"If there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things"—Philippians 4:8
"There was a man in the land of Hus whose name was Job, a blameless, upright and God fearing man; Satan asked to be allowed to tempt him, and the Lord gave him power over his possessions and his body; and so, he destroyed his possessions and his children, and he ravaged his flesh with horrible sores"—Job 1; 2:7, Offertory Antiphon for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
"I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better. Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit." Philippians 1:23-24
St. Paul has two exhortations today, for two different kinds of people:
"I long to depart this life and be with Christ, for that is far better." If you love the things of this world, St. Paul wants to help you to want to leave this world and be with God.
"Yet that I remain in the flesh is more necessary for your benefit."
If you are disappointed with this world, and pine for the next, St. Paul wants to help you focus on the work God has in store for you.
"Blessed be he who has raised the great day of Sunday above all other days. The heavens and the earth, angels and men give themselves over to joy!" Father Peter talks about the Day of the Lord, Sunday, and the teaching of Christ that, “The Sabbath was made for man” (Mark 2:27).
Pope St. John Paul II, apostolic letter Dies Domini:
"Sunday is a day which is at the very heart of the Christian life." (7)
It is an "indelible expression of our relationship with God," (13)
and an “indispensable element of our Christian identity.” (30)
"Sharing in the Eucharist is the heart of Sunday, but the duty to keep Sunday holy cannot be reduced to this. [... In] the other moments of the day: family life, social relationships, moments of relaxation—the peace and joy of the Risen Lord [should] emerge in the ordinary events of life." (52)
"I would strongly urge everyone to rediscover Sunday: Do not be afraid to give your time to Christ!" (7)
St. Bernard of Clairvaux asks: Is gluttony the only sin in your life? Is your appetite, your stomach, the only thing that causes you to sin? If not, then why fast only from food this Lent? In addition to the stomach, he says: "The eyes must fast from curiosity, the ears must fast from tales, the tongue must fast from gossip, the soul must fast from vice, and the will must fast from its own desire."
If you're pushing yourself this Lent to grow in holiness, if you're taking up a serious spiritual discipline, here are three tips that might help you to get the most out of the Lenten season:
In whatever we decide to do for Lent, even though our particular fasts and disciplines may be hidden from each other, let us remember that we are all in this together, that we are all trying to grow in holiness during this lenten season, and so let us encourage one another and pray for one another throughout these forty days.
I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her.
What is wisdom? What is this thing that is so great that it is better than having power or riches? Here are three descriptions of wisdom in the Bible:
The book of Proverbs (9:10) says that: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” The book of Sirach (21:11) adds: “wisdom is the fulfillment of the fear of the Lord.” And holy Job, seeking to find God in the midst of his suffering, concludes in the 28th chapter of the book that bears his name: “Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.”
Wisdom is not the same thing as knowledge. It is something that has to do with our relationship with the Lord. Praise God that wisdom is not knowledge! Wisdom is accessible to everyone, not just to scholars who have mastered calculus or physics or chemistry or ancient languages.
Wisdom is something that we can all obtain by prayer, reflection, and meditation. Heavenly Wisdom is most easily obtained by mediation on the Holy Scriptures which, again, are accessible to everyone. St. Gregory the Great said about the Bible:
"The divine speech stirs up the clever with its mysteries, but provides consolation to the simple with its plain meaning.Scripture is like a river, broad and deep: shallow enough for the lamb to wade, deep enough for the elephant to swim." [Moralia in Job, Ep. IV]
The love of wisdom that we hear about in today's Old Testament reading is something that we can all experience by reading the Holy Scriptures, no matter our age, no matter our education.
Beyond health and comeliness I loved her,
and I chose to have her rather than the light,
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
I love this image: Long after the sun has gone down, when everyone else has gone to bed, there is still a candle burning in one window, in the house of the person who is seeking wisdom, who continues to read the holy Scriptures late into the night. Even “beyond health!” Once the love of wisdom takes hold a person, even the “good sense” that would tell a person: “go to bed, get some sleep” yields to the overwhelming desire to continue to bask in the presence of the deep things of God.
The reason that the person who loves wisdom acts in this way is because, in another phrase of St. Gregory: "the more we partake [...] the more we hunger." [Homily 36 on the Gospels] Unlike a person hungry for food, who is satisfied by eating or who even feels sick after overeating, the person who hungers for wisdom and who decides to take the Bible down from the bookshelf (often despite the fact that he or she doesn't much feel like reading), that person not only experiences satisfaction, but also finds within his or her heart an even greater desire than before, a desire that prompts one to continue reading: another verse, another chapter … and that prompts one then to pray about what one has read, first for a minute, then for an hour…. Until, without realizing it, you suddenly find yourself in the almost ridiculous position spoken of in the Scripture: "Beyond health and comeliness I loved her, and I chose to have her rather than the light, because the splendor of her never yields to sleep."
Why is this? Why does the pursuit of wisdom in the reading of the Holy Scripture give rise in us to this hidden desire that we never knew we had? St. Paul taught us in our second reading: "The word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart." The word of God cuts right to the heart of those most meaningful experiences that have made you who you are. Because the word of God is not a dead letter but is "living and effective," reading the Scriptures is different than reading other books.
Because the Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the Word of God, reading the word of God contained in Holy Scripture causes you to encounter the One for Whom and through Whom you were created, to encounter the One Who loves your soul and Who understands you better than you could ever understand yourself. For this reason, the conversation we have with God, Who is "able to discern reflections and thoughts of [our] heart"—that is, the prayer, the conversation we have with Him while reading the Bible—this conversation excites us, because we begin to feel that our deepest questions about life are answered by the presence of the Lord Jesus Who speaks to us in the Scriptures.
The reading about Wisdom that we heard today from the Book of Wisdom concludes in this way:
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.
In today's Gospel the rich man “went away sad, for he had many possessions.” He decided not to follow Jesus because he loved the things he owned. But St. Peter and the other disciples who, as Peter noted, had “given up everything” to follow Jesus, were promised by the Lord that
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands,
for my sake and for the sake of the gospel,
who will not receive a hundred times more, now, in this present age.
If someone were to ask me why I follow the Lord Jesus, I would not talk about Heaven. Meditation on the Holy Scriptures and the resulting encounter with the Living God have given me, now, in this present age, a hundred times more happiness than has been obtained by anyone devoted to the acquisition of money and the preservation of a comfortable routine.
Even though our Lord warns us that those who "receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands" will obtain all these things only "with persecutions," yet even the persecutions that inevitably come to anyone who upholds the teachings of Christ are to be preferred to the meaninglessness and nihilism that overtake those who seek their happiness from the things of this earth.
And besides all this, our Lord promises us also "eternal life in the age to come."
How then ought we to live? We can either seek wisdom, or distract ourselves with the things of this world which will never satisfy our deepest longings. Do we want only what is offered us by the world, or do we desire the hundredfold in this life promised us by the Lord? If, therefore, our desires are not too weak, let us resolve to read the Holy Scriptures, speak to God about what we have read, and so follow our Lord’s call to seek Wisdom.
My judgment on the project of modern translations of the Bible is that of John Senior: "For cultural purposes, there are only two English Bibles: for the Protestants the King James Version and for Catholics the Douay-Rheims. Both are literary masterpieces as none other even remotely is. Since spiritual mysteries can only be communicated through poetry, whatever more modern versions may gain in accuracy is nothing compared to what is lost."
So as not to merely set my own position against a straw man, I will quote what is probably the best concise defense of vernacular translation ever given, the introduction written by C.S. Lewis to the work "Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles" by J. B. Phillips (1947). Lewis argues: "The truth is that if we are to have translation at all we must have periodical re-translation. There is no such thing as translating a book into another language once and for all, for a language is a changing thing. If your son is to have clothes it is no good buying him a suit once and for all: he will grow out of it and have to be re-clothed." The meaning of certain English words has certainly changed since the early seventeenth or late sixteenth century. Reading the King James Version or Douay-Rheims unaided is a challenging task even for the relatively well-educated. But the lesson I draw from the 20th century is that the multiplicity of Bible translations, each trying desperately to pass itself off as "the best" English translation (or, whose Publishers propose it so in order to line their pockets with filthy lucre), has produced great division amongst faithful readers of Holy Scripture, and wholly unnecessary arguments between them about which translation to use. Let us stick to the old standards for communal reading, and use modern English translations only for private devotions or aid in study.
Msgr. Ronald Knox (whose 1949 translation of Holy Writ has inexplicably become popular in recent years with Catholics who wish to set themselves apart from their Protestant friends) explored with a little more specificity Lewis' notion that "we must have periodical re-translation". In his essay "Thoughts on Bible Translation," Knox opined, "anybody who tries to do a new translation of the Bible in these days should aim at producing something which will not, in fifty or a hundred years’ time, be 'dated.' In a word, what you want is neither sixteenth-century English nor twentieth-century English, but timeless English. Whether you can get it, is another question."
The English language changes, and therefore no translation will ever accomplish definitively the task of making plain the meaning of the ancient languages. Can one reach back through the millennia and bring into the present moment the sense of words written in those languages that once proclaimed the crucified Christ as King of the Jews? If one tries to do so, one must periodically revise one's work, simply because the 'present moment' is present for only a moment.
Given this, I would propose that we revisit the image given by Lewis: "If your son is to have clothes it is no good buying him a suit once and for all: he will grow out of it and have to be re-clothed." Maybe our search for the "best" English translation is not a search for the one that meets the needs of the here and now. Maybe the "definitive" English translation is a piece of clothing that can be one unchanging size and yet fit for its purpose, and even handed down through the generations: not a suit, but a baptismal garment. The Douay-Rheims is the gown worn by your infant grandfather, which if God be so good you might live to see outfit your great-grandson. It is everyone's beginning, the first dress in which one is clothed, and out of which one grows only after maturation. That is to say, once one has been awed by the majesty of the Word as presented in all its ancient splendor, perhaps one might be moved to explore the details of the Scripture, reading multiple translations so as to better arrive at the sense of this or that passage. But for many, entering into the wider exploration of these details is something they will leave to others of a more academic persuasion. The many will be content with this simple baptismal garment, content indeed to remain like little children as Our Lord commanded, fulfilling by their prayerful meditation on the venerable version of Scripture the admonition they received at their baptism: "Take this robe and keep it spotless until you arrive at the judgment seat of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you may be rewarded with everlasting life."
"For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord the divine institution."
Words from today's reading from the Book of Wisdom.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
My dear people,
Last week our Bishop, His Excellency the Most Reverend Salvatore Matano, wrote a letter to you, the faithful of the Diocese, which can be found as an insert in this week's bulletin. The letter concerns the fact that, some years ago, there were priests who hurt people, who hurt children, very badly. This week, a new law goes into effect allowing people who have been hurt to approach a court of law to seek redress for the wrongs that they suffered when they were young. We will very likely be hearing in the news a number of painful stories concerning the Church. I want to try to understand these horrors by examining the Gospel.
The Lord Jesus told a parable about some good and faithful servants who "vigilantly" await the return of Christ. St. Peter asked Him, "Lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?" Peter was asking whether this applied in a special way to those who follow Jesus very closely.
Christ's answer is disturbing. He says that in addition to the "faithful and prudent servants" who will do what Jesus wants, there will also be servants who "beat the menservants and the maidservants, [who] eat and drink and get drunk." Jesus says that when He returns at the end of time, He "will punish [those] servant[s] severely and assign [them] a place with the unfaithful."
What must St. Peter have thought, when he heard Jesus say this? When he asked, "Lord, is this parable meant for us?", what must Peter have thought of the answer: "That servant who knew his master’s will but did not [...] act in accord with his will, shall be beaten severely"?
Even before Jesus died on the Cross, He foresaw that some who would call themselves his servants would wickedly hurt people and leave them wounded. As we are confronted again with the fact that there have been terrible sinners in the Church, even within the priesthood, I think it is important for us to remember that Jesus chose to die to redeem mankind, even despite the fact that He foresaw those in his Church who would live unworthily of that redemption.
The Apostles themselves confronted this fact about the Church. St. Paul said to the leaders of the Church in Ephesus, "[T]he Holy Spirit has made you bishops to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them." (Acts 20:28–30)
If Jesus died for his Church even knowing that there would be sinful priests; if Saints Peter & Paul went forth and preached the Gospel despite knowing that there would be sinful bishops, just as there had been a Betrayer among the Twelve Disciples; I believe that we, too, can confidently hold the Catholic faith, even when we hear about members and ministers of the Church who are sinners.
But what can we do, when we are faced with the difficult truth of sin in the Church and in the clergy?
At the end of July I made a retreat with the Benedictines Monks of Perpetual Adoration in County Meath, Ireland. This monastery was founded in 2012 and, basing their prayers on the writings of a 17th century nun, Servant of God Catherine Mectilde de Bar, these monks pray in a special way in reparation for the sins of priests.
Mother Mectilde, commenting on the passage of Scripture where the prophet Jeremiah sees great abominations happening inside the Temple, says:
Who, alas, […] does not know that, alongside of priests who are fervent and truly divine, there are priests who are lukewarm and indifferent, priests who are wicked […]? And so, the Church, in calling [us] to reparation, begs us not to forget the outrages made against the glory of her Divine Spouse by His own ministers. Yours it is […] to expiate the sins of the Sanctuary; yours it is to bear the weight of the sins of the priesthood. Let us enter into these intentions of the Church, and united in spirit with what remains on earth of fervent Christians, and of priests pressed by the charity of Jesus Christ, let us strive to repair the[se] outrages.
The Benedictine monks whom I met seek to make reparation for the sins of priests through prayer. One of the prayers from this community uses ordinary rosary beads to say simple prayers for priests. On the large bead, one recites the prayer:
"Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Thy Beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb without blemish or spot / In reparation for my sins, and for the sins of all Thy priests."
And then on the ten smaller beads one says:
"By Thy Precious Blood O Jesus, / Purify and Sanctify Thy Priests."
… "By Thy Precious Blood O Jesus, / Purify and Sanctify Thy Priests."
Perhaps we can pray prayers of reparation like these. The word "reparation" means "to repair." We can ask God to repair the damage done to souls and to the Church by the sins of priests. It is important that we use the Sacrament of Confession to confess our own sins, also, lest we too cause harm to others by falling into grave sin.
One of the most disturbing things about living in this moment of history is how widespread these sins have been shown to be. Fifteen years ago when I was becoming Catholic, many people believed that Catholic priests were the only class of people who had betrayed and hurt children. Many people thought that there must have been something uniquely horrific about the seminaries where priests were trained, or something about the nature of celibacy that gave rise to these sins. But the New York State Child Victims Act that goes into effect this week has brought forth stories of people who had been hurt, not only by priests, but by doctors and nurses, by public school teachers, gymnastics coaches, boy scout troop leaders; and many, many other people whom everyone used simply to assume could be trusted, without question.
We therefore are confronted with the stark reality of sin. What can we do, when we are faced with the difficult truth of sin in the world, and within our own souls? In the book of Wisdom we read, "[I]n secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice." We can offer sacrifice in reparation. We can ask God, in prayer, to repair the damage done to souls. We can sacrifice our pride by admitting our own sinfulness in the Sacrament of Confession. And we can unite our prayers to the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross by coming to pray before the Blessed Sacrament, and especially by coming each and every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation to the Holy Sacrifice the Mass, where the great act of reparation and reconciliation, the pouring out of Christ's Blood, is renewed in this sacred ritual, where the Resurrected Christ Who has defeated the power of Sin and Death is present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Sacred Host.
Let us pray especially in this week that God may be pleased to give his Church the gifts of unity and peace.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
This sermon is an abbreviation of the first chapter of "The Way to Converse Always and Familiarly with God" by St. Alphonsus Liguori. The chapter is entitled: "God Wishes Us to Speak to Him."
Jesus "was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days"
Next year on the first Sunday of Lent I’ll say a word about the three temptations Christ confronts in the desert, but this year for Lent I want to focus on prayer. Christ our Lord was led into the desert where He spent forty days. In the forty days of Lent, we have an opportunity to find a deserted place—a quiet church, a corner of the house where no one will bother us—and "pray to our Father in secret."
The first thing it is necessary to realize about prayer is how much God wants us to speak to Him! Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking that speaking to God with confidence, like one would speak to a friend, is irreverent—They ask with a misplaced humility: Who am I to talk to God? Why would God want to listen to me? Holy Job in the Old Testament was awestruck when he thought about the fact that God shows us his love, and wants us to speak to Him: "What is man,” Job exclaims, "that You should make so much of him, or why do You set your Heart upon him?"
The friends of God in the Bible and all the saints throughout history teach us that, yes, you ought to revere God in humility—especially when you remember your unthankfulness, and the outrages you’ve been guilty of—yet this should not stop you from treating God with the most tender love, and great confidence.
God is Infinite Majesty; but at the same time he is Infinite Goodness, Infinite Love.
Even though God is so much greater than you, He delights that you should talk to him with that same confidence, that freedom and tenderness, which children use towards their mothers.
God loves you as much as if He had no love for anyone except you only. Christ said to his Apostles that He would shed his Blood "for you and for many," but even if He had known that you would have been the only person in all of history to accept his love—He still would have been born and suffered and died and conquered death, all just to share his love with you alone!
St. Alphonsus Liguori, a bishop and Doctor of the Church, encourages us to think about God’s love for us, and to tell God how we feel when we think about his love for us:
"Say to Him often: O my Lord! Why do You love me? what good do You see in me? Have You forgotten the pains I have caused You? But since You have treated me so lovingly—and instead of casting me into Hell, have granted me so many favors—whom can I desire to love from this day forward ... but You, my God, my all?"
St. Alphonsus continues:
"In order to strengthen your confidence in God, frequently call to mind his loving treatment of you, and the gracious ways he has saved you from the disorders of your life, and your attachments to this world, in order to draw you to his holy love." And be afraid of this one thing: "fear … to have too little confidence in God! God is displeased with a want of trust on the part of souls that heartily love Him. If, then, you desire to please his loving heart: talk with Him, from now on, with the greatest confidence and tenderness you can possibly have."
St. Paul, thinking about God’s love, wonders how we could ever think that God would ever refuse us anything good. Paul says in his letter to the Romans: God "did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all: will he not also give us all things with Him?"
Don’t only pray to God during Mass, or only just before going to bed, or only before meals, or only before starting the day. Get used to speaking with God often, alone, familiarly, with confidence and love, as you would to the dearest friend you have, who loves you best.
This sermon was taken, almost in its entirety, from "The Liturgical Year" by Dom Prosper Guéranger, abbot of Solesmes.
Holy Saturday has well nigh run its course, and the dawn of Easter is approaching.
In the underworld, the Soul of our crucified Lord is about to give the glad word of departure to the myriads of long-imprisoned holy souls, who cluster 'round Him in adoring love. Death is still holding his silent sway over the sepulchre where the Body of Jesus rests. Since the day when Death gained his first victim, Abel, he has swept off countless generations; but never has he held in his grasp a prey so noble as the One who now lies in the tomb near Calvary. Never has the terrible sentence of God, pronounced against our first parents, “YOU SHALL SURELY DIE,” received such a fulfillment as this; but, never has Death received such a defeat as the one that it is about to suffer. It is true, the power of God has, at times, brought back the dead to life: the son of the widow of Naim, for instance, and Lazarus, were reclaimed from the bondage of this tyrant Death; but he regained his sway over them all. But the Victim of Calvary is to conquer him for ever, for this is He of whom it is written in the prophecy: ‘O death! I will be your death!’ [Osee, xiii, 14]. Yet a few brief moments and the battle will be begun, and life shall vanquish death.
Jesus had said to the Jews: ‘A wicked generation seeks a sign; no sign shall be given it, but that of Jonah the prophet.’ [St. Matth. xii, 39]. Three days in the tomb—the afternoon and night of Friday, the whole of Saturday, and the first few hours of the Sunday—these are enough: enough to satisfy divine justice; enough to certify the death of the Crucified, and make His triumph glorious.
‘No one takes away my life from Me: I lay it down of Myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again.’ [St. John, x, 18]. This is what Our Lord said before His Passion: now is the hour for the fulfillment of His words, and Death shall feel their whole force. As the first rays of dawn break across the horizon, the Soul of Jesus immediately darts from the prison of the netherworld, followed by the whole multitude of the holy souls that are around Him. In the twinkling of an eye, it reaches and enters the tomb, and reunites itself with that Body, which, three days before, it had quitted amidst an agony of suffering. The sacred Body returns to life, raises itself up, and throws aside the winding-sheet, the spices, and the bands. The bruises have disappeared, the Blood has been brought back to the veins; and from the wounds in his hands and in his side, from these hands and feet that had been pierced with nails, there shines forth a dazzling light that fills the cave.
The holy Angels had once clustered 'round the stable and adored the Babe of Bethlehem; they are now gathered around the tomb, adoring the conqueror of death. They take the shrouds and, reverently, folding them up, place them on the slab, whereon the Body had been laid by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
O death! where is now thy sting? Sin had made us your slaves; your victory was complete; and now, behold! You yourself are defeated! Jesus, whom you exultingly held under your law, has set Himself free; and we, after you have domineered over us for a time, we too shall be free from your grasp. The tomb you make for us, will become to us the source of a new life, for He that now conquers you is “the First-born among the dead” and to-day is the Passover, the deliverance, for Jesus and for us, his brethren. He has led the way; we shall follow; and the day will come, when you, the enemy that destroys all things, shall yourself be destroyed by immortality. Your defeat dates from this moment of Jesus’ resurrection, and so, with St. Paul, we say to you: “O death! where is thy victory? O death! where is thy sting?”
And so, with great rejoicing, we now bless the font from which we share in the power of Christ's resurrection.
Two weeks ago, on the feast of the Holy Family, we discussed marriage and family life, and some of the wonderful blessings that God bestows on the world through his gift of human sexuality. Today, St. Paul reminds us that along with that gift comes a responsibility to use it well.
"The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord," he says. Elsewhere in the same chapter he writes: "neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate [molles], nor those who lie with men [ἀρσενοκοῖται / masculorum concubitores], nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God."
The New Testament proposes an incredibly high standard for sexual morality, and relates it to whether or not one will enter the kingdom of Heaven. And what St. Paul says here is not even as provocative as what Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew when he taught that anyone who even looks at another person with lust is guilty of the sin of adultery: "Every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
Seeing that God wants us to live this way, we would be right to ask the question: WHY?
The Church's answer to this question is that God calls us to live the moral life for the sake of our own happiness; and for the purpose of human flourishing, of becoming greater than we presently are. Departing from the Church's teaching on the moral law makes people sad, angry, and bitter.
Fifty years ago, in 1968, Pope Paul VI predicted that society would become sad, angry, and bitter as a result of the abandonment of the moral law, beginning with the world's embrace of a contraceptive mentality. In his prophetic encyclical Humanae vitae, he wrote:
"Responsible individuals will quickly see the truth of the Church's teaching if they consider what consequences will follow from the methods of contraception and the reasons given for the use of contraception. They should first consider how easy it will be [for many] to justify behavior leading to marital infidelity or to a gradual weakening in the discipline of morals. [...] Indeed, it is to be feared that husbands who become accustomed to contraceptive practices will lose respect for their wives. They may come to disregard their wife's psychological and physical equilibrium and use their wives as instruments for serving their own desires."
"As instruments for serving their own desires." Pope Paul VI predicted that if people treated God's gift of sexuality not as a means for bringing new life into the world, but merely as a way to find pleasure, men would treat women, certainly not as equals, and sometimes not even as people, but simply as "instruments for serving their own desires."
And boy, have the chickens come home to roost on that one. Our country has recently begun to have a long-overdue conversation about how wrong it is for anyone to treat another person as an "instrument for serving their own desires." At the Golden Globes last week, Oprah made a grand speech about the #MeToo movement, and everyone has banded together to proclaim that is always, absolutely necessary that each person in a relationship must give their CONSENT to what passes between them; they must CHOOSE any behavior in which they might engage. This contains a wonderful underlying assumption: YOU CAN CHOOSE! You need not make decisions based solely on what you feel! You can choose whether to follow your base instincts, OR—if you see that a choice would not make you happy, or see that it would hurt another person, or that it would be contrary to God's law—you can choose to rise above your passions and make your choice according to the rational consideration of whether it is the right thing to do or not.
Now, Pope Paul VI in Humanae vitae was speaking specifically about contraception, but his basic message applies broadly. One of the things I love about the Catholic moral system is its internal consistency. Everything has reference to everything else, and nothing is arbitrary.
One element of a moral system with internal consistency is that it all stands or falls together. Humanae vitae says that "each and every marriage act (quilibet matrimonii usus) must remain ordered towards (per se destinatus) the transmission of life." That is the teaching of the Church: human sexuality must always be aimed at bringing about new life. That is why every method of contraception, or anything that would frustrate the sexual act from being able to generate new life, is a sin. That is why pornography and masturbation are both sins. That is why the Church can not recognize a "marriage" between two people of the same sex: because their love for each other can not, in that way, culminate in an act that generates new life.
(If I can be allowed to insert a side-bar here about homosexuality: I've met gay Catholics pretty much everywhere I've been, and I have to say that I number some of my gay Catholic friends among the most faithful Catholics that I know. The rest of us are constantly encouraged by the Church in our vocations, either the discernment and living out of marriage, or the life of celibacy in priesthood or consecrated life. But those who have courageously chosen to embrace celibacy because of their homosexuality have frequently encountered from their fellow Catholics and from their priests either outright hatred, or, at best, a well-meaning but weak-hearted refusal to really have an honest conversation about how their particular circumstances can be shepherded by the teachings of the Church to foster their growth in holiness and their more perfect following of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And yet despite this lack of encouragement, they remain loyal to the Scriptures and to the Church. I know of few examples more inspiring than theirs.)
When Pope John Paul II came to America in 1995, he challenged us with this question:
"Can the Biblical wisdom which played such a formative part in the very founding of your country be excluded from [the] debate [about morals]? Would not doing so mean that America’s founding documents no longer have any defining content? [...] Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought."
And this is the question: WHAT OUGHT WE TO DO?
Should I act selfishly? Or should I find some source of meaning or purpose outside of myself, greater than myself?
When Saint Paul says that those who engage in various kinds of immorality "will not inherit the kingdom of God," some people ask, "Would God really send someone to Hell" for x, or y, or z? I say, that's God's business. Let Him worry about whom He will command be delivered from eternal damnation. It doesn't do a lot of good to wonder about, or even particularly to worry about, the eternal salvation of anyone else, because the only person whose eternal salvation you can directly affect is your own.
And so again, many people then ask the question, "Would God really send me to Hell” for this or that or the other thing? But I think that's the wrong way of approaching the issue.
Living the moral life as proposed by the Church is difficult. Sometimes extremely difficult. It requires courage, and virtue, and a willingness to suffer. But it's worth it.
In the Gospels, in that same chapter where Jesus teaches about even lust being adultery, He says that "Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven." If someone wants to adopt the attitude: "Could I make it to Heaven without fully committing to Christ's teachings?"—if you want to settle for less, I can't stop you. But as for me, I want to be numbered among the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven! Or even if I fail, which I probably will, I want to be able to look God in the face when I die and be able to tell Him that I tried. That, to me, is what the moral life is about. Christ proposes to us, through the Church, a way of living that is incredibly difficult, and radical, and which will probably cause some of our family and friends to look down on us as someone who's living in a way that is unhealthy and just downright weird.
But those who follow Christ, God will make great. So aim high!
My dear people, let us journey together to Heaven.
Today we celebrate Christ the King. Although the idea that Christ is our king is present in the Scriptures, this is not an ancient observance. This feast was only instituted in 1925. Centuries before, America and France had cast aside their Kings by violent revolution. In those days the Kaiser of Germany lived in exile, and Russia had just killed their entire royal family. In an era when men refused to be ruled by Kings, the Church reaffirmed her ancient language for the relationship we have with Christ. She did so because nothing short of the word “King” can capture what it means to say that Christ is in a position of authority over us.
Christ is the absolute Monarch of the whole earth, and we are his subjects. This means we are not free to do whatever we please with our lives, but must follow the commands of our sovereign. We must be willing to swallow our pride and submit to his law. And he explains to us clearly in the Gospel the nature of the laws that He demands we must obey:
When He says, “whatever you did for one of the least brothers of mine, you did for me,” Christ reminds us of how He manifested his Kingship in the world: He was born into poverty, suffered hunger and thirst, lived for years in exile from his home country, was stripped of his garments, and was wrongfully put to death. That was Christ’s idea of how to show that He was the great King.
Being King, for Christ, never meant asserting his rights, but instead meant being willing to suffer for the sake of his people. This gives us some insight, I think, into how we should live in imitation of our Lord.
The Church in ancient Rome, believing with all her heart in the Kingship of Christ, did not attempt to assert before Caesar the rights of Christians to freedom of worship. Rather than taking the course of political activism, the earliest generations of Christians proclaimed one thing only: Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. They proclaimed Him with their upright moral lives, with their unsparingly generous service to the poor, and by their willingness to die rather than compromise even one article of their faith. And the effect of the witness of the martyrs was that the entire Roman Empire abandoned the false gods worshiped by their fathers, and adhered to the true faith.
Imitating our Lord, Who served in humility and died in obscurity, the early Christians changed the world. And the way they thought about Christ as their King guided their actions.
There is a fourth century legend (Life of St. Martin, XXIV) about St. Martin of Tours in which the Devil attempts to trick the saint by presenting himself disguised as Christ the King. Satan, whom Saint Paul tells us sometimes “disguises himself as an angel of light,” appears to Saint Martin surrounded by a brilliant purple light, clothed in a royal robe, and with a crown of precious stones and gold upon his head; even his shoes were inlaid with gold. With excitement and rejoicing in his voice, he stands by the side of Martin as he prays in his cell and says, "Acknowledge, Martin, who it is that you behold. I am Christ; and being just about to return to earth, I wished to manifest myself to you first." The saint, who was dazzled by this appearance, preserved a long silence. ... The Devil then repeated, "Martin, why do you hesitate to believe, when you see? I am Christ." Then Martin replied as follows: "The Lord Jesus did not predict that he would come clothed in purple, and with a glittering crown upon his head. I will not believe that Christ has come, unless he appears with that appearance and form in which he suffered, and openly displaying the marks of his wounds upon the cross." On hearing these words, the devil vanished like smoke.
When St. Martin thought of Christ crowned with many crowns, he imagined the first and greatest of Christ’s crowns to be the crown of thorns. Martin knew that Christ’s majesty was the prize of his suffering, and so would not believe that it was Christ unless he saw the nail marks in his hands. As we sang in our opening hymn, “Rich wounds yet visible above in beauty glorified!” For the early Christians, the suffering we undergo in this life is the means by which we attain Heaven, where earthly suffering will be transformed into something beautiful.
This way of thinking about Christ’s kingship produced many saints. And the saints learned to think about Christ the King in this way by observing how Christ treated power and authority in the Gospels.
Our Lord was tempted by Satan in the desert with worldly power: “The devil led him into a high mountain, and shewed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time; And he said to him: To You will I give all this power, and the glory of them; for to me they are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them. If you therefore will adore before me, all shall be yours. And Jesus answering said to him: It is written: You shall adore the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” He declined to lay claim to the worldly authority that ought rightly to have been his.
Our Lord was asked by Pontius Pilate quite directly, “You are then a King?” His words ought to ring in our ears, not only on this Feast of Christ the King, but every day of our lives: “Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, my followers would certainly have fought that I might not be delivered to the Jews. But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”
How did Our Lord assert his Kingship? By living in a way that led all men to the conviction that He was one who “taught with authority,” and whose words were Truth.
How did Our Lord assert his Kingship? By eschewing all secular power, lest anyone say that He attained his kingdom from a bargain with the Devil.
How did Our Lord assert his Kingship? By being willing to suffer and die for the Truth He had preached, rather than hold back even a single word of that Truth.
Let us follow his example.
Let us prove Christ’s love for the poor by serving our needy neighbor as if he were our King.
Let us prove the truth of the words Jesus spoke by living as if our kingdom were not of this world.
Let us prove the superiority of that kingdom by choosing to suffer for our faith rather than battle for our rights.
Let us prove the veracity of our faith by proclaiming at all times the Truth we have been taught by Christ, even if by sharing this Truth the world condemns us to a shameful death.
If we, like our Lord and like his glorious martyrs, are willing even to hazard our lives in order to proclaim to truth of the Kingdom which is not of this world, then by our sufferings we shall give the world such a proof of that Kingdom that men shall once again stand in awe of the faith of Christians, lay aside their false idols, and follow Jesus.
Thy Kingdom Come.
I am honored to have been invited by His Excellency to preach to the members Saint Thomas More Lawyers’ Guild. I hope that these thoughts derived from the Canon Law tradition will be of at least some small benefit to you who labor in the field of civil law.
We read in the Book of Revelation that the Archangels whose feast we celebrate today were the victors of the great celestial contest. For the devil and his angels, “there was no longer any place for them in heaven.” Satan was thrown down to earth, and his angels with him.
And so instead of war in Heaven, war has broken out on earth. That war sometimes manifests itself in physical violence, but it is most fundamentally a war fought within the human heart. The ancient serpent, who once whispered temptation into Eve’s ear in the garden of Paradise, is not content to ruin man one by one. Rather, we are told that the Devil has “deceived the whole world,” and with each passing year his great deception becomes manifest more and more in the laws of our society.
In the third century, the great theologian and Church father Origen proposed a Christian resistance to this evil: “Suppose,” he says, “that a man were living among the Scythians, whose laws are contrary to the divine law, and was compelled to live among them ... such a man for the sake of the true law, though illegal among the Scythians, would rightly form associations with like-minded people contrary to the laws of the Scythians.” (Contra Celsum, Book 1, Chapter 1.)
You are such an association: A group of like-minded persons, guided by Catholic principles, who are willing to stand up against the false and degenerate statutes that mock true justice. And it is God who teaches us what is just. For example, the fourteenth century jurist Johannes Monachus pointed out that when the Lord God wished to punish the first man for the first sin, He did so by means of a fair trial. God, who knows all things, asked Adam: “Where are you? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Genesis demonstrates that the accused must always be given a citation and an opportunity to defend himself. Johannes summarized this lesson by coining the phrase, “innocens nisi probetur nocens,” “innocent until proven guilty.” We who serve the law must always follow the example of God Himself, Who affords man his rights even when he has done nothing to deserve them.
Saint John Paul II, addressing the International Union of Catholic Jurists on November 24th, 2000, articulated our vocation in this way: "The possibility of giving his or her due not only to a relative, a friend, a citizen or fellow believer, but also to every human being, simply because he is a person, simply because justice requires it, [this] is the honor of law and of jurists. If there is an expression of the unity of the human race and of equality between all human beings, this expression is rightly given by the law, which [excludes] no one."
It is our particular duty that we who uphold the law should always insist upon the rights of everyone, without exception: no matter what they may have been accused of, no matter whether they are rich or poor, no matter their country of origin, no matter whether they have already been born or not. If we live out the principles of justice, which we see enacted in Holy Scripture, we trust that one day the Lord will call us home to sing his praises in the sight of the angels.
Christ the Lord has raised marriage, between the baptized, to the dignity of a Sacrament. In the Sacraments, simple things are used to make us holy. Consider the manner in which He has given you grace through the other Sacraments:
In Baptism, Christ used water to plunge you into his death, that you might be reborn as a child of God.
In Confirmation, Christ used oil mixed with aromatic spices to fill you with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
In the Eucharist, Christ takes simple bread and wine, and through the power of his word, makes them into his Body and Blood, that you might receive the most profound spiritual nourishment.
But in Marriage, Christ will sanctify you, not by means of some of the common things of everyday life—water, olive oil, bread—but rather, in the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, Christ will sanctify you by means of day-to-day life itself!
God has given you in this Sacrament a means of growing in holiness that is not limited to the time you spend within the four walls of this church. But this growth in holiness is, to be sure, neither easy nor simple; and the happiness which the Church professes to be a part of marriage is a prize to be won, not a gift received at the altar-rail. It will require constant attention to the needs of your spouse, and one day, God willing, to those of your children.
This highlights the difference between how the world sees Marriage and how the Church sees marriage. Our society, I think, misunderstands the … genre of Marriage. For the world, Marriage is a fairy tale, the story of living “happily ever after.” But for the Christian, Marriage is the story of a martyrdom. This wedding is the beginning of your life together, a life you now live not for yourself, but for your spouse, and for your children. Each day will give you ample opportunities to choose those things which please your spouse, rather than your own selfish desires. And thus, Christ has given you a thousand little ways to mortify your members which are upon the earth, so that when Christ who is your life shall appear, you may also appear with him in glory.
I said that the world misunderstands Matrimony when it images Marriage as living “happily ever after”. But perhaps I ought rather to have said this: The Church recognizes only one truly happy ending. Your married life is meant to prepare you for Heaven; and to create a home in which children can discover the faith from within a loving family; and, through your example of loving and mutual self-sacrifice, to provide a witness and an encouragement to the family and friends who have gathered around you today. In all these things, take as your constant example the perfect marriage, that between Christ and his Church, marked on his side by unfailing self-giving love, and on the side of the Church by repentant faithfulness.
In the Nuptial Blessing given at this Mass we will pray that you may “see your children's children to the third and fourth generation, and enjoy the long life that will fulfill your desires.” I know that this is not simply my prayer for you, but the prayer of each and every person here present. You are greatly loved. May the fondness and affection we all have for you be a source of strength in times of difficulty, that, upheld by God's grace through the many tribulations of this present life, you may come one day to the everlasting joys of Heaven.
“Moses consecrated an altar to the Lord, offering upon it holocausts, and sacrificing victims: he made an evening sacrifice to the Lord God for an odor of sweetness, in the sight of the Israelites.”+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
—Offertory of today's Mass
"Our great danger is to throw away things that are excellent, which we do not understand, and replace them with mediocre forms which seem to us to be more meaningful [but] which in fact are only trite. I am very much afraid that when all the dust clears we will be left with no better than we deserve: a rather silly, flashy, seemingly up-to-date series of liturgical forms that have lost the dignity and the meaning of the old ones."
It's a striking phrase: “Our great danger is to throw away things that are excellent, which we do not understand.” My purpose this morning is not to expound upon the evils of “silly, flashy, seemingly up-to-date” liturgy: I think that for the most part I would be preaching to the choir on that subject. Rather, I want to say that Merton's warning about the liturgy applies to all aspects of our spiritual lives. We all stand in danger of throwing away things that are excellent because we do not understand them. Of the many things we stand in danger of throwing away, I will mention three:
If there is one excellent thing, above all others, that has been thrown away in our modern age for lack of understanding, it is silence. One of the reasons I love this Mass is that there is so much time for silent prayer. Although there may be noise—singing, a crying child, the ringing of bells—there is always an environment conducive to an interior silence. Silence, whether kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament or sitting in some other tranquil place away from distractions, is something commended to us by the lives of all the saints as a way to draw close to God. In the second chapter of the prophet Habbukuk we read: “The Lord is in his holy temple: let all the earth keep silence before him.”
One reason our society hates this stillness and silence because it is not productive, because there is nothing to “show” for time spent in this way. But as Pope Benedict said during his apostolic visit to the United States in 2008: “Time spent in prayer is never wasted, however urgent the duties that press upon us from every side.” Although time spent in silence before God does not usually produce immediately obvious effects in our life, it makes us into reservoirs of God's grace; and if silence is for us a habit we will often find ourselves saying something unexpectedly profound as we spontaneously share the fruit of our contemplation with others.
A second aspect of the spiritual life too often ignored in our day is the importance Holy Scripture. The Scriptures are an excellent and most important way in which we come to know God. St. Jerome said that “Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.” (Commentariorum in Isaiam libri, Prol.: PL 24, 17.) Saint Basil the Great wrote, “What is the distinctive mark of the faithful? Conforming their lives with complete certainty to the meaning of the words of Scripture, not daring to remove or add a single thing.” (Moralia, Regula LXXX, XXII: PG 31, 867.)
Sometimes, however, our lack of comprehension discourages us from reading the Bible. But we are not alone in this feeling! In fact, even the Bible itself says this about the Bible! In St. Peter's second epistle, speaking of the letters of St. Paul, he says: “There are some things in them hard to understand” (3:16). But although there are many things in the Bible we may not understand at first, if we allow the clean sea breeze of the Scripture to continually blow through our minds it will clear away the stagnant air of our worldly thoughts, and gradually all our reflections, our very way of thinking, will be filled with the scent, with the sweetness of Scripture. [For this image I am indebted to C. S. Lewis.]
This is, for me, difficult to illustrate. I might take as an example the verses from the 24th chapter of the Book of Exodus which serve as the Offertory Verse of today's Mass: “Moses consecrated an altar to the Lord, offering upon it holocausts, and sacrificing victims: he made an evening sacrifice to the Lord God for an odor of sweetness.” If we are inclined to throw away that which we do not understand, these words might pass in one ear and out the other, for there is much in them that may seem strange to us: “Why did God command animal sacrifice? What does it mean to consecrate an altar? Why were these sacrifices done in the evening?” While it is important to answer such questions, it is not always important to answer each of them immediately. One of the great advantages I have enjoyed in the Christian life is that I started reading the Bible, book-by-book I mean, in seventh grade, before I was old enough to let this constant stream of abstract questions distract me from the central concepts that were being communicated by the text. Gradually, the ideas I gleaned from the Bible formed the way I thought about God. This reading and re-reading of the Scripture laid the foundation for my subsequent conversion to Catholicism:
“Moses consecrated an altar to the Lord,”
just as our worship of the Lord happens in sacred places set apart from the rest of our neighborhoods, on altars consecrated by a bishop;
“offering upon it holocausts, and sacrificing victims,”
which offering was a prefigurement, a foreshadowing, of the perfect offering made once for all by Christ on the Cross, the offering which we re-present to the Father sacramentally on this altar each Sunday;
Moses “made an evening sacrifice to the Lord God for an odor of sweetness;”
just as the Lord desires that we should pray to Him at certain times throughout the day.
This brings me to my final point, the third spiritual practice we stand in danger of throwing away when we do not understand its value: the sanctification of the hours of the day. Throughout the Scriptures, we see that God's people render Him homage at fixed times. The morning and evening sacrifices of the levitical priesthood as we have just seen in Exodus; the Apostles Peter and John “going up to the temple at” what the third chapter of the book of Acts calls “the hour of prayer, the ninth hour,” or what we call 3pm, the hour at which Our Lord died on the Cross; in the Psalms we read, “Seven times a day I have given praise to thee”.
Sometimes we do not understand how much our human nature thrives on regularity, rhythms, and habits. For this reason, the Scripture and many of the saints exhort us to punctuate the day with planned, regular moments of prayer: to rise at a fixed time and make the first word of each day a prayer: “Serviam!”, “I will serve!”; to pray the Angelus at mid-day; to offer thanks to God in the evening after the close of the day's labors; to pray before bed, beginning at a very young age with the prayers we recite with our parents, and as we grow older transitioning to an examination of conscience in which we review the actions of the day and ask God's forgiveness for our shortcomings.
In monastic life, “the best and safest” of all vocations (St. Teresa of Avila, Life, 3, 5), religious follow a fixed and unvarying schedule of prayer each day, one which revolves primarily around the recitation of the Psalms. The more we imitate that ideal, the more we share in the fruit of that way of life.
I fear that these brief explanations can do little to help us understand the excellence of these spiritual practices, which means that we may still face the great danger of throwing them away. But although my words have fallen short of their task, I ask that you would take these things to heart all the same: Daily silent prayer, daily reading of the Scriptures, and daily prayers of all kinds recited at fixed hours of the day. If these elements are present in our lives, God will do great things through us.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
This sermon was preached at St. Thomas the Apostle church in Irondequoit, New York on 18 September, 2016.
“In a year or two,” he said holding her hand tightly, “we’ll be married. Just as soon as I’m on my feet and set with the firm for good.”That year passes, but nothing changes: there was always something to get in the way, always a “but first…” that kept Peter from acting on his desire to marry the only person who made him happy. Eventually, Katie confronts him about it:
“I’ll wait, Peter,” she whispered. “We don’t have to hurry.”
“We won’t tell anyone, Katie…. It’s our secret.”
“Peter, I want to be married now, tomorrow, as soon as possible.”But when that morning rolled around, Peter had second thoughts. He told Katie that his job was particularly stressful at that moment, but that the difficulty would be over soon:
“Katie!” he gasped, regaining his voice. “What happened? Why as soon as possible? […] You know I’d marry you tonight if you wanted me to. Only, what happened?”
“Nothing. I’m all right now. I’ll tell you. You’ll think I’m crazy. I just suddenly had the feeling that I’d never marry you.”
“Look, Katie, we’ll get the license tomorrow morning. […] I’ll come for you at ten o’clock tomorrow morning and we’ll go for the license.”
“And I thought…I thought that if we waited…for just a few weeks…I’d be set with the firm […]. But, of course it’s up to you.” He looked at her and his voice was eager. “If you want to do it now, we’ll go at once.”Things ended up not working out between Peter and Katie. There was always ‘just one more’ delay. This story illustrates why sloth is more than simple laziness, but is in fact something so radically opposed to our happiness that it constitutes “the beginning and root of despair.” (Josef Pieper, On Hope, in Faith, Hope, Love, San Fransisco: Ignatius, 2012, p. 117) Because we often wrongly identify sloth with “laziness” in the sense of inactivity, many people try to overcome the despair born of sloth by making themselves busy. Peter Keeting was always busy with work, but he went away desolate because the despair that comes from sloth “is not destroyed by ‘work’ […] but [by] magnanimity and that joy which is a fruit of the supernatural love of God.” (Pieper 118, 122)
“But, Peter,” she said calmly, serene and astonished. “But of course. We’ll wait. […] No, it’s much better. You see, to tell you the truth, I thought this morning that it would be better if we waited, but I didn’t want to say anything if you had made up your mind.”
“Well…” he muttered. “Well, all right, Katie. We’ll wait. It’s better, of course. I…I’ll run along then. I’ll be late at the office.” He felt he had to escape her room for the moment, for that day. “I’ll give you a ring. Let’s have dinner together tomorrow.”
“Yes, Peter. That will be nice.”
He went away, relieved; and desolate: cursing himself for the dull, persistent feeling that told him he had missed a chance which would never return.
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church”.
When St. Paul said that he is “filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ,” what does he mean? Does he mean that the sufferings of Christ were not sufficient to redeem us?
No! That is absolutely not what he means! The perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is of infinite value because it is the willing sacrifice of God Himself.
So, what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ?
Only “our participation in them.” The only thing that is lacking in the afflictions of Christ is that there are still people who have not fully benefited from them by accepting God’s grace. And St. Paul can say, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake” because he knows that the many sufferings that he endured during his missionary journeys were not in vain: Many, many people believed the Gospel message and were baptized because of his preaching.
This missionary attitude is something that all Christians ought to share. We ought, like St. Paul, to feel even that we can REJOICE in our suffering, if this suffering is brought about by our efforts to share the faith with others.
Much of the time, though, we do not have this missionary attitude. Although in this country (at least right now) we don’t expect to suffer martyrdom for witnessing to our faith, as St. Paul did, even when we do have a desire to tell others about Christ we hold back because we’re afraid to suffer the humiliation of being rejected. We’re afraid of appearing foolish if we’re not able to explain ourselves well….
An old man had an enormous apple tree in the middle of his field. He told his two sons to divide the fruit between them. To the older son he gave all the fruit on the left side of the tree. This older son brought a bushel of apples home to his wife and children. They had their fill of apples, they made apple pie, and they canned applesauce for the winter. But so abundant was the fruit of the tree that the ground was strewn with unpicked apples left to fall and rot. The younger son of the old man brought home from the right side of the tree enough apples to satisfy his family, but after they had their fill he returned to the tree. There he loaded a wheelbarrow full of apples and began to transport them to the village. As his old rickety wheelbarrow rolled over the uneven stones of the road, it tipped over and the whole pile of apples rolled away. Those the man could reach he put back, bruised, into the wheelbarrow. Others had rolled so far off the path that he could not retrieve them. But the apples that made it all the way to the village were received by the man’s hungry friends with great joy.
Christ is the Apple Tree. God the Father has given to us all the abundant fruits of the Tree of the Cross, the graces of salvation and sanctification. Many Catholics are like the older son in the parable: we receive grace from Christ, and do our best to pass on the faith to our family, our spouse and children, but we do little to share this abundant fruit with others. Like the rotting apples in the field that could feed so many starving people, Christ’s grace remains unshared with a hungry world. But there are a few Catholics who take after the younger son: These are those who share their faith with all who will listen. Now, this requires sacrifice. A sacrifice of time, for one thing. It’s difficult enough to provide for the religious upbringing of our own children without also making provision for the spiritual well-being of our neighbors and friends. It also requires humility. The man in the parable shared apples that had become bruised, and in just the same way when we share the faith it often gets bruised by the way we hand it on. We bruise the faith by our poor choice of words, by our inability to describe our experience. Or we bruise the faith by our imperfections and sins. But just because we can not pass on the faith perfectly does not mean we should not try to pass it on. A man who is already full may refuse your offer of a bruised apple, but to a man who is starving, your brown and mealy apple just might be the best thing he’s ever tasted.
Listen, all that you are trying so forcefully to tell me is not worth as much as what I am about to tell you. You cannot deny that the true grandeur of man is represented by Dante's Capaneus, that giant chained by God to hell, yet who cries to God, "I cannot free myself from these chains because you bind me here. You cannot, however, prevent me from blaspheming you, and so I blaspheme you." This is the true grandeur of man."I must admit that there is something persuasive about the young man's assertion. There is indeed something moving about the indomitable strength of will of Capaneus, who resolutely maintains his obstinacy even in the face of God's eternal torment: "though he wear out the others one by one [...] and hurl down endlessly with all the power of Heaven in his arm, small satisfaction would he win from me." (lines 52–57) And whereas other denizens of this circle of Hell cower from their punishment, he faces it head-on—literally—suffering the awful rain of fire across his exposed face so as to be free to shake his fist at God.
After being unsettled for a few seconds, I said calmly, "But isn't it even greater to love the infinite?" The young man left. After four months, he returned to say that for two weeks he had been receiving the sacraments because he had been "eaten away" all summer long by my response. (p. 9)People are always attracted to greatness, even when that greatness is grossly misdirected, especially when they do not understand that such people always get their just deserts ("Only your own rage could be fit torment for your sullen pride," Virgil says to Capaneus in lines 62 and 63). But true greatness, the fullness of what it means to be great, is found in the lives of the saints. The many impressive feats that have been accomplished out of love for power or money all pale in comparison to the great deeds wrought by those who love God. And this greatness of the saints is what we will see when Dante finishes his long journey and enters Paradise. But in the mean time we are faced with a challenge: if people see greatness in the world rather than in the Church, they will undoubtedly follow these same worldly pursuits, and frankly I can't blame them. It must be our task, therefore, to do great things for God, and so show them what greatness is.
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