Daily Virtue

In his great work, The Imitation of Christ, Thomas Kempis writes that many will always love Christ’s heavenly kingdom, but few will bear his cross. Many are awed by his miracles; few accept the shame of his cross. Decide then, like a good and faithful servant of Christ, to bear the cross of your Lord bravely. It was out of love that he was crucified for you. Drink freely from the Lord’s cup if you wish to be his friend. Leave your need for consolation to God. Let him do as he wills. On your part, be ready to bear sufferings and consider how in these sufferings lies your greatest consolation. Realize that to know Christ; you must lead a dying life. The more you die to yourself, the more you will live unto God. You will never enjoy heavenly things unless you’re ready to suffer hardship for Christ. Nothing is more acceptable to God, nothing more helpful for you on this earth. When there is a choice to be made, take the narrow way. That alone will make you more like Christ.

I have often told others, and most importantly told myself, that loving as the Lord taught us is the singularly hardest thing for a Christian to do. But that is because we fail to understand the humility one needs in life to understand, live, and give away love as Jesus did. Bishop Robert Barron notes humility is living out the deepest truth: God is God, and we are not. But Bishop Barron also readily notes that all of this sounds very clear when stated in the abstract, but man, is it hard to live out. In our fallen world, we forget so readily that we are creatures. We start to assume that we are gods, the center of the universe. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we demonstrate humility when we live in the face of the fact that we are both dependent and interdependent. We are not ipsum esse subsistens, self-sufficient Being, God, nor the center of the earth, nor intended to be that center. Humility is centering on the reality that we can do nothing without God and should seek to do everything for the glory of God. It is not about us; it’s about Him.

Bishop Robert Barron reminds us, “the more one draws on the divine life, the more one receives that life precisely because it is a gift.” Dr. Carolyn Y. Woo, reflecting on this passage, says, “Our capacity to forgive and give to others seems, in my experience, so limited. But God gives us the power to accept our sinfulness, to acknowledge this in others. His 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 God’s love and mercy into us.” This state of humility requires us to accept God’s gift of love and, in turn, learn to live our lives centered on that love. When you receive it as a gift, you must give it away, and then you will find more of it flooding back into your heart. The love of the Lord is meant to be given away to others.

An introductory scriptural statement often repeated by scholars of Jesus is that his mission was the fulfillment of Old Testament revelation. The symbolism of the Transfiguration has Moses representing the law, Elijah representing the prophets, and Jesus representing the fulfillment of what they said. Bishop Robert Barron explains that God gave the Torah, the law, to his people so that they might become a priestly people, a holy nation, a people set apart, in the hopes that they would then function as a sort of magnet to the rest of the world. But the law didn’t take. From the beginning, the people turned away from its dictates, becoming as bad as the nations around them. And then the prophets. Repeatedly we hear the call to be faithful to the Torah and follow the Lord’s ways. The prophets constantly turn on Israel, reminding her of her sinfulness. And then came Jesus, God, and man. Jesus did what no hero of Judaism had ever done. He fulfilled the law and remained utterly obedient to the demands of the Father, even to the point of laying down his life. He brought the Torah and the prophets thereby to fulfillment.

Jesus said this about enemies: love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. Fr. Ron Rolheiser asks, “How do we really love and forgive as Jesus did? How did he retain peace of mind, warmth in his heart, graciousness in his speech, joy in his life, resiliency in his efforts, the capacity to be grateful, and a sense of humor in the face of misunderstanding, jealousy, hatred, and death threats?” Fr. Rolheiser writes that Jesus did it by recognizing that this was, singularly, the most crucial challenge of his life and mission and, under the weight of that imperative, by falling on his knees to ask for the help of the One who can do in us what we can’t do for ourselves. Dorothy Day writes that when you love people, you see all the good in them, all the Christ in them. God sees Christ, His Son, in us. And so, we should see Christ in others and nothing else and love them. There can never be enough of it. And this is not easy. Everyone will try and kill that love in you, even the nearest and dearest of your friends. But the only Christian answer is to see Christ in others, even to the very end, to the laying down of your life. If there is an “acid test” in life for determining who is or isn’t living as a Christian, loving one’s enemy is that test.

The greatest miracles have to do with gratuity, with love, with unfreezing a soul, and with forgiveness. Our great poverty is that these go mostly unnoticed. Spirituality writer, Benoit Standaert, suggests that the greatest miracle is “that the freely given exists, that there is love that makes whole and that embraces what has been lost, that chooses what had been rejected, that forgives what has been found guilty beyond appeal, that unites what had seemingly been torn apart forever. Whenever we strive to bring a little more peace through justice here on earth and, in whatever form, change sadness into happiness, heal broken hearts, or assist the sick and the weak, we arrive directly at God, the God of the resurrection.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that forgiveness is the most astonishing miracle we will ever see or experience on this side of eternity. It, alone, makes for the possibility of heaven and happiness.

There are several places in the gospels where Jesus assures us that if we ask for something in his name, we are guaranteed to receive it. Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, a renowned scripture scholar, suggests that when we pray “through Christ,” we pray through the resurrected Christ in heaven and the “body of Christ” on earth, ourselves. We need to be involved in helping answer our own prayers. Karl Rahner writes that asking in Jesus’ name means entering into him, living by him, and being one with him in love and faith. If he is in us by faith, in love, in grace, in his Spirit, then our petition arises from the center of our being, which is himself, and if all our petition and desire is gathered up and fused in him and his Spirit, then the Father hears us. To pray in Jesus’ name is to have one’s prayer answered, to receive God and God’s blessing, and then, even amid tears, even in pain, even in poverty, even when it seems that one has still not been heard, the heart rests in God, and that while we are still here on pilgrimage, far from the Lord-is perfect joy.

In this psalm, the writer (David) confesses his sin to the Lord. He wrote this psalm in response to being confronted by the prophet, Nathan, for his sin with Bathsheba. David acknowledges that his sin is ultimately a sin against God. We need to confess sin and receive God’s forgiveness whenever we identify sin in our lives. Confession involves honesty. We are honest with ourselves and with God. We freely admit what we’ve done. We don’t excuse it or blame others for it. We don’t call it less than it is. We also don’t merely confess our sins in broad strokes, but we need to be specific about the sins we’ve committed, both those of commission and omission. Such confession of sin requires humility. We have to humble ourselves before the Lord. We have to recognize that God is God and we are not. We have to rest and rely on his mercy and grace for us in Christ. In Christ, we are forgiven, justified, and made righteous. In Christ, we know David’s cry has ultimately been fulfilled.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes about an elderly professor speaking on the need for prayer in our lives: “Prayer isn’t easy because we’re always tired, distracted, busy, bored, and caught up in so many things that it’s hard to find the time and energy to center ourselves on God for some moments. So, this is what I do: No matter what my day is like, no matter what’s on my mind, no matter what my distractions and temptations are, I am faithful to this: Once a day, I pray the Our Father as best I can from where I am at that moment. Inside everything that’s going on inside me and around me that day, I pray the Our Father, asking God to hear me from inside of all the distractions and temptations besetting me. It’s the best I can do. Maybe it’s a bare minimum, and I should do more and try to concentrate harder, but at least I do that. And sometimes, it’s all I can do, but I do it every day as best I can. It’s the prayer Jesus told us to pray.” St. John Paul II wrote that prayer is not simply one occupation among many but is at the center of our life in Christ. It turns our attention away from ourselves and directs it to the Lord. Prayer fills the mind with truth and gives hope to the heart. Let us earnestly seek to pray this prayer each day.

This responsorial psalm today expresses the musing of a faithful heart, the seat of consciousness in which thoughts are formed. Through words, the soul finds voice, and the self is presented to God. The prayer serves the purpose of a sacrifice, which is the psalmist’s intention that this prayer poem is their offering. In Psalm 19, we see that the Lord is perfect and refreshes the soul; He is trustworthy, right, clear, true, desirable, precious, pure, sweet, and enduring forever. The Lord’s word brings everlasting life. This reality is how millions upon millions have come to believe in and follow Jesus Christ. They look around for a philosophy of life, a god, a world without God, a world without the sovereignty of God, a world with an explanation that makes more sense of more things. And after bringing Jesus into their heart, mind, and soul, they respond as the Apostle Peter did and say, “Where shall we go? Lord, you have the words of eternal life.”