Fr. JC Maximilian

In this chapter of the encyclical the Holy Father starts to identify how the Church’s teaching on human development speaks to some of the most prevalent issues facing us today. He notes that Pope Paul VI’s understanding of human development set the goal of rescuing people from hunger, deprivation, disease, and illiteracy first and foremost, and that these are still concerns for human development today.

The Holy Father wants to make clear that there is nothing wrong with profit if it is used to serves as a means towards an end that provides a sense both of how to produce it and how to make good use of it. Profit becomes problematic when it is produced by improper means and it does not have the common good as its ultimate end. When profit becomes the end in itself, it starts to destroy wealth and create poverty. This is evidenced by the fact that the world’s wealth is growing in absolute terms, while the gap between the rich and poor is increasing. A major cause of this problem is the greed and corruption among those in leadership positions — both political and economic — in both the wealthy countries and in poor ones.

At the time in which Pope Paul VI wrote Populorum Progressio, we could already speak of social issues in global terms. However, in the past 40 years there has been an integration of nations and economies to an unprecedented level. 40 years ago, individual States still had a large degree of ability to determine the priorities for their economy and govern the instruments at their disposal. This is why Pope Paul VI assigned a central role to what he called “public authorities.” Today, however, individual States have to address the limitations to their own sovereignty with international trade and banking has placed on them. Economies are much more integrated together today, thus it is not realistic to look solely at the State’s public authorities for solutions. These public authorities need to re-evaluate their role and power in engaging the economic problems of today.

Whereas in the past, competition in the marketplace was often confined to within national boundaries, today the competition crosses the globe. In order to attach new industry countries too often relax the social networks that safeguarded the welfare of workers. In doing so, the focus becomes on profit as an end in itself, and not a means for fostering human development. The Holy Father reminds us, that in an authentic concern for human development, “the primary capital to be safeguarded and valued is man, the human person in his or her integrity” (#25).

Another factor of importance to human development today is on the cultural plane. There is a much greater possibility of cultural interaction today. This can be a positive force in human development if two dangers, that the commercialization of cultural exchange can increase, are avoided. First there is the danger of “cultural eclecticism” where cultures are placed uncritically along side each other and viewed as being substantially equivalent and interchangeable. This leads to cultural relativism, which actually results in keeping the various cultural groups separated, since they are seen as being substantially the same. This actually closes down intercultural dialogue. The other danger is “cultural leveling” which loses sight of the profound significance of the culture of different nations. Both of these dangers separates culture from human nature, which reduces the human person.

The Pope notes another issue for our time is “food security.” Feeding the poor has been a central concern of the Church’s social justice ministry right from the beginning. Today the concern in not so much with there not being enough food to feed everyone, but rather inadequate structures to ensure that everyone receives adequate food and water. Food and access to water is an universal right of all human beings, without distinction or discrimination (#27).

One of the issues that struck me the most in this chapter is the Holy Father’s clear statement that we cannot detach respect for life from all other matters of social justice and human development. I have been in parishes where the “Social Concerns” committee refused to support any Respect Life initiative, and vice versa. The Holy Father points out in many nations, in an attempt to address poverty, there are government and non-governmental efforts to control population growth through contraception, sterilization and even forced abortion; sometimes without even informing the women concerned. “Openness to life is at the center of true development. When a society moves towards the denial or suppression of life, it ends up no longer finding the necessary motivation and energy to strive for man’s true good. . . . The acceptance of life strengthens moral fiber and makes people capable of mutual help. By cultivating openness to life, wealthy peoples can better understand the needs of poor ones, they can avoid employing huge economic and intellectual resources to satisfy the selfish desires of their own citizens” (#28).

A final concern connected to human develop noted in the encyclical is the denial of the right to religious freedom. Problems in this area includes religious fanaticism, violence against religious belief, and even religious indifference and practical atheism. We must keep in mind that God is the guarantor of man’s true happiness. When there are obstacles to people fulfilling their supernatural desires, there is a reduction of their humanity.

To address these concerns so to foster human development, the Holy Father states that there must be a commitment to foster the interaction of the different levels of human knowledge. Again, he emphasizes that Charity does not exclude knowledge. “Deeds without knowledge are blind, and knowledge without love is sterile” (#30). Given the complexity of the phenomena before us, charity in truth requires that we know and understand, acknowledging and respecting the specific competence of every level of knowledge. This does not exclude charity, either. “Human knowledge is insufficient, and the conclusions of science cannot indicate by themselves the path towards integral human development” (#30). “Love is rich in intelligence, and intelligence is full of love” (#30).

In other words, moral evaluation and scientific research must go hand in hand. A good example of this is the debate over the use of embryonic stem cells and cloning. Often the proponents of no or little restrictions in this type of research parade out potential promises of this research in curing diseases, without any reflections on the morality of the research. Often the mainstream media paints the Church as being against stem cell research, when in fact the Church has supported most research using stem cells, just not those studies that wish to destroy human embryos to obtain the stem cells; in other words destroys one human life in order to do research to help others. Too much science is done today with the rejection of metaphysics and rejection of theology as another form of knowledge. The Holy Father warns, “Without the guidance of charity in truth, this global force could cause unprecedented damage and create new divisions within the human family” (#33).

Since this encyclical is commemorating the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum Progressio, this chapter basically summarizes the main points of that encyclical. Pope Benedict XVI discusses how while, Populorum Progressio was certainly a fruit of the Second Vatican Council, it would be wrong to see it as a “break” from the Church’s social teaching prior to the Council. In fact, he clearly disagrees with the whole attitude that the Council marked a radical change in the Church. Rather he sees it as flowing from the “Tradition of the apostolic faith,” to address the issues of our times. “The Church’s social doctrine illuminates with an unchanging light the new problems that are constantly emerging” (#12; picking up a theme from John Paul II’s encyclical, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis #3).

From the vision of the Council, Pope Paul VI set out to convey two important truths. First, the whole Church, in all her being and action (whether she is proclaiming, celebrating, or performing acts of charity), is engaged in promoting integral human development. However, the Church needs a climate of freedom in order to bring all this energy to the advancement of humanity and the promotion of universal fraternity. Unfortunately the Church’s freedom is often impeded; whether through persecution or even simply reducing her public presence to just her charitable activities.

The second truth that Pope Paul VI conveyed is that “authentic human development concerns the whole of the person in every single dimension” (#11). This includes the spiritual/religious dimension which gives us the perspective of eternal life. We must recognize that Man does not develop through his own powers, nor can development be simply handed to him. Even the institutions that we create are not enough, because integral human development is primarily a vocation. As such, it involves the free assumption of responsibilities in solidarity with everyone else. It requires the recognition that human development NEEDS God, because we cannot bring about our own salvation. Without this recognition, any attempt of development dehumanizes the human person.

The Holy Father then demonstrates how these themes are also picked up, and developed in different ways, in other writings of Paul VI. Importantly, Paul VI recognized that all these social questions had really become worldwide. He also saw that technology, while bringing the possibility of much good in promoting human development, had serious limitations; it should be viewed as an ambivalent tool, at the service of the human striving for truth and meaning, but incapable of providing that truth and meaning in itself.

Even Man himself cannot, on his own, supply the ultimate meaning of his existence. That is only possible through the transcendent call, vocation, from the Mystery. The Mystery provides Man with responsible freedom, with is presupposed in integral human development. In addition to freedom, integral human develop also requires a respect for its truth. It is a call to seek the “more.” The essential quality of ‘authentic’ development is that it must be ‘integral.’ In other words it “has to promote the good of every man and of the whole man” (Populorum Progressio #14).

Lastly, the view of development as vocation brings charity into the central place of that development. “As society becomes ever more globalized, it makes us neighbors, but does not make us brothers. Reason, by itself, is capable of grasping the equality between men and of giving stability to their civic coexistence, but it cannot establish fraternity. This originates in a transcendent vocation from God the Father, who loved us first, teaching us through the Son what fraternal charity is” (#19).

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Now that I have finished Is it Possible to Live this Way? Vol. 1: Faith by Msgr. Luigi Giussani, I am turned my attention to Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent encyclical, Caritas in Veritate or in English, Charity in Truth. I am reading the edition put out by Ignatius Press, as pictured above, however since there are several editions of the encyclical (including just downloading the PDF), I will use the paragraph numbers which will remain the same across editions, instead of the page numbers when making references to the text.

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, has been one of my favorite writers in theology for a long time. While most certainly a scholar, I find his writing very easy to understand. I believe it is because he does not just caught up in his head, but he writes from his heart: from the unity of his person. He writes from his experience. Now, while I do not know if he is a member of Communion and Liberation, I do know that he has been very close to the Movement for quite some time. He preached at Msgr. Guissani’s funeral Mass, and shortly after he was elected Pope he asked for members of Memores Domini, basically the secular institute of the Movement (they are lay men and women who live in community after making promises of chastity, obedience and poverty, while working in the world), to move into the Apostolic Palace to do the housekeeping, but mostly so he could join them for “School of Community” as often as his schedule would allow. I believe it is his living the Method of CL that allows him to write so well from his own experience so that we can see what he is talking about in our own experience.

Right from the start, His Holiness points out that Charity in truth is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. For each of us, truth is God’s plan, and we find our good by adhering closely to God’s plan in our lives. It is only through adherence to God’s plan that we can experience real freedom, which is of course, our destiny. Jesus, through His Incarnation, purifies our search for love and truth, and liberates both from the impoverishment that our humanity brings to it.

In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, the Holy Father started from the truth revealed through St. John, that “God is Love” (1 Jn 4:8), and that everything has its origin in God’s love, everything is shaped by His love, and everything is directed towards God’s love. That charity, our participation in God’s love, is at the very heart of the Church’s social teaching. Charity is what gives this teaching life, for it gives it real substance to the relationship with God and neighbor.

Unfortunately, charity is often misconstrued in modern society is such a way as to empty it of any real meaning. When this happens there is the risk that charity will become detached from ethical living. Charity must remain rooted in the real; it must remain rooted in truth. St. Paul writes, in his Letter to the Ephesians, to speak “the truth in charity” (Eph. 4:15), and this is very important. Truth must be sought, found and expressed in charity. I am sure we have all experienced people being “brutally honest” with us. It is not so much the truth but the way it is expressed to us that can be so painful when done with little concern for our feelings. Or, scientific research, which is a seeking of the truth, most certainly can be so very good in promoting human development, but not when that research is done in a way that does not respect the dignity of the human person (this is why the Church is opposed to embryonic stem cell research; not to stand in the way of the benefits that might come from that research, but because of the truth of the dignity of the human life that is destroyed in that research). However, in this encyclical, Pope Benedict is turning St. Paul’s expression around to emphasize that charity also needs to be understood, confirmed, and practiced in the light of truth. “Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity” (#3). Without this foundation in truth, charity “degenerates” into mere emotionalism. This foundation gives charity freedom from the constraints of emotionalism that takes away charity’s social and relational content, and from the constraints of fideism that deprives charity of its human and universal breathing space.

When we fill charity with truth we can communicate and share it with others. The word “dialogue” comes from two Greek words, dia which means “through” and logos which means “word or reason”. Thus truth allows us to let go of our subjective opinions and impressions, to move beyond our cultural and historical limitations, so that we can come together in the assessment of the value and substance of things. “In the present social and cultural context, where there is a widespread tendency to relativize truth, practicing charity in truth helps people to understand that adherence to the values of Christianity is not merely useful but essential for building a good society and for true integral human development” (#4).

Charity is both received and given. Of course it is first received by us from God, but then we are called to give it to others. The Church’s social teaching is “the proclamation of the truth of Christ’s love in society. This doctrine is a service to charity, but its locus is truth” (#5). As we are first the objects of God’s love, we should then become the subjects of charity by allowing ourselves to become instruments of God’s grace, His charity, so that we can form a network of charity.

This encyclical is marking the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, Populorum Progressio (“The Development of Peoples”), and so it picks up and extends many of the themes of that monumental encyclical. Two of the most important being justice and the common good.

Simply, justice is giving another person what is due them. Every society develops its own system of justice. Charity, however, goes beyond justice while never lacking justice. In justice I give to the other person what is due them. I call the plumber to fix my sink, in justice I pay him for his services. Charity goes beyond justice because in charity I offer what is mine to the other. “I cannot ‘give’ what is mine to the other without first giving him what pertains to him in justice” (#6). So using our plumber analogy, I cannot give him a tip if I have not first paid him the bill I owe him. The tip would be charity, a giving of something that is mine to him. Paying his bill is justice. “On the one hand, charity demands justice: recognition and respect for the legitimate rights of individuals and peoples. . . . On the other hand, charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving” (#6).

All this is a good thing for us. If God was merely just, we would all be in trouble. We are all sinners, and if God treated us merely in justice, according to what we deserve, we would have no chance of heaven. But God is Love/Charity, so He goes beyond justice, offering Himself, quite literally by becoming Flesh and still offering Himself in the Eucharist, for the forgiveness of our sins. Yet, God does not contradict justice; He will judge us. If we are in mortal sin, we will end up in hell, if we still have the stains of our venial sins we will spend time in Purgatory making amends for the effects of our sins (which God has forgiven), and once free from all stain of sin God will bring us into communion with Him in heaven. As God deals with us (both just, but goes beyond justice to be charitable in giving and forgiving us), so we must we deal with one another.

This brings us to the consideration of the common good. If I say that I love someone, then naturally I desire the good for the person I love, and I will even take steps to help secure for them the good. We are all called to love not just this person and that one, but all people. Therefore there is a good that is linked to living in society, and we call that the common good. To both desire and strive for the common good is a requirement of both justice and charity. “The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them” (#7).

“The Church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim ‘to interfere in any way in the politics of States’. She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance, for a society that is attuned to man, to his dignity, to his vocation. Without truth, it is easy to fall into an empiricist and skeptical view of life, incapable of rising to the level of praxis because of a lack of interest in grasping the values — sometimes even the meanings — with which to judge and direct it. Fidelity to man requires fidelity to the truth, which alone is the guarantee of freedom (cf. Jn 8:32) and of the possibility of integral human development” (#9).

One of the sites that I often go to get ideas, mostly illustrations, for my homilies is www.epriest.com.  For example, the information and quote that I had in my homily for the Epiphany about Annie Johnson Flint, I got from that site.  They had some fascinating information concerning the Star of Bethlehem on their site, which was just too much to share in a homily, but I thought I would put it here on my blog.  What follows is all from the www.epriest.com website, just edited and paraphrased by me.

Who were these Magi, these Wise Men from the east?  We know what their coming meant, theologically speaking – it shows that Jesus Christ was not just another Jewish prophet.  The Magi were “from the east” – they were not Jews.  And yet, they came to worship Jesus.  This shows that Christ was the promised Savior of the entire world, of both the Jews and the Gentiles.  But that doesn’t really tell us much about the Magi themselves, or about their star-inspired adventure.  Is that adventure just a myth, as non-believers claim?  Is it just a mystery that we can’t really understand, as many Christians believe?  Or does the Magi’s discovery and journey have something more to tell us?

A lawyer and law professor named Frederick Larson recently applied his legal logic to this very question.  Professor Larson studied St Matthew’s description of the Magi’s adventure and discovered a group of specific, measurable characteristics having to do with the star of Bethlehem.  Then he used modern astronomical know-how to search for a non-mythical and non-mysterious explanation.  His investigation could never have been done before modern times, because it required computer technology.  With computer software, you can recreate what the night sky looked like on any date in history, from any point on the earth’s surface.  When Professor Larson started doing that in search of the Star of Bethlehem, he discovered three things that can give all of us a whole new appreciation for today’s feast of the Epiphany.  [Note: Professor Larson has produced an excellent DVD explaining in detail some of the points used in this expositional homily. He also gives parish and church presentations on his findings. More information is at www.bethlehemstar.net]

The first thing he discovered had to do with the Magi themselves.  He looked at other references to the term “Magi” or “wise men” in the Bible.  Then he looked up references in other ancient literature.  He discovered that Magi were, basically, the “scientists” of the ancient world.  Quasi-scientists, from our perspective, since they didn’t have the benefit of the modern scientific, experimental method.  But even so, they did make a rational, logical study of philosophy, medicine, and the natural world – including the stars.  They were like the scholars and professors of ancient times.  But instead of working in universities, they usually worked for kings.  A king would finance his own group of scholars, using them as consultants and translators, and also to enhance his kingdom’s reputation.

One group of these scholars revered throughout the ancient world was the Chaldean Magi, based in the city of Babylon, just south of Bagdad, in modern Iraq.  This school was already well-established 600 years before Christ, when the prophet Daniel was exiled from Jerusalem.  The King of Babylon at the time forced Daniel and a few companions, some of Israel’s most promising scholars, to join his school of Magi.  There they studied, learned, did amazing deeds, and even kept their faith in the one, true God, as the Book of Daniel describes.

The prophet Daniel never returned to Jerusalem.  He lived his whole, long life as a top-scholar and royal adviser among Babylon’s Magi, where he not only learned from others, but also shared Jewish history, prophecy, and beliefs.  It is not unreasonable, therefore, to think that his prophesies were known, studied, and passed down through the generations by the Magi there.  And if that’s the case, it would make a lot of historical sense for St Matthew to tell us that the wise men “from the east” had seen signs of the Savior’s birth and come to worship “the newborn King of the Jews.”

That is a reasonable, interesting, and enlightening explanation of who the Magi may have been, but it doesn’t explain the star of Bethlehem.

For that, Professor Larson needed to put modern astronomy to work.  He programmed his software to show what the stars would have looked like in Babylon in the year 3 BC.  He knew the star of Bethlehem couldn’t be a shooting star, or a super nova, or even a comet.  Those things would have been obvious to everyone, and yet, King Herod and his advisers were astonished by the Magi’s news.  King Herod even asked when the star had appeared – so it couldn’t have been an obviously dramatic phenomenon.

Instead, it must have been something extraordinary inside the ordinary – something that would be truly remarkable, but that only the expert Magi would have noticed. vDid anything like that occur in the sky, in the year 3 BC?  Yes.  That September, the Planet Jupiter, the brightest planet in the night sky, followed its normal retrograde motion back and forth, but this time that motion created an elliptical, crown-like pattern above the star known as Regulus.  The Magi would have known Jupiter as the King Planet – the brightest and biggest planet.  And the name “Regulus” also means “king”.  The King Planet giving the King Star a coronation – the first coincidence.

At that time and place, this unusual conjuncture occurred inside the constellation known as Leo, or the Lion.  The Magi would have recognized the Lion as the Biblical symbol for the Israelite tribe of Judah.  And the Old Testament prophesies predicted that the Messiah would be born of the tribe of Judah – the second coincidence.

Also at that time, the constellation that rose in the east after Leo was Virgo – the Virgin.
And right at the feet of the constellation, at that particular moment, was the new crescent moon, the “birthing” moon.  Another Old Testament prophecy predicted that the Messiah would be born of a Virgin – coincidence number three.

Together, these starry coincidences linked three concepts: King, Jewish, and Birth – the King of the Jews being born.

Nine months later, things got even more interesting.  In June of the year 2 BC, the Planet Jupiter, the King Planet, was no longer in conjunction with the King Star, Regulus.  Instead, on the horizon of the western sky, Jupiter was having an even more spectacular rendezvous.  Jupiter came so close to the Planet Venus that their light merged, becoming the brightest light in the night sky – the brightest the Magi would have ever seen.  And the Magi, along with the rest of the pagan world, knew the planet Venus as the Mother Planet – the icing on the cake.

If at that point the Magi had begun their journey, by the time they reached Jerusalem the orientation of the Jupiter-Venus conjunction would have changed.  Looking up from Jerusalem, the Magi would have seen it in the south – the exact direction of Bethlehem.  Also at that time, Jupiter’s retrograde motion made it appear – relative to the position of the other stars – to have stopped in its tracks, just as St Matthew says.

Here is a historical and scientific hypothesis that not only doesn’t contradict the Biblical evidence regarding the star of Bethlehem and the journey of the Magi, but actually sheds new light on it.

The theory means that unbelievers can’t just dismiss the star as a Christian myth.  It also means that we believers shouldn’t hide comfortably behind a vague and quaint mystery.  Instead, this new insight into the star of Bethlehem gives us a deeper understanding and appreciation of our God.

The coincidences witnessed by the Magi were not miracles.  They did not suspend the normal laws of nature.  On the contrary, the clockwork regularity of the planets and stars was perfectly respected.  And this is the most astonishing fact of all.  It shows that from the beginning of time, when God set that clock in motion, he already foresaw Christmas Day.  It shows that God’s highest priority is us and our salvation.  The universe itself is centered on Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, our Savior, our Redeemer, our Friend.

And we know him. He has revealed himself to us through the Church, just as he revealed himself to the Magi through the star.  Even more – he gives himself to us even more astonishingly: in the Eucharist, a gift so wonderful the Magi could never have conceived of it.

The God who guides the entire universe, who guided the Magi to Bethlehem, wants also to guide our lives – just because he loves us, and he knows we need his help.

This has been a particularly busy week, here in the parish. Last night we hosted a concert, “A Classic Fall Night.” This has been a dream of Fr. Mick, the administrator, to have several of his friends who sing opera come and give a concert. I was a lot of work to put together. Thankfully, the parishioners here at St. Theresa’s are very generous with their time and talent, so we had a lot of help. We sold over 800 tickets, and raised close to $9000 for our new parish center.

As I mentioned, Fr. Mick has several friends who have trained as classical singers, who have sung in operas around the world. They very generously agreed to come to perform. In addition, we have some tremendously talented people here in the parish, so we augmented the program with our “local” talent — a 15-year-old self-taught prodigy on the organ, a 14-year-old flutist, and a brother (12 years old) and sister (14 years old) who are very talented singers (the young lady is also incredibly talented on the Celtic Harp, having won the US National competition this past year, and finished 4th at the International competition in Ireland). It really turned into the cultural event of the year here in Tuckerton/Little Egg Harbor. People were talking about it for weeks. It was a smashing success. Oh yeah, Bishop Smith attended as well.

I say all this by way of an excuse. I did not write my homily this week. Of course I prayed over the readings, and looked at various commentaries, and I knew what I wanted to preach about. I just never got a chance to actually sit down and write it out. I had a few notes, and preached off the cuff. So what follows is my attempt to reproduce what I preached on; the fruits of my contemplation.

Jesus Christ makes an unique, and unambiguous claim, namely that He is the King of all the Universe, the King of everything that exists. He does not claim to be one wise man among many, nor one philosopher among many. He does not claim to be just a good teacher, or exceedingly compassionate and generous person. No, Jesus Christ make the claim that He is the King of all the Universe, that all nations will come before Him to be judged, that all the angels in heaven make up His royal court, and that He holds in His hands the eternal destiny of every man and woman of ALL time.

There is no other way of understanding today’s Gospel reading. Now, that means that we face an important decision in deciding what to think about Jesus. Either we accept His claim of being Christ the King, the King of all life and history, or we must conclude that Jesus was a madman. He is either the most sane person the world has ever known, or He is a lunatic who is completely out of touch with reality.

Bill Maher, the comedian — or at least he is claims to be a comedian, though I personally have never found him to be funny but rather just a very angry man — has gone public as to his decision concerning Jesus’ claim. Thinking himself an important social commentator, Bill Maher put out a movie about a month or two ago, called Religulous, in which he says that anyone who believes in God is a complete fool. For about 2-hours in the film, Mr. Maher mocks anyone who claims that they believe in God, in general, and Jesus in particular. Mr. Maher thinks that the story of Jesus is just a plagiarized retelling of the ancient Egyptian myth about the god Osiris. In the myth, Osiris dies each fall, but each spring comes back to life making the land fertile. For Bill Maher belief in Jesus is ridiculous; at best Jesus was a good teacher, but was essentially a madman because of His claims to be God

So, is Bill Maher right? We have to look at the evidence in order to make a reasonable decision. The first thing that we notice is that Jesus is nothing like Bill Maher’s example of Osiris. Like all of these ancient myths, no one claims to have been alive when Osiris was killed and then came back to life. All of these myths occur long before there were any human beings. Jesus, on the contrary, was an historical person. Even His enemies acknowledged that Jesus actually existed. He was born at a particular time in history. He spoke and did certain actions. There are just so many witnesses, even those who did not accept Jesus’ claim to be the only-begotten Son of God, who attest to these words and actions of Jesus.

So, I really do not think that there can be any serious thoughts to Jesus just being a myth. But was He just a madman? Has any other lunatic or madman ever founded an organization or movement that has not only lasted, but grown for 2000 years? And during all that time, the followers of Jesus have stayed faithful to Him; not just to His teaching, but to Him, in a personal way. Countless number of men and women have completely dedicated their lives to Jesus, often leaving all behind to follow Him. Thousands have followed Jesus so closely, and had so much faith in His claim and promise to His followers, that they willingly died for Jesus.

Looking at this evidence, it seems apparent that the claims of Jesus are true. He is the co-eternal Son of God. God, the Father, did love the world so much that He sent His only-begotten Son into the world. In fact, God continues to so love the world that His Son, Jesus, continues to be present among us. Jesus is the Christ, He is our King, and the King of all the world. As the Second Vatican Council states; “Christ is the Lord and goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the fulfillment of all its yearning” (Gaudium et spes, #45).

As His followers, we share in the uniqueness of Christ Jesus. We see this uniqueness in today’s Gospel. It shows just how united Jesus’ two great commandments — to love God with all our hearts, minds and soul, and to love our neighbors as ourself. Jesus says in todays Gospel that what we either do, or fail to do, for the least of our brothers and sisters we fail to do to our brothers and sisters, we either do or fail to do for Him. When we fail to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked, visit the sick we fail to see Jesus, our King, right there in our midst. When we do feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, cloth the naked and give compassion to the sick we are saying “Yes, Jesus, I see you! You are my King!” It is not enough to be nice. As followers of Christ, we are called to be holy. To be holy is to live the fact that Jesus Christ is our King.

We cannot sit on the fence forever. We need to make the choice. Do we accept Jesus’ claim to be our King, and the King of all the world, or do we see Him as a madman? We are called, as followers of Christ, to boldly declare our belief that Jesus Christ is our King to all the Bill Mahers of the world.

[His Excellency Robert Morlino, Bishop of Madison, WI]

One of the women with whom I worked, at my last assignment, is a good friend of Bishop Robert Morlino, of Madison, WI.  I think her husband and the bishop went to school together.  In any case, she first shared a recording of one of the bishop’s homilies, and I was very impressed with the context of his message.  Since then I have tried to follow whenever one of Bishop Morlino’s homilies appear online somewhere, and I have continued to be impressed by what a genuine shepherd he is in witnessing to the love of Jesus Christ.  I just came across a homily that he must have given in September of this year; actually the day that Senator Biden appeared on TV and gave his very poor understanding of the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion.  It is worth a listen, so I am sharing (I hope; the technology part often gets me in trouble) a link to a recording of Bishop Morlino’s Homily (HTML has conquered me again; I cannot figure out how to create the link to play the mp3 here, so instead the link will take you to the website where the mp3 is).  I pray for good shepherds like Bishop Morlino everyday. 

[These are reflections I made to our 7th & 8th grade Religious Education Classes]

A Reading from the Book of Genesis: (Gen. 18:1-8)

The LORD appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of his tent, while the day was growing hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them; and bowing to the ground, he said: “Sir, if I may ask you this favor, please do not go on past your servant. Let some water be brought, that you may bathe your feet, and then rest yourselves under the tree. Now that you have come this close to your servant, let me bring you a little food, that you may refresh yourselves; and afterward you may go on your way.” “Very well,” they replied, “do as you have said.” Abraham hastened into the tent and told Sarah, “Quick, three seahs of fine flour! Knead it and make rolls.” He ran to the herd, picked out a tender, choice steer, and gave it to a servant, who quickly prepared it. Then he got some curds and milk, as well as the steer that had been prepared, and set these before them; and he waited on them under the tree while they ate.

1. Tonight we are going to learn something about the Most Holy Trinity. To begin with, the Trinity is the most central Mystery of our Faith. Being a Mystery, even if we were to discuss it for a million evenings, we would never be able to say all that there is to know about the Trinity; so tonight we are just scratching the surface.

2. In discussing the Trinity, I am going to give you each a gift, that we are going to look at for our reflection. It has a copy of a famous icon, “The Most Holy Trinity,” by a Russian monk named Andrei Rublev, written in 1410. Rublev’s icon of the Trinity was unlike any other icon of the Trinity up to that point because he used the passage from the Book of Genesis that I just read to you as the text to base his icon.

3. One of the key points that Rublev picked up in that passage is that while Abraham looks up and sees three men standing nearby, when Abraham speaks to them he says, “Sir” the singular, and not “sirs” the plural. As Rublev correctly understood this indicates the most basic characteristic of the Trinity; while there are three Divine Persons, there is only one God. In the icon, this is indicated by three main things:

   1. First, while the icon is rectangular, when you look at it, there seems to be a circle around the three central figures. This unseen, but present circle, indicates the Divine Love that is the very essence of God and that binds the Three distinct Persons. The Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the Fruit of the Love.

   2. Second, all three figures have the same face; again, indicating their one Divine Nature as Three distinct persons.

   3. Lastly, they all are where blue garment, the color of the Heavens in iconography. Yet each wears something that also speaks of their own identity.

4. Now let’s look at each figure to see what we can learn about each of the Divine Persons in the Trinity. Let’s first look at the figure all the way to the right. We can see the blue garment, again representing His divinity, and we see Him also wearing green. While most of us, being from the Western or Roman tradition of the Catholic Church, think of red being the color of the Holy Spirit, in the Eastern tradition of the Church, which Rublev belonged to, the color of the Holy Spirit is green. Now, why do you thing that green would be a color of the Holy Spirit? Have you ever looked closely at a tree during the Springtime and noticed the green of the new leaves? Green is used to represent the new life that the Holy Spirit gives us. This is why in the Creed we refer to the Holy Spirit as the Giver of Life.

   1. Notice that the Holy Spirit touches the table. This indicates the “earthing” of the the Divine life. Think about the following words that are used at Mass, as the priest calls forth the Holy Spirit onto the bread and wine that will become the Body and Blood of Christ, “Lord, You are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness.
Let Your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy….”

   2. Behind the figure of the Holy Spirit is a mountain. Mountains are common places where people have encounters with God. Just remember Moses encountering God in the burning bush on the mountain. Mountains are symbolic of places where heaven and earth come together.

   3. Lastly, the figure is inclined, that is bending forward, gazing towards the figure in the center, who we will turn to next.

5. The figure in the middle is of course wearing a blue garment, indicating His divinity, and He is also wearing a brown garment, representing the earth, and in this case His humanity. This is the figure of Jesus Christ in the icon. Notice that on His brown robe there is a gold stripe. This is a sign of His Kingship.

   1. The figure of Christ Jesus has His hand on the table and is pointing with two fingers. This points out for us that by Jesus’ two natures, being both fully Human and fully Divine, Jesus reveals the Trinity to us.

   2. The figure of Jesus points to a cup of wine. What do you think that this represents? The cup of His blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant between God and human beings.

   3. Behind this figure of Christ is a tree. This tree helps us call to mind several things from Scripture.

      1. First, it can be literally the Tree of Mamre, where the three angelic figures who encountered Abraham rested. This represents the importance of hospitality. Because of his and Sarah’s hospitality, Abraham is rewarded with a son. For the people of Abraham’s time, children were important not only for their own sake, but because they were seen as a way of living eternal life.

      2. The Tree also is there to remind us of the wood of the Cross. The Cross, the tree of death, becomes the tree of eternal life -
lost to humanity by the disobedience of Adam and Eve -
restored to us by the obedience of Jesus.

      3. The tree in the icon also calls to mind the Tree of Life described in the Book of Revelations (22:2) which bears fruit each month, and whose leaves are used for medicine.

   4. The figure of Christ is inclined to draw our gaze to the figure on the left.

6. The figure on the left of course represents the Father. Notice, that while He is also wearing a blue garment, most of it is hidden by His rose colored garment. This represents the fact that God the Father, the Creator of all, cannot be seen by human beings. Rather, as Jesus tells us, it is the Son who reveals the Father. Why is He where a Rose colored garment? When do the priests wear rose colored vestments at Mass? When we are more than half way finished with Advent and Lent, the two penitential seasons of the Church year. Rose is the color of the sky at dawn, just before the sun rises.

   1. The Father has both hands grasping His staff. This is a sign of His authority in heaven and on earth.

   2. Behind the figure of the Father is a house, the dwelling place of God. “In my Father’s House are many mansions – 
I go to prepare a place for you…” What is the promise for you in these words of Jesus?

7. Another important feature of Rublev’s icon, is that he has the three heavenly figures seated at table, with a cup on the table. Clearly this is a sign of Them seated at a meal, but not just the meal that Abraham had fixed for them. It is the meal of the Eucharist. In fact, if you follow the line of the legs of the two figures on the two ends, you will see they form the outline of a chalice. The Eucharist is the sign of the Communion, the oneness, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

8. There is one last aspect of the icon that I would like to point out. Notice that the green robe of the Holy Spirit draped in front of the table, and that there is a piece missing from the table. This is the place for each of us. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, who gives us New Life, we are invited to enter into communion with the Trinity.

Every day the sun rises and the sun sets, yet most of us take it for granted; we do not even notice.  Yet I am sure that all of us can remember a particular sunrise or sunset, one that was particularly beautiful or just meaningful to us, even it it was years ago.  Maybe it was part of a romantic get away with that someone special.  Maybe it was during a dark time of our lives, and it was the sign of light in that darkness.  It was in the beauty of that particular sunrise or sunset that we truly saw the sun for what it is.

In today’s second reading, St. Peter is remember such a special moment.  It had been many years early, and in a now far away land, but St. Peter could still vividly recall that singular moment of beauty when Jesus was Transfigured before him, James and John.  The Apostles already knew that there was something special about Jesus; that was why they followed Him.  Peter himself had already made his great proclamation, “You are the Christ, the Son of God,” yet they still did not fully appreciate who Jesus was.  Then, on that holy mountain, the glory of Christ Jesus was displayed to Peter, James and John and in that beauty they realized the singular presence of Jesus, the God-Man.  While they did not see Jesus always in that way, they could never forget what they had seen, and in remembering, they continued to see more clearly the reality of the Presence that they followed.

The Church gives us the Feast of the Transfiguration to help us remember and continue to recognize the real Presence of Christ Jesus in our lives.  While Jesus lived in history, He still lives among us.  He still walks we us, and we are still called to follow Him.  In remembering the Transfiguration, we recall that we are called to be “con-figured” to Jesus.  We are to recognize His singular, glorious presence in our lives, and be “figured with” Him, so that with St. Paul we can cry out that it is no longer we who live but it is Christ who lives within us.

We remember so that we can recognize now the Presence of the Lord.

“Spe Salvi:  Saved in Hope”
A Presentation to the Hamilton Council of the Knights of Columbus
On the Pope’s Recent Encyclical”
April 28, 2008
Fr. John C. Garrett

In October 2000, I had the privilege of being in Rome for the canonization of St. Katharine Drexel.  There were several persons raised to the Altar of the Saints that day; one of them being St. Josephine Bakhita.

St. Josephine was born in the Sudan, and at the age of 9 she was kidnapped into slavery.  As a slave, she was beaten regularly.  Throughout her entire life she bore 144 scars left from the many times that she was flogged.  Five times she was sold in the slave-markets of Sudan.

In 1882, when she was about 13, she was bought by an Italian merchant for the consul Callisto Legnani, who then took Josephine back with him to Italy.  It was then that she came to know a completely different kind of “master,” and I do not mean Mr. Legnani, who did treat her kindly.  No, Josephine learned about the “master” above all masters; the living God, who was goodness in person.  She came to know that this “master,” the Lord, knew her and loved her.  She came to know that this Lord had been flogged like her, and now awaited her at His Father’s right hand.

In fact, she came to more than just know about Jesus; rather she encountered Him through His disciples, His Church.  From her encounter with Jesus, Josephine came to have hope.  Not just a hope to have a less cruel master, but the great hope.  In her own words, “I am definitely loved, and whatever happens to me — I am awaited by this Love.  And so my life is good.”

In 1890 Josephine was baptized, and in 1896 she took vows as a Canossian Sister.  In addition to working in the sacristy and as the porter, Sr. Josephine promoted the missions, “the liberation that she had received through her encounter with the God of Jesus Christ, she felt she had to extend, it had to be handed on to others, to the greatest possible number of people” (Spe Salvi #3).

Now you might be wondering what does this story about St. Josephine Bakhita have to do with the topic of tonight’s talk, Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Spe Salvi, which is translated, Saved in Hope.  I started with this personal connection to St. Josephine Bakhita because His Holiness holds her up in his encyclical as an example of true Christian hope.

What is hope?  The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes hope as, “the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC #1817).  In developing a deeper understanding of this definition of hope, the Holy Father starts by presenting an analysis demonstrating how throughout much of the Sacred Scriptures, particularly in the New Testament, the word “hope” is often used interchangeably with the word “faith.”  I will not go through all the examples of this from the New Testament that the Holy Father uses to show this — you will have to read the encyclical for that — rather I just want to emphasize the importance of this point.  For many people in our world the word “hope” is equated with the idea of a wish for a better future, but largely cut off from any connection to the present reality of their lives.  The Christian concept of hope is much different.  While certainly looking towards the future, it is not focused on just the “not yet.”  Certainly the Kingdom of Heaven will not come to completion until the end of time, as Christians we are called to start building up the Kingdom of Heaven here and now.  Our faith in Jesus Christ draws the future into the present, so that the present is actually changed.  Life itself is given a new basis.  If we really have hope, we live our lives differently.  As the Holy Father says in the encyclical, “Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future:  it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness.  Only when the future is certain as a positive reality does it become possible to live the present as well” (Spe Salvi #2).

What is Christian hope?  It is to come to know God, the true God.  St. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians says that before they encounter Christ Jesus, through his preaching, they were without hope because they were without God in the world.  Christianity is not a message calling for some kind of social revolution.  Rather Christianity is an encounter with the Lord of Lords, the living God, or the Master above all the other “masters” as St. Josephine Bakhita discovered.

A point emphasized by the Pope is that our encounter with Christ is both informative and performative.  By this His Holiness means that it is not sufficient to know a lot of facts about the Church.  It does not matter if one has memorized a bunch of the doctrines of the Church.  What is essential — that is pertaining to the core or heart of the matter — is the encounter that changes how we now live our lives.  It is not necessarily a changing in “what we are doing” but a change in “how and with what attitude we are doing it.”  As Christians, that is as a person who has encountered the Risen Christ and has formed a relationship with Him, we live as pilgrims:  living in the here and now, the particular circumstances of our lives, while always remembering that our true homeland is heaven.

Why is this encounter with Christ Jesus so profound?  The Holy Father uses two images found on ancient Christian tombs to explain this.  The first image is that of the philosopher, represented on the tombs as Jesus holding a staff and a scroll.  When we think of an image of a philosopher today, we probably think of the stereotypical “absent-minded professor” who seems to be lost in the world of ideas and out of touch with the practical reality of normal life.  This is not the idea of the philosopher in the ancient world.  The philosopher was someone who taught the essential art, the art of living and dying, the art of being authentically human.  The philosopher was seen as a person who really knew what life was all about.  The early Christians clearly saw Jesus as someone who really knew what life was all about, and took seriously His promise, “I have come that you might have life, life to the full.”

The other image from the ancient Christian tombs is one one more familiar to us; Christ as a Shepherd. The image of the shepherd recalls for us the dream of a tranquil and simple life.  In the words of the Holy Father, “The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through:  he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through.  The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his ‘rod and staff comforts me’, so that ‘I fear no evil’ (cf Ps. 23 [22]:4) — this was the new ‘hope’ that arose over the life of believers” (Spe Salvi #6).

The Holy Father asks each of us a fundamental question:  Is the Christian faith for us today a life-changing and life-sustaining hope?  Does it change the shape of our lives?

The Pope then uses the example of the Baptismal Rite as means for exploring this issue.  In the Rite of Baptism, the priest or deacon should meet the child to be baptized with their parents at the door of the church.  Then, after asking the name given to the child, the priest asks, “What do you ask of God’s Church for this child?”  One of the responses that the parents can give is “Faith”, and then the priest asks, “What does faith give you?” and the parents respond “Eternal life.”  This is what baptism is really all about.  It is not just an act of socialization within the community.  It is about receiving the gift of Faith, which is oriented towards Eternal life.

Perhaps the reason so many people seem to reject the Faith today is because they are not attracted to the prospect of eternal life.  The Pope points out that this is due to confusing eternal life with living this life forever.  What we call “life” in everyday language is not real “life.”  Ultimately we do not know what the reality of the blessed life is really like, but there is a knowing in our not knowing.  We know that this blessed life exists because we desire it.  “We do not know what we would really like; we do not know this ‘true life’, and yet we know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven” (Spe Salvi #11).  We want a true life, untouched by death.  This unknown “thing” is the true “hope” which drives us.  It can cause despair if in our pride we are not patient with our not knowing.  The Holy Father describes eternal life as “To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality” (Spe Salvi #12).

The Holy Father then turns to an analysis of the modern world’s critique and deformation of Christian hope.  The most common critique of the Christian concept of hope is that it involves an abandoning of the world to its misery, in order to take refuge in a private form of salvation.  Christian hope is portrayed as being individualistic.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Sin was understood by the early Church Fathers as the destruction of the unity of the human race.  They understood redemption and salvation as the re-establishment of the unity.  In fact the word “community” comes from the Latin “com” which means “with” and “unitas” which means “oneness.”  Thus the redemption and salvation that Jesus won for us begins to take shape in the world through the community of believers, which we call the Church.

It is rather interesting that this critique that the modern world makes of Christian hope — that it is individualistic — really stems from its own deformation of Christian hope.  The basis of the modern age is the correlation of experiment and method to arrive at an interpretation of nature in conformity with its laws.  Everyone can see that Man’s dominion over the world has become disorder (as Christians we would say it is because of the Fall), and up until the modern age it was expected that what was lost by the Fall would be recovered (redeemed) by faith in Jesus Christ.  However, with the modern age came the idea that redemption/recovery of the lost unity and dominion will only come through scientific discovery that is put into practice (what we might call a short definition of “technology”).  In doing this, religious faith is not denied explicitly, rather it is just made a purely private matter that is irrelevant for the world.  Hope becomes “faith in progress.”  Just consider the example of all the “promises” made on behalf of embryonic stem cell research — if only the religious fanatics would stop bringing their religious faith into the public square we are promised we will have cures for all the worse diseases in the world.  They rather not be bothered by the “inconvenient truth” that other, more ethical means that respect the dignity of the human person are available, and have already demonstrated to be more useful than stem cells from embryos.

This “progress” which we are now expected to put our faith in is the growing dominion of “scientific” reason.  Progress is the overcoming of all forms of dependency so that we can achieve “perfect” freedom.  Both “freedom” and “reason” are seen by the modern world as being in conflict with religious faith.  This “faith in progress” develops not just in natural science but in political “science” that calls for new structures of society that will lead to freedom; i.e. communism.

Pope Benedict asks what does this progress really mean?  Certainly scientific and technological progress offers new possibilities for good, but they also offer possibilities for evil; e.g., nuclear weapons, the “Final Solution” that attempted to rid the world of those races that were “scientifically” seen as inferior.  Clearly these scientific and technological developments need to be checked with ethical development.  Moral growth is also needed.  We need a criterion of measurement in order to tell good from evil, and when we look at every human criteria all are found lacking.  Something infinitely Good, True, and Beautiful is needed.  We discover that Man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope for discovering the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.  Faith and reason are not in conflict with each other, rather they need each other in order for each to fulfill their mission.

Incremental progress is only possible in the material sphere.  While we can build on the moral treasury of the past, moral decision making is always new and free.  Science can help, but it cannot redeem Man.  Man is redeemed by Love, which implies a relationship, and unconditional Love provides true certainty in life.  An honest looking at our relationships with other people shows us that they cannot provide this unconditional love we need for certainty.  No matter how hard people try, we human beings are all finite.  Hope can only be founded on our relationship with He who is Goodness itself, Truth itself, Beauty itself.  Hope is our relationship with He who is the source of life; God, who embraces the totality of Reality.  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39).

Finally the Holy Father discusses several settings for learning and practicing hope.  Unsurprisingly, the first setting is prayer.  St. Augustine once said that “prayer is the exercise of desire.”  Man was created for God, however our hearts are too small for the greatness to which they are destined.  God stretches our hearts.  God always listens to us even when others do not.  Prayer is not a stepping out of history into a private happiness.  Rather it must be incarnate, it must be rooted in our time and place.  While prayer is personal, an encounter with God, yet it is guided by the public, liturgical prayer of the whole Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ.

Another setting for learning about and practicing hope is action and suffering.  While we cannot “build” the kingdom of God by our own efforts, we can receive the grace of God’s Kingdom.  We must open ourselves to allow God to enter us.  We must open ourselves to truth, love, beauty and goodness so that we will do God’s will.  While we should do what we can to banish suffering, we must have the humility to recognize that it is not within our power to completely banish suffering.  By accepting our finiteness we open ourselves to God’s infiniteness.  “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer….  A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘com-passion’ is a cruel and inhuman society” (Spe Salvi #38).

Allow me to end with the invocation that the Holy Father ends the encyclical, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, our Mother, teach us to believe, to hope, to love with you.  Show us the way to his Kingdom! Star of the Sea, shine upon us  and guide us on our way!” (Spe Salvi #50).

Broken Dreams

As children bring their broken toys
With tears for us to mend,
I brought my broken dreams to God
Because He was my friend.
But then instead of leaving Him
In peace to work alone,
I hung around and tried to help
With ways that were my own.

At last I snatched them back and cried,
“How could you be so slow”
“My child,” He said, “What could I do?
You never did let go.”

Robert J. Burdette

I first heard the poem I just read, written by Robert Burdette, many years ago when I was in graduate school. As I thought about what to say in this talk, the poem came to my mind again as an example of how we often lack trust in God. Our Lord revealed to St. Faustina that “Sins of distrust wound Me most painfully” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1076). What does it mean to trust in the Lord, and why would our distrust in Him wound Him so much?

The Oxford American Dictionary defines trust as “firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability or strength of someone or something.” While some would like to define trust as an irrational belief in someone or something, arrived at without investigating the matter, I believe that the act of trusting someone is a very profound act of reason. While we might not be able to prove with mathematical or scientific precision why we trust the people we do, our trust is earned, often through our experience with the person or thing that we place our trust in. I trusted that my car was going to start when I had to run over here to Roman Hall after saying Mass. Why? Because for the past three years since I have had my car it has always started when I got in and pushed the start button. When I arrived I trusted that Msgr. Arnister was not going to shock me with a joy-buzzer when I shook his hand, because in the years that I have known him he has always been a friendly, gracious person. Because of my past experience with Msgr. Arnister, and my car, I was able to place trust in them; that they would be reliable and true.

While these may seem like somewhat silly examples, I have come to realize that in order to know God we need to look closely at our experiences. Otherwise God becomes too abstract; just a theoretical construct, and the Christian life becomes just following a set of rules. This is what St. Paul wrote so much against in his letters when he spoke about becoming free from the Law. St. Paul realized that the Law had become mere moralism and not a sharing in the Divine Life. Yet God is not abstract, He is not distant. In fact He loves us so much that He demonstrated His personal commitment to our salvation by sending His only-begotten Son in the flesh. Jesus is the God-Man, He took on flesh so that He could walk with us, touch us, talk with us. In other words by becoming flesh, Jesus became someone that people could experience, and through their experience with Jesus they could come to see that He was reliable, true and had the strength and ability to establish the Kingdom of God as He claimed.

Yet the ability to have a personal experience with Jesus did not end with His death on the cross, because He rose from the dead. And it did not end with His ascension into Heaven because He promised that He would remain with us until the end of time. Jesus remains with us in His Church, which cannot be reduced to being merely an institution or building or organization. Rather the Church is a Life. It is the Life of Jesus. The various members or parts of His body are joined together and enlivened by His Holy Spirit, and it is through our encounters and experiences with the Church that we continue to encounter and experience Christ Jesus. And for certain blessed souls, Jesus expresses this continued encounter through extraordinary ways. St. Faustina was one such soul, and that is why her diary is more like a dialogue with Jesus who speaks to her as she speaks with Him.

As beautiful as her diary is, even as beautiful as the New Testament is, if we merely read them as just something disconnected from us, then they will not help us trust Jesus. Rather all spiritual reading is meant to provoke us to examine our own experiences so that we recognize our own encounters with Christ. It is only through looking at our experiences with God that we will develop trust in Him.

So, why should we trust in God?

Let’s just look at our most fundamental experience. We experience ourselves as existing; we have being. This implies that there was a time when we did not exist, when we did not have being, and all that means that we were created. If there are creatures, of which we are each one, then there must be a Creator, and our faith tells us that God is that Creator. When God revealed His name to Moses through the burning bush, He said that His name is “I AM.” God’s name is the verb “to be” which indicates that He is the source of all being, of all existence. So our encounters with all the creation around us sings of the Glory of God our Creator.

Next we might ask, what kind of Creator is God? Did He just create everything and then dusted off His hands and let things run on their own without taking much interest in what became of His creation? Starting with the Old Testament we see that this is not the case. That even when we lost God’s friendship because of our disobedience, He continued to care for humanity; He continued to reveal His will to human beings so that we would know the way of His Divine Life. This indicates that God loves us. In fact St. John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, reveals that God not only loves but He IS love. Have you ever experienced love in your life? All of us can surely recall experiences of love in our lives, and when we ponder those experiences we recognize God’s presence in the midst of all that love. Since God is love, where ever love is there is God.

God has revealed to us, both through the prophets, and most perfectly by the Incarnation, that His love is that of a Father for His children. God is our Heavenly Father, and the source of all true fatherhood. So we can look at our experiences with our own fathers as experiences of God.

Remembering my father, I know that he put his family above his own desires. He worked very hard to provide for us. Oh sure, there were times when my sisters or I wanted the latest fad and we didn’t get it, and we felt disappointed and angry. However as we look back on it, we see that most of the time we did not really NEED what we wanted, and that Dad had our long term happiness in mind. As we matured, Dad allowed us to make more of our own decisions. I am sure that we sometimes didn’t make what he thought was the best decision — I can remember making a bad decision involving a french curve — but Dad allowed us to experience the consequences of our decisions, protecting us from those that would overwhelm us, so that we would learn from them. And of course he was always there for us, and quick to forgive.

Now many people have not had very positive relationships with their fathers, but we can all look at our relationship with our Heavenly Father. He does have plans for us. He said to the prophet Jeremiah, and says to us, “For I know the plans I have for you; plans to prosper you . . . plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer. 29:11). I am sure that Jeremiah did not see clearly all that God’s plans had for him and for the Chosen People, but he trusted. God also gives us free will, and often we abuse that freedom by choosing sin, choosing to follow our own will and not God’s. Yet God does not turn His back on us. He continues to call us to repentance, and He continues to offer us His loving forgiveness, and we call this loving forgiveness His Mercy.

Think of the good things in your lives. Think about the fact that you did not have to search the gutter for food this morning. That you have warm clothes. That you were able to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. In all these things we see how God is providing for us.

The greatest gift that our Heavenly Father has given to us is His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus demonstrated the infinite love of God by offering everything that He is for us, by His passion and death. All these experiences demonstrate that God the Father and Jesus are reliable, they are true, and they are able to provide for our happiness, so that we can have life to the full. If there was going to be anyone that we trusted it really needs to be God, for He has demonstrated His trustworthiness more than anyone. Yet, at times we still distrust.

Jesus said to St. Faustina, “Distrust on the part of souls is tearing My insides . . . despite My inexhaustible love for them they do not trust Me. Even My death is not enough for them. Woe to the soul that abuses these gifts” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #50). Why do we tear at the insides of Jesus by not trusting in Him?

There are two principles reasons why we often lack trust in God — pride and fear. Since pride is the root of all evil, let us first look at it, and how it impedes our trust in God. And let us turn again to the poem that I read at the start. As our loving Father, God wants us to bring our needs to Him, including our broken dreams. That is an initial act of trust, because we would not bring our needs to someone if we did not think that they could help us. “But then instead of leaving Him In peace to work alone, I hung around and tried to help With ways that were my own.” How often do we do just that? This is our own pride acting up, thinking that we know better than God what will make us truly happy. It is a distrust in God’s plan; we become impatient and want things done our way and according to our timeline.

We need to keep in mind that we are finite, and we do not know everything, whereas God is all-knowing. It is fitting that today is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, for in today’s Gospel reading we have a perfect example of trusting in God’s plan. While we do not know for sure, it is likely that Mary was a teenager of 14 or 15 when the Angel Gabriel came to announce God’s plan to her. Gospel account says that Mary was troubled by his greeting and wondered what it meant. I am sure that part of her thought that all this was happening too fast; not according to her timeline. She had planned to get married first, and then have a child. Yet Mary’s experiences with God assured her that He was her Heavenly Father and that she could trust Him. She knew that God’s will, while mysterious to her, was so much superior to her own. So in trust she answered, “May it be done to me according to your word.”

The other reason we often distrust God is fear. I think that is why Jesus says over and over again throughout the Gospels, “Do not be afraid.” Often when we see God’s will for us we also see the difficulties, struggles and even persecutions that will be involved and we are afraid. We don’t think we can do what God is asking of us. We might not understand why He is asking it of us. Can we really trust that God will not abandon us in our difficulties and need?

I think we need only to look to the Garden of Gethsemane to see how to respond to God’s will when we are afraid. Jesus was afraid. In His human nature He was afraid of the torture, suffering and death that His Father was calling Him to endure. He asked His Father to let the cup of His passion to pass away from Him if it was possible, but He did not allow His fear to destroy His trust in His Father. He said in the end, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”

We are not often called to face the persecution and suffering that Christ faced in dying on the Cross for us, yet often we allow our fear to undermine our trust in God. We are afraid that others might think less of us if we say “no” to some activity that we know is contrary to the Divine Life. We fear losing friends and family if we talk about God too much, if we invite others to join us at Mass, or bring up the Church’s teachings on some of the issues we are facing in our lives. Often we are afraid of giving up the sin in our lives because we have become too comfortable with it. Or we are afraid of Christ’s Mercy.

Part of the message of Divine Mercy entrusted to St. Faustina is for all of us to utterly place our trust in God. Jesus said to her, “When a soul approaches Me with trust, I fill it with such an abundance of graces that it cannot contain them within itself, but radiates them to other souls” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #1074).

In thinking about a title for this talk I decided to call it “Christ makes Himself Dependent on Our Trust.” I took it from the following passage from St. Faustina’s diary, “Suddenly I heard these words in my soul: My daughter, I assure you of a permanent income on which you will live. Your duty will be to trust completely in My goodness, and My duty will be to give you all you need. I am making Myself dependent upon your trust: if your trust is great, then My generosity will be without limit” (Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, #548). Christ makes Himself dependent on US, on our trust. As Jesus depended on Mary and Joseph to care for Him when He was an infant and child, He continues to humble Himself to make Himself dependent on us. He desires to fill the world with His Mercy, with His love. He wants all of us to have life, life to the full. He offers us all good things. Will we trust in Him, even if the road gets difficult and we might need to endure persecution for our faith in Him?

JESUS, I TRUST IN YOU!

[This was a talk that I gave to the Jesus Divine Mercy Ministry of Yardley, PA. They have a monthly day of inspiration at the Roman Hall Restaurant, Trenton, NJ]