The video below contains a surprise, reminding us that not all things are as they appear. We should be careful about sizing things up, and when we must do so, do it with great humility. There is an old saying that seems appropriate:
If your words are soft and sweet, they won’t be as hard to swallow if you have to eat them.
Before watching the video, consider these cautionary quotes from Scripture:
But the LORD said to Samuel [who seeking a king, was impressed with Jesse’s eldest son], “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer (2 Cor 5:16).
Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly (John 7:24).
You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me (John 8:15-16).
Jesus said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts” (Luke 16:15).
[O Lord] Forgive and act; deal with everyone according to all they do, since you know their hearts (for you alone know every human heart) (1 Kings 8:39).
Call no one happy before his death; by how he ends, a person becomes known (Sirach 11:28).
Today’s Gospel (Mat 12:1-8), in which Jesus is rebuked for violating the Sabbath, reminded me of the video below. It illustrates how we sometimes follow smaller rules while overlooking bigger ones in the process.
The Lord Jesus was often scorned by the people of His day, who claimed that He overlooked certain details of the law (often Sabbath observances). But those who rebuked him for this were guilty of far greater violations. For example,
[Jesus] went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Stand up in front of everyone.” Then Jesus asked them, “Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus (Mk 3:1-6).
Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone (Luke 11:42).
Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue ruler said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.” The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Lk 13:14-16)
You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean (Matt 23:24-25).
Yes, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels, maximizing the minimum but minimizing the maximum. Note that in the first passage above they are actually planning to kill Jesus for healing on the Sabbath!
Perhaps my all-time favorite illustration of this awful human tendency is in the Gospel of John:
Then the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. So Pilate came out … (John 18:28-29).
They are plotting to kill a just and innocent man, indeed they are plotting to kill God. They are acting out of wickedness, envy, jealousy, hatred, and murderous anger, but their primary concern is avoiding ritual uncleanliness! Yes, they are straining out gnats but swallowing camels.
We who are pious and observant need to be wary of this tendency. Sometimes in congratulating ourselves over adherence in lesser matters, we can either offend or neglect in weightier ones. Perhaps I attend Mass each Sunday (a grave obligation); perhaps I pray the rosary (a highly commendable practice); perhaps I tithe (a commendable precept). These are all things that ought to be done (one is commanded, one is commended, and one is a precept). But what if at the same time I am hateful toward someone at the office, unforgiving to a family member, and/or insensitive to the poor?
The danger could be that I let my observance of certain things allow me to think that I can “check off the God box” and figure that because I went to Mass, prayed the rosary, and gave an offering, I’ve “got this righteousness thing down.” Too often, very significant and serious things like love, mercy, forgiveness, and charity are set aside or neglected as I am busy congratulating myself over my adherence to other, sometimes lesser, things.
This oversight can happen in the other direction as well. Someone may congratulate himself for spending the day working in a soup kitchen, and think that he therefore has no need to look at the fact that he is living unchastely (shacked up, for example) or not attending Mass.
We cannot “buy God off,” doing certain things (usually things that we like) while ignoring others we’d rather not. In the end, the whole counsel of God is important.
We must avoid the sinful tendency to try to substitute or swap, to observe a few things while overlooking others.
We see a lot of examples of this in our culture as well. We obsess over people smoking because it might be bad for their health while ignoring the health consequences of promiscuous behavior, which spreads AIDS and countless venereal diseases and leads to abortion. We campaign to save the baby seals while over a thousand baby humans are killed each day in the United States. We deplore (rightfully) the death of thousands each year in gun homicides while calling the murder of hundreds of thousands of babies each year a constitutional right. The school nurse is required to obtain parental permission to dispense aspirin to students but not to provide the dangerous abortifacient “morning after pill.” We talk about the dignity of women and yet pornography flourishes. We fret endlessly about our weight and the physical appearance of our bodies, which will die, and care little for our souls, which will live. We obsess over carbon footprints while flying on jets to global warming conferences at luxurious convention center complexes.
Yes, we are straining gnats but swallowing camels. As the Lord says, we ought not to neglect smaller things wholly, but simply observing lesser things doesn’t give us the right to ignore greater ones.
Salus animarum suprema lex. (The salvation of souls is the highest Law.) While little things mean a lot, we must always remember not to allow them to eclipse greater things.
The ideal for which to aim is an integrated state in which the lesser serves the greater and is subsumed into it. St. Augustine rightly observed,
Quod Minimum, minimum est, Sed in minimo fidelem esse, magnum est.
St. Augustine – De Doctrina Christiana, IV,35
(What is a little thing, is (just) a little thing. But to be faithful in a little thing is a great thing.)
Notice that the lesser things are in service of the greater thing—in this case fidelity. And thus we should rightly ask whether some of the lesser things we do are really in service of the greater things like justice, love, mercy, fidelity, kindness, and generosity. Otherwise we run the risk of straining out gnats but swallowing camels.
Enjoy this commercial, which illustrates how one rule (no loud voices in the library) is observed while violating nearly every other.
The Gospel from Wednesday’s Daily Mass contains memorable but often misunderstood lines:
Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest … Take my yoke upon you … For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.
The most important word in this sentence is the word “my.” Jesus says, my yoke is easy; my burden is light.
What is a yoke? It’s a wooden truss that makes it easier to carry a heavy load by distributing the weight across a wider part of the body or by allowing the weight to be shared by two or more people or animals. In the picture at left, the woman is able to carry the heavy water more easily with the weight distributed across her shoulders rather than in her hands. The load is eased by involving more parts of the body. Yokes are also used to join two animals and help them work together in pulling a load.
What is Jesus saying? First, He is saying that He has a yoke for us. That is, He has a cross for us. Notice that Jesus is not saying that there is no yoke or cross in following Him. There is a cross that He allows, and He allows it for a reason and for a season.
Easy? Jesus says that the cross he has for us is “easy.” The Greek word χρηστὸς (chrestos) is better translated as “well fitting,” “suitable,” or even “useful.” In effect, the Lord is saying that the yoke he has for us is suited to us; it fits us well and has been carefully chosen so as to be useful for us. God knows that we need some crosses in order to grow. He knows what those crosses are. He knows what we can bear and what we are ready for. Yes, His yoke for us fits us well.
But notice again that little word: “my.” The cross or yoke that Jesus has for us is well suited and useful for us. The problem comes when we start adding to that weight with things of our own doing. We put wood on our shoulders that God never put there and never intended for us. We make decisions without asking God. We undertake projects, launch careers, accept promotions, and even enter marriages without ever discerning if God wants this for us. And sure enough, before long our life is complicated and burdensome; we feel pulled in many different directions. But this is not the yoke of Jesus; this is largely the yoke of our own making. Of course it is not easy nor does it fit well, because Jesus didn’t make it.
Don’t blame God; simplify. Be very careful before accepting commitments and making big decisions. Ask God. It may be good, but not for you. It may help others, but destroy you. Seek the Lord’s will. If necessary, seek advice from a spiritually mature person. Consider your state in life; consider the tradeoffs. Balance the call to be generous with the call to proper stewardship of your time, talent, and treasure. Have proper priorities. It is amazing how many people put their career before their vocation. They accept promotions, take on special assignments, and think more about money and advancement than their spouse and children. The burdens increase and the load gets heavy when we don’t ask God or even consider how a proposed course of action might affect the most precious and important things in our lives.
Jesus’ final advice, then, is this: Take my yoke and only my yoke. Forsake all others. Simplify.
So stop “yoking around.” Take only His yoke. If you do, your burdens will be lighter. Jesus says, “Come and learn from me. I will not put heavy burdens on you. I will set your heart on fire with love. And then, whatever I do have for you, will be a pleasure for you to do. Because, what makes the difference is love.” Love lightens every load.
As we go through the Book of the Prophet Isaiah at Mass, we read of Israel’s painful purifications and also of a coming punishment of the surrounding nations. These ancient stories have something to say to us today.
As Isaiah sets forth, God permitted the nations to persecute Israel in order that she be purified. But the iniquity and sin of the nations and of this world cannot go on forever; wickedness must be ended. The Lord will judge the nations, not merely purify Israel.
In a complex passage, God says (through Isaiah) that although He had used Assyria as a tool to purify Israel, Assyria would not escape punishment for her iniquity. Here is an excerpt:
Woe to Assyria! My rod in anger, my staff in wrath. Against an impious nation [Israel] I send him, and against a people under my wrath I order him to seize plunder, carry off loot …. But this is not what he intends, nor does he have this in mind; Rather, it is in his heart to destroy …. [And] he says: “By my own power I have done it, and by my wisdom, for I am shrewd. I have moved the boundaries of peoples ….” Will the axe boast against him who hews with it? Will the saw exalt itself above him who wields it? As if a rod could sway him who lifts it …. Therefore, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, will send among his fat ones leanness, And instead of his glory there will be kindling like the kindling of fire (Isaiah 10:5-16).
Although God wielded Assyria like an axe to prune Israel, that did not make the axe good. And now it is time for the axe also to be refined as in fire.
What do stories like these have to say to us today? A lot, especially if we see Israel as an image for the Church, and the nations around us as akin to Assyria and Babylon.
For indeed, the Church has been going through a great pruning and purification. The once luxuriant vine of Catholicism and Christendom in the West is reduced. Only 25% of Catholics in the U.S. attend Mass; in Europe the numbers are far worse. Indifference to the faith and to God is widespread. Many are Catholic in name only. Yet for those who remain there is an increasingly fervent experience of the faith. On account of doubt and persecution, many of us are actually clearer about what we believe and why than we were in the past. There has been a great blossoming of Catholic apologetics and media. The smaller numbers of Catholics who remain are getting clearer, more devout, and more creative. And thus we see a pruning and purification that is so often necessary in the Church. Ecclesia semper reformanda (the Church is always in need of reform).
This purification is being effected by God, who is permitting an increasingly secular and hostile world to afflict the Church. These afflictions take many forms: simple scoffing at our beliefs, the promulgation of error and lies to lead us away from the faith, the excoriating and even criminalization of long-held beliefs of our faith, and even outright martyring of believers.
For the time being, God seems to be permitting the “Assyria” of modern, decadent culture to afflict us. But things do by opposition grow. Even if God is wielding the axe of modernity now, this does not make the axe holy; soon enough the axe will have to answer for its wickedness.
What are faithful Catholics to do under the current circumstances? The answer to this may vary based our state in life (parent, priest, married, single, young, old, etc.). Many younger families are choosing to “hunker down” and live as isolated from our toxic culture as possible: homeschooling, restricting television viewing, and/or limiting Internet access.
Others have chosen to engage the culture boldly in order to seek its conversion and/or to rescue as many as possible from its grip.
Both approaches are certainly valid. But as we journey further into the darkness, the banners of tolerance under which the revolutionaries marched are increasingly being exposed for what they really are: banners of tyranny. They never really meant what they said about tolerance; it was just a smoke screen. Under the new tyranny, our options for influencing the culture are decreasing; faithful Catholics proclaiming ancient truths are seeing their religious liberty erode. Merely quoting certain Scripture passages or reading from the Catechism of the Catholic Church is being labeled hate speech. There are increasing efforts to compel faithful Catholics and others to directly cooperate in evils such as contraception, abortion, and euthanasia.
With all this in mind, a text from another part of Isaiah seems appropriate for an increasing number of Catholics:
Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the wrath has passed by. For behold, the LORD is coming out from his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity, and the earth will disclose the blood shed on it, and will no more cover its slain (Is 26:21-22).
In effect, this text advises the faithful to hunker down and preserve the faith by seeking to live as far apart from the prevailing culture as possible. Now that Israel’s purification was bearing fruit, God was preparing to punish the nations that afflicted His faithful in Israel.
A possible modern application of this text is to view the wickedness in current Western culture as a sign of the wrath of God, who is allowing it to collapse under the weight of its own sin. A kind of delusion and lunacy has taken hold that reminds one of a rabid animal madly running around in circles. Rabid animals are not to be engaged; flee from them!
Much as in the days of Noah, our job may well be to hunker down and preserve the faith from the flood of rebellion. Scripture says,
The nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her immorality. The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy through the extravagance of her luxury. Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven …” (Rev 18:3-5).
I will punish Bel in Babylon and make him spew out what he has swallowed. The nations will no longer stream to him. And the wall of Babylon will fall. Come out of her, my people! Run for your lives! Run from the fierce anger of the Lord. But do not lose heart or be afraid … (Jer 51:44-46).
In the months and years ahead, the priority for many in the Church may shift to a protective stance, a kind of hunkering down while God’s judgment brings an end to the evils in the cultures and nations around us.
This of course is not the usual stance of the Church, which ordinarily is to be zealously evangelical. But even the first evangelists were told by Jesus that in the face of fierce opposition to the Gospel they were to flee: When you are persecuted in one place, flee to another (Matt 10:24). There are times to hole up in the enclosure of the ark in order to preserve the life and light of the Gospel and then emerge again when the storms of destruction have passed by.
What does all of this mean to you? You must decide. Some may be called to isolate their families in order to preserve them from the caustic culture. Others may be called to engage with this world and seek to save as many as possible. But increasingly, the Church is simply not going to be able to make the compromises that the world will require.
Isaiah’s prophecies are not merely locked in the past; they are operative now as well.
In the video below, Bishop Robert Barron does a wonderful job of describing this stance (hunkering down) that the Church must occasionally take. It is a stance that is less one of hiding thank of preserving the faith so that it can be set loose later, with its purity still intact.
We are reading excerpts from the Prophet Isaiah this week in the Daily Liturgy, particularly from passages in which God’s judgment on unbelief and sin is proclaimed. I will write a bit more on this tomorrow, but perhaps for today there is some benefit in looking at Isaiah by way of overview. Let’s consider key elements of his life, struggle, and message. If you already have a firm grasp on Isaiah’s life and teachings and would like to read a shorter meditation, you can skip down to the section labeled in red: Lessons from Isaiah.
Isaiah was born in 760 B.C. He is further identified as the son of Amoz (Is 1:1). His name in Hebrew (Yeshayahu) means “Yah[weh] is salvation.” Isaiah lived this name well, insisting that Judah’s kings and people trust only in God, make no alliances with foreign nations, and refuse to fear anyone but God.
Isaiah lived in the terrible period following the great severing of the northern kingdom of Israel (with its ten tribes) from the southern kingdom of Judah. In the period prior to Isaiah’s birth, the northern kingdom had known almost nothing but godless kings. Idolatry had begun there from the start, when the first king, Jeroboam, erected golden calves (of all things!) in two northern cities and strove to dissuade northern Jews from going south to Jerusalem (in Judah) to worship. Other ugly moments in the north featured King Ahab and the wicked Queen Jezebel, who advanced the worship of the Canaanite fertility god, Baal, and who persecuted Elijah and the few others who sought to stay true to the faith of Abraham.
By the time Isaiah began his ministry (742 B.C.), the division was some 200 years old. Though living in Judah to the south, Isaiah both prophesied doom for the north and warned the kings of the south to rebuke wickedness and fears and to form no foreign alliances against the growing menaces to the north (Israel) and the east (Assyria). In this passage, he warned of northern destruction: In a single day the Lord will destroy both the head and the tail … The leaders of Israel are the head, and the lying prophets are the tail (Is 9:14-15). But his own Judah remained the focus of his concern and warnings.
Isaiah’s mission and ministry in Judah spanned four kings: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. It is likely that he was a cousin of King Uzziah, which gave him both access and influence. Isaiah’s eloquence and influence also suggest that he received a royal education; little else is known of him personally.
Although the opening chapters of the Book of Isaiah describe the wickedness of the people of Judah and the need for their repentance and his ministry, Isaiah’s prophetic call seems to have begun in 742 B.C., “the year King Uzziah died,” and is described in Chapter 6:
1In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. 2Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. 3And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” 4And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. 5And I said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” 6Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7And he touched my mouth, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” 8And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me” (Is 6:1–8).
While God accepts Isaiah’s offer, He warns that Isaiah’s message will be resisted. Isaiah asks, sadly,
11“How long, O Lord?” And he said, “Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without men, and the land is utterly desolate, 12and the Lord removes men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned” (Is 6:11–13).
Sure enough, the first 39 chapters of Isaiah describe a fiercely stubborn resistance to Isaiah’s calls. However, the prophesied destruction of the south would not occur until 587 B.C., long into the future, due in part to some limited success Isaiah had in working with King Hezekiah at a critical moment.
The winds of war were blowing. Assyria was expanding and the ominous clouds of its destructive conquest were moving westward. Israel to the north joined in a coalition to fight Assyria and tried to strong-arm Judah to join, threatening invasion and overthrow of King Ahaz if there was no agreement. Let’s just say that Ahaz was anxious, and all of Judah with him—threats to the north, threats to the east, and the Mediterranean to the west. There was no real escape.
God dispatches Isaiah to Ahaz with the following message:
4… Take heed, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands 5… [who have] devised evil against you, saying, 6“Let us go up against Judah and terrify it, and let us conquer it for ourselves, and set up the son of Tabe-el as king in the midst of it,” 7thus says the Lord GOD: It shall not stand, and it shall not come to pass (Is 7:4–7).
In other words, trust God. Make no alliances and do not give in to your fears. Stand your ground! God offers Ahaz a sign that a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, Immanuel (God is with us). But Ahaz cops a falsely pious attitude, talking about not putting God to the test. Yet it is Ahaz who fails the test. Caving in, he sends tribute to Assyria and offers to become a vassal state.
In the end, this frees Assyria to concentrate on destroying Israel to the north. And while it can be argued that Israel’s wickedness brought her destruction, Ahaz helped seal the fate of fellow Jews in the north through his fearful and self-serving political calculations. The northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Assyrians in 721 B.C. and the survivors were carried off into exile. It was farewell to the Ten Lost Tribes. Only Judah and the Levites in the south remained intact.
Though Judah was spared, the relief from threatening Assyriawas to be temporary. Meanwhile, Ahaz’s son Hezekiah became king (ruling from 715-687 B.C.). Hezekiah was a better king: more faithful, more trusting, and thus less fearful. He rid Judah of any elements of Canaanite religious practice and by 705 B.C. had courageously broken free of the alliance with Assyria. He fortified Jerusalem (and his faith) against the backlash that was sure to come from Assyria.
Sure enough, in 701 B.C., Assyria came to collect past-due tribute and to assert who was boss. Jerusalem was surrounded with troops and her fate seemed sealed. But Isaiah summoned Hezekiah and Judah to courage:
33“Therefore thus says the Lord concerning the king of Assyria: He shall not come into this city, or shoot an arrow here, or come before it with a shield, or cast up a siege mound against it. 34By the way that he came, by the same he shall return, and he shall not come into this city, says the Lord. 35For I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.” 36And the angel of the Lord went forth, and slew a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians; and when men arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies (Is 37:33–36).
The Assyrian survivors left and returned by the way they had come. Their king, Sennacherib, returned home and was killed by his own sons.
A fear rebuked brought victory to Judah.Now maybe people would listen to Isaiah and trust God rather than foreign alliances! Well, not so fast. Hezekiah, who had been ill but miraculously recovered, started to get awfully friendly with the Babylonians, who were then emerging as a power to the east. Faith and trust are surely difficult things, especially for a king.
Because it looked like another alliance was being formed with a pagan state, Isaiah warned,
5“Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: 6Behold, the days are coming, when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon; nothing shall be left, says the Lord. 7 And some of your own sons, who are born to you, shall be taken away; and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.” 8Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, “The word of the Lord which you have spoken is good.” For he thought, “There will be peace and security in my days” (Is 39:5–8).
Hezekiah’s selfish response reminds me of an old saying of my father’s: “People disappoint.” Alliances and dalliances with foreign lands and a corresponding lack of trust in God would continue to plague Judah despite miracles against Assyria.
We know little of Isaiah’s final demise. According to an extra-biblical tradition (and hinted at in Hebrews 11:37), he died by being sawed in half by Hezekiah’s unfaithful son, Manasseh. If the tradition is true, Manasseh answered to God for the murder of Isaiah.
Lessons from Isaiah:
Despite often disappointing results, Isaiah never gave up. God told him to prophesy and so he did. Isaiah lived what he preached. He feared God, not man. He never thought twice about going up to kings and declaring to their faces, “Thus saith the Lord!” Isaiah was willing to rebuke and encourage people regardless of their standing.
In the end, Isaiah’s message is remarkably clear: Do not fear! Clearly, fear leads all of us to a lot of foolish decisions. It is through fear that the devil holds us in bondage (Heb 2:15). The solution to fear is trust in God. And even if we were to be killed, we would still win, for the martyr’s crown would await us. Do not fear!
Why were foreign alliances so troubling to Isaiah? First of all, they manifested a lack of trust in the Lord with the following thinking: “Can God really save us? Maybe, but just in case He doesn’t come through, let’s make sure we have a plan B.” Hmm … not much faith there! But second (and related) the secular states of today were unknown at that time. People and nations were deeply religious. Alliances with foreign lands meant marriages to foreign queens as well as adopting the false religions of those nations and queens. Can someone say, “Jezebel”? Or how about Solomon and his 1000 wives and all their foreign gods? It was his folly that led to a divided Jewish nation and that introduced the wicked practices of the Baals and other Canaanite atrocities. These alliances manifested a lack of trust in God and introduced, inevitably, the adultery of “sleeping with” other gods.
An admonition is in order for us as well. As a Church, we ought to be wary of too many entanglements or partnerships with our increasingly hostile secular government. Many strings are attached to the federal and state monies we accept to serve the poor, give tuition assistance, etc. Compromises are increasingly demanded of us. Sadly, some sectors of the Church (especially certain universities) are caving in to the power and slavery of money and are compromising on same-sex unions and providing contraception (and even abortifacients) to their employees through health care plans. Large blocks of federal money are currently administered by some Catholic charitable organizations around the country. These government entanglements increasingly demand compromises of us and it is only going to get worse. Beware! We need to shift back to using our own monies to care for the poor. We need to be willing to say no to funding that comes with the demand to make compromises we cannot make. Serving the poor is important, but we cannot let even that become an idol. And frankly, if we are using mostly government money, can we really say that we are serving the poor? Are we not, rather, merely administering a government program? The Pope recently warned that the Church is not merely an NGO (any non-governmental, voluntary, not-for-profit organization).
Individual Catholics would also do well to be more hesitant to form political alliances. Too often, we allow political views to overrule our faith. Catholics need to be Catholics first, and be willing to denounce sin and evil no matter who perpetrates it or promotes it.
Alliances are often dangerous things. Too easily do we slip into adultery with the world. Beware! Compromise is ugly; adultery is a disgraceful betrayal of the Lord, whom we should fear and love.
Do not be afraid!
Tomorrow we will look at a passage that speaks of staying faithful and prayerful until the storms of destruction pass by.
For some twenty-four of my twenty-seven years as a priest I have lived in and ministered to largely African-American parishes and communities. It has been a great blessing to me spiritually, liturgically, and personally.
As you may imagine, I get a lot of questions from people when racially charged events appear in the news. I’m asked what my parishioners think as well as what I think.
This past week began with the death of two African-American men, Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, in interactions with the police. Their deaths are certainly tragic and appear prima facie to be unnecessary, even possibly criminal. And while the investigations into the circumstances must continue, the videos are nevertheless horrible to watch. Add to this a long string of recently publicized deaths under similar conditions and the result is a widespread, deeply held belief among African-Americans that the weapons of law enforcement are too quickly drawn, guilt is too easily presumed, and deadly solutions are too frequently the recourse when the dispatcher notes that the subject is a black male.
The week ended with the tragic shooting death of five police officers and injury of several others. These officers had no connection with the questionable deaths earlier in the week other than the blue uniforms they wore. Whatever injustices police in other cities may have committed, the shooting of the Dallas policemen was an egregious crime that will likely set back any reasonable discussions on these matters for a long time. Violent responses only encourage more injustice and more violence. Absolutely no one is helped by this act of declared vengeance by the assailant, a man who does not deserve to be named.
In the midst of all of this, how should we respond? Something tells me that the first step is to stop and really listen to one another.
Not a Spokesman – Although I have pastored in and been immersed in the African-American community for many years, I often humorously note, “I’ve been white all my life.” I cannot begin to know the depths of what it feels like to be African-American in a country with a history like ours. I am not, and cannot be, a spokesman for the black community. And thus I resist answering those who ask me what my parishioners think. My response can only be inadequate.
But I can say that I have learned to listen and simply to accept the experiences of others, experiences that often surprise me because I’d like to think we’ve made more progress than what I hear. My parishioners are people whom I trust and I will not doubt their experiences just because they aren’t mine, or because I think America isn’t or shouldn’t be like that. Our parishioners have varied backgrounds. Many are college-educated. Some are government employees; some own their own businesses. Some work in healthcare: doctors, nurses, or nursing home staff. Others are teachers, lawyers, or work on Capitol Hill. Still others have IT-related jobs, work in retail, or are involved in real estate. Although some of our parishioners are poor, overall my parish is an upper-middle-class African-American parish. With 600 in attendance (120 of whom are children), the offertory alone is almost a million dollars per year; other donations amount to another 200,000. We are not a poor, black, inner-city parish by any definition.
Despite this, most of my parishioners (many of whom earn six figures) can attest to the ongoing frustration of “driving while black,” “shopping while black,” and “hailing a taxi while black.” A man in my parish who is nearly sixty and a professional with a job on K Street, rejoices that Uber has arrived; prior to that it was very difficult for him to get a cab. He once filmed his attempts. Empty taxi after empty taxi drove right past him only to stop further up the block to pick up another patron, usually white and/or female.
Stories like this shock me. I think to myself that this can’t possibly still be going on in America. But these are people I trust and have lived with for a long, long time; they are not fired-up activists looking for trouble. They are talking about experiences that are realities for them. I once took a walk with an African-American deacon from a nearby Catholic parish. He was wearing trousers and a button-down shirt—ordinary, “respectable” clothing. We stepped into a store and he said to me, “Now watch. I am the ‘face of crime.’ We’re going to get extra scrutiny.” Dubious, I kept a little distance from him so that I could observe. Sure enough, that extra scrutiny was subtle but undeniably there.
Many African-Americans have also experienced problems with their treatment by the police. This is not to say that every interaction with law enforcement is bad every time. But it is common enough that many African-Americans do not have the same level of trust in the police that white Americans do. The widespread anger in the black community is not artificially created by activists or by the media; even if they at times light the fuse, the powder keg comes from past experiences and from events that are still happening today.
This may not be your experience or mine. We tend to doubt the experiences of others, especially when they are different from ours. But the point is that these are the experiences of many, if not most, African-Americans.
The first step in listening is to accept the stated experiences of many African-Americans without discounting or doubting them, to respectfully acknowledge them. A respectful reply could be as simple as saying, “I’m sorry that this has happened to you in the past and still continues in our country. Thank you for telling me so that I can better understand.”
White Americans also have experiences with race that are painful. In fact, one of the greatest difficulties in this time of political correctness is that many of the feelings and experiences of white Americans are excoriated and/or disallowed. In some sense they are not even allowed to express them at all without being shamed or sidelined.
There is much dismay and fear among many white Americans at the soaring rate of crime in poor neighborhoods, the high rate of black-on-black crime, and the further breakdown of African-American families. There is also a frustration when, despite the emergence of a strong black middle-class in many regions and the election (and reelection) of an African-American president, many activists minimize progress and still label the United States a racist country.
Most white Americans do not simply lay this at the feet of the African-American community. The causes are also seen as rooted in a poorly designed, patronizing welfare system that has undermined poor families, isolated them in housing projects and inferior schools, and locked many into a suffocating cycle of intergenerational poverty.
But again, publicly expressing such thoughts, fears, or experiences is extremely difficult in today’s politically correct culture. And thus resentments simmer and honest conversations about mutual solutions seem impossible.
The terrible, radical act of an isolated gunman has surely not helped the advancement of honest, respectful, candid discussion of our various experiences. But I remain convinced that such conversation is essential. We ought not to doubt or excoriate the experiences of others.
Some will say, “What good will listening do? It’s just a bunch of talk.” Perhaps, but if real listening can take place, maybe better understanding and mutual respect will pave the way to better, more mutually satisfactory solutions. I know it’s big and idealistic, but I think there’s a place for big and idealistic—even in this cynical, decaying culture of ours.
I’m no policy wonk; I’m just a white guy who has loved and ministered to God’s people in largely African-American parishes for a long and wonderful time. There’s something about this long conversation over the years that has fostered mutual respect, love, and understanding. Believe it or not, we actually talk about things other than race! We talk about God and about the stuff of life: family, the death of loved ones, the latest movie, football, the weather, and how bad traffic is getting. People are people.
After all these years I can say to my parishioners, most of whom are African-American, “For you, I am your pastor. With you, I am your brother. From you, I am your son.”
Life lived together can do that. Race gives way to relationships, fears to familial feelings, concerns to commonality, and different experiences to delightful enrichment. It’s a long conversation that isn’t over yet, but that already blesses us.
One could easily reduce today’s Gospel to trite moralisms: Help people in trouble; Be kind to strangers; etc. While these are certainly good thoughts, I would argue that it is about far deeper things than human kindness or ethics. This is a Gospel about the transformative power of God’s love and our need to receive it. It is not a Gospel that can be understood as a demand of the flesh.
Let’s look at the Gospel in three stages.
I. The Radical Requirements of Love – As the Gospel opens, there is a discussion between Jesus and a scholar of the law as to a basic summation of the law. The text says, There was a scholar of the law who stood up to test him and said, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?” He said in reply, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
The Shema, a summary of the law known to every Jew, is quoted by the scholar. Note how often the word “all” occurs. There is a radical nature to the call of love that cannot be avoided. When it comes to love, the requirement is not to give what is reasonable, to give a little, or perhaps to give a tithe. No, the call is to give God all our heart, mind, being, and strength, and to love our neighbor as though he were our very self.
As we shall see in a moment, our flesh recoils at this sort of open demand; immediately we want to qualify it and quantify it somehow. The flesh seeks refuge in law, asking, “What is the minimum I can do while still meeting the requirements?”
But love is by its very nature open-ended and generous. Love is extravagant; it wants to do more. Love wants to please the beloved. A young man in love does not say to himself, “What is the cheapest gift I can get her for her birthday?” No, he will see an opportunity to show his love; he may even spend too much. Love does not think, “What is the least I can do?” Love thinks, “What more can I do?” Love is expansive and extravagant.
And thus the great Shema speaks to the open-ended and extravagant quality of love.
But the flesh, that fallen and sin-soaked part of our nature, recoils at such expansive talk and brings out the lawyer in us, negotiating for lesser terms.
II. The Reductionism that Resists Love– After giving the beautiful answer about love, the lawyer (and there is a lawyer in all of us) now reverts to form and speaks out of his flesh. The text continues, But because he wished to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
In other words, he wants to say, “Look, if I have to love my neighbor, let’s make this category as small and manageable as possible.”
Note how quickly he has retreated into a kind of fearful reaction to the broad expanse of love. His fear is likely rooted in the fact that he has reduced the Shema into a moralism, as if he could pull the whole thing off out of his own power. And so he recoils and demands more favorable terms of surrender. Because he thinks he has to do it all, he needs to get its scope into the range of something he can manage on his own. Perhaps he is willing to consider the people on his block to be his neighbors, but those two or three blocks away? That’s just too much.
The fearful lawyer in him has started negotiating a kind of “debt relief.” He seeks to “define down” the category “neighbor.” But the Lord is not buying it; He will expand the concept even further than the Jewish notions of the day.
To be fair to the lawyer in this passage, there is a lawyer in all of us, negotiating for favorable terms. And while it is not wrong for us to ask for some guidance in specifying the law, we all know that the lawyer in us is really trying more to evade the demands than to fulfill them.
In a way we are all like the typical teenager. Every teenager is a natural lawyer. Give a teenager a rule and he will parse every nuance of it in order to evade its demands or to water it down.
Some years ago I was teaching 7th grade religion in our parish’s Catholic school. I told the kids, “Do your work … and no talking!” Within moments, a young lady started singing. Interestingly, her name was Carmen (which means song in Latin). When I rebuked her for breaking the rule she replied, “I wasn’t talking; I was singing … and you didn’t say anything about singing.” Yes, she was a natural born lawyer.
I remember my thoughts when I was in high school: I couldn’t break the 6th Commandment (forbidding adultery) because I wasn’t married and certainly wouldn’t be intimate with a married woman since they were all “old.” Yes, the lawyer was at work in me, but was answered by Jesus in Matthew 5:27-30.
This is how we are in our rebellious, fearful, and resentful flesh. Hearing a law, we go to work at once and seek to over-specify it, to parse every word, to seek every nuance so as to evade its intent in every way possible. If we are going to follow it at all, we’re going to try to find a way that involves the minimum effort on our part.
So often Catholics and other Christians talk more like lawyers than lovers: “Do I have to go to confession? How often? Do I have to pray? How long? Do I have to give to the poor? How much? Why can’t I do that? It’s not so bad; besides, everyone else is doing it.”
Sometimes, too, we seek to reduce holiness to perfunctory religious observance. Look, I go to Mass; I put something in the collection basket; I say my prayers. What more do you want? Perhaps we think that if we do certain ritual observances (which are good in themselves) we have bought God off and do not need to look at other matters in our life. Because I go to Mass and say a few prayers, I can put a check mark in the “God box” and don’t really need to look at my lack of forgiveness, my harsh tongue, or my lack of generosity.
This is reductionism. It is the lawyer in us at work, seeking to avoid the extravagance of love by hiding behind legal minimalism. It emerges from a kind of fear generated by the notion that I must be able to do everything on my own, by the power of my own flesh. But that’s not possible. You can’t pull it off on your own. But God can, and that is why He commands it of us.
Our fleshly notions have to die. Our spirit must come alive with the virtue of hope that relies trustingly on God’s grace to bring out a vigorous and loving response in us. Law and the flesh say, “What are the minimum requirements?” Love says, “What more can I do?” This is the gift of a loving heart that we must seek.
III. The Response that Reflects Love – The Lord then paints a picture of what his love and grace can do in someone: Jesus replied, “A man fell victim to robbers as he went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. They stripped and beat him and went off leaving him half-dead. A priest happened to be going down that road, but when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. Likewise, a Levite came to the place, and when he saw him, he passed by on the opposite side. But a Samaritan traveler who came upon him was moved with compassion at the sight. He approached the victim, poured oil and wine over his wounds and bandaged them. Then he lifted him up on his own animal, took him to an inn, and cared for him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper with the instruction, ‘Take care of him. If you spend more than what I have given you, I shall repay you on my way back.’ Which of these three, in your opinion, was neighbor to the robbers’ victim?” He answered, “The one who treated him with mercy.” Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
There is a very important phrase that must not be missed, for it gives the key to the Samaritan man’s actions: “[he] was moved.” Note that the verb “was moved” is in the passive voice. That is to say it was not so much that he acted, but that he was acted upon.
More specifically, love and grace have moved within him and are moving him. The Greek verb here is ἐσπλαγχνίσθη (esplagchnisthe), a third person singular passive verb meaning “to be deeply moved” or “to be moved to compassion.” The verb is also in the aorist tense, signifying that something has happened but also that it has a kind of ongoing
Why is this phrase “was moved” so important? Because it indicates for us the power of the gift of grace. So many of our fears about what God asks and what love demands are rooted in the idea that we must accomplish them out of our own flesh. No, that is not the Gospel. In the New Covenant the keeping of the Law is received, not achieved. The keeping of the commandments is a work of God within us to which we yield. To keep the commandments and to fulfill the law is the result of love, not the cause of it.
We do not know the Samaritan’s history; the Lord does not supply it. And because this is only a story, the Samaritan is only a literary figure.
But for us the teaching must be clearly understood: Our receiving and experiencing of love is and must be the basis of our keeping of the law. Experiencing and receiving God’s love for us equips, empowers, and enables us to respond extravagantly as joyful lovers rather than as fearful lawyers.
Love lightens every load. When we love God and love other people, we want to do what love requires. Even if there are difficulties that must be overcome, love makes us eager to respond anyway.
When I was in the 7th grade, I found myself quite taken by a pretty girl named Shelly. I was quite “in love.” One day she was walking down the hall trying to carry a pile of books to the library; I saw my chance! I offered to carry those books at once. Now I was skinny as a rail with no muscles at all, and in those days the books were heavy. But I was glad to do it despite the effort. Love does that; it lightens every load and makes us eager to help, even at great cost.
Perhaps it’s just a silly story of an awkward teenager, but it demonstrates what love does. It “moves” us to be generous, kind, merciful, patient, and even extravagant. We don’t do what we do because we have to, but because we want to.
The Samaritan in this story, was “moved” with and by love to overcome race, nation, fear, and danger. He generously gave his time and money to save a brother and fellow traveler.
Let love lift you. Let it empower you, equip you, and enable you! Go to the Lord and pray for a deeper experience of His love. Open the door of your heart and let the love of God in. Go to the foot of the cross and remember what the Lord has done for you. Let what He has done be so present in your mind and heart that you are grateful and different. Let God’s love come alive in you.
As a witness, I promise you that love lightens every load and makes us eager to keep the commandments, to help others, to forgive, to show mercy, to be patient and kind, and to courageously speak the truth in love to others. Yes, I am a witness that love can and does change us. I’m not what I want to be, but I am not what I used to be. Love has lifted me and lightened every load of mine.
Again, today’s Gospel is not a mere moralism. The main point is that we must let the Lord’s love into our heart. If we do, we will do what love does and we will do it extravagantly—not because we have to, but because we want to.
The grace of love lightens every load and equips us for every good work.
This song says, “More of his saving fullness see, more of his love who died for me.”
Given the violence of the past week both in the U.S. and abroad, it is important to consider the dignity of human life. I think the video below helps to do this. In it, you will see a visual representation of worldwide airline traffic over a 24-hour period. Each plane is represented by a small dot of yellow light.
As you view the video consider some of the following:
Each dot is a plane that carries hundreds of people.
Each individual has a story.
Some people are joyful, flying to attend a weddings or family events.
Some people are sad, flying to attend funerals.
Some people are nervous, flying to job interviews.
Other people are flying to attend conferences or give business presentations.
Each dot is a plane filled with people who have both gifts and struggles.
The life of each person on each plane intersects with that of hundreds of other people.
Some people are influential and/or well-known.
Other people live more quiet, hidden lives but are still very precious to others.
The people on the planes are parents and children, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, old and young.
Some of the people on the planes will die soon.
Other people on the planes will live for many more years.
All of the people on these planes have lives that are swept up into the great mystery of God’s unfolding plan.
None of the people on the planes is an “accident” or a surprise to God.
Each person has the dignity of being an intentional and loving creation of God.
Each person is known by God more than he knows himself.
God knows everything about every person on each plane.
God knows the past, present, and future of every person on each plane.
God sustains every fiber of every person on each plane.
Before these people were ever formed in their mother’s wombs, God knew them, loved them, and intended them.
Every one of their days was written in God’s book before any of those days came to pass.
Each dot: a plane. Each dot: a gathering of people. Each person has both a history and a destiny unfolding, and is known to God, loved by God, and sustained by God.
Behold the mystery and the dignity of humanity as seen in a thousand points of light:
The video below contains a surprise, reminding us that not all things are as they appear. We should be careful about sizing things up, and when we must do so, do it with great humility. There is an old saying that seems appropriate:
