Tag Archives: conversion

Things not seen

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If you’re thinking about becoming Catholic, the emphasis the Church places on the Eucharist means you have to come to terms with this whole it-may-look-like-bread-but-believe-me-it-isn’t-bread thing.  What the Church calls transubstantiation.  How can a modern, educated person with at least some understanding of science and evidence possibly buy into Middle Ages Catholic voodoo about eating Jesus’ body and drinking his blood?  For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you how I came to terms with it.

 The central question

The central question is whether Jesus meant for me to understand the Eucharist as really and truly his body.  Was this his intention?   If Jesus wants me to believe when I go to Mass I really do eat his body and drink his blood, then that is what I will believe.

Here’s some context.

 I’m a Christian – with all my heart I believe Jesus was raised from the dead, literally got up out of a grave after being dead for days.  I believe it based on historical evidence, evidence that seems undeniable to me.  If a fellow can do that, then I have no particular problem with other things that he says, even if those things seem improbable. 

 Here are some examples:

  • Jesus says that a person who is baptized and who surrenders his life to Jesus is a person whose sins are forgiven.  That doesn’t make much sense.  When I was baptized (I was an adult), I didn’t have physical evidence my sins were forgiven.  What I had was Jesus saying so (it’s in Mark 16:16 and Matthew 28:20) and that was all I needed.  Something Jesus says can be completely without corroborating evidence, yet still be true and still be believed.
  • Jesus says my prayers make a difference.  That’s one I cannot demonstrate with scientific rigor.  Nor does it make all that much sense when you think about it.  About all I can tell is this — sometimes my prayers get a “yes” and sometimes it’s a “no”.  Sometimes I seem to get an answer right away, other times it seems to takes weeks and months.  Sometimes I pray and the sense I have is that God is absent and my prayers are unheard.  But none of that keeps me from believing Jesus when he says my prayers make a difference.  Remember, he’s the one who got up out of a grave.  If he says a thing, I trust him and believe.  Something Jesus says can relate to the physical world (like answering prayers) in a complicated way, but that doesn’t keep me from believing him.
  • Jesus says if I love him and obey him, then both he and the Father will come to me and make their home with me.  It’s in John 14:23.  I’ll be honest… I’m not even sure what that means.  But I don’t have to understand it for it to be true.  What in the world makes me think I have to understand a thing for it to be true?  That would be a crazy thing to believe!  Something Jesus says may involve an interaction between the realm of God and this world I live in and I may not understand it.  More likely, there’s about zero chance I’m going to understand it.

 So, the summary of all this is that Jesus can say something without corroborating evidence, something complicated, something that relates this world to the “other” in a way I cannot understand.  Yet, I will believe simply because he says it.  He is powerful and reliable.

 So did Jesus mean for me to take his words literally when he spoke of his body and blood?

Yes, he did.  The Bible says Jesus made the statement at the Last Supper “This is my body” and “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”.  The earliest recording is here starting in verse 23  from St. Paul.  The same words are also in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke.

Here are the reasons I find most persuasive for taking Jesus literally when he talks about his body and blood.

 A literal belief is ancient.    

I figure the folks nearest the apostles in time would know what it is that Jesus means by his words. 

For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, we have been taught, the food that has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic Prayer set down by him and by the change of which our flesh and blood is nourished, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.  St. Justin Martyr   Apologia   148-155 AD

 

But what consistency is there in those who hold that the bread over which thanks been given is the Body of their Lord, and the cup his Blood, if they do not acknowledge that he is the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, his Word, through whom the wood bears fruit, and the fountains gush forth, and the earth gives first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain on the ear?  How can they say that the flesh which has been nourished by the Body of the Lord and by his Blood gives way to corruption and does not partake of life?  Let them either change their opinion, or else stop offering the things mentioned.    St. Irenaeus       Adversus haereses    circa 180 and 199 AD

 Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Cyprian also left writings expressing the faith of the Church in a literal understanding of Jesus’ words.  If the 2nd Century Church is dead wrong about something as fundamental as the Eucharist, then Jesus’ promise to the apostles that he would guide the Church into all the truth seems to have no meaning.  To conclude the leaders nearest in time to the apostles made an error of this magnitude calls into question the entire role of the Holy Spirit and the Church in the world.

 By no means was the 1st and 2nd Century church biased toward what we call “fundamentalism”.

The early Church Fathers were not what we would call today “fundamentalists” or literalists.  They often viewed the Scriptures as allegory and analogy given by God for our instruction.  

What this means is that I cannot just reject out of hand the early Church Fathers as being naively literalistic with Scripture.  They were more likely not to view things simply as literal statements.  So when they take a statement that is as difficult as “This is my body” and they interpret Jesus as meaning exactly and literally those words, I really must pay attention to that.

A literal interpretation is the only way I can make sense out of John 6.

In John 6 is the so-called Bread of Life discourse of Jesus.  It’s one of the longest discourses we have and it is definitely one of the strangest.  Without analyzing the chapter verse-by-verse, I’ll just make two observations, then draw a conclusion.

 As the chapter progresses, Jesus becomes more and more insistent on the necessity of eating his body and drinking his blood.  These are strange, even repulsive, words and yet Jesus would not let go.  Instead, he bore down harder and harder.  He begins by saying the people must eat his flesh.  He ends by saying they must grind his flesh between their teeth.  And he says this is the only way they will have life in them.  The words are so repellant and shocking that most of his disciples leave him.  Jesus is even concerned that the Twelve may leave him, but good old St. Peter saves the day.

The other thing is that if these words are simply analogy, if the words speak of the body and blood only in a symbolic way, then why in the world does Jesus not say so?  What possible motive would he have in driving away his disciples with language straight out of a horror movie, if that language is simply a symbol?  That would be the behavior of a crazy man, and Jesus is definitely not crazy.

 My conclusion is that Jesus considers the teaching regarding his body and blood as so important, so central to his entire mission, that even if these words drive people away he will not teach them less than the full truth.

 For a very, very long time a literal understanding is the only thing anybody believed.

Look at the quote above from Iranaeus.  It is remarkable that his argument is based on even the heretics believing in a literal presence of the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist.  Even the heretics!

 The first big controversy over whether the bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus is in the late 11th Century, precipitated by a fellow named Berengar of Tours.  My point is it took a 1,000 years for there to be a major challenge to the Church’s faith that bread and wine are wonderfully changed in the Eucharist.  That’s a long time to go without a challenge from within the Church.

 This is not because there were no challenges to the faith of the Church.  This same 1,000 years saw tons of controversy over doctrine, but not over the bread and wine.

Then it is another 440 years before the Reformation challenges the accepted faith regarding the Eucharist.

 So here’s my question.  Am I supposed to believe that the 16th century reformers and protestors, who could charitably be said to have operated in a complicated time and with complicated motives, understood the teaching of Jesus and his apostles better than did the Early Fathers and 1,400 years of uninterrupted history?  I guess it’s not impossible, but it is so unlikely I can’t believe it.  Instead, I must suspect the philosophical and cultural and intellectual milieu of the times.

I come to the conclusion the alternative to a literal interpretation of Jesus’ words is unacceptable

 I understand my alternative to Transubstantiation to be this: in order to reject Catholic teaching I must conclude Jesus purposely drove away disciples based on a misunderstanding of his choice of words.  I must conclude the 16th Century understood the apostles better than the 2nd Century.  I must conclude the Catholic and Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist species, an understanding that has been crucial in holding these groups together for 2,000 years, is wrong – and instead conclude that somewhere within the almost bewildering division of Protestantism on this subject lies some group who has the right understanding.

 I can’t do that.

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.   John 6:53

Why do things stay so new?

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It’s a common experience that the “newness” of a thing will wear off after a few months or years.  A new car or a new house – a new job, even a marriage – eventually settles into a routine and is no longer exciting.  For me, there has been an exception to this.  Six years ago, I was received into the Roman Catholic Church after a lifetime of Christianity in another fellowship.  The newness of Catholicism has not worn off.  If anything, it’s more exciting than ever.  How can that be?

This has relevance to anyone who is considering conversion.  Many people have questions about whether a Christian conversion will wear off over time, will become old and sort of worn before it is discarded for the next new thing.  Maybe my experience will be encouraging.

Here are some things I’m pretty sure do not explain it

I’m not still excited about my Catholic faith because it’s a new experience to be a Christian.  I have served Jesus as well as I knew how for almost my entire adult life.  Ups and downs happened like most other things.  At one point, I betrayed the Lord big time, but with his help and the help of a wonderful brother in Christ, I recovered.

It’s not my personality.  I’m one of those people who get tired of a thing fairly quickly.  So my Catholic faith doesn’t continue to be new simply because that’s the sort of person I am.

It’s not because I have found some wonderful new ministry within the Church that excites and challenges me.  In my old fellowship I taught Bible classes constantly, preached every once in a while, conducted weddings and funerals.  In some contexts, I had influence and respect.  By contrast, as a Catholic layman I have not been able to do what I once did.  My personal ministry has even sometimes seemed insignificant compared to what I once did.  So that’s not it.

Nor is it the richness of Catholic fellowship.  To be sure, I have made wonderful friends in the Catholic Church, including clergy and religious.  Yet, the person-to-person involvement, the combined faith and social fellowship I loved in my old church is something I wish I could see more of in my parish.

Nor is it because my six years as a Catholic have just been one joyful high after another.  The Cleveland Diocese where I serve has seen its share of trouble in the last few years.  50 parishes have been closed.  I was an active member of the lay group selected to make difficult recommendations regarding five parishes in our area.  Our recommendations were not taken initially – we appealed to the Bishop and he changed his mind after tons of work and angst.  So I have been part of the hard side of a diocese in a Rust Belt city, and I don’t have illusions of Catholicism as butterflies and chubby cherubs and sweet little statues of Mary in a flowerbed.

It’s just a guess, but here’s what I suspect keeps my Catholic faith new

I suspect it is because of the Catholic Church herself.  Not simply what she proposes for belief, nor the beauty of her liturgy, but rather the Church itself.  If my suspicion is correct, then two traits of the Church keep things new.

The Church has power.  The authority Jesus gave first to Peter, then later to the apostles, continues to subsist in the successors to these men.  The initial and explicit instances of granting power are the ability to forgive sins and the power to bind and loose — the so-called power of the keys.

So I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.  Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.     Matthew 16:18,19

 

[Jesus] said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the holy Spirit.  Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.”      John 20:21-23

Very quickly, as the Church matured and came to an understanding of her role as the Body of Christ, other powers were exercised.  It is given to the Church to receive and proclaim and protect God’s truth with divine assistance and without error.  (John 16: 8-15, esp. verse 13   also I Timothy 3:15 )  This power guarantees the Church can assist me to grow authentically into the fullness of Christ.  This power allows me to rely on her to give me guidance and relieves me of the danger of every-man-for-himself determination of what the Bible means, of what the will of God is.

The Church has power to survive.  When Jesus gave Peter the power to forgive and bind and loose in Matthew 16, he also spoke of founding the Church and said the gates of the netherworld would not prevail against her.  Now I know a bit about the history of the Catholic Church, a history that is often inspiring, but sometimes is shameful and anything but godly.  Yet, God has stood by this promise to the Church that she will survive.  No institution in history has lived as long as the Church.  No other has survived what would have killed a merely human institution as has the Catholic Church.  No other has combined the preservation of what is unchangeable with the sort of growth and development which prove she is alive.

And that brings up my second suspicion as to why my Catholic faith remains new.

The Church has life and gives life.  This came as a shock to me.  I think it took a couple of years to realize that, yes, the Church is all the individual Christians taken as a group (which is all I had previously believed the church to be), but at the same time she is also more than that.  She really is the mystical Body of Christ, possessed of the life of Christ and able to give that life to me.  She is a living organic whole possessing and dispensing life as the Church.

In a way, this possession of life and giving of life explains the familiar description of the Eucharist as the “source and summit” of the life of the Church.  In John 6, Jesus says unless a person eats his body and drinks his blood, that person does not have life in him.  It’s in verse 53 here.      This life belongs to the Church as the Body of Christ.  By virtue of her priesthood and her inheritance in the apostles and her intimate, lively relation to her Head, the Church offers me life.  The source of everything good, everything lively in the Church, is this nourishment in the Eucharist rooted in Jesus that literally continues without end across the world and across time.  And the summit of all the power and life of the Church is this same communion in the body and blood and Jesus.

I receive this life at Mass.  It never gets old or loses its power to energize and quicken.  It never fails to amaze me, and puzzle me, for that matter – it seems too good to possibly be true, yet there it is.  The 2,000-year history of the Church and her teaching assure me I eat the Body of Christ in the Sacrament.  I am assured the life I receive is linked to the liturgy in heaven, is precisely the gift that Jesus said he gave for the life of the world, and is precisely the sacrifice of Calvary given in a new way.

Never has the Savior been so immediate, so available and intimate, as he is now.  The life received in the Eucharist spills over into prayer that draws me, into liturgy that transcends my ordinary circumstances and then seems almost to haunt my mind between the times at Mass.  This life seems even to chip away at my weakness and sin, gradually and gently coaxing me more fully to obey God, like medicine for what separates me from God and man.

And it all stays new.

 So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.        II Corinthians 5:17

Peace and joy and endurance

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During Easter each year, we read the Gospel of John.  Several times, we hear Jesus say that he gives us peace and joy.  He makes these promises before he dies and again after he is resurrected.  Does Jesus promise peace and joy so that we can sit at home and watch TV without worrying?  How should I approach times in my life when peace and joy seem to be exactly what I do not have?  Is this an empty promise?

This is the fourth post in a series about God’s promises.  Look here , and here , and here and here to read the other posts.

Do I get peace and joy so I can sit back and take things easy?

Some preachers today proclaim a “gospel of prosperity” – serve God and you get money and success, maybe even ease.  But let me give you two absolutely iron-tight reasons this simply cannot be the message of the Gospel.

First, you cannot find a single hero of the faith in the Bible or in the Church’s saints who lived that way.  Who you gonna name?  The apostles?  Nope, they all died as martyrs, except John, and he was exiled on an island.  King David?  He had trouble almost every day of his life.  Isaiah or Jeremiah or Ezekiel or any other Old Testament prophet you want to name?  Nope, nope, and nope.  Some of them suffered horribly, others were discouraged and ignored.  Abraham or Isaac or Jacob?  Are you kidding?  Go read and you see their life was full of challenge, even suffering.

The same goes for the Saints and Doctors of the Church.  They did not receive peace and joy in order that they could just take it easy.  The overwhelming majority of them led lives of difficulty.

Second, even though Jesus says we receive peace and joy, he specifically says it won’t be easy.  Look at two passages from Mark’s Gospel.

And these are the ones sown on rocky ground who, when they hear the word, receive it at once with joy.  But they have no root; they last only for a time. Then when tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away.    Mark 4:16,17

Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age: houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.     Mark 10:29,30

Jesus doesn’t say “if” persecutions come – the Lord says “when”.

So is the promise of peace and joy an empty promise?

No, it isn’t empty – it’s deeply significant in a Christian’s life when properly understood.

The main thing in responding to Jesus’ promise of peace and joy is to distinguish what these things are and are not. “Peace and joy” is not the same thing as having plenty of money and good health and children who never give you trouble and the admiration of the people around you and good bone structure and great hair.

Peace and joy is the abiding conviction that you are doing God’s will, which is precisely the confidence that all is well with you.  You are in agreement with God, who is the great Ground of all there is and can be.  The focus of your being lifts from current conditions and a short-term future, onto a horizon linked to eternity.  God is your friend.

Let me offer an example from Father Robert Barron’s Catholicism dvd series.  (By the way, the dvd series is a triumph.  You can learn more here.

Here is Father Barron’s example.  In the Beatitudes, Jesus speaks of the happy person as one who does not look for happiness in economic wealth or in power or in experience.  The happy person hungers for God and for the qualities that belong to God.  Jesus even says  in the final Beatitude “Blessed are you when men… persecute you… on account of me.”  Father Barron then goes to Matthias Grunewald’s Isenheim altar depiction of the Crucifixion and says this painting of Jesus nailed to the cross is a picture of a happy man.  Why?  Because this is a man who does the will of God and knows it, a man who is motivated by what motivates God.  Thus, this is a man who is at peace and one who has joy, despite his suffering.

St. Paul speaks of much the same thing.

Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus…  I know indeed how to live in humble circumstances; I know also how to live with abundance. In every circumstance and in all things I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of living in abundance and of being in need.  I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.     Philippians 4:6,7,12,13

Paul’s peace did not depend on whether he was hungry or well-fed.  His peace was not a function of whether he was in abundance or in need.  He lived by the strength of Jesus.  His peace came from Jesus.

The oddly logical link between joy and peace and suffering

God in his wisdom and forbearance has allowed our world to continue, even though so much of this world is controlled by people who are evil.  Somehow, it is the will of God that hurtful people nevertheless retain the freedom to exercise their hurtfulness.  It is his will that even natural forces have power to cause physical suffering for his children.

He gives peace and joy to you and me who serve him – he does this in order that we may endure suffering in this world, yet remain bound to Father and Son and holy Spirit.  It is odd, isn’t it?  For now, it is necessary that there be pain and hunger and persecution and all the rest.  So God holds me close, he “guards my heart and mind in Christ Jesus” so that when I suffer I am not in danger of separation from him.  Romans 8:28-39  is another passage that describes this process.

Far from being an empty promise, God’s peace and joy are what make it possible for me to imitate Jesus in his suffering, even Jesus on the cross, “who for the sake of the joy that lay before him endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God”.   Hebrews 12:2

Suffering and persecution are inevitable for God’s people.

To endure suffering, God gives his people peace and joy.

When the suffering is ended and we are in the presence of God, part of our perfection will have come from the suffering we endured with God’s help.

Overwhelming temptation – can the devil make you do something?

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God gives a promise that makes it impossible for a Christian to shrug his shoulders when he sins and say “the devil made me do it”.  It’s a promise described by St. Paul in I Corinthians which says whenever a Christian is tempted to sin, there will always be a way to escape the temptation, always a way to keep from sinning.  And that means being Jesus’ disciple is not hopeless, it is not doomed to fail.  This promise has a bright side, and it has sort of a tough side, too.

This is the fourth post in a series about God’s promises.  Look here , and here, and here to read the other posts.

Here’s the bright side to the promise

First a word about the people Paul was writing to.  The Corinthians are already Christians and they are literally covered up with stuff that just is not right.  These people get drunk at church (no kidding) — they sue each other instead of settling their difference privately — they have factions within the church sort of like denominations — they do things in front of each other (having to do with pagan worship and food) that really create problems for Christians falling away from the church — they have a man who is sleeping with his mother-in-law and nobody seems to think it’s a problem — their worship is chaotic and even out of control to the extent it’s hard to tell what’s going on — rich people discriminate against poor people in obvious, hurtful ways.  Good grief!  If your diocese had a parish like these Corinthians, your bishop would be all over them to clean things up.  And Paul was definitely all over the Corinthians.

As often as they sinned, it would have been easy for the Corinthians to throw up their hands and just say “what’s the use?”  Paul tells them about God’s promise so they won’t give up.

In chapter 10 after Paul makes a list of warnings, he then tells these Christians about a promise God has made to them:

No trial has come to you but what is human. God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength; but with the trial he will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.   I Corinthians 10:13

 

Paul says sinning as badly as these people already have done is no reason to quit!  The good news in this promise is that God is actively involved in the life of each Christian to limit the temptations each of us face.  The limit is that the temptation will not be more than we can bear.

This promise gives us the courage to start our discipleship, because God’s promise means our effort is not hopeless.  We will not meet temptation so strong that we are doomed to fail.  And even when we do sin, we have the courage to “get back up” because of this promise.  If we endure, then Paul’s word that God “will also provide a way out” means God is our helper who understands each situation we are in and who will help overcome.

Here’s the tougher side to the promise

Since God protects me from overwhelming temptation, one so strong I cannot resist it – since “God is faithful and will not let you [that would be me!] be tried beyond your strength” – well… it means when I do give in to the temptation it sure isn’t God’s fault!  He gave me a way out and I just did not take it.  It means I sinned because I wanted to.

So this promise from God means that part of the process of dealing with temptation is to step up to the plate and as Paul puts it “bear it”.  This is endurance, it is patience, it is trust in God and in myself that I really can play my part as a human with a will.  It is self-control to avoid the wrong and do the right.  Most of the time, it will not be fun.  But it doesn’t have to be grim, either.

Each time I resist temptation with God’s help, I learn a little more about myself.  I learn what it feels like to resist and succeed.  I gain the experience of working in partnership with God to accomplish his will, to produce the project that is my life.  I see from experience  that, yes, God plays his part and I can play mine, too.

Here’s a sweet description of how this works, again from Paul:

Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. For God is the one who, for his good purpose, works in you both to desire and to work.    Philippians 2:12,13

 

Did you help your mom in the kitchen when you were a kid?  Or maybe mow the grass with your dad?  There was joy in learning you really could do these things with their help.  Joy in the knowledge you were growing and developing as you should.  If I could find that same joy of growth and purpose when I partner with God to resist temptation, then I would be farther along the path to holiness.

So what is my part in resisting temptation?

Trust the promise.  Know that things are not hopeless.

Get back up if you do sin.  The promise is still there, Jesus is still there.  Don’t give up.

Avoid the situations that put you in strong temptation.  The Church calls these “occasions for sin”.  Part of knowing yourself and playing your part is to stay away from what tempts you in the first place.  It’s part of humility.  It’s part of the “way out” that God promises.

Pray for strength whenever you are tempted.  And pray for a continuing sense of recollection, for the awareness that God is both available and is your great helper.

Picture the Lord who suffered to forgive you.  If you are Catholic and go to Mass, picture the crucifix in your church.  If you’re not, then bring to mind as vividly as you can the Lord’s agony.  Know that if you choose to yield to sin, then it is only through Jesus’ suffering that you will be forgiven.  This isn’t morbid – it’s realism.

Study the Bible and study the Church’s magisterial teaching.  How can I hope to receive strength from God and from my faith if I’m not even aware of what the Bible and the Church teach?

Prepare for the time when temptation comes.  Design your response ahead of time, then do your best to stick to it.

Spend time in Christian service.  Get involved with other people at church or in charities doing the things that please God.  Spend your time and spend your self.

Confess your sins.  Obviously, you should confess your sins to God when you pray, discussing them specifically and frankly.  Then confess them to a priest if you are Catholic or to a trusted Christian friend if you are not.  Own your sins.

Be prepared for the resistance to sin to be difficult.  Paul speaks of “bearing” temptation.

Join with people who can help you.  It might be a 12-step group, or an internet support group with temptation similar to yours.  Or simply choosing your friends from Christians who have the same goal as you.  Christianity is not a solitary activity.  It is communion.

All of this taken together is sort of the same thing as what the Benedictines say.  Ora et labora.  “Work and pray.”

Here is something to remember about your non-Christian friends

The promise of protection from overwhelming temptation is not made to people outside the church.  It is made to Christians.  If you have non-Christian friends who seem to give in to certain temptations over and over again, remember that it might be more than they can do to resist.  Be patient and understanding with your non-Christian friends.  Help them come to Jesus, because that is where the protection from temptation is.

God limits the temptation I face.  He will not allow a stronger temptation than I can resist.

God provides a way out of temptation.

I play my part when I take His way out of temptation and bear it.

Lunch is on me. Signed, Jesus.

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When Jesus tells us something, it is never just some kind of Hallmark Card moment.  It is never just pretty words with a soft focus picture.  If Jesus says it, it’s because he means it.  In the Sermon on the Mount is a famous promise.  Jesus says that God feeds the birds and he clothes the grass.  Jesus then draws a conclusion that confronts materialism head on.  He says if I pursue the righteousness of God as my first priority, then I will receive the food and clothing that God knows I need.

Why would Jesus make a promise like that?  Can I really believe it?

This is the second of several posts about God’s promises.  Look at the first section here for a discussion of why anybody (even God) makes promises.  Read the part titled God makes promises for the same reason you make promises.   

There’s a lot going on in this promise – more than you might think…

Here is the entire passage:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds in the sky; they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you more important than they?  Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?  Why are you anxious about clothes? Learn from the way the wild flowers grow. They do not work or spin.  But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was clothed like one of them.  If God so clothes the grass of the field, which grows today and is thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not much more provide for you, O you of little faith?  So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’  All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.   But seek first the kingdom (of God) and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.  Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.  Sufficient for a day is its own evil.     Matthew 6:25-34

First of all, look at the examples Jesus uses.  Birds.  What do they do all day?  They fly around eating everything they can find.  When you get down to it, it’s almost all a bird does.  Or flowers and grass.  Just about all day they are busy with photosynthesis and whatever biochemical mystery turns dirt into leaves.  If a bird reads Matthew 6 about God feeding him, and based on that verse decides to sit on a branch waiting for God to have some takeout delivered to him… well, that bird starves.  Not because God welched on the promise, but because the bird did not play his part.

Jesus speaks of creatures who play their proper part in God’s creation.  God plays his part, too, and his part involves feeding birds and clothing grass.  There is cooperation between creature and Creator.

Second, Jesus says we are “more important” than birds and plants.  We are more important because we resemble God in ways a bird or a plant does not.  We are in God’s image.  That means the part we play in creation differs from the part the plants and birds play.  Yet, within this creation God will give us what he knows we need as creatures, provided we play our part.

Third, our proper part in creation is to pursue God.  Birds get their nourishment from bugs and seed and carrion.  Because I am a spiritual creature (as well as a physical one), I get part of my nourishment, the spiritual part, from God himself.  If I will pursue God, if I will hunger for God and play my part to satisfy that hunger, God will do two things for me.  First, he will allow me to find him, even to possess him.  Second, he will tend to my physical needs.

And last, don’t be a pig.  St. Timothy was St. Paul’s delegate to various places that Paul couldn’t visit personally.  This is part of what Paul told Timothy to teach:

[R]eligion with contentment is a great gain.  For we brought nothing into the world, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of it.  If we have food and clothing, we shall be content with that.    I Timothy 6:6-8 

Doesn’t that fit things together nicely?  Paul tells us to be content with food and clothing, and that is precisely what Jesus promises in the Sermon on the Mount if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

The part a lot of us don’t like is that last part about contentment

A fellow in Tulsa one time told me that he had more money than Donald Trump.  His explanation?  “I have all the money I want.”  That’s a deeply Christian attitude, especially since this fellow was by no means rich.

Most people who read this post are probably middle-class Westerners.  The Western media tell us consistently and repeatedly that the drive to possess physical things is not only natural, it is laudable, it is worthy of praise and something we all ought to encourage.  We are told over and over again that to support the economy we should consume.  That the basis of the economy is our consumption.  Good grief – look at what we call ourselves.  Consumers!  As if our purpose is to consume.

Bacteria consume.  A human’s aim should be higher than that!

And even Christians can succumb to the enchantment of owning physical things.  A bigger car, a better address, a big enough retirement fund that we don’t need to depend on anything else for our security, clothes that reflect to strangers our refinement and economic success.  As Christians, we are permitted to have these things, but we are forbidden to love them or use them to define our lives.  We are forbidden to make these things our first priority.

Jesus says our first priority is to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”  This simply means that I must imitate God, which Jesus also explained in the Sermon on the Mount in chapter 5 starting at verse 21.  Here’s a summary

  • Do not hate.  Don’t live your life in anger.
  • Do everything in your power to be reconciled (to live in peace) with people around you.
  • Don’t have sex outside marriage and don’t fill your mind with sexual thought.
  • If there are aspects of your life that cause you to sin, then get rid of them.
  • Keep your marriage vows.
  • Keep your promises.
  • Do not take revenge.
  • Respond to violence and injustice with non-violence.
  • Love everybody.

Do these things – do them because of a total commitment to Jesus – add to these things the qualities Jesus lists in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5, the beginning of the chapter).  And you are pursuing the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Jesus hits me between the eyes with this promise!

Look at the promise the wrong way and it could seem like what is happening is this – Jesus says I should give my life to God and what I get in return is food and clothing.  Which is not all that exciting if I look at it that way, if it looks like the trade is bare necessities in return for my entire life.  But the fact is, I get more.  I get life itself, I get life in such abundance that existence is on a wholly different level (John 10:7ff).  I get God himself and Jesus and the holy Spirit.  I get life in heaven with them and the saints forever (John14:23 and Revelation 22:1-5).  God freely gives everything he has if I will freely choose to love and obey him.

But here’s why he makes the promise about food and clothing, a promise that can seem to us in the Western middle class something so modest and even negligible.  This modest promise simultaneously removes any excuse for not following him because I fear I would starve and at the same time it confronts me with the stark choice of whether I prefer to pursue physical possessions rather than God.  This promise of God reveals me to myself, it shines a disturbing light on whether I love God or whether I love physical possessions.  Here’s how Jesus puts it.

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither rust nor moth destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal… No one can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and riches.      Matthew 6:19-24

 

Jesus isn’t playing.  He died so I can have the chance to gain God.  He did not die so I can spend my life pursuing houses and Buicks and designer labels.

 

This promise of food and clothing is a dead-serious promise that forces me confront my own appetite for God.

God knows I have physical needs.

He promises to meet my physical needs, if I seek his kingdom and his righteousness.

If the promise is taken seriously, it reveals to me my own priorities.

 

NOTE:  My next post will discuss how this promise can be understood when Christians die in famines.  If there’s a famine and a Christian dies, has God broken his promise?

It will all work out. Really.

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In Romans 8, we are promised that all things work for good for those who love God.  Nice to know, isn’t it, especially when things are hard.  When life gets hard, it may be difficult to see just how God is keeping this promise, yet we trust God.   But why would God make such a sweet promise in the first place?

Note: this is the first of several posts about God’s promises.

God makes promises for the same reason you make promises

Here’s why you make promises: you want to get somebody else to do something.  Think about it.  You go into a bank and you promise the banker you will pay back a loan.  You do that because you want the banker to loan you some money.  Or maybe you promise to get a little child some new stickers after Mass.  You make the promise hoping the little angel will be quiet during church.  Here’s another – you promise a person you will love her until you die.  You promise it because you want her to marry you.

You make promises because you want the other person to do something like loan you money or be good in church.  You might also have a longer-term goal in mind.  If the banker sees you keep your promise on a small loan, you hope that will help your credit score, which in turn prompts other people to loan your money.  But the base motive is still the same.  You make promises to persuade somebody else to do something.

God makes promises to us because he wants us to do things, too.  He says exactly this in II Peter chapter 1:

[God] has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire.  For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love.  If these are yours and increase in abundance, they will keep you from being idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.   II Peter 1:4-8 

The goal of God’s promises to you is that you partake in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world.  That’s huge!!  And what is the change in your behavior that God intends these promises to produce?  He wants you to make your best effort to be faithful and virtuous and enduring and affectionate and loving.  God does not play for small change, does he?

The promises that God makes to us do, of course, comfort us and they inform us.  But those are secondary effects.  The main reason God makes promises is to change us, to assist in the process of our partaking in his nature.

Now, back to the Romans 8 promise

So think about the promise that all things will work together for good if we love God.  Here’s the whole passage:

We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose…  What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him?  Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who acquits us.  Who will condemn? It is Christ [Jesus] who died, rather, was raised, who also is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.  What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?  As it is written: “For your sake we are being slain all the day; we are looked upon as sheep to be slaughtered.”  No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:28, 31-39

First, be very clear about what this promise “that all things work for good” does not mean.  It does not mean that we will escape all discomfort or suffering if we love God.  Immediately after wording the promise in Romans 8, Paul speaks of anguish and famine and persecution, so it’s still possible that these things could happen to us.  This is not a promise that we escape all unpleasantness.  Think about it – Peter and Paul sure loved Jesus and they suffered amazing things, then they were martyred in Rome.  So the promise cannot mean that you and I escape all pain as long as we love God.

 

The promise says that everything will work together for good if we love God.  So even if suffering and persecution do happen to me, they will be part of this “working together for good”.  God will look after what happens to me and he will do what it takes to make sure things turn out “good” for me.  And since I love him, “good” means whatever brings me closer to God, whatever makes me love him even more, whatever makes me a better imitator of Jesus, all these things are “good” even if they are painful.

When you get right down to it, this promise confronts me, it almost dares me

This promise is a powerful word for obedience.  There are some pretty stiff things that Jesus gives me as commands.  Not suggestions – commands.  He tells me to be generous with my money and time to other people, even people who are beggars and strangers (for instance, Luke 6:35 and 12:33).  He tells me to incur risk in order to help someone who is in great danger (the Good Samaritan parable ends with the statement “go and do the same”).  He tells me that when I encounter jerks who mistreat me and even abuse me, that non-violence is the only path I may take as his disciple (Matthew 5:38-48).

And this Romans 8 promise that things will work together in my life for good absolutely leaves me with no excuse for not obeying these difficult commands.

I can’t tell Jesus “I’m scared”.  I can’t tell Jesus that turning the other cheek is just too risky.  I can’t tell Jesus that if I do these hard things he commands it will get in the way of my bigger plans and mess them up (even if the plans are for him).   And the reason I cannot say these things is that Jesus promised me things will work together for good if I love him and he also said if I love him I will keep his commands.  To be sure, I may very well suffer because I obey Jesus, but I can be certain that everything will work together for good.

And this promise is a powerful word for conversion.  If a person is far enough along the road to conversion to Jesus that she has concluded God can be trusted, then hesitancy to convert can be done away with in this promise.  Convert to Jesus – begin the journey of loving Jesus with everything you have.  And things will fit together for good.

It is a powerful word when there’s a big decision to make.  Christians have to make big decisions, just like everybody else.  What school to go to, whether to accept some job, who to marry, how to raise a child, whether to retire.  We pray about these things and we consider the will of God carefully, but at the end of the day we have to make a decision.  This promise of things working together for good keeps me from being paralyzed when I must make a big decision.  Even if the decision I choose is unwise or uninformed and causes me trouble, nevertheless it will fit into a pattern for good if I keep on loving God.

This promise is a powerful word when plans get messed up.  Sometimes it seems like things “come out of nowhere” and the best plans, the best decisions get messed up.  Maybe I get sick.  Maybe the bottom falls out of the economy.  Maybe I’m doing research and I lose my funding or it turns out the person in charge of things disagrees with how I’m going and I lose a couple years of work.  Stuff happens.  But this promise means that even these unforeseen developments will somehow, eventually work together for good.

God promises me that things will work together for good if I love him.

The promise improves my ability to live like Jesus.

This promise enables me to trust God, to make plans and decisions, and to obey God without fear.

Daydreams and the will of God

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I suspect this is true for the majority of Christians.  On the one hand, we want to work the will of God, to please God and be on his good side.  And at the same time, we have thoughts of what would be our own dream come true, fun little daydreams of a possible world in which our ambitions and aspirations come true.  These dreams are not necessarily opposed to God – they are just somehow more personal, more based on my own preference.  A person who is thinking about conversion to Jesus may especially dream of some Christian role that she believes would bring happiness and she even hopes this is what God intends for her life.

Is anything wrong with daydreams or with fond hopes for the future?  Is it ok to pray that God go along with these daydreams?  For that matter, what about charting out specific plans for my life?  Does that somehow get in God’s way or could it even mean that I don’t want him to take charge of my life?

St. Paul had these issues three times.  What did he do?

Call this Case One.  At the opening of Acts 16, Paul and Silas are planning their itinerary.  They decided to go to western Turkey (called Asia back then) and the Bible says the Holy Spirit “prevented” them from doing it.  So then they figure maybe they should go to northern Turkey (Bithynia), but the Spirit won’t let them do that, either.  Eventually, they get a vision in a dream telling them to preach in Macedonia, so that’s what they do right away.

Call this Case Two.  In Acts 20, Paul has finished collecting money to aid the church in Judea.  Now he wants to get to Jerusalem with the money and he’s in a big hurry.  Paul says in verse 23 “in one city after another the holy Spirit has been warning me that imprisonment and hardships await me” in Jerusalem.  So God isn’t exactly stopping Paul, but he’s not exactly encouraging the trip, either.  It gets even more intense in Acts 21:

We had been there [Caesaria] several days when a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea.  He came up to us, took Paul’s belt, bound his own feet and hands with it, and said, “Thus says the holy Spirit: This is the way the Jews will bind the owner of this belt in Jerusalem, and they will hand him over to the Gentiles.”  When we heard this, we and the local residents begged him not to go up to Jerusalem.  Then Paul replied, “What are you doing, weeping and breaking my heart? I am prepared not only to be bound but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”   Since he would not be dissuaded we let the matter rest, saying, “The Lord’s will be done.”

Long story short, Paul gets to Jerusalem and sure enough, he gets thrown in jail and he is imprisoned for several years thereafter.  Eventually, he ends up a prisoner in Rome.

Call this Case Three.  In Romans 15:22-24, Paul says he has often wanted to come to Rome, but something always gets in the way.  He writes with a “hope” (that’s what he calls it) that maybe he will get to go to Spain and on the way there he can stop in Rome.  This hope comes halfway true, but not the way he wanted.  Paul does get as far as Rome, but only as the prisoner described  in Case Two above.  Nobody knows if he made it to Spain.

What we can learn from Paul

Case Two lets us know it’s ok to make our own decisions about our Christian ministry.  Maybe other Christians will urge us one way or the other like they did Paul, but it is permitted – we have the example of the apostle – it is permitted that we make our own decision about what to plan and what to do.  Obviously, a proper decision should not violate love or morality, but given that, it is permitted that we make our own decision.

The general principle is that my human intellect and will are dignified by God to the extent that I may shape my own life.  Dogs don’t get this – not even monkeys or dolphins.  But as a human I am sort of handed the keys to the car and told to take a drive.  Heady stuff!

Case One, however, says we ought not be a stubborn mule about things.  If a decision seems providentially prevented, then by all means I should wait to see if God will somehow give a nudge in some other direction he prefers.  Chances are, I will not receive a vision from God telling me exactly what to do next … yet, haven’t there been times in your life when it just seems like you are supposed to go a particular way?  Be open to the possibility this feeling is of God, even if it’s not anything you would have planned yourself.

The general principle is I should not become so attached the plans I make that God can’t get a word in.  It’s always possible God has a different idea, and if he does, his idea is definitely the better one.

Case Three says Paul had hopes that he held onto, even if they sometimes seemed to be only disappointments.  Godly hopes like going to Spain (the edge of his world) – and, who knows, maybe it will happen.  Here’s what I notice about Paul.  There’s no indication in the Romans 15 passage that Paul is flipped out about everything not going his own way.  He even says “I hope to see you in passing as I go to Spain… now, however, I am going to Jerusalem.”  He has made a priority choice for Jerusalem over Spain and he abides by the consequences.

The general principle is when one thing gets in the way of another, or when some project or hope gets delayed, the thing to do is to accept the delay with patience, even as you continue to harbor the hope.

Here’s a way to look at all this

I can offer my plans and even my dreams to God as a kind of prayer.  With an attitude committed to God’s will as the prime force in my life, I can enjoy making plans and dreams, communicating these to God, sharing them with him.  Maybe he will enable my plans and hopes to be realized.

Maybe I dream that some effort of mine accomplishes real good in God’s Kingdom.  Or I can hope that my conversion will sort of snowball into more people coming to Jesus.  I can use my imagination even in a daydream to picture a better me overcoming limitations, launching into some new sea with Jesus to bring glory to God.  I can imagine me as a saint and how I would play my part in that.  If Paul is a guide (and he is), there is nothing wrong with these things.  I can ask God to take into account my dreams as he charts my life.

But I must not become attached to these plans and daydreams.  They are in God’s hands.  They are a prayer to God and he will decide.  They are not demands – they are prayers.  In fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way.  I remember how fouled up things were when I tried to run my life by myself.  The only sure way to this sainthood that I dream of is after I plan and dream, to give the wheel to God and devote myself to obedient faith in him.

There’s a real tough side to what I’m trying to say

Some plans can only be accomplished after much work and with much risk, which means if they don’t work out, you may suffer a terrible loss.  If you do decide to undertake a plan to serve God as a doctor, then bless your heart, you have 10 years of school to deal with.  You may plan a beautiful family to serve and honor God, and then your spouse goes haywire and leaves you with the kids.  Or you launch a business – with all your heart, you promise any gain in that business to God and his church – and the business fails and you have nothing.

The thing that’s tough is that you can plan a thing for God, invest yourself in that plan, and yet end up with great pain and loss.  Ask Peter who was crucified.  Ask Paul who begged Jesus to take the “thorn in his flesh” away, the thorn put there by Satan, and Jesus said “no”.  Ask the Carmelite nun Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)who gave up everything in her plans for God, yet died at Auschwitz.

Nevertheless, great loss and what might even be called failure from a certain point of view do not change what I have written here.  Knowing that God may allow my plans not to be fulfilled, nevertheless I work for him.  I play my part in the pattern of my life in plans and dreams, trusting that if I suffer loss in these plans, God will sustain me in that loss and draw me even closer.

The proper response to God when plans go wrong

The prophet Habakkuk was told by God that Judah would be destroyed by the Chaldeans and nothing can forestall God’s decision in the matter.  Habakkuk’s beautiful response trusts God even when every plan of Habakkuk’s has been laid waste:

Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit appears on the vine, though the yield of the olive fails and the terraces produce no nourishment, though the flocks disappear from the fold and there is no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD and exult in my saving God.   Habakkuk 3:17,18

Plans and dreams to serve God are fine, so long as the plans themselves do not become the substance of my life.

What God permits to disrupt my plans should not be despised as though God made some kind of mistake.

We pray Fiat voluntas tua – thy will be done.

What if I’m not sure?

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This Sunday’s Gospel was about the apostle Thomas when he said (after the other apostles told him Jesus had been raised from the dead) “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”  Thomas wants proof.  A week later, Jesus gives Thomas exactly the proof that Thomas requires, plus a very gentle chide to him for his doubt of his fellow apostles.   Jesus doesn’t seem to think that Thomas’s doubt is grounds for a penalty.

But there’s another Bible passage about doubt that is quite different to how Jesus treated Thomas.  Decades later, James encourages Christians who are in need of wisdom (which would be all of us!) to ask for wisdom from God and he will give it to them unless they doubt.  This is what James says about the one who doubts: “For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways.”

So Thomas doubts, but he still gets what he asks for.  Then James tells me that if I doubt, I will get nothing.  What’s going on here??  What is the difference in the two passages?

There are two kinds of doubt

One kind of doubt is when I don’t know the outcome of some process or don’t know whether some event will happen or not.  For instance, I may doubt the outcome of an election.  Or maybe I work for a company introducing a new product – no matter how good the product is, I still have at least some uncertainty, some doubt, as to whether it will be a success.  In a similar way, I can pray to God for an event (birth of a child, healing an illness, some project at church), but I cannot know for sure how he will react to that prayer for an event.  There is doubt.

The other kind of doubt is not in the realm of events.  It is in the realm of persons and thus is a more fundamental doubt.  For instance, if I know you well enough, I may become quite certain you are honest.  I obtain this degree of certainty not merely because of what you do, but much more because I know you, because I know the person that is you.  This does not mean I can predict your specific behavior in every circumstance that requires honesty.  After all, there may be different ways of being honest in a given situation and sometimes one must choose.  But I am nevertheless certain that whatever actions you choose, those actions will fit in with the conduct of an honest person.  I know you and your character, even if I don’t know what you will do.

To repeat, the key thing is that I know you.  I do not know specifically what you will do.  So I will always have doubts about events connected to you.  But it is possible for me to know the sort of person you are and to know this deeply and without doubt.

What Thomas doubted (and what the other ten apostles doubted, for that matter)

Thomas doubted an event.  Admittedly, it was a big event, one that none of the apostles saw coming despite the fact Jesus told them it would happen.  Thomas doubted the event of Jesus’ resurrection.  But so did all the others.  Not one of them declared to the others after Jesus was executed “we must wait and see if he rises like he said he would”.  No one said anything like that.  They hid.

Then after the resurrection, Thomas even went so far as to doubt the other apostles’ testimony about that event, apparently because it just seemed too fantastic.  But the other ten apostles had been exactly like Thomas.  Remember how the women told the apostles that Jesus had risen?  And Luke says “their story seemed like nonsense and they did not believe them”.  The other apostles are no different from Thomas.  They didn’t believe the resurrection event before it happened, nor did they believe what they heard second-hand from the women.

But Jesus is not bent out of shape with them.  They have not so much doubted him as they have doubted an event.

So what is the doubt that James say offends God so much he won’t even respond to me?

Here is the whole passage from James.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and he will be given it.  But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the wind.  For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways.      James 1:5-7

 

James says the doubt that offends God is the doubt that is not “in faith”.  It is a doubt that questions God himself.  There’s nothing new about this proposition.  Hebrews 11 says that without faith it is impossible to please God and goes on to say that part of this faith is belief that God rewards his children.  You can read the whole passage here, especially verse 6.  The passage says I must, absolutely must, understand that God rewards his children.  So the doubt that is not “in faith” as James puts it, the doubt that offends God, is the doubt that violates faith, the doubt that wonders whether or not God gives gifts generously.  A doubt that questions God’s most basic character.

This doubt has the result that I will receive nothing from God – I have doubted God himself, not simply doubted some event.  And when you get right down to it, this makes good sense, doesn’t it?  After all, God can be mighty surprising sometimes in the events he either allows to happen or perhaps even causes to happen.  I’m not able to predict what he will do – but as a function of God’s character and his love, he has promised me wisdom and love and support in times of trouble and protection from overwhelming temptation and many other blessings.  I trust him 100% in faith, I trust him with absolutely no doubt as to his character and motive.

An example from today’s news

Here is an example of what I’m trying to get at.  It comes from the Pope.  This week is the birthday of Pope Benedict XVI.  Here is part of what he said in his homily on his birthday.  The quote is from USA Today, but the emphasis is mine.  “I am facing the final leg of the path of my life and I don’t know what’s ahead,” Benedict said in his homily. “I know though that God’s light is there … and that his light is stronger than every darkness.”

The Holy Father says he does not know the events.  He says he knows the Lord.  He sets a good example for us all.

 It’s usually OK to have doubts about events.

It is not OK to have doubts about God himself.

With real faith in God, I may trust that he will bless me according to his will.  And when I pray according to his will, I am assured he will answer Yes.

Sleeping in church

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A committed Christian surprised me the other day with a problem that bothers him.  It bothers me, too.  He is distracted, even angered, by the apparent casual attitude and lack of involvement by some people at Mass.  He’s talking about folks who fiddle around with something during the prayers, whisper during the homily, don’t participate in the songs or Mass parts – all are just variations of sleeping in church.  What surprised me is that this bothers him so much he has considered not attending Mass himself.

So here’s the question… how am I supposed to react when something that is utterly precious to me (namely, worshipping God) is treated with lack of respect or even contempt by people a few feet from me?

Be generous

To start with, I ought to make some allowances, for sure in cases where children are involved or maybe really old people.  If there are issues with physical or mental health that have an effect on attention span or comprehension, well I want to be generous and understanding with a thing like that.   Since I have no way of knowing the conditions in a stranger’s mind, then I ought to make allowances for what I don’t know.  That’s part of loving other people the way I want them to love me.

For that matter, being this way is prudent.  In Luke 6 Jesus says “the measure that you give is the measure you get back”.  In James 2, the idea is expressed that the judgment I will undergo will vary in its rigor according to how harsh or how kind I have been with others.  James says “judgment will be without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy”.  That’s a pretty sobering statement when I consider how much I will need mercy when I stand before Jesus!  So I’m going to do my best to cut some slack for the guy in the next pew who is bothering me.

For goodness sake, I ought to keep worshipping myself!

This isn’t easy.  It is definitely an act of self-discipline and of recollection before God that I don’t allow a distraction in Mass to interrupt my own worship.  In a weird way, I might even be able to turn that distraction into a little prayer and maybe even a conscious reinforcement of my decision to worship God.

Let’s say a couple of kids are squirming around in front of me as Father elevates the consecrated Host.  For that matter, let’s say a couple of teenagers three feet in front of me are nudging each other and whispering and ridiculing almost everything that happens at the Easter Vigil.  (This actually happened to me last week.)  Well, of course, that disappoints me.  I’m human, so it irritates me, too.  But my role is to re-focus my mind even more on the community and the sacrifice and our participation in Christ that is the Mass.

And I must avoid self-righteousness as I try to continue my worship.  By grace and nothing else, I have been allowed a mind and will that seeks to worship God.  I am not some superior human because I am this way – I am a blessed human because I have somehow been given the grace to be this way.  If I harbor thoughts of my superiority to the one who fails to understand the worship – if I grit my teeth and thank God that I am not like other people (read Luke 18:10ff) — then I am sinning more grievously than the person I disdain and I bring that sin literally in front of God’s altar.

This idea of re-focusing on the worship brings up something else I can do

When I was distracted by those teenagers in front of me at the Easter Vigil, chances are that other people were distracted, too.  So maybe I can be of some use to those other people by concentrating on the prayers and the homily, by remaining reverent in gesture and expression, by joining myself to Father’s words as we all pray at the altar.

Mass is a group affair.  It’s not about “me”, it’s about “us”.  If I can maintain myself despite distractions, maybe that will help my friend sitting next to me.

And along the same lines, maybe it will even help Father and our deacon if I do everything I can to put myself fully in the liturgy.  One time at lunch, I told our priest how disappointing it is that there are people in the congregation who seem to have little understanding of the stupendous things that happen at every Mass.  His response was “you should see what I see from the altar”.  He said it with sadness and with a sort of matter-of-fact resignation to what he could not change.

Thinking about what Father said, several things occur to me.  It occurs to me that the care of souls is a real weight to our pastor.  It occurs to me he has given his life to the Church – to her liturgy and to the parish in his care.  Most of all, he has given himself to Jesus.  And in that generous gift of himself to Jesus, Father participates in the pain and sadness of Jesus when people are not responsive to the divine call of love and mercy, when they treat the Mass like a second-rate entertainment.  Perhaps in some small way, if I enter in fully to the liturgy, then part of what Father sees from the altar will be me and others in agreement with the gift he has made of his life together with Jesus.  When he lifts up the holy sacrifice, perhaps somehow our wonder and gratitude and awe can mingle with his and encourage him.  I would be grateful if I could help God’s priest.

This hope that I can benefit both my neighbor in the pew and the priest at the altar is summed up in a verse from Hebrews 10: “We must consider how to rouse one another to love and good works.”

If I am distracted or worse at Mass, it is within my power to recall my mind to where I am and why.

Participation at Mass in spirit and in truth centers me in the liturgy and has a positive effect on other people.

How does truth set me free?

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Jesus famously claims “the truth will set you free”.  Well, 2 plus 2 equals 4 is truth, and from what I can tell, it doesn’t exactly set me free.  Maybe Jesus means some secret, almost magical truth about God that somehow liberates me and is only available to a few people?  “Free” sounds awfully good – I’m sure I want it.  How does truth set me free?

“Free” is a tricky word

I spent some time when I was in my late teens and twenties thinking that “free” meant making my own decisions.  No one could tell me what to do.  I had goals I pursued because they were my goals (college, diversion, and sex were the top three).  I had friends who I chose.  Lived where I chose, listened to what I wanted, you get the picture.

But it didn’t take too long (about five years) to figure out I wasn’t free.  The reason I wasn’t free is that the decisions I made had consequences whether I liked them or not, consequences I was not able to avoid or change.  Drugs got me thrown in jail.  Not free.  Sex got me a life-threatening illness that took a couple of months to get over.  Not free.  The diversions I chose twisted my mind toward dishonesty and trying to manipulate friends.  Not free.

I wasn’t free because the consequences of my actions backed me into corners where eventually I had almost no choices.  I could yell all day about how I was living my life my way, but the fact is that things just got narrower and narrower.

Three things are at work here

First, something about humans.  We are interior creatures, designed for relationships.  This statement is pretty easy to defend.  Many people think that solitary confinement as a punishment for crime is harsher even than death.  More people would agree that loneliness — deep, existential loneliness — is as troubling a condition as hunger or disease.  I suspect that no one would say the best way to live life is without friends, without family, without love.  We are built for love.

Our human nature requires relationships the way our physical life requires oxygen.  And the easiest way to explain this is that we are designed to crave relationships, designed that way on purpose by a creator.

Second, something about the universe.  The universe is a place of morals, a place of right and wrong.  This relates to being designed for relationships because almost all the right-and-wrong things are about relationships.  It doesn’t just “seem” this way – it really is this way.  The fact that no one can escape the perception that some things are wrong and other things are right has an explanation.  Right and wrong really do exist and they are not simply something that humans have made up.  I maintain that it is literally impossible for a human to believe and live as if it doesn’t make any difference whether one lies or not, doesn’t make any difference whether one causes pain or not, and so on.

The easiest way to explain this is that the universe involves a moral system as integral to its nature as gravity or electromagnetism.  And the easiest way to explain that is this moral order is designed by a creator.

Third, put the two together.  If I pursue an interior life that is consistent with the moral structure of the universe it draws me nearer to the creator who gives me freedom.  When I decide not to defy laws of gravity or live as if these laws do not exist, then I don’t injure myself in falls or reckless leaps – I am more free when I accommodate gravity than when I defy it.  Or when I am eight years old and decide to follow the rules at school and at home, I get to do more stuff.  And in a similar way, when I follow the moral laws and live my life in helpful/loving relations, then I am rewarded both by the relationships themselves and by the creator who designed me and the universe.  What I get from the relationships and from the creator makes me more free.

To a large extent, I am able to discover the points above on my own.  The points are accessible to reason and experience. But in some cases, these things must be explained to me by the one who created the conditions and who created me to exist within these conditions.  So far, most of the truth I have discussed is in the form of information which, if I accommodate that information, will make me more free.

But not all truth is simply information.

There is even a problem with the kind of truth that is information.  The problem lies with me, not with the information itself.  The problem is that informational truth usually can make me free only to extent that I am aware of it and have the capacity to understand it.  If I am either unaware or lack the capacity to understand, then truth that is information probably will not do me much good.  It almost surely will not set me free.

But there is a twist, a deep divine twist, that carries things beyond “information”  – Truth is ultimately a person

Truth is what forms me, changes my character and my will and my behavior by changing me.  If you have ever loved another person deeply and without reserve, then you know that there is “truth” in that love.  Truth that is not information (which is why we have trouble telling a little child what love is).  You know that your approach to life itself, your approach to yourself and to others, has been altered by this deep love.  This is truth that is different from information and is somehow more central to my existence.

Now Jesus makes this statement in John 14: “I am the way, and the truth, and the light.”  He says he is the truth.  And what a beautiful, even astonishing, synthesis this makes of the three points above.  The creator who designed me and the universe is literally the truth by which I gain freedom.  He offers himself to me as master, as transformer, as one who frees.  If I love him in faith, then truth floods my life.

If I want to be free – not just sort of free, not just more free than some other person, but free at a deep level — I must be in an ordered relation with Jesus.  There is truth that is available only in Jesus and from him.  The truths of the universe and the truths about me are not simply a set of physical laws or even moral precepts.  It is not simply information.  The deep truth is Jesus who subsumes all of reality in himself.

I’m not denying that Jesus gives me information.  Of course he does, since he knows more than I do.  He also gives me commandments, since he is master.  But even beyond these two things, he gives me more, and the “more” that he gives me completes the process of making me free.  This “more” is simultaneously the foundation and the summit of true freedom.

For instance, Jesus gives me peace of mind, and participation in God’s very nature, and the privilege of prayer.  He teaches me to love more fully, not just by precept, but also by the love of God which has been poured into my heart by his Holy Spirit (Romans 5:1ff).  There’s more and I wrote a post about these things here.  At the bottom of everything, Jesus wants to give me himself.   Eph. 3:14-21 (esp. v 19)

These gifts of Jesus constitute truth.  It is truth that lies at the foundation of all there is because Jesus is the upholding principle of the universe.  This truth teaches me and forms me.  It molds me into what a human being ought to be.  Obtaining this truth and using it in my life is called by St. Paul “knowing Christ”.  Here is what he said about this truth as the summit.

I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and [the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.    Philippians 3:8-11

Jesus is available to everybody – after all, we are built to love and it comes naturally to love Jesus-who-is-truth.  Anyone who wills it can know Jesus and thus can know the truth that sets him free.

If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.    John 8:31,32