Daily Virtue

In our readings this Sunday from Acts, First John, and the Gospel of John, the Church calls us to absolute faith in, and deep love for, God, in Jesus, risen to life after dying on the cross. Jesus is the cornerstone of our faith and our lives. “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” At first glance, human speech is absent from the holiness equation for disciples of Jesus. However, we know that our manner of speech can be a loving expression of our faith and the spirit that dwells within us. Love is expressed in deeds, and speech must never be a substitute for doing the right and often difficult thing. The only way to live out this truth is to be spiritually transformed by abiding in Jesus. The Greek word that John uses means to dwell or remain, and it becomes a metaphor for life in Christ. To abide in Christ throughout your life means doing so, not snippets of time like Sunday morning. The disciple must dwell continually in Christ’s heart, mind, and consciousness. That is how we are nourished spiritually and how we are transformed. John expressed this in the metaphor of the vine. Christ is the vine, providing spiritual sustenance; we are the branches fed continuously through this vine. Our words, thoughts, and actions will flow from this dwelling in Christ, for He is the source of our transformation and holiness. This is not religiosity or piety but a way of life. It is essential to remain connected, for our nourishment ceases once we sever that connection through laziness, sin, inattention, or any other reason. This is not punishment but the consequence of failing to remain connected to our divine source. Only when we abide in Him can we ask and receive whatever is needed to do His will, for in that state, we are not separate or distant from the Lord. The Lord is only as distant as we wish Him to be. The image of the vine also reveals that since we all drink from the same well and are nourished from the same source, we are not separate from one another. When we abide in Him, we become an extension of Christ Himself.

For centuries, the Israelites had been taught that the Gentiles were unclean. Just entering the house of a Gentile would render a Jew unclean, and he would have to go through a series of steps to become purified again. So, imagine the apostles’ shock when they realized that the Holy Spirit was also calling the Gentiles into the Church. Suddenly, for the first time in history, God was asking them to put aside the traditions of avoiding contact with Gentiles. He told them to embrace the “unclean” new believers and call them brothers and sisters in Christ. That must have been a lot for the Christians to work through, and it’s a testament to the power of the Holy Spirit that the merging of these two peoples went as smoothly as it did. Today, the ideal of a universal Church comprised of people from all over the earth has come to pass. Still, people sometimes complain that Catholics can be overly exclusive. Perhaps we subtly look down on Christians from other traditions. Maybe we avoid making friends with non-Christians. Or perhaps we emphasize the things that separate us from the rest of the world instead of the things that unite us. Pope Francis has made very bold steps to help overcome this division. When he travels, he is often accompanied by two old friends: a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim, both of whom he came to know while he was living in Argentina. These friendships are important to him because they help him keep his horizons wide and welcoming. Just as Pope Francis has made it a point to develop friendships with people of other faiths—or people who have no faith at all—he encourages us to do the same. Consider how you can open your life to people from other backgrounds or traditions today. Approach them with friendship, not the goal of converting them. Appreciate the unique person God has created each of them to be, and let the Holy Spirit bind you together in love.

The Apostles did not understand what Jesus told them, which is the reason behind Thomas’ question in today’s Gospel reading. St Augustine wrote that the Lord explains that he is the way to the Father because “He needed to say ‘I am the Way’ to show them that they really knew what they thought they were ignorant of because they knew him.” Jesus is the way to the Father through what he teaches, for by keeping to his teaching, we will reach heaven through faith, which he inspires because he came to this world so “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” St Francis de Sales, in his book, “Introduction to the Devout Life,” writes that: “Just as children by listening to their mothers, and prattling with them, learn to speak their language, so we, by keeping close to the Savior in mediation, and observing his words, his actions, and his affections, shall learn, with the help of his grace, to speak, to act, and to will like him. Diana Gaillardetz recounts her journey with her son on the ancient pilgrimage across Spain, the Camino de Santiago, and the challenge they often faced in finding the route markers. Missing a sign meant miles of unnecessary travel. But she says they were blessed to find a local town elder when these occasions arose who would simply tell them, “Follow me, and I will take you there.” And so it was that in answering Thomas’s very human question, he provided all of us with our own pilgrimage path. Early Christianity was called “The Way” before it was a church or a formal religion. This ‘Way” is founded upon a deep, trusting relationship with Jesus. Today, we find it too easy to think of the “truth” of Jesus only in the language of formal, doctrinal statements that often say little about the challenges of daily living. Only in our decision to follow Jesus, who is “way” and “life” can the “truth” of Jesus be discovered.

Anxiety, like all tensions, eats at us at various levels. More superficially, we worry about many things. Deep down though we are anxious in a way that colors almost everything we do. We nurse the secret belief that if we have the right combination of these in our lives, we will have the substance we need to feel secure and non-anxious. But experience soon teaches us that these things, though good in themselves, are not our cure. We are forever trying to give ourselves wholeness, but we cannot. We cannot self-justify. We cannot make ourselves immortal. We cannot write our own names into heaven. Only love casts out anxiety and, indeed, only a certain kind of love can give us substance. Only God’s love can write our names into heaven. What’s the algebra here? Some years ago, I went on a weeklong retreat directed by Fr. Robert Michel, a French-Canadian, Oblate missionary. He began the retreat with these words: “I want to make this a very simple retreat for you. I want to teach you how to pray in a particular way. I want to teach you how to pray so that in your prayer, perhaps not this week, perhaps not even this year, but sometime, you will open yourself so that in your deepest self you will hear God say to you: ‘I love you!’ Because before you hear this inside you, nothing will be enough for you. You’ll be searching for this and for that, running here and running there, trying every kind of thing, but nothing will ever be quite right. After you hear this from God, you will have substance; you will have found the thing you’ve been looking for so long. Only after you have heard these words will you finally be free of your anxiety. In the Gospel of John, Jesus exhibits very little humanity. Near the end of the Gospel, we have that poignant, post-resurrection meeting between Jesus and Mary of Magdala. Mary, carrying spices to embalm his dead body, goes searching for Jesus on Easter Sunday morning. She meets him but doesn’t recognize him. Supposing him to be the gardener, she asks him where she might find the body of the dead Jesus. Jesus replies by repeating the question with which he opened the Gospel. Then, before she can answer, he gives the deepest answer to that question: He pronounces her name in love: “Mary”.  In that very particularized affirmation of love, he writes her name into heaven. He gives her substance, and he cures her of her anxiety.

For the eyes, the light of the resurrection is a radically new physical phenomenon. At the resurrection of Jesus, the atoms of the planet were shaken up from their normal physical workings. A dead body rose from the grave to a life from which it would never again die. That had never happened before. Moreover, the resurrection of Jesus was also a radically new light for the soul, the light of hope. Can life be raised back up when it’s in defeat? Can a dead body come out of its grave? Can a violated body again become whole? Can lost innocence ever be restored? Can a broken heart ever be mended? Can a crushed hope ever again lift up a soul?  Doesn’t darkness extinguish all light? What hope was there for Jesus’ followers as they witnessed his humiliation and death on Good Friday? When goodness itself gets crucified, what’s the basis for any hope? In two words, the resurrection. When darkness enveloped the earth a second time, God made light a second time, and that light, unlike the physical light created at the dawn of time, can never be extinguished. That’s the difference between the resuscitation of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus, between physical light and the light of the resurrection. Lazarus was restored to his self-same body from which he had to die again. Jesus was given a radically new body that would never die again. The renowned biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown tells us that the darkness that beset the world as Jesus hung dying would last until we believe in the resurrection. Until we believe that God has a live-giving response for all death and until we believe God will roll back the stone from any grave, no matter how deeply goodness is buried under hatred and violence, the darkness of Good Friday will continue to darken our planet. Mohandas K. Gandhi once observed that we can see the truth of God always creating new light simply by looking at history: “When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time, they can seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Think of it, always.”

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that “perspective is everything.” When it’s lost, headaches and heartaches set in, take root and begin to dominate our lives. When we lose perspective, everything is reduced: the wide horizon, the depth of our minds, the compassion of our hearts, the enjoyment of our lives, and the consolation of our God. When perspective is lost, the world turns upside down: contentment gives way to restlessness, humility to ambition, and patience to a hopeless pursuit of a consummation, renown, and immortality that this life can never give. To have perspective, I must be praying, mystically feeling the other world, and content enough in my anonymity to take my place, but no more than that, among others, as one small but integral member of the billions of men and women who have walked, and will walk, the earth and will, one day, be presented by Christ to his Father. It is not easy to keep perspective and to claim no more, and no less, than my true place in history. When my own prayer and mysticism are too weak for me to properly do this, one of the things I can still do is to stay in touch with those who have kept things in perspective. One of the people who helped me with this is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French scientist/priest/mystic/philosopher who died on Easter Sunday in 1955. Like the rest of us, his life, too, had its share of hurts, ambitions, cold, lonely seasons, and obsessions. He spent most of his life unsure that anyone really understood him. But, this is where he is rare; he invariably was able to put things into perspective, to regain the wide horizon, and to see things, no matter how bad they appeared on the surface, as making sense in Christ. Because of this perspective, he was a gifted man, gifted not just with extraordinary insight but also with exceptional joy. He could see God in a stone. A chip of rock in the desert or an opera in Paris or New York—both held equal potential for delight. The simple pleasures of life, the elementary act of looking at the world and feeling its elements—the weather, the soil, the sun, the very dust could give him a joy bordering on ecstasy. He could love deeply, and he could also let go, and this letting go was what saved him from the always-present fear, ambition, and loneliness that so often asphyxiates me. He was able to keep things in perspective, so he didn’t need to dwell on past hurts, on present loneliness, and on future fears.

A seminary professor shares this story. He’s been teaching seminarians for many years, and in recent years, when teaching about the sacrament of penance, he is frequently asked this question, often as the first question in the class: “When can I refuse absolution? When do I not grant forgiveness?” The anxiety expressed here is not, I believe, triggered by a need for power but by a very sincere fear that we have to be rather scrupulous in handing out God’s mercy and that we shouldn’t be handing out cheap grace. And, undergirding that fear, Fr. Rolheiser writes, is the unconscious notion that God, too, works out of a sense of scarcity rather than of abundance and that God’s mercies, like our own resources, are limited and need to be measured out very sparingly. But that’s not the God whom Jesus incarnated and revealed. The Gospels rather reveal a God who is prodigal beyond all our standards and beyond our imagination. The God of the Gospels is the Sower who, because he has unlimited seeds, scatters those seeds everywhere without discrimination: on the road, in the ditches, in the thorn bushes, in bad soil, and in good soil. Moreover, that prodigal Sower is also the God of creation, that is, the God who has created and continues to create hundreds of billions of galaxies and billions and billions of human beings. And this prodigal God gives us this perennial invitation: Come to the waters, come without money, come without merit because God’s gift is as plentiful, available, and as free as the air we breathe. The Gospel of Luke recounts an incident where Peter, just after he had spent an entire night fishing and had caught nothing, is told to cast out his net one more time and, this time, Peter’s net catches so many fish that the weight of the catch threatens to sink two boats. Peter reacts by falling on his knees and confessing his sinfulness. But, as the text makes clear, that’s not the proper reaction in the face of over-abundance. Peter is wrongly fearful, in effect, wanting that over-abundance to go away, when what Jesus wants from him in the face of that over-abundance is to go out to the world and share with others that unimaginable grace. What God’s over-abundance is meant to teach us is that, in the face of limitless grace, we may never refuse anyone absolution.

This is the fourth of seven “I am” declarations that Jesus makes about himself in the Gospel of John. In other ones, Jesus says that he is the bread of life, the light of the world, the resurrection and the life, the gate, the true vine, the way, and the door. These declarations tell us something unique about Jesus and who he is – the Son of God. Using the simple analogy of sheep and their shepherd, Jesus is telling us something central to our life of faith. Like a shepherd, he leads, feeds, protects, and saves us from death. But there’s one mystery that this statement—or any of the others—doesn’t answer: why does God have such unending and boundless love for us? The answer to this question is both simple and profound. God is love. It’s who he is, and he can’t stop loving us. We are his children, and he will always care for us. He loves us so much that he asked his Son to leave his heavenly home, take on a human body, and lay down his life for us. Now risen in glory and enthroned with his Father, Jesus still cares more about us than himself. Like a good shepherd, he guides us to safety, restores our strength, and anoints us with his grace. He is the “shepherd and guardian” of our souls. He is the “great shepherd” who gives his all to his sheep. Jesus knows that his sheep are defenseless against the temptations of Satan, the “thief” who wants to steal, kill, and destroy us. He also wants us to know it so that we will cling to him and follow him like faithful, innocent sheep. Today, in prayer, tell the Lord, “Jesus, you are my good shepherd. Come, Lord, and keep me safe.”

To whom shall we go? Peter asks. In other words, “Who else will instruct us the way you do?” Or, “To whom shall we go to find anything better?” You have the words of eternal life, not hard words, as those other disciples say, but words that will bring us to the loftiest goal, unceasing, endless life removed from all corruption. The Church, down through the ages to the present day, has stood with Peter. Jesus is not one interesting teacher among many; he is the only one, the one with the words of eternal life, indeed, the Holy One of God. And he comes to us through the flesh and blood of the Eucharist. St. Cyril of Alexandria writes that these words surely make quite apparent to us the necessity of sitting at the feet of Christ, taking him as our one and only teacher, and giving him our constant and undivided attention. “He must be our guide who knows well how to lead us to everlasting life. Thus, shall we ascend to the divine court of heaven and, entering the church of the firstborn, delight in blessings passing all human understanding. But accompanying the Savior Christ and following him is by no means to be thought of as something done by the body. It is accomplished rather by deeds springing from virtue. Upon such virtue, the wisest disciples firmly fixed their minds and refused to depart with the unbelievers, which they saw would be fatal. With good reason, they cried out, ‘Where can we go?’ It was as though they said: ‘We will stay with you always and hold fast to your commandments. We will receive your words without finding fault or thinking you are teaching hard as the ignorant do, but thinking rather, how sweet are your words to my throat! Sweeter to my mouth are they than honey or the honeycomb.'” If we are aligned with Love, if the Bread is true, if the “flesh” and Blood are nourishment, then life flows in us. We have come not only to believe but to know, and we stay because eternal life is flowing.

In the annual remembrance of the Passion of Christ, Jesus says to Pontius Pilate, “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate responded by asking him, “What is truth?” Jesus is the truth. He can testify to the truth because he belongs to what is above and is the only one who has come down from heaven; thus, he has seen what the Father does and has heard what the Father has said. Indeed, he is the embodiment of truth, so the deeds and words of his ministry constitute testimony to the truth. I believe that Christ is truly present in the bread and the wine – referred to as the “real presence” of Christ.  The real presence of Jesus is true because he said so: “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.” C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” Tweaking his statement, we could also say: “The real presence of Christ, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”