Memorial of Saint Jerome, Priest and Doctor of the Church

Lectionary: 457

…but how can a man be justified before God? Should one wish to contend with him, he could not answer him once in a thousand times.
God is wise in heart and mighty in strength; who has withstood him and remained unscathed?

 

The Book of Job is steeped in reverence for God. The Divine Author has struggled to comprehend God’s sovereign goodness even from the depths of human misery. He is profoundly confused -- as we all are -- by God’s apparent indifference in the face of anguish. On the one hand, he knows that God’s majesty, which is far beyond human comprehension, renders every human question moot. To ask Why? is to risk sacrilege. But he is compelled nonetheless by his pain to ask for, even to demand, an answer.

Job, as ancient literature of the highest order, retains its fascination even in a post-Christian world. But many of today's readers have little experience and little consciousness of the sacred. Words like holy, reverent, pious, and devotion mean little to them; and they blow off blasphemy, anathema, and sacrilege. Even common words like bless and curse have little resonance. But, as they read Job, they feel the import of his question, “Why do the innocent suffer?” 

Occasionally I raise a question with Veterans in recovery: “Is anything sacred?” 

One fellow immediately declared, “Nothing is sacred!” But when I asked, “Not even the American flag?” he allowed one exception. The question might be rephrased, “What is more important than me? What is worth sacrifices of time, energy, talent, friendship, or my life?”

A sense of the sacred is like the senses of taste and smell. It must be cultivated. Sometimes, when I eat something I have never tried before, I don’t taste anything. Likewise, I have drank very expensive tea that was wasted on me. It seemed to have no flavor. However, with further experience, I learned to taste these exotic foods and to enjoy them. I notice, too, that I should hear a piece of classical music several times before I feel its enchantment.

Likewise, we must cultivate reverence, piety, or the sacred. It is natural but it doesn’t come naturally. It is peculiarly human, and a world of many human cultures have as many ways to sense, express, and celebrate the sacred. Catholics have a deep reverence for the Blessed Sacrament, which only baffles the Protestants next door. Some Protestants carry pocket bibles with such small print they can’t read it; and a Catholic wonders, “Why bother?”

Often the question is asked of a devout person, “Why do you have to do that?” I might reply, "I don't have to, I want to!" But the premise is not entirely wrong. I have to do this because I am afraid not to. I fear the Lord because I want to. Isn't the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom?

It is not easy to cultivate an awareness of the holy with recovering addicts and alcoholics. Even before they were sucked into the eddy of addiction, many bought into the worst heresies of our culture, and the disease has only made it worse. They are our children; they believed what we taught them, and that's why they're sick. 

They wanted success without disappointment, comfort without distress, and love without commitment. They believed that freedom is doing what you want to do, and there is no higher authority than the self. Good is what I want; bad is when others tell me I can't have it. 

These heresies are so entrenched deeply within our hearts and minds that challenges sound like nonsense at best, but more like treason. It's scandalous and sacrilegious to suggest that money is not sacred; that happiness isn't important. 

The wise man Job is worships the only God and for that he is favored, as we learn in the last chapter. His reverence reflects his personal integrity which we have heard in his honest complaints, despite the critics who urged him to use more "politically correct" expressions. He is also blessed for challenging God mano-a-mano, rather than griping or complaining about God. 

As our culture descends ever deeper into crude, irreverent, and insulting entertainment, with its threat of impending violence, Christians and Catholics must practice deeper reverence for our religion and faith. We cultivate an awareness of God's presence which is benevolent, watchful, concerned, and beautiful. We approach our churches and our ceremonies with grateful gladness. 

We also want to regard others as God regards them, through the affectionate eyes of Jesus. He sees human beings as brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts, cousins, neighbors, and friends. His humor is healing; his laughter, contagious; and his demeanor, confident and friendly. 

Encountering the suffering of Job we sit with them in reverent silence, and plead for mercy. 

Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels

Lectionary: 647

War broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels battled against the dragon. The dragon and its angels fought back, but they did not prevail
and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

 

The Gospels describe the death and resurrection of Jesus with many references to the Jewish scriptures, especially Psalm 22. In their telling, the death of the Messiah also disturbs the universe and arouses dreadful omens: an earthquake, eclipse of the sun, and dead people walking the streets of Jerusalem. These familiar verses and unfamiliar events should persuade the faithful that something spectacular has happened. If the world and its secular authorities saw only the death of a troublesome Jew and, on the third day, a perfectly ordinary first day of the week, they didn’t need to ask, “What just happened?” But, for the Church, that Easter Sunday is fraught with intense meaning, defying simple explanation.

American leaders like to declare war on poverty, war on crime, war on drugs, and war on illiteracy. They use the metaphor of intentional, concerted violence to describe a bureaucratic program that might have some drama but will never be as terrifying as actual warfare.

Inevitably, the inspired Church must also use the metaphor of war to describe what just happened. In its effort to express the wonder, the Book of Revelation invites us to look up at the sky and see angels, demons, and the victory of the righteous. It was, admittedly, a brief struggle; the author could not turn an instantaneous rout into a prolonged saga. The dragon and his angels resisted, and were immediately overwhelmed and expelled from heaven. 

Christians often reflect on these hyperbolic descriptions of what happened in Jerusalem two millennia ago, especially with music, paintings, poetry, and cinema. Until recently every generation of English readers studied John Milton’s Paradise Lost as if it were holy writ. His Puritan imagery overwhelms the simpler descriptions of Genesis 1-3 and Revelation 12.

But the metaphor of war is apt not only for its drama. Wars changes everything; new ages begin with the death and rebirth of war. Even for the victors, peace is never like it used to be. Jesus’s sacrifice is like a cosmic war as the Universe is deeply, irrevocably changed. A terrible beauty is born. Because we have heard and believed the Gospel, our life is also fundamentally different from the world around us.

Revelation 12 describes what happened next:

The huge dragon, the ancient serpent,
who is called the Devil and Satan,
who deceived the whole world,
was thrown down to earth,

and its angels were thrown down with it.

The good news, God has fought the battle in the sky and won the victory for us. The bad news, here below we’re still slugging it out. The victory was in heaven; the victory on earth is yet to come. It is certain! But it’s not quite yet.

It is, however, real and complete to believers. Those who have seen the vision walk in the freedom of Jesus’s victory because they do not fear death anymore than he did. 

Monday of the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Collect of Philippine Martyrs

Lectionary: 455

“Naked I came forth from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I go back again.
The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD! ...We accept good things from the Lord, and should we not accept the bad as well?

On Wednesday mornings, every four weeks in the Morning Prayer cycle, I hear Job's invitation to quit complaining and accept life as it is. Alcoholics Anonymous entones a similar sentiment with the Serenity Prayer.

The Year of Our Lord 2020 will be remembered as a year of challenges, grace, and opportunity. It is a crisis which should not be wasted. It's first lesson might be the helplessness we feel in the face of the mess we have made of our world. Americans have felt so assailed by the Covid-19 epidemic they've nearly forgotten the other epidemics that are killing us: suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism, gun violence, and loneliness -- to name a few. Plus we've been assaulted by terrific hurricanes and furious wildfires, with many lives lost. And the paralysis of federal government as it fails to address the crises in our hospitals, the disintegration of highways and other infrastructure, institutional terrorism of minorities, and so forth.  

It is touching to see how many people expect the pandemic to be resolved by Operation Warp Speed. Do they expect we'll get back to normal when it's over. If that normal is the best we can hope for, we're in deep trouble. I don't remember it fondly. 

We are in God's hands now and I hear Job's counsel: We accept good things from the Lord, should we not accept the bad as well? 

If I would be free I should gently, firmly remove my ego from the space between me and God. I have my preferences but they have only served to make me less grateful, less appreciative, less spontaneous, and less willing to recognize the opportunities of the moment. My question is not, "When will this be over?" but "What do you want me to do now, Sir?" 

I neither need nor have the Big Picture. I don't know where this is going. But God does, as Job knew so well. Why would I ask for anything more? 

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 136

Jesus said to them, "Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.
When John came to you in the way of righteousness,
you did not believe him;
but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him."

Today's gospel challenges the easy assumption of those who suppose they know the mind of God. They've lived a good life, have no major regrets, and are not shaken by the prospect of death. They've seen loved ones pass on. I meet Veterans who have encountered death in combat, both their own and that of others. Confronted with mortality and having no more worlds to conquer, feeling less and less at home in a once-familiar home, they welcome death. Assured of  anti-anxiety medicines and powerful painkillers, it is nothing worse than turning out the lights, a sleep with no expectation of waking. 

They have no fear of the Lord. They say, "If there is a judge, I've got nothing to be ashamed of." 

We might suppose the second son in today's gospel story felt that way about his relationship to the father. He had said he would go into the vineyard but he didn't. Never mind. The old man will get over it. If the first son was more obedient, he'd also reacted insolently. He's the one society detests. 

The story is familiar to us because image is still more important than reality. Whenever there's a catastrophe people and nations rush forward with promises of help. They make quite a show of it. But the news cycle soon forgets the crisis as it rushes on to others, and the promises are given to financial departments with their limited budgets. 

"The Lord's way is not fair!" Where does that come from? Who would make such a remark and why? It seems to come from the far side of the future, after a decision has been made -- what grammarians call the "future perfect tense" -- when someone who now expects a blessing will be disappointed. A secular, complaisant society cannot imagine making such a protest. "If there is a God," they think, "he'll be good to me."

They rely on their image. They're like the fellow who ran a traffic light and was pulled over. "But what about all the times I stopped for a red light!"  or the murderer who pleads, "Look at all the people I didn't kill! Doesn't that count for something?" 

Actually -- no. 

Thomas Merton once declared, "God does not hear the prayers of those who don't exist." He doesn't see our images; he sees us. He doesn't judge us by our standards but by his own. As the Prophet Isaiah says,

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, my thoughts higher than your thoughts." 

Today's first reading, which should be familiar to us from the Good Friday Liturgy, reminds us of the Obedient Son who fears the Lord and walks in his way. Abandoning the privilege, security, and luxuries of heaven, he considered equality with God as so much rubbish; it was not "something to be grasped." Rather, he emptied himself. He had an ego like every human being but before the majesty of God it meant nothing. He was poured out like an emptied vessel -- drained of blood, water, and breath -- because his Father willed it. He could think of nothing better to do with his life. 

To this day we place before our eyes the image of a god destroyed, and worship him. 

Saturday of the Twenty-Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 454

  

Rejoice, O young man, while you are young and let your heart be glad in the days of your youth.
Follow the ways of your heart,
the vision of your eyes; Yet understand that as regards all this God will bring you to judgment.

 

A few weeks short of 72, I am still a young man among priests, and still rejoice in my health, such as it is. I follow the ways of my heart, if not the vision of my eyes, as I search for love in the chapel, the friary, and the hospital ministry. And I understand that I stand under God’s judgment, especially because I already suffer the verdict of my body for past foolishness.

As I tell some Veterans, the only reason we’re ever young is so that we’ll have something to regret when we get old. There are many regrets. Qoheleth’s last words – “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity!” – might not be my last words but I get it.

I have never been persuaded that the pursuit of happiness is a good idea. I don’t think Qoheleth would buy it. Wisdom, goodness, truth, beauty: these are worth pursuing. Happiness is a distraction. It’s nice while it lasts but it’s not a plan for a people or a nation.

As we work our way through this pandemic and face the far worse and on-rushing catastrophe of climate change, as entire nations are being displaced, we prepare our children and grandchildren for the unsettled world they will inherit.

They must know that, GOD IS STILL IN CHARGE. If the Lord persistently remains with us despite our killing him by crucifixion, if he remains with us despite our ham-fisted efforts to create a world without him, we can be sure he will appear to our children in the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries. The Spirit of God, like the Spirit of John Brown, marches on.

In today’s gospel Jesus told his disciples of the coming disaster. As a prophet he could speak with assurance of the future. But without the spirit of prophecy, humans cannot imagine a future unlike the familiar present. We might expect some improvements and fear some developments but, for the most part, we look for more of the same. Even when we see unprecedented forest fires, punishing hurricanes, and millions of people fleeing their homes, we suppose it won't happen here.

The prophets’ message is invariably, “Repent!” meaning “Turn away from your sins.” This is something we can do. In the face of catastrophe, we are neither helpless nor clueless.

Some people insist these developments are not God’s punishment. God, they suppose, will not punish good people like us! That may be; I cannot say. But that attitude leaves us with no response to what is obviously the end of an age in history. Although we don’t know the way we can see the gate to the future -- the narrow gate -- which is penance.

Call it atonement, sorrow for sin, reparation, or remorse, the scriptures describe it closely in the words of the prophets. I think of Lamentations, attributed to the Prophet Jeremiah after the fall of Jerusalem. Prostrate, the people could only acknowledge their sins and wait on God’s mercy. The Lord who had called them out of Egypt and made them a nation among nations, would surely not abandon them. We still hope in God, because God is our hope.

Friday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 453

 

I have considered the task that God has appointed
for the sons of men to be busied about.
He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts,
without man’s ever discovering,
from beginning to end, the work which God has done.

 

I reflected yesterday, rather pessimistically, upon “perplexity” as the human response to mystery. When Herod heard of Jesus’s miracles and signs he was perplexed. I suggested that Qoheleth’s response to the apparent tedium of human life, with its endless cycles of disappointment and frustration, is perplexity.

Finally, I called to mind Jesus’s admonition, “Be alert!” We cannot throw up our hands and say, “It’s too much for me!” Our response will have to be more appropriate than, “Let someone else deal with it.”

Today, we hear Qoheleth’s timeless reflection on time, which begins with, “There is an appointed time for everything.” We hear of birth and death, planting and uprooting, war and peace, and so forth. God knows the time and Wisdom reveals the time to the wise.

Some Christians imagine a vast gulf between religious matters and human affairs. “God’s ways are not our ways.” they say. The Bible’s wisdom literature appreciates the gulf but understands that, for some people, it is not wide. A wise baker knows how much time it takes to knead a loaf of dough, and how long to bake the bread. A brewer adjusts to the change of seasons. A veteran laborer knows when the body is too tired and, to avoid accidents, should knock off for the day.

That kind of wisdom is not very different from the knowledge of “spiritual” things like speaking and silence, love and hate, war and peace. In fact, a master carpenter or plumber will probably be less eager for impetuous action than novices; and also, more ready to strike when the iron is hot.

Christians might recognize Qoheleth’s sense of timing as an alertness to the Holy Spirit. We ask God to show us what to do and when to do it. We may have an intuition of what should be done but no eagerness to do it. “The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak.” We may experience some shame and discouragement as we seem so reluctant to speak or act. But that may be due to our own ego, which is too eager to take charge and set things right.

And then one day something happens and we suddenly say or do what has been on our mind for so long. And it proves to be just the right moment. The word that would have provoked anger yesterday is received quietly, even gratefully, today.

Did I do that? No, the Holy Spirit moved me.

Many Christians recite daily the Prayer of Saint Francis as we ask God to use us as instruments of peace. Does the hammer, the kitchen blender, or the computer know when to act? They’re only tools; the skilled worker knows when and how to use which instrument for what purpose.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Thursday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 452

Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was greatly perplexed….

Since the middle ages, Herod Antipas has often been staged as a fool; a stupid, powerful buffoon to amuse the audience. He appeared that way most recently in the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, with an additional suggestion of homosexuality. That comic tradition relies on the gospels of Saint Matthew and Saint Mark, which describe Herod as superstitious and frightened. He supposed that Jesus was a resurrected John the Baptist whom he had executed during a drunken banquet. 

Today's gospel, from Saint Luke, takes Herod more seriously. He is perplexed but not given to superstitious conspiracies, and that makes him dangerous.

Perplexed: the word comes from a French root for tangled or snared. The tyrant doesn’t know which way to go or what to make of Jesus. We can recognize his problem by the way society in general hears the Gospel. They really get into Christmas but have no interest whatever in a God who is born in poverty and pursued by murderers into Egypt. A powerless God seems oxymoronic. A Christmas sermon about silence, darkness, and poverty would only perplex them. And that could be dangerous.

Today’s first reading introduces the short, fascinating, and sometime depressing book of Ecclesiastes, which was written by a wise man known as Qoheleth. Many generations of Jews and Christians have struggled to describe his book. Pessimistic? Realistic? Hopeless? Hopeful in its apparent hopelessness?

Qoheleth, teacher and advisor to kings, has studied many things and has arrived at a tentative conclusion, “All things are vanity.” Summarizing his experience and stories he has heard from parts near and far he concludes,

All speech is labored;
there is nothing one can say.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing
nor is the ear satisfied with hearing.

Qoheleth has taken perplexity to an ultimate, existential level. He is being-who-looks-at-being and cannot see its purpose. His mirror does not reflect transparency; he sees nothing there. The eye cannot see itself. 

The world has been perplexed lately by the Covid-19 epidemic. We understand it’s a virus; it resembles other coronaviruses. But who gets the disease and why? Why do some healthy people die of it while some, apparently vulnerable, survive? Why are some people untouched? Jesus warned us of these inexplicable catastrophes,

Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left.

Catastrophes like this -- war, riots, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, fires, epidemics, and so forth -- don’t make sense. Qoheleth could only conclude: “…yet when I applied my mind to know wisdom and knowledge, madness and folly, I learned that this also is a chase after wind.”

 

Confronted with the existential threat that anyone can die at any time, we hear Jesus's urgent command, “Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come.”

Memorial of Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, Priest

Lectionary: 451

Two things I ask of you,
deny them not to me before I die:
Put falsehood and lying far from me,
give me neither poverty nor riches;
provide me only with the food I need;
Lest, being full, I deny you,
saying, “Who is the LORD?”
Or, being in want, I steal,
and profane the name of my God.

With the historic emergence of an economic middle class -- something the authors of the Bible could not imagine -- many people live the above verse. They have the food they need, and most other resources of housing, health care, education, leisure, and an old age without destitution. But they're not wealthy. They don't have so much that they can snub their faith with remarks like, "Who is the Lord?" Nor are they poor and driven to thievery. 

The middle class lives with the possibility of failure. And so they create insurance policies, pensions, and other "safety nets" to secure their way of life. Aware of the possibility of garnering more wealth they invest in markets; fearful of poverty they organize into labor unions. They also create democratic governments that should protect their interests against the powerful few who would exploit them. 

But some, feeling comfortable and becoming complacent, flirt with failure. They pay little attention to politics and believe only what they want to hear. They ignore the institutions of local government, volunteer agencies and church which would keep them in touch with the world beyond family and lookalike friends. Some invest heavily in lifestyles laced with alcohol, drugs, gambling, and cheap entertainment. Biblical proverbs remind us that fools forget the possibility of catastrophe. 

...like epidemics. We thought they were things of the past. We were sure public health care systems would  protect us against them. In fact, complacency pooh-poohed the guardians of public health as alarmists. 

According to the Minnesota Department of Health: 

The areas of public health responsibility include (1) assuring an adequate local public health infrastructure, (2) promoting healthy communities and healthy behaviors, (3) preventing the spread of communicable disease, (4) protecting against environmental health hazards, (5) preparing for and responding to emergencies, and (6) assuring health services. 

Even now many people prefer the proverbial ostrich's posture of burying their heads in the sand rather than supporting public health care measures. They hope that climate change is a liberal conspiracy. And when finally faced with the imminent threat of destruction and death, they piously declare "it's the end of the world." 

 Jesus tells us what to do with fools, "...shake the dust from your feet in testimony against them.” He has announced the end of the world as we know it, and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God. To live in his new world we receive the Baptism he offers and the Spirit he breathes upon us. Baptism includes the renunciation of former ways of life, atoning for sin, membership in the living Body of the Church, and confident participation in the world around us. 

We understand that human beings have created the world as it is, with its danger and violence and its possibilities for good. We're not given to blaming others but we do recognize past mistakes. The world as we know it has become impossibly complex; no one understands the deepest issues that have led to these catastrophes. But as Christians we believe the Spirit of God will lead us through the narrow gate to salvation. 

May God have mercy on us and our poor planet. 

Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 450

The just man appraises the house of the wicked:
there is one who brings down the wicked to ruin.
He who shuts his ear to the cry of the poor will himself also call and not be heard.



Buddhist have a saying that goes something like this: "When I came to the monastery, I knew that rivers were rivers and mountains were mountains. But after many years of deep meditation I came to understand that rivers are mountains and mountains are rivers. Now I have been in the monastery all my life, and I am very old, and I see that rivers are rivers and mountains are mountains"

At some point in my life, I began to understand the old monks saying. As a child I learned there are good people and bad people. We can trust good people, but we avoid bad people.

But I learned that good people often do very bad things, and some truly wicked people dote on their children and make enormous sacrifices for them. All pedophiles, I am told, were sexually abused as children. I should have some compassion for these unfortunate persons. I was just as vulnerable once, and I might have suffered that horror.

But most people who were sexually abused as children, attaining adulthood, do not prey on children. They protect their children and raise them carefully. They have not countered evil with evil.

Finally, in my senior years, I have learned that there's little I can do for really vicious people. I am sorry some were abused as children, for instance, but the best place for them and for us, is prison. Where bad people go. I would be happy to offer them the sacraments and to listen to their story, if they were only willing to receive the grace I offer as an "administrator of the mysteries of God." Many, perhaps most, refuse the opportunity. I am sad for them and pray that God's mercy might reach where I cannot.

The Book of Proverbs -- from which today's first reading is taken -- is addressed to children. Here are simple, easy to remember, formulas for life. For every reliable truism there is an opposite truism, equally reliable. The wise learn to apply the right proverb to the right occasion. They live by today's first proverb:

Like a stream is the king’s heart in the hand of the LORD;
wherever it pleases him, he directs it.

They use proverbs as craftsmen use their tools, knowing from experience and habit which one to use as the situation requires. Their attitude is willing rather than willful because they have divested ego from the process and its product. They do not pretend to infallibility as they trust that God's spirit will guide them. If the results are disappointing after their best efforts, they know that God is still in charge. God sees beyond our horizon and knows what good will come from failure.

The Christian, as the Lord describes in today's gospel, is the one who hears the word of God and acts on it. "Duty are ours, results are God's." as President John Quincy Adams said.

Feast of Saint Matthew, Apostle and Evangelist

Lectionary: 643

Jesus heard this and said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words,I desire mercy, not sacrifice. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

Pope Francis has taken the most unusual stance of challenging the Church to care for the victims of a sick planet. Ordinarily, the pope's job is to rein in excessive impulses as he tries to unify many nations and peoples into a single communion. Too much creative energy can become impatient and impetuous as it explores new forms of ministry. Inevitably its ardor alienates the very elements of the Church it would invite to reform and renewal. 

But the world is in crisis now as climate change renders once fertile homelands barren, and rising sea waters flood coastal communities. This year's fires in the western states, the worst in history, will certainly trigger adjustments in the way insurance companies do business and state and local governments plan. The dustbowl states have never recovered from the droughts in the 1930's; can California recover its dream of the good life? 

Because forty percent of Americans live within a coastal county by an ocean, gulf or Great Lake, the melting artic poles are hitting us too. Billions of people will have to adjust to different ways of life in different places, and today's crowded cities will soon be over-crowded. 

At a time like this we hear Jesus's command, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice." Being religously pious is a fine thing, but one's prayer must compel acts of mercy. 

Some may argue that their hard work has earned them a comfortable place away from the crying needs of the poor. They've done their part and are finished! Others will point out that their comfortable place was, in fact, built on the backs of the poor. There are no "self-made" men or women.

But the argument is moot. The only question is, "What will you do now?" No one is justified by their pious works of prayer or sacrifice; we are justified by fidelity to God's commands, "When I was hungry, you gave me food. When I was homeless you sheltered me. When I was sick, you cared for me."  

Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 133

Forgive your neighbor’s injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the LORD? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins?

My historian friend Father Camillus once told me that, despite my major in English, I have a pretty good understanding of history. Given that encouragement I will venture a theory: Beginning with Greek philosophy western civilization has struggled to lift its face from the muck of passionate emotions and attain the calm, deliberate, intelligent vision of reason. 

Anyone can react in anger, joy, or desire and explain their action with one or more of those emotions. "It felt good!" But was the act reasonable? Did it help the situation? Do you feel good about the results? 

In the Greek spirit of elevating the mind and rationality, early Christians often practiced severe asceticism in the effort to control their desires and emotions. They fasted for days at a time, passed long sleepless nights in prayer, and punished their bodies with hairshirts and flails. All in an effort to discipline their appetites. Many attained astounding control of their bodies. Despite their emaciated appearances and long, drawn faces, they could walk long journeys, endure cold, miserable nights without complaint, and suffer the torture of enemies. During Saint Francis's last two years, after he had received the stigmata, the legends say he looked like a corpse, a dancing corpse, as he preached the Good News of Jesus!

Need I add these men and women had completely erased their sexual appetites? The younger Saint Francis, tormented by desire, once got up in the night and created a woman of snow. Then, as he considered marriage, he realized he must have children of snow, and several servants. Remember, he had grown up amid wealth, with cooks, maids, body guards, launderesses, and gofers. A household was a lot of people. "If that's what you want, Francis," he said, "go for it!" He was never tempted again. (So the legends says.)

With deeper reflection and the Renaissance appreciation for both passion and the beauty of the human body, Christian spirituality has paid less attention to mortification of the body and more attention to the needs of the poor. Human history is, unfortunately, a story of the relentlessly widening gap between poverty and wealth. Today the Holy Spirit urges us to care for the body while paying more attention to the needs of others. 

But we are still carried away by passions occasionally, and that's usually not good for anyone. I am told that Wall Street is driven by fear and greed. A friend who worked in a brokerage office told me of desperate phone calls from anxious investors whenever The Economy hickupped. 

Marketeers know how to generate anxiety among shoppers to sell more stuff. Children readily justify their pummelling one another with half-truths, "He started it!" Unfortunately, nations go to war and murder vast numbers of defenseless civilians with the same flimsy excuse.

Today's first reading urges us to "Forgive your neighbor's injustice. Then, when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven." Angry, hurt, frightened, we rarely pause to consider our own guilt. 

When I visit the psych ward in the hospital, I often meet people whose complaints about loved ones are precisely my own! They cannot stop pleading their cases like lawyers in a courtroom -- as if their doctors, nurses, chaplains, and fellow patients should judge and vindicate them. I realize these patients are no sicker than me when I feel offended!

Today's gospel describes a vicious servant who refuses to forgive a small debt after his own enormous debt has been erased. Clearly, the man is driven by strange emotions. Perhaps he thinks he has pulled the wool over his master's eyes and will not have a fellow servant do the same to him. Or perhaps he feels humiliated after cringing before the master, and despises a fellow servant cringing before him. But whatever his feelings may be, they do not justify his action. He must suffer a terrible punishment. 

Then Jesus delivers his own verdict, "So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

Christians practice penance daily, examining our thoughts, feelings, impulses, and actions in the light of the Gospel. We ask the Holy Spirit to help us recognize and claim our sinfulness. We hope we might recognize our foolishness before others do! But, if they point it out to us, we can gratefully accept the feedback. We put away every pretense of being better than others. Unlike the Pharisee in the temple, we say, "Oh Lord, I thank you that I am like the rest of humanity,"greedy, dishonest, adulterous." 

We ponder Jesus's threat and ask again for mercy even as we renew our commitment to show mercy to others. Free of the muck of passionate emotions, we enjoy a clearer vision of all people. They are indeed images of God. 

Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 448

After saying this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear.” Then his disciples asked him what the meaning of this parable might be. He answered, “Knowledge of the mysteries of the Kingdom of God has been granted to you; but to the rest, they are made known through parables so that they may look but not see, and hear but not understand.

Today's gospel begins with Saint Luke's remark that people travelled from many towns and long distances. He doesn't say exactly why they came, but we can suppose the majority brought their loved ones to be healed. A few were driven by curiosity and might volunteer to be disciples. 

Given the opportunity of the moment, Jesus's response must be off putting. They came all this way to hear a remark with no apparent meaning? Most of a farmer's broadcast seed fails to take root, flourish, and fructify. But some does. 

Yes, and...? There is absolutely nothing new about that! 

"Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear!" Hear what? When Jesus made a similar remark in Capernaum they wanted to throw him over the cliff! 

To his disciples he will reveal his meaning: it's not easy to follow him. Once you set your hands to the plow, don't look back. 

Of course, that observation accompanies a universal truth: it's not easy to be human. Millions of Americans today are daily confronted with the question, "Why shouldn't I kill myself?" Many cannot answer the question and do take their own lives. Far more forestall the question with alcohol, improper use of drugs, internet/television, or some other useless pastime. 

But as for the seed that fell on rich soil, they are the ones who, when they have heard the word, embrace it with a generous and good heart, and bear fruit through perseverance.”

Because it is not easy to be human or to be a disciple of Jesus, he gives us his Holy Spirit, a readiness to embrace the word eagerly, "with a generous and good heart." 

If you think it comes automatically, as if you're some kind of machine that revs up when there is gas in the tank and spark in the plugs, you'll find yourself sitting idly in the garage, going no where. We must go the extra mile, lend a jacket and a shirt, give to anyone who asks, and turn the other cheek. 

Is it easy? No. That's why God gives us his Spirit. 

Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 447

If Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty too is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.

 

Until that great gittin-up morning arrives, Christians will always wonder about the promise of eternal life. How is it possible?

We have many fanciful ways to describe it but, as Hamlet said, from that undiscovered country no traveler returns.  Are there streets of gold in heaven? Will our bodies be like these we’re familiar with? Will our disabilities be removed? Will we be free to move about as Jesus did when he appeared despite the locked doors? Will we have to study languages to talk with each other, or will we know them already? With piled up unanswerable questions mounting like that some people may dismiss the whole idea. It’s more than we can comprehend; and asking about it invites nonsense.

But we wonder anyway.

Contrary notions point to the cycles of life and the inevitability of death. Some spiritualities celebrate life and death as intrinsically good; they need neither judgement nor vindication from a Divine Authority. There is no Eternal Reward, they say, for a good life. Approaching death they might close with, “It was good while it lasted.”

 

As appealing as that argument might be, it fails to address the reality of evil and our rightful refusal to accept it. Even small children realize there should be justice; they don’t hesitate to complain, “That’s not fair!” Is there no final reckoning and atonement for evil? Are innocent victims of violence and poverty never compensated for their suffering? Do the wicked whose crimes were never punished, who lived la dolce vita until they died, finally escape retribution and justice?

Our Jewish tradition will never allow us to be silent in the face of that which is just wrong.

 

I have a kind of answer. It’s not completely satisfactory but it’s a reply. If material objects and organic systems – two different types of being – must suffer corruption we can still hope that the Lord will remember, restore, and save that third level of being, personal relationships. My automobile won’t last long; the tree I planted will fall to the ground and be reabsorbed under fungi and the voracious teeth of insects. But you and I hope and believe our love is forever.

Isn’t that what Tony sang about in West Side Story, an endless night: 

Tonight, tonight, / Won't be just any night, / Tonight there will be no morning star. / Tonight, tonight, / I'll see my love tonight. / And for us, stars will stop where they are. / Today, The minutes seem like hours, / The hours go so slowly, / And still the sky is light. / Oh moon, grow bright, / And make this endless day endless night.  Tonight!

Or as Michael Martin Murphy sang, “If love never last forever, what’s forever for?”

In the resurrection of Jesus, we find the promise of everlasting life. Saint Paul argued from that historical fact. Some may contest its facticity but Christians don’t. We have it on reliable testimony which the Holy Spirit has sustained through these twenty centuries.

It’s silly to ask what it might be like. Can anyone describe what the second Covid Christmas will be like? Or what must happen on November 3, 2020. We’ll wait and see. Hope and pray. And trust in God’s mercy for us and our loved ones.

  

Thursday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 446

 

“Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?”

 

In today’s gospel Jesus uses a homely riddle to enlighten his host, a prosperous Pharisee. A quibbler, disrespecting the Lord’s authority, might have responded with a high-minded retort, “Neither debtor would love the merciful creditor more! You can’t buy love!" 

With such a smartaleck reply he might choose a life of inane foolishness and the loss of salvation.

However, the Pharisee, knowing the Lord was about to make an important statement, gamily replied, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.” And Jesus approved his answer, “You have judged rightly.” The Pharisee obviously respected Jesus and stood ready to be instructed.

I have been reading Saint John Newman’s Apologia pro vita sua and I am struck by the seriousness with which he and his contemporaries took religion. First as an Episcopalian and then as a Roman Catholic he saw “liberalism” as the enemy of religion and the human spirit.

I’ll confess I have not understood the hullabaloo about liberalism and modernism, although every deacon, priest, and bishop, at one time, had to swear an Oath against Modernism. 

At this late date it appears to me as an indistinct belief that religion doesn't matter, plus a deliberate attempt to redefine religious truths in the language of psychology or some other frame of reference. So our Catholic tradition of devotion to the Blessed Mother, for instance, might be redefined as a loyalty to the Church, since "Mary is a symbol of the Church." 

It sounds insipid and that's intentional. Modernism, liberalism, or secularism regards religion as a thing of the past. Some people will say all religions are the same, or any religion is better than none. Which is the same as, "No religion is better than any." 

People who go that route might describe themselves lamely as "spiritual but not religious" or, more simply, "none." If they declare they still believe in God, they mean they suppose there might be a God. But they would not say they actually believe in God as in, "I would stake my life on God's fidelity." 

Saint John Newman saw it coming in the nineteenth century and he frankly blamed the Protestant Reformation in general. After a long tortuous inward journey, he turned away from the "mother" who raised him, his Church of England, and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He embraced the binding authority of Rome which -- today and forever -- holds the Church together. 

   

In today's gospel I notice the deference the Pharisee gave to the Rabbi Jesus whose presence and demeanor command enormous respect. We hear it at the beginning of the passage: 

Jesus said to him in reply,

“Simon, I have something to say to you.”

“Tell me, teacher,” he said.

If he did not respect religion he would not have invited Jesus to his home. 

Saint John Newman believed in religion and he made enormous personal sacrifice in his quest to discover the true religion. At the end of that search, he urged deference to the Roman Pope and his infallible authority. He recognized the obvious limits of that authority. Popes don't predict the weather or define quantum theory. They do urge us to believe that Jesus is our Lord and we are saved despite our sins by belief in him.

Pope Francis as a religious authority tells us we must respond to the moral crises of environmental degradation, deepening poverty, and mass migrations of people. Belief in God requires moral action. Some (few) scientific authorities might disagree with him, but our religion demands respect for the authority of the Pope and his bishops, and a willingness to follow their lead.

Memorial of Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

Lectionary: 445

 

If I speak in human and angelic tongues

but do not have love,

I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy

and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge;

if I have all faith so as to move mountains,

but do not have love, I am nothing….

 

The scriptures speak of that most illusive mystery, the human heart. Although everyone has one, we often don’t understand what is happening in there. Even our own intentions seem unfathomable. “What was I thinking?” we ask ourselves, and not only about things that happened a long time ago.

Enemies of the Church love to point at our gatherings and accuse us of hypocrisy. But they don’t see the hypocrisy of their accusation. They do not understand how difficult it is to tell the truth, or speak from the heart, or act with integrity. Many believe that their impulsive utterances, given with little reflection or forethought, are honest.  “That’s how I feel!” they might add, thus compounding their duplicity. It’s not that easy to speak the truth.

The anagram THINK reminds of the challenge of speaking the truth:

• Is it True?
• Helpful?
• Inspiring?
• Necessary?
• and Kind?

Speaking the truth occurs between real people; it is not a virtual exercise with imaginary people. (Much of what I see on Facebook is just gas by people who might be doing something useful with their time. Twitter, from what I hear, is even less reliable.)

I am convinced that fallen human creatures cannot speak the truth, discover the heart, love or be loved unless the Spirit of God moves in us. The human being is an empty vessel meant to be filled. It longs for that consummation devoutly to be wished but is not prepared to die for it.

And yet speaking the truth is terribly difficult because it has nothing to do with me. I cannot gain by it. There is no profit motive for integrity. When I speak the truth, I let it go, ceding control to the Lord. "My truth" never belonged to me. 

Martyrs like today’s Saints Cornelius and Cyprian show the world hearts that speak truth; they remind us of where love must go. Seeking satisfaction in God alone, they drink the dregs of disappointment and find, in the bottom of that cup, communion with the Crucified.