Expect the Expected

We all know the phrase, “Expect the unexpected.” It is used to describe a person or a situation that is less than predictable, perhaps in an exciting way, perhaps in a troublesome one. The phrase was not used in Jesus’s time, at least as far as I know, but no doubt his Apostles and others who encountered him would have well understood its meaning. Jesus was always confounding expectations, breaking social norms, and generally bewildering others, especially those in authority. No doubt the Apostles learned that when you’re following Jesus, you have to learn to “expect the unexpected.” 

Our Gospel today presents us with two good examples of just what I mean. Jesus twice acts in a way contrary to how we might expect, not just to be surprising for its own sake, but because he was aware of a deeper need, a more urgent call of the Holy Spirit. Looking at these two instances of the unexpected, I think we can learn something valuable for our own walk with the Lord.

Last week, we heard about how Jesus sent out the Twelve Apostles ahead of him to towns and villages, endowed with his power and authority. In today’s Gospel they have returned from their missionary work. They have preached and healed and cast out demons, and they are excited to tell the Lord all that they have done ministering in his name. We might expect Jesus would say, “Great, now go on back out there, and do even more!” But instead, he invites them to come away and rest. No doubt he appreciated their exuberance for what they had done, but perhaps he understood a potential danger as well, maybe a temptation to pride, or a danger of being exhausted. Whatever it was, Jesus unexpectedly invites them to take a break.

This should have obvious implications for us. There is an inherent value in rest, in slowing down, in pausing from the routine. Doing so allows us to recover our strength. But it also helps us to be attentive to deeper and more spiritual things. Our culture has tended to create a virtue out of busyness for busyness’s sake, often at the expense of or in avoidance of what is truly meaningful and lasting. Jesus surely appreciated the work that the Apostles had done – their preaching, their healing, their casting out demons. But he also wanted to remind them that none of it had been done by their own powers. When we become too wrapped up in our efforts and labors – even in good things, even in things that explicitly are part of our Christian calling – we risk losing connection with the One who is behind it all. Thus, at times, we need to step back and step away: to rest, to reflect, to pray – to be reminded that in all things it is God who sustains us and it is only in our relationship with him that we remain effective in what we do.

Jan Brueghel the Elder, Sermon on the Sea of Galilee (c. 1600)

If the Gospel had stopped there, that would have been a great message to take away: the importance of renewal and rejuvenation. But as we heard, there is a second, surprising part to the story. As Jesus and the Apostles head off to a deserted place for a time of reflection, they are swarmed by people searching for them, coming out from all the towns and villages and turning up in vast numbers. There is an air of desperation about them; as we heard, they were “like sheep without a shepherd.” And Jesus, “moved with pity”, begins to minister to them again, and the Apostles along with him. As important as that period of rest and reflection was to have been, it now goes out the window in order to respond to a more dire need.

This is another important, if harder lesson about Christian discipleship: we need rest and reflection for ourselves, but we will not always get it right away or in just the way we would like. At times, the Lord may even ask us to give up or to delay this kind of rest – good as it is in itself – for a deeper commitment of service to those in need. Here the Lord shows us that what really renews us is not just relaxation but a refreshment in who we are, and in what our Christian calling entails. Some things cannot wait or be delayed: a parent has to set aside their own fatigue in order to care for a sick child; a family may have to pull together time or money to support a troubled teenager or an elderly parent; a pastor may have to respond that midnight emergency call after a long day of ministry. In these situations, and many others that we might think about, the Lord invites us to be like him, and like his Apostles – deserving of their own rest, their hearts go out to those in even greater need, and so they respond to what the Holy Spirit inspires them to do in the moment.

A brief word of caution here: this kind of deeper sacrifice of service cannot be sustained forever. The Lord does not call us to go beyond our own needs to the point of utter exhaustion. We have to be aware of our limits, and so rightly step away or ask for help without fear of shame when we need it. But we should also understand that sometimes there is a deeper refreshment, a deeper sustenance that comes from finding the face of the Lord in places we might not first readily expect. I have known families who have given up their vacation so that they can work in service to the poor; I have known priests who spend their well-earned rest giving retreats to sisters, etc. Those are noble things to do, and things that not all of us are necessarily called to; but what we are called to do, at times, is to set aside our own needs, important as they are, in order to attend to those truly in need.

What we need is a good discernment of who we are and where we are at with the Lord. We should never become so caught up in the tasks at hand that we abandon prayer altogether, because prayer is the instrument by which we can hear God speaking to us. Has our well run dry, have we run aground spiritually? Are we in need of some quiet reflection? Okay, good; seek that out. But if the Lord comes knocking, and a greater need presents itself, we should be open to considering that Jesus may also be present there, that he may be asking us to put aside our rest for a time – as good and well-earned as it may be – so that we can encounter him in service to those in even greater need.

Friends, take a moment this week to ask where Jesus is leading you at this time. Perhaps like the Apostles, you need some time away for rest and spiritual renewal. Great! Seek that out. Perhaps he is asking you to continue laboring for a bit longer, to attend to those who are in your care or awaiting your help, setting aside your own needs for a time. Okay – trust that he will strengthen you to do just that, and then be joyful in serving him there. Following the Lord is ultimately not just about “expecting the unexpected,” but rather about expecting the expected – that is, an encounter with Jesus, often in unexpected places. May the Eucharistic presence that we will soon receive help us to hear his voice speaking to us, and give us the grace to respond readily to all that he may ask.

Go Forth

James Tissot, He Sent Them Out Two by Two (c. 1886)

Ordinary people often do heroic things. We see examples in the news all the time. A person puts themselves in harm’s way to save a person in need. Inevitably, you’ll hear them say afterward, “I’m not a hero; I just did what anybody would do.”

We often think of bravery as a quality by those who react instinctively – running into oncoming traffic or into a burning building. But bravery is really just doing what you know must be done, despite the potential costs to yourself. The truly brave then are not those who risk life or limb without thinking – but rather, those who do know the possible danger full well and who face it anyway, despite their fears.

In the Gospel today, Jesus sends out the Apostles on a mission that requires true bravery. Having spent time seeing him preach, watching him heal, they will now go out ahead of him and on his behalf to the nearby towns and villages. Because we know that the Apostles did a lot of preaching and evangelizing in their later lives, we might forget that this is the first time they are going out on their own. No doubt they were nervous and felt unprepared, and probably all of the things that might go wrong went racing through their minds. After all they were just poor fishermen, most of them, unskilled, not even completely sure themselves what following Jesus was all about, and now they were being sent out into strange, maybe hostile communities with a message of repentance.

And yet, they went. They showed bravery in the face of their mission, despite the dangers that lay ahead. Perhaps you have anticipated what I am leading to – Jesus wants to send us out on mission in a similar way. Don’t we tend to think of our faith as something that we have chosen? As an affiliation or belief system that we subscribe to out of free choice? But a fundamental reality of Christianity is that before we chose the Lord, he has chosen us – he has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as St. Paul says, and so he calls us to use that blessing in our encounter with others. If Christian discipleship is about trying to follow Jesus more perfectly each day, it is also about trying to answer each day his call of being sent by him into the world. There’s no generic or boilerplate calling – God sends each of us uniquely, according to our vocation, in our circumstances right now, to bring the Good News of Jesus to others.

I think we can draw from our Gospel today three brief insights that might help us to answer that call well:

1) First, notice that the Apostles don’t offer excuses. They know they don’t have it all figured out yet; they know they’re still missing many things, still needing God’s grace to be healed of their own imperfections. But they trust in what Jesus has told them – to rely upon him, and not on what they possess, physically or spiritually. In our lives, we don’t have to be theological experts or moral gurus in order to speak about the Lord to another. We only have to be ready to communicate to another why life with Christ is better than life without him, and believe that he will give us the words to speak what he wishes us to say.

2) Second, notice that Jesus sent the Apostles out two by two. The Lord gives us his inner strength in our mission, but he also knows we need support from each other. It’s critical then that we look for spiritual friends who will help support us and keep us accountable in answering our call. Think about who might meet this need for you, and for whom you meet this need. None of us are called to evangelize on our own; we need to strengthen and support each other in our common task.

3) Third, notice that Jesus tells the Apostles not to be troubled by rejection. Going out to proclaim the Gospel, we will encounter hardship and resistance; that’s just the nature of the calling. But when it happens, we should not give it undue thought, allowing it to breed doubt or discouragement within us. Instead, as Jesus says, look ahead to the next place, the next person, because there is always another opportunity on the horizon. Trust in the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and carry on.

Friends, at the end of every Mass, the priest or deacon gives us a simple command: in Latin, “Ite” – “Go” – that is, “Go forth”, “Go in peace,” “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.” It is a reminder that this command is not really from the priest or deacon, but from the Lord Jesus. He commands us to go out – to our homes, our workplaces, our classrooms, any and every social setting – to proclaim his Good News to those who might hear it. The Lord sends us out, like he sent the Apostles, to bring his message of faith, hope, and love to those who need it. Let’s be brave in answering his call, let’s support each other, and let’s not be discouraged if we encounter rejection. We surely know well the costs and dangers that can come from living our Catholic faith authentically in this day and age. But we also know it is the Lord who sends us, and he will not fail to provide us all that we need if we show bravery in responding to what he commands, to what must be done in his name. Relying upon him, he can transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, the weak into the brave, the disciple into the Apostle. Let us go forth!

Hidden Thorns

If you're a fan of baseball, as I am, you may be familiar with the term "home cooking". It's not used so much anymore, but back in the day, it was used to refer to the generous or forgiving approach to the game that a player or team might receive in their home stadium. For example, a pitcher for the home team might get a few extra inches on the edge of the strike zone than a pitcher from the away team. Or, if a batter for the home team hits a ball that should have been caught, he might be granted a hit from the official scorer even if in another city the ball would have been ruled an error. There's no conscious bias or discrimination happening – that's just "home cooking".

Most of us expect to get a little easier treatment when we're at home, among family and friends, in settings that are familiar and comfortable. No doubt, Jesus may have looked forward to something very similar when he returns to his hometown in the Gospel today. But as we hear, what he finds is anything but "home cooking". He's met instead with skepticism, perplexity, and above all, a lack of faith. The Gospel writer Mark tells us that he was "not able to perform any mighty deed there." It's not that he lacked the power or no longer had the ability to work a miracle – rather, the faith that warranted and elicited the mighty deeds he had done elsewhere was wholly lacking in his hometown, among his own family and friends. How truly sad that must have been for the Lord.

While we tend to expect things at home to go easier for us than in more unfamiliar, less welcoming places, the reality of course is often much different. For many people, "home" is often a place of great challenge and the setting of much suffering. Home can be the place of domestic troubles, marital strife, illness, isolation, addiction, even despair. Home can be the place where people who may seem perfectly fine and happy to the outside world have to face their crippling fears, their sorrowful memories, their inner demons, or their broken relationships. The place that should be a place of rest, welcome, and peace can become for many a place of true pain.

The Apostle Paul (c. 1657) by Rembrandt van Rijn

In our second ready today, we hear Saint Paul confide to the Corinthian community about an experience of suffering that he has had. He seems to be sharing something that is not perceptible to everyone else, something private and personal. There has long been debate about what exactly he was suffering from. Some think it was a debilitating illness, like epilepsy, while others tend to think it was some broken personal relationship, or even a temptation of some kind. Whatever it was, we know it caused him great pain – he refers to it as "a thorn in the flesh" and even "an angel of Satan". Clearly, this was no small thing, but a source of great suffering.

Paul very understandably prays to the Lord, with whom he clearly has a very close relationship, asking for healing and for this suffering to be taken away. And he is told, "No." Jesus, the Divine Friend, the one who had changed Paul's life and was the driving force behind all of his missionary work, tells him that he wants him to continue to bear the pain that he has. How strange this is to our way of thinking! But Paul comes to understand the Lord's true desire – that the pain he felt would keep him from growing too proud, too "elated," and would remind him of the sufferings that must always be a part of our life on this side of heaven. The Lord could surely have taken away Paul's pain, changed his situation to undo the hurt and no doubt bewilderment that must have come, wondering why he was being asked to suffer. But as Paul explains to the Corinthians, he came to realize that he was stronger with his suffering than without it, because it forced him to rely upon the Lord's strength and not his own. Paul was humbled, and in his humility, he found a deeper faith, a renewed strength, a joy that comes not from the absence of pain but endurance despite it.

When we look at our own lives, especially those private and personal things, those aspects of our domestic world and home life that others may not see, perhaps known only to us, how do we face those challenges? As I said, there is no end to the number of hidden thorns that can afflict us in the very place, the very setting that we would most wish to take solace in. All of us likely have some aspect of our "home" life that not only could be better, but is in need of healing, that is a place of pain which we wish the Lord would touch and heal. We can and should ask for that healing, as Paul did. But if we are told "No" – that is, if the Lord says that his grace is sufficient for us, and that his power is made perfect in our weakness – then we must find the same faith that Paul found. Our natural response might be skepticism, perplexity, and perhaps even a lack of faith – a belief that God has rejected us, has not heard our prayer, or doesn't wish to respond. But perhaps that is not it at all; perhaps the mighty deed God wants to work in us is not healing but something greater, something that doesn't take away our pain but allows us to overcome it, to move beyond it. It is then that, unlike the people of Jesus's hometown, our faith in what God can do must not be found lacking. How powerful it can be if we understand, like Paul, that God has heard our prayer and responds instead, "Yes, you are suffering, but your suffering is making your stronger, holier, more perfect". The thorn in our flesh may be the very part of our life that is drawing us closer to God, making us more Christ-like, perhaps even paving our own personal path to heaven.

Friends, none of us expect to get "home cooking" all of the time. All of us know there are times when the calls will seem to go against us, and things won't go our way. But perhaps we do at times tend to believe that if we are good people, if we believe in Jesus, that will we be saved from the worst parts of life, that God will prevent us from encountering anything truly terrible, truly painful. We must learn that that is not what the Lord grants to us. Like Paul, we must come to understand, "when I am weak, then I am strong." Don't shy away from the sufferings you are asked to bear, the hidden wounds that only you know, the situations that you wish to be fixed but are not. Instead, let your hidden thorns become signs of your faith – marks in your "flesh," as it were, that mimic the marks of Christ, that make you more like him, even as you struggle on. There are few things in this world that are as profoundly hopeful and inspiring as a person who bears nobly a great suffering, a humiliating pain, especially when they do so out of their faith in Jesus. Whether known to others, or even if known only to ourselves, it may be that exactly at that point, exactly in that place, the Lord is doing something amazing within us – offering us, if not healing now, the strength and grace and perseverance to bear our sufferings with faith and hope, furthering us on the road to the Kingdom where pain and sadness have no place, where every tear has been wiped away.

Getting Out Alive

 Ilya Repin, Christ Raising Jairus's Daughter from the Dead (1871)

(Homily for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, preached at Little Flower Church, Bethesda, Maryland)

Like a lot of kids, when I was in high school I discovered my parents’ record collection and listened to a lot of the albums they had liked at my age, hoping to expand my musical horizons. One of the bands that especially interested me was The Doors. I thought their music had a cool sound. Their singer had a charismatic aura about him; he even kind of looked like a secular Jesus. However, my attraction didn’t last long. As I learned more about the history of the band, the darkness of their ethos and especially how their frontman’s life came to a sad and early end, the mystique that they had had turned into something more menacing. As one of their lyrics said, “no one here gets out alive” – and I could well believe it.

In my priestly work in Arkansas, I am pastor of a university parish where, as you might imagine, much of my time is spent working with and counseling young people. Working with students, I have found that the experience I just mentioned is not unique. So many people these days – especially young people – feel an enticement to what is dark or dangerous, to whatever bucks tradition, especially morality and religion. However, they soon find that the reality is much different than the allure. The “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” lifestyle promises freedom and joy, but all it yields in the end is frustration, emptiness, and regret.

In our first reading today, the author of the Book of Wisdom reminds us that such was never the plan of God: death – and all that leads to it – was not originally part of his creation. Rather, it entered the world through the temptations of the devil and the sinfulness of mankind. Through the Fall of our first parents, human beings became enslaved to the experience of sin and, through our weakened nature, we were inclined to all that leads away from God. When viewed through this lens, God’s plan to send his Son Jesus was nothing short of a rescue mission. God decisively acted – in the Lord’s Incarnation, and Passion, Death, and Resurrection – to set free his creation and restore it to life.

We see this laid out very clearly in our Gospel today. Jesus performs two miracles, one sandwiched in between the other. Both of them display his power over death. First, he heals the woman with the hemorrhage apparently inadvertently, curing her from an illness that has ostracized her from her community, has driven her to destitution, and has robbed her of life altogether, for all intents and purposes. Second, he literally raises from the dead the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue official. The implication from our evangelist, St. Mark, is clear – the Lord has at last arrived on the scene to rid his creation of the infection of death and restore to life all those enslaved to sin and its effects.

The readings of the liturgy today invite us to consider how God’s rescue mission is playing out in our world. The liberation that Christ offers is not something just for the daughter of Jairus or the woman with the hemorrhage – he offers it to all. To those desperate, to those addicted, to those fearful or enraged, to those who are spiritually lifeless, emotionally despondent, physically deprived, to anyone who wishes to experience new life and freedom – Christ says, “Arise!” His grace offers us redemption and hope; his love affords us the promise of resurrection and new life. And through the good that he continues to do in his Church – that means not only for us, but also through us – he offers help to those who are in need: comfort for the afflicted, charity for those who are needy, and especially hope for the downcast. Not even suffering and death, as terrible as they are, can rob us of the life that Jesus can give – because, as he showed, he will undo even those afflictions at the end of all things. 

Ariel Amegian, The Face of Christ (1935), based upon a negative of the Shroud of Turin

Perhaps we might consider today: What is holding me captive? From what do I wish to be liberated? Maybe it is something that has a grip on our life, driving us to desperation, like the woman with the hemorrhage; maybe like Jairus or his daughter, it is mortality itself, our own or another’s. Whatever it is, Christ says to us, “Arise!”. We have to learn to rebuke those voices, whether interior or exterior, which tempt us to doubt, to hesitate out of fear, or to hold back for any reason from placing all of our confidence in the Lord’s power. No secular “Jesus” can save us – only the true Savior, who has redeemed our humanity and raised us from death to new life. 

Friends, it may be true that in this life, from this world, “no one here gets out alive.” While God did not create death, he did permit us to choose it by our own sinfulness. But in Jesus, he has launched a rescue mission, one that will bring us to the shores of an eternal life in a world without end. May we learn each day to bow low in complete faith before the awesome power that the Lord has to liberate us from all that can ensnare us and raise us by grace to the freedom and joy that he alone can give.