To Vote or Not To Vote

Famously, Jesus tells us to give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's. (Mt 22:15-21)  Many people have used that passage to justify separating church from state.  For most of my life, I certainly stood with those people.  I felt that this world was Caesar's, the next was God's.  How I lived my secular life was more or less unconnected to how I lived my spiritual life.  They were separate lives.

However, Jesus quickly corrects this interpretation (Mt 22:34-40).  For Jesus offers us a radical change in lifestyle.  Not so much in the laws that he cites.  The Shema, "you shall love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind" would have drawn no argument from most devout Jews.  As Deuteromomy states, it was drilled into their heads as children, they could easily agree that it held special place in the catalogue of laws.

Yet Jesus doesn't stop there.  He is asked for the single greatest commandment, yet he seems to give us two.  But listen more closely.  For Jesus says the "second is like the first."  They are as one.  We cannot love God without loving our neighbors as well.  And we cannot withhold love of neighbor without also withholding love of God.  Our secular lives, our relationships with each other on earth, are not unconnected at all to our spiritual lives, they are exact reflections of one another.

As we approach this election season, those of us of a certain age or with long political memories are reminded of Ronald Reagan's political home run in 1980.  Then, he asked "are you better off now than you were four years ago?"  As we also may remember, very few of us in 1980 could answer that question positively – and Reagan was swept to victory.  Even today, candidates are still using this line to highlight an incumbent’s failures.

Yet if we take the Jesus’ greatest law seriously, the question is not apt.  The real issue is: "are WE better off now than we were four years ago."  And the “WE” is not just our family, our parish, our town, our political party or even, for that matter, our country.  It is WE as the body of Christ, WE as fellow sons and daughters of God, WE as fellow human beings.

When we desire world peace yet continue to hoard the world’s largest supply of nuclear and chemical weapons, when we continue to be the world's largest merchant of war material and weapons of mass destruction - WE are not better off.

When we claim to be pro-life but stay silent on the daily assaults on God's precious gift of life - euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion, gun violence, poverty - WE are not better off.

When we vote to deny fellow humans access to education, basic health services and nutrition simply because they cannot document their legal existence in our country - WE are not better off.

And when we vote to cling tightly to God's gifts to preserve our own comfortable lives, while denying fellow sons and daughters of God the chance to afford decent housing for their families - WE are not better off.

In a democracy like the United States, voting is a vital part of our civic life.  But for followers of Jesus in the United States, voting is also a vital part of our spiritual life.  If we deny our neighbor in our vote, we deny our God in our hearts.  But if we affirm our neighbor with our votes, we affirm our love of God - and WE are certainly better off for that!

A Purgatory Parable

In the Gospels, we hear many parables about the kingdom of heaven, and throughout Scripture, we are presented with many images used to describe heaven and hell.  Yet, there is very little to be heard of Purgatory. 

I once heard a parable of Purgatory – I don’t remember where or from whom, and it is certainly not part of the Bible – but it gave me some insights into the mystery of Purgatory.  As best I recall, it goes like this…

The state of Purgatory is like a woman who decided to have a dinner party.  Not just any dinner party, but a very special, holiday party.  She brought out her Irish lace tablecloth, the wedding china, solid sterling silverware, crystal glassware, and her most exquisite linen napkins.  In the middle of the table sat a rather ordinary-looking cut glass bowl. While it was filled with orchids as the centerpiece, the bowl itself looked somewhat out of place among the luxurious trappings of the table. 

Yet as out of place it may have looked on the table, it held a special place in the woman’s heart.  It had been her great-grandmother’s bowl, and the woman had seen it prominently displayed and used at her grandmother’s house when she visited on holidays.  It was a fixture at every family gathering, and the woman was so pleased that it was now hers to use and to pass on to the next generation.

The dinner is a great success, with everyone enjoying the lively company and delicious food.  At the end, one of the guests, being a good friend of the hostess, stays behind to help clean up.  As she takes the centerpiece bowl into the kitchen so as to clear the table, it slips from her hands and crashes to the tile floor, shattering into countless pieces.

Knowing its great sentimental value, the guest is as shattered as the bowl, struck dumb with horror.  Before the words of apology can come of her mouth, the hostess runs over, embraces her and says, “Are you hurt?  Do not worry about the bowl, it was just an accident.  We can clean this up in no time.” 

Despite the gracious and genuine forgiveness offered by the hostess, the guest remains shattered.  She knew she could not undo what had been done; she could not replace the irreplaceable.  For some time, she avoids the hostess completely, for it pains her to be reminded of her mistakes; to be reminded of her powerlessness to right what she had done wrong.

We are all called by God to holiness, called to be one with Him who is all holy.  When we answer this call, we begin a journey towards God.  Down through the ages, spiritual masters have described this journey in many different ways.  While the images and process may differ from sage to sage, one common element is the need for purgation, the need to purge ourselves from our ego, our pride, our drive for self-reliance, so that we can accept the mercy of God.  Jesus himself often refers to this purgation when he says we must die to ourselves and be born again in Spirit and light.

But for most of us, this purgation takes a long, long time, and the journey is fraught with failure.  Even as we make some progress along the journey, we often stray from the path and when we find ourselves back to the path, we are often further back than we had been before.  The process is so long it doesn’t necessarily end when we physically die.  Surely at our deaths, we leave behind the toils and travails of an earthly life, but even though God offers us complete forgiveness of our sins, most of us – I dare say virtually all of us – probably won’t be ready to face God.  Our pride, our reluctance to accept that which we don’t deserve, keeps us from the ultimate peace and joy that is God’s gracious, undeserved, unconditional love.  We are like the guest in the parable who cannot face her friend as the friend’s face simply reminds her of her failings and her inadequacies.

Yet, when we have completely purged ourselves of pride and ego – and Jesus is confident that we will since he will ultimately draw all those who believe in him to himself (Jn 6:36-40) – we become clean of heart!  Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God – and live! 

Today, we gather to commemorate and to pray for those who have left the womb of Mother Earth, but who are perhaps still on the journey to holiness, still purging the dross so as to be free to accept God in all his glory, grace, and goodness. 

But we do more than just pray for them.  We also ask them to pray for us, to pray with us, for we are in this journey together – we are a communion of saints.  I know that my dad and my father-in-law, both of whom prayed for my family and me mightily when they were here on earth, continue to pray for us as Mary and I continue to pray for them, that all of us may ultimately be free to be with God and with one another in eternal joy and eternal peace.

Is this fair?

My granddaughter, Ava – the most beautiful in the world – is 20 months old.  She is speaking more but has yet to learn the four-letter word that strikes terror into a young parent's heart.  That word is "fair."  The problem is that in a two-year-old's egotistical world, fairness is: "If it's not mine, it's not fair."  Ava may not know the word, but she knows the theory.  If you take something from her, she indignantly pulls the pacifier from her mouth and flings it to the ground, crumples onto the carpet and lays out spread-eagled as if she has been crucified!  Oh, the unfairness of it all!

As the toddler reaches preschool, we try to inject a sense of sharing with others into our child's concept of fairness.  I'll call this the "one for you, one for me" school of fairness.  Then our children grow older and start playing games.  With games, there are rules.  Being fair becomes “follow the rules.”  If you work hard and play fair, you’re a winner, whether the score is in your favor or not.

We take this “play hard, follow the rules” sense of fairness into our adult lives.  If you work hard, if you follow the rules, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, you will get rewarded.  And the rewards tend to be proportionate to the effort.  "An honest day's wage for an honest day's work," "You worked hard, you earned it."  And if you slack off and break the rules, you will get nothing, at best, punished at worst.  

We're quite proud of this civilized, “quid pro quo” approach to fairness.  We believe it is just – everyone gets their just desserts.  Even if it doesn’t work out that neatly all the time in real life, ultimately karma prevails.

It is a fairly small leap to carry this concept from the material realm – the world in which we live – to the spiritual realm – the kingdom of heaven of which we are.  If I work hard, if I say the right prayers, if I obey the commandments, go to Mass every Sunday, then I earn my heavenly reward.  In fact, we may even commingle the material and spiritual worlds together, assuming that our path to spiritual success is marked by our well-earned success and growing wealth here on earth.

We forget the Lord’s words to Isaiah – “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your thoughts and my thoughts above your thoughts.” (Is 55:9)  Then we hear Jesus in this morning's Gospel.  (Mt 20:1-6)

Our valued sense of fairness isn’t at all important to Jesus.  He tells us bluntly, this is not what “the kingdom of heaven is like.”  Jesus does not want us to settle for human fairness in divvying up our finite goods.  He calls us to divine mercy and unlimited, infinite, super-generous divine love.  And each one of is promised precisely the same share of God’s love – infinite love for everyone!  No matter what we’ve done or failed to do.  We cannot earn more, for it is already infinite.  We cannot earn less, for it is unconditional; we can never lose it; for it is eternal.  We need only accept God’s generosity.  

In a sense, the kingdom of God’s concept of fairness is more like nursery school than like our grown-up, adult world.  We teach our three and four-year olds to share with others since they obviously haven't done anything to warrant all of the toys that they have.  The toys have simply been given to them.  Similarly, God's love is given to us.  It is pure gift, pure grace.  By definition, it cannot be earned or deserved, it can only be accepted.

We earn nothing, yet we have everything.  Having everything, we need nothing.  Needing nothing, we can share this superabundance of love with others.  We look at others not as competitors for the finite goods of this world, not as opponents whom we must overcome through hard work or bombs and bullets, but as other children of God – our brothers and sisters who are loved by God and cared for by God, precisely as we ourselves are loved and cared for by God.

We look on others not as an inconvenience, a drag on society, a scourge that needs purged, but as a gift from God, as one for whom the hope of eternal life shines as brightly as we pray that it shines in ourselves, as one whose right to life comes not from human laws or institutions, is not determined their good or evil works, but is from God's very hand.

And He calls each of us to care for these lives, to support these lives, and to cherish these lives as our very own.

For Christians, fairness is stewardship.

For Christians, fairness is preference for the poor.

For Christians, fairness is unconditional love.

Hail Holy Queen

From the earliest centuries of the Church, we have honored Mary as queen, recognizing her role as mother of our king, Jesus, who is son of Mary and Son of God.  Virtually all of the Church Fathers lauded Mary as queen, particularly after the fourth century councils that declared Mary as the Theotikos, Mother of God.  Some of our most ancient hymns venerate Mary in this role – “Hail, Holy Queen Enthroned Above” has always been one of my favorites.

In a sense, when we recognize Mary as queen, we are echoing the words of the angel Gabriel, the words of Elizabeth, and the words of Mary herself.  As we recall from Scripture, both Gabriel and Elizabeth declare Mary as “blessed among women.”  (Lk 1:28, 42)  Mary then prays that though she is merely God’s lowly servant, “…all generations will call me blessed.” (Lk 1:48)

But why is she so blessed?  Why is so right for us to honor her as our queen?  Is it because God somehow loves Mary more than he loves us?  Is there really some ranking in heaven where the great saints are somehow more “one with God” that those who perhaps just weren’t that great? 

But this would contradict our faith that God’s love is unconditional, infinite and universal.  God loves all creation – even fallible you and fallible me – with precisely the same love as God loves Mary.  Rankings and titles are things us finite, world-bound humans do.

Yet, it is still right to honor Mary as Queen.  For Mary is not only the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God.  She is also our perfect model of response to the love of God.  It is through Mary’s perfect obedience to God’s will that salvation was made available to us.  For Mary did not pray as I often do – may your will be changed – she prayed perfectly, as Jesus would teach us to do – may your will be done.   “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.  May it be done to me according to your word.”  (Lk 1:38)

Mary prayed that God’s will be done despite the great personal danger it entailed for her.  She remained faithful to this prayer despite the great suffering and pain she endured listening to the people scorn her son, torture him, and crucify him.

But there is more.  As she if our model of perfect prayer, she also becomes a paragon of intercessors.  After all, if we wish someone to pray for us, what better person to ask than the one whose prayer is perfect? 

Mary, perfect pray-er, Mary, Queen of saints, Mary, Queen of heaven and earth, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, Amen.

Hail, holy Queen enthroned above, O Maria.

Hail, Queen of mercy and of love, O Maria.

Triumph, all ye cherubim,

Sing with us, ye seraphim,

Heaven and earth resound the hymn:

Salve, salve, salve Regina!

It's not fair!

My granddaughter, Ava, is about 19 months old now and more and more intelligible words can be heard.  However she has yet to learn that four-letter word that strikes terror into a young parent's heart.  That word is "fair."  The problem is that in a two-year-old's egotistical world, fairness is "If it's not mine, it's not fair."

As the toddler reaches pre-school, we try to inject a sense of sharing with others into our child's concept of fairness.  I'll call this the "one for you, one for me" school of fairness.

Finally, as our child grows us, we try to instill a more sophisticated, quid-pro-quo sense of fairness.  We teach that if you work hard, if you follow the rules, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, you will get rewarded.  And the rewards tend to be proportionate to the effort.  "An honest day's wage for an honest day's work," "You worked hard, you earned it."  

We're quite proud of this civilized approach.  In fact, one might call this concept "the American way."  While far from perfect, America has long epitomized the "land of opportunity", the road to social mobility, better than perhaps any other culture in the history of the world.

It is a fairly small leap to carry this concept from the material realm to the spiritual realm.  If I work hard, if I say the right prayers, if I obey the commandments, I earn my heavenly reward.  In fact, we often comingle the material and spiritual worlds together, assuming that our path to spiritual success is marked by our well-earned success and growing wealth here on earth.

Then we hear Jesus in this morning's Gospel.  (Mt 20:1-16)

Our valued sense of fairness isn’t at all important to Jesus.  He tells us bluntly, this is not what “the kingdom of heaven is like.”  Jesus does not want us to settle for human fairness in divvying up our finite goods.  He calls us to divine mercy and unlimited, infinite, super-generous divine love.  And each one of is promised precisely the same share of God’s love – infinite love for everyone!  No matter what we’ve done or failed to do.  We cannot earn more; we cannot earn less; we need only accept God’s generosity.  It is pure gift.

In a sense, the kingdom of God’s concept of fairness is more like nursery school than like our grown-up, adult world.  We teach our three- and four-year-olds to share with others since they obviously haven't done anything to warrant all of the toys that they have.  The toys have simply been given to them.  Similarly, God's love is generously given to us. 

We earn nothing, yet we have everything.  Having everything, we need nothing.  Needing nothing, we can share this superabundance of love with others.  We look at others not as competitors for the finite goods of this world, not as opponents whom we must overcome through hard work, but as other children of God who are loved by God and cared for by God, precisely as we ourselves are loved and cared for by God.

We look on others not as an inconvenience, a drag on society, a scourge that needs purged, but as a gift from God, one for whom the hope of eternal life shines as brightly as we pray that it shines in ourselves, as one whose right to life comes not from human laws or institutions, but from God's very hand.

As Christians, fairness is stewardship.

As Christians, fairness is preference for the poor.

As Christians, fairness is unconditional love.

Growing down

When our children were very young, both of their sets of grandparents lived 400 miles away, in opposite directions.  Thus, Mary and I took many long car trips to visit the grandparents. 

Our strategy was to pack the care the night before, get up before dawn, try to put the kids in the car without waking them up, and hope that they’d sleep all the way there!  Of course, it never worked.  Most times, before we’ve barely left the street, you know what we heard from the back seat.  “Are we there yet?”  Who teaches them that?  We’d ignore them, but then it would only escalate, “Look, there’s a McDonald’s, can we get something to eat.  Oh, and are we there yet?”  And again.  And again.

In frustration, I’d turn around and tell them, “Grow up.”  It’s what we want our children to do, to grow up and be like us – learned, responsible, upstanding adults.

Today, we hear Jesus praising his Father for revealing the kingdom, not to the learned and the wise, but to the childlike.  (Mt 11: 25)   Mark reports Jesus telling us that unless we are like the children, the kingdom of heaven cannot be ours.  (Mk 10:15)  Here I am telling my children to grow up, to act like an adult, and Jesus is telling me to grow down, and be like the child.

What Jesus knows is that children have an amazing capacity for faith, for the understanding that there is great mystery in the world, and powerful forces that are much beyond their understanding.  The sun comes up in the morning and they see God at work.  A garden is in full bloom with all the colors of the rainbow and they see God at work.  A bedewed spider’s web sparkles in the sunlight, and they see God at work.  Simple things, yes, but to a child, they are visions of God.

And then they go to school.  They learn lots of things, just as we did.  Soon they learn so much, they think – as we often do – there are no mysteries, for they know it all.  And if we can’t explain it and understand it, then it can’t be true.

Then there is Jesus – a man who was born like us, who looked like us, ate like us, laughed when he saw something funny, cried when he saw something sad, bled when you cut him, and died when he was put on the cross – and one of the first things we teach them is this man is God.  They seem to grasp it quite easily.  But oftentimes, it is not so easy for us, educated as we may be, those of us who pride ourselves on our understanding of all things.  This just doesn’t make sense.  Perhaps we try to rationalize it all, make it more palatable to our sense of logic.

We forget that St. Augustine, who reminds us that if we know anything completely, understand it thoroughly, it cannot be God.  We cannot wrap our finite minds around the infinite God.  If we have allowed our pride in learning to lead us astray, we must grow down to accept the ineffable mystery of God.

And so Jesus tells us the we must grow down, be like a child, hold fast to the faith and a sense of mystery that when we see Jesus, we see God, when we know Jesus, we know God – certainly not all there is to know – but we know God.

Today, we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a title given to the Blessed Mother in her role as the patron saint of the Carmelites.  The Carmelites are an ancient religious order who began as a group of hermits living on the slopes of Mount Carmel in the Holy Land.

 

A century or so ago, a young French girl became a Carmelite nun.  She was a true child at heart, and in her short life – she was only 24 years old when she died – and in her writings, she has inspired millions of people to retain the simplicity of a child’s faith.  Today, we pray with St. Therese of the Child Jesus, the Little Flower, that despite our great learning, we remain humble and childlike in our openness to the mystery of God; that we might follow his Son and enter the kingdom of heaven.

Yielding a gazillion-fold

In life, progress rarely happens in a straight, uninterrupted line.  Even when things seem to be going our way, we often make two steps forward only to find ourselves retracing one step back.  And when things aren’t going so well, we may even find ourselves making one step up only to fall two steps down.  On my really bad days, I am like the White Rabbit in Wonderland – the hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

Today’s readings offer us hope that such is not to be our ultimate fate.  Isaiah states that as certainly as the rains water the earth, God’s word will prevail. (Is 55:10-11)  Paul insists, that despite our creaturely limitations, despite the sufferings which we endure, salvation and glory beyond our wildest imaginings is the ultimate fate of the children of God. (Rom 8:18-23)  And Jesus takes our normal experience and turns it on its ear. (Mt 13:1-9)

For Jesus, even three steps back does not matter.  When we take one step forward living in the fertile ground of God’s word, of God’s way, that one step is worth thirty, sixty, or even one hundred steps.  To put this in the perspective of Jesus’ listeners, they would have known that typically, the yield for the well-planted seed would have been seven or eight times, perhaps ten times at the outside.  Jesus is promising a yield that is beyond imagination.  If Jesus related this story to us today, he might claim that the fertile ground yielded a gazillion-fold.

So where do we find this fertile ground, this agent of the gazillion-fold yield.  For Isaiah, it is in God’s word, in Paul, it is the revelation of God.  There are saying the same thing.  The fertile ground is Jesus, the Word of God, the perfect revelations of God.  When we walk with Jesus, our lives bear abundant fruit.

Yet, our culture insists that God or Jesus is not the answer.  I find myself depending on my own hard work, my financial success, scientific advances, and self-righteousness to build security, happiness, and the good life.

On the hard-packed path where I often find myself, I think that I can protect what I own by shutting myself off from those who I see as taking from me.  I pass laws and build walls to keep these people from coming into my life, from invading my space.  Yet in jealously protecting what I consider mine, my heart becomes as hard as the path I walk.  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

Among the thorns, I believe that in my anger, as righteous as I feel it to be, I can strike out at others in revenge for what they have done to me or mine.  Yet my vengeance becomes another’s motivation to strike me even harder.  As I sow the wind, I reap the whirlwind.  Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

In rocky soil, I buy into the theory that creating bigger and better weapons will keep others from using weapons against us.  I think that we can make weapons “smart” enough that only those who we intend to kill are killed.  Yet wars persist; innocent people die.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.

This is the futility of our creatureliness; this is the hard-packed, rocky and thorny soil that yields nothing but more agony and pain.  There is another way and we do not have to look far back in history to see those who have shown us that way, whose lives have been lived not on the fast lane but in the fertile land.

Dorothy Day worked for most of her adult life in destitution, struggling to live a life of non-violence, love, and trust in the God who gives life.  As a result, many thousands are fed each day and many thousands find the only warm bed they know in the houses of hospitality which Dorothy Day founded or inspired.

Dr. Martin Luther King looked the evil of racism in the face and offered peaceful resistance, a vision of brotherhood, and his very life.  As a result, millions of minds have been changed, a nation was moved.

Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela fought apartheid not with terrorism but with God’s word, and today apartheid in South Africa is but a bad memory; today South Africa is a nation struggling to uncover the brutal truth of its past, to reconcile those who were once enemies.

Pope St. John Paul II, by letting God’s love and mercy show through him, helped to gain freedom for many, many millions who had lived under the oppression of Soviet rule.

Each one of us has the same power that enabled Dorothy Day, Dr. King, Bishop Tutu, Mr. Mandela and Pope St. John Paul to accomplish great things.  God will work through each one of us, but only if we allow Him to do so.  Trust in God, live in the fertile soil of Jesus, his Word, and we, too, shall yield thirty-fold, sixty-fold, one hundred-fold…perhaps even a gazillion-fold.