Fighting Our True Enemy

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the struggles in modern warfare is that the enemy doesn’t always dress like an enemy.  When the US fought against Iraq and Afghanistan, the armies of the two countries knew that they couldn’t resist the US military by fighting on equal terms, where one military fights another in open combat.  So many soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan fought without any uniforms and without any direct ties to a military chain of command.  They would look and act like regular civilians until they were able to inflict great harm by IEDs and surprise attacks.  This frustrated the US military because we didn’t want to kill innocent civilians, and yet the military often couldn’t identify opposing forces because they often acted individually or in small groups, and looked the same as innocent civilians.

    We can often find difficulty in identifying our enemy.  St. Paul reminds us that our true enemy is not flesh and blood, but a spiritual enemy that seeks to keep us separate from the Lord.  But it can sometimes frustrate us when we don’t know how to identify a spiritual enemy, so we choose to focus on earthly enemies instead and fight them.  And yet, in fighting them, we don’t make any real progress in winning the war because we waste our spiritual ammunition on the wrong targets.
    Now, it is true that humans can often support policies and practices that give aid to our real enemy, Satan and his fallen angels.  Over the past decade individual people and groups of people have tried to redefine marriage from how God created it; have tried to say that our right to practice our faith ends at the doors of the church; have sown confusion about the ways our body helps us understand who we are as male or female; have continued the lie that an unborn child is simply part of the mother’s body; etc.  And we should work to make sure that a distorted view of the human person does not spread by engaging in clear and convincing arguments that show the lies to be harmful to individuals and society as a whole.
    But the politician on the other side of the aisle, or the neighbor who posts the nonsense signs that say “Love is love,” they are not my enemy.  They are my brother or sister in error, and I don’t have to support or enable their error, but they are not my enemy.  
    St. Augustine of Hippo wrote a beautiful reflection on those who no longer taught the same thing as the Catholic Church on baptism, and wanted to rebaptize Catholics, which is a heretical position.  The text is long, but worth hearing:
 

If they say, “Why do you seek us?  What do you want of us?” We should reply: You are our brothers.  They may say, “Leave us alone.  We have nothing to do with you.”  But we have everything to do with you, for we are one in our belief in Christ; and so we should be in one body, under one head.
And so, dear brothers, we entreat you on their behalf, in the name of the very source of our love…in the name of Christ our Lord and his gentle love.  For it is time now for us to show them great love and abundant compassion by praying to God for them.  May he one day give them a clear mind to repent and to realize that they have nothing now but the sickness of their hatred, and the stronger they think they are, the weaker they become.  We entreat you then to pray for them, for them are weak, given to the wisdom of the flesh, to fleshly and carnal things, but yet they are our brothers….And so pour out your hearts for them in prayer to God

    The Doctor of Grace doesn’t say that their error doesn’t matter.  He doesn’t pretend that false teaching is true.  But he still says that they are our brothers and encourages us to pray for them.  And he does this because he knows that they are not truly our enemy.  The enemy is the one who encourages them to believe lies to be truth.  And that enemy cannot be defeated by force of arms, but by prayer and the love and grace of God.  
    So who do you fight?  It is an earthly enemy?  If so, you’re wasting time and energy.  By all means, correct with truth, but don’t treat those who disagree as enemies, but as misinformed brothers and sisters.  And not in an arrogant way, not looking down on them.  But truly caring for them and wanting their conversion of heart so that they can live in the truth and go to heaven.
    And when it comes to those who oppose us, be ready to forgive.  I often say that forgiveness, especially of enemies, is one of the most difficult teachings of our Lord.  Because when someone harms us we want to get them back.  Or we at least want them to make good on what they owe us according to our understanding of justice.  But look at the parable: the master forgives the steward a great debt, but the steward cannot forgive small debts.  The mercy of the master should have changed the heart of the steward to likewise engage in mercy.  But when the master heard how harshly the steward treated those with smaller debts, he gave the same measure of justice to the steward, rather than the mercy the steward desired and had originally obtained.
    God has acted so mercifully with us.  He forgives us large debt, especially the debt of sin that Christ took upon Himself.  The penalty for sin is death, but Christ died so that we wouldn’t have to die.  There is no greater debt that we could ever owe.  And yet, when someone, especially someone we consider an enemy, offends us, are we as quick to forgive them as we want God to be quick to forgive us?
    Make sure you know who your real enemy is and how to fight that enemy.  The enemy wants to distract us and make us think that our brothers and sisters who are not exactly like us are our enemies.  But we will waste time and energy shadowboxing against fake enemies, and miss out on opportunities for conversion or reversion.  Fight our true spiritual enemies with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, connecting yourself to the one who has conquered sin and death and is forever victorious: Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

The Catholic Sense of Death

Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed

    While we, as Catholics, are used to the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed, more commonly known as All Souls’ Day, it doesn’t often fall on a Sunday.  Sundays are little Easters, so it might seem odd to focus on those who are dead.  But Purgatory, the abode where the souls who are not ready for heaven, but have not rejected God, precisely stands as a possibility because of the Resurrection of Christ.  And Purgatory gives hope to all those who are not perfected at the time of their death, and therefore are not ready for heaven, where we see God, Holiness Himself, face to face.  
    We cannot deny the pain and sorrow of death.  When someone we love dies, we know that we won’t see that person on earth again.  And in the face of that harsh reality, tears naturally follow.  But as those who know that Jesus rose from the dead, our grief should be eased a bit by the fact that death is not the end.  That’s the power of the Resurrection of Christ: death is not the end.  That’s the power that the martyrs held as they didn’t fear to suffer for Christ, because they knew that the world threw all pain and suffering at Christ in His crucifixion, but Christ came out victorious in the end on Easter Sunday.  
    But it’s also the power that should help us who remain after someone dies, because our faith tells us that they simply have gone on a long journey to a place where we can’t stay connected through a meet-up, phone call, text, FaceTime, or Zoom, but where we can stay connected through prayer.  Just as we are somewhat sad, but still have hope when a family member or friend goes on a cruise and we can’t contact them with earthly technology, so we should have the same hope when someone we love dies, because death is not the end, but a transition to a new form of life.  
    But as Catholics we can often act like non-believers who treat death as the absolute end.  We forget our faith and the central teaching of our religion, the resurrection, and we do what St. Paul tells us not to do: weep as those who have no hope.  I’m not saying we need to celebrate every time someone dies, though some saints have reminded their family and friends that life will be better for them in heaven, since they followed Christ on earth.  Really, we should only mourn when someone was not prepared to die and did not follow Christ, though even then we commend those people to the mercy of God.  
    Purgatory also gives us hope because while we strive for perfection, if you’re anything like me, you sometimes fall short.  God is perfect holiness, and if you ever read through the Old Testament, you’ll notice that no one is really excited to see God.  It’s not because they disliked God, but because they knew, often better than we do, that the holiness of God destroys any sin, like light destroys darkness.  So to be in heaven, in the presence of God’s perfect holiness, means that we have nothing sinful left in us, otherwise we would be destroyed.  Or, if we think about God’s holiness like heat, it’s so hot that our sinfulness would immediately burst into flames.
    So if we die in a state of grace, that is, not aware of any mortal sins or any rejections of God, but we still have sin, we have the opportunity to still make it to heaven after we have been purified in Purgatory.  It’s not perfect holiness (and heaven) or hell.  We have the chance to still make it to heaven even if we have not fully configured our life to Christ.
    Having said that, Christ still calls us to put sin behind us and make His life our own while on earth.  Our goal should always be heaven.  If our goal is Purgatory, then we’re aiming too low, like a sports team that only hopes to make it to the playoffs, not win the National Championship.  Plus, we often don’t achieve the goals we set for ourselves.  If we set our goal as heaven and fall short, we do have Purgatory.  But if we set our goal as Purgatory and fall short, there’s no safety net, and our eternity could be the eternal suffering of hell.  
    What is also worth celebrating on a Sunday is that, because of the Resurrection and death is not the end, just like we can help each other while on earth to get closer to heaven, we can help those who have died and whom God purifies in Purgatory by His grace.  The souls in Purgatory are not just left to be purified until God has perfected them.  We can assist them in a variety of different ways and speed their way into heaven.  
    And this is something that we have also forgotten as Catholics.  Not only are we worse, after COVID, of even going to funerals (and I know that some employers are less willing to allow employees to attend funerals), but we especially drop the ball after the funeral.  We take on the mentality either that the person is dead and there’s nothing else we can do, or that the person has certainly made it to heaven and no longer needs our help.  Both of those approaches are antithetical to our Catholic faith.
    Because death is not the end, we can suffer for the benefit of souls in Purgatory.  Maybe it’s an illness, or pain, or just a frustrating situation, but we can offer it up, as the sisters used to say, and speed someone’s path to heaven.  During these first days of November we focus on special opportunities to gain indulgences for the souls in Purgatory, but there are numerous opportunities throughout the year to gain an indulgence, not only for our own salvation, but to help a soul in Purgatory get to heaven a bit faster.  For example, under the usual conditions, spending 30+ minutes in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a plenary or full indulgence; saying the Canticle of Mary (the Magnificat) is partial indulgence; using an object of religious devotion that has been blessed by a priest is a partial indulgence; the vocal  recitation of the Rosary in a church or as a family, or a partial indulgence anywhere else; reading Sacred Scripture to grow in holiness is a partial indulgence, unless it’s 30 minutes or more, in which case it’s a plenary indulgence.  None of those require going to Rome or a Jubilee Year (though there are also indulgences attached to the Jubilee Year).  
    Lastly, Masses can be said for the soul of a person who died.  When a Mass is said for a deceased person, the merits of Jesus’ salvific work is applied to purify the soul of that person.  The practice of saying Mass for a person enjoyed popularity with older Catholics, but is important for every person.  And the cost to schedule Mass for the intention of a person is only $10.  So it’s not outside the range for even a young family with kids.  But what a powerful way to help a person in Purgatory!
    As we celebrate All Souls’ Day today, it’s good to have reminders about our faith in the Resurrection, and the effect it has upon how we mourn those who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith.  May our faith in the Resurrection of Christ not only remain in our minds and hearts, but truly affect how we live our lives as Catholics and the choices we make to assist the souls in Purgatory.