Kindness and truth shall meet

"John had said to Herod, 'It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.' Herodias harbored a grudge against him and wanted to kill him. ... Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him." -- Mark 6:18-20 (NAB)

Today is the feast of the Martyrdom of St. John the Baptist. As I listened to the Gospel at Mass today (Mark 6:17-29), I was struck by the fact that, although John was known primarily for his role as the precursor to the Messiah, Jesus, he wasn't ultimately killed because of his witness to Jesus. It isn't clear if Herod at the time that John was arrested even knew who Jesus was, since just a few verses earlier it says that when Herod heard of Jesus, his first reaction was that He was John the Baptist raised from the dead.

No, John the Baptist was persecuted and ultimately killed because of his courageous witness to God's truth regarding sexual morality.

In Herod and Herodias we see two different reactions to John's message, reactions that are common today. Herodias rejected his message; more than that, she resented him so much for even saying it that she wanted to kill him.

On the other hand, Herod knew that John was a righteous and holy man and liked listening to him, despite the fact that John was telling him he needed to repent. So even though John was speaking a hard word to him, he must have been doing it in such a way that Herod wasn't put off, that Herod somehow sensed that John was motivated by a selfless desire to see him made right with God, that is, by love. Perhaps John preached, as his father Zechariah had predicted at his birth, not just repentance, but forgiveness and the tender mercy of God (see Luke 1:76-79). Perhaps it was that same message of repentance combined with mercy that caused so many to come to John to be baptized as a sign of their turning away from their sin.

Dear Lord, teach us how to live holy lives and speak the truth with love as John did, knowing that some, like Herodias, will reject both the message and the messenger, but that others, even if only a few, will hear and turn to You for salvation.

The thin veil

"Then Eli'sha prayed, and said, 'O LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.' So the LORD opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw; and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Eli'sha." -- 2 Kings 6:17 (RSV)

I've experienced another surge of deaths, the most concentrated one yet. In the last six days I've attended four funerals with another one coming next week. Three of them were women in their 90s and one was a woman who had been on dialysis for a long time. The fifth, though, was a 64-year-old man who dropped dead of an apparent heart attack, the second heart attack victim in our parish in a month. At times like this, the veil between this world and the next seems very thin.

I've reflected on the passage above before (Feb. 14, 2012) from the standpoint of spiritual warfare. But there is another aspect of it that is standing out for me right now. When the Lord opened the eyes of Elisha's servant, he saw that he was standing in the midst of a great army, an army which had been there all along.

Again, I am struck by the thought that Heaven is not far away "out there" somewhere. Rather, it is all around us. We are always walking in the presence of the Lord and all His hosts and saints, including those we know who have gone before us. Though they may be blocked from our sight most of the time, we are not blocked from theirs. They see us and, because they are members of the Body of Christ as we are, they love us and fight for us, fight with much greater power than we do, because while we are walking by faith, they are walking by sight.

Of mushrooms and men

"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." -- Matthew 5:44 (RSV)

I have many concerns about the Supreme Court's decision yesterday regarding the Defense of Marriage Act. Rather than list them all here, I simply encourage you to read Justice Scalia's dissent, available at www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/12-307_6j37.pdf. But there is one aspect of the decision that particularly disturbs me.

As both Justice Scalia and Chief Justice Roberts in his separate dissent clearly pointed out, the majority characterized those who supported DOMA -- which included President Bill Clinton, majorities of both houses of Congress and millions of Americans -- as acting out of malice. It's one thing to judge someone's actions. To judge someone's motives, however, is to assume that you have a window into that person's heart, mind and soul, a supposed view that is almost always clouded by one's own prejudices and judgments. Let me propose a story that might help clarify this point.

Suppose you were walking in the forest with a friend when you come upon a large patch of wild mushrooms. Your friend, who loves mushrooms, pounces upon them with glee and starts happily munching them and picking them to take home.

You, however, happen to know for certain that these are poisonous mushrooms. They're not poisonous in the same way that Snow White's apple was: one bite and you keel over dead. Rather their poison accumulates in the system over time, eventually leading to sickness and death.

So what would be the loving thing to do in this situation? Would you say, "Well, he doesn't know that they're poisonous, and he likes mushrooms so much, he might be really upset if I tell him, so I'll just let him be"? Of course not! The loving thing to do would be to plead with him to stop eating the mushrooms.

Hopefully your friend would trust you enough to at least pause and ask why you think they're poisonous. But what if he rejected your pleas, told you that you were crazy, or even mean-spirited, because you were trying to deny him the pleasure of eating those wild mushrooms? His negative assessment of your motives would not change the fact that you were actually motivated by a desire for his greater good, that is, by love.

Now let's take the story a little further. Let's say that your friend decides that these mushrooms are so delicious that he's going to spread the word about these great mushrooms to others. In fact, he's going to gather the spores and start raising these mushrooms so as to make them available to others. Soon he's formed an association of wild mushroom lovers who are promoting eating the mushrooms.

Now you're faced with a real dilemma. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people could start eating those mushrooms, not knowing that they're eating something that will eventually kill them. So would you just throw up your hands, saying, "I tried! It's their problem!" Or would the loving thing to do be to try to protect people from the dangers of eating those mushrooms? I think the answer is clear.

So you form an association to help educate people about the dangers of eating those mushrooms. You even try to get laws passed, making the eating of those mushrooms illegal. All this angers your former friend and his associates who accuse you of acting with malice to restrict their freedom to eat wild mushrooms. "If you don't want to eat them," they say, "then, fine! But leave us alone!"

Meanwhile, some of the wild mushroom eaters are starting to get sick and even die. But rather than consider that maybe there really is a problem with eating the mushrooms, they point to other causes. They even blame the "stress" caused by your "hate speech" toward wild mushroom eaters. They slap you with a lawsuit to get you to stop telling people that the mushrooms are poisonous and shouldn't be eaten, claiming that your hateful speech is causing them great physical and emotional suffering. You're forced to defend yourself not only in the court of law, but also in the court of public opinion, as the public sees you as a bigot acting with malice toward wild mushroom eaters, while all along, your motive was to actually save their lives, even at the cost of great suffering to yourself.

Does my story, especially the last scene, strike you as "over the top"? Then perhaps you haven't heard about the Canadian bishop who was accused of "hate speech" for a 2005 pastoral letter to his diocese on marriage. Or the youth pastor in Canada who was in legal battles for years over an op-ed piece that was published in a local paper. Or the decision by the Canadian Supreme Court last February that a man who distributed flyers regarding the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexuality was guilty of a hate crime.

I suspect that in the months and years ahead, Christians are going to have more opportunities than ever before to say with Jesus on the cross, "Father, forgive them. They don't know what they are doing."

The struggles that lead to new life

"We know that all things work for good for those who love God..." -- Rom. 8:28 (NAB)

On this Easter Saturday, I attended the funeral of a friend's mother, during which she told a story about her mom helping them find caterpillars when they were young so that they could have the awesome experience of watching them go from caterpillar to cocoon to butterfly. It reminded me of another butterfly story I heard once, one that is well-suited to this season in which we move from suffering and death to rising to new life. It's possible that I may have posted it before, but if so, it's worth posting again. :-)

A Monarch (Danaus plexippus) eclosing from a chrysalis. It took about 15 minutes for the Monarch's wings to fully expand. (By Megan McCarty (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)

A boy once saw a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. He felt pity for it, because it was struggling so hard to break free. To help it out, he got a pair of scissors and carefully snipped away the cocoon, allowing the butterfly to break free. He walked away, very pleased with himself for having helped out the poor struggling creature.

What the boy didn't know was that it is the very process of struggling to break free from its cocoon that helps strengthen a butterfly's wings so it can later fly. By intervening and freeing it from its struggle, the boy had unintentionally doomed the butterfly to a life on the ground.

How easy it is to look at our and others' struggles and see only the pain and suffering. Often, though, those very struggles are the necessary means by which God works grace and blessing and virtue into our lives. Like the training that an athlete undergoes, or the struggles of a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, our sufferings serve a purpose. We may not see or understand the purpose when we're in the midst of the struggles, but we need to believe God's promise that they will indeed work for our good if we love and trust Him.

Watch and pray

"Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation, for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." -- Matthew 26:41 (RSV); see also Mark 14:38 and Luke 22:40

As I was praying after the Holy Thursday Mass this year, I was particularly struck by Jesus' words to Peter, James and John in the Garden of Gethsemane, possibly because I have this strange sense of being in a "Gethsemane" season myself. No, I'm not suffering agony as Jesus did. Rather, I feel more like the apostles, sensing that something is coming, but not sure what I should do to get ready. I definitely don't want to just fall asleep when I should be preparing, so Jesus' words of instruction are striking me with particular force.

All three synoptic gospels record Jesus saying, "Pray that you may not enter into temptation"; in Luke, he says it twice. Yes, I realize that Biblical scholarship says that the synoptics probably shared the same sources, but I still find the exact repetition striking. What does our Lord mean by this repeated instruction?

In St. Thomas Aquinas' wonderful commentary on Matthew, the Catena Aurea (available online at www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/catena1.html), he quotes St. Jerome on this verse:

"It is impossible that the human mind should not be tempted, therefore He says not 'Watch and pray' that ye be not tempted, but 'that ye enter not into temptation,' that is, that temptation vanquish you not. ... This is against those rash persons who think that whatever they believe they can perform. The more confident we are of our zeal, the more mistrustful should we be of the frailty of the flesh."

Earlier, Aquinas cites Origen's comments on the fact that Jesus brought with Him into the Garden Peter, James and John:

"He took with Him the self-confident Peter, and the others, that they might see Him falling on His face and praying, and might learn not to think great things, but little things of themselves, and not to be hasty in promising, but careful in prayer. ...  He who had said above, 'Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart,' now commendably humbling Himself, falls on His face. But He shews His devotion in His prayer, and as beloved and well-pleasing to His Father, He adds, 'Not as I will, but as thou wilt,' teaching us that we should pray, not that our own will, but that God’s will, should be done."

If Jesus, being God and man, underwent such agony, how much more must I pray for grace to persevere in doing God's will in the face of temptation? As when He washed the apostles' feet, He is again giving us an example. "As I have done, you also must do." Teach me, Lord, to watch and pray.

Benedict XVI Online Photo Album; Adopt a Cardinal!

"God is love." -- I John 4:8

A couple of quick notes (I don't want to stay up as late as I did last night!):

• I just stumbled upon a beautiful online photo album on the Vatican Web site of pictures and quotes from Benedict XVI's time as pope. His wonderful warmth and love really come through these images and words. Check it out at www.vatican.va/bxvi/omaggio/index_en.html. (Click on a corner of the photo album to turn the page.)
  
• Someone passed on a Web site that's encouraging people to adopt a specific cardinal who will be voting in the conclave and pray for that person from now until the new pope is elected. Just go to adoptacardinal.org, click on the "adopt" button, and fill in your name and email address. You will be sent the name of one of the cardinal electors to pray for. What a great way to support with our prayers the cardinal electors as they discern God's will for us!

Your life is not your own

"Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” -- John 21:18 (NAB)

When I listened to the beautiful message given by Pope Benedict in his final Wednesday general audience, one aspect in particular stood out for me.

In his full message, translated into English by the Vatican Radio staff and available on the Vatican Web site, he commented on the fact that the pope is no longer a private person, and that will continue to be true of him as he resigns. He said that he cannot go back to a private life of talks, conferences, etc. Instead, he will continue to serve the Church in prayer, staying at the foot of the Cross with our Crucified Lord.

I was struck by the fact that many would think that what he described as a "private life" of talks, conferences, etc., was actually a very public and active life, while the life of prayer to which he is retiring is the private life. But Pope Benedict seems to understand it differently.

A private life is one in which you are free to "go where you want," as Jesus said to the first pope, St. Peter. A public life, on the other hand, is one in which you "stretch out your hands" and let someone "lead you where you do not want to go."

How accurately Jesus' words described the life of not only St. Peter, but of St. Peter's successor, Pope Benedict XVI.