Audacity and Deference

Third Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  For my first assignment as a priest, Bishop Boyea sent me to St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing.  And people still remembered the second pastor of that parish, named Msgr. Jerome MacEachin, but more lovingly referred to as Fr. Mac, though he had died in 1987.  His favorite hymn, a hymn also near and dear to my heart, was “O Lord, I Am Not Worthy,” whose first verse comes primarily from the second half of the Gospel passage we heard today.

    We hear this familiar passage about the centurion asking our Lord to heal His slave, but then objecting to our Lord visiting his house, and having faith that the Savior could heal even from afar.  And as I reflected on this the readings, the person of the centurion rose to the top as a model for our interaction with the Lord.
    The first thing that we note about the centurion is his audacity.  The centurion did not practice Judaism.  He did not belong to the Chosen People.  Perhaps he admired Judaism.  Perhaps he had simply heard about a wonder-worker who could heal people, so he came to ask for a favor.  But though the Messiah was not claimed as the Messiah for the Romans, the Roman soldier asked for a great miracle.  
    His audacity reminds me, and perhaps you as well, of the audacity of Esther in the Old Testament.  When praying about the situation of her people who had been condemned to ethnic cleansing by a government official looking for more power and to get rid of those who did not follow his every whim, Queen Esther basically prayed that God would remember His promise to protect His people.  She acknowledged that God could raise up His people in some other way, but asked God that she could help save her people from utter destruction.
    Are we as audacious as they?  We have more claim to God’s attention than a Roman centurion, because we are His adopted sons and daughters in Christ.  We even have more claim to God’s attention than Esther, because though she was a part of God’s Chosen People, the Jews, we are part of His Son, our Lord, through baptism.  And so, as beloved children of the Father, we can go to Him with a certain confidence that what we ask the Father for in the name of Christ will be granted us, as long as it is part of His will, and helps us grow in holiness.  The Redeemer promised that whatever we asked in His Name, the Father would give us.  When we pray, do we have that confidence?  Or is our approach,  “Lord, if it’s not too much trouble, and I know I don’t have any room to ask, but if you wouldn’t mind listening to the prayers of little, old me…”?  
    On the other hand, we also see the centurion display great humility and deference.  He doesn’t consider Himself worthy of a personal visit by the Lord.  A Roman soldier could command almost anything, and expect to be followed.  In fact, our Lord preached in His Sermon on the Mount, “‘If anyone press you into service for one mile, go with him for two miles.’”  This references the times that a soldier could demand that a Jew carry his gear for one mile, even if it was inconvenient for the Jew.  So the Roman soldier could have simply commanded our Lord to come to his house, and our Lord would have been expected to obey.  Instead, the Roman doesn’t even feel worthy to have the Savior go anywhere with him, so he demurs the visit.  
    We should also show this attitude in our prayer.  The Lord owes us nothing.  He has already given us more than we could dream in terms of salvation.  If He gave us nothing else than the opportunity to go to heaven, that would be a debt we could never repay.  Ours should also be the prayer from Luke, chapter 17: “We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.”  

St. Gemma Galgani

    St. Gemma Galgani is another great example of this humility and deference.  St. Gemma was a virgin and stigmatist from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.  Even though she received mystical visions from our Lord, the Blessed Mother, St. Gabriel of Our Lady of Sorrows, and her guardian angel, she would say, “Oh Jesus, do not let me do things that are above me.  I am good for nothing.  I do not know how to return all these great graces you have given me.”  She had been given so much, and yet did not expect anything from God.  
    This may seem like an odd balance to keep in prayer, but both are important.  We should approach the Father with confidence as His beloved children in Christ, but also recognize that God owes us nothing.  We know that whatever we ask the Father in the name of Christ will be given us, as long as it serves God’s plan and helps us grow in holiness.  We tend to favor one or the other.  Some may find it easier to approach the Father will confidence.  Some may find it easier to be deferential and not ask for anything because we cannot merit anything on our own.  In the end, that first verse of the hymn “O Lord, I Am Not Worthy” displays both attitudes of the centurion, audacity and humility, attitudes which are also important in our life: “O Lord, I am not worthy / That thou should’st come to me. / But speak the words of comfort, / My spirit healed shall be.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

We Can't Fix It Ourselves

Third Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Perhaps it’s just a guy thing, but I guess that at least the men here, and possible the women here, have had a time in their lives when someone said that they had a problem that needed to be fixed.  It could be a big problem or a small problem, but somehow something is not working.  And while the person may have worked on the issue for a while, the new person says, “Lemme take a look at it,” and goes to whatever is malfunctioning.  Maybe the person looks at it, maybe taps a few buttons, or maybe even tries some real troubleshooting.  Not always, but at least sometimes, the second person looking at it is just as lost as the first, and says something like, “Yeah, I can’t really figure out why it’s not working.” 

    Our Lord in the Gospel today first heals a leper by touching Him.  This would have shocked people, since leprosy was so contagious, and lepers had to stay away from the public.  But Christ “fixes” him by healing the disease.  And then the centurion comes with another person to heal, and the Lord is about to go over to help that one.  But then a funny thing happens: the centurion says that physical presence is not necessary; a simple word will suffice.  The Lord, unlike us with our limitations, “fixes” the servant from afar; no tapping, kicking, or troubleshooting involved.  He wills it and it is done.
    Our world is, in many cases, broken.  But we can’t fix it.  No matter how many times we take a look at it, or how many times we tap here, kick there, re-read the manual, and press buttons, the healing of the world cannot be accomplished by human effort alone.  It needs Christ.  But how many times are we like the proverbial man, wanting our chance to take a look at it and fix the broken appliance? 
    Instead, the Lord invites us to have the faith of the centurion, and to trust that He can fix it, even without taking a second look, because He is the manufacturer, and knows exactly what is needed.  We are often closet-Pelagians: we figure if we simply do the right things, teach the right things, fast on the right days, then we will be saints.  We leave no room for God to fix us, and then wonder why we keep ending up broken.  We lack faith in God’s ability to heal and save.  And when we lack that faith, then like in Capernaum where people didn’t have faith in their local friend, Jesus, He’s not able to do many miracles. 
    How many times do we think that if we just did something ourselves, or if something within human control changed, then the world would be better?  We can go from the macro to the micro scale: if we had a different president; if we had different politicians; if we had a different pope; if we had a different bishop; if we had a different pastor; if we had a different spouse; if we had better-behaved kids.  All these different scenarios are where we are the agents of change and healing.  The Church survived and survives persecutions and bad governments; the Church survived bad popes, bishops, and priests; family holiness comes with the family we have, not the mythical family where everything seems perfect.  And all that is possible, not because the people were so great, but because God is, and the people relied on God for fixing the world.
    This is not to say, of course, that we shouldn’t do our best to elect politicians who promote what we know are universal goods; that we shouldn’t expect our pontiff to speak clearly and charitably about the unchanging truths of the faith; that bishops and priests shouldn’t be models of holiness and sound preaching; that families shouldn’t do all they can to respond to God’s grace and live in harmony and charity with each other.  Of course all those things are good.  But there has never been a time when everything was perfect in the Church, not even when our Lord walked the earth.  And the biggest changes came simply from individuals deciding to open themselves up to God’s grace and respond by doing their best to follow God’s will rather than their own.
    This also impacts what happens when others harm us.  St. Paul reminds us not to take revenge into our own hands, but to do good to those who wrong us.  Revenge belongs to God, because God is the only one who can effectively change the world for the better at its root.  When we decide to be agents of vengeance, we do not mete out perfect justice, but add at least a little bit of injustice to the equation, to try to convince the other not to wrong us again.  But that only leads to a vicious cycle where the other person, not truly aggrieved, takes revenge on us, giving us a little more than what justice demands, etc., etc.  Again, revenge is the Pelagian tendency in us that says that I have to be the one to fix the world, and hopefully God will bless my efforts.  Instead, St. Paul tells us to overcome evil with God, which will be its own revenge upon a person who does us wrong. 
    On this last Sunday before the -gesima Sundays, God invites us to have faith in Him and how He works, to trust in His timing and His ways over our own.  Yes, we should still cooperate with God’s grace, and achieve whatever good we can, but not as if we’re going to fix the world.  The good we do will be a response to God’s grace, which is the only thing that can fix the world.   Whenever we try to take God’s place, we do a very poor job of it.  Let God be God, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign 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.  

If You Want Something Done Right, Ask for God's Help

Third Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.  I can’t tell you how many times I have operated under that saying.  In the long run it may help to explain things to others and have them assist you with your task, but in a crunch, it’s so much easier to do what you know needs to be done, and to make sure it’s done in a correct way.
    While this approach can be helpful in daily tasks at home or at work, it is poison to our faith.  St. Paul tells us, “do not be wise in your own estimation.”  The apostle talks not only about head knowledge, but also about thinking that we can take care of ourselves when it comes to our needs.  When something goes wrong, we figure out a way to fix it.  When we need something done, we do it.  We maybe even think that the phrase, “God helps those who help themselves” is a phrase from the Scriptures or at least uttered by a saint, when, in fact, it likely originated in pagan Greece. 

    Our Gospel tells us the approach that we should take, and does so twice over.  We heard about the leper and about the centurion.  Both demonstrated how to live the spiritual life: go to Jesus.  The leper certainly wanted health.  He wanted to be reunited with the rest of the community of Israel, and to be able to worship God in the temple.  But he couldn’t give himself what he wanted most.  He couldn’t do it himself.  So he went to our Lord and said, “‘Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.’”  He relied on the Lord and on the Lord’s good will, and did not presume that the Lord would even grant his request.  But he had faith that Christ could heal him, and heal him Christ did.
    The centurion wanted health for his slave.  He wanted the paralysis to end.  But he did not consider himself worthy to have our Lord even come to his house to do the miracle.  He simply had faith that Christ could heal, even from afar.  Maybe the centurion had tried doctors to cure the paralysis.  Maybe he had tried to take of the matter himself.  But to no avail. 
    It is also important to note that slaves were property.  Yet the centurion did not treat his slave as property.  If you have a horse that is lame, you euthanize it and put it out of its misery, because it is no longer good for anything, just using up supplies.  If a tree is no longer producing fruit, you cut it down so that something else can be planted that will produce food.  Countless Romans had likely dispatched their slaves because they were no longer able to help with the work that the estate required.  Yet the centurion had not killed his slave, but asked for healing.  And he trusted that the Lord could heal.
    When we trust only ourselves to advance spiritually, we are doomed to failure.  When we figure that we have gotten ourselves into a mess, and so we have to get ourselves out, we will not succeed.  Only with God’s help can we find the healing that we need.  Only with God’s help will we find progress in the spiritual life.  Only with God’s help can we find freedom from the messes in which we so often find ourselves.
    It is so easy to become Pelagians.  Pelagius was a British layman who taught that we have to reach out to God first, to do some good first, which God will then approve.  Pelagius denied original sin, and said that we could be holy without the assistance of grace.  This was declared heretical by the local Council of Carthage in 411, and was vehemently opposed by St. Augustine of Hippo.

      If anyone could understand that merely willing the good was not enough, St. Augustine certainly did.  He had tried almost every philosophy, every seductive way of living, including fathering a child out of wedlock.  Even after his mind began to believe in the truth of Catholicism, his will could not seem to follow.  Then, one day, at his wits end from the frustration of not being able to do what he wanted, he heard a voice call out, “Tolle, lege,” "Take, read," opened up St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans, and was “knocked over” by God’s grace, which allowed him to live as he desired, according to the law of Christ and His Church. 
    But how often do we think that we are somehow more privileged than St. Augustine, that we can do it by ourselves?  We have a virtue in our life, and so we decide to achieve it, not asking for God’s help, or only doing so as a second thought.  God has to be the beginning, the middle, and the end of achieving any virtue.  We cannot start a virtue on our own, continue a virtue on our own, or achieve a virtue on our own.  The only thing we can do on our own is sin.  The rest is made possible by God’s grace.
    Or, perhaps there is a sin that we are fighting.  Perhaps we have been fighting it for some time, and we do not find any progress.  I try to give some helpful advice in the confessional, especially if I am not pressed for time, for ways that we can respond to God’s grace and cooperate with it.  But so often we forget that those practical pointers are meant to accompany prayer and asking for divine help, rather than pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. 
    Do we need to cooperate with God’s grace?  Certainly.  Can we be passive in our own conversion?  Certainly not.  But how often do we try to be wise in our own estimation and create plans which are not based in the will of God, and then find ourselves shocked that it didn’t work on our own?
    When it comes to the spiritual life, a better adage would be: if you want something done right, let God start the work.  Or: God helps those who ask for it.  Or, to quote the Psalms, “Unless the Lord build the house, in vain do its builders labor.”  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.