From The Imitation of Christ, Book 2 Chapter 11:

Jesus has always many who love His heavenly kingdom, but few who bear His cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who care for trial. He finds many to share His table, but few to take part in His fasting. All desire to be happy with Him; few wish to suffer anything for Him. Many follow Him to the breaking of bread, but few to the drinking of the chalice of His passion. Many revere His miracles; few approach the shame of the Cross. Many love Him as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless Him as long as they receive some comfort from Him. But if Jesus hides Himself and leaves them for a while, they fall either into complaints or into deep dejection. Those, on the contrary, who love Him for His own sake and not for any comfort of their own, bless Him in all trial and anguish of heart as well as in the bliss of consolation. Even if He should never give them consolation, yet they would continue to praise Him and wish always to give Him thanks. What power there is in pure love for Jesus—love that is free from all self-interest and self-love!

Seek the Cross the and Consolations will come; seek only consolations and, well, you do the math.

Just today my wife and I were discussing people who get married just so they can be “not alone” and how, in the end, those marriages never worked.  It was, surely, no coincidence that just earlier in the day I had read this from Dietrich von Hildebrand’s Transformation in Christ (and yes, I’m finally only a few pages from finishing it):

True self-surrender … implies that we are entirely centered upon the object in which we lose ourselves.  The value of that which holds us, and by no means the pleasure of being held, dominates our consciousness.  One who seeks that pleasure for its own sake errs just as they do who yearn for the thrill of love rather than thinking of the beloved person, and hence never attain real love at all.

There is no point in our longing to lose ourselves in general.  What we should long for is exclusively to lose ourselves in Christ.  Let us never forget that, though an intense love or enthusiasm as such is undoubtedly a great experience and a fine sight, its value essentially depends on whom or what we love; on the person or thing that evokes our enthusiasm.

(I meant to post this yesterday but, well, life intervened.)

In this Friday’s Morning Prayer we have a reading from the letter to the Galatians that made me really, truly, stop and think.  We read:

I have been crucified with Christ, and the life I live now is not my own; Christ is living in me.  I still live my human life, but it is a life of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:19b-20)

For some reason every time I’ve read this passage I’ve always at least partially dismissed it as Paul’s description of himself.  I don’t think there is any arguing that St. Paul was a zealot, so seeing such strong and complete language from him isn’t very surprising.  But yet this is far more than a reflective statement – more than just Paul explaining why he acts the way he does.  Behind these words is the cry, “I have come this far, come with me, live only in and for Him!“  It is, as is only fitting, a call to follow.

So … all those times you have the opportunity to do what you want or do what you ought, which do you pick?  And when you do do what you ought, do you do it begrudgingly or with the joy of knowing you are following Christ’s call to charity?  Do you find joy in the freedom of being yoked with Christ or look askance at your perceived loss of freedom?  It may be that in surrendering what we perceive to be our freedom we find ourselves only then to be truly free.

I once proposed a paper for my senior English thesis dealing with the role of organized religion in an individualistic society.  I was told that the modern society was not individualistic but rather formed of a series of group-think and peer-pressure groups.  Lo these many years since, and look where we have come.

In our RCIA session this morning we were talking about this morning’s first reading, from Deuteronomy 26:4-10, where the Israelites are commanded by Moses to offer their firstfruits to the Lord as an offering in thanksgiving for all He had done.  The discussion made its way to the fact that “firstfruits” is also saying “the best of what you have” – i.e. that we give to God our best, not giving Him something inferior and keeping the best for ourselves.  From there it made its way to the point that we must not put anything – or anyone – before God.  One of our catechumen posed the concerned question (paraphrased), “does that mean we have to put God before our own family?“  I don’t think I did a sufficient job with the answer then but I’d like another crack at it here.

In short, the answer is “yes”.  But, of course, there is far more to the answer than just one word.  The short answer comes from the very first Commandment:

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.  You shall have no other gods before me. (Deut  5:6-7)

The word “gods” here means not only spiritual creatures, entities in ancient myths or superstitions.  It is well understood to extend to any thing or person one ahead of God in priority.  So yes, one must always put God before all else, even one’s own family.  This answer is both direct and rather shocking to those who have lived life centered around their family.  It can seem an incredibly large drop to the family from first place to second.  It can, further, seem an almost impossible request – perhaps even a devaluing of the family and an elevation of God to a position in contention with the family.  The simple answer becomes quickly not so simple.

The longer, harder-at-the-start, answer is that the question is a false dichotomy.  “How’s that?” you say.  The question proposes an either-or situation when, in fact, none exists.  Even in the case of the mother of the seven martyred brothers in 2 Maccabees 7 (if you do not know the story, it is an excellent one to read to illustrate my point) the separation between love of God and love of family is shown to be a false one.

But how is that so?  Let us first start with a short reflection:  if God is One and God is Love, then in the end there is truly only one Love of which we partake and to which we can aspire.  What does that mean in this case?  Look deeply into the question and you will find that to love your God is to love your neighbor, to love your family and to truly love your family is to love God.  So there is no true act of love for God which would ever be an act against love for one’s family.

The difficulty, if I may make the conjecture, is that we often project from the love we know – love of friends, love of family – onto the love we hope to know – the love of God, the love who is God.  This is another area where Christianity turns our process upside down.  We are asked, instead of deriving God-love from familial-love to come to a new understanding of familial love by starting at the true love of God.  It is in this complete agape – self-giving – love that we find the complete unity of love of God and love of family.  They are, indeed, the same if we allow ourselves to start with God.

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”  He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”  He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”  A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”  He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.”  He said to him, “Tend my sheep.”  He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”  Peter was grieved because he said to him a third time, “Do you love me?”  And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.”  Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” — John 21:15-17

Before anyone asks, this isn’t going to be a treatment of the issue of agape and filio in this selection.  While I find that both stimulating and moving, it’s not why I’m here today.  That said…

For some reason this passage came into my head several days ago and I’ve been mulling it over ever since.  I’ve always felt a particular attachment to Peter due to the dual reasons of our shared name and personality.  And perhaps because we both continually find new ways to screw up and are gently dusted off by our Lord and set on a straight path again.

It is with that in mind that I look at this not as a proof-text but as something even greater than the simple words on the page.  To me this is not just a conversation between two men, or even between a man and God – it is a question asked to each and every one of us and a way of framing every decision we make in our lives from here on out.  Do you love me more than these?

Several days ago my best friend’s father passed away.  This got me thinking about the judgment each person faces after death.  Now, as far as I know, the Church has no official teaching about how exactly this judgment will go, but I get the feeling this question will have something to do with it – Do you love me more than these?  Imagine having that question posed to you by Jesus Himself, seeing the nail marks in His hands and then saying, “yes Lord, I do.”  I wonder … could I say that?  Could I say it now, will I be able to say it then?

There is, of course, more to it than that.  One question has long vexed me – who or what are the “these” to which He refers?  Generally it’s understood Jesus is asking Peter if he loves Him more than do the other Apostles.  That is not however, at least in the English translation, the only way it can be interpreted.

Wrapped in the question is also, “do you love me more than these” – i.e. does your love for Jesus outweigh your love for everyone else, even your closest friends and family.  Does Jesus come first, and do you really love everyone else through the lens of your love for Him?  It sounds like an easy question to answer to many, but when you really get down and wrestle with it, well, do I?

The net can be cast yet wider too.  Do I love Him more than all the other gadgets, gizmos, trophies, quests, people and places in my life?  When it comes down to it, when my love for Him is placed on one side of a scale and my love for all the other people, places and things in my life on the other, which way would it tip?  When I look at the places I go, the people I see, the things I do – do they resonate with a love for Him that surpasses my love for anything else?  Do I, really, love Him more than these?

Thoughts such as these are usually greeted with a friendly reminder about keeping balance in life.  As much as I appreciate these comments, and I truly do for my life seems to have all the balance of a broken Weeble-wobble at times, it stands in stark contrast to the complete, and some would say reckless, abandon found in the examples of so many of the saints.  It is, as a friend said recently, very hard to look a spouse or a child right in the eye and know that we are called to love God even more.

The call, it seems, is impossible.  But that doesn’t make it any less real or any less necessary.  For me, for you, this is impossible, but only if we do it alone.  There are no unfunded mandates with God; all we have to do is step back, relax, and cooperate with the grace God offers us.  The only thing stopping us … is us.  So, “Do you love me more than these?”  Lord, help me to love You that much.

As part of a discussion I was having the other day someone said, “I’m of the opinion that not very many people go to Hell.”  That statement has been clanging around in my head ever since then and it just isn’t quite sitting right.  I know it’s a very popular belief in this day and age but when you look across the broad cross-section of Catholic history and inside the Bible the concept of an empty or nearly-empty Hell is hard to find.  Now, it’s possible this is another case where God is reaching people “where they are” in history and all the Biblical warnings about the ease of going to Hell and the difficulty of attaining Heaven are merely purposeful hyperbole.  I grant that possibility, but I confess I haven’t seen the kind of exegesis that suggests it is a likely, let alone the most likely, option.

Let’s start first with the words of Jesus in Mattew 7:13-14:

Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

That certainly doesn’t sound much like words suggesting there’s a buyer’s market for real estate in Hell.  I’m quite desperately trying to come up with a way around it but I simply can’t find one.

Add on to that the number of times Jesus repeats warnings about Hell and the human capacity to end up there (e.g. Matt 3:12, Matt 5:29, Matt 8:28, Matt 13:30 etc.).  Add to that the number of times it is found in the epistles (e.g. 2 Thess 1:9, 1 Pet 4:17).  If God is using hyperbole through the Scriptures to, if you will, “scare us straight” He certainly is laying it on with a heavy hand.

There is also the quote, variously attributed to St. Theresa of Avila and Mary at Fatima, tracked down at Fr. Z’s to an actual quote from St. Therese of Liseux that souls are lost like “snowflakes”.  Again, the quote attributed loosely to St. Athanasius that the floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of Bishops.  The list goes on, but this is not an exercise in pounding the reader into either submission or boredom with an excess of talking points.

Let me reduce it down the way my brain processes it:

1. Jesus says there is a Hell.
2. Jesus says we can end up there and lays out various things that will get us there.
3. Jesus doesn’t lie.
4. We’re not perfect, and we sometimes break the very commands He tells us will earn us Hell

ergo, we could wind up in Hell.

To be perfectly honest I find some modicum of comfort in the idea that it is nearly impossible to go to Hell, but I also find a tremendously dangerous impulse to spiritual sloth hidden just beneath the surface of that idea.  How does one earn Hell?  That’s something God has not entirely revealed to us, or at least not in a way we haven’t managed to muddle with sophistries.  We’ll hear about how God is so loving and all-powerful He would never allow a single soul to go to Hell.  But then … if He could undo all His warnings with a snap of His fingers, why did He have to come, live, suffer, die and rise again to open Heaven for us?  If we believe the latter, how can we say the former?  And again, God would not warn us about an easy-to-earn Hell if Heaven were in fact our only, or even almost-only, destination.

So where does that leave us?  Right back with what the Church teaches:

To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice.  This state of definitive self-exclusion from Communion with God and the blessed is called “hell”. (CCC #1033)

The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. (CCC #1035)

Mother Angelica of EWTN fame once said that too many people aim for Purgatory.  But what, she asked, if they fall just short?  There’s nothing below Purgatory other than Hell.  Aim instead, she said, for Heaven.  That way if you fall short you still land in Purgatory.  Of course, she delivered it far better than did I with all her usual wit and charm.

So let me summarize it a slightly different way than before.  Hell is real and it is eternal.  And it doesn’t matter if there is room for only one person in Hell, if that person is you.

Well, most of it, anyway.  And besides being far busier than I should have been to get out of Lent what I could have.  But we can beat up on me later.

Just before Ash Wednesday I received a box in the mail from my dear old Irish Catholic grandmother.  As I opened the box the smell that wafted up let me know whatever was inside had been in her house for a long time – there’s just something about the smell of her house I’ll never quite forget.  Inside I found three books and was suddenly struck by a realization both sobering and uplifting.  Her eyesight has been getting worse as she’s gotten older, and her high blood pressure certainly hasn’t helped.  The last time we were together she lamented how difficult it has become for her to read which was painful for her as she has always loved to read spiritual works and particularly the Bible.    While I have no proof I can’t help but be haunted by the thought that she is sending me, as her only family member who is an actively practicing Catholic, bits and pieces of a library she can no longer read.  My previous plans for Lenten reading mattered no more – I had to read whatever it was she sent, and I’m glad I did.

Among the books she sent me was A.G. Sertillanges’ classic What Jesus Saw from the Cross.  The book follows Jesus from multiple points of view – centered on, as one would guess, what He could see upon the Cross, and dives deeply into the events that happened in the places He could and couldn’t see.  Fr. Sertillanges spent time in Jerusalem and his first-hand contact with the Holy Land is evidenced throughout the book.  With an artistic flourish I could only hope some day to imitate in the slightest way he paints the events of those fateful days in the reader’s mind.

More than a historical treatise this is a spiritual work that helps unite the reader with the happenings of those days.  Yet even calling it a spiritual work doesn’t fully encompass what is inside.  It is by turns historical, spiritual, apologetic, and theological – and perhaps a few other things I haven’t quite categorized.  Even though the book is now more than sixty years old so very much of his commentary is still not only relevant but timely.  An example for your edification:

Jesus is not mocked today; but is He not generally forgotten?  Compassion is rare, still rarer is active devotion.  And when we say that Jesus is no longer mocked we are thinking only of His person, to which Jesus Himself attaches far less importance than to His work and to our salvation.

How many insults are hurled at the doctrines, the practices, the ministers, the precepts, the promises, the words, the deeds, the institutions, and the persons connected with the name and work of Jesus crucified!  Here, too, there are those who mock and wag their heads; here, too, are drinkers of win – the wine of sophistry and licentiousness – who sing after Jesus as He passes.

The Passover of mankind still continues.  Men pitch their tents and move on; men drink and dance; men worry and become absorbed in business; men form attachments and break them; men love and hate – and Christ hangs on the Cross.  His sorrow meets only with contempt, and His appeal, His offer of salvation, arouses nothing but a vague and distracted smile.

Lent may now be all but over, but there is never a bad time to read a book so moving, challenging and educational.  Buy two and give one to someone else much like my dear grandmother has done for me.

I recently finished reading Frank Sheed’s Theology and Sanity.  It is, in short, quintessentially Frank Sheed, delivered with the stark clarity that typifies his writing.  I can’t say for sure that it was his intent, but this book makes a perfect follow-on to his excellent Theology for Beginners.  These two books would serve well as a launching point for anyone interested in dipping their toe into theology.

To put it simply, Sheed doesn’t waste any time qualifying his positions or mincing his words in this book – what is, simply is, and what is not simply is not.  You quickly realize he truly means the word “Sanity” in the title of the book – a proper understanding of the topics presented leads to a more sane understanding of this creation God has made.  Perhaps an illustration is called for:

God, we say, moves the will, which moves the intellect.  But God does not do violence to nature.  He does not force either will or intellect to act against the nature He has given them.  The function of prayer and humility is to to prepare the will that when the impulsion comes from God it is ready to go with that impulsion, with no violence done to its own nature as a will.  The function of evidence and argument is so to prepare the intellect that when it feels the impulsion of the God-moved will, it too will be prepared to co-operate with that impulsion, with no violence to its own nature as an intellect.  It would be outside God’s normal mode of working upon man to move his intellect to an assent for which nothing had prepared it, against which much of its own experience as an intellect might well have predisposed it.

And again, because it is so relevant to the world in which we live today:

Whether this point is grasped or not, a moral code must be founded on something.  A society can accept a moral code without any conscious awareness of its foundation, provided the code is of long standing and not questioned.  But in a generation like ours where everything is questioned, the foundation must be clearly seen; and apart from God the foundation cannot be clearly seen.  The practical result for the average man of our generation is tha twhen he is faced with what his grandparents would have called a temptation, he has nothing to judge it by.  His first reaction is “Why shouldn’t I?”  Conscience may put up a brief resistance; but conscience, as we have seen, is the judgment of our intellect, and it is precisely our intellect that is confused; and in any event our modern man wil have heard half a dozen theories to explain conscience away.  All this is too weak a barrier against any really strong rush of temptation.  From the initial “Why shouldn’t I?” he passes with an uneasiness too slight to affect his decision to “I don’t see why I shouldn’t.”  As we have already seen, this last statement is precise almost to the point of pedantry.  He does not see why he shouldn’t; he does not see anything, because he has turned out the lights, or had them turned out for him:  he is simply conscious of a lot of urges and appetites in the dark, and there is no mistaking their direction.

Sanity is the same no matter what generation.  It is works like this book that help us to remember that only in, with and through God can we keep our wits about us in a world that seems determined to lose theirs.

Normally, as anyone who has followed this blog or its predecessor would know, I tend to stay away from political commentary.  That is largely because I find I tend to make my most rash statements when I’m talking or writing about politics.  I’ll make an exception this time and see if I can make any cogent points.

The Matthew 25 Network portrays as its guiding principle the statement of Jesus found in Matthew 25:40: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”  As critical statements in the Bible go, this one is right up near the top.  Just before and just after we are given a list of the classic states of the unfortunate (the poor, if you will) souls who are to be considered “the least” – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger and those in prison; I’d suggest it’s not a leap to say these states were intended to suggest a universal definition of the poor and not be a limited list.  As it stands it truly is a strong foundation on which to build a proper understanding of social justice.  To this point I believe the folks running the Matthew 25 Network and I are in agreement.

Where I think we begin to part ways is that they continue from this point and suggest that it also gives a strong base for how those things are to be done.  Quickly following this is the assertion it is the role of the government, of those “in power” to make these things happen.  Read the whole of Matthew 25 again and you will find no such specific or direct statement – no mechanisms, devices or modes of delivery are suggested.  In fact, at most what you will find is precisely the contrary – in the story Jesus tells rather of individual responsibility both in the doing and at the time of judgement.  Jesus says “whatever you did” not “whatever the governmental organization to which you delegated responsibility did”.  Is that a gross oversimplification?  Perhaps, but it serves to illustrate the point.

Let me further my argument by taking a different selection of the Bible to deepen our understanding of Matthew 25.  In Matthew 14, just after Jesus has been told of the death of John the Baptist we read:

When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples approached him and said, “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.” But they said to him, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” Then he said, “Bring them here to me,” and he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.  They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over — twelve wicker baskets full.  Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children.

Notice specifically what Jesus tells the Apostles – “give them some food yourselves.”  He makes it clear, with a point, that it is the responsibility of the Apostles to provide for those who have nothing from what they have.  There is no allowance for offloading this responsibility even when the Apostles try to shy away.

The Church has taught the principle of subsidiarity from at least the time of Leo XII’s Rerum Novarum and it is, to me, critical to this issue.  The principle holds, in short, that government should only take on those initiatives which exceed the capacity of individuals or private groups acting independently.  This I find to be a crucial distinction to be made whenever we are considering any of the acts of charity outlined in Matthew 25.  The first, the primary responsibility for performing and ensuring the performance of these acts lays not with a government but with each of us as members of the Body of Christ.  From there it should roll up to the parish level and with small charities and NGOs.  I, personally, have a hard time believing that there are any issues regrading these acts which require the participation of government, particularly at the Federal level.  The government is required to ensure proper legal protections and where appropriate individual fiscal incentives (i.e. recognizing contributions to these charities as tax writeoffs) but the implementation of these acts is not, either in Matthew 25 or Matthew 14 ever given the government.

I will grant right now that this is not an exhaustive discussion of this issue, but I hope to have at least probed the intersection of two Gospel directives which I think is all too often ignored or glossed over.  I’d like to hope this kick starts a discussion, although I’m afraid my little blog doesn’t quite have the readership necessary to thoroughly deal with all its ramifications.  Even so, comment away, one and all!