Big Journeys and Small

Today, the Church celebrates the Second Sunday of Lent. But because today is March 17, no doubt many Catholics in our country and beyond are also commemorating Saint Patrick’s Day. Since it falls on a Sunday this year, there’s no reason to worry about celebrating with a little Irish fare, in moderation of course.

Everybody knows that St. Patrick is the patron saint of the Irish. But not everyone knows that St. Patrick was actually English by birth. More accurately, he was a Briton, born in what is now the UK under the last days of the Roman Empire. When he was a teenager, Patrick was kidnapped by Irish pirates. He spent some six years as their slave before escaping and returning to his family in Britain. However, after being ordained a priest, he decided to return to Ireland to evangelize the people that formerly had help him captive. Later, he became a bishop and did much to build up the Christian religion in Ireland. The rest is history.

In the first reading today, we hear about another man who is born in one place but finds his destiny somewhere else. Abram, or Abraham as he is later known, has just completed a journey from Chaldea to Canaan, a journey that he undertook at God’s prompting. It is in Canaan that God has promised Abraham that he will make him the “father of many nations,” with his descendants numbering as many as the stars in the sky. For Abraham, God’s plan is unexpected, probably perplexing, and yet Abraham responds obediently with faith in what God says. Like Patrick, he’s willing to go beyond what is comfortable and familiar to seek the fulfillment of what God has envisioned for his life.

Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld, Abraham Will Be Father of Many Nations (c. 1850)

In many ways, the season of Lent has echoes of this theme: it invites us to respond with obedience to what is unexpected, even perplexing, in God’s plan for our lives. Lent offers us the chance to be purified, not only of our sins, but of every semblance of thinking we have ultimate control over what happens to us. It’s an opportunity for renewed obedience. We are invited to take up practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving as a way of remembering that we are not the center of the universe. Indeed, we shouldn’t even be the center of our own lives. God and those in need have a greater demand upon us. But while penitential practices are good, there is also the need for an interior spirit of obedience. As we heard on Ash Wednesday, taking up exterior disciplines don’t benefit us at all if we are not willing to be disciplined also on the inside.

If I may, I’d like to suggest that one of the best ways of learning interior discipline, and one of the hardest as well, is learning to accept the perplexing circumstances and unfortunate happenings of life – and indeed, not just to accept them, but to accept them joyfully. Fr. Jacques Philippe, a French priest and one of the best spiritual teachers today, writes about just this idea in his book Interior Freedom. He says that when something negative happens to us, our natural impulse in response is usually rebellion, rejecting that thing and trying to avoid it or undo it. If that fails, we respond with resignation, recognizing that the situation is beyond our control and that it’s best to just admit the fact. But while this may be the natural limit for most people, Fr. Philippe says that as Christians we have a further step: consent. In consenting to something negative, something beyond our control, we actually exercise our freedom, and freely choosing what before had seemed so negative, can grant us the joy and confidence that before we had lacked. By consent, we renew our love and trust in God and we deepen our hope in all things working together unto good (Rom 8:28).

Obviously, this is a lot easier said than done, and some negative things are more easily consented to than others. Learning how to accept an unexpected health diagnosis is going to be more challenging than some of the day to day inconveniences we face. But being joyful in consenting to those smaller nuisances and difficulties can help give us the interior discipline, the deeper trust in God, when the bigger challenges come along. We may not always understand God’s will but we can respond with faith in the promises he has made, just as Abraham did. We can be mindful of how God can take something negative – as he did for Patrick, even something as terrible as being kidnapped into slavery! – and utilize it ultimately as a step in our own road to sainthood.

Ultimately, we do this because it is what Christ did. In today’s Gospel, Jesus shows Peter, James, and John his divine glory, but he does so to prepare them for his own coming crucifixion and death. Jesus is the Divine Son of the Father, who has come to fulfill at last the covenant made to Abraham, to accomplish the plan of redemption foretold by the prophets. To do so, though, he must go to the Cross. If the Incarnate Lord obediently, joyfully went to his own death to realize our salvation, should we not seek to accept obediently, even joyfully, the hard things that come our way? 

James Barry, The Baptism of the King of Cashel by St. Patrick (c. 1780)

Friends, as we continue our traverse through this season of Lent, the lives of Abraham, Patrick, and even Jesus show us how we should navigate our own lives. The unexpected, perplexing, and even negative circumstances and happenings of our lives afford us the chance also to journey beyond what is comfortable and familiar and into a place of deeper trust, deeper faith in God. Whether those journeys are big or small, we can learn not just to accept them, but even to consent to them in joy because we believe that through them God is drawing us one step closer in our path toward him. That ultimately is our greatest journey, the destiny to which God calls each of us: from sinner to saint, from earth to heaven, from this life to life with him.

Keep Your Friend Close

Fifty years ago today, Mario Puzo’s classic novel The Godfather was published. It was made into a movie three years later, which is probably how many of us became familiar with it. Its the story of a mafia family in the mid-20th century, a story about power, corruption, and temptation. It’s something of an institution in American culture. I know young people today who have never seen the movie but are still familiar with quotes like: “Don’t ever take sides with anyone against the family again,” or “I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse,” or “Leave the gun; take the cannoli.”

Maybe the movie’s most notable quote is: “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” In many ways, the Gospel we just heard presents us with a similar idea: that to defeat an enemy, you need to know him well and know the tactics he will use. At the beginning of his ministry, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus out into the desert to face the forces of darkness. Jesus has come after all to undo the devil’s hold on the world – his grip on humanity – and so the Lord goes out to encounter him at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus knows fully well who the Enemy of humanity is and what tactics he uses to tempt our nature, and so he is not tricked by the devil’s enticements. In the words of one of the prayers from Ash Wednesday, Lent is about “taking up battle against spiritual evils,” and so as we begin it, it’s good for us to remember to be on guard against our Adversary.

 The Temptation in the Wilderness (1824) by John St. John Long

But here’s a question: what does this story have to do with us? Yes, Jesus is victorious against the devil. But he’s the Son of God, right – and we are not! We are not even tempted in the same way as he was. The devil does not appear before us, offering us certain things; instead, we are usually tempted in far more mundane ways. And we know from experience that we often fall to temptation, whereas Jesus resisted and did not sin. So, what exactly are we supposed to learn?

The key to understanding this story’s relevance to us is that it occurs right after Jesus’s baptism. As John baptized the Lord in the Jordan River, a voice from heaven declared “This is my Beloved Son,” and as we enter into journey of Lent, we should recall that we share in that identity. We know we are not perfect – but by the grace of baptism, we too are God's beloved sons and daughters. In a sense, all of Lent is a meditation upon how our lives mimic the life of Jesus. He became Incarnate to share our human nature, and through baptism, we have been made partakers in Jesus’s divine nature. Thus, he shared our human life, and as we go through our human lives, we can share in his divine life.

Jesus was really tempted. Yes, in ways different from us – and yes, he did not fall to temptation, while we often do. But because Christ was tempted and overcame that temptation, then by his grace we too can overcome the devils’ assaults when they come. We share in who Jesus is and in what he has done. This is true for every part of our earthly life – whether we are coming face to face with evil, or whether we are subject to much more mundane forms of trial and temptation, we can bring the presence of Christ to bear within us and be victorious. We don’t have to wait until heaven to begin to live a life that is very much infused with divinity.

The question, of course, is how do we resist temptation? The logic of the world – the logic of The Godfather – would be that we need to learn all about the devil and his ways: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” But in this case, the opposite is true: we have to stay close to Jesus in order to turn away from temptation when it comes. It’s true that we need some awareness of ourselves – e.g., what kinds of temptations we are most subject to, particular times and places and even persons that may be a source of temptation – and some awareness of the devil’s wiles. But the devil is a Deceiver, and if we try to outsmart him, we are going to fail. It’s much better to turn to Christ to help us in a moment of weakness.

So how do we do it? First, we have to recognize in the moment that we are being tempted. We are familiar enough with the kinds of temptations: anger, jealousy, resentment, gossip, lust, greed, sloth, petulance, immoderation, indulgence, fear, self-centeredness – the list goes on and on. But while temptation often arises, we are not powerless against it. That’s one of the great lessons of Lent – that we can learn to train our will, through self-restraint, to withstand the impulses of temptations when they come. It’s always with God’s grace, and never by ourselves, but our own agency is always involved.

Second, once we have recognized we are being tempted, we have to remember that every temptation is a lie. Every temptation is an attraction to something good, or something that seems good in the moment. But because the devil is a Deceiver, giving into temptation will never give us that seemingly good thing, at least not without costing us something much more important in return. After fasting for forty days, Jesus’s hunger must have made the idea of turning stones into bread very attractive. But to do so, he would have had to show a lack of trust in his Father’s love and in his Father’s care, something he valued much more highly than food.

And so, third, after we recognize we are being tempted, and after we realize the temptation is a lie, we invite Jesus’s strength to become our own and we powerfully dismiss the temptation present to us. We see the falsehood for what it is, and we reject it. It’s very helpful at this time to do something to counteract the temptation – maybe to turn to prayer; maybe to do something kind for someone else, especially if they're the ones aggravating us in the moment; if nothing else to get up and change our surroundings and try to remove the immediacy of the temptation so that we can recall the goodness of our relationship with God. 

Ilya Repin, The Temptation of Christ (1890)

Will this always work? No, not always – not because the method is flawed, but because we are. Sometimes we will give into temptation against our better judgment. In many ways, we will continue to struggle against some form of sin all of our lives. But by God’s grace, we can at least learn to reject the big sins – those grave sins that rupture our relationship with God and strip us of his grace. Because we are connected to Christ by our baptism, we can keep from falling into mortal sin again and again. And above all else, we can resist the devil’s most pernicious temptation of all: to despair, to give up hope and believe that we are not capable of turning away from sin and so it is pointless to try. We are capable, because Jesus makes us capable! And even if we fall, we need never despair of the power of the Lord’s mercy to pick us up, dust us off, and set us aright again.

Friends, as we begin Lent, the Gospel today reminds us to call upon our baptismal graces in our struggles against sin and temptation. Our Enemy may be close – but our Friend, Jesus, is even closer. Temptations to sin at times may seem ever-present, but the Lord’s presence is also always at hand, always more powerful, always ready for us to call upon him in our time of need. His protection is greater than that of any Godfather. So, don’t be afraid to brave your own wilderness this Lent – don’t fear doing spiritual battle with the weapons of self-restraint, prayer, and works of charity. But more importantly, let this Lent be a time to come to know in a deeper and fuller way your dearest Friend, Jesus Christ, the only One in the end who makes us an offer too good to refuse. This Lent, let’s strive to model our lives more and more after the life of Christ, beginning with resisting every temptation that comes our way. May the Lord’s Body and Blood, which we come forward to receive in this Mass, fill us with the knowledge and the wisdom of God so that we can prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

"Rend Your Hearts": Ash Wednesday

St. Jerome Doing Penance in His Study (c. 1618) by Luis Tristán

“Rend your hearts and not your garments,” the prophet Joel says to us today. Seems like kind of a strange thing to say, right? But if you read the Old Testament, you will disover that the tearing of one’s clothing was a traditional way to express extreme mourning. For example, when Job finds out all of his children have been killed, he tears his garments and prays for death. To rend one’s clothes was understood as a sign of devastation, utter loss.

The ashes we will receive on our foreheads today signify much the same thing. The ashes are not just a reminder about our own mortality; they tell us that we have lost something of immense importance. What have we lost? For what are we in mourning? That special gift from God that we call grace: a sharing in God’s divine life. When we sin, we reject that gift – we fracture that relationship with God. And when we recognize that fact, when we realize what we have lost, we feel sorrow and we mourn.

Fortunately, our God is a merciful God, and he never wants us to remain in that place of sorrow. Instead he calls us back into relationship. When we repent, we receive anew his grace: his love, his freedom, his joy. But we don’t just go back to being the same as we were before – we should be changed, transformed, wiser for where we have gone astray and where God has brought us back.

The ashes we receive will be an exterior sign of our sinfulness, but exterior signs are not enough. As the prophet Joel says, what God really wants is a transformation of our heart. We can go to great lengths in our exterior penance – tearing our clothing, covering ourselves in ashes, or fasting and praying visibly as Jesus says in the Gospel. But none of that will do us any good at all unless we are also changed on the inside, unless we become aware of just how destructive sin is for our relationship with God. We tend to focus a lot on the individual sins we commit, but those are just indicative of the deeper problem: that too often you and I prefer our sins to the love of relationship with God. And so it is that we must learn to “rend” our hearts, to tear them away from the sinful things that they cling to. We cannot learn to love the Lord God as we should until we learn to hate the false things our hearts so often prefer.

Friends, this Lent, let’s take up our different penances and spiritual practices not just with the intention of trying to be a little bit better, a little bit holier, but instead with the desire to be completely new. Recognize what sin always does, what it costs you, and reject it completely. Allow God to transform your heart completely – indeed, to give you a new heart, a new way of living with him. “Rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. For gracious and merciful is he.”

Rooted in Faith

At the end of 2017, the Collins English Dictionary announced its annual selection of the Word of the Year. It was actually two words – “fake news”. Those words have taken on a new life of their own in recent years, used not only in political contexts by elected officials but even in media, sports, culture, and daily life. The words “fake news” express quickly and easily something that we are all familiar with – something artificial, mere hype, a story that is a non-story.

But while “fake news” is certainly a thing, sometimes real and important events are discredited in the same way. For example, perhaps no other event in history has been as frequently written off as just “fake news” as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Just like in Jesus’s time, many people today believe the Resurrection didn’t occur – even people who claim to follow Jesus as Christians! They may think the Resurrection story is symbolic or allegorical, some kind of spiritual phenomenon but one that doesn’t involve the Body of Jesus in the Tomb actually being raised from the dead.

But the Resurrection is a real occurrence, something which actually happened: the person Jesus, having suffered and died on the Cross, rose again after three days so that we might share in his eternal life. To believe in that is at the very heart of the Christian faith, and for the last several Sundays, we have been hearing St. Paul speak about exactly that idea in the second reading of the Mass. The readings have come from the fifteenth chapter of the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians. The letter we call “the First Letter” is actually at least his second letter to the Corinthians, since he references a previous letter he had written to them. Apparently, they then wrote back with several questions about the meaning of the Christian faith. While we don’t have those original two letters, we do have Paul’s letter which answers those questions they ask – we call that letter “the First Letter” and it is from that which we have been hearing.

The central point of St. Paul in these excerpts is that Jesus’s Resurrection is not just something nice to think about, or something that we hope happened – it is the cornerstone of our entire faith. Jesus rose from the dead and lives still now at the right hand of his Father, and we too can share in his life. We believe in that more fully than we believe the sun will rise tomorrow morning! St. Paul even goes so far as to say that Christian faith has no meaning, no point if Jesus did not really rise; our faith would be totally in vain. But as we profess in faith each Sunday, Jesus really did rise, and so our faith is not in vain. In fact, though it occurred 2000 years ago, the Resurrection is the most important thing that has ever happened, not just in the world’s history, but in each of our lives as well. St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, and to us, to explain how the Resurrection changes everything for us. By it, God’s love has triumphed over the power of sin and death, and the victory of Jesus is something that can be extended to us as well. It is the Resurrection which allows us to look at every sorrow, every suffering as impermanent, to even look at something as fearful to all of us as our own death and to turn up our noses at it, to say: “Where, O death, is your victory… your sting?”

The Ecstasy of St. Paul – painted for Paul Scarron (c. 1650) by Nicolas Poussin

If faith in Jesus’s Resurrection should shape how we view our deaths, then it should also shape how we view our lives as well. To have faith in the Resurrection of Jesus means to see every part of our lives in light of the goal of sharing in Christ’s new Risen Life. That is the goal, and Jesus tells us in the Gospel today that those who live with that goal will live differently than others. Each of our lives is like a tree, he says, and we will be judged by the kind of fruit our tree bears. Of course, the good news is that we don’t have to produce good fruit all by ourselves; in fact, we always rely upon God’s grace to produce the good works that he calls us to do. As God draws us to share in the eternal life of his Son, he helps us to begin to live that life even now, allowing us to flourish and to glorify him by the good works that we do. But to bring forth abundant fruit, our tree must be rooted in faith – it must be rooted in a radical dependence on Jesus and on what his Resurrection means for us, not just at the close of our lives but here and now as well.

Friends, in just a few days, we’ll begin the season of Lent once more. The forty days of penance will be a great time for each of us to do a bit of self-examination. What kind of fruit is my life producing? Is my life rooted in faith – in Jesus and in his Resurrection – or in something else? Do I live my life differently because of my faith, in a way that is visible and apparent? The message of Jesus is Good News, not “fake news,” because it is the path to sharing in his Resurrection, the only thing in the end that truly matters. May this Eucharist which we are about to share be a sign and a promise of the Lord’s Risen Life that we hope to share one day.

Power and Splendor

Earlier this week, I was in Kansas City for a few days to see some friends. While there, I went to see a particular exhibit that one of my friends had recommended at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The exhibit was called Napoleon: Power and Splendor. It was composed of a few hundred pieces of all different kinds that demonstrated how Napoleon Bonaparte used art to project an aura of opulence and authority during his ten-year reign as Emperor of France. From paintings, to sculpture and metalwork, to lavish furniture and furnishings of all kinds, Napoleon used his wealth and influence to portray himself as the semi-divine, all-powerful ruler he desired to be.

As I went through the exhibit, I couldn’t help but think about how the human spirit has always been inclined toward the trappings of power and splendor. Maybe Napoleon was more ostentatious than most, but history is full of examples of those who seek authority to rule over others, and to do it in style. Precisely for this reason, when true Divinity, true Omnipotence entered our world in the Person of Jesus Christ, he preached service and poverty as virtues to aspire to. Jesus gave his apostles real authority in leading his Church, but he sought to form them in a way different from worldly models.

The Gospels are full of examples of this. The brothers James and John want to sit at his right and left hands; Jesus tells them that he who serves is greatest of all (Mk 10:42-43). Peter believes he knows better than Jesus that he should not have to suffer; Jesus tells him to get behind him, for he is thinking in worldly not in godly ways (Mt 16:22-23). John is jealous when others are doing works in Jesus’s name; Jesus tells him to not be (Lk 9:49-50). Jesus himself gives a final testimony about his attitude toward worldly power when he tells Pontius Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world” (Jn 18:36). Jesus came to serve, not to be served, and he wants his Church to be the same way.

In the Gospel today, Jesus makes it clear that this standard is one to be embodied by every disciple, not just those at the Church’s highest levels. Today’s passage is a direct continuation of last week’s Gospel, when we heard Luke’s account of the Beatitudes. Jesus declared that “the blessed” – the word really just means those who are spiritually happy, joyful – are those who recognize that their deepest desires cannot be satisfied by the trappings of this world but only in the world to come, and so they embrace sorrow and suffering here now in order to live now for the heavenly kingdom. Jesus calls everyone who follows him to be among those who strive for this ideal, who seek to be among “the blessed.”

In today’s passage, Jesus describes how his disciples, “the blessed,” having oriented themselves interiorly to the world to come, should treat others. His standard is not that of the world – not the grasping, contentious, zero sum game that so often dominates the various dynamics we are familiar with: political, social, even interpersonal. Jesus’s standard is entirely new because it is modeled on himself. It is a standard that is more than an ideal – it’s a calling by grace to see by a new lens every interaction we have with others, to allow every relationship to be transformed just as our relationship with God has been transformed. 

Our first reading today provides a wonderful example of just this kind of thinking. David has been anointed king of Israel, but he’s being hunted by Saul, the previous king but the one who still has all the power. David and his cohort come upon Saul’s army in the night, and David’s general Abishai offers to kill Saul and put the conflict to an end. It must have surely been a tempting idea. David, after all, was the legitimate king, and Saul had been trying to murder him for some time. To be rid of Saul, David would no longer have to hide out and could take up his duty of actually ruling the people. In the logic of the world, killing Saul is not only the correct, efficient thing to do, but to not do so seems ludicrous. 

However, David is attentive to a higher wisdom. He recognizes that how he treats others is indicative of his attitude toward God – especially when it happens to be his own former king, who had been anointed by God. And so, he chooses mercy. Mercy means inconvenience for himself – in fact, it means the continuation of a threat to his own life. But by showing restraint, and by being attentive to a wisdom beyond that of the world, David exerts a power, an authority that speaks to his own moral excellence. 

Pietro Antonio Magatti, David Spares Saul's Life (c. 1760)

Our day to day lives normally do not feature the kind of life and death choices that David faced. But we do find ourselves in fraught relationships, struggles over authority and influence, tough decisions about whether to act in a way convenient for ourselves but harmful to others. David’s example reminds us that we must be attentive to a wisdom higher than the world’s way of thinking. This is all the more true, of course, in light of what Jesus Christ has done for us. Jesus doesn’t just command us to love our enemies and do good to those who hate us; he illustrates what this looks like by his own passion and death. In the words of St. Paul, he died for us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8) and he forgave us despite the fact that he was condemned for our offenses (Rom 4:25). With such a Savior, with such a Model to keep always before our eyes, we as his disciples are to personify in our dealings with others the wisdom of mercy, the power and splendor of charity.

We are living at a very important time, not only in our world, but in our Church. We have seen all too clearly in recent months the shocking scandals of how those who claim to follow Christ have instead followed a wisdom of the world. The very disciples who have been entrusted with authority have too often abused that privilege – they have misused their power either for their own gain, or for some misunderstanding of what is best for the Body of Christ. Thank God that we are now grappling with what true authority demands, what it must be if it is to be faithful to the Lord’s commands. You may know that just in the last few days Pope Francis has been meeting with bishops from around the world to discern better ways to protect the young and the vulnerable and to hold those in authority to account.

While this is certainly good news, we can’t forget that the renewal of the Church – the reinvigoration of the witness of Christ to the world – also includes us. We should call for justice for victims and accountability for those who have abuse or misused their authority – no doubt. But we also must be aware of the ways we too can become enamored with power and privilege. In our lives, we can become enraptured with material things, or consumed with the desire to gain more and more, or fixated on the wants of Number One rather than those in need. In our relationships, we misuse our own power when we become petty, or hold grudges, or judge the value of another person, or refuse to forgive out of spite or even legitimate grievance. Don’t get me wrong – these sins and offenses are not on the scale of the sins, and in many cases the crimes, of the worst of the offenders we have heard and read about. At the same time, we each have room to grow in following Christ more closely. What a wonderful witness we can give to the world and to our fellow Christians when we are willing to not only call for renewal but to work for it within ourselves! We may not be responsible for the crisis we are now in, but we can be a part of its solution – we can give testimony to a wisdom higher than that of this world, to Jesus Christ, “the Power of God and the Wisdom of God” (1 Cor 1:24).

Friends, we are about ten days out from the season of Lent. We need not wait until then to begin, with the Lord’s help, a work of renewal within our hearts – to see where it is that we, as the Lord’s “blessed,” can be transformed in our relationships with others. We can strive for justice, and demand what is right, while also being examples – as David was – of listening to a wisdom higher than what the world practices. Every interaction, every relationship, every encounter is an opportunity to exhibit the world’s values or the Lord’s. May we seek the power and splendor that comes from knowing Christ and becoming like him in all that we do and to every person whom we meet.

Into Deep Water

Every relationship has its own story. For any person that we are close to, we can give – if asked – an explanation for how we have come to know that person. This is especially true of friends. Some friendships are rooted in the distant past, in childhood or adolescence, while others are much more recent. For example, Fr. Jason and I got to know each other as adults, but we have been friends now for nearly fifteen years. I still remember the dinner for prospective seminarians at Bishop Sartain’s house when we first met. I remember thinking, “This guy is interesting, but he sure does talk a lot.”

The friendship of Jesus and Peter is one of the most important relationships in history, especially for us Christians. In the Gospel today, we hear St. Luke’s rather interesting account of how that friendship began. Jesus and St. Peter were not childhood acquaintances. They meet as grown men, and as we heard, they are very different in many ways. Jesus is a traveling preacher and healer; Peter – or Simon, as he’s still called here – is a professional fisherman. Jesus’s message is one of repentance, and Simon is very much aware of his own sinfulness. Their friendship begins not because of similar personalities or shared interests but because Jesus gets into Simon’s boat and begins ordering him around.

Peter Paul Rubens, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (1619)

If this is a startling way to describe it, imagine how Simon must have felt. This famous prophet invites himself into Simon’s boat, and tells him to put out into deep water. And somewhat amazingly, Simon does what Jesus says. He is open to the direct action of Jesus, and thus a relationship begins, a friendship that will shape Simon’s life – indeed, that will remake his life, that will give him a new name, “Peter,” and that will be the foundation for every friendship with Christ that will follow.

Why does Jesus choose Simon’s boat? Because he knows what he will become. Jesus sees Simon as not just a fisherman, but, as he says, as a “Fisher of Men”, as one of his chosen apostles, indeed as the “Rock” (in Greek, “Petros”) upon whom he will build his Church. All of that though is in the future – it’s easy to skip ahead in the story and think of it as a done deal, but the reality is that it’s not. Jesus has initiated an invitation to Simon to a friendship, but Simon must respond to that invitation, cooperating with the grace of relationship that Jesus offers to him.

This is the fundamental dynamic of every disciple. By virtue of our humanity, each of us has a relationship with God; by baptism, that relationship has become a friendship in Christ. God is the one who makes the overture – it’s his direct action, not ours, that initiates the grace of knowing him and relating to him. And yet in Jesus, God also wants to elicit from us a response, an act of faith that allows the Lord to climb into our boat and orient our lives in the direction he has in mind. This is the grace of friendship – this is the grace of vocation – by which we grow into becoming that which the Lord has foreseen all along.

Of course, the flipside to all of this is our freedom to say, “No.” Simon could have said something like “Sir, with all due respect, could you find someone else’s boat?” When the Lord invites us to the grace of friendship, we are free to resist it, either because we are afraid of where it may lead us, or because we’re unwilling to do what it will require of us. How relatively easy it is to decline that offer of friendship – to say something like, “I would prefer not to” – because of false humility or a sense of unworthiness. Note that in the Gospel Simon is ready to that very thing – he confesses to Jesus he is a sinful man and even says, “Depart from me.”

Jesus’s response is very interesting, and very important for us. “Do not be afraid,” he says. God doesn’t want us to grow fearful because of our own unworthiness. We are unworthy, we are sinful, and at times, we experience a renewed awareness of this. When that happens we should be contrite – we should seek forgiveness – we should never grow dejected or afraid. Why? Because God knows what we can become. He knows much better than us what the grace of friendship can do for us, how it can purify us if only we are willing to let the Lord into our boat. All we need to do is extend that trust to him – to respond to his invitation as Simon did, and put out into the deep. As with Simon, Jesus sees in us not just lowly sinners, but saints who can bring others into relationship with the Lord by the way we live. Jesus knew Simon could become Peter – what might he see in us if we are willing to respond openly to his call?

Friends, the reality is that each of us has a story of friendship to tell, a story of our own about our relationship with Jesus. True – its details may not involve fishing, or a literal boat. But it is a story of the presence of Jesus coming into our lives in a radical way, probably in a disruptive way, but in a way that leads to true life. What is the Lord’s invitation to you? Where is he offering you the grace of renewed relationship? Let the Lord’s friendship take root in you, despite your fears, despite your unworthiness. It’s easy to say, “I would prefer not to,” but to do so may mean to miss out on the very destiny for which God has created us. Instead, when the Lord calls, put your trust in him and set out into deep water. Let him set the course and lead you to full and abundant life.

Liturgy, Identity & Mission: On Our Patronal Feast

When we encounter someone new, it’s natural to want to know more about them. Where do they come from? What are they about? What do they value? In what ways are they similar to us; in what ways different?

For example, when someone first visits our church, they probably look for certain clues about our identity. They might see the name of our parish on the church exterior, or check out the Mass times on the sign out front. They might read about details of our parish life in our bulletin or on our website. Most importantly, though, they come to understand who we are by encountering us, individually, but especially as a community, which usually means here at Mass. In the Catholic view of things, we are most truly ourselves when we are gathered around the Sacrifice of the Altar, since our most fundamental identity is the Body of Christ, united in praise to our Heavenly Father. 

Helio Wernegreen, The Institution of the Eucharist (c. 1950)

Today, we celebrate our parish’s patronal feast day. In the church calendar, the Memorial of St. Thomas Aquinas occurs tomorrow but because he is our patron saint – and because our identity as the Body of Christ is most fully expressed and lived out when we gather together in the liturgy – the Church permits us to transfer that feast to the closest Sunday so that we can celebrate together. It is fitting that we do that because in the liturgy the true nature of our identity is most fully present.

In the Gospel today, Jesus reveals the true nature of his identity. And he does so in the context of the liturgy – not our Catholic Mass, but the Jewish liturgy of the local synagogue, where the Scriptures were proclaimed and commented upon. As we heard, Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth, and what’s more he is among his “parish” community, the family and friends with whom he gathered each week to praise God. It is in this familiar setting – among all these people who knew him – that Jesus reveals what they did not know: his true self, his identity as God’s Son. He is the Messiah that they have been awaiting; he is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel.

What Jesus first proclaimed in that synagogue centuries ago continues to be proclaimed in the present day by the Church. In Christ, God grants liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed. The presence of Jesus introduces something new in the world: a rejuvenation of creation by God, salvation for all that had been lost. Everyone who bears the name of Christian – every person, and every community – also bears the responsibility to make that salvation known to others, to proclaim by word and deed the new life of grace that is found in Christ.

The celebration of our feast day is an opportunity to be proud of our parish community, of the family of God that we are and the works of God that we do. Our parish has served the community of the University of Arkansas for some 60 years, and while much has changed in that time – in the university, in our Church, and in the broader world – our presence remains, and our mission is the same as ever: to proclaim the Good News of Jesus and to give witness to the Catholic faith. All of the things that we do and have done throughout our history as a parish – all of our campus ministry programs, our service and outreach to the broader community, even all of the prayer and witness that we practice in our own private lives – all of it is in service to the message and the mission of Jesus.

Sadly, that mission is not always well-received. In next week’s Gospel, we will hear that the people of Nazareth – Jesus’s own family and friends – will respond negatively to the new identity he has shared with them. They believe there’s no way that the Jesus they know can be the Savior, not the one whom they have watched mature in their midst. Their familiarity with him breeds contempt, and so they reject the Good News that he has come to bring.

Familiarity can also breed contempt today as well. The Good News of Jesus is seemingly well-known today – and yet how far our world feels from actually accepting it, from actually living it out. The Christian mystery has lost none of its vigor, none of its relevance, but at times we who are responsible to proclaim that message to the world have become lax in doing so. We are more comfortable in adopting other identities: identities from culture, sports, or hobbies; political identities; identities shaped by the causes and movements (even good ones) that we care about; etc. Each of these identities, lived out the majority of our day and our week, can obscure the most fundamental identity we have – the identity that we discover here, in the context of the liturgy. When that happens, then it can become easy for others to reject the Gospel message that we say we bring, the identity of Christian that we say we are. In time, even we ourselves can begin to doubt just how important that mission of Jesus is, just how much our identity in Christ really is the most fundamental, the most crucial identity we have. 

                  

 

Friends, the questions that arise when we meet someone – “Who are we?”, “What are we about?” – are not just questions for others. They are questions also for ourselves. As we celebrate our feast day, we recognize that we are the parish of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic community here at the University of Arkansas. Even more fundamentally, we remember that we are each members of the Body of Christ, as St. Paul tells us, sharers in the very identity and the very mission that Jesus himself had when he walked the earth. We too are called to proclaim his healing, his reconciliation, his peace to others. But we can’t share with anyone what we ourselves do not truly possess. We have to continually be grounded in the identity we find here, in the liturgy – in the communal celebration of Jesus’s Perfect Sacrifice to the Father.

St. Thomas Aquinas once said it is a Christian’s greatest joy to praise God in the Mass because the Mass “is the fulfillment of Christ’s Mystical Body.” Gathered together as the Body of Christ, today and at every Mass, we remember what Christ has done for us, and what he calls us to do now for others. As we prepare to receive the Sacrament of the Lord's Body and Blood, may the intercession of our patron saint help us to worthily receive the Lord’s Presence and then share that Presence fruitfully by our lives.

Beloved of the Bridegroom

The Miracle at the Wedding at Cana (1693) by Nicolás Correa

For most of us, Christmas probably feels like a distant memory. The trees have come down, the gifts we gave and received have been well used at this point, and the better part of the first month of the new year is past.

And yet, the afterglow of those celebrations remains with us in certain ways. In a few weeks, we will commemorate what used to be the end of the Christmas season, Candlemas, or the Feast of Jesus’s Presentation in the Temple, which occurs forty days after December 25, or February 2. And while the contemporary liturgical calendar now has us back in Ordinary Time, historically this period used to be known as Epiphany-tide, a season that continued the celebration of the Feast of the Epiphany, which we observed two weeks ago. The word “epiphany” means “manifestation” or “revelation” – the idea being that in Jesus God has made himself and his power known to us. Three events in the life of Jesus are associated with the celebration of the Epiphany. The first is the adoration of the Magi, the Gentiles who come to worship the newborn Jewish king, who is also God-in-the-Flesh. The second is the baptism of Jesus, when it is revealed that he is the Only-Begotten Son of the Father, upon whom the Holy Spirit rests.

The third and final event connected with the Epiphany is the story that we hear today from the Gospel of John. The changing of water into wine is certainly miraculous, but it might seem fairly pedestrian compared to some of Jesus’s more astounding works of healing the sick, feeding the thousands, and raising the dead to life. Why is this the first miracle that Jesus performed? Was it simply because his mother asked to him, and because he was a dutiful son? Or is there something more going on?

We get a hint of the answer in the first reading from Isaiah. Through the Prophet’s promise, God gives words of comfort and hope – that he will restore to glory Jerusalem, the city that personified the Jewish people, the city in which God himself dwelled. Following upon the Babylonian exile, and all of the mourning and misery that came with it, God assures his people that he will restore them to glory. Isaiah uses the language of love to signify just how much God means this. His commitment to his people is total, his love for them absolute – as much as a bridegroom is devoted to his bride, God is faithful to those whom he has chosen.

If there is one idea that we have been recalling over and over the last several weeks, it is that Jesus is – in himself – the fulfillment of Isaiah’s promise, and indeed all of God’s promises to mankind. Returning to the Gospel, we can see that it is no mere coincidence that Jesus’s first miracle takes place at a wedding. His very presence – in the scene at Cana, or in the human experience as a whole – is transformative, because in him, God has joined himself to us. In Jesus, God has wed his people. In this symbolic reading of the story, the transformation of water into wine is not just a way for the wedding party to continue – it’s a way to understand how the coming of Christ, the presence of Jesus with us, proves God’s love and faithfulness has been fulfilled. This miracle stands at the head of John’s Gospel because in a sense it contextualizes how everything that Jesus does and is – all of that healing the sick, feeding the thousands, raising the dead to life – are part of God’s work of restoring his people to himself.

We too are part of that restorative work. In the Gospel, the headwaiter comments upon the “good wine” that is the result of Jesus’s transformation. It was the duty of the Bridegroom to furnish the refreshments for the guests: to satisfy them and make them merry. Experiencing God’s love helps us awaken to the need to turn away from lesser, falser loves. God’s love does not appeal to our baser instincts but rather calls out to the deepest part of ourselves. There is within each of us a thirst, a longing for authentic love – and the love of Jesus satisfies that thirst in a way no other love can. Indeed, having tasted the “good wine” of Christ, our lives should take on a new character, endowed with a meaning and a purpose they had not had previously. The Gospel tells us that Jesus’s disciples began to believe in him after the miracle at Cana – it confirmed for them the love of a God made visible and real. In fact, there is even an ancient tradition that the man whose wedding it was is actually the Gospel writer himself, St. John, who from that point forward began to follow him, who became known as “the Beloved” disciple.

Friends, we are each “beloved,” we are each “espoused” by God, who loves us with a faithful love. That Christmas message, that Epiphany reality, is a message for every season: that in his Son, God has proven his love for us. If you have forgotten that fact, or been unconvinced by it recently, seek the love of Jesus the Bridegroom. Be fortified by the “good wine” of Jesus, which delights in a way the world cannot, and which restores and refreshes us with the knowledge of God’s faithfulness. May this story of the miracle at Cana begin something new within each of us, so that we may come more and more to believe.

Humble Greetings

Adoration of the Magi (c. 1660) by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo

With each passing year, traditional Christmas cards seem to become more and more relics of the past. I am as bad about sending them out as anyone. In the age of ever-present social media, and with Skype and FaceTime so accessible for many of us, the practice of actually sitting down to write out Christmas greetings by hand seems increasingly quaint, and perhaps for that reason, all the more meaningful.

If Christmas cards seem increasingly scarce these days, then far rarer still are receiving personal Christmas greetings. In the Gospel today, we heard the story of the original personalized Christmas greeting, not in a card but in a visit. The Solemnity of the Epiphany presents us with an annual opportunity to reflect upon the Magi and the adoration that they come to bring the Christ-child. On the one hand, the Magi are very familiar to us – wearing their fine robes and crowns, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, accompanied by camels. On the other hand, they are quite mysterious – they come from an unknown country, from an unknown past, and then disappear as quickly as they have come, to an unknown future. While many scholars have speculated about who exactly these Wise Men are, and how they could have known about Christ’s birth, the Gospel account highlights instead the purpose for which they have come – to worship the newborn Jewish king. More than where they are from, or what they do after, what is important is the fact that the Magi have actually come in adoration.

As we heard, they came to adore a king – but surely not the kind of king they expected to find. Jesus’s birth was foretold by prophecies and heralded by the light of a star, and yet the Magi find him in a lowly place. It is interesting that the Gospel account gives no indication that the Magi are taken aback by Jesus’s humble circumstances. There’s no doubt the Magi would have expected to find him in some palace, not in a humble dwelling; but nonetheless, having found him, they are not shocked or repulsed but only filled with great joy. And then, as we heard, having presented him the gifts they had brought, they return to their own country by another way.

There is a lot in this account, and about today’s feast in general, that is worthy of our reflection. But perhaps it is sufficient to return to the central theme: the adoration of a king, but a king born in a very un-kingly way. Whatever their expectations, whatever their preconceptions, the Magi worship the one they find. We know even better than the Wise Men precisely who this newborn child is: not just the king of the Jews, but the God of the Jews, born in human flesh. This appearance of God in our world – as a humble child, small and vulnerable – probably does not fit our expectations. It is not how we would have drawn it up – it’s not how we would imagine God revealing himself in our midst. And yet it is what happened.

If there is a lesson for us in this, to reflect upon on this great feast, it is perhaps that God’s humility must always prompt humility in us as a response. We all are guilty at times of creating Christianity in our own image, so to speak. We tend to make of our faith and our relationship with God what we believe it should be. For example, some of us gravitate more toward the doctrinal and theological aspects of our Christian tradition. For others among us, we are attracted to the social witness of Christianity, engaging with various causes and issues in the world around us. Those things are good and necessary, but they are not the core of our faith. Our Christian identity cannot be reduced to dogmatism, or activism, or any other “-ism.” Instead it is about what the Magi demonstrate for us: about a basic encounter with a Person, born into our history, who reveals God to us, and then adoring him.

The great Jesuit theologian Avery Dulles once wrote, “The Incarnation does not give us a ladder to climb out of the human condition. It gives us a drill that lets us burrow down into the heart of everything that is, and there, to find it shimmering with divinity.” Surely, such a drill can only be wielded by humble hands. Until we have grappled with the reality of God becoming Man in the person of Jesus – until the profound humility of his coming elicits from us a similar response, humble, adoring – then we really haven’t grasped what our relationship with God is all about.

It is worthwhile perhaps to reflect upon what “adoration” looks like for us in the 21st century. The Church gives us a certain number of basic foundational points: Mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation; confession at least once a year, but probably more often if we’re being honest with the state of our own souls; observing days of fasting and abstinence, and helping provide for the needs of the Church; taking time for daily prayer, whether it be praying the rosary, reading Scripture, quiet meditation or Christian reading. But those make up just the starting point. If we really want to grow in worship, we have to look for God where he presents himself in the unexpected and seemingly ordinary encounters of life. Jesus the newborn king meets us in other places too: around the dinner table, at the water cooler, in the checkout line, surfing the web, in traffic, on our phones, in disagreements and disappointments, in laughter of friends and loved ones, in the quiet moments of believing and being aware of his Real Presence in the Eucharist.

My friends, what kind of greeting will we bring this day, every day to the newborn king? Is it merely perfunctory piety, like a token Christmas card? Or do we instead need to learn how to adore, like the Magi can teach us? Amid the hustle and bustle of our lives, it is easy to let our worship become merely an hour on Sunday and a hasty prayer now and again. It is perhaps all too common to adopt a merely nominal notion of being a Christian. The Wise Men present us with an alternative witness today – that faith is a long and sometimes arduous journey, that we must be always willing to meet God not according to our expectations but rather as he presents himself each day and to be filled with joy at every humble opportunity to adore. That is a wisdom available to all of us if we are humble enough to receive it – a light to guide our steps if we are wise enough to follow it.

The Prophecy Fulfilled

In his plays, William Shakespeare often used prophecy as a literary device. One of his characters, hearing some prediction about the future, would be influenced by it, often indirectly bringing the prophecy to fulfillment by their choices. For example, in the tragedy Macbeth, the title character commits murder in order to become the king of Scotland. Macbeth’s bold wickedness is partly fueled by his belief that he is invincible, because a prophecy had told him he could not be harmed by anyone born of a woman. Only too late does Macbeth learn that his main adversary Macduff was born via what we would call Caesarean section, and thus he meets his demise at Macduff’s hands.

In our second reading today, we heard Saint Paul also refer to a prophecy: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” This is a prophecy of hope not foreboding. But like the prophecies in Shakespeare, it too is fulfilled in a very surprising way.

As a good Jew, Paul knew about all of the promises God had given to the people of Israel, the covenants made with Abraham, with Moses, and with David. Paul and other Jews of his time expected God to fulfill these covenants by sending the Messiah, the one who would redeem Israel and usher in the kingdom of God. What Paul did not expect – what no one could have expected – was that God would do this by sending his own Son, by being born into history through a woman, sharing in our humanity in all things but sin.

Marianne Stokes, Madonna and Child (1905)

On this Octave day of Christmas, we have the chance to reflect upon this mystery again – not in the abstract, but in the real and the personal. In Jesus, God has given us something much more precious than just general forgiveness of our sins. He has given us Mercy made in the Flesh, Salvation made Incarnate. Mary is the first one, as we hear in the Gospel, to reflect upon this reality. She “pondered” upon the birth of Jesus, and all of the events surrounding it, and “reflected on them in her heart.” No doubt she understood how the birth of Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to her, made through the angel Gabriel, but also the fulfillment of all of his promises made to mankind. Jesus is the answer from God to every question of life, to every longing of the human heart. God makes known his definitive self-revelation not in a decree, or a pronouncement, or a rule, but in a person. His Son has been born for us in time so that, crying out “Abba, Father!”, we may become sons and daughters of the One who exists from all time.

God’s revelation of himself in Jesus should spur in each of us a double reaction: first to really understand this Good News, and then to share it. In both of these responses, Mary is our model. The Christian cannot really properly follow Jesus without an interior life, without taking time to ponder God’s mysteries and especially how the salvation of Jesus impacts me directly. This son, born of a woman, is also God’s Son, come for my salvation. The prophecies of ancient history are fulfilled in him, and in him, I have come into communion with the one true God. This is a very important point to grasp. Jesus has come for me, to save me from my sins; he is the visible fruit of God’s love for me.

With that deeper appreciation of God's love – not just for all of humanity, but for me personally – we then are called to share it. It may not be immediately clear how Mary is a model of this as well until we realize that all of the stories of Jesus’s birth and infancy could only have come to us through her own telling. Mary is the first evangelist – the one who reflected upon God’s Good News in Jesus not just for her own sake but for the sake of others. We too must share with others the fruit of our own faith: sometimes through explicit evangelization – whether faith sharing or encouragement or generosity of heart – but probably more often through the example of daily prayer, faithful engagement with the sacraments, a joyful and peaceful spirit, and actions motivated by the love that God has shown for us. Now more than ever, we have to rediscover our identity as Christians: how our belief in the love of God made visible in Jesus must be a point of differentiation for us from the rest of the world.

My friends, as we begin a new year, as we continue our Christmas celebrations, let’s take time to ponder – as Paul did, as Mary did – how God’s ancient promises have been fulfilled in a marvelous and unexpected way. Jesus is the prophecy fulfilled – not in an abstract way, but in a personal, intimate one, in a way more marvelous than even Shakespeare could have devised. May this Eucharist help us to reflect more fully on this mystery of our salvation and make us ready to share it anew.