God’s Compassion and Law

In our first reading at Holy Mass on Sunday, we will hear the Lord declare, “I am compassionate.” Almighty God’s compassion towards us moved Him to become one of us. The Word became flesh. [Spanish]

The Incarnation of the eternal Son revealed to us human beings the immeasurable depths of God’s compassion for us. He willed to share everything with us. In fact, it is the coming of Christ that teaches us what compassion really is. The love God has for the human race–that is compassion. Christ crucified–that is compassion.

To believe in this–that is Christianity. To share in the mystery of God’s compassion toward us, the mystery of Jesus’ life. That is the faith and the life of the Church–to believe in and share in God’s Incarnation as a human being.

We cannot do this as isolated individuals. The virus continues to isolate many of us physically. But it need not isolate anyone from the Christian faith. Someday, please God, we will all find ourselves together again, in person, celebrating the mystery of faith, the Mass. May that day come sooner, rather than later.

da Vinci “Head of a Pharisee”

But in the meantime, we commune with Christ, and with each other, by believing. Wherever we find ourselves, right here, right now, let’s believe. God is compassionate. God did become one of us, to free us from sin and death and give us a share in His eternal life. We believe it. Let’s make sure we never let a Sunday go by without reciting the Creed and meditating on it.

In the gospel reading at Sunday’s Mass, we will read about how the Pharisees came to the Incarnate Word, and one of them addressed Him as “Teacher.” To use that title implied great respect. It acknowledged a rabbi’s learning, his wisdom, and his holiness. You called someone “teacher,” and then asked a question about God, because you wanted to learn something.

The Pharisee, however, addressed Jesus as “teacher” without really meaning it. That group of Pharisees only intended to set Jesus up. They did not have any real respect for Him as a teacher. To the contrary, they despised Him.

The scholar asked, “Which commandment in the Law is the greatest?” But he had no real interest in Jesus’ answer to that question. In fact, these Pharisees had grown cynical about the Law of Moses.

The Lord had established a covenant with His people by giving the Law on Mount Sinai. The Law of Moses contained the ordinances that could bring peace to the people as a community, and interior peace for each individual. All you have to do is strive to follow the commandments.

But this group of Pharisees had turned the whole thing on its head. They had turned God’s straightforward Law into a complicated burden that subjugated people–subjugated people to the Pharisees themselves. The crooked Pharisees wanted to retain their wrongful authority over consciences. They could see that Jesus spoke to liberate us from precisely such a burden, by offering Divine Mercy.

Christ offers mercy, so we need not tie our consciences up in knots, trying to prove to God how righteous we are. Rather, we can live in the truth that we are the sinners for whom Jesus died. Interior peace comes from living in that truth–which gives us a fighting chance at actually following the commandments that Jesus said are the greatest.

Because we believe in the Christ, we can revere Him as our teacher, and we can seek instruction from Him with a real willingness to learn. We know that we don’t know what to do. We know that we don’t know the greatest commandment. We have failed to obey God over and over again. We deserve punishment, but we get a fresh start instead.

So we can listen. He teaches us. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind.” Forget yourself. Forget having power over anyone else. Forget having prestige and the honor of men. Forget comfort and “the finer things.” The finest thing is God. The only one with any real power–God. The only truly honorable one. God.

Love Him. Love the unseen Answer to every question and every problem. Cling by faith to the greater, more-beautiful Good. Then love your neighbor as yourself, with the same compassion that God showed us when He died on the cross for us.

Sharing in Christ’s mystery means laying down our lives without a second thought. Why not? What do we need our lives on earth for, anyway–if not to give Him glory, by loving with His divine love?

Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the Law? He spoke the answer, then He showed it. The eternal Law is: the love in the Heart of Jesus Christ crucified.

The Catholic Banquet

At Holy Mass on Sunday we will hear a parable from the gospel, about a king giving a wedding feast for his son. The marriage in question involves the Lord Jesus Christ and all our souls, each individual soul. [Spanish]

God made me, and He exercises ultimate control over the entire course of my life. Every day—every moment—involves an invitation. The loving, almighty hand of God lavishly arrays everything that I experience. All for one reason: to communicate love. To give life. To open up the infinite horizon of friendship with Him.

When did Jesus weep? He wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. But that wasn’t the only time. Once, as He approached Jerusalem as a pilgrim, He paused on the hill overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Temple Mount beyond, and He wept. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those whom the Lord sends to you. How many times have I longed to gather your children together, like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

God demands my attention, more urgently than anything else. Who has more of a claim on me than He does? My Creator has a right to expect my devoted love.

But… He’s invisible. And so confoundedly silent. He seems aloof. Intentionally mysterious. Is He really, you know—there?

Let’s not forget about the banquet in the parable, the “calves and fattened cattle” that the king prepared for his guests. We do not seek friendship with God in an arid wasteland. We don’t have to invent our own religion, based on our own clever insights. We seek friendship with God at a fully stocked banquet table that He has prepared.

He became man. He gave Himself for us on the cross, and then rose again to minister in heaven as our High Priest. He founded a Church and endowed Her with holy writings and sacraments. He has given us a religion, which allows our friendship with Him to grow through the whole course of our humble lives on earth.

God prepared this banquet of grace, this great, undefinable “thing” that is Christianity, Catholicism. He made it; I didn’t. It’s not for me to understand it all, just like it’s not for wedding guests to know all the recipes for every item on all the banquet tables. My job—our job—is to partake. If I make my own understanding of God the measure of my friendship with Him, forget it. After all, the closer we get to God, the more we realize how little we understand.

What I do or don’t do, what I understand or don’t understand—none of that makes or breaks my religion. Most of us hardly know what we are doing most of the time, anyway. What really matters is that God has intervened in history. He founded a Church.

Now, to be sure, our Church clearly has some serious problems. Also, no one has an obligation to go to Mass right now, because of the virus. But my point is this: the Catholic Church’s fundamental institutions deserve my trust and devotion, because they are the means by which I receive God’s grace. When I trust in the mystery of divine love revealed by Christ, I can partake of the banquet of heaven at the altar. I just need to take my place among all the sinners who need that grace.

The king of the parable really just wants everyone to be happy, but he is utterly demanding in one way. He invites us to the wedding banquet of His only Son, and we must accept. If we fail to accept the invitation, we lose our one chance at finding meaning in life. We accept the invitation by believing—believing in Christ and in the sacraments He instituted, and frequenting the sacraments at the right time, and under the right circumstances, of course, considering the public-health situation we face.

No matter what our particular individual circumstances right now, having to do with the virus, or being suspended from ministry, or whatever might get in the way–the main thing is faith. And hope: looking forward to better days, when we can live the life of the Church together, in peace.

Those days will come. In the meantime, we share in the banquet by believing, hoping, praying, and receiving the sacraments insofar as that is possible.

—

PS. Happy Feast of Saint Dennis 🙂

Statue of St. Denis in Virginia Museum of Fine Art

Charity and “Saved”

The evangelical law of charity. Love God above all things, with everything you have. And love your neighbor as yourself, for God’s sake.

At the Ecumenical Council of Trent, they discussed the relationship between faith and charity.

We believe in God. We believe in God’s Christ. We believe in the Redemption of the human race. We believe in divine love and mercy.

The Christian faith comes to us as a pure gift from above. Salvation comes as a pure gift from heaven. Our response to that gift: Belief. And grateful love.

But that doesn’t mean that we are, right now, “saved.” We have a pilgrimage to make as Christians in this fallen world, to get to the heavenly kingdom. A difficult pilgrimage. Harder than walking from London to Venice, like St. Rose of Lima’s contemporary, and William Shakespeare’s friend, Thomas Coryat did, in 1608. (In 1612, he walked from Turkey to India.) We know we cannot rely on our own strength to persevere to the end of the Christian pilgrimage. So we rely on God’s grace. We hope in God.

By hoping in God, we can live in His love. We can love with His love, and thereby fulfill the evangelical law—a task which human nature, left to itself, cannot accomplish. We neither presume on God’s mercy, nor despair of it. We persevere in faith and divine love by hoping in God’s mercy.

Faith, hope, and love. The greatest is love, to be sure. In heaven, faith and love will be no more; it will be all love. But here below: all three, inextricably intertwined. The human soul in the state of grace believes in God, hopes in God’s grace, and loves God and neighbor by God’s grace.

inveterate pilgrim, Thomas Coryat

Loving and Believing in God and Man

 

Hear, O Israel. Thou shalt love God. And not just a little, but with an all-consuming passion. With your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. [CLICK para español]

Now, commanding love seems strange. After all, can I really obey this command, just by my own choice? Doesn’t real love always involve a force beyond my control? Isn’t that the distinguishing characteristic of love? Namely, that it comes to me and changes me by its power. It consumes me. I don’t choose love or control love. Rather, I receive the force of love within, and follow its lead.

So someone could say, in response to God’s law of love: “Lord, You can command me to love you all you want. But I can’t do it by my own choice. You need to give me the gift of divine love first.”

Amen. He does. God commands by His law only what He makes possible by His grace. He is the immeasurably loveable Compassionate One. He has counted all the hairs on our heads. He loves us with more devotion than a mother loves the baby nursing at her breast.

He has opened His Heart up to us, by sending His only-begotten Son, Jesus. We know the love the invisible God has for us by the love that Christ showed us on the cross. And to know that love of God is to love God in return.

So: Yes, He commands us to love Him with all our hearts, but only because He has loved us with His whole Heart first, thereby moving us to respond with love.

And He commands that we love Him back not for His benefit, but for ours. The truth is that loving God above all things is the only way to have a life worth living. The only way to find meaning in this life is to love God. If we don’t love the triune God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, we will wind up loving something else instead–something much less truly lovable, something beneath us.

But there’s more. Not just, “Love God with your whole heart, mind and strength.” But also: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” –Now, Lord Jesus. The man asked for the greatest commandment in the Law. He asked for one. But here come two.

Is this fair? Loving God totally is one thing. God is noble and glorious and true. But loving my neighbor, too? My neighbor annoys the living daylights out of me. And loving myself, also? That’s probably the hardest thing of all. The more experience we acquire in life, the more we tend to conclude: this human race of ours is not all it’s cracked-up to be.

But, let’s remember: God only commands what He makes possible by His grace. When I gaze upon the face of my neighbor, I may not experience love. I might actually think to myself: “Not sure I have the patience to deal with this character right now!” And when I gaze at myself in the mirror, I may not experience love. I may not be impressed at all. But that is not the point. That’s not what this commandment is about.

The real question is: When the Lord Jesus Christ gazed at people when He walked the earth, what moved His Heart? Unfathomable understanding, sympathy, and love. Christ saw with perfect clarity how good, how beautiful, how honest and lovable all the people He encountered could be.

He sees the same when He gazes upon us now. From heaven He sees us with eyes that penetrate to the inner heart of the good man or good woman we all got formed in our mothers’ wombs to become. He sees the path to heaven that stretches out in front of each of us. He sees it perfectly, in every detail—and He always sees it, no matter what nonsense and confusion we manage to get ourselves involved in.

There’s only one way to fulfill the double commandment of divine love which Christ laid down. Only one way. Namely, to let Him love through us.

I may have lost faith in the people around me. But Jesus Christ has not. I may have lost faith in the fundamental goodness of mankind. But Jesus Christ has not. I may have lost faith in myself. I may have lied to myself about myself so many times that I no longer really believe myself about anything. But Jesus has not lost faith in the honest man I could be.

Fifty-five years ago this month, Pope St. John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council. The pope made an act of sublime faith. Faith not just in the goodness of God, but in the fundamental goodness of the human race, too. Pope John believed that people could learn to trust each other, and lay aside our petty antagonisms, and work together for a more peaceful future.

The fifty-five years since October 1962 have seen plenty of continued antagonism. World peace has not exactly broken out.

But we Christians still hold fast to the vision of the good, holy pope who started Vatican II. We still believe in mankind. People thought Pope John was naïve to believe that mankind could become good. But believing in God—and believing in man—doesn’t make us naïve. Because Jesus Christ still reigns. And Christ still gazes upon us all with the kind of love that can make us good.

Parable of the Wedding Feast

 

Apse window in the church of Christ’s Tears, on the Mount of Olives

The king gave a wedding feast for his son. The marriage in question involves the Lord Jesus Christ and my soul, our souls. [Click por español.]

God made me, and He exercises ultimate control over the entire course of my life. Every day—every moment—involves an invitation. The loving, almighty hand of God lavishly arrays everything that I experience. And for one reason: to communicate love. To give life. To open up the infinite horizon of friendship with Him.

When did Jesus weep? He wept at the tomb of His friend Lazarus. But that wasn’t the only time. Once, as He approached Jerusalem as a pilgrim, He paused on the hill overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Temple Mount beyond, and He wept. “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! You kill the prophets and stone those whom the Lord sends to you. How many times have I longed to gather your children together, like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

Now, what could possibly demand my attention more urgently than my friendship with my Creator? Who has more of a claim on me than He does? Who has more of a right to expect my devoted love?

–But, Father! God… He’s invisible. And so confoundedly silent. He seems aloof. Intentionally mysterious. Is He really, you know—there?

Now, let’s not forget about the banquet in the parable, the “calves and fattened cattle” that the king prepared for his guests. We do not seek friendship with God in an arid wasteland. We don’t have to live like twentieth-century existentialist philosophers. If we had to invent our own way to have a friendship with God, based on our own clever insights—forget it! But that is not the situation. We seek friendship with God at a fully stocked banquet table that He has prepared.

He became man. He gave Himself for us on the cross, and then rose again to minister in heaven as our High Priest. He founded a Church and endowed Her with holy writings and sacraments. He has given us a way of life—a religion—which allows our friendship with Him to grow through the whole course of our humble lives on earth.

When we practice the religion Christ gave us, we grow in friendship with Him, even in spite of ourselves. All we have to do is regularly make use of the spiritual help that the Lord gives us in His Church.

My faith doesn’t have to be perfect. My religious knowledge doesn’t have to be perfect. And I don’t necessarily have to grapple with angst and uncertainty, like a philosopher, just to have a relationship with God.

All I have to do is: show up for Mass on Sundays, go to confession at least once a year, stay faithful to my commitments, and slog on into the future.

God has prepared the banquet of divine revelation. The banquet of grace operating through specific sacred ceremonies. He made the great, undefinable “thing” that is Christianity, Catholicism. He made it; I didn’t. It’s not for me to understand it all, just like it’s not for wedding guests to know all the recipes for every item on all the banquet tables. My job—our job—is to show up and partake. With gratitude.

Nothing wrong with trying to understand the rich treasures of our religion. We have to try to understand—but that entails the work of a lifetime.

My point here is simply that if I make my own understanding the measure of my friendship with my Maker, I have no hope of getting close to Him. But if I accept that He has indeed intervened in history, and founded a Church according to His designs—if I accept that the Catholic Church’s fundamental institutions deserve my trust and devotion, because they are the means by which I receive God’s grace—then I can do like my forefathers and foremothers have done before me. That is, partake of the banquet of heaven on a regular basis, even while I live my little life on earth. A little life that might involve things like oil changes, baseball playoffs, and maybe even school boards.

Because the king of the parable is utterly demanding in one way, but perfectly chill in another. He invites us to the wedding banquet of His only Son. Our lives, and the whole history of mankind, are nothing other than the wedding banquet of the Son of God. If we fail to recognize this basic fact, we are utterly lost. Because we have no other hope for finding meaning in life.

But if I do recognize that my first obligation is to show up for this wedding banquet that my God has prepared for me, then the king lets me have all kinds of other things besides. I just have to avoid breaking the Ten Commandments.

God calls a few people to the rigorous existential difficulty of being a monk or nun or philosopher. But for most of us, He allows things like going to movies, or playing golf, or watching cooking shows, or gardening, or collecting model trains–while meanwhile faithfully practicing the religion God gave us.

He demands that we show up at the banquet He Himself has prepared. Then He throws the world wide-open for us. This is a feast worth showing up for.

Giving God His Due + the Impracticality of Generation X

The passage in the holy gospel about giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God establishes the distinction between the sacred and the secular.

We owe God our religion. We owe Him worship and honor, our acknowledgement of how immeasurably greater He is than we are. God transcends all time and space; His wisdom excels the intelligence of any human mind. We use our little minds to try to govern as wisely as we can the things that we can control. Meanwhile, we recognize with faith that God alone governs all things.

Some people distinguish sacred and secular as idealistic vs. practical. But, actually, religion involves the utmost practicality. The sphere of the sacred is the most immediate and real sphere. God is always closer to us even than we are to ourselves.

But religion isn’t everything. We also have to serve God by exercising practicality in the short-term matters of day-to-day life. Developing and exercising skills, communicating honestly, confronting the practical problems that we human beings have, living together here on earth.

Later this week I will head north to attend my 25^th college reunion. They call us Generation X.

How have we done, we Gen-Xers, when it comes to solving secular problems practically?

Well: During the 1980’s, the US worked on solving the problem of black-white racism. And we find ourselves working on it now. In the 1980’s we debated abortion, and we debate it now. In the 1980’s we debated immigration and naturalization policy. And we debate it now.

The 1992 election involved the question of North-American free trade. So did the 2016 election. In the 1980’s, scientists developed a solution to the problems posed by greenhouse-gas emissions. And it remains a highly disputed point. Our national health-care system needed fixing in 1993. And in 2017.

We had riots because of police brutality in 1992. And in 2014. Muslim terrorists left the world speechless in 1972. And in 2001. And in 2015.

My point is: we have gone in circles, like Frodo and Sam lost in the rocky wilderness. The verdict on Generation X, after a quarter century of influencing the course of world events: impractical.

We lose our practicality in secular matters when we get confused about the sacred sphere. Mankind will worship someone or something. If it’s someone or something other than God, then we expect something secular to have divine power. That leads to consummate impracticality.

In my opinion, my generation has gone in circles because we have worshiped…computers. We have imagined that the internet, good programming, and laptops for everyone could solve the problems of the world, by some mystical power which Steve Jobs wielded as high priest.

But computers do not have the power to bless the earth. Only God has the power to bless the earth.

Asking a Real Question

—

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Matthew 22:36

Which commandment is the greatest, the most important, the one I have to think of first? God Himself may be perfectly simple, but He has given us a number of commandments over the years. And when we search our consciences honestly, we find not just one, but many demands. Sometimes the various demands throw us into a quandary, and we don’t know what to do.

So we can see how someone might honestly pose the question. Teacher, help me sort out my conscience. Tell me which commandment to think of first.

But these Pharisees in Sunday’s gospel passage were not really asking a question, per se. Asking a question means having room in my mind for an answer. It means using the word ‘teacher’ with real respect. ‘Teacher, you know more than I do, so illuminate my mind with something I do not yet know.’

World Mission Sunday

So much to reflect on this Sunday, it’s almost too much. Bear with me here.

St. Isaac Jogues with missing fingers

1. Sunday we mark 368 years since the martyrdom of St. Isaac Jogues, who died in upstate New York.

And he was by no means the only Jesuit who died for the faith on this continent. In 1571, eight Jesuits died as martyrs here in what is now Virginia.

We salute these greatest of American heroes. Before George Washington’s great-great-grandparents were conceived in their mothers’ wombs, the missionary martyrs of America gave their lives so that the people of this land could know the Good News.

2. In Rome on Sunday, our Holy Father will declare Pope Paul VI to be among the blessed in heaven.

Some of us, maybe, remember when Pope Paul governed the Church, which was from 1963 to 1978. The Beatification of Pope Paul concludes the Roman Synod that has studied marriage and family life these past two weeks, and which some of us may have heard something about in the newspaper or on tv. We had better discuss the Synod. But I think the Synod we had better discuss is actually the Synod on Evangelization, which took place in 1974. Let’s come back to that in a minute.

3. In the middle of all this, we hear our Lord say to us with His quiet wisdom: “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Maybe you remember us talking about this gospel passage three years ago. We considered the challenge of actually trying to give God His due. We start at the altar: praising Him; offering the perfect sacrifice given to us by His Son; offering ourselves, along with Christ, to the Father. It all starts with Mass, and our whole lives are directed to the glory we come into contact with in the Holy Mass.

Blessed Pope Paul VI

But we have to give God His due outside church, too. And we give Him His due by following His solemn command that we love our neighbor. We truly love our neighbor by thinking of him or her in the exact same way that Christ thought of us, when he spread out His arms on the cross for us.

Which brings us to “repay to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” Our love for our fellowman means paying careful attention to our duties as citizens. Because we love God, we also seek, even in this fallen world, the great political goal known as “the common good.” And in a couple weeks, we who are of voting age have to figure out a way to cast a pro-life, pro-immigrant vote.

…But let’s go back to the memorable Synod of Bishops, which took place in Rome—in 1974, when Blessed Paul VI was pope. One topic on the table then was this:

Since we Catholics firmly believe that God is all-merciful and all-loving; since Jesus Christ, crucified for our salvation, has revealed the truth about God like nothing else ever could, we of course believe that God has a plan for absolutely everyone to be saved. This includes people who have never heard of Jesus or received the sacraments.

We ourselves know only one way to heaven—Holy Baptism, along with the other sacraments of the Church. But God knows more than we do, so we never despair about anyone’s salvation. The second Vatican Council re-echoed these truths, which can be found in the New Testament. God can find a way for anyone to get to heaven. How then do we understand our mission to evangelize?

Such was one of the pastoral problems posed by the Synod of Bishops which took place in the 1974. A good question. Allow me to quote what Blessed Pope Paul VI wrote:

It would be useful if every Christian were to pray about the following
thought: men can gain salvation also in other ways, by God’s mercy, even though we do not preach the Gospel to them. But as for us, can we gain salvation if—through negligence, or fear, or shame –if we ‘blush for the Gospel’–or as a result of false ideas, we fail to preach it?

For that would be to betray the call of God, who wishes the seed to bear fruit through the voice of the ministers of the Gospel; and it will depend on us whether this seed grows. [emphasis added]

…Anyone ever heard of Francis Parkman, the writer? He wrote the definitive history books about the two centuries when Europeans and native tribes both lived in what is now the United States, with each living according to their own long-standing traditional way of life. That is, the 1600’s and 1700’s.

Parkman was an amazingly smart historian and gifted writer. That said, in his books, Parkman has a clear bias against some of the Indian tribes. One group, though, he held in even greater contempt. The Jesuits. Parkman’s phrase for the Jesuits in North America during colonial times is: “Romish zealots.”

Seems to me that this lays a challenge on us. When biased historians look back on the 21st century, will they find a record of what we have done, and conclude: What a bunch of Romish zealots!

May God give us the grace to water this land with our blood, sweat, and tears, because we Romish zealots won’t be satisfied until everyone has a chance to share in the grace that we have received in the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

2,011 Years of an Uncommon Era

Last Sunday after Mass someone said to me, “Father, it’s too bad we had to have the Diocesan Appeal. I missed your homily, because I could not make any sense out of that parable about the vineyard and the wicked tenants.”

Perhaps some people are saying to themselves right now, “The parable about the wedding guests makes no sense to me, either. But what are the chances that this joker will be able to explain it?”

Before we get to these parables, I have a couple questions for you.

What year is it?