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In today’s second reading from Romans, Paul tells us that we must think of ourselves as being dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.
What does that mean?
Well, I actually decided to look to see what God calls us not to do to understand what he wants us to do. The strongest word in the Old Testament that tells us what not to do is abomination. Anything that is an abomination to God is what we should not do. Looking in the Old Testament to see what is an abomination, I found that the most common use of the word is in connection to idolatry.
The worst sin in the Old Testament is idolatry. Every form of idolatry eventually leads the Jews away from God and even into pagan practices including human sacrifice.
If we are to live in a way that rejects sin and seeks righteousness, the most powerful form of it is in finding and eliminating idolatry from our lives. Any form of idolatry will lead us away from Christ.
The cause of idolatry was always what makes me prosperous. Even in societies that never encountered the God of the Jews until 1500’s they too had similar pagan practices including human sacrifice and even child sacrifice and such practices were to please the gods to ensure prosperity of one form or another.
Such idolatry was an attempt to manipulate the gods to conform to our will or to placate the gods who might be mad at us for one reason or another.
Jesus calls us completely out of this system and he offers himself as sacrifice so that we will be freed from all that.
Then, as we see in Paul, our role is to serve God in such a way that we are not pleasing him so that he will make us prosperous, but we will live for him as His agents and glorify him in our lives. At times that might make us prosperous, but at times it might make us poor. Jesus never promises financial prosperity. He rather promises eternal joy and calls us to be agents to lead others to that joy.
This means we need to allow ourselves to be formed as those agents. We need the Holy Spirit to come to challenge and change us so that we will live in a way that will reflect our love for God and for God’s presence in the world.
We cannot live for prosperity and we cannot make prosperity our focus, we must instead live for holiness and make holiness our desire.
If we live for Christ we must live for righteousness, but the truly righteous one among the Jews was the prophet. He was the one who lived in a way that let people know that God was intimately involved in the human lives of the Jews and later the whole world. The perceived righteous one was the pharisee he conformed to the norms that would most benefit him.
So if we are to live as St. Paul calls us we must live in true righteousness, the righteousness of the prophet, not of the pharisee. We need the Holy Spirit to come to challenge and change us to be those prophets.
I think you will find that we are living in a unique time where that call is even stronger.
Our country is caught up in a revolution right now and we are seeing people challenge the status quo in every aspect of some cities.
We see the work to take down statues. Does any of this challenge our form of thinking? People are afraid that these revolutionaries will take down statues of Jesus because they represent the status quo to some people.
I am certainly not inviting you to participate in any of this, but I am calling us all to ask the Lord to show us where we have embraced the status quo. Look for anytime we made property more important than people and we will see what needs to change in us.
How can we as Catholics live for righteousness at this time? Can we live this way, if it becomes unpopular to come to church and live the faith?
Can we pray to be challenged on what God wants us to do?
Can we ask the Lord to show us what needs to be done?
We need to draw on the devotions and piety we foster as Catholics, we need to stay close to the sacraments if we can, so that we can live in ways that pleases Christ in our love and service to others, even if it does not conform to society.
Remember going to Church is a powerful act whether you are attending in person or attending online. It is a powerful act for each of us to live.
We must allow ourselves to be challenged by Christ so that we can be his agents in the world. We must not be influenced by what is expedient or culturally acceptable. We must live in ways that lead others to know Christ in us to see Christ in what we do. That may not conform to society’s norms.
What happens when we do not. I learned some time ago when I watched people protest against the Catholic Church and insult and scream at innocent Catholics attending Mass on Sunday, when the local media was trying to mold the Church in their image and fostering movements that called people to fight for their world there way, that this was the source of evil: in and out of the Church. Our world, our way.
We represent our world, God’s way. But our understanding of God’s way is challenged and must be challenged every day. We must allow God to show us where the status quo is not God’s way and where we need to understand our perception of righteousness to be God’s way.
We are agents of God’s love, justice, mercy, holiness so that people can see that their world their way will fail but the only way to a just society is one that is rooted in the eternal truths of love, mercy, justice and holiness in Christ. That is a society where all try to live in righteousness in service to others.
Let us call the Holy Spirit to come to challenge and change us that God’s will may enlighten our minds and we may enlighten others by our actions.
Since we are in ordinary time, the first reading and Gospel now have some form of connection. The first reading is from Jeremiah the Prophet and it details how much he suffered for his speaking out. He wanted to live just a simple life, but God called him to be his prophet and the people did not want to hear what he had to say. They persecuted him severely so much, he cursed the day he was born.
What would have happened if Jeremiah never spoke out? The Jews would be remembered as much as the Babylonians. Their culture would have died out, but God’s will was that the world would be transformed through the Jews’ monotheism. The world needed to know that our truth comes from beyond us and it costs nothing to seek it but seek it we must. For those who seek it find it and those who reject it get lost in the falsehood of their own chosen idolatry.
Now let’s look at our same world from the Gospel reading.
Like the call for Jeremiah to be courageous, so Jesus teaches us to have courage and for the same reason. What is at stake?
Our world is in flux and one of the reasons is that in many corners humanity lost touch with the source of truth and the fount of wisdom.
However, do not start shaking a finger at them. Do not start shaking a finger at the Chinese Communist Party, The atheist professors in our own country, The European Union, The United Nations or even the corporate media, we need to start focusing on own call and mission.
Jesus calls us to live in courage and not to fear those who can kill the body and not the soul. That can be difficult at times, I know from experience. However, why does he admonish us this way? For the same reason he called Jeremiah to be strong despite his suffering.
There is too much at stake.
He calls us to be strong in our faith that we can witness to the truths that come from outside of us.
If we do not, then our society falls back into paganism which has been happening worldwide for several decades.
It is a natural progress. Humanity either continues its pilgrimage to union with the Father or it falls back on itself into the worst forms of paganism. There is no other alternative. This does not mean that humanity cannot accomplish great things even within a pagan society, but it does mean the society’s eventual weakness will lead it to collapse as it did since the days of fall of the Assyrian Empire.
Jesus’ words are important to us today. We have a mission to be the prophets that he called Jeremiah to be. We have a mission to testify to the truths and we do that by living the Gospel. What does that demand? To love as Jesus loves.
We need to live prophetically.
If we are not doing that then we are not being the Catholics Christ called us to be.
In order to accomplish that goal, we must be people of prayer because it is through prayer that we learn to know Christ and to live his demands. If we do not pray, even though we know every jot and tittle of Catholic moral teaching, we will be as St. Paul demands noisy gongs and clanging symbols.
It is through our actions of love that we witness to the truth of Christ. In fact, when we come forward to communion, it is an action that we commit to love to that level. That by the way is the reason that the Church prohibits people from receiving if they are living in ways that reflect a rejection of Church teaching, it is a call to embrace a higher form of love.
We can look around at how our country changed over the past month and since the shutdown caused by the fears over the virus. Many of the social struggles that the country suffers from right now are caused by the Catholic Church not being a prophetic institution.
We must step out of ourselves and live in a way that radically affects the lives of those around us and changes our world and we can only do that through the love that comes from the source of all love, truth and wisdom.
If you look at the great problems we are having in our country right now, they are based on delegating government agencies the authorities to act on our behalf. However, what if we chose only to delegate that authority as a last resort.
An example: You saw the news of the final result of incidents in Atlanta: A man who fell asleep in his car in a drive thru of a fast food restaurant. He apparently had been drinking. A police officer charged with his murder after a struggle where the man got a hold of his TASER. A riot and finally the restaurant burned to the ground.
How did all this start. With people calling the police that a man was asleep in the drive-thru of the restaurant. Now this needs to be said with caution and with discernment. What if instead of calling the police, a small group of people knocked on the car window, woke the guy up, advised him to move his car to the parking lot where he could continue sleeping and that worked.
None of the previous issues would have happened. That is a bit risky, and I am sure many people including the restaurant would not be happy. However, if they knew what the alternative result would be I am sure everyone would be happy.
What is the difference, acting in a way that humanizes That is acting prophetically. It may or may not have worked, but we know the action taken did not work.
How can you live your faith courageously first be a person a of prayer and then with discernment put your faith in action.
Notice the first reading, from Deuteronomy how much it speaks to us at our time, especially for this day: Corpus Christi.
A little history:
This passage takes place just before the Hebrews are going to cross into the promised land, the land we now call Israel. They spent forty years in the desert. This is because the older generation turned from the Lord, so He raised a new generation that would be more faithful. The Lord calls these new migrants to remember what they went through and explains the struggles they suffered for the past forty years were all by the Lord’s hand. He used those experiences to strengthen them and prepare them to enter into the promised land. They would know, as they crossed the border, they survived the forty years through the power of the Lord. They learned to rely on Him which they would need to do to remain faithful.
Now we are living in a unique time, we spent many weeks without even being able to receive communion or attend Mass in person we have been in our own desert. We are just beginning to open up our churches, but our country changed radically. Many are unemployed, businesses closed and trying to reopen. We saw the riots sparked by the death of a man at the hands of a rogue police officer and now our country is not in the same place it was only three months ago.
However, we are here either in person or via online streaming. This might be a good time to reflect, especially because we are here on Corpus Christi Sunday.
What is the Lord saying to us?
The Eucharist is such a unique reality—the presence of Jesus Christ, especially in exposition. It is not a symbol, but Christ present in the Eucharist and present to us. Just as the angel said to Mary: God with us. Christ speaks to us with his presence visually. So it is a message that transcends all languages and cultures.
During these months when we were forbidden from attending Mass or receiving the Eucharist we could receive our Lord spiritually. As I would say on many Sundays, the playing field was leveled. No one could receive, but all could invite Christ into their hearts spiritually.
Is this not what Christ wants for us? He does not want us to receive the Eucharist just because that is what we do at that part of the Mass. He wants us to be in communion with Him regardless of whom we are. Those who are not able to receive communion because of a state of life or a disagreement with Church teaching, then Christ wants to draw them closer through the Spiritual communion so He can bring them to conversion so they can receive him sacramentally. He wants people to bring their disagreements, their struggles, their anger, their fear, their questions to him in prayer.
That is the powerful message that the Eucharist gives to us on this unique celebration of the Body and Blood of Christ.
We watched struggles in this country over the past several weeks. There is a terrible story coming out of New Jersey where a corrections officer publicly mocked the George Floyd killing. He has been suspended pending an investigation, but we can ask the question what is the source of all this?
It can be caused by a country or even a world losing a sense of who we are. Remember, the first temptation is the most important: ‘You will be like Gods’ and when members of our society lose a sense of who we truly are as humans we can fall into that temptation. Indeed, our society and others in the world have.
Gods have no accountability. They can do anything they want at any time. If there is any message in the Bible especially in this first reading it is that we as human beings require accountability to our God. Or we will act like gods. What do gods act like? How about a rogue police officer deciding who will live and who will die? How about others stealing, lying, looting, immorality of all forms and more. Look carefully there is a commandment for everything I just mentioned.
When we as humans do not allow ourselves to be accountable to God then we can do some horrible things. That includes those who believe in God, but choose not to act accountable to Him. Jesus called that offering Him lip service. That simple message is the prime message of the twentieth century and now twenty-first century.
The Eucharist and this special day gives us an opportunity to say: We are not Gods and to look upon the Eucharist, the Body of Christ as the presence of our true God. We can seek to be humble before him and pledge obedience to He who is pure truth, pure reason, pure love, pure goodness which we are not. We can recognize our need for him. God tells the Hebrews in today’s first reading the importance of remembering that he is with them always and he used those forty years to strengthen them. He used these days to strengthen us.
Let us look upon the Eucharist as a reminder of the same message. God is with us always. God might be showing his hand in this time and He is calling us to remember, we are not gods. We are human and we need Him in every part of our life or we risk acting like the worst of the Greek pantheon. For when we forget, then, like the Hebrews, we can and will go astray. We have a glimpse, after all these weeks, to understand how much we need God in our lives and in our society.
God is with us and now he is with us in the Eucharist.
Just before the meltdown, a local professor with a doctorate in psychology who happens to be an atheist told people that churches should not open because they will spread the virus.
Why is this important? Simple. A person could be an expert in basketweaving and tell everyone that the way to stop the virus is to walk on your hands for a week and some people would do it because well he is an expert and they believe he will keep them safe.
In philosophy that is called appeal to improper authority. There is a word for that in religion, it is called idolatry. It is endemic in this society. People fawning all over someone who is and expert in anything all the time.
Psychologists are not epidemiologists, nor virologists. Neither am I. Like me, he obviously is able to state his opinion. So, he is not the problem.
The melt down happened and that is pure psychology. That is exactly where you need a comment from a psychologist and no one consulted him from what I saw.
That is the problem. Again, it is not him. It is how our culture has embraced the experts and turned them into gods because many believe they will keep us safe.
Matt Taibbi wrote a great book called I Can’t Breathe A Killing on Bay Street (2017; Spiegel & Grau) about the Eric Garner case in New York. The George Floyd case echoes it. He shows how what happened to Eric Garner begins with some experts coming up with an idea to stop crime. It turns into a policy that destroyed lives and led eventually to the death of Eric Garner. What was at the bottom of all these policies? Safety.
Why is all this important for our time?
Just before the meltdown, a local professor with a doctorate in psychology who happens to be an atheist told people that churches should not open because they will spread the virus.
Why is this important? Simple. A person could have a Ph.D in basketweaving and tell everyone that the way to stop the virus is to walk on your hands for a week and some people would do it because well he is an expert and they believe he will keep them safe.
In philosophy that is called appeal to improper authority. There is a word for that in religion, it is called idolatry. It is endemic in this society. People fawning all over someone who has a Ph.D. in anything all the time.
Psychologists are not epidemiologists, nor virologists. Neither am I. Like me, he obviously is able to state his opinion. So, he is not the problem.
The melt down happened and that is pure psychology. That is exactly where you need a comment from a psychologist and no one consulted him from what I saw.
That is the problem. Again, it is not him. It is how our culture has embraced the experts and turned them into gods because many believe they will keep us safe.
Matt Taibbi wrote a great book called I Can’t Breathe A Killing on Bay Street (2017; Spiegel & Grau) about the Eric Garner case in New York. The George Floyd case echoes it. He shows how what happened to Eric Garner begins with some experts coming up with an idea to stop crime. It turns into a policy that destroyed lives and led eventually to the death of Eric Garner. What was at the bottom of all these policies? Safety.
Why is all this important for our time?
Today is Trinity Sunday. We celebrate the Holy Trinity that God is one God of three persons. God’s greatest desire is that all live in unity as God is unity. So we can assume what we see right now going on outside is not God’s greatest desire.
Our whole faith is about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit calling us to be in union with them by seeking God to be the center of our lives. He calls us to deepen our union with Him until the time that as St. James says we see him face to face.
Dennis Prager in his book the Rational Bible: Exodus (2017, Regnery) explains that Moses never saw the face of God. So we have no idea what God’s face actually looks like and will not until that time. We only know that Jesus became the face of God so we would understand. However, God is so much beyond us and this God calls us to be as much in union with him as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are with themselves. This is destiny of every human being.
Many, instead, as we see in Romans 1, exchange the truth for a lie. They worship someone whom they tell us is an expert. So, he or she must be all knowing, of course. That person has the secret of life and the secret to save us from ourselves of course.
The problem with that attitude is that it does not denigrate God, it denigrates us. God desires to bestow His wisdom upon us. He calls us to union with Him and many instead say that this is Old Fashioned, we have science now, we can now be like gods. Then meltdowns like this happen and we learn the effects of believing that certain people were like gods who came to take care of us. We learn they are only human.
You cannot learn to be the fullness of what it means to be human, to be fully human and fully alive from any media outlet from any university professor, any tv reporter, any politician or for that matter any priest or bishop, archbishop or pope if you are not first seeking the wisdom of the God who is beyond us.
When you seek the wisdom from the Divine Trinity, then you will learn a deeper truth that will help you move in this life.
What failed in the death of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Aubrey, Trayvon Martin and so much more was not just the actions of certain individuals but the breakdown of a system that promotes a false understanding of what it means to be human. It is a system rooted in idolatry and develops a concept of humanity based on doing what is necessary to keep a certain part of the population safe, even at the risk of hurting another part of the same population. That is clear in Taibbi's book by the way.
Universities are not local branches of Mount Olympus. They are human institutions at best. The media are not oracles, they are human institutions at best. When we ascribe to them the characteristics of being like gods, we set ourselves up for manipulation, destruction and pain.
We say that they are like Gods while we bow and scrape to them. Therefore, we don’t question them.
Eventually this idolatry breaks and that is what happened this week. People saying out loud this system failed again. Remember, the mission of the police officer is to keep people safe, but many are saying the system is not keeping us safe.
There needs to be a change and it can begin by realizing that all have a calling to respond to the invitation given to us by love itself The Holy Trinity. We do that by humbly seeking that relationship with the Father through the Son under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls us to be his witnesses not only of whom He is but whom we are. We pray so we can know him more and more and be more in union with him and with his people.
God created all people and you and I have a command to love God and our neighbor as Christ loves us. That is not a nice notion; that is a radical notion because it requires us not to do what some system tells us is correct, but what Christ calls us to do in the name of love and obedience to him. Often that bucks the system in and out of the Church by the way. That is because we all have the same calling. There are no special people who have a super human status while the rest are just humans. Nor are there any sub humans. God calls each human being equally.
Let us take this time to recommit ourselves to our mission as baptized Christians, to seek Christ and to eliminate from our lives the idolatry that has hurt us, our neighbor, our church and every person affected by the policies in place that dehumanize until they blow up as they did this past week. Remember, safety is at the bottom of what dehumanizes us, Jesus reminds us that what is at the bottom of what leads us to union with the Holy Trinity is risk that begins with carrying our cross.
May I ask that we all begin to pray to be open to being confronted with those attitudes and actions that undermine our ability to testify to the truth that we are all invited to embrace. Reflect this week on what risk you would take to seek your destiny to be in union with the Holy Trinity. What you would do to ensure as many people around you go with you. I am not referring to protests or violence. I am talking about sacrifice for those around us for whom Jesus died and to whom the trinity invites us to unity. God is not only one God in three persons but he invites all of humanity to participate in his unity.
Our whole faith is about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit calling us to be in union with them by seeking God to be the center of our lives. He calls us to deepen our union with Him until the time that as St. James says we see him face to face.
Dennis Prager in his book the Rational Bible: Exodus (2017, Regnery) explains that Moses never saw the face of God. So we have no idea what God’s face actually looks like and will not until that time. We only know that Jesus became the face of God so we would understand. However, God is so much beyond us and this God calls us to be as much in union with him as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are with themselves. This is destiny of every human being
Many, instead, as we see in Romans 1, exchange the truth for a lie. They worship someone whom they tell us is an expert. So, he or she must be all knowing, of course. That person has the secret of life and the secret to save us from ourselves of course.
The problem with that attitude is that it does not denigrate God, it denigrates us. God desires to bestow His wisdom upon us. He calls us to union with Him and many instead say that this is Old Fashioned, we have science now, we can now be like gods. Then meltdowns like this happen and we learn the effects of believing that certain people were like gods who came to take care of us. We learn they are only human.
You cannot learn to be the fullness of what it means to be human, to be fully human and fully alive from any media outlet from any university professor, any tv reporter, any politician or for that matter any priest or bishop, archbishop or pope if you are not first seeking the wisdom of the God who is beyond us.
When you seek the wisdom from the Divine Trinity, then you will learn a deeper truth that will help you move in this life.
What failed in the death of George Floyd, Eric Garner, Ahmaud Aubrey, Trayvon Martin and so much more was not just the actions of certain individuals but the breakdown of a system that promotes a false understanding of what it means to be human. It is a system rooted in idolatry and develops a concept of humanity based on doing what is necessary to keep a certain part of the population safe, even at the risk of hurting another part of the same population. That is clear in Taibbi book by the way.
Universities are not local branches of Mount Olympus. They are human institutions at best. The media are not oracles, they are human institutions at best. When we ascribe to them the characteristics of being like gods, we set ourselves up for manipulation, destruction and pain.
We say that they are like Gods while we bow and scrape to them. Therefore, we don’t question them.
Eventually this idolatry breaks and that is what happened this week. People saying out loud this system failed again. Remember, the mission of the police officer is to keep people safe, but many are saying the system is not keeping us safe.
There needs to be a change and it can begin by realizing that all have a calling to respond to the invitation given to us by love itself The Holy Trinity. We do that by humbly seeking that relationship with the Father through the Son under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Jesus calls us to be his witnesses not only of whom He is but whom we are. We pray so we can know him more and more and be more in union with him and with his people.
God created all people and you and I have a command to love God and our neighbor as Christ loves us. That is not a nice notion; that is a radical notion because it requires us not to do what some system tells us is correct, but what Christ calls us to do in the name of love and obedience to him. Often that bucks the system in and out of the Church by the way. That is because we all have the same calling. There are no special people who have a super human status while the rest are just humans. Nor are there any sub humans. God calls each human being equally.
Let us take this time to recommit ourselves to our mission as baptized Christians, to seek Christ and to eliminate from our lives the idolatry that has hurt us, our neighbor, our church and every person affected by the policies in place that dehumanize until they blow up as they did this past week. Remember, safety is at the bottom of what dehumanizes us, Jesus reminds us that what is at the bottom of what leads us to union with the Holy Trinity is risk that begins with carrying our cross.
May I ask that we all begin to pray to be open to being confronted with those attitudes and actions that undermine our ability to testify to the truth that we are all invited to embrace. Reflect this week on what risk you would take to seek your destiny to be in union with the Holy Trinity. What you would do to ensure as many people around you go with you. I am not referring to protests or violence. I am talking about sacrifice for those around us for whom Jesus died and to whom the trinity invites us to unity. God is not only one God in three persons but he invites all of humanity to participate in his unity.
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