Saturday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 448

I charge you before God... to keep the commandment without stain or reproach until the appearance of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When I was a high school seminarian, the friars who taught us -- who were young men -- told us the story of the old man whom they often heard praying for "perseverance in my vocation." The friars were edified by the legend, the students were mystified. 

Almost sixty years later, I have begun to understand it on all three levels of young, middle, and senior adulthood. 

In today's first reading we hear Saint Paul "charging" his disciple to "keep the commandment... until the appearance...," and in the gospel we hear a parable about perseverance. As I approach seventy-three I wonder when it might get easier.

The challenge is made acute by the realization that, like the generals who fight this war with the tactics and stratagems of the last war, I quarrel with people who have already left the building. I see more clearly how past developments led to present realities, but have little idea where the present is leading.  

And so I keep the faith with more insight and with less. As the United States recently retreated from Afghanistan, I remember very clearly that, on September 12, 2001, I told a small congregation that the United States must not go to war over the insult and tragedy of "what happened yesterday." (It was not yet called "nine eleven.") But they knew and I knew we would go to war; we only had to decide which nation to invade. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, or Afghanistan? I knew then that the incursion would be no more successful than the debacle of Vietnam. The wisdom of my fifty-two years was no more persuasive then than that of my seventy-two years is today. 

I cling to a faith which is not described by American fantasies but by Catholic doctrine. As a chaplain in a VA hospital, I hope that Veterans will remember the faith of their childhood, abandoned in Vietnam and scorned in Afghanistan but, as I tell them, "We're still here." As a chaplain for the Knights of Columbus, I draw on our Catholic heritage to honor what President Lincoln called in his first inaugural address, "the better angels of our nature:"

"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." 

Catholics bring the true history of God to this nation. We remember that he was born among us, crucified, buried, and raised up. With that foundational memory we also remember that the Revolutionary War was supported by less than half of Americans, that the west was won by smallpox, and the Civil War was fought over slavery. We remember the jingoism of manifest destiny, a city on the hill, and making the world safe for democracy. We remember that God is still in charge and is leading us through these dark times despite the lies we tell ourselves. We pray that our children will recognize our lies for what they are and forgive us for having told them. 

Catholics should speak the truth as Americans reassemble our broken identity. That takes courage for many will only want to recreate a past that was neither great for the majority nor good for the least among us. As Catholics, we invite our neighbors to journey with us toward justice in a world we cannot even imagine.