The Meaning of Christian Priesthood

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and God created man in His own image, and God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good.  Yet in spite of such glorious and auspicious beginnings, man could not carry on more than a brief moment before the terrible ignominy of sin had torn asunder his relationship with the loving Creator to whom he owed his very being.  Since that time, the life of every human being has been driven by the great, often misunderstood longing to cross the threshold that sin has wrought and return to the loving embrace of Our Father.  The means to this reconciliation, somehow revealed by God to those first transgressors, has been handed down since the time of Cain and Abel, and so all men everywhere have always known that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus has the priest always been the constant fixture in all cultures, punctuating every period of human history.  He – or in those places where men had exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, she – has, in every place stood daily at service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, until, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son to become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Therein lies the distinctiveness, the dignity, and the importance of the priesthood of Christ, which is the priesthood of the Church of God.  Men have sought since time immemorial to turn to God, and have employed the services of the priest for just as long.  However, only when God Himself became a priest in the person of Jesus Christ could such a ministry achieve its intended end.  Jesus Christ is our high priest, and He now continues His ministry through the hands of those men whom He calls to serve in His person at His Altar.  While Christ serves in the Holy of Holies of Heaven, the men of the ordained priesthood perpetuate His ministry on earth, making present to the people of God His one, eternal offering to the Father.  They serve not as priests in their own right, but by participating mystically in His one eternal priesthood, and as such, a true appreciation, and any real understanding at all, of the ordained priesthood can only be found in an appreciation and understanding of Christ Himself.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Her Universal Call

Today we celebrate Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who is a very big deal to me.  She is my favorite expression of the Blessed Mother, and I have at many times in my life recognized a very special call from her.

As particular as this may be to myself, the fact is that as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our mother has a very special call to all of us.  Of course, she is the patroness of the Carmelite order, but she's much more than that.  There is a universal quality to her message. The most obvious evidence of this may be that the Brown Scapular, which is of course a gift of hers, is one of the most popular devotions in the Church.  All kinds of people from all kinds of spiritual backgrounds go about their days with the Scapular draped over their torsos.

Less well known, but perhaps more intriguing, is that Mary has chosen to invoke Mount Carmel in some of the other prominent messages she has given to the world.  It was on July 16th, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, that Mary made her final appearance at Lourdes.  When she made her final appearance to the three children of Fatima, Mary appeared as Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  It would appear that the message of Mount Carmel is one that the Virgin wants to leave us with.  What, then, is this message?

I can do no better than to quote, via Wikipedia, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCD, in saying that she offers us:

a special call to the interior life, which is preeminently a Marian life. Our Lady wants us to resemble her not only in our outward vesture but, far more, in heart and spirit. If we gaze into Mary's soul, we shall see that grace in her has flowered into a spiritual life of incalcuable wealth: a life of recollection, prayer, uninterrupted oblation to God, continual contact, and intimate union with him. Mary's soul is a sanctuary reserved for God alone, where no human creature has ever left its trace, where love and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind reign supreme. [...] Those who want to live their devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to the full must follow Mary into the depths of her interior life. Carmel is the symbol of the contemplative life, the life wholly dedicated to the quest for God, wholly orientated towards intimacy with God; and the one who has best realized this highest of ideals is Our Lady herself, 'Queen and Splendor of Carmel'."

This coming Sunday, we will hear the Gospel reading of Mary and Martha.  Upon receiving a visit from Jesus, Mary (not the Virgin Mary) sits at His feet and listens to Him, while Martha runs about trying to prepare her house for Him, to feed Him, to clean up, to serve Him.  As we know, Christ concludes this story by explaining that Mary had chosen better.  This is one of the most important Scriptural texts about the importance of prayer, and it is precisely this message that Our Lady of Mount Carmel gives us: listen to Jesus.

Interior prayer is that "one thing necessary" that Christ speaks to Martha about.  This does not of course exclude action, for Christ in fact commands action, but all of our action must stem from this life of interior prayer.  So many people want to serve Our Lord, and this is so laudable a choice.  Especially in this day and age, it is in many ways a heroic choice simply to serve the Lord.  However, so few people actually take the time to listen to Him so that they might actually know what He wishes them to do!  I cannot claim to be at all innocent of this.  I, like many, go about making great efforts to serve the Lord while in reality doing nothing more than what I assume He would want.  Ultimately, we are only asserting our own wills as the Lord's when we do this.

If we wish truly to serve the Lord and to do His will, then we must commit ourselves to a deep life of interior prayer.  For some, this is a call to enter into the interior life in a radical way, by joining a contemplative order or even perhaps ultimately entering the eremitical life.  For most of us, it means - at first - simply taking the time out of our days to engage in silent prayer for some period of time.  (Do not fear silent prayer - it is not at all complicated or difficult.  As a convert, I was very intimidated by the idea of mental prayer as it seemed like such a nebulous concept and I didn't quite know anything about it.  I will shortly post an explanation of how to get started with it for those who may feel the same way!)

Later, this should blossom into the great gift of recognizing one's living in the presence of God at all times.  This can sound frightening, challenging, necessitating greater sanctity than one feels he possesses, or even as though its "going overboard," but it is none of these things.  Each of these objections can be answered simply by pointing out that the Lord is everywhere and everything.  If God is what awaits us when we end this life and Heaven truly is the final goal of all people, how can it be suggested that living in constant relationship with Him now is somehow overzealous?  Those who do not wish to have God a part of every moment of their lives now will have a very difficult time when they find that He is all that there is in the life to come! Beyond that, if God is everywhere, then what difficulty can there be in allowing Him to be a part of each moment of our lives?

Fear not, for this goal is not one that is beyond you.  To live in His presence at all times simply means to recognize what is already a reality.  We do not need to bring God into our lives at every point, but rather simply open ourselves to seeing Him where He already is.  Once we begin to realize this it is and incredibly natural experience to live one's interior life at all times, turning to the Lord in our hearts for each and every moment and decision and letting Him direct every action.  It is well within our grasps, for this Our Lord calls us to and He grants willingly us by His abundant Grace - and of course! - we have Our Lady's constant loving  help at our sides.

Do You Understand the Good Samaritan?

The parable of the good Samaritan is quite possibly the most well known of all Jesus' parables, the only other likely to challenge it in notoriety being of course the parable of the prodigal son.  So ubiquitous is this parable that the phrase "good Samaritan" has come to stand on its own as universally recognized part of the English language.

It came as a great surprise to me, then, when upon listening to the parable during this past Sunday's Liturgy I realized that I did not actually understand the parable!  Of course, as I walked into the church to prepare for Mass I certainly thought I understood it - even recognizing that in all of the Scriptures there are depths of meaning in it that I have yet to reap.  It seems like a rather straightforward parable, doesn't it?  Having been told that he must love his neighbor, a lawyer asks Jesus whom his neighbor is, which the Lord answers with His tale of the good Samaritan teaching that our neighbors whom we should love are the poor, the suffering, the needy, and by extension, everybody.

There's only one problem: the wounded, dying man isn't the neighbor in this parable: the Samaritan is.

It was this thought that occurred to me as I listened to the Gospel being read and which at first led me to some degree of confusion.  Jesus concludes the parable by getting His questioner to recognize that it was the Samaritan who was the neighbor of the dying, penniless man on the side of the road.  I had always understood Jesus' message to be that the dying man who was in need of help was the neighbor, people like whom we as His disciples were called to love.  From the conversations I have had with others, this seems to be how most folks interpret this Gospel at first hearing.

The realization that the Samaritan is identified as the neighbor the lawyer asked about leads to a variety of new questions.  Most significantly, it seems as though Jesus is teaching that our neighbors - those we are called to love - are those who do good to us, those who help us and show mercy to us.  The message of the parable is, after all, that the priest and Levite (whose indifference Jesus juxtaposes with the Samaritan's compassionate help) are not neighbors.  Should then we only love as ourselves those who do good to us, and not those who do not?  Following upon this, what do we make of Jesus' instruction to the lawyer to "go and do likewise?"  In fact, it is by considering this instruction that we can come to understand the greater depth of what Jesus is in fact teaching here.

First, we need to consider what exactly Jesus was telling this lawyer to do.  The instruction comes in response to the man's statement that the neighbor was "the one who showed mercy," that is, the Samaritan.  Christ then says that he must imitate the Samaritan.  Here we find an important aspect to this parable that has been lost to history: Jews and Samaritans at this time held bitter hatred for one another, similar - if not even in greater measure - to the hatred that currently exists between Jews and Muslims.  So strong was it that this man could not even utter the answer "the Samaritan," but had rather to convolutely admit that the neighbor was "the one who showed mercy" That this Jewish man would be asked to imitate a Samaritan would have been both shocking to him and a very difficult pill to swallow.

In fact, this hatred is at the very heart of the lawyer's question.  Christ's teaching to "love thy neighbor as thyself" was actually not a new teaching.  It was found in the book of Leviticus, which in the 18th verse of the 19th chapter commands that "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."  The understanding of this existed was that one's fellow Jew was one's neighbor.  That the man asked who his neighbor was "to justify himself" indicates that he asked Jesus this so that the Lord might affirm him in his practice.  Jesus offers the parable so as to help the man see that all people - even a Samaritan - should be loved.  Rather than simply saying as much and being swiftly rejected, He presents the story of the compassionate Samaritan so as to appeal to this man's sense of decency and compassion.  

On this note, it's secondly important to consider that Christ actually changes the lawyer's question around on him.  He had asked who he should love, and while Christ in a roundabout way gives him the hard answer that he should love all people - even Samaritans - His more direct answer teaches who it is that loves.  The man wanted to know who his neighbor was, but Christ taught him that it is more important that he himself should be a neighbor.  The Greek text of Jesus' question actually carries the sense of "who became the neighbor" of the dying man? This lawyer - and all of us - are called to become neighbors to those around us, whether they love us or not.

Yes, then we are called to love all people, not only those who do good to us as did the Samaritan to the victim on the road.  My initial confusion emphasizes the very purpose of Jesus' parable and His decision to answer the lawyer in the way He did.  I, like the lawyer, should be less concerned with who to love than simply with loving.  We need not worry who our neighbors are, but rather, we should worry about how to be neighbors.

Sometimes, our focus is misdirected so that we do not even ask the right question.  Christ, in His Wisdom, often chooses not to answer our misplaced questions but rather to give us the answer to the questions that we should be asking!

Why did Christ set up the Church?

The Church is set up in the way it is for a very specific reason. Did you ever wonder why we have Sacraments and all that? I mean, in some ways, the Protestant system actually makes more sense. As Catholics we believe in a God who essentially has invited us to become His children; we believe in a God who wants Love, not adherence to some checklist like a strict boss or professor. Even though the Scriptures never use the terminology, we agree with the Protestants that what God desires is a personal relationship with us. He wants us to know Him and Love Him. So if what God wants is Love and Faith - a relationship - well then Sacraments seem to be completely unnecessary.

Our conception of the Church as an authority to speak on matters of truth would still be important; having a personal relationship with someone requires that one know the truth about them. Imagine trying to have a relationship with your earthly father without any certainty concerning the facts about him. Do you get him golf clubs for his birthday, or a violin? Does he like it when you make lawyer jokes, or should you refrain. Is he a lawyer? In fact, when is his birthday, anyways? It wouldn't work. The situation is even more difficult with our Heavenly Father, whom is present not only when we are in the same room as Him but always. Is X a sin - does it offend Him - or not? When the Scripture says we should fast in one place but says we shouldn't in another, what does God really want? When half the Christians interpret a verse one way and the other half another, what's correct? What did God really intend to say?

But not Sacraments. For a God who simply wants a relationship they don't seem to fit. Once we know the truth about Him, what is the purpose of having to go through these rituals? Going back to fathers, if I offend my earthly father, the way to repair that relationship is to ask Him for forgiveness - not to go to someone else, like mom, and ask her to offer his forgiveness, as Catholics do in confession. So the Sacraments seem sortof, well, superfluous at best.

But the reality is that by Christ's own choice He set it up that way. The Sacraments aren't some superfluous thing that the Church came up with for some reason - Christ Himself instituted them Himself. Why? Why, if what He really wants is a relationship?

The reason is that Christ is compassionate. God loves us even if we don't always love Him. He wants those who aren't going to have a relationship with Him to have a chance. He wants as few people as possible to reject Him. He wants us in Heaven, so He didn't simply give us some authority to tell us what is true and then leave us to, if we can get ourselves to, have a relationship on our own. Different Christian groups, and even different schools among Catholics, have many different ideas of how Grace works exactly, so it's impossible to give some blanket statement about the technicalities of it, but suffice it to say that basic human experience shows that however Grace works, the vast majority of people in the world don't seem motivated to have a relationship with God even with the help and promptings of Grace. The truth is that left to out own, most people simply don't take advantage of the Grace God has for them and have a relationship with Him. Few Christians from any group ever really do. So Christ gave us Sacraments - things that work ex opera operandi, as that Latin calls it: "in and of themselves."

The Sacrament of Reconcilliation really does reconcile usto God. If someone is an absolutely miserable Christian and the very most they can muster is being sorry because they are afraid of hell, then the Sacrament will save them from it and - even as what may be a completely unintended side effect from their perspective - reunite them to God.

Christ made the Church in the exact way He did specifically so that poor Christians can make it to Heaven. He gave us last rights so that even the greatest sinner can, on his deathbed, at least say he's afraid of Hell and make it to Heaven, even if that person can't bring Himself to actually Love God or to be sorry for His sins in any real way. He wants us there, and so He gave us a Church with Sacraments exactly as He did so that those with the bare minimum can make it. He'll Give us Love when we get to Him.

Of course, He wants so much more, and so we have the fantastic saints who actually gave all they possibly could, and then people like you and me who hopefully do our best even if we're not quite ready for canonization. But He wants those folks who are just sitting in the pews each week and that's really all they're doing in Heaven, too. And that's at least one of the reasons that He did it they way He did.

Pirates of the Caribbean and the Fall of Western Civilization

This coming weekend, the keenly expected third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean films will be released in theatres. It won't be the typical summer release, but rather one of those "special" events where people dress up in costumes and go to the theatres at midnight so that they can see the highly anticipated release as soon as is humanly possible. Even beyond that, the theatres will no doubt be packed this weekend with all manner of swashbucklers and salty dogs. In short, most of western civilization will be going to see this film.

It would do them much good, however, to revisit the first film before doing so. This is not simply for the sake of refreshing their memories of the adventures of the buccaneers, but more importantly because the first film contains a message that most of western civilization is in dire need of hearing, and more importantly, of assimilating.

The first film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, tells the story of a crew of pirates trying to escape the curse of an eternity existing in between death and life as immortal half-men, unable to experience anything other than their own miserable, half-human existence. They can go through neither pain nor pleasure, a state which leaves them to a numb, meaningless, empty existence far worse than even any suffering might provide. The cause of all of this is a curse which came upon them after taking forbidden treasure, and their sole purpose is now one of trying to steal back all of the treasure so that the curse can be reversed.

Watching the film, one can't help but feel a bit bad for these fellows. They are in a simply pathetic state of affairs. What used to be men, they now simply go through the motions of men, even fighting amongst each other with no possible outcome to be gained, as they cannot be injured. These men have been without any meaning to their existence for so long that they don't even realize just how self-destructive and stupid their behaviors are. Fighting amongst selves causes enough delay in reaching a goal; in their case, the delay may be forever, if they choose to fight that long. Any member of the audience at once realizes just how stupid these cursed men are behaving.

Unfortunately, our society has been caught in an existence without meaning for so long that we, too, are essentially incapable of recognizing just how self-destructive and stupid our behaviors are. The reality is that western civilization is caught in the very same situation that these forsaken pirates were. Just like the pirates, we have sold our souls for various treasures. Sometimes it is money, but, as Captain Jack points out in the film, "not all that glitters is gold." One of our treasures is wealth. Another is fame. Sex is one of our treasures, as is science, and even progress in general. As a society, we have thrown aside what makes us human for the treasure - and in many cases, the unknown treasure. When it comes to progress, for example, we do not need to know the ultimate prize, simply that it is in some way moving forward.

This is perhaps best exemplified in the case of abortion and contraception. Here, we take the very life out of us and destroy it, all for the sake of our treasure. Modern science makes this parallel frightfully complete. Biology identifies life as that which fulfills 7 characteristics, one of which is the ability to produce new organisms. Contraception and abortion are designed to hinder and negate this ability, rendering us as not quite alive, but clearly not dead, either. In fact in western Europe, where we see this problem most prominently, the population is decreasing at a rate faster than it was during the black plague and the birth rate is in such that humanity is well on its way to virtual extinction on the continent. Without children to prepare for the future and a new generation to leave a legacy and bestow our accomplishments on, lives are reduced to an utter meaninglessness of going through the motions.

And these pirates teach us something else about the sins that plague our society, as well. Their first sin was a sin against themselves. They weren't so much hurting anyone; any claimants to the treasure had long since died. The only thing truly wrong with the treasure was that it was forbidden. That's the reality of all sin, in one sense: God said "no." There may be more too it than that (and there most often is), but even if there weren't, all that matters is that god said "no."

Yet even such a "harmless" sin leads the pirates into greater sins, sins against other people. The emptiness which they find in themselves after the first sin leads to a need, a need to fulfill what can only be fulfilled by more sin, and greater sin. Now they must steal, murder, and kidnap to fill the hole inside of them.

This is the reality of sin. Nobody sins to commit evil. Every sin is an effort - a misguided effort - to get some good. The pirates didn't go after this treasure to make their existence a constant, meaningless process of going through the motions: they wanted easy money. The person who has sex outside of marriage is trying to find love, even if without realizing it. The young man who gets high on drugs isn't looking to destroy his body, he's trying to find happiness in a fallen world. The woman who has 3 abortions isn't trying to snuff out 3 innocent lives, she is trying to protect her career.

And yet all sin leads to this emptiness, an emptiness created by trying to fill a need with self. We already have ourselves - adding more of oneself cannot fulfill. Selfish acts - and all sin is, ultimately, selfish - simply try to fill that hole inside of us with self, leading us to feel more empty than before; discovering the powerlessness to fulfill oneself is a very gnawing experience. And so the sinner, not knowing what to do, tries to take from others in the hope that they can provide what is lacking in themselves. Yet taking from others is simply another act of selfishness, another attempt to fill the hole with self. It is a numbing cycle in which the western world is trapped.

Ultimately, there are two possible endings to this cycle, both illustrated in the Curse of the Black Pearl. When the curse is finally - and unexpectedly - lifted, Captain Barbossa, the leader of the cursed pirates, has just been shot. Because of the lifting of the curse, he is finally able to feel. He is finally able to experience life - and yet all he can experience is death. His initial reaction is one of joy. He has gone for so long without feeling, that though all he is able to experience is the pangs of death, he rejoices in it. This is, ironically, what he was seeking: feeling and meaning, at any cost. Like today's western world, Captain Barbossa delved into sin after sin in his drive for meaning. Ultimately, the meaning that he found was death, and it came unexpectedly. He always expected to be in control of his mortality - to hang onto his invincibility until he was ready to surrender it. Yet death came, unexpectedly, and ironically, as the utter and perfect fulfillment of all of his desires. He sought meaning through sin, and he found the only meaning sin holds: death.

His crew, on the other hand, meets a different end: mercy. They, too, find themselves subject to death unexpectedly as the curse is lifted while in battle with superior British forces. However, death does not come to these men. They are granted mercy by the soldiers. The commanding officer did not need to grant these pirates mercy - and they had certainly committed crimes far exceeding the warrant of death - but he did. All they had to do was accept it. Their choice was to go on fighting to the death, or drop their weapons and accept the fate of capture.

Yet this is a deeper choice than it would seem, and one which ultimately our civilization will have to make. The pirates had gone for a great time without any meaning in their lives, without any feeling. Finally, they had found it, and they were left with a choice: life as prisoners, or death. They chose the former. This no doubt meant much suffering for them, especially in light of the allusion from earlier in the film that freedom is the greatest and most valued privilege of pirates. They would seem to heartily agree with the famous statement of Patrick Henry, "give me liberty or give me death!" But these pirates had something greater than that: meaning. They had sought meaning for so long, as their single goal, and though they had sought it in every corrupt, wrong, and evil way, by the grace of mercy, they had an opportunity to experience it. Even surrendering themselves to the British, the pirates could experience meaning. They could taste the sweet bite of an apple, or experience the warm Caribbean breeze on their faces and an infinity of other things which anybody else would take for granted. They must suffer for this, but ultimately, it was life, and it was meaning, and they chose it.

And so, this is where the western world stands. Indulging in an endless cycle of a search for meaning, a cycle leading deeper and deeper into sin and meaninglessness, one of two things will happen. Either death will come, quickly and unexpectedly, or mercy will. If mercy comes, it will be on the condition of suffering. There is much penance to be done for the sins our civilization has committed, and redemption will not come without suffering and hard work. And yet, if mercy is offered, and if it is accepted, we will have the chance to experience something beautiful, something incredible, and something well worth any suffering: meaning. If we are willing to lay down our weapons of vice and selfishness, we will find such infinite meaning that we had forgotten existed that the sacrifices required for it would seem radically insignificant. Let us pray for this; let us pray.

The Limitations of Knowledge

"To be learned and able to discuss the Trinity will get you nowhere if you do not have humility, and therefore displease the Trinity. Lofty words neither save you more make you a Saint; only a virtuous life makes you dear to god. It is better to experience contrition than to be able to define it.

To be well versed in Scripture and all the sayings of philosophers will not profit you if you are without God's Love and His Grace. All things are vanity. Nothing matters except to Love God and to serve Him only. The height of wisdom is to set your goal on Heaven by despising the world." - The Imitation of Christ, 1

The Ascension, the Body, and the Beatific Vision

Today is the official date of the Feast of the Ascension. In some parts of the United States and in some other countries, the celebration has been moved to the 7th Sunday of Easter. However, here in my home archdiocese of Boston, it is still celebrated today. This is the day that, in a certain sense - as Fr. Ventura said at the evening Mass tonight - sums up the reason we're Catholic: to go to Heaven. Jesus ascended into Heaven, and we hope to get there.

GK Chesterton made a similar statement once when he was asked why he was Catholic. Of course, his questioner was expecting some sort of theological reasoning, perhaps a historical reference, or even an emotional appeal to aesthetics or some such thing. However, in classic Chestertonian fashion, the author responded simply, "to get my sins forgiven."

So here we have to answers to the question of why we are Catholic. One is provided by today's celebration, and might be called the more positive of the two: we hope for Heaven! The second might be understood to be more negative, focusing on that which we hope to escape rather than that which we hope to gain. However, in the classic beauty of the Catholic faith, the reality is that the two answers are not really all that different at all, much less opposed as being two different ways of looking at something. In fact, in a certain sense they are very really the same answer precisely.

St. Augustine touched on this point in one of his sermons on the Ascension. He wrote,

"While in heaven [Christ] is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love."

The last statement really stuck out at me when I read it. We can be in Heaven - even now - by Love. This is really an astonishing statement. I'm sitting in a chair right now as I write this, and as much as I might try to love God, I certainly don't feel like I'm in Heaven. I'm in an orange basement, so far as my eyes tell me, and it seem quite far from Heaven, as you might imagine.

To explain this point further, Augustine speaks more specifically of Christ's incarnation, quoting John 3:13:

"He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven."

This statement is very though provoking. It could be the subject of a great deal of meditation. However, the reality is that its not that profound a statement, theologically speaking. It simply states a very basic theological statement, one which any student would learn in his first year of theology: Christ experienced the beatific vision from the first moment of His existence.

Now, the beatific vision is the very essence of Heaven. To be in Heaven, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, consists in"nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence" (ST, I-II, 3, 8). Heaven is - in all that it is - the state of knowing God. Christ states the same in John's Gospel: "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God..." (17:3)

So Christ was literally in Heaven while on earth, and St. Augustine says that we can be too, through Love. If you've noticed, however, I have been capitalizing "Love" most of the time in this post. This is because it's not our love that Augustine is speaking about, but the Love of God, and this brings us back to Fr. Ventura and GK Chesterton. We are forgiven our sins, per Chesterton's answer, thanks to the Love of God, and we are brought into Heaven, per Fr. Ventura's homily, by His Love as well. John expressed this in his first epistle, writing that what matters is "not that we loved God, but that He loved us..." (4:10).

It gets deeper than this, though. Love doesn't cause our forgiveness and beatification to Heaven simply as a final cause, but also as a efficient cause. In other words, Love isn't simply that which inspires God to forgive us and show us the vision of Himself, but it is also the means by which He does this. In our justification, God's Love is "poured into our hearts" (Rom. 5:5). It is this very Love which wipes away sin. Sin and Love are incompatible, because sin is the contradiction of Love. By pouring His own Love into our hearts, God eradicates sin. At the same time, it is through Love that we know God - that is, see Him. With Love in our souls (which is what "hearts" refers to in Scripture[excluding passages referring to the organ]), we see God. On the other hand, "Anyone who loves," St. John writes, "...knows God." (1 John 4:7).

To know God is to Love, but to Love not with our own, human Love, but with the Love that God has placed in us. Further, to know God is, according to Christ, the essence of eternal life. Love is that which at once - simultaneously - forgives sin and infuses the vision of God into our souls. Just as Christ was in Heaven while on earth, we too can be in Heaven, even while on earth. In fact, anyone who is in a state of Grace (does not have unforgiven mortal sin) is in Heaven, quite literally.

This makes more sense when we recall that Heaven belongs to the soul, not the body. Our bodies will be glorified and brought into Heaven, but even then, it is not by them which we experience Heaven (at least not directly; Heaven will involve the body, but not as a fundamental quality. See ST, I-II, 3,3 and ST, Sup., 92, 2 regarding this point). Heaven consists in the soul's vision of God.

The practical implications of this are tremendous. So long as we are in Grace, we are in Heaven, even here on earth. Christ experienced Heaven, even as He hung on the cross, and we can experience Heaven even as we bear some terrible pain or sadness. This explains the ability of the saints and the apostles, as recorded in Scripture, to profess tremendous joy even in their sufferings. By this, they were able to rejoice in their sufferings, as St. Paul said (Rom. 5:3). The pain can be overwhelming, but the soul is still in Heaven.

This also has implications for our consciences. Our bodies are afflicted with sin, even when our souls are striving for God. We will become angry without intention, our eyes will be drawn to look upon an illicit image, evil thoughts will pass through our minds. This does not matter. Our body will do these things even while our souls rejoice - in a certain very real sense unbeknownst to us - in the vision of God. Sin enters when we consent to these things, by allowing them in the door of our souls as it were. Make no mistake, to consent to or willingly engage in bodily wrong is sinful. It is also true that gradually, through living virtuously, God's Grace will heal our bodies so that these things will happen less and less, and if you are blessed in a special way, never at all. This must be what we strive for, but we must also not be discouraged if it does not happen this way. Some of the saints, for example Augustine, struggled with their bodies until their death.

And so as we go through life, it is easy to expect that we will have a lot of "cleaning up" to do in Purgatory. For many of us this will be the case. However, it is also possible that our souls may be much cleaner than we imagine. This is important to understand for the sake of perseverance, as it can be a great encouragement. Nevertheless, there is great danger in thinking of it in any way more than this. We all have many sins which indeed are in our souls, which indeed we do consent to and even engage in purposefully, and we needn't any excuses.

Rather, what we need to do is recognize just what it means to be in the state of Grace and strive to stay there. We need to recognize the reality that our souls are in Heaven even now, and live for that. "Is this song fit for a soul in Heaven?" "Is this movie something that is good to see when I can be seeing God?" "Should I spend time experiencing this when God is there for me to experience?"

And this is where all of this should bring us: to prayer. Our souls are filled with God's Love - they can see God - but because of our emphasis on the body, we don't recognize this. God is there, waiting to be experienced, and we don't even realize it. In prayer, we reach beyond the bodily senses of sight, taste, smell, touch, and sound, and reach the senses of our souls, the senses that have direct access to God Himself. We have this power, and we simply don't even realize it because we have never used it. Imagine if you had been fed intravenously your entire life and never had anything put into your mouth so that you didn't even realize there was such a thing as taste for never having used it before. This is the state we are in in regards to our souls.

In prayer, gradually and slowly, we are able to peel off the layers of flesh until we recognize these senses, the senses of our souls. I am not referring to verbal prayer, but mental prayer, to meditation. "Blessed is the man who... meditates night and day," David tells us in the first Psalm. Mary herself, the one creature living in the greatest communion with God, led a life of meditation, as Luke tells us when he says that Mary treasured sayings about Jesus and pondered them in her heart (2:19).

Our souls do not yet see God fully. As we grow in prayer and holiness, we will see God more and more as He is. If it is difficult to pray now, to take the time to do it, or to avoid sin, it will become easier. It can be frustrating when we struggle so much with these things, but we needn't feel this way. As we see God more and more, the choices between sin and God, or between one thing and the prayer by which we know God, will become easier. After all, the more we grow the more we will see Heaven - see God - and the choice between anything and this is really a very simple one when we see the choice we're making.

"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12). St. Paul wrote these words immediately before writing that Love is the most important thing. I want to end on this point. Love is truly the most important thing in the world. To Love is literally to know God! All of our actions, be they of Love, are actions of prayer and actions of Heavenly contemplation. God is Love! When we Love, we are knowing God. If we Love, we are experiencing God, even if we can't quite see it yet. St. Thérèse understood this, and so she Loved. And she Loved some more. And she Loved and she Loved and she Loved. As John wrote, "We love because he first loved us." (1 John 4:19). He gave us His Love so that we can give it to others. By doing this - by Loving - we are entering more and more into the realm of God. Each simple, Loving action is nothing less than another step further into Heaven itself.

Take a plunge.

Heaven in Her Eyes

It's so hard to look towards Heaven when we don't know exactly what it is we are looking forward to. It's no surprise that we sin, that we choose lesser things, when we don't even know what is being offered us. "Heaven..." It seems so abstract, so esoteric, so meaningless, really, as merely a word.

This is the face of St. Thérèse of Liseux. It is the face of a person who is filled with the Love of God and nothing else. Look at her. Look her in the eyes. There, you will see your every longing, your every desire, all that you have ever wanted, and in some mysterious way, so much more.

It is the face of someone who is looking to God and desiring nothing but Him, and who can almost see Him already. It is the face of a person who knows how much she is loved by God, and who lives every moment simply to receive that love so that she can share it with others. St. Thérèse understood how she was loved by God, and as a result you can see God - see Heaven - in her eyes.

This is the very meaning of life: to have what is in her eyes in our souls. No matter what we are going through, what mistakes we have made, or what longings and desires we might have, this is waiting for us. This is true joy, the unending joy that cannot be weakened or taken away. It's there for the taking... all we have to do is receive.

Strive for it. Ask for it. Cast away everything else you have, and it will be yours. Oh, how can we desire sex, alcohol, material things - even human love! - rather than that which is in Thérèse's eyes? All that those things can possibly give, and so, so much more, is right there. This is Heaven. This is what we are offered. Go and live every moment looking toward this prize... towards Love....

Carrying Our Crosses

"Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me," Jesus said," cannot be my disciple." There is a great deal of meaning behind these words, and many Christians do try to pay attention to them. Our lives will contain many burdens we must bear, sufferings we must go through, and personal difficulties we must struggle through. We are called to bear these things as Jesus bore His cross: with humility, patience, love, and even thanksgiving to God our Father. I think we understand this. We don't always like it or do it, but we at least understand it.

However, the problem is that we typically acknowledge this and move on, or we make some half-hearted resolution to do better and then go back to our old ways. What we really need to do is actually carry our crosses, and suffer with Jesus. But this is what we've been trying to do - how can we do it?

There are many answers. The one I want to focus on here is to realize just what it means to carry our cross - and what it tells us. After all, we know we have to carry our crosses, but what does that actually mean? Why do we have to carry our crosses; what difference does it make? We all have some vague idea of it, to be sure. We know that we are sharing in Jesus' suffering when we carry our cross. We know that we are offering a sacrifice of praise to God... but does this mean anything personally to us?

I'm going to say something rather shocking here: Jesus couldn't save us alone, and He didn't. He needed human help. This is an incredibly shocking, if not scandalous, thing to say - but it's the reality, and in fact we are all familiar with this fact even if we don't realize it.

We all know Simon of Cyrene, even if not by name. He's the person that the Roman soldiers forced to help Jesus carry His cross. Matthew, Mark, and here Luke, recorded it: "And as they led him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the cross, to carry it behind Jesus." (23:26) This shows us that Jesus allowed another person to help Him, and this itself is rather significant. Jesus wants us to be able to play a part... He did what we couldn't do, but He also didn't hoard it all to Himself so as that we can't do anything to help.

I have heard it explained rather beautifully by Rosalind Moss, a writer for This Rock magazine and a Jewish convert. Imagine, she says, a mother baking cookies in the kitchen when her little daughter walks into the kitchen behind her and asks to help. Now the mother doesn't need the child's help; she has the ingrediants, the tools, the bowls and cookie sheets, the oven, and the ability to put it all together to make cookies. In fact, the child could never make the cookies on her own. She couldn't even reach the counter! Is the mother going to not allow the poor child to help? Of course not... she loves her child, and she wants the child to feel a part of it and to help if she likes. Jesus is infinitely more loving than this mother, and so He would do no less for us. After all, if, Rosalind says, you could go back to Calvary and hold up Jesus' arms a little bit as He hung on the cross to take some of that burden off of Him, wouldn't you?

We can see that Jesus allows us to suffer with Him, then. This in itself is absolutely fantastic - to share in God's very own work and suffering. Words cannot convey how wonderful this is! If we only consider this, how can we not carry our crosses, realizing what an oppurtunity we are passing up!

But I said more than this. I said that Jesus couldn't save us on His own - without Simon. Why does it matter that someone else helped Him? Why does it matter that Jesus allowed Him to help, even if it is an astounding participation? Let's ask, then, why did they make Simon carry the cross? The answer must be because Jesus was incapable of doing so. This is the way it was depicted in The Passion of the Christ, and it makes a lot of sense. The Romans weren't nice guys, especially when it came to executions. They were ruthless. They didn't just want to be nice to Jesus here. The only reason they ever would have done this is if Jesus was actually incapable of carrying the cross on His own any further.

There's an incredibly important distinction here. Jesus, in His Divinity, certainly needed no help. God doesn't need help with anything. But in His humanity, Jesus did need help. His human body was spent. It couldn't go any further. He needed the addition of Simon's humanity, as it were, to finish the job.

But to say that Jesus - the God-man - needed Simon is different. He was, after all, God and man, so why could He not simply have miraculously lifted His body up and kept it going? The answer is, no, He couldn't, not if He wanted to save us. Jesus became man primarily to be a human representative - a sinless human representative - to God the Father on our behalf. Some human being needed to offer God a perfect sacrifice, but because all human beings were sinful, none could. Christ couldn't offer this simply as God, because then it would be God offering God a sacrifice; there would be no benefit to humanity, because no human would have made the sacrifice. If Christ had performed some miraculous act to offer the sacrifice, then it would have essentially subsumed His humanity, and the sacrifice wouldn't have been an authentically human act. his role as human Mediator would have been destroyed, and the sacrifice would have been no good for us.

So without Simon's help, Christ couldn't have made it up to Calvary to be put on the cross. What's more, up until the point of actually being put on that cross, the sacrifice couldn't necessarily be said to have been offered, even had Jesus died on the way. His sacrifice was a spotless sacrifice, a sinless one of Christ being obedient unto death (cf. Phill. 2:8). Up until being nailed to that cross, Christ hadn't done that yet. He had gone far, but not all the way. He hadn't actually been obedient to death, because He hadn't put Himself in the position definitely to be killed yet. For example, He could have escaped, or tried to. He certainly could have sinned on the cross, too, by rejecting His death even as He underwent it, but there is something a bit different about this. This would be a different way He could have sinned, but there was still the fact that He had not yet actually gone all the way to death, not volunatarilly. Allowing Himself to be nailed to that cross was truly a consummation of sorts to His acceptance of death.

Simon made up what was lacking in Christ's sufferings, then. In fact, this is exactly the choice of words Paul used in Colossians when he explained his sufferings: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church." (1:24) This is a wonderfully deep statement, in light of what we have been discussing, and it leads directly to the point of all of this. Note that Paul said that it was in his "flesh" that he made up what was lacking, just as Simon had made up in his flesh. Simon provided what was lacking in Christ's bruised and battered humanity. St. Paul said that he was doing the same.

Let's consider one more thing. Simon was one of the most common names amongst Jews at the time of Christ. Cyrene was an important gentile port city, from which the entire world could be reached. Simon of Cyrene, represents, essentially, the everyman. He is the common Jew, and the gentile from anywhere in the world. The place he took is the place that any person could take. When St. Paul bore his own sufferings well, he took the place of Simon. Paul carried his cross, and in carrying his cross, he was not carrying his alone, but that of Christ. He was adding to Christ's afflictions what was lacking, just as Simon did. And when we bear our crosses, we do the same.

And this is the reality of our crosses. Our crosses are not simply difficulties to suffer through out of praise, but to take part in the true sacrifice of Christ. They are sufferings by which we take part in the ultimate praise, the only praise ever complete enough for God, the praise of Christ's offering on the cross. When we bear our crosses, we bear His, and when we bear His, we become a true part of His sacrifice, His sacrifice of praise, His eucharistion (Greek: thanksgiving). We hold up His arms that little bit - out of love. To be His disciple, we must take up our crosses, for apart from that, His cross would lay on the ground with Him just inside the walls of Jerusalem.

This also means something very important, so much more important than anything else. It means that Jesus didn't just die for us but He died for you - personally. Every step He took on the way of the cross was for you and you personally. In the grand mystery of the Incarnation, His steps were at once for all mankind and exclusively for you. He died because He loves you - not because He loved mankind, not because He loved everyone or because He loved me or us, but because He loved YOU.

Thinking of this, our crosses must seem like toothpicks.

Are You Semi-Pelagian?

A shocking question, I know. It has the force to harrow one to the bones just considering it!

But seriously, it is an important question. I came to thinking about it last evening at the vigil for Virginia Tech, when we sang "Amazing Grace." It's a beautiful song, really, in terms of the melody and such, and I must admit I have been known to sing it on my way home from school on occasion. The words are pretty nice, too - the message that is intended is fantastic.

But it's semi-Pelagian, or at least could be understood that way.

Pelagianism is a form of theological belief (considered a heresy by the Catholic Church and virtually every other Christian group in existence) which is named after a man named Pelagius who lived in the latter part of the 4th century. Pelagius taught that man could be saved completely by his own actions. According to Pelagius, a person could live a virtuous enough life, staying away from sins and doing enough good works - to earn the right to enter Heaven as, more or less, a payment from God. Man didn't need any Grace. This is the heresy that Augustine fought so strongly against, occupying a rather large portion of his time in fact. It's also the heresy that is probably most likely to strike horror into the heart of any good Protestant.

Semi-Pelagianism is a belief that developed in the middle of the 5th century in what would later become southern France. It held that Grace was necessary, but that man could make the first step toward God, Who would then respond with the Grace necessary for salvation. It rejects the idea that a person can somehow make his or her way to Heaven apart from God's help, but still holds out the idea that a person can at least start to approach God apart from being called. In semi-Pelagianism, the fallen person asks God to save him or her, and then God does it. This idea was rejected in 529 at the Second Council of Orange, which condemned, among other things, the idea that "the beginning of faith and the very desire of faith... proceeds from our own nature and not from a gift of Grace..."

The orthodox Christian position, the one held by all but a few pockets of Christians, is that Grace comes before anything. Grace is what enables a person to realize his or her need for God, to believe in God, to ask God for salvation, and to do anything else at all. There's some disagreement over whether or not the individual must consent to this Grace (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Evangelicalism, Methodism, Lutheranism, Anglicanism, most Baptists, most Pentacostalism) or whether God simply chooses those who will accept it without the cooperation of the individual (Presbyterianism, most Southern Baptists, other Calvanists), but the fact that God has to reach out to man and not the other way around is all but universally accepted.

The potential problem in "Amazing Grace" is the verse, "How precious did that grace appear, The hour I first believ’d!" This could easily be read to mean that Grace came with the first moment of belief, as if the belief of the speaker prompted the Grace, rather than the orthodox Christian position that the belief was preceded by Grace. This interpretation is strengthend by the fact that the verses immediately preceding speak about some of the benefits of Grace, such as the relief of fear, intimating that the these treasured effects had been gained by merit of the belief.

In any case, I didn't write this for the sake of criticizing this song. I wrote it for the sake of leading us to examine ourselves. Semi-Pelagianism is one of those interesting things in Christianity that nobody believes, but a great number live as if they do. The idea that we go to God for what we need, rather than God calling us to come to Him, is one that at times permeates our lives. This is especially true because of the emphasis that Christianity puts on faith.

We are saved by faith, we must have faith, we must follow God with faith. With this mindset, albeit one based on the truth, it is very easy to fall into the same error as the author of "Amazing Grace" seems to have. We realize that our faith is important - we must have it, and we must exercise it, but beyond that, we must realize that when we exercise our faith or cling to our faith or even simply have faith, we are simply replying "yes" to God's promptings.

This should cause us to rely even more on God. Our faith is not a sort of buzzer by which we can call upon God, hoping He says 'yes.' If anything, our faith is the gift that gave us when we said yes to His buzzer. Saint Paul teaches us that our faith is the gift of Grace, saying, " by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." (Eph. 2:8) The "it" he is referring to is the faith - the faith is not of our own doing, but is the gift of God. We can't even believe apart from God. We utterly rely on Him for everything. Of course, we have to respond, which is gets to what St. Paul talks about in the passage Stephanie brought up, as he says that we must "work out our own salvation." (Phil. 2:12) We have to actually respond with a "yes" when God gives us the Grace to pray, to ask Him for something, to do something good, or even simply to believe.

Yet it is in these moments that we should realize that we couldn't even be doing this apart from Him. When we pray, it is because He loves us enough to enable us to pray to Him. When we goto church, it is because He has given us the Grace to do that, and we should thank Him. When we believe, at each moment that we do, we should thank God and praise Him to High Heaven for the gift of belief, the gift that He gave all of His own Love - all the while realizing that the very praises we are saying are there only as another gift from Him.

He gives us everything. All that we give to God we are simply giving back what He provided in the first place. This is how indebted we are to our God and our Saviour. And this knowledge should lead us to recognize something even more profund. Every moment of faith, and every act of faith, and every good deed, and every prayer, and every second spent inside church, feeding the poor, or placing a few cents into a charity tin at the drive through - each of these moments is another yes to God, another yes just as important as that first moment we came to Christ in the first place. At that time, we said "yes" to His Grace, and at each and every other moment - with every breath we take believing in Jesus Christ - we are saying "yes" to His Grace.

And so how can we fail to pray? How can we not worship God? How can we not keep Him in mind at all moments? For when we do not do these things, we are failing to say "yes." Even if our choices are not at the level of a conscious "no" to the Lord, we are nevertheless passing up an oppurtunity to say "yes." We are passing up an oppurtunity to receive the gift of God, the gift that He offers so freely and at such great cost to Himself. Let us not then be idle in our faith, nor in our works, nor prayers nor our Love, for with each moment passing, our Heavenly, Loving God, Our God Who Loves us more than anyone could and desires the greatest happiness for us, who has given His only Son over to death simply so that we could say "yes" to what we should have been saying "yes" to in the first place, calls to us. Our Divine Spouse awaits, calling - let us go to Him without reserve.

What Easter Means to Us

The tomb is empty, and Jesus Christ is risen. Today, we celebrate how 2,000 years ago, after tremendous suffering and a horrible death, a man rose from the dead and made it possible for all of us to go with Him. You all know the story. We’ve probably all heard it so many times that it may not have the effect it ought to on us anymore. Most of us have been hearing the story of Jesus’ Resurrection since before we were old enough to remember. Some of us may have heard it only a few times, but the fact is that it is the center of our faith and so, in a way, we think of it all throughout the year. Dare I say, we take it for granted all throughout the year.

But this is the story – the historical, real as World War II or the American Revolution or Columbus’ landing in America story – of a man dying one of the most thorough deaths a person can, being taken down from a cross, lifted all about, wrapped up, carried to a tomb, being put inside, and then three days later rising to be no less alive than any one of us is here today. This is something we should be amazed by, not something we should hear passively as though it were an old war story we’re hearing grandpa tell for the hundredth time or that little book we’ve been made to read to our children at bedtime for so many times we’ve lost count.

Unfortunately, that’s how we react. We don’t mean to. I think I could fairly vouch for everyone here that we all wish we didn’t react this way. We wish the story could astound us, confuse us, and shock us like it did those first disciples long ago. When Mary Magdalene went to the tomb on Easter morning, she was shocked to find Jesus’ body gone. What does she say? Does she assume Christ had risen from the dead? No, even after His having spoken of it so many times, the disciples still didn’t get it. Mary’s first thought was that the body had been taken. Moved. Perhaps stolen. Thomas, upon seeing Christ standing in front of him, still couldn’t believe it. This event was so shocking that many of the Jews of the time simply refused to believe it – they couldn’t bring themselves to – and never joined the Christian Church. Saul of Tarsus refused to believe until he was spoken to by Christ in a mystical vision.

If we want to be like these first Christians, we need to follow Christ’s words and be like children. “Unless… you become like children,” He said, “you shall never enter the kingdom of Heaven.” To children, the story of Christ is not new. To children, the story of Christ is as vibrant and real in their minds as the visit to the grocery store to buy things for Easter dinner. To children, the Resurrection of Christ is filled with wonder and awe.

But those of us who are grown have an advantage – and it is an advantage though it doesn’t seem to be. Our advantage is that we understand that people don’t rise from the dead. We understand, now more than ever in this culture of death, war, and violence, that death is final. We know that when our friends, children, and siblings go to Iraq, they might die – and we know what that means. We have been through the suffering of losing a parent or a loved one, and we know the finality of that. We see in the paper each and every day the death that fills the world – and we know that it is something that one does not return from.

But Christ did. He rose from the dead. The finality of death meant nothing to Him. This is what we celebrate today – a man rising from the dead. This is what our faith is about. This event, an event so real it could have been on the front page of the Jerusalem Times if such a thing existed in His day. Christ was like every other poor soul who got themselves in perhaps over their head and ended up dead for it – except He rose. So how can we become like children? How can we become like those first disciples? Well, for one thing we can think of the pains in our own lives. We can imagine the time when a loved on passed on – go ahead, do it - or when a friend was killed. Remember the finality of it - and then imagine they rose from the grave. Imagine they came back. This was the experience that the disciples had. Their friend – their teacher – risen again, come back from the tomb, from the end.

And so I’d like to ask you to think for a moment about what Easter means to us now, here, today. What else can we learn from the first disciples about us today? What does the Resurrection of Christ mean for us? It means death has no hold over us. It means we can escape our sins and go to Heaven – we know that. It’s another thing we take terribly for granted. But that’s the end of the journey. What about right now, in the midst of the journey itself? What does it mean for us as we prepare for that end, realizing that it could come at any moment?

Like Peter, it means that we can return God, or even to a friend or to family, no matter how much we’ve hurt them or how harshly we abandoned them. Like it did Peter, Easter gives us the chance to forget the past altogether and to simply turn to God and say, “I’m sorry.” It gives us the chance to tell Him we love Him, and for us to realize that He accepts us back, even if we have abandoned and denied Him at the most crucial hour. And, what’s more, Peter didn’t just do this - no he rushed. When he was told that Christ had risen, he immediately got up and ran to the tomb to see for himself. When Christ appeared to the disciples as they fished in his boat, Peter didn’t take the few minutes it would have to row the boat ashore. He lept from it, into the water, and swam to meet Jesus as fast as he could. He wanted so desperately to return to God, and on Easter he could. We can too, and we shouldn’t take our time any more than Peter did, but jump out of the boat, get ourselves wet, abandon a catch we had been struggling to make all day, and do anything else we need to simply to get to Jesus as fast as we can.

Like Thomas, it means we have the chance to literally touch God and to see His reality, and that He is ours. In this special time of Grace, He is there in a special way for us that we may see Him as we consider His wounds, and we may realize just what it is He means to us. Easter Sunday wasn’t the first time Thomas doubted; it seemed to be a bit of a personality trait of his. With Thomas, we can see all that Jesus has gone through and that now despite our abandoning Him, He wants us to come with Him still, and we can fall on our knees and say, “My Lord and My God.”

With John, we can see the Glory of God in some terrible suffering we have had to see a friend or loved one go through. As John stood helpless at the foot of the cross and watched Christ suffer agony upon agony, we too may be helpless to stop the suffering of someone we care about. As John finally saw the glory of God in that suffering, as he finally saw all that that suffering was for and all that that suffering really meant, we too can, on this Easter, see in Christ’s Resurrection the glory of God in the suffering of someone – or perhaps ourselves – and the ultimate joy that is born of that suffering.

With Mary, we can learn to trust God regardless of what He does, or asks of us, to know that His ways and the difficult times He allows us to go through are for our own good if we will embrace Him. Jesus’ poor mother had to stand by and watch as her son was abused, mocked, tortured, and killed – all for having done nothing wrong. No human being could possibly go through more suffering than this poor Woman. Yet she trusted God, knowing He would deliver her son – and herself – from it all, and on Easter morning, He finally did. With Mary, we can learn to trust God and go through with things His way, rather than our own, surrendering our own understandings and even our own desires and opinions to for the sake of what He asks. We can recognize that even if we think there is a better way, even if perhaps we see what God asks as being a bit unfair or a bit harsh, in the end His way is the way of true compassion. His way is the way of love. His way is the way that leads to the Resurrection, and to the unsurpassed joy of Easter morning. With Mary, we can put aside our own confusions, opinions, and understandings, trust in and follow after God, and wait for that Easter morning in our lives when it all suddenly makes sense.

And finally like Christ Himself, we can recognize that the mockery and hatred, the stripes on our backs, and the spittle in our faces that are given us unjustly by those who do not understand needn’t bother us. Christ did not deserve death. He did not deserve to be beaten. He did not deserve to be spit upon or to be mocked or to be reviled. In fact, He deserved the highest glory and honor a person could receive. But He accepted all these things willingly, lovingly. He didn’t hate those who did Him injustice, but loved and prayed for them. He didn’t let them bother Him, and He didn’t compromise for them. He did what God asked of Him, trusting in Him completely, and caring only what God asked of Him. He turned to God in His difficult times and in His easy times, and He didn’t make exceptions. As the ungodly did Him harm, He never forgot the Godly friends He did have, even when they abandoned Him. He realized that John and His Mother were there with Him even in His own suffering, and in the midst of all the mockery, hatred, and violence, He turned to them to love them. He turned to John as a friend, and to Mary as His Mother.

And in the end, none of that mockery mattered. None of the pain Christ endured mattered. Mary’s confusion was erased, and Easter morning answered any of the questions she may have had about why things were as they were. The suffering John went through didn’t matter either in the end, except perhaps to make the ultimate outcome more joyful. Thomas’ doubts were answered, and he found a faith like he had never had before. And Peter – poor Peter. His sins were forgiven, as terrible as they were, and Christ accepted Him back lovingly. On this day, on Easter Sunday, none of these sins, doubts, fears, confusions or sufferings mattered. All that mattered was Christ, a man, risen from the dead, making it possible for us to rise with Him. Let us see that Christ is risen for us today, and that all of this is a reality for us even now – if we only ask for it. Alleluia, Christ is risen. Truly, He is Risen.