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.

A Level Path to Heaven

Second Sunday of Advent

One of the great memories in my life is my pilgrimage in northern Spain to the tomb of St. James the Greater, Apostle in 2004. 

One of the mornings as we started to walk

Eight of my fellow seminarians who were studying in Rome and I walked 110 km. in five days from a little town of Sarria to the city of Santiago de Compostela, the resting place of the remains of St. James.  Generally we would wake up around 5:30 a.m., get walking at about 6 a.m., and finish walking around 1 p.m., before it got too hot.  We averaged a little over 20 km, or 12.5 miles per day.  It was an amazing trip, with beautiful landscapes.  But I have to admit, rolling landscapes are much easier to look at than walk.  I was in much better shape in 2004, but even then I needed ace wraps for both my knees, which were ready to give out after only two days of walking.  Honestly, walking up the hills was easier than walking down them, and a make-shift walking stick was a great aide to the pilgrimage.  

So for me, the first reading and Gospel, which talk about mountains being made low, and valleys being filled in, makes perfect sense to me.  A flat land is much easier to traverse.  And let’s remember, whether it was during the time of the Prophet Baruch in the sixth century BC, or around the year AD 30 when Jesus was doing His public ministry, there weren’t cars to drive you, trains to take you, or Ubers to call, so hills and valleys were tough, whether it was on the knees of a donkey or the knees of a human.

Jesus makes things easier.  He levels out the road to salvation.  It may not always seem that way, but it’s true.  In order to find salvation, we need to follow Jesus.  It’s that simple, and that difficult.  No longer do we have to try to figure out if this or that prophet was really sent by God.  No longer do we have to make yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great Jewish feasts.  All we need to do is follow Jesus.  Even Jesus Himself tells us to take His yoke upon our shoulders, for His yoke is easy, and His burden light, and we will find rest for ourselves.  

Our Catholic faith is simply following Jesus as the full and final manifestation of who God is.  Our understanding of the Trinity comes from Jesus, who revealed the Communion of Three Divine Persons.  All the letters of St. Paul, the letters of St. Peter, the letter of St. Jude, the Letter to the Hebrews, the Letters of St. John, and the Book of Revelation are simply Jesus continuing to teach through those He appointed to act in His Name, so that, as He said, “Whoever listens to you, listens to me.”  All that the Church has taught as necessary for salvation throughout these nearly two millennia is Jesus teaching us what we are to believe and how we are to live.  This is done through the pope and the bishops in union with him, in a variety of different settings and different ways.  But at the end of the day, it’s simply following Jesus.  

I’ve been, for some time, very impressed with Bishop Robert Barron, who is an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles.  Before that he was a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and founded Word on Fire, an evangelistic Catholic ministry whose work is to spread the Gospel.  In particular, Bishop Barron focuses on beauty as a way to evangelize, rather than outlining the “rules” of Catholicism and defending them.  There is something to this, as the leveling out of the hills and valleys.  Rules can seem like efforts to climb and descend.  But beauty is something for which we were made.  St. Augustine says it this way in his work, The Confessions:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!  You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you.  In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.  You were with me, but I was not with you.  Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all.  You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness.  You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness.  You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.  I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more.  You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

God is Beauty itself, just as He is also Truth itself and Goodness itself.  But Beauty is often more accessible than truth.  Bishop Barron talks about baseball, one of his great loves, and says that no one really gets into baseball by simply studying the rules.  There is a beauty to the game which attracts the person to it.  But, he also states that, in order to play the game well, you need to know the rules, and the rules actually make you a freer baseball player.  Still, no one learns about the infield fly rule, and then says, “I really want to play baseball!”  They play because of the beauty of the game.  

In regards to our faith, Jesus is the one who attracts us, or should attract us, because, as Pope Benedict XVI said in Deus caritas est, his Encyclical Letter of 2005, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with…a person,” and that person is Jesus Christ.  If we have encountered that Person, if we love that Person, then all the other rules fall into place, make sense, and help us to encounter Jesus and love Jesus more.  That is the easy way, the level path, the road to salvation: falling in love with Jesus and following all that He teaches us because of our love.  No hills, no valleys, just a level pilgrimage to the goal of every human life: eternal happiness with God in heaven. 

Country Club of Heaven

First Sunday of Advent

Ever since 24 June, the Solemnity of the Birth of John the Baptist, there has been less and less daylight in our part of the world.  That changes right around 25 December, the Solemnity of the Birth of Jesus Christ, the Light of the World.  But until we get there, it’s dark.  And with daylight saving’s time having ended, it gets dark pretty early.  Today the sunset around 5:05 p.m.  Even though 5 p.m. is not late at all, with the early darkness, it just seems gloomy, especially with the usual Michigan winter cloudiness.

In the midst of this gloom, we can long for the long, warm days of summer, when all was bright and the sun was out until 9 p.m. or even later!  But it can be hard to think that those days will ever be here again when its dark so early, and certainly not as warm (though it is a warm weekend!).  

We get a sense through our weather of what the Jews were going through as Jeremiah was prophesying.  At this point in the Book of the prophet Jeremiah, the city is under siege by the Babylonians, who are about to take Jerusalem.  This will be the beginning of the Babylonian Exile, which exiles most of the Jews from Judah and Jerusalem until 587 B.C.  Those days were certainly dark, and not because of daylight saving’s time!  

In the midst of that darkness, Jeremiah speaks for the Lord a word of hope: “I will raise up for David a just shoot;…In those days Judah shall be safe and Jerusalem shall dwell secure.”  God promises that the dark days will not last forever.  He will give them new life, and a new king from the line of David, the idyllic king, who will be just.  Judah and Jerusalem shall not be besieged, but shall be safe and secure.

Jesus’ words in the Gospel do not sound so calming and hopeful.  Jesus is speaking to His disciples just before His Passion, and is warning them about the end times.  They will be so horrible that people will die of fright simply anticipating what will happen.  “‘But,’” as Jesus says, “‘when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.’”  For Jesus disciples, who are following Him and His will, the terror of the end is like the birth pangs which bring about new life.  So, maybe we can breathe a sigh of relief.  After all, we are Jesus’ disciples, and we have nothing to worry about.  We go to Mass each Sunday, so we’re good.  Right?

Well, Jesus’ next words should give us a little more trepidation.  Jesus warns His disciples not to become lax so that the end catches us off-guard.  And he tells His disciples to be vigilant “‘and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man.’”  

Being baptized and attending Mass each Sunday and Holyday is a big deal.  It shows at least a minimal attachment to Jesus and a desire to work at our relationship with Him.  But baptism is not a membership card in the Heavenly Country Club.  It’s not like if we sign up to join (baptism) and pay our weekly dues (going to Mass) that Jesus has to let us in.  Being a disciple of Jesus is not about going through the motions.  Being Catholic is not about the rules.  Being a Catholic and a disciple of Jesus is about growing in our friendship with Jesus and making our lives more like His.  That is the sign that we have accepted God’s friendship, which is offered to all, and that we are going in our friendship with Jesus.  We cannot rest on the laurels of our past good deeds.  We are never at a point in our relationship with Jesus where we can say, “I’ve done enough; I can just coast from here on out.”  Imagine if you treated your friends that way: “I’ve spent enough time with you for a while.  I’ll see you sometime in June.”  You probably wouldn’t be good friends.  Or imagine if you treated your spouse that way (so many saints and even Jesus talk about our relationship in marriage/wedding terms): “I spent every day with you so far in 2015; I’m going to live with someone else for December, but I’ll see you again in January.”  I’m sure that marriage wouldn’t last long.  

St. Paul encourages us to conduct ourselves in a particular way, as friends of Jesus.  We see that in the love that we share with others, but especially in the love we have for God, which overflows into our love for others.  As Pope Benedict said 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.”  If we love God, then we don’t simply go through the motions of the sacramental life of the Church and weekly Mass attendance, but we allow those sacraments and the Mass to propel us in loving God and our neighbor in daily life, that is to say, in growing as friends of Jesus.  

Things may seem dark during this time of year.  Things may seem dark in our lives at other times.  But God has a vision of hope for us: the hope of new life in growing in our relationship with Jesus.  That relationship gives us the true Light, Jesus Christ, and prepares us for the unending Day of the Lord in heaven when Jesus returns.