Love and (of?) Shamrock Shakes

Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

           

On 11 February of this year, Bishop John Doerfler was ordained and installed as the 13^th bishop of Marquette, and 12^th successor of the Venerable Frederic Baraga, in Marquette.  Being the church junky that I am, I watched some of it online.  And I caught his opening words as the newest bishop, his pastoral plan for the diocese: be a friend of Jesus; make a friend; introduce your friend to Jesus.  Pretty easy to remember these three points: be a friend of Jesus; make a friend; introduce your friend to Jesus.

            I’m not as good with sound bites as Bishop Doerfler.  I could only keep my homily to four points, not three.  But the first and the last one are the same, so hopefully it’s not too challenging.  My four points are: love the person; do not condemn; call to conversion; love the person.  Did we get that?  Love the person; do not condemn; call to conversion; love the person.

            That is certainly the message of today’s readings, though the Word of God expresses it better than I do: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” we heard the Book of Leviticus say from our first reading.  First, of course, we must actually love who we are, not with the egotistical, self-centered, narcissistic love that our culture promotes, but with the realization that we are created in the image and likeness of God and so are basically good, even though we suffer under the effects of desiring what we should not want to do, what we call concupiscence.  But if we realize that we are in the image and likeness of God, then and only then can we treat others like we treat ourselves.  Love the person.

            The Gospel continues with Jesus telling us how God loves those who don’t love Him, and that we are called to the same.  He lets his sun shine on the bad and the good, and lets the rains fall on the just and the unjust.  God does not condemn the person.  He does not approve of evil or unjust deeds, but He does not condemn the person as soon as they fall into sin.  Instead, He continues to love them.  Do not condemn.

            To what end?  Why would God love someone who has turned away from Him?  Why would God give good things to those who deserve bad?  He showers His love on them so that they might be changed by His love.  The cliché way of saying this is: “God loves us as we are—but too much to let us stay that way.”  God loves us even though we turn away from Him in sin, but His love that He continues to give us is meant to encourage us to return that love and choose Him rather than sin.  Call to conversion.

            This is the part that our society really has a problem with.  We’re all too ready to say that God loves us.  We’re all too ready not to be condemned by God.  But when it comes to conversion, we shrink back.  We have fallen into the error that loving a person means loving everything that person does.  That is not how God’s love works, and therefore it’s not how our love as followers of God should work. 

Let’s say I had an evil twin, who was the antithesis of who I am, sort of the Bizarro Fr. Anthony (if you don’t know Superman, that probably didn’t make sense).  And let’s say Bizarro Fr. Anthony is just a very angry man and his anger overflows one day because McDonald’s just ran out of the shamrock shake and he didn’t get to enjoy one at all (this is not a true story, just in case you’re wondering), and so he kills the McDonald’s employee.  Does God still love Bizarro Fr. Anthony?  Yes!!  If God didn’t love Bizarro Fr. Anthony, Bizarro Fr. Anthony wouldn’t exist.  But God does not love the murder that Bizarro Fr. Anthony just committed, even if McDonald’s did just run out of shamrock shakes.  The same goes for any sin with any person.  God loves us, but he doesn’t love everything we do.  We, too, can love the person without loving everything they do.  Don’t believe me?

None of you would probably call Pope Francis a hateful person, full of bigotry.  In fact, I would guess that if we had to come up with one word that described Pope Francis, that word would be: loving.  And yet, in the interview Pope Francis gave to a Jesuit priest in September, Pope Francis stated that the Church’s teaching on abortion, gay marriage, and artificial contraception is clear.  Does that mean he does not love certain people?  Of course not!  Pope Francis loves us all!!  And he is an image, an icon, if you will, of Jesus’ love, which is fitting since he is the Vicar of Christ.  And he is teaching us how to love a person without loving everything they do.  And the key is that we love people, not just at the beginning, but throughout, even when we disagree with them, even if they do things with which we cannot agree because Christ has taught us otherwise.  We love them, because God loves us, even when we do things which God does not agree with, and which He taught us not to do, no matter how big or how small.  That is why the fourth point is as same as the first: love the person.

Jesus summed up the law and the prophets in two commandments: love God with all of who we are, and love our neighbors as ourselves.  Everything the Church teaches as true and part of our faith stems from those two commandments.  As we seek to live those commandments out we try with all our strength to love the person; do not condemn; call to conversion; love the person.

Catholic Culture?

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            What would a Catholic culture look like today?  It can often be easier to bemoan the present than to dream of the future.  But let’s take some time to dream, to hope, to imagine what life could be like.  Now, we may think it’s a little arrogant to want to the culture to reflect our beliefs.  And I’m certainly not saying that we would set up a country where you can only enter if you’re Catholic.  But I’m talking about a world where the Catholic view of the world is so well lived that it’s in the air we breathe.  And we want it to be that way, but not because we can be the most powerful.  But if, as Vatican II says, Jesus reveals what humanity is called to be, then what we have we should want to share with everyone, not keep to ourselves.

           

That’s what Jesus means when He says in today’s Gospel passage, “‘You are the salt of the earth.  But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?  It is no longer good for anything…You are the light of the world.  A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden…Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.’”  We are meant to give flavor and light to the culture, to the world, and the more we do that, the more we encourage people into right belief and right worship.  Our life of service is meant to help fill this church.  And our worship in this church is meant to enable our life of service.  If all we do is serve without drawing people to conversion and belief in Jesus, then our service is missing a necessary component.  If our worship and belief do not propel us to serve others, than our worship and belief are empty.  As St. John, our heavenly patron, says in his first letter, if we don’t love the brother or sister whom we can see, how can we claim to love God whom we cannot see?

            In a Catholic culture, we embrace and serve the poor, especially those at our front door.  We do pretty good work here with our St. John Food Pantry.  But it goes beyond food bank.  It is a whole way of life.  Think about your clothes: what do you need, and what is extra?  For me, I have a rule that, because I have basically what I need—my clerical attire, some spring/summer casual clothes, and some fall/winter casual clothes—whenever I want to get a new article of clothing, I also have to donate something to the St. Vincent de Paul store.  I have one daily pair of boots, one dress pair of boots, Sperry’s for the summer time, and one pair of athletic shoes.  That’s all I need.  My parents go through shoes faster than I do, because they are more active with running.  That’s what they need.  Business leaders may need more suits than I do, because they go to more dressy functions, including many major charities.  Living a simple life will look a little different for each of us.  But the key is that we don’t just buy clothes because we want them; we buy clothes because we need them.  And should we feel we need a new article of clothing, we can, in many cases, give something else away.

            Another great question for us is how we spend our time caring for those at the fringes of society?  Our first reading is just one example of how God highlights His preference for the poor and outcast.  Is it because poverty and exclusion lead to holiness?  Not necessarily.  Poverty and being excluded can just as easily lead to hatred, jealousy, and vengeful thoughts and deeds.  But the poor and outcasts have no one else to rely on, and so God takes their cause.  And when we do the same, we spread God’s love.  We live as Jesus’ disciples by following the example of the Master.  In ancient cultures, widows were often part of the defenseless because they no longer had a husband to get them food, protect them, etc.  Widows are not so defenseless and helpless now, thank God, but I was just talking to a widow from our parish the other day, and I asked her how things were going.  She said they were ok, but she was lonely.  This is a woman who goes and has gone to Church at least every Sunday certainly for all of her adult life, and, from my four years here, has gone to many weekday Masses.  And yet no one makes time to visit her.  Sadly, I have not made much time, either, so I include myself in that challenge.  Financially widows find more protection these days, but how do we do at visiting widows and making sure they are not lonely?  In a parish about 3400 families, there should be no reason for any person to feel like they don’t have someone they can turn to, or someone to check in on them to make sure they’re alright.

            On this celebration of World Marriage Day, it’s also important that a Catholic culture is one that supports marriage as created by God.  A loving marriage between a man and a woman, with children lovingly welcomed and cared for is a great way to give people a good beginning to use their gifts and talents for the betterment of their city, State, and country, and for the building up of the city of God.  And working to protect that sacred institution is part of being salt and light.  Being salt and light also means that we welcome and support our brothers and sisters who have a same-sex attraction, and help them to strive, along with all of us—married, single, priests, and consecrated people—to live the chaste life that the Gospel calls us to.  Being salt and light also means that we help women who feel like they have no choice but to abort their babies to choose life, as we assist them through the difficulties of a pregnancy which so often has no other support.

            All of these issues that I just mentioned: poverty, spending habits, marriage and family life, and working to end abortion, are all part of the church’s teaching on social justice.  We can’t just pick the parts that we like.  If we say we are for social justice, then we embrace it all.  There are many in our one parish who are working for social justice in its different facets.  But we always need to challenge each other to make sure we’re doing all we can.  Maybe as individuals we can’t do it all, but as the Body of Christ, we can join together and support another in making our world more saturated with the Gospel as a Catholic culture.

What Are You Doing?!?

Feast of the Presentation of the Lord

            “What are you doing?!?”  Maybe some of you who are parents have had those words come out of your mouth, probably with more emotion than I just gave them.  More often than not an answer is not really necessary, as the sight of the child doing, well, what children do, often explains what exactly is going on.  Although, this phrase can also be used when we don’t understand what another person is doing.  I imagine the Wright Brothers had a lot of people ask them, “What are you doing?”

            We might have asked God that question when Jesus was presented in the temple, which is what we celebrate today on the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  After all, Jesus is God.  He doesn’t have to be presented to God in the temple.  And He certainly doesn’t need to follow the Mosaic Law, because He is not a subject of the Law, He is the giver of the Law.  And this prescription of the Law was given to the Chosen People as a way of having them participate in the redemption of the Passover.  Just as God passed over the houses and the Israelites and did not kill their firstborn sons because of the blood of the Passover lamb, so each male child was to be offered to the Lord, but instead of the child dying, the animals would take its place, as a vicarious sacrifice.  But Jesus did not need redeeming.  He was sinless, and so was not under the reality that St. Paul talks about, that the wages of sin is death.  So what was God doing?

            Well, as often happens when it comes to God, in one action God was doing a lot of things.  First, He was returning to the Temple built in His honor.  The presence of God, represented by the Ark of the Covenant, had been absent from the Temple since the Babylonian Exile, when Jeremiah had taken it away and hidden it somewhere on his way to Egypt.  But, as often happens when you hide something, you don’t quite remember where you put it.  And so, after the Jews returned from Babylon, even though they built the temple, there was no Ark of the Covenant to be there.  There are many theories where it was: some say it’s located beneath the rubble of the Temple that Nebuchadnezzar ordered destroyed; some say it made its way down to Ethiopia, to the Queen of Sheba, and has been kept safe by Ethiopian Orthodox priests since the time of Jesus; if you believe Hollywood, Indiana Jones found it and now it’s locked in a warehouse in some government facility.  But it was not in the temple.  And so, as Jesus is presented in the temple, the prophecy of Malachi is fulfilled: “And suddenly there will come to the temple the Lord whom you seek, And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.”

            Secondly, God was fulfilling the promise He had made to Simeon, that Simeon would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s anointed, or, in Hebrew, Meshiach (Messiah).  Simeon, who had waited on the Lord, was now so glad that God made good on His word, that he broke into a prayer which has echoed on the lips of clergy, religious, and lay faithful throughout the centuries:

            Lord, now you let your servant go in peace,

            Your word has been fulfilled.

            My own eyes have seen the salvation

            which you have prepared in the sight of every people,

            A light to reveal you to the nations

            And the glory of your people, Israel.

In this way each member of the Church is invited, each night before he or she goes to sleep, to recall how God has been faithful to His promises, and has made salvation know, not only to the Jews, the Chosen People, but also to the nations, the Gentiles, as the darkness of sin is destroyed by the Light of Christ.  What a great way to end our day, by learning this short prayer and saying it each night before we go to bed as we recall the promises God has fulfilled to us!

            Thirdly, God was continuing to humble Himself.  In St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he says, “Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at.  Rather, he humbled himself and took the form of a slave.”  Jesus, through He is the Lawgiver, submits to the law, setting before us a beautiful example of obedience.  Obedience is certainly not a popular virtue.  But Jesus shows us that obedience to God always is the recipe for freedom with others and ourselves.

            Even as God re-enters His Temple in the Person of Jesus, we also know that at the crucifixion the veil of the Temple is ripped in two by the power of God, and God establishes Christ as the Temple not made by hands but destroyed by human hands, but raised up and rebuilt by God.  And Christ makes living temples of those who are joined to Him in Baptism.  We become the place where God dwells.  We become the place where Jesus is presented as we receive His Body and Blood into our very body in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.  We become lights in the Light that is meant to scatter the darkness of sin and enlighten others to the joy, freedom, and peace of following Jesus and living according to His law of love.  Jesus is about to enter into your temple.  May the Light of the World find your heart a welcome home, and then give you the courage to share that light with others.