In A Post-Christendom Age

Christ the King
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Much ink has been spilt of late on the idea of Christendom, or a worldwide or Western-wide Christian kingdom reality.  In case you’re wondering, we’re not in it.  Christendom often describes a reality where Christian values are the norm, and may even be the major underpinning of the legal system.  In the US, people often think of the 1950s as demonstrating the height of Christendom for Americans.  Certainly, in Europe that history goes much farther back, but also frayed during the time of the so-called Enlightenment, until its collapse probably around World War I, when many in Europe wondered how a Christian ethos could produce the “War to end all wars” between Christian countries.
    Again, in case you’re wondering, we’re not in a time of Christendom.  While our court system, perhaps the last bastion of sanity in our otherwise crazy political system, has upheld our rights as a church against the assaults connected with especially the Obama and Biden administrations (think of Little Sisters of the Poor, the redefinition of civil marriage, and the promotion of gender dysphoria policies), society generally has walked away from a Christian worldview.  
    And in some cases, we’re to blame.  When our lives as Catholics no longer act as salt and leaven, but rather are part of the rot and flatness of society, is it no wonder that others would not want to continue with Christians providing the overarching theme of society?  Two extreme examples from the past century stand out as acute reminders that simply being Christian doesn’t mean you live a Christian life: Hitler and Stalin were both baptized Christians: Hitler a Catholic and Stalin a Russian Orthodox.  But many more stopped living the faith in their work and in their homes, which had an even greater diminishment of trust in a Christian worldview.  
    So, as we celebrate Christ the King this Sunday, what do we celebrate in a post-Christendom world?  This is an important date for the Traditional Latin Mass community of Flint, but how do we celebrate Christ the King when He seems to reign less and less in our country and in our world?  
    In the first place, we have to ask ourselves if Christ is truly king in our lives.  Can people tell that I am Catholic when I work?  When I invite friends over to my house?  When I go on vacation?  The first and most important way to spread a Christian and Catholic culture is to live it ourselves.  If we do not live the Gospel at its roots, that is, in a radical way (from the Latin word radice, meaning root), then no one is going to listen to me encouraging them to become Catholic or to live with Catholic values.  One thing that people look for today is authenticity.  While we all fall short of our goals at times, living something in integrity convinces others.  Living Catholicism only as a mask does not convince others, and strengthens the point that it’s not worth trying, since even those who profess it don’t live it.  May our lives not reflect the quote from G.K. Chesterton: “The Christian idea has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”  If we don’t do what we can to live up to the standard Christ sets, why would we expect others to do so?

    Secondly, Christ told Pontius Pilate that His Kingdom was not of this world.  That doesn’t mean that we don’t advance the Gospel and Christ’s way of life, but that it will always be opposed.  Christ is King, whether we and the world accept Him or not.  And at the end of time, that kingdom will come in force.  But until that happens, our goal is to encourage others, by proposition, not imposition, to join in the kingdom, so that the inauguration of the full reign of Christ will be a day of joy for them and us, not a day of wrath.  The blueprint for this is what is called the Apostolic Model (in distinction from the Christendom Model).  Our key is to live like the Apostles did: filled with the Holy Spirit; committed wholeheartedly to Christ; willing to suffer persecution joyfully for the sake of the Name.  The first disciples were not theologians.  Maybe St. Paul could claim that title, but most of the first disciples simply opened themselves to Christ’s grace and were willing to die for their belief that He is God and saved them from sin and eternal death.  They lived in a way that showed they were ready for Christ’s return at any moment, not growing drowsy from the wait.  

    Living in such a way, and dying in such a way, transformed the first-century world.  The first generations of Christians did not participate in the all-too-common debauchery of public life.  They did not concern themselves with doing anything to gain power and prestige.  They loved those who persecuted them.  They lived innocent lives, but did not disdain to be martyred when confronted with false charges of treason or heresy against the Roman pantheon.  This convinced everyday people to convert and follow Christ then, and it will work to convince and convert everyday people now.  In a world that lacks logical consistency; in a world gone made by lust and power, those who live the truth (not their truth but the truth) stand out as beacons.  Yes, some will persecute those who are not mad.  St. Anthony of the Desert saw this some seventeen hundred years ago when he wrote, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attach him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us.’”   So we need to be ready for greater persecution, if it comes.  But when neighbors recognize that we are not buying into the cultural madness, and that we are even willing to suffer because we do not buy into it, they will slowly come to our side, and sense the power of the Gospel, just as ordinary Romans did in the first three hundred years of the Church.
    Christ is King.  And while His Kingdom has not advance in this world recently, and in fact has receded quite a bit, His Kingdom cannot, in the end, be stopped.  In the meantime, our goal is to live the faith in its fulness, doing all we can to follow Christ with all of who we are.  When we do this, we live as faithful subjects of so great a King, and can expect to be welcomed into the mansions prepared for us when His Kingdom comes in all its fulness at the end of time.  To Christ be honor and glory for ever and ever.  In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

No Golden Age

Fifth Sunday of Easter
    We often tend to think of the early Church as perfect, where everything went as the apostles wanted it to go, where it was easy to follow Christ, and there were no struggles.  Today’s first reading should let us know that it was not as easy as we may have imagined.  Yes, the Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit, and many Jews were joining the Church by becoming baptized.  Even Greeks were seeking baptism and following Christ as His disciples in His new Church.  But the Greek-speaking Jews (St. Luke uses the word Hellenists) started to complain that their widows didn’t seem to get the same care as the Hebrew widows.  It also sounds like the Apostles had their hands full, and perhaps had too many responsibilities, which made their service less than it could have been.
    So, they created a new set of ministers in the Church, deacons, who would receive the Holy Spirit, and would take over the mission of service at table from the Apostles, so that the Apostles could focus on prayer and preaching the Gospel.  They chose seven men, including St. Stephen, to fill this new office in the Church.  We know the rest of the story: Stephen also starts preaching, and ends us getting stoned to death.  More and more persecutions start, and St. James the Greater, the brother of St. John, is martyred.  Antagonism becomes more and more heated between the members of the early Church and the Jewish leaders, who thought that Jesus was a heretic and led people away from God.  So maybe it wasn’t quite as easy and perfect as we so often imagine.
    Why mention this?  Because we ourselves experience difficult times in the Church, but it helps to know that it’s never been easy for the Church.  There are always new challenges and new opportunities for the Church.  There are always periods of growth, and periods of decline, whether from internal or external forces.  Even as we may be convinced that we are not in a golden age of the Church, there truly has never been a golden age: each epoch of history had its own joys and struggles to which the Church had to adjust.

    And while God desires all to be saved, and we know the ordinary path to salvation runs through baptism and daily living the life to which Christ calls us, God has also allowed periods of decline, not only in one parish, or one diocese, but sometimes every across countries.  The example that comes to my mind most often is North Africa.  North Africa, because of its connection to Rome, had been a vibrant area of the Catholic Faith.  Some of the greatest saints and theological writers had come from there, including St. Athanasius, St. Anthony, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Cyprian, and St. Augustine of Hippo.  There were struggles, as many of those saints had to deal with heresies that would spring up from time to time, but the faith was strong.  But then, the barbarians from Europe swept across much of North Africa from the west, and the newly formed Islamic religion came from the east shortly thereafter, and Catholicism was more or less snuffed out entirely in the matter of a hundred years or so.  Why did God allow this?  I couldn’t tell you.  But allow it He did.  Did it mean He loved North Africa any less than the rest of the world?  Certainly not.  But those few who remained had to adjust to a new way of living their faith in the midst of fewer structures and more regular persecution.
    How does the Church survive such struggles?  We stay faithful to Christ and following Him, we ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, and we live up to our call to be “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own,” as St. Peter said in our second reading.  We ask the Holy Spirit to guide us, and follow the Apostles, as the Church did in our first reading.  We do not give in to the temptation to let our hearts be troubled, but have faith in God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–knowing that God’s ways are sometimes mysterious, but are always for our good.
    In our own diminishment as a parish, we can easily fall to the temptation to despair, to not trust in God’s plan.  But, as we prepare to meet this Wednesday, I would invite you to do what the Church has always done during difficult times: pray and trust in the Holy Spirit.  That’s why I invited you last week to pray the novena to the Holy Spirit, asking for His guidance for our parish, whatever the will of God may be.  And, as I also said last week, I don’t know exactly what that will might be; we will discern it together on Wednesday, given the facts that we have, and using the reason that God gave to us to help us to follow His will. 
    But the key is that, whatever you decide to recommend to Bishop Boyea after this Wednesday’s meeting, God calls us to remain faithful to Him and continue to not only say that we are Catholic, but show it by our actions, both in this parish and in the wider community.  People are still hungry to know the love of the Father, and Jesus reveals that to us, and He calls us to reveal Him to others.  No matter how the realities of the structural church change and call for adjustments, if we follow the Holy Spirit and live as disciples of Christ, we can have the confidence that we will one day see the Father, and be enveloped by His love in the kingdom of heaven.  There is not golden age of the Church.  There is simply the streets of gold upon which we hope to walk in heaven, as a result of our fidelity to Christ through all the days of our life on earth.  That is our ultimate goal, and the Holy Spirit will help us to get there.

Saints Among Us

 Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
 

   There’s a beautiful song by the band “Alabama” called “Angels Among Us.”  The song talks about the presence of “angels” at different times in the singer’s life, those who “guide us with the light of love.”  It’s a touching image and song, and mentions people who help out, who are like angels, assisting us in our various times of need.
    But the “angels” among us are not simply kind and loving humans on earth.  As the author of the Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”  We often forget these witnesses, because we don’t see them.  But if we truly believe that death is not the end, that it is simply a transition to a new state that, temporarily, does not include the body (except for the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose Assumption we celebrate on Monday), then we should remember that the saints are among us, urging us to “persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”  
    Do you have a relationship with the saints?  Do you turn to them each week or each day for help in being a saint yourself?  Or do we turn to saints like St. Anthony only when we have lost our car keys, or on All Saints’ Day in November?  

    Our devotion to saints (but not worship of them) is part of the beauty of our apostolic faith.  We Catholics and the Orthodox are really the two churches that foster great devotion to these heroes and heroines of the faith who have gone before us (some Protestants honor the Biblical saints, but not many or any beyond that).  We, instead, have saints of all kinds from all times.  Yes, we honor the apostles, but we also honor St. Monica, whose tears won her family’s conversion.  We venerate children saints like Maria Goretti, and saints like St. Anthony of the Desert who lived for a hundred years.  There are married saints and celibate saints, monks, nuns, brothers, and sisters.  We have saints who were kings and queens, and saints who gave up everything to serve lepers.  There are saints from every continent.  Some like Dominic and Elizabeth have very common names.  Others like Cundegunde and Polycarp have names that never seem to be in the top one hundred when considering a name for your newborn child.  There are saints who are patrons for just about anything.  Some were holy all their life; others had major conversions.  There’s even a blessed, Bl. Anthony Neyrot, from the 1400s, who was captured as a Dominican friar by Muslim pirates, renounced his faith in Christ after some years in slavery, but then had a vision of his Dominican mentor, St. Antoninus, who had died, and reverted to the Catholic faith, which led to his martyrdom by the muslims among whom he lived.  So there are saints for everyone and every situation.
    There’s a book I have called “Drinking With the Saints,” which provides drink ideas for some of the major or minor saints of our faith.  I’m not encouraging getting drunk, but it’s a great way to learn something about the saints throughout the year, and maybe enjoy a new (or familiar) adult beverage at the same time.
    Our relationship with the saints is one of the great ways that we can persevere in doing our best to live holy lives.  Just last week, I felt a bit overwhelmed by all the things I had to do (I often use the example from the old “Ed Sullivan Show” where a man puts plates on poles and starts them spinning, and then has to run around the stage to keep them spinning so that they don’t fall and break).  So I leaned on two of my best friends to commiserate and to bolster me to keep going.  The saints help us to do the same thing and we should turn to them in any joy or struggle.  The saints can understand the pain we’re going through, but they can also show us how to persevere, no matter what is happening in our life.  And they can be great voices before the throne of God, telling our loving God to ease up a bit when times are tough, or to pour it on when there’s something worth celebrating.  
    Jesus reminds us today that following Him is not always easy.  Following Christ doesn’t always bring peace, but sometimes brings great interior turmoil as the grace of God strengthens us to put the old man to death and live for the new man, Jesus Christ.  It sometimes even causes families to be divided.  The saints are urging us on, like a cross country coach meeting us at different points along the course, or a boxing coach standing in our corner, patching up our cuts and making sure we get re-hydrated.  
    Don’t just stay at a surface level relationship with the saints, where we ask St. Anthony to find things for us, or we put up a statue of St. Francis because we like pets.  Get to know the saints more deeply.  Read about their lives.  Talk to them each week or even each day.  Because there are not only angels, but saints among us “to show us how to live, to teach us how to give, to guide us with the light of love.”

Going Deeper

 Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    We, as Americans are very pragmatic.  “Just tell me what I have to do,” could easily be an American mantra.  When we see a goal, we want to know how to achieve it.  The rich young man had this same sort of mentality.  He asked Jesus, “‘what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  What do I have to do?

    Jesus gives him a fairly straightforward answer: follow the Commandments.  And we should take this to heart.  If we live a life that follows what God revealed as part and parcel of being a member of His Chosen People, then we can have some assurance that we’re on the right path.  But the rich young man already follows the Commandments, and he still feels like there’s more to it than that.  So he asks if there’s anything else, and Jesus responds that the man should sell what he has, give it to the poor, and the follow Jesus more closely.  But the man cannot, because he loved his possessions more than eternal life.
    There is no sense in this Gospel that the man was trying to trick Jesus, or that Jesus was trying to trick the man.  What we heard was an honest exchange between a person who wants to go to heaven, and the one who could reveal how to do that.  In fact, in giving the rich young man the extended call of following Jesus, Mark is clear that Jesus loved the rich young man, and the call that followed was a result of Jesus’ love.  The tragedy of it all is that the man cannot bring himself to follow through with the call beyond the call: what do to when the Ten Commandments are being obeyed.
     When it comes to the spiritual life, there is never “I’ve done enough.”  Yes, the Ten Commandments are the basics of living a God-centered life: love God above all else, keep His Name holy, honor God on the Sabbath, and do not harm your neighbor through murder, adultery, lying, stealing, or envy.  Perhaps some of you have achieved that goal, and you don’t find yourselves breaking the face-value sense of the Commandments.  Praise God!
    But if you have mastered the Decalogue, then Christ invites you to something deeper.  It may not mean giving up all your possessions, but it always means following Christ more closely in your particular vocation.  Even when it comes to the Commandments, Jesus, in teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, goes beyond the face value.  No longer can one simply say, “I haven’t murdered anyone,” but one must consider whether or not one holds a grudge against a neighbor, or insults a neighbor.  No longer is it sufficient to not have sex with someone else’s spouse, one is not to look at another with lust.  And so, for all the Ten Commandments, there are deeper considerations, deeper ways of following Jesus.  
    For the rich young man, it meant giving up money, and that was hard because the man loved his money.  But for us it can mean giving up a grudge, or stopping the practice of keeping up with the Joneses, or working on how we talk about others or think about others, or spending more time in prayer.  For all of us, there are ways that we can go deeper in our spiritual life, but we have to make it a priority.
    Doing this by ourselves is very difficult.  Almost from the beginning, everyday Christians looked towards spiritual guides to help them live that deeper life beyond the Commandments.  Very quickly those guides were given titles of respect, Abba or Amma, Father or Mother, as in Abba Anthony (St. Anthony of the Desert) or Amma Mary (St. Mary of Egypt).  Throughout the centuries saints have guided everyday people to go deeper.  For this reason we talk about Benedictine, or Dominican, or Franciscan, or Ignatian spirituality.  
    But sometimes it also helps to have another person alongside us, on this earth, urging us on as we urge them on.  A few months back I started working out with weights 4 or 5 times per week (can’t you tell?!?).  I had tried to work on physical strength before as an adult, but never really got into it.  A few years back I made a New Year’s resolution to do push-ups and sit-ups 3 times a week.  I was successful for about six weeks, until life got busy, and I found excuses not to do it (plus, it wasn’t really that much fun).  So what made the difference this time around?  What has kept me on track since around June?  A good friend taught me how to start working out.  At first we started with only a few exercises, and we would meet at least once per week.  Both of our schedules have filled up since then, and now we might work out together once or twice a month, if that.  But I still keep at it because we challenge each other to work out when we can, and we hold each other accountable.  
    I would suggest having someone to help you in your spiritual life.  Don’t try to tackle it by yourself.  When you are ready to go deeper, involve a friend or two who can hold you accountable and urge you on.  If it’s reading more Scripture, have another friend read with you (physically, or at least reading the same amount each day or week).  If it’s working on a virtue or a penitential practice, check in with each other.  Notice that Jesus calls the rich young man to follow Him, which meant being in the group of disciples who worked together on being more closely conformed to Jesus.  We tend to do better, and Jesus knows this, with others when we try to grow in our relationship with Him.  
    If you’re struggling to still keep the Commandments, have someone help you with that.  If you’ve mastered the Ten, then find a friend who will not let you settle, but will work out those spiritual muscles with you each week.  Hear and accept the invitation that Jesus is offering you today to follow Him.

Into the Lenten Desert

First Sunday of Lent

St. Anthony being attacked by demons

    St. Anthony of the Desert, also known as St. Anthony of Egypt, is considered the Father of Monks.  According to St. Athanasius, who wrote his biography, St. Anthony, while twenty years old, heard the Gospel of the rich young man, that, in order to be happy, he had to sell his riches and follow Christ.  So he got rid of most of his possessions and land, gave his sister into the care of some local Christian virgins (no one knows how she took his decision), and eventually went into the wilderness of Egypt, and lived to the ripe old age of 105 (a blessing in addition to having the name Anthony).
    Why does St. Anthony go into the desert?  Why does Jesus go into the desert after His baptism, as heard in the Gospel today?  What’s the big deal with deserts?
    To begin with, it was the opposite of where man was supposed to be.  We heard in Genesis how God put Adam and Eve into a garden in Eden.  The garden had everything they needed for food and sustenance, and apparently it was warm enough where walking around without clothes wasn’t a problem, so certainly, the garden was not in Michigan!  But the point is that gardens are places of life, whereas deserts are places of death.
    For the Israelites, the desert was also the place of great testing after the Exodus from Egypt.  Recall that the desert was where the Israelites wandered for 40 years, after they doubted that God could take care of the giants who were occupying the land of Canaan, where God had promised to settle the Chosen People. 
    Last, but not least, just as the garden was seen as the property of God, the source of life, so the desert was seen as the property of the devil, the source of death.  At the Day of Atonement, the priests would send the goat, who had previously received the sins of the nation on it, into the desert to be handed over to the demon Azazel. 
    So Jesus, and St. Anthony in imitation of Him, goes into the desert, and there He is tempted.  Both Jesus and St. Anthony went there to battle Satan.  St. Matthew writes in his account of the Gospel that Jesus battled Satan verbally (Jesus, of course, won).  St. Athanasius records that St. Anthony was tempted in the desert with all sorts of temptations, and St. Anthony did not give in to those temptations; he won his contest. 
    For us, then, Lent is going into the desert.  The desert isn’t a fun place, but it’s a necessary place for us to grow in our relationship with God.  It’s a place of battle, and that means we have to fight.  But it’s the only way to get back to the garden.  In Lent we fight against our fallen earthly desires in order that our desire for heaven can be strengthened.  In Lent we fight against our temptations to sin, to be disobedient to God and obedient to Satan.  In Lent, we fight against hiding from God because of our shame, and we run to God to ask Him to heal the wounds the sin has created and clothe us with His holiness. 
    Lent is a privileged time to grow in holiness.  Jesus didn’t grow in holiness when He went into the desert, because He is holiness Himself.  But He gave us an example so that we could grow in holiness.  St. Anthony grew in holiness when he went into the desert, and gave us an example of how fasting, extra prayer, and concentrating on our relationship with God transform us by the power of God’s grace into the man or woman that God wants us to be. 
    Entering the desert for us can be more time for silence.  Not only for the young, but especially for the young, silence can feel like death!  To a society so used to having access to the internet all the time on the phone, or music all the time, or some sort of stimulus for our ears and eyes, silence can seem as barren as a sea of sand.  But it’s also a great way to become more accustomed to hearing the Word of God, which often is only audible in silence.
    Entering the desert for us can be making more time for prayer: speaking with and listening to God.  It seems like every year we get more and more things to do, and prayer often gets shoved out of the way, even before we ditch exercise!  And yet, without prayer, we can’t thrive as God wants us to thrive.  Again, it may feel deadly to set aside even another 5 minutes each day to tell God what’s on our hearts, and to listen to hear what God’s heart wants to say to us.  But it’s also a great way to know if we are following God’s will or our own will.
    As we enter this Lenten season, this Lenten desert, let’s follow the example of Jesus, and the example of St. Anthony.  Let’s go into the desert to fight our temptations and to do battle with Satan, a battle that we can assuredly win if we’re connected to Christ, as St. Anthony was.  Don’t be afraid of the dryness of the desert; don’t be afraid that it’s too difficult.  Enter the desert with Christ and St. Anthony, as a way to enter the Garden when we come to Easter.