Author: DVO

Robert Barron writes that in the Middle Ages, prudence was called “the queen of the virtues” because it was the virtue that enabled one to do the right thing in a particular situation. Prudence is a feel for the moral situation. Justice is a wonderful virtue, but without prudence, it is blind and finally useless. One can be as just as possible, but without a feel for the present situation, his justice will do him no good. Wisdom, unlike prudence, is a sense of the big picture. It is the view from the hilltop. Most of us look at our lives from the standpoint of our own self-interest. But wisdom is the capacity to survey reality from the vantage point of God. Even the most prudent judgment will be erroneous, short-sighted, and inadequate without wisdom. The combination, therefore, of prudence and wisdom is especially powerful. Someone wise and prudent will have a sense of the bigger picture and a feel for the particular situation. Living faith is the vantage point for a believing Christian. It opens our eyes to see all of life differently because of who Jesus is and who we are invited to become in Him, through Him, and with Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit. God has withheld nothing from us. In Jesus Christ, and in his Body, the Church, we have been given everything we could ever ask for or imagine. We are the ones to whom much has been given. We are the ones who have been given much. It has been entrusted to us. Now, much more is required.

Most of us have had the experience of being left out at one time or another. Somebody did not choose us for a sports team or accept us in a group we wanted to join. Some of us have experienced the pain of exclusion because of race, religion, nationality, socio-economic status, or gender. Some of us may have had the good fortune of being accepted and included where we previously were not. It is this kind of remarkable reversal that Paul now recounts. He reminds Gentile believers that at one point in time, they were the consummate outsiders, separated from God and his chosen people, Israel. He explains that the Messiah’s sacrificial death on the cross has brought them in, reconciling Jews and Gentiles to one another and God in a re-created human race. The upshot is that Gentile believers now enjoy an astonishingly close relationship with God as members of his household and as part of his temple on earth. Fr. Anthony Schueller writes that some became complacent and comfortable in worldly ways as the years passed. Luke included the parable of the Vigilant Stewards in our reading today to awaken them and us from complacency and a false sense of security. In prosperous times especially, it is tempting to think that this life is all we have to look forward to, that there is nothing more that God intends for us or creation. Jesus praises those servants who don’t succumb to such thinking but remain alert and watchful, preparing to welcome him. For each of us, there is that intensely personal coming of Christ at life’s end. There is his promised second coming for humankind at the end of time. Jesus warns us to be ready for both!

The Tibetan word for attachment, do chag, translates as “sticky desire.” Author Joshua Becker writes about this sticky desire that drives our insidious behavior for accumulation. “We have been told since our birth that possessions equal joy. And because we have heard that message so many times and from so many angles, we have begun to believe it. As a result, we spend our lives working long hours to make good money to buy nice stuff. People who live their lives in pursuit of possessions are never content. They always desire newer, faster, or bigger because material possessions can never satisfy our deepest heart desires.” The Book of Job begins with an introduction of Job as he is described as a blessed man who lives righteously. He is suddenly beset with horrendous disasters that take away all he holds dear, something that Jesus speaks to today. We can lose everything we have accumulated in the blink of an eye. We must learn from Job and realize our greatest treasure is faith in God. God will always remain faithful to those who put their trust in him: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). We can’t take our possessions with us when we die. Life teaches us that possessions can only offer temporary and empty happiness. They can never provide the true joy and happiness our hearts seek. Strive for the better path – the one that matters to God – our holiness. Life on earth is far too short and valuable to waste on accumulating material possessions. Seek first the treasures of heaven.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus faces questions from the religious authorities trying to trap him in some violation to persecute him. Amid this effort, Jesus shows them a third way to answer the dilemma they present, which they never thought of. A core teaching today revolves around giving God what he is due. How is this accomplished daily when so many things in life trap us? It begins by peeling away the things that are trapping us. The main snarl we face is unloading life’s baggage of actions, thoughts, and sinful ways that separate us from his presence. How do we meet those actions and thoughts in blinding honesty before God? I would suggest a third way most of us have never explored: contemplative prayer. Most of us go through our daily lives carefully, consigning these sinful actions and thoughts that separate us from God into a neat little box we hide away until the fateful day we face them in front of our maker. But what are we waiting for? Why do we consign God to the afterlife and not our daily life? The searing judgment that awaits all at the end of life is something Fr. Rolheiser notes should be a daily occurrence. We are meant to bring ourselves, with all our complexities and weaknesses, into God’s full light daily. Genuine prayer brings us into that searing light. And, in the great prayer traditions, one particular form of prayer, contemplative prayer, is singled out as most helpful. That is prayer without words, without images, the prayer of quiet, centering prayer. Contemplative prayer is where you set off to pray, find a quiet place, sit or kneel, and consciously place yourself in God’s presence without protection, with no possibility of hiding anything. The silence and absence of prayerful conversation leaves you naked and exposed, like a plant sitting in the sun, silently drinking in its rays. Each day, we should set aside some time to put ourselves into God’s presence without words and images, where, naked, stripped of everything, silent, exposed, hiding nothing, completely vulnerable, we simply sit, full face, allowing this baggage to come forth before God’s judgment, trusting in his grace and mercy.

Many of those that Jesus encountered in his lifetime on earth were confused about his identity. Why does he refer to himself as the “Son of Man?” In his illuminating article, “Born into the Ordinary,” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that when Jesus was on earth, virtually no one believed he was the Messiah precisely because he was so ordinary, unlike what they’d imagined God to be. People were looking for a Messiah. When Jesus, the Christ, finally did appear, they were disappointed. They’d expected a superstar, a king, a miracle worker, someone who would, by miracle and hammer, vindicate good, destroy evil, and turn the world rightfully upside down. Jesus didn’t live up to those expectations. The expected Messiah would not have been born in a barn, preaching meekness and gentleness, unwilling to use power in a forceful way. There was a tiny hammer and a few miracles. Mainly, there was ordinariness. Curiously, Scripture refuses to describe what Jesus looked like. It never tells us whether he was short or tall, with a beard or without, had light or dark hair, or blue or brown eyes. Neither does it ever assign to him anything extraordinary in terms of psychological countenance: for example, it never tells us that when Jesus entered a room, his eyes were so penetrating and his gaze so awesome that people knew they were in the presence of something extraordinary. No, Scripture doesn’t describe him because, in terms of physical appearance, Jesus wasn’t worth describing; he looked like everyone else. Even after the resurrection, he is mistaken for a gardener, a cook, or a traveler. People had trouble recognizing Jesus as God incarnate because he was so ordinary, so immersed in the things they took for granted. He was just a carpenter’s son and looked like everyone else. We read in 1 John 4:7-16: “God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him/her.” Love is a thing that happens in ordinary life, in kitchens, at tables, in workplaces, in families, and in the flesh. God abides in us when we abide there. The Christ-child is also to be found in church, in the sacraments, and in private meditations (for these, too, are ordinary). All of these are ordinary, and the incarnation crawls into them and helps us, there, to abide in God, who abides in the ordinary.

As with most stories in scripture, we can often see what appears to be evident in its teaching yet know there is also something more profound for us to find. In today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is dealing with human fear. If we surveyed 100 people, what would be their primary fear? Studies point to the fear of death. In speaking to this reality, Jesus tells us that we shouldn’t worry about that but of a far greater “fear.” Our reflection verse says that the fear of God, in its healthy sense, is what we should fear. This is basically love’s fear of not living with the proper reverence and respect before the one we love, namely, fear of violating love’s moral boundaries. But that is not fear of hellfire, as we commonly understand this. Bishop Robert Barron writes that fear is the antithesis of faith and a sign that something is wrong with our love. We aren’t afraid of what we love and what truly loves us. In First John, we read, “Let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love…There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. Fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us.” When I am in love with God and fearing him above all things, I am rooted in a power that transcends space and time, a power that governs the universe in its entirety, a power that is greater than life and death. Bishop Barron goes on to note that when we are in love with God and when we are “fearing” him above all things, we are then rooted in a power that transcends space and time, a power that governs the universe in its entirety, a power that is greater than life and death. “Do not be afraid,” because we have nothing to fear from anything or anybody here below.

Adam and Eve’s sinful disobedience broke humanity’s relationship with God, and sin-ridden humanity was reconciled to God through the atoning death of Jesus and his resurrection. Jesus removed our condemnation and offered us forgiveness through the shedding of his blood. Yet God calls us to repent of the personal sins and offenses that we commit, and that separate us from him. Through confession, we bring things that separate us from God into the light and place them in Christ’s purifying love. The fullest meaning of repentance involves a dual choice: to turn away from sin and to turn toward God. When we repent, moved by sorrow and remorse, we show not only a change of heart, mind, and behavior but a fidelity to God and the desire and intention to set aside sin and live by his commandments and standards. God’s forgiveness is inseparably linked with our repentance, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). This forgiveness brings to fullness in us the work of transformation and healing begun by our repentance. One of the classical definitions of prayer suggests that “prayer is lifting mind and heart to God.” Simple, clear, and accurate. Our problem is that we too seldom do this when we pray. Rather than lifting up to God what is on our minds and hearts, we treat God as someone from whom we need to hide the truth of our thoughts and feelings. Instead of pouring out our minds and hearts, we tell God what we think God wants to hear – not the murderous thoughts, desire for vengeance, or our disappointment with him. As Kathleen Norris writes, “You come to the Bible’s great `book of praises’ through all the moods and conditions of life, and while you feel like hell, you sing anyway. To your surprise, you will find that the Psalms do not deny your true feelings but allow you to reflect them right in front of God and everyone.”

“I have lost contact with so many people who meant a lot to me at different stages of my life, people I loved dearly and really cared for and who had given me so much and made me what I am.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that this is true for him, and he suspects it’s the same for most of us. People enter our lives, friendships develop, and then some of those friends disappear from our lives. One of the richest experiences of grace that we can have this side of eternity is the experience of friendship. In Christian spirituality, true friendship is only possible among people who are practicing virtue. Fr. Rolheiser writes that genuine friendship is nothing less than a participation in the flow of life and love inside of God. Scripture tells us that God is love, but the word it uses for love, in this case, is the Greek word agape, a term which might be rendered as “family,” “community,” or “the sharing of life.”  Hence, the famous text (“God is Love”) might be transliterated to read: God is family, God is community, God is shared existence, and whoever shares his or her existence inside of community and friendship is participating in the very flow of life and love that is inside the Trinity. As we all know, deep, life-giving friendship is as difficult as it is rare. Why? We’re different from each other, unique, and rightly cautious as to whom we give entry into our soul. And so, it isn’t easy to find a soulmate, to have that kind of affinity and trust. Nor is it easy to sustain a friendship once we have found one. Friendship, like love, is always partly a mystery, something beyond us. It’s a struggle in all cultures. Part of this is simply our humanity. Scripture tells us that, as believers, we form together a body that, as much as any living body, is a true living organism, with all parts affecting all other parts. Inside that body, we’re present to each other, not fully consciously, of course, but deeply, truly. And to the extent that we’re living our lives faithfully and sharing honest friendship and fellowship with those who are immediately around us, we’re not only healthy enzymes helping bring health to the body, but we’re also present to each other affectively, in a way that touches us at the deepest level of our souls There is a place where we are not neglecting each other. And so, to all my friends: we’re still together!

We are growing ever more distrustful of words. Our world is full of lies, false promises, glittering advertising that doesn’t deliver, and words never backed up by anything. We trust less and less in what we hear. We’ve been lied to and betrayed far too often, and now we’re cautious about what we believe. But the Gospel is God’s truth revealed. As Fr. Rolheiser proclaims, I also believe in God because the Gospel works if we live it. What Jesus incarnated and taught ultimately resonates with what’s most precious, most noble, and most meaningful inside of life and inside each of us. Moreover, this checks out in life. Whenever I have the faith and courage to live out the Gospel and roll the dice on its truth, it always proves to be true: the loaves multiply and feed the thousands, and David defeats Goliath. But it doesn’t work unless I risk it. The Gospel works if we work it. The objection could be raised here, of course, that many sincere, faith-filled people risk their lives and truth on the Gospel and, from all appearances in this world, it doesn’t work for them. They end up poor, as victims, on the losing side of things. But again, that’s a judgment we make from the world’s standards, from the Gospel of prosperity, where whoever has the most worldly success wins. The Gospel of Jesus undercuts this. Anyone who lives it out faithfully, within the power they possess to do that, will be blessed with something beyond material success, namely, the deeper joy of a life well-lived, which Jesus assures us is deeper, less temporal, and more lasting than any other joy. I believe in God because the Gospel works!

Today’s Gospel reading from Luke is all about the demands of people who constantly seek a sign from God so that they can “believe.” It reminds me of all the excitement you see on TV and the Internet when someone displays an object that they say shows the face of Jesus or any other religious figure. The world goes wild over these things. So it begs the question: Why are we people constantly demanding a sign? How often do we ask for external confirmation or proof that God is near? The crowd in the Gospel had the Lord right in their very midst yet completely missed that reality. We know from Jonah’s story that God sent him to warn the Ninevites that their sinful ways would lead to destruction under God’s judgment. They “heard” and repented. Jesus knows the crowd has heard of his wondrous deeds but still chooses not to believe. We must be alert and attentive as Jesus closes his remarks with a warning, “There is something greater than Jonah here.”