Jesus himself was an observant Jew, and the themes and images of the Holy Scriptures were elemental to him. He presented himself as the one who would not undermine the Law and the Prophets but fulfill them. In our Gospel reading from Mark, Jesus quotes a passage from Isaiah to call out those whose worship practice was superficial and routine. Jesus spoke about an attitude toward God that he saw as the tendency to substitute religiosity for genuine obedience to God and his word. In today’s vernacular, we would call that giving “lip service.” Jesus came “to do the will of the one who sent me.” Is that our daily mission, to do “the will of God” in our life? We cannot do it alone. We can do nothing without God. Only through a steadfast commitment to the Lord can we find that deep transformation of our hearts, minds, and souls that will change everything.
God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul. He is God alone, supreme in His majesty. I sit at His feet, a child in the dark beside Him; my joy is aware of His glance, and my sorrow is tempted, to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments, not velvet or silk and affable to the touch, but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch, and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal to the Divinity that I am dust. Here is the loud profession of my trust. I need not go abroad, to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music, for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still. I have this potent prayer through good or ill: here in the dark, I clutch the garments of God.
– Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers
Jesus calls his followers to be the salt and light of the world. As his followers, being salt effectively preserves and enhances what is best in the society around us. We can undermine what is dysfunctional in the surrounding culture. We are also light by which people around us come to see what is worth seeing. By the quality and integrity of our lives, we shed light, illumining what is beautiful and revealing what is ugly. The clear implication is that, without vibrant Christians, the world is a much worse place. Mother Teresa of Calcutta would never have achieved much for the poor if she hadn’t lived authentic discipleship. People can see through false words and self-promotion. That is the sense of the Arab proverb: “Three things cannot be hidden: a mountain, a man riding on a camel, and love.” Mother Teresa embodied the love of Christ that all disciples are called to be.
Today’s reflection verse from Hebrews links Christian teaching on grace with man’s response to that grace. Commenting on this passage, St Thomas Aquinas explains that the words “equip you with everything good that you may do his will” is the same as saying “may God make you desire everything good” because it is God’s will that we act of our own free will. If we did not act freely, our will would not be good; if we do God’s will, we will always do what is good for us. God has disposed man’s will to choose to do what is right. It is up to man to respond to God’s design. In this sense, God “equips us with everything good that you may do his will.” We can do nothing to add or remove the grace God bestows on us, but we can affect how that grace will impact our lives and vocations through our actions.
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? That question can spark endless debate because it is largely irresolvable. Catholic teaching is that God is revealed through sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, hence the statement that Catholicism is a “both/and” faith practice.
Our protestant brethren hold that scripture alone is the only authoritative resource for the faith and practice of the Christian. This doctrine is referred to as Sola scriptura (Scripture alone). The often-quoted verse to support this doctrine comes from the Second Letter of Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).
To view this from a Catholic perspective, some definitions are in order at the outset. Sacred Scripture, or the Bible, is a collection of works written under divine inspiration. Sacred Tradition is the unwritten or oral record of God’s Word to His prophets and apostles, received under divine inspiration and faithfully transmitted to the Church under the same guidance. Tradition differs from Scripture in that Tradition is a living reality passed on and preserved in the Church’s doctrine, life, and worship, while Scripture is a tangible reality found in written form.
Since the Protestant Reformation, a sticking point in the dialogue between Protestants and Catholics has been the perceived rivalry between Scripture and Tradition. The Catholic Church teaches that “sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church.” The focus of the debate shifted from one of “Scripture versus Tradition” to a discussion of the Lord’s desire to reveal Himself to His people, a process carried forward by both Scripture and Tradition.
From the temporal point of view, Tradition precedes Scripture, and the Church precedes both in that the writing of the New Testament did not begin until some fifteen to twenty years after the Pentecostal formation of the Church and was not completed until perhaps as late as a.d. 120. The Gospel message, then, was imparted through oral tradition first, and only later was it committed to written form. The means (whether oral or written), however, is in many ways secondary to the goal (revelation) and to the receiver of the revelation (God’s people, the Church).
An example from the American government might be instructive. The law of the land is found in the Constitution of the United States; it is normative for American life. However, it is not a self-interpreting document. On the contrary, it calls for detailed, professional interpretation from an entire branch of government dedicated to that purpose. Furthermore, when conflicting views do emerge, standard procedures of jurisprudence call for a return to the sources in an effort to discover the minds of the people who produced the document.
The canon of the Bible (the officially accepted list of inspired books) is the most evident proof of the validity of this approach. We know with the utmost certitude that no authoritative list of scriptural books existed until the fourth century. And who then produced this canon? None other than the Church meeting in the ecumenical council. Therefore, the value and even, one could say, the validity of the written Word is established only after its inspiration and inerrancy are assured and attested to by the Church. The process of divine revelation thus began with the Church, through Tradition, and subsequently passed into Scripture, and not the other way around.
Can it happen, though, that Scripture and Tradition will at times contradict each other? Impossible—because they are just two sides of the same coin, whose purpose is the same and whose origins are the same. Since God wishes to reveal Himself to us, He has guaranteed the process in both its oral and written expressions (and not one more than the other). Furthermore, God cannot contradict Himself. Saint Paul apparently had this very concept in mind when he urged his readers at Thessalonika to “hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours” (2 Th 2:15). This very passage, however, raises a secondary but related problem.
Some Christians tend to confuse “Tradition” with “traditions.” Having already defined Tradition, we need to consider the meaning and place of traditions (customs or practices). Sacred Tradition is divine in origin and, so, unchangeable; traditions are human in origin and therefore changeable. Some examples that come to mind are various devotions to the saints, processions, acts of penance, and the use of incense or holy water. No Church authority has ever held that these practices are divinely mandated; at the same time, no one can demonstrate that they are divinely forbidden. Traditions exist to put people in touch with Almighty God. To the extent that they do, they are good; to the extent that they do not, they are bad and should be modified or abolished.
On the other hand, certain defined dogmas cannot be found explicitly in Scripture (for example, Mary’s Assumption or Immaculate Conception). Yet, the Church binds its members to an acceptance of these teachings. How so? First of all, nothing in Scripture contradicts these dogmas. Second, they have been a part of the Tradition (or oral revelation) from the beginning. Third, because they can be implicitly located in Scripture, waiting, in a sense, to be uncovered by the Church’s prayerful reflection over the centuries.
Scripture comes alive only in the life of the community that gave it birth and has since preached and proclaimed it. To remove Scripture from its moorings in the Church is to deny it genuine vitality. Scripture provides Tradition with a written record against which to judge its fidelity and thus serves as a safeguard. In the “balance of powers” (to resort once more to the governmental analogy), Tradition is a defense against an unhealthy individualism that distorts the Bible through a private interpretation at odds with the constant Tradition of the Church.
Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that God lets his sun shine on the bad as well as the good. God’s love doesn’t discriminate; it simply embraces everything. God loves us when we are good, and God loves us when we are bad. God loves the saints in heaven and the devils in hell equally. They just respond differently. Why be good if God loves us equally when we are bad and good? That is an interesting question, though not a deep one. Love, understood properly, is never a reward for being good. Instead, goodness is always a consequence of having been loved. We aren’t loved because we are good, but hopefully, we become good because we experience love. That is the power of unconditional love.
The verse we are reflecting on today speaks of contradiction. Simeon’s words bring me back to the basic principle of “non-contradiction,” which says, “something is, or it is not, it cannot be both, and two plus two can never be five. Our God is One. That means that there is no internal contradiction within God, and that assures us that there is no internal contradiction possible within the structure of reality and a sane mind. Jesus is either the messiah or a crazy person; he cannot be both. God incarnate existed, and that fact will forever be true and cannot be denied. The single most dangerous thing in the whole world is lying, dishonesty, and denying facts. To deny a fact is not only to play fast and loose with your sanity and the very foundations of rationality; it is also to play fast and loose with our God, whose consistency undergirds all sanity and all meaning. God is one, undivided, and consistent.
Discipline. Let’s look at the word’s origin to understand what discipline is and what it means. The root word of discipline is “disciple,” which comes from the Latin word discipulus, meaning “student.” Most people believe a disciple is a “follower.” To be a disciple is to put yourself under a discipline. That, as St. Paul says today, is the enduring “discipline” to make “straight” our paths in life, striving “for peace with everyone,” seeking “holiness” that will be blessed by the “grace of God.” The greatest discipline we can exhibit as a disciple is living in ever-greater transparency and honesty through an ever-wider embrace of being compassionate as God is, trusting as God is, and loving as God is.
Mark Wahlberg’s new film Father Stu is one of the most theologically interesting films to come out in a long time. It considers some of the thorniest and most puzzling themes in the sacred science, including the nature of vocation, the purpose of suffering in the divine plan, the role of supernatural agency, the dynamics of redemption, and perhaps most thoroughly, the mystery of God’s providence. In the course of this article, I would like to say just a few simple things about the first and last of those motifs.
Let’s take providence first. I have argued for years that most people in the modern world are functionally deist in their understanding of God. This means that they consider God a distant cause, important perhaps in bringing the universe into being, but now essentially uninvolved with his creation. This might have been the philosophical perspective of the leading minds of the eighteenth century, but it is most assuredly not the perspective of the authors of the Bible. For the writers of the Torah, for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Peter, John, and Paul, God is personally and passionately implicated in his creation, especially in the affairs of human beings. The God of Israel pushes, pulls, cajoles, corrects, punishes, leads, and lures his human friends into fullness of life. Psalm 139 gives classic expression to this Biblical intuition: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me” (Ps. 139:1–5).
Wahlberg’s movie tells the unlikely story of Stuart Long, a burnt-out boxer from Montana who tried to make his way in Hollywood and ended up, to everyone’s enormous surprise, including his own, a Catholic priest. The journey commenced in the LA grocery store where Stu was working as a clerk. He spied a beautiful woman and was smitten. Inquiring after her, he discovered that she was a faithful attendee at the local Catholic parish, and so one Sunday, Stu went to Mass. Not a Catholic, not even a believer, he had no idea what to do or say at the liturgy, but he was intent upon getting to know the girl. After some awkward courting, she frankly informed the boxer that she would never consider dating someone who was not baptized. And so, with decidedly imperfect motivation, Stu entered the RCIA program and received baptism. In accord with Catholic theology, the sacrament had a truly efficacious effect on Stu, awakening and deepening his faith, and it ultimately prepared him to face a terrible trial. A motorcycle accident, depicted in the film with horrific realism, left him bedridden for months, but his Catholic faith and the support of his girlfriend sustained him. In time, he came to the realization that God wanted him to be a priest.
I won’t rehearse any more of the details of the story, but suffice it to say that, even as Stu was planning a life of movie stardom and marriage, God was about something else entirely. In point of fact, the Lord of the universe was so interested in the former boxer from Helena that, by careful steps, he led him, first to the Church, then to the faith, and finally to the priesthood. I wonder, honestly, how many devout Christians truly believe that God is so interested in them that he supervises their lives, drawing their freedom at every turn. Thomas Aquinas said, simply enough, that God’s providence “extends to particulars,” which implies that he knows and guides everyone individually. St. Paul told the Ephesians that the “power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). How our lives would change if we learned to trust that power and watch for the signs of his providence. A theme deeply related to providence is that of vocation or calling. Our culture highly privileges the rights, freedom, and prerogative of the individual. We celebrate, accordingly, those people who stand against the expectations of their families, friends, or traditions and make their own decisions, following their own chosen path. But this is repugnant to the Bible. The scriptural authors are interested, not in self-determination, but in the process by which a person awakens to God’s call. They celebrate those who enact, not the ego-drama, but the theo-drama, who abide, not by their own voice, but by God’s. They furthermore know that God’s call, once discerned, is practically irresistible. Once someone knows what God wants for him, he will do anything, overcome any obstacle, face down any opposition, in order to follow that divine directive. For biblical examples of this principle, think of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Jeremiah, or Paul. Stuart Long belongs, in his own way, in that great tradition, for having discerned that God wanted him to be a priest, he faced down the opposition of his mother, his father, his girlfriend, many of the people in his parish, the seminary rector, and even some of his seminary classmates. Moreover, he remained faithful to his calling when he was afflicted with the degenerative muscle disease that would eventually kill him. “Here I am; send me” (Isa. 6:8), said the prophet Isaiah, and Fr. Stu said the same thing.
I wonder, again, how many devout Christians understand that the discernment of their vocation is the most important psychological and spiritual move that they will ever make, that every other decision they make in their lives is secondary. And I wonder how many have experienced the real joy and excitement of surrendering to God’s call? What I sensed, especially in the second half of Father Stu, is how this man, despite everything, retained the joy of knowing he was cooperating with a divine purpose. That is the joy that, as the Bible says, no one can take from you (John 16:22).
If you want to see a concrete and contemporary enactment of these two great biblical principles, you could do a lot worse than to watch Father Stu.
Father Michael Himes, a widely respected Catholic theologian and beloved faculty member at Boston College for almost three decades, recently passed on June 10 at the age of 75. I was drawn to his writings with a book on the public significance of theology called Fullness of Faith (1993). He also is well known for his book and video series, The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to Catholicism (2004). With his death, I wanted to provide a timely example of his teaching and thought process with the video he did: Catholics: Why We Are a Sacramental People.
Fr. Himes, in a 2012 lecture at Boston College, explained to his audience that anything in creation could be sacramental. “All of us have personal sacraments: people, things, places or events which speak to us deeply and richly of the love of God which we know surrounds us always but of which we are not always aware … and sometimes those personal sacraments may be even more effective as signs of grace for us than the great public sacraments.” That is a beautiful insight into some facets of sacramental thought in the Catholic Church. His lecture can be viewed below.
