Armed with the Sword of the Spirit

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I was once speaking with a traditional Catholic years ago, who said, “I don’t read the Scriptures.  That’s what Protestants do.”  And I remember thinking how sad it was that this person thought that reading the Bible was a Protestant thing.  I tried to encourage him to read the Scriptures, but to no avail.
    Hopefully, that is not the position of anyone here.  St. Paul today speaks about the Scriptures as the “sword of the Spirit.”  St. Jerome, in a homily on the Book of Isaiah, famously wrote, “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”  But do we heed St. Jerome?  Are we armed with this important weapon of our faith?

    Christ Himself uses the Scriptures to take away the power of the temptations in the desert.  When tempted to turn rocks into bread, Christ quotes Deuteronomy 8:3 which reads, “it is not by bread alone that people live, but by all that comes forth from the mouth of God.”  When tempted to throw Himself down from the temple, because Satan said, quoting Psalm 91, that the angels would protect Him, Christ responds with another Scripture, again from the Book of Deuteronomy, this time 6:16 which reads, “You shall not put the Lord, your God, to the test.”  And the last temptation of Christ, where the enemy says that he will give Christ all the kingdoms of the world if he worships Satan, Christ forcefully quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, which reads, “The Lord, your God, shall you fear; him shall you serve.”  Even when the devil takes Scripture out of context, Christ uses Scripture to defeat the temptation.
    Certainly, as we saw from that example, one can take Scripture out of context.  Which is why we should have a decent understanding of not just a few verses, but a good grasp of the whole, as well.  Often times, Protestants and Evangelicals will take a verse of Scripture out of context, so it is good to review together the entire chapter to make sure that the phrase is not part of a larger whole which gives a different meaning.  After all, there is part of a verse in the Psalms that reads, “‘There is no God.’”  However, the first part of that verse which gives it context is, “The fool says in his heart,” which changes the whole meaning of that verse.
    Knowing Scripture also helps us defend our faith, whether in public or in private.  Recently, a decently well-known politician said that the Scriptures don’t deal with abortion, and certainly don’t condemn it directly.  His opponent, a Catholic, easily rebutted that claim by pointing out the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” which especially means killing an innocent human being.  Or, I recently mentioned to an evangelical that I had just gone to confession, so if I died, I had a strong sense that I would eventually make it to heaven.  He responded, “I don’t think that’s how it works,” and went on to explain that he simply confesses his sins to God; he doesn’t feel the need to go to a priest, because only God can forgive sins.  I responded that that was an interesting principle, and certainly God can forgive sins directly, but if God didn’t intend for us to go to confession, why did Jesus give the Apostles the authority to forgive sins?  He asked where that was in the Bible, and I responded, John chapter 20 (I couldn’t remember the verses), where Jesus says, “‘Receive the holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.’”  I also pointed out that Jesus said something very similar in Matthew 16 where He gave the keys of the kingdom to St. Peter.  He wisely said he wanted to review the chapters I had mentioned, and I hope to continue that conversation with him some day.
    Now, to be fair, I’m fairly well-trained in Scripture.  I went to school for 8 years before ordination, and we dealt with a lot of Scripture.  And I pray with the Scriptures on a daily basis, and have gone through reading the Old Testament one year and the New Testament the next year over a course of many years.  But I know that sometimes it can seem difficult to understand certain passages, and that’s where having a Catechism of the Catholic Church, to keep with you when you read the Scriptures, can help you make sense of difficult passages.  There’s a cross reference in the back of the Catechism that can help you know how the Church interprets a particular passage.  As St. Peter says in the first chapter of his second epistle, “there is no prophecy of scripture that is a matter of personal interpretation, for no prophecy ever came through human will; but rather human beings moved by the holy Spirit spoke under the influence of God.”  The official teaching office of the Church, which we call the Magisterium, guides us infallibly on how to interpret the Scriptures, because the Scriptures are a product of the Church, not the Church is a product of the Scriptures.  If we rely only on our understanding, we will splinter into thousands of groups, like the Protestants have, because there are different senses of Scriptures, even within the same book.
    All of this is to say: read the Bible!  We offer Bible studies here, and we recently had the Catholic Biblical School of Michigan here to advertise the classes they offer online and in-person at Holy Redeemer in Burton.  Whether it’s an intro course to help you feel basically familiar with the Scriptures, or maybe a deeper dive into particular books, knowing the Scriptures will help you know Christ better.  Do not neglect to carry your sword with you into spiritual battle!  Stay armed with the Word of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

God and Politics

Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    We’re in that time in our country where all the ads on television, radio, Facebook, etc., seem to be about politics.  Generally, those who love politics get really excited about this time of year, studying polls and updates on the races.  I think everyone else tends to put-up with all the commercials and mailings.  Our country seems particularly polarized, and for a while now we have failed to teach people how to dialogue respectfully and logically about candidates and policies, so we tend to just shout our positions at each other without truly engaging the people seeking office and the policies they support.  Rather than a healthy discussion over a meal or a drink, we tend to act more like monkeys at the zoo, throwing dung at each other.
    So in the midst of the political activity, today the Church, which doesn’t assign the readings based on the democratic system in the United States, puts before us a first reading and a Gospel that remind us about government.  In the first reading, we hear about Cyrus, God’s anointed, whom God chose for the sake of His People.  What’s interesting is that Cyrus was the Persian king, a pagan.  And yet, the word for anointed is mashiach, or messiah.  Cyrus is not the messiah; that is Christ.  And yet, Cyrus is God’s anointed who, though he doesn’t know God, will help return the Chosen People to the Holy Land so that they can witness that there is one God.
    And in the Gospel, the Pharisees try to trap Jesus with a puzzle concerning another pagan foreign leader, Caesar, and whether they need to pay taxes to the pagan Roman government.  The Pharisees likely thought that if Jesus said to pay taxes, the people would reject Him (after all, who wants to be encouraged to pay taxes to an occupying force that teaches a false religion).  But, if Jesus said not to pay taxes, they could report Him to the Romans and they would take care of Him.  Easy peasy.  But instead, Jesus turns the question on its head, and avoids both the scylla and the charybdis that the Pharisees put before Him.
    All of this should remind us that the question of who has governmental power and authority does not concern God all that much, because as Jesus said to Pilate on Good Friday, Pilate would have no power unless God had allowed Pilate to use it.  God can use a pagan government like the Persians to accomplish good for His People.  He can use a pagan government like the Romans and the pax Romana that came from their military domination of Europe and the Near East to create the perfect time for Jesus, the true Messiah, to be born and grow up in the Holy Land.  
    Everything, in the end, finds itself subject to God and what He directs or allows through His will.  “Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more,” St. Paul reminds us, and God can use the sinfulness of rulers and governments even to accomplish holiness in His People.  The invitation to give God what belongs to Him really reminds us that, while we have civic responsibilities that we should exercise responsibly, our first duty is to God, who has given us everything and against whom no power on earth can ever compete.
    For that reason, I no longer tend to get worked up about politics.  I can’t honestly say I was always that way, and when I was younger I loved politics and reading the polls and trying to understand positions and policies and how to argue for the best ones.  But after the delayed election results in 2020, I found that I obsessed about politics and it stole my peace.  When I stopped trying to think that who the president or the governor was would greatly change my life, I found that I was happier.
    To be clear, I do not mean to communicate that elections don’t matter.  Elections do matter, and we ought to form our conscience well and vote accordingly.  We ought to do our best to support candidates and policies that protect and promote human dignity and the common good.  A great many people in the world, including 1.4 billion people in China, probably wish they could vote for their government officials freely.  We ought not to take our political process for granted.  
    But, no matter who gets elected, and no matter how good or how evil the policies they enact are, God is King, and no one can challenge His power or unseat Him from His Throne.  Yes, it’s nice when the City of Man resembles the City of God, but even when governments oppress us, our key is to be faithful to God and give God His due, no matter what Caesar says.  The Church certainly rejoiced when Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity, but She didn’t shrink for the three hundred years earlier that Roman emperors sought to stop the spread of the Gospel.  
    Yes, do vote this November with a conscience informed by the Catholic faith.  Do not worry if your candidate got elected or didn’t, or if the candidates or the policies they support are contrary to the Catholic faith, like abortion, euthanasia, gender dysphoria, same sex marriage, or socialism.  “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and God will sort out everything else in the end when His victory comes to fruition.

You Gotta Have Faith

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  What came first: the chicken or the egg?  As a young student this question was posed, but I never really thought it too complicated.  If the egg came first, who would sit on it to incubate it so that the chick could hatch?  But, philosophers much wiser than me have debated this general question for centuries.
    In our Gospel, another question gets posed that could, if we’re not careful, trip us up.  That question is: what comes first: faith or miracles?  Perhaps we don’t consider this much of a question, as all the miracles seem to follow from faith.  And yet, our Lord says today that unless the people see signs and wonders (another way of saying miracles), they will not believe.  So what comes first: faith or miracles?
    Throughout the Scriptures, it seems mostly evident that faith comes first.  Christ does not do many miracles in Capernaum because of their lack of faith.  And miracles without faith are more like magic tricks, and God doesn’t do magic tricks.  So faith comes first.  And yet, the miracles themselves also beget faith.  Our Lord raises the son of the widow of Nain, without any sense that she believed in Him.  The woman with a hemorrhage has some small faith so that she touches our Lord’s clothes, but then, after she receives healing, our Lord turns and tells her that her faith has saved her, not only healed her.  So many people, after encountering the Savior, are certainly moved to a deeper faith after they receive a miracle.  So there we see a back and forth when it comes to the relationship with faith and miracles.  Faith leads to miracles, which lead to more faith, which leads to more miracles.  It’s like the chicken and the egg: chickens lead to eggs, which lead to more chickens, which lead to more eggs.
    So how is our faith?  Do we have confidence in what God has revealed?  Do we trust that God can still work miracles in our life and in the lives of others?  Do we have to see signs and wonders before we believe?
    The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews begins with faith.  The sacred author writes, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”  Hope assures us that what we have not yet received we will, and faith is the object of that hope, the thing unseen which we believe we will receive.  The author lists examples of faith-filled men: Abel; Enoch; Noah; Abraham.  In the Canon the Church refers to Abraham as “Patriárchae nostri Abrahae,” or “Abraham, our father in faith.”  And the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds the hearers and readers that Abraham, while still called Abram, left the familiarity of his home to go to a land he had never seen, with all his family and possessions, called by a God he didn’t know all too well.  Doubt could have taken hold of him, questioning if his mind was playing tricks on him, how he would survive and care for his flocks outside of what we now call the Fertile Crescent, and whether the people living there would welcome him or attack him.  But he didn’t allow those questions to stop him.  He left modern-day Iraq, or Chaldea, behind.

    So, too, Abraham demonstrated great faith when it came to Isaac, his beloved son and the son of the promise God had made.  Hebrews 11:17 reads, “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’”  While child sacrifice was all too common in the near East, especially to the pagan god Moloch, Abraham had two seemingly contradictory things from which he had to choose: was Isaac the son of the promise that Abraham’s descendants would be more numerous than the stars?  Or was God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the top of Mount Moriah?  Walking up Mount Moriah, one can only imagine the pain and questioning in Abraham’s heart, but he followed God’s command anyway, trusting that “God was able to raise even from the dead,” and, of course, God stopped Abraham’s hand before Isaac could be killed.  
    Faith is risky business, because we sometimes don’t see the results of our faith on this side of eternity, and sometimes what God asks us to do seems to defy logic.  It’s like Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade,” who has to step out into what looks like a great chasm, taking an almost literal “leap of faith.”  Or it’s like Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, recalling the words of his uncle, Bilbo Baggins, saying, “‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.  You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might go.’”  Faith led St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to leave behind Italy and help form the faith in the US by founding schools and teaching.  The same could be said for St. John Neumann and Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, who came from Europe to help the Church in the new United States of America, or Bishop Benedict Flaget, a Sulpician priest who became one of the first bishops of the US, but who came to the US from France originally to spread the Gospel in the then-frontier lands of Indiana and Kentucky.

Bishop Benedict Flaget

      

So how is your faith?  Are you willing to leap out and trust when God truly calls you to something?  Can you trust your loving Father to care for you, no matter where He leads you?  Will you have enough faith for God to do great things for you?  
    Faith comes first.  But God strengthens our faith by signs of His love, be they miracles or simply little “God moments.”  And those signs of His love lead to more faith, which leads to more trust, and on and on.  May all of our names be written in the Book of Life, with Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, as those who had faith in God and received His gift of salvation. 

The Most Important Invitation

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As we’re in the midst of our October Counts, when parishes across the Diocese of Lansing count the number of people who attend Mass each weekend, it may seem self-serving to preach on the importance of going to Mass.  For the past few years, St. Matthew has been seen the largest per capita growth of any parish in the Diocese of Lansing since 2019, or pre-Covid.  But, while I love to see us grow, the importance lies not so much in our numbers, but in making God a priority.
    Even those who do not have a degree in nuclear engineering can understand the meaning of the parable heard today: God’s call to the banquet, to His Kingdom supersedes everything else.  We hear about some people ignoring the invitation to the banquet; others make excuses because of farm work or other business.  In a similar passage in Luke, chapter 14, three excuses are given: examination of a newly-bought field; evaluation of newly-purchased oxen; a new bride.  Indeed, Deuteronomy 24:5 stated that a newly married man could not even be called up into service in the military for the first year.  His excuse took precedence over the defense of the nation.  Deuteronomy 20:5 also talks about how a person could receive an exemption for a new house that was not dedicated, or a vineyard that hadn’t had a first harvest.  So these excuses not to come would have been understandable to the Jews to whom Christ preached.
    But the banquet has such import that event these excuses do not negate the importance of showing up to the banquet.  When the invited guests demure, the master makes sure that the banquet will be filled with people, even if they were not the original invitees.  And at the end of the parable, we hear about the importance of showing up to the banquet in proper clothing.
    But each week, the Lord sets before us a banquet, His wedding feast to His Bride, the Church.  He gives us His very self on which to feast, the fruit of the sacrifice He made for His Bride when He gave up His life willingly and lovingly on Calvary, which the Holy Spirit makes present for us in an unbloody manner at each Mass.  And not just Calvary, but also the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus all become present for us on this altar.  And if we are in a state of grace, and have kept the communion fast of no food or drink except water and medicine for one hour before receiving Holy Communion, then we even get to receive Jesus into our very selves, to strengthen us to live as His disciples.

    St. John Vianney, the holy priest of Ars, France, told us that if we truly understood the Mass, we would die from joy.  All the angels and saints are here with us in this Mass, though we cannot see them unless God gives us a special grace, worshipping God in the banquet which anticipates heaven here on earth.  
    Does merely going to Mass make you a good Catholic, a saint?  No.  Our call as Catholics, as disciples, has to break out beyond these walls in the way we talk, the way we act, the way we think, the way we vote, the way we rest, as a witness to what happens within these walls.  But you cannot be a good Catholic and skip Mass, skip the banquet, because you feel you have more important things to do.  Notice I used the word skip, because sometimes people are ill and cannot make it, or are caring for the ill and cannot make it, or sometimes people are homebound and cannot make it.  They would if they could, but they can’t.  That’s a big difference from prioritizing something else over the Mass, whether it be sleep, sports, or simply one’s own will.
    And frankly, what has more importance than Jesus’ very presence before us?  The choice of virtue means choosing the highest good at each moment.  Sports can be good; sleep can be good; your own desires can be good.  But when we put those lesser goods over the greatest good of worshipping God, we disorder goods, which is one of the ways St. Augustine talks about sin.
    Mass anticipates heaven.  So if we ignore the Mass for some lesser good, we ignore heaven, and make the choice to reject God in a serious way.  Skipping Mass, if we know it’s wrong, and freely choose to skip Mass anyway, is a mortal sin.  It tells God that we don’t want to be in heaven, and God will respect that choice.  He won’t force us to be with Him if we don’t want to.  
    The other part of this Gospel is the evangelical push: the push to invite others to the banquet.  People can reject God and His invitation.  And yes, we should still work on them as best we can to invite them back, because God always welcomes us back if we repent.  But as the Master’s servants, we, too, should be going out to invite others to Mass.  When was the last time you invited a non-Catholic to Mass?  I know it can seem intimidating if you aren’t Catholic and go to Mass, but if you’re inviting them, then you should also join with them to show them the ropes.  Help them understand the different parts of the Mass, and why we sit when we take instruction, stand when we pray, and kneel in adoration.  Help them understand why we believe that what looks like bread is actually the Body of Christ, and why only those who fully believe and live their life in conformity with Christ’s teachings can receive it.  Help them understand the beauty of singing the Scriptures in our antiphons during the procession of the ministers and the procession of Holy Communion, chants which hopefully stay with us and help us to familiarize ourselves with Sacred Scriptures, especially the psalms.  
    It’s not about the numbers.  It’s about bringing people into a fuller relationship with God by helping them attend the wedding banquet of the Son of God, the anticipation of heaven on earth.  “Many are invited.”  Few choose to attend.  Don’t let lesser good keep you from the banquet, lest your find yourself cast outside.  Blessed are those called to the Supper of the Lamb.

Rebuilding the Church

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/19th Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]  Yesterday marked the 800th anniversary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, one of the most recognized saints.  Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV declared a holy year for Franciscans to celebrate their holy founder’s passing to eternal life.  While we still celebrate the twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time/nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, I wanted to take a break from focusing on our readings, and focus on St. Francis.

St. Francis of Assisi embracing a leper

    St. Francis, like St. Dominic, founded a mendicant, or begging order.  Just as we members of the Dominican Family refer to St. Dominic as our holy father Dominic, so we also refer to St. Francis as our holy father Francis.  Hopefully it won’t be too confusing when I refer to St. Francis of Assisi as our holy father Francis.  The Italians, for their part, refer to him as Il Poverello, or the little poor one. 
    Our holy father Francis was radical in both senses: he returned to the roots (from the Latin radice), but he also was a bit out there.  I remember a homily in college seminary where the priest said that if we went into the public square and stripped naked, as our holy father Francis did to demonstrate his rejection of his father’s money and inheritance, it wouldn’t be a man in a white cassock coming for us, but men in white jackets to put us into a padded room.  
    At the heart of our holy father Francis’s vocation was a call he heard to rebuild the Church.  At first, Il Poverello started to collect materials to re-construct the little church of San Damiano, which was collapsing due to age and neglect.  But he came to realize that his order, the Franciscans, was to rebuild the Catholic Church by his witness of evangelical poverty, chastity, and obedience; especially poverty.  Our holy father Francis wanted to live like Christ, who relied on God the Father and others for His basic needs; live a life totally given over to the mission of the Father by giving up the good gift of romantic relationships; do only and all that the Father willed in proclaiming the Kingdom of God is at hand.  
    Our beloved Church, though perfect in heaven, on earth is always falling apart due to age and neglect.  God constantly calls each generation to rebuild His Church.  How can holy father Francis help us do this?  Need we strip naked and give away all our money to beg from others as we proclaim the kingdom?  No.  Need we jump into rose bushes every time we feel a sexual temptation coming on (as the story goes, Francis jumped into the roses to get his mind off the temptation, and from that time on they bloomed without thorns)?  No.  Need we take a vow of obedience to a religious leader and go wherever he or she tells us?  No.  
    But when we live as owners of our possessions rather than our possessions owning us, we are living, each in our own way and according to our own vocation, the evangelical counsel of poverty and building up the Church of God.  God has called many of you to engage in the cares of the world, in commerce, and to build up the earthly world by our good stewardship of it, advancing appropriately technology and unlocking the secrets that earth has to help us better understand our Creator.  But all too easily we make life about money, or possessions, or some other thing, rather than living life for God.  
    When we recognize that human sexuality is a precious gift from God that God calls us to use very specifically, each according to our vocation, we are living the evangelical counsel of chastity and building up the Church of God.  God has called many of you to be spouses and parents.  Some of you have heard God’s will time and time again (and sometimes many times after that) to be fruitful and multiply, which not only increases the size of our human family, but increases the number of disciples of Christ.  But the key is not simply having as many babies as physically possible–a number which varies for each woman and a number to be discerned through prayer and study by husbands and wives–but to see how God wants you to engage in the marital act as a way of expressing the love of God, rather than simply seeking after the pleasure that comes with it.  And for those who are not married, to utilize that desire for fatherhood or motherhood either temporarily or permanently in a non-physical way: caring for others and showing others brotherly and sisterly love, or even fatherly and motherly love without the biological connection.

    Lastly, when we obey legitimate authority, always subject to what we know God commands us, and when we seek out the will of God and strive to do that above all else, each according to our vocation, then we are living the evangelical counsel of obedience and are rebuilding the Church of God.  Too often and too easily we live life with the theme song of Hell: “I Did It My Way” (with no offense intended towards Frank Sinatra, God rest his soul).  Now more than ever, society tells us to focus only on ourselves and what we want.  We are like the sea gulls from “Finding Nemo,” always saying “Mine, Mine.”  When it comes to Burger King, have it your way.  But when it comes to holiness, we find it through submitting our will to God the Father’s will, sometimes made known to us strongly and miraculously, often times made known through prayerful reflection and study.  And not just doing the will of God begrudgingly, but lovingly saying “Thy will be done,” with our lips and our lives.
    God calls us, as He called our holy father Francis, to rebuild His Church.  The way we do so will not follow exactly Il Poverello, but will follow the same principles: poverty; chastity; obedience.  St. Francis of Assisi wrote, “Praised be you, my Lord, through our sister bodily Death, from whom no living man can escape.  Woe to those who die in mortal sin.  Blessed are those who will find your most holy will, for the second death shall do them no harm.”  If we, according to each of our vocations, live a poor, chaste, and obedient life, the second death shall do us no harm, and we shall praise God for eternity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.