The Irony of it All.

A man named Pilate posed the question "What is truth?" nearly 2000 years ago.    The irony of asking that question while standing before Truth itself is still echoing in our society today.  Mankind tends to think of himself as the source of truth instead of seeing it as a static and concrete reality that exists outside of ourselves.  Isn't it just like us to think of ourselves as the center of the universe?  I think we often use that concept to allow our egos to justify our own actions.   The youth of today have this saying, "I'll do me, and you do you."   That is, if your truth does on impinge upon my truth, we can get along.   Truth is more than that though.   Truth cannot just be generated by current societal norms and practices.  If it did, then if whatever we believe to be true is "true".   That means that Stalin was right in what he did, so was Hitler.  That makes rape OK, as long as you think it's OK.    No, all of us understand on some level that truth has to exist outside of ourselves, that some things are evil no matter who thinks they are OK.

In the first reading today we see St. James continuing his exhortation on morality.  He gives us this statement: But above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear, either by heaven or by earth or with any other oath, but let your “Yes” mean “Yes” and your “No” mean “No,” that you may not incur condemnation.  Some see this as a simple statement that means don't make promises you can't keep, and that's there in a small way, after all James was just writing previously about not making plans for tomorrow without realizing that it's only if God wills it that you do so.   It's more than that though.   It's not a lowering of our promises, as with most of the Gospel it isn't setting the bar even lower than the Law of Moses did, it's raising it.  It all revolves around that ironic image of Jesus as the incarnation of Truth.

By virtue of our Baptism we are infused with the Holy Spirit who guides us to all truth.  We are made in the image of the living God, even more so after He condescended to become man.  That makes Jesus the image which we strive to emulate.  When James says make your Yes, yes, and your no, no.. it means that every single word we speak must be taken as seriously as any oath.   We as Christians are expected to speak Truth, to live Truth, making every action, every idle word count.  No, this is not a leeway to never worry about keeping your word, or to never take anything you say seriously.. but rather a challenge to take every single yes or no we say as seriously as if God were saying them.   When we break our word, when we lie, we sully that image... We are the temple of God, His Spirit has come to rest in us.   Lying, speaking a non-Truth, is profaning that Temple.

This is not a new problem. While our society is on a rampage at the moment trying to redefine truth as fluid, ignoring reality itself to define everything from marriage to DNA as circumspect, even in the time of Moses they could not live out the reality of what God had planned for us.   Jesus reminds the men asking him questions that it was not because God wanted it that way, but because of the hardness of our own hearts that concessions were made in the Dueteronomistic laws. It's funny though, these men sat in front of Jesus asking questions, and yet they did not want answers.  Here they were questioning God himself but rather than seeking Truth, they were seeking to trap him.  Herod had already put John to death for daring to question his marriage.  Jesus answer was just as harsh for Herod as Johns had been, in that both Herod and his wife had rejected their spouses, divorced them, that they might enter into an incestuous relationship together.

With all of that in mind, what Jesus had to say about marriage is one of the most important things for us to remember in society today.  The family is the building block of any society.   Without it, society cannot continue.   People have to come together and raise children or society itself will of course die out.   Even more so, marriage is an image of the trinity itself.   The Father (parent), the Son (child), and the Holy Spirit (the love between them.)  For those of us called to live out the vocation of marriage, we are called to do so in emulation of God.   We of course will always do so imperfectly.   Man alone is incapable of living out the pure love of God, to be infinitely compassionate and merciful.  That's why we need the Holy Spirit in our lives.   Jesus quoted Genesis when he said that a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife and the two shall become one.  Two shall become one.  Mathematically that's impossible right?  1+1=2. 1-1=0.   The only way for two to become one is by adding a third.  3-2=1.   Only when we add God to our relationship and make Him first can we ever hope to live out the Sacramental marriage.

One of my favorite sayings is "A person's heart should be so lost in God that anyone seeking a relationship with them must first find one with Him."   Another saying I heard recently is "If Catholics lived out a sacramental marriage, the world would change."   I think our challenge today is similar to that.  "If Catholics lived out the truth, making their yes, yes and their no, no in all things, the world will change."  Are you ready for that challenge?  Just like 2000 years ago as Pilot and the Pharisees stood before Truth itself, we today encounter the same Divine Person in the Sacraments.   When you prepare yourself to stand before Jesus in the Eucharist ask yourself, "Is there anything in my life that I am still holding on to because of the hardness of my own heart? Lord, help me let that go and cling only to you." 


His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

A Lock is Only For Honest Men

Just this morning I locked myself out of my house this morning.  It's one of those moments when you feel so very silly and embarrassed.  It happens to all of us.  When it happens to us though, it seems so much more shameful.  I marched around the house looking for an open window.  Would you believe my kids actually listened to me when I told them to keep their windows locked?  You would think that I would be happy with that, and when I look back on it I was.. but this time it was frustrating.  I then went to the back garage door which we also hardly ever lock, but because of someone recently goofing around in our garage, we've started locking that too.  Guess what?   It was locked. 

I was walking back to my car when I remembered the garage door opener.  I pushed the button in the car and the door creaked it's way upward. Heaving a sigh of relief I walked in, pushing the button behind me to lower the door back down.  After it closed I went to open the door into the kitchen.  Guess what?  Yes, you guessed it.  It was locked.  It was locked with a slide bolt at the top.  I knew that it was kind of lose and thought, if I jar it nice and hard... it'll shake out of place.  So I turned the handle and gave it a nice, hefty, frustrated shoulder bump.   The door flew open inside.  I looked up and the brass bolt that was supposed to hold it shut had bent at a ninety degree angle.   Beware the frustrated shoulder of a three hundred pound man.

What does that story have to do with tomorrow's reading?  In the Gospel we see the parable of the men who built their houses, one on sand and the other on rock.  Both homes we wearied by a storm.  The one built on a rock solid foundation stood the test of the weather.  The one built on sand crumbled and fell.  Like the foundation, a good lock is supposed to hold the door shut.  One shouldn't be able to blow the door open with a shoulder, especially with as little effort as I put into it.  It should take a lot of effort to get into the house, that's what safety is all about. We want to feel safe.  We want the bad elements to stay outside and the good in.  Those things that go bump in the night.. we want to go bump far away from us.

I think sometimes our hearts and our minds are much like that.  There are so many bad influences out there.  Television is filled with so much angst, pornography, slack morals, and sensual lures that it can be almost too dangerous to watch.  Music is filled with messages that most people gloss over as the norm.  All of these things are trying to break in, trying to get into our hearts.  They want us to be influenced to enjoy them, to join in.  Our relationship with Christ is much like the lock on the door.  The stronger our relationship, the harder it is for these things to get inside.  If we have a weak lock, we are like the house with a weak foundation.   It doesn't take much effort to get inside, we then spend our time looking and hearing these things until they come right in.   They don't fight for it, they just nudge a little harder and it flies open, exposing the inside to all who come by.

If your foundation is rock solid though, if your rock is Christ himself, how can they get in?  Just like the house that weathered the storm, the lock will hold tight, keeping the door of your mind and heart from being opened by anyone but those who should be opening it.   That doesn't mean a blind obedience, it means a discerning heart.  We pick and choose those things which will make us better.  We stop looking at, listening, choosing, and participating in those things which erode away our foundation, which draw us farther and farther away from Christ.

“A strong city have we;
he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.
Open up the gates
to let in a nation that is just,
one that keeps faith.
A nation of firm purpose you keep in peace;
in peace, for its trust in you.”


That's what I take from the first reading as well.   Just as Jesus words say in the gospel, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”   It's more than just hearing, or saying... it's living the Gospel.  It's making your life a beacon in a world of darkness.  It's making sure your foundation is rock solid.  That Rock is Jesus Christ himself.  That is the bed stone of our Church.  We should open our gates to let in those things which keep the faith.  We should have a firm purpose, indeed.   Locking the doors to any evil influence, and carefully and spiritually discerning what we should let in.

How powerful a reminder of this is the Saint of tomorrow's memorial.  Saint Francis Xavier was probably the greatest evangelist since Saint Paul himself.  It is credited to Francis to have been directly involved in the conversion of over fifty thousand souls, even an entire city at once.  He followed God's calling and went wherever he needed to help spread the Church, in the end giving his life in the pursuit of that faith.  That's what a rock solid faith looks like.   It gives itself.  It pours itself out.  It does whatever necessary to spread the faith in it's entirety, not some watered down version.  When we water it down... we erode the foundation... we weaken the lock.

As we continue our journey in advent toward Christmas, that's what we need to be asking ourselves.  Is our foundation solid?  Are our doors locked?  Are there things in our lives that are eroding that foundation?  Have I kept God at the center of my life? Or is something else creeping into his place?  Let us prepare our hearts like the temple that were created to be.  As we approach Christmas, let's dust out the corners, shake out the curtains, and sweep out the cob webs.  Let's close the door on those things which are trying to get in that have no place, no right to be there, and instead let Christ be reborn in our hearts.  Then we can truly proclaim with the Psalmist: "This gate is the LORD’s; the just shall enter it. I will give thanks to you, for you have answered me and have been my savior."

His servant and yours,
Brian

Feast of Saint's Simon and Jude

What does it mean to be chosen by God?  Tomorrow we celebrate the feast of two people who not only where chosen by Christ but also suffered martyrdom for their faith.  What can we learn from these readings?  How do they apply to us as Catholics today, 2000 years after they were recorded?

While looking at the first reading I wanted to ask myself, how does that apply to me?  The reading talks about the Apostles being the foundation of our faith.  That the church Jesus left us with was built on them as the base.  That's an important thing to us as Catholics.  We are an apostolic faith.  That is we believe in the teachings of the Apostles, as handed down through their successors, and recorded in the Scriptures.  So we hold to those teachings, we trust in them and we try to live as the Apostles did.  We listen to their testimony about who Jesus is and what that revelation means to us as humans.   We learn from them more about our relationship in this covenant of love that unites us with God as his people.

There is an important thing though to notice in that reading.  The Apostles are indeed the base, the foundation of our faith.. but Jesus is the Capstone.  It is Jesus himself that holds us together in our faith.  Without a capstone an arch, a building, a pyramid.. they all fall.    The capstone holds all the weight. It is the 'key' to the entire structure.  That shows us a very important thing.  We are not a people of the book, we are a people of God.  The book is part of the foundation, it was given to us by the Church, by the apostles.. but the key, the key to the Church, to understanding the book, to our faith in it's entirety is a person.   The person of Christ.  It is through him, through his support, through his guidance and his spirit that we are lead to not only understand our faith (and our book) but also to be able to follow it.  When we try to do things on our own, our flesh gets in the way.  That is why we keep falling into the same sin over and over.  We don't turn it over to God and let him take it away, we try to fight it on our own.  "I got this" we say.  It's only when we humble ourselves, humble our own egos, that we begin to say "I don't have this Lord. I am struggling.  I need you to help me."  We have to make him the Capstone of our lives, so that he holds us together.  Without him, we ourselves fall apart.

Just as the Gospel reading reminds us that Jesus personally called each and every one of his 12 Apostles, even Judas who would betray Him, he also calls each of us into a relationship.  He wants us to step out of our world, out of our comfort, and to build a temple for Him.  A temple of living stones,  all support and held together by Jesus Christ himself.  He has been calling us since the moment of our birth, are we ready to listen?  Are we ready to turn it all over to him? Or will we just sit where we are, afraid to respond?  It's ok.  You don't even have to move.  All you have to do is make Him the Capstone, and he will lead you out. 

The LORD will fight for you; you have only to keep still. - Exodus 14:14 NAB

"Be still and know that I am God," the Psalmist reminds us.    Elijah stayed still in the cave.  He listened for God and found him in the silence.  God has been reminding me over and over to be still, to listen for Him, and then do what He guides me to do.  So my challenge to you today, is to get in some quite time.. some 'still' time with God.  Find a quiet place, away from the sounds and influences of the world, and spend some time just listening for God's voice.   Find an adoration chapel, a Sanctuary to sit in with the reposed Christ, or even just a quiet corner in your home and say "Speak Lord, your servant is listening."  Then be Still.   Listen for His call.  Realize he has already called out to you, he has already chosen you, he is just waiting for you to realize how much you mean to him.

In Christ, His Servant and Yours,
Brian