For the Right Reasons

 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    When I started working out over a year ago, I did so at the suggestion of a friend, who encouraged me to lift weights in order to be healthier.  Along the way, around 9 months in, I was getting pretty frustrated because, while I had lost some weight, especially around my waist, I didn’t seem to be gaining muscle mass.  I had worked out for 9 months, and I didn’t have a chiseled body!  When I complained about this to my friend, he told me that lifting weights and exercising is a good unto itself, and shouldn’t be done just to make one look more toned.  I was doing all the right things, but I had started doing them for the wrong reasons.
    We hear this list in our first reading today about the things God wants us to do: feed the hungry; shelter the oppressed and homeless; clothe the naked; remove oppression, false accusation, and malicious speech.  And this seems to be backed up in our Gospel when Jesus tells us to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  So we’ve got our list of things to do.  But, you can do all those things even if you’re not Catholic, even if you’re not Christian.  And I’m sure that there are a number of people who have left the Church over the years who have heard the message preached when they were younger about all the ways that they are supposed to love their neighbor, but mistakenly thought that they didn’t have to go to Mass, or believe in the Eucharist, or go to confession, or abstain from meat on Fridays, or not live with a significant other before marriage, or anything else that goes along with being Catholic.  You can almost hear the person asking why they need to do all those other things, as long as they are doing what Isaiah said in our first reading God wanted us to do.
    That person was like me: doing the right things but for the wrong reasons.  And that person probably heard the same message I did growing up: just love your neighbor and you will be good.  Bishops, priests, catechists, and all those who taught the faith had a tendency to boil the significance of being Catholic down to being a social worker or do-gooder.  And, to be clear, we are called to do those things.  But we do them, not because we earn our salvation by doing certain things, but as a result of our relationship with Christ.  
    St. Paul said in our second reading that he resolved to know nothing while he was with the Corinthians except Jesus Christ.  For St. Paul, knowing Christ (and not just knowing facts about Him) was the most important, and he wanted to pass on the message to the people of Corinth.  Everything in Paul’s life revolved around and was a result of his relationship with Christ.  His missionary zeal came because Christ called him; his sufferings were bearable because Christ was with him; his demonstrations of the Gospel came from the Holy Spirit, who was given by Christ.  But all of it was the consequence of St. Paul’s relationship with Christ, not a replacement for it.
    Being Catholic is not about being a do-gooder, or promoting a social program, or being a philanthropist.  Being Catholic is about being in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, who saves us from sin and death, from which we cannot save ourselves.  Going to confession and Mass; abstaining from meat on Fridays; not living together before marriage; and all the moral teachings of the Church follow from being a disciple of Jesus Christ, because He has revealed to us the way to salvation and the means of true and lasting happiness.  They are not added on rules form old men who have nothing better to do with their time.  Those, and many others, are ways that we deepen our relationship with Christ and live a life like His (as St. Paul says, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”).  
    And as we become more and more like Christ, being obedient to the will of the Father, not only do we want to spend time with Him in adoration and in the Church, and mortify our bodies to help us say no to our fallen sinful nature and yes to the divine nature that God implants in us in baptism, but we also want to love the ones that Christ loves, and show that love in a variety of ways.  That love is shown by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick and imprisoned, and all the corporal works of mercy.  
    If we are truly becoming more and more like Christ, we cannot help but show that love by what we do.  Think of it like a marriage: if we truly love a spouse, then we show it.  But the things that we do are results and demonstrations of that love, not replacements for it.  A person can do all the things that a spouse would do, but if that person is not the spouse, it doesn’t have the same effect.

    Pope Benedict XVI, who should be canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church for his holiness of life, humility, and extremely insightful writings, once wrote in his Encyclical Deus caritas est, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.”  Being Catholic is first and foremost about our relationship with Christ, which moves us to do certain things and avoid others.  As Catholics we serve others, not simply as a philosophy of service, but as the consequence of knowing and loving Jesus Christ.  Let’s not just do the “right things,” but do them for the right reasons.