Daily Virtue Post

What is the message in the verse from Matthew 5:18 as Jesus is teaching about the Law? Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the movement of God in Jesus Christ is a downward one, which invites us to enter into powerlessness; looking down, to investigate the small.

He goes on to write, “The incarnation, the central mystery of our Christian faith, invites us to look down, to investigate the small, to descend. Why? Because that is what God did in the incarnation. He emptied Himself, taking on the form of a slave. He became small, a helpless baby. Unfortunately, although we all know this theoretically, we often struggle to apply it practically. Usually, when we look for God, we look the other way, towards the sky. We investigate the powerful. We try to ascend.”

This downward movement that Rolheiser speaks of invites us to “look for God in the baby rather than in corporate magnate, the president, the prime minister, the rock star, the star athlete, the brilliant writer, the Nobel prize-winning scientist, or the Hollywood god or goddess. It is not that God cannot be present in these. It is just that, given the movement of the incarnation, if we are looking for God these days, we should be looking close to the ground, we should be investigating the small, we should be looking at the baby.”

One of the challenges in walking the path of Christ in our life is understanding, as Rolheiser notes, “To be Christian, to be persons who keep giving flesh to God in this world, we must, ultimately, be free of the tyranny of ambition and achievement, of measuring our meaning and success from what gives us upward mobility. A useful criterion to discern whether we are following Christ or following our own desires (under the guise of following Christ) is precisely whether we are moving upward or downward. Are we deeming equality with God as something to be grasped at? Are we growing in power, prestige, and admiration? Or, are we emptying ourselves and assuming the powerlessness of the poor? There should be no delusion. The Christ-movement is downward.” [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Christ Movement Downward,” November 1995]

For most of us, I suspect, the word ego has a negative connotation. To accuse someone of having a big ego is to accuse him of being overfull of himself, inflated, grandiose, and lacking in humility. We almost always oppose the words ego and humility. To have a big ego is to not be humble.

But that can be simplistic and untrue. To have a strong, large ego isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it is a needed thing, especially if we are ever to achieve anything of worth. Nobody does anything great without a strong ego, and that doesn’t mean that he or she isn’t humble.

Few people would ever think of Mother Theresa as having had a big ego. We think of her as humility incarnate. Yet, clearly, she had a huge ego – a powerful self-image that allowed her to stand before the whole world convinced of her truth, convinced of her worth, and convinced of her importance. She could stand before anyone in the world secure in the knowledge that her person and her word were important. It takes a powerful ego to do that, one more powerful than most of us possess. Indeed that was one of the keys to her greatness. She was aware that she was a unique and blessed instrument of God in this world and she was secure enough to act on that.

And yet she was humble. She was aware as well, always, that everything that made her unique and special and powerful did not come from her, but from God. She was simply a channel of somebody else’s power and grace. She had a huge ego, but she wasn’t an egoist. She was never full of herself, only full of God.

Spirituality, in general, has been slow to admit the importance of ego and has often been in outright denial of the role it plays in greatness, especially spiritual greatness. Somehow we cannot admit that saints like Francis of Assisi, Theresa of Avila, John of the Cross, or Therese of Lisieux had huge egos – powerful self-images that made them secure in the sense of their unique importance. Instead we project on to them a false idea of humility which isn’t true to them and which hurts us.

It hurts us because, for so many of us, the bigger problem in our lives, including our spiritual lives, is precisely that our egos are too weak. Because our self-image is weak, unlike Mother Theresa, we are too inhibited to reach out, to speak our truth and to express our love. We have too many internal voices (no doubt, originally external voices) that habitually paralyze us with the words: “Who do you think you are!

We struggle to be vulnerable, to not be paranoid and protect ourselves. Why? Precisely because we aren’t secure enough inside, because our egos and our sense of self-worth are shaky. Francis of Assisi, Theresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, and John of the Cross never needed to protect themselves. They were secure enough to be vulnerable. They had strong egos. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Humility, Ego, and Greatness.”]

Naaman was a Syrian (an enemy of Israel) and a Gentile who suffered from leprosy. He was the army commander of the Arameans who had captured a little girl in their raid of Israel who became Naaman’s wife servant. This girl tells her mistress that her husband could be healed by the prophet Elisha.

Naaman asks his king and gets his approval to go and meet Elisha. Upon his arrival, after presenting a letter from his king to the king of Israel, Naaman expects a grand gesture from Elisa to cure his leprosy. But he is told to simply wash himself in the dirty Jordan River. But Naaman is angered by this and plans to leave when his servant’s reason with him and help change his mind.

Once Naaman realizes the direction from the prophet Elisha is his opportunity to be cured, he does as Elisha commanded and plunges seven times into the Jordan as sees his leprosy washed away. Fr. Ron Rolheiser highlights this as a lesson in stripping away pride. True healing often requires us to abandon our intellectual, spiritual, or personal pride and accept God’s grace in simple, unglamorous ways.

When Naaman witnesses the healing, he exclaims, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.” This statement marks a radical shift from believing in territorial, limited gods to recognizing the one, universal God. His “healing” is as much about spiritual insight as it is about physical health.

Rolheiser notes that Naaman’s declaration is a testament to the universality of God’s grace, which breaks through national, religious, and personal barriers when met with a humble heart. It also emphasizes that God’s power and love are not restricted to the “insiders” or the righteous, but are available to anyone, even those outside the formal faith community.

The cry from Exodus this Sunday, “Is the LORD among us or not?” echoes a deeper theme throughout Scripture: people struggling to believe God is present during hardship. The wilderness becomes a symbol of that tension between memory of God’s past acts and fear in the present moment. When life becomes hard, faith often turns into the question “Are You really here?”This narrative shows that God’s presence doesn’t disappear just because people doubt it.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes, “God’s presence inside us and in our world is rarely dramatic, overwhelming, sensational, impossible to ignore. God doesn’t work like that. Rather, God’s presence is something that lies quiet and seemingly helpless inside us. It rarely makes a huge splash.

We should know that from the very way God was born into our world. Jesus, as we know, was born into our world with no fanfare and no power, a baby lying helpless in the straw, another child among millions. Nothing spectacular to human eyes surrounded his birth. Then, during his ministry, he never performed miracles to prove his divinity, but only as acts of compassion or to reveal something about God. His ministry, like his birth, wasn’t an attempt to prove his divinity or prove God’s existence. It was intended rather to teach us what God is like and how God loves us unconditionally.

In essence, Jesus’ teaching about God’s presence in our lives makes clear that this presence is mostly quiet and under the surface, a plant growing silently as we sleep, yeast leavening dough in a manner hidden from our eyes, spring slowly turning a barren tree green, an insignificant mustard plant eventually surprising us with its growth, a man or woman forgiving an enemy. God works in ways that are seemingly hidden and can be ignored by our eyes. The God that Jesus incarnates is neither dramatic nor flashy.

Fredrick Buechner suggests that God is present inside us as a subterranean presence of grace. The grace of God is ‘beneath the surface; it’s not right there like the brass band announcing itself, but it comes, and it touches, and it strikes in ways that leave us free to either not even notice it or to draw back from it.’

God never tries to overwhelm us. More than anyone else, God respects our freedom. God lies everywhere, inside us and around us, almost unfelt, largely unnoticed, and easily ignored, a quiet, gentle nudge; but, if drawn upon, the ultimate stream of love and life.”

Recently, while giving a series of lectures, I was confronted by a rather angry man who accused me of being soft on hell, God’s judgment, and God’s justice. “Don’t tell me that all these people who are doing these things—from molesting children to ignoring all morality—are going to be in heaven when we get there! What does that say about God’s justice?”

His lament is, in fact, quite an old one. The prophet Isaiah had the same kind of wish. For him it was not enough that the Messiah should usher in a time of peace and freedom for good people. Along with rewards for the good, he felt, there needed to be too a “day of vengeance” on the bad (Isaiah 61:2). Interestingly, in a curious omission, when Jesus quotes this text to define his own ministry, he leaves out the part about vengeance (Luke 4:18).

There are too many of us in the church and the world today, in both conservative and liberal camps, who like this man have the same burning need. We want to see misfortune fall upon the wicked. It is not enough that eventually the good should have their day. The bad must be positively punished.

To my mind, this desire for justice (as we call it) is, at its root, unhealthy and speaks volumes about the bitterness within our own lives. All these worries that somebody might be getting away with something and all these wishes that God better be an exacting judge, suggest that we, like the older brother of the prodigal son, might be doing things right, but real love, forgiveness and celebration have long gone out of our hearts.

Alice Miller, the great Swiss psychologist, suggests that the primary task of the second half of life is that of grieving. We need to grieve, she says, or the bitterness and anger that come from our wounds, disappointments, bad choices and broken dreams will overwhelm us with the sense of life’s unfairness.

In the end, it is because we are wounded and bitter that we worry about God’s justice, worry that it might be too lenient, worry that the bad will not be fully punished, worry that there might not be a hell. To be fit for heaven, we must let go of our bitterness.

Like the older brother, our problem is ultimately not the excessive love that is seemingly shown to someone else. Our problem is that we have never fully heard or understood God’s words: “My child, you have always been with me, and all I have is yours, but we, you and I, should be happy and dance because your younger brother who was dead has come back to life!” [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “The Prodigal Son’s Brother,” April 1993]

Hatred and contempt are everywhere. They are in our government houses, in our communities, in our churches, and in our families. We are struggling, mostly without success, to be civil with each other, let alone to respect each other.

Our scripture today is a direct prophecy by Jesus regarding his own impending rejection and death at the hands of Jewish leaders, following the rejection of prophets sent before him. Just as in ancient times, Hatred and contempt were everywhere.

Jesus taught, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor^’ and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven…If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5, 43-48)

This is the very essence of Christian morality. Can you love someone who hates you? Can you do good to someone who wishes you evil? Can you forgive someone who has wronged you? Can you forgive a murderer? It’s this, and not some particular issue in moral theology, which is the litmus test for who is a Christian and who isn’t. Can you love someone who hates you? Can you forgive someone who has hurt you? Can you move beyond your natural proclivity for vengeance?

God is love. Jesus is love enfleshed. Disrespect, hatred, division, and revenge may never be preached in God’s or Jesus’ name, no matter the cause, no matter the anger, no matter the wrong. This doesn’t mean that we cannot have disagreements, spirited discussions, and bitter debates. But disrespect, hatred, division, and revenge (no matter how deeply they may in fact be felt inside us) may not be advocated in the name of goodness and Jesus. [Adapted from Ron Rolhesier’s “Breaking Faith with Each Other,” January 2024]

We have been made, as scripture assures us, “as little less than God.” If God could have given us divinity, I believe, he would have. But the one thing God can’t do is to create another God. So, in creating us, God took us as close to divinity as possible. Given the incredible array of qualities that God put in us, it shouldn’t then be surprising that we are pathologically complex, that human grandiosity has a perpetual itch to set itself against God, and that, when frustrated, we are capable of becoming killers who can take life itself as if we were God. We should never be surprised at how messy life can get or how deranged we can be. What is surprising, rather, is that sometimes – in the pre-sophistication of a child or the post-sophistication of a saint – we do see simple happiness, simple meaning, and simple faith.

Things could only be simpler if God had made us Swiss clocks – wonderfully tuned to pre-set rhythms, with no mess, no sin, no evil, and the beauty of perfect crystal. But then there wouldn’t be any love, freedom, creativity, or meaning. No. God built us on a razor’s edge, so full of godly fire that we are capable of both martyrdom and murder.

We live in a very disordered world but must bless that world by letting it know that God still looks at it and says: “You are my beloved Child in whom I am well pleased”; even as we prophetically challenge it to see the poverty of its practical atheism, its lack of community, its consumerism, its greed, its obsession with comfort and the things of this world, and especially with its failure to see the poor. 

Ultimately, what we must do is to show the world the cross of Christ, to make it aware that the one whom it commonly rejects, the one whom it crucifies, the poor one, the helpless one, the unnoticed one, the insignificant one, is the cornerstone for its final progress. Within all the goodness and sin of this world, our task is to stand with the poor and bring the expertise of the poor, which is the wisdom of the cross, to all the dialogue and planning that goes into helping shape our planet. 

But we can do this only if we view the world through a prism of hope within which we bless its goodness and challenge its sin, even as we trust that God still deeply loves this post-modern planet and that, in the end, all will be well and all will be well and every manner of being will be well. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “A Christian Attitude Towards the World and God’s Risk…Our Freedom,” September 1998, and 2001 respectively]

All who serve, whether ordained or lay ministers, come into service with a hopefully discerned gift from God. Fr. Ron Rolheiser recounts the period in his life when he was away from his teaching, one of his gifts, as he fought his battle with cancer.

When he returned to teaching, he was somewhat nervous, but as the three-hour session got underway, he noted, “My nervousness passed quickly as the class robustly engaged the topic and, after the three hours, I walked out of the class feeling a wonderful energy that I hadn’t felt for six months.”

Every good gift comes from God. Not just the visible talents — the quiet strengths, the compassion that comes naturally, the ability to listen, to build, to lead, to create. These are not accidents of personality. They are entrusted with grace.

Rolheiser continued his reflection by questioning himself on the anxiety he felt. “What really triggered that wonderful feeling and burst of energy? Narcissism? Pride? Was I basking in the capacity to demonstrate some cleverness and learning and then drink in the students’ admiration? Did I feel good because my ego got stroked? Was my teaching really about furthering God’s kingdom or about stoking my ego?”

He goes on to write that “these are valid questions for anyone who draws energy from his or her work, especially if, because of that work, he or she drinks in a fair amount of adulation. Our motivations are never completely pure.” A beautiful example is drawn from the story of Eric Liddell, the Scottish Olympian and evangelist that was depicted in the movie, Chariots of Fire.  

Liddell once made this comment on his running, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” Rolheiser writes that “in his quest to win an Olympic gold medal, he was motivated more by his faith than by his own ego. His faith had him believe that, since God gave him this unique talent, God, not unlike any proud parent, took a genuine delight in seeing him use that gift. In his heart, he sensed that God was pleased whenever he exercised that talent to its optimum.”

He continues: “Moreover, that an inner sense that God was happy with his use of his talent filled Eric, with a wonderful energy whenever he ran. And this, I believe, is true for every one of us. When anyone uses the gifts that God gave him or her properly, God will take pleasure in that. After all, God gave us that gift and that gift was given to us for a reason.” [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “God’s Pleasure in Our Action” February 2015]

God is non-violent. God does not prescribe violence. Violence should never be rationalized in God’s name. That is clear in Christian revelation. But that immediately poses the question:  What about the violence in scripture that is attributed to God or to God’s direct orders?

Doesn’t God, in anger, wipe out the entire human race, save for Noah and his family? Doesn’t God ask Abraham to kill Isaac on an altar of sacrifice? Doesn’t Moses have to talk God out of destroying Israel because God is angry?  Didn’t God give an order to Israel to kill everybody and everything (men, women, children, and even the animals) as she entered the Promised Land? Didn’t the Mosaic Law, attributed to God, prescribe stoning women to death for adultery? What about all the wars and capital punishment that have been done in God’s name through the centuries?  What about extremist Islam today, killing thousands of people in God’s name? How do we explain all the violence attributed to God?

Whenever scripture speaks about God as being offended, as getting angry, as wanting to wreak vengeance on his enemies, or as demanding that we kill somebody in his name, it is speaking anthropomorphically, that is, it is taking our own thoughts, feelings, and reactions and projecting them into God. We get angry, God doesn’t. Our hearts crave vengeance; God’s heart doesn’t. We demand that murderers be executed, but God doesn’t. Scripture contains many anthropomorphisms that lead to a bad and dangerous theology if read and understood literally. To read parts of scripture literally is to turn God into a tribal God in competition with other gods.

When scripture says that we experience God’s wrath when we sin, it doesn’t want us to believe that God actually gets angry and punishes us. There’s no need.  The punishment is innate, inherent in the sin itself. When we sin it is our own actions that punish us (the way excessive use of alcohol dehydrates the brain and the dehydration causes a headache). We may feel that the punishment as coming from God, from God’s anger, from God’s wrath, but it is nature’s wrath and our own that we are feeling. God has no need to extrinsically punish sin because sin already punishes itself. Nature is so constructed. There is a law of karma. Sin is its own punishment.

But still, what do we do with the biblical texts that prescribe violence to God? For instance, how can we interpret God’s ordering Israel to kill all the Canaanites as she entered the Promised Land? In archetypal stories, killing is metaphorical not literal. It’s about a death inside the heart.  God’s command to kill all the inhabitants of Canaan is simply a hard metaphor for what Jesus refers to when he says that you have to put new wine into new wineskins so that the new wine will not burst the old skins.

Virtually every text in the bible which ascribes violence to God or puts into his mouth a command to do violence needs to be read in that same way. The violence and killing are metaphorical, even as the text is asking the heart to do something that cannot be a half-measure. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “God and Violence,” May 2011]

I hope that something people take away from my lectures and writings is to believe that the first task of any Christian apologetics is to rescue God from stupidity, arbitrariness, narrowness, legalism, rigidity, tribalism, and everything else that’s bad but gets associated with God. A healthy theology of God must underwrite all our apologetics and pastoral practices. Anything we do in the name of God should reflect God.

It’s no accident that atheism, anti-clericalism, and the many diatribes leveled against the church and religion today can always point to some bad theology or church practice on which to base their skepticism and anger. Atheism is always a parasite, feeding off bad religion.

More important than the criticism of atheists are the many people who have been hurt by their churches. A huge number of people today no longer go to church or have a very strained relationship with their churches because of what they’ve met in their churches doesn’t speak well of God.

Jesus taught that God is especially compassionate and understanding towards the weak and towards sinners. Jesus scandalized his religious contemporaries by sitting down with public sinners without first asking them to repent. He welcomed everyone in ways that often offended the religious propriety of the time and he sometimes went against the religious sensitivity of his contemporaries, as we see from his conversation with the Samaritan woman or when he grants a healing to the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman. Moreover he asks us to be compassionate in the same way and immediately spells out what that means by telling us that God loves sinners and saints in exactly the same way.  God does not have preferential love for the virtuous.

Finally, and centrally, Jesus is clear that his message is, first of all, good news for the poor, that any preaching in his name that isn’t good news for the poor is not his gospel. We need to keep these things in mind even as we recognize the validity and importance of the ongoing debates among and within our churches about whom and what makes for true discipleship and true sacrament. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Mercy, Truth, and Pastoral Practice,” May 2018]