What Do You Desire?

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Christmas is slightly more than 10 weeks away.  As a priest, that makes me say: oh my!  Now, when I was a kid, that meant it was time to start picking through the toy catalogues from different stores to see what I wanted for Christmas presents.  I have no idea why, but there were years where I wanted a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll (I was a weird child, I guess).  But I focused my attention pretty quickly on what I wanted.

What do you want?  What do you desire?  We’re really good at asking God for things that we want.  Some are as frivolous as a Charlie McCarthy ventriloquist doll; others are more enduring like love, health, and good friends.  King Solomon, the traditional author of the Book of Wisdom whence our first reading came today, asked for prudence and wisdom.  As we hear in the Second Book of Samuel, he didn’t pray for gold, for a long reign, or for the death of his enemies, but for the gifts that were truly necessary to be a good king.  Prudence is that virtue that tells us when, to whom, and how to do the right thing.  Wisdom is that virtue that tells us what to do, what that right thing is. 

In the Gospel we heard today, a man goes to Jesus desiring to go to heaven.  He, like King Solomon, didn’t want passing things.  He wanted eternal life.  Jesus tells him to obey the commandments.  “Yep.  Got it,” he says.  And then Jesus “loved him and said to him, ‘You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”  Jesus presses to the place where his desire for heaven stops, and in this case, it was his money.

I think if we’re honest with ourselves, we all have parts of our life that we are not quite comfortable giving to Jesus.  Those parts probably change during our lives, but they’re there, nonetheless.  We all can say (I hope) at a surface level, “I want to go to heaven.”  But then that desire bumps into another desire, and we find out what we value more: heaven or the other thing.  Today’s Gospel is not so much about having money (though it can easily be an obstacle to our relationship with God).  It’s about whatever it is that we value more than our relationship with God and our goal of going to heaven.

If you wonder if you have anything that you value more than heaven, then think about how you would feel if it God asked you to give it up in order to go to heaven.  Maybe it’s control (or what we consider control) of our life.  Some people, like me, like to have things planned out and have a particular direction.  If God asked me to give that up, that would be difficult for me.  God may not ask me to give control up, but if I’m not willing to give it up, then I’m not ready for heaven.  What if God asked you to give up your family?  It should make you sad (if losing your family makes you happy, we need to talk!).  But could you do that for God?  People do.  People who convert to Catholicism, especially in the Middle East, are sometimes disowned by family members.  What if God asked you to give up all your money?  Could you do that for God?  Could you do that to gain eternal life if Jesus asked you to, like he asked the man in today’s Gospel?  How about your political affiliation?  If God asked you to stop being a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian or whatever so that you could go to heaven, could you do that?  Sadly, too often I know people who are more committed to a political platform than to their faith.  Whatever it is, if we desire it more than we desire God, than we desire eternal union with Him in heaven, Jesus invites us to give it up to find true and eternal happiness.

Sometimes God doesn’t ask us to give something up, but He asks us if we’re willing to give it up.  But sometimes He does ask us to leave less important things behind, sometimes even to leave people behind because they’re not helpful to our eternal salvation.  How do you know?  Pray.  Pray and ask God what you need to leave behind to focus on your relationship with God.  It may take time, and even if we walk away from Jesus, He never walks away from us.  But I encourage you to pray to God to see what He is inviting you to leave behind.  To help you, I invite you to look up Bl. Charles de Foucauld, who wrote a beautiful prayer on abandoning ourselves to God.

Father,

I abandon myself into your hands;

do with me what you will.

Whatever you may do, I thank you:

I am ready for all, I accept all.

Let only your will be done in me,

and in all your creatures - 

I wish no more than this, O Lord.

Into your hands I commend my soul:

I offer it to you with all the love of my heart,

for I love you, Lord, and so need to give myself,

to surrender myself into your hands without reserve,

and with boundless confidence,

for you are my Father.

Amen.

God's View of Marriage

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

My sister, Allison,
and her fiancé, Tom

My youngest sister, Allison, is getting married in March.  This is the first and only wedding that I’ll have the chance to do for one of my siblings (unless, God-forbid, a spouse dies), since my other sister, Amanda, got married before I was a priest.  Of course, in all of the prep, there’s the wedding questions about the Mass, the dress, the tuxedos or suits, the reception, the food, and whom to invite.  As a priest, I see lots of different options for how weddings are celebrated.  I will say that entertainment and mass media has increased the ideas that people have (some good, some bad) for what their wedding should look like.

What almost never gets considered, or is given only a small consideration, is how the Church, the Bride of Christ, views the wedding and, more importantly, the marriage.  We hear about marriage in our first reading and Gospel today, but before I get there, I do want to take the opportunity to say that the Church expects certain things even from the wedding, ways that our Catholic understanding of marriage is expressed.  But just having a wedding in a church is a big part of that.  A wedding is not a ceremony whose goal is to make the couple look as much like royalty as possible.  A wedding is supposed to be in a Catholic church (unless the bride or groom would find such a location offensive due to their Jewish or Muslim faith) because marriage is a sacred covenant, an agreement between the couple, yes, but also between the couple and God.  And a church is a place where God dwells in a way that God doesn’t dwell on a beach, in a fancy barn, or anywhere else.  

But, back to the readings.  In our first reading we hear about God creating marriage.  It’s not explicit, but God creates Eve for Adam, as an equal partner, to compliment him.  Man and woman are different (I know that, for many of us, that’s common sense, but in today’s culture, saying that man and woman are different is quite shocking!).  And in creating Eve to be with Adam, God creates marriage.  And since God created marriage, and since God does always what is for our good, we see in Adam and Eve a pattern with which we have no authority to tinker.  Marriage cannot be one man and two women; it cannot be one woman and two men; it cannot be two people of the same sex.  That doesn’t sound loving, but everything God does for us is an act of love, and Scripture makes it very clear how God created marriage.  

Now, throughout the Old Testament, God continued to reveal more about how He created marriage.  But, sometimes the message got muddled.  And that’s where our Gospel comes in.  The Pharisees ask Jesus if, as Moses said, divorce is still allowed in following Jesus.  Jesus had overturned a lot of what the Pharisees thought was right, and so they’re seeing if he’s upending marriage, too.  Moses allowed a husband to divorce his wife for certain reasons, including infidelity.  But Jesus clarifies: man and woman in marriage are no longer two, but one flesh, joined by God.  So what God has joined together, no one must separate.  

As radical as it now sounds to say that two men or two women cannot be married in the eyes of God and His Church, it was that radical in the time of Jesus to say that divorce could not happen.  This was not an easy statement.  It was very counter-cultural.  But Jesus, who is God, who is Love Incarnate, tells us this so that we can truly be happy.

This is, I’m sure, where all sorts of objections come to our mind.  When we think about how the Church does not allow or recognize homosexual marriage, maybe we think it’s not fair to have two people who feel a certain way for each other to deny them marriage.  But marriage is ordered toward sex (as well as union and fidelity and the good of the spouses), and sex is ordered toward children.  All the goods of marriage have to be present to be part of God’s plan.  Older people get married, yes, but even sometimes older people conceive children; just ask Abraham and Sarah or Elizabeth and Zechariah.  And God reveals in the Old and New Testament that only those who are married can have holy sex.

When we think about divorce and remarriage, sometimes people bring up cases of abuse, and say that the Church is saying they need to stay in those abusive relationships.  We turn back to Genesis: Adam and Eve are co-equal partners, who are there to help each other.  Abuse is not an example of helping each other.  Marriages can be annulled if abuse happens, but even before that, the defense of self and/or one’s children is another basic part of God’s teaching.  If you’re in an abusive relationship, God is not calling you to be a verbal or physical punching bag.  Come to me, and I’ll help you to take care of your marriage situation.  

Even if you’re not part of an abusive marriage that broke up, but simply divorced, I can help you examine if there was an obstacle that existed before you were married, even if it was only known after you got married.  Or if you have questions about your marriage situation, I’ll be glad to help you understand it in the light of what God has revealed in Sacred Scripture and the teaching of the Church so that you can be truly happy according to God’s plan.  I’m not here to beat you up spiritually or emotionally even if your marriage is not what is part of God’s plan; I’m here to help you get to that place where your marriage reflects God’s vision for marriage.

There are a lot of groups that give us what they think is the key to a happy marriage.  We see royal marriages, Hollywood marriages, and what some people call marriage but which are, in God’s eyes, not marriage.  Go to the Creator of marriage to understand how to live this beautiful Sacrament.  Go to what He has revealed through Scripture and the Church to understand how marriage truly works.  It may be difficult; it may be counter-cultural.  But, as it comes from the source of all true happiness and joy, it will make you truly happy and filled with joy.

Would that All God's People Were Prophets!

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes reading the Bible is difficult.  Sometimes it’s difficult because of unique names.  The two we had in the first reading, Eldad and Medad, aren’t too bad, but when you get to names like Melchisedech, Rehoboam, Abinadab, etc., it’s easy to see why some people get a little nervous.  It’s also tough because some parts of the Bible are read differently than others.  In some cases, we can follow the literal meaning that is easily recognizable at face value.  Other times, God speaks more figuratively.  And, if you’re just reading the text, you can’t always tell the difference.  It’s not like there are brackets around the literal phrases and italics for the more figurative statements.  But that’s why we have a Magisterium, an official teaching office entrusted to the Pope and the Bishops to help us understand how the Word of God is to be interpreted.  And that’s why we offer Bible studies at our parish: to help you understand what the Word of God means. 

Back in the late-second to the mid-third century, there was a guy from Alexandria, Egypt, and his name was Origen.  Origen was a firebrand of a guy.  He really wanted to be a martyr to witness to how much he loved Jesus.  But his mother wasn’t so keen on the idea.  Origen was bound and determined to die for Jesus, and was ready to run off to die for Jesus.  So his mother hid all his clothes, guessing (correctly, as it turned out) that he would not run out of the house naked.  Origen was known for his interpretation of Scripture, and he is one of the most prolific theological writers of the third century.  But, he could not always tell the difference between literal and the figurative senses of Scripture.  In one big mix-up, Origen took the passage we heard today much too literally: “‘If your hand causes you to sin, but it off.  It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.’”  But Origen’s issue was sexual sins, so it wasn’t his hands he cut off, and I’ll leave it at that.

While that part of our Gospel is not literal, our first reading can be taken literally.  God sent His spirit, that He had previously bestowed on Moses, and gave it to seventy elders.  God told the seventy to be in a certain spot to receive His spirit.  Of course, two of the seventy didn’t make it, or didn’t get the message.  So they were in the general camp, when they started prophesying.  Joshua, Moses’ assistant, complains because they didn’t follow directions.  But Moses said, “‘Would that all the people of the Lord were prophets!  Would that the Lord might bestow his spirit on them all!’”  Moses wanted, and God wants, all His people to be filled with the Holy Spirit so that we might all be prophets, so that we might all speak God’s message.  But perhaps we take this passage a bit too figuratively.  

After all, we might say, the priests are the ones who are supposed to be prophets and speak God’s word.  Or religious sisters; they’re supposed to be prophets and speak God’s word.  Or missionaries in Africa and tropical islands: they’re supposed to be prophets and speak God’s word.  That’s not us!  But, that’s not what God is saying here.  God is saying He wants us all to speak His message for Him.  We can’t pawn it off on priests or deacons or sisters or missionaries.  We are all called to be prophets, as I preached last Sunday.

But what, then, are we meant to say?  I think all of us can start with the basics of Catholicism.  And in case you’re rusty, here it is: we’re sinners; we cannot save ourselves; God sent His Son Jesus to save us from sin and death; Jesus did this by His Death and Resurrection; we can be saved by believing in Jesus and following Him; if we believe in Jesus and follow Him, we’ll be ready for heaven, which is perfect happiness and the goal of our life.  That’s it.  

And you know what?  People need to hear it.  People are generally miserable.  Sometimes they hide it.  Sometimes they try to distract themselves with temptations or shortcuts to happiness: sensual pleasure, power, and glory.  All of them, but especially the first one, is the Johnny Lee song: “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places.”  The second one is when we strive to be in control–of the world, of people, of work, of ourselves–when in fact we have control over almost nothing.  The third one is about being known, being famous, being popular.  And while all of them will give us pleasure, and may even distract us for a while, they will never give us true happiness.  

And since this is what everybody needs, Bishop Boyea has proclaimed another Year of Prayer.  This time the Year of Prayer is focused on helping us become a community of Missionary Disciples.  Not just that we believe in Jesus (which is a necessary first step), but that we share that news for others.  So, to be clear, when the Bible says would that all of God’s people were prophets, it’s not symbolic language, it’s not figurative language.  God wants all of us to hear His message of salvation and truth; and then proclaim it to others.  So go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!