Tag: St. John

  • The Sadness of Losing Sheep

    The Sadness of Losing Sheep

    Tuesday of Holy Week: Isaiah 49:1-6, John 13:21-33, 36-38.

    Today, we hear part of  John’s account of the Last Supper when Jesus offers himself to and through Judas, always giving himself even in his own betrayal. As we contemplate the Word of God recorded by St. John, let us be drawn into the mystery of the Spirit that is “agitated” and the mind that understands all prophecy and all revelation. Below is a lightly edited version of my post from this same day in 2020.

    The gospel reading opens with, “Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’” The Greek phrase used for “deeply troubled” is ἐταράχθη τῷ πνεύματι (etarachthē tō pneumati), which means “agitated in spirit.” This is nearly identical to the phrase used to describe the state of his spirit when he encounters an emotional Mary just before raising Lazarus from the dead.

    In my reflection See the Glory of God, I argue that this agitation of spirit is due to the gut-like passion of God rejecting the force of death in his midst. I feel that we are experiencing the same agitation of spirit and the same underlying cause here in today’s gospel. Just as “Amen, Amen, I say to you” is a common phrase used by Jesus throughout the New Testament, and one that we can take to mean “The truth is here, I am teaching it to you,” I feel that this phrase “agitated in spirit” signals a fundamental surge of the spirit in opposition to death’s enthralling grip on someone. Here, it is Judas, and Christ’s agitation is not tied to the fact that his own death is implicated, but that this apostle he loved, someone whose feet he just washed, had given himself over to death. This is a lament from Jesus, the Good Shepherd who goes to every length to rescue one of his sheep, over the loss of Judas’s soul.

    The betrayal is even more symbolically devastating than we might think at first glance. The beloved one (John himself, the writer of the gospel) leans back on Jesus’s chest and asks who he’s talking about. Jesus replies, “It is the one to whom I hand the morsel after I have dipped it.” What morsel is He describing? Remember, this is the Last Supper, when Jesus institutes the sacrament of the Eucharist and provides his instructions to the apostles: “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Lk 22:19). John, for his part, doesn’t describe the Last Supper with these same words of institution as the synoptic gospels, but simply tells us, “So he dipped the morsel and took it and handed it to Judas.”

    Could this be a different, more simple morsel of bread? Perhaps, but is any morsel of bread “simple” at this sacred meal? They are all handed to the apostles personally by the Lord on the eve of his Passion, with his sanctifying grace and the intention of instituting the sacrament of Eucharist. It is all the Body of Christ, meant to spark the mystical Body of Christ that is the Church.

    And what happens with Judas when this holy morsel is given freely to him by Christ? John writes, “After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him. So Jesus said to him, ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’” It seems that Satan recoils and constricts his victim as the presence of God is placed upon him. Jesus, in turn, realizes that Judas is firmly in the devil’s grip and releases him from His Presence.

    The Last Supper (1786), Benjamin West | Creative Commons, courtesy the Detroit Institute of Arts. I think West captures a great range of humanity in the faces of the apostles and Jesus. We see the incredulous, questioning, uncomprehending, and earnest faces of most of the apostles, the divine relationship of Christ and God the Father as he institutes the sacrament of the Eucharist, and Satan darkly inhabiting the face and form of Judas.

    The Apostles aren’t sure what’s going on, but Judas, Satan, and Christ are clear. John writes, “So Judas took the morsel and left at once. And it was night.” Judas takes Christ’s life, His sanctified body, and leaves with it. He doesn’t eat the morsel, he doesn’t allow it to nourish him and bring the love of God into his being. Instead, he takes the gift like a greedy child, hoarding it away. And John gives us a poetic little sentence that signals the true darkness of this moment: “And it was night.” 

    Newcomers to Christianity are more incredulous over this moment than many lifelong Catholics. Why would Jesus just let Judas go if he knew he would betray him? He has it in his power to stop the whole, horrible ordeal before it starts. Yes, he’s always had this in his power, and that’s really the point. Jesus is the master of his destiny at all times. He can feed thousands and raise the dead with nothing but a word of thanks to the Father.

    But Jesus isn’t just the master of his destiny — He is the Master of Destiny, that is, of all destiny for all of humanity. As such, his responsibility has always been more than his human life; his responsibility is to provide salvation for all humans — life everlasting. The only way to do this is to take our sin and nail it to the Cross as a sacrifice to the Father, then to descend into death in a humanity He deliberately shares with us, but raise that human form with a divinity that is solely His. His choices are divine, they always exist within the love of the Trinity that is a pouring out of the self (kenosis) to a degree that we can’t quite comprehend. So he knows that he must let this sheep Judas escape with Satan in order to start the saving action he destines for us.

    The rest of today’s reading shows us how Jesus tells his beloved Apostles about his ordering of destiny. I am struck with how patient he has been throughout the gospels to this point, gradually revealing the mystery of his being and mission of salvation, trying to give them enough time to grow in understanding, and always pointing back to the glory of the Father. Now, things accelerate, as they must.

    He begins by saying, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.” I believe that we must again remember the importance of the Last Supper here and the seed of Christian ritual that Jesus gives the Church, one that will begin to make sense as his Body and Blood are literally poured out and then when he resurrects. But at the same time “glorification” refers to the necessary divine reaction to the fleeing Judas. How is Judas’s betrayal the thing that causes Jesus to say “Now is the Son of Man glorified”?

    I believe that this act enables Christ to display the overflowing, undeserved, and totally out-of-proportion love of God that the pours out in response to our infidelity. This is beyond turning the other cheek; this is the wellspring of love.

    Christ in Glory (14th c. Crete, Greece), Hand-painted (written) icon by Plamen Kazakov | image from blessedmart.com.

    Judas is the first in a cascade of sin and evil that will be rained down on Jesus during his suffering and death. His glorification and the glorification of God resides not in the smiting of the offenders but in the patient acceptance of this evil. This ability to love in the face of all the hate and injustice that can be mustered, well, it’s supernatural. It’s so paradoxical to how humans would respond that in it is the proof and the glory of God. The plea to forgive those “who know not what they do” as he hangs on the Cross! This looking out for his sheep in the darkest of night, this is the glorification.

    So when Jesus says, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now, though you will follow later,” we can take a double meaning. The apostles can’t follow him into the never-ending love in the face of torture and hate because of the supernatural divine love it requires, and this has not yet been poured out upon humanity. Secondly, they can’t follow him into death and the underworld, where he must go so that his divine essence, which can never die, can raise up again. But, as he notes, their paths to sainthood will require them to follow in both senses.

    Our reading today ends with Jesus explaining to Peter that although he claims he will lay down his life for Jesus, he will actually deny him three times that night, before the crow signals morning. When I was younger, I imagined that a certain degree of understandable bitterness may have marked Christ’s statement, but now I see things differently.

    I think the emotion that overwhelms Jesus on this fateful evening that will take them to the Garden of Gethsemane is sadness. Not anger toward God or the people who will betray him. Not fear of the impending torturous death. Not anguish over losing his family and friends. He may have experienced some measure of these things but I think it’s been in vogue since Vatican II to emphasize these aspects his humanity, perhaps to the detriment of remembering that the Good News is about the divinity that comes to earth. For me, I think that if we accept the reality of the love that defines the Trinity, which is the operative force brought into the world through the man Jesus Christ, agape must define for us who he ultimately is, especially in his final hours. That love is purely selfless, only wanting to draw others to unity with God.

    I think he grieves for humanity in the display of evil, the enthrallment of death, all of the cowardly and wicked acts. He knows that the cup the Father wants him to drink will entail humanity digging itself even further down into the depths of evil by torturing and crucifying the Word of God, an unspeakable sin. This is the Good Shepherd, this is the Son of Man who has devoted his life to preaching the New Covenant of love, this is the Anointed One who cares more deeply than we can imagine for all of us.

    So, no, I don’t think he was bitter with Peter, but instead sad. I can even imagine a tear on the cheek of our Savior when he gently tells Peter with some irony that the Rock who pledges to lay down his life is destined to deny any connection with Jesus three times that night. A tear of sadness, not for himself, but for Peter, a lost sheep who will thankfully eventually find his way back to the Father.

  • The Unwitting Prophet Caiaphas

    The Unwitting Prophet Caiaphas

    Saturday in the Fifth Week of Lent: Ezekiel 37:21-28, John 11:45-56.

    Today, the momentum gathering for Holy Week is palpable, both at home and in the daily readings. Tonight we sing first Vespers for Palm Sunday, and the antiphons will sing of the beginnings of the Passion. In today’s readings, we encounter Ezekiel’s first prophecy of Christ uniting the nations and then the gospel shows how the high priest Caiaphas unwittingly echoes this prophecy.

    We should pay attention here: Caiaphas is a lesson in not using religious language to justify political moves.

    The prophecy recorded in Ezekiel is this: “I will take the children of Israel from among the nations to which they have come, and gather them from all sides to bring them back to their land. I will make them one nation upon the land.” The promise of unification on their own land has been integral to the Jewish nation to this day, likely because of verses like this: “they shall live on it forever, they, and their children, and their children’s children, with my servant David their prince forever.” Theirs is a very literal interpretation of this promise, whereas Christians understand this to refer to the new Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God.

    John attributes a similar prophetic voice to Caiaphas: “He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God.” The phrase he did not say this on his own is found throughout scriptures as a way to say that the Spirit of God is active in a person. It follows, then, that John would write that he prophesied.

    Undoubtedly the same Holy Spirit revealed this to St. John as he wrote down the holy, inspired gospel. It is an interesting comment on the fact that God uses all parts of humanity in His plan of salvation. Caiaphas was, by all accounts, a highly political man and perhaps a tool of his influential father-in-law, Annas. Caiaphas was one of five men to serve as high priest who were either sons or sons in law-of Annas, who was high priest from A.D. 6-15 when the Romans had previously deposed him. So, God presents Caiaphas with the prophetic wisdom that Jesus is meant to gather into one the dispersed children of God. What Caiaphas does with this prophetic wisdom is another thing altogether.

    The scene in the gospel is the convening of the Sanhedrin. We think of this as being a plot of a few bad apples, but historically the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, which met every day except the Sabbath, was comprised of 71 elders (priests and scribes). Their function was that of a supreme Jewish court, among other things. This was no small cabal of plotters. This was the primary body of respected Jews who held power in Jerusalem.

    The Sanhedrin was undoubtedly central to the operation of the Jewish religious/social state, but since they were under Roman rule and the Roman procurator appointed the high priest, it was plagued with politics (and even accusations of members being collaborators with the Romans). This uneasy relationship with Rome, along with a Jewish populace that chafed at the thought of being subjugated, made those in the Sanhedrin politically jumpy to say the least. 

    John writes, “So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, ‘What are we going to do? This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation.’” This is a summary of what was likely some months of worrying and discussion that came to a head on this day. Their worry is that a Messiah who unites the people would be seen as a sign of revolt or instigation against their Roman rulers.

    Note how divorced this is from what the common people (like the Apostles) felt and yearned for. The Apostles and other disciples of Jesus show us that the Messiah was more than a political figure. In fact, one couldn’t avoid the fact that Jesus tells them directly that the Kingdom he preached was “not of this world.” The people yearn for salvation and a relationship with God, or at least God’s Anointed One. These are upright intentions.

    The Sanhedrin, on the other hand, displays none of this. They are stuck in their worldly concerns. In a way, its understandable, since we’ve seen leaders in most every culture prioritize political and territorial concerns over everything else. And yet this is Israel, of which God says “you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation,” (Ex 19:6). St. Peter writes something similar to the Jews living outside of the Holy Land in his first letter: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9). Is the Sanhedrin acting like it is a priestly kingdom or just another secular fiefdom?

    John directly quotes Caiaphas as saying, “You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish.” Caiaphas appears to be a man of determination. Perhaps the vision from the Holy Spirit of what Jesus means to the Jewish people has given him this confidence. But his utterly political perspective twists this prophetic knowledge to its own purposes.

    If his compatriots know nothing, he thinks he knows something important, but all he does with this important knowledge is to make a cold military calculation: one life to save many. This is the arithmetic of death, of loss. He is ruled by worldly concerns.

    Christ before Caiaphas (1308-1311), Duccio di Buoninsegna | Image from Wikiart.org.

    This is an important lesson for how to live out our lives. If we are open to God, faithful to the spirit as well as the letter of the law, and cultivate love, then we can avoid misusing any wisdom that God grants us. Caiaphas has not grown in the Lord and has not cultivated a heart and mind that is receptive to God’s will. The only will we see present in his short speech is his own cold, calculating will that is preoccupied with earthly power relations.

    Thank you, God, for an alternative way that you’ve given us in your Son, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Him. 

      

  • Hotheads and Zealots

    Hotheads and Zealots

    Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Jeremiah 20:10-13, John 10:31-42.

    I feel that I have less and less to say about the readings as we approach Holy Week. This could be a result of the distractions at home and in work or it could be because the weekday readings are the same from year to year and I don’t wish to repeat what I wrote in previous years. I can say that today, though, it is also in part due to a reaction against the people who rejected Christ in the gospels.

    I don’t know if it’s a sense of weariness over this rejection that we never forget in the life of the Church or perhaps a question of how many times I can reflect on the wrongness of humanity for not recognizing God in our midst. In any case, St. John’s gospel presents us with a number of episodes where the Jews continue to disbelieve, test, not listen to, and flat out insult our Lord, and today’s readings are another example. This being said, I hope to lay out a few observations below.

    Study of five grotesque heads (c.1494), Leonardo da Vinci | Wikimedia Commons.

    When we read that “The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus,” it’s a little jolt of surprise — wait, that’s not how he dies! Reading the gospels, we realize that Jesus came face-to-face with murderous intent several times (almost getting thrown off a cliff at Nazareth being another). Imagine if a random stoning over blasphemy was the story of his death. He would of course accomplish the Resurrection because immortality cannot be subject to death, but the great drama of the Passion is missing.

    As we approach Holy Week, we can reflect on the importance of the sequence of events happening in the way God intended for them to happen. We will encounter the praise and worship of his entrance into Jerusalem, a forecast of Christian worship in the form of the Church, but also a darkly ironic celebration just before betrayal, torture, and crucifixion at the hands of the people. Perhaps the stoning that could have happened in today’s reading was not enough of a judgement; by this I mean that all of the secular and religious powers had to participate in their wholly inappropriate judging and condemnation of the Son of God — today’s cluster of angry Jews did not fulfill the requirements that all of human powers must symbolically play in the drama of the Lord’s self-sacrifice. 

    While not the great drama to come, today’s pericope offers a different type of deliverance. It is a lesson in contrasting patience and human reason with hothead zealousness. Jesus surely shows us how reason and intellect are a blessing from God, but also how they must be joined to a spiritual reality that they cannot explain. In response to the Jews picking up stones with the intent to kill him, Jesus, the master of the Law, asks which of his “many good works from my Father” justify death by stoning. He is meeting anger and impulse with dry facts and the law.

    When they respond it is not his deeds but rather blasphemy, let’s understand how difficult and frustrating it would be for the Son of God to hear that he’s the one blaspheming, much less have to defend himself from these accusations. By definition, God cannot blaspheme against himself. All that he says is creative and generative; he does not contradict himself.

    But if they don’t accept him as God (in fact, this is the very thing they think makes him a blasphemer), then how to explain it to them? In the verses prior to this he has just said, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” (Jn 10:25b-27). In other words, either they recognize him as Lord through his deeds and Word, or they simply do not because they do not have the Father in them. By this point, the whole conversation is moot, which is likely why the Jews picked up stones — they had nothing more to say with words.

    But Jesus does not give up, much less participate in violence. He continues to reach out to them, long past the point when they were open to listening. He goes on to justify His words by pointing to scripture (Psalm 82), and justify Himself by pointing to “my Father’s works.” This is the action of the Father — endless mercy, endlessly reaching out to us even when we push Him away. Jesus even goes so far as to say, “even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” He simply wants them to honor the Father here, knowing that a rejection of Himself is a rejection of the Father.

    But it is not to be, and when they try to arrest him, “he escaped from their power.” What an interesting turn of phrase here. The power they have is the power of the world, the power of Satan whispering in their ears, and this is a power that has no grip over Christ. The original Greek reads that he “went forth from” (ἐξῆλθεν / exēlthen) — interestingly, the same verb used to describe the water and blood that “flowed” from his side when he is pierced by a spear on the Cross — “their grasp” (literally, their hands). This sense of “going forth” like flowing water reinforces the sense of irrefutability of the logic that we hear from the Logos of God. When water flows, we are somewhat at a loss of how to stop it, just like the Word of God can’t be stoppered and Jesus can’t be arrested before his time. These things are not subject to the will of humanity; they operate on a different plane and they are inevitable.

    Crucifix of the Pierced Heart of Jesus from the Mother House Chapel of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Ixelles, Belgium | image from rscjinternational.org.

    My prayer for today is that we learn some specific lessons from our Lenten gospel readings: that our role is never to be judge or executioner; that we refrain from trying to interrogate the Lord or pin him down (hold him in our grasp) and instead trust that he’s always there for us and look to join him in the Spirit, which blows where the Father wills it. And that we check our own blasphemy any time we hear disrespect against the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.

  • The Dense Life

    The Dense Life

    Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Daniel 3:14-20, 91-92, 95, John 8:31-42.

    Ah, freedom! It’s a major aspect of today’s gospel reading. Who knows more about freedom than the American (so we tell ourselves)? There was an article in one of our local news outlets, the Deseret News, just before the November 2020 presidential election that shed a lot of light on how Americans have thrown their notions of the constitution, the symbol of the flag, and personal freedoms into a blender to arrive at a specific brand of in-your-face freedom.

    The article is called Big Flags on Big Trucks, and details the phenomenon of “caravanning as a conservative way of protesting,” including a 6-mile-long train of trucks and cars flying flags and pro-Trump propaganda that drove the 380-mile length of Utah’s I-15 in late October, 2020. Now, people’s political persuasions are not my concern with this site. A quote from this article, however, reveals something about how Americans have twisted the concept of freedom to mean the opposite of what Christ means.

    “Liberals are always in your face. They want to push their opinion on you,” says a 22-year-old construction worker quoted in the article, “I have freedom of speech. I can say what I feel too.” Indeed, on both sides of the political spectrum, freedom means the unfiltered, unregulated firehose of opinion. Because American “freedom” implies the lack of any check or law, it has instilled a type of anarchy in the national psyche.

    It’s not too much of a leap to claim that Americans still have a bit of the wild West in them, feeling like they have the right to take matters into their own hands — certainly with words, but also with actions, guns, whatever. Our concept of freedom empowers us to “say what I feel” or “do as I please.” The result is that we envision ourselves as mini deities, marching about the world according to rules that we make up for ourselves, or no rules at all.

    Freedom of Speech (btw 1941-1945), Norman Rockwell | Wikimedia Commons.

    It’s important to state that this is a new (and errant) way of thinking about freedom. Human civilizations until the last several hundred years regularly had enslavement and servitude as part of cultures around the world. When someone was freed from slavery, this meant they could operate in society as any other citizen — according to the laws and prescriptions of the society. Free citizens certainly enjoyed more rights than slaves, but no one was exempt from the law, except the rulers, and even then certain codes of conduct were expected.

    Americans founded their society on revolution from a colonial master, and the rhetoric of freedom has always enjoyed center stage. “Freedom” as a national touchstone grew with our abolishment of slavery after the Civil War (something that lagged behind European countries, by the way), and enfranchisement of women and people of color in the 20th century. I would claim that the civil freedoms we enjoy are not that different from many, if not most, other countries around the world, but in our minds, we are exceptional.

    Much has been written about American exceptionalism in academic circles, and suffice it to say here that our exceptionalism has many levels: we feel exempt from many prescriptions that other cultures have but also more exceptional in character, in the fiber of who we are, which results in a ton of entitlement. I don’t think any of us intentionally feels this way — it’s simply something that we take on by millions of subtle and not-so-subtle messages in our public discourse, our entertainment, our advertising, etc.

    In my mind, the consequence of American exceptionalism as a part of our national character is that we are weaker, more arrogant, and less conformed to Christ. To put it bluntly, personal or national exceptionalism is a form of sin, where we place ourselves above others.

    As children of God, equal to all other children of God, we are lying to ourselves when we imagine a type of exceptionalism. As Dostoevsky wrote,

    “People who lie to themselves and listen to their own lie come to such a pass that they cannot distinguish the truth within them, or around them, and so lose all respect for themselves and for others. And having no respect, they cease to love, and in order to occupy and distract themselves without love they give way to passions and to coarse pleasures, and sink to bestiality in their vices, all from continual lying to others and to themselves.” (The Brothers Karamazov, II, 2).

    Dostoevsky rightly locates the loss of truth as a crucial part of the spiral of sin.

    Christ speaks today of the role of truth in establishing true freedom: “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Christ promises freedom, but at the end of a sequence of things that starts with a personal journey with him.

    Let’s start with the beginning: “If you remain in my word.” His word is both the teaching of the man Jesus as well as the Word of God contained in all of scripture. Jesus is affirming the laws and prescriptions of how to act and comport oneself as laid down for millennia in the scriptures as well as his own perfection of the law as he reveals during his ministry. Remaining in his word is where we start. Many (or most) of us may spend our entire lives just trying to get here, aspiring to remain, not slip, to train ourselves to resist worldly temptations, to pray often to the Father, and to serve our fellow human like Christ taught. 

    Christ promises that if we remain in his word, we will truly be his disciples. This means we will have a personal relationship with our teacher. Our lives become more than just following rules of behavior. We are immersed in a spiritual relationship that feeds us and transforms us. It is dynamic. We learn from him and lean on him and he rejoices with us when we succeed in turning to goodness and away from evil. He also comforts us when we slip.

    As we check in with ourselves on this journey, we can start to see that we are living a fuller, denser life, allowing ourselves to be conformed to something divine, to take on a spiritual dimension that promises to be more meaty than our physical one.

    Christ in Front of Pilate (1881), Mihály Munkácsy | Wikimedia Commons. Nietzsche (see next paragraph) aligns himself with one of the greatest theological “misses” in the Passion story, Pilate’s offhand retort to Christ. In The Anti-Christ, Nietzsche writes, “Must I add that, in the whole New Testament, there appears but a solitary figure worthy of honor? Pilate, the Roman viceroy. … The noble scorn of a Roman, before whom the word “truth” was shamelessly mishandled, enriched the New Testament with the only saying that has any value—and that is at once its criticism and its destruction: ‘What is truth?’”

    Then Jesus promises us that we “will know the truth.” After remaining in his Word and developing a personal relationship with our teacher, we will know the Truth. Let’s pause here and say that anyone who thinks that truth is a matter of context or is subjective depending on who you are, well, this person cannot call herself a Christian. Jesus clearly here and elsewhere tells us that there is a (singular) Truth — that Truth lives in God and we apprehend it through Christ as the Way.

    In fact, this is how he can say, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light.” To deny that there is Truth is at the heart of atheism. Thus, Nietzsche says, “What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.” In this world of Nietzsche, nothing exists but people making things up and calling them “rational” or “true” or “false.”

    Apart from this being simply counter to everything God has revealed about reality, I find it quite a mental stretch, like a bad dystopian movie or an episode of the Twilight Zone. There are too many things that exist beyond us and to which we respond to limit the world in this way. Certainly, in God’s great created universe we can find amazement and life that surprises us, that we do not create. But even in what we do create, like artwork, there is something about beauty that speaks to something transcendent, something that carries meaning outside of what we determine it should be.

    Thus, even the cynical, anti-Christian, existentialist student of Nietzsche, Albert Camus, writes, “Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” He affirms that there is truth, and that we tell ourselves fictions, some of which reveal the truth that is external to what we can create on our own.

    Pope Francis does a lovely job of summarizing how Christianity conveys a denser, more profound understanding of truth:

    In Christianity, truth is not just a conceptual reality that regards how we judge things, defining them as true or false. The truth is not just bringing to light things that are concealed, “revealing reality”, as the ancient Greek term aletheia (from a-lethès, “not hidden”) might lead us to believe. Truth involves our whole life. In the Bible, it carries with it the sense of support, solidity, and trust, as implied by the root ‘aman, the source of our liturgical expression Amen. Truth is something you can lean on, so as not to fall. In this relational sense, the only truly reliable and trustworthy One – the One on whom we can count – is the living God. Hence, Jesus can say: “I am the truth” (Jn 14:6). We discover and rediscover the truth when we experience it within ourselves in the loyalty and trustworthiness of the One who loves us. This alone can liberate us: “The truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32).
    – from Pope Francis’s message on World Communications Day, January 24, 2018.

    So, Truth necessarily involves the “only truly reliable and trustworthy One,” God. It is only in our lifelong walk with Christ, within the fabric of that personal relationship where he transforms us into better and better human beings, that we start to recognize and discover Truth.

    Thus, we arrive at the final part of this complex relationship and promise from Christ: “the truth will set you free.” We will get to the “free from what?” question presently, but first let’s linger on the fact that freedom comes as a result of a lifelong walk on the Way to the Kingdom where we discover truth “in the loyalty and trustworthiness of the One who loves us.” Contrast this complex, experiential definition with the American concept of freedom (“say what I feel” or “do as I please”). How self-centered and shallow it is revealed to be! There is no discovery of Truth that underlies this type of “freedom”; everything comes from within our flawed selves.

    This is, in fact, the very definition of living in a state of sin and without God in our hearts. It’s hard to think of a saint who hasn’t warned us about allowing ourselves to be led by our passions and desires. St. Benedict: “No one should follow what he considers to be good for himself, but rather what seems good for another.” St. Alphonso Liguori: “He who trusts in himself is lost. He who trusts in God can do all things.” (We could go on and on).

    The point is that when we follow our own desires, we are being ruled by the prince of this world. This is how Satan works in us, by having us elevate our own interests above everything else. The Ten Commandments were given to us to help us push back on these desires and temptations — coveting property and people, disrespecting our parents, destroying people who stand in our way, and putting ourselves ahead of God. Sinning is giving into the unchecked desires of self that are not conformed to God.

    Two Satyrs (1618-1619), Peter Paul Rubens | Wikimedia Commons.

    (NB., desire can be good, too! Desire for God, sexual desire for a spouse, desire to have someone else do well or be saved from suffering, etc.)

    So when Christ speaks of being set free, of course, he is saying, “everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.” The slavery of sin is what he has come to free us from. Imagine if we lived in a land where people proudly spoke of their freedom and — instead of the right to bear arms, to say whatever they pleased, or to hold private property — they meant freedom from sin. Now, that would be a country to be proud of!

    Along these lines, imagine if we found our purpose in this density of being, this filling out of ourselves with meaning and Truth. Rather than pursing the goal of proving our worth by showing off accomplishments that we’ve done all on our own, as if our own merit is the driving force in our lives, what if we pursue the goal of being shown Truth and goodness from outside of ourselves, by God. The first is a lonely, selfish, and ultimately shallow existence. The second is filled with the life of the heavenly hosts, it’s expansive, and it’s an ultimately deep existence.

    We must close with St. Paul because we have to realize that Jesus gave us our freedom from sin permanently and irrevocably. While it continues to be our challenge and call to find truth after a lifelong personal walk with Christ, he permanently changed our ontological spiritual state with his death and resurrection.

    Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. (Romans 6:3-12).

  • The Limits of Language

    The Limits of Language

    Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Numbers 21:4-9, John 8:21-30.

    For me, today’s readings expose the limits of language to convey God’s plan. More than language, really, it’s a limit to our very capacity to understand. The reason we call these things the mysteries of our faith is not that they are to be blown over or passed of as simply “unknowable” (that’s a cop out, in some ways). It’s because they exist within a divine logic that we do not have access to here on the earthly plane.

    I imagine that some saints and mystics have had encounters with this divine logic and entered an ecstasy that included an understanding, in parts, of God’s ways. What this tells us is that pure worldly knowledge and intelligence are poor ways to “interrogate” or understand these mysteries. God IS, and there is an experiential aspect to encountering God’s divine plan.

    In other words, the more we can exist in a way that is conformed to God’s image, the more our very existence is compatible with Him. What follows it that the more we can conform to Him, the more we might gain insights into the mysteries of our faith.

    We discussed the seminal Lenten image of Moses’s bronze serpent on the staff in the reflections Lifted Like the Serpent and Bridging Salvation History with a Serpent. We encounter that full reading from the Book of Numbers today. It is very difficult to understand how this thing that resembles an idol could be prescribed by God, who detests all forms of idolatry in his Chosen People. In fact, the entire thing doesn’t really reveal its meaning until Jesus comes and compares his own Crucifixion with the bronze serpent, which happens about 1,475 years later.

    This is a good example of the divine intelligence, where millennia are but a breath, where symbols contain a depth of meaning that may only reveal itself in another age. We can react to this in many ways, from frustration to withdrawal. This is why God constantly tells us that he loves us and won’t abandon us. He calls us to him and strengthens us with opportunities to exercise our spiritual muscle of faith in him over and over again. The overwhelming message is clear: we are his sheep, we need to trust in our Good Shepherd. His plan is unknowable to us as calculus is to a sheep, likely infinitely moreso. 

    When I first really grappled with the first reading some years ago, I was left with a lot of questions. It’s somewhat funny that the text just plows along without anyone’s doubt being expressed. That’s why I was pleased to find that I wasn’t the only one imagining that Moses’s introduction of a bronze staff would have been met with some skepticism. The excellent series The Chosen opened episode 7 with this exact scene, and Joshua confronts Moses with all of these doubts. Moses replies, “It’s an act of faith, not reason!” It’s worth a peek if you haven’t seen it:

    Moving to today’s gospel reading, we find that Jesus’s words are oddly unilluminating for the Pharisees. When I read this passage, I find myself frustrated, undoubtedly as St. John must have been when recalling the exchange. Every time Jesus offers a kernel of truth about himself or a piece of wisdom about eternal life, they respond like idiots. This is the perspective of a believer: he’s giving you gold, giving you the truth about his very self, and you respond with lame, cynical questions! And the perspective of an unbeliever: he’s talking in riddles, not answering us in plain language or at least the language we’re expecting.

    How can these perspectives be so different? He is the Word of God, the light casting away darkness, bringing intelligibility to the universe. Perhaps this is the genius of how St. John has presented the gospel here. There is no better way to convey the difference between walking the Way and being an unbeliever — it should make those of us who love Christ want to help him explain to the pigheaded Pharisees, make them understand that the stakes couldn’t be higher here and they’re fumbling the ball. Think of some of the exchange:

    Jesus: I am going away and you will look for me, but you will die in your sin.

    Pharisees: He is not going to kill himself, is he?

    [My reaction: Miss the point much? He’s concerned about you missing out on your salvation]

    Jesus: You belong to this world, but I do not belong to this world. That is why I told you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you will die in your sins.

    Pharisees: Who are you?

    [My reaction: He just told you He is the great I AM!]

    Jesus: the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.

    Pharisees: They did not realize that he was speaking to them of the Father.

    [My reaction: !!]

    Jesus: When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me.

    Pharisees:

    At this point, my reaction has to move past frustration and figure out what John is telling us about Christ. Is his point that language is simply inadequate to explain the mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation? I don’t think so. It’s true, language only goes so far, but language can go much further than we give it credit. That is why the scriptures will continue to reveal the treasures of wisdom to us throughout our lives — they are inexhaustible. As St. Paul tells the Romans, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Rom 11:33).

    But what is required is an alignment of one’s spirit with the spirit of Truth. Simply put, we have to want to encounter God. If we don’t want to encounter God, it will all seem like rubbish, ravings of a crazy cult. Indeed, we have heard such accusations from atheists over the last few centuries.

    Are You Talking to Me? (contemporary), Witold Gilewicz and Janusz Gilewicz | Image from artpal.com.

    When we admit to ourselves that we actually want to get to know God, that we’re willing to take on faith the entire tradition and revelation of himself to humanity, we start to see meaning where before we saw nothing. We are not creating meaning — this meaning existed long before our little brains encountered it — it’s more like we finally moved the radio dial off of static and tuned into the divine frequency. In our gospel reading today, Jesus is broadcasting loud and clear to those tuned into the divine frequency. The Pharisees, sadly, are not just on static, they’re on their own channel that broadcasts nothing but politics and self-assuredness.

    Jesus tells us something else of great importance at the end of today’s reading: “The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” Remember, with every revelation about himself, he is instructing us on the Way to the Kingdom. He is our role model, our high priest, and our Savior. The more we can be like him, the more we will be on our way to the Kingdom. And here he shares that the divine frequency carries more than just wisdom. It is a spiritual reality where God himself walks alongside us.

    “The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.” The promise is the same as it has always been: God will not leave us alone, and in return we should do what is pleasing to him. It’s amazing how the core of our faith is always this simple covenant of loving care. But this is more real than perhaps we ever hoped! Jesus tells us that the very real being of God is “with” him and “has not left me alone.” We have to be open to the ways of the Spirit and spiritual realities to understand this, but once we open ourselves, the reality is stunning.

    This is no distant judge from on high who checks his list each time we sin. This is our shepherd and partner every step of our life. He doesn’t leave us when we’re exhausted and crabby, or when we can’t afford a meal, or when we suffer an embarrassing failure. This should transform how we pray to him; he is much closer than we imagined, much more interested in giving us his mercy and help than we thought. The psalmist writes beautifully on this:

    O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
    You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
        you discern my thoughts from far away.
    You search out my path and my lying down,
        and are acquainted with all my ways.
    Even before a word is on my tongue,
        O Lord, you know it completely.
    You hem me in, behind and before,
        and lay your hand upon me.
    Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
        it is so high that I cannot attain it.

    Where can I go from your spirit?
        Or where can I flee from your presence?
    If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
        if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. …

    For it was you who formed my inward parts;
        you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
    I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
        Wonderful are your works    (Psalm 139:1-8, 13-14).

    Medieval artist’s rendering of King David as the psalmist in the Rice Psalter (mid-1400s) | Image from christies.com.

    This is a great aspect of God’s Wisdom for us to comprehend: not only does God exist, not only does he care that you do “what is pleasing” to him, he is so close to your being that you could never escape even if you wanted to. Why are so many of us spending our lives running away from the source of all goodness that springs up like a well within us?

    It’s time for us to tune into the divine frequency, to walk the Way with Christ who has always been right here with us.

  • Lust and Justice

    Lust and Justice

    Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent: Daniel 13:1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62, John 8:1-11.

    Wow, what a first reading today – 1,079 words! I’m guessing, but I think it’s the longest one outside of Easter Vigil. Thankfully, it reads like the script for a telenovela, so there’s a certain pacing and several plot twists to keep us interested. This reading and the gospel seem to be about adultery — at least the accusation of adultery. But in the end, they are more about lust, the perversion of God’s law, and divine justice. Let’s dig in.

    Detail from Susanna and the Elders (1653), Jacob Jordaens | Wikimedia Commons. While I think Jordaens is off with his smiling Susanna, as if she’s enjoying the intrusion of these nasty men on her bath, I think he’s spot on with the devilish faces of the judges and their grasping hands. It speaks to their lustful focus on her.

    Susanna, the heroine of the first reading and my wife’s namesake, is a fitting object of desire: “a very beautiful and God-fearing woman.” This reading is ostensibly about her, but really it’s about the two elder judges, complete degenerates that they are. When they begin to lust after her, the state of their sin is described in these terms: “They suppressed their consciences; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments.” This strikes me as being so on-point. Unbridled lust is absolutely a suppression of our God-given conscience, something that we have to cultivate and listen to in order to live upright lives.

    Lust is a determined effort not to look at God, for who can contemplate the face of God and still be drawn to evil? They also are determined not to think of “just judgements” — ironic for judges, and a choice that will come back to bite them. This description cuts right to the spiritual truth of their actions. When we think of being caught up in lust, this series of choices made on the spiritual plane might not occur to us because physical desire can be so blinding of a force (at least in my experience as a man), almost like animal instinct. We’ve all heard of or experienced sex as a result of being “caught up in the moment.” To me, at least, lust doesn’t seem as calculated or deliberate as it is described, but when I think about it, this is exactly what’s going on in terms of my spiritual being. Lust has an amazing ability to cause a huge discrepancy between what we experience mentally and physically and what we experience spiritually.

    All religious orders must address lust as communities of same-sex people living out their lives in sexual abstinence. Our saints from religious orders have gone to great lengths to preserve their purity. St. Josemaria Escriva said: “To defend his purity, St. Francis of Assisi rolled in the snow, St. Benedict threw himself into a thorn bush, St. Bernard plunged into an icy pond…You…what have you done?” Now that speaks to the power of temptation and lust!

    Yes, there’s something special about this sin, as St. Alphonsus Liguori writes, “In temptations against chastity, the spiritual masters advise us, not so much to contend with the bad thought, as to turn the mind to some spiritual, or, at least, indifferent object. It is useful to combat other bad thoughts face to face, but not thoughts of impurity.” How interesting, and consistent with the description of how the judges were affected in today’s first reading. If turning your thoughts to a spiritual matter is the best way to combat lust, then the description of how they “would not allow their eyes to look to heaven” is telling indeed.

    In addition, the line about how they suppressed their consciences is exactly the opposite of what Pope Saint John Paul II writes about how to deal with lust: “Deep within yourself, listen to your conscience, which calls you to be pure…a home is not warmed by the fire of pleasure, which burns quickly like a pile of withered grass. Passing encounters are only a caricature of love; they injure hearts and mock God’s plan.” I bring up all of these saints not just to complement the description of the sin in the first reading, but to help us remember that even though the sin appears to be purely physical, it is in fact a deep spiritual injury to ourselves and God.

    Lust as temptation is dangerous because it perverts our spiritual nature, turning us into baser animal creatures. If unchecked, it culminates in lust as an action. Today, we hear the two elder judges tell Susanna, “give in to our desire, and lie with us. If you refuse, we will testify against you.” Their spiritual natures are so undermined and perverted that they threaten rape and end up carrying out false testimony when she screams for help.

    Shortly after this, we hear the cringe-worthy, sleazy details of their false testimony. How interesting that the train wreck of sins is so caught up in power and wielding power on this earth. It is no mere coincidence that these men are elder judges. They represent the corrupting influence of the world, the depravity that reigns in the place where justice should be.

    As a sharp contrast, a young Daniel (think: new life in the spirit) intervenes to help restore a community twisted by sin: “God stirred up the holy spirit of a young boy named Daniel, and he cried aloud: ‘… Are you such fools, O children of Israel! To condemn a woman of Israel without examination and without clear evidence? Return to court, for they have testified falsely against her.’” Here we have God’s intervention because grave sin and injustice are at stake. The reading hinges on this moment, when God works through his chosen prophet Daniel to confront the people with truth.

    Like an early version of a detective crime story, Daniel smoothly trips up the elders to reveal their treachery. Finally, unlike what we hear in the gospel, divine justice is enacted on the spot.

    The Self-Mortification of St. Benedict (1496), Albrecht Dürer | Creative Commons, courtesy of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. From their website: “This window depicts an episode from the life of Saint Benedict (ca. 480–547). Satan, in the form of black birds, flutters around the saint. The young saint overcame his sexual desires (represented by the woman seen at the right) by throwing himself into a thorn bush. Albrecht Dürer shows Benedict lying in a thicket, deep in prayer.” One word: ouch.

    I think this is more than a critique of Jewish law and earthly justice systems. Likewise, I think it’s more than a simple morality fable even though the narrative structure reads like it. Remember that we are told that there was a prophecy about these judges: “of whom the Lord said, ‘Wickedness has come out of Babylon: from the elders who were to govern the people as judges.’” This brings the scope of salvation history into play. God has announced their coming, and as we see with other prophesied events, their arrival is a moment for God to reveal something about his desire to have us come to him in the Kingdom. It’s more than just a story of right vs. wrong.

    We learn two things in this vein:

    1. God hears us when we are pure of heart and call out to Him. Susanna precipitates David’s prophetic intervention when she cries, “O eternal God, you know what is hidden and are aware of all things before they come to be: you know that they have testified falsely against me.” Then we are told, “The Lord heard her prayer.”
    2. God promises divine justice, especially when earthly justice falls short due to human guile. Daniel does not promise a lynch mob or a simple execution; instead, he speaks of justice delivered by spiritual beings: “the angel of God waits with a sword to cut you in two so as to make an end of you both.” And even though the people do take the judges’ lives, Daniel’s words speak to a much more profound justice. God, through this scripture, gives us a vision of the Kingdom, where purity and virtue live with him and where sin and perversion of the spirit are eradicated.

    Let’s turn to the gospel, where Jesus Christ is the true way we will be re-configured in the Spirit. Daniel’s life and works simply pointed to Christ, like an early promise of the configuring and justice yet to be fully unveiled. And Jesus, as ever, surprises us with a teaching about God’s law and justice. 

    When the scribes and Pharisees throw a woman into the middle of the place where Jesus is teaching, St. John tells us that their question to Jesus about punishing her adultery was “to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him.” How like the elder judges in the Book of Daniel!

    They are here on false pretenses, not interested in justice but instead their own gain. Like the elder judges, they have bound themselves to the quest for worldly power and control; in so doing, they are avoiding looking at God. They lust not for sexual relations but for power, specifically the power of the judge to charge and condemn Jesus.

    Christ and the Adulterous Woman (contemporary), Domenico Morelli | Image from pixels.com. Excusing the overtly neo-classical elements of this painting (including Jesus’s robes), I like the use of light and dark to delineate Christ and the accusers.

    The other important thing here is the way the narrative of adultery is dealt with. On the surface, this episode seems to be a slam-dunk according to Jewish law, and when Jesus allows the woman to go unpunished, it seems to subvert that law. But John’s statement about their hidden intentions changes the narrative completely.

    They are not seeking to identify sin at all. Christ knows what is in their hearts, and for him this encounter is about their own falseness, not about the woman. After all, isn’t this what all encounters with God are about? When we stand before God, it is a personal encounter — we don’t go with a list of people we want to praise or condemn. Our role as his creation, his servants, is not one where we play judge or colleague.

    So as the Sun of Righteousness turns his gaze on the scribes and Pharisees, let’s remember that he understands their priestly role as upholders of God’s commandments and precepts. In fact, he shows them that their sin is the betrayal of the solemn, pure role they are supposed to play for their community.

    St. Augustine of Hippo explains the ironic position that these false upholders of the law occupy:

    “You have heard, O Jews, you have heard, O Pharisees, you have heard, O teachers of the law, the guardian of the law, but have not yet understood Him as the Lawgiver. What else does He signify to you when He writes with His finger on the ground? For the law was written with the finger of God; but written on stone because of the hard-hearted. The Lord now wrote on the ground, because He was seeking fruit” (Tractate 33 on the Gospel of John, 5).

    Thank you, St. Augustine, for connecting that mysterious detail from today’s gospel to the writing of the law. Many people wonder what Jesus may have been writing on the ground. The simple act of doing so in response to the question he was asked almost seems like an evasion or an act of rudely ignoring them. But not so! You see, these are professionals of the law, brought together in their common purpose of tripping up Jesus, not by some coincidental experience of all seeing a woman commit adultery at the same time. In other words, although they claim that she was “caught in the act,” they are not themselves the witnesses. This is a form of false witness in itself.

    For accusations of adultery without witnesses, the Torah describes a water trial (called Sotah) that the woman must undergo. As part of this, “the priest shall put [the charges and penalties] in writing, and wash them off into the water of bitterness” (Numbers 5:23). Here we have the incarnate Word of God, the One who forms the Torah and its prescriptions around how to carry out justice, bending down to enact the prescriptions of the law in front of the scribes and Pharisees. He is reminding them that there is a form of earthly justice that was handed to them by God and which is a solemn gift not to be tampered with. He knows that these prescriptions are in place so that there is no miscarriage of justice. He lifts up the law to fulfill the spiritual work it is intended to do: to keep our hearts clean from lies and sin, to keep sinners from perverting the justice God intends in the world.

    So when he stands back up at their insistence and says, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” we understand that this is a specific accusation against them. He knows their hearts and they have been called out. In response, “they went away one by one, beginning with the elders.” The elders, the ones who should know better than the rest, but in whom lies the entropy of sin. They slink off first, avoiding the embarrassment of those left later.

    Christ and the Adulteress (1532), Lucas Cranach the Elder | Wikimedia Commons. Lucas Cranach gets the focus of this episode correct in the variously ugly, refined, worldly, and half-interested looks of the scribes and Pharisees to the left of Jesus.

    Then they are left alone. Jesus’s simple questioning is a reminder of how we must all encounter God: “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” We must all account for our sins in honesty before God, no one else will be there to condemn or defend us. He knows our hearts and our deeds. But then we have this pestering problem of him letting a woman “caught in the act” of adultery leave unpunished. What is the point of this episode? That no matter what you do, all will be forgiven?

    I don’t think so. Jesus is incarnated to give us a new way, a new unity with God, not to judge and destroy. His mission is about fidelity of Spirit. If he has anything new to say about adultery, it is to point out that the worst adultery is to break our most fundamental covenant and union with God. This spiritual adultery is what the scribes and Pharisees just committed, not the woman.

    Nothing about this final exchange is like the other miracles or healings he accomplishes. He does not ask her about her faith or belief. He does not establish the atonement and request for mercy that is the requirement for spiritual healing. We must conclude that this encounter is not about sin being forgiven. Not her sin, certainly, because he doesn’t ritually absolve her.

    Instead, He renews God’s call to be holy: “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.” It’s not that he didn’t know if she committed adultery and was unwilling to point it out. After all, he told the Samaritan woman at the well that she had five husbands and was living in adultery at that moment.

    No, the lesson of today’s gospel is not so much about forgiveness as it is about the ultimate sanctity of our spiritual fidelity with God.

  • The Tree in its Vigor

    The Tree in its Vigor

    Saturday of the Fourth Week of Lent: Jeremiah 11:18-20, John 7:40-53.

    Today we observe two men of God in their prime: the prophet Jeremiah and Jesus Christ. As strong as they are in their relationship with the Father, they are besieged by the evil that walks among humanity. Despite being the living embodiment of God’s Truth, the peoples’ response was, “Let us destroy the tree in its vigor.”

    We should certainly take note of this historic violence against God’s anointed ones, not because we fear to repeat it (after all, Jesus is the final prophet), but because it presents us with a perspective on God’s chosen way to operate in humanity. This perspective, coupled with the Christ Event in its fullness, should prompt us to quicken our steps to the Lord, keep our lamps trimmed and burning, for the Lord will come like a thief in the night and we must be upright and ready.

    The reality is that we live the Last Times, the final age before the Judgment, and if we do not pay attention to all that has been given to us (scriptural revelation and the gift of Christ Himself), then we are dooming ourselves as surely as the chief priests and Pharisees who conspired against Christ.

    Jeremiah on the Ruins of Jerusalem (Jeremia op de puinhopen van Jeruzalem), 1844, Horace Vernet | Wikimedia Commons.

    Jeremiah is as simple yet as troubled a soul as there can be. Simple in that he is the model of fidelity to the Lord, doing his will without question and delivering difficult prophecies without sugar-coating them. There is no guile, no politicking. Yet he is troubled in every other way.

    He concisely shares his state of affairs in today’s reading: “Yet I, like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me.” People mock him, imprison him, beat him, conspire against him, and he is emotionally ripped up because he sees what lies in store for Judah and mourns their intractable defiance of the Lord. No one listens during his entire ministry and indeed the nation is destroyed as the Babylonian Exile begins.

    Jeremiah gives us a look into the evil hearts of his enemies: “Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more.” I note two things about this. First, there is a reaction against his strength in the Lord — they recognize that he is at the top of his prophetic game, a “tree in its vigor.” This is the reaction of the prince of this world to the presence of holiness. Second, this reaction is so forceful that it seeks the utter destruction of the prophet. It is not enough to kill him, but to ensure that “his name will be spoken no more.”

    They want to not only destroy the man but the divine truth that he has brought into the world. This erasure enables the devil to work without opposition. Satan preys on our base instincts and works through us to destroy truth and beauty.

    But we cannot be sucked into dualism, a worldview that pits good forces against equivalent evil forces like a version of Star Wars. That is a heretical teaching that the Church has stamped out many times in her history. This is why the lectionary includes the final verse of today’s first reading: “But, you, O LORD of hosts, O just Judge, searcher of mind and heart, Let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause!” This is not just a message that good will win out in the end. What it shows us is that Jeremiah has been blessed with a tiny glimpse of the divine intelligence, enough to show him that God has a great plan for humanity in which his lifetime is just a fraction of a breath.

    Jeremiah knows that there will be a “vengeance” against evil at some point and he is asking to witness it. I don’t think this has been included just to make Jeremiah look like a vengeful guy, with evil in his own heart. No, that’s completely inconsistent with who we know Jeremiah to be. Enraptured in the divine vision, he longs to see full justice restored for humanity — this is the Kingdom of God — and he wants to be present for it (which he will, indeed, after Jesus resurrects).

    But God’s plan is that evil is allowed to act upon humanity in Jeremiah’s age. He could stop it, but he doesn’t. Why? This is the great question that so consumes people bothered by suffering in the world. Why are we left to be vulnerable to evil?

    There is something greater going on. Let’s remember that God asks nothing of us that he does not also ask of his Son.

    Looking at today’s gospel reading, Jesus experiences much more success in planting Truth and his Word in the world (of course!) — he converts countless people to himself, and in today’s reading we hear several proclaim that he is “the Christ.” But perhaps the greatest mystery (and point of beauty) in God’s plan is how delicately he enters into humanity, allowing for personal sovereignty of will rather than eradicating all evil and opposition in a forceful application of the divine will. So, the great drama of our God’s self-willed vulnerability unfolds. The conspiracy of those supposed to be his greatest defenders, the upholders of divine law, is shown in its awfulness.

    What is so interesting here is that we do witness a type of scriptural/religious tyranny, but on the side of the Jews. This is a great contrast to our Lord’s refusal to be a divine tyrant. The Jews have painted themselves into a corner: “The Christ will not come from Galilee, will he?” They have fetishized scriptural accounts and their huge corpus of rabbinic teaching to such an extent that rather than being open to the Lord in the world, they have narrowed and perverted their expectations. This is what I mean by a religious tyranny, where it is not God speaking to them, but their manmade understanding of religious teaching that looms over them and determines their reactions to Truth in their midst.

    They are specific: “Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” And it is worth noting that so much of the Jewish tradition at that point was concerned with restrictions — what you cannot touch, cannot eat, cannot say, cannot do. By living only in the restrictions and not in the life-giving love that God calls them to, they lose their autonomy to respond to Truth in their midst. 

    Annas and Caiaphas (Anne et Caïphe), 1886-1894, James Tissot | Creative Commons, courtesy the Brooklyn Museum.

    The result? We are told, “So a division occurred in the crowd because of him.” God is allowing us the space to see for ourselves, to contrast the freedom of belief in the Truth with the constriction of fetishizing the trappings of truth. God is creating for us the opportunity to make a choice of our own free will, to decide to come to him or, alternatively, reject him. 

    When the guards return empty-handed to the chief priests and scribes, they are mocked: “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd, which does not know the law, is accursed.” Note how the leaders of the religious tyranny operate in darkness, in mockery and deceit. They show their narrow-minded clutching at scraps of prophecy by saying the crowd does not know the law. How ironic, since Jesus tells us he is the very fulfillment of the law!

    At stake here is the true meaning of “knowing.” The priests and scribes have filled themselves with book knowledge and the grammar of restrictions, which they wield like weapons of power. But God presents himself to us so that we can know him as a person, and this knowledge is used as a salve for humanity. The “knowing” that God is calling us to is always completely wrapped up in his personhood and the personhood of humans.

    He takes the form of a human in part to show us that when we open ourselves to him, we are also opening ourselves to each other. Godliness is absolute openness to knowing each other fully, not judging, not forcing our will or the other’s, but knowing and accepting. When this “knowing” is joined with loving, then we are on our way to the Kingdom.

    Nicodemus, who came timidly to Jesus at night to get to know him better, is the one Pharisee who is on the Way. He slows the Pharisees’ frenzy by challenging them to adhere to the spirit of the law — to not condemn before hearing someone first. Having started his own journey of knowing, he brings both truth and humanity back to the scene of these circling sharks. They spit a mocking comment at him before we hear the end of the episode: “Then each went to his own house.” How fitting that these men filled with worldly knowledge and power plays disperse, alone. They do not “know” God or humanity, which draws us together, not apart.

    Today, we encounter a contrast of visions. First is the worldly vision of the religious leaders who wield their knowledge as weapons to divide humanity. Second is God’s plan for humanity as revealed through his “trees in their vigor,” marked by gentleness and a personal knowing that heals and unites.

    The worldly vision is all-too-familiar; we see it in force to this day in our governments, businesses, and even families. The second has also been laid out for us to see plainly. We’ve had access to this amazing perspective on God’s personhood and plan for 2,000 years. We have no excuse, we cannot plead ignorance, and we cannot expect that God has more to reveal and more prophets to send.

    The Church has always insisted that we are living in the End Times, the last period before Christ will return for the Final Judgment. This Lent, let’s all realize that the time is now, there is no other. 

    Head of Christ (c.1648), Rembrandt | Wikimedia Commons.

    I want to finish with a reminder of why everyone was a-buzz in today’s gospel reading. In the verses just prior to our reading, we learn that it is “last day of the festival, the great day,” which is known as Hoshana Rabbah. This is the last “day of judgment” in the Jewish calendar when they process around the temple seven times and have a great temple service, imploring the Lord for a bountiful year ahead. On this last day of Hoshana Rabbah, the priest makes a great show of the water libation as an appeal to God to provide water for the people in the year ahead. It is at this time that Jesus cries out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’” (Jn 7:37-38).

    No wonder the crowd is amazed! Jesus, as if in answer to the priest’s prayer, tells the people to come to him for living water. He is establishing that he has God’s power of restoration for the people. The Jews must make a decision: will they accept and follow the Messiah in their midst or reject Him? 

    Will you?

  • Forgiving our Great Affront

    Forgiving our Great Affront

    Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent: Exodus 32:7-14, John 5:31-47.

    Today’s readings pull no punches in shining a light on our inability to recognize God and remain faithful to Him. But they also show us that God’s overwhelming love, mercy, and forgiveness wipe away this great affront. This is our God: deserving of all honor and glory, but as the source of goodness and love, willing to erase the greatest affront and welcome us back to himself.

    The Adoration of the Golden Calf (L’Adoration du veau d’or), 1633-1634, Nicolas Poussin | Wikimedia Commons.

    The famous incident of the golden calf is the subject of the first reading. In the verses just prior to this, the extent of God’s betrayal is shown in the person of his chosen priest, Aaron. Aaron, Moses’s brother, who has been by his side for all of the wonders God worked in Egypt, who held up Moses’s arms during the long battle with Amalek so the Jews could win, is the one who builds the calf. Aaron responds to the wishes of the people who were tired of waiting for Moses (occupied on Mount Sinai with God). He takes all of their gold rings, melts them, and casts a statue of a golden calf. Then, he says, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” and “he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord.’”

    Now, that’s truly messed up if you asked me. I understand the desperation of a people lost and wandering in the desert without a home, but this extreme of abandoning the God who made himself known personally to Aaron, who singlehandedly brought them all out of slavery … it’s almost unfathomable.

    It’s surprising, but on second thought, not terribly different from all of us today who abandon God despite all of the blessings we’ve received. It is interesting that those who receive the most blessings on earth are often the quickest to abandon God when reflecting on the troubles that plague humanity. People in poorer countries (in South America and Africa, for instance) are the ones who comprise the bulk of the Catholic Church nowadays while rates of atheists in first-world countries are higher than ever before.

    Perhaps God makes up for whatever blessings of earthly pleasures are lacking for some people by blessing them with greater faith. Or perhaps striving to live with dignity in the face of great obstacles reminds us of our humility in the face of things greater than us and thereby find room in our hearts to honor God and seek his help. Either way, the poor and less fortunate seem to be more faithful to God.

    We begin to understand Jesus when he says, “many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mt 19:30) — that is, the “first” in this world will be last in the Kingdom because they have abandoned God while the “last” in this world will be first in the Kingdom because they remained faithful.

    There is something of this conundrum in the Jews who are tarrying at the base of Mt. Sinai. Over the course of their miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt, they have benefitted from miracle after miracle: waters parting, manna and quail being given as food, water sprouting from rocks at the strike of Moses’s staff. And oddly we hear at each turn how they are abandoning God for idols or not obeying his commandments. Their ongoing blessings seem to engender a sense of entitlement rather than thankfulness. The more they receive, the less they recognize the giver of the gifts.

    This culminates in them so forgetting who God is that they clamor for Aaron to invent someone for them to worship: “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him” (Ex 32:1b).

    Let’s not tell ourselves that this is the work of particularly evil or callous people. The story of the Jews in the desert is the story of all humanity failing to recognize God in their blessings. It is the story of our lost wanderings, being led back to God and the Promised Land (i.e., the Kingdom of God), but questioning him and his ways at every step. Sadly, it is the story of our contemporary descent into idolatry and atheism even when we have been shown the way.

    What is God’s response to this unfaithfulness? He tells Moses he’s ready to purify these people: “that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them. Then I will make of you a great nation.” Whoa! This is the God of Love. Let’s unpack this so that we don’t think there is some sort of contradiction going on.

    The Church teaches us that God is all good, complete, and unchanging. He is the origin of all creation, not a part of it, as He tells Moses: “I AM who I AM.” As the only complete and unchanging thing in the universe (or outside of the universe), he doesn’t get angry, he’s not surprised, he’s not jealous, etc. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t care, mind you, or doesn’t yearn for us more than we yearn for him. When we encounter moments like today’s in the Scriptures, we have to remember what all of revelation has taught us about God and read the passage as it has been laid down by a mortal.

    One of the better articles I’ve read on this topic was posted on the Catholic Standard by Monsignor Charles Pope in 2019. He writes that God’s “wrath” can be called “wrath” only in how it is experienced by us, not as an emotion raging within him. He writes about the analogy of trying to mix water and fire:

    God’s wrath is our experience of the total incompatibility of our sinful state before the holiness of God. Sin and God’s holiness just don’t mix; they can’t keep company. Think of fire and water; they cannot coexist in the same place. Bring them together and you can hear the conflict. Think of a small amount of water poured into a large fire: the water droplets sizzle and pop; steam rises as the water boils away. … We must be purified before entering His presence, otherwise we could not tolerate His glory. We would wail and grind our teeth, turning away in horror. The wrath is the conflict between our sin and God’s holiness. God cannot and will not change, so we must be changed or else we will experience wrath.

    So we can affirm that God does not lose self-control or experience emotions in the ways that humans do. I tend to agree with our Church Father, Tertullian, though, who writes, “Angry He will possibly be, but not irritated, nor dangerously tempted; He will be moved, but not subverted” (Against Marcion, II.16). Tertullian’s point, in part, is that we can’t really know how or if God experiences “feelings,” since it is beyond our capacity. But, he notes that one thing is for sure: “it is yet palpably absurd of you to be placing human characteristics in God rather than divine ones in man, and clothing God in the likeness of man, instead of man in the image of God” (ibid, II.16).

    As I wrote in Forgiveness is Mercy in Action last week, there is something in the original Greek that points to God’s visceral reaction that we might interpret (by analogy) as “emotional” or “affective.” When he is viscerally moved to compassion, the verb has its root in the word for intestines and internal organs: σπλαγχνισθεὶς (splanchnistheis). This is a nice nuance to add to Msgr. Pope’s analogy of the fire, which is by definition an element that is impassive and will burn anything regardless of its good or evil nature.

    Let me tentatively put this forward: because God is all goodness and purity, the purifying fire of his nature has a valence, meaning that it is weighted with all things good and against all things evil. Thus, when goodness approaches Him, the reaction is unity, which we experience as delight, warmth, and embrace. When evil approaches Him, the reaction is rejection and elimination, which we experience as wrath, anger, and jealousy.

    Transfiguration of Jesus (2004), Armando Alemdar Ara | Wikimedia Commons. I think this beautiful interpretation of the Transfiguration might also be a nice way to visualize the purifying fire of God.

    Let’s return with these thoughts to our story from Exodus. God says, “Let me alone, then, that my wrath may blaze up against them to consume them.” Two things to note: first, he maintains his discourse and relationship with Moses, not to mention the promise to build for him “a great nation.” When he asks Moses to “let him alone,” we might see this as a the way Moses interprets this moment of sensing the momentum of God’s purifying fire and the opening Moses himself has in terms of begging for mercy for his people.

    For those who welcome the idea of a God who tests us, perhaps he is probing to see if Moses is able to fully inhabit the mercy of God and reflect this same mercy in a request to save his people. In any case, we can say that God is exhibiting his own mercy here simply in the act of conversing with Moses, giving him a chance to halt his purifying essence from burning through his people.

    The second thing to note is that God is not consumed by wrath; he is not out of control with human-like emotions. He is measured, speaking frankly and with mercy to Moses. In fact, he presents his wrath as a fundamental part of who he is, a purifying force that simply blazes up in rejection of the sin it encounters. This shows us the mercy and compassion of God while maintaining his essential, indivisible nature, “I AM who I AM.”

    Moses steps into his role of chosen prophet and law-giver admirably, reflecting back to God the mercy that he himself was shown. He pleads for the sinful people to be saved. God, ever merciful, grants his prayer. We hear, “So the LORD relented in the punishment, he had threatened to inflict on his people.” In some ways this wording is unfortunate because the words “punishment” and “threatened” feed a misunderstanding of God as one who is overly emotional and fickle (the theological terms would be passible and changing). This sentence could have also been written “So the LORD granted Moses’s prayer and mercifully spared the sinful people from His purifying essence.” In this way, we should understand his “punishment” as simply the incompatibility of sin and blasphemy with the presence of God. Likewise, “threatened to inflict” is “told Moses would occur if His presence fully encountered and burned/purified the sinful people.”

    Could worshipping a golden calf after God has saved you countless times be the biggest affront possible? It’s close, but I think how we treat Jesus Christ is worse. After all, we take his greatest gift, his only Son, don’t believe him, mock him, torture him, and crucify him. It is the same type of affront — faithlessness — but many degrees more egregious.

    Today’s gospel reading is a continuation of yesterday’s, when Jesus is talking about his consubstantial relationship with the Father, like a flame and the light it gives forth. He is trying to show the ridiculousness of the Jews’ accusations of blasphemy; they are distrustful of the only one telling the truth! But how do you convince distrustful people? You have prophets testify to your coming throughout the scriptures, including a living example in John the Baptist. More, you have the Father’s miracles coursing through you that testify to the Truth you are. What more could they want?

    This is what Jesus tells them. They have the promised gift of life from God and refuse to accept it. He speaks of an interesting mindset, particularly Jewish: “You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf. But you do not want to come to me to have life.” This is not the disbelief of an atheist or pagan. This is the disbelief of a people who have become fossilized in what they consider to be truth, yet is only prophecy, only something that points to the truth yet to come in a very real way: Jesus the Christ.

    They think they have eternal life through the scriptures, that is, by living out written laws and prescriptions, but Jesus tells them this is not eternal life — it is only part of the path of living on the earth right now. Importantly, he points out the big affront: “you do not want to come to me to have life.” This is the stubbornness and pride of the “stiff-necked” people. They must acknowledge that they need something more, that they are still vulnerable and dependent on God, in order to want to come to Christ. They do not do so.

    Head III (1949), Francis Bacon | Wikimedia Commons. Bacon was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his raw, unsettling imagery, and claimed that he strove to render “the brutality of fact.” This is neither his most abstract nor most macabre work, but one that I think speaks to the mind of humans when we think that we “know best.” There is a pride in this man’s demeanor and hints of scholarly knowledge in his eyeglasses. And while we see his features and face, it is as if they emerge with great effort, for he is but a shell of what a full human should be. Importantly, his mind is obliterated – lost to a vacuum of some sort rather than full and defined with actual Truth.

    “Moreover,” Jesus says, “I know that you do not have the love of God in you.” Oh, the shame and trembling if they only knew who was saying this to them! It is interesting to me that Jesus separates this ultimate sin of turning one’s back on God from the earlier point about them not wanting to come to him. Jesus instructs us here that one can be imperfect and prideful yet still perhaps have a kernel of God’s love inside them. Sadly, the Jews who disbelieve and accuse him are both prideful and lack God’s love inside them, meaning that the truth they supposedly found in the scriptures is not something they have incorporated into themselves. They lack God’s love out of their own fault, not because it has been withheld from them. This is a horrible state of affairs, a great affront to our Creator, to whom we owe our lives, our intelligence, our souls, everything. 

    But like the Father, the Son loves and gives mercy. Despite their accusations against him and their disbelief in who he IS, he says, “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father: the one who will accuse you is Moses, in whom you have placed your hope.” Like the Father, he IS, meaning he will radiate and purify with his love through his actions and his very being. His saving mission at this moment in history is to teach, to suffer, to die, to resurrect, and to initiate the Church in Spirit and Truth.

    But we must remember his words from yesterday (part of this same dialogue), when he says, “[the Father] has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” This discussion, in other words, has an eschatological bent. It is concerned with everlasting life or everlasting torment. The Son’s mission isn’t done with the establishment of the Church — it will eventually conclude with his presiding over Judgement Day. He will embody the purifying love of the Father. He returns to that concept when he says “Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father.” It sends a chill up my spine to imagine how these unconverted Jews will wither when they see their great hero, Moses, prostrate before the Son of God and condemning them.

    The take-home message is clear: be grateful to God for your life and every blessing in it. Be faithful to God — especially when thinking and talking about him with others. Your testimony to the Truth of God and Jesus Christ is an essential element of your salvation. And, like Jesus tells us, whether you believe it or not, the Truth has already been testified to.

  • Consubstantial yet a Different Person

    Consubstantial yet a Different Person

    Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent: Isaiah 49:8-15, John 5:17-30.

    I’d like to ponder the moment in today’s gospel reading when Jesus speaks of the mystery of the Trinity, specifically the Father and Son who are separate yet at the same time One God. In the early history of the Church, this was one of the great jumping off points for heretics who wanted to contain and understand this mystery and arrived at incorrect conclusions. It often manifested as a demotion of the Son as less than the Father (e.g., Arianism  or Adoptionism) or an elevation of the Son as being a divine spirit and not a man at all (e.g., Monophysitism or Docetism). There’s also the problem of people claiming we worship three gods, not one God!

    There are many errant beliefs that rage unnoticed and unexamined today, in fact, among otherwise pious Catholics and Christians of other denominations. A true understanding is important — to the best of our abilities, since this is, after all, the greatest mystery of our faith.

    We have to start with the version of the Nicene Creed we say at Mass. It lays out for us the essential relationship between the Father and Son. As the USCCB website states:

    The bishops at the Council of Nicea (AD 325), in order to ensure that Jesus was professed as the eternal Son of God, equal to the Father, stated that he is “the Son of God, begotten from the Father, the only-begotten, that is from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, the same substance (homoousion) with the Father…” The Creed of the Council of Constantinople (381), which is professed at all Sunday Masses and Solemnities within the Catholic Church, similarly stated: “We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of the same substance (homoousion) with the Father.”

    We now say “consubstantial,” not “of the same substance.” I think this concept of consubstantiality is very important for us to keep in mind. The divine person of the Father is the Creator, the great mover who initiates all things. His Son is, as St. Paul writes, “the firstborn of all Creation” (c.f. Colossians 1), yet is not of a different substance than the Father. At this point, we have to dispense of biology class. This is not a mammalian relationship, but a divine one. We have no idea how this divine substance exists, leads to creation, has intelligence, etc. It is only through God revealing himself to us through prophets and his Son, and secondarily through all of his Creation, which has the fingerprint of the Father throughout, that we start to learn about him. 

    So, when we hear Jesus say, “the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also,” we must be careful not to imagine that the Father operates independently of the Son and in a greater way. Jesus uses these terms to help us start to grasp the ultimate glory and priority of the Father — it is the Way of humility and fear of God that he gives to us as a gift to help us towards salvation.

    I don’t think that we should just shrug and accept it as a mystery, although that is certainly an option. But for those who want to delve deeper into this mystery, there are great saints smarter and more graced than the rest of us who have shared their meditations. There are so many great sources: Chrysostom, Augustine, Aquinas, and many more. For the sake of brevity given an impossibly deep subject, one small image from St. Augustine jumps out at me.

    Reflecting on the line the Son cannot do anything on his own, St. Augustine presents us with a way to think of the unity of the Father and Son without thinking of the Son as less than the Father (instead, maintaining that they are equal). He compares them to a flame: “The generating flame is coeval with the light which it generates: the generating flame does not precede in time the generated light; but from the moment the flame begins, from that moment the light begins. Show me flame without light, and I show you God the Father without Son” (Tractates on the Gospel of John 20.8).

    What a great thought! He bumps up the analogy later: “If, indeed, you can separate the brightness from the sun, then separate the Word from the Father” (20.13). And he notes that he’s not just talking about the sun, but the divine essence. “See God, see His Word inhering to the Word speaking, that the speaker speaks not by syllables, but this his speaking is a shining out in the brightness of wisdom. What is said of the Wisdom itself? It is the radiance of eternal light. (Wisdom 7:26).

    St. Augustine (1645-1650), Philippe de Champaigne | Wikimedia Commons.

    It is only through God’s grace that he reveals himself to us. The prophets, the Apostles, and the saints are outstanding examples of those who have been graced with understanding. It is from them that we must continually refresh our understanding. On that note, I can think of nothing better to end with than St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians. There is a reason it is used so much in the Divine Office: it is an intense meditation on the relationship between the Father and the Son.

    He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Col 1:15-20).

     

  • From Temple to Living Water

    From Temple to Living Water

    Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Lent: Ezekiel 47:1-9, 12, John 5:1-16.

    [COVID-19-era] It’s been over a year since we could attend Mass in our churches in a normal fashion. The exact experience differs from town to town, church to church. For some people, this has been quite upsetting while for others it’s a convenient excuse to stop going to something that interrupted their leisurely Sundays. Being Lent, it’s a good chance to reflect on our church experiences — what they mean to us, what they should mean to us.

    Going to Church (1902), Pekka Halonen | Wikimedia Commons.

    I grew up going to church every Sunday (bless my parents for that). “Blowing off” Mass was not an option. Thus, I came into adulthood with a strong sense of obligation when it comes to regular Mass attendance. But when you’re a young adult you have this existential moment when you realize that you don’t have to do things just because you always have or you feel obligated to. You can skip Mass and no one is around to make you feel guilty. This is an important moment — some experience it while still in their teens, others not until their 30s or later. This is important because we need to grow out of the habit of going to the church building to “endure” the Mass for an hour and grow into something deeper. We must find that it is something we do because we felt compelled to, from deep inside of ourselves as we respond to God’s call. Not because someone else is telling us we have to go. God wants us to respond personally to His invitation.

    On the other side of this moment, when I feel so blessed to be part of the mystical Church, I look back on the great bugbear of Catholic obligation as an absurdity. I see how it served its purpose, especially for children who must be taught where the spiritual well resides so that they can access it throughout their lives, but if we allow our lifelong relationship to God to exist in the shadow of obligation, we risk never finding the Church despite all our church-going.

    Don’t get me wrong — I think obligation has a very good place within the pantheon of attitudes that make up “fear of God” — but this is a reflection of our humble state in front of our Creator, not a motivation for religious practices like going to Mass or confession.

    What does that church building mean to you? That question is at the forefront of our readings today. Ezekiel is shown how the temple is transformed in the New Jerusalem, and in the gospel reading, Jesus enters a ritualized, symbolized, and mythologized part of the great Temple in Jerusalem to establish a new call to humanity on the Sabbath, effectively reforming the temple from within. At the end of this reflection, we must ask ourselves if we have heard the scriptures and the Voice of God — do we conceive of our churches and our Church in the way he intends?

    Ezekiel prophesies during the Babylonian Captivity, around the years 596-574 BC. Jerusalem and its great holy temple have been destroyed, which is a catastrophic symbolic and religious loss for the Jews. They collectively mourn, and Ezekiel can only dream of the great temple being rebuilt. Twenty-five years into their exile, God grants Ezekiel an extraordinary vision of the restored temple. The record of this vision covers 7 extensive chapters at the end of the Book of Ezekiel and details the dimensions and activities of the temple. Clearly, the Jewish traditions and laws surrounding religious worship still matter a great deal, but something else is going on, too. And it coalesces at the East Gate.

    Ezekiel relates that at the East Gate, “the glory of the God of Israel was coming from the east; the sound was like the sound of mighty waters; and the earth shone with his glory.” Ezekiel falls on his face, and “As the glory of the Lord entered the temple by the gate facing east, the spirit lifted me up, and brought me into the inner court; and the glory of the Lord filled the temple” (Ez 43:2, 4-5). The East Gate, therefore is identified as the place where the Lord enters, and Ezekiel is commanded to keep it closed and locked except on the Sabbath, when the people come to encounter the Lord. The temple is made holy not by its height and girth and golden ornamentation, but by this connection to the presence of the Lord.

    One of our Church Fathers, Origen, helps us understand Ezekiel’s vision of the east through the lens of Christ: “Atonement comes to you from the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you” (Hom. 9, 5. 10: PG 12, 515. 523.). 

    The description of the restored temple finishes with today’s reading. In an extraordinary scene, Ezekiel sees beyond the temple walls. Flowing eastward from the temple is a stream of water that becomes deeper and deeper until it is a mighty river, too deep to cross. The river gives life to all around it: “Wherever the river flows, every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live.”

    The vision is clear: the Lord, coming from the east, meets humanity in the temple at the altar, and from the temple flows forth a river of life — in the world and making its way back toward God in the east. This river of life happens as a consequence of the encounter within the temple, and is clearly an ecstatic vision of a transformed world. Nothing could be a more concise picture of the reality ushered in by Christ than this.

    River in Saint-Clair (1908), Henri-Edmond Cross | Creative Commons, courtesy Wikiart.org.

    The Jews recognized the incredible importance of the temple as the holy meeting place between them and God, but it seems as though the end of Ezekiel’s vision was not as firmly implanted. Jesus criticizes the Pharisees and scribes for only upholding the strictures of the laws and rituals but missing the point of how the temple encounter should transform how they relate with their fellow human beings outside of the temple. This aborted, truncated life in the Lord precipitates the need for the Son of God to be born into humanity, perfect the Lord’s teachings, and usher in a new way to encounter divinity that allows for the River of Life to eclipse the temple in importance.

    At many points in Christ’s ministry, he tells us how he is establishing a new priesthood (with Peter and his apostles), a new sacrifice to replace all other ritual sacrifices (the Eucharist as initiated at the Last Supper), and a new direct communion with God and God’s love through himself. In fact, we hear echoes Ezekiel’s description of the temple gates when Jesus calls himself the gate for the sheep (cf. Jn 10:1-10). Most strikingly, he not only identifies himself with the temple, but being greater than the temple: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. … For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Mt 12:6, 8).

    This brings us to the gospel reading, which happens at the Temple, on the Sabbath, at the Sheep Gate. This likely references the sheep market where people could buy sheep for sacrifice at the temple. There are also pools there, used to ritually wash the animals before they were used in the temple. “In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years.”

    A few things are being conveyed to us. First, Jesus is drawn to the place where the outcasts go in a bid to purify themselves like the sacrificial animals. (Jesus more than once calls humanity his sheep as he describes himself as the Good Shepherd — here that image is seen to be much more accurate in actual practice than we may have realized.) We see a desperation in these poor beings as they wait for a “stirring” of the waters by an angel whereby, according to common legend, the first one in the water is cleaned by divine action. We might be reminded of the story of the Canaanite woman begging for Christ’s mercy and healing: “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table” (Mt 15:27). 

    To sum up the deeply symbolic scene: at a place where animals are purified before being sacrificed to God, we encounter poor, wretched humans hoping for scraps of cleanliness to drop their way, by a singular, angelic stirring of the waters. They essentially have no dignity, no place in Jewish society. Contrast this with the great, flowing River of Life that Ezekiel sees pouring out from the temple, granting bounty to everything it touches. Clearly, the beatific vision is not being realized.

    But then comes Christ.

    Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda (c.1615-1620), Pedro Orrente | Wikimedia Commons.

    Note the formula of God’s call and our response; this is his way. Jesus asks if the man wants to be well (pure, whole; the Greek word is hygiēs). The man laments that he cannot do it on his own, he needs help. Jesus’s response is beyond the man’s expectations or even understanding of what is possible, as is always the way with God’s overflowing love. Jesus says, “Rise, take up your mat, and walk.”

    Like all of us, the man was so caught up in his thoughts of what he needed at the moment (which he had been doing for 38 years!), that he couldn’t imagine anything else to ask for. How many times have we been overwhelmed by our current concerns and worries that we only bring these trivialities to God to “solve” rather than asking to be made whole?

    Let’s expand our focus and notice several other things happening here.

    First, Jesus establishes a new, direct connection to healing in himself, something only available before through the extensive rituals of the temple. This is the miraculous change brought about by the Incarnation of divinity in human flesh. This is underscored by his instruction to “take up your mat,” which provides a temporary dwelling place for the man in the temple. That dwelling is no longer needed.

    Second, he provides the divine energy personally to the man so that he can rise by himself and walk on his own. The river of life enables us to “bear fresh fruit” of our own. The man is enabled to be fully human, blossoming in the love of God.

    Third, Jesus performs an act of healing on the Sabbath. The Jews, particularly the Pharisees and scribes, will use this act of “work” on the Sabbath to persecute and eventually arrest Jesus. It is a major theme of the gospels, and juxtaposes their hangups with particularities of the law while disregarding the presence of God among them.

    But perhaps throughout the gospels, Jesus is intentionally healing on the Sabbath. Let’s return to the quote from Matthew: “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. … For the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath” (Mt 12:6, 8). Christ is establishing in himself, here at the temple in today’s reading, what he says in that passage from Matthew. Here, in the temple, he does the “work” of replacing the temple through his own saving person and mission. As the Lord of the Sabbath, united with God to whom the sacrifice is being offered, he releases humanity from our ritual debt of sin offerings and atonement.

    Origen emphasizes this wonderfully in terms of the liturgy:

    “God taught the people of the old covenant how to celebrate the ritual offered to him in atonement for the sins of men. But you have come to Christ, the true high priest. Through his blood he has made God turn to you in mercy and has reconciled you with the Father. You must not think simply of ordinary blood but you must learn to recognize instead the blood of the Word. Listen to him as he tells you: This is my blood, which will be shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.”

    This brings us back to the questions that opened this reflection: what do our churches mean to us? Our churches are the center of our liturgical lives because that is where Christ instituted the sacramental remembrance of his own great sacrifice. No longer are animals needed for atonement as we encounter God because Jesus makes that sacrifice unnecessary.

    But so much more! He gives himself continually, over and over, not just to the Father but to us, through his Word and his Body and Blood. He is the River of Life flowing from the altar, nourishing us and making the world whole and bountiful. He flows to the east, back to the Father, and has inaugurated the Church, his mystical Body, as his Bride in this journey to the Father.

    Thus, our participation in the Church (both in the church building and in every other aspect of our lives) becomes much more than just “going to church”. It is the deepest spiritual encounter with God that certainly does not end when the priest announces “the Mass is over, go in peace.” The life of the Church is the liturgy. Liturgy is not confined to the hour or so of the Mass; instead the Mass is one of the greatest ways we celebrate the liturgy.

    Detail from The Crucifixion (late 1400s), Andreas Pavias | Wikimedia Commons. St. John’s description of water and blood coming from the side of Christ when the centurion pierces his side with a spear is a good point of reflection. As we consider the River of Life in which we are baptized as Christians, this life-giving water finds its source alongside the Blood of our crucified Savior.

    If what we miss about church in the time of pandemic is hanging out with other parishioners for doughnuts and coffee, perhaps we need to reconsider what our Church means. If what we miss most is the great music at Mass, perhaps we need to recall exactly what type of heavenly encounter is going on there and re-prioritize ourselves. We are united with saints and angels, the dead and the alive, in a way that is much more deep than discussion groups, charity drives, and parish dinners. These things are great, absolutely! But the Church is fundamentally something altogether different.

    A Lenten prayer for today: may we all desire to encounter the River of Life throughout our day and cherish our moments within the Mass when we encounter the Word and Eucharist in a singularly spectacular way.