The Gift of Silence

Silence is a gift of God, and like all God's gifts it is both a blessing and a curse.

What a great blessing it is, to be offered the chance to be silent.  It doesn't come often.  Our world is full of constant noise.  The pull of advertisements trying to get our attention, of pundits trying to shout each other down, of politicians vying for our votes, of pop music battering down our senses with its relentless beat.  The push of our own vanity to get our voice in, to make ourselves heard, to offer up our witticisms and our jokes, our advice and our opinions.  What a great blessing it is to be offered a chance to escape this push, this pull, and simply sit in silence, neither being addressed by noise nor being impelled to make it.

Yet it is also extremely difficult to sit in silence.  True silence is very difficult to achieve.  First one is assailed by thoughts of all the other, more productive, more efficient things one could be doing.  I could be doing housework, or paying bills, or checking e-mail, or running an errand. . . Then one is confronted by sheer boredom.  Silence is boring.  It sits on you like a weight.  It cries out to be alleviated, an itch that demands to be scratched.

Then, when you have convinced yourself (truthfully) that you would most likely not be using your time more efficiently (think of all the hours wasted "surfing the internet," anxiously checking Facebook or e-mail, clicking on nonsense and watching inane YouTube videos) - then, when you have finally pushed past your boredom and entered a state where you can hear yourself think clearly, calmly, meditatively - then the real difficulty begins.  Because then you are confronted, face to face, with yourself.  With who you are, honestly.  All your failings, your flaws.  Your sinfulness.  All the times you have been ashamed or guilty.  All the times you have not been who you know you ought to be, who you want to be.  You see yourself as you are - a fretful, anxious, tiny little creature, frittering away purposelessly, meaninglessly, without goal or direction, a blind bat crashing into walls, a frantic bird slamming into the bars of its cages because it does not know how to free itself.

But even then you have not mastered silence.  Because silence insists we move even past this - past our own thoughts that reveal to us the smallness of our lives.  Silence insists we stop that onslaught of thought, and listen.  Listen to the voice of God, which can only speak in the silence.  Hear as He shows us the grandeur of His majesty, His greatness.  See the beauty of His plan for all creation and know - yes, our smallness in this plan, but also the wonder that we have a place in this plan, a place He has destined for us, and us alone, for all time.  Feel the humbled awe of knowing that God has deigned to speak to you - to you, wretched creature that you are! - and that His words are words of love and assurance.  Give your sins to Him and He will wash them clean.  Give your weakness to Him and He will make them strengths.  Give your purposelessness to Him, and He will draw it into His purposes.  Give your smallness to Him and He will make it great.

Only in silence can we come to recognize our smallness and God's greatness, and only in doing so can we become great - and achieve the greatness God has destined us to achieve.

Giving to Charity - and Dancing with the Devil

At my son's school I help to coordinate the Lenten Rice Bowl Project that benefits the Catholic Relief Services.  Yesterday a friend of mine told me that some pro-life parishioners at our parish had sent her information objecting to CRS' efforts to collaborate with secular or non-Catholic organizations in impoverished nations because those organizations often promote abortion and contraception.  Some research into the matter revealed that the main objections seem to be coming from a group called the American Life League, who published a very odd article that opens with an implied dig at the leadership of Carolyn Woo as a "woman" and a "layperson."  In addition to the charges that CRS is not "pro-life," the article also condemns CRS for its employment of a married gay man.  The USCCB has tried to take a stand against such criticisms in support of CRS, but that will never stop some people from trying to be more Catholic than the bishops.

These internecine quarrels can't help but make me sad. We sound just like the Pharisees critiquing Christ for eating with the tax collectors.  Now people might object that Christ eating with tax collectors was simply meant to show that He transcended "cultural norms" and was able to see past irrelevant external actions to the "heart."  But really his action was more than that.  Christ wasn't just showing His transcendence of cultural norms.  Tax collectors were sinners, and Jesus never denied that they were sinners.  Jesus was not just transcending cultural norms; He was transcending human justice by offering fellowship and friendship to those who were engaged in very serious sin.

But some may argue that CRS has gone farther than simply offering fellowship or friendship; they've offered material cooperation with sin.  To me it seems there are two different issues at hand in this discussion.  First is the question, as some have argued, of whether or not CRS has directly promoted actions that violate Church teaching while at the same time trying to hide or obfuscate these violations.  If CRS is engaging in behavior contrary to Church teaching they should absolutely be called out on it.  And certainly I don't object to doing your due diligence when it comes to where you should donate your money.

On the other hand, there is evidence that CRS is trying to remain reflective and responsive about these issues.  Moreover, I think we should try to be sympathetic to the fact that they are a worldwide organization that serves many people who aren't Catholic and whose employees likely encounter moral dilemmas I couldn't possibly imagine.  And I do think it reflects an excessive hypercriticalness to believe that, before you donate to a charity, you must first scrutinize every minute aspect of its conduct.  If you feel that way, I doubt you'll ever find a charity - or even an individual person, for that matter - you'll feel entirely morally comfortable in assisting.

Consider a parallel but more personal case: let's say your younger sister is really struggling financially, and you've given her a loan to help her pay her rent.  A few months later, you find out she's had an abortion.  Now, perhaps the money you loaned her didn't go directly to her abortion, but you still feel that you materially supported it because the money you gave her freed up the money that did pay for it.  Let's say that, after her abortion, she shows up homeless at your doorstep.  She's not at all repentant for having had her abortion, but she's looking for a place to say for night.  Do you say no?  And if so - why?

I leave that question open for consideration, realizing that it's not quite the same as material cooperation between charitable organizations, although I do think it raises similar moral questions.  But the second issue in the CRS case, and the one I want to deal with here, regards how we decide when to cooperate with people or groups that don't embrace Church teaching on certain matters.  My gut feeling is to say: well, how else are we supposed to convert them except by our witness?  And how else are we supposed to witness to them unless we work alongside them and demonstrate our good will?

And even aside from the question of our witness to nonbelievers - are we supposed to not do the good that our faith mandates that we do because we are so afraid of somehow, somewhere coming into contact with the evil that our faith says we should avoid?  This idea seems, again, contrary to the Gospel.  Recall St. Peter, fearing to eat unclean foods (Acts 10:9-15), and God's declaration: Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.  This isn't about God suddenly deciding that the rules of the Old Testament no longer mattered or were just "cultural norms" and not a moral matter.  Eating impure foods had everything to do with morality - with one's worthiness to stand before God as a righteous person.  But God tells Peter not to be afraid of becoming impure through his contact with impure foods, because God's purity was stronger than the impurity of any food - or, for that matter, any person.

It was on the basis of this revelation regarding food that Peter felt morally justified in visiting Cornelius, the righteous Gentile.  It was perfectly possible for a Jewish Christian in Peter's situation to have decided that, because visiting a Gentile was anathema, he should not go to Cornelius even to spread the Gospel.  In this way he could have kept himself "pure," even while doing great harm to Cornelius by neglecting the opportunity to bring him to Christ.  In the same way, we can keep ourselves "pure" by refusing to give except to individuals or charities who fit some lengthy moral checklist.  But Christ seems to be saying: Don't neglect doing good out of fear that you'll be tainted by evil.  Rely on my purity to protect you, and be an instrument of my purity to others.  If a Catholic organization is, itself, actively promoting actions that violate Catholic moral teaching, that's one thing.  But if such an organization remains mindful of its own house, they needn't fear being "contaminated" simply because they cooperate with other groups on projects that do not violate the moral law.

How else are we to call people to repentance and conversion?  If we refuse to do good because we object to their evil, all the world will see is our refusal to do good and our self-righteous sanctimony.  But if we can find a way to object to their evil while at the same time doing the good we can agree on, we've opened a door.  We have found a bridge, and we can use that bridge to lead them to conversion.

We can't wait for people to recognize or repent of their sinfulness before we offer them our hand in friendship and fellowship.  That's not Christ's way.  There's no evidence that Jesus waited for people to repent before giving them His mercy.  Think of the adulteress whom the Pharisees brought before Jesus asking if she should be stoned.  There's no indication that she said she was sorry before Jesus said, "Neither do I condemn you."  Yes, He did say: "Go and sin no more."  But that injunction came after He offered her mercy and forgiveness.  Sometimes people will argue that we should only offer forgiveness when someone has repented.  But that's sort of like insisting that someone stand up and turn around when they're tied to a chair facing a wall.  You have to untie them first, before they can rise to face you.  And the way Christ unties us is through His mercy, His understanding, His love.

As a mother I sense the truth of this phenomenon.  I remember once my son spoke disrespectfully to me and I sent him to his room.  I told him to come out when he was ready to apologize.  He stayed in there for hours - first crying loudly and angrily, then sitting in silence.  Finally I went to knock on his door.  He was lying on his bed facing the wall.  I sat down next to him, put my hand on his arm, and said, "What you did was wrong.  But I still love you, you know."

That did it.  He turned around to face me, burst into tears, hugged me and said, "I'm sorry!"  It was my affirmation of my love for him that opened the door to his apology.

And that's what people need from the Church: an affirmation of God's love.  That comes before repentance is even a possibility.  God's action first, then the change of the human heart.  This change doesn't occur miraculously or overnight.  For an individual it might take a lifetime; for a group or a culture or a nation, it might take centuries.

If a Catholic person, or a Catholic organization, can show people the face of God's love, we must take a chance to do it.  We can't wait for someone to convert before we offer them our aid.  CRS can't wait for every secular organization in the world to follow Catholic moral teaching before it offers its cooperation in doing good.  Yes, it's a dangerous path.  It will require constant vigilance; we will have to be constantly mindful that we're not tempted by the world's wisdom.  But Christ tells us: do not be afraid.  Rely on His mercy, His righteousness, His purity to keep us safe.          

Morality, Mercy, and Breastfeeding

There's a saying that if you're conservative when you're twenty you have no heart, and if you're liberal when you're sixty you have no brain.  But even though I grew up in a conservative household and still in most ways consider myself to be one, I find that my own journey is taking the opposite route.  As I grow older my heart is speaking to me more loudly than my brain.

When I was young and naive, I assumed the world operated under certain, definable circumstances.  Children were raised in economically stable, two-parent households.  Families were mentally and physically healthy and intact.  When I was young, I didn't realize that such a state of affairs was a privilege.  I assumed, as all children do, that my reality was the norm, and within this reality certain moral rules were expected to be obeyed.  And, indeed, the privileged reality in which I lived made it possible for those rules to be obeyed.  

Then I grew up.  I met people whose mental and physical health was shattered, who had grown up in broken homes, who had faced severe material deprivation.  Seeing them in person, hearing their stories in person, meant more than simply reading about them in abstraction in the newspaper.  For my own part, I got married, became pregnant unexpectedly, and suffered severe postpartum depression in the aftermath.  I was lucky enough to have a supportive spouse and excellent medical care, but I knew that many women in my situation didn't have those blessings.  

I am older now and, though I am probably still very naive and definitely still very privileged, I recognize more and more that the places where personal sin - an individual's decision to violate those moral rules I thought were so inviolable when I was young - and structural injustices overlap are incredibly difficult to disentangle.  And it seems more and more unjust to me for the fortunate among us - those of us who exist above and outside of those structural injustices - to condemn the least fortunate for not having the moral heroism to do what for us is no heroism at all.

But just as I was coming to this realization, there emerged in the political sphere a cohort of conservative Catholics (a group of which I considered myself a member!) who, in the wake of statements by Pope Francis indicating a desire to think more deeply about the Church's moral positions on things like contraception and divorce, rose up with the objection that negotiating about, compromising on, or even discussing the Church's position on these matters amounted to a slap in the face - a betrayal of the loyal children of the Church who have tried to uphold these moral teachings.  I don't mean for a moment to cast doubt on the faithfulness of these people, or to imply that it's been easy for them to abide by the moral ideal the Church has held up for them.  Whether they're using NFP or choosing celibacy after a divorce or even refraining from receiving the Eucharist because they've remarried after divorce, these sons and daughters of the Church are laudably upholding the faith.

But then again, no one could doubt that the elder brother of the Prodigal Son was similarly hardworking, faithful, and loyal.  And he too felt betrayed by his father's empathy for his wayward brother.  People will object, no doubt: "Well, but the Prodigal Son repented.  He returned to his father's house."  True enough.  But I think we must honestly ask ourselves: are we doing enough to keep the path to repentance open?  Are we running out, like the father, to meet these returning sinners halfway?  Or have we shut the gates against them with a goodbye and good riddance?  How many have we driven into the arms of the devil by our own lack of mercy?

It's become painfully obvious to me that we conservative Catholics have a strong tendency towards pharisaism, so focused on upholding the letter of the law that we have forgotten its purpose and meaning.  But we must follow Christ and recognize that morality - living a moral life - is not about obeying a set of rules but about becoming a certain kind of people - people of virtue and charity, and, dare I say, of mercy and compassion.  

This is not to say that rules aren't important.  At their best, rules are an expression of the spirit, just as the Pharisaic rule not to pick grain on the Sabbath was an expression of the praiseworthy spirit of honoring God on His holy day.  But Christ recognized that rules, if followed too rigidly, too unquestioningly, and too legalistically, can become divorced from their spirit and can, paradoxically, contradict the spirit they were meant to embody.

This does not mean we should feel free to change the rules willy-nilly, at the whim of cultural shifts and popular opinion.  In our own time, it is important to recognize that abortion, for instance, is an evil and that acquiring one is a grave matter.  It is important to know that contraception is not part of God's plan for married sexuality and is therefore a serious affair.  It is important to understand that divorce is not God's intention for human marriage and should never be undertaken lightly.

But also not part of God's plan are abusive or adulterous spouses, anencephalic babies, postpartum depression, or even, for that matter, the Zika virus.  And we do need to reflect every now and then on whether the rules, as they are practiced and applied, still adequately reflect the spirit they were meant to embody.  To think that the Church's moral rules provide us with a script from which we can in no circumstance deviate without imperiling our immortal souls seems to me not only unjust, but a violation of human freedom and an insult to God's mercy.  Try to tell me that there is no moral difference between the woman seeking an abortion because her child is anencephalic and a woman seeking an abortion simply because a baby may interfere with her career.  The suggestion that the situations are equivalent is prima facie ludicrous, but conservative Catholic moral discourse seems to have no way to make a distinction. 

This is a serious problem.  If our moral thinking depends upon the world being the "best of all possible worlds" then we will have to face up to the consequence that we are consigning the vast majority of the human race to despair.  But we seem so afraid that if we loosen our grip even a little on the moral laws we hold so dear, moral anarchy will reign.  We can't imagine a situation in which it might be possible, for example, to acknowledge that contraception, though an evil, may be permissible in some extreme circumstances, without our minds leaping down the slippery slope to the idea that contraception would then be permissible always and everywhere.  But there is a world of moral difference between an impoverished woman with little access to health care using contraception to prevent pregnancy during a serious outbreak of disease and a middle-class Western woman using contraception because "now's not a good time."  Can we find a way to talk about this difference?  Because if we can't, we've only demonstrated the hardness of our own hearts.

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Though I've talked mostly about the Church's teachings on sexual ethics here, the real impetus for my writing down these thoughts came from an essay regarding breastfeeding, of all things.  A Catholic psychologist with a wide public audience has written an article praising the work of a moral developmental psychologist who has written that breastfeeding is essentially a moral imperative if you want your children to thrive.  After what must have been powerful backlash to his article, he updated his piece to add: "People are free to parent however they want.  They don't need my permission."  But the dismissiveness even of this comment belies his arrogance: he's already stated that it's God's will that you breastfeed, and if you don't your denying your child's birthright.

As I mentioned before, I suffered severe postpartum depression after the birth of my first child - so severe that I was hospitalized twice.  Also, in my early twenties I had breast surgery to reduce severe back pain - a medically necessary intervention to improve the quality of my life.  At the time I didn't know if I would ever be married or have children, let alone breastfeed them, but I did know that the surgery would very likely make it impossible to breastfeed without supplementation.  When I eventually did have children, my low milk supply combined with the depression made breastfeeding an insurmountable feat.  

Did I do everything I could to breastfeed?  No, I didn't.  I could have pumped, taken drugs, bought fancy devices that would provide supplementation while supporting breastfeeding.  I also didn't "preserve my children's inheritance" by keeping my breasts intact even though they were causing me extreme pain.  And though I tried to breastfeed my first (until I ended up in the hospital a week later), I didn't even really consider it with my second.  My priority was to keep my mental health stable enough so that I could care for my baby.

According to Dr. Popcak, I suppose I should feel devastated by the fact that I didn't go to morally heroic lengths to ensure that my children received breastmilk.  I know that breast is best for baby, medically and probably morally too.  But I wasn't willing to suffer physically disabling back pain or extreme psychological distress.  Does this make me selfish?  I don't know.  I only know that not having back pain means I can now pick up heavy objects (i.e., children) without distress, and not having PPD means I can actually take care of my kids because I'm not in the hospital.

I'm tempted to make a laundry list of the things I have sacrificed for my family's sake in order to "prove" that I'm not selfish, or at least that I've made up for the selfishness of choosing not to breastfeed.  But that's besides the point.  What is the point is that a life of virtue is not defined by a single choice made in a very hard circumstance, even if that choice is regrettable.  We can't do all the good that's out there to do, nor can we avoid all the evil that's out there in our fallen world.  We try to avoid doing the bad as much as we possibly can, and we're grateful that we have the Church's guidance on what is bad.  But if we're in an impossibly difficult situation, where it's hard to see how to pursue the good without doing bad, or where our only choices are between bad things - well, it seems to me that we have to do the best we can, and rely on the mercy of God and the righteousness of Christ to save us.

If this is true of breastfeeding it must also be true of other things as well, whether it's lying or stealing, or using contraception or even killing another person.  I can't make exceptions for myself in my own situation and refuse to extend that courtesy to others.  And if we, as followers and emulators of Christ, can't extend compassion to people in horrifying circumstances who are forced to make tremendously difficult moral decisions, simply because we're afraid of implying that we condone those who treat those same decisions with facile indifference - well, then, I fear that our own souls are the ones in peril.

The Freedom of Submission

Kierkegaard says that the most important thing one can do in life is simply to decide.  Yet he also speaks of bearing one's responsibilities and duties in a surrendered way.  This seems a paradox: on the one hand, our great freedom lies in choosing, but on the other, "surrendering to one's duties" sounds a lot like servitude.

But it's not really a paradox.  The great choice of which Kierkegaard speaks is precisely the choice to accept the concrete reality of our situation.  It is the choice to view the reality of our duties and responsibilities as things to which we must adapt ourselves, rather than to try to adapt these realities to conform to our wishes.  If we do not make this choice, and reaffirm it every day, we are destined to live a shallow, empty, meaningless life.

Of course, Western society and twenty-first century technology are built on the premise that we have the right and ought to have the ability to conform reality to our wishes.  To make reality "customizable."  We delude ourselves that this is freedom as we "choose" which aspects of reality to accept and which to reject.  We enshrine "choice" as an end in itself, and in doing so enslave ourselves to the choices that are presented to us - by the government, by the media, by corporations, by technology.

We do this because we are afraid.  We are afraid of duties and responsibilities; we are afraid of limitations; we are afraid of losing our limitless options and closing the door on any opportunities.  The flip side of this fear, this cowardice, is, as Kierkegaard says, pride: we are afraid of the reality in which God has placed us, and so we try, pridefully, to wrestle the right of deciding what is true and what is real from God.

St. Paul understood from the beginning that surrender is impossible to avoid.  The only choice we have is to whom we will surrender: God or man?  Modern society has tried to convince us that surrendering to God is slavery, but the only other option is to enslave ourselves to man.

The Christian knows that surrendering to God is not slavery, but freedom.  Surrendering to God means to surrender to what is true and real.  It means facing up to the otherness of God, of the world, of other people - it means acknowledging the truth that other things and other people have a reality of their own that commands our respect and our submission.  Only when we face this reality can we have true agency, true freedom.  When we are locked into our own little customizable self-contained worlds, we have no power to impact reality.  But when we face up to reality as it is, we find we can interact with it, have an impact on it, relate to it, engage with it.

I find myself thinking of this more and more when it comes to parenthood.  I have two children, both of whom were the result of unplanned (or ambivalently planned) pregnancies.  Now, I have a choice.  I can regret the loss of opportunities that necessarily occur when one has children - the loss of personal freedom, personal space, personal time - and I can try to force these things back into my life by neglecting my children, ignoring their demands on me, refusing to accept them as others who have a claim on me.  But this doesn't lead to freedom: it leads to a vicious cycle of resentment and guilt, and to a sense of powerlessness because no matter what I do I cannot make their otherness go away. 

The alternative is to choose to accept and submit to the reality of parenthood - and when I do that, suddenly a whole new world of possibility opens up to me!  I can confront the otherness of my children and experience the wonder of discovering who they are.  I am not consigned to living a life of regret; I can now look forward with hope.  I commit myself to doing my best in the situation in which I find myself.  I am free to cultivate my character by practicing self-sacrifice and love.  When I see my children in their otherness, when I respect that otherness, I find possibilities for true togetherness, in which it is neither my children's whims nor my own self-centered desires that define our lives.  We are no longer caught up in a battle between "them" and "me."  We are, rather, in this battle together, faced with the necessity of confronting difficulty together, of getting to know each other, of learning to respect each other, of creating a relationship.

I spent my first seven years of motherhood going back and forth between resenting my son for taking away from me the life that I had planned for myself, and feeling guilty for resenting him.  This internal struggle left me impotent and empty.  It took the birth of my daughter to make me see that I had a choice in the matter: I could choose to accept my reality, to find possibility within its confines, and to discover new opportunities to become a better person by recognizing the limits of my own desires as they confront the reality of my children's otherness.

And now I find, to my great surprise, a true joy in motherhood.  This is not to say that every day or every moment is a happy one.  Kierkegaard also says that a "great decision" is one that renews itself each day in the midst of the nitty-grittiness of daily life, and I find this to be true.  Each time my daughter cries or needs a diaper change, each time my son talks back to me or argues with me, each time I have to get up in the middle of the night to tend to a sick child, I have to decide again to accept the reality of motherhood.  This is reality.  Other people have claims on me.  I must go where I do not wish to go, do what I do not wish to do.  

How can I describe the joy that accompanies this submission?  It is not a joy that finds reward in any great "payoff."  I don't seek recompense in the form of recognition from my children (although it's nice when it happens!).  The joy is simply the joy of gratitude.  I am grateful for the difficult moments because I know they are inculcating in me the virtue of patience, of love, of gentleness, of respect.  I am grateful for the happy moments, the moments that are rays of consolation and blessing.  I discovered that when I accept my life as it is, I could be grateful for my life as it is.

Which brings me back to God.  Kierkegaard says that making a decision puts us in touch with eternity.  This is true: to make a decision, and to accept responsibility for its outcomes, puts us on an irrevocable path in which there is no room for regret (although there is plenty of room for remorse).  And making a decision to accept reality as it is touches the eternal in an even more profound way, because it is a decision to accept the will of God, Who created this reality and Who put me in it.  But it is also a decision to accept God's love, because God gives us our reality out of love for us - this reality is the only way we have to relate to Him, to discover Him, to grow in Him.  And when we open our hearts to that love, what other response can we have but grateful thanksgiving?

Fools like God

Feast of St. Justin Martyr

Today's readings both speak about people who act, in the world's eyes, foolishly.  First there is Tobit, who persistently insists on providing proper burial for his kinsmen despite the fact that, in Ninevah, this is a capital offense.  Then, there is God Himself, who repeatedly sends messengers to His people, hoping that they will accept at least one of them.  

Whenever I read this Gospel passage, I wonder: why doesn't God know any better?  I've heard it said that the definition of a fool is someone who does the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.  If so, God must be an idiot.  Repeatedly He sends us messengers, and repeatedly we reject them, persecute them, destroy them.

In the past He sent us prophets.  Now He sends us His only Son.  That Son dwells within us by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Yet repeatedly we kill the Son within us when we sin, when we are selfish, when we refuse to forgive those who have hurt us, when we we make idols of ourselves.  But God persists.

What makes God act like a fool?  Love.  He loves us, He loves us, He loves us.  We can beat Him, scourge Him, crucify Him, and yet He will continue to turn up at our door, smiling foolishly, a fool in love.  

When we defy the laws of the world in order to follow the laws of God's love, we may be considered foolish.  Tobit disobeyed the unjust laws of Ninevah in order to follow God's law because he loved God and loved his countrymen.  Today's feast is about a similar fool: Justin Martyr, who, like Tobit, committed a capital offense by refusing to sacrifice to the Roman Empire's gods.  

Today, it is, thankfully, not a capital offense to worship God.  But the world does continue to hold up false idols for us, and it also does continue to call us fools for refusing to bow down to them.  God continues to call us out of idolatry and into the true light of His love, but every time we place ourselves - our greed, our self-righteousness, our grudges and our desire for revenge - before God, we kill the Son God has sent to dwell in our hearts and we bow down before the false idol we have made of ourselves.

God, like a fool, will not give up on us.  We, like fools, must be willing to kill the idol of ourselves and follow God.  We have God's word that such foolishness will be rewarded.  We have the hope of Tobit to sustain us.  We have the witness of the Resurrection to empower us.  We have the example of Justin Martyr to guide us.  Let us, with St. Justin, proclaim our foolish yet certain hope of entering God's house when we live a life of love.

Monday of the Fourth Week of Easter: Infectious Holiness

Readings:

Acts 11: 1-18
Psalm 42: 2-3

John 10: 1-10

See also:

Revelation 13: 1-18

St. Basil the Great on the Holy Spirit

Reflection:

In the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles, the story unfolds in two parts.  First, Peter has a vision in which “unclean” foods are made “clean”; then, Peter goes into the house of a Gentile and the Holy Spirit falls upon his household.  What God says to Peter regarding the food could also be said of the Gentiles: “What God has called clean you are not to call profane.”  The story is not primarily about the fact that Christians no longer had to keep kosher; the story is about God’s cleansing of a people, of extending His promises beyond the Jews and to all nations.  This is how Christ fulfills the law but does not destroy it.  This is not a story of the renunciation of the promises God made to the Jews, but a story of the expansion of that promise to all peoples.

This is also a story about God’s all-encompassing holiness – one might even call it an infectious holiness.  In the Old Testament understanding, the holy had to be kept separated from the profane; if the profane came into contact with the holy, the holy person or object was corrupted and had to be purified.  But Christ inaugurated a new order: the profane, when it comes into contact with the holy, does not render the holy impure, but rather makes the profane holy.  Thus, Peter argues that the early Christians need not worry about breaking bread with the Gentiles; as sharers in Christ’s infectious holiness, they will not be corrupted by the Gentiles’ “impurity” but will rather be bearers of holiness to the Gentiles.

Because God alone has the power to make things holy, and because Christ is the sole mediator between God and man, it is only through Christ that we can be made holy.  He is the only “gate” by which we can pass from our life of captivity to sin and into the freedom of love.  Only by coming into contact with Christ’s “infectious holiness” can we become free and pure.  How do we attain this contact? By following Him where He goes: through death to resurrection.  We come into contact with Christ by participating in the Paschal Mystery.  In Christ’s passion, suffering and death have themselves been made holy because Christ endured them; Christ’s contact with suffering has made suffering a means of salvation, and if we suffer well with Christ, our suffering can make us holy too.

The sacrament of baptism efficaciously symbolizes this death and rebirth; thus, passing through the gate is a metaphor for baptism.  But suffering is hard; we do not want to do it.  Suffering requires us to renounce the things we love most in this world –our material possessions, the people we care about, our health, our sanity, our preconceived notions about God, our understandings of justice and goodness.  None of us want to sacrifice these things; that’s why it’s so tempting to follow false shepherds, who come climbing over the fence illegitimately promising freedom.  The book of Revelation testifies to these false shepherds, who come with displays of power and promises of wealth and security.  But they are promising something they do not have the power to provide. The only way to freedom is through Christ, and to attain that freedom we must detach ourselves from what we hold most dear in order to attach ourselves more firmly to Christ.

Such detachment is inevitable, whether we choose it or not.  Suffering has a way of finding us all.  Death will ultimately claim our loved ones.  Disasters and war can claim our material possessions.  Disease and old age can claim the health of our minds and bodies.  If there’s a lesson to be learned from the post-modern era, it’s that the more we run away from suffering and try to shield ourselves from it, the more suffering tracks us down and knocks us off our feet.  Christ teaches us that we defeat suffering not by running away from it, but by confronting it, transforming it with the holiness that He has shared with us, and turning it into a source of new life and resurrection. 

As Christians we believe that the Holy Spirit can give us the strength, courage, and grace to face this challenge.  And if we can face up to it, we can become bearers of holiness, of light and grace, to the whole world. 

Fourth Sunday of Easter: Seeking the Source of Goodness

Readings:

Acts 4:8-12

Psalm 118
1 John 3: 1-2

John 10: 11-18

Reflection:

Today Peter exhorts those who have seen the “good deeds” of the Apostles to recognize the source of the goodness: Christ Jesus, in whose name the healings have occurred.  It’s rather remarkable that Peter does not wish to take credit for the healings himself.  He does not set himself up as the amazing miracle-worker; rather, he humbly points to Christ.

It takes being “full of the Holy Spirit” to act with such humility – to recognize goodness, even our own, as coming from Christ.  When we behave badly, we always try to justify ourselves and blame someone else: “I didn’t mean to!” or “So-and-so made me!”  But when we behave well, we’re happy to take credit.  Similarly, when bad things happen to us we always want to know why: who’s to blame, what went wrong.  But when good comes our way, we accept it as if it is our due and often forget to seek its Source.

Recognizing goodness in the world as coming from God is a sign of wisdom: we are able to know the spiritual realities that lie within the things that happen to us and the things that we do.  We are able to see beyond the goods of this world to the true Source of Goodness: Christ Himself.  The world, as John’s letter tells us, does not have this wisdom, but we have it as children of God.  As his flock, we recognize the Source of Goodness, our true shepherd.

How lucky we are to have this wisdom!  Christ contrasts Himself as the Good Shepherd with the “hired man” who works for pay.  Worldly wisdom, which satisfies itself with goods and does not seek the Source of Goodness, tempts us to follow such treacherous shepherds – false shepherds and substitute shepherds, such as the desire for wealth, or acknowledgment, or admiration.  But Christ warns us that when we try to substitute these goods for the Source of Goodness, we will ultimately be betrayed.  In the time of crisis, those false shepherds will abandon us, and we will not know where to turn.  We must seek and cling to the Source of Goodness, the Good Shepherd, Christ Himself, if we are to be safe.

And what does the Good Shepherd teach us about goodness?  That in order to be good we have to be willing to sacrifice goods for the sake of others.  The Good Shepherd is good because He lays down His life – which is a good! – for His sheep.  This self-giving love is the source of all goodness in the world, and if we want to be good we have to participate in that love.  The choice is ours: we can spend our lives seeking goods, snatching them up greedily and hoarding them like misers – or we can spend our lives seeking the Source of Goodness, Who urges us to joyfully share our goods with others out of gratitude and love and the desire to draw all into His goodness.  One path leads to soul-withering selfishness; the other leads to a life-giving expansion of the soul.