Author: DVO

Bishop Barron notes that Moses is, without a doubt, the greatest figure in the Old Testament. He heard the voice of God from the burning bush; he was chosen to lead the people of Israel to freedom; he was given the Ten Commandments; he was permitted to speak with God as a friend. Every teacher within ancient Judaism derived his authority finally from Moses. Therefore, when Moses speaks of a prophet who is to come, who is “like himself,” and who should be listened to—apparently of even greater authority than Moses—Israel took heed. Jesus is the prophet whom Moses predicted would come. But who, finally, could have the authority to speak the divine Word and bring healing to creation? It could only be God himself. In the Jewish scriptures, there’s a famous incident in which Moses asks God to see his face. God answers that this is impossible because nobody can see God’s face and live. When Moses persists in his demand, God offers a compromise: He tells Moses that he will place him in a cleft in the rocks, put his hand over Moses’s face, and then pass by so that Moses will get to see God’s, back, though never his face. Fr. Rolheiser writes that we struggle to feel God in the present moment, to see God’s face in the here and now. In the present, God often seems absent. Yet, when we turn around and look back on our lives, when we look back on our story, we more easily see how God has been there all along and how we have walked in a divine presence, protection, guidance, and love that were imperceptible at the time but are clear in retrospect. We see God more clearly in our past than in our present. We see God’s back more than we see God’s face. This can clarify how Christ is present to us, even when it doesn’t always feel like it.

We all fear judgment. We fear being seen with all that’s inside us, some of which we don’t want exposed to the light. Conversely, we fear being misunderstood, of not being seen in the full light, of not being seen for who we are. And what we fear most, perhaps, is a final judgment, the ultimate revelation of ourselves. Whether we are religious or not, most of us fear having to one day face our Maker, judgment day. We fear standing naked in complete light where nothing’s hidden and all that’s in the dark inside us is brought to light. What’s curious about these fears is that we fear both being known for who we are, even as we fear not being known for who we really are. We fear judgment, even as we long for it. Perhaps that’s because we already intuit what our final judgment will be and how it will take place. Perhaps we already intuit that when we finally stand naked in God’s light, we will also finally be understood and that revealing light will not just expose our shortcomings but also make our virtues visible. That intuition is divinely placed in us and reflects the reality of our final judgment. When all our secrets are known, our secret goodness will also be known. Light exposes everything. Saint Therese of Lisieux used to ask God for forgiveness with these words: “Punish me with a kiss!” Judgment day will be exactly that. We will be “punished” by a kiss, by being loved in a way that will make us painfully aware of the sin within us, even as it lets us know that we are good and loveable. This notion of judgment is also, I believe, what we Catholics mean by our concept of purgatory. Purgatory is not a place that’s separate from heaven where one goes for a time to do penance for one’s sins and to purify one’s heart. Our hearts are purified by being embraced by God, not by being separated from God for a time so as to be made worthy of that embrace. As well, as Therese of Lisieux implies the punishment for our sin is in the embrace itself. Final judgment takes place by being unconditionally embraced by Love. When that happens to the extent that we’re sinful and selfish that embrace of pure goodness and love will make us painfully aware of our own sin and that will be hell until it is heaven. – Fr. Ron Rolheiser, “Judgement Day”

As Christians, we believe that we are all members of one living organism, the Body of Christ. In that reality, Fr. Rolheiser writes that our union with each other is more than metaphorical. It is real, as real as the physicality of a living body. We are not a corporation but a living body, a living organism, where all parts affect all other parts. Hence, just as in a live body, healthy enzymes help bring health to the whole body, and infected and cancerous cells threaten the health of the whole body, so too inside the Body of Christ. What we do in private is still inside the body. Consequently, when we do virtuous things, even in private, like a healthy enzyme, we help strengthen the immune system within the whole body. Conversely, when we are unfaithful, when we are selfish, and when we sin, no matter whether this is only done in private, like an infected or cancerous cell, we are helping break down the immune system in the body. Both healthy enzymes and harmful cancer cells work in secret below the surface. This has important implications for our private lives. Our private thoughts and actions, like healthy enzymes or infected cells, affect the health of the body, either strengthening or weakening its immune system. When we are faithful, we help bring health to the body; when we are unfaithful, we are an infected cell challenging the immune system within the body. Whether we are faithful or unfaithful in private affects others, and this is not something that is abstract or mystical. We know some things consciously and others unconsciously. We know certain things through observation and others intuitively. We know through our heads, our hearts, and our guts, and through all three of these faculties, sometimes (because inside of a body, all parts affect each other), we know something because we sense it as either a tension or comfort inside our soul. There are no private acts. Our private acts, like our public ones, are either bringing health or disease to the community.  Sin robs us of our innocence by wounding and killing the child inside. To be innocent, as we know, means to be “un-wounded,” and our capacity to experience joy, as we know both from experience and scripture, is very much linked to innocence, to what’s still childlike inside us. Sin makes us sad precisely because it makes us sophisticated in a way that wounds the child inside of us. The opposite is also true. If you are here faithfully, you bring great blessings. If you are here unfaithfully, you bring great harm.

Theologian Paul Tillich said that “faith” is the most misunderstood word in the religious vocabulary. And this is a tragedy, for faith stands at the very heart of the program; it is the sine qua non of the Christian thing. What is it? The opening line of Hebrews 11 has the right definition: “Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, and conviction about things we do not see.” Faith is a straining ahead toward those things that are, at best, dimly glimpsed. But notice it is not a craven, hand-wringing, unsure business. It is “confident” and full of “conviction.” Think of the great figures of faith, from Abraham to John Paul II: they are anything but shaky, indefinite, questioning people. Wilfred Stinissen writes that we have been given new eyes to discover the divine reality, namely, our faith. Faith sees through the outer shell and penetrates to the substance of things. Faith reveals new areas of reality (the Trinity, angels, and so on), but faith also enables us to see everything we encounter in a completely new way. It sees the deep dimension of daily events. That is why there is no longer anything ordinary for the believer; nothing is uninteresting or boring. Everything becomes exciting and fascinating. Beautiful thoughts and theories often remain in our heads and do not change our lives. They are not our most important teachers. We are influenced by events. In Hebrew, the terms for “word” and “event” (dabar) are the same. God speaks through events. Every event is a Word of God to us. He is in everything that happens. I live in God’s presence when I accept what happens as a message from him without rebelling against it. I am aware that he is continually working to form and sculpt me. This does not require any thoughts or words. Even work that demands all of my attention does not prevent me from living in God’s presence in this way. The only thing necessary is a “yes” attitude, letting God create me. We seek him in the great things, but he communicates and reveals himself in the small.

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was also a man of privilege and entitlement but disagreed with the Sadducees. As Pharisees, he and Jesus had much more in common, philosophically and religiously. In fact, there is reasonable scholarly speculation that Jesus was raised as a Pharisee. And so Jesus’ actions in the temple must have also caught Nicodemus’ attention because here, in the chapter that immediately follows the temple story, Nicodemus has come to Jesus in the night for fear of being seen by other members of the Sanhedrin. Rev. John Forman writes that Nicodemus recognized Jesus as a rabbi and asked him deep and probing questions. Without condemning Nicodemus’ understanding, Jesus invites him—and you and I—into a deeper embrace. Jesus, in our reflection verse, is testifying that those who trust and bond with the Beloved One will not perish, not because we have fulfilled a contractual obligation, but because we, too, have become God’s offspring, children of God. In that way, we receive from God the same family honor and character that God has, and we owe God the same loyalty that blood relatives give to each other. This is the way that God loved the world. God gave the world the only begotten child so that everyone who trusts and bonds with that child may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the only begotten One into the world to judge creation but to save that creation through that One. Those who trust and bond with him are not judged, but those who hesitate and are disloyal to him are already judged because they have not trusted in the family name of the only begotten. God has loved us; God loves us and will love us. God loves us not because we have behaved correctly, because we have agreed to a checklist of doctrines, or even because we call ourselves Christians. God loves us because God is love. Loving is what God does, and God’s love abides. God’s love is wild and unconditional, not transactional. God simply delights in loving us because it is the essence of God’s being.  And that is the essence that came to us in the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ, the only Begotten child. Fr. Ronald Rolheiser, author of several of my favorite books on spirituality, has suggested that we are still a long way from trusting and bonding with the Word made Flesh and, in that way, taking on the family name. Fr. Rolheiser writes, “Do we ever really take the unconditional love of God seriously? Do we ever really take the joy of God seriously? Do we ever really believe that God loves us long before any sin we commit and long after every sin we commit? Do we ever really believe that God still, unconditionally, loves Satan and everyone in hell and that God is even now willing to open the gates of heaven to them?  Do we ever really take how wide the embrace of God is?  Do we ever believe Julian of Norwich when she tells us that God sits in the center of heaven, smiling, his face completely relaxed, looking like a marvelous symphony?” These are fantastic questions to be pondering during Lent, because as Rolheiser concludes, “the deep struggle of all religion is to enter into the joy of God.”   As Jesus continues to offer light to Nicodemus there under the cover of night and to us here in the darkness of this Lenten season, Jesus also points to a sobering truth. Even if we have seen the light, we can still choose the darkness. We can choose not to be in relation to God.  We can choose to fearfully imagine salvation to be a limited guarantee for the “there and then” and reject the life-sustaining intimate relationship that God deeply yearns for with us in the “here and now.” Choose life instead. Choose light. Choose love.

What does it mean to be merciful in the religious sense? Medieval theology taught that mercy flows spontaneously out of charity, like smoke from fire. It linked mercy to justice, seeing it as one dimension of justice. This insight is valuable because mercy does flow out of charity and ultimately takes its root in justice. But Fr. Rolheiser writes that it has its own specificity, which can be seen when we examine it biblically. In the Old Testament, mercy (hesed, often translated as loving-kindness) is a quality ascribed first of all to God. Later, the prophets begin challenging the people with it, telling them that God does not want sacrifice but mercy, as God practices. What is implied in this? Biblically, mercy is a word used to describe the feelings and actions that a very loving parent has towards their children. The concept of mercy connotes feelings and actions that are deeply personal, one-to-one, unique, special, tender, and warm. The tender love of a parent for a child dwarfs the demand for strict justice even while never violating it. The church classically taught this through various lists, which tried to summarize what is implied in imitating God’s mercy. The corporal works of mercy: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the sick, ransoming the captive, bury the dead are one such list. In essence, these lists challenge us to be more holy and God-like through practicing a justice that is more personal, one-to-one, warm, and gracious beyond strict need. The prophets of the Old Testament made this list the acid test for faith. If you did these things, you had faith – and vice versa. Jesus goes even further. For him, as is evident in Matthew’s Gospel, the corporal works of mercy are the criteria for salvation and the measure of how we are treating him – “Whatsoever you do unto the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, sick, and captive, you do unto me.” Long buried in the thicket, the list of the corporal works of mercy awaits such exploration.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that when he was younger, he was pretty confident that he knew what love meant. After all, we all experience love in some way: being in love, loving someone, being loved by someone. Virtually everyone has known the love of somebody, a friend, a family member, or an acquaintance. The more we age, the more we also begin to know love’s dark side: We fall in love and think it will last forever, but then fall out of love, feel love go sour, feel love grow cold, see love betrayed, feel ourselves wounded by love, and wound others. Finally, even more upsetting, we all find that there are always people in our lives who are cold, bitter, and unforgiving towards us, so it is not always easy to feel love and be loving. Jesus commanded us to “Love one another as I have loved you!” We too easily read that simplistically, romantically, and in a one-sided, over-confident manner. But this command contains the most important challenge of the whole gospel and, like the deepest part of the gospel to which it is linked, the crucifixion, it is very, very difficult to imitate. Why? It’s easy to consider ourselves as loving if we only look at one side of things, namely, how we relate to those people who are loving, warm, respectful, and gracious towards us. But if we begin to look at the skeletons in our relational closets, our naive confidence will soon disappear. What about the people who hate us, whom we don’t like? What about the people whom we avoid and who avoid us? What about those people towards whom we feel resentment? What about all those people with whom we are at odds, towards whom we feel suspicion, coldness, and anger? What about those people whom we haven’t been able to forgive? It’s one thing to love someone who adores you, and it’s quite another to love someone who wants you dead! But that’s the real test. Jesus’ command to love contains a critical subordinate clause, “as I have loved you!” What was unique in the way he loved us? More than any creedal formula or other moral issue, the command to love and forgive your enemies is the litmus test for Christian discipleship. We can ardently believe in and defend every item in the creed and fight passionately for justice in all its dimensions, but the real test of whether or not we are followers of Jesus is the capacity or non-capacity to forgive an enemy, to remain warm and loving towards someone who is not warm and loving to us. That’s the hard, non-negotiable truth underlying Jesus’ command to love, and when we are honest, we have to admit that we are still a long way from measuring up to that. There’s a sobering challenge in an old Stevie Nicks song, Golddust Woman: She suggests that it’s good that, at a point in life, someone “shatters our illusion of love” because far too often, blind to its own true intentions, our love is manipulative and self-serving. Too often, the song points out, we are lousy lovers who unconsciously pick our prey. What shatters our illusion of love is the presence in our lives of people who hate us. They’re the test. It’s here where we have to measure up: If we can love them, we’re real lovers; if we can’t, we’re still under a self-serving illusion.

The great challenge is living your wounds through instead of thinking them through. It is better to cry than to worry, better to feel your wounds than to understand them, better to let them enter into your silence than to talk about them. The choice you face constantly is whether you are taking your wounds to your head or your heart. – Henri Nouwen

Fr. Rolheiser writes that part of us understands exactly what Henri Nouwen is saying here, even as another part of us congenitally resists his advice: There’s a place in us that doesn’t want to cry, doesn’t want to feel our hurt, doesn’t want to take our pain to a place of silence, and doesn’t want to take our wounds to our heart. And so instead, in our heartaches and wounds, we grow anxious and obsessive, we struggle to understand, we talk endlessly to others, and we try to sort things out with our heads rather than letting ourselves simply feel them with our hearts. For all of this wisdom he provides, there needs to be some qualification: We must also take our wounds to our heads. Our hearts and heads need to be in sync. The way we take pain to our heads and block healing tears in our hearts is by denial, by rationalization, by blaming, by not simply and honestly admitting and owning our own pain, our own helplessness, our own weakness, and our own inadequacy. When we are brought to our knees by heartache and pain, we shouldn’t try to deny that pain, its bitter strength, or our helplessness in dealing with it. To do so is to risk becoming hard and bitter. Tears connect us to our origins and allow life’s primal water to flow through us again. Moreover, when we take our pain to our hearts and when we honestly admit our weaknesses and helplessness, God can finally begin to fill us with strength. Why? It is only when we are brought to our knees in utter helplessness, only when we finally give up on our own strength, that God can send an angel to strengthen us like God sent an angel to strengthen Jesus during his agony in the garden. That is why it is better to feel our wounds than to understand them and why it is better to cry than to worry.

In Hebrew, the figure of seventy times seven means the same as “always.” Therefore, our Lord did not limit forgiveness to a fixed number but declared that it must be continuous and forever. The parable also clearly shows that we are totally in God’s debt. A talent was the equivalent of six thousand denarii, and a denarius was a working man’s daily wage. Ten thousand talents, an enormous sum, gives us an idea of the immense value attached to the pardon we receive from God. During the preparation of the gifts at the Offertory of the Mass, the priest prays quietly: “With humble spirit and contrite heart, may we be accepted by you, O Lord, and may our sacrifice in your sight this day be pleasing to you, Lord God.” Azariah, in our first reading from Daniel, prayed loudly to the Lord: “But with contrite heart and humble spirit let us be received…” As we come before the Lord in personal or communal prayer, our disposition and our moral behavior play a significant part in the effectiveness of our dialogue with the Lord. Humility grounds us in the truth of things; contrition opens our hearts to receive the mercy of God. The Gospel parable about the servant who received God’s forgiveness but refused to forgive in return is deeply disturbing. Of course, we are that servant being offered God’s forgiveness. Hopefully, we are not that servant in withholding forgiveness from those who have hurt us in any way. Jesus adds a zinger—our forgiveness of others must be “from the heart.” A famous line from Erich Segal’s 1970 novel Love Story, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” is not only bad psychology, but it denies what love is all about. The cousins of love are mercy and forgiveness. Every relationship will have its hurts and bruises. These must be tended to as much as a knife wound. If not, an infection will set in, threatening our spiritual life and the life of the community. A humble spirit and contrite heart dispose us well to live authentically with God and with others.

In Hebrew, the figure of seventy times seven means the same as “always.” Therefore, our Lord did not limit forgiveness to a fixed number but declared that it must be continuous and forever. The parable also clearly shows that we are totally in God’s debt. A talent was the equivalent of six thousand denarii, and a single denarius was a working man’s daily wage. Ten thousand talents, an enormous sum, gives us an idea of the immense value attached to the pardon we receive from God. We must force ourselves, if necessary, to always forgive those who offend us from the very first moment. The greatest injury or offense you can suffer from them is nothing compared with what God has pardoned each of us from.