Podcasts for Young Philosophers and IB Theory of Knowledge Students

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_392homily2023easter5.html

Deacon Doug McManaman

Currently I am teaching prospective teachers at Niagara University (Toronto Campus). I taught for 32 and a half years as a classroom teacher and did not move up at all, but my friend who joined me this year to teach teachers became, early on, a vice principal, then a principal, a superintendent, and then assistant director of education. Every week we discussed what and how we were going to teach these prospective teachers. One of his suggestions was that we should have the students read the Gospel of Mark (the shortest gospel) straight through. Of course that’s a great idea; for I always insisted on this for my grade 10s; the goal was to have the students become familiar with the character of Christ; for we often hear only pieces of the gospel here and there, but to read a gospel straight through is very important; it gives us a deeper sense of Christ, his life, his personality, and his mission. So we put together an assignment for them to do that was not too demanding. Anyone can read the gospel of Mark in two sittings, but we got them to read just two or three chapters a week, and all we wanted them to do was to take informal notes on things that struck them. No need for in depth research.

That assignment was easily the most enjoyable assignment to mark. So many of them were nothing short of excellent. It was obvious that actually reading the gospel affected them significantly. 

There is tremendous power in the word of God. There is tremendous power in reading the life of Christ as it is laid out in the gospels. And it needs to be powerful, because darkness also has some power. Falsehood has some power. It has the power to deceive. Christ said that the children of darkness are more shrewd than are the children of light (Lk 16, 8). That hasn’t changed. The children of light often lack shrewdness. They look to the surface of things only. If it glitters, if it sounds good, it must be good. 

But how does a person get to that point where he or she can become more shrewd, less gullible, not so easily taken in by popular trends that sound good on the surface, but on closer inspection reveal a dangerous rot? The answer is to become more rooted in the truth. But, what does it mean to be rooted in the truth? Whose truth? “What is truth?” as Pontius Pilate famously asked Jesus. The irony is that the truth was standing right there in front of him, and he crucified the truth, because he was not rooted in the truth.  

In our gospel today, Christ provides the answer: Thomas said to Jesus: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also.”

To be rooted in the truth is to be rooted in Christ, because it is not that he possesses the truth or knows the truth, rather, he is the truth. He is the way, the truth, and he is life itself. All life comes from the Father, through the Word, through the Son; for all things were created through him and for him. He is the source of life and truth. It’s all about Christ. It’s not about us. 

This is the wonderful thing about Catholicism. So many people who have left the Church think that Catholicism is fundamentally about us. They leave the Church when they hear news of the disgraceful behavior of the clergy in the past, or they hear of sinful bishops, or corrupt popes in our history, the Residential schools, abusive nuns or clergy, etc. My friend asked me, years ago, to do an RCIA class on the history of the Church, and I remember preparing for it, going over that history, trying to condense it into an hour. I think it was a rather boring session, I’m sorry to say, but I do remember asking him: are you sure you want me to talk about the history of the Church to these candidates. It might scare them away. There’s a lot of sin in our history. Clearly, the Catholic faith is not about us. If our goal is to get people to look toward us, all they are going to be is disappointed. No, just like the icons of John the Baptist or the Blessed Virgin Mary, our hands must point away from ourselves and point to the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. It’s all about Christ. Everything speaks of Christ. Every rose speaks of his crown of thorns and his blood poured out for us, every tree speaks of his cross, which is our salvation and stability. Winter speaks of his death, spring speaks of his resurrection, the endlessness of the universe speaks of his divine infinity, the movement of the sun from sunrise to sunset speaks of Christ the bridegroom, coming from his tent, going out to meet his bride, the Church, to redeem her and prepare her for the eternal marriage banquet in heaven. It’s all about him, not us. 

Many of us are like Philip; we spend our lives in the Church, we’ve had 12 years of Catholic education, and yet we turn to Jesus and say to him: “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied”. Jesus replies to us the same way he replied to Philip: “Have I been with you all this time and you still do not know me?”

The Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in the Father. To see this, we need to be rooted in the scriptures, for we need to become familiar with the personality and character of Christ. The more we are rooted in him, that is, the more we look to him, think about him, study him, look to him to guide us, spend time in silence with him, the more our eyes will be opened. The more shrewd we will become. We won’t be as easily deceived by false prophets and dangerous but trendy ideologies that are constantly popping up every few years. We’ll be able to see through the facade. If we are not rooted in the truth, who is Christ himself, if we allow ourselves to remain ignorant of his life, we’ll fall for anything that sounds good. Cardinal Collins gave a talk to Catholic trustees a few years ago, and I was struck by an image he employed; he spoke of “the meringue Jesus”, a Jesus that is made up of sweet and light meringue, the stuff you put on a lemon pie. It’s a Jesus that has no substance but is all sweet. The reason many people have the meringue Jesus in their heads instead of the real Jesus is that they don’t read scripture; they don’t pray the scriptures; they don’t contemplate the life of Christ in the reading of the gospels. But when you start to focus on Christ as he is revealed in the gospels, you see that he is not so sweet. For example, he is very offensive to the Pharisees, calling them “whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead”, a first century way of saying “You’re full of it”. He called them hypocrites. He spoke hard truths; for he condemned lying, fornication, adultery, murder, theft, greed of all kinds. He spoke of damnation. He even referred to certain people as pigs and dogs: Do not throw your pearls to swine, or feed holy things to dogs. He wasn’t talking about actual pigs and dogs. He knew that not everyone is genuine. There are people in this world who love evil. 

But we won’t have the eyes to discern who these people are if we are naive. He said to us: be shrewd as serpents, but innocent as doves (Mt 10, 16). Many of us have the innocence part, but we lack the shrewdness. The children of darkness lack the innocence part, but they are shrewd. Immersed in Christ, we get both parts: shrewdness and innocence. 

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_391imageofshepherd.html

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent

Deacon Doug McManaman

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_389tragedytoglory.html

This gospel reading, the raising of Lazarus, is so important, because it reveals Christ’s power over death. Only God has the power to open the grave, as we read in the first reading from Ezekiel: “Thus says the Lord God:  O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them” (Ez 37, 12). Jesus opens the grave of Lazarus and has him rise from it. In other words, Jesus is God. He is divine. And this miracle announces what is to come, namely, Jesus’ own resurrection. Lazarus, although he rises from the dead, will also die again, so this is not a complete victory over death. That will take place on Easter Sunday, when Jesus rises from the dead, never to die again. And that is the good news of the gospel: the resurrection. Death has been defeated. 

This is such an important point to grasp. There is so much suffering in this world, so many people whose lives are beset by a tragedy of one sort or another. And tragedy, which has many different origins, is always connected in some way with death. At the root of tragedy is often human error, or incompetence, or worse, human sinfulness and malice. Sometimes the root of tragedy is not human error or sin at all, but the course of nature. Nature’s disasters, however, often lead to human loss and death, and so they are designated as tragedies–without human loss, we would not refer to such events as tragedies. 

But tragedies rooted in human error are more difficult to deal with, and these are tragedies which often are in turn rooted in human sin, such as laziness or overconfidence or arrogance–think of the sinking of the Titanic. But then there are tragedies that are simply rooted in malice, such as the senseless murder of a loved one, a life cut short. Parents can suffer such loss, the loss of a child for example. Such tragedies leave wounds that stay with them throughout their lives, and their lives are practically defined from that point onwards by that very tragedy. 

But here is the point. The word gospel means ‘good news’, and the good news has gravitas. It is weighty and has real consequence. Christ’s death destroyed death. The good news is that Christ has power over death; he conquered death. If we really believe this, then it is the case that whatever tragedy has befallen us, it need not define our very existence. It no longer has the power to crush and deprive us of light and hope. We can allow it to crush our lives and redefine our entire existence, shrouding our lives in darkness, if we so choose. But because Jesus rose from the dead, and because he raised Lazarus, not to mention a twelve-year-old girl and the son of the widow, it need not do so. Death does not have the final word over our lives. Resurrection does. 

All those whom we have loved and who have died, some even in the most tragic circumstances, we will see and touch them again. The resurrection was for us. The Second Person of the Trinity joined a human nature to himself, uniting himself to every human person, as it were; he died and rose in our humanity, joined to his divinity. If we live our lives in him and die in him, he will raise us up as well: “For if we have been united with Him in a death like his, we shall also be united with him in his resurrection” (Rom 6, 5).

And that is why those who have suffered a terrible tragedy as a result of the sinfulness and malice of another person are able, in time, to forgive that person, because they know, through faith, that tragedy is relative. That is what Christ’s death and resurrection has accomplished: he has reduced tragedy from the absolute to the relative. The crucifix, once a symbol of horror, has become a symbol of power, victory, and glory. Death is no longer absolute and final. And so despair is no longer absolute and final, but relative and temporary. 

Those who have no faith in the resurrection of Christ, who do not live out of that faith, will be unable to rise above the tragedy that besets them, and so they are hardened and imprisoned in unforgiveness. But the power of the risen life of Christ is revealed in those who choose to believe in him and in the one who sent him, and they will not allow tragedy to imprison them in the darkness of perpetual resentment and unforgiveness. These are the people who know the risen Christ, whose lives have been illuminated by the hope of resurrection, by the good news of Christ’s victory over tragedy, sin, and death. 

Deacon D. McManaman

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_390indigenousreligionandmass.html

            It is always inspiring to teach a World Religions course. What becomes obvious to anyone studying the religions of the world is that man is naturally a religious animal; he has always aspired to seek a relationship with his origin, the very source of his being, either God, or the gods, or both. Particularly fascinating are the myriads of creation myths of the indigenous peoples around the world, from Australia to Africa, to North America and the Amazon basin. For the indigenous, life itself is religion, that is, life is ritual, and ritual is ordered to joining the realms of the sacred and the profane. The more one becomes familiar with indigenous myths, the more one understands the essence of ritual as precisely a joining, for the day-to-day activities of the indigenous peoples are really an emulation of the gods of these myths, which is the way to making the past present. Everything they do, i.e., hunting, cooking, giving birth, basket weaving, etc., is sacred to the degree that it imitates the acts of the gods or ancestors whose deeds are recounted in myths and legends. 

            The indigenous believe that the great sky god created lesser deities, who in turn created the earth, mountains, rock formations, trees, rivers, man, and the basic pattern of his daily life. All this took place in what the indigenous refer to as the creation period (or the dreaming), a period of time that is sacred, for it is a time that measures the very work of the gods. This sacred time is of an entirely different dimension than ordinary time. To get a better understanding of this notion of sacred time, consider C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia, specifically The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When the children pass through the wardrobe, they enter a different world, the world of Narnia, and many years in Narnia amount to about a minute or two of earth time. Similarly, for the indigenous, there is earth time, which is profane time (our time), and there is sacred time in which the gods dwell, and the two are not perfectly parallel. Ritual is precisely the way that the indigenous bring sacred time into contact with profane time. In performing ritual, such as an elaborate initiation ritual—which may require an entire season to complete—, they imitate the ancestors or lesser deities, and in doing so, sacred time is made contemporary with profane time. The two different realms are in contact, all as a result of ritual. In other words, the acts of the gods are made present, in the here and now, through the ritual acts of the indigenous, and it is by virtue of this contact that they are renewed, strengthened, and made holy. 

            There is one feature of indigenous myths and legends, however, that I have always found particularly striking, and this feature is found all over the world, in the myths of the Australian, African, South and North American tribes. In these myths, there is very often an account of a murdered god. It is often an unjust murder of an innocent deity or ancestor, and from the body of this murdered deity arises vegetation of all kinds, i.e., beans, melons, corn, tobacco, or a certain tree from whose wood are made flutes that produce enchanting sounds, like the archetypal flute that was played by the murdered god in sacred time. To create such a flute out of the wood of this particular tree is a ritual that makes present the murdered deity. And to harvest the crops in the fall is a ritual act that includes sacrificial offerings to the deity and festivities, since it is from his sacrificed body that the fruits of the earth come to us year after year. Even the headhunting and cannibalism of certain tribes can only be understood in light of the tribes’ myths, for these acts are always offerings to the murdered god, a re-enactment of the myth carried out for the sake of the blessings that will inevitably follow upon such ritual. 

Consider the following excerpt from an ancient legend, “A Boy’s Vision and the First Corn”. 

A young boy on his guardian spirit quest sees a handsome young man coming down from the sky and advancing toward him. Every movement of his body was graceful. “I am sent to you, my friend, by that great and good spirit, the Master of Life, who made all things in the sky and on the earth. He knows your motives in fasting. He sees that you have a kind and unselfish wish to do good to your people, to seek some benefit for them. He knows that you do not ask for strength in war or for the praise of warriors. I am sent to instruct you and to show you how you can do good for your people. Arise now, young man, and prepare to wrestle with me. Only in that way can you hope to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And so they wrestled until the boy was exhausted; the handsome young man returned the following day; for they wrestled on three consecutive days. Finally, on the third day, the heavenly stranger stopped. “I am conquered,” he declared. “Let us sit down, and I will instruct you.” So the two sat together in the lodge, and the visitor began to speak. “You have won what you desire from the Master of Life, my friend. You have wrestled manfully. Tomorrow will be the seventh day of your fasting. Your father will offer you food to strengthen you, but as it is the last day of trial, you will prevail. I know this, and I will tell you what you must do to benefit your family and your tribe. Tomorrow I shall meet you and wrestle with you for the last time. As soon as you have conquered me, you will strip off my garments and throw me down. You will clean the earth of weeds and roots, make it soft, and bury me in the spot. Leave my body in the earth. Do not disturb it, but come occasionally to visit the place, to see whether I have returned to life. Be careful never to let the grass or weeds grow on my grave. Once a month cover me with fresh earth. If you follow my directions, you will accomplish your object of doing good to your fellow creatures by teaching them what I have now taught you.

At sunset, the visitor from the sky returned, and the two wrestled for the last time. In spite of the fact that the boy had refused the food his father had brought, he felt that new strength had been given him and that his courage was greater than ever. He grasped his opponent with supernatural strength, threw him down, took from him his beautiful garments and plume. Finding him dead, the boy buried him on the spot, following all the directions that had been given the day before. He was confident that the stranger would come to life again, as he had promised. 

Throughout the spring he visited the grave, pulled out the grass and weeds, and kept the ground soft. Soon he saw the tops of the green plumes coming through the ground. The more carefully he followed the directions to keep the ground soft, the faster the green plumes grew. But he did not tell his father or anyone else about his vigil or about the grave. Days and weeks passed. One day when the summer was drawing to a close, he [Wunzh] invited his father to follow him. Together they walked to the quiet, secluded place of the youth’s vigil. He had removed the lodge and had kept the weeds from growing on the circle where it had stood. In the center of the spot the father saw, for the first time, a tall and graceful plant with bright-coloured silken hair. It had long green leaves and on every side were golden clusters. Nodding plumes seemed to grow from its top.

“It is my friend, the friend of all people,” explained the boy. “It is the friend who came to me here–Mondawmin, the spirit of corn. We need no longer depend upon hunting and fishing only. As long as this gift of the Good Spirit is cherished, as long as it is taken care of, the earth itself will give us a living.” (See E. E. Clark’s Indian Legends of Canada. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1960, p 46 – 49) 

            What is it in the human subconscious that can account for this universal theme found in the creation myths and legends of tribes separated by oceans and thousands of miles? The Church may have an answer for that, and the clues are in the first reading from the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ: 

Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was a priest of God Most High. He blessed Abram with these words: “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, the creator of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who delivered your foes into your hand.” Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

            How do we explain this reading in which the ancient king of Salem and priest of God the Most High, Melchizedek, brings bread and wine to Abraham, with a blessing? Melchizedek, a pre-Israelite, prefigures the priesthood that Christ established, and of course Melchizedek knew nothing about this foreshadowing or prefiguring, nor did Abraham. And well after Abraham, at the time of the Exodus, the Passover feast was established. The Seder plate prefigures the Eucharist as well. Here the original Passover lamb is sacrificed, and it is the blood that marks the doorposts of the Israelites that is their deliverance. 

            To share in the Seder meal is to be part of that Exodus; for the Jews, to share a meal is to enter into communion with all who are at table, because all share in the one food, which is a source of life. When they celebrate the Passover, they believe that what is past is made present, in the here and now, and so each time the Passover is celebrated throughout the centuries, Moses is present in their midst; Jews who celebrate Passover believe they leave Egypt with all of Israel at the time of the Exodus. 

            In the gospel reading for that same Solemnity (Corpus Christi), the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fish also prefigures the coming reality of the Eucharist. We see this prefiguring of the Eucharist not only in the New Testament, and not only in the history of Israel, which includes a small account of the pagan king Melchizedek, but it goes back further, as far back as the indigenous peoples of the world. God leaves clues throughout history, in every continent and in every people, clues about where He will be found. In the Person of Christ, myth becomes reality. All that the indigenous dreamt of, believed in and articulated is affirmed by God and is brought to reality. We (Catholics) worship a murdered God, a crucified God, and from his body come the fruit of the vine and the work of human hands, the bread of life and the cup of salvation. To partake of this thanksgiving sacrifice is to enter into him, to live in him. And just as the indigenous regard ritual as the way of making sacred time contemporary with ordinary time, a way of making it touch profane time, thereby renewing it, sanctifying it, and healing it, so too has this come to reality in the Eucharist, because to be present at an ordinary Mass is to be just as present at the foot of the cross as Mary and John were two thousand years ago. The sacrifice of Good Friday, which took place 2000 years ago, is made contemporary, that is, re-presented in the here and now. It is not this or that priest who is offering the sacrifice, it is Christ who is the priest who offers the sacrifice, and Christ is the victim, the murdered God, who is being offered. The individual priest is only acting in the Person of Christ (in persona Christi).

And Catholics believe that Christ is the new Passover lamb, whose blood frees us from the slavery of sin and death, and of whose flesh we partake, making us one with that sacrificial offering. And so to eat of this Eucharistic meal is to become one not only with every member of Christ’s mystical body, past and present, but it is to become intimately one with all the faithful of Israel, as well as the indigenous peoples who knew something of this sacrifice, however obscure that understanding might have been. 

One year as I was explaining to some students that the Eucharist is truly the body and blood of Christ, not merely a symbol of his body and blood, a girl raised her hand and said: “It can’t be. That would make us cannibals”. And of course, she had no idea the religious significance of ancient tribal cannibalism. She saw primitive man with the condescending eyes of the western world, that is, as backward and unintelligent. But it is not that we cannot be like them; rather, when we understand the significance of indigenous myth and the rituals that enact them, we begin to see that we can be like them, we are like them, and indeed they are like us. They yearned to participate in the life of the gods, that is, they yearned for the sacred to repeatedly touch their ordinary existence and make it holy and complete, as we do now. They yearned for the deification of the earth, the deification of creation. God answers man’s deepest longings and aspirations in the mystery of the Incarnation, and ultimately in the Eucharist, which is ultimately the source that heals all intergenerational trauma. God reveals His mercy and humility in joining a human nature and entering into human suffering, and dying on a cross. Like every child, God loves to play hide and seek, and like a good player He hides Himself in unexpected places, under a humble disguise of one form or another. He continues to hide in our midst under the ordinary and humble appearance of a wafer of bread. After consecration, it is no longer bread, although it looks like bread, tastes and feels like bread; it is the substance of his murdered and resurrected body. The sacred has joined itself to the profane, matter is made holy, the food which is creation itself has become the Bread of Life, the bread of angels. Had we in the west paid more attention to the deeper significance of indigenous myth and allowed indigenous knowledge to open our eyes to what has always been present but hidden in our own theology, we would have become more fully cognizant of the deeper brotherhood that unites us all.  

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_388necessityofbattle.html

Deacon D. McManaman

As I reflect back upon the more than thirty years I spent as a teacher, I realize that out of all the school principals I had worked with over those years, only two were brave and relatively exemplary Catholic leaders. One was a man, a priest of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit, the other a strong and bright Trinidadian woman. In between these two were a number of men whose leadership style emboldened the enemies of the school, i.e., drug dealing thugs, who, as a result of the timidity they witnessed, eventually gained a level of control over the fearful students of the schools.

I will never forget the day this Trinidadian principal came on the PA and instructed everyone in the school to put down their pens and to listen up very carefully. Her message was specifically addressed to the drug dealers in the school who had begun to provide free marajuana to some of the younger grade nine students, as a way of increasing their clientele. She was incensed at the news that this was happening. With great indignation in her voice, and after instructing everyone to stop what they were doing and listen, she said: “All you drug dealers out there, know this: your days are numbered at this school. I’m coming after you, and I’m your worst nightmare.” She went on for another minute or two chastising them, reiterating her foretelling. All I could think of were all the male principals I worked with in previous years and how they would react if they were to hear such an announcement; without question, every single one of them would have insisted that this woman had lost her mind, that she was a fool for initiating a battle she could not win.

But before her announcement was over, the “kingpin” of the school had been nabbed, for during it, he was out of class wandering the halls and at one point began to jump up and down crying out: “Catch me if you can! Catch me if you can!” At that very moment, a vice principal turned the corner and witnessed it all: “You’re caught”, he said.  He was sent home and expelled the next day. By the end of June, every drug dealer was caught and expelled. At the end of the year, I overheard a vice principal saying to a colleague: “We don’t know how it happened, but we always found ourselves at the right place at the right time”. 

I had to shake my head at this man’s dull witted remark; for it was obvious to anyone with faith how it happened. This woman loved the students enough to enter a frightening battle for them; she had the faith, the trust, and the intensity of love to take the first step in that battle, and when that happens, the Lord takes the next step and battles on our side: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (Ja 4, 8); for “the Lord is a warrior, Lord is his name” (Ex 15, 3). When a person in a leadership position steps out in faith to do what in fact he or she has an obligation to do, to protect the vulnerable and engage in the battle that life in Christ fundamentally is, the Lord joins us: “But during the watch just before dawn, the Lord looked down from a column of fiery cloud upon the Egyptian army and threw it into a panic; and he so clogged their chariot wheels that they could drive only with difficulty. With that the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from Israel, because the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.” (Ex 14, 24-25). 

I remember the year my best friend, a priest of a nearby diocese, was assigned to a new parish. On his first day, a group of women introduced themselves to him, referring to themselves as “the bitches of St. Basil’s”, assuring him that “we’re here to give you a run for your money”. These were women who saw themselves as catalysts of true progress; needless to say they did not like the straightforward, back to the basics preaching of my friend. They opposed him at every turn. But my friend too was a “warrior” who loved the congregation enough to actually preach with substance and grit. I recall the Sunday he actually called the ladies out, publicly, loudly and clearly telling them: “If you don’t like it (i.e., the principles and fundamental teachings of the Church), get out!” A few days later, my friend received a call from the bishop, who insisted: “You can’t be telling them to get out”. My friend simply replied, “Well, I have been telling them to get out, and the more I do, the more people come, and the collections are steadily increasing”. In time, my friend even moved the tabernacle to the center of the Church, and just as he began to call the congregation’s attention to the change on the sanctuary, a thundering applause erupted. The ladies never returned after that, and the collections continued to increase. 

What is it that accounts for the increase in Church attendance, not to mention collections? Although determining the causes and factors that explain a phenomenon like this is more complex than intuition would suggest, who can doubt that a significant factor is courageous leadership and a challenging kerygma, as opposed to the innocuous and insipid preaching they were subject to for years, a style of leadership that typically does not appeal to men?

There are many anomalies in our lives, but struggle is not one of them; on the contrary, a life without struggle would be truly anomalous. I recall one principal I worked with who typically identified a good day with a smooth day; conversely, a bad day was one beset by frustrations, conflicts, and difficulties–in short, a struggle. Most people make that identification, but a smooth day is not necessarily a good day, and a day full of frustrations, confrontations, and difficulties might very well be the best and most fruitful day of the week. Many of our leaders today typically identify good days with smooth days, and doing so causes them to regard setbacks, conflicts, uncomfortable confrontations and challenges as anomalies. When this occurs among clergy, Catholic leaders will employ strategies designed to avoid battle altogether. The result is that the Lion of Judah is slowly tamed, and preaching becomes mind numbingly innocuous. However, one cannot win a battle that one refuses to fight, and a lion tamed is not the Lion of Judah (Christ), but an imposter. Moses directed Joshua, both of whom prefigure Christ, to go to battle:

At Rephidim, Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses, therefore, said to Joshua, “Pick out certain men, and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle. I will be standing on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”

So Joshua did as Moses told him: he engaged Amalek in battle after Moses had climbed to the top of the hill with Aaron and Hur. As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight. Moses’ hands, however, grew tired; so they put a rock in place for him to sit on. Meanwhile Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword. (Ex 17, 1-16)

Moses with raised hands prefigures the crucified, the sign under which we are always victorious. But the decision of a “king” to siesta while his army is at war makes himself vulnerable to a serious fall, as we see in king David:  

At the turn of the year, the time when kings go to war, David sent out Joab along with his officers and all Israel, and they laid waste the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. David himself remained in Jerusalem. One evening David rose from his bed and strolled about on the roof of the king’s house. From the roof he saw a woman bathing; she was very beautiful… (2 Sam 11, 1-2)

The Christian is not called to a life of peace, rest, and tranquility: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household’” (Mt 10, 34-36. See also Eph 6, 10-12; 2 Cor 10, 3-5). Peace and tranquility are only moments of reprieve in a long war; they are gifts from God, and although we would like that state of affairs to endure perpetually, as did Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Lord assures us we don’t know what we are talking about and directs us to come down from that mountain to continue the struggle. 

The decision to face conflict for the sake of the gospel is rooted in a love of God that extends to our neighbor; on the other hand, the decision to avoid all conflict is a decision to avoid battle. Immediately following these verses, Christ points out that “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. In other words, whoever loves his own peace of mind more than the division and conflict that life in the Person of Christ inevitably brings about is not worthy of Christ, for such a love amounts to a refusal to fight under the sign of the cross: “…and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10, 38). The follower of Christ has to be willing to lose his life in battle if he is to find life: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 10, 39). 

The effeminate, which includes both males and females, are characterized by an unbecoming delicacy or overrefinement. They tend to confuse an argument with a quarrel. If these people are teachers, they often discourage debate; disagreement with his/her point of view is often taken as a personal affront. The more “manly” among us, which includes strong women as well as real men, tend to enjoy a good debate. Such people appreciate the fact that the other was willing to act as an obstacle. In this light, cancel culture is fundamentally a phenomenon rooted in the increased feminization of western culture. However, the fear of being canceled is also fundamentally effeminate. It is particularly ironic to uncover this fear in the Church, for Christ was canceled; the very redemption of humanity was the result of a “cancellation”, and we are called to share in that cancellation (Jn 15, 18; Mt 10, 17-19). Catholic leaders who find themselves in the midst of a war must indeed fight with prudence and strategy, for one has to be able to discern what battles are worth our attention and which ones waste time and energy–a prudence not always exemplified in conservative Catholics; for there’s a fine line between audacity and strong leadership, but there is a difference between a prudence that has as its end the avoidance of battle and a prudence that has victory as its end. Avoiding battle for the sake of peace does not achieve peace in the end, because peace must be “made” (Mt 5, 9), and “making” is an activity, not a passivity. Those who fear being canceled to the point of rendering the kerygma of the Church palatable to the enemies of the Church essentially love their own livelihood over the spiritual and moral integrity of the vulnerable. Such fear is unbecoming of a Christian, let alone a pastor or bishop, for each one of us is called to be a peacemaker, and the harmony that peace is (pax) can only be achieved by engaging in a difficult battle that upsets those who love evil and despise everything the Church loves. 

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_387catholiceducationandproclamation.html

Deacon Doug McManaman

I’d like to focus on the notion of the kingdom of God, which is so prominent in the New Testament. It is such an important notion, but it is rather difficult because it is so multifaceted. The kingdom of God is at the heart of Christ’s preaching. 

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel.” (Mk 1, 14-15)

Jesus speaks specifically of the good news of the kingdom of God (Lk 4, 43). I’ve often asked my students in the past: “You have had about 10 years of Catholic education, and you’ve heard the words “good news”, and of course the word ‘gospel’ means good news. Tell me: what is the good news?” More often than not, they simply have no clue. I once met a Catholic nun in the U.S who was beginning to buy into the latest ideological fads, political in nature, that are typically nothing more than temporary substitutes for the authentic kerygma of the Church, and as I was arguing with her, it became rather obvious that she seemed to me to lack a basic understanding of the faith. So at one point I asked her: “What is the good news of the gospel?” She too was stuck for an answer, which is why over the years I have wondered whether or not she is still a Catholic nun. I say this to stress the point that political ideologies are not the gospel. Christ was not a political revolutionary; he did not speak of “social justice”–which is not to suggest that Christ’s teaching and his life have no social implications, they certainly do, but the cart must never be placed before the horse. Christ came to proclaim the good news; he came to establish it. He is the good news. 

The good news is the establishment of the kingdom of God in him. But what does that mean exactly? Certainly this is strange language to modern ears; for we don’t speak of kingdoms, but provinces, nations, countries, and we speak of Prime Ministers and Presidents, not kings. So what does this really mean? 

Consider this historically. Under king David, the nation of Israel became a kingdom that subjugates other nations. In fact, at the time of Christ, the Jews were expecting a Messiah who would restore Israel to its former status as a kingdom. They were expecting a Messiah like David, a soldier who would lead the defeat of the Romans and free Israel from Roman occupation. But that is not the kingdom Jesus came to establish. He said to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world” (Jn 18, 36). And in the synoptic gospels, Jesus foretells his passion three times. The reason is that he is preparing his followers so that they may come to understand his true mission. He came to defeat another enemy, the one enemy that man cannot defeat; for he came to conquer sin and its offspring, which is death. The good news of the gospel is the resurrection. And if death has been conquered, sin has been conquered, because death is the effect of sin; for death entered into the world as a result of the sin of the first parents of the human race. 

But ‘good news’ (gospel) and ‘kingdom of God’ are often used together in the New Testament.  A king governs a kingdom, and a kingdom is an empire that subjugates other nations. Christ came to establish the kingdom of God over and against the kingdom of darkness. The kingdom of darkness is a different kingdom. Recall the story of Genesis: “God said ‘Let there be light’, and God separated the light from the darkness”. This is the creation of the angelic realm. Angels are immaterial, pure spirits, created intellectual lights, and so they are not limited by matter and subject to time as material things are, such as human persons, who are composites of spirit and matter. And angels choose instantaneously whether to serve God or rebel against God. And so, immediately after God created the light of the angelic spirits, God separated light from darkness, that is, He separated the good angels from the rebellious, the angels of darkness. And we know from a study of the fall of man in Genesis chapter 3 that the devil, the prince of darkness, draws the first parents of the human race into the current of his own rebellion. Through his inspiration, darkness enters into the world. The result of the first sin is death, concupiscence, and a loss of the life of grace and the sense of the divine. Sin and darkness spread throughout the world as history continues. 

Moving right into the New Testament to the biblical story of the temptation in the wilderness, the devil tempts Jesus in the desert. In the second temptation in the gospel of Luke, we read: “Then the Devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant. The devil said to him, “I shall give to you all this power and their glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish. All this will be yours, if you worship me.” Jesus said to him in reply, “It is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord, your God, and him alone shall you serve.’” Notice what the devil says: “…the kingdoms of the world have been handed over to me, and I may give it to whomever I wish”. And in the first chapter of the gospel of John, we read that the light entered the darkness. Jesus came to free man from the kingdom of darkness. He came to defeat that kingdom, to take back what rightfully belongs to God, to free man from the dominion of Satan. In the first letter of John, we read: “Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the devil.” 

Christ came to buy back (redeem) the human race, to deliver man from the darkness of this kingdom. And so a battle ensues. This temptation in the wilderness is the first round of this battle, and the first round goes to Christ. This kingdom, the kingdom of darkness, is both a visible and an invisible kingdom. Its origin is invisible (the demonic realm); its effects are visible in human sinfulness manifest in history. This is a kingdom that was established in the beginning, not at a particular time in history, as was the Roman or Alexandrian empires. When the first parents cooperated with the evil one and chose to taste radical independence from God, for themselves and their offspring, they submitted themselves to him. They rejected their status as children dependent upon God. Christ came to undo the work of the evil one, and the work of the evil one was to draw humanity into his own sin and rebellion, with all its effects. Christ came to reverse that. 

But how is Christ going to reverse that? He reverses that in his Incarnation, death, and resurrection. By his Incarnation, the Second Person of the Trinity joins his divinity to our humanity. The Son dwells among us. The signs of the impending defeat of the kingdom of darkness occur almost immediately, beginning with the overcoming of temptation in the desert, but they continue in the miracles Christ worked, in his miracles over nature (changing water into wine, the calming of the storm, etc.), in the raising of a 12 year old girl from the dead and the raising of Lazarus, which imply his power over death, and most importantly in his forgiving others of their sins, something only God can do. All these are signs that the kingdom of God is among us. 

When Jesus returned to Capernaum after some days, it became known that he was at home. Many gathered together so that there was no longer room for them, not even around the door, and he preached the word to them. They came bringing to him a paralytic carried by four men. Unable to get near Jesus because of the crowd, they opened up the roof above him. After they had broken through, they let down the mat on which the paralytic was lying. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Child, your sins are forgiven.”

Now some of the scribes were sitting there asking themselves, “Why does this man speak that way? He is blaspheming. Who but God alone can forgive sins?” Jesus immediately knew in his mind what they were thinking to themselves, so he said, “Why are you thinking such things in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, pick up your mat and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth”, he said to the paralytic, “I say to you, rise, pick up your mat, and go home.” He rose, picked up his mat at once, and went away in the sight of everyone. They were all astounded and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.” (Mk 2, 1-12)

Christ, who is Messiah, exercises power over the kingdom of darkness; he forgives sins and cures the sick. Rise up, he says, just as he will say to Lazarus and the 12 year old girl whom he raised from the dead. Christ exercises dominion over death. But his definitive defeat of this kingdom takes place on Good Friday. By dying, he destroys death, by rising, he restores life. His blood is the price he paid for the sins of man, and the proof that they have been forgiven is his resurrection, for sin begets death, but divine grace begets life. 

So what is this kingdom of God? The kingdom of God is something that cannot be adequately expressed in one answer, which is why we have a multitude of parables of the kingdom. Each one highlights one aspect of that kingdom. What we can say is that it is not of this world. Indeed, it is in this world, but it is not of this world. It is not a political kingdom. And like the kingdom of darkness, it is both visible and invisible. Its origin is invisible; its sustaining source is invisible–the Holy Spirit is invisible. But it is visible insofar as Christ is visible, and insofar as the kingdom has a grip on visible human beings, in particular the visible Church that Christ established on the twelve foundation stones of the Apostles. And, it is a kingdom that grows and develops in history. Consider the parable of the mustard seed: 

He proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. It becomes a large bush, and the ‘birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.’” (Mt 13, 31-32)

A very short parable, but it conveys only an aspect of that kingdom, namely, its developmental nature: the kingdom of God develops and evolves in history; it begins small, but grows, develops in time, within history. 

The kingdom of God is an invisible kingdom that is here, within the confines of space and time, developing like a plant. The kingdom of God is the redemptive presence of God through the power of the reconciling Spirit. Christ said that he has overcome the world. Christ redeemed us. His presence, his influence, his life, his grace, is in the world. It has been joined to matter. The divine life, divine grace, is intimately present to a sufficient degree to each individual person, and it is up to each person to accept that grace or reject it. Those who accept his grace and cooperate with it will possess sanctifying grace, which is a supernatural quality that is indwelling and habitual, unlike sufficient grace. To be in a state of sanctifying grace does not mean one has achieved spiritual perfection. Rather, it means that one has freely opened himself to the divine nature, which now dwells within; for grace is a sharing in the divine life. This makes one a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, for the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit is the very soul of the Church. Hence, the kingdom of God is present in the world, through that Mystical Body. 

The king, who is Christ, is the king of the universe, but he does not reign by force. He does not compel. First and foremost, he reigns within; he reigns through the free cooperation of human persons, and so Christ reigns in his Church. But he does not yet reign in the world of which he is king. Not yet. The world will not allow him to. There is still darkness, enmity, strife, war, between the offspring of the evil one and the offspring of the woman (Gn 3, 15). And so we see history as a battle. We are at war. You are at war. It is not a war fought with conventional weaponry. It is a spiritual battle. My spiritual director would always remind teachers: “There is a war for the souls of our students”. And our responsibility as teachers is to enter into this battle and go to war for them, for their sake, to protect them from the subtle influence of darkness. And that means coming to know that faith, and above all witnessing to the joy of Christ’s resurrection, the joy of belonging to that kingdom, being under the influence of that kingdom, allowing that kingdom, that redemptive presence, to have dominion over your own life; it involves praying for our students, helping them to see the world through the eyes of faith. It is a highly dignified vocation. A very noble one. It’s no longer completely in the hands of the clergy, the religious, as it was of old, when the schools were run by the religious orders. Now, it is up to you and me to carry on that mission, to enter into that battle. 

So, even now, Christ is still in the process of defeating his enemies, but he defeats his enemies in the same way that he did when he came among us 2000 years ago in Palestine: as a servant, a humble servant, through the power of the cross. He does not come in military and political power, as did the kings of history. He defeats the kingdom of darkness in “weakness”, for “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Co 1, 25). God is so powerful that he defeated the one enemy that man could not defeat, namely sin and death, and he did so by dying on a cross. The eternal Person of the Son, who is Life and Light, allowed himself to be swallowed up in death, like a mound of earth would swallow up a stick of dynamite, only to be detonated. Christ’s life fills the darkness of death with the light of life. For the rest of us, dying is loss, it is defeat, but for God, dying is victory. And our dying becomes light and victory in him. 

And so the crucifix has become the most powerful sign under which we operate–that is why it is so important to have a crucifix in every room of our house, especially in each classroom, and not the resurrected figures fixed to a cross, but a crucifix; Satan recoils from the crucifix, because it is the sign of his definitive defeat.

Another parable of the kingdom that illustrates an aspect of the kingdom is the following:

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch was leavened.” (Mt 13, 33)

Yeast takes time to influence the entire loaf. The kingdom of God is in the world like yeast. A teacher is above all yeast, and a good teacher has influence. That’s the power of a teacher. Influence. It is a real tragedy to have a teacher spend over 30 years in the classroom, with a mission to witness to the good news of the kingdom, to inspire kids to enter that world of grace, truth, and joy, and to neglect that mission completely, to waste those years, by seeing his teaching profession merely as a job, to become totally preoccupied with making his life easier, doing as little as possible. The light that they could have brought into the classroom but did not, because their faith was lifeless, limp, unenlightened and ineffective. Such teachers are forgettable, for instead of bringing light into the classroom, they bring tension, darkness, and hardness. 

It is the faith of the Church that it is impossible for man, outside of Christ, to establish peace and justice on earth. Man is inclined to sin. In the Psalms we read: “Unless the Lord builds the house, in vain to the builders labor” (Ps 127, 1). The fullness of the kingdom will only be achieved in the Second Coming of Christ, the Parousia. What we do in the meantime is allow Christ the King to reign in our own lives, and we influence people that way. When Christ the King reigns in our lives, we begin to love with the heart of Christ. We love with humility. We love with the love that we see from the cross, which is a love the world cannot understand, because the world only understands power and politics. It does not understand the humility of the divine love. The world admires strength, wealth, fame, youthfulness, etc. But God the Father admires His Son, who:

…though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2, 6-11)

The kingdom of God, as we said above, is an invisible kingdom, but it is visible insofar as it dwells within the hearts of visible sinful, flawed, neurotic human beings who make up Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church. Christ the king reigns in his Church, and Christ reigns in the hearts of our Protestant brethren who speak and act in his name, and he also reigns implicitly and perhaps pre-consciously in many of our Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, etc., brothers and sisters of good will, who are open to divine grace, whose decisions are moved by divine grace, even without them knowing it explicitly. These are part of the invisible Church.

There will always be conflict between the two kingdoms. We know this from the words of Christ himself who said: “If the world hates me, know that it will hate you too” (Jn 15, 18). We also know this from as far back as the book of Genesis: “I shall put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. She will crush your head, while you will bite at her heel” (3, 15). The woman is Israel, as well as the New Israel, Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church, and the Blessed Mother, whose offspring is Jesus. That battle plays out in history, and we are part of it. The specific task assigned to us is to bring the light of the gospel, the commands of Christ, and the message of Christ’s forgiveness of sins to the students entrusted to us. We labor for the next 30 years or so, but in the end, the Lord will take our labors, all our works of charity, as a builder takes wood, glass, and steel, and he will make the final product. But he will usher in the fullness of the kingdom, and when that will occur, no one knows. In large part it does depend on us in that we create the conditions for his ushering in the fullness of that kingdom; we delay that coming or we hasten it by our cooperation or lack of cooperation. Moreover, eternal life with God in the fullness of the kingdom will include the resurrection of the body, our bodies, for we profess this in the Creed, and it will include the Beatific Vision, which is the vision of God as He is in Himself. To see God as He is in Himself is to possess the Supreme Good, the source of all that is Good. Everything you and I desire in this life is ultimately a desire for God, for everything we desire in this life is only a finite good which does not satisfy indefinitely, but only temporarily. The human heart was created by God and for God, and in the human heart is an infinite thirst, and only one thing in reality is infinite, and that is God Himself. The happiness of the eternal possession of God (heaven) is unimaginable. It is not in any way comparable to a Club Med vacation. Any depiction of heaven in film or media is necessarily false, for it is beyond our ability to conceive. However, the more you grow in prayer and begin to experience the joy of intimacy with God and grow in a deeper sense of the divine, you will begin to get glimpses of what the happiness of heaven really is and what it is not; for this is a very subtle joy that is indescribable. 

But the joy of heaven begins now, in this life. Christ said that “the kingdom of God is within you”. Too often, Catholic teachers speak as if our mission is to build a utopia, that the kingdom of God is some sort of utopian society that we create, and so the gospel is once again reduced to politics, and what happens then is that political action takes priority, rather than the personal action of the pursuit of holiness, through prayer, confession, Eucharist, works of charity, etc., and soon the teaching of religion becomes a matter of encouraging students to political activism. The fact is social justice will naturally proceed from a life that is growing in holiness. 

St. Paul tells us that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, and so each one of us is called to be a sacred space, a temple that houses the presence of God. The light that will fill that temple if we are open will certainly illuminate our own life, our own interior, but as teachers, that light will illuminate the space outside of us so that others can begin to make their way through the darkness. That is the great blessing of the vocation of a Catholic teacher. The greatest joy in store for those who have sought first the kingdom of God and left all else to God’s providence will be the awareness that they’ve loved God far more than they thought they did and that the Lord has accomplished so much more, through their efforts, labors and sufferings, than they could have possibly imagined. 

Deacon Doug McManaman

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_386postmodernismctholiceducation.html