Of the errors many people in this generation have embraced, one is the “error of self-identification.” This error asserts that one’s authentic identity results from choices one makes regarding a host of substantive personal matters—for example and among others, gender, sexuality, and nutritional preference. All people have to do is to make a choice and say, “I self-identify as ____” and that’s it.
This error expands an error of a previous generation—the error of “I’m okay, you’re okay, so can’t we just all get along okay”—which upheld the notion that we shouldn’t allow differences to lead to divisions among us. The error of self-identification not only disallows anyone to make judgments about the choices other people make but also asserts that anyone who disagrees with those choices is a bigot. And because there are so many folks who actually do disagree with those choices if only for the reason they’re contrary to Scripture and Church teaching, those who make those choices must be provided “safe spaces” where they won’t be judged and can feel comfortable.
“Sleepy” Catholics may not actively promote this particular error, but they do aid and abet it. Not wanting to be judgmental and potentially hurt the feelings of those who have embraced this error, “sleepy” Catholics fear evangelizing those folks by speaking and exploring with them God’s word as that’s revealed in Scripture and Church teaching. Why? “Sleepy” Catholics fear more hurting the feelings of those who are in error than they care about the state of their souls.
In short: “Sleepy” Catholics live more for this world than they do God’s Kingdom.
This past week, I read the story of a mother in England whose son made the decision during high school to become a female. Peer pressure and supportive teachers played their part, to be sure and the boy’s mother was surprised, if not astonished, by his choice. But rather than cause any animosity that might hurt her son’s feelings and cause any estrangement—the article didn’t mention anything about the father so it’s probable the parents are divorced—the boy’s mother decided to learn to live with his choice. A couple of years later, this mother’s daughter—the younger sister of her brother—announced that she was transitioning to self-identify as a male. Surprised by not as astonished by her daughter’s choice having been there and done that already, the mother observed: “Well, I decided, nothing’s really changed in my family. I still have a son and a daughter.”
For Catholics, this error is a heresy because it casts aside if not disregards the body and unique identity God chose for each human being when God created them individually in and from the beginning. Wandering away from the Source of their lives, Catholics who shape their lives according to this error aren’t aware that God is with them—“Emmanuel,” as we heard God promise on Christmas Eve. They’re also blind to what Pope Francis calls “our God of surprises.” In the end, the surprise for those Catholics who have embraced the error of self-identification will be that they will never lived the unique life for which God created each of them. Yes, they may have resided in a “safe space” where they’d be insulated and protected from anyone who would make judgments about the choices they’ve made. But they’ll never have journeyed to the “special place”—the Promised Land—where God tried to lead them. Either “sleepy” Catholics didn’t say anything or those folks refused to listen to the “WOKE” Catholics who spoke God’s word to them.
We heard about the “God of surprises” in today’s first reading which told us about Moses’ surprise at the sight of a burning bush that wasn’t immolated. The surprise so astonished Moses that he said to himself:
I must go over to look at this remarkable sight, and see why the bush isn’t burned.
Examining this inexplicable phenomenon, we were told, “this [holy place] is where God spoke to Moses.”
If that wasn’t surprising enough, God’s words to Moses were equally astonishing.
There were, first, the words of a promised special place:
I have come down to rescue [the Hebrew people] from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.
Those words were followed, second, by words commissioning Moses to go to the Hebrew people and tell them that God has sent Moses to them. Those words of mission were followed, third, by God’s self-identification when Moses asks who God is so he can to tell the Hebrew people who sent him:
Then [God] added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.
Now, that’s astonishing! God makes a promise and then commissions Moses to announce that promise to the Hebrew people. But, when they ask Moses “Who sent you?”, he’s supposed to say, “I am sent me to you.”
Catch the irony? “I am sent me.” That’s what’s called the “perpendicular personal pronoun.”
“Who?”, the Hebrew people were sure to ask again for clarification thinking they didn’t hear Moses correctly.
“I am,” an exasperated Moses would reply which, we knows, means “me.”
Imagine saying this:
I sent myself and speak God’s word to you.
While those words may be surprising, it’s the fulfillment of God’s promise to us on Christmas Eve: “…he shall be named ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’.”
One of the most astonishing ways that God is with us is found in the people God has commissioned to remind us that God is with us…as they evangelize by speaking God’s word to us.
I am sent me to you to speak these words. I sent myself and speak God’s word to you.
Yes, that is our Catholic faith: God has commissioned and sent each of us to evangelize one another…spouses, parents, children, relatives, friends, co-workers. Through our baptism and confirmation we’re to speak God’s word to one another. That is, to self-identify as God’s children and citizens of God’s Kingdom so that we might arrive at that “special place” called the “Promised Land.”
But the Hebrew people didn’t listen.
As St. Paul reminded the Corinthians—and us—in today’s epistle, the Hebrew people grumbled against Moses because, he said, they desired evil things, with most of them dying in the middle of the desert. “These things happened as examples for us…to serve as a warning to us,” St. Paul states, “so that we might not desire evil things, as they did.” Instead, St. Paul challenged the Corinthians—and challenges us today—to “take care not to fall.”
When you and I don’t listen to the “I am sent me’s” God sends to surprise us with His word, we will die and be left behind in the middle of the desert that today is called a “safe space” were people protect and insulate themselves from hearing God’s word proclaimed.
During this season of Lent, our purpose is to recall continuously each day that God is with us. This will help us to center our lives in God, not become or arise from being “sleepy” Catholics, and to fulfill the purpose for which God has created us in and from the beginning and sent us into this world: To speak God’s word to those to whom God has sent us.
“The God of surprises…” is the living God. This God dwells in us, moves our hearts, walks with us, and in the journey of our lives, this God surprises us, oftentimes astonishing us with inexplicable phenomena. It is God who possesses the creativity to regenerate this fallen world and each of us as well as the creativity to regenerate each and every one of us. This is the God of surprises.
“Sleepy” Catholics are so busy worried about being attached to this world by conforming themselves with its agenda, they ridicule “I am’s” voice when it speaks and some go so far as to reject its surprising source. Some “sleepy” Catholics are so busy self-identifying as one thing or another that they become enslaved to their personal agenda, never prepared to recognize and respond to God’s surprises. Thus, “sleepy” Catholics render themselves unavailable to hear God’s word commissioning them to be recreated and go forth to those who also have wandered away from God so they also might be open to God’s surprises.
To these folks, Jesus said:
Repent, says the Lord; the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
The kingdom is “at hand” when “WOKE” Catholics speak God’s word, just as Moses did to the Hebrew people in the desert in his day and Jesus did to the people in Jerusalem in his day.
“I tell you,” Jesus said, “if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”
“WOKE” Catholics strive to detach themselves from this world and its voices, seeking instead to live their days not as masters and mistresses of their schedules but as servants of God’s schedule as they seek to be open and responsive to God’s surprises. They don’t look at the time they’re given during the day as a personal possession but as a gift of God that’s to be used to fulfill the purpose and mission for which God has created them and placed them into the world. They use their time to offer others one of God’s surprises by saying “I am sent me.”
As “WOKE” Catholics speak God’s word, they announce the Truth of Christ, which allows doubts to recede, the light to break through clouds of darkness, for serenity to overpower fear, and to resolve difficulties and tribulations. When they speak God’s word, “WOKE” Catholics demonstrate their trust in God, knowing well that the life of faith is continuous journey of continuously being surprised, and making each day an opportunity to experience something new and unexpected that always leads to that special place, the land that God has prepared for us, just as God did for the Hebrew people. “Sleepy” Catholics seek instead a safe space where they can insulate themselves from God’s word.
This past week, for example, a Villanova graduate student approached and introduced herself to me as I was on my way to teach class. Knowing I was in a bit of a hurry, the student explained tha tshe had withdrawn from my class before the semester began because, as she had previously explained in an email she sent me, she had recently started a new job and was now the primary caregiver for her father, who was recently diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy which he wasn’t tolerating very well.
“Do you mind if I tell you something?”, she asked me.
“No, not at all,” I responded.
“When you emailed me back, you told me not to worry at all about withdrawing from the class. You said, ‘Faith comes first, family comes second, and everything else third. Get that right and everything will work out’.”
“You know what?,” she asked.
“No, what?”, I responded.
“No one has ever told me that. It turned my world upside down and I became very calm. All my worries and fears left me.”
I told her that I was surprised, astounded that no one has ever said that to her…and, quite likely, many like her as well.
She then said, “I’ve never felt anything like it in my life and I hope I never lose it. Faith first. Family second. Everything else will take care of itself. Thank you.”
And we parted our ways.
When we respond to God’s surprises, this is how people experience what the Psalmist wrote in today’s psalm response:
He pardons all your iniquities, heals all your ills; He redeems your life from destruction, and crowns you with kindness and compassion.
They meet and experience the living God who recreates them in that moment when God surprises them.
That represents our challenge from this week’s reading from scripture: Upon awaking each morning, conduct a memento mori by recalling, as we have throughout this Lenten season, the Christmas Eve promise, “Emmanuel,” that is, “God is with us.” Then remind yourself that God has sent you to speak God’s word to the people to whom God will be sending you during the day. While your schedule for the day may be set, your commitment as a “WOKE” Catholic is to recall that it’s unfolding isn’t determined by the times we’ve allotted to “do this”—everything that’s got to be done to survive in this world—but the time that’s required to “do this in memory of me” by being responsive to God’s surprises—everything that’s got to be done if we are to live in that special place where God is leading us.
In this way and when one of God’s surprises arises, recall our responsibility as that was stated by the gardener in today’s gospel:
Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, then you can cut it down.
That’s what God meant when he said to Moses and God continues to say to us:
Thus shall you say…The LORD, the God of your fathers—I am who am—has sent me to you. This is my name forever; thus am I to be remembered through all generations.
“Emmanuel”—“God is with us”—and works through as as we speak God’s word this week when God surprises us.
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