Keeping the Past in the Past

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In the spring of my senior year of high school, my friend group decided to go out to breakfast after our last final exam of high school.  The exam started at 8 or so, and finished by 10.  The restaurant we decided to frequent wasn’t far from the school.  We all got in our cars and drove there individually.  For whatever reason, even though I knew where I was going, I followed another car that did not.  It was able to get over into the far right lane of a four lane, one way highway and turn into a parking lot to go back on a perpendicular street.  I, however, was in the second lane from the right, and panicked a little.  So, without much thought and without looking, I just decided to make a right turn into a parking lot from my current lane.  I heard the screeching of tires, the honking of a horn, and my adrenaline rushed through my body.  Somehow, no doubt due to my guardian angel who was working extra that morning, the car I had just cut off did not hit me, and I was able to turn back towards the restaurant and arrive safely, albeit with a heart rate that was more congruent with sprinting a 200-meter race.

    We all have things we’re not proud of in our past, things that we would do differently if we could.  St. Paul was no exception.  He wrote to the Corinthians that he was the least of the Apostles and not even worthy to be called an Apostle because, before his conversion, he persecuted God’s holy Church.  If we think back, the Acts of the Apostles makes very clear that Saul of Tarsus–who started going by Paul after his conversion, especially with his work among the Greeks, since Saul was a very Jewish name and Paul was more Gentile–consented to the stoning of St. Stephen, and had been arresting Jews for proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ.  He was, to use a mafia term, the enforcer for the Pharisees, and was a Pharisee himself.
    But, St. Paul, whom St. Thomas Aquinas does and we can refer to as the Apostle, continued: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.”  Paul did not ignore his past, but neither did he let it define his present.  He acknowledged his past, but recognized that the grace of God had changed him, and he was no longer that man from his past.
    We all have a past.  Maybe it’s bad driving, like in my example from the beginning of this homily.  Maybe it’s something not that bad.  Maybe it’s something far worse.  We cannot change the past, but we shouldn’t live in the past, either.  God does not want us to allow our past sins to control our present and our future.  If we repent from them and convert, that is, turn towards God, our past can remain and education for us, rather than a life-sentence of guilt.  

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate Hearing

    Of course, the first step is acknowledging our past sins.  Forgiveness and conversion only happen when we acknowledge that we have done wrong.  If we pretend like we’re perfect, God’s mercy finds no room in us, and so it cannot change us.  St. Paul, when writing to the people of Corinth didn’t say, “On the advice of council, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution,” like Dr. Fauci did at the Senate Hearing on 29 July.  Paul acknowledged that he persecuted God’s Church, God’s people, with whom God so identifies that Christ said to him on the road to Damascus, “‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’”  But Paul didn’t stay in his past.  He then also acknowledged that God’s grace had done a mighty work, which allowed Paul to preach the Gospel.
    So if we have acknowledged our sins and confessed them, we don’t forget them, but we don’t live in them, either.  The enemy often likes to remind us of our past sins.  But if our sins our forgiven, then in God’s eyes, the sins themselves are gone.  Might there be consequences for those sins that come with us into the present?  Sure.  But the sins are gone.  As King David sang in Psalm 102: “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our sins from us.”  If we have made a good confession, God’s not coming back to us to remind us of all the bad things we have done.  We will have to deal with the temporal effects due to sin, either on this earth (which the saints say is much preferred and much easier) or in Purgatory (which is still not bad, because Purgatory always leads to heaven).  But the sins themselves are gone. 
    We, though, have to accept that forgiveness.  Some scholars say that the sin against the Holy Spirit is not being willing to accept God’s forgiveness, which is why it is the only unforgivable sin.  If we don’t accept God’s mercy, then God won’t force it on us, which leaves us in sin, rather than restoring us to grace, as God desires.  
    We cannot erase our past, much as we would like to at times.  We should learn from our past, especially when we have sinned and done wrong.  But we should not drag our past into the present, at least not when we’ve given those sins to God through sacramental confession.  That is a yoke too heavy to carry, a yoke the Lord does not desire for us.  He desires us to carry His yoke, which is mercy, a burden truly light and easy.  Open yourselves up to God’s mercy and live in the freedom of those forgiven by God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Green Monsters

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to check off a number of the New England States that I had not yet visited in my quest to see all 50 States before I’m 50.  One of the highlights of that trip was staying in Boston and being able to attend a Red Sox game at Fenway Park, home of the infamous green monster.
    St. Paul instructs us today about another green monster, or green-eyed monster, the sin of envy.  In fact, in his treatment of envy in the Summa, St. Thomas Aquinas quotes this exact passage in affirming the sinfulness of envy.  Envy, the Angelic Doctor writes, is “sorrow for another’s good,” which is a quote of how St. John Damascene defines envy.  But St. Thomas further explains that when we envy someone, “we grieve over a man’s good, in so far as his good surpasses ours.”  In other words, we see something good in another, and we get upset because we don’t have that good ourselves, or don’t have it in the same quantity.      Now, to say that we’re upset because we don’t have something isn’t always bad.  Fr. Nick Monco, a Dominican friar, has a whole video series on the vices through Open Light Media (this is my free plug for a great YouTube channel set up by the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist).  And when it comes to envy, he uses the example of a friend who plays the piano well.  He notes that if we notice our friend plays the piano well, and we get upset because we don’t and realize that we, perhaps, wasted opportunities in the past to work at playing the piano, or it spurs us on to take up piano lessons again so that I, too, can excel in the good of playing piano, that’s not envy.  But if we were to get upset that our friend plays the piano well because it makes us look bad, that would be envy.
    Envy gives away the joy that we should have in another’s excellence.  When I notice something good in my neighbor, it should help me to love that person more.  I am horrible at math.  Can’t stand it.  So when I see someone else who excels in math, that should cause me to rejoice in the gifts and talents that the other person has that I do not.  Love of the other, charity, helps me to recognize that there are different members in the Mystical Body of Christ, each which has its own role and its own excellence, which, when applied together, cause an increase in the proper functioning of the entire body.  Envy, on the other hand, seeks to take away the legitimate diversity of the other members, and causes disunity simply because I do not have a particular gift.
    Envy breeds the harmful type of ambition, which I would say occurs when I strive to be the best, not for the good of excellence, but to gain power or prestige.  We do not err when we seek to use our talents in the best way possible.  But if I only do my best so that I get a promotion, or get further ahead in the company or in life than that other person, then I have left the realm of magnanimity, greatness of soul and settled for weakness that fears any other competition to my own good.
    Envy can often come because we lack healthy self-esteem, or lack a certain confidence in another’s love for us.  Think of two children playing at home.  One child does something well, and gets celebrated for that new achievement.  The other child, not wanting to lack the seeming extra love of the parents, tries to take away from the first child by doing something else that will cause the parents to stop praising the achievement of the first child, and turn the focus back on the other child.  When I know that I am loved, even if I don’t have the gifts that others have, I don’t see love as a limited resource that has to be hoarded, or else I may run out of it.  When I know that I am loved, I find it easier to rejoice in the good of the other because I know that love shared is love increased, and the gift of love for one does not decrease love that I can receive.
    Envy especially becomes dangerous when it comes to spiritual matters.  Spiritual envy occurs when I see another person with a spiritual good that I don’t have, or that another person is growing in grace while I am not.  Again, I can see a spiritual good that I don’t have, and it causes me to work harder to be open to that good, and that is not envy.  But when I don’t want another to grow in grace because I am not, that is certainly spiritual envy, and St. Thomas warns us, “it is accounted a sin against the Holy Ghost, because thereby a man envies, as it were, the Holy Ghost Himself, Who is glorified in His works.”  True charity rejoices when another receives a special gift from God, rather than sorrows because I do not have it.
    How do we fight envy?  Rejoice in what others have.  We can use the desire of what others have to push us on to achieve goals, and that is good.  But rejoice in that good, no matter what it might be.  Praise God for showering His gifts upon another when we recognize the gifts of another.  When we feel that tinge of envy, remind ourselves that the love of God for us cannot be decreased simply because another’s good is increased.  Have confidence in your own goodness, not in a prideful way, but in the way that God asks us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves, and so we have to have a certain type of healthy self-love or appreciation that we are a child of God.  Take an inventory of the ways that God has blessed you, because it’s different than the way He has blessed others.
    Don’t make room for the green-eyed monster.  Fight to conquer it just as so many have fought to conquer the Green Monster at Fenway Park in Boston.  Do not be sad at another’s good, but rejoice that God has blessed others with particular graces, just as He has blessed us: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.