The Truth Hurts

“Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and be diverted in myths.” 2 Timothy 4:2-4

There is such a tremendous difference between telling someone that his actions are wrong and telling him that he is condemning himself. The former address objective truth, whereas the latter makes a judgment. There are so many who say, “Who are you to tell me what is right and wrong?” and in their defensiveness compel their critics to “love the sinner, but hate the sin.” They are confused by the notion that correction, admonishment, and reprimanding are signs of judgment about their character, not of their action. They recognize the value of “tough love” until they are at the receiving end.

Oftentimes, their blindness is only agitated by the messenger. The convincing and encouraging are often missing. I freely admit that I'm often among the worst in that regard. But if we present right teaching to its opponents as fact, without the groundwork of reason, our message will usually be, at best, divisive.

I had a discussion with a Protestant friend the other day, and we talked a little bit about the relation between Scripture and the Church. I think the gist of what I presented was that they were separate, but equally authoritative, complementary and supplementary necessities of faith. But it has really gotten me thinking about the role of the Church. And my conclusion is this, though these summations are necessarily incomplete: Scripture contains the essential elements of the gospel that can bring anyone who seeks righteousness to the grace of salvation through faith. The Church is the protector and interpreter of Scripture through her union with the Holy Spirit. The Word of God includes the entirety of Scripture, but we know by John 1 that the Word is Jesus, and no amount of writing can contain Him in His entirety. How then do we come to full knowledge of Him? Through his bride, the Church.

The divisions among the baptized make it clear that we are enduring this time prophesied by St. Paul. To what can we appeal to heal the brokenness of the Body? We must discover again the source of sound doctrine. We must expose the myths. We must answer those teachers who say that our desires and curiosity can be satisfied in any manner but through the Church. And we must do so with encouragement, conviction, persistence, and patience.

Our Lady of Sorrows, as you saw your Son's Body brought to destruction on the cross, only to be restored by the power of the Father, so you see His Body again torn and suffering. You became our mother on that day. Pray for us, and hold us in your arms, that we may again be restored for the glory of the Almighty.

What's in a Name?

“Our Father in heaven,
   hallowed be your name,
   your kingdom come,
   your will be done,
   on earth as in heaven.” Matthew 6:9-10

Hallowed be your name. Of all the petitions in this prayer taught us by our Lord, none is more misunderstood, and thus glazed over, than this. And, insofar as nothing can make the name of the Lord unholy, it seems to cross from the misunderstood to the unnecessary. Yet it begins and is the foundation of our Lord's prayer—without acknowledging God's name, the prayer is fruitless.

There are two things that are helpful to remember at this point: 1) the prayers of Christ, because He is God, are always and completely fulfilled, and 2) every “action” of God is for Him in this sense: it is for us, that we may be drawn to Him, and magnify His glory.

Though Christ taught His disciples this prayer for them, He was the first to pray it. It is fulfilled, and it is fulfilled in His name: it is an oath, a covenant—the covenant.

God's name is holy, and need not become holy. His name is holy because he is holy, and He and His name are One. And because His prayer is bound to His name, we have the same assurance in the “Our Father” as we do the sacraments, as we do in our salvation through the cross: “everyone shall be saved who calls on the name of the Lord” (Acts 2:21).

And if this prayer is self-fulfilling, we should not have far to look in this world to get a foretaste of the next. “On earth as it is in heaven.” And it is so. We may have to look past the worldliness of the world to see it, but the divine has His fingerprints all over the place. From the splendor of creation to the gift of free will, his mark is plain for all who want to see it. But the real glimpses of heaven are a little more hidden. The easiest way to find them is to find evidence of the devil's work, because what is most treasured by God is certainly most hated by Satan.

Moral relativism vs. absolute truth. The indulgence of self vs. the gift of love. The foolishness of rationalization vs. the wisdom of obedience. “All religions are one” vs. “there is only one religion”. “Love” produces families vs. the family as love.

The point is, that the latter in all these cases reflects things as they are, and no amount of deceit and destruction can make it unso. We have God's promise. What we need to do now is to dig out these diamonds of truth and make them so irresistible that the deceiver is rendered incapable of hiding them again. We must be the discoverers and champions of truth. For we have sworn by God's own name that it is so.

Queen of Heaven and Mother of the Church,
Guide us, illumine us.
Make us wise, and make us strong.
Grant us firmness in truth, but softness of heart.
Fill us with the riches of your Son,
And make us worthy of our name:
Anointed.

Please, Sir, Can I Have Some More?

“Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied.” Luke 6:21

I am STARVING.

My life has been nothing but blessings for the better part of a year. I have learned more about myself, about my faith, about the Church, and about God than I had really ever even considered before. And this last week has been the best yet. I've gotten my hands on a couple great books and I ate them up. Then Friday I was smacked with the the most tangible understanding of the Church as the bride of Christ that I think I will ever know: that our becoming one flesh in the Eucharist is the consummation of our marriage! I can't get enough of this stuff. And I know that no matter how much wisdom, knowledge, or understanding I am given, it will be infinitesimal in comparison to what I'll have in eternity.

This is nothing new. It's not even an idea peculiar to religion (except, perhaps, in terms of scale). In every life, we spend years (maybe less, if we're lucky) trying to figure out the meaning of life, and why we're here, and all these massive, seemingly unanswerable questions. And we begin our search the only way we know how: by breaking it down into terms we can understand. A man may not know where he stands in the grand scheme of things, but he knows he has a mind that understands chemistry like no one else's ever has. A woman may not be the sharpest kid in her class, but she knows she has no equal in her beauty. So they've discovered their gifts. The chemist begins to study, and ever he answer he finds begets infinitely more questions. Maybe the model discovers there is more to her than just being pretty; of any number of things that could turn her off from modeling, the end result is the same: she goes to rediscover her gifts in hope of finding something that she is so passionate about and hungry for that it drives her, consumes her, and sends her on the same quest as the chemist—to answer the infinitely unanswerable.

What I realized this week about this Scripture from Luke, however, absolutely blew me away. I was literally giddy for about 15 minutes. I have always understood this notion to mean that we're going to get to heaven, and God's entire plan will be laid out right in front of us. We'll have all the knowledge, wisdom, and understanding to we've ever dreamed of times gazillion trillion. But it's not. It's not about how much we'll know. It points to that, sure, but get this: it's about how happy we will be. (I realize that I am far from the first to see this, but that makes it no less exhilarating.) I was giddy—omigosh-this-is-so-phenomenal-I-couldn't-sleep-if-I-wanted-to excited—over a drop of water! And now I'm told that God wants to fill me to the brim. How great and how glorious is this God of ours!

O, Mother of Goodness,
Teach us to be satisfied by nothing less than your Son. At the foot of the cross, you became our mother. Protect us, as you did Him in his infancy, that we might grow into His perfect sacrifice, and be filled here on earth in His Eucharist, and at the heavenly banquet in the life to come.