Renew The Church! – website and Blog

Today is Thanksgiving Day, 2011. This is a troubling time for me, in many ways, as I see what is happening around the world. Western civilization was built on a foundation of “common sense” – the philosophical realism and natural moral law that were made clear and specific in Judeo-Christian revelation. Today, I see such a poverty of that common sense – today, such irrationality and amorality, such cultural insanity. The phrase “suicide of the West” is now often applied to this tragic movement in our culture. These are dark times.

But God is not finished yet with His work: a world-wide work bigger than the West, reaching to all the peoples and cultures and lands He created with His intention of eternal ends and purposes. These are dark times, but Son-rise is coming.

A beautiful sign of the coming daybreak is the New Evangelization called for by Blessed John Paul II and now recalled by Pope Benedict XVI. This morning in Zenit’s daily email of relevant Catholic news, we find a report of a “Europe and the New Evangelization” seminar held Tuesday in Rome, in which Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization, said this: the new evangelization is necessary to respond to the anthropological, ethical and social crisis caused by the neglect of God. Yes, this is the problem simply said: the neglect of God, the “practical atheism” that permeates our modern world. The West chooses to live “as though God does not exist.”

So yes, this is the firm ground the West needs to recover – the reference point of all reality, the standard of all authentic morality is God and He will not be ignored forever. Nor can His Church ignore her vocation and her mission, in this pivotal time! Too many of our parishes remain in the universe of their own parochial boundaries, both in the literal and the figurative senses! The Church in the person of the Pope sees the need to reach out and live our vocation to “make disciples” – but the churches in the places of the local parishes mostly continue to look within, with internal concerns, even while the world outside staggers toward the precipice.

The Zenit article reports the call for “the enthusiasm of a faith that embraces reason is the key for a rebirth in truth and liberty of the whole world.” Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Pope’s secretary of state, stressed that for “baptized persons whose faith is extinguished and who are no longer practicing, the Gospel must be proclaimed with new ardor, new methods and new expressions.” The Cardinal said it is the time to rediscover the “first love,” that is “reflected in the immense love that God the Father has shown for us by giving us his Son,” because that “first love” is the force that moves the hearts and steps of so many new evangelizers: individuals, families, communities, ecclesial movements.

On this Thanksgiving Day I cry out “Thank God!” for the simple truth that He continues to speak through His Church. Are we listening? Are we hearing? Are we responding? It is clear to me that the parishes in America had better get their priorities rightly ordered, and soon, while there is still time. The enemy of souls is not sleeping, and he is forming and placing his workers even now to advance his dark agenda. Is the Church awake? Is the Church aware of the forces at work in the world, in this country, in our cities and towns, in our children?

Thank you, God! You will bring about your Kingdom, whether with us or in spite of us. Give us the grace to be gatherers into life with you, even in the midst of the dividing and the scattering that is taking root deeply all around us. Thy Kingdom come.

Forgive me for the deep sadness when I hear – much too frequently, these days – evangelicals and also some Catholics depreciating “religion” in favor of “a personal relationship” with Jesus. There is a contrast made between the old, unacceptable and mere “practice of religion” and the current, acceptable and authentic bond of “a personal relationship” with Jesus. “Religion” is perceived, if not defined, as merely external, institutional, formal and dead. “Personal relationship” is perceived, if not defined, as of the heart, meaningful, dynamic and alive.

Religion is a good thing! The deep sadness I experience when I hear this caricature, this demeaning, of religion is due to the grains of truth in it. People are created religious beings! God made us to seek Him, to find Him, to worship Him and to find life in Him! That quest and journey is the religious life! Yet somehow, many have come to think of “religion” as ceremony without content; rituals without meaning: theatrics sprinkled with holy water. What a colossal tragedy for the Church.

Part of the cause for this false dichotomy – and it is false – is the “grain of truth” that it is possible to appear to be religious when one is not. It is possible to go through the religious ceremonies and celebrations while one’s heart never enters them. It is possible to appear to be in solemn worship of God, when in truth worship has never begun within the person. It is possible, in other words, to be an actor in the weekly religious play, and not a religious man or woman who is in “full, conscious and active participation” in the liturgy of worship.

Part of the reason for the popularity of this misunderstanding (especially among evangelicals) is the false philosophy of individualism prevalent in Western culture. “I can worship God better at my golf course.” I am closer to God in my fishing boat, alone.” I like to read the paper and enjoy a cup of hot coffee Sunday mornings, and God and I have our little conversation.” And so evangelicals who have indeed encountered Christ in their hearts begin to plan a way to draw such marginalized Christians (painfully often, marginalized Catholic Christians) back into a church building for a Sunday experience of “real relationship with Jesus.”

God does seek true worshippers. Jesus said, in John’s Gospel,

Jn 4: 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
24 God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.

What is “worship in Spirit and truth”? It does require real and personal relationship – the Spirit gathers persons into a communion of holy love in truth, and love is most certainly personal. And because that Spirit-led love is bigger than merely “Jesus-and-me”, He calls us to much more than “Jesus-and-me” in a private conversation. Love calls us to a communion or persons as big as the heart of Jesus, to an embrace as wide as His outstretched arms, to a love as universal and world-wide as His. The full truth of His holy love is defined at the Cross: there, at the Cross, is where we find both relationship and religion.

The Catholic Church does offer the Father true worship, in every holy Mass. We offer the same self-sacrifice of Christ His Son! And in the Holy Mass, to every worshipper is offered a most personal communion in that perfect self-sacrifice of love. There can be no holier or more complete worship! In each Mass, the Cross of Calvary is made present; for every man and woman present in that Mass, the offering of Jesus for the salvation of the world upon that Cross is made present for them individually, personally and collectively to embrace with their own human and personal “yes”.

In the Mass, worship of the Father in spirit and truth is a real supernatural possibility for every man and woman. In the Mass, at the Cross, all men and women are offered their very personal vocations in completeness, to the glory of God their Creator and Redeemer. Jesus has made into one, religion and relationship. In the Mass, all become one.

Ps 85: Near indeed is his salvation for those who fear him;
glory will dwell in our land.
11 Love and truth will meet;
justice and peace will kiss.
12 Truth will spring from the earth;
justice will look down from heaven.

Thomas

Many non-Catholics (and now many Catholics as well) simply don’t understand why we venerate Mary and the saints. The common question is, “Why not just go straight to Jesus?” In fact Scripture tells us to! (Doesn’t it?) Yes, the Lord does want us to go straight to Jesus, and through Him to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit. However, the straight path to Jesus, and through Him into the life of the Holy Trinity, is by way of His Church: in the firm truth of Catholic teachings, in the grace of Catholic sacraments, in the moral living of Catholic Christian life, and in the Catholic communion of prayer.

The straight way to Jesus is in and through His Church! And the greatest of her members as examples, models and prayer-companions for each of us in His Church are the saints. And among the saints, one holy woman is above them all by God’s choice, intention and provision: Mary. The straight way to Jesus is with Mary.

Many non-Catholics (and now many Catholics as well) simply don’t understand why we give such attention and honor to Mary. Doesn’t this subtract from the attention and honor we give to Jesus? No, the opposite is true: Mary enables us to see Him more clearly. Mary orients us straight to Him, that we may honor Him more fully, more intensely, more completely.

To understand the veneration and honor that is due to Mary, I think one has to understand and appreciate the value of a true model or example of something. If as a boy your Dad told you to do something for the family – such as cut the grass in the yard, for example, but never showed you what a good grass-cutting looked like, you would have a hard time doing it right. You might have to try many ways, many attempts by trial and error, seeking the best way to do it. We need an example to follow. If your father first told you to come, watch him very carefully as he did it, then you would have an example to follow.

When a young man begins to sense something in his heart that he thinks might be love for a young woman, it would be good if he has a model of what real conjugal love is – what it looks like. We need examples of doing things – of cutting the grass, or of forming a bond of human love, or of any other human reality. But if our examples are mixtures – goodness mixed in with imperfections, mistakes or downright errors – then such examples are of mixed value in helping us know and “see” what to really strive for ourselves.

Thus the saints are beautiful examples for young people and for us all, of the human call to holiness and the perfection of charity, or holy love. But even the saints in their earthly lives were flawed. Even the saints had original sin and human imperfections as we also have. They can show us models of the heroic overcoming of original inclinations for the sake of Christ! But their examples are not perfect, nor complete. They can’t show us the perfection (without spot or blemish) to which we are all called, and toward which we all ought to aim. The saints can show us how they, in their individuality and gifts, could in a limited way bring Christ to the world in their own personal lives. But only one human person can show us the perfection of the human vocation to bring Christ to the world! Only one person, His mother Mary, can show us both the literal and the spiritual bringing forth of Christ to the world, in the fullness of her “yes” to the will of God.

Jesus does show us the perfection of humanity, but He is not a human person – He is a divine Person, God the Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity. Mary is a human person as we are human persons, and Mary, uniquely, is the perfect example of a human person, having no sin at all nor any sinful inclinations at all, ever. Mary is the perfect human example for us all of the universal human call to holiness and the perfection of charity – the perfect example for all, for men and for women.

Mary is more than that, but she is that – and that is one thing to keep in mind. That alone makes her worthy of devotion – veneration – highest regard and respect.

Mary is also our mother in the order of grace. Mary was given to all disciples at the Cross, in the person of John the Apostle called “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” John showed us our proper response to this gift from God in his Gospel, “he took her into his own.” We too are called to “take her into our own,” as spiritual mother. Though all who keep the Word of God are “brother, sister and mother” to Jesus, Mary is uniquely one who “kept” and who “keeps” the Word of God, literally and spiritually, thus here too she is uniquely mother to all who keep and treasure and obey the “words” of “the Word.”

In her maternal love, Mary is uniquely ordered to be intercessor for us in prayer. All the saints delight in the work of intercession on our behalf because of the holy love – charity – that they live in glory! But Mary above all, in her perfection in grace, in her maternal vocation, tends to her children by God’s design and intention, in a full and unique way.

These were some of the thoughts that helped me to understand de Montfort’s vision and insight into a truth that changed the spirituality of the man who would be called John Paul II: the mystery of the call to Jesus through Mary – the journey of discipleship to Jesus through Mary – the coming into union with Jesus through Mary.

Mary, because God made her as He did, is the perfect – literally and uniquely the perfect – lens though which (through whom) we fallen human beings can begin to see, in ever growing clarity, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, true God and true man. Yes, our vision is clouded by the imperfections and wounds of the fallen nature in us, and in those we look to for guidance and help. Jesus is our Savior, and our intercessor before the Father! Oh how we need to look to Jesus, and to see Him as He is! In our wounds and imperfections, however, we can fail to see Him as He is and instead we can begin to see Him as less than He is. We can begin to see Him as we want.

So God created a New Eve, a new mother for a new generation and a new creation, and her first-born was the Christ, come to save us from our sins. She was made to be the mold in whom His perfect humanity was to be formed and brought forth; hers was the milk to nurture Him and the arms to rock Him to sleep. Hers was the love to mother Him, even to the foot of His Cross. Hers was the maternal heart Jesus entrusted with His beloved disciple, and all His beloved disciples. She is the perfection of His Church, sent to be light to the nations until the end, showing forth with every human movement the way to Jesus our Lord.

I urge you the reader – if you do not yet share that vision of de Montfort, Jesus through Mary – to begin to seek to see it as John Paul II did as a young man. It is a process of growing in appreciation of God’s work and mystery – a journey more and more beautiful in every step.

Thomas

…I look to all of you, brothers and sisters of every state of life, to you, Christian families, to you, the sick and elderly, and to you, young people: confidently take up the Rosary once again. Rediscover the Rosary in the light of Scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and in the context of your daily lives.

May this appeal of mine not go unheard! At the start of the twenty-fifth year of my Pontificate, I entrust this Apostolic Letter to the loving hands of the Virgin Mary, prostrating myself in spirit before her image in the splendid Shrine built for her by Blessed Bartolo Longo, the apostle of the Rosary. I willingly make my own the touching words with which he concluded his well-known Supplication to the Queen of the Holy Rosary: “O Blessed Rosary of Mary, sweet chain which unites us to God, bond of love which unites us to the angels, tower of salvation against the assaults of Hell, safe port in our universal shipwreck, we will never abandon you. You will be our comfort in the hour of death: yours our final kiss as life ebbs away. And the last word from our lips will be your sweet name, O Queen of the Rosary of Pompei, O dearest Mother, O Refuge of Sinners, O Sovereign Consoler of the Afflicted. May you be everywhere blessed, today and always, on earth and in heaven”.

The above quote is the conclusion to the Apostolic Letter of Blessed John Paul II, “On the Most Holy Rosary”,  given to the Church on October 16, 2002.    I just finished re-reading this beautiful letter, today, Oct. 7 –  the Feast of the Rosary.     I found in this re-reading, far more than I remembered receiving when I first read it, but that isn’t unusual.  How often do we  find after time and hopefully more grace has been given us, we begin to see what we had not seen before or had not appreciated enough!

HERE is a link to this letter, if you would like to read it today, or at least begin to read it, and ponder it over the course of a few days.  It is not a very long document, but it  is one that is written with the heartfelt love of a son for his Mother.

Perhaps, after you have read it you may be willing to share your comments.  I hope, that after you have read even a part of it, you will begin to take up the Rosary again, as Blessed John Paul II encouraged us to do, with a renewed love for Jesus and our Mother Mary.  May we all be blessed to learn from her to contemplate the Face of Christ.

Self-knowledge is so very important in our life of prayer, in our seeking after God and His life. We can deceive ourselves so cleverly! The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector at prayer comes to mind:

Lk 11:9 He then addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.
10 “Two people went up to the temple area to pray; one was a Pharisee and the other was a tax collector.
11 The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself, ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector.
12 I fast twice a week, and I pay tithes on my whole income.’
13 But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast and prayed, ‘O God, be merciful to me a sinner.’
14 I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

We can so easily blind ourselves to our own faults and idolatries, and thus so easily enter and leave the temple of sacred prayer in ignorance and presumption. May the Lord give us in grace the courageous honesty – the simplicity and hope in the mercy of God – shown us by the tax collector, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner.”

In the world we see so many in desperate flight, it seems, from His mercy and ready forgiveness. Like Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden after their sin, modern man hides from God, and from the darkening consequences of his escape from Truth, from God. Indeed modern man wants to deny “consequences” themselves! Yet consequence remain, as surely as effect follows cause and suffering follows sin. The abortions, the immorality and amorality, the subversion of love and of marriage and of family, the turning from actuality in preference for fantasies, fictions and “virtual” reality, the borrowing against the future to finance the excess and the self-indulgence of the present – all these are added to the scales, the weight of debt grows, and the time of reckoning grows closer.

Sept. 11, 2011, ten years after the horrific awakening that exploded upon America, was yesterday. All the videos were replayed, all the tapes again were heard, the anguish again was uncovered and the deep, deep sorrow again invited us to repentance. How the world needs a holy People of God! How the world needs to hear the saving Gospel! How the world needs the Church to be Church, calling this lost world to the one Truth that can save us.

O God, be merciful to me a sinner. Save us all Lord from the sterile self-satisfactions of pharisaism, the nest-building when we ought to be out evangelizing. Deliver us from all false security with our outward structures, and point us to what is inside the cup. Thy Kingdom come, O Lord.

Alright – this is not a Church issue, but a secular governmental one. I received this in an email, and I thought it deserved an audience. Think about it:

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

1. Term Limits
12 years max, some possible options are below.
A. Two Six-year Senate terms
B. Six Two-year House terms
C. One Six-year Senate term and three Two-Year House terms

2. No Tenure / No Pension
Members of Congress receive a salary while in office,
that salary ends when they leave office.

3. Congress members (past, present & future) are to participate in Social Security.
All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system
immediately.
All future funds flow into the Social Security system,
and Congress participates with all Americans.

4. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan,
just as all Americans do.

5. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise.
Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

6. Congress loses their current health care system
and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

7. Members of Congress must equally abide by all laws
they impose on the American people.

8. All contracts with past and present members of Congress are void effective 1/1/12.
The American people did not make the contract members of Congress enjoy,
Congress made all these contracts for themselves.
Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career.
The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators,
so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Do you think this might work? Congress needs a reformation! Could this be part of a solution? If you think so, suggest it to your congresspersons.

I’m going to post here a slight re-write of a post I wrote for a Catholic on-line forum, on boredom at Mass.

There are many ways today that people (priests and laity) are trying to generate a genuine personal participation (or “interest” or “excitement” or something) in the celebration of the Mass. Some attempts are embarrassingly superficial (popular music and musicians, liturgical dance, extended “kiss of peace” hugs and chats, “creative” and made-up comments, commentaries and sometimes even jokes by the celebrant during the rite, ….); some try appeals to the solemnity, reverence and unction still remembered from pre-Vatican II days – and so on. But when men try to “create” or “generate” a reaction to Mass that is not authentic and from within, they are defeated before they begin. Worship is not created or generated outside of man by other men. Worship emerges from the interior of a worshipful heart, the rightful response to the work of the Spirit within.

Defeat is seen, in spite of the persistent attempts of some, in the dreaded judgment after all that “Mass is boring.” We can hear it often from the kids; we can see it often in the faces of many adults. “Mass is boring.” Why? Given the actual meaning and significance of every Mass, how can this be?

I came across this passage quoted below in then-Card. Ratzinger’s book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, that for me sheds light on the real issue. The problem is certainly not an “external” or superficial one, but an interior one, a problem in the heart.

In the Old Testament there is a series of very impressive testimonies to the truth that the liturgy is not a matter of “what you please”. Nowhere is this more dramatically evident than in the narrative of the golden calf (strictly speaking, “bull calf”). The cult conducted by the high priest Aaron is not meant to serve any of the false gods of the heathen. The apostasy is more subtle. There is no obvious turning away from God to the false gods. Outwardly, the people remain completely attached to the same God. They want to glorify the God who led Israel out of Egypt and believe that they may very properly represent his mysterious power in the image of a bull calf. Everything seems to be in order. Presumably even the ritual is in complete conformity to the rubrics. And yet it is a falling away from the worship of God to idolatry.

This apostasy, which outwardly is scarcely perceptible, has two causes. First, there is a violation of the prohibition of images. The people cannot cope with the invisible, remote, and mysterious God. They want to bring him down into their own world, into what they can see and understand. Worship is no longer going up to God, but drawing God down into one’s own world.

He must be there when he is needed, and he must be the kind of God that is needed. Man is using God, and in reality, even if it is not outwardly discernible, he is placing himself above God. This gives us a clue to the second point. The worship of the golden calf is a self-generated cult. When Moses stays away for too long, and God himself becomes inaccessible, the people just fetch him back. Worship becomes a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation. Instead of being worship of God, it becomes a circle closed in on itself – eating, drinking, and making merry. The dance around the golden calf is an image of this self-seeking worship. It is a kind of banal self-gratification.

The narrative of the golden calf is a warning about any kind of self-initiated and self-seeking worship. Ultimately, it is no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one’s own resources. Then liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God.

from Spirit of the Liturgy, Card. Ratzinger, p.22-23.

To attempt to apply Card. Ratzinger’s words on “the golden calf” episode to our Holy Mass, can Holy Mass actually be, for some, “a feast that the community gives itself, a festival of self-affirmation”? Instead of authentic worship of God, can it become “a circle closed in on itself – eating, drinking, and making merry”? Can Mass be for some after all a mere “dance around the golden calf” – mere “self-seeking worship” – mere “banal self-gratification”?

What a truly horrific thought!

Can Mass be, for some, another “narrative of the golden calf” – a “self-initiated and self-seeking worship”? Can it be that Mass is boring for many precisely because Mass is not sufficiently “all about me”? For those “no longer concerned with God but with giving oneself a nice little alternative world, manufactured from one’s own resources,” yes Holy Mass would be boring!

For such disconnected persons, “liturgy really does become pointless, just fooling around. Or still worse it becomes an apostasy from the living God, an apostasy in sacral disguise. All that is left in the end is frustration, a feeling of emptiness. There is no experience of that liberation which always takes place when man encounters the living God.” How can there be liberation if the only encounter experienced or sought is encounter with oneself!

True liturgical renewal and reform must always have the end of ever more authentic encounter with and worship of the one true God. Such reform, I suggest, has then one essential prerequisite, imperative above all: prior and continuing catechesis – teaching, instruction, formation in the truth of the God who deserves authentic worship! What is the goal of catechesis? To place persons in communion with Christ! We must be in a vital encounter with the living God in Christ, to worship Him!

“The definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ: only He can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Trinity.” (John Paul II, On Catechesis in Our Time #5)

Considering the state of our present efforts at adult faith formation, it is no wonder so many are bored at Mass. They do not know the One being offered worship, and so they do not know what worship of Him truly is. They cannot enter communion with true worshippers; they cannot enter true worship. The Church needs catechesis – especially adult catechesis: the faith formation of adults! The Church needs to enable that life-changing, personal encounter with the living God. Why is this not obvious? Why is this not the number one action item in every parish, in our “new evangelization”? We need to meet Christ, and the Church needs to enable that life-changing meeting.

Jn 4:23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.
Jn 4:24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

As America begins to get serious about the national debt crisis, we have an opportunity to look at and reconsider our shameful moral crisis: these two crises are inseparable, like two edges of a single sword. Our economic crisis is clear: we perpetually overspend using borrowed money, producing an ever-deepening chasm of debt. Our moral crisis seems to have been “tabled” for now, so that we can deal with the “important” problem of the economy. Any separation of the two, however, is superficial and artificial.

The analogy that comes to mind is the common caricature of the drunken sailor. (My apologies to every real sailor: I was a sailor myself, once!) Every weekend ashore he went out on a drinking binge, and spent every dime he had earned and could borrow on loose living. His problem had an obvious economic side, and an obvious moral side, but the two problems had a single root: no recognition of, no faith in God. He lived only for himself, even though in the most nearsighted, immature, carnal and immediately gratifying ways he could find. He pictures for us, I suggest, America.

American government has continued to believe in and hold to an economic model of constant borrowing that requires constant economic growth to eventually repay. Thus we need ever more businesses, more business activity, more jobs, more tax revenues to enable more benefits (more tax expenditures per person) – a system constantly requiring more people to financially support. All the while, however, the American people have been embracing an immoral (and becoming amoral) life-style that requires and that results in fewer people: fewer children means less responsibility for ME, more stuff for ME, more time for ME. America for decades now has been clinging to moral adolescence, to a refusal to grow up, to a denial of personal responsibility, to an obsession with self – and thus to the abandonment of true love, of authentic marriage, and of generous responsible parenthood. We see the progressing triumph of this Peter Pan refusal to mature in the culture: within decades, contraception was made “Christian”, abortion was made “legal”, homosexuality was made “moral” – and thus children were made “optional”.

Washington, however, has continued legislating and spending under a model of growing population, while America has continued producing an ever shrinking and ever more-self-obsessed one. That’s the prescription for a national train-wreck; one that could and should have been foreseen if we had enough adults around who could do the math. Immoral or amoral living has economic consequences.

“It’s the economy stupid” is far too nearsighted a proverb. The human soul is more valuable than mere money, and is made for far grander and more noble things, but God will get our attention one way or the other. Unbridled hedonism has two downsides, economic and spiritual. The sins of man have one solution! And thus the Church has one overriding responsibility – and it is not to meet its annual budget, or to provide more meeting spaces or reorganize or have an annual “mission” with an even more “inspirational” preacher than last year. We don’t need guest motivational speakers who come and go; we need the abiding and life-changing presence of God here among us. We need to meet Christ; we need to become alive in the Holy Spirit; we need renewal.

The Church exists to evangelize! We have spent decades now in our parishes and dioceses with mostly “in-house” concerns: in shallow attempts at spiritual and moral introspection, in canned programs of formation, in paper-thin episcopal pronouncements, plans and policies. In spite of all this apparent activity, we have failed seriously to commit to what is essential, what Christ formed and sent us to do. Granted there are exceptions by the grace of God, though relatively few. What has become “normal”, however, is not good: the Church has failed to throw her heart and soul and being into the mission He gave us, to make disciples.

America is in her shiny brand-new bought-on-credit-with-no-down-payment car, cruising at 80, on a paved road to a radical humiliation. Maybe such a humiliation can usher in an authentic humility before God. And maybe the Church will begin to see her failure to be Church and to be His Light for this dark culture. May He have mercy on us, and give us His grace still. Maybe yet we will turn to Him.

No, I don’t mean people who were secular celebrities for whatever gift or notoriety, and who then became devoted Catholic Christians. I mean people, typically converts to the Faith with especially dramatic or radical conversion stories, who then became celebrated authors, speakers, and teachers. They became celebrities after conversion because of their speaking and writing abilities.

This is not unique to the Catholic Faith, of course. The Protestant world as well has their share of “successful” TV evangelists, who accumulate many followers, fans, supporters and donations. There is a lot of money to be collected from the faithful – and modernity makes it easier. I remember hearing one TV evangelist exhort the audience, “Plant a seed on your plastic today!” No, not in contradiction to biology 101 – but in convenience 101: “Use credit cards, it’s easy!”

There is an unnecessary tragedy when they fall. Yes it is a personal tragedy for them, but it is unnecessarily tragic for their followers, because these “stars” became something beyond God’s provision for His people. Such quasi-idolatrous “celebrity” is no gift of the Holy Spirit. Stars, heroes, celebrities – the whole concept seems radically non-Christian to me. Christians in general and Catholics included, unfortunately for us all, can succumb to a kind of idolatry of heroes. Catholics, unfortunately for us all, can seek inspiration of the “inexpensive” kind – the kind that passes as quickly as it came, the kind that does not threaten one’s life or life-style, the kind of inspiration that someone else has. The “celebrity saint” is booked many months in advance, in very large halls, with guaranteed funding, and all to the delight of his ardent fan base. They, filling the halls, sit in the audience. He, on tour, on stage, delivers his performance and everyone is happy.

Is Christ happy? Are disciples being made? Are persons being transformed into Christ? Are they growing mature in the Faith? Are they themselves becoming evangelizers as they support the professional evangelists? Or is all this theater a too-convenient way of avoiding the personal responsibility that comes with the grace of the Cross of Christ?

Mother Teresa knew sanctity in her profound humility. She did not seek the spotlight; she endured it for the sake of Christ and His mission. Attributed to her are these two comments on the matter:

Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.

We must have a real living determination to reach holiness. ‘I will be a saint’ means I will despoil myself of all that is not God; I will strip my heart of all created things; I will live in poverty and detachment; I will renounce my will, my inclinations, my whims and fancies, and make myself a willing slave to the will of God.

Jesus came to give us something more than a crafted “inspirational” talk. He came to “in-spirate” us – that is, to pour forth the Spirit into our hearts and lives. He came to call us out of the audience, out of the safety of being a mere spectator, out of avoiding living by instead vicariously substituting the stage-lives of the stars, the heroes, the celebrities.

We are to be inspired by the Holy Spirit. We are to live lives of heroic virtue and faith. We are called to be perfect – that is, mature in the life to which God has called us, and for which He has enabled us. If the celebrity teachers are really doing what they are supposed to be doing, then they are working themselves out of a job – they are to point us to Jesus, they are to enable us to encounter Him personally, and to strengthen us to remain in Him.

And in Him, we will not long remain in the audience. The Church is sent to evangelize. How long will it take us to “learn” enough actually to do it?

Blessings on this Holy Day!  May we all be open to receive the Love of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Rejoicing in our blessings, may we remember also our call to “be a blessing” to others.  Our family is our first experience of love, but the older we become in nature and grace, the more our choices determine the depth and direction of our love.  Even those little loved by human parents, can by God’s Grace yet experience and grow in His Love, and can help others to become perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect. (cf Mt. 5:48).  In the Trinity is Love for all, and we as Christian families are called to reflect this Love in the world.

“The Christian family is a communion of persons, a sign and image of the communion of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.  In the procreation and education of children it reflects the Father’s work of Creation.  It is called to partake of the prayer and sacrifice of Christ.  Daily prayer and the reading of the Word of God strengthen it in charity.  The Christian family has an evangelizing and missionary task.” – The Catechism of the Catholic Church paragraph 2205.

How many families today are a “communion of persons” or believe they are created to be a sign and an image of the Holy Trinity’s Communion of Three Divine Persons?   Some may remember this truth from the Catechism or from a class or homily they heard, but many other families are broken, hurting, and aching for communion.  Sin has destroyed and will continue to destroy familial love, but God so loved the world He sent His Only Begotten Son (Jn 3:16). In Christ, true communion of persons reflecting the Trinity is given, but will we receive Him and help others receive Him?

If by God’s Grace we are determined to know and follow Christ as disciples, daily we can learn from Him how to love truly. We can repent and believe; we can experience the communion we need.  We also hear Him tell us to go and make disciples teaching them all that we have heard from Him.  But how “determined” are we?  How many families take time to know Christ and to follow Him?  How many are truly open to life while others defend contraception, abortion, same sex-marriages, and are educating others to do the same?  Some fervently partake of prayer and the sacrifice of the Mass, but others find excuses not to come if it’s inconvenient.  Fewer still may pray daily and daily read the Word of God and grow strong in charity.   God has loved us so much, but how determined are we to love Him in return?  How much grace do we squander?  What do we value most?

How can the Christian family take up the evangelizing and missionary task it has been given in Baptism and Confirmation when so may of our families are in need of evangelization?  The king going to battle against impossible odds in the movie, Lord of the Rings, asked: “How did it come to this?”  I believe it has come one venial sin at a time.   We have become more and more careless, irreverent, and more and more forgetful of the Lord’s warning: “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.“ (Mat 26:41).

Many families do not watch and do not pray, thus  they enter  temptation and fall.  The more we fall, the less our conscience may bother us.  The flesh is weak and the spirit becomes weak as well.  But if we cooperate with God’s Grace, we will watch and discern the signs of these times.   We will pray and we will help our families to pray.  Thus helped by word and example, we will not enter into temptation and fall – or if we do fall, we will sincerely repent and begin again.     By God’s Grace, our families can become stronger in the Love of God and find true communion of persons.  We cannot ever give up in the struggle.  We must pray with perseverance, take up our cross daily and follow Him Who has loved us first.  Together we need to overcome the culture of death around us by doing the truth lovingly in our families first, and with our families to reach out to others.

Our battle to overcome evil seems impossible to us often, and without God’s Grace it is.  But with Him, all things are possible.  Let us rejoice that God in His Mercy has given us life this day and His Grace to enter union with Him, growing each day in faith hope and above all charity.  The decisive battle of our time is in the family.  It is in the home, where the evil one knows it begins for each of us.  Let us strive to love one another with His Love.  Let us approach each person as one created in His Image and Likeness, no matter how disfigured he/she may appear to us.  Jesus excludes no one from His invitation to “ask, seek, knock.”  Can we?  The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 in search of the one lost.  Will we?

What a glorious future awaits the sons and daughters of God who have fought the good fight and finished the race!   We see only a reflection of the Trinity here and now, but the Beatific Vision awaits those willing to receive Love and give Love in return.