Disciples are Made for Greatness, Not Comfort

Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

There’s a temptation that can creep into any believer’s life, that if we just do the right things, then everything in our life is going to go well.  Maybe it comes from a desire for justice, for everyone getting what is owed them, but we can easily think that if we follow God, if we live our life according to what the Church teaches, then life should be easy for us.  We should be rewarded for good behavior, just like bad behavior should be punished.  There are even those who claim to preach the Gospel (they are really just perverting it) who say that if we follow God’s laws and if we give 10% to the Church, then God is going to make us rich and give us every earthly pleasure that is holy that we could desire.  We call that the Gospel of Prosperity (note that it’s not the Gospel of Jesus Christ).  

This perhaps also betrays a certain tendency in our human nature to want comfort, which is especially prevalent today among the young.  We want the good life, where we don’t have to struggle, don’t have to put forth effort, but we still get the rewards that would come from struggle and effort.  In one sense, we might say that this is built in to us because we were created for prelapsarian life, the life before the Fall in the Garden of Eden.  But we are living in postlapsarian times, the time after the Fall, where we earn our living by the sweat of our brow.  Furthermore, as Pope Benedict XVI reminded us, “The world promises you comfort, but you were not made for comfort.  You were made for greatness.”  Greatness takes work.  Works means struggle.  Struggle means pain.  And it even applies for those who follow God.

Take Jeremiah in our first reading.  God appointed him a prophet.  In fact, God says that He appointed Jeremiah a prophet even while Jeremiah was in his mother’s womb.  And yet, Jeremiah has a tough life, so much so, that God says, “gird your loins; […] Be not crushed on their account.”  Jeremiah is the prophet who immediately prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of God’s people to Babylon.  As you might imagine, no one liked hearing this dire message.  But even as God tells Jeremiah that he will undergo a lot, he also promises that he has “made you a fortified city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass…They will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”  

But besides the fact that God does not promise that those who follow Him and speak for Him will have it easy, Jesus also reminds us that sometimes those who don’t follow God get blessings.  The widow in Zarephath to whom Elijah was sent was not a Jew, and yet God took care of her.  Naaman the Syrian was a foreign general, a general of an army that was constantly threatening to destroy the Jews, and yet God, through the Prophet Elisha, cured him of leprosy.  Those who don’t follow God can still receive His blessings and healing.

And, if we look at Jesus, the co-eternal Son of God, He was perfect.  He never sinned, never did anything wrong.  He followed God’s will perfectly, and extended healing to many, both Jew and Gentile alike.  And what did Jesus get for perfectly doing the will of God and healing those who were ill?  He was led to the cross do die for our sins.  He suffered the most painful and embarrassing way to die as nails pierced his hands and feet and he hung naked outside the walls of Jerusalem.

But just in case you thought that being a disciple of Jesus means that life is going to be quite painful and horrible, that’s not the truth either.  Yes, our life on earth, in the vale of tears, may have a lot of suffering, but faithfulness to God always leads to eternal life in heaven.  Jesus shows us that in the most perfect way in His Resurrection.  Yes, following God’s will led Jesus to the cross, but the cross led to the Resurrection.  Yes, Jeremiah was treated poorly for speaking a difficult word from God, but he was received into heaven when Christ opened the gates of Paradise.  We long for the ease of Eden, but God promises, after our trials and tribulations on earth, a paradise and a comfort that exceeds anything that earth can offer to an infinite degree.  To tweak Pope Benedict’s words slightly, we were not made for comfort on this earth, but we were made for eternal joy in heaven.  

And what guides us amid the joys and sorrows of life?  Love.  True love, which means the type of love that is patient, kind, not jealous, not pompous, not rude, not quick-tempered, not brooding, rejoicing in the truth.  Love guides us to our eternal joy because perfect love is eternal joy in heaven, where God, who is Love itself, shows us himself face to face.  

It would be nice if everything came to us without effort; if following Jesus did not require sacrifice and struggle.  But because we are fallen, following Jesus does not mean that we will get everything we want and life will not always be easy.  But, if we stay faithful to Christ, especially when it requires sacrifice and struggle, we know that we have a treasure, not made by hands, eternal in heaven, waiting for us, and fulfilling beyond measure the desire we have on earth for true joy.

The Comfort of the Truth

Second Sunday of Advent

            “Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God.”  When I heard the word comfort, and try to think of what comforts me, I think of a cold, snowy evening, sitting by the fireplace, the living room lit only by a few flickering flames from candles, drinking my family recipe of hot spiced cider, and watching a favorite television show or movie.  For others it might be a hot tub, or a warm beach, or even just a pint of Häagen Dazs.  Or maybe you’ve got your own sense of what comforts you that is radically different from the examples I just listed. 

            It’s beautiful to hear the words of Isaiah the prophet, telling us that God wants to bring us comfort.  “Speak tenderly,” he says, “and proclaim to her that her service is at an end; her guilt is expiated…Go up on a high mountain…cry out at the top of your voice…Here is your God!  […] Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.”  Who doesn’t want to know that the Lord is going to speak tenderly to us, to proclaim that our service is at an end, and that our guilt is no more?  Who doesn’t want the Lord to come as a shepherd, feeding his flock, gathering us in his arms and carrying us close to his chest?

            So what do we do with the middle part of the first reading and our Gospel?  We heard twice, “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD!  Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!”  We have traditionally associated that proclamation with St. John the Baptist who, as St. Mark wrote in today’s Gospel passage, “appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”  If any of you have seen the movie “Jesus of Nazareth” by Franco Zeffirelli, you can picture how enthused John the Baptist was about his message.  In the movie, John the Baptist is screaming at the top of his lungs: Repent!  And he’s only wearing a camel’s hair tunic and a leather belt around his waist, eating locusts and honey.  In fact, he screams so much that Herod has him arrested for preaching against his so-called marriage to his brother’s wife.  This is not the warm, pastoral scene that Isaiah has at the end of our first reading.  And it certainly doesn’t seem like the comfort that Isaiah prophesies at the beginning of our first reading.  So why is the figure of John the Baptist, the one crying out in the wilderness: Prepare the Way of the Lord, sandwiched between those two soft images?

            What John preaches is the truth.  As St. Augustine says in one of His sermons, Jesus is the word, and John is the voice.  Jesus is what is being proclaimed, and John is the one proclaiming it.  John is preaching repentance, which is the beginning of the comfort that God wants to give.  “But change is hard!  Change isn’t comfortable!”  Change can be difficult.  We’re seeing that as we slowly get used to our new translations, saying “And with your spirit” instead of “And also with you.”  But what is most comfortable is the truth.  The truth is precisely what gives comfort.  It may not always seem like it does, but if Jesus is the Truth, as he says (I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life), then when we receive the truth, we receive Jesus, who is the shepherd, drawing us close to his bosom, and leading us with care, from lies to truth, from darkness to light, from slavery to sin to freedom in God’s commandments. 

            It is true, sometimes the truth hurts, and we don’t usually associate that hurt with comfort.  But that painful truth is like knowing the reality that our infected wound has to be drained.  It is going to be painful at first, probably very painful, but it will actually be comforting to know that the infection is being treated, and the wound will heal properly. 

            So when John is preaching repentance, turning away from sins and being faithful to God, he is bringing the comfort of God.  Because it is only when we recognize that we need to turn back to the Lord, when we recognize the truth, that we can actually start going in the right direction with the help of God, rather than wandering off by ourselves away from the kingdom God has prepared for us, where the fullness of comfort is present. 

            We all need that message that John the Baptist preaches.  We need to hear, time and time again, “Repent!  For the Kingdom of God is at hand!”  We need the truth.  Otherwise we get stuck with the mentality: my sins aren’t that bad!  It’s not like I murdered someone!  It was just a little gossip; I just cheated a little bit; it’s just a little pornography every now and then; I’ll give back the money I took at my next paycheck.  If our mentality, no matter what sins we struggle with, is, “I’m really ok; I’m not that bad,” then we will not receive the comfort that God wants to give us, the comfort of living how God has created us: for Him in love, and with Him eternally in heaven.  If we do not repent, through the sacrament of Reconciliation, then God won’t be able to say to us, “your service is at an end, your guilt is expiated,” because we will have closed ourselves off to the mercy and love that God wants to communicate to us.  Next Sunday, on 11 December, we’ll once again host a Communal Celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation with Individual Confessions, with priests from around the Eastern part of Lansing offering you the sacramental grace and peace that comes from hearing the words and knowing the reality: your sins are forgiven; go in peace.  That’s the comfort the Lord wants to give you.  That’s the tenderness that waits for our response.  How will you answer?  Where will you find comfort?