American Pie, the Letter, and the Spirit

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Don McLean produced a hit 8 minutes and 42 seconds long called “American Pie.”  And while most red-blooded Americans know the song, and maybe have even sung it at a karaoke bar, I imagine that as generations get further and further from its release in 1971, fewer and fewer people know that the song, which is mostly upbeat, speaks about the loss of innocence in America, beginning with the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper in 1959.  
    As we heard the Gospel today, we heard about the Pharisee who stood as far removed from the Law of Moses as many young people do today from “American Pie.”  The Pharisee knew the words.  He knew the right answer that the two greatest laws to uphold included the love of God with all of one’s self and the love of neighbor as oneself.  But he didn’t know the deeper meaning.  

    And so Christ has to give him a parable to talk about love of neighbor and how love of neighbor is demonstrated.  The Samaritan, the one outside the law, actually demonstrated love of neighbor, rather that the priest or the Levite.  Those who should have known the law the best, and certainly its deeper meaning, practiced the law the least, and become the bad guys in the parable.  The one who had no direct access to the law, because his people had abandoned the law when they intermarried with the local pagans, lived the law of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, even sacrificing his own money to care for the robbery and assault and battery victim, though the neighbor in this case was a stranger.
    There can be a challenge for us as Catholics, and Catholics probably better educated that in any century before.  If you want to know what the Church teaches on any issue, simply Google it.  I understand there’s even a Catholic AI that can help synthesize the Church Fathers, Doctors of the Church, and Magisterial documents to answer questions.  But are we like the Pharisee, who knows the right answer, but lack the gift of understanding to know how to put that knowledge into practice?  
    Many will refer to the practice and the deeper reality of what God has revealed as the spirit.  We hear that dichotomy today from the epistle between the spirit and the letter.  The spirit gives life, while the letter kills.  Sometimes this dichotomy is used to advance things which are patently contrary to the letter by placing it under the spirit of the law.  Some will say, for example, that while St. Paul clearly teaches that those who obstinately practice homosexual actions cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven (and notice that the actions separate us from God, not necessarily the disordered affection), that because our Lord taught us to love people, we cannot say that homosexual activity is wrong, because St. Paul was referring to the letter of the law, while the desire to let people love whomever they want to love (to use their phrase, not our understanding of true love) is part of the spirit of the law.
    But, that’s like saying that we can’t say adultery is wrong simply because Christ loves the person who commits that sin against the sixth commandment, and would never want to condemn that person.  Christ doesn’t want to condemn that person, but that person does have to choose the good that God has revealed, which is part and parcel of how God made us.  
    The spirit of the law does not mean anything goes.  But it does mean we have to look more deeply than the surface.  There’s a difference between looking beyond and looking more deeply.  To look beyond means that we ignore what we have received.  To look more deeply means to investigate how what we have received can be more fully understood.  It is the difference between changing a teaching (looking beyond) and legitimate development of doctrine (looking more deeply).  
    I think one good example of this is the more nuanced teaching of the Church on suicide.  The Church has taught, and in some cases will always teach, that taking one’s own life means committing a grave sin.  God clearly states in the Scriptures that He is the author of life, and the only one who can legitimately end an innocent life (though sometimes people have to end lives in the interest of defense of self, family, friends, or country without sin).  However, we have come to understand the complexity of a human mind that thinks that the best way to ease the psychological pain that he or she undergoes is to take his or her own life.  In some cases, and really the full knowledge of what is going on only God knows, a person is not free to make a choice because of chemical imbalances in the brain.  And, as we know, if a person cannot freely choose an action, no matter how grave it is, it cannot be a mortal sin.  So when a person commits suicide, unless we know it was made with a clear mind, we have some doubt as to how culpable that person was for an objectively evil action.  
    This is also what makes assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia, so horrible.  If people of any age feel that their lives have no value (and often times society tells them they have no purpose if they can’t be fully active or somehow benefit society), they are vulnerable to depression and rejection, and a doctor or nurse who comes to them to help them kill themselves takes advantage of that depression in an action which does not admit, generally, of repentance because of its finality; once completed you don’t get a do-over.  On the one hand, the Church reminds us that if we undergo euthanasia or assisted suicide and we know what we’re doing, we don’t know how that person could go to heaven, and that person would be denied anointing of the sick beforehand, and a Catholic funeral afterwards.  However, only God knows fully the mind, and so we also need to not presume omniscience and have some understanding for a person who may have dealt with mental illness in some form while trying to make the decision, especially if it was more encouraged by those who swore an oath to do no harm.
    The face value of the law and the commandments is not always the final word.  We don’t go beyond what God has revealed for our moral life, as if there are no moral absolutes or as if God’s teaching always changes with cultural adaptations.  However, we do need to go deeper to better understand the full implications of what God has revealed of how we are to love our neighbor and how we are to love God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Human Intellect and Divine Wisdom

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time
    As I get ready to turn 40, it’s incredible to think of the technological advances just in those four decades.  Thinking simply about how we listen to music, we went from records, to 8-tracks, to cassette tapes, to CDs, to Napster, to iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify. 
    The human mind is an amazing organ, and we continue to unlock different ways to utilize the created world.  But, while the brain comes up with ever-new ideas, it is not perfect.  Our intellect, which helps us to understand the world, both natural and supernatural, is fallen like the rest of creation.  Our minds do not always grasp truth.
    We see that in the Gospel today.  When asked who people say Jesus is, the first few apostles echoed the human wisdom, perhaps the best human wisdom, of the day.  “They replied, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’”  These Apostles, as good as their hypotheses were, erred.  Even if they were simply echoing what others said, they did not grasp the truth of Jesus’ identity. 

Statue of St. Peter from Galilee

    When St. Peter makes his reply, Jesus quickly identifies that “‘flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.’”  Peter’s response comes, yes, from his intellect, but, more accurately, from his intellect inspired and guided by God the Father.  Peter bases his response partially from what he understands, but also from wisdom from above.
    Those who have responsibility for teaching the faith, as well as we who receive that faith, do well to remember that our human intellect alone does not suffice for passing on the truths of the faith.  From all appearances and human judgments, Jesus was simply another great prophet.  But His miracles demonstrated that He was more than that; He showed by His actions that He was the “Son of the living God.”  But only intellects guided by grace could apprehend that truth.
    When we stick to our own understanding of truth, it is all too easy for our minds, darkened by sin, to assert things which are false.  We may even have reasons and some kind of logic to back up what we say.  But if our intellect is not guided by the Light of God, then we can, all too easily, get things wrong and either not fully grasp what God wants us to know, or even go against what God has revealed. 
    Take, for example, a popular idiom: love is love.  Our intellect, left to itself, might say, “Yeah, that sounds right.”  Dissecting the sentence, it actually doesn’t say much.  Grammatically speaking, it would be as profound as saying “one equals one” or “red is red.”  But it’s all too often used as a way of saying that a person should be able to love romantically or marry whomever he or she wants. 
    Some even use the Scriptures to try to back this up.  They see that St. John says in his first epistle that God is love.  And so, God would seemingly approve of romantic love of another, no matter who that other is.  They might also point to the fact that Jesus upended many of the cultural norms in His day, so we should be willing to do so as well.
    They might point to human history, and point out that there were, in our country, not that long ago, laws which prohibited interracial marriages.  They might say that we are more enlightened now to realize that those laws were wrong (as they were), because every human being has dignity and is worthy of love.  This move to allowing same-sex marriage, they might advocate, is the natural progression of enlightenment and development of human society, so that, as long as two people love each other, they can do whatever they want, and are entitled to the same protections that we have given to marriage between a man and a woman in marriage.  It all sounds quite logical.
    But it fails to take into account the guidance of our loving God in Sacred Scripture.  God, both in the Old and the New Testament, condemns homosexual activity as contrary to His will for human sexuality, and affirms that marriage is between a man and a woman.  And if one retorted that the Scriptures are conditioned by their culture, then why believe any of it as true?  If Scripture is simply one example of the human intellect, unguided by the grace of God, then we’re back to the fact that Jesus is John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or a prophet.  He’s just another teacher.  But, as Jesus tells Peter, He’s not simply another teacher or prophet.  If we can’t rely upon the Word of God, then Judaism and Catholicism might as well be tossed aside.

Statue of St. Paul from Rome

   Besides the clear statements from St. Paul that one cannot practice homosexual acts and go to heaven, we also need to look at how St. Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, teaches about love.  From everyone’s favorite wedding passage in 1 Corinthians: “Love…does not seek its own interests…it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.”  When a feeling of attraction divorces itself from the truth, it is not love, no matter how strong or how well-intentioned.  Yes, God is Love, but Jesus is God, and Jesus refers to Himself as the Truth, so Truth and Love are intrinsically bound up together.  When love separates itself from the truth, it becomes mere infatuation or even lust.  I cannot will the good of the other (St. Thomas’ definition of love) if what I want to do is contrary to what will help the other person attain heaven.  Love would never lead one to endanger the immortal soul of the beloved.  Love would also never go against what Love Incarnate has taught through the Old and New Testaments and through the infallible teachings of Love’s Mystical Body, the Church. 
    Does this mean that God wants us to hate those with same-sex attractions and persecute them?  No.  God calls us to will the good of all others, whether they are like us or different from us.  God calls us, as He says myriad times in the Scriptures, to pay special attention to those who struggle in life and find themselves on the margins of society, as those with same-sex attractions often do.  Telling someone that they cannot get married and enjoy the physical expressions that are proper to marriage does not mean that we hate that person.  Telling someone “no” does not equal hate, otherwise every parent hates their children…sometimes multiple times…each day. 
    When we rely simply on human reason, as good as it sometimes is, we can get things wrong.  This is especially when it comes to God and what He teaches, because our minds are darkened by sin.  In order to get the “God-stuff” right, we also need the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who helped Peter proclaim Jesus’ true identity, and who still guides the Church to teach us infallibly on matters of faith and morals.  

No Karma for Catholics

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time/Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.]. Over the past few years people of all and no faiths have started to buy into this idea of karma.  Whether what is shared is actually the Hindu view of karma or not, I’m not sure, but the basic statement is that if someone does good, then good things will happen to that person.  More often than not, it’s invoked when someone does something bad to a person, and that person hopes something bad will happen back to the other. 

Prophet Jeremiah

   Catholics do not believe in karma.  Nor should we espouse it so blithely.  In our/the Ordinary Form first reading, we hear the prophet Jeremiah talk about his former friends trying to trap him and cause his problems.  Jeremiah does call out to God for retribution, and has confidence that God will take care of things.  But bad things did happen to Jeremiah.  He was thrown into a partly-dry well, and no one listened to him.  What had Jeremiah done to deserve such horrible treatment?  What horrendous things must he have committed in order for “karma” to treat him so poorly?  Jeremiah spoke God’s word.  He did nothing wrong (beyond the daily small sins of any person).  The word God sent Jeremiah to preach was not a popular word, because it was the word of judgement on a people who had rejected God.  But if karma is true, then Jeremiah should have experienced nothing but good things, since he was doing good.  But that’s not what happened.
    Or take St. Paul.  In Romans, chapter 8, [the pericope we heard today], St. Paul says that the sufferings of this time are as nothing compared to the glory that is to be revealed.  St. Paul had done some bad stuff (he had persecuted Christians and consented to the martyrdom of St. Stephen).  But by the time he’s writing this epistle, he’s been doing God’s work for a while, preaching the Gospel, working miracles, and encouraging young communities to follow the Lord.  According to karma, everything should be enjoyable; there shouldn’t be sufferings.  But, of course, there were.  In fact, St. Paul continues that all creation is groaning as it awaits for the fullness of redemption in Christ. 
    Christ, of course, is the nail in the coffin when it comes to the idea of karma.  Christ was sinless.  He did no wrong.  And yet He suffered immense pain and agony.  So, hopefully we can put to rest this idea of karma, and that good things happen to those who do good, while bad things happen to those who do bad.  Those who follow God’s will often have to suffer, and sometimes there is no immediate justice for those who do wrong.  There are many who lie, cheat, sleep around, and have no real practice of religion, and they seem to get richer and richer, not have any problems, and continue to thrive while those who try their best to follow God’s law of freedom have to struggle daily to make ends meet, and have problems with sometimes even the basic realities of life.
    So what do we do?  We stay faithful, even when it’s hard.  We follow the law of the Gospel and the teachings of the Church, even when they seem unpopular, and even when we are persecuted, because, as our Lord says in the Gospel according to St. Matthew [that we heard today], God cares even for the sparrows, and we are worth much more than many sparrows. 
    When Christ invites us to live a certain way or to follow Him somewhere, our best response is to follow His lead and do what He says.  It may sometimes seem counterintuitive, like when Christ asked Peter to put out into the deep waters to make a catch of fish, even though Peter had been fishing the entire night before and had caught nothing.  But when we respond with the obedience of faith, Christ can do things beyond our imagining.  The miracle where St. Peter caught all those fish was not about the fish: it was about God not being outdone when we follow Him.  Sometimes it happens immediately, like with St. Peter.  Sometimes it takes longer.  Sometimes we may not even see the results on this side of eternity.  But God rewards faithfulness, and especially when it is tough.
    And it’s tough for Catholics now, and probably will get tougher in the future.  Last week the LA Dodgers honored a group of anti-Catholic cross-dressers who openly mock the beautiful lives and work of religious sisters.  Those who remain faithful to the Church’s teaching that homosexual acts are gravely sinful and contrary to God’s plan for human sexuality are called bigots and homophobes.  Our own Michigan Supreme Court wants to make a rule that says that a person is to be identified by whatever terminology that person decides, regardless of reality, and our governor openly brags about how easy it is to murder innocent children in the womb and says that people should move to Michigan because of that ease of access to infanticide.  These aren’t so much political issues as they are moral.  We now find ourselves in a culture that is more pagan than the height of the Roman Empire. 
    God calls us to be Jeremiahs, those who speak His word, no matter what those who called themselves friends do to us, no matter what privileges and popularity society grabs from us, no matter what names and epithets others give to us.  We do this, not because of karma, not because bad people will get bad things in their lifetime, but because God’s word is life and truth, and living according to the truth brings happiness, while living according to lies, no matter how popular, brings sorrow.  God gives us the Eucharist to strengthen us so that we have the courage and energy to remain faithful to Him. 
    That is why it is so important to go to Mass each Sunday and holyday: without the Eucharist, the devil can more easily persuade us with his lies to dive into the culture of death.  The Eucharist is our lembas bread (Elvish bread from Lord of the Rings which sustained those who ate it much longer than it looked like it could) which fills our soul to press on, no matter how hard the journey. 

    Whether we like it or not, bad things do not always happen to bad people; good things do not always happen to good people.  Sometimes staying faithful to God means losing friends, power, and prestige.  But, we cannot imagine the good things that God has in store for us if we remain faithful to Him: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

History is Going Somewhere

First Sunday of Advent

If you asked a seminarian for a description of Hell, he would likely say that Hell would be remaining in seminary forever.  Don’t get me wrong, seminary is a great place, and were some of the best eight years of my life (four in college, four in theology), but it had a goal: ordination to the priesthood.  Of course, there’s no way to teach us all the things we’ll need to know in seminary, but if they kept us until we knew everything we needed, we’d never become priests; we’d be seminarians forever; which would be Hell.

It think sometimes we forget that history has a goal.  History is not aimlessly meandering throughout the centuries and millennia.  History is proceeding to the final judgement.  History is going towards Jesus.  And our goal, as Catholics, is to make sure that we’re on the right side of history.  

History for the Jews was going towards Jesus, their long-awaited Messiah.  Jeremiah speaks the Lord’s message that God was going to “raise up for David a just shoot.”  God was going to fulfill His promise that a son of David would sit on the throne of Israel forever, and that promise was fulfilled in Jesus.  Of course, the Jews do not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, but He is the Messiah, and proved it throughout the Gospels .  

For us as Catholics, as the fulfillment of Judaism and  even the Gentiles (those who were joined to Judaism who were not originally part of the Chosen People), our goal is to remain faithful to Jesus the Messiah until He returns to judge the living and the dead.  St. Paul reminds us that we know how to conduct ourselves as pleasing to God, through the instructions that St. Paul gave us.  And not just St. Paul, but the apostles, joined in union with St. Peter and his successors, the popes, who are called to authentically teach us how to live out our faith, and how to follow Jesus in new times and places.  

Jesus Himself reminds us in the Gospel not to become drowsy from immoral behavior and the daily grind of life.  Instead, we are to be vigilant, waiting for that culmination of human history in the return of the Messiah who, at the end of time, will bring to fulfillment the victory He won on the cross.

And this season of Advent is our reminder to be ready, and to keep ourselves on the right side of history.  Advent is the time when, as the days grow darker, we focus more intently on the Light of the World that is Jesus.  Nations will be in dismay because they are not faithful to the teachings of Jesus.  The ending of the world will cause non-believers to fear because they will be on the wrong side of history and their days of power and control will come to an end.  Those who follow Jesus will “‘stand erect and raise [their] heads because [their] redemption is at hand.’”

What will remain?  Jesus and all that is in Him and His Mystical Body, the Church.  What will pass away?  Everything that is contrary to Jesus and His Mystical Body, the Church.  Sadly, we tend to see things more in a political view than in a Gospel view.  We give allegiance to this or that political group, but not as much to Jesus and His Church.  The Gospel and the unbroken teaching of the Church tell us that we cannot support abortion, artificial contraception, homosexual activity, and the philosophy that we can determine our gender independent of the way God has created our bodies.  Of course, to our American ears that sounds like I’m attacking women and diversity and the Democratic party.  And certainly, we are called to love those who try to promote or get an abortion, those who engage in homosexual acts, and those who are confused about their gender.  But at the same time that we love them we cannot endorse their actions.  The Gospel and the unbroken teaching of the Church also tell us that we have an obligation to assist the poor, especially those who cannot care for themselves, and to care for the stranger, the alien, and those in prison, to strive for just working conditions and a fare wage.  Of course, to our American ears that sounds like I’m supporting laziness, like I don’t care about national security, and am in the pockets of the unions, and attacking the Republican party.  But God the Father doesn’t call us to be part of a political party.  He calls us to follow Jesus with all that it entails, which cannot be entirely encompassed by one political party (at least not one that I’ve seen).  We can have strong borders, encourage others to work, and make sure that employees are not taken advantage of for profit.  But we also have to make sure that we are treating all people with human dignity, no matter what their circumstance in life.

Our goal is to advance our life and the lives of those around us, towards Christ, following what He teaches in its fulness, not picking and choosing the parts we like.  Our goal is to be part of the trajectory of history that is going towards Jesus, committed to Him entirely, not committed to other groups or ideologies before Jesus.  During this Advent, let’s recommit ourselves to moving towards the goal of history, towards Jesus, and avoiding being on the wrong side of the judgement of Christ.

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?