A Relationship with the Truth

Third Sunday of Lent-First Scrutiny

    In high school I was on our own Quiz Bowl team (yes, I was a nerd).  And Lansing Catholic High School participated in the PBS TV station televised games called “Quiz Busters.”  I remember being in the championship game one year, with a one-year tuition scholarship to MSU on the line.  We were in the final Lightning Round, with either team in a position to win, and the question was asked, “In the Sistine Chapel, what color smoke…” to which I buzzed in and yelled “White!”, anticipating the rest of the question, which answer was right, and helped us win the “Quiz Busters” Championship against another school which was much larger than Lansing Catholic.
    I like to have the right answers, and there is something good about knowing the truth.  But having the right answers isn’t all there is, as we see in the Gospel today, this long Gospel that we use each year that we have an elect, a catechumen chosen by the Bishop for baptism at Easter.  The Samaritan woman has the right answers, at least most of them.  She knows that Jews do not drink from the same containers as Samaritan women, because the samaritans were pagans and it could render the Jew unclean.  She knows that to have water, you have to have a bucket to draw it out.  She gives a technically right answer when she says that she doesn’t have a husband.  And she says that Jews and Samaritans don’t agree on how and where to worship.
    But the Lord isn’t only looking for right answers.  He is looking for a relationship with her.  Now, Jesus also identifies Himself as the Truth.  So I’m not trying to say that the truth doesn’t matter.  It does.  But the truth comes in the context of a relationship with Truth Incarnate.  Jesus is trying to give the Samaritan woman eternal life, and all she can focus on is trying to give correct answers and trip Jesus up in theological debates.

    The Samaritan woman, upon entering into relationship with Jesus, recognizes that He knows her.  She says, “‘Come see a man who told me everything I have done.’”  Jesus knows her, more deeply than anyone else, though He just met her at the well.  The Samaritan woman heard Him say that He is the Christ, the Messiah, who will let everyone know what they are to believe and how they are to worship.  
    Dylan, as an elect, God already knows you.  But over these past months He has drawn you in to know Him better.  He knows everything you have done: the good, the bad, and the ugly.    But He wants to be in a relationship with you.  You have learned many important things over the past months about what it means to be Catholic and how we Catholics are called to follow Christ in our daily lives.  Being a friend of Jesus, and even more than a friend, a sibling with Jesus, means doing things that will strengthen your relationship with Him and avoiding anything that would harm that relationship with Him.  
    Through Holy Baptism, Confirmation, and reception of the Eucharist, the love of God will be poured into your heart, as St. Paul said in our second reading, “through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  You will become an adopted son of God the Father, and God will dwell within you as in a temple.  
    As God prepares you for this, He draws you closer and closer to Himself.  The Samaritan woman changes the way she addresses Jesus as the conversation develops: she starts by calling Him “a Jew”; then, “Sir”; then “the Messiah.”  You, too, have come to know Jesus more deeply in the passing weeks and months, to be at a place where you are almost ready to profess Him as God and Savior.  
    And sometimes, like with the Samaritan woman, some of what Jesus the Savior has revealed has been painful.  I’m sure the Samaritan woman wasn’t too pleased when Christ said, “‘You are right in saying, “I do not have a husband.”  For you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband.’”  But Christ reveals our brokenness because He can heal us, and wants to heal us.  
    But this process of growing in relationship with Christ won’t end with your reception of the Sacraments of Initiation.  All of us here hopefully try to grow in our relationship with Christ each day.  Yes, we try to know the right answers, but we also try to be a good brother or sister of Christ and son or daughter of the Father.  Sometimes we miss the point, like the Samaritan woman.  Sometimes the Lord needs to convict us of sin, or sinful habits.  But everything the Lord does gives us the opportunity to grow closer to Him.  May we not squander the opportunities the Lord gives us to deepen our relationship with Him, especially this Lent, but drink from the living water which flows from the wounded side of Christ. 

Pyromaniacs for Faith

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Guys seem to have a universal reputation for being pyromaniacs, that is, obsessed with fire.  It may not apply to all men, and it may apply to some women, but generally the guys I know love lighting fires.  There is a special thrill that comes from getting some newspaper, small twigs, and a couple of logs to make a large fire, giving off heat and light.  Sometimes guys have to settle with the fire they create lighting a grill.  But generally, guys love fire.

I doubt that Jesus was obsessed with anything, other than doing His Father’s will.  Yet, maybe he really liked fire, too, as we heard Him say today, “‘I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!’”  But, as we all know, Jesus wasn’t talking about a bonfire.  He was talking about the heat and the light that come from the passion for God and His truth and love.

Sometimes we get a taste for this with other people in our lives.  We are approaching the beginning of school, which generally makes the students (and often the teachers) a little sad.  Yet, it can also be a time of great joy and excitement, especially when friends haven’t seen each much or at all during the summer.  Teachers know all too well about the chaos that ensues when two friends who haven’t really seen each other all summer get in the same room for the first time.  It is definitely fire-like!

Jesus wants that sort of intensity in our relationship with Him.  Now, as with fires, just because there are big flames does not mean the fire is super hot.  Some of the hottest fires I have made have been fires that no longer flame as much, but are white-hot coals.  Our relationship with Jesus doesn’t need to have lots of exciting moments to be strong.  Sometimes a strong relationship is one that doesn’t have lots of flames, but is more white-hot coals.  Still, when new fuel gets added to those white-hot coals, it can certainly create those exciting new signs of activity.

So how do we have a fire-like relationship with Jesus?  How do we quench Jesus’ thirst for the world to be on fire with His love and truth?  One way is prayer.  A few years back as a Diocese we prayed the prayer to the Holy Spirit.  The beginning of that prayer is: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love.”  How often do we pray to the Holy Spirit, using those words or others, asking Him to stoke the coals, or maybe add more fuel to the fire before it goes out?  How often do we ask God to make the fire of faith alive in us?

Another way to keep that fire of God’s love hot is to suffer.  We hear about that in our first and second readings today.  Jeremiah suffers for speaking God’s Word.  He’s even thrown into a cistern and starts to sink into the mud.  Now, we might not think of that as a way to help our relationship with God.  But think about your friends: are your best friends the one who are only with you in the good times?  Or are your best friends the ones who are with you no matter what, who are willing to be with you with life has got you down, and when others, or maybe even the world, seems to be against you?  The author to the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us to not grow weary or lose heart, because suffering perfects our relationship with God.  It is not a sign that God hates us; it is not necessarily a sign that we have done something wrong (though sometimes our sufferings come from our own sins).  But it is always a way that God is inviting us to trust Him more, and to remind us that, no matter how bad things get, He never abandons us, just as He never abandoned Jesus even as Jesus endured the cross.

In order to strengthen our relationship with God, we can also look to Mary, whose Assumption, body and soul, into heaven we celebrate tomorrow.  Mary always leads us to Jesus, and she shows us how to be a good disciple.  She shows us how to ponder God’s Word in our hearts, how to suffer with faith, and how to rejoice in the triumphs that God gives us.  How long has it been since you prayed a rosary?  Sometimes we think we don’t have time, but even just a decade is a good place to start.  I often pray the rosary as I’m driving from one place to another.  Or, if we pray the rosary regularly, are there other ways that we can strengthen our relationship with Jesus through Mary?  

Imagine if all of us, guys and gals, were as obsessed with our relationship with Jesus as guys tend to be with fire.  Imagine if we worked as hard to get our relationship with Jesus going as we did trying to get newspaper, twigs, and logs to burn.  If that were the case, the world would be a warmer and brighter place, not with climate change and light pollution, but with the warmth and light of God’s love.

Who Do You Know Better? Justin or Jesus?

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            It seems like anytime there is a great tragedy, especially a natural disaster, in a mainly Catholic area, like Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, or the earthquakes in Chile, certain fringe televangelists will blame it on the Catholics.  We are charged with believing in magic and the power of works, not faith and grace.  In fact, the words, “hocus pocus” come from a play on the Latin words of institution, hoc est corpus, and was used to accuse Catholics of believing that just by saying the right words, the bread and wine could become the Body and Blood of Jesus as if by magic.

Statue of St. Paul from the Patriarchal Basilica
of St. Paul Outside the Walls

            In today’s second reading, St. Paul makes it very clear that the Law, the law given by God through Moses on Mt. Sinai to the people of Israel, does not save people.  It just not justify, or bring them into right relationship with God.  Only by grace, “through the redemption in Christ Jesus…by his blood” are we brought into right relationship with God.  This idea may seem very Protestant, but, as we know, St. Paul was Catholic.  He was a great missionary of the one Church Jesus founded.  And so we Catholics cling to this idea.  There is nothing that we can do that can earn us salvation. 

            And, in case you don’t trust St. Paul, and believe me, some Catholics get a little leery about him (mostly, I think, because they’re afraid that he bolsters the Protestant claims), we can look to Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel.  Jesus says that just because we call Him Lord; just because we prophesy in Jesus’ name; just because we exorcise demons in Jesus’ name; just because we do mighty deeds in Jesus’ name, does not mean that we will go to heaven.  In fact, to those who do those great deeds but do not do the will of the Father in heaven, Jesus will say, “‘I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers.’” 

            So, if prophecy, exorcisms, and mighty deeds done in the name of Jesus don’t get us in, what will?  Those things can “get us in,” so to speak, if they are the will of God for us in our lives.  But if not, then we must be sure that we are doing the will of God as it is made known to us in our lives.  There is no magical thing to do to get into heaven.  Not even dying for the faith, if we do not have love and a right relationship with Jesus, will get us into heaven, as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians in the famous hymn of love that we hear so often at weddings.

            Being Catholic is not about doing the right things.  It is not about saying the right words.  Yes, we do need to do the right things and say the right words, but those acts, those words, to be helpful to our salvation must first come from a relationship with Jesus.  As Catholics we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that our salvation is caused by the things we do.  As long as we are baptized; as long as we confess our sins to the priest; as long as we receive communion; as long as we give money to the Church, then we’ll be saved.  And certainly baptism is the ordinary way that God cleanses His children from original sin and brings them into a right relationship with Him; certainly if we sin after Baptism, especially mortally, then we need to confess to a priest as the ordinary means of gaining forgiveness from God; certainly we need to come to Mass each Sunday to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ to give us the strength to live out our lives as disciples; certainly being good stewards of the gifts and talents and time God has given us shows that we appreciate those blessings and give our best back to God.  The sacraments surely cause grace, but those graces call for a response from us.

            So the question for us is: how is our relationship with Jesus?  How well do we know Jesus?  Do we know Him as well as we know the Pope (which, for most of us means that we’re familiar with the guy, but we don’t really know what he’s like)?  Do we know Jesus as well as we know Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, or Katy Perry (which means that we probably know everything about them [and believe me, I know a fair amount of young girls who know everything about Justin Bieber], but without really having a friendship with them)?  Do we know Jesus as well as we know our friends (which means that we know a lot about them, and we know them personally, but there are still some things that we don’t share with them)?  Or do we know Jesus like and even better than we know our best friend or like we know our spouse (which means that we share everything with Jesus, joys and sorrows, graces and sins)?    In case you’re wondering, it’s the last one that we should be aiming for.

            What you’ll find, the closer to you get to Jesus, is that there are fewer things in life that can shake you.  As you become closer to Jesus, the house of faith that you build becomes more like a house built on the rock and less like on the sand, so that when traumatic events in life come: the loss of a job; the loss of a family member; attacks on our faith, etc., while they still shake the house a little, the house of faith is not washed away.  In a time when everything seems so changeable, where there’s a new iPad, iPod, or iPhone every year, and when nothing seems to stay the same, we can be sure that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, always relevant, but never changing.  We need that stability in our lives, and nothing else can live up to that desire for total stability, not even another person.

            We as Catholics do not believe in magic.  It is not just the right words that we say or the right deeds that we do.  Being a disciple, a good disciple, is all about how close we are to Jesus, our relationship with Him, and then responding to that love that He pours upon us in the Sacraments and in our daily lives.  My prayer is that our house of faith will be built on the rock of Jesus and will stand the many trials and tests that come along in life so that when we come before Jesus, the Judge of the Living and the Dead, we will not hear, “‘“I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers,”’” but, “‘Come, good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy prepared for you by my Father.’”