Interdependence not Independence

 Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Think about the great milestones in a person’s life that we celebrate: first steps; going to school; riding a bicycle without training wheels; driving; going to college; buying your first house.  What do all those have in common?  They are all about independence.  It’s not so amazing that a child walks while his or her parents are holding on; it’s noteworthy (as well as the beginning of a new, scary part of childhood) when the child can walk on his or her own.  Yes, kids first learn how to drive with a parent in the car.  But when do we really celebrate?  When you can drive on your own.  Going off to college is, yes, going to a large group of people in a new place (at least before COVID), but it’s striking out on one’s own away from parents.  And buying one’s own house (or apartment) means, generally, that you’re not living with your parents anymore.
    There’s nothing in se wrong with this, but look at how much we celebrate independence and individuality and doing things on one’s own.  We celebrate when a person doesn’t need another person anymore, but can do something on his or her own.  I can tell you that I really knew I was an adult when my parents didn’t have to pay for their own birthday dinners, but I paid the check.
    And yet, our readings today all talk about interdependence, rather than independence.  Let’s start with the Gospel.  Jesus recognizes that there will be conflicts among His disciples.  While He calls them to love one another, He also realizes that we do not always do that.  And so, Jesus says that if our fellow disciple sins against us, we are to deal with it, not independently (by gossiping and holding on to grudges by ourselves), but interdependently, by telling our brother or sister that they have sinned against us, and need to repent.  If the other doesn’t listen to us, we invite others who have knowledge of the fault to bolster our case.  If the other doesn’t listen to them, we invite the church to get involved (notice that running to tell the priest is not the first step!).  If the other won’t even listen to the church, then we can work on separating from them.  The process of reconciliation is not one-sided in Jesus’ church, but always works with at least two.
    In our second reading, St. Paul tells us that we are to love one another, because love fulfills the law.  Love, by its very nature, is diffusive.  It seeks an outlet.  Self-love is not really what is meant by love.  Yes, we have to care for ourselves, but if we truly love, then it always involves the way we treat each other.  All of the commandments that we are bound to keep, are examples of ways that we should love each other.  We cannot say that we are keeping the commandments if we cut everyone else out of our life or only do what is best for ourselves.  That narcissism is part and parcel of our current culture, but it’s anathema for followers of Jesus.
    And lastly, in our first reading, Ezekiel talks about the shepherds of Israel.  He’s not talking about people who care for sheep, but people who care for people, the religious leaders.  And God says through Ezekiel that shepherds have a responsibility to look out for others, to warn them about sin and death, so that they can avoid it.  When the shepherds warn about sin and death, they also save themselves.  If they don’t warn the sheep about sin and death, not only do the sheep die, but God promises to hold the shepherds responsible, too.  
    As followers of Jesus, we are interdependent.  What we do affects each other.  We are our brother’s keeper.  We cannot simply say that we’re doing the right thing, so let the world go to hell in a hand basket.  We have a responsibility towards each other, especially as fellow believers.  
    There’s a word that we have when a follower of Jesus doesn’t do publicly what he or she is supposed to do, and that word is scandal.  We currently associate that work with priests who committed horrible crimes against the most innocent, and that is certainly a horrible scandal.  But scandal applies to all, not just priests and not just about sexual abuse.  When a Catholic says publicly that he or she supports abortion, euthanasia, artificial contraception, sex outside of marriage, marriage between two people of the same sex, or that sex has no connection to biology, that is a scandal, because Catholics are not to support such practices or ideas because they are contrary to God’s revelation.  When a Catholic makes derogatory comments about a person simply because of that person’s race, gender, IQ, economic status, or religion, that is a scandal, because Catholics are called to show respect to every person as created in the image and likeness of God.  As Catholics we can judge certain beliefs and actions to be wrong without judging another because God has revealed to us that those things are wrong.  Sin, too, is always interdependent: it always effects more than simply the person committing the sin.  We are both to work so that we are not a scandal to others, as well as work to correct others so that they are not a scandal to the world.
    G.K. Chesterton, an early 20th century Catholic author said, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”  So often, when we come to a difficult part of our faith, we try to be independent, to make it on our own, or to choose to reject what the Church calls us to believe or how the Church calls us to live.  We owe it to Jesus, and to each other, to be interdependent; to help each other live as followers of Jesus.  Catholicism is not a religion of independence; it’s a religion of interdependence which calls us to care for and to challenge each other to be the saints that God call us to be in Baptism.

"Do you also want to leave?"

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

So the second week of August was not a great week for me.  It was one of those weeks, I know you’ve had them, where everything seemed to come together, but not in a good way, but in a way that kept draining me emotionally and spiritually.  I had my regular responsibilities of taking care of parishioners, which is both something that gives me joy and something that tires me out, and then my grandmother was dying (she passed away on Tuesday, 7 August), and then the news came out about Archbishop McCarrick and how he is accused of abuse of minors and engaging in homosexual relationships with seminarians and priests.  I buried my grandmother on Friday, 10 August, buried a parishioner of St. John the Evangelist in Davison on Saturday (because their church wasn’t available).  Then the weekend schedule, then continuing with my usual parish duties with a few hospital visits, and also working with the State Police trying to comfort a woman whose husband had just committed suicide and left her four children fatherless.  And then the grand jury report came out of Pennsylvania, talking about the horrific crimes perpetrated against children, some which could best be described by the word diabolical.  Let’s just say my emotional and spiritual tank were running on E.  

Bishop Mengeling, when he was still bishop of Lansing, would often say that he quit frequently, usually at the end of the day.  And I can honestly say that at points, especially as the news about Archbishop McCarrick and the priests in Pennsylvania came out, I wondered what sort of organization I was working for, and whether it was worth it.  I don’t mind all the work, and in fact I love helping others find God in difficult times, especially sickness and death when God seems so absent.  But to hear about so many brother priests who were priests in name only, who did not serve God’s people but preyed on them, that just killed my morale.

So today’s Gospel really hit home.  Jesus is finishing with what we call His Bread of Life Discourse.  He has told the people that unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they do not have life within them.  He has told them that what He is giving them is even more precious than the manna that God gave them in the desert.  And what do His disciples, those who followed Jesus, do?  “‘This saying is hard; who can accept it?’”  And they mostly leave.

What’s interesting is that Jesus doesn’t stop them; He doesn’t run after them to say that they misunderstood, that they were thinking about eating human flesh, when He was talking about the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist under the appearance of bread and wine.  He doesn’t even expand His teaching where He is.  If it were a numbers game, Jesus was not doing what He should have to keep His attendance high.  All Jesus does is ask the Twelve, the Apostles, “‘Do you also want to leave?’”  And honestly, in the midst of my fatigue, my lack of energy, my disgust at people who betrayed Jesus and misused the sacred office entrusted to them by Jesus, I felt like Jesus asked me, “Do you also want to leave?”  

There are a million reasons to leave the Church.  In heaven she is the immaculate bride of Christ, but on earth, she is made up of sinful members, sometimes very sinful members.  And I don’t have to look beyond myself to find a sinner in the Church.  There are myriad historical examples of the Church not doing what she should have, even if we take off our modern way of thinking, which would have been very odd to those who lived centuries and a millennium before us.  We’ve had popes, bishops, and priests who fathered children why claiming to live a chaste life; we’ve had lay people in public office who claimed to be doing the will of God even while they were anything but godly in their governance; we’ve been on the wrong side of history more times than we’d like to admit.  Sometimes pastors make decisions that we don’t like, that we think are bad decisions.

But while there are a million reasons to leave the Church, there’s only one real reason to stay: Jesus.  If Jesus really is God, and if the Church is really the Mystical Body of Christ, then even when the Church on earth messes up and does horrible things, my faith in Jesus can still remain.  If Jesus said that we need to be baptized, to be born again in order to have eternal life; if He said that unless we eat His Body and drink His Blood we do not have life within us; and if He set up His Church in such a way as to continue that power to make His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension–His Paschal Mystery–present for us through bishops and priests, then even when some whom He has chosen as priests act in a polar opposite way than Jesus, it does not shake my faith in Jesus and His Mystical Body.  It may break my heart, first and foremost for the victims who suffered so horribly, and then for an institution that I love which is going through a very painful purification from its sinful members.  But it doesn’t make me leave, because my faith was never in those individuals, but it was in Jesus.  They were supposed to lead me to Jesus and act in His name, but they weren’t Jesus Christ Himself.  

In the midst of this trial, Jesus asks us, “‘Do you also want to leave?’”  And you’ll have to decide how you will respond.  Maybe you want to leave because of the horrendous news over the past few weeks.  Maybe you don’t like the new Mass schedule.  Maybe you have a different reason that makes you want to leave the parish or the Church.  But to that question from Jesus, asking if I want to leave, I have to make my own the words of Simon Peter and Joshua: Master, to whom shall I go?  You have the words of eternal life.  I have come to believe and am convinced that you are the Holy One of God.  As for me, I will serve you, Lord.

From Death to Life

Fifth Sunday of Lent-Third Scrutiny

            For the past two weeks we have heard from the Gospel according to John at this Mass.  We step aside from the usual hearing from the Gospel according to Luke to meditate and reflect upon what St. John calls the main signs of Jesus’ ministry.  We do this to assist our Elect to prepare for baptism, confirmation, and the reception of Holy Communion for the first time, as we accompany them through the Scrutinies.

            These three signs that we hear about all have to do with life, and are fitting for the Elect who are preparing for new life in baptism.  Two weeks ago we heard about the Samaritan woman at the well, and how Jesus was going to give her living water.  As we all know, we can’t live without water.  Last week we heard of the man born blind and how Jesus is the light of the world.  Light is an important part of life.  Without sunlight, the plants don’t produce, which means we, and the animals we eat, don’t survive.  Today, we don’t deal with an image or a metaphor for life, but with life itself in the raising of Lazarus from the dead.

            The first important aspect is that faith is involved.  The Samaritan woman comes to believe in Jesus, and so she is given the life-giving water in her soul which will never run dry.  The man born blind has faith, and Jesus opens His eyes.  Martha has faith that Jesus will raise Lazarus.  In none of these cases is the faith complete, as if one knows it all.  In fact, if one truly knows it all, faith, the knowledge of things unseen, is not necessary.  But faith makes new life possible.

            It is faith, at least in its seminal form, which led you, Elect of God, to ask questions about the Catholic Church.  It is faith which led you to continue searching and opening the Word of God to see if this Jesus should be followed.  It is faith which you will profess before you are baptized.  This will not be the end of the journey, but only the beginning of new life in Christ, just as for those of us who were baptized as infants, when our parents and godparents professed faith for us so that we could receive the precious gift of new life in Christ, that moment of baptism was not the end of our pilgrimage, but the beginning.  And likewise confirmation is not the end of our development of faith, but another important step in the pilgrimage, not the destination.

            God’s love is shown for us in giving us new life.  God promises through the prophet Ezekiel that the way we know that God is God is by receiving new life from Him.  Jesus fulfills that prophecy in our Gospel passage from today.

            But new life is meant to be new, not old.  You don’t pour new wine into old wineskins.  Lazarus had been dead for four days.  His decomposing body was rank with the odor of death.  It looked like a body, in some regards, but was not (we use the word corpse for a body that is no longer animated by a soul).  That is how it is with us before we come to Christ.  Yes, we are made in the image and likeness of God, we have human dignity because we are rational and have an immortal soul, but we do not have new life in us.  That comes through baptism, at least ordinarily.  Before baptism, we are plagued by original sin which puts us at enmity with God.  That is why we pray for you, dear Elect, that, because you have already been chosen—elected—for baptism, the power of Satan may have no sway over you.  After baptism, original sin is washed away—death is washed away—and you are filled with new life.

            But our outsides need to match our insides.  There needs to be a certain consonance, a certainly harmony between the new life we have in our souls, and the way we act with our bodies.  Beauty comes from when the image matches the idea, and if we truly want to be beautiful, then we should try with all our might to make sure that the way we live matches what we believe.  That goes for all of us, not just you Elect.  How many times did Jesus decry the lack of consonance in the Pharisees: “‘You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every kind of filth.’”  The same could be said when what we have inside does not match what we do on the outside.  The temptations are great to keep our faith to ourselves and not let it impact the way we live our lives.  That is where scandal arises, when what we profess with our lips does not match the other actions of our life; when we have new life in us, but we still act like a rotting corpse; when we are members of the Body of Christ, but we act no differently than those who do not know Jesus.

            Dear Elect of God, we pray for you, that as you draw nearer to the life-giving waters of baptism, to the Light of Christ, to new life in Jesus, that you will grow in faith and be kept safe from the Evil One so that you are prepared to put to death the old man, and put on Christ, the new Man.  And we thank you, because your consonance of life between what you believe and how you live reminds us who were baptized before to live up to that call ourselves, so that more and more will be drawn to new life in Christ that not only changes our souls, but changes how we live each day.

Role Models

Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

             We all have role models.  We have people that we look up to, who help shape our behavior.  We may not want to be exactly like them, but there’s at least one aspect of their life that inspires us to be a better person.  It may be a coach in athletics; a teacher in school; a family member.  For me, a priest, there are two men who stick out, living right now, that I admire greatly.  There are many people I admire, but the two that always stick out in my mind are Pope Benedict and Archbishop Dolan. 

            Now please, don’t misunderstand me: I do not want to be pope or archbishop of New York.  But I greatly admire Pope Benedict’s humility, his fidelity to the truth, his compassion, and his ability to keep going at 85, when most of his confreres have been retired for quite some time.  In the midst of this, he keeps fulfilling, to the best of his ability, the Petrine ministry entrusted to him.  I hope that I can emulate his humility, fidelity to the truth, compassion, and perseverance.

            I greatly admire Archbishop Dolan’s gregariousness with people, his ability to connect, his ability to preach the Gospel, and not water it down, yet still draw people in.  I admire his sense of humor, and how he can remember both a face and a name of people he has met years ago.  I hope that I can one day grow to communicate the Gospel so clearly and effectively as he does in his homilies, and draw people in to a relationship with Christ.

            Most people have someone who has helped them to grow in their relationship with Christ: whether it was the priest that baptized them, a priest who listened when they were in trouble, or a dynamic preacher.  But it’s not just in religion.  We hold up on a pedestal all those who should be worthy of a greater level of respect, either by office or by personality: athletes, presidents, and movie stars. 

However, when they do not live up to that level of respect, if our life of faith rests on them, then it is easily shaken.  Remember the movie, some may call it a classic now, “Field of Dreams”?  The background of that story was the disappointment of Ray at the alleged throwing of the 1919 World Series by the Chicago Black Sox.  Or think about the respect that is lost by presidents when they go astray.  Or even movie stars who claim to live a good life, and then we find out that they were cheating on their spouse, or living a lie.

            We cannot put our faith in a merely human person.  We cannot rest our faith on a religious leader, no matter how famous and holy.  Humans are too feeble, and right at the edge of sin and scandal.  Our faith must rest in only three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  If our faith rests on anything or anyone else, then it will be shaken, because it is not built on a solid foundation.  We have only one teacher, and he is the Christ.

            “‘The scribes and the Pharisees haven taken their seat on the chair of Moses.  Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example.’”  How scandalous this must have sounded to the Jews of Jesus’ day.  The scribes and the Pharisees were the Jewish all-stars.  They helped to interpret the Law to make sure that the people were following God’s will and not sinning.  But, between their teaching and their example, they fell short.  It’s as if Jesus is telling the crowd and disciples to follow their instruction, but to not put their faith in these scribes and Pharisees, because they will fail.  Their actions will betray them.  And in the first reading, God, through Malachi the prophet, chastises the priests for not living up to their vocation, to make the people holy, but instead have fallen into great sin themselves. 

            I do admire Pope Benedict and Archbishop Dolan.  I respect them a great deal and look up to them, especially Pope Benedict as the Vicar of Christ.  But my faith is not in them.  I want to be like them in some ways, but only because they are living examples to me of being like Christ.  Jesus is the only one who is worthy of our faith.  He is the only one who can shoulder that burden.

            In the measure that any leader, religious or secular, lives and preaches the message of Jesus can we look up to them as an example in faith.  This even goes for Fr. Mark, Fr. Joe, Fr. Jake, and myself.  But we cannot be the sole reason for your practice of the faith.  We cannot bear the weight of your complete faith.  We will try to teach you the truth; we will try to be a good example for you; we will do our best to model the life of Christ for you so that you can live it out in your own vocations.  But none of us—no one—is the object of faith except God. 

            We all have people who have shown us what it means to be Catholic.  We all have people, especially the saints, who inspire us to do better, to keep striving for holiness.  We should pray for those who help lead us to faith and are examples of a life in Christ.  But God alone is worthy of our faith, and we want to make sure that our faith is based on Him, so that when disappointments come, whether from religious leaders, athletes, movie stars, or anyone else, they make shake the house of faith that we have built, but they will not destroy it, because our foundation is in Jesus, the rock of faith upon which a sturdy foundation can be built and will survive, no matter what the trials and tribulations.