Following Christ May Not be Easy

Septuagesima
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One would be forgiven for thinking that, once one truly believes in Christ, everything goes easily.  We have a desire for doing right, and we want that desire and those righteous actions to carry with them the consequence of ease.  And certainly, even Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics points to how the truly virtuous person exhibits virtue without too much struggle.  A person who truly has the virtue of courage will exhibit courage, rather than cowardice or rashness, in his or her actions, and will not need to think about it much, because a virtue is a stable disposition or habit to choose a particular good.  
    At the same time, a person who exhibits every virtue is rare.  And so there is a kind of struggle that takes place as that person seeks to life a fully virtuous life.  A man may never struggle with remaining faithful to his wife, but he may struggle with telling the truth, or displaying magnanimity (greatness of soul), or tempering his desire for food.

    St. Paul talks about striving for self-mastery and living a virtue, and compares it to running a race.  He notes that only one person wins a prize for first place, and says that we should run so as to win, rather than simply seeking a participation trophy.  He even says that he competes and subjects his body to penances, in order that he might also win.  
    He then also talks about how all the Jews received a sort of baptism in Moses, whether through the cloud or through the sea, and all participated in a foreshadowing of the Eucharist through the spiritual food and spiritual drink that was Christ.  But the Apostle notes that most of them did not please God.  
    What we can understand from this is that just because we are baptized; just because we receive the Eucharist, doesn’t mean that we can rest on our laurels.  While both are important sacraments that, respectively, make us adopted children of God and give us spiritual strength to live as children of God, receiving sacraments doesn’t mean that the graces work in us necessarily.  The fault lies not with the grace that God gives, but with our receptivity to those graces: with how we allow the grace to operate in our lives.
    We refer to these two aspects of the sacrament with two Latin phrases: ex opere operato, and ex opere operantis.  Ex opere operato means “from the work having been worked,” and refers to the objective reality that the sacraments have, as long as they are celebrated as the Church intends (the right words, the right stuff, and the right minster).  Ex opere operantis means “from the work of the one working,” and refers to the subjective reality and fruitfulness that the sacraments have, which is based upon the holiness of the minister and the recipient.  The former steers us clear of the heresy of Donatism, which stated that an evil minister could invalidate a sacrament, even if he did everything else correctly, and the latter steers us clear of magic, which takes the approach that, no matter what, just say the right words and do the right things and a change takes place, no matter whether a person opens him or herself up to the graces that God wants to convey.  

    This helps us understand why some baptized Catholics do not live up to their call to be saints.  Did the baptism not take?  Of course it did (as long as the minister celebrated it validly)!  But that recipient might be putting up a block to those graces through personal sin after the fact, or maybe the minister gave bad catechesis and treated baptism like an empty ceremony that doesn’t accomplish anything.  
    This helps us understand why, after we receive the Eucharist, sometimes we still want to sin.  The joke is that in the church we’re all pious and grateful for the Body and Blood of Christ, but then as we try to pull out of the parking lot we lose our temper and act like heathens who do not know Christ’s command to love one another and be patient.  
    And this is why we do our penitential practices, especially in the upcoming season of Lent.  We don’t do penance to earn salvation; we can’t earn salvation.  That’s the heresy of Pelagianism.  But our penances help discipline us to open ourselves to the graces that God wants to give, because our sin puts up obstacles (the theological word is obex) to the fruitfulness of God’s grace.  When we fast, when we abstain, when we give alms, we recognize our need for deeper conversion and to rely on God, rather than on ourselves or the goods of the world.  We make more room for God so that the spring of grace He has given us in baptism flows unobstructed, and so that the sacramental grace transforms us from the inside out.  
    Some get this from the beginning, like the workers whom the master hired at the beginning of the day.  For others it takes a long time, like those who only worked for the last hour.  But if we allow God’s grace to transform us into the saints He wants us to be in baptism, even at the last moments, then our hope of eternal salvation can be strong.
    We all likely have ways that need to grow in virtue, and our upcoming Lenten season is the perfect time to open ourselves up more to God’s grace so that we can grow in virtue.  May we run so as to win the prize, knowing that it is God who makes any good work possible and completes any good work that we began by His inspiration: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Humility, Gentleness, and Patience, Even When We Disagree

 Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  We are in the midst of the midterm elections.  And both in the partisan elections and in the ballot proposals, there are high stakes and heavy consequences for the outcomes.  Whether in the debates or in television ads, we see all kinds of name-calling and mud-slinging, accusing the opposition of being the worst kinds of people.  In the midst of this rancor, we hear from St. Paul today: “live…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.”  
    We may think that this admonition is easy to make for St. Paul, because he doesn’t have to deal with “those kind of people” in his letter.  But, in almost every Pauline letter, there is division in the Church, and not simply divisions between rich and poor, but divisions in faith and morality.  Indeed, St. Paul exhorts the faithful in Corinth to excommunicate a member for his egregious behavior.  But still, he calls for gentleness and humility here, along with patience and unity.

    Fast forward a few centuries to St. Augustine of Hippo.  St. Augustine was no wilting flower.  He fought heresy whenever he found it.  Indeed, he fought heresies that sometimes made him seem to be contradicting himself, in order to emphasize either God’s grace or our participation with it.  The Pelagians taught the heresy that original sin has not tainted us, and so we can do good works simply by our nature, rather than by the grace of God.  The Donatists taught the heresy that sin was everywhere and made us wretches and the priest had to be a saint in order to validly confect the sacraments.  St. Augustine also fought the Manichaeans, who taught the heresy that the world was divided into good and evil, the spiritual being good, and the material being evil.  
    But St. Augustine, even while being tough on heresy, strove to follow the words of St. Paul that we heard today.  The Doctor of Grace wrote of those who denied the validity of Catholic baptism (no small accusation):
 

when we do not repeat their baptism but acknowledge it to be our own, we are saying to them: You are our brothers.  […] And so, dear brothers, we entreat you on their behalf, in the name of the very source of our love, by whose milk we are nourished, and whose bread is our strength, in the name of Christ our Lord and his gentle love.  For it is time now for us to show them great love and abundant compassion by praying to God for them.  […] They respond with the same Amen, not with us, but still the same.  And so pour out your hearts for them in prayer to God.  

This guardian of orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice or worship), neither gave up the faith, nor gave up charity to those who had wandered away.
    Christ shows us the basis for what St. Augustine taught and lived.  He was very hard on the Pharisees, who had twisted the words of Sacred Scripture in favor of their own traditions.  They executed a sham trial of Him for blasphemy, and led Him to be put to death by the Romans, all the while mocking Him as He offered Himself for us on the altar of the cross.  Christ did not give in to their lies and perjury, but He also prayed for them as He offered Himself to the eternal Father.  
    So how are we are unity?  How gentle and humble are we, especially with those whom we oppose?  Do we automatically condemn and excise from our life, or do we seek reconciliation and peace, whether from afar when it is not possible due to antagonisms when in person, or even close up when we have the chance?
    And this goes, not only for political opponents, many of whom profess the same faith, even if their actions show a lack of understanding of that faith and a lack of integrity in living out that faith, but also for fellow Catholics and priests and bishops.  It is easy to ostracize those with whom we do not agree, and sometimes we must take harsh action.  But are we willing to pray for them, and even to meet and dialogue with them, not giving up the truth, but being willing to hear their position and agree where we can, and be charitable where we can?
    Last weekend I was in Chicago for the Annual Investiture Weekend of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.  I am honored to be a member, and was glad to welcome one of our parishioners, Kishore, to this august group that supports the Christian presence in the Holy Land.  The spiritual leader of our North Central Lieutenancy is the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago.  He and I likely disagree on a number of priorities and prudential decisions when it comes to our Catholic faith.  There may even be areas where we disagree on the faith.  But, during one of our evening socials, he was suddenly right in front of me, and extended his hand in greeting.  I introduced myself, told him that I was a priest of Lansing, and we joked a bit about Bishop Boyea, who followed the Archbishop at the Josephenum as Rector.  We had a short, but pleasant conversation, before he moved on to other members to greet them.  I was struck by His Eminence’s sincere interest in meeting us, his charm, and his willingness to give of his time to be with us, when he likely has other more important matters (at least in his estimation) with which to deal.
    Meeting him didn’t change my disagreements with the head of the Church in Chicago.  It didn’t convince me that his prudential decisions were well-made.  I’m not signing up to be a member of his fan club (if he has one).  But it did bring home the Apostle’s admonition today, to be gentle and humble, patient, and to strive for unity where one can find it.
    Many Catholics today are quick to write-off those whom we feel are heterodox or heteropracticers (I just created that word for those who practice heteropraxy).  We can demonize them in words on blogs and Facebook posts, and then advocate all kinds of hateful actions, justified, in our minds, by seeking to maintain orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  But I think we would do well to follow the method of St. Augustine, who followed the method of St. Paul, who followed the model of our Lord: profess the truth, without giving in to error; hold fast to what God has revealed, even when it means suffering; but do all this with charity towards others, seeking forgiveness for those who have wandered away and who persecute us, simply for following and conforming ourselves to God.  Pour our your hearts for them to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.