Simply Complicated

Resumed Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

**NB: This is an expansion of the homily I gave at the 11 a.m. Ordinary Form Mass**

  

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  During my combined 13 years of post-high school education, I wrote a lot of papers on a lot of topics.  But the one thing that unified everything–from English and political science classes in undergrad, to theological papers in Major Seminary, to liturgical papers in my second Master’s degree after ordination–was that I tended to make things more complicated than they needed to be.  Apparently, St. Paul and I have the same writing style, where we like to cram a lot of ideas into one sentence, with various subordinate clauses and ideas.  
    When it comes to following the Lord, we, too, can complicate things.  Which is why it’s nice when either our Lord or St. Paul simplifies things (though the sentences St. Paul uses rarely are simple).  At the end of the day, being a Catholic and a disciple of Christ means loving God and loving our neighbor.  Nothing more; nothing less.  Living up to our call as baptized followers of Christ entails giving God His due, and giving our neighbor his or her due.  
    So why do we complicate things?  Why does the Church have all these teachings and all these rules if living as a disciple comes down to two basic rules?  Well, we tend to overcomplicate things, and in our complications, we can fail to see how certain actions detract from the love of God or the love of neighbor.  So the Church gives us a guide to help us to know how to live out the great commandment.
    To say we complicate things is, ironically, a gross simplification.  Our minds, operating under the shadow of sin, fail to comprehend how God calls us to love Him and love those whom He loves, that is, our neighbor.  I mean, in our own day, we can’t even understand what love is.  We use the word love for different things that are vastly different: I love my family; I love my spouse; I love my friends; I love that car; I love bourbon; I love tropical beaches; I love my dog.  We should not be loving all of those people and things in the same way!!  But love for a spouse is different than love for a sibling (at least it should be!), though we should love both.  And the way we enjoy objects like cars or bourbon or beaches or dogs is altogether a different action than the way we appreciate people.  Love, true love, means willing the good of the other when that other can return that love to you.  We can’t really love cars, or bourbon, or beaches, or (and I might be stoned for saying this) pets.  We can enjoy them, we can delight in them, they can give us pleasure.  But we cannot, strictly speaking, love them.
    So, we’re already struggling just to say what love is.  But now, we take the myriad examples of actions in our life, and we strive to connect it to love of God or love of neighbor.  What gets in the way of this is our desire to care for ourself first, to will our own good, rather than that of the other, be he God or neighbor.  I might know and express that I love God and should love Him.  But then when it’s a beautiful day for golf, or my favorite artist had a concert last night that kept me out really late, or my kid has a game in his or her travel league, suddenly my love of God and knowledge that I should worship Him, especially on Sundays, gets clouded by my own desire to recreate, to rest, to give my kid the opportunity to be a future professional athlete (however unlikely that may be).  
    Or, to take our epistle, how do we love our neighbor?  We can say, academically, perhaps even piously, that we should will the good of our neighbor.  But then our neighbor’s tree is dying and branches are falling on my side of the property line.  Or my neighbor cuts me off and slams on his breaks, almost causing me to get in a crash.  Or my co-worker has really odd habits and I feel I need to discuss it with all the other employees to validate my opinion.  Or my neighbor has a yard sign that suggests voting for someone who is, quite obviously, evil.  And all the sudden, love of neighbor is a good idea, theoretically, but in the real world we have to take care of ourselves first and make sure our neighbor knows that we are important and he should not mess with us.  
    I’ve used some pretty simple examples, but even in the complicated matters of life, it all comes down to love of God and love of neighbor.  Take in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.  Because we in the Church haven’t made it clear, many Catholics don’t see the problem with IVF.  After all, aren’t we supposed to be fruitful and multiply, as God commanded in the Garden of Eden?  Aren’t we supposed to be open to life?  So how is IVF not loving?  
    The church’s teaching on the sexual act, or anything like it, is based on the fact that God has made marital relations with three requirements to be good: not using another or out of force; unitive; and open to life.  IVF includes a break in that meaning of the sexual act.  First, it treats a child as a commodity, a good that one can pursue no matter what the cost.  Couples seeking IVF will often say that they deserve a child, rather than being open to it as a gift.  Also, IVF requires a man to spill his seed, which also involves using oneself to mimic the results of the marital act with another, or using another to achieve arousal.  IVF also requires a doctor to impregnate the woman, rather than how a child should be conceived, that is, with her husband in a loving and unitive act where they can give themselves freely to each other, not only in body, but also emotionally and spiritually.  Children, the Church says, have a right to be conceived in a loving act between a father and a mother, which also ends up being the best way to love a child and ensure its future success: with a loving mother and a loving father.  Further, IVF most often requires multiple fertilizations at the same time, because sometimes one fertilized egg will not take.  But that fertilized egg is a new human being, but it’s treated more like an object to be used to achieve an end.   If it doesn’t achieve that end, or gets in the way of another end, it is thrown away like garbage.  To throw away an innocent human being at one of the most defenseless moments of its life certainly does not demonstrate love of neighbor.  
    Again, our minds can focus on our own good, and can easily rationalize certain acts, when, at their heart, they do not really demonstrate love of neighbor.  So while following Christ comes down simply to loving God and loving our neighbor, we need a guide to help us know whether or not certain acts demonstrate true love.  But we don’t just have a guide, we have a mother, Holy Mother Church, who lovingly helps us to know what is good as God has communicated it, so that we can achieve our highest goal, and the result of loving God and loving neighbor in this world: eternal happiness in heaven, where God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.

In A Post-Christendom Age

Christ the King
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Much ink has been spilt of late on the idea of Christendom, or a worldwide or Western-wide Christian kingdom reality.  In case you’re wondering, we’re not in it.  Christendom often describes a reality where Christian values are the norm, and may even be the major underpinning of the legal system.  In the US, people often think of the 1950s as demonstrating the height of Christendom for Americans.  Certainly, in Europe that history goes much farther back, but also frayed during the time of the so-called Enlightenment, until its collapse probably around World War I, when many in Europe wondered how a Christian ethos could produce the “War to end all wars” between Christian countries.
    Again, in case you’re wondering, we’re not in a time of Christendom.  While our court system, perhaps the last bastion of sanity in our otherwise crazy political system, has upheld our rights as a church against the assaults connected with especially the Obama and Biden administrations (think of Little Sisters of the Poor, the redefinition of civil marriage, and the promotion of gender dysphoria policies), society generally has walked away from a Christian worldview.  
    And in some cases, we’re to blame.  When our lives as Catholics no longer act as salt and leaven, but rather are part of the rot and flatness of society, is it no wonder that others would not want to continue with Christians providing the overarching theme of society?  Two extreme examples from the past century stand out as acute reminders that simply being Christian doesn’t mean you live a Christian life: Hitler and Stalin were both baptized Christians: Hitler a Catholic and Stalin a Russian Orthodox.  But many more stopped living the faith in their work and in their homes, which had an even greater diminishment of trust in a Christian worldview.  
    So, as we celebrate Christ the King this Sunday, what do we celebrate in a post-Christendom world?  This is an important date for the Traditional Latin Mass community of Flint, but how do we celebrate Christ the King when He seems to reign less and less in our country and in our world?  
    In the first place, we have to ask ourselves if Christ is truly king in our lives.  Can people tell that I am Catholic when I work?  When I invite friends over to my house?  When I go on vacation?  The first and most important way to spread a Christian and Catholic culture is to live it ourselves.  If we do not live the Gospel at its roots, that is, in a radical way (from the Latin word radice, meaning root), then no one is going to listen to me encouraging them to become Catholic or to live with Catholic values.  One thing that people look for today is authenticity.  While we all fall short of our goals at times, living something in integrity convinces others.  Living Catholicism only as a mask does not convince others, and strengthens the point that it’s not worth trying, since even those who profess it don’t live it.  May our lives not reflect the quote from G.K. Chesterton: “The Christian idea has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”  If we don’t do what we can to live up to the standard Christ sets, why would we expect others to do so?

    Secondly, Christ told Pontius Pilate that His Kingdom was not of this world.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t advance the Gospel and Christ’s way of life, but that it will always be opposed.  Christ is King, whether we and the world accept Him or not.  And at the end of time, that kingdom will come in force.  But until that happens, our goal is to encourage others, by proposition, not imposition, to join in the kingdom, so that the inauguration of the full reign of Christ will be a day of joy for them and us, not a day of wrath.  The blueprint for this is what is called the Apostolic Model (in distinction from the Christendom Model).  Our key is to live like the Apostles did: filled with the Holy Spirit; committed wholeheartedly to Christ; willing to suffer persecution joyfully for the sake of the Name.  The first disciples were not theologians.  Maybe St. Paul could claim that title, but most of the first disciples simply opened themselves to Christ’s grace and were willing to die for their belief that He is God and saved them from sin and eternal death.  They lived in a way that showed they were ready for Christ’s return at any moment, not growing drowsy from the wait.  

    Living in such a way, and dying in such a way, transformed the first-century world.  The first generations of Christians did not participate in the all-too-common debauchery of public life.  They did not concern themselves with doing anything to gain power and prestige.  They loved those who persecuted them.  They lived innocent lives, but did not disdain to be martyred when confronted with false charges of treason or heresy against the Roman pantheon.  This convinced everyday people to convert and follow Christ then, and it will work to convince and convert everyday people now.  In a world that lacks logical consistency; in a world gone made by lust and power, those who live the truth (not their truth but the truth) stand out as beacons.  Yes, some will persecute those who are not mad.  St. Anthony of the Desert saw this some seventeen hundred years ago when he wrote, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attach him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”   So we need to be ready for greater persecution, if it comes.  But when neighbors recognize that we are not buying into the cultural madness, and that we are even willing to suffer because we do not buy into it, they will slowly come to our side, and sense the power of the Gospel, just as ordinary Romans did in the first three hundred years of the Church.
    Christ is King.  And while His Kingdom has not advance in this world recently, and in fact has receded quite a bit, His Kingdom cannot, in the end, be stopped.  In the meantime, our goal is to live the faith in its fulness, doing all we can to follow Christ with all of who we are.  When we do this, we live as faithful subjects of so great a King, and can expect to be welcomed into the mansions prepared for us when His Kingdom comes in all its fulness at the end of time.  To Christ be honor and glory for ever and ever.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Blind Spots

Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    More times than I would like to admit, I have been driving on the freeway, with a slow car ahead of me in the right lane (and, for the record, I generally drive 72 miles per hour), and I start to merge into the left lane, and either I notice the other car as I’m turning my head to the side to make sure the lane is clear (I know, I’m supposed to do that before I attempt to merge), or the car in the right lane next to me honks as I start to merge over.  Even with my “blind spot” indicator on the side-view mirror, I am still sometimes unaware of everything going on around me on the road.
    Our Lord heals Bartimaeus today in the Gospel from his blindness.  His blindness involved physically being unable to see.  But, ironically, Bartimaeus’ spiritual sight seemed to be 20/20.  How can we tell?  He cries out, “‘Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.’”  He cannot see, but he knows that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-foretold son of David who would save Israel.  He hadn’t seen any of Jesus’ miracles, but he trusted in what he heard and in what Jesus could do.  And even when people tell him to be quiet, Bartimaeus just keeps calling out to the Lord.  Ironically, those around Jesus, the “sizable crowd,” as St. Mark reports, had some blindness of their own.  Otherwise they would not have told Bartimaeus to be quiet.  Perhaps the crowd had heard of what this rabbi from Nazareth could do, but they didn’t expect Him to heal the man from the roadside.  
    We all have blindspots.  We all miss things that we should otherwise see.  Luckily, as we hear in the Letter to the Hebrews, Christ “is able to deal patiently with the ignorant and the erring.”  Because we have received so much that should make things so clear.  And yet, sometimes we are as spiritually blind as Bartimaeus was physically.  We fail to recognize what God is doing, or even who God is, though we have opportunities to encounter Him every day.
    Sometimes our blindness comes from our busyness.  When I’m driving and I don’t see the car coming up behind me or along my side, it’s usually because I have focused on the wrong thing, or I am in a rush.  I think that whatever I want to concentrate on is more important, and I miss the other vehicles traveling with me on the road.  This can happen in our faith life.  We get so busy with work, or maybe even with leisure, or maybe even with our family, that we neglect to take time to notice how God works or when God tries to communicate with us directly or through others.  Our minds get clogged with unnecessary worries, and we become like the sizable crowd that fails to recognize Jesus’ power and mission.  

    The antidote to this is daily prayer.  I know that, when we feel busy, we feel like we don’t have time to pray.  But, St. Teresa of Calcutta reminded us that if we feel too busy, that’s a sign we need to pray more, not less.  And, let’s be honest, we often can make time for prayer at work, though it might mean not scrolling the news page headlines or playing a game on our phone as a little break.  Or on vacation, we can choose to pray on a beach, or in the woods, and make time for going to Mass while on vacation.  Or even at home, though the kids are screaming, or making a mess, we can try to pray, even if that prayer is, “Lord, give me patience!” or “Thank you, God, for my beautiful children who don’t always act so beautifully,” or even taking more time as you put the kids to bed to pray with them and tell them just how much Jesus loves them.    But don’t let busyness be the disease that causes spiritual blindness.
    Joshua, as you enter into full communion with us, you complete one journey and begin another.  You are finishing a path which led you to seek the truths of the Catholic faith, truths that  you discovered are from Christ Himself through His Mystical Body, the Church.  You started to gain a new vision of the world and of being a disciple of Christ, which began outside the Catholic Church when you were baptized.  Christ gave you a new vision back then, and He continues to give you a new vision now.  But today you also begin a new road on your pilgrimage to the Father’s house.  You begin to walk with us as a Catholic, as we all continue to seek clarity in our spiritual sight from the Lord.  
    As you begin this new pilgrimage, do not be afraid to cry out to the Lord when you need Him.  If a teaching does not seem obvious, or if you are in need of forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance, do not fear to cry out, “‘Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!’”  He will come to you, in one way or another, and heal you from whatever blindness afflicts you at that moment.  And know that you are not alone.  I don’t know if all our parishioners would be considered a “sizable crowd,” but, unlike that crowd outside Jericho, we commit ourselves to helping you encounter the Lord more and more each day.  Do not be afraid to reach out to us, as well all walk towards the Lord and doing His will.
    If we are honest, we all have blind spots.  But, with the Lord’s grace, we can find healing and clear sight.  May the Lord open our eyes and our hearts to His love and truth each day as we seek to follow Him.

The Good Work in You

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Sometimes a particular phrase has a way of taking our minds back to a specific point of time.  For example, whenever I hear or read the phrase we heard from the epistle–“May God who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment”–I am taken back to the day of my ordination, when Bishop Boyea said those exact words to me after I made my promises to be the priest the Church calls me to be.  
    In many ways I looked at my ordination as an ending.  And after eight years of seminary formation, that’s probably not surprising.  It had seemed like forever since I started at St. John Vianney College Seminary immediately after high school in 2002, and it even seemed like a relatively long time since I had started Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 2006.  And while the first and most important goal of seminary is proper discernment of God’s call (or not), the farther along you get, the more you look forward to ordination to the priesthood.  That last year, as a transitional deacon, you’re looking at chalices, vestments, and trying to plan for the ordination reception, so ordination especially seems like the goal.
    But the words that are said before the man is ordained treat it, not as an ending, but as a beginning.  God has begun the good work, and we pray it finds its way to completion, on the day of Christ Jesus.  And, in retrospect and with the blessing of age and hopefully the acquisition of a bit more wisdom, ordination really is a beginning, more so than an ending.  And the years that follow really demonstrate how that good work is moving closer to or farther from completion.
    But the same is true for the other sacramental vocation, the vocation to Holy Matrimony.  Instead of eight years it’s around eight months or proximate preparation (sometimes more, sometimes less, based upon the date of engagement).  But there’s still all that planning and excitement for the “big day.”  Still, the big day is not the ending (though, and I’m sure the father’s of the bride are especially happy for this, it does end all the spending for the day of celebration).  The wedding day begins a lifelong commitment to the other, a good work, that finds its completion on the day when the bond of marriage is broken by death, by meeting the Lord.  That’s why we do marriage prep: to help the couple prepare, not so much for the wedding, but for married life and all the days that follow the wedding.
    But this is also true for all of Christ’s faithful.  When the priest baptizes us, a “good work” is begun, that will not find its completion until we meet the Lord, either at our death or at the end of time on the last day.  Either the parents or the one being baptized makes promises, just like a man makes promises on his ordination day, and a couple makes promises on their wedding day.  And every day that follows, God gives us all we need so that our “charity may more and more abound in knowledge and in all understanding.”  Our growth in holiness is really a growth in love of God and love of neighbor, as we understand better and better how God has made us for Himself, and how we can show that love to Him directly, as well as to our neighbor, with whom God identifies, especially the poor and outcast.  
    But so often we want to act like we should be a finished product.  We figure that, if we were truly holy, we would be done.  But the saints show us, time and time again, that we are never done growing in holiness.  Bishop Mengeling, who turns 94 on Tuesday, says frequently, “I’m not done yet!”  And he doesn’t just mean that he’s still alive.  He readily admits that he is still growing in holiness, and while continue growing for the rest of his life.  

    So don’t get too discouraged if you’re not there yet, if you’re not the saint that you want to be, and that God wants you to be.  Certainly, don’t give up or grow lazy and complacent.  But the work of your sanctification is a lifelong work.  It’s not something that you get to retire from once you reach a certain age, or have accomplished a certain number of achievements.  Even for me, if I make it to the age of seventy when I can become a senior priest, it’s not like I can stop living as a priest and give up my vocation.  No, I’ll continue it until death.  And for married couples, they can’t give up because their children have all grown, or when they’re retired from their jobs.  Marriage keeps going “until death do [you] part.”  
    The call of holiness is to daily give God what is His due, that is, everything.  Even while God gives us some authority over our actions, all things are from God and belong to Him.  Each day God calls us to render to Him everything that we have: our life, our family, our work, our leisure, everything.  Just because we offer it to Him doesn’t mean that He will take it from us.  Sometimes it’s simply that we are willing to offer what is most precious to God, like Abraham did with Isaac.  But it is a good work that continues throughout our life, until, like Christ, we offer our last breath to God as we commend our spirit into His hands.  May God, who has begun the good work in us, bring it to fulfillment on the day of Christ Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Evaluating with Catholic Wisdom

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    When I became a chaplain for the Michigan State Police, I learned very quickly that State Troopers have a different way of thinking of things.  Troopers generally will sit facing the door, and will often evaluate the room for potential threats.  Because they see so many horrible things, they tend to have a very dark sense of humor as a coping mechanism.  But they really do have a different way of thinking of things from the average citizen because of their training and experience.
    While we are not Troopers (though we do have one or two who come here from time to time), as Catholics we should have a particular point of view.  There is a certain way that we should look at the world which is not simply based upon our own experience or training, but based upon the wisdom of God.  We hear about that prayer for wisdom in our first reading; about a wisdom that comes from the Word of God in our second reading, the Word of God that is not a wisdom from a thousand years ago, but a wisdom that is living and effective; and in our Gospel the Lord talks about a wisdom that goes beyond a surface reading of the Law, to a deeper, full gift of self from an individual.  
    That is why we should talk about our Catholic faith, not so much as a group to which we belong, but rather a way of life that we live each day, to the best of our ability, following Christ and, as St. Paul says, Christ living in me.  Yes, there are a set of beliefs that we have, without which we cannot honestly refer to ourselves as Catholics, but it’s more than just things that we take into our minds.  Being Catholic involves allowing God to transform us and the choices we make by His grace, so that all of our life reflects choices that make sense based upon Jesus, whom we follow.

    And while we are probably sick of hearing political commercials, or getting texts about how this candidate or that candidate is a threat to democracy and will ruin our country for decades to come, I thought it would help to applying this theme of Catholic wisdom to a very important choice we have before us even right now, if we’re voting absentee, or in November if we go to the physical polls.  I promise you that I do not intend to endorse or reject any particular candidate or party.  That’s not what we do as the Catholic Church.  We do our best to inform you of the issues, to help you take in the wisdom of God, so that you can live that wisdom not only in the church on Sundays and holydays, but so that you can live that wisdom of God, based upon His Revelation, the Word of God, in every aspect of your life, including your political views.
    One of the first priorities of the Catholic Church is the dignity of every human life.  This is very counter-cultural.  Voters in Michigan, including, sadly, many Catholics, and voters across various political parties across the US treat human life based upon whether it has value to us or not.  But if we are truly living with the wisdom of God active in our life, we value every human life: the infant in the womb; the poor person on the street; the person who looks like she has it all together; the dying elderly person in a nursing home; and everything in-between.  Every other right flows from the dignity of the human being and his or her right to life.  If you can get rid of a human being because it has no value to you, then no other policy makes any difference because they all assume that every person is alive and treasured as a creation in the image and likeness of God.  So how does my vote support life?
    A second priority that comes from our Catholic wisdom is solidarity.  Solidarity means that we recognize that we are part of a human family.  Now, I don’t mean this in a secular humanist way, like the only thing which should unite us are the lowest common denominators.  Rather, solidarity says that, because Christ has died for every person, the other person has a right to my care and concern.  So how does my vote support a worldview where I am my brother’s keeper?
    A third priority that should influence all that we do, including our politics, is subsidiarity.  While we are all united to each other in solidarity, we do not have equal authority over everything.  Subsidiarity says that the smallest institution that can deal with responsibilities should do so, and larger institutions should only intervene when the smaller institution cannot adequately provide solutions on their own.  I’ll take education as one example.  The institution that should have the most say over its own life is the family.  But sometimes families cannot do everything on their own, so they rely on school districts to help them educate their child.  But sometimes even an individual district cannot provide for its own needs, so the State perhaps gathers money from everyone to support every district.  And maybe even in a few cases there are things that the State cannot do, so they turn to the federal government for guidance and funding in limited ways.  But the federal government shouldn’t set particular lesson plans for individual teachers in individual schools.  Likewise, we rely on the federal government for national defense, and that’s not something we rely on only one family to achieve national safety, though we do rely on other intermediate groups between the family and the federal government for local and State safety.  So when we vote, are we considering if a particular candidate or party respects subsidiarity and does not encourage infringement by larger institutions that which can be done by a smaller institution, even as small as the family?
    Lastly, living and voting based upon the wisdom of God calls us to consider the common good.  We live in a very selfish culture, where I predominately consider what is in my best interest.  Instead, God calls us to look beyond ourselves and consider others and what is best for them, not just what is good for us.  When I vote, am I thinking beyond what works best for me, and considering what works best for others?

    What do we do if we cannot find a candidate who fulfills all of these?  We do our best to choose the candidate or party who most fully supports these four main categories, as long as we do not choose a candidate because of an evil that he or she supports.  
    In all areas of our life, including our political life, we should live according to the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of the world.  When we live only according to our own wisdom, we limit ourselves to what our own minds can design and imagine.  When we live according to the wisdom of God, we tap into the guidance that comes from the Creator of all the universe, whom nothing can limit.  May we bring that wisdom with us to the voting booth, and to each part of our life every day.

Battling the Liar

Dedication of St. Michael the Archangel
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I tend to quote country songs a lot, and given that country songs have been described as “three chords and the truth,” it’s not surprising that they can draw one closer to God and His truth.  One such song that connected with our celebration of St. Michael the Archangel today is by a country artist who recently gained Genesee County connections: Jelly Roll.  
    The song he sang is called “Liar” and to me it speaks about the voice of the one against whom St. Michael fights: the devil.  Jelly Roll sings about how he let the devil “drive around my mind” and “played me like a fool.”  Some of the lies that the devil tells are: “Drink another whiskey / Pop another pill / Money makes you happy / Heaven isn’t real / You won’t find nobody to love / Because your heart’s too broke.”  But he recognizes those lines for the lies that they are, trying to keep him down in the suggestions in his head, in the dreams he has at night, promising to be his friend, but the devil’s just “blowin’ smoke” because he’s “nothing but a liar.”  

Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome

    The work of St. Michael is precisely to foil the lies of the devil.  He fights for Christ, who is the Truth, and works to cast Satan and the fallen angels away from us, who can sometimes be so susceptible to the lies of the prince of this world.  The tempter often has cunning lies that seem like they’re the truth, preying especially on our weaknesses, our vulnerabilities, our wounds.  He did the same thing with our first parents, Adam and Eve, when he tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, telling her that she wouldn’t die if she ate the forbidden fruit, but that she would be like God on her own terms.  On the one hand, it may be hard to believe that Eve would buy into that lie.  She had perfect earthly happiness, communion with God and with nature around her, and lacked for nothing.  Why would she give into the lies of the ancient serpent?
    Why do we?  We may not have perfect earthly happiness, or perfect communion with the natural world which gives us fruit without effort, but we have God Himself who enters into us!  God not only walks with us in the cool of the evening, as He did with Adam and Eve, He humbles Himself to enter into us the Most Holy Eucharist, to fill us spiritually with His presence.  And yet, how often do we turn away from God, disobey His commands, and listen to the lies that the devil feeds us?
    Maybe it’s not excessive drinking, or drugs.  Maybe it is for some of us.  But I am willing to bet that each of us has had moments where money became our God and we thought if we just had enough of it we would be truly happy.  Or maybe we doubted whether there’s anything beyond this world, if all the rules that we follow and the ascetical practices we do will amount to anything, or if death will be the end.  Or maybe we have bought into the lie that no one could ever love us because we’re so broken that we’re not worthy of love.
    When we have those lies in our head, we should turn to St. Michael the Archangel, or our guardian angel, or our patron saints and ask them to bring the light of Christ to cast out the darkness of temptation and sin.  Pope St. Gregory the Great, while preaching a homily, said that St. Michael’s name in Hebrew means, “Who is like God,” and, “Whenever some act of wondrous power must be performed, Michael is sent, so that his action and his name may make it clear that no one can do what God does by his power.”  Whereas Lucifer, the light bearer angel, sought in his pride to contend with God, St. Michael allows God to be God and work His power through whomever God chooses.  
    And that can be a lesson for us when fighting evil.  From time to time, we might even be tempted to think that we are powerful enough to fight the devil and his fallen angels on our own terms.  But that is pride, and leads to our downfall.  Yes, we have a higher dignity than the angels, since Christ became man.  But angels are more powerful than we are, and we should not seek to fight them on their own terms.  Rather, rely on God’s helpers, whether angels or saints, and especially the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, to allow God’s grace to cast down any evil spirits who seek the ruin of our souls.  Follow the example of Michael and not try to grasp at power, but allow God’s power to work through them and through us.
    There are many lies that the devil tries to get us to believe.  Some of those lies we may have recognized in Jelly Roll’s song.  Some of the lies the devil tells differ from those, but are no less powerful.  But Christ is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, and if we wish to come to the Father, we must hold fast to the truth, name the lie that the devil tells us as false, and run towards St. Michael and the saints to help us stay connected to the truth.  May St. Michael and all the holy angels defend us always and keep us united to God–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Remembering a Past (and Current) Teaching

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Sometimes, after a number of years or decades, if the meaning of something is not refreshed in the minds of the people, things once taken for granted are forgotten.  Take Veterans’ Day: you may or may not know that Veterans’ Day is always 11 November, no matter on what day of the week that date falls.  But many people probably don’t know that 11 November wasn’t a random day chosen for this federal holiday.  11 November marked the end of World War I in 1918, and was celebrated as the end of the war to end all wars.  Of course, we know that World War II followed, and so, in 1954, rather than simply celebrating Armistice Day and the end of World War I, the name was changed to Veterans’ Day, honoring all those who served in war.  
    Today in our second reading, we heard about a particular sin: that of withholding wages from laborers.  St. James writes, “the wages you withheld from the workers…and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.”  This is one of a list of sins that Scripture notes cry to heaven for vengeance.  The full list is: the blood of Abel (homicide); the sin of the Sodomites (homosexual activity); the cry of the people oppressed in Egypt (slavery); the cry of the foreigner, the widow, and the orphan; and injustice to the wage earner, which we heard today.  You can find this list in paragraph 1867 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
    We probably don’t use this phrase that often, and because we don’t use it, we forget that it still holds true.  Certain sins cry out to God for His divine justice.  And even though one may think that he has gotten away with it because no one has noticed, God has taken notice; He has heard the cry from that sin, and will repay accordingly if there is no repentance.  Some make sense, especially homicide and slavery.  Others, like the sin of Sodom or maybe even the sin that St. James mentions today, may not seem serious.  In fact, some would not even call them sins.  But they are gravely against God’s plan for human happiness and the justice that He desires exist among all people.
    In the Gospel, Jesus also reminds His disciples, which includes us, that while good deeds, even the smallest ones, can echo into eternity, so can evil deeds.  Jesus advises us to take seriously the punishment for sin, because one will account for the evil done in the “unquenchable fire” of Gehenna, another name for Hell.  Jesus even notes hyperbolically, that if a part of our us is causing sin, then cut it off.  Of course, he’s not asking us to perform surgery and mutilate ourselves.  But He is encouraging us to figuratively cut out the parts of our life that separate us from God, so that we can enter heaven.  
    We don’t talk about sin too much, because talking about sin makes us admit that we are wrong, and no one likes to do that.  We don’t talk about the consequences of sin because we prefer to think about God as more of a grandparent who never tells us no, and who will welcome us into His home no matter what we may have done at ours.  Sin has an effect on us, and draws us farther away from God.  God, who is Justice Himself, cannot ignore unrepentant sin, anymore than light can allow darkness to continue in its presence.  The light always destroys the darkness whenever it is present.  This doesn’t take away from God’s mercy, which is also who God is, but somehow in God justice and mercy meet perfectly.
    Dr. Peter Kreeft, a Catholic apologist, notes:
 

If you really think that you can endure and enjoy the full light and fire of God for a second after you die, being essentially the same kind of being you are now, without any kind of divine operation on your soul, then you dangerously underestimate either your sinful nature, God’s holiness, or the gap between them.

It’s not as if God can let sin go, in the sense that He can allow sin to persist in His divine presence, like it’s a permission He can grant.  God, being holiness itself, burns away sin, which is why God told Moses that he couldn’t see God face to face on earth and live.  Instead, God had to shield Moses in the rock, and only let Moses see God as He passed by, so that Moses would not be destroyed.  
    So, for us, all unrepentant sin will receive its consequence.  Venial sins will not be treated harshly because they were not a strong turning away from God and His life.  But God will still deal with them.  And even more harshly will God deal with mortal sins and the sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance, because they signify serious, even deadly repudiation of God’s presence in our life.  We can deal with those mortal sins in confession, where the Blood of Jesus washes those sins away so that they are no more, or we can deal with them at our judgement, at which point, as the Church teaches, we have no hope of salvation if we have not yet repented.  Again, we don’t talk that way often, but the Church teaches, and I quote, “If [mortal sin] is not redeemed by repentance and God’s forgiveness, it causes exclusion from Christ’s kingdom and the eternal death of hell.”  
    So today, it’s a good thing to ask ourselves, do I have serious sin that needs to be forgiven through sacramental confession?  Do I participate in or encourage any of the sins that cry to heaven for vengeance?  Am I forming hatred in my heart for another that can lead to homicide?  Do I encourage human trafficking through the viewing of pornography?  Do I oppress those who have no one to help them, like the foreigner, the widow, or the orphan?  Am I just to those who work for me?  Are there other mortal sins, even simple ones like taking God’s name in vain or skipping Mass out of laziness or preference for other things that are endangering my eternal salvation?  If so, today is the day for repentance.  Today is the day to return to the Sacrament of Penance so that the mercy, rather than the justice, of God can wash over you and save you.  
    Just because we don’t talk about sin as much does not mean that it has gone away, or that it no longer matters.  May we not forget just how serious sin is, but rather accept God’s grace to turn away from our sin, and turn to God to be wrapped in His divine mercy.  

Better than Having $1,000,000

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the mid 90s there was a song by the group Barenaked Ladies (ironically a band entirely made of up males) called “If I Had $1000000.”  It’s a catchy tune, and it talks about all the things that the writer would do if he had a million dollars.  He’d buy a house, furniture, a “reliant automobile,” a tree fort with a tiny fridge, a fur coat (“but not a real fur coat, that’s cruel”), an exotic pet like a llama or emu or monkey.  We’ve probably all thought of what we could do with an unlimited or nearly unlimited amount of money at one time or another, and maybe our dreams have even included some of the things of which the Barenaked Ladies sang.
    St. Paul, on the other hand, talks about becoming rich in Christ, so that no one wants for any grace while we wait for the return of our Lord.  Probably not a catchy enough phrase for a song, but a chance to reflect on how we can truly be rich.  Our world so often associates riches with material things and possessions.  But St. Paul talks about the richness of a relationship with Christ and the openness to His grace.

    Even as we look at the Gospel, the sick man’s friends brought him so that the Lord would heal him.  But what is the first thing the Savior does?  He forgives the sick man’s sins, which drives the scribes up a wall.  It is only to prove that He has the power to forgive sins that a physical healing follows.  What would the man have thought if all he received was the forgiveness of sins?  What would we think if we approached the Lord for physical healing, but only received spiritual healing?
    Physical healings are amazing.  They reveal God’s power over the human body, His ability to remake it as it should be.  And physical miracles can help to bolster our faith in spiritual realities, like the communion of saints.  But eventually whatever is healed will break down again.  Skin, muscle, organs, and bones will decompose, and then what will we have left?  But with spiritual healing, the effects can last into eternity, possibly snatching us from the teeth of the devil in Hell to the loving embrace of God in heaven.
    And even on earth, we can have opportunities to realize that material things, while nice, do not have as much value as intangible things.  For my birthday I received gifts from my family and from parishioners, for which I am very grateful.  I received a gift card to a brand of hotels in which I often stay to help lower my cost of future travel.  I received some cash and other gift cards with helped me purchase some items on my personal wish list.  And I received some very kind birthday cards.  But honestly, and with no ingratitude intended to anyone who gave me a gift, my best present was the chance for my very busy best friend to set aside time to spend with me, and let me know that, for that evening, he didn’t have anywhere else to be and didn’t have to cut out early to do anything else.  As MasterCard used to remind us, while you can buy many things with a credit card, the best things in life are priceless.
    So do we see God’s grace that way?  Do we view our relationship with God as our most treasured gift?  This is not to say that we can’t have material things that are precious to us, but do we treasure God above even our most expensive goods?  Do we treasure Him even above the intangible things on earth?  Or does God take second, or third, or fourth place when we consider what we value most?
    Do we appreciate the treasure that confession is?  God gave us a sensible way to receive His forgiveness through the Sacrament of Penance.  We hear the priest, acting in the person of Christ the head, in persona Christi capitis, telling us that our sins are forgiven.  Especially with my analytical mind, I can’t imagine simply asking God for forgiveness from my heart, but then wondering if I was truly sorry, which is the requisite for forgiveness.  Instead, if I have at least imperfect contrition, a firm amendment not to sin in the future, and a willingness to do penance, and if I confess my grave sins in number and kind to the priest, I know, I have certainty, that God has forgiven me; no ifs, ands, or buts.  What a treasure that is!  Can God forgive me without the sacrament?  Certainly.  But we will only know if that happened at the end of our life when we meet God for our final judgment.  Through the Church that Christ Himself founded, I can have confidence that those sins won’t be brought up at my final judgement, because Christ has washed them away in His Precious Blood.
    One million dollars is an impressive amount of money.  It can buy a lot of things that can help us live a comfortable life while on earth.  But the comfort that God wants for us doesn’t always come on earth, but lasts for eternity in heaven.  Each day we have the opportunity to decide how we want to be rich.  Do we want to strive primarily for the riches that can buy us a house, a car, or an emu?  Or do we want to strive primarily for the riches of knowing Jesus Christ and receiving the graces He sends us?  The two don’t always conflict, but one is always more important than the other.  Even if, at the end of our life, the world does not recognize us as rich, may God see how we have worked for and received the riches that He showers upon us each day: His grace, and knowledge, and love.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Unity and Diversity

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A buzzword these days is “diversity.”  And while people can associate the socio-political term with some level of mistrust, when it comes to diversity in the Catholic sense, we need not fear.  We don’t fear diversity, because it is also bound up with unity.  And this connection between diversity and unity bases itself in the Most Holy Trinity, who is both One God and Three Divine Persons.
    While not directly pointing to the Trinity, it intrigued me that St. Paul, in the epistle we heard today, kept going back to threes: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and “Who is above all, and through all, and in all.”  Again, this is not to equate the word “Lord” with the Father, “faith” with the Son, and “baptism” with the Holy Spirit, nor any individual Person with being above, through, or in all.  But there is something providential as God inspired St. Paul to write in a way that points to the oneness and threeness of God.
    Beginning with God’s oneness, His unity, we even get a glimpse of this in the Gospel.  When asked about the greatest commandment, our Lord replies with the second half of the shema, one of the great credal expressions of Judaism: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one.  Therefore you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.”  The unity of God forms the foundation of the commandment to love God.

   The diversity, if you will, of God, started to reveal itself most clearly in the Incarnation.  We can look to the Baptism of the Lord, when the voice of the Father spoke as St. John baptized our Lord, and the Holy Spirit hovered over our Lord in the form of a dove.  Time and time again, our Lord claims authority which only God could have, especially seen in the power of forgiving sins.  And in the Gospel of John, the people almost stone Christ, which makes him ask, “‘For which of these [good works] are you trying to stone me?’”  The people reply, “‘We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.  You, a man, are making yourself God.’”  And at the great commission at the end of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Christ commands that his disciples to baptize “‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’”  
    Certainly, this believe in our Triune God developed over the centuries after the Ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Indeed, the word Trinitas, Trinity, was only first coined by Tertullian, who died in the year AD 200.  Creeds would follow from Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon that would clarify how we understood our one God as well as the Trinity of Persons.  But the kernel of the truth of our belief in who God is was present from the beginning.
    So, when it comes to the Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, we see both unity and diversity operating, just as unity and diversity are attributes of God.  There is one God, but the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Holy Spirit, nor the Holy Spirit the Father.  There is one Church established by Christ, but that one Church has different expressions across the world with different gifts and charisms.  The temptation is to overemphasize unity or overemphasize diversity.  But that would be like excluding either the Three Persons in favor of one God, or excluding the oneness of God in favor of the Three Divine Persons.  But the truth is not expressed fully when one or the other is excluded.
    So for us, God calls us to profess, though one baptism, one faith in the one God.  To reflect the unity of God we hold fast to what God has truly revealed as necessary for salvation, including those statements codified by Ecumenical Councils and Popes, as well as the teaching the Magisterium.  To vary in professions of the divinity of the Son or the Holy Spirit tears away from the unity that God desires for His Church.
    On the other hand, there are diversities in practices of how we live that faith out that vary place by place.  St. Monica struggled with the fact that Romans fasted on Saturdays, while the Milanese did not.  St. Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, said that when he was in Rome he fasted on Saturdays, but when in Milan, he did not.  Liturgically, from the beginning, there rose up legitimate differences in how the followers of Christ, united in one Church, worshiped.  While most of the Roman world spoke Greek, and so Greek was likely used in many of the earliest liturgies, Latin was introduced not too long after Christianity ceased to be a persecuted religion.  Maronites, the Catholic Rite (R-I-T-E) based in Lebanon, still uses Aramaic, as it has from the beginning, the language our Lord spoke, in at least part of its liturgy.  And as the Gospel spread, the Mass came to be celebrated in various languages, though each language was often codified and does not always match the current way that same language is used (e.g., Slavonic versus Church Slavonic).
    But this variety of languages and rites resembles Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit gave the Apostles and disciples the ability to speak in different tongues so that those who had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast could understand the preaching of the Gospel.  Still, while the languages were many, the faith they professed was one.
    So, as Catholics, we can welcome diversity in a Catholic sense, because it is also connected to a unified mission and proclamation, mimicking the way that our one God is also Three Divine Persons.  In the Mystical Body of Christ, we need not all have the same task or vocation, any more than all our body parts need to be the same.  But those diverse body parts do need to work together for the proper functioning of the body, and so the diverse members of the Church need to utilize their gifts and talents in a unified way for the proclamation of the one Gospel in the one Church that our Lord founded.  May we, the diverse members of the Mystical Body of Christ, be held together for common purpose by our Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Charity and Knowledge

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Though not celebrated today since it falls on a Sunday, today is the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  After Mass today, as part of your thanksgiving, maybe add a few Marian prayers like the Hail Mary, Memorare, Hail, Holy Queen, or even the Litany of Loretto to wish a happy birthday to our Blessed Mother, reigning in heaven alongside her Son.
    Our Blessed Mother is the perfect example of being rooted in charity and knowing the charity of Christ, as St. Paul wrote in our epistle today.  And St. Paul compares charity, divine love, with knowledge, saying that charity surpasses knowledge.  St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians that, “knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up.”  
    As someone who loves learning, these words can be a challenge.  And, indeed, many have rightly put an emphasis on learning the truths of the faith, so that they can be shared.  God has given us the gift of reason to understand what He has revealed through His Church, both in the Scriptures and through Sacred Tradition.  To the extent that we can understand, and then share, those truths, we can.
    But entrance into heaven does not come from having a degree in theology.  Indeed, just because we know something about God doesn’t mean that we will get to heaven.  The pharisees in today’s Gospel knew God’s law very well, at least in its external practice.  But they didn’t understand the love which undergirded that law.  Satan, for his part, knows the truths of the faith, probably better than many of us.  St. James, in his epistle, writes, “You believe that God is one.  You do well.  Even the demons believe that and tremble.”  So, as helpful as knowledge is, it cannot substitute for love.
    For those who may not be so intellectually gifted, this should be a consolation.  Not everyone can study theology, but everyone can go to heaven.  One can love God deeply without being able to explain precisely the relationships between the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity.  And, as St. John of the Cross says, at the end of our life we will be judged, not on knowledge, but on our loves.

    Think about the Annunciation.  The Archangel Gabriel brought incredible news, that is, news that was hard to believe, that she would become the Mother of God.  First of all, Mary, though of the family of King David, had no royal training.  She was not part of palace life.  She was a young, humble virgin in a backwater town in a backwater province of the Roman Empire.  Further, and even more incredible, she was not married, so how could she conceive?  If the Virgin Mary had relied solely on her knowledge, she would have never said yes.  In fact, Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, seems to have only relied on this knowledge when the same Archangel Gabriel appeared to him some six months earlier, and told him and that he and his wife, Elizabeth, would conceive a great prophet who would prepare people for God “in the spirit and power of Elijah.”  But Zechariah responded from his knowledge, saying, “‘How shall I know this?  For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.’”  For his lack of acceptance, his lack of love of God, Zechariah was struck mute until he affirmed Gabriel’s message that his son should be named John.
    The love of the Blessed Mother for God and her trust in His love for her allowed her not to doubt, but to wholeheartedly respond to the plan of God, “‘May it be done to me according to your word.’”  Love filled in the gap where knowledge left off.  
    Now, love is not contrary to reason, but sometimes flies above reason.  Think of a mother whose child is threatened.  While the mother may not be the strongest woman in the world, God help the person who comes between a mother and her child!  Her love gives her a reason beyond simple knowledge that can preserve life when reason would give up in the face of such danger and such odds.  
    And, as in the Gospel, love informs the law.  Yes, God gave the Sabbath as a day of rest, where no work could be done.  But even the rabbis had known that sometimes you have to respond to special situations that cannot wait beyond the Sabbath, so they allowed people to pull out their farm animals from harm, even on the day of rest.  But, because they did not love, the Pharisees could not see how healing the man fulfilled what God intended for the Sabbath: rest, freedom, and wholeness in God.  So healing a man on the Sabbath did not violate God’s commandment, but, in love fulfilled it.  The healing was not contrary to our understanding of the Sabbath rest, but flew beyond the mere outward expression of not doing work.
    This can even apply to some laws of the Church.  Perhaps the easiest example is Friday as a day of penance.  We should, all things being equal, do some sort of penitential act on every Friday.  Traditionally, this has meant that Catholics don’t eat meat.  But let’s say a friend had a dinner and did not observe abstinence from meat.  While our understanding of the law might suggest that we simply eat nothing and be a rude guest, love understands that, from time to time, on special occasions, we might not do as much penance as usual for legitimate reasons.  Friday weddings can often be times where we set aside our penitential practices for one meal, in order to rejoice in a new sacrament of God’s love.
    We cannot simply ignore the law and claim that we don’t have to follow it because of love.  Love often undergirds just laws.  But knowledge of the law, and our understanding of the faith, has to be supported by love, or else it is a clanging gong or a crashing symbol.  Today, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, may we grow in love of God and neighbor, and so be prepared for the eternal contemplation of love in heaven, where our Lord reigns, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for ever and ever.  Amen.