Your Life is Hidden now with Christ in God

 

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

31 July 2022, St. Lambert

 

Eccl 1:2; 2:21-23

Col 3:1-5, 9-11

Lk 12:13-21

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “But God said to him, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” // “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities!”

        Among other things, summertime is marked by class reunions. Generally, these events get mixed reviews depending on whom you talk to. Some joy, some indifference, and, yes, some dread! I am going to go out on a limb and declare that the older we get the better our class reunions. I mean that in the sense of our Gospel for today. “But God said to him, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.”  Class reunions inevitably end up being times to take stock of how our life project has been going. It is in this matter especially that I am convinced that the older reunions are the more positive ones. That is very simply because if the years don’t necessarily make us wiser, they can make us milder and maybe happier, by knocking off our rough edges and relativizing our expectations. For men and women of good will, that materialism typical of youth and those career goals that go with it lose their importance, especially those projects pushed on children by overly ambitious parents. Whether we for ourselves have reached those youthful goals or just become more realistic about our capabilities and the opportunities available to us, with age there seems to be more time for living and, if we are believers, the things of God can actually take on more importance in our lives.

        Now, let me be clear! You are thoroughly entitled to contradict my experience when it comes to reunions and insist that your fifth or tenth or twentieth high school reunion were all fantastic. But in my case being out of the country for most of my adult life, I only managed to make one, my 20^th reunion, and it was a heartbreak for all sorts of reasons and in all sorts of ways. My point would be that in the life of a Christian, of a believer, of a good Catholic with the aging process can come a greater measure of serenity grounded in the detachment which accompanies our life experience, especially our failures and mistakes. They used to call that process the “school of hard knocks”.

Apart from those class reunions I missed, I did have the joy of experiencing the progress which had taken place in the lives of a goodly number of former classmates on the occasion of my ordination as a bishop in November of 2004. That was 36 years after our graduation from O’Gorman. Thirty-some of my class of 200 were present that day in the Cathedral and many, especially men, took the time to write good and thoughtful letters to me thereafter and shared some powerful reflections about their life experience at that point in their lives. I was impressed by the grace the women had acquired and the wisdom and humility of many of those men.

        I am a firm believer in the old maxim from that TV hair color commercial, “You’re not getting older, you’re getting better”. As the anxious career goals of our late teens and early twenties give way to other priorities in our own lives, we gain constancy, and we can find joy. As we give up trying to pressure our children into achieving and instead start hoping and praying that they will grow up happy, healthy, and holy, we still may have our worries, but at least now maybe for the right reasons.

        If I had to say it, this is where the message from our second reading, from St. Paul to the Colossians, comes in.

        “Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

        As a young priest I can remember men coming to confession for Easter who would straight out say, “Father, I really don’t know why I am here except for my Easter duty, as I don’t have any sins.” You rarely hear that anymore, but I suspect the reason is that those sinless ones have drawn the logical conclusion of not needing confession and have decided they don’t need church or Christ anymore either. I guess they answer to themselves, but to no one else. Granted, they may not be criminals or particularly wicked in the moral sense, but Paul’s words have no real meaning for them. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

        To a certain extent I guess I live from my memories. From my class in high school I have all kinds of recollections of young men and women who were just plain good; these are the memories that tend to surface. In another sense, however, I live very much in the present and rejoice in the witness of virtue: upright living and constancy in sacrifice after the manner of Jesus Christ for the sake of spouse and children, for the sake of the life of the world.

        A number in my class are talking about a 55^th reunion in 2023. The argument for not waiting for our 60^th is mostly because we have begun dying out in significant numbers. I rather suspect that the eagerness has more to do with the number of wise and virtuous men and women they would love to see again and spend more time with this side of heaven. That is good, but important is that we have our sights set on Christ.

“Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.”

        In the lives of the saints, we come across many who were single-hearted in their attachment to Christ from a very tender age and maybe even you could say they were too good for this world as the Lord called them home while they were still very young. Others experienced a profound conversion, leaving behind soldiering and the ways of the world to embrace Christ and make atonement through penance for the excesses and distractions of youth. I personally take hope in those saints who lived long and constant lives marked by abundant goodness. Whatever our path in union with Christ, may we be a source of encouragement for one another in the Lord!

        “But God said to him, “You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.” // “Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities!”

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Never Lose Patience! Never Give Up!

 

SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

23-24 July 2022, Tea and Parker Parishes

Gn 18:20-32

Col 2:12-14

Lk 11:1-13

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least ten there?” He replied, “For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it.”

        People who are familiar with the Scriptures, especially with the Book of Genesis, have to be flabbergasted over this dialogue, over Abraham’s bargaining, pleading for God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah. The only logical explanation for Abraham insisting with God seems to have been family interest. Abraham must have pressed God for the sake of his nephew Lot, who chose to move away from his uncle and take his people and his flocks down into what was then a lush valley around Sodom and Gomorrah. The idea was that at a distance from each other the numerous flocks of both men could better prosper than when they were crowding each other. Abraham gave the younger man the choice of where to go to settle and Lot picked the valley. Lot did not seem to be aware of or maybe was just not impressed by the excesses of vice which gripped these two towns. So now it comes out that these two towns by their evil deeds were crying out to God for vengeance because of their extreme wickedness. Despite Abraham’s best efforts to move God to mercy, in the end God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He rained down fire and brimstone annihilating everyone and everything but Lot and his children. Lot lost his wealth and his wife, but got out by the skin of his teeth, thanks to God’s favor to our father in faith. Abraham had tried, but God’s judgment prevailed. The towns could not be spared as there were not even ten good people in the place.

         We know and believe from our upbringing that God rewards the good and punishes evil. Interestingly enough, however, to get that timeless message across is not why the Church has assigned this part of Genesis 18 as the first reading today. This Sunday in its liturgy the Church uses this passage from Genesis to illustrate God’s willingness as a loving Father to hear and answer the prayers of His children. Abraham was indeed favored by God and the Church wants us to know that so are we. Very simply stated, our prayers are heard by God, they do work, because God wills it so.

This first reading from Genesis complements our Gospel from Luke Chapter 11 where Jesus teaches His disciples to pray with the words of the Our Father. This Sunday’s Gospel ends up with Jesus teaching: “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” God has chosen us in Baptism, and He favors us out of love despite our unworthiness. Jesus assures us that the Father hears and answers our prayers. We need but engage Him with confidence as did Abraham long ago. “If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

        Our Gospel passage today starts out with the disciples saying, “Lord, teach us to pray!” Jesus basically responds, “Say the Our Father!” Then Jesus goes on to encourage His listeners by giving them a real pep talk about what prayer does, what prayer can or should mean for them in their lives. Sadly, this truth is one most of us struggle to embrace. To say that another way: most people hesitate to ask God’s help. Not only that, but when they encounter people who do ask and ask God’s help with insistence, they feel a bit embarrassed. There’s a whole body of catechesis even, which tends to discourage our prayers of petition and supplication in favor of praise and thanksgiving. Praise and thanksgiving are fine, but God does not really need them. The words of Christ are before us to show that God wants to encourage us to ask of Him, to thereby praise Him, by declaring our dependence upon Him Who rules the universe and all it holds.

        Granted, there is something psychological about this hesitancy to ask God’s favor, but it also indicates a weakness of faith in God’s presence and power to save. We may be willing to ask other people for their prayers, but we don’t really expect that God will either answer us or answer the person we asked to pray in our favor. We are a long way from believing that God hears and answers His friends the saints, both those in the calendar and saintly, holy people whom we encounter in life. We have a hard time with the notion that God works miracles in answer to the prayers of His holy ones, both from heaven and here on earth. I can remember as an adolescent being embarrassed by the prayers after Mass for good weather and bountiful crops, thinking it somewhat useless to bother God with our prayers for sufficient rain and a good harvest. Typical adolescence, you might say, but it can carry over into adulthood. Try praying for a sick child or for someone gravely injured in a car accident! Here too, there seems to be embarrassment about pestering God. People don’t seem to believe enough or to imagine God as close at hand. And it is of no help at all when someone shouts at us and shakes a finger, “Oh, ye of little faith!” And yet, God would have us ask. He would have us insist a bit with Him, press Him, if you will, just like Abraham.

        In the traditional prayer of the Church or in monastic communities and big convents, there is daily prayed something called the Roman Martyrology, which has an entry for every day of the year. A big part of the book obviously are the saints who died as martyrs for the faith and are commemorated on certain days of the year. In that little book, with its short paragraph for each day, there are many more saints mentioned than actually have a proper feast day in the Church calendar. Notably, besides the martyrs there are also remembered those who were outstanding in holiness, a fact evidenced by the miracles which accompanied them already in this life, but which have multiplied since death. The Martyrology is an eloquent witness to all of the powerful intercessors, friends of God, who have been at work in our world, healing or simply making things better.

        Abraham knew enough not only to pray to God but to insist with Him. Jesus in the Gospel is absolutely reassuring about how God like a good father that stands ready and eager to give us all we need in answer to our prayers.

        The other day an old friend told me a family story of his about a relative, a young expectant mother whose doctor gave her the results of prenatal tests which showed evidence that the baby was very sick and with numerous birth defects. Not despairing, the family began praying, asking family and friends to pray, and on good advice called a rather special priest to come and pray over the mother and her baby, which he did with great confidence. Almost immediately the mother started feeling better for the first time during her pregnancy and when they did her sonagram by her next regular exam, the doctor found everything to be just fine. When the time came, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, who continues to grow and be happy and to bring joy to his family. I believe the testimony of my old friend.

        God does answer prayers. He works wonders. I have seen more than I can count in my life. “And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you…”

        That does not mean that we should pretend to pray away all death, suffering and hardship from life. God did not relent on Sodom and Gomorrah despite Abraham’s prayers. Nonetheless, Abraham engaged God and God saved Abraham’s nephew.

        This Sunday’s message? Very simply, pray! Don’t give up on God!

Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

At the Feet of Jesus Attentive

 

SIXTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Saturday, 16 July 2022

Gn 18:1-10a

Col 1:24-28

Lk 10:38-42

 

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        “There is need of only one thing.” (These are Jesus’ words to Martha from today’s Gospel) “There is need of only one thing.”

When it comes to being a believer, we live in an age when it is rare to encounter people with all the right priorities or who live out the conviction that we as Catholics cannot do less than strive wholeheartedly for personal sanctity. A certain worldliness is all too common not just on TV but even among the real people we might encounter in society and perhaps even in our parishes. From experience, I have to say that sadly I am forever encountering nice people who are basically pretty slack, who in their daily living are less than attentive to the will of the Divine Master. Please note I am not talking about big sinners or some kind of criminals. I am referring to people within the community of the baptized who don’t seem to be enthused, who are not moved by love. What this amounts to is what may be termed lukewarmness and experiencing it in our lives, especially within our own family circle, can be demoralizing for adults and a scandal for children. It is indeed a tragedy to discover that somebody might not be on fire with the love of Christ. I rather suspect that this ambivalence toward virtuous living is what above all else has a negative impact on faith practice among these same Catholics (regarding Mass attendance, regular confession, almsgiving) and what amounts to indifference to Christ is what puts the official Church at a disadvantage when it comes to proclaiming Christ and leading people around us to faith.

Personal sanctity is not optional in the Christian life, and it basically has to do with being personally devoted to the living God, looking for His Face, hanging on His every Word. This insight or intuition is perhaps the primary characteristic of the faith in our times. One of the sustaining pillars of the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, as well as of a lot of the popular religious movements in the Catholic Church today, is its message on the universal call to holiness. That is to say not only priests and nuns, but all of the baptized are called to holiness of life. What does that mean really? What does it mean – to be or to become holy? In the words of Jesus Himself from the Gospel: “There is need of only one thing.” Let us discuss the universal call to holiness if ever so briefly from that point of view! In the words of Jesus: “There is need of only one thing.”

        During Ordinary Time the first reading at Sunday Mass from the Old Testament and the Gospel passage which is generally a continuous reading, this year from St. Luke, complement one another in some fashion. This Sunday both offer accounts of table hospitality being offered to God in the context of the family!

In Genesis it is hospitality from Abraham and his wife Sarah shown to strangers passing by. Our father in faith insists that these three rather mysterious men whom we can recognize as God Himself (or as angel messengers from God) stop to rest by Abraham’s tent in the desert. In St. Luke’s Gospel, we learn of the hospitality from Mary, Martha and Lazarus shown by them to God the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. Different from Abraham, the brother and his two sisters were dear friends of Jesus the Lord, no strangers at all. Both accounts describe attentive service to the guest, and Luke’s Gospel brings home the fact that what is pleasing to God above all else and useful for salvation is not so much the food service but the attentiveness to the guest which accompanies it: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

        Protocol and hospitality were very much a part of my life as an ambassador, as an apostolic nuncio. We all know there is a proper way to treat a guest. When things are done by the book, a formal dinner or a reception is always an agreeable occasion, but not necessarily very satisfying for the guest of honor. If you are like me all things being equal, you could care less about great food, great drink, and impeccable service, although these things have their place. What makes or breaks an evening at someone’s home or at a certain venue is rather your being invited there to be with a friend or in the case of family with loved ones open to spending time with you. The same is true of God in Christ. He longs for our attention.

        It seems clear enough to me that these Scripture passages are held out for us by the Church in its liturgy to teach us something about how God operates, and above all that He is willing to have contact with us, to show us His will, and to answer our prayers. The Genesis passage is interesting in that regard. “They asked Abraham, ‘Where is your wife Sarah?’ He replied, ‘There in the tent.’ One of them said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son.’”

        Abraham certainly did not have any ulterior motive in welcoming the three men to rest in the shade by his tent. As it turned out, his generous step in their direction was all that was needed to open the way to the fulfillment of God’s promise of descendants to Abraham and Sarah. “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah will then have a son.”

        Jesus taught that the Great Commandments, the fulfillment of God’s Law, are two. First: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength! And secondly: You shall love your neighbor as yourself! Isn’t it strange how something as simple and natural, even if perhaps today uncommon, as hospitality can so work as to dispose us to enjoy God’s good favor and thereby open us up to a sharing in His righteousness?

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” No doubt Martha’s concerns about hospitality were correct and pleasing to God for His own good purposes. We read about the traditional understanding of the importance of hospitality in the Letter to the Hebrews 13:1-2: “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” But somehow in her frantic chasing around Martha missed the heart of the matter, namely attentiveness to Christ, that one thing needed to make all the difference. Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus was engrossed in Him, attentive to Him. The food and drink were fine, but ultimately secondary to this encounter. Jesus said as much to His disciples about His encounter with the Samaritan woman from John 4:31-34.   Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.

        Jesus wants Martha to stop fussing and to open wide her heart to Him as had Mary. Would that we could do the same! “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”

        Praised be Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

O Sacrament Most Holy!

 

The Solemnity of

THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

(Corpus Christi) 18 June 2022, St. Lambert

Gn 14:18-20

1 Cor 11:23-26

Lk 9:11b-17

Praised be Jesus Christ!

        Corpus Christi: The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ.

        This week, in the runup to our celebration of Corpus Christi, I have had to take another look at what has been described as a crisis of faith among Catholics in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I am doing so in the light of statements I have come across made by relatively younger men (young for me would be not yet 50 years of age). I have been confronted by statements by various younger men, all of them seemingly faithful Catholics, who express their understanding for the results of that recent Pew Research survey and other surveys which peg faith among Catholics in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist at 27% or less. It would seem that over 70% of Catholics polled in these surveys, do not believe that the Blessed Sacrament is really and truly Christ; they refer to the symbolic value of the consecrated bread and wine, but no more, and some even less.

I was sort of taken aback to discover that this story of the last year, which has a lot of people expressing their shock over the lack of faith in one of the central teachings of the Church doesn’t seem to shock these younger men. They are not happy about it, but they claim they can understand it, where it is coming from and how something as tragic as this could happen. For two generations now children have not been taught the faith either at home or in their Catholic schools; they have no idea what the Church believes and teaches. Let me give you two examples of such men and their observations which recently came to my attention!

In the one case, I just listened to a podcast by Fr. Mike Schmitz (a priest of the diocese of Duluth and quite popular on Catholic media). Fr. Mike comes from a good Catholic family but does not seem to have avoided in his own life as a child a major crisis of faith, and this already in elementary school. In the video in point, he recounts his own personal conversion at age 15, his conversion to faith in Jesus Christ really and truly present in the Eucharist. The other man, an Irishman who discerned out of a religious community in favor of marriage and family, expresses himself in his video as quite convinced that practically no one in Ireland born after Vatican II has actually been formed in Catholic faith. For him it is obvious that people without any formation in the faith cannot be expected to believe in Christ present in the Sacrament. Remember, this man says this of himself, having been a professed religious, who should have been better formed in the faith.

        Until I took time for these men’s opinions, I was shocked by the lack of faith pointed out by the surveys and which I had encountered in the lives of Catholics, let us say, around the world. I had my own theories about remedies for the situation, but which I fear fell short of the real problem of the countless number of people in the Catholic Church who simply do not know Who Jesus is.

Let me say that this is not a new crisis in the history of the Church and that in some ways it takes us back to the origins of the Feast of Corpus Christi, which was historically intended to reaffirm the faith in the transubstantiation, in Christ really and truly present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, under the forms of Bread and Wine in the Eucharist. The beautiful office composed for this feast by St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us what we must needs believe, what the Lord Jesus Himself taught and which we find recorded in the Bread of Life Discourse in Chapter 6 of the Gospel of St. John (cf. vv. 47-51). “Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

        There are people who claim that the Feast of Corpus Christi is no more than a duplicate of Holy Thursday. Some approved authors argue in favor of this duplication simply for the fact that as Holy Thursday is situated right in the middle of our reflection on the Lord’s Passion that it is good to have another feast so that we can focus on all that is contained in this great mystery. Which mystery? That of the real Presence in the Eucharist of Jesus Christ, True God and True Man! With all of its beautiful old hymns and customs, Corpus Christ is intended as an aid to our faith, to help us embrace the great truth that Our Savior has not abandoned us, but at Holy Mass in the memorial of His Passion, He comes to us really and fully in His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. In the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar the Son of God feeds us with His very Self and strengthens us with heavenly nourishment for life’s journey to the Kingdom.

        Our first reading this year is taken from Genesis and speaks about Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High, bringing out bread and wine to Abraham, a foreshadowing of the Eucharist. From this Old Testament passage Abraham’s reverence for the priest-king Melchizedek and for the sacred gifts he bears is all too evident. And to think that the Eucharist is so very much more!

        In today’s Gospel passage from St. Luke, we read about the miraculous multiplication of the loaves and the fishes, Jesus feeding over five thousand, feeding their bodies and by His teaching feeding their souls as well. “They all ate and were satisfied.” … “Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God.”

        Traditionally, a big part of Corpus Christi were always the beautiful outdoor processions with the Blessed Sacrament, Christ carried out of church and through the streets to encounter and bless His people. One of the most hopeful signs in the Church of our times has been the rise in the practice of Perpetual Adoration. Here at St. Lambert’s, we have public adoration of the Blessed Sacrament here in church from after Thursday morning Mass nonstop for just short of 24 hours until just before Friday morning Mass. Other places, like the Adoration Sisters chapel across from the Cathedral are open for prayer before the Blessed Sacrament all day, every day, with one of the sisters in turn keeping watch and praying the whole time.

        Some of the youth retreat movements and other Church events and celebrations incorporate times of adoration before the Blessed Sacrament and we have lots of testimony to vocations inspired or confirmed in the hearts of young people who spend time with Christ adoring Him in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

        My duty today is obviously to confirm you in your practice of coming to adore Christ here exposed on the Altar at special times, or at any time here reserved in the Tabernacle. If you are not in the habit of taking even a little bit of time on a regular basis to keep our Eucharistic Lord company, then I am here to challenge you as well to come and give Him His due. Christ must rule in our hearts and moving our bodies to come and kneel before Him is the best evidence that we are doing our part to seek His Holy Face. “Jesus spoke to the crowds about the kingdom of God.” … “They all ate and were satisfied.”

        O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine, all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

Rejoice with Me! Up Close and Personal

The Solemnity of

 THE MOST HOLY TRINITY

Saturday, 11 June 2022, St. Lambert

 

Prv 8:22-31

Rom 5:1-5

Jn 16:12-15

Praised be Jesus Christ!

On today’s solemn feast it is proper to make some mention at least of the Doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity: One God in Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! There is no other day in the year quite like Trinity Sunday, prone to lead us into theological and even philosophical discourse. It would be the appropriate day to offer outside of Mass some kind of educational, catechetical content on the nature of God. I say outside of Mass, because homilies were never intended for lectures, but they should kind of point us toward where we ought to be going. Study, reflection, meditation should be an integral part of our Christian life, for both priests and religious, but no less for all the lay faithful, for all the baptized. Repurpose some of your Sunday, if you will, for the things of God! Make it truly the Lord’s day!

So not having a Sunday afternoon lecture on the calendar, if I can leave you with nothing else, it would be that we are duty bound to be aware, to reflect on the place of God in our lives. Not God in any generic sense of the term but as God the Most Holy Trinity: One God in Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

        Personally, I am a firm believer that even as we grow older, we never stop learning. For instance: one of the things I have learned in the last year is that among the general non-churched population, especially in the world of scientific research, you don’t have to be an atheist anymore. Believing in God is back in fashion among scientists and mathematicians. I would say it this way: Atheism is no longer a viable or reasonable option for serious, grownup people. Granted, there are people who may not be all that sure about God. They may have doubts, but they do not deny His existence, that is, if they have anything intelligent or intellectual going on in their lives, they admit God even if they fail to name Him.

Atheism has become what it always was: it is or was either an attitude held by angry people, or it is or was a political stance. The tenets of atheism cannot be held in good faith by people of good will. At some point in recent history, the questions which thinking people tend to ask on an ultimate level have changed. “Does God exist?” “Is there a Creator, Who brought all things into being and holds them in existence?” These are not the big questions anymore. Serious science seems to be aware of its limits in describing reality. People have moved beyond much of the pretense of the 19^th and early 20^th Century. In the face of its own discoveries and a clearer understanding of the limits its methods impose upon it, science seems to have become more respectful especially when it comes to speaking about matters of faith.

        The question of the day seems rather to be: “Who is God?” And we respond, God is Trinity in Unity. We can know God clearly in the Person of Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus has shown us the Father and sent the Holy Spirit forth into our midst.

I was watching a year-old video the other day. It was a discussion between the very popular Jordan Peterson and Bishop Robert Barron. Jordan though a clinical psychologist is not an atheist. Nonetheless he has not yet succeeded in making a faith commitment in life, at least not one which goes beyond generic Christianity. Most people who know and admire Peterson expect that at some point he will take that final step and will probably convert to the Catholic faith. For now, he speaks about Catholic faith with respect, but also as a friendly critic, as an outsider who wishes us well. In the video he makes a general statement noting all the people, especially young people, who are walking away from the Church, who are abandoning the Catholic faith. They are the same people whom Bishop Robert Barron and many others refer to as “nones” (people who on a questionnaire when asked about their religious affiliation say they have “none”). Peterson places the blame for this exodus or abandonment by the young of Catholicism in our day on the leadership of the Church, on the hierarchy. His thesis would be that the Church has failed the young in particular for not really demanding enough of them, for not espousing high enough ideals. He thinks being a Christian and fulfilling the demands of the Church has become too easy.

        Peterson makes that accusation despite a deep respect for the things of God and of His Church. I suppose it could be true, that the Church is not demanding enough. Personally though, I think young people falling away from the Church has more to do with their failure to grasp the uniqueness of our faith. I doubt if Peterson would disagree with me, but I would challenge his analysis from outside of the Church which complains that faith practice today is not demanding enough. Granted: the goal of getting everyone in and out of church on Sunday in less than an hour is slack; it does not inspire. Doing away with abstinence from meat on Fridays except in Lent is slack; it is not serious. I won’t deny the relevance of Peterson’s observations. He has something to say, but I think more central to the abandonment of church life is the failure to grapple with the question of God’s personhood, that He can be named. We are not just talking about God in any generic sense of the term but of God as the Most Holy Trinity: One God in Three Divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit!

Sadly, most folks’ commitment to the Church is not one which goes beyond generic Christianity. I remember back in high school already learning about the teaching of the II Vatican Council, which warned against the temptation to a false irenicism in areas of interreligious dialogue or even ecumenism. For all the warnings, that seems to be the trap we have fallen into. Our respect for others who do not share our faith ends up in promoting religious indifference: one church, temple or house of prayer ends up mistakenly being considered equal to another. The notion of the fulness of truth in Jesus Christ in His One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church gets emptied of its meaning. The gift of the Holy Spirit no longer seems to be grounded in such an urgent call to Baptism in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Our first reading today was from Proverbs in the Old Testament. It starts out: “Thus says the wisdom of God.” Not only is there a God, Who brought into being all that is and holds it in being, but He saved us from everlasting death in and through His Son. God showed us His Face. Our faith is in Jesus Christ alone. As St.  Paul says in his letter to the Romans: “…we boast in hope of the glory of God.” We usually use Luke’s Gospel Chapter 15 to illustrate the Church’s teaching on penance and reconciliation. On Trinity Sunday we could apply it as well to God’s love for us and His eagerness to bring us to share in His joy: rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep… rejoice with me because I have found the coin I lost… but, son, we had to rejoice because the brother of yours who was lost, who was dead, has been found and has come back to life within the circle of the family.

If our notion of God is not shot through with our awareness of the Almighty as Person, who created and saved us out of love, then we might as well check the box which puts us in the “none” category. Glory then be to the Father, God, to the Son, God, and to the Holy Spirit, God, one in Being and threefold in Person. To Him be glory now and for ages unending. Amen. 

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

In Thy Sevenfold Gift Descend!

 

Pentecost Sunday

4-5 June 2022, St. Lambert

Acts 2:1-11

1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13

Jn 14:15-16, 23b-26

        Praised be Jesus Christ!

Come, Holy Spirit!

        “No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit … As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.”

        Even before I started to prepare my homily for Pentecost, for some reason (call it inspiration?) the Genesis reading about the Tower of Babel was roaming around in my head. The thought which accompanied this little distraction was about how in Sacred Scripture Old and New Testament, that is to say in God’s inspired word, confused speech, speech with no commonly held point of reference, was and is considered a curse: Babel (the word says it all).

When in 2001 I moved from Bonn, Germany (at the heart of the very culturally Catholic Rhine Valley) to Berlin (bottom land, marsh land, sort of Protestant, but mostly just secularized and without any particular geographic points of reference) I learned that one of the things Berliners were quite proud of was referring to themselves as “multiculti”, multicultural. As many of these same people in that big city were often prejudiced against foreigners, that multiculturalism usually boiled down to a rejection of what were for their parents commonly held pre-WWII German values, usually Christian values about matters of faith and home life. With this multiculti business, it was as if they were celebrating the chaos in the Book of Genesis which came as a result of the confusion of speech which put an end to the project of building a tower to heaven (Babel!). They were effectively not embracing foreigners and diversity of culture so much as they were rejecting hearth and home as they relate to traditional Christian values and customs. In other words, many of the rather outspoken people living in Germany’s capital city when I was there 20 years ago were being doubly foolish. Not only did they refuse to place themselves under God or to espouse the traditional values of their ancestors, but they basically refused any kind of common social project for the present or for the future. They were being multiculti, or so they said!

My simple message to you is that “multiculti” (you can supply the word “woke-ism” if you like) is not the miracle of Pentecost. The tongues of fire and the multiple languages with which the Apostles taught on that day were far better, because they effectively communicated. They did not divide but actually taught people, offering singleness of purpose. God is not about division and confusion but rather about unity, experienced as favor and grace. If we are going to build up our world, this world, then we will do so on Christ and no one else. We will do so by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost was and is the showering of His gifts upon the faithful. We know who is faithful and truly favored by God by the fruits of their lives, the fruits of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our hearts, in our Church.

“Come, Thou Holy Spirit, come!”  

        “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always.”

        I don’t mean to pick on the Berliners, but back then they were for me a perfectly illustrated example of unfounded pride which had lost its way. Life is about virtue, and it is God-centered, or it is not truly life at all. Before we moved to the old/new capital of reunified Germany, my boss had sent me ahead to Berlin to interview candidates for the position of chauffeur for the Nunciature. The idea was to recruit a man from Berlin to come to Bonn to work for the last couple months before our move, so that then back in Berlin he would be at home with his family. After interviewing 11 candidates, I settled on the guy who seemed the cleverest and most engaging. Reporting back with my recommendation to my boss, with my top three picks, he reacted by telling me I was mistaken to favor as number one a guy without church affiliation rather than to pick the less flashy but much more solid Catholic man, my number two among those I interviewed. As it turned out, he was right. Flashy quit almost immediately (no real strength of character). He did not even make it through the couple months left in Bonn before the move. The Catholic guy, in the meantime, had been hired by the Cardinal of Berlin and served faithfully and well for many years. He was steady and his life was marked, yes, by virtue.

        Life in the Holy Spirit is virtuous living. Virtue is a habitual and firm disposition to do good. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the human virtues are stable dispositions of the intellect and the will that govern our acts, order our passions, and guide our conduct in accordance with reason and faith. There are moral virtues and there are theological virtues. The moral virtues grow through education, deliberate acts, and perseverance in struggle. They can be grouped around the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Divine grace purifies and elevates them. The theological virtues dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have God for their origin, their motive, and their object— God known by faith, God hoped in and loved for his own sake. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity. They inform all the moral virtues and give life to them.

        Many of the more charismatically inclined members of the Church seem to be drawn by the flashy. They seem to ignore basic Catholic teaching about what the true gifts, the higher qualities in life are. The moral life of Christians is sustained by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are permanent dispositions which make man docile in following the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Already from the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah we class these gifts as numbering seven. The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. They complete and perfect the virtues of those who receive them.

        Several of the communities of nuns I have worked with over the years had the custom of preparing holy cards with the name of each of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit on them and then each one drawing a card out on Pentecost at breakfast. The card you drew was the gift you were to work on and pray for, for yourself, during the Pentecost Octave especially.

There are also the fruits of the Spirit. They are perfections that the Holy Spirit forms in us as the first fruits of eternal glory. The tradition of the Church lists twelve of them: “charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity.”

[cf. Church, U.S. Catholic. Catechism of the Catholic Church: Second Edition (pp. 502-504). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.]

        On this Sunday or during the Pentecost Octave, look in the mirror at your own life to see what kind of perfections the Holy Spirit is working in you. “Charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, chastity”, not much of what you would call “flashy” there and not particularly marked by multi-anything either. There is steadiness, however, something wholesome that you can build on for your own sake and for the sake of the life of the world.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Come, Holy Spirit!

 PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI

An Anathema or Two to Clear the Air

 

SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

21-22 May 2022

Acts 15:1-2, 22-29

Rv 21:10-14, 22-23

Jn 14:23-29

 

Praised by Jesus Christ!

         From the Acts of the Apostles today we read about the decision taken by the very first Council of the Church held at Jerusalem not to impose the Jewish custom or rule of circumcision on the new Gentile Christians. When asked to resolve the controversy which had arisen over whether the observance of all the Old Testament precepts was required of non-Jewish converts, the elders of the community of Jerusalem wrote back to the Church at Antioch. Their response began with the words: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” The Apostles could not have been clearer in expressing themselves in their letter. They were deciding the case brought to them by appealing to the authority of God. “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” God was speaking through them; they claimed the authority of the Holy Spirit for the decision which was properly their own as those who presided over the Church at its beginnings, after Christ’s Ascension into Heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

        Governance is no small or easy matter. You may have picked up on the news that just yesterday the Most Reverend Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, announced that he was banning Speaker Nancy Pelosi from receiving Holy Communion until such time as she publicly renounces her pro-abortion stance, repents of her great sin of pushing her agenda in Congress and seeks reconciliation with the Church through Penance and sacramental Absolution. We’ll have to see if Pelosi comes back to the Church or not. But no matter what she does, thanks to the clarity of the Archbishop’s statement and his respectful but firm stance, everyone else in the Church should be confident in what is to be expected of a Catholic in terms of respect for innocent human life. No one has the right (so-called) to take the life of a child born or not yet born.  

Abortion is only the most obvious of a whole series of controversies which need resolution by means of clear teaching from the successors of the Apostles according to the mind of God. It appears, however, that both inside and outside the Church today wisdom and courage seem to be in short supply among our leaders. We are sadly in need of much more from the Church hierarchy in faithfulness to Christ. Decisiveness of action on the part of our leaders is an all too rare commodity, as the happy example of Archbishop Cordileone points out.

Part of their hesitancy may be explained by the lack of responsiveness among the lay faithful to their leaders’ teaching and directions. Some would try and justify this opposition to authority in the Church by shaking their heads and saying, “No way! Whether the problem is one of Church discipline, of morality, or of the faith itself, I don’t want any priest or bishop quoting the Catechism or some Church document and telling me what to do!” Typically, people often do not seem to like taking orders. Or they may seem to think that majority votes can settle most everything, even if the vote comes out contrary to God’s law. “Dialogue” is the catch word you hear in lots of Church circles, and just about everything appears to be up for discussion. In Germany or in Switzerland today the Church establishment and quite a few lay people would just bristle or fume at the words from the Book of Acts: “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” Honestly, it is not uncommon even here in the United States to encounter Catholics who would assert that appealing to God for the authority of our commands is a bit too much to claim. Granted there are some people who are just as rebellious as we read about in the Book of Genesis. In Adam and Eve fashion they do not stop at challenging people set over them in the Church. Fundamentally they reject God’s authority flat out (Gen. 3:2-5 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”). Perhaps more common however is a kind of foot dragging or hunching our shoulders, being less than eager to place ourselves without reserve under God’s law. In this lawless world, everything tends to get relativized or flattened. There is a kind of stubbornness or resentfulness which holds back or refuses to take anyone’s authority without a challenge. Then too, people do not seem to be ready to take the path less traveled through life and refuse to live heroically by following in the footsteps of our loving Lord and Savior.

Sometimes, I suppose, it is simply wanting to have a say or to have the last word on certain topics. Ultimately though, the question is not whether the Pope or a Bishop is drawing me into the decision-making process, whether he is listening to me or taking my input into consideration, but whether we can have confidence in those who are speaking. “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…” We may have reason to doubt whether a given priest or bishop is truly acting on God’s behalf, whether what he says or does truly reflects faithfulness to God within His Church. Nonetheless I cannot offhandedly reject all Church authority.

The rebelliousness we encounter is a rejection of the Holy Spirit in favor of the spirit of the age. To say it more simply, too often we just follow the crowd while turning our backs on God as He speaks to us through His Church. We are caught up in the prevailing world view which overvalues self-indulgence at worst, and perhaps not much better promotes or insists upon things like so-called social progress or future orientation. Such are not categories for believers, whereas faithfulness to tradition is. We are called, for love of God, to be faithful to Christ, to conform our will to His, as it is mediated by those within the Church possessing and properly exercising legitimate authority.

The big question, of course, is how does that work? Jesus in St. John’s Gospel today could not be clearer. “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me.”

        Keeping God’s word, by very simply obeying Him, by conforming my will to that of the Almighty! How do we do that? There’s an ancient legend about St. John the Evangelist, the only one of the original twelve Apostles to live to an advanced age and not die a martyr. The older he got, the more St. John limited his teaching of the faith to repeating the two great Commandments: you shall love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The Evangelist clearly understood that by holding faithfully to these two, the Christian would be fulfilling everything contained in the Law and the Prophets. “It is the decision of the Holy Spirit and of us…”

        Praised by Jesus Christ!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI