The Flesh and the Spirit (14th Sunday - Cycle A)

In different parts of the New Testament, we see a dichotomy delineated between the spirit and the flesh. We have to be careful as to how we interpret these passages. We could easily assume that the "spirit" here is synonymous with the spiritual, and the "flesh" with the material. But the meaning is a bit more complex. Flesh, in this context, refers to anything that takes us away from God; whereas spirit refers to anything that takes us toward God. Some material things, depending on what they are and how we approach them, can take us toward God. Some spiritual things, again depending on what they are and how we approach them, can take us away from God.

Christianity does not consider the material world to be evil. We believe that the material world is good in its nature, but fallen and marred by sin. Human nature too is fallen due to sin, and as a result, we have concupiscence, that is to say, a tendency toward sin. Due to concupiscence, our desires are disordered, and we are continually tempted to use the material world in an unwholesome way, harmful both to ourselves and to the world around us.

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Image Credit: Icon of the Resurrection of Jesus - Resurrection Gate, from Wikimedia Commons.

Christ Always Comes First (13th Sunday - Cycle A)

In the Gospel passage for today, Jesus makes it clear that he is to be the center of our lives. Of course, we are to love our families. We are to love our parents, our children, and other family members. The Church holds, and has always held, that the family is the foundational building block of society. But love of our family should not get in the way of loving Christ. In the culture of Jesus, a person's identity, including their religion, was defined primarily by the family to which they belonged. Converting to a new religion, without the family's approval, was well-nigh unthinkable. The first followers of Christ often had to make hard choices in the conflict between their faith and their family.

The words of Jesus apply not only to family, but to everything. God made us with a deep, existential hunger that only his love can satisfy. We find peace and fulfillment only when we accept God's love and give ourselves in love to him in return. Christ is God Incarnate, God's love manifest among us. It is only through union with Christ that we experience the true completion of our hearts, the true fulfillment of our existential yearning. That is a principal reason that Christ must be the center of our lives.

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Image Credit: Christ the King Statue 2, from Wikimedia Commons.

Niceness vs Love (12 Sunday - Cycle A)

For many years in the past, I ran an RCIA program (which is now called OCIA). The goal of such a program is to work with adults who seek to become Catholic. One participant, who came from a multi-generational Mormon background, took a long time to discern whether or not he wanted to join the Catholic Church. He started the program, then left, then came back, and eventually he was received into the Catholic faith. At one point, he told me that he had been a Mormon missionary and he had learned all the tricks, as he put it, of getting someone to commit to something. He said, with great surprise, that I was not using any of those tricks in my program.

I told him that I took his words as a compliment. I would never want to trick anyone into believing the Catholic faith and joining the Catholic Church. We should continually invite, but we should never trick, manipulate, or coerce. Following Christ should always be a free choice. The same perspective on interacting with non-believers applies to all of us. However, as Catholics, we are very good about not tricking, manipulating, or coercing others to share our faith. But we are not so good about inviting others to Christ. Perhaps we are too shy or afraid or polite. Or we might think that it is not nice to try to change another person's life in some way. Perhaps, seeking to be nice, we have a live-and-let-live attitude, hoping to live in a world where everyone just goes about their business, encouraging each other in whatever life project they might be embarked upon. But there are two fundamental problems with that perspective.

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Image Credit: Musée Boyadjian MRAH 20 11 2011 Ex-voto 04, from Wikipedia Commons.

Extraordinary Love (11th Sunday - Cycle A)

In Old Testament times, God established a covenant with the Israelites, making them his chosen people. He offered then protection and support, in exchange for their loyalty and fidelity to him. The goal of this special relationship was that the Israelites would become an example for the whole world of being in right relationship with God. They were to be a light to the nations, and through their example, the other nations would come to worship God as well.

God also offered the Israelites the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, where they could build their society. As they entered Canaan, the land was divided among eleven of the twelve tribes of Israel. One tribe, the Levites, did not get land, because they became the priestly tribe, whose inheritance was the Lord himself. However, the possession of the land was contingent on fidelity to the Lord.

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Image Credit: The Crucifixion, Italian, c. 1320, from Wikipedia Commons.

What Is the Eucharist? (Corpus Christi - Cycle A)

The Eucharist is at the heart of Catholic worship and spiritual life. During the Mass, the priest prays over the bread and the wine, calling down the Holy Spirit and repeating Christ’s words from the Last Supper: “This is my body,” “This is my blood.” As Catholics, we believe that through the prayer of the priest and the power of the Holy Spirit the bread and wine are transformed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the risen Christ. When we consume the consecrated host and drink of the consecrated wine, we do not merely receive a symbol, we receive Christ himself. We enter into the most intimate union with Christ possible in this life.

How can we understand this transformation? On the one hand, the Eucharist is an inscrutable mystery that we will never fully understand in this life. On the other hand, philosophical reflection can help us gain some insights into the mystery. In the 13th century, the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas used the metaphysical system of Aristotle to help us understand the Eucharist more deeply. Aquinas worked out the theology of transubstantiation, which is based on the perspective that each object has what are known as essential qualities and accidental qualities.

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Photo Credit: Eucharistic Adoration in Lourdes by Zoltan Abraham (c) 2015.

Our True Peace and Fulfillment (Trinity Sunday - Cycle A)

The Holy Trinity is the most difficult subject in Catholic theology. According to an ancient story, St. Augustine, one of the greatest theologians of Church history, was one day walking along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea contemplating the question of the Holy Trinity, when he saw a child playing on the seashore. The boy had dug a hole in the sand and then was carrying buckets of water from the sea, pouring them into the hole. St. Augustine asked him what he was doing. The boy replied that he was going to put the sea into the hole. The saint replied that the boy would never be able to put the whole sea into that small hole. To which the boy replied, “Neither will you ever be able to understand the Trinity.”

Indeed, our finite minds can never fully comprehend the inscrutable mystery of the Holy Trinity, because we can never fully understand the infinite mystery of God. All we can do is formulate some thoughts that point toward the reality of who God is. But we have to bear in mind that all human thought is finite, and therefore no human words can capture the fullness of God. Anything we say about God, even if it is true, will fall short. Imagine going to a place of great natural beauty, like the Grand Canyon, Mt. Rainier, or the ocean. If you take a picture with your phone, then post it to social media, will your followers be able to experience through the picture what you are experiencing in person? No, they will only get a small inkling of the grandeur of what you are beholding. Our words about God are similar. They only give us a small inkling of the inexpressible wonder of God’s being. Let us bear that in mind as we contemplate who the Holy Trinity is.

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Image: Holy Trinity Icon by Andrej Rublëv from Wikipedia Commons.

How the Holy Spirit Transforms Us (Pentecost - Cycle A)

After Jesus was crucified, the disciples hid away behind locked doors for fear of suffering the same fate themselves. When Jesus rose from the dead and revealed himself to them, the disciples still remained in hiding. But on Pentecost they went forth to proclaim the Good News and they kept on proclaiming it, despite threats and persecution. In fact, eleven of the twelve apostles were martyred for their faith.

What made the difference was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Once they received the Holy Spirit, they had the courage and the strength to go forth. They were empowered for ministry. In the same way, we too derive our spiritual strength from the grace we receive through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the Holy Spirit is the animating principle of the Church.

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Photo Credit: Ingeborg Psalter 02f 1200 (cropped) from Wikimedia Commons.