Sacramentum Unitatis

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

    In 1971, the Hillside Singers released their version of a British popular song by Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway.  In the “Hilltop” version, as it was called, the producers of a Coca-Cola commercial used the song to promote their own pop, and suggested that if everyone would sing this song and buy each other a Coke the world could live in perfect harmony.  This commercial stood in the context of the on-going cold war with Communist Russia and the Vietnam War.
    Some 55 years later, wars still rage and the world and our country desire unity.  It seems like every election comes down to a slim majority determining the track of the country for the following years.  We equate compromise with cowardice.  Citizens in our country operate on very different philosophies about the human person and how society should operate, even including how to define men and women (if a person even admits that such a definition is possible).  We are a divided nation, perhaps not this divided since the Civil War.
    Our church, too, seems ever divided.  Some, even those who hold sacred office, seem to want to change unchangeable Church teaching.  Bishops and Cardinals sling verbal attacks at each other.  It seems we fight our own ecclesial war between progressivism and traditionalism, even if most of the soldiers are keyboard warriors.
    But singing a jingle and buying Coke (the drink, not the drug) will not bring unity.  The unity that we seek cannot come from our own making, though we do have to cooperate with it.  The unity we seek finds its source in Christ, not in us.  And as God assembles us tonight to celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we celebrate the Sacramentum unitatis, the Sacrament of unity, and the one priesthood that our Lord established.

    The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity because it unites us with the one head of the Church, Jesus Christ.  When we receive worthily Holy Communion, unlike other food that becomes part of us, we become part of the Body of Christ, which we have just received.  Through the Eucharist, Christ brings together all those who believe in Him to be one with Him and one with each other.  The Didache, a second-century Greek ecclesial text talks about how many grains are gathered together to make the bread that becomes the Eucharist.  The many grains, ground into one batch of flour, join to each other through the water of baptism, and then bake in the fire of the Holy Spirit to become bread, which becomes the Body of Christ.  Likewise, many individual grapes are pressed through suffering to become juice which ferments over time to become wine, used to become the Blood of Christ.  Unity comes from diverse individuals, but all united through Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit, and suffering, which joins us to Christ.  
    But unity with Christ can only come when we submit ourselves to Christ.  The reason why the non-baptized, and even the baptized who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church, cannot receive Holy Communion is because Christ is the ruler for unity, not us.  And Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.  We cannot reject parts of the truth that Christ has revealed, and then claim unity with Truth Incarnate.  That would be a lie.  Unity does not come from rejecting what we know to be true until we get to a lowest common denominator of truth, but from embracing the truth has Christ Himself has revealed it through His teachings in the Scriptures and in the Church.  
    Both the Eucharist and the priesthood bring about unity because they find their source and power in the one Jesus Christ.  When we conform our lives to Him, we find the true unity because we can join ourselves, diverse as we are, to Him.  He brings us together as different parts of His Mystical Body to cooperate with each other and do what we cannot do on our own.  I do some things well, but other things not as well, or even poorly.  You do other things well, but not maybe the same things I do well.  When we bring our gifts to Christ, He allows them to work together so that we support each other, rather than combatting each other or each trying to do everything on his or her own.  
    Coca-Cola won’t bring us unity, catchy jingle or not.  Politics will not bring us unity, no matter who has the executive and legislative branches and how many laws they pass.  True unity, the unity that we desire, can only come from Christ, who both instituted the priesthood and the Eucharist tonight.  May our worthy reception of Holy Communion, made possible by my consecrated hands, but through no worthiness of my own, unify us so that we can find the peace and harmony we all desire.

Unity and Diversity

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  A buzzword these days is “diversity.”  And while people can associate the socio-political term with some level of mistrust, when it comes to diversity in the Catholic sense, we need not fear.  We don’t fear diversity, because it is also bound up with unity.  And this connection between diversity and unity bases itself in the Most Holy Trinity, who is both One God and Three Divine Persons.
    While not directly pointing to the Trinity, it intrigued me that St. Paul, in the epistle we heard today, kept going back to threes: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and “Who is above all, and through all, and in all.”  Again, this is not to equate the word “Lord” with the Father, “faith” with the Son, and “baptism” with the Holy Spirit, nor any individual Person with being above, through, or in all.  But there is something providential as God inspired St. Paul to write in a way that points to the oneness and threeness of God.
    Beginning with God’s oneness, His unity, we even get a glimpse of this in the Gospel.  When asked about the greatest commandment, our Lord replies with the second half of the shema, one of the great credal expressions of Judaism: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one.  Therefore you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, and with your whole being, and with your whole strength.”  The unity of God forms the foundation of the commandment to love God.

   The diversity, if you will, of God, started to reveal itself most clearly in the Incarnation.  We can look to the Baptism of the Lord, when the voice of the Father spoke as St. John baptized our Lord, and the Holy Spirit hovered over our Lord in the form of a dove.  Time and time again, our Lord claims authority which only God could have, especially seen in the power of forgiving sins.  And in the Gospel of John, the people almost stone Christ, which makes him ask, “‘For which of these [good works] are you trying to stone me?’”  The people reply, “‘We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.  You, a man, are making yourself God.’”  And at the great commission at the end of the Gospel according to St. Matthew, Christ commands that his disciples to baptize “‘in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’”  
    Certainly, this believe in our Triune God developed over the centuries after the Ascension and sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  Indeed, the word Trinitas, Trinity, was only first coined by Tertullian, who died in the year AD 200.  Creeds would follow from Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon that would clarify how we understood our one God as well as the Trinity of Persons.  But the kernel of the truth of our belief in who God is was present from the beginning.
    So, when it comes to the Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, we see both unity and diversity operating, just as unity and diversity are attributes of God.  There is one God, but the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Holy Spirit, nor the Holy Spirit the Father.  There is one Church established by Christ, but that one Church has different expressions across the world with different gifts and charisms.  The temptation is to overemphasize unity or overemphasize diversity.  But that would be like excluding either the Three Persons in favor of one God, or excluding the oneness of God in favor of the Three Divine Persons.  But the truth is not expressed fully when one or the other is excluded.
    So for us, God calls us to profess, though one baptism, one faith in the one God.  To reflect the unity of God we hold fast to what God has truly revealed as necessary for salvation, including those statements codified by Ecumenical Councils and Popes, as well as the teaching the Magisterium.  To vary in professions of the divinity of the Son or the Holy Spirit tears away from the unity that God desires for His Church.
    On the other hand, there are diversities in practices of how we live that faith out that vary place by place.  St. Monica struggled with the fact that Romans fasted on Saturdays, while the Milanese did not.  St. Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, said that when he was in Rome he fasted on Saturdays, but when in Milan, he did not.  Liturgically, from the beginning, there rose up legitimate differences in how the followers of Christ, united in one Church, worshiped.  While most of the Roman world spoke Greek, and so Greek was likely used in many of the earliest liturgies, Latin was introduced not too long after Christianity ceased to be a persecuted religion.  Maronites, the Catholic Rite (R-I-T-E) based in Lebanon, still uses Aramaic, as it has from the beginning, the language our Lord spoke, in at least part of its liturgy.  And as the Gospel spread, the Mass came to be celebrated in various languages, though each language was often codified and does not always match the current way that same language is used (e.g., Slavonic versus Church Slavonic).
    But this variety of languages and rites resembles Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit gave the Apostles and disciples the ability to speak in different tongues so that those who had gathered in Jerusalem for the feast could understand the preaching of the Gospel.  Still, while the languages were many, the faith they professed was one.
    So, as Catholics, we can welcome diversity in a Catholic sense, because it is also connected to a unified mission and proclamation, mimicking the way that our one God is also Three Divine Persons.  In the Mystical Body of Christ, we need not all have the same task or vocation, any more than all our body parts need to be the same.  But those diverse body parts do need to work together for the proper functioning of the body, and so the diverse members of the Church need to utilize their gifts and talents in a unified way for the proclamation of the one Gospel in the one Church that our Lord founded.  May we, the diverse members of the Mystical Body of Christ, be held together for common purpose by our Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Unity & Diversity

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity
    [In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.].  Throughout the history of the Church, as people have tried to explain the Most Holy Trinity, whom we celebrate today, more often than not they have fallen into some kind of heresy.  Some have advocated that our one God appeared in three forms, which is the heresy of modalism.  Or others have advocated that God the Father, our one God, created the Son and the Holy Spirit, but made them like Himself, which is the heresy of Arianism.  The best route has always been sticking with what God has revealed through Sacred Scripture (that God is one, and yet God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are somehow one God), and using the terms given to us by the early Church, especially the term Trinity, by which we confess that God is one, but is also Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

    When we talk about God, who is infinite and cannot fully be explained or understood by us who are finite, we see a unity of substance (one God), but a diversity of Persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).  We also know from Genesis that man and woman are created in the image and likeness of God.  So in humanity we are meant to see a reflection of God, who is unity and diversity.  The more we see this, the more that God’s image and likeness shine forth.  The less we see this, the more muddled our understanding of God is.  And like the early Trinitarian heresies, we can tend to overemphasize one aspect or another.
    God desires our oneness or unity to be based in Him.  God wants all human beings to believe rightly about who God is and who we are.  God desires that we confess one faith that properly professes right belief and advocates right action.  God desires that we be united in the truth and in the love which we call charity (the love of God).  From the beginning, God has sent us out to make disciples of all nations, and bring them into the unity of the Church, rightly believing in, living by, and worshipping the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  We desire all people to become Catholic, not by force or compulsion, but by the free assent of the mind which recognizes the truth and the freedom that comes from living according to God’s plan.  And until that happens, our work of spreading the Gospel is not done.  Until all people not only believe the Catholic faith with their mind and heart but also live in such a way that reflects what they believe, we can grow in our manifestation of the oneness of God.
    At the same time, oneness in faith does not mean that we are all automatons who look the same, who all have the same vocation and avocations, and who give up our individual identity to a corporate identity.  Yes, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God, and yet the Father is not the Son, the Father is not the Holy Spirit, and the Son is not the Holy Spirit.  They are different divine Persons, united in the one Godhead, or consubstantial. 
    That is why the Church, from the beginning, has welcomed people of all nations, not just Jews, to follow our Trinitarian God.  Indeed, on the day of Pentecost, there were Jews of many nations gathered in Jerusalem, who heard the Gospel proclaimed in their own language.  Very early on even Gentiles, non-Jews were baptized.  People of different skin color, of both genders, slaves and free, rich and poor, and any other grouping you can think of were invited to change their beliefs and the way they lived their lives to the way that God teaches us through His Word and His Church. 
    This diversity is also a reflection of God, who is not one Person, but three.  Each participates in the one work of salvation, but each does so with the identity of the Person, so that we can say that the Son suffered death, but we cannot say that of the Father.  We can say that the Holy Spirit was spirated or breathed-forth, but we cannot say that of the Son. 
    In our own day, we tend to emphasize one or the other quality of God, unity or diversity.  But an overemphasis in our reflection of these attributes of God leads to a disfigurement and poor reflection of who God is, just as the early heresies which emphasized either the unity of God or the diversity of God in one way or another did not lead to the true faith, but marred our understanding of who God is.
    The temptation to overemphasize unity can often be seen in the Mass.  The Mass is supposed to have a certain unity to it, a way that all people can relate to what is going on within that one rite.  But there are 23 different rites or churches who celebrate Mass in a particular way, including the Latin Rite (ours), the Chaldean Rite (from Iraq), the Syro-Malabar Rite (from India), the Coptic Rite (from Egypt), the Maronite Rite (from Lebanon), and the Byzantine Rite (from modern-day Turkey), just to name a few.  We also have diversity in our vocations and the roles those vocations have.  The vocation to consecrated life (religious brothers and sisters, monks and nuns, hermits, and consecrated virgins) show in a most excellent way the priority of the heavenly life following Christ who was poor, chaste, and obedient.  The priesthood continues the sacramental life of the Church, especially the Eucharist and Penance, in a way that no other vocation does.  And married life creates new life through a sacrament which reflects the life of the Trinity in a way that consecrated life and ordained life cannot.  The diversity of rituals and vocations are just two examples of how our differences can be beautiful and express the life of God in a way that only one does not.
    At the same time, there is a temptation to overemphasize diversity, which weakens the unity of the Church and does not reflect God.  We did not allow diverse teachings about who God is, because some of those teachings are wrong.  We do not allow diversity when it comes to recognizing that life is sacred and a gift from God, from conception to natural death.  The diversity of belief that women should be allowed to be priests or that marriage between two persons of the same sex is not based in God, and is not welcomed into the Catholic Church, because it is not as God has revealed reality to us.  For diversity to be a benefit, there has to be some commonality that binds everyone together, not a free-for-all and scattering based on wrong understanding of who God is or how God has called us to live. 
    Just as with the false understandings of the Trinity, so with the human person and the Church today: either unity or diversity is emphasized over and against the others.  Some, in order to advocate unity, would suggest that all Catholics should do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way.  Others, in order to advocate diversity, would suggest that it doesn’t matter what you believe or how you live.  In reality, our Triune God shows us that both unity and diversity are realities of who God is, and that if we wish to live as those created in His image and likeness, we, too, need the unity and diversity of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Humility, Gentleness, and Patience, Even When We Disagree

 Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  We are in the midst of the midterm elections.  And both in the partisan elections and in the ballot proposals, there are high stakes and heavy consequences for the outcomes.  Whether in the debates or in television ads, we see all kinds of name-calling and mud-slinging, accusing the opposition of being the worst kinds of people.  In the midst of this rancor, we hear from St. Paul today: “live…with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.”  
    We may think that this admonition is easy to make for St. Paul, because he doesn’t have to deal with “those kind of people” in his letter.  But, in almost every Pauline letter, there is division in the Church, and not simply divisions between rich and poor, but divisions in faith and morality.  Indeed, St. Paul exhorts the faithful in Corinth to excommunicate a member for his egregious behavior.  But still, he calls for gentleness and humility here, along with patience and unity.

    Fast forward a few centuries to St. Augustine of Hippo.  St. Augustine was no wilting flower.  He fought heresy whenever he found it.  Indeed, he fought heresies that sometimes made him seem to be contradicting himself, in order to emphasize either God’s grace or our participation with it.  The Pelagians taught the heresy that original sin has not tainted us, and so we can do good works simply by our nature, rather than by the grace of God.  The Donatists taught the heresy that sin was everywhere and made us wretches and the priest had to be a saint in order to validly confect the sacraments.  St. Augustine also fought the Manichaeans, who taught the heresy that the world was divided into good and evil, the spiritual being good, and the material being evil.  
    But St. Augustine, even while being tough on heresy, strove to follow the words of St. Paul that we heard today.  The Doctor of Grace wrote of those who denied the validity of Catholic baptism (no small accusation):
 

when we do not repeat their baptism but acknowledge it to be our own, we are saying to them: You are our brothers.  […] And so, dear brothers, we entreat you on their behalf, in the name of the very source of our love, by whose milk we are nourished, and whose bread is our strength, 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.  […] They respond with the same Amen, not with us, but still the same.  And so pour out your hearts for them in prayer to God.  

This guardian of orthodoxy (right belief) and orthopraxy (right practice or worship), neither gave up the faith, nor gave up charity to those who had wandered away.
    Christ shows us the basis for what St. Augustine taught and lived.  He was very hard on the Pharisees, who had twisted the words of Sacred Scripture in favor of their own traditions.  They executed a sham trial of Him for blasphemy, and led Him to be put to death by the Romans, all the while mocking Him as He offered Himself for us on the altar of the cross.  Christ did not give in to their lies and perjury, but He also prayed for them as He offered Himself to the eternal Father.  
    So how are we are unity?  How gentle and humble are we, especially with those whom we oppose?  Do we automatically condemn and excise from our life, or do we seek reconciliation and peace, whether from afar when it is not possible due to antagonisms when in person, or even close up when we have the chance?
    And this goes, not only for political opponents, many of whom profess the same faith, even if their actions show a lack of understanding of that faith and a lack of integrity in living out that faith, but also for fellow Catholics and priests and bishops.  It is easy to ostracize those with whom we do not agree, and sometimes we must take harsh action.  But are we willing to pray for them, and even to meet and dialogue with them, not giving up the truth, but being willing to hear their position and agree where we can, and be charitable where we can?
    Last weekend I was in Chicago for the Annual Investiture Weekend of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.  I am honored to be a member, and was glad to welcome one of our parishioners, Kishore, to this august group that supports the Christian presence in the Holy Land.  The spiritual leader of our North Central Lieutenancy is the Cardinal Archbishop of Chicago.  He and I likely disagree on a number of priorities and prudential decisions when it comes to our Catholic faith.  There may even be areas where we disagree on the faith.  But, during one of our evening socials, he was suddenly right in front of me, and extended his hand in greeting.  I introduced myself, told him that I was a priest of Lansing, and we joked a bit about Bishop Boyea, who followed the Archbishop at the Josephenum as Rector.  We had a short, but pleasant conversation, before he moved on to other members to greet them.  I was struck by His Eminence’s sincere interest in meeting us, his charm, and his willingness to give of his time to be with us, when he likely has other more important matters (at least in his estimation) with which to deal.
    Meeting him didn’t change my disagreements with the head of the Church in Chicago.  It didn’t convince me that his prudential decisions were well-made.  I’m not signing up to be a member of his fan club (if he has one).  But it did bring home the Apostle’s admonition today, to be gentle and humble, patient, and to strive for unity where one can find it.
    Many Catholics today are quick to write-off those whom we feel are heterodox or heteropracticers (I just created that word for those who practice heteropraxy).  We can demonize them in words on blogs and Facebook posts, and then advocate all kinds of hateful actions, justified, in our minds, by seeking to maintain orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  But I think we would do well to follow the method of St. Augustine, who followed the method of St. Paul, who followed the model of our Lord: profess the truth, without giving in to error; hold fast to what God has revealed, even when it means suffering; but do all this with charity towards others, seeking forgiveness for those who have wandered away and who persecute us, simply for following and conforming ourselves to God.  Pour our your hearts for them to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Job and Detroit Lions Fans

 Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    I am convinced that at some point in the future, the Lions will make it to the Super Bowl.  It will be the fourth quarter, and the Lions will be losing by 1 point.  They’ll be on the opponent’s 20 yard line, ready to kick the game-winning field goal, with 1 second left on the clock.  The kicker will kick the ball, and it will go straight, ready to pass through the uprights, and just as it’s about to pass through, and the refs are about to raise their hands, Jesus Christ will return in glory, and the Lions will forever be the team that never won a Super Bowl.
    As Lions fans we are used to disappointment.  There are other bad teams, but only the Lions seem to find new and exciting ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  So perhaps we can sympathize with Job from our first reading and say “I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.”  In case you’re unfamiliar with Job, it’s a beautiful book of the Bible.  It may be more of a parable than a literal story, but it tells the story of a man who is faithful to God, but then undergoes great trials.  His first trial is that his oxen and donkeys were grazing, and were stolen by Sabeans, who killed all the herdsmen, save one.  Lightening struck all his sheep and shepherds and killed all but one shepherd.  Chaldeans came and stole all of Job’s camels, and killed all their caretakers, save one.  His seven sons and three daughters were all killed when their house collapsed during a party, and only one servant survived.  To this Job says: “‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”  Quite the ordeal!
 

   But then, Job is struck by severe boils “from the soles of his feet to the crown of the head.”  Life is so bad that his wife, obviously a loving and caring woman, tells Job, “‘Curse God and die.’”  The Book of Job makes clear that Job has done nothing wrong, and yet he suffers greatly.  This story of Job is an attempt to understand why bad things happen to good people.  I encourage you to read the rest of the book (we only hear a part of chapter 7 today) to see how it ends.
    Suffering is a part of life, not just for Lions’ fans.  There are moral evils that we have to suffer with (crimes, betrayals, loneliness from others’ rejection of us); there are also natural evils that make us suffer (natural disasters, illnesses, pandemics).  People of all faiths and none struggle with this question, sometimes called Theodicy, of why bad things happen to good people, and why there is evil in the world.  In case you’re wondering, there is no easy answer.
    Jesus, as He so often does, turns the question on its head.  What does He do?  He heals; He grants wholeness; He saves.  Our Gospel today relates healings that Jesus did, exorcisms, and preaching.  Jesus shows us that He enters into our evils, some of our own making, some that we have no control over, and He brings healing.  The very word for savior in Latin, Salvator, is connected to another word, salus, meaning health.  The Salvator is the one who brings salus.  
    But Jesus, our Savior, doesn’t do so extrinsically, outside of all our sufferings.  He doesn’t watch from afar and offer us health while social distancing.  He enters into our pain, our suffering, our illness, and brings us delight, wholeness, and health.  And that’s part of the beautiful message of the Gospel: Jesus defeats sin and death through His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension; but we still see it happening, until Jesus returns and ushers in the fullness of His Kingdom.  Until then, Jesus suffers with and in us; He does not abandon us.  And while suffering is not good, it always helps to know that we are not alone, that our suffering has not separated us from the One who loves us above all, as suffering often does make us feel segregated.
    I think this is so clear from our pandemic.  I’m not here to argue against science and taking necessary precautions to protect one’s health.  But one of the greatest evils in this pandemic, whether physically necessary or not, is that we are being disconnected from each other.  Whether we have symptoms, are asymptomatic, or are virus-free, COVID has sought to divide us from each other.  The age-old wounds of sin and division, that were always just below the surface, have come to the top and are festering.  And because we lack a physical unity with each other, that spiritual and emotional unity has also been stretched, or even torn.  
    In the midst of that division, Jesus continues to heal and make whole.  There are stories of heroic Catholics–priests, deacons, and lay faithful–who have refused to let people die alone, even if they had COVID.  The Church has continued to feed the poor, shelter the homeless, educate adults and children, because that is Jesus’ work, and that work does not stop just because there’s a pandemic.  My mind is drawn, by way of an earlier example, to St. Damian of Molokai, whose Belgian blood I share, who gave up his own life to bring Jesus and His healing, especially spiritual healing, to the leper colony in the Hawaiian islands.  
    But even today, through the Sacrament of Penance (confession) and the Eucharist, Jesus continues to heal, and continues to walk with us through our suffering.  He has defeated it, and suffering will end when Christ is all in all.  But until then, Jesus does not leave us orphans; He does not leave us to suffer alone, but suffers with and in us, so that we can bear our burden with Him.
    In the times when you feel most alone, most abandoned, most bereft of human interaction, turn to Jesus in prayer.  Come to the church and spend time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  Look to the crucifix, and lay all your trials on that cross.  If you do, life, victory, and wholeness will be yours in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

Who is the Holy Spirit?

Solemnity of Pentecost

Who is the Holy Spirit?  I will admit, growing up He was the Person of the Blessed Trinity with whom I was least familiar (luckily, He was much more familiar with me!).  But we grow up hearing about God the Father, and of course, as Christians, we spend much of our time focusing on the work of Jesus, the Son.  We talk about the Holy Spirit, but usually in relationship to Jesus.  So as we celebrate Pentecost, it can all seem a bit out there.

Our readings today give us a clue about the Holy Spirit: who He is, and what He does.  He unifies; He demonstrates power; He continues the work of Jesus.  In Genesis, in the story of the Tower of Babel, when people try to get to God on their own terms, confusion is caused.  In the Pentecost account, though, it is the Holy Spirit who unifies the Apostles and Disciples in proclaiming Jesus to the people in different languages.  It seems like the best thing in today’s world is diversity.  And diversity is a gift.  Even I have to admit that if everyone were like me, the world would be a dull place (but it would be amazingly organized and punctual!!).  But, in the midst of diversity, we also need unity, we need something to bring us together.  And what truly brings us together is the Holy Spirit, who utilizes our diverse gifts and personalities in order to achieve unified goals.

The Holy Spirit demonstrates power.  In the Book of Exodus, as the people go to worship God on the mountain, there are peals of thunder and lightning, a cloud over the mountain, and very loud trumpet blasts.  Smokes rises from Mt. Sinai, as the Lord came down in fire.  The Holy Spirit was demonstrating power.  The same happened in the upper room: the Holy Spirit shook the room, and tongues as of fire appeared over the apostles’ and disciples’ heads.  In the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, the Holy Spirit gives life to the dry bones, and in the Book of the Prophet Joel, the Holy Spirit is promised to help the people prophesy and work wonders.  Throughout the history of the Church, the Holy Spirit has demonstrated power, not only in the magnificent ways, but even in smaller, yet equally powerful ways.  Each time Mass is celebrated, the Holy Spirit transforms bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.  I have spoken to you of priests I know whom the Holy Spirit utilizes to heal others (the work is the Holy Spirit, the vessel is the priest).  Lay men and women are given incredible courage and strength to talk about Jesus, not only in the old days to Roman governors and foreign kings, but even in our own days.  One of our own young parishioners shared an account with me of how the Holy Spirit answered his prayer through a phrase from Scripture that a friend spoke to him after He asked God for a sign.  The Holy Spirit continues to exercise His power in the world.  

The Holy Spirit continues the work of Jesus.  In John’s Gospel, Jesus breathes on the apostles and says, “‘Receive the Holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.’”  Jesus came to reveal God the Father, to share the truth about what truly makes us happy as human persons created in the image and likeness of God, and to share the mercy of God.  The Holy Spirit continues to do that.  Through the proclamation of the Word of God, especially at Mass, we come to know the Father better.  Through the teachings of the Church, we learn the truth about how we can experience the joy and peace that God desires for all His children.  Through the Sacrament of Penance especially, we receive the mercy of God.  In this way, the ministry of Jesus spreads throughout the whole world, and is not limited to Palestine.

So what?  Who cares?  All of those things are nice, but to what end?  We need unity, and not simply around the lowest common denominator of belief, but unity in the truth.  We need a unified goal towards which we can apply the diversity of our gifts.  And this is certainly true as a parish.  We need the power of the Holy Spirit to help us proclaim the Gospel, not only in what we do, but also by what we say.  Without this sharing of the truth, by showing the power of the Holy Spirit to make even the meekest person share Jesus as Lord, our parish will continue to shrink.  We need to continue the mercy of Jesus, because that is what we are about as a Church: not a social club, not a weekly meeting of people who live in the same area, but those who are committed to continue, by the power of the Holy Spirit, what Jesus Himself did and taught.  

We may not be as familiar with the Holy Spirit, but we need Him, now as much as at any time.  We need the unifying power of the Holy Spirit continuing the work of Jesus in us.  The growth of our parish depends on it!  Come, Holy Spirit!

Not Them vs. Us

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

If you’ve been watching the news recently (a depressing venture, to be sure), you’ve heard about students from Convington Catholic High School at the March for Life.  A first video was shared which seemed to show an elder Native American activist being shouted at by the students, some with “Make America Great Again” hats, with one student in particular with a smug, very condescending smile on his face.  Some also claimed that the students were chanting “Build the Wall.”  The students were excoriated in the media as being the problem with America, and by some, the problem with the pro-life movement.  The Diocese of Convington apologized for the students’ behavior and judged them as guilty based upon the popular narrative at the time.

Shortly after the first video was released, a second video was released with more context, showing that the students were being yelled at by an African-American group that was protesting.  That group of people were yelling hateful things towards the students, so, to drown out the hate, they started doing school chants.  At that point, the elder Native American and his group walked towards the students, and the Native American elder stood very close to the smiling student.  That student explained that he was smiling to try to diffuse a very tense situation, and did what he thought was best to keep other students from the school from becoming verbally or physically abusive in retaliation.  Some apologies and retractions were issued about those who pounced on the first video, and these students were put forward as good examples of our youth not being baited into a fight, while others were excoriated for jumping to conclusions and reporting those conclusions before all the facts were available.

I’m not here to dissect all the blame in this situation, and who is right and who is wrong.  I’m here to preach the Gospel, and our Gospel today bears upon this situation.  Jesus in the Gospel says, quoting the Prophet Isaiah, that he has come “‘to proclaim liberty to captives…[and] to let the oppressed go free.’”  When we hear those words, we probably associate them with those who are incarcerated or held by strong forces (captives) and those who are downtrodden (the oppressed).  Maybe we think about it in social terms or government terms, or maybe even military or law enforcement terms (probably, some of those hearing it understood Jesus to mean that He was going to free them from Roman rule).  

But we are today captivated, that is to say, held by, and oppressed by more things than just foreign powers or strong worldly forces.  We are, I would suggested, held captive and oppressed by a mentality, from which Jesus came to free us.  That mentality, which captivates and oppresses us is a mentality which divides the world into “them” and “us.”  Jesus does not see people as “others,” but rather, as “His,” because all things have been handed over to Him by His Father, by our heavenly Father.  

This is not to say that Jesus naïvely thought that everyone was working for him.  How many times did Jesus condemn the scribes and Pharisees for their wrong interpretation of the law, their oppression of people, and they hypocrisy.  And yet, when a Pharisee came asking Jesus about the greatest commandment, and when Jesus responded, that Pharisee gave his assent to the teaching of Jesus, then Jesus told the Pharisee that he was not far from salvation.  Jesus condemned the misreading and skepticism about the resurrection of the dead by the Sadducees, and yet Nicodemus, one of the Sadducees, engaged in dialogue with Jesus about baptism and being born again, and there was no condemnation from Jesus.  Jesus told the adulterous woman to go and sin no more, and called tax collectors to stop cheating others, and called everyone to stop hating their enemies, or looking lustfully at people, or swearing oaths blithely.  But Jesus also welcomed sinners into His company and invited them to a relationship with Him so that they could find the conversion to which Jesus called them.

We have become captives and oppressed by a worldview that divides the world.  We are all too happy to condemn them when they don’t agree with us.  This is hard to do as humans, because we’re social and want to belong.  So we demonize others, put them down, so that we can write them off.  Look at Congress and the President over the past month.  Nothing was getting done because each side had demonized the other.  There’s plenty of blame to go around for both sides; no one side is perfectly innocent.  The same goes for the coverage of the Convington Catholic students.  And yet, we willingly let ourselves be led like lemmings to a pre-determined conclusion because of a political or social affiliation that we value more than our affiliation with Jesus.  St. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians: 

remember that at one time you, Gentiles in the flesh…were at that time without Christ, alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.  But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become nearly by the blood of Christ.  For he is our peace, he who made both one and broke down the dividing wall of enmity, through his flesh…[creating] in himself one new person in place of the two, thus establishing peace.

St. Paul puts it in terms of Gentile and Jew, the Jewish division of the world.  But it applies to any division we make in our world.

There are people who do evil in the world.  There is legitimate blame for things that people do wrong, for which we can hold them accountable.  But if we see the world through the lens of “them” vs. “us,” then we are ignoring the Good News that Jesus came to bring, that He came to bring us freedom from being held captive and oppressed by division, and that God’s freedom, prophesied by Isaiah, has been fulfilled by Christ.

Michigan or Michigan State?

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

            As I have been assigned, first as a seminarian, then later as a deacon, and now as a priest, at any parish that has a school, there is one early question that can change the effectiveness of my ministry.  It’s always asked by at least one student in every school, and the question can be simplified into four words: Michigan or Michigan State?  Generally, the question refers to athletics, and if I answer correctly, then that young man or woman has a connection, because we like the same team.  Now, as far as athletics goes, for the most part, we have been teaching our “Older Brother,” (their words, not mine) a lesson.  But, as happens, coaches change, teams improve or get worse, and that’s what feeds a good, competitive spirit.

            Problems happen when the rival mentality that feeds a University’s student body and the alumni creeps into the Church.  And, unfortunately, the United States is no stranger to this phenomenon.    While it is certainly fine to connect to certain causes more than others because of a similarity in personality of one of the leaders, or a focus in an area that is near and dear to our hearts, the Church is not the NCAA, made up of opposing teams that, while keeping good sportsmanship, are trying to destroy each other on the field, court, ice, or any other venue.

            This problem is not new.  We hear about the exact same problem in the second reading from St. Paul’s first letter to the people of Corinth.  Paul writes, and we heard, “I urge you, brothers and sisters…that there be no divisions among you…For it has been reported to me…that each of you is saying, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas.’”  Paul wrote this letter from Ephesus somewhere between AD 52 and 57, which means that not 20 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his followers were already finding ways to attack the unity that Christ desired of His Church.

            The problem continues today, with some claiming, “I belong to this cause,” or “I belong to that movement.”  Again, while it is fine to look up to these causes and groups and to admire them as much as they promote causes that we find important and give us the true faith, we cannot treat our allegiance as to one camp over and against another in the Catholic Church.  Truly, none of you belong to any one cause.  You belong to Christ!  As much as those bishops help you to belong to Christ and follow the true faith, they are to be followed.  As much as they divide you from Christ and the true faith, they are to be avoided. 

            At the end of today’s Gospel, we heard about the call of the first of the Twelve Apostles.  And already we begin to see some of the diversity in unity.  Peter was no doubt a little different than Andrew, as are any set of brothers.  The same probably went for James and John, the sons of Zebedee.  And then among the four of them, there were probably many differences, even though they were all fishermen.  And yet, they were unified in following Jesus and obeying Him as He preached the Gospel and cured the infirm.  One can only imagine the diversity of personalities when all Twelve were gathered together.  And yet all, minus Judas, were first and foremost concerned with following Jesus.  And then you add Paul into the mix, Paul who chided Peter, not for his teaching, but for his lack of action that followed his own teaching of saying that Gentiles did not have to keep kosher law. 

            There is no problem with true diversity.  It is a gift of the Holy Spirit to the different cultures into which the Gospel has been preached.  It is a gift to those who take seriously the teachings of the Church, and seek to make those teachings a reality in the world.  We see diversity in unity in the 21 different rites of the Catholic Church, who have legitimately developed certain traditions that vary among the rites.  But they are all unified by their basic structure and their fidelity to the legitimate authorities who guide how the Mass develops in their rite.  We see diversity in the many ways that Catholics try to bring their faith in the public sector and decrease the social evils that plague us: abortion, poverty, racism, and many more.  But that diversity is also bound in unity to teaching which is in harmony with what we have first received from Christ and have developed over the centuries in harmony with Scripture and Tradition.  Just like an orchestra, we are made up of many instruments that play individual parts, but those instruments and parts must be united by a common score of music, lest we are left with a cacophony.  

This Tuesday ends the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  And while we certainly pray that all who bear the name of Christ, all Christians, may be drawn together into the one Church that Jesus Christ founded, where the fullness of grace and truth are found, the Catholic Church, we cannot neglect the real need for unity in the members of that same Catholic Church. 

This cause and that movement are not Michigan State and Michigan.  We are all a part of the Body of Christ, the family of God’s adopted children in Christ.  Follow those causes who draw you to a closer relationship with Christ as they pass on the authentic faith of Jesus’ one Church.  But do so only to the extent that they promote unity and charity in truth and in fidelity to the Gospel of God.  May Jesus’ prayer in the Upper Room be fulfilled soon: “ut unum sint”: “that they may be one.”