Don't be fooled

Readings: Eccl 1:2.2:21-23; Ps 90:3-6.12-14.17; Col 3:1-5.9-11; Luke 12:13-21

What I love about the period the Church spends in Ordinary Time between Corpus Christi and Advent is reading in a semi-continuous way through whichever of the Synoptic Gospels is the focus of that year. Being in Year C of the Sunday Lectionary, we are reading through the Gospel According to Saint Luke. In chapter nine, verse fifty-one, which marks the end of the Lord's Galilean ministry, Jesus "resolutely" determines that He is going to Jerusalem. And so, Luke takes us on a journey with Jesus and His disciples.

This journey narrative is the heart of the Luke's Gospel. Being harmonized with our reading from Ecclesiastes, today's Gospel sets forth the foolishness of making one's life about the acquisition of riches. Often, the pursuit of riches starts with the idea that attaining a certain level of wealth equals security. This then easily morphs into the acquisition and hoarding of wealth for it's own sake. It can even lead to the realization that wealth is a source of power.

Jesus and Qoheleth (the preacher of Ecclesiastes) both demonstrate in rather down-to-earth terms that security does not and cannot come from wealth. Qoheleth simply points out that acquiring is wealth is stressful. It eats up all your bandwidth and even deprives you of sleep. All for what? To leave all that you've spent your life in the service of to someone else? Ecclesiastes is likely the most existential book in all of Sacred Scripture.

Jesus mines this same vein. The self-satisfied man who has accumulated so much wealth that he needs to construct bigger barns in which to store it so that he can relax and enjoy himself will die the very night he sets forth his plan. Talk about futility! Apart from noting that Jesus'culture was not primarily a cash culture, like ours, the point of these two readings doesn't require much gloss or explanation. Sure, we can tell more updated stories but the moral remains the same.

Elsewhere in scripture we read not that money is evil- in and of itself it is a neutral means of exchange- but that "the love of money is the root of all evils" (1 Tim 6:10). Our current cultural and political situation graphically shows us this every day. Instead of envying the very rich, we should take the lesson from today's scriptures to heart. Sadly, the typical Christian response to this very straightforward teaching often starts with "But". It isn't pleasant to be provoked.

I'll be honest, as I am in within a few years of retiring from my secular career, I find myself thinking about and worrying about money way too much. All too easily, no amount of money seems too much because I want to be safe and secure, to eat, drink, and be merry. Sometimes money seems a better bet than God- though I am not supposed to say that out loud let alone write it down. This isn't to say things like retirement planning, having some savings, etc. are evil things. It is to say that they can easily become all-consuming, crowding out what should really matter.

It is in our reading from Colossians that we find the cure for what ails us. Among those things we are to mortify (i.e., "Put to death") are "evil desire" and "the greed that is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5). Wealth is more often than not a wellspring of vice. As Jesus teaches in Saint Matthew's Gospel, what you value is not only where your heart is but it's what you place your hope in. Vanity is deadly. What Qoheleth means by "vanity" is futility. The pursuit of wealth, of pleasure, of power are all futile in the end.

The evil and deeply disturbing push towards transhumanism is a result of this. Death entered the world because we wanted (and still want) to usurp God and be masters of ourselves and of the world. Rather than trust in Christ's overcoming death by His Resurrection, we seek to overcome death through capital investment in technology. By means of these technologies, making ourselves machines, our consciousness reduced to a data set.

Theologically we insist that likeness to God is lost through sin and can be restored by grace but the image of God every person bears is ineradicable. When faced with the dystopia toward which we are hurling ourselves at warp speed, I wonder if there will come a point at which this supposed ineradicability needs to be called into question.

So, if today you hear God's voice in the proclamation of these scriptures, harden not your heart. Learn to number your days rightly so as to gain wisdom of heart. Don't forget, your days are numbered. Memento mori is an important spiritual practice.

"Either way it's okay..."

Friendships are interesting. No two are the same. These relationships are so varied, which is what makes them kind of amazing. At least for me, friendships are difficult to sustain over time. This often isn't the result of a lack of effort. Friendships are, in a word, fragile.

A lot of my Friday posts have become quite personal, which is something new for me. I hardly see my life as instructive for me, let alone anyone else. But my reason for "getting" personal is what I would describe as confessional, not pedagogical. This is somewhat reminiscent of "A dream and making sense of reality" from last December.

"I was going to text you tomorrow," replies a friend who months ago stopped texting (texting to stay in touch- part of the problem, no doubt). This is followed by, "Can I get back you later?" "Yeah sure," knowing this won't happen. After several of these kinds of exchanges it becomes apparent that this person really doesn't want to communicate anymore. A final text- "As you wish," thus offloading the issue back onto you.

Considered from a distance, it's a predictable trajectory. There's the the inevitable question, "What happened?" Honestly, it's usually not a question worth asking.

It's all okay. Almost nothing lasts forever. The world is a transitory place. I need to work on being grateful (graceful) for whatever fruit friendships bear while they last. I admit, this is very hard for me. I tend to hold on to things, to cling to them really, especially people and things I am fond of. Most of the time, the fruit of holding on too tightly is bitterness and resentment, being in a state of loss.

"Oh well" is a phrase I use a lot these days. I mean it when I say it both to myself and to others. Security is found in what lasts. Last night, I watched a short video by Ralph Martin. It's not about his recent firing from Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. The title of his video is "Who Will Remember Us?" Watching this gave me solace.

Ralph's video made me think that perhaps I should replace "Oh well" with "It's alright." But a sincerely meant "It's alright." A lot of life, including spiritual life, is making peace with reality, being okay with what happens good, bad, or indifferent. Reality is rarely if ever how/what I want it to be. What's more no one else cares that reality doesn't bend to my desires. Even more, they don't have to and it's probably better that they don't. Getting to that sincerely felt "It's alright" is a struggle.

Martin is the founder and president of Renewal Ministries. Renewal is a Catholic charismatic organization. One overlooked feature of the charismatic renewal is the kind of simple teaching Martin's video contains. This amounts to an emphasis of not losing sight of the purpose of my life. Keeping my end ever in mind is what enables me to navigate my way through. I am reminded this morning of the medieval morality play The Summoning of Everyman (the link is to God's speech at the beginning of the play).

On a tangential note, in the end, Beatrices usually turn out to be Dulcineas.

It's August, if you can believe it! 1 August is the Memorial of Saint Alphonsus Ligori, who is a Doctor of the Church. He is primarily known for his teaching about the complexities of morality. Yesterday it was announced that Saint John Henry Newman is going to be made a Doctor of the Church. Without Newman, I would not be Catholic. Somewhere Muriel Spark, too, is smiling.

I would like to post a performance of Elgar's musical setting of Newman's "Dream of Gerontius" but a traditio lasting more than ninety minutes kind of violates the medium. So, as a tribute to my inabilty to take a more mature view of the transitoriness of life's vicissitude, I am going with Billy Joel's "Leave Me Alone." I choose it a bit tongue in cheek.

Year 1 Monday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 32:15-24.30-34; Psalm 106:19-23; Matthew 13:31-35

While it’s important to understand what the Church means by “Ordinary Time,” it’s also necessary to recognize that, for most of us, most of life is lived in ordinary time, that is, ordinary in the normal sense of the word. In other words, most of our lives do not consist of tremendous highs and deep lows, peaks and valleys. We usually live somewhere between these poles. At least for me, a Monday in late summer is about as ordinary as it gets.

Even so, we live in a society that seems to wage war on the ordinary and the small. This is easy to detect in the language we hear, read, even sometimes use. Specifically, the use of superlatives, interjections, and exclamations. Growing up, excessive use of interjections, exclamations, and superlatives was discouraged in both speaking and writing.

To wit: when everything is “magnificent,” nothing is magnificent. When everything and everyone are “the best,” nothing is the best. In religious terms, the demise of the word “awesome” is lamentable. When everything is awesome, nothing is awesome. Our God is an awesome God, but this golden calf is pretty awesome too!

Everything, it seems, must be either terrible or superb, the worst or the best. We’re having none of this in between, ordinary nonsense. This is even true of faith and religious experience. Our first reading today, the story of the golden calf from the Book of Exodus, shows us the origin of this impulse. Let’s just say, its origin isn’t divine.

After lamenting to God that he fears those who seek to take his life, the prophet Elijah (considered the greatest of the Old Testament prophets) was directed “to stand on the mountain before the LORD.”¹ As he stood on that mountain, Elijah experienced a wind so strong that it broke rocks, but God wasn’t in the wind. He then felt an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake. Next, there was a fire, but God wasn’t in the fire. Finally, there was what is best translated as “a light silent sound.” God was in this “silent sound.” We can bear the contradictory language because a more or less immediate experience of God is not really communicable through words, no matter the language.

Mustard seeds

Day-to-day, week-to-week, year-to-year, encountering God is mostly just paying attention. As a colleague used to sarcastically remark: “Ninety percent of situational awareness is knowing what is going on around you.”

You don’t have summon God like genie. You don’t have to impose a preconception to find God. No matter where you’re at and regardless of your circumstances, God is always already there.

The spirituality given to the Church through Saint Ignatius of Loyola founder of the Society of Jesus (a.k.a. the Jesuits), whose feast we observe on Thursday, is best summed up in the phrase “Finding God in all things.” Finding God in all things is an invitation to look for and find the triune God in every circumstance of life, not just in explicitly religious activities like prayer, going to Mass, and not just in private, solitary moments (though certainly in all of these, just not limited to them).

All of this is built on the conviction that God is everywhere present and, while invisible, can be “found” in all aspects of creation and in every circumstance of life, even in, maybe especially in, the small things that occur during life’s ordinary times.

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1 See 1 Kings 19:10-13.^↩

Persist in prayer

Readings: Genesis 18:20-32; Psalm 138:1-3.6-8; Colossians 1:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

At root, our readings for this Sunday are about prayer. Listening, we learn about the importance not just of prayer in general but of petitionary prayer that is intercessory in its orientation. To be clear, by petitionary prayer, I refer to petitioning God for specific intentions. By intercessory prayer, I mean petitioning God on someone else's behalf.

In our day, there seems to be a loss of the belief in the efficacy of prayer. Why pray? It doesn't change anything. Even many genuinely pious people seem to focus merely on accepting whatever happens as God will, which they assume is predetermined. Why seek to cut against the grain of how reality seems to be working?

Now, don't get me wrong. We do need to learn how accept all things from God. This is no easy task. For many, it is crushing and understandably so. It's very important to grasp that not all outcomes are directly willed by God. God sometimes permits things without willing them to realize some some greater good. Let's never lose sight of the fact that God is in the resurrection business. God brings life from death and always seeks to do so, causality notwithstanding.

The question I always come away with after reading about Abraham's petition to God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah is, What if he had persisted with God down to one? I realize that this opens a can of theological worms. Let's bracket those concerns and persist with the question what if? Would the cities have been spared had Abraham been more persistent?

If we take the Gospels as we should, which is as God's revelation because these texts accurately hand-on Christ's teachings, it is clear that we should be persistent in our prayers not only those for others but those made on our own behalf. Jesus' teaching is clear: persist! Keep asking, keep petitioning, keep praying. How many years did Saint Monica pray for her son, Augustine? Don't let up. The Lord is telling us in very practical terms how to pray.

Lest you think our reading from Colossians has no bearing on our readings from Genesis and Luke (great effort being made during Ordinary Time to harmonize the Old Testament reading with the Gospel), it has a lot of bearing. To wit: we become children of the Father through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. This happens in baptism when you were baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. You were reborn in baptism as a child of God. Not only were you reborn in baptism, you died, were buried, and rose with Christ to new life. Life, death, and love, as all of us seem to know intuitively, are intricately interwoven.

It pleases our Father to give you the Holy Spirit. It pleases Him to hear and answer the prayers of His children. So, don't pray by throwing up some half-digested desire. Recollect yourself, gather up all that is in your heart, consider the needs of people you know, pay special attention to those who have asked for your prayers. Then, pray to God, asking directly for what you want.

As the late Herbert McCabe, OP, wrote about prayer:

Our stance in prayer is not simply, or even primarily, that of the creature before the creator but that of the Son before the Father. At the most fundamental level, the level which defines prayer as prayer, we receive from the Father not as creatures receiving what they need to make up their deficiencies, but as the Son eternally receives his being from the Father¹

Summarizing McCabe's take on prayer, Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist, provides an important insight:

Fr. Herbert McCabe, O.P., used to say, that it is necessary to pray for what you really want— not to dissemble your desires. Distraction often comes, because we dissemble and do not recognize what we really want. And because at the beginning of spiritual life, our desires are often stupid and pointless, our prayers too will be stupid and (apparently) pointless. But those who persevere in prayer will find that God transforms their desires. And the more they are transformed, the more the stupidity and pointless will give way to a real communion with God²

Nonetheless, returning to McCabe, it is important to recognize "All our prayer is, in a very precise sense, in Spirit and in truth. For us to pray is for us to be taken over, possessed by the Holy Spirit which is the life of love between Father and Son."³

One of two things: keep praying, pray and then pray some more or start praying and then keep praying. Trust that will transform you through prayer. Also trust that God hears and answers prayers. This is experiential, not systematic, not doing x number of repetitions of A will inevitably result in B. Such nonsense is, far from being scientific, is superstitious.

Maybe in your prayer life you need to clear the deck and begin again. It's okay, as Father M. Louis said of the spiritual life, "We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners all our life!"⁴

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1 Herbert McCabe, O.P., God Matters (London: Continuum, 2005), 220.^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist., "Prayer Begins in Pointlessness and Stupidity," Church Life Journal, 27 June 2018.^↩
4 "Thomas Merton/Always Beginners"^↩

Music, a movie, and more music

You'd have to live under a proverbial rock to not know that Ozzy Osbourne died this week. Why such a big deal? It's a great question.

Ozzy's career began when, along with three other guys from Birmingham, England, he formed a band. Originally called "Earth," for reasons that seem to vary, they changed their name to "Black Sabbath." Black Sabbath was the English title of an Italian horror movie. The film's Italian title was I tre volti della paura (i.e., Three Faces of Fear). It featured the word tre because the film is comprised of three different stories: "The Drop of Water," "The Telephone," and "The Wurdulak."

Year 1 Monday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Exodus 14:5-8; Exodus 15:1-6; Matthew 12:38-42

In ministry circles there are sometimes mentions of what is called “practical atheism.” As Catholics, our category for this would be material atheism, which is opposed to formal atheism. Formal atheism is the conscious and explicit renunciation of belief in God.

Material atheism can be the result of what pastor and author Steve Cuss describes as “a gap between what we believe about God and what we experience from God.”¹ This often results not in people formally renouncing belief in God, but believing God won’t, or perhaps can’t, or, worst of all, doesn’t want to help in concrete ways with life’s inevitable challenges and setbacks.

In short, someone believes in God who made everything from nothing and who can do all things and yet there are things s/he has asked God to do that God hasn’t done. Now, one can be glib and simply say something like, “Maybe it’s for the better or to realize a greater good that God didn’t do what you asked Him to do,” even when what God was petitioned for appears, from an objective standpoint, to be a good thing.

Of course, such an answer is logically possible. It makes sense and, I guess, can be helpful for some people some of the time. But logical possibilities do not amount to ground truth. Plus, cliches and platitudes tend to wear thin pretty quickly.

In his most recent work, Cuss addresses what he sees as three gaps. But there is only one that has bearing on our readings: “I believe God is with me, but I can’t see Him.”² This seems to be the case both with the Israelites in our first reading and the scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel.

In our reading from Exodus, seeing Pharoah and his army rapidly closing in on them, the people say to Moses, with no little biting sarcasm:

Were there no burial places in Egypt that you had to bring us out here to die in the desert? Why did you do this to us? Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? Far better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness³

The scribes and Pharisees in our Gospel are refreshingly straightforward, saying: “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”⁴ Especially in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke) Jesus’ attitude toward His own miracles can best be described as ambiguous. He seems to be keenly opposed to simply being seen as a miracle worker, a magician of sorts. Hence, the Lord replies to this direct request by saying it is an “evil and unfaithful generation” that seeks a sign.⁵ Note, He does not say He will give no sign. Rather, He points to the sign of Jonah, by which, of course, He points to His resurrection.

In his masterpiece, The Brothers Karamazov, Fydor Dostoevsky observed:

It is not miracles that bring a realist to faith. A true realist, if he is not a believer, will always find in himself the strength and ability not to believe in miracles… and if a miracle stands before him as an irrefutable fact, he will sooner doubt his own senses than admit the fact⁶

In our Gospel, Jesus is telling the scribes and Pharisees who He is. He more than implies that if they do not believe now, they will not believe even when He rises from the dead. By “unfaithful,” He means they lack faith, despite Who is addressing them, speaking words of life and truth.

The Gentiles of Nineveh, who believed and repented in response to Jonah’s preaching, and the Gentile queen of Sheba, who sought Solomon’s wisdom, will "condemn" them for their lack of faith and their infidelity to the Law and the prophets. As the Israelites were saved at the last minute, those who believe the sign of Jonah are not merely saved in the end but are already saved.

I get it, sometimes it doesn’t feel like you are already saved. Nonetheless, you are! When it comes to the expectation gap between what you believe about God and what you may experience from Him, this verse from a song by the late Rich Mullins, “Hard to Get,” helps me attend to the sign of Jonah:

What I really need to know
Is if You who live in eternity
Hear the prayers of those of us who live in time?
We can't see what's ahead
And we cannot get free from what we've left behind
I'm reeling from these voices that keep screamin' in my ears
All these words of shame and doubt, blame and regret
I can't see how You're leading me
Unless You've led me here
To where I'm lost enough to let myself be led⁷

Like the Israelites following Moses, following Jesus, even when it’s hard to see where He’s leading you, is the path to the Promised Land, where He "will wipe away every tear from our eyes."⁸

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1 Steve Cuss. The Expectation Gap: The Tiny, Vast Space between Our Beliefs and Experience of God, pg.1. ^↩
2 Ibid.^↩
3 Exodus 14:11-12.^↩
4 Matthew 12:38.^↩
5 Mathhew 12:39.^↩
6 Fydor Dostoevsky. The Brothers Karamazov, Book I, Chapter V. ^↩
7 Rich Mullins, "Hard to Get."^↩
8 Roman Missal. The Order of Mass. Eucharistic Prayer III when said as part of Masses for the Dead.^↩

Choosing the better part

Reading: Genesis 18:1-10a; Psalm 15:2-5; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

Today's readings contain a lot. It's one of those Sundays when perhaps the readings are too rich, too deep, too full. Both the Old Testament reading and the Gospel feature a meal. Both feature service and preparation of the meal. Of course, since it is the source and summit of our faith, this quite naturally and rightly prompts some thoughts about the Eucharist.

In our Gospel, the one serving complains to the Lord about her sister who is just sitting there, listening to Him. Jesus gives a beautiful "No" to Martha's request that He tell Mary to get up and go help her. He says no by pointing out that Mary has chosen the better thing to do and that He won't deprive her of it. In other words, He isn't going to tell Mary "Get up and go help your sister." Prayer and contemplation matter greatly.

Christian worship and service should be rooted in prayer and contemplation. The fact prayer and contemplation are often not the wellspring of liturgy and ministry is as obvious as it is sad. The Lord Himself gives us the priority. Wheher you're comfortable with it or not, the Lord calls you to have deeply personal relationship with Him.

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, Johannes Vermeer, 1655

By the very nature of our vocation, deacons are Marthas. In fact, both times the word "serving" appears in verse 40 of the tenth chapter of Luke, it is a translation of the Greek verb meaning "to deacon," that is, "to serve" (first diakonian- literally Martha was "pulled about through service" and diakonein- literally her sister "left" Martha to be the only one "serving").

It's easy when serving as deacon of the Mass to get caught up in what needs to be done, ensuring what needs to happen happens when its supporse to happen, etc., while trying to stay a step ahead. Even so, how a deacon moves, when he moves, the body labguage of his movement should reflect a genuine diaconal spirituality, which, like any genuinely Christian spiriuality, must be rooted in prayer.

Because we live a culture and society that values doing over being all of us Marthas virtually all the time. This is one reason why the practice of lectio divina is vitally important. For deacons, along with Liturgy of the Hours, the Holy Rosary, and the Examen, lectio divina is a vital spirtual discipline.

In my view, especially reflecting on Eucharist and prayer, the key phrase from today's readings is found neither in the Gospel nor in the reading Genesis, Rather, it is found in our reading from Colossians: "Christ in you." Not only is Christ in you (in me) "the hope for glory," it is "the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past." It is this mystery all Christians are called to reveal through our lives.

Christ comes to be in you (in me) by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is precisely why Jesus ascended and then sent the Spirit. Otherwise, He could be close to you but not in you. Before the Lord comes to be present in you through your reception of the Holy Communion, He makes Himself present in you aurally by the proclamation of Sacred Scripture. The Word is to become flesh in and through you and me. This is what makes the Church Christ's Body.