Reconciliation

FIRST READING: ISAIAH 40:1-11
“Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated; Indeed, she has received from the hand of the LORD double for all her sins. A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; The rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley. Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken. A voice says, "Cry out!" I answer, "What shall I cry out?" "All mankind is grass, and all their glory like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower wilts, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it. (So then, the people is the grass.) Though the grass withers and the flower wilts, the word of our God stands forever." Go up onto a high mountain, Zion, herald of glad tidings; Cry out at the top of your voice, Jerusalem, herald of good news! Fear not to cry out and say to the cities of Judah: Here is your God! Here comes with power the Lord GOD, who rules by his strong arm; Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, Carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.” ~NAB

GOSPEL READING: MATT. 18:12-14
"What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will be not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost." ~ NAB

REFLECTION

The first reading is challenging. Are you comfortable before our Lord, today? Are you happy with the direction of your life and the circumstances that surround you? Or, are you anxious, concerned, and in need of rest? Are you confident in God’s care for you or is there a bit of doubt in the back of your mind?

God speaks to us through his prophet today that God’s will is to give us comfort. Not a comfort of good fortune but the comfort of a compassionate God. One who speaks tenderly to his people, proclaiming that our sad days are gone and our sins are pardoned.

This message breaks forth in the midst of our lives regardless of where we are spiritually, but it is a special joy for those of us that sense we are in a spiritual desert.

How would you describe a spiritual desert? For me, it is when the excitement of life seems dry, lacking purpose, lacking fruit, and lacking growth. It’s that spiritual place where you don’t want to get up in the morning and face the day. The thought that “So much is not right in the world” runs deep within our minds. This is despair and it lurks in the desert. Do you sense it when you look out at the economic conditions of our city, state, and country? When gas prices go up? In the housing market? In the persistence of the war? Or maybe in the illness of a loved one or yourself? Maybe despair has risen up when a loved one moves out of state or in the breakup of a marriage.

Yet, in this the desert, a voice is heard, “Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight, in the wasteland, a highway for our God!”

Now, some may not be in the desert of despair, but we may experience the wasteland. Other translations call it the wilderness. When I think of a wilderness, I do not think of a desert but an overgrown woods or forest. A forest whose underbrush is so thick that you cannot walk through it easily. There are briars and thorns, poison ivy, and vines that pinch and pull at my clothes and leave me irritated and frustrated because I cannot get to the place I want to be.

When we allow ourselves to follow our passions without control – that is to say, we try to grossly fulfill our animal desires - we end up in places that we thought would bring us more fruit, greater happiness, but only discover that we have become lost and entangled by our desires. This too can lead us to become weary, uncertain by the circumstances we face, and we must halt at each step we take or risk stumbling further into the destruction of happiness in our relationships and in our interior life.

We see this message in the story of the lamb who risked the comfort of the community to search out for greener grass elsewhere. And, having done so, becomes lost.

It is here, in the wilderness, that the prophet tells us to make a highway for the Lord - A highway in our soul. Cut down the underbrush and overgrowth of our passions to make a place for the Lord. For it is by faith, that we know that lasting comfort doesn’t exist within the circumstances of our life or allowing our passions to go wild but our hope of lasting comfort is found in our faith that the presence of God IS our ultimate source of happiness.

So, what is this highway? How best do we cut down the overgrowth? Law itself is the highway that directs us to our proper end. This highway begins with the natural law that is found in all of us – believer and unbeliever. It is our pursuit of greater life, goodness, and power (to serve). But then it is refined by divine law when we discover all of these longings are found completely in God. So, we progress to the old law, that is, the Ten Commandments given to us by Moses and the Israelites which lead us into right relationship with God and with others.

Reflecting on our communal experience, I believe we each had mountain-top moments when we thought “everything is right in the world.” All the circumstances were in our favor and we were comfortable. But then comes the valley, when the circumstances are not right in our world and we are not comfortable. Something happens and we are robbed of our joy. The prophet calls us to live out the Ten Commandments in order to smooth out those mountain and valley experiences of our life.

Now some may say, I am not in the desert and others may say I am not in the wilderness. Some of us might have the blessing of saying, “I’m on the right path.” But, who among us is not lost in some way? Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans, realized that the more he tried to do what was right, he fell back to delight in his animal appetite that lead us back into that underbrush of vice and eventually sin.

Even when we are doing 99% what God has reveal us to do, who can deny that 1% that is still lost within us.

It is here, that the gospel reading, shows us a better path. And not just a path, but a highway. For it describes God’s love for those of us who are in the desert, the wilderness, or in the ditch on the side of the path. Like a good shepherd, God seeks us out and brings us back to himself through Christ in each of our human experiences and conditions. And this is grace, that God would rescue us from the desert of despair or bewildering forest of our passions and led us back to where he resides. It is this grace, this power of the Holy Spirit poured out on us through Jesus found in the sacrament that enables us to escape that black forest of sin. This is the New Law.

God forgives us for our failings and our sins regardless of whether we are young, like a new blade of grass or an old, bent, and broken flower.

I have heard that forgiveness is when we no longer wish the other person to suffer for the evil they have done to us. But reconciliation begins when the bond of friendship has been restored and both parties seek to growth that friendship further through love.

God is faithful to the word he gave his prophet. Through Jesus, he has brought us the comfort of his forgiving presence found in the Sacrament and in our affirming response to his presence through acts of love and virtue.

The prophet tells us, and maybe we are blessed enough to experience this ourselves, that when we are reconciled to God, there is great joy. A joy so overwhelming that it is glorious and presses out all sorrow. We discover God’s presence and our loving response to him fulfills our interior longings and we are comforted despite our external circumstances.

Covenant Love in Marriage

What does it mean to love your spouse as a reflection of God's love for us? What does it mean to have a covenant kind of love?

[As I share this personal story, please don't interpret my wife as lacking any self esteem. She is a bright, successful career woman, a great and godly mother, and a loving wife. This story compresses twenty years of being together into one short entry.]

When I first met my wife, we were in college and still in our teens. She was (and is) the most gorgeous woman God has ever brought into my life. Early in our relationship, I would tell her that I loved her. With a big beaming smile and a glint in her eye, she would ask me, "Why do you love me?"

At that time in my life, with all the hormones rushing through my body, I would passionately say to her, "because, baby, your hot!"

As time went on, we became married and all through our early years of marriage I would continue to give her this reason upon her asking me why I loved her.

Then, in cooperation with God, we decided to have a child. My wife grew over the few months with her abdomen expanding exponentially, her hair becoming brittle and stiff, dark rings under her eyes, and a certain fluffiness about her whole body.

I remember telling her "I love you" and her reply, "Why?" Of course, I said, "Cause, baby, your hot!" To which she turned into tears. "I'm NOT hot! I'm fat, my hair's falling out, and my face is all puffy. I'm not hot."

I was stunned. Honestly, I really thought she was gorgeous but I saw that she didn't see it that way. I tried to think of other attributes and then remembering that she was the sigma cum Laud student at our college and that she gave the commencement speech, I turned to her and said, "I love you because you are so smart. You were the top student in our college, you gave the commencement speech, and you're the director of a department at your hospital. Baby, you're smart."

Time went on, my wife came home to be with our children. One day, when the kids were 4 and 1 years old, I told my wife, "I love you." Again, to which she replied, "why?"

Having learned my lesson about not saying "'cause you're hot" I said, "Baby, 'cause you are so smart." She burst into tears. "I'm NOT smart! All I do is talk about Sesame Street, colors, numbers, and toys. I'm not smart. My brain as turned to mush since I have been home with the kids." Again, I tried to think of other attributes of her and reflected on how hard of a worker she was around the house, with the kids, and in the yard. "I love you because you're such a hard worker," and I proceeded to tell her all the ways she worked hard.

Then one fateful day, I became paralyzed from the hips down. My L4 and L5 disks in my lower back ruptured and the fragments migrated down my spine, kinking my nerves to my legs and lower abdomen. After my emergency surgery, I laid in bed for four months. I began to think about how worthless I was to my wife these four months because she did all the work while I laid around. It got me thinking about what would happen if my wife was in the same place.

What would happen if she contracted dementia in her old age and she no longer recognized me or knew herself even? What if she had a stroke and was confined to her bed? Would I still love her? Of course! But why?

This lead me to think about why God loves humanity. What attributes of humanity could ever be worthy of a being so infinite, so perfect, so beautiful, so powerful? There was no reason why. There was no attribute of humanity that could move God's love. God loves us because he chooses to love us because he is love.

As I began to think of all the circumstances and situations that could happen in my relationship with my wife, I concluded that I would always love her regardless of any defect. Yes, she's pretty. Yes, she's smart. Yes, she's hard working. Yes, she's faithful and loves me too. All of these attributes of hers fills our relationship with so many blessings and add to my happiness in this life. But, if all of those attributes were to fail (and I would grieve the loss of any one of them), their loss would not diminish my love for her because like God,

I love her because I choose to love her.

This is what it means to have a covenant love. This is the meaning behind our vows of marriage, in sickness and health, in riches and poverty, and in goodness and adversity. We love each other because we choose to love each other - even when the other can no longer love us.

Fidelity and strength are found in this type of love because it dissolves temptation from the outside world. If my love was founded on her beauty alone then what would stop me from falling in love with someone prettier? If it was founded on brilliance, then what would stop me from falling in love with someone smarter?

If our love is founded on the attributes of the other, then they will always be tested against those who have greater or lesser attributes. But if our love is founded upon a firm, unchanging choice of our will, then there can be no temptation that the world could offer to break us away from that vow.

Fruit of the Spirit

READING: GALATIANS 5:22-23

"In Contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law." (Gal. 5:22-23)

REFLECTION:

For such a long time, I interpreted this text to mean that each attribute was independent from the other. I found it difficult to observe each slice of the fruit manifesting in my life. Sometimes, I would experience love. Other times, I would experience joy. Sometimes, I would have victory over self-control. Other times, I would struggle with gentleness. But the fruit always seemed elusive - as if God's Spirit would reveal himself upon me on some days and in some events while other times I struggled against errors and spiritual defects. Consistency of being "in the Spirit" was a constant struggle especially when it seemed that there was so much evil in the world.

Then I came to the understanding that these attributes were not separate or isolated. Rather, the fruit of the Spirit states of being that are sequential and compounding, planted within us by God's Spirit with the first state being love - that is - "desiring what is best for another and making it happen."

By acting in charity (love), joy naturally manifests itself. Has anyone ever truly loved someone and not felt the joy of that love?

Once joy resides in our soul, peace naturally manifests itself afterwards because our longing for peace is satisfied by inner joy.

Peace, then, leads to patience. For when I have peace, I am much more at liberty to be patient with the world around me which might consist of standing in line at a check-out counter, waiting for test results, or waiting for an individual or circumstance to change in my life.

From patience comes kindness and then generosity for when we are at the height of patience we act out in kindness and generosity to the world around us.

Faithfulness, sometimes referred to in this passage as "perseverance," is that ability to be consistent in all of these earlier fruit regardless of the circumstances we find in ourselves. It is not so much the ability to withstand adversity but rather to allow it to be a part of our life. It is not accepting evil (the absence of Good) but being the ministering body of Christ in the midst of that adversity and this leads us to gentleness.

Jesus did not accept the cross with ugliness or hatred, he embraced the cross with gentleness. Gentleness is that ability for our spirit to embrace our world but not be subject to it. The world doesn't move us as it once did, we are not compelled by fear or desire. That which once tempted us to vice or sin no longer has a grasp upon us. And, if vice or sin, fear or desire, no longer have a grasp upon our very being, then we naturally possess self-control.

No longer do we need to struggle with self-control over doing the right thing. We no longer "do" Christianity to try to manifest God's Spirit within us. Rather, we become Christ-like. It is a question of "being" part of the body of Christ, not "doing" Christianity. This state of "being" begins with love. Love is what unites us with God. His love for us and our reciprocation of that love back to him. We replace our practices of love - that is, our trying to do individual and sometimes isolating acts of love (e.g. I chose to love my wife but not the evil person in my life) - and become love itself which is indiscriminatory. Once we manifest this state of being, the fruit of the Spirit naturally manifest themselves.

In the end, it is not what we do; rather, there is only one thing we need to be and that is love. If we fail at obtaining the other fruit, we need not be discouraged. For all we need to "do" is continue to pray on, meditate on, and practice "love." God is in the process of transforming us into his likeness. God will lead us into being love by his grace.