Daily Virtue Post

Jesus states that he is the way that leads to life. What is this way of Jesus? Among other things, it is the way of wisdom and pondering. The way of Jesus is the way of standing amid all delight, joy, contradiction, ambiguity, division, and complexity with a heart and a faith big enough to hold it all somehow. Jesus’ way is the way of holding things. Part of this can be understood by looking at its opposite. The opposite of the way of wisdom, the way of holding things, scripture tells us, is the way of amazement. Time and time again, the crowds following Jesus are described as being amazed at what he says and does. Invariably, they are chided for it: “Don’t be amazed!” Jesus says. Amazement is not what Jesus wants, and it is never something that does us good. Why? Is it not good to be amazed? The same persons who were amazed at Jesus and who tried to make him King would, not long afterwards, shout: “Crucify him!” What we are amazed at we will eventually try to crucify, as every celebrity soon learns. Amazement is the opposite of wisdom. If amazement is bad, and the opposite of wisdom, what is good and what is wisdom? Pondering and helplessness are wisdom. We see an example of this in Mary, Jesus’ mother. She is never amazed. When others are amazed, she goes off and silently ponders things in her heart instead. In amazement, we fall prey to every kind of superficiality, novelty, trick, and one-sided ideology. Amazement is the unrecognized face of fundamentalism, the antithesis of wisdom. The way of amazement is the way of fundamentalism, the way of letting one piece, or person, be the whole. And the way of amazement is everywhere. The way of wisdom is the way of pondering, the way of holding every kind of pain, suffering, delight, and contradiction long enough until it transforms you, gestates compassion within you and brings you to your knees in a thousand surrenders. You and I are wise, and we walk the way of Jesus, when we are so stunned by it all that, in wonder, we ask: “If that is the case, who then can be saved?”[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection: “Jesus’ Way of Wisdom,” April 1997.

A particular Christian activist ended her presentation with words to this effect: “I work for the poor, and I do it out of my Christian faith. I’m committed to this because of Jesus, but I can go for three years on the streets without ever mentioning his name because I believe that God is mature enough that he doesn’t demand to be the center of our conscious attention all the time.” Does God mind that we don’t give him explicit attention for long periods of time? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that there’s an important truth here, though only if it’s sufficiently qualified. Taken as it stands, this can be used to justify too many things (spiritual laziness, selfishness, excessive self-preoccupation, culpable resistance to deeper thought, excessive procrastination with what’s important, and countless other things) that are not good. But here’s its truth: God understands! God is a loving parent who understands the inattentiveness and self-preoccupation of his children. However, because the unexamined life is less than human, we also need to have moments where we try to make God the center of our conscious awareness. We need regular moments of explicit prayer, of meditation, of contemplation, of worship, of Sabbath, of explicit acknowledgement of God and of explicit gratitude to God. We do need moments when we make ourselves consciously aware that there is a next life, an eternal one, beyond this present one. God understands that we’re human, spiritually frail, busy, and instinctually geared towards the things of this world so that we don’t naturally move towards prayer and church, and that even when we are at prayer or in church, we’re generally still distracted, tired, bored, impatient, thinking of other things, and longing for prayer and church to be over with. Coming at this from the Mennonite tradition, Kate Bowler comments on what the Church calls “Ordinary time,” that is, those times during the year when there is nothing special to celebrate, unlike the Advent, Lenten, Christmas, or Easter seasons. What happens then? Well, what happens then is that things get “ordinary”: “There is no birth at the manger or death on the cross, just the ponderous pace of people singing, praying, and keeping their kids quiet during the sermon. The magic fades and reveals the church for what it is: a plain people in a boring building who meet until kickoff.” Yes, most of the time, that’s us, plain people in boring buildings waiting for the kickoff. And God understands perfectly.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Divine Understanding” reflection, August 2019.

We are forever creating God in our own image and likeness. We picture God, what we believe God to be and stand for, according to what we imagine God should be like. Sometimes that speaks for what’s best in us, and sometimes it does the opposite. In either case, we are usually far from the God Jesus revealed. That is why we often believe in and preach a God who, like us, is jealous, arbitrary, legalistic, unfair, fearful, consumed with protecting himself, vengeful, unforgiving, and violent. It is no accident that in every age, including our own, the worst violence, bigotry, and murder are usually justified in the name of God, even when this is done in the name of atheism or secularity. We all have innate mechanisms for health, and whenever we go wrong, something inside reacts. That isn’t just true for our bodies but also for our souls. Faith has its inbuilt immune system. We want God on our own terms, but ultimately, it doesn’t work. Divine love and divine revelation are pure gifts, and the inner dynamics of faith ensure that they have to be received as pure gifts or not received at all. And that is why we sometimes experience dark nights of the soul in our faith and religious beliefs. Our inner powers to feel, imagine, and sense God’s existence dry up and leave us in a certain “agnosticism.” Mystics call this a dark night of the soul. Paul Tillich once defined real religion as what we attain when, in our religious quest, we attune ourselves to a reality and a consciousness that is beyond our own, as opposed to touching what is highest inside of ourselves or highest within the collective ideals of humanity. In real religion, we meet God, not ourselves.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ronald Rolheiser’s “The Nature of Faith” February 2008.

Jesus was once asked why he spoke in parables. His answer is more than a little curious: “I speak in parables . . . lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn again, and I should heal them.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that at first glance, this suggests that Jesus was deliberately vague so that people would not understand the truth and could remain ignorant and obstinate. The opposite is true. His deliberate vagueness is a studied gentleness, a deep compassion that recognizes people’s lives are complex and that truth is not a sledgehammer. It is not enough to have the truth. Truth can set free, but it can also freeze hearts further if not presented with the utmost compassion, gentleness, and understanding. There is a story told about Vincent de Paul which says that, on his deathbed, he spoke words like these to his community: “When you grow tired of giving to others, when you are tempted to self-pity and begin to believe that others, the poor, are taking advantage of you, that you are being asked to give more than is fair, then continue to give and, maybe, sometime in the future, the poor will find it in their hearts to forgive you. It is more blessed to give than receive—and it is also a lot easier!” Maybe, sometime in the future, the poor will find it in their hearts to forgive us for, so often, using the truth as a hammer to enslave them further rather than to set them free.

Cardinal Francis George once famously commented that we live in a culture where “everything is permitted, and nothing is forgiven.” Bishop Robert Barron writes that in the typical Georgean manner, the saying is pithy, memorable, and dead right. Even the most casual survey of our society discloses the truth of the first part of the Cardinal’s adage. Men are allowed to be women, and women men. Male athletes, claiming a female identity, can dominate women’s sports. Transgender surgery, even when it amounts to the mutilation of children, is positively encouraged in many parts of our country, including my home state of Minnesota. Abortion, even to the moment of birth, is legal (indeed celebrated) in a number of states; assisted suicide of the suffering is considered a fundamental right of the individual and a prerogative of the state. But the truth of the second part of the Cardinal’s statement is equally obvious. Violations of the accepted secular orthodoxy today result in cancellation, elimination, and permanent ostracization. If you doubt me, try posting something even mildly anti-woke on the internet. The Jacobin mob will be on you in moments. And if you read the ideologues behind wokeism, you will see that being, say, a white male or an advocate of traditional religious values makes you permanently a reprobate with no hope of redemption. If you doubt me on this score, ask any woke enthusiast just how much apology or reparation is required to relieve an offender of his guilt. You will find that the answer is “never enough.” So, on the one hand, everything seems to be permitted, but on the other hand, nothing is ever really forgiven. What brought the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross was a demonic farrago of hatred, stupidity, violence, cruelty, institutional injustice, self-serving careerism, betrayal, denial, and gross indifference to the will of God. Though many of those responsible for the death of Jesus wrapped themselves in the mantle of righteousness or offered pathetic justifications for their behavior, all of them were exposed as frauds and sinners. The cross itself served as a judgment on human folly and wickedness. In its light, there was no chance to hide. But in the Gospel story, the man who had been hurt as thoroughly as a person can be hurt returned that action by providing forgiving love. Every sin is forgivable, and the ineffable God cancels no one.

Our scripture reflection verse today comes from the Gospel of Mark and the story of the Sower. I found this beautiful reflection in the Word Among Us and share it with you today.

Have you ever planted seeds from a packet and sat back to see what would happen? With little attention and just a little water and some sunshine, you soon see little sprouts popping up through the soil. It’s like watching a miracle! This is similar to what the sower in today’s parable does. His method may not be the best in terms of growing a food crop, but it does illustrate an approach to evangelization that probably feels more natural to us. Sometimes, when we feel the Spirit nudging us to reach out to someone, we can overthink it: “What will I say? What will I do? What if he asks a question I can’t answer?” But that wouldn’t be the situation if we were to sow the seeds of the gospel as liberally as this farmer. Perhaps there are ways to reach out and bless people without feeling forced or uncomfortable. Start by thinking about your personality. Are you an encourager? Or maybe you find little ways to help a co-worker who always seems overworked. Or you might love spending time with people, or you like to bring people little gifts that make them happy: a cup of coffee on a cold morning or a plate of cookies for an afternoon snack at the office. Guess what? These are all “seeds” you can sow. They are much more than kind gestures; they are signs that you are actively going out of your way to bless the people around you. Now, imagine that a prayer is behind every seed, a prayer that your gesture will help draw that person a little closer to Christ. What power could be released! As you go about your day, don’t worry about how to talk to someone about your faith. Just live your life with a focus on the people around you. That’s the secret to evangelization. Your witness may come through words, but it may come through consistently loving and caring for someone who needs it. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see fruit right away. Today’s parable reassures us that the seeds are growing and sprouting almost of their own accord. Our job is just to scatter as many of them as you can.

Our scripture verse is one that many people struggle with precisely because we see ourselves either wondering if what we do is truly God’s will for us or simply our desires, masking within us our “hope” that what we want to do is in line with His will. The mystery we live in is huge, and the more we grasp the magnitude of the cosmic and spiritual world, the more we grasp too how ineffable God is, truly beyond us, beyond language, beyond imagination, and even beyond feeling. Fr. Ron Rolheiser, writing on this topic, tells us that we can know God but can never understand God. And so we must be more humble, both in our theology and in our ecclesiology. Mostly, we don’t know what we are doing. Moreover, the older I get, the more I see how blind I am to my own hypocrisies and how weak and rationalizing my human nature is. I don’t always know when I’m rationalizing, biased, or following Christ properly. And, even when I do, I don’t always have the strength or will to do what I know is right. And so, I lean heavily on the invitation that Jesus left us on the night before he died to break bread and drink wine in his memory and to trust that this, if all else is uncertain, is what I should be doing while I wait for him to return. Sometimes, when he was instructing a couple for marriage, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great Lutheran priest and martyr, would caution them with words to this effect: right now, you are in love, and you believe that your love can sustain your marriage. It can’t. But your marriage can sustain your love! The Eucharist is such a ritual-container for Christians. We can’t sustain our faith, charity, forgiveness, and hope based on feeling or thought, but we can sustain them through the Eucharist. We can’t always be clear-headed or warm-hearted; we can’t always be sure that we know the exact path of God; and we won’t always measure up morally and humanly to what faith asks of us. But we can be faithful in this one profound way. The Eucharist contains and carries many deep realities: it helps continue the incarnation of God in history, it is God’s physical embrace, it is an intensification of our community together as Christians, it is the new manna that God gives to nurture his people, it is our family meal together as believers, it is Christ’s sacrifice which we commemorate ritually, it is God’s gift of reconciliation and forgiveness, it is an invitation to a deeper discipleship, it is a banquet table opened up for the poor, it is a vigil service within which we wait for Christ to return, and it is Christ’s priestly prayer for the world. I go to the Eucharist daily for another reason, too, a more personal one: this is the one place where I can be faithful and essentially measure up. I can’t always control how I feel or how I think, and I can’t always measure up morally and spiritually, but inside of my perpetual inadequacy and occasional doubt and confusion, I can be faithful in this one profound way.

As Catholics, we are journeying through a jubilee year focused on being “Pilgrims of Hope.” In many ways, it presents an opportunity to reflect upon the “hope” we carry as people of faith. I am drawn back to my first impression when someone read William Butler Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.” He writes, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Everything in life falls apart because nothing ultimately holds everything together; nothing underwrites us. Good things may well occur within history and our lives, but they are, in the end, accidental constellations, random happenings that are vulnerable to dissolution when the chance forces that produced them die because “the center” of life cannot hold. To believe in the cause of Christianity is to believe that in the midst of what seems to be eternal pain, selfishness, immorality, and the evilness of humankind’s actions against all things created, a loving God is present. This foundation of belief is found in the incarnation of God through his human and divine Son, Jesus Christ. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we emphatically state our disagreement with the Yeats philosophy in the Creed, which we repeat at every Mass. We believe that at the center of all things is a gracious, personal God who is powerful and loving enough to underwrite everything. We believe that the resurrection of Christ is the truth that the center holds firm because “all things are possible with God.” To say the Creed is to live with the knowledge that, in the end, God is in charge because he is stronger than death and is the gracious and loving presence in life, even when we are sweating blood. This is the “Pilgrim Hope” that we rise each day to embrace until the transition from this earthly life to our eternal life with the ineffable and almighty Yahwee. Faith is a practical thing. It is to trust that God is in charge, nothing more and nothing less. To believe in the resurrection, the essence of our Christian faith is to look at everything, including death, and believe that the center will hold.

Jesus read the passage from Isaiah where the prophet announces the coming of the Lord, who will free his people of their afflictions. In Christ, this prophecy finds its fulfillment, for he is the Anointed, the Messiah whom God has sent to his people in their tribulation. The Holy Spirit has anointed Jesus for the mission the Father has entrusted to him. Saint Pope John Paul ll writes, “These phrases, according to Luke, are his first messianic declaration. They are followed by the actions and words known through the Gospel. Christ makes the Father present among men through these actions and words.” The words of Isaiah, which Christ read out on this occasion, describe very graphically the reason why God has sent his Son into the world—to redeem men from sin, to liberate them from slavery to the devil and from eternal death. It is true that in the course of his public ministry, Christ, in his mercy, worked many cures, cast out devils, etc. But he did not cure all the sick people in the world, nor did he eliminate all forms of distress in this life, because pain, which entered the world through sin, has a permanent redemptive value when associated with the sufferings of Christ. Therefore, Christ worked miracles not so much to release the people concerned from suffering as to demonstrate that he had a God-given mission to bring everyone eternal redemption. The Church carries on this mission of Christ as written in the Gospel of Matthew: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” These simple and sublime words, which conclude the words of the Apostle Matthew, point out the obligation to preach the truths of faith, the need for sacramental life, and the promise of Christ’s continual assistance to his Church. You cannot be faithful to our Lord if you neglect these supernatural demands to receive instruction in Christian faith and morality and to frequent the sacraments. It is with this mandate that Christ founded his Church.

I was reading the story of a good man from a wonderful family who has been blessed with lots of love and good examples in his life. But, like the rest of us, he had his weaknesses, in his case, gossip and occasional pettiness. One day, as he was sitting with my friend, he made a very racist remark. My friend, instead of accusing him of being a racist or shaming him with the inappropriateness of his remark, called him instead to his own essential goodness: “That comment surprises me,” he said, “coming from you. I’ve always considered you and your family big-hearted people with class, never petty. I’ve always envied your family for its goodness and understanding. That remark doesn’t sound like you!” The man’s reaction was instant, positive. Immediately, he apologized: “You’re right,” he said, “I don’t know why I sometimes say stupid things like that!” It’s interesting to note that the word “Gospel” means “good news,” not “good advice.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the gospels are not so much a spiritual and moral theology book that tells us what we should be doing but are more an account of what God has already done for us, is still doing for us, and the remarkable dignity that this bestows on us. Morality is not a command, it’s an invitation; not a threat, but a reminder of who we truly are. We become taller and less petty when remembering what kind of family we ultimately come from. We all have two souls, two hearts, and two minds. Inside each of us, there’s a soul, heart, and mind that’s petty, that’s been hurt, that wants vengeance, that wants to protect itself, that’s frightened of what’s different, that’s prone to gossip, that’s racist, that perennially feels cheated. Seen in a certain light, all of us are as small in stature. But there’s also a tall, big-hearted person inside each of us who wants to warmly embrace the whole world beyond personal hurt, selfishness, race, creed, and politics. We are always both grand and petty. Our days are divided between those moments when we are big-hearted, generous, warm, hospitable, unafraid, and wanting to embrace everyone and those moments when we are petty, selfish, over-aware of the unfairness of life, frightened, and seeking only to protect ourselves and our own safety and interests. We are both tall and short simultaneously, and either of these can manifest itself from minute to minute. To grow to what our deepest DNA has destined us for is what makes us whole and makes us tall – humanly, spiritually, and morally. The gospel challenge doesn’t shame us with our pettiness; it invites us to what’s already best inside us.