Good Soil and Good Fruit

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time/Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen].  It never failed that during summer vacation while in high school, my teachers would always give me something educational to do.  Usually it was literature classes requiring us to read a certain book or books, and we would have a test our first week back at school.  I always had the intention of reading the book progressively through the summer so I didn’t have to cram it all in at the end.  And for the first couple of weeks I did pretty well of reading a chapter or two every few days.  But then I always felt like I had a lot of time during the summer to read, which meant I put it off, which meant I usually had a majority of the book or books to read in the last two weeks before school began.     
    The way we treat summer can sometimes mirror the way we treat our spiritual life.  We figure we have lots of time, so we don’t need to rush anything.  Instead, our Lord uses the image of seeds and crops and trees to remind us about how we should always work at improving our spiritual life and remaining open to the ways in which the Lord wants to work in and through us.  

    We’re all used to the parable about the sower of the seeds [which we heard today].  There are different types of soil that have the ability to sustain or not sustain the crops.  The meaning doesn’t take a rocket scientist to sleuth.  But how are we treating our soil?  Do we cooperate with God’s grace to have good soil, or do our hearts mimic more of a path, or rocky soil, or soil with thorns already growing there?  Do we generally know that God has spoken through the Scriptures and through His Church, but we don’t really bother to engage what God says?  Or do we joyfully hear God’s Word at Sunday Mass, but then forget about God’s word on the car ride home or through the rest of the week, and then act like practical atheists who do not involve God in life, whether life goes well or poorly?  Or do we read the Bible daily, but then treat the rest of life as more important and more practical than living by God’s Word, and so it cannot take root in us?  Or do we hear God’s Word at Mass, and read it at home, and allow it to transform the decisions we make and the words we say and the way we treat others so that, with St. Paul, we can say that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me?
    God wants us to bear fruit.  But how we receive the Word of God and allow it to saturate our lives will determine what kind of fruit we bear.  If we don’t care for the soil, the tree of our spiritual life will produce rotten fruit rather than good fruit.  And the state of our soul manifests itself in our words and actions.  A person animated by the love of Christ does not curse out other people.  A person trying to follow Christ does not put sports above God and the Sunday obligation of Mass.  A disciple makes decisions not on how much money he can make, or how much power and prestige this will gain her, or what his favorite political party and spokesman says, but on the teachings of the Gospel as expounded throughout the centuries by the Church.  
    But all too often, our lives can contradict what we say we believe and whom we say we follow.  It’s like the young person arrested for possessing or selling heroin or fentanyl while wearing a DARE shirt (which, for those who didn’t grow up in the 90s, stood for Drug Abuse Resistance Education and was meant to help kids avoid doing drugs).  Or the person who wants to live a healthier life but eats fast food every day of the week.  Or the politician who says he or she cares for the environment and wants to limit carbon emissions and the flatulence of cows because they make too much methane gas, only to fly across the country and the world every month in a private jet.

St. Anthony of Padua

    Does this mean we will live the Gospel and Church teachings perfectly?  No.  We are all sinners, and we all miss the mark, sometimes often, sometimes rarely.  But are we doing our best to cooperate with God’s grace and God’s will, or do we say one thing and do another?  St. Anthony of Padua once preached: “Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak.  We are full of words but empty of actions, and therefore are cursed by the Lord, since he himself cursed the fig tree when he found not fruit but only leaves.”  There’s a difference between me wanting to bench press 225 pounds for one or two sets of three reps, and not having the strength yet but going to the gym regularly to improve my bench press, and wanting to bench press 225 pounds but not even bothering to go to a gym, or only doing so once or twice a week.  
    The vice of sloth can act as a temptation to many, that we can delay really putting in effort to receive the Word of God and live the Word of God until we’re older and when we have more free time.  But God doesn’t promise us tomorrow.  All we have is today.  As St. Paul says, quoting the Prophet Isaiah: “Now is the acceptable time; now is the day of salvation.”  Tend the soil of your soul today.  Put in the work now to bear good fruit in the future.  Before we know it, the summer will be over, and the harvesters will come to reap the fruit from the crops they sowed in the spring.  May we not be the branches that brought forth bad fruit and were cut down and cast into the fire, but the branches that bore good fruit because we cultivated our soil and stayed connected to the Vine, Jesus Christ [who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen]. 

Flirting with Death

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

A trail at Zion National Park

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In my visits to National Parks, which are a great treasure of our country, there have been some, like Zion National Park, where you can hike up high mountains and use trails that seemingly climb to the heavens.  Now, when I say trails, I don’t mean nice, paved, even trails.  These are usually parts of a mountain, sometimes with rudimentary railings, but often not, with sharp drop-offs if one were to lose his or her balance.  Some more adventurous folk like to get right to the edge.  As for me, I try to stay as far away from the edge as possible, because I definitely have a fear of losing my balance and falling to my death.
    While I, and many others who have a fear of heights, may not enjoy the idea of flirting with death by falling off a path, how many others enjoy flirting with the death that comes from sin.  St. Paul says it clearly enough: “The wages of sin is death.”  And even if the English grammar doesn’t hit our ears quite right (wages, though it sounds plural, is a singular idea, and so yields a verb in the singular), the message is clear enough: do you want to die?  Then sin!  Sin is like floating one foot over the edge of the gorge with nothing to hang on to in case you fall.  

    It can be hard to take sin so seriously, especially with such ready access to the Sacrament of Penance at this parish.  If I sin, then I go to confession.  And that is a good rule to follow.  We rightly focus on the mercy of God, because God, through Christ, has revealed the Father’s great love for us, a love which never wants us to be separated from Him, and a love which will be wasteful in mercy and look foolish just to reconcile us to Him.  
    But while not giving sin more power than God’s mercy and grace, we do also need to recognize the horror of sin.  And, our appreciation for the mercy of God increases with our appreciation of just what we deserve when we sin.  If I don’t think that sin makes all that big of a difference, then God’s mercy also doesn’t mean as much.  But if I know that the wages of sin is death, that I deserve death every time I sin, then when I do confess my sins and when God reconciles me to Himself through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, I recognize just what an amazing thing God has done.
    If we forget just how awfully sin takes a toll, then we need only look at a crucifix.  And, if we really want to understand crucifixion, then a Spanish crucifix is probably the best, as they are the most gruesome depictions of the death of Christ, rather than the very placid depictions we are used to seeing in bronze, silver, or gold.  Think of the excruciating (literally, from the Latin, from the cross) pain of having nails hammered into your hands and feet.  No matter where exactly the nails would have entered, they would have hurt.  Think of the struggle just to breathe, which is the way most died from crucifixion, as your lungs slowly filled with fluid and you struggled just to take a quick breath, all the while your body seeking any way to stay alive, but without any way to do so.  Add to that the shame of being totally naked before all, and we begin to get the idea of how terrible undergoing crucifixion was.  
    That, the crucifixion, was the wages the of sin.  No just sin up to the time of Christ.  Not just sin at the time of Christ.  But all sin, from all time, nailed to the cross and carried upon the shoulders of the spotless Lamb of God.  That was the price for our salvation.
    But the Apostle doesn’t end with “the wages of sin is death.”  He continues: “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Death does not get the last say, though we deserve it.  We don’t have to fear falling off the side of a steep cliff.  God remains vigilant, ready to grab us and pull us back to safety if we but call upon His Name.  Earlier in this epistle, St. Paul reminds us that where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.  God’s mercy and grace are infinitely more powerful than our sins.  It’s as much a competition as my legos trying to fight me.  
    But it’s still good to keep in our mind that sin yields death.  Because the Church teaches us that if a person were to die in a state of mortal sin, we do not know how that person could go to heaven.  When we choose separation from God who is the source of life, we choose separation from eternal life.  It’s not that God sends us anywhere, as much as we choose by our actions if we want death or if we want life.  God will lovingly take us back if we desire, but if we don’t, God loves us enough to respect our misuse of free will, because true love never forces itself on another.  
    Yes, God is merciful.  If we ask for God’s mercy then He will grant it to us.  But if we choose sin, then we choose death.  And if we choose death, no matter how attractive it looks at the time, we will get death, eternal death.  Do not presume that just because we can say, “Lord, Lord,” we will go to heaven.  But do not despair of God’s mercy, as long as you seek to do the will of God the Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.   

Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Recently more and more journalists are reporting that sometime around the middle of this month, Pope Francis will further restrict celebrations of the Mass using the Missal of Pope St. John XXIII.  And while I’m loathe to accept rumors and gossip as fact, two previous similar situations have proven that, at times, rumors and gossip do have a ring of truth.
    I cannot and will not go into detail now about speculating on what will happen after Rome releases this document, if there will be, in fact, a document as feared, because we don’t know what it will say.  I have, through the Diocese of Lansing’s Office of Worship, asked Bishop Boyea to release a pastoral letter to the communities that celebrate using the Usus antiquior if further restrictions are levied against us.  Certainly, in times of upheaval and strife, the words of the spiritual father of our Diocese are most important.
    But what do we do until then?  One temptation is to worry.  But our Lord told us quite directly not to do that.  “Do not worry about your life…” he said in Matthew, chapter 6.  “Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?”  Worry is what the enemy seeks to have us do, because when we worry we try to take the place of God where everything has to be in our own hands for an appropriate answer and resolution.  No amount of worrying will change anything, but it will exhaust us and cause us to lack trust in God, who can do all things.

    St. Pio of Pietrelcina, more commonly known as Padre Pio, would say it this way: “Pray, hope, and don’t worry.”  Prayer is something we can do.  When we pray we take our concerns to God, for whom all things are possible.  Whether we pray Rosaries, or litanies, or novenas, or simple Paters and Aves, prayer draws us closer to the Sacred Heart, which always benefits us.  In prayer we become like the beloved disciple, St. John, who leaned his head against the breast of our Savior at the Last Supper.  And that is not a bad place to be.
    Obedience is also key.  St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote, “If you believe what you like in the Gospel, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself.”  Analogously, we could say that if we only obey what we like, and disobey when we don’t like something, then we are not truly obedient.  Pope Francis, whatever we may think about the reasons for any upcoming decision, is the Pope.  He was validly elected.  If he weren’t, I’m sure Cardinal Burke, who was present for the election, would have said something by now.  I don’t have to agree with all of Pope Francis’s decisions.  I don’t have to find that his words or actions always to help foster faith.  But I do owe him, as Supreme Pontiff, religious submission of will and intellect.  And Popes have always retained the authority to adjust the form of the sacraments and the way the Mass is celebrated.  Pope St. Pius V did so in eliminating rites that were less than 100 years old.  Pope St. John XXIII did it when he added St. Joseph’s name to the Canon.  Pope Benedict XVI (who should be canonized) did it when he gave all individual priests that authority to celebrate using the pre-Conciliar liturgy. 
    In my time here, I have observed almost none of the criticisms which Pope Francis has leveled against those who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass.  Very few deny the dogmatic and doctrinal authority of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, even while some (quite rightly) do point out issues in its implementation.  Very few do what Cardinal Burke has condemned: lacking respect and obedience to the Holy Father by simply referring to him as Bergoglio or using other words to describe him which are not fitting for Catholics when referring to the pontiff.  Most, if not all, even while struggling with some of the things Pope Francis says (as do I, at times) pray for him and seek only to be good Catholics who appreciate the entire 2,000 year history of the Church, and prefer to worship using the older Mass.  We have united well in our parish with those who worship using the Missal of Pope St. Paul VI, and I truly believe we are united as one parish, not a divisive group within a parish.  So the attacks that some level against us are not true, and we suffer quietly those detractions, as St. Peter, our first pontiff, encouraged us to do.
    We also remain true to our conscience.  Conscience is a word that has been warped in the past decades.  Right now, most consider conscience as simply what they want to do or what they feel in their gut is right.  But conscience is the voice of God, and so God cannot contradict Himself, nor what He has revealed as true for the past 2,000 years.  Conscience has to be aided by the study of Church teaching, both in the Scriptures and in the Magisterial pronouncements.  Conscience is our practical application of those teachings in individual circumstances, not the changing of teachings to fit individual circumstances.  And the Church is very clear: whoever knows the Catholic Church to be necessary for salvation, but purposely chooses to leave her, cannot be saved.  We must follow our conscience, even if it errs.  But we have the responsibility to make sure our conscience is formed so that we can hear God’s voice and not rely only on our gut or instinct.
    When a recent parishioner who attends this Mass brought up to me the now-more-pervasive stories about further restrictions, his approach was an inspiring act of faith.  He simply said that he would trust God and not worry about what was ahead, because God is in control.  He said he chose not to worry because worrying wouldn’t accomplish anything productive, and could prove quite destructive.  I applaud that man’s faith, and hope that we can all emulate it. 
    Be assured of this: as your local shepherd, your pastor, and your spiritual father, I will never lead you away from what I believe to be the truth and the best course of action.  I will ardently yet gently encourage you to stay with the Church, even as waves sometimes seem to pummel the barque of Peter.  I will never encourage anything which I believe will endanger your eternal salvation, and I will do whatever I can to make sure that the Mass is still celebrated reverently according to whatever legitimate laws we need to follow.  I pray that you will not worry, but you will pray and entrust this present trial to God.  I pray that we will all have the wisdom to know when to be obedient and how best to do that.  And in this way, we can be assured that we are not simply those who say, “Lord, Lord,” but are truly those who do the will of our heavenly Father, and so prepare ourselves for heaven, where He lives and reigns with the Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

True Dichotomy

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  So often we’re nudged in the direction of a false dichotomy.  That phrase, false dichotomy, might sound foreign, might even sound like an obscure body part, but it’s the wrong assertion that there are only two choices.  For example, a person might say, “You have to vote for a Republican or a Democrat,” when, in fact, there are other political parties for whom you can vote.  Or, less weighty, you have to decide whether or not you can put pineapple on pizza.  As I tend to be the pop culture reference guy, it’s like Anakin in “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” saying to Obi Wan, “‘If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy.’” 

    But not all dichotomies are false.  Scripture, and especially our epistle today, talks about the dichotomy between sin and grace, death and life.  Sin brings death, grace brings life.  And St. Paul talks about the Romans had previously been slaves to sin and death, but now were raised to life through grace, “in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 
    But this is not just St. Paul.  It’s the overarching theme in the Scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation.  In Genesis, after God creates everything good, culminating in the creation of man and woman in His image, our first parents have life.  They are living in the grace of God.  But then, Eve, followed by Adam, disobey God; they sin.  And by sinning, they welcome death into the world.  They are expelled from the Garden of Eden, and separated from the Tree of Life, so that they experience death. 
    And so throughout Genesis, we see that when evil is allowed to fester, it leads to death.  Think of the Flood and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  But, when people follow God, they find life.  Think of Abram leaving Ur because God calls him to go to Canaan, and then becoming Abraham, the father of many nations.  The same could be said for Exodus, where God leads His people from slavery to sin in Egypt to freedom in following His law in the Promised Land.  Of course, throughout the journey, some disobey God, and they find death.  While others, like Joshua and Caleb, follow God, even when unpopular, and they enter the Promised Land.
    This same overarching theme repeats itself in the Books of Joshua and Judges, and then with the Kings of Israel.  The prophetic books are basically warnings from God through His prophets to live according to God’s will, because if they continue in their sin, they will die.  This culminates in the dispersion of the Northern Kingdom of Israel after they start worshiping false gods and oppressing those for whom God has a special love: widows and orphan; and the exile of the Southern Kingdom of Judah to Babylon after they, too, engage in idolatry and mistreatment of the poor and vulnerable.
    Of course, nowhere does this dichotomy appear clearer than with our Lord, who calls Himself, “‘the Way and the Truth and the Life.’”  To follow Him is to have life; to reject Him is to choose death.  The Savior even takes our rejection and the consequence of that rejection–death–upon Himself in His crucifixion, but because He was faithful to God He rises on the third day.  And the rest of the New Testament unpacks that choice between life and death, and helps those who follow the Lord to know what choosing life looks like to the nascent Church.  The Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul’s epistles, the epistles of St. Peter, St. Jude, and St. John all talk about how we can have eternal life and reject the death of sin.
    And at the end of the Bible in the Book of Revelation, we see the cosmic battle between good and evil, a battle that God wins convincingly.  But the Spirit also warns the churches that they have to continue to follow God to have that life.  It was not enough to choose life once or earlier; life must be chosen each day.  In the end, sin and death are defeated forever, and the fullness of the reign of God shines forth, with eternal life for those who remained faithful (and eternal punishment for those who rejected God).
    So which do we choose: life or death?  By our fruits, Christ tells us, you can tell what we choose.  Each time we sin, especially grave sins, we invite death into our lives.  Each time we follow God, we invite eternal life into our lives.  Indeed, though we often think of the judgment as Christ telling us where to go, either to Hell, or to Purgatory or Heaven, really we make that choice each day of our lives.  While the just are surprised that they served Christ through service to the poor, and the wicked are likewise surprised that they ignored Christ through ignoring the poor, they knew that they had served or ignored the poor.  In that way, their salvation or damnation was not a surprise, because they knew their choices, and whether or not they choose to do follow what God had instructed for eternal life.  Sometimes it was one act of following the Lord at the end of one’s life, like St. Dismas, the good thief, who received paradise for his defense of Christ crucified.  At other times it was more choices for the Lord, with some rejections sprinkled in, like St. Peter.  Or, in a negative sense, one great act of betrayal from Judas led him to despair of any chance of salvation.  But Dismas nor Peter nor Judas was ignorant of the choices they made and how each could affect eternal salvation.
    So where will we come out in this great drama and battle between life and death?  By baptism Christ claimed us for Himself and eternal life, and gives us the grace to stay faithful to the choices of life each day.  Each day the enemy works to enslave us once more to death.  Neither Christ nor the devil chooses for us.  We choose if we want death or life.  Praised be to God who gives us all the graces necessary so that we can accept the gift that salvation is, won for us by Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever. 
    

Choosing Life Instead of Death

 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  The colloquial definition of insanity is doing the same thing but expecting different results.  How often we can be insane, at least according to that definition!  It’s like the old gag where a man goes to the doctor and says, “It hurts when I raise my arm,” so the doctor replies, “Then don’t raise your arm!”  Sometimes the simplest things in theory, are the most complex in practice.

    St. Paul reminds us today that the wages of sin is death.  When we sin, we are inviting death into our life.  We might say that we are cutting out life from our existence.  Sin is slavery: shackling ourselves into bondage.  No one forces us to sin; we have the freedom to choose good from evil.  But how often do we choose evil?!
    And then, having chosen death, having chosen to sin, we wonder why we reap death.  Again, our Lord reminds us that if we sow death, we will reap death.  If we sow slavery, we will reap slavery.  We know the tree by the fruits it produces.  But we still go back to the tree that brings us death and weakens our relationship with God, or even separates us from God.  
    Of course, we think that we can get away with it, or that the consequences won’t effect us.  We think we can outsmart sin and death, or be so tricky that we can enjoy the sin but not suffer the consequences.  
    But no one explicitly thinks this way when he or she sins.  We don’t use our brains, we use our passions, and so we often don’t consciously think: this action is not good; it is not leading me to God.  If I do this, I’m inviting death and slavery into my life.  Or we may think that it’s not a big sin, so we don’t need to really worry about it.  So we flirt with little sins, not realizing that they can, if left alone, lead to bigger sins.
    But it doesn’t have to be this way.  Our Lord came precisely to transfer us from the kingdom of death and slavery to the kingdom of life and freedom.  He ransomed us with His own Precious Blood, and paid the price of our freedom by dying on the cross.  God wants freedom for our life.  He wants us to live.  And He offers us every opportunity for freedom and life.  But we keep sliding back into slavery and death.
    The antidote to this sliding is the fear of the Lord.  Our Gradual today, from Psalm 33, begins, “Come, children, and hear me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”  The fear of the Lord is not about being scared or afraid.  Fear of the Lord is about recognizing the pain sin causes God, not because He is weak, but because He mourns when we draw farther away from Him.  Think of this fear like the fear you would have of disappointing your spouse or a parent.  Sometimes the worst thing we can hear is, “I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.”  When we love someone, we want to show that love to them, and we don’t want them to not feel that love.  The scriptures often use the image of adultery, marital infidelity, to describe sin.  The action is bad enough, and we know it’s wrong, but the pain that comes from realizing we let our beloved or our Father down is sometimes worse than any corporal punishment that could be inflicted upon us.
    So, to avoid sin, especially grave sin, we need to keep that desire not to hurt our beloved, God, at the front of our mind.  When our mind is fixed on God and showing Him our love by what we do (and what we don’t do), then we’re less likely to give in to those sins that demonstrate that we don’t fully love God, that something else is more important than Him.  Would that we always kept the post-sin sadness in our minds before we fell into sin, so that we wouldn’t have the pain that comes from disappointing our beloved, our God.
    Our life in Christ is not so much about doing the right things and not doing the wrong things (though we should do the right and avoid the wrong).  We can live at that surface level of our faith, where we just do this and don’t do that because the Scriptures or the Church tell us so.  But God invites us to let our roots grow deeper so that we can bear better fruit.  He invites us to consider His commands as the way that we can return the love that He first showed us when our Lord died on the cross.  How often we go to our Divine Physician and say, “It hurts when I sin!”  He tells us, “Then don’t sin!”  Keep at the front of your mind your love for God, that love that makes sin seem less appealing, and by keeping that love before you, avoid the death that sin always brings, the death and sin that were conquered by Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit reign for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Judging Books and Wine

 Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the early lessons we learn as a child is never judge a book by its cover.  There are many stories (some true, some invented) which seem to give credence to this maxim.  I don’t read a ton, but I can tell you that I often decide whether or not I want to pick-up a book by the cover.  There was also a story a year or so back about how wine labels have changed to try to encourage people (especially those of the female persuasion) to buy the bottle without knowing what the wine tastes like.  
    Our Lord seems to be saying that we should judge a book by its cover.  After all, good fruit equals a good tree; bad fruit equals a bad tree.  Doesn’t seem too complicated, and seems to make perfect sense.  And I’m certainly not here to contradict the words of the Son of God.

    Having said that, it’s not quite as simple as: doing bad things makes you a bad person.  Pope St. John Paul II reminded us: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son, Jesus.”  Which of us hasn’t sinned?  And yet, we do not want to be defined by our sins, but by the love of God.  
    Even St. Paul today in the epistle spoke about the conversion of the Romans, how they had been slaves to sin, but they were now slaves of God.  If St. Paul would have defined the Romans by how they had acted before their conversion, he would have simply written them off as damned.  But instead he called them to new life in Christ.  So how do we understand the words that we heard in the Gospel?  
    Part of it, I believe, has to do with a reading of the other parables of our Lord, rather than this one.  In another place, Jesus talks about the weeds sown among the wheat.  He says to let the weeds go until harvest time, when they can be sorted from the wheat.  That sorting would only take place when the “fruit” of the stalk of wheat had come to fruition, when the harvest was ready.  But, at that point, you would be able to tell the good fruit from the bad fruit, the weeds from the wheat.  And perhaps this is what our Lord means when He talks about He says that we can judge a tree by its fruit: it is only at the end that it becomes apparent what the fruit is.
    Think about it in terms of your own life.  Unless you are the Blessed Mother, you have, like me, had moments in life of which you are not proud, where you wandered away from the love of God and His law.  At that moment, you and I were not bearing good fruit.  So, perhaps we should be cut down and thrown into the fire.  And yet, God did not do that.  God was patient with us, like the farmer in the Gospel parable who sees the fig tree not bearing fruit, but waits one more year to see if it bears fruit.  God is patient with us so that we can stop being slaves of the flesh, slaves of immorality, and start being not only slaves, but friends of God.  
    Does this mean that we rest on our laurels, and just coast until the end of life?  It is interesting that, no matter what times weekday Masses are celebrated, it does tend to be older people who attend.  There is a certain sobriety that comes when you realize that you have more years behind you than you have in front of you.  But that seriousness, that wisdom of being a senior, can be had by us now, and not just about going to Mass.  The danger with putting off true and deep conversion until the end is that we never know when our particular end will be.  I could die any day, and Jesus could return any day.  If I am in the habit of delaying my conversion, the change of my heart for our Lord, then I could be caught unawares, and the judgment may come to me like a thief in the night.  
    Each day we are invited to, as St. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.”  We do battle and put the old man to death, while trying to be receptive to the grace of God which makes us new men and women in Christ.  Inasmuch as we do this, we are, likely bearing good fruit, which is a good sign.  Inasmuch as I strive for holiness by the grace of God, I am pointing towards heaven.  And, making a regular habit of confession, and perhaps knowing a very short but good act of contrition in case of extreme danger, God knows that I am doing my best to stop being a slave of sin.
    But even in our attempts to follow Jesus, that sin of apathy, or we might say sloth, can creep in.  ‘I am doing what I can, and I may not be perfect, but at least I’ll get to Purgatory,’ we might say to ourselves.  As one professor in seminary told me, humans often have a way of not getting their target, so aim for heaven, in case you fall a bit short.  Don’t aim for Purgatory, because if you miss, well, you get the picture.  
    Further, our Lord reminds us that lip service is not enough.  Words are cheap, and actions speak louder than words.  Even the demons know the truth, but they reject it.  We can know the truth, but do we embrace it?  Do we strive to go by the grace of God on the narrow way to salvation, or do we figure that, because we are in the Church that Jesus founded and have received the sacraments, we don’t have to worry or respond to the gift of salvation each day?  
    “The wages of sin is death,” St. Paul tells us (in grammar that only works in Greek).  If we embrace the death of sin in this life, we know what will await us in the next.  Our fruit, at the harvest of our particular judgement, will be bad.  But if we embrace the life of our Lord each day, our fruit, at the harvest of our particular judgement, will be good, and we will enjoy eternal happiness in the kingdom of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Who Do You Know Better? Justin or Jesus?

Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

            It seems like anytime there is a great tragedy, especially a natural disaster, in a mainly Catholic area, like Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, or the earthquakes in Chile, certain fringe televangelists will blame it on the Catholics.  We are charged with believing in magic and the power of works, not faith and grace.  In fact, the words, “hocus pocus” come from a play on the Latin words of institution, hoc est corpus, and was used to accuse Catholics of believing that just by saying the right words, the bread and wine could become the Body and Blood of Jesus as if by magic.

Statue of St. Paul from the Patriarchal Basilica
of St. Paul Outside the Walls

            In today’s second reading, St. Paul makes it very clear that the Law, the law given by God through Moses on Mt. Sinai to the people of Israel, does not save people.  It just not justify, or bring them into right relationship with God.  Only by grace, “through the redemption in Christ Jesus…by his blood” are we brought into right relationship with God.  This idea may seem very Protestant, but, as we know, St. Paul was Catholic.  He was a great missionary of the one Church Jesus founded.  And so we Catholics cling to this idea.  There is nothing that we can do that can earn us salvation. 

            And, in case you don’t trust St. Paul, and believe me, some Catholics get a little leery about him (mostly, I think, because they’re afraid that he bolsters the Protestant claims), we can look to Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel.  Jesus says that just because we call Him Lord; just because we prophesy in Jesus’ name; just because we exorcise demons in Jesus’ name; just because we do mighty deeds in Jesus’ name, does not mean that we will go to heaven.  In fact, to those who do those great deeds but do not do the will of the Father in heaven, Jesus will say, “‘I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers.’” 

            So, if prophecy, exorcisms, and mighty deeds done in the name of Jesus don’t get us in, what will?  Those things can “get us in,” so to speak, if they are the will of God for us in our lives.  But if not, then we must be sure that we are doing the will of God as it is made known to us in our lives.  There is no magical thing to do to get into heaven.  Not even dying for the faith, if we do not have love and a right relationship with Jesus, will get us into heaven, as St. Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians in the famous hymn of love that we hear so often at weddings.

            Being Catholic is not about doing the right things.  It is not about saying the right words.  Yes, we do need to do the right things and say the right words, but those acts, those words, to be helpful to our salvation must first come from a relationship with Jesus.  As Catholics we can easily fall into the trap of thinking that our salvation is caused by the things we do.  As long as we are baptized; as long as we confess our sins to the priest; as long as we receive communion; as long as we give money to the Church, then we’ll be saved.  And certainly baptism is the ordinary way that God cleanses His children from original sin and brings them into a right relationship with Him; certainly if we sin after Baptism, especially mortally, then we need to confess to a priest as the ordinary means of gaining forgiveness from God; certainly we need to come to Mass each Sunday to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ to give us the strength to live out our lives as disciples; certainly being good stewards of the gifts and talents and time God has given us shows that we appreciate those blessings and give our best back to God.  The sacraments surely cause grace, but those graces call for a response from us.

            So the question for us is: how is our relationship with Jesus?  How well do we know Jesus?  Do we know Him as well as we know the Pope (which, for most of us means that we’re familiar with the guy, but we don’t really know what he’s like)?  Do we know Jesus as well as we know Justin Bieber, Michael Jackson, Celine Dion, or Katy Perry (which means that we probably know everything about them [and believe me, I know a fair amount of young girls who know everything about Justin Bieber], but without really having a friendship with them)?  Do we know Jesus as well as we know our friends (which means that we know a lot about them, and we know them personally, but there are still some things that we don’t share with them)?  Or do we know Jesus like and even better than we know our best friend or like we know our spouse (which means that we share everything with Jesus, joys and sorrows, graces and sins)?    In case you’re wondering, it’s the last one that we should be aiming for.

            What you’ll find, the closer to you get to Jesus, is that there are fewer things in life that can shake you.  As you become closer to Jesus, the house of faith that you build becomes more like a house built on the rock and less like on the sand, so that when traumatic events in life come: the loss of a job; the loss of a family member; attacks on our faith, etc., while they still shake the house a little, the house of faith is not washed away.  In a time when everything seems so changeable, where there’s a new iPad, iPod, or iPhone every year, and when nothing seems to stay the same, we can be sure that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, always relevant, but never changing.  We need that stability in our lives, and nothing else can live up to that desire for total stability, not even another person.

            We as Catholics do not believe in magic.  It is not just the right words that we say or the right deeds that we do.  Being a disciple, a good disciple, is all about how close we are to Jesus, our relationship with Him, and then responding to that love that He pours upon us in the Sacraments and in our daily lives.  My prayer is that our house of faith will be built on the rock of Jesus and will stand the many trials and tests that come along in life so that when we come before Jesus, the Judge of the Living and the Dead, we will not hear, “‘“I never knew you.  Depart from me, you evildoers,”’” but, “‘Come, good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy prepared for you by my Father.’”