Conversion often comes at a price- a reality that our Lord made quite clear in today’s gospel. He warned that following him would break up entire families. “One’s enemies will be those of his own household,” he said.
This is as true today as it was in Jesus’ day, especially in those places where becoming Christian is understood as rejecting one’s cultural heritage, as is experienced by converts in predominantly Muslim or Hindu lands. In our society, converts might be thought of as crazy; in other societies, converts can be thought of as almost criminal.
This was the experience of Blessed Kateri, whose memorial we celebrate today. We call her the “Lily of the Mohawks,” but her uncle and adoptive father, a seventeenth century Mohawk chief, did not think of her in such glowing terms. When she became a Catholic with the help of French missionaries, her family treated her as a slave, and even denied her food on Sundays, since she refused to work on the Sabbath. Ultimately, her life became endangered, and she was forced to flee to a Catholic community some 200 miles away, where she remained the rest of her short life.
Blessed Kateri’s witness can remind all of us that we need to place allegiance to Christ above anything else that may lay claim to us, and regardless of what the cost may be. As she herself said: “I am not my own. I have given myself to Jesus.”
A common Evangelical protest against the Catholic practice of praying and interacting with the saints is that they “can’t hear us.” Those who disbelieve our practice often quote 1 Kings 8:39 which says, for you alone (O Lord) know the hearts of all men. Hence, according to this quote Saints, who are not God, cannot know our thoughts unless we speak them aloud.
This means, we must therefore speak them aloud. And this in turn ridiculed, or at least dismissed, by many Evangelicals who consider it absurd to think a saint way up in heaven would have adequate hearing to perceive us, way down here on earth talking to them. Further, even if they could hear us, how could they distinguish thousands or millions of people talking to them all at once? And so on, with these sorts of objections. To be fair, not every Evangelical shares all these objections nor do they always attempt to ridicule our practice. But objections and attitudes like this are common enough to merit response.
The straight answer to the objections that saints cannot know our prayers due to lack of hearing, or inability to mind read, is set aside by Scripture itself which does speak of them as interacting with our prayers. More of this in a moment.
But some attention should also be paid to the highly naturalistic notions held by our critics, of the saints in heaven. To simply presume they “hear” in same way we do here on earth, or that their minds are operative in same way that ours are, or that they even experience time in the same serial way we do, are all highly questionable premises.
To begin with, the saints, through their more perfect union with Christ, ought not be presumed to experience their human faculties in exactly the same way as here on earth. Obviously their bodies have not yet risen, and hence they do not “hear” in the same manner as we do who still have bodies. Neither are their minds mediated through the physical brain as our is. Even when the trumpet shall sound and the bodies of the saints be restored to them, we need to understand that their humanity, body and soul, will be a glorified humanity. While we do not know all the aspects of a glorified humanity we will surely not have the forgetful and slow minds we have now. Neither ought we presume that our hearing will be limited as it is now.
So, to be clear, we ought not merely presume that the saints in heaven, even now, experience all the limits we do. They are caught up in Christ, and bound to Him more intimately and perfectly.
Secondly, the saints do not likely experience time like we do. Heaven is called, among other things in Scripture “eternity” or “eternal life.” Now eternity does not refer merely to the length of time or life, but also to the fulness of it. The fulness of time includes past, present and future, as one thing, in one moment. While we cannot be sure if the saints experience the “comprehensive now” as God does, we ought not presume that they experience time merely as we do either. Heaven is quite surely outside our earthly experience of time.
Hence, our understanding of heaven ought to include a mystical dimension and it is wrong to simply project our currently broken and fallen human condition on to the Saints in heaven or to presume them inside time exactly as we are.
Jesus rebukes the minimalists of his day – Regarding this tendency to make heavenly realities look either silly or untenable by projecting earthly categories there, Jesus had to rebuke the Sadducees of his day. They attempted to make heaven (which they rejected as a reality) look silly by projecting an earthly marriage scenario there of a woman who had seven husbands. Jesus said to them “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven (Mk 12:24-25). Thus, heaven is not like earth, and should not be reduced to it. Nor are the souls in heaven presumed to be exactly the same as they are now.
Hence, to presume that Saints can hear us is not outlandish, for they are in Christ, and they are perfectly in communion with him in heaven. It is obviously Christ himself, then, who fosters our union with the Saints and their ability to remain in communion with us. For there is only one Body of Christ, and all the members are untied by the Head, who is Christ.
Now that the Saints do interact with us and present our prayers to God is stated in the Book of Revelation:
[T]he twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Rev 5:8)
Later we also see that the angels also collect the prayers of the saints:
Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne (Rev 8:3).
“Saints” here is used in the common first Century biblical sense as meaning those on earth who have accepted Christ (cf Eph 1:1; Phil 1:1; 2 Cor 9:1; Phil 1:5; Rom 16:2 and many,many more), not merely in the modern Catholic sense as only the canonized saints in heaven.
And thus, the image and teaching here is that the Holy Ones in heaven collect the prayers of the saints on earth and present them to God, like incense.
That these prayers have dramatic effects is illustrated in the verses that follow in Rev 8:
The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. (Rev 8:4-5)
There follow seven trumpet blasts with confer God’s judgment and justice.
So the saints in heaven do hear us, they do collect our prayers and present them God and their intercession has powerful effects, the text from 1 Kings above, not withstanding.
Those who merely deny this based on some human notion of implausibility I would argue come under the Lord’s judgement: Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? (Mk 12:24). For though it may seem implausible to human minds, our God is able. And he reveals in Scripture that he not only able to empower the heavenly saints and angels in this regard, he is also most willing.
Here is a very good and brief video on this by Tim Staples
When my son Charlie was 3, he said to me: “Daddy, when I grow up, I’m going to be an astronaut, a fireman, a librarian, and a teenager! For him to have said this is pretty normal. Most children, even though they enjoy being kids, sincerely look forward to growing up.
I think this childlike desire to grow up can help us understand Jesus’ words in today’s gospel. If you recall, Jesus said that God doesn’t reveal himself to “the wise and the learned”- people who think they have it all figured out, who in their mind can see no need to grow. Instead, our Lord continued, it is to the childlike that God is revealed- those who recognize their need to “grow up,” so to speak, in God’s grace.
This should present a challenge to us. Maybe today we need to examine ourselves and ask: Do I recognize my need to grow? Do I really want to grow? What should I do in order to grow? And then we should look forward with excitement to what we’ll become when we do “grow up”- not a fireman, not an astronaut, certainly not a teenager- but a saint, completely refashioned into the image of Christ.
At the bottom of this post is a video of a large dog and a small cat who apparently never got the memo that they are supposed to fear and hate each other. As the video makes clear, they are bosom buddies who love to romp, play, wrestle and even snuggle. How unlikely, and yet, there it is before our eyes.
While the interactions between animals are mysterious and not to be compared with human relationships, and I can’t help thinking of humanity as I look at these animals. What would things be like if some of the “memos” we pass back and forth were never received or got lost?
I remember some years ago when the former Yugoslavia broke apart as the long reign of communism ended there. Good news, as Soviet style rule ended. But then, a horrible blood bath ensued as and the Bosnian, Serbians and Croatians turned on one another, rekindling old hatreds going back hundreds of years. I remember wondering how people who had lived largely without violence for so long could still hate each other so. It seemed that the injustices of the past predated most of the people who were alive now.
Bosnian babies were not born hating Croatian babies. Some one must have taught them to hate each other. Some one gave them “the memo.” So when the “strong man,” Tito left the scene, ancient hatreds which had continued to be handed on from parent to child, exploded. Looking with my American eyes, I wondered how the Bosnian, Croat and Serbian people could even distinguish each other. To me they all “looked alike.” But they surely knew the differences, drew the lines, and spiraled right down into the hell of hatred.
I realize that I may be over-simplifying things, but there is also the tendency to over complicate matters. The fact is, no child enters this world with an intrinsic hated of a whole group of other children. Some one teaches them that. That part isn’t complicated.
Another awful example of this was what happened in Rwanda in the early 1990s. There, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes had separated back in 1959. But suddenly in 1990 Civil war exploded and in 1994 a Tutsi Tribe undertook an attempted Genocide of the Hutu tribe killing as many as a million in a very short period of time. Some argued that the tensions went all the way to colonial times. But here too, most of grievances seemed to predate the soldiers and vigilantes who undertook to massacres. Who taught them this hatred? Who “gave them the memo?”
When I was a child I lived in Chicago, Ill. I never remember my parents ever telling me to hate or even be wary of Black people. I give them a lot of credit for that. Neither do I remember any awareness of Racial tension or hatred in my neighborhood. However, to be clear, I was still very young and the racial riots that Followed Dr. King’s assassination did not really register on my 7 year old mind.
But in 1969 we moved to Northern Florida (think “Southern Georgia”). And there the racial tension was in the air. I remember being confused and bewildered by the unexplained resentments and fears. I guess I was too young, and was a newcomer and had not read “the memo” which indicated that I was to be suspicious, hateful and in no way mix with “them.” I remember seeing the Black children on the other side of the playground and they were playing with some “really cool” toys. Not having read the memo I went to join them. I was rebuffed not only by fellow Whites, but also by some of the Black children who were unaware that I had not read the memo and considered my “incursion” unwanted and even threatening.
Crazy stuff. We are not born hating anyone, any race, or ethnicity. Some one teaches us that. And this very fact increases the total disgrace that such hatred is. There is an old phrase that talks about “burying the hatchet.” You may call me naive, and simplistic, even myopic, but I wonder, what might happen if we could just “tear up the memo.”
I hope most of you know me by now well enough to understand that I am no moral relativist. I am not suggesting there is no such thing as truth, right or wrong, injustice etc. Neither am I one to dispatch slogans like: “Can’t we all get along?” or “Coexist.” For these sorts of slogans often rest on faulty premises that there is no real truth to announce or protect. But honestly, some of the hatreds we struggle with go back to things long gone, that predate any of us here today, and which, quite frankly, are not even grievances we know much about. There are just some “memos” that need to go to the shredder.
The Catechism makes some very helpful observations:
Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. “But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.”….
Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is the tranquility of order. Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity…..
Injustice, excessive economic or social inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging among men and nations constantly threaten peace and cause wars. Everything done to overcome these disorders contributes to building up peace and avoiding war: Insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until Christ comes again; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and these words will be fulfilled: “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (CCC # 2303,2304, 2317)
Well, if nothing else, enjoy this video of two animals who never got “the memo” that they are supposed to be mortal enemies, and consider joining me in the dream that some of us humans too will never get “the memo.”
Mother Teresa once said, “The only thing that should make us weep is the fact that we aren’t saints!” But do we weep over this?
I ask this because it’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking: “Hey, maybe I’m not a saint, but I am a pretty decent person, all things considered.” And I would imagine that most of us ARE pretty decent people. Which is a good thing!
However, Jesus hasn’t called us to decency. Instead, Jesus calls us to sainthood. And if we’re to take his call to sainthood seriously, we need to take our sinfulness seriously.
I think this is what today’s gospel is calling us to do. If you recall, Jesus was angry with the people of certain cities. He had done “mighty deeds” in their midst, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. They didn’t repent; they didn’t try to change.
For us, Jesus has done more than “mighty deeds.” Jesus died for us- because he takes our sins seriously. In gratitude, so should we. We need to repent; we need to try and change. Because every time we sin, it’s as if Jesus is nailed to the cross, all over again.
Pope John Paul II put it well. “When we forget we are sinners,” he said, “we forget our need for Christ. And when we forget our need for Christ, we have lost everything.”
This Past Sunday I celebrated my 50th Birthday and of all the gifts I received, I must say I got the best from the Lord who delivered it in a “strange package.”
It began the day before as I arose and realized with some dread that I had surely over-committed myself. As I looked at my calendar I saw that I had scheduled four Masses and luncheon meeting. “How could I be so crazy!” I told myself as I prayed in the groggy early morning. The Lord remained quiet but I sensed he was smiling just a bit.
The first Mass was at 8:00am and was the most straight forward. It was a very pleasant Mass with the Sisters in the Convent. I offered it for the repose of my Mother. When she was alive I always bought her flowers on my birthday, since I figured she did all the work, and I just showed up. If anyone deserved a gift she did. Now that she has departed this life, my gift to her is Mass for her happy repose. A nice but brief breakfast followed with the sisters. They are always so kind to me. And so here was the first of the six sacraments I would celebrate that day: Holy Eucharist.
The second Mass was at 10:00 am, a solemn high Latin Nuptial Mass for a wonderful young couple from Africa, both of them studying medicine here in the States. God be praised, it was a beautiful Mass, with all the ceremony and splendor that the Traditional Latin Mass offers. But it was a workout, coming in at an hour and a half. And here was the second of six sacraments I would celebrate that day, Holy Matrimony along with Holy Eucharist, again.
A luncheon followed with parish leaders at noon. Here too, a wonderful occasion. I have so many wonderful leaders. God be praised. They surprised me with a birthday cake and three different versions of Happy Birthday.
By now I felt a nap coming on, but no time for that….I have miles to go before I sleep.
The third Mass was at 2pm. It was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the Sacraments of Initiation for woman who had been delayed for over two years while “canonical issues” were resolved. At long last she had her green light, and there was no way I was going to make her wait until next Easter. With her family in the Chapel we celebrated big time with Mass wherein she received her Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist AND had her marriage validated! Wow, God is good. She’d had a long wait, and was so patient. It was so satisfying to finally see her through. And here were the third and fourth of the six sacraments I would celebrate that day: Baptism and Confirmation, along with Holy Matrimony and Holy Eucharistic, again, and again.
It’s 4:00pm now. Time to go hear confessions in Church. And here was the fifth sacrament I would celebrate that day: Confession.
At 4:30pm Mass # 4 and Holy Eucharist again, Mass number four!
6:00 pm – Time to chill. “Lord you really made me work this weekend. That’s a strange thing to do to me on my birthday weekend!” There’s that silent smile of the Lord again. What’s he up to? Sure enough: the phone rings. Hospital call! And not even nearby. I am mindful of the words of Mother Teresa who said that the Lord told her he’d never give her more than she could take. She only wished that the Lord didn’t trust her so much! Off to anoint the critically ill. And thus the sixth sacrament I celebrated: Anointing of the Sick
Well, there you have it. My gift in a “strange package,” a sacramental six-pack, every sacrament I can possibly celebrate. It was a bone-crusher of a day but God is so good. I don’t suppose a priest could have any better gift that to be reminded so powerfully of his purpose on the eve of his 50th birthday.
But God knows me well enough to realize that he had to send a prophet to decode it all for me, just to make sure I got it. It came on Sunday afternoon, the evening of my birthday. Two of the Sisters came from the Convent presented me with a cake and sang happy birthday.
Innocently they asked me how my birthday weekend had gone. “Do you have a few minutes Sisters?” I said. And I told them the whole story.
One of them looked at me and said, “Do you see what God was saying to you on your 50th birthday? He was saying, ‘This is why I created you.'”
Yes, that is what he was saying alright. And it was the best gift I could have received.
The video at the bottom of this page is a humorous and also stunning illustration that things in life are not always what they first appear to be. Life can have its little surprises that make us say, “Wow!” It can also have its shocking and deeply disappointing moments that rock us back on our heals and cause up deep hurt. Some of these hurts and shocks can be prevented or lessened by prayerful and careful discernment as we go through life.
Discernment is a spiritual discipline that is important for us to develop in our Christian walk. The word “discern” is derived from the Medieval Latin word cernere, meaning to sift, separate, or distinguish. Hence, as we can see, discernment is a discipline that counsels us to make careful distinctions and to avoid rash conclusions. While most people tend to place discernment in the realm of spiritual issues, spiritual direction, and vocations only, discernment has a wider application in how we understand the people and situations in our life. (It is this second area that I want to emphasize in this post).
It is an often troublesome human tendency to “size things up” too quickly, before we really have all the information and can carefully sift, separate and distinguish. There is also the human tendency to make conclusions that are too sweeping nor simplistic, given the limited information we have.We do this regarding both people and situations.
Regarding people, too often, we like to assess them quickly and put them into one category or another. Thus, we may conclude that “Jane is a really wonderful person!” based on very few interactions with her or very limited information. We do this a great deal with the famous personalities and “heroes” of our culture, seeing them in broad and simplistic ways. In fact we usually know very little of them, other than what we see in a rather cursory and public way. In lionizing and idealizing people, we are often setting ourselves up for deep disappointment. And this disappointment is rooted in our rushed and simplistic judgments about people. The fact is, people are generally a mixed bag, often possessed of great gifts, and also afflicted by human weakness and personal flaws. Scripture says, No one is good but God alone. (Mk 10:18 inter al). It also says, For God regards all men as sinners, that he may have mercy on all (Rom 11:23). This the human condition, gifted but flawed.
Hence we do well to carefully discern, that is to sift, sort and distinguish, when we assess one another. Not all things are as they first appear. And no one should be regarded simplistically. We are usually a complicated mix of gifts and struggles.
In the Scriptures there is the story of Samuel who was sent by God to find and anoint a King among Jesse’s sons. Arriving and seeing the eldest and strongest of the sons, Samuel was quick to conclude he must be the one: But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.” (1 Sam 16:6). Samuel was eventually led to anoint the youngest and least likely of the brothers, David.
Scripture also says:
Call no one blessed before his death, for by his end shall a man be known. (Sir 11:28)
And Paul cautions Timothy: Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, and do not share in the sins of others. Keep yourself pure…Remember, the sins of some men are obvious, leading them to certain judgment. But there are others whose sins will not be revealed until later. (1 Tim 5:22,24)
Sometimes too, we fail to note the gifts of others. Here too Scripture says, So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! (2 Cor 5:16)
Discernment regarding people therefore ought to proceed with careful deliberation wherein we resist the urge to quickly size up and categorize people, and exercise careful discernment that is on-going, charitable and sober.
Regarding situations, here too, the rush to judgment is to be avoided. I have, in the past, been prone to criticize some of the judgments and decisions of the Church, and in particular, my diocesan leadership and religious superiors. Yet, in some of the matters about which I was most critical, I have come to discover that I did not have all the facts, and that my judgment was both rash and wrong. We often think we know the whole story. And often we do not.
Likewise it is often easy to take sides quickly in disputes and to assess blame in simplistic ways. In marriage counseling for example, I have learned to resist the urge to be too sympathetic to one or the other. In the past I would tend to be sympathetic to one who had called to make the appointment and whose side I had heard the most of already. But, a one sided pancake is pretty thin, and there is always another side. Very few marriages are in trouble because one is a saint and the other is the devil. There are usually issues on both sides, bad and good.
Thus, again, regarding situations, discernment, the careful sorting, sifting and distinguishing of things, must take place.
Disclaimer – Discernment should be seen as a middle ground between quickly claiming we know too much, and claiming we can know nothing at all. Discernment is not an affirmation that there is no truth to be found, or that we are locked away in a purely subjective and relativistic world where no judgments can be made at all. Rather it is a caution from making sweeping, simplistic or rash judgments that are not based on things we really know. It is a call to sobriety, for people and situations are often more complicated than we first grasp, and it takes time to make proper assessments.
Some (including me) have often criticized the Church for not operating in the fast speed zone of the modern world. We often want quick and bold statements to be issued. We desire rapid responses and bold initiatives made to every issue and crisis that emerges. Of themselves, these desires are not wrong. But they need to be balanced with an appreciation that discernment is often accomplished at slower speeds than we demand or wish. A more rapid response may sometimes be desired and even necessary. But there is something to be said about following the priority of the important rather than, merely, the priority of the urgent. And careful consideration and discernment is important and has its place.
To discern: to sift, separate, or distinguish.
Photo Credit: St Ildefonso (in prayerful discernment) by El Greco
Consider this video. I pray you won’t take offense at it and maintain a certain “sense of humor.” For while it may seem to make light of a serious spiritual matter, I am making use of it merely to illustrate that not all things are as they first appear. Even in the matter illustrated, the Church demands long investigation before concluding the worst and proceeding with the rites.
When I moved into my home eleven years ago, I inherited a backyard that once had been landscaped and beautiful. Yet everything had become completely overgrown with weeds, all because it has hardly been touched for nearly twenty years. As the man from whom I bought the house said, “If you don’t stay on top of it, nature quickly takes over.” Ever since then I’ve spent many hours my yard- weeding, tilling, mulching, seeding, planting, fertilizing, and weeding again. And as soon as I think I can take a break, “nature quickly takes over,” and the crab grass and weeds make their appearance once again.
I thought of my yard as I reflected on today’s gospel. Jesus told us that he wants us to be good soil that is receptive to the seed of his word and brings forth abundant fruits of the Spirit. Yet in order for us to become this type of soil, we need to invest effort, discipline, and time- just like with my backyard. Because the moment we don’t stay on top of it, our fallen human nature quickly takes over.
This is because when we aren’t attentive to God’s word, other voices will quickly fill the void. And then it’s these voices- and not God’s word- that will shape our thoughts, actions, and our character. Specifically, I’m referring to the voices of our culture, common sense, and our feelings.
The voice of our culture was loud and clear the other day as I sat next to two young women on an airplane who were deeply engrossed in a copy of “Cosmopolitan” magazine. From what I could see and hear, the articles were all about explicit love-making techniques, horoscopes, shopping, and beauty products: a spirit-killing diet of materialism, self-gratification, superstition, and soft porn. This reminded me that as Christians we need to be very, very careful about our media intake if we don’t want the voice of culture to drown out the voice of God.
The voice of “common sense” of can also be ungodly, although in a less obvious way. Yet if you think about it, so much of what Jesus taught us, and so many of his commandments to us, simply defy common sense. For instance, Jesus teaches us to love our enemies…to carry a cross…to humble ourselves as a servant…to give without counting the cost…that marriage is forever…that all life is sacred…that we should trust only in God. Yet common sense would have us hate our enemies, avoid suffering, promote ourselves, maximize our returns, divorce without fault, judge life by it’s so-called “quality”, and trust in our own abilities. Truly, common sense and godly wisdom can be very different things indeed!
Then there’s the voice of emotion. I imagine that we’ve all done things that felt right at the time but that we came to regret later on. Or maybe we’ve tried to convince ourselves that what we were doing was right because we were feeling afraid or angry or lonely or were caught up in the excitement of the moment. Feelings like this are given to us by God. They serve a purpose and we need to pay attention to them. Yet they can lead us down the wrong path if we’re not grounded in the Word of God.
That’s why Jesus says it’s so important for us to listen to God’s word. In today’s gospel, Jesus quoted a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It said that when we listen to God’s word, God can change us, and God can heal us. And deep down, that’s what we all want! But if we truly wish to receive these gifts, we truly need to listen. Lots of people came out to see Jesus in today’s gospel, but not all of them really listened. I imagine that’s probably true of our gathering today as well. I confess that I can be just as guilty as anyone else about letting my mind wander during the Biblical readings or a homily. Yet the truth is, as I heard it put recently, that we should listen at Mass as if we were listening to the instructions on how to open our own parachute!
Of course we need to do far more than be attentive at Mass in order to truly hear all that God wishes to say to us. As Catholics, we believe that God’s word comes to us in two ways: through the pages of Holy Scripture, and in the authentic teachings of the Church. We need to make it a priority to be receptive to both.
Bishop Robert Morneau of Green Bay says that whenever he confirms young people, he always tells them to remember two numbers: 144 and 168. 144 is the number of ten-minute periods in a day, and 168 is the number of hours in the week. He then asks them from that point on to give ten minutes a day to the study of God’s word and one hour every week to attend Sunday Mass.
And surely that isn’t too much to ask when it comes to the word of God. In reality, it should be just the beginning, or a bare minimum. We’re all busy people. Yet at the same time a typical American today spends dozens of hours each week in front of a television set, not to mention a computer screen. But if we stopped watching one thirty-minute television program a day and read Scripture instead, we could read through the entire Bible twice a year.
I’ve heard it said that one can’t become an effective preacher if all you read is Sports Illustrated. It’s just as true to say that we won’t become strong Christians if we fail to take in the Word of God. Our soil will become shallow, rocky, and weed-infested: precisely what Jesus warns against! We’ll become worldly people, instead of the people of God. That’s why what Jesus told the crowds, he also says to us: “Whoever has ears,” he said, “ought to hear.”
Conversion often comes at a price- a reality that our Lord made quite clear in today’s gospel. He warned that following him would break up entire families. “One’s enemies will be those of his own household,” he said.
