The Trials of Life and the Tests of Faith

When a person has overcome one temptation and his faith has been tried in it, there upon he comes to another, and he passes as it were from one stage to the next; and when he has mastered whatever may befall him and faithfully endured it, he goes onto another. And thus he is said to have proceeded by stages as he submits to each of the trials of life and the tests of faith, and in them the virtues are acquired one by one. Likewise in them there is fulfilled what has been written, "They shall go from strength to strength” [Psalm 84:7], until the final stage is attained, which is the summit of the virtues, and the river of God is crossed and the promised inheritance is received.

ORIGEN Homilies on Numbers 

Thanksgiving Homily

This morning a dazzling excerpt from the Last Supper Discourse in John’s Gospel, something we usually hear in Eastertide. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. ..I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete…love one another as I love you.” Jesus invites us to remain with him, in him, in the Father. This remaining and abiding have been enabled by God’s enfleshment in Christ, this “utmost gesture of his self-surrender and self-donation” which will reach its culmination on the cross. There on the cross, Love’s Sacred Heart will be pierced and the gushing spring of his love fully revealed.  

We are invited simply to remain, to be drenched beneath this spring, remarkable in its immediacy, overwhelming in its immensity and beauty. Such is the passion of the Word, the eternal Eros of his self-emptying love. God has fallen in love, espoused us to himself, given himself over to us completely, irrevocably and welcomed us into the eternal Embrace of Father with Son in the Spirit. It’s unfathomable, and it’s very real. We are the beloved of God. Our response can be nothing less than awe and wonder and effusive thanks, along with the promise to try to love one another just as we are being loved. This is what the Lord God asks, even demands of us. And it is, of course, impossible, impossible for our puny, frightened hearts, but God who gives all things is with us empowering us to move forward- to love as he loves. And once again this morning Jesus’ desire situates us in the illogic of divine love’s immensity.

My brothers and sisters, the Lord’s invitation to remain and to love requires, I think, courage and great humility to endure the illogic of its immensity, and to believe ourselves infinitely, endlessly lovable. So a question. How did we learn to love and to allow ourselves to be loved? Who told us we were lovable? Did we learn it? Do we believe it? Who refused not to love us even when we were at our meanest? Who stood by? Who wouldn’t give up on us? Who thought we were worth it? Was there someone, even just once? Even a small kindness still remembered that still has its effect on us? A love that changed us, made us feel secure? Who showed us that love, compassion, swallowing a hurt was a better way? How did we learn to love and to receive love? For we didn’t get here alone.

Here's a story, about a man named Charles Plumb, a US Navy jet pilot during the Vietnam conflict. After 74 combat missions, his plane was blown out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected. And he parachuted - into enemy hands. He was captured and spent six years in a Prisoner of War camp. Providentially, he survived the ordeal. Many years later, Plumb and his wife were sitting in a local restaurant. And a man at a nearby table came over and said, “Hey, you’re Charlie Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You got shot down!” Plumb asked this stranger, “How in the world did you know that?” The man replied, “I was on the Kitty Hawk too. I am the guy who packed your parachute.” Plumb sat there stunned, unable to say another word, as the man shook his hand and said, “Well, I guess it worked!” Plumb finally replied, “It sure did. If it hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here today.”

That night, Charles Plumb couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t stop thinking about the man at the restaurant. Plumb recounts, “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform…. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not said, ‘Good-Morning, or How are you? or What’s up?—because you see, back then, I was a cocky, self-absorbed, hotshot Navy fighter pilot, and he was just a sailor after all.” That night, Plumb thought about this man and about how many hours the sailor had spent standing at a long wooden table deep in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving and folding the silks of each parachute so that they would work perfectly, if ever needed.

This random encounter at a neighborhood restaurant changed Plumb’s life forever. He now travels around the country as a motivational speaker. After telling his story, he concludes his presentations by asking his audiences one unforgettable question: “Who has packed your parachute?”  

We identify ourselves almost exclusively through the naming of relationships: we are sons, brothers, sisters, daughters, mothers, fathers, monks with fellow monks in a monastery. Sometimes we think we want to be alone, but that never works. Like it or not, it’s always about connectedness, bonds of love, interdependence. We need each other. Haven’t each of us, like Charlie Plumb, had someone, someones, behind the scenes, covering our back, packing our parachute, so that we could get where we are today? Right here. Connectedness, bonds of love, interdependence that’s what it takes. And that’s who God is - a Trinity of relationships, three Persons “each marked by the capacity for self-emptying love.” The impossibly good news is that Jesus is inviting us to enter fully into this divine, Triune interrelatedness.  

God is with us, his goodness and love mediated immediately, refracted through millions of moments and real persons who have helped us on the way to loving, teaching us to remain, teaching us that love is worth it. “Remain in my love,” says Jesus. And once again he will give us a pledge of his abiding in this Most Holy Sacrament. Oneness, relationship par excellence, at fever pitch, solidarity with our God in Christ and with one another, with our forebears and friends, those who loved us into life in great and often tiny ways? They are all here with us around table, as we celebrate a Eucharist - a Thanksgiving feast. So much has been given, so many parachutes of fine silk have been given to us. Best of all, most of all, Christ Jesus our Lord is himself the great Parachute, his Love, strong and fine as silk, opening and expanding endlessly, helping us glide to safe landings in Him, over and over. Let us rejoice and give thanks, for perhaps, as Saint Ignatius of Loyola has said, the greatest sin would be lack of gratitude.   

Work and Prayer

The way to achieve stability in our soul is to beseech God that in each of our undertakings we may have a successful outcome, to give him full gratitude for having provided us with the power to perform what we have done, and to persevere in our goal of pleasing him…. For, unless we adopt this approach, how can we possibly reconcile the two texts of the Apostle Paul, "Pray without ceasing" and "At work day and night” [1 Thessalonians 2:9]? Nonetheless, even though the law requires us to give thanks at each and every moment and both nature and reason demonstrate that thanksgiving is one of life's necessities, we should not overlook the fixed times for communal prayer, for these times have been selected with an eye to the necessity that each has his own distinctive way of remembering God's good gifts.

BASIL THE GREAT The Longer Rules 37

Union With Christ in the Eucharist

In the type of bread his body is given to you, and in the type of wine his blood is given to you, so that by partaking of the body and blood of Christ you may be one body and one blood with him also. For thus also we become bearers of Christ, because his body and blood are distributed throughout our members. Thus, according to the blessed Peter, "we become partakers of the divine nature” [2 Peter 1:4].

CYRIL OF JERUSALEM Mystagogical Catechesis 4.3

Unceasing Prayer

Desire itself is your prayer, and if your desire is continuous your prayer is unceasing. For the Apostle did not say in vain, "Pray without ceasing.” Is it possible that we should unceasingly bend the knee or prostrate our body or raise up our hands that he should tell us, "Pray without ceasing”? Or, if we say that we pray in this manner, I do not think that we are able to do it unceasingly. There is another prayer that is unceasing and interior, and it is desire. Whatever else you do, if you desire that sabbath [i.e., eternal life] you do not cease to pray. If you do not wish to stop praying, do not stop desiring. Your unceasing desire is your uninterrupted voice. You will grow silent if you stop loving.

SAINT AUGUSTINE Exposition of the Psalms 37.14

Conformity to Christ Through the Eucharist

Indeed, this participation in the body and blood of the Lord, when we eat the bread and drink the cup, teaches us that we should die to the world and have our life hidden with Christ in God [see Colossians 3:3], that we should crucify our flesh with its vices and wicked desires [see Galatians 5:24]. Thus it happens that all the faithful, who love God and their neighbor, drink of the cup of the Lord’s love even if they do not drink of the cup of his bodily suffering. And when they have become inebriated with it they have put to death their members that are upon the earth [see Colossians 3:5] and, having clothed themselves with the Lord Jesus Christ [see Galatians 3:27], they pay no heed to the desires of the flesh [see Galatians 5:16]. The gift of love confers this upon us—that we should in fact be what we celebrate mystically in the sacrifice.

FULGENTIUS OF RUSPE Against Fabian 28.18-19

What to Say to the Tempter

Each of us can say to the tempter, “Unlike you, I have not yet become an outcast from heaven through my pride. By my baptism I have become one with Him. It is you that should fall prostrate before me.”

SAINT GREGORY NAZIANZEN

Feeding the Hungry Christ

Although he is the Lord, and a real lord who has no need of our goods, yet he has deigned to be hungry in his poor so that we might do something for him. “I was hungry and you gave me to eat,” he says. “Lord, when did we see you hungry?” “When you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” [See Matthew 25:35-37, 40.] In a word, let everyone hear and consider worthily how great the merit is for having fed the hungry Christ, and how great the crime is for having scorned the hungry Christ.

SAINT AUGUSTINE Sermons 60.11.11

God’s Providence

Is Providence not always with us? Two sparrows are not worth very much, and who can count the hairs on your head? But the Lord cares for the sparrows and counts the hairs on your head. Will He not also care for our souls, our life itself? So there is nothing to fear, for nothing can happen to us without our Father knowing. The Lord is the Creator of the sparrows, but to us He is even more: He is our Father.

SAINT JOHN XXIII

God Willed to be Seen in the Flesh

I think this is the principal reason why the invisible God willed to be seen in the flesh and to converse with men as a man. He wanted to recapture the affections of carnal men who were unable to love in any other way, by first drawing them to the salutary love of his own humanity, and then gradually to raise them to a spiritual love.

SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

A World of Iniquity

Although it runs contrary to the way we normally use our tongues, God's Word tells us: “do not speak evil against one another, brothers and sisters” (James 4:11). Being willing to speak ill of another person is a way of asserting ourselves, venting resentment and envy without concern for the harm we may do. We often forget that slander can be quite sinful; it is a grave offense against God when it seriously harms another person’s good name and causes damage that is hard to repair. Hence God’s Word forthrightly states that the tongue is “a world of iniquity” that “stains the whole body”; it is a “restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Whereas the tongue can be used to “curse those who are made in the likeness of God,” love cherishes the good name of others, even one’s enemies. In seeking to uphold God's law we must never forget this specific requirement of love.

POPE FRANCIS Amoris Laetitia

The Root of Virtue

At the root of all virtues there ought to be humility: not only that humility which is exterior and formed with words, but humility of the heart; not a forced humility that comes from delusions, displeasures, or the fear of not succeeding, but humility of the heart, willed for the love of God, born of the knowledge that God alone is great, while we are nothing. Our Lord surely does not love humility that is melancholy, sad, or of bad humor, urging us to set ourselves apart and to remain inactive. Rather, he loves that humility of heart that is happy to act and sacrifice self for God.

FR. GARRIGOU-LANGRANGE, O.P. Knowing the Love of God: Lessons From a Spiritual Master

Drawing Benefit From Holy Communion

If we often draw so little fruit from Communion, it is because we take it to be something it is not. People think they are supposed to experience some kind of sacred emotion or thrill. Such an attitude is entirely sterile; it prevents us from getting out of ourselves. It is still a search for self. To derive from Communion the benefit that should be drawn from it, we must above all remember that Christ wished to be our food in the Eucharist. We take in nourishment in order to replenish and increase our strength. We take Communion in order to increase our spiritual strength. We eat when we are hungry: our appetite decides the matter here, the equivalent of the physical appetite is the infinite (but powerless) passion to get out of ourselves, to forget ourselves—this being our only means of being assimilated to the Truth. Once this passion arises in us, we will soon experience a painful need of strength to achieve this “ecstasy”—and we will go to Communion to obtain this strength.

FR. CHARLES NICOLET, SJ

God’s Name Written Within Us

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This point of nothingness and absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us—as our poverty, our indigence, as our dependence, as our Sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody and if we could see it we would see these billion points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely… I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

THOMAS MERTON 

Homily: 31st SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME-B

PERFECT LOVE INDWELLS US

Over the last few Sundays we have seen in Mark’s Gospel how many groups with political and religious vested interests have accosted Jesus to challenge his authority, out of envy and self-righteousness, and often with murderous intent. But today a lone individual, someone very much like you or me, approaches Jesus on very friendly terms, even though, as a scribe, he is a member of one of those hostile groups. This man is different because he comes to Jesus by himself, as an earnest, non-prejudiced searcher for truth, without an axe to grind. 

The scribe asks Jesus which is “the first of all the commandments” of the sacred Law. This question implies that, among the 613 commandments of Torah, there must exist a hierarchy. Since it is humanly impossible to comply with so many commandments, the hope is that, by obeying the greatest commandment, one can be said to obey God’s will in its totality. 

We are so familiar with this text that we may not at first realize that Jesus’ reply to the scribe’s question is remarkable—stunningly creative and even provocative in several respects. For example, the scribe asks Jesus to proclaim only one commandment to be the first and highest of all. Instead Jesus replies by naming two commandments of the Law. By so doing Jesus refuses to separate a first commandment, concerning love of God, from a second commandment, concerning love of neighbor, thus hinting that the two stand or fall together, the observance of the one guaranteeing the observance of the other. Jesus’ ruling fuses the two commandments magisterially: “There is no commandment”, he affirms, “greater than these”.

Furthermore, while the first commandment is taken from the Book of Deuteronomy (6:5), the second commandment that Jesus yokes to it inseparably is taken from the Book of Leviticus (19:18). By so doing Jesus is introducing a major innovation into Torah, in fact creating a new text out of two ancient texts, and infusing both with new meaning. And his boldness is heightened by the fact that, in the context of Leviticus, the definition of “neighbor” has a very restrictive, tribal meaning and not the unrestricted, universal meaning Jesus is obviously giving it here. In other words, Jesus’ answer to the scribe shows him making love as such an absolute priority, giving it a preeminence it did not enjoy before. To do this is for Jesus to act as sovereign Legislator of the New Law of the Gospel, which gathers together scattered aspects of Torah and brings the Law of Moses to perfection by raising so-called “horizontal”, intra-human love irreversibly into the sphere of divine love. 

Quite aside from Jesus’ unheard-of audacity in daring to alter in any way the text of the Law, the Lord’s indissoluble yoking of divine and human love into one imperative command is something which the Jewish authorities would have considered sheer blasphemy, an idolatry of man. And yet St John sums up this crucial issue unforgettably when he writes: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1 Jn 4:20). And in Matthew 25, in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, the Lord himself radically equates love for him with love for the least of his brethren. Surely it is the indivisibility of the divine and human natures in Jesus’ own Person as incarnate Word that impels him to revolutionize so drastically the biblical teaching on love, and to transform it into the absolute center of Christian faith and life, to which all else must bow. 

The commandment in Deuteronomy quoted by Jesus would have us love God “with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength”. This triple repetition of the word all evokes in me an unsettling dismay as I wonder: ‘Am I really capable of loving God so thoroughly, with all my being?’ And the passage concludes with the words: “Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.” As we have being hearing in rich detail from Pope Francis this week in his encyclical Dilexit nos, biblical anthropology views the heart as designating the center of the whole person, the heart as bringing together the whole of our being: bodily and psychic, rational and emotional. 

For this reason we should wake up to the fact that the too familiar expression to love God with all your heart is nothing to be yawned at, because involves nothing less than the long journey of our total existence, an itinerary whose rigor we should never take for granted. We all know that in our hearts there dwell not only high and virtuous aspirations but also mean and shameful thoughts and desires that are far from what the Gospel expects of us. Therefore, the first step in coming to love God with one’s whole heart should be the honest acknowledgment that such fullness and intensity of love is still a distant goal for us, yet one toward which we strive with fervent hope.

Now, in order for the expression “to love God” to acquire credibility on our lips, we should stop turning the wheel of the same old tired and pious words that are totally disconnected from our concrete life. Instead we should struggle along as best we can, trying to practice what is quite difficult: to love the invisible God by putting on the mind of Christ as our own and by performing the actions of Christ’s Heart. To do this we must undertake the hard and sobering work of self-knowledge that leads us to recognize, name and accept (at the cost of sharp humiliation) all the negative forces and shortcomings that inhabit us, all the darkness that still lurks in our hearts. To love God with all one’s heart requires the courage to face the work of knowing one’s own heart, and this knowledge normally brings us unwelcome surprises. And yet, such a therapeutic effort is essential if we are ever to stand before God with some degree of authenticity. Knowing our limitations and distortions—whether moral or intellectual, physical or psychological, emotional or affective—is indispensable if we are ever to part ways with the ideal, glittering “I” that we construct for ourselves and present to others and to God by way of self-defense. True enough, this redundant, self-constructed self is a merely imaginary “I”; and yet, unreal though it is, it has all the power of deception and fascination of an idol. The purpose of this journey of self-knowledge is eventual adherence to reality, acceptance of that very particular being we are, with all its negative aspects as well as all its riches. As we read in the parable of the Prodigal Son, this difficult journey to the truth of the self is in the end (O consolation!) a deeply satisfying “coming back to ourselves” (Lk 15:17), a blessed “returning to our own heart”. We cannot meet the Heart of Christ except with our own authentic heart, in whatever state it may find itself, because this and no other is the heart Christ loves and avidly seeks.

The commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart…” is evidence of God’s trust in us, because God does not command what we cannot do. God believes in us and in our capacity to love, so much so that this commandment also sounds like a promise. The solemn declaration “You shall love” does not only drive home the supreme importance of what is involved, but it also instils a kind of joy about the certainty of its fulfillment: God trusts that we are, indeed, going to do it, and God knows it because he is ready to provide the means to guarantee it! Obedience to this commandment, our striving over and over to fulfill it as best we can, is what is going to shape our heart, making it more Christ-like, more like the Heart of God. Our loving God with all our heart is, after all, only a reflection of the fact that he has first loved us with all his heart in Christ, from the first moment of our existence. Only a faithful Lover can issue such a command! You shall love means: everything you do, do out of love, act out of love, pursue love. You shall love: your true “you” is the “you” who loves. You shall love means: do not be discouraged. The very love you do not see in yourself right now the Lord may give to you as pure grace, at a time you do not know.

And so the Letter to the Hebrews today inspires great trust in our hearts when it assures us that “Jesus, [our great High Priest,] is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them.” What a magnificent truth is proclaimed here! What Jesus lives for, the text says—the meaning of his very existence—is to unite us with his and our Father in love, by making us one with himself. Such is the pattern of perfect love that Jesus is the first to embody and which he holds out to us expectantly: to live exclusively to enhance the lives of others. Indeed, in just a few moments Jesus will give himself to us here and now from this altar as pure, undeserved gift, in his Body, Soul and Divinity—for God is the first to love with his whole being, holding back nothing! We can trust the fact that Christ’s life-giving presence in us will provide the energy of perfect love with which we can love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, and our neighbor as ourselves: two objects of love but only one love. 

Let us, then, strive to love, not out of our native feebleness and chronic half-heartedness, but out of the abundance of  Jesus’ own invincible love, which he communicates to us as he now hands himself over to us, irrevocably. 

A Grateful Heart

The wonderful, unbelievable thing is that every difference and distinction of rank is missing here. If anyone happens to be in a position of worldly importance or conspicuous wealth, if he boasts of his birth or the glory of this present life, he stands on just the same footing as the beggar in rags, the blind man or the lame. Nor does he complain at this since he knows that all such differences have been set aside in the life of the spirit; a grateful heart is the only requirement.

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM