You Gotta Have Faith

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  What came first: the chicken or the egg?  As a young student this question was posed, but I never really thought it too complicated.  If the egg came first, who would sit on it to incubate it so that the chick could hatch?  But, philosophers much wiser than me have debated this general question for centuries.
    In our Gospel, another question gets posed that could, if we’re not careful, trip us up.  That question is: what comes first: faith or miracles?  Perhaps we don’t consider this much of a question, as all the miracles seem to follow from faith.  And yet, our Lord says today that unless the people see signs and wonders (another way of saying miracles), they will not believe.  So what comes first: faith or miracles?
    Throughout the Scriptures, it seems mostly evident that faith comes first.  Christ does not do many miracles in Capernaum because of their lack of faith.  And miracles without faith are more like magic tricks, and God doesn’t do magic tricks.  So faith comes first.  And yet, the miracles themselves also beget faith.  Our Lord raises the son of the widow of Nain, without any sense that she believed in Him.  The woman with a hemorrhage has some small faith so that she touches our Lord’s clothes, but then, after she receives healing, our Lord turns and tells her that her faith has saved her, not only healed her.  So many people, after encountering the Savior, are certainly moved to a deeper faith after they receive a miracle.  So there we see a back and forth when it comes to the relationship with faith and miracles.  Faith leads to miracles, which lead to more faith, which leads to more miracles.  It’s like the chicken and the egg: chickens lead to eggs, which lead to more chickens, which lead to more eggs.
    So how is our faith?  Do we have confidence in what God has revealed?  Do we trust that God can still work miracles in our life and in the lives of others?  Do we have to see signs and wonders before we believe?
    The eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews begins with faith.  The sacred author writes, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.”  Hope assures us that what we have not yet received we will, and faith is the object of that hope, the thing unseen which we believe we will receive.  The author lists examples of faith-filled men: Abel; Enoch; Noah; Abraham.  In the Canon the Church refers to Abraham as “Patriárchae nostri Abrahae,” or “Abraham, our father in faith.”  And the Epistle to the Hebrews reminds the hearers and readers that Abraham, while still called Abram, left the familiarity of his home to go to a land he had never seen, with all his family and possessions, called by a God he didn’t know all too well.  Doubt could have taken hold of him, questioning if his mind was playing tricks on him, how he would survive and care for his flocks outside of what we now call the Fertile Crescent, and whether the people living there would welcome him or attack him.  But he didn’t allow those questions to stop him.  He left modern-day Iraq, or Chaldea, behind.

    So, too, Abraham demonstrated great faith when it came to Isaac, his beloved son and the son of the promise God had made.  Hebrews 11:17 reads, “By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac descendants shall bear your name.’”  While child sacrifice was all too common in the near East, especially to the pagan god Moloch, Abraham had two seemingly contradictory things from which he had to choose: was Isaac the son of the promise that Abraham’s descendants would be more numerous than the stars?  Or was God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on the top of Mount Moriah?  Walking up Mount Moriah, one can only imagine the pain and questioning in Abraham’s heart, but he followed God’s command anyway, trusting that “God was able to raise even from the dead,” and, of course, God stopped Abraham’s hand before Isaac could be killed.  
    Faith is risky business, because we sometimes don’t see the results of our faith on this side of eternity, and sometimes what God asks us to do seems to defy logic.  It’s like Indiana Jones in “The Last Crusade,” who has to step out into what looks like a great chasm, taking an almost literal “leap of faith.”  Or it’s like Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, recalling the words of his uncle, Bilbo Baggins, saying, “‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door.  You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might go.’”  Faith led St. Frances Xavier Cabrini to leave behind Italy and help form the faith in the US by founding schools and teaching.  The same could be said for St. John Neumann and Bl. Francis Xavier Seelos, who came from Europe to help the Church in the new United States of America, or Bishop Benedict Flaget, a Sulpician priest who became one of the first bishops of the US, but who came to the US from France originally to spread the Gospel in the then-frontier lands of Indiana and Kentucky.

Bishop Benedict Flaget

      

So how is your faith?  Are you willing to leap out and trust when God truly calls you to something?  Can you trust your loving Father to care for you, no matter where He leads you?  Will you have enough faith for God to do great things for you?  
    Faith comes first.  But God strengthens our faith by signs of His love, be they miracles or simply little “God moments.”  And those signs of His love lead to more faith, which leads to more trust, and on and on.  May all of our names be written in the Book of Life, with Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham, as those who had faith in God and received His gift of salvation. 

Senses of Scripture

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  An early Church Father from the end of the second and beginning of the third century is Origen.  When he was not yet seventeen, his father was arrested for being Catholic, and was sentenced to death.  Origen wanted to accompany his father, but his mother would not let him, and hid his clothes, so he couldn’t leave his house because of his nudity.  This is the first oddity about Origen.
    He studied the Scriptures deeply, and wrote commentaries on the Gospel of John, the Books of Genesis and Exodus, Psalms 1-25, the Book of Lamentations, Ezekiel and the Song of Songs, as well as other works on prayer.  He wrote the Hexapla, which was the first critical edition of the Old Testament, with the original Hebrew, four different Greek translations, and a Greek transliteration in different columns.  It was quite the monumental work.  While disputed by some, there is a common story that Origen read Matthew 19:12 a bit too literally.  In case that verse doesn’t immediately come to your mind, it’s where Christ says that if your eyes cause you to sin, pluck them out, for it is better to enter heaven without eyes than enter Gehenna with two eyes.  Origen’s eyes weren’t his problem, his libido was.  So he castrated himself.  He also “bishop-shopped” in order to get ordained.  So there were some issues with Origen.
    While some of his teachings (or teachings ascribed to him) were condemned after his death, he gave us the understanding of three different aspects of Biblical interpretation, a schema we still can use today: the literal sense (what does the Biblical account actually say and what happened?); the moral sense (how does this apply to my daily life?); and the spiritual sense (how does this point to Christ?).  And that is what I want to focus on in our Gospel.

    What literally happened (and yes, I’m using that word correctly), was that our Lord encountered a funeral procession in the city of Nain, saw that a boy, the only son of a widowed-mother, had died, and raised him from the dead.  I’ve been to Nain in the Holy Land and there’s a little chapel to commemorate the miracle.  I do find it interesting that we tend to forget that Christ raised other people from the dead other than Lazarus: the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow of Nain.  
    As we look to the spiritual sense, we see especially in this miracle a foreshadowing of Christ’s own Resurrection.  He was the Blessed Mother’s only son.  By tradition, Mary was a widow when Christ died for our salvation (otherwise Joseph would have also been with Christ during His ministry and especially at the foot of the cross).  The raising of this boy anticipates the Resurrection of Christ in a very direct way.
    But does this story have anything to do with us?  Can we understand this story from a moral point of view and how it affects our daily lives?  I think Origen would say that any Scripture can have a moral sense, if we reflect enough.  And in thinking about this passage, the following occurred to me.
    Sometimes we have spiritually died.  Maybe that’s from mortal sin, which takes away from us sanctifying grace, or the grace that allows us to go to heaven.  We cut ourselves off from our relationship with God.  Our Mother, who gave us spiritual birth, Holy Mother Church, mourns us with all those who are close to her.  At that point, we can do nothing else for ourselves.
    But never fear: Christ is near.  Even while we cannot do anything for ourselves, Christ comes to us to call us from death to life.  He tells Holy Mother Church that she need not weep, because He has risen from the dead and destroyed death and sin.  He has the power to raise us to life again, and tells us to get up from our sin and walk away from them.  And, because of Christ’s power, we can rise up and once more praise God.  We are given new life.
    We probably more often think of the Sacrament of Penance–Confession–as a car wash.  But properly speaking, it’s more like a resurrection, a restoring to new life of someone who was dead, specially if we have committed any mortal, or deadly, sins.  We cannot take away sin ourselves.  Even the desire to ask for forgiveness is itself a gift from God and a way that He already is raising us to new life.  Our sin saddens the family of the Church, and causes them to weep for our loss.  But in Christ, all is not lost, and we can rise again.  That is why we might think of the Sacrament of Penance like a second baptism, a new rising to life for those who are dead, not because of original sin, but because of personal sins.  St. Jerome calls it is a second plank to which we grasp on, after the shipwreck of the loss of the state of grace.  
    So see in the desire for confession Christ coming near to you and starting to raise you to new life.  Holy Mother Church desires you to be fully alive, which, as St. Irenaeus says, is also the glory of God.  Christ comes to you and calls you to stand up and walk away from sin.  May the grace and mercy of God call you to new life and the wholeness that are the gifts of the Resurrection of Christ: who with the Father and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns for ever and ever.  Amen.  

Foreshadowing

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  If today’s Gospel were a work of secular literature, we would talk about this passage as a great example of foreshadowing.  Think about it: a son had died, the only child of his mother, who was a widow.  If that doesn’t describe Jesus and Mary at the crucifixion, then you haven’t payed enough attention to the passion narratives.  I can’t help but think that our Lord’s own Passion was on His mind as He came upon this scene, and how it tugged at His Sacred Heart.  The resurrection of this boy is a great act of mercy for a woman who would be in a similar position as the Blessed Mother some time later. 
    But our Lord has the same desire for us, even if we are not a widow or if we have not lost a child.  The Lord desires to raise us up with Him, to raise us to new life, not just a second chance at life on this earth, but a chance at life in a world that will never end, where there is no sorrow, no weeping nor pain, but the fulness of life as we contemplate God for all eternity and worship Him in heaven.  And all of the rituals and practices that the Church has, some, like the Sacraments, given to us directly by our Lord, and others, like sacramentals and devotions, given to us through the Church, are ways that the Lord raises us to new life.

    Think about Baptism, the first Sacrament which opens to the door to the rest of the sacramental life of the Church.  As the water is poured over our heads, we die with Christ, so that we can be raised up with Him.  The old man (to use a Pauline term), Adam, is put to death so that the new man, Jesus, can live in us.  And as Christ lives in us, it is meant to configure us more and more each day to be more like Him, each in our own vocations and avocations.  In fact, this is the way that we rise to new life with Christ: we make His life our own more and more, doing the things that our Lord would do as we go through our day, and putting behind us things that our Lord wouldn’t do. 
    When we don’t quite live that our perfectly, Christ gave us the Sacrament of Penance to raise us from the squalor that we have let infect our souls through sin.  St. Paul reminds us that the wages of sin is death, and so, as we take upon ourselves death through our sinful actions which we freely choose, we need to be raised to new life, which is done through confessing our sins, being truly sorry for them, having a firm purpose of amendment to not sin again, and receiving absolution from a priest.  In that moment, we are raised from the dead.
    Likewise, the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Sacraments, allows our Lord to enter into us.  We are, quite literally, consuming life Himself, which helps us to live that life of Christ each day.  That is why saints, like St. Pius X, recommended frequent reception of Holy Communion (assuming that we are in a state of grace): so that we can more and more receive life, which casts out death.  Without the Eucharist, it is impossible to live the life that Christ desires for us as Catholics, which is why it is so painful when Catholics fall away from the faith, even if they attend other ecclesial communities.  They are depriving themselves of opportunities to receive within themselves, in the closest and best way possible on this side of eternity, eternal life which is given to us through Christ’s Body and Blood.
    But we, too, are called to participate in Christ’s action of raising others from the dead.  We can do this, as St. Paul mentioned in the epistle today, through helping others to know and choose the good, doing so gently, and bearing one another’s burdens.  Fraternal correction and encouraging others to live as our Lord desires is often difficult, because we can seem to be boasting or taking a position of superiority to others (even if we don’t intend that, it can often be perceived that way).  One of the best ways to avoid this is to help others know that we are not perfect ourselves, and that we will help them.  Our Lord condemned the Pharisees for imposing burdens on others, but not lifting a finger to help them.  Let that never be said of us as we seek to help others live a Catholic life!
    But raising others to new life also extends to those who are not Catholic, who are not part of the “family of faith.”  Raising up Catholic children is one wonderful way of spreading the faith, but here in our beloved City of Flint and in Genesee County, there are literally thousands of people who do not know Christ, and who are caught up in works of death.  Homicides are up 50% in the City of Flint from last year to this year.  And one of the many ways to curb that horrible statistic is to spread the Good News about Christ, to be evangelists.  Because people who love Jesus don’t kill other people, don’t take the law into their own hands in violent acts of revenge, don’t sell illegal drugs.  If we truly wish to see change in our city and county, then we have to share with others the life that we have received. 
    Again, it is important not to be sanctimonious in our approach, or even to be perceived this way.  Yes, we have “the way, the truth, and the life,” in our Lord.  But we are working with and walking with others on the path to daily increase in holiness, rather than standing above others.  But the key is that we are, in fact, inviting others to the new life that Christ desires for all mankind.  It can be done through a kind word, through a warm smile, through a cup of water given to a person in need, all the while sharing not just the word, the smile, or the water, but also the reason why we are doing it: to share the new life of our Lord and help raise people from death. 
    We may not seem to be doing much.  Our efforts may not seem to be effective or making any real difference.  But, I would suggest we look at St. Dominic as our model.  While the Order of Preachers was still very young and very small, only with a few friars, and the nuns praying for their success, St. Dominic sent the few out friars to the major universities of Europe to share the Gospel.  What started off small, and often times was not received well (even by local bishops!), soon became a large community that continues to spread the Gospel to this day.  The Lord is inviting us to sustain our own new life in Him, but also to spread that new life to others.  Can we look upon our brothers and sisters who are dying and dead, and not feel pity for them as did our Lord with the son of the widow of Nain?  Will we walk past as the spiritual funerals of so many pass us by?  May we instead share the new life that we have received of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.