Today, we turn our hearts to reflect on the responsorial psalm on this day when we celebrate the memorial of Saint Teresa of Avila. As Christians, we can espouse this lovely prayer more eagerly than someone reading it in the context of just the Old Testament. It is a prayer about the Word of God as heard in his Law. After speaking his word through Moses and the prophets, God has spoken definitively through Jesus Christ. Christ himself is the Word of God made flesh, and his person, his works, his teaching, and his death and resurrection are the eternal Word of God addressed to all, which brings light and salvation. The Psalms give us a voice to ask God for mercy, to soften our hearts, to wash us clean, and to provide us with a new start. There are also times when we feel bitterly disappointed with God himself and need some way to express this. The Psalms give us this voice: “Why are you so silent? Why are you so far from me?” even as they make us aware that God is not afraid of our anger and bitterness but, like a loving parent, only wants us to come and talk about it. Let your mercy come to me, O Lord.
Luke’s Gospel today sheds light on our human complexity. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus begins his preaching with the word Metanoia, a word that implies infinitely more than what’s connoted in its English translation, Repent. Metanoia is an invitation to put on a higher mind, to be more noble of heart, and to leave paranoia, pettiness, and self-gratification behind. Fr. Ron Rolheiser recounts what the Czechoslovakian novelist Ivan Klima wrote a series of autobiographical essays entitled My First Loves about this moral tension he carried around, choosing to remain celibate and not for religious reasons, wondering why he was living this way. If he wondered if he died, would God look at him with disappointment, or would he congratulate him for going on without consolation? For him, it was not a question of what’s sinful or not but rather a question of carrying his solitude and tension in a way that makes for nobility of soul. At first glance, that can seem self-serving; trying to be special can also make for a very judgmental pride. However, true nobility of the soul isn’t something sought for its own sake but something sought for the good of others. One does not try to be good to set oneself apart from others. Instead, one tries to be good to create a beacon of stability, respect, hospitality, and purity for others. When I was a seminarian studying moral theology, one day in class we were examining various questions within sexual morality. At one point, the question arose as to sinfulness or non-sinfulness of masturbation. Is this an intrinsic disorder? Seriously sinful or not anything serious? What’s to be said morally about this question? After weighing the various opinions of students, the professor said this: I don’t think the important question is whether this is a sin or not. There’s a better way of framing this. Here’s where I land on this question: I disagree with those who say it’s a serious sin, but also disagree with those who see no moral issue here whatsoever. The issue here is not so much whether this is a sin or not; rather it’s a question of what level, compensatory or heroic, we want to carry this tension. In the face of this issue, I need to ask myself, at what level do I want to carry my solitude? How noble of soul can I be? How much can I accept to carry this tension to make for a more chaste community inside the body of Christ? Moral theology and spirituality cease being a command and become an invitation to a greater nobility of soul for the sake of the world. Can I be more big-hearted? Can I be less petty? Can I carry more tension without giving in to compensation? Can I be more forgiving? Saints don’t think so much in terms of what’s sinful and what isn’t. Rather, they ask, what is the more loving thing to do here? What’s more noble of the soul, and what’s more petty? What serves the world better?
This story from Jesus today, taken from the Gospel of Mark, can help us understand Jesus’ teaching that the rich find it difficult to enter the kingdom of heaven while little children enter it quite naturally. We tend to misunderstand both why the rich find it hard to enter the kingdom and why little children enter it more easily. Children have no choice but to know their dependence. They’re not self-sufficient and know that they cannot provide for themselves. If someone doesn’t feed them, they go hungry. They need to say, and to say it often: “Help me!” It’s generally the opposite for adults, especially if we’re strong, talented, and blessed with sufficient wealth. We easily nurse the illusion of self-sufficiency. In our strength, we more naturally forget that we need others and are not self-reliant. It’s not riches that block us from entering the kingdom. Rather, it’s the danger that, by having them, we will more easily also have the illusion that we’re self-sufficient. We aren’t. The moral danger in being rich is instead the illusion of self-sufficiency that seems to forever accompany riches. Little children don’t suffer this illusion, but the strong do. As Thomas Aquinas points out in how he defines God (as Esse Subsistens – Self-sufficient Being), only God does not need anyone or anything else, but the rest of us do, and that’s the danger of being wealthy, money-wise or otherwise. How do we minimize that danger? Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that riches aren’t bad in themselves. God is rich. But God is prodigiously generous with that richness. God’s generosity, as we learn from the parables of Jesus, is so excessive that it’s scandalous. It upsets our measured sense of fairness. Generosity is Godlike, and hoarding is antithetical to heaven. From the time we learn to tie our own shoelaces until the various diminishments of life begin to strip away the illusion of self-sufficiency, riches of all kinds constitute a danger. We must never unlearn the words: “Help me!” [Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article, “Our Struggle with Riches”]
In today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, we see the exchange of Jesus and a woman who says to the Lord, “Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.” But in his reply to the woman, Jesus provides an insight into his relationship with his mother, Mary, and the example she gives to all believers when he responds, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that here, as in other places, we must be careful to understand what Jesus is telling us about his mother. We see places in the gospels where he seemingly does not speak highly of her when, in fact, the reverse is true. For example, he is approached and told: “Your mother is here, trying to see you,” and he answers, “Who is my mother?” Then, pointing to the people sitting around him, he says, “Those who hear the word of God and keep it are mother and brother and sister to me.” Is Jesus distancing himself from his mother here? No. He’s pointing out the fundamental link between them: among all the people in the gospels, Mary is the pre-eminent example of the one who hears and keeps the word of God. Looking at how Mary gave birth to Christ, we see that it’s not something that’s done in an instant. Faith, like biology, also relies on a process that has distinct, organic moments. What are these moments? What is the process by which we give birth to faith in the world? First, like Mary, we need to get pregnant by the Holy Spirit. We need to let the word take such root in us that it begins to become part of our actual flesh. Then, like any woman who’s pregnant, we have to lovingly gestate, nurture, and protect what is growing inside us until it’s sufficiently strong so that it can live on its own, outside us. Eventually, of course, we must give birth. What we have nurtured and grown inside of us must, when it is ready, be given birth outside. This will always be excruciatingly painful. There is no painless way to give birth. And in this, Mary wants imitation, not admiration: Our task too is to give birth to Christ. Mary is the paradigm for doing that. From her we get the pattern: Let the word of God take root and make you pregnant; gestate that by giving it the nourishing sustenance of your own life; submit to the pain that is demanded for it to be born to the outside; then spend years coaxing it from infancy to adulthood; and finally, during and after all of this, do some pondering, accept the pain of not understanding and of letting go.
In the first episode of the “Catholicism” series, then Fr. Robert Barron, in a deliberate way, shakes out of us our tendency to ‘domesticate’ the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Instead, he reminds us that Jesus was a deeply disconcerting, subversive figure. The gospel writers were clear that Jesus came as a warrior king who came to set his people free. Unlike other spiritual leaders, who do not point to themselves, Jesus of Nazareth keeps speaking and acting as if he is God. Either Jesus is who he says he is (in which case we are obliged to give our whole lives to him), or he is a madman (in which case we should be against him). What does not remain, as C.S. Lewis saw so clearly, is the bland middle position that, though he isn’t divine, he is a good, kind, and wise ethical teacher. If he isn’t who he says he is, then he isn’t admirable at all. The Buddha could claim that he had found a way that he wanted to share with his followers, but Jesus said, “I am the way.” Mohammed could say that, through him, the final divine truth had been communicated to the world, but Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Confucius could maintain that he had discovered a new and uplifting form of life, but Jesus said, “I am the life.” No other founder forces that choice. Christ compels a choice: you either believe he is God’s ‘Anointed One’ or you do not. As Jesus says, you’re either with him or you’re against him. There’s no room for a middle ground. This is crazy stuff when you take the time to consider the radicality of the person of Christ and the incredulous truth that God became man and dwelt among us. We are either with Jesus or we are against him.
Normand Gouin of the Paulist Center writes about persistent prayer as an “Act of Crazy Compassion and Reckless Love.” He notes that at every Mass, we pray for the growing list of concerns and needs in our world, such as the devasting effects of climate change, the war in Ukraine, the ongoing battle with the Coronavirus, racism, injustice in all its forms, and the pervasive divisiveness in our land. Yet with all that is going on, in what often seems like a futile exercise, we are often left wondering why does it seem like things are getting worse, why do these prayers seem to go either unanswered or to have no effect? We continue searching but have not found? Why does the door we keep knocking at never seem to open? I have struggled with these questions, and I bet you have as well. I don’t believe Jesus ever intended when he said: ask, search, and knock to be a blank check on God’s account as if prayer was a transaction between us and God. Jesus’ instruction to ask, search, and knock is perfectly reflected in the prayer he taught the disciples, the prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer. We are to be persistent in aligning our lives to the mercy and compassion of God, bearing witness to the presence of God in our life and relationships, opening ourselves to the gift and sufficiency of this day, freely receiving and giving forgiveness. To be persistent in prayer means to not give up when the sands of life are shifting under our feet, when our life comes unhinged, when we are overwhelmed, when we come to the limits of our ability, or when it looks like this day is as good as it gets and all there will ever be. However, beyond being persistent, I believe it is also important to note that prayer is not simply a private act. When we pray for specific concerns, needs, or situations, are we not in effect also expressing our desire for the healing and restoration of the entire Body of Christ? Fr. Ron Rolheiser describes prayer not so much as the words one speaks or imparts but as an attitude we embody that, when adopted, can affect the entire Body. Rolheiser states, “Central to our faith as Christians is the belief that we are all part of one mystical body, the Body of Christ. This is not a metaphor. This body is a living organism. If this is true, and it is, then there is no such thing as a truly private action. Our prayers are health-giving enzymes affecting the whole body, particularly the persons and events to which we direct them.” May our practice of prayer, through trust and persistence, be like a sneaky hidden antibiotic – needed precisely when it seems most useless.
On this day when many celebrate the feast day of Saint John Henry Newman, we recall its uniqueness as the day commemorates Newman’s conversion to Catholicism in 1845, rather than his death, which is a departure from traditional practice. Newman famously wrote about the power of prayer to assist in the perfection of our being as one searches for the truth in life: To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that unless you can drink in strength from a source outside yourself, your natural proclivities for paranoia, bitterness, and hatred will invariably swallow you whole. The disciples in Luke’s Gospel understood this. They approached Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray because they saw him doing things that they did not see anyone else doing. He was able to meet hatred with love, to genuinely forgive others, to endure misunderstanding and opposition without giving in to self-pity and bitterness, and to retain within himself a center of peace and non-violence. This, they knew, was as extraordinary as walking on water, and they sensed that he was drawing the strength to do this from a source outside him, through prayer. Prayer is meant to keep us awake, which means it’s meant to keep us connected to a source outside our of natural instincts and proclivities which can keep us grounded in love, forgiveness, non-retaliation, and non-violence when everything inside of us and around us screams for bitterness, hatred, and retaliation. And if Jesus had to sweat blood in trying to stay connected to that source when he was tested, we can expect that the cost for us will be the same, struggle, agony, wanting in every fiber of our being to give in, clinging to love precariously by the skin of our teeth, and then having God’s angel strengthen us only when we’ve been writhing long enough in the struggle so that we can let God’s strength do for us what our own strength cannot do. Lord, teach us to pray!
Martha and Mary signify two dimensions of the spiritual life. Martha signifies an active life as she busily labors to honor Christ through her work. Mary exemplifies the contemplative life as she sits attentively to listen and learn from Christ. Fr. Ron Rolheiser speaks of the tension between contemplation and action that is demonstrated in the story of Martha and Mary. Martha engaged herself in the necessary task of serving others while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, doing nothing but loving a lot. Jesus commends Mary, saying she has chosen the better part. Christian spirituality forever after has had to struggle with those words. Is prayer really more important than active service? The saints would have us do both. Healthy spirituality is not a question of choosing between Mary and Martha but of choosing both – contemplation and action, soulcraft and statecraft, loving and doing, prayer and service, private morality, and social justice. While both activities are essential to Christian living, the latter is greater than the former. The active life terminates in heaven, while the contemplative life reaches its perfection. Our challenge as disciples is to see beyond the either-or nature of this story. An active life forgetful of union with God is useless and barren, but an apparent life of prayer, which shows no concern for serving and evangelizing the world through our daily, ordinary actions, also fails to please God. The key for the engaged disciple lies in being able to combine these two lives without either harming the other.
If we reflect on our verse today, we can quickly come to the question in our minds, “What does God expect me to do in light of the seeming enormity of the challenge presented in the scholar’s response to Jesus’ question, ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” The answer I suggest we consider is our relationship with God the Father through his Son Jesus. Yet our relationship with Jesus is tied to our relationship with others, especially with the least, the lost and the forgotten. Who are the least in our lives? We all have our list of the least of these. They are the people who are outside of our circle of compassion and concern. They might be individuals of another socioeconomic group, someone with more or less education, people from another political party, people from another culture or lifestyle, or people who don’t believe or think like us. The Christian life is not primarily a list of things to believe. It is about a relationship with God through Christ that forever changes us. This relationship changes all of our other relationships. It actually enables us to begin to see the least of these. The challenge in today’s Gospel reading is understanding the enormity of what the Samaritan did from a twenty-first-century view. Can we imagine today seeing a person we have witnessed spewing hateful and discordant views against minorities and then giving of their time and treasure to assist those same people? That action would significantly perplex us today as the actions of the Samaritan were similarly perplexing to the Jews. Jesus is telling us that we need to step back and see that we are all children of God and capable of sinful and virtuous behavior. The opportunity for each of us is to look for the good in everyone and not expect otherwise just because they live a life different from our own. Our accountability is to respond as Jesus taught – always with kindness and mercy. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” I believe that what Jesus meant for each of us is that we are not merely to believe he was the way, but we were to adopt his way of living. Jesus’ way of living is the way to God. What does that mean? Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.
Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes about the period of his life in which one of his sisters died and noted that as much as everyone missed her, none of us, including her own children, felt her absence as much as her husband. He didn’t just miss her. Half of his life was gone. That’s no romantic exaggeration, as everyone who knew them knows. They were married, husband and wife, for 34 years, and everything about them and their relationship suggested that what was between them was rare. Nothing between them garbled life. Their relationship was, for the most part, too ordinary to notice. For years at a stretch, over dirty diapers and dirty dishes, in a house packed with kids, they would meet each other’s eyes, and both would know that they were home: “At last, bone from my bone, flesh from flesh.” What needs to be there for someone to look at another and feel that other as bone from my bone, flesh from my flesh, kindred spirit? In today’s terminology, what makes someone a soulmate? What do you need to experience with another person to overcome that exile of heart? Someone looking at my sister and brother-in-law might, more superficially, have seen some obvious things: deep mutual respect, a gentleness between them, uncompromising fidelity to each other, harmony of thought and feelings on most things that are important, regular prayer together, and maintain a complete trust of each other. Those things are the heart of a marriage. What connected them, made for bone of my bone, for the harmony, respect, fidelity, and gentleness, was something deeper. They had a moral affinity. Long before, and concurrent with, sleeping with each other physically, they slept with each other morally. What’s meant by this curious phrase? Each of us has a place inside where we feel most deeply about the right and wrong of things and where what is most precious to us is cherished and guarded. My sister and brother-in-law found this in each other. They were moral lovers. They found, touched, and protected each others’ souls. Everything that was deepest and most precious in each of them was understood, cherished, and safe when the other was around. It made for a great marriage—one flesh, true consummation, all predicated on a great trust and a great chastity. That is a secret worth knowing.
