Truth: Proposition and Person

Fourth Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Math is not my thing.  Math is good, but it’s not something I focus on or am drawn to in my life.  There were many days in high school that I wondered whether I would ever use what I learned in Algebra I, Geometry, or Algebra II later in life.  But today, at even if just in this homily, it seems like math is once again useful.
    The math that came to mind when reading over the Gospel was the Transitive Property of Equality.  This law states that if A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, then A is equal to C.  What does that have to do with the Gospel?  Well, our Lord states that when the Spirit of truth comes, He will teach us all truth.  But the Christ Himself also says, “‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life.’”  So the Spirit of truth will lead us to truth, but Christ is truth, so the Spirit will lead us to Christ.
    Pope Francis, may he rest in peace, emphasized this point in his weekly audience in May 2013, when he said:
 

Jesus himself told his disciples: the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth”, since he himself is “the Spirit of Truth”.  We are living in an age in which people are rather sceptical [sic] of truth.  Benedict xvi [sic] has frequently spoken of relativism, that is, of the tendency to consider nothing definitive….And yet Jesus is exactly this: the Truth that, in the fullness of time, “became flesh”, and came to dwell among us so that we might know it.  The truth is not grasped as a thing, the truth is encountered.  It is not a possession, it is an encounter with a Person.

We often think of truths like we think of mathematical laws: propositions that explain reality.  But truth cannot be limited to propositions, but desires to be encountered in the Divine Person of our Lord.
    We can try to limit truth to mere propositions.  We might say: you must believe this fact; or you must live in that way.  But for Catholics, these propositions do not exist simply as Platonic ideas in a far away heaven.  For Catholics, our beliefs and our morality reveal to us who Christ is, which is important because Christ reveals who we can be to us.  Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council puts it this way: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light….Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear.”

    And the Church Fathers from the earliest times recognized this revelation of who God desires us to be so clearly.  At the end of this month, we will celebrate in this church, with our Orthodox brothers and sisters in Genesee County, the 1700th anniversary of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea.  At this first ecumenical council in the life of the Church, the 318 bishops affirmed that Christ is consubstantial with the Father (‘𝜊𝜇𝜊𝜊𝜐𝜎𝜄𝜊𝜍 is the Greek term; we say consubstantialem in Latin), rather than what the heretic Arius taught, which was that Christ was an exalted part of God’s creation, but merely a created being.  But the fathers recognized that if Christ was not co-equal God, then He could not save us.  As St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become God.”     So Christ reveals to us, in this proposition of truth, that we are those saved by God Incarnate.  We encounter the mystery of God-made-man, which allows us to understand that we are worth saving, that God would come to us and take on our human nature so that our human nature could be united to God.  While there are propositions that are true, we can more easily reject cold axioms.  But if Truth is a Person, then our connection to that axiom becomes a relationship with a brother, an opportunity to love and be loved and become the fullest version of ourselves, revealed by the one who created us.
    And Truth in flesh calls us to go deeper than merely the recitation of facts or axioms.  This becomes clearer when you think about your spouse or your best friend.  I could tell you that my best friend has brown hair, is six-foot-something tall, is muscular, works for the State Police, is married with children, likes to joke around and poke fun at me for mediocre homilies.  You might know those facts, but if you haven’t met Anthony, you wouldn’t fully appreciate who he is and how he is.  I could list all the facts in the world, but the encounter with him gives a reality that stating facts never could.  The same is truth for our faith: we could give all the facts about our Lord, but until you encounter Him, you cannot truly love Him, and only in encountering Him can that love blossom so that it gives us the fullness of joy that God desires for us.

    Yes, the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Father and the Son to the Church, leads us to understand propositions and axioms of how God made the world and how we are to live in it to find happiness.  But the Holy Spirit leads us to so much more than that!  The Holy Spirit leads us to encounter the Truth that surpasses propositions, because the Truth is not an “it” but a “He,” a Person that loves us, has shown us how to be truly happy, and that desires our love in return, Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  

Two-fold Evangelization Approach

Fifth Sunday of Easter
    How do we help others recognize the important of joining the Catholic Church and living as a disciple?  Does a secret recipe or formula exist?  What program do we need to buy?  Our readings give us a hint of how we can evangelize effectively.
    Really, it comes down to two phrases from our first reading and Gospel, with the second reading an affirmation of what we heard in the first reading.  The two approaches that God gives us through His Sacred Word today are: report what God has done; and love one another.

Statue of St. Paul from St. Peter's Basilica

    The entire Bible lays out what God has done for us, which is why we read it week after week in the Church.  We’re following the pattern set down for us in the Acts of the Apostles where Paul and Barnabas, “called the church together and reported what God had done with them.”  The story of our Church, the one founded by Jesus Christ, stretches back to Judaism and the Book of Genesis, and goes all the way through the Book of Revelation.  This inerrant, privileged communication of God demonstrates what God has done.  He rescued us from the sin and death of the fall of our first parents through the Resurrection of Jesus, and then accompanied that proclamation of new life by signs and wonders.  Whether it’s the first patriarchs from the Book of Genesis, Moses and Joshua, the Judges, the good and bad kings, or the prophets, we hear how God interacts with us and calls us to the life that brings us happiness.  We then hear the life of Christ and how God worked through the second Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity.  And then we hear how the Holy Spirit continued the work of Christ through the early Church and the activity of the Apostles Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and John.  And we close Divine Revelation in the Scriptures with the culmination of how God will make everything right through the Book of Revelation, or the Apocalypse of St. John.  
    The Bible tells a very objective side of how God has worked, but we also make up the larger story of salvation history, that did not end after the death of the last apostle.  And so, part of effective evangelization also entails communicating what God has done in our own life.  No matter who we are, God works in our day-to-day life.  He’s not the God that many of the founding fathers of our country posited, who created the world, but then stands afar off, like a distant clockmaker who put together the clock and watches it wind down.  No, He’s intimately involved in every part of our life, or wants to be, and wants to guide us to live in a way that prepares us for heaven.  
    As the Book of Revelation tells us, God dwells with us as our God, and we are His people.  He works to help us stay on the narrow path to get to the place where tears are wiped away, where death, mourning, wailing, and pain no longer exist, because He has cast away the old life of sin and death, and made all things new.
    But, being a disciple goes beyond simply telling others about God.  To live as a disciple means loving others as God has loved us.  Jesus gave us this command in the Gospel today, and connected the living of this commandment to the glorification of God.  When we love others as God loves us, we glorify God, and God is glorified in us.  
    But love is not some amorphous idea.  Love means willing the good of the other in individual circumstances.  Whether we work in the home, raising children, or work outside the home; whether we are in school or on vacation; whether we try to find the right job or enjoy retirement from our job; God calls us to will the good of the other.  This can seem vague, but think about individual choices we make: if I hit my sibling because he or she annoys me, can I really say that I am willing my sibling’s good?  If I look at another person, whether live or online, with lust and use them for my own gratification, am I really willing that person’s good?  If I drive in a way that endangers my own or another’s life, am I willing the good of my fellow drivers?  If I treat people based on what they can do for me, or how productive they are for society, am I truly willing the good of those people?  The vague becomes pretty concrete when we think about it that way.
    The early Church seemed pretty good at sharing what God had done for His People (generally) and them (individually).  They were convinced that others needed to hear the hope and joy that God does not dwell in some far-off heaven, removed from our everyday experiences, but loves us and wants us to involve Him in our day-to-day life, to increase our joys and bear our sorrows with us.  They did not treat people based upon their social status or economic bracket, but loved even those whom society had cast away or who seemed dispensable.  And in this way, whether in Judea, or Egypt, or Persia, or India, or Rome, or wherever, the Gospel spread.  
    So while there are best practices in evangelization, there is no secret recipe or formula.  There is no program that we can buy that can replace these two essential factors: sharing what God has done for us, and loving others.  Not just to grow our parish, but to help people get on the road to heaven, God calls us to these two aspects of evangelization.  Will we share the Gospel and help others get to heaven?  Will we share what God has done for us, and love them as God has loved us?

The Peace of the Risen Christ

Third Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I’m going to apologize up front here, because this will probably not be my best homily.  Between vacation (which wasn’t that restful) and trainings for the Michigan State Police I needed to attend, I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up and simply dealing with things as they pop up, like an arcade game of whack a mole.  In addition, a friend of mine who is a Trooper was shot early on Monday morning in Detroit, and I have been trying to help him and his fiancee, whose wedding I will celebrate in October, deal with his serious injury (he’s going to be fine, but he will certainly need some time before he gets back to work).
    So I’m giving this the best I have.  I haven’t had my usual times to think and pray over the readings like I normally do.  I don’t have any funny or deep connections to make at the beginning to draw you in.  I have to preach, and I’m relying on the Holy Spirit to hopefully help draw you ever more deeply into the sacred mysteries and how the Word of God applies to our daily lives (the Holy Spirit is always the one who gives any good message, I just feel like I usually have more time and energy to cooperate with Him than I have had this week).
    The Catholic life is always simply giving our best and allowing God to work out what has to happen.  We don’t see Christ in the Body in the same way that the Apostles did.  That should give us a certain sadness.  We fight through struggles; we can seem overwhelmed by our family situations, by work, by the fears of the world which seeks to silence the Gospel and which so often drives toward violence and division.  Sometimes all of this weighs heavy on our heart.  We are like our Lord described, a woman in labor, who struggles through intense pain, giving all she has.  

    In the midst of this; in the midst of the chaos and busyness of my own life and the reality that I cannot be everywhere to help everyone, nor can I be all things to all people, the first words of Pope Leo XIV rang in my ears: “Peace be with you.”  He continued, “this was the first greeting of the risen Christ, the good shepherd who gave His life for the flock of God.”  
    And this is the only greeting I can share with you today.  The Risen Christ gives you His peace.  He assures as, us His Vicar, the Supreme Pontiff, assured us, “evil will not prevail.”  You are struggling.  You are fighting for truth.  You are working hard to protect and serve your family, your community, your parish, your country.  Sometimes things go well, but so often things break down or go contrary to what you think is best.  Christ did not promise us a world without sorrow, without struggle.  Indeed, He promised us we would have it.  But He also promised that He would see us again and our hearts would rejoice in seeing Him again.  And He promised that the joy of seeing Him again would be a joy no one could take from us.
    The peace and joy that Christ desires to give us can only come when we make room for Him.  When we try to do everything ourselves, without His grace, it all collapses like a house of cards.  We cannot have the peace and joy of Christ if we do not make room in our hearts for Christ Himself.  Sometimes we act like atheists, who do not believe in God and so do not turn to God for help in the midst of our struggles.  But God does not want us to struggle alone.  He wants us to make room for Him in our hearts and in our days, even if it’s simply a few minutes or seconds here and there.  Those stolen moments while the kids nap, or during a snack break in the office, or driving somewhere in the midst of running what seems like a free Uber service, make all the difference in the world, because they invite the peace and joy of Christ back into our minds, hearts, and souls to strengthen us.

Our Lady, Queen of Peace

    And on this Mother’s Day, let us not forget to invoke our heavenly mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, in whatever struggles we may have.  She is the woman who labors in heaven for our safe deliverance to the Father’s house, who feels the pain of our sorrows and fatigue, who wraps us in her loving embrace when we feel overwhelmed, who shows us that the pains we go through, if united to Christ, can lead to a joy that words cannot fully describe.  Never be afraid to call on her when all seems lost, or like we can’t make it one more day, because she will help us to be open to receive the peace and joy that the risen Christ desires to share with us always.  I will end this homily in the same way our new Holy Father ended his first words at the loggia of St. Peter’s basilica: Hail Mary…. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Obvious to Some, Not to All

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Country star Randy Travis

    Country music is the best non-liturgical music there is.  Others may think differently, and they’re entitled to their opinions, but they’re wrong.  That’s not to say that there aren’t other good songs.  I grew up on lite rock (with bands and singers like Chicago, REO Speedwagon, Rod Stewart, Cher, etc.), and also listened to the great songs of the 50s and 60s, so I enjoy other types of music, too.  But, as a whole, country music is the best.  Now, what amazes me is that not everyone shares my opinion.  Even good people sometimes don’t appreciate fully (or at all) how wonderful country music is.  While country music is just three chords and the truth (which is part of what makes it great), others will joke that when you play a country song backwards you get your dog back, your truck back, and your wife back.      Of course, I jest…somewhat.  But sometimes things can seem so obvious to one person, but others do not appreciate the same things.  And we hear that reality in our first reading, which regards the people’s appreciation for something even greater than country music: the faith.  We skip what Paul said to the synagogue, but we get the reaction of those who heard: they start arguing with Paul and telling him that he’s wrong, all because the Gentiles, non-Jews, started to believe Paul and Barnabas and began following Christ.  
    But this makes no sense!  Paul was so learned in Judaism because he had been a Pharisee and had studied his faith deeply.  He understood how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, and could explain that to the Jews, who would understand those prophecies.  So how could they reject Paul’s preaching?
    Following Jesus is not just a matter of understanding facts.  St. James reminds us in his letter that the demons know who God is.  But they do not follow him.  They have all the facts in the world, but they do not love Him.  Catholicism is not just a matter of the head (though we certainly have things we need to believe).  Living the Catholic life means loving Jesus and conforming our lives to His.  So if we wish to be disciples, we do not only need to form our minds, but also form our hearts so that we love what God loves, and will what God wills.
    And this is where people struggle, because their hearts are not always totally given over to God, and their wills desire things on their own, contrary to what God wants.  We call this concupiscence.  We may know what is right, but because of some other factor, we reject what is right for what is convenient or less challenging.  God wants us to be His sheep, to belong to His sheepfold, but we wander away, because we would rather listen to a voice that does not lead us towards happiness, but leads us to temporary pleasure.

    Knowing the disconnect that can happen between the head and the heart is not only important in our own lives and helping us to follow Christ, but also when we seek to share the Gospel, like Sts. Paul and Barnabas did.  We might be able to give people facts about Jesus, but can we help them love Him?  Cardinal Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, recalled a time when he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.  His Jewish classmates would ask him questions about the faith and he would respond, but without much success.  He said, “I answered as the catechism answers and I realized from her face that she had not understood anything.  I was unable to make myself understood. It took some time for me to understand that the Resurrection is not explained.”  He wrote that what makes the difference is helping people understand that “there is nothing better in life than to encounter Jesus Christ.”  Again, that goes beyond just head knowledge, and goes to the heart, to loving Christ.
    If, in times past, we erred on the side of the head, that we know what God teaches us, today we err on the side of the heart, which then seems to ignore sinful activity because a person is good in other areas.  In reality, we need to affirm both head and heart.  Simply hitting others over the head with the teachings of Christ often does not work, but neither is it helpful to ignore the teachings of Christ so that we pretend what is evil is, in fact, good.  Of course our actions, living the connection of head and heart out, needs the virtue of prudence and has to be motivated by true love for the other person and their eternal salvation.
    What can seem obvious to some is not obvious to all.  We should always be looking for new ways to share the Gospel, and finding ways to make the proclamation more effective.  This is the heart of the New Evangelization: the teachings of the Church are the same, but we find new ways to proclaim them in convincing ways to new generations of people who have new struggles and new needs.  We connect head and heart in sharing the Good News about Jesus and His teachings.  May the Holy Spirit fill us with wisdom, courage, and prudence to share the joy of the Resurrection, and all that Christ has revealed to us as necessary for salvation.  

A Tradition Unlike Any Other

Third Sunday of Easter

    A few weeks back, during a few, rare downtimes on Palm Sunday weekend, I was able to tune in to the Masters Tournament at Augusta National coverage on TV.  I don’t golf, but there is something about the Masters which draws even non-golfers in.  While I was primarily rooting for Jordan Spieth, who ended up with a decent set of scores, I was also very happy to see Rory McElroy not only win his first green jacket, but also complete the career Grand Slam of winning all four major championships: the PGA Championship, US Open, Open Championship, and the Masters.  There’s something about the Masters that signals spring is finally here.  It’s not just the game itself; it goes beyond a simple few days in Georgia.
    The same could be said for our Gospel passage today.  But I want to focus more on the second part of the Gospel passage, Peter’s interaction with Jesus, which also goes beyond a simple apologetic conversation, though it is that.  Part of the beyond is Jesus again supporting Peter’s special role as pope and head of the Apostolic College, the group of apostles.  But it also demonstrates for us what confession is mean to be like.
    The Gospel writers are clear that Peter denied Jesus on Holy Thursday evening and into Good Friday.  They are clear that he wasn’t at the cross, but that, once the cock crowed after Peter had denied Christ, he went away weeping, knowing that he had betrayed the Lord.  But we never hear anything else, until this passage, about the reconciliation.  Peter had been going all this time after seeing the Risen Christ on Easter Sunday without dealing with his sin.  But now the Lord invites Him to reconcile.
    How many times do we carry sins with us, perhaps even avoiding confession because we are ashamed?  We, in our own way, have denied and betrayed the Lord.  And while we have later seen His goodness and His new life, we’re afraid to confront our sin.  But if we don’t reconcile, we can’t receive healing.  And if the wound is mortal, deadly, then we could perish forever.
    So the Lord invites us to speak with Him in confession, and the priest acts in His name, in persona Christi capitis, in the person of Christ the Head, we say in theological language.  And He asks us, “‘do you love me more than these?’”  Now, in the Gospel, perhaps Jesus meant more than the other apostles, or more than fishing.  But with us, the Lord asks us if we love Him more than we love our sins.  The act of confessing makes us confront what or who we love more.  
    In the Greek (and Venerable Fulton Sheen makes a whole homily about this), the type of love Jesus asks Peter is not the type of love that Peter responds to Jesus.  Jesus asks, <<𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝛼𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or, “Do you love me with the love of God?”  Peter responds, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜔 𝜎𝜀>> or “I love you with brotherly love.”  The second time Jesus asks the same question, and Peter responds the same way.  But the third time, Jesus asks, <<𝜙𝜄𝜆𝜀𝜄𝜍 𝜇𝜀;>> or “Do you love me with brotherly love?”  Hence, Peter gets upset that Jesus asked, not only a third time, but changed the type of love (though that was the love Peter could muster in response).  But he still responds in the same way.  
    Jesus desires us to have 𝛼𝛾𝛼𝜋𝜀, or caritas, or selfless, Godlike love.  But He knows we are weak, and He accepts that we can’t always affirm that.  So he takes what we can give.  When we sin, especially mortal sins, we should have perfect contrition: the sorrow that comes, “not because of the loss of heaven or the pains of hell, but most of all because they have offended thee, my God.”  Still, through the sacrament, God raises our imperfect contrition, the fear of punishment, and makes it perfect by His grace so that we can be forgiven.  

    Through the Sacrament of Penance, which we often call confession, God reconciles us to Himself, even when we’re not fully ready to be reconciled.  We need to be sorry in some sense, confess our mortal sins in kind and number, have a firm purpose to not commit sin again, and be ready to accept penance, but God knows that sometimes we cannot honestly say that we love Him the way He loves us.  Still, He doesn’t want anything to stand in the way of His relationship with us, so He forgives us.  He asks us to love Him and let that love be manifest in our actions.
    The Gospels tell us what Jesus truly did and taught for eternal salvation, as Dei Verbum, the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the Second Vatican Council taught.  But the Gospels go beyond the telling of true stories.  They also help us continue our life in Christ.  May our hearing and reading of the exchange between Jesus and Peter draw us closer to our Lord as we confess our sins, receive forgiveness and healing, and help us to live with the mission Christ gave us: to be saints.