People of Constant Sorrow and Joy

Third Sunday after Easter
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  I first heard the song, “Man of Constant Sorrow” while watching the 2000 Cohen brothers movie, “O Brother Where Art Thou?”  And while it didn’t strike me as religious, the lyrics mirror what the Lord says in today’s Gospel: that we will have sorrow here, but joy after.  
    The song talks about the sorrow of leaving Kentucky (a sorrow I can relate to, though I was neither born nor raised there), the sorrow of rambling through the world without any friends, of leaving a true love, and that true love loving another after the singer is dead and buried.  “But,” as the song continues, “there is one promise that is given / I’ll meet you on God’s golden shore.”  
    While, in my own experience, leaving Kentucky is truly sorrowful, the sorrow our Lord talks about in the Gospel consists in the reality that the world does not conform to God’s plan.  Our Lord shares these words in the context of the Last Supper, as He prepares to be judged in a sham trial and be put to death by a strange alliance of Pharisees and Pontius Pilate and Roman soldiers.  We can think of no greater sorrow, no greater demonstration that the world is not as it should be, than putting God’s own Son to death in such a gruesome way.
    But the messed-up state of the world did not end there.  It continues because of sin: our own personal sins, and the sins of cultures, societies, and governments.  Even we, who have received the saving washing of Holy Baptism, still suffer under concupiscence, the inordinate desires of our lives not in accord with the will of God, and fall short of the august call that God has given us to be His adopted children in Christ.  Our sins, and the sins that we experience, should cause us sorrow.  Wars, even if necessary, should cause us sorrow at the destruction of life and property.  Illness and disease, things that are not necessarily due to anyone’s choices, should cause us sorrow because God has made us for health and integrity.  
    But, even as we pass through this vale of tears, in hac lacrimarum valle, as we say in the Salve Regina, we should also have joy.  Our joy comes not from a human solution to wars, illness, and personal evil, but from Christ who has conquered sin and all its effects, death, and even natural evils.  Our joy comes from the knowledge that we threw everything evil at Christ that we could think of, all our hate, all our dysfunction, all our sin and death, and while it looked for a while like He had been conquered, He rose victorious on the third day and proved that nothing has more power than God, and that God can turn into life and light even the worst death and darkness that we give Him.

    Our joy should come from the understanding that God did not simply raise our Lord for His own benefit, but also for ours, and that God has given us a way to be joined to the Risen Christ through Holy Baptism, a once-for-all event in our life that we have to choose to ratify each day if we wish to share in its full benefits.  Our joy comes from knowing that, if we cling to Christ, turn away from our sins, and do all that we can to reject Satan and sin, then we, too, will find victory over death and darkness.  And that can keep us going.
    It is the joy that mothers keep in mind as they suffer through pregnancy.  All the morning sickness, all the stretch marks, all the back pain, all the swollen feet and ankles, all the pain of delivery (which, all joking aside, I do believe exceeds even a man-cold), is worth it because of a new child and the joy that comes from holding that child in her arms, a result of the love shared between her and her husband.  
    But we have to keep that in mind, otherwise it just seems like trials.  And when we only consider our trials, they can wear us down, depress us, lead us into despair.  When we forget about heaven and the perfect happiness that comes from union with Christ, the sufferings we endure and the sufferings we choose to endure in order to follow Christ don’t seem to make any sense.  If heaven doesn’t exist, then why would I curtail the desires of my body?  If heaven doesn’t exist, then when would I give up meat on Fridays?  If heaven doesn’t exist, then why wouldn’t I do whatever I needed to be the most powerful, the most famous, the most rich?  If Christ is not raised from the dead, as St. Paul says, then we are the most pitiable of people because all the ways we die to ourselves seem foolish.  But if there is life after death, a life that can be filled with happiness if we live like Christ (or a life that can be filled with suffering if we only seek out pleasure on earth), then no matter what pain or sorrow we go through on our way, the destination is worth it.  To use an analogy, driving through Ohio is worth it only if Kentucky is on the other side of Cincinnati.  
    We are, in some sense, men and women of constant sorrow, because Christ has not yet returned to usher in the fullness of His Kingdom.  We leave Kentucky, we ramble through life, we lose friends and loved ones, we go each day towards the grave.  “But there is one promise that is given”: that through living the life of Christ, the life of the Easter, the life of resurrection, we can meet Him and all the saints on God’s golden shore, where He reigns–the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit–for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Proven by Testing

Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Aerial picture of the house that exploded

    On Monday, 22 November 2021 just before 9:30 p.m., I was preparing to got to bed in my old rectory at St. Pius X parish.  All of the sudden I saw a large flame down the road, felt the house shake, and heard a loud boom.  The house not even a block away from the rectory had exploded from (we later learned) a natural gas leak from a faultily-installed appliance.  
    As a chaplain with the Michigan State Police, much of my training has been for emergency situations.  But, up to that point, I had never been on my own in the case of a real emergency.  I always had Troopers who would take the lead, and I would try to assist them with what they said I needed to do.  
    After I saw, felt, and heard the house explode, I said, “Lord, have mercy!”, called 911 to give any information I had, and then rushed to get my State Police jacket on, find my flashlight, and run to see what had happened.  As the fire engines from Flint Fire Department started to arrive on scene, I then started directing traffic so that emergency vehicles could get access to the scene.
    Often, we don’t know what we will do unless we are tested.  If we are wise, we make plans for disasters, or maybe we just daydream about scenarios where we are the hero, but until that situation arises in our life, it’s just theory.  When life throws a situation at us where we need to react, we find out if our planning or our daydreaming was just wishful thinking, or if we really could respond in a heroic way to a life-changing event.
    The same is true in our faith life.  In order to find out our true physical strength, we have to test our muscles and put them under pressure.  In order to find out our true spiritual strength, and what virtues we have, by the grace of God, cultivated in our life, we have to be in situations where we can choose virtue or we can choose vice.  It doesn’t matter if we think we are a saint and we would never choose evil.  Only when we are in a situation when we can choose either to do good or to do evil do we really learn how much we value following God’s way rather than our own, or the way of the world.  
    Take, for example, being put into a situation where we have done something wrong, maybe even something small, but someone notices and asks us if we are responsible.  Maybe we even have friends around us to add to the situation with some peer pressure.  When asked if we did something wrong, would we tell the truth, or would we lie?  The lie may seem easier, and may, whether for a short or even a long time, keep us out of trouble.  But we know that lying is wrong, a sin against God who is truth.  So what do we do?  It is so easy to fold under the pressure, and give in to what we think will be easier and cause less punishment for us.  Maybe we even convince ourselves that it’s not that bad, or that we can do so much more good if we are allowed to lie in just this one case.  But, of course, if we start to lie now, we are more likely to lie later.  And a basic principle of morality is that you cannot do evil to achieve a good: it makes the whole scenario evil.
    In the upcoming forty days of Lent, we will test our spiritual muscles out again.  Our acts of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (or the lack thereof) will tell us exactly what kind of fruit our life of grace has borne thus far.  When faced with a spiritual struggle, our true mettle comes out, what we are made of, and we learn where we need to grow in following Christ.  God reveals to us our shortcomings, not to beat us up with them, but to help us to know the ways in which we need to open ourselves to His grace to be better followers of Christ.  God gives us this special time to turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel so that we can rejoice even more in the new life that Christ won by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and live that new life ourselves.
    Our catechumens who will be sent today by us to the Rite of Election, will also be tested in these weeks of Lent.  In the scrutinies, the Church will ask them to review their own life and put behind them all that does not conform to Christ.  They will reflect on how much their thirst for the new life Christ gives; on the areas of their life in which they are blind to sin; on the death that sin has caused in their lives.  But it won’t end there, just as Good Friday is not the end of the story.
    Because God wants to help us through these trials.  We cannot grow in holiness on our own.  Without God’s grace, we have no chance to live a holy life.  So as we grow in awareness through our trials, don’t be afraid to call upon God and ask for the help that we each need to live the new life of Christ.
    Until we are tested, we don’t really know how we would react.  May these upcoming Lenten days test us, show us our shortcomings, and open us to the grace and mercy of God who strengthens us to follow Christ on his pilgrimage through the desert.  May we allow God’s grace to make us bear good fruit as we remove the splinters of sin from our lives. 

Transformation through Trial

 Second Sunday of Lent
    In many a great story of literature, we find a hero who has to undergo a great trial, or many great trials.  After going through the trial(s), the hero is changed, for the better; transformed, we might even say.  This is true of ancient literature, like “The Odyssey,” where Odysseus, on his way home from war, has to conquer many trials on various islands as his ship is tossed about the seas.  This is true of classical literature like “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, where Ebenezer Scrooge has to grapple with his past, his present, and even a possible future in order to be changed from a miser to philanthropist.  This is true in the great Catholic trilogy, “The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien where Frodo is put through many trials trying to destroy the Ring of Power in the fires of Mount Doom.  This is even true in J. K. Rowling’s novels about Harry Potter, who discovers who he is and how to stop the evil wizard Voldemort through many tribulations.  
  

 That is true also for Abraham in today’s first reading.  After being promised a son to inherit everything; after his wife, Sarah, getting impatient with God’s plan and telling Abraham to conceive a child with her slave, Hagar; after finally having that son through Sarah, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son (at least of the promise), the son whom he loves.  Abraham’s willingness to abandon himself to God’s plan, however mysterious, is his great trial, for which God greatly rewards Abraham.
    As for the greatest story ever told, the story of Jesus, He doesn’t have to do anything to be great; He is great because He is God.  And yet, Jesus, too, in humility, undergoes a great trial in His Passion and Death, in order to be transformed, to be raised from the dead and receive a glorified body.  And in today’s Gospel, we hear about a foretaste of that glorified body as Jesus is transfigured before Peter, James, and John.  It is a rest before the great struggle begins, and the apostles will need that reminder as they go through an unexpected journey of their own with their Master.
    What about our story?  I dare say that everyone over the past year has had trials.  And many people had trials before COVID.  And we will all have trials after we’ve gotten a handle on this pandemic.  How do we view those struggles in the light of faith?  Do we view those struggles in the light of faith, or are we fatalists, just letting life happen to us?  
    God does not call us to be fatalists, as if suffering is beyond the control of God and so we have no one to turn to during our tribulations.  God calls us to be sons and daughters in His Son, who gives us everything that we need, including allowing us to undergo trials to help us to grow.  
    There is, I would also dare say, a part of us that cringes from the trials and tests.  We would rather have the Resurrection without the crucifixion.  We would rather have abs of steel without going to the gym and eating well.  We would rather have infused knowledge than going to school for so many years.  But that’s not the way the world works.  In God’s mysterious plan, somehow the struggle is good for us, and builds us in ways that cheap grace never could.  There is no such thing as cheap grace; it is never earned (because grace is a gift), but it’s also not encountered passively; it always requires some death to self, which is a struggle.  
    And the attitude to have through it all is the attitude of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jesus: God will provide.  We can imagine how much the thought of sacrificing his son tore up Abraham.  We can imagine how confused and perhaps even scared Isaac was.  And in a few weeks we’ll hear the reaction of Jesus to His known, impending suffering and Death as He asks His loving Father for another way, if it is possible.  But, and these words are key, Jesus says, “Not my will, but yours be done.”  
    The trials and tribulations of life, the sufferings we encounter, especially if they are not of our own making, are the ways that we pass through death to life.  Lent is a long time of truly entering in, as we are called to do year round, to the Paschal Mystery–to the Passion and Death of Jesus–so that we are share in the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus.  And if we go through whatever struggles we have with God, they do strengthen us, they transform us, they even transfigure us to be more like Jesus in glory.  
    We have a choice: do we want to get to that glory that Jesus showed His apostles on Mt. Tabor?  If so, there’s only one way to get there: through the cross; through suffering and death to our own wills and to our own sinfulness.  St. Rose of Lima put it this way: “Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.”  The ladder may be difficult to climb, but the reward at the top is joy beyond imagining!  In the story of your life, follow the path of so many literary heroes: go through trials so that you can be transformed!