Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 378

 …but he was asleep.

They came and woke him, saying,
“Lord, save us!  We are perishing!”
He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?”
Then he got up, rebuked the winds and the sea,
and there was great calm.

Recently we heard the Prophet Elijah taunting his Baalist opponents,

“Call louder, for he is a god and may be meditating, or may have retired, or may be on a journey. Perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.”

The disciples in the boat with Jesus found themselves in a similar predicament. Their Lord was asleep amid a raging storm! But he woke to their cries. First, he scolded them for their fearfulness, and then rebuked the winds and sea, “and there was great calm.”

Our pious tradition assures us:

Behold, the guardian of Israel

never slumbers nor sleeps.

What sleeps is our confidence and faith in God! The Lord is truly present, we’re the absent party. As the churches ask from their front lawn message boards: “Ch__ch. What’s missing?”

As a hospital chaplain in a secular/government institution, I find that most patients I meet do not attend church. (It seems that the staff mostly do attend church, despite the demands of the hospital.)

Americans are paying a heavy price for their absence. People search for value and meaning outside the church and find some outlandish and patently absurd new directions. In the meanwhile, they waste themselves with idleness, overconsumption, and resentments of every sort.

The human being wants values and needs to make sacrifices. We know there is something more to life than the self, despite the ad campaigns that tell us otherwise. Often, exhausted by the fruitless search, we fall asleep, and are washed overboard into stormy seas.

The Lord has come to us. He does not abandon us. He finds us where we are and invites us to go with him.

Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles

Mass during the DayLectionary: 591

I, Paul, am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.
From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me,
which the Lord, the just judge,
will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance.

Technically, today’s solemnity is a holy day of obligation in the Roman Catholic Church; it has not been observed as such in the United States since 1840. On this day we remember the martyrdom of Rome’s most important and influential apostles, Saints Peter and Paul.

Martyrdom seems to be a ham-fisted way to suppress a movement. It is more impulsive than calculated; and often ineffective. Rome never figured that out. They executed Christians for three centuries, inspiring many generations with the Blood of Martyrs, until the Emperor became a Christian!

This world’s authorities have found better ways to coopt and neutralize the challenge of the Church. Thomas Jefferson’s “wall” between the Church and State allowed priests and ministers to deal in “spiritual matters,” leaving politics, economics, war, and other substantial matters to the government.Occasionally, however, the churches respond to moral issues with spiritual movements that cannot be suppressed. In the nineteenth century, American Christians, following the lead of many European nations, revolted against the institution of slavery. Their cries for “abolition” met the resistance of a civil war. That movement went on to inspire the prohibition of alcohol, women’s equality, and civil rights. Today the impetus for the rights of aliens and refugees, convicts, the unborn, the elderly and dying often begins in the churches. These movements, stigmatized as leftist, are only encouraged by rightist reactions.

However, demands for civil rights and human dignity are not the sole purpose of the church. Like poetry and the arts, our uselessness is vital. Our purpose is to worship God.

We do that in public and in private, in groups and alone, with our work and our idleness, our study and our recreation. Even wasted hours like Saint Paul’s periodic incarcerations serve the Lord if the Lord has assigned them to us.

That “purposeless” dimension of religion is often overlooked as purpose-driven people try to rationalize and exploit its potential. It is difficult to invite people, especially needy, lost souls, to “come pray with us” without making promises we cannot keep. The sick might not recover; the homeless might remain on the street; alcoholics will relapse despite their daily prayer.

We believe our God is faithful despite many bitter disappointments; and our continual prayer is the greatest proof of God’s fidelity. The Roman church certainly prayed for the safe release of Peter and Paul and hundreds of others before they were martyred. They found comfort in burying their bodies, and reassurance as they honored their graves. Saint Peter’s Cathedral, the world’s largest, is built over his tomb, a grand mausoleum for many popes.

During this age of resurgent racism and nationalism, and declining cooperation among nations, Christians the world over feel like they are already being poured out like a libation. We seem to toil in vain for nothing, and for naught spend our strength, yet our right is with the LORD and our recompense is our God. We keep the faith of the martyrs.

Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 97

Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.


Christians and Catholics today find ourselves under severe criticism from many directions. A tradition of contempt for organized religion began with the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century when Reason was idolized; today the most ignorant louts employ the same contempt as they scoff at belief. Innumerable schisms within the Church, with their animosities, invite mockery from outsiders. A perpetually evolving culture, suffering future shock, cannot be bothered with outmoded expressions of faith and piety. 
And, worst of all, betrayal from within our ranks -- sexual exploitation, harrassment, and abuse plus larceny and financial mismanagement -- demoralize even the most devout. Finally, there is the anti-Semitism, sexism, and racism that creep into our language and poison our relations with minority groups. 
Christians have always had a way of addressing these challenges, the practices of penance. But we hear little mention of that virtue and its attendant rituals today. Many, perhaps most, Catholics rarely approach the confessional. As a VA hospital chaplain, I might hear a half-dozen confessions in a good year. Many Protestant Americans had their tent revivals in which their preachers accused them of sin and they enthusiastically begged the Lord for forgiveness. I don't hear of these practices anymore. 

We have indeed been baptized into the death of Christ. Today's gospel invites us to explore this "death of Christ" more deeply:

...whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.

And so we look at -- and look for -- our traditions of sin. Recently I reminded several Knights of Columbus that, "If you checked white on your census form or driver's licence, you became the heir of slave owners."
Before the Civil War, Americans were classed as free or slave. There were some free African-Americans; a few of them were wealthy; some owned slaves! After the War there was a general reallignment and Americans were either black or white. Post-war European immigrants, fresh off the boat, eagerly signed on as white. Even today, African immigrants are assigned to black, with all its attendant disadvantages.  
Catholic bishops in the southern states, pressured to evangelize recently-freed slaves, found few priests willing to take on the work. Josephite and Paulist missionaries took it up, but even they were reluctant to ordain men of African descent. I met a black priest of my own generation who applied to a dozen seminaries before he was accepted. Each one required a photograph, none offered an explanation for their refusal. 
African-American Catholics, relocating out of their black neighborhoods into suburbia, are immediately welcomed to attend a nearby Protestant church. Should they enter a Catholic church they're often greeted with a whisper, "This is a Catholic church!" 

Baptized into the death of Christ, we admit we have not actively invited strangers -- white, black, hispanic, native, or asian -- to our congregations. 

Jesus did not remain in Galilee waiting for people to come to him. He travelled from village to burg to city announcing the Kingdom of God and preaching penance for the remission of sins. Wherever he went he made people feel welcome by healing their bodies and welcoming them to the table. Catholics revere the Blessed Mother who, despite her Assumption into Heaven, has miraculously appeared as a missionary in countless places! 
We too might live in newness of life when this pandemic lifts, by inviting everyone, "We're going to Mass. You come too!" 

Saturday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 376

In vain they ask their mothers,
“Where is the grain?”
As they faint away like the wounded
in the streets of the city,
And breathe their last
in their mothers’ arms.
To what can I liken or compare you,
O daughter Jerusalem?


Our reading today, from the Book of Lamentations, follows yesterday's reading from 2 Kings, the destruction of Jerusalem. The scriptures urge us to remember and weep over this great tragedy. 
Can we mourn over the destruction of an ancient city and the slaughter of its people? How many thousands of cities and millions of people have suffered the same cruelty in the intervening twenty-five centuries? 
But we do mourn the death of Jesus. We don't hesitate to recall the five sorrowful mysteries and the fourteen stations of his passion. 
Our religion offers us endless cycles of joy, luminosity, sadness, and glory. We mark these cycles weekly with the rosary, and annually with the seasons. 
These devotions and liturgies are a foretaste of heaven, in which we will drink more deeply the life and experience of God. Our God is supremely happy and deeply sad. Our Trinitarian God remembers the sins not only of ancient Jerusalem and its inevitable destruction. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit also know eternally the horror of all killing, rape, and violence. And yet God is very happy. The Gospels assure us that the Father is pleased with the Son of God! 
Nothing is forgotten in God; all things are reconciled. 
Humans know that. This is why we never forget the Greek plays, both the tragedies and comedies. This is why we treasure the great literary and artistic works of all nations. They're not just happy stories; the greatest works are often overwhelmingly sad. A friend of mine, a contemplative nun, wept for days after reading Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. I have seen Hamlet a dozen times and melt in tears every time Ophelia drowns. African-Americans taught the world the Blues as they tasted the sour flavors of racism and its impact on their lives. We must hear B.B King explain Why I Sing the Blues. In moments of intensity we weep for joy and laugh with grief. 
We do not forget the destruction of Jerusalem or the the systematic Nazi atrocities. Nor do we forget the Lord's Resurrection. 
The promise of Eternal Life is a promise to know the Truth in all its colors, hues, and shades. Anguish might be only a memory in heaven but we shall know the fullness of life and its utter goodness. 

Friday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 375

By the streams of Babylon
we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
On the aspens of that land
we hung up our harps.


I think of the razing of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple as the "crucifixion" of the Old Testament. It was unthinkable and unimaginable. How could God's holy city fall to an army of idolaters? How could the Only Begotten Son of God die a most ignominious death, like a common criminal, hanging on a cross and shamefully exposed to every passerby? Neither could make any sense to the devout faithful.
And yet they happened. They were undeniable historical facts with all the horrible consequences of a cruel reality.
But, mysteriously, the Jews would not stop worshipping their God even from exile in Babylon. They remained in touch with their coreligionists in faraway Egypt, and eventually throughout the world. Using standard technologies of communication and available methods of travel, with respected authorities (rabbis) but no commanding headship, they adjusted and helped each other adjust to the new reality. They became an international, stateless religion -- something the world had never seen and could not imagine.
Their persistent practice of faith made them a peculiar people among the nations, for which they were both admired and despised. Some gentiles would be attracted to their humane ethics and their reasonable worship of the One God. Others would hate them for being nonconformists, and for their practice of caring for one another even at remote distances. They didn't blend in; they created Jewish neighborhoods around their synagogues in Babylonian, Persian, Egyptian, and Roman empires. They preferred to do business with one another because their ethics and their social cohesiveness guaranteed honest dealings.
This could only be the work of God's Spirit moving among the Jewish people. While other cities and nations disappear under the wash of history, when other religions vanish without a trace, Jews persist in faith, hope, and charity. They remember their history and the God who remains with them forever.
Christians, of course, worship the same God, and also persist in that practice. Our God has been crucified but raised up. Our people have been despised but rejoiced in their suffering. We have been deeply shocked by innumerable betrayals from within out ranks, and yet we continue to worship this Crucified Lord. We belong to no nation; we have watched them rise and fall. But, because we are sent from Jerusalem by the Lord, we are loyal to our particular nations.
Often we turn back to the Lord and pray, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” You can heal me; you can teach me; you can guide me; you can reconcile me to this present moment; you can gather this shattered community into your Body.
Living as we do in a deeply divisive era, scandalized by violent racism and sexism that persist in our troubled, beloved country, we ask the Spirit of God to be with us, and help us to listen as He says again, "I do will it, be made clean!"

Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 374

“Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them
will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
The rain fell, the floods came,
and the winds blew and buffeted the house.
But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.

As Americans watch their infrastructure of highways, water mains, gas mains, and sewers disintegrate because of partisan wrangling, we hear Jesus speak of “my words” and spiritual infrastructure. We know how important infrastructure is, be it physical, intellectual, or spiritual; but we cannot begin to address its complexity due to our political paralysis. Even routine precautions, like wearing facemasks during a respiratory pandemic, become a political statement under these circumstances. Fortunately, the Catholic Church in the United States, though certainly troubled, is not as divided. 

The Psalmist wondered, “Foundations destroyed, what can the just do?” A highly individualized spirituality, focusing only on “Jesus and me,” cannot be bothered with building or maintaining the infrastructures of a church. They assume these foundations are always there, that someone else will manage and maintain them while the isolated saint takes care of themself. If they add anything it’s carping and criticism. Their interest is “heaven,” which they expect to occur at any moment.

And yet Reality continually invades the privacy of the solipsistic Christian. They cannot always retire to their inner rooms and close the door to pray to their Father in secret. 

The Gospel of Saint Matthew, which occupies the summer months of our weekday lectionary, has much to say about the infrastructure of faith; that is, the Church. No one can keep the faith if no one shares that faith with other people. We learn to practice faith within the Church's traditions of rituals, stories, song, and customs; we learn to make sacrifices from those who make these sacrifices. They do not happen spontaneously.

Matthew 18 presumes there is a well-organized, disciplined church and addresses some of its concerns:

• the care that the disciples must have for one another in respect to guarding each other’s faith in Jesus (Mt 18:6–7),
• seeking out those who have wandered from the fold (Mt 18:10–14),
• repeatedly forgiving fellow disciples who have offended the Church (Mt 18:21–35),
• And the obligation to correct the sinful fellow Christian; even to excommunicate them should that be necessary. (Mt 18:15–18).

A child may be forgiven for taking the Church for granted; but adults are not allowed that indulgence. Those who refuse to build and maintain Church might suppose they have heard the word of God, but they do not keep it. They are barren and bear no fruit; they will be thrown out to wither, and then to be burned. 

But "those who listen to these words of mine and act on them will be like the wise man who built his house on rock. They do not collapse."

Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

Lectionary: 587

John heralded his coming by proclaiming a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel; and as John was completing his course, he would say, ‘What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. Behold, one is coming after me; I am not worthy to unfasten the sandals of his feet.’

We celebrate today, during this summer of our discontent, the Birth of Saint John the Baptist. If the novel coronavirus wasn't enough to remind us of our mortality, the protests against racism must remind us of our traditional sin, and of Saint John's mission. He proclaimed a baptism of repentance. 
Have you ever filled out an application for a driver's licence, or answered the questions on a census form? How did you answer, as an American, the question of race? 
Did you answer, as I have, "white?" 
With that, you became an heir of slaveowners. Your ancestors bought, sold, traded, rented out, and forced men, women, and children to work for them. 
Before the Civil War, the American population was divided between free and slave. Not all "blacks" were slaves. Some African families in New Orleans prospered; some owned slaves. However, after the War, free black families suffered the same penalties as the former slaves, and were soon reduced to the same social caste. American were no longer free or slave; they were black or white, with some "Indians." Even today, the children of recent African immigrants are soon classed with, and identify with, the descendents of slaves. They inherit the same prejudicial mistreatment and segregation despite their late arrival in the United States.
The words white and black are neither helpful nor accurate. They cannot describe races because there are no significant differences between the groups. In other words, God did not create black and white races. We did. With our census sheets, drivers licences, bank loans, educational systems, churches, neighborhoods, benevolent societies, and criminal gangs we created race and racism.
"Whiteness" is beloved to many people. They claim status and privilege for themselves; they maintain it by favoring their own kind; and, often, by terrorizing other racial groups. Those whites who defy the system, by hiring or associating with blacks, may pay dearly for their boldness. 
At the same time, studies show that many American men are "dying of whiteness." They use their beloved second amendment to kill themselves with the guns they are privileged to own. And, fearing that blacks may profit from their largesse, they vote consistently against educational opportunities and universal health care. More often than not, racism sabotages the very individuals it is supposed to protect.
Americans have been reminded in the wake of the pandemic of our sinful traditions of segregation and racial violence. If we cannot regard the upheaval as divine wrath; we can receive it gratefully, on this feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, as an invitation to penance, prayer, and atonement. 

Tuesday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 372

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few.”

Saint Luke encourages us to “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” Saint Matthew doesn’t include the word strive. “Just do it!” he might be saying.

I hear people say they will try to quit smoking, try to abstain from sweets during Lent, or try to be more patient with their children. That’s a sure-fire formula for failure.

There is no trying in the spiritual life. There is only simple obedience. “I do this for the Lord!" or, “I don’t do this for the Lord!”

There is, however, sin, as Saint Paul famously admitted in Romans 7:

“What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.” (verse 15)

and

“For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. (verses 19-20.)

The narrow gate is not not-sinning. The narrow gate is admitting, owning, and repenting of my consistent, deliberate sin. As my confessor said to me, “You do it because you want to.”

Grace both confronts and meets us in the same place; that is, where we sin. Perhaps we wish we could meet grace somewhere else, some place where I feel more presentable, more like the person I should be. But the Lord comes to us in our guilt, shame, and remorse; and then leads us as we are willing to go. 

Although, until now, we might not have been willing to go there. "Excuse me," I might have said. "I still have some important business here." As the reluctant citizens said in Jesus's parable, "I have married a wife and bought a cow! Please hold me excused." 

On this blog, tucked away in one of the corners is a sixteen century tract by a Franciscan mystic. In the last chapter of Pax Anima he encourages us: 

CHAPTER XV

How the soul must quiet herself at every turn without losing time or profit.

Take, then, this rule and method in all the falls you shall make, be they great or little; yea, though ten thousand times in the same day you shall have incurred the same crime, and that not occasionally, but voluntarily and deliberately; observe, I say, inviolably this prescription: That as soon as ever you find yourself in fault, you trouble not nor disquiet yourself, but instantly, as soon as you are aware what you have done, with humility and confidence, beholding your own frailty, cast an amorous glance on God, and fixing there your love, say with heart and mouth,"Lord, I have done that which is like what I am, nor can anything else be expected at my hands but these and the like transgressions; nor had I stopped here, but plunged myself further into all wickedness, if thy goodness had permitted it, and left me wholly to myself. I give thee infinite thanks that thou didst not thus leave me, and for what I have done I am sorry. Pardon me for thy own sake, and for what thou art, and give me grace to offend thee no more, but admit me again to the favour of thy friendship."Having done this, lose neither time nor quiet of mind, imagining that perhaps God hath not pardoned you, and the like, but with full repose proceed with your exercise as though you had committed no fault; and this, as I have said, not once, but a hundred times, and, if there were need, every moment, with as much confidence and tranquility the last time as the first. For, beside the particular service of God herein, a thousand other advantages are gained by it; time is not lost in futile excuses, further progress is not obstructed, but, on the contrary, sin is subdued and mastered with much profit and perfection. This I would gladly inculcate upon, and persuade scrupulous and disquieted souls of; then they would soon see how different a state of tranquility they would find themselves in, and pity the blindness of those who, so much to their cost, go on still losing so much precious time. Note this well, for it is the key to all true spiritual progress, and the shortest means to attain to it.

Monday of the Twelfth Week of Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 371

Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.

Today we hear Jesus’s gentle admonition of Matthew 7, that we should not judge others, immediately following the story of Assyria’s conquest of the northern kingdom. Most of God’s chosen people in the 8^th century bce disappeared; “ten tribes of Israel” were lost to history. “Only the tribe of Judah was left.”

The Divine Authors of Kings believed this catastrophe followed inevitably because,

“…they did not listen, but were as stiff-necked as their fathers, who had not believed in the LORD, their God. They rejected his statutes,

the covenant which he had made with their fathers, and the warnings which he had given them…

If the judgement was cruel, so was the story. Their religion could allow no other conclusion.

 

In twenty-first century America, we might hear Matthew 7:1 as a teaching about multi-culturalism. Living in a nation whose people practice many religions and no religion, whose values vary from white racism to Spiritual But Not Religious to Roman Catholic orthodoxy, we might suppose “Stop judging” means value-free education, which is an oxymoron. That attitude assumes there is no god; and that is not an option for Catholics.

We believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, who presents us before the Judgement Seat as his beloved people. We do not doubt the existence of a supreme judge, nor do we challenge God’s right and authority to judge.

We hear this admonition as a warning, “Do not presume to displace the Lord and Judge of All with your own inane opinions!” Saint James reinforces this teaching:

Do not speak evil of one another, brothers. Whoever speaks evil of a brother or judges his brother speaks evil of the law and judges the law. If you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save or to destroy. Who then are you to judge your neighbor?

Saint Paul encourages us to maintain a generous spirit toward everyone:

Have the same regard for one another; do not be haughty but associate with the lowly; do not be wise in your own estimation. Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, on your part, live at peace with all. Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Rather, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.

And finally, in his Sermon on the Mount, (where we started):

But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?

 

During these trying times, knowing our inability to stop judging others, we ask the Lord to give us this equable, peaceful spirit.

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 94

And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

 

 

The story is told of the boy who said, “I would never commit suicide. My Dad would kill me if I did.” He may have his chronology out of whack, but his reasoning is sound. The lad has a good relationship to his father, who does not presume to be a pal to his son.

On this Fathers’ Day the Gospel reminds us to fear Our Father in Heaven, who “can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.”

Jesus insists that, in God’s eyes, “…you are worth more than many sparrows!” If Christians think that should be obvious, it is not for many people. Exploited, manipulated, bullied, conned, with their integrity violated sexually, physically, intellectually, and spiritually, millions of people cannot believe in mercy. If God created this world, they say, he obviously has no respect for human life or human dignity.

But, despite what the Bible and the churches say, God did not create this world. Our world today has been recreated from the ground up by humanity. It does not reflect the image and likeness of the One whom Jesus adores. Our water, air, and earth are polluted by human garbage; our cities fit the needs of industry and commerce. Our governments reflect the struggle for dominance and power among the elite. Our systems serve the purposes and beliefs of those who control their levers. They do not reckon on One who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.

Our faith teaches us to fear good and not evil. This fear is like the electrician’s respect for “hot” wires. They don’t avoid electricity; they don’t think it’s evil although it can instantly punish a foolish misstep. The use and guidance of electricity has made work easier for billions of people, prolonging their lives and offering them leisure opportunities. But electricity demands respect.

Every human being should be treated with the same kind of respect. The husband who takes his wife for granted should soon regret his mistake; the child who presumes the parent is there to serve invites rebuke. Loves teaches us to fear neglecting, insulting, and hurting one another. If we practice respect for electricity and for other people, how much more should we respect the One who gives his Only Begotten Son for our salvation!

Holy Fear is entirely different in that we freely take it upon ourselves. We prefer it to indifference toward others; we should never consider coercing or imposing on others. It has other names – reverence, piety, awe, respect – but I like the word fear. Who can forget Frodo’s cowering before the gentle Gandolf when the hobbit foolishly suggested the wizard should take the Ring of Power? He was suddenly terrified of the friendly old man he’d known since childhood.

The Bible describes moments when holy fear overwhelms us. First there are theophanies, when the Lord appears to Moses, the seventy elders, or the disciples of Jesus. And there are ominous warnings that comes with violating God’s command. Are these not the anguished master’s cry to the apprentice electrician, “Be careful, for God’s sake?” With choice comes consequences and foolishness invites dire consequences. The One whose eye is upon the sparrow does not want to see his beloved wasted.

Today we face serious penalties as the gap between wealth and poverty has increased exponentially since the end of World War II. The Pax Americana has been unevenly distributed, even in America. The gap often appears as the divide between “blacks” and “whites.” But it’s there between men and women, single adults and families with children, and various religious groups.

But these are distractions, the real peril is vast power in the hands of an unworthy few, who are a fraction of one percent of the population. Social unrest, looting, police brutality and assaults upon the police are only symptoms of the real danger. The threat is real, the punishment will be catastrophic.

“Be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” The great American preacher Oswald Chamber said it best: ““The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.”

As we move past the Covid epidemic and address the deeper issues of our society, the Fear of the Lord will guide us in the singular path of Justice and Mercy.

Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Lectionary: 370/573

As the earth brings forth its plants,
and a garden makes its growth spring up,
So will the Lord GOD make justice and praise
spring up before all the nations.


Today's memorial represents the last echo of the Easter Season; it follows the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which always falls on the second Friday after Pentecost. The New Testament tells us Mary survived her son, disappearing from its pages after her final appearances on Good Friday and Pentecost. There are traditions about her life from that time, most especially her Assumption into, and her Coronation in, heaven. But, if the particular person of Mary fades away, her Spirit remains on every page and in every chapter of the Bible. She is the true model and first disciple of Jesus. 

I see her quietly opening her heart and home to the Church as it ventured out from Jerusalem to the whole world. She remained as a garden of repose for Jesus's disciples as they faced unexpected, unprecedented challenges. Her Holy Spirit was an infallible guide for a faithful, sinful people.

In recent years Mary's cult has been politicised and polarized. We should not be surprised by that. Religion lends itself to strong opinions and hardened attitudes. Conservative Catholics celebrate her as an anti-Communist crusader; liberal Catholics remember the bold young woman who travelled to Jerusalem from Nazareth "with or without" a male escort. She is also hailed as champion and queen of the poor; and especially in America, of Indiginous and Latin Americans. The delightful young Lady of Guadalupe still challenges us to trust her guidance, "Am I not your mother?" The online Catholic Encyclopedia has an excellent article about devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and its long history.

Saint Maximillian Kolbe, the "Martyr of Love" who died at the hand of Nazis, described Mary's particular blessing as "Immaculation." It was more than a state of purity; it was a growing from grace to grace. A human being, she could no more imagine the destiny of her child than any woman. She must have expected and hoped that he would outlive her; the death of a child is one of nature's cruelest disappointments. Even pet owners see that when puppies or kittens die and their pets grieve the loss. Mary could only suffer the stories of hostility that surrounded her son as he left Nazareth and advanced upon Jerusalem. Nor could she keep herself away as that fatal day approached. 

But all the while she found the courage to wait and trust in God. What his passion and death meant, no one could imagine. The greatest minds in history have stood appalled and silent before that mystery. 

The Prophet Simeon had given her some notice, 

Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted, and you yourself a sword will pierce so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

His words offered little comfort and less explanation on that Good Friday, and during the long, empty hours of Holy Saturday. In the years that followed his Resurrection she and the Church would begin to understand. 

During this long Covid-19 summer of 2020, as we await the decision of the American people in November, as we ponder America's Original Sin of racism -- a tradition received from Christian Europe -- we pray that our hearts will be rendered pure like the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This process is like hers, immaculation, as we become worthy to bear the Son of God. 

Solemnity of Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Lectionary: 170

You are a people sacred to the LORD, your God;

he has chosen you from all the nations on the face of the earth

to be a people peculiarly his own.

It was not because you are the largest of all nations

that the LORD set his heart on you and chose you,

for you are really the smallest of all nations.

It was because the LORD loved you

and because of his fidelity to the oath he had sworn your fathers,

that he brought you out with his strong hand from the place of slavery,

and ransomed you from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

 

For this Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church offers a reading from the Torah, the oldest source of our faith. Within the Book of Deuteronomy the Voice of God assures us of the deep affection in which the Lord holds us. We owe God’s merciful attention not to any power, charm, virtue, or wisdom of ours. Indeed, we have no singular trait to identify us from the innumerable peoples of the Earth. If we enjoy a characteristic that makes us good, of which we might boast, many other peoples have as good or better. That's a contest we can never win and need not enter.

God's favor begins with Abraham, continues with Moses and David, and climaxes -- if we can use so mild a word -- with the revelation of Jesus Christ. That benign gaze is totally gratuitous. The Lord owes us nothing. If the favor of God is not arbitrary, we have no idea why it should be us. Among all the mysteries that are revealed to us, that one is not. 

But why would we ask? Do children ask their parents why they love them? Would a wise parent answer such a foolish question? 

Our response begins not with questioning but with gratitude. 

And then we aspire to be worthy of God's choice. 

I say aspire rather than try, or even strive. Trying might be driven by vanity, and if I accomplish anything by my trying I will certainly boast of it. "Look how I have proven myself worthy!" 

Striving is a better choice, as in, "Strive to enter through the narrow gate!" But how hard is it to walk through a narrow gate? We're not talking about Fat Man's Misery, the famously narrow passage in Mammoth Cave.

Our journey with the Lord begins with God's initiative. The Lord has chosen us as a parent chooses a child, daily, consistently, persistently, freely and generously. Our parts, as we let him take our hand, are Amen and Thank you. 

The image of the Sacred Heart comes to us as a comfort in our misery, and a solace in our disappointment. 

The tradition has a long development but the image has come to us recently, in the last few centuries, as modern life becomes more and more complex. The Sacred Heart of Jesus comes to us first as millions, and then as billions of people, are deprived of the respect they should be given and the dignity that should be honored. The powerful leaders of our society are increasingly drawn from a small "elite" who prove their incompetence by rigging the financial, political, and economic systems to secure their comfortable status. Because it is unjust it is unstable and violent. 

Poverty is a violence which is no more necessary than an epidemic transmitted by deliberate and incautious behavior. It is born of a Darwinian society that assumes that God, and not we human beings, decreed the "survival of the fittest." (A theory which is immediately disproven by the obvious unfitness of the surviving elite!) 

The Sacred Heart speaks to us with compassion and understands our sin. He has lived in our world and suffered our injustice. His Sacred Heart has been stabbed not only with a soldier's lance but by the cruel indifference of an impassive society. They just don't care. As Hannah Arendt said of Adolph Eichmann: 

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

While the Sacred Heart comforts us, it also challenges us to be "a people peculiarly his own." We cannot accept the ubiquitous standards of competition and survival that our culture celebrates as normal. We cannot endorse the racism that would promote one so-called race at the expense of the common good.

We can turn to the Lord and his Spirit for guidance and instruction in all our thinking, speaking, and acting. That Spirit is given to us despite our apparent unworthiness, we must not grieve it.