Believing and Belonging

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    All too often, we can be tempted to fall into the temptation that all that really matters is, to use a phrase, me and Jesus.  Some of my favorite country artists have songs to this effect.  Josh Turner sings, “There ain’t nothing that can’t be done by me and God. / Ain’t nobody gonna come between me and God.”  And Brad Paisley sings, “Me and Jesus got our own thing goin’ / Me and Jesus got it all worked out. / Me and Jesus got our own thing goin’/ and we don’t need anybody to tell us what it’s all about.”  And certainly, we do need to have a personal relationship or connection with Jesus.  

    But on 21 September 2010, then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan told the sixth-annual Los Angeles Catholic Prayer Breakfast: 
 

Jesus did not ask, “Saul, why do you persecute my people?” or “Why do you persecute my church?”  Jesus asked, “Why do you persecute me?”…We are living in an era where people believe in Christ, but not in his Church.  They want the king, but not the kingdom; they want to believe without belonging; they want the faith, but not the faithful.  But for the committed Catholic, the answer to that is ‘no can do.’  Jesus and the Church are one.

In other words, we are in this together; it’s not just me and Jesus. 
    And we hear that message in our readings today.  We hear about the principle of solidarity, that we have a responsibility for each other.  Ezekiel the prophet is the “watchman for the house of Israel.”  His duty is to warn the wicked to repent, otherwise not only will they die for their sins, but he will be responsible.  If, however, the Ezekiel warns the wicked and they do not repent, they will die, but Ezekiel will save himself.
    St. Paul, too, reminds us that God commands us to love one another.  In fact, all the commandments about how we should act come down to the command to love our neighbor as ourselves.  And when we love our neighbor, we fulfill the law.
    Maybe solidarity, our share connection to each other, makes the most sense for married couples.  When you celebrated the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, you made a commitment that your life no longer only concerned you.  From that point on, your life intertwined with your spouse, first, and then your children.  Their happiness is yours; their suffering is yours; their salvation impacts your salvation.  
    But while St. Thomas Aquinas rightly teaches that our love has different levels (you have a higher responsibility to care for those closest to you than those who are not as close), we still are called to love our neighbor, even when our neighbor isn’t a spouse or family member, or even a friend.  Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his Encyclical, Sollicitudo rei socialis that solidarity is not a “feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far.  On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good.  That is to say the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.”  I am my brother’s keeper, in response to Cain’s famous question.  In a less powerful way, but still truly, when he succeeds, I succeed; when he fails, I fail.  I still have primary responsibility for myself and my family, but my actions towards others impact me, whether I notice the impact or not.
    This even extends to what we can call fraternal correction, which we hear about in the Gospel today.  Our Lord doesn’t pretend that all of his disciples will always get along.  He knows that, as we’re concerned for each other because we are each other’s keeper, we will sometimes need to correct each other in order to preserve unity in the truth in the Body of Christ, the Church.  
    The key to fraternal correction is charity.  One can give correction without truly seeking the good of the other.  In fact, giving correction can easily become a power trip of me vs. you masquerading as right vs. wrong.  But when we correct others, we need to do so with preparation in prayer first, and with charity throughout the process.  Still, because we are connected, we may need to correct others and let them know if they are falling short of living the Gospel.
    Fraternal correction becomes most difficult with family.  Sometimes it may take someone outside family to do the actual correction.  But even if we can’t correct because of a lack of charity or we have a good sense that the other will not listen to us, we should pray for that person.
    The key is that we are all connected to each other, especially Catholics with each other.  In the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist, we who are many are united with Christ, and therefore with each other.  We call the Eucharist Holy Communion because we have union with Christ first and then each other.  But this is only true if we believe the fullness of what Christ has taught and live in accord with how Christ and His Mystical Body, the Church, teaches us.  That is why Catholics living contrary to the major teachings of the Church and non-Catholics cannot receive Holy Communion: they are not in union with us.  [Waylon, part of the great joy today in you receiving your first Holy Communion, is that you will have a new form of union with Christ, who loves you so much that He wants to be closer to you than any other person will be.  But, in order to keep that union with Christ, you will need to follow Him and make sure you keep returning to Mass each Sunday and holyday with your family.  Only when we seek to grow in friendship with Christ each week and when we live as He taught us can we truly say that we have union with Christ and receive all the graces that Christ wants to give us through this sacrament].
    Our individual relationship with Jesus is important.  But it’s not just me and Jesus (or, to be grammatically correct, Jesus and I).  If I am joined to Christ through Holy Baptism, then I am also joined to every other baptized person.  And if I am part of Christ, then I love and show concern for all those whom God loves, that is, everyone, to the extent that I am able.  If we want the king, we also have to take the kingdom; to believe, we must also belong; to have the faith, we also have to take the faithful.  Jesus and His Church are one.  

The Good Work in You

Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Sometimes a particular phrase has a way of taking our minds back to a specific point of time.  For example, whenever I hear or read the phrase we heard from the epistle–“May God who has begun the good work in you bring it to fulfillment”–I am taken back to the day of my ordination, when Bishop Boyea said those exact words to me after I made my promises to be the priest the Church calls me to be.  
    In many ways I looked at my ordination as an ending.  And after eight years of seminary formation, that’s probably not surprising.  It had seemed like forever since I started at St. John Vianney College Seminary immediately after high school in 2002, and it even seemed like a relatively long time since I had started Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 2006.  And while the first and most important goal of seminary is proper discernment of God’s call (or not), the farther along you get, the more you look forward to ordination to the priesthood.  That last year, as a transitional deacon, you’re looking at chalices, vestments, and trying to plan for the ordination reception, so ordination especially seems like the goal.
    But the words that are said before the man is ordained treat it, not as an ending, but as a beginning.  God has begun the good work, and we pray it finds its way to completion, on the day of Christ Jesus.  And, in retrospect and with the blessing of age and hopefully the acquisition of a bit more wisdom, ordination really is a beginning, more so than an ending.  And the years that follow really demonstrate how that good work is moving closer to or farther from completion.
    But the same is true for the other sacramental vocation, the vocation to Holy Matrimony.  Instead of eight years it’s around eight months or proximate preparation (sometimes more, sometimes less, based upon the date of engagement).  But there’s still all that planning and excitement for the “big day.”  Still, the big day is not the ending (though, and I’m sure the father’s of the bride are especially happy for this, it does end all the spending for the day of celebration).  The wedding day begins a lifelong commitment to the other, a good work, that finds its completion on the day when the bond of marriage is broken by death, by meeting the Lord.  That’s why we do marriage prep: to help the couple prepare, not so much for the wedding, but for married life and all the days that follow the wedding.
    But this is also true for all of Christ’s faithful.  When the priest baptizes us, a “good work” is begun, that will not find its completion until we meet the Lord, either at our death or at the end of time on the last day.  Either the parents or the one being baptized makes promises, just like a man makes promises on his ordination day, and a couple makes promises on their wedding day.  And every day that follows, God gives us all we need so that our “charity may more and more abound in knowledge and in all understanding.”  Our growth in holiness is really a growth in love of God and love of neighbor, as we understand better and better how God has made us for Himself, and how we can show that love to Him directly, as well as to our neighbor, with whom God identifies, especially the poor and outcast.  
    But so often we want to act like we should be a finished product.  We figure that, if we were truly holy, we would be done.  But the saints show us, time and time again, that we are never done growing in holiness.  Bishop Mengeling, who turns 94 on Tuesday, says frequently, “I’m not done yet!”  And he doesn’t just mean that he’s still alive.  He readily admits that he is still growing in holiness, and while continue growing for the rest of his life.  

    So don’t get too discouraged if you’re not there yet, if you’re not the saint that you want to be, and that God wants you to be.  Certainly, don’t give up or grow lazy and complacent.  But the work of your sanctification is a lifelong work.  It’s not something that you get to retire from once you reach a certain age, or have accomplished a certain number of achievements.  Even for me, if I make it to the age of seventy when I can become a senior priest, it’s not like I can stop living as a priest and give up my vocation.  No, I’ll continue it until death.  And for married couples, they can’t give up because their children have all grown, or when they’re retired from their jobs.  Marriage keeps going “until death do [you] part.”  
    The call of holiness is to daily give God what is His due, that is, everything.  Even while God gives us some authority over our actions, all things are from God and belong to Him.  Each day God calls us to render to Him everything that we have: our life, our family, our work, our leisure, everything.  Just because we offer it to Him doesn’t mean that He will take it from us.  Sometimes it’s simply that we are willing to offer what is most precious to God, like Abraham did with Isaac.  But it is a good work that continues throughout our life, until, like Christ, we offer our last breath to God as we commend our spirit into His hands.  May God, who has begun the good work in us, bring it to fulfillment on the day of Christ Jesus, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.