Have Your Marriage and Make It Two

There has been a lot of talk in recent decades about the issue of divorced Catholics who have remarried outside the Church—since there are so many—and the possibility of their being allowed to receive Holy Communion. The Church has always held to the essential indissolubility of marriage, and hence a civil divorce and remarriage means that the second “marriage” is no marriage at all, but an adulterous relationship. Jesus’ teaching on the matter confirms this (Mt. 5:31-32 and 19:9; Mk. 10:11-12; Lk. 16:18). Matthew’s version of Jesus’ teaching admits an exception to the absolute ban on divorce and remarriage, but it is one whose meaning is obscure. The exception is “for porneia,” which literally means “fornication,” but is sometimes interpreted to mean marriage with someone too closely blood-related, which would render it invalid. No one knows if that is the original intention, but the Church has held to the teaching: “What God has joined together, let not man put asunder” (Mk. 10:9 and parallels). The issue of annulments is a sticky one, and the Church grants too many, though the Pope is trying to stop abuses, but I don't intend to deal with that here.

I read recently that some Italian moral theologians are trying to come up with a way for divorced and remarried Catholics to be admitted to Holy Communion. I assume their pastoral concerns are genuine, but their solution accords neither with Catholic teaching nor even simple logic. They try to explain it all in great detail, with various qualifications and caveats, but what it comes down to is the following. A married couple divorces. One of the spouses remarries and perhaps has children with the new spouse. The remarried spouse rethinks his past, realizes it was wrong to divorce, but has since bonded with his new wife and loves her, and has emotional, financial, and family responsibilities that he feels unable or unwilling to renounce. To be re-admitted to Holy Communion (say these theologians), he must acknowledge that his first marriage was the only sacramental one, repent of his divorce and do some appropriate penance, perhaps on an ongoing basis, yet even though realizing that his new marriage is not the “real” one, he can continue the relationship and he can still go on having sexual relations with his new “wife” and in good conscience present himself for Holy Communion! Oh yes, he must also be available to help raise the kids from his first marriage. They neglect to mention whether or not it is permissible on occasion to have sex with the original spouse, since that is the only valid marriage, and the sacramental bond still exists (see how messy it can easily become?).

Does something seem wrong with this picture? Aside from not being in accord with Catholic teaching, and the general confusion, there’s a fundamental dishonesty that is being advanced here. The simple fact that the first marriage was sacramental, i.e., blessed and approved and graced by God, and the second is not, should make it clear about eligibility for the further blessing of sacramental Communion. But what do they mean by “repenting” of the divorce? To repent means to change—not spouses, but behavior! It is disingenuous (to say the least) simply to say: “Hey, I’m really sorry about that divorce. Now can I get married again?” And what kind of “penance” can he or she do that will have any meaning at all, since penance is supposed to help you live the life to which your repentance has returned you? If you fully intend to continue living and having sexual relations with one who is not, in the eyes of God, your spouse, the terms repentance and penance become meaningless.

It is a shame that there are so many divorces today, but perhaps the Church has been complicit in that as well. There should be a long and careful preparation for marriage, for it is meant to last a lifetime, and everyone had better know just what a lifetime commitment entails. Maybe there should be a kind of “novitiate,” a mandatory 3-year courtship and preparation period, like monks have a novitiate before they profess their vows. Marriage vows are no less binding. If the Church insists on upholding her teaching, as she should, then she should not admit anyone to marriage who does not manifest the psychological and spiritual maturity by which they can understand and live their commitment.

It is impossible here to cover all the issues of canon law that apply to various types of situations for which the solution is not always the same—though the Church’s teaching must always be upheld and practiced. It’s not my intention in this reflection to engage in canonical or theological casuistry, but to point out an underlying problem. To make such a change in the Church’s consistent and millennial teaching is not only a serious break with Tradition (which would inevitably lead to demands for even more changes until there’s little content left to her teaching)—it also indicates a weakening in her essential mission of the sanctification of souls.

Vatican II, for all its opening of windows a little too wide to the spirit of the world, in this case paradoxically closes them by its universal call to holiness. Sanctity is not the province only of priests and monks and mystics, but it is the life’s work of everyone. That means that heroic virtue is not only someone else’s calling but yours and mine. This may in some cases translate into working long and hard to save a difficult marriage or, having failed after noble efforts and choosing to separate for the protection of one’s life or integrity, remaining single and carrying that particular cross with the Lord. “No temptation [the word also means “test” or “trial”] has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1Cor. 10:13).

The Church does not fulfill her mission if she accommodates herself to the increasing degeneration of the morals of her members. She must, of course, meet them where they are, but not for the sake of adapting her teachings to their inability (or unwillingness) to live the Gospel. The mission of the Church is to call them out of sin and lukewarmess into fervor and holiness. Jesus didn’t associate with prostitutes and publicans as an approval of their behavior, or to get some ideas as to how He might modify his teachings to make life easier for them. No, He went down to them to call them to repentance, and to save them from their sins! The Church likewise does no service to her people by adapting her teachings to the changing mores of a secular and often morally heedless society. She is to show them “a still more excellent way” (1Cor. 12:31), that is, the unchanging and holy commandments of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The suggestions of those theologians are not surprising. They’re going for the jackpot now, because they have seen the Church back down on other things. Is it too hard to fast? OK, no fasting anymore (except for a negligible minimum). Too many holy days of obligation, on which you have to make the supreme effort to go to church? OK, we’ll get rid of most of them. And the few that are left we’ll try to transfer to the nearest Sunday, so as to increase your convenience still more. Want to sleep late on Sunday or go to the beach or the games? OK, we’ll have Mass on Saturday evening so the Lord’s day can just be for your recreation. Now they’re trying to get the Church to say: Unhappy as a divorcee? OK, you can get married again, and make sure you come to Communion on Saturday evening. Other moral (immoral?) theologians are pushing for Church acceptance of pre-marital sex (only in certain cases, of course, until that’s approved; then they’ll add more), Church acceptance of homosexual activity (try to be faithful to one partner, though; but if you can’t, well, we understand), etc. The Church cannot keep accommodating and still remain the Church of Jesus Christ.

An unexpected and disappointing fruit of Vatican II’s universal call to holiness is that along with the call came (in practice) a rejection of the very mentality and means that are supposed to lead to holiness. All are called to holiness, but what we’ve seen is a falling away from penance, from zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls, a weakened spirit of endurance and fidelity, lack of eagerness for prayer, sacramental confession, living the Gospel, and of reverence for the Holy Eucharist and all the things of God. It won’t work. That call to holiness has to have its practical applications. In the context of unfortunate marital situations, the answer isn’t one more ecclesiastical accommodation, but fidelity to the truth, even unto the Cross. For that is what Christianity is about. We’re not supposed to have paradise on earth; this is a time of testing, of proving our love for the Lord in good times or bad, when it’s easy or hard to put his word into practice. Sacrifice is an essential and inescapable part of Christian life. The saints and martyrs knew this, and they didn’t seek exceptions, loopholes, or changes in Church teaching. They only wanted to spend their lives serving the Lord, come what may—for they knew what He promised, and they believed it!

This life is only a short prelude to our true and eternal life. As Christians we should accept the Cross and let it bear fruit in our lives. If we live only with temporal and earthly hopes, desires, and perspectives, then the hardships of life will seem overwhelming and we will rage against them. But if we set our hearts on things of Heaven, as Scripture says, we will live life on a different level, acquiring a taste for spiritual blessings—and realizing that the best is yet to come.

Bread, Cross, Christ

St. Paul says in First Corinthians (1:18) that the Cross is the power of God for those who are being saved. The mystery of the Cross is present in the Gospel account of the multiplication of the loaves, though it will seem hidden, if one looks only superficially. The event, as described by the evangelists, is the miraculous feeding of five thousand men in the wilderness. Jesus took a small amount of bread and fish, looked to Heaven, blessed and broke them, and gave them to the apostles, who then gave them to the crowd. There were even 12 baskets of leftover pieces.

God fed the Israelites in the desert many centuries before that, also in a miraculous way. Paul says in First Corinthians (10:4) that it was Christ, the Son of God, who was with them invisibly in the desert. Now that the Son had become visible as man, he again manifested the gift of God to his people. But He took it a step further, an indispensable and extremely significant step. St. John tells us that the people themselves made the connection between Jesus’ feeding the multitude in the desert and Moses giving them bread from heaven, the miraculous manna. That gave Jesus the opportunity to speak to them of the true Bread from Heaven, which is his own flesh, which He would give for the life of the world.

Here is where we first see the mystery of the Cross. The gift of the flesh of Christ, the divine and life-giving Bread, can be communicated only insofar as it is a fruit of the Cross—of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus. The multiplication of ordinary bread to feed multitudes is but a symbol or prefiguration of the universal availability of the Holy Eucharist after the Resurrection of Christ and the establishment of his Church in the Holy Spirit. But the Eucharist is itself much more than a miraculous change from ordinary bread to the flesh of Christ—as astounding as that is in itself. The Holy Eucharist is the fruit of the Cross, and hence is a mystery of forgiveness and love, of the transforming power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is also in itself a proclamation of the Gospel, for the essence of the Gospel is manifested and communicated through the Eucharist. Jesus gave Himself up to death for the forgiveness of our sins, as he explicitly said at the Last Supper: “Take, eat, this is my body… Drink of it, all of you; for this is the blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:26-28).

Jesus must have looked with some satisfaction upon the crowds He had fed by multiplying the loaves and fish. For He knew that the Bread He would soon give would be able to satisfy the spiritual hunger of the whole world. Jesus made sure that the disciples gathered up all the fragments of the miraculous meal He had provided, “so that nothing may be lost.” If even this symbol of his divine gift was to be treated with such care, how much more, then, ought we reverence the Holy Eucharist, and approach with deep adoration! Yet how little reverence is paid to his presence during the Liturgy or in the Tabernacle! A friend of mine often grieved over finding consecrated Hosts in the pews and even on the floor of a church in San Francisco. And I remember when I was visiting someone in the hospital (I was out of town, so I was not able to bring the Eucharist myself), I went to receive a Host from the hospital chaplain so as to give Communion to my friend. I went to the office and his assistant was there, who nonchalantly pulled out a pyx and removed a Host, which she then somehow dropped on the floor. At hearing my little gasp, she just said, “Don’t worry; it’s OK.” I thought, and probably should have said: “No, it’s not OK. If you drop the Body of the Lord on the floor you reverently bow down to recover it, and then repent of your carelessness and irreverence!” And so it goes on. When the communion rails or other separations between sanctuary and nave come down; when anyone—man, woman, child—can walk into the Holy of Holies at will; when laypeople, inadequately formed and inappropriately dressed, can saunter up to the tabernacle and open and close it as if it were their fridge at home, then of course the message is given to everyone that no reverence is required for the Holy Eucharist.

But let us hope and pray for better things. And let us, who do recognize the greatness of his inexpressible gift, give thanks that He who once multiplied bread in the wilderness, multiplies the gift of his saving and sanctifying Body and Blood for us in this wilderness of our earthly exile. Let us give thanks to Him who, as the Psalmist says, “gives food to those who fear Him.” We are invited at every Byzantine Liturgy, immediately before Communion, to “approach with the fear of God and with faith.” This approach with holy fear—which is the deep reverence and awe that we owe to the Bread from Heaven—and with faith in his mercy and love, will enable us to bear fruit and to live continually in the grace of the Holy Eucharist, which is the grace of the Gospel of the Cross, the Resurrection, and eternal life.

My Words Will Not Pass

Jesus has said many things that indicate his divinity. Some things would be the height of hubris if He were not in fact the Son of God. But since He is, let us listen with reverence and faith to one such saying: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass” (Matthew 24:35). Those of us who maintain blogs know that our words pass every day! But how shall we understand what Jesus has said?

First of all, I think ought to reflect on how seriously we take Jesus’ words and put them into practice. If his words outlast even the heavens and the earth—for “the word of the Lord endures forever” (1Peter 1:25)—then they speak to you and me, for they are valid for all times and all places. Some people try to relativize his words by saying that He was a man of his time and culture and as such his words (at least some of them) aren’t binding upon us. Hmm. “In the beginning was the Word.” The Son of God always was and always will be, so his appearance as a man in first-century Palestine did not put such severe blinders on him. Of course, he spoke in a way readily understandable to the people of that time, but since He transcends all times and cultures, He was also able to do so in a way that disallows any dismissal of his words as some long-ago and far-away phenomenon.

On the other hand, to believe in his words and yet use them as mere proof-texts for debates or polemics is also to miss the point of his ever-enduring words. Jesus’ words are spirit and life, not semantic hammers for leveling the opposition. Then again, some try to pit Paul’s words against Jesus’ words—and even, in practice, accord them greater authority!—as if the Gospels were somehow only an incomplete prelude to the Apostles’ teachings. Yet Jesus is the Word of God in person. I guess certain theological positions seem to them better defended by Paul. Then others more or less simply abandon Jesus’ words and debate about theological or philosophical issues that have only a tenuous relationship to the living word of God.

I think we may need a fresh listening to the words of Jesus, a return to the Gospels in all their vigor and spirit. To say that Jesus’ words will not pass does not merely mean that they’ll always be enshrined in some archeological museum for the interest of future generations. It means they have ever-active wisdom and power to make or break kingdoms, nations, and hearts. It means they can enlighten, strengthen, motivate, and guide us to salvation. It means they will stand as our judge on the Last Day (see John 12:48).

We ought to avoid a fundamentalist literalism but also a too-allegorical or esoteric reading. Putting on the mind of Christ, of his Spirit and his Church, we ought simply to sit at the feet of the Master and try to hear his voice in our hearts as we read the Gospels, to see his words reflected in the lives of the saints, and to let them reverberate in our own actions. Some of his words are clear and direct and admit no misinterpretation. Others seem obscure or shrouded in mystery, and require much pondering and prayer. But all of them are our food and our life-support.

It’s easy to see how our lives pass, the days and years, our health, our energy, even all the creation around us. He who made all things does not pass away, and if we embrace his enduring word with love and fidelity, He will take us to Himself, that we too may abide in Him forever.

Hold On a Little Longer

There are many things we don’t know, probably many more than we do know. We may learn a little and then think we know everything (just ask any teenager), but everything we learn just opens doors to new fields of knowledge of which we are still ignorant. It is a sign of the wise that they not only know their own limitations, but they also know that the more they know, the more they realize how little they know.

It’s a similar situation with faith. After we’ve learned our catechism and read a few dozen books, we may think we’ve got a pretty fair knowledge of the things of God. But the more we enter into the mysteries of God, the more we get a glimpse of the boundless vistas of the knowledge of God. And after many years of study and prayer, we come to realize that we are still neophytes, that we’ve barely scratched the surface of divine truths and of the meaning and depth of life with the Lord.

From a “negative” perspective, this realization ought to keep us humble enough to avoid all haughty or narrow denigration of those who don’t see things as we do, and all misplaced rejoicing at the misfortunes of others, by which in some strange way we consider ourselves vindicated. It may be that on some points we are right and others are not (though we might think so for the wrong reasons), and it may be that some suffer trials because of their erroneous beliefs or misbehaviors, but how all that fits into the divine plan we shouldn’t venture to guess, but rather pray for greater insight and a vision that expands more and more towards the dimensions of God’s own.

But I’d rather look at our limited knowledge and awareness from a more positive perspective. We are called to believe in things we cannot see, to accept things we cannot (fully) understand, to experience divine encounters (often subtle) that are far beyond our ability to comprehend or articulate. Yet we’re called to remain and to bear fruit in this twilight of knowing/unknowing, of touching but not possessing, believing but not seeing, entering but not comprehending.

We’re also called not to give up or become discouraged with our limitations, our inability to see what we believe, and with the hints and traces of the divine presence that don’t quite “materialize” to our satisfaction, or that mysteriously disappear like the Lover in the Songs who knocks but playfully flees when we arise to open (Song of Songs 5:2-6). Hold on a little longer, says the Lord, wait in faith and patience; eventually all will be revealed, and you will know as you are known.

I think the Lord waits even more impatiently than we do for the final fulfillment, the full manifestation of his glory and his kingdom, the ultimate and unending embrace. I can almost see Him watching our astonished delight as we finally see what we have long struggled to believe, when the mysteries we thought we knew something about open up undreamed-of panoramas. And the Lord will delight in our delight; He will rejoice in our joy at having at last found Him whom our hearts love, as we discover within us more love than we ever thought possible.

Hold on a little longer. It’s all true. It will all be revealed. A time is coming when we will no longer “see in a glass darkly,” but will see face to face. Now we must struggle, we must live by faith, we must reach out through the darkness to the Light of the world. But if you do hold on, when that day comes you will rejoice with a glorious and grateful joy, and you will see all mysteries revealed, will drink deeply from the Living Water, will forget all your trials and sufferings, and will see that God was right all along, that it was the right thing, the only right thing, to believe, follow, and obey Him. The Lord has promised it, and He will do it.

Martyrs of America

I wrote a week or so ago about some English martyrs, but I’ve been reading lately about the martyrs of North America, and there’s something more to say. All of those I’ve read about recently have been Jesuits. Now they certainly don’t have a monopoly on martyrdom, but they have undeniably produced a number of holy, fearless, and heroic servants of God and the Church. I’m not sure why I’ve been reading the lives of martyrs lately. Maybe the Lord is trying to show me that I’m still a marshmallow—or that neither my love nor my sufferings even approach that of many of his faithful servants.

The book I’m reading is Saints of the American Wilderness, by John A. O’Brien. The subtitle tells you what it is about: The Brave Lives and Holy Deaths of the Eight North American Martyrs. I’ve only read about three so far: SS. Isaac Jogues, René Goupil, and Jean de Lalande. I must admit that I wept, rather unexpectedly, over the sufferings of St. Isaac Jogues. It is incredible, not only what he suffered—and his super-human endurance—but his love for the Lord that kindled all his heroic efforts to evangelize and baptize the often savage and superstitious tribes in what is now New England and Eastern Canada. I will share a bit of it here.

“The Iroquois…leaped on the priest [Jogues] and beat him with fists, clubs and sticks until he fell unconscious. When he came to, they bit out his fingernails and chewed his two forefingers… A few of the Hurons [who, with Jogues, were captured by the Iroquois] had not been baptized, and some now wished to receive the sacrament. Jogues completed their instruction, with his mangled fingers squeezed water from his wet clothing, and baptized them. ‘Put your trust in God,’ he admonished them. ‘He will give you the courage to endure this ordeal… Blessed be His Holy Name forever.’

“The wounds of Jogues and the two Frenchmen were putrefying by then, and their condition was intensified by the swarming mosquitoes… Some of the braves approached them in their exhausted condition and proceeded to pluck out their hair and beards and to drive their long fingernails into the most sensitive parts of their bodies… On the eighth day of their journey…Jogues was placed last in line and was beaten with such fury that, drenched in blood, he fell stunned. They dragged him to the top of the hill… Jogues was led to a platform where they again beat and stabbed him, mangled his fingers and thrust burning sticks against his arms and thighs…

“The crowd surged up on the platform and beat and stabbed the prisoners. A sorcerer approached [Jogues] and cried, ‘I hate this one most of all.’ With that, he commenced to gnaw his fingers. Next, he ordered…a prisoner of the Mohawks to saw off Jogues’ left thumb with a jagged shell… The prisoners then were placed in one of the houses, each of them stretched on his back, his limbs extended, his wrists and ankles bound fast to stakes driven into the earthen floor… They placed live coals on their naked bodies…

“While Jogues was still there, four fresh Huron captives were brought to the platform for the customary treatment. In spite of his pain and exhaustion, Jogues took the opportunity to convert them. An ear of green corn had been thrown to him for food, and he found a few raindrops clinging to the husk. With these he baptized two of the Hurons… He was made a beast of burden; heavy loads were place on his bruised shoulders, and he was compelled to tramp fifty, seventy, a hundred miles after the Indians… His wounds were gangrened, his bare feet left tracks of blood on snow and ice, the deerskin he wore was alive with vermin…”

Those are just a few snippets of his sufferings. But his sheer endurance is not the most amazing thing. You read how in the midst of all that he was still evangelizing and baptizing. In all this, he could only think of God and of his unworthiness to serve Him. After his thumb had been cut off, “Isaac picked it up and, as he later wrote, ‘I presented it to Thee, O my God, in remembrances of the sacrifices which for the last seven years I had offered on the altars of Thy Church, and as an atonement for the want of love and reverence of which I have been guilty in touching Thy Sacred Body.’” In his agony, instead of crying out for deliverance, he offered his suffering in reparation for not being wholly reverent and loving at certain moments when offering the Mass! How many people today touch his Sacred Body in the Eucharist while in a state of sin, and think nothing of it! These are the kinds of things that make me weep. What about my own “want of love and reverence” over the past 15 years at the altar? If I were being tortured, would I humbly offer my sufferings in reparation for this?

For Isaac Jogues, Christ was everything. He lived his whole life with burning love for his Lord and Savior, and he labored tirelessly, heroically, to bring as many to Him as possible. Another incredible thing. Through a complicated series of circumstances and more sufferings, he managed to get on a boat and go back to France. Did he spend the rest of his life there healing his wounds and his nightmarish memories? No, within a few months he was on a boat back to the very place he had left! Like Elijah, he was full of jealous zeal for the Lord of Hosts, that is, if there was a single soul left in the most desolate wilderness, he would go there to preach the Gospel, baptize, and teach the true faith.

It was not too long after having arrived again, that one of the tribes broke a peace treaty, captured Jogues, beat and tortured him again, and finally buried a tomahawk in his brain and beheaded him, thus ending the earthly life of a great soldier of Christ. With what joy he must have been received into the Kingdom of Heaven! When I think of Isaac Jogues and other martyrs like him, I think of what the Letter to the Hebrews says about the saints of the Old Testament: “The world was not worthy of them” (11:38).

We may be intimidated by the specter of his horrifying sufferings, yet it is not our threshold of pain that is the issue, but rather our love for the Lord. I’ve been grumbling about the intense heat wave we’ve been enduring here for a couple weeks (went up to 115), but St. Isaac would have cheerfully continued his work, happy only to be a servant of such a blessed and loving Master. There’s so much we can do for the Lord and offer to Him, just in the context of daily life. We are called to a daily martyrdom of patience, forgiveness, labor, and faithfulness to the word of God.

How much do we recognize and value the gifts God has given us, primarily in his Son who suffered unspeakable tortures as well as bearing the infinitely greater burden of our sins? With what reverence (or lack of it) do we approach the Holy Eucharist? What price are we willing to pay to ensure our fidelity to the commandments of the Lord? How weak and selfish and petty do we look in the face of those who gave their all for Jesus? What are our priorities in life? “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ…” (Phil. 3:8-9). St. Paul must have been proud of Isaac Jogues. What would he think of you and me? Holy Martyrs, pray to God for us!

Adult Books

There are many strange and misleading euphemisms in our society. For example, “reproductive health” often entails the murder of the very one who is the living manifestation of human reproduction. Not very healthy, death. Another one, which I’d like to look at today, is “adult books,” which can be bought at “adult bookstores” or on “adult websites.”

There’s really not much that is adult about “adult” books. They mostly cater to adolescent fantasies (at least I guess they do, or so I’ve been told, or, like, I wouldn’t know!). And if people read them long enough, they become so twisted and perverse that there’s little that is adult, i.e., mature, about them. “Mature” is another misused word. Books or films that cater to those same adolescent fantasies are for “mature audiences.” Perhaps there should be a rating system that indicates certain books or films as designed for “immature, sick, perverse, weird, satanic, degenerate audiences.” That would at least give pause to some mature adults.

Our society in general is quite immature, or at least it takes people much longer to mature than in past generations. It may be that they get street-wise and have their “eyes opened” by eating forbidden fruit much earlier (in some places lobbyists are advocating STD vaccines for 11-year-olds). But about the meaning of human life they have no clue. I was just told of a young pregnant woman who wants to have an abortion because she doesn’t want to get fat. Perfectly good reason for killing a baby! I know a young husband and father who left his wife and son, because after the birth of their child his wife actually grew up and became a mother, and hence was “no fun” anymore, but he wanted to have fun. I suppose he reads “adult” books, too. He’s a real man!

Perhaps our high-tech society has something to do with the lack of ordinary human growth and formation. Kids can use a calculator, but they don’t know their multiplication tables (quick, what is 9 x 7?). They can operate a computer, but they can barely read and write. They can manipulate figures in video games, but they don’t know how to hold a baseball bat. They know nothing of literature, but they read “adult” books and magazines. They go to school to learn cutting-edge technology, but they rarely receive an education.

But it’s more than that. They also don’t receive adequate moral and spiritual formation, and I think that is the major impediment to human maturity. If they are not grounded in eternal truths and in profoundly God-centered vision of life, the way is paved for the media, the pornographers, Planned Parenthood, and every hawker of hedonism to insure that they will never become real adults, never mature. They will remain forever in an emotional adolescence that thrives on fun, gratification, and selfish disregard for others, while eschewing sacrifice, courage, nobility, faith, and all that truly builds human maturity and character.

My recommendation to you is to read some adult books: the Bible, the lives of the saints, the fathers of the Church, and other noteworthy spiritual writers, novelists, etc. These are the true adult books. They may be for mature audiences, but even if you’re not quite mature yet, they will actually help you get there. And make sure you recommend them to others. Our society must eventually tire of its degrading surfeit of immorality, its unhealthy diet of illicit pleasure and moral indifference. Their “adult” freedom is nothing more than enslavement to perpetual adolescence. We need to show them the path to recovery, so that they will not forever remain at the present arrested level of emotional and spiritual growth. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1Cor. 13:11). They need to hear that word and grow up to “mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13).

Lewis on Forgiveness

There’s a short address called “On Forgiveness” in a collection entitled, The Weight of Glory, by C.S. Lewis. With his usual penetrating insight, he illuminates this difficult but indispensable element of Christian life. So, without further ado:

“…If you don’t forgive you will not be forgiven. No part of His teaching is clearer, and there are no exceptions to it. He doesn’t say that we are to forgive other people’s sins provided they are not too frightful, or provided there are extenuating circumstances, or anything of that sort. We are to forgive them all, however spiteful, however mean, however often they are repeated. If we don’t, we shall be forgiven none of our own…

“I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often…asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to excuse me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing. Forgiveness says, ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us will be exactly as it was before.’ But excusing says, ‘I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.’ If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive… what we call ‘asking God’s forgiveness’ very often really consists in asking God to accept our excuses… We are so very anxious to point these [‘extenuating circumstances’] out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to forget the really important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which the excuses don’t cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable. And if we forget this, we shall go away imagining that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves with our own excuses…

“A great deal of our anxiety to make excuses comes from not really believing in [the forgiveness of sins], from thinking that God will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favor. But that would not be forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.

“When it comes to a question of our forgiving other people…here also, forgiving does not mean excusing. Many people…think that if you ask them to forgive someone who has cheated or bullied them you are trying to make out that there was really no cheating or no bullying. But if that were so, there would be nothing to forgive. They keep on replying, ‘But I tell you the man broke a most solemn promise.’ Exactly: that is precisely what you have to forgive. (This doesn’t mean that you must necessarily believe his next promise. It does mean that you must make every effort to kill every taste of resentment in your own heart—every wish to humiliate or hurt him or to pay him out.)… In our own case we accept excuses too easily; in other people’s we do not accept them easily enough… To excuse what can really produce good excuses is not Christian charity; it is only fairness. To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.

“This is hard. It is perhaps not so hard to forgive a single great injury. But to forgive the incessant provocations of daily life—to keep on forgiving the bossy mother-in-law, the bullying husband, the nagging wife, the selfish daughter, the deceitful son—how can we do it? Only, I think, by remembering where we stand, by meaning our words when we say in our prayers each night, ‘forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.’ We are offered forgiveness on no other terms. To refuse it is to refuse God’s mercy for ourselves. There is no hint of exceptions, and God means what He says.”

We have a short prayer in our tradition: “Have mercy on us, O Lord, have mercy on us. Since we have no excuse for our sinfulness, we can only offer You this prayer, O Master: Have mercy on us!” We don’t make excuses; we even assert that we have none, which means we really are asking for forgiveness. I think the key passage in Lewis’ address is: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” We all have our work cut out for us…

Gospel, Repentance, Eucharist

I’ve recently been reading an insightful book entitled, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death, by John Behr, an Orthodox priest and theologian. He makes a point about the original proclamation of the Gospel that we would do well to ponder. He says, first of all, that it is not enough, using tools such as the historical-critical method, to discover what the Scriptures meant in their original context (though there is some value to this). We need to know what the Scriptures mean. By this he does not reduce them to modern subjective interpretations, but he wants us to see the meaning of the words of Scripture not merely as the meaning of the text. Rather, we must meet the Word of God Himself therein—He who is with us always, and who is also the Coming One, for whom the Church must constantly watch and wait.

The original preaching of the Gospel, expressed in St. Peter’s post-Pentecost discourses, was not a mere imparting of information, about which scientific research might satisfy our curiosity. Nor was his audience neutral or even innocent. For this preaching was about “Jesus, whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). Now here’s an important reason why we should not just want to know what the Scriptures meant, but what they mean. This preaching is directed to us, too, here and now. “‘We are, insistently and relentlessly, in Jerusalem, confronted therefore with a victim who is our victim.’ What is embodied and enacted in Christ, though occurring at a specific historical moment and in a particular context, is nevertheless God’s own work and, as such, eternal or timeless. The preaching of his crucifixion and resurrection is not restricted to the first century… Rather, now that Christ is with God, and all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him, there is no place or time where he cannot be or cannot work: he is present, even now, to those who turn to him, as the victim of their own sins and, as such, the one who is able to forgive and bring them into the life of God.” [emphasis added]

The preaching of the Gospel tells us that we have crucified and killed the Son of God, by our own sins. To Him we must turn for forgiveness, for He is the one we have offended and hurt (and don’t forget, whatever we do to his brethren, we do to Him). The first hearers of that news were “cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brethren, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them: ‘Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 2:37-38). The same Gospel message is for us: repentance and baptism, unto forgiveness and the gift of the Holy Spirit. We may already be baptized, but repentance and growth in the grace of the Holy Spirit must be ongoing. To encounter Christ in the proclamation of his Gospel is first to repent of what we did to Him (and, from our perspective, still do, as it is played out in time). We have crucified Christ and must now make a decision to enter into his forgiveness and fellowship.

St. Peter had to learn his own lesson before he preached the Gospel to others. He knew that he had also crucified Christ by his betrayal. He denied Him three times, and so a three-fold profession of love was required from him after Jesus’ resurrection. The evangelist John carefully sets the scene. When Peter betrayed Jesus, he was standing by a charcoal fire (John 18:18, 25-27). When Peter and the other disciples came in from the sea to meet the risen Lord, “they saw a charcoal fire there” (21:9), and momentarily Jesus asked Peter to renounce, through love, what he had done at the previous charcoal fire.

This immersion in the Gospel proclamation through the encounter with Christ in repentance is richer still. The charcoal fire was there at the seashore to prepare a meal that they would share, fish and bread. That meal of reconciliation and communion was prepared over the fire of betrayal-transformed-by-repentance-into-love. Their story is our story. For Christians today, “as with the disciples after the Resurrection, the primary locus for this encounter is a meal. The Eucharistic celebration is not simply a fellowship meal or a commemoration of a past meal, but one which begins ‘in the same night in which he was given up’: ‘We do not eucharistically remember a distant meal in Jerusalem, nor even a distant death: we are…people complicit in the betrayal and death of Jesus and yet still called and accepted, still companions of Christ in the strict sense—those who break bread with him’” (a “com-panion” is literally one who shares bread with another).

As the heart of the Gospel message, repentance and Eucharist are symbolically brought together by another burning charcoal: the one that the angel brought with a pair of tongs to purify the lips of Isaiah as he confessed his unworthiness of his vision of God and of standing in his presence (Is. 6:1-8). He came to God first in repentance and was purified by a flaming coal from angelic hands. It is no coincidence, then, that in the Byzantine tradition, the Holy Eucharist, the “live coal of divinity” (Matthew the Poor, Communion of Love) is given with a spoon, as though with tongs, and after Communion the priest says to all the people, just like Isaiah’s angel: “Behold, this has touched your lips; it has taken away your iniquities and cleansed you of your sins.”

Gospel, repentance, Eucharist: this is what the Scripture means; this is the word of God alive and active today. We have to hear it afresh and to meet the Lord Jesus in Spirit and in truth. After receiving the proclamation of the Gospel, and forgiveness through repentance and Holy Communion, we are to become preachers of the Gospel ourselves. As soon as Isaiah was purified, the Lord said: “Whom shall I send?” And Isaiah cried out: “Here am I. Send me!”

What Will Set You Free?

I read a little book recently (Freedom From Fear, by Marci Alborghetti) that was quite well-intentioned, if a bit eclectic, though it seemed to miss the mark—from a spiritual perspective, anyway. It’s a kind of self-help book, for which the intended audience seems mainly to be neurotic housewives or working women. (Why, then, was I reading it, you ask? Well, I look for insights in many different places, and sometimes all I learn is where not to look anymore!) The book is about overcoming fear through faith, which is certainly a worthwhile goal. But there were two major drawbacks to the author’s approach, as I see it.

Before I examine those, however, I’d like to mention that some people will probably find the book valuable for its practical tips and exercises for taming one’s fears and anxieties. The author admits to being a fellow-sufferer, and she is sharing what she has learned along the way, which is not without its usefulness.

The first flaw is that faith in God seems to be used simply as one means among others. You can try this exercise, create this reminder, believe in God, use this relaxation technique, etc. The book is not really about overcoming fear through faith, but through a host of methods or means, faith being just one of them. This is typical of modern pragmatic America, where things are valued and utilized for their practical effectiveness. You have a goal: freedom from fear. If faith works, then by all means, have faith! If something else works better, use that. Seems to me like that’s putting the cart before the horse. Faith in God is of inestimable value even if it doesn’t cure your neuroses! Freedom from fears may be a happy consequence or fruit of faith, but God is the goal, not healing of anxieties.

The other flaw is more fundamental. The author suggests that we “re-image” God in such a way that our fears are calmed. We should put out of our minds any thought that God might punish us for our sins, for that makes us afraid. Rather, we should only speak and think of God with warm, soft, tender, loving images. But this approach borders on idolatry, that is, making an image of God that is not the true God. It is not a non-threatening or gentle image of God that will set you free from fear. As Jesus said, it is the truth that will set you free (John 8:31-32), and nothing else! The truth is, God has revealed Himself in many ways in the Holy Scriptures, and since it is God who is revealing and being revealed, they are all true. Even the stern ones. Even those that the “re-imaging” censors would discard. God certainly is loving, tender, merciful, etc., but He is also the eschatological Judge and the Vindicator of his own righteousness. He is demanding and uncompromising as well as forgiving and healing. He receives harlots and drives out money-changers. He is who He is, and we’ve no right to “re-image” Him to meet our emotional needs.

Now let me hasten to add that it may be necessary for someone suffering from an extreme trauma or emotional disorder to focus (temporarily, anyway) solely on the mercy, the peace, the loving-kindness of God. This may be necessary to begin the path to recovery. But these are exceptions, and even in these cases one may hope that they regain their strength and balance sufficiently to accept God in the fullness of his truth.

The point is simply this: our goal is God, and eternal life with Him. Faith, prayer, sacraments, etc., may perhaps be considered “means” to this ultimate end, but that’s not quite correct, either. They are part of the whole condition or spiritual “environment” within which we enter communion with God, not merely practical stepping stones. But it is inappropriate (to say the least) in the case of a lesser goal, like freedom from neurotic fears, to utilize faith—and that in a one-sided image of God—in order to attain it. That’s a kind of psychological sleight-of-hand that can only attain a “freedom” that is short-lived or superficial. Only the truth will set us free—and not just the parts of the truth that seem sweet. Our willingness to embrace the whole truth opens us up to the profound mystery of God, in whom are all the riches of wisdom, love, goodness, and life. But we must accept God as He has revealed Himself, and we put our trust in Him who invites us to the leap of faith—and faith not as a technique for balancing our emotional life, but as the key to “the life which is life indeed” (1Timothy 6:19).

Not Our Ways

It is perhaps cause for both consolation and consternation that God’s ways are not our ways, as He said through the prophet Isaiah (55:8-9). We may initially have more consternation than consolation, so let’s look at that first.

Sometimes it may be looked upon as a kind of Christian cop-out: whatever tragic or absurd thing happens, we say it’s because God’s ways are not our ways. And the unbeliever’s answer is: “Yeah, right. That’s a convenient excuse, but it doesn’t fly in the real world.” It’s OK for unbelievers to question (as long as they don’t get all mean-spirited about it), but then they have to listen for an answer. Mostly, though, they don’t want to hear the answer. They don’t want to accept that God’s ways are not ours because of his infinitely greater wisdom and far-seeing understanding. They don’t want to hear God’s answer to Job, who, unlike God, was not there at the creation of the cosmos and does not know how to set the orbits of the planets or regulate the tides or make the eagles soar. Those who can’t discern and accept God’s ways have their spiritual blinders on too tight.

But even believers don’t always like it that God’s ways are not our ways, and not because they are wrestling with complex theodicies. We don’t like God’s ways being different because we simply prefer our ways. We have certain plans, desires, or aspirations, and (let’s be honest) we don’t want God’s will messing everything up! “Thy will be done” spells doom for our myopic or selfish designs. We don’t want God to have a different take on things than we do, because then we’ll either have to change our plans or else do them anyway, but with the disadvantage of a bad conscience. So we’re a little uneasy with God coming right out and saying that his ways and thoughts are not ours.

Yet we might take some consolation when things aren’t going well for us, or when we’re in some serious jam because of circumstances beyond (or because of) our control, that God has a better vantage point than we do, and we hope that a rescue is imminent. When we can’t figure our way out of a problem, then God’s having different thoughts and ways is a rather welcome revelation.

We shouldn’t, however, let self-interest guide our approach to the mysteries of God, whether from a positive or negative perspective. We should simply rest in the truth of what He has revealed, and then try to get our own ways as far as possible in line with his. Also, if we’re tempted to grumble about God’s ways, we ought to look at the context in which He said this, for it is full of mercy. Our ways are generally to judge and condemn the sinner, and perhaps if we recognize our own sins and failures, our way is to fear judgment or condemnation from God or others. But this is what He says about it: “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that He may have mercy on him, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Notice two things here. God’s ways are ways of mercy, of patience and compassion—which is why they are, more often than not, unlike ours. The “for” (meaning “because”) is an explanatory link in the text: the Lord will pardon because his ways are not ours. And his ways are not merely different than ours, they are higher, that is, more noble, wise, holy, and good.

Therefore we shouldn’t regard God’s ways as favorable or not depending on their perceived benefit to us. Rather, the fact that they are not our ways, and are actually better, higher ways, should be cause for standing in awe of Him, in joy and gratitude and adoration, like St. Paul: “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! … For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen!” (Romans 11:33-36).

Rejoice, then, for God’s ways are not yours. If you had your way in all things, your life would end up a disaster and you would probably lose your soul in the process, for you simply can’t know what’s best for you and what the future holds. That’s why there’s something called faith, something called trust, by which we embrace Him in whom are all the unsearchable riches of wisdom, grace, mercy, and love. He patiently endures our short-sighted critiques of his governance of the universe, for He knows that we’ll see clearly in the end, if we’ll only persevere. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, even though—or rather, precisely because—his ways are not ours!

Bedewed From Heaven

Gideon asked for a sign (Judges 6:36-40). If God was going to deliver Israel from the Midianites, let the fleece which Gideon was laying on the threshing floor be covered with dew, while all the ground is dry. God granted the miraculous sign, and Gideon wrung out a bowlful of water from the fleece, though the ground was dry all around. Then Gideon became just a bit presumptuous—he asked for another sign! This time, let there be dew on all the ground but not on the fleece. And God, in his long-suffering patience, granted the second sign.

The fathers of the Church have seen in this miraculous fleece a foreshadowing of the mystery of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She has been called (by Gerard Manley Hopkins, I think), “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” This applies both to her immaculate sinlessness and to her being the only virgin-mother in the history of the world. God blessed her in a way that He blessed no other.

So we have a beautiful hymn in our tradition, one line of which runs: “Queen and Virgin Mother, fleece bedewed from Heaven—rejoice, O unwedded Bride!” Heaven descended upon her, the Power of the Most High overshadowed her in a wholly unique manner. Worthy as she is, however, I didn’t intend to write specifically about the Mother of God here, but to reflect on that felicitous phrase, “bedewed from Heaven,” and what it might mean for us. (A little actual dew from the heavens would be welcome right about now, as it is going up to 111 degrees here today!)

Every time we receive the grace of God, it is dew from Heaven. When we consider Our Lady, however, it is a total gift, for it was not merely a special touch of God she received, but God Himself, bodily dwelling within her. This means that she had a profound and ineffable “connection” with Heaven, her inner life was “taken up” into the mysteries of God, of the Other World, of the Life of the Age to Come. Heaven came to earth and permeated the body and soul of the Virgin.

Yet God comes to dwell in us too, not in precisely the same way, but still tangibly, sacramentally, through the Holy Eucharist. The dew of Heaven covers us, the gates of the Kingdom are mystically opened to us, a marvelous other-worldly Light shines upon us. As we receive the Son of God in his inexpressible Gift, a connection, a bonding, is made with Heaven, and we are further secured in the divine embrace.

Unlike ordinary rain, the dew appears rather mysteriously. We say the dew “falls,” but it doesn’t really fall, it suddenly is just there. It is really all around us, in the air, but under the proper conditions it condenses, so the earth can be refreshed anew with cool droplets of dew. The presence of God is all around us too, like the very air, but under the proper conditions (faith and prayer being the main ones) his omnipresence “condenses” into the gift of grace—something mysterious, yet something that can be experienced—refreshing our souls with pure divine love and mercy.

Sleep outside under the stars and you’ll wake up covered with dew. Stand in awe of the mysteries of God, open your heart to the world of the Spirit—and you’ll discover that you are enlightened by his grace, that is, you are bedewed from Heaven.

On Life and Mushrooms

A number of years ago we decided (with the help of a generous benefactor) to pave our long driveway, which was nothing but dirt and gravel and ruts. We watched as muscled men and machinery leveled out the drive and laid down a thick layer of asphalt, creating an actual road (though still a bit narrow and steep in places) leading up to our monastery church. We figured that now there would be fewer auto undercarriages wrecked by bouncing over our poor excuse for a driveway.

After a short time we noticed a rather disturbing phenomenon. The new road began bulging and cracking in a few places down by the gate, and we couldn’t figure out why. Some defect in materials or workmanship? We thought we’d just wait a little and see if it somehow corrected itself or got worse. It got worse. Suspense was mounting as we watched those areas of the driveway rise and crack. Finally the mystery was solved, and we discovered the irresistible force that broke through the road: mushrooms!

Being monks, we didn’t get indignant at the audacity of those inconsiderate fungi, but rather took the opportunity to reflect on the mystery. I, for one, was struck by the irrepressible vital energy of life. It may sound redundant to say that life must live, but it will simply not be thwarted. Even mushrooms do not find an asphalt road an obstacle to fulfilling their God-given mandate to live and thrive. Blades of grass crack sidewalks, tiny wildflowers grow out of rocks and barren clay. Animals and human beings often survive in all kinds of impossible conditions. Everything struggles, instinctively if not consciously, to live. Life will not be denied, for life is of God, the Creator. Therefore the Lord God said: Thou shalt not kill.

It is easy to see, then, that the chief enemy of God is the enemy of life. The first recorded sin after Adam and Eve’s expulsion from Paradise was murder. Jesus calls the devil “a murderer from the beginning,” one who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 8:44; 10:10). The mad fury of the demonic hater of life is present to a frightening degree today: wars, abortion, other types of murder, “assisted suicide,” etc.

God has an ultimate answer: resurrection. The helpless may be slaughtered, but the power of life goes on. They will one day break through their coffins and covered graves even more easily than mushrooms break through asphalt. On that day, no one will be able to take their lives any more, and they will live in the ever-increasing exhilaration of life in the heavenly Paradise.

But our concern is not only the final victory. If we ourselves are to be fully alive—and worthy of the gift—we must protect and nurture life, especially human life, created as it is in the image of God. We have to say NO to wanton killing of all kinds and YES to the flourishing of life. All attempts to squelch life will ultimately fail, even though they may gain temporary victories. Woe to those who stand on the side of death, joining forces with the “murderer from the beginning.” All their little victims will rise in triumphant glory, while the killers get what they promoted: death, and the eternal draining-out of every last shred of joy in the gift of life. We, however, stand at the Cross of Christ, uniting ourselves with Him who was killed and then overcame death, rising to everlasting glory. For we know wherein the victory lies.

So learn a lesson from the mushrooms that break through roads—and even from the squirrels who, as I write, are hurling half-eaten pinecones at my cabin from their safe treetop vantage—nothing can stop them! Nothing will stop the march of life to its ultimate fulfillment in God. We won’t give up, for we can’t give up. We are alive, and Christ lives in us through his Spirit. This life is irrepressible, so let us go forth undaunted to preach the Gospel of Life to the world. Just let the enemies of life try to pave us over. They’ll see what the power of life can do!

The Blood of the Martyrs

I’d like to continue with reflections on the martyrdom of St. Edmund Campion. There’s quite an interesting fruit of his death that I’ll mention shortly. I was going to spare you the gory details of his execution, but perhaps it is better to learn just what the saints suffered for the love of God. Here is his death sentence, which was fully carried out:

“You shall be drawn through the open city of London upon hurdles [i.e., dragged through the streets in a kind of frame attached to a horse] to the place of execution, and there be hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your head is to be cut off and your body divided into four parts, to be disposed of at her Majesty’s pleasure.” This was to be done because he was a Catholic priest, in a country that also was Catholic—until recently. “In condemning us,” Campion declared at his mock trial, “you condemn all your own ancestors—all the ancient priests, bishops, and kings—all that was once the glory of England, the island of saints, and the most devoted child of the See of Peter.”

To his death he nobly proceeded, and even as he was dragged through the streets he blessed people in the crowd. Something quite amazing happened as the saint was being butchered, but I’ll let Evelyn Waugh describe it for you:

“Henry Walpole…came of a Catholic family and occasionally expressed Catholic sentiments, but until that day had kept at a discreet distance from [known Catholics], and was on good terms with authority. He was a typical member of that easy-going majority, on whom the success of the Elizabethan settlement depended, who would have preferred to live under a Catholic regime but accepted the change without very serious regret… He secured a front place at Tyburn [the place of execution]; so close that when Campion’s entrails were torn out by the butcher and thrown into the cauldron of boiling water, a spot of blood splashed upon his coat. In that moment he was caught into a new life; he crossed the sea, became a priest, and, thirteen years later, after very terrible sufferings, died the same death as Campion’s on the gallows at York. And so the work of Campion continued; so it continues. He was one of a host of martyrs, each, in their several ways, gallant and venerable…”

Henry Walpole, now Saint Henry Walpole, was canonized along with St. Edmund Campion as one of the “Forty Martyrs of England and Wales” by Pope Paul VI. It is clear from the above events how great is the power of the sacrifice of one’s life for the sake of Christ and the Gospel. A drop of the martyr’s blood carried the grace of the Holy Spirit to someone who had been more or less indifferent to the Faith, who was then immediately enkindled with zeal for the truth and for the salvation of souls, and who in turn gave his own life for Christ and his Church.

Not all have the courage to die for the Lord, but we are all called to live for Him, and to suffer whatever life brings—as an offering of thanksgiving to Him who loved us unto death, and whose love is so great that it inspires many others to make the supreme sacrifice. The blood of martyrs still flows in many places in the world today, for the advancement of the Gospel and the sanctification of souls. May we be able to see beyond the narrow confines of our own worries and pains, and look to the ever-expanding horizon of the fruitfulness of divine grace—and unhesitatingly give ourselves to God, “who has called [us] to his eternal glory” (1Peter 5:10).

Handing On What Was Handed On

This Sunday on the Byzantine calendar marks the commemoration of the fathers of the early ecumenical councils (Heb. 13:7-16 and John 17:1-13). The reading from the Letter to the Hebrews urges us today to remember our leaders, those who spoke to us the word of God, and then to imitate their faith. That is what we are doing as we celebrate the fathers of the ecumenical councils. The author of Hebrews also warns us not to be led away by strange and diverse teachings—another reason to celebrate the fathers, who have defined the dogmas of our faith and hence have protected us from strange and heretical ideas. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, so we should be aware that new ideas that contradict what has already been definitively proclaimed are not of God. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be fresh formulations and clarifications of the ancient truths—for every age has to receive the Gospel in a way that it can understand, and hopefully always deepen faith and understanding. But nothing may be discarded or changed that has been delivered to the Church by the apostles and fathers as the true word of God.

The hour has come, Jesus declared in his “high-priestly” prayer—the hour of the glorification of the Son, i.e., his suffering, death, and resurrection. Jesus was aware that the Father had given Him power and authority to give eternal life to “all those whom You have given Me.” Here we touch on a mystery, one which perhaps we can never adequately explain this side of eternity. If Jesus refers to those whom the Father has given Him, does that mean that there are those whom the Father has not given Him, the only Savior? Perhaps one of these was Judas, whom Jesus referred to as the “son of perdition.” Later in his prayer, Jesus said that none of his disciples was lost, “except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” And when many of Jesus’ disciples ceased to follow Him after He solemnly declared that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood to have eternal life, He said: “That is why I told you that no one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:65). In his prayer He also said He was praying not for the world, but for those whom the Father had given Him. I think we have to leave this mystery in the depths of the wisdom of God, and simply pray for the salvation of all. Or, we can pray, as I do, based on this prayer of Jesus, for those whom God has given us. Each individual is not personally responsible for every individual in the world, for no one can carry that kind of burden. But God has given us those for whom He wants us to be responsible, for whom He expects us to pray and even suffer. Some of these we may know (our own family, friends, and those who have asked our prayers), but there may be many others that we don’t know—among whom may be those for whom we would not otherwise be inclined to pray—so in praying for those whom God has given us, we exclude no one for whom God wants us to pray. We may be surprised to find out in the end just who the beneficiaries of our prayers and sacrifices actually were!

Jesus said that to those whom the Father had given Him, He would grant eternal life. Immediately He tells us what this means: “Eternal life is this: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” Will we know the true God by reading the Catechism or other books? We will certainly gain important knowledge about God, but to know facts about Him is not the same as knowing Him.

Learned theologians can still lose their souls if they do not have a personal relationship with God, if they do not love Him and do his will. So the knowledge Jesus is talking about is an experiential knowledge, i.e., knowledge in the biblical sense of intimate relationship. If we have faith in the true God and if we love and obey Him, then eternal life has already begun for us, for eternal life is not merely an endless duration of life, but a spiritual quality of life, a life that is wholly permeated by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and thus it is a life of love and joy in the Lord. According to St. Paul, life in the Kingdom of God is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Romans 14:17), and that can begin, and must begin, here on earth.

The connection with the fathers of the Church in this Gospel is Jesus’ handing on of his word to the apostles, who were then to hand on his word to others. “I gave them Your word,” Jesus said in his prayer to the Father, and then He prayed for “all those who believe in Me through their word.” The fathers were the transmitters of the apostolic teaching to the whole Church, and their successors have handed it on from generation to generation, to this very day, in which we can enjoy the privilege of embracing the richness of the heritage of Christ, handed on through the apostles and fathers. But it can’t stop with our generation. We have not only to receive the word, but to live it and to pass it on to others—intact, unadulterated, undiluted, in its full power, truth, and spiritual dynamism, for this is the word that leads to personal knowledge and experience of God, and hence to salvation.

One of the great crises in the Church today is the refusal to accept the Gospel as handed down by our fathers in the faith. What we see in many places is the radical reinterpretation of the gospel, so much so that it is hardly distinguishable from today’s social and political trends—or from the heresies long since condemned by the fathers. Rather than receive the tradition, they want to “re-imagine” God. Well, if they have to re-imagine God, it must mean their god is a product of their imagination in the first place, so they can re-imagine all they want—it will never be the true God who grants eternal life.

The true God is fully manifest only in the One whom He has sent, his only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not a restriction, a narrowing, as if life could be fuller by embracing other faiths, other gods. The parameters of the true faith simply exclude all that is false, all that is evil, all that is not of God. Therefore the only thing we are missing out on by embracing Christ alone is error, evil, and Hell. I’ll take that kind of narrowing any time! But embracing Christ is more than excluding evil. Jesus spoke the words of his prayer for this reason: “that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” It is for our joy that we are called to embrace the true faith, to enter into that saving knowledge of God and his Son Jesus Christ.

So let us rejoice that the Faith has been handed down to us intact, that we are among those whom the Father has given Jesus; we are his disciples and friends. And let us be faithful in both transmitting and living the true faith—that Christ’s joy may be fulfilled in us, as we grow in knowledge and love of the true God unto eternal life.

Campion's Brag

St. Edmund Campion (+1581) was one of the martyrs of the English Reformation. He was tortured and killed for his Catholic faith, in his native country of England, which had separated itself from the Church of Rome and had subsequently begun a persecution of Catholics, especially priests.

In reading Evelyn Waugh’s biography of the saint (Edmund Campion: A Life), I learned about a document he had penned on his way to England from Rome. He was quite prepared to die for his faith, but he wanted to write a testament of his mission, lest he be secretly arrested and executed without his being able to fulfill his mission, or worse, that forged “confessions” might be circulated, etc, to the discouragement of the faithful. As this document circulated in England, it was referred to by his detractors as “Campion’s Brag,” but it was originally entitled, “Challenge to the Privy Council,” that is, the chief advisors of the queen.

The reason I bring all this up is that I was impressed by his spirit, his courage, his faith, and his confidence in the triumph of the Truth. We live in an age of compromise, of relativism, and of tolerance of nearly every aberration. There aren’t enough people who stand up and say: this is true and this is false, this is right and this is wrong. But St. Edmund Campion was one of them. I’d like to share a bit of his “brag” here. Catch the spirit of one who, as he prepared for martyrdom, was “directly, truly and resolutely opening [his] full enterprise and purpose.”

“I confess that I am (albeit unworthy) a priest of the Catholic Church… I have taken upon me a kind of special warfare under the banner of obedience, and also resigned all my interest or possibility of wealth, honour, pleasure, and other worldly felicity… My charge is, of free cost to preach the Gospel, to minister the Sacraments, to instruct the simple, to reform sinners, to confute errors—in brief, to cry spiritual alarm against foul vice and proud ignorance, wherewith many of my dear countrymen are abused… I undertake to avow the faith of our Catholic Church by proofs innumerable—Scriptures, councils, Fathers, history, natural and moral reasons…

“…see upon what substantial grounds our Catholic Faith is built… discountenance error when it is revealed, and hearken to those who would spend the best blood in their bodies for your salvation. Many innocent hands are lifted up to heaven for you daily by those English students, whose posterity shall never die, which beyond seas, gathering virtue and sufficient knowledge for the purpose, are determined never to give you over, but either to win you heaven or to die upon your pikes… Be it known to you that we have made a league…cheerfully to carry the cross you shall lay upon us, and never to despair your recovery, while we have a man left to enjoy your Tyburn, or to be racked with your torments, or consumed with your prisons. The expense is reckoned, the enterprise begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood. So the faith was planted: so it must be restored…

“I have no more to say but to recommend your case and mine to Almighty God, the Searcher of Hearts, to send us his grace, and see us at accord before the day of payment, to the end we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.”

It is to Campion’s credit that his unyielding witness to the Truth was not an arrogant threat of conquest, but a plea for reconciliation unto salvation, that “we may at last be friends in heaven.” Yet the testimony of his life shows that we cannot make “friends” with opponents through apostasy, compromise, or violation of conscience. Rather, his mission was to enlighten others to the full truth, so that all could be one in the True God.

May God raise up more courageous and single-hearted men and women who are willing to proclaim the truth and even to die for it, in imitation of Him who laid down his life for the sake of truth and as a supreme act of love. As the saying goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything. Stand for something. Stand for Someone. Stand for his Church, which is persecuted overtly and covertly throughout the world. “Instruct the simple, reform sinners, confute errors,” pray for the enlightenment and salvation of all—that all “may at last be friends in heaven.”

Letting God Look at You

I wrote a few days ago about letting God love you, and someone asked me to write more on the subject. So here we’ll look at a basic condition or disposition for letting God love you. Before you can let Him love you, you have to let Him look at you.

You might say that this goes without saying, but I think it should be said anyway. Sure, God sees everything, He sees in the dark, He perceives our inmost thoughts and feelings, knows our history and our hearts. But the fact that the Omniscient One can do all this is not enough. Here we’re still at the negative point of admitting that we cannot prevent God from seeing us as we are. We have to come to the positive point of willingly inviting his gaze, showing Him that which we are afraid or ashamed to show anyone else.

A wound must be exposed before it can be treated and healed. A secret must be shared in order to create intimacy. Your inner depths must be opened up to God if you are to experience the transforming tenderness of his love.

I wrote last October about an experience of Our Lady seeing through me, as it were, and my finding healing in that. It may be helpful to reproduce it in the present context: “Once when praying before an icon of the Mother of God—one in which her eyes were looking directly at me—I suddenly became aware that she herself actually was looking at me, or rather into me, as if a window to my soul had just opened. She could see—and I knew she could see, and I wanted her to see, and I let her see—all that was within me: the good, the bad, and the ugly of my whole life. It was not an entirely pleasant experience, for there were things I wished never were a part of my history but that had left their mark on me. For a while I felt exposed and ashamed, yet it wasn’t like a judgment but rather a moment of cleansing and healing. I realized since then that even though God is fully able to see within us, if we really want to be transformed within, we have to choose to let Him see, let Him come in. That’s when the real spiritual work begins.”

There’s an initial uneasiness or fear about exposing one’s inner self, even to God. But that step must be taken, with trust in the divine compassion. He already knows; He won’t be taken aback by your frank self-revelation. “O Lord, you have searched me and you know me; you know when I sit and when I rise; you discern my thoughts from afar… Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it altogether… your eyes have seen all my actions” (Psalm 138/139:1-4, 16). See, He knows, but even so, He is waiting for you to tell Him, to show Him, to let Him see.

This is part of what it means to surrender to God. Surrender doesn’t mean only a willingness to do his will; it also means a willingness to expose to Him your most intimate secrets, your nameless fears and unspeakable agonies, your hidden desires. Therefore letting God look at you really means giving your very self to Him, entrusting your fragile heart to his strong but gentle hands, taking the leap of faith, of trust—because deep down you know that hidden wounds will never heal.

After overcoming that initial fear or shame—at least enough to take the leap of self-disclosure—there is an immense relief. The secret is shared, the soul is revealed, God is still there and, if it were possible, now He loves you even more. This brings peace and a further willingness to go on living in his grace and care—no longer running, no longer hiding in the dark corridors of anticipated rejection. He knocked and you opened, and He came in to share a quiet moment with you (see Revelation 3:20). And you discover at last that all manner of things shall be well.

This first surrender is probably the most dramatic, certainly the most necessary. But there will be more to come. No one can open the labyrinth of his entire life in an instant. There will still be long walks with the Lord through the winding passages of your soul. But it’s a lot easier now, and trust grows every day. You’ve found a Friend with whom you can share everything, with whom you have found forgiveness and understanding. He will still instruct and even admonish you, but now that He has won your heart and your trust, even a reproach will sound sweet, for you know that it is one more way of purifying and perfecting you, so as to enhance your mutual joy, in this age and in the age to come.

So, if you haven’t yet chosen to let Him look at you, I think that now is the time. You’ve nothing to lose—except fear and shame and the solitude of despair—and everything to gain. To let God look at you is to begin to let Him love you. It is significant that in St Paul’s profound ode to love in First Corinthinans 13, he approaches his conclusion saying: “I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

Where Your Treasure Is...

A few days ago I was praying in the early morning, which is practically the only time I can easily enter into prayer. For me, the total silence and the candlelit darkness provide the best environment to listen to God. Well, despite the ideal external conditions, I found myself preoccupied with other things—the work and the difficulties I would meet during the day, etc—so I asked Our Lady about it. I have a large icon of Our Lady of Vladimir in my cell, and I dared to look into those penetrating eyes of hers and ask: “You were able to be recollected in the Lord; you could pray without a million things distracting you. What was your secret?”

I had hardly even finished the question when immediately this passage came into my mind: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21). Mary always leads us to her Son, so when I asked a question, she responded with her Son’s words.

Those words were both enlightenment and a mild motherly reproach. My “treasure” must have been somewhere else than with God at my distracted moments. She knew, of course, that in the absolute, ultimate, and consciously-willed sense, my treasure is indeed with God and the things of God, and therefore so is my heart. But to the extent that I allowed other concerns to eclipse my focus on God at the time of prayer, I had, in effect, placed higher value on them, and thus they became my (temporary) “treasure,” and so my mind and heart followed. They weren’t evil thoughts; just untimely ones and hence inappropriate ones for the precious moments set aside for speaking and listening to my God. Therefore they were an unworthy “treasure” to which I gave my attention.

These words of Christ apply not only to prayer but to the whole of our lives. When we make an examination of conscience, what we’re essentially doing is recognizing where our treasures, and hence our hearts, have been that day. And when we look back on our whole life, we see how what we have valued (that is, what our treasure was), has made us what we are (that is, where our hearts have been).

That is why Christian morality, for example, is not something that can be accepted or rejected piecemeal, as if we could—with any integrity—choose to follow certain precepts of Christ and the Church, and ignore others out of personal preference, changing trends, or peer pressure. If our treasure is Christ, our hearts will be with Him, and every word He has said will be gold and precious jewels to us. That is because we have made a Person our treasure, and not merely a list of precepts.

The distinction between grace and law is related to this. St. Paul was trying to tell his Jewish converts that salvation is not a matter or fulfilling those “works” by which one is constituted a Jew (and hence a member of God’s chosen people), but rather of embracing Someone in whom all the law and the prophets are fulfilled. “Is God the God of Jews only? Is He not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, for God is one” (Romans 3:29-30). Jesus had the same difficulty in trying to enlighten the Pharisees, whose treasures were in observance of the minutiae of the law, but not in what would actually put their hearts in the right relationship with God: “…you tithe mint and dill and cumin, but have neglected…justice and mercy and faith” (Matthew 23:23).

The Lord is trying to show us that our treasure must be in God—with all that implies—and not merely in the fulfillment of legal prescriptions, even if these do have some value. Our treasure must be in God, because our hearts must be there too! Why can’t we be content with the legal prescriptions and mere externals of religion? Because our hearts are too big for that! They were made to be dwelling places of the Most Holy Trinity, and God will not rest until we open our hearts wide enough to receive Him!

So take an honest look at yourself, your life. Where is your treasure? Not just ideally, but in practical reality. Where do you focus the best of your time, energy, love, and desire? We can’t have our treasure and heart in unworthy things and then hope to switch them over to God on judgment day. We bring to the Throne the witness of our whole life. Open your eyes that you may see “the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7), the true and lasting wealth. May your treasure then be found in the secret chambers of the pierced heart of Christ, for He wants your heart to be forever united to his.

Bless the Lord!

“Bless the Lord, O my soul!” cries the psalmist numerous times in his songs of praise. But what does it mean to “bless” the Lord? Scripture tells us that “it is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior” (Hebrews 7:7). Wait a minute! How then can we, the infinitely inferior, bless the Lord, the Supremely Superior?

It should be obvious that the term “bless” is used equivocally. It cannot mean the same thing when we say the Lord blesses us as it does when we say we bless the Lord. The Lord blesses us by bestowing his grace and bounty upon us, granting us what we could in no way provide for ourselves, since He is the divine Benefactor, as our liturgy often calls Him. Only God can bless as Superior to inferiors (when a priest blesses, it is not with his own blessing, but with the blessing of God).

There are two main things that we do when we bless the Lord. The first is synonymous with giving thanks and praise. Some translations actually say, “Give thanks to the Lord,” where others say, “Bless the Lord.” So, blessing the Lord is praising Him and giving thanks to Him—for blessing us! The other thing we do when we bless the Lord is to proclaim Him blessed. Here I think I’ll have to make a distinction between “blessed” and “blessed.” For clarity’s sake, this distinction is between “blessed” and “blest”—though I don’t really like that newfangled form of the word—the former in two syllables and the latter in one. The former is a state of being, the latter a consequence of something have been done or given to someone.

When we call God blessed, we are saying something about who God is. He is blessed, which is a synonym for “holy.” Blessed is God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! The Byzantine Divine Liturgy always opens with the glorious and magnificent “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, both now and forever and unto ages of ages!” When we speak of God as the recipient of our blessings (praises and thanksgivings), then He is blest. May the Lord be forever blest! Sometimes both meanings can apply simultaneously. When Our Lady said, “All generations shall call me blessed,” it means both that all generations acknowledge her holiness and that all generations acknowledge that she has been uniquely blest by God.

I have another reason for saying all this, however, besides explaining the difference between “blessed” and “blest,” and besides saying that it is fitting and right to bless the Lord. The reason is this: it is imperative that we bless the Lord, because too few people do it, and He deserves better that that from us!

I wrote a while back that when I was at the ocean I would pray by repeating a couple lines from one of our liturgical hymns: “Blessed are You, O Christ our God... O Lover of Mankind, glory to You!” I have continued to do this, and it is now a significant part of my daily prayer. I’m beginning to see that blessing the Lord is a vocation, and not merely and occasional prayer formula for times when one is feeling happy.

Let’s face it, for most people, the two main forms of prayer are Asking and Complaining. We come to God with a list of petitions, and if we don’t get what we want, we complain and grumble, or else we merely manifest our ongoing discontent with The Way Things Are. I’ve even heard stories of people who, when they didn’t receive some favor for which they asked, would “punish” the saints whom they asked to intercede for them—by turning their statues to face the wall, making them sit in the corner, as it were! Now most people don’t engage in such infantile behavior, but many still remain in that asking and complaining cycle (with occasional forays into the uncharted areas of repentance or thanksgiving).

Blessing the Lord, however, covers just about everything, and I find it to be a real “lift” in my prayer life. The Byzantine Liturgy, along with glorifying God, has a very strong emphasis on penitence and asking for mercy. We ask for mercy dozens of times a day in liturgical offices (hundreds of times if you include the Jesus Prayer). But asking for mercy, while indispensable, is still not the whole of prayer. What are we doing, anyway, when we seek mercy? We are imploring the Lord to enter into the sinful and suffering condition of the world, to heal and forgive and save. But blessing God can do the same thing, and it’s less depressing than focusing on the world’s miseries—or our own! To bless the Lord is ascend to a higher and more noble level of awareness, to gratefully recognize God’s universal providence, to honor his wisdom and his plan for the spiritual growth and salvation of all. It is a resounding “Yes!” to all God is and does. This does not mean that we are oblivious to the evil in the world; we simply acknowledge that God's wisdom, compassion, and timing are better than ours, and we bless Him in trust. To bless the Lord makes us “transparent” to God’s grace, an opening for his light to come in to the world, while we simply lose ourselves in Him. I like the image used by St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein): “…like a windowpane, which lets through all the light but itself remains unseen.”

We may very well do more good for ourselves and for the world by blessing the Lord than by asking for what we need. “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him… Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well” (Matthew 6:8, 33). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t ever ask, for Jesus also said, “Ask, and you shall receive,” but I think that our asking ought to be balanced by (at least) equal amounts of blessing.

So, bless the Lord, O my soul, and you, soul, who are reading this, bless the Lord! Proclaim his blessedness, his holiness and infinite goodness, and make sure that He is forever blest by your gratitude and praise. Gather all your prayers—petition, penitence, praise, worship, and thanksgiving (and even your complaints, if you must!)—and send them to Him in a package labeled: “Blessed are You, O God!” It’ll get there faster than any other.

Letting God Love You

A friend of mine recently asked me to write something on this topic. It ought to be the easiest thing in the world to let God love us—“Sure, go right ahead!” But we’re such complex beings who often have a history of pain or alienation, so that it is actually an effort, at least in the beginning, to allow God to do what He does best: love us!

We have to start by realizing that God loves us even if we do not “allow” Him to. We are sometimes like wounded animals that only lash out at the very ones who come to help and heal us. But God is Love by nature and cannot not love us, so we ought to find some consolation in that. God loved us first, as St. John says, so at least we don’t have to worry about trying to get Him to love us. And St. Paul says that even while we were enemies of God through sin, He showed his love by sending his Son to die for us.

Some people may wonder, as they perceive themselves with perhaps a too-critical eye: “But how could God love me? I’m just a confused blob of dark and dirty spineless jelly.” I just read something from St Augustine that may help here. He said that when a craftsman spies a gnarled and rough old piece of wood, he immediately begins to think of what beautiful thing he will make of it once he applies his carving and polishing skills. It’s not because it is gnarly and rough (and maybe a little bug-eaten) that he loves it, but because he knows what he will make out of it. Similarly, God does not love our sins and how they’ve disfigured us, but rather what He, the Master Craftsman, will make out of us when his love and mercy and grace are applied to us, restoring his image in us so that we can shine like the sun in our Father’s Kingdom.

So we see thus far that God loves what He has made, and what He will re-make, since we tend to ruin everything by our sins. But what happens in the meantime? Are we to flounder fearfully in our defilement while we wait with wavering hope that He will indeed make all things new, make us lovable and loving? Here is where we need a bit of courage. Someone once wrote about “the courage to accept acceptance,” and this is an important element of letting God love us. It doesn’t matter so much if you are at this moment the gnarly wood or spineless jelly or ugly duckling. Once you accept the fact that God has chosen you anyway, accepts what you are in view of what you are to become, then you can begin in earnest to cooperate with Him, so that your transformation can get underway. It’s not being a pile of spiritual rubble that keeps God’s love from working in you, it’s choosing to remain such despite his invitation to restoration and renewal. That’s refusing to accept that God accepts you. That is what despair is all about; despair is the only thing that can really create an impenetrable wall around you, and thus God’s love is not allowed to enter.

Perhaps part of our difficulty in allowing God to love us is that we have a skewed understanding of love. What we may have learned to call love is a kind of unhealthy enmeshment, marked by conditions, fear, co-dependency, unreasonable expectations, or even some form of abuse. So we may not feel able to offer the unconditional surrender, the necessary vulnerability to God that makes a loving union possible. This is something that only time and grace can heal—along with our continuous efforts to purify our own understanding of love and to recognize the distortions for what they are, realizing that God’s love is wholly above and beyond the defective human versions it has been our misfortune to endure. This takes faith as well as courage and trust.

It is in fact easy to say to God, “go ahead, love me!” but our love is required in return if it is to bear fruit. The failure to love, or to love fully, is always on our part and, frankly, I think we should spend more time learning how to love God than how to experience God’s love for us. I think we know how, though; we just don’t always want to do it his way. We don’t want to make the necessary sacrifices or renunciations, we don’t want to “lose our lives” for his sake, we don’t want to walk the rough and narrow path. To love God is not to surround Him with the flowery phrases of puffed-up piety, but rather to hear the word of God and do it!

In the final analysis, it is in giving that we learn to receive, in loving that we allow ourselves to be loved. Just say yes. Just invite God into your gnarly heart, exactly as it is, trusting that He will make it exactly as He intended it would be when He created you in the first place. It’s all about trust. It’s all about “let it be done to me according to Your word.”

On Pigs and Possession

In the Gospel account of the deliverance of the demoniacs (Matthew 8:28-34), the demons speak a lot more than Christ, but here the important thing is not words but presence and power. Jesus’ very presence provoked the frenzied words of the demons, and the power of this presence cast them out. I’ve read Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis’ commentary on this Gospel, so some of what follows will be based on that.

The demons who inhabited the two men were dwelling, first of all, in a place of death, the tombs. God is the Source and Giver of life, and if one rejects Him, only death—and all that has to do with death—remains. But they also were dwelling in uncleanness, for they were in the vicinity of a herd of swine. This was a pagan territory; the name of God was not invoked there, his law was not obeyed; it was full of unclean animals and dead men’s bones—no wonder it was the haunt of demons as well.

Jesus did not go to that place merely to confront evil. The demons had already definitively rejected Him, so there was nothing more He could do for them. He came instead to rescue the men who could still be saved, who were tormented and enslaved by evil, and who were thus in desperate need of their Redeemer.

It was the demons who had the first word. The very presence of Jesus provoked an angry and arrogant response from them—yet one that was also filled with fear: “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” They knew who He was, but that knowledge was not for them salvific. It was only a torment. The demons like to lie and deceive, but when Truth Himself is standing before them, it’s no use. They have to admit who He really is.

They asked if He was coming “before the time.” What time is that? Since they had arrogantly entered the world of man, perhaps they are referring to the time of the harrowing of hell, of Jesus’ descent into their world, when He would liberate all just souls from the prison of Hades. Wherever Jesus goes, He frees human beings from the power and influence of the evil spirits.

Then they spoke again, begging Him to let them flee from his presence: “If you cast us out”—that is, when You cast us out, for they knew they were already beaten—“send us into the herd of swine.” They had to get away from Christ at all costs, even to the point of entering pigs. So Jesus spoke his only word: “Go.” He didn’t even need to say anything; the demons already knew they had to leave, so with a great commotion they entered the unclean animals, who suddenly recognized in themselves something far more unclean than they were, so they jumped off the cliff and into the sea, just to be rid of the ghoulish intruders.

Here Erasmo says something I never thought of: the demons, being spirits, could not die along with pigs, and thus had to go somewhere else (I always assumed they had to go back to Hell), but the demons may at that moment have entered the swineherds, for they too immediately fled from the presence of Jesus. And they went into the town and spread their hatred for Jesus, so that the whole town came out and begged Jesus to leave, just as the demons originally did—they too could not stand to be in his presence.

For our own victory over the dark and unclean powers, we have first to have a greater awareness of, and trust in, the power of the presence of Jesus. Before He ascended to the Father, He said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” That “I am with you,” has to be the bedrock of our spiritual lives. It will be no clever psychological or even spiritual technique that will free us from evil, but only total reliance on the presence of Jesus. We must be aware, however, as in this Gospel account, that the very presence of Jesus provokes a reaction from the demons, but we also have to realize that the rage of the demons is impotent. They have no real power to harm us, and when Jesus is with us, they know they have to leave, even if they put up a big fuss in the meantime.

The key is to stand with Christ, absolutely, without wavering, without fear, and especially without any affinity with whatever the devil is using to draw us over to his side. What happens when people fall into sin, especially grievous sin? They tend to flee from the light, can’t look Jesus in the eye, in essence beg Him to leave, because of their guilt and anger and other conflicting emotions. To sin is to put yourself at odds with Christ, to join the ranks of those who cannot tolerate his presence and who must flee from Him. To persist in sin without repentance to the very end is to flee from Him forever, and that’s what Hell is. Hell is the abyss into which those must leap who are forever running away from Christ, from his truth and his love.

But if we are so foolish as to have bought the lies of the deceiver, then we must at once send a cry from our hearts to our Healer and Savior, that He deliver us from our bondage and make all things new. We must not flee from Him but rather flee to Him, for mercy and healing and the strength to stand firm in the battle against sin and all the unclean powers of darkness. Unlike them, we still have a chance to repent and be saved, so Jesus deals with us not in stern commands to depart from Him but in heartfelt exhortations to walk while we still have the light. If we are to be delivered from evil, we have to confess our sins, not remain in them like possessed men dwelling in the tombs. When Jesus comes to us, we want to be free to embrace Him, and not be constrained to flee Him.

So let us resolve always to choose the way of light, of goodness, purity, repentance, fidelity, and love. We must be ruthless in our fight against evil, yet confident in our resting in the saving presence and power of Christ. For He alone can defeat our enemies, heal our wounds, and preserve us in his grace for the Kingdom of Heaven. To the demons Jesus says “Go,” but to us He says, “Come.”

Numbered Among the Just

There have been a lot of “there are two kinds of people in the world” jokes going around. My favorite one is this: There are two kinds of people in the world—those who think there are only two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t! At the final reckoning, however, there really will be only two kinds of people in the world: the just and the wicked. It may be (or seem) that at the present time there are many shades in between, but the searching light of divine truth will clarify everything on that day.

We recently prayed a short memorial service on the anniversary of the death of the mother of one of the monks. It’s a service we have done many times over the years, but this time something struck me in a way it hadn’t before. The petition is not particularly eloquent, and is actually a rather standard expression of prayer for the deceased, yet it was quite powerful when we sang: “number her among the just.” (The experience was more a feeling than a thought, so I may have some difficulty articulating it.)

Perhaps it is so powerful, so solemn, because it is ultimate. And since the final separation leaves only two kinds of people, it is absolutely imperative that we be numbered among the just. When a person’s life on this earth comes to an end, there is no more that can be done to secure “a good account before the awesome judgment seat of Christ” (something we pray for often in our services). It is finished; the testimony of our time, our one chance in this world is complete. And what is the result, the verdict? Did we follow the Lord, were we faithful, did we repent of our sins and do our best to live in faith and love and obedience to God’s will? May we be numbered among the just!

The just are the saints, the saved. They are already with God; their place in Heaven is secure forever. They have nothing to fear on the day of the Final Judgment. Here below we waver; we fall down and get up and fall down and get up again. Our hope and trust is that as long as we continue to get up again, our falls will not result in our being numbered with the wicked. Yet despite our best efforts to trust, we know that it is still possible (not by some unforeseen technicality or divine caprice, but by our own free choice) to lose what we’ve been given, to lose what God has offered. So when our loved ones die we pray—hard—“number them among the just!”

What an immense relief we will feel, what joy, what a sense of victory over everything that weighed us down, sidetracked us, defiled us, tried to rob us of our heavenly inheritance, when we are at length numbered among the just! The meaning of our existence will then eternally unfold in all its beauty and glory. Of course, to be numbered among the just then, we have to be numbered among the just now. We won’t be numbered among the just if our lives testify otherwise. It is awe-inspiring just to think of the terrible finality of the hour of judgment, yet so wonderful to realize that, numbered among the just, our joy can never be taken away, our happiness is safe and sure—forever!

God knows, the stakes are high. That is why He sent his Son into the world, to teach us the way of wisdom, to blaze a trail for us, to re-open the gates of Paradise by his atoning Sacrifice, and to invite us in through the forgiveness of sins and the gift of grace. Let us strive to shed the damning dead weight of the world’s seductions and everything that could keep us from rising to the Light of heavenly glory and peace. And let us pray:

“O God of all spirits and all flesh, who have destroyed death, overcome the devil, and given life to the world: O Lord, grant rest to the souls of your servants who have departed from this life, in a place of light, happiness, and peace, where there is no pain, no grief, no sighing. And since You are a gracious God and the Lover of Mankind, forgive them every sin they have committed in thought or word or deed, for there is no one who lives and does not sin. You alone are without sin; your righteousness is everlasting and your word is truth. For you are the Resurrection and the Life, and the repose of your departed servants, O Christ our God, and to You we give glory, together with your eternal Father, and your all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now and forever and unto ages of ages. Amen!”

Angels in Our Midst

There are lots of edifying stories out there about the presence and intervention of the holy angels in peoples lives, often saving them from dangers (or warning about them beforehand), but often enough simply testifying in one way or another to the reality of God and his loving providence in our lives.

I’m not going to recount any of these here but will rather look to the Bible (as you have come to expect me to do) for a story of a powerful archangel in our midst. Not long ago I re-read the delightful Book of Tobit, a story of love and fidelity, of miracles and praise. It is the only biblical source of our knowledge of the holy Archangel Raphael.

Raphael was sent as a protector and mentor to young Tobias, as a healer to his father Tobit (“Raphael” means “medicine of God”), and as a warrior to save a damsel in distress—Tobias’ bride-to-be Sarah, whose seven husbands were all killed by a wicked demon on their wedding nights.

I’ll let you read the story for yourself, but there are a couple points I’d like to focus on here, having to do with the angel. First, it is a good example of what the author of the Letter to the Hebrews meant when he wrote: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” (13:2). It wasn’t until the very end of the story that the angel revealed his true identity.

This revelation is one of the most dramatic moments in the story, and its effect is powerful. Just when we think that nothing new can happen, or when we start to drift from a lively faith in God and the whole spiritual world, we read this: “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints and enter into the presence of the glory of the Holy One.” They all fell on their faces in fear (as I think I would, too), but he said: “Do not be afraid; you will be safe. But praise God forever. For I did not come as a favor on my part, but by the will of our God. Therefore praise him forever” (12:15-18). Angels are always so focused! They don’t utter a superfluous word; they always turn everyone’s attention to God, for they know, they know! When John, overwhelmed by all that was revealed to him, fell down to worship the Angel of Revelation, the angel simply said: “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you… Worship God” (Rev. 19:10). So Raphael said, twice, to Tobit and his son: Praise God forever.

Finally, the angel was there in their midst, even before he appeared in human form to help them in their needs, for as he said, he brings their prayers to God. “When you and your daughter-in-law Sarah prayed, I brought a reminder of your prayer before the Holy One; and when you buried the dead, I was likewise present with you… your good deed was not hidden from me, but I was with you” (12:12-13).

It would be good to remind ourselves, at least from time to time, that there are angels in our midst. Our guardian angels are constantly with us—do you ask their assistance, call them by name, rely on their attentive presence to help in your many needs? We also have the great archangels to help us in spiritual warfare—St Michael is really good at that!—and don’t forget to call on “Medicine of God” when you are in need of healing. The angels bring our prayers to God (see Rev. 8:4). Let them turn your attention to the living God; ask them to help you become more focused on Him. They will be happy to oblige. And then praise Him forever, like Tobit:

“Blessed is God who lives forever, and blessed is his kingdom… because he is our Lord and God, he is our Father forever… If you turn to him with all your heart and with all your soul, to do what is true before him, then he will turn to you and will not hide his face from you. But see what he will do with you; give thanks to him with your full voice. Praise the Lord of righteousness, and exalt the King of the ages… I exalt my God; my soul exalts the King of heaven and will rejoice in his majesty…” (13:1-7).

God, Crickets, and Birds of Dawn

The older I get, the more things I notice—the more important things anyway. I tend to forget or be oblivious to many daily details, much to my chagrin, but I think I’d still prefer to notice the finer things, if the choice came down to that.

Some things can only be noticed at certain times of year. During the summer, and only during a certain few weeks of the summer, our monastic schedule enables me to notice something. It has to do with the coming of dawn. (None of this applies during the winter, for dawn comes far too late.)

There’s a certain moment when the birds wake up to greet the dawn. I don’t know how they do it. They don’t need alarm clocks, but they never oversleep—must be that healthy lifestyle. Now the crickets, they are the lords of the night. Their rhythmic and relaxing nightsong is quite compatible with silence, and even at their fullest chorus one would not be tempted to call the night anything but still.

If I am the celebrant of the week, I go down to church 20-25 minutes earlier than usual, to perform in silence the preparatory rites for the Divine Liturgy. That would be around 4:50 AM. At this time I know, because of chirping crickets and silent birds, that it is still night. But if I go down just those 20 minutes later, the hills are alive with the polyphonic joy of the dawn-welcomers. (No clever studio-mixing could reproduce this experience of immersion in a singing forest.) The birds know the precise moment of the dawn and are singing their greeting as if on cue. These are very special birds, it seems. I hear their calls only at dawn; other birds bear the burden and heat of the day. There’s one with a delicate little voice that sings outside my window for about a half-hour each morning—unceasingly—but is not heard again until the next dawn breaks.

So there’s a moment of passage between night and day, and all creation knows it. While most people are snoring (or perhaps grumbling as they smack their snooze button once again), the crickets and the dawn-birds are singing the praises of Him who made us all, who tells the sun the time of its rising and setting, who made the moon to mark the months, who tells the seas they can go thus far and no farther. You may say—if you can’t see beyond your textbooks—that all these things are governed by physical or biological laws. Well, I say that laws presuppose a Lawgiver, and that random associations of molecules don’t just blindly happen to commence singing precisely at dawn.

We live in a world of wonders, though it seems that many people are too busy to notice, or worse, are not interested in noticing the delicate displays of divine artistry, intricate design, and delightful harmonies abounding among the works of God’s hands. Life has its inescapable stresses and demands, but they are not the whole of life. Life is full of God, and because of Him it is also full of crickets and dawn-birds, morning glories and honeysuckle, sea-foam and mountain peaks, shooting stars and crescent moons, autumn leaves and jackrabbits and blue herons and mighty clouds of joy.

Don’t let life pass you by without your noticing all these things, and so much more. As I walk along our paths during springtime and see the wildflowers joyfully popping up on this side and that, I say to my soul: “See, He even strews my path with flowers!” One of our brothers used to say: “Lord, I’m not worthy, but I’ll take it!” God doesn’t immerse us in blessings because we’re worthy, but because He loves us. He wants us to open our eyes to the abundance of his gifts and simply give thanks, simply sing to Him at dawn. We tend to forget why we are here, why God made us in the first place. He made us to sing for joy, to be fountains of praise, to marvel at his glory and to imbibe his living love. Lord knows, we still have to carry the cross, but that's why He provides resurrection. He knows that the seed must fall to the earth and die, but that's why He gave it power to produce flowers and fruit. When we're fully aware that we’re wading in wonders, we’ll know how to deal with the challenges our lives bring. We will be much less inclined to turn away from our God when we know that walking with Him opens such a panorama of beauty and goodness.

All that the Lord gives us now is a preparation, a little foretaste of the glories of a new and ever-fresh Morning. In comparison with that, our life on this earth is a mere cricket chirp in the night. But if He abides in us and we in Him, we’ll recognize the precise moment of the Dawn of the everlasting Day—and we will sing!

God Bless America—Please!

Since it’s July 4, I think I ought to say something about the U.S. of A. I’m not too sure, though, what is most appropriate. I really do love America, and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. Not that I have all that much experience of anywhere else. I’ve been to Canada and Mexico, and to all the countries of Western Europe and to one in Eastern Europe (though I must confess I spent a little too much time in Amsterdam—hey, it was the ‘70s!). But I’ve never lived anywhere but America—in which I’ve lived in New York, Connecticut, Florida, Oregon, and California, but nothing in between! Must be those oceans…

All the same, I think I’m less a “love it or leave it” American than a “change it or lose it” one. I should hasten to add that I’m no flag-burner, or one who reaps all the benefits of a free and affluent society while relentlessly vilifying it and biting the hand that feeds me. It is good and healthy to love one’s country, and it is also good and healthy to love it enough to sometimes point out its errors for the sake of the country’s goodness and health.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was the darling of the West, as long as his incisive critiques were directed against the repressive communist regime. He lost favor as soon as he took aim at the self-absorbed, materialistic consumer society of the West. But he was not interested in currying anyone’s favor, nor in advancing the cause of any particular social or political system. He wanted to uphold the spiritual values which guaranteed the dignity, integrity, and freedom (in the best sense) of the human being, and neither the Soviet East nor the European/American West was doing so, but for different reasons. There’s nothing inherently evil about socialism or capitalism as such—though their various historical manifestations show how evil they can become—but the best spiritual and moral values should guide any system of government if it is to be truly human and humane.

I’m not competent in political discourse, so I’ll stick to the spiritual and moral. America has experienced a real moral and spiritual (can’t really separate the two) degeneration over the past few decades. Perhaps they could be called the decadent decades. While technological prowess has advanced remarkably, traditional faith and morals have been mercilessly shredded in the public eye by all the high-profile evildoers who are hammering away at the spiritual foundations of America. Abortion, euthanasia, and wanton war-making have claimed the lives of millions of innocents. Pornography, promiscuity, and the veritable explosion of “gay” militancy and advocacy, are enervating the soul of our country. The near-total rejection of all norms of sexual morality is devastating to America, and despite her ubiquitous churches and high percentage (according to pollsters) of belief in God, she is among the chief exporters of smut and hedonism around the world. Corruption or lack of honesty and integrity among politicians is certainly not a phenomenon proper to America (in some places it is much worse), but I for one have become sufficiently disillusioned to have almost no trust at all in the system.

It might seem to be a truism simply to say that if they would all repent and believe in the Gospel, everything would change, but truisms usually become such because they are true. America was founded on Christian principles (or at least theistic ones), which could have set the course for a more just, righteous, and even spiritually sound society. It seems, however, that (humanly seen) we’re on an irreversible course to self-destruction, and maybe the whole world is going to blow up before we recognize not only the futility but the horror of the disastrous detours from the divine decrees that we have arrogantly taken.

But as long as the Lord has not yet returned on the clouds, we still have time to repent and change. Even when a forest entirely burns down, it can restore itself. There are certain kinds of seeds that will be released from their pods only under conditions of extreme heat. So God built recovery into disaster. Likewise, when Elijah claimed that he was the only faithful one left in a thoroughly idolatrous society, God told him: “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bent the knee to Baal” (see Rom. 11:2-5). God always reserves a remnant (at least) for Himself, so that through the faithful few, the many may be enlightened and saved.

America’s heritage is in many ways noble and good, and God really has blessed America abundantly with natural beauty, material abundance, significant levels of freedom and peace, and a rich mix of peoples and cultures that have great potential for good. The freedom of religion has allowed the Church to grow and flourish (though the PC Police and special-interest groups give us ominous signs of the curtailment of that freedom). We must admit, however, that the Church in America has drunk a little too deeply from the tainted flagons of popular trends. But throughout her history (at least before she adopted sleaze-culture and me-generation paradigms), America has produced many admirable men and women, and a kind of spirit or ethos that in many ways encourages virtue.

Well, no need to go on and on. Fire up the barbecue and have a cold one for me. We must celebrate what is good while working to heal what has gone awry. Surely a country of our size and resources is not without a significant place in the plans of God. But we have to do what it takes to realize the divine plans, and it will mean, in Solzhenitsyn’s words, “repentance and self-limitation,” that is, changing arrogant and greedy attitudes, learning to live simply and share generously, abstaining from evil and blessing the Lord. Then God will bless America not only with abundance and beauty, but with purity, holiness, and salvation. That nation is greatest whose citizens are simultaneously citizens of Heaven.

The Great Divorce

C.S. Lewis wrote a marvelous little book with that title, one that is quite engaging yet deeply insightful. He had a gift for expressing spiritual and eternal truths in a way that made it all quite accessible and even desirable. Take the bus ride from Hell to Heaven, and see if you have what it takes to experience the "more real" reality of the High Countries and leave the "grey city" behind! The short preface to this book is itself worth the price of admission, and I’d like to reproduce the majority of it here. It’s a good reminder, a good encouragement.

“Blake wrote the Marriage of Heaven and Hell. If I have written of their Divorce, this is not because I think myself a fit antagonist for so great a genius, nor even because I feel at all sure that I know what he meant. But in some sense or other the attempt to make that marriage is perennial. The attempt is based on the belief that reality never presents us with an absolutely unavoidable ‘either-or’; that, granted skill and patience and (above all) time enough, some way of embracing both alternatives can always be found; that mere development or adjustment or refinement will somehow turn evil into good without our being called on for a final and total rejection of anything we should like to retain. This belief I take to be a disastrous error. You cannot take all luggage with you on all journeys; on one journey even your right hand and your right eye may be among the things you have to leave behind. We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore gradually grow nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision…

“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put right: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it… It is still ‘either-or.’ If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell. I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries.’ In that sense it will be true for those who have completed the journey (and for no others) to say that good is everything and Heaven everywhere. But we, at this end of the road, must not try to anticipate that retrospective vision. If we do, we are likely to embrace the false and disastrous converse, and fancy that everything is good and everywhere is Heaven.

“But what, you ask, of earth? Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put second to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself.”

If you haven’t read the book, I recommend it. It’s a kind of fanciful story, but the truths it manifests are clear and solid. It gives you a good feel for just what kinds of persons are compatible with Heaven, and what kind with Hell. And you just might be in for a little surprise…

You Gotta Serve Somebody

Bob Dylan, who got saved a number of years ago, and then subsequently got unsaved, wrote a song (this was during his saved period) in which he rightly insisted that no matter who you are, you gotta serve somebody. You might as well serve the Lord, because if you don’t you’re going to end up serving yourself or even the devil, which in the long run amounts to the same thing. (When he got unsaved, he started singing things like “I’m Sick of Love,” but we won’t go into that here!)

We hear a lot about serving in the readings for this Sunday on the Byzantine liturgical calendar (Rom. 6:18-23 and Mt. 8:5-13), and it’s all in the context of faith. Let’s look first at the reading from Romans. St Paul says we are servants (or slaves) of whatever we obey. We serve either sin, which leads to eternal death, or we serve the law of obedience, which leads to righteousness and eternal life. He says that once we are set free from sin, we begin to serve righteousness, that is, we seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, as Jesus says. So Dylan was right; we gotta serve somebody—or something. If we’re set free from sin, we’ll serve righteousness; if we refuse to obey righteousness, we’ll become enslaved to sin. There’s no middle ground.

Thus Paul exhorts us: as you once yielded yourself to impurity—this yielding results in greater and greater iniquity—now yield yourself to righteousness, for this yielding results in sanctification. And sanctification results in eternal life. “What good did you get out of those things of which you are now ashamed?” he asks. Sure, you had your “freedom,” but all it really was, was freedom from goodness and holiness—you thought you were free but you were actually a slave to sin. Now, however, your eyes have been opened to the reality of your former bondage, and so you freely bind yourself to God and his will, serving Him instead. And guess what? You now can receive from God the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In the Gospel, we see different kinds of service. First of all, we see the basic master/servant relationship. A centurion, which was a fairly high rank in the Roman army (commander of 100), had a servant. The centurion was the one the servant had to serve. Fortunately for this servant, his master treated him well and cared very much for him. But at this moment, the servant was serving the law of disintegration and death. His body was about to die and return to the dust from which it came. The centurion was distressed enough over his servant’s mortal illness that he humbled himself by approaching an itinerant Jewish wonder-worker and imploring him to heal his servant. It really was a humiliation for him, because he knew how much Jews despised Gentiles, especially those who had conquered their nation and were ruling them by force. He knew that a Jew would consider himself defiled simply by entering the house of one of those gentile dogs (as they called them). Honoring their low opinion of his kind, he said to Jesus—who despised no one and who had just said that He would indeed enter his house and heal his servant—“Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word and my servant will be healed.”

It becomes clear as the story progresses that it was not only because as a gentile he was not worthy that a Jew should enter his house, but rather as a mere man he was not worthy that the Son of God should enter his house. Did he really believe at that moment that Jesus was divine? There’s no way to prove that, but he did attribute to Jesus powers that could only be of God.

You see, the centurion also had to serve. I said he was a fairly high-ranking officer, but there were still others above him. So he knew about service. He said, “I am a man under authority.” Yet he also admitted that there were those under his authority: “I say to one ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes.” The marvelous thing here is what he is getting at. He’s saying that He believes that if Jesus says, “Go,” to a deadly disease, it will simply go, as if He were ordering a servant. Perhaps the centurion was a “God-fearer,” someone who believed in the God of Israel, even if not officially a Jew. Perhaps he had read in the psalms this prayer of praise to God: “By your appointment, [the earth and all generations] stand to this day; for all things are your servants” (118/119: 90-91). All things serve the Lord; nothing can withstand his word when He commands, but everything must obey.

The Lord marveled at this. It’s not often that the Lord marveled (as far as we can tell from the Gospels), but this faith of the centurion was so marvelous that even the Son of God marveled. He said, “Not even in Israel have I found such faith.” Not even those who knew the patriarchs and Moses and the prophets had the faith of a humble gentile soldier. We see the power of mustard-seed faith at work here.

So Jesus said to the centurion—who now accepted to be Jesus’ servant—“Go.” Just like the centurion says to his servants! So he went, but not before he heard the words which were the reward of his service and his faith: “Be it done for you as you have believed.” Then the lethal paralysis obeyed Jesus (for it too was his servant) and left the boy, who was healed at that very moment. The centurion served Jesus by believing in Him, in his divine power to heal. And Jesus blessed his new servant’s faith by granting what he asked.

Getting back to Dylan and St Paul: we all gotta serve somebody. To serve Christ in faith means to serve righteousness, which brings the benefit not only of answered prayers but, more importantly, of sanctification unto eternal life. To serve one’s own will and passions is to serve sin and hence to serve satan unto eternal death. So let us pray for both the faith and the humility of the centurion, approaching Jesus as we are, with all our sins and everything within us that is still an obstacle to growing in his grace. Believe that when Jesus decides to say “Go,” it will go. And may it be done for you as you have believed.