Fighting Our True Enemy

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the struggles in modern warfare is that the enemy doesn’t always dress like an enemy.  When the US fought against Iraq and Afghanistan, the armies of the two countries knew that they couldn’t resist the US military by fighting on equal terms, where one military fights another in open combat.  So many soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan fought without any uniforms and without any direct ties to a military chain of command.  They would look and act like regular civilians until they were able to inflict great harm by IEDs and surprise attacks.  This frustrated the US military because we didn’t want to kill innocent civilians, and yet the military often couldn’t identify opposing forces because they often acted individually or in small groups, and looked the same as innocent civilians.

    We can often find difficulty in identifying our enemy.  St. Paul reminds us that our true enemy is not flesh and blood, but a spiritual enemy that seeks to keep us separate from the Lord.  But it can sometimes frustrate us when we don’t know how to identify a spiritual enemy, so we choose to focus on earthly enemies instead and fight them.  And yet, in fighting them, we don’t make any real progress in winning the war because we waste our spiritual ammunition on the wrong targets.
    Now, it is true that humans can often support policies and practices that give aid to our real enemy, Satan and his fallen angels.  Over the past decade individual people and groups of people have tried to redefine marriage from how God created it; have tried to say that our right to practice our faith ends at the doors of the church; have sown confusion about the ways our body helps us understand who we are as male or female; have continued the lie that an unborn child is simply part of the mother’s body; etc.  And we should work to make sure that a distorted view of the human person does not spread by engaging in clear and convincing arguments that show the lies to be harmful to individuals and society as a whole.
    But the politician on the other side of the aisle, or the neighbor who posts the nonsense signs that say “Love is love,” they are not my enemy.  They are my brother or sister in error, and I don’t have to support or enable their error, but they are not my enemy.  
    St. Augustine of Hippo wrote a beautiful reflection on those who no longer taught the same thing as the Catholic Church on baptism, and wanted to rebaptize Catholics, which is a heretical position.  The text is long, but worth hearing:
 

If they say, “Why do you seek us?  What do you want of us?” We should reply: You are our brothers.  They may say, “Leave us alone.  We have nothing to do with you.”  But we have everything to do with you, for we are one in our belief in Christ; and so we should be in one body, under one head.
And so, dear brothers, we entreat you on their behalf, in the name of the very source of our love…in the name of Christ our Lord and his gentle love.  For it is time now for us to show them great love and abundant compassion by praying to God for them.  May he one day give them a clear mind to repent and to realize that they have nothing now but the sickness of their hatred, and the stronger they think they are, the weaker they become.  We entreat you then to pray for them, for them are weak, given to the wisdom of the flesh, to fleshly and carnal things, but yet they are our brothers….And so pour out your hearts for them in prayer to God

    The Doctor of Grace doesn’t say that their error doesn’t matter.  He doesn’t pretend that false teaching is true.  But he still says that they are our brothers and encourages us to pray for them.  And he does this because he knows that they are not truly our enemy.  The enemy is the one who encourages them to believe lies to be truth.  And that enemy cannot be defeated by force of arms, but by prayer and the love and grace of God.  
    So who do you fight?  It is an earthly enemy?  If so, you’re wasting time and energy.  By all means, correct with truth, but don’t treat those who disagree as enemies, but as misinformed brothers and sisters.  And not in an arrogant way, not looking down on them.  But truly caring for them and wanting their conversion of heart so that they can live in the truth and go to heaven.
    And when it comes to those who oppose us, be ready to forgive.  I often say that forgiveness, especially of enemies, is one of the most difficult teachings of our Lord.  Because when someone harms us we want to get them back.  Or we at least want them to make good on what they owe us according to our understanding of justice.  But look at the parable: the master forgives the steward a great debt, but the steward cannot forgive small debts.  The mercy of the master should have changed the heart of the steward to likewise engage in mercy.  But when the master heard how harshly the steward treated those with smaller debts, he gave the same measure of justice to the steward, rather than the mercy the steward desired and had originally obtained.
    God has acted so mercifully with us.  He forgives us large debt, especially the debt of sin that Christ took upon Himself.  The penalty for sin is death, but Christ died so that we wouldn’t have to die.  There is no greater debt that we could ever owe.  And yet, when someone, especially someone we consider an enemy, offends us, are we as quick to forgive them as we want God to be quick to forgive us?
    Make sure you know who your real enemy is and how to fight that enemy.  The enemy wants to distract us and make us think that our brothers and sisters who are not exactly like us are our enemies.  But we will waste time and energy shadowboxing against fake enemies, and miss out on opportunities for conversion or reversion.  Fight our true spiritual enemies with prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, connecting yourself to the one who has conquered sin and death and is forever victorious: Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit is God for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Same Words, Different Results

Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

St. Thomas Aquinas

   In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When I served at St. Thomas Aquinas parish in East Lansing as a parochial vicar, I spent a fair amount of time in our parish school.  One day I was asked by a teacher to come over at the end of the school day to talk to a few students who had been picking on another kid, such that the other kid had locked himself in a bathroom stall and brought to tears.  I pulled the two students aside into a classroom and asked them what had happened.  They explained that they had continuously stolen and hidden the other student’s folder, seeing how upset it made him.  I asked them why they would do such a thing.  The responded that they didn’t think it would affect him so much.  I said, “That’s right; you didn’t think.”  After that point, things become a bit hazy in my memory, but I remember thinking to myself after those words came out of my mouth, ‘I have become my father,’ because my dad would say the same thing to me if I had done something wrong and had responded that I didn’t think such and such would happen.
    I was struck in today’s Gospel by the words that the servant uses to the master when his freedom is threatened: “‘“Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.”’”  Later that same day he hears those same words from another servant who owed the first servant much smaller amounts than the first servant owed the master: “‘“Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.”’”  But apparently the light didn’t come on in the first servant’s head, and rather than recognizing that he was now in the position of the master to be generous and patient, the first servant took immediate and decisive action to put the other servant in debtor’s jail until he could pay back what he owed.  Where the master was patient and lenient, the servant was intolerant and rigorous.  

    One of the great blessings God has given us is the Sacrament of Penance, what we often call confession.  And I try to offer generous times for the celebration of God’s mercy in this sacrament.  I am also pleased that so many people, from both our parish and from other parishes, take advantage of these opportunities.  I myself try to go to confession every two or three weeks.  Besides the primary effect of forgiveness of sins (especially if we are in a state of mortal sin), as well as giving us grace to avoid temptation in the future, one of the graces that God desires to give us is to make us more like Him, our Master, in His Mercy.  
    People can often confuse mercy with license.  Especially in today’s culture, where no one takes responsibility for anything, mercy tends to mean letting me get away with something I have done.  But a priest I recently heard at convocation said that, in order to receive mercy, we have to acknowledge what is just.  And this priest used the example of the prodigal son to back up his point.  We are very quick to jump to the part of the parable where the father runs out to meet his son and puts a ring on his finger, a robe around him, and sandals on his feet, and throws a big party.  But right before that, the son acknowledges that he has sinned against heaven and against his father, and he no longer deserves to be called a son.  This priest made the point that it was because the prodigal son made that admission in justice that the father granted mercy and restored him to his previous place in family life.  Imagine if the son would have come back and simply said, “Could I have a job?”  
    Now, these two points may seem contradictory.  The parable from today’s Gospel highlights mercy, while the parable of the Prodigal Son seems to highlight justice.  But both are truly operative, and both guide how we show mercy.  In the Gospel parable the servant says that he will pay the master back.  He admits the justice.  And that admission of justice opens up mercy, a mercy which does not have a timeline.  It restores the relationship immediately, and even cancels.  And we are invited to have that same level of mercy.  When someone admits that they have wronged us, we should be ready to grant them mercy, just as God grants us mercy as soon as we confess our faults in the Sacrament of Penance.  As long as we will try not to commit that sin again, even if we think it would take a miracle to avoid those temptations, then God will forgive us.  If someone admits to us that he or she is wrong, then Christ calls us to be like the merciful Father and immediately grant mercy.
    To drive home this point even more, the Lord says elsewhere that the measure we measure out to others will in turn be measured out to us.  If we come before God, admitting our faults, and expect God to forgive us, then we should also forgive those who come to us and admit their faults.  If we do not, then how can God grant mercy to a heart that is hardened?  If we have no mercy for others in our life, then we have no room for the mercy of God, either.  If we are not willing to receive another’s act of contrition, then how could God receive ours?
    Probably many of us of a certain age have had those moments where we think: ‘I have become my parents.’  And maybe sometimes that idea scares us.  But it should be the goal of each one of us to become like our heavenly Father, who with the Son and the Holy Spirit live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.