I have seen the future... (Lent.1.A)

 

I have seen the future, and it works. I didn’t know where the words came from, but they came to my mind after the first night of our Parish Mission on Thursday: I have seen the future, and it works.

By which I mean that the vision of the parish we’ve been talking about for the last six months or so, namely becoming an irresistible parish that puts evangelization in the forefront, is becoming something visible and fruitful.

The gym was filled, and we had to keep bringing out more tables and chairs for all those coming through the doors.

The talk by Father Richard Conlin was the perfect beginning to the topic of the mission, “The Jesus You Never Knew.” He presented the Jesus he has known and invited us into that friendship. I simply couldn’t imagine a better way to launch Lent.

Strangely enough, I was also thinking about the word Lent this week. Years ago, I probably knew where it came from but I’d certainly forgotten; I suspected it came from the French word lent which means ‘slow.’ Well, I was wrong. Lent indeed comes from old German and old English words meaning Spring, or the lengthening of the day.

Quite the opposite of slow. The ancient word probably refers to the increasing daylight in Spring, helping us realize that each Lent is a new springtime.

That was another word that came to my mind: the new springtime, which Pope John Paul II spoke of in his apostolic letter on the millennium as a ‘new springtime of Christian life.’ As it happened, soon after he wrote those words, the Church became mired in scandal and sadness and it seemed like we were going into a long winter, certainly not a new springtime.

And yet Jesus and his message is ‘ever ancient, ever new.’ There is never a time when the Gospel becomes stale, when the Good News becomes old. The truth is that a season of sorrow, whether in our own lives or in the Church, is a time to encounter the deepest truths about our Faith.

So it’s wonderful that the Church in her wisdom takes us right back to the beginning in our readings today. The very origins of humanity, the origins not only of man and woman but also the origin of sin. The sin of our first parents, the scar that the human race continues to bear is described in the first reading, calling us to reflect on the roots of sin in our lives.

Why is it that—blessed as we are, perhaps not exactly as Adam and Eve were, but blessed with so many riches, so many good things—we choose those things that are not held out to us by the hand of God?

When we get to the second reading, we have a more complex but more hopeful teaching on sin. Yes, it came into the world through Adam, and indeed through sin came death, yet the Fall was as the Easter Exsultet says: a happy fault, the necessary sin of Adam. It brought us redemption by another man, Jesus Christ.

So just as the first reading presents us with the source of our condemnation, so the second presents us with the source of our salvation, which is, of course, the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Lord.

The Gospel moves us away from those fundamental, big-picture themes to something we can immediately apply to ourselves. Which one of us doesn’t know temptation? If you can say you don’t, I would really appreciate being let in on the secret.

Temptation is part of the human condition. So much so that we have the remarkable scene in today’s Gospel of Christ being tempted. Jesus, ‘a man like us in all things but sin,’ nonetheless endured temptation. Tempted, one would think, rather severely after a fast of forty days and forty nights. I didn’t manage to walk by a bowl of peanuts during my fast on Friday.

And so: let’s look ahead. We have listened to the story of sin. St. Paul has proclaimed the story of redemption. Where does this leave us?

In one way or another every Christian spends some time in the wilderness, confused and uncertain. Each of us has moments when we doubt God, when we want him to prove himself. And there are times when we stand on the mountaintops of ambition and achievement, tempted to worship these and other false gods.

How can we receive what St. Paul calls “the free gift of righteousness”? How do we gain access to the abundance of grace that leads to justification and life?

Listening to Father Richard Conlin on Thursday, I was once again reminded that Jesus must be at the center of our Christian life. He talked about the powerful, playful, and prodigal love of Jesus for us. That’s what makes our parish irresistible—the love of Christ for each one of us.

My one-sentence takeaway this week is this: it’s more than a story. We are being offered a deep personal friendship with Jesus, which is the ultimate remedy for temptation and the scars of sin. If we’re not looking for that in the Church, then we are—if not in the wrong place, then certainly not obtaining the benefits of being in the right place.

I have seen the future and it is working. The future for a renewed Church, a renewed parish, and the renewal of our own lives, despite the effects of sin and any weakness that besets us.

People are responding to what we are doing at Christ the Redeemer. Guided and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, we are going to keep it up.

To end on a slightly humorous note, I never use quotations without double-checking the source, since I find my memory often plays tricks on me. I Googled “I have seen the future and it works” only to discover the words were written by a naïve American journalist who wrote them after a visit to Communist Russia in 1918!

He lived, of course, to eat his words. But I won’t eat mine: as I said last week, in person and on video, this Mission can change your life. So if you weren’t there on Thursday join us, and if you were there come back and invite someone along with you.

...as our Heavenly Father is Perfect (OT.7.A)

Let me start by reading something:

First thing every morning tell yourself: today I am going to meet a busybody, an ingrate, a bully, a liar, a schemer, and a boor. Ignorance of good and evil has made them what they are. But I know that the good is by nature beautiful and the bad ugly, and I know that these wrongdoers are by nature my brothers, not by blood or breeding, but by being similarly endowed with reason and sharing in the divine.

These are words that Marcus Aurelius wrote in his book of meditations some two thousand years ago.

There are two reasons I’m quoting an ancient Roman emperor this Sunday. First, because of the similarity between his thoughts and those we hear in today’s Gospel.

If you compare the wisdom of Jesus with that of Marcus Aurelius, who was renowned as a philosopher and ruler, you will see that Our Lord is not teaching something that’s only relevant for Christians. The man or woman who is not at the mercy of unpleasant people, of ungrateful people, even of treacherous people, is truly free.

Marcus Aurelius says that these unpleasant and even evil people cannot harm us because they can’t force us to do wrong against our will. Treating our enemies better than they treat us expresses our autonomy and integrity and spares us anger and resentment.

The second reason is the profound difference between the Emperor’s meditation and Christ’s teaching. The Roman philosopher was a stoic, someone who believed that wisdom and the path to happiness was found by self mastery, submitting to the natural law, and enduring the circumstances of life.

While these concepts are not foreign to Christians, compare what Marcus Aurelius writes to what Jesus says about meeting evil with good. Philosophy offers a way to bear the burdens of living with difficult and dishonest people; Jesus shows us how to transform them and ourselves.

And he does so by turning the Old Testament law of justice into his own law of love. It is one of the most important revelations in the New Testament. The philosophy of the ancients was based on reason; but what we have heard today seems not only unreasonable but impossible.

However, as Jesus says elsewhere, nothing is impossible for God.

The Lord’s wisdom is not meant to be separated from grace. Marcus Aurelius could not help the reader follow his advice, while Jesus—through the Holy Spirit—fills our hearts with the love we show those who wrong us. What’s more, he rewards us for our efforts to live the law of love.

And that’s not all. Even as wise and respected an emperor as Marcus Aurelius was not someone we would want to imitate. We’ve heard his wonderful words about tolerating others, but his tolerance did not extend to Christians! They were brutally martyred during his rule; he even criticized them for crying at public executions and for failing to die like stoics.

Jesus, on the other hand, became the living proof of his own words. There are various examples of this but none better than when he prayed on the cross for forgiveness of his executioners.

I’m fighting a nasty cold I picked up during my travels last week—nasty enough that every time I tested for Covid I was disappointed at the negative result! But I think it’s enough of an excuse to end this homily with its simple summary: Love your enemies is earthly wisdom that brings us inner peace and divine guidance that brings us a heavenly reward.

So however ‘impossible’ it may seem, let us do our best to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect.

 

Marcus Aurelius: 121-180

 

Be Salt for the World and Your Light will Shine (OT.5.A)

I don’t talk much about my vocation story, partly because there’s not that much to say! No dramatic conversion, and I wasn’t one of those boys who wanted to be a priest from an early age.

In fact, from the time I was four years old until I was fourteen I wanted only to be a doctor.

What happened at fourteen, you might ask. Simple. I got back a report card with my first C in science. And I’m sorry to say it wasn’t my last. It didn’t take long to figure out I was not destined for medical school.

But a preacher has to know some science—several of the great Fathers of the Church, including St. John Chrysostom, were quite scientific in their sermons on today’s Gospel. They speak about its use as a preservative, as a seasoning, and even as something destructive used to destroy crops in time of war.

Most of the other natural substances Jesus uses in his teaching are straightforward: things like bread, wine, oil, seeds, and leaven. But salt is ambiguous.

I may not be an expert on salt, but I know more than a fourth century preacher did. And what I know—what we all know these days—is just as ambiguous as what St. John Chrysostom knew.

Too much salt leads to high blood pressure and other medical problems. Too little is just a big a problem even if it’s not as common. We need salt for our bodies to work properly.

And cooks know that some foods need salt and others don’t. I haven’t seen anybody putting salt on their ice cream lately.

So there are two sides to the story when Jesus calls us “the salt of the earth.” There’s a downside to salt.

We need to be careful about being the salt of the earth for others. If we over-season our conversation with morality or judgement, we can raise someone’s blood pressure pretty darn quick. Just this week I heard two stories from people in health care whose jobs require them to deal with people requesting assisted suicide—medical assistance in dying.

The situations were different but the conclusions were the same: just telling people it’s wrong to end their life this way almost always does more harm than good. A Catholic doctor tells how she listened with great care to a patient asking for MAiD. The patient told the doctor she was so touched by the compassion that she wanted her to be the one to cause her death.

The physician explained that she could not do this, and told the patient why. The patient, comforted by the doctor’s caring approach, chose not to carry on with the request.

I wasn’t surprised to hear this. In our pastoral counselling course in the seminary a brilliant professor of medicine, founder of the Catholic marriage counselling network in Britain, urged us to resist our natural instinct to tell people what they need to do—not because there’s no place for that in the pulpit but because it’s simply no use in counselling.

(In most cases, if they are Catholic, their heads know very well what is right and what is wrong. It’s their hearts we can help.)

Whether it’s a priest dealing with parishioners, a doctor with patients, or a hospital chaplain with someone asking for MAID, we need to be like a good cook, who know that less can be more, especially when it comes to salt.

This, of course, is something many parents have learned the hard way. Contrary to instinct, young people tune out sermonizing—they don’t like to be told, but they love being heard. If we listen to them they will usually provide an opportunity for the truth to be told sooner or later.

We may have incredibly good arguments but if we come across as negative or stern, young people will want nothing to do with what we’re offering.

I got a tremendous Christmas gift from a generous parishioner—a book called “Return: How to Get Your Child Back to Church.” The book, published by Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire ministry, is full of great advice for parents. Among the simple things it says is just “speak with positivity and joy.”

The author, Brandon Vogt, has other books with practical advice on what to say and how to say it when sharing our faith with anyone. You can get them on Amazon or “Return” directly from Word on Fire. And over the summer another kind parishioner gave me a book of essays, also from the amazing people at Word on Fire, titled “The New Apologetics: Defending the Faith in a Post-Christian Era.” It too presents a whole new way of being salt and light. You can also get it on Amazon.

(Links to these books are on my blog. I should also mention that after Communion today we are going to hear about a terrific event this week that can help strengthen fathers in their important role.)

And then there are teachers. Pope Paul VI famously said: “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” (Evangelii Nuntiandi, 41)

We are so blessed in our parish and in our Archdiocese to have solid Catholic schools with many disciples teaching in them. I’m particularly proud of the two schools our parish supports. A number of our active parishioners teach and minister at St. Anthony’s and St. Thomas Aquinas. We support the schools financially, but we really owe the teachers our prayerful support as well.

I hope I haven’t discouraged anybody from being salt of the earth. I thought I might end by saying at least there’s nothing ambiguous about being the light of the world. But a commentary on the text points out that there’s a danger here, too. “If people see our good works they might praise us as good, saintly Christians and then we would ‘have received our reward’,” as St. Matthew says in the next chapter. 

“But Christ never lets his light and wisdom shine forth from his own center. Instead he lets them radiate from the Father’s light and wisdom.” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Light of the World, p. 46)

Christ’s disciples must also take care that their actions reflect God’s glory and not their own. St. Teresa of Calcutta regularly said Cardinal Newman’s prayer “Radiating Christ,” which is inspired by what we heard Jesus say this morning.

That prayer includes these words “Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Thy presence in my soul. Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!”

St. John Henry Newman wasn’t praying only about being light to the world but also, indirectly, about being salt for the earth—because the prayer ends “Let me preach Thee without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to Thee. Amen.”

And so my one sentence summary: there can be too much of a good thing when it comes to sharing the faith or speaking the truth; sometimes “less is more.”

Let us season and preserve the world of our families, friends, and workplaces more by what we do than by what we say—all for God’s glory, and with the Holy Spirit’s help.

Radiating Christ

Dear Jesus,
help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly,
that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me
that every soul I come in contact with
may feel Your presence in my soul
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine,
so to shine as to be a light to others.
The light, O Jesus, will be all from You;
none of it will be mine.
It will be you, shining on others through me.
Let me thus praise You the way You love best,
by shining on those around me.
Let me preach You without preaching,
not by words but by my example,
by the catching force of the sympathetic influence
of what I do,
the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.
Amen.