Not Why, but What

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Sometimes the way that God answers prayers doesn’t appear obvious.  Some people pray for a miraculous cure for their family member or friend and they get a miracle.  Other people say the same prayers and yet their loved one dies.  A natural disaster like a tornado or a hurricane demolishes one church, but another which is in the direct path has only minor damage.  Why?
    Some would like to attribute it to personal holiness.  And certainly being a friend of God, not only in name but also in deed, doesn’t hurt when asking God for a favor.  But that’s not what happened in the first reading.  The prophet Elijah went to Zarephath, which was a pagan town.  The widow he helped during the famine was not Jewish, but worshipped false gods.  Yet God answered her prayer for sustenance through Elijah, though many Jewish widows had to see their children die of starvation.  Jesus also speaks about how “there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian.”  

    So how does God answer prayers?  Why do the prayers of some get heard, while others seemed to be ignored?  God never ignores prayers, but He doesn’t always answer them as we want.  And, to be honest, we don’t often know why He answers some prayers as people want, but not others as they want.  Why God allows good things to happen to bad people, and bad things to happen to good people is a conundrum we won’t know on this side of eternity.  Sometimes we do see that an answered prayer helps a non-believe believe, or that even a seemingly-unanswered prayer doesn’t shake the faith of one who believes in God, who accepts even a negative outcome gracefully.  But often, we don’t have the answer to why.
    So what do we do?  We ask a different question.  And that question is not “why?”, but “what?”.  What do we know?  We know that God loves us, and that, as St. Paul says, “all things work for the good of those who love God.”  Whatever God wills for us, and even whatever He allows us to undergo, helps us to be the saints that He wants us to be.  Sometimes what God wills and what God allows seems beneficial to us, like an unexpected raise, or recovery from an illness.  Sometimes what God allows does not seem so beneficial.  But He desires that everything we might undergo, even the tragic death of a loved one, would increase or faith, hope, and love in Him.
    We also know, as we hear in the second reading, that Christ is forever interceding for us to our heavenly Father.  Though He is also God, Christ stands in the heavenly Jerusalem, the sanctuary not made with hands, bringing our prayers, made in the power of the Holy Spirit, to God the Father.  Christ offers Himself, not in a bloody way, but in an unbloody way, to the Father, bringing our humanity to God throughout all time.  He offers Himself always so that our sins might be taken away, just as He offered, once for all, the perfect sacrifice on the cross for the salvation of all the world.  And Christ, who shares our human nature, always asks the Father to give us what we need for our sanctification.  
    During this month of November, which we began with the celebration of All Saints, we also know that all the saints plead with God for us and our needs.  They do so, not to change the will of God, but to submit our desires and our prayers to the will of God which is always for our good.  I often ask St. Anthony to help me or others find things that they have lost.  Or maybe you pray to St. Monica to ask God to give your children who have left the faith the openness to the grace to return to His Holy Church.  Or maybe you ask St. Joseph to intercede for a loved one who is terminally ill for the grace of a happy death.  Or whatever other desire you might have.  The saints cannot do anything but that which is in accord with the will of God.  But they always ask God that our desires might be aligned with His so that our faith, hope, and love will find more strength and resiliency.  
    Lastly, we know that God desires that we trust Him.  The poor widow who gave all the money that she had trusted that God would provide.  God doesn’t always ask for money, though we should support the Church financially, but He does always ask for the gift of our entire selves.  He wants all of us, not just parts of us.  He even wants the sinful parts of us, so that He can transform them by the power of his grace and mercy.  Just as Christ offers all of who He is to the Father in the Holy Spirit, so the Father desires that we offer all of who we are, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to Him.  And when we offer all of who we are, God offers all of who He is, which is a treasure beyond imagining, not in the sense the world uses treasure, but in the sense of the deepest longing of our hearts.  
    We don’t always know God’s ways.  We may never fully understand why some prayers are answered the way we want, but others God does not answer the way we want.  But we know that God loves us, that He always acts for our good and salvation, and that the best gift we can give God is the gift of ourselves, trusting in His will and plan for our salvation.  

Simply Complicated

Resumed Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

**NB: This is an expansion of the homily I gave at the 11 a.m. Ordinary Form Mass**

  

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  During my combined 13 years of post-high school education, I wrote a lot of papers on a lot of topics.  But the one thing that unified everything–from English and political science classes in undergrad, to theological papers in Major Seminary, to liturgical papers in my second Master’s degree after ordination–was that I tended to make things more complicated than they needed to be.  Apparently, St. Paul and I have the same writing style, where we like to cram a lot of ideas into one sentence, with various subordinate clauses and ideas.  
    When it comes to following the Lord, we, too, can complicate things.  Which is why it’s nice when either our Lord or St. Paul simplifies things (though the sentences St. Paul uses rarely are simple).  At the end of the day, being a Catholic and a disciple of Christ means loving God and loving our neighbor.  Nothing more; nothing less.  Living up to our call as baptized followers of Christ entails giving God His due, and giving our neighbor his or her due.  
    So why do we complicate things?  Why does the Church have all these teachings and all these rules if living as a disciple comes down to two basic rules?  Well, we tend to overcomplicate things, and in our complications, we can fail to see how certain actions detract from the love of God or the love of neighbor.  So the Church gives us a guide to help us to know how to live out the great commandment.
    To say we complicate things is, ironically, a gross simplification.  Our minds, operating under the shadow of sin, fail to comprehend how God calls us to love Him and love those whom He loves, that is, our neighbor.  I mean, in our own day, we can’t even understand what love is.  We use the word love for different things that are vastly different: I love my family; I love my spouse; I love my friends; I love that car; I love bourbon; I love tropical beaches; I love my dog.  We should not be loving all of those people and things in the same way!!  But love for a spouse is different than love for a sibling (at least it should be!), though we should love both.  And the way we enjoy objects like cars or bourbon or beaches or dogs is altogether a different action than the way we appreciate people.  Love, true love, means willing the good of the other when that other can return that love to you.  We can’t really love cars, or bourbon, or beaches, or (and I might be stoned for saying this) pets.  We can enjoy them, we can delight in them, they can give us pleasure.  But we cannot, strictly speaking, love them.
    So, we’re already struggling just to say what love is.  But now, we take the myriad examples of actions in our life, and we strive to connect it to love of God or love of neighbor.  What gets in the way of this is our desire to care for ourself first, to will our own good, rather than that of the other, be he God or neighbor.  I might know and express that I love God and should love Him.  But then when it’s a beautiful day for golf, or my favorite artist had a concert last night that kept me out really late, or my kid has a game in his or her travel league, suddenly my love of God and knowledge that I should worship Him, especially on Sundays, gets clouded by my own desire to recreate, to rest, to give my kid the opportunity to be a future professional athlete (however unlikely that may be).  
    Or, to take our epistle, how do we love our neighbor?  We can say, academically, perhaps even piously, that we should will the good of our neighbor.  But then our neighbor’s tree is dying and branches are falling on my side of the property line.  Or my neighbor cuts me off and slams on his breaks, almost causing me to get in a crash.  Or my co-worker has really odd habits and I feel I need to discuss it with all the other employees to validate my opinion.  Or my neighbor has a yard sign that suggests voting for someone who is, quite obviously, evil.  And all the sudden, love of neighbor is a good idea, theoretically, but in the real world we have to take care of ourselves first and make sure our neighbor knows that we are important and he should not mess with us.  
    I’ve used some pretty simple examples, but even in the complicated matters of life, it all comes down to love of God and love of neighbor.  Take in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.  Because we in the Church haven’t made it clear, many Catholics don’t see the problem with IVF.  After all, aren’t we supposed to be fruitful and multiply, as God commanded in the Garden of Eden?  Aren’t we supposed to be open to life?  So how is IVF not loving?  
    The church’s teaching on the sexual act, or anything like it, is based on the fact that God has made marital relations with three requirements to be good: not using another or out of force; unitive; and open to life.  IVF includes a break in that meaning of the sexual act.  First, it treats a child as a commodity, a good that one can pursue no matter what the cost.  Couples seeking IVF will often say that they deserve a child, rather than being open to it as a gift.  Also, IVF requires a man to spill his seed, which also involves using oneself to mimic the results of the marital act with another, or using another to achieve arousal.  IVF also requires a doctor to impregnate the woman, rather than how a child should be conceived, that is, with her husband in a loving and unitive act where they can give themselves freely to each other, not only in body, but also emotionally and spiritually.  Children, the Church says, have a right to be conceived in a loving act between a father and a mother, which also ends up being the best way to love a child and ensure its future success: with a loving mother and a loving father.  Further, IVF most often requires multiple fertilizations at the same time, because sometimes one fertilized egg will not take.  But that fertilized egg is a new human being, but it’s treated more like an object to be used to achieve an end.   If it doesn’t achieve that end, or gets in the way of another end, it is thrown away like garbage.  To throw away an innocent human being at one of the most defenseless moments of its life certainly does not demonstrate love of neighbor.  
    Again, our minds can focus on our own good, and can easily rationalize certain acts, when, at their heart, they do not really demonstrate love of neighbor.  So while following Christ comes down simply to loving God and loving our neighbor, we need a guide to help us know whether or not certain acts demonstrate true love.  But we don’t just have a guide, we have a mother, Holy Mother Church, who lovingly helps us to know what is good as God has communicated it, so that we can achieve our highest goal, and the result of loving God and loving neighbor in this world: eternal happiness in heaven, where God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.

Giving God Your Nothing Left

 Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
    People think priests have a hard life.  And, in some ways, we do.  We’re on call 24/6 (I do get one day off per week), it’s not uncommon to have evening meetings after a full day of work, because that’s when people are most often free to meet.  Because people have their own ideas (sometimes based in theology, sometimes not) about how long homilies should be, how warm (or cold) the church should be, what songs should be sung, etc., the priest often gets peppered with complaints from all sides.  So yeah, it is tough at times, but we are also taken care of and loved pretty well.
    I think parents have a hard life.  If it put myself in their shoes, I wouldn’t want to be working all day, probably putting up with many similar things as priests in terms of working conditions, complaints, expectations, etc., and then come home, only to have to prepare some dinner, often from scratch, clean-up after dinner, help the kids with homework, and then, hopefully, have some time to catch up with a few things around the house, maybe have a little alone time with the spouse, before going to bed to start all over on the next day.  That sounds like a tough vocation!!
    I know I have been, and I’m sure parents have been, at the point where I feel like I’ve got nothing left.  Maybe it’s been a long day, or there’s a long day coming on the following day, or an earlier start, and I’m exhausted, and then there’s a call to go to the hospital, or, because I work with MSP, to go out to a homicide or meet with a Trooper who can use some comforting words.  And I know parents are in a similar boat so frequently.  So you give, even though you think you’ve got nothing left to give, and somehow, it works out to be enough.
    The same was true for the widows we heard about in the first reading and the Gospel.  Can you imagine being in a famine, and all you have left is a handful of flour, just enough to make a couple of cakes for you and your son, and then this man of God comes and asks you to make some for him?  I think if I did that, I’d be run out of the house, maybe even the parish and county!  But the woman gives, and Elijah makes sure that the woman doesn’t run out during the famine.  She gave beyond what she thought she could, and God rewarded that generosity.

Examples of the widow's coins

    Or in the Gospel, the widow is giving two coins that she needs probably to feed herself to the temple, to offer to God something.  The value wasn’t large, but the sacrifice was her everything.  She gave, even after she had nothing left.  And yet, the Lord commends her gift, more than those who were putting in large amounts of money, because she was giving when she had nothing left, while the others were giving while making sure they had something left over.  
    God invites us to trust in Him as we give to Him.  And I’m not talking only about money (though, we’re always happy to receive that from you).  I’m talking about giving to God time and energy and whatever is going on in your life, even if you don’t think you’re giving God much, even if you feel like what you have to give to God isn’t worth giving.
    Maybe life is crushing you right now, and it takes all you can muster to come to Mass.  It would be so much easier to stay home and rest.  And yet, you came to give God that little bit.  And God will reward that.  Or maybe you’re just trying to make sure your kid doesn’t run away during Mass, or trying to make sure that he or she is not a major distraction (though, truth be told, I am rarely distracted by kids and love having them around at Mass).  You don’t think you’re getting much out of Mass, but you’re giving to God what little attention you can call up while you supervise your child at Mass.  And God accepts that and makes it a loving sacrifice, received with gratitude because it’s your gift.
    Parents often get gifts from their children that are made at school that are not that expensive, and maybe are not Michelangelo sculptures or Rembrandt paintings.  But those are still treasured gifts (how many moms have kept those little gifts throughout the years!?) because the child is giving what he or she can.  The same is true for God: when we give God what we can, He treasures it as the perfect gift.
    God even receives the fallen parts of us, our sins.  Through the Sacrament of Penance (aka confession or reconciliation), God deigns to take our brokenness and failings from us, so that we can be made whole.  I know that sometimes it seems like the sins may be small, or maybe the sins are awkward to acknowledge, or maybe it’s just that we confess the same sins over and over again.  In any case, God wants to receive that as our small gift, the last little bit we have left, so that it doesn’t stand in the way of our relationship with Him.  Obviously our sins are not good; they’re not our finest moments as human beings.  But God takes it upon Himself so that we might have life in place of death, grace in place of sin, light in place of darkness.
    I don’t know about you, but I feel like more and more people are at their wit’s end these days.  I meet people who feel like they have nothing left to give.  At that moment, offer to God that nothing, that fatigue, that exhaustion.  It may not seem like much, but neither did the two coins offered by the widow in the Gospel, or the handful of flour offered by the widow in the first reading.  But if it’s what you have, God will accept and bless it, and will make it enough.

Simple, and Yet Complicated

 Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

    So simple, and yet so complicated.  Love God and love your neighbor.  It’s as easy and as difficult as that.  And even simply understanding the two great commandments is key to being on the right path to heaven, as Jesus tells the scribe in the Gospel today.  But, while it’s easy to say that all we have to do is love God and love our neighbor, it does require some unpacking.
    First of all, we need to understand what love is.  Modern culture is less than helpful when it comes to defining love.  We are told: love is never having to say you’re sorry; love is a feeling or an emotion; what is love? Baby don’t hurt me; love is love; to quote a somewhat contemporary movie: “Love is like oxygen.  Love is a many-splendored thing.  Love lifts us up where we belong.  All you need is love.”  
    Love, though, from a Catholic point of view, and I’m stealing here from Bishop Barron, is willing the good of the other.  Love is an action that pursues the true happiness of the other.  To quote St. Paul (a bit more solid than a secular definition), “Love is patient, love is kind.  It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury.”  Love means working for the good of the other, even when it means the denial of personal goods.  And if we want an image of love, we need look no further than Jesus on the crucifix, which is love made incarnate.  Jesus acted for our good, even when it meant His own death, just so that we could enter heaven and have eternal happiness.  That is certainly willing the good of the other, acting for the good of the other.
    So how do we love?  St. Augustine says, “Love, and do what you will.”  Does this mean that we can do anything as long as we feel like it’s good for the other?  No, and Augustine would not agree with that.  If God is love, as the Scriptures say in St. John’s first epistle, then there is a measure of what love does, which cannot contradict the nature of love.  I cannot say that I am loving God or neighbor if it involves breaking a commandment.  I cannot say that I am loving God or neighbor if my actions go against something we are taught as a matter of faith or morals in the Bible or authoritatively by the Church.  If God is love, and Jesus is God, and the Church is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, then when the Church teaches something with authority (as a matter of faith and morals), we are learning what love is, and how to love (and sometimes what love is not, and how not to love).  
    So how do we know if we’re loving God and loving our neighbor?  Do we will the good that God desires?  Do we will the true good of our neighbor, not just acting in a way that makes our neighbor feel good?  Sometimes homilies can be a bit broad and vague, so let’s break it down a little further.
    If you skip Mass out of laziness or prioritize something else (e.g., sports) as more important than worshiping God, you are not loving God fully.  You may love God in other ways, but you are not loving God in that way.  If you reject one of the dogmatic teachings of the Church, or think that the Church cannot tell you what to do in a particular area of your life, like the bedroom, then you are not loving God fully.  You may love God by giving your obedience of faith and morals in other areas, but you are missing out on loving God as God wants to be loved.  
    If you give someone the bird while driving, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  If you gossip about your fellow employee who gets on everyone’s nerves, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  If you see you neighbor falling into sin and do not correct him or her in a charitable and prudent way, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  If you have sex before marriage or live with your girlfriend or boyfriend, or even fiancé before marriage, you are not loving your neighbor fully.  In all those ways, and many more, you are not willing the good of the other.  It may feel good; it may feel very good.  But it is not, in the end, the actual good of the other.
    Family life is a great analogy for understanding love.  You cannot say you fully love your spouse if you hold back in an area of your life from him or her, or do something that you know upsets your spouse.  You may love in other ways, but you are not fully willing your spouse’s good.  Or if you let your children do whatever they want, like eating ice cream every day for dinner, or never making children go to school or help clean the house, you are not fully loving your children.  You may love them in other ways, but you are not fully willing their good, since the good of the other often includes not following every desire that we have.  Love–willing the good of the other–does not always feel good, but it is always directed toward what is truly good.  
    Sometimes we struggle at knowing what is truly good, and that is what makes loving God and our neighbor so difficult.  We can easily confuse what is good and what is delightful.  The best guide for knowing what is truly good is God, and God has spoken to us to help us know the good through the Scriptures and through the Church.  If you’re ever wondering if you are willing the good of God or your neighbor, look towards the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Those two books will help you to know if you are being truly loving, and if you are “not far from the kingdom of God.”

Both...And Not Either...Or

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

One of the first things Bishop Boyea was asked in 2008 when he was introduced as the newest Bishop of Lansing, and one of the things that priests are often asked in their first weekend as they begin at a new parish is the four word question: Michigan or Michigan State?

We often tend to put things into an “either…or” category.  In academia we all this a dichotomy, a choice between two different things.  In our politics: Republican or Democrat; in our fountain drinks: Pepsi or Coke; in our schools: Catholic or public; in our housing choice: rent or own; in our cars and beer: domestic or foreign.  Maybe it’s easier for our mind to operate this way, but we tend to put people in one of two camps.

So today, given our predilection for dichotomies, perhaps we think of it as love of God, or love of neighbor.  We probably don’t think of it that way, exactly, but we tend to focus on one, and perhaps we don’t focus on the other.  Maybe we like going to church, we love a beautiful liturgy, we love learning about our faith; or we like serving the poor, working at food pantries, promoting social justice.  

But to the scribe who comes up to Jesus and asks him the first of all the commandments, Jesus doesn’t try to pigeon-hole His answer into simply one or the other.  He says both love of God and love of neighbor.  Love of God is from the first reading we heard today in the Book of Deuteronomy.  Love of neighbor as oneself is from the Book of Leviticus.  Both are the most important commandments.  Both are part and parcel of following Jesus.

One could rightly point out that serving God is more important than anything else.  Part of what is radical in Jesus is that He demands total obedience, even above family, which only God could claim.  Being a do-gooder is not the same as being a disciple.  There are people who serve the poor, and yet reject God, and while I’m not the judge, rejecting God on this earth, especially in a purposeful way, is probably more on the road to Hell than Heaven.

But still, St. John, in his first Letter, says that we cannot serve the God that we don’t see, if we do not serve our neighbor (he uses the word brother) that we do see.  Being a philanthropist does not assure us of heaven.  But ignoring Jesus in the least of His brothers and sisters (to paraphrase Matthew 25) is also not helpful in us receiving eternal salvation.  St. John Chrysostom, one of the saints in our icons, says it this way: 

Do you want to honor Christ’s body?  Then do not scorn him in his nakedness, nor honor him here in the church with silken garments while neglecting him outside where he is cold and naked.  For he who said: This is my body, and made it so by his words, also said: You saw me hungry and did not feed me, and inasmuch as you did not do it for one of these, the least of my brothers, you did not do it for me.

Jesus instructs us of the great Catholic principle: both…and.  Both love of God and love of neighbor, not either or.

Most people focus on one or the other, love of God or love of neighbor.  So today Jesus challenges us to make sure that a focus on one does not mean the exclusion of the other.  Do you love worshipping God here in the church, being formed by the Mass and by our faith formation groups, learning more and more about what God has revealed through Scripture and Tradition?  Wonderful!  But remember: those clothes that you never wear in your closet or dresser: those belong to the poor; they have a right to them.

Do you love being with people and bringing them the love of God through your actions?  Do you feed them, clothe them, work for justice on their part?  Wonderful!  But if you skip worshipping God at Sunday Mass to serve the poor, then you are making an idol of the poor and worshipping them rather than God.

St. Theresa of Calcutta, Mother Theresa, is an embodiment of both…and.  Yes, most of her day was spent working with the poor, the outcast, and the dying.  But she never missed her opportunities for daily Mass and a Holy Hour of Adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  That was the most important part of her day, and it gave her the strength to serve the poor, the outcast, and the dying.

Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati is another embodiment of both…and.  He loved being outdoors, enjoying the beauty of God’s creation, being sustained by the Eucharist in Mass, but he secretly did work with the poor, contracting and dying of polio that was so prevalent among the poor he served.  And his secret was so well kept, that his rich parents had no idea who all the people were who attended his funeral, though the poor knew Pier Giorgio as a person who cared for them and their needs.  

Life is too complicated to be simply divided into two things.  Our faith is too rich to be simply divided into two things.  It’s not Scripture or Tradition, it’s both Scripture and Tradition; it’s not faith or reason, it’s both faith and reason; it’s not Word or Sacrament, it’s both Word and Sacrament; it’s not love of God or love of neighbor, it’s both love of God and love of neighbor.

A Leap from the Lion's Head

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Early in our pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2017 we are traveling to Petra in Jordan (sign-up on our webpage if you’re interested!).  Petra is the place where the final scenes in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” were filmed, that building that seemed to be carved into rocks.  Yes, it’s real (at least the outside is).  If you remember, in the movie, Indiana, has to face three trials before he can reach the chamber with the Holy Grail, and to do so he uses three clues.  In the first trial, he kneels, as “only the penitent man will pass.”  The second trial deals with the Name of God, which is very inaccurate because the Name Jehovah was not used until much later and is a German invention based upon the Tetragrammaton, the sacred Name of God in the Old Testament.  In the third and final trial to get to the grail chamber, Indiana is faced with a deep chasm, too wide to jump across, but which must be crossed.  His clue is: “only by a leap from the lion’s head will he prove his worth.”  As Indiana says, “It’s a leap of faith.”  I won’t spoil the rest of the movie for you.

Our readings present us with a challenge of faith, not to seek the Holy Grail, but to grow in our relationship with Jesus and be prepared for heaven.  Our first reading and Gospel in particular give us examples of faith to encourage us to have faith.

In the first reading, the widow of Zarephath and her son are about to run out of food because of the famine that God has sent upon the Land.  God sends Elijah to the widow for water and bread.  We hear this story, and we know the end, so of course we know it’s going to work out.  But for the widow, who had no idea, and who was not even a Jew, Elijah’s request must have been horribly painful: “‘Please bring along a bit of bread.’”  She has only a little bit of oil and flour, and after she makes a cake, she and her son will have nothing left, and they will die from starvation.  But Elijah promises her that she and her son will have food enough until the rains return and she is able to get more food.  She complies, and they have flour and oil enough for a year.  Again, we know the ending, so we easily gloss over it.  But imagine that you had only one pack of ramen noodles left for you and your child, and someone who claimed to speak for God, but belonged to a different religion, asked to share that one pack with you, all the while promising that you would have enough.  Would you have shared?  I know we all want to think that we would, but would we truly have faith to share?

Or the poor widow who gave her two small coins to the temple treasury to pay for the upkeep of the temple.  She gave all that she had, even though it was a little bit of money.  As a widow, she had no one to plead her cause, no one to provide her with food, and no one to protect her.  But she had faith that God would provide, and so she offered God what little she had.  Jesus commends that faith in the Gospel passage we heard from today, and makes her the example, though we don’t even know if she knew Jesus, had faith in Him, or ever encountered Him.

Faith is easy when our bellies are full.  Faith is easy when we feel like we have enough to make ends meet.  Faith is much harder when we have nothing and no one to rely on but God.  That happens with all too many people who lack food and drink.  That happens to all too many people who have no money even though they have tried to work and save.  But it is not limited to our bellies and our pocketbooks.  Whenever we feel like the rug has been pulled out from under us, it is hard to have faith.  But that’s when we find out how strong our faith is.  That’s when we find out in what or in whom we really do put our trust.

Some priests on this weekend will preach about money, and donating to the Church, just like the widows did with Elijah and in the Temple.  This is not that homily.  I’m not asking you to give more money, because, as you seen from our bulletin updates, you are already being generous, and I thank you for that generosity.  But I will ask you to give something much more precious than your money to God.  The gift of money sometimes is the sign of the gift that God truly wants, but not always.  God wants your heart, and he’s asking you to make a leap of faith, to trust in Him, and to give Him your love.

When we truly love someone, they become the focus of our attention, and we rearrange our lives around that person.  Parents take off work, and maybe even lose their jobs because they love their children who are sick or in danger.  Do we love God more than that?  Do we love God enough to make our relationship with Him the number one priority in our life?  Not: I’ve got a million things to do this weekend, so hopefully I make it to Mass; not: my bed’s so warm, I’ll sleep a little longer and skip my daily prayers; not: I know our St. Vincent de Paul Society or Knights of Columbus or CCW could use some help, but I’ll do that next month when I have more time.  Instead: Mass is the first thing I plan on the weekend, and everything else fits around that; or: I’m tired, but God loves to hear even my tired prayers; or: how can I serve others with my time?

It takes a leap of faith to make God the number one priority in our lives.  It can be scary.  God can sometimes take us places we never expected to go.  But a relationship with Jesus requires faith: faith like the widow from Zarephath had; faith like the poor widow in the Temple had.  Lord, we want to have faith in you; help us have faith in you more.

What Question Do We Ask God?

Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

            This past Monday, Bishop Mengeling gave a wonderful talk on the Year of Faith and his time at the Second Vatican Council.  He had some amazing slides from both outside and inside St. Peter’s during some of the sessions.  Before the talk, a few members of the pastoral staff and members of the adult formation team had dinner with Bishop Mengeling and I.  At one point of the conversation, Bishop Mengeling mentioned the questions he would have for God when he died, and some of the others mentioned their own questions to God that they are saving up for when they meet their Maker.

            In today’s Gospel, a scribe asked Jesus a question.  Now, recall that the scribes and Jesus didn’t always get along.  The scribes, along with the Pharisees and Sadducees, were always trying to trap Jesus, to get Him to say something so they could write Jesus off as neither a prophet nor sent by God.  At the first hearing of the question, maybe we think it’s another trap being set: “‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’”  Maybe, we could think, this scribe was trying to trick Jesus into giving a wrong answer. 

            Jesus responds with the Shema, the text we heard from our first reading, which forms the heart of the Jewish faith, and was to be said by Jews each day: “Hear, O Israel!  The Lord our God is Lord alone!  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.”  He then adds a second commandment, from the Book of Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  The scribe then agrees with Jesus.  But rather than Jesus condemning the scribe for trying to trap Him, as Jesus did with so many others, Jesus says, “‘You are not far from the kingdom of God.’”  This is a different type of question; one asked not so much to trap, as to truly find out the truth.

            What question would we ask Jesus?  What question do we ask Jesus?  Maybe there’s lots of little trivia that we want to know: did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?  What does Jesus really look like in His human body?  How many angels can fit on the head of a pin?  But this scribe, who was basically congratulated for his question, asked about salvation.  The question of ‘what is the greatest commandment?’ is basically a question about what the most important thing is to know and do.  And Jesus answers that question.

            Especially in an academic community like East Lansing, we can have lots of questions for God.  Sometimes they are questions about trivia.  Sometimes they are weightier questions about life and death, why suffering exists.  Those are not bad questions.  But there’s a hierarchy of truths, and the first one on our mind should be ‘how do I get to spend eternity with God?’  If God made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him, to paraphrase St. Augustine, then the first question on our minds should be how we come to rest in God?  To answer that, we turn back to the scribe’s question.

            Jesus answers that the first commandment is about knowing and doing.  We must know who God is.  Only in the measure that we know God can we love God.  If we know God well, we can love Him more.  If we know God poorly, we won’t love God as much as we need to or want to.  Jesus starts out with the unity of God; God is one.  And yet, God is love, and love is self-diffusive; it gives out.  So our one God is also a communion of Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  And God sent His Son, Jesus, to reveal to us in a human body just how far that love goes.  That’s what we see on the cross: God’s love.  Then God sends the Holy Spirit to those who have gotten to know Jesus in order to continue the work of Jesus after He ascended into heaven.  That’s the Church.  The Holy Spirit continues the work of Jesus by continuing to teach the truth (the teaching office of the Church) and by sharing God’s love with those who want it and who have faith in God (that’s the sacramental life of the Church, where God’s love which is grace, is poured into our hearts by the 7 Sacraments and by our connecting to Jesus through prayer).  Just like in the New Testament, some continue to receive the truth and love that God reveals (especially those who recognize their need for God, that is, sinners), and there are some who continue to reject the truth and love that God reveals (especially those who think that they have all the answers themselves, and who don’t need anyone). 

            But besides just knowing who God is, Jesus also reminds us that we are called to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; in other words, with all of who we are.  Jesus calls us not just to know, but to act and respond to that love.  And if we are called through Baptism to be members of Christ’s Body, the Church, then our mission is the same as Jesus’ mission: to reveal the truth and the love of God.  We are also called, in loving God with our entire self, to preach the truth to others by our words and to give them the love of God through our actions.  Some may reject the light of truth and choose to remain in the darkness of their own opinions.  Some may even reject God’s love because it makes demands on their life and calls for conversion.  But, as Jesus Himself said, “‘If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.  If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.’”

            In this Year of Faith, let us continually seek to rest in God by taking practical ways to get to know God better—through prayer, study, and silence—and by taking practical ways to love God better—through prayer, giving of our time and talent, and supporting one another—so that, at the end of our lives, we can say when Jesus questions us, that we have tried our best to know the God who is One, and to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.