Charity and Knowledge

Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  Though not celebrated today since it falls on a Sunday, today is the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  After Mass today, as part of your thanksgiving, maybe add a few Marian prayers like the Hail Mary, Memorare, Hail, Holy Queen, or even the Litany of Loretto to wish a happy birthday to our Blessed Mother, reigning in heaven alongside her Son.
    Our Blessed Mother is the perfect example of being rooted in charity and knowing the charity of Christ, as St. Paul wrote in our epistle today.  And St. Paul compares charity, divine love, with knowledge, saying that charity surpasses knowledge.  St. Paul says in his first epistle to the Corinthians that, “knowledge inflates with pride, but love builds up.”  
    As someone who loves learning, these words can be a challenge.  And, indeed, many have rightly put an emphasis on learning the truths of the faith, so that they can be shared.  God has given us the gift of reason to understand what He has revealed through His Church, both in the Scriptures and through Sacred Tradition.  To the extent that we can understand, and then share, those truths, we can.
    But entrance into heaven does not come from having a degree in theology.  Indeed, just because we know something about God doesn’t mean that we will get to heaven.  The pharisees in today’s Gospel knew God’s law very well, at least in its external practice.  But they didn’t understand the love which undergirded that law.  Satan, for his part, knows the truths of the faith, probably better than many of us.  St. James, in his epistle, writes, “You believe that God is one.  You do well.  Even the demons believe that and tremble.”  So, as helpful as knowledge is, it cannot substitute for love.
    For those who may not be so intellectually gifted, this should be a consolation.  Not everyone can study theology, but everyone can go to heaven.  One can love God deeply without being able to explain precisely the relationships between the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity.  And, as St. John of the Cross says, at the end of our life we will be judged, not on knowledge, but on our loves.

    Think about the Annunciation.  The Archangel Gabriel brought incredible news, that is, news that was hard to believe, that she would become the Mother of God.  First of all, Mary, though of the family of King David, had no royal training.  She was not part of palace life.  She was a young, humble virgin in a backwater town in a backwater province of the Roman Empire.  Further, and even more incredible, she was not married, so how could she conceive?  If the Virgin Mary had relied solely on her knowledge, she would have never said yes.  In fact, Zechariah, the husband of Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, seems to have only relied on this knowledge when the same Archangel Gabriel appeared to him some six months earlier, and told him and that he and his wife, Elizabeth, would conceive a great prophet who would prepare people for God “in the spirit and power of Elijah.”  But Zechariah responded from his knowledge, saying, “‘How shall I know this?  For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.’”  For his lack of acceptance, his lack of love of God, Zechariah was struck mute until he affirmed Gabriel’s message that his son should be named John.
    The love of the Blessed Mother for God and her trust in His love for her allowed her not to doubt, but to wholeheartedly respond to the plan of God, “‘May it be done to me according to your word.’”  Love filled in the gap where knowledge left off.  
    Now, love is not contrary to reason, but sometimes flies above reason.  Think of a mother whose child is threatened.  While the mother may not be the strongest woman in the world, God help the person who comes between a mother and her child!  Her love gives her a reason beyond simple knowledge that can preserve life when reason would give up in the face of such danger and such odds.  
    And, as in the Gospel, love informs the law.  Yes, God gave the Sabbath as a day of rest, where no work could be done.  But even the rabbis had known that sometimes you have to respond to special situations that cannot wait beyond the Sabbath, so they allowed people to pull out their farm animals from harm, even on the day of rest.  But, because they did not love, the Pharisees could not see how healing the man fulfilled what God intended for the Sabbath: rest, freedom, and wholeness in God.  So healing a man on the Sabbath did not violate God’s commandment, but, in love fulfilled it.  The healing was not contrary to our understanding of the Sabbath rest, but flew beyond the mere outward expression of not doing work.
    This can even apply to some laws of the Church.  Perhaps the easiest example is Friday as a day of penance.  We should, all things being equal, do some sort of penitential act on every Friday.  Traditionally, this has meant that Catholics don’t eat meat.  But let’s say a friend had a dinner and did not observe abstinence from meat.  While our understanding of the law might suggest that we simply eat nothing and be a rude guest, love understands that, from time to time, on special occasions, we might not do as much penance as usual for legitimate reasons.  Friday weddings can often be times where we set aside our penitential practices for one meal, in order to rejoice in a new sacrament of God’s love.
    We cannot simply ignore the law and claim that we don’t have to follow it because of love.  Love often undergirds just laws.  But knowledge of the law, and our understanding of the faith, has to be supported by love, or else it is a clanging gong or a crashing symbol.  Today, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God, may we grow in love of God and neighbor, and so be prepared for the eternal contemplation of love in heaven, where our Lord reigns, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for ever and ever.  Amen. 

Fix You

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Songs have a way of touching us when mere words don’t suffice.  Sometimes they increase our joy; sometimes they commiserate with us in sorrow.  One such song for when a person feels down and out is “Fix You” by the band Coldplay.  Towards the beginning of the song the listener hears, “And the tears come streaming down your face / When you lose something you can’t replace / When you love someone, but it goes to waste / Could it be worse? //  Lights will guide you home / And ignite your bones / And I will try to fix you.”  Nothing like a mopey song to get your Sunday going, eh?
    But in all seriousness, our God did come to fix us.  We hear it in all our readings.  Jesus’ very name means “God saves.”  The word for savior in Greek is 𝜎𝜔𝜏𝜂𝜌, which, in ancient times, could also mean healer, in addition to savior.  Isaiah outlined ways that God would heal His people, and Mark shows the profound healing of a deaf and mute man.  Even St. James in his epistle demonstrates how that healing goes beyond just our physical realities, and includes the healing of our prejudices that can affect how we live the Gospel.
    But all of this presumes that we know we need healing and saving.  And to admit that we need healing and saving includes the admission that we are ill and lost.  And that can be hard to admit.  It seems much easier to live with the veneer that everything is going great, that we have everything under control.  We learn to live with our illness and brokenness, and think that our infirmity and disfunction are normal.  We put up walls and barriers to the grace of God, because in order to let that grace and healing in, we have to admit that we are not as we should be, and that might make us hurt as we acknowledge things that our mind prefers to ignore but our heart knows all too well.
    Acknowledging the salvation of God also means that we don’t treat Jesus as our preferential guru.  If we treat Jesus as simply the teacher who works best for us, while others have other teachers who help them be the best they can be, we miss the point of what Jesus taught and did.  Teachers or gurus teach a way of life, but they don’t save.  Only saviors teach a way of life, and heal, and save.  Moses cannot save; Buddha cannot save; Mohammed cannot save; Confucius cannot save.  Any teacher or guru that you name might help us in some ways, but they cannot bridge the chasm that sin created.  They cannot heal at the root the sickness that infects our hearts and souls.  Only Christ can do that.
    Admitting that we need a savior goes against what our culture wants to affirm.  In these days, we affirm however you feel you are, whether or not that is good for you, whether or not it leads you to excellence.  Society says I feel I love this person, so you have to accept my understanding of romantic love, even if it flies in the face of what God has revealed romantic love truly is.  Society says I may be morbidly obese due to bad died and lack of exercise, but you can’t tell me to lose weight because that would be shaming my body.  Society says I don’t feel comfortable in the body God gave me, so you have to refer to me in whatever way I choose, regardless of my biological sex, and you even have to provide me with procedures that either involve mutilation or hormone blocking drugs so that the way I feel can be affirmed.  All of these examples, and many more less significant ones, base themselves in a reality that I pretend I can mold to my own emotions, so that I don’t have to acknowledge the deep pain of brokenness in my life.  Because acknowledging that brokenness will make me feel sad or make me feel pain, and that’s the last thing I want to feel.  So I ignore it and try to live in a fantasy world where I live my own truth which fits standards which don’t call me higher and to a fuller form of life.

    Instead, Christ came to heal our brokenness, which might be painful at first, but brings true wholeness and holiness in the end.  Christ helps you to know that your sexual desires do not define you as a person, and can be properly ordered according to how He made the world.  Christ brings you healing from those unhealthy patterns of self-medication so that you don’t have to use food or laziness to feel better.  Christ comes to help you love yourself and how God made you, just as much as God loves you.  Christ wants to help you deal with whatever broken reality you are living now, to save you from your false realities, so that you’re prepared for the final judgement, where reality will not bend to your will, but will impose itself, whether you want it to or not.  
    Jesus did not come to make us feel better about our fallen selves.  Jesus came to heal what was broken in us; to save what was fallen in us.  Jesus did not come to help us usher in a world according to our own design, but to live in the world that He made, to start restoring us to a place even better than the Garden of Eden, where all creation lived in harmony with God and each other.  Let the Light of Christ guide you home.  Let the Holy Spirit ignite you with His love.  God has come to fix you.

Green Monsters

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

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

Never Could Have Imagined

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

    For whatever reason, once you reach a certain age, there is a requirement that you tell younger people how passes more quickly the older you get when they say that they can’t believe how fast time is going.  As a youngster and on the receiving end, I never really appreciated how true that statement could be.  After all, time, at best, seemed like a constant, and it seemed like it just dragged on.  But, as I approach my forty-first birthday next week, I appreciate more the reality that time really does go faster the older you get.
    When Moses asked the rhetorical question to the Israelites, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”, the Chosen People certainly could think of the closeness of God.  Ever since their departure from Egypt, God had accompanied them by a column of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night.  He had stopped the flow of the Red Sea for them.  He had appeared in trumpet blast and storms on Mount Sinai.  He traveled with them in the Ark of the Covenant.  There was no question that God sojourned with His People.  But they didn’t appreciate how close God would get to us.
    Centuries later, King Solomon built a temple to God to be a resting place for the Ark of the Covenant, which King David had previously moved to the new capital city of Jerusalem.  In the great temple, with all of its gold and silver beyond value, all of the fine wood and decorations of the different courts for different groups of people, leading up to the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary where God dwelt, God could be approached.  He had a physical footstool on earth, a place where the people could draw close to Him at any time they wanted.  While the Chosen People had spread out over the Promised Land, they could come to God to give thanks or to ask for blessings.  God no longer seemed itinerant, but had a home fit for the King of Kings.  But still they couldn’t imagine how close God would get to us.

    Centuries later, in a village called Nazareth, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to a young virgin named Mary.  Gabriel asked Mary if she would become the Mother of God, and would carry the Son of God and Son of David in her womb for nine months.  Mary said yes, and suddenly, God’s presence was again itinerant, but this time not in cloud or fire, but in the Incarnation, the union of God and man in the Person of Jesus Christ.  Mary gave birth in Bethlehem, and suddenly people could not only see God from afar in the cloud and smoke; people could not only visit God in a particular place; the shepherds could now gaze loving on God, who looked like a little baby.  The Magi could offer their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the little Christ Child.  And that child would grow, so that people could see the face of God, which before not even Moses could do, as God warned it would kill him.  But not only could you see the face of God, you could touch God, hear His voice, and experience His love in a way previously thought impossible.  But still, they couldn’t imagine how close God would get to us.
    Because while Jesus Christ, God-made-man, walked this earth and helped people experience God in ways unthought of before, while He walked this earth He limited Himself to being in one place, at one time.  The Lord of all creation who created time and space became subject to time and space.  Until He gave us the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, His Body and Blood, given to us under the appearance of bread and wine, which would prolong His presence with us, not through his limited Body, but through His glorified Body, which now reigns at the right hand of the Father in heaven.  You don’t have to go to the Holy Land to see Jesus.  He comes to you at each Mass, so that you only have to travel a short distance to see Him, not fly over oceans and seas and other continents.  And God enters into us, into our very person, so that He is closer to us than any other person could ever be.  We can say, in a way Moses probably never imagined while he was on earth, “what great nation is there that has gods so close to it as the Lord, our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”!
    What a great gift God gives us!  How could we ever repay God for His generosity, for His proximity to us?  St. James tells us a way that we can repay, however humbly, the great gift God has given us: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only.”  The best thank you we can say to God is to worship Him, to open ourselves to His grace, and to do our best to conform our lives to the pattern God has given us, especially by loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.  
    I could never have imagined how fast time continues to pass in my own life.  Moses could never have imagined how close God would come to us through the Eucharist.  But it is true.  God has come to dwell with us.  Come, let us worship!

Doctor Gratiae and Darth Vader

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  One of the things that can easily frustrate Catholics is when they are striving to live a holy life, but they aren’t quite getting there.  They go to Mass on Sundays; they go to confession on a regular basis; they pray the Rosary and/or the Divine Mercy chaplet; they have a crucifix and holy water in their home; etc.  And yet, they are still struggling with sin, be it venial or mortal.  They want to walk according to the spirit, but they all too often find themselves giving in to the flesh.  They desire the fruits of the Spirit, but they at least occasionally give in to the works of the flesh.
    This tug of war is because there are two still two masters in our hearts and souls, and we’re oscillating between the two.  We may be primarily for Christ, but we leave some part of ourselves, however small, open to the mastery of the evil one, and so he takes whatever opportunities he can to steal us away from our Lord.
    We know in our minds that we want to serve God and that our happiness lies in Him.  We know, as St. Paul teaches, that the wages of sin is death.  We know that sin distracts or even derails us from our final destination of heaven.  And yet, we choose to sin time and time again.

    St. Augustine of Hippo, the great Doctor of Grace, provides us with a stark example of this inner turmoil.  Though he became a catechumen at a young age, he writes in his Confessions that he did not live the faith as a young boy or young man.  He writes how, around the age of 16, he gave himself entirely over to lustful actions.  This terrorized his mother, but his father, also not yet a Catholic, seems to have figured it a normal part of life.  Things didn’t get better as 18-year-old Augustine moved to Carthage.  He writes, “desire had grown, and when desire is given satisfaction, habit is forged; and when habit passes unresisted, a compulsive urge sets in.  He took one mistress, with whom he had his son, Adeodatus (whose name means “gift given from God”), and then took a different mistress.  
    Through his studies, though, even while he meandered through various heresies, he began to see the truths of the faith as truth, and his mind grew convicted to join the Catholic Church through baptism.  Still, his will resisted what his mind longed to grasp, such that his prayer became, “Give me chastity…but not yet.”  
    This struggle between the two masters–Christ and his sin-driven will–frustrated him more and more each day.  It finally led to what appears to be a kind of mental breakdown, bringing him to tears over his dilemma.  But it was in that moment, in his utter brokenness, that he heard the voice of a small child say, “Tolle, lege,” “Take and read.”  He did what no good spiritual director would ever recommend: he played Biblical roulette, trying to turn to a random page to see what it would say, and read Romans 13:13-14.  The Apostle wrote, “let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and licentiousness, not in rivalry and jealousy.  But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”  The grace that had been building in him in his search for the truth finally broke the dam of his will, and he found the freedom he desired, and the gentle yoke of Christ under which he was glad to bind himself.
    Perhaps our sins are not so grave.  Perhaps the conversion of our fallen wills will not be so dramatic.  But that same back and forth happens in so many Catholics, dealing with many types of sin, not just lust.  So many struggle with patience, or gossip, or judgement.  They want to do better, but they keep finding themselves in similar situations and confessing the same faults when they seek out the Sacrament of Penance.
    The example of St. Augustine reminds us that part of committing ourselves to the master we know we want to serve, Christ, is to persevere in fighting our temptations, no matter how strong, no matter how persistent.  The great bishop of North Africa, in his days before baptism, never fully acquiesced to the realities he knew to be false: that true freedom and happiness could be found in sin.  Sometimes all he had was his mind to tell him that sin did not lead to joy and hope, but he never abandoned that mind that guided him closer and closer to the truth.  

    In a very secular example, it’s like Darth Vader.  In the original three movies, especially episodes V and VI, George Lucas makes clear that there is good in Vader, and Luke Skywalker, his hidden son, senses it.  Even while Vader seems to resist that goodness; even while he attacks Luke, Luke knows that there is still a battle going on in Vader’s soul between light and darkness.  Even as Emperor Palpatine tortures Luke while Darth Vader looks on, the battle rages until (spoiler alert), Vader stops the torture and kills Emperor Palpatine (or at least, that’s what happened until they made the latest three movies, where being thrown down a shaft that explodes no longer kills a person).  Vader apologizes to Luke, and becomes, once again, the Jedi he should have been in his final breaths.
    Whether it’s a fourth and fifth century saint, or a fictional character that demonstrates the point to us better, our life is a choice between two masters.  Not just God and mammon, the pagan god of riches and greed, but between God and whatever sin we leave room for in our hearts.  May we persevere in continuing to fight for the mastery of Christ, the mastery that does not enslave us like sin does, but grants us the true freedom to choose the good and to live in the happiness that is desired for each of us by God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  

Sesame Street Readings

Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time

    As a young child I remember a segment of “Sesame Street” that was called “One of these things.”  The point was to identify things that didn’t belong together before the jingle ended.  It speaks to the effectiveness of the jingle that, all these years later, I can still sing the tune and the words in my head without much effort.
    We might think, as we heard the three main readings today, that one of these things is not like the other, and one of these things just doesn’t belong.  Our first reading and Gospel focus on whether or not the people stay committed to God, while the second reading has a slightly different focus, to say the least.  And frankly, when the lectionary was revised after the Second Vatican Council, the principle was that the first reading and the Gospel would be related, while the second reading, usually from an epistle of St. Paul, would be more of a continuous reading, a lectio continua, from the non-Gospel New Testament works.
    But they do all belong together.  And it’s my job to help you see how that applies, even with this longer second reading that probably does not fall well on the ears of modern couples.  The first unifying aspect to all three readings is that all three describe realities that, at one time or another, would be difficult to accept.  In the first reading, Joshua has led the people into the Promised Land after Moses died.  They were finally occupying the lands, but remnants of pagan nations who worshiped false gods still remained to be cast out.  Joshua knew, from his experience since the Exodus, that this people did not always remain faithful to God, and would often abandon God when things got difficult.  So he encourages them to stay with God.  
    In the Gospel, Jesus having taught the people that they have to eat His flesh and drink His blood in order to have eternal life, most of the disciples abandon Him.  They struggle to understand this drastic teaching, which Jesus never waters down or modifies to sound easier, and so they leave.  Finally, Jesus turns to the Twelve, His closest friends, and asks them if they will stay with Him or abandon Him.
    In the second reading, probably most people in the time of St. Paul did not find it strange that St. Paul encouraged wives to be subordinate to their husbands, but it probably was striking that husbands were to love their wives “as Christ loved the church.”  And even if it all strikes us differently, St. Paul teaches that this isn’t simply something that is determined by cultural norms, but is “in reference to Christ and the church.”  
    Secondly, all of the readings remind us of who we should be when it comes to God.  We are the people God chose as His own, who works wonders and signs for us, and brings us from slavery to sin into the promised land of freedom of grace.  But He is God, and we are not.  We don’t get to decide which of the teachings that God revealed we maintain, and which of the teachings God revealed we jettison because it’s hard or seems odd.  We all are the bride, and Christ is our head, to whom we need to be subordinate.  When God reveals the way we are to live, just like He revealed the Ten Commandments to the Chosen People, which included Joshua; just like when He revealed the teaching on the Eucharist, that it truly is His Flesh and Blood which give us eternal life; just like when He revealed that we are to “be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ,” and that wives are to “be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord,” and husbands are to “love your wives as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for her,”; we cannot simply pick and choose.  God’s word is life, and a rejection of some of His teaching is a rejection of some of the fullness of life that God wants for us.
    Having said that, God allows us our freedom.  Not long after the people pledged to serve God in the Promised Land, they abandoned Him and served other gods.  They found it didn’t work out so well, as other nations invaded and oppressed them, but God allowed them to exercise their free will, even as He constantly called them back to Himself.  In the Gospel, Jesus didn’t run after the people and given them a secondary teaching on the Eucharist to help them understand it in different ways.  He gave them the teaching they needed, and they either abandoned Him (most disciples) or stayed with Him (the Apostles and a few others).  Jesus told them how they could have eternal life within them, and they had to choose whether they wanted it or not.  And even with marriage, God does not force His way upon couples.  Couples can do the power struggle thing where each tries to be the most important, or tries to make everything about him or herself, probably resulting in an unhappy marriage or even divorce.  Or they can accept Christ’s teaching that they need to live for the other, and not be so concerned about their own will and their own desires, and find a happier marriage.  God reveals what will make us happy and give us new life, but we are free to accept or reject that.
    Sometimes things don’t seem related.  Or we like the Jesus who says, “‘I am the bread of life,’” but don’t want to hear that we can’t worship other gods, or that marriage has a particular meaning and way of being lived out that brings about grace.  But it’s the same God who reveals all ways in which we are to follow Him, as He lovingly lets us choose to follow Him, or to choose other gods who bring upon us slavery, error, and unhappiness.  As for me, I know that God has the words of eternal life, so there is no where else to go.  As for me, I will serve the Lord.

The Extended Plan

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  In college seminary on an occasional Friday night my brother seminarians and I would pull out the game of Risk, especially if we knew we had a lot of time and didn’t have to get up early the next morning.  I was never particularly good at Risk.  I would hold my own for a little while, but usually tried stretching my armies too much, which made them vulnerable to attack, and then other armies would come and wipe them out.  I usually liked starting with Australia, but then when I tried to attack different parts of Asia, it wouldn’t work our well for me.  

St. Paul

    St. Paul in the epistle today outlines in a very general sense the plan of God for his re-conquest of humanity.  In our first parents, Adam and Eve, humanity had been taken captive by the devil and his lies.  But God, not wanting us to stay prisoners to sin and death, developed a plan to win us back.  St. Paul highlights Abraham and Moses (whom he references by mentioning the law), culminating in the Incarnation of the Lord.  
    The Apostle writes that God called Abraham and promised prosperity for his seed, which, if only reading the Old Testament, one would think applies to Isaac, but in fact, St. Paul argues, applies to Christ, at least in the fullness of God’s revelation.  Now, he acknowledges another covenant, that of the Law, made through the mediator, Moses.  But St. Paul writes that the second covenant does not annul the first, the law does not cancel out the promise, because the promise is greater than the law.  But all of it is fulfilled in Christ, who fulfills God’s promise and fulfills even the law, so that we might no longer be under the reign of sin, but be heirs of the promise made to Abraham through our union with Christ, the son of Abraham in Christ’s human nature.  
    We see, then, that God sometimes takes a very long view of things, at least from our finite, temporal reality.  Since God is present in all times at once, it’s not a long view, but an eternal present.  We know this in salvation: Abraham is commonly thought to have lived around the year 2,000 BC.  The law came some four hundred and so years after that.  And Christ came around 2,000 years after Abraham.  But God, not infringing upon our free will, yet guiding history towards its climax in the Incarnation, sought to bring salvation to the creatures He had made in His image and likeness.  
    But God doesn’t only work that way with salvation history on the macro scale.  He also at times works that way in our lives.  Now, we don’t have 2,000 years to wait, but we can be patient with the time that God does allow things to work out in our lives, adjusting and compensating for our free will.  For most married couples, we ask them to have a period of nine or so months between their engagement and their wedding date.  I know that for couples, this seems like a never-ending time.  But this allows them to continue to deepen their relationship, and continue to learn how to sacrifice their own wills for the good of the other.  
    Or think about the nine months that a mother carries an infant in her womb.  Especially in that last trimester, I’ve known many moms who feel like the child is never going to leave her body.  But that period of waiting allows the child to develop, little by little, so that, at the appropriate time, the child can experience its life outside of the womb.
    For me, as a seminarian, I thought I was never going to make it to ordination.  I have 8 years of seminary, and that was the short way (if I would have gone to a secular college, then into seminary, I would have had four years of college, at least, and then two years of philosophy, and then four years of theology, so at least 10 years, if not more).  But my time in seminary proved invaluable in teaching me more about prayer, about how the Lord works, about growing in virtue, about what the Church teaches, about how to celebrate the sacraments, about the promise of celibacy made at diaconate ordination, etc.  I didn’t always enjoy seminary, but I believe the length helped me to grow in love with the Lord, to get to know Him and His Church better, and to discern if I could live a celibate life.
    But the “extended plan,” if you will, is not just about vocation.  It also applies in our hopes for our professional or social lives, travel plans, etc.  God works with us through our daily lives, even the small choices we make, to try to bring about our salvation with our cooperation.  He puts us in some situations that we think we will never make it through, and He saves us from some situations that we think we might want, but which would draw us farther away from Him.  We’re not always grateful for those times, but they do give us the opportunity to be the people God wants us to be for our own happiness and salvation.
    As country songs are three chords and the truth, there’s a good country song that references this reality: “Unanswered Prayers” by Garth Brooks.  In the song, the artist references a girl with whom he was smitten in high school, that he begged God would allow them to get married and spend a lifetime together.  But God didn’t answer his prayers the way he wanted.  And years later, at a football game with the woman he did marry, as he sees that high school crush again, he realizes that he wouldn’t have been happy marrying his originally-desired woman.  And so he thanks God for unanswered prayers, and sings that “just because He may not answer, doesn’t mean He don’t care,” because “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”  
    We can find it difficult to be patient with God’s plans, especially when we don’t think they’re for our good.  But God always works for our salvation, and sometimes works out that plan over weeks, months, years, centuries, and even millennia.  His strategy is always the best, and I pray that we can all trust in the loving, merciful, and providential will of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Samaritans and Politicians

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  When it comes to familiar Gospel passages like today’s parable of the Good Samaritan, it’s easy to gloss over the text because “I’ve heard this one before.”  We know the message, and we know the point.  Christ is quite clearly teaching us that we are called to love our neighbor, even the neighbors that we don’t find so lovable.  The Samaritans, after all, had separated from the united Kingdom that David had led, and because of that separation, had wandered away from God to follow false gods.  Eventually their sin of idolatry led to them being exiled by the Assyrians, who conquered the northern kingdom of Israel.  What remained, then, was a hodgepodge of Judeo-pagan practices and worship (we would use the word synchronism today).  And yet, it was the Samaritan that cared for the man taken upon by robbers.  The shock of a Samaritan helping a Jew is also echoed in the story (not parable) of our Lord interacting with the Samaritan woman at the well in John, chapter 4 (she says, “What do you, a Jew, have to do with me, a Samaritan?”).  
    But well-known passages like this give us an opportunity to go beyond the surface level.  It’s so easy to say to ourselves, ‘I do my best to love my neighbor.’  We might even think of people of different races or religions that we get along with as evidence that we’re not like the lawyer who asks, “‘And who is my neighbor?’”  But let’s look beyond race and religion, and go to something which, currently, is perhaps an even more divisive indicator of belonging: politics.
    We are in the midst of election season.  The rhetoric has been vitriolic, to say the least.  Former-president Trump survived an assassination attempt in July.  If words were bullets, we’d be in a heated firestorm on the battlefield.  There are more than two parties, but the two parties that have the most power currently accuse each other of being a threat to democracy and to our nation.  The sense that politicians communicate conveys that belonging to the other party indicates some sort of evil present in the soul of one type or another.  

    What intrigues me about all this is that religion has been condemned for decades for requiring total obedience of the person.  People have been asked why they can’t think for themselves if they follow what their religion teaches.  Religions are condemned as the source of most violence and wars.  And yet, when it comes to politics, the two major political parties each demand total obedience from their members, or else they are fake or members of their party “in name only.”  I would dare say that more violence and civil disturbance has been done in the name of politics over the past ten years than religion.  Indeed, if people could get away with witch-hunts and burning people at the stake, streets across our nation would be illumined by the tar and feathering of “heretics” of modern politics.
    But beyond the out there, our Lord encourages us to look in here, at myself.  I cannot control what others do, but I can control what I do.  Sin, and virtue, has a social aspect.  When I live as Christ calls me to live, that encourages others to do so.  When I do not live with the love of God and neighbor in my life, others find it easier to ignore the great commandments Christ expounded in today’s Gospel.
    So how do I treat those who do not agree with me politically?  Of course, I’m not advocating that we simply roll-over and allow poor policies and laws to continue.  Healthy and respectful debate are exactly how we change minds and hearts (at least partially) so that we come to a greater understanding of the truth and the impact it has on the way we live our life.  But if you’re anything like me, you probably find it easier to just ignore the person who espouses other political theories, to cut them out of your life, rather than to engage the other, and even to treat them like a human person.  The Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, famously wrote, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.”  And that’s exactly what our society tends to do when we disagree with someone.  We unfriend or unfollow them.  We call them names, in our head or with our mouths, to make them seem less human, less worthy of our love.  We puff ourselves up with the righteousness of our position so that we can put them down for the error of theirs.  
    At the end of the day, we fail to recognize in the other the fact that our political enemy is a creation of God, a human person, worthy of respect and love for no other reason than he or she was created in the image and likeness of God.  We apply labels to the other to excuse ourselves from what Christ commanded us today: to love the other regardless of what separates us from them.  
    Now, Christ did not praise the Samaritan because he worshipped false gods.  The Samaritan’s life certainly had room for conversion.  But the Samaritan was praised because he recognized in the Jew beset by robbers, languishing on the side of the road, someone whom God thought should live; someone God willed into being and loved infinitely.  We don’t have to agree with bad policies or laws.  We should fight non-violently against those who promote error and bad policies and laws.  But we should, first and foremost, recognize that they are a creation of God, worthy of love and respect, a person for whom Christ died on the cross.  
    And yes, sometimes the talk about politics becomes so poisonous that we have to take a step back.  Sometimes people are unwilling to listen to the truth and we realize that we cannot reason with someone who is unwilling to consider that his or her position may be wrong.  But, no matter what a person advocates, no matter how a person votes, God loves that person, and so, as He taught us today, we should, too.  
    It’s easy to say that I’m not generally a hateful person.  It’s easy to think that I do my best to love my neighbor.  But don’t just think about the neighbors who are easy to love, who agree with us, whose identity doesn’t clash with ours.  Consider those who annoy us the most, and ask yourself if you have been a neighbor to that person.  Because that person is created in the image and likeness of God: the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

Rest and Good Food

Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
    Doing the will of God can sometimes be tiring.  Elijah, in our first reading, feels fatigued, even enough to die.  Why he feels this way comes from the chapter before the one we heard today.  Elijah had just challenged the prophets of the false god, Baal, to a test on Mount Carmel, and they lost, and he slew the prophets of Baal.  King Ahab and his wife, Queen Jezebel, were none too thrilled, since they worshipped Baal, so Elijah had to run away.  In fact, Queen Jezebel had said, “‘May the gods do thus to me and more, if by this time tomorrow I have not done with your life what was done to each of [the prophets of Baal].’”  So Elijah is tired from running, and from running for his life while the king and queen of Israel try to capture him to kill him.  

    And it is here, underneath the broom tree, that an angel instructs Elijah to eat from a hearth cake.  Elijah eats, regains his strength, and then walks for 40 days and 40 nights to Horeb, which was another name for Mount Sinai.  This food must have been pretty good stuff to have him go from wanting to die and napping to walking for over a month.
    God knows we need rest.  He knows that we go through some awful things sometimes.  Even when we’re doing His will, we can get tired, especially when not everyone wants us to follow God’s will.  So what does God do?  He gives us the Mass as our time of rest.
    Now, I’m not advocating that you all fall asleep right now, and for those of you who already fell asleep because of the dullness of this homily, wake up!  But God gives us a day of rest, which for the Jews was Saturday, but which Christians almost immediately transferred to Sunday, so that we can regain our strength.  He Himself teaches us, as Jesus quotes in the Gospel today.  And He gives us the Body of Christ, under the appearance of bread, to satisfy us to go as long as we need to throughout the following six days, until we reach our next day of rest on the following Sunday.
    I think most people know they need rest, at least deep down in their heart, but how often people find excuses not to rest.  They will fill their Sundays with all sorts of other things, things which wear them out and make them more tired, but they won’t spend around one hour at Mass and they won’t take the rest of the day to just take it easy with family or friends.
    Mass is supposed to be restful.  It’s not meant to be frenetic and boisterous.  This doesn’t mean that Mass should put us to sleep.  But it is meant to be restful.  We rest intellectually when a church looks like a church.  We may not think about it much, but our minds constantly seek to understand the world around us.  They are constantly taking in pieces of information to help us interact with reality.  When everything makes sense, our minds are at ease; when something is off or not the way it’s supposed to be, our minds tend to focus on that.  So with this beautiful church, part of the draw is not just that there are expensive things, but that our minds understand that this place leads us to the worship of God and draws us out of the fallen world towards the heavenly Jerusalem by the precious materials and its orientation towards where God rests, in the tabernacle.  When a church looks like a church, no matter how ornate or simple it might be, it helps our minds to rest.
    God also teaches us in the Mass as we hear His word proclaimed to us and hear it explained in the homily.  Sometimes the Bible does not come so easily to us, because it is complex and God has inspired it to sustain us until Christ returns.  So it applies to AD 400, and AD 2024.  Sometimes it gives us historical facts, sometimes it gives us poetry, sometimes it gives us analogy, sometimes it gives us apocalyptic literature.  Some we can easily understand passages, sometimes we need help understanding what God is saying.  But there is a rest that comes from listening to good stories.  I remember in third grade that, right after recess, my teacher would read to our class a chapter of a small book, and that helped quiet our bodies and our minds down after the frenzied pace of recess.  Or think of a parent reading a bedtime story to kids as they try to get them to fall asleep.  Hearing helps us rest, and hearing the inspired Word of God gives rest to our souls.

    Lastly, God gives us Himself as food, which strengthens us.  The Eucharist is the source of our strength to live as Catholics in a world that increasingly opposes Catholicism and the teachings of Jesus.  The Eucharist is to Catholics what spinach is to Popeye.  Without it, we cannot be the people God wants us to be.  But how often do people skip Mass because there’s a sports tournament, or because they’re up north, or simply because they were out too late on Saturday night?  People bemoan that there are youth sports played on Sundays, but then they take their kids to the games and tournaments anyway.  If you want Sunday sports for young people to stop, stop taking your kids.  Let your coach know that you don’t participate in games on Sundays.  If enough people do it, they will stop having games.  Sandy Koufax, a Jewish pitcher who played for the Brooklyn, and then Los Angeles Dodgers, refused to pitch even in game one of the World Series because it was Yom Kippur.  
    We need rest, and God has given us a day of rest, where we can rest with Him in a place that helps our mind to rest and worship, while hearing the truth given to us through the Scriptures, and being sustained by the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist.  Don’t skip your rest.  You will need it for the road that God will lay out for you over the next six days!

Walking through Pagan Lands

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.  By now we’re probably all aware of the debacle that was the opening ceremonies of the Paris Olympics.  I didn’t watch it (I’m honestly not that big of an Olympics fan).  And I’m sure there were some nice parts to it.  However, the story quickly became how the opening ceremonies mocked Christianity by mimicking da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” with drag queens, transitioning to a mostly-naked man depicting Dionysius, the pagan god of revelry and debauchery.

    Bishop Barron had some good commentary on the whole thing, including the so-called apology after the fact.  And bishops from across the United States and the world have condemned this unnecessary antagonism towards Christianity, some noting that no such thing would have every been done concerning Mohammed or the Buddha.  I’ll let those commentaries speak for themselves.
    What struck me is how we really do live in pagan times.  I’m sure I knew this subconsciously, but the opening ceremonies certainly cemented it in my mind.  None of us lived during the first few centuries of Catholicism, before the Emperor Constantine legalized it in the early fourth century, but I doubt it was much different from what we saw on our screens (there’s just an easier way to share the depravity now with television and social media).
    So what do we do?  How do we live our lives in a post-christendom age?  I would suggest our Gospel gives us a clue.  The pagan world is like the man who was deaf and mute.  It is a world that is alive, but is not as it is supposed to be.  It lacks the ability to live up to its fullest potential.  The Decapolis was a group of ten city-states not far from the Sea of Galilee that had some Jewish population, but was mostly pagan.  The Lord, though his primary mission was to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, walked through a thoroughly pagan territory (this is one example; the other famous is His journey where He encountered the Gerasene demoniac).  So Christ then, like us today, walked through pagan lands.
    What did Christ do?  He opened the deaf and mute man’s ears and loosened his tongue.  In this way, the man could then hear the Gospel and share it.  Now, at this point, I do have to address the admonition that Christ gave the man who He healed to tell no one.  Mark’s Gospel is full of these warnings not to speak about what the Redeemer had done.  Why?  Part of St. Mark’s point, I believe, is that the Lord wants belief through faith.  The miracles He works demonstrates who He is, but they cannot take the place of faith.  And so He wants to draw the people to true and abiding faith in Himself as the Son of God, not just amazement and the miracles.  
    But back to the man, who, in some sense, represents paganism.  He needs someone to open his ears and to allow him to speak.  And not just speak anything, but speak the truth.  Paganism, a rejection of the true God, struggles to hear what is true and speak what is true.  It has some truth (think of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, for example), but that truth is muddled in with so much error.  Only when Christ come can the truth that the pagan world recognized be purified so that it doesn’t lead others astray (think of the Christianization of Plato and Aristotle by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, respectively, for example).  
    So, our role, as little christs, little anointed ones, sealed with the Holy Spirit to proclaim the Gospel, is to go to paganism and open their ears to the truth so that their lips can proclaim the Gospels.  Our mission is to take the water of baptism and apply it to paganism as we cry out to God and say Ephpheta, that is, be opened.  This is done, not by force, but by the witness of a life lived in fidelity to what Christ has taught, and sharing the reason for our hope.  That is how the Christians of the first few centuries secretly and very successfully converted much of Roman society, which was itself marked by polarization between the rich and poor, the increased stretching of the Roman military apparatus across the known world, and the licentiousness of those who had power and money (sound familiar?).  
    The early Catholics were known for not discriminating between Jew and non-Jew (Gentile was the word used, also sometimes Greek).  They didn’t practice enslavement.  They didn’t consider women and children property, but equal sharers in the new life that Christ won by His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  This is what St. Paul meant when he wrote to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  He wasn’t talking about gender identity or power struggles.  He was talking about how everyone was welcome to follow Christ, on Christ’s terms, and that the most important identity was that of a disciple.  In our invitations to others, we should have the same approach–invite everyone, regardless of race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, etc.–to follow Christ as He instructs us.
    Early Catholics drew people in by the way that they were happier because they didn’t worry about the power struggles, and the never-ending pursuit of riches.  An ancient Christian apologetic letter called The Epistle of Diognetus, showing how Catholics were not subversive but followed a higher law, wrote that Catholics “share their food by not their wives.”  They care for the poor, they exercise hospitality, but they do not share the perverse Roman sexual mores.  We, too, can live in such a way that we care for the poor, we show kindness to others, and exercise chastity and modesty in our relationships with others.  
    This was the way that pagan Rome became Christendom (albeit over centuries).  This was the way that the Church moved from being a bunch of small communities of maybe 30-50 people to metropolises of Catholic life and culture.  It worked then, and I believe it will work now.  We may not have the power we used to; we may not be able to keep public debauchery and indecency at bay anymore; but we can witness to Christ and the freedom and joy that come from living the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who with the Father and the Holy Spirit, live and reign for ever and ever.  Amen.