Green Monsters

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to check off a number of the New England States that I had not yet visited in my quest to see all 50 States before I’m 50.  One of the highlights of that trip was staying in Boston and being able to attend a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, home of the infamous green monster.
    St. Paul instructs us today about another green monster, or green-eyed monster, the sin of envy.  In fact, in his treatment of envy in the Summa, St. Thomas Aquinas quotes this exact passage in affirming the sinfulness of envy.  Envy, the Angelic Doctor writes, is “sorrow for another’s good,” which is a quote of how St. John Damascene defines envy.  But St. Thomas further explains that when we envy someone, “we grieve over a man’s good, in so far as his good surpasses ours.”  In other words, we see something good in another, and we get upset because we don’t have that good ourselves, or don’t have it in the same quantity.      Now, to say that we’re upset because we don’t have something isn’t always bad.  Fr. Nick Monco, a Dominican friar, has a whole video series on the vices through Open Light Media (this is my free plug for a great YouTube channel set up by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist).  And when it comes to envy, he uses the example of a friend who plays the piano well.  He notes that if we notice our friend plays the piano well, and we get upset because we don’t and realize that we, perhaps, wasted opportunities in the past to work at playing the piano, or it spurs us on to take up piano lessons again so that I, too, can excel in the good of playing piano, that’s not envy.  But if we were to get upset that our friend plays the piano well because it makes us look bad, that would be envy.
    Envy gives away the joy that we should have in another’s excellence.  When I notice something good in my neighbor, it should help me to love that person more.  I am horrible at math.  Can’t stand it.  So when I see someone else who excels in math, that should cause me to rejoice in the gifts and talents that the other person has that I do not.  Love of the other, charity, helps me to recognize that there are different members in the Mystical Body of Christ, each which has its own role and its own excellence, which, when applied together, cause an increase in the proper functioning of the entire body.  Envy, on the other hand, seeks to take away the legitimate diversity of the other members, and causes disunity simply because I do not have a particular gift.
    Envy breeds the harmful type of ambition, which I would say occurs when I strive to be the best, not for the good of excellence, but to gain power or prestige.  We do not err when we seek to use our talents in the best way possible.  But if I only do my best so that I get a promotion, or get further ahead in the company or in life than that other person, then I have left the realm of magnanimity, greatness of soul and settled for weakness that fears any other competition to my own good.
    Envy can often come because we lack healthy self-esteem, or lack a certain confidence in another’s love for us.  Think of two children playing at home.  One child does something well, and gets celebrated for that new achievement.  The other child, not wanting to lack the seeming extra love of the parents, tries to take away from the first child by doing something else that will cause the parents to stop praising the achievement of the first child, and turn the focus back on the other child.  When I know that I am loved, even if I don’t have the gifts that others have, I don’t see love as a limited resource that has to be hoarded, or else I may run out of it.  When I know that I am loved, I find it easier to rejoice in the good of the other because I know that love shared is love increased, and the gift of love for one does not decrease love that I can receive.
    Envy especially becomes dangerous when it comes to spiritual matters.  Spiritual envy occurs when I see another person with a spiritual good that I don’t have, or that another person is growing in grace while I am not.  Again, I can see a spiritual good that I don’t have, and it causes me to work harder to be open to that good, and that is not envy.  But when I don’t want another to grow in grace because I am not, that is certainly spiritual envy, and St. Thomas warns us, “it is accounted a sin against the Holy Ghost, because thereby a man envies, as it were, the Holy Ghost Himself, Who is glorified in His works.”  True charity rejoices when another receives a special gift from God, rather than sorrows because I do not have it.
    How do we fight envy?  Rejoice in what others have.  We can use the desire of what others have to push us on to achieve goals, and that is good.  But rejoice in that good, no matter what it might be.  Praise God for showering His gifts upon another when we recognize the gifts of another.  When we feel that tinge of envy, remind ourselves that the love of God for us cannot be decreased simply because another’s good is increased.  Have confidence in your own goodness, not in a prideful way, but in the way that God asks us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and so we have to have a certain type of healthy self-love or appreciation that we are a child of God.  Take an inventory of the ways that God has blessed you, because it’s different than the way He has blessed others.
    Don’t make room for the green-eyed monster.  Fight to conquer it just as so many have fought to conquer the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.  Do not be sad at another’s good, but rejoice that God has blessed others with particular graces, just as He has blessed us: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

All Things to All People

Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Fr. Anthony and his sisters, (l-r) Amanda and Allison

    As any good parent knows, you can’t treat each child the same and expect the same results.  Each child is unique and has different personalities and means of motivation, even if there are similarities.  In my own family, all three of us children generally wanted to excel in what we did.  We generally all behaved, but we also all got into trouble in different ways.  For me, the oldest (the one whose perfection the parents kept trying to duplicate by having other children), usually simply setting out the expectation was good enough to keep me in line.  If not, a little punishment went a long way.  For the middle child, all my dad had to do was look at her the wrong way and she would start crying in penitence.  For the youngest child, telling her what to do usually led to some defiance, and then harsher punishments (she was the only one who had her mouth washed out with soap after mom told her not to say the word “punk” and she argued that it wasn't a bad word). 
    So as St. Paul says today, “I have become all things to all, to save at least some,” he is exercising good spiritual fatherhood.  He knows that each person responds to the Gospel differently, and so he had to tailor the tone and delivery of the Gospel, as well as his witness to it, to each person as best he could, so that some might convert to living as Christ has shown us.  Elsewhere in his letters he talks about using the power of the Gospel, and one can think of the miracles that God did through St. Paul (like raising a man from the dead who fell out of a window after falling asleep because St. Paul was preaching so long).  Or in another place we hear how he earned a living while preaching the Gospel (St. Paul was a tent-maker), so that they wouldn’t think he was trying to mooch off of them and get rich by preaching the Gospel. 
 

St. John Vianney

   This is still true today with my own spiritual fatherhood.  Some in this parish need strong words and the threat of divine retribution in order to change their lives.  Others are scrupulous, and don’t think that they can do anything right, that everything is a sin.  Some fall in between those two extremes.  St. John Vianney said that priests should be “a lion at the pulpit and a lamb in the confessional,” that is, strong words of preaching to bring about conversion, but gentle when a person comes to admit his or her faults to God in the Sacrament of Penance.  I may not always hit that goal, but I admit that, in my own estimation, that is the standard to which I apply myself.
    But being all things to all people in evangelization concerns not only priests.  It also applies to the lay faithful, you, in your work of sharing the Gospel in everyday life and transforming the secular world, the city of man, to be more like the heavenly world, the City of God.  Probably we all get this in principle, but do we apply it?
    When I was a seminarian I sure didn’t understand this principle.  It always perplexed me why people didn’t immediately convert after giving them a logical argument for the Catholic Church being the Church started by Jesus.  Or how self-styled Catholics could do things or promote things which were so antithetical to the Catholic faith.  To me, all a person needs is a good, rational argument, and they should convert.  And that works for some people.
    But for others, the truths of the faith are important, but only convince when they are lived out in practice.  You can give them every good argument from the Summa Theologiae, and still they would not be convinced.  But if they see a Catholic caring for the poor, feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful and afflicted, they are convinced that the faith must be real, because people actually do what they say Christ calls us to do.
    This can even go for the devotional life.  Some people love the warm, touchy-feely stuff.  They love the emotive nature of praise and worship music and need those emotional highs and lows to really move them in their relationship with God.  Others find the steady, metered pace of Gregorian chant more helpful to their prayer life.  Some just want to be still in silence and put the world outside.  Others need to use their imaginations and put themselves in the Gospel passages to envision how they would have responded and how they are responding to Jesus.  While the liturgical life has set standards that may come more easily or more difficult to us, based on our temperaments, the devotional life admits of a variety of expressions, based upon the individual desires and needs of each person or each type of person.  To pretend that Catholicism is monolithic in personal and devotional prayer, or that everyone should simply convert based upon intellectual arguments does not reflect the reality of the diversity of individuals. 
    So, our goal is the same as St. Paul’s: to be all things to all so that we can save at least some.  Again, this doesn’t mean that the Church changes her teachings to fit the times, or even that our common prayer, the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours, should have wide variations.  But it does mean that the way we present the Gospel, and the way that we help people to personally connect to Jesus through personal and devotional prayer will vary based upon the person.  May our diverse approaches, unified in the one faith given to us from God the Father through Jesus the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit transform our world to be more configured to Christ, and therefore a better place to be.
    

Non Nisi Te: None but You, Lord

Solemnity of St. Thomas Aquinas

            St. Thomas Aquinas is known for a great many things.  On the lighter side, it is commonly held that St. Thomas was a very large man.  In fact, he was called the Dumb Ox in school, due to his large size and (ironically) seemingly slow-working intellect.  Stories are also told that at the table at which St. Thomas would usually sit for meals, a crescent had to be cut away so that he could sit close enough to the table to take his food.  On a more serious side, St. Thomas is known for his great writing: Summa Theologica, Summa contra Gentiles, Corpus Christi texts for Mass, the hymns: Tantum Ergo, Pange Lingua, Adoro Te, Devote, and so many more.  His intellectual understanding of the faith is, in my humble estimation, unrivaled by any person before or after him.

            And yet, there have been many smart people who are not saints.  And St. Thomas’ size, no matter whether the stories are true or false, did not create his holiness.  No, there was something else in St. Thomas’ life that was greater even than his love of knowledge.  And that trait is best described by a true story of St. Thomas.

            When St. Thomas was in Naples, celebrating Mass, the crucifix on the altar spoke to him, saying, “You have written well of me, Thomas.  What reward will you have?”  To this grand question from the Lord, St. Thomas answered, “None other than You, Lord.”  Those words in Latin, Non nisi Te, appear on the crest of our great parish school.

            None other than You, Lord.  What profound words from a man who had systematically progressed through the major and minor questions of the faith with stunning accuracy, such that, centuries later, Pope Leo XIII advised that all seminarians be required to study St. Thomas Aquinas (no other saint received such a recommendation, not even St. Augustine), and declared St. Thomas the patron of Catholic universities, schools, and students.  St. Thomas could have answered that he wanted more knowledge to complete his great Summa Theologica.  He could have answered that wanted to be assured of salvation for him and his family.  He could have asked for the flourishing of the order to which St. Thomas dedicated his life, the Order of Preachers or Dominicans.  But he simply said, “None other than You, Lord.”

            What a great question to ask ourselves: if Jesus spoke from this crucifix here in this church, or, indeed, from any crucifix, and asked me what I wanted, what would be my answer?  Would I ask for wisdom, money, power, friends, health, peace, an end to poverty, or assured salvation?  If so, we would not have answered as well as St. Thomas, and would not receive the fullness of the gift that God wants to bestow on us.  Sure, wisdom is good so we can choose to do good and avoid evil.  Money is a fine means of providing for our family, for the Church, and for helping to end poverty.  Power can be used to advance the respect for human dignity and justice.  Peace is the gift of the children of God in the beatitudes.  And who doesn’t want to be in heaven with God forever?  And yet, we should be asking God for the conversion to desire nothing but God alone, because He, as St. Thomas taught, is the greatest good, the good to be desired above all other goods.

            In desiring and receiving the Lord, we find that all those other things which are good and helpful, especially to our salvation, are provided for us anyways.  This is what our Lord means when He said, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”  If we desire the Lord, and we open our hearts to receive Him, then nothing which is truly good will be denied us.

            In this Mass, we have the opportunity to deepen our love for our Lord, and to receive Him, especially through His Word and through His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, present in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist.  How blest are our ears that they hear God’s Word, our minds that they are taught with heavenly wisdom, and our tongues that the receive the Lord of all creation under the appearance of bread and wine!

            So great was St. Thomas’ love of the Eucharist that, besides penning the texts for the Corpus Christi Mass, texts which we still use today, and writing eloquently about the Sacrament of Sacraments, when Thomas was dying and received the Eucharist for the last time in Viaticum, he said:

I firmly believe and know as certain that Jesus Christ, True God and True Man, Son of God and Son of the Virgin Mary, is in this Sacrament…I receive Thee, the price of my redemption, for Whose love I have watched, studied, and laboured.  Thee have I preached; Thee have I taught. 

 Knowing that he wanted nothing but the Lord, in his last hours of life, he affirmed that the Eucharist was precisely the great desire of his life, more than knowledge or any other gift.

            St. Thomas provides us with the example of what it means to prefer nothing above God.  It’s a tall order, but something which we are all called to do: whether priest or deacon, religious or consecrated person, married or single, adult or child.  Are we there yet?  Maybe some of you are.  I’m certainly still working on it.  But we know it’s possible because St. Thomas has shown us the way, a way that he did not create, but a way which he pointed out to us in showing us Jesus who is the Way.  As St. Thomas said, “God alone satisfies.”  Help us, O Lord, to purify our desires so that we can say with St. Thomas that we desire “none but You, Lord.”  Non nisi Te.  St Thomas Aquinas: pray for us!