Author: Daniel Scofield, MTS

This passage from St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians has always seemed to draw a “side eye” look from couples sitting in the pews and for what many see as a very good reason – the thought that wives are to be submissive to a “dominate” husband who is “head of his wife.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser wonders if the growing sensitivity to gender language and the Christian “discipleship of equals” has suddenly rendered invalid and irrelevant the teaching of Ephesians on the sacrament of matrimony?” He goes on to say that it shouldn’t. Why? Because it requires us to read this passage in the context of the overall letter and understand that this phrasing comes from the honest effort of the English translators to break up a long Greek sentence to make for easier reading. In their attempt to break the sentence into smaller units, the translators chose to repeat the verb from verse 21 of “be submissive” or “be subordinate,” causing many readers to be distracted from the fact that this clause is simply beginning to unfold the mandate of mutual subordination that governs the whole passage. Whatever we want to make of the author’s assumptions about the distinctive roles of the spouses in their relationship, the overriding message is that, in the body of Christ, the marital relationship is utterly transformed into the life of mutual subordination demanded of all baptized disciples. In the end, this passage from Ephesians on marriage simply spelled out the teaching of Jesus that his followers are to be characterized by service to one another and the laying down of life for one another. All disciples are called to seek the highest form of love, “agape love,” which is all about loving “other” simply as other – no strings attached. It is the bedrock of mutual love and is at the heart of the two great commandments that all disciples are bound to. While this saying is difficult, the difficulty has to do mainly with not understanding mutual subordination. And that mutual subordination takes its life from the subordination of each person to Christ. Whatever the role expectations of spouses in a particular culture, baptism into the Christian covenant transmutes them absolutely into this mutual unconditional love commitment.

Eternal life. Where is it? When is it? For a long time, I have thought about eternal life as a life after all my birthdays have run out. For most of my years, I have spoken about eternal life as the “afterlife” or “life after death.” But the older I become, the less interest my “afterlife” holds for me. Worrying not only about tomorrow, next year, and the next decade but even about the next life seems a false preoccupation. Wondering how things will be for me after I die seems, for the most part, a distraction. When my clear goal is the eternal life, that life must be reachable right now, where I am, because eternal life is life in and with God, and God is where I am here and now. The great mystery of the spiritual life—the life in God—is that we don’t have to wait for it as something that will happen later. Jesus says: “Dwell in me as I dwell in you.” It is this divine in-dwelling that is eternal life. It is the active presence of God at the center of my living—the movement of God’s Spirit within us—that gives us the eternal life. The Spirit of Jesus comes to dwell within us so that we can become living Christs [Christians] here and now.      – Henri Nouwen

The Gospel reading for this Sunday hinges on a single phrase: “Son of David.” For the Jews, this title was pregnant with Messianic significance: David’s heir, the one to usher in the everlasting kingdom, the fulfillment of all their longings, was the son of David promised in the Scriptures. But to the Jewish crowd, this was blasphemous, as only the Messiah could be referred to in this way. Imagine you were the blind beggar Bartimaeus, living in the shadows of life, deep in his darkness but with piercingly attuned ears to hear the stories of Jesus’ redemptive power. For him, this is a moment he has been seeking, and he will not be denied. So, he continues to call out, “Son of David, have pity on me.” Jesus hears him and calls to the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus’ clear and simple reply was, “Master, I want to see.” Jesus immediately responds to this request by saying, “Go your way; your faith has saved you.”  How does this story affect each of us today, especially those of us who have felt that our prayers often go unanswered? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that our prayers aren’t always answered as swiftly and directly as we see in today’s reading, but they are always answered, as Jesus assures us, because God does not withhold the Holy Spirit from those who ask for it. If we pray for guidance and support, it will be given us. All of us, at different times in our lives, find ourselves alone, lost, confused, and tempted towards a road that will not lead to life. At such times we need to approach God with a prayer that is shamelessly honest, direct, and humble. Then, we need to wait, in patience and belief that God will place His answer to our prayers before us. We must remember that God responds in ways that align with His will for our lives, not our will. And that is often the rub – testing our ability to wait and to listen for “God’s still small voice” that can come from anyone or anywhere in His creative landscape.

William James wrote: “I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monument of pride.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that this wisdom speaks to the deep, important things that most affect us are usually not big and showy, but tiny, perhaps even imperceptible. Every community or society has a certain visible life that can be seen and whose overt interconnections, to an extent, can be grasped, charted, and written up into textbooks. But, just as with the human body, most of the deep things in a community are under the surface, invisible, silent, available only through another kind of instrument, the intuitive gaze of the mystic, novelist, poet, or artist. And all of this is even more true of the body of Christ, the community of the baptized, the sincere. Most of the important processes there are also invisible. Like any other body, partly this body is visible – physical, historical, something that can be observed from the outside. Historical Christianity, the churches, in their concrete history, are the visible body of Christ – people, institutions, buildings, virtue, and sin enfleshed in history. But the body of Christ is more than meets the physical eye, a billion times more. As in every body, countless, silent, invisible processes are going on beneath. Inside the body of Christ, as in all bodies, there are deadly viruses, an immune system, cancer-cells, and health-carrying enzymes. What’s deepest inside of life is not visible to the naked eye. The union among ourselves in the “communion of saints” is also a presence to each other beyond distance. Inside the body of Christ, we are present to each other and carry each other across the miles. Everything we do, good or bad, affects all the others. To believe this is to be both consoled and challenged. Consoled in knowing that we carry each other in love and union across all distances, even through death. But challenged too in knowing that everything we do, be it ever so private, is either a bad virus or healthy enzyme affecting the overall health of the body of Christ and the family of humanity.

Language is a tremendous feature of our human being and allows us to interpret things, especially as words create a word picture of what we see. A reporter once asked two men at the construction site where a church was being built what each did for a living. The first man replied: “I’m a bricklayer.” The second said: “I’m building a cathedral!”  How we interpret and name an experience largely determines its meaning to us. Philip Rieff writes that we live our lives under a certain “symbolic hedge” within a language and set of concepts by which we interpret our experience. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we can understand our experience within a language and set of concepts that have us believe that things are very meaningful or that they are quite shallow and not very meaningful at all. Experience is rich or shallow, depending upon the language within which we interpret it. For example, we see the language of soul, among other places, in some of our great myths and fairy tales, many of them centuries old. Their seeming simplicity masks a disarming depth. To offer just one example, take the story of Cinderella: The first thing to notice is that the name Cinderella is not an actual name but a composite of two words: Cinder, meaning ashes, and Puella, meaning young girl. This is not a simple fairy tale about a lonely, beaten-down young girl. It’s a myth that highlights a universal, paradoxical, paschal dynamic that we experience in our lives, where, before you are ready to wear the glass slipper, be the belle of the ball, marry the prince, and live happily ever after, you must first spend some prerequisite time sitting in the ashes, suffering humiliation, and being purified by that time in the dust. Thus, there are two ways of understanding ourselves: we can have a job or we can have a vocation; we can be lost or we can be spending our 40 days in the desert; we can be bitterly frustrated or we can be pondering with Mary; or we can be slaving away for a pay check or we can be building a cathedral. Meaning depends a lot on language.

Jesus, at times, makes us sit back and wonder, “What did he just say?” Today, in Luke’s Gospel, the Lord says, “I have come to cast a fire upon the earth; how I wish it were already kindled.” Hmmm, I thought the angels on Christmas morning said that he had come as the Prince of Peace? Jesus is the Incarnation of the God who is nothing but love, but this enfleshment, as Bishop Robert Barron notes, takes place in the midst of a fallen, sinful world. Christ was a sign of contradiction. Our Lord is forewarning his disciples about the contention and division which will accompany the spread of the Gospel. As His disciples, to live a life as Christ taught is to be branded as radical in the eyes of a world obsessed with the material self. Our Baptism is a submersion in Christ’s death, in which we die to sin and are reborn to the new life of grace. Through this new life, we Christians should become set on fire in the same way as Jesus set his disciples on fire. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that Christianity is the only religion that worships the scapegoat, the one who is hated, excluded, spat upon, blamed for everything, ridiculed, shamed, and made expendable. Christianity is the only religion that focuses on imitating the victim and sees God in the one who is surrounded by the halo of hatred. We must be “set on fire” in the same way Jesus set his disciples on fire, with hearts ablaze in love of the marginalized, the sick, the poor, the handicapped, the unborn, the unattractive, the non-productive, and the aged. This is the cross we must lovingly bear in suffering with Christ through the grace of God.

Today’s Gospel from Luke has Jesus telling us that we have been entrusted with much, and much will be expected of us. By the grace of God, we are coheirs with Christ and the Apostles, Jews, and Gentiles, in the promise foretold. We are coheirs in the promise and the tasks and responsibilities given to us. Our eyes have been opened to see all of life differently because of who Jesus is. We are invited to become his light and love with him, through him, and in him. This life of Christ can be difficult. Our addiction to hurry and noise comes, in part, from a desire to keep painful, sometimes overwhelming emotions at bay. We think if we remain busy enough, distracted enough, and scheduled enough, then we don’t have to feel the hurt, the anger, the anxiety, and the grief inside of us. I don’t have to acknowledge how sad, lonely, or scared I am. So, how do we deal with this? Jesus’ reaction is one we should emulate. When faced with adversity, he slipped away to find a place of silence and solitude to be with the Father in prayerful communion. Silence and solitude strip away the masks we wear around others. All of the ways we strive for affirmation and recognition from others are gone when we step into the quiet. Our attempts to justify ourselves through hard work and achievement get tossed aside, and we are left with who we truly are before God. Henri Nouwen writes, “If we really believe not only that God exists but also that he is actively present in our lives—healing, teaching, and guiding—then we need to set aside a time and space to give him our undivided attention.” Silence and solitude create that space to give Jesus our attention, for this is where Jesus meets us with his love and grace.

Today, we celebrate the Memorial of St. John Paul II while we also wrestle with a man who was convicted of capital murder in the death of his child by what authorities now say was “junk science.” John Paul II was the first pope to speak out unequivocally against capital punishment. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that it’s important to note that he didn’t say capital punishment was wrong as he knew we scripturally have the right to practice it. But John Paul II said, in conceding this, that we shouldn’t do it because Jesus calls us to something higher, namely, to forgive sinners and not execute them. That’s magnanimity, being bigger than the moment we’re caught up within. In his moral astuteness, St. Thomas Aquinas said something can be a sin for someone big-hearted, even as it is not a sin for someone who is petty and small of heart. His example was to write that it’s a sin to withhold a compliment from someone who genuinely deserves it because, in doing so, we are withholding from that person some of the food upon which they need to live. Thomas was clear that this is a sin only for someone who is big-hearted, magnanimous, and at a certain level of maturity. Someone who is immature, self-centered, and petty of heart is not held to the same moral and spiritual standards. How is it possible that it isn’t a sin, irrespective of the person? Whether or not something is a sin or not and the seriousness of a sin depends upon the depth and maturity within a relationship. Imagine this: A man and his wife have such a deep, sensitive, caring, respectful, and intimate relationship so that the tiniest expressions of affection or neglect speak loudly to each other. For example, as they part to go their separate ways each morning, they always exchange an expression of affection as a parting ritual. Should either of them neglect that expression of affection on an ordinary morning where there’s no special circumstance, it would be no small, incidental matter. Something large would be being said. Conversely, consider another couple whose relationship is not close, where there is little care, affection, respect, and no habit of expressing affection upon parting. Such neglect would mean nothing. No slight, no intent, no harm, no sin, just lack of care as usual. Yes, some things can be a sin for one person and not for another. We’re invited both by Jesus and by what’s best inside us to become big enough of heart and mind to know that even though biblically we may do capital punishment, we still shouldn’t do it and to know that we’re better human beings when we are bigger than any slight we experience within a given moment.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the most crucial question in our lives, at least during our adult years, shouldn’t be: What must I do to go to heaven, or what must I do to avoid going to hell? It is not that concerns about our own salvation are unimportant or that heaven and hell are unreal; rather, the point is that our deepest motivation has to be to do things for others and not for ourselves. We show our love for God and our intimacy with Jesus by laying down our lives for our neighbor. To dread the loss of heaven and fear the pains of hell can seem like one and the same thing. They’re not. There’s a vast moral distance between dreading heaven’s loss and fearing hell’s pains. Fear of hell is based upon a fear of punishment, and dreading the loss of heaven is based upon a fear of not being a good, loving person. There’s a vast difference between living in fear of punishment and living in fear of not being a good person. We’re more mature and human, and as Christians, when we’re more worried about not being loving enough than when we’re fearful that we will be punished for doing something wrong. The heavenly table is open to all willing to sit down with all.  That’s a line from a John Shea poem that spells out succinctly, I believe, a non-negotiable condition for going to heaven, namely, the willingness and capacity to love everyone and sit down with everyone. It’s non-negotiable for this reason: How can we be at the heavenly table with everyone if, for some reason of pride, wound, temperament, bitterness, bigotry, politics, nationalism, color, race, religion, or history, we aren’t open to sitting down with everyone? Jesus teaches this, too, just in a different way. After giving us the Lord’s Prayer, which ends with the words, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” he adds, “If you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, your Father will not forgive you.” Why can’t God forgive us if we don’t forgive others? Has God arbitrarily singled out this one condition as his pet criterion for going to heaven? No. We cannot sit at the heavenly banquet table if we are still selective about whom to sit down with. If, in the next life, like here in this life, we are selective as to whom we love and embrace, then heaven would be the same as earth, with factions, bitterness, grudges, hurt, and every kind of racism, sexism, nationalism, and religious fundamentalism keeping us all in our separate silos. Let us not continue acting like the brother of the prodigal son, standing outside the Father’s house, excluded by anger rather than by sin. We can only sit at the heavenly banquet when our hearts are wide enough to embrace everyone else at the table. Heaven demands a heart open to a universal embrace.

In the resurrection, God vindicated Jesus, his life, his message, and his fidelity. Jesus entered our world preaching faith, love, and forgiveness, but the world didn’t accept that. Instead, it crucified him and, by that, seemingly shamed his message. The Resurrection asks us to believe what Gandhi affirmed, despite every appearance to the contrary at times, in the end, love does triumph over hatred. Peace does triumph over chaos. Forgiveness does triumph over bitterness. Hope does triumph over cynicism. Fidelity does triumph over despair. Virtue does triumph over sin. Conscience does triumph over callousness. Life does triumph over death, and good does triumph over evil, always. More concretely, it asks us to roll the dice on trust and truth, namely, trusting that what Jesus taught is true. Virtue is not naive, even when it is shamed. Sin and cynicism are naive, even when they appear to triumph. Those who genuflect before God and others in conscience will find meaning and joy, even when they are deprived of some of the world’s pleasures. Those who drink in and manipulate sacred energy without conscience will not find meaning in life, even when they taste pleasure. Those who live in honesty, no matter the cost, will find freedom. Those who lie and rationalize will find themselves imprisoned in self-hate. Those who live in trust will find love. The Resurrection, most forcibly, makes that point. In the end, God has the last word. The resurrection of Jesus is that last word. From the ashes of shame, of seeming defeat, failure, and death, a new, deeper, and eternal life perennially bursts forth. Our faith begins at the very point where it seems it should end, in God’s seeming silence in the face of evil. God’s silence can be trusted, even when we die inside of it. We need to remain faithful in love, forgiveness, and conscience despite everything that suggests they are naive. They will bring us to what is deepest inside of life. Ultimately, God vindicates virtue, love, conscience, forgiveness, and fidelity. God vindicates Jesus and will vindicate us, too, if we remain faithful.