A Priest Forever

The special Year for Priests was inaugurated a few weeks ago by His Holiness Benedict XVI (and not a moment too soon!).  I read his letter and a few other things to get myself in a receptive mode for the graces I expect will be cascading down upon me every day of this year.  I also thought I ought to take a look at the Rite of Ordination for the priesthood in the Byzantine tradition, just to make sure I remember what I signed up for!  In a couple months it will be 18 years since that blessed day of my ordination.  (I had been in the monastery 9 years previous to that.)  The full story of my priestly vocation can be found on the link in the pages column to your right, entitled (appropriately) My Priestly Vocation.

One must humble oneself, said the Lord, if one is to be exalted.  There’s plenty of that in the ordination rite.  The devout deacon prostrates three times (with prayers said over him each time) as he approaches the bishop just before the sanctuary, and then after the ordination he prostrates again before the sanctuary while a litany of petitions is prayed.  But for the actual Prayer of Ordination he kneels at the altar.  There’s a little symbolic indication that a priest must be humbler than a deacon: when the deacon is ordained, he gets down on one knee before the altar; when the priest is ordained he has to be on both knees!

More humbling to come.  The Prayer of Ordination begins: “Divine Grace, which always heals the infirm and supplies what is lacking…”  So I was immediately informed that I was infirm and inadequate!  Well, it was (and is) true, so it’s good to get all the cards on the table when entering the presence of the Holy God, the Searcher of Hearts.  The prayer goes on: “…elevates the devout deacon _____ to the priesthood.  Therefore let us pray for him, that the grace of the Holy Spirit may come upon him.”  Then the whole congregation says, “Lord, have mercy!”  The humbling precedes the exaltation (or elevation), though once elevated the priest must still continue to humble himself.  I guess that’s why he prostrates again after he is ordained.

There are other prayers that are said, and here is one of them: “O Lord God, whose power is great and wisdom is unfathomable, whose counsels are more wonderful than those of the sons of men: fill your servant, whom You have chosen to be ordained to the priesthood, with the gifts of your Holy Spirit, so that he may stand worthily and blamelessly before your holy altar, preach the Gospel of your Kingdom, sanctify the word of your truth, offer gifts and spiritual sacrifices and renew your people in the bath of regeneration.  Grant also that, at the time of the Second Coming of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, your only-begotten Son, he may meet Him and receive the reward of a good stewardship, according to the fullness of your goodness.  For blessed and glorified is your most honored and sublime name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and forever and unto ages of ages.”

The newly-ordained priest has risen from his prostration by this time, but only to his knees (still humbled!).  Then the bishop gives him the “insignia of office”: the various parts of his priestly vestments and the sacred vessels, etc.  With each one, after the appropriate prayer or blessing, the bishop declares, and the people respond: Axios! (Greek for “worthy”—in the early Church, it was a question, and the people either affirmed his worthiness or declared him anaxios, unworthy; it is more or less a formality these days, so at least I didn’t have to sweat that one out!)

Among the prayers at the giving of insignia, the one I found most striking was the one that accompanied the giving of the chalice and diskos (paten): “Receive the power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate the Liturgy for the living and those who have fallen asleep in the Lord.”  This is really of the essence of the Catholic priesthood: to offer the sacrifice of Christ to the Father, for the sake of the living and the dead.  Without this sacrificial element, the priesthood would be little more than a “service profession.”  But it is the “elevation” mentioned above which configures the priest in his very being to Christ the High Priest (“who offers and is offered,” as we say in the Liturgy) and thus grants him “the power to offer sacrifice to God.”  Earlier in the rite, after making the Profession of Faith, the one about to be ordained must additionally profess (among other things): “I further believe that in the Sacrament of the Most Holy Eucharist bread is changed into the Body and wine into the Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  This is sworn upon the Holy Gospel.  The Church wants to get it clear that she is not admitting any doubters to the priesthood!

I’ve not gone over the whole rite and all its prayers and details, but that is the essence of it.  I remember my ordination Liturgy well.  Even though I had been a deacon for 16 months and was used to serving at the altar, nothing quite prepared me for receiving the grace to offer the Sacrifice, putting on the priestly vestments, extending my hand and saying: “Take, eat, this is My body… this is My blood,” and imploring God the Father to “make this bread the body of your Christ, and that which is in this chalice the blood of your Christ, changing them by your Holy Spirit.  Amen, amen, amen!”  The experience of that day cannot really be communicated in words, for the awareness of the grace of the mystery is ineffable.  But it is good to recall it from time to time, so that I can remember both the humbling and the elevation—and to remember that both are required to be a true priest.

I hope and pray that this Year for Priests will be the occasion of the bearing of much spiritual fruit in the Church, and of a genuine renewal of the priesthood, which is so beleaguered and so torn from strife and scandal.  Yet it is still the priesthood of Jesus Christ, and He will not cease to purify and heal, admonish and encourage his own to be faithful icons of his sacrificial life and love.  He has entrusted much to the priests, for your salvation.  Pray for us, that we may be found axios when the Lord will require an account of our stewardship.  We are both humbled and exalted by this extraordinary grace from God—and may God enable us to fulfill this demanding but rewarding vocation, for his glory and the salvation of souls.

Too Good to be True?

This past June 21st marked the second anniversary of the death of my friend Laura, whom those of you who have been following this blog for some time know something about.  The day dawned cool and clear, which in itself was something extraordinary, since by the beginning of summer the days are usually very hot around here.  The year before it actually rained on that day, something unheard of in late June in this neck of the woods.  So this year, with the extraordinarily cool and fresh weather, I guessed that Laura was praying for us, giving a little sign that all is well with her—and possibly letting us know, since she had made a few retreats here during the summertime, that she remembers the discomfort of those 112-degree days and was glad to intercede for some fresher weather for us!

Such anniversaries get me to thinking about life and death and life after death.  Laura had been my best friend in this world (to the extent that a monk can have a “best friend”). And so, of course (in my “Murphy’s-Law” perspective), she was the one who had to get cancer and die.  Knowing that she had repented of her sins and earnestly served the Lord in the last years of her life, and died with the sacraments and much prayer, I wasn’t freaking out over the possible loss of her soul.  Yet bodily death and the immortality of the soul are mysteries not easily comprehended, and there’s much that remains unknown.  I trust she is in Heaven, but I can’t wrap my little brain around the concept.  It almost seems too good to be true.  It’s hard to imagine someone you knew on earth suddenly being transported to a place of unearthly glory and beauty and joy, freed from all their sufferings and sorrows, and being wholly transformed in the process.  They really can’t be quite the same anymore, despite the necessary continuity with who they were on earth.  And it may be that there’s not much anymore that they could say to us that we have the capacity to understand, though I’m sure they would if we were able to grasp it.

There’s also a certain irony in this case, since Laura had questions about the spiritual life, and some doubts and struggles concerning the mystery of God and the life of the world to come.  I helped her as much as I could, and she grew in her faith and life in God.  Yet now she has no questions, but I do.  Now she sees face to face and I’m still trying to walk in faith.  Now she has a wholly different perspective as she lives in the Ultimate Reality, of which I can at best have only fleeting and incomplete glimpses.  “Hey, help me out here,” I’d like to say to her; “give me some sort of confirmation, some sort of better insight into the mysteries that you, who used to come to me for help, suddenly know so well!”

I did receive something of a confirmation, at least about her place in Heaven.  I can’t expect to have her just appear to me and answer all my questions (though I’m quite open to that, if God would permit it!), so I asked the Lord if He would let her use his word to say something to me.  And He did.  I opened up the Bible and the two pages I saw contained the better part of chapters 13-14 of the Gospel of St Matthew (the following quotes will all be from there).

The first thing was an assurance that the Lord had heard my prayer, that He was letting her tell me she was indeed with Him and trying to communicate to me now: “Take heart, it is I; have no fear…”  Well, that got my attention!  This was followed, of course, by a mild reproach to the effect that I should have known by now that she was safe in Heaven: “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?”  (I could have said, “That’s easy for you to say from where you are now; I’m still down here groping around in the dark!”—but I didn’t.)  Evidently everything is so darn clear when you’re walking in the fields of Paradise!  That’s why up there they always pray that we hurry up and get over all our foolishness, because they know how important it is that we get busy with hearing the word of God and keeping it—without whining, procrastinating, excuse-making, etc.

But there is much more, and this too made it clear to me that she was speaking from Heaven.  For it was all about Heaven: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed… The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven… The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure, hidden… The Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls…”  These are important parables for understanding the Kingdom, but what is it like to be there?  Certainly it’s beyond human language to describe, but she at least gave me this to reflect upon: “The righteous will shine like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father.”  And finally, as if saying “a word to the wise is sufficient”: “He who has ears, let him hear.”  Laura had entitled the online journal of her last months, Prepare for the Kingdom (and I used the same title for “our” book). She must have done just that, for now she’s telling me all about what the Kingdom is like!

Needless to say, that made my day, but there was still more.  There was one other “word” that I had to ponder: “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” It has been my contention all along that I’m too blind and deaf to know anything about the Kingdom of Heaven or any of the divine mysteries.  But it’s as if she were trying to say that I see more than I think I do.  It is in fact true that anyone who believes in God is already light years ahead of anyone who doesn’t.  And anyone who is trying to live according to the Gospel “sees” and “hears” more than anyone who isn’t.  Even those who wrestle unsuccessfully with the divine mysteries are still in a better position than those don’t take the trouble to attend to them.

There were still blessings to come on that day, which one may or may not attribute to Laura’s intercession, but since one may, I do.  After the Divine Liturgy, which I offered for the repose of her soul, a friend of ours—whom Laura had befriended during the times she had stayed at the monastery—was so moved by God’s grace during the prayers after Holy Communion that he wept, which he had never done before (he wasn’t aware it was the anniversary of Laura’s death).  Later, his wife told me: “I’ve been waiting 30 years for that to happen.”

So there was more joy in this second anniversary than there was in the first.  I still find it hard to imagine Laura standing in the indescribable glory of God and sharing in all the delights of Paradise, in utter happiness and fulfillment.  I still only know her as I knew her here below, but I shouldn’t judge the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven within the confines of my own severe limitations.  Just because I can’t imagine what it’s like for her to be in Heaven doesn’t mean I shouldn’t believe in it.  Is that really little Laura up there in the glorious City of God, in the midst of angels and saints, wearing the shimmering white robe of her victory and rejoicing in the presence of the Creator of the universe, the Savior of the world?  Hey, I knew her when…

Despite the sorrow of loss when a loved one dies, it is a blessing to have a “connection” when the loved one departs for Heaven.  They can help us in ways we don’t know and can’t imagine, and they are helping us prepare for the Kingdom.  Ineffable joy and glory await us.  It may all be much more than we deserve, but even so, it’s not too good to be true.  For nothing is too good to be true when we are speaking of what God has prepared for those who love Him.  There may be in this world various subjective or perceived “goods” that can be false or deceptive.  But in an objective or absolute sense, whatever is good is necessarily true—all the more so for God, who is the ultimate Good and hence the ultimate Truth.  Heaven, the eternal dwelling place of God, is thus an absolute good.  Therefore it is absolutely true!

They’ve Simply Got to Go!

I saw a cartoon once in which there was a person lying in bed, two doctors standing nearby, and a priest holding up a crucifix, while a huge, monstrous demon was flying out of the person in the bed.  One doctor commented to the other: “So much for our anemia diagnosis.”

The mystery of the presence of demonic elements in this world is one which is often disbelieved or variously explained away, but for all that it still remains.  A psychiatric or other medical disorder is often the diagnosis offered for otherwise unexplainable phenomena.  But, in the context of today’s Gospel (Mt 8:28 – 9:1), I find it difficult to understand how a psychiatric disorder could leap out of two men and enter into a herd of pigs and drive them to their deaths in the sea.  It is true that people who really are merely psychotic can seem to have demons, or think they have demons, and so every case has to be evaluated by competent professionals.  But we need to understand that there are distinctly spiritual maladies that are incurable by psychotherapy and medications.

St Matthew’s account of the possessed men of Gadara is quite brief, compared to the parallel accounts of St Mark and St Luke.  So rather than concentrate on the details of the story, perhaps today we ought simply to reflect on the mystery it dramatizes.  For even if we are not called to be professional exorcists, we all have to deal with the presence of the devil in our lives, and so we have to know how to drive him out and remain safely under divine protection.

First of all, we have to learn something about how the devil enters in the first place.  It’s a lot easier to protect ourselves from evil than to try to get rid of it once it is firmly planted within us.  Quite simply, the open door for the entrance of evil spirits is sin.  The more grievous the sin, the wider the opening of the door.  The devil inhabits things like pornography and sexual perversions, crimes against life like abortion, crimes against love like adultery and fornication, crimes against holiness like blasphemy and sacrilege and occultism, crimes against innocence like child abuse, crimes against truth like the lies and corruption of politicians and others who wield power.  The list can go on and on.  But we have to be aware that even if we aren’t guilty of heinous crimes, and even if we haven’t made an explicit pact with the devil, to the extent we commit sin we make ourselves vulnerable to his presence, activity, and gradual entrenchment in our minds and hearts.  Anger, disobedience, unforgiveness, laziness, selfishness, etc, are also open doors to the devil.

We hear in the Gospel that the men who were full of demons were fierce.  If demons manifest themselves it is usually as fearsome specters, for they want to fill us with fear.  But that is only because they don’t want us to know that they are already afraid of us—especially if we are baptized into Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit.  They know that Christ has already defeated them by his death and resurrection, but if they can deceive us into thinking they have more power than they really do, it is less likely that we will confidently rebuke them by the power of Christ.

In the Gospel account, when they saw the Lord they were afraid of Him and tried to talk Him into leaving them alone and not to torment them.  His very presence was a torment, for He was holy and they were unholy and thus could not endure Him.  So we have to realize that if we are in Christ the demons are afraid of us, and anything they try to do to us is just bluster and deceit, and all their saber-rattling is just a bluff.  But that is the case only insofar as we are in Christ.  To the extent that we are not in Christ, that is, to the extent that sin abides in us, there really is something that can give the devil a foothold in our souls, something that can feed him and make him more powerful than he could possibly be if we stood against him in the full armor of divine grace.  All our sins, especially ingrained habits of sin, are so many chinks in the armor, and the devil will constantly be trying to gain access through our vulnerabilities.

If we’re already to some extent in thrall to evil, then we have a lot of strenuous work to do to get free.  We have first to confess our sins, do penance, and then labor to overcome the habits that have been formed by our repeated acquiescence to the temptations of the devil. This takes time, but frequent reception of the sacraments, immersion in the word of God, prayer and steadfast resistance will go a long way toward deliverance.  One professional exorcist says that the mortification of the flesh is the best exorcism one can perform upon oneself.

If we’re already more firmly rooted in Christ, the repulsion of demons is easier.  We do what Jesus did in the Gospel: we say, “Go.”  That’s all He did.  He didn’t wave his hands, make long incantations or engage in Hollywood-style theatrics.  He just said: “Go.”  And they went.

This is the power that is given to us who have received the sacraments that incorporate us into the life of God.  I’m not talking here about casting demons out of other persons—for which there are more requirements and specialized training—only about keeping ourselves free from the influence and presence of the devil.  But in order to have the spiritual strength to simply say “go” and have the devils actually obey, we have to be totally with Christ.  “He who is not with Me is against Me,” said the Lord, so a half-hearted rejection of temptation will be ineffective.  But if we really desire and decide to do the Lord’s will, really desire and decide to stand with Him, really desire and decide to have nothing to do with the seductions of the demons, then in the name and grace of Christ, we can say “go” and they have to go.  That’s because we thus have the power of Christ’s victory at our disposal.  And thus the jig is up for the devil, he is unmasked, his blustery façade falls, his clever deceits suddenly look silly, and his stranglehold on our souls is released.  For we are now acting as members of the Body of Christ, the same Christ who tore open the gates of hell and robbed the devil of his power.

There’s something else we ought to be aware of, and we get some insight for this from the Epistle reading (Rom. 10:1-10).  First of all, St Paul says that the ignorant and unenlightened do not submit to God’s righteousness because they try to establish their own.  Here is another access point for the devil that I failed to mention in the above list of evils.  You don’t have to be some sort of slimy pervert or devil-worshipper to be eligible for dominance by demons.  You can simply be self-righteous and the devil will be happy with you.  He might like you even better than the creepier sinners because they are more likely to repent as soon as the Light shines in their darkness.  But the self-righteous are practically immune to repentance because they don’t think they need it!

There’s something else the Apostle says that we need to know for being strong against evil.  In our spiritual warfare we need to use the one-two punch of both inner and outer fidelity to Christ.  St Paul says that our salvation comes from believing with the heart and confessing with the lips.  These are practical expressions of the two main elements of our spiritual life, the interior and the exterior.  We even begin our prayer before Holy Communion by saying “I believe and profess…”

In the context of our overcoming the works of the devil in our lives we have to engage our inner life of faith in Jesus and love for Him, and cultivate our desire to be loyal and obedient to Him in all things.  And we have to feed and strengthen our souls with the Holy Eucharist, with word of God and with prayer.  Exteriorly, we have to put our faith into practice, avoid near occasions of sin, give a good example to others, make use of sacramentals (like holy water, or wearing blessed medals or crucifixes) and icons, etc, to keep ourselves in a holy environment where it is less likely for us to fall prey to the works of the devil.  And, as the fathers say, we may need to attack the particular temptations to which we are vulnerable by practicing the opposite virtue or mortifying ourselves in that area: fast if we are gluttonous, keep vigil if we are lazy, guard the eyes and thoughts and mortify the flesh in other ways if we are prone to sensuality, etc.

It is clear, then, that casting out the devil is not merely a matter of a formula of words or rituals.  It is a way of life that is rooted in faith in Christ and love for Him, steadfastly following Him and drawing strength from his love and the power of his grace, which flows from his pierced Heart, offered on the Cross for us as He was taking away the sins of the world and handing the devil his doom.  The devil has only the power that we give him, by our fear and our failure to make use of the means God has given us to submit freely to his righteousness and thus be invincible.

The Book of Revelation speaks of our ultimate victory over the dragon, who is called the accuser, who in the end is vanquished.  God’s faithful ones “have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”  The devil made war “on those who keep the commandments of God and bear witness to Jesus” (12:11, 17), but he ends up getting cast into the lake of burning sulfur forever, while the righteous rejoice in the everlasting wedding feast of the Lamb.  So our efforts to root out sin in our lives and to leave no place for the devil to gain access to our souls are oriented not merely to maintaining some inner peace or spiritual equilibrium in this life.  We are part of the great and universal struggle of the people of God to enter into the definitive victory of Christ over the power of sin and death. It’s not a matter of indifference whether or not we give in to temptation.  It’s a matter of either feeding the evil one or casting him out.  Our ultimate victory is the culmination of the many small acts of daily faithfulness to the will of God.

Let us then be consciously with Christ in confronting the powers of darkness, drawing on the power of his grace, aware that we redeemed by his Blood and sealed by his Spirit.  Thus when we sense the approach of the demons with their wicked designs for our undoing, we can simply say, “Go”—and by the power of God that’s just what they’ll do.

A National Examen

I mentioned in my last post the Ignatian examen prayer as a way of living in more conscious dialogue with the Lord, discerning his will and giving thanks for his gifts, while recognizing our failures and repenting of our sins.  It occurs to me, as we come to Independence Day, that perhaps we ought to pray the examen as a nation.

While this prayer has five distinct steps, it’s probably safe to say that we could sum them up for the most part in two of them: thanksgiving and repentance.  That is how I think we ought to approach the Independence Day of the United States of America.

Thanksgiving should always come first.  God is the Initiator, the Giver, He who loved us first, and He has bestowed—for reasons known only to Him—a disproportionate amount of blessings upon our country.  There are many things we probably take for granted, like our freedom, religious and otherwise, the abundance of natural resources and natural beauty, general access to adequate food, clothing, and shelter, the strong and (mostly) reliable infrastructure of electric power, water, roads, communications, a high level of technology and modern medicine, etc.  I’m quite aware that these aren’t anywhere near flawless, and that even some of our freedoms are eroding, but relative to most other nations we among the most free, prosperous, and even religious (according to statistics concerning faith and churchgoing) nations in the world.

Yet we have not proved to be worthy of such gifts and have often abused them or have simply turned away from God, the Source of all blessings, to the service of manifold idols.  And for this we, as a nation, need to repent.  Two of the most egregious moral failures of this country in recent decades have been the legalization and widespread practice of abortion (and other sins against human life like euthanasia and human embryo destruction) and the unprecedented flourishing of the “gay” movement, which is a direct and blatant attempt to undermine marriage, the family, and the meaning of human sexuality.  These two major categories of sin will by themselves destroy our nation, corrupting it from inside, even if every other evil is rectified and cleaned up.

These evils have been around for a while, but since this nation has chosen Mr Obama to be its leader we can expect (as we have already seen) only an increase in them.  He immediately took measures to promote abortion (and embryo experimentation, which means destruction) both here and abroad, and while he hasn’t yet made same-sex “marriage” legal nationwide (he’s still testing the political winds), he has made it clear where his sympathies lie.  He made it all the more clear recently when he hosted a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride reception at the White House and told them: “I will not only be your friend, I will continue to be an ally and a champion and a president who fights with you and for you.”  I guess, then, that he’s not going to be the friend, ally, or champion of anyone who upholds traditional morality, marriage, and family.  The things he’s fighting for were illegal a short time ago and still are immoral.

I find it hard to believe that people still buy his phony rhetoric.  Catholics said they voted for him because he said he would reduce abortions.  He lied so as to get their votes.  Do people still believe campaign promises?  You don’t listen to what a politician says, you look at what he does, that is, at his voting record, and Obama was 100% pro-abortion and even pro-infanticide.  So what made anyone think he would reduce abortions?  Besides, even reducing them is not enough.  One abortion is way too many.  And that business about his being willing to “reach out” to and talk with those who disagree with him on abortion is pure b.s.  Before there can be a friendly conversation on such a “divisive” issue you are required to accept Obama’s non-negotiables: abortion will be legal, abortion will be widely available, and you, as a taxpayer, will subsidize it.  Now, let’s have a civil discussion and try to find some common ground.  No need to get in a huff.  I’m here to listen to you.  I just happen not to give a damn what you think, because I’ll implement my agenda regardless.  But let’s dialogue, shall we?

Because of the way his charisma and his lies and his Christian posturing to get Christian votes rocketed him to political stardom, some have speculated that he might be the anti-Christ.  He probably isn’t, but there’s something in his style and his agenda that would be in character with that prophesied arch-fiend.  I don’t remember if I said it here or somewhere else, but it’s worth repeating (my memory is going bad, so don’t surprised if I start repeating myself!).  There are two meanings to the Greek anti.  One, which we all know, is “against.”  The other, less known, is “instead of.”  Obama (and whoever the ultimate anti-Christ may be) doesn’t publicly stand against Christ.  He would simply like to replace Him.  We can have a secular messiah instead of the holy and true one. He won’t argue for the elimination of Christianity.  He will just try to offer us something else instead of it, a different version, a politically-correct, “tolerant” version of it which allows the silent corruption to simmer until the nation is entirely brainwashed, desensitized to evil, and spiritually gutted—and thus ready to offer unquestioning obedience to its self-appointed savior.  It was as chilling as it was ludicrous that, when the final blessing was given by the priest at the infamous Notre Dame commencement, the “blessed one” (which is what “Barack” means) also extended his hand to give his own.  Don’t be fooled if he sometimes talks like a Christian.  He has no use for Christ or his Gospel except to use caricatures of them as political tools.

Now all this talk about Obama is not just a digression.  He is the elected leader of this country whose independence we are celebrating.  This independence was hard-won, and this country was established with the understanding that Christian morality would be the bedrock upon which its growth and prosperity would be founded.  But Obama is a traitor to the founding fathers and to all that once made this country great.  Murder and sexual perversion are the “freedoms” he wants to enshrine.  And if we go along with that, we deserve the consequences of it.  “God is not mocked,” says the Apostle, “for whatever you sow, you will reap” (Gal. 6:7).

We still have much to be thankful for, much that hasn’t yet been lost or corrupted.  But there is much to repent for, and we will do well to heed the words of the Lord, who offered blessings to those who would be faithful to Him in the Promised Land, but a curse to those who would not.  “…when you have eaten and are full and have built fine houses and live in them, and when…your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied… beware lest you say in your heart, ‘my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth’… And if you forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you this day that you shall surely perish… because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 8:12-20).

The examen prayer concludes with a look—in the presence of the Lord—to tomorrow, to try to discover his will, recognize his new gifts, and learn from our past mistakes.  Let us pray that those in power will somehow be, if it takes a miracle, open to be guided by divine grace, to repent of the evils still daily perpetuated and to learn how to lead this country to the greatness that is yet possible through obedience to the voice of the Lord our God.

Counting Footprints

There’s a story from the Desert Fathers that I found rather helpful, and you may too, if you sometimes get bogged down in the daily round of activities and perhaps think your life is monotonous or going nowhere.  The Christian life requires steadfast fidelity, which is not always easy to maintain, but it is always worthwhile.

The story is about an old monk who dwelled in the desert for a very long time, living in poverty and prayer.  The nearest water source was several miles away, and he had to walk there every day to get sufficient water to live on.  Every day, year after year, decade after decade.  Finally, he began to wear out.  Each day was just like the one before it, so the strain and the routine became increasingly wearisome. Walking miles every day for water became a symbol of his weariness, and he started thinking about giving up his life of serving God in the desert.

Finally, on one of his long, exhausting walks to fetch water, he stopped and said to himself: “What need is there for me to endure this toil?  I shall come and live near the water.”  Having said that, he turned around and noticed that someone was following him.  The old monk asked who he was.  He replied: “I am an angel of the Lord, and I am sent to count your footprints and give you your reward.”  Hearing this, the old monk’s heart was strengthened—and he moved his cell still farther from the water.

I found this story in a somewhat unlikely place: a book entitled, The Examen Prayer: Ignatian Wisdom for our Lives Today, by Fr. Timothy Gallagher, OMV.  I rarely read books on Ignatian spirituality, but this was recommended by my confessor, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I’ll say a bit more about it shortly, but first, the author’s comments on the above story:

“In the end, it all comes down to footprints in the sand: day after day, year after year, in the time when our hearts are warm with God’s love and all that is spiritual delights us, and in the times we must plod forward faithfully under the burning sun and across the miles that seem to stretch endlessly before us, knowing that God sees and loves each footprint of our fidelity.  And the energy that impels us forward on that journey is always the same: ‘We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us’ (1John 4:16).” [emphasis in the original]

Our lives may seem at times to be a long trek to nowhere, doing the same things every day and not seeming to get anywhere or discover anything new or find the kind of happiness we used to dream of.  But we don’t notice the angel following us, counting our footprints, that is, taking note of our perseverance in daily faithfulness, our accepting what life brings and carrying our crosses, doing what we know to be right, even if our spiritual life sometimes seems like a mouthful of gravel.  And God who sees in secret, says Jesus, will reward us—for “each footprint of our fidelity.”

This present life isn’t really about being “happy,” at least on our own terms, though the word of God frequently enjoins us to rejoice.  Happiness—the full, unmitigated, unassailable, undiminishable, everlasting variety—is reserved for the life to come, for those who in this life walk patiently the burning sands of fidelity to God’s will in a spirit of prayer and fortitude and hope.  To be sure, God will provide oases as He sees we need them, but we’re not supposed to try to “move nearer to the water,” that is, to make life easier for ourselves by giving up the God-pleasing struggle over the long haul.

The Examen Prayer is supposed to help with that.  I have for many years done an examination of conscience at the end of the day, with rather limited fruitfulness, I confess.  But Fr Gallagher’s book shows that the Ignatian examen is meant to be more than that.  It is meant to help discern the presence of the Lord and his will during the day (St Ignatius’ custom was to do it every hour to see if he was pleasing the Lord through the day), to notice his gifts and give thanks, to try to see things as the Lord does and thus learn the lessons He wants us to, and to see where we’ve strayed and need forgiveness.  Then we look at the coming day and think about how we can serve more faithfully.  I think it has potential for making our spiritual lives more of an ongoing dialogue with the Lord in love (receiving and giving), which will make each day seem less a wearying walk than a hopeful pilgrimage.  In any case, life will unavoidably have its low points and discouragements and burdens—and even crushing disappointments or tragedies—and you may be tempted to give up, cease to serve the Lord, or simply descend into self-pity.

But don’t forget about that angel who is sent to count your footprints…

Life with Peter and Paul

In preaching on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, which is in a sense the feast of the Church as such (as one of our liturgical texts indicates), I usually focus on who they are and what they represent in the mystery of the Church, in her hierarchical and sacramental nature, and in her ascetical and mystical life.  But since preachers are not supposed to merely regurgitate the same things over and over, I thought I’d try to look at this feast from a somewhat different perspective this time around.  It’s not going to be so different that I would not focus on Peter and Paul, of course!  I would like to look at them, however, not primarily in the ways they reflect the mystery of the Church as such, but in the ways we can, as individual members of the Church, benefit from the example of their lives.

Hopefully we will find them to be more accessible than unreachable ideals on pedestals, which are worthy of veneration but beyond our capacity for emulation.  As St Paul himself said in the Epistle for this feast (2Cor. 11:21 – 12:9), despite his extraordinary experiences, he doesn’t want anyone to think more of him that what we can see in him or hear from him.  So let us discover what we can see in these great Apostles and hear from them, so as to come closer to Him whom their hearts loved and for whom they gave their lives.

We should see from the outset, perhaps as a bit of consolation, that even though Peter and Paul are among the holiest of the saints, both of them needed to repent—and were rather sharply reminded of it.  The future Apostle to the Gentiles was knocked to the ground and interrogated in a blinding light by a Voice from Heaven that accused the bewildered Saul of persecuting Him.  And the future rock and leader of Christ’s Church was called “satan” and accused of being on the side of man instead of that of God, and he was brought to bitter tears by the fulfillment of a prophecy and a piercing look by the Lord who was led away to crucifixion after Peter had denied Him.

So, their pedestals are somewhat chipped and cracked.  Yet this does not detract from their glory, for Paul himself noted that divine treasures are kept in earthen vessels to make it clear that all the grace and power come from God.  So we, though always in need of repentance, can realize that sanctity is still possible, that holiness comes from God and can be granted to sinners who sincerely strive to overcome their sin by God’s grace, and who cling to their faith in Jesus, come what may.

In the context of today’s Gospel (Mt. 16:13-19), we see that Peter’s glory comes from his profession of faith in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God.  Jesus declared that this insight could only have come from his heavenly Father, and He straightway made Peter the rock of his Church, a Church over which Hell would never prevail—though He didn’t say Hell wouldn’t inflict some serious damage, which historically, and up to the present day, it has.  But the point here is that the Church of Jesus Christ is built upon the true faith, the faith which Peter was the first to profess, the faith which Peter’s successors have been called to guard and propagate until the Lord returns.

Here is the way we can be like Peter: our faith should be as lively and personal as his was.  It is not enough to make a formal profession of faith, as in reciting the Creed, in which we speak of God and his only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit in the third person.  Our profession of faith should be made personally to Christ: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”  To be able to do that, we have to know Him and love Him, that is, to be in an ongoing relationship with Him.  The Church helps us with this, for the very first words of our prayer just before approaching Holy Communion are those of Peter from the Gospel of this feast: “I believe, O Lord, and profess that you are truly Christ, the Son of the Living God”—and then we immediately add a few words from St Paul—“who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first” (1Tim. 1:15), “first” meaning “foremost,” the most egregious example.  Paul could say that because he persecuted the Church, and we can say that because after all the graces we have received, we—who are supposed to know and love God and follow Jesus—still sin as if we hardly knew Him at all or as if we haven’t received countless blessings.  So our guilt is proportionately and subjectively greater than that of someone who may commit more grievous sins without having received the graces we have.  God doesn’t judge with one standard template; He weighs our sins against the graces we have received.  So in truth we can pray with Paul that we are foremost among sinners.

Peter, along with his boldness of faith, was somewhat impetuous and hard-headed, even blustery.  In some ways this got him into trouble, but I think it probably also endeared him to the Lord.  He had a habit of speaking or acting without first thinking, but this impetuosity was also in service of his love for Christ.  I like the passage in the last chapter of John’s Gospel in which the risen Jesus appeared on the shore while the disciples were fishing.  When John told Peter it was the Lord, Peter immediately “sprang into the sea,” not willing to wait to row the boat in.  Jesus tested Peter’s love for Him on the shore, rehabilitating his threefold denial with a threefold profession of love.  So Peter is known in the Gospels for his profession both of faith and of love—fitting for the leader and rock of the Church of Christ.

Indeed, for this reason Jesus required more love from Peter than from the other apostles.  “Do you love Me more than these do?” Jesus asked him.  I think of Pope Benedict XVI, the current successor of St Peter.  He may not be as charismatic as Pope John Paul II, but his love for Jesus—“more than these”—is evident in all he says and does.  He carries a heavy cross and endures much harsh criticism from those who know not the Lord, but he always preaches Christ: a life-giving, personal encounter of love with Him, and fidelity to his word and example.  And in this the Pope is eminently worthy of the commission Christ gave to Peter, to be a spiritual rock, a shepherd, a guardian of the truth, a lover of Christ, laying down his life day by day.

We know that St Peter glorified God not only in life but in death, being crucified in imitation of his Lord, though considering himself unworthy to die that way was granted his request to be crucified upside down.  We don’t know much about Peter’s life and sufferings once he disappears from the pages of the Acts of the Apostles, but it’s probably safe to say that it is St Paul who wins the prize for suffering the most for Christ.  I don’t know if any of the saints have been beaten, flogged, stoned, imprisoned, or otherwise persecuted more than the indestructible Apostle to the Gentiles.

We heard Paul’s own account in the epistle reading.  He did admit he was boasting somewhat, though not a whit beyond the honest truth, but he felt compelled to do so because there were “false apostles” in their midst, servants of satan who “disguised themselves as servants of righteousness.”  These were placing themselves, and hence their false doctrines, on a par with Paul and his teaching, so he had to assert his authority.  “Do they suffer for Christ as I have?” could be the theme of this section.  “Have they be taken to the third heaven and been granted extraordinary revelations?”  St Paul didn’t want to talk about himself, but in this case it seemed it was the only thing he could do to safeguard the true faith. And as if he hadn’t suffered enough, the Lord sent him still another affliction to make sure his extraordinary experiences didn’t make him proud.  The Apostle begged the Lord to relent, but the Lord famously told him that grace was sufficient for him.  Immediately Paul decided to rejoice in his sufferings, for in this weakness Christ’s power would make him strong.

Here we come to Paul’s greatness.  To say he had an intense personality is an understatement, but all his intensity he focused on loving and serving Christ, and preaching Him to all who would listen, and even to those who wouldn’t. He would suffer whatever was required to remain faithful, and to help others see what he saw.  For he had come to know Christ personally, and hence nothing else mattered.  Like Peter he could say to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

So let us learn something from these two great Apostles of Christ and pillars of his Church, something that we can practice in our own lives and thus become more like them and hence more pleasing to the Lord.  Let us first realize that our flawed personalities can still be used in service of the Kingdom: repentance and grace go a long way here, and the lives of the Apostles show that God can work with anyone who is willing to take up his cross and follow Christ. Let us also profess the true faith in a personal way, engaging Christ in dialogue through prayer, being faithful to Him and sharing our faith with others.  Let us then hear Him speak to us as He did to Peter, asking us if we love Him, and giving Him our hearts in return.  Let us pray for that intense, wholehearted, even foolhardy (in the eyes of the world) love for Jesus that characterized the lives of these two apostles and of all the saints.  St Peter didn’t hesitate to walk on a stormy sea toward his beloved Lord, and St Paul didn’t mind becoming a “fool for Christ” as he preached the wisdom of the Cross.

Let us also accept, finally, that the grace of Christ is sufficient for us in whatever we suffer.  Everything is healed and made new by divine love.  The love of Christ impels us, that we might live for Him who died for us, says St Paul (see 2Cor. 5:14-15).  And, “Lord, you know that I love you,” says St Peter (Jn. 21:15).  Before God, we can do no better than to follow the example of these two beloved apostles, servants, and friends of Christ.

Overcome Evil with Good

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28).  “Do not return evil for evil or reviling for reviling; but on the contrary bless, for to this you have been called, that you may obtain a blessing” (1Peter 3:9).  “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21).

Having just heard from our Lord Jesus Christ, St Peter and St Paul, we can be quite certain of the truth of these words.  It may be, however, that we hesitate to put them into practice, finding them not only impractical but downright inconvenient—and perhaps even a bit irksome, if we dare to be honest about it.  Yet I think we may have to conclude that the sorry state of today’s world (including our own inner worlds) has very much to do with the neglect or refusal to incorporate these inspired words into our world-view and daily behavior.

Sure, there are some apparently cogent arguments for not living according to these words, and there may in fact be certain beneficial objectives that could possibly be obtained without explicit reference to them.  But the goal of the Gospel is not merely a happy, secure, comfortable earthly life, or an “end justifies the means” approach to achieving our objectives.  The goal is nothing less than eternal salvation, which was won for us by the ultimate sacrifice of One who loved his enemies, blessed those who cursed Him, did not return evil for evil, and overcame it with good.

Since I derived the title of this reflection from Romans 12, I’d like to take a closer look.  This single chapter is kind of a compendium of Christian behavior (as is Colossians 3 and a few other rich chapters of the New Testament).  If we had no Scripture but Romans 12, we’d still have a pretty good idea of how a Christian ought to live.  “Present yourself as a living sacrifice to God… Do not be conformed to this world [or, this age]… we are one body in Christ… Let love be genuine… serve the Lord… be patient in tribulation, persevere in prayer… Repay no one evil for evil… live peaceably with all… never avenge yourself… overcome evil with good.”  Perhaps some of these seem like too-general counsels, but the practical applications will become clear—when the inner attitude of blessing and charity, and the commitment to doing good, come what may, are firmly in place.

All change, all transformation, has to begin with individuals.  Corrupt people cannot purify a corrupt society.  So we—even though imperfect—must nevertheless strive for the perfection the Gospel enjoins, and labor to put into practice the words of the Holy Scriptures.  “Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord,’” writes St Paul.  He was not wearing rose-colored glasses; the very fact that he mentions vengeance and wrath means he is quite aware of the evil and injustice in the world.  But what God is saying here is “Vengeance is mine—not yours.”  When there must be retribution for evil (and let us be aware that not all injustices will be fully redressed before the Day of Reckoning), God has his ways of doing it, and we trust that He will.  We can make ourselves available to co-operate with Him—but never to second-guess His wisdom or try to take the reins from the hand of the Almighty.

Paul goes on: “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by doing so you will heap burning coals upon his head.”  So, if you want to heap burning coals on your enemy’s head, fine—just don’t do it by actually heaping burning coals on his head!  Do it by overcoming evil with good, for thus they will be put to shame before God.  Our goal should not be to utterly destroy our enemies, for God desires that all men be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1Timothy 2:3-4), so we ought to desire their enlightenment, change of heart, and salvation.

Again, this sounds quite impractical in real-world situations.  But just what is the real world?  Is it that which is presented to us by the media?  Recall a bit of the famous speech from the old movie, Network: “But, man, you’re never gonna get any truth from us … We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night … We’re all you know! You’re beginning to believe the illusions we’re spinning here! You’re beginning to think that the tube is reality…”  We form opinions about world events without really knowing what is going on, relying on the TV or the papers. Perhaps we can’t always know what goes on behind the scenes. But the Gospel applies whether we have all the details straight or not. We must exercise both charity and discernment, always listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit to guide us to the whole truth in any given situation—to guide us also in the way of responding to the serious issues of our time according to God’s will.  Many have, sadly, conformed themselves entirely to this world, this age, so full of deception and manipulation of people and events in order to preserve the interests of the high and mighty—but the Magnificat reminds us that God is planning a great reversal of the accepted ways of this world.

The logic of the Kingdom of God is not the logic of this world.  Paul has made that clear in the first two chapters of First Corinthians.  Jesus confronts the confusion and treachery of a fallen world with the wisdom of the Cross.  Thus his response to the evil in the world was not mass destruction but sacrificial love. That’s because there is a hidden power in love (that He Himself has hidden there), which is stronger than the violence of hatred and revenge. Few want to believe that, because people are afraid that the way of the Gospel might not be instantly effective.  They don’t want to risk looking weak or vulnerable, since the logic of this world says “might makes right.”  Jesus wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses, either, when He said, “Father, forgive them.”  Rather, He was wearing a blood-stained robe. He knew precisely the extent of their evil and malice, for He bore it all in his own body and soul.  Jesus did not shrink from speaking the hard truth to evildoers, calling them to change their ways—but He did it without hatred, without forceful imposition.

Hear what Dostoevsky says about the power of humble love: “At some thoughts one stands perplexed—especially at the sight of men’s sin—and wonders whether one should use force or humble love. Always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that, once and for all, you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it. Every day and every hour, every minute, walk around yourself and watch yourself, and see that your image is a seemly one. If you pass by a little child, and pass by spitefully, with ugly words or wrathful heart, you may not notice the child, but he will see you, and your image, unseemly and ignoble, may remain in his defenseless heart. You may not know it, but you may have sown an evil seed in him, and it may grow, all because you were not careful before the child, because you did not foster in yourself an active, benevolent love. Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire; it is dearly bought; it is won by slow, long labor… (The Brothers Karamazov).

Our ability—or our lack thereof—to bless, to love, to forgive, to refrain from violence, will have a “ripple effect” for good or evil throughout the Body of Christ and even the whole world.  The greed and lust and aggression that are in the world today began with unrighteous movements of individual hearts, with bad examples, seeds of evil secretly planted, and the careless words by which we all shall be judged (see Matthew 12:36-37).

The transformation of the world into a place of peace and righteousness can only be a work of divine grace, a work that begins in the hearts of people who refuse to repay evil for evil, and who choose to overcome evil with good.  The Bible should not be absent from the negotiating tables of world leaders.  Things will never change, really, when merely human solutions, however well-intentioned, are proposed or implemented.  “Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain do the builders labor” (Ps 127).  That is because there is only one Creator and Lord, and his world functions optimally only according to his design and will.  All the ingenuity of man will end up producing only suffering, chaos, despair and death if it is not submitted to the guiding power of the Holy Spirit.  It cannot be any other way, for “the world is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Ps. 24).  And the way that the Lord wants us to deal with the evil that sin has unleashed in his world is to overcome it with good.

More on the Forerunner

[I came across this old (2002) homily I gave on the feast of the Forerunner’s birth.  I thought I’d share it here, since it offers a different perspective than the one I just gave (2009).  Homilists are always trying to look at the mysteries from different angles so we don’t have to give the same homilies over and over.  Sometimes it’s even possible!]

The Angel Gabriel said to Zachariah, speaking of John, that many will rejoice at his birth—and, today, we are called to be among the many who rejoice at his birth.   It behooves us to rejoice on this feast for several reasons, especially because of the joyful nature of it and because the great manifestation of the working of God in salvation history, but there’s another and a practical reason for rejoicing, and that’s because if we don’t rejoice, something unpleasant might happen!  Zachariah, instead of rejoicing over the words of the angel—because the angel said, “I came to bring you good news!”—did a kind of logical analysis of the situation and came up short.  He said, “Well, I’m an old man; my wife’s an old lady, and she’s also sterile.   So how can any of this happen, these things you’re saying?”   The angel said, “Well!  OK, you don’t believe me?  Don’t worry, you’ll see!  Everything will happen, just as I said.   But you—because you’re not rejoicing in the good news, but questioning and trying to reduce the mystery of God to some sort of logical syllogism—you have to shut up!  You won’t be able to talk, until all these things come to pass.”

One of the lessons here is that the mystery of God is something bigger than what we can figure out.  And the liturgy expresses that over and over in many different ways, showing how what God does, and has done, goes beyond our understanding, beyond our comprehension, beyond the laws of nature, beyond what we expect could or should happen.  God is greater than that, bigger than that—and that’s one of the causes for rejoicing.

John’s life began with prophecies about who he was going to be and what he was going to do.  And we see, later on, of course, that the prophecies were fulfilled in his life.  But, it’s not that the prophecies were determining, so to speak, his life.  He still had to freely choose to cooperate with the grace of God, to respond with his whole life, so that what God willed and intended and expressed through these prophecies would in fact come to pass.  Things don’t happen automatically—this is because of our freedom.  We can say “yes” to God; we can say “no” to God.  We can fulfill the prophecies, or we can thwart the prophecies.  That’s that terrible privilege that we have: to cooperate or not with the grace and the will of God.

John did cooperate, and that’s what his life was all about.   John, in today’s colloquial terms, “didn’t have a life.”  John’s own personal life did not matter to him.  He was all mission, all service, all consecration to God.  He lived for his mission.  As soon as he was old enough, he went into the desert to prepare for his mission.  As soon as the word of God came to him in the desert, he went out and started fulfilling his mission.  And that was it; he was just that “finger” pointing to Christ, and once he fulfilled his mission, once Christ was manifest, once he testified to Him, then he could back off.  Then he could decrease and say, “Now my mission is fulfilled.”  Now—as he says in John’s Gospel—his joy is complete, because he has seen and testified to the One whom he was called to reveal.   He says, “The reason I came to baptize in the first place was to reveal Him: the Holy One of God.  Now that I did it, my joy is full. Now I can decrease; now He can increase.”  That’s an example for our own lives. I believe that for each of us, too, for our creation, our entry into the world, there’s a prophecy attached to our lives.  Not only John comes into this world with a prophecy, but there’s a prophecy for each one of us.  It’s inscribed somewhere in the halls of Heaven, and we may never see it or realize it till everything’s over (though we are meant to discover it), but there’s a plan of God—there’s a design, a destiny, something that God has chosen for each of us uniquely for the way that we are to express his will, to carry out a particular, unique mission in the world, that’s given only to us.

So there are prophecies that accompany us, and we, like John, have the choice of saying “yes” to that, of fulfilling the prophecy of our lives, fulfilling the destiny of our lives, or thwarting it, thwarting the will of God and saying “no.”   We have to think about that, and consider that, and see where we stand and to what extent our life looks like the life of John, insofar as he was totally consecrated to God and to his mission.  We can either say “yes” and be willing to sacrifice our lives to prepare the way of the Lord, or we can be selfish and disobedient and rebellious, and thwart the will of God, and not do what He wants us to, not fulfill the prophecy.  We can just kind of crawl into our own, self-absorbed world, and sit there and gather moss and spider webs and just do nothing.  And it will thus not come to pass—the great mystery, the great miracle, the great wonder, the bearing of fruit that God wants us to do will not happen.

But, on the other hand, we can realize, first of all, that there is a mission that we have, a plan, that we are created in the image and likeness of God and that there’s a nobility that God has communicated to us in our very being as well as in the mission that He has entrusted to us, to live in faithful service of Him.  He wants us to sacrifice our lives and our own personal preferences and to let go of our fears or doubts or disappointments or anything that is too small for the great drama that He has placed us in, that He wants us to see. We are to realize that we have a place in a bigger picture, a picture that’s much bigger than our own little lives and our own little feelings and desires and whatever.  We’re part of a great, glorious adventure.  We have a role to play, like John had a role to play, and we, in our own way, have to prepare the way of the Lord.

So, let us strive to enter into that mystery, to embrace it, to discover the depths of it, the ever-greater reality of God and his calling in our life and the meaning of our life, and rise above all the pettiness and the stuff that’s beneath the dignity of the children of God.  And then, someday, when we discover what that primordial prophecy of our lives was, we’ll look back and say, “How wonderful it is, that God fulfilled this prophecy in our lives, because we said ‘yes’ to Him.”  We have to go on doing that.  We’re celebrating something now that happened 2000 years ago, but each of us, in every age, has this role to play to prepare the way of the Lord, because God still wants to give knowledge of salvation to his people for the forgiveness of their sins.  God still wants to come and visit his people, to turn our hearts from disobedience to the wisdom of the righteous.  His word does not return to Him empty but fulfills that for which it was spoken.  Let us be a conscious and faithful part of that fulfillment.

Prophet of the Most High

Today is a special day, for we celebrate the only saint whose birth is recounted in the New Testament.  This account is paralleled in Luke’s Gospel with the birth of Christ, but as God Christ is not to be classed with the merely human saints.  So St John receives this unique honor in the pages of the new covenant of the word of God.  It behooves us, then, to look more closely at who this great man is: the greatest, said Jesus, of all those born of woman.

We first see that, like some Old Testament precedents, John’s conception and birth were announced by an angel to a couple who were unable to conceive.  Right from the beginning there are extraordinary circumstances surrounding his entry into the world.  But the most important thing is not that his conception from aged parents was a miracle, nor even that this conception was foretold by a heavenly messenger.  What matters is most is the content of the angel’s message, that is, who this child would be and what he would do, and why.

Like all the saints, even the Mother of God, St John’s glory is not so much in himself as in his relationship to the Lord.  He is the greatest of men born of woman because of the greatness of his mission, which was to be the forerunner of the Son of God made flesh, He whom the Father would send into the world to redeem and save it.

The blessing of a son in their old age was the Lord’s gracious gift to Zachariah and Elizabeth.  Perhaps that is why the angel said his name was to be John, which means “the Lord is gracious.”  His birth, said Gabriel, would be a cause of joy and gladness for many.  Now that could be said about almost any occasion of childbearing, but as the angel goes on, the message becomes more specific to John and his mission.

First, he situates John’s life in the context of the consecrated ones, the nazir of the Old Testament, by saying, “He shall drink no wine or strong drink.”  Then he says something that expresses the uniqueness of the Lord’s forerunner: “He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his mother’s womb.”  We can’t assume that Zachariah understood precisely what was meant by the Holy Spirit at this “pre-dawn” stage of the New Testament, but he at least would have understood that the child would be chosen and blessed by God for the whole of his life.

Now we come to what the mission of this forerunner would be.  Most appropriately, he would “go before” the Lord, preparing the people to receive the revelation of the Messiah who would come shortly afterward.  The people’s hearts would have to be “turned,” that is, converted, from disobedience to wisdom, if they were both to recognize and receive the One who was to come after John.  This was the task of the forerunner, but this turning of hearts to wisdom would not be effected through mere teaching, a kind of Socratic dialogue with seekers of wisdom.  No, the model that the angel gave for the forerunner was not Socrates but Elijah, the fiery and uncompromising prophet who called down divine wrath from heaven and stood up fearlessly for the absolute rights of the Lord over all false gods, denouncing all infidelity to the truth.

So, a new Elijah was foretold by the Archangel Gabriel.  The fact that Gabriel used some of the same words for the coming of John that the prophet Malachi used for the “second coming” of Elijah makes this identification clear, and it would strike fear into the hearts of the pious, and fill them with trembling expectation.  The very last words of the whole body of prophetic literature in the Old Testament read thus: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible Day of the Lord comes.  And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse” (Mal. 4:5-6).

We know that St John the Forerunner fulfilled well the role of the return of Elijah before the Day of the Lord.  Jesus Himself confirmed it when He told the crowds, “if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come” (Mt. 11:14; see also 17:12-13).  The Forerunner would call the people to righteousness and faithfulness just like Elijah did.  He didn’t call down fire from heaven, but he didn’t have to: his words were enough to put the fear of God into the hearts of the people and bring them in droves to confess their sins and receive a baptism of repentance at the Forerunner’s hands.

But today’s feast is not about fiery preaching or threats of divine judgment.  We’re still in the mode of rejoicing over the birth of a child, one specially blessed and destined by God for great things.  The first prophecy of Gabriel was fulfilled at the moment of John’s birth, for he had said, “many will rejoice at his birth.”  Forty-some verses later we read that when she gave birth, Elizabeth’s neighbors and kinsfolk indeed “rejoiced with her.”

Yet stranger things were about to happen and, almost as a prophecy of John’s own future prophecy, the fear of God was put into the hearts of the people when Zachariah indicated that the boy would be called “the Lord is gracious,” and suddenly the curse of his muteness was lifted and he himself began uttering prophecies!  “Fear came upon all their neighbors,” says St Luke, “and all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea, and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, ‘What, then, will this child be?’”

Well, Zachariah, having heard the words of the angel, knew what this child would be, and he told him so: “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, and you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins.”  These three elements—preparation, knowledge of salvation, and forgiveness—concisely describe John’s mission as forerunner, preacher, and baptizer.

So, maybe we get all that; we understand something of who John was and what he was called to do, how his coming was prepared and how he prepared the coming of Christ.  But does he have anything to say to us today?  Is his story just one element of the Gospel, and is the Gospel just another “epic fantasy,” a stirring drama that has little more than entertainment value, with perhaps a moral to the story?

The world does need to hear the message of John, the new Elijah who speaks of uncompromising faithfulness to the Righteous God who is coming to judge the world He has made.  John’s style of preaching perhaps would not be well-received today, and no one wants their day ruined by talk of unpleasant things like divine judgment.  Yet his message is timeless and its truth unchanging.  Like it or not, there is a God who is coming to judge the living and the dead, and, like it or not, we are accountable for our choices and our actions.

Perhaps this is why the Epistle reading from Romans was chosen (13:11 – 14:4).  It is literally a wake-up call: “It is high time now for you to wake from sleep… the day is at hand… cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”  St Paul sounds a lot like St John in this passage, and this message is echoed throughout the New Testament.

At the same time, we know that Jesus, when He was at last revealed, was something of a mystery to St John, who even had to double-check and to make sure he got it right that Jesus was the Messiah after all (see Mt. 11:2-3).  Jesus did in fact begin just like John, with both barrels blazing: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” (Mt. 4:17).  But then he began to heal the sick, to change water into wine, to eat with tax collectors and prostitutes and to forgive them, and to speak about laying down his own life as a sacrifice for sinners.  No fire from heaven, no laying waste the whole earth, as the ancient prophets repeatedly predicted for the coming Day of the Lord.  Rather, the divine voice was heard saying things like, “her sins are forgiven for she loved much,” and “the Son of Man came to seek and save what was lost.”

So, as always when we approach the things of God, we are confronted with a mystery, one that is too profound to be expressed in a simple catchphrase or an either/or proposition.  We have the mystery of the incarnation of the eternal God whose holiness and majesty make the world tremble, announced by an angel and a fiery prophet.  This incarnate God then sets about quietly healing, forgiving, and inviting people to a change of heart, a new perspective and a more fruitful way of life—and He even gives up his own life in reparation for their endless crimes.  Yet this same gentle Master is coming back to judge the living and the dead, and nothing of his awe-inspiring holiness and glory will be diminished before the eyes of all people of all ages, who will give an account for their deeds and receive their reward or their doom.

As the Gospel for this feast showed us both joy and the fear of God, let us try to integrate these into our lives as we try to grow in understanding and love of God.  His righteousness is everlasting and his word is truth—and his mercy endures forever.  So let us ask John the Forerunner to intercede for us, that the Lord may be gracious to us.  Thus may we serve Him in holiness all the days of our life, while He gives us light in the darkness and guides our feet into the way of peace.

Collected Posts

I know that you have been laboriously searching my archives, one month at a time, all the way back to 2005, to discover the hidden treasures of Word Incarnate, hoping against hope to find a post you’ve never seen before, to increase your ever-deepening insight into the eternal divine mysteries.  Well, now an industrious and good-hearted friend has saved you much of the trouble.  For an alphabetical list of links to all my posts, just click here and dive into the bottomless sea of Word Incarnate blog posts.  I’m adding a link to my blogroll so this list will always be at your fingertips, 24/7.  I know some of you visit my blog late at night to help you get to… well, whatever it’s good for, now you can more easily find the post of your fancy.

So, happy hunting, and don’t be shy about telling your friends.  The Gospel is supposed to go to the ends of the earth, and so far the internet seems to be, if not the most personal way, at least the most effective way of reaching many people all at once (short of advertising on Super Bowl Sunday, but this is a lot cheaper).  Having all these posts permanently available and easily accessible, I’ll be able to preach even long after I’m dead and gone.  Hey, maybe if I generate enough volume of material here on this blog, I’ll get to check out early.  I don’t want the beaches of Paradise to be too crowded when I get there.  Though maybe we each get our own, or maybe…  Anyway, let us work while it is still day, and leave the rest to God.