Daily Virtue

Jesus was once asked why he spoke in parables. His answer is more than a little curious: “I speak in parables . . . lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and turn again, and I should heal them.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that at first glance, this suggests that Jesus was deliberately vague so that people would not understand the truth and could remain ignorant and obstinate. The opposite is true. His deliberate vagueness is a studied gentleness, a deep compassion that recognizes people’s lives are complex and that truth is not a sledgehammer. It is not enough to have the truth. Truth can set free, but it can also freeze hearts further if not presented with the utmost compassion, gentleness, and understanding. There is a story told about Vincent de Paul which says that, on his deathbed, he spoke words like these to his community: “When you grow tired of giving to others, when you are tempted to self-pity and begin to believe that others, the poor, are taking advantage of you, that you are being asked to give more than is fair, then continue to give and, maybe, sometime in the future, the poor will find it in their hearts to forgive you. It is more blessed to give than receive—and it is also a lot easier!” Maybe, sometime in the future, the poor will find it in their hearts to forgive us for, so often, using the truth as a hammer to enslave them further rather than to set them free.

Cardinal Francis George once famously commented that we live in a culture where “everything is permitted, and nothing is forgiven.” Bishop Robert Barron writes that in the typical Georgean manner, the saying is pithy, memorable, and dead right. Even the most casual survey of our society discloses the truth of the first part of the Cardinal’s adage. Men are allowed to be women, and women men. Male athletes, claiming a female identity, can dominate women’s sports. Transgender surgery, even when it amounts to the mutilation of children, is positively encouraged in many parts of our country, including my home state of Minnesota. Abortion, even to the moment of birth, is legal (indeed celebrated) in a number of states; assisted suicide of the suffering is considered a fundamental right of the individual and a prerogative of the state. But the truth of the second part of the Cardinal’s statement is equally obvious. Violations of the accepted secular orthodoxy today result in cancellation, elimination, and permanent ostracization. If you doubt me, try posting something even mildly anti-woke on the internet. The Jacobin mob will be on you in moments. And if you read the ideologues behind wokeism, you will see that being, say, a white male or an advocate of traditional religious values makes you permanently a reprobate with no hope of redemption. If you doubt me on this score, ask any woke enthusiast just how much apology or reparation is required to relieve an offender of his guilt. You will find that the answer is “never enough.” So, on the one hand, everything seems to be permitted, but on the other hand, nothing is ever really forgiven. What brought the Lord Jesus Christ to the cross was a demonic farrago of hatred, stupidity, violence, cruelty, institutional injustice, self-serving careerism, betrayal, denial, and gross indifference to the will of God. Though many of those responsible for the death of Jesus wrapped themselves in the mantle of righteousness or offered pathetic justifications for their behavior, all of them were exposed as frauds and sinners. The cross itself served as a judgment on human folly and wickedness. In its light, there was no chance to hide. But in the Gospel story, the man who had been hurt as thoroughly as a person can be hurt returned that action by providing forgiving love. Every sin is forgivable, and the ineffable God cancels no one.

Our scripture reflection verse today comes from the Gospel of Mark and the story of the Sower. I found this beautiful reflection in the Word Among Us and share it with you today.

Have you ever planted seeds from a packet and sat back to see what would happen? With little attention and just a little water and some sunshine, you soon see little sprouts popping up through the soil. It’s like watching a miracle! This is similar to what the sower in today’s parable does. His method may not be the best in terms of growing a food crop, but it does illustrate an approach to evangelization that probably feels more natural to us. Sometimes, when we feel the Spirit nudging us to reach out to someone, we can overthink it: “What will I say? What will I do? What if he asks a question I can’t answer?” But that wouldn’t be the situation if we were to sow the seeds of the gospel as liberally as this farmer. Perhaps there are ways to reach out and bless people without feeling forced or uncomfortable. Start by thinking about your personality. Are you an encourager? Or maybe you find little ways to help a co-worker who always seems overworked. Or you might love spending time with people, or you like to bring people little gifts that make them happy: a cup of coffee on a cold morning or a plate of cookies for an afternoon snack at the office. Guess what? These are all “seeds” you can sow. They are much more than kind gestures; they are signs that you are actively going out of your way to bless the people around you. Now, imagine that a prayer is behind every seed, a prayer that your gesture will help draw that person a little closer to Christ. What power could be released! As you go about your day, don’t worry about how to talk to someone about your faith. Just live your life with a focus on the people around you. That’s the secret to evangelization. Your witness may come through words, but it may come through consistently loving and caring for someone who needs it. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see fruit right away. Today’s parable reassures us that the seeds are growing and sprouting almost of their own accord. Our job is just to scatter as many of them as you can.

Our scripture verse is one that many people struggle with precisely because we see ourselves either wondering if what we do is truly God’s will for us or simply our desires, masking within us our “hope” that what we want to do is in line with His will. The mystery we live in is huge, and the more we grasp the magnitude of the cosmic and spiritual world, the more we grasp too how ineffable God is, truly beyond us, beyond language, beyond imagination, and even beyond feeling. Fr. Ron Rolheiser, writing on this topic, tells us that we can know God but can never understand God. And so we must be more humble, both in our theology and in our ecclesiology. Mostly, we don’t know what we are doing. Moreover, the older I get, the more I see how blind I am to my own hypocrisies and how weak and rationalizing my human nature is. I don’t always know when I’m rationalizing, biased, or following Christ properly. And, even when I do, I don’t always have the strength or will to do what I know is right. And so, I lean heavily on the invitation that Jesus left us on the night before he died to break bread and drink wine in his memory and to trust that this, if all else is uncertain, is what I should be doing while I wait for him to return. Sometimes, when he was instructing a couple for marriage, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great Lutheran priest and martyr, would caution them with words to this effect: right now, you are in love, and you believe that your love can sustain your marriage. It can’t. But your marriage can sustain your love! The Eucharist is such a ritual-container for Christians. We can’t sustain our faith, charity, forgiveness, and hope based on feeling or thought, but we can sustain them through the Eucharist. We can’t always be clear-headed or warm-hearted; we can’t always be sure that we know the exact path of God; and we won’t always measure up morally and humanly to what faith asks of us. But we can be faithful in this one profound way. The Eucharist contains and carries many deep realities: it helps continue the incarnation of God in history, it is God’s physical embrace, it is an intensification of our community together as Christians, it is the new manna that God gives to nurture his people, it is our family meal together as believers, it is Christ’s sacrifice which we commemorate ritually, it is God’s gift of reconciliation and forgiveness, it is an invitation to a deeper discipleship, it is a banquet table opened up for the poor, it is a vigil service within which we wait for Christ to return, and it is Christ’s priestly prayer for the world. I go to the Eucharist daily for another reason, too, a more personal one: this is the one place where I can be faithful and essentially measure up. I can’t always control how I feel or how I think, and I can’t always measure up morally and spiritually, but inside of my perpetual inadequacy and occasional doubt and confusion, I can be faithful in this one profound way.

As Catholics, we are journeying through a jubilee year focused on being “Pilgrims of Hope.” In many ways, it presents an opportunity to reflect upon the “hope” we carry as people of faith. I am drawn back to my first impression when someone read William Butler Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming.” He writes, “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.” Everything in life falls apart because nothing ultimately holds everything together; nothing underwrites us. Good things may well occur within history and our lives, but they are, in the end, accidental constellations, random happenings that are vulnerable to dissolution when the chance forces that produced them die because “the center” of life cannot hold. To believe in the cause of Christianity is to believe that in the midst of what seems to be eternal pain, selfishness, immorality, and the evilness of humankind’s actions against all things created, a loving God is present. This foundation of belief is found in the incarnation of God through his human and divine Son, Jesus Christ. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that we emphatically state our disagreement with the Yeats philosophy in the Creed, which we repeat at every Mass. We believe that at the center of all things is a gracious, personal God who is powerful and loving enough to underwrite everything. We believe that the resurrection of Christ is the truth that the center holds firm because “all things are possible with God.” To say the Creed is to live with the knowledge that, in the end, God is in charge because he is stronger than death and is the gracious and loving presence in life, even when we are sweating blood. This is the “Pilgrim Hope” that we rise each day to embrace until the transition from this earthly life to our eternal life with the ineffable and almighty Yahwee. Faith is a practical thing. It is to trust that God is in charge, nothing more and nothing less. To believe in the resurrection, the essence of our Christian faith is to look at everything, including death, and believe that the center will hold.

Jesus read the passage from Isaiah where the prophet announces the coming of the Lord, who will free his people of their afflictions. In Christ, this prophecy finds its fulfillment, for he is the Anointed, the Messiah whom God has sent to his people in their tribulation. The Holy Spirit has anointed Jesus for the mission the Father has entrusted to him. Saint Pope John Paul ll writes, “These phrases, according to Luke, are his first messianic declaration. They are followed by the actions and words known through the Gospel. Christ makes the Father present among men through these actions and words.” The words of Isaiah, which Christ read out on this occasion, describe very graphically the reason why God has sent his Son into the world—to redeem men from sin, to liberate them from slavery to the devil and from eternal death. It is true that in the course of his public ministry, Christ, in his mercy, worked many cures, cast out devils, etc. But he did not cure all the sick people in the world, nor did he eliminate all forms of distress in this life, because pain, which entered the world through sin, has a permanent redemptive value when associated with the sufferings of Christ. Therefore, Christ worked miracles not so much to release the people concerned from suffering as to demonstrate that he had a God-given mission to bring everyone eternal redemption. The Church carries on this mission of Christ as written in the Gospel of Matthew: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” These simple and sublime words, which conclude the words of the Apostle Matthew, point out the obligation to preach the truths of faith, the need for sacramental life, and the promise of Christ’s continual assistance to his Church. You cannot be faithful to our Lord if you neglect these supernatural demands to receive instruction in Christian faith and morality and to frequent the sacraments. It is with this mandate that Christ founded his Church.

I was reading the story of a good man from a wonderful family who has been blessed with lots of love and good examples in his life. But, like the rest of us, he had his weaknesses, in his case, gossip and occasional pettiness. One day, as he was sitting with my friend, he made a very racist remark. My friend, instead of accusing him of being a racist or shaming him with the inappropriateness of his remark, called him instead to his own essential goodness: “That comment surprises me,” he said, “coming from you. I’ve always considered you and your family big-hearted people with class, never petty. I’ve always envied your family for its goodness and understanding. That remark doesn’t sound like you!” The man’s reaction was instant, positive. Immediately, he apologized: “You’re right,” he said, “I don’t know why I sometimes say stupid things like that!” It’s interesting to note that the word “Gospel” means “good news,” not “good advice.” Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the gospels are not so much a spiritual and moral theology book that tells us what we should be doing but are more an account of what God has already done for us, is still doing for us, and the remarkable dignity that this bestows on us. Morality is not a command, it’s an invitation; not a threat, but a reminder of who we truly are. We become taller and less petty when remembering what kind of family we ultimately come from. We all have two souls, two hearts, and two minds. Inside each of us, there’s a soul, heart, and mind that’s petty, that’s been hurt, that wants vengeance, that wants to protect itself, that’s frightened of what’s different, that’s prone to gossip, that’s racist, that perennially feels cheated. Seen in a certain light, all of us are as small in stature. But there’s also a tall, big-hearted person inside each of us who wants to warmly embrace the whole world beyond personal hurt, selfishness, race, creed, and politics. We are always both grand and petty. Our days are divided between those moments when we are big-hearted, generous, warm, hospitable, unafraid, and wanting to embrace everyone and those moments when we are petty, selfish, over-aware of the unfairness of life, frightened, and seeking only to protect ourselves and our own safety and interests. We are both tall and short simultaneously, and either of these can manifest itself from minute to minute. To grow to what our deepest DNA has destined us for is what makes us whole and makes us tall – humanly, spiritually, and morally. The gospel challenge doesn’t shame us with our pettiness; it invites us to what’s already best inside us.

“We may say that the gospels, especially Mark, are aware of a great variety of forms of participation in Jesus’ cause. There were the Twelve. There was a broader circle of disciples. There were those who participated in Jesus’ life. There were localized resident adherents who made their houses available. There were people who helped in particular situations, if only by offering a cup of water. Finally, there were the beneficiaries who profited from Jesus’ cause and for that reason did not speak against it.” The above words from German scripture scholar Gerhard Lohfink describe, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes, how people in the gospels relate to Jesus in different ways. Not everyone was an apostle, not everyone was a disciple, and not everyone who contributed to Jesus’ cause even followed him. When we look at church life today, especially as we see it lived out concretely within parishes, it is evident that it is made up of much more than only the core, committed congregation, namely, those who regularly participate in church life and accept (at least for the central part) the dogmatic and moral teachings their churches. The church also contains a wide variety of the less-engaged: people who practice occasionally, people who accept some of its teachings, guests who visit our churches, people who don’t explicitly commit but are sympathetic to the church and offer it various kinds of support, and, not least, people who link themselves to God in more-privatized ways, those who are spiritual but not religious. There were some centuries in church history where Christian spirituality suffered from precisely this misunderstanding, where it was common to think that monks, nuns, contemplatives, priests, and other such people were called to live the full gospel while others were exempt from the more demanding of Jesus’ invitations. No such exemptions. The church may never be divided into the perfect and less perfect, the better and the half-baked, full-participation and partial-participation. The full gospel applies to everyone, as does Jesus’ invitation to intimacy with him. Jesus doesn’t call people according to more or less. Each individual chooses how deep he or she will go, and some go deeper than others, though ideally, everyone is meant to go its full depth. There will always be a great variation in both depth and participation. And Jesus, it seemed, was okay with that.

In the centuries leading up to the birth of Jesus and among Jesus’ contemporaries there were numerous notions of what the Christ would look like. Like virtually all of his contemporaries and not unlike our own fantasies of what a Savior should look like, Peter no doubt pictured the Savior who was to come as a Superman, a Superstar who would vanquish evil through a worldly triumph within which he would simply overpower everything that’s wrong by miraculous powers. Such a Savior would not be subject to any weakness, humiliation, suffering, or death and his superiority and glory would have to be acknowledged by everyone, willing or begrudgingly. There would be no holdouts; his demonstration of power would leave no room for doubt or opposition. He would triumph over everything and would reign in a glory such as the world conceives of glory, that is, as the Ultimate Winner, as the Ultimate Champion – the winner of the Olympic medal, the World Cup, the Super Bowl, the Academy Award, the Nobel Prize, the winner of the great trophy or accolade that definitively sets one above others. Who is he? Jesus is the Savior. He’s not a Superman or Superstar in this world or a miracle worker who will prove his power through spectacular deeds. The Messiah is a dying and rising Messiah, someone who in his own life and body will demonstrate that evil is not overcome by miracles but by forgiveness, magnanimity, and nobility of soul and that these are attained not through crushing an enemy but through loving him or her more fully. And the route to this is paradoxical: The glory of the Messiah is not demonstrated by overpowering us with spectacular deeds.  Rather it is demonstrated in Jesus letting himself be transformed through accepting with proper love and graciousness the unavoidable passivity, humiliation, diminishment, and dying that eventually found him. That’s the dying part. But when one dies like that or accepts any humiliation or diminishment in this way there’s always a subsequent rising to real glory, that is, to the glory of a heart so stretched and enlarged that it is now able to transform evil into good, hatred into love, bitterness into forgiveness, humiliation into glory. That’s the proper work of a Messiah. How do we imagine the Messiah?  How do we imagine triumph? Imagine Glory?  If Jesus looked us square in the eye and asked, as he asked Peter: “How do you understand me?” Would he laud us for our answer or would he tell us: “Don’t tell anyone about that!”

Today is the Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. John of the Cross teaches that there are no exempt areas within spirituality and morality. Simply put, you cannot be a saint or a highly moral person if you allow yourself a moral exemption or two. Thus, I may not allow myself to split off one moral flaw or sinful habit and see it as unimportant in the light of my positive qualities and the overall good that I do. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the same is true for our efforts to protect life and foster justice. The protection of life and the promotion of justice are all of one piece. Cardinal Bernardin says: “The success of any one of the issues concerning life requires a concern for the broader attitude in society about the respect for human life.” That’s a strong challenge for all of us on all sides of the ideological spectrum. Thus, those of us who are concerned about abortion need to accept that the problem of abortion cannot be effectively addressed without at the same time addressing issues of poverty, access to health care, sexual morality, and even capital punishment. The interconnection here is not wholly mystical. It’s real. Abortion is driven more by poverty and lack of adequate support than by any liberal ideology. Hence, the struggle against abortion must also focus on the issues of poverty and support for pregnant women. As well, to morally accept killing in one area (capital punishment) helps sanction its acceptance in another area (abortion). Sexual morality must also be addressed since abortion is the inevitable byproduct of a society within which two people who are not married to each other have sex with each other. It’s all one piece, and any opposition to abortion that fails to adequately recognize the broader perspective that more fully defines Pro-life leaves many sincere people unable to support anti-abortion groups. Conversely, those of us who are concerned with the issues of poverty, healthcare, capital punishment, ecology, war, racism, sexism, and LGBT rights need to accept that these issues cannot be effectively addressed without also addressing the issue of abortion. Again, the interconnection isn’t just mystical; it’s empirical: Failure to be sensitive to who is weak and vulnerable in one area deeply compromises one’s moral standing on other issues that deal with the weak and the vulnerable.  We must advocate for and strive to protect everyone who falls victim within our present way of living, and that includes the unborn.