Our Camaraderie with God

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            Many of the adults I talk to who have children who frequently misbehave, tell me that they feel like they are getting their just desserts.  “Father,” they tell me, “when I was a kid I was a real trouble maker.  I kept my mom and dad up late at night, worrying about whether I was ok.  At the time, I didn’t think it was a big deal, but now that I have kids, I realize how difficult I made it for my mom and dad, and I appreciate all their love and concern all the more.” 

            There’s something about having someone know exactly what you’re going through that gives you a real sense of camaraderie.  While anyone can be a critic, only coaches know how hard it is to get your players to perform at the level of which you know they are capable so the team can win.  When there is a death of a loved one, especially a spouse, parent, or child, we rightfully support each other, but only one who has lost a spouse, parent, or child truly understands what that person is going through.

            What camaraderie we have, then, with our God!  God knows us.  He knows us better than we do ourselves.  He knows what will truly make us happy, and how we can best achieve that happiness.  But the shocker is that, not only does God teach us how we are to live in order to be happy, but He joins us to Himself and experiences life just like we do, but without sin.  This is the scandal of the Incarnation: that God, who existed before all else, who cannot suffer, who was subject to nothing, would lower Himself and take on human flesh and feel the heat of the burning sun, the cool of the desert night, would stub his toe occasionally while walking, and would be tempted to all the things we are, and then freely be nailed to a cross in order to save us.  While we have grown used to this narrative over 2,000 years, this is truly amazing!!  God did not have to join a human nature to His divine nature in Jesus.  There was no compulsion to take on human limitations.  But out of love for us, Jesus did all that.

            In our first reading, God talks about how He will lead his people from exile into joy.  He promises to bring gather them, and to console them after their sorrows.  He will even make the road easy for them, without hills or valleys, without twists or turns.  He will free them from their oppression.  And in Jesus, God does that.  In our Gospel, Jesus heals a blind man, Bartimaeus.  He restores light and vision to the man’s eyes, the man who had walked in darkness for a long time.  But God does not just do this like a magic trick.  He does not simply will it to be from the heavens.  Instead, He takes the journey with us, from exile into freedom, from darkness into light.

            In Jesus, God knew the weight of sin, though He was sinless Himself.  As holiness itself in a human body, Jesus could sense all the disobedience around Him.  It must have made His very being convulse interiorly at the separation that sin causes.  But, He took that sin upon Himself and freed us from it.  It is as if He took our hand as we were lost, and told us, “I’ll lead you back home.”  In Jesus, we could hold hands with God, and be led where we needed to go.

            Although God knows the eye better than we do ourselves, in Jesus God sees with His eyes.  He has eyes that receive light and shadow and color, and so as He comes to Bartimaeus and senses his faith, He restores sight to that man to bring him back into the light. 

            Our God is not the god of the deists, a disinterested clockmaker who set the world in motion and lets it work according to its mechanical rules.  Our God is the loving Father, who sends His Son to experience life with us, and to show us the way to true happiness.  Yes, He knows the pain of sin because He knows how He created us and He knows that sin does not fulfill who we are.  But He also knows the weight and pain through Jesus’ human nature, such that He cries out from the cross using the words of King David in Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  Through always united to God, He drinks the pain of sin, not just a sip, but to the dregs, so that we can have life.  Yes, God knows darkness because He separated the day from the night, but He also has eyes that see and experiences the joy of vision with human eyes.

            So, do you know that God?  Do you know the God who not only knows you because He is God, but because He has also taken to Himself human flesh, never to separate from it?  Would you be comfortable enough having breakfast with this God?  Or do you prefer the anonymous, distant god?  To be honest, the anonymous, distant god is easier to deal with.  It’s like that fourth cousin, once removed who lives in Mississippi.  Sure, we’re family, but there’s no real relationship there.  And that way, he makes no demands on me, and I make no demands on Him.  We’re just associated with each other.  Do you know Jesus such that you would be comfortable spending time with Him, and making a sacrifice for Him?  A relationship means that there are demands on one’s affections.  Friends do this and don’t do that.  Jesus invites us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.  He invites us to be pure of heart, mind, and body.  Jesus invites us to take up our cross daily and follow Him, to value everything less than our relationship with Him.  Those demands only make sense if we have a relationship with Him.  If not, they just seem like rules and regulations.

            The Good News is that Jesus knows us, and He knows the reality of our situation, in His human nature as one like us in all things but sin, and in His divine nature as our Creator.  The upside is that, if we are willing to have a relationship with the God who took on human flesh, then we can grasp that fleshy hand as He says to us, “Come with me.  Let me take you from the exile of sin into the freedom of holiness; from the darkness of death into the light of life.”  “Come, follow me.”  

Kenny Chesney & the Rich Young Man

Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I’m a fan of country music.  Others may have noticed my cowboy boots and country hat that I have worn.  One of the popular country stars in these days is Kenny Chesney.  He has such hits as “Boys of Fall,” “You and Tequila,” and “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.”  Lesser known is his song, “Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven.”  The words of the refrain are: “Everybody wants to go to heaven/ Have a mansion high above the clouds/ Everybody wants to go to heaven/ but nobody wants to go now.” 

            Today’s readings also focus us on what our priorities are: are they earthly or are they heavenly?  In the first reading, the Sacred Author, traditionally regarded as King Solomon, says that he prayed for prudence and wisdom, and he received it.  He wanted it more than “scepter and throne, and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her, nor did [he] liken any priceless gem to her; because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand, and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.”  He didn’t care about good health and being attractive, and even about sleep.  Solomon here is not just talking about being book smart or street smart, but is talking about the wisdom from above, the wisdom from God so that Solomon could know what is important, and what is less or unimportant.  But, even though Solomon talks about only wanting the wisdom of God, he also says, “Yet all good things together came to me in her company, and countless riches at her hands.”  Having the wisdom of God did not deny Solomon the good things, but, instead, brought the truly good things to him.

            Jesus, in the Gospel, talks about obstacles to heaven, as seen in the Rich Young Man.  The man had kept all of the commandments, and so Jesus told him that he lacked just one thing: “‘Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”  But the man couldn’t bring himself to make that radical step.  The Word of God, Jesus Christ the Divine Word, was sharper than any sword for that man, penetrated between soul and spirit, joint and marrow, and was able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart, and that Rich Young Man’s heart loved his possessions more than he loved Jesus.  Now, to be clear, Jesus did not condemn wealth.  But, Jesus did condemn making wealth a god, and preferring it to following Him.  He also warned how easy it is for riches to become an obstacle to salvation, going so far as to say, “‘It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’”  Money so easily becomes a god unto itself which beckons like a siren to be loved and treasured above all else, and to try and make more and more and more.

            Now, money isn’t an obstacle for all people.  It’s so easy to place other lesser goods between us and the Lord, so that the demand isn’t so great.  We could prefer status to Jesus; or vacation; or power; or prestige; or even just our own will.  Each of those things, and so many more, can be things that we feel we cannot let go, even if the Lord is calling us to abandon them in order to follow Him more deeply.  Our relationship with Jesus, truly knowing Him and loving Him, has to be first, with no excuses why anything else is more important.  If today Jesus appeared right in your midst, in His glorified body, and said to you, “You can spend two hours with me here, or I will give you the winning Powerball numbers so you can win $50 million dollars,” what would we say?  I know what I should say.  And maybe you’re like me, and want to immediately rationalize what we could do with $50 million dollars.  But the only right answer is Jesus.  And even if money isn’t your temptation, it could be good grades, a good job, a nice vacation getaway, or, again, maybe just having your own way.  But, the key is, what comes first for us?

            What’s interesting is that the choice isn’t: follow Jesus and be miserable, or follow whatever little god is important to you and have pleasure.  After St. Peter tells Jesus, “‘We have given up everything and followed you,’” Jesus replies, “‘there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age…and eternal life in the age to come.’”  Now, Jesus is also clear that with following Him comes persecution.   But you also receive a lot more, even in this age, not to mention eternal life and happiness with God.  Bl. Teresa of Calcutta attests to that; she preferred nothing to Jesus.  And even though she didn’t even own the sari on her back and went through intense spiritual darkness, she was truly happy.  Venerable Solanus Casey is another good example.  He was ordained a priest, but he was not allowed to hear confessions or preach sermons.  Most of his work was opening doors to the monastery, and serving the poor.  Yet I dare you to find a happier man, who also brought such joy to those he met. 

            Nothing is more important than our relationship with Jesus.  Nothing even comes close to its worth.  The Lord asks each of us today: what is an obstacle to our relationship?  What keeps us from drawing close to Him?  “‘Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.’”

The Icon of Marriage

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

            If there’s one gift that I admire in people, it’s the gift of being an artist; of being able to take pencils, or crayons, or paints, or charcoal and create an image that truly looks like something, whether it’s a landscape, a person, or a scene.  Try as I might, I just don’t have that gift.  The best I can do is stick figures and basic shapes, and they never seem to look like what I am imagining or picturing in my head, no matter how hard I try.

            When a piece of art looks like what it represents, it’s easy to tell the correlation.  When the art doesn’t look like what it represents, it’s difficult to find the correlation.  When an artist paints the Coliseum in Rome, you can tell what it is.  Why I try to draw the Coliseum, it could be a bathtub, a strainer, or just a blob.

            Jesus’ teaching today on marriage is all about correlation.  Marriage is meant to be an icon, and image, or something else.  And we see that in the beginning in Genesis.  Adam and Eve are created to be a communion of persons.  They are not simply to be two persons who happen to be in the same area, but they are meant to be joined in a relationship.  “‘It is not good for the man to be alone,’” God says, and so he makes Eve for Adam.  But Adam recognizes that this is not simply a second, but a part of him.  “‘This one, at last,’” Adam says, “‘is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’”  The two are meant for each other.  And in that first couple, we see the design of marriage, as the sacred author says at the end, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”

            But what are Adam and Eve, two persons but joined as one flesh, meant to represent?  They are the icon of the God’s relationship with humanity.  Adam and Eve are meant to be a physical representation in their marriage of God and human nature.  Just as Jesus is one Person, so Adam and Eve are both human.  And, just as Jesus has two distinct natures, so Adam and Eve retain their individuality.  Of course, an icon is an image; it is not the same.  And there are differences between the relationship between God and humanity and Adam and Eve.  But Adam and Eve are an image of the communion of marriage of God to humanity.

            Through the years, after the Fall of Adam and Eve, that image became marred.  It’s as if Fr. Anthony started to draw the image.  Yes, it had some resemblances to the original, but there were flaws.  Whereas God’s original plan was for one man and one woman to be joined as one flesh for life, very soon after the Fall men and women started to abuse the gift of their sexuality and so marred the image of marriage.  It was no longer one man and one woman, but maybe one man and lots of women.  And even in the Law given through Moses, while adultery is clearly forbidden (the Sixth Commandment), still, divorce is allowed by Moses, and the image of God’s communion of Persons is still not quite an accurate portrayal.

            But Jesus, the full revelation of the Father, the new Moses, cleans up the image.  He reminds the Pharisees that the husband and wife are not two, but one flesh, and what God has joined cannot be separated (unless, as in the passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the marriage is not valid from the start).  Jesus calls the Chosen People back to the idea of radical fidelity, even in the face of unfaithfulness.  That is the message of almost all the prophets, who remind Israel that she is the Bride of God, and that she has been unfaithful.  But God, for His part, never abandoned her, and remains faithful for all time.  That image of marriage is based upon God Himself, who took to Himself a human nature, and will never separate or divorce that human nature from Himself.  He is one flesh with humanity.    And so Jesus says there this is no such thing as divorce from God’s perspective. 

            This is a tough teaching because it is a difficult image to live up to.  But that is precisely what marriage represents: the relationship between Jesus and humanity.  That is why preparation for marriage is so important, so that the union of a man and a woman is an accurate representation of the marriage of the divine to the human in Jesus Christ.  That is why it is so important for married couples to support each other, especially in difficult times, to remain faithful to their vows and to that image, as long as it does not endanger a person’s spiritual, mental, or emotional well-being.  The Church certainly does not want a spouse to be a punching bag, and sometimes separation is necessary.  Sometimes there was something that was missing from the marriage from the start, which may or may not have been known.  That is why the Church grants Declarations of Invalidity, or annulments, to recognize that what was necessary for that image to even be crafted may not have been there.  It does not illegitimate any of the aspects that looked like a real marriage, including the children, but it does recognize that something necessary was missing.

            To all those who have civil divorces in our community: while we cannot change Jesus’ teaching, we can also emphasize that Jesus still loves you and wants you as a part of His Body, the Church.  I have too often heard from people who have felt that because they are divorced (even though they are not civilly remarried) they cannot participate in the life of the Church.  That is the farthest from the truth.  As long as you are not doing anything which is improper for a married person, if you are divorced, you are still welcome to present yourself for all the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.  And whether you have or have not attempted remarriage outside of the Church, do not be afraid to come and meet with a priest to try to regularize your situation and obtain a declaration of invalidity.  Especially if you have attempted remarriage, Fr. Mark and I want to help you so that you can once again return to the sacramental life of the Church.

            The Church’s teaching on marriage can seem hard.  It can seem to many to be out of date and punitive.  But what the Church teaches is what Jesus teaches: that marriage is not just about one man and one woman becoming one flesh.  That union is meant to symbolize the bond of one human nature and one Divine nature in the one Divine Person of Jesus, a bond which Jesus will never separate, because God has joined them together.  Let us support each other, especially married couples, in living out that icon of love, so that the image is clear and recognizable of the unending and unbreakable bond of love of God with humanity.

Be a Prophet!!

Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            So often I think when Catholics hear the word “prophet,” we think of someone who can foretell the future.  In fact, in the Biblical accounts, while prophets do sometimes tell people what will happen as a result of their sin or conversion, the prophets are the ones who speak for God.  Their job is not to say on what exact date the world is going to end (apparently that job was already taken by the Mayans), or which lottery numbers to play, but to speak for God.  And in our first reading, we hear how God pours out a spirit of prophecy of 70 elders.  Towards the end of the passage today, Joshua gets a little envious, and is upset that Eldad and Medad, who were outside the camp when they were supposed to be with Moses, still received the spirit of prophecy.  Moses then prophesies, “‘Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!  Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!’”  That prophecy was fulfilled at Pentecost, when the Lord poured out His Spirit upon the Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and the Disciples gathered in the Upper Room.  And then the Lord poured out His spirit on the new believers. 

            We, for our part, have also been made prophets.  The Lord has poured out His Spirit on us in Baptism and Confirmation.  At Baptism we were anointed with the Sacred Chrism, which reminded us that we are now a member of the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, and we share in his priestly, prophetic, and kingly ministry of all the faithful.  In Confirmation, the Bishop or Priest called down the Holy Spirit upon us through prayer, and then anointed us again with the Sacred Chrism to seal us with the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And so, the prophecy of Moses was fulfilled in us as we were made prophets, those who speak for God.

            As a good examination of conscience we can ask ourselves: how do we speak for God, both by our words (the prophets of the Old Testament are always saying, “Thus says the Lord”) and by our deeds (like when Jeremiah made the clay pot, or Ezekiel acted as if he were in exile)?

            Are we a prophet when it comes to defending the dignity of the poor and truly assisting them?  People can debate the best way to help the poor legitimately.  But, as prophets, we must ensure that the poor, widows, and orphans, those whom the Lord favors, are protected from neglect and are not punished for their lack of means.  Are we a prophet when it comes to defending the dignity and definition of marriage?  Our culture is really confused about marriage right now.  But we know that marriage was created by God as the union between one man and one woman for life, and that good, happy, holy marriages should be protected because of the important role they play in forming good, happy, and holy societies.  Are we a prophet for the infant in the womb and the homebound, who are so often neglected?  Do we give those who do not have a voice our voice and speak for God so that mothers and fathers can make the only good choice, the choice for life, and so that the homebound are not “done away with” because they are a burden to society?  Are we prophets for religious freedom, the God-given right that we have to worship and to take what we have received in worship into the public sector and not be punished for our beliefs or for serving those who are not Catholic?

            Are we prophets by what we say and what we do (and in this election year, being a prophet includes speak for God when we vote)?  When we are not prophets, by what we say and by what we do, then we causes others to sin by assisting them in thinking that God’s message does not really matter; that we can separate what we believe and how we live.  That is the sin of scandal, and it occurs when, by our words or actions, we provide a witness that does not live up to our prophetic call to speak for God, so that others do not consider, for example, protecting the poor, the infant in the womb, the homebound, the true definition of marriage, and religious freedom.  When we don’t exercise our prophetic vocation that we received in Baptism and Confirmation, others notice: when they know that as Christians we are called to assist the poor as an act of charity, and yet we make wealth and possessions our little idols; when we say we’re pro-life but then our actions don’t reflect that belief; when we don’t assist married couples, especially when times are difficult for them; when we are silent in the midst of the government telling us that they will decide who qualifies for conscience protection; then we cause scandal and lead others to think that those issues don’t really matter.  And if that happens, woe to us, because Jesus is quite clear what we can expect: “‘it would be better for him [or her] if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.’”

            But, when we live up to our prophetic call to infuse the culture, our families, our neighborhoods, our jobs, politics, and all aspects of life with the message of God, the Gospel, then we will not lose our reward.  When we speak for God and not for ourselves, then others will know what God wants for this world in order that all people might life in peace, justice, and the love of God.  The Spirit of the Lord is upon you, because He has anointed you.  Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.