Sunday Readings


The Lourdes August 2008 Page is...
HERE

God’s Choice

I really love it when people you barely know, hearing of or seeing a problem you are dealing with, pull out the popular platitudes of the moment and throw them in your direction. And they do mean well. They say things like “the Chinese character for crisis is the same as the one for opportunity.” Or “God will never give you more than you can handle.” After dispensing this wisdom, they seemed shocked that you are not instantly more positive, better, and happier. Again, it comes from a good place, but it is not realistic. There are some things that are not good, that we cannot manage and that we really can’t handle. And we all know them.

But is that popular wisdom wrong? Are these coping skills a false hope of functionality? They are not. It is true that a crisis is an opportunity. It is true that the providential will of God is never without His grace. The problem is a little deeper. And we see it today in St. Peter. He hears the harsh and crushing words of Jesus that speak of the cross. And from a good place, he says, “No. This is too awful for you. You don’t deserve to be treated like that. We can find a different way more suited to a productive use of your time and talents. Master, how can any good come of this so long as you are thinking like that?” Yes, these are words of a friend. These are the sentiments of one who truly cares for another. But Jesus responds with a word we can find callous. He tells Peter not that his feelings are wrong, but his thinking. He says that Peter is thinking in the most limited way we can. We choose to think as if our thoughts were the highest of standards.

Jeremiah was feeling tricked and cheated by God since there he was, preaching a divinely inspired message that was greeted only with opposition and even violence. He thought, as normal people do, of just giving up on the whole thing. He asked if there wouldn’t be an easier, more efficient way of doing things. But he finds under all his understanding and feelings something much deeper. It was a burning that could not be put into words. It was a certain something prodding him onward to keep preaching, to keep living the grace God had given him. He discovered that there was a thinking higher than his own, a purpose greater than his plans. Peter would discover this later even though now he was only beginning his walk with Christ. St. Paul even went farther and saw that the highest devotion was found in a total offering of life and limb as a spiritual offering to the Father in imitation of the Son Himself.

So is our God one who sets up moments of misery to have us rise to the heights of glory? Does God, as Jeremiah said, dupe us?

From the human point of view, the answer can be justified as a yes. After all, innocents become victims, by-standers become statistics. And this is the hard part. Because our human point of view is so often our only point of view, we have trouble with things like the cross, and suffering and difficulty. Our natural instincts for self-preservation kick in and we create a God who supports our agreeable premise. I really don’t think there is any natural way out of this. Seeing beyond the obvious or even the imagined is not a human skill.

But what if there was another vision? What if we, caught in our sadness and worry, could try to view things from God’s vantage point? What if we took seriously the Incarnation and made an act of faith that in Christ, there is no problem too severe or no difficulty that is final? Yes, we love the idea; it’s the specifics we have a problem with. If the Gospel of Mercy of Jesus Christ is a true union of words and life – found in the Passion and resurrection – then things have to be different.

And they are. We pray for the Father’s will to be dine in us - even if we don’t like it. We call for Divine healing when we are sick. We plead for pardon at the times we have no right to ask for it. And, yes, we have a God who loves us even as He allows some awful situations to become our pulpits. No, maybe not the venue we’d choose but they are the ones God has chosen.

And God has chosen you. Not the perfect you or the healthier you. Not the more skilled or most attractive you. Just you. Do you think you’re not worthy? You’re right; you are not. But God is and His choice is sovereign. He’s promised us eternal life, not prolonged existence. And through weak, sinful and prone to messing it up, we are the instruments of the Kingdom.

Sunday Readings


The Lourdes August 2008 Page is...
HERE

Sunday Readings


The Lourdes August 2008 Page is...
HERE

Well...I’m going back to Lourdes with the Order of Malta Youth Pilgrimage 8-18 August. I am thrilled to have another opportunity to go over to this wonderful place. Being there in the 150th Anniversary Year - as well as on the Feast of the Assumption - makes it even more so.

(And now....the homily and the real reason you came to this page)

Good God

During the ‘Great Hunger’ in Ireland in the mid-1800’s, there were some unscrupulous folks who offered the starving masses soup and nourishment – if they converted to another religion. Those who accepted the bribe were known as ‘soupers’ and a common caution was - ‘don’t accept the soup.’ We see it today as foreign governments accept aid in times of disaster and replace the symbol of the country that gave the food with their own. On the other hand, the Quakers to this day are remembered for their unqualified generosity to the people of Ireland in those terrible times and many in Europe still recall the American aid in their darkest hours of World War II.

Is God playing the same game? Is God offering us His blessings in order to get our allegiance? From the human point of view, this seems to be the case. He invites us to the banquet in the first reading from Isaiah and actually feeds us in the Gospel miracle of the feeding of 5000. He offers us that celestial banquet of the Eucharist foreshadowing an unrivaled eternal celebration. And as we hear and begin to accept this invitation, we start finding out that we have to give things up, act a certain way and even suffer willingly. A classic bait and switch to the casual observer.

And that observer would be correct save for one interfering reality. It’s wrong.

Yes, there is the offer of grace and, yes, it is a conversation that demands a response. Our gracious God will provide for us and will do so even if we call on Him only in the bad times. But the moment we begin to think that God’s goodness depends on how deserving we are of it, it is clearly not God we are talking about. When we filter, define and demand that God’s generosity be subject to our appreciation of it, we have missed out on it. And in mistaking it, we blame and ignore God for not bestowing it. Like spoiled children, we condemn ourselves to a life of spiritual cheapness as we lament a ‘god’ who is good to others, but not to us.

Come now, be honest, we all do it! We find it hard to rejoice that God seems to be good to folks we know are unworthy! We begrudge a common joy to another’s success as if it were something we have lost ourselves. We go so far as to lament that God makes the sun shine on the just and the wicked alike.

What’s the answer to this? St. Paul asks the question that we have too-often answered wrongly for ourselves. What can separate us from the love of Christ? His answer is clear – nothing. Nothing in us or outside us, nothing of our making or of a demonic influence can separate us from the goodness of God. What St. Paul is saying is that the offer in Isaiah and the bounty of the Christ’s miracle has nothing to do with us; it is all about God – and God alone. It is pure grace that cannot be earned, cheapened, or even defined by our unwillingness to accept it as it is. God is good whether we are or are not.

Sure, we can refuse it by a choice to reject it, but that doesn’t mean it disappears. The beautifully annoying quality of grace is that it just keeps on going and going and going… Rain is water that comes down from the sky and even in our age of bottled water, it is still free. And we may not prefer its packaging or frequency, but it is there. We can shelter ourselves from it and cover up from it, but it is still there. Gerard Manley Hopkins, quoted by Pope Benedict in Australia, once said that the world is charged with the grandeur of God. The goodness of God is evident even in the quickest counting of anyone’s blessing.

How could we ever put a price on this goodness? How could we cheapen it and lower it to a bribe or a scam? And even if we do, isn’t God’s goodness so far beyond the restraining walls that we can set for it? In our need, our joy, our desperate moments, our sinful ones, our occasions of thanksgiving – can we not see that goodness of God?

In many cases looking for the good in things is an affirmation of the better angels of our fallen human nature. And this is very true. But to seek and desire the vision of that Goodness in our life of faith is a little more. To see the goodness of God is to begin to see God Himself. To appreciate the bounty of God is to share in it already. To be fed by God is to know God. When we are tempted to deny, doubt or question that goodness, God invites us again and again saying, as they do in Washington Heights, ‘chilax – you know I love you.’

And the goodness of every moment proves it.