New Life Not Rules

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time–Third Scrutiny Readings
    Go to Mass on Sundays and holydays; don’t eat meat on Fridays; serve the poor; love your enemies; save sex for marriage and don’t live together before you’re married; contribute to your parish; pray daily.  Catholicism is often broken down to these and many other rules.  And when Catholicism is presented as simply one set of rules (and fairly strict!) over others, it doesn’t sound that good.  But these rules are meant to be the response to a new life, rather than a reason for joining a new club.
    Yes, clubs have rules, but people make rules for themselves based upon their goals.  I remember a classmate of mine from high school whose goal was to become valedictorian.  She spent much of her time studying and making sure that she understood the concepts that the teachers taught.  She didn’t shy away from tougher honors classes, but I can only imagine the hours she spent going over lectures and assignments (and this, in addition to playing various sports).  But, her years of study, probably when others were doing things that seemed more enjoyable, paid off when she had the grades to be the valedictorian for the Lansing Catholic graduating class of 2002.
    Your goal, Mia, is not simply another tassel around your graduation gown.  Your goal is the new life that Christ offers.  And that is really what Catholicism is about.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we are not always who we want to be.  We desire the eternal, even while going through life in very limited bodies.  There is a desire for God in our hearts, but we don’t always choose God.  We need help.  And God gave us that help in Christ, who not only teaches us, but can fill us with the power to accomplish what we want: union with God.  

    Catholicism isn’t about rules (though we have a lot of them).  Catholicism is about dying and rising; dying to our old, fallen self, and rising to our new glorified self.  That is most evident in baptism, where the Death and Resurrection of Christ are given to us so that we can be changed in a way we couldn’t on our own.  The death of Lazarus, which we heard today in the very long Gospel account, anticipated Christ’s own dying and rising, except that Lazarus would die again, but Christ would never die again, because it no longer had power over Him.  
    Catholicism is about being connected to the source of the power that allows us to reach beyond our limitedness, and begin to reach into infinity as we grow in our relationship with God who is infinite.  God desires us to have new life, not just be dried bones in graves.  And He makes it happen in us through the sacraments and through the grace that comes each day from them.
    And that new life comes from doing our best to live like Jesus.  When we live our merely human life, we care most importantly for ourselves.  We go throughout life seeking pleasure and avoiding pain wherever we think we can find delight and hide from discomfort.  The merely earthly life is very self-centered, very solipsistic.  And while it may lead to more money than one can imagine, or more things that one can count, or more power to exercise over others, it does not, as so many have shown us throughout history, lead to true and lasting happiness.  Ironically, the one who cares for others, who dies to his or her own desire to be most important, ends us rising to a happier form of life where doing God’s will is most important, others follow in importance, and only then are my desires considered.  The happiest people are those who live the new life where service to others comes before pampering the self.  
    And over the centuries, Mia, the Church has created rules and practices that help us die to self and rise for God.  Ever since Pentecost when the Church was born, we have come to know more and more deeply what actions are in accord with how Christ showed us to be happy, and what actions are antithetical to living a truly happy life in Christ.  And the more we live the life of Christ here on earth, the more it will seem like the place we want to be at the end of our life when our actions will shows whether or not we want to be in heaven, which is where God created us to be.  We do those practices and we follow those rules not because we can earn God’s love; we can’t.  We go to Mass, we serve the poor, we fast and abstain, we do all those things that I mentioned and more as our response to the love of God that has been poured into our hearts.  So happy are we that we have access to new life, that we can escape the bonds of death in Christ, that we don’t just tell Christ we love Him; we show Him by what we say and by what we do.
    Mia, you are not signing up to join a new club that your friends are in.  You are not simply applying new rules to your life as a form of self-control.  You are one week away from dying to everything that is old and fallen in you, and rising to all that is young and glorified in Christ.  God doesn’t just want to give you rules, He wants to give you new life.  Hear the voice of Jesus as He invites you out of the tombs of death of your old way of life.  Let Jesus unbind the sinful bands around you.  Come to the waters of baptism next week, not for a new set of rules, but for a new life that is only possible in Christ. 

More Than Rules

Second Sunday of Lent
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  The Church Fathers have consistently taught that the Gospel we heard today, that of the Transfiguration, allowed Christ to assuage the distress of the announcement of His Passion, so that the Apostles could know that, after the Passion, the glory of the Resurrection would follow. 

    The Transfiguration also demonstrates what Christ desires to happen to us if He joins us to Himself through Holy Baptism.  The glorification of the head also means the glorification of the body.  God does not keep His glory to Himself, but shares it with those whom Holy Baptism joins to Himself and those who, through a holy life, keep that union strong. 
    And during our Lenten observances, as we discipline ourselves and “waste away” from fasting and abstaining, it is good to keep our eyes on the prize and realize for what God made us.  Because God did not solely destine us for this earth and all of its fallenness.  God made us so that we could live with Him eternally in heaven, and the glory that He has by nature He would share with us by grace.  We, too, are meant to be transfigured.
    So often Catholicism is simply presented as rules to follow.  St. Paul today tells us not to give in to fornication and not to give in to lust, as do the pagans.  And in this way, St. Paul tells us, God will make us holy.  Certainly, many people think about the Church’s teaching on sex as “don’t do [fill in the blank].” 
    But the Gospel reminds us that Catholicism is not, at its heart, about rules.  Catholicism is about letting God transfigure us to be more like Himself, which is how He made us.  Rules can often seem very external, but God desires that His grace not only affect our actions, the externals, but also affect our entire being, both externals and internals.  The chief complaint from the Lord about the Pharisees was that they only cared about the externals, so He calls them cups where only the outside is washed, while the inside remains dirty, or white-washed sepulchers, finely decorated on the outside, but full of death on the inside.  The catch-word for Lent, repent, comes from the Greek 𝜇𝜀𝜏𝛼𝜈𝜊𝜀𝜄𝜏𝜀, meaning a change of mind or a change of being. 
    And as we hear St. Peter say that it is good that they are at Mt. Tabor, and should stay there in three tents, even he, in a sense, thinks only about the externals.  Christ allows His divinity to shine through, and Peter is awe-filled.  But it doesn’t require any change of his own life.  He can simply watch the Lord and bask in His brilliance.  But a disciple is not just about “me and Jesus,” to use a common Christian phrase.  Following the Lord means that we allow God to transform our life, which pushes us out to share that new life with others.  When we conform our lives to God, we conform them to love, which is diffusive; it wants to be shared with others, not kept to ourselves. 
    This transformation cannot only be on the outside.  St. Paul, elsewhere, talks about the glory of the law, which pales in comparison to the glory of righteousness.  Moses, the Apostle writes, had this glory, but the glory faded, which is why Moses covered his face: so the Israelites didn’t see the slow fade of the glory.  The Law had some transfiguring effect, but not a total transfiguration.  Moses could give the law, but grace and truth came through Christ, as we hear in St. John’s prologue at each Mass. 
    It is all too easy to “do the right things.”  It is easier to simply do the external things that we are told that we need to do than to allow those things that we are supposed to do change us, both outside and inside.  But the point of the externals is to change the internals.  God does not only want us to look good, He wants us to be good.  And so those things that we do should change our interior dispositions to be more like Christ.
    So as we engage in our Lenten disciplines, ask yourselves: is this discipline opening me up to the grace of God so that I can be transformed?  Or is it only an outward action that does nothing to my interior spiritual life?  And if we’re not being transformed, it’s not that we stop our penances.  We can’t simply eat meat on Fridays because we don’t experience how abstaining from meat on Fridays transforms us to be more like Christ.  What it does mean is that we have to examine how that practice, or any others that we undertake, can make us more receptive to God’s grace.  Maybe by not eating meat by choice, I ponder those who cannot choose what they want to eat because they have no money.  My heart grows in love for the poor, and I am led to consider how I can help them according to my own state in life.  I no longer see them as “others” who annoy me, but as beloved of Christ, and even Christ Himself, as He says in Matthew 25, for whom I have a responsibility to care. 
    I know I preached about externals and internals on Ash Wednesday, but the Gospel of the Transfiguration reminds us that Christ did not come only to change religious practices.  Christ came to make us more like God, not on our own terms, like what Adam and Eve tried to do when they disobeyed God, but on God’s terms, with a transformation that shines more brightly.  May our Lenten practices not only discipline our bodies, but also help us to be more like Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Not Made Up

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  As kids, but even as adults, we can make up rules.  Kids do it with games they create.  The games may not always make sense, and the rules often favor the person making up the game.  Sometimes they’re made up as the game progresses.  But even as adults we change rules, not often in games, but in relationships, in decisions we make and how we make them, in order to suit our whims and fancies.  Not all of this is vicious or devious, but sometimes just the result of more experience.  This is often the case with parents’ rules for their children.  The firstborn often has very strict rules, and is not allowed to do much, as the parents are still trying to figure out how to be parents and how to keep their eldest safe and responsible.  But, as more and more kids come, sometimes the rules soften a bit.  Sometimes the baby of the family gets away with things that the oldest child never could have done, this being attributed either to the favor of the youngest child, or because the parents are too tired to fight those battles with another child, so they acquiesce. 
    Many Catholics see the teachings of the faith as made up rules and regulations.  How often does the trope get repeated that this teaching or that Church law is simply the will of a bunch of old men with pointy hats.  But St. Paul reminds us of something important today: while there are rules that can change based upon later needs of generations, what is most precious to us and what is necessary is not made up by old men, but is handed down to us, starting from the Apostles, and then further expounded by their successors, the bishops. 

    St. Paul in today’s epistle outlines the basic kerygma of the faith: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose on the third day.  And everything basically flows from that basic teaching.  And that teaching is not ours, as if we own it.  It does not belong to the bishops or even the pope, as if they could change it.  Rather, they are the stewards of what came before, who, as our Lord says elsewhere, brings out the old and the new, as they guard what came before, and open up deeper mines in the treasure that is the deposit of faith.
    In communicating the faith, it’s important to start with those basic teachings (again, we call it the kergyma, which is just the Greek word for teaching).  When talking to our neighbors, they may not even be sure if God exists, so we should start there.  Whether using St. Thomas Aquinas’s five ways, or simply talking about how there is a desire on our heart for the infinite, which could not be there without an infinite being implanting that in our heart, we can start with the truths about God, who He is, and how He works.  This will lead us to how the Church teaches that God is not a monad, but a Trinity of Divine Persons, a Communion of Love.
    St. Paul, after talking about God (Christ), then says that He died for our sins.  Sin is pretty obvious.  G.K. Chesterton said that sin is one of the teachings of the Church that can be proved simply by observation.  Look around and you will see people missing the mark (the Greek word for sin, 𝛼𝜇𝛼𝜌𝜏𝜄𝛼, literally means to miss the mark).  We see people, and we even notice ourselves, making choices that we don’t really want to make, or that take us in a different direction than we want to travel in life.  And if God is life, and sin is choosing against God, then choosing sin is choosing death, more specifically, eternal death if it is grave and we do not repent.  That’s a pretty bad place to be, but God didn’t leave us in sin, He took upon Himself the punishment for sin (death), though He was sinless, so that we could have life.  He reconciled us to the Father, and gave us the possibility that we could choose God and not choose against God.  He accomplished this by His Resurrection, proving that sin and its consequence, death, had no power over Him, that He was more powerful than anything else.
    St. Paul then talks about how Christ appeared to Cephas (Peter) and the Eleven.  Then other disciples, and then Paul again reiterates Christ appearing to the Apostles, including to St. Paul himself eventually.  This is also, I would argue, the basis of the apostolic teaching: Christ continues His ministry through His Apostles (whom He chose to lead the Church) and through His disciples (all those who follow Him in the Church).  And His grace, through the Apostles and disciples, is not in vain; it is active and enlivens the Church.  But always in harmony with the basic teachings, and how the Magisterium, the fancy term for the pope and bishops exercising their teaching office, has developed those basic teachings.
    Our job is to share those teachings, and hold fast to what has been handed down to us in matters of faith and morals.  When we do that, we participate in our Lord opening the ears and mouths of the deaf and mute (but without having to spit on everyone with whom we share the Gospel).  All of those teachings are in Scripture, directly or indirectly; others are promulgated in Ecumenical Councils, from Nicaea I to Vatican II; others are in papal pronouncements on faith and morals; others are commonly taught by the popes and bishops.  But we do not change those teachings that touch on what has been revealed as part of the divine and Catholic faith: not the pope, not any bishop, not any priest, not any layperson.  If we were to do that, we would cut ourselves off from communion with the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, and we would find ourselves on the outside looking in, rather than part of that communion of Trinitarian love that God desires for each of us. 
    Yes, some rules are created that flow from our belief, but can change based on the needs of certain generations and peoples.  But our teachings on faith and morals are not made up, like in a child’s game, just to favor those who are in power.  Our teachings on faith and morals is a bottomless treasure chest, helping us to find the happiness that God desires for us, but always in harmony with the earliest treasures God gave to us in His Truth.  May we all be equipped to understand those treasures of faith and morals, and share them with others, so that they, too, can come into a saving relationship with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Immersed in the Mass

Third Sunday of Lent

German World Cup Athlete

If I were to try to explain the rules of soccer to someone who didn’t play, soccer would likely sound like one of the most boring and complicated sports in the world.  It would sound something like: the point of the game is to get the ball into the opponent’s goal; but you have to use your feet to get the ball there; or you can use your head; if you use your hands it’s a penalty, unless you’re a goalie within the goal box, or unless  you’re throwing the ball in from out of bounds; but if you throw the ball in then both feet have to be on the ground and the ball has to go completely over your heard; but if the ball goes out on the goal line but not in the net, if it was last touched by the offense it’s a goal kick, which means that the ball is placed on the ground and kicked; if it was last touched by the defense it’s a corner kick, which means that the ball is placed on the ground at the corner flag.  And I won’t even get into the offsides rules that confuse so many people!

It sounds like a lot of rules that may or may not make sense.  But when you see a professional athlete play soccer, see how all the rules work together to allow two teams to try to win, and see how the rules allow play to continue without favoring one side or another, the beauty of soccer comes through.  The rules of the system allow the activity to continue in a way that beauty is conveyed.  How often do we speak about the way an athlete plays as poetry in motion!

Jesus, in the Gospel, is crying foul (or blowing His whistle for a penalty) with the merchants and moneychangers in the temple.  It’s easy to gloss over why Jesus gets so upset.  We can quickly jump to conclusions about why Jesus throws out the moneychangers and merchants.  After all, why would there be a mini-bank in the temple?  And the merchants were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and those things smell, are messy, and, if they’ve eaten recently, tend to leave little presents that need to be cleaned up.  But the moneychangers were helping Jews from across the world exchange their money so they could pay the temple tax in the accepted shekels.  They were like super ushers who would exchange money for you for the collection.  And the merchants were really just religious goods salesmen, as those animals were only used for one thing: sacrifice.  And yet Jesus casts them out!  Why?  Because they were not allowing the beauty of the temple and of temple worship to shine through.

We have a lot of rules when it comes to Mass: don’t eat or drink anything besides water and medicine 1 hour before you receive Holy Communion; stand at this time, sit at this time, kneel at this time; the priest and deacon have certain words that they need to say, and can rarely ad lib; all vessels must be made of precious metal which hold the Body or Blood of Jesus; not every song that we like can be sung; and the list goes on.  These rules are meant to communicate the beauty which the Mass is meant to show, namely, the truth of Jesus’ perfect sacrifice on the cross and our participation in the Paschal Mystery.  The less we know about the reasons for the rules, the more they seem capricious or willy-nilly, just like the rules of soccer seem strange to those who are not immersed in the beauty of the game.  But, when we familiarize ourselves with what the Mass is supposed to be, the worship of rational beings to God, joined to the perfect worship of Jesus on the altar of the cross, it’s like watching professional athletes play World Cup soccer: the rules don’t seem as clunky, and, in fact, they allow each individual to use their talents in a more profound way.  

I invite you, if you don’t understand what goes on in the Mass, to read, attend adult faith formation sessions, and learn more about what occurs when the Mass is celebrated.  The more we do, the more we will see the beauty of the Mass as facilitated by the rules, rather than just a bunch of rules that don’t let us do what we want to in the Mass.