The writing on the wall

I have always been fascinated as to how the language in the Bible has influenced the English language.  I avidly read David Crystal’s Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language when it was published in 2010 to celebrate the 500^th anniversary of that translation.  The book describes how people often use expressions from the Bible not only to recall a particular Bible message or to set a spiritual tone, but also when they don’t even know the phrase came from the Bible, for the phrase has just become one more thread in the rich tapestry of English.

 

Abraham Lincoln was a tone-setter extraordinaire and his speeches were generally filled with biblical allusions.  I was reminded of this a week or so ago as we were remembering the Gettysburg Address.  Surely, he could have said, “Eighty-seven years ago…”  Instead, he said, “Four score and seven years ago…,” alluding to Psalm 90 where our life span is described as “three score years and ten” (Ps 90:10 KJV) When Lincoln used these allusions, he meant for his listeners to know – and virtually all of them would have “gotten” the allusion – that the purpose of the Civil War, and of the very founding of our country, was not simply political, but more importantly, spiritual.

 

On the other hand, this morning, we read from the fifth chapter of Daniel the origin of the term “the writing on the wall.”  Even among people who do not know its biblical origins, this expression has become a common idiom.  Of course, when we use this term today, we are usually not referring to graffiti, but rather to some figurative “writing,” and we’re generally not intending to cite Scripture, though, like in Daniel, we usually intend to warn our audience about a dire situation at hand.

 

Thinking like Lincoln, what are the spiritual writings on the wall that we should heed today?  As in the time of King Belshazzar, the writings can seem quite ominous.

 

·        In the United States, one family in seven lives in poverty, and the income disparity between the wealthiest and the poorest has reached an all-time high.

·        Approximately 20-25% of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion.

·        Suicide rates are increasing, to the point that in 2010, the latest year comprehensive statistics are available, more people in the United States committed suicide than those who died in automobile accidents.

·        In 2011, 41% of the live births in the United States were to unmarried women

·        Less than one-third of the Catholics in the United States attend Mass weekly and in a Gallup poll, the percent of Americans describing themselves as having “no religion” has doubled in the past twenty years.

 

These are not just ominous signs for our own country – similar signs can be seen in many countries around the world.  How are we to respond to such global and pervasive issues?  Do we even have the power to correct these issues?

 

Our answer lies in a new writing, but this one not simply figurative.  It is not written on a wall, but it is words that are meant to be written on our hearts.  It is not intended to inspire despair or fear, but it is filled with hope and joy.  This week, Pope Francis released Evangelii Gaudium – the Joy of the Gospel.  In this exhortation, the Pope states that all Christians have access to a power which can overcome the greatest dangers that face us today.  That power is grounded in the unconditional love of God.  When we encounter this love in the person of Jesus, our lives are transformed into ones of great joy, which in turn, transforms the entire world.

 

Here are some of the opening lines of this amazing exhortation:

 

“I invite all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ, or at least an openness to letting him encounter them; I ask all of you to do this unfailingly each day. No one should think that this invitation is not meant for him or her…How good it feels to come back to him whenever we are lost! Let me say this once more: God never tires of forgiving us; we are the ones who tire of seeking his mercy. Christ, who told us to forgive one another “seventy times seven” (Mt 18:22) has given us his example: he has forgiven us seventy times seven. Time and time again he bears us on his shoulders. No one can strip us of the dignity bestowed upon us by this boundless and unfailing love. With a tenderness which never disappoints, but is always capable of restoring our joy, he makes it possible for us to lift up our heads and to start anew.” Evangelii Gaudium 3

 

At this very moment, people are gathering from far and wide and will soon sit down with friends and family to give thanks for the gifts they have received.

 

Thus, the Pope’s message is extremely timely, for gratitude is a door through which we encounter the unconditional love of God.  May this encounter transform us into lights of joy that we, and the world around us, might lift up our heads and start anew.

The Living Word

As we near the end of the liturgical year, our gospel readings seem a bit scary…fire and brimstone stuff – wars and insurrections, famines and plagues, temples being destroyed, and Christians being persecuted, spurned by their families and friends, and ultimately put to death.  Where’s the love?

Often I prefer to set these readings aside, to compartmentalize them as written in a far distant time to a much different set of people in a much different culture.  I read them as apt descriptions of what was going on in first century Palestine, but of much less relevance to me living in twenty-first century America.  But this “historical” look at Scripture is a spiritually dangerous path to tread, for Scripture is the living word of God, as relevant to our salvation today as it was to the apostles living and eating with Jesus.

Today, we hear the disciples marveling at the magnificence of the Jerusalem Temple, but Jesus admonishes them that, in time, there will not be one stone atop another.  (Lk 21:5-6)  Most scholars agree that Luke wrote this gospel about 85 or 90 AD, when the memory of the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was still fresh in many people’s minds.  Thus, it was likely that these words of Jesus were remembered as an accurate prediction of this tragedy.  Temple destroyed, prophecy fulfilled, end of story.

But it’s not the end.  Jesus was saying much more.  Jesus warns his first disicples – and us – that whenever we place our faith in anything on earth, a material thing or a purely human institution, that faith must crumble, as all things on earth ultimately do.  It may take some time, but all earthly things must come to an end.  Their journey must end in death.

Jesus goes on to say how his followers will be called before the governors and kings, forced to witness to their faith, and some will die for his name.  (Lk 21:12-19)  Again, I recall the early martyrs of the church, many of whom, like Paul and Ignatius of Antioch, were called before Caesar himself to testify and to die.  That was then, but certainly not so in our more enlightened time.

Yet, it seems that more and more often, right here in America, we are being called up before governors and, if not kings, congressmen and Presidents, called up to testify to the faith that we share, the values we hold and the principles by which we live.  Respecting the rights of others to not believe what we believe, to not hold our same values or live by our same principles, even accepting that these beliefs and values and principles may put us in a distinct minority, we must, as the early martyrs did, persevere in asserting our right – and even more importantly, our duty – to hold firm to our faith, to live our values, and to be guided by our principles.

We persevere in our living witness even if we find it hard to come up with the words for our defense, for Jesus himself stands with us today and the Spirit will give us the words we need.

And Jesus ends by promising that by persevering we will secure our lives.  By persevering, we will live forever and ever, with Him and all the saints in the kingdom of God.

Thank God

In her book, Love Through Me, Natalie Ryan tells of working for a small non-profit and receiving a call from a man named Dennis seeking a $100 donation for his work with orphans in Africa.  She felt the man was sincere and verbally promised she would have her organization fund his request.  You’re probably thinking like I am: “Right, man from Africa wants money.  It’s got to be a scam.”  Natalie’s boss was probably thinking that, because try as she might – and she worked to get independent verification that Dennis’s work was legitimate – she could not convince her boss to send the $100.

In trying to figure out who was going to help this poor man, she heard God say, “You.”  She quit her job and decided to answer God’s call, forming her own missionary charity, “Hearts in Action.”   In a throw-away line that struck me hard, she wrote that her first order of business was “raising the $100” that she had promised to Dennis, the man from Africa.

What struck me was the realization that I could never remember a time in my adult life when it was necessary for me to “raise $100.”  If I needed $100 cash and it wasn’t already in my pocket, it was certainly as close as the nearest ATM.  My second thought is that I had never directly thanked God for this particular blessing in my life.  Perhaps I just attributed it to my hard work, or my prudent financial management, or just good luck, but apparently I had never attributed it to God.

And not realizing that this was simply a small manifestation of God’s infinite, unconditional and eternal love for me, I was never felt particularly happy or satisfied with this blessing.  Of course, I could always find $100 if I needed it, but what if I needed $1000 or $10000?  Not so easy.  I’d just have to work a little harder, save a little more.  But even if I got that, I would always see that there was something more, something better, or something newer that would be the icing on my cake.

I constantly sought out the new and improved, but once I got it, it quickly became the old and the ordinary.  I thought that more was always better – more possessions, more pleasure, more power, more beauty, more friends, etc. – yet always found that more may be better for a while, but more is never enough. 

Mary Jo Leddy, in her book, Radical Gratitude, refers to this state as perpetual dissatisfaction.  It is ugly, but it is the lifeblood of our money-based economy.  Without our constant yearning for the newer car, the bigger house, the latest fashions; without our obsession for the new and improved; without our mantra of “more is always better,” we spend less, the economy falters, jobs are lost, and our material wealth and our self-worth shrinks.  We no longer live for God, but only for ourselves.

Jesus praises the grateful leper (Lk 17:11-19) for he has broken this cycle of dissatisfaction.  The man has recognized the source of his life, the source of all that he is, the source of all that he has, and it is enough.  His sight is no longer focused on what he lacks, but on what he has already been given, the unconditional, infinite, eternal love of God.   

When we come together to celebrate the Eucharist – the root word for Eucharist is the same word that Luke uses to describe the man’s thanks and praise to God – we recognize that God has given us our very lives as a gift, that God loves us with a love that knows no bounds, that He gave us his only Son to die for us that we might have eternal life with Him.  Our gratitude does not change God, it changes us.  When we live with this radical, at-our-very-core gratitude, we, like the leper, appreciate and honor what we have, not obsess over and crave for what we are missing.  We can see ourselves for who we are – loved children of God – rather that constantly trying to be who other people want us to be. 

Most importantly, we recognize that we cannot wait to be happy to be grateful – we must be grateful to be happy.

Thank God.

The doorstep of heaven

The Sadducees attempt to discredit Jesus by showing that his belief in an afterlife in heaven implies ludicrous results (Lk 20:27-38).  They assume that heaven must be pretty much like earth.  On earth, we have the laws of Moses to follow, so we must have those laws to follow in heaven, too.  If the laws don’t make sense in heaven, then heaven must not be real.  However, as we’ll see, Jesus points out that their argument is flawed because their premise is false. 

Like the Sadducees, I have spent most of my life laboring under a false premise.  No, I’ve always believed in heaven and hell.  But like the Sadducees, I had a false idea of what heaven was like.  I assumed that heaven was the end reward for following the rules and being a good boy.  If I tried to obey all the rules, go to church every Sunday, be nice to other people, avoid lying, cheating, stealing, swearing, etc. etc., I would earn credits for heaven.  On the other hand, of course, God would always be watching for those times when I wasn’t living up to the rules.  In the end, St. Peter would have this book, and on the one side would be all the nice I had done, and on the other the naughty.  My hope, of course, is that the nice would outweigh the naughty and into heaven I would go.   Does this sound familiar?  Essentially, I figured that the afterlife was essentially the ultimate Christmas – the final reckoning of who was naughty and who was nice.

However, I came to realize that this was a quite sterile and empty view of my salvation.  No matter how hard I tried, I knew that I would always be doing things that were not on the “nice” list.  Okay, so there we have this reconciliation thing, but what good is that if I continue to sin?  And if this is my faith, why would God have to send his only Son to humble himself, “take the form of a slave,” and die an excruciating death on the cross just so that I could take my shot in the naughty and nice contest?   My premise, like that of the Sadducees, must be false.

Slowly, I began to understand what Jesus tells the Sadducees.  Heaven is not about following rules; it is about our relationship with our infinite, eternal and all-loving God.  And when we have left this earth and accepted this relationship for all time, that’s all we will ever need.  We will have no physical or emotional needs, no physical limitations; we will simply be one with our Creator, the source of all happiness.

I knew that I could be with God after I had died – all I had to do was follow the rules and I’d be with God after death.  But if heaven is about our relationship with God, wasn’t I missing the fact that God has already called me into relationship with him from the moment I was conceived?  I was following rules, but not living in relationship.  For Christian faith is not a list of rules to follow; it is a relationship to live, a relationship with the One who is my creator, who created me out of love to be with him and for him for all eternity, who is the my only source of true happiness, who calls me to live in him every day of my life.

From the very beginning, God reveals this truth to us in Scripture.  He creates us in his image and likeness, giving us life by bestowing his very Spirit on us.  He interacts with us as a loving parent acts with its loved child, so radically different from the master-slave relationship that most every other culture believed was the relationship between the gods and humanity.  He calls Abraham to be his intimate friend, promising that his descendants will be his chosen people forever.  He “so loved the world, he gave us his only Son.”  His Son gives us his very body and blood as a sign of God’s everlasting love and real presence in our lives.

On my good days, when I get this relationship, it changes my life and changes my relationships with others.  I see my marriage not just as a human contract between Mary and me, but as a permanent and divine vocation, a model of the everlasting, unifying love of the Trinity.

I begin to see my fatherhood not as simply as a temporary responsibility to prepare and launch my children into adulthood, but as a permanent vocation, a model of the unconditional, life-giving love of Christ.

I begin to see life not as a struggle to be number one, but as an imperative to be one: one with my family; one with my neighbor; one with my enemy; one with the poor; one with the oppressed; one with the persecuted; one with Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, I understand that if I ignore this relationship with God while I live on earth, then I will not value this relationship when I have left earth.  I will have damned myself to an eternity without God – that’s what we call hell. 

But when I can let go of my pride, let go of my need to earn what cannot be earned – the unconditional love of God – when I can lose myself in a relationship with the all-loving God, then I am living on the doorstep of heaven.

Temples

When the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 A.D, they expected the Jewish religion to just fade away, but they failed to reckon with the faithfulness of God to his people.  Today, we celebrate the dedication of St. John Lateran, the mother church of our faith.  It is our only archbasilica!  Yet, if some disaster destroyed St. John Lateran, would anyone think the Catholic faith would crumble?

But it made sense for the Romans to think as they did, for it is almost impossible for us to comprehend how important and vital the temple was to the Jewish people of Jesus’ time.

It was the heart and soul of the faith.  It housed the holy of holies, the Ark of the Covenant, and was where Yahweh chose to dwell with his people.  It was the only place where a Jew could offer sacrifice to Yahweh and properly atone for his sins.  Tens of thousands of Jews descended on Jerusalem on each of the major feast days to worship and sacrifice at the temple.

Ezekiel, writing during the Babylonian exile with the first temple destroyed, envisions the new temple with streams flowing from it, making the salt water fresh, and giving life to all creatures.  The vision evokes for us Genesis 2, and the streams flowing from the Garden of Eden.  The temple, in Ezekiel’s vision restores the peace and original justice of the Garden itself.

With Herod’s extensive renovation of the temple, it had surpassed the magnificence of Solomon’s original.  Outside of Rome, it was perhaps the most impressive and imposing building in the Mediterranean world.  Thus, it was also a point of pride for the Jewish people, who were, at best, only bit players on the world stage.

The Jewish prophets often proclaimed the Messiah would restore and perfect the purity of the Temple.   Jesus’ prophetic cleansing of the Temple that we read about this morning, echoing Jeremiah’s denunciations of the desecration of the Temple in his day, would have addressed this particular mission.  But Jesus knows that the Jerusalem Temple, as all things on earth, could not last.  It was just stones on stones that, one day, would crumble.  Rather, the temple on which his followers will depend is the temple of his body, which even death itself cannot destroy, which he gives to us anew at each and every celebration of the Mass.

St. Paul extends this metaphor to make us aware that, by virtue of our baptisms, God dwells in each of us, and each of our own bodies is now a temple of the Holy Spirit.  Considering my own meager body, that’s a pretty staggering thought!

How can this poor body of mine possibly house the glory of God?  How can I hold this temple of the Holy Spirit – and the temples of all those around me – with the same reverence and awe as the Jewish people had for the temple in Jerusalem.  What can or should I do to make my body and my life holy enough to justify such an honor?  Well, that’s a really long, long talk.  It’s our call to holiness – be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.  Spiritual masters have written thousands of books, billions of words, on this pursuit of holiness. 

But this time of year, I think of one insight that many of these masters have in common.  One wise man said it like this, “God dwells in two places – in heaven and in a grateful heart.”

Do I see everything about me as gift, the fruits of God’s unconditional and infinite love? 

Or do I jealously cling to all those things I claim as “mine,” the well-earned fruits of my hard work, my pious acts, or even my goodness?

St. Ignatius understood that we all find ourselves in this trap.  He saw that gratitude was an important early step on the road to holiness.  The first stage of the daily examen was to thank God for all that He had done that day, perhaps even reaching back and thanking God for all those times he directed and prodded me, provided for and protected me.  You don’t move forward in the examen until you’ve truly expressed your thanks to God for his unconditional and infinite love and providence.

Each November, before Thanksgiving, or whenever I lapse and believe that I am grateful enough, I re-read Radical Gratitude, by Mary Jo Leddy.  It’s a small book, easy to read and re-read often.  It reminds of the transformational gratitude that should always gild the temple in my heart.  It also reminds me that being happy will not lead to gratitude.  Gratitude makes me happy.

From the temple of a grateful heart, warmed by the appreciation of God’s infinite, unconditional and eternal love and providence, streams of love, streams of compassion, streams of generosity, peace and mercy flow out to the world.  And like streams flowing from the temple in Ezekiel’s vision, like the streams flowing from Jesus’ side on the cross, these streams bring life to the world.

Thank God.

Zacchaeus

I suppose that I am like many people – when I know that I’ve done something wrong, I don’t want anyone else to know about it.  I’m afraid that people will think less of me if they know my mistakes.  I try to hide them.  Maybe nobody will notice. 

Of course, I become ensnared by my desire to hide my mistake, inevitably creating more mistakes along the way, forcing me into more hiding and more disguising.  I can tangle webs with the best of them.  It is a vicious cycle and, to make matters worse, someone ultimately finds out and I end up looking even worse than if my original mistake had been known.  And yet, I find it hard to apologize for my mistake, to repent for my sin.  Most times, my only true sorrow is that I failed to keep it hidden.

Yet in Wisdom today, we hear that we need not care if our sins are known, for God overlooks people’s sins that they might repent.  (Wis 11:23)  That sounds a bit illogical.  God certainly knows that I’ve sinned, for he sees and knows all things, but he overlooks my sins.  He doesn’t think any worse of me at all.  And he does this precisely so I might repent for my sins.  That makes no sense at all.  If God overlooks my sins, why should I repent for them?  I don’t get it.  Zacchaeus did. 

Zacchaeus was a tax collector who lived in the very wealthy city of Jericho.  We presume that he gained his great wealth by extorting large sums from his fellow Jews.  They would have considered a traitor to his people and his faith, the very incarnation of sin and evil.

Despite Zacchaeus great sins, Jesus surprises Zacchaeus with an amazing gift.  Jesus overlooks his sins and declares that he will honor Zacchaeus by spending that day at Zacchaeus’ house.  For perhaps the first time in his adult life, Zacchaeus experiences unconditional love.  He is filled with the great joy that recurs throughout Luke’s Gospel.  The infant in Elizabeth’s womb “leaps for joy” when the pregnant Mary arrives.  The angels have “tidings of great joy” when Jesus is born.  Zacchaeus’ joy reflects the joy of the shepherd who found his lost sheep, the woman who found her lost coin, the father who found his lost son, and, most aptly, the angels who rejoice greatly at the return of one sinner.

This joy transforms Zacchaeus.  He declares his intent to put right anything he has done wrong.  He goes far beyond the mere law in giving half of his wealth to the poor.  No piddling tithing for him!  He returns four times whatever he may have wrongly taken, twice as much as the law would have him do…all because Jesus overlooked his sins and showed him God’s great unconditional love.

Jesus knows, as the author of Wisdom knew, that unconditional love is the only sure antidote to sin and evil.   As we hear in today’s passage from Wisdom: “you love all things that are and loathe nothing that you have made; for what you hated, you would not have fashioned.” (Wis 11:24)

We are loved not for what we do, but for who we are – creatures of a God who loves all that he has created; creatures of a God that overlooks our greatest sins, seeing beyond those sins to the person whom He loves.  And when we recognize this truth in our hearts, when we accept the truth that we can never be worthy of this love, yet we are still graced by it, this truth breaks the chains of our sins, setting us free from our enslaving sins and transforming us as it transformed Zacchaeus.  We repent and become the loving, joyful, generous people whom God created us to be.

Transformed by the unconditional love of God, we will hear Jesus say to us, as he said to Zacchaeus, “today, salvation has come to this house.” (Lk 19:9)

All Saints

Since the very earliest days of the Church, Christians have venerated those people who showed heroic devotion to the faith, to the truth, and to the life and the way that Jesus taught and embodied.  Perhaps our very first hagiography, or saint-story, is told in chapters six and seven of the Acts of the Apostles where we read about Stephen, one of the first deacons and first martyrs for the faith.

Remembering and venerating the saints is an important part of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions and an important part of our spiritual growth.  The saints’ lives are edifying—they show us how different people in different places and different times, sinners just like us, followed Christ and found themselves with Christ in everlasting glory.

Some people have argued that a cult of saints is unnecessary, perhaps even sacrilegious.  For these people, the only model is Jesus himself.  WWJD is their watchword.  Simply consider “what would Jesus do”, act accordingly, and all will be right in the world.  Of course, Jesus is the perfect model, and WWJD can certainly be a useful discipline.  But if we ignore the saints, or pretend that they are irrelevant, are we then to suppose that nobody, in the two thousand years since Christ walked this earth, has ever followed His way?  Would it not be the ultimate hubris to believe that we will be the first successful disciples, simply because we’ve adopted WWJD as our way of life?

We are mere mortals.  We discourage easily.  The saints offer us hope that even when we fail, even when we sin, the Spirit is stronger than us.  The Holy Spirit has worked through uncounted millions of people just like us, helping to bring God’s kingdom to light.  These people are part of the Church to this very day, part of the “communion of saints” that we proclaim our belief in every Sunday.  And the Church has officially recognized some of these people as “big S” saints.  To ignore their stories, to ignore their friendship, is to walk Jesus’ way with legs shackled, arms tied to our side, and dark glasses clouding our sight.  I guess it’s possible, but I’d rather not.

There are thousands of saints that the Church recognizes by name.  Of course, the Church doesn’t “make” saints – only God can do that.  However, for the past thousand years or so, the Church has “canonized” certain people who were believed to have led holy and virtuous lives.  Before then, saints were declared by acclamation, generally by those people around whom the saint lived out his or her life here on earth.  Of course, these named saints are only a tiny fraction of those whom we presume are in heaven.

The fascinating thing about saints is that they come from all walks of life and from all parts of the world.  There are saints from privileged backgrounds like St. Thomas More, chancellor to King Henry VIII or England and St. Katherine Drexel.  There are saints from very humble backgrounds like St. Isidore the Farmer and many of Jesus’ first disciples, poor fishermen from the dusty backwater of Galilee.  There are saints from Africa like St. Charles Lwanga and our diocese’s own patron, St. Augustine of Hippo, saints from North America like St. Kateri Tekakwitha and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and saints from Japan like St. Paul Miki.

The thousands of saints all have their unique stories and there is bound to be a saint who experiences may match quite closely with your own.  And this leads us to a second benefit we gain from our veneration of the saints.  The saints not only model Christian living for us, but also become prayer partners with us in our times of need.  Again, some have claimed that Catholics, in praying to saints, are blaspheming God.  But we don’t pray to the saints in the sense that they are replacements or surrogates for God, we pray with the saints just as we pray with our friends and our neighbors at Mass.  We pray with the saints just as St. Paul prayed with his disciples, just as he asked them to pray with and for him. 

Some saints are patrons of certain causes, perhaps due to some characteristic in their own lives, the manner in which they died, some trouble they may have endured, or some feat they may have accomplished.  That patron saint may be a particularly apt prayer partner when faced with particular situations or challenges.

For example, St. Anthony of Padua was once teaching about the Psalms at a monastery.  Now, Anthony had a hand-copied psalter that he used in his teaching.  Anthony lived in the early twelfth century, long before the printing press, so books like this were very scarce and almost impossible to replace.  One of the monks in the monastery recognized the value in this book and stole it and ran off.  There was much consternation but Anthony seemed rather sanguine about the affair.  He simply prayed for the monk.  Soon after, the monk came to his senses and returned to the monastery, restoring Anthony’s precious book to him and seeking his forgiveness.  Today, we call on St. Anthony to pray with us that we might find some lost object as dear to us as Anthony’s psalter was to him.

Study the saints, pray with the saints, for each of us by our baptisms are called to holiness, called to be saints in this life and in the next.  What better way to learn what we are called to do than to know the stories of those who have already done it.  What better friends can we have to help us on the way than those who have tread the path ahead of us? 

All holy men and women, pray for us.