Going to Jesus with Faith

Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  This passage of the raising of the Jairus’s daughter (in Matthew’s account he is only called a certain official), with the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage sandwiched in-between, is important enough that it is included in all three synoptic Gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, and Luke).  And we have two things going on: one, the Lord goes to raise the daughter of Jairus (Luke and Mark put her at the point of death, but not dead yet); two, the Lord heals the woman with the hemorrhage, seemingly without even knowing it (at least in the other accounts).  But both of these accounts show important aspects of the life of a disciple: going to Christ and having faith.
    In both parts of today’s Gospel, the people go to the Savior for what they want.  The official goes so that his daughter might have life.  He pleads with Christ to heal her, but after she has died, to raise her from the dead.  The woman needs healing, and interrupts the Lord’s journey to Jairus’s house.  She does not feel comfortable speaking with Christ, but has confidence that all she has to do is touch His clothes and she will be healed.  In both cases, the people go to Christ for what they need, and He provides for them.
    In both parts of today’s Gospel, that approach to the Lord is motivated by faith.  Jairus has faith that the Lord will heal or raise his daughter.  The woman has faith that if she but touches the hem of Christ’s garment that she will receive the healing for which she has long been searching.  In all three Gospel accounts, this story is fairly early in the Lord’s public ministry, so this faith is based mostly on the hope for who this itinerant rabbi might be.
    The two temptations for us as followers of Christ are to fall into the error of a kind of fideism, which the philosopher Alvin Plantinga describes as “the exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason”; or rationalism, where faith has no role in our lives, and we only follow scientific realities.  Now, both might seem like an extreme no one here would fall into, but they can sneak up quite quickly. 
    In the case of a brand of fideism, we go to God, which is good, but we don’t also utilize what God has revealed through human reason.  There are those who refuse to seek medical treatment because faith in God’s healing will suffice, and if God wants the person to be healed, that person will be healed.  When someone is sick, we should go to God to ask for the health of an individual.  We should have faith that God can do amazing things without any assistance from another, just like in the Gospel.  But we should also utilize that gifts that God has given, whether to us or to others, in utilizing the natural sciences to work God’s healing.  If a child’s arm is broken, we don’t just pray over that child, hoping that the bone will set itself correctly.  We pray for healing, and we take the child to a doctor to set the arm and put it in a cast.
    In the case of a type of rationalism, we ignore God altogether, and rely simply upon our wisdom.  While this might seem like something we would never do, especially as people who go to church, it can sneak in quite easily and clandestinely to our lives, such that, as we approach decisions, we fail to include God in those decisions at all.  We start out from the view that we know what is best, and ask God simply to affirm our decision, rather than putting our decision to him, and leaving space in our life for His will to be done.  We allow our reason to take the place of God’s providence, and leave no room for God to act.
    St. Paul says in today’s epistle that we should follow his example, and St. Paul was someone who both used reason and relied on faith in God.  He avoided the vicious extremes of fideism and rationalism, and took the virtuous middle road of rational faith, leaving room for God and also utilizing his own wisdom.  We see this in the trial St. Paul undergoes before he is sent to Rome for Caesar’s decision.

    St. Paul had been told by the Holy Spirit that he would go to Jerusalem to undergo imprisonment and hardships.  When, on his way to Jerusalem, he stopped in Caesarea, a prophet by the name of Agabus came to St. Paul, “too Paul’s belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, ‘Thus says the holy Spirit: This is the way the Jews will bind the owner of this belt in Jerusalem, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles.’”  St. Paul was open to the will of God leading him back to Jerusalem.  But, when on trial before the high priest and Sanhedrin, Paul also realized that some were Pharisees, who believe in the resurrection, and some were Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection.  He used that knowledge to pit them against each other, saying that he was on trial for his belief in the resurrection of the dead, such that the Pharisees wanted to release him, but the Sadducees would not allow it.
    Towards the end of that trial, the Lord spoke to St. Paul and said, “‘Take courage.  For just as you have borne witness to my cause in Jerusalem, so you must also bear witness in Rome.’”  St. Paul was transferred back to Caesarea to be questioned by the Roman governor Felix.  The case wouldn’t be decided, as Felix and his successor, Festus, wanted to curry favor from the Jews, no doubt to help keep peace.  When St. Paul saw that Festus wanted to send him back to Jerusalem, he invoked his right as a Roman citizen, and said, “‘I appeal to Caesar.’”  Festus keeps him a little longer and lets him speak to King Agrippa.  King Agrippa, after hearing Paul’s testimony and witness of his faith, admits that Paul had done nothing wrong, and told Festus, “‘This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.’”  But St. Paul knew that God wanted him to witness to the faith in Rome, so he appealed to Caesar, rather than risk the chance of being set free again.  St. Paul trusted in God, believed what God had revealed to him, but also used his reason and wit to cooperate with the plan of God.
     Our challenge today is to follow the example of Jairus and of the woman with the hemorrhage and of St. Paul: to go to the Lord when we are in any need, and to have faith in His plan.  This doesn’t mean that we ignore God’s gift of reason to us, nor does it mean that we ignore God and only use our reason.  Rather, we take our desires and plans to God, and submit them to His Divine Providence, knowing that sometimes God will intervene in some way to change our plans to be more in accord with His, and that sometimes God will allow our plans to proceed as we desired.  But the key is that we have faith in God, and that we go to Him in any need: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Small Sacrificies Yield Large Results

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    From time to time I see ads on TV and on the internet for ways to have a chiseled body, with well defined muscles.  I’m sure that some of the ads were photoshopped a bit, but even so, I often thought about what it would be like to have better muscle definition, stronger muscles, and a stronger appearance.  But to truly get into that shape, I would have to give up a lot of foods that I enjoy eating, and actually go to a gym on a regular basis and lift weights, neither of which sounds that appealing to me.  And looking at me, you can see which path I choose!
    Each in our own way, we probably all have things that we want, but for which we’re not really willing to work.  We have a desire for something, but we’re not really willing to do the things to make that desire an achieved reality.  That can even be the case when it comes to our faith.
    In today’s first reading we hear about a mother and her children who are being tortured and killed because they’re not willing to break God’s law, even though the local government is telling them to.  The back story is that the Greeks had taken over the Holy Land, and wanted everyone to live in the Greek manner of life: they placed idols in the temple, forbade parents to have their sons circumcised, and forced the Jews to eat pork, all as ways of rejecting the Jewish religion.  The part we hear in today’s passage highlights a heroic sacrifice that they make, simply because they would rather obey God and be tortured and killed than disobey God and enjoy prosperity. 
    But this heroic action probably did not start the moment they were arrested and brought before the king.  They likely had made smaller sacrifices to be faithful to God throughout their lives, maybe not even perfectly, but still, doing their best to say yes to God in their choices in small ways, which helped them to say yes to God when it was a major decision with drastic consequences.
    I think we can sometimes be as clueless as the Sadducees in today’s Gospel when it comes to the Resurrection.  We desire to be raised, to reign with Jesus in heaven.  But when it comes to the daily ways that we show that we want to accept this gift of eternal life, we’re not quite there, and we don’t want it that much.  We want the end result without wanting the daily effort it takes to obtain that result.
    Being welcomed into heaven is all about putting behind us the fallen parts of our nature by God’s grace, and accepting God’s grace to choose things which do not always seem to desirable, but which help us to say yes to God and say no to our fallen nature.  St. Paul talks about it as putting to death the old man (Adam, who said no to God), and living the life of the new man (Jesus, who said yes to God).  It’s easy to want to do that in major ways, and praise God when that happens, when we’re able to recognize a major temptation as something leading us away from God, and reject it.  But it’s much harder, but more efficacious, to say yes to God in small ways, which, over time, make us more like Christ.
    I would suggest two small ways that we can live more for Christ, and bring us closer to the desire to be welcomed into heaven.  The first you’re already doing today.  And that’s attending Mass every Sunday and Holyday, unless you're sick or homebound, or necessary work prevents you from attending.  Attending Mass might not seem like much, but that sacrifice to set aside your own desires on how to use your time, and then to drive to Mass to worship God, builds up our spiritual muscles.  You may not see it making a difference, but if we could see the difference it makes in our souls, we would be amazed.  Those who go to Mass still have temptations, but it’s much easier to reject temptation and sin when we’re filled with the grace of the Body and Blood of Christ, received in a state of grace.  Even if we still sin even though we attend weekly Mass, imagine the other sins you may have fallen into without attending Mass.  And daily Mass is even better, still!
    A second small way is abstaining from meat every Friday, not just the Fridays of Lent, unless it’s a solemnity, like on All Saints Day.  We might think that it’s not a big deal, and it’s not, especially if we like fish.  But saying no to our desire to eat whatever we want to is a great small sacrifice that prepares us to be faithful in bigger sacrifices that may come our way.  Sometimes, if visiting family or friends, that may not be possible, so maybe try fasting from lunch, or doing an extra work of charity on that day.  I try to abstain from meat on all Fridays, and I have seen the difference it makes in my own spiritual life.
    When I hear the story of the great martyrs, I am inspired by how they suffered for Christ in such major ways!  Some of the pain I think I could suffer through.  Some, like getting boiling water poured on me or having my fingernails pulled out, do not seem so easy to endure.  But in reality, if I’m not doing the smaller, daily sacrifices, whatever they might be, then I’m not going to be successful in the larger sacrifices if and when they ever come my way.  If we truly want to be in that number when the saints go marching in, to be as faithful as the mother and her children in not rejecting God even when it meant coercion, torture, and death by the government, then let us follow the advice of St. Paul to die to our fallen nature by little daily or weekly sacrifices, and live in the new life of the risen Christ.

Not Them vs. Us

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

If you’ve been watching the news recently (a depressing venture, to be sure), you’ve heard about students from Convington Catholic High School at the March for Life.  A first video was shared which seemed to show an elder Native American activist being shouted at by the students, some with “Make America Great Again” hats, with one student in particular with a smug, very condescending smile on his face.  Some also claimed that the students were chanting “Build the Wall.”  The students were excoriated in the media as being the problem with America, and by some, the problem with the pro-life movement.  The Diocese of Convington apologized for the students’ behavior and judged them as guilty based upon the popular narrative at the time.

Shortly after the first video was released, a second video was released with more context, showing that the students were being yelled at by an African-American group that was protesting.  That group of people were yelling hateful things towards the students, so, to drown out the hate, they started doing school chants.  At that point, the elder Native American and his group walked towards the students, and the Native American elder stood very close to the smiling student.  That student explained that he was smiling to try to diffuse a very tense situation, and did what he thought was best to keep other students from the school from becoming verbally or physically abusive in retaliation.  Some apologies and retractions were issued about those who pounced on the first video, and these students were put forward as good examples of our youth not being baited into a fight, while others were excoriated for jumping to conclusions and reporting those conclusions before all the facts were available.

I’m not here to dissect all the blame in this situation, and who is right and who is wrong.  I’m here to preach the Gospel, and our Gospel today bears upon this situation.  Jesus in the Gospel says, quoting the Prophet Isaiah, that he has come “‘to proclaim liberty to captives…[and] to let the oppressed go free.’”  When we hear those words, we probably associate them with those who are incarcerated or held by strong forces (captives) and those who are downtrodden (the oppressed).  Maybe we think about it in social terms or government terms, or maybe even military or law enforcement terms (probably, some of those hearing it understood Jesus to mean that He was going to free them from Roman rule).  

But we are today captivated, that is to say, held by, and oppressed by more things than just foreign powers or strong worldly forces.  We are, I would suggested, held captive and oppressed by a mentality, from which Jesus came to free us.  That mentality, which captivates and oppresses us is a mentality which divides the world into “them” and “us.”  Jesus does not see people as “others,” but rather, as “His,” because all things have been handed over to Him by His Father, by our heavenly Father.  

This is not to say that Jesus naïvely thought that everyone was working for him.  How many times did Jesus condemn the scribes and Pharisees for their wrong interpretation of the law, their oppression of people, and they hypocrisy.  And yet, when a Pharisee came asking Jesus about the greatest commandment, and when Jesus responded, that Pharisee gave his assent to the teaching of Jesus, then Jesus told the Pharisee that he was not far from salvation.  Jesus condemned the misreading and skepticism about the resurrection of the dead by the Sadducees, and yet Nicodemus, one of the Sadducees, engaged in dialogue with Jesus about baptism and being born again, and there was no condemnation from Jesus.  Jesus told the adulterous woman to go and sin no more, and called tax collectors to stop cheating others, and called everyone to stop hating their enemies, or looking lustfully at people, or swearing oaths blithely.  But Jesus also welcomed sinners into His company and invited them to a relationship with Him so that they could find the conversion to which Jesus called them.

We have become captives and oppressed by a worldview that divides the world.  We are all too happy to condemn them when they don’t agree with us.  This is hard to do as humans, because we’re social and want to belong.  So we demonize others, put them down, so that we can write them off.  Look at Congress and the President over the past month.  Nothing was getting done because each side had demonized the other.  There’s plenty of blame to go around for both sides; no one side is perfectly innocent.  The same goes for the coverage of the Convington Catholic students.  And yet, we willingly let ourselves be led like lemmings to a pre-determined conclusion because of a political or social affiliation that we value more than our affiliation with Jesus.  St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians: 

remember that at one time you, Gentiles in the flesh…were at that time without Christ, alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become nearly by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh…[creating] in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace.

St. Paul puts it in terms of Gentile and Jew, the Jewish division of the world.  But it applies to any division we make in our world.

There are people who do evil in the world.  There is legitimate blame for things that people do wrong, for which we can hold them accountable.  But if we see the world through the lens of “them” vs. “us,” then we are ignoring the Good News that Jesus came to bring, that He came to bring us freedom from being held captive and oppressed by division, and that God’s freedom, prophesied by Isaiah, has been fulfilled by Christ.

Chocolate, Puppies, and Belinda Carlisle

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

What is heaven like?  People have many different ideas.  Some people believe heaven is an unending chocolate fountain of goodness, but the chocolate has no calories.  Some people think heaven is a world full of puppies, except you never have to clean up after them and they obey your every command.  Some people consider heaven to be a tropical island with bottomless piña coladas and cuba libres.  In 1987, Belinda Carlisle told us heaven is a place on earth.

In all of these situations, heaven is simply a better version of earth.  The Sadducees in our Gospel today also took that approach.  They felt that heaven was merely a continuation of earth.  So, they plan to trick Jesus, by showing how problematic even believing in heaven truly is.  They set a trap where a woman in heaven would have seven different husbands, and try to see how Jesus would squirm out of this problem.  But rather than granting their premise that heaven is merely a continuation of earth, maybe with a little less pain, Jesus tells them that they have missed the point entirely.  Heaven is not a better continuation of earth, but is radically different.  In heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage, because marriage is for earth.  Marriage, at least between two baptized Christians, is a visible symbol of the invisible reality of Christ for His Church, which not only reminds us of Jesus, but communicates His grace.  In heaven, we don’t need physical realities that communicate God’s grace to us, because we have the direct vision of God.  

Heaven is the place where God’s reign comes in its fulness, as compared to what we have today.  We hear about that in our first reading.  This passage tells us of when Jewish brothers and their mother were remaining faithful to God’s law, even though the government, run by pagan Greeks, tried to get them to abandon God’s law.  The brothers knew that God would accept their sacrifice, and would right the wrongs that had been inflicted upon them by giving them new life.  

Heaven is not just earth 2.0.  Heaven is not just earth without any more elections, without any more war, without suffering and pain.  Heaven is as different from our current way of life as our life is different from an ant’s.  The Book of Revelation reminds us that heaven is the place where there are no more wrongs to be righted, and where we see God face to face.  Heaven is the place where there are no more tears or suffering or sorrow, for the old order has passed away.  Heaven is perfect happiness, not to our fallen human nature, but to our human nature perfected by Christ.  And to get there, we have to cooperate with God’s perfection of our nature in this life.  If we work against God’s will by our actions in this life, then we won’t be going to heaven in the life to come.  

The Book of Revelation also describes heaven as an eternal liturgy, an eternal Mass.  Now, before you think to yourself: ‘Heaven is like a never-ending Mass?  I don’t wanna go there!’, there won’t be boring homilies in heaven.  We won’t have to wait for bread and wine to be transubstantiated into the Eucharist in heaven, because we won’t need a sacrament of Jesus’ Body and Blood; Jesus’ Body and Blood will be present for us immediately. 

But if you have ever read the Book of Revelation, and not just the snippets about weird animals and the number 666, then you will recognize that it describes what goes on as worship of God, which is what we do at Mass.  The elders (in Greek, 𝛑𝛒𝛆𝛔𝛃𝛖𝛕𝛆𝛒𝛐𝛓, from which we get the word presbyter or priest) are around the throne of the Lamb, Jesus, throwing down their crowns (I don’t get any crowns) as they worship God.  They are also surrounded by the four living creatures, the Ox, Man, Lion, and Eagle, representing the four evangelists or Gospels, with the Cherubim singing “‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God.’”  The scroll with the Word of God is digested (like we’re supposed to do in the homily), and the elders and the angels and all those who are in heaven sing hymns to the Lord, praising God for what He has done.  And all of this is done over the place where the martyrs are, which is why, since the earliest days of Christianity, altars have been built over the site of martyrdom, or relics have been placed in altars.  If you want to read a good book on this, Scott Hahn’s book “The Lamb’s Supper,” is a great read.  

The Mass is supposed to give us a foretaste of what heaven is like.  It’s not meant to be the same as every day life.  It’s not supposed to be earthly.  It is patterned upon the worship of God in Scripture, and as the Church has developed the Mass throughout the centuries to emphasize what we believe.  While using earthly things, everything about our Mass is supposed to transport our senses, minds, and hearts to the heavenly Jerusalem through the symbols that make that reality present, and the signs that remind us of that reality.  

Heaven is not a mere continuation of our earthly existence.  It’s not earth without mosquitos.  Heaven is not a place on earth, with all due respect to Belinda Carlisle.  Heaven is the place of perfect fulfillment, where we will be who God created us to be.  May we all receive the many graces God gives us, especially through the Mass and confession, so that we will be found worthy of dwelling with God in that place of perfect light, happiness, and peace.

Is Heaven a Place on Earth?

Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

            In this month of November, when we remember the dead in a special way, our minds easily turn towards heaven.  We began the month by praying for All Saints: all those who are in heaven, not just the ones the Church knows about and has canonized, but even those who are known only to God.  As we write the names of our family members and friends who have died in the Book of the Dead, we pray and we hope that they are in heaven. 

            Secular music has thought about heaven a fair amount, too.  As I thought about songs with heaven in them, three came right to mind: Belinda Carlisle singing, “Oh, heaven is a place on earth”; Eric Clapton singing, “Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven?”; and, a little more recently, Los Lonely Boys singing, “how far is heaven?”  You can probably think of more (but do it after Mass so you’re not distracted). 

            Heaven is our goal.  It is the hope we have.  I’ve never known a person who didn’t want to go to heaven.  It was the hope for the seven brothers and their mother as they were offered the choice to eat pork, that is, to break the Mosaic Law, or to die.  We get a few of their stories today, and their perseverance in the face of physical torture is inspiring.  Why do they remain faithful to God rather than make a small concession?  Because they believe that God will reward them for their fidelity.  We have countless martyrs, many from the last century in the Spanish Civil War, during World War II, and in from Communist countries, who died rather than deny their faith.  From the very beginning with St. Stephen, the first martyr, the hope of heaven has been what has consoled the multitude of men and women as they underwent excruciating pain for Jesus.

            Heaven is our hope amid the sighs, mournings, and weepings in this vale of tears, as we pray in the Hail, Holy Queen prayer.  And we intuitively want heaven to be worth the price of what we go through on earth: all the little sacrifices we make, all the big sacrifices we make.  We want to know that heaven is worth it.  In a way, we’re weighing the cost of discipleship against the cost of the world.  For this reason, it’s no surprise that when I visit our parish school classroom, or when I visit our parish high school, Lansing Catholic, I frequently get asked what heaven will be like.

            The students often want to know: will heaven have a TV?  If not, how can I be happy if I can’t make sure I’ve seen all the episodes of my favorite shows?  Will heaven have an X-box?  If not, how can I truly be happy if I’m not killing zombies?  Will heaven have my iPhone?  If not, how am I ever going to finish all the levels of Candy Crush?  Perhaps we adults like to think that we’re a little bit more sophisticated: will my favorite food and drink (maybe adult beverage) be there?  Will it be the perfect temperature?  Will the Lions finally win the Super Bowl?  Our view of heaven is very much based upon what we know, and that is what is earthly, and then making it a perfected earthly existence.

            But it strikes me that in our Gospel today, Jesus challenges the Sadducees, and us, to not get caught up in making heaven simply a better version of earth.  The Sadducees are trying to trap Jesus into making the resurrection seem silly if the Law of Moses is true, because all seven men will claim to be this woman’s husband in heaven.  But Jesus sidesteps the trap by teaching them that heaven is not simply earth perfected.  Heaven involves a change of mind, a change of attitude because it’s not happiness from our fallen point of view, but is happiness from God’s point of view.  God, who made us, and who knows what will make us perfectly happy, gives us true happiness, not just what our minds can conceive as true happiness.  Even our bodies, which we know we will receive back at the end of time in the resurrection of the body, are different, and we see that in Jesus.  It’s still His body; He still has the marks from the nails and the spear, but it’s different; it’s glorified.  And it’s different enough that Mary Magdalene at the tomb does not at first recognize Him; the disciples on the road to Emmaus don’t even recognize Him.  But it’s similar enough that the apostles in the Upper Room do know it’s Jesus. 

            What we know by Scripture and the teaching of the Church is that heaven is perfect happiness, and it involves the worship of God in a time of Sabbath rest.  It is being with God, who made us to be with Himself, and the fulfillment of what it means to be human.  Maybe some of our creature comforts will be there; maybe not.  Maybe the Lions will actually win a Super Bowl; maybe not.  But we do have faith and confidence that whatever heaven is like, we will be perfectly happy because we will be with God and lack for nothing that we truly need.  May we all be found worthy, by the way we live our lives, to accept that gift of eternal blessedness that God wants to give us, so we can experience for ourselves, with all the saints, canonized and known only to God, the joy of entering into the eternal rest of our Lord.