Fr. JC Maximilian

In this new age that we are living in, the age of the Internet, we all have friends whom we have never met in person.  Over 15 years ago I “met” a group of Catholic friends in an AOL chat room discussing Pope John Paul II’s “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”.  I have kept in touch with these “Threshold” friends even though most of us are no longer on AOL.  We pray for and with each other.  I have gotten to meet 4 of them in person, but many others I have not.

Michael Dubruiel is another of my Internet friends, whom I have never met in person.  Michael stumbled across this blog about 18 months ago, and posted a comment.  I don’t even remember which posting he was commenting on.  We then exchanged some emails, and he sent me some of his books.  Our friendship was beginning.  Michael was a Catholic author and catechist; married to Amy Welborn, a much more famous Catholic Blogger than I.  He and Amy had a book on the Rosary, which for my private use I recorded my first “podcast” of me reciting the Rosary using the meditations from their book.  I sent Michael a copy of my recording (just 2 sets of mysteries, I have not finished the rest), so that like me, he could listen and pray with them while at the gym.

Last year at this time I drew a bit closer to Michael.  Months earlier he had sent me a copy of his book, The Power of the Cross, and I had decided to read it for my Lenten meditation.  Just before Lent began I received word from my sister that my then 16-year old niece had been taken by three men and sexually assaulted.  I was in shock and filled with anger.  I picked up Michael’s book, and in its pages I found a better way of dealing with my anger and hurt.  The way of uniting it to the Cross of Christ Jesus.  Of course the only way you are going to do that is if you have confidence in the power of Christ’s Cross to conquer evil.  I share my appreciation of his book with Michael and in a series of emails he told me that he began re-reading his own book because he was struggling with some emotions over a serious illness his father was facing.

I had not chatted with Michael, well emailed him, in several months.  The other day I was making my rounds of some of my favorite Catholic sites and blogs and came across some shocking and very sad news.  Michael had died suddenly.  Apparently he was at the gym when he collapsed and died.  He was only 51.  Of course Amy, his wife, and their children are grieving … pray for them.  Especially in this difficult economic times there is anxiety about their future.  If you can, support them by buying one (or more) of Michael’s books.  If you are looking for something to read this Lent, I cannot recommend highly enough his book The Power of the Cross (it is even organized for the weeks of Lent).  If you want to learn more about the Mass, his How to Book of the Mass is great.  You can get them from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, or your favorite religious books shop.

And remember my friend … whom I never met face to face, but I will remember in my heart.

I ran across an article about this YouTube post by a 12-year old girl; no name is given. Apparently it was a speech she gave in class. She does a wonderful job of addressing the evil of abortion. Sadly, her family had to turn off the “comments” feature of YouTube because of some of the vile, hateful comments directed at this child. They were not opposed to a civil debate on the issue (in fact they kept some of the comments, both pro and con, on the site), but civility was lost in too many of the comments.

[Photograph uploaded to Flickr on May 18, 2007 by Jeanette's Ozpix]

“Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam!” St. Ignatius Loyola gave this phrase to his Jesuits as their unofficial motto.  It translate as “for the greater glory of God.”  In today’s second reading St. Paul says basically the same thing when he says, “do everything for the glory of God.”  One of our most common prayers, is “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.  Amen.”  Giving glory to God, is front and center at every Mass, right after we ask God’s pardon for our sins, when we sing: “Glory to God in the highest.”  These prayers are so basic to our Catholic faith that they must have an important and deep meaning for us.  Yet in the busyness of our lives these prayers can become routine and we might forget their important meaning.  It is good to take time to polish up on the meaning of God’s glory in our lives of faith.

What is the Glory of God?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “Scripture and Tradition never cease to teach and celebrate this fundamental truth: ‘The world was made for the glory of God’” (#293).  In other words, the glory of God is the motivation behind both God’s creation and redemption of the universe.  Since this is God’s motivation for His work of creation and redemption, when we make the Glory of God the reason behind our decisions and actions, we are uniting our deepest desires to his deepest desires, which is the secret to wisdom and happiness.

Yet we can say even something more about the glory of God.  It is not just the reason behind His creation and redemption; “the glory of God consists in the… manifestation and communication of his goodness” (CCC #294).  In other words, to glorify God, to give glory to God, means to experience his goodness or to help someone else experience it.

Let’s consider a simple example.  Imagine that your mother makes the best cherry pie in history.  When you taste that cherry pie and experience its goodness, you are glorifying, in a sense, your mother.  And when you invite your friends to experience the goodness of that cherry pie, you are giving glory to your mother even more.  She is the source of all that goodness.  But until we taste how good it is, we don’t know that.  To “give her glory” is to partake of that goodness and to make it known.

God’s goodness, of course, is much greater than that because it is infinite and the ultimate source of every other non-infinite goodness – even Mom’s pie.  God wanted to share that goodness with us, which is why he created us – for his glory, to allow us to experience his goodness.  So, when we say, “Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” we are saying, “may God’s goodness be known and experienced by us and by everyone more and more forever and ever, amen!”  That is why the “Glory be” is such a beautiful and powerful prayer – it points us directly towards the incredible adventure of everlasting life.

Today we are all witnesses as these four children begin this incredible adventure of everlasting life.  Their parents have brought them to be baptized, which is the beginning of the adventure.  So how do they, and we, make this prayer come true?  How do we experience God’s goodness?

Experiencing Mom’s pie is easy, all we need to do is take a bite.  How do we take a bite of God’s goodness?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church helps us here too.  It says, “the glory of God is man fully alive.”  By living our human life to the full we experience God’s goodness, and give Him glory.  Sin and selfishness, in every form, are evil precisely because they hold us back from experiencing life to the full, life as God meant it to be experienced.  This is why Jesus says, “I came that they may have life, and have it more abundantly!” (John 10:10).

This is why it is such an amazing gift to be a Catholic Christian.  Through the Church, Christ teaches and guides us surely away from all sin and evil.  Through the sacraments, he gives us the grace we need to grow in virtue and wisdom, so that we can become more fully alive every day.  This is why faithful Catholic couples and families are not just stronger, but healthier and happier too.

By discovering and developing our talents and those of our neighbors, we are glorifying God, because he is the origin of those talents, and of our ability to develop and discover them.  Following Christ doesn’t stifle our human nature, it maximizes it!  The only danger is to forget that God is the origin and goal of all these wonderful things.  When we do that, we turn one of them into an idol, and it becomes poison for our souls and for the world around us.

So, how do we glorify God?  By living our lives to the full, exactly as he meant them to be lived.

Up to this point, Msgr. Giussani has been discussing how faith is a method of reason, and not something opposed to reason.  The presentation has used a lot of examples that we might find in our every day life, of how we come to know about most of the things in our life through the method of faith, because we come to know them through the testimony of witnesses.  From history and culture to more personal information like on how a schoolmate is doing, we often learn about them indirectly, from someone telling us about them.  Of course we want to have faith that is reasonable (since it is a method of reason), and not unreasonably, so last time I posted I tried to explain the two criteria for evaluating the lynchpin of the method of faith, namely the witness.  First we need to make a judgment as to whether or not the witness knows about the subject that they are talking about.  Second we need to judge whether or not the person is trying to deceive us.  If a person does know what they are talking about and we have no reason to think that they are trying to deceive us, then not only is it reasonable to believe (put faith in) them as a witness, but it would be UNREASONABLE not to believe them.

In this section, Msgr. Giussani starts to turn the discussion more directly to Christian Faith.  “Christ is the total object of our faith” (IPLW-Faith, p. 25).  What other reason would we have for walking the Christian path if it were not for Christ?  In one of my “stock” funeral homilies, I build on this idea.  I start by saying that many of our fore fathers believed in liberty and freedom and democracy, but how many of them would have put up their property and lives just for the concepts, the ideals of liberty and democracy?  Rather, it was because of their confidence in George Washington (and others) that they were willing to pursue the ideals, even at the risk of life and limb.  People really are not willing to die for doctrines, dogmas and ideals.  However, they are willing to make these great sacrifices for another person.

It was not because of some religious philosophy or set of doctrines that caused Peter, James, John, Andrew and all the others to give up their homes and livelihoods to follow Jesus.  Rather it was because of their personal relationship with Jesus, it was for HIM, that they were willing to leave everything, because, to quote St. Peter, “Lord, where else could we go?  You have the words of eternal life.”  Peter, James, John, Andrew and the rest came to know Jesus through their own direct, personal experience.  How do we come know Christ?

What is the first characteristic of Christian Faith?  We can start by looking at the reading we had just a few weeks ago from St. John’s Gospel, when Andrew and John heard John the Baptist say about Jesus, “Behold the Lamb of God.”  Andrew and John most likely did not know what he meant by that, but they decided to follow Jesus.  Jesus noticed them following Him and asked them, “What are you looking for?” and they asked Him, “Master, where do you live?”  Jesus replied, “Come and see.”  They then spent a few hours with Jesus, and while not understanding everything He said, they knew that they needed to follow Him, and they immediately invited others to follow Him as well.

The first characteristic of faith in Jesus is a fact.  This is really the first characteristic of any kind of knowledge.  A fact is “the impact of consciousness with a reality If it’s not reality then its a dream, it isn’t knowledge” (IPLW-Faith, p. 28).  Now there are many different kinds of facts.  Tonight I had baked potato soup for dinner.  It is 28 degrees outside.  Faith in Jesus is a particular kind of fact.  It is a fact that had the appearance of an encounter.  An encounter is when I experience the reality, the presence of another person.

The second characteristic of faith in Jesus, is that this encounter is not with just some ordinary presence.  No, it is an exceptional encounter.  What makes something exceptional?  “Something is exceptional when it corresponds to the deepest needs for which we live and move” (IPLW-Faith, p. 31).  An exceptional encounter is when we find a person who corresponds with what we truly desire; those infinite needs we have for justice, truth, happiness and love.  The exceptional means the divine, because only the divine is infinite.

The third characteristic of faith in Jesus is that this exceptional encounter produces in us Wonder.  Wonder is always a question, even if it is a secret one.  It is a question that touches the ultimate fiber of our being.

This question is the fourth characteristic of faith in Jesus, because it takes the form of “Who is this man?”  This is the central problem of Christian faith.  The answer to this question is the answer of faith.  Many of the Pharisees witnessed many of the great works of Jesus, including the miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead.  In the gospels we hear many people asking this question in one form or another, “Who is this man?”  Some respond like St. Peter and say, “Yes, You are the Christ!  You have the words of eternal life.”  Others say no to Jesus, they walk away from Him; maybe just sad, like the Rich Young Man, but others with a hatred that leads them to plot against Him.

When I was just a priest for a few months, and the doctor told me that I had cancer, why did I not curse God, or say that He did not exist?  Why did I say (and I explicitly remember saying this to myself, in my anxiety), “All for Jesus”?  I said it because I had had an encounter with Jesus Christ in my life.  I knew him not merely as a person of history, but a person and friend present in my life.  I did not know how things would turn out, but I knew that He was my Lord and Savior.  Sure, there were times during my treatment and recovery when my faith may have faltered, but it never failed.  And after my illness, and after my father’s death when I was experiencing a great deal of spiritual aridness, instead of giving up with God and looking for happiness in other people and things, I knew that I had to re-encounter Christ Jesus in my life, right here and right now.  It was then that I first heard of Communion and Liberation.  I did not know what it was all about, but in the life witness of Luca and Daniel (the first two people in the Movement I met), I recognized Jesus there and I knew that I had to follow Him.

This leads to the fifth and final characteristic of faith in Jesus:  the Response.  In this exceptional encounter I experience my ultimate freedom, freedom to become the person I was made to be.  This is what makes it a truly human action.  To be reasonable I must say “yes” to the exceptional encounter that inspires wonder and asks the question “who is this man?”  If I do not say “yes” I am basically saying that I cannot except what I see with my own eyes, what I hear with my own ears.  Those that walked away from Jesus, those that plotted against Him, heard His words and saw His miracles, yet they rejected what they saw and heard.  Why?  Because of their own preconceptions of what the Messiah was suppose to be like.

I spoke this morning in my homily about preconceptions; the gospel was about Jesus not being accepted in Nazareth.  We too can have preconceptions about Jesus.  Maybe we have the bad kind of fear of the Lord, expecting that He is a harsh judge just looking to punish us, and that is why we cannot forgive ourselves for the mistakes we have made, and we become depressed or embittered.  Or we face illness as a punishment from God, and add to our agony by asking, “Why?  What did I do wrong?”  Maybe Jesus is just a nice philosopher who taught good things, and we just allot Him an hour on Sunday, out of respect or simply duty.  Maybe God is just that “last chance” magic worker that if we say the right kind and number of prayers will give us what we want.  When we persist in these preconceptions, then we will say “no” to Jesus when He invites us to “Come and see” where He lives.