Archive for category: Go and Glorify

You are here: / Go and Glorify

A wedding garment of mercy

/in

Deacon Greg Kandra

Guest

The parable we hear this Sunday is one of the most challenging in the Gospels —about an extravagantly generous king who throws a large wedding feast for his son. He invites anyone and everyone, only to take offense when one guest shows up improperly dressed.

There’s a lot to unpack here — about the king and, really, about ourselves.

Peel back the layers of this parable and you understand it’s about more than just fashionable wedding apparel. (Spoiler alert: Don’t go leafing through Modern Bride to decipher the meaning here!)

Commentators will tell you: the king in this story — God — is less interested in what we choose to wear; he is more concerned with how we choose to live and how we respond to his invitation, his call. Do we ignore him? Shrug him off? When God invites us to the feast, do we show up clothed with the very best we have to offer? Are we willing to make the effort?

I can’t help but be reminded of St. Paul’s advice to the Colossians, who used a garment metaphor to describe the Christian journey: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another … And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.”

So the real question here is: What do we choose to “wear” when we go into the world? Do we don righteousness a desire to live with holiness and humility and justice? Or do we just throw on indifference? What do we “put on” when God invites us to his feast? Do we clothe ourselves with the best we have, and offer the best we can be? Do we strive to wrap ourselves in holiness and faithfulness, compassion and mercy?

Pope Francis once described it this way, as a matter of grace: “The wedding garment,” the pope said, “symbolizes the mercy that God freely gives us, namely, grace. Without grace we cannot take a step forward in Christian life. Everything is grace. It is not enough to accept the invitation to follow the Lord; one must be open to a journey of conversion, which changes the heart. The garment of mercy, which God offers us unceasingly, is the free gift of his love; it is precisely grace. And it demands to be welcomed with astonishment and joy: ‘Thank you, Lord, for having given me this gift.'”

I think there is one more lesson to take away from this parable. It’s about the one who is extending the invitation. What kind of a king is this? How should we think of our God?

Jesus has described a ruler with limitless generosity. The king tells his servants, “Go out into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.” And the servants do just that, gathering “all they found, good and bad alike, and the hall was filled with guests.”

Here is a king willing to share the best of everything he has to offer with every soul in his kingdom. He does it with patience and, as Pope Francis said, mercy.

It may seem like this king has a stringent dress code. But what he really has is a code for living the spiritual life — a life spent working daily to make ourselves worthy of the invitation we’ve been given. That means extending to others the generosity and mercy our king offers us, and to show up at the feast with a spirit of faithfulness, gratitude and love.

So, don’t worry about what’s in your closet. In God’s kingdom, a desire to live a holy, faithful and loving life — a life of righteousness — is always in fashion.

Deacon Greg Kandra is an award-winning author and journalist, and creator of the blog “The Deacon’s Bench.”

What’s most important

/in

Father Daniel Schomaker

Guest

This past week I had the privilege of visiting the Eternal City, Rome. It was a time for me to slow down — which I found quite refreshing.

Normally I’m always going from one thing to another. On this trip I noticed something, and it was a point of many conversations amongst the other priests who were with me. The many visitors to the Vatican and surrounding Rome had almost no self-awareness. Walking through pictures, pushing to the front of the line, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, bumping into you, cutting you off, and so on. Everyone was in a rush.

I have to be honest; I did behave this way at least once because I couldn’t handle the crowd in St. Peter’s Square — I just had to get out. My own self-reflection suggests that this was very selfish. I had no concern for the other. I certainly felt that others had no concern for me.

Why have we gotten this way? I think it’s because we have fallen into the trap of the secular world — “look out for number one.” I am most important. I am the determining factor of what is right. I, I, I. Me, me, me.

The problem is that when we live for the self, we are actually hurting the self. None of us created the world, and none of us has saved it. Only God has done these things! And his command is this: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

In the Gospel today, the tenants tried to take that which wasn’t theirs. They were living for the self. In the end, it was their downfall. Let us be sure that as Christians we are living for the other — willing the good of the other — living lives of love.

And the reality is, it starts with really simple things. Good manners and kindness. Let’s start being self-aware, so that we can see others. How do we change the world? Start with changing yourself!

Father Daniel Schomaker is pastor, Blessed Sacrament Parish, Ft. Mitchell and director, Office of Worship and Liturgy for the Diocese of Covington, Ky.

Indifference to God, fascination with Christ

/in

Father Philip DeVous

Guest

Ultimately, everything depends on the God question. Faith is faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ or it is nothing. And to the extent we can grasp the nettle of the matter, it is that the crisis in the heart of modern man exists to the degree to which he is indifferent to God. That indifference to God, however, is often not met with a direct repudiation of Jesus Christ, but rather, by erecting a simulacrum of the savior — an idol — who approves our every whim to live as we will.

In recognizing this situation of deep indifference and idolatry, we must cry out anew with the Psalmist, “Your ways, O Lord, make known to me; teach me your paths, guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my savior.”

No doubt, there are many reasons as to why people have grown indifferent to God. The reasons are as personal as every individual who has become indifferent. I think, however, we could sum up a great many of those reasons as distraction. After all, the world puts many titillating things before our eyes.

The passing world is very good indeed at making us forget that it is passing away. The sum of this relentless distraction leads us down the path of disinterest in Jesus Christ, inattentiveness to the things of the spirit, then on to indifference, and finally to a kind of blindness to God and to the presence of Christ in our midst. This is a constant pressure and temptation with which we all contend.

So, here are some questions to ask ourselves daily to avoid being pulled down the road of indifference to God and to the priority of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom: Do I find Jesus Christ interesting? Do I find Jesus Christ fascinating? Do I want to know more about Jesus Christ?

Every pastoral work of the Church is dead in the water if we do not find Jesus interesting and do not have a desire to really get to know him. It is a tragic irony that after more than a millennium of Christianity as the dominant religion in the Western world that the challenging person of Jesus Christ is now largely met with widespread disinterest, even by many claiming to have a relationship with Him. How many church related things do we engage with whereof Jesus Christ is barely spoken?

If there is to be a resurgence of faith in our time, which truly rediscovers the priority of Christ, taking faith beyond the routine and superficial, it will only start when we again find Jesus fascinating. And, it must be said, Jesus Christ is fascinating!

Let us pray to hear the words of St. Paul with fresh, inquisitive ears when he says: “(Christ Jesus) Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God, something to be grasped.”

In this single sentence we have two claims that were revolutionary in St. Paul’s time and our own. First, that Jesus is God. The God of the Israelites was understood as majestic, so holy that not even His name was to be said, lest one offend with blasphemy. Though He cared for Israel, the chosen people, he was to be carefully approached and attended to. The apostle is saying this Jesus is that God. The Lord. The Creator.

Second, even though Jesus is the God of Israel, He “did not regard equality with God.”

Why?

“…Because he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness and human in appearance.” Now whatever one may think about this claim, is this not a fascinating claim? That the all-holy Eternal God from whom all things were made, through whom the entire cosmos was fashioned, set aside His glory to take the form of a slave, to approach us.

Faith can only be sustained if we find Jesus interesting. When we pursue that interest in prayer, worship, fellowship, service and study, our fascination with Jesus grows. Consequently, we find ourselves more willing to listen to Him, to live more of our life “through him, and with him and in him.” Allowing ourselves to be led from indifference to interest, and then onwards to fascination, we become more desirous and willing to bend the knee, and to let the entirety of our lives confess “that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Father Phillip W. DeVous is pastor of Sts. Peter & Paul Parish in California, KY.

The goal of Christian life

/in

Father Stephen Bankemper

Guest

In the last few weeks, we have heard individual lessons that will aid our growth as Christians. For example, last weekend: forgive over and over (77 times in the translation we heard, seventy times seven in other translations); the weekend before that: if your brother sins against you, tell him his sin first privately, if he does not listen to you, with others, but not to retaliate, but to convert him; the weekend before that: there is nothing more important than one’s eternal life.

But while focusing on individual lessons is important, the danger is that our lives as Christians becomes just another version of if I-want-to-get-to-heaven-I-must-do-this-and-this-and-this. There is an overarching lesson that makes sense of all the individual lessons and can inspire us with the overall goal of our Christian faith; we hear it today in the first reading.

God says today through Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,/ nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord./ As high as the heavens are above the earth,/ so high are my ways above your ways/ and my thoughts above your thoughts.” (Is 55:8-9) If only this truth could become most prominent in our minds, we would be well on the way to holiness!

To understand this, we must understand the purpose and goal of the Christian life — it is not to become a good person, but to be transformed.

There are different ways to describe this transformation. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul describes it as changing from bearing the image of the “earthly man” to the image of the “heavenly man”:

“The first man was from the earth, a man of dust [Adam]; the second man is from heaven [Jesus]. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1 Cor 15:47-50)

How does this transformation take place? We heard this a few weeks ago (22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time) from Paul’s letter to the Romans: “Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind …” (Rom 12:2) In the Gospel of the same Sunday Jesus put it this way to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! … You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Matt 16:23)

It is vitally important to know — lest our spirituality become muscular, so to speak, and Pelagian — that this kind of transformation is not something that we do, but something that happens to us. We have a part to play, but that part is what we do to open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

Regularly reading and meditating on Scripture is essential. How can we know the mind of God if we ignore the books that teach us that mind?

Prayer is next, of course, where God speaks directly to our soul and communicates what He wants us to do.

Finally, practice. The more we seek to live as the prophets and saints and, especially, Jesus, teach us, the more habitual a holy life will become.

Let us learn the individual lessons that come through the scriptures but let us keep in the mind the overarching purpose of the Christian life, to become people who think the way God thinks and value what God values, so that we may become like him.

Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.

We gain when we forgive

/in

Father Michael Elmlinger

Guest

One of the most difficult things Christ to do for one another is to forgive one another. There can be a desire to hold onto that grudge, because the person has done something so horribly to us and is not deserving of our mercy and forgiveness. They have caused a wound within us that may never fully heal, or at the very least will leave a nasty scar. While it is true that some wounds take so long to heal (if they ever fully heal at all), nevertheless, we are still called to forgive all who have wronged us, because God has chosen to forgive us of all the wrongs that we have done, as well as the fact that when we choose to forgive, our hearts are set free from the imprisonment that wrath and resentment causes.

This is the essential teaching in our readings this weekend, particularly in our Gospel reading from Matthew 18:21-35. In this passage, Peter asks Jesus how often we must forgive those who wrong us. “As many as seven times?” he asks (18:21). Now, we have to keep in mind that in Peter’s eyes, as well as the eyes of the Jewish audience to whom Jesus is speaking and Matthew is writing, forgiving someone seven times is already seen as extremely generous. At this time, many rabbis considered forgiving someone three times to be sufficient. However, Jesus goes even further. He tells Peter, “not seven times, but seventy-seven times” (18:22; also translated as “seventy times seven”). By using this extremely high number, Jesus is not intending to put a hard limit on the number seventy-seven or four hundred ninety. Instead, it seems more likely that he is using hyperbole that would have been even more emphatic at his time to emphasize the need for a limitless mercy for those who have wronged us.

That is when he goes into one of the most beautiful parables of Matthew’s Gospel: the parable of the Unforgiving Servant, where we hear about this servant who owed his master “a huge amount” (18:24), but was forgiven of his debt by his master. In the original Greek for this passage, it actually says the amount that the servant owed and is translated in other versions of this passage: “a myriad of talents.” A myriad was the equivalent of the number 10,000, while a talent was a unit of measurement for denarii. The denarius was the equivalent of a day’s wages. Now, a talent was worth 6,000 denarii, so that meant that this servant owed his master 10,000 talents, which equates to 60,000,000 denarii. That is the equivalent of over 160,000 years of wages that he owed! He was never going to pay that back, and yet the master chooses to completely forgive him of the debt when the servant begs him to give him more time. That is an incredible act of mercy on the part of the master!

However, when this servant met another servant who owed him “a much smaller amount” (only 100 denarii), rather than showing that same mercy he received, instead, he forces the servant to pay him what he owes. The master is not happy when he hears this news and tells the servant, “I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?” (18:32-33). He then throws him in prison until he is able to pay back the full debt, which is ultimately never.

When we choose not to forgive those who have wronged us, the truth is that we are very much like this unforgiving servant. In reality, while our neighbor can certainly do some horrible things to us, the debt that they owe us pales in comparison to the debt that we owe God when we sin against him, who is an infinite God. Our sins against that infinite God thus bear infinite value, and yet, God still chooses to forgive us. That is the same mercy we are to show to one another.

That said, there is another thing that choosing to forgive our neighbor does for us: it frees our hearts from the prison of resentment and wrath. Ultimately, what do we gain when we choose to hold a grudge against someone and refuse to forgive them? We do not gain anything. In fact, we lose something: the peace that is meant to reign within our hearts. We allow that person’s sin against us to have power over us. However, when we choose to forgive someone of the debt that they owe us, we reject that power and instead choose to live in the freedom of the children of the Father. We choose to look past the evil the person has done and ask God to intervene in their lives to transform them into the person that he wants them to be. We gain nothing in refusing to forgive one another. We gain everything when we choose to forgive as the Lord himself has chosen to forgive us.

Father Michael Elmlinger is a priest of the Diocese of Covington, Ky. Father Elmlinger is currently studying Canon Law at the University of St. Paul, Ottawa, Canada.

Fraternal correction

/in

Father Daniel Schomaker

Guest

On this 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time the Church calls us to reflect on “fraternal correction.” We need a little context to understand Jesus’ teaching. Immediately preceding the passage for Holy Mass this weekend, is the story of the lost sheep — where only one of a hundred is lost. And Jesus tells his disciples (us): “It is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.” (Mt. 18: 14b)

Being lost in the spiritual life is multifaceted. Sometimes, it means abandoning the Way that leads to Heaven. Or, being deceived into thinking you are on the right path though you aren’t. We might find ourselves searching but end up wandering around aimlessly instead. And sometimes we can be on the right path, we just get turned around and are facing the wrong way, or we have stumbled and fallen on our face!

All of this “lostness” is the consequence of sin. Living contrary to our nature — which is willing the good of the other — and instead giving into the ego and living for the self. The Lord Jesus, does not accept us being lost, and comes seeking us out.

Too often in our society we forget that our selfish actions, our sins, have an effect not just on ourselves, but on the community of believers — the Church. And so, Jesus teaches us how to correct the bad behavior of a disciple and heal the hurt caused to the Church.

It starts privately! Not on social media as is so often the case today! As Jesus’ disciples, we are not called to shame or humiliate each other, but to love. Remember what we learn in the Scriptures: the love the disciples had for one another lead to the “adding of those who were being saved.” (Acts 2:47b) Shaming a brother or sister in Christ can be a detriment to the apostolic mission.

If the correction isn’t accepted, then Jesus calls us to take one or two others with us to give witness to the facts of the bad behavior. This is in keeping with the Law found in the Book of Deuteronomy. It is still quiet, private.

Only when there is obstinance in the one who is sinning is it brought to the authority of the Church — those who have the power to bind and to loose. And then if there is not conversion and reconciliation does Jesus command that they be cut off from communion. It is from Jesus that we get the practice of excommunication.

This sounds extremely harsh on the part of Jesus, but all sin is a barrier to communion. But there is in fact a positive side to this being “cut off” from the Church. The sinner is returned to the state of one who is in need of evangelization. They then get to hear the Gospel proclaimed again. And hopefully more clearly so that they can be returned to the communion of disciples and reintegrated into the Church. Remember, sometimes the healing process can be difficult, and the medicine doesn’t always taste good.

There is nothing that cannot be healed and forgiven. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Father Daniel Schomaker is pastor, Blessed Sacrament Parish, Ft. Mitchell and director, Office of Worship and Liturgy for the Diocese of Covington, Ky.

Possible, though difficult

/in

Bishop Emeritus Foys

Guest

Jesus has asked His disciples what people were saying about Him. Who do they say that He is. They answer that some think He is John the Baptist come back from the dead or one of the great prophets or Elijah come back to earth. But YOU, Jesus says — who do YOU say that I am. Silence, broken by Peter, who proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah, the one who is to come, the Savior of the world! Jesus commends Peter which must have made Peter feel honored indeed. He’s riding high!

Then, Jesus tells His disciples that they are on the way to Jerusalem where Jesus will suffer and die. Well, Peter was having none of that. Absolutely not! He had just been singled out as the rock upon which Jesus was going to build His Church and Peter was to play an important role in that. Jesus suffer and die? Preposterous, It didn’t fit Peter’s narrative. After all, this was a glorious moment. Jesus was going to lead the disciples to a great victory over those oppressing them.

And what was the response of Jesus to Peter’s outburst that “no such thing will ever happen to You?” (Matt 16:22) “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” (Matt 16:23) Wow! Talk about a quick fall from favor. One minute Peter is going to be the leader of (in Peter’s mind) a great revolution and in the next minute he is told to get behind the master because he doesn’t grasp the reality of who Jesus really is.

Jesus then goes on to tell His disciples that those who want to follow him must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Him. (Matt 16:24) Jesus was very clear that following Him would entail sacrifice. The love that Jesus has for His Father in heaven and that Jesus has for us is a sacrificial love. Jesus gave his life up — literally and figurately — for the love of His Father and for love of us. Can we do any less?

Peter was not a bad person and was certainly dedicated to Jesus and to His mission. But, as Jesus told him, he was thinking as human beings do and not as God does. Jesus’ words and the prediction of His suffering and death did not fit Peter’s narrative, did not fit his image of who Jesus is and what Jesus ought to do.

Do we sometimes do the same regarding the Lord and other people? We pray, thinking that God needs to answer our prayers in the way we think He should. And should God not answer them in that way we become discouraged, disheartened, and maybe, just maybe, angry. We think like human beings and not like God Who always has our best interests at heart.

And what about our perception and expectation of other people? What expectations do we have of them. Do they measure up to the person we think they should be? Do they fit our narrative? And if they don’t, how do we respond? Do we try to change them? Do we write them off because they are not who we think they ought to be? And how would we feel if someone did that to us?

Jesus tells us that if we want to come after Him we need to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. That cross will take many forms. At times it will seem too much for us to bear. At times it will mean accepting people and loving them and caring for them where they are. It will mean accepting the Lord without reservation and making Him our first and only priority. It will mean denying ourself and becoming selfless instead of selfish. It will mean thinking as God does and not as human beings.

Possible? Certainly. For all things are possible with God. Difficult? Sometimes. Worth it? Without a doubt!

Most Rev. Roger J. Foys, D.D. is Bishop Emeritus of the Diocese of Covington, Ky.

The only question that matters

/in

Father Phillip DeVous

Guest

The intertwined questions of what is true, and how do I live in truth, are the two most important questions in life to answer, no matter how urgent other matters might appear. We are confronted in our proclamation of the holy Gospel with both of those questions when Jesus asks the disciples, “but who do you say that I am?”

We are now immersed in a post-Christian moment in history. In this post-Christian moment, we are dealing with a culture-wide situation where knowledge of Jesus Christ is no longer “common knowledge,” much less a cultural norm. We are dealing with a situation where it is simply the case that many people no longer have a personal faith in Jesus and no longer practice the faith. I think something fundamental has changed and we must reckon with it.

The late Pope Benedict XVI insightfully described this situation when he observed: “A particularly dangerous phenomenon for faith has arisen in our times: indeed, a form of atheism exists which we define, precisely, as ‘practical,’ in which the truths of faith or religious rites are not denied but are merely deemed irrelevant to daily life, detached from life, pointless. So it is that people often believe in God in a superficial manner, and live ‘as though God did not exist.’ In the end, however, this way of life proves even more destructive because it leads to indifference to faith and to the question of God.”

The situation of post-Christian man is that he cannot conceive that he is in anyway separated from God because the question and the reality of God have been nullified. That means voided or invalidated as legitimate questions for serious consideration. One might even say God has been liquified — everything is God, nothing is God or whatever.

This age of the nullification of God is a total paradigm shift in the consciousness and culture of the western world, leading to a profound reorientation of our souls. The consequence is that we now live within a formative cultural, educational, economic, personal, political and social situation that is fundamentally, not merely unbelieving, but anti-theistic in a radical way — right down to the very unconscious assumptions of every aspect of contemporary life and living.

Contemplating our situation, we see the Lord directs his gaze toward us, asking, “but who do you say that I am?” His disciples are meant to know the answer to the question. It is not a test. It is a call to profess our faith! After all, in our worship and prayer, we are the ones who swim up to the very heart of God and put our lips to his blood. We are meant to know. After all, the Word of God is made for our heart, and our heart is made for the Word of God.

In recognizing that we live within a situation where God’s existence is not so easily assumed and the presence of Jesus Christ not so readily recognized, we also consider the question, “Lord, where did you say you would be?”

Our Blessed Lord did not just leave us with mere memories of him that would degrade over time. He left us his Word and his presence in the Holy Sacraments and the Church. The Church and sacraments continue the work of Jesus’ incarnation, within us and among us. As St. Leo the Great has taught, “what was to be seen of our Redeemer has passed over in the Sacraments so that faith might be more perfect and more firm.”

In the Gospel passage we proclaim this Sunday, Peter’s answer is meant to be our own: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And in response to his answer, Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Those keys of the kingdom are the Holy Sacraments. If you want to access the kingdom of the divine life of God, the sacraments, most especially the Holy Eucharist, are the keys. The Holy Sacraments build up the Body of Christ, bringing the Holy Spirit’s power to us to transform us into living images of Jesus Christ. They are how Jesus Christ shares his holiness with us. They are the means by which the gaze of our whole existence is oriented to Jesus Christ above all things and in all things.

“But who do you say that I am?”

Our answer to that question determines everything, not just for us, but the very life of the world.

Father Phillip W. DeVous is pastor of Sts. Peter & Paul Parish in California, Ky.

Gratefulness to God

/in

Father Stephen Bankemper

Guest

As we continue our way through Matthew’s Gospel, we come to the surprising story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, surprising, not just because Jesus speaks to her in a manner that seems offensive to us (and likely to her as well), but also because just two verses later he pays her the highest compliment he pays to anyone in the Gospels.

To get a better feel for this encounter, we should remind ourselves of how the apostles might have viewed this woman.  Matthew tells us that she was from the region of Tyre and Sidon, places not high in the esteem of the Jews.  Further, she was a Canaanite woman.  Besides the fact that Canaanites worshipped pagan gods, the Jews’ opinion of them is reflected in the book of Wisdom:

“Those who dwelt of old in thy holy land/ thou didst hate for their detestable practices,/ their works of sorcery and unholy rites,/ their merciless slaughter of children,/ and their sacrificial feasting on human flesh and blood.” (Wis 12:3-5a)

This was the woman the apostles saw crying to Jesus for mercy.

Many have struggled with Jesus’ treatment of her: first ignoring her, then dismissing her request to the apostles, and finally dismissing her to her face with his comment about taking bread meant for children and throwing it to dogs.  Yet she does not back down from Jesus, but uses His term to further argue for her request.

It is worthwhile considering her rejoinder to Jesus.  Instead of taking offense, she merely answers, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”  Whether or not she finds Jesus’ words objectionable, she is in fact acknowledging the truth of his comment: she is not a Jew and does not have the same claim on Jesus that the Jews have.  Yet she is not asking for salvation or to be part of the covenant – the “bread” that belongs to the children.  She is asking only for freedom for her daughter — a “scrap” that even an unworthy Canaanite woman might eat from the floor beneath the table.  And her insistence leads Jesus to praise her with his highest praise: “O woman, great is your faith!”

We Catholics — especially we “cradle” Catholics — are subject to the temptation to take our membership in the Catholic Church for granted.  We can forget that we do not have a right to be Catholic, that it is an undeserved grace.  Our baptism into Christ’s salvation, the opportunity to have our sins forgiven and wiped away, the ability to worship God with “the sacrifice acceptable to him,” these are astounding graces.  In our society in this time there is very prevalent the attitude that “we all worship the same God,” that “all religions are the same,” but, in fact, all religions are not the same.  We are, through no merit of our own, members of the Church begun by Jesus.  We offer his true sacrifice on our altars, we receive his true Body and Blood in Holy Communion, we receive his Holy Spirit in the sacraments, especially Confirmation.  Those things do not make us better than anyone, they make us undeservedly blessed.  Let us always (hopefully eternally) be grateful to God and use these graces to serve him with all our hearts.

Father Stephen Bankemper is pastor, St. Catherine of Siena Parish, Ft. Thomas, Ky.

The desire for glory

/in

Father Phillip DeVous

Guest

What are we to make of those powerful, yet mysterious words of St. Paul, “those he justified he also glorified?”

The justification of which St. Paul speaks is a true reconciliation with God that occurs the moment one believes and receives Baptism. This justification is a dynamic, ongoing event of reconciliation with God, in which the Christian, acting in cooperation with this grace of reconciliation, becomes progressively perfected in divine charity after the pattern of Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we understand that one comes to be saved, by which we mean no longer alienated from God, both at the beginning AND throughout the arc of one’s whole life.

Grace is a reality given at precise moments but is also a yeast that fosters a leavening of holiness throughout life. The dynamism of the grace of justification moves in the direction of glory, which St. Paul understands to be a complete and total sharing in the fullness of the being of the Trinitarian God. This grace of justification leading to glory is given at precise moments — the Holy Sacraments. The dynamic relationship of justification and glory within a person is developed through the agency and action of the Holy Sacraments, received, of course, with faith.

St. Thomas Aquinas in reflecting on this relationship between justification and glory recalls that grace has five primary effects: healing the soul, making it so the soul wills the good, working in such a way that the willed good be effectively carried out, persevering in the good, and finally reaching eternal glory. This is why the Holy Sacraments of the Church are essential to salvation, for it is in and through them we personally receive the Trinitarian life, which is the glory of which St. Paul speaks.

In contemplating these mysteries of the faith, the issue of desire arises. C.S. Lewis was a keen observer of things divine and the longing, or lack thereof, for the spiritual. He passionately believed in the primacy of the spiritual; yet he noted that for modern man, enthralled by materialism, the vision of things divine was dimming and the desire for the spiritual was waning:

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures … 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.”

To be too easily pleased by the passing things of the world is a species of what is called acedia or sloth in the spiritual life. There are many ways to understand it, but the most fundamental is one loses the sense of the reality of God; one’s “desire” for the holy withers; and one becomes apathetic towards the spiritual. Consequently, we chase after things to consume or to distract. Inevitably this devolves into a destructive boredom which settles over everything. It is one of the great ironies of our day that we are ruled by an empire of desire without limits, yet so very little really excites us.

“No longer a vice afflicting individuals only, acedia has become a cultural reality” writes R.J. Snell in “Acedia and Its Discontents.” He further notes that “nestled deep in the roots of our ways of acting and living, sloth seeps into our loves and lives in virtually every domain, before finally transforming itself into boredom and nihilism.”

This is deadly for the Christian! We are meant to seek the Kingdom of Heaven with the passion of someone who finds a treasure buried in a field and who then goes out and sells everything he possesses to obtain that field to the exclusion of all others. Further, we are enjoined to have the eye of a merchant seeking the finest pearls, excitedly looking for the finest of them all, because one desires this object of great beauty and perfection. And when found, we give up everything to obtain this impeccable jewel.

Grasping the contemporary struggle with acedia, a cause of our cultural affliction and a sickness of our soul, we pray with faith and fervor, “that through the powerful working of your grace these most sacred mysteries may sanctify our present way of life and lead us to eternal gladness.”

Father Phillip W. DeVous is the pastor of Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in California, Ky.