gospel

Brief Reflection on the Triumph of the Cross

Deacon Douglas McManaman

 

Consider this part of today’s gospel reading:  

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.

The more I go on in my life as a Deacon and have to listen to various preachers as well as many faithful Catholics, the more I am convinced that so many of us have missed the radical nature of the good news (gospel), likely because we have read such passages against the background of centuries old prejudice against Protestantism, in particular Martin Luther’s emphasis on the principle that we are saved by faith, not works. A very important document came out in 1999 that many Catholics are unaware of entitled the “Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification“. It was created and agreed to by the Church’s Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Lutheran World Federation as a result of Catholic–Lutheran dialogue. It states that the churches now share “a common understanding of our justification by God’s grace through faith in Christ.”

It’s a very important document, because to anyone who reads St. Paul or the gospels carefully, it is obvious that we are not saved by our works, but by grace through faith in Christ. This does not mean faith as in a simple assent to a set of theological propositions; rather, it means believing that by his death on the cross, Christ has defeated death definitively, and that forgiveness of sins and eternal life is ours for the accepting. So many of the parables point to this fact, but many instinctively believe that such an arrangement is too good to be true, and so they drift back into a transactional covenant, an Old Testament legalism, so to speak. The only work necessary is faith that Christ has saved us from death by his death–everything else will follow from that. Jesus says: “And this is the will of Him that sent Me: that every one who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the Last Day.” 

And notice the last half of today’s gospel: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him”. The gospel, the good news, is a message of salvation. It’s not a morality–even though it has moral implications–, it’s not a set of rules and regulations, nor is it an ideology; rather, it is about a Person, namely Christ himself, who came to save the lost and give his life as a ransom for many. In short, it is about the Triumph of the Cross. 

Over the years I’ve noticed that many people would like the person preaching to be a conduit of their anger. In that anger, they inevitably project a Christ who condemns. They don’t really want the good news, it seems. But I was reading from a great Scripture scholar and theologian the other day who was commenting on the verse: “Many are called, but few are chosen”. Allow me to quote a portion of what he wrote, because I can’t hope to say it any better.  He writes: 

What then do I make of, “Many are called but few are chosen”? Just this. The sad truth of our fallen condition is that we don’t want anything to do with a system of salvation that works by grace through faith. We want our merits, sleazy though they may be, to be rewarded–and we want everybody else’s obviously raunchy behavior punished. We are like pitiful little bargain-hunters going to a used-car lot with $265 worth of hard-earned cash in our pockets and looking for the ultimate transport of delight. But just as we are about to give up and go away, the salesman comes up to us with a smile on his face and whispers in our ear: “You really want a car?” “Come around to the back of the lot. Have I got a deal for you!” And back there, gleaming in the sun, is a brand-new Porsche. “It’s yours for free,” he says. “The boss just likes you; here are the keys.”  

Many are called: there is no one in the whole world, good, bad, or indifferent, who isn’t walked around to the back of the lot by the divine Salesman and offered heaven for nothing. But few are chosen: because you know what most of us do? First thing–before we so much as let ourselves sink into the leather upholstery or listen to the engine purr–we get suspicious. We walk around the car and kick the tires. We slam the doors. We jump up and down on the bumpers to test the shocks. And then, even if we do decide to take it, we start right in worrying about the warranty, fussing about the cost of insuring a sports car, and even fuming about whether, if our no-good neighbor came in here, he might be offered a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. But God doesn’t help us–at least not with all that tough-customer routine. He just sits up there in the front office and remains Mr. Giveaway, the Mad Dog Tyson of Parousia Motors, the Crazy Eddy of Eternity whose prices are insane. He gives heaven to absolutely everybody: nothing down, no interest, no payments. And he makes hell absolutely unnecessary for anybody. 

The only catch is, you have to be as crazy as God to take the deal, because your every instinct will be to distrust such a cockamamy arrangement. You have to be willing to believe in an operation that would put any respectable God out of the deity business. Which, nicely enough, lands us right back at the parable: a king who throws parties that any other king would be ashamed of, representing a God who refuses to act like one; and a hell only for idiots who insist on being serious. (Robert Farrar Capon: The Parables of Judgment. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1993)

 

Padre, don’t forget

Deacon Douglas McManaman

My good friend, a retired priest from the Diocese of Hamilton, Ontario, took a group of kids to the Dominican Republic more than 30 years ago. One day he went out to the outlying regions in Consuelo, called the Bateyes, which are small rural settlements designed for plantation workers. They are very impoverished areas, lacking basic services such as clean drinking water. My friend remembers meeting a very poor woman who was blind and who had one arm severed; she was in her 50s, and of course she was living in great poverty. Through a translator, my friend said to her: “I’m sorry”. He was sorry for her condition, for her suffering. She read his sorrow on his face and simply said to him in reply: “Padre: don’t forget, there is going to be a resurrection”. 

My friend felt tremendously uplifted by her words. In her suffering, and in her faith and hope in the resurrection, she lifted him up. This lady experienced something of the empty tomb; she was a witness that we can actually experience the reality of the resurrection without actually having been at the empty tomb. She is an example of those whom Christ referred to in the gospel of John: “Blessed are those who have not seen but believe”. Her Easter joy transcended all her misery.  

The word ‘gospel’ means good news. Over the years, I would often ask my students: “What is the good news”? Many of them would be stuck for an answer. Only a few could tell me. And many Catholic adults today reduce the gospel to “a collection of rules and prohibitions… to the repetition of doctrinal principles, to bland or nervous moralizing” (Aparecida, 12). “You shall not kill”; is that good news? “Do not take the Lord’s name in vain… You shall not commit adultery… You shall not steal…”; is this the good news? Not at all: “…for through the law comes consciousness of sin” (Rom 3, 20).

Recently, I was part of a 90-day spiritual exercise at a local parish that includes rigorous disciplines, such as cold showers, fasting and abstinence on Wednesdays and Fridays, no social media, no sports on TV and alcohol, work out three times a week, and more. There are many good things about this exercise, in particular the weekly fraternity meetings, but it is very easy to fall into a discussion on the details of how we failed in this or that discipline during the week: “I was just too tired to work out this week”, or “I had a glass of wine”, or “I just couldn’t take cold showers this time around”, etc. This is not the good news, for we are talking about our failures. If anything, it was good news that the program ended on Easter Sunday. 

And this leads me to what the gospel really is, namely, Easter. The good news is the resurrection of Christ. Death has been defeated; for death had no power over him. So much of our sinful behavior throughout our lives is rooted in a deep but unconscious fear of death. The good news is that death no longer has the final word over your life and my life, and we know this because one Person has risen from the dead. His resurrection means that you too will rise to new and everlasting life. To live in him and to die in him is to live and die in the sure hope of resurrection. Furthermore, all those we loved in life and who have died, we will see and touch them again, for we will rise with a glorified body, not subject to sickness and death–and we won’t look like we do now, which is more good news to many of us.

I remember walking into my friend’s office and seeing a picture of a little girl, about 4 or 5 years of age. I asked my friend who that is. “That’s little Stephanie”, he said. One afternoon she choked on a sandwich and died. It was one of the saddest days of my friend’s priesthood, walking into the hospital and seeing her young mother and father standing there beside the hospital gurney with the lifeless body of their four-year-old girl lying on it. About 6 months later in the middle of a dark winter night, however, my friend had a powerful dream-vision of Stephanie, but not as a 4-year-old child, but a young adult woman in her 20s, surrounded by a bright white light, like nothing my friend had ever seen before. She said to him: “I can’t see my parents now, but I can come to you. Tell them not to worry, that I am happy.” My friend then reached out to her and suddenly found himself sitting up in bed, in the pitch black of night, about 3 am. What struck me, among other things, is that she did not appear as a child, but as a young adult. 

The gospel is a message of salvation. But more to the point, our resurrection to new life begins now, in this life. Salvation is ours today, it has been freely given, as sheer gift. And we are saved by faith, not by works. As St. Paul says: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph 2, 8-9). We did not nor can we save ourselves. Even our own cooperation with grace, our free decision to follow the lead and promptings of divine grace is itself a grace; for we were given the power to cooperate and to follow, so we cannot take any credit for where we are today. 

The good news is that our sins have been forgiven: “In him we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of transgressions, in accord with the riches of his grace that he lavished upon us” (Eph 1, 7-8). For example, there is nothing that the paralyzed man did to earn God’s forgiveness (Mk 2, 1-8). His friends who brought him to Jesus believed that Jesus could and would heal him. Nothing more is required. Christ’s healing of his paralysis is a resurrection. He can freely stand up. That’s what the forgiveness of our sins is, namely, our theosis. The problem, of course, is that we have a very hard time believing that and even receiving that forgiveness. Many of us still believe, deep down, that we have to do something to earn it in some way. But to think this way is to very subtly and perhaps unconsciously reject the gift of grace he offers us; so instead of “all glory and honor are yours”, some of us would rather a portion of that glory directed our way. But God loved us while we were sinners: “God proves His love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5, 8). 

The focus of our lives must not be on our sins, our failures, our shortcomings, but on the immeasurable and gratuitous nature of his love for each one of us. Only then can our life be a genuine response to that love, a joy, not a burden.  

Religion and Relationship

Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Lent

Deacon Douglas McManaman

That Jesus is speaking to a Samaritan woman is quite radical; for Jews had no dealings with Samaritans. Pious Jews were known to take long detours rather than walk through Samaria. It was unheard of for a Jewish man to speak with a woman in public, especially a Samaritan woman, and the disciples marveled (ethaumasan) that Jesus was speaking to her. Moreover, that Jesus was asking her for a drink was also quite radical–he was willing to use her vessel from which to drink, which would have rendered him ritually unclean. Also, he did not condemn her, knowing that she was married five times and was currently living with a man who was not her husband, but he chose to relate to her anyways, to communicate and actually drink from her container. As we can see, Jesus was not very orthodox by Jewish standards. Relationship is more important than law–i.e., the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mk 2, 27). 

But what’s particularly interesting about this conversation with the Samaritan woman is the change that took place in her during the course of it. She goes from calling Jesus “Sir”, to calling him a prophet, to becoming a witness to the Samaritan villagers that he is the Messiah, and finally, the townspeople go from believing in him on the basis of her testimony to believing in him through their own personal experience of Jesus, professing him as Saviour of the world (Sir, prophet, Messiah, Saviour of the World). And this was all due to Jesus’ decision to enter into relationship with this woman, to do something contrary to religious custom, to actually communicate with her as a human being with inherent dignity. And this was typical of Jesus—after all, he entrusted the good news of the resurrection to Mary Magdalene, chose her to be the first person sent to deliver the good news of the resurrection to the rest of the disciples. His was a very unique and revolutionary way of seeing women. Incidentally, the woman at the well is venerated as Saint Photina. She was martyred under Nero, and her name means enlightened one or “shining”, which calls attention to her missionary work, bringing the light of the Gospel to those in Smyrna and Carthage. In the Eastern rite, she is venerated with the rare title “Equal to the Apostles” (Isapostolos). 

But most importantly, this gospel shows clearly that true religion is not primarily about law; it is about relationship first and foremost. Both words (religion and relationship) are from the Latin religare, which means “to bind fast”. Jesus desires to enter into relationship with this woman, to give her the living water of his own divinity, but he asks that she give him the water of her humanity. That is the exchange he offers each one of us: “I will give you my divinity if you give me your humanity”, to be divinized, deified (theosis), filled with the life of grace, sharers in the divine life. 

For every desire we have in our lives is ultimately a desire for God. Nothing in this world can satisfy the human heart, which is restless and is always in search of rest. The problem is that the human heart’s thirst is infinite, and nothing in this contingent universe can bring it rest, nothing except God alone. St. Augustine said it on the first page of his Confessions: “O Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You”. God became flesh so that we could make our way back to God in the Person of Christ. He is the living water that alone brings rest to the human heart. For most people, it takes a lifetime to finally learn this. 

I mentioned in a previous reflection that a patient I was visiting in the hospital told me about a certain person who owns a 165-million-dollar estate; this patient was utterly dismayed that someone would spend so much on himself. Later in the day I decided to do a “fact check”, and indeed he does own a 165-million-dollar estate, but that’s not all; he has three other estates in Florida, all three totaling 230 million, another property in Hawaii at 78 million, another in Washington for 23 million, and some apartments in New York City totaling 80 million. It is a strange phenomenon that the more wealth we acquire, the greater our desire for more. One would think that greater wealth would be accompanied by a corresponding decrease in desire, that one is gradually reaching the point at which one no longer feels the need for more, but it seems the opposite happens; the more wealth we acquire, the desire for more continues to increase, as if we are becoming poorer. It’s as if the heart rebels against us by desiring more, as if to tell us that we’re on the wrong track. 

St. Augustine says later on in the Confessions: “O You Omnipotent Good, You care for every one of us as if you care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one!” (3.11.19). This life is about coming to know that love intimately, not just in our heads, but knowing it by experience.

There’s a wonderful story of a San Francisco physician who had a friend do some house sitting for him while he was away on vacation. When he returned, he found his friend sitting on the stairs, staring out into space. As he approached him to see if he was ok, his friend stood up, screaming, and he began hitting the doctor with a tennis racquet. The doctor lost consciousness, but when he came to, his friend had a dagger; he tried to fight him off, but he was overpowered. He then saw a hallway filled with light, and he said the love coming from this light was utterly overwhelming. He said it was so overwhelming that “this life must have something to do with learning to love like that”. But then he corrected himself: “Rather, this life must have something to do with learning to be loved like that, to allow yourself to be loved by this light”. He then adds that if anyone you know died in horrible circumstances like this, “if my experience is any indication, they did not die alone; they died in a sea of love around them”. 

Sin takes on a whole new meaning for us when we have personally experienced the love that God has for us. At that point, religion is no longer a matter of observing rules, and sin is no longer the violation of a law; rather, it is the rupture of a relationship. I remember the first change that took place in me when I returned to my faith as a teenager, after having had a very personal experience of God’s intervention in my life, was that I could no longer take the Lord’s name in vain, which was habitual for me at the time. I became aware that I had God’s undivided attention at every instant of the day; I was in relationship with a Person and my actions affected this Person. 

To get to that point, we have to pay attention to what God is doing in our lives, individually, in my life, your life, the particular ways that God is showing you that He loves you, that he is paying attention to you, giving you his undivided attention, to become more aware of the blessings he pours out upon us at every moment, that is, allow ourselves to be loved by him and allow that love to awaken us and bring us to life. Then we begin to taste a tiny portion of the joy of heaven, for that experience is very much like finding a great treasure in a field, and we will be ready and willing to give up everything in order to purchase that field so as to never lose that treasure.