Saturday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 406 

Thereupon the princes and all the people said to the priests and the prophets,
“This man does not deserve death;
it is in the name of the LORD, our God, that he speaks to us.”

I am ever more convinced of the futility of conservative and liberal efforts to save whatever they're trying to save. The right would conserve a way of life that vanished a long time ago, or may never have existed. The left have sold their souls to a determined future which will never happen. They demonize each other because they cannot recognize the demons within their own hearts. 

Nor can protests and politics address the crises; their futile efforts demonstrate only our inability and unwillingness to dismantle what we have built. 

The Bible describes many environmental clues of God's displeasure with the world we have built. We have only to read the prophets and then look around and see the droughts, infestations, plagues, floods, and ceaseless wars they predicted. If we'd rather not read the prophets, we can listen to the sociologists, economists, political scientists, and climatologists who tell us our problems of our own making. The latter are right -- we made the mess; but the prophets are more correct -- we cannot change it without God's help. We created this situation out of our sins; it will end only when we turn to the Gospel. 

But our religion is also complicit in havoc because it's too often about feeling good, or feeling right with God. "Does God still love me?" we ask. And we assure one another, "Oh yes, God loves you very much." We cuddle ourselves and say, "God loves me unconditionally, and nothing else matters." 

Okay, God loves you! Fine! Get over yourself and listen to what God is saying. His anger doesn't mean he doesn't love you, but it does mean he is unhappy with us and is taking steps to correct us.  

The Testaments Old and New preach penance for the forgiveness of sins. The Lord's first word in Galilee was not, "Relax, God loves you." It was, "Repent and believe the Gospel." 

We practice penance by observing the holiness of God in our world, and by being holy as He is holy. We practice penance by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. They require discipleship, as in discipline. We must live under the authority of a disciplinarian who directs, teaches, and corrects our attitudes, thinking, speaking, and acting. We must begin to look like him; our manner must reflect his continual presence in our life. 

If his discipline is sometimes uncomfortable, we don't walk away from it. We say, "Thank you! I need to feel uncomfortable, unloved, and uneasy about myself." If your faith in God does not sustain and reassure you through anxiety and self-doubt, it's not much faith. I've met people who quit the Church because the priest wasn't very nice to them. Obviously, they had no faith to start with. 

• Penitential prayer is both communal and personal. We pray with the Church and alone.  
• We fast with disciplined food consumption, and careful management of our time. We don't waste it with cheap entertainment, social media nonsense, and political partisanship. (No one needs 24-7 news coverage. If you've seen President Trump get shot in the ear one time, that's enough.) 
• We give alms first with virtuous, responsible behavior in the workplace and marketplace, and then by donating time, talent, and treasure to our churches and other worthwhile organizations.  

We don't need to feel good about ourselves. We do need to do good, and that begins with Penance.