Author: DVO

Language is a tremendous feature of our human being and allows us to interpret things, especially as words create a word picture of what we see. A reporter once asked two men at the construction site where a church was being built what each did for a living. The first man replied: “I’m a bricklayer.” The second said: “I’m building a cathedral!”  How we interpret and name an experience largely determines its meaning to us. Philip Rieff writes that we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge” within a language and set of concepts by which we interpret our experience. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we can understand our experience within a language and set of concepts that have us believe that things are very meaningful or that they are quite shallow and not very meaningful at all. Experience is rich or shallow, depending upon the language within which we interpret it. For example, we see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity masks a disarming depth. To offer just one example, take the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice is that the name Cinderella is not an actual name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes, and Puella, meaning young girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a universal, paradoxical, paschal dynamic that we experience in our lives, where, before you are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, marry the prince, and live happily ever after, you must first spend some prerequisite time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by that time in the dust. Thus, there are two ways of understanding ourselves: we can have a job or we can have a vocation; we can be lost or we can be spending our 40 days in the desert; we can be bitterly frustrated or we can be pondering with Mary; or we can be slaving away for a pay check or we can be building a cathedral. Meaning depends a lot on language.

Jesus, at times, makes us sit back and wonder, “What did he just say?” Today, in Luke’s Gospel, the Lord says, “I have come to cast a fire upon the earth; how I wish it were already kindled.” Hmmm, I thought the angels on Christmas morning said that he had come as the Prince of Peace? Jesus is the Incarnation of the God who is nothing but love, but this enfleshment, as Bishop Robert Barron notes, takes place in the midst of a fallen, sinful world. Christ was a sign of contradiction. Our Lord is forewarning his disciples about the contention and division which will accompany the spread of the Gospel. As His disciples, to live a life as Christ taught is to be branded as radical in the eyes of a world obsessed with the material self. Our Baptism is a submersion in Christ’s death, in which we die to sin and are reborn to the new life of grace. Through this new life, we Christians should become set on fire in the same way as Jesus set his disciples on fire. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that Christianity is the only religion that worships the scapegoat, the one who is hated, excluded, spat upon, blamed for everything, ridiculed, shamed, and made expendable. Christianity is the only religion that focuses on imitating the victim and sees God in the one who is surrounded by the halo of hatred. We must be “set on fire” in the same way Jesus set his disciples on fire, with hearts ablaze in love of the marginalized, the sick, the poor, the handicapped, the unborn, the unattractive, the non-productive, and the aged. This is the cross we must lovingly bear in suffering with Christ through the grace of God.

Today’s Gospel from Luke has Jesus telling us that we have been entrusted with much, and much will be expected of us. By the grace of God, we are coheirs with Christ and the Apostles, Jews, and Gentiles, in the promise foretold. We are coheirs in the promise and the tasks and responsibilities given to us. Our eyes have been opened to see all of life differently because of who Jesus is. We are invited to become his light and love with him, through him, and in him. This life of Christ can be difficult. Our addiction to hurry and noise comes, in part, from a desire to keep painful, sometimes overwhelming emotions at bay. We think if we remain busy enough, distracted enough, and scheduled enough, then we don’t have to feel the hurt, the anger, the anxiety, and the grief inside of us. I don’t have to acknowledge how sad, lonely, or scared I am. So, how do we deal with this? Jesus’ reaction is one we should emulate. When faced with adversity, he slipped away to find a place of silence and solitude to be with the Father in prayerful communion. Silence and solitude strip away the masks we wear around others. All of the ways we strive for affirmation and recognition from others are gone when we step into the quiet. Our attempts to justify ourselves through hard work and achievement get tossed aside, and we are left with who we truly are before God. Henri Nouwen writes, “If we really believe not only that God exists but also that he is actively present in our lives—healing, teaching, and guiding—then we need to set aside a time and space to give him our undivided attention.” Silence and solitude create that space to give Jesus our attention, for this is where Jesus meets us with his love and grace.

Today, we celebrate the Memorial of St. John Paul II while we also wrestle with a man who was convicted of capital murder in the death of his child by what authorities now say was “junk science.” John Paul II was the first pope to speak out unequivocally against capital punishment. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that it’s important to note that he didn’t say capital punishment was wrong as he knew we scripturally have the right to practice it. But John Paul II said, in conceding this, that we shouldn’t do it because Jesus calls us to something higher, namely, to forgive sinners and not execute them. That’s magnanimity, being bigger than the moment we’re caught up within. In his moral astuteness, St. Thomas Aquinas said something can be a sin for someone big-hearted, even as it is not a sin for someone who is petty and small of heart. His example was to write that it’s a sin to withhold a compliment from someone who genuinely deserves it because, in doing so, we are withholding from that person some of the food upon which they need to live. Thomas was clear that this is a sin only for someone who is big-hearted, magnanimous, and at a certain level of maturity. Someone who is immature, self-centered, and petty of heart is not held to the same moral and spiritual standards. How is it possible that it isn’t a sin, irrespective of the person? Whether or not something is a sin or not and the seriousness of a sin depends upon the depth and maturity within a relationship. Imagine this: A man and his wife have such a deep, sensitive, caring, respectful, and intimate relationship so that the tiniest expressions of affection or neglect speak loudly to each other. For example, as they part to go their separate ways each morning, they always exchange an expression of affection as a parting ritual. Should either of them neglect that expression of affection on an ordinary morning where there’s no special circumstance, it would be no small, incidental matter. Something large would be being said. Conversely, consider another couple whose relationship is not close, where there is little care, affection, respect, and no habit of expressing affection upon parting. Such neglect would mean nothing. No slight, no intent, no harm, no sin, just lack of care as usual. Yes, some things can be a sin for one person and not for another. We’re invited both by Jesus and by what’s best inside us to become big enough of heart and mind to know that even though biblically we may do capital punishment, we still shouldn’t do it and to know that we’re better human beings when we are bigger than any slight we experience within a given moment.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the most crucial question in our lives, at least during our adult years, shouldn’t be: What must I do to go to heaven, or what must I do to avoid going to hell? It is not that concerns about our own salvation are unimportant or that heaven and hell are unreal; rather, the point is that our deepest motivation has to be to do things for others and not for ourselves. We show our love for God and our intimacy with Jesus by laying down our lives for our neighbor. To dread the loss of heaven and fear the pains of hell can seem like one and the same thing. They’re not. There’s a vast moral distance between dreading heaven’s loss and fearing hell’s pains. Fear of hell is based upon a fear of punishment, and dreading the loss of heaven is based upon a fear of not being a good, loving person. There’s a vast difference between living in fear of punishment and living in fear of not being a good person. We’re more mature and human, and as Christians, when we’re more worried about not being loving enough than when we’re fearful that we will be punished for doing something wrong. The heavenly table is open to all willing to sit down with all.  That’s a line from a John Shea poem that spells out succinctly, I believe, a non-negotiable condition for going to heaven, namely, the willingness and capacity to love everyone and sit down with everyone. It’s non-negotiable for this reason: How can we be at the heavenly table with everyone if, for some reason of pride, wound, temperament, bitterness, bigotry, politics, nationalism, color, race, religion, or history, we aren’t open to sitting down with everyone? Jesus teaches this, too, just in a different way. After giving us the Lord’s Prayer, which ends with the words, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he adds, “If you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you.” Why can’t God forgive us if we don’t forgive others? Has God arbitrarily singled out this one condition as his pet criterion for going to heaven? No. We cannot sit at the heavenly banquet table if we are still selective about whom to sit down with. If, in the next life, like here in this life, we are selective as to whom we love and embrace, then heaven would be the same as earth, with factions, bitterness, grudges, hurt, and every kind of racism, sexism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism keeping us all in our separate silos. Let us not continue acting like the brother of the prodigal son, standing outside the Father’s house, excluded by anger rather than by sin. We can only sit at the heavenly banquet when our hearts are wide enough to embrace everyone else at the table. Heaven demands a heart open to a universal embrace.

In the resurrection, God vindicated Jesus, his life, his message, and his fidelity. Jesus entered our world preaching faith, love, and forgiveness, but the world didn’t accept that. Instead, it crucified him and, by that, seemingly shamed his message. The Resurrection asks us to believe what Gandhi affirmed, despite every appearance to the contrary at times, in the end, love does triumph over hatred. Peace does triumph over chaos. Forgiveness does triumph over bitterness. Hope does triumph over cynicism. Fidelity does triumph over despair. Virtue does triumph over sin. Conscience does triumph over callousness. Life does triumph over death, and good does triumph over evil, always. More concretely, it asks us to roll the dice on trust and truth, namely, trusting that what Jesus taught is true. Virtue is not naive, even when it is shamed. Sin and cynicism are naive, even when they appear to triumph. Those who genuflect before God and others in conscience will find meaning and joy, even when they are deprived of some of the world’s pleasures. Those who drink in and manipulate sacred energy without conscience will not find meaning in life, even when they taste pleasure. Those who live in honesty, no matter the cost, will find freedom. Those who lie and rationalize will find themselves imprisoned in self-hate. Those who live in trust will find love. The Resurrection, most forcibly, makes that point. In the end, God has the last word. The resurrection of Jesus is that last word. From the ashes of shame, of seeming defeat, failure, and death, a new, deeper, and eternal life perennially bursts forth. Our faith begins at the very point where it seems it should end, in God’s seeming silence in the face of evil. God’s silence can be trusted, even when we die inside of it. We need to remain faithful in love, forgiveness, and conscience despite everything that suggests they are naive. They will bring us to what is deepest inside of life. Ultimately, God vindicates virtue, love, conscience, forgiveness, and fidelity. God vindicates Jesus and will vindicate us, too, if we remain faithful.

Scott Hahn, founder of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, writes that in the early Church, as today, Easter was the normal time for the baptism of adult converts. The sacrament was often called “illumination” or “enlightenment” because of the light that came with God’s saving grace. St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, speaks of the glory that leads to greater glories still: “May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,” he writes, as he looks to the divinization of the believers. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that God put us into this world with huge hearts, hearts as deep as the Grand Canyon. As St. Augustine describes it, the human heart is not fulfilled by anything less than infinity itself. There’s nothing small about the human heart. The early Church Fathers taught that each of us has two hearts, two souls: there is a small, petty heart, a pusilla anima, which is the heart within which we are chronically irritated and angry, the heart within which we feel the unfairness of life, the heart within which we sense others as a threat, the heart within which we feel envy and bitterness, and the heart within which greed, lust, and selfishness breakthrough. But the Church Fathers taught that inside of each of us there was also another heart, a magna anima, a huge, deep, big, generous, and noble heart. This is the heart we operate out of when we are at our best. This is the heart within which we feel empathy and compassion. This is the heart within which we are enflamed with noble ideals. Inside each of us, sadly often buried under suffocating wounds that keep if far from the surface, lies the heart of a saint, bursting to get out. St. Paul’s words today to the Ephesians speak to their “hope” in “his inheritance among the holy ones,” the saints who have been adopted into God’s family and now rule with him. It’s the good news we must spread today within the hugeness of our hearts, where we inchoately feel God’s presence in faith and hope and proclaim to others in charity, forgiveness, and through our lived life that God has infinite love for every one of us.

From Baptism onwards, every Christian is called by Christ to perform a mission. In the gospel reading from Luke, we see Jesus sending the disciples into every town and place where he is to come. He sends them on the Church’s apostolate, an apostolate that is one yet has different forms and methods, an apostolate that must all the time be adapting itself to the needs of the moment; he sends them on an apostolate where they are to show themselves his cooperators, doing their full share continually in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord their labor cannot be lost. St John Chrysostom comments that the Lord’s direction in sending the disciples outward “suffices to give us encouragement, to give us confidence and to ensure that we are not afraid of our assailants.” The apostles’ and disciples’ boldness stemmed from their firm conviction that they were on a God-given mission: they acted, as Peter, the apostle, confidently explained to the Sanhedrin, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, “for there is no other name under heaven … by which we must be saved.” St. John Henry Newman writes, “Everyone has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random. God sees every one of us. God creates every soul for a purpose. God needs every one of us. God has an end for each of us; we are all equal in God’s sight. As Christ has his work, we too have ours; as he rejoiced to do his work, we must rejoice in ours also.” It is far easier to stay in our comfortable world, within the confines of the known, the safe bastions of our churches. We conjure up all kinds of reasons for not heading the call, much like Moses and the prophets of old. We say to God, “Not me, for I am unable to do this,” instead of saying, “Take me, God, for you are with me always.”

In Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, he explains that we have been predestined to be adopted sons in the Son through the gift of the Holy Spirit.  Through receiving “the Spirit of adoption of sons,” a completely new life is bestowed upon the Christian, fundamentally changing his existence.  As a consequence of this filiation, the Christian is now able to address the Father as Abba, the same term of intimacy by which the Son addresses his Father.  Thus, through adoption, the Christian is drawn into the Son’s own relationship with the Father. The adoption of the Christian takes place through his incorporation into the Church through baptism. The Catechism states that “we can adore the Father because he has caused us to be reborn to his life, by adopting us as his children, in his only Son.” The Eucharist plays a pivotal role in this adoption process, as it is through the Eucharistic that humankind participates in the life of Christ and, therefore, in his life as Son. It is through the spiritual worship of the Eucharist that man enters into union with the Son.  He encounters the Logos, made flesh, who has already spoken to man through the Liturgy of the Word. This Logos draws man to himself, in his total sacrifice on the Cross, made present in the Eucharistic Prayer, and into his self-surrender to the Father, in the Holy Spirit.  Thus, in participating in the Eucharist Prayer, and especially in receiving Communion, man receives and enters into the very life of the Son in his filial relationship with the Father. The Son assumed our nature so that we might share in his nature; this is a sign of God’s unfathomable love for us.

Few expressions so succinctly summarize what is asked of us as Christians, as does the expression: “to live in the Spirit.” We are living in the spirit when, in our lives, there is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.” The Holy Spirit, as classically defined in theology, is “the love between the God and Christ, the Father and the Son.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that it is in meditating on this concept that we come to some understanding of what it means to live in the Spirit. Imagine a man and a woman who are deeply, passionately, and completely in love. What will characterize their relationship? Constant giving and receiving, resulting in an ever-deeper relationship and an ever-intensifying gratitude – which will leave them both, daily, feeling ever more mellow, joyful, peaceful, mild, patient, chaste, and wanting to reach out and share with others what is so quickening in their own lives. Moreover, their love for each other will create an ambiance, a climate, and an atmosphere of charity, joy, peace, patience, mildness, and chastity. The movement of giving and receiving in gratitude between them will create a warm heart where others will spontaneously come to seek warmth in a world that offers too little peace, patience, joy, and the like. Such a relationship can be a modest indicator of what happens in the Trinity, of how the Father and the Son generate the Spirit, and what results from this generation. 

(1) The Father constantly creates and gives life.
(2) The Son receives life from the Father and gives it back in gratitude.
(3) This then (as is true in all relationships wherein the gift is received lovingly) makes it possible for the Father to give even more to the Son.
(4) As this flow of life, this giving and receiving, goes on, gratitude intensifies, and an energy, a spirit, the Holy Spirit, is created.
(5) This Spirit, since it is generated by gratitude, naturally is a Spirit of charity, joy, peace, patience, goodness, long-suffering, mildness, faith, and chastity. It is then also true that a spirit is naturally incompatible with idolatry, adultery, violence, gossip, factionalism, jealousy, rage, and infidelity.

When we meditate on how the Holy Spirit is generated, we are under less illusion as to what it means to live in the Spirit.