Fr. JC Maximilian

[”The Baptism of Christ” by Fra Angelico]

Most of us probably do not remember our own baptism, since we were most likely infants, but hopefully most of us have been to other baptisms. The baptism that we hear about in today’s Gospel reading was not like your usual Baptism. There were no crying infants, no nervous parents and godparents, no family members all vying for the best picture. No white, lace gown that belonged so someone’s great-grandfather. Instead of a font, the place of Baptism was a mud-choked river.

Of course the Baptism in today’s Gospel reading did have some extraordinary events. Like what was the deal with that dove, and what about that voice from the clouds? Because of these extraordinary events at Jesus’ Baptism, we might be tempted to look at our own Baptism as nothing remarkable; nothing out of the ordinary.

However, nothing could be farther from the truth. The same Holy Spirit that appeared at Jesus’ baptism came down upon us at ours. God said to each of us what He said then: “You are my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” We are not by our nature God’s children. Oh, we are made in His image and likeness, but due to Original Sin we lost the privilege of being God’s children. Rather it is through the grace of the Sacrament of Baptism that we are incorporated into God’s family, we become His children, and the sisters and brothers of Jesus. In fact, through the grace of Baptism, we are incorporated into the Divine Life by our being anointed by the self-same Spirit who anointed Jesus at Galilee. God the Father gives us through our adoption at holy baptism the same gifts as Jesus received. Two of the greatest of these gifts we received through our baptism is that God holds us with loving hands, and we receive the power of the Holy Spirit.

Being held in the loving hands of God does not mean that we will always see prosperity, health, and safety in times of danger. This is the false image of God’s loving hands often sold to us by the television evangelists, “Convert to the Lord and you will be cured of cancer, and double your income!” We need to keep in mind that when we are baptized into the life of Jesus, we are also baptized into His death and resurrection.

The Prophet Isaiah knew what it means to be God’s favored one, as he writes in our first reading: “I have grasped you by the hand; I formed you and set you as a covenant of the people, a light to the nations.” To be held in the loving hands of God means to be given to the world. At our baptism the priest or deacon lit a small candle from the Paschal Candle and said as he gave it to our parent or godparent, “Receive the Light of Christ.” The parents and godparents are told that this light is entrusted to them to be kept burning brightly, so that the child who has been enlightened by Christ will continue to walk as a child of the light, the flame of faith burning brightly in their heart. Of course this light is not to be put under a bushel basket, rather it is to shine out brightly through us into the shadows of the WHOLE wounded world. There will be times when we will be like Jesus on the cross, feeling completely abandoned and forsaken. Our Calvary might be on the factory floor, around the water cooler in the office, on the hospital ward, but where ever our Calvary is by our baptism we are called to be the instrument through which people feel held by the loving hands of God. In order to be this, we must experience it. We must allow God to hold us in His loving hands.

The second gift that God gives us at our baptism is that the power of the Holy Spirit is poured upon us. Again listening to the words of Isaiah in today’s first reading, we see that this power is not meant to dominate or hurt. Rather the power of the Holy Spirit is to heal and set free. It is to bring forth justice, open the eyes of the blind so that they can see the Truth of Jesus Christ.

We need to ask ourselves how can each of us become more responsive to the graces we received at our baptism? Baptism is not something automatic, done once long ago like a vaccination. Baptism is suppose to be still happening, each time we are called to offer ourselves up for the lifting up of God’s people. Our hearts should mirror the forgiveness that we received at our baptism by being a source of God’s mercy to all those around us.

One of the more important Catholic, American writers of the 20th century was the southern lady, Flannery O’Connor. In one of her short stories, entitled “The River,” Bevel is the five-year-old son of uncaring, alcoholic parents. His babysitter takes Bevel to the river to be baptized by a traveling preacher. In this scene, O’Connor catches the human and redemptive promise given in baptism:

“Have you ever been baptized?” the preacher asked.
“What’s that?” [Bevel] murmured.
“If I baptize you,” the preacher said, “you’ll be able to go to the kingdom of Christ. You’ll be washed in the river of suffering, son, and you’ll go by the deep river of life. Do you want that?”
“Yes,” the child said, and thought, I won’t go back to the apartment then, I’ll go under the river. “You won’t be the same again,” the preacher said. “You’ll count.” He held him under while he said the words of baptism and then he jerked him up again and looked sternly at the gasping child.
Bevel’s eyes were dark and dilated. “You count now,” the preacher said. “You didn’t even count before!”

At each of our baptisms the preacher’s words were said to us, “You count now.” This “counting” is both a gift and a responsibility. The challenge of being people who “count” is to make our baptism a reality every day of our lives. God the Father said of Jesus on the day of His Baptism, what He says to us on the day of our Baptism, “This is my beloved, my chosen one with whom I am pleased.” We need to make sure we please God every day, by loving Him with our whole mind, our whole heart, and all our strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. After all, “we count now.”

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[”The Holy Family” by Michangelo]

The Christmas season is a time for families.  Children come home from college or from their own homes to celebrate with mom and dad.  We visit grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who we do not see for most of the year.  We share stories, traditions, and dreams.  Sometimes we fight with our family; hopefully we spend more time laughing and rekindling the love that binds families.  There is an old saying that goes something like this; “everyone’s greatest blessing is also their greatest curse.”  At least sometimes, most of us probably feel that way about our own families.  Somehow our greatest joys and our greatest sufferings are often both linked up with family relationships.

Did you ever wonder why God invented family life?  After all, God could have made us like ferns.  Ferns are pretty much self-sufficient and self-propagating.  Just give them some soil, sunshine and just the right amount of water and ferns are just fine all by themselves, making new ferns.  God could have made us like ferns, but He didn’t.  Why?

God created us in His own image and likeness.  God is a communion of three persons — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — each person is distinct but they share the one Divine nature.  God is a Trinity.  In making us in His own image and likeness, God created us so that we can only find our fulfillment in community, in the intricate network of relationships that make us dependent on others, and others dependent on us.  To be created in the image of God is to be created for family life.

However, since we are human-beings, our family life does not come ready-made.  We cannot buy the perfect, pre-fabricated family somewhere.  Rather family life is a calling from God, and it can seem like a task.  God has created us kind of like a coloring book; the outline of how we are meant to be is provided, as are the crayons, but it is up to us to color it in, and to do our best to stay within the lines.

So how do we fulfill this central mission of our lives, the imaging of God through living a truly Christian life?  We need to use three canyons that God makes available to us.

The first thing that we need to do to live a healthy Christian family life is to respect family roles.  There is a natural structure of the family, just like there is a natural structure of a tree.  The natural structure of a tree includes roots, trunk and leaves, whereas the natural structure of a family includes a dad, a mom, and children.  They all go together and need each other in order to bear the fruit of maturity, wisdom and happiness.

In today’s first reading from the Book of Sirach we see a beautiful picture of family roles painted.  Mom and Dad are in charge.  Together they exercise authority over their children.  This authority comes from God, and it comes with a lot of responsibility.  Parents must not abuse their  authority over their children, and they must not neglect the love, education in the faith, and training in virtue that they owe their children.  God is counting on parents to carry out this important, primary mission in life.

In today’s second reading, St. Paul offers a formula for couples to successfully carry out this mission:  spouses must keep their love strong by serving each other.  The new life of their children flow from the joyful and mutual self-giving in love of their parents.  A home filled with the joyful, self-forgetful love of the parents provides an atmosphere that will allow children to mature into healthy young adults.

Sirach points out that children also have a key role.  They are to honor and obey their parents while they are growing up, and respect and care for them when they get old.

These are the healthy roles of family life.  Parents should not behave like children, and children should not act like parents.  It is like a triangle; dad is one side, mom is one side, and the children are the third side.  If selfishness breaks one of those sides, the whole triangle fails.

Maintaining healthy roles of family life is not easy in this fallen world, and that where the second crayon comes in.  Again we can look to St. Paul in today’s second reading for a foolproof way of rebuilding the triangle whenever it gets broken or bent out of shape.  It can be summed up in two simple words:  “I’m sorry.”  Simple words, yes, but not always all that simple to say due to sinful pride, but if we know how to say “I’m sorry,” our family relationships can endure and grow even through very difficult circumstances.

St. Paul writes, “Put on … patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.”  The only way to create an atmosphere of forgiveness is to be ready to ask for forgiveness.  One of the best gifts that we can give our families is to make a commitment to always be the first to say “I’m sorry” whenever there is the slightest need.  Without Christ’s example and help we could never live like that, but we do have Christ (don’t we?), so we can live like that.  “I’m sorry” is the super-glue for family relationships.  Like a broken bone that has been healed, a family can become stronger than ever when nourished with the calcium of forgiveness.

Despite our best efforts to build a healthy, happy Christian family we will face obstacles.  The fact remains that we live in a fall world.  We cannot escape from it.  That is where the third crayon comes in.  To build a healthy Christian family we have to expect trouble.

This past Christmas I spent with my Mother, and we watched a movie that she has been talking about called The Ultimate Gift.  I really recommend it, its great for the whole family.  Basically the main character has 12 tasks, which his grandfather calls “gifts,” to complete to get his inheritance from his grandfather.  One of the “gifts” is the gift of troubles.

We need to keep in mind that we are pilgrims on earth; in fact we are soldiers in a real spiritual battle.  We are human beings with free will and deep-seated tendencies towards selfishness and sin.  And to make matters more difficult, we are surround by people with those same tendencies.

Today’s Gospel describes a family on the run, suffering, and struggling just to survive.  St. Joseph is told in a dream that King Herod is looking to kill the baby Jesus, and he needs to take Mary and Jesus to a foreign country to be safe.  St. Joseph knew that life would be even more difficult in Egypt because they would be outsiders, but he trusted in God.  He knew that sometimes God permits hardships because God knows that hardship can bring us closer to Him.  St. Matthew’s Gospel makes it clear that the flight to Egypt fulfilled a prophecy, so furthered God’s plan of salvation.  Just so, when we face the hardships of family life with courage, we grow in virtue and glorify God better because we have a chance to love more heroically.

Family life truly is the school where we learn to color in the outline of the image of God in which we were created.  That is why there are so many forces in modern culture that are trying so hard to extinguish family life.  These forces are anti-Christian and anti-God.  They resent the fact that God is God and they are not, and so they delight in disfiguring the image of God, the human family.  This is the real reason behind the immoral movement towards legally recognizing homosexual unions as equivalent to marriages.  It is the real reason behind the efforts to expand abortion laws throughout the world.  It is the real reason that contraception and pre-marital sex is promoted as “normal” and “healthy.”  It is why no-fault divorce laws have been, and continue to be expanded.  And it is why legalized euthanasia is being pushed as the next “choice” we all must have, so that we can be able to dispose of the elderly and the disabled when they get inconvenient.  All these trends claim to promote human freedom and dignity, but in fact, whether their promoters realize it or not, they are direct attacks against human freedom and dignity.

You can pull the wheels off a car and make the tires into a pedestal.  You can rip out the engine, smash it up, and put it on top of the pedestal.  You can peel of the frame, twist the pieces into fascinating, contorted shapes, and arrange them as decorations around the smashed engine and piled tires.  If you do, you may have an award-winning piece of post-modern art, but that car will never again make it out of the driveway.  God wants us to make it out of the driveway and to cruise all the way home to heaven.  To do so, we need to follow His instructions.  We must do our best to image God by faithfully living as a Christian family.

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[”Adoration of the Child” (1439-43) by Fra Angelico]

How many of you have been to Oberndorf, Austria?  OK, it is not one of the top vacation spots, but it was in that small village in 1818 that an event happened that led to an expression of the meaning of Christmas which people will most likely cherish for as long as the world endures.

It was just a few days before Christmas when the organ in the church of St. Nicola broke down.  Some say that some of the pipes rusted out, while others say mice ate some of the workings of the organ.  In any case it became clear that there was no way that the organ would be repaired in time for Midnight Mass.  The organist, Franz Gruber, asked the parish priest, Fr. Josef Mohr, for permission to use a guitar for the Mass.  Gruber explained that they would keep the music simple, but the choir would need some accompaniment.

Fr. Mohr agreed, and mentioned that he had been working on a simple Christmas poem, that most people would be able to understand.  Fr. Mohr recognized that his parishioners, the villagers of Oberndorf, were without much education as were the shepherds who were invited to the crib in Bethlehem.  The brief poem, which Fr. Mohr had given no title, was only 26 words in German.

The organist went to work, and shortly before Christmas he completed his melody.  At midnight Mass in the church of St. Nicola in Oberndorf, Austria in the year 1818 people sang for the first time “Silent Night.”

This simple carol captured the spirit — the feeling — of Christmas.  It is actually a lullaby for the Son of God.  The power of this carol lies in its simplicity and humility.  From Oberndorf, Austria “Silent Night” has spread throughout the world; having been translated into over 300 languages.  This simple carol has so captured the spirit of Christmas, that it has even brought enemies together.  During the Christmas cease-fire during the First World War the American and German soldiers sang “Silent Night” together from their foxholes.

The real appeal of Christmas is not so much the truth that God entered the world and that divinity took on humanity, but the manner in which this was done.  If Christ had been born of luxury and high rank, the unbelievers would have said that the world was transformed by wealth.  If Jesus had been born in Rome, the great city and capital of the Empire, unbelievers would have thought that the transformation had been brought about by civil power.

Instead He chose to be born into the most humble of circumstances.  He chose to be born in an insignificant village in a remote province.  He chose to be born of a poor maiden, whose husband could not even find them a proper place to stay.  Jesus accepts all that poverty implies, hoping to ensnare us and save us by stealth.

It is only the Christ Child lying in the manger who possesses the true secret of life.  “For this reason he asks us to welcome him, to make room for him within us, in our hearts, in our homes, in our cities, and in our societies.  The words of John’s Prologue echo in our minds and hearts: ‘To all who received him…he gave power to become children of God’ (John 1:12).  Let us endeavor to be among those who welcome him.  Before him one cannot remain indifferent…. What will our response be?  With what attitude will we welcome him?  The simplicity of the shepherds and the seeking of the Magi who scrutinized the signs of God by means of the star come to our help.  The docility of Mary and the wise prudence of Joseph serve as an example to us…” (Pope Benedict XVI, Audience, January 3, 2007.  Libreria Editrice Vatican, www.vatican.va).

By His birth in Bethlehem, Jesus brought into the world the love that binds the world to Himself in a relationship of friendship for all who welcome Him.  Saint John of the Cross says, “In giving us all, that is, his Son, in him God has now said all.  Fix your eyes on him alone . . . and you will find in addition more than you ask and desire.”

In the “Silent Night”, in the manger in Bethlehem you will find the deepest desire of your heart.  You will find the Way, the Truth and the Life that leads to eternal happiness.  Embrace the Christ Child, and allow Him to embrace you.  Merry Christmas!

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[Philippe de Champaigne’s The Dream of Saint Joseph painted around 1636]

So, are you all ready for Christmas? Do you have all your shopping, baking, and Christmas cards done? Christmas is so close that we can practically touch it. The joy of Christ’s birth is already warming our hearts, but our Lord wants our hearts to grow even warmer.

This past Tuesday I attended something that certainly warmed my heart. It was the annual Christmas show that our pre-schoolers put on. Our wonderful pre-school teachers had all the kids well rehearsed to sing the carols, and of course the children were so very cute and full of excitement. One thing that really impressed me during one of the songs was that the teachers had taught the children to bow their heads at the name of Jesus.

For many, this might seem as an old-fashioned custom, but it is one that helps us keep in mind that we should have a special reverence for the name of Jesus. In the readings this weekend three of the names of the Lord are revealed to us. Of course we have all heard these names before, but we need to think about them again.

Names have power. Just think about the many stories and legends that talk about the power of a name. I recent finished reading a science fiction trilogy by Ursala LeGuin, called EarthSea, in which if you knew a thing’s real name you had power over the thing. Of course we do not believe in such magical thinking, however when we really understand the meaning of Christ’s names our relationship with God can be brought to a whole new level.

Human parents are very careful in choosing a name for their children. They want the name to have some special meaning or significance. Maybe we are named after a grandparent, or a favorite aunt or uncle, or perhaps even a favorite saint. I even knew a woman who was named after her mother’s favorite candy. Parents carefully deliberate over the name of their children because they want the name to signify just how important this new life is to them.

God the Father was also very careful in naming His Son. He did not leave it up to chance or to Mary and Joseph’s creativity. God the Father chose His Son’s name Himself, and sent an angel to announce the choice to Mary and Joseph.

In the Old Testament, God often changed people’s names when He was entrusting to them a special mission in salvation history. Just think about Abram who became our father of faith Abraham. Or Jacob who became the father of the nation, Israel. The meaning of their new names signified their role in God’s plan.

When God the Father instructs Joseph to call Mary’s son “Jesus” even before He has been born, He is showing that Jesus is not just another prophet. Rather the Father is showing that Jesus is His Son in an entirely unique way — so much so that God the Father has the right to choose His name right from the beginning of His human existence.

What does this name mean? In Hebrew, Jesus means “God saves.” This name reveals to the whole world Christ’s mission. Unlike the prophets of the Old Testament, Jesus did not come merely to announce God’s plan of saving mankind from sin and death. Rather Jesus came in order to enact that plan. Jesus came to win that salvation for everyone.

However, another name is also revealed to us in today’s readings: the name “Emmanuel”. This is the name foretold by the prophet Isaiah, and St. Matthew applies it explicitly to Jesus. In Hebrew Emmanuel means, “God is among us.” Where as the name “Jesus” referred to Christ’s mission, what He came to do, the name “Emmanuel” refers to His identity, who Jesus is.

The two names are, of course, closely related. The only reason that Jesus is capable of winning salvation for the human race is precisely because He is both true Man and true God. Original Sin had cut off the human race from God’s friendship; it destroyed sanctifying grace, the Divine Life within us. It made us slaves of the devil. Adam and Eve had freely disobeyed God and obeyed Satan, and so they put themselves and their descendants under Satan’s influence. This was the origin of evil in the world. We could not climb back up to God’s level on our own. In order to reestablish the friendship with God, we needed God Himself to take the initiative. We needed a Savior who could unite God and the human family.

Jesus is that Savior. He brings God and humanity back together in His own person. He has God for His Father, so He is fully Divine, and He has Mary for His mother, so He is fully human. Thus, since He is “Emmanuel” (God among us) He can also be “Jesus” (God saves). God becoming man in order to save the fallen human race is the greatest story ever told, more fantastic than any science fiction or fantasy or fairy tale. Yet, it is as true as the air we breath. This is the true meaning of Christmas.

There is yet another name that the Church presents to us today. In today’s second reading, St. Paul summarizes Christ’s amazing mission and refers to Him as “Lord”. “Jesus” and “Emmanuel” are names that only God could have given, but “Lord” is a name that only we can give.

“Lord” comes from the Hebrew word “Adonai” (add-own-EYE), which is used often in the Old Testament. It is a grammatical alteration of the word “adoni” (add-own-EE), which referred to kings, owners of slaves, and heads of households. Anyone who had authority over other persons was called “adoni.” However, only God was referred to as “Adonai”. Human authorities always receive their authority from somewhere — a cultural tradition, a higher authority, their position in society. However, God does not receive His authority from anyone else. He is the ultimate source of all power, order, truth, beauty, greatness and love. By His very nature, God is “Adonai” — Lord.

When we call Jesus Lord we are acknowledging that He is much more than just one of history’s great religious leaders or moral teachers. In calling Him Lord, we are expressing our conviction that He is truly Jesus, the Savior; that He is truly Emmanuel, God among us; and that He is truly worthy of our faith and obedience. God cannot call Himself Lord because He cannot submit Himself to Himself. Only we can submit ourselves freely to Jesus’ authority, to be His followers. Only Christians can call Jesus Lord.

In the days remaining before Christmas, let us keep all three names on our lips and in our hearts, as true lovers always do. At the name of Jesus, who is Emmanuel, let us bow our heads in respect and reverence for our Lord.

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Francis Thompson was a British poet who lived from 1859 until 1907.  He had a very difficult life.  He was trained as a physician, but his medical career was an utter failure.  He had a very troublesome relationship with his father which resulted in him being homeless for several years.  Most of his adult life he struggled with an addiction to opium.  Both his circumstances and his sins made his life miserable.  Yet his greatest work, an autobiographical poem entitled “The Hound of Heaven,” is considered one of the greatest Christian poems of all time.  In this 182 line poem Thompson beautifully tells about a God who refuses to abandon even the most determined sinner.

In the poem, the protagonist is madly searching for happiness, but in all the wrong places.  During his misguided search for happiness, he is relentlessly pursued by a hunting dog, a hound.  The hound is a symbol of God, who loves us too much to ever give up on us, and He is too well “trained” so that nothing that we can do will ever shake Him off our trail.  The poem begins with a description of his flight from God and his vain search for happiness in other things:

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

At the end of the poem, after he has no place else to run to, the hound catches up to him and says:

Rise, clasp My hand, and come!
… Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou drivest love from thee, who drivest Me.

Like every other human being, the deepest desire of our heart is to be happy; a desire for infinite love, infinite truth, and infinite beauty.  Like Thompson, we often search madly for happiness in all the wrong places, often fleeing from God, the only source of eternal and infinite happiness.  What the poem teaches us is that nothing we do can lessen God’s love for us.  He is faithful, and His hand is always outstretched to save us from ourselves.

The drama of “The Hound of Heaven” in nothing new.  Seven-hundred years before the coming of Christ, when the Kingdom of Israel was falling apart, God promised that He would not abandon His people.  He promised to send a descendent of King David — “a shoot from the stump of Jesse” — to be our Savior.  Two-thousand years ago when Jesus was born, that promise was fulfilled.  God is faithful.

To make sure that the suffering people of Israel would recognize this Savior, God sent a messenger to announce His arrival:  John the Baptist.  Before Jesus began His public ministry, the Holy Spirit sent John to make the preparations.  John reminded the people of Israel of their covenant with God, and informed them that the promised Messiah was soon to arrive.  John the Baptist told them to get ready for the arrival of the Messiah by repenting of their sins.

These are the actions of a faithful God who keeps His promises.  And just as He kept His promises to the People of Israel, so too does He keep His promises to us.  On the day of our baptism, God promised that He would never abandon us.  He adopted us as His children and became our Father.  He promised that He would always sustain us with His grace, love and truth.  In his recent encyclical, Spe Salvi (The Hope that Saves), Pope Benedict XVI writes, “Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God — God who has loved us and who continues to love us ‘to the end,’ until all ‘is accomplished’” (#27).

The whole Advent season tells us that God is faithful, and that means that He is worthy of our trust.  In this post-modern, post-Christian world we need to have someone we can trust.  How can we keep on the right track, the path to true happiness, when we are surrounded by so many contradictory opinions?  How can we know what is true and good, what is morally right, when there are hundreds of television channels and 1 billion Web sites that are all communicating their own theory of values?  How can we find true happiness in life when every year 100,000 new books are published in the US, each one pointing to happiness in its own direction?

We must always keep in mind; GOD IS FAITHFUL!  His Gospel is trustworthy, true and unchanging.  His Church, through which He has promised to guide us until the end of time, in spite of the imperfections and frailties of its pastors, never tires of reminding us about the essential truths, the top priorities, the milestones on the path to meaning, interior peace, and everlasting happiness.

GOD IS FAITHFUL!  Therefore we should obey His voice; expressed in the Ten Commandments, in our well-formed consciences, and in the Church’s official teaching about faith and morals.  To do so is to put ourselves and our loved ones inside the only boat that is guaranteed to make it to the port of heaven.

The Hound of Heaven is set loose.  Instead of running from Him, let us run to embrace that Hound, for He is “He Whom thou seekest!”

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[A stone from the Basillica of St. John the Evangelist in Ephesus, Turkey.  From my photos, taken 2007]

What will happen to us after we die?  Is death simply the end, like the snuffing out of a candle?  If there is life after death, what is it like?  All of us have questions such as these.  In fact, these are the type of questions that really make us human.  Neither dogs nor cats nor any other animal ask themselves these type of questions.  These deep, existential questions are only asked by us human beings.  November, the month in which we celebrate All Soul’s day, is a time when the Church calls us to ask these questions so that we can have certainty as to the answers.

The brothers in today’s first reading from the second book of Maccabees were certain of their answers to these questions.  On the surface it might seem like a rather silly reason to suffer torture and death – all because they would not eat a piece of pork.  How often do we eat a ham sandwich or some bacon without giving it a second thought?  Yet this is what the seven brothers were asked to do, with their mother, just to eat some pork yet they chose to die instead.  Why?

Well, of course what they were being asked to do was so much more than just simply to eat some pork.  They were being asked to give up their faith in God, and instead believe in the false gods of the Greeks.  At that time, the Greeks where the very height of civilization, so the brothers and their mother were being told to give up their “old-fashioned” and “superstitious” beliefs and embrace the “modern” world.  Sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it?  How often are our religious beliefs held up by the modern world as being “old-fashioned” and “superstitious”?  Just look at the rash of books that have been on the New York Times Bestseller list recently which attack belief in God as irrational, old-fashioned, superstitious, and even dangerous.  The pagan gods of the Greeks have been replaced by our modern gods of genetics, physics, cosmology, economics, and the entire pantheon of the sciences, both natural and social.

The brothers in the today’s first reading knew that there was something more important than this life.  As the first brother said right before he died, “You accursed fiend, you are depriving us of this present life, but the King of the world will raise us up to live again forever.  It is for his laws that we are dying.”  Do we have that same kind of faith in God’s promise of eternal life if we obey His commandments and follow His will?

Today’s Gospel account makes it clear that there were still those during Jesus’ time who did not believe in anything beyond this life on earth.  Among the various sects of Jews, it was the Sadducees who did not believe in an afterlife, so they try to trip Jesus up with their ridiculous hypothetical question.  They were really just trying to make the whole idea of life after death look ridiculous, and Jesus could have dismissed them as just being frivolous.  Rather, Jesus took the opportunity to teach them, and us, about what the next life will be like.

Jesus points out that life beyond death is not simply a prolongation of life on earth.  Rather it is something entirely new.  Maybe a better way of saying it than “life after death” is to call it “life beyond death.”  So what will life beyond death be like?  Of course our finite minds cannot fully answer that question, but St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Exposition of the Apostles’ Creed, gives an excellent description:

    “Eternal life is the perfect fulfillment of desire, because each of the blessed will have more than he desired or hoped for.  In this life, no one can fulfill his desires, nor can any creature satisfy a man’s craving.  God alone satisfies and infinitely surpasses man’s desires, which therefore can never rest except in God.”

Pope Benedict XII, in Benedictus Deus, wrote that the souls in heaven “see the divine essence with an intuitive and even face-to-face vision, without interposition of any creature . . . . Those who see the divine essence in this way receive great joy from it.”
The basic truth of Jesus’ teaching, from today’s Gospel passage, is that our hope of life beyond death is not based on wishful thinking but on the nature of God Himself.  Yes, in philosophy we can talk of God as being the “first cause” and the “unmoved mover”, yet He is infinitely more than that.  Jesus reveals God as our loving heavenly Father who enters into a personal relationship with us.  God loves us, and this relationship of love cannot be terminated by death, just as God the Father’s love for Jesus did not end when Jesus died on the cross.

Jesus does not offer us a faith that answers every question our curiosity can propose.  Rather He gives us a faith by which to live and die.  When we die, we will find that Jesus has already gone before us, and is waiting for us.  He has prepared a place for us.

Meanwhile our task is to prepare for that great encounter with Christ Jesus, which will be our homecoming.  We prepare for it not by worrying about the details but by living to the full here and now.  Jesus has entrusted to His Church gifts – namely the Sacraments – to help us do just that.

“When we encounter Jesus at the end of life’s journey, will we be meeting a familiar and well-loved friend?  Or will he be a stranger at whose approach we shrink in fear?  The answer to that question lies in our hands, right now.  Out of his great love for us God permits us to choose what that great final encounter will be like.

It is the most important choice we what ever have.” (John Jay Hughes, Proclaiming the Good News:  Homilies for the ‘C’ Cycle, Huntington, IN:  Our Sunday Visitor, Inc. 1985, p. 255)

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Today is the 25th anniversary of the priestly ordination of my pastor, Msgr. Thomas N. Gervasio (pictured above). The parish celebrated this wonderful event on Sunday. There was a beautiful Mass at St. Anthony’s church in the afternoon, followed by a very fun reception at a local hotel. Msgr. Gervasio asked his friend from the seminary, Fr. Robert Pasley, K.H.S. to preach at this Mass, and Fr. Pasley gave an awesome homily, affirming the value of the ministerial priesthood (very appropriate for not only a priestly ordination anniversary, but also for “Priesthood Sunday”). I am happy to reprint Fr. Pasley’s homily below.
Twenty nine years ago, in August 1978, at Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary, in Emmitsburg, Maryland, I met a seminarian from Trenton, by the name of Thomas N. Gervasio. We met just before Mass, on our second day, at the top of the hill behind the seminary near the beautiful Lourdes Grotto.

Where has the time gone?

Our responsibilities have increased and I think, so has our weight – Just a little.
Our experience has flourished while our follicles have thinned - his more than mine.
We have lived through many varied assignments – challenging, joyful and some downright crazy. We made it through the seminary without computers, the internet, and no one had a cell phone – as a matter of fact – one thing has not changed in the last 29 years – Msgr. still doesn’t have a cell phone. Getting in touch with this busy priest is no easy matter. Before this grand Jubilee, I spoke at length with Father Garrett. We both decided it was time for Monsignor to have a cell phone. But even though he is a Monsignor, and even though he was at the top of his class in the seminary, technologically, there are some difficulties. Fr. Garrett, however, came up with a solution and saved the day. We are going to buy him a Jitterbug phone - used for senior citizens. All he will have to do is push the big magenta Msgr. button and the operator will dial the number for him. A new chapter has begun.

My dear people, all humor aside, we celebrate today the priesthood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the 25 years that Msgr Gervasio has shared in the glorious gift of that priesthood. We celebrate 25 years of faithful, dedicated service to Christ and His Church. We celebrate 25 years as a shepherd and teacher. We celebrate 25 years as an alter Christus – another Christ - who brings the glorious gifts of God and the joyful message of the Holy Gospel to all who will listen. “Blessed are the feet of him who brings glad tidings.”

The last 20 years have not been kind to the priesthood; attacks from without, but even worse, defections and betrayals from within. At my Jubilee celebration in April, I told my people how truly thankful I was for having been given this great gift. I do not know of anything else I would want to do in this life, and I’m sure Monsignor would say the same. God called us – the Church confirmed the call - and it has been a life filled with
redeeming sufferings and beautiful joys. We would do it all over again without a doubt.

We, however, are halfway through our allotted time. Vocations to the priesthood are desperately needed. Doctrinal confusion, materialism, and the fact that parents no longer encourage their son’s to be priests, has caused a spiritual contraception in the Church. Where are the vocations? Without the priest, the Church and its full life of grace is severely wounded, if not destroyed. And so, on this day, when we celebrate Msgr.’s Jubilee, we are also here to celebrate the sacred priesthood. Please permit me to take this time to meditate on this essential gift of Christ to his Church.

First and foremost, the priest is a sacramental Icon of Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states,

“In the service of the ordained [priest], it is Christ Himself, who is present to His Church as Head of His Body, Shepherd of His Flock, High Priest of the redemptive sacrifice, and teacher of the Truth.”

The priest acts, “In Persona Christi Capitis – In the person of Christ the Head.”

The Catechism goes on to quote Pope Pius XII, in his encyclical, Mediator Dei,

“It is the same priest, Christ Jesus, whose sacred person His minister truly represents. Now this minister, by reason of the sacerdotal consecration which he has received, is truly made like to the High Priest and possesses the authority to act in the power and the place of the person of Christ himself.”

The most recent Council of the Church, in its decree on Priests, says,

“Priests of the New Testament, by their ordination, are set apart that they may be completely consecrated to the task for which God chooses them.”

These beautiful descriptions of the priesthood are made manifest and become most real - in the confessional, while anointing the sick, in pouring the water of Baptism, in witnessing marriages, and ultimately and most perfectly when he celebrates that sacrament which is the height and summit of all the sacraments – Calvary renewed, the Eternal Banquet, the Wedding Feast of the Lamb – the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
At Mass, one with the Lord sacramentally, he is the priest (The one who offers sacrifice and intercedes for the people) and the victim (the one who gives his whole life, with the Lamb to the service of the Father and the flock). He dons the sacred vestments which somewhat hide his human weakness and limitation. These vestments help teach us what he is about;

The alb, the long white robe – is a symbol that he has been washed clean in the blood of the Lamb

The cincture – the rope belt, is a symbol of his being girded with chastity - so that he can give his love exclusively to the Lord and His service

The Stole – worn around the neck – is the sign that he is an instrument of the sacred authority and power of Christ.

The Chasuble - the outer garment – is a symbol of the yoke of service that he gladly accepts.

He offers bread and wine as did the Lord, and at the moment of Consecration, he does not say, “This is His Body – This is His Blood.” NO – He says, “This is MY BODY and this is the chalice of My BLOOD. Do this in memory of me.” The priest is the frail, human instrument of Christ who effects the sacrifice of our redemption and performs a task to which angels must bow.

Second, the priest must be a prophetic voice in the world. This is so often downplayed or forgotten these days. There are those who are afraid to speak the truth because it might offend.

In the Epistle today we hear from Saint Paul who writes to Saint Timothy. Just prior to today’s passage he says to Timothy –
“I charge thee, before God and Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and the dead, by his coming, and his kingdom: Preach the word: insist on it, in season and out of season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but, according to their own desires, they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears: And will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labor in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober.”

He then goes on to say in today’s reading that He is being poured out like a libation. A libation was a sacrificial offering in pagan temples – usually animal blood that was poured out of a chalice on to the altar. To be poured out like a libation was to sacrifice one’s life, to even shed ones blood, so that the Truth – Christ - no matter how inconvenient or dangerous, could be proclaimed.

As Saint Paul says, a priest must fight – and I emphasize – fight, the good fight. He must finish the race, keep the faith, and teach others to do the same. He must do everything it takes to win the merited crown and lead others in its pursuit. And he must do this even if, God forbid, everyone should abandon him. For the Lord will be his strength that the preaching task might be completed and all nations might hear the Gospel.

Third, the priest is the shepherd who must rule and guard the flock.
He administers the goods of the Church for the benefit of the flock
He gathers the lost, provides for those in need, and feeds all by providing religious education
He brings new sheep into the fold through RCIA.
He teaches, he cares for, he leads all to the green pastures of sacramental grace, doctrinal truth, and good moral living.
He teaches the flock to be just and merciful, charitable and forgiving.

Our Lord says in St. Matthew’s Gospel, “So let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven…He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. But he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. The shepherd must be great, he must be a light for without him the sheep would be scattered in the darkness.

Finally, the Catechism, grounding us in reality, says,

“The presence of Christ in the minister is not to be understood as if the latter were preserved from all human weaknesses, the spirit of domination, error and even sin.”

No, the priest is called to be an Icon of Christ, a prophetic teacher, and a good shepherd, but he is also sinner in need of salvation. At the beginning of every Mass, the priest, along with his people bows before God and says, I confess that I have sinned, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa – through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault. It was Saint Augustine who said, “I am for you a bishop, and with you a disciple.” We are for you priests but with you disciples. A priest is a weak man who must constantly strive to become the personal friend and faithful disciple of the Lord. He cannot believe in his own self-righteousness, like our friend in the Gospel, the Pharisee, but must, with the poor tax collector, raise his eyes to heaven, strike his breast, and every day repeat; “O God, be merciful to me a sinner!”

On this beautiful day of celebration, we shout out to the all the world, our thanksgiving and appreciation for the great gift of the sacred priesthood. Monsignor Gervasio, my dear friend and brother priest, I know that you have striven, with every ounce of your being, to love the Lord and be a good priest – with consistency, faithfulness, and joy for 25 years. So many people today are afraid of making a commitment in life. Commitment to one thing means freely choosing to limit other options in life. Saying yes to one thing means saying no to many other things. But without dying to self, without living for something bigger than self, without a commitment to something important, we are tossed to and fro by every whim that presents itself, and before we know it, life quickly approaches its end. And perhaps, we have very little to show for all the years we have spent.

But on your ordination day, 25 years ago, you lay prostrate on the floor of the Cathedral and begged all the saints of heaven to intercede for you. You rose and knelt before Bishop Reiss. As he imposed hands on you, you accepted Christ’s call and gave your life to that call - and you have never turned back. You have had to die to self over and over again and by God’s grace you have a treasury of goodness to show for all the years that you have spent in the Lord’s service.

The priesthood is a wonderful life. Please pray and work for vocations! Encourage your sons and grandsons, your nephews and friends, to consider a commitment to this life. And please pray for us who continue to fight the good fight for Christ and His Church.
Monsignor Gervasio – God has given us an incredible 25 years

AD MULTOS ANNOS !

May you have many years, May our Lady watch over you and guard you, and may God Bless you in every way.

[Sermon given on Sunday, October 28, for the Silver Jubilee of The Reverend Monsignor Thomas N. Gervasio, by The Reverend Robert C. Pasley, KHs, Rector of Mater Ecclesiae Mission, Berlin, NJ]

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[One of the domed ceilings in the Cathedral at Orvieto, Italy showing the Beggar of Assisi.  I took this August 2007.] 

What is the great sin of our society? I am sure we all could nominate a few: abortion, materialism, culture of death, attacking the traditional family, etc. While these are certainly prevalent evils in our modern society, I think we suffer from something more fundamental. I think that the greatest sin of our modern society is presumption.

Some may even ask what exactly presumption? Presumption is one of the two sins against the virtue of hope (the other is despair), so maybe we should first recall what we mean by the virtue of hope. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “hope is the confident expectation of divine blessing and the beatific vision of God; it is also the fear of offending God’s love and of incurring punishment” (#2090).

The Catechism describes two different kinds of presumption. In the one, a person presumes upon their own capacities. Basically in this type of presumption we think that we can save ourselves without divine grace by just doing good works. In the second kind of presumption we presume upon God’s power and mercy, thinking we can be forgiven without conversion, or participate in God’s glory without merit. This is the type of presumption in which the person thinks that it does not matter how they live their life, that it is OK to sin – at least the “little” sins – because Jesus is their friend. In both forms of the sin of presumption the person fails to give God the honor and respect that is due to Him. They fail to fear God.

The Pharisee in today’s Gospel reading is presumptuous. He probably did the good things that he said that he does; the extra fasting, the giving to the poor. In a strictly superficial level he was virtuous. However, he robbed his virtue of any value by his way of approaching God. In pointing our all that he had done for God so to claim his reward, he was comparing himself with others instead of comparing himself with the standards of God’s law. God’s standards are always higher than our best achievements. We always have shortcomings, and can do better. The Pharisee placed his trust in his own achievement instead of trusting in God.

The tax collector in the parable, on the other hand, was very much aware that he was a sinner. During that time, the Roman officials would contract out the collecting of taxes. The way that these private tax collectors made their money was by adding a commission on the tax that each person owed. There was no rules governing how much of a commission could be added, so tax collectors were often prone to corruption; extorting money from people. The tax collector in today’s parable knew he was a sinner. He probably could tell God each person that he took an unfair commission from. He probably could tell God the so-called reasons he used to justify his sinful behavior – for example, he needed to take more money from some people because there would always be those few people who always seemed to slip away without paying their taxes, so he needed the collect extra from those he caught to make sure that both the Romans and he got his “fair share.” He knew that this was a lie he told himself to cover his greed.

Something moved this tax collector to compunction. He came to recognize his sinfulness and he knew that he could not do anything on his own to make it right. He recognized that he needed God’s grace to forgive him and to strengthen him so that he would act more justly in the future. His recognition of his own sinfulness could have led him to the other sin against the virtue of hope, namely despair. However, his experience of his own limitations and failure has led him not to despair, but to depend on God. He has remembered that there is something beyond every evil threat and the Lord will rescue him.

Dependency is not something that we tend to view as something good. We think that we should all be independent, that we should all be able to take care of ourselves on our own. Underlining such an attitude is pride. We are utterly dependent on God. The Lord has created us, and He gives us every beat of our heart and every breath we take. God gives us life, and He saves us from damnation. But in creating us He has given us a free will. We need to choose to accept the grace that He offers us. We need to have the humility to acknowledge our own limitations and sinfulness. We need to have the humility to acknowledge that we need to be forgiven, we need to be saved. Then we need to depend on God, our loving Father, by following His will.

Throughout the Old Testament we hear, as we hear in today’s first reading, that the Lord hears the cry of the oppressed, particularly the orphan, the widow, and the resident alien. In that time and culture, those were the three most vulnerable groups of people because they had no one to care for them. They relied completely on God, and to their cry “the Lord is not deaf.” They knew what it meant to depend on God.

Likewise in today’s second reading, St. Paul tells Timothy that in his trial and imprisonment he too learnt that he could only depend on God. That when no one appeared on his behalf at his defense, he realized that “The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat and will bring me safe to his heavenly kingdom.”

We need to turn away from presumption, and develop an attitude of utter dependence on God. Jesus has taught us that the real hero in history is not the person who is self-sufficient, rather it is the beggar: “Christ begging for the heart of man, and the heart of man begging for Christ” (L. Giussani, S. Alberto, & J. Prades, Generare tracce nella storia del mondo [Generating Traces in the History of the World]. Milan, Italy: Rizzoli, 1998, p. vii).

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[Reliquary of the blood-stained altar cloth in the Cathedral of Orvieto, Italy, when the host bleed.  I took this photo when I was in Italy in August, 2007.  Now that I have found, albeit a backwards way, of uploading my pictures to this blog, I will include more of them.]

At the end of St. John’s Gospel, he writes that he has recorded only a sample of the words and miracles of Jesus, for the entire world could not contain all the books necessary to record all that Jesus did and said.  Since this is true, we need to reflect on why each of the evangelists chose to include the particular encounters, parables, and miracles that they did for their Gospels.  Why, of all the miraculous healings that Jesus performed, did St. Luke choose to include the healing of the ten lepers that we heard in today’s Gospel?  I think it can be summed up by this one question that Jesus asks, “Where are the other nine?”

Jesus wants, in this Gospel account, to teach us the beauty of gratitude.  Jesus did not have low self-esteem and needed people to thank Him in order to feel good about Himself.  As the Son of God, Jesus had no need for our praise and thanksgiving.  No, the reason that Jesus values gratitude so much is because it is valuable for us, for the health of our souls.

First of all, gratitude keeps us grounded in the TRUTH.  We need to be grounded in the truth in order to keep our ongoing relationship with God healthy.  Not only is being ungrateful to God unjust, but it is an illusion.  We do not create ourselves!  The simple fact is that EVERYTHING we have is a gift from God:  every beat of our heart, every breath we take, every talent we have, all of our hopes and dreams, our very life.  As a simple matter of justice we need to give God His due and be thankful for all these gifts, but more than that, we constantly need God’s grace to persevere in doing what is right and good.

Secondly, gratitude is an anti-dote to sin.  As we all know, the root of all evil is PRIDE.  Sin turns us in on ourselves.  As Satan said to Adam and Eve in the Garden, “You will be like gods.”  Sin leads to self-centeredness, self-indulgence, and self-absorption.  Gratitude, on the other hand, opens us up to God and our neighbor.  A thankful heart build bridges and unites communities.

Because of the great value that Jesus placed on gratitude He left us a perfect expression of gratitude to give life to our souls.  It is the Eucharist.  The very word Eucharist comes from the Greek word that means “thanksgiving”.  The Eucharist is the perfect expression of this gratitude that gives life and health to our souls.  It keeps us grounded in the Truth, that God loves us so much that He gave us His Only Son to be our Savior, so that we can turn away from our sinful pride and live as children of God.

I am certain that all of us here could share with each other instances of just how good our Good God has been in our lives.  Times when maybe He has strengthened us through a crisis or illness.  Brought healing to the brokenness in our lives.  Gave us the most astonishing graces that brought joy to our lives.  So, look around you; “Where are the other nine?”

So with all the examples of just how good God is in our lives, why isn’t this church filled with people expressing their gratitude to God in this celebration of the Eucharist?  In the 1950s over 70% of baptized Catholics went to Mass every Sunday; today, less than 25% of baptized Catholics attend Mass weekly.  In Western Europe the numbers are even worse; some estimates indicate that only 10% of the Catholics attend Sunday Mass, so quite literally we can ask, “Where are the other nine?”

Oh, we can blame the usual suspects for the decline in Mass attendance:  boring homilies, insipid music, a lose of sacredness in the liturgy, the liturgy is boring and old-fashion, not liking some of the Church’s teachings, being too busy with activities, etc.  I think that one of the main underlining causes is a loss of a sense of obligation.  In our culture freedom, in the sense of being able to do whatever I want, is worshipped, so being told that we have an obligation to go to Mass does not play well.  The very word obligation has suffered the same fate as the word faithfulness during the time of the Prophet Jeremiah who wrote, “Faithfulness has disappeared:  the word itself is banished from their speech” (Jer. 7:28).

However, obligation is a truly noble and profoundly human concept.  The dictionary defines obligation as “something by which a person is bound to do certain things and which arises out of a sense of duty; the act of binding oneself by a promise.”  Isn’t it good to have a sense of duty, and to bind oneself to one’s promises?  In fact, obligation makes all kinds of human transactions possible:  promises, contracts, verbal and written agreements.  Without a sense of obligation, human life would simply be unbearable.

We need to have this same sense of obligation in our covenant relationship with God.  I am not referring to a heavy-handed, guilt-inducing sense of obligation.  Rather we need to view obligation as a positive, life-affirming form of Christian discipleship.

First, participation in Mass is a matter of justice, of showing our gratitude to God for all the blessings in our lives.  I fear that too many of us do not really take the time to count our blessings.  This can lead to a sense of pessimism; only seeing the negative in life.  We need to see Jesus who is present in all aspects and circumstances in our lives so that we can accept the grace that He offers us.  One of the reasons that the Third Commandment tells us “to keep holy the Sabbath Day” is to honor God for all that He has given us, and to recognize our need for Him in our lives.  While we do need to develop a personal relationship with God, throughout Sacred Scripture God has made it clear that He wants us to worship Him as part of a community.  We cannot live as Christians just by ourselves.  To miss Sunday Mass deliberately is a mortal sin, unless we have a serious reason, like we cannot attend because of a serious illness, we are not able to get to a church (not because we are too busy with other things, but because of weather or there was no church available).

Secondly, we need to recognize our desire.  We all have a spiritual hunger because we can see that everything in this world is finite yet our hearts have a capacity for infinite love, infinite truth, infinite beauty.  At Mass we encounter this Infinite Goodness, Infinite Love, Infinite Truth, and Infinite Beauty when we encounter God.  At Mass we are nourished by this Infinite God by hearing His holy word in the Scriptures, and are feed by the very Body and Blood of the Lord in the Eucharist.  This gives us the grace and help we need to live the Christian life.

The Second Vatican Council called the Sunday celebration of the Eucharist the heart of the Church, and the “source and summit” of all the Church’s activity.  We need to foster within our selves, our families, and our neighbors a healthy sense of obligation to express our gratitude to God.  “Where are the other nine?”  Each of us need to ask ourselves that question, and see what we can do to invite some of those “nine” back to Mass, back to the Eucharist, so that they can have life, life to the full.

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 If you read the Gospels regularly, one thing that you notice is that the Apostles most of the time just do not “get it.”  Most of the time they do not understand what Jesus is teaching them.  They see how good Jesus is, and all the good works that He does, and they see that they are not that good, and that they do not help people as much as Jesus does.  They had to have known that they were not very good disciples of Jesus.  It would have been very tempting for them, maybe even understandable, to just become completely discouraged and give up.

In today’s Gospel reading the disciples have been living with Jesus for about a year, hearing Him preach, watching Him perform miracles, and changing people’s lives.  Instead of becoming discouraged, however, the Apostles did the right thing.  They asked Jesus to “Increase our faith.”

While the Gospel account does not say this, I have to believe that Jesus smiled when the Apostles asked for this increase of faith.  He must have been glad that they asked for help instead of abandoning Him and the mission that He was entrusting to them.  Yet, Jesus’ response is mysterious.  He says that they do not need more faith, rather they just need to use the faith that they already have.

Faith is so basic to being a Christian, yet it is something that is so often misunderstood.  Sometimes it is equated with “wishful thinking,” so some type of problem-free philosophy.  It is when people express Faith in this superficial way that we leave ourselves open to the criticism of atheism – whether it be formally declared atheism, or the more common “practical” atheism in which people may proclaim that they believe in God, but then does not allow their belief in God to have any real impact on how they live their lives.  This is cartoon “faith” and it is not going to move anything.

It is because so many people have such a cartoon-faith that there has been such an public and media shock at the recently published letters of Blessed Mother Teresa.  For those who do not know the book that I am talking about, it was published about a month ago and is entitled, Mother Teresa:  Come Be My Light.  The book is composed mostly of letters that Mother Teresa wrote to her spiritual directors, and what has been found shocking to so many people is that for fifty years Mother Teresa struggled with an interior darkness of feeling abandoned by God.  Most people’s pictures of Mother Teresa is that of one of the happiest people in the world, and that her faith was so strong that nothing bothered her.  To read her write things such as, “The child of your Love, and now [I have] become as the most hated one, the one You have thrown away as unwanted, unloved . . . .” or “Where is my Faith?  Even deep down right in there is nothing but emptiness and darkness,” is shocking for those with a superficial, cartoon-faith.

Such statements, such a “dark night of the soul,” is not a sign that Mother Teresa lacked faith, but rather that she had a mature, strong and contagious faith – it did move mountains, and is still doing so today through her sisters.  Yet her faith did not take away her crosses.  Her faith was so strong that she fulfilled her promise never to deny God anything that He asked, not even suffering.  For her, Faith was strength with length.  It was the power to persevere through difficulties because of the power that comes from knowing that God is in charge.

One philosophical atheist defined faith as “belief in the impossible.”  In other words, believing in something that is not real.  Real Faith, however, is based on the FACT of the Resurrection, on the FACT that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  It is an act of the will.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines it as, “Faith is first of all a personal adherence of man to God.  At the same time, and inseparably, it is a free assent to the whole truth that God has revealed.” (#150; emphasis is in the original).

Another cartoon of faith is that it is just “positive thinking,” that if you just trust in God and obey His commands everything will be OK.  While it is true that God loves us, and we are only saved through Jesus, we are called to use the intellect that God has given us.  Reason is a gift from God, and we are called to use it.  While God could miraculously heal us from a serious illness, God usually acts through doctors and their knowledge of medicine.  This is all part of what St. Paul writes to the Philippians when he says, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” (2:12).  We recognize that the gifts that we have, the talents that we have, are from God above, and with thankfulness and humility we use them in the service of others for the greater glory of God.

At our baptism, the seeds of Faith, of divine life, was planted in our souls.  Now it is up to us to exercise that Faith, so that it will grow.  This means recognizing, as the Apostles did, that we are capable of doing much more, and we are created for greater things.  It means recognizing that God gives us everything to achieve the great things for which He has made us.  That by deliberately clinging to Him, we make room for Him to work great things in us and through us.

Let us “stir into flame the gift of God,” (Tim. 1:6) namely our Faith so that will will not be ashamed of giving testimony to our Lord Jesus Christ, and in hardship let us bear everything with the strength that comes from God.

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