Chosen

Resumed 6th Sunday after Epiphany
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the epistle today, St. Paul talks about being chosen.  Some translations use the word elect.  In any case, the meaning is the same: God has selected us.  And for what or to what end has He selected us?  For salvation.  But we need to avoid the Calvinist position of double predestination, that God has chosen who will be saved and who will be damned.  Instead, with St. Augustine of Hippo, we say that God saves us with our cooperation, though He knows from all eternity who will accept the grace of God and cooperate with Him.
    What a great mystery!  God relies on us, in a limited sense, to save us.  Of course, the means of salvation is the sacrifice of Christ, which is re-presented for us in an unbloody manner on this altar.  Still, we can choose whether or not to accept the salvation that comes from that once-for-all sacrifice, not just at the time of our baptism, but throughout our life, and, indeed, each day!  
    One of my favorite authors, Romano Guardini, wrote about this in his great work, The Lord.  While meditating on John’s account of the High Priestly Prayer at the Last Supper, Guardini writes:
 

[The Apostles] are his.  Jesus has taught them his message and the name of his Father.  He has lost none of them but the son of perdition.  Not even the implacable passages of the Epistle to the Romans speak with such harshness of the law of grace and the inviolate sovereignty of that divine will which chooses as it pleases, giving those it has selected to the Son–leaving the others so far behind that the Son does not even pray for them.  We should hear these words often, and God grant us the fear without which we shall never enjoy salvation!  The more deeply we understand them, the more unconditionally we should fling ourselves on God’s mercy.  Autonomous, he [God] can choose whom he will; there is no such thing as a “right” to be chosen, but nothing on earth should hinder me from pleading: Lord, let me be among your chosen, and my loved ones, and all mankind!  Do not add: for I have done no real wrong.  If you are tempted to, fear for your chances.  Before this tremendous mystery it matters little whether or not you have done your duty, whether you are noble or base, possess this or that intrinsically important quality.  Everyone should do what he can; every value retains its value; but in the face of this overwhelming mystery, such things are no longer decisive.  You must know only this, but as profoundly as possible: that you are a sinner and lost.  In this knowledge fling yourself on God’s heart and say: Lord, will that I be chosen; that I am among those given to your Son never to be lost–my loved ones and I and all mankind!

It was a long quote, but worth the reading, as he captures both God’s divine will and our participation.
    As Catholics, we can say that we are chosen.  But not with arrogance or as laurels upon which to rest.  Because, as Christ said in the Gospel of John, we did choose Him, but He chose us.  In one sense, we might say that because many of our parents had us baptized.  But even for those who, as young adults or adults chose to become Catholic, that choice was only possible because God gave us the grace to accept Him.  Being Catholic cannot simply be a matter of the will.  It is an openness to God’s grace which He begins in us.  
    And why did Christ choose us?  John continues relating what our Savior said, telling us that those who are chosen are selected to go and bear fruit that will remain.  We aren’t chosen for our own sake, or because we are the wisest, strongest, most attractive, or those with the best genes.  We are chosen so that the world can be converted to Christ, so that humanity can be what God wanted it to be in the Garden of Eden, and, even better, what Christ died so that humanity could be.  Our election in Christ is not so much as badge, as a catalyst that stirs us to evangelical action.  
    And, as Guardini noted, everyone should do what he can.  True, the Apostles didn’t really get this at first, but once they had been filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they realized that importance of sharing what Christ had done for them.  They received the courage from the Holy Spirit to share with others, often in simple ways, but sometimes in very profound ways, that life in Christ changes everything, and that one can find the happiness for which he was made, perhaps not on this earth, but after death in heaven.  
    And while we do not earn our salvation, St. Paul urges us in his epistle to the Philippians to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  Why would we do that?  Only if we are not sure if we will be chosen in the end.  When we recognize that we are sinners and lost, then we seek to do what we can to show God that we should be chosen, not because we can merit it, but showing that we know we need saving, and that we are open to the salvation God wants for us.  

Msgr. Romano Guardini

    Guardini also reminds us that we should pray that we might be part of the chosen.  That prayer helps keep our election as not something that we take for granted, but something we seek each day.  This prayer to be chosen throws us on God’s mercy, which is the only way we can be chosen.  And it reminds us that being chosen means bearing fruit, and not being like the fig tree that was cursed because it would not bear fruit for the Lord.  
    Our election in Christ is a reason to give thanks.  But it is also an impulse to spread the Gospel.  Our election is made at baptism, but it is a gift that we can accept or reject each day.  Lord, will that we be chosen; that we be among those given to your Son never to be lost–my loved ones and I and all mankind!  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

The Sound (and Power!) of Silence

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            “How does God speak to you?”  It’s a question I get asked a lot, especially when talking about my discernment to become a priest.  “How did you know, Father, that God was calling you to be a priest?  Did you hear a voice?”  We want to know how God communicates to us, to see if He is communicating with us.

            We have three paradigms for divine communication in today’s readings.  I usually work towards the Gospel in preaching, but this time I’m going to go from the Gospel to the first reading.  And each reading contains ways that God communicates to us.

            In our Gospel, Jesus speaks to the disciples in the boat, as I am speaking to you.  But whereas many of us probably think that if God were to speak to us, we would clearly understand what He was saying and do whatever He asked, this isn’t true with the disciples.  They have been with Jesus for some time, hearing Him preach, watching Him heal the sick and possessed.  And yet, when Jesus appears, walking on the sea, they figure that it’s a ghost.  They do not recognize Jesus.  Peter, to ascertain Jesus’ identity, asks Jesus to command Peter to walk on water.  And when St. Peter does, but then falters, it is Jesus who picks him up and helps him back into the boat.  In this way, we see two ways that Jesus speaks to us: in the first way, He speaks to us in the same way that I am speaking with you now, so that we can hear His voice.  But what is surprising is that, just like the disciples, we don’t always recognize the voice of Jesus even when it’s a voice.  Secondly, Jesus speaks through His care for the disciples.  When Jesus rescues Peter from drowning, He is communicating through His actions that He will never allow Peter to sink amidst the crashing waves.  We see in this the foreshadowing of Jesus’ protection of His Church, sometimes referred to as the Barque or Boat of Peter, which is not allowed to sink in the storms of world events.

            The second paradigm is in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans.  St. Paul says, “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie.”  God speaks to us through His apostles, those whom Jesus called and sent out to build up and oversee the Church.  The bishops, as successors to the apostles, when speaking on matters of faith or morals speak “the truth in Christ.”  To them is given the charism, when they are united to the Pope, to teach what belongs to the faith infallibly.  Just as St. Paul says elsewhere, “It is not longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” the bishops are given the grace to teach, not by their own authority, but with the authority of Christ on matters of faith and morals.  If we want to hear God speaking about what we must believe, and how we must live to as to be faithful to Christ, we can look to the bishops, the successors of the apostles, to hear the voice of God.

            The last paradigm from our readings comes from the first reading, and is a very powerful way that God communicates.  We hear the inspired author tell us that Elijah, the greatest prophet in all the Old Testament, did not hear God in the heavy winds, nor the earthquake, nor the fire.  No, Elijah heard the voice of God in the whisper heard in the silence.  This voice was so powerful, that Elijah, who had called down fire from the heavens to consume the oblation, offered to the true God to shame the prophets of Baal, had to hide his face because He heard God in the silence.

            Silence is a very powerful expression of God’s voice.  It is in silence that the great things of God happen.  When God created the universe, He did so in silence.  In the silence of meditation, according to most artistic renditions, Mary heard the Archangel Gabriel tell her that God had called her to be the Mother of the Son of God.  And in the silence of the night, the Word-Made-Flesh came to be known by us as He was born in Bethlehem.  In fact, in the extraordinary form of the Mass, what some call the Tridentine Mass, part of the Liturgy includes a prophecy from the Book of Wisdom about the Incarnation.  Romano Guardini quotes it in The Lord, his meditation on the life of Christ: “‘For while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course, thy almighty word leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne.’”  Likewise, the Resurrection happens in the silence of the early morning, when the guards are asleep and no one expects Christ to rise from the dead.

            In our days, however, we manage to cut out as much silence as possible.  Are we afraid of being alone with God?  Are we afraid of what God would say?  The answer is probably as diverse as the number of people here.  I bet that if I remained silent for a long period of time during the Mass, we would try to find ways to break the silence: thumbing through hymnal pages, reading the bulletin, looking around to others.  But we need silence.  My practice is to always give up the radio and music during Lent so as to allow more time for God to speak to me in His power.  But we don’t just need silence in Lent.  We need it all throughout the year. 

            We’re taught in seminary that every homily (at least the good ones) should have a practical way to apply the readings to life.  Today we’ll apply this teaching by taking some extended time of silence, first after my homily, and then after the reception of Holy Communion.  Listen to God during this time.  Don’t just make it a time of doing nothing, but make it a time of active listening to the whisper of God, heard only in the silence.

"The Lord" and Humility

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

            One of my favorite spiritual books is The Lord by Romano Guardini, a German monsignor who was born in 1885 and died in 1968.  The Lord is his meditation on Scriptures, and is a very rich and deep reflection on the life of Jesus Christ.  I would encourage all those here in high school or older to read it.

            One of the chapters in the book is on humility, the virtue that we hear about in our readings today.  Humility is a very misunderstood virtue, and Guardini first seeks to clarify the word.  He writes, “We use it to describe someone who bows to the grandeur of another; or who esteems a talent that surpasses his own; or who appreciates without envy another’s merit.  That is not humility but honesty.  […] When St. Francis knelt at the throne of the Pope it was not an act of humility (since he believed in the papal dignity) but only of verity; he was humble when he bowed to the poor.  Not as one who condescends to help them, or whose humanitarian instinct sees in every beggar a remnant of human dignity, but as one whose heart has been instructed by God flings himself to the ground before the mystery of the paltriness as before that of majesty.”  Humility is the virtue, the secured habit, whereby we lower ourselves with whatever greatness we might have, to another person’s need and want and baseness.

            We might think of humility when we assist the poor: when we who have such great resources spend time and donate food, money, clothing, or other goods to those who do not have such great resources.  Certainly this parish community in East Lansing is known for its generosity to the poor.  But why do this?  We can fall into the traps that Romano Guardini mentioned: condescension, whereby we pretend to debase ourselves and do the poor a favor by spending time with them or giving them something; or simply a humanitarian instinct, whereby we realize that we are all human beings, with dignity because we are created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore we should help each other. 

            While it is true that we all do share a common dignity through our being created in the image and likeness of God, this is not the virtue of humility.  That would be more of the virtue of solidarity.  No, humility seeks to lower ourselves without losing any of the greatness which is ours: both actually lived out, and that greatness that we only have in potential.

            We see the virtue of humility most perfectly in Jesus Christ.  When the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became a man, he did not condescend to us, in the sense that He pretended to be nothing more than one of us.  Rather, He comes down to us to dwell with us without losing any of His divine greatness.  He humbles Himself.  And so, in our Gospel, when Jesus talks about going to the lowest place at the table, He is simply telling us what He has done.  He is the guest at the table of God the Father, and Jesus goes to the lowest place, to earth, and even to the very abode of the dead in His passion, but brings His greatness even there.  As St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Philippians, “Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at.  Rather, He emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of man.”  Jesus did not abandon His divinity when He became incarnate, but neither did He claim any privileges while on earth because of it.  He, of all persons, had the right to claim the highest place and remain there.  But, He humbled Himself, and allowed God the Father to call Him up to the head of the table, at the right hand of the Father.

            And so, when the author of the book of Sirach, Jesus, son of Eleazar, son of Sirach, tells us to “conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts.  Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God,” we listen to his words because we see them practiced in a most perfect way by Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man.  God favors humility because God is the source of humility and the summit of humility. 

But His humility is not limited to the Incarnation.  Jesus, from all eternity, was pouring Himself out to the Father, giving all that He is, with the exception of His identity as the Son.  And so the Incarnation was simply a continuation of that. 

But the Incarnation is not the end of Jesus’ humility.  Even now, as He sits at the right hand of the Father in heaven, Jesus continues to humble Himself, by allowing bread and wine to be changed into His body and blood at this altar, and letting Himself, the infinite God, be received into us, mere finite humans.  To paraphrase our second reading today, “We have approached Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal fathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel.” 

In this Eucharist, we are allowed to come to the antechamber of heaven.  While what we can see seems earthly, the reality we approach is the Wedding Feast of the Lamb from the Book of Revelation, where all the angels and saints are present, adoring the Lord, the judge of all.  We have come to the sacrifice where the Lord of All humbles Himself to be received by us.  So then, let us approach with honesty, mindful of the greatness that God brings down to us sinners.  And as we serve the poor, let us not do so because it simply provides physical needs for others, but in imitation of Jesus Christ who gave us of His greatness and riches, so that we, who were poor because we were separated from God, could become rich and be called to a higher place.  As long as we simply give because “it’s the right thing to do,” then we are no different from those who do not know Christ.  But, if we give because we are trying to live out in our lives the great humility of Jesus, then we will be witnesses of true humility first shown to us by Jesus.