Spiritual Sicknesses

Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Many people, when hearing what the book of Leviticus said today in our first reading, have a very negative view of the rule that was set out when someone had some sort of skin disease.  Many shudder at the idea of a person being ostracized, sent away from the community, because of an illness which, in most cases, was beyond that person’s control.  But, even today there are some illnesses which cause separation from the community.  The community does not want to become infected, and so people are quarantined, or at least told to stay home.  We do not want sickness to be mingled with health.  We need a doctor to heal the person before they can resume their normal duties and be joined once more to the community.

In our Gospel today, Jesus, the Divine Physician, goes right into the middle of that illness to heal that person of their illness and restore them to the community.  Jesus does not condemn the law separating lepers from the greater community.  In fact, He even upholds the law that the leper was supposed to show himself to the priest and offer what Moses prescribed, fulfilling the law.  Jesus cures the man, thus eliminating the separation that the illness created.  Jesus wants to make us whole, and He goes into the very heart of our illness to do so, so that we can once more worship and be united with the community.

Besides physical illnesses, there are also spiritual illnesses.  These illnesses we call sin.  Now, it’s no longer popular for priests to talk about sin.  It’s no longer popular for people to hear about sin.  But it’s a reality in our lives.  It is an illness, and one that can kill our souls!  What kind of a doctor of souls would I be if I didn’t tell you about the current illnesses that are spreading?!?

Just like all illnesses weren’t leprosy and didn’t separate a person from the community, so not all sins separate us from sanctifying grace, the grace which saves us from eternal death.  In the first letter of St. John, we are told, “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that is not deadly.”  All sin is bad, but not all sin severs our relationship with God.  These may be sins like gossip, ill-thoughts against another, little white lies, etc.  We should not ignore these and pretend they have no effect on our spiritual health, any more than we should ignore small illnesses.  Sometimes, if not treated, they develop into or make us more susceptible to bigger illnesses.  So certainly we need to deal with them.  One way to deal with them is simply by receiving the Eucharist.  When we receive the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus which saves us from sins, Jesus washes away our venial sins (St. Ignatius of Antioch calls the Eucharist the “medicine of immortality) and strengthens us to not commit those sins again.  Another way is by confessing them in the Sacrament of Penance.  When we confess venial sins, even if they have been previously forgiven through reception of the Eucharist, we are strengthened and receive more grace to avoid sin in the future.

But there are also sins which are deadly.  We also use the term mortal.  Mortal sins are the sins we commit that are gravely wrong (they are grave because they cause spiritual death), we know they are wrong, and we freely choose them anyway.  These sins, like murder, missing Mass on purpose, stealing, major lies, pornography, and unchastity with ourselves or another, etc., deprive us of God’s sanctifying grace, and sever our relationship with God.  We are cut off like the leper in the community.  

And because we are cut off from God, we cannot simply receive the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of Jesus, and have our sins cleansed.  When we sin mortally, we tell God that we want no part of His rule in our life.  To receive the Eucharist in a state of mortal sin is uniting our sinful state, our deliberate rebellion against God, with God Himself in an act of sacrilege.  St. Paul clearly teaches this in chapter six of his first letter to the Corinthians.  He corrects those who are Christians but who are committing sins of immorality with prostitutes because they are joining prostitution to the Mystical Body of Christ.  St. Paul also says in chapter 10: “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and also the cup of demons.  You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and of the table of demons.”  He also says in the following chapter, “A person should examine himself, and so eat the bread and drink the cup.  For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.”  For that reason, the Church has held, from the time of the apostles, that no one who is conscience of grave sin is to present himself or herself for the Eucharist.  

But just like in the Gospel, Jesus wants to heal us.  He does not want us to be cut off.  In the Sacrament of Penance, with sorrow for our sins and an amendment to avoid those sins in the future, we cry out like the leper, “‘If you wish, you can make me clean.’”  And through the ministry of the priest and the prayer of absolution, Jesus also says as He did in today’s Gospel, “‘I do will it.  Be made clean.’”  Through the Sacrament of Penance, the ordinary way to have mortal sins forgiven, our rejection of God is healed, and God restores sanctifying grace to us, so that we can live forever.  We are returned not only to spiritual health, like the leper, but are also, like the leper, restored to full worship with the community.  God does not leave us in our sins, but seeks us out to heal us.  But He will not force His healing upon us.  Inspired by His grace, we have to respond and reach out for His help in the Sacrament of Penance.  And God heals us and strengthens us to avoid those sins in the future.  

And we can then proclaim to others how good God is to us!!  We can be like the leper who cannot contain, even though Jesus tells him to, the good news that God has healed us.  What a powerful witness to those who are afflicted with the disease of sin: to know that there’s a medicine which can heal them!  Right now I hear confessions every Saturday from 3:30-4:30 p.m. and by appointment.  What a great blessing it would be if I had to add another hour on a different day of the week to be able to handle all of the people coming to the Lord to be healed, either from small sins or big ones, and restoring those who are mortally ill to full health and the ability to receive the Eucharist.  Don’t doubt the extent of God’s mercy.  Don’t limit the exercise of His healing on your soul.  Celebrate God’s healing in the Sacrament of Penance.  Be made clean!

God Takes On the Life of Job

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

If you came to Mass today looking for a pick-me-up reading, our first reading from the Book of Job was probably not helpful.  We’ve probably all had days like Job, though, thinking that our life is just dragging on and is full of misery.  Remember that at this point, Job has lost almost of all of his material wealth, his children have been killed, and he himself is afflicted with sores.  His wife’s advice in all of this: curse God and die!  Not the loving support you want to hear from your spouse!  Instead, I think in hard times we all would rather that we had someone to sympathize with us; not just someone who feels bad for us, but someone who has gone through the same or similar circumstances.

That is the great news about the Incarnation!  God sees us in our misery, a misery which far surpasses that of Job, but He doesn’t just empathize with us, that is, suffer in us without any idea of what it really means.  Our God takes flesh in the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and comes down to know our pain.  When God takes on our human flesh, not just living in it but truly making it His own, uniting our human nature to His divine nature forever, He takes on our misery, without giving up any of His glory.  

But while He could have avoided the nastiness of our fallen condition, He doesn’t.  In fact, our Gospel reminds us that He went down right into the middle of it all.  He spends time and touches people who are sick “with various diseases.”  He drives out demons.  He even enters into the delicate relationship between a son and his mother-in-law when He goes to the house of Simon Peter.  And, as our Gospel also states, He goes out to preach and to heal and to expel demons in other villages, not just His own.  He takes upon Himself all that it means to be human, but without sinning.  But, though He never sins, He even takes sin upon Himself as He suffers the pain and the penalty of sin.  When we sin, we (hopefully) feel bad enough because we have injured (venial sins) or severed (mortal sins) our relationship with God.  But imagine how much more horrible that must have felt for Jesus Christ, Himself God, to take upon Himself separation from God.  When we think about it, Jesus’ words on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” become even more powerful.  Jesus even shares in our death, the ultimate penalty of sin, as He breathes His last and His body loses the breath of God.

That doesn’t sound like it, but it’s good news.  It sounds horrible that God would have to go through that, and it’s for that reason that people weep when they think about the Passion of Jesus Christ, but it’s really good news.  Our God does not simply empathize with us, but sympathizes with us(which means He suffers with us).  He embraces us as we suffer, and reminds us that He knows the pain that we go through, not as a distant onlooker, but as a participant in our pain.

And that is the good news that St. Paul preaches.  That is the Gospel (which means good news) that St. Paul is obliged to preach, because he wants others to know that they do not suffer alone, and that, after all Jesus’ suffering, new life was won.  That is why St. Paul made himself a slave to all; why he became weak to the weak and all things to all.  St. Paul wants others to know that while life can sometimes seem as miserable as Job, Jesus has passed through pain and death and has transformed it into joy and life.  

Today the Church celebrates World Marriage Day, and next weekend we’ll have a blessing for Married Couples which will coincide with our St. Valentine’s Day Dinner Dance (and the Sunday after).  The call of Catholic married couples is to be a sacrament, a sign instituted by Christ which brings grace.  Too many married couples feel like Job, with life as a drag.  Catholic married couples are meant to show them, through their own living out of the vocation of marriage, that marriage may not be easy, and that sometimes couples might feel like Job, but that Christ has transformed marriage into a way to become holy.  They show it to others by their love for each other.  They show it to a new generation as they conceive and raise children in the faith.  They preach the Gospel by letting Christ sanctify and transform their love for each other so that when others look at them, they see the love of Jesus for His Bride, the Church.  

And we, the Bride, the Church, are not always easy to love, as many married couples sometimes experience.  We, God’s People, are not always faithful to Him; we do not always love Him; we do not always show that love for Him by prayer, spending time with Him, making Him the priority in our life.  And yet, Jesus continues to love us and pour Himself out for us as He sits at the right hand of the Father, interceding for us.  Married couples: I challenge you to say 1 Our Father with each other each day.  If you do, I promise not that marriage will be easy, but that you will have the strength from heaven to persevere even in the hard times.  High schoolers, college students, and young adults: I challenge you to say 1 Hail Mary each day, asking our Blessed Mother to help show you if you are called to marriage, and if you are called to that beautiful vocation, to show you whom to marry.  For the rest of us, let us pray 1 Glory Be each day for the sanctification of married couples and those discerning a vocation to marriage so that our church, our city, our nation, and our world can be filled with examples of Christ’s love.

Whose Authority?

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Last week I announced that I was going to DJ the St. Valentine’s Day Dinner Dance.  A number of people wondered if I was serious; and though I might get some help, I certainly am!  A number of people asked if the dance was only going to have country music; it won’t.  I do also appreciate other genres of music.  The 9th grade confirmation class asked if I was going to play “All About That Bass,” a current song that is not, despite its title, about a certain register on an instrument or in a voice.  

Musical taste is always a funny thing.  Some people only listen to one kind of music.  Some people listen to many.  Some have genres that they’ll never listen to (like rap or country), while others go back and forth between different styles.  What I love about country music is that, more often than not, the words are profound, funny, or insightful.  What I dislike about many current songs, be they rock, rap, or R&B, is that you can’t even understand the words the artist is singing.  And if you do find out, well, you probably wish you didn’t understand them again.

Music shapes us.  When we listen to a song and we come to know it, it impacts us.  Sometimes the impact is small, especially at the beginning, but it often grows.  When we actually memorize a song, it becomes almost a part of us.  I often chuckle at students who tell me they hate memorizing poems or dates in history, but then can sing me all the words to “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift.  Where do most of the fights occur about the Mass (though not all of them)?  Music.  We hear hymns or other music and they become a part of us.  We are changed by what we listen to.

Moses tells the Jews in the first reading that they need to listen to this prophet that God will send who will be like Moses.  When God wanted to speak to His People at Mount Sinai, he spoke from a cloud, with earthquakes, fire, trumpet blasts, and thunder.  And the people were so scared that they told Moses that they only wanted to hear from God through Moses.  And so at this point in the Book of Deuteronomy in our first reading, Moses promises them another prophet who will also speak for God, to whom they will need to listen.  

Jesus, of course, is the fulfillment of the promise.  Though He is more than a prophet (He’s the Son of God), He speaks for God the Father and reveals God the Father by all He says and does.  And He is not scary (at least not at most times, though Peter, James, and John do find wonder and awe in the presence of God at the Transfiguration), and God speaks through Jesus: just what the people wanted.  And the people recognize that Jesus is speaking with authority, unlike the scribes.  Even the demons obey the words of Jesus; even they recognize His authority. To have authority, one must be the author.  Our English word “authority” even includes the word “author.”  Jesus speaks with authority because He is the Author of everything; He is the Author of Life; He created the world. 

To what or to whom to we listen?  To what or to whom do we give authority?  There are all kinds of businesses, groups, and persons that want us to listen to them and to recognize authority in them.  How easily we can buy into the lie that if we don’t have the newest phone we won’t be happy?  How much would Fox News, CNN, or MSNBC love us to base our life on their reporting?  How much would the New York Times or the Washington Post love us to view the world through their lens?  How much do certain TV shows or songs try to convince us that what they say is right is right?  There’s nothing wrong with buying a new phone, or watching cable news, or reading newspapers, or even watching certain TV shows or listening to songs in and of themselves.  But some of them (more and more I would suggest) are trying to change our life.  They are trying to claim what only belongs to Jesus: the authority of obedience.

Is it a wonder that so many people think sexual acts outside of marriage are not wrong?  We see it (even if not graphically) on primetime television and in popular music.  Is it a wonder than women are treated simply as toys to entertain?  So many movies, shows, and songs treat women as if their only purpose in life is to satisfy the libido of men.  But the more we listen to the world, and the less we listen to Jesus, the more our problems will increase.  Because Hollywood, the media, artists, and businesses don’t care about our ultimate happiness.  They may want to do more than just make money, but I can assure you that Apple, Clint Eastwood, and Taylor Swift don’t truly care about me.  They can’t because they don’t know me.  Jesus cares about me.  He wants me to be happy and be fulfilled.  He knows me, even better than I know myself.  He knows me because He created me, and sustains me in love.  And He invites me to listen to Him, to acknowledge His authority, because He is my Author, and wants to have me with Him forever in heaven, enveloped in love.  But I have to listen to Him.

I enjoy listening to music.  I enjoy watching movies and TV.  But I have to guard my ears and my eyes to make sure that I am not giving more authority to music and shows than I give to Jesus in determining the direction of my life.  To whom do we listen?  Whose authority do we recognize?