Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God

"Who do you say that I am?" Jesus asked His disciples. Prior to asking this direct question, He inquired who other people said that He was. After answering by telling Him some said He was John the Baptist, which is a bit weird because the Baptist was a contemporary, some said he was Elijah, whose return, according to Malachi, was to usher in the coming of the Messiah, still others insisted He was Jeremiah or another of the prophets, they were asked this direct question.

Stepping up, it was Simon, son of Jonah, who professed Jesus not only as Messiah but as God's Son. At root, what it means to be a Christian is to profess Jesus as Lord, that is, as Messiah and Son of God. This profession is wrought with implications. Relax, I am not going to delve into them.

As a Christian, it's hard to think of a more important question than "Who is Jesus?" What say ye?

Paul, Peter's fellow apostle, insisted both that "nobody speaking by the spirit of God says, 'Jesus be accursed." while convresely asserting "no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except by the holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).

It's important, I think, to point out that Peter and Paul had a fairly major spat. In the second chapter of Galatians, Paul is pretty hard on Peter for being wishy washy, sometimes taking the side of judaizers and sometimes not, depending on whose company he was in (see Galatians 2:11-14). This is why Paul calls Peter a "hypocrite" outright. Galatians is an authentically Pauline letter.

Saints Peter and Paul, from Vatican News, use Creative Common License

Peter and Paul both met their mortal ends in Rome. Peter being crucified upside down, tradition tell us, and Paul, a Roman citizen being beheaded. Two Roman basilicas mark these spots: Saint Peter's Basilica and Saint Paul Outside the Walls.

Both Apostles also enjoy their own feast days. The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, Apostle is observed each year on 25 January and the Feast of the Chair of Saint Peter the Apostle is fixed on 22 February.

While it is common to refer to the pope as the Successor of Peter, it is important to note that, being universal, the papacy has an important Pauline dimension. Pope Saint Paul VI, who was the first pope to chose the name Paul in 357 years, was the first pope to really travel the world in a missionary spirit. His name and his papal ministry, therefore, are quite fitting. Ever since Pope Paul VI, worldwide travels have been important aspect of the papacy.

Whether to the city (urbi) or to the world (orbi), what the Successor of Peter, who is also the Vicar of Christ, proclaims is that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, the Son of God. In his Angelus address today, Pope Leo noted

The rock from which Peter received his name is Jesus Christ. He is the rock rejected by the builders, whom God made the cornerstone. This very Square, and the Papal Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, are a sign of how that reversal continues in our own day. They are located on the outskirts of the city, “Outside the Walls,” as we say even today. What appears great and glorious to us today, was originally rejected and excluded because it ran counter to the thinking of this world. Those who follow Jesus must tread the path of the Beatitudes, where poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, hunger and thirst for justice, and peace-making are often met with opposition and even persecution. Yet God’s glory shines forth in his friends and continues to shape them along the way, passing from conversion to conversion

June ends tomorrow. 2025 reaches its halfway point. The summer solstice has come and gone. And so, the daylight slowly begins to recede. I am not preaching tomorrow, meaning this is very likely the last post for June. Only 11 this month. I enjoy doing reflections like this one because I can be looser. Peace and blessings on this lovely solemnity.

Saints Peter & Paul, holy Apostles, pray for us.

Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus

Today is the second of three Solemnities this week. It was lovely to be able to serve at Mass this morning. After cooling down over last weekend and remaining cool through yesterday, it's back to being hot. Boy, the heat really takes it out of me!

I was happy to read wonderful piece by Larry Chapp: "The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the burning furnace of divine love." Like Chapp, I, too, "I have been drawn to the emphasis this devotion places on the humanity of Jesus, as I consider our era as one marked by an anthropological crisis. And with the emerging threat of artificial intelligence, this crisis will only grow more acute. What is a human being? What is special about us? What is our unique dignity as creatures made in the image and likeness of God? What is consciousness? Is there such a thing as a spiritual soul within us?"

This reminded me of the focus of Servant of God Cora Louise Evans mysticism- The Mystical Humanity of Christ. I encourage you to follow the link and read about Cora Evans.

On December 24, 1946, Jesus revealed the mission entrusted to Cora. She learned that she was to promulgate the Mystical Humanity of Christ, a way of prayer that encourages people to live with a heightened awareness of the indwelling presence of Jesus in their daily lives. It is Eucharistic spirituality, and Jesus promised to foster the devotion

Our traditio for today the Litany of the Sacred Heart sung by Benedictine Monks of Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, Silver City, New Mexico.

Vigil of the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist

Readings: Jeremiah 1:4-10; Psalm 71:1-6.15.17; 1 Peter 1:8-12; Luke 1:5-17

This evening, we observe the vigil of the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. In addition to this solemnity, the Church celebrates two other solemnities this week. Friday is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our Saturday Vigil Mass will be the Vigil of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, which we will celebrate on Sunday.

The convergence of all three solemnities doesn’t always occur. The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart is observed each year on the day after the octave of Corpus Christi ends. As it is throughout most of the rest of the world, normatively and traditionally, Corpus Christi is the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, in turn, is the Sunday after Pentecost and Pentecost is fifty days after Easter. All this simply means that the date of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart changes each year, depending on the date of Easter.

By contrast, the Solemnity of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist is a solemnity with a fixed date: 24 June. At least for those of us in the northern hemisphere, this solemnity fittingly occurs just a few days after the summer solstice. Usually, the summer solstice falls on 21 June but some years, like this year, it happens on 20 June and sometimes on 19 June. 29 June is the fixed date for the Solemnity of Peter and Paul.

It is fitting for the solemnity of the Baptist’s birth to fall near the summer solstice because the birth of John the Baptist, the precursor of the Christ, marks the dawn of a new day, the day of salvation. Even now in many northern European countries, though it has largely lost its religious and liturgical connection, Saint John’s Day is a time for nighttime dinner gatherings and parties: a way to celebrate and enjoy together the long days of summer.

In our Gospel this evening, much is made of Zechariah belonging to the tribe of Levi and to the subdivision of that tribe, the “division of Abijah.” Much more is made of Zechariah being chosen by lot to burn incense in the sanctuary. According to Luke, John’s father was a Levite. But being of the division of Abijah, he was not, strictly speaking, a kohen, a priest. But, according to Luke, his wife, Elizabeth, was a descendant of Aaron.¹

Deisis (John the Baptist) of Kirillo-Belozersky iconostasis (15th century, Russia), Wikipedia Commons

Luke’s assertion of Zecheriah’s and Elizabeth’s Levitical kinship has interesting theological implications for Jesus. As set forth by Luke, Mary, the Mother of our Lord, is related to Elizabeth. She is closely enough related to go and stay with her upon learning she was pregnant. Is Mary, too, at least in Luke’s account, of the tribe of Levi? If so, it’s interesting to think about the theological implications for our Lord.

New Testament scholars, like the late Father John P. Meier, whose masterly multi-volume study, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, suggest that Jesus belonged to the House of David, which means he belonged to the tribe of Judah (not Levi), through Joseph. It also bears noting that Levites, like Zechariah, who were not numbered among the kohanim, from patristic times, have been associated with deacons because they, too, assisted the priests. In any case, Luke goes to great pains to show the Baptist’s Levitical credentials.

Given that in ancient Israel, the king was not a priest, how to reconcile Jesus being the true High Priest while not being a kohen or even a Levite is something taken up by the inspired author of the Letter to the Hebrews in what is now chapter seven of that scriptural book. Sense is made of this using Melchizedek, the King of Salem and priest of the Most High God, about whom we heard in yesterday’s first reading from Genesis 14.

The Baptist, like Jeremiah in our first reading, was chosen from his mother’s womb not just to be a prophet, but to be the Messiah’s forerunner. He is also the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophesy about Elijah’s return.² Jesus identifies John with Elijah.³ John is the seal of the prophets and, according to the Lord, the greatest prophet and perhaps even the greatest of men.4

Among Latin Catholics, veneration of John the Baptist has greatly waned. Traditionally, he has been almost as highly venerated as our Blessed Mother. In Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox Churches, Christ, flanked by the Baptist and the Blessed Virgin, is featured on the level of the iconostasis known as the Deisis Tier. John the Baptist should be featured in every publicly prayed Litany of the Saints.

A bit later in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel, in a canticle known by its first word in Latin, Benedictus, which is recited each day during Morning Prayer, Zechariah, having regained his voice after being struck dumb by the angel for expressing incredulity about his wife bearing a son, sings of his son:

And you, my child, will be called prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
to give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins,
in the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high will break upon usto shine on those who dwell in darkness and shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace [modified to match Liturgy of the Hours]5

So, on the Vigil of our celebration of his birth, Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

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1 Luke 1:5.^↩
2 Malachi 3:23-24.^↩
3 Matthew 17:10-13; Mark 9:11-13.^↩
4 Matthew 11:11.^↩
5 Luke 1:76-79.^↩

Melchizedek: A Christophany

Melchizedek, the King of Salem, is a priest unlike any other priest. "Salem" is a translation of the Hebrew שלם, which transliterates to shalem. Closely related to the more familar shalom, shalem means to make whole or complete. Therefore, shalem sometimes refers to making proper restitution.

It is to Melchizedek that Abram (not yet Abraham) gave a tenth of everything. The "everything" was what Abram looted while rescuing Lot, his nephew, who had been abducted. This tithe is made by Abram after Melchizedek blesses him in the wake of his offering of bread and wine. Salem is mentioned in Psalm 76 as the place where God's tabernacle was located. This tabernacle preceded the building of Solomon's temple. Indicating that Jerusalem was a sacred place well before there were any Israelites.

Apart from Genesis 14, in the whole of Sacred Scripture, Melchizedek is mentioned only in Psalm 110, our Responsorial, and in Hebrews 7. It is in Hebrews that there is one priest who is not only like Melchizedek but who is greater than Melchizedek, just as Melchizedek was greater than Levi (more on this in a minute).

As the inspired author Hebrews notes, being "Without father, mother, or ancestry, without beginning of days or end of life," Melchizedek is "thus made to resemble the Son of God, he remains a priest forever" (Hebrews 7:3). As it turns out, Jesus is not a priest in the line of Melchizedek. Melchizedek has no priestly line. He is a one-off. Rather, Melchizedek is a priest sorta like Christ.

The Sacrifices of Melchizedek, Abel, and Abraham. Mosaic from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Classe, Ravenna.

For Israel, the priestly line were descendents of Jacob's son Levi. Moses and Aaron were both Levites. While the tribe of Levi was a priestly tribe, there was a subset of Levites, the descendents of Aaron, who were the priests. Kohen (the familiar Jewish last name "Cohen") is the Hebrew word for priest. Hence, the subset of Levites who were the descendents of Aaron, known as the Kohanim, were the priestly caste. The other Levites, like Zechariah, John the Baptist's father, assisted the Kohanim. This is why, from patristic times, Levites are often corrolated with deacons.

Melchizedek's appearance in Genesis is a Christophany. As a priest "of God Most High," he is, as previously noted, a priest kinda like Jesus. In no way is he more like Jesus than in his offering of bread and wine. We can add to that his role as King of Salem- the king of wholeness and of perfect restitution. Finally, his not being a Levite. Melchizedek was not even an Israelite, as there was no such thing according to the chronology of Genesis, is another important parallel.

Jesus himself was not a Levite. This is perhaps the major issue the inspired author of Hebrews is seeking to explain in the book's seventh chapter (see the whole of Hebrews 7). Jesus was from the tribe of Judah. Yet, He becomes a priest forever, our great High Priest. As such, unique and singular. Melchizedek is a priest sorta like Christ because there is no priest like Jesus Christ. There is nobody who could be a priest like Jesus Christ because no one else is true God and true man. In offering Himself on the altar of the cross, He is both priest and offering.

"If, then, perfection came through the levitical priesthood on the basis of which the people received the law," we read in Hebrews 7, "what need would there still have been for another priest to arise according to the order of Melchizedek, and not reckoned according to the order of Aaron?" Because there was a need for such a priest to arise, there was a change of priesthood. "When there is a change of priesthood," we read further on, "there is necessarily a change of law as well."

There is only one priesthood. The priesthood of Jesus Christ. Through baptism and confirmation, we participate in His priesthood. Hence, like the Levites and greater Israel, Christians are a priestly people. The participation of those ordained to the ministerial priesthood in the priesthood of Jesus Christ differs in kind and not just degree. But that is a topic for another time.

Where I live, understanding Melchizedek is important.

"And as funny as it may seem..."

I have a pretty involved post on Eucharist and liturgy that I was going to finish and post today. Frankly, it's a bit heavy duty for what I want our Friday traditio. to be. Without a doubt, there's no end to other pressing matters about which I could weigh in. In reality, I am exhausted with what's going on in the world, which is not to say that I don't care. I do, very much.

I am even more exhausted with social media. The idea that posting something on Facebook, X, Blue Sky, MeWe, et al. has any effect at all is delusional. So many people are deluded into believing they are in some way influencing opinion and that opinion, in turn, has impact on decisions, etc. What it really achieves for the most part is more and more ideological polarization. In almost every case, the algorithm kicks your ass and takes your lunch. No matter your politics, when you're raging on social media, you're literally raging with the machine. And I don't mean "literally" in a lazy colloquial sense that really means figuratively. More than a paragraph on this would be self-defeating.

Life is temporary. Temporary, to widen the scope, means timebound. Temporality is an antonym of eternity. Because life is temporary, everything in life is temporary. While "I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come," something I profess each Sunday, it is something I have to take on faith. Let's be honest, even though I believe on the basis of what God has revealed in life eternal, I can't claim to really know what happens after death.

Friendships, which run the gamut from friendly acquaintances to deep connections that move between philia and eros, are almost always temporary, despite our adolescent assertions to the contrary. This is not helped by the fact that we are, despite our internal urge to protest, fickle and contradictory creatures. One minute I can't get enough of someone or s/he can't get enough of me. The next, you're an annoyance, a bother, a needy beggar who needs to just go away. Of course, it's rare that someone will say, "We're done, leave me alone." Let's face it, there are those we can't live with or without. That's life. C'est la vie. Que sera, sera, pick a pithy cliché.

In our automated society, in which everyone is a therapist well-trained in that vaunted therapeutic method of posting memes, which largely consist of out of context quotes by authors with whose work the erstwhile therapist has no acquaintance (Nietzsche in this realm has superseded Freud), and everyone who's ever crossed me is a narcissist, life is not only a cliché but a bad one. Just as constant complaints about the narcissism of others is a sure sign of genuine narcissism, serious people, like myself, are usually the least serious people.

I have to say, staring down the barrel at 60 is a bit daunting. It's not the end of the world, but it brings me closer to the end of the world. This awareness is, uh, let's go with sobering. I have to say, I've been enjoying watching an episode of One Foot in the Grave each night. I read an article this week about this very thing: "I pride myself on being a miserable middle-aged man." I probably enjoyed it more than I should have. My only quibble is with the denial inherent in the assertion of middle age.

Speaking of the end of the world, here in northern Utah we've been having late July/early August weather. What I mean by that is high 90s to low 100s. It's as hot as hell. I was notified, via my "smart" devices of a "fire weather warning." Maybe I can use this as preparation for awaits me at the end of the world. I mean that somewhat humorously, I think. I hate the heat. Since I, too, can qualify as an online therapist, I may have something like reverse seasonal affective disorder.

Julian of Norwich's "all will be well" remains for me a well-intended proposition that may yet turn out to be true. My hope is in the name of the Lord. For me, hope takes the form of something deep within me that features a rather sharp, defiant edge. This defiance has saved my life, literally.

I will end with saying how very spiritually useful I have found reading Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy. His three novels are a continuous story about World War II. The final installment, which I am now finishing, is Unconditional Surrender.

Guy Crouchback, the main character, is from an aristocratic English west country Catholic recusant family. The novels are loosely based on Waugh's own experiences during the war. Crouchback is Waugh's creation of who he really wanted to be but was not. The second novel of the trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen, culminates with the Battle of Crete. Waugh was in this battle, which resulted in Germany taking Crete. While Waugh's is a fictionalized account, it is written in such a way that only someone who has experienced war could've written it.

Through it all, I find Crouchback's deep and abiding faith, which is neither naive nor sentimental, something of a balm for my soul. While I would say I am not naive when it comes to faith, I do tend to be a bit sentimental. At times, very sentimental. At the risk of being pedantic (a mode that is easy for me to lapse into), I would distinguish between sentimentality and affectivity. Affection is inherent to faith.

While it is probably a repeat (I don't know, I haven't looked), David Lee Roth singing "That's Life" is our Friday traditio. It was either that or "Goin' Crazy," which is also on Roth's Eat 'Em and Smile album. At nearly 60, I can repeat myself now and then, n'est ce pas?

Written by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, "That's Life" was first recorded in 1963 by Marion Montgomery. The song was made famous by Frank Sinatra, who recorded it three years later. At least for me, this is reminiscent of "I Did It My Way." Along with John Lennon's "Imagine," "I Did It My Way" is one of my least favorite songs.

When it comes to being a showman, nobody out does Dave:

Year 1 Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Psalm 98:1-4; Matthew 5:38-42

In our reading from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, in a passage anyone interested in ministry should study, the apostle uses his own experience in ministry to show his brothers and sisters how not to receive God’s grace in vain. He exhorts them and us to follow the teachings of the Lord set forth in our Gospel regardless of circumstances.

One thing Paul is clear about: this is not easy. A Christian follows Christ, according to the apostle:

by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness,
in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech,
in the power of God;
with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left
through glory and dishonor, insult and praise

If we remain content to live by the lex talionis, which requires an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, then we are no different than the pagans who surround us now as they did the Christians of ancient Corinth. Living differently, even weirdly, by adhering to the Lord’s teaching come what may is precisely how the Lord’s salvation is made known.

In our Gospel, which comes from the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not speaking elliptically, parabolically, hyperbolically, or figuratively. Rather speaks plainly and unequivocally. The way of the Gospel is the path of maximum resistance as it pertains to our natural and socially reinforced tendencies. The lex talonis seems to be the human default setting.

Endeavoring to become like our Lord is how we receive God’s grace in earnest. What the Lord calls His followers to in this passage is radical trust in and total dependence on God, on God’s provision and God’s justice. Jesus doesn’t just tell us; He shows us by walking His talk.

Too often in the aftermath of some bad experience at the hands of another, I hear something that starts like, “I’m a Christian, but…” This disjunction is usually followed by an intention to do something not in line with the hard teachings of Jesus. Yet, we often persist in justifying ourselves.

Don’t receive God’s grace vain. The Lord perhaps provokes us as much as He consoles us. Take heart. A provocation, by definition, is something for your calling. You are called to eternal life.

Year C Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Readings: Prov 8:22-31; Ps 8:4-9; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

It may surprise many to learn that Christian theology does not begin with the Most Holy Trinity. Christian theology begins with Jesus Christ. It is Christ who reveals God as Father. It is Christ who sends the Holy Spirit to remain present in, among, and through us. It is by means of the Holy Spirit that the Father and Son come to dwell in us.

Perhaps the best way to conceive of the Holy Spirit is as the love between the Father and the Son personified. When we contemplate the phrase that occurs twice in the span of eight verses in the fourth chapter of First John, “God is love,” lest it be narcissism, love requires a lover and beloved.¹ Since love is profuse, that is, outward-looking, it bears fruit.

Love is at the heart of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. It is love that enables us to make sense of our profession of one God in three divine persons. Because love is fruitful, when someone has experienced the love of God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, which experience is what makes you a Christian, you are impelled to share this Good News.

In theological terms, a mystery isn’t something unknown. Rather, a divine mystery is known because God has revealed it. While we cannot apprehend divine mysteries by reason alone, what God reveals is not and cannot be contrary to reason.

This is why the best definition of theology remains the one given by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century: faith seeing understanding. Far from being unknowable, divine mysteries are endlessly knowable. No matter how much you know, grasp, understand, there is always more. One of the attributes of God, after all, is infinitude.

This is just what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel, which, again, is taken from the Last Supper Discourse from Saint John’s Gospel. By taking from what the Father has given Him, which is literally everything, the Son gives us the Spirit to guide us into all truth.² All the Father had to reveal He revealed through the Incarnation of His Son. Here we are nearly 2,000 years later being drawn ever more deeply into the mystery of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth.

Let’s not forget that, according to Sacred Scripture, “the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past… has [now] been manifested.” What is this mystery? “Christ in you.”³ Christ comes to be in you through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who, through our trials and tribulations, our woes and sufferings, our afflictions, produces genuine hope where otherwise there would be despair.

Hope is the most difficult of the three theological virtues to understand. One thing is certain; hope is not optimism. Hope lies on the far side of optimism. Hope is that tiny flickering flame that is left when your optimism has run out. Very often, optimism is about what I want. Hope, by contrast, is about seeking, knowing, doing and accepting God’s will come what may. It is the realization that my ways are not God’s ways.

I believe that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was correct in his insistence that it is better to show than to say. This is what the saints do for us. Through their lives, they make what is abstract concrete. Their witness makes the metaphysical existential, the transcendent immanent, the hard to grasp graspable.

On Trinity Sunday 1925, a non-descript man was making his way up Granby Lane in Dublin, Ireland to attend Mass at Saint Savior’s church. While walking he collapsed. In the next day’s edition, the Irish Independent newspaper reported: “An elderly man collapsed in Granby Lane yesterday and, on being taken to Jervis Street Hospital, was found to be dead. He was wearing a tweed suit, but there was nothing to indicate who he was.”

Matt Talbot, used Under a Creative Commons License

Once at the hospital, while treating him, the doctors discovered that he had wound a chain around his waist and more chains around an arm and a leg, as well as cords around the other arm and leg. The chains found on his body at death were not weird self-torture. Rather, they were a symbol of his devotion to Mary, Mother of God, to whom he had entrusted himself completely. This man’s name was Matt Talbot.

Talbot was born into a relatively poor working-class family in Dublin. Like a lot of young men of that time and place, Matt started working full-time to help support his family at the age of twelve. His first job was with a wine merchant. To make a long story short, by the age of thirteen, he was considered a hopeless alcoholic.

Fifteen years later, broke and unable to drink on credit, Matt waited outside a pub he frequented hoping a friend would invite him in for a drink, a favor he had extended many times to broke friends. After several friends walked past him into the pub without inviting him in, he went home. Upon arriving home, Matt told his mother he was going “to take the pledge” and give up alcohol.

Matt followed through on his promise, pledging not to drink for three months. “The pledge” also consisted of making a general confession and attending Mass daily. At the end of three months, he took the pledge for another six months and then for life. Through an austere, prayerful, penitential manner of life, he remained sober for the rest of his life, right up until that Trinity Sunday when he collapsed on Granby Lane.

As it turned out, Matt was not hopeless. Hope was all he had. It was through his affliction that he came to understand hope, to live in hope. “It’s as hard to give up the drink as it is to raise the dead to life again,” he noted. “But” he insisted, “both are possible and even easy for our Lord. We have only to depend on him.”

The first several years of his sobriety were very difficult for Matt. But he prayed, attended Mass, went to confession, read and learned about his faith, supported the missions and charities from his modest earnings. In other words, he made use of the means of grace that Mother Church provides for all her children. During two general strikes, being single and living a very austere life, Matt gave money to fellow strikers who were married with children.

After he sobered up, Matt sought to repay all his debts. Once, while in the throes of alcoholism, Talbot stole a fiddler’s fiddle and sold it for money to buy booze. After he was in his right mind, he searched for the fiddler whose instrument he stole to pay him back. He failed to find him and so he gave the money to have a Mass said for the man whose livelihood he took.

Venerable Matt Talbot became a beacon of hope. He led an austere life of deep, even mystical prayer. But apart from knowing that he was “religious” and went to Mass a lot, his fellow workers, neighbors and even his siblings did not really understand the depth of his sanctity until after his death. He was quiet, soft-spoken, unremarkable, unassuming, someone who’s yes meant yes and no meant no. In the eyes of the world, he was literally a nobody.

Of course, not every Christian (or even most Christians) is called to live a life of extreme penance like Matt Talbot. We are, however, called to place our hope in Christ with the same love and devotion, to have the same commitment to our Savior, recoginizing our need and honoring what He has done for us.

And so, you don’t need to look for the Trinity up in the sky, or in some abstract philosophical construct, as useful as these can sometimes be. God is always right in front of you, if you have eyes to see. Another of God’s attributes is omnipresence. Being a Christian is an existential commitment, a commitment to living each day in what is now and has always been a peculiar way. Genuine hope is weird. As Flannery O'Connor put it: "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd."

Walking with the Lord can sometimes seem like a dry and dusty path to nowhere. But Venerable Matt Talbot, along with other holy women and men, shows us what it means to walk the road of faith, which gives us access to the grace in which we stand.

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1 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
2 John 16:13.^↩
3 Colossians 1:26-27.^↩