Prepare the Way of the Lord: Love Thine Enemies

If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,

will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills

and go in search of the stray?

And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it

than over the ninety-nine that did not stray.

In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father

that one of these little ones be lost."  Matthew 18:12-14

As part of my reflection on the readings for December 11, 2012, I have a confession to make.  I am addicted to twitter and Facebook.  I am also addicted to reading stories involving faith reported by mainstream media.  I then love to read the comments posted on those stories.  There is absolutely no surprise for me in what I read.  I will almost always find comments that extremely critical of religion and Christianity.  Some comments are incredibly vicious and needlessly mean.  One in particular is an opinion posted in CNN’s Belief Blog, “MyTake:  No pressure, Mr. President.”  The article is by Eric Metaxas speaking about loving your enemy and how the President at the National Prayer Breakfast embraced some of these ideals and turned around to allow his campaign to introduce some controversial campaign tactics.  I am not here to critique this article or its content, save one idea.  Eric Metaxas hit the nail on the head when he said that: “I talked specifically about the idea of loving our enemies. I said this was the test of real faith.”

As this is the season of Advent, we reflect and contemplate on the coming of the Lord and how we ought to order our lives.  Our readings today give us great clarity into the love of God, the Father, and how he will come and look for us, the lost.  In the first reading, from the Prophet, Isaiah, we hear that we can be comforted; that our guilt has been extinguished by God.  The interesting thing here is the nature of the love of God.  We believe that when Jesus Christ died on cross, he bore all the sins of humanity.  In the words of the Prophet, the expiation borne of the sins of Jerusalem was doubled by the hand of the Lord.  The Prophet tells us that, in a sense, God has taken our sin and then some more.  This lends to the mystery of what kind of Love would trade heaven’s throne for a cross?  This love is a great meditation for advent as we reflect on the grace given by the salvation earned through saving act of Christ.  And we hear in Advent, prepare the way of the Lord.  We prepare the way of the Lord by listening to God and hearing how we are to live out in our lives the call to which each of us receives uniquely from God.  The second half of preparing for the Lord is to take what we hear and act upon it in our lives.  Hearing the word of the Lord is not good enough; accepting the word of the Lord is not good enough.  What matters is having our outward actions reflect the internal movements of our souls.  We must strive to act in a way which brings glory to the Lord. 

Today’s gospel reading is from the Gospel according to St Matthew.  Jesus offers a parable a about the depth of the love of God.  The parable tells us that out of love for one sheep, a shepherd will leave all the others to find one that goes astray.  The shepherd rejoices more for the one who was lost than the others who stayed.  The Lord rejoices over us who turn and return to the Lord.  Because the Lord tells us that it is not the Father’s will that we should be lost, we can rejoice that God continues to seek us out and call us to conversion. 

It is this constancy from the Lord that makes me mourn the commentary on many articles I read online.  It also provides me with a great hope for the world because the Lord does not stop seeking us out.  The love of God is made manifest through the Mass in the sacramental body and blood of Christ.  We also experience God, knowingly and unknowingly, when we choose to act in love.  The awesomeness of God, for me, is that the people who appear most destructive with regard to faith and religion, in choosing to love, actually participate in the life of God.  The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, that “He has loved us first and he continues to do so; we too, then, can respond with love. God does not demand of us a feeling which we ourselves are incapable of producing. He loves us, he makes us see and experience his love, and since he has “loved us first”, love can also blossom as a response within us.”  Love is a response to love, which we as Christians accept as God.  It is my hope and consolation that as those who ridicule my faith and yours, one day find as they love the people in their lives come to realize that God does exist and that they come to love God as they realize the love of God in their own lives. 

In the most concrete way, we can demonstrate how we order our lives and how well we have prepared the way of the Lord by how we love our enemies.  It is not difficult to love those we don’t know nor is it difficult to love the people we love.  The great challenge to loving neighbor as self comes when that person has declared us to be the enemy.  We must respond to the abyss of evil and hatred with an overwhelming abyss of love.

The First Advent Reflection of the Year

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,'
will enter the Kingdom of heaven,
but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

Welcome to the first blog post of the season of Advent in 2013.  Cogitata Sanctatis began as a musing; a place to put things to paper that linger in my mind long after the day has ended or more distractedly, long after I have stopped paying close attention in one of many staff meetings.  The not paying attention is a sin I must vehemently work on.  I sometimes feel as though my participation in the blog is a reflection of my personal faith life.  When the blog entries slow down, my faith life seems to stall or stagnate.  When the entries pick up, my faith life is booming with growth.  Today, I find myself needing to add entries to the blog.  Best part is that I don’t expect a single soul to read this, but it is out there. 

The readings for daily Mass today tell a story.  The story is about things that will come.  The prophet Isaiah is calling the people to repentance but he is doing so with veiled language.  The image he shows to the people is one that is dressed with joy.  He says that they will sing in the land of Judah because the Lord will protect in his city the people who believe.  This is followed with a more detailed description of what will happen to those who don’t repent, which is where the call to repentance finds its strength.  The prophet tells us that the ones in high places will be brought down, crushed and trampled by the needy and the poor.  Just who are the ones in high places?  Let us wait to that question.

The psalmist bridges the prophet and our Gospel message.  The psalm connects us and prepares us for the message we have for today but first telling us that ‘blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’  We are given a reminder to trust in the Lord because he is the one who grants prosperity and can give life.  The psalms are more than just songs and hymns to be sung in a Church.  They offer keen insight into the message of the Church in the daily readings.  They can also speak to us directly by helping us to take in the gospel meaning in our lives.  And definitely, blessed is he who comes in the name of Lord. 

And now onto today’s gospel:  The writer of the Gospel of Saint Matthew gives us a glimpse into one of Jesus’ favorite teaching methods—the analogy.  Let’s not try to discount this because we are taking a 21^st century look at a 1^st century thought.  We have the luxury of 2000 years of critical thought.  But what is it that Jesus wants us to hear, today.  Jesus tells us that salvation is for those who do the will of the father.  This is new theology for the Jewish people.  Jesus speaks of the Father but still has not been fully revealed as the Son.  So, in order to not complete alienate these people who are following him for no other reason than he performs miracles, he speaks to them analogously to help them understand the radical new things he will bring.  Jesus opens his analogy by saying that the person who hears and acts on what Jesus says is like the man who builds on rock.  So Jesus talks about the house on sand and how it was destroyed.  The people would have certainly picked up on this idea because they lived in a region where sand and wind and floods were not abnormal occurrences.  Most of the ordinary people would have either lived in mud brick house or were workers in rich people’s houses.  Thus the central theme of being grounded in faith with a strong foundation would not have been out of the ordinary. 

So where does this take us today?  The Church calls us in this time of Advent to prepare our hearts and recommit ourselves to Jesus and our faith.  We are not called to be Sunday Christians or Christmas-only Catholics but to live as though we are firmly rooted in our faith and able to withstand to handle what the world will bring us.  Today, Christ calls us to live more courageously and more virtuously as we encounter a world more hostile to Christian charity.  So let us reflect today on what Jesus tells us to do.  He tells us that it is not enough to hear his words and call his name.  We must act on his words and allow him to work through us, in complete docility, to bear great fruit in the world. 

December 7, 1941 and F.E. Nye s1c

Palm trees and coconuts are plentiful.  A light breeze passes through the air.  A rich aroma of flowers and trees can be discerned with a simple whiff of the air.  However, today calls to mind a solemnity and remembrance of a series of tragic events.  The first real destination on my vacation to visit family is a trip to the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor.  December 7, 1941 is a day immortally described by President Franklin Roosevelt as a “day which will live in infamy.”  History teaches us that on that day the Empire of Japan attacked the United States Pacific Naval fleet at Pearl Harbor in two waves of attacks.  The losses were extraordinary and unparalleled in our nation’s history to that point. 

My cousin and I were dropped off at the entrance to the memorial park.  I picked up our tickets and waited for my aunt to come.  Our scheduled ferry ride to the memorial was almost 3 and a half hours later than our arrival time.  So we had some time to pass before we were taken to the memorial.  We filled this time by passing through the museums and the exhibits.  One in particular was the USS Bowfin.  This was one of the first “modern naval submarines.”  This exhibit set the stage for my reflection on the whole event of visiting this memorial park.  The Bowfin allowed me to place myself in the early 40s.  I was able to envision what life would have been like for a sailor in the Navy at that time.  The various museum exhibits only enhanced my reflection.  So lets start at the beginning.  

At about 30 minutes prior to our scheduled time, we queued up for the tour.  It began with a short film about the history of the ship and the overview of the whole Pearl Harbor attack.  Anybody can watch a documentary on an event.  The USS Arizona memorial is different.  I knew it from before I stepped into the line to begin the tour.  Given my prior combat experience, I know a little about explosions.  I sat across the harbor today and peered at the memorial.  I could see in my mind the Arizona moored in its majesty.  I could also imagine someone standing in my position the morning of December 7, 1941.  The dive bomber who would have hit the Arizona with a munition that would have caused the armaments on board to also explode and create a smoke plume 500 feet high would have been clearly visible flying so low on Battleship row.  The explosion would have been deafening and would have rocked anyone on the shoreline.  The mercy of God would have been for the souls who perished immediately.  The ship sank immediately.  There were many souls who perished on board who could not escape the water.  Their souls spoke to me today.  They called out to me in a whisper and an echo.  One soul spoke louder than all the others.  While I was on the memorial, I looked at the wall of the names of all the sailors and marines who lost their lives on the USS Arizona on December 7, 1941 and one name was burned into my mind.  “F.E. Nye s1c.”  At the end of my day, I had to google this man.  His full name was Frank Erskine Nye and he was a Seaman First Class.  He was 20 years old when he was killed in the attack.  I don’t know if I am related to this man.  I am sure it is unlikely.  However, the search also showed me that the Nye family has given many men to service and some received the honor giving their lives.  

The memorial made the events of December 7, 1941 present for me.  I stood in the open air on the memorial just above the ship.  I stood mere feet from the deck of the Arizona.  Men who lost their lives on that fateful day were entombed just below my feet.  I looked down and could see with my eyes the remains of a ship that once floated magnanimously in that harbor.  And today we stood above it.  Remembering the horrors of war and desperation.  That day produced many heroes.  I wonder how many heroes were stripped of their ability to demonstrate their valor and fidelity to country.  Now their names are echoes that become fainter every day.  One voice not heard in almost 70 years calls my name.  I stood there in the memorial nearly overcome to think of someone whose name possibly shares my blood.  

The memorial called to mind the harbor.  The attack would have created a most unfortunate smell and sight.  Burning rubber and burning human flesh crossed with smoke and debris.  The beaches were probably stained red with the blood of the fallen who were launched into the harbor.  This would have been the war zone that should have never been.  History changes little.  The memorial is more than just names carved into a wall of pretty stone.  There are still pieces of the ship that protrude above the water.  They are aged with rust but still they tell a story.  The eyes can see where the ship came to rest.  The ears can make out the waves and the birds.  These sounds which would have been native to the harbor for ages upon ages would have been interrupted by propellor engines, gunshots, torpedoes and, most disturbing, the sounds of cries and screams.  Today, the sounds of the waves and birds return Pearl Harbor to a setting that beguiles the mind.  Standing upon the memorial, the sounds of peace are betrayed by the other senses.  You can see the ship underneath you in the water.  And the most telling is the smell of the oil which is still leaking from the ship.  On the memorial, if one is not paying attention or does not venture too deep into the memorial, this smell could be over looked but not from the viewing area near the opposite side as the dock.  The smell will remain with me for a very long time. 

The price of freedom is born most by the ones who give their lives for it.  My service today pales in comparison to the men who gave their lives.  Today, I remember Frank Nye.  Seaman First Class on the Arizona.  His service is commemorated in our freedom.  

Freedom and Free Will

The LORD secures justice for the oppressed,
gives food to the hungry.
The LORD sets captives free.-Psalm 146:7

The readings for today call us to freedom.  The true freedom that comes from the Lord is the only thing that can bring peace to the soul.  In this time and in this day, our country is extremely divided over the concept of freedom.  But what are we really looking for?  What need are we trying to fulfill?  My suspicion is that we are looking for acceptance and love. 

So let this blog today, with the sacred scriptures as our foundation, reflect on our search for freedom.  There are so many ideas of what it means to be free.  As a professed “guardian of freedom and the American way of life,” I have come to understand freedom in a new way.  It seems that freedom, in the cultural sense, has become the ability to do whatever pleases so long as it neither breaks the law nor hurts anyone.  Webster’s current primary definition is “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.”  I wish to argue that freedom is simply the ability to choose.  Webster says that very thing but places the emphasis on the lack of obstruction in choice.  But real freedom is not in the lack of something, but the fullness of something.  Our freedom is full of our active, conscious participation in what we do.  And it is our ability to choose that makes us free. 

We have this freedom that I think is confused with free will.  Our free will is the ability to do whatever we choose to do.  The choice is what makes freedom.  I look at my words and I agonize over what I feel is inferiority at trying to explain this.  However, I know that I cannot explain this well enough so I am going to offer the explanation given in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  “Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility.  By free will one shapes one’s own life.  Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.”-CCC 1731

With this idea of freedom, the ability to do whatever, we can come back to the search for acceptance and love.  And for this I must refer to the wisdom of our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, because my words are not nearly as well.  In his encyclical, Redemptor Hominis,  “Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.”  What the Holy Father tells us is that we need love.  We cannot understand ourselves without love.  Love reveals us to ourselves.  The best part of this is that with the understanding of freedom, love is a choice. 

However, love from my perspective is being mistaken for lust.  As best as I can put it, love is an inward movement of the heart.  It speaks to other hearts.  Love seeks what is best for others and not for self.  When love is used to promote self over others, then it ceases to be love.  Love cannot be objectified because its nature is sacrificial.  We know love because it feels for us, it seeks us out and we encounter it.  The most magnanimous love is that Christ, who is love, seeks us, so much that he gave his life to us and for us.  His act teaches us what the extreme selfless act should be and we are called to model that, to imitate that, in our daily lives.  Lust, by its very nature, cannot be selfless.  Lust cannot give because it is inherently selfish. 

We can be set free by accepting love.  There is freedom in acceptance of what is good.  Constraint by evil only creates circular ruts because lust and evil only promotes more lust and more evil.  In hope, love and goodness promote more love and more goodness.  

We return to freedom again.  We have the choice in our lives to do as we will.  Our choices are what define who we are and how we are viewed by the world.  If we must make a choice, the choice founded in love promotes goodness.  Making choices that promote what is best for others carry with it the inherent nobility and carry charity at its core.  This is freedom. 

The Gospel message today describes the glory of God in the Kingdom.  Our participation in the kingdom comes back to our choices.  The guidance given by the Lord is to “not go off.”  Rather our choices give us the ability to participate in the Kingdom of God.  Our hope and our sanctity rest in God alone.  Let us be free and live as God intended.  With love and freedom.

Who, O Lord, Could Save Themselves?

When the kindness and generous love

of God our savior appeared,

not because of any righteous deeds we had done

but because of his mercy,

he saved us through the bath of rebirth

and renewal by the Holy Spirit

...through Jesus Christ our Savior- Titus 3:4-5, 6

A recent Christian praise and worship song rhetorically asks the question, “Who, O Lord, could save themselves?”  This question asks us to consider two ideas:  1) Are we in need of saving, and 2) who is the savior?  The second question hinges exclusively on the answer of the first question.  A person who does believe they need to be saved, will not seek a savior.  However, this scripture passage opens the notion that our Savior, God himself, appeared on his own volition, he saved us (with baptismal imagery) and then makes us new.  The key piece of this scripture from today’s readings is the do-er of the action.  Jesus is the active participant and the ubiquitous “we” are the recipient of this divine work.  In the mercy of God, he realized that people were so buried in sin that they could not see they needed repentance and forgiveness.  

The readings, as a whole, present a theme of awareness.  The first reading from the letter to Titus calls the faithful to be aware of themselves and what they are doing.   There is a stress on obedience because the verse places focus on how to live.  This scripture provides a dynamic and paradigmatic approach to living.  This epistle seems to be a synthesis of what the life of the Church and the essential Christological doctrine of the early Church.  This particular reading provides a guide for living and makes a very brief creed statement.  

Moving forward, let’s reflect on the Church’s wisdom in placing the 23rd Psalm with the readings for today.  The reading from Titus values rejection of desire and pleasures.  The writer refers to these as foolish.  The Psalmist tells us that because the Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want.  The psalm is a beautiful and poetic image of salvation and the journey of the soul.  It would seem that the psalm foretells the Christian life.  Accepting Christ, and in baptism, we are given rest and our soul is “re-posed” for the Christian life.  God walks with us on our journey through life and though we encounter the bad things, we find strength and courage to continue to move through life.  The psalm then moves on to the Christian death.  Let us dwell in the house of God, or so says the psalmist.  The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.  

The Gospel reading today is an interesting tie-in to this.  Jesus is heading to Jerusalem leading up to the passover and he passes 10 lepers.  They ask for his pity and so he sends them to the priests and they are healed.  One came back to offer thanks.  Jesus notes that only one of ten came back and he tells this Samaritan man that he has been saved.  

Let’s unpack some of the major points I noticed about this gospel and then I will tie it into the other readings to conclude.  First, the lepers ask for the Lord to have pity on them and heal them.  The major truth in this is that they realize that Jesus has the power to heal them.  They recognize that he is not an ordinary teacher, but someone who performs works of God.  The second major truth is that Jesus is moved to help them.  This indicates that the pity, or mercy, of the Lord influences the Lord to heal these people.  One came back to offer thanks.  Scripture indicates that he realized that he was healed.  This indicates the man did not fully believe that he could be healed directly by Jesus but stilled followed the instruction faithfully.  Upon his realization, he finds Jesus and thanks him.  There is value in the presentation that few people have genuine appreciation for the work of God.  Jesus notes the Samaritan is the only one who comes back.  The foreigner returns and his fellow Jews bail.  This seems to be a warning over getting lukewarm or comfortable in faith.  The assumption is that God will always bail us out when we are in need.  This can also be applied to some who sin and then go to confession without the contrite spirit.  Their lack of conversion is represented in this gospel passage by the 9 other lepers who are healed but don’t come back and give thanks (which can also prefigure the Eucharist but that is not for this reflection). 

All of these readings call us to conversion and to a life of holiness.  Conversion is not an academic process but a working of the heart in harmony with the soul at the prompting of the Holy Spirit.  The call to conversion should begin with an inward desire for holiness.  The movement of the Holy Spirit convicts sinfulness.  This moves the soul for reconciliation.  Confession is essential to holiness.  Holiness is not the absence of sin but rather living in the truth that a humble and contrite heart will not be spurned (according to the psalmist).  The year of faith has called us to renew our faith, and with this call, we should re-commit ourselves to the Sacramental life of the Church.  Today’s readings call us to holiness.  They call us to conversion.  They call us to be thankful.  They call us to be saved.

God is God and I Am Not

"He’d been a pastor twenty years
But tonight he sits alone and brokenhearted
In the corner of the church
He’s tried to change a fallen world
With his words and with his wisdom
But it seems like it is only getting worse
And he cries
Oh Lord I just don’t understand
And then he felt the hand of grace,
And he heard a voice that said
I have been there" --Mark Schultz "I Have Been There"


Ever feel like living your faith is a losing proposition?  Does the pain of seeing others around you who live in a dangerous manner bother you?  I have become quite close to this but some words offer hope in the trials and tribulations that come with life.  In this, I was listening to a playlist of Christian songs as a change of pace from the Worship music I love.  (There is a difference between Christian music and Worship music.)  Sometimes when we feel the closest to God, we can find that we become more alone than we thought possible.  According to a translation of St Irenaeus, "The glory of God is man fully alive."  We praise God for the goodness he has given us.  Our lives are meant to experience fully what God has created for us and what he intends for us.  We are meant to worship God and be led to holiness and virtue.  We must continue to persevere in faith and continue to seek God in all things.  Faith is our expression of our belief in things unseen.  How we live our lives will show how we believe.  The goodness of God allows us to live as we choose and, in turn, we do all things for his glory.  

As Christ Loved the Church

For the grace of God has appeared, saving all
and training us to reject godless ways and worldly desires
and to live temperately, justly, and devoutly in this age,
as we await the blessed hope,
the appearance of the glory of the great God
and of our savior Jesus Christ- Titus 2:11-13

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches us that grace is “favor, the free and underserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life” (CCC 1996).  Regis University, a Jesuit University, constantly asks its students to consider the question, “How ought we to live?”  Our lives depend on God’s grace.  It is God who breathes new life into our bodies so that we can live lives of faith, hope and love. 

The Holy Spirit gives us the strength in our baptism and sealed in our confirmation to have that strength which only God can give to reject sin and live in such a way that brings honor and glory to God.  But this strength, this grace, is a gift which means that it has to be accepted.  This is in line with God’s gift to us of free will.  God is our father and he teaches us the truth about honor and dignity.  God does not force us to follow his will like a dictator but expresses true fatherhood in giving us the ability and intellect to choose him above all else.  Our choices demonstrate our will.  Our voices only affirm our actions and behavior.  We can speak words of hope just as we can speak words that wound.  Our choices made in free will are what make us who we are. 

Choice is a gift often taken for granted.  During this year of faith, let us not take for granted the choices we make daily.  Placing our lives before the Lord and offering our souls in selfless service to our God, our Church and our communities is a choice that encourages hope.  We choose to live.  We choose to love. 

Faith gives us the ability to ‘await the blessed hope…of our savior Jesus Christ.”  This hope is based in the truth that though we die, we live because Jesus died and rose from the dead.  So we believe and we hope.  

This year of faith is the opportunity to embrace our beliefs with renewed vigor.  The Church stands against the culture of our time, not because she seeks to deprive us of life and freedom but so that we may have life and have it to the fullest (cf John 10:10).  So we ought to live in a manner that shows that we have life.  Jesus Christ gave his life in love for all.  And we should love as Christ loves the Church (cf Ephesians 5:25).