Tempting

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost-Commemoration of St. Lawrence

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  St. Theresa of Calcutta, aka Mother Theresa, famously once said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle.  I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”  Given that this is also the feast of St. Lawrence, who is commemorated today, this seems fitting as both this comment and St. Lawrence’s famous quote while being burned alive on a grill (“Turn me over, I’m done on this side,”) can elicit a chuckle.
    But when we’re in the midst of temptations, it doesn’t seem so funny.  And today’s words from St. Paul, that God does not test us beyond our strength, may not seems funny or may seem discouraging.  Temptations, which, by the way, are not sins in themselves, can sometimes seem overwhelming that clamor for our attention like a petulant child.  It’s one thing when it’s just that draw to say something about another and we catch ourselves before we actually say anything.  It’s another when that temptation just seems to take all our attention and won’t let us go.  
    There are different approaches to try to fight temptation.  Many saints of course will recommend turning to prayer when you are being tempted.  And for some people and for some temptations that can work really well.  Pious phrases like, “Jesus, deliver me!” can help us focus away from that which tempts us and calls upon divine assistance to open us up to the grace that will keep us from giving in to that temptation and committing a sin.
    For some people and some temptations, prayer doesn’t seem to work as well.  I think this can certainly be true with sins of the flesh.  Many people when facing a sexual temptation find it difficult to focus on anything else, even just being able to say a quick prayer.  St. Francis of Assisi famously jumped naked into a rose bush to fight temptation (though some say it was to fight discouragement, not sexual sins), and that rose bush no longer has thorns.
    But no matter what the temptation and how we fight it, it may seem odd that we even have to undergo temptation.  I mean, isn’t original sin washed away in Holy Baptism?  So why, to paraphrase St. Paul, do we not do the good we want to do, and we do the evil that we don’t want to do?  Why would a loving God allow us to have to choose between Him and sin more than just once in our life?
    While Holy Baptism does wash away original sin, that original disobedience that was passed down to us from Adam and Eve from their choice against God, we are still left with concupiscence, or a disordered affection for that which is contrary to God.  Concupiscence is not a sin in itself, but is the fomes peccati, or the tinder or fuel for sin (and the dating app Tinder is often a fuel for sin).  
    But concupiscence is part and parcel of a system where we have free will.  Our proper use of free will allows us to choose the good.  But baked within that free will is the ability to use free will poorly and choose the bad.  But we can’t love without free will, which is the main desire of God: that we love Him and grow in our relationship with Him so that He can configure us more and more to Himself.  God does not want us to fall to sin, but He also loves us enough to allow us to exist in a system that allows us to love Him, but also allows us not to love Him.

Church of Dominus Flevit, where Christ wept over Jerusalem

    And as we look to the Gospel, as we look to Christ weeping over the city of Jerusalem, we see Him weeping over the misuse of that free will.  The Chosen People had been prepared as best as God could to welcome the Messiah who was not simply a human leader of the Jews but the very Son of God Himself.  While He worked many miracles to back up His claim that He was God, many, in the end, would not accept that revelation, which would lead to the very destruction of the Holy City itself.  
    And we are more important even than the City of David.  Yet God demonstrates His love for us time and time again, just like He revealed His divinity.  In the midst of our temptations God never abandons us or leaves us to temptation.  In fact, the Church teaches us that God always gives us sufficient grace, the grace we need to respond to His will and avoid all mortal sin.  But we do have to accept that grace.  Grace never forces itself upon another.
    Part of our response should be to avoid what we often call the near occasion of sin.  If we know that we are tempted in certain circumstances, we should do our best, whenever possible, to avoid those circumstances.  It should be no surprise that when an alcoholic goes to a bar, he or she is more likely to have a drink.  The alcoholic can’t really complain that temptation is so hard to fight when he or she goes to a place where the temptation is readily present.  Or, if a young man and a young woman who are dating go into a bedroom when no one else is home and sit on the bed, it’s not so surprising if they end up giving into grave sexual sins because they put themselves in a near occasion of sin.  They not only have the kindling for the fire of sin, they brought a butane lighter and poured lighter fuel on the kindling.  
    With other sins like judgement, we cannot always avoid other people who tend to upset us or make us want to judge them, but do we have the foresight to pray before we get into that situation, or maybe even just finger the beads of the rosary that we keep in our pocket to help us remember to whom we belong and what He wants for us to thrive spiritually.
    In order for us to love God as He wants us to love Him and in return for His love for God, God does trust us to choose the good in a situation where good and bad are two different options for us.  God does trust us to choose Him even when sometimes we find that very difficult.  May we lean into the grace of God that helps us to fight temptation and avoid sin, and so come to enjoy the bliss that St. Theresa won by her charity to the poor and St. Lawrence won by the shedding of His blood for Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Recognizing Holiness

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Me after my first Extraordinary Form Mass

    There is a tradition in the Extraordinary Form that the people bow as the priest processes up or down the aisle at the beginning or end of Mass.  This gesture is a sign of respect, not so much for the priest as an individual, but for Christ whom the priest makes present in a special way each Mass.
    I remember at the first Extraordinary Form Mass that I celebrated, I invited my friend to be there.  After Mass we spoke about how it went, and he joked with me that he saw all the people bowing, but he didn’t bow because he knows me too well and he doesn’t think I’m worthy of a bow. 
    I know my friend didn’t mean any disrespect, and he certainly is good at keeping me humble and not thinking that they are bowing to me.  But it illustrates the point that Jesus made in the Gospel today: it’s hard to recognize holiness in people we know well.  It was true for Jesus in His own time, and it continues to be true now.  With merely human friends, we know all their failings and their idiosyncrasies.  Of course, Jesus had no failings or idiosyncrasies.  But the cliché phrase can so easily come true: familiarity breeds contempt. 
    But in our minds, we convince ourselves that if we would have been alive at the time of Christ, we would have been one of His closest followers.  We would have walked all over to see His miracles; we would have believed in Him from His miracles and teachings; we would have stayed faithful to Him during His Passion; we would have stood by the cross at His crucifixion.  But the witness of the Gospels show us that, just because people were close to Jesus didn’t mean they stood by Him all the time or recognized His holiness.
    Holiness can draw people in.  Think of St. Theresa of Calcutta (Mother Theresa) or St. Pio of Pietrelcina (Padre Pio).  Though, even in those cases, most people who were drawn in didn’t spend a lot of time with the saints.  They simply had one or a few powerful encounters.  So it’s also true that holiness can put people off.  St. Francis of Assisi drew a number of people towards him to join in his radical way of life.  But if you stripped down in the town square to show your renunciation of all your worldly goods, it’s not an old man in a white cassock who would come to see you, but a doctor in a white coat who might come to commit you to a mental health facility!  Sometimes the holiest of people can be quite annoying to those of us who don’t share in their total love for God.
    Why?  Why can we find it so difficult to love the saints?  Why is it so easy to be hard-hearted, as God warned Ezekiel the people of Israel would be.  As St. John says in the Gospel, people often prefer darkness to light, and so when the light comes, we try however we can to get rid of it.  The light makes the darkness in us uncomfortable, and makes us realize that we are not who we claim to be. 
    And because of this hardness of heart and preference for darkness, God does not work great things in us.  He can’t, because we leave no openness to His work in our lives, but reject it and work against it.  And God respects our free will, however miserable the misuse of our free will makes us.  He wants to do great things in us, to transform us by the power of His love and grace, but He won’t force Himself on us, because love never forces itself on anyone.  Jesus didn’t work great miracles in His home town because of the people’s lack of faith there.  When we don’t open up to God, when we lack faith that God can do something for us, then He won’t work miracles in us. 
    The key to allowing Christ to work great things in us is to admit we need Him.  Even the smallest opening to God’s work in us can be enough for God to break through.  Think of St. Paul: there must have been some openness to God’s work, even as he was persecuting Christians, so that when Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus, it could change his life and change him from a persecutor of Christians to one of the greatest Christian missionaries the world has ever known. 
    Today, ask God to soften your heart to be open to His work.  Ask him to reveal holy people in your life who can help you grow closer to God.  It could be a friend or a relative.  It could be someone you have written off.  But if we ask God to do great things for us, and make even a small amount of space for His love and grace, there’s no telling how much God can do with us, and make us into the saints He created us to be.  

Body and Soul

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the common errors of people today is a false dichotomy, or a presupposition that there are only two choices.  And this can also affect our faith life.  Because we sometimes act as if we forget that a person is a unity of soul and body, and deal with the one we find more enjoyable or the one that comes more easily to us.  But both soul and body are important, as we see in today's readings.
    The epistle focuses us mainly on the spiritual.  And we have to understand this spiritually, otherwise we would start some pretty strange practices.  St. Paul says that we are baptized into the death of Christ, and that the body has to be destroyed so that sin will no longer have power over us.  St. Paul intends, of course, that we read this spiritually.  We believe that by the pouring of water over our heads and the invocation of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, we symbolically die.  Now, I say symbolically because our soul is not separated from the body, as happens in natural death.  But the death is real inasmuch as our fallen self dies with Christ on the cross, and then rises to new life with Christ in the resurrection.  So it’s not as if this is all made up or in our minds.  We die to sin when we die with the Lord in the waters of baptism, and that is very real.  But it is not that our physical life is ended, otherwise we would be a cult of mass homicide.
    But then in the Gospel, our Lord focuses on the physical needs of those who were following him.  Christ had been teaching the people about who He was, and backing up what He said by healings and exorcisms.  But then, it is three days later, and the people are getting hungry and running out of food.  At this point, while the Savior had taken care of their souls by His teaching, He also focuses on their bodies by performing a miracle of multiplying bread and fish, so that they could eat and be filled.
    In the Church, people easily separate into those who take care of the soul versus those who take care of the body.  As regards the latter, we can think of those who want to provide for people’s physical needs without consideration of the hunger of their souls for truth and beauty and love.  As regards the former, we can think of those who want to teach people about the Lord and instruct them in the faith, but then when they ask for something to eat, they say some form of, “we don’t do that.” 
    And this tension even exists in Scripture.  In Acts chapter 3, we hear about a crippled man who begs Sts. Peter and John for alms.  He wants money to take care of his physical needs.  But the first pontiff says, “‘I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, walk.’”  There is a much deeper healing going on here.  Or look back to the Lord, who, when friends lower a paralyzed man down through the roof, immediately tells the man that his sins are forgiven, and only afterwards heals his body, as proof that the Son of Man can forgive sins.  But then in the epistle of James, chapter 2, we read, “If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, ‘God in peace, keep warm, and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?”
    So, we invoke the principle of both/and, so often operative in Catholicism.  Jesus is both God and man.  Mary is both virgin and mother.  The Church is composed of both saints and sinners.  We are both soul and body.  We are called to care for both the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy.  We cannot choose one and ignore the other, save at the possible expense of our souls. 

    This doesn’t mean that we can’t focus on one, even while we don’t exclude the other.  St. Theresa of Calcutta is a great example of doing both as she was able.  Her primary mission was to serve the poorest of the poor, and much of her work was caring for the physical needs of those whom society had abandoned.  She didn’t exclude service to people because they weren’t Catholic.  She fed them, cleaned them, and cared for them not because they were Catholic but because she was.  Still, and I know this from my own semester of working with the Missionaries of Charity in Rome, if you were living in their house and eating the food that they prepared, you would pray with the Missionaries of Charity, too.  And St. Theresa would even speak to spiritual poverty when she was given a platform on the national and international stage.
    Probably many of us feel more comfortable serving the spiritual needs of others rather than the physical needs of others.  Part of it may be because we readily have Church teachings accessible in our minds, but we don’t always know how to help someone who says they’re hungry, or thirsty, or need a bus ticket to somewhere.  And, sadly, some people try to scam others out of money, which makes it even more difficult to assist others.  But, I would encourage you to do what I do when someone asks me for help with basic needs of life: pray for guidance from the Holy Spirit to know how best to help that person.  And remember that we don’t have to do it all.  There are many groups in Flint that assist those who are hungry, thirsty, or homeless, like Catholic Charities, the St. Luke New Life Center, St. Francis Prayer Center, and others which are not Catholic but still do great work.  It is not wrong to refer someone to those agencies to do what we cannot do on our own.  But sometimes I know I feel that tug at my heart to give money, or I often carry Applebees gift cards in my car so that, if the Holy Spirit moves me to help someone, I can have a gift card to give them so that they can get food or drink. 
    So often we can try to create false dichotomy between the body and the spirit.  And certainly, one can be fully fed but spiritually starving; or one can be physically hungry but spiritually satisfied.  Christ invites us today through the Scriptures to consider both, and to do whatever we can to address both the spiritual and the physical needs of others, according to the gifts and talents we have received from God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Filling Up What is Lacking

Tenth Week in Ordinary Time-First Scrutiny Readings
    Mia, your preparation for baptism, which will happen at the end of this month, is so important that the Church has us take a break from the usual progression of readings and has us focus on thirsting for God, thirsting for Christ, especially as we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.

    In the first reading, the people thirst for water because they have not yet arrived at the Promised Land.  And even though they complain and say that slavery seemed better, God gives the people water after Moses strikes a rock.  In the Gospel, the Samaritan woman thirsts for water because the town ostracizes her, and she has to draw water at the hottest time of the day, when no one else in their right mind would have drawn water.  But Jesus shows her that she truly wants something more than physical water.  She desires God.
    In both the first reading and the Gospel, the Chosen People and the Samaritan woman want someone to take care of them.  They want someone to provide them with water, but they don’t see how that can happen.  They don’t trust that God will care for them.
    In your life, you have come to acknowledge that your life lacks something.  Like so many times in life, it is an encounter with another who helps us to recognize what we are missing in our life.  And through your continued friendship with the Pietras family, you explored what might be lacking in your life.  You attended Mass with them, and eventually worked up the courage to acknowledge that you needed God, just like the Israelites did in the first reading; just like the Samaritan woman did in the Gospel.  
    But while you were thirsting for God like a deer that longs for streams of water, as Psalm 42 says, another thirst also existed.  When we have these readings we often focus on the person who will undergo the scrutiny, the time of prayer and acknowledgment of sin, and the thirst of that person.  But God also has been thirsting for you.  He has desired that you come to Him and discover the soul-saving relationship that He wants with you.  He wants you to become His child, not just because you are human and are made in His image and likeness, but by Holy Baptism, which configures you to Christ and makes you a child of God by grace, so that Christ can truly become your brother by adoption, and you can become a joint-heir to heaven and eternal life with Christ.
    That thirst of God comes from Jesus’ very lips as He was dying on the cross when He said, “‘I thirst.’”  St. Theresa of Calcutta, whom we often refer to as Mother Theresa, connected deeply with those words and wanted to satiate the thirst of Christ for souls by serving the poorest of the poor.  But it was also present in the first reading.  God wanted the Chosen People to trust in Him, to trust that He would provide for their every need.  God didn’t want the Israelites to doubt His love, or to think that their foreign masters cared for them more than He, their God and husband, did.  All they had to do was ask, and God would satisfy their every necessity.  
    It was also present in the Gospel, as Jesus drew out from the woman her desire for a savior, her desire for the Messiah.  The Samaritan woman had tried to plaster over that desire with physical desires, with liturgical arguments, and even with multiple marriages.  But none of them satisfied.  And Christ could cut through all of that to name her true desire, for God, and let her know that He could provide for what she needed.  
    Today, the Lord invites you to trust in Him, and allow Him to satisfy your every necessity.  Trusting is not always easy.  And the ancient enemy wants you to think that you have to take care of yourself.  He tempted our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the same way, and got them to doubt God’s care for them when He told them they could not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  Adam and Eve doubted that God would give them what they needed, so they disobeyed Him, and they lost everything: they lost the innocence that was theirs so that they had to cover up their nakedness; they lost the ease of the garden providing for their every need so they had to toil for the food they would eat; they lost the painlessness of giving birth so that new children could only come through suffering; and they lost paradise, as God cast them out from the Garden of Eden.  That all happened because they did not trust God to provide for them.
    Today, over these next three weeks in particular, and for your entire life as a Catholic, God will invite you to trust Him.  Yes, we can cry out to God in our need, but He invites us to trust that He will provide for us.  Satan will try to get us to doubt God, but do not give in to those temptations.  Whatever ways you have doubted God before, trust in all the more now.  Thirst for His love; satiate His thirst for your love by trusting Him.  You are being led to the waters of new life, which when you drink from them you will never thirst again.  May your preparation for Holy Baptism strengthen your trust in God and in His will for the rest of your life!

A Father Who Keeps His Promises

Fourth Sunday of Advent

    I try to be a man of my word.  If I say something, I consider myself, except for extreme circumstances, bound to do what I said I would.  This has led me to become very particular with my word choice, and to say, when asked if I can do someone a favor, “Depends on what it is.”  If I make a promise, I intend to keep it, as far as I am able.
    But we have probably all had an experience (hopefully not from me!) when a promise has been broken.  I remember a local story from not too long ago about a contractor who took people’s money, but didn’t complete the work.  Or the sad broken promise of a marriage that ends in divorce, a promise not only made to each other, but also made to the children for their best upbringing. 
    How beautiful it is then, that we have a Father who keeps His promises.  God always is true to His word.  As St. Paul reminds us, when God says yes He means yes, and His no means no.  We hear God promise to David today that He will establish a house for David, and raise up an heir whose kingdom will be firm and endure forever.  David himself saw kingdoms fall and rise during his reign, and so this promise must have been quite encouraging! 
    But that promise seemed like it was broken.  David’s son, Solomon, was the only one who could claim a united kingdom.  The kingdom of Israel and Judah split into two due to the harshness of Solomon’s son, and they never rejoined.  Israel was eventually exiled because they worshipped false gods, so that only the southern kingdom of Judah was left.  But even then, eventually the king was captured by the Babylonians who exiled all the royal family.  After the Babylonian exile, the sons of David never ruled over a kingdom again, at least not an earthly kingdom.  Even after the Jews returned to Judah and rebuilt the temple, there was never a king to rule over them, and they soon found themselves a vassal territory of Rome.  King Herod, who ruled at the time of the Gospel we heard today, was not of David’s line, and he wasn’t even really a king in his own right.  He ruled only because Rome let him, and to try to appease the Jews.  For how many years must the people have thought that God had broken His promise to David!
    Enter the Archangel Gabriel.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, like her betrothed, Joseph, was of David’s house.  They were descendants of King David, though they had no political power.  But Gabriel assures Mary that her son, conceived by the Holy Spirit, will receive “the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”  God had not broken His promise.  He simply fulfilled it in a way that others did not expect.  And this unexpected way improved the apparent promise, as Christ’s kingdom would truly never end, because time could not limit the one who rules outside time, and the rule would not limit itself to only a particular piece of land, but upon all of humanity.  It would be like asking a parent for money for ice cream, but then not getting it when you wanted it immediately, only to find out that the parent was the heir to the Dairy Queen, and you had been named as the new owner and CEO.  It wasn’t what you expected, but it was better!

    We should keep that in mind when we think of God’s other promises: for example, God’s promise that He would never abandon us.  God is always there for us.  If He stopped being there for us, we would cease to exist; not just die, but disappear from existence, like George Bailey from “It’s A Wonderful Life” when Clarence the angel shows him what life would be like if he had never been born.  That’s not to say that we will always feel that God is with us.  St. Theresa of Calcutta rarely felt God’s presence.  St. John of the Cross felt abandoned by God, but knew that God would never forsake him, even in the midst of his dark night.  And what joy Sts. Theresa and John must have experienced when they, having remained faithful to God even in the face of difficulties and seeming abandonment, saw God face to face in heaven! 
    When we are going through difficult times, it is not that God has abandoned us.  God is simply allowing us to prove our love, not just for the good feelings that He so often sends, but for Him directly.  Sometimes God is so close to us that we cannot even sense Him.  Sometimes a struggle is meant to help us grow in a virtue or in general holiness, which will draw us even closer to God in the end.  But God never walks away from us.  He will never divorce us.  We are the only ones who can walk away, and even then, God always remains for us, watching for our return like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son, ready to run to us if we come to our senses. 
    God is a Father who always keeps His Promises.  Jesus Christ says yes when He means yes, but sometimes also says no when He means no.  We may not always live to see how the promise is fulfilled.  And the promise may be so beyond our expectations that we can’t imagine how the promise will be fulfilled.  But God will fulfill it.  Have faith; our Father only knows how to give us what is good, even better than we can dream.

Not Safe, But Good

Feast of Christ the King
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In his wonderful work, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis has a dialogue between the three children and Mr. Beaver, where Mr. Beaver introduces the character of Aslan.  Mr. Beaver says that Aslan is:

“the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea.  […]Aslan is a lion–the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “…Is he–quite safe?  I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mr. Beaver.  “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver.  “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you?  Who said anything about safe?  ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.  He’s the King, I tell you.”

As we celebrate Christ the King, we celebrate the King to whom Aslan points, not safe, but good; the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, whom we, the sons of Adam and Eve, can embrace as our brother, but a Lion, nonetheless.

    Christ as a King is both a strong warrior who defeats the enemy at the gates, but also our brother, by our adoption by His Divine Father.  Words limp at such an apparent paradox.  Christ Himself tells parable about killing the enemies of the king, and says on the night before His Passion that the prince of this world is being cast out.  And at the same time He asks the woman caught in adultery, “‘Has no one condemned you?  Neither then do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on, sin no more.’”  He is the Good Samaritan who binds up our wounds, puts us on His beast, and takes us to the inn where He pays for our recovery; but at the same time He is the one who “will put those wicked men to a wicked end” for not taking care of His vineyard and harming and killing the messengers of the vineyard owner.  He is, in the Apocalypse, the Lamb who was slain, and yet who has a sword which comes from His mouth to strike down the nations that oppose Him. 
    Perhaps that is why we are presented with two distinct images of His Kingship in our readings: St. Paul’s description of the Lord as the firstborn of all creation, the head of the body, the Church, who has primacy over everything; and the innocent victim, standing before the merely temporal Roman governor, yet submitting to Pilate’s decision that would mean the sacrifice of Christ’s life.  Christ, like Aslan, is both approachable and terrifying; Lover and Lord. 
    Perhaps that is why our relationship with Christ the King is also so hard to explain and put into words.  The Lord says in John, chapter 15, “‘You are my friends if you do what I command you.  I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing.  I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.’”  But then St. Paul, who met the same Christ on the road to Damascus, refers to himself as “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus,” in his epistle to the Romans.  St. Ignatius of Loyola would “baptize” his former life as a mercenary, and talk about himself as a knight serving the King of Kings.  While St. Catherine of Siena would describe the Lord as “sweet Jesus, Jesus, Love.”  The responsory from the post-Conciliar Divine Office for the Second Reading on the Memorial of Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian says, “We are warriors now, fighting on the battlefield of faith, and God sees all we do; the angels watch and so does Christ.  What honor and glory and joy, to do battle in the presence of God and to have Christ approve our victory.”  While St. Theresa of Calcutta saw Christ hanging on the cross, telling her, “I thirst” and asking her to quench that thirst by serving the poorest of the poor.  All of those images are true, as contradictory as they may seem at first glance.
    His Eminence, Cardinal Pizzaballa, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, recently issued a pastoral letter to the Patriarchate which also expresses this tension.  He meditates on words from the Gospel of John, “‘I have told you this so that you might have peace in me.  In the world you will have tribulations, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”  The Cardinal writes:
 

[Christ] addresses these words to His disciples, who will shortly be tossed about, as if in a storm, before His death.  They will panic, scatter and flee, like sheep without a shepherd.
    Yet, this last word of Jesus is an encouragement.  He does not say that He shall win, but that He has already won.  Even in the turmoil to come, the disciples will be able to have peace.  This is not a matter of theoretical irenic peace, nor of resignation to the fact that the world is evil, and we can do nothing to change it.  Instead it is about having the assurance that precisely within all this evil, Jesus has already won.  Despite the evil ravaging the world, Jesus has achieved a victory, and established a new reality, a new order, which after the resurrection will be issued by the disciples who were reborn in the Spirit. 
    It was on the cross that Jesus won: not with weapons, not with political power, not by great means, nor by imposing himself.  The peace He speaks of has nothing to do with victory over others.  He won the world by loving it.

This letter was written for the Feast of Our Lady of Palestine, celebrated on 25 October, in the midst of yet another war in the Holy Land, the Land of the King of Kings and Prince of Peace.
    What can we do as we celebrate Christ the King, which is also the anniversary our our own Traditional Latin Mass Community in Flint?  We do our best to live in imitation of our King, Conqueror and Victim, Conqueror because He is Victim.  We do our best to put to death the works of evil, starting with ourselves and the planks that are in our own eyes, but also working to promote life by opposing the evils without and the splinters in the eyes of our neighbors.  We seek the victory and the triumph which so often are made manifest through the rituals of this beautiful Mass, doing so by the reality to which this Mass points, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, lived out in our own lives daily.  We do not shun the cross, but realize that Christ reigns from a the throne of a tree, and so we seek to reign with Him through our own daily crucifixions. 

    Christ is a King, and He is our brother.  We kneel before Him in fealty, and we run to embrace Him in love.  We acknowledge that He is not a domesticated animal, that He is not safe, but that He is good, in fact, Goodness Incarnate.  Christus vincit!  Christus regnat!  Christus imperat!  Christ conquers!  Christ reigns!  Christ commands!  He who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Reaching Out to Untouchables

Third Sunday after Epiphany

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  St. Theresa of Calcutta (aka Mother Theresa) was known for her work among the poorest of the poor in India.  Through reading her biography, and hearing the testimony of priests who worked with her, I learned of so many stories of Mother (as they simply called her) seeing people in the streets and loving and caring for them.  There were stories of how she would find a dying person who had been placed literally in the gutters, just left alone to die.  Sometimes there would already be maggots eating away at sores on the bodies, but Mother would pick them up, carry them to her priory, and clean them up and care for them. 
    I had a chance to work with the Missionaries of Charity when I was studying abroad in Rome.  They had a house at San Gregorio not far from the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum.  We didn’t provide medical care, but we helped prep the food that they would be served, and mopped the floors and cleaned up.  Whenever I smell overly ripe fruit or vegetables (which we had to clean before we served it), my mind often goes back to those days.  I am ashamed to say that my charity, my love of Christ for others, was not often present, and I did the work only because I was required to do so.  That is a part of my soul that still deeply needs conversion.
    As we hear about our Lord healing the leper and the centurion’s slave in today’s Gospel, we probably sanitize this story in our mind.  We know leprosy was bad, and very contagious.  And we know that the Romans were hated by most Jews, not only because of their political oppression, but because they had symbols of their pagan religion everywhere.  But do we appreciate how outcast those two groups were at the time of Christ?
    Perhaps our country came somewhat closer to understanding the shame and the isolation of a leper as we muddled our way (often in a less than virtuous manner) through the early days of the COVID pandemic.  So many, myself included at times, especially at the beginning, would be so nervous about a person coughing.  There were still other viruses present, and yet how quickly we could assume that the other person had COVID, and if (especially in the beginning) we even looked at them we might get it too, and be under house arrest for 14 days!  But even that doesn’t really get to an understanding of leprosy.  A leper’s flesh was literally rotting away.  He or she was likely covered with cloths to hide some of those sores, but those cloths were probably not cleaned that often.  Though no one had deodorant in those days (though the rich had perfumes), leper colonies were often in horrible, inhospitable places, where personal hygiene was even lower than the average standard of that time.  Perhaps maggots also were in the flesh of those who had leprosy, just like some of the untouchables for whom Mother Theresa cared.
    But the Savior didn’t shrink back.  I doubt He covered His nose, or turned away.  No, from what we hear and from my own estimation, our Lord stretched out His hand, touched the man, and healed Him.  Christ saw, not a leper, but a child of God who needed to be made whole and healed from a disease that cut one off from practically every good and wholesome part of human existence. 

    When it comes to the Romans, we do have some people that we tend to ostracize.  These days it tends to be the Russians and Chinese.  Around September 11th it was Arabs.  But to get a closer sense of the animosity, we’d probably want to think back to the way we treated Russians in the 1950s.  While I was not alive, certainly the stories about how we, as Americans, were afraid of Russian spies infiltrating our government (which perhaps they did, in some ways).  So we ostracized and persecuted anyone we thought might be connected to the Russian communists.  Better dead than Red, we would say.
    And yet, as this Roman, this hated figure came to our Lord seeking a healing for the centurion’s slave, again, Christ didn’t pull back, or say that He had no times for Romans.  The request was made for healing, our Lord offered to go, but then the Roman demonstrated faith that no such visit was necessary; as long as our Lord said it would happen, it would happen.  I’m not sure we can fully appreciate just how revolutionary and rebellious that action was, not to mention when the Savior said that many foreigners would recline with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but many children of the kingdom would be outside, wailing and grinding their teeth. 
    The basic requirement for healing was faith, and as long as one had faith, our Lord was not ashamed to help that person.  It didn’t matter whether your were ritually unclean, or diseased, or even a soldier of an oppressing pagan regime.  God would act if the faith was present.
    From whom do we still make sure we keep six feet away (or farther)?  Whom do we ostracize?  How many opportunities for conversion do we miss out on because we treat the other as someone not worthy of our time or attention?  In what ways are deep conversions lost because we’re not willing to approach the other?  Our Lord didn’t say that leprosy was no big deal, but He restored that leper to wholeness, not just physically, but in terms of community and right worship.  Our Lord didn’t say that Roman oppression and the treatment of the Jews was just, but He healed the slave of the centurion.  There was a centurion at the foot of the cross, who exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!”  Perhaps it was the same centurion, whom we now refer to as St. Longinus.  Perhaps that healing was the first step in that soldier rejecting pagan gods and believing in the true Son of God, Jesus Christ.
    I won’t stand before you today and say that I’ve got it all together, and willingly reach out to our modern “untouchables.”  I would be a hypocrite to say that there are not people whom I keep at a distance, of whose conversion I could be an instrument if I would put aside my own fears and stereotypes.  But I’m working at it, and I hope you will, too.  Because no matter who the person is, or what the person has done, that person, without a doubt, needs the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

A Catholic View of Work

 Second Sunday after Easter

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Today we are celebrating two important people: St. Joseph the Worker, and our First Communicants.  First, I'll speak about St. Joseph.

St. Joseph's Workshop in Nazareth

    Holy Mother Church chose today, 1 May, to celebrate St. Joseph as a way to combat and convert celebrations that celebrated work in a communist mentality.  Pope Pius XII established the feast in 1955.  While we are not communists (at least I hope no one here is!), in many ways our understanding of work is still not fully in line with the Scriptures.  Many think of work as the thing to avoid at all costs, to get away from as much as possible.  We even may look back at Genesis and see that God cursed Adam and Eve and told them that only by their toil would the fruits of the earth come forth.  But in Christ, our understanding of work developed, no longer as a curse, but as a way that we can grow in holiness.  Christ was not subject to sin, and yet He still chose to work as a carpenter with His foster-father, St. Joseph.  He redeemed work as He accomplished it.  And so for us, work is no longer simply a drudgery, something to be avoided as a curse, but as a way that we grow in holiness, following the pattern of our Redeemer.  

    This may still seem counter-intuitive.  And may ring empty from a priest who just got back from a vacation.  But, we see that God has given each of us gifts, and our Lord tells us that we are to use our talents to progress society, as He tells us in the parable of the talents.  It is to the lazy servant that Christ has the harshest words.  You have gifts and talents that I don't, that are meant to build up society and help it to grow to be more like the City of God.  When we don't use those gifts and talents, society suffers.  We see that, not only from our unemployment numbers, but from how our society suffers when we don't band together to make it better.  

    But it even affects our salvation.  When we use our gifts and talents, we are giving glory to God who has given us those gifts, and letting our light shine before others.  When we don't use those gifts, we are hiding them under the bushel basket.  We are not to brag about our gifts, but we are to use our gifts, recognizing that, without God we cannot do anything.  At the same time, rather than looking in jealousy or envy towards others, we should see that they, too, have a part to play in building up society with their gifts, just as we do with ours.  Both they and we are necessary for the building up the world, whether we feel like our job is glamourous or is menial.  All work has dignity, and is a means of becoming a saint.  In fact, some of our more popular recent saints had very menial work, and yet are celebrated more.  St. Theresa of Calcutta worked with the poorest of the poor, taking those society had rejected, those who were often treated like trash and smelled worse than trash, and embracing them with the love of Christ.  Or think about our own Michigan saint, Bl. Solanus Casey.  He was ordained a priest simplex, not given all of the faculties that other priests had.  He was a porter at St. Bonaventure, opening the door for and greeting people.  And yet how many pilgrims flock to his site and seek his intercession!  I think this is a beautiful way that God elevates the humble and shows their importance, even while so many "important" priests and bishops and lay-faithful are not counted among the saints and blesseds.  They may have exercised jobs that the world considered more important on earth, but an earthly perspective doesn't count for much, if anything after death.  

    Indeed, St. Joseph was a nobody in his own day!  He toiled without making much money, but had the important role as protector of the Holy Family.  While he was one of the most unknown among his contemporaries, he is numbered among the greatest of the saints, after the Blessed Mother.

    My dear first communicants, St. Joseph is also a perfect model for you today as you receive our Lord for the first time in Holy Communion.  St. Joseph was obedient to the will of God in caring for Christ during the time before He started His public ministry.  He cared for our Lord, making sure that He was safe, and felt the love that a child should from parents.  Like St. Joseph, Christ will be coming to you in a miraculous way.  Holy Communion is nothing other than a miracle, the greatest miracle we have.  God changes ordinary bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ so that Christ can enter the home of our heart and live there.  

    You, like St. Joseph, are able to welcome Christ into your home today.  Our Lord will be even closer to you than He was to St. Joseph.  Your "job" as it were, is to welcome Jesus into you, and live a life that shows that you want Him to continue to be a part of who you are.  No one else will know, except God, how well you do that, just as no one really appreciated all that St. Joseph did while he was alive.  But the better job you do at making Christ feel at home within you, the more you can look forward to an eternal home in heaven with St. Joseph many decades from now.

    I encourage you to never stop loving our Lord, especially in the Eucharist.  Never lose the joy that you have today at being able to receive the Lord.  And when you fall into sin, let that gift of Holy Communion push you towards the Sacrament of Penance, which we often call confession, so that you can, by the grace of God, clean your house of anything that makes our Lord not feel like a welcomed guest.  It is so easy to treat Holy Communion like something that is a habit, something you do every Sunday just because it's what we do.  But Holy Communion is the greatest gift God can give to you, greater than any present you could ever receive.  

    After you have received Holy Communion and returned to your pew, make sure you thank God for the gift that you just received in the Eucharist.  I imagine St. Joseph, before he went to bed each night, thanked God for another day that he was able to spend with Jesus.  Each time you receive Holy Communion, thank God that you were, once more, able to receive the same Jesus for whom St. Joseph cared.  In that way, you will live like St. Joseph, and receive the same reward he received for always caring for our Lord, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live for ever in heaven.  Amen.

Justice and Mercy

 Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
    

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  The saints are often known for pithy quotes that make one think, or sometimes chuckle.  For example, St. Theresa of Avila is quoted as saying to the Lord, “If this is how you treat your friends, it is no wonder you have so few!”  Or St. John XXIII, who had a particularly good sense of humor, would say to God each night before he went to bed, something to the effect of “Dear Lord, it’s your Church; you take care of it.  I’m going to bed.”  Or St. Theresa of Calcutta, who said, “I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle.  I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”    I bet we all can or have once had the same feeling.
    St. Paul reminds us today that “God is faithful and will not let [us] be tried beyond [our] strength.”  This is a good thing to remember in our day-to-day life.  We do not have to give in to our temptations; we do not have to sin.  God gives us what the scholastics called sufficient grace, or the power of God which is required to say no to temptation.  Certainly, venial sins may pop up which are simply due to weakness of our character or pre-dispositions, but when it comes to knowingly being tempted to commit a venial or a mortal sin, we do not have to give in to the temptation and act contrary to God’s will.
    But how often do we call upon that grace?  How often do we call out to God to save us in time of temptation?  Or how often do we rebuke the temptation as having no power over us?  In our daily temptations, we can turn to the Lord, and then rebuke, mentally or verbally, that temptation as not being from God.  Sometimes out-loud is especially effective, because it gets us out of our head.  
    The other option, giving in to temptation, leads to consequences.  It’s a kind of spiritual law of physics.  Just as for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so in the spiritual life, for every sin to which we acquiesce, there are consequences with which we might have to deal.  It is true that sometimes God can withhold that consequence, for a time or for ever, but He can also let the consequence of sin (which is death) affect us.  
    St. Paul mentions that in his epistle as well.  He mentions the fall of the twenty-three thousand as a consequence of immorality, or those who died by serpents on the way to the Promised Land.  And in our Gospel, we hear our Lord prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem, because the city did not recognize the time of its visitation.  
    We tend to look at these things as punishments.  We think that God is striking this person or that person down because of evil.  But, from other parts of the Gospel, it’s not quite that simple.  Our Lord himself, when talking about the tower that fell, or those who were killed by Pilate, argued that they were no more guilty than others.  Only God knows how, why, and when to allow the consequences of sin to catch up with a person or a group of persons.  And His patience is always for the purpose of allowing for conversion, as St. Peter says in his second epistle.  
    There’s a rather horrible contemporary hymn that was written, and which was very popular in my first assignment, called “The Canticle of the Turning.”  It’s a kind of very, very loose paraphrase of the Magnificat written to the melody of an Irish bar song (sort of the example of everything wrong with contemporary hymnody).  The refrain states, “My heart shall sing of the day you bring / Let the fires of your justice burn.”  I don’t know about you, but if I have the choice between God’s mercy and God’s justice, I will take God’s mercy every day, and twice on Sundays, as the saying goes.  
    But what we want to receive, we need to give to and desire for others.  Our Lord’s teaching on loving our enemies is one of the tougher teachings of the Gospel.  It’s easy to immediately want what we consider to be justice, for the other person to get their just desserts.  How often when I am driving do I see a car run a red light, and I opine, sometimes out-loud, that I hope that there’s a cop around to pull them over.  I can tell you it’s not so much because I’m concerned about my own safety or the safety of others that I want that person pulled over (which would be fine), but because I want that drive to be punished for breaking the rules, which I strive so hard to follow.  If we want to receive mercy, we need to show mercy.  If we want others to have Divine Justice, then we need to be prepared for it to fall upon us as well.

    There is a small chapel on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the city of Jerusalem from the west, called Dominus Flevit, which, for those whose Latin isn’t that sharp, means The Lord Wept.  It’s called that because it is the place (or at least it’s around the place) where today’s Gospel took place and the Lord wept over Jerusalem.  It’s one of my favorite chapels, because as you attend Mass, you see the present-day city of Jerusalem.  But you see it through a wrought-iron image that includes a cross and a host over a chalice.  Outside of pandemics, I would guess that chapel is used every day.  It’s a great reminder for us that the Mass is the prayer of reconciliation of Jesus to the Father, pleading for, not just Jerusalem, but the world, which should be seen through the mystery of the Eucharist.  May our hearts be moved daily to show the mercy of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Both...And Not Either...Or

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the first things Bishop Boyea was asked in 2008 when he was introduced as the newest Bishop of Lansing, and one of the things that priests are often asked in their first weekend as they begin at a new parish is the four word question: Michigan or Michigan State?

We often tend to put things into an “either…or” category.  In academia we all this a dichotomy, a choice between two different things.  In our politics: Republican or Democrat; in our fountain drinks: Pepsi or Coke; in our schools: Catholic or public; in our housing choice: rent or own; in our cars and beer: domestic or foreign.  Maybe it’s easier for our mind to operate this way, but we tend to put people in one of two camps.

So today, given our predilection for dichotomies, perhaps we think of it as love of God, or love of neighbor.  We probably don’t think of it that way, exactly, but we tend to focus on one, and perhaps we don’t focus on the other.  Maybe we like going to church, we love a beautiful liturgy, we love learning about our faith; or we like serving the poor, working at food pantries, promoting social justice.  

But to the scribe who comes up to Jesus and asks him the first of all the commandments, Jesus doesn’t try to pigeon-hole His answer into simply one or the other.  He says both love of God and love of neighbor.  Love of God is from the first reading we heard today in the Book of Deuteronomy.  Love of neighbor as oneself is from the Book of Leviticus.  Both are the most important commandments.  Both are part and parcel of following Jesus.

One could rightly point out that serving God is more important than anything else.  Part of what is radical in Jesus is that He demands total obedience, even above family, which only God could claim.  Being a do-gooder is not the same as being a disciple.  There are people who serve the poor, and yet reject God, and while I’m not the judge, rejecting God on this earth, especially in a purposeful way, is probably more on the road to Hell than Heaven.

But still, St. John, in his first Letter, says that we cannot serve the God that we don’t see, if we do not serve our neighbor (he uses the word brother) that we do see.  Being a philanthropist does not assure us of heaven.  But ignoring Jesus in the least of His brothers and sisters (to paraphrase Matthew 25) is also not helpful in us receiving eternal salvation.  St. John Chrysostom, one of the saints in our icons, says it this way: 

Do you want to honor Christ’s body?  Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked.  For he who said: This is my body, and made it so by his words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me.

Jesus instructs us of the great Catholic principle: both…and.  Both love of God and love of neighbor, not either or.

Most people focus on one or the other, love of God or love of neighbor.  So today Jesus challenges us to make sure that a focus on one does not mean the exclusion of the other.  Do you love worshipping God here in the church, being formed by the Mass and by our faith formation groups, learning more and more about what God has revealed through Scripture and Tradition?  Wonderful!  But remember: those clothes that you never wear in your closet or dresser: those belong to the poor; they have a right to them.

Do you love being with people and bringing them the love of God through your actions?  Do you feed them, clothe them, work for justice on their part?  Wonderful!  But if you skip worshipping God at Sunday Mass to serve the poor, then you are making an idol of the poor and worshipping them rather than God.

St. Theresa of Calcutta, Mother Theresa, is an embodiment of both…and.  Yes, most of her day was spent working with the poor, the outcast, and the dying.  But she never missed her opportunities for daily Mass and a Holy Hour of Adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  That was the most important part of her day, and it gave her the strength to serve the poor, the outcast, and the dying.

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati is another embodiment of both…and.  He loved being outdoors, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation, being sustained by the Eucharist in Mass, but he secretly did work with the poor, contracting and dying of polio that was so prevalent among the poor he served.  And his secret was so well kept, that his rich parents had no idea who all the people were who attended his funeral, though the poor knew Pier Giorgio as a person who cared for them and their needs.  

Life is too complicated to be simply divided into two things.  Our faith is too rich to be simply divided into two things.  It’s not Scripture or Tradition, it’s both Scripture and Tradition; it’s not faith or reason, it’s both faith and reason; it’s not Word or Sacrament, it’s both Word and Sacrament; it’s not love of God or love of neighbor, it’s both love of God and love of neighbor.

Afraid of the Dark

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Part of moving into a new house, as I did last July, is getting used to it.  A foreign house, especially if you live in it alone, can be a little scary.  Probably a few of those first weeks, as I went to bed, my heart started to beat a little faster as I heard creaks and different noises in my house.  Of course, there was nothing there, but because it was a new house, I wasn’t used to the different noises it would make at night.  What didn’t help was that Flint does not have the reputation of being the safest place in Michigan (though I have to say I have not had any problems here).  The other big issue was that, especially immediately after going to bed, the house was dark, and the fact that I couldn’t see and wasn’t familiar with the different parts of the house and how the shadows fall probably kept me alert without any real cause for concern.

Not being able to see can often change the way we approach things.  To a child, those clothes hanging in the closet or the stuff underneath the bed can seem like monsters.  But even adults, in an unknown area might try to be more attentive as they walk to their car from a restaurant.  Law enforcement is always trying to keep their eyes open, especially these days, so that they are not taken by surprise by someone trying to harm them.

Our readings today remind us of the importance of seeing correctly.  In our first reading, even one of the great prophets, Samuel, does not see as God sees when trying to find the next king of Israel among the sons of Jesse.  Samuel was looking at outward appearances; God was looking at the heart.  

And St. Paul in the second reading reminded us to take advantage of the light of Christ, since we are children of the light, not of darkness.  We do not belong to the night or the darkness, no matter what Pat Benatar sings.  In baptism, we were given the light of Christ, and Christ always gives us the light of His grace to help us know right from wrong.  He does that through our conscience, but even our conscience has to be formed by the light that the Church gives us.  Especially living in an age which, in many ways, are contrary to the teachings of Jesus, our conscience is not always a sure guide for the choices we should make.  

The Gospel we heard, about the man born blind, is one we hear maybe every year, but definitely every three years.  Ironically, in this passage, the person who sees the best (besides Jesus) is the Blind Man.  Neither the Pharisees, nor even the disciples, see as Christ sees.  The disciples think the man is blind because of some sin.  Christ corrects them and says that it’s so that God may be glorified and His works be more visible.  The Pharisees cannot see that Jesus is displaying His divinity in healing the man.  They do not accept Jesus’ miracles, and therefore do not accept Jesus Himself.  Even the man, now formerly blind, exclaims, “‘This is what is so amazing, that you do not know where he is from, yet he opened my eyes.  […] It is unheard of that anyone ever opened the eyes of a person born blind.  If this man were not from God, he would not be able to do anything.”

But, if we are honest, sometimes we do not see as God sees.  We do not let the light of Christ illumine our lives.  We have a type of spiritual glaucoma, and no marijuana, medical or not, will cure our spiritual glaucoma.  Only Christ can heal us; only he can restore our sight.

Throughout the history of the Church we have examples of people who saw with the light of Christ.  They had 20/20 spiritual vision.  We call them saints, and we should strive to follow their example in our own lives.  I’ll mention just a few.

St. Martin of Tours, who lived in the fourth century, was a soldier, and later became a bishop.  But one of the stories about him mentions that, as a soldier, he was riding a horse in the cold.  He saw a poor man on the side of the road, with very little clothing.  St. Martin cut his cloak in half, and gave half to the man.  That night, Martin had a dream where Jesus was wearing his cloak.  St. Martin did not simply see a poor man, but saw Jesus, and tried to help him.

St. Francis of Assisi needs almost no introduction.  But how many of you have heard the story of how St. Francis, who had started to give up his father’s wealth, saw a leper, whose skin was rotting away from his body, but dismounted from his horse, gave him money to help, and even kissed his hand.  As hard as it was, Francis saw past his fear of contracting leprosy, and dared to touch, and even kiss, the lepers as a sign of his love for Jesus.

In our own more recent times, St. Teresa of Calcutta is someone who saw with the eyes of Jesus.  In the streets of Calcutta, Mother Teresa would see the “untouchables,” those whom society had rejected, literally rotting away in the streets as they died, flies likely laying their eggs in the putrid flesh, and Mother would care for them and show them the respect and love that she had for Jesus.  I worked in Rome with the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, not so much with the dying, but with the poor and neglected of the Eternal City.  I will admit: I struggled to see Jesus.  But for me I knew that my sight was not quite right, and that I need the healing of Jesus not to be blind to Him in the least of His brothers and sisters.  I’m sure I’m not there yet.  I still pray that I can see.  How is your spiritual sight?