On both sides of my genetic tree, my grandparents, my parents, as well as my aunts and uncles suffered from dementia and Alzheimer’s…what, when I was kid and my great grandmother was suffering from the disease, was called “hardening of the arteries.” For this reason, experience teaches me two things: 1) it’s a terrible disease and 2) it’s pretty clear what’s likely awaiting me in the concluding chapter of my life. Despite the likely prognosis, I’m inclined to feel gratitude should I be afflicted by the disease.
When I mention this, people are incredulous. But I respond: “Look, the good news is that when I’m present for my final judgment, I won’t need a lawyer to defend me. When I testify ‘I don’t remember that at all,’ I’ll be telling the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth...so help me God!”
The problem is that absent the disease, most of us do remember the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth...so help me God! And, because we do, we bear an unnecessary weight: the burden of guilt.
These past four weeks of Eastertime, we’ve been considering what it means to be a “WOKE” Catholic by relegating to the past what Pope Francis calls our “tomb psychology.”
As we heard in today’s epistle taken from the Book of Revelations, leaving that tomb psychology requires opening our minds to accept the fact that “the old order has passed away.” Then, embracing the “new order,” our hearts will experience the hope that doesn’t disappoint, a future in which all divisions are overcome and, with everyone renewed in love and fully and visibly united as God’s children, everyone will live in kumbaya.
Of course, the Book of Revelations didn’t use the term “kumbaya.” But the term perfectly translates the image of what has been, is, and always will be present in the hearts of human beings since God created them. As St. John reminds us: That’s a place where no hardships are experienced and God wipes every tear away because there’ll be no more death or mourning, wailing, or pain.
That said, there’s a major difficulty we humanoids experience with this “new order”: It contradicts the routine we’ve become comfortable with and used to—what constitutes the “old normal” that is, “the way I’ve always done things.”
All of us dig this moral and spiritual rut into the path our lives take. But “sleepy” Catholics widen and deepen that rut each day as they live I call a “Glory be faith” causing them to seek kumbaya in everything that ultimately disappoints—for example, the promises that politicians and political parties routinely make each election cycle. As that “Glory be faith” fails to deliver on what I call the addictive substance of false hope—hopium—“sleepy” Catholics envision the future as they believe it should have been in the beginning, now, and forever. Amen.
“Sleepy” Catholics live in this “old order” bearing the weighty burden of guilt for worshipping false idols believing they have to demonstrate their love for God if God is to demonstrate His love for them. But, as is pretty common with most spiritual and moral matters, “sleepy” Catholics have it all backwards because, when it comes to those who have turned away from the “old order,” God has dementia and Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember what happened in the past because God has already reconciled Himself with humanity. It’s “sleepy Catholics who haven’t reconciled themselves with God!
To get out of the rut which they’ve dug for themselves, all “sleepy” Catholics have to do is to accept this gift, offered not through any merit of their own but through God’s lavish generosity—the reconciliation God has already offered all humanity in Christ and which has turned the “old order” upside-down and inside-out. Or, in the words of today’s epistle, to live in the realization that “the old order has passed away.”
For “sleepy” Catholics, that lavish gift presents a fundamental problem: They aren’t interested in reconciling with God, as the Church teaches, in the Sacrament of Penance.
The challenge this new order presents all of us who aren’t “comatose” Catholics but spend our days somewhere between being “sleepy” and “WOKE” Catholics is to reconcile ourselves with God and, in this way, to allow the Risen Lord—who makes all things new—to unveil within our hearts an entirely new life. This life is lived in the Holy Spirit who reveals this “new order” as we live each day confidently in God’s presence—the fulfillment of the promised made on Christmas Eve, “He shall be called ‘Emmanuel,’ which means God is with us”—not in fear of God’s judgment, as we experience consolation knowing that and not apprehension, and as we promote reconciliation no longer holding grudges.
In short: When we are confident and experience consolation, we live in the Holy Spirit—the kumbaya for which our hearts long.
Not only that, we cannot keep the power of this “new order” to ourselves. Instead, the Holy Spirit impels us to proclaim God’s gift of reconciliation as we work actively to reconcile ourselves with one another just as God has already reconciled Himself with us through the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son.
Reconciled with God leaving the “old order” and its burden of guilt in the past where it belongs insofar as God is concerned, “WOKE” Catholics realize that living this gift in word and deed—to be what St. Paul has called “ministers of reconciliation”—is primary. That’s followed by bearing witness to this gift as “WOKE” Catholics sacrifice themselves and their self-interests—especially their feelings of hurt, self-pity, and anger caused by the “old order” that others have lived—by looking to the Crucifix and seeing the people they’ve condemned and nailed to it for their sins and transgressions and now bear the burden of guilt for their sins. Gazing upon the Crucifix in this way, “WOKE” Catholics experience the Holy Spirit moving their hearts to leave behind the childish silliness and immaturity of the “old order” where they justify themselves before God, reject the gift of God’s reconciliation, and judge and condemn others as unworthy of love.
But, living and witnessing to the gift of God’s reconciliation constitutes only the first step.
To usher in the “new order” and actually be ministers of reconciliation, “WOKE” Catholics also look upon others as God does by acknowledging their gifts and talents with humility and docility, not expecting them to make the first move. Dying to themselves, “WOKE” Catholics work each day to make that old way of life a thing of the past—the “old order has passed away”—and pass over to a new form of life and fellowship by responding to the gift of God’s reconciliation not by “proving” anything to God but by living simply in appreciation of this gift and demonstrating gratitude for it by offering themselves as ministers of reconciliation…“givers of the live-giving gift received.” Rather than occupying themselves with the corruption that results from living in the old order that has passed away and blaming everyone else for it, “WOKE” Catholics don’t allow themselves to be distracted by it and, as Plato argues, “mind their own work” by repaying God’s extravagant love for His human creatures with extravagant love for them.
With God having “hotwired” kumbaya into the human heart, many of us wonder: “How am I to “do this,” as Jesus taught, “in memory of me”?
That constitutes our challenge from this week’s scripture: To read and contemplate the life of a saint who minded his or her own work and repaid God’s extravagant love through a life of extravagant love for others which, for the saints, has echoed across the years and in the centuries following their death.
It used to be that practically every Catholic home had a crucifix prominently displayed on a wall, a Bible on the coffee table or sharing a bookshelf with a set of Encyclopedia Britannica’s and, alongside the Bible, a second book, Butler’s “Lives of the Saints.” Parents encouraged their children to read the “Lives of the Saints,” the idea being to inspire young Catholics to exemplify heroic virtue in their daily lives and construct a solid foundation for holiness of life. If a particular saint captured a young person’s imagination, it was likely that saint would be selected for one’s “confirmation name.”
Over the past six decades, that particular practice has waned and it may be that most Catholic homes don’t have a copy of Butler’s “Lives of the Saints” or, if they do, the pages have grown so yellow ochre and dried from neglect that they crumble when the volume is opened.
Have no fear, however! The biography of every saint is available online…and for free!
Today, Pope Francis has canonized ten new saints, people just like you and me who exemplified heroic holiness of life. The new saints are:
- Charles de Foucauld: A French soldier and explorer who became a Trappist monk and Catholic missionary to Muslims in Algeria. Known as Brother Charles of Jesus, he was killed in 1916 at the age of 58.
- Titus Brandsma: A Dutch priest, professor, and journalist who opposed Nazi propaganda in Catholic newspapers. He was killed by lethal injection in Dachau in 1942.
- Devasahayam Pillai: A layman from India who was tortured and martyred after converting from Hinduism to Catholicism in the 18th century.
- Marie Rivier: The founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Presentation. The Frenchwoman founded the order in 1796, at the age of 28, during the Reign of Terror.
- Maria Francesca of Jesus: A 19th-century missionary founder who crossed the Atlantic Ocean seven times by boat to establish an order of Capuchin sisters in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil.
- Maria Domenica Mantovani: The first general superior of the Institute of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, which she co-founded to serve the poor, orphaned, and the sick in Italy in 1892.
- Maria of Jesus Santocanale: The founder of the Capuchin Sisters of Immaculate Mary of Lourdes in Sicily in 1910. She spent most of her free moments, day or night, in front of the tabernacle.
- César de Bus: A French Catholic priest who founded two religious congregations in the 16th century. He was a zealous preacher and catechist, who performed many works of charity.
- Luigi Maria Palazzolo: An Italian priest who is known for having established the Sisters of the Poor, opened an orphanage, and worked for the poor.
- Giustino Maria Russolillo: The founder of the religious congregations of the Vocationist Fathers, the Vocationist Sisters, and x`the Secular Institute of the Apostles of Universal Sanctification in Italy. The priest was devoted to educating young people and cultivating their vocations.
Consider picking one of these new saints and familiarize yourself the content of the saint’s biography, allowing your heart to be uplifted from the “old order” and reach upward for the “new order.” As Pope Francis said at today’s canonization ceremony:
To serve the Gospel and our brothers and sisters, to offer our lives without expecting anything in return, or any worldly glory: this is our calling. That was how our fellow travelers canonized today lived their holiness.
By embracing with enthusiasm their vocation—some as a priest, others as a consecrated woman, as a lay person—they devoted their lives to the Gospel. They discovered an incomparable joy and they became brilliant reflections of the Lord of history. This is a saint, someone who is a brilliant reflection of the Lord of history.
May we strive to do the same—the road of holiness is not closed, it is for all of us, and it begins with baptism. It is not closed. May we strive to do the same, for each of us is called to holiness, to a form of holiness all our own.
This week’s task is to read and re-read the biography of one saint and to contemplate this person’s heroic virtue, allowing the images to stir up the power of the Holy Spirit within. I can promise you will benefit from this practice as you gradually “lift up your heart” to envision the “new order”—a life where you’re no longer fixated upon the past, lingering over the memory of wrongs done and endured, judging others in human terms which paralyzes you and prevent you from experiencing the new order, and bearing the weight of guilt.
Conducted each day this fifth week of Easter, this memento mori will remind each of us to live not in the past but to draw our strength from it—the gift of God’s reconciliation through the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son—as we recall this gift God has lavishly bestowed upon us. And, in this way, each of us will become more “WOKE”—not as the people of this world define it politically and choose up sides based upon whether “you’re with us or against us”—but as Catholics who put the “old order” of the past behind by embracing and witnessing to the “new order” in the present under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit as that’s conveyed through reconciling with God and living the life of a Catholic who is striving to be a saint.
This week, let us not tire of being grateful to God for the gift of reconciliation which God has lavished upon all of us and, by reconciling ourselves with God, become those witnesses—“WOKE” Catholics—whose life of lavish love for others exemplifies Jesus taught:
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.
For those of us who have used this Eastertime profitably in terms of our moral and spiritual growth to become “WOKE” Catholics, when Eastertime concludes on Pentecost Sunday, our preparation will culminate when God’s invitation to renew our hearts passes over us and we leave behind the old order that already has passed away. No longer “acting” Catholic as “sleepy” Catholics do, the Holy Spirit will have transformed how we think, how we feel and act, as well as how we look upon and treat others by generating within us a change of heart.
As Jesus taught in today's gospel:
This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.
Comments
Post a Comment