love

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.  

Fire and Rain

https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_443fireandrain.html

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

These are wonderful readings and there is so much to cover, but no time to do so. If this were a Pentecostal or Baptist Church, maybe–they tend to preach for 40 minutes. Something tells me you wouldn’t appreciate that. But the readings this Sunday emphasize the importance of keeping the commandments. In the first reading, we read: “If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and they will save you. If you trust in God, you too shall live. The Lord has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose”. 

Now, as St. Paul says, the law does not save (Rm 8, 3). We are not saved by the works of the law, but by faith (see Eph 2, 8), but these verses seem to suggest otherwise–that we are saved by our works. Both are right. If you have a living faith, which according to St. Augustine is fides cum dilectionem (faith that works through love), your life will bear fruit in charity: love of God and love of neighbour. If I love God, I will love what God loves, and God loves each one of us as if there is only one of us, as if you are the only being in existence to love. As St. Augustine says in his Confessions: “O thou Omnipotent Good, thou carest for every one of us as if thou didst care for him only, and so for all as if they were but one!” (3.11.19). And the commandments are nothing but the concrete implications of the love of God and the love of neighbor. The first three commandments have to do with God, the last seven have to do with our neighbor. This means that God is first. Do not worship any gods but the Lord your God; to worship is to make the center of your life. The most beloved gods today are money, security, my own comfort, pleasure, sex, popularity and power. These gods must be placed on the backburner, and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who revealed himself in the Person of Christ, must take their place.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat [or drink], or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? …So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’…Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom [of God] and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides (Mt 6, 25-34).

There it is. Put God first, and all other things will be provided. Seek first his righteousness, his justice, that is, his will. That’s it. Why is there so much evil, so much suffering and darkness in the world? Because people do not put God first, they worry too much about themselves, and so they end up putting themselves first, and others second. When that happens, our life slowly begins to fall apart. 

We’ve heard the old expression: ‘You are what you eat’. No, rather, you are what you love. In other words, you are what you worship. You are exactly what you have made the center of your existence. The more God becomes the center of your existence, the more God radiates through your life, and the more the self decreases in importance in your own eyes. You and I begin to love what God loves, and the less there is of you, and the more God occupies that place once occupied by you, the more you will live in his joy, because God is joy itself. 

As was mentioned, if I love God, I will love what he loves. What does He love? He loves every human person that he has created, brought into this world, and redeemed by the death and resurrection of his Son. He loves them so much that he identifies with each one of them, especially the least of them, the most destitute, so much so that what we do to them, we do to him. If God loves each one of us as if there is only one of us to love, then we must learn to love each person as if that person is the only person to love. 

Our culture does not understand this. Speaking generally, we value people on the basis of their quality of life, and when we value something according to its quality, we value it according to its usefulness. A television of low quality will cost less, for it is less useful. Once it no longer functions properly, it is of no value, to be tossed out and replaced by a newer and more useful model. That’s how we as a culture have begun to treat human beings. Many in the medical profession have adopted this mentality, which is the opposite of a “sanctity of life” mentality that regards human life as sacred, of immeasurable value, created by God. 

We know from Scripture that your life is the breath of God. In the second chapter of Genesis, we read that “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”. Your life is holy, because it (the soul) comes directly from God, brought into being by a unique and singular act of creation by God. Your value does not decrease as you get older, more frail, less able to do the things you used to do. Your value does not decrease if you were to lose your ability to walk and communicate intelligently with others. Every week as part of my ministry I visit a person with Alzheimer’s who used to be an Emergency room doctor just two floors below in the same hospital where he is now. His life is just as immeasurable in value as it was when he was a practicing physician taking care of patients. Of course, many people today do not see that nor agree with that, but believe that at this point, medical personnel should be available to put an end to his life and others like him, with proper consent.

If we don’t begin looking at human beings from God’s point of view, as people created in the image and likeness of God and redeemed by the death and resurrection of Christ, then we will inevitably look upon human beings with that quality of life mentality that believes that as the quality of life lessens, the value of the person lessons. Then we begin to see them as useless eaters. When we see people like that as useless eaters, we no longer look upon them through the eyes of love. We no longer love them for their sake, but for the sake of what they do for us as a society. Are they productive? Do they contribute in any way?

They are not productive in the way we typically employ that word, but what these people do, whether we are talking about Alzheimer’s patients, or Down Syndrome children, developmentally disabled people, etc., is they provide us with the opportunity to love them for their own sake, to learn to love human beings for their sake alone, not for the sake of what they can do for me or for society at large. We never really love another person unless we love them for their sake, not for the sake of what they do for us. I love food primarily for what food does for me–it tastes good, and it is good for my health. But I don’t really love food. As St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out, we don’t destroy what we love, but we destroy food when we eat it. When I say I love food, what I mean is I love myself, I love it for what it does for me. 

When we love human beings for what they do for us, we love ourselves primarily. If we love human beings whose spirit is the breath of God, then we won’t destroy them. We won’t be able to destroy them, kill them, give them a lethal injection to put them out of their misery. We can certainly administer medications that treat pain even if our pain management has the effect of shortening their lives, but we don’t eliminate pain by eliminating the patient. Willingly destroying a human life is contrary to love, even if it is in accordance with a person’s will. If someone who was severely depressed asked me to take this gun or that needle and put them out of their misery by killing them, they are asking me to do something incompatible with love. It might feel like love, but we don’t destroy what we love. God alone is the Lord of human life, and he commands us not to kill. He does, however, allow us to reject his will, but he warns us that doing so has repercussions: “I put before you fire and water. Stretch out your hand for whichever you choose”. If we stretch out our hand to the fire, it will burn and destroy us. Water, on the other hand, is life giving. We are what we love. If we choose death, we die. But if we choose life, we live.

Poor in Spirit and Pure in Heart

Poor in Spirit @Lifeissues.net

Deacon Douglas McManaman

As we all know, Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Mk 12, 31). That’s not easy to do, because we tend to love ourselves a great deal more than our neighbor. In fact, if we require some visible evidence of the extent of our self-love, just take a look at the property values of the homes of some of the richest celebrities. I know of one, whom I won’t mention by name, who has a 165-million-dollar estate. But that’s not all. He also has three others in Florida, all three totaling 230 million. He has another property in Hawaii at 78 million, another in Washington for 23 million, and a collection of apartments in New York City for 80 million. That’s a total of 576 million in total properties. 

Now, I’m not about to whine about people having more than they need or the sin of greed, etc., and I don’t mean to suggest that this person neglects giving to charity. My point is that we can see that loving another person, as we love ourselves, is rather difficult, because the ratio between our self-love and our love of neighbor is far greater than we realize. The wealth that I call attention to is merely a visible image of what happens when all the conditions are in place that permit a person to provide himself with everything that corresponds to the degree of that self-love. Is it possible that my real estate portfolio could look something like that, if billions of dollars were to suddenly fall on my lap? Of course it is possible, but I hope not, and if not, it will only be by the grace of God. But whenever we see this kind of luxury, it is really a manifestation of what happens when all the conditions are in place that permit a person to look after himself in a way that measures up to the degree of his own self-love. We want the best for ourselves and we probably don’t realize just how great that love is because of our circumstances. These celebrities help us get a glimpse of it. 

And it is a strange phenomenon that the more wealth a person acquires, the greater is his 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 wealth–after all, I have everything I need and more. But it seems the opposite happens; the more wealth is acquired, the desire for more continues to increase. 

The first beatitude in today’s gospel is the most fundamental: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; the kingdom of heaven is theirs”. Those who are poor know it. They feel their poverty, their lack of life’s basic necessities; they struggle to make ends meet. Those who are poor in spirit, however, are poor not necessarily in material things, but “in spirit”, and they too know it, they are aware of their spiritual destitution, that is, aware of their utter need for God. The poor in spirit know that independence and control are basically illusions. We are, all of us, one freak accident away from ending up in a hospital bed, dependent upon the care of others, or worse, on the streets with a serious mental incapacity to take care of ourselves. 

A person poor in spirit is open to God, desires God, will go in search of God–and of course, anyone who seeks God finds him. In fact, anyone who is actively seeking God has already been found by God. The difficulty is getting to that place where one actually begins to feel one’s own radical need for God. That is much rarer than we tend to think. Most of us, it seems, have to “hit rock bottom” before it begins to dawn on us that we really do need God. I believe this is one reason God allows suffering in our lives.

And so, poverty of spirit, the experience of a deep interior need for God, is really the greatest gift that a person can receive, for it is in fact the gift of faith, because faith begins with precisely that openness to God and readiness to surrender to him. And the blessing that goes with poverty of spirit is the kingdom of God, which Jesus compares to a treasure hidden in a field that someone finds and who goes off and sells everything he owns in order to buy that field. In other words, having the kingdom of God, living within it, having Christ reign over one’s life, is far more valuable than a collection of properties that add up to about 600 million dollars. To have found that interior treasure is to have become aware of that, which is the fruit of true poverty of spirit. 

The ones whom I have met in my life as a Deacon who are truly poor in spirit have been those who suffer from mental illness, in particular clinical depression. In my experience, these have had the deepest sense of their utter need for God. It was precisely the experience of their darkness that made them call out to God. It seems counterintuitive to imply that clinical depression can be one of God’s greatest gifts, but there is some truth to this. Friendships are typically based on common qualities and interests, which is why mental sufferers really do have something in common with Christ, namely, their life of suffering, a life that amounts to accompanying Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, keeping him company in the mental anguish he experienced on Holy Thursday night. That vocation imparts a much greater dignity and identity than does owning a multi-million-dollar estate and a private jet. As they say, we bring none of our wealth with us to the grave, only what we have in our souls, that is, our spiritual and moral identity. And the more like Christ that identity is, the more beautiful it is, and that is a beauty we will possess for eternity. 

The other beatitude that I would like to address is purity of heart, because according to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, that is the very purpose of the spiritual life. The pure in heart shall see God. “Pure” (katharoi) means clean or unmixed (as in pure maple syrup, which is unmixed with any artificial additives). A pure heart is one that loves God with an undivided love, a love not mixed with a competing love of self. 

Purity in heart involves a loss of a sense of “I”. In many ways, it is a return to the innocence of childhood, the innocence of the first parents in the Garden. When we compare ourselves to others, perhaps feeling a kind of satisfaction in knowing we are better than another in some way, there is a definite felt sense of “I”. But consider the times when you are watching a great film; you lose all sense of a “self” watching the movie. It’s as if you and the movie are one. That’s the place we need to get to in the spiritual life, if we are to be pure in heart. At that point, everything is seen in God and God is seen in everything; everything is loved in God, and God is loved in everything, and that sense of “I” disappears, at least for the most part.

The only regret we will have at the end of our lives is that we did not achieve this level of purity. In other words, we loved ourselves too much and did not love others enough. The real joy in human existence, however, is loving others as another self. St. Teresa of Calcutta often employed the expression “the joy of loving”. Think of the self as a kind of prison cell. The more we love others as we love ourselves, the more we go outside of ourselves, outside of the prison walls. That’s true freedom, and the result is that we bring so much more light and life to others who are living in darkness. 

Cloud of Witnesses

Homily for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deacon Doug McManaman

There is a line in the 2nd reading from Hebrews that struck me, and it is the following: “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely…” (Heb 12, 1-4). This notion that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses is so important. The expression refers to the faithful individuals from the past, including of course those saints who have been canonized.

When I was a full-time teacher, I used to visit my best friend Father Don Sanvido of the Hamilton Diocese a couple of times every semester, to give him a break from preaching, etc. I am an early riser, and this one morning I got up just before 5 am, went to the living room of the rectory, and said my breviary. When I finished, I looked up and noticed, on a large bookshelf, Butler’s four volume Lives of the Saints. I went up to the books, closed my eyes, randomly selected a volume, opened the book and placed my finger on a randomly selected page. Wherever my finger landed, I would read the life of that saint. I landed on some 3rd century saint I’ve never heard of before. After reading about her life, less than a page of that volume, I felt tremendous inspiration. I felt awakened. So I did it once more, this time choosing a different volume, landing on a 6th century male saint. His life and character was totally different from the first woman I’d read about, but I felt inspired once again, like I had just drank a large glass of orange juice. The feeling was actually in my body.  

And this is the lie we’ve been fed for years in the world of entertainment: goodness is boring; evil is interesting. But it’s really the other way around; goodness is profoundly interesting and inspiring, while evil is nothing but an empty promise. Goodness inspires and fills, but people tend to believe the opposite. My first 10 years of teaching were in a very poor and broken neighbourhood of Toronto, but every year our students would raise over 60 thousand food items for the Food Bank at Christmas, more than any other institution in the city. At first, we’d notify the media, the local newspapers, but no one was interested. However, let there be a non-fatal stabbing in the school Cafeteria and it’s on every local news channel by 6 o’clock in the evening. 

The lives and stories of the faithful are far more interesting. Think of a typical coffee shop, a Tim Horton’s for example. Practically everyone there is a non entity to you, and you are a non entity to them. But if any one of us were to sit down at a table where some old man is having his coffee and were to ask him to spend the next hour or so telling us about himself, his life history, etc., a whole world would open up before us and his life would acquire color and significance, and we’d never see him the same way again. Consider the number of tombstones in a typical cemetery. Each one represents a massive biography that would easily exceed two thousand pages. I am convinced that in our first few thousand years in heaven, we’re going to be reading biographies–without the actual books, that is, we will be coming to know the deepest meaning of every human person in the kingdom of God. The life of each person is a unique instance and expression of the workings of divine providence. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, and we hope one day to be part of that communion of saints. 

But that is a frightening thought, in many ways. I think of the third volume of the Lord of the Rings, the scene in which Gandalf comes before Theoden, King of Rohan, who is under a spell that was cast by the diabolical character, Wormtongue. Gandalf is trying to get through to the King that he needs to call his people to take up arms and join in the resistance against Saruman’s forces. The king, however, is just not awake to the danger that is approaching, but Gandalf finally breaks the spell and Theoden suddenly realizes what he has to do and gathers his men for battle. Eowen, the king’s daughter, arms herself for battle because she too is determined to fight the evil that threatens. Theoden is finally struck down in the battle of Pelennor, and as she kneels down beside her dying father, he says the following: “My body is broken. I go to my fathers. And even in their mighty company I shall not now be ashamed”. 

That is a tremendous line: “I shall not now be ashamed”. In other words, I would have been ashamed having died refusing to enter into battle and suffer for the sake of my people, but not now. We are destined to join our fathers and mothers, and the question I have often asked myself over the years is whether or not I will feel ashamed in their mighty company. Think of the courageous lives of our great saints, like St. Patrick, who in the 4th century was captured by Irish marauders and was a slave for 6 years in a region of Northern Ireland. He finally escaped and walked more than 200 miles to board a ship back to Britain. Years later, as a result of a dream he had in which the Irish were calling him to return, he actually returns as a missionary, surrounded by danger and living in hardship. Or consider the life of St. John de Brebeuf among the Hurons, in 17th century Canada, in the brutal Canadian winters, without heated vehicles, traveling in the freezing temperatures, long trips by canoe and portages over land, carrying canoes and supplies around rapids and waterfalls, living on corn mush for weeks on end. Or St. Isaac Jogues who was tortured, his hands mutilated, and yet after going back to France actually returned to the missions and ended his life as a martyr. Or St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast we just celebrated, who took the place of a polish sergeant chosen to die by starvation in a Nazi concentration camp in retaliation for an escaped prisoner. It took Maximillian two weeks to die of starvation. Or St. Thomas More who refused to take the oath of Parliament and was confined to the Tower of London for more than a year before being found guilty of treason. All he had to do was take a simple oath, and he would have been restored to his former position with all the perks of high office, an estate in Chelsea, a life of ease and prestige. Instead, he chose not to violate his conscience, and he had his head cut off for it–he was originally scheduled to be hung, drawn and quartered, but at the last minute the king had mercy and commuted the sentence to beheading. And then you have great saints in our day like Mother Theresa who left the comforts of the Loretto Convent to live on the streets of Calcutta. 

These are the kinds of people we are going to be in the presence of in the kingdom of God. That could turn out to be a rather uncomfortable experience, at least initially. Their lives were on fire with the fire that Jesus spoke of in Luke: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12, 49). God is a consuming fire and their lives were burning with it. 

And that’s what the spiritual life is about, becoming more and more disposed to be lit by the fire of the divine love for the human beings that Christ came to die for. In the end, that is the only real joy in life, the joy of loving others, as Mother Teresa worded it.  As St. John of the Cross wrote: “In the evening of this life, we will be judged on love alone”. Nothing else; not our accomplishments or awards, not our social status, not even the office we might have held in the Church. Only on love, that is, on how large the fire is that burns within us.