Obedience and Humility

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Obedience and humility.  These two virtues, pointed to in our readings today, are probably two of the least practiced or appreciated virtues in society today.  In fact, there are probably people who consider either both or at least one of those virtues as not really that good.

    Driving in Flint, I see examples of disobedience all the time.  And I’m not talking about driving maybe 1-5 mph over the speed limit.  Even (or maybe especially) when I’m not working with the Michigan State Police, I see people routinely driving 10 or more mph above the speed limit, or passing in the center turn lane, or even running red lights, or rolling through a stop sign.  And as someone who values obedience, it drives me nuts!
    But beyond traffic laws, the idea of obeying another bristles most Americans.  We find excuses why we shouldn’t have to obey this or that person: she’s a Republican; he’s a Democrat; she doesn’t follow through on her commitments; did you see what he did when he didn’t think anyone was looking?  The list goes on.  It’s not a bad thing to want integrity of life in someone who has authority over us.  But sometimes I think that we only would listen to Jesus or the Blessed Mother, because they’re sinless.
    And let’s be honest, we wouldn’t even listen to them.  We’d find some reason to write even Jesus or the Blessed Mother off when they tell us to do difficult things.  And we’d probably use their sinlessness against them: “Yeah, they tell us to do X, but that’s easy for them to say, they’re sinless!” 
    Jesus was no stranger to the discontinuity between instruction and example.  But He doesn’t tell the people to stop obeying the Pharisees and scribes in what they teach about they faith.  Instead, Jesus tells them not to follow their example, even while they follow what they teach.  And, He tells them to center their lives around the one master, the Christ (and that’s Jesus). 
    But to follow what someone teaches, even if their life doesn’t measure up to that standard, takes real humility.  Because humility admits that I don’t know everything, and that sometimes other people are going to legitimately ask me to do something that I don’t want to do, but that I should still do it anyway.  Humility says that I don’t have to be in charge of every aspect of my life, that I can actually find happiness in submitting to another’s will, as long as it’s not against what God has revealed. 
    And part of Jesus’ message today is that the important thing is to follow God’s will for our lives, even when those who are telling us to follow it don’t do so perfectly, or maybe don’t even try.  The most important thing is not the vehicle by which the message is conveyed; it’s the message.  When the truth presents itself to us, our only good option is to follow it, even if the message of truth is not spread by someone fully living that truth him or herself.
    Take last weekend’s Gospel: Jesus told us that the two great commandments are to love God with all of who we are, and love our neighbor as ourselves.  And I preached on what that looks like.  But, and this will come as no shock to at least some of you, I don’t always love God with all of who I am, and I don’t always love my neighbor.  I do my best to live out the great commandments, but I often fail.  Does that mean that you shouldn’t love God or your neighbor because I’m not doing it perfectly?  If that were the case, no one would ever hear the Gospel, because everyone who has preached the Gospel, outside of Jesus and Mary, have struggled to keep it, including our first pope, St. Peter.
    St. Paul reminds us that we hold the treasure of the Gospel in earthen vessels.  And he says that the reason for this is, “that the surpassing power may be of God and not from us.”  There is a method to knowing that everyone who preaches the Gospel does not fully live up to us, so that people aren’t convinced that it’s simply some special power that only an elite few have.  No, the power of the Gospel comes not from the messenger, but from God, the author of the Gospel. 
    Does that mean that we don’t worry about living the Gospel to our fullest ability because God will show the power of the Gospel even if we are not living it?  Certainly not.  There is a greater witness when someone has the integrity of living what they preach.  When someone lives contrary to that message, it lessens our desire to live according to the message, which is part of the definition of scandal.  Imagine a marriage counselor telling a couple to work out their differences through dialogue, and then you find out that he beats his wife whenever she does something he doesn’t like.  You’d be less likely to listen to him in the future.  So we should do our best to live out the message that we preach to others about following Christ.
    Still, we need not be overly worried when we do not live according to God’s will perfectly, and then decide not to preach what God teaches because we don’t always live up to it.  Yes, we should try our best to cooperate with God’s grace each day to do His will, but we shouldn’t cease our witness to the Gospel because we ourselves are not perfect.  The importance is that the truth is preached and that people have a chance to make it their own in their life, no matter who is preaching it.  May we be humble enough to do our best to live obediently to God’s will each day, making God’s will the most important thing in our life, rather than our own will.

Glorifying God and Lifting Burdens

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

This week is the week the Church in the United States focuses on promoting vocations to the priesthood, diaconate, and consecrated life, and it’s called National Vocation Awareness Week.  That may seem odd, because our first reading from Malachi and our Gospel passage sound pretty rough on priests.  God the Father, speaking through Malachi, has some harsh words for priests: “If you do not listen, if you do not lay it to bear, to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts, I will send a curse upon you.”  God the Son, Jesus, also is critical of the scribes and Pharisees, who were not necessarily priests, but who were leaders of the Jewish communities in their day: “‘The scribes and Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses.  Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.  For they preach but they do not practice.  They tie up heavy burdens hard to carry and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.’”  It doesn’t sound like God the Father or Jesus has much love for priests and religious leaders!

  But, on the contrary, God the Father and Jesus both love priests, but they both also hold priests to a very high standard, because they are acting in God’s Name and are called to reflect who God is.  As Jesus says elsewhere, “To whom much has been given, much will be expected.”  God through Malachi chastises the priests because they are not leading the people in giving glory to God’s Name.  And Jesus does not condemn the priests for what they are teaching, but for what they fail to do in terms of helping God’s people.  Sadly, in our own country, a few priests have not led the people in glorifying God, and they have not helped God’s people, but have hurt them, sometimes in horrific ways.  

So what is the solution?  Should we get rid of priests?  Should we close down the seminaries and become Christian communities who do not have priests because a small group of priests have not lived up to their vocation?  To do so would be not put ourselves as masters of the Church, and as I preached a few months ago, it is not our Church; the Church belongs to Jesus; She is His Bride.  Instead, we need better priests.

People often ask me what I do each day (usually right before someone else chimes in that priests only work for an hour or two on Sundays).  And I can say that no two days are exactly the same.  There are some common things, but you never know what will happen on any given day.  The most important part of my job is to do what Malachi said: to lead you in giving glory to God, and that happens most perfectly, most eminently, in the Mass.  The Mass is the high point of my day, as I offer to God the Father through Christ the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit, the one, acceptable sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross for the salvation of the world.  And in that, I hopefully draw you in, not to glorify ourselves, not to focus inward on how great we are, because we are not great, but rather, to glorify God and so focus on serving God first in the Mass and then after the Mass in our daily lives.  That is the key to a priest’s life: the Mass; the Eucharist.

Outside of that, I try to do what Jesus condemned the scribes and Pharisees for not doing: practicing what I preach, and lifting burdens from people’s shoulders.  Practicing what I preach means treating ever parishioner the way I would want to be treated, and treating them according to what the Church, sitting on the Chair of St. Peter, has taught, never giving special consideration because a person is famous, gives a lot, or is a friend.  Each day I also try to lift the burdens of the people in my parish, as I talk to them about their marriages, as I hear their confessions and offer them God’s mercy, as I try to help our school students see how much God loves them and help them to mature as Catholic young men and women.  Does it take a lot out of me?  Certainly.  Being a priest is about giving of oneself, in a similar way to how marriage is about giving of oneself (without the sex part).  But that is why the Eucharist is so important, because it is the source of the strength and wisdom, without which a priest would quickly burn out and become useless.

The reality is that we need more priests.  We need courageous, adventurous men who are trying to live according to God’s law to become priests.  We don’t need sissies; they won’t make it.  The priesthood calls for a man’s man; not a man with machismo, who is all about his own strength, but for a man who seeks to glorify God and care for the people entrusted to his care, even when the people don’t want the care that he knows God wants for them.  You don’t have to be perfect to become a priest; I’m living proof of that!  But you do have to want to follow God as perfectly as you can, so that God can be glorified, and His people can be cared for in love and truth.  

Role Models

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

             We all have role models.  We have people that we look up to, who help shape our behavior.  We may not want to be exactly like them, but there’s at least one aspect of their life that inspires us to be a better person.  It may be a coach in athletics; a teacher in school; a family member.  For me, a priest, there are two men who stick out, living right now, that I admire greatly.  There are many people I admire, but the two that always stick out in my mind are Pope Benedict and Archbishop Dolan. 

            Now please, don’t misunderstand me: I do not want to be pope or archbishop of New York.  But I greatly admire Pope Benedict’s humility, his fidelity to the truth, his compassion, and his ability to keep going at 85, when most of his confreres have been retired for quite some time.  In the midst of this, he keeps fulfilling, to the best of his ability, the Petrine ministry entrusted to him.  I hope that I can emulate his humility, fidelity to the truth, compassion, and perseverance.

            I greatly admire Archbishop Dolan’s gregariousness with people, his ability to connect, his ability to preach the Gospel, and not water it down, yet still draw people in.  I admire his sense of humor, and how he can remember both a face and a name of people he has met years ago.  I hope that I can one day grow to communicate the Gospel so clearly and effectively as he does in his homilies, and draw people in to a relationship with Christ.

            Most people have someone who has helped them to grow in their relationship with Christ: whether it was the priest that baptized them, a priest who listened when they were in trouble, or a dynamic preacher.  But it’s not just in religion.  We hold up on a pedestal all those who should be worthy of a greater level of respect, either by office or by personality: athletes, presidents, and movie stars. 

However, when they do not live up to that level of respect, if our life of faith rests on them, then it is easily shaken.  Remember the movie, some may call it a classic now, “Field of Dreams”?  The background of that story was the disappointment of Ray at the alleged throwing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago Black Sox.  Or think about the respect that is lost by presidents when they go astray.  Or even movie stars who claim to live a good life, and then we find out that they were cheating on their spouse, or living a lie.

            We cannot put our faith in a merely human person.  We cannot rest our faith on a religious leader, no matter how famous and holy.  Humans are too feeble, and right at the edge of sin and scandal.  Our faith must rest in only three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  If our faith rests on anything or anyone else, then it will be shaken, because it is not built on a solid foundation.  We have only one teacher, and he is the Christ.

            “‘The scribes and the Pharisees haven taken their seat on the chair of Moses.  Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.’”  How scandalous this must have sounded to the Jews of Jesus’ day.  The scribes and the Pharisees were the Jewish all-stars.  They helped to interpret the Law to make sure that the people were following God’s will and not sinning.  But, between their teaching and their example, they fell short.  It’s as if Jesus is telling the crowd and disciples to follow their instruction, but to not put their faith in these scribes and Pharisees, because they will fail.  Their actions will betray them.  And in the first reading, God, through Malachi the prophet, chastises the priests for not living up to their vocation, to make the people holy, but instead have fallen into great sin themselves. 

            I do admire Pope Benedict and Archbishop Dolan.  I respect them a great deal and look up to them, especially Pope Benedict as the Vicar of Christ.  But my faith is not in them.  I want to be like them in some ways, but only because they are living examples to me of being like Christ.  Jesus is the only one who is worthy of our faith.  He is the only one who can shoulder that burden.

            In the measure that any leader, religious or secular, lives and preaches the message of Jesus can we look up to them as an example in faith.  This even goes for Fr. Mark, Fr. Joe, Fr. Jake, and myself.  But we cannot be the sole reason for your practice of the faith.  We cannot bear the weight of your complete faith.  We will try to teach you the truth; we will try to be a good example for you; we will do our best to model the life of Christ for you so that you can live it out in your own vocations.  But none of us—no one—is the object of faith except God. 

            We all have people who have shown us what it means to be Catholic.  We all have people, especially the saints, who inspire us to do better, to keep striving for holiness.  We should pray for those who help lead us to faith and are examples of a life in Christ.  But God alone is worthy of our faith, and we want to make sure that our faith is based on Him, so that when disappointments come, whether from religious leaders, athletes, movie stars, or anyone else, they make shake the house of faith that we have built, but they will not destroy it, because our foundation is in Jesus, the rock of faith upon which a sturdy foundation can be built and will survive, no matter what the trials and tribulations.