Senses of Scripture

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  An early Church Father from the end of the second and beginning of the third century is Origen.  When he was not yet seventeen, his father was arrested for being Catholic, and was sentenced to death.  Origen wanted to accompany his father, but his mother would not let him, and hid his clothes, so he couldn’t leave his house because of his nudity.  This is the first oddity about Origen.
    He studied the Scriptures deeply, and wrote commentaries on the Gospel of John, the Books of Genesis and Exodus, Psalms 1-25, the Book of Lamentations, Ezekiel and the Song of Songs, as well as other works on prayer.  He wrote the Hexapla, which was the first critical edition of the Old Testament, with the original Hebrew, four different Greek translations, and a Greek transliteration in different columns.  It was quite the monumental work.  While disputed by some, there is a common story that Origen read Matthew 19:12 a bit too literally.  In case that verse doesn’t immediately come to your mind, it’s where Christ says that if your eyes cause you to sin, pluck them out, for it is better to enter heaven without eyes than enter Gehenna with two eyes.  Origen’s eyes weren’t his problem, his libido was.  So he castrated himself.  He also “bishop-shopped” in order to get ordained.  So there were some issues with Origen.
    While some of his teachings (or teachings ascribed to him) were condemned after his death, he gave us the understanding of three different aspects of Biblical interpretation, a schema we still can use today: the literal sense (what does the Biblical account actually say and what happened?); the moral sense (how does this apply to my daily life?); and the spiritual sense (how does this point to Christ?).  And that is what I want to focus on in our Gospel.

    What literally happened (and yes, I’m using that word correctly), was that our Lord encountered a funeral procession in the city of Nain, saw that a boy, the only son of a widowed-mother, had died, and raised him from the dead.  I’ve been to Nain in the Holy Land and there’s a little chapel to commemorate the miracle.  I do find it interesting that we tend to forget that Christ raised other people from the dead other than Lazarus: the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain.  
    As we look to the spiritual sense, we see especially in this miracle a foreshadowing of Christ’s own Resurrection.  He was the Blessed Mother’s only son.  By tradition, Mary was a widow when Christ died for our salvation (otherwise Joseph would have also been with Christ during His ministry and especially at the foot of the cross).  The raising of this boy anticipates the Resurrection of Christ in a very direct way.
    But does this story have anything to do with us?  Can we understand this story from a moral point of view and how it affects our daily lives?  I think Origen would say that any Scripture can have a moral sense, if we reflect enough.  And in thinking about this passage, the following occurred to me.
    Sometimes we have spiritually died.  Maybe that’s from mortal sin, which takes away from us sanctifying grace, or the grace that allows us to go to heaven.  We cut ourselves off from our relationship with God.  Our Mother, who gave us spiritual birth, Holy Mother Church, mourns us with all those who are close to her.  At that point, we can do nothing else for ourselves.
    But never fear: Christ is near.  Even while we cannot do anything for ourselves, Christ comes to us to call us from death to life.  He tells Holy Mother Church that she need not weep, because He has risen from the dead and destroyed death and sin.  He has the power to raise us to life again, and tells us to get up from our sin and walk away from them.  And, because of Christ’s power, we can rise up and once more praise God.  We are given new life.
    We probably more often think of the Sacrament of Penance–Confession–as a car wash.  But properly speaking, it’s more like a resurrection, a restoring to new life of someone who was dead, specially if we have committed any mortal, or deadly, sins.  We cannot take away sin ourselves.  Even the desire to ask for forgiveness is itself a gift from God and a way that He already is raising us to new life.  Our sin saddens the family of the Church, and causes them to weep for our loss.  But in Christ, all is not lost, and we can rise again.  That is why we might think of the Sacrament of Penance like a second baptism, a new rising to life for those who are dead, not because of original sin, but because of personal sins.  St. Jerome calls it is a second plank to which we grasp on, after the shipwreck of the loss of the state of grace.  
    So see in the desire for confession Christ coming near to you and starting to raise you to new life.  Holy Mother Church desires you to be fully alive, which, as St. Irenaeus says, is also the glory of God.  Christ comes to you and calls you to stand up and walk away from sin.  May the grace and mercy of God call you to new life and the wholeness that are the gifts of the Resurrection of Christ: who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Believing and Belonging

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    All too often, we can be tempted to fall into the temptation that all that really matters is, to use a phrase, me and Jesus.  Some of my favorite country artists have songs to this effect.  Josh Turner sings, “There ain’t nothing that can’t be done by me and God. / Ain’t nobody gonna come between me and God.”  And Brad Paisley sings, “Me and Jesus got our own thing goin’ / Me and Jesus got it all worked out. / Me and Jesus got our own thing goin’/ and we don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.”  And certainly, we do need to have a personal relationship or connection with Jesus.  

    But on 21 September 2010, then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan told the sixth-annual Los Angeles Catholic Prayer Breakfast: 
 

Jesus did not ask, “Saul, why do you persecute my people?” or “Why do you persecute my church?”  Jesus asked, “Why do you persecute me?”…We are living in an era where people believe in Christ, but not in his Church.  They want the king, but not the kingdom; they want to believe without belonging; they want the faith, but not the faithful.  But for the committed Catholic, the answer to that is ‘no can do.’  Jesus and the Church are one.

In other words, we are in this together; it’s not just me and Jesus. 
    And we hear that message in our readings today.  We hear about the principle of solidarity, that we have a responsibility for each other.  Ezekiel the prophet is the “watchman for the house of Israel.”  His duty is to warn the wicked to repent, otherwise not only will they die for their sins, but he will be responsible.  If, however, the Ezekiel warns the wicked and they do not repent, they will die, but Ezekiel will save himself.
    St. Paul, too, reminds us that God commands us to love one another.  In fact, all the commandments about how we should act come down to the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.  And when we love our neighbor, we fulfill the law.
    Maybe solidarity, our share connection to each other, makes the most sense for married couples.  When you celebrated the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, you made a commitment that your life no longer only concerned you.  From that point on, your life intertwined with your spouse, first, and then your children.  Their happiness is yours; their suffering is yours; their salvation impacts your salvation.  
    But while St. Thomas Aquinas rightly teaches that our love has different levels (you have a higher responsibility to care for those closest to you than those who are not as close), we still are called to love our neighbor, even when our neighbor isn’t a spouse or family member, or even a friend.  Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his Encyclical, Sollicitudo rei socialis that solidarity is not a “feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far.  On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good.  That is to say the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”  I am my brother’s keeper, in response to Cain’s famous question.  In a less powerful way, but still truly, when he succeeds, I succeed; when he fails, I fail.  I still have primary responsibility for myself and my family, but my actions towards others impact me, whether I notice the impact or not.
    This even extends to what we can call fraternal correction, which we hear about in the Gospel today.  Our Lord doesn’t pretend that all of his disciples will always get along.  He knows that, as we’re concerned for each other because we are each other’s keeper, we will sometimes need to correct each other in order to preserve unity in the truth in the Body of Christ, the Church.  
    The key to fraternal correction is charity.  One can give correction without truly seeking the good of the other.  In fact, giving correction can easily become a power trip of me vs. you masquerading as right vs. wrong.  But when we correct others, we need to do so with preparation in prayer first, and with charity throughout the process.  Still, because we are connected, we may need to correct others and let them know if they are falling short of living the Gospel.
    Fraternal correction becomes most difficult with family.  Sometimes it may take someone outside family to do the actual correction.  But even if we can’t correct because of a lack of charity or we have a good sense that the other will not listen to us, we should pray for that person.
    The key is that we are all connected to each other, especially Catholics with each other.  In the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, we who are many are united with Christ, and therefore with each other.  We call the Eucharist Holy Communion because we have union with Christ first and then each other.  But this is only true if we believe the fullness of what Christ has taught and live in accord with how Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, teaches us.  That is why Catholics living contrary to the major teachings of the Church and non-Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion: they are not in union with us.  [Waylon, part of the great joy today in you receiving your first Holy Communion, is that you will have a new form of union with Christ, who loves you so much that He wants to be closer to you than any other person will be.  But, in order to keep that union with Christ, you will need to follow Him and make sure you keep returning to Mass each Sunday and holyday with your family.  Only when we seek to grow in friendship with Christ each week and when we live as He taught us can we truly say that we have union with Christ and receive all the graces that Christ wants to give us through this sacrament].
    Our individual relationship with Jesus is important.  But it’s not just me and Jesus (or, to be grammatically correct, Jesus and I).  If I am joined to Christ through Holy Baptism, then I am also joined to every other baptized person.  And if I am part of Christ, then I love and show concern for all those whom God loves, that is, everyone, to the extent that I am able.  If we want the king, we also have to take the kingdom; to believe, we must also belong; to have the faith, we also have to take the faithful.  Jesus and His Church are one.