Today, the day after the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, we enter Ordinary Time truly and fully. Falling as they do on successive Sundays after Pentecost, which celebration formally brings the season of Easter to an end, the Solemnities of the Most Holy Trinity and the Body and Blood of Christ are a testament to the understandably great pull of Christ’s Resurrection. It is the magnetic attraction of Easter that makes us, as Saint Augustine observed, an Easter people with Alleulia! as our song.1
Oriented as it is to Sundays, Sundays are always, even during Lent, “little Easters,” Ordinary Time, too, is about the Paschal Mystery of Christ. Our readings today demonstrate that Jesus’ death and resurrection are not merely past events that we come together to remember, but a way of life. Because in baptism we died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life, post-baptismal life is, or is supposed to be, resurrected life.
In our Gospel reading we heard the magna carta of Christian life: the Beatitudes. Author Kurt Vonnegut, who was not a Christian, once observed:
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes (Matthew 5). But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course, that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon?2As the reformer Martin Luther correctly noted in his commentary on Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: “Christ is no Moses.”3 This simply of echo of what is written in the Gospel of Saint John: “because while the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”4 Instead of giving the Law, Christ gives grace. It was Christ and Christ alone who satisfied, the only one who could ever satisfy, the Law in both its letter and its spirit.
On this account, it is important to note that in the Beatitudes Jesus does not teach by saying “Thou shalt” and “Thou shall not.” Rather, he teaches in a positive, gracious way: “blessed” are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, the merciful, those with clean hearts, the peacemakers, those who are persecuted for seeking to live in this always countercultural way.
Living as a Christian is not easy because it almost always goes against our natural human tendencies. I remember bumper stickers that said “To err is human. To forgive is out of the question.” It is easier to hold a grudge than to let one go. As a Christian, which means, among other things, recognizing my own need for God’s mercy, I’ll take grace over karma every time.
It should not be lost on us that being materially rich often makes one puffed up, more assured that s/he has control of this thing called life. Making peace is harder than being indifferent or joining a melee, especially in this era of so-called “culture wars.” Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. While making peace is not a passive endeavor, it certainly isn’t the Orwellian slogan “war is peace.”5 There is an inescapable paradoxical aspect to Christian life.
This brings us to the issue of just how to live in this most unusual way. Saint Paul, in our reading from 2 Corinthians, far from teaching the highly popular and detestable heresy that being a Christian means not having to suffer, takes for granted that believers will suffer “affliction.” He is so bold as to state that Christ’s sufferings overflow to us. It is by means of this that God’s “encouragement” and support overflow to us through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
What Paul writes about here is something that must be experienced to be understood. But dying and rising is the mode of Christian life. This is the Paschal Mystery in which, by virtue of our baptism, Christ allows us to share. The Paschal Mystery is the mystery of human existence.
As many of us know experientially, God is never nearer to us than when we suffer, if we let him, even when our suffering is self-inflicted. Resurrected life is sustained by the sacraments, particularly the Sacraments of Penance and Eucharist.
Training prospective deacons in the art of preaching, I am quick to warn against the overuse of personal experience. But it would be a little odd if, preaching on the thirtieth anniversary of my marriage to Holly during a Mass offered for that intention, not to mention it. But marriage, as Pope Saint Paul II insisted, is an intense school of Christian life. To use his phrase, it is a “school of love.”
Moreover, along with the Sacrament of Holy Orders, Holy Matrimony, as Deacon Owen Cummings insists, is a diaconal sacrament, a sacrament of service.6 Stated more conventionally, with the Sacrament of Orders, Matrimony is a sacrament at the service of communion. Service to the Church has been part of Holly’s life and my life since before we were married. We met at Church. So, it seems fitting that the occasion of our pearl anniversary finds us at Church serving. This makes us sound way more perfect than we are. We are far from perfect. I can think of no better way to observe this occasion than to participate in Eucharist, in thanksgiving.
What Papa Wojtyla meant by identifying marriage and family life as a school of love, is that this manner of life, being a path to holiness, presents you daily with opportunities to grow in virtue, to practice the Beatitudes. Practicing the Beatitudes through life’s ups and downs is how you taste and see the Lord’s goodness now and is an act of hope for the future.
1 Saint Augustine. Exposition on Psalm 148.↩
2 Kurt Vonnegut. “Do Unto Others.” In A Man Without a Country. New York: Seven Stories. 98.↩
3 Martin Luther. Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, written in 1535..↩
4 John 1:16.↩
5 George Orwell. 1984.↩
6 Owen F. Cummings. "Images of the Diaconate," sec. 2.↩
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