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Rock Solid

Some one once said to me that he does ‘not wear his religion on his sleeve.’ He reminded me that his faith was a matter of the heart, was a private affair, and was none of anybody’s business. He pontificated that this was an authentic faith and that all good people live by such a creed. Of course it had nothing to d with the fact that he was stealing thousands of dollars from his office every month. A convenient faith, to say the least. I certainly wish I could find one like that! Imagine how much fun it would be if we could believe in a religion where all we needed was to believe in God. How wonderful if what we do or fail to do has nothing to do with whether or not we are saved! Well like my friend, you can now. Just ignore 99.9% of the Bible and Christian history, grab a few verses here and there and let go of all those bothersome commandments. But if you think I am kidding, just look at modern Christianity. Faith is a matter of how we believe (or not) in the existence of God as if God’s existence depended on our consent.

And faith is certainly not about doing religious things alone. It has and can be reduced to following rules and customs as if that were enough. Be nice, we say, and God will be loving. Do good things and God will be good. Tell yourself you are fine and it will all work out in the end. Religion seems to vacillate between these two extremes and faith is never found in the shifting sands of inconsistent mortals. Faith - authentic faith – is built on solid rock

In the covenant with Moses, choosing faith was matter of life and death. Jesus makes it clear that faith ultimately has more long-range implications. And while we should never forget the eternal destiny we are called to, there is a more present reality we cannot forget.

Ben Franklin once said, “I can’t hear what you are saying; your actions are speaking too loudly.” Actions do not define us as if what we do for a living is our reason for living. But they do reveal what we have chosen as our way of life. Actions are the result of the decisions we make. They are the way we relate to the world and how we evaluate our place in it. People often say that ‘if you knew the real me…” Here’s the problem: we can only work with what we have. The ‘real me’ can only be known fully by God. We cannot even claim to be fully aware ourselves of that secret and wonderful place. All we can do is see the results by the evidence that appears on the surface. Human actions are like ground penetrating radar – they reveal what is below. They are never the complete picture nor are they ever completely pure. But as St. Thomas Aquinas says agere sequitur esse: action follows upon being. A seed does not grow up to be a Volkswagen; it flowers into a plant.

Similarly, faith shows itself in life. There is a natural and super-natural aspect to the things we do in faith. Worship makes sense, charity is instinctual. It’s never perfect but it fits. There is a moment when we follow Jesus’ words not merely because He said them, but because of Him. The reason we do right and avoid wrong is because of the Truth Himself and not simply because they are true. Maybe our problems with perfection lie with a misunderstanding of what that means. Maybe trying to be perfect is itself a mistake. Maybe it’s really a matter of knowing the perfect God. Only a cruel deity would demand the impossible. And because all things are possible with God, maybe living our belief in the power of the Gospel is possible.

On judgment day, God is not looking at us like we look at a report card. It’s not a matter of how well we did or how strong our belief is. It’s about how solid we responded to a Divine love we experienced. No one in heaven has faith because they are in the Presence of God. They have no hope because they have no need for anything. All they have is love because when all is said and done, that is all that abides.

And what we know now in part, what we live in so far as we know it and what we do because of it, is that God is love.

And we can safely build on that foundation – and that foundation alone.

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Taken To Heart

In times past, something important was called holy. Today, many use the word ‘significant’. This is a subtle shift from something important in itself to something that has meaning for me. A cross in a church may be holy but a wooden cross on the side of the road marking and accident is significant to the family and friends. You can tear down a church, but God help you if you clear away that make-shift shrine. Let me give another example. I remember the Nation Anthem at ball games and many would be talking or act disrespectfully while it was being sung. After 9-11, there is a note of solemnity to it. And these are good things. We need indictors and examples of who we are and what we value. And, yes, we often can gauge how we fall short or fall away from them. So there is a part of us that takes them to heart. And there is another side to us that rejects what we do not see as a ‘core value’ or a matter of faith handed on to us.

The Eucharist has become of those things. What we believe of it and how we treat it has become a personal issue. Many individually decide their own doctrine of the Eucharist based on how significant it is to them. They seem to be putting the same criteria to the Eucharist that they place on choosing the right wedding song or their favorite sweater. They’re not nasty about it but in many respects they are wrong. We cannot take the Eucharist to heart if we have no idea what it is. We cannot love what we do not know.

The Eucharist, received in Holy Communion or reserved in the Tabernacle is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. It is the ‘living Bread’ without which we are without hope. It is not a meaningful sign or a significant gesture. It is not a symbol of God or a spiritual image. It is what it is. Sacred and accessible, it is for the life of the world and our life. It is offered to be received; to be eaten and taken to heart for the reason Jesus instituted it.

And that is the reason why day after day, week after week, we come to come to Mass. We need nourishment to make it through our days here on earth. We need that same thing for our journey to an endless day in heaven. We need, as human beings, to eat and drink in order to survive. And what a wonderful and needed gift food can be! A good fettuccini carbonara or filet minion can accurately be described as ‘heavenly’ because it is a delightful nourishment that echoes the best of all things good. No one who eats only once a year or once a decade is going to continue living. It’s a simple and absolute biological fact.

The Eucharist is similar. Our bodies need food; so do our souls. Without either, we starve. How we appreciate this Sacrament is seen in how we have or have not taken it to heart. How alive we are in faith and virtue has a direct relationship with how we see this gift. If this is only a symbol of faith, our religion will need little more than a token of respect at say Christmas or Easter. If we decide that there is a sacred presence surrounding that bread and wine than we will see God as hovering over us but not really a part of us. If we accept the words of Jesus and the teaching of the Church from the earliest days that His flesh is real food and His blood is real drink, then we are being fed and nourished by the hand of God Himself in the deepest part of who are by grace. Some polls say how many Catholics do not believe in transubstantiation – that the Eucharist is the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. I think it may be a lack of belief that God can be that close to human beings. I think in a world where every believer seems to be a pope, the humbling acceptance of the Eucharist is too much for them. You can see it in the indifference or even sacrilegious way some handle or receive Communion.

But most are trying to take the Eucharist to heart. Most acknowledge that this is the Mystery of Faith not some meaningless ritual. The goal of Corpus Christi is to celebrate what we have been given by God and who we are because of it. We come to the Altar to have the strength to come back again. We feed at the Holy Table to be nourished for our road to the heavenly banquet. It’s not a matter of correcting our understanding of this Mystery as much as it is an invitation to go deeper into it.

One bit of advice comes from a sign that used to be in many sacristies in the past. It was an encouragement for the priest that we can apply to all who receive today and hereafter. Receive the Eucharist today ‘as if it were the first time, the only time and the last time’ you do. We reflect, as we see this time of year, on the beauty and happiness of First Holy Communion day. That simplicity and innocence of child-like faith is something we need to take with us long after we have outgrown the suit or dress.

On this Memorial Day, we remember the great price of those who served to preserve our right to live free. This Sacrament is the memorial and the reality of Jesus who freely gave His life to save ours. In adoration and gratitude, we receive the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ and say with every-growing faith:

O Sacrament most holy, O Sacrament Divine,

All praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine.

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Getting God

Trinity Sunday is the one day of the year most priests wish a visiting preacher would take the pulpit. I will give two reasons for this. The first is that we are speaking of the incomprehensible mystery of the nature of God that sends the holiest saint’s head spinning. Whatever is said today cannot help but sound like a theology class. The second thing is that we are speaking of a mystery and not a puzzle. There are few stern moral lessons or easy answers to how there is one God in three Persons.

Does this sound familiar? We have no clear definition of human love after all these millennia of love and marriage. We still are writing new love songs and new love poems because we are describing a great and wonderful mystery of human life. If that is true of this world, how much more mysterious is the Divine? How accurate to use this famous quote of St. John’s Gospel for this Mass. ‘God so loved the world’ is nothing less than a mystery but it is also something we can somehow begin to grasp. And it is love that is the key to the mystery of the Trinity. It is our God-given capacity to love that clues us in to its very possibility. If we can love one another, can we not be capable of loving God? And if so, love is the language of revelation. It is the’ love unto death’ of the Son, in the will of the Father and communicated to us by the Holy Spirit that God reveals Himself to the human race.

But from the beginning, we have not been good with this. We wanted to eat of the tree in the garden because we wanted to control God. We’ve been doing it ever since. Our superstitions, our horoscopes, our magic and spells – all of these are about controlling God. We say certain prayers and do specific things and God will not only listen to us; He’ll obey us. If we - as limited beings - can somehow or another get a handle on the mystery of God, we gain a mastery over God. Look at all the fiction of secret books and angelic revelations that make God simple. If we have this secret knowledge, we’ll get super-powers. We will, as the serpent said to Adam and Eve, be like God.

The Holy Trinity is a mystery placed before the eyes of faith to bring us to the one thing that understands its language of live. It brings us to adoration. We adore a God we cannot grasp and who has clearly and freely grasped us. We praise a God we cannot figure out and who receives our meager gratitude with joy. We are humbled before the burning holiness of Divinity and try and walk through life by the light of that eternal flame. Ultimately, in both grace and nature, we yield to the will of a God we will never control.

I can’t apologize for getting poetic on you today even if everything said today falls far too short of the accurate reality of the Trinity. Using images and analogies are the tools of this trade. And maybe it is in that searching for the most right, the most correct way to describe who God is as He has revealed Himself that we come a little closer to Him. Perhaps that would be an excellent task for both today and for our Christian lives to ask our self if we understand who God is. Do we accept who God has revealed Himself as or do we construct a more convenient and controllable deity? Can we speak the language of love as we adore this unfathomable mystery who is the very reason why we live and move and have our being?

The question of today is not do we get the Trinity but has the Trinity gotten us? God loves us so much that He has revealed Himself to us. That is truly worthy of trust.

So - as the money says - “In God We Trust.” And that is something we can bank on.

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Radical Man

A few days ago, there was a commemoration of the 1968 student take-over of Columbia University. There have been many of these remembrances throughout the nation as the 40-year mark comes and goes. In our more local anniversary, the fond recollections of dreams and ideals was marred by two unavoidable realities. The first was a clear racial divide even among the most “progressive” of students. The second is what must be a numbing sense that it ultimately didn’t make a difference. Mostly white, upper-middle class college students really thought that they were changing the world. And some can argue that they my have. But they could not and they did not change the human being. In fact, from dictators to democracies throughout our history, that remains the one unchanging factor. And despite the best of intention or the most villainous tyranny – or a mixture of the two -, humanity remains what it is.

Pentecost says what humanity may become. The Spirit of God given to the world and gifted in particular to those who have accepted the graced-mercy of the Redeemer, is the only true change in the world. We refer to those wild-eyed enthusiasts of 1968 as ‘radicals.’ That’s an interesting use of that word. From the Latin word for the root of a plant, it implies that a theory or action would be directed to the origin of something. But they, like so many others, did not address the root of the human person. They saw – and see – human beings as machines that function on principles they either accept or dismiss. Change the principles, they say, and you change the person. Demand and legislate the norms and all will be well. In other words, start with the human being and not the human person. Leave that to religion if that’s ‘your thing.’ Don’t speak of the soul or an eternal destiny because that ultimately means that something Greater is in fact greater. Never put belief in God over the collective good of everybody.

What was the result? Sure there was some good in terms of laws and rights, but there were a lot of families and lives destroyed and damaged in the process. And I am not referring to just the 60’s. The same could be said of any revolution or social onslaught. And perhaps the reason there are so many of them is the one true change we celebrate today is not ‘blowin’ in the wind’ because it appears as nothing more than the breath of God. Jesus breathes the Spirit upon the Apostles and commissions them to go out to the world and proclaim the offer of the forgiveness of sins. He breathes on them to re-create the world just as He breathed over the waters of creation.

In St. John’s Gospel, the Pentecost event is not a wild scene of fire and strange languages. He sees the outpouring of the Spirit in the intimacy of the Upper Room. The subtlety of the event is clear because this is something radical beyond words and images. The Spirit is sent to make right what sin and stupidity have made wrong. Forgiveness is a more than a revolution; it is a re-creation. In Genesis, hose first winds swept over the waters of chaos in the darkness of the time before the light, now in the Risen Christ is the that same breath bringing mercy to the world in the darkness of that evening encounter.

The Spirit of God is seeking ever since to radically renovate all things, beginning with each of us. Do you want to change the world? Let God change you. I think it is a particularly special occurrence that we celebrate this feast on what happens to be Mother’s Day in this country. How many of us have seen these women we know transformed by taking on this role? What a marvelous operation of the Spirit that mothers – and those who fulfill that role – are co-workers in the natural and super-natural re-creation of the world. They hand on life, they hand on the faith. We salute them and honor them for their commitment to this radical and spiritual task God has given them. Our Church is often called “Holy Mother Church” for the same reason. She gives new life in the Sacraments and offers the re-creation of forgiveness to those who seek it.

So on this Pentecost, we honor our mother, the Church as we honor those women called by God to continue the work of the Spirit in renewing the face of the earth.

And that is truly, a radical and wonderful world.