Daily Virtue Scripture Readings

In the first episode of the “Catholicism” series, then Fr. Robert Barron, in a deliberate way, shakes out of us our tendency to ‘domesticate’ the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. Instead, he reminds us that Jesus was a deeply disconcerting, subversive figure. The gospel writers were clear that Jesus came as a warrior king who came to set his people free. Unlike other spiritual leaders, who do not point to themselves, Jesus of Nazareth keeps speaking and acting as if he is God. Either Jesus is who he says he is (in which case we are obliged to give our whole lives to him), or he is a madman (in which case we should be against him). What does not remain, as C.S. Lewis saw so clearly, is the bland middle position that, though he isn’t divine, he is a good, kind, and wise ethical teacher. If he isn’t who he says he is, then he isn’t admirable at all. The Buddha could claim that he had found a way that he wanted to share with his followers, but Jesus said, “I am the way.” Mohammed could say that, through him, the final divine truth had been communicated to the world, but Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Confucius could maintain that he had discovered a new and uplifting form of life, but Jesus said, “I am the life.” No other founder forces that choice. Christ compels a choice: you either believe he is God’s ‘Anointed One’ or you do not. As Jesus says, you’re either with him or you’re against him. There’s no room for a middle ground. This is crazy stuff when you take the time to consider the radicality of the person of Christ and the incredulous truth that God became man and dwelt among us. We are either with Jesus or we are against him.  

Normand Gouin of the Paulist Center writes about persistent prayer as an “Act of Crazy Compassion and Reckless Love.” He notes that at every Mass, we pray for the growing list of concerns and needs in our world, such as the devasting effects of climate change, the war in Ukraine, the ongoing battle with the Coronavirus, racism, injustice in all its forms, and the pervasive divisiveness in our land. Yet with all that is going on, in what often seems like a futile exercise, we are often left wondering why does it seem like things are getting worse, why do these prayers seem to go either unanswered or to have no effect? We continue searching but have not found? Why does the door we keep knocking at never seem to open? I have struggled with these questions, and I bet you have as well. I don’t believe Jesus ever intended when he said: ask, search, and knock to be a blank check on God’s account as if prayer was a transaction between us and God. Jesus’ instruction to ask, search, and knock is perfectly reflected in the prayer he taught the disciples, the prayer we know as The Lord’s Prayer. We are to be persistent in aligning our lives to the mercy and compassion of God, bearing witness to the presence of God in our life and relationships, opening ourselves to the gift and sufficiency of this day, freely receiving and giving forgiveness. To be persistent in prayer means to not give up when the sands of life are shifting under our feet, when our life comes unhinged, when we are overwhelmed, when we come to the limits of our ability, or when it looks like this day is as good as it gets and all there will ever be. However, beyond being persistent, I believe it is also important to note that prayer is not simply a private act. When we pray for specific concerns, needs, or situations, are we not in effect also expressing our desire for the healing and restoration of the entire Body of Christ? Fr. Ron Rolheiser describes prayer not so much as the words one speaks or imparts but as an attitude we embody that, when adopted, can affect the entire Body. Rolheiser states, “Central to our faith as Christians is the belief that we are all part of one mystical body, the Body of Christ. This is not a metaphor. This body is a living organism. If this is true, and it is, then there is no such thing as a truly private action. Our prayers are health-giving enzymes affecting the whole body, particularly the persons and events to which we direct them.” May our practice of prayer, through trust and persistence, be like a sneaky hidden antibiotic – needed precisely when it seems most useless.

On this day when many celebrate the feast day of Saint John Henry Newman, we recall its uniqueness as the day commemorates Newman’s conversion to Catholicism in 1845, rather than his death, which is a departure from traditional practice. Newman famously wrote about the power of prayer to assist in the perfection of our being as one searches for the truth in life: To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that unless you can drink in strength from a source outside yourself, your natural proclivities for paranoia, bitterness, and hatred will invariably swallow you whole. The disciples in Luke’s Gospel understood this. They approached Jesus and asked him to teach them how to pray because they saw him doing things that they did not see anyone else doing. He was able to meet hatred with love, to genuinely forgive others, to endure misunderstanding and opposition without giving in to self-pity and bitterness, and to retain within himself a center of peace and non-violence.  This, they knew, was as extraordinary as walking on water, and they sensed that he was drawing the strength to do this from a source outside him, through prayer. Prayer is meant to keep us awake, which means it’s meant to keep us connected to a source outside our of natural instincts and proclivities which can keep us grounded in love, forgiveness, non-retaliation, and non-violence when everything inside of us and around us screams for bitterness, hatred, and retaliation. And if Jesus had to sweat blood in trying to stay connected to that source when he was tested, we can expect that the cost for us will be the same, struggle, agony, wanting in every fiber of our being to give in, clinging to love precariously by the skin of our teeth, and then having God’s angel strengthen us only when we’ve been writhing long enough in the struggle so that we can let God’s strength do for us what our own strength cannot do. Lord, teach us to pray!

Martha and Mary signify two dimensions of the spiritual life. Martha signifies an active life as she busily labors to honor Christ through her work. Mary exemplifies the contemplative life as she sits attentively to listen and learn from Christ. Fr. Ron Rolheiser speaks of the tension between contemplation and action that is demonstrated in the story of Martha and Mary. Martha engaged herself in the necessary task of serving others while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet, doing nothing but loving a lot. Jesus commends Mary, saying she has chosen the better part. Christian spirituality forever after has had to struggle with those words. Is prayer really more important than active service? The saints would have us do both. Healthy spirituality is not a question of choosing between Mary and Martha but of choosing both – contemplation and action, soulcraft and statecraft, loving and doing, prayer and service, private morality, and social justice. While both activities are essential to Christian living, the latter is greater than the former. The active life terminates in heaven, while the contemplative life reaches its perfection. Our challenge as disciples is to see beyond the either-or nature of this story. An active life forgetful of union with God is useless and barren, but an apparent life of prayer, which shows no concern for serving and evangelizing the world through our daily, ordinary actions, also fails to please God. The key for the engaged disciple lies in being able to combine these two lives without either harming the other.

If we reflect on our verse today, we can quickly come to the question in our minds, “What does God expect me to do in light of the seeming enormity of the challenge presented in the scholar’s response to Jesus’ question, ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’” The answer I suggest we consider is our relationship with God the Father through his Son Jesus. Yet our relationship with Jesus is tied to our relationship with others, especially with the least, the lost and the forgotten. Who are the least in our lives? We all have our list of the least of these. They are the people who are outside of our circle of compassion and concern. They might be individuals of another socioeconomic group, someone with more or less education, people from another political party, people from another culture or lifestyle, or people who don’t believe or think like us. The Christian life is not primarily a list of things to believe. It is about a relationship with God through Christ that forever changes us. This relationship changes all of our other relationships. It actually enables us to begin to see the least of these. The challenge in today’s Gospel reading is understanding the enormity of what the Samaritan did from a twenty-first-century view. Can we imagine today seeing a person we have witnessed spewing hateful and discordant views against minorities and then giving of their time and treasure to assist those same people? That action would significantly perplex us today as the actions of the Samaritan were similarly perplexing to the Jews. Jesus is telling us that we need to step back and see that we are all children of God and capable of sinful and virtuous behavior. The opportunity for each of us is to look for the good in everyone and not expect otherwise just because they live a life different from our own. Our accountability is to respond as Jesus taught – always with kindness and mercy. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” I believe that what Jesus meant for each of us is that we are not merely to believe he was the way, but we were to adopt his way of living. Jesus’ way of living is the way to God. What does that mean? Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously – take God seriously.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes about the period of his life in which one of his sisters died and noted that as much as everyone missed her, none of us, including her own children, felt her absence as much as her husband. He didn’t just miss her. Half of his life was gone. That’s no romantic exaggeration, as everyone who knew them knows. They were married, husband and wife, for 34 years, and everything about them and their relationship suggested that what was between them was rare. Nothing between them garbled life. Their relationship was, for the most part, too ordinary to notice. For years at a stretch, over dirty diapers and dirty dishes, in a house packed with kids, they would meet each other’s eyes, and both would know that they were home: “At last, bone from my bone, flesh from flesh.” What needs to be there for someone to look at another and feel that other as bone from my bone, flesh from my flesh, kindred spirit? In today’s terminology, what makes someone a soulmate? What do you need to experience with another person to overcome that exile of heart? Someone looking at my sister and brother-in-law might, more superficially, have seen some obvious things: deep mutual respect, a gentleness between them, uncompromising fidelity to each other, harmony of thought and feelings on most things that are important, regular prayer together, and maintain a complete trust of each other. Those things are the heart of a marriage. What connected them, made for bone of my bone, for the harmony, respect, fidelity, and gentleness, was something deeper. They had a moral affinity. Long before, and concurrent with, sleeping with each other physically, they slept with each other morally. What’s meant by this curious phrase? Each of us has a place inside where we feel most deeply about the right and wrong of things and where what is most precious to us is cherished and guarded. My sister and brother-in-law found this in each other. They were moral lovers. They found, touched, and protected each others’ souls. Everything that was deepest and most precious in each of them was understood, cherished, and safe when the other was around. It made for a great marriage—one flesh, true consummation, all predicated on a great trust and a great chastity. That is a secret worth knowing.

Can you imagine how amazed the disciples must have felt? They had just returned from one of their first mission trips, where they had seen people healed and spiritual oppression lifted. And yet Jesus challenged them to look past the immediate circumstances of what had happened so that they could grasp a bigger vision. It was not only about their success; it was about the kingdom of heaven. People had been longing to see these things for hundreds of years—they were witnesses to history! So, let’s take a look at some of the blessings that Jesus wants to tell us about.

• Blessed are your eyes because you have seen me in the quiet place of prayer. You have come to know me through the Scriptures. You have looked on the Host at Mass with eyes of faith and seen me, your Redeemer, ready to feed and nourish you. You have seen me change your heart.
• Blessed are your eyes because you have seen me work in the lives of people you love. I have brought family members back to me; I have healed wounded relationships and brought peace to the anxious; I have knit people together in love. I have manifested myself to your loved ones in big and small ways.
• Blessed are your eyes because you have seen me in the faces of those in need. You have seen me weeping for the abused and neglected. You have seen my image stamped on every human life, even those whom you don’t like. You have seen me in the people—including yourself—who care for the lost and suffering.
• Blessed are your eyes because you have seen the impossible. You have seen hearts transformed, drastic situations resolved, and mourning turned into dancing. You know in your heart that my Holy Spirit is at work bringing new life and renewal.
  
  Jesus wants to expand our vision so that we can look past our immediate circumstances and see how much more he is doing in our lives and in the world around us.

Today, we celebrate the Memorial of Saint Francis of Assisi. Fr. Daniel Horan, OFM, writes that Saint Augustine of Hippo famously remarked that God is the One who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. This experience of divine immanence, of the presence of God among and within creation, was the keystone of Saint Francis’ whole approach to prayer. His commitment to Christian living in the beginning was a ‘literal’ approach to discipleship. His focus was on the externals of affective religiosity, such as attending Mass and physically rebuilding churches. The increasing number of relational encounters—the living among lepers, the unsolicited brothers and sisters, the reception of Clare, and other experiences shifted over time, his vision of prayer. If prayer is always a form of communication with God, then we are, in some sense, always praying because God is always already present to us. It is, in a sense, a form of hubris to think that we can turn on or turn off the prayer channel as if we had the ability to select when God is able to receive our missives. In truth, not only what we say or think, but how we act, what we prioritize, how we love, how we care for one another, and so on, all combine to communicate something to the God who is at all times nearer to us than we are to ourselves. Long before St. Ignatius popularized the expression, finding God in all things, Saint Francis’s understanding and experience of prayer was a form of ordinary mysticism. For Francis, prayer was always a journey of growing more deeply in relationship with God and neighbor, including his nonhuman neighbors. His own narrative of lifelong conversion and his model for how to prioritize the elements of one’s life—never extinguish the spirit of prayer and devotion, embrace regular solitude, and so on—provide us with a pattern of life, a guide for our own journeys, and a series of points for reflection. The objective of prayer, to put it simply, is nothing more than for each of us, in our own way and in our own contexts, to become more and more a living prayer.

How do we anchor ourselves in God’s goodness? What would Jesus do? For some Christians, that’s the easy answer to every question. In every situation, all we need to ask is: What would Jesus do? At a deep level, that’s actually true. Jesus is the ultimate criterion. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and anything that contradicts him is not a way to God. Yet, I suspect many of us find ourselves irritated by how that expression is often used in simplistic ways, as a fundamentalism challenging to digest. Yet Jesus is still, and forever, a non-negotiable criterion. While Jesus is a non-negotiable criterion, he’s not a simplistic one. What did Jesus do? Well, the answer isn’t simple. Looking at his life we see that sometimes he did things one way, sometimes another way, and sometimes he started out doing something one way and ended up changing his mind and doing it differently, as we see in his interaction with the Syro-Phoenician woman. That’s why, I suspect, within Christianity, there are so many different denominations, spiritualities, and ways of worship, each with its own interpretation of Jesus. Jesus is complex. So where does this leave us as we seek to know and find the good in things? Do we give ourselves over uncritically to some ecclesial or academic authority and trust that it will tell us what Jesus would do in every situation? We need to answer that for ourselves by faithfully holding and carrying within us the tension between being obedient to our churches and not betraying the critical voices within our own conscience. If we do that honestly, one thing will eventually constellate inside us as an absolute: God is good!  Everything Jesus taught and incarnated was predicated on that truth. Anything that jeopardizes or belies that, be it a church, a theology, a liturgical practice, or a spirituality, is wrong. And any voice within dogma or private conscience that betrays that is also wrong. How we conceive of God colors for good or for bad everything within our religious practice. And above all else, Jesus revealed this about God: God is good. That truth needs to ground everything else: our churches, our theologies, our spiritualities, our liturgies, and our understanding of everyone else. Sadly, the God who is met in our churches today is often too narrow, too merciless, too tribal, too petty, and too untrustworthy to be worthy of Jesus or the surrender of our souls. What would Jesus do? Admittedly, the question is complex. However, we know we have the wrong answer whenever we make God anything less than fully good, whenever we set conditions for unconditional love, and whenever, however subtly, we block access to God and God’s mercy. [Excerpted from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s “Anchoring Ourselves within God’s Goodness”]

Angel of God, my guardian dear,
To whom God’s love commits me here,
Ever this day, be at my side,
To light and guard,
Rule and guide. Amen.

Are we still meant to believe in guardian angels? If yes, in what exactly are we meant to believe? Are angels real personified beings or simply another word for God’s presence in our lives? Hearing the news about another senseless massacre or storm-ravaged tragedy on the morning of the Feast of the Guardian Angels can challenge our beliefs in God’s protection. Most adults, within all Christian denominations, either see the existence of guardian angels as a pious fantasy or are simply indifferent to the idea. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that scripture scholars don’t give us a definitive answer but suggest that the question can be answered either way. In scripture, the word ‘angel’ might refer to a real personified spirit, or it might refer to a special presence of God in some situations. Church tradition affirms more strongly that angels are real. Where does that leave us? Divided. Conservative Christians generally assert the existence of angels as a dogmatic teaching. Angels are real.  Liberal Christians tend to doubt that or at least are agnostic about it. For them, ‘angel’ more likely refers to a special presence of God. For example, they take the statement in the Gospels where the evangelist tells us that while Jesus was praying, “an angel came and strengthened him” to mean that God’s grace came and strengthened him. Who’s right? Perhaps it doesn’t matter since the reality is the same in either case. God gives us revelation, guidance, protection, and strength and does so in ” angelic ” ways beyond our normal conceptualizations. We know now that there are billions of universes (not just planets), and we know now that our planet Earth, and we on this planet, are the tiniest of minute specks inside the unthinkable magnitude of God’s creation. If this is true, and it is, then this is hardly the time to be skeptical about the extent of God’s creation, believing that we, humans, are what is central and that there can be no personified realities beyond our own flesh and blood. Such thinking is narrow, both from the point of view of faith and from the perspective of science itself. So, do we have guardian angels? Yes, we do have a guardian angel, irrespective of how we might imagine or conceive of this. God is closer to us than we are to ourselves and God’s solicitous love, guidance, and protection are with us always. At the end of the day, it matters little whether this comes through a particular personified spirit (who has a name in heaven) or whether it comes simply through God’s loving omnipresence. God’s presence is real; we are never alone without God’s love, guidance, and protection.