Author: DVO

“There’s so much evil in the world, and so many people are suffering from other people’s sins that there must be retribution, some justice. Don’t tell me that the people who are doing these things – from molesting children to ignoring all morality – are going to be in heaven when we get there! What would that say about God’s justice?” How would you answer this person’s question on God’s justice? Many of us today, conservatives and liberals alike, have a need to see punishment befall the wicked. It is not enough that eventually, the good should have its day that we should be rewarded. No, the bad must also be punished. Liberals and conservatives might disagree on what constitutes sin and wickedness, but they tend to agree that it must be punished. Fr. Rolheiser writes that this desire for justice is not always healthy and, in a way, speaks volumes about a certain frustration and bitterness within our own lives. All that worry that somebody might be getting away with something and all that anxiety that God might not be an exacting judge suggest that we, like the older brother of the prodigal son, might be doing a lot of things right but are missing something important inside of ourselves. We are dutiful and moral but bitter underneath and are unable to enter the circle of celebration and the dance. Everything about us is right, except for the lack of real warmth in our hearts. Alice Miller, the famous Swiss psychologist, suggests that the primary spiritual task of the second half of life is dealing with this. We need to grieve, she says, or the bitterness and anger that come from our wounds, disappointments, bad choices, and broken dreams will overwhelm us with the sense of life’s unfairness. Our problem is more that we have never really heard in our hearts the gentle words that the Father spoke to the older brother: “My child, you have always been with me, and all I have is yours, but we, you and I, need to be happy and dance because your younger brother was dead and has come back to life!” In the end, it’s all about our ability to see through the lens of the “other.”

Why is it so difficult to trust? Why do we struggle to honestly say the psalmist’s words, “In you, my God, I place my trust?” Fr. Rolheiser writes that we fail to understand the need to surrender. Emotionally, psychologically, and sexually the deepest imperative inside us is simply to surrender. The entire gospel can be summed up in that ultimate threshold we must cross to accept the reality that we need God because, in the end, we cannot take care of ourselves, make ourselves whole, and hide our weaknesses from each other. We need to surrender, trust, and let ourselves fall into stronger and safer hands than our own. But to do this, we need to trust, trust that it is safe to love, let go, reveal who we really are, show weakness, and not have to pretend that we are whole and self-reliant. How do we move towards trust? We need to be willing to open ourselves to vulnerability. Ruth Burrows, the British Carmelite, writes that surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But, for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew, and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.

Fr. Rolheiser wrote a beautiful piece, “Finding Rest for Our Souls,” that I have abridged for this post because it speaks to the core of the verse we are reflecting on. It speaks to finding rest among so much activity that captures our life. Yale philosopher, Nicholas Wolterstorff, wrote a book entitled, “Lament for a Son.” It’s a chronicle of his struggles to come to grips with the death of his 25-year-old son, Eric, who died in a mountain climbing accident. He keeps asking: “Why? Why was a young person with such potential so tragically struck down? How does one make sense of a life that ends before being given a chance to achieve anything? Is his death to be lamented more than the death of another twenty-five-year-old who spent his life in routine but, through that routine, loved those he knew, trusted God, and cherished the earth? What is it that we carry into God’s abiding kingdom? Is it only love and faith and trust? Or is it culture too?” Fr. Rolheiser writes that our notes written and unwritten will lie mute in boxes for virtually all of us. Does it matter that our life stories, with all their unique and precious insights, will not interest anyone, nor even be known after we die? Does it matter that, as Thoreau says, when we reach middle age, we are forced into the kind of realism that salvages a woodshed from the materials we once gathered in hopes of building a bridge to the moon or a palace or a temple? Socrates once said that we come into life possessed by a divine madness that pushes us to try to recover wholeness by embracing another, trying to perpetuate our seed, and trying to get others to remember our deeds. Plato and Aquinas agreed. The ache for immortality is part of our hard wiring, an instinct nearly synonymous with our drive for life itself. We are compulsively driven to leave something behind, which will tell future generations that we are significant. Only in a true saint, in someone whose faith in God is so strong that they know and trust that the only mark which truly remains is the hidden mark one makes in the body of Christ, is this ache transformed so that it no longer restlessly haunts our every action. Those of us who aren’t saints play out and act out the same familiar tapes and scripts. We compulsively plant trees, have children, and write books to make some immortality for ourselves. When Christ says: “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest,” the rest of what he speaks is not a rest that we can give ourselves through a good night’s sleep or a good vacation. It’s a much deeper rest for the soul, a rest from all the compulsive restlessness that emanates from our genetic propensity to achieve that special something that would forever leave a mark.

Author John Shea shared a story about the effect of a deep blessing. It’s the story of a woman he met while teaching in Ireland. During a summer school there, he had asked each person in his class to recount an incident of blessing from their own life. One woman, very timidly, shared the following: “I came from a large family and, each Sunday morning to ready them for church, my mother would line up all of us and then, one by one, wash each of our faces and comb our hair. We would wait patiently in line for our turn and then go out to play while the mother finished with the rest. One Sunday, I was second in line and anxious to finish my turn because it would mean nearly a half hour of playtime while the others were being washed and combed. Then, just before my turn, my mother noticed that our youngest sister, at the end of the line, was missing a shoelace and asked me to go into the bedroom and get one. But, not wanting to lose my place in the line and given that Mother did not ask me again, I decided not to get the shoelace. My mother said nothing to me as she combed my hair. When Mother was finished, I went out to play. However, after playing for about ten minutes, I felt very guilty and returned to the house to get the shoelace for my baby sister. When I entered the house, mother had just removed her own shoelace and was bent down, putting it into my baby sister’s shoe. Feeling doubly guilty, I went into my parents’ bedroom and got a shoelace, and as my mother was combing our baby sister’s hair, I bent down and put the shoelace into my mother’s shoe. While I was doing this, my mother said nothing but gently stroked my hair.” A day later, Shea, who had the habit of sitting under a particular tree every day during the afternoon break and smoking a cigar, had settled himself under that tree but had forgotten to bring a cigar. Out of nowhere, the woman appeared: “Where is your cigar today?” she asked shyly. “I forgot to bring one!” He answered. Immediately she produced a cigar, gave it to him, and without a word, disappeared. The next day Shea found her sitting by herself at the back of the room. He went to her and confronted her with these words: “THE CIGAR IS THE SHOELACE, ISN’T IT?”  “Yes,” she answered, “Ever since that day that my mother stroked my hair, through all these years and long after she has died, I have had this secret covenant with her; I go through life supplying what is missing!” Blessing begets blessing. When we are treated gently, gentleness grows in us. We all make an unconscious secret covenant with those who have blessed us, who have stroked our hair gently.

Jesus recognized the true outcasts, the ones beyond pity. Not only did he love them, but he made them part of his team. He didn’t look for perfection; he looked for comrades. He didn’t wait until they had changed their lives to eat with them; he sat down with them while they were still doing damage. As a tax collector, Matthew would have been held at arm’s length by his family and despised by his neighbors. His co-workers had a reputation for coming up with scams to line their own pockets, and Matthew might have done the same thing himself. So, it’s not hard to imagine him leading a lonely life or trying to use money to make up for the lack of friendship. But then Jesus arrives and offers his invitation, and Matthew follows. The next thing we hear, they are having a meal together with a host of other people like him! Perhaps this is the key: Matthew felt love and acceptance in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Jesus was compassionate. He saw who had been left out and rejected. He let them know that he wanted to be with them. It’s a simple but powerful message: “I want to know you. I’m happy to spend time with you. Let’s have dinner.” This idea of breaking bread together is an affirmation that can change lives. So, who’s coming to dinner with you tonight?

Saint Thomas, commenting on this verse, notes that the person with paralysis symbolizes a “sinner lying in sin, trapped by the sin, unable to move toward the healing power of God. The people choose to accompany the person with paralysis, giving them good advice and leading them to God’s healing grace and mercy.” Bishop Barron says this story affirms God’s forgiveness and healing power. “Even though we are sinners, even though we are hopeless in our hatred and stupidity, even though we had gone (and would still go today) to the limits of killing God’s son, God still loves us and forgives us. We know that nothing can separate us from God’s love because we hear in the greeting of the risen Jesus that every sin can be forgiven.” Have you ever felt weighed down or paralyzed by sin? Then you know that forgiveness is the permission and the power to rise and walk on. Pharisees were blind to the fact that Jesus and the Father were one. So, they missed the entire point of his statement. They missed the real healing, available right in front of them. We don’t have to. We can call on Jesus in our sins and weakness; his love will enable us to rise again.

Michelle Francl-Donnay writes about the challenge we see in the Lord’s voice and the similarity she has experienced in the heralding of glowering clouds, and ponderous stillness gives way to the rustling of leaves. A blink of lightning, a counted pause before the grumble of thunder—I relish those last moments before a thunderstorm breaks. Yet once the storm arrives, I often find myself unnerved, even frightened, by its strength. The howling wind tugs verses of the 29th Psalm from my memory; they swirl past with the leaves ripped from the trees—the Lord’s voice rending the oak tree and stripping the forest bare. Thunderbolts explode in my backyard. The Lord’s voice shakes the wilderness. Frankly, I prefer my thunderstorms at a bit of distance. I wonder if the Gadarenes felt the same way about Jesus. “They begged him to leave,” says Matthew. We are perplexed. Who would ask Jesus to keep his distance? But we did not feel the ground tremble, or taste the dust, as the herd thundered past into the sea. Or imagine what might happen to us if we encounter this man, Jesus, on the road. Have we lost our fear of the Lord? At a distance of two millennia, the stories safely tucked between the covers of the Bible, I suspect we sometimes find it hard to imagine being overwhelmed by the Word, which speaks with such power that water springs up in the desert, and demons flee. Yet those who let themselves be shaken, who allow their hearts to be rent open—who fear the Lord—these are the Lord’s cherished people, lacking nothing. “Desire this?” asks the psalmist. “Come, let me teach you the fear of the Lord.”  

Fear is a powerful emotion. We see that play out in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, where the disciples and Jesus encounter a violent storm as they sail. This made me recall our family adventure as I took the family out on a day sail when we lived in Okinawa. I had been sailing for several years and teaching Red Cross Sailing lessons, so I asked the kids if they wanted to go out and see the cargo ships that they said were “parked” on the water. About halfway to the cargo ships, I noticed a small storm on the horizon, and given the changing wind direction, I knew that we could not make it back into port before it hit us. I calmly explained to my wife and children that some rain was coming and we would probably get wet, but everything would be fine. As the storm approached, the wind picked up, and the water got a little rougher. When the rain and wind hit us, the wife and kids were in full “scared for our lives” mode. The squall lasted maybe a couple of minutes. As things settled, I asked if they wanted to continue our journey to see the cargo ships. I failed to notice that our boat was filled with mutinous family members who wished to keel haul me. Their rained-soaked mother’s reply was to stare at me in that “you’ve got to be kidding” look. Thankfully we had no more issues in getting back to the docks. As I talked about this years later with my oldest son and daughter and asked what created the fear they expressed, they responded by saying they were fearful of not knowing what the storm would do to us and how we would get help if the boat capsized. When I asked why they didn’t trust God was with us, my son quickly replied, “Was he mad at you?” I responded, “Why did you say that?” My quick-witted son replied, “Why else did that storm come out of nowhere and almost drown us?” As grown adults, we can now laugh at that adventure and realize, as the disciples did in hearing Jesus’s response to their fear, that we cannot let fear get a hold of our hearts and minds in times of stress. When we face real-life unknowns: cancer diagnosis, lost job, car accident, crazy sailing adventures – we need to hold fast to the promises of God’s word that he will be with us through every trial and tribulation.  

St. Thomas is famously referred to as “Doubting Thomas.” And his doubt was all about the resurrection of Jesus. Remember how he protests that he must stick his finger in the side of Jesus in order to believe he has risen from the dead? When Jesus finally appears to him, he tells Thomas in Luke’s Gospel, “Come here, and see for yourself that I am real and not a ghost.” Our verse from John’s Gospel highlights how Jesus realizes the challenge that lies ahead for many who will never be with him in his human form. But Fr. Rolheiser writes that the nature of believing in Christ has and will be a challenge for many – not simply because they can’t “put our hand into his side,” but because it requires faith. Skepticism and agnosticism, even atheism, are not a problem as long as one is honest, non-rationalizing, non-lying, ready to efface oneself before reality as it appears, and generous in giving his or her life away in service. If these conditions are met, God, the author, and source of all reality, will eventually become evident, even to those who need physical proof. The story of Thomas assures us that God is neither angered nor threatened by honest agnosticism. Faith is never certainty. Neither it is the sure feeling that God exists. Conversely, unbelief is not to be confused with the absence of the felt assurance that God exists. There are, for every one of us, dark nights of the soul, silences of God, cold lonely seasons, and bitter times when God’s appearances to us cannot be truly grasped or recognized. The history of faith, as witnessed by the life of Jesus and the lives of the saints, shows us that God often seems dead and, at those times, the reality of the empirical world can so overpower us that nothing seems real except what we can see and feel right now, namely our own pain. God does not ask us to have a faith that is certain but a service that is sure. We have the assurance that should we faithfully help carry others without first thinking of ourselves; we will one day find ourselves before the person of Christ who will gently say to us: “See for yourself that I am real, and not a ghost.”

In the gospel reading today, Jesus uses a powerful word, “hate,” to speak to his disciples about anything that causes you to cling to possessions as if you were clinging to your ego. He knows that once we have learned to hate even these most loveable things, we are to “take up our cross.” Christians often use the idea of taking up a cross as a metaphor to describe bearing life’s regular burdens: a long wait in traffic, a demanding boss, and a nasty cold. However, for the first-century Jews, the image of taking up a cross evoked horror and shame. Crucifixion was intended to punish rebels by inflicting as much physical pain as possible and maximizing humiliation, signaling other potential rebels not to revolt against Rome. Therefore, when Jesus says the true disciple must “take up his cross,” he is not merely calling for acceptance of life’s little inconveniences and hardships. He calls his disciples to give up everything, even their lives, if necessary, to follow him. The Christian life is based on self-denial grounded in humility and love. There is no Christianity without the cross. Those who seek happiness by pursuing their personal interests will never be fulfilled. Only by giving oneself to God and loving others do we experience the lasting fulfillment God wants us to have. To be mature in the faith means living out what faith and morality ask of us as a natural response to the gratitude of being loved by God unconditionally and a natural expression of sensitivity to others. Fr. Ron Rolheiser says that taking up our cross “should not be an attempt to somehow earn love or heaven, but rather an acknowledgment, a humble one, that one still needs a lot of help in knowing how to live in the face of love.”