Author: Msgr. Charles Pope

There was a tendency in ancient plays in Greece and Rome to introduce something that was called a deus ex machina solution (literally “God from a Machine”). For very often, the playwrights had concocted a plot so complicated, with so many subplots and difficult situations, that they themselves really couldn’t resolve the mess they’d written. Thus, “gods” (marionettes or actors really) would be lowered down onto the stage from above, using winches and other machines. These “gods” would simply and magically solve all the problems. Hence the expression deus ex machine has come in English to mean “a contrived or unlikely solution.”

Somehow, I thought about that as I saw the cartoon below. I also thought a lot about the mess that we’re currently in in our culture, and throughout the whole world. For where, really, aren’t things just an awful mess? Marriage, family, sexuality, and the meaning and purpose of life, are all confused. Social order, self-restraint, and any moral consensus, let alone the practice of virtue or even common sense, are becoming hard to find.

How are we ever to clean up this mess? The depth of confusion and increasing social chaos, along with base and reprehensible behavior that many actually celebrate, make it hard to imagine that we’re going anywhere, except to a very bad place, and with increasing rapidity.

Yes, it’s a little bit like the ancient playwrights of Greece and Rome who had written themselves into such a chaotic corner that they had to use fake gods to bail themselves out. As for us, only the one, true God can snatch us out of the quicksand.

In the cartoon below, there is a secret agent man who seems to think he has everything under control. But even as the cartoon opens, we can see he’s a bit foolish, unsteady on his feet, and can barely cross the street without getting killed. Let’s call this secret agent man “Modern Man.”  He thinks he amounts to something, but he ain’t all that.

There comes into “Modern Man’s” life a pesky pigeon that he just can’t beat. Let’s call the pigeon “Consequences.” For all Modern Man’s gadgets and apparent smarts, the pigeon Consequences just keeps outsmarting Modern Man. In fact, it is exactly Modern Man’s technology that the pigeon, Consequences, is able to exploit. In effect, the pigeon hoists Modern Man with his own petard.

And though utter disaster is ultimately avoided by Modern Man, as the video draws to its conclusion the pesky pigeon is still there. He’ll never go away! Then comes a surprise ending, a kind of deus ex machina solution.

What does all of this have to say to us modern men (and women)? Well, very much like “Modern Man” in the cartoon, we too have been hoisted with our own petards. Despite our bravado and our prideful self-assurance, we ain’t all that. We can barely cross the road without getting killed.  In other words, it is only by the sheer mercy of God that we have not annihilated ourselves with nuclear weapons, etc.

But like Modern Man in the cartoon, we are increasingly dogged by the consequences of our many bad choices. Like the man in the video that just can’t beat the pigeon, we just can’t seem to get away from the consequences that afflict us. And it is often our modern way of life and technology that are the very things that cause the greatest harm.

And while we have somehow avoided complete disaster, it becomes increasingly hard to imagine how we can ever get out of this mess that we are in. Yes, only a solution from above, only God, can save us.

How he will do it? I don’t really know. I am afraid that the only way I can see of pressing the “reset button” in a world gone mad would be for some awful calamity to happen that would so rock us back on our heels that we would actually have to start living ordered lives again.

But of course, I am not God, thanks be to God! God has in the past effected great reforms, seemingly out of the blue. For example, even as the Roman Empire crumbled in the 4th Century and the Church lost all of North Africa to the Muslims in the 7th Century, God worked the miracle that the Barbarian tribes of the north suddenly began to embrace Christ.

At another great crisis in the “Dark Ages,” when much seemed lost to plague and social disorder, suddenly people like Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic appeared on the scene. And later came St. Bernard, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. John of the Cross, ushering in great reforms in response to the Protestant Revolt. And when millions walked out of the Church in Europe, nine million came in in Mexico, through Our Lady of Guadalupe.

We can only pray that God will do it again; namely, effect a great reform, as if out of the blue. Lord knows we were in an awful mess emerging from the Satanic 20th-century. It’s going to take a miracle, or a calamity (I hope not), to reset and restore the modern world seemingly gone mad.

For the sake of Thy sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world.

Anyway, enjoy the cartoon. It’s a good little allegory about a prideful secret agent who thinks he’s all that, but he ain’t; and how a little pigeon practically pecks him to death. Only a solution from above can save him from the awful bird called “Consequences.”

Help us Lord!

The themes of early Lent are pretty basic. The ashes of Ash Wednesday announce the simple truth that we are going to die, and  thereafter we will face judgment. Hence we need to repent and come to believe the good news that only Jesus can save us.

The reading for Thursday after Ash Wednesday features Moses laying out the basic reality that all of us have a choice to make. He says to us,

Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom…

I call heaven and earth today to witness against you:
I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse. (Dt 30:15, 20)

So there it is, our choice: life or death, prosperity or doom. An old Latin expression says, Tertium non datur (no third way is given). We often like to think that we can plow some middle path. But in the matter of the last things, there is no middle path, no third way. Either we choose God and his kingdom, and then reflect that choice in all of our smaller decisions, or we do not.

To those who think that a middle path is possible, I would say that it is in effect the way of compromise, ambivalence, and tepidity. Walking such a path shows a lack of real commitment and a refusal to witness to Christ.  These are not virtues that belong to God’s Kingdom; they pertain more to the kingdom of darkness. Jesus says,  Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil. (Matt 5:37). He also says, No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Matt 6:24)

So we are back to a choice: for the Kingdom of Light or for the kingdom of darkness; for the world and its ways, or for God and His ways.  Do we choose to gratify the flesh or nourish the spirit, to serve Satan and his agenda or to serve Christ and His will and plan?

You are free to choose, but you’re not free not to choose. That is to say, you must choose. And if you think that you can go on simply not choosing one or the other, I’ve got news for you: not choosing is choosing the kingdom of darkness.

While it is true that many do not directly choose Satan, but rather indirectly choose him by following his ways, we are asked to directly choose God by accepting the gift of faith and basing our life on what the Lord commands. Faith is not some sort of “default position” we can have by accident. Faith is the supernaturally-assisted and transformed human decision for God and all that that choice implies. Faith is a gift freely offered, and one that we must also freely accept; it is a choice that will not be forced on us. And through many daily choices, we are called to reaffirm, by grace, the choice we have made for God.

So again, life is about choices: the fundamental choice of Faith, and all the daily choices that either affirm or deny the reality of our faith.

We live in times in which people like to demand free choice, but also like to evade the responsibilities that come with making choices. Moses goes on in the reading today to describe the fact that the choice we make for or against God will have consequences:

If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,
which I enjoin on you today,
loving him, and walking in his ways,
and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,
you will live and grow numerous,
and the LORD, your God,
will bless you in the land you are entering to occupy.
If, however, you turn away your hearts and will not listen,
but are led astray and adore and serve other gods,
I tell you now that you will certainly perish;
you will not have a long life
on the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and occupy. (Dt 30)

Yes, choices have consequences. And even little daily choices have the cumulative affect of moving us in one direction or the other, toward God and our goal or away.

Many little choices also have a way of forming our hearts. Deeds become habits; habits become character; character becomes destiny. Many little choices form our hearts, establish our character, and move us into one future or another.

And while it is true that sudden and dramatic conversions are possible as long as we are still living, it is more common that, as we make our journey, our hearts become more fixed, and our fundamental character becomes less and less likely to change. As we get older, it’s harder to change because that’s what choices do to us: they move us in a certain direction, down a certain path. And the further along that path we go, the less likely we are to turn back.

Therefore daily choices are important, and making frequent examinations of conscience and frequent confession are essential. Each day we ought to ask and consider the question, “Where am I going with my life?” If we go on too long living an unreflective life,  it is easy to find ourselves deeply locked in sinful habits and patterns that are harder and harder to break. Thus frequent reflection is necessary, and we ought not make light of small daily decisions.

We live in times in which, to some degree, it is easier to insulate ourselves from the immediate consequences of many choices we make. Medicine, technology, social safety nets, etc. are all good things in and of themselves, but they do tend to shield us from immediate consequences, and they help cultivate the illusion that consequences can be forever evaded.

We also live in times in which, perhaps more than ever before, the community is often willing to bear the burden of many bad individual choices. Again, this is not in and of itself a bad thing, but it does become an enabler of bad behavior, and fosters the illusion that consequences can be avoided forever. They cannot.

Our own culture is currently under the weight of a colossal number of poor individual choices,  ones that have added up to a financial, spiritual, moral, and emotional debt that we cannot pay.  Sexual misconduct, divorce, cohabitation, abortion, STDs, the use of hallucinogenic and addictive drugs, the casting off of of discipline and parental responsibility, the rejection of faith and ancient and tested wisdom,  rebellion, silence in the face of sin and injustice, greed, consumerism gone mad, factions, envy discord and on and on… all of this is creating a tremendous toll. The consequences are mounting and it is becoming clear that even the most basic functions of society such as raising the next generation, preserving order and stability, and ensuring the common good are gravely threatened.

And what is true collectively is also true for us as individuals. Lots of bad little choices quickly draw us into self-destructive patterns that get deeper and deeper. And without regular reflection and penitential seasons like Lent, we lose our way too easily! St. Augustine noted this in his Confession, in which he described himself as being bound, “not by another’s irons, but by my own iron will…For in truth lust is made out of a perverse will, and when lust is served, it becomes habit, and when habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity” (Conf 8.5.10)

Moses’ warnings are before us as never before.

Back in 1917, a beautiful and holy Woman (Our Lady) appeared to three little children. She explained that the horrifying war (WW I) was finally coming to an end. But, she warned, if people did not turn back to her Son Jesus and start praying, a worse war would ensue; Russia would spread her errors and great disaster would befall this world. Do I need to tell you what happened? Of course not! Any even casual assessment of the 20th Century would find it hard to conclude that the century was anything but satanic.

Life and Death, prosperity and doom. What will you choose? What will we choose?

Choices! Consequences!

From heavy to a little humor:

Traditional Catholic theology has distinguished the “Four Last Things” : Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. We are admonished to meditate upon these things frequently. We WILL die, be judged, and spend eternity either in Hell or in Heaven (likely after some time in purgatory).

Beginning with the end, or starting with the last things, is, paradoxically, a good place for Lent to commence.

Regarding Death –  All men are appointed to die once, and after that face The judgment (Hebrews 9:27) The video posted below is of a song by Johnny Cash on the topic of judgment. Here are some of the words:

You can run on for a long time
Run on for a long time,
run on for a long time
Sooner or later
God’ll cut you down

Go tell that long tongue liar,
go and tell that midnight rider
Tell the rambler, the gambler,
the back biter
Tell ‘em that God’s
gonna cut ‘em down.

We will all die one day, or as the song puts it, be “cut down.”

Regarding Judgment – Scripture says, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad. (2 Cor 5:10). And of the unrepentant St. Peter says, but they will have to give account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead (1 Peter 4:5). And in Hebrews, For we know him who said, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge his people.” It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God. (Hebrews 10:31). And of this salutary fear we should have of our Judgment Scripture says, Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. (Hebrews 4:13). And Jesus himself warns, But I tell you that for every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. (Matt 12:36)

Regarding Heaven –  Heaven is our true goal, not all the other stuff we run after endlessly. The heart of heaven is to be with God, to look upon his beautiful and serene face and become fully alive with him for all eternity. As Scripture says, there is a deep longing in us for this look: My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I seek! (Psalm 27:8). This is really what our desires are all about: God, and the healing, fulfilling, and beatific glory of being in His presence forevermore, transformed by the Look and the glory of his love.

So glorious is this promise that it cannot be reduced to words; eye has never seen it, nor ear heard it. Scripture says, Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. (1 John 3:2).

Jesus said to St. Catherine that if she ever saw the state of a human being fully alive with him in heaven, she would fall down and worship because she would think she was looking at him (Jesus). This is our dignity and our call. Heaven is beyond what we could ever imagine in its glory and beatitude.

Regarding Hell – The teaching  of Hell bothers a lot of modern Christians who have had God’s love emphasized to the exclusion of just about everything else about God. For example, they have learned that He is Truth and utterly Holy, that nothing unholy can tolerate His presence, and so forth. No one loves you more than Jesus does, and yet no one warned of Hell and judgment more than Jesus did – in parable after parable, warning after warning.

God does want to save us all and have us live with him forever. This is clear in Scripture. But God has also made us free, and wants us to love Him freely and accept His invitation. This is His respect for our freedom.

And though everyone wants to go to heaven, it is a heaven as they perceive it. But not everyone wants to go to the real heaven, which is God’s Kingdom in perfection. You see in heaven, God’s Kingdom, there is love for the truth, love for chastity, love for the poor, love for justice, love for one another, esteem of mercy and forgiveness, and at the center, God himself. But NOT EVERYONE wants these things. Not everyone wants the truth, or wants to be chaste; not everyone wants to forgive and to love everyone. Not everyone wants God to be at the center; they prefer that spot for themselves or some other idol. Many people can’t stand to go to Church at all, or if they do, they want it to be as short as possible. If we don’t want to spend time with God here, what makes us think we will want to do so after death? If the liturgy is boring or loathsome to someone now, what makes him think he will enjoy the liturgy of heaven? And the Scriptures clearly describe heaven as primarily a liturgy of praise (cf esp. Rev 4-8) centered on God.

So God invites, but not all accept or are even interested in the real heaven to which God invites them. In the end, God respects our choice. This is why there is Hell; it is for those who do not want what the Kingdom of God is.

We ought to pray for a deepening desire for heaven. Death is on the way; sooner or later we will all be cut down. And the Lord Jesus will judge us, among other ways, by asking this question: “What is it that you want?” Do not think that we will magically change at that moment. By that time our choice for the Lord and his Kingdom, or for something else will be firmly fixed. Behaviors become habits; habits become character; character becomes destiny.

The Four Last things are actually a pretty good place to begin our Lenten reflections.

Ponder this video:

Some final thoughts from the Wisdom tradition, which we have been sampling in the Liturgy of the Hours, just prior to the arrival of Lent. The following two Proverbs from Ecclesiastes come to mind, along with some concluding advice at the end of that Book. These sayings seem especially apt for those of us who engage and struggle with our troubled culture, and they help us to keep things in perspective.

Do not in spirit become quickly discontented,  for discontent lodges in the bosom of a fool.

We certainly do live in times that challenge our sense of well-being. There is much to lament in these times of broken families, confused sexuality, secularism, and greater hostility to the teachings of our holy faith.

And yet, in all of this, we must not yield to the temptation to become too sour. Or as the proverb says, we ought not become too quickly discontented.

At the center of every Christian heart should be a deep and abiding gratitude to God for his many, indeed countless gifts. Into every life, every family, every community, every culture, and every nation, there are admixed many beautiful blessings, along with struggles and hardships.

The proverb here warns us against “discontent.” The word comes from the past participle of the Latin word continere meaning to contain or hold. And thus to be discontented amounts to refusing to hold within us the joy and gratitude that we ought to have for so many rich blessings, even in the midst of difficulties.

Every day, ten trillion things go right and only a handful of things go wrong. It is no exaggeration to speak of ten trillion things going right when we consider that every aspect of every cell within our body, every molecule that makes up those cells, every atom that makes up the molecules that make up our cells; all those things are up and running and functioning by the grace of God.

And beyond our bodies is a vast ecosystem with myriad complex interactions such as photosynthesis enabling plants to produce oxygen for us to breathe, the Gulf Stream moderating our temperature, the Van Allen belts protecting us from the harmful radiation of the sun, Jupiter and Saturn out there catching comets, the Earth’s orbit maintaining itself carefully, a mere 3° from being a perfect circle, keeping our temperatures more stable. Our sun remains stable, unlike many other stars, and we live in a relatively quiet section of the Milky Way galaxy, free from the usual space debris that flies about in other areas.

And troubled though America is, people are still (literally) dying to get here. We drive on paved roads, have a functioning and reliable electrical grid, a stable government, and a good market system.

We ought to be filled with immense gratitude, with large doses of wonder and awe at the countless blessings that God bestows on us from moment to moment.

To become quickly discontented, and even more, to allow discontent to lodge in our hearts, is deeply foolish. It is foolish first of all, because it is so myopic. Refusing to see, or to reflect frequently on our manifold blessings is a kind of self-imposed blindness.

Consider a rich man who thought himself poor. Only a fool would close his eyes and refuse to see the millions he actually had in the bank. Why live poor and run from creditors? There is no one would not agree that a man of such resources claiming to be poor must either be blind, or a fool, or both.

So much more so for us who have even more blessings. And yet how easily we become discontented and negative.

Thus, even though there are things about which we must be very sober, there are also many other things about which we must be exuberantly joyful. Without this balance we are, as a Proverb says, foolish.

Do not say: How is it that former times were better than these? For it is not in wisdom that you ask about this.

Here too is an important caution for those of us who lament many things in these difficult days. We may tend to look to previous decades see them as more idyllic than they actually were. All ages have struggles particular to them, but they have blessings too. Some look to the 1950s with nostalgic affection but they forget the nuclear arms race, the Korean War, and the Cold War. The 1940s had the second World War; the 30s had the Great Depression; and the 20s was a time of rather widespread immorality and organized crime. The 1910s had another major world war. The 1900s was a time of great economic recession, and waves of immigrants were often made to live and work in horrifying conditions. And so forth with every decade going backward in time. But each of these decades also had its blessings.

The fact is, whatever strengths or struggles there were in the past, whatever strengths or struggles there are in the present day, we are living now. Accept your assignment with humility, and seek to influence positively the many difficulties faced in these current times. And do not fail to be grateful for the many blessings we have today such as medicine, technology, and many creature comforts that make life a little more pleasant.

Be actively grateful and gratefully active.

Finally, then, comes this word from Ecclesiastes, as we look to Lent and to essential goal of our life:

The last word, when all is heard: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is man’s all; because God will bring to judgment every work, with all its hidden qualities, whether good or bad.

Yes, look to your own judgment. Have a healthy Fear of God and a sober appreciation for the fact that judgment awaits us all. Prepare for your own judgment and help others prepare for theirs, insofar as it is your duty to remind and prepare them.

If you have suffered injustice, or grow weary of these sinful times, remember God sees all and others will answer to God for what they have done if they have not repented. Pray that they do repent; for nothing will be unrequited and every idle word will have to be accounted for (see Mat 12:36).

Do not delay your own repentance either. Tomorrow is not promised, but judgment is.

Jesus our Judge says, For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open. Therefore consider carefully how you listen. (Luke 8:17-18)

Jesus gets the last word!

This video is an allegory of a woman who rejects the offer of truth and order. Truth offers his friendship. After being rejected, he warns, admonishes, and offers again. But the woman’s rejection of truth persists and great is her ruin.

When we read today’s Gospel (from the Sermon on the Mount) we must be careful not to misinterpret its basic vision.  Jesus is not telling us what to do, but rather is offering us something to receive.  The wrong way to interpret this Gospel is to think Jesus is just saying, “Stop worrying.”  We all get this advice from people every day and it isn’t very helpful.  This is not what Jesus is saying.  For remember, in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is describing what a transformed human person is like.  And what he is teaching us here is that as He begins to live His life in us, many of our anxieties will diminish and go away.

The transformed human person trusts God and is even able to see God’s hand in the difficulties of life.  It is this trust growing in us by God’s grace that ultimately diminishes and removes fear.  Trust God and fear diminishes.  This is the gift that Jesus offers in this Gospel.

We can distinguish three particular aspects of  anxiety that Jesus sets forth: The Problem of Possessions, the Problem of Paternity, and the Problem of Priority. Let’s examine each and see how the Lord wants to free us from them.

1. The Problem of Possessions – The text says, No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon is variously understood as riches, greed, or possessions. In an extended sense it can refer to the agenda of the world, which is focused essentially on material things, and which ties our dignity to only those things.

Whose slave are you? The Lord is clear that we cannot serve mammon  if we wish to serve God. The Greek word translated here as “serve” is δουλεύειν (douleuein), which more specifically means to “serve as a slave.”  We miss the strength of the text when we fail to notice the slavery aspect. It may happen in our culture that one works at a job, yet after work hours goes home and is free from obligations. Hence we tend to believe that we CAN serve both God and mammon. But the Greek word used here describes a slave, not a mere servant. And a slave is wholly given over to the will of his master. The Greek word is thus more intense than the English translation.

What the Lord is saying is, “Look, you’re either going to be a slave of the Lord or you’re going to be a slave of the world.”  And the honest truth is that most people are slaves of the world, slaves of mammon, slaves to riches, greed, and the agendas associated with them. These worldly things tend to completely consume us so that when we hear of some demand from God, we feel overwhelmed, even angry that something “more” is required of us. Our anger at God is a sign that we are slaves to mammon.

We are usually too proud to admit that we are slaves of the world, but the fact is that most of us are, to a large extent. The world and its demands press on us, and take up nearly all the oxygen in our life. It is this terrible slavery that is a huge source of our anxiety and  from which the Lord offers to free us.  The Lord describes the anxieties that flow from slavery to Mammon, slavery to the world, its riches, and its agenda:

I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink,  or about your body, what you will wear….. Why are you anxious about clothes? Do not worry and say, What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’

Still anxious! For us who live in the Western World, the anxieties about merely HAVING such things may have receded a bit. We are well-supplied and may not worry IF we will have clothes, food, etc. But even though we have them in abundance, still we obsessively worry about them. For example, we worry if we have the right clothes, if they are in fashion, if they look good on us, etc. We worry that we eat too much salt or too much fat. Indeed many are quite obsessed about what they eat. We have never lived so long and been so healthy, yet we have never been so anxious about our health! It’s amazing when you think of it. We have plenty of food and still we worry about food! Worry, worry, worry.  Anxiety about these things is a sign that we are slaves to them. Scripture says, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep. (Eccles 5:12)

What the Lord offers us here is to live His life in us so that we will not be slaves to mammon, but slaves to Him. We may not like the image of slavery, but I have news for you: we are so small and powerless that we are going to be slaves of someone; it might as well be the Lord! Being wholly devoted to the Lord and what pleases him breaks our obsession with the world, money, possessions, popularity, fashion, and the like.

As the Lord’s life and His will begin to replace our own life and will, our obsession with the world’s demands diminishes and its power is broken. As we grow into a deeper relationship with the Lord, our ties and concerns with worldly agendas fade. And as the ties are loosened, the anxiety diminishes.

You and I, in our flesh, are not going to stop worrying. But the Lord, living His life in us, isn’t worried at all. And as His power and influence over us grows, the worries lessen, and the anxiety goes.

This is the gift the Lord is offering if we but let him take greater possession of our hearts. How do we do this? Through the medicine of prayer, the Sacraments, daily doses of Scripture, and spiritual reading. Gradually the Lord’s heart, mind, and will transform our heart, mind, and will to be like His own.

2.  The Problem of Paternity  – The Lord Jesus wants to draw us to a deeper relationship with his Father. It remains a common spiritual problem that even those who develop something of a relationship with Jesus, still find the Eternal Father to be distant or remote. To many, the Father is a stranger. They have surely heard of Him and read of Him in the Scriptures. But he is stranger. Some even have a sort of fear of him. There are Old Testament texts that may come to mind, or perhaps some people struggle because their earthly Father was either stern or remote. Whatever the problem, the Lord Jesus wants to lead to us His Father. Note that the phrase, “your heavenly Father” occurs twice in this passage and four times in Chapter 6 overall. There are two other references to the Father as “God” in today’s gospel, and it is in Chapter 6 of Matthew that Jesus teaches us the “Our Father.”

Now all of these references to the Father, in close proximity to the invitation, “Do not worry,” cannot be overlooked. There is to be seen here an antidote to anxiety in having a closer relationship with the Heavenly Father. Our Heavenly Father knows what we need.  He cares for birds, flowers, and countless other things, and thus he is willing and able to care for us. To embrace and experience His love for us is to experience a lessening in anxiety.

Perhaps an illustration will help. When I was six years old, I had a fear that someone would break into our home, or that perhaps something bad would happen during the night. But when my Father was home I did not have these fears. In 1968 he left for Vietnam and was gone for a year. During that year I had an extended bout of ongoing fear that something bad might happen during the night. Daddy was gone and I felt unsafe. But in 1969 he returned and my fears went away. I did not cause them to go away; it was not an act of will on my part. It was simply this: Daddy was home.

And thus you and I may not be able to dismiss our fears and anxieties by a simple act of the will. But to the degree that our “Daddy-God” is near and we feel his presence, our fears just go away.

Here is a critical gift that Jesus wants to give us: a deep, personal experience of, and love for his Father. It is our perceived distance from the Father that causes our anxiety. But when we truly experience that our Heavenly Father “knows what we need,” we find our fears melting away.

Seek this gift from Jesus that his Father will be known and loved by you, that His presence will be close at hand. And then watch your fears melt away. The Lord Jesus can do this for us.  Take time and read the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15) slowly, and realize that the parable is really about the Father more than it is about the sons. Jesus is saying, “This is what my Father is like.”

3.  The Problem of Priority. The Text says,  But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. One of our greatest struggles is to have proper priorities and in the end, to do just one thing. This third matter (priority) is not unlike the first (possessions), but it is more about choices and direction rather than things and allegiances.

The simple truth is that we have a lot of trouble deciding what is most important and how to make good decisions. This causes a lot of grief and anxiety for us. We want too many things. We want to please too many people. We are too easily distracted from our goal. In many ways we have not even fully clarified our goal.

What is it that you want? What is the one thing that really guides every other thing you do? Now be honest! You may say “God.” You may say “the world,” or maybe “my career.”  But the fact is, a lot of people don’t really have a clear answer as to what the one thing they want is. The fact is they want a lot of things,  and have never really sat down and determined the one overarching goal of their life. And thus they run about chasing this thing and that, and experiencing lots of anxiety along the way.

Imagine a man driving north to New York from Philadelphia. He knows that Philadelphia is his destination. Along the way he sees lots of signs but is quickly able to determine which ones pertain to his journey and which ones can be ignored. If he sees a sign that says, “95 South Baltimore,” he ignores it and experiences no anxiety at all about doing so.

But now imagine another man who is not sure where he is going. It may be New York or it may be somewhere else. He just isn’t all that sure. Frankly, he hasn’t thought about it all that much and just sort of lets life happen. Now HE sees the sign for “95 South Richmond” and struggles to know if he should take it or not. The sign makes him anxious. It is a fork in the road and he is not sure what to do. Should he take it, or not? And even if he does finally make a choice, he wonders if he did the right thing. His choice only heightens his anxiety. He made a choice but keeps looking back, second-guessing, and wondering. Yes, he is anxious because he has not sought first to determine his real destination.

Many live this way today. They have no real priority, no definite choice.  And even if they have some vague direction (e.g., “I want to be happy”) they have little idea what it really takes to get there. And frankly, they don’t want to know the specifics all that much. Commitments and decisions are eschewed. But, strangely, in trying to avoid a decision or commitment, they are not any less anxious; if fact they are more anxious. Every intersection is bewildering: “What should I do?”

Now the Lord wants to save us all this anxiety and thus offers us the grace to become clear about what we want and where we are going. As He begins to live His life more fully in us, our mind gets clearer; our heart desires with greater clarity.  When Jesus’ own life begins to replace our own, we want what He wants. And He wants the Kingdom and its values. He loves his Father and everyone and everything that His Father loves.

And so do we. By grace and by degrees the Lord begins to change us, to clarify things for us, and increasingly our life becomes about only one thing: “I want to die and leave this world loving God and His kingdom.  I want to be with him forever.”

Received, not achieved – In all three of these areas please remember that the Lord is not merely saying to us that through our own power we must serve only God, experience Him as Father (Abba), and seek first the Kingdom of God. If it depended on us, it would last twenty minutes (max)!

No, what the Lord is doing here is painting a picture of the transformed human person and what we will increasingly experience if we let Him live His life in us and transform us in stages. This work begins in us and continues when we get down on our knees and beg the Lord to do it. It begins and continues when we are serious about having a steady diet of prayer, Scripture, Church teaching, the Sacraments, Holy Mass, and holy fellowship.

Now if you want to stay anxious and fretful, fine; you can have all my turns. But if you seek serenity, then ask the Lord into your life; reinvite him every day. Stay faithful to spiritual practices. And if you do, I promise you (I am a witness), you will see your anxieties lessen, your fears abate, your serenity grow, and your confidence strengthen. The choice is yours.

This video illustrates the Scripture, “but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep.” (Eccles 5:12)

And this video speaks of the doing just one thing (pardon the slight profanity):

When I was a teenager, I remember resenting how adults would try to prevent me from doing what I wanted. They would often warn me not to “learn the hard way” that something was wrong. I would often be told that I should learn from them and their experiences not to make the same mistakes they did. The rebel in me thought that it might be fun to “make a few mistakes of my own.” Arrogantly, I thought that I would escape the consequences.

In the end of course they were right; and one of the most valuable gifts I have received from others is to have learned from their experience. As a pastor too, I must say that my staff has saved me from innumerable errors through their expertise and long experience with the parish.

The word “experience” comes from the Latin experientia, meaning the act of trying or testing. More deeply, it comes from two Latin words: ex (out of) and periri (which is akin to periculum, meaning peril or danger). Hence “experience” refers to those who have endured trials, perils, testing, and danger, and speak of these to us so that we don’t have to endure the same things. It is a very great gift!

The Church too offers us the great gift of long experience. Indeed, one of the great advantages of making our home in the Catholic Church is that we are at the feet of a wise and experienced teacher who has “seen it all.” The Scriptures, the Catechism, the lives of the Saints—all of the Church’s teaching is a wealth of knowledge and collected experience for us. Through this vast treasury, The Church, as a good mother and teacher, helps us to learn from the experiences of others.

At this point I would like to let G.K. Chesterton do the talking:

The other day a well-known writer, otherwise quite well-informed, said that the Catholic Church is always the enemy of new ideas. It probably did not occur to him that his own remark was not exactly in the nature of a new idea…Nevertheless, the man who made that remark about Catholics meant something…What he meant was that, in the modern world, the Catholic Church is in fact the enemy of many influential fashions; most of which…claim to be new. [But] nine out of ten of what we call new ideas, are simply old mistakes.

The Catholic Church has for one of her chief duties that of preventing people from making those old mistakes; from making them over and over again forever, as people always do if they are left to themselves…There is no other case of one continuous intelligent institution that has been thinking about thinking for two thousand years. Its experience naturally covers nearly all experiences; and nearly all errors.

The result is a map in which all the blind alleys and bad roads are clearly marked, all the ways that have been shown to be worthless by the best of all evidence: the evidence of those who have gone down them. On this map of the mind the errors are marked…[but] the greater part of it consists of playgrounds and happy hunting-fields, where the mind may have as much liberty as it likes. But [the Church] does definitely take the responsibility of marking certain roads as leading nowhere or leading to destruction…By this means, it does prevent men from wasting their time or losing their lives upon paths that have been found futile or disastrous again and again in the past, but which might otherwise entrap travelers again and again in the future.

The Church does make herself responsible for warning her people against these; she does dogmatically defend humanity from its worst foes…Now all false issues have a way of looking quite fresh, especially to a fresh generation…[But] we must have something that will hold the four corners of the world still, while we make our social experiments or build our Utopias. (From Twelve Modern Apostles and Their Creeds (1926). Reprinted in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 3 Ignatius Press 1990)

Yes, what a gift! Many may take of the role of a pouting  teenager and be resentful at any warning from the Church. But in the end, it’s a mighty fine gift to be able to learn from others and benefit from their experience.

Here’s a funny commercial that shows the value of learning from the experiences of others:

We are currently reading through some wonderful “Wisdom Sayings” in the Office of Readings of the Liturgy of the Hours. Several of the sayings speak to the relationship between suffering and wisdom. And in this way the foolishness of our age, which is so hyper-focused on avoiding suffering at all costs, is exposed. Perhaps the link of suffering to wisdom is not the most pleasant of associations, but it is no less true for its difficulty. Let’s consider a few of the sayings.

The tone was set in the psalm of the day which says,

Make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart.  (Ps 89:3)

In the last portion of my sermon at every funeral, I say to the faithful very plain terms, “You are going to die, and you don’t get to choose when.”  I then ask them what are they doing to get ready to meet God.

For indeed in our culture, with all of our medicines and with the fact that many of the elderly die in nursing homes out of our sight,  we have tended to ignore the reality of death. And this creates the illusion that death is remote, that we can somehow stave it off indefinitely. To many people, death seems almost theoretical. And in our fallen state, of course we entertain willingly the illusion that death is remote.

And yet in our almost unprecedented ability to maintain this illusion, it is also evident how foolish our collective behavior has become.   Many people live with almost no thought that they will one day die and appear before the judgment seat of Christ, and will have to render an account for what they have done. Too many of us have wrongful priorities and spend most of our time and energy in passing, unimportant things. And we spend little or no time on eternal and certain things like death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Too many go on living in unrepentant mortal sin. All of this is foolishness on an almost colossal scale.

When I preach at funerals and say to people “You are going to die,” there is a visible reaction throughout the congregation. Some look anxiously amused; some look annoyed; and a few look knowingly and nod. But almost all are surprised, even shocked to hear something they almost never hear anymore.

As the Psalm verse implies by its logic, this silence about death is at the root of a great deal of the foolishness of our modern age.  Many surveys indicate that 75-80% of people are not living in any discernible way that acknowledges that they will die and must prepare for it. Most are not praying; they are not reading Scripture; they are not going to Mass or to any church; they are not receiving Communion; and many are in serious and unrepentant mortal sin. All of this  foolish neglect given the judgment that is coming upon them.

Sadly, when they do confront death and find themselves in a church for the funeral of a friend or relative, they are more likely to hear a “sermon” about what a great guy Joe was,  but little to nothing of their need to pray for him and to prepare for death themselves.

And thus the verse from the Psalm is indeed poignant, beautiful, and necessary: Make us know the shortness of our life, that we may gain wisdom of heart.

There then come a number of wise sayings in the book of Ecclesiastes that also speak to this theme.

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to the house of feasting, for that is the end of every man, and the living should take it to heart.

To be sure, there is a time to celebrate and feast. We ought to rejoice with those who rejoice; we ought to celebrate the goodness of God. But as the saying from the Book of Ecclesiastes reminds us, there is also a place for mourning and suffering, and in some sense that is better for us.

The text goes on to explain why.

Sorrow is better than laughter, because when the face is sad the heart grows wiser.

Yes, mirth and celebration bring joy, but  sorrow and suffering bring wisdom. And though joy is wonderful, it passes in this world. But wisdom perdures and draws us to God. Wisdom is of God, and the things waiting for us in Heaven draw us to that place where true joys—joys that never end—are.

 And then text drives the point further home.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth…For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the fool’s laughter.

Yes, jokes and laughter have their moments and they have their place. But too much draws us into foolishness. For the need to laugh, if we are not careful, comes to take on an almost addictive quality.

Any look at the “Comedy Channel” will confirm this. Most of the humor there is becoming edgier and edgier, more and more bawdy, filled with sexual content and the demeaning of many values such as family life, sexuality, and any number of human virtues. Comedians stand before large crowds in theaters and have the audience laughing about such foolish things as drunkenness, adultery, lust, greed, and pornography.  Comedians also spent a great deal of time demeaning well-known figures as well as many important human institutions and activities. At most comedy clubs almost nothing is sacred, and people will laugh at some of the most hurtful and hateful things.

And thus the text from Ecclesiastes warns that the heart of fools is in the house of mirth, as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the fool’s laughter. Though mirth has its place, it must be balanced with sobriety and respect—respect for what is holy, decent, admirable, and pure. This is seldom the case with comedy today.

Is this too harsh an indictment? The text from Ecclesiastes goes on to say,

It is better to hearken to the wise man’s rebuke than to hearken to the song of fools;

Yes, some who read this reflection may consider this biblical wisdom to be too “negative,” too judgmental, too rebuking.

Before rushing to judgment, though, one ought to consider that many of us have had a steady diet of “the song of fools.” Whether it is the filthy comedy just described, or the music, movies, and other media of pop-culture, which celebrate things like fornication, rebellion, and gratuitous violence; a steady diet of this sort of stuff is bound to make God’s word seem too severe.

Is the problem God’s Word, which summons us to sobriety, or is it sin, which makes us foolish and hypersensitive to any correction? Light is only abhorrent to those who are accustomed to darkness.

Is God’s word unbalanced, or are we? You decide for yourself. As for me, I will strive to listen to the Lord and seek balance on His terms, not the world’s terms, which are already the outer extreme. God’s Word is the reference, not the world’s excesses.

We must look at more Wisdom sayings next week! Our Lady Seat of Wisdom, pray for us!

Here’s a song about meditating on what is good, true, and beautiful—things which, having been discarded, are not sought as pearls of great value: