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. 

Fix You

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Songs have a way of touching us when mere words don’t suffice.  Sometimes they increase our joy; sometimes they commiserate with us in sorrow.  One such song for when a person feels down and out is “Fix You” by the band Coldplay.  Towards the beginning of the song the listener hears, “And the tears come streaming down your face / When you lose something you can’t replace / When you love someone, but it goes to waste / Could it be worse? //  Lights will guide you home / And ignite your bones / And I will try to fix you.”  Nothing like a mopey song to get your Sunday going, eh?
    But in all seriousness, our God did come to fix us.  We hear it in all our readings.  Jesus’ very name means “God saves.”  The word for savior in Greek is 𝜎𝜔𝜏𝜂𝜌, which, in ancient times, could also mean healer, in addition to savior.  Isaiah outlined ways that God would heal His people, and Mark shows the profound healing of a deaf and mute man.  Even St. James in his epistle demonstrates how that healing goes beyond just our physical realities, and includes the healing of our prejudices that can affect how we live the Gospel.
    But all of this presumes that we know we need healing and saving.  And to admit that we need healing and saving includes the admission that we are ill and lost.  And that can be hard to admit.  It seems much easier to live with the veneer that everything is going great, that we have everything under control.  We learn to live with our illness and brokenness, and think that our infirmity and disfunction are normal.  We put up walls and barriers to the grace of God, because in order to let that grace and healing in, we have to admit that we are not as we should be, and that might make us hurt as we acknowledge things that our mind prefers to ignore but our heart knows all too well.
    Acknowledging the salvation of God also means that we don’t treat Jesus as our preferential guru.  If we treat Jesus as simply the teacher who works best for us, while others have other teachers who help them be the best they can be, we miss the point of what Jesus taught and did.  Teachers or gurus teach a way of life, but they don’t save.  Only saviors teach a way of life, and heal, and save.  Moses cannot save; Buddha cannot save; Mohammed cannot save; Confucius cannot save.  Any teacher or guru that you name might help us in some ways, but they cannot bridge the chasm that sin created.  They cannot heal at the root the sickness that infects our hearts and souls.  Only Christ can do that.
    Admitting that we need a savior goes against what our culture wants to affirm.  In these days, we affirm however you feel you are, whether or not that is good for you, whether or not it leads you to excellence.  Society says I feel I love this person, so you have to accept my understanding of romantic love, even if it flies in the face of what God has revealed romantic love truly is.  Society says I may be morbidly obese due to bad died and lack of exercise, but you can’t tell me to lose weight because that would be shaming my body.  Society says I don’t feel comfortable in the body God gave me, so you have to refer to me in whatever way I choose, regardless of my biological sex, and you even have to provide me with procedures that either involve mutilation or hormone blocking drugs so that the way I feel can be affirmed.  All of these examples, and many more less significant ones, base themselves in a reality that I pretend I can mold to my own emotions, so that I don’t have to acknowledge the deep pain of brokenness in my life.  Because acknowledging that brokenness will make me feel sad or make me feel pain, and that’s the last thing I want to feel.  So I ignore it and try to live in a fantasy world where I live my own truth which fits standards which don’t call me higher and to a fuller form of life.

    Instead, Christ came to heal our brokenness, which might be painful at first, but brings true wholeness and holiness in the end.  Christ helps you to know that your sexual desires do not define you as a person, and can be properly ordered according to how He made the world.  Christ brings you healing from those unhealthy patterns of self-medication so that you don’t have to use food or laziness to feel better.  Christ comes to help you love yourself and how God made you, just as much as God loves you.  Christ wants to help you deal with whatever broken reality you are living now, to save you from your false realities, so that you’re prepared for the final judgement, where reality will not bend to your will, but will impose itself, whether you want it to or not.  
    Jesus did not come to make us feel better about our fallen selves.  Jesus came to heal what was broken in us; to save what was fallen in us.  Jesus did not come to help us usher in a world according to our own design, but to live in the world that He made, to start restoring us to a place even better than the Garden of Eden, where all creation lived in harmony with God and each other.  Let the Light of Christ guide you home.  Let the Holy Spirit ignite you with His love.  God has come to fix you.

Green Monsters

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to check off a number of the New England States that I had not yet visited in my quest to see all 50 States before I’m 50.  One of the highlights of that trip was staying in Boston and being able to attend a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, home of the infamous green monster.
    St. Paul instructs us today about another green monster, or green-eyed monster, the sin of envy.  In fact, in his treatment of envy in the Summa, St. Thomas Aquinas quotes this exact passage in affirming the sinfulness of envy.  Envy, the Angelic Doctor writes, is “sorrow for another’s good,” which is a quote of how St. John Damascene defines envy.  But St. Thomas further explains that when we envy someone, “we grieve over a man’s good, in so far as his good surpasses ours.”  In other words, we see something good in another, and we get upset because we don’t have that good ourselves, or don’t have it in the same quantity.      Now, to say that we’re upset because we don’t have something isn’t always bad.  Fr. Nick Monco, a Dominican friar, has a whole video series on the vices through Open Light Media (this is my free plug for a great YouTube channel set up by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist).  And when it comes to envy, he uses the example of a friend who plays the piano well.  He notes that if we notice our friend plays the piano well, and we get upset because we don’t and realize that we, perhaps, wasted opportunities in the past to work at playing the piano, or it spurs us on to take up piano lessons again so that I, too, can excel in the good of playing piano, that’s not envy.  But if we were to get upset that our friend plays the piano well because it makes us look bad, that would be envy.
    Envy gives away the joy that we should have in another’s excellence.  When I notice something good in my neighbor, it should help me to love that person more.  I am horrible at math.  Can’t stand it.  So when I see someone else who excels in math, that should cause me to rejoice in the gifts and talents that the other person has that I do not.  Love of the other, charity, helps me to recognize that there are different members in the Mystical Body of Christ, each which has its own role and its own excellence, which, when applied together, cause an increase in the proper functioning of the entire body.  Envy, on the other hand, seeks to take away the legitimate diversity of the other members, and causes disunity simply because I do not have a particular gift.
    Envy breeds the harmful type of ambition, which I would say occurs when I strive to be the best, not for the good of excellence, but to gain power or prestige.  We do not err when we seek to use our talents in the best way possible.  But if I only do my best so that I get a promotion, or get further ahead in the company or in life than that other person, then I have left the realm of magnanimity, greatness of soul and settled for weakness that fears any other competition to my own good.
    Envy can often come because we lack healthy self-esteem, or lack a certain confidence in another’s love for us.  Think of two children playing at home.  One child does something well, and gets celebrated for that new achievement.  The other child, not wanting to lack the seeming extra love of the parents, tries to take away from the first child by doing something else that will cause the parents to stop praising the achievement of the first child, and turn the focus back on the other child.  When I know that I am loved, even if I don’t have the gifts that others have, I don’t see love as a limited resource that has to be hoarded, or else I may run out of it.  When I know that I am loved, I find it easier to rejoice in the good of the other because I know that love shared is love increased, and the gift of love for one does not decrease love that I can receive.
    Envy especially becomes dangerous when it comes to spiritual matters.  Spiritual envy occurs when I see another person with a spiritual good that I don’t have, or that another person is growing in grace while I am not.  Again, I can see a spiritual good that I don’t have, and it causes me to work harder to be open to that good, and that is not envy.  But when I don’t want another to grow in grace because I am not, that is certainly spiritual envy, and St. Thomas warns us, “it is accounted a sin against the Holy Ghost, because thereby a man envies, as it were, the Holy Ghost Himself, Who is glorified in His works.”  True charity rejoices when another receives a special gift from God, rather than sorrows because I do not have it.
    How do we fight envy?  Rejoice in what others have.  We can use the desire of what others have to push us on to achieve goals, and that is good.  But rejoice in that good, no matter what it might be.  Praise God for showering His gifts upon another when we recognize the gifts of another.  When we feel that tinge of envy, remind ourselves that the love of God for us cannot be decreased simply because another’s good is increased.  Have confidence in your own goodness, not in a prideful way, but in the way that God asks us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and so we have to have a certain type of healthy self-love or appreciation that we are a child of God.  Take an inventory of the ways that God has blessed you, because it’s different than the way He has blessed others.
    Don’t make room for the green-eyed monster.  Fight to conquer it just as so many have fought to conquer the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.  Do not be sad at another’s good, but rejoice that God has blessed others with particular graces, just as He has blessed us: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Never Could Have Imagined

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    For whatever reason, once you reach a certain age, there is a requirement that you tell younger people how passes more quickly the older you get when they say that they can’t believe how fast time is going.  As a youngster and on the receiving end, I never really appreciated how true that statement could be.  After all, time, at best, seemed like a constant, and it seemed like it just dragged on.  But, as I approach my forty-first birthday next week, I appreciate more the reality that time really does go faster the older you get.
    When Moses asked the rhetorical question to the Israelites, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”, the Chosen People certainly could think of the closeness of God.  Ever since their departure from Egypt, God had accompanied them by a column of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.  He had stopped the flow of the Red Sea for them.  He had appeared in trumpet blast and storms on Mount Sinai.  He traveled with them in the Ark of the Covenant.  There was no question that God sojourned with His People.  But they didn’t appreciate how close God would get to us.
    Centuries later, King Solomon built a temple to God to be a resting place for the Ark of the Covenant, which King David had previously moved to the new capital city of Jerusalem.  In the great temple, with all of its gold and silver beyond value, all of the fine wood and decorations of the different courts for different groups of people, leading up to the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary where God dwelt, God could be approached.  He had a physical footstool on earth, a place where the people could draw close to Him at any time they wanted.  While the Chosen People had spread out over the Promised Land, they could come to God to give thanks or to ask for blessings.  God no longer seemed itinerant, but had a home fit for the King of Kings.  But still they couldn’t imagine how close God would get to us.

    Centuries later, in a village called Nazareth, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to a young virgin named Mary.  Gabriel asked Mary if she would become the Mother of God, and would carry the Son of God and Son of David in her womb for nine months.  Mary said yes, and suddenly, God’s presence was again itinerant, but this time not in cloud or fire, but in the Incarnation, the union of God and man in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Mary gave birth in Bethlehem, and suddenly people could not only see God from afar in the cloud and smoke; people could not only visit God in a particular place; the shepherds could now gaze loving on God, who looked like a little baby.  The Magi could offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the little Christ Child.  And that child would grow, so that people could see the face of God, which before not even Moses could do, as God warned it would kill him.  But not only could you see the face of God, you could touch God, hear His voice, and experience His love in a way previously thought impossible.  But still, they couldn’t imagine how close God would get to us.
    Because while Jesus Christ, God-made-man, walked this earth and helped people experience God in ways unthought of before, while He walked this earth He limited Himself to being in one place, at one time.  The Lord of all creation who created time and space became subject to time and space.  Until He gave us the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, His Body and Blood, given to us under the appearance of bread and wine, which would prolong His presence with us, not through his limited Body, but through His glorified Body, which now reigns at the right hand of the Father in heaven.  You don’t have to go to the Holy Land to see Jesus.  He comes to you at each Mass, so that you only have to travel a short distance to see Him, not fly over oceans and seas and other continents.  And God enters into us, into our very person, so that He is closer to us than any other person could ever be.  We can say, in a way Moses probably never imagined while he was on earth, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”!
    What a great gift God gives us!  How could we ever repay God for His generosity, for His proximity to us?  St. James tells us a way that we can repay, however humbly, the great gift God has given us: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.”  The best thank you we can say to God is to worship Him, to open ourselves to His grace, and to do our best to conform our lives to the pattern God has given us, especially by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.  
    I could never have imagined how fast time continues to pass in my own life.  Moses could never have imagined how close God would come to us through the Eucharist.  But it is true.  God has come to dwell with us.  Come, let us worship!

Doctor Gratiae and Darth Vader

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the things that can easily frustrate Catholics is when they are striving to live a holy life, but they aren’t quite getting there.  They go to Mass on Sundays; they go to confession on a regular basis; they pray the Rosary and/or the Divine Mercy chaplet; they have a crucifix and holy water in their home; etc.  And yet, they are still struggling with sin, be it venial or mortal.  They want to walk according to the spirit, but they all too often find themselves giving in to the flesh.  They desire the fruits of the Spirit, but they at least occasionally give in to the works of the flesh.
    This tug of war is because there are two still two masters in our hearts and souls, and we’re oscillating between the two.  We may be primarily for Christ, but we leave some part of ourselves, however small, open to the mastery of the evil one, and so he takes whatever opportunities he can to steal us away from our Lord.
    We know in our minds that we want to serve God and that our happiness lies in Him.  We know, as St. Paul teaches, that the wages of sin is death.  We know that sin distracts or even derails us from our final destination of heaven.  And yet, we choose to sin time and time again.

    St. Augustine of Hippo, the great Doctor of Grace, provides us with a stark example of this inner turmoil.  Though he became a catechumen at a young age, he writes in his Confessions that he did not live the faith as a young boy or young man.  He writes how, around the age of 16, he gave himself entirely over to lustful actions.  This terrorized his mother, but his father, also not yet a Catholic, seems to have figured it a normal part of life.  Things didn’t get better as 18-year-old Augustine moved to Carthage.  He writes, “desire had grown, and when desire is given satisfaction, habit is forged; and when habit passes unresisted, a compulsive urge sets in.  He took one mistress, with whom he had his son, Adeodatus (whose name means “gift given from God”), and then took a different mistress.  
    Through his studies, though, even while he meandered through various heresies, he began to see the truths of the faith as truth, and his mind grew convicted to join the Catholic Church through baptism.  Still, his will resisted what his mind longed to grasp, such that his prayer became, “Give me chastity…but not yet.”  
    This struggle between the two masters–Christ and his sin-driven will–frustrated him more and more each day.  It finally led to what appears to be a kind of mental breakdown, bringing him to tears over his dilemma.  But it was in that moment, in his utter brokenness, that he heard the voice of a small child say, “Tolle, lege,” “Take and read.”  He did what no good spiritual director would ever recommend: he played Biblical roulette, trying to turn to a random page to see what it would say, and read Romans 13:13-14.  The Apostle wrote, “let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”  The grace that had been building in him in his search for the truth finally broke the dam of his will, and he found the freedom he desired, and the gentle yoke of Christ under which he was glad to bind himself.
    Perhaps our sins are not so grave.  Perhaps the conversion of our fallen wills will not be so dramatic.  But that same back and forth happens in so many Catholics, dealing with many types of sin, not just lust.  So many struggle with patience, or gossip, or judgement.  They want to do better, but they keep finding themselves in similar situations and confessing the same faults when they seek out the Sacrament of Penance.
    The example of St. Augustine reminds us that part of committing ourselves to the master we know we want to serve, Christ, is to persevere in fighting our temptations, no matter how strong, no matter how persistent.  The great bishop of North Africa, in his days before baptism, never fully acquiesced to the realities he knew to be false: that true freedom and happiness could be found in sin.  Sometimes all he had was his mind to tell him that sin did not lead to joy and hope, but he never abandoned that mind that guided him closer and closer to the truth.  

    In a very secular example, it’s like Darth Vader.  In the original three movies, especially episodes V and VI, George Lucas makes clear that there is good in Vader, and Luke Skywalker, his hidden son, senses it.  Even while Vader seems to resist that goodness; even while he attacks Luke, Luke knows that there is still a battle going on in Vader’s soul between light and darkness.  Even as Emperor Palpatine tortures Luke while Darth Vader looks on, the battle rages until (spoiler alert), Vader stops the torture and kills Emperor Palpatine (or at least, that’s what happened until they made the latest three movies, where being thrown down a shaft that explodes no longer kills a person).  Vader apologizes to Luke, and becomes, once again, the Jedi he should have been in his final breaths.
    Whether it’s a fourth and fifth century saint, or a fictional character that demonstrates the point to us better, our life is a choice between two masters.  Not just God and mammon, the pagan god of riches and greed, but between God and whatever sin we leave room for in our hearts.  May we persevere in continuing to fight for the mastery of Christ, the mastery that does not enslave us like sin does, but grants us the true freedom to choose the good and to live in the happiness that is desired for each of us by God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.