Author: DVO

Millions of people, particularly in the Western world, are Christian in name, come from Christian backgrounds, are familiar with Christianity, and believe that they know and understand Christianity but no longer practice that faith in a meaningful way. They’ve heard of Christ and the Gospel, even though they may be overrating themselves in their belief that they know and understand what these mean. No matter. Whatever their shortcomings in understanding a faith they no longer practice, they believe they’ve already been evangelized and that their non-practice is an examined decision. Their attitude toward Christianity, in essence, is: I know what it is. I’ve tried it. And it’s not for me! And so it no longer makes sense to speak of trying to evangelize such persons in the same way as we intend that term when speaking of taking the Gospel to someone for the first time. It’s more accurate precisely to speak of a new evangelization, of an attempt to bring the Gospel to individuals and to a culture that has already largely been shaped by it, is in a sense over-familiar with it, but hasn’t really, in fact, examined it. The new evangelization tries to take the Gospel to people who are already Christian but no longer practicing as Christians. How to do that? How do we make the Gospel fresh for those who it has become stale? How do we, as G. K. Chesterton put it, help people to look at the familiar until it looks unfamiliar again? How do we try to Christianize someone who is already Christian? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there are no simple answers. We have already been trying to do that for more than a generation. Anxious parents have been trying to do this with their children. Anxious pastors have been trying to do that with their parishioners. Anxious bishops have been trying to do that with their dioceses. Anxious spiritual writers, including this one, have attempted to do that with their readership. And an anxious church has been trying to do that with the world. What more might we be doing? In my view, we are in for a long, uphill struggle that demands faith in the power and truth of what we believe in and a long, difficult patience. Christ, the faith, and the church will survive. They always do. The stone always eventually rolls away from the tomb, and Christ always eventually re-emerges, but we, too, must do our parts. Let’s start by working at winning over hearts, not hardening them.

Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo writes that getting older has the benefit of letting time and experience help us better understand certain things that puzzled us earlier. “Today’s Gospel used to trouble me in the way it seems to set a condition for God’s unconditional love and boundless mercy. Worse is that the condition is us: our own capacity to forgive and give to others. We all know how limited that is. From an unlikely place, I picked up an insight that helped me approach these three verses differently. In management literature, there is a concept called absorptive capacity. Organizations have different capacities—prior experiences, skills of their people, culture, attitude, commitment, and discipline—to absorb learning and undertake improvement. God’s gifts are, of course, boundless and unconditional. But our capacity to receive and absorb needs cultivation. When our life is cluttered with things, worries, resentment, bitterness, and busyness, there is not much room to receive. More importantly, God does not give us things, even if our blessings often lead us to acquire badges, buildings, and bling. God does give us power: the power to accept our own sinfulness, to acknowledge this in others. Still, we believe in the inexhaustible goodness in us and others because this is what it means to be made in God’s image. God’s power within us is like a current that, when turned on, illuminates and energizes. When we unplug from others in negative judgment and self-centeredness, we disconnect ourselves from God’s power. When we plug in to give and forgive, we invite the flow of God’s love and mercy into us. What I take away from today’s Gospel: Give to others, take from God.”

If Christ was born into the world to redeem it, why doesn’t our world look more redeemed? Why is our world still full of loneliness, anxiety, betrayals, sickness, poverty, violence, war, and death? What did Christ’s birth into our world change? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that these aren’t irreverent questions but the right ones. Only in struggling to answer them do we begin to understand the mystery of Christ more deeply. The fact that Christ is born into our world does not mean that those who believe in him will be spared the pain, loneliness, seasons of sickness, heartaches, betrayals, anxieties, fears, and humiliations that afflict everyone else. Faith offers no one an escape from pain. Moreover, believers, like unbelievers, will suffer too the darkness of doubt, the painful fear that the heavens are empty. Faith in Christ doesn’t remove any of the pains inherent within the human condition, including the pain of doubting God’s existence. Faith promises no magic pass-cards. So how can we say that “God is with us” when mostly it feels like God isn’t there for us? Generally, we struggle to feel God in the present moment, to see God’s face in the here and now. In the present, God often seems absent. Yet, when we turn around and look back on our lives, when we look back on our story, we more easily see how God has been there all along and how we have walked in a divine presence, protection, guidance, and love that were imperceptible at the time but are apparent in retrospect. We see God more clearly in our past than in our present. This can help us understand how Christ is present to us, even when it doesn’t always feel like it. Faith doesn’t promise us a ladder to crawl out of the pains of life; it promises a friend to walk with us through those pains. Mostly, though, it’s only when we look back on our lives that we see that this friend has always been there.

Our first reading today comes from Deuteronomy, which is written and edited in the form of a covenant treaty between God and the people but is also a speech by Moses in which he recalls all the covenant benefits that God has done for Israel in the desert. On their part the people promise to observe YHWH’s statutes and edicts with all their heart and with all their soul, and to “walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his edicts, and to obey him.” YHWH’s offer is unconditional and will never be retracted. They, however, must welcome the offering for it cannot and will not be forced upon them. God is love. God has chosen them. But they must choose “to love” God. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes: “Inside each of us there’s a deep place, a virginal center, where all that’s tender, sacred, cherished, and precious is held and guarded. …It’s where we unconsciously remember that once, long before consciousness, we were caressed by hands far gentler than our own. It’s where we still sense the primordial kiss of God.” As Christian we have the advantage of living our lives in Christ’s love. This love provides a filter through which we approach the world. We are constantly in the love of Christ, and we extend his grace to the world. Jesus wants to walk with us so we might learn from him to be humble. Jesus promises us rest and an easier burden. Even our hardest burdens become bearable with Christ’s shoulders taking some of the weight. We need the God who knows our pain, meets us in our pain, and redeems our pain. We can live in the presence of the Lord, loving others and sharing God’s grace. That is our mandate every Sunday morning as we go forth from our churches to love and serve the Lord. We can choose to accept Jesus as a companion in life. We can share our burdens and our joys with the one who suffered for us. “Come to me,” he invites us.

In the musical Les Miserables, there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fantine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness that life can deal a person.

But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So much different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.

Fr. Rolheiser writes that despair has all too often been understood as the one unforgivable sin, the absolute worst state within which one could die. The Psalms tell us that God is particularly close to those who are crushed in spirit and that God will save them. Jesus makes this central to his teaching and ministry. Not only does he have a special affection for those who are broken in spirit, he identifies his presence with their brokenness and assures us that they will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the rich, the strong, and the powerful. For Jesus, the broken are God’s specially loved little ones. Given that truth, do we really believe that God will send someone to hell who dies crushed in spirit, seemingly without hope? Do we really believe that God would send Fantine to hell? What kind of God would do this? n Mark’s Gospel, just before he dies on the cross, Jesus cries out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Then he hands over his spirit to his Father. In our classic understanding of this text, we generally explain what happened there in this way. Jesus was tempted towards despair, but he found the strength to resist and instead, in hope, surrendered himself to God’s mercy. I suspect that in the end this is what most people who die (seemingly having given up hope) also do, that is, crushed in spirit, they surrender to the unknown – which is God’s embrace. We need to be far more understanding in the judgments we make vis-a-vis despair.

The Catholic Church makes an extraordinary claim that it is through a special charism of the Spirit that Peter and his successors govern the Church. Bishop Barron writes that this has been the cause of division between Catholics and Protestants. What is the focus of Peter’s confession? It has to do with who Jesus is. This is the rock upon which the Church is built. We don’t say for a moment that all of Peter’s practical decisions are right, that everything he says is right. But we are saying that he is right about who Jesus is a man who is also the Son of the living God. And this is the source and ground of the whole operation. Fr. Kenneth E. Grabner writes that the question Jesus asks the disciples, and the one Peter answers is so important that Jesus addresses it to each one of us. The way we answer it reveals what kind of relationship we have with God. Imagine Jesus standing before you now and asking, “Who do you say I am?” How would you answer? For me, Jesus is the One who shows by his words and actions how our lives can be meaningful, full of joy and open to the divine presence that dwells inside of us. Jesus not only shows us, but he is also within us, giving us the ability to imitate what he has shown. No mere human being can do this for us. Such a gift can only be given by God.

Fr. Rolheiser writes that many people think of the name “Jesus Christ” as we think of names like “Susan Parker” or “Jack Smith.”  But that’s an unhealthy confusion. Jesus didn’t have a second name. The word “Christ” is a title which, while it includes the person of Jesus, speaks of something broader than Jesus alone. What’s the difference between “Jesus” and “Christ”? Jesus refers to a concrete person who, though the Second Person within the Godhead, walked this earth for 33 years and is still today someone whom we understand and relate to as an individual person. Christ refers to something more significant, namely, the vast mystery of both creation and salvation of which Jesus, as the Christ, plays the foundational role but which includes the Eucharist, the Christian community, the historic Christian churches, the community of all sincere people who walk this planet, and physical creation itself. Jesus is a person we seek to be in a relationship, in friendship and intimacy with, while Christ is a mystery of which we and all creation are part and within which we participate. So, should we be focused on the teaching of Jesus or the person of Jesus? Are we more focused on Jesus or Christ? In terms of a large over-generalization, we might say that Roman Catholicism and mainline Protestantism have tended to focus more on the teachings of Jesus and the demands of discipleship that flow from those teachings than they have on the person of Jesus himself. In the Evangelical tradition, the emphasis has been and continues to be on the person of Jesus and our individual relationship with him. In fairness, both traditions also include the other dimension. Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants haven’t ignored the person of Jesus, and Evangelicals haven’t neglected the teachings of Jesus, but, in both cases, one has been more central than the other. But Christian discipleship clearly asks for both intimacy with Jesus and attention to what he taught, personal piety and social justice, firm loyalty to one’s own ecclesial family, and the capacity to embrace all others of sincere heart as one’s faith family. Soren Kierkegaard once suggested that Jesus really wants followers, not admirers. That’s spoken as a true mainline Protestant. Evangelicals wouldn’t disagree but would argue that Jesus really wants an intimate relationship with us. The earliest preachers of the Gospel would agree with both Kierkegaard and the Evangelicals. We need to proclaim both the message of Jesus and Jesus himself.

Fr. George Maloney writes that Christ has called Christians to see him everywhere as the light of God’s loving presence. We have been made in His image and likeness to grasp boldly the sun in all its brightness so that we may image his light fully to the world. We become God’s creative power as His word tumbles forth from the lips of the Almighty. That word, spoken in the flowers, the trees, birds, animals, the beauties of each new season, the sun, moon, stars, mountains, lakes, and oceans, goes forth. Archbishop Oscar Romero notes that it is very easy to be a servant of the word without disturbing the world by using words that can sound in any part of the world because they belong to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems and starts no conflicts. What starts conflicts and persecutions, what marks the genuine church, is the word that burning like the word of the prophets proclaims and accuses: declares to the people God’s wonders to be believed and venerated, and accuses of sin those who oppose God’s reign, so that they may tear that sin out of their hearts, out of their societies, out of their laws—out of the structures that oppress, that imprison, that violate the rights of God and humanity. This is the hard service of the word. But God’s Spirit goes with the prophet, with the preacher, for he is Christ, who keeps on proclaiming his reign to the people of all times. Nothing exists or moves toward perfection except by God’s creative power immanently present in all things. “In God, we live, move, and have our being.”

What is our commitment to works of mercy? Ministering to our fellow human beings means ministering to the Lord Jesus himself, whose image we can see in the faces of the poor. Today’s passage from the Gospel of Matthew records speaking to his disciples on the nature of their actions as his followers. Saint Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa) speaks to having the commitment to works of mercy. “In order to help us deserve heaven, Christ set a condition: that at the moment of our death you and I, whoever we might have been and wherever we have lived, Christians and non-Christians alike, every human being who has been created by the loving hand of God in his own image shall stand in his presence and be judged according to what we have been for the poor, what we have done for them.… Christ said, ‘I was hungry and you gave me food.’ He was hungry not only for bread but for the understanding love of being loved, of being known, of being someone to someone. He was naked not only of clothing but of human dignity and of respect, through the injustice that is done to the poor, who are looked down upon simply because they are poor. He was dispossessed not only of a house made of bricks but because of the dispossession of those who are locked up, of those who are unwanted and unloved, of those who walk through the world with no one to care for them.… Do we go out to meet those? Do we know them? Do we try to find them?”

Christianity is not primarily about ethics, “being a nice person,” or, to use Flannery O’Connor’s wry formula, “having a heart of gold.” Bishop Robert Barron writes that when Christians grant that Christianity’s ultimate purpose is to make us ethically better people, they cannot convincingly defend against the insinuation that if some other system makes human beings just as good or better, Christianity has lost its purpose. Immanuel Kant argued that, at its best, religion is not about dogma or doctrine or liturgy but about ethics. In the measure that the Scriptures, prayer, and belief make one morally good, they are admissible, but in the measure that they lead to moral corruption, they should be dispensed with. The problem with this old and new Kantianism is that it runs dramatically counter to the witness of the first Christians, who were concerned, above all, not with an ethical program but with the explosive emergence of a new world. We can read the letters of St. Paul, the earliest Christian texts we have, and are particularly instructive on this score. The central motif of all of Paul’s letters is Jesus Christ risen from the dead. For Paul, the resurrection of Jesus is the sign that the world as we know it—a world marked by death and the fear of death—is passing and that a new order of things is emerging. The inaugural speech of Jesus, as reported in the Gospel of Mark, commences with the announcement of the kingdom of God and then the exhortation to “repent and believe the good news.” We tend automatically to interpret repentance as a summons to moral conversion, but the Greek word that Mark employs is metanoiete, which literally means “go beyond the mind you have.” In Mark’s telling, Jesus urges his listeners to change their thinking to see the new world that is coming into existence. Anyone with any theological persuasion or no persuasion can be “good people.” But only followers of the risen Christ can witness to an earthquake that has shaken the foundations of the world and turned every expectation upside down.