Department of Redundancy Department

Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

Sometimes hearing something a second time is just annoying.  How many times has a parent responded to a nagging or whining child who keeps bringing up the same issue, “I heard you the first time”?  Or sometimes we might hear deja vu all over again, which is saying the same thing twice, since deja vu colloquially means all over again.  Or, in seminary, if someone said something redundant, we would snarkily ask if he was from the Department of Redundancy Department.  

Today we hear a very similar parable twice: from Isaiah in the first reading and from Jesus in the Gospel.  But this is not Jesus being redundant; this is one of those times when someone says something twice in order to stress its importance.  And the chief priests and the elders of the people would have recognized the parable as Jesus told it.  They would know what it means.  

And for us, who have heard this story numerous times, we can probably intuit the meaning fairly easily.  But one point that is the basis for the entire parable, is to whom the vineyard belongs.  In Isaiah’s version, Isaiah talks about a friend who has a vineyard, who does all the work, but the fruit of his work is not what he expected.  In Jesus’ version, it is still a vineyard, but he talks about the people working it, rather than the fruit that is produced.  But in both cases, God is the clear owner of the vineyard.  It does not belong to Isaiah; it does not belong even to the tenants or the servants.  God owns the vineyard, and he expects it to produce proper fruit.

So often we can think of the Church, the Body of Christ, as ours.  In the proper context, we rightfully say that we, the People of God, are the Church.  But the body cannot do anything without a head; and Jesus is the head of the Church, while we are the other members.  We cannot do anything without Jesus.  Sometimes we think that the Church can teach whatever she wants.  But that’s only true if we are the owners of the vineyard.  If, instead, we are merely tenants, or those housed in the vineyard, than we don’t get to make decisions about the structure of the property, or what fruit we want to grow.  We only get to work in the vineyard.

Right now it is very popular to say that the Church needs to change her teaching to keep up with the times.  We should allow women to be priests; we should stop talking about homosexual acts as sinful; we should recognize homosexual marriage; we should let people get divorced and remarried without an annulment.  But that very approach betrays a lack of understanding about who owns the vineyard.  God has revealed to us, through Sacred Scripture and by the Holy Spirit guiding the Pope and the bishops in what they teach as to what we are to believe and how we are to live, what is His will for His vineyard, the Church.  We cannot change it, because the vineyard is not ours.  The Pope and the bishops cannot simply make up what we are to believe or how we are to live.  If they teach something contrary to what we call the Deposit of Faith, the body of beliefs that have been handed on to us from the apostles and their successors, then they can either be reprimanded, or sometimes even lose communion with the Church.  

But God doesn’t expect us to only guess what His plan is for His vineyard.  He has given us the prophets to tell us His will; He has given us Jesus who is the full revelation of the Father, who leads us into all truth; and He has given us the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, to help us to know what to believe and how we are to live.  Certainly there have been some bad tenants: there have been bad laypeople, bad priests, bad bishops, and even a few bad popes!  But God’s vineyard has remained intact.  And we have an unbroken line of consistent teaching from Old Testament through the New Testament right down to 2017.  

Sometimes that has put the Church against what is common or what is popular.  The Romans certainly didn’t want us to claim there is only one God, and that the emperor was not God; certainly there have been cases for over 2,000 years where it would have been much easier not to follow Jesus’ teaching on marriage and family life; Turkish and Arab Armies during different empires tried to invade Europe and supplant Christianity by force with Islam; France, the so-called eldest daughter of the Church tried to destroy the Church and supplant it during the French Revolution; the Mexican federal government and local American governments tried to make Catholicism illegal or irrelevant; Joseph Stalin famously wondered how many military divisions the pope has; and recently our own government has sought to make Catholic institutions provide services that are contrary to our faith.  And it would be easy to capitulate, to give up, and to simply go along with the culture.  But then we would be betraying the mandate of the owner of the vineyard, and we would risk having the vineyard leased to other tenants who will produce the right fruit.  Will we listen to the parables of the Lord’s vineyard?  Will we, as tenants, listen to the ones the Lord sends us so we know how to tend his vineyard?

The Spirit of the Law

Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Some, or maybe many of you, have heard that I have applied to become the chaplain of the Flint Post of the Michigan State Police.  I’m almost done with the process and will know by the middle of March whether I have been approved or not.  In the mean time, hoping that I am approved, and trying to get to know the troopers, I have been doing ride-alongs with them.  Many people who have experiences with law enforcement have negative experiences with them, because they have been caught doing something wrong.  But in my ride-alongs, I have been extremely impressed with the mercy of the troopers, and how often people get only a warning.  In fact, on one ride-along, a trooper asked me (and he said, “Be honest,”), “Do you think I should be doing anything differently?”  I told him that, if I were in his shoes, I probably would have given out more tickets and given fewer warnings.  He chuckled.

Besides what I see as a generally antagonistic culture when it comes to law enforcement (i.e., the cops are always wrong, they use way too much force all the time, they’re all racist, they’re horrible human beings, etc.), we are also in a culture that does not value the law.  Many people, if not we ourselves, feel like the rules were made to be broken, and that rules get in the way, rather than help us.  

So Jesus’ words today might be hard to swallow.  After all, Jesus, so we hear, wasn’t about laws and rules!  That’s why he was so tough on the Pharisees and the scribes!  But what did Jesus say today?  “‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.  Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law.’”  It would be hard to argue the whole “spirit of the law” theory while quoting these words.

But Jesus was a spirit of the law guy.  Now, the spirit of the law does not mean undoing the law.  So often that’s what we want it to mean: the spirit of the law means we don’t have to follow the real law.  But as Jesus goes beyond the letter of the law (Thou shalt not kill…, thou shalt not commit adultery…, whoever divorces his wife…, do not take a false oath…), He seems to make things stricter, not looser.  

As a confessor, I’m not sure I have ever had someone say, “Yeah, I killed somebody.”  But I do often hear anger and hatred and vengeance of the heart.  But Jesus goes beyond simply doing bodily harm.  He goes to the heart of the issue, which is, pardon the earlier pun, the heart.  

The letter of the law says that I cannot take an innocent life.  If we consider how many people are on earth, and how many of them ever actually murder someone (murder being the word we use for the taking of an innocent life), that percentage is probably pretty low.  But how many of us have wanted to do someone serious harm because they wronged us?  How many of us have held something against another person in hatred and vengeance?  That’s probably a much larger percentage.  But Jesus, the new Moses, the new Lawgiver, tells us that our offering here at Mass is only acceptable if we have been reconciled with those with whom we have issues.  If there is a large separation between us and another person, or us and God, we should go to confession, receive forgiveness of sins, and only then present ourselves for Holy Communion.

The letter of the law says that we can’t have marital relations with a person who is not our spouse or who is married to another.  Jesus reminds us that the infidelity or unchastity does not begin with the exterior parts of our body, but begins in our hearts and in our minds.

The teaching on divorce might seem very difficult.  After all, Jesus makes it very clear that we cannot divorce and remarry without committing adultery, unless the marriage is unlawful.  This is the passage that the Church points to in what is commonly referred to as the annulment process.  The Church examines the validity, or lawfulness, of the marriage.  But until the Church declares that bond unlawful, each spouse is bound to live a life free of sexual relations with someone other than their spouse.  

Whenever Jesus gives us a law, it is meant to guide us to lead happy lives.  And in my ride-alongs with the Michigan State Police, I can tell you that, outside traffic stops, the difficult situations into which the troopers are called began earlier than when 911 was called: with anger or lust in the heart; with distrust; or with any other issue.  The calls we responded to were simply the outer manifestations of interior problems that had been festering for some time.  

Today we are invited to listen to the words of Jesus.  To paraphrase our first reading from Sirach, if we follow the words of Jesus, we will be happy and be in a right relationship with God.  Before us are the choices between good and evil, life and death.  Choose the life-giving words of Jesus.  

The Icon of Marriage

Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

            If there’s one gift that I admire in people, it’s the gift of being an artist; of being able to take pencils, or crayons, or paints, or charcoal and create an image that truly looks like something, whether it’s a landscape, a person, or a scene.  Try as I might, I just don’t have that gift.  The best I can do is stick figures and basic shapes, and they never seem to look like what I am imagining or picturing in my head, no matter how hard I try.

            When a piece of art looks like what it represents, it’s easy to tell the correlation.  When the art doesn’t look like what it represents, it’s difficult to find the correlation.  When an artist paints the Coliseum in Rome, you can tell what it is.  Why I try to draw the Coliseum, it could be a bathtub, a strainer, or just a blob.

            Jesus’ teaching today on marriage is all about correlation.  Marriage is meant to be an icon, and image, or something else.  And we see that in the beginning in Genesis.  Adam and Eve are created to be a communion of persons.  They are not simply to be two persons who happen to be in the same area, but they are meant to be joined in a relationship.  “‘It is not good for the man to be alone,’” God says, and so he makes Eve for Adam.  But Adam recognizes that this is not simply a second, but a part of him.  “‘This one, at last,’” Adam says, “‘is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’”  The two are meant for each other.  And in that first couple, we see the design of marriage, as the sacred author says at the end, “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one flesh.”

            But what are Adam and Eve, two persons but joined as one flesh, meant to represent?  They are the icon of the God’s relationship with humanity.  Adam and Eve are meant to be a physical representation in their marriage of God and human nature.  Just as Jesus is one Person, so Adam and Eve are both human.  And, just as Jesus has two distinct natures, so Adam and Eve retain their individuality.  Of course, an icon is an image; it is not the same.  And there are differences between the relationship between God and humanity and Adam and Eve.  But Adam and Eve are an image of the communion of marriage of God to humanity.

            Through the years, after the Fall of Adam and Eve, that image became marred.  It’s as if Fr. Anthony started to draw the image.  Yes, it had some resemblances to the original, but there were flaws.  Whereas God’s original plan was for one man and one woman to be joined as one flesh for life, very soon after the Fall men and women started to abuse the gift of their sexuality and so marred the image of marriage.  It was no longer one man and one woman, but maybe one man and lots of women.  And even in the Law given through Moses, while adultery is clearly forbidden (the Sixth Commandment), still, divorce is allowed by Moses, and the image of God’s communion of Persons is still not quite an accurate portrayal.

            But Jesus, the full revelation of the Father, the new Moses, cleans up the image.  He reminds the Pharisees that the husband and wife are not two, but one flesh, and what God has joined cannot be separated (unless, as in the passage from the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the marriage is not valid from the start).  Jesus calls the Chosen People back to the idea of radical fidelity, even in the face of unfaithfulness.  That is the message of almost all the prophets, who remind Israel that she is the Bride of God, and that she has been unfaithful.  But God, for His part, never abandoned her, and remains faithful for all time.  That image of marriage is based upon God Himself, who took to Himself a human nature, and will never separate or divorce that human nature from Himself.  He is one flesh with humanity.    And so Jesus says there this is no such thing as divorce from God’s perspective. 

            This is a tough teaching because it is a difficult image to live up to.  But that is precisely what marriage represents: the relationship between Jesus and humanity.  That is why preparation for marriage is so important, so that the union of a man and a woman is an accurate representation of the marriage of the divine to the human in Jesus Christ.  That is why it is so important for married couples to support each other, especially in difficult times, to remain faithful to their vows and to that image, as long as it does not endanger a person’s spiritual, mental, or emotional well-being.  The Church certainly does not want a spouse to be a punching bag, and sometimes separation is necessary.  Sometimes there was something that was missing from the marriage from the start, which may or may not have been known.  That is why the Church grants Declarations of Invalidity, or annulments, to recognize that what was necessary for that image to even be crafted may not have been there.  It does not illegitimate any of the aspects that looked like a real marriage, including the children, but it does recognize that something necessary was missing.

            To all those who have civil divorces in our community: while we cannot change Jesus’ teaching, we can also emphasize that Jesus still loves you and wants you as a part of His Body, the Church.  I have too often heard from people who have felt that because they are divorced (even though they are not civilly remarried) they cannot participate in the life of the Church.  That is the farthest from the truth.  As long as you are not doing anything which is improper for a married person, if you are divorced, you are still welcome to present yourself for all the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.  And whether you have or have not attempted remarriage outside of the Church, do not be afraid to come and meet with a priest to try to regularize your situation and obtain a declaration of invalidity.  Especially if you have attempted remarriage, Fr. Mark and I want to help you so that you can once again return to the sacramental life of the Church.

            The Church’s teaching on marriage can seem hard.  It can seem to many to be out of date and punitive.  But what the Church teaches is what Jesus teaches: that marriage is not just about one man and one woman becoming one flesh.  That union is meant to symbolize the bond of one human nature and one Divine nature in the one Divine Person of Jesus, a bond which Jesus will never separate, because God has joined them together.  Let us support each other, especially married couples, in living out that icon of love, so that the image is clear and recognizable of the unending and unbreakable bond of love of God with humanity.