Year Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezk 18:25-28; Ps 25:4-9; Phil 2:1-11; Matt 21:28-32

Currently, repentance is a word little used and little understood. To repent does not mean to be sorry for your sins. Contrition is our theological word for that. This is why in the Sacrament of Penance, before imparting absolution, the priest asks the penitent to make an act of contrition. This vocal prayer is meant to be an outward sign of the penitent’s inner sorrow for his sins.

Repentance means to change your behavior. In a Christian context, it means to have a change of mind, a conversion, which causes you to turn from sin and start acting rightly. Indeed, repentance is the fruit of genuine contrition. It is addressed in the formal Act of Contrition, when we say to God- “I firmly intend, with Your help, to do penance, to sin no more, and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.”

Note, too, that penance, while related, is also distinct from repentance. Penance consists of those good and pious acts we undertake to help reverse the effects of our bad and impious actions. As the doctrine of indulgences teaches, it is something like the Christian way of balancing karma. Hence, a truly Christian life is a repentant life, that is, a life filled with the good fruits grown and nurtured in the life of the Christian by the grace of God. The main source of this grace is the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist.

Far from a dismal gray existence, living in a repentant manner does not mean playing life so as not to lose, sitting on the sidelines, or endeavoring to stay out of “the world.” A repentant life is a vibrant, happy, joyful life. It is a life played to win; a life prepared to take risks for God’s kingdom. It is a life of gratitude lived in response to God’s love given us in Christ; a Spirit-filled life. Repentance is the theme of our readings today from Ezekiel and Matthew.

Our reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Philippians consists of what is often called the “Kenotic Hymn.” “Kenotic” is an English adjective of the Greek verb kenosis. Kenosis, in Greek, even in modern Greek, simply means “to empty,” as in Paul’s phrase translated as “he emptied himself.”¹

The passage that comprises our second reading consists of the first eleven verses of the second chapter of the apostle’s letter to the Church in ancient Philippi. New Testament scholars insist that verses seven through eleven were not originally composed by Paul. Rather, he used the words of an ancient Christian hymn sung in the Church and known to his correspondents to make his point about what it means for Christians to be Christ-like.

This hymn gets to the very nature of God and is vital for us to grasp: It is the very nature of the tri-personal God to be self-emptying for the Other. This is the only way to understand the revelation “God is love.”² It has been noted that the Incarnation of the Son of God is an event “so earth-shattering that it enacts something akin to the psychoanalytic concept of trauma” on the world.³ The Incarnation is the most profound instance of God-being-God. During the Creed, we bow as we profess our belief that “by the Holy Spirit [He] was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”

It is because “he was in the form of God” that Jesus “did not regard” his divinity “as something to be grasped,” or, more literally to be made use of in a debased manner, or even to steal. Getting to the point, the Son’s self-emptying was not despite his divinity but precisely because of it. Too often when dealing with this critical New Testament passage, it is understood and communicated in such a way that it is made to seem as if Christ’s self-emptying is somehow at odds with his divinity rather than the surest sign that he is “true God from true God.”

It has been noted that “Jesus’ disclosure shows that in his very nature God is self-effacing.” This observation stands in direct contrast to what is often taken for traditional Christian orthodoxy, which “has thought of [God] as the opposite; majestic, glorious and triumphal,” or even as angry, easily offended, and vengeful.⁴ Thinking of God as anything other than self-emptying/self-effacing is a remnant of the paganism that seems inherent to fallen humanity.

A kenotic, or self-emptying, life is a repentant life. It is repentant because it requires you, according to the apostle, not to look out first and foremost for yourself but to “humbly regard others as more important than yourselves.”⁵

Not only is a repentant life the only life worth living, in the end, it proves to be life itself. Elsewhere in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus clearly teaches- “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”⁶ This paradox is the beating heart of Christian faith.

In his song “Paper and Fire,” John Mellencamp captured this powerfully:

He wanted love with no involvement
So he chased the wind, that's all his silly life required
And the days of vanity went on forever
And he saw his days burn up like paper in fire⁷

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1 Philippians 2:7.^↩
2 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
3 John Milbank, Slavoj Žižek, Creston Davis, Paul’s New Moment: Continental Philosophy and the Future of Christian Theology, 7.^↩
4 Hugh Montefiore, “Jesus and the Revelation of God,” 111.^↩
5 Philippians 2:3-4.^↩
6 Matthew 16:25.^↩
7 John Mellencamp, “Paper and Fire.”^↩

From your heart

My hiatus was not planned. My life has been busy this summer, at times to the point of overwhelming. I have usually not had the time to write and, on those occasions when I've had time, I simply haven't felt like it.

I hope to get back to posting reflections on the Sunday readings and the Friday traditio as well as some occasional posts on matters of interest.

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What struck me about today's Gospel is how reluctant everyone is to discuss it in full. While to allegorize a parable of Jesus is to take a risk, I think the parable of the wicked servant is one that almost requires an allegory. As allegories go, this one seems pretty straightforward to me.

One can only call it something like the parable of the forgiving or merciful God if the parable is truncated. I think Paschal's distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of revelation still very apt. I can't grasp not only bracketing out parts of the Bible (this is not say context doesn't matter), or even of the New Testament, but those words handed on that are put in Jesus' mouth. God won't be domesticated and we shouldn't make God in an image more conducive to how it seems to us things ought to be.

The subject of the parable, the leading character, if you will, is clearly the servant who was forgiven a huge debt he could never repay and, when threatened by the king to whom he owed the debt, begged for mercy, received mercy, and then did not extend mercy to a fellow servant who owed him a much smaller amount. According to the allegory that comes to mind, the king is God. The servant who owes the great debt is the individual Christian. Here it is necessary to deviate from the allegory a little, but only a little.. According to a certain understanding of Christ's atonement, the debt we owe wasn't merely forgiven. It was paid in full by God's Son. I think such a take is not only congruent with but perhaps even implied by this passage.

Based on the above, any time a Christian refuses to forgive a brother or sister from the heart, s/he becomes the wicked servant. Something about being forgiven our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Or, to borrow words from our first reading: "Forgive your neighbor's injustice; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven" (Sirach 28:2).

Jesus use of "brother" reminds us that this pericope is still part of the Church Life Discourse, the fourth of five discourses found in the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Therefore, this has an ecclesiological overtone.

Forgiveness is hard. It's even hard when the offense is not egregious. At least in strictly human terms, when the sin is grievous, it may be impossible. But the Christian needs to forsake karma and both accept and offer grace. How else will God's kingdom be realized? If Christians do not live to make the Kingdom of God a present reality, then what is our mission? Doing so often makes us look foolish and naïve. It also makes us somewhat vulenrable. Isn't vulnerability what the Incarnation is all about?

Especially in this age of social media, I don't know how many times I've seen a tweet or a post that begins something like "I am a Christian, but..." Then the author goes on to describe some unforgivable trespass that they are not only not going to forgive but one for which they want vengeance and demand karma do its thing to the perpetrator. Based on our Gospel, it is more accurate to say "hellbent on avenging." Indeed, seeking vengeance is to bend toward hell and away from God's kingdom.

Forgiveness, especially for heinous offenses, is no easy thing. It is work and hard work at that. It's so hard that we probably can't do it without God's help. It's just this kind of endeavor that brings about conversion, change and even transformation into the likeness of Christ.

I think Saint Ignatius of Loyola's concept of indifference is very useful when it comes to forgiving others. "Indifference" in the Ignatian sense is not apathy, being uncaring or passive. In a short article on indifference according to Ignatian spirituality, Marina Berzens McCoy defines it beautifully: "the capacity to let go of what doesn’t help me to love God or love others—while staying engaged with what does."

Let's be clear, forgiveness really only pertains to those instances when you have really and truly been wronged. Let's be equally clear, refusing to do the work forgiveness requires doesn't help you love God or others. My willingness and desire to forgive, even if I may not yet be able to fully do so, is what requires my engagement because it helps me love God and others.

In his address "On Forgiveness" published in the book The Weight of Glory, C.S. Lewis summarizes what it means, in the words of Paul from our second reading, to "live for the Lord"- "To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you."

Year A Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95:1-2.6-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

A temptation that must be resisted when hearing a reading like our first reading from Ezekiel is to think that God is laying on you the same prophetic mantle he laid on Ezekiel. If you’ve ever read the Book of Ezekiel, you are grateful for that. Rest easy. God isn’t burdening you with all the sins of the Church.

It is also important to keep in mind that our uniquely Christian scriptures, which we collectively call “the New Testament,” are addressed exclusively to the Church, that is, to Christians both collectively and individually. Remember, that we fulfill our baptismal call to evangelize by bearing witness to Christ through our adherence to what scripture teaches, which is clarified and amplified by the Church’s magisterium throughout time.

Saint Paul, in our reading from his Letter to the Romans, provides instruction on how Christians living in the ancient capital of the Roman Empire were to comport themselves. In all ages, Christians are to live imitatio Christi- in the imitation of Christ. In this passage, the apostle does nothing more than resound the words of our Lord: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”¹ In his own teaching, the Lord himself simply cites the Law from Leviticus, which enjoins: “Take no revenge and cherish no grudge against your own people. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”²

It is notable in the verse from Leviticus that it implies one’s neighbor is limited to one’s fellow Israelite. While the Law demands that non-Israelites not be mistreated, it seems to draw a line between an “us” and a “them.” For a Christian, there is only us. There is no them. This is the point the apostle makes in our reading when he writes “love is the fulfillment of the law.”³ Being a disciple of Jesus requires you to be a neighbor to those you encounter, especially the one in need, not just to your fellow Christian.

Our Gospel for this Sunday is taken from that section of Matthew’s Gospel known as “The Discourse on Life in the Church.”⁴ This Gospel was written in and for an early Christian community that from its inception had been largely and, perhaps in the beginning, exclusively Jewish. But the Gospel was written at a time when this community was experiencing a crisis.

Primarily, the word “crisis” is a medical term. In this context, “crisis” refers to a “turning point for better or for worse in an acute disease or fever.”⁵ Even when used in a more general context, a crisis is a turning point. One thing is clear: after a crisis, you’re never the same. You are either better off or worse off.

What was the crisis the Matthean church was undergoing? It was experiencing a significant influx of Gentiles, that is, non-Jewish converts. But even before this crisis, because the Church, then as now, was composed of people, conflicts undoubtedly arose. Therefore, structures of reconciliation were necessary to deal with both deviations from the community’s standards and to deal with injuries that members inflicted upon each other.

It is an unhealthy community that seeks to avoid or paper over conflicts. As a priest of my acquaintance once asked, “What do you call marriage in which there are no arguments?” I had to reply that I didn’t know. He answered, “You call a marriage in which there are no arguments dead.” This is true, too, of the Church, the Bride of Christ.

These structures, of course, needed to be in conformity with Jesus’ teaching, which means they are done out of love and have increased charity as their objective. This brings us back to our verse from Leviticus- “take no revenge and cherish no grudge.” Seeking revenge is perhaps the most anti-Christian thing you can do.

Elsewhere in his Letter to the Romans, Paul teaches “Do not repay evil for evil… do not look for revenge…Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.”⁶ Let’s not overlook the Spiritual Work of Mercy that bids us to suffer wrongs patiently.

Revenge is a distortion of justice because it is merciless. Without mercy, justice is reduced to revenge. Another thing to be avoided is cherishing your grudges. Holding a grudge is what refusing to forgive looks like. It has been noted that holding a grudge (i.e., refusing to forgive) is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

As our Gospel indicates and the Church’s experience over the last few decades clearly shows, addressing critical issues directly isn’t just important, it is vitally necessary. Injustice and grievous harm cannot be ignored. But I think for most of us, many issues that arise within the context of the Church don’t rise to that level. Many can be resolved by broaching the issue straightforwardly and charitably with each other.

For several years I led a group for Catholics who were estranged from the Church and who were interested in coming back or, if they hadn’t stopped practicing, were interested in discussing their concerns. After a while, what struck me was how resolvable many of the issues we discussed were. Occasionally, our bishop at the time, John Wester, would come to our meeting.

I remember one woman sharing with the bishop some unpleasant experiences she’d had with a disagreeable priest. The woman did not accuse this priest of anything more than not being very nice to her. After speaking for a while, she asked the bishop what he thought about the experiences she had described. He said something like, “I think you’re giving that priest way too much power over your life. I am sorry that happened to you, but don’t let it keep you away.”

Not every issue needs to be addressed. Some wrongs are best born patiently, as anyone in ministry can tell you. Of those issues that need to be addressed, many are best addressed person-to-person, cara-a-cara, brother-to-brother, sister-to-sister, sister-to-brother. Serious issues should be brought to the attention of leaders, who, as leaders, are required to follow through. Otherwise, it is a failure of leadership, a phenomenon with which we’re sadly all too familiar.

During this year of Eucharistic Revival, there is a lot of talk about Christ’s “Real Presence” in the Eucharist. Of course, the Church teaches that Christ is really present in the Eucharist, which refers to the whole of Mass. According to the Church, Christ is present in four ways. The first way he is really present, taking a cue from today’s Gospel, is in the gathering of the baptized - “where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”⁷

I think Christ’s Eucharistic presence in the gathering of the baptized assumes and is even somewhat dependent on whether we are reconciled to one another and whether or not we are a reconciling community. Nothing is more fundamental to the Christian faith than forgiveness and reconciliation. This is why, earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches:

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar, and there recall that your brother has anything against you, leave your gift there at the altar, go first and be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift⁸

This is one of those things we should search our consciences for during the Penitential Rite at the beginning of Mass.

It should not be lost on us that God loves everyone, even sinners! Thanks be to God! At its very outset, the teaching we hear in our Gospel today is given to deal with conflicts in a manner that facilitates not just forgiveness but reconciliation and conversion. This evangelizes because it can cause non-Christians to marvel at the Church, saying, in the words of Tertullian, “look how they love one another.”⁹

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1 Matthew 22:39; Romans 13:9.^↩
2 Leviticus 19:18.^↩
3 Romans 13:10.^↩
4 Byrne, Brendan, SJ. “Matthew” in The Paulist Biblical Commentary. 944..^↩
5 Merriam-Webster Dictionary online "crisis".^↩
6 See Romans 12:17-20.^↩
7 Matthew 18:20.^↩
8 Matthew 5:23-24.^↩
9 Tertullian. Apologeticus, chap. 39.^↩

Memorial Saint Augustine, Bishop & Doctor of the Church

Readings: 1 John 4:7-16; Ps 119:9-14; Matthew 23:8-12

It would be difficult to exaggerate Saint Augustine’s influence on Christian theology, especially theology in the Western/Latin/Church. Augustine, who lived in the fourth and fifth centuries. He was a native of North Africa, which at that time was ruled by Rome. Without a doubt, he is the greatest of the Latin Church Fathers.

Augustine’s mother was Saint Monica, whose memorial the Church observes the day before that of her son. Next to the Blessed Mother, Monica is probably the best model of Christian motherhood in the history of the Church. A devoted Christian who was married to a non-Christian, she sought to bring Augustine up as a Christian. Instead, as a young man, Augustine fell in with the Manicheans.

Manicheism was a gnostic sect. One feature of Gnosticism is its pitting of spirit over and against matter. According to this view, spirit is good, and matter is bad. Beyond this, Augustine was also greatly influenced by the philosophy of Plato, which also tends toward body/spirit dualism. It was not until, as a grown man, Augustine, a professor of rhetoric, went to Milan that he converted. Monica accompanied him there. Saint Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, was influential in Augustine becoming a Christian.

After returning home to North Africa, during which trip his mother died, Augustine was named the Bishop of Hippo-Regius, an ancient city, the ruins of which are in the modern country of Algeria.

Without a doubt, Augustine’s best-known work is his Confessions. Even today, it is considered a masterwork, not just of Christian or religious literature, but of world literature. It remains a highly influential and, hence, much-read and commented-upon text. Next to his Confessions, he is best known for his work The City of God.

While Saint Augustine's work remains magisterial in many ways, he was never able to entirely shake off the Manichean-Platonic dualism. I suggest, a bit controversially, that this can be seen, at least to some degree in the two-kingdom polity he set forth in The City of God, which, until the latter third of the last century, was highly influential in political theology for both Catholics and Protestants, even if, starting with Martin Luther, it has been applied with much more rigor in the latter.

Augustine’s personal experience of God is well-expressed in our first reading from 1 John, which reveals to us something quite astounding and beautiful: “God is love.” His response to God’s loving initiative toward him is love. We speak a lot about the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. But you can’t really have faith without having love and love is what gives us hope. These three, like the persons of the Blessed Trinity, while distinguishable, are inextricably bound together.

In his Confessions, all of which are addressed to God, Augustine asked “What does love look like?” He answers- “It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”

That also strikes me as a good way to summarize today’s Gospel.

Year A Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: 1 Kgs 19:9a.11-13a; Ps 85:9-14; Rom 9:1-5; Matt 14:22-33

Judging from our first reading and our Gospel, wind is a central feature of our readings for this Sunday. At the beginning of the first creation story in Genesis chapter one, life begins to emerge after a “mighty wind” sweeps “over the waters.”¹ In Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that, like the wind, the Spirit blows wherever he will.²

In our reading from 1 Kings, how Elijah the prophet came to be on Mount Horeb is because that is where he fled when Jezebel, wife of Ahab, the king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, sought to kill him. Once there, after finding safety and solitude in a cave, the LORD inquired of his prophet “Why are you here?”³

Elijah, being honest in prayer, tells the LORD that he is there as a result of his obedience. The people of the Northern Kingdom, during this particularly wicked time in their history, Elijah tells God, have forsaken their covenant with God, destroyed God’s altar, and set about killing the prophets. In fact, Elijah is the only one left alive. In short, Elijah says to the LORD “I am here because of you.” He’s not wrong.

How does the LORD respond? By telling Elijah to get out of his cave and onto the mountain where God will pass by, revealing himself. As he emerges, Elijah experiences a violent wind so strong that it breaks rocks, then there is an earthquake, and after the earthquake, a fire. But the prophet did not see or experience God in any of these powerful forces of nature. Nature, after all, is not divine- something many people today, as in Elijah’s day, could well be reminded of.

Finally, Elijah heard “a tiny whispering sound,” or “a light, silent sound,” or, as it is translated in older English versions, “a still, small voice.”⁴ Through prayer, fasting and faithful prophetic ministry, the prophet was spiritually attuned enough to recognize this “tiny whispering sound” as God passing by. If you follow our passage to the end, Elijah’s response, appropriately enough, was awe.

As for the rest of the story, God did not let Elijah stay on the mountain. Instead, he sent him on a mission with the words “Go back!”⁵

Like Elijah, to hear God’s voice, to discern God’s call, to live in obedience to the living God requires communication, communion with God. My dear friends, there is no substitute for personal prayer. Unlike the general term “prayer,” “personal” prayer is not an umbrella term for a variety of spiritual practices.

Personal prayer, while it may arise from and/or lead to meditation and contemplation, cannot be confused with those practices, as valuable and even as indispensable as both are. For a Christian, personal prayer is a conversation with God. Conversations consist of an exchange: speaking and listening; asking and answering.

At the end of each of the exercises that together comprise The Spiritual Exercises, Saint Ignatius of Loyola set forth a colloquy. Colloquy is just another word for conversation. For the colloquy found at the end of the first exercise of the first week of the Exercises, Ignatius bids the exercitant to imagine Jesus on the cross and “begin to speak with him, asking how it is that though He is the Creator, he has stooped to become man, and to pass from eternal life to death here in time, that thus he might die for our sins.”⁶

After providing some questions for the exercitant to ask herself, Ignatius then directs that this conversation “be made by speaking exactly as one friend speaks to another.”⁷ Rather like Elijah speaks to the LORD in our first reading.

To really listen to the Holy Spirit, you first need to hear the Spirit. Especially in our present cultural moment, the noise can easily drown out the signal. The only way to learn how to hear and then heed the Holy Spirit is through personal prayer, which requires eliminating as much noise as possible. That said, it needs to be noted that listening and speaking to God in prayer, while rooted in fixed times of prayers, cannot be limited to just those times. Our communion with God needs to be constant, not just daily but hourly, at times even minute-by-minute.

Perhaps the biggest take-away from our readings this week is that the Lord is in the storm with you. He is not over and above it or even through it. He is there in it with you and for you! While true, the main lesson is not when you’re sinking Jesus will save you. Hence, the corollary to the big take-away is that you shouldn’t wait until you’re sinking to call on Jesus. This means not deceiving yourself into believing that you can do it without him.

During the Last Supper Discourse in Saint John’s Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples “without me you can do nothing.”⁸ In our Gospel for today, the Lord admonishes Peter for his lack of faith. Jesus doesn’t rebuke him for not believing in himself enough. Peter is admonished for his lack of faith in God, for not trusting enough in Jesus Christ.

I’ve heard it said and maybe you have too that God doesn’t care what happens to you as much as he cares about how you respond to it. Well, I think that God cares immensely about what happens to you and how you deal with it. God wants you to encounter him, not through life’s storms, but right smack in the middle of them. This where God is really God. Jesus’ moment of exaltation was when he was lifted up on the cross. It is from the cross that the glory of the Lord shines forth.

As the words to a wonderful contemporary worship song goes:

To see you high and lifted up/
Shining in the light of your glory/
Pour out your power and love as we sing Holy, Holy, Holy⁹

For some people, sadly, either for a lengthy season or for its duration, life is a storm. For most of us, life can be seen as a series of storms separated by periods of calm. Especially during extended periods of calm, we tend to imagine we have more control than we do. Like Peter, a storm quickly exposes our delusions of control. At those times, it makes all the difference in time and eternity whether you place your trust in Christ or exclusively in yourself.

Maybe because of the wind and the waves or the dust, it’s easy to miss Jesus in the storm. But there he is, hand outstretched, waiting for us to call to him, to look at him. Why does he wait? This is where we can benefit from a deep insight from Msgr Luigi Giussani:

Jesus Christ did not come into the world as a substitute for human freedom or to eliminate human trial. He came into the world to call man back to the depths of all questions, to his own fundamental structure, to his own real situation. He came to call man back to true religiosity, without which every claim to a solution of the human problems is a lie¹⁰

Too often we are content with the lie, with the shortcut, the quick fix that will get us out of a fix. Our “real situation” is that we exist for a reason. This reason is stated clearly at the be-ginning of the First Principle and Foundation of The Spiritual Exercises: “Man,” meaning all human beings, “is created to praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and by this means to save his soul.”¹¹

As each of you know, everyone experiences life’s storms, usually sooner rather than later. And salvation happens in the midst of the storm. The Christian attitude is captured well by Saint Paul, who knew a thing or two about weathering life’s storms. In his letter to the Church in ancient Philippi, the apostle wrote: “I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.”¹² Experience is the difference between this being a call back to your own fundamental structure, an empty slogan, or merely a pious platitude.

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1 Genesis 1:2.^↩
2 John 3:8.^↩
3 1 Kings 19:9.^↩
4 1 Kings 19:12- See King James Version.^↩
5 1 Kings 19:15.^↩
6 Saint Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual Exercises, sec. 53.^↩
7 The Spiritual Exercises, sec. 54.^↩
8 John 15:5.^↩
9 Michael W. Smith. "Open the Eyes of My Heart."^↩
10 Luigi Giussani. At the Origin of the Christian Claim, 97.^↩
11 The Spiritual Exercises, sec. 23.^↩
12 Philippians 4:13.^↩

Memorial of Saint John Vianney

Readings: Ezk 3:17-21; Ps 117:1abc-2; Matt 9:35-10:1

Saint John Vianney, known popularly as the Curé d’Ars, lived his life as a parish priest. He did so in such an exemplary way that the Church designated him the patron saint of parish priests. Most priests live their lives, and give their lives, by service to the People of God as pastors of parishes. This pastoral work, which is vitally important, doesn’t bring with it a lot of recognition. Many retired priests of my acquaintance, in fact, are a bit dismayed at how quickly they are forgotten.

Apart from the celebration of the sacraments, most parish pastoral ministry happens with people who need it, with those who are temporarily, chronically, or terminally ill, or with those who are troubled in some way, maybe depressed, struggling with substance abuse, or who just can’t seem to catch a break in life or with those who are having relational difficulties, or people struggling with their faith.

What all these situations call for is presence, availability, and accompaniment. To do these things requires tremendous trust in God, a deep prayer life, and a lot of patience. All clerics- bishops, priests, and deacons- are formed to have a deep devotion to our Blessed Mother. It is fitting that the Curé d' Ars was named Jean-Marie. The Church, after all, is our Mater et Magistra- our Mother and Teacher. It’s not saying anything controversial to insist that pastoral ministry has both a paternal and maternal dimension. Above all, one is orders needs to love love those he’s called to serve. That is what makes the Sacrament of Orders Holy Orders.

John Vianney’s priestly ministry took place in the aftermath of the French Revolution. This revolution had decimated the Church in France tearing apart dioceses and parishes. As a simple parish priest, Vianney saw one of his major tasks as catechizing his parishioners. He also spent a lot of time in the confessional, making the Sacrament of Penance frequently available.

He became so well known as a confessor that during the last ten years of his life, it is estimated that some 20,000 people a year came to him for confession. It was not unusual for him to spend 16-18 hours a day hearing confessions. A woman whose husband has committed suicide wanted to approach Vianney to ask him about her husband’s fate. But the line to see him was hours long and she could not get to him. Just as she was ready to give up, the Curé had a moment of mystical insight and shouted over the crowd to her “He is saved!” Sensing that woman still doubted, the priest said “I tell you he is saved. He is in Purgatory, and you must pray for him. Between the parapet of the bridge and the water he had time to make an act of contrition.”

Vianney also saw to the care of the poor in his large rural parish, working to help meet the basic needs of the poorest of his parishioners.

Saint John Vianney heard the call of the Lord issued in today’s Gospel and became a dedicated laborer, absolving sins, healing the sick, and casting out demons. His own encounters with the powers of darkness are quite stunning. Like Ezekial, Vianney’s famous homilies and sermons, which were printed and widely circulated in France even during his lifetime, called people back to the Lord and called them back to the practice of Christian virtue.

Judging from the number of people who came to him for confession, his message of repentance resonated with many thousands of people responding, he touched many hearts and helped turned countless people toward God. Repentance, confession, and contrition seem like good things to be reminded about on a Friday, which remains, even now, a day dedicated to penance- though this isn’t widely understood or practiced.

Despite the fruitfulness of his parochial ministry, Vianney yearned for the contemplative life of a monk. Four times he tried to run away from Ars with the intention of joining a monastery. The last time in 1853, was only six years before his death. As I tell our deacons and some of our priests, if you don’t think about simply quitting occasionally, you’re not taking your ministry seriously enough. By contrast, if you think about it all the time, you have a problem. Parish ministry is very challenging at times, one must be firmly rooted in Christ to withstand the winds that sometimes blow.

Vianney was well-known for his stamina, his perseverance, and his dedication. On this score, it seems relevant to note that he had a great devotion to Saint Philomena, considering her to be his Guardian. This martyr lived in the late third and early fourth centuries. Her remains were discovered in Rome in 1802. She was the daughter of a king in Greece. The king had converted to Christianity. At the age of about 13, Philomena took a vow of virginity for Christ's sake. When Emperor Diocletian threatened to make war on her father, he took his family and went to Rome to beg the emperor for peace.

As it is told, no doubt some of it legendary, Diocletian fell in love with the beautiful young Philomena and, when she refused to be his wife, he subjected her to a series of torments: scourging, from whose effects two angels cured her; drowning with an anchor attached to her (two angels cut the rope and raised her to the river bank); and being shot with arrows (on the first occasion her wounds were healed; on the second, the arrows turned aside; and on the third, they returned and killed six of the archers, after which several of the others became Christians). Finally, the Emperor had her decapitated.

So, on this day when the Church remembers the life and priestly ministry of Saint John Vianney, let us invoke his intercession for all parish priests, for all pastors of our diocese, for Fr. Andrzej, our pastor. May Saint John Vianney’s intercession inspire and strengthen them to continue their labor in that part of the Lord’s vineyard entrusted to each of them.

Year I Wednesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ord. Time

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35; Ps 99:5-7.9; Matthew 13:44-46

There is a passage in the third chapter of Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians that speaks directly to our first reading. In this passage, Paul writes about how much more glorious the “ministry of the Spirit” is than that of the Law, which the apostle refers to as “the ministry of death” and “the ministry of condemnation.”¹

To really understand what Paul is trying to communicate, it’s necessary to grasp that, for the apostle, the Law is perfect. It’s us who are flawed. While Paul certainly believes that human beings can do good things on our own, as it wers (i.e., he’s not an advocate of total depravity, which is quite anti-Pauline), he does not believe that we are capable of keeping the whole Law in letter and spirit.² This is why he refers to it the way he does in this passage.

Ultimately, what Saint Paul is driving at in this very assertive section is that, unlike ancient Israel, for whom Moses became the sole mediator, through Christ and by the power of His Holy Spirit, “All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.”³

Having the Holy Spirit makes all the difference! It is the Holy Spirit who enables you to recognize the kingdom of heaven. More than recognizing it, the Spirit helps you to see not just the value of God’s kingdom relative to worldly things, but to see things as they really are and for what they really are. What the Holy Spirit seeks to do is give you an intense encounter with reality.

This intense encounter with reality forces a fundamental decision on everyone who has it. This decision is about how you are going to live your life and the priorities by which you are going to live. Very often, as Christians, we view faith as icing on the cake of life. But faith that is faith becomes the rule of life.

As Paul intimates, this transformation doesn’t happen all at once. Rather, for the one who sees and recognizes the surpassing value of the kingdom of heaven, this transformation happens little by little, en español poco a poco. The reason for this is that your life matters. What is your life except those things you do every day, the aggregation of the experiences you have?

This is why Saint Ignatius’ insistence on finding God in all things truly means in all things- in the good, the bad, and the ugly of life. For one who lives by faith, this is not just important but vitally necessary. This puts into bold relief the importance of having a method of prayer, like the Examen. Sometimes just where or how God is in some experiences or certain periods of your life isn’t so obvious. You may have to look for him.

Far from hiding, God wants you to find him. Learning to truly see God in all things enables you to move beyond the platitude spouted by the likes of me that God is in all things to seeing for yourself just how that is the case. Because God knows each one of us intimately, better than we know ourselves, how he works in my life is different from how God works in yours.

In its current, incomplete configuration, the kingdom of heaven is hidden in plain sight. It’s most often found in the middle of the world’s messiness. Hence, we need a way of seeing it, of discerning its presence even when it is right in front of us.

Once you learn how to see it, you can’t unsee it. To see it is to behold reality according to all the factors that constitute it. It transforms you day-by-day, encounter-by-encounter, poco a poco.

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1 See 2 Corthinthians 3:7-18.^↩
2 See Romans 2:12-16.^↩
3 2 Corinthians 3:18.^↩