2006

A priest visited a wise old monk to be enlightened. “Father, I have come to you seeking wisdom. What must I do?”

 

“Well,” the sage replied. “For the first exercise of your retreat, go into the courtyard, tilt back your head, stretch out your arms and wait until I come for you.”

 

The priest did as he was told. As soon as he stretched out his arms and tilted back his head, it began to rain and rain, and rain, and rain. Finally the monk came for him. “Well, father, have you been enlightened today?” “Are you kidding?” the drenched priest said in dismay. “I’ve been standing here in the rain for more than an hour and I feel like a fool!” The monk replied, “Well, father, for the first day of your retreat, that sounds like a great enlightenment to me!”

 

You never know what you are going to get when you ask for something. Consider Bartimaeus, the blind man we find by the side of the road. Hearing that Jesus was walking by, he cried out, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” In all likelihood, he was begging for a handout, but Jesus put an interesting question to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the rest is history. Able to see at last, we are told, Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way.

 

Few of us know what it is like to be blind. Even if you wear glasses as thick as coke bottles, at least you can see. We may even have perfect eyesight, but that doesn’t mean we always see what really matters in life. There is more to sight than merely seeing the light of day.

 

Like Bartimaeus, we need to cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me!” Why? Even if we are not physically blind, we could suffer from spiritual blindness whenever we choose not to follow the example of Bartimaeus.

 

There is ample evidence that we lack spiritual vision to follow Jesus at times. Hatred, pride, and jealousy flourish in our homes among siblings and between spouses as do bigotry and prejudice in our communities. Never being satisfied with what we have and always wanting more than we need reveals that we can be blinded by greed and selfishness.  Rare is the family in which someone doesn’t get into trouble sooner or later.

 

In numerous ways lately, we have addressed the need to respect the sanctity of life from the womb to the tomb. There is more to that than the fate of the unwanted baby or the terminally ill patient. Are we respecting the lives of those close to us?  We don’t when we allow lust, for example, to blind us from respecting them.  I will never forget the young child whose father abused her and I pray that he is no longer blind to the harm he has done. I will never forget the hurt I saw on a friend’s face when she discovered her husband’s addictions on the internet which led to the breakup of their marriage. How embarrassed I still am to think back on the ways I treated my siblings when we were growing up. When we misbehave, for whatever reason, we are often blind to the hurt we cause others even to those closest to us.

 

Throughout the Bible, God speaks plainly of his blueprint for living wisely yet our human reason goes against the grain of such truth. So long as we are content with a minimal prayer life, we risk remaining spiritually blind, discounting God’s wisdom as we go about doing our own thing. Then we wonder why our lives or our world is in such chaos.

 

We all live by a certain set of values that we define for ourselves to meet our personal wants. When we ignore the wisdom Jesus offers us as values to live by through the scriptures or teachings of the Church, our spiritual vision at best remains blurry.

 

Our attitude toward what Jesus has to offer reminds me of the child who protests at dinner about eating carrots and peas. As children we are told to eat our veggies for good reason so that we will grow strong and big. Of course back then we had our doubts that this would really make a difference.  Likewise, we were often told how to behave but some of us didn’t buy our parents’ wisdom until long after we left home.  In other words, we can be slow learners at times, can’t we?

 

When making any choice, especially one regarding the sanctity of life, how readily do we consider all the possible options before us and their consequences? If our spiritual vision is blurred to any degree, we need to make the same plea that Bartimaeus did, “Master, I want to see.”

 

I want to see the wisdom of your ways. I want to see how the prejudices of my ways can blind me to the goodness of others. I want to see the shortcomings and consequences of my selfish choices. I want to see how my indifference allows evil to flourish because I don’t care enough to protest. I want to see how my obsession for accumulating wealth and enjoying a life of ease distracts me from reaching out and helping the less fortunate. If my eyes could be open, then possibly I would see how my choices could leave someone hurt, devastated, crushed, or even dead.

 

Open my eyes, Lord, so that I can see how the choices I make at times show a lack of respect not only for my life but also for the lives of others. Then I shall see what an enlightened fool I have been.

“You know the commandments.” So began Jesus’ reply to the man kneeling before him. Do you? I once thought that all Christians did but long ago I learned otherwise when I taught a class on the Book of Exodus to some teens. Not a single one could name all Ten Commandments. I had to wonder by what values they were living their lives. If you don’t know the Ten Commandments, by what values are you living yours? 

 

Daily we find ourselves making choices. Some of them are of little consequence, like the juice you will drink for breakfast. But others can be damaging, such as those we make that lead us to sin. Quite likely the question in today’s gospel on inheriting eternal life rarely comes to mind when we make our choices, otherwise more of us would be following the example of King Solomon and praying for prudence. Instead of ignoring them, we would then see the wisdom behind the commandments and what Jesus is urging us to do if indeed we want to inherit eternal life. 

 

The dictionary defines prudence as being careful about one’s conduct. Prudence is necessary to avoid harm. When we act indiscreetly or imprudently, such as indulging our addictive behaviors by overspending, eating or drinking too much, compulsive gambling, gossiping, dishonesty, or being unchaste, we harm ourselves and others. 

 

King Solomon equated prudence with the spirit of wisdom which he preferred over anything else, for that gave him the means to travel the right path in life. Unfortunately, many of us have made choices that have taken us down the wrong path at times, leaving us sad or disillusioned. Fortunately, as Jesus said, “All things are possible for God.” And that includes forgiving us for the wrong choices we have made in life as many women and some men have learned through the healing ministry of Project Rachel.  

The summer after my father died, my younger sister worked as a candy striper at the hospital where he had worked. She met a man there whom she introduced to our older sister. Before long, my older sister was engaged and in the summer of 1968 they were married. We rarely saw them after that since his job took them to remote places like Wolf Point, MT and Zuni, NM. They seldom came home to visit because my brother-in-law never felt comfortable with our family lifestyle.

 

In the summer of 1992, I helped my sister move from Colorado to California. On the way, she told me that her marriage was in trouble. Her husband had moved to Sacramento the year before to get their older children into a better high school while my sister and their younger children stayed behind to sell the house. He was having an affair and as much as she loved him, my sister was not too hopeful that their marriage could be saved. Despite their efforts at counseling, the end came a year later.

 

Divorce is not a common experience in our family. At that time, I had 35 first cousins, ranging in age from 38 to 82, and only two of them had experienced divorce.

 

A few years later, she decided to seek an annulment, so my sister asked me to serve as a witness for her. I made the observation that she did not marry a husband; she had married a father. I then explained that she met her former husband less than a year after our father had died; the two men were both army officers, pharmacists, and physically big men each in their own way.  As I expected, the tribunal in Sacramento granted my sister a “declaration of nullity.”  After its investigation, it concluded that no true sacramental marriage existed between them. Such a decree says nothing about the legal status of their marriage or their children.

 

The business of divorce and annulment undoubtedly leaves many people confused and sometimes angry, especially if they were never married in the Catholic Church. Why do I need to go through another trial with the Church in order to marry again?  I recall years ago how Ann Landers even called an annulment a Catholic divorce. Actually, we are dealing with two separate issues here.

 

A divorce is a civil decree stating that a legal marriage no longer exists. The marriage between my sister and former brother-in-law witnessed here in Washington was terminated by a court in California 24 years later. In the eyes of society, they were now legally free to remarry.

 

Based on what Jesus has said, the Church presumes every couple to be married in the eyes of God until, as the vows state, death do they part. In the wedding rite, one even finds the line taken from today’s gospel, “Let no man separate what God has joined.” Thus, the Church does not have the freedom to terminate a valid marriage. Being divorced doesn’t free a person to marry, so the question is asked, “Did God in fact join this couple together?” In other words, was this marriage a truly sacramental union?

 

Like priesthood, marriage is a vocation. Not everyone is called by God to marriage, or if they are, some choose to marry a person other than the one God had in mind.

 

A tribunal’s mission is to discern if a sacramental marriage exists or not. Whenever a declaration of nullity is granted, the tribunal has determined that something was lacking which made the marriage as a sacrament null from the beginning. Often times, one spouse or both entered into the marriage either unable or unwilling to fulfill the vows that were exchanged along with the implicit responsibilities that a true marriage entails. Two fairly common examples would be when one or both spouses enter the relationship lacking the intent, the desire or the capacity to remain faithful to one another or to have and raise children.

 

What makes a marriage sacramental? Up front, I would say when both spouses strive to include God as an integral partner in their union. Statistics show that when couples pray together, their marriage becomes practically indestructible. When God is missing from a person’s life for any number of reasons, self-centeredness is likely to fill the vacuum. Sooner or later, that is apt to stop a person from carrying out the fundamental responsibilities of marriage, namely attending to the well-being of one’s spouse and children.

 

I often tell engaged couples that a wise approach to ensuring the success of their marriage would be to adopt the line, “God is first, you are second, and I am third.” If that were the creed of every lover in every marriage, I am convinced that the seeds of divorce would never take root. The lover who honestly lives that creed could not verbally or physically batter the beloved. The lover who honestly lives that creed cannot deny the dignity of the beloved. The lover who strives to live that creed will not be unfaithful to the beloved or their children.

 

The lover who lives with this conviction would see the beloved, not as someone to be dominated or diminished, but as a spouse equal in dignity and value, for both the lover and the beloved are created equal in God’s image. The lover who believes this would never ask the question raised by the Pharisees in this gospel for instead of seeing marriage as a link merely joining two separate and possibly unequal partners, the lover sees their union as one bonded together by God that no one or nothing but death can separate.

 

Urged on by false doctrines and a want to believe that there can be no such thing as eternal punishment for serious wrongs when Jesus is a God of love and kindness, many have thrown hell out the window along with any concern for sin in their lives. After all, if there is no hell, then why would we need to worry about sin?  Yet Jesus spoke more often on the subject of hell than heaven.

 

In today’s gospel, he uses the Gehenna to paint a picture of hell that his listeners could relate to. It was the ever-burning rubbish dump of Jerusalem where the city’s garbage and trash cans were emptied. As you can imagine, it had become a foul, unclean place, which smoked and smoldered at all times like a vast incinerator. In the mind of his listeners, there was no grimmer or more terrible place on earth. 

 

The Church certainly does not view hell as a myth. While we often hear that hell is the destiny for anyone who dies in a state of mortal sin, the Church has never taught that anyone has in fact, died in a state of mortal sin because we never know what manner of contrition may take place if any before a person dies. Hell should not be seen as a place created by God into which God casts sinners. Instead, hell can best be understood as a self-chosen state for those who have chosen to alienate themselves from God, not as a punishment that God inflicts on unrepentant sinners.

 

It is not God who rejects the sinner, but the sinner who rejects God. 

 

Our Catechism points out, “We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves…To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice. This state of self-exclusion is called ‘hell.’” (1033)

 

Hell is best understood as the state of being utterly alone in self-chosen isolation, not literally a place of fire. Hell is theoretically possible for anyone of us if we end our lives totally rejecting goodness and God.  Has any person ended his or her life in this condition? We do not know. Could anyone do so?  Most definitely. As a product of our free will we could choose to live apart from God in this lifetime and many of us do. We could be so utterly absorbed and trapped in ourselves to the point that we see no need for God’s company, much less his love and mercy.

 

Jesus uses rather graphic language to grab our attention. I doubt any of us would literally follow his advice and mutilate ourselves in any way nor would he want us to but with this descriptive language Jesus is challenging us to realize that eternal life is worth any sacrifice if that takes away the temptations that stand in the way between us and God. Behind his warnings, I hear a call to humility. We shouldn’t be so proud of ourselves that we lose vigilance against our fallen nature or give into the lies of the devil who is constantly trying to convince us that we don’t need God in our lives. 

 

As James implies in his letter, at the root of all pride is a yearning for self-sufficiency at the expense of others, which is so contrary to the message of the gospel. If you recall, that is what drove Adam and Eve to break God’s command in the Garden of Eden; they tried to become like God, which is what a fair number of so-called Christians have done. Having become so able to take care of their earthly needs, they see little need for God in this lifetime, so quite likely they will see no need for God in the next lifetime as well.

 

Life is full of choices. Every day we can expect to find ourselves in situations that demand a choice between right and wrong, but how watchful are we in avoiding sin? How readily do we seek to do God’s will in our daily lives?

 

Sometimes I have disappointed people because I have told them that the choice they made was a grave sin. In reply, one person asserted that God does not demand perfection in exchange for his love and accepts us for who we are. I told her she was right, but I cautioned her not to confuse who you are with what you do.

 

Leaving aside the question of guilt, mortal sin, and hell, every choice we make creates us, forms us, and gives shapes to our souls. Yes, God created us, but we create ourselves as the unique individual persons that we become. By our choices, we define who are. Do the choices we make reflect a personal desire to be with God forever in heaven or not? As his followers, we must be willing to sacrifice even what is most precious to us to enter the kingdom of heaven.

 

Jesus informed his apostles, “Anyone who is not against us is with us.” Are we with him or not? The choices we make each day speak louder than any answer we could vocalize. Hopefully when the moment comes to stand before him, we will allow Jesus to look us in the eye, embrace us lovingly and say, “Welcome to my Father’s house for you are indeed one with us!”

Today’s reading from James asks and answers a timely question. Where do wars and conflicts come from? All around us on the international scene there are wars and even rumors of WW III. Why is peace so elusive? James, the master of wisdom, traces the origins of conflict to jealousy and selfish ambition.  No wonder even close to home, one is bound to find conflicts in our communities, churches and families. The consequences of which can be very damaging as anyone who has experienced a broken home well knows.

 

James offers an antidote, but unfortunately, we ignore his prescription because instead of making any serious efforts at cultivating peace by striving to be righteous, we do covet, we do envy, and we do resent. So long as we do, evil will remain a reality in our midst. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian novelist, once wrote, “If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”  He later notes that while it is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, it is possible to constrict evil within each person. To do that, Jesus suggests that we begin by embracing faith in a child-like manner.

 

What he did in the gospel reminds me of a scene from the novel, Clowns of God, by Morris West.  Jesus makes his presence known in the midst of a small French community on Christmas Eve.  A terrified world is bracing for a nuclear holocaust.

 

As a small group of political and church leaders look on, Jesus lifts a mentally handicapped child out of her high chair, kisses her and places her on his knees. He dips a crust of bread in wine and feeds her, morsel by morsel. As he does so, he says:

 

“I know what you are thinking. You need a sign. What better one could I give than to make this little one whole and new? I could do it; but I will not. I am the Lord and not a conjuror. I gave this mite a gift I denied all of you—eternal innocence. To you she looks imperfect—but to me she is flawless, like the bud that dies unopened or the fledgling that falls from the nest to be devoured by ants. She will never offend me, as all of you have done. She will never pervert or destroy the work of my hands. She is necessary to you. She will evoke the kindness that will keep you human. Her infirmity will prompt you to gratitude for your own good fortune…More! She will remind you that every day I am who I am, that my ways are not your ways, and that the smallest dust mote whirled in the darkest space does not fall out of my hand…I have chosen you. You have not chosen me. This little one is my sign to you. Treasure her!”

 

Undoubtedly, the apostles were startled that Jesus used a child to reprimand them for their squabble. He had just told them for the second time of his pending passion and death, but they still didn’t get the message. Still anticipating an earthly kingdom, they had been arguing about who among them was the greatest. In the eyes of Jesus, none of them were. Instead, he implies that a child is.  “Whoever receives one child such as this in my name, receives me; and whoever receives me, receives not me but the One who sent me.” Children had no status, so that had to have been one eye opening statement for the apostles to hear.

 

The poorest and the neediest, the forgotten and rejected, the “least” and the “lowly,” are represented by the child in this gospel passage.  By embracing a child, Jesus is calling on us to embrace the uncomplicated yet genuine faith of a child that we adults sadly tend to outgrow; to love God and others without condition or expectation. “Child-like” faith never becomes cynical or jaded; it never ceases to be amazed and it is grateful for the many ways God reveals his presence in our lives. The power of such simple faith is its ability to overcome every rationalization, fear, complication and agenda in order to mirror the selflessness nature of Jesus.

 

By embracing child-like kindness, compassion, generosity, and forgiveness, we can attain true greatness in the kingdom of God. In the service we give and the respect we afford others as children of God, we welcome into our midst the very presence of God. Our love for them reminds us of the love of God for us despite our failings, our sins, and our distortion of God’s creation for our own self-centered ends.

 

Welcoming everyone is a sign that we have begun to constrict the evil that can be found lurking in our hearts. That is a big step we can all do personally toward bringing about the peace we yearn for.

 

A great and powerful Chinese statesman once journeyed to the humble hermitage of the wise master. He asked, “Master, what is the deep meaning of Buddhism?”  The mystic replied, “Do nothing evil, only do good.”

 

The statesman exclaimed, “That’s it? That’s all you have to say? Why, even a three year old could say this!” The Master answered, “A three year old may be able to say it, but can an 80 year old adult practice it?”

 

Good question. Can we? Just think, if we all did, wouldn’t the world be a better place?