Author: Daniel Scofield, MTS

Jesus recognized the true outcasts, the ones beyond pity. Not only did he love them, but he made them part of his team. He didn’t look for perfection; he looked for comrades. He didn’t wait until they had changed their lives to eat with them; he sat down with them while they were still doing damage. As a tax collector, Matthew would have been held at arm’s length by his family and despised by his neighbors. His co-workers had a reputation for coming up with scams to line their own pockets, and Matthew might have done the same thing himself. So, it’s not hard to imagine him leading a lonely life or trying to use money to make up for the lack of friendship. But then Jesus arrives and offers his invitation, and Matthew follows. The next thing we hear, they are having a meal together with a host of other people like him! Perhaps this is the key: Matthew felt love and acceptance in a way he hadn’t in a long time. Jesus was compassionate. He saw who had been left out and rejected. He let them know that he wanted to be with them. It’s a simple but powerful message: “I want to know you. I’m happy to spend time with you. Let’s have dinner.” This idea of breaking bread together is an affirmation that can change lives. So, who’s coming to dinner with you tonight?

Saint Thomas, commenting on this verse, notes that the person with paralysis symbolizes a “sinner lying in sin, trapped by the sin, unable to move toward the healing power of God. The people choose to accompany the person with paralysis, giving them good advice and leading them to God’s healing grace and mercy.” Bishop Barron says this story affirms God’s forgiveness and healing power. “Even though we are sinners, even though we are hopeless in our hatred and stupidity, even though we had gone (and would still go today) to the limits of killing God’s son, God still loves us and forgives us. We know that nothing can separate us from God’s love because we hear in the greeting of the risen Jesus that every sin can be forgiven.” Have you ever felt weighed down or paralyzed by sin? Then you know that forgiveness is the permission and the power to rise and walk on. Pharisees were blind to the fact that Jesus and the Father were one. So, they missed the entire point of his statement. They missed the real healing, available right in front of them. We don’t have to. We can call on Jesus in our sins and weakness; his love will enable us to rise again.

Michelle Francl-Donnay writes about the challenge we see in the Lord’s voice and the similarity she has experienced in the heralding of glowering clouds, and ponderous stillness gives way to the rustling of leaves. A blink of lightning, a counted pause before the grumble of thunder—I relish those last moments before a thunderstorm breaks. Yet once the storm arrives, I often find myself unnerved, even frightened, by its strength. The howling wind tugs verses of the 29th Psalm from my memory; they swirl past with the leaves ripped from the trees—the Lord’s voice rending the oak tree and stripping the forest bare. Thunderbolts explode in my backyard. The Lord’s voice shakes the wilderness. Frankly, I prefer my thunderstorms at a bit of distance. I wonder if the Gadarenes felt the same way about Jesus. “They begged him to leave,” says Matthew. We are perplexed. Who would ask Jesus to keep his distance? But we did not feel the ground tremble, or taste the dust, as the herd thundered past into the sea. Or imagine what might happen to us if we encounter this man, Jesus, on the road. Have we lost our fear of the Lord? At a distance of two millennia, the stories safely tucked between the covers of the Bible, I suspect we sometimes find it hard to imagine being overwhelmed by the Word, which speaks with such power that water springs up in the desert, and demons flee. Yet those who let themselves be shaken, who allow their hearts to be rent open—who fear the Lord—these are the Lord’s cherished people, lacking nothing. “Desire this?” asks the psalmist. “Come, let me teach you the fear of the Lord.”  

Fear is a powerful emotion. We see that play out in today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew, where the disciples and Jesus encounter a violent storm as they sail. This made me recall our family adventure as I took the family out on a day sail when we lived in Okinawa. I had been sailing for several years and teaching Red Cross Sailing lessons, so I asked the kids if they wanted to go out and see the cargo ships that they said were “parked” on the water. About halfway to the cargo ships, I noticed a small storm on the horizon, and given the changing wind direction, I knew that we could not make it back into port before it hit us. I calmly explained to my wife and children that some rain was coming and we would probably get wet, but everything would be fine. As the storm approached, the wind picked up, and the water got a little rougher. When the rain and wind hit us, the wife and kids were in full “scared for our lives” mode. The squall lasted maybe a couple of minutes. As things settled, I asked if they wanted to continue our journey to see the cargo ships. I failed to notice that our boat was filled with mutinous family members who wished to keel haul me. Their rained-soaked mother’s reply was to stare at me in that “you’ve got to be kidding” look. Thankfully we had no more issues in getting back to the docks. As I talked about this years later with my oldest son and daughter and asked what created the fear they expressed, they responded by saying they were fearful of not knowing what the storm would do to us and how we would get help if the boat capsized. When I asked why they didn’t trust God was with us, my son quickly replied, “Was he mad at you?” I responded, “Why did you say that?” My quick-witted son replied, “Why else did that storm come out of nowhere and almost drown us?” As grown adults, we can now laugh at that adventure and realize, as the disciples did in hearing Jesus’s response to their fear, that we cannot let fear get a hold of our hearts and minds in times of stress. When we face real-life unknowns: cancer diagnosis, lost job, car accident, crazy sailing adventures – we need to hold fast to the promises of God’s word that he will be with us through every trial and tribulation.  

St. Thomas is famously referred to as “Doubting Thomas.” And his doubt was all about the resurrection of Jesus. Remember how he protests that he must stick his finger in the side of Jesus in order to believe he has risen from the dead? When Jesus finally appears to him, he tells Thomas in Luke’s Gospel, “Come here, and see for yourself that I am real and not a ghost.” Our verse from John’s Gospel highlights how Jesus realizes the challenge that lies ahead for many who will never be with him in his human form. But Fr. Rolheiser writes that the nature of believing in Christ has and will be a challenge for many – not simply because they can’t “put our hand into his side,” but because it requires faith. Skepticism and agnosticism, even atheism, are not a problem as long as one is honest, non-rationalizing, non-lying, ready to efface oneself before reality as it appears, and generous in giving his or her life away in service. If these conditions are met, God, the author, and source of all reality, will eventually become evident, even to those who need physical proof. The story of Thomas assures us that God is neither angered nor threatened by honest agnosticism. Faith is never certainty. Neither it is the sure feeling that God exists. Conversely, unbelief is not to be confused with the absence of the felt assurance that God exists. There are, for every one of us, dark nights of the soul, silences of God, cold lonely seasons, and bitter times when God’s appearances to us cannot be truly grasped or recognized. The history of faith, as witnessed by the life of Jesus and the lives of the saints, shows us that God often seems dead and, at those times, the reality of the empirical world can so overpower us that nothing seems real except what we can see and feel right now, namely our own pain. God does not ask us to have a faith that is certain but a service that is sure. We have the assurance that should we faithfully help carry others without first thinking of ourselves; we will one day find ourselves before the person of Christ who will gently say to us: “See for yourself that I am real, and not a ghost.”

In the gospel reading today, Jesus uses a powerful word, “hate,” to speak to his disciples about anything that causes you to cling to possessions as if you were clinging to your ego. He knows that once we have learned to hate even these most loveable things, we are to “take up our cross.” Christians often use the idea of taking up a cross as a metaphor to describe bearing life’s regular burdens: a long wait in traffic, a demanding boss, and a nasty cold. However, for the first-century Jews, the image of taking up a cross evoked horror and shame. Crucifixion was intended to punish rebels by inflicting as much physical pain as possible and maximizing humiliation, signaling other potential rebels not to revolt against Rome. Therefore, when Jesus says the true disciple must “take up his cross,” he is not merely calling for acceptance of life’s little inconveniences and hardships. He calls his disciples to give up everything, even their lives, if necessary, to follow him. The Christian life is based on self-denial grounded in humility and love. There is no Christianity without the cross. Those who seek happiness by pursuing their personal interests will never be fulfilled. Only by giving oneself to God and loving others do we experience the lasting fulfillment God wants us to have. To be mature in the faith means living out what faith and morality ask of us as a natural response to the gratitude of being loved by God unconditionally and a natural expression of sensitivity to others. Fr. Ron Rolheiser says that taking up our cross “should not be an attempt to somehow earn love or heaven, but rather an acknowledgment, a humble one, that one still needs a lot of help in knowing how to live in the face of love.”

Saint John Paul II wrote that in a highly developed society such as ours, where everyone has enough to eat, where education and health care are available to all, and where a high level of social justice is being achieved, it is easy to lose sight of the Creator, from whose loving hands all things come. It is easy to love as if God did not exist. Indeed, there is a powerful attraction to such an attitude, for it might seem that acknowledging God as the origin and end of all things lessens human independence and places unacceptable limits on human action. But when we forget God, we soon lose sight of the deeper meaning of our existence; we no longer know who we are. Is this not an important part of the dissatisfaction common in highly developed societies? Bishop Barron writes that one of the most fundamental statements of the Christian faith is this: your life is not about you. This is not your project. Rather, you are part of God’s great design. To believe this in your bones and to act accordingly is to have faith. When we operate out of this transformed vision, amazing things can happen, for we have surrendered to “a power already at work in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”

Deep inside authentic faith is the truth that God is the object of all human desire, no matter how earthy and unholy that desire may seem. Today’s verse from Matthew’s Gospel tells us that the Lord listens and responds to all that is asked within his covenantal promise and understanding of His will for humankind. Fr. Rolheiser writes that this implies that everything we desire is contained in God. “Do we really believe that God is the real object of our desires? When we look at all that is beautiful, full of life, attractive, sexually alluring, and pleasurable on earth, do we really think and believe that this is contained in an infinitely richer way inside of God and inside the life into which God invites us? Do we really believe that the joys of heaven will surpass the pleasures of earth and that, already in this world, the pleasures of virtue trump the sensations of sin? Do we really believe that faith will give us what we desire? Jesus promises that whatever we give up for what is higher will be returned to us one hundredfold. Knowing this, we should live our lives fully enjoying what is earthy and earthly. The beauties and pleasures of this life are a gift from God, meant to be enjoyed. But, by being aware of their source, we can be free enough to accept the very real limits that life puts on our desires. And better still, we need not fear death since what we lose will be trumped one-hundredfold by what we gain.”

Christianity teaches us that our world is holy and that everything is matter for sacrament. In this view, the universe manifests God’s glory, and humanity is made in God’s image. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, our food is sacramental, and in our work and sexual embrace, we are co-creators with God. This is high theology, a symbolic hedge that dwarfs what is found in virtually every other religion and philosophy. Our responsorial psalm today comes from Psalm 19, which proclaims that the Lord is the “rock” of salvation by his virtue of universal dominion. The glory of God is made manifest to all by the sun and divine Law. The Christian reader can see in the preaching of the Gospel the definitive revelation of this glory. The psalmist says that he can see the greatness of God because the whole world, he proclaims poetically, can also see it because it speaks without words through the succession of days and nights. Fr. Rolheiser writes that the problem is that, most times, our daily lives are so dram, distracted, and fixed upon realities that seem so base that it makes this idea that “everything is a sacrament” seem to be an adolescent fantasy. That is because we have lost the sense that the world is holy and that our eating, working, and making love are sacramental. We no longer connect ourselves, our world, and our eating and making love to their sacred origins. In not making this connection, our prayer, and ritual fall short. Fr. Rolheiser admits, “I am not sure what the solution is. The ways of the past, for better and for worse, are not our ways. But we must find a way…a way to connect our eating and drinking, working and making love, to their sacred origins. The joylessness of so much that should bring us joy can tell us as much.”

We are challenged as Christians to remain in Christ so that we can bear good fruit. When we are rooted in Christ, we are the same inside as outside – we are a person of integrity who is believable and will bear much fruit that can be harvested. As a disciple of the Lord, I have often felt that the fruit of our life should result from attaining the perfection of love we are called to live out. I feel very blessed to catch what I think is a “glimpse” of this perfection when I watch my new granddaughter as she becomes absolutely at peace in her mother’s arms. At this point in her life, no place in the world brings her this kind of security, peace, and love. This is the perfection of love God desires and provides us when we humble ourselves like a little child. This is the most amazing teaching to take into each day as an example of how the perfection of love, this path of holiness we are called to, is within reach of anyone willing to do God’s will in love at each successive moment as life unfolds, surrendering themselves into God’s providence. The closer we get to living out life in this manner, the more our life’s tree will bear its intended fruit of love. This lived praxis is the greatest testament to others of the truth, happiness, and joy obtained in living a life centered on being the light and love of God.