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Possible, though difficult

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Eyes fixed on Christ

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Father Michael Elmlinger

Guest

A temptation that I have faced and I am sure many others have faced as well is, when there are moments in life when it seems like there is a lot going on at once, to begin to sacrifice the time that I would normally give to the Lord in order to focus on whatever major challenge I am dealing with in the moment. However, it almost never fails that when I do so, I find myself overwhelmed by the “storm” and begin to drown in the midst of the suffering, whatever it may be. Each time I am reminded by the Lord that, while it is always important to keep my eyes fixed on him, it is especially important during these storms to keep my eyes fixed on Christ.

This was a lesson that St. Peter had to learn the hard way, and thanks be to God that he does. In doing so, both he and the Lord provide the lesson to us so that we know what to do during those storms that we face in our lives. In our Gospel for this weekend (Matthew 14:22-33), Jesus has the disciples go into a boat to cross the sea while he goes up the mountain by himself to pray to the Father. However, while the disciples are crossing the sea, a major storm begins to oppress them. Already being a few miles offshore (cf. 14:24), they are too far out at sea to be able to simply go back and get out of the water. They are completely stuck and are likely becoming so frightened that they think they will die out at sea. We also have to keep in mind that some of these disciples are fishermen, including Peter, so the fact that this storm was giving them so much trouble tells us that this was not a typical storm that they would face. This was something lethal.

It is during this time that they become even more terrified when they see Jesus himself walking on the water, thinking that he was a ghost (14:26). It is here that Jesus reassures them who he is and gives a simple command: “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid” (14:27). Peter then tests him to see if it really is Jesus by telling Jesus to command him to walk onto the water. Amazingly, Peter is able to get out of the water and walk towards Jesus. In fact, in another translation of this passage, it seems as if Peter was even able to make it all the way to Jesus when it says that he “came to Jesus” (Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition, 14:29). However, Peter does something that nearly dooms him; he takes his eyes off Jesus and begins to focus on the storm around him. He sees that this storm is not calming down and begins to think again that he is going to die. It is when he does this that Peter begins to drown and has to cry out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” (14:30). Jesus calmly grabs him and says to him, “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” (14:31), and just like that, the wind dies down.

What is amazing about this passage is that had Peter simply kept his eyes fixed on Christ, he would never have begun to sink into the water. He would have been simply there with Jesus while the storm continued to rage. It was only when Peter looked away from Jesus and began instead to focus on the storm around him rather than on Jesus that he began to drown. In doing so, he doubts his faith in Jesus that Jesus is in full control of the situation. While the storm would have continued to rage on, Jesus would have been there, quietly present, but in total control of everything going on around him. Peter could have remembered the message from our first reading from 1 Kings 19, which was that amidst the heavy wind, the earthquake, and the fire, the voice of the Lord was found as a tiny whispering sound, quietly present.

That is how the Lord can be for us in our own lives. While the storms in our lives are raging, Christ will continue to be quietly present in our lives, possessing full power and authority over those storms and being in complete control. Instead of focusing on those storms and trying to handle them ourselves, we are meant to keep our eyes and our attention fixed on Christ, who will see us through to the end.

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.

The parable of the sower: An examination of conscience

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Father Michael Elmlinger

Guest

There is a temptation when we read or hear a passage from the Scriptures, especially the Gospel, to assume that we are not the ones being challenged, as if we are not the intended audience of the message that is being delivered. This can be true with our Gospel this weekend with the parable of the sower (Matt 13:1-23).

It can be easy to view ourselves as being like the seed that is sown on rich soil (13:8, 23), where we “hear the word and understand it,” and “bear fruit and yield a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.” We can think, “Oh, I am already a Christian and a follower of Christ, so I am definitely this last seed. I don’t need to pay attention to the others.” However, if this is the immediate view of ourselves, we may end up missing the point of the parable and the challenge that Christ is presenting to us to grow into deeper holiness.

In truth, this parable of the sower can actually be a great examination of conscience for us to see where we truly are within our own spiritual lives. I think if we are truly honest with ourselves, we will find that we can be like all four types of seed that Jesus is talking about here.

First there is the seed that “fell on the bath, and birds came and ate it up” (13:4), which, Jesus says, represents “the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart.” (13:19) The kind of person that Jesus is referring to here is someone who audibly hears the message of the Gospel spoken to him or her, but this person does not truly allow the message to take root in his or her heart.

This can be true for us particularly when it comes to the kind of sins that we commit. These sins indicate to us the aspects of the Gospel that we may struggle with. Even if intellectually we may understand what Christ has spoken to us, within our hearts we struggle with understanding how to live out the message of the Gospel. Because of this, we fall into sin, particularly habitual sins that we struggle with regularly. What are those aspects of the Gospel that we struggle with putting into practice in our own lives?

Then there is the “seed sown on rocky ground, where it had little soil” and “sprang up at once” but “withered for lack of roots” (13:5-6), which, Jesus says, represents “the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away.” (13:20-21)

For us, it can be easy to love the Lord when everything is going our way and we are on fire with love for him. However, the real challenge comes when we have to face life’s difficulties and bear its crosses. During these times, it can be easy to fall away and resent God for leading us to those crosses. When we face these difficult challenges, whatever those challenges may be, do we truly respond with the grace and submission that Christ does when he bears his cross?

Finally (at least before the good seed), there is the seed that “fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it” (13:7), which, Jesus says, represents “the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit.” (13:22) How often do we allow our day-to-day worries and anxieties take up our mind to the point that we lose all trust in God and instead try to trust in ourselves? Or how much do we become focused on the things of this world that they end up becoming our own gods and lead to us making sacrifices to our relationship with the one true God rather than the other way around?

We see here that, while we ought to strive to be like the seed sown on rich soil, oftentimes we can be like the other seeds. We have to keep in mind that what Christ is doing here is not merely condemning us for being like these seeds, though they can certainly lead towards it. Rather, he is challenging us to be better, to be holier, to be the person that the Father is calling us to be through him and in the Holy Spirit. Each day we ought to seek greater and deeper conversion within our lives. One of the ways we can do so is to examine our conscience using this parable to see where we truly are in our relationship with the Lord and with one another.

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.

Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Father Michael Elmlinger

Guest

One of the greatest things that I was able to do as a seminarian was to be assigned to different parishes and to see more of the people in the diocese that I had not been able to see and meet before. On top of that, a great joy that I had was having the opportunity to express my gratitude, as well as all the other seminarians’ gratitude, to all the people of the diocese for all that they have done to support us during our time in seminary. I truly meant it when I said, “We cannot do this without you.” Without the support of the people in the diocese, it is difficult to say whether I would even be a priest at this time, because it was largely thanks to the prayers of the people of the diocese that I was able to hear the calling of the Lord in my life to be a priest.

That brings me to the Gospel for this weekend, where we hear that Jesus’s heart was “moved with pity for [the crowds] because they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd” (9:36), showing the level of compassion that he has for them that the very depths of his being are stirred up by the fact that the people are missing a shepherd to lead them. This then leads him to give a commandment to the disciples: “The harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few; so, ask the master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” (9:37) The Lord wants to give his people a shepherd to lead them; he wants to give them priests who will offer sacrifice and act as a shepherd leading the sheep to safe pastures.

This is a commandment that Christ gives to all his disciples, including all of us to this very day. The Code of Canon Law, which binds all Catholics in the Latin Church, tells us that the entire Christian community (not just clergy) as a whole has the duty to foster vocations to the priesthood (cf. canon 233 §1), so that the needs of the People of God may be met, so that the sheep who are scattered may be brought back into the fold and led to the Heavenly Kingdom of our Heavenly Father. All of us bear the responsibility of praying to the Master of the harvest that he will send out laborers to this harvest. Not only that, but it is also partly by our prayers that men are able to hear the voice of the Lord calling them in their hearts to be priests.

I can say rather confidently that if it were not for the prayers of the People of God in our diocese in particular and throughout the world, that I likely would not have heard the voice of the Lord calling me to be a priest. If it was not for the support that I received from the People of God, then it is difficult to say that I would be a priest right now. For that support from all of you, I was, am, and will continue to be truly grateful to all of you.

However, our duty is not finished. Vocations to the priesthood are out there. The laborers for the harvest are out there. But they need our prayers and support in order to assist them in hearing the call of the Master of the harvest crying out to them and to respond to that call with a generous “Yes.”

My brothers and sisters in Christ, each and every day, “ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.”

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.

Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

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Bishop Emeritus Roger Foys

Guest

When I was studying the Italian language, the textbook (this was before Rosetta Stone) introduced a new proverb at the top of the page of each chapter. One that came to mind as I prepared for the Solemnity of Trinity Sunday is Ogni trino e Perfetto. Literally the meaning is “Everything that comes in threes is perfect.” We know the proverb as: “All good things come in threes.”

The doctrine of the Most Trinity is a mystery — One God in three Divine Persons. Yet, there are several references to it in the Scriptures. As Jesus was taking leave of his apostles as he ascended into heaven, he leaves them with a clear instruction: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matt 28:1920)

This was, so to speak, Jesus’ farewell, his last wishes.

Note that he doesn’t say to baptize only in his name, or only in the Father’s name but rather in the name of Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. This was, of course, before the Father and Son had sent the Holy Spirit upon the disciples as he had promised: “I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth which the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans.” (John 14:16-19)

And so, the Father, who is the creator and the Son, who is the redeemer, send the Holy Spirit who is the counselor and comforter and who remains with the Church until the end of time.

Another word to describe the Holy Spirit is paraclete, from the Greek parakletos. It means one who is sent to help. And this paraclete is with us until the end of time to be comfort and counsel, especially in times of difficulty or doubt. But Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one, bound together in love and unity. And from them we learn to live in that same love and unity.

In the early Church people were attracted to the followers of Jesus because they saw how they loved one another. Christians looked after each other, cared for each other, especially those who needed their help such as the widows, the orphans, the poor, the aged. There was no want in those early Christian communities, no one went hungry.

Their love was genuine, it was honest, it was not exclusive. They took seriously the words of Jesus to his disciples: “A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35)

The early Christians were also known by their unity and community. “They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone … and every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” (Acts 2: 42, 43, 46)

So, perhaps it is true that good things come in threes. The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit continue to be an example to us of how we should live, about how we should profess our faith, about how we should be united as one and love each other as Jesus, who gave his life for us so that we might have new life, eternal life!

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

Pentecost Sunday

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Father Phillip W. DeVous

Guest

The novelist Saul Bellow, in an interview in the early 1980s, anticipated the coming era we now inhabit, which many describe as the “post-truth” era. With great brio of description Bellow called the emerging era and its ethos the “moronic inferno.” The moronic inferno was described as a situation where “there was too much of everything … too much history and culture to keep track of … too much news … too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all of this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torment.”

When I contemplate the scene from the Acts of the Apostles, where all the various peoples with their various languages were gathered, Bellow’s image of the moronic inferno is always in my mind. The cacophony of sounds is easy to imagine, as is the confusion likely generated by such a gathering. For me, this scene is stand-in for the “Niagara Falls torment” of the cross currents of assertions, information, news, manufactured emotions and statements we are daily subjected to, which make it hard to know what is true and worthy of attention.

I often stop and ask myself the question: What in the world is going on? Who is to be believed? What is true?

I imagine the multitudes gathered on the day of Pentecost had a similar feeling.

On the day of Pentecost, amidst the confusion of the gathered peoples, “there appeared to them tongues of fire, which came to rest on each one of them (the Apostles). And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.”

All of those who heard the apostles proclaim somehow began to understand what the Apostles were saying about the mighty acts of God. Are we to presume the Holy Spirit had turned the preachers into human simultaneous translation machines? I think not. The Holy Spirit enabled the apostles to speak to the people the universal language of Truth. A language that spoke directly to the hearts of the people.

The Holy Spirit is the Advocate whose mission it is to effect within us a living faith founded on the most central reality of the cosmos itself: Jesus Christ is Lord. It is Jesus who is the Alpha and the Omega. It is Jesus who is the source, center and summit of our lives.

The Holy Spirit, to establish the Lordship of Jesus Christ within us, IS the language and reality of truth spoken to us. The Spirit sees to it that we really do know Jesus Christ. Then, the Spirit sees to it that the truth we know becomes the mission we live: “Grant, we pray, O Lord, that, as promised by your Son, the Holy Spirit may reveal to us more abundantly the hidden mystery of this sacrifice and graciously lead us into all truth.”

Being established in the truth of Christ’s Lordship gives us the discernment and the grace to live with integrity and truthfulness over and against the moronic inferno that confuses and consumes everything. Yet, the gift of the Holy Spirit, descending as tongues of fire, reminds us that we have been given the fire of truth that “burns out” the fires of confusion, falsehood and the disorienting torrent of “too much” that washes over us daily.

Increasingly, I find myself praying to the Holy Spirit to teach me the truth I need to know today to do God’s will. I ask the Holy Spirit to grace me with the truth I need to love as Christ commands, today. I pray throughout the day that the Holy Spirit would take me through the confusion and the madness that can invade even the simplest interactions. I pray the Holy Spirit would give me the wisdom I need to lead others into all truth.

The Holy Spirit, in communicating the language of spiritual truth to us, has sent us disciples on a mission of truth to the world around us. Through that same Spirit we douse the flames and clear the noxious fumes created by the moronic inferno. Let us have every confidence that Jesus Christ is still standing in our midst, that the fire of truth still burns, and that His words to us remain both true and vital: “Peace be with you.”

Father Phillip W. DeVous is the pastor of St. Charles Parish, Flemingsburg, and St. Rose Parish, May’s Lick.

Ascension of the Lord

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Father Stephen Bankemper

Guest

We come this Sunday to our diocese’s celebration of the solemnity of The Ascension of the Lord. It is a fascinating event that can be forgotten in our everyday language.

How often, for example, have you heard someone speak of the “Passion, Death and Resurrection” of the Lord, as opposed to the “Passion, Death, Resurrection and Ascension” of the Lord? The first is a far more common phrase. Yet the Ascension of our Lord is truly a pivotal event: with the Lord’s return to the Father his earthly ministry in his body ends and the ministry of the apostles (and, by extension, the ministry of the Church) begins.

This article will focus on the twofold meaning of the Ascension for us in the Church: the hope and mandate that come from it.

The hope that the Ascension awakens in us is the hope that we, too, can “ascend” one day with Jesus to the Father. It is heard in all the prayers of the Mass and in one of the readings.

In the Collect we pray: “. . . for the Ascension of Christ your Son is our exaltation, and, where the Head has gone before in glory, the Body is called to follow in hope.”

The Prayer Over the Offerings does not use the actual word ‘hope,’ but the idea is there: “. . . grant, we pray, that through this most holy exchange we, too, may rise up to the heavenly realms.”

Finally, in the Prayer After Communion we pray, “. . . grant . . . that Christian hope may draw us onward to where our nature is united with you.”

The Church also gives us a short section of St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that not only mentions our hope of being with Christ in heaven, but also entices us, draws us, one might say, by its very description: “May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory in his inheritance among the holy ones . . .”

It is vital that we understand how the Church uses the word “hope.” The way we use the word in ordinary speech, we might just as easily and accurately exchange for it the word “wish”: “I hope it does not rain tomorrow,” “I hope she shows up on time,” “I hope there are tickets left for the movie.”

This is not what the Church means by hope. The Church’s meaning is expressed in paragraph 1817 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.”

Notice the parts of this definition: hope is a theological virtue — in other words, it does not even come from us but is a gift from God — and we rely, not on ourselves for its fulfillment, but on Christ’s promises and the grace of the Holy Spirit. And, we can add on this feast, on Christ’s first taking our human nature into the heavenly realms.

As Martin Luther wrote in his hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God (Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott), “Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing,/ Were not the right Man on our side, the Man of God’s own choosing.”

Pope Francis expressed this beautifully in one of his general audiences: “The Ascension of Jesus into heaven acquaints us with this deeply consoling reality on our journey: in Christ, true God and true man, our humanity was taken to God. Christ opened the path to us. If we entrust our life to him, if we let ourselves be guided by him, we are certain to be in safe hands, in the hands of our Savior.” (General Audience, 17 April 2013)

The Ascension of our Lord also brings a mandate, as we hear in the Gospel. Jesus has redeemed the world, reconciling it to the Father, and created the Church. He now entrusts to his Church a mission: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matt 28:18-20)

If the hope of eternal life with the Father cannot be realized without entrusting our life to Jesus, as Francis said, then those who know Him must proclaim Him to others.

Jesus’ command to make disciples “of all nations” may sound so broad as to seem to apply only to “the Church” as we often mean it, the great institution into which it has grown, but if it is to mean something to each of us — we individually are part of the Church’s constitution — we must see something more specific in Jesus’ words.

Instead of “all nations,” we might substitute “all people” or, even better, “every person.” In other words, the Church’s mission — and we are part of the mission — is to make disciples of our sister and brother, if necessary, our next-door neighbor, our boss, our co-workers and cousins. Not necessarily first by proselytizing, but by the “strangeness” of our Christian life.

Last Sunday we heard from Peter’s first letter: “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” (Pt 3:15) Why would someone ask about our lives if they were not different from theirs?

So, Jesus’ command to his apostles before he ascends to his Father becomes an exhortation and command to us as well: live a life that draws the world to me, that all may know “the hope that belongs to his call, what are the riches of glory” that await all who give their lives to our Lord.

The Ascension of the Lord — our hope and our mandate.

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