Human Intellect and Divine Wisdom

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As I get ready to turn 40, it’s incredible to think of the technological advances just in those four decades.  Thinking simply about how we listen to music, we went from records, to 8-tracks, to cassette tapes, to CDs, to Napster, to iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify. 
    The human mind is an amazing organ, and we continue to unlock different ways to utilize the created world.  But, while the brain comes up with ever-new ideas, it is not perfect.  Our intellect, which helps us to understand the world, both natural and supernatural, is fallen like the rest of creation.  Our minds do not always grasp truth.
    We see that in the Gospel today.  When asked who people say Jesus is, the first few apostles echoed the human wisdom, perhaps the best human wisdom, of the day.  “They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’”  These Apostles, as good as their hypotheses were, erred.  Even if they were simply echoing what others said, they did not grasp the truth of Jesus’ identity. 

Statue of St. Peter from Galilee

    When St. Peter makes his reply, Jesus quickly identifies that “‘flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.’”  Peter’s response comes, yes, from his intellect, but, more accurately, from his intellect inspired and guided by God the Father.  Peter bases his response partially from what he understands, but also from wisdom from above.
    Those who have responsibility for teaching the faith, as well as we who receive that faith, do well to remember that our human intellect alone does not suffice for passing on the truths of the faith.  From all appearances and human judgments, Jesus was simply another great prophet.  But His miracles demonstrated that He was more than that; He showed by His actions that He was the “Son of the living God.”  But only intellects guided by grace could apprehend that truth.
    When we stick to our own understanding of truth, it is all too easy for our minds, darkened by sin, to assert things which are false.  We may even have reasons and some kind of logic to back up what we say.  But if our intellect is not guided by the Light of God, then we can, all too easily, get things wrong and either not fully grasp what God wants us to know, or even go against what God has revealed. 
    Take, for example, a popular idiom: love is love.  Our intellect, left to itself, might say, “Yeah, that sounds right.”  Dissecting the sentence, it actually doesn’t say much.  Grammatically speaking, it would be as profound as saying “one equals one” or “red is red.”  But it’s all too often used as a way of saying that a person should be able to love romantically or marry whomever he or she wants. 
    Some even use the Scriptures to try to back this up.  They see that St. John says in his first epistle that God is love.  And so, God would seemingly approve of romantic love of another, no matter who that other is.  They might also point to the fact that Jesus upended many of the cultural norms in His day, so we should be willing to do so as well.
    They might point to human history, and point out that there were, in our country, not that long ago, laws which prohibited interracial marriages.  They might say that we are more enlightened now to realize that those laws were wrong (as they were), because every human being has dignity and is worthy of love.  This move to allowing same-sex marriage, they might advocate, is the natural progression of enlightenment and development of human society, so that, as long as two people love each other, they can do whatever they want, and are entitled to the same protections that we have given to marriage between a man and a woman in marriage.  It all sounds quite logical.
    But it fails to take into account the guidance of our loving God in Sacred Scripture.  God, both in the Old and the New Testament, condemns homosexual activity as contrary to His will for human sexuality, and affirms that marriage is between a man and a woman.  And if one retorted that the Scriptures are conditioned by their culture, then why believe any of it as true?  If Scripture is simply one example of the human intellect, unguided by the grace of God, then we’re back to the fact that Jesus is John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or a prophet.  He’s just another teacher.  But, as Jesus tells Peter, He’s not simply another teacher or prophet.  If we can’t rely upon the Word of God, then Judaism and Catholicism might as well be tossed aside.

Statue of St. Paul from Rome

   Besides the clear statements from St. Paul that one cannot practice homosexual acts and go to heaven, we also need to look at how St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, teaches about love.  From everyone’s favorite wedding passage in 1 Corinthians: “Love…does not seek its own interests…it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.”  When a feeling of attraction divorces itself from the truth, it is not love, no matter how strong or how well-intentioned.  Yes, God is Love, but Jesus is God, and Jesus refers to Himself as the Truth, so Truth and Love are intrinsically bound up together.  When love separates itself from the truth, it becomes mere infatuation or even lust.  I cannot will the good of the other (St. Thomas’ definition of love) if what I want to do is contrary to what will help the other person attain heaven.  Love would never lead one to endanger the immortal soul of the beloved.  Love would also never go against what Love Incarnate has taught through the Old and New Testaments and through the infallible teachings of Love’s Mystical Body, the Church. 
    Does this mean that God wants us to hate those with same-sex attractions and persecute them?  No.  God calls us to will the good of all others, whether they are like us or different from us.  God calls us, as He says myriad times in the Scriptures, to pay special attention to those who struggle in life and find themselves on the margins of society, as those with same-sex attractions often do.  Telling someone that they cannot get married and enjoy the physical expressions that are proper to marriage does not mean that we hate that person.  Telling someone “no” does not equal hate, otherwise every parent hates their children…sometimes multiple times…each day. 
    When we rely simply on human reason, as good as it sometimes is, we can get things wrong.  This is especially when it comes to God and what He teaches, because our minds are darkened by sin.  In order to get the “God-stuff” right, we also need the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who helped Peter proclaim Jesus’ true identity, and who still guides the Church to teach us infallibly on matters of faith and morals.  

A Deeper Law

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes what is obvious is not as obvious as it seems.  When we hear this Gospel of the Good Samaritan, I am willing to bet that most of us can’t understand why the priest and the levite don’t help the man who was accosted by robbers.  We likely feel that it’s obvious what a person should do.  In fact, many States have laws called “Good Samaritan laws” that protect people who are trying to help, even if things do not go well, as long as there is no malfeasance intended or vincible negligence allowed.
    But listen to Leviticus 21:1-3: “The Lord said to Moses: Speak to the priests, Aaron’s sons, and tell them: None of you shall make himself unclean for any dead person among his kindred, except for his nearest relatives, his mother or father, his son or daughter, his brother or his unmarried sister.”  It continues in verses 10-11: “The most exalted of the priests, upon whose head the anointing oil has been poured and who has been ordained to wear the special vestments…shall [not] go near any dead person.  Not even for his father or mother may he thus become unclean.”  All of the sudden, with this in mind, the priest and the levite don’t sound quite as bad, or, at least, there’s a question as to what they were supposed to do.
    Of course, our Lord’s point is quite obvious: we are still supposed to help those in need.  Love of neighbor, which is part of inheriting eternal life, means caring for others.  The man was left for dead, and if the priests were truly living out the law, then they should have helped the man who had been robbed.  
    We learn, then that there is a kind of hierarchy of laws.  The levitical laws were important.  God gave them so that the priests could offer worthy sacrifice, and obtain mercy and blessings for God’s Chosen People.  But there was a more basic law, also found in Leviticus, two chapters earlier: “The Lord said to Moses: Speak to the whole Israelite community and tell them: Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.  […] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Love of neighbor is part of the way that the Israelites were to be holy, like God.  And it was a law for all Israelites, not just the priests or levites.  
    It reminds me of the scene from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where Aslan, who has risen from the dead after he sacrificed himself on the Stone Table, says:
 

…though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know.  Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time.  But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.  She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.

Yes, the priests and levites were supposed to stay ritually clean, but they had a previous commitment to love as God loves, and to care for the most vulnerable.  And they didn’t even check to see if the man was dead.  They simply walked on by.
    Ironically, it was the priests and levites who could not distinguish, though they were well-educated, between the letter and the spirit.  I know this dichotomy is often abused to mean that anything goes.  And I’m certainly not advocating that position.  But Christ came to help us understand what it truly meant to live as children of our heavenly Father.  Elsewhere he condemns the fact that a person could free their beast of burden from being entrapped on the Sabbath, but He could not liberate a person from demonic possession or from illness on the Sabbath.  Again, some had lost sight of the point of the law: to help the People live as God’s own possession, and to witness to His life and love by their own actions and words.  
    And Christ could make this point, because, as the Church Fathers say, the parable of the Good Samaritan is really an allegory for what God did for us.  God displayed His holiness by seeing us beat up on our path.  We were walking the wrong way, away from Jerusalem, the city of the Temple, to the city of Jericho, the city cursed by Joshua after they destroyed it.  Satan and his horde had accosted us, taken away from us our rightful inheritance by tempting us to sin, and then left us for dead after we caved to sin.  The law and the prophets were sent to us, but they could not fully help.  But then our Savior, who was both one of us but also God, came to our rescue.  He put us on His shoulders as He bore the weight of the cross, and made sure that we could be healed at His own expense, even promising to do whatever was necessary for healing even after He departed from earth.  
    Strictly speaking, God had no need of us.  He didn’t need to save us.  He would lack nothing if all of humanity were damned to Hell.  But, because He loves us, He descended to hell so that we wouldn’t have to.  He came to our rescue through no merit of our own.  And so God desires that we do our best to live in imitation of Him.  God desires that we participate in and share His holiness with others.  And that is part of evangelizing.  When we demonstrate the love of God in our actions and words, especially when others know that we are Catholic, they can be drawn, even if only little by little, to a relationship or a deeper relationship with God.  
    The parable of the Good Samaritan seems obvious.  In some ways it is.  But at the end, the point is that, in order to inherit eternal life, we must do our best to demonstrate the holiness of God.  Sometimes, perhaps most often, the laws help us demonstrate God’s holiness.  But any law that exists always draws its authority from how it helps us to be holy as God is holy.  May we be helped each day to love our neighbor as ourselves, and to love with all of who we are God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Not Made Up

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  As kids, but even as adults, we can make up rules.  Kids do it with games they create.  The games may not always make sense, and the rules often favor the person making up the game.  Sometimes they’re made up as the game progresses.  But even as adults we change rules, not often in games, but in relationships, in decisions we make and how we make them, in order to suit our whims and fancies.  Not all of this is vicious or devious, but sometimes just the result of more experience.  This is often the case with parents’ rules for their children.  The firstborn often has very strict rules, and is not allowed to do much, as the parents are still trying to figure out how to be parents and how to keep their eldest safe and responsible.  But, as more and more kids come, sometimes the rules soften a bit.  Sometimes the baby of the family gets away with things that the oldest child never could have done, this being attributed either to the favor of the youngest child, or because the parents are too tired to fight those battles with another child, so they acquiesce. 
    Many Catholics see the teachings of the faith as made up rules and regulations.  How often does the trope get repeated that this teaching or that Church law is simply the will of a bunch of old men with pointy hats.  But St. Paul reminds us of something important today: while there are rules that can change based upon later needs of generations, what is most precious to us and what is necessary is not made up by old men, but is handed down to us, starting from the Apostles, and then further expounded by their successors, the bishops. 

    St. Paul in today’s epistle outlines the basic kerygma of the faith: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day.  And everything basically flows from that basic teaching.  And that teaching is not ours, as if we own it.  It does not belong to the bishops or even the pope, as if they could change it.  Rather, they are the stewards of what came before, who, as our Lord says elsewhere, brings out the old and the new, as they guard what came before, and open up deeper mines in the treasure that is the deposit of faith.
    In communicating the faith, it’s important to start with those basic teachings (again, we call it the kergyma, which is just the Greek word for teaching).  When talking to our neighbors, they may not even be sure if God exists, so we should start there.  Whether using St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways, or simply talking about how there is a desire on our heart for the infinite, which could not be there without an infinite being implanting that in our heart, we can start with the truths about God, who He is, and how He works.  This will lead us to how the Church teaches that God is not a monad, but a Trinity of Divine Persons, a Communion of Love.
    St. Paul, after talking about God (Christ), then says that He died for our sins.  Sin is pretty obvious.  G.K. Chesterton said that sin is one of the teachings of the Church that can be proved simply by observation.  Look around and you will see people missing the mark (the Greek word for sin, 𝛼𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜄𝛼, literally means to miss the mark).  We see people, and we even notice ourselves, making choices that we don’t really want to make, or that take us in a different direction than we want to travel in life.  And if God is life, and sin is choosing against God, then choosing sin is choosing death, more specifically, eternal death if it is grave and we do not repent.  That’s a pretty bad place to be, but God didn’t leave us in sin, He took upon Himself the punishment for sin (death), though He was sinless, so that we could have life.  He reconciled us to the Father, and gave us the possibility that we could choose God and not choose against God.  He accomplished this by His Resurrection, proving that sin and its consequence, death, had no power over Him, that He was more powerful than anything else.
    St. Paul then talks about how Christ appeared to Cephas (Peter) and the Eleven.  Then other disciples, and then Paul again reiterates Christ appearing to the Apostles, including to St. Paul himself eventually.  This is also, I would argue, the basis of the apostolic teaching: Christ continues His ministry through His Apostles (whom He chose to lead the Church) and through His disciples (all those who follow Him in the Church).  And His grace, through the Apostles and disciples, is not in vain; it is active and enlivens the Church.  But always in harmony with the basic teachings, and how the Magisterium, the fancy term for the pope and bishops exercising their teaching office, has developed those basic teachings.
    Our job is to share those teachings, and hold fast to what has been handed down to us in matters of faith and morals.  When we do that, we participate in our Lord opening the ears and mouths of the deaf and mute (but without having to spit on everyone with whom we share the Gospel).  All of those teachings are in Scripture, directly or indirectly; others are promulgated in Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I to Vatican II; others are in papal pronouncements on faith and morals; others are commonly taught by the popes and bishops.  But we do not change those teachings that touch on what has been revealed as part of the divine and Catholic faith: not the pope, not any bishop, not any priest, not any layperson.  If we were to do that, we would cut ourselves off from communion with the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, and we would find ourselves on the outside looking in, rather than part of that communion of Trinitarian love that God desires for each of us. 
    Yes, some rules are created that flow from our belief, but can change based on the needs of certain generations and peoples.  But our teachings on faith and morals are not made up, like in a child’s game, just to favor those who are in power.  Our teachings on faith and morals is a bottomless treasure chest, helping us to find the happiness that God desires for us, but always in harmony with the earliest treasures God gave to us in His Truth.  May we all be equipped to understand those treasures of faith and morals, and share them with others, so that they, too, can come into a saving relationship with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

The Sound of Silence

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Around 8th grade, I was given a basement bedroom that my dad created so that my sisters could have separate bedrooms (so that they didn’t kill each other).  And in that bedroom was an old stereo system that had radio, two cassette decks, and a turntable, with storage area for records at the bottom.  One of the records that my dad has was “Simon and Garfunkel: The Concert in Central Park.”  It was a great set of records, and included on of their more famous songs: “The Sound of Silence.”  The title of the song itself is something that tickles the brain, as we usually don’t associate silence with any sounds.  And yet, if we reflect upon silence it does almost have its own unique sound to it.
    Today in the first reading, we hear the well-known story about how Elijah was at Mount Horeb, another name for Mount Sinai.  Elijah was fleeing from Queen Jezebel, who had threatened to kill Elijah after he had put the prophets of the false god, Ba’al, whom she followed, to death on Mount Carmel.  This was the mountain where God had revealed Himself in the dark cloud, in thunder, and trumpet blasts as Moses approached the mountain.  This was where the finger of God wrote out the Ten Commandments.
    But as Elijah is there, while he hears wind strong enough to crush rocks, feels the earthquake under him, and sees fire, Elijah only comes into contact with God through a tiny whisper, which could only be heard in the silence.  It was if God revealed Himself to the prophet Elijah in exactly the opposite way that He revealed Himself to Moses, himself also a prophet. 
    Silence confuses modern man, who so obsesses himself with activity and noise.  But if we don’t make time for silence, if we are always busied about with actions and sounds, then we lose one of the ways that God communicates with us.  Yes, like with Moses, God sometimes reveals Himself in the truly awesome, that which fills us with awe, due to magnificent displays.  But, like with Elijah, God sometimes reveals Himself in ways that we can only appreciate if we practice silence.
    Silence is meant to be a part of the liturgy, of the Mass.  Bishop Boyea, in one of his challenges in The Road to Emmaus, part of our activity during this Eucharistic Revival, was to arrive to Mass 15 minutes early for silent prayer.  Did you do that?  Did you even attempt it?  Or was talking to your friends before Mass more important that spending time with God?
    Besides a beautiful way to prepare for what happens at the Mass, silence is also supposed to be a part of the Mass.  There are different times when the Church calls for silence.  Why?  Cardinal Sarah, former head of the now-Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and originally from the Africa, had this to say:
 

When we encounter the sacred, when we come face to face with God, we naturally fall silent and kneel in adoration.  […] We await His Word, His saving action, in awe and anticipation.  […] If I am so full of myself and of the noise of the world that there is no space for silence within me, if human pride reigns in my heart so that it is only myself of whom I am in awe, then it is almost impossible for me to worship Almighty God, to hear His Word or to allow it space to take root in my life.”

Silence can be so difficult to us because it forces us to acknowledge that we are not God, and that God cannot be summoned to respond to us like a genie from a bottle.
    Do you notice the times of silence in our Mass?  The first is during our recollection of sins during the Penitential Act.  After I ask us to acknowledge our sins, “and so prepare ourselves to celebrate these sacred mysteries,” I give us time in silence to think about the ways that we have fallen short of following Christ in our daily lives.  I’m not lost; I’m not catching my breath.  I’m giving myself and you time to think about the sins for which we need to ask for God’s mercy.
    The second is after the homily.  After we have heard God speak through His Word in the readings, the Psalm, and the Gospel, and after we have heard how that Word is to be applied to today (however good or poor the homily may be), we need time to be silent with God and let that Word sink into our hearts, and challenge us to repent and change our lives.  Otherwise it is like seed that falls on the path which the birds come and eat up.
    The third is after Communion.  After we finish singing the Communion chant, that is especially your time, not to watch me purify the vessels; not to prepare your exit strategy from the parking lot so you don’t get caught by Sunday drivers.  That time is for you to thank Jesus for offering Himself for our salvation, and giving us a way to connect with that salvation through our worthy reception of the Eucharist.  Communion is God’s greatest gift to us.  Do we even say thank you, or are we waiting until some more noise can fill our minds?
    The Gospel talks about recognizing Jesus amidst the waves and winds.  This reminds us of the chaotic, noisy times of life.  And it is important to recognize God at those times, too.  But we will all-too-often mistake God’s voice for that of our own during chaos if we have not made time to listen for the voice of God during times of calm and silence.  “Do not be afraid” of the silence.  As you are able each day, make some time for silence, and don’t just turn on music or the TV to have background noise.  Because if our life is filled with noise and distractions, we will likely miss many opportunities that God desires to be close to us and remind us of His love and His truth.

Eyewitnesses

Feast of the Transfiguration
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  I will admit that I haven’t really been into baseball all that much for a while.  It probably tracks with how good the Tigers have been (or, rather, how bad they’ve been for so long).  But I do know that one of the much-disputed changes in baseball has been the use of replay.  For those of you who watch baseball, perhaps you’ll tell me that it’s not as controversial now as it was when it was instituted.  And I’m sure it’s popularity varies between when it overturns a call that we like, versus when it overturns a call that we don’t like. 
    It is interesting to note how long baseball relied simply on the eyes of the umpires.  And especially when it comes to major league games, sometimes the separation between a ball hitting a mitt and a shoe touching the bag was infinitesimal.  But it was the way we did things in baseball.
    I bring this up, because when it comes to our faith, we often go back to the old cliché, “you just have to believe it.”  Sometimes this is a fine answer, and especially when it comes to teachings that are beyond our reason.  But what we believe, though it may sometimes be beyond reason, is not unreasonable.  In fact, it’s very reasonable to believe what we believe.
    And that’s the point that St. Peter is trying to make in the second reading/epistle: “We did not follow cleverly devised myths…but we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.”  St. Peter is, of course, talking about what we celebrate today, the Transfiguration of the Lord.  Christ didn’t simply walk up Mount Tabor by Himself, then come down and say, “You’ll never guessed what happened to me!  My clothes because dazzling white, and then Moses and Elijah appeared, and then God the Father’s voice was heard, saying, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.’” 

    No, three Apostles witnessed the Transfiguration.  Not even just one witness; three.  Peter, James, and John.  Deuteronomy 19:15 states: “One witness alone shall not stand against someone in regard to any crime or any offense that may have been committed; a charge shall stand only on the testimony of two or three witnesses.”  One could perhaps doubt if only St. Peter had been there, or only St. John, or only St. James.  But if their testimony could support charging someone with a crime, some of which were punishable by death, certainly their testimony could also be believed when it came to testifying to the glorification of the Lord, as well as the presence of Moses and Elijah.
    Speaking of which, the presence of Moses and Elijah also strengthen the case that Christ is who He says He is.  By their presence with the Lord on Mount Tabor, they were witnessing to His divine identity.  And not just Moses and Elijah, but also those whom they represented, that is, the Law and the Prophets, a shorthand way of saying the entire Old Testament.
    But back to the Apostles.  They may have been afraid.  They may have been a bit confused.  But they know what they saw.  And after the Son of Man was raised from the dead, they told the vision to those who would listen.  And if three people tell me the same thing, at least in the broad strokes of the story, I am very likely to believe it, because it is backed up by others.
    While the Transfiguration was only seen by three, the Resurrection was seen by the Eleven, by St. Matthias, by St. Paul, and by other disciples in the 40 days the Lord remained on earth.  And they shared what they had seen and heard.  Not a ghost; not an apparition; but the real Lord, with the marks of His crucifixion, but also eating fish.  These witnesses testified to what they saw, and that testimony was shared down to the present day.
    We, too, are called to be witnesses of what we have seen.  In some cases, that means our own personal experiences of God in our life.  St. Peter tells us elsewhere that we should always be ready to give the reason for our hope to anyone who asks.  Do we know why we have hope?  Do we know the Lord?  We should be ready to tell others about what God has done in our lives, whether a miracle, or even simply the times when we have felt his presence and the effects of His grace, love, and truth in our lives.
    But we can and should also appeal to those first witnesses.  They saw the Lord risen from the dead, in His glorified body.  And then told the next generation of disciples, and they told the next generation of disciples, all the way down to us some 2,000 years later.  And they were very careful about keeping the story straight, and not letting in unnecessary or factually wrong details.  This wasn’t simply about whether George Washington every chopped down a tree, and told his father the truth about it.  This was about salvation, about heaven or hell.  And so the teachings have been kept throughout the millennia. 
    Our task as disciples is to get others to listen to the “beloved Son” of the Father.  Christ desires glory for us.  He wants us to be in heaven with Him, because that is why God created us: to know, love, and serve Him in this life so to be with Him in the next, as the Baltimore Catechism states.  We, too, are supposed to have a glorified body like Christ revealed at the Transfiguration.  But that only happens if we listen to Him.  It only happens if we conform our lives to Him.  And that transformation of life can only occur by God’s grace. 
    Our faith is not unreasonable.  Our faith is not based on “cleverly devised myths,” or stories that have no basis in reality.  Others have seen, and have testified both by their words and even by the shedding of their blood to the truth that Christ gave them.  May we listen to those who have gone before us, and speak to those who come after us, the good news of salvation in Christ[, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever].