Daily Virtue Scripture Readings

In today’s reflection verse from Matthew’s Gospel, we can see the Oneness between Jesus and the Father in this statement; “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” This oneness with God is directly stated by Jesus in John’s gospel, “The Father and I are one.” As his disciples, we also long for this oneness with the Lord that is so beautifully stated by St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” This restless nature is what Fr. Ron Rolheiser refers to as the “longing of our hearts.”  Our connection to this oneness starts by knowing that God is in everything; nothing exists except in God. There is no time outside God. God is the beauty in all beauty. Those who allow divine friendship then partake of divine friendship, and it is almost that simple. God’s life and love flow through you when you are ready to enable it. Oneness with the Lord is available to all disciples when we truly embrace what Christ told us, “On that day, you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” Open your heart – he is waiting there for you.

Curtis Mitch writes that some of us read passages like these and are not greatly affected by them. The situation is remote, the language of prophetic judgment is foreign, and there seems to be little that fits our contemporary Christian experience. Unfortunately, this is a serious miscalculation on our part. These verses are directly relevant to the lives of God’s people today. The lesson to be learned is simple: with great privilege comes great responsibility. The Galilean cities denounced by Jesus were blasted with unusually harsh words because they were among the precious few to see, hear, and touch the Messiah in person. They had incentives to believe in Jesus that most would never have. As a result, the culpability of these towns for impenitence could hardly be greater. What about us? Jesus has entrusted the Church with the fullness of Christian truth and grace. Christians of all confessions hold that salvation in Christ is ours for the taking and that the Bible is the living Word of God. Have we responded to these privileges with faith and zeal proportionate to their greatness? If we are honest with ourselves, we will surely find areas that are not fully surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus. Yet if Christ is truly present among us—in his Word, Eucharist, and Church—then we are in a situation much like that of ancient Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum as they witnessed his ministry. Here is a case where applying Scripture to our lives means learning from the mistakes of others. Unlike the towns of Galilee, will we take advantage of our time to repent of our sinful ways and pursue holiness? Or will we procrastinate until the window of opportunity closes for good? Much has been given to us, and so much will be required.

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 difficult boss, and a cold rainy day. However, for the first-century Jews, the image of taking up a cross evoked horror and shame. Crucifixion was the cruelest form of execution used by the Roman government. Therefore, when Jesus says the true disciple must “take up his cross,” he is not merely calling for acceptance of life’s inconveniences and hardships. He calls his disciples to be willing to give up everything, even their lives if necessary, to follow him. That is, in reality, a dying of the old self, the one who lived for human approval, honor, power, and prestige more than obediently following Jesus. The new self of the true disciple is ready to endure opposition, shame, suffering, and even death. For there is more gain in following Jesus, even through suffering, than there is in walking away from him, even with millions of earthly benefits.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Matthew has Jesus telling the Parable of the Sower. A parish school I worked with had a yearly scripture focus, and one year the slogan was “The Good Soil,” based on the Parable of the Sower. I bring this up because of an article I read whose author noted that one of the reasons Jesus used parables was his knowledge that most, if not all, of those he was speaking to could not handle the truth he was trying to convey in a more direct manner. T.S. Eliot once said, “It’s not for nothing that Jesus challenged us to speak our truth in parables because truth cannot always be swallowed whole, and the context and tone within which it is spoken generally dictate whether it’s helpful to speak it at a given time, or to a given person. Simply put, it isn’t always helpful, or charitable, or mature, to throw a truth into someone’s face.” Drawing on the Parable of the Sower and the school’s use of “the good soil” imagery, we know that seedlings need to be protected and gently cared for to grow strong and survive. Plants that have grown to maturity are strong enough to handle a variety of seasons and living conditions. Applying this reality to our brothers and sisters, we know that everyone is at different points in understanding their faith. Therefore, we need to be sensitive to where and how we speak the deeper truths that come from maturity in the faith.

We read in Proverbs that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Today we again see the topic of fear in Jesus’ discussion with the Apostles. But this is not fear as we would traditionally define it. He is telling the Apostles and us not to fear what man can do to us; instead, we should fear God. But this fear is healthy; it must be understood as reverence, loving awe, and love that fears disappointment. Fr. Rolheiser says, “Healthy fear is love’s fear, a fear of betraying, of not being faithful to what love asks of us in return for its gratuity. We aren’t afraid of someone we trust, fearing that they will suddenly turn arbitrary, unfair, cruel, incomprehensible, vicious, and unloving. Rather we are afraid about our own being worthy of the trust that’s given us, not least from God.” We were made in his likeness and with all our human weaknesses. God still wants us despite this weakness; he wants us to be in communion with him and be at ease with him as if we were being held close to his breast. This only comes from the knowledge and belief that God’s love for us overcomes all.

Today is one of those difficult messages from Jesus. He is telling his disciples that they will face hardships and persecution. These instructions and warnings apply throughout the history of the Church. It is difficult for the world to understand the way of God. Sometimes there will be persecution, indifference to the Gospel’s message, or even a failure to understand it. Why should we be surprised that we could face difficulties today because of our faith? Genuine commitment to Christ always involves effort. Christian life inevitably involves nonconformity with anything that goes against the teachings of the Lord. This is a life that often involves choosing between fearlessness and betrayal. We should never shrink in the face of this challenge because we have God’s promise to give us the power, wisdom, and courage needed to deal with these demanding times humbly. We would be wise to remember that our words are not ours alone. Knowing that we are God’s messengers is especially important as we venture into a world that concurrently shuns religion and is desperate for what the “Spirit of our Father” has to say. Are we confident enough to allow the Spirit to say it through us?

Millions of people, particularly in the Western world, are Christian in name, come from Christian backgrounds, are familiar with Christianity, and believe that they know and understand Christianity but no longer practice that faith in a meaningful way. They’ve heard of Christ and the Gospel, even though they may be overrating themselves in their belief that they know and understand what all this means. No matter. Whatever their shortcomings in understanding a faith they no longer practice, they believe that they’ve already been evangelized and that their non-practice is an examined decision. Their attitude toward Christianity, in essence, is: I know what it is. I’ve tried it. And it’s not for me! How do we make the Gospel fresh for those for whom it has become stale? How do we, as G. K. Chesterton put it, help people to look at the familiar until it looks unfamiliar again? How do we try to Christianize someone who is already Christian? There are no simple answers. It’s not as if we haven’t already been trying to do that for more than a generation. Whatever we do must be done through the lens of relationships – relations with God, the Church, and a faith community. It’s not so much about proclaiming what we believe, it’s living out what you believe that impacts others. If we do not have a relationship with something, it means nothing to us; therefore, when we see no value in something, we move on to things that we do have a relationship with. Most of those we are discussing herein have found meaningful relationships with things in and around the world. Things they believe in and that matter to them. Until God is not just one of those things but THE THING that matters in their life, he will forever be distant and unimportant to them. How can this change? It all starts with building trust through the lived praxis of our lives lived with God at its center and how its effect on your life is something others see and long to have. That is how hearts and minds open to the idea of God and his love, grace, and endless mercy that changes lives.   

There is a friend who likes to humorously talk about his struggles growing up. “When I was in my twenties, I felt that by the time I was forty, I would have grown up enough to let go of my bad habits. But, when I turned forty, I gave myself an extra ten years, promising myself that I’d have conquered these habits by age fifty. Well, now I’m in my fifties, and I’ve promised myself that by age sixty, I’ll be more mature and more serious about the deeper things in life.” Most of us, if we are honest, have a similar story. We’re well-intentioned, but we keep pushing the things we need to change in our lives off into the future: Yes, I need to do this, but I’m not ready yet. I want more time. Sometime in the future, I’ll do this. That’s a near-universal sentiment and for good reason. The tension we experience between our desire to grow up and our perennial procrastination and infinite stalling in doing that reflects, in fact, a tension that lies at the heart of Jesus’ message, a tension between God’s promises as being already here and God’s promises as still coming. Simply put: Everything Jesus promised is already here, and everything Jesus promised is still coming. We’re already living the new, resurrected life, even as we’re still waiting for it. Jesus preached this very clearly; the problem was not that his hearers didn’t understand him. They understood, but almost universally, they resisted that message. Much as they yearned for God’s Kingdom to be already here, like my friend who keeps asking for another ten years to get his life in order, they preferred to push things into the future. Having God become concrete in their lives was far too threatening. (excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s “May Your Kingdom Come, But Not Yet”)

“There’s so much evil in the world, and so many people are suffering from other people’s sins that there must be retribution, some justice. Don’t tell me that the people who are doing these things – from molesting children to ignoring all morality – are going to be in heaven when we get there! What would that say about God’s justice?” How would you answer this person’s question on God’s justice? Many of us today, conservatives and liberals alike, have a need to see punishment befall the wicked. It is not enough that eventually, the good should have its day that we should be rewarded. No, the bad must also be punished. Liberals and conservatives might disagree on what constitutes sin and wickedness, but they tend to agree that it must be punished. Fr. Rolheiser writes that this desire for justice is not always healthy and, in a way, speaks volumes about a certain frustration and bitterness within our own lives. All that worry that somebody might be getting away with something and all that anxiety that God might not be an exacting judge suggest that we, like the older brother of the prodigal son, might be doing a lot of things right but are missing something important inside of ourselves. We are dutiful and moral but bitter underneath and are unable to enter the circle of celebration and the dance. Everything about us is right, except for the lack of real warmth in our hearts. Alice Miller, the famous Swiss psychologist, suggests that the primary spiritual task of the second half of life is dealing with this. 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. Our problem is more that we have never really heard in our hearts the gentle words that the Father spoke to the older brother: “My child, you have always been with me, and all I have is yours, but we, you and I, need to be happy and dance because your younger brother was dead and has come back to life!” In the end, it’s all about our ability to see through the lens of the “other.”

Why is it so difficult to trust? Why do we struggle to honestly say the psalmist’s words, “In you, my God, I place my trust?” Fr. Rolheiser writes that we fail to understand the need to surrender. Emotionally, psychologically, and sexually the deepest imperative inside us is simply to surrender. The entire gospel can be summed up in that ultimate threshold we must cross to accept the reality that we need God because, in the end, we cannot take care of ourselves, make ourselves whole, and hide our weaknesses from each other. We need to surrender, trust, and let ourselves fall into stronger and safer hands than our own. But to do this, we need to trust, trust that it is safe to love, let go, reveal who we really are, show weakness, and not have to pretend that we are whole and self-reliant. How do we move towards trust? We need to be willing to open ourselves to vulnerability. Ruth Burrows, the British Carmelite, writes that surrender and abandonment are like a deep, inviting, frightening ocean into which we are drawn. We make excursions into it to test it, to see whether it’s safe, to enjoy the sensation of it. But, for all kinds of reasons, we always go back to dry land, to solid ground, to where we are safe. But the ocean beckons us out anew, and we risk again being afloat in something bigger than ourselves. And we keep doing that, wading in and then going back to safety, until one day, when we are ready, we just let the waters carry us away.