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.
    

The Domestic Church

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
    One of the great blessings in my life as a priest, when I have the opportunity, is to visit people’s homes for dinner and/or house blessings.  It’s good to see families in their home environment, even with all the messes and drama that can happen from time to time.  As the ritual for a house blessing states, the blessing is a sign that the family is welcoming Christ into their home.

Zacchaeus' sycamore tree in Jericho

    In some ways, this practice of inviting the priest into the home stems from the Gospel we heard today, when Jesus invited Himself to visit the home of Zacchaeus.  Zacchaeus, for his part, was very happy to oblige, and “received [Jesus] with joy.”  We don’t know what was on the menu for the meal Zacchaeus prepared, but we do know that some became very upset, because Zacchaeus collected taxes for the Romans, and that job often included taking more than even what the Romans asked for, to line a tax collector’s pockets.  Still, Jesus says that He came to the house of Zacchaeus because He came to seek out and save those who were lost.
    How do we welcome Jesus into our homes?  Do we welcome Jesus into our homes?  A phrase that has been used, especially since the Second Vatican Council, but which dates to the early church, is the domestic Church.  No, this is not the calm, passive, housebroken Church (as in a domesticated animal).  The term domestic comes from the Latin domus, meaning house.  But the phrase domestic Church does not refer to having Sunday Masses in the home, either.  The domestic Church is the family, “as centers of living, radiant faith”, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church says.  The Catechism continues:
 

It is here [in the family, the domestic Church] that the father of the family, the mother, children, and all members of the family exercise the priesthood of the baptized in a privileged way “by…prayer and thanksgiving, the witness of a holy life, and self-denial and active charity.”  Thus the home is the first school of Christian life and a “school for human enrichment.”  Here one learns endurance and the joy of work, fraternal love, generous-even repeated-forgiveness, and above all divine worship in prayer and the offering of one’s life.

Families are not something added on to the faith; they are part and parcel of the faith, and the way that the faith is passed on and learned, in all its facets.
    This presumes that the exercise of the faith is not something that happens only on Sunday.  If the only time that we have contact with God is at Mass, even though the Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life, then we are starving ourselves of the life-giving sustenance of our relationship with God.  Our faith is not meant to be observed only in these four walls on Sundays and holydays.  Our faith is meant to permeate our entire life, especially what happens in our homes with our families.
    Part of the symptom that people do not live their faith out at home is the desire to force all sorts of devotions into the Mass.  The Catholic Mass has a particular set of structures, music, gestures, which are noble, yet simple.  The more emotional, dramatic aspects of our faith are good, but are meant to be lived out more during the week outside of Mass, especially in the home.  Praying the Rosary, Praise and Worship music, clapping hands, spreading hands, lectures on this or that aspect of the faith can all be good things, but do not belong in the Mass.  People are hungry for the devotional life, because it is important to our life in Christ.  But the devotional life is not meant to be forced into the Mass. If people more fully lived out the faith at home, they wouldn’t feel the need for those devotional aspects during Sunday Mass.
    So what does living as a domestic Church look like?  What are things that every family should do?  The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists a number of things that families could and should do to more fully exemplify their role as the domestic Church.  I’ll list a few.  
 

-Read Scripture daily as a family, pray together, not just before meals, but in the morning or evening, in a time that works best for your family.  Don’t only use formal prayers (which are good), but also heartfelt, unstructured prayers, too.
-Pray a family Rosary, or even simply a decade.
-Have a crucifix in a prominent place in the home, and in each room.
-Utilize an Advent wreath or a poor box for Lent.
-Visit different churches and shrines as a family.
-Show love for each other, and connect that love to the love that God has for us.
-Talk about how God is helping you in good times and bad.
-Make Mass a priority each Sunday and holyday, as well as going to confession regularly.
-Install a holy water stoop inside a door so that people can bless themselves on entering or exiting the home and as a reminder of baptism.
-Show the importance of donating time, talent, and treasure to the Church by what you say and do.

Those are just ten ways; there are many more that you could invent or find.  But the important thing is that, whether you are single person, a family of two, or a family of ten, that Jesus is welcome in your house, and that Jesus’ presence in your house is evident.

    Too often we constrict our relationship with Christ only to going to Mass on Sundays and holydays.  We enter God’s house, the church, but we fail to invite Him back to our house, the domestic church.  Be like Zacchaeus today and everyday: welcome Christ to your house with joy.