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The Battle of Anger in God’s Prophets

Jeremiah, by Lorenzo Monaco (1407)

We recently read a passage from the Book of the Jeremiah in daily Mass (Wednesday of the 17th Week of the Year) that provides an important teaching on righteous anger and the need for meekness. Meekness is the virtue that moderates anger; it is a form of temperance that controls resentment.

The biblical prophets were people too, and one of the human passions that most drove and affected them was anger. The focus in the passage is on “righteous anger,” not the sinful anger rooted in ego, vanity, and/or desire to have everything on our terms. Righteous anger is our response to sin and injustice. Seeing injustice and observing the sinful behaviors of the very people who should have exemplified holiness, provoked the prophets to anger, to disappointment, and to rebuke rooted in love for God and His people. Of itself, anger is neither sin nor virtue. It is simply a response in the face of perceived danger or injustice. Sometimes we have to get angry enough to do something about a problem and work at it until it is resolved.

Even righteous anger is difficult to balance and navigate well. There is a difference between being creatively angry and simply being angry. At its best, anger alerts us to a problem and then supplies the creative energy and resolve to correct it. At its worst, anger is too easily vented in destructive and unhelpful ways or is carried about like a heavy weight. Anger turned inward is depression and sullenness. Anger vented is often mere wrath and/or vengeance.

In the following passage we see a description of Jeremiah’s struggle with anger and of God’s call for him to engage in an internal battle with his own anger so that he can engage in the external battle for righteousness among God’s people. As the passage opens we see a sullen and depressed Jeremiah:

Woe to me, mother, that you gave me birth!
a man of strife and contention to all the land!
I neither borrow nor lend,
yet all curse me.

Why is my pain continuous,
my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?
You have indeed become for me a treacherous brook,
whose waters do not abide! (Jer 15:10ff)

Jeremiah is weary of the weight of his anger. He has contended for righteousness among God’s people but has encountered much resistance. (Welcome to the life of a prophet!) Based on the limited information in the passage, it would seem that Jeremiah’s anger has turned inward and become depression.

One error in the face of anger is to vent it. Often this involves fits of temper, invective, and lashing out that misses the target and causes a good bit of collateral damage. Vented anger brings more heat than light, more tense reaction than true reform.

Jeremiah, however, seems to suffer from the other error in the face of anger: he suppresses it or turns it inward. One definition of depression is this: anger turned inward. When we do this, we begin to carry our anger like a heavy weight. We ruminate and feel blue. This is especially the case when we experience resistance or feel powerless to effect the change our anger energizes us to address. The desired outcome of our anger seems too distant, but instead of redirecting the energy of our anger (e.g., prayer, fasting, educating God’s people in first principles of justice and holiness), we carry the anger as a kind of bitterness and defeat that we take personally.

Jeremiah describes his life as one of woe, so much so that he wishes he had never been born. He sees all as strife and takes personally the fact that all curse him. He is weighed down with this suppressed anger and feels it continuously. He is stuck in his anger and depression.

To some degree, his sorrow is multiplied by his memory of the joy that God’s righteousness inspired in him. God’s word gave him a joyful idealism wherein he could live God’s ways and call others to do the same:

When I found your words, I devoured them;
they became my joy and the happiness of my heart,
Because I bore your name,
O LORD, God of hosts.
I did not sit celebrating
in the circle of merrymakers;
Under the weight of your hand I sat alone
because you filled me with indignation.

In the early stages, Jeremiah’s anger was like an energy that supplied a resolve for him to do what was right, even if it cost him some of the carnal pleasures and the relationships that preoccupy most people. He was content with the joy of God’s teaching and perhaps that God was preparing him to draw others to that joy.

When results are lacking, though, joy can turn to sorrow. The soul can cry out, why do others not see and desire the joy I have found? Why do they prefer vain and sinful things? Where is the harvest of justice and righteousness that God has promised?

It has been said that expectations are premeditated resentments. The joy and hopeful expectations of Jeremiah have not come to fruition. Given the intensity of the joy and zeal, the disappointment is all the more deep and dark. Jeremiah’s anger has turned dark and inward; it is experienced as a heavy weight and brings him weariness and depression.

Therefore, the Lord speaks to Jeremiah in the following way:

Thus the LORD answered me:
If you repent, so that I restore you,
in my presence you shall stand;
If you bring forth the precious without the vile,
you shall be my mouthpiece.

Then it shall be they who turn to you,
and you shall not turn to them;
And I will make you toward this people
a solid wall of brass.
Though they fight against you,
they shall not prevail,
For I am with you,
to deliver and rescue you, says the LORD.
I will free you from the hand of the wicked,
and rescue you from the grasp of the violent.

God counsels Jeremiah to repent of this unhelpful use of his anger. God has supplied him with righteous anger to give him resolve, fortitude, patience, a steady dependence on Him, and a confident expectation of ultimate victory. The battle will be long; there will be no quick resolution here. The people are stiff-necked and resistant. Jeremiah must learn to bring forth the precious truth without the negative aspects of anger: wrath, vengeance, arrogance, impatience, and the thin-skinned quality that comes from forgetting that the battle is the Lord’s not his.

Many of us who have worked for justice and respect for life in this increasingly selfish and greedy culture know Jeremiah’s struggle. Sometimes in our zeal we vent our anger and say hateful or unhelpful things. At other times we grow weary and carry our anger around like an anchor rather than channeling it to creative ends.

The virtue that controls anger is meekness. Meekness is not weakness; it does not mean being easily manipulated or free from all anger. It is the virtue that gives us authority over our anger. It is the proper middle ground between too much anger and not enough. The meek are in fact strong because they have authority over perhaps the strongest and most unruly of the passions. Jesus says in the beatitudes that the meek will inherit the earth. Why? Because it is they who will consistently work to build a better world; it is they who will use their anger like a creative energy to establish a more just and holy order.

Another beatitude that applies to anger is this one: Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Who are those who mourn? It is those who see the awful state of God’s people, that they are often lost and searching for meaning in vain things. Seeing this, they mourn, but it is not the mourning of depression. It is a creative mourning. It is a grief, an anger, that motivates them to pray and to try to reach as many of God’s people as possible. God comforts them (more literally he strengthens them) to channel their grief and anger to resolve, patience, and persistence.

Jeremiah, though a great prophet, was flesh and blood like us; he had his struggles and dark moments. In speaking to him, God also speaks to us:

Stay close to me in daily repentance and realize that your strengths and struggles are very closely related. Your anger and resolve are gifts I offer you to strengthen you and summon you to battle. Make sure that you fight the right battle against the right foe. Satan and his unjust vision are the enemy, not the people I send you to correct, nor your very self. Neither vent your anger at the wrong foe nor turn it inward to depression. Receive my gift of meekness to have authority over your anger. Receive the comfort and strength I offer to those who mourn the state of my people. The battle is mine and I have already won the final victory.

Be angry, but sin not.

The song below is from the Carmina Burana. The man in the poem laments that his anger is based in sinful rootlessness and indulgence of his passions. This is wholly different from “righteous anger” because its source is carnal and sinful drives rather than sorrow at injustice. Here is the English translation of the Latin text:

Burning inwardly with strong anger, in my bitterness I speak to my soul; created out of matter, ashes of the earth, I am like a leaf with which the winds play.

Whereas it is proper for a wise man to place his foundations on rock, I, in my folly, am like a flowing river, never staying on the same course.

I am borne along like a ship without a sailor, just as a wandering bird is carried along paths of air; chains do not keep me nor does a key; I seek men like myself, and I am joined with rogues.

For me a serious heart is too serious a matter; a joke is pleasant and sweeter than honeycombs; whatever Venus orders is pleasant toil; she never dwells in faint hearts.

I go on the broad way after the manner of youth; and I entangle myself in vice, forgetful of virtue; greedy for pleasure more than for salvation, I, dead in my soul, attend to the needs of my flesh.

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The Experience of Conscience

In my online class on the Catechism (for the Institute of Catholic Culture), we recently discussed conscience. Many today confuse conscience with their opinion or what they “feel” is right or wrong. However, the Catechism has this to say: Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. … It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1778). Conscience interacts with our innate sense of fundamental moral principles (St. Jerome and later St. Thomas Aquinas call this synderesis).

I have written more technically on the definition and understanding of conscience here: The True Meaning of Conscience. In today’s post I’d like to write about it more from the standpoint of experience.

Let’s start with an early text from Genesis:

The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not. Cain greatly resented this and was crestfallen. So the LORD said to Cain: “Why are you so resentful and crestfallen. If you do well, you can hold up your head; but if not, sin is a demon lurking at the door: his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master” (Gen 4:4-7).

In this passage we see Cain’s internal struggle with anger and sin, but also another primordial reality in man: the existence of conscience and our experience of its “voice.”

What is the voice of conscience? The Catechism describes it this way:

“Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. … For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God. … His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths” (CCC 1776).

Notice that the conscience hears the voice of God and interacts with our innate sense of the law of God. The conscience exists because God has written His law into every heart. It is there, and we cannot ultimately deny it or silence it, though many try to do so. It is this reality that is powerfully and poetically described in the Genesis account of Cain. God’s voice echoes within Cain and warns him of the demonic presence of sinful anger. He also summons Cain to hope, indicating that he is capable of mastering it.

Tragically, Cain refused to heed his conscience. He refused to heed the voice of God echoing in him. Make no mistake, Cain knew that what he was doing was wrong. Though Cain had a fallen nature and was living in fallen world influenced by fallen angel, he still had a conscience; he still heard God’s voice in his soul.

It is common to hear today, even among the clergy, that people really don’t know any better when it comes to moral teaching. They then claim that because people have not been properly taught they cannot be expected to understand important moral concepts nor should they be held accountable for their poor moral decisions. I do not agree; this sort of thinking amounts to a denial of the existence of the conscience and synderesis. In my experience, most people know very well that what they are doing is wrong. It is true that the voice of our conscience can err and that competing voices can distract or mislead us, but underneath all the layers of denial, suppression, and contrary voices, we know quite well the basics of right and wrong. For example, we don’t like being lied to; we know that lying is wrong. We don’t like to have things stolen from us; we know that stealing is wrong. We don’t like to be sexually exploited; we know that it is wrong to do so to others.

The existence of the conscience clearly taught in this text from Genesis. Here are some other Scripture passages that affirm the fundamental presence of conscience and the Law of God within everyone:

  • When the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law, since they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, or at times even defending them (Romans 2:14-15).
  • By the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every one’s conscience in the sight of God (2 Cor 4:2).
  • We know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade men. What we are is plain to God, and trust it is also plain to your conscience (2 Cor 5:11).
  • And thy ears shall hear the voice of one admonishing thee behind thy back: This is the way, walk ye in it: and go not aside neither to the right hand, nor to the left (Is. 30:21).
  • See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay careful attention to him and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him (Ex 23-20-21).

Yes, the voice of God echoes within us and is in the very heart of our conscience.

Towards a Rediscovery – There is little reference to the conscience today, even among the clergy. I suppose this is because the word was misused a great deal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many people would misuse the term to justify sinful behavior, saying, “I’m only following my conscience.” In making such a statement they are equating their opinion with conscience. Conscience implies an act of judgment and so surely accesses the intellect, but it is deeper than that. It interacts with our innate sense of fundamental moral principles (synderesis).

Because the work of the conscience is so deep, people will often construct elaborate rationalizations to try to suppress its voice. They surround themselves with false teachers who will “tickle their ears.” Deep down, though, they know that what they are doing is wrong.

 Consider some examples and thoughts from pastoral experience:

  • I have sat in the parlor during marriage preparation with couples who are fornicating and sometimes cohabiting as well. Despite the modern world’s claim that such behavior is fine, despite the couple’s attempts to convince themselves that it’s really OK, despite their attempts to not think about it, when I speak frankly with them about it, it’s clear that they know what they are doing is wrong.
  • I have walked the streets of Southeast Washington, D.C. and talked with “boys in the hood.” When in conversation I tell them that they ought to stop selling and using and stealing and instead get themselves to God’s house, it’s clear that they know what they are doing is wrong.
  • I have spoken with pro-choice demonstrators in front of the Supreme Court and told them directly that they know in their heart that abortion is wrong. They argue with me and often get quite hostile, sometimes attacking me personally for being a man and a priest, but I can see in their eyes and in their overly defensive anger that they know it really is
  • I have become quite convinced that much of the intense anger directed at the Church whenever we speak out against abortion, euthanasia, premarital sex, homosexual activity, and homosexual “marriage” is in fact evidence that we have reached the conscience and pricked it. The anger comes from the fact that deep down inside, they know that these things are wrong and that what we are saying is true.
  • Attempts to suppress the conscience are not usually very successful. When someone violates the zone of insulation we attempt to erect around ourselves, we can easily get angry. Deep down inside, though, we know that the Church and the Scriptures are right.
  • Some people attempt to surround themselves with teachers and experts who will “tickle their ears” with false teaching and unsound doctrine. Deep down inside, though, they know better.

While each of us has an innate sense of right and wrong, and God has written His law in our hearts, the Catechism reminds us that, due to sin, we must be open to having our conscience formed and its judgments refined:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one personal God…and of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. … The human mind … is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful. This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation …  about … religious and moral truths … so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error (CCC 37-38).

We who try to teach and hand on the faith need to remember the fact of the conscience and never lose heart. We are ultimately appealing to things that people already know. This is so at least in terms of fundamental morality. There may be certain advanced topics that require informed discourse, but the basics are written in our hearts. The fact that there we get angry responses does not necessarily mean that we have failed; it may be just the opposite. We may have struck more than a nerve; we may have touched the conscience. Don’t lose heart.

What, then should the pastor, catechist, teacher, parent, and evangelizer do? Speak the truth in love. Speak it with confidence, knowing that every person has a conscience, and even when it has been suppressed or ignored, it can still be reached. St. Paul gave good advice to Timothy in this regard:

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the Word; in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry (2 Timothy 4:1-5).

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An Important Question for the Secular World: Why?

One of the more common misunderstandings of the modern age—we might even call it a delusion— is confusing explanation with meaning. Using the scientific method and other empirical techniques, we have been able to explain many of the processes and mechanics of the natural world.

To give explanation, however, is not the same as to ascribe meaning. To answer how things work is not the same as to answer why they do. Showing, for example, the wonderful symbiotic relationships involved in photosynthesis and describing how it works at the molecular level does not explain why there is such a thing as photosynthesis.

To take it further, why do things exist at all? Why is there observable order in the universe rather than chaos? Explanation is not the same as meaning; how is not the same as why.

The Delusion – In modern times, perhaps as a prideful result of being able to explain so much, we often think we have wholly accounted for not just how things work, but why they do. We have not. Many today like to argue that the material or physical sciences have presented a comprehensive explanation for most things. They have not. By definition, the physical sciences only address physical interrelationships and secondary causes of things.

Put in philosophical terms, the physical sciences deal well with material and efficient causality but are not well equipped or able to answer questions of formal or final causality. Further, the material sciences can address some secondary causality but not primary causality. (Additional information on these topics is available here and here.)

The error of our day, that the physical sciences can provide a comprehensive explanation for nearly everything, is often referred to as scientism. As Bishop Robert Barron and others have rightly pointed out, there is a metaphysical assumption at the basis of all the physical sciences: that reality is intelligible. It is a necessary presumption for the scientific method that things are not mindlessly or haphazardly here.

Science must base itself on intelligibility but cannot answer why there is intelligibility, why there is meaning or purpose at all. It is self-evident that humans think, that we can extract meaning, and that things are intelligible. But why do we have this capacity? Why do rocks, trees, and likely most animals, not have this ability?

Brain chemistry can tell us some of how we have this capacity (though consciousness and the sense of self remain mysterious) but not why.

To explain is not the same as to understand. One of the great tragedies in this unreflective age is that too many people do not realize this. In our focus on intellectual acumen, impressive though it is, many are dismissive of the sense of wonder and awe that engages our humility at the moral level and our faith at the spiritual level.

Man is naturally spiritual, leading us to ask, Why? Despite the relatively recent surge of atheism in the West, faith has been widespread throughout human history and still is today across most cultures. No matter how much we think we have explained, deep down we still have that nagging question, Why? Even the secularists and atheists of the modern age cannot wholly avoid this question, for explanation is not the same as meaning. They may defer it, try to ignore it, or deny its relevance, but one day they will have to confront it.

There is a remarkable story told about a dying soldier in the trenches of World War I. As the 18-year-old lay dying, the chaplain comforted him. In his delirium, the soldier asked, “Why?” The chaplain thought the young man was struggling with why he was dying after such a brief life, so he asked, “Do you mean, ‘Why am I dying?’” The soldier answered with something far more profound: “No, why did I live? What was I here for?”

Why is about meaning and is not a question that science can answer. It is not a question that seems to come from our body or brain but from our soul. There is no evidence that plants or animals ponder meaning or seek to understand. They don’t ask why or agonize over nonexistence as they are dying. These are uniquely human questions: Why? What is the meaning? To explain is not the same as to understand.

No matter how materialistic, secular, or atheistic our culture becomes; no matter how widespread the error of scientism; it is a question that is not going away: Why?

We who are of faith have answers given to us, for faith is a way of knowing based on God’s revelation. Granted, we don’t always fully understand God’s answers and they do contain mysterious elements, but the answer to why things exist rather than not or why we are here rather than not, is simply this: God is, and God is love.

We of the house of faith must gently but clearly continue to raise the fundamental question, why? to an unbelieving age and respectfully insist that it be addressed. There are many ways to do so:

  1. Why is there existence?
  2. Why (not how) do you exist?
  3. Why are you angered when I mention God? You are not angry when I mention a duck-billed platypus or the possibility of ancient space visitors to this planet who sowed the seeds of life, but my mention of God seems to evoke a strong response in you.
  4. If your anger is rooted in a sense of injustice (i.e., that what I say or believe is “wrong”), why? In other words, why do we human beings have a sense of justice, of right and wrong? Where does it come from and on what is it based?
  5. If you believe that everything is caused by random mutation and behavior is biologically determined, then is there any basis for morality at all?
  6. If you claim that believing in God is “wrong” and atheism is “right,” on what do you base this?
  7. If you point to the “evil things” that believers have done in the past (e.g., the Inquisition), where does your sense of injustice come from? Why are you angry with believers if behavior is determined by chemicals in the brains?
  8. If behavior, thought, and decision are biologically determined, why is anything wrong at all?
  9. In a word, Why?

During debates, some will seek refuge in terms like pre-frontal cortex and hippocampus, but these are focused on the how not the why. Why does the brain do what it does? Why does the brain have what it has? Why is the brain there in the first place?

Why?

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Love and Lament Alike – A Brief Reflection for All Who Care About the Church

As a priest and pastor I work very closely with others: clergy, religious, laity who work for the Church, and laity who volunteer. We all work for the Church because we love her and her people.

At times, though, there is disappointment, hurt, or even disillusionment. Perhaps these feelings result from issues in the wider Church: sexual abuse by clergy, the lack of courage and leadership from some bishops and priests, the scandal of dissent at the highest levels, questionable partnerships with anti-life and anti-Catholic organizations, the breakdown of discipline, and the strange severity of response to some infractions contrasted with the almost total laxity in the face of others. Perhaps they are the result of local problems found in any group of human beings: gossip, hurtful actions, hypocrisy, power struggles, misplaced priorities, favoritism, and injustice.

While these things happen everywhere, many hope that there will be fewer occurrences in the Church. Some who come to work for the Church begin by thinking, How wonderful it will be to work for the Church instead of out in the cutthroat business world! Maybe they envision a place where people pray together and support each other more. Perhaps they think the Church will be a place with less competition and strife.

Alas, such hopes are usually dashed quickly. We are, after all, running a hospital of sorts; and just as hospitals tend to attract the sick, so the Church attracts sinners and those who struggle. Jesus was often found in strange company, so much so that the Pharisees were scandalized. He rebuked them by saying, People who are well do not need a doctor, sick people do. I have come to call sinners, not the righteous (Mk 2:17).

Idealistic notions of working in and for the Church evaporate quickly when the phone rings with an impatient parishioner on the line, or when two group leaders argue over who gets to use the parish hall, or when the pastor is irritable and disorganized, or when the maintenance engineer is found to be drinking on the job, or when certain members of the choir are making anything but harmony, or when some favored parishioners get attention from and access to the old guard leaders while newcomers are resisted.

For all these sorts of situations that engender irritation, disappointment, or disillusionment, I keep a little prayer card near my desk. Sometimes I read it for my own benefit and sometimes I share it with those who feel discouraged at what happens (or doesn’t happen) in the Church. It is a beautiful mediation; it recalls that although great love often generates the deep disappointment, in the end love still abides.

Consider, then, the following words. They are perhaps over-the-top in places, but love has its excesses. Take these words as a kind of elixir that speaks to the pain that love can cause.

How baffling you are, Oh Church,
and yet how I love you!
How you have made me suffer,
and yet how much I owe you!
I would like to see you destroyed,
and yet I need your presence.

You have given me so much scandal
and yet you have made me understand what sanctity is.
I have seen nothing in the world more devoted to obscurity,
more compromised, more false,
and yet I have touched nothing more pure, more generous, more beautiful.
How often I have wanted to shut the doors of my soul in your face,
and how often I have prayed to die in the safety of your arms.

No, I cannot free myself from you,
because I am you, though not completely.
And besides, where would I go?

Would I establish another?
I would not be able to establish it without the same faults,
for they are the same faults I carry in me.
And if I did establish another,
it would be my Church,
not the Church of Christ.

(from The God Who Comes, by Carlo Carretto)

Yes, where else would I go?

https://youtu.be/U55m_TzM7jw

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Of Plenty, Population, and Trust – A Further Reflection on the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes

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The multiplication of the loaves and fishes that we read about at Sunday Mass was a miracle so astonishing that it is recounted in all four Gospels. A second, similar instance is recorded in another gospel passage. So, this sort of miracle is recounted five times within the four Gospels.

There are many theological reasons for this. Clearly, Jesus was fulfilling the promise of Moses: that after him a greater one would arise who would also feed the people mysteriously with bread. There are also many Eucharistic and spiritual dimensions to the miracle.

In this reflection I would like to ponder the notion that this miracle of satisfying our physical hunger is a one writ large in our times. While many wish that astounding miracles like those recounted in the Scriptures were more evident today, I would argue that the miracle of the loaves and fishes and God’s promise to care for His people is right before our very eyes.

While there is hunger in the world today, it is not due to God but to human struggles and human sinfulness. Let’s ponder the work of God to feed us and see how He has multiplied our loaves and fishes.

In the Book of Genesis, God blessed Adam and Eve and said to them,

“Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant-yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit-yielding seed; it shall be food for you …” (Gen 1:28-29).

God would repeat a similar blessing and instruction to Noah, adding meat to the diet as well.

God wanted the human family to grow and promised to supply food for us. Even after the fall of Original Sin, although God told Adam that his harvesting would come “by the sweat of your brow,” there would be a harvest.

In the first reading from Sunday’s Mass, Elisha said, “For thus says the LORD, ‘They shall eat and there shall be some left over.’” And when they had eaten, there was some left over, as the LORD had said (2 Kings 4:43-44).

So, God did establish the general truth that the earth would provide adequate food for His people. While there might be local famines or droughts, on the whole, the earth would provide.

As the world’s population has continued to grow, some have cast doubt on the capacity of the earth to supply food for us. In 1798, Thomas Malthus wrote an influential essay in which he predicted that our population was approaching a critical stage and that it would soon outdistance the food supply, bringing on mass starvation. Since that time many others have posited similar doomsday scenarios, although the projected date of the crisis has varied.

Today the world’s population is more than 7 billion people, yet there remains a remarkably stable, even increasing, food supply. So abundant is agriculture here in the U.S. that the government encourages farmers, through subsidies, not to plant certain crops. We even burn a lot of corn for fuel rather than using it for food. I do not report these things because I necessarily approve of them, but only to show that basic foods are produced by this earth in abundance.

There are some who dispute the claim that our earth is producing in abundance, pointing to things such as desertification and declines in arable land. However, for centuries now, one doomsday scenario after another has failed to materialize. The population continues to grow, and yet there is still food in relative abundance.

Though many, perhaps understandably, wonder how we can ever get enough food to feed this multitude, the Lord and His earth continue to provide for us. In a way, the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes is writ large by modern agriculture.

Surely, though, just as the Lord used the five loaves and two fishes in the lakeside miracle, He involves us in the solution to feeding the planet today. The miracle of multiplied food sources comes from God but interacts with human ingenuity. Consider the human role:

  • Agricultural technology, soil management, and insect control have all increased the yield of crops many times over. God has given us intellects and blessed our capacity to learn what works to increase the harvest.
  • There is the emergence of a worldwide economy and the transportation to be able to harvest crops from all over the world. Localized droughts and even just the change of the seasons no longer have the impact on the food supply that they once did. Trouble in one area can be mitigated by supply from another. Winter in one area can be covered for by summer in another.
  • Animal husbandry, fisheries, and other technologies also foster a great increase in meats, fishes, and dairy products.

Our five loaves and two fishes do matter!

Granted, some of these technologies are controversial from an environmental point of view. If we can make the desert bloom, should we? Should we genetically modify things and if so, how much and how often? What pesticides are acceptable to use and what are their side effects? How much water can and should be used for agriculture? Is building dams helpful or harmful?

This is not a blog to debate such matters, but without suggesting either blanket approval or condemnation of such technologies, the fact remains that the earth continues to provide abundant food. It does so in a way that the ancient world—or even more recently Thomas Malthus—would consider astonishing (and I would say, miraculous). As atomic physics has shown, even tiny amounts of matter contain enormous energy locked within them.

God’s promise to provide food for the human family, whom He told to “multiply to fill the earth,” remains stubbornly true, despite the doubters and their doomsday predictions.

But what of hunger? Clearly there is not an even distribution of food on our planet. There are areas where many people go hungry. Often, the poor do not have adequate access to a good food supply. As food sometimes rots in American silos, is burned for fuel, or is even deliberately not planted, other regions struggle. As many Americans blithely cast leftover food into the trash after meals, others would “kill” for the scraps from our tables.

Yet note that this is not a lack on the part of God. The earth supplies what we need, but that does not preclude human sinfulness or other factors from allowing hunger to continue. Consider that hunger in the modern world is often caused by things such as

  • war,
  • local corruption that prevents food from reaching the poor,
  • poor infrastructure (e.g., roads, landing strips) to bring food in,
  • greed, and
  • hoarding.

How best to address these factors is a matter of debate and is beyond the scope of this blog post and my blog as a whole.

The point I wish to emphasize is that the miracle of the loaves and fishes, even from the standpoint of physical food sources, is writ large today. It is a miracle the way our planet, as God has given it, supplies our needs even as we “fill the earth.” God did not command what He could not provide for. If He told us to multiply, fill, and subdue the earth, then He also asks us to trust Him. Bringing the loaves and fishes of our minds and our ingenuity to the table, with God’s grace and the earth He has given us, we can partner to produce an abundant harvest!

Are there hungry people? Yes. This is a disgrace rooted not in God but in us. God Himself counsels us not merely to build bigger barns to hoard our excess food, but instead to “store” it in the stomachs of the poor and needy (cf Luke 12:13-21).

God is faithful and true to His promise. The earth has yielded its fruit, God our God has blessed us (Ps 67:6).

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What Are Your Five Loaves and Two Fishes? A Homily for the 17th Sunday of the Year

We have in this Sunday’s Gospel the very familiar miracle of the loaves and the fishes. One is tempted to say, “Oh, that one …” and then tune out, but it contains a personal appeal directly from the Lord’s lips to our ears: “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?”

Immediately, objections begin to pop up in our minds, but let’s be still and allow the Lord to instruct us by applying this gospel in three stages. I would like to apply it in such a way as to illustrate our need to evangelize the culture in which we live. It is an immense task, one that can easily overwhelm us, but the Lord still bids us to get busy and join Him in feeding the multitudes.

I. THE IMAGE THAT IS EXTOLLED – The text says, Jesus went up on the mountain and there he sat down with his disciples. The Jewish feast of Passover was near. Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him.

The text says that Jesus saw a large crowd. Do we? Often when we think of the Church, declining numbers come to mind. This is because we tend to think in terms of the number of members. Jesus, however, thinks in terms of those who need to be reached. As we know that is a staggering number today. While it seems clear that the gospel is currently “out of season,” we must never forget that everyone is precious to the Lord; He wants to reach all and feed them with His grace, mercy, truth, and love.

So, the image that is extolled is that of need, not of believers and non-believers. Is this how we see the world? Jesus sees it as a vineyard, a mission field. He sees all as hungry, even if they insist they are not. Unfortunately, many reject the food that we in the Church offer. Many deny that they are hungry, but they are hungry, and Jesus is about to ask our help in feeding them. While we may see such people as opponents to the faith, this text presents an image that is rooted in the universal human problem of hunger, physical and spiritual.

II. THE INSUFFICIENCY THAT IS EXPRESSED – The text says, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” Jesus said this to test Philip, because he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, “Two hundred days’ wages worth of food would not be enough for each of them to have a little.” One of his disciples, Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fishes; but what good are these for so many?”

It is easy for us to feel overwhelmed. This is understandable, as the task of evangelizing and feeding the world is a daunting one to say the least.

Note that in this gospel, the apostles are not without any resources at all with which to feed the crowd. What they have may seem insufficient, but it is not nothing.

Similarly, we today may feel overwhelmed by the cultural meltdown taking place before our very eyes. It seems that every number we want to go down is going up, and every number we want to go up is going down. The cultural war is occurring on multiple fronts: family, marriage, sexuality, life issues, religious freedom, schools, church attendance, the rise of secularism and atheism, and the lack of personal responsibility and self-control. The list could go on and on. It is not difficult to see the disrepair in our culture. The task of evangelizing our culture may seem far more difficult than coming up with two hundred days’ wages.

Notice that Jesus says, “Where can we” get enough (food in this case) to solve the problem. It is not only up to us mere mortals to resolve the grave issues of the day. The Lord asks us to work with Him. With Him we have a fighting chance!

III. THE IMMENSITY THAT IS EXPERIENCED – The text says, Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined, about five thousand in number. Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed them to those who were reclining, and also as much of the fish as they wanted. When they had had their fill, he said to his disciples,” Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted.” So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves.

By now this story is so familiar that we are not shocked by the outcome, but no matter how many times we hear it, it’s still hard to accept its astonishing truth. These Scripture passages also speak to that truth:

  • I can do all things in God who strengthens me (Phil 4:13).
  • All things are possible to him who believes (Mk 9:23).
  • For man it is impossible, but not with God, for all things are possible with God (Mk 10:27).
  • Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness (2 Cor 9:10).

We all know that this world is in an increasingly bad state and the problems feel overwhelming. In addition, the resources we have seem so limited to be able turn back the tide. What will we ever do with only five loaves and two fishes?

Jesus says, “Bring them to me.”

Remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The conversion of the whole world begins with each one of us. As we look at the huge problems before us, each of us must assess our “loaves and fishes”:

  • I can work on my own conversion. A holier world must start with me. If I get holier, the world gets holier.
  • I can serve the poor, perhaps with money, maybe by using my talents to instruct or counsel, perhaps just by giving of my time to listen.
  • I can pick up the phone and call a family member who I know is hurting.
  • I can love my spouse and my children.
  • I can spend time raising my children to know the Lord and to seek His kingdom.
  • I can exhort the weak in my own family. With love, I can rebuke sin and encourage righteousness.
  • If I am a priest or religious, I can faithfully live my vocation and heroically call others to Christ by teaching and proclaiming the gospel without compromise.
  • If I am young, I can prepare myself devoutly for a vocation to marriage, the priesthood, or religious life.
  • If I am older, I can seek to manifest wisdom and to provide a good example to the young.
  • If I am elderly, I can prepare myself for death devoutly and display the desire for Heaven.
  • I can pray for this world and attend Mass faithfully, begging God’s mercy on this sin-soaked world.

It is too easy to lament the condition of the world and, like the apostles, feel overwhelmed. Jesus says tells us that we should just bring Him what we have so that we can get started together. The conversion of the whole world will begin with each of us, with our own meager loaves and fishes.

Jesus will surely multiply them; He will not fail. Already there is renewal evident in the Church through a faithful remnant who are willing to bring their “loaves and fishes.” They are bringing them to Jesus and He is multiplying them. Renewal is happening; signs of spring are evident in the Church.

It’s been said that it’s easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world. Indeed it is! If it’s a converted world that you want, start with yourself. Bring your loaves and fishes to Jesus; bring your slippers and let’s get started. It begins with each one of us.

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The Stain of Sin, as Seen in an Advertisement

The video below, an ad for a carpet cleaning product, is masterfully done and has a surprise ending. In the ad, the horror caused by the carpet stain is palpable.

I’d like to relate this mere carpet stain to the growing and ominous stain that represents evil.

This stain (macula in Latin) should cause us revulsion and horror similar to that which we have for things that go bump in the night.

Sin ought to spook us! The horror of the stain of sin can lead us to the Lord, who alone can make us immacula (without stain).

“Enjoy” this video!

https://youtu.be/80juKtg1TSk

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The Paschal Mystery Writ Personally and Writ Large

The Crucifixion With Saints, by Fra Angelico (1441-42)

For the Feast of St. James on Wednesday, the first reading was from the Second Letter to the Corinthians. In it, St. Paul speaks of the Christian life on two levels: the individual and the Church. Let’s look at each.

Level One: The Individual

Many times every day we are asked, “How are you?” We often respond by saying, “I’m doing OK.”

But consider, fellow Christian, the truest answer to this question. For us who are Christian, St, Paul supplies a beautiful answer:

Always carrying about in our bodies the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in us (2 Cor 4:10).

As Christians, the Paschal Mystery is our life. We are immersed in the dying, rising, and ascending of Jesus. At every moment of our life, the great Easter mysteries of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection are at work. With Jesus, we are ascending to the Father. No matter what you may think, this is what is really going on.

This cycle may go on several times each day as both good and bad things happen to us or around us. The pattern is also evident in the fact that there are challenging and difficult years in our life as well as ones that are more serene and joyful. Yes, we die, and we rise with Christ. This is the Paschal Mystery; this is our life.

We experience trials, difficulties, disappointments, losses, and even devastation. This is the dying of Christ. That dying, however, leads to new life and so we rise with Christ. It may take “three days” in the tomb, but if we are faithful we rise, not just to where we were before, but more and more alive in Christ Jesus. As the old Adam dies in us we gradually experience the New Adam, Christ Jesus. The old life that dies is replaced by the fuller life of Christ.

Unless the gain of wheat falls to earth and dies to itself it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies it [rises and] produces abundant fruit (Jn 12:24).

Consider how much greater the mighty oak tree is compared to the acorn that fell to earth and “died.” There is hardly a resemblance at all. So it is that the life of the New Adam is incomprehensibly greater than the life it replaces: the dying life of the old Adam.

We are dying, and we are rising, but it is not a simple trade off, for in all of it we are ascending higher and higher with Jesus. The next time someone asks, “How’s it going?” or “How are you?” surprise him with the truest answer: Always carrying about in our bodies the dying of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be manifest in us (2 Cor 4:10). No matter what you think, this is what’s really going on: the Paschal Mystery is writ personally in our lives.

Level Two: The Church.

In the same passage, St. Paul writes on another level, that of the Body of Christ, the Church. Referring to himself, his sufferings, imprisonments, and difficulties he says,

So death is at work in us, but life in you …. We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed; … Everything indeed is for you, so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God (2 Cor 4:8-9; 14-15).

In this way, St. Paul views his suffering (and that of others in the apostolic band) as being for the sake of others in the Church. He suffers so that they might have faith and life. Historically this has been the case: The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church (Tertullian). Some in the Church have suffered and died so that others might have faith and life. One of the hard but freeing truths of life is this: “Your life is not about you.” The ink of the Creed is the blood of martyrs. We ought never to forget how much others have suffered so that we might have faith.

This is the Paschal Mystery writ large: some in the Church are suffering, even now, and others are thriving and experiencing growth. The Church, the Body of Christ, is dying and rising. St. Paul says elsewhere,

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake … (1 Cor 4:9-10).

Indeed! Of the first 33 popes, thirty died as martyrs, two died in exile, and only one died in his own bed. Today’s bishops are often protected, surrounded by layers of staff, cautious in the face of conflict, and in some cases possessed of a comfortable life. St. Paul calls bishops and pastors to a willingness to suffer for the flock if necessary.

Many in the Church today are suffering, although this is often unnoticed by our inwardly focused eyes. (To remedy this, read regularly here: Today’s Martyrs.) Yet in their sufferings the Church obtains mercy and continues to grow. The blood of martyrs is still seed for the Church. In the often-decadent West, we should be somewhat embarrassed at how others are willing to suffer loss, imprisonment, and even death for the faith, while we can barely stir ourselves to roll out of bed and get to Mass on Sunday.

The Lord has so designed His Body, the Church, such that some do suffer, do carry the weight, so that others may thrive and grow. We should be grateful for these sacrifices, often hidden from us but not from God. From their sufferings come life for the rest. It is the Paschal Mystery writ large!