You are beautiful

Probably the greatest anthropological error in advanced societies today is the reduction of the human person to her/his sexuality. In short, you are not your sexuality. That sexuality is an important dimension of human being is beyond doubt.

From a holistic Christian perspective, human sexuality is a gift from God, a blessing. Your sexuality is not just a blessing for you. When well-understood and lived properly, it is a blessing for others.

To use Pope Saint John Paul II's frame, in the proper context, sexual union is the way you can most fully give the gift of yourself to another. Through this, the blessing can extend beyond the couple. The expansion of the blessing beyond sexual partners is not creepy in the least. How is it not weird? Easy, by maintaining the vital link between sex and procreation.

Eros can be transformed into agape. In his still magnificent first encyclical, Deus caritas est, Pope Benedict XVI provided a wonderful meditation on eros and agape (see sections 3-8).

Chastity is not just the doctrine of "No." It's important to point out that for married couples, chastity does not mean sexual continence. One easily overlooked and progressive aspect of Humanae Vitae is Pope Saint Paul VI's positing of the "unitive significance" of sex in marriage (sec. 12).

What comes after "No"? In essence, the Church teaches that chastity is "the successful integration of sexuality within the person, ensuring the inner unity of one's bodily and spiritual being" (CCC 2337). This inner unity is vitally important. It's what it means to say the Christian approach to sexuality should be "holistic."

Not only are you not your sexuality, sexual acts aren't all there is to sex. To reduce sexuality to just having sex is a monstrous reduction, one that reduces your humanity and that of others. It is "monstrous" because we're all either witnesses to the effects of this reduction or have suffered ourselves and maybe even harmed others and not necessarily in grave and deliberate ways.

To be clearer, just think of watching pornography. For many people today, this activity is considered to be a fairly innocent activity. It's not and it never is. The prevalence of porn is nearly impossible to exaggerate. Talk about an abasement of our humanity!

Your sexuality is not the most important dimension of the mystery of your person. It isn't even the most interesting aspect of who you are. Insisting that human sexuality is a secondary dimension of the human person isn't to say that it doesn't matter. It is to say that it isn't all that matters or even the most important matter.

Let's be honest, sexuality is a place of great human vulnerability for most if not all people. Many, many people, women and men, are bear deep sexual wounds that bear out the truth our vulnerability.

Anyway, some thoughts for a Friday when I am not preaching. What is the the important aspect of your person? You are created in the image of God and that God loves you and there is nothing you can do about it. As Pope Leo XIV asserted in Magnifica Humanitas: "No sin, failure, humiliation or exclusion can diminish the profound value of a human life that God has willed and called into being" (sec. 52). Yes, that includes you, your life. It's a concrete reality, not an abstraction.

Anyway, Twila Paris singing "How Beautiful" is our Friday traditio. We haven't had one in awhile.

The vulnerability of parental love

For my morning prayer time this year, I have been using a book I found in a discard pile: An Ignatian Book of Days. Put together by Jim Manney, the book consists of curated meditations for each day of the year. This book has been a boon for my spiritual life.

As a husband and as a father, one who, along with my wife, has been going through our most challenging time in more than thirty years of parenting the past year-and-a-half (I will spare you the details and safeguard my child's privacy), I was particularly struck by the extended extract from another book, written by Carmelite nun Ruth Burrows: Essence of Prayer, that was today's meditation from An Ignatian Book of Days.

I am not sure that consoling is the best word to describe the effect of what Burrows wrote had on me. I would have to go with hopeful. As longtime readers know, I have a very specific take on hope.

Consider a blissfully happy couple finding all they need is one another. For no other reason than generosity and the desire to share their happiness, they decide to adopt children as their own. From then on their life undergoes a profound change. Now they are vulnerable, their happiness is wrapped in the welfare of the children; things can never be the same again.

If the children choose to alienate themselves and start on the path to ruin, the couple are stricken, They will plead, humble themselves, make huge sacrifices go out of themselves to get their loved ones to understand that the home is still their home, that the love they have been given is unchanging.

This perhaps gives us some insight into redemption. In a mystery we cannot fathom, God "empties," "loses" Himself in bringing back to Himself His estranged, lost children. And this is all the Father wants. This is the only remedy for His wound. God is no longer pure God, but always God-with-humanity-in-his-heart

On a theological note, the Incarnation practically forces you to dump your Aristotelianism and your Platonism. As Pascal learned, the God of the philosophers is not the saving God, the God of redemption and liberation, God as revealed in Jesus Christ.

It is, of course, through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit that, in baptism, we become children of God by adoption (the Father has only one begotten child, a Son).

As parents of six children, my wife and I have experienced our share of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, consolations and desolations. We haven't dealt anything of the magnitude of what we are currently enmeshed in. "Now they are vulnerable," indeed! Thank God fo that.

It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation,
always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy,
through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ, . . .

While I am not one of those who thinks spiritual truths need to validated empirically and scientifically (I am more one who is like, "Duh, of course mony of these things bear out empirically!"), here is an article that I found useful: "The Good Kind of Vulnerability."

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

John 3:16-18

According to the Church, it is possible for a person to come to the knowledge that there is a God on the basis of natural reason alone, that is, unaided by divine revelation. Hence, belief in God can be called a truth of reason, as opposed to a truth of faith. Of course, natural reason aided by divine revelation strengthens and fortifies this a belief.

To know that God is a Trinity of persons- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- revelation is required. And so, knowing God as a Trinity, one in being and distinct in person, is a truth of faith. To be clear, truths of faith are not contrary to reason. This is why Saint Anslem of Canterbury's definition of theology still perhaps remains the best: fides quaerens intellectum- faith seeking understanding.

What I like most about the Gospel reading for Year A of the lectionary for the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity is that it gives us the starting point for Christian theology. Christians do not start with the Most Holy Trinity. Rather, Christian theology begins with the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. We start with Jesus Christ, in whom God revealed everything he could reveal.

The Trinity icon, by Andre Rublev, 15th century

"God is love" (1 John 4:8.16). God is self-giving, self-sacrificing love. "God [the Father] so loved the world that he gave his only Son. . . " (John 3:16). And the Son so loved the Father that he loved us enough to give himself. The love between the Father and the Son is a person: the Holy Spirit.

It is through Christ and by the power of the Spirit that we are made children of the Father by rebirth through the waters of baptism. In baptism, you are plunged into the very life of God, into that perfect communion that is the Most Holy Trinity. Andre Rublev's amazing Trinity icon beautifully shows this.

From the vantage point of the person looking at this icon you see an open semi-circle- three person serenely seated at table. The open space at the table, the one the viewer already occupies, even if from a distance, is your place. You are invited to the table. You are invited into the very life of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

As we prepare for next week's Solemnity of the Body and Bloody of Christ (Corpus Christi), let's bear in mind that the Church, too, is a communion of person. We are the Body of Christ. As Christ's Body, our communion is to show forth in a visible and tangible way blessed communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

This is the last post of May!

Year 2 Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Peter 4:7-13; Psalm 96:10-13; Mark 11:11-26

There is a lot that can be gleaned from our readings this morning. But it’s necessary to focus on only one. At least according to Jesus, forgiving others “against whom you have a grievance” is necessary for your prayers to be answered.¹ Each day we pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” thus accepting the other thing Jesus teaches in today’s Gospel: that forgiving others is a condition for receiving the Father’s forgiveness.

Forgive as you are forgiven. Refuse to forgive and forfeit the forgiveness necessary for eternal life. It’s really that simple. As C.S. Lewis observed: “To be Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” He then observes: “This is hard.”²

As a Christian, it is also important to try living in such a way that you don’t make other people have to forgive you. It’s easy to become so focused on what you want that you fail to consider others in your quest to obtain it. Being thoughtful and considerate of others is particularly important. As we collectively abandon civility, these virtues are increasingly rare.

In our reading from 1 Peter, we heard the exhortation: “Be hospitable to one another without complaining.”³ Value every person’s gifts, especially those put at the service of all. As Saint Paul insisted in his Letter to the Philippians, “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves.”⁴ This is perhaps the best measure of spiritual and emotional maturity.

To be like Jesus, you must want, you must desire to be like Him. Desiring this means not receiving these teachings sentimentally. Rather, you must let yourself be provoked. In its most literal sense, a provocation is something for (pro) your calling (vocation). Don’t be content to remain a non-fruit-bearing fig tree and certainly don’t become a cursed one.

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1 Mark 11:25.^↩
2 C.S. Lewis. The Weight of Glory (Simon & Schuster, 1996), pgs. 135-136.^↩
3 1 Peter 4:9.^↩
4 Philippians 2:3.^↩
h

Pentecost

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104:1.24.29-31.34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7.12-13; John 20:19-23

In Greek, “pentecost” means fiftieth. Jews observe Pentecost, known to them more familiarly as Shavuot, fifty days after Passover. Shavuot commemorates God giving the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai.

It was to celebrate Shavuot that so many Jews from all over the known world were gathered in Jerusalem, as recounted in the first Christian Pentecost found in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. All four canonical Gospels, especially the synoptics (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke), are quite clear that Christ’s passion and crucifixion took place during Passover. This is why this first Pentecost precisely coincided with Shavuot.

This year, Shavuot and Pentecost very nearly coincided. Jews throughout the world observed Shavuot on Friday, 22 May. So, a mere two days’ difference. As Christians, we must never lose sight of the deeply Jewish origins of our religion. Without Judaism, Christianity makes no sense at all!

Christians also need to recognize that our first Pentecost was the undoing of the Tower of Babel, when all human languages were confounded, thus confining people to language groups. This led to the existence of ethnicities and nations. In short, it meant a divided humanity.

With their Spirit-given ability to speak unknown foreign languages and proclaim salvation through Jesus Christ to all present, the apostles were able to begin God's work uniting humanity. This unification is not under a national banner, not by means of heredity, not by virtue of language. But under Christ's kingship, thus making God's kingdom present in the world.

The Catholic Church is just that, catholic, global, transcending everything that tends to divide people. Uniting people in and through the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is the beginning of the Church. As we heard last Sunday, our mission is to proclaim the Gospel, make disciples, and baptize people. The Holy Spirit is the Lord, the Giver of life. Being the Church of Christ also means being the Church of the Holy Spirit.

In his Second Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul first posits his antithesis between the letter and the spirit of the Law. In the context of writing about his own ministry, the apostle insisted, “the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.”¹ An antithesis is not a contradiction. And so, antithesis refers to an inherent tension, not a negation.

In what way are spirit and letter antithetical? By “letter,” Saint Paul refers to the Law, the 613 rules (prescriptions and proscriptions) he would’ve been very familiar with as a former Pharisee. For Paul, the purpose of the Law is to reveal sin by our inability to obey perfectly. Hence, the Law cannot grant eternal life.

By “spirit,” the apostle refers to the Holy Spirit, who brings life through faith in Christ, enabling believers to live in accordance with God’s will and to experience spiritual transformation. To live by the Spirit, then, isn’t simply to do whatever you want. It is to have your will increasingly conformed to God’s will. So, what you want is what God wants.

Spiritual transformation results not only in doing God’s will (i.e., “keeping God’s commandments”). Loving God with your entire being and loving your neighbor as yourself needs to become what you want, even what you long to do. In other words, love because you are first loved. To be holy, to be like Christ, is to love perfectly.

As Christians, we are called to rise above what our natural response might be when faced with life’s challenges. It isn’t easy to forgive, to do good to those who have done you wrong, to love and pray for your enemies. By God’s grace, imparted by the Holy Spirit, Christians are to live supernaturally.

There is a close liturgical connection between Ascension, which is normally observed forty days after Easter, and Pentecost because there is a close theological connection between the Lord’s ascension and the Holy Spirit’s descent.

During Saint John’s Last Supper Discourse, the Lord tells those who believe in Him that they will do greater works than the ones He performed “because I am going to the Father.”² Later, in the same discourse, Jesus says that unless He goes, the Spirit “will not come to you.”³

It is the Holy Spirit who effects the sacraments, that is, confects the Eucharist, etc. As our Gospel indicates, the first gift the Risen Lord gives to His Church, as He breathes the Holy Spirit, is the forgiveness of sins. In the Creeds, we confess our belief in “the forgiveness of sins.”

It is the forgiveness of sins that allows us to live by the Spirit, not the letter of the Law. It is the Holy Spirit who guides us to an ever deeper understanding of what God has revealed in Christ. Hence, living by the spirit and not the letter is the work of God through the Holy Spirit.

In his Letter to the Galatians, Saint Paul insisted that “if you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” Life in the Spirit, he goes on to write, is manifest by “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”⁴ Let us strive to live in the Spirit and thus enjoy the glorious freedom of the children of God.

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1 2 Corinthians 3:6.^↩
2 John 14:12.^↩
3 John 16:7.^↩
4 See Galatians 5:18-25.^↩

Year 2 Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter

Readings: Acts 25:13b-21; Psalm 103:1-2.11-12.19-20; John 21:15-19

In today’s Gospel, the Risen Lord asks Peter, who betrayed Him three times, if he loves Him. He asks him this not once, not twice, but three times. The first two times the Lord asks Peter, He uses the appropriate form of the Greek verb agape. He switches gears the third time.

Agape is self-giving, self-sacrificing love. In 1 John 4, in the span of eight verses, we hear twice, “God is love.”¹Agape is the word used. Unlike most Western languages, such as English or even Latin, which feature a single word, “love” or, in Latin, amor, to cover a vast terrain of human experience, Greek has four love words: agape, eros, philia, and storge. Each word refers to a different kind of love. At least in Greek, the trivializing "Love is love" doesn't hold.

Eros, of course, refers to romantic love. Storge refers to familial love found among close family members, with a strong emphasis on loyalty- blood is thicker than water and all that (for Christians, water- referring to baptism- is thicker than blood). Much more than a lesson in Greek vocabulary, this understanding is vital for grasping what happens in this passage.

Philia is brotherly love, referring to deep and abiding friendship. Aristotle thought this was the highest form of love. Each of the three times Christ asks Peter if he loves Him, Peter replies with philos/philia. This includes the third time, when Peter, clearly growing frustrated, says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”²

But the third time the Lord asks Peter, “Do you love me,” He meets Peter where he’s at, so to speak. The Lord does this by using philia (philels, to be exact). What this shows is that, even now, after encountering the Risen Lord, Peter’s love for Him is not yet perfect. Will it be made perfect? If so, how? We receive the answer when the Lord tells Peter,

when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go³

The inspired author, in an editorial note, looking back across the distance of several decades, likely referring to Peter being crucified upside down in Rome, tells us that the Lord “said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God.”⁴ The author then writes the Lord’s final word of this exchange: “Follow me.”⁵

You and I are also perfected in love by taking up our cross and following Jesus.

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1 See 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
2 John 21:17.^↩
3 John 21:18.^↩
4 John 21:19.^↩
5 John 21:19.^↩

Ascension of the Lord

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47:23-.6-9; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20

Today we are celebrating Ascension Thursday. For those who do not know, Catholics throughout most of the world, including many Catholics in the United States, observed the Lord’s Ascension last Thursday. Ascension is celebrated on Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter because that is forty days after Easter Sunday.

Pentecost follows ten days later, fifty days after Easter. Like Easter, Pentecost, which is the Church’s second most important liturgical celebration, is always on Sunday. The word “Pentecost” means fiftieth. Maybe if we called Ascension Tessarakost, we would not be able to move it- tessarkost is “fortieth” in Greek.

Forty days is important because in Saint Luke’s account of the Lord’s Ascension found at the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, which should be considered as something like the fifth Gospel, a period of forty days is mentioned:

He presented himself alive to them by many proofs after he had suffered, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God¹

The Risen Lord speaking to His closest disciples about the kingdom of God during this forty-day period is often referred to as “the Gospel of the forty days.” So, moving this solemnity throws our liturgical math off a little.

According to the Church, divine revelation is communicated to us via two interrelated but distinct modes: scripture and tradition. The Gospel of the forty days is about what is handed on through the Church’s tradition.

Despite the Lord speaking to them about the kingdom of God, it’s clear from our first reading that His closest disciples still did not understand what He taught them. This is why they ask, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”²

Their failure to grasp what they were taught led the disciples to ask that question. Short answer: No! Longer answer: No, not even maybe. God’s kingdom, which, in and through Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is already present in the world, even if only in the form of a mustard seed, is not identifiable with any earthly kingdom, nation, or domain. This is fundamental Christian teaching!

Sadly, many Christians today are similarly confused. Speaking their confusion, the Lord refers them to Pentecost, when, just a few days hence, they “will be baptized with the holy Spirit.”³ It is then that they will begin to understand better.

This is why Blessed Pope Pius XII, in 1954, promulgated an entire encyclical letter on the Church’s supranationality. Being Catholic, as the word “Catholic” implies, means having an allegiance that transcends any ethnic or national identity.⁴ As the Church father, Justin Martyr insisted, because of our faith, Christians make the best citizens.⁵

Pentecost is the undoing of Babel and the beginning of the Church, which includes women and men of every race, tongue, people, and nation. Look around you, even here in our parish, you'll see the Church's catholicity.

Christ ascended so that He could send the Holy Spirit. By means of the Holy Spirit, the Lord can be closer to you than if He had remained bodily. The Holy Spirit is the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence among, in, and through us. It is the Holy Spirit who transforms the bread and wine into Christ’s body and blood.

It is the Holy Spirit who makes Christ present in and through all the sacraments. Along with the Eucharist, baptism anchors the sacramental economy of grace. It is holy baptism that allows you to receive Christ in Holy Communion.

Baptism impels us (or at least it should) to share the Gospel. In today's Gospel, the Lord gives His Church our mission. But that mission is not merely to baptize people. We are to make them disciples. Disciple-making, something with which the Church really struggles. It is a core ministry to engage in formation for transformation into Chritslikeness.

It’s been great to read so many news stories about record numbers of baptisms this Easter. This can easily become just a numbers game. In the end, numbers don’t matter. The Church’s retention rate for adults who join through OCIA isn’t very good. Much the same can be said for the young people who pass through sacramental preparation programs.

These are just some of the indications that we need to focus on making disciples, on becoming disciples, people who want to be like Christ. Part of becoming a disciple is to take up the Great Commission, given in today’s Gospel. It is the mission of the Church until the end of the age. Hence, being a disciple is to be a missionary disciple.

As the Lord’s disciples learned from the angel as they stood there looking up as Jesus ascended, being Christian isn’t about standing around staring at the sky and passively waiting for Christ’s return in a strikingly similar way to His ascending. Christian disciples, as Saint Paul insists, play to win.⁶ We don’t play merely not to lose.

Christ’s disciples are to make God’s kingdom a present reality and not view it as a dream deferred, as pie in the sky in the by and by. We need to level our gaze and bring good news to a world in such dire need of it. At the end of this Mass and every Mass, let us go in peace glorifying the Lord by our lives.

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1 Acts 1:3.^↩
2 Acts 1:6.^↩
3 Acts 1:5.^↩
4 Pope Pius XII. Encyclical Letter Ad Sinarum Gentem [On the Supranationality of the Church]. 7 October 1954.^↩
5 Justin Martyr. First Apology, Chapter 4.^↩
6 1 Corinthians 9:24.^↩