As the close of the 2022 Liturgical Year (the “Year of Grace 2022”) draws nigh on, it’s good to take a bit of time to reflect upon this past year’s theme—the promise of Christmas Eve, “They shall name him ‘Emmanuel,’ which means ‘God is with us’.” The purpose for these reflections is to reconsider what’s been identified each Sunday during this past year as differentiating “sleepy” Catholics from “WOKE” Catholics. The goal is to judge the degree to which we’ve awakened from our slumber and risen from our sleep for the new day that was dawning for those who live in the knowledge that “God is with us.”
Recall tri-fold the purpose of religion: To govern, nurture, and teach. Examining this tri-fold purpose, the Church hasn’t failed us this past year. The truth be told, most of us have failed our religion, living our Catholic faith more like “sleepy” Catholics than “WOKE” Catholics:
- Some of us may have attempted here and there—this week or that week when perhaps we were motivated by a particular memento mori—to live our faith better. But those efforts waned and evaporated into the ether…we awakened but immediately turned over, buried our head in the pillows, and went straight back to sleep.
- Others of us may have tried mightily and were successful on Mondays. But, by Wednesday or Friday and Saturday to be sure, those efforts waned and they also evaporated into the ether…we awakened and arose but also went straight back to sleep.
- Still others of us may have done pretty well for a couple of weeks. But, as the trials and tribulations of daily life got into the way and gummed things up, those very valiant efforts waned and evaporated into the ether. We awoke and rose…but ultimately, we really didn’t live each day better in the knowledge that “God is with us.”
Is the conclusion we’re to derive from these data that most of us are too lazy or doomed to be “sleepy” Catholics? Are we utterly incapable of fulfilling the tri-fold purpose of religion by becoming “WOKE” Catholics?
The answer to that question, of course, is a definitive “No.” That is, unless we intentionally choose to give up the battle against evil by choosing each day to remain “sleepy.” Not engaging in the challenging, if not arduous struggle to live out our Catholic faith in a secular, materialist, and consumer culture, evil once again seems to have had the upper hand this past Liturgical Year.
Rather than judge and harshly condemn ourselves for this failure, the real battle against evil never lies in the past and living in it—that’s a failure “sinners” commit. The real battle is in the present and living in it—where we can choose to turn away from the past and struggle to become a “saint” in the present. Yes, all of us have a past that’s riddled with sin and that’s the common lot of humanity. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we can’t awake from our slumber and arise from our sleep by getting up from that Procustean bed, cleaning ourselves up and, with renewed purpose, giving it our best shot each new day.
That kind of persistence—as last week’s scripture readings reminded us about prayer—is what differentiates “sleepy” from “WOKE” Catholics. Yes, they regret those sins whether through omission or commission. But they don’t live in the past; instead, they are able to joke and laugh about themselves and those bad and sometimes very bad choices. “WOKE” Catholics seize the present moment and entrust the future to God.
Over the centuries, theologians have advanced many theoretical explanations concerning the tendency of all human beings to fall short of the mark when it comes to living out the faith—except, of course, for the Blessed Virgin Mary and her son “Emmanuel.” The most durable explanation, the one carrying the most currency historically, is the Church’s doctrine of “Original Sin.” That is, each of us has inherited from our primogenitors the tendency to choose to love ourselves more than we love either God or neighbor.
Yes, it’s true: We may profess to love God and neighbor—as “sleepy” Catholics do—but that most oftentimes means “only after I take care of #1.” Then, as that approach to daily life persists and we fail to persist in prayer, we push God and neighbor further and further out into the peripheries of each day. The problem is that both should be placed smack dab in the center of each day, just as each of us places ourselves smack dab in the center of each day. Those who have children and pets understand this well—from the rising of the sun to its setting, they want your full attention!
Given our imperfect nature and the fact that each of us has sinned—the only difference being a matter of degree—how can any of us justify ourselves before God? That is, aware that we’ve failed time and again to love God and neighbor as we love ourselves, how can we get back to the state where we live in the realization “God is with us” regardless of those sins and recommit ourselves to make the journey each day along the pathway of a “WOKE” Catholic faith to eternal life in God by loving God and neighbor as we love ourselves?
In today’s gospel, Jesus offers Pharisees a remedy: Humility.
This remedy isn’t for the faint of heart because it’s castor oil for the soul and tastes horrible—sort of like eating calves’ liver or chewing dirt. But humility is what heals the wound of pride that is the source of and fuels the self-righteousness through which we make ourselves the sole proprietors of each day and exclude God and neighbor from it.
As “castor oil” for the soul, humility vanquishes pride but not by as we assert our lowliness or degrade ourselves in the presence of others. That’s dangerous—potentially signaling timidity, laziness, low self-esteem, or perhaps even hypocrisy—as we avoid performing the challenging and difficult work that’s required to achieve our God-given potential by denying that we’re capable of it. Excuses in the form of how unfortunate we are then punctuate our days, the focus being exclusively upon ourselves…which is nothing but a form of pride…as is the attempt to achieve self-perfection which oftentimes ends in pride, leaving the proud extremely sensitive to criticism, prone to discouragement, and easily wounded.
Humble people choose to live in reality, not comparing themselves to others but assessing themselves as they are in the light of truth. Neither do humble people seek to be like others, do what they expect, or view them as a threat but work with what God has entrusted to them and make the best of that. Nor do humble people need to feel better than others and debate who’s better or worse off but appreciate others for possessing what they don’t and never will. Possessing a broad, profound, and realistic perspective about themselves, humble people live in peace with themselves as well as their place in the world knowing they’re imperfect creatures who God loves.
Being humble is living in the truth—accepting that we’re imperfect and acknowledging our difficulties, shortcomings, and limits. It’s being “authentic” and its practice is done in silence—not promoting ourselves or seeking to stand out, receive publicity or adulation from the crowd. In short, humility is observed not announced and is best characterized in the way we accept and value ourselves, imperfect as we are and able to rejoice in the good of other people and their greatness. Freed of pride, we’re humble when we don’t seek praise, recognition, or applause for our virtuous way of life because we know the reward for virtue is virtue itself.
The Fathers of the Church taught that humility means realizing and patterning our lives with God at the center, aware that the world doesn’t revolve around us.
For his part, St. John Chrysostom described humility as “the mother of all virtues,” providing their foundation and root. The other virtues can be forged, he wrote, only if people first recognize and accept the areas where they are weak, need to grow, and seek redemption. He added that humble people seek to perfect themselves—to overcome their defects willingly—but living in truth, realize they achieve their goal—holiness of life—only with the assistance of God’s grace.
For this reason, humble people aren’t afraid of identifying their failures because this knowledge assists them to grow and mature spiritually and morally. This “valiant self-knowledge,” as St. Augustine called it, makes people more human—more aware of their smallness and limitations—and, thus, free of pretension. “All humility consists in knowing yourself,” the Doctor of Grace wrote.
More recently, G.K. Chesterton offered that humor is the natural foundation and expression of humility. How so? Those who can laugh at themselves aren’t ensnared by the vice of pride but are confident and courageous because their happiness doesn’t depend upon others’ opinions.
In sum, humility serves to remind “WOKE” Catholics to root daily life in love of God and neighbor as they love themselves which presumes that they first love themselves—hence, “love God and neighbor as you love yourself”!
At the same time, the humility of “WOKE” Catholics impacts others with whom they come into contact during each day. There’s a certain comfortability they exude allowing others to feel less defensive and more open about themselves, especially their moral and spiritual needs. Not imposing their opinion or needing to be correct upon others, “WOKE” Catholics are empathetic, willingly listening to others with an open heart and compassionate with other’s failures and sins. As St. Pope Pius X noted:
Like Jesus, the meek and humble of heart are kind to sinners and those who have gone astray even though they don’t respect their false ideas.
Moreover, “WOKE” Catholics scandalize others because when they realize they’re wrong or need help, they ask forgiveness and acknowledge their mistakes. The proud could never do that! Living in the light of truth, “WOKE” Catholics don’t waste their time and energy protecting a false image of themselves. Again, the proud could never do that! Instead, their freedom, gratitude, and maturity cause others around them to rethink the false images they project.
With this understanding of the natural virtue of humility, consider anew the parable of the Pharisee and tax collector in today’s gospel, likening the former to a “sleepy” Catholic living a delusional life of faith. This person follows all the rules and complies with the minimum required by every obligation. On the outside, this person appears to be a very “WOKE” Catholic and maybe to many others, a “pillar of the parish.” Yet, on the inside, what moves this person’s heart isn’t faith but self-righteousness. “Compared to all those other Catholics, look at me!” this person thinks. “I’m not perfect, that’s true. But what’s fact is that I’m so much better than all of them are.”
The Pharisee can also be likened to a “sleepy” Catholic who may not practice the faith as this individual knows he or she should. But in comparison to all those other “sleepy” Catholic who are lax about the practice of their faith to the point they are “Catholics In Name Only,” there’s absolutely no comparison! “I’m surely much better off in God’s estimation than that person!”, this sleepy Catholic asserts.
Comparing ourselves to others for the purpose of making ourselves look better reveals a malignant state of soul, one that has not yet responded to the tri-fold purpose of religion and, hence, doesn’t experience “God is with us.” When it comes to living our Catholic faith, the issue isn’t first about the law but the heart—whether we’ve loved God and neighbor as we loved ourselves. Notice how the focus isn’t love of self but whether we’ve loved God and neighbor with the same amount of love as we have for ourselves. For us, the problem isn’t denying original sin—it’s indelibly written into our genetic code and we’re incapable of expunging it—or the fact that we’ve all sinned. The problem also isn’t living the faith in the way we know we should live it but our lack of resolve to demonstrate a “WOKE” faith by recommitting ourselves each day to love God and neighbor as we love ourselves.
At the root of this lack of resolve is pride—the antithesis of humility—which fuels self-righteousness. “Sleepy” Catholics point to the failures of others to live their faith as they know they should and harshly judge their moral and spiritual shortcomings and failures. Then, by comparing themselves to those “sinners,” “sleepy” Catholics whose self-righteousness allows them the license to make those judgments dupe themselves into believing they’re so much better than those “sleepy” Catholics. That’s the evidence which condemns those Catholics, in much the way the Pharisee condemned himself by justifying himself before God and neighbor in the synagogue.
Consider anew Jesus’ teaching concerning the Pharisee’s judgment of the tax collector in today’s gospel:
For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
Pretending to be someone we’re not evidences the moral and spiritual malignancy resulting when don’t allow the tri-fold purpose of religion to move our hearts to experience “God is with us.” That’s how we end up loving ourselves more than we love God and neighbor.
Given our propensity to do this, who of us can justify ourselves before God?
The answer, of course, is “Not one of us.”
Jesus taught us that humility is the antidote, “castor oil for the soul.” It requires not just that we be sincere in admitting our failure to love God and neighbor as we love ourselves. Humility also requires a conversion of heart that evidences itself when we no longer promote ourselves to others and the world as if we’re so much better than them. That includes the most lowly among us as well as those we’ve rejected by pushing them to the peripheries of our lives.
Absent conversion, sincerity is nothing but a form of pride.
- We see a lot of that today in so-called “Pride Marches” which promote lifestyles that aren’t rooted in love of God and neighbor but in self-righteousness and indignation.
- We see a lot of that today in the so-called “Women’s Rights” movement which promotes a vision of the female gender that isn’t rooted in love of God and neighbor but in the license to do with one’s body as one chooses irrespective of the other human beings involved.
- We see a lot of that today in the so-called “WOKE” movement, especially on the nation’s college campuses, which isn’t rooted in love of God and neighbor. No, it glorifies the present, trashes the past, and in the name of being inclusive excludes anyone who has the temerity to challenge, contradict, or resist the ideology.
What unites all three forms of pride is the sincere self-righteous judgments about others “not measuring up.” Yes, indeed! Without humility, sincerity is a form of pride.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI reminded Catholics—called them to awake from their slumber and arise from their sleep—that love of God and neighbor require refusing to accept this situation and to do something about it. We’re not to moralize but to love in truth. The Pope Emeritus wrote:
If we let ourselves be caught up in these discussions, then the Church becomes fixed on just a small number of rules or prohibitions. We stand there like moralists with a few old-fashioned views, and the real greatness of the faith does not appear at all.
That represents this week’s challenge from scripture: To root each day in humility.
This week, each of us can grow in humility by conducting a simple memento mori: When you find yourself thinking something negative about another person, stop yourself dead in your tracks and pray “Heavenly Father, send your blessing upon N. that N. will reveal today the divine image and likeness You breathed into N. Assist me to see and affirm that in N.”
As humility roots us in truth, the words of Sirach will be fulfilled:
The one who serves God willingly is heard; his petition reaches the heavens.
While this prayer may not eradicate the roots of pride in us this week, it will begin pruning its branches back before its buds blossom into pride. Over the course of this week this simple but powerful prayer will begin to re-center each of us in loving God and neighbor as we love ourselves by “doing this, in memory of me.”
In this way, we will develop persistence not only in prayer but become more humble “WOKE” Catholics whose living faith—days lived in the abiding awareness “God is with us”—in practice transforms this earthly city of proud individuals into the City of God’s holy people.
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