Daily Virtue

Mary Ann Evans, known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of her time. Eliot points out in her novel Middlemarch that we don’t need to do great things that leave a significant mark on human history because “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.” Fr. Rolheiser writes that history bears this out. “I think, for instance, of Therese of Lisieux who lived out her life in obscurity in a little convent tucked away in rural France, who when she died at age twenty-four, was probably known by fewer than one hundred people. In terms of how we assess things in this world she accomplished very little, nothing in terms of outstanding achievement or visible contribution. She entered the convent at age fifteen and spent the years until her early death doing menial things in the laundry, kitchen, and garden inside her obscure convent. The only tangible possession she left behind was a diary, a personal journal with bad spelling, which told the story of her family, her upbringing, and what she experienced during her last months in palliative care as she faced death. But what she did leave behind is something that has made her a figure now renowned worldwide, both inside and outside of faith circles. Her little private journal, The Story of a Soul, has touched millions of lives, despite its bad spelling. What she records in the story of her soul is that she, fully aware of her own uniqueness and preciousness, could unbegrudgingly give that all over in faith because she trusted that her gifts and talents were working silently and powerfully inside a mystical (though real, organic) body, the Body of Christ and of humanity. She understood herself as a cell inside a living body, giving over what was precious and unique inside her for the good of the world. Anonymity offers us this invitation. There is no greater work of art that one can give to the world.” 

Throughout salvation history, the People of God have always had priests to mediate between God and man. The priests offered sacrifices to atone for the people’s sins and officiated over the liturgy. The priests of the Old Covenant offered sheep, goats, and bulls. In the New Covenant, Jesus, who is simultaneously the high priest and the sacrifice, offers Himself on the Cross to the Father in heaven. By our Baptism, each Christian shares, to a certain degree, in Christ’s priesthood. This priesthood of all believers is known as the common priesthood of the faithful. We offer the sacrifices of our lives to the Father in union with the sacrifice of Christ, which the priest presents to Our Heavenly Father at the Mass. Out of this common priesthood of all believers, certain men are called to the ministerial priesthood, which was instituted by Christ and has been passed down from the apostles. These New Covenant priests, ordained by the laying on of hands, participate in the priesthood of Christ by offering to the Father in the Mass the sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary. “Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” The Messiah is said to be a priest, not after the order of Aaron and the Levites, but according to the order of Melchizedek. Melchizedek is the priest-king of Salem who blesses Abraham and offers up bread and wine to God. Jewish tradition and the early Church Fathers believed that Melchizedek (“king of righteousness”) was the throne name of the first-born son of Noah: Shem. According to Shem’s genealogy, he outlives Abraham, which would explain the passing of the blessing from Noah to Shem to Abraham. As God’s eternal first-born son, Jesus is the eternal high priest of God. The role of the priest is to offer sacrifices for the atonement of sin. Jesus does not offer up the blood of bulls and goats, but rather, He offers His own body and blood on the Cross. In the sacrifice of the Mass, the one perfect sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is re-presented to the Father for the sanctification of the Church.  Everything that the priesthood of the Old Covenant prefigured finds its fulfillment in Christ Jesus, the “one mediator between God and men.”

Today’s reflection verse from the Gospel of John recounts the Wedding at Cana and the first miracle of Jesus’ ministry. This naturally draws us into the nature of two people coming together in the sacrament of marriage, where we see them as a sacred sign, a hint, a sacrament of Christ’s love for the Church. Bishop Robert Barron writes that it is a peculiarity of Catholic theology that a couple exchanging vows at their wedding Mass do not so much receive a sacrament as they become a sacrament. Everyone gathered in the church that day believed that these two people coming together was not a function of dumb chance; rather, it was the consequence of God’s active providence. God wanted them to find their salvation in each other’s company, which is to imply that God wanted them, as a couple, to carry out his salvific will. When the authors of the Old Testament wanted to express the faithful, life-giving, and intense love of God for the world, they rather naturally turned to the trope of marriage. The manner in which married partners give themselves to one another completely, passionately, procreatively, in season, and out is the supreme metaphor for God’s gracious manner of being present to his people. Thus, the prophet Isaiah, in a statement of breathtaking audacity, says to the people of Israel, “Your builder (God) wants to marry you.” Every religion or religious philosophy will talk about obeying God, honoring God, and seeking after God, but it is a unique conviction of Biblical religion that God is seeking us, even to the point of wanting to marry us, to pour out his life for us without restriction. At a first-century Jewish wedding, it was the responsibility of the bridegroom to provide the wine. This explains why, upon tasting the water-made wine, the steward came directly to the groom with his puzzled observation: “Usually people serve the best wine first and then later a lesser vintage, but you have saved the best wine for last.” In changing water into wine, Jesus was, in fact, acting as the definitive bridegroom, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah that Yahweh would indeed come to marry his people. This is why St. Paul could speak of the love of husband and wife as a great “mystery,” that is to say, a sacred sign that speaks of Christ’s love for his body, the Church. Brides and grooms in the ordinary sense symbolically evoke the Groom and the Bride, and the great wedding banquet is re-presented sacramentally at every Mass when Christ provides not ordinary wine but his very blood to drink. So when two wonderful young people are in love, that’s reason enough to rejoice. But they are also living symbols of the Bridegroom’s ecstatic love for his Bride, the Church, that is a reason, in the very deepest sense, to give thanks.

Thomas Aquinas writes that God is in all things by essence, presence, and power.  “Where is God?” The correct answer is everywhere.  When you let that sink in, everything changes. Thomas Aquinas also said that God delights in drawing us into his causality, meaning we can participate in what God wants to accomplish. So those two options—God as the almighty Father overseeing my choices and God as Holy Spirit working through my choices – actually dovetail.  Bishop Robert Barron writes that he becomes much more of himself in the measure that he surrenders to God. We’re not two wills competing on the same plane, but instead, we can say with the prophet Isaiah, “Lord, it is you who have accomplished all that I have done.” I’ve used the image before of my Waze GPS app, which gives traffic directions. When you make a wrong turn or, in my case, when I think I know better and choose to ignore the directions (which I’ve learned never benefits me), the Waze voice doesn’t scold me or upbraid me. Instead, it simply recognizes I made a wrong choice and immediately shows me how to get on the right track again.  To me, that’s a great image of the grace of God.  We are making wrong turns all the time. It’s that stubborn thing in all of us where we say, “Lord, I’ve heard your voice in Scripture, in the liturgy, in the sacraments, in the counsel of my spiritual director and confession.  I’ve heard your voice; I know it’s the right way… but no, no, no, I’m going to make this wrong turn.” God allows us to make this mistake, reshuffles the deck, and finds a way to get back on the right track. So, part of casting away fear is learning to trust the voice of God, which comes to us in a hundred different ways every day. And as the scripture reflection verse says today, God speaks to us through the very words he imparted to the prophets that we have access to today in the holy scriptures. He speaks to us through the people he brings into our lives. And he speaks to us in the quiet stillness of our hearts. “Be still and know that I am God.”

We have a commandment from God: Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy. We can all agree that this commandment has fallen on hard times today. It is not just that fewer and fewer people are going to their churches on Sunday, or that more and more shops and businesses are open on Sunday, or that sporting events now take up much of the Sabbath space once reserved for religion. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the deeper issue is that more and more of us can no longer slow down our lives, shut down the communication machines, get away from the stress and preoccupations in our lives, and simply stop and rest. With this in mind, he offers Ten Councils for practicing Sabbath today.

1. Practice Sabbath with the discipline demanded of a commandment, even as you practice the discipline of life and duty.
2. Have at least one “Sabbath” moment every day. 
3. Go somewhere every week where you can’t be reached and have a “cyber-Sabbath.”
4. Honor the “wisdom of dormancy.” Do something regularly that is non-pragmatic. 
5. Pray and meditate regularly in some way. 
6. Be attentive to little children, old people, and the weather. 
7. Live by axiom: “If not now, when? If not here, where? If not with these people, with whom? If not for God, why? 
8. Let your body also know that it is Sabbath. 
9. Make family and relationships the priority. 
10. Don’t nurse grudges and obsessions. 
    God gave us the Sabbath for our health and our enjoyment.

All of us will get hurt. That is a given. However, and this was his challenge, how we handle that hurt, with either bitterness or forgiveness, will color the rest of our lives and determine what kind of person we will be. Fr. Rolheiser writes that suffering and humiliation will find us all and in full measure, but how we respond to them will determine our maturity level and what kind of person we are. Suffering and humiliation will either soften our hearts or harden our souls. There is no depth of soul without suffering. There is no depth of soul without suffering. Human experience has long ago taught us this. We attain depth primarily through suffering, especially through the kind of suffering that is also humiliating. If any of us were to ask ourselves the question: What has given me depth? What has opened me to deeper perception and deeper understanding? Almost invariably, the answer would be one of which we would be ashamed to speak: we were bullied as a child, we were abused in some way, something within our physical appearance makes us feel inferior, we speak with an accent, we are always somehow the outsider, we have a weight problem, we are socially awkward, the list goes on, but the truth is always the same: To the extent that we have depth we have also been humiliated, the two are inextricably connected. Humiliation makes us deep, but it can make us deep in very different ways: It can make us deep in understanding, empathy, and forgiveness, or it can make us deep in resentment, bitterness, and vengeance. As Jesus prepares to face his crucifixion and the shameful humiliation within it, he cringes before the challenge, and he asks God whether there is another way of getting to the depth of Easter Sunday without having to undergo the humiliation of Good Friday. The issue was not whether to die or not die. It was about how to die. Jesus’ choice was this: Do I die in bitterness or in love? Do I die in hardness of heart or softness of soul? Do I die in resentment or in forgiveness? We know which way he chose. His humiliation drove him to extreme depths, but these were depths of empathy, love, and forgiveness. And, ultimately, for all of us, as was the case with Jesus, we will have to face this choice on the ultimate playing field: In the face of our earthly diminishment and death, will we choose to let go and die with a cold heart or a warm soul?

Scripture details how Jesus often went into the desert to places where he could be alone with the Father. The desert, scripture assures us, is where God is especially near. God sends his angels to minister to us when we are in the desert and the garden of Gethsemane. The desert, as we know, is a place that is stripped of everything that generally nourishes and supports us. We are exposed to chaos, raw fear, and demons of every kind. In the desert, we are exposed, body and soul, made vulnerable to be overwhelmed by chaos and temptations of every kind. But precisely because we are so stripped of everything we usually rely on, this is also a privileged moment for grace. Why? Because all the defense mechanisms, support systems, and distractions that we usually surround ourselves with to keep chaos and fear at bay work at the same time to keep much of God’s grace at bay. What we use to buoy us upwards off both chaos and grace, demons and the divine alike. Conversely, when we are helpless, we are open. That is why the desert is both the place of chaos and the place of God’s closeness. It is no accident that while feeling all is lost, God’s presence shows up. Just at that point in our lives, when we have lost everything that can support us, we find ourselves in the desert of life. And scripture assures us that it is there that God can send angels to minister to us.

Our reflection verse today describes how Jesus tasted death for the sins of everyone through the grace of God. The gospels do not focus on his physical sufferings (which must have been horrific). What they highlight instead is his emotional suffering and his humiliation. He is presented as lonely, betrayed, alone, helpless to explain himself, a victim of jealousy, morally isolated, mocked, misunderstood, stripped naked so as to have to feel embarrassment and shame, and yet, inside of all this, as clinging to warmth, goodness, and forgiveness. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that whenever we find ourselves outside the circle of health and vibrancy, on a sick bed alone, with the sure knowledge that, despite the love and support of family and friends, in the end, it is us, by ourselves, who face disability and disfigurement, who have to lose a breast or an organ to surgery, who face chemotherapy and maybe death, when we are alone inside of that, alone inside of fear, we are feeling what Jesus felt on Good Friday. When we taste that bitterness, there is little else to say other than what Jesus said when he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane and led away to humiliation and death. We know what that means. All of us have moments when our world falls apart and when, as the Book of Lamentations says, all we can do is put our mouths to the dust and wait. Wait for what? Wait for darkness and death to have their hour, wait for the curtain of the temple to be torn from top to bottom, and the earth to shake, and the rocks to split open, and the graves to open and to show themselves to be empty. Our verse today conveys that Jesus tasted death for everyone through the grace of God, “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once and for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Romans 6:9-11).”

It is hard to measure up. In our lucid moments, we admit this. Rarely is there a day when we cannot echo these words by Henri Nouwen: There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, and unrealized proposals. There is always something else that we should have remembered, done, or said. There are always people we did not speak to, write to, or visit. Thus, although we are very busy, we also have a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligations. A gnawing sense of being unfulfilled underlies our filled lives. It would seem that St. Paul understood this better than many when he said: “Woe to me, wretch that I am, the good I want to do, I cannot do; and the evil I want to avoid, I end up doing!” Nobody does it perfectly, and accepting this, our congenital inadequacy can bring us to a healthy humility and perhaps even to a healthy humor about it. But it should bring us to something more: prayer, especially the Eucharist. The Eucharist is, among other things, a vigil of waiting. When Jesus instituted the Eucharistic celebration, he told the disciples to keep celebrating it until he returned again. The early apostolic communities cannot be understood outside of the matrix of intense expectation. They were communities imminently awaiting Christ’s return. They gathered in the Eucharist, among other reasons, to foster and sustain this awareness, namely, that they were living in wait, waiting for Christ to return. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that the older he gets, the less confident, in some ways, he is becoming. “I don’t always know whether I’m following Christ properly or even know exactly what it means to follow Christ, and so I stake my faith on an 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 we should be doing while we wait for him to return.”

God writes straight with crooked lines. We know that expression, though we rarely apply it to sacred history or the birth of Jesus. Fr. Rolheiser writes that we should. Matthew, in a text we like to ignore, traces the lineage of Jesus from Abraham to Mary. What Matthew reveals in his list of people begetting other people is, as Fr. Raymond Brown highlights, quite a checkered story. Jesus’ family tree contains as many sinners as saints, and his origins take their roots too in the crooked lines written by liars, betrayers, adulterers, and murderers. Jesus was pure, but his origins were not. Matthew begins his story of the origins of Jesus with Abraham, who fathers Isaac and then sends his other son, Ishmael, and his mother packing off into the desert to be rid of them. Then Jacob steals his older brother’s blessing from Isaac. Matthew lists the names of fourteen kings who are part of the genetic origins of Jesus. Of those fourteen, only two, Hezekiah and Josiah, were considered faithful to God as judged by the Book of Kings. The rest, in Brown’s words, were “adulterers, murderers, incompetents, power-seekers, and harem-wastrels.” Then there is the question of which women are named as significant in Jesus’ lineage. Instead of naming Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, Matthew names Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba before finally naming Mary as Jesus’ mother. Each of these women had marital issues that contained elements of irregularity or scandal, and yet each was able to be an instrument in God’s birth on this planet. Matthew highlights their names to set the stage for Mary, whose pregnancy is also irregular since Jesus had no human father. The God who wrote the beginning with crooked lines also writes the sequence with crooked lines; some of those lines are our own lives and witness. Grace is pure, but we who mediate it often aren’t. Still, God’s love and God’s plan aren’t derailed by our infidelities, sin, and scheming. God’s designs for grace still somehow work. One wonders, too, how many people find this story comforting rather than discomforting, given a strong ecclesial ethos today wherein many of us nurse the fear that we are handing out grace and mercy too cheaply. But grace and mercy are never given out cheaply since love is never merited.