Ordinary Time 25 - The Art of Knowing Love

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 25

September 22, 2024

Gratitude and the Art of Knowing Love

 

            One time a college professor was teaching a lesson on the seven deadly sins. He instructed his pupils, “Before we begin discussing envy, I’d like you to write down every person you are envious of, but don’t write them on paper – I want you to write each name on a potato and bring it to class.” The students thought this was creative and was excited to see what he would do with them. Some students had two or three potatoes, while others brought in a whole sack. They were hoping to air their grievances with all of those people: this one boasts all the time about their athletic awards; this one posts arrogant photos on Instagram showing off their bodies; this one didn’t earn their wealth and doesn’t deserve it.

            But to their surprise, the teacher didn’t address the issue, but only told them to bring the potatoes back the next day. They did so, and he told them to bring them back the next day. Day after day they were to bring back the potatoes. After two weeks, the potatoes had begun to get heavy, burdensome, smelly, and rotten. Finally, two weeks after assigning it, the teacher said, “This is what happens when you carry envy in your heart. It makes your heart heavy, weighed down, and it begins to rot. Now get rid of all your potatoes – and get rid of all your envy.”

            All three of our readings deal with envy and its consequences. The first reading describes the envious machinations of the Pharisees, who see Jesus as a threat because of His holiness. The Gospels portray the Apostles as envious of one another, angling to become the greatest among them. And St. James speaks about the consequences of envy: war, dissension, division. Let’s look at that particular sin and how to combat it.

            First, we need to define it. Aquinas defines envy as “sorrow at another’s good fortune.” This distinguishes envy from jealousy, which is not wanting to share something that you already have. So in this way, jealousy can be good – a husband should be jealous of his wife in the sense that he does not want another man to have her! But can envy – sorrow at another’s good fortune – ever be good?

            Yes! St. Thomas Aquinas mentions two ways that envy is good, and two ways it is sinful. Envy can be helpful when we see an evil person receive a good thing that they will use wrongly. So if a corrupt politician becomes elected, it is right to be sorrowful – knowing that their political position might be used to harm others. Or if a pleasure-loving, faithless person wins the lottery, and we know they will only spend the money on sinful things – it is right to be sorrowful over this. Envy can also be helpful when it spurs us on to become better. I see someone who has been exercising and looks great – and I want to do the same. We see someone who is living a virtuous life and radiates joy – and we want to pursue the same.

            But envy is sinful, according to Aquinas, when we don’t think the person is worthy of their blessings – that is always wrong, for God gives His blessings to both the righteous and sinners. And how many times have we received blessings from God when we were unworthy of them! The other cause of sinful envy, according to Aquinas, is when we are angry that another person has simply received more blessings than we have.

            This can even be a temptation in the spiritual life. St. Therese of Lisieux struggled with this. She had a burning desire to become a martyr, but living in nineteenth-century France, there was no chance. She had the desire to become a missionary, but poor health meant that she never left her hometown. Initially she wrestled with God – why can’t I do something great for you? Why can’t I become like those magnificent saints who lived tremendously heroic lives? But she came to peace about it when she considered the variety of flowers in the garden: some are flashy and eye-catching, while others are decked in more subtle hues. As she writes in her autobiography:

            Our Lord has deigned to explain this mystery to me. He showed me the book of nature, and I understood that every flower created by Him is beautiful, that the brilliance of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not lessen the perfume of the violet or the sweet simplicity of the daisy. I understood that if all the lowly flowers wished to be roses, nature would lose its springtime beauty. And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden. He has been pleased to create great Saints who may be compared to the lily and the rose, but He has also created lesser ones, who must be content to be daisies or simple violets flowering at His Feet, and whose mission it is to gladden His Divine Eyes when He deigns to look down on them. And the more gladly they do His Will the greater their perfection.

            So what is the antidote to envy, that sorrow at other’s blessings? There are three, one clearly evident and the other two hidden. The evident one, of course, is gratitude. So often we forget all of our own blessings – we have been given more than we deserve – family and friends, life, good health, our Catholic Faith. As Catholic speaker Chris Stefanick puts it, “None of us has to exist, but we get to. It’s just awesome to be alive – everything else is a bonus!” Counting our gratefuls helps stave off envy.

            But there are two deeper ways to fight off envy. I believe that one reason we are envious of others is that we think that someone else’s blessings means that they are loved more. We falsely believe that a person’s bigger paycheck and more expensive vacations, better health and more friends, means that we are somehow loved less by God or by others.

            This may be why Jesus chooses to hold a young child up as an example – most children are secure in their parents’ love. They know that they are unconditionally loved, safe in their parents’ embrace. And all Christians ought to know so deeply that they are equally unconditionally loved by their Heavenly Father. If we have the treasure of Christ and know the depths of His love, what else do we really need?

            Of course, that’s easier said than done. To be secure in your Father’s love isn’t a feeling, but an unshakeable confidence that we are loved, not because of what we can do or produce, how we look or how successful we are, but because we are His. Take a risk, believe in His love, and rest secure that no matter what others have, we are still infinitely, personally, passionately loved by God.

            Finally, we can overcome envy with the realization that God has a unique, unrepeatable plan in our lives – and this plan is good and perfect, directed to our holiness. So if we don’t have wealth, if we aren’t successful, if we don’t have good health – we can surrender this all to our Heavenly Father in trust that He is leading us along a path of holiness. Rather than look to other people’s lives and wish we were like them, we look to our own unique path and see the virtues and gifts God wants to form in us.

            How many of the saints became holy through unique, difficult paths! One of my favorites is St. Benedict Joseph Labre. Born in France in the 1700s, he thought about becoming a priest, but was rejected from three separate monasteries. He was too poor; he wasn’t able to get letters of recommendation from influential people; he had bad health. It would have been easy for him to grow angry and say, “Why me?” or to look to others’ blessings. But instead, he said, “Lord, I don’t know where you’re leading me…but I trust in you.”

            One day in prayer he received an inspiration – to go, on foot, to all of the holy pilgrimage sites throughout the world – forever. He would live his life as a perpetual pilgrim, subsisting by begging for bread, and praying for the world. So he began a most unique mission! He traveled thousands of miles, sharing what little bread he begged with the homeless, sleeping out under the stars, and living a life of hardship and poverty. Every town he would enter, he would spend long hours in front of the Eucharist, before seeking out the company of the homeless to teach them about the Lord.

            God used this humble pilgrim in profound ways – he was known to multiply bread for the homeless and heal the sick, and God even gave him the grace of levitation (which means actually floating while praying – a few saints have had this remarkable gift!).

            At the end of his life he made Rome his permanent home, continuing to beg and minister to the homeless as a homeless man himself. St. Benedict Joseph Labre had a very unique call to holiness – and rather than blame God or grow envious of others for his lack of natural gifts, allowed God to use his poverty to make him a saint!

            My friends, envy is one of the deadly sins – it kills charity in the heart, and rots away our peace and joy. But with the antidotes of gratitude, accepting the love of God, and rejoicing in the path that God has planned for us, we can overcome envy to live a life of joy!

Ordinary Time 24 - Things That Go Together

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 24

September 15, 2024

Faith and Works

 

            There are some things in life that always seem to go together. Peanut butter and jelly. Salt and pepper. Romeo and Juliet. The New York Giants and losing. Some things were just meant to be together.

            But since the mid-1500s, there has been considerable debate about two more things that should be together: faith and works. How are we saved? By our faith in Jesus Christ, or by our good deeds and following the Commandments? The answer is: yes. But the history is a lot more complicated.

            On one side, there is a teaching that many of the early Protestants believed: sola fide, which means being saved by faith alone. Martin Luther, who founded Protestantism, once wrote to a spiritual friend: “God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, sin boldly, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.” Now, I don’t think Luther was actually telling people to go and sin and not worry about it, but his belief was that all we needed for Heaven was to believe in what Jesus did – regardless of what we do or don’t do.

            But there is an equally dangerous extreme on the other side. The early Church wrestled with a heresy called Pelagianism. Pelagius denied original sin and said that we could freely choose to be perfect, even without God’s grace. If we just tried hard enough, we could live good lives, and we didn’t need Jesus to save us. Jesus was an example of a sinless life, said Pelagius, but we can become holy just by imitating Him, even without His grace. I see this error a lot at funerals where people say, “Oh, I know Uncle Billy didn’t really believe or go to Mass or pray, but he was very nice so we know he’s in Heaven.” That’s Pelagianism, and it ain’t good!

            Both of these are opposite errors. The truth, as Aquinas says, is in the middle of extremes. And James puts it best when he defines what saves us: living faith. We are actually saved by our faith in Jesus Christ, in His death and resurrection, not in anything we’ve done. But that faith remains dead until it is vivified by good works.

            Consider the example of the first person to enter Heaven, after Jesus. Do you know who it was? It wasn’t Mary, or the Apostles, or some super-holy person. It was the Good Thief who was crucified alongside Jesus. He turned to Christ and said, “Remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” To which Jesus responded, “This day you will be with Me in paradise.” He had no good works or deeds to bring to Jesus – he was a thief, a public sinner. But by his faith, he was saved.

            But – what if he was brought down alive and allowed to continue his life…do you think he could say, “Well, now that I’ve acknowledged Jesus as Lord, I can go out and still be a thief.” Would that be saving faith? Of course not! Saving faith means that we acknowledge Jesus as Lord, and then we live like Jesus is Lord.

            We see this same dynamic in the Gospel. St. Peter has rock-solid faith – he is the first person to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, the Savior of the world. What faith! But then when Jesus reveals to him the reality that the Christian life involves the Cross, and the living-out of that faith becomes a stumbling block.

            A lot of Christians have that same challenge – it’s easy enough to believe in Jesus in our heads, but when it comes to actually living it out, it’s another matter. I am reminded of a Peanuts cartoon where Linus says, “I love mankind! It’s people I can’t stand.” It’s a nice notion to think that Jesus should be the center of our life – it’s a little tougher when we’ve got to tell our kids’ sports coach that we have to miss the game to get to Mass. It’s good theology to believe that everyone is made in the image and likeness of God…but it gets a little tough to put that theology into practice when we have to sit next to our brother-in-law at the family gathering…you know, the weird one who is boring and has no social graces and who always argues about politics. Faith plus works equals the cross – but do not be afraid, for it is through the Cross that we draw close to Jesus and become like Him.

            I close with another beautiful saint who combined great faith and piety with an active love for the needy – St. Louise de Marillac. She was born and raised among the French aristocracy in the 1600s, but cultivated a deep relationship with the Lord. As a young adult, she felt called to be a cloistered nun (that is, a nun who spends her entire life in prayer, never leaving her monastery but interceding for the world). But she was rejected by all the religious communities she applied to.

            Confused and lost, her family suggested that she try marriage. She married a good and devout aristocrat, and they had one son. It was a happy few years, but she was still restless – she wanted to put her faith into action but couldn’t find out how to do it. Tragically, her husband died of an illness, and as a widow with a son to raise she was cast into poverty.

            Around that same time, a priest named St. Vincent de Paul had been launching an initiative called the Ladies of Charity, which recruited aristocratic ladies to work with the poor. Unfortunately, the initiative was a failure – the rich women would wear their fancy dresses into the slums and be afraid of getting their hands dirty, while the poor they were serving were insulted by the condescending attitude of the rich. Fr. Vincent knew he needed a new tactic, where ordinary women, not the 1%, would actually serve the poor. He quickly found a friend in Louise, who had the same vision of spending her life to relieve the distress of the destitute.

            Together, they organized a group of young women who wanted to dedicate their lives to the service of the poor and orphans. Starting with only four women, they soon grew and attracted more young ladies who wanted to give themselves over to service, for love of Jesus and souls. By the end of her life, she had opened over 40 homes where the poor, orphans, widows, and the sick could find food, shelter, and love. The women she gathered to care for them became the Daughters of Charity, a religious community that still exists to this day. She combined her deep piety with a fervor to serve – the best of both worlds!

             Like Jack and Jill, popcorn and a movie, thunder and lightning – so faith and works go together. We are saved by our living faith in Jesus Christ – a vibrant relationship with Him that is lived out in our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Ordinary Time 23 - A Better Family

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 23

September 8, 2024

Welcome Home

 

            We have a young lady who comes to our youth group here who has a rather inspiring backstory. She was born in Waterbury to a broken home, and bounced around through foster homes for many years until she was finally adopted by a good Catholic family at ten years old. Four years later, she’s now a fervent, faithful follower of Jesus. Over the summer, I asked her how she came to really love the faith, when she grew up in such rough homes and was more-or-less forced to be baptized at ten. She told me, “I don’t know how I came to love Jesus, but when I was baptized, I felt like I was finally coming home.”

            What a beautiful description of a life with Christ – finally coming home. Did you catch the immense power of today’s Collect (Opening Prayer)? Here it is again: O God, by whom we are redeemed and receive adoption, look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters, that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance. Let’s unpack that for a minute.

            We are creatures – no better than servants, really. We don’t have the power to draw another breath if it’s not given to us from above. And worse than that – we were disobedient slaves, we had spat in His face, disobeyed His commands. But even though He knows our nothingness and our arrogant rebellion, He still decided to offer us something phenomenal: we have the chance to become, not servants and dust, but sons and daughters.

            To do that, He had to first pay back the consequences of our rebellion – which He paid on the Cross. Once cleansed, through baptism He raises us to a dignity we never deserved – to be His sons and daughters, to share in His very life, to open His home to us and to allow us to call Him Father.

            This is the radical uniqueness of Christianity! Our Muslim brothers and sisters call God “Allah” – Master – but we call God “Abba”, Father, which would be blasphemous to Muslims. Our Jewish brethren would never consider themselves children of God – they are His people, perhaps, but not His family – and the blessings of God were only for them, not for the world.

            It would be outrageous in the first century, then, to invite the entire world into this sonship. There was an important detail in the Gospel – where did Jesus do this miracle? In the land of Tyre and Sidon, which is about 22 miles north of the border of the Holy Land – pagan territory. Of course they were overjoyed – not only did Jesus do a remarkable miracle, but He did it for Gentiles – the blessings of sonship are now being extended to the ends of the earth!

            So what’s our takeaway? Three elements. First – do you ever feel like you don’t fit in? This message of adoptive sonship in Christ means that we now have a family, no matter what. The Catholic Church is sometimes called “Holy Mother Church” and if you ever look at the colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Basilica, they were designed to resemble arms reaching out to embrace the world. So maybe we were always “on the outside” as a kid…maybe as a young adult we felt like we couldn’t find our friend-group…maybe as an adult we feel alone. In Christ, though, we are surrounded by a “great crowd of witnesses,” as St. Paul puts it in the Book of Hebrews. Our best friends can be Jesus and the saints – and what a friendship that can be!

            I went to seminary with a remarkable man named Fr. Chase Hilgenbrinck. Before seminary, he was a professional soccer player, playing on the New England Revolution. He was so good that he was invited to try out for the Chilean national team, and he made the team and moved to Chile to play. The only problem was that he didn’t speak Spanish, and his teammates didn’t speak English. So after practice, his teammates would all go out and party…and Chase would be completely left out. In his loneliness, he began to go to the local Catholic Church and just sit in the presence of Jesus – it was the only place he could feel at home in a foreign country. Through those long afternoons of silence, he began to discern God calling him to the priesthood – and now he serves as a priest in Illinois. But it was through the experience of loneliness that God revealed to him that he belonged to Christ in the Catholic Church.

            Second, there’s an awful lot of people who struggle with their family. No one has perfect parents; we’ve all got family issues. But it’s good to know that we have a better family, a better Father. Even if you have great parents, they can only take us so far. At a certain point, we all have to turn to God as our Father. I remember being faced with some difficulty in my life and thinking, “Man, I wish my dad had prepared me for this!” To which, God responded, “He couldn’t prepare you for everything – now turn to Me, and I will lead you.” Whether we have great parents or are dealing with wounds because of them, God wants to father us – and He does so through the joys and challenges of everyday life. We receive His Fathering by reading His Word (the Bible), spending time with Him in prayer, and having that spirit of docility which asks Him, “Father, how are You leading me through this joy or sorrow? What are You teaching me? How are You forming me through this?”

            Finally, being a child of God means living out of such a dignity. Imagine being the son of Michael Jordan or Martin Luther King Jr. – there is a certain expectation that you “live up to the family name,” that you succeed in life because of who you’re related to. In the same way, as Pope St. Leo put it, “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition.” If we are adopted into God’s family, we must make the family proud and glorify our Heavenly Father! No more living as if we’re the star of our own melodrama; we’re sons of a Father who we want to make proud.

            I close with a beautiful saint who found her family in Christ. In South Sudan in the late 1800s, a young girl was the daughter of the tribal chief. She grew up happy, but when she was only eight years old, Muslim slave traders raided her village, forced her to march 600 miles, and sold her into slavery. She was so traumatized by the experience of losing her entire family that she actually forgot her name, so the Muslims called her “Bakhita”, which means “fortunate or lucky” in Arabic. She was traded from one master to another, until she was finally sold to a wealthy businessman from Italy, who took her back home. For many years she served this wealthy Italian man until one time he had to go on a lengthy business trip to the Middle East. Rather than take Bakhita with him, he decided to entrust her to a local convent of nuns, to make sure she didn’t run away.

            Living with the nuns was such a blessing for Bakhita. For the first time since her capture, she felt like she was surrounded by love. The nuns treated her with dignity and respect, not like a slave, and taught her about the Lord Jesus. She received baptism, taking the name Josephine, and rejoiced at her newfound family in Christ.

            The businessman returned, and demanded that Bakhita be returned to him. But there was a law in Italy that forbade anyone from keeping a baptized person as a slave. The man appealed to a judge, but the judge ruled that due to Bakhita’s baptism, she was now free. When asked what she wished to do with her newfound freedom, she replied that she wanted to become a nun and join the convent, as it was the best family she had ever found. She became a nun and was well-known for her joy, her kindness, and her merciful nature. Later on in life she was asked, “What would you do if you met those men who sold you into slavery?” She replied, “I would kiss their hands, for if that had not happened, I would not have known Jesus Christ.” What beautiful forgiveness and mercy – all because she found a family in the Church and in the Lord, a family of grace even richer than her family of blood.

            We’ve probably all heard the term that “blood is thicker than water” – the idea that loyalty to our family is the highest value. But in Christ, we are adopted into a family more secure and more loving than even our biological brothers and sisters. Now we are sons and daughters of a Heavenly Father, with an eternal inheritance awaiting us. And as St. Aloysius Gonzaga once said, “It is better to be a child of God than king of the whole world.”