Homily for May 26,
2019
Sixth Sunday of
Easter
A Well-Ordered
Life
It was a
dark place, damp and smelling of death. The Tower of London was the place where
people were jailed before their execution. And that is precisely what brought St.
Thomas More there.
He was
once the Chancellor of all of England, the second-in-command to his friend,
King Henry VIII. But as the King began to stray from the Church – first by
divorcing his wife and marrying another woman without an annulment, then by
declaring himself the head of the Church in England – Thomas stayed faithful to
his Catholic Faith. When the King forced all officials to swear an oath
declaring the King, not the Pope, to be the head of the Church, Thomas refused,
knowing that it would lead to his death. Despite offers of great wealth,
freedom, and honors if he only violated his faith and signed the oath, he
stayed steadfast, and was sentenced to execution by beheading.
The
night before his death, he wrote a letter to his beloved daughter Margaret. In part,
it reads: “Therefore tomorrow I long to go to God: it will be a day very perfect
for me. Farewell, my dear child, and pray for me, and I shall for you, and for
all your friends, that we may merrily meet in heaven.”
How can
a condemned man keep such peace? Here he was, facing his own death, but able to
write to his daughter with joy and love. He had a peace the world cannot give –
the peace that Jesus promises in the Gospel.
Peace is
not the absence of conflict. That is not possible on this earth. As St. Cyril
of Alexandria wrote, “It is not possible to avoid the malice of the wicked, no
matter how one’s life is ordered.” No, we will always have stressful
situations, difficult bosses, bullies, family tensions. But we can still have
peace – because peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of
Christ.
The
Gospel ties together three seemingly disparate ideas – peace, the Holy Spirit,
and following God’s commandments. But these ideas are actually closely
connected – and they all have to do with ordering your life well so that we can
have inner peace.
What do
I mean by “ordering our life well”? Simple. The order of our life should be:
God first, others second, ourselves third. Let’s take a look at that.
Inner
peace comes, first, from a life where God is central. Jesus talks about sending
the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit will not dwell in a soul where He has to
take second or third place. We’d all like to think that God is the most
important priority, but is He really? Do we attend Mass every Sunday, even on vacation or when it conflicts with our kids’
sports games? Do we pray for at least ten minutes daily? Do we read spiritual
books and seek to grow in our Faith? Do we seek to live a virtuous life,
following in the footsteps of Christ? If we had to be honest, probably most of
us have idols on the throne of our heart!
Imagine
that your life is like a bucket. Into the bucket you must place a big rock,
pebbles, sand, and water. What needs to go in first? The big rock. If we fill
the bucket with sand, we will never be able to put in the big rock. But if we
put the big rock in first, then the pebbles can fill in around it, and the sand
can fill in around the pebbles, and the water can fill in around the sand.
Likewise, if we put the non-essential stuff into our life first (work, sports,
cars, etc), then we will have no room for God. But if we put God into our life
first, then the rest will fit in its proper place as well.
So, to
have inner peace through a rightly ordered life, we keep God first. Second is
our love for neighbor. As Pope John Paul II said, “Man can only find himself in
a sincere gift of himself.” In other words, when you sacrifice for others, that
is when we find the true joy and peace.
Third –
and this is often overlooked – we must have a rightly-ordered love of self.
Human beings are made of two parts: body and soul. Which one should be
dominant? Which one should be the master? The soul. Our souls should direct our
body, but so often it’s the other way around. We know that we should pray, but
our body is too comfortable on the couch watching reruns of “Game of Thrones”
so we allow our body to rule. We know we shouldn’t eat that third donut because
it would be gluttony, but our bodies overwhelm our soul’s good intentions. We
know we shouldn’t look at women with lust, but we are – all too often – slaves
to our bodies.
Unfortunately,
our culture supports this. Look at any commercial: they always emphasize
pleasure, comfort, convenience, ease. How many times do you see a commercial like
“Kale: It Tastes Horrible, But It’s Good for You” or “Ford Focus: It May Not Be
Comfortable, But It’s Got Great Gas Mileage.” Of course not! Advertisers know
that we are attracted to the comfortable, the easy, the pleasant – but in our
world, this leads to a population that is ruled by its physical desires instead
of what is truly good for the human person.
So what
is the antidote? How can we be rightly-ordered within ourselves, and not allow
our bodies to master our souls? The answer is discipline. Self-discipline leads
to inner peace. We grow in self-discipline every time we make a choice to do
something unpleasant that is for our good. The alarm goes off – we have a
choice to hit the snooze button or to get up. Choose to get up! (St. Josemaria
Escriva once called that “the heroic minute” – as it’s the first battle of the
day to choose your body’s comfort or your soul’s strength). We are at an office
party with free food, and our favorite cookie is there – do we go crazy and
stuff ourselves, or exercise self-mastery and say, “I will have three cookies,
and no more.” Every time we choose discipline, we are re-ordering our life so
that the soul has mastery over the body.
And this
is the way to peace – living a well-ordered life, putting God first, others
second, and having an ordered interior life where the soul has mastery over the
body. This is also the way to peace
in society – when enough people live a well-ordered life, we will have
well-ordered families, well-ordered communities, and a well-ordered – and
peaceful – nation. These three ideas in the Gospel aren’t all that different –
the Holy Spirit, following the commandments, and peace – because with the Holy
Spirit dwelling in us, and a well-ordered following of God’s commands, we will have peace!
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