The Spirit of the Law

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I will admit, as I’m driving down Court Street, and I see a car or a motorcycle fly past me driving 15 mph over the speed limit; or I see a car drive through the intersection not on a green light, a yellow light, or even an amber light (that intermediate time between yellow and red), but driving through a solid red light; or in construction zones, when a car blocks an open lane because they don’t understand how a zipper merge works; I want to be like the cops in the TV shows, throw a red bubble on the top of my car, pull them over, and write them a ticket for breaking the law.  I like the law, and I like it when people follow it.  If I have to, they should, too.
    But when it comes to The Law, not just man-made laws, but the Law given through Moses, how do we deal with it?  How do we consider the Law for others?  How do we consider the Law for ourselves?  More often than not, we have stricter standards for others than we have for ourselves, whether intended or not.  We tend to notice the splinter in our brother’s eye rather than the beam in our own.  
    And at face value, St. Paul seems pretty tough on the Law.  Today he refers to it as the ministry of condemnation.  He often writes how the Law does not save.  So we might think that we don’t have to follow the Law.  But, on the other hand, we tend to accept the Ten Commandments, the heart of the Law.  And if we don’t accept the Ten Commandments, we’re in trouble.  We need to follow the Ten Commandments.  But yet, the other six hundred odd points of the law, we tend not to follow.  And every time you eat bacon or a cheeseburger, you should thank God that we don’t have to follow the Law, as any meat from pig or any mixture of meat and milk was illegal.
    The other option finds its basis ostensively in the epistle, where Paul contrasts the law and the spirit of the law.  It can be easy to say that we need to follow the spirit of the law, not the law itself.  And there are numerous Gospel passages where our Lord seems to suggest that we go beyond what the clear text of the Law states.  But the difference is that whereas the spirit of the Law as presented by Christ tends to be stricter, whereas our idea of the spirit tends to be easier.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Christ teaches that the spirit of the Law not only forbids us having sex with someone who is not our spouse, but also means we cannot look at another person with lust in our hearts.  Whereas now many would say that the spirit of the law means that Christ would never want us to be unhappy or that Christ wants us to love, so however that happens is ok, no matter what the Law says about adultery or sexual relations in general.  
    So when people use the phrase “the spirit of the law,” often they’re taking on an anti-nomian mentality (the Greek word for law is nomos).  But the point the Apostle is making in the epistle is not that we get to eliminate all rules, but what the Law is supposed to do, and what Christ came to do.  
    The Law, St. Paul says elsewhere that God gave us the law as a tutor, as a way to teach us how to follow God.  It did have a certain glory because it came from God.  Indeed, as Moses received the law from God, Moses’ face began to shine, which freaked out the Israelites enough that they would make Moses cover his face with a veil in their presence, and then remove the veil when he returned to the presence of God.
    But the way of life that Christ taught us, the way to live like Him, in full obedience to the Father and in the most fulfilling form of life we can live, goes beyond the simple “Thou shalt not,” and gets to the deeper ways that we can live as beloved sons and daughters in the Son of God.  And this starts to transform us even more, and helps us shine like Christ shone at the Transfiguration.  We put halos around the heads of saints because there is a way in which holiness helps us to shine, like lights, in the midst of a world that includes a lot of darkness.
    Looking at the law, God forbade the people from murdering each other, or taking an innocent life.  That taught us a baseline minimum.  But Christ, the New Moses, says that true holiness comes from living at peace with others, and not letting grudges fester.  When we come to the point when we can love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, we experience a freedom that truly frees great.  It’s no longer walking around convincing ourselves not to kill that person who forever gets on our nerves, it’s not letting another affect us in such a way that we feel we need to exact justice, rather than letting the source of justice and mercy, deal with the person in the best way possible.

    Or, looking at the Gospel, the man thought he was fine because he knew God commanded to him to love God and his neighbor, but missed who his neighbor is.  And notice that the Samaritan hero of the parable doesn’t simply make sure the victim isn’t dead.  He takes the victim on his own beast of burden, takes him to an inn where he can be cared for, and even pays for the victim’s medical care.  Again, the spirit of the law of love of neighbor didn’t mean that you could ignore people you don’t like or because the person is a foreigner.  The law of love for neighbor means doing what you can, however much or little that might be, to help the other person know that it’s good that he exists.  Rather than the colloquial idea that the spirit of the law means the bar is lowered, the spirit of the law tends to mean that the bar is raised, but also helps transform a person more to live in accord with the will of God.  
    The Law is not bad.  Some of it has been done away with (like kosher laws and animal sacrifices).  But the Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, is eternal.  Still, the Commandments provide us with a basic understanding of how to live as God wants.  The spirit goes deeper, to transform the entire person and transform and transfigure us to live like Christ.  May the Holy Spirit help us to understand not simply the basics of living as God desires, but truly transform us at our deepest levels to put on Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Trying to Take Over the World

Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    Growing up as a child, one of my favorite TV shows was “Animaniacs,” which was a Warner Brothers cartoon that was spun off of Looney Tunes.  And one of the regular vignettes in the show was “Pinky and the Brain,” which followed two lab rats and their exploits after the lab was closed.  The Brain, as you might expect, had a super-developed intellect.  Pinky was a bit of a dummy.  And at the beginning of each vignette, Pinky would ask, “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?”  And Brain would answer, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky–try to take over the world!”
    As Catholics, our goal is to take over the world.  But when we say that, we don’t mean it like Brain.  We’re not trying to subjugate the world to our political views or our personality or military might.  We’re trying to make the entire world Catholic, to be in relationship with Jesus Christ and find salvation through Him, which is the only way anybody can be saved.  
    Now, this language fell out of favor after the Second Vatican Council.  And certainly, we have to stay away from a sense of military or forceful takeover or subjugation.  But, it should not make us uncomfortable to say that God wants the entire world to be Catholic.  We can say this because Jesus Christ founded one Church, one community of believers who follow Him and live according to the way of life that truly gives us happiness because it is the way God created the world and us to best live.
    But this approach didn’t come out of nowhere.  This idea starts in the Garden of Eden.  God created humanity, Adam and Eve, to be in union with Him, and be His people.  And while Adam and Eve both sinned and ruptured our union with God, God sought to return us to Him.  And to do this, He chose a particular people, the Jewish people, to reclaim the world for Himself, as the world had often chosen to go astray and make other things gods and worship them, and then change the way God wanted us to interact with each other.  
    God reclaiming the world started small, with families.  Noah and his family; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s twelve sons.  But God didn’t just choose these families so that the family reunion could be a little larger.  He chose them to bring others into relationship with God.  And eventually those families wanted an earthly king, first Saul and then David.  And God chooses David to spread the effects of Israel and to eliminate the enemies of Israel, who are false gods, demons, who fight against God.  And David finds a lot of success, expanding the kingdom of Israel to its largest borders in its history.  But, David’s son, Solomon, starts letting the enemies behind the gates because he takes foreign wives for himself.  The influence of the foreign gods, foreign ways of life, most often represented by foreign worship, starts to creep into God’s family.  And people become more disconnected from God, which is why the prophets constantly call back God’s people to God.  
    And this is where our first reading from Isaiah comes in.  Isaiah reminds the people that God didn’t call Israel simply for its own sake.  God called Israel to be a witness of holiness that would not only keep God’s people happy as God created them, but would also draw non-Jews, Gentiles, to Himself so that they, too, could find holiness and happiness, which only comes from God since He created us for Himself.  And just like foreign, sinful influence found itself expressed through wrong worship, so right relationship with God would find expression through right worship, through all peoples worshipping God in His home on earth, the Temple. 
    And through Christ, as St. Paul teaches, Jew and Gentile were united so that all people could find happiness in God and worship God as He wanted, which really means allowing God to determine how we live our lives.  Through Christ, all people could be reconciled, or be in right relationship, with God, though God never abandons his special call to Israel.  
    If Christ has revealed the truth about how we are to live and how He wants to be worshipped; and if Christ has created a Church that accurately conveys how to live and how to worship; and if that Church subsists in the Catholic Church, then we can say, without any hubris, that God wants the entire world to be Catholic.  Not because of anything we have done, but because of what Christ has done, which opens up to us the fullness of being in relationship with God.
    Where people took things too far in the past consists in a mentality that we were the best because of what we had done, and if others wanted to be part of the best, they could lower themselves and join us.  The Pharisees had basically this same approach.  Christ, instead, taught that God wanted us to reach out to those outside–sinners, tax collectors, Gentiles–so that they, too, could be part of God’s family and find true happiness by living in the way God created us to live.  
    But God still wants all His people, all the ones He has created in His image and likeness, to live in the fullness of the truth of the world as God created it and to be truly happy.  And that’s our role: to bring others into the fullness of that relationship with God that only exists in the Catholic Church.  We’re not the best because of what we have done.  We help people be the best because we have maintained the direct connection to Christ and what He has revealed, especially through His Death and Resurrection.  
    We, like Brain, are trying to take over the world.  But, unlike Brain, we’re not doing it for our own power trip or ego, but as servants of others and in service to the truth, Who is Christ.  We’re doing it because God wants all people united in the truth and charity, which expresses itself through right worship.  

Keeping the Past in the Past

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the spring of my senior year of high school, my friend group decided to go out to breakfast after our last final exam of high school.  The exam started at 8 or so, and finished by 10.  The restaurant we decided to frequent wasn’t far from the school.  We all got in our cars and drove there individually.  For whatever reason, even though I knew where I was going, I followed another car that did not.  It was able to get over into the far right lane of a four lane, one way highway and turn into a parking lot to go back on a perpendicular street.  I, however, was in the second lane from the right, and panicked a little.  So, without much thought and without looking, I just decided to make a right turn into a parking lot from my current lane.  I heard the screeching of tires, the honking of a horn, and my adrenaline rushed through my body.  Somehow, no doubt due to my guardian angel who was working extra that morning, the car I had just cut off did not hit me, and I was able to turn back towards the restaurant and arrive safely, albeit with a heart rate that was more congruent with sprinting a 200-meter race.

    We all have things we’re not proud of in our past, things that we would do differently if we could.  St. Paul was no exception.  He wrote to the Corinthians that he was the least of the Apostles and not even worthy to be called an Apostle because, before his conversion, he persecuted God’s holy Church.  If we think back, the Acts of the Apostles makes very clear that Saul of Tarsus–who started going by Paul after his conversion, especially with his work among the Greeks, since Saul was a very Jewish name and Paul was more Gentile–consented to the stoning of St. Stephen, and had been arresting Jews for proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ.  He was, to use a mafia term, the enforcer for the Pharisees, and was a Pharisee himself.
    But, St. Paul, whom St. Thomas Aquinas does and we can refer to as the Apostle, continued: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”  Paul did not ignore his past, but neither did he let it define his present.  He acknowledged his past, but recognized that the grace of God had changed him, and he was no longer that man from his past.
    We all have a past.  Maybe it’s bad driving, like in my example from the beginning of this homily.  Maybe it’s something not that bad.  Maybe it’s something far worse.  We cannot change the past, but we shouldn’t live in the past, either.  God does not want us to allow our past sins to control our present and our future.  If we repent from them and convert, that is, turn towards God, our past can remain and education for us, rather than a life-sentence of guilt.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate Hearing

    Of course, the first step is acknowledging our past sins.  Forgiveness and conversion only happen when we acknowledge that we have done wrong.  If we pretend like we’re perfect, God’s mercy finds no room in us, and so it cannot change us.  St. Paul, when writing to the people of Corinth didn’t say, “On the advice of council, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” like Dr. Fauci did at the Senate Hearing on 29 July.  Paul acknowledged that he persecuted God’s Church, God’s people, with whom God so identifies that Christ said to him on the road to Damascus, “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”  But Paul didn’t stay in his past.  He then also acknowledged that God’s grace had done a mighty work, which allowed Paul to preach the Gospel.
    So if we have acknowledged our sins and confessed them, we don’t forget them, but we don’t live in them, either.  The enemy often likes to remind us of our past sins.  But if our sins our forgiven, then in God’s eyes, the sins themselves are gone.  Might there be consequences for those sins that come with us into the present?  Sure.  But the sins are gone.  As King David sang in Psalm 102: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”  If we have made a good confession, God’s not coming back to us to remind us of all the bad things we have done.  We will have to deal with the temporal effects due to sin, either on this earth (which the saints say is much preferred and much easier) or in Purgatory (which is still not bad, because Purgatory always leads to heaven).  But the sins themselves are gone. 
    We, though, have to accept that forgiveness.  Some scholars say that the sin against the Holy Spirit is not being willing to accept God’s forgiveness, which is why it is the only unforgivable sin.  If we don’t accept God’s mercy, then God won’t force it on us, which leaves us in sin, rather than restoring us to grace, as God desires.  
    We cannot erase our past, much as we would like to at times.  We should learn from our past, especially when we have sinned and done wrong.  But we should not drag our past into the present, at least not when we’ve given those sins to God through sacramental confession.  That is a yoke too heavy to carry, a yoke the Lord does not desire for us.  He desires us to carry His yoke, which is mercy, a burden truly light and easy.  Open yourselves up to God’s mercy and live in the freedom of those forgiven by God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Keeping our Eyes Fixed on Jesus

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    What is it about car accidents, or even simply a car stopped by the police, that makes us want to stare at it?  Whether I’m driving my own car, or doing a ride along, whenever a car is stopped on the side of the road, for whatever reason, people can’t help but stare.  It’s even so ubiquitous we have a term for it: rubbernecking.  

    While staring at a traffic stop or car accident is not a good thing to do, we should keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.  When we do, anything good is possible.  Take Peter today: at the Lord’s command and keeping his eyes fixed on Jesus, Peter walks on water.  But as soon as he takes his eyes off of Jesus and notices the storms around him, he starts to sink.
    The life of holiness consists in keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus.  Obviously I don’t mean our physical eyes, but I do mean our attention.  Most of us are good at multitasking.  Moms, in particular, seem to have a charism for it.  Or there are the funny videos of dads at a baseball game somehow holding on to their young child and a beer, and yet catching a pop fly or a foul ball.  And certainly when we keep our eyes on Jesus, we will also have to be going through life at the same time.  But it’s a matter of keeping the Lord involved in everything we do, not setting Him off to the side and taking our eyes off of Him.  
    When I look at someone, and not just look in their direction or have that thousand-yard stare where you’re really looking past someone, they become part of what I do.  So, if I look at Jesus, if I keep my mind on Him as I’m watching the kids, going to work, doing the laundry, cooking dinner, sitting on a beach on a hot, Michigan summer day, or whatever I’m doing, I’m keeping Jesus in mind and I’m more likely to do things now as He would do them, or letting Christ live in me as St. Paul the Apostle says.
    However, if I, like Peter, take my eyes off of Jesus; if I start to pay more attention to the world and its troubles, I give up that attention on Christ, and start to live according to my own rules or desires, which do not always match those of Christ.  That’s where we fall into sin.  While there are numerous definitions of sin, one good one that I recently heard is: sinning is taking our eyes off Jesus.  When we take our eyes off the road, either through texting while driving, or feeling drowsy, or trying to reach back to get something or to tell the kids to stop fighting with each other, we run the risk of getting hurt.  The same is true for taking our eyes off of Jesus.  
    This doesn’t mean that the storms around us stop if we keep our eyes on Jesus.  Christ bade Peter walk on water in the midst of the storms.  Our patron, St. Matthew, writes, “But when [Peter] saw how strong the wind was he became frightened.”  Christ didn’t change the circumstances to make it easier for Peter to walk on water, He empowered Peter in the midst of the storms to do what seemed impossible.  So for us, focusing on Christ doesn’t mean that all temptations go away.  We praise those who do not give in to temptations, not those who never undergo temptations, just like we praise the courage of those who have been in scary situations but still overcome their fears, not the person who fears nothing.
    God calls us to be attentive to Him, because He is present in every present moment of our lives.  No matter where we are, God is there.  But sometimes He’s not where we expect Him to be, just like, for Elijah, God wasn’t in the strong and heavy wind, the earthquake, or the fire.  He was in the tiny whisper.  So when you’re caring for your kids at home; or at work, however energizing or boring it might be; or driving to a practice; or on a vacation in Pure Michigan; God is there.  We just have to pay attention to Him, rather than giving our attention only to so many other things.
    One way to do this is the Jesus prayer.  The Jesus prayer is: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  In the eastern Christian tradition, both Catholic and Orthodox, you can practice saying the first half when you breathe in, and the second half when you breathe out.  And if you practice it enough, you end up saying it throughout the day.  Or maybe just the short phrase: “Jesus, I love you,” which were Pope Benedict’s last words before he died.  Or maybe, like St. Peter, we learn to say, “Lord, save me!”  
    But notice what comes next.  Jesus immediately reaches out His hand.  When we turn to the Lord, the Lord has already been waiting for us, and immediately reaches out to help us.  Without a pause or any delay, God is there to help us.
    So stop rubbernecking, but start putting your attention on Jesus throughout the day.  Say short prayers throughout the day to keep your focus on Jesus.  Keep Jesus before you eyes as much as you can each day.  He won’t let you drown, even when that seems to be what would happen, and you may even find yourself seemingly walking on water.

Gifts From God

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost 
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  On 13 July 2012, while running for re-election in 2012, President Barack Obama said in Roanoke, Virginia, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.”  The former president and I probably disagree on more things than we agree on, and I know that many (including a restaurant owner who is a friend of mine) saw this as an attack on entrepreneurs.  But there’s a way to read this phrase that is helpful for us as Catholics (which may be one of the very few helps Catholics received from the Obama administration).
    We all have gifts and talents.  The Holy Spirit has given us certain things that we can do that others cannot.  But God gave them as gifts; we didn’t create these abilities on our own.  Yes, personal effort was required in developing our gifts, but it’s not as if we created ourselves.  The Holy Spirit, God, gave gifts to us for the building up of the Kingdom of God.  St. Paul the Apostles lists gifts like wisdom, knowledge, healing, miracle-working, prophecy, discernment of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.  But they all, and so many other gifts, come from the Holy Spirit.  

    But our tendency is to be like the Pharisee and presume that all the good things we do come from ourselves.  The Pharisee did good things: he fasted twice per week, gave tithes, did not extort people, rendered to people what they deserved, and keep his libido in check.  But he told God in a way that he was responsible for those good things.  Pride ruined all the good things the Pharisee was doing, whereas humility made up for the bad things the tax collector or publican did.
    In the spiritual life, it’s so easy to feel like we’re the ones doing all the work.  And we do have to put in work.  The Apostle says, “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”  Pelagius, a 5th-century British monk, probably used that phrase to defend his belief that we alone choose to be holy or to be sinful, which led to him to deny original sin.  This was condemned as the heresy Pelagianism.  Most heresies don’t go away for too long; they simply go dormant for a while.  And Pelagianism, even with the impact of our Protestant brothers and sisters who talk about salvation through faith alone (though faith alone is not, ironically, in the Bible), is still alive and well.  We like to tout how we do things on our own, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and achieve the American dream by our blood, sweat, and tears.  But when it comes to our spiritual life, any good we do comes only from God.  It is, as the Collect for the First Sunday after Pentecost prays: 
 

O God, the strength of all who hope in Thee, 
kindly be present to our invocations; 
and, because our mortal weakness can do nothing without Thee, 
bestow the help of Thy grace: 
that in carrying out Thy commandments, 
we may be pleasing to Thee in will and action.

St. Augustine, much beloved here at St. Matthew because of the Augustinians who served here, fought hard to combat Pelagianism, which was formally condemned by the Council of Carthage, a local council, in AD 418, and yet Pelagianism continues like a cockroach which never seems to die, but only scurries away.
    So how do we live in a non-Pelagian way?  Does this mean that our good works mean nothing?  Our good works mean something, but only because of God’s generosity.  We call this congruent merit, when we do something with God’s grace that God has promised to reward.  The reward surpasses the work we do, but because God has said that if we do this work, we shall be rewarded, we can expect it.  But again, notice that this is only due to God’s generosity, or a gratuitous gift.  Only Christ can truly merit anything as a matter of strict justice (which we call condign merit), because all of His works, in every aspect, are good.  
    One of the traps, even of those who find the freedom of virtue, is to attribute to ourselves the goodness of the act, which usually means we fall into sin shortly thereafter.  God can allow us to experience the weakness of our nature when not supported first by His grace to show us how little we can do.
    And yet even the little we can do, and even though it has to have God as its source, God desires.  God justified the tax collector who could not brag about anything he had done, but only asked for God’s mercy.  The tax collector acknowledged how much in need he was, which opened up the possibility for God’s grace to do its work.  So in our own lives, as we come before God, it’s good to acknowledge that we cannot do good on our own, but need God both to inspire the good, strengthen our good actions, and bring them to a good completion in Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Much like Schrödinger’s cat, we both didn’t build it (because every good thing we can do comes from God) and we did build it (because we do have to cooperate with God’s grace as we choose good actions).  
    Nothing good happens without God.  When we think that we are so good and do so many good things, we forget that it is the Holy Spirit who gives us every good gift and talent, and we fall into the trap of the Pharisee who thinks he can justify or save himself.  Instead, even while we seek to cooperate with God’s grace through good deeds, we should be like the tax collector and realize that we need God’s mercy because we so easily choose lesser goods and choose not to use the gifts the Holy Spirit has given us, who with the Father and the Son is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.  

All Are Welcome, but We Need to Prepare

Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    How wonderful to receive an invitation!  I don’t mean the incessant invitations to subscribe to this, or buy that which we seem to receive every day through email or text.   I mean invitations to some celebration or to become a part of a group or club that means something.  Invitations make one feel desired, appreciated, even treasured.  Especially when not everyone can join, due to cost or space, invitations have a way of stroking the ego in a healthy way.

    And so our Liturgy of the Word, the first main part of our Mass today, begins with an invitation.  “All you who are thirsty, come to the water!  You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; Come, without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk!”  And when paired with our Gospel and the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, we certainly understand this banquet to point towards our Eucharistic celebration, the Mass.  I’ve mentioned before the beautiful mosaic at Tabgha at the place of the miracle in the Gospel, where there's a chapel, and underneath the altar is a mosaic with two fish and four loaves, signifying that the fifth loaf is the one on the altar, and that the miracle points to the Eucharist.
    What we see in both the prophecy from Isaiah and the miracle that we hear from Matthew, but which is in all four Gospels, is that everyone is welcome.  God invites everyone to come to him to receive proper drink and food.  And Christ feels compassion for the crowd of 5,000 people who have nowhere to go without being quite hungry.  They were certainly all disciples, as they stopped to listen to Him for an entire day, but we don’t get a sense that they were equally knowledgeable of Christ, or faithful to Christ.  Some may have simply been curious and become quite intrigued with the words Christ spoke.  Others may have been dragged there by friends and simply didn’t want to be rude and return home without the host who brought them.  So we see a certain universal call, a call to all people, to Christ’s banquet where He feeds them.
    However, Isaiah’s prophecy and the feeding of the 5,000 are not the Mass, even though they point to it.  We don’t use bread and wine and milk in the Mass.  Nor do we use bread and fish.  Milk doesn’t really agree with my digestion (though I’ll suffer through it for ice cream, pizza, and lasagna), so I’m glad we don’t use milk.  And imagine trying to keep fish and distribute it at Mass: we’d have to use incense just to mask the smell of aging fish!
    So even within the universal call to the banquet of Christ that we hear issued, which, in some sense, is true of the Mass, we also have restrictions on who partakes of the banquet.  In another parable, Christ speaks about how he invites the unlikely to the wedding banquet after the original invitees demure and do not come, but how the master expects the guests to come to the banquet in proper clothing.  So a universal invitation and guidance on how we carry ourselves in responding to that invitation is not foreign to the Gospel.  Imagine thinking that because your friends invited you to their wedding, you could show up in your pjs, because that made you feel the most comfortable.  Your friends may not mention your attire to your face, but I assure you everyone would be talking about it.
    So how do we come to this Eucharistic banquet to which we were invited?  I know it was vogue to say that clothing doesn’t matter when you come to Mass, but that’s simply not true.  I’m not saying everyone has to be in suit and tie or best dress, but there’s a reason why we call certain attire “Sunday best.”  Your Sunday best may be different than others, but do we give our best and show that this banquet means something to us, at least as best as we can muster as a college student, or parents with an infant, or established adults, or senior citizens?  Again, as long as we can say we’re giving our best to God, that’s what counts, not as much of what type of clothing we wear (though, if you’re over the age of 5, pjs should never be considered one’s best).
    Another consideration on the invitation to all is what we believe.  St. Justin Martyr, writing in the mid-second century, says that only those who have been baptized and believe in what the Church teaches receive the Eucharist.  That’s why we generally don’t have intercommunion, even for baptized non-Catholics, because they don’t believe in the fullness of what the Catholic Church teaches.
    Likewise, in order to receive the full graces of the banquet, we should prepare for receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  If we are aware of grave sins, like skipping Mass, using God’s Name in vain, improper use of our sexual faculties, etc., we need to go to confession first.  If we receive Holy Communion in a state of grave sin, we add the sin of a sacrilegious communion to our previous list and damage further our relationship with Christ.  We fast from all food and drink except water and medicine for one hour before receiving Holy Communion in order to prepare even our bodies, which are united with our souls, to receive Christ into us.  We might even, on Saturday or earlier in the week, read the Sunday readings ahead of time so that we’re more ready to hear them proclaimed at Mass, or if our kids are distracting us, as kids do, we still know what God is saying through the Scriptures for that day.  This doesn’t mean God doesn’t want you to come at all to His banquet, but that while attendance is open to all, the full participation in the banquet does require certain actions and forbids others.
    There is room for everyone in God’s kingdom and at the wedding feast of the Lamb.  God invites each of us to union with Him and attendance at His banquet because of His great love for all of us.  But He expects that we will prepare ourselves for the banquet, because it is such a joyous occasion, just like we prepare ourselves for a wedding.  Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb!

Five-Letter Word

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of my morning routines is to play Wordle, an online game in which you have 6 chances to guess a five-letter word, based upon being shown if the individual letters of words are in the correct space, or maybe belong in a different space.  For example, my starter word is always “crate,” which will tell me if there are any cs, rs, as, ts, or es in the word, and if those letters are in the right place for the mystery word of the day.  Recently, the word was “pshaw,” which is a real word (and which was very difficult to guess).  The word “pshaw” expresses contempt, impatience, or disgust, and has been used in English since the early 1600s, even if we don’t really use it much today.
    Another word we don’t use very much, except when it comes to the commandments, is another five-letter word St. Paul used today at the beginning of the epistle: covet.  The Apostle to the Gentiles encourages us not to covet evil things.  Probably the other major context of covet is the ninth and tenth commandments, forbidding us from coveting our neighbor’s wife (the ninth commandment) and our neighbor’s goods (the tenth commandment).  But what does it mean to covet?
    The Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, tells us that to covet is to immoderately love the possession of someone or something.  Our English word come from the Latin, cúpere, which means to desire.  Obviously we all desire things.  When I haven’t eaten in a while, I desire food.  When I am too hot I desire air conditioning.  So the key to distinguishing coveting from simple desiring is the immoderate desire or love of something, or a desire for something not in accord with reason.  I might want some food when I’m hungry, but I can covet food by wanting more food than I need, or a certain quality of food that goes beyond reason.  I might desire air conditioning when I’m not, but I can covet air conditioning by wanting it to be 60 degrees inside, or to spend money I don’t have on installing a new air conditioner.  
    The ninth and tenth commandments help us to govern the good things we want, because sometimes we want them when we don’t need them.  We’ve all had moments where we said we needed something that we truly only wanted.  Or we’ve said aloud or in our head, “Give me a break!” when a child claims to need something that is altogether unnecessary.  But we all have little children inside of us claiming to need things that we don’t truly need.  When it comes to the ninth commandment, it’s the desire for physical affection.  When it comes to the tenth commandment, it’s the desire for some material thing.  
    I would also say that coveting goes beyond the simple, “That would be nice to have.”  I might see a nice car and admire it, and say to myself, ‘Oh, that would be cool to own that car,’ without actually coveting it.  Or, especially while one vacation, you might notice an attractive person of the opposite sex and recognize objective beauty.  But coveting goes beyond the first glance and then turns to the desire to possess the person or object observed.  It really turns a person into an object, and the object into a god, so that we put other things in the first place that only God is supposed to occupy.  
    The prohibition against coveting does not mean that you can’t want better for yourself.  We should always strive to do better than our parents.  But what are the intentions of my heart?  Why do I want what I want?  A trooper can say, “I want overtime,” but might want it because he simply wants more money to buy more things (that would be coveting), or because he wants to provide for his family and maybe get them some special food for a birthday or other celebration.  
    Coveting is not restricted to those who don’t have much.  A rich person can covet things, even if she has a large house, the best car, the most expensive jewelry, etc.  On the other hand, a rich person might have a lot, but not covet her possessions, and instead exercise generosity and detachment from her material wealth.  A poor person might covet more goods, beyond what he needs for survival and basic thriving, or a poor person might be content even with the little he has.
    Likewise, when it comes to coveting people, it’s not just for single people.  A married person can covet a woman other than his wife, or might even covet his wife.  If the husband treats his wife simply as an outlet for his lust, he could even fall into the sin of coveting her.  On the other hand he might recognize her beauty, but not to possess, but to serve and lay down his life, and express that love in the marital act when she is open to expressing that love in a full gift of herself.  Or a single woman might covet a strong, handsome man and gawk at him and use him to feel some kind of way, or she might simply notice that he has well-defined muscles and good proportion of body, but not dwell on him and think lustful thoughts.  The issue is not what one has or does not have; or whether one is single or married.  The issue is whether we are the masters of our desires, or if they master us.  
    While we don’t use the word covet much anymore, it is no less prevalent and no less a temptation.  But God has given us the grace not to desire immoderately, but to govern our desires so that we only act on desires which are in accord with Divine Law or reason.  May we call upon God to cleanse the temples of our hearts of any inordinate desires that exist there, so that our souls may not be a den of thieves, but a house of prayer for the worship of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Include God in the Little Things

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    What do our hearts desire most?  Of course, sitting here, we probably would naturally say God.  But if we give time to that which is most important, how much time do we spend thinking about God?  I’m willing to guess that in an average weekday, your mind might focus on: what do I have going on today?; what am I going to make or have for lunch or dinner?; where do the kids need to be?; how much is gas?; what did President Trump say or tweet now?; when will the weekend be here?; does the grass need mowing?; am I going to get the parasite if I eat at Taco Bell?; why does Canada let it get so smoky?  I could go on.  But in any of those, were our thoughts directed toward God or not?  How much time did we spend thinking about God?  What does that say about God’s place in our life?
    All of those things are normal things to think about.  In some cases, you have a responsibility to think about those things.  You can’t ignore the need to feed your family and use an excuse that you were spending the day in prayer.  You can’t tell your bank that you didn’t have time to pay the mortgage because you were too busy giving God the time He should have.  So how do we both take care of our responsibilities and live in a world in which we have to make plans, but also make God the most important thing in our life: the treasure in the field or the pearls of great price?
    We make God the most important by getting in the habit of including God in all of those questions and considerations that happen in our daily life.  I’m not saying that we need to wait to hear a message from the heavens on what we should eat, but include God in the consideration: “God, what would be a good thing to have tonight for dinner?”  Or, “God, please help me remember all the practices I have to get my kids to and not forget them when practices end.”  Or, “God, I’ve got a lot going on today and this week.  Please help me to be patient when I am stressed out, and give me enough time to care for my family and my home.”  Or even, “God, please get me to the weekend before I snap!”  
    It seems like such a simple thing, but it’s a great way to show the importance that we give to God and include Him in our life.  God doesn’t feel needy for our friendship.  He is the source of all wisdom and wants to share that wisdom with us, as he promised Solomon.  God’s desire for us to include Him stems from His knowledge of how we operate the best and how we can not just survive by thrive and be saints.  Including God shows Him how much we want Him to be a part of our lives.
    I often use marriage as an analogy, and that works well here, too.  Imagine you never talk to your spouse about what you will cook for dinner, or when you will mow the lawn, or who will get the kids to and from practice, or how work went, or all those other daily things of life.  Your marriage probably wouldn’t be so great.  If your spouse only knows about the major things going on in life, but you tell the smaller things to someone else, you have inserted another person into your relationship who holds more importance to you than your spouse.  It doesn’t mean you can’t share that same information with anyone else, but there should be a priority in who knows what happens in your life, and your spouse shouldn’t be the last to know.
    [My dear parents, as you have Jack baptized today, you are committing to helping him develop his relationship with God.  In baptism, he will become a child of God, in addition to being your child.  And your role will be to help him to know how to love God and keep God as the most important part of his life.  This means teaching him to pray, that is, to speak to and listen to God on a daily basis, as well as learning what we believe and how we Catholics live.  But you are not alone.  You will have the assistance of Jack’s godmother, your family and friends, and your parish community to help you.  By your life and the choices you make, you will show Jack and his siblings whether God is important, and whether we live according to His will or our own.  This also requires communication with God to make sure that you are living up to the commitment you make today through baptism.]
    We all have a lot going on.  Whether we’re a young child, an adult, or a senior citizen, life can get busy and we can face numerous questions and choices throughout our day.  Don’t answer those questions alone; don’t make choices based solely on your wisdom.  Turn to God for His guidance; ask Him even about the little things in life.  God desires your good, and will show you the best way forward.  And even if He doesn’t seem to answer every little question, He loves that you involve Him and will give you ways of knowing His will.  Train your hearts to desire God above all else.  Practice speaking and listening to Him even about the small matters of life.  If you do, you will be prepared for the kingdom of heaven and eternal happiness with God.

Sons and Brides

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Today St. Paul reminds us that we are the sons of God and joint heirs with Christ.  While we often speak about the moral life and the requirements of following Christ as His disciples, there is something that comes before morality, and if we miss this, we often see the demands of a relationship with Christ as merely laws imposed on us from without.  What comes before morality is identity.  Or, to put it another way, being precedes doing.  You have to exist before you can act, and any action you take or can take flows from what and who you are.
    Now, we might think that St. Paul should have said that we are sons and daughters of God.  Certainly in the age we live in, we can demonstrate more inclusivity and not simply reference masculine identity.  But the Apostle to the Gentiles carefully chose his words, words that God Himself inspired.  So how can we disciples, both males and females, understand what St. Paul meant when he called us all sons?  

    Our identity, ever since baptism, connects to Christ.  At Holy Baptism, we receive a new identity, and that is of Christ.  In Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit mystically joins us to the Body of Christ, so that we are members of Him.  And in that sense, all of us are sons.  Or, to put it another way, we can speak of ourselves as sons and daughters in the Son of God.  This identity cannot be overstated.  When God looks at us, He doesn’t ignore who we are.  He created us as males and females, different, and yet complimentary.  Even our bodies tell us something about ourselves that is not accidental (this is where those who promote gender dysphoria get it wrong; having a male body or a female body tells us something about ourselves, even if it doesn’t exhaust our identity).  And yet, as soon as we die with Christ in the waters of baptism, the Holy Spirit configures us to Christ so that, already and yet in potential, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, as St. Paul also says.  When God sees us He sees us as individuals, but also sees us as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, as His Beloved Son.
    And because God joins us to His Son, we can also call ourselves heirs of God “and joint heirs with Christ.”  All the riches that God has for His Son belong to us to, not by nature, but by adoption.  In human adoption, the child has no claim to anything from a parent not his own until that parent chooses the child, which opens up the claim to support from the parents to the adopted child.  So with us, as adopted sons and daughters in the Son of God, everything that God has for Christ, God offers to us as well.  As God Himself says in the second psalm: “‘You are my son; today I have begotten you.  Ask it of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and, as your possession, the ends of the earth.’”  God withholds nothings good from us, including eternal life and a seat at His right hand, provided we stay in God’s family and remain connected to Christ.  What good thing could God withhold from Christ?  He will not withhold it from us, either, because we are in His Son and part of Him through Holy Baptism.  Eternal life?  Ours.  Power?  Ours.  Grace to resist all temptations and never commit mortal sin?  Ours.  As St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 3: “all belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.”
    So often we think only of what we have to do, but we ought to first think of to whom we belong and our identity.  When I know I belong to God, Catholicism no longer consists of rules to follow from without, but a means of fully living according to how God has made me and how He has configured me to Christ, so that I can be ready to receive my full inheritance as a son of God, rather than spending it elsewhere like the prodigal son.

My sister and brother-in-law at the their wedding reception

    But, lest you ladies feel like the struggle is only yours in thinking of yourselves as sons, we, all of us, are also brides.  This is where men have to struggle.  Throughout the Old and New Testament, God uses bridal imagery to describe His People.  In the Book of Hosea, Israel is compared to a wife, though an unfaithful one.  The Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah speak about God as our husband.  And the Song of Songs allegorizes the Chosen People to a bride and God as the husband.  Likewise, in the New Testament, our Lord speaks of Himself as the Bridegroom for whom the virgins must keep watch.  In St. Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians, marriage is a mystery which refers back to Christ and the Church.  And in the Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of St. John the Apostle, he describes heaven as a wedding feast of the Lamb of God, and the New Jerusalem is a bride adorned for her husband.
    Saints have long described the soul as a bride of Christ.  Not just the souls of women, but the souls of men.  Why?  Because there is meant to be a certain subordination of the wife to the husband, always out of love, and trusting in the husband laying down his life for the wife.  So we, the Church, Christ’s bride, should receive Christ’s law of love and obedience as a wife receives her husband.  That is why the Church has no authority to change the teachings of Christ, as so many of our Protestant brothers and sisters have tried to do, because we are not the masters of revelation, but simply the recipients and stewards of it.  The Church can develop those teachings and understand them more deeply through the centuries, but we cannot reject the ones we don’t like or find uncomfortable or inconvenient.  This is our challenge as men, who like to take charge and be in control: to give control over to the husband of our souls and submit to His rule, rather than to our own.
    Being precedes doing.  Before we do anything, we are sons of God and the Bride of Christ.  Starting with our identity makes actions much more intelligible.  The moral life no longer seems like barriers to our freedom, but ways to fully live out who and whose we are.  God wants to give us every good thing as our inheritance.  But to receive that great gift, we first must recognize that we are sons and daughters in the Son of God and our souls are the Bride of Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  

Zeal and Patience

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    For priests in the Diocese of Lansing, 1 July (or around there) is a special day.  It’s new pastor assignment day, meaning that priests who are moving into a new parish (whether as the first pastor assignment or from a transfer of assignments) usually start on or around that day.  As with any change, it can be stressful, both on the priest and on the people. What is the priest like?  What are the people like?  What is the staff like?  Social media has added a new dimension to the whole process, as future parishioners can “Facebook stalk” their new priest and see what they can learn from his pictures and posts.

After the Easter Vigil at my first pastorate in Adrian

    One of the many questions when a parish receives a new priest is how much he will change.  From a priest’s perspective, the question is how much he feels he needs to change, and when to make those changes.  From the people’s perspective, the question is basically the same, but perhaps with a bit more trepidation.  And different priests will give different advice on how fast a new priest should move on changes.  On the one hand, some priests say don’t change anything for the first year.  On the other hand, people often are prepared for some things to change when getting a new priest, so it may be easier to make changes right at the beginning, rather than waiting to change.  And, of course, it depends on what the new priest wants to change, and if it is a sacred cow to parishioners.
    Stereotypically, young priests in their new pastorate want to change a lot, and they often want to move quickly.  They may have good reasons and good intentions.  But, having been a pastor a few times, my advice is to move slowly on changing things that can wait, and only change things quickly that are of the utmost importance, though I will admit I’m not sure I’ve always followed my own advice in the past.  And we hear that general theme of patience in the Gospel today, though not precisely aimed at new pastors.  
    Christ again and again urges patience.  Whether it’s weeds growing among the wheat, or the growth of the mustard seed, or the rising of dough from yeast, all these require patience.  The master allows the weeds to grow so as not to harm the wheat.  The mustard seed starts small but grows large, as long as one has patience to let it grow.  The yeast mixed in the dough rises, but you have to wait over night or throughout the day.  As I have become known as the “Bourbon Priest,” I will admit that I associate yeast more with distilling than baking, but that’s just me.
    Impatience leads to problems.  I’m a fan of pita bread, but if you want sourdough bread, you can’t rush things without ruining the batch.  You can’t rush a tree growing.  And if you pull up the weeds too early, it might destroy your crop, and then you have nothing to show for all your work.  But, of course, the main point is not agriculture; it’s souls.
    Haste makes waste.  Too much zeal, especially if applied without patience, can turn people off from the Gospel.  Patience allows others to develop their faith, even if certain corrections are required from time to time.  Zeal is a good thing, as it drives us to seek the truth and help others live that truth.  But when zeal is misapplied, it can destroy progress made.  Now, perhaps we are sometimes too patient with others and give too much time, but we shouldn’t go from one extreme to the other.  Virtue stands in the middle.  Not too much, not too little.  Like Goldilocks, we need just the right amount of zeal and patience.
    And while we often think about zeal and patience with others, which is good, we should also exhibit both zeal and patience with ourselves.  Do we push ourselves to be more open to God’s grace and follow His teachings?  But do we also allow for the fact that we won’t do so perfectly?  So often we go to extremes with others but also with ourselves.  We might be overzealous and expect unrealistic change or growth in our spiritual life in a short period of time.  We have conversion of mind and commit ourselves to living in the truth, or encouraging others to live in the truth, but then when we fall short, as we often do when it comes to change and lofty goals, we crash and give up.  Or, we might be over-patient and figure that Christ is so merciful and understanding that we don’t really need to worry about the fact that we keep falling into the same sins and vices and never seem to make any progress.  In reality, Christ calls us to set lofty goals for our spiritual life, and to seek His grace to get us there, but to be patient if we don’t reach that goal perfectly.  

    [This is certainly true for you, my dear Catechumens.  You have experienced a call from Christ to follow Him.  You have recognized the parts of your life that need to change to be configured to Christ.  But perhaps you have also experienced some discouragement because you’re not there yet.  That’s ok.  Don’t slack, but don’t give up, either.  There’s a reason why we ask you to wait around a year before we baptize you.  We want you to know what you are doing, and to be able to commit to the new life of a disciple, rather than rushing in with too much zeal, and then backing out after baptism because you changed your mind or don’t feel like you can live the Gospel.  God calls you to deepen your relationship with Him, but He is patient with you as you walk away from your sinful past and walk towards holiness with God.]
    Zeal is good.  So is patience.  Both are necessary for real and long-lasting spiritual growth.  Don’t be too zealous and turn others or yourself away from slow, but real change and growth.  Don’t be too lazy and miss out on real changes and growth that will help you be a better disciple.  Be zealously patient with others and with yourself.