Rules or Relationship?

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Some people view Catholicism as a set of rules, or maybe even a particular type of morality or ethics.  They hear the Church rightly say that one ought to do this, or ought not to do that.  They sense, whether from reality or from caricatures in popular culture, that being Catholic is all about going to Mass each Sunday, going to confession, saying the rosary, listening to the pope, not eating meat on Fridays, getting married in a church, not having sex outside of marriage, not contracepting, etc.  And those are all aspects of the way that a Catholic, every Catholic, should be living his or her life. 

    But, as Pope Benedict XVI said, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”  And the encounter that Pope Benedict mentions is not just a meeting, but really a falling in love.  That is why Jesus teaches us today in the Gospel that the greatest commandment is the two-fold love of God and love of neighbor.
    When we love someone, we love not only that person, but the things that he or she loves.  When we truly love someone, our affections change to better match that person’s.  Our life becomes not about us, but about the other.  We see this start to bloom even in adolescence when a boy starts to care more about the things that his crush likes.  I think I have mentioned this before, but that’s how I started listening to country music: a girl I liked listened to country, and I wanted to have something to talk to her about.  But the love of the other fully blossoms in marriage, where one’s life is not one’s own, but is inseparably joined to the other, intertwined at the deepest levels, and the importance of the other eclipses the importance of the self and one’s own desires. 
    God desires that we each have an encounter of love with Him.  God desires not that we simply know about Him (even the demons can do that), but that we love Him, that we give our heart to Him, that He becomes more important to us than we are to ourselves, and that the things He loves become the things we love, which are really what will make us happy, since God, as our Creator, knows exactly what will fulfill our human nature. 
    “‘The whole law and the prophets,’” says Jesus, “‘depend on these two commandments.’”  The phrase, “the whole law and the prophets” means the entirety of Scripture.  All of what God has revealed depend on love of Him and love of neighbor.  Every genuinely Catholic practice–every law, every precept, every commandment–needs to find its base in this two-fold commandment of love, or else it is built on sand.
    This may not always seem obvious.  What, we might ask, does giving up fish on Fridays have to do with love of God or love of neighbor?  Is it because I’m supporting the fish industry, and those who work in it are my neighbor?  Not entirely, though I suppose it is love of neighbor in that sense.  But much more deeply, God has revealed to us that our desires are not always in accord with His will or with the truth.  We want things we shouldn’t.  And in order to help train our wills and our bodies not to go astray, God tells us that we should give up good things to focus on that which is even better: not fish in se, but on growing closer to God through restraining our human desires, even the good ones, so that we can more easily say no to the desires that take us away from God. 
    Or consider going to Mass every Sunday and Holyday.  Can’t I love go through a screen on the TV or the computer?  Can’t I offer worship to God from my couch?  In a word, no; not in the same way.  Is FaceTiming your spouse the same as sitting with her at the table, holding her hand, smelling her perfume, seeing the radiance of her smile in person?  And God not only gives us His presence.  He enters into us through the Eucharist so that we are even physically united to Him.  You cannot have that watching the Mass on TV or via Live Stream.  Each time we stand, or sit, or kneel it is like we are dancing with God, our bodies moving this way and that based upon how the sacred liturgy is progressing.  And our encounter with God culminates in Christ giving Himself to us, giving us today the same sacrifice of some 2,000 years ago on the cross, though doing it not in an unbloody way.  True love of God wouldn’t want to miss out on that for the world.
    Love of neighbor follows from our love of God, because when we love someone we love the ones they love, and God loves all of His children, even the difficult ones.  As we grow in our love with God, we cannot help but love our neighbor.  And if we are not growing in love of neighbor, then it’s a good chance that we’re not really growing in our love of God.  It is as St. John says in his first epistle: “whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”  Any authentic growth in holiness means that we are growing in love of our neighbor.
    Yes, Catholicism has a lot of things that we do or don’t do.  Yes, it has its own morality.  But it’s not just dos and don’ts.  It’s not just a moral system.  Catholicism is a love story between the individual and God, and therefore also between the individual and God and those whom God loves.  If you name a teaching or a moral precept of Catholicism, it will find its way back to love of God and love of neighbor.  “‘The whole law and the prophets,’” and the whole exercise of our faith, “‘depend on these two commandments.’” 

Trying to See the Tracks

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

           

I remember when I was finally tall enough to ride Space Mountain at Disney World.  I was excited, because everyone kept talking about how much fun the ride was, but I was still nervous because it was my first real roller coaster.  And it was in the dark.  So, as I bravely sat in the little car, my only real concern was trying to see the track ahead of me, so I would know when there was a dip or a sharp turn. 

            “Faith,” says our first reading today, “is the … evidence of things not seen.”  Faith is precisely not being able to see the track ahead of you, no matter how hard you peer into the darkness.  Some people find this exhilarating.  Some people find it scarier than anything else in the world.  But growing in faith means that we are growing in our comfort in the dark: not that our eyes adjust, but that we are less concerned with seeing.

            Faith, then, is all about trust.  Even though the tracks are not seen, the faith-filled person does not worry about seeing because he or she trusts in the one who brought them there.  We can trust that beliefs are true, and that is one aspect of faith.  But even then, our faith that this teaching is true is based upon trust in the One who said it.  Our faith in what God has taught us, through His Word in Scriptures and His Word in the teachings of the Church is based upon the fact that we trust that God is trustworthy.  We only doubt one whom we feel cannot be trusted.

            When we doubt something the Church teaches as part of God’s plan for humanity, we fail to trust Jesus’ promise in Matthew 16 that the gates of the netherworld will not prevail against it, and that despite their own individual sinfulness, the apostles and successors can teach without error what must be authentically believed and how one should live.  Surrounded by the darkness, we choose to trust in ourselves rather than in Jesus and the one Church He founded.  We figure we can do it better our way.  Maybe we trust ourselves more about our responsibilities in the Church: to attend Mass each Sunday and Holyday; to support the parish with our time, talent, and treasure; to go to confession at least once a year when we’re aware of a mortal sin.  Maybe we trust ourselves and our own opinions when it comes to human sexuality, marriage, contraception.  Whatever the issue, the temptation is always there to respond to the darkness, not with faith, but with self-sufficiency and over-confidence in our own opinions rather than by what God has communicated through His Word.

But, faith is not just the evidence of things unseen.  It is also, “the realization of what is hoped for.”  Faith does involve darkness.  But it is also a light, hence the title of Pope Francis’ first Encyclical, Lumen fidei, the Light of Faith.  Faith allows us to realize, even now, what will only be fulfilled in the future.  Abraham had faith in God, he trusted God, that everything would be ok if he left the only land he knew, Ur of the Chaldeans, and went to Canaan.  He trusted that God would give him a son, and that, even though God asked him to sacrifice his own son, that God could raise up another son who would fulfill the promise that Abraham would have “descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, and as countless as the sands on the seashore.”

The Jews, as we heard in our first reading, had faith that God, who had promised the land of Canaan to Abraham, would fulfill His word, and so even in slavery in Egypt, they foresaw the Passover, the saving of God’s Chosen People from oppression. 

We are called to be a people of faith, to trust in Jesus to light the right path before us through His Body, the Church.  We are called to be the faithful servants who have faith that the Master will return, and so are ready to open the door for Him when He knocks.  When we trust Jesus, we find that we who are His servants are served by Him, as He prepares a meal for us, the Eucharist, and waits on us so that we are spiritually nourished.  And when we have faith in the Eucharist, we see already in these sacramental signs of bread and wine, made into the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb in heaven.  We participate in a foretaste of it.  Faith in God allows us to see the good things that are in store for us if we are faithful servants, waiting for our Master’s return.  It enlightens us so that what we choose prepares us for the end God desires for us: heaven.  Faith enlightens our work, our recreation, the way we spend our time, the way we use our gift of sexuality, how we use our money, etc.  There is no aspect of our lives that faith does not alter if it’s being lived out. 

Faith is trust in the midst of darkness, the darkness that comes not because God is absent, but because He is so close that our eyes cannot take the brilliance.  Faith illumines every aspect of our lives to receive the good things God has promised to us, even if we do not possess them in their fullness yet.  In these last months of the Year of Faith, trust God: He will not disappoint.  Trust the Church He has founded to authentically communicate what we are to believe and how we are to live: it only leads to perfect happiness.  Do not be afraid!!  Have faith!!  

My Favorite Sacrament

Fourth Sunday of Lent

            When people ask me what my favorite sacrament is, I don’t think they’re generally surprised to hear me say the Eucharist.  Vatican II teaches us that the Eucharist is meant to be the source and summit of Christian life, the beginning of our life in Christ, whence we get the strength to live as disciples, and the goal of the Christian life, that we have intimate communion with God.  For priests even more so, the Eucharist is the key to the priesthood, as the priest acts in the person of Christ the Head, offering himself to the Father represented by the bread and the wine which become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

            I think they are more surprised when I say that there is another sacrament that is tied for first with the Eucharist, and that sacrament is Reconciliation.  But it’s true.  While I was, in some ways, prepared for the joy of celebrating the Mass and bringing about, in an unbloody manner, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross through the Eucharist, I have to say I was not prepared for what a gift celebrating the Sacrament of Reconciliation would be.

            At this point I have to make a disclaimer: I don’t love to celebrate Reconciliation as a confessor because I get to hear all your dirty little secrets of the things you’ve done wrong.  What I love is the fact that I get to take part in an intimate moment between the penitent and God and get to grant that penitent the forgiveness of their sins in the name of Christ, and bring them back to the road to heaven.  It is an experience of humility (because it takes true humility to tell God, not that we have made a mistake, but that we freely chose to go against His will) and an experience of love.  I treasure the “ministry of reconciliation” as St. Paul says in our second reading, that God has entrusted to me.  I am in awe of the fact that, though I continue to need to confess my sins (being a priest doesn’t mean that I suddenly stop sinning), God has chosen me to grant that forgiveness to His beloved sons and daughters so that they can, once more, be prepared for heaven.

            Our Gospel passage is all too familiar to us today.  We likely hear it every year, at least once.  But it is so powerful, if we let it speak to us!  We can put ourselves in the place of the prodigal son, the son who wastes his inheritance on dissipate living, and then who goes broke, and has to work as a swineherd (one of the worst jobs that a Jew could have), and would love just to eat the pigs’ food.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son who recognizes that he needs to return to the Father, if for no other reason than just to work as a slave so that he can eat.  And we can put ourselves in the place of the son who is embraced by the Father who has run out to meet him.  We can put ourselves in the place of the son, because that is what happens in reconciliation.

            “All men have sinned,” says St. Paul in his letter to the Romans, “and are deprived of the glory of God.”  We all tell God that we know better, that we’d rather control our own lives and do our own thing.  It’s the ancient sin of pride, which leads to so many other sins.  We squander the inheritance of grace that we received in baptism, when we were made sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And when we do that, we squander it quickly, and we find that we are living a trashy life, amidst slops that are meant for the pigs.  But God does not abandon us.  He gives us grace, we use the term prevenient grace, to lead us back to Him, to consider that the “threshold of the house of God” is better than the “tents of the wicked,” as Psalm 84 says.  Even just being close to union is God is better than living with evil.  And so we start on our way back.  But before we can even get out the words of our apology, to try to argue our case for being a slave rather than the heir that we were, the Father embraces us and says to us

“Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it.  Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.”

God doesn’t rub in our face the wrong we have done, but celebrates that we have returned to our Father’s house, and that we are back to life in grace.

            There is nothing quite like the experience of welcoming someone back to the love of God in reconciliation.  Often, those who have been away from the Church for some time or those who feel the heavy weight of sin are brought to tears.  I am not ashamed to say that from time to time I am brought to tears as the love of God flows through me and I rejoice in the fact that the penitent was lost and now is found, was dead and is now alive by the grace of God.

            I want to invite each of you today, whether it’s been a week or a lifetime, to come experience this great sacrament of God’s mercy, and to start a habit of making regular confessions.  There’s no sin that can permanently keep you from the love of God, unless you give that sin that power.  God will forgive all sins, if we come to Him in sorrow, sincerely at least wanting to stop.  Whether it’s lying; impatience; stealing; adultery; viewing pornography and the sin that often accompanies it; sex outside of marriage; contracepting; murder; abortion; missing Mass; pride; or whatever other sins we may struggle with, God wants to put a robe of love around you and put the ring that signifies your place in God’s household on your finger.  Maybe it’s only been a few days since you last went to confession.  Maybe it’s been forty years since you last went to confession.  In either case, we priests are glad to give you the assurance of God’s mercy.  We have a great confession schedule between St. Thomas and St. John, and we even have a communal penance service with individual confession & absolution next Sunday, 17 March at 2 p.m. at St. Thomas in case you want to go to a priest from out of town (though recall that we can’t tell anyone else your sins, nor can we treat you any differently based upon your confession).  Don’t stay stuck in the pigs’ slop.  Come back to the Father’s house.  Let God love you and forgive you.  “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.”

"Babeling"

Pentecost

            In the story of the Tower of Babel, the sacred author of Genesis tries to explain how all the people of the earth at that time were speaking different languages.  The people try to build a tower to be able to go up to God.  Instead, God makes them speak different languages, so that they cannot complete the tower.  The Solemnity of Pentecost is the undoing of the confusion of Babel.  St. Luke records for us in the Acts of the Apostles that Jews from all over the world, who were in Jerusalem, heard the apostles speaking to them in their native languages, languages that the apostles did not know or speak minutes before the Spirit was given to them. 

While it is a work of God the Holy Spirit to allow the apostles to be able to speak to the Jews from all across the world in their own varied native languages, the story of the Tower of Babel, and the undoing of Babel at Pentecost, is about something much greater than being able to speak many languages.

            In the story of the Tower of Babel, humanity tries to make itself equal with God, to decide for itself what is right and wrong.  And the result of this pride is that everyone starts speaking differently so that no one is understood.  Our society is still a culture of Babel.

            We are a culture that values having our own opinions on just about everything and we often feel that our opinions are necessarily right, just as our neighbor feels that his opinion is necessarily right.  The result is that we often talk past each other without any understanding.  Take, for example, cable news stations like MSNBC, Fox News, or CNN.  Each presents the same facts, more or less.  But then those facts are pushed through a particular filter by which that station views the world, their opinion about how things should be, and we end up getting 3 different stories even though the facts are the same. 

            This is true also in the faith.  More and more people are deciding that their opinions about God, faith, and morality are necessarily the right ones, and no one should be able to contradict what they say, unless, of course, they want someone else’s opinion.  Whether it’s on who Jesus is, how marriage should be defined, women’s ordination, or contraception, or any other major issue, we have become the judges of right and wrong.  We are trying to build our own towers to God to tell Him how He should be.  And the result is confusion as each person speaks past each other as they share their opinions.

            Pentecost stands in stark contrast to this.  Rather than us trying to be on equal footing with God, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to the apostles, the Blessed Mother, and the disciples to lead them into all truth, as Jesus says in the Gospel according to John, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth.  He is not the Spirit of Opinion.  And while the many languages that were explained by Babel are still present, each person hears the truth, that Jesus is Lord and all that flows from who Jesus is, from the lips of the disciples in his or her own language.  No longer are opinions just being tossed about, but the truth is delivered, and the truth is convincing. 

            This gift of the Spirit of Truth did not end on Pentecost, as if it were a one-time event.  The Holy Spirit continues to pour Himself out to the apostles and disciples in the Church.  Through the successors of the apostles, the bishops, in union with the successor of St. Peter, the Pope, the Spirit fulfills Jesus’ promise to St. Peter that the gates of hell would never prevail against the Church and that what the apostles would be inspired to hold bound or loosed on earth would be held bound or loosed in heaven.  This gift is called the Magisterium: the bishops in union with the Pope, who teach, without error, on matters of faith and morals, like on who Jesus is, marriage, ordination, and contraception.

            But the disciples, too, are gifted with the Holy Spirit, to be persevered in the Truth.  Vatican II, in the document Lumen gentium, put it this way: “The entire body of the faithful, anointed as they are by the Holy One, cannot err in matters of belief…when ‘from the Bishops down to the last of the lay faithful’ they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.  It is exercised under the guidance of the sacred teaching authority, in faithful and respectful obedience…”  The lay faithful are guided by the Spirit, and, under obedience to the Magisterium, are kept in the truth so that what is believed about God, faith, and morals is not simply a matter of opinion, but is protected by the Holy Spirit as true and right. 

            Does this mean that the Church has every detail figured out?  Certainly not.  There are still prudential decisions to apply the truth to everyday situations.  But these decisions should not simply be based upon opinions, as if we decide what is right and wrong, but should be based upon the principles of faith and morality which are united to the Spirit of Truth.

            The gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is a great gift of Jesus to His Body, the Church, because it saves us from the endless babbling of opinions on what should be believed and how one should live.  There are so many voices that tell us that we should believe this or do that because they know better.  Even some Christian ecclesial communities have started to reject the parts of Scripture that do not fit modern “sensibilities.”  In the midst of this babbling, we have a sure guide in the Pope and the Bishops united with him who are protected from preaching error in matters of faith and morals because of the gift of the Holy Spirit.  And the you, lay faithful are also given the Spirit to lead you to believe and to hold on to what is taught by the successors to the apostles.  Rather than being divided among our own opinions of what we think we should believe and how we think we should live, let us be united in the Spirit of Truth in the Church so that the Gospel may be proclaimed to every language under heaven.

Hammering in the Nails

Palm Sunday of Passion of the Lord

            We began Holy Week by hearing how Jesus entered triumphantly into His city, Jerusalem.  Shortly afterwards, we recalled in the Gospel how Jesus was then mocked, stripped, and crucified for our salvation.  What a stark contrast in a short amount of time.  What a short time it must have seemed for Jesus between the original Palm Sunday and Good Friday.

            How fickle the crown of God’s creation can be.  How easily swayed we are by excitement…and fear.  With the celebration of the Passover in the background, with tens of thousands of pilgrims coming to Jerusalem, the Jews welcomed Jesus.  With the pressure of the Chief Priests, the Scribes, and the Sadducees, the Jews condemned Jesus for blasphemy.  The King of Glory who entered His capital with shouts of “Hosanna” was made to reign upon the Cross with shouts of “Hail the King of the Jews” in mockery. 

            Because we have become so used to seeing Jesus on the cross in artistic renditions of the crucifix, we can easily become numb to its reality.  Death by crucifixion was a death of suffocation, the lungs filling with fluid, making it harder and harder to breathe.  The only way to get a breath was to use the hands and feet to push oneself up, which only increased the pain where the nails were.  It was a horrible, painful death, filled with shame and derision.

            In the face of such suffering, we can all too easily think that we would never have been part of the crowd crucifying Jesus.  We would not be so easily swayed.  We might even say with St. Peter, “‘Even though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be.’”  But we would be wrong.  All of us—from Pope Benedict XVI to me and you—have all helped to hammer in those nails into Jesus’ hands and feet.  All of us stand guilty.

            If we lie to another, the hammer falls.  If we swear and curse and take the Lord’s name in vain, the hammer falls.  If we totally ignore the poor standing on the corner; if we make decisions based on prejudice and racism; if we fail to see Christ in those around us, the hammer falls.  If we think first of ourselves and never of others; if we skip Mass because we don’t make time for the Lord; if we react to our parents, children, or family members with anger rather than responding with love, the hammer falls.  If we ignore the Church’s teaching on human sexuality, marriage, and contraception because we feel we’re more enlightened; if we support organizations or ideologies that allow for an innocent child in the womb or an elderly or ill person to be put to death because they are inconvenient to our way of life; if we support the objectification of men and women through pornography, the hammer falls.

            All of us who can make a moral choice have been in that fickle mob that first hailed Jesus on His entry into Jerusalem, and then mocked him by hailing Him on the cross.  All of us have helped hammer in the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet.  All of us have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God.  We made Jesus cry out from that cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” as Jesus felt the weight of our sins. 

            Since we have forced Jesus to walk that dark pilgrimage to the crucifixion, let us not abandon Him this week.  Though we ran away with the apostles in the garden 2,000 years ago, let us accompany Jesus this year, this week, these days as the Church celebrates our salvation in Christ: to the upper room on Holy Thursday to celebrate the Last Supper; from the upper room to the Garden of Gethsemane to keep watch in prayer; from Gethsemane to Golgotha on Good Friday; and because death and sin do not have the final word, from Golgotha to the empty tomb for the Easter Vigil or the Easter Sunday Mass.  We began Holy Week today in joy.  Let us also end it in the joy of those who, having repented of their sins and confessed them to the Lord, have been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb.  “Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord: Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; Though they be red like crimson, they may become white as wool.”