moralizing

An all inclusive covenant

Reflection for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Deacon Douglas McManaman

The readings for the 20th Sunday in Ordinary time are very interesting, for what they show is the development of the covenant to its final stage. The covenant began with the family of Abraham, and so we could say the covenant was initially a family covenant. It was then renewed in Genesis 35, through Jacob, and by this time the covenant had expanded to a tribal covenant, as it were. With Moses, the covenant is again renewed between God and Israel, who by this time had become a nation of twelve tribes (national covenant), and with king David, Israel becomes a single kingdom, exercising dominion over other nations. So the covenant grows and develops like a living organism. Can it develop further? The answer is yes. In Christ, the new covenant becomes an international covenant, one that expands beyond the limits of a nation to one that includes all nations without any subjugation, for Jesus commissioned the Apostles to go out to all nations and proclaim the prince of peace, the good news of salvation. This is an essentially different covenant, sealed not in the blood of goats, but in the blood of Christ. The end goal of this development is the salvation of all.

God has revealed himself as absolute mercy, but most importantly as all inclusive mercy, extending to all nations: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mk 16, 15). That is what the word ‘Catholic’ means (from the Greek kataholos, or on the whole, or universal). In the first reading from Isaiah, the prophet foretells the coming of this new covenant. We read: “The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord,… them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer;… for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (56, 6-7). The joy of this house of prayer is the clue that we are talking about the good news, the gospel; for the good news is not a collection of “Thou shalt nots”; rather, the good news is that Christ is risen, that he conquered death, that our sins have been forgiven, our debt has been cancelled, not by virtue of anything we did, but as pure gift. That’s the source of our joy, not our own moral perfection. This brings us to the second reading; for none of us can speak of our own moral perfection. As St. Paul says: “For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all” (Rm 11, 32). 

The implications here are far reaching. God delivered all to disobedience. All of us are sinners. None of us can stand secure before God: “…whoever thinks he stands firm should beware lest he fall” (1 Co 10, 12). But there is a purpose to this decision to deliver all of us over to disobedience, and the purpose is that the Lord will have mercy on all so that we might know that mercy from within. In other words, God’s purpose is not to shame us, but to pour out his mercy and fill us with his life. God permits sin not to convince us of our sinfulness and imperfection, but to convince us of his incomprehensible mercy. That’s the good news. My friend once preached: “God can control his anger, but he cannot control his mercy”. That’s the news that alone brings joy. 

The good news is thus incompatible with the sanctimonious posture of one who wears a perpetually long face, or the finger wagging cleric who confuses moralizing with evangelization. Moreover, there are a number of people in our congregations who would very much like whoever is preaching, i.e., bishop, priest, or deacon, to be a conduit of their own anger, to preach homilies that shame and emphasize sin, or barring that, liturgical trivialities. There are some who delight more in the prospect of divine justice than in news of the divine mercy; for an excessively merciful God seems to imply a free pass to outsiders–while we insiders practiced mortification and reformed our lives. 

But Jesus addressed this attitude in the New Testament, both in the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Mt 20, 1-16), but especially in the parable of the prodigal son, for those of us who identify with the older son who refused to celebrate the return of his brother–I get nothing for my “righteousness” while he gets a feast after wasting his inheritance on a life of debauchery. What we fail to understand in our resentment is that we are where we are not by virtue of anything we have done, but by the sheer mercy of God. In short, we tend to fall into Semi-Pelagianism without realizing it.[1] 

Hence, “Us vs. Them” dualisms have no place in the new covenant, for divine grace is operative in the world, outside the visible boundaries of the Church. The Second Vatican Council was very clear on this. The Council Fathers rejected a rigid fortress mentality that saw the secular world as devoid of grace, a worldview that was par for the course in the Pre-Vatican period. On the contrary, by virtue of the Incarnation, grace touches all human beings, cultures, and situations, invisibly drawing everyone towards salvation and truth. Gaudium et Spes taught that grace works invisibly in the hearts of all people of good will and is thus active in other religions and cultures. Any truth, goodness and beauty found in secular culture and non-Christian religions acts as a preparation for the gospel, disposing a person towards the good news of the gospel; for error cannot achieve that, only grace can dispose us to further graces–and anyone the least bit familiar with the writings of the Sufis, Sikhs, Hinduism or Zen Buddhism, to name only a few, knows that they are jam packed with profound wisdom, insight, and inspiration (it is in this light that Richard Bergeron’s Hors de l’Église, plein de salut can best be understood). Even the atheist who sincerely seeks the truth and follows his/her conscience is actually moved by grace and can attain eternal salvation by that very fact. [2] As Cardinal Newman pointed out, the voice of conscience is the voice of God within the deepest recesses of the soul; for conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ. For an atheist to revere the voice of his conscience is for him to respond reverently to the aboriginal vicar of Christ. 

Belonging to Christ is not a matter of holding to certain propositions; rather, it is a matter of responding to divine grace, and our response to grace is implicit and unconscious before it is explicit (Ann Ulanov). Although your response and my response to grace is explicit, not everyone’s response makes it to that level. In other words, some people love Christ without even knowing it. We know this is true because if, as St. Paul said, it is no longer you who live but Christ who lives in you, then it follows that if the atheist or the non-Christian loves you and loves what you stand for, that is, your commitment to truth, goodness, justice and the well-being of all, then they love Christ without explicitly knowing it. 

Notes

  1. Semi-Pelagianism is a 5th century heresy that basically taught that although God’s grace is necessary for salvation, the first step towards faith is taken by us, without the aid of divine grace. So yes, argues the Semi-Pelagian, I am in a state of grace by virtue of God’s free gift of grace, but I took the first step, and grace was rewarded to me for doing so. Hence, I get some credit for where I am. The Church rejects this outright, much to the chagrin of most Catholics upon discovering this for the first time. The faith of the Church is that I get no credit at all, that all credit and all glory belong to God. Indeed, I cooperated with divine grace, but my cooperation with divine grace was itself a grace. And so there is no part of divine grace that I have earned in any way. In the Person of Christ, the justice of God has been revealed precisely as divine mercy. I am justified, made just, not by my own religiosity and piety, but by grace, so that no one may boast, as St. Paul says. 
  2. “Nor is God far distant from those who in shadows and images seek the unknown God, for it is He who gives to all men life and breath and all things, and as Saviour wills that all men be saved. Those also can attain to salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, yet sincerely seek God and moved by grace strive by their deeds to do His will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does Divine Providence deny the helps necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God and with His grace strive to live a good life. Whatever good or truth is found amongst them is looked upon by the Church as a preparation for the Gospel” (LG, 16).

 

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.