Author: DVO

Fr. Ron Rolheiser, in his piercingly awakening article, “When Sinners Rationalize,” speaks to how we rationalize sin due to our failure to be honest with ourselves and an inability to admit our weaknesses. He says that much within and around us invites us to rationalize, make excuses, and demand that standards be changed or re-integrated because we cannot live up to them. Less and less, even in prayer and confession, do we find searing honesty and contrition. This propensity to rationalize and not admit weakness and sin is the most deadly temptation facing each of us. Failure to admit weaknesses and acknowledge our sin as sin is infinitely more damaging than weakness and sin themselves. Failure in self-honesty is the start of the sin against the Holy Spirit. The only sin that can never be forgiven is the sin of lying to oneself until one becomes so warped that one believes one’s own lie. Falsehood becomes truth. The reason this sin cannot be forgiven is not that God does not want to forgive it but rather that the person no longer sees the need for forgiveness. Living in darkness is seen by them as living in light; sin is seen as grace; perversion is seen as virtue. The person living in this state feels a certain disdain for what is genuinely virtuous, innocent, and happy. They would not accept forgiveness were it offered. This sin always begins with rationalization, with the failure to admit sinning. Much within our world and ourselves feeds this temptation to rationalize, take ourselves off the hook, and make ourselves look good by denying our weakness and sin. The rest of us must live and die in searing contrition, sinners asking God and others to forgive us for a life of weakness. In such honesty lies redemption. Anything less honest produces the seeds and, if allowed to grow, leads one to believe that sin isn’t sin.

A comedian recently quipped that today’s information technologies have effectively rendered several things obsolete, most notably phone books and human courtesy. That’s also true for human rest. Fr. Rolheiser writes that “as we get wrapped up more and more in mobile phones, texting, email, Facebook, and the internet in general, we are beginning to live with the expectation that we must be attentive all the time to everything that’s happening in the world and within the lives of our families and friends.” The spoken and unspoken expectation is that we are always available, as are others. We are becoming more enslaved and more compulsive in using mobile phones and the internet. For many of us, it is now existentially impossible to take off a day, let alone several weeks off, and be on a genuine holiday or vacation. The rhythm of time, as God designed it, is meant to give us regular, weekly time off the wheel, some “Sabbath-time” when ordinary life, ordinary pressures, ordinary work, and ordinary expectations are bracketed, and we permit ourselves to stop, to shut things down, and to rest. This is the intention of “Sabbath rest.” For most people over sixty, we grew up when our churches and our culture still took the concept of the Sabbath (for Christians, especially the idea of not working on Sunday) more seriously. I still remember my great Dodger hero, Sandy Kofax, refusing to pitch a World Series game that was being held on the Sabbath. The critical question is: Can we step off the treadmill of phones and computers on Sundays and be genuinely available to celebrate the Sabbath? Author Wayne Muller wrote in his wonderful book, “Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives,” tells us that time off the wheel, the time when we take our hand from the plow and let God and the earth care of things, while we drink in, if only for a few moments, from the fountain of rest and delight that God intended for the Sabbath. It’s a great read if you, like me, too often fail to “rest” on the Sabbath, having trapped yourself in the need to respond to any and everything in this 24×7 world we live in. Take a breath, and take time to rest in the Lord.

Today, unless we speak of corporate or systematic evil, there is a general hesitancy to use the word sin. We rarely hear someone simply and humbly say, without reference to circumstances or excuse: “I’ve sinned.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that we are poorer for being unable to say that because our sense of sin relates to our love. To sin is to betray in love. To have lost a sense of personal sin is to have lost a sense of being personally and deeply loved. Lovers know that their immaturity, woundedness, and neuroses are part of their struggles. They also know that, ultimately, there is something called betrayal, sin. Admitting that we sin gives us the space to be honest and a place to receive forgiveness. When we refuse to acknowledge that we sin, we are forced to be dishonest because, in the end, no one can honestly stand before God and others and not have to say: “I am weak; I do things I shouldn’t. The good I want to do, I cannot. The evil I want to avoid, I end up doing. I need forgiveness.” Not to say this is to lie. Not admitting sin forces us to rationalize, give excuses, project blame, and over-emphasize psychological and sociological influences on our behavior. A lady who has been coming to me for the sacrament of reconciliation for some time always begins her confession with the beautiful phrase: “I am a loved sinner.” In that expression, she correctly balances the most essential truths of humanity: We are sinners, and we are loved despite it. To admit sin sets us free to receive love under the only condition it can be genuinely offered. Acknowledging that we are loved, despite sin, sets us free from false guilt and self-hatred.

In the Gospels, we see Jesus perform several healings. He heals lame people, deaf people, mute people, people with leprosy, and two women who, for different reasons, cannot become pregnant. What’s important to see in these various miracles is that, almost always, there’s more at issue than mere physical healing. Jesus is healing people in a deeper way. We see this most clearly at those times when Jesus heals people who are blind. He’s giving them more than just physical sight; he’s opening their eyes so they can see more deeply. But that’s only an image. How might it be unpackaged? How can the grace and teachings of Jesus help us see more deeply? Fr. Rolheiser offers these suggestions:

• By shifting our eyes from seeing through familiarity to seeing through wonder.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through paranoia and self-protection to seeing through metanoia and nurture.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through jealousy to seeing through admiration.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through bitterness to seeing through eyes purified and softened by grief.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through fantasy and auto-eroticism to seeing through appreciation and prayer.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through relevance to seeing through contemplation.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through anger to seeing through forgiveness.
• By shifting our eyes from seeing through longing and hunger to seeing through gratitude.

Longing and hunger distort our vision. Gratitude restores it. It enables insight. The most grateful person you know has the best eyesight of all the people you know.

Our verse today from Paul’s Letter to the Thessalonians reminds me of the principle in psychology that says I can only educe love out of others if I, myself, have first experienced it. The same is true for liturgy and spirituality. I can only help effect a personal relationship with God in someone else if I first have experienced this myself. While gathering in liturgy is central to all that is Catholic, Jesus must also touch each of us deeply and personally. We are, after all, a faith that embraces a both-and praxis. Fr. Rolheiser speaks to what renowned scripture scholar Fr. Raymond Brown said about those of us who are “High Church,” either by temperament or denomination: “It’s too easy to look at the devotional stream of having a relational nature to Christ as simply as ‘Jesus and I’ spirituality that is excessively privatized, as seeking the wrong kind of security, as spiritually immature, as theological and liturgical immature, and as missing the real center, worship in liturgy. According to the Apostle John, we are dangerously wrong in making such an assessment. In John’s gospel, ecclesiology and liturgy are subservient to the person of Jesus and a personal relationship to him. To teach this, John presents the image of ‘the beloved disciple,’ one who has a special intimacy with Jesus. For John, this intimacy outweighs everything else, including special service in the church. Thus, at the Last Supper, Peter, the head of the apostles, may not even talk directly to Jesus but must channel his questions through the one who has this special intimacy with Jesus. In John, everything is second to this particular relationship. If this is true, and it is, then we who are ‘high church’ have something to learn from our ‘low church’ and more devotionally-oriented siblings: Jesus is our personal savior!”

The words of Isaiah, which Christ read out on this occasion, describe what lies in His heart and should lie in each person’s heart – an awareness and love of the poor. We need to give to people experiencing poverty, not because they need it, though they do, but because we need to do that to be healthy. That’s an axiom grounded in scripture where, time and again, we are taught that giving to the poor is something we must do for our health. Fr. Rolheiser writes that this truth is expressed in many religions and cultures. For example, several indigenous North American people practiced something they called potlatch. This was a festival, sometimes attached to a birth or wedding celebration, at which a wealthy person gave away gifts to the community. Its primary purpose was to ensure a certain distribution of wealth but also to ensure that wealthy individuals stayed healthy by being solicitous in terms of not accumulating too much wealth. It was believed that too much excess left a person unhealthy. This has been a perennial belief in most cultures. In Christianity, we have enshrined this in the challenge to be charitable to the poor, and we have classically seen our giving to the poor as a virtue, rightly so. For the most part, we are generous and charitable people. We give away some of our surpluses, and despite warnings from professionals who work with street people that this isn’t helpful, our hearts are still moved by those begging on our streets. We continue to slip them money (even as we don’t believe their claim that they need money for food or bus fare). For the most part, our hearts are still in the right place. We need to give to the poor because they need it, admittedly, but we need to do it because we cannot be healthy unless we do this. And we need to see our giving not so much as charity but as obligation, justice, and something we owe. St. Vincent de Paul is reputed to have challenged his followers with words to this effect: It is more blessed to give than to receive- and it is also easier!

In today’s reading from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus asks, “What does it profit you if you gain the whole world but suffer the loss of your own soul?” Man’s goal does not consist of accumulating worldly goods; these are only a means to an end. Man’s last end, his ultimate goal, is God himself; he possesses God in advance, as it were, here on earth through grace and possesses him fully and forever in heaven. St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us that “the least good of grace is superior to the natural good of the entire universe.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser asks, “What does it mean to lose your soul in this world?” Philosophy speaks of the soul as immaterial and spiritual. This double principle is inside every living being: the principle of life and energy inside us and the principle of integration. Essentially, the soul is the fire inside us, giving us life and energy and the glue that holds us together. We can have our vitality and energy go dead or become unglued and fall apart; in either case, we lose our souls. We lose our souls in opposite ways; thus, the minding of the soul is a refined alchemy that has to know when to heat things up and cool things down. What’s healthy for my soul depends a lot upon what I’m struggling with: Am I losing my soul because I’m losing vitality, energy, hope, and graciousness in my life? Am I becoming a person who’s painful to be around? Or, conversely, am I full of life and energy but so full of it that I am falling apart, losing my sense of self? Does my soul need more fire, something to rekindle its energy? Does my soul have too much fire and need some cooling down and glue? After we die, we can go to heaven or hell. That’s one way of speaking about losing or saving our souls. But Christian theology also teaches that heaven and hell start here in this life. We can lose our souls by not having enough fire or losing them by not having enough glue.

We live in a time of pain and division. Hatred, anger, and bitterness are growing daily in the world and church. It is harder to live at peace with each other, to be calm, and to not alienate someone just by breathing the same air. There is so much wound and division around. Women’s issues, poverty and social justice, abortion, sexual morality, questions of leadership and authority, issues of war and peace, and styles of living and ministry are touching deep wounds and setting people bitterly against each other. That is on top of traditional tension creators: personality conflicts, jealousy, greed, and sin, which habitually divide. The above comments are taken from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s article on how we are “Closed to Love and Open to Hate.” This is never more evident in the issue of social justice. Daily, I witness the verbal anger and tension around immigrants at our borders within the walls of our work establishments, homes, and even churches. How do we avoid joining our voices to these divisive issues? The pathways offered are not ones in which love is practiced or compromise a part of either side’s argument. Since nothing else is possible, save for the bitterness this creates, which, if we are walking in the light and the love of the Lord must be rejected, the answer lies in maintaining a fidelity that accepts suffering. Fr. Rolheiser says to be “faithful today means to live in pain, tension, frustration, and seeming compromise, often hated by both sides. Our call today is to reconcile by feeling the pain of all sides and letting our pain and helplessness be a buffer that heals the blood that helps wash the wound. As a simple start, we can test how open-minded we are on these issues by seeing how much pain we are in. Not to be in pain is not to be open-minded. It is a time of pain for the church when we will all feel some hatred and when, above all, we must keep our peace of mind, our inner calm of spirit, and our outer charity. Most of all, it is time to resist bitterness and that hardness of spirit which dampens the Holy Spirit.”

Gratitude and thankfulness should be the bedrock of our daily lives. Fr. Rolheiser writes that to be a saint is to be motivated by gratitude, nothing more and nothing less. Scripture, everywhere and always, makes this point. For example, the sin of Adam and Eve was, first and foremost, a failure in receptivity and gratitude. God gives them life, each other, and the garden and asks them only to receive it properly, in gratitude, receive and give thanks. Only after doing this do we go on to “break and share.” Before all else, we first give thanks. To receive in gratitude and be properly grateful is the primary of all religious attitudes. Proper gratitude is the ultimate virtue. It defines sanctity. Saints, holy persons, are grateful people who see and receive everything as a gift. The converse is also true. Anyone who takes life and love for granted should never be confused with a saint. The failure to be appropriately grateful, to take as owed what’s offered as a gift, lies at the root of many of our deepest resentments towards others and their resentments towards us. Invariably, when we are angry at someone, especially at those closest to us, it is precisely because we are not being appreciated (that is, thanked) properly. Conversely, I suspect more than a few people harbor resentment towards us because we consciously or unconsciously think it is their job to take care of us. Like Adam and Eve, we take, as if it is ours by right, what can only be received gratefully as a gift. This goes against the very contours of love. It is the original sin.

Jesus is always telling us to wake up, stay awake, be vigilant, and be more alert to a deeper reality. What is meant by that, and how exactly are we “asleep?” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we all know how difficult it is for us to be in the present moment and not be asleep to the real riches in our lives. Daily life’s distractions and worries tend to consume us so much that we habitually take for granted what’s most precious to us: our health, the miracle of our senses, the love and friendships that surround us, and the gift of life itself. We go through our daily lives not only with a lack of reflectiveness and gratitude but with a habitual touch of resentment as well, a chronic, grey depression. We are very much asleep, both to God and to our own lives. How do we wake up? An awareness of our mortality does wake us up, as does a stroke, a heart attack, or cancer; but that heightened awareness is easier to sustain for a short season of our lives than it is for twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years. Nobody can sustain that kind of awareness all the time. None of us can live seventy or eighty years as if each day was our last day. Or can we? Spiritual wisdom offers a nuanced answer: We can and can’t! On the one hand, everyday life’s distractions, cares, and pressures will invariably have their way with us, and we will, in effect, fall asleep to what’s deeper and more important inside of life. None of us live each day of our lives as if it were their last day. Our heartaches, headaches, distractions, and busyness invariably lull us to sleep. That’s forgivable; it’s what it means to be human. So we should ensure that we have regular spiritual rituals and spiritual alarm clocks to jolt us back awake so that it doesn’t take a heart attack, a stroke, cancer, or death to wake us up. For this reason, we need to begin each day with prayer, as this is how we maintain alertness to God’s actions.