War and Peace Begins with Us

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Pope Pius XII

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  “Nothing is lost by peace; everything may be lost by war.”  Who do you suppose said this?  Pope Leo XIV?  Pope Francis?  It was Pope Pius XII in 1939, a week before historians say that World War II began.  “It is hardly possible to imagine that in an atomic age era, war could be used as an instrument of justice.”  That was Pope St. John XXIII in his Encyclical, Pacem in Terris.  As we hopefully find ourselves at the end of another war, this time with Iran, and given the readings today, I thought it important to reflect on violence and peace on this fifth Sunday after Pentecost.
    To be fair, declarations of war are the proper authority of governments.  Yet the Church has something to say about war and the moral questions and implications of war.  But today’s homily is not for members of Congress nor for heads of state.  Today’s homily is for you, not so much as a one-sided talking to about whether or not we should have entered into a war (declared or not) in Iran, but what we contribute to war or peace.  
    St. Peter, our first pope, tells us today in the epistle that Christ does not call us to return evil for evil, and that we “must turn from evil and do good, seek peace and follow after it.”  Why?  Because, frankly, we’re bad at meting out just punishment.  It doesn’t mean that we can’t, but we’re not very good at it.  And we see this from a young age.  There you are, a young child, minding your own business, riding in a car with your parents on a beautiful sunny day, maybe even on your way to or coming from church, and your sister decides to push your buttons by poking you in the arm.  Now, you know your parents have told you to use your words, so you tell your sister to stop.  But this only eggs her on all the more, and she keeps poking you.  So you hit her, to show her that she can’t pick on you without repercussions.  But she doesn’t want to look like a weakling, so she pushes you back, until you’re in a full-on car fight and your parents look back and tell you both to cut it out, and your dad says, “If I have to pull this car over…”
    When we respond to perceived wrongs, we tend to give a little more than we got, as a deterrent to the person wronging us.  In our attempt to be just, we tend to go a little beyond justice.  But then the other person feels aggrieved, and has to respond to us, and goes a little beyond what we deserve.  And so the cycle starts and sometimes even goes to a point we never would have imagined.
    St. James asks in his epistle, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from?  Is it not from your passions?”  Our Lord knew that we often don’t hit the target of justice and tend to give more punishment than others deserve.  And so, while the Decalogue forbade murdering another (“Thou shalt not kill”), Christ the New Moses teaches us that we have to nip anger in the bud in order to stop unjust force, and change our hearts so that we act from a place of peace, not a place of wrath or vengeance.  

G.K. Chesterton

    “But,” you may say, “what about the Nazis?  Shouldn’t we have fought them?”  Before answering that, if you have to use Nazi’s to justify your argument, you probably haven’t developed your arguments well enough, and simply disagree with the conclusion without having an issue with individual propositions that lead to the conclusion.  But, having said that, the Church does allow, in some limited cases, that war, primarily in self-defense, is necessary.  And this finds its basis in our individual right, and sometimes duty, to defend ourselves and others.  A parent who doesn’t defend their child from violence is a coward, not a virtuous person.  But, again, what is the motivation?  Is it because we really don’t like the aggressor and we’re glad we finally have a reason to knock his lights out?  Or is it because we love our children and don’t want any harm to come to them.  G.K. Chesterton wisely wrote, “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”  The motivation comes not from antagonism towards others, but love of those he or she is bound to protect by some obligation, be it a parent of a child, a law enforcement officer of a community, or a soldier of a nation.  
    When we “give it to them” to prove that we are the victors and the stronger person, we tend to perpetual the cycle of violence.  Even looking at World War II, most historians agree that the ingredients for the rise of the Nazi party came from an overaggressive and punitive response to Germany and Austria in the Treaty of Versailles.  The allies were so hurt by the people and materials lost in World War I, that they allowed vengeance to govern the resumption of peace, rather than trying to truly bring back justice and not going beyond that.  
    In our lives, we have to ask ourselves if we, or probably how we, perpetual a cycle of violence.  Even if I am simply acting only out of anger or animus towards another, I am contributing, even in a very small way, to a mentality that might makes right and violence is the only answer that works.  While we don’t have to make decisions on going to war, we do have to decide how we respond to injustices.  Are we willing, without denying our right to self-defense and defense of others, especially the vulnerable, to seek good rather than evil, peace rather than conflict?  Do my insults and harsh words of others build up the common good, or make others feel victimized so that they have to get back at me?  If every person learns to give better than you get, will the people who get elected to positions of government just carry that over into international relations?  
    God does not call us to be doormats and allow others to victimize us without consequence.  But if we can die to our passions which seek retribution; if we can truly seek the good of the other, even if we have to do so from afar, then we can, in our own small way, promote peace, which comes when people feel they are treated with dignity.  If we wish to stop wars, violence, and hatred, then we cannot simply state that we have not murdered anyone.  As Christ teaches us, we have to first work on eliminating the anger and hatred in our own hearts, and love others as Christ has loved us.  Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.   

What Makes Us Catholic

 Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Due to my retreat I had tried to get ahead of the game and write my homily before I left, which I successfully did.  And then Friday the sixteenth happened.  So, back to the drawing board.
    This past Friday morning, as I was finishing up our usual Friday morning adoration, I received a text from a brother priest of mine in the Diocese who knows how to celebrate the Extraordinary Form, or whatever we’re going to call it from now on, about Traditionis custodes, the new Motu Proprio.  We spoke after the 8 a.m. Mass about the details and the law of the new document (this brother priest is also a canon lawyer).  I then called Bishop Boyea, only to be reminded by his secretary that he is on retreat this week with the bishops of Michigan and Ohio.  I then had time to read over the document myself.
    I have to admit that, even though I only started celebrating according to the Missal of St. John XXIII a couple of months ago, my heart ached at what looks like more restrictions (we’ll see what Bishop Boyea has to say when he gets back with me).  Even in this short time I have come to see the beauty and transcendence of this form of celebration.  I will say that I also think that a priest can celebrate according to the Missal of St. Paul VI beautifully and transcendently, in its own way.  We’ll have to see what future lies in store for us, though I neither want to freak you out with specious speculations, nor presume that everything will be exactly the same.
    But Pope Francis, who is our validly elected Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Christ, and head of the Universal Church, also reminds us of important points about our Catholic faith, that I believe are worth speaking about here.

   The first is a general point about what makes us Catholic.  We are Catholics because we believe that Jesus founded His Church in a particular way, namely, upon apostolic foundations, with the successor of St. Peter as the Prince of the Apostles, and the visible sign of unity and head of the apostolic college.  Certainly I understand and sympathize (suffer with you) in feeling hurt by our Holy Father, and likely there are feelings of anger, betrayal, or others.  But to say that the pope is not the pope, or that we do not owe him religious submission of will and intellect because he has hurt us, because he has made decisions with which we do not agree, in a matter that is not de fide or part of the moral life of the Church, is not Catholic.  As your spiritual father I understand your pain, but also want to warn against a schismatic attitude that can separate you from the Body of Christ, which is the ordinary means of salvation.  We will continue to see what this new document means, but we have to do so with respect for Pope Francis, lest we endanger our immortal soul.  Does this mean that this legislation of his is the best or even simply right?  I think we can reasonably disagree in charity with this legislation.  But he is still our pope, allowed for us by Christ Himself.  And if St. Catherine of Siena can give that same respect to popes who were wrongly living in Avignon, we can give respect and pray for Pope Francis.  I certainly mention his name every time I pray the Roman Canon.  If you want to be in a parish that is schismatic, separated from visible unity with the Church, then this is not the parish for you.  We are Latin Rite, Roman Catholics, and too many martyrs died to uphold the papacy for us to reject it because of what we consider a hurtful and wrong piece of legislation.  I invite each of you to storm heaven with your prayers, and pray a Chaplet of Divine Mercy for Pope Francis.  
    Secondly, Vatican II.  The jokes about the Spirit of Vatican II being the scariest Halloween costume are funny because they contain a bit of truth.  Many people have taken Vatican II to mean a variety of things which the Council Fathers never intended nor desired.  I was born in 1983 (yes, I’m young), so I have only known a post-Vatican II world, and I have seen some of the negative effects of wrong implementation on the Church.  Many people saw Vatican II as a jettisoning of everything that had come before.  
    But Vatican II, especially in the Constitutions, and even in some of the documents which have less authority (e.g., decrees and declarations), was not a rejection of what came before, but a re-application of what came before.  Lumen gentium itself contains over 200 quotations and 92 references to Pope Pius XII.  As you look through Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, there is a beautiful collection of citations from Sacred Scripture, St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, and the conciliar documents of Trent and Vatican I.  I didn’t have time to count them all, but the references to solid Catholic saints, previous holy popes, and previous councils, is impressive.  
    Further, Pope St. John XXIII, whose missal we use, declared it to be an ecumenical council, and it was confirmed and approved, in the ways ecumenical councils need to be, by Pope St. Paul VI.  So we cannot ignore Vatican II and its documents, without ignoring an ecumenical council called for and confirmed by the successor of St. Peter.  To do so would be to make the same mistake as Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon, and other so-called reformers of rejecting what we don’t like and keeping what we do.  St. Augustine says this of the Gospel, but the same could be said for ecumenical councils, that if we accept what we like and reject what we don’t like, we do not have faith in God but in ourselves.  
    Further, while everyone likes to quote Lumen gentium, 16 which says that those who, “through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known through them through the dictates of conscience” can be saved, there is another quote, I would say that is even stronger, about the necessity of belonging to the Church.  Lumen gentium, 14 says, “Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved.”  I think all here know that the Catholic Church is a necessary connection to Christ (inasmuch as our Lord Himself said that persecuting His followers was persecuting Him as He spoke to Saul on the road to Damascus).  In the same way, then, we must hold fast to the Church, even when the barque of Peter seems to be adrift and taking on water, or risk damnation, as Vatican II clearly teaches.  
    I know these are hard days.  I know that it seems like the Church may want to abandon us.  But, St. Paul tells us, that we are not called to fear, but to have courage.  And Jesus reminds us in the Gospel, to do whatever it takes to be saved, even if it means suffering greatly.  We can likely see ourselves in the boat in Mark 4 with the apostles, as the storm is pounding us, and the waves are breaking over the boat, so that it seems like it will capsize.  But our Lord is in the boat, and He will not let it sink.  Our duty, even in our pain, frustration, and betrayal, is to stay in the boat with Christ, hold fast to Him, and have faith that He will see us safely to the harbor of heaven, where God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, reign eternally, world without end.  Amen.

Where No Christian Man Has Gone Before

Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

            I sometimes hear from people that the Catholic Church is a “men only” club.  Sure women attend (and are often more faithful than their male counterparts!) but only men can be deacons, priests, and bishops, many of the major saints are men, etc., etc.  This solemnity stands in direct contradiction to that vision of the Church.  It is a denial of that point of view at its root.  No other Christian man in the history of the Church has received so great an honor as the one we celebrate tonight.  And what we celebrate is that Mary, at the end of her life, was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.  She is the only Christian person to receive that honor. 

Painting of the Assumption from the
Orthodox Church of the Dormition

            What makes the Blessed Mother worthy of this unique privilege?  Was it simply the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb and nursed him?  In our Gospel, Jesus takes the usual Jewish thought of blessing being connected with the generation of children, and modifies it so that the truly blessed ones are those “‘who hear the word of God and observe it.’”  And who has done this better than the Blessed Virgin Mary?  Mary heard the word of God through the Archangel Gabriel telling her that she would be the Mother of God.  But, while she wondered how this could happen, since she did not know man, she did not doubt the angel, but said with that great act of faith, “Let it be done to me according to your word.”  Because Christ is the Incarnate Word of God, every time Mary, along with St. Joseph, cared for Jesus: feeding him, teaching Him to walk, teaching Him to talk, and all the work of raising a child, she was being attentive to the Word of God in a way no other person could. 

            But the fact that Mary carried Jesus in her womb was also a special privilege that prepared her for the privilege of the Assumption.  In our first reading we heard about the preparation of the Ark of the Covenant made by David.  The Ark of God was the place where God dwelt with humanity in a special way, and so it was treated with great honor and joy.  At the moment of the Incarnation, when Jesus was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Mother by the power of the Holy Spirit, she became the new Ark of God, the Ark of the New and Everlasting Covenant because she carried within herself God Himself.  Because of this previous honor, she who carried within her he Whom the universe cannot contain, the Source of Life Himself, it was most fitting that she should not taste death, but be preserved from it by her Son who gained for her the blessing of the Resurrection, not only of the soul, but also of the body. 

            But there the other mysteries of Mary’s life are also connected to this great privilege.  On November 1, 1950, in the Papal Bull Munificentissimus Deus, the document which solemnly defined the Assumption as belonging to the Deposit of the Faith, and therefore which must be believed by all the faithful, Pope Pius XII recalled how all the mysteries of Mary’s life are connected to this celebration.  He cites the Byzantine Divine Liturgy which, when celebrating this day, states, “‘God, the King of the universe, has granted you favors that surpass nature.  As he kept you a virgin in childbirth, thus he has kept your body incorrupt in the tomb and has glorified it by his divine act of transferring it from the tomb.’”  The privilege of Mary’s Virginal Motherhood is connected to this day.  So, too, is Mary’s Immaculate Conception, that she was conceived in the womb of St. Anne, without the taint of original sin touching her soul.  Pope Pius XII writes, “[Mary], by an entirely unique privilege, completely overcame sin by her Immaculate Conception, and as a result she was not subject to the law of remaining in the corruption of the grave, and she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body.”  Even Mary’s Immaculate Conception prepares her for this day that we celebrate, when she did not undergo corruption, but already enjoys the full joys of heaven, body and soul.

            There is no male human person who shares the same honors that we give to a woman, the Blessed Virgin Mary.  There is no male person celebrated as much as we celebrate Mary, not even St. Peter or St. Paul.  Because of her Immaculate Conception, Virginal Motherhood, unique care for and adherence to Jesus as a perfect disciple, and her Assumption, no other human person can claim such honors.  We are a Church who celebrates only one human person who on earth lived perfectly, and that human person is a woman.  Mary is the glory of Jerusalem.  Mary is the fairest honor of our race.

            While women have often been the most faithful members of the Church, by the will of God only men can become deacons, priests, and bishops and share in the ordained ministry of Jesus Christ.  But, this is certainly not because men are better than women, smarter than women, or holier than women.  This celebration of the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary reminds all of us, men and women, that our salvation was made possible by a woman, and that the holiest human person we have is a woman.  But she is for all of us, men and women, an example to strive to follow in her obedience and love of Christ, so that one day, after our deaths and the resurrection of our bodies, we, too might be able to share in the joys of heaven, body and soul, and Mary currently does.