The Four Last Things

Maarten van Heemskerck, The Four Last Things (1565)

Have you ever heard of the Four Last Things? Those of you who read from or studied the Baltimore Catechism long ago might remember the phrase. The Four Last Things are those things that come at the end of our lives: they are Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. No matter the vicissitudes of our life, the ups and downs, whether we have lived well or poorly, we will all encounter the same basic realities at our lives’ end: Death, when our mortal bodies pass away; Judgment, when we will stand before God face to face and understand our life perfectly as he does; and then finally either Heaven, union with God, or Hell, separation from him.

While it might be a bit sobering to think of all of these things, it is clear that the Church wants us to think of them. In a sense, these Four Last Things should always be before our mind’s eye – not to be frightened by them, but to be ready for them because they are what await us. They should be especially at the forefront of our minds each year as we begin the month of November, when our Church gives us two days to help remind us of these Last Things.

On November 1, we gather for Mass to celebrate and ask the intercession of our brothers and sisters in heaven – those saints, canonized or not, who have passed through death and judgment and who now dwell in God’s presence forever. As we heard in the first reading, they are the ones who “survived the time of great distress” – or as St. Paul said in last Sunday’s readings, they are the ones who have competed well, who have run the race, who have kept the faith. The saints are our forerunners in life; they show us that holiness is possible, and that we too can one day achieve the blessedness they now enjoy.

However, while heaven is our goal and all of life is a kind of contest to reach it, we can’t assume that reaching that heavenly homeland is a guarantee. After all, among the Last Things, the alternative to Heaven is Hell, which we may not like to think of but which is a possibility if we reject God and his commandments, if we fail to run well the race of life. Allow me then to say something briefly about the second day that helps us remember the Four Last Things, the 2nd of November. On All Souls Day, we remember and pray for our loved ones who have passed from this life who are not saints, not yet – they are in need of still some purification (or purgation, which is where the word “purgatory” comes from) to be able to stand in God’s presence.

In recent years, I have noticed a disturbing trend in how many people – even many Catholics – speak about their loved ones who have passed away. They talk as if they know undoubtedly their loved ones are in heaven. While that sentiment might help us when we are grieving, we have to be very careful about presuming we know their fate. We may hope and even believe they are in heaven, but we should never presume such so definitively that we decide they no longer are in need of our prayers. I recall one of the most beautiful homilies I have ever heard was the one given by a priest at the funeral of his father, who was a famous and influential judge. He said to the congregation something to the effect of “Please do not let the love and admiration you had for my father in his earthly life dissuade you from praying fervently for his soul now that he has passed from this world.” Those words have always struck me as so very true. To believe that our loved ones are in the merciful embrace of Jesus is something we all want – but if that leads us to presume that they no longer need our prayers, we do them a great disservice.

Friends, I recently heard someone say, “If the Church isn’t making saints, then she isn’t making sense.” How true that is! The purpose of our faith, and the purpose of our Church, is to get us to heaven. As we begin this month of November, we honor today our brothers and sisters who are there now, rejoicing and helping us with their prayers. Tomorrow, in turn, we offer our prayers for others of our brothers and sisters who still are being purified, awaiting that final glorious vision of God face to face. Most importantly, perhaps, these days help us remember for ourselves the final things of our lives, the Last Things that await us, so that we may be ready to face them. May we strive to compete well in this trial of life – to finish the race, to keep the faith – so that one day we too may enter the glorious presence of that heavenly company.

A Primer on Prayer

Have you ever had to politely give a critique to someone you cared about? Maybe it was a friend or a coworker, or maybe your child – or yes, even your spouse. Maybe you have had to explain something about the particular culture of your family or your workplace, or maybe something generally about societal expectations. I remember one time having to explain to a friend how he tended to dominate the conversation, and that it was polite to let others have a chance to chime in.

It is never easy to offer a critique to someone you care about. To do it well you want convey the important information to the other person without crushing their spirit. In a sense, I think that is what Jesus is trying to do for us in the Gospel today. He is gently pointing out how we tend to not be very good at prayer. We can run into problems with praying in many ways, but Jesus addresses two of the most common in our Gospel today.

In the first regard, we can lack persistence in our prayer. That is, we give up too easily! We may pray for an intention, or a particular person, or in a particular moment of need, but when the going gets tough, too often we fail to persist. Perhaps we get tired from prayer, or perhaps we grow discouraged. But, as Jesus shows to us, our attitude with God should be one of stubborn persistence – even to the point of obnoxiousness. As he says, even a dishonest judge, who cared nothing about God or man, decided to rule on behalf of the woman because of her persistence; how much more then will God, who is good and gracious and desires our well-being at every moment, respond to us who believe in him.

Of course, God being God, we should not expect that he would act in precisely the way we would want. Sometimes we may not get what we ask for, or we don’t get it in the time or manner we would prefer. Does that mean he doesn’t love us? No – in fact, just the opposite. It’s because of God’s all-encompassing love that he allows us to go through difficulty, even sometimes letting our prayers seemingly go unanswered, in order to bring forth some greater good. God knows what is good for us, and desires it, even more fully than we do, and we must trust him even when we can’t see how he is at work in the present moment.

Jesus asks an important question at the end of the Gospel today: “But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This is a good admonition for when our prayer seems one-sided; the Lord sometimes requires that we continue to trust in him, to have faith, even when we can’t see the end result. But I think Jesus is also speaking to the second problem we have with prayer: at times we are not very faithful. In other words, not only do we often give up too soon, but sometimes we fail to really believe and trust that God will answer our prayers. How often do we say to someone, “Let me pray about that!” or “Yes, I’ll pray for you!” But do we really follow through? Prayer should be the foundation of how we think and discern and act, and we need to carve out a daily space in order to build up that foundation. I know we might say, “Oh Father, I’m so busy, I can’t find the time to pray!” But that’s precisely it – being so busy can disorient us, and lead us often to poor, rash choices. We need that time to pray precisely because we are busy.

Thomas Brigstocke, Moses with His Arms Supported by Aaron and Hur (c. 1860)

In the first reading, Moses kept his arms raised because he knew – he could see – how God responded to his prayers. He got physically tired and so he had help in keeping his arms raised. For us, what bothers us is not so much physical but spiritual fatigue, especially when we do not immediately see how prayer benefits us. I think the devil tempts us away from prayer often through frustration and a feeling of being either unworthy or unsuccessful in our prayer. But like Moses, we have to persist, and not allow ourselves to stop praying or to doubt that God is at work for our good. Prayer is not just about asking for and getting what we want – it’s about learning to deepen our trust in God himself, and deepening the relationship we have with him. That’s why time in prayer is never wasted – even if we are distracted, or feel as if we didn’t feel anything, or didn’t gain any new insight, or even if we wished we had done something else entirely with our time! God knows the value of our prayer much better than we do, and so he will use it in the way that he knows best.

Friends, let’s listen to the gentle critique Jesus is offering us today, in how we relate to God, especially in how we pray to him and how we trust in him. In a sense, it is doesn’t matter how good or how poor we may feel we are at prayer, we all have room for further growth. In the end, Jesus today is encouraging us to pray as he himself did – continuously, never wavering, but praying always with the certainty that not only was God listening but that he was acting as well. Our prayer must be rooted, as his was, in a relationship with the Father in heaven – in the persistent practice of turning to him in need and relying upon him, each and every day, to be with us, to assist us, to give us what we need.

The Spirit of Conversion

Some people say that converts make the best Catholics. That might be overly simplistic, but personally I have found that some of the most committed Catholics I have known, as well as some of the best priests, are those who grew up in another faith tradition or none at all. People who come to the Catholic faith later in life sometimes have a deeper appreciation for what our Church teaches and believes than do those of us who are Catholic from the cradle. Catholics who are converts know why they chose to become Catholic, and what being Catholic gives them that they didn’t have before.

Often, we appreciate what we have only if we truly know what it would be like to not have it. In today’s readings, we hear the stories of two individuals who suffer from a terrible disease, and then who are miraculously healed of it. This healing fills them with profound gratitude precisely because they know very well what their lives had been like before. As we heard, the malady they suffered from was leprosy, the most feared and hated disease in the ancient world. Leprosy was an incurable skin disease that caused disfiguring sores all throughout the body. Because it was highly contagious, it was more than a disease – it was a social stigma, an illness that made a person unfit to be a member of regular society. Lepers were ostracized because others feared to be near them, and eventually the illness itself became indicative of being unholy. If you had leprosy, God was punishing you because of your sins, and so in addition to being very visibly sick you were also shunned by the rest of society.

Perhaps we can understand then how much it must have meant to be miraculously healed of such a terrible illness. In both the First Reading and again in the Gospel, those who are healed of leprosy are not just restored to full health – they are, in a sense, restored to life itself. They are no longer separated very visibly from the human community by this terrible disease, outcast and unable to participate in the fabric of society. They had been healed, and more than healed – they had been given a second chance at life.

This sense of restoration is deepened if we look specifically at who is healed. In the first reading, Naaman the Syrian is an outsider – in fact, he is the general of the army that is getting ready to attack Israel. But he also suffers from leprosy, and he desires to receive the healing that he’s heard he can receive from the prophets in Israel. Having washed in the waters of the Jordan, as the prophet Elisha commands him to do, Naaman is cured, and what’s more, he’s converted. He says that from that point forward he will worship the true God alone – he asks for two mule-loads of earth so that he can take the sacred soil of Israel back to his own land and worship the true God there. In the Gospel reading, the ten lepers are healed, but only one of them returns to give thanks – only the outsider, the Samaritan. He was not a part of the Jewish people, but he alone sees in Jesus the power of the living God, and he gives thanks for it.

The Ten Lepers (2018) by Jorge Cocco Santángelo

The stories of today’s readings then are more than stories of healing. They are stories of conversion – of a new awareness and appreciation of the power of God. And these stories invite us, I think, to consider our own stories of being healed, or restored, or converted, and whether those experiences have prompted in us gratitude and led us to a deeper experience of God. We might perhaps most readily think of our own experiences of physical healing, of being restored to full health after facing an illness and feeling a new lease on life. There are other kinds of healing, too – spiritual and emotional wounds that are healed, troubled relationships that are made whole, flaws of character that are eventually rectified. And more than any of those, we should all have an experience of the profound restoration that comes from being healed of our sins – of being restored to grace and communion with God through his mercy.

Healing, of whatever kind, should always give rise to gratitude. But it’s not enough to stop there; gratitude must also prompt within us a renewed appreciation for the love of God – a renewed awareness of his restorative power and his desire to draw us always closer to him. And while physical healing, or the healing of relationship, are often very powerful experiences, the most powerful kind of healing we can experience is that at the level of our soul. That is the only kind of healing that lasts beyond this life – indeed, it is the healing that we pray will guide us into the life to come. Naaman the Syrian and the Samaritan leper were both drawn by the power of gratitude to the worship of the true God. That’s how the Lord works – he seeks to change us in order to draw us closer to himself.

Perhaps you know that today in Rome John Henry Newman is being canonized a saint. He was an English theologian and writer, as well as an Anglican priest who had profound influence on the Church of England in the mid 19th century. But after a number of years, later in life, he made the very difficult decision to become Catholic because he came to believe that the Catholic Church is the true Church founded by Christ. This decision cost him quite a bit – it alienated him from many friends and former colleagues, and he lost his teaching post at Oxford. But he never regretted it, because he knew that as a Catholic he had arrived at a deeper and truer love for God. He said about his conversion: “It was like coming into port after a rough sea; and my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption” (Apologia Pro Vita Sua, ch. 5). 

St. John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

Friends, I don’t know if converts make the best Catholics. But I do think that in every Catholic there should be a powerful sense of the spirit of conversion – an awareness of how God’s restorative power has impacted our lives directly. Whether through healing or reconciliation or conversion, we must know something of that grace felt by Naaman the Syrian, the Samaritan healed of leprosy, and St. John Henry Newman. We must gain from our gratitude a renewed devotion to the true and living God.

As we prepare to celebrate again the Holy Eucharist, and to receive the true and living God, may we also rejoice to give thanks at how he has revealed to us “his saving power” (Ps 98:2).

Superpowers Not Required

Do you ever wish you had a superpower? Maybe the ability to fly, or to become invisible, or the ability to travel through time? Superhero stories have been popular for a long time, and still to the present day, probably because we enjoy imagining having such powers ourselves. “If only I had that superpower,” we think to ourselves, “I could do anything I wanted!”

In the Gospel today, the apostles ask Jesus for something that they think will give them great power too. They want an increase in faith. The Gospel passage doesn’t tell us why they want this, but if you look at the stories similar to this one in Matthew and Mark’s accounts, it’s clear that they probably were asking for this power in order to be able to perform greater miracles. Throughout his ministry, Jesus empowered his disciples with the ability to perform certain mighty deeds in his name: to heal and to cast out demons especially. But the Gospels also tell us of times when they try to do this and fail. Perhaps the apostles think that with increased faith, they will be able to do anything they desire.

You and I are probably not too preoccupied with casting out demons and healing the sick, so we may not be able to relate to the disciples’ ulterior motives for asking what they did of Jesus. But we probably do relate to the request itself: “Lord, increase our faith!” Who among us would not wish to have a deeper, stronger, and fuller faith? “With only more faith,” we think, “I wouldn’t be filled with worries or doubts, I wouldn’t fall victim to the same old sins time and again, I wouldn’t feel so distant from God or his love.” Being strong in faith, we assume, is like a superpower that would be wonderful to have, that would enable us to do all kinds of amazing things. Darn, if only we had that!

Much like the apostles’ desire in the Gospel, I think this way of thinking is perfectly understandable but also misguided. Now, it is not wrong of course to want a better or deeper faith. We all should want that! And we should want to ask God for that. But we should not assume that somehow we lack what is necessary, that we know better than God what he should give us. The apostles think of faith as something to possess, a superpower to do whatever they want, rather than understand it as a relationship to the Lord. That’s why he rebukes their attitude at the end of the Gospel – they are guilty of pride for thinking they know better than the Master what must be done.

While we should desire and ask for a deeper faith, we also have to value and act upon the faith already present. God never fails to provide whatever grace we need in the moment to do his will, but we must appreciate it in order to apply it. Faith is the gift of relationship with God – it’s not like a superpower that we imagine, that gets bestowed upon us from on high: Boom, now you have it, now you can do anything you want! Faith is much more like a seed, as Jesus describes. It may start small, but it grows incrementally and often in unseen ways but in time flowers and produces what God had foreseen from the beginning.

Faith is also, for us as Catholics, a fundamentally communal reality. As I announced at the beginning of Mass, today we celebrate our parish patronal feast. Our Lady of the Rosary is October 7, this coming Monday, but because of its importance for our community – because it is the celebration of the very identity we have as God’s family here in Stuttgart – then the Church permits us to celebrate it together on Sunday instead. Why is that? Because fundamentally, we relate to God not as a collection of individual believers who just happen to gather together once a week. Often we think that, don’t we? “I come to Mass to get what I need, so that I can be informed, or encouraged, or entertained.” But that’s not it at all. As Catholics, we relate to God first as a community, and only secondarily as individuals. My relationship with him, and your relationship with him, is always formed and founded by our relationship with as a community, by the common identity we have as the Body of Christ present in this place.

Our parish’s feast day allows us to reflect upon our common identity and to give thanks for the many blessings God has given us. Perhaps our minds and hearts are drawn to recall the history of our parish, the many good people past and present who have labored to make Holy Rosary what it is. We have so much to be grateful for! From the proud legacy of our school, to the works of service we do, to the witness of faith that we give to each and to our community, we are proud of the spiritual heritage that we have here. Perhaps we also think about the present moment too, about the responsibilities and opportunities we have, and the challenges we face today as a parish. Our numbers are smaller these days than in the glory days of the past, and we have a community that is at times separated by culture and language. And in a day when there are so many other demands upon time and attention and involvement, we face the challenge of trying to form the younger generation in the practice of the faith, as well as encourage the older one to continue to do so. 

Hearing Mass, Rocafort by José Benlliure y Gil (1855-1937)

As a parish, we join the disciples in asking the Lord today, “Increase our faith!” But I would encourage us also to not fall victim to their mistake – to lose trust in God’s Providence, to think that we know better than him what we need. Instead, I think the Lord invites us, like the disciples, to consider the faith present within us, even as we yearn for more. By faith, we can do – and indeed are doing – all kinds of things that are truly amazing if only we stop to appreciate them. By faith, we know the love of God’s Son Jesus Christ – we experience that love in the sacraments and share that love with others by works of charity. By faith, we are able to unite ourselves with the Cross of Christ and so endure all kinds of sufferings and trials and humiliations, often in truly heroic ways. By faith, we continue to pray for righteousness, to work for justice, to strive for the good and to stand against evil, to be resolute in not conforming with what is tempting and easy and despairing, to persevere confidently even when we struggle with doubts or discouragements. By faith, we have the power to forgive and to be forgiven, to heal and to be healed, to shine with the brightness of God’s light and love and make it known to the world.

My friends, I don’t know about you, but I think all of that – those things and more that we do as the Body of Christ here at Holy Rosary – are pretty clear signs that God is present and at work in our midst. In the end, we don’t need great superpowers to do what the Lord has given us to do – just the power of faith that he gives us in his Son and that he calls us to act upon. By prayer, by participation in the sacraments, by deepening our involvement in the community life of our parish, we have ample opportunities before us to have our faith increased, to grow in just the way God desires. What might the Lord be asking of you, of me, this day? What might he desire us to do so that we can build and strengthen the identity we have as a community of faith, as the Body of Christ? As we celebrate our parish in this Mass, let’s ask for the intercession of our Blessed Mother, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. May we rededicate ourselves to being the Lord’s grateful and humble servants, working faithfully for his harvest, and trusting that he will prosper the work of our hands.