Basic training: Origins and Destiny

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There's a lot of excitement about DNA tests nowadays, especially the new mail-in tests that you are able to do yourself and get results back regarding your ancestral heritage.  I've heard of many people being surprised to learn that their genetic makeup shows them to be connected with areas of the world they would not have guessed. In fact, our locally-produced Catholic medical radio show "Doctor, Doctor" just dedicated an episode to this topic that I found very enlightening.  The question of why this was so popular was presented to the guest by the two doctor hosts, and the priest-doctor's response was simple: people like to know about where they are from, to discover more about themselves. There is a sense that knowing where you are from gives your life today some meaning, purpose, direction. It grounds you in a story bigger than yourself.
For us today, at the first Sunday of this Lent, we sort of do the same. We look at where we came from in the first reading, and in a certain way, from the other readings as well.
The story of Genesis chapters two and three helps us to understand our own lives. Instead of being a history or science book, this reading today outlines the important theological truths about the human person: we are created in God's image and likeness; sin is not natural to us; our human nature is disordered by sin and the deceptive lies of the devil; and the world is good but fallen from the same cause.

The father of lies wishes to do anything he can to corrupt our sense of reality.  He wants to confuse us about the world, about ourselves, and above all, about who God is. One of Lent's goals is to get back to the basics, uproot any of those lies, and let the truth of God's goodness seep into us as water into tilled soil in the Spring.

Today the Church throughout the world begins the period of preparation for those entering the Church at Easter known as "Election," and those Catechumens who are on the road toward baptism are to be the "elect" when they go through the process of enrollment of names with Bishop Rhodes on Sunday afternoon.
In this beautiful moment for our Catechumens, we all stop and reflect on this core truth of our own identity: We are created by God for a relationship with Him. He "elects" or "chooses" every one of us to be His own.  He chooses us all to exist, and our existence is most importantly so that he can shine the light of His love upon us.

Relationships require time.  Prayer is that giving time for God, as well as obedience to His commands, fasting from the good things of this world, and almsgiving - which are all prayer put into action.

CS Lewis' Weight of Glory - a beautiful sermon given at the end of term in Oxford, 1942.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you may talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare.

All day long we are in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. ... There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

This is the point, then, of the season of Lent: to redirect our desires to the things that we really should be desiring.  Not to destroy desire itself, but to set it on the proper object: God alone. Thus Jesus spends 40 days in the desert, not for himself to re-orient, but to be an example for us of how important this must be in our lives.  Everything it less important. Nothing else matters, not even food, when compared to the great "weight of glory" that God wishes to share with us. In the desert, we connect with our true identity in God and discover where we really come from.  At the same time, we are called forward to where we are really headed. May we follow Our Lord's example this Lent and draw close to the Lord, our true origin, and our ultimate destiny.

Ash Wednesday

How to do Lent wrong:
As a self-help program (weight loss, self-perfection)   *no reference to God*
From a perspective that enjoying things of earth is bad  (Buddhism and Stoicism) *not ordered*
“hold my breath” penances
doing too much.  (not sustainable)
doing too little  (no growth)  (e.g. push-ups, not 1/day, not 500/day)
“winging it” (no plan)
telling no one (no accountability, easy to slack off; no chance to help others)
telling everyone  (Pharisees)
LOSING THE CENTER  - GOD IS THE CENTER


CCC 1428 Christ's call to conversion continues to resound in the lives of Christians. This second conversion is an uninterrupted task for the whole Church who, “follows constantly the path of penance and renewal." This endeavor of conversion is not just a human work. It is the movement of a "contrite heart," drawn and moved by grace to respond to the merciful love of God who loved us first.  St. Ambrose says of the two conversions that, in the Church, "there are water and tears: the water of Baptism and the tears of repentance.”

1432Conversion is first of all a work of the grace of God who makes our hearts return to him: "Restore us to thyself, O LORD, that we may be restored!"26 God gives us the strength to begin anew. It is in discovering the greatness of God's love that our heart is shaken by the horror and weight of sin and begins to fear offending God by sin and being separated from him.

1434 The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving,31 which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one's neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one's neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity "which covers a multitude of sins."32

1439 The process of conversion and repentance was described by Jesus in the parable of the prodigal son, the center of which is the merciful father.

Focus is relationship.  Prodigal Son.
Prayer and Mass have a priority.  From this flows the other two practices of fasting and almsgiving.  Encountering God helps us to realize that these things of the world will not satisfy, and almsgiving is to be like God who is generous, self-giving love.  So God must be at the center.

Deification -  GOD WANTS TO MAKE YOU LIKE HIMSELF.  He created you that way, but our sins have covered over it, just like the ashes on our forehead will be a small sign of the mess we have thrown over our souls. Lent is a time of taking that stuff away.

How do you make and shape glass? How do you make steel armor or a sword?  You place it in a fire. And it becomes like that fire: it becomes hot and it gives light.
God is the fire, and prayer is drawing close to him. The fire burns away our imperfections, but only if we put our selves into it, just like the glass and steel will never be purified, strengthened, and transformed unless it is put in the fire and becomes that fire.
From afar, a blazing fire is only a light that shines on us, and we are “safe” but unchanged when we keep our distance, left out in the cold. Draw near to the fire of God’s love this Lent, and you will lose your false “safety” but gain your true self and become the fulness of what you were always made to be as a son and daughter of God.

Identity - from God alone

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If you remember, last week we spoke about the importance of seeing beyond the rules of our faith to their full meaning, and their true goal: which is holiness, human perfection, the ability to love in a way that is powerful and transforms the world around us. This truth is continued in today’s readings, as we get at a “rule” that is so essential for making both the old law of Judaism and the New Law of Christ Jesus: love of neighbor.

As we do this, it might be good to start with a simple reminder: You are not the center of the universe.  I’m sorry if this comes as a shock to you, but rest assured, it’s gonna be okay. You will make it through this.

Now if that wasn’t shocking to you, perhaps this truth is more so: You are not even the center of yourself, of your own life. The more you make yourself the center, the more you fall apart, and the less yourself you become.  You end up just an empty shell.

I’ve talked about identity before, and it ultimately boils down to this: our true center is found in God.  If He’s at the center of our lives, we are full. We become what we were made to be.

You discover who you are by discovering whose you are.

The 2^nd Vatican Council (1963) described this beautifully when the bishops promulgated the document on the Church in the Modern World entitled Gaudium et Spes.  It says in article 22 - In reality it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear. For Adam, the first man, was a type of him who was to come, Christ the Lord. Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals humanity to itself and brings to light its very high calling.

This is why in our 1^st reading today we hear the phrase

Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy.  And we end with the phrase …I am the Lord. In fact, as the law is given in Leviticus almost every paragraph ends with that phrase   …I am the Lord. …I am the Lord. …I am the Lord.  It’s as if God is showing us who we are by showing us who He is.  And that indeed is what He means to “Be holy because He is Holy” a phrase Jesus also reprises with his conclusion today: So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

God slowly reveals Himself to us. God slowly reveals ourselves to us.

“Self help” vs. Christian identity à Become a fool so as to become wise.

You discover who you are by discovering whose you are. A life of worship of God, of gazing at Him and His love, is how you discover your true identity.

As you live from this identity, you will be able to help others also discover their true selves. Go and be that light.

homily - why rules?

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As far as rules go, Christianity needs to graduate to a higher understanding. Christianity is much more than a list of ‘no’s. 
G.K. Chesterton uses the image of a what rules are for:  Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.
Jesus raises the bar here, because he wants the people to see the true meaning of all the prescriptions of the Law.  The purpose of the Law is to work its way inwards to the heart of the person.  Sinful human nature, with its tendency towards sin, needs to be worked on, and the easiest place to start that work of untwisting the lies of the devil is in our actions. The law is all about external actions, things that can be measured.  These almost always take time to think about and take a real conscious decision to enact. When we begin to control our behavior, it should strengthen us for the next step, the mind, our thoughts, and then finally the passions, which are certainly much more difficult to overcome but can be healed by God’s grace.
So Jesus raises the bar from the Old Law today in all kinds of ways for this reason: that there is something more out there for us.  The rules Jesus gives are not ends in themselves. They have a goal that we cannot forget.  When we forget the goal of human perfection, holiness, the ability to love at such a high pitch that our lives become the salt of the earth and the light of the world, - when we forget that, Christianity looks like a bunch of silly rules.  Like my family’s rule that shoes had to go upstairs.  Why, dad? I don’t wear shoes upstairs… “Because your mother and I are the parents and you are the kids, and we said so.” In just the same way, Christianity because rather unattractive when we don’t see the point of the rules.
 It can happen in many different parts of life where we get caught up in the rules and forget that there is a reason for them that goes beyond them.
Soccer, basketball, baseball, any sport they all have lots of rules. But the rules have a higher purpose: the beauty of the game played well.
Music too has rules.  Playing piano or guitar or another musical instrument has all kinds of things that say: do it this way, not this way. But the rules have a higher purpose: the beauty of music performed well.
Was Michael Jordan breaking the rules all the time? No. But did he play for something more than the rules? Definitely.
Did Mozart or Beethoven have to learn the rules of music and how to play piano? Certainly. But did they stay focused on the rules forever? No way!
So too for us as Christians: we must learn the rules in our head, but more importantly live them so well that they become part of us – automatic so to speak.  Then we can really get more and more free into the beauty of the Christian life.

Bearing Fruit

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Witnesses to Jesus are most important. Most important. Broken Christians are the worst thing for Christianity.  Broken Catholics are the worst thing for Catholicism.

When my microwave broke, what was the good of keeping it?  I couldn't pull it off the wall and use it as a decorative piece, and had no way of incorporating it into my Christmas decorations.
Even worse if this happens more than once.
My sister Katie (in high school) with her hair straighteners.  She bought two in a row that both failed soon after purchase.  She eventually wrote a letter to the company that ended with quite a powerful line, "Could you please let me know I can stop wasting my money?" They got the message and sent her two new hair curlers, and maybe other stuff, to make up for it.  The point is, if it ain't doing its job, it's a waste.

Paul VI (Evangelii Nuntiandi 41): "Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses."[67] St. Peter expressed this well when he held up the example of a reverent and chaste life that wins over even without a word those who refuse to obey the word.[68] It is therefore primarily by her conduct and by her life that the Church will evangelize the world, in other words, by her living witness of fidelity to the Lord Jesus- the witness of poverty and detachment, of freedom in the face of the powers of this world, in short, the witness of sanctity.

To put it one other way before we move on, I will use an example from one of the books given away at Christmas:  Jesus Shock (below)

God has required that witness to be concrete for thousands of years, even before Christianity.  Isaiah makes it clear today that we must live the command of the Lord to “be holy, as He is holy” especially through living justice as we heard today in the first reading:

So the challenge today is: how are we witnessing? What are we doing to bear fruit? How is Jesus working through us?  What is the evidence that shows we are alive?
It could happen in a thousand ways, but the Church invites us to get disturbingly concrete.
Ask God to show you ONE way that you can get concrete in one way of being salt and light in our world. To show others that there's more to Christianity than broken, zombie Christians.



Jesus Shock by Peter Kreeft, referenced Socrates meets Jesus by Peter Kreeft

Socrates: “Rather, I must ask another question. I fear it will be misunderstood and prove embarrassing, so please be patient with me and try very hard not to misunderstand my motives in asking it.
Class: Sure, Socrates. [Accommodating, open, inviting looks.]
Bertha [impatient, interested]: What's the question?
Socrates: Where are the Christians? [Whole class looks shocked and puzzled.]
Bertha: What do you mean? They're all over the place.
Socrates: This place?
Bertha: Of course this place, and many other places too.
Socrates: Then there is something I do not understand.
 Bertha: What's that?
Socrates: If you are all Christians, if some of you are Christians, if any of you are Christians-how could your life be the same? How could you look the same, talk the same, think the same? How could the born child so closely resemble the unborn child? How could your life be so ... so bland, if this incredible thing is true?
Molly: Socrates, are you putting us down?
Socrates: Alas, that is what I feared you would think. That's why the question is so embarrassing. Look here, I am certainly no expert in this Christianity thing; I have only discovered it in the last few days, so far be it from me to tell you or anyone what it all really amounts to. But this book of yours does tell us-all of us, me as well as you-what it all amounts to. And if everything thing in this book is true, then what it amounts to compared to everything else I have ever known is like a whale compared to minnows.
Fesser: It's nice of you to take the New Testament so seriously, Socrates, but ... Socrates: Nice? Did you say nice?”

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“Fesser [annoyed yet interested]: Exactly what do you find missing, Socrates?
Socrates: Everything!
Fesser: Surely you of all people could explain a bit more clearly.
Socrates: I shall certainly try. See here, if I understand this book, it claims that the supreme Creator-God became a man so that men and women could become gods and goddesses. "Partakers in the divine nature," it says. How could anything be the same after that, if it really happens?
Fesser: Oh, well, now, that is something of a bone of contention. Should we interpret the metaphor of participating in the divine nature to refer to a literal, historical event, or is it instead a mythological expression, not to be taken literally?
Socrates: A myth? Do you think it is a myth?
Fesser: Some do, some don't.
Socrates: And you? What do you think?
Fesser [uncomfortable]: That is not the issue here. This is an academic classroom, not a revival meeting. [Some giggle.]
Bertha [trying to bail Fesser out]: Socrates, are you asking why we aren't all saints?
Socrates: No, not if you mean heroes of perfection. The people in your Bible were not that. All of them had flaws-unlike the heroes and heroines of the fiction of my culture. That is one of the reasons your book seems to be factual, by the way. No, I'm asking about something else, something that's hard to define but easy to recognize, I think, though the only place I have recognized nized it so far is in this book. Let me put it this way. When I read about this man Jesus and about his disciples and about his "called-out-ones" (that's what church means, doesn't it?)-when I read this, I find something so unmistakable, so distinctive, so strong and full of life and joy, that it's like the noonday sun. If all these things really happened, then it's no wonder that the whole world was turned upside down, as your book says, even the hard-nosed Roman world. It's no wonder the people who met Christ either worshiped him or crucified him. And it's no wonder the people who met his disciples either believed them and worshiped him, or didn't believe them and persecuted them for telling this abominable, insane he. It's got to be all or nothing, either-or.
Fesser: Are you defending fanaticism, Socrates?
Socrates: No.
Fesser: What, then?
Socrates: Something more like marriage. In-loveness. Fidelity.
Fesser: And what do you think you see around you instead?
Socrates: Scholarship. Teachers and students playing at a game, like children playing safari while there is a real lion lurking in their own front yard. You think you are studying a dead man, don't you? - a man like myself as I was until a few days ago, rather than someone alive, and present, and active, as I am now. Isn't that how you see it?
Bertha: But Socrates, Jesus isn't here as you are here.
Socrates: Your book says that he is. His disciples believed and acted as if he was. He himself promised to be. If it's not a myth, if he really rose from the dead, then he's not dead, but alive, like an animal-at least as alive as an animal.”

Homily - Presentation

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40 days since Christmas.  Old end of the Christmas season. “Circumcision”. The covenant with Abraham is brought to its fulfillment in Christ.  Also the promise of Ezekiel that the Lord’s presence will return to the temple after the Lord’s glory had abandoned the temple due to sacrileges practiced by His priests (a fitting message for our times as well).

Two words from Simeon today really point us forward to the Paschal Mystery, especially Good Friday: “A sword will pierce your heart.” “A sign that will be contradicted.”

“A sign that will be contradicted.”  It seems that whenever we stand up for Christ, we will receive some opposition.  First, we need to discern well if we are really standing with Jesus or standing with some ideology that seems to fit Christ when looked at from a specific lens.  Secondly, this doesn’t mean that we should be provoking opposition, but that we shouldn’t be shocked when it comes.  Jesus didn’t provoke. Even His coming as a child and his years of hidden life show that He was not trying to bring about separation and division, but truly tried to draw people to himself.

“A sword will pierce your heart.” Nothing hurts more than when that separation is from those you love the most.  Family and friends at times will not share our faith or our enthusiasm for being Christian.  This may cause grief and a type of “death” but should not rob our hope in Christ, nor should it destroy our love for them. We must pray, witness, and love them as they make their way through the five steps of conversion we spoke of last week: initial trust, curiosity, openness, seeking/pursuing, and discipleship.

The God of infinite power returns to His temple in this way.  What a surprise.

Babies need parents.  You only exist today because you were loved day after day by someone.  My little nephew with his floppy head and hilarious arm skills is proof that we couldn’t survive on our own.  God chose to make himself one of us, and thus chose to make himself “need” us for a little bit, just as we really do need God for every moment of our existence, for every breath.