Saturday, October 30, 2021

Overcoming Spiritual ADHD

 


What Does It Mean To Love God With Your Whole Mind, Heart, Soul, and Strength?
Reflections of the Readings for the 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year B

Readings:
Deuteronomy 6:2-6
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 12:28b-34


A lawyer, a doctor and the parish pastor went hunting. When they saw a buck, all three of them shot at the deer simultaneously. But only one shot struck the buck. An argument broke out among them on whose bullet struck the deer and succeeded in killing it. A game warden came on the scene to see what was going on. The three men told him that they were arguing about whose bullet struck the deer. The warden said, “I’ll settle this.” Then he turned and walked over to the deer to examine it. After examining the deer, the officer settled the matter. “The pastor shot the buck,” he said with confidence. “How can you tell that it was the pastor’s?” inquired the three. “I can tell,” replied the warden, “because it went in one ear and out the other.” That can happen to us when the priest, who is acting in persona Christi, is aiming the Word of God at us, aiming for the heart. Unfortunately, most of the time it doesn’t make it to the heart, but goes in one ear and out the other. God is always aiming for our heart, whether it is when the Word of God is being proclaimed, or when the Word of God is communicating himself in every moment through the people and events around us. God aims for the heart, but we are moving targets. We have spiritual ADHD, as it were. God’s communication of himself to us is happening in every moment in some way, but his communication is not reaching our heart, but is going in one ear and out the other, as it were.

Speaking of ADHD, and going in one ear and out the other, one Halloween, in the Learning Center, during the Language Arts block, the students were each given a gift bag of candy and watched a movie. By the time they came to my block for mathematics they were on a sugar high and in a non-academic mood. Sugar multiplies ADHD! The students couldn’t stop talking. I was trying in vain to get them to focus. I kept telling them to stop talking to one another and focus on the assigned tasks. At one point, I spoke very sternly. They did stop talking, at least for a short time, but after a few moments, when I had turned around, I could hear a couple of students talking again. Feeling very frustrated, I turned around and said loudly, “Why am I still hearing voices?” One of the students spoke up, “I don’t know, Fr. Max. Maybe you should talk to Dr. Lamourt (the psychologist).” I responded loudly, “Well, if I am crazy, it is you guys who are driving me crazy.” That of course, got the whole class laughing and prompted further distraction. I felt like yelling some more, but I decided just to stand there quietly for a few moments and pray, as I often do, for patience and for God to give me the grace of recognizing his presence in the moment, and how he is communicating himself to me in that moment through the frustrating situation and through the very kids who are prompting my frustration. It worked, as it usually does. I eventually became more calm and got control of the classroom and did not have to call the disciplinarian. 

Speaking of going crazy, Dr. Karl Menninger, the famous psychiatrist, during a lecture on mental health, was asked the question, “What would you advise a person to do if that person felt a nervous breakdown coming on?” Of course, everyone was expecting that Dr. Menninger’s advice to such a person would be to seek counseling or consult a psychiatrist.” To their astonishment, he replied, “If a person felt a nervous breakdown coming on, I would tell that person to ‘lock up your house, go across the highway, find someone in need and do something to help that person.’” That is the most effective psychological therapy: relieving the stress and anxiety of obsessive concern for self-preservation by directing our attention and energy into loving service. That is the greatest stress reliever. But this always comes with a challenge: we are called to love God with our whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength, but we are called to do it in a world that is full of challenges; in a world that is broken; a world in which we are constantly faced with the challenges of trying to love people whose brokenness can make them difficult to love. Because of this, we have a tendency to become like the Scribes and Pharisees whom Jesus often criticizes: who would build a protective wall of religious pretension around themselves as a way of protecting themselves from the challenges and difficulties of loving others.  

We can become like Ralphy. One Sunday the family was at mass. When the collection basket came around, Ralphy reached into his pocket and pulled out a quarter and dropped it in the basket. After mass, Dad asked him, “Was that quarter all you had to give?” “No,” replied Ralphy, “I also had a dollar.” Dad asked, “Why didn’t you put in the dollar?” "Well,” Ralphy explained.” I was going to give the dollar, but then I remembered what the priest said: ‘God loves a cheerful giver.’ I knew that I'd be a lot more cheerful if I gave the quarter, than if I gave the dollar." Love involves cheerful giving even when the challenges are the greatest. Loving God means getting my hands dirty, working, serving, and frequently getting frustrated as I engage in my relationships with other people.

I repeat the challenge: We are called, as we heard in the Gospel today, to love God with our whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength, but we are called to do it in a world that is full of challenges; in a world that is broken; a world in which we are constantly faced with the challenges of trying to love people whose brokenness can make them difficult to love. It seems to me that loving God is easier than loving one’s fellow human beings. Why can’t I just love God and get the credit for that?!!! It is easy for me to sit and meditate before the Blessed Sacrament and pray the Rosary. I love to go to mass, and to preside at mass as a priest. Isn’t that loving God? Well, the answer of course is: not if I want to love God with my whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength. These exercises support my effort at loving God, but loving God means getting my hands dirty, working, serving, and frequently getting frustrated as I engage in my relationships with other people. Love involves relationship. Sometimes I am more passive while God engages my heart, soul, mind and body in the solitary activities of prayer and meditation, but most of the time, the way that he is engaging my mind, heart, soul and body in divine interaction is in the context of my active engagement in my relationships and interactions with other people. Most of the time, I am more active than passive in my communicating with God and engaging myself in relationship with him. During most of my day, the way that I am communicating with God is through my loving service to others, and I am allowing him to communicate himself to me through my openness to his presence in the events that are demanding my engagement, and in the people with whom I am engaged and whom I am serving. Whenever I am engaged in loving service I am communicating with God. I am worshipping him and communicating my love for him as I carry out my daily service with the awareness of God’s presence in the others whom I am serving. I am communicating my love for God when I carry out my service to others with the very care and concern that is demanded of a relationship with God. Since God demands that I love him with my whole mind, whole heart, whole soul, and whole strength, then I must therefore carry out my loving service of other people with my whole mind, heart, soul, and strength engaged. Love is a divine interaction. It is an engagement of the mind, heart, soul and body together. God’s way of engaging us in this divine interaction in our daily lives is by engaging our mind, heart, soul and strength in the interactions between those whom he created for divine interaction: those whom he created in his image and likeness; those whom he created precisely for this divine interaction: you, me and every human being that I come in contact with. Let us not be like the Pharisees like those whom Jesus criticizes: They felt that they could love God by engaging in worship, prayer and sacrifice, and not have to care for those around them in need. Just as he did to them, he wants to jolt us out of our comfort zone, not just once but in every moment as he presents himself in each moment with the demand to love him with our whole mind, heart, soul and strength, not just when we pray, but always.

Wakeup Call

A spiritual writer once said: “To live with the saints above, that is the highest glory. But to live with the saints below, that is another story.”

The scribe in today’s Gospel reading came to Jesus and asked, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus replied by juxtaposing two commandments: love of God and love of neighbor. He connected the Shema Israel: to love God with your whole heart, soul, mind and strength, with the command to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus was acutely aware of how the Scribes and the Pharisees had separated the two precepts in practice. They felt that they could fulfill the Shema Israel, to love God completely, without engaging in the effort at loving your neighbor. They felt that they could love God by engaging in worship, prayer and sacrifice, and not have to care for those around them in need. They also felt that they could seek reconciliation with God and forgiveness from God and not have to seek reconciliation and forgiveness between their fellow human beings. But Jesus seeks to disrupt their feeling of comfort about this. He wants to jolt them out of their comfort zone by making clear to them that you cannot love God without loving your neighbor, and you cannot gain forgiveness and reconciliation with God without seeking reconciliation and forgiveness with your neighbor. We hear this is the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We hear it in Jesus’ portrayal of the Last Judgment: “Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters you did for me.” There is no loving God independently of loving our neighbor. St. John makes this even more explicit: “If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. (John 4:20-21)

I remember going a whole year avoiding a confrere in the monastery who offended me. I wouldn’t sit near him at table or other social settings to talk. During that year I received Holy Communion daily and would engage in my usual morning meditation before the Blessed Sacrament. One day, as I was meditating before the Blessed Sacrament, that passage from John, which I just quoted, came to my mind and I suddenly felt a deep crises of conscience: I was receiving Jesus in the Holy Eucharist every day and adoring him in the Blessed Sacrament while at the same time holding a grudge toward a confrere. That day I sought him out and we got together to talk. What was so funny (or perhaps I should say, sad, and even embarrassing) was that I could not for the life of me remember just what it was that caused me to feel so offended. He couldn’t remember either.

That was really a wakeup call for me!

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Thursday, October 21, 2021

Entering into the Cathedral is like entering the Heart of God

 

Entering into the Newark Cathedral is like entering the Heart of God
Reflection for the Feast of the Dedication of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart of Newark
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Walking into the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark is like walking into the Bible. Catholic and Orthodox churches, in general, are like this. Orthodox churches are especially like a picture Bible. You can learn so much about the historical events and prophetic revelations of the Bible by reading the icons which completely surround you. In most Catholic churches it is quite similar: you have paintings, statues, mosaics, freises, Stained-glass windows, etc. which teach about the mysteries expounded in the Scriptures. The Bible mysteries are made present as these images stir up the physical imagination, which is the first step in stirring up the supernatural imagination. Word and sacrament are key means that the Holy Spirit uses to activate the image and likeness of God in us, and what better space for that to happen than in the Newark cathedral basilica, with all its sacramentals, which include not only the sacramental art and architecture that help to make the Biblical mysteries present, but also the angelic choir and grand organ that help us worship and praise the Lord in the presence of the angels and saints.

Any church, especially the Cathedral, is a place where Catholics can feel the same sense of holy fear as Jacob did, and say with him, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it! . . .How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” The presence of the Blessed Sacrament gives it a place and presence and encounter with the Lord. Catholics are taught from an early age that the Lord is especially present in the church. We are taught to dip our fingers into the holy water font as we walk in to sign ourselves as a sign by which we acknowledge that we recognized that the Lord is present. We bow and/or genuflect as we enter our pew. We may go to light a candle and make a visit to the tabernacle.

For most protestant and non denominational Christians the church is merely a meeting or assembly place for worship services. They take seriously, as we do, the words of Jesus, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.” For them, the church becomes a place of presence and encounter with the Lord when people gather there in his name, to proclaim the Word and worship in song and prayer. The non denominational Christian, if they go into the church space alone to pray, it is for the quiet, not, I believe, because they believe that there is something about that space which makes it a space where God is present in a special way, different than the manner that he would be present in any other space where that person may be by him or herself praying. This is not so for Catholics. Early in the history of the Catholic Church, especially because of the belief in the real and continued presence of Christ in the consecrated hosts, the space in which the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, is regarded by Catholics as a space of real and special presence of the Lord, different from the ordinary way that he is present elsewhere. That is why Catholics have always endeavored to construct and fill the spaces for worship and sacramental rites, especially churches, where the Blessed Sacrament is perpetually present, with grand art and architecture in order to convey a sense of being in the presence of the supernatural; in order to convey a sense of being in the place where heaven descends? When I was a child, our pastor at St. Lucy’s Church, Fr. Thomas Ritucci, would often say to us altar servers that the church is a place where we are in the presence of the communion of saints and angels in a special way, and where heaven descends in the celebration of the sacrifice of the mass. I would always think about this as I served at mass, always imagining throngs of saints and angels present, and heaven descending, especially at the time of the consecration of the sacred species into the Body and Blood of Christ. This childhood excitement revives in me when I am in the Newark Cathedral. That childhood awe at imagining myself in the presence of angels and saints is facilitated in a special way as I look up at the clerestory stained glass windows with the glowing, even ethereal, images of angels and saints above. Sometimes, as I gaze at the rose windows, as they glow brightly with the bright sunlight, I imagine myself like Moses in the presence of the burning bush. This is exactly what a church is meant to do. This is what the Newark Cathedral does. And it is quite apropos that it is named for the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It is in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus that we become true children of our heavenly Father. The Cathedral church models the Church which is the Body of Christ, within which beats the heart of the Creator, beating through the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Cathedral Church serves as a sacramental sign of our entry into the very heart of Jesus - of the very heart of God. So, in addition to likening the entering into the Cathedral Church to an entering into the Bible, I think we can also liken our entry into the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart to an entering into the heart of God.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Sunday, October 17, 2021

The Suffering Servant Messiah and the Authority of Love

 

Human Expectations about Rank and Privilege Are Turned Upside Down by the Power and Authority of Love
A Reflection of the Readings for the 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year B
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Readings:
Isaiah 53:10-11
Hebrews 4:14-16
Mark 10:35-45

James and John’s vying for greater status makes me think about a story that I heard. There were three high school classmates who always were vying to be better than each other, each aspiring to outperform the others. Many years after they graduated high school, the three classmates met in a class reunion. Each was anxious to prove that he had outdone the other in career aspirations. “I am a pastor,” said the first, “people call me ‘Monsignor.’” “Well,” bragged the second, “I am a bishop and people call me ‘Your Excellency.’” “Well,” said the third, “I have you both beat.” “Yeah? How?” asked the other two. “I’m an auditor for the IRS. When people open the door and see me, they say, ‘My God, it’s you again!”

I have another story. This one is true, or perhaps a legend. It took place more than 250 years ago. On one occasion during the American Revolutionary War, preparations were being made for an up-coming battle. A man dressed in civilian clothes passed by a corporal who was screaming orders at his men. Seeing that they were obviously exhausted from their labor, the man asked the corporal, “Why don’t you help them?” “Sir,” the corporal bristled as his anger rose, “I am a corporal!” With a quick apology, the stranger took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and set to work with the soldiers. When the work was completed, he walked over to the corporal and said, “Mr. Corporal, Sir, whenever you need someone to help with a job, feel free to call on me, your commander-in-chief. I will be happy to be of service.” With that, George Washington put on his coat and left, to the corporal’s embarrassment, of course. Whether George Washington’s motivation was gospel-driven or not, Washington understood the principle that Jesus was conveying to his apostles in the Gospel passage (Mark 10:35-45), that those who aspire to greatness, or aspire to rank first among others, must serve the needs of all - they must be, as Jesus said, the slave of all. For Jesus, a person’s status is no longer to be measured by how many people are subject to that person, or how many people serve that person, but how many people to whom that person is subject through loving service. This principle does not accord with human reason. The corporal’s position seems more reasonable. Incidents like this one with Washington and his corporal stand out so much because they are uncommon. People resist it because of its apparent unreasonableness. That is why this principle has not found a universal foothold in society at large. I may insist that I am not seeking greatness and power over other people, but if I examine my motives deeply and honestly, I will often discover that I am actually seeking to be better than others or exercise power over others in much smaller matters, even in my ministry. That could happen with anyone, whether lay or religious: we may be using our reason to rationalize a grasp for power and control over others in our job and/or in our family.

Let me tell you a story that happened this week that got me reflecting on my own use of authority and power. One of the students I tutor sent an email to Dr. Fletcher, the music teacher and band director, to inform him that he would be late to band practice the next day after school because of tutoring. The email read: “Good evening Dr. Fletcher, I just wanted to let you know that I have torturing tomorrow after school.” Dr. Fletcher shared that with other members of the faculty and staff - blocking out, of course, the name of the student). When I viewed it, I wondered, “is that just a misspelling? Maybe he meant it figuratively as a way of expressing how onerous is the task of addressing skills deficiencies? Or perhaps, God forbid, he meant it literally?” One of the faculty members who read it asked me, “What is it that you do after school when you are tutoring?” “Well,” I responded, “I do whatever it takes to get them to learn.” It has made me reflect in recent days on how I personally exercise power over others, in particular, my students. It is important to act with authority; the students need that. However, I have to ask myself if I am guilty of exercising authority for the sake of exercising authority, or for ensuring that I am successful. In that case, I am really meeting the needs of the students, or am I meeting my own disordered desires. I have to be careful that I am not putting my aspiration to be successful with the student - to be successful in developing his learning skills - ahead of that student’s need to grow in self-confidence and self-esteem. I may even use the power of reason to rationalize that I am helping the student even when I am actually harming him by neglecting to nurture his self-esteem. Reason is good and necessary for life in this world. It is a gift from God to be used for living well and continually improving society. But I must always be aware that reason can turn into rationalization by which I can convince myself that what I am doing is good for others, even when my deeper motivation is self-interest, and doing it may not necessarily be in the best interest of others.

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, had a strong desire for success and had lofty aspirations. But those desires and aspirations, to the extent that they were influenced by self-interest, were disorder desires and aspirations, even if they seemed very reasonable. On the contrary, properly ordered desires and aspirations flow from self-sacrificial love, even if they can, to many, seem very unreasonable. That is the lesson that Jesus was teaching his disciples, and is teaching us.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus turns human expectations about rank and privilege, about ambitions and authority, upside down, even to the point that it sounds unreasonable. What Jesus is making very clear to us today is that God is not reasonable. God does not act from reason. Human beings, who can only understand and make decisions by the use of successional, sequential, and analytical thinking, make use of the power of reason that they have been endowed with. But God does not think and make decisions by the use of reason. God’s thought and his being are one, and the nature of his being is love. So, when it appears to us that God is being unreasonable, it is because he, in fact, does not use reason as we do. His thought completely transcends what human reason can attain. Jesus comes into this world to radically change the way that we think about God. He turns things on their head. He regularly makes declarations that are totally unreasonable. For example, after giving the same wages to those who worked only one hour as he did to those who worked 12 hours, he said to those who protested (Matthew 20:15-16), “. . .are you envious because I am generous? So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” That is totally unreasonable. It is not fair. Reason tells us that God must be fair. So it is reasonable to expect God to be fair. Well, not according to Jesus. According to Jesus, God is not fair, God is merciful. Fairness is a way of judging actions according to reason. But God judges - God views things - from the perspective of his transcendent being, which is love. And Jesus challenges us also to attempt to go beyond what is reasonable to that which transcends reason so that we can gain a better sense of how God thinks and acts, and ourselves act Godly - that is, lovingly.

In summary, Jesus wants his followers to see that the highest authority by which one can act and influence other people is the authority of love. Love flows from self-sacrifice rather than self-interest, and Jesus wants his followers to imitate him in that kind of exercise of authority. In the Gospel passage from Luke (22:25-27), he says to his disciples, “. . .‘The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.” Thus, Jesus counters the human expectation for a messiah that exercises great power and authority in the world to overthrow the existing political order, to reveal that the real messiah is a suffering servant. That is most unreasonable. But the power and authority of God transcends what is reasonable: that is, the power and authority of love.

The exercise of the authority of love is self-transcending. It is self-transcending because it is God himself activating his image and likeness in me with his Holy Spirit living and acting in and through me. If it is merely I who am being merciful, then I have not transcended my self. I may be doing what is reasonable for me to do in aspiring to be good, but it is unlikely that I am authentically exercising the authority of love. But if God is being merciful through me, as is the case when I show mercy toward others that is beyond my own power to love, such as in the case of loving my enemies, it is then that I am transcending my self and am manifesting a love-response that is a perfect activation of God’s image and likeness in me in its fullness. It is then that I am being perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect. It is then that I am drinking of the cup that Jesus drank, and being baptized with the baptism with which Jesus was baptized. In fact, it is then then that, through me, Jesus continues to drink of that cup of redemptive mercy, and it is then that, through me, Jesus continues to be baptized with the baptism of self-sacrificing love. It is then that Jesus is exercising the power and authority of love in and through me. Amen.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Saturday, October 16, 2021

Not Justification but Mercification


We are not justified by faith, but mercified through a living faith

A Reflection on the Readings for Saturday of the 28th Week of Ordinary Time
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Readings:
Romans 4:13, 16-18
Luke 12:8-12


One of the students I tutor sent an email to Dr. Fletcher, the music teacher and band director, to inform him that he would not be able to make it to band practice after school. The email read: “Good evening Dr. Fletcher, I just wanted to let you know that I have torturing tomorrow after school.” I wonder if that was just a misspelling, or he meant it figuratively, or, perhaps, even meant it literally. Dr. Fletcher shared that email with other faculty members. One of the faculty members asked me, “What is it that you do after school with the students when you tutor?” “Well,” I responded, “I do whatever it takes to get them to learn.” I think that it can only be experienced as torture when I have to break through a student’s defensive denial of his need for help. The kind of student that I am not able to help is the student that is in denial of having a learning or skills deficiency that needs to be addressed. I think that this is kind of what Jesus was talking about when he says, “. . .whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” Denial of one’s sinfulness and denial of one’s need for forgiveness can be taken as a kind of blasphemy. It is a kind of blasphemy because it denies what and who the Holy Spirit is. As a result, the Holy Spirit cannot act in such a person according to the Holy Spirit's very nature which is to be merciful, and according to that person’s very nature, which is to be a channel of God’s mercy. Denying what we are created to be - that is, both an object and subject of God’s mercy - is a kind of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Denying the Holy Spirit’s mercy is denying what the Holy Spirit is, which is mercy. To act against forgiveness is to prevent the Spirit’s power in us to forgive. A “sin against the Spirit” is any action that prevents God from being God in our life – and it is unforgivable because we lock out the very access to forgiveness that would transform our lives. God wants to activate the image and likeness of himself in us through the power of love, to work his mercy in and through us so that we can become what he has created us to be. When I go about all day doing all of my service work - tutoring, counseling, teaching, and then come home to clean the refectory, dust and vacuum, and then go to bed tired from all of the good works that I have done, feeling that I am justified by all of the good work that I have done, and then forget to do an examination of conscience and seek God’s mercy, by this, I am blocking the work of the Spirit in me to work his mercy in and through me. In this way I am in a certain sense acting against forgiveness. To act against forgiveness is to prevent the Spirit’s power in me to forgive. So not only will I not be forgiven, but I will be less able to forgive others.

I sin against the Holy Spirit when I think of my justification by faith as a quid pro quo affair - I do this and God will do that. St. Paul worked hard to disassociate the word, justification, a very legalistic term, from its legalistic meaning when applied to God’s action. As I said, the word, justification, implies a quid pro quo - I do this and God will do that; I put my faith in him and do good works and God will reward me with eternal life. But that is not the nature of the justification which is worked in us by the Holy Spirit. It is not quid pro quo. It depends 100 percent on God’s action in me. It is gift. Thus, I propose a better word than “justification” to describe what the Holy Spirit is doing in us: he is not justifying us, he is “mercifying” us. The action of the Spirit in us, when we are allowing him to live and work in us, can best be described as “mercification,” not justification. Putting my faith in Jesus Christ and doing all of the things that are associated with a life of faith, such as fasting, prayer and good works, are not the means of my justification, but the way that I cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the process of “mercification” in me, so that he can not only mercify me but, in turn, work his mercification through me. I am not being justified by faith. Rather, I am being mercy-fied by faith. Through faith I am being forgiven and becoming ever more a forgiving and loving person, and this is happening in the context of a living faith working through love.

Once again in today’s reading from Romans (4:13, 16-18), St. Paul talks about the righteousness that comes through faith. As I said in a previous reflection, the faith through which justification comes - or, using my term, the faith through which mercification comes - must be a living faith that works through love. A living faith is a loving faith, and a loving faith is a living faith. The justification which comes through a living faith is not a justification which comes from faith-acts or faith-works, but a justification which comes from the Spirit of Christ living and active in us who acts in the world through us - through our living, loving faith. That is why I prefer to refer to it as mercification. Our actions of living-faith flow from the life of the Spirit of love in us. As Christians – in particular monks – ours is a life of faith. We are not called just to have faith, but to live it. We are not asked to live good lives, but to live lives in which Goodness himself is living and active in us. We are called to live lives that manifest a living faith in Jesus Christ, lives in which the image and likeness of God in us is fully activated. That is what a living faith is: the activation of the image and likeness of God in us. St. Paul said that we are justified by faith. I propose that we are justified neither by faith nor by works: we are justified by the Spirit of Christ living within us, enlivening us with faith-life, which is at the same time love-life. What really matters to our personal salvation is not faith-works but faith-life, which is the activation of the image and likeness of God in us as faith working through love. We are called to a living-faith which is a loving-faith, which spontaneously finds expression in a life of love, in a lifestyle that allows the Spirit of Christ to live in and through us so that his, and our, heavenly Father can touch the lives of his children in and through us. That is the goal of our faith-life, to which everything else is secondary.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

The Unclean Spirit's Return

 

Our soul must be a house that accommodates the Spirit of love
A Reflection on Luke 11:24-26
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it wanders through waterless regions looking for a resting place, but not finding any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ When it comes, it finds it swept and put in order. Then it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and live there; and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” (Luke 11:24-26)

Reading this, my reaction is, “Why bother trying to overcome evil in myself if every good and successful effort to become virtuous and overcome sinful tendencies in myself just results in the introduction of an even harder challenge, seven times harder to overcome than the last?” This can cause me to become disheartened in my pursuit of virtue and holiness. But I think that what Jesus is warning his hearers about in today’s Gospel passage is the same thing that St. Paul warns his hearers about often: the temptation to be presumptuous about the effectiveness of our own abilities and talents for achieving virtue and holiness. 

In the Gospel parable spoken by Jesus, the clean house, swept and put in order, that the unclean spirit finds upon its return, is the house of the soul where order is imposed through ascetical practices and religious observances, not carried out in humble obedience, and that are effective in fostering virtue, but have no capacity to introduce love into the soul. The house of the soul becomes a clean but empty room. St. Paul describes the emptiness of such a soul (1 Corinthians 13:1-3): “. . .if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.” In this state, my soul is perfectly clean and ordered; but it is not tidied and ordered to accommodate the spirit of mercy and charity. Rather, it is better ordered to accommodate the spirits associated with pride and self-interest. In this state my soul is not prepared for the activation of the image and likeness of God in me, but, instead, is prepared for the activation of spiritual pride and human ambition. My soul is not a home where the Spirit of Christ feels comfortable and at home. My ascesis and religious observance do not serve as a preparation for the activation of the image and likeness of God in me by the indwelling and action of the Spirit of Christ in me. Through intense ascesis and religious practices, I may clean and order my soul, making my soul perfectly clean and ordered; but if it is not tidied and ordered through humility and obedience, I may be unwittingly cleaning and ordering my soul to better accommodate the spirit of pride and its associated self-interest spirits, rather than preparing my soul to better accommodate the spirit of mercy and charity. The unclean spirit of pride returns to my soul and is delighted to find a space so accommodating that it invites all of its seven fellow unclean spirits of anger, fear, envy, jealousy, hypocrisy, arrogance and lust. A soul that is not filled with love is a space just waiting to be filled with the unclean spirits associated with pride and self-interest.

A soul, on the other hand, that is emptied and made clean by openness and obedience to the Spirit of Christ becomes a house most accommodating to the Spirit of love, and quickly and readily becomes filled with, and occupied with - the clean and holy spirit of charity. The soul that is filled with the Spirit of charity leaves no space for the self-building ambition of pride and its associated unclean spirits of selfish interest. Let us daily endeavor to do the housecleaning of our soul with humble listening to the Word of God and receiving the Lord in humble obedience, so that our soul becomes ever increasingly a house that accommodates Christ’s Spirit of Love.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

The Rich Young Man and the Perfect Gift of Self

 


Being a Christian Is About Making a Full Gift of Self Through Love
Reflection of the Readings for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year B
By Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Readings:
Wisdom 7:7-11
Hebrews 4:12-13
Mark 10:17-30

I read a story about the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley. In this story he had a dream. In this dream, he came to the gates of hell and asked, “What kind of people are here, Catholics?” The answer was, “Yes, many.” “Also, Anglicans?” “Yes, many” was the answer. “Also Lutherans, Baptists and Orthodox?” The answer was always the same, “Yes, many.” And what about the Methodists?” “Also plenty,” was the answer. This made Wesley feel very distressed. So he then went to the gates of heaven. He knocked at the door and asked the same question. “Are there any Catholics here?” “No, not a single one,” was the answer. “And Anglicans?” “No, not one!” “What about Lutherans, Baptists and Orthodox?” “No, none,” was again the answer. Finally he dared to ask, “what about Methodists?” “No, not a single one here.” Wesley was horrified, and, with deep vexation, asked, “Well, what kind of people are there in heaven anyway?” The answer came, “Only Christians.”

What might this mean that there are only Christians in heaven? Does it mean that Jews, Moslems, Buddhists or people adhering to other religious beliefs cannot get into heaven. Well, I believe that the readings today give us clues to the type of person who will be admitted to heaven. The person who qualifies for admission to heaven can indeed be called a Christian, but what, then, is the definition of a Christian? Today’s readings make clear that being a true Christian is about being a true person of God, and being a true person of God is not about perfect adherence to a particular set of doctrines and laws, but about making a total gift of self to God by making a total gift of self to others through love. Solomon does not pray for the ability to adhere to a set of doctrines and laws, but for the living spirit of wisdom - the Spirit of God, which is the Spirit of love - to dwell in his heart, so that he may make a better gift of self in the service of love toward his subjects. The passage from Hebrews speaks, not about the word of God as being conveyed through laws and doctrines and scriptures, but about the word being living and active and penetrating the heart - something that doctrines and laws cannot do. Jesus challenges the rich young man, who is already adhering perfectly to the Law and the doctrines of the faith, to make a total gift of self if he wants to be truly made perfect and inherit eternal life.

I am convinced that being a Christian is more about making a total gift of self through love than it is about adhering to a particular set of doctrines. I don’t know if John Wesley actually had that dream, but if he did, when the Lord says that the only kind of people in heaven are Christians, I would interpret “Christians” to refer precisely to those people who have made a total gift of self through love. This is not to deny that Christians have an obligation to humbly pursue right thinking about the nature of God, his revelations, and his interventions in human history, but this later aspect is secondary to the principal goal of Christianity: that is, to imitate Christ’s total gift of self, who, “. . .emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:6-8) This is the true Christian way because it is the way of love. It is the way that we activate the image and likeness of God in us, and thereby activate in ourselves the vehicle by which the Lord channels his faithful loving mercy into the world through us. This is the Christian way, no matter what particular religious denomination one belongs to. Although Jesus set up the one Church, which has continued under the name Catholic for two millennia, through which he conveys and preserves the truths of the faith, and dispenses the graces sacramentally for a life of redemptive suffering and love, one’s receiving of these graces, and exercising of this redemptive love in imitation of Christ, does not necessarily require an explicit membership in the Roman Catholic Church with an explicit adherence to the doctrines that it puts forth through its Magisterium, but an implicit membership and implicit adherence to its doctrines, which is attained by the activation of the image and likeness of God in oneself through a sincere pursuit of truth and a life of love. To prove that one’s faith and membership in the one Church set up by Christ does not have to be fully explicit, Jesus tells us the parable of the Last Judgment (Matthew 25:31-46). The king invites those on his right to enter their eternal reward because they have given themselves in service to him by feeding him when he was hungry, giving him drink when he was thirsty, clothing him when he was naked, welcoming him as a stranger, caring for him when he was sick, and visiting him when he was confined. These righteous people did not have an awareness of having acted with such explicit faith and knowledge, asking, “. . .when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?” The faith of these righteous people, and their membership in the Church as people of God was implicit as the image and likeness of God in them was activated in the service of the Lord. What is more important than explicit membership in he Catholic Church and explicit adherence to its laws and doctrines is the explicit expression of what that membership and adherence to doctrine is meant to facilitate: namely, the activation of the image and likeness of God in us for the service of love. I may be a devout Catholic and I may be able to adhere to the fullness of doctrine that comes from the Magisterial authority of the Roman Catholic Church; I may (1 Corinthians 13) “. . .have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge” that is made available through the Catholic Church. I may have a Catholic “faith so as to move mountains but [if I] do not have love, I am nothing.” “If I give away everything I own” to be a Catholic, and “if I hand my body over so that I may boast” of being Roman Catholic, “but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

It is true that it is Jesus Christ who bears the Spirit of God into the world, and into human souls, so it is therefore also true that any person in whom the Spirit of God - the Spirit of Christ - dwells actively can, in a proper sense, be called Christian. So, when the Lord tells Wesley in his dream that only Christians are in heaven, it should be taken to mean that only those in whom the Spirit of Christ - the Spirit of God - is active - that is, only those in whom the image and likeness of God is fully activated - are the people who are in heaven.

I want to be in heaven some day, and I am confident that it is the Church that Jesus established, namely, the Catholic Church, which makes it possible for me, and everyone else destined for heaven, to prepare our souls for the heavenly state. To those of us who have an explicit membership in the Catholic Church, St. Paul says (Ephesians 1:8-10), “With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” That is why I am so happy to be a member of the Roman Catholic Church. Being a member of the Catholic Church certainly is a privilege, and I certainly feel privileged to have been baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, to be able to be a member of a monastic religious community, and more recently to be ordained a priest. But none of this should be seen by me as something for me to boast about, but rather to be humble about. I must never see my membership in the Roman Catholic Church as giving me an advantage for salvation over other people who are living a life of mercy and love but may not be members of the Catholic Church. I must rather always consider whether I am being true to my Catholic faith by living a life of mercy and charity - that is, a life in which the image and likeness of God is fully activated in me. I must always remember that, no matter what my religious membership may be, the Spirit that judges me is “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12-13); remembering always that I will be principally judged on the state of my heart, and on a living faith from which flows love that is a total gift of self.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Sunday, October 3, 2021

At Last Bone of My Bones and Flesh of My Flesh


Created to be Perfect for the Marriage of Divine Love
A Reflection on the Readings for the 27th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Year B
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Readings:

Genesis 2:18-24

Hebrews 2:9-11

Mark 10:2-16


Made Perfect through sufferings means being made perfect for a loving relationship

When the author of the Letter to the Hebrews (2:9-11) declares that Jesus was made perfect through suffering, he was not talking about Jesus being made perfect in his nature - which, of course was already perfect - nor was he talking about Jesus being made perfect in grace - in which he was likewise also already perfect. When it says that Jesus was made perfect through suffering, it means that Jesus was made perfect for identifying with and deeply empathizing with human beings in their suffering, and he was made perfect for offering that suffering to our common Father as the suffering of God. Here is a little story to illustrate this point.

A man put up a sign in front of his house that read: “Puppies for Sale.” Soon after, a young boy came in to inquire. “Please, Mister,” he said, “I’d like to buy one of your puppies.” “Well, son,” the man replied, “they’re $25.” The boy looked crushed. “I’ve only got two dollars and five cents. Could I see them anyway?” “Of course. Maybe we can work something out,” said the man. The lad’s eyes danced at the sight of those five little balls of fur. “I can offer you this one here for $2.00. She has a defect in her leg.” said the man. “Oh yes,” replied the boy excitedly, “she would be perfect for me.” “Well, you know,” warned the man, “that dog will be crippled for life.” “That’s definitely the puppy I want.” The man said again, “But she’ll always have a limp.” Smiling, the boy pulled up one pant leg, revealing a brace supporting his leg due to a congenital defect. “I don’t walk good either.” Then, looking at the puppy sympathetically, he continued, “I guess she’ll need a lot of love and help. I sure did. It’s not so easy being crippled.” “Here, take her,” said the man. “I know you’ll give her a good home. Forget the money.” In this story we see a young boy who has been made perfect to be the ideal caregiver of the crippled puppy through what he suffered, namely his personal handicap. Because he has experienced lameness, he is now in the best position to understand and help the lame puppy. In the same way, Christ, by embracing the human condition and experiencing the hardships, weaknesses and temptations of human life, became the perfect candidate to help us along the way of salvation. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). The statement that Jesus was made perfect through suffering does not make sense if we apply to it the philosophical meaning of being made perfect. From a philosophical perspective “to be perfect” means to be ideal in every respect, to be altogether excellent, to be absolutely free from any flaw or defect. The Hebrew understanding of perfection, which is more likely the sense of the word that is used in this passage from the Letter to the Hebrews, has a nuance. In the Hebrew understanding of the text, “to be perfect” most likely means “to be ideally suited for a particular purpose” Here perfection can be understood as being relative to an end, rather than as something absolute. Thus, it would be better to understand the statement that Jesus was made perfect through suffering as saying that, on account of what he suffered, Jesus became ideally suited for the purpose for which he came, namely, to be “the pioneer of our salvation” (verse 10). And he became ideally suited to our salvation by becoming perfect in the deep empathic regard for those who suffer that is in someone who himself has suffered as the other has. Today the Church deliberately connects this passage with passages from the Old and New Testaments on marriage. I think that it is because this is what marriage is about: being made perfect for empathic regard - for love - for the perfect activation of the image and likeness of God in us.

Created to be suitable for the marriage of divine love

In the first reading, we hear Adam, as he gazes upon his new partner, Eve, declare, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Adam was not just declaring Eve to be of the same nature as he, but was identifying with her with the deepest empathic regard. This is how God the Father regards each of the beings that he creates in his own image and likeness. He so identifies with them that he sees their needs as his own needs, and their sufferings as his own sufferings. That what he intended to be imitated through the beings that he created in his image and likeness: that each regards the other with the deepest empathic regard, identifying with the other so that he or she sees the other’s needs as his or her own, and the other’s sufferings as his or her own. To prove to humankind that he so identified with us that he regards our needs as his own needs and our sufferings as his own, he becomes incarnate in the second person of the Trinity, the Son who is one with the Father and with whom the Father perfectly identifies with. When Son takes on human flesh, it thereby becomes for the Father “Bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” not in the sense that God, who is pure Spirit, has flesh and bones, but that the bones and flesh of humanity, is connected, not only to the image and likeness of God in the human individual, but now becomes connected into the Body of the very Son of God, and now becomes perfectly identified as the Father’s own bones and flesh, connected as they are in the Body of Christ to the divine nature. The heavenly Father gazes with an infinite and eternal love at this Body of human beings and says, like Adam, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” It is thus that God became incarnate in Christ Jesus as a Bridegroom to be wedded to humanity, the collective of human beings becoming “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” in the Body of Christ. He weds humanity with infinite and eternal faithful loving mercy, with a complete gift of self, giving his very self in sacrifice to be consumed sacramentally by us, consuming the flesh of the Son of Man so that we may become “bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh” in divine spiritual communion. The Father, who creates many children in Christ his Beloved Son, through this divine marital bond, also brings “many children to glory.” (Hebrews 2:10) And the principal human agency of this divine marital bond is the marriage bond between man and woman. Through the incarnation and self-sacrificial giving of the Son to humanity as Bridegroom, God elevated marriage to a sacramental status - a divine status. It is now a sacramental bond which makes present the eternal self-giving act of the Son of God, emptying himself, and becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:7-8) to manifest his faithful loving mercy by his total gift of self to the other.

God wants to declare to every one of us: “At last bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

God made known through Jesus that he desires the marital bond between two human beings to be the imitation of the love bond between the Father and the Son, through which he begets the Son in eternity, and begets children in creation, with that same infinite and eternal faithful loving mercy. God wants the marital relationship to be the sacramental by which children first encounter God’s faithful loving mercy. It is the bond by which human beings participate in the creative loving mercy of God, and the bond through which human beings receive the grace of birth and rebirth in the Lord. This is why Jesus insists that, even though the Lord previously allowed for a divorce “of convenience” because of the hardheartedness of men, which allowed a spouse, if he or she was not well disposed to great personal sacrifice, to avoid significant self-sacrifice in a marriage by getting out of it, this “divorce of convenience” is no longer tolerable to the Lord, because he now wants total gift of self by each partner in marriage in imitation of his own total gift of self to humankind. Marriage is now to be the primary vehicle for the bonding of humans in the one Body in which humanity becomes for God “bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.” God wants each one of us so bonded in the the Body of his Son that he can gaze upon each of us with the same infinite and eternal loving gaze with which he gazes upon his Son and say to each of us both individually and collectively, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Although marriage is a major sacramental bond for activating the channel of divine love in us - that is, the image and likeness of God in us - the channel of divine love in us can be activated in other states of life as well, including religious life, whether in a religious order like we are, or in parish or other forms of community life where one is able to make a full gift of self in loving service. The channel of divine love in us - that is, the divine image and likeness in us - is only fully activated in us when we make a total gift of self. Let us pray that the Lord will continue to give each of us the grace to make that total gift of self in the service of love so that the Lord may say to us with delight, “At last, bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.”

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Friday, October 1, 2021

Donning the True Religious Habit

 



Cutting off the limbs of self-interest

Reflection on the Readings for the 26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B

By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB


There was a man who was a member of several Catholic societies and was very active in his parish, serving as lector, Eucharistic minister and usher. One Sunday, when he was scheduled to serve as usher, he was on his way to church and was running late. Ushers needed to get there early. As he was driving, a car with a young man suddenly changed lanes cutting him off and then was going very slowly. He started blowing his horn and raising his fist. Then he changed lanes to pass the car and, as he was passing, he opened his window and yelled some obscenities at the young driver. Suddenly he sees the flashing lights of a police car behind him and the sound of the loudspeaker telling him to pull over.  He pulled over and the police officer came over to his window and asked to see his license and registration. He gives him his license and the vehicle registration and the officer returns to his vehicle to run a check. He comes back and hands the license and registration back and says, “you’re OK, you can go.” Confused, the driver asked the policeman why he had stopped him to check. The officer replied, “Well, I was driving behind you and I saw the 'Choose Life' license plate holder, the ‘I love Jesus,’ and the 'What Would Jesus Do' bumper stickers, the 'Follow Me to church' bumper sticker, and the crucifix hanging from your rearview mirror. Then I saw you blowing your horn impatiently, shaking your fist, and yelling obscenities. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car." Deeply embarrassed, he arrived at the church, much humbled, and started carrying out his usher duties.


The incident with the policeman that had occurred on the way to church was a real eye-opener for that man. He was “exposed,” as my students would say. What was exposed is that, even though he was very religious and an active member of his parish community, he had not yet fully donned the habit of his baptismal consecration. Christian virtue was still lacking in a certain significant way.


The story about the usher was a fictional story, but I have a true story of something that happened to me very recently. I was driving along Avenue C in Bayonne with my friend Nagui in the passenger seat. I started feeling very frustrated because of what seemed to me a very slow speed that the cars ahead of me were driving. I even turned to Nagui and complained about the slow speed of the traffic. Some distance down the road I realized that at the head of the cars was a police vehicle. Then I looked down at my odometer and noticed that the traffic was moving right at the speed limit. I was exposed!


There is a danger for religious people: to have the expectation that membership and active participation in a religious society or group guarantees that they are virtuous. As a member of a Benedictine religious community, I engage in daily exercises of prayer and work with the expectation of growing in grace and virtue. I wear a habit made up of a tunic, scapular and hood. It serves as a strong symbol of what I strive to be as a monastic consecrated religious. But none of this guarantees that I am virtuous. My wearing of the habit and all of the ritual exercises that I perform every day, alone do not serve as guarantors of my virtue. These daily exercises must be accompanied, as Jesus advises in the Gospel today, by authentic inward efforts at cutting off the limbs of vice which cause me to stumble, and cause my heart to turn away from the light of Christ and toward the darkness of sin. I must daily pluck out the eye of envy and jealousy and prejudice which color my perceptions and cause me to react in sinful ways toward others, and, as I myself, my inner vision darkened by sinful self-interest, act as a child of darkness, rather than a child of the light and of the day, as St. Paul says (1 Thessalonians 5:5). I may thus cause others to turn their hearts from the lighted path of the spirit. I must daily cut off the hand of anger which causes me to ignore the presence of Christ in my brother or sister, and causes me to “return evil for evil; rather, always seek what is good for each other and for all” (1 Thessalonians 5:15); resulting not only in myself not being at peace, but also preventing me from promoting peace among my brothers and sisters. I must daily cut off the foot of pride which causes me to walk in the way of self-advancement and self-building, at the expense of the interests and advancement of others, causing me to stumble along in the drunken stupor of illusion of control, and not only prevent my own heart from dwelling in heaven, but turn my brother’s or sister’s heart from the heavenly path. I must always be conscious of how my calling as a Christian, in general, and as a monastic, specifically, is meant to give inspiration, and help people to come to an awareness of God’s presence and of his loving mercy. As a Christian and especially as a monastic, my heart must continually dwell in heaven through contemplation even as my body and mind dwell on earth engaged in the business of the world, transforming that business into loving service that transmits heaven into the daily lives of myself and others. I must always be aware that bad behavior on my part, especially as a monastic, serves, as Jesus said, to put a stumbling block before the little ones who believe in him. It is through people like me and you that they come to a knowledge of Jesus. What impression of Jesus am I giving them? Therefore I must strive daily to don the true religious habit: the most beautiful habit, and the most authentic habit. That is, the habit of faithfulness and charity. This is the most beautiful and authentic habit that a religious person can put on. It is a habit that one does not put on from the outside, but it is put on from the inside. It radiates outward, and it radiates with the love of Jesus!


All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Bearing the Marks of Christ

 

A Reflection on the Meaning of Suffering through the Wounds of Jesus
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

When we think of saints like Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, whose memorial we celebrate on September 23rd, and Francis of Assisi, whose feast day we celebrate on October 4th, we think of the stigmata, which were a manifestation in the flesh of these saints of the sacrificial mercy of Jesus realized in a very high way in them. But each and every one of us is also called to bear the marks of Christ in our body and soul. The stigmata by which we, as ordinary Christians, manifest the sacrificial mercy of Christ in the flesh is our compassion for those who suffer, our joyful readiness to bear suffering ourselves, and our joyful readiness to come to the service of others in need. We are called to bear the wounds of Christ by suffering with him. Although Christ’s death on the cross was final, his redemptive suffering is ongoing. St. Paul (Romans 6:10-13) makes clear that the death of Christ was once for all, perfect in fulfilling its purpose: “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. . .” But we also know that Jesus’ redemptive suffering continues vicariously through us and all who suffer across the ages. When Jesus invites us take up our cross daily to follow him (Matthew 16:24-26), he invites us to share in his ongoing redemptive suffering for sin as a way of participating in his evangelical mission of drawing souls to his Father as adopted children and heirs of God (Romans 8:17): “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God . . . and fellow heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” But, we are assured that bearing the wounds of Christ, suffering with him, comes with the redemptive power of the resurrection (Philippians 3:10): “. . .that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. . .” “Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

Jesus suffers vicariously through us in all of our sufferings and in the sufferings of all those who suffer in the world. Henri Nouwen articulated this mystery so profoundly when he said (Christ of the Americas): “We have come to the inner knowledge that the agony of the world is God’s agony. The agony of women, men and children during the ages reveals to us the inexhaustible depth of God’s agony that we glimpsed in the garden of Gethsemane. The deepest meaning of human history is the gradual unfolding of the suffering of Christ. As long as there is human history, the story of Christ’s suffering has not yet been fully told. Every time we hear more about the way human beings are in pain, we come to know more about the immensity of God’s love, who did not want to exclude anything human from his experience of being God. God indeed is Yahweh Rachamin, the God who carries his suffering people in his womb, with the intimacy and care of a mother. This is what Blaise Pascal alluded to when he wrote that Christ is in agony until the end of time. The more we try to enter into this mystery the more we will come to see the suffering world as a world hidden in God.” This is why St. Teresa of Calcutta invites us to see in the poor, and in all those who are suffering, Christ on the cross saying “I thirst,” and invites us to satisfy that thirst through deeds of love. Our sacrificial works of charity are not carried out in order to get us into heaven, but they are the means by which heaven gets into us who are members of that “suffering world hidden in God”. Our works of charity guarantee that our heart dwells in heaven even while our body and mind dwell on earth engaged in the business of the world.

The prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 9:11, 16, 20; 10:4) repeats the phrase: “. . .and his hand is still outstretched!” In this passage, Isaiah expressed the punishing - the wounding effect - of his outstretched arm, but he adds elsewhere with great emphasis that the ultimate effect of his outstretched arm is healing and forgiveness and mercy. In Old Testament times, the Lord stretched out his arm with a punitive effect toward the sinner in order to gain mercy for the most vulnerable and suffering - for the widow, the orphan and the stranger - while at the same time humbling the sinner so that he would become open to the redemptive mercy of the Lord. Likewise, in New Testament times, Jesus stretches out his arm to us, inviting us to take up our cross in self-sacrifice for the sake of others, especially the suffering and needy, inviting us to take up our cross daily to follow him, bearing his wounds in our body and soul, interceding with him to the Father, to gain mercy for the poor and downtrodden, while, at the same time, his same outstretched arm provides strength and healing to our own sinful soul, humbling our hearts in preparation for receiving his redemptive mercy.

After his resurrection Jesus stretched out his arm so that Thomas and the other apostles could touch his wounds now glorified. Jesus did not not say to Thomas, “Touch my side.” No. Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your hand into my side.” He wanted Thomas to do more than touch his wounds. He wanted Thomas to touch his heart, and thereby to touch the heart of God. Jesus invites us daily, also, to put our hand into the wound in his side, to touch his heart, so as to touch the very heart of God, and thereby to become channels of the excruciating love that flows from the heart of so loving a Father, through the heart of Jesus, flowing through his wounded side. The wounds of Jesus are an opening in creation to the heart of God. They are an opening to touch the heart of Jesus, and thereby to touch the heart of God. The wound in Jesus' side is an opening to a most intimate heart-touching-heart relationship between God and human beings. Whenever I put my hand into the side of Christ, reaching with the hand of charity, to touch his heart, the water and blood of grace and mercy flow through me into the world. In contemplating the wounds of Christ, I can see how, with a lance, a human being opened up the passageway between time and eternity; how, with a lance, a human being pierced the divine heart of love, piercing the heart of a man nailed to a cross, that the water of divine holiness and the blood of divine goodness and love may flow forth from the divine heart of love of the Father, through the wound in the heart of a human being, into men and women to sanctify them quicken them with true and eternal life.

It is in this way that Jesus invites us, with outstretched arms, to touch his wounds, so that we may be healed and that we may offer his healing touch to others. Like the apostles, I feel the wounding of the Lord’s outstretched arm as I take up my cross in order to, as St. Paul said, “fill up in [my own] flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church.” (Colossians 1:24) And it is thus that I, like St. Paul and the other apostles, bear the marks of Jesus on my body.” It is thus that I become a channel for the healing flood of grace and mercy which flows forth from his glorified wounds to flow into the world. Whenever I perform an act of mercy, a self-sacrificial deed of charity, an act of forgiveness, I touch the wounds of Christ, and I gain the healing grace that pours forth from his wounds not only for myself, but for others as well, because I am in that moment an earthbound channel of the heavenly channel of his wounds. Thus, every person who is living a truly evangelical life bears the marks of Christ in his/her body and soul, and bears the evangelical message, also forecast by Isaiah (9:1-2): “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Upon those who lived in a land of gloom a light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing. The suffering of the cross, of the wounds, is not for suffering’s sake, but for the channeling of mercy into the world.

Because of the power of the resurrection in the wounds of Christ which we bear through our suffering, we are able to embrace great suffering because this suffering, joined to the wounds of Christ Crucified, can now serve for us as a vehicle of contemplation: a vehicle of the contemplation of the profound compassion and faithful mercy of God the loving Father, expressed through his incarnate Word, who embraced death on the cross as an expression of excruciating love. In our own suffering, we contemplate the wounds of Christ, to see how Jesus was pierced with sorrow and deep compassion for the sins which keep souls from being open to God’s love, and we ourselves become pierced with Christ with that same sorrow for sin and deep compassion for souls.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max

Created To Be An Ev-angel


A Reflection for the Feast of St. Michael and the Archangels
By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

In a homily by St Gregory the Great (PL 76, 1250-1251), St. Gregory says that the word “angel” is denotative of a function, much more so than of a nature. The nature of the beings that we usually refer to as angels is to be incorporeal spirits. It is their function to be the holy spirits of heaven who are personal intermediaries between the Holy Trinity and corporeal creation. As St. Benedict says (RB 7:13), our “actions everywhere are in God’s sight and are reported by angels at every hour.” They are spirits, and they can only be properly called angels to the extent that they deliver some message. As St. Gregory points out, the spirits who deliver messages of lesser importance are referred to simply as angels; while those who proclaim messages of supreme importance are called archangels. And so, it was not merely an angel, but the archangel, Gabriel, that was sent to the Virgin Mary, to convey the message of the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, by which the second person of the Holy Trinity would become incarnate. It is only fitting that the highest angels, the archangels, should come to announce the greatest messages. Although all angels have a perfect knowledge of God that comes from the direct vision and intercourse with the Holy Trinity, it is only the archangels who are given proper names to denote the service they are empowered to perform. The three names that we are most familiar with are, Michael, which means “Who is like God”; Gabriel which means “The Strength [or the Power] of God”; and Raphael, which means “God’s Healing Remedy.”

We too, like the archangels, are given names, because we are embodied spirits with a specific mission. The same root, angelos, is in the word evangelical, which means bringing the good news. Created in the image and likeness of God, each of us is made “little lower than the angels and crowned with honor and glory.” (Psalm 8:5) We do something that the archangels cannot do: we embody God’s love. We are embodied spirits. We are not arch-angels, we are ev-angels, good news bearers. As ev-angels, we are created as mission - our very being is a mission. We are created as personal messengers - ev-angels - of the Holy Trinity, to convey, in the world, God’s faithful mercy. That is the meaning of our personhood: to sound through the mask of corporeality the spiritual reality of the greatness and glory of an infinite and eternal loving creator. We are like angels especially when we become truly evangelical persons, living a life rooted in contemplation and prayer; living a holy life continuously conveying the message - the good news - of God’s faithful and merciful love, through our words and good deeds - by our very lives. Like St. Michael, by our words of praise and our humble obedience to the Word of God, we proclaim, “Micha-el!”, “Who is like unto God!” Like St. Gabriel, our deeds of loving service proclaim “Gabri-el”, “The Strength of God.” Our compassion and care for the sick and for those most vulnerable, and especially our acts of forgiveness and mercy toward our enemies, proclaim, “Rapha-el!” “God’s Healing Remedy!” We have this mission by the very fact of being human persons, but this mission is elevated to a higher plane of spiritual - angelic - mission when we become truly evangelical persons. And we become truly evangelical persons when our hearts are dwelling in heaven through contemplation, even as our minds and bodies remain on earth engaged in the business of the world. When we become truly evangelical persons - ev-angels - it is then that we are made perfect in what God has created us to be, and it is then that God’s business in the world becomes our daily business in the world, and our daily actions and interactions become angelic actions and interactions, imbued with the message of the greatness and glory, strength, and healing remedy, of the faithful mercy of an infinite and eternal loving Father, conveyed to us through his Word, Christ Jesus, with the aid of the heavenly spirits - the Archangels - which we, in turn, convey to other people. May God, through his Spirit dwelling in us, and with the assistance of the Angels, continue to perfect in us our nature and mission as messengers of his faithful loving mercy: as ev-angels.

All for Jesus,
Fr. Max