The Holy Family Men of Faith (HF-MOF) is a group of men that educates and informs each other about our Church’s teachings so we can grow in our relationship with Our Lord. This is a group where men can openly share their challenges, successes and failures to help one another live in the most Christ-like way possible. The focus is on development of our spiritual growth within us; our families and communities; as well as the world around us.
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ReplyDeleteOMG!!! I Love our Pope
ReplyDeleteBoy asks pope if atheist father is in heaven
https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2018/04/18/pope-francis-comforts-boy-who-lost-father-orig-vstan-bdk.cnn
This is wonderful showing that God doesn't need us to believe in Him as God doesn't need anything. But He wants us to obey Him by doing His will and His will is that we love each other. This boy's father was a good and loving man according to the child, and with those thoughts, the Pope reassured him of our loving Father.
DeleteBishop Barron has a good review for the movie "The Shape of Water" Food for thought:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4XBa6xaddQ
Next Holy Family Men of Faith meeting will be Tuesday, May 8th from 7 to 8:30 pm at the Church of the Holy Family. Agenda will be mailed out a week prior to this meeting.
ReplyDeleteNext Holy Family Men of Faith meeting will be Thursday, May 24 from 7 to 8:30 at the Church of the Holy Family. Lon Scofield will have agenda and will lead this meeting. Fr. Eric Ayers might join us this night pending his schedule.
ReplyDeleteNext Holy Family MOF meeting will be Tuesday, June 12th from 7 to 8:30 PM at the Church of the Holy Family. Ron Batdorf will lead the meeting this session. Ron has invited the two Summer Seminarians to attend and give us some suggestions for our understanding of the Mass readings.
ReplyDeleteThis is an informative site for current Catholic Information that Jack Campbell sent me and I want to share it with you all. https://catholiccitizens.org/
ReplyDeleteMale love needs to be earned
ReplyDeleteThis small insert was written within the pages of Fr. Richard Rohr’s book on Adam’s Return (The five promises of Male initiation)
The mature person loves with both the motherly and the fatherly conscience, in spite of the fact that they seem to contradict one another….In the failure of this development lies the basic cause of neurosis. – Erich Fromm - The Art of Loving
Because initiators did not give away privilege, status, and respect cheaply, youth were made to earn them. The same thing happens in the military, sports, and early-stage patriarchal religion. There is an ego-structuring nature to male love. It is tough love, but still love in a way that a male respects and honors- as long as it is not cruel or demeaning. In later years, men largely recall and remember their tough teachers and their demanding coaches, those who pushed them to their best and their limits. In some way, a male knows that his other teachers did not take him seriously – and he did not take them seriously either. They needed his love more than he needed theirs, and he knew it. Such love loses its power for male redemption. Many women, soft men, and present humanistic culture do not understand this. Males need to need and work for male love. Love does not work for the male when it is given away too cheaply, too quickly, or too easily. It turns him into a lazy manipulator instead of a strong man.
We see this same tension in the New Testament, where the Gospel of John has Jesus rather frequently saying things like, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love” (John 15: 10). His love seems very conditional. I am convinced it is a necessary balance – although a seeming contradiction – to the many stories and passages that show Jesus always taking the initiative in loving sinner, outcasts, and the unworthy. Which is the true Jesus? I think both are true, and both need to be true for love to be love.
At its best, father love is also conditional. Such love serves the child well outside the picket fence, where he must eventually go to school, a job, and a partnership in marriage. The unique quality of such love is that it gives the boy impulse control, ego boundaries, and a sense of his own identity and power: “I can do something to acquire it: I can work for it; I can improve myself. Father Love is not outside my control as mother love usually is.” 44 This is not a bad place to work from, and it has many life benefits, as long as you have unconditional love somewhere. Perfect unconditional love is found only in God, of course. It is more than enough to heal all your woundedness if you know how to access it.
The healthiest people I know had a combination of both conditional and unconditional love from their two parents. It is an unhelpful myth that constant unconditional love from both parents produces strong ego structures, healthy people, or necessary impulse control. The most effective organizations, I am also told, have both a “good boos” and a “bad boss.” We need the sacred “no,” something to butt up against, something to create limit situations for us, or we never go deep and demand the best of ourselves. Parents must love us enough to allow us to be angry with them and fight them now and then. Organizations must have laws and someone who enforces them, or we all slip back into private self-interest. God clearly loves us with both left and right hands, total demand (commandments) combined with pure, unearned grace. It helps us grow up, and we are held securely inside reality.
ReplyDeletePersonal discipline and internalized values were never assumed in the young man historically. In fact, they were assumed not to be there until they were taught, demanded, practiced, and tested. In this sense, the military is much smarter than most progressive schools or liberal anything. The privileges of manhood are given only to those who have paid some dues to the common good, and therefore can be trusted not to abuse the common good. Otherwise, we merely empower selfishness. Historically, very clear distinctions were maintained between levels of advancement and status in the community. The elders, who had earned certain privileges, did not need to justify them to the young, whereas the young needed something to work toward and achieve. This serves the growing boy very well. It is a meritocracy, which the young man inherently respects, even though he fights it all the way. This is precisely the meaning of the law in the Bible, although most people make it the final goal.
The male, for some reason, does not respect anything that he gets for nothing. I spent a lot of years preaching the love of God to entitled and jaded American youth who had never worked for or deeply needed the love of God. They like me, but that bore very little fruity in the long run. One must wait and yearn for grace to achieve its purpose. Cheap grace is not grace at all. I think this is why Jesus is presented as cursing the barren fig tree (Matthew 21:19). Even God expects a return, a pass-through account, as it were. If not, it means the gift was not received at all. Authentic salvation, like love, has an effective quality to it. It works through you.
Initiation insisted on physical and concrete performance and behavior. It is not a verbal exercise or a support group, where the ego can always say wherever it needs to say to get what it wants. This, in my opinion is the Achilles’ heel of the present psychological, conversational model of enlightenment. In seminaries or any idealistic system, it creates a large number of submarines, who go underground until after ordination, licensing, or promotion. Ask anyone who does job interviews about the reliability of what people say during an interview or write on their resumes. We now look for a clear behavioral skill set that has been proven over time.
44 Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York; Harper and Row, 1956), 43ff
A Crisis—but Not of Faith
ReplyDeletePublished in The Wall Street Journal on August 31, 2018
George Weigel
BY GEORGE WEIGEL
In the ancient creed recited at Mass on Sundays, Catholics affirm their belief in “one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.” It’s not difficult to imagine hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Catholics in the U.S. choking on that second adjective over the past several months.
Grisly allegations of sexually abusive clergy in Chile, Honduras, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia and the U.S.; the former cardinal-archbishop of Washington unmasked as a serial sexual predator specializing in the degradation of seminarians under his authority; clueless and bureaucratic responses to these crimes from some bishops seemingly incapable of sharing the rage being expressed by their people; unprecedented charges of inattention to sexual abuse against a sitting pope, first leveled by furious lay Catholics in Chile and then by a retired Vatican diplomat; stonewalling in Rome; unhinged polemics across the spectrum of Catholic opinion: Where is the holiness of the Church in all of this?
Little wonder, then, that some of my fellow-Catholics have taken to the internet and the op-ed pages, not just to condemn gross failures of Catholic leadership but to confess to a crisis of faith. In this summer of nightmare, with the bad news by no means all out, the gag reflex of many Catholics is entirely understandable.
But that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, make it a crisis of faith.
The Catholic Church is such a large, fascinating, complex and storied institution, and Catholic life is so focused on institutions like parishes, schools and hospitals, that it’s easy for serious Catholics to lose sight of something quite basic: Catholics aren’t—or shouldn’t be—at Mass on Sunday because they admire the pope of the day, or their local bishop, or their pastor. Catholics come to Mass on Sunday to hear what we believe to be the Word of God in Scripture and to enter into what we believe to be communion with God because of Jesus Christ.
Friendship with Jesus Christ is where Christianity begins. To learn from Christ and to be fed by him in holy communion is the primary reason for Catholic worship. If Catholics lose sight of that, the awfulness that has come to light about some of the people of the Church, at all levels of Catholic life, can cause what might seem at first blush a crisis of faith.
ReplyDeleteYet much as I share the anger and disgust of my fellow Catholics over what has surfaced these past months, I’d suggest to those imagining themselves in a crisis of faith that they’re experiencing something different: a challenge to understanding what the Church really is. As the Second Vatican Council taught in the first sentence of its most important document, the Church, first and foremost, is about Jesus Christ, the “light of the nations.” Catholics trust Jesus Christ; trust in the institutions of the Church follows from that. And when trust in the Church as an institution is broken—as it has been so many times over two millennia—it’s important to refocus on the basis of Catholic faith, which is trust in Jesus Christ.
This is, in fact, a very old story. Catholics at Mass on Aug. 26 were reminded of it in the Gospel reading they heard. Although it was prescribed for that Sunday by an accident of the Church’s triennial cycle of scripture readings, it seemed remarkably germane to the present moment.
At the end of the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus has caused a furor among his first followers by declaring himself the “bread of life,” on which his friends and disciples must feed. Many found this a “hard saying,” left the itinerant rabbi from Nazareth and “returned to their former way of life.” Jesus then turns to his closest companions, the Twelve, and asks, “Do you also want to leave?” Peter answers in two sentences that every outraged or embittered Catholic today should pause and ponder: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”
That conviction is the reason to be a Catholic, the reason to stay a Catholic and the reason to bend every effort to reform the Church as an institution, so that it can be a credible witness to the Lord who offers communion with God and words of eternal life.
Fifteen years ago, during another shattering crisis of Catholic credibility, I was signing copies of my new book after giving a lecture at a Catholic parish in rural Indiana when a young couple approached me. They were much less dour than the figures in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” but were remarkably similar otherwise: honest, hardworking, uncomplicated farm folk. They said, quite casually, that reading the book’s candid description of ecclesiastical corruption and fecklessness, and my proposals for reform, had finally convinced them, after years of indecision, to enter the Catholic Church during what was then the worst crisis in U.S. Catholic history. Why, I asked? Because, they said, any Church that could be this honest about what’s wrong with it had to be based on the truth and on Jesus Christ.
I’ve thought about that couple many times these past months. Their testimony has not only helped sustain me during this annus horribilis. It has, I hope, given me a deeper insight into the nature of the current crisis and what is required for its resolution.
Those of us who believe in God’s providential guidance of the Church must wrestle with the questions, why is this awfulness going on and what are we supposed to do about it?
My answer, inspired in part by those Indiana farmers in 2003, is that the Church is being called to a great purification through far more radical fidelity to Christ, to Catholic teaching and to Catholic mission. Bishops who have failed in their responsibilities as teachers, shepherds and stewards have typically done so because they put institutional maintenance ahead of evangelical mission. Keeping the institutional Catholic machinery ticking as smoothly as possible, by compromises with truth and discipline if necessary, was deemed more important than offering others friendship with Jesus Christ and the sometimes hard truths the Church learns from Christ.
ReplyDeleteAll that institutional-maintenance Catholicism must now end. There is little holiness there. Throughout the world today, the living parts of the Catholic Church are those where people have embraced Catholic teaching in full and have grasped that being a faithful Catholic means offering others the gift they have been given—friendship with Jesus Christ. These Catholics, who have been stirred to protest but have not been shaken in their faith, are those who will effect the reform the Church needs. They include those bishops, priests and lay men and women who have squarely faced the present wretchedness, who are determined to get answers to the questions that must be answered and who will not settle for that form of institutional maintenance called stonewalling—whether it comes from their local bishop in the U.S. or from Rome.
Happily, those Catholics exist in considerable numbers. This is their moment.
—Mr. Weigel is distinguished senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies.
Thanks, Ron, for reminding us of this BLOG. I (and others, I think) had forgotten all about it. Now that we're not even Zooming for a while, maybe we can revive this method of discussion.
ReplyDeleteYes Lon this could be a very useful tool.
DeleteThe following the readings for Sunday 16 Aug, 2020 - The Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time:
ReplyDeleteTwentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
A reading from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah 56:1, 6-7
THUS SAYS THE LORD:/Observe what is right, do what is just;/ for my salvation is about to come,/ my justice, about to be revealed.
The foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,/ ministering to him,/ loving the name of the LORD,/ and becoming his servants—/ all who keep the sabbath free from profanation/ and hold to my covenant,/ them I will bring to my holy mountain/ and make joyful in my house of prayer;/ their burnt offerings and sacrifices/ will be acceptable on my altar,/for my house shall be called/ a house of prayer for all peoples.
The Word of the Lord.
PSALM 67
R/ (4) O God, let all the nations praise you!
May God have pity on us and bless us;
may he let his face shine upon us.
So may your way be known upon earth;
among all nations, your salvation. R/
May the nations be glad and exult
because you rule the peoples in equity;
the nations on the earth you guide. R/
May the peoples praise you, O God;
may all the peoples praise you!
May God bless us,
and may all the ends of the earth fear him! R/
• The gifts and the call of God for Israel are irrevocable.
A reading from the Letter of Saint Paul to the Romans 11:13-15, 29-32
BROTHERS AND SISTERS: I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them. For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?
For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable. Just as you once disobeyed God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so they have now disobeyed in order that, by virtue of the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.
The Word of the Lord.
Alleluia, alleluia. Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the kingdom/ and cured every disease among the people. Alleluia, alleluia.
• O woman, great is your faith!
A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew 15:21-28
AT THAT TIME, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman of that ¬district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” But Jesus did not say a word in answer to her. Jesus’ disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But the woman came and did Jesus homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And the woman’s daughter was healed from that hour.
The Gospel of the Lord.
Lectio Divina: 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
DeleteA key to the reading
a) The context within which Matthew preserves the words of Jesus:
* Matthew’s Gospel, written about 85 AD, is addressed to a community of pious and observant Jews, converted to faith in Jesus. After Jesus’ example, they continued to live according to the traditions of the Jewish people, observing the Law of Moses in its fullness. But now in the 80s they find themselves in an ambivalent situation. After the destruction of Jerusalem (70 AD), the Pharisees, their racial brothers, had started to reorganize Judaism, and, in the name of fidelity to that same Law of Moses, sought to block the ever increasing spread of Christianity. They came to the point of expelling them from the synagogues. This unforeseen hostility brought the community of Christian Jews into deep crisis. Both the Pharisees and the Christians claimed to be faithful to the law of God. Who was right? On whose side was God? To whom did the inheritance of the Jewish people belong, to the synagogue or to the ecclesia?
* It is precisely to encourage and support this group of Jewish-Christians that Matthew writes his Gospel. He writes to confirm them in the faith by showing that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the culmination of the whole history of the Old Testament. He writes to strengthen them in the midst of hostility, helping them to overcome the trauma of the break with the brothers. He writes to call them to a new practice of life, showing them the way to a new form of justice, better than that of the Pharisees.
* In this context, the episode of the Canaanite woman served to show the community how this same Jesus took concrete steps to go beyond the limitations of a religion turned in on itself and how He went about discerning the will of God beyond the traditional scheme.
b) A commentary on the words of Jesus as preserved in Matthew:
DeleteMatthew 15: 21: Jesus moves away from the Jewish territory.
In the discussion concerning what is pure and what is not, Jesus had taught that which was contrary to the tradition of the ancients, declaring all foods to be clean, and helped the people and the disciples free themselves of the chains of the laws on purity (Mt 15:1-20). Now, in this episode of the Canaanite woman, He moves away from Galilee, goes beyond the frontiers of the national territory and welcomes a foreign woman who did not belong to the people and with whom it was forbidden to talk. The Gospel of Mark informs us that Jesus did not want to be known. He wanted to remain anonymous. But it is evident that His fame had already preceded Him (Mk 7:24). The people knew Him and a woman begins to present Him with a request.
Matthew 15:22: The anguished cry of the woman.
The woman was from another race and religion. She begins to beg for the healing of her daughter who was possessed by an unclean spirit. The pagans had no problem having recourse to Jesus. The Jews, however, had problems co-existing with the pagans! The Law forbade them to make contact with a person of another religion or race.
Matthew 15:23-24: The strange silence of Jesus and the reaction of the disciples.
The woman shouts, but Jesus does not respond. A strange attitude! Because, if there is one sure thing throughout the Bible, from beginning to end, it is that God always listens to the cry of the oppressed. But here Jesus does not listen. He does not want to listen. Why? Even the disciples are surprised by Jesus’ attitude and ask Him to say something to the woman. They want to get rid of that shouting: "Give her what she wants, they said, because she is shouting after us". Jesus explains His silence, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel". His silence is connected to an awareness of His mission and His fidelity to the law of God. The passive form shows that the subject of the verb’s action is the Father. It is as though He had said, "The Father does not want Me to listen to this woman, because He has sent Me only to the lost sheep of Israel!" For the same reason, at the time of Matthew’s writing of the Gospel, the Pharisees were saying, "We cannot have contact with pagans!"
Matthew 15:25-26: The woman repeats her request and Jesus again refuses her.
The woman is not worried by Jesus’ refusal. The love of a mother for her sick daughter does not take notice of religious rules or other people’s reactions, but seeks healing wherever her intuition leads her to a solution, namely, in Jesus! She draws closer. She throws herself at Jesus’ feet and goes on begging, "Lord, help me". Faithful to the rules of His religion, Jesus answers with a parable and says that it is not right to take the bread of one’s children and give it to dogs. The parallel is taken from everyday life. Even today, we find many children and dogs in the houses of the poor. Jesus says that no mother will take bread from the mouths of her children and give it to dogs. Concretely, the children are the Jewish people and the dogs are the pagans. End of story! Obedient to the Father and faithful to His mission, Jesus goes on His way and takes no notice of the woman’s pleading!
Matthew 15:27-28: At the third attempt, the woman obtains the healing of her daughter.
DeleteThe woman will not yield. She agrees with Jesus, but she amplifies the parallel and applies it to her case, "Ah, yes, sir; but even house-dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table". She simply draws the conclusion from that image, showing that in the houses of the poor (and so also in the house of Jesus) the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of the children. Most probably, Jesus Himself as a young boy would have given bits of bread to dogs that roamed under the table where He ate with His parents. And in "Jesus’ house", that is, in the Christian community of Matthew’s time, at the end of the first century, there were "twelve baskets full" left over (Mt 14:20) for the "dogs", that is, for the pagans!
Jesus’ reaction is immediate, "Woman, you have great faith!" The woman got what she asked for. From that moment her daughter was healed. The reason Jesus responded was that He understood that the Father wanted Him to grant the woman’s request. The meeting with the Canaanite woman freed Him from the racial prison and opened Him to the whole of humanity. This means that Jesus discovered the will of the Father by listening to the reactions of people. This pagan woman’s attitude opened new horizons for Jesus and helped Him take an important step in the fulfillment of the Father’s plan. The gift of life and salvation is for all who seek life and who try to free themselves from the chains that bind vital energy. This episode helps us to perceive a little of the mystery that surrounded the person of Jesus, the manner in which He was in communion with the Father and how He discovered the will of the Father in the events of life.
For discussion purposes, after reading the readings and the Lectio Divina, it focused my attention on how Jesus was so human that He even had to go through the process of decisions on discerning his mission creep that wasn't in his thoughts until being confronted by the pagan woman. This to me is a very good sign for all of us that we not only need to be persistent but also we have to be open minded when we are tested with faith issues that we think we know the answers to. I think we encounter this every day with fellow Christians and maybe even our own selves when we try to live by laws of the Church instead of laws of God. Sometimes the Church hasn't defined the laws in light of the situations at hand and we have to discern what would God do. Of course what would Jesus do, is what is the Will of the Father, so this was why He was sent to bring humankind back to oneness with the Father.
DeleteWell said, Ron.
DeleteI see what’s going on in our country and try to remember that Jesus wants us to release the prisoners and forgive “seventy times seven.” I find those hard lessons to put into practice. In some cities, they are releasing inmates from prison and raising money to bail out rioters: those who smash, burn, loot and fight with the police. Those policies result in further murder and mayhem.
I know we should trust God to protect us, but it seems that so many in this country have turned there back on God that they—and the rest of us because of them—are not being protected. Isn’t it possible to lock them all up to protect the rest of us and still love and forgive them?
Lon, I think I understand your thoughts and only God knows humans’ true hearts. Therefore, it is exceedingly difficult for humans to administer justice for all. The word “repent” means turning back to God. And it is essential for God’s justice. We as fellow humans cannot know when someone is truly repentant…only God knows. Thus, we do not want to be in the way of God’s mercy. That is why love comes into the picture as what God wants us to do but to define love means to define sacrifice and with those sacrifice boundaries based on love.
DeleteFreeing or incarceration of prisoners is both a sacrifice. Incarceration requires financial support with our taxes to keep a person in prison and I have read it is about $35,000 a year on average in America. Whereas freeing a prisoner has the potential for more chaos and even loss of life and property to us or others. This potential is why repeat offenders get higher sentences.
Laws of the State do not supersede laws of God, but God’s laws were made simple by Christ but hard to live by as we must discern our pluralistic world in some forward direction. This is in my opinion why I think we have so much instability today as people either gave up discernment or are choosing one side or the other of the mob rule out there.
Choosing mob rule only divides us further but discernment requires us to openly listen to others and to seek what God’s Will is. With so many turning away from God today discernment has become a relic of the past. All through human history when man stopped looking for the Will of God, God started over with the humans that still seek Him. This is the battle we are in and it includes all humanity.
It is not just one religion or one person but all-inclusive of God-seekers. So, I feel that your sharing of your thoughts here is you wrestling (discerning) what is God’s Will forward. And God is all about life and its abundance.
Giving second chances allows the potential for life but we must not stop there as unless the prisoners are mentally ill repeat offenses usually come when they don’t have a new way out of their situations and go back to doing crime as the way to live their lives. Once you have a prison record, it is hard to get back to a good job or to support a family. When God frees us from our transgressions, He does not taint us going forward but instead like “Paul” he reinforces us. But humans with our laws keep a ledger and do not agree with open second chances.
Lon as a military leader you know that giving second chances and even more when required can lead others to become better contributors to the unit. This in my opinion is God’s Will.
Hallelujah our son is now a Macho Tool franchise owner. This is proof that God will be be with us always.
ReplyDeleteGreat news David especially with so much going on with this pandemic.
DeleteCongrats to him and to you!
DeleteSomething I never thought of before, when I read Fr. John Foley’s commentary on this Sunday’s Gospel. Jesus was quick to name calling Peter…Satan. He was very emotional about this in the Gospel and just last Sunday Jesus was telling peter he is the rock that he was going to build his Church upon. So, what happened so quickly to turn Jesus to name calling?
ReplyDeleteAs Fr. Foley suggests - Jesus was expressing his pending suffering and death and as a human dreading it. His rebuke to peter is so sharp, so instant, so contradictory, that its emotional roots are showing. He knows what a terrible toll human misery and affliction will take on him. Yet he also knows that God’s love for humanity is greater than all the pending suffering. Peter is telling Jesus to avoid this pain. This is just what the devil had recommended in the desert temptations. When Jesus was hungry, Satan had said, stealthily, you are Messiah! Why don’t you simply turn these stones into bread? After that have your angels save you from all danger. And then, be a real Messiah, be in charge of all the lands there are. Why not?
But recall that all of this required bowing down and worshipping Satan. To put it another way, Jesus would have to act according to the self-seeking, self-interested part of human nature. Go for the wealth, the power, and the reputation. Forget Godly love. Since he was human, Jesus must have felt within himself the rewards that would come with such desert temptations. And he must feel it now as Peter gives him the same enticement. So, he reacts strongly.
Does he really mean that Peter is Satan? No. But surely he remembers with pain the devil’s temptations. No wonder that name slips out.
In the end, we need to forgive God and that might be the hardest forgiveness of all. It’s hard to accept that God loves everyone equally—even our enemies, even those who hate us, even those who don’t work as hard as we do, even those who reject duty for selfishness, and even those who give in to all the temptations we resist. Although deep down we know that God has been more than fair with us, God’s lavish generosity to others is something which we find hard to accept. Like the workers in the Parable of the Vineyard who toiled the whole day and then saw those who had worked just one hour get the same wage as theirs, we often let God’s generosity to others warp both our joy and our eyesight.
ReplyDeleteBut that struggle points us in the right direction. Grace is amazing. By disorienting us it properly orients us.
Ron Rolheiser
Ron Rolheiser wrote:
ReplyDeleteIt was WH Auden, I think, who wrote that when grace enters a room everyone begins to dance.
Would this were so! More often the opposite happens, grace enters a room and instead of dancing we become discontent and our eyes grow bitter with envy. Why? Nikos Kazantzakis, the Greek writer, tells a story of an elderly monk he once met on Mount Athos. Kazantzakis, still young and full of curiosity, was questioning this monk and asked him: “Do you still wrestle with the devil?” “No,” replied the old monk, “I used to, when I was younger, but now I’ve grown old and tired and the devil has grown old and tired with me.” “So,” Kazantzakis said, “your life is easy then? No more big struggles.” “Oh, no!” replied the old man, “now it’s worse. Now I wrestle with God!” “You wrestle with God,” replied Kazantzakis, rather surprised, “and you hope to win?” “No,” said the old monk, “I wrestle with God and I hope to lose!”
God’s blessings go out lavishly to those who don’t seem to deserve them.
There comes a point in life when our major spiritual struggle is no longer with the fact that we are weak and desperately in need of God’s forgiveness, but rather with the opposite, with the fact that God’s grace and forgiveness is overly-lavish, unmerited, and especially that it goes out so indiscriminately. God’s lavish love and forgiveness apply equally to those have worked hard and to those who haven’t, to those who have been faithful for a long time and to those who jumped on-board at the last minute, to those who have had to bear the heat of the day and to those who didn’t, to those who did their duty and to those who lived selfishly.
God’s love isn’t a reward for being good, doing our duty, resisting temptation, bearing the heat of the day in fidelity, saying our prayers, remaining pure, or offering worship, good and important though these are. God loves us because God is love and God cannot fail to love and cannot be discriminating in love. God’s love, as scripture says, shines on the good and bad alike. That’s nice to know when we need forgiveness and unmerited love, but it’s hard to accept when that forgiveness and love are given to those whom we deem less worthy of it, to those who didn’t seem to do their duty. It’s not easy to accept the fact that God’s love does not discriminate, especially when God’s blessings go out lavishly to those who don’t seem to deserve them.