Job, Not Karen

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    There is a stereotype of a person who, when not getting the answer he or she wants, especially at a business, starts arguing to get his or her way, especially asking to see the manager.  Unfortunately for those with this name, this type of person has been called a Karen.  A Karen is going to get her way, no matter how long she has to talk to the person or the manager.  And sincere apologies to all those named Karen here, who, I am sure, are wonderful people.
    Perhaps this is the image that comes to mind when we hear the second part of today’s Gospel, where Jesus talks about a friend who needs three loaves of bread, and won’t stop asking until the friend, who has already gone to bed, gives him what he wants.  In other words, if I just go all Karen on God, He will give me whatever I want.  But is that really what our Lord is saying?  Does God want us to be so convinced that we’re right that we refuse to give up any ground when it comes to something that we want?

St. John Henry Newman

    I think we need to look at the nature of prayer as we begin to answer that question.  What is prayer?  St. John Henry Newman describes prayer as “Cor ad cor loquitur–Heart speaking to heart.”  Prayer is the speaking, and listening, to the God who created us out of love, sustains us in love, and works for our salvation in love.  Prayer lifts our hearts and our minds to God, entrusting not only our needs but also our desires to Him, but then also paying attention to God’s response by making room for Him and the ways He communicates in our lives.  
    God calls us to have a childlike trust in Him.  And we know that experience of a child who does not worry that mom and dad will provide what the child needs.  But perhaps, as we hear childlike, we turn it more into childish, like the spoiled three-year-old who won’t stop crying and screaming unless it gets the candy bar it wants from the checkout lane at Meijer’s, the younger version of a Karen.
    We could be forgiven for hearing both the first reading and the middle part of the Gospel and thinking that God wants us to ask for what we want until we get it.  After all, Abraham keeps bartering with God not to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah until God seems to relent and promises not to destroy it if He can find only ten good people in the cities.  And certainly, God does want to teach us about persistence in prayer and not giving up on what we truly desire and what we think we truly need, even if we don’t get it immediately.
    But God is not a salesman nor a manager that we can wear down until He gives us what we want.  God is our loving Father.  And while sometimes He does allow us to keep asking until the time is right to give us what we desire, we also have to make sure that our desires are in accord with God’s will.  God will not give us something that we don’t need, or something that is actually harmful for my salvation, no matter how adamantly or persistently I ask for it.  And some people lose faith when they do not get what they want; they feel that God has not answered their prayers.
    We might understand this if a person asks God to win the lottery, or for some material good.  We understand how God doesn’t give us everything we want if what we want doesn’t fit a need.  But we find it more difficult to understand when our request in prayer seems more noble and asks for something we perceive as a great good.  I’m thinking in particular of the many different scenarios when a loved one is unexpectedly in a hospital: it may be a grandparent, parent, friend, or even a child.  We pray for God to heal our loved one, and we don’t understand why God wouldn’t heal that person.  Certainly a person’s life, maybe even a very good person, a faithful and devoted Catholic, has more worth than money or material possessions.  How could a loving God not answer that prayer?  And if we don’t get healing immediately, then certainly God would grant our prayer if we are persistent.  After all, He’s the one who said, “‘ask and you will receive.’”  
    But I have been in too many situations, and known too many people who have gone through situations, where the loved one dies.  And where is God in that?  Why didn’t He answer my prayers, or the prayers of tens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who were asking for a good thing?  
    This is where we have to return to heart speaking to heart, of the lover and the beloved in conversation.  At the end of the day, we don’t know why God answers some prayers in the way we want, sometimes of people who are not so good, and God answers the prayers in the way we don’t want, even though we strive to be good disciples and faithful Catholics.  We don’t always know the mind of God.  
    In those moments, we can certainly pour out our hearts and tell God that we are upset that our loved one didn’t make it, or that we didn’t get some spiritual good that we wanted.  There is nothing wrong with telling God that His answer, which sometimes is no, doesn’t seem to make sense with what we know of a loving Father who gives His children good gifts.  But we also follow the example of Job who, upon losing everything–property, his children, and even his own health–said, “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  Job loved God, and could trust in God’s plan, even when it didn’t make sense to him.  Job hadn’t even heard the response of God yet, though he was listening, but could trust that God had a plan where that loss made sense in the divine economy.
    The message of the readings today is not to annoy God until He acquiesces to our requests.  The message of the readings is to be persistent, but to also know that God always answers our prayers, even if we don’t get what we want.  He wants us to bring our needs and our wants to Him, and He promises to do what will work out best for salvation history, even when it doesn’t make sense to us.  That only comes as an act of faith.  And the act of faith only makes sense for one who loves us deeply, and one whom we love as deeply as we can.  When it comes to prayer, God does not ask us to be a Karen, but a Job.

Conscience: Gut or Cricket?

Sunday after the Ascension

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  While, in my opinion, the TV show “NCIS” is not as good as it was when Mark Harmon’s character Leroy Jethro Gibbs led the team of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, it still was one of my favorite shows to watch.  Gibbs, as most call him, is known primarily for two things: his rules and his gut.  But in this case, the gut doesn’t refer to the paunch or beer belly, but to his instinct, his intuition when it comes to cases and finding the suspect who did the crime.  
    When most people use the word conscience, what they really mean is intuition, instinct, or gut.  It’s a feeling, a sense for what to do.  But this can all too easily change into desire or want, having its base in our will and our passions, rather than in anything objective.  Or some may think of it like Jiminy Cricket from the Disney animated classic, “Pinocchio.”  And perhaps this gets closer to the truth, as conscience is meant to have a connection to something outside of ourselves.
    The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 1776, states:
 

Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey.  Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment….For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God.

This text is actually taken verbatim from the Vatican II document, Gaudium et spes, n. 16.  It addresses both the reality of being something interior, like intuition, instinct, or a gut, but also something exterior, like the fictional conscience of Pinocchio.  While some would make conscience a law unto itself, and cite church teaching that we must follow our consciences, and even an erring conscience binds, conscience is rather our understanding of the objective moral law, given to us by God, applied to the particular situation in which we will find, we are finding, or we have found ourselves.

St. John Henry Newman

    And this voice that speaks to us from within is really the Holy Spirit, who gives testimony to Christ and His teachings within our soul.  St. John Henry Newman describes conscience this way: “[Conscience] is a messenger of him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by his representatives.  Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar of Christ.”  By our conscience, Christ continues to speak to us each day through the Holy Spirit who helps us to know right from wrong, and how to choose the good and avoid the bad.  The Holy Spirit gives us the power to be prudent and loving, as St. Peter instructed us in the epistle, so that “in all things God may be honored through Jesus Christ, our Lord.”  
    Christ teaches us in the Gospel that the Holy Spirit will give testimony to Christ.  Practically, this means that the Holy Spirit will never encourage us to do that which Christ would condemn or teach as wrong.  Again, modern man wants to make the conscience a law unto itself, that is, something which is untethered to any profession of faith or church teaching.  But the Holy Spirit always testifies to Christ, and so they can never contradict.  The Holy Spirit will never encourage us to do evil things, even with the best of intentions.  The Holy Spirit will never contradict what He has said earlier in a privileged and infallible way.  Right now there are some (perhaps even many) in Germany who want to rewrite the Church’s teaching on the reservation of the Sacrament of Holy Orders to men, or the Church’s teaching on the proper use and meaning of sexuality.  They use the word (wrongly, I would suggest) synodality to promote merely human and political evaluations of what we call wrong and right.  And perhaps some even appeal to conscience.
    And while they may have voices within them telling them that trying to change Church teaching is right, I can assure you that those voices are the voices of a holy spirit, but of a fallen one.  Because the Church has, always and everywhere taught, and this was confirmed as a matter of faith by Pope St. John Paul II, that the Sacrament of Holy Orders is reserved to men: not because of a greater holiness of men or because of a cowardice of rejecting sinful patriarchy, but because Christ willed it this way for His Church, and it is, after all, His Church, His Mystical Body, not ours.  Sacred Scripture, affirmed in both Old and New Testaments, and affirmed by doctors of the church and pontiffs, teaches clearly that marital relations are meant only for a man and woman within the context of a loving marriage and as an expression of true love and the full gift of self in an act that could, under the right circumstances, conceive a child; and that marriage is for life, and he who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery.  The Holy Spirit cannot teach us anything different without undermining everything of what came before and leaving all teachings open to shifting mentalities and proclivities of human activity.  
    We often don’t naturally remember what Christ told us, because those teachings call us to reject our fallen passions and intellect, and live in a way that does not always come most easily to us.  But our conscience, the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, tells us what God has affirmed as true, which will not change, even if the rest of the world declared it to be changed.  
    Our duty is to form ourselves to be able to distinguish the voice of the Holy Spirit from the voice of other spirits or even simply our human so-called wisdom.  We do this through reading the Scriptures, reading the Catechism, and studying our faith through sounds guides like the saints.  The more we do that, the more we will recognize that even when we want to do something wrong, we know that we should not.  If we try, we can hear that voice, and if we hear that voice, we can follow it, even when it means true challenge to what comes most easily to us.
    Our conscience does come to us from within, like Gibbs’s gut.  But it also references that which is outside of us, the inerrant and unchanging teachings of Christ through the Scriptures and through the Church.  May the Holy Spirit strengthen us to readily hear His voice and follow what He teaches us, that is, what Christ tells us.  Who with the Father and the same Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Now in the Sacraments

 Sunday after the Ascension
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In Pope St. Leo the Great’s second Sermon on the Ascension, the saintly pontiff preached: 

such is the light of truly believing souls, that they put unhesitating faith in what is not seen with the bodily eye; they fix their desires on what is beyond sight.  Such fidelity could never be born in our hearts, nor could anyone be justified by faith, if our salvation lay only in what was visible.  And so our Redeemer’s visible presence has passed into the sacraments.

It may seem odd that Christ ascended into heaven.  Why not remain on earth to be with us, to govern His Church directly, and to continue preaching so that we would know exactly what He would have preached in new circumstances and situations, because He Himself instructed us?

St. John Henry Newman

    Pope St. Leo the Great says it has to do with faith. St. John Henry Cardinal Newman affirms this as well in his Parochial and Plain Sermons.  He writes:

Now consider what would have been the probable effect of a public exhibition of his Resurrection.  Let us suppose that our Savior had shown himself as openly as before he suffered; preaching in the temple and in the streets of the city; traversing the land with his Apostles, and with multitudes following to see the miracles which he did.  What would have been the effect of this?  Of course, what it had already been.  His former miracles had not effectually moved the body of the people; and doubtless, this miracle too would have left them as it found them, or worse than before.  They might have been more startled at the time; but why should this amazement last?

Remaining on earth instead of ascending may not have had any different effect than our Lord’s time on earth before He suffered and died.  Many saw Christ and still doubted.  St. Mark states that even the apostles doubted after the Resurrection.  Many would have likely done the same.  
    Instead, our Lord ascended, but is still present to us through the sacraments.  Indeed, the sacramental life is not only the work of those on earth; its efficacy is based upon Christ.  In one of his letters, St. Augustine says, “When Peter baptizes, it is Christ who baptizes.”  Christ continues His work through His Church, especially through the sacraments which are meant to transform us into the disciples we are called to be.  That work is made possible by the Holy Spirit, who gives power and efficacy to each of the sacraments when administered with the matter, words, intention, and minister that the Church requires.  
    This, of course, takes faith.  It takes faith to have confidence that, when water is poured over a person’s head, and the Blessed Trinity is invoked as the Church requires, that person’s sins are washed away, and he or she becomes an adopted child of God and a member of the Church that Christ instituted for salvation.  It takes faith to trust that, when we go to a priest and confess our sins (mortal sins in kind and number), that those sins are no more; they are forgiven.  It takes faith kneel before that which looks like a round piece of unleaded bread, but which truly is the Body of Christ, the flesh without which our Lord said we do not have life within us.  
    But faith is precisely who we are as a people.  Our father in faith, Abraham, had faith in a God he had never seen, but who called him to travel from modern-day Iraq to the Promised Land, a land which God promised, but which Abraham himself never fully possessed.  He also trusted in God to make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, even though Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were well past the child-bearing age.  And then, when God did give them a son, Isaac, the son of the promise, Abraham trusted that God would restore Isaac to life, after God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah.

    So, too, with the Blessed Virgin Mary.  Hers was a life of faith in God.  She had faith when the Archangel Gabriel appeared that, though she did not know man, she would conceive and bear the Son of God.  She trusted God would keep her, Joseph, and the Christ Child safe as they journeyed to Egypt, and then to Nazareth.  She trusted even when her Son was nailed to the cross, and as He ascended into heaven.      Do we trust in what God wants to accomplish with us?  Are we open to the graces that flow through the sacraments, graces that are meant to transform us to be who God desires us to be?  The sacraments always “work,” that is to say, they do what we believe they do when we celebrate them as the Church requires (we use the phrase ex opere operato-from the work having been worked).  But the effect that they have in our lives, what we call “fruitfulness,” is based upon our openness to them and our disposition to receive those graces (we use the phrase ex opere operantis-from the work of the one working).
    Just as Christ said to people while on earth, “Your sins are forgiven,” so through the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance, Christ says to us, “Your sins are forgiven.”  Just as Christ told the Apostles in the Upper Room, “Take and eat; this is my Body; take and drink; this is my Blood,” so He changes bread and wine into His Body and Blood through the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.  Just as Christ breathed on the Apostles and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,” so through the Sacrament of Confirmation, Christ gives us the Holy Spirit.  Just as Christ blessed the wedding at Cana by changing water into wine, so Christ changes natural marriage into a supernatural marriage between two baptized persons in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony.  Just as Christ healed the sick and cured their illnesses, so Christ heals us, especially of our spiritual maladies, but even of our physical illness at times, through the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.  And just as Christ commissioned the Apostles and disciples to go and preach the Gospel, to heal, and to expel demons; and just as He said, “Whoever listens to you, listens to me,” so Christ ordains men to act in His person (Christ the Servant in the case of a deacon, and Christ the Priest in the case of a priest or bishop) and with His power.  
    Christ did ascend into heaven.  But He has not abandoned us.  He has not left us.  He still remains with us and acts in our world, allowing His visible presence to pass especially into the sacraments.  May we acknowledge Christ and His activity in the world, and be open to it, so that the grace of the sacraments may be fruitful in us, and transform us to be more like the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

The Spirit of Truth

Fourth Sunday after Easter In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. As we are getting closer to Pentecost, our Gospels start to focus more and more on Christ leaving this world and the sending of the Holy Spirit. We hear our Lord today promise to send the Advocate to the apostles, who will lead them into all truth.

To be honest, the Holy Spirit is probably the least acknowledged Person of the Blessed Trinity. Christ is often the first, only because of the Incarnation and His taking on our human nature. Because of this, we naturally are drawn to Him. And the Father easily comes next, as a Son needs a Father. Most of our prayers are addressed to the Father, through Christ our Lord (Per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, Fillium tuum…). The Apostles’ Creed, the earliest baptismal creed that we have, professes faith in the Father, and in the Incarnate Son and the major events of His saving life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, but then just continues, “And in the Holy Spirit.” It wasn’t until the Council of Constantinople in 381 that we get the expansion of our understanding of the Holy Spirit. He is professed as, “the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son (that last part, in Latin, Filioque, being added some centuries later), who, with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets.” St. Paul describes, especially in his first Epistle to the Corinthians. the gifts of the Holy Spirit and some of the charisms that can accompany the work of the Holy Spirit. St. John in his first Epistle describes the Spirit as one of the three witnesses to our Lord (along with water and blood). With the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, there was an explosion of interest in the Person of the Holy Spirit, but some (including many of those who love the Usus antiquior) were a bit skeptical of this focus on the Holy Spirit, if, for no other reason, than some of the liturgical innovations that accompanied it. What’s interesting is that, as far as theology, charismatics tend to be in step with traditional Catholics as far as being obedient to the teachings of the faith through Scripture and the Magisterium. But the Holy Spirit is given to us all, not only in Baptism, but especially in Confirmation, and works through all the seven sacraments. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that the work of Christ continues to this day. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is demonstrated by extraordinary gifts like speaking in tongues, or words of prophecy (we hear about these charisms in the New Testament, but they didn’t stop after that). Other times the Holy Spirit is demonstrated by an attentiveness to doing God’s will in the present moment, those nudges that we get to assist this poor person with money or food, or a different way of expressing the faith to a person who is struggling, which seems to immediately help that person understand what we are saying. We need not be afraid of the Holy Spirit, any more than we need be afraid of the Father or the Son. Every good gift, as St. James says today in the Epistle, comes from above, from the Father, through the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. But I want to focus today on another way the Holy Spirit is revealed, which is mentioned directly in both the Gospel and the Epistle: and that is the revelation of the truth. We live in a world which both demands obedience to certain truths, all the while denying that there is any objective truth. We are told that science is to be believed by all (usually only science that favors certain policies or agendas). But then we are told that there is no truth outside of scientific facts (which is a self-defeating statement, because if there is no truth, then the statement that there is no truth is not true). One of the reasons why the Catholic Church is so often under attack is because we claim that there is truth, and that it has been revealed by our Lord through His Church. Any group that opposes the Church has to call into question the Catholic Church’s authority to proclaim the truth. I remember reading an article about how the New York Times works very hard to undermine the Catholic Church because the Grey Lady wants to be the bearer of truth (through its own ideological lenses), and does not want any competition. But we know that truth is not simply a set of propositions. Truth is a Person, a Person with a human nature and a human face, Jesus Christ. That is why we insist so much on truth, because it is an expression of faith in the Incarnate Lord. Our lies, no matter how small, are denials of Christ, who refers to Himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But even Christ says that the Holy Spirit will reveal to us more truth, truth that the Apostles couldn’t bear during our Lord’s public ministry. And we know that this promise of Christ, this gift of the Holy Spirit to help us know the truth, has been preserved unbroken through 2,000 years of the Church. Doctrines do, indeed, develop, but truth does not; only our understanding of the truth expands. St. John Henry Newman likens the development of dogma as the growth of a human: the person has to remain the same, it cannot change, even while the limbs and features grow.

The Holy Spirit is the great Easter gift. When it comes to faith and morals, we don’t have to make it up, and rely on merely human wisdom (which is so subject to error). God Himself promises to reveal what we need to know about the truth, and that, when the Mystical Body of Christ teaches, it is without error. What a great assurance that is for us, especially in these days when everything seems to be changing and re-examined on an almost monthly basis! The promise of the Advocate who reveals the truth to us is the stabilizing factor as the barque of Peter is tossed about by the waves. May we hold fast to the truth always, given to us by the Father of lights, through His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, in the power and protection of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen.

We're On a Mission from God

Third Sunday of Advent

     If I say the names Jake and Elwood, those of you who remember the 80s probably know exactly who I’m talking about.  Jake and Elwood are the Blues brothers, from the movie with the same name.  And as they work to get the band back together, they make it clear to everyone, that they’re on a mission from God. 
    Our first reading and Gospel today focus on a mission.  In the first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, we hear the mission statement that Jesus Himself will give as He preaches in the synagogue at Nazareth.  Jesus tells them, as Isaiah told Israel, that God has sent Him “to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a year of favor from the Lord and a day of vindication by our God.”  That’s definitely a mission from God, and a pretty good one!
    Our Gospel, too, makes clear that St. John the Baptist was “sent from God.  He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.”  We heard about St. John the Baptist, also called the Precursor, last week in our Gospel.  The Precursor is a man on a mission, to prepare the way for Jesus.  He is not the Messiah, as some had started to think, but wants everyone in Israel to be ready for the Messiah. 
    We, too, are called to be people on mission.  We, like Jake and Elwood, are on a mission from God.  I have used this quote before, but St. John Henry Newman wrote: 

God has created me to do Him some definite service.  He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission….He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good; I shall do His work.  I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place.

God has given us each a mission, a call, and it’s something that no one else can do like we can.  Can we respond to that call?
    Many times when we think of a call, we think of priests and consecrated men and women like monks and brothers, nuns and sisters.  But all of us are called, by baptism, to be on mission for God.  Many are called to be on mission as a wife or mother, husband or father.  Others are called to serve as a priest or deacon, or be in a religious community.  Some women are called to be consecrated virgins.  But all are called to advance the Gospel to others.
    How do we recognize our call?  Prayer is key.  A call is something that we choose, but to which God first invites us.  We make a deliberate choice to follow the urging of the Holy Spirit in our life.  Imagine how silly it would sound if I said I chose to be a priest simply because no one else wanted me.  Probably not a great way to start the seminary interview with the bishop.  Instead, a call is something to which we are driven.  A wife (hopefully) doesn’t agree to marry someone simply because no one else will have her.  She finds a man who cares for her, who puts her needs above his own, who wants to work with her to build a family according to God’s plan.  She chooses to love him because she senses that they are meant to become saints together.  And through daily prayer, taking time in silence to hear the voice of God, we learn what God wants for us.
    Sometimes our idea of the call develops or changes.  I didn’t always want to be a priest.  I wanted to be married, have a few kids, a couple of dogs, a really nice house and car, and work either in the military, or as a lawyer, and then maybe a politician (don’t let that last part lessen your opinion of me!).  But through prayer, I came to sense that I could only be truly happy as a priest.  Of course, the Church had something to say about it, too.  It wasn’t simply that I wanted a particular vocation.  But with the formation that the Church provided, and the “yes” that the Church spoke through her leaders, I came to be confirmed in what I felt God wanted me to do.  Sometimes our understanding of our mission changes or develops.
    Another key part of our mission is that we don’t replace the Messiah.  An older priest once told me that his spiritual director had counseled him when he became all-too-convinced of his own importance, “The Church already has a Messiah; we don’t need you!”  Our mission is to cooperate with God, not to take His place.  So many people feel that they can decide what they want to do, rather than God; that they can define what happiness will be–whom they can marry, how many kids they need to have, how they should spend their money–without any consideration of what God wants.  God has made the world a certain way, and has taught us, through the Scriptures and the Church, what truly makes us happy.  When we choose other than that, we are in an exercise of futility; we cannot be happy doing the things that God has said will not give us true happiness. 
    Some of you may feel, due to age or other factors, that you have already accomplished your mission because you know your vocation.  But, as long as you are alive, you still are on mission.  You can continue to spread the Gospel through your children, your grandchildren, and others.  You can offer suffering to Jesus on the cross for an intention.  You can continue to help others know the joy you have from your relationship with Jesus.  Don’t let COVID give you the blues.  You are on a mission from God!

St. John Henry Newman