Major point there. Rather than strategize a technique to capture a PsyOp, reel it into a net, and splay it on the beach to die, Dean Dwyer properly directs us to practice the revelatory power of God. Such is Jesus’ style—indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Be transformed by the Eucharist, and imitate Jesus who entered the lion’s den and masterfully controlled every consequence and outcome. Don’t invoke yourself. Take Jesus.

Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Philippians 2:5-11
Psalm 22:26b-27, 28-30ab, 30e, 31-32
Luke 14:15-24

A “PsyOp” is defined as “a military operation usually aimed at influencing the enemy’s state of mind through noncombative means” (Merriam-Webster). PsyOp isn't a new psychological trick, but a thought-based approach that dates back to Genesis and is meant to ruin reality. Though posited as a military technique, PsyOp has ancient roots, coordinated by the devil himself, used to confuse and reframe the thinking of those who are innocent and ignorantly complicit.

It's a devious and deceitful, coordinated manipulation, more insidious than electrode-style brainwashing.

Jesus dealt with PsyOps regularly. It’s worth studying his reaction to and subsequent quashing of a PsyOp.

Harbinger’s Daily1 printed an article by Dean Dwyer back on January 27, 2024, titled, PsyOps: The Historical, Modern, And Spiritual Warfare Tactics Used To Manipulate The Mind, which succinctly described the intent of a PsyOp this way: “It was once said that information is power. That has proven to be very true, particularly in the hands of those who can skillfully wield that power to influence the thoughts, emotions, and actions of individuals and groups.”

He defined five strategies that seek out well-defined objectives such as:

1. Undermine the morale and ‘will to fight’ of an enemy;

2. Influence the population of another country [expand that to mean another organization, individual, or segment of the population] to support the objectives of those launching the PsyOps;

3. Discredit opposition groups or governments;

4. Shape public opinion in support of a particular cause or policy; and

5. Divert attention away from sensitive activities or operations.

Dwyer wrote, “The way we must counter [PsyOps] is to stay connected to the Word of God, speak to Him in prayer, and seek the leading of the Holy Spirit. The bad news for unbelievers is that the PsyOps used against them is about to get a whole lot worse. Although this will manifest itself in the physical world, it originates in the spiritual world.”

Major point there. Rather than strategize a technique to capture a PsyOp, reel it into a net, and splay it on the beach to die, Dwyer properly directs us to practice the revelatory power of God. I would add: Receive the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. Such is Jesus’ request.

Remember when the Pharisees asked Jesus if they had to pay Caesar’s taxes to Caesar, hoping to trap him politically? Others questioned Jesus about the resurrection of the body. They wanted to funnel him into a single issue. Later, the trap shifted to which commandment was greatest. This is actually all one strategic PsyOp, pitting Jesus against the “frailties” of the faith of the Jews. Jesus reframed it all, securing the Jewish faith, its revelatory practices, and the ultimate rising of the Messiah from the Chosen People.

When he died and rose again, the PsyOp centered on his body being stolen by the disciples. We can blame the Pharisees, but the more probable source is Satan. The cycle of a PsyOp begins and relies upon collaboration with evil. Power, authority, and vice may be Satan’s recruitment tools; yet, refusing to practice collaborating with the revelatory power of God, we become dupes, morons, and chattel of the devil himself.

At the banquet dinner held by Pharisaical leaders, an unfortunate man is plopped in front of Jesus, suffering from an oozing illness. He is a stage show prop. The PsyOp plan is to position Jesus as a carnival magician. He’ll heal an extremely sick person, and the elite audience will hail Jesus as their celebrity, a puppet under the control of the wealthy and powerful. They assume Jesus won’t be able to resist his newfound popularity among the well-heeled, remade from a rabble-rouser among the indigent and unwashed into an upper-class hero. Their thinking expects Jesus to heal a man on the Sabbath, something he’s done before, except this time, they think they have leverage.

“In front of him there was a man suffering from dropsy. Jesus spoke to the scholars of the law and Pharisees in reply, asking, “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?” But they kept silent; so he took the man and, after he had healed him, dismissed him. Then he said to them, “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”

Jesus fractures the PsyOp in two steps. The healing is positioned against the very plan afoot: “Is it lawful to cure on the sabbath or not?” He heals poor Mr. Dropsy, taking the wind out of that sail, first by letting the healed man leave before they can parade him as both a witness to breaking the Sabbath rule and entertainment for the elite. A side goal may have been to corrupt Jesus to do their bidding. That’s been derailed. The healed man is no longer their dupe. Second, Jesus shatters their leverage with a winning argument for healing on the Sabbath.

Few of those present likely recognized that their manipulation of the sick man, and their attempt to trap Jesus, were blatant evil calculations. That pattern holds across all of Jesus’ miracles, which cements Jesus’ unassailable comebacks. All PsyOp attempts ultimately fail under his presence.

The impact of Jesus’ response is certainly for that day, but it is also for a separate audience from his followers. This is for us. Jesus in the lion’s den masterfully controlled every consequence and outcome. He gave us the Cross, and his body and blood in the Eucharist.

Jesus response to Dwyer’s five strategies for PsyOps was to take the moral high ground, influence humankind for all time, discredit evil and its collaborators, invoke eternal truths, and focus all attention on the Father, leaving us with the protective, mentoring, & all powerful Holy Spirit. To seal the deal, Jesus is present in us, his Eucharistic carriers.

What Jesus does in this case, as in all of his public actions against a PsyOp, may seem like training for those going into the ministry, those who will lead the Church into the coming eons. That’s partly the message, but the training is different than we think. Jesus is God. We are not Jesus. We are his warriors, his transformed mystical body, because the PsyOps setting requires more than a single human against evil. The battle against Satanic PsyOps belongs to God and his angels and saints, all acting according to his will. Can’t we, too, be Jesus in these kinds of situations?

In truth, we must act in harmony with the angels and saints if and when we are called. As Dwyer correctly noted, we must “stay connected to the Word of God, speak to Him in prayer, and seek the leading of the Holy Spirit.”

This takes practice in relationship to God. We may practice whip-smart comebacks and parrying wordsmithing, but if we aren’t living in relationship to God, we're likely to end up cruel and mean-spirited. Wearing the armor of God is necessary. To watch for a PsyOp and react properly puts us in dangerous territory, where God uses us as he wills.

Oddly enough, the first reading for today applies the framework for seeing and responding to the manipulation of minds and souls:

Have among yourselves the same attitude
that is also yours in Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave …

Jesus didn’t just hook up to a puppet master in his Father, bouncing about like a thoughtless, powerless slave. He emptied his human nature so the Holy Spirit could fill him. This is an alignment, a cooperative partnership with God.

We can do this. We begin by surrendering, giving up our calculated plans for this life. Heck, that’s the hardest part! Because once we experience God’s love, we become God’s friend. God doesn't force a relationship on us without our permission. Do that, and God has an ally in us.

The PsyOps won’t stop, but they can run into a wall when they meet us. We must gather in God’s Church. It’s the only community with mystical power, infused with graces flowing through the saints and protected by the angels. God’s authority, order, and Word are written upon our hearts. Jesus’ Eucharist transforms our very DNA. The Holy Spirit’s indwelling secures our soul, no matter what happens to our temporary body.

PsyOps, like any temptation, must be rejected as a method and a means to spread the gospel and build the Kingdom. We mustn’t use them to manipulate low-information folks, fodder for Satan. We certainly shouldn’t join the devil’s ranks, either.

Pray. Align with God. Be his weaponry, but only use his ammunition. Live by virtue, and wield what he has given us—love.

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We exist in full view of, and even in interaction with, heaven’s watchful and intercessory hosts. Orchestrating angels as they watch all of creation, plus interacting with the residents of heaven (an inestimable number of saints) as they pray for our divine intercession, takes incredible organization and readiness. Only God can do that.

Tuesday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
Ephesians 5:21-33
Psalm 128:1-2, 3, 4-5
Luke 13:18-21

Do prayers from frightened children, prayers formed under the threat of death, and prayers that put God on the spot all strike at God’s heart in the same way? Is anyone other than God listening to these prayers?

We Christian Catholic folk presume, or more properly imagine, that we know God is not the only one to hear our prayers. The angels and the Communion of Saints are also privy to all our communications. They don’t take prayers in bulk, as does God. The bulk of them, however, hear every muttered plea. As the wind and the waves and the footsteps of creation move about on earth, I believe the angels watch. As we pray, I also believe the saints pray with us. At times they intercede.

They appear to us like a canopy of graceful aids —tree trunks, branches, leaves, and hallowed seeds —intervening only as God allows, and then with unified purpose: the salvation of our souls.

I offer three tales of prayers from fellow members of creation — a child, a man in crisis, and a woman pleading for God to answer. A trio of people passing from this life into holiness in the same hour. These were innocent folk. We might disregard our eventual destination, focused instead on death’s cruelty, mourning the gift of life taken away. However, death’s final and brutal act isn’t final at all.

We exist in full view of, and even in interaction with, heaven’s watchful and intercessory hosts. Orchestrating angels watch all of creation. Their interaction with the residents of heaven (an inestimable number of saints), as they pray for our divine intercession, takes incredible organization and readiness. Only God can do that.

Angels don’t write our prayers down; they collect them, I presume, measuring each against an innate ethical compass. They watch how God responds, designed to be curious and expectant about us. “For he commands his angels with regard to you, to guard you wherever you go. With their hands they shall support you, lest you strike your foot against a stone.^” (Psalm 91:11-12)

We have to be careful, as Colossians 2:18 says, not to worship angels. I probably don’t have to say this, but being reminded to be careful is good, like those bumpy and noisy edges when we drift off the center lanes of a highway.

The Communion of Saints is more ponderous than curious. They pray for those who struggle through life, especially with an urgency over those in creation who ask them personally to intercede. Some find this a ridiculous idea, and perhaps even a heresy. Ours is a separate existence from heaven. Yet, Catholics allow for channels of prayerful communication. For all saints hold dear every breath — those who have lived just a short moment or two, and those who lasted a century or more. They pray for those born and about to die.

I get this notion (actually, it’s doctrine) from Hebrews 12. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us^* and persevere in running the race that lies before us.”

We were pleased to be housed inside our mother’s protection, but a path of transition awaited us. We are about to burst into the next reality, one we can barely imagine.

The distance between creation and heaven is thinner than an atom's width. That’s not pure conjecture — just thin evidence. Still, it’s an impermeable veil except for when God allows creation to see through it. Several times in scripture, that veil has been opened. A cosmic burst ripped it in two, then Jesus removed the veil upon his Ascension.

Creation, most likely, sits in the midst of heaven. Heaven wouldn’t have any edges, would it? Creation and heaven are certainly not the same size, like two opposing planets. Creation can only be a small spot compared to heaven's divine breadth and depth, accessible enough that anyone in divine communion with God can see into it, probably from anywhere in heaven. It’s fine to guess at such things, because our concentration on death’s result needs to be heaven’s existence. I do this rather than fret over the dentist’s chair appointment-like trauma of death.

Lou, a wise man, explained that both divinity’s architecture and physics surpass our understanding. Well, I said that. But then he said. “Yes, for how would you explain to a child in his mother’s womb about a tree?” That’s pretty wise.

I have never been out of this current womb, yet Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension offer a darn good story involving angels and saints. Jesus is ensconced in our minds.

To our stories, then.

The saints watched as three people prayed from earth. This is a common occurrence. More than 600 people die every second (or is it way more, or about half that — oh well, it’s a lot). The saints are urged to pay special attention to people in their last grip on life. It’s an unimaginable coordination, only sensible if you live in the heavenly realm. In every case, angels attended to these three folks who called out to God.

We begin with a boy in Kansas, segue to a man on his tractor, and end with a devout woman.

A whirling East wind whacked a tree branch against Trevor Holmes’ house, periodically scratching a window in its wild wrangling slaps. Nine-year-old Trevor listened, clutching his dog, Moan — named for the sounds he made as a pup whenever he and Trevor got separated. Moan growled lowly at every screech of the branch on the glass. The boy and his dog were the same age. They’d slept together most nights.

Trevor prayed that everyone he knew was safe at home with their families, not out alone and afraid in the wind. The angels noted this. The saints nodded and prayed with Trevor. Moan turned his head to the boy. Trevor touched the cross on the necklace he’d worn every day since his First Communion. “Pray that the wind calms down, Moan,” Trevor said. Moan stared at him, sensing the boy’s fear. He pushed his head into Trevor’s neck.

Our records on Trevor’s death do not match heaven’s. A congenital heart anomaly took his life. Heaven lists his death as a holy martyrdom. The further transitory particulars of his death include an incredible matrix of sorrows and corresponding graces upon his family, blessings to his friends, while simultaneously projecting to all a number of hallowed procedures introduced by Trevor’s entry into heaven’s realm.

Moan did meet up with Trevor later. The tears and misery rampant in Trevor’s death subsided as each affected person later experienced their own hallowed procedures. The storm, by the way, calmed down, and no one was injured or left outside alone in the wind. The angels praised God.

Hugo Steener steered his tractor uphill, a sideways, traversing climb, singing to calm his nerves. Behind him, he dragged a sled of chain link along the silty beach mound he had built at the northern end of Sweden’s shores. At 74, Hugo knew the sea’s periodic seizures; water attempting to hide from the storm, smacking the beach in waves, then pulling back into foamy chaos. It never learns. Instead of getting away from the storm, the sea ran farther and farther onto the beach, only to be yanked back into the storm’s rage, melting his mound.

"When gazing upon the beauty of creation, our souls cannot help but burst into praise: O Mighty God!" he sang.

Hugo coaxed a berm of sand to rise higher and higher to protect his crops from the waves slashing needlessly into his property. He watched the salt water splash and spray closer to his farm’s edge and prayed as he pulled at the sand. “Let this storm pass quickly, dear Lord. I’ll do what I do. You do what you do. Tell the waves not to get frightened and flee from where they belong.”

Hugo’s farm did survive the storm. There is that. Hugo did not. His tractor was never found. Hugo’s body lay wrapped around the trunk of a tree which he’d planted as a child, just a few yards from his house. He spent quite a while being greeted and cared for by relatives both recent and ancient in the wonderfully bright, rageless spaces of heaven. His perspective on ocean storms and the fretfulness of waves became an opera in heaven. Hugo burst into song. The chorus of angels joined him.

High on a forest hill far from the city of Seoul, South Korea, Eun Jung walked through the woods reciting the rosary as she did every day heading home from work. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” Eun chanted, rolling her rosary in her fingers. Her mother taught Eun to pray the ancient litany of pleas on this very path. Eun’s “Eomma” passed away walking home one day with a rosary in her hands. Eun, holding the same rosary, was now a few years older than her mother when she had died two decades ago. She stopped at the spot where Eomma Jung had collapsed and asked, as Eun did almost every day, “Jesus, do you walk with Mother for me? I have asked you many times. She would enjoy that. I’m sure Mother Mary has told you that I asked. It would mean a great deal to me to know. OK. I’m going home now.”

Prescient of Eun to use that phrase. She did not die on that spot, but later when she was home, in her sleep. Her mother met her in heaven and took her right away on a walk with Jesus. They had a great time. She told Jesus, “Thank you.” He replied, “Mullon,” which means “Of course.” She recognized his voice at once and nodded, remembering how steadily Jesus had communicated with her throughout her life.

Angels and saints do not know the prayers in the hearts of God’s creation. We are told that’s not possible, because they only hear them from our lips. God alone knows our heart. Neither angels nor devils can go there.

Prayers aren’t unofficial just because we don’t say them out loud. It’s just that the angels and the saints don’t get to hear them unless we do. God does let heaven in on every prayer (a wild-eyed supposition), but with so many prayers going on, you can imagine the delightful imagery of verbal prayers going straight to the ears of the angels and saints.

God’s answers in every case are remarkable, for he makes sure the angels know what he does as he does it. The saints, however, are charged with interpretation, putting causes and effects together, because they are constantly being formed, brought closer to divinity, absorbing love, and knowing God's mind. The particular differences between angels and saints aren’t clear to us. That’s the best I can explain it. Well, maybe when they come to harvest the good from the bad we’ll have more info.

God's answers to our prayers don't seem to come the moment we cry out. In the whirls of the wind, the waves on the beach, and the footsteps on the paths, however, people often release prayers loudly from their lips. The angels and saints will certainly hear.

Trevor, Hugo, and Eun all arrived in heaven that day. They were shaken and stunned at the immediate transformation from their places on the beach, on the path, or cuddled with their dog. The saints met them after the angels escorted them to Jesus, just after Jesus brought them to heaven and filled them with the Holy Spirit, and probably after the Father had already embraced them.

The stories may sound very real to some, but I imagined them, meager tracings of various news stories. Not surface scratchings from graveyard stones, but visions of people who resemble our dear friends and family.

Unlike our three new fabricated Saints, not everyone prays with heaven in mind. It’s more than we calculate. So much must be purged from our lives if we have not encased our beings in prayer and noted the subsequent graces we grasp. So the time to cross the thin veil into heaven might be much longer for some of us. I think I am among the longer ones.

In our deaths, we may be preserved under a similar veil, protected from evil’s snare. God judges beyond our grasp.

Some do not want to see heaven at all. I cannot recall engaging any such person. If so, they're likely forgotten by us as much as by Heaven. Each one who balks is an incredible loss to God, especially those who refuse to pray. We’re not sure about the math on this, but I believe quite a few of the 600 or more folks dying per second were offered heaven, but simply were unaware of the offer. The saints may have coupons for the unsure, an enticement, a coaxing from pure hearts. The lost may not be remembered, a sadness no one wants to visit.

We are not privy to the numbers of those who never properly cross over, or those who never will. Prayer, however, synced between heaven and creation, attempts to breach the chasm of the thin atomic veil, and we are better awakened when we allow for the angels and saints to be engaged in our life and our prayers.

You might think my faux saints — Trevor, Hugo and Eun — are mythical, fictional characters. They most certainly are. Every being of creation, however, is not. The rest of the trillions of Saints, and all of the faithful angels, are certainly not mythical or fictional.

At all times, and certainly for all time, the prayer catcher releases no plea back into the wild, but serves it as a welcome feast for the hosts and residents of Heaven.

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Paul wasn’t a follower of the apostles, nor trained by them. Jesus taught him personally, as He did the apostles. In fact, Paul emphasized that he received the same three-year training the apostles did—from Jesus' presence. As one scholar put it, “The Lord from heaven communed with him, as He on earth in the days of His flesh communed with the other apostles.”

Tuesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Galatians 1:13-24
Psalm 139:1b-3, 13-14ab, 14c-15
Luke 10:38-42

The final line in today’s First Reading captures not only the essence of Paul’s letter to the Galatians but the very essence of Paul. He describes himself by his Judaism, with Jewish fervor — a bounty hunter tracking down criminals charged with Christianity — culling a treasonous cult of brainwashed Jews who bought the lie that Jesus was God. Certain they must be cleansed at the root, for they were a caustic transgression, Paul saw the Christians as an incurable infection. They believed the devil in them was the Holy Spirit of God.

It’s no wonder that Paul, depicted in early art, rode a horse, brandished a whip, and galloped from town to town defending the Jewish nation and religion. He was armed with knowledge and a sense of urgency. Paul identified his mindset, “progressed in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my race, since I was even more a zealot for my ancestral traditions.”

Artists envisioned Saul as a Knight and a Roman warrior, fitting for their later eras. Though horses existed, mostly in warfare in Paul’s era, he probably walked everywhere. That is, when he wasn’t on a boat. Paul’s stature didn’t match Sir Gallahad or any other round-table warrior. Yet if he rode a horse, I imagine him as an intense Jimmy Cagney character, cowboy-like, chasing down Christians. After his conversion, Paul lost the whip, but the intensity remained.

Scholars argue that Galatians is one of the earliest New Testament letters, yet it was written upon Paul’s second visit to the Christian Jews in Galatia. By the time he wrote this letter, Paul had at least 15 years of ministry under his belt. His first trip to Galatia took place anywhere from 3 months to a year earlier. Conjectures vary. We hear that at the beginning of this first chapter: “I am amazed that you are so quickly forsaking the one who called you by [the] grace [of Christ] for a different gospel (not that there is another). But there are some who are disturbing you and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ.”

His corrective tone points to the preaching he originally gave the Galatians. The community leaders insisted upon circumcision, holding to Jewish law, ignoring Paul’s teaching that Jesus’ sacrifice settled that. In Acts, Paul had argued the circumcision point with the Apostles back in Jerusalem, and he won that debate. What were the Galatians thinking? Did they question Paul’s authority?

More than any of Jesus’ apostles, Paul is adamant about the authority he received to teach Jesus’ teachings. He called himself an apostle in Galatians’ opening words. “Paul, an apostle not from human beings nor through a human being but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead.”

As the notes on the Catholic lectionary readings describe, Paul felt compelled to defend his title as an apostle. Other methods for elevating a disciple didn’t fit Paul. Existing apostles could commission an apostle (Phil 2:25; 2 Cor 8:23), which confers authority. That was not how Paul arose. Prophets too (1 Tm 1:18; 4:14) have authority. But Paul sets aside his anointing as separate, unmerited, and not elected. Paul’s apostleship came directly from Jesus Christ and God the Father, just like the 12.

That defense of his authority — few, if any, other apostles spoke on the subject — includes his conversion history. “I did not immediately consult flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were Apostles before me; rather, I went into Arabia and then returned to Damascus.”

Paul argues that he didn’t sit at the apostles’ feet in Jerusalem—he didn’t immediately consult flesh and blood. He wasn’t in Jerusalem at all during his apostolic training. Instead, he received three years of formation off campus, outside of Christianity’s headquarters in Jerusalem. Paul witnessed Jesus’ teaching firsthand.

The word “immediately” shows that Paul later joined the apostles, met with them, and grew together in Christ. His ministry to Gentiles set him apart, pulling at the strings that tied the other apostles to Jerusalem.

After his violent and blinding encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, Paul was led to Ananias, who laid hands on him, baptizing him. Ananias said to Paul, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 9:17).

Paul wasn’t an apostle's disciple who was then trained like the apostles. Jesus taught Paul personally, a similarly lengthy encounter in Christian leadership. Paul emphasized that he received the same three-year training the apostles did—by being in Jesus’ presence. As one scholar put it, “The Lord from heaven communed with him, as He on earth in the days of His flesh communed with the other apostles.”

Paul added further evidence of his evangelistic work before meeting the apostles. “Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to confer with Cephas and remained with him for fifteen days. But I did not see any other of the Apostles, only James the brother of the Lord.”

Cephas is Peter. Paul calls him by his Hebrew name, a homage to Jesus’ words used when he called Simon “rock.” Paul was Saul’s Roman name. Saul is Hebrew, like Cephas. Church tradition identifies the apostle James, “the brother of the Lord,” as the son of Alpheus and Mary. James mother, also named Mary, is the Virgin Mary’s sister.1 James, called the brother of the Lord, is, then, Jesus’ cousin. Another apostle named James, by the way, was Jude’s brother; both were sons of Zebedee.

Paul’s argument that he spent only 15 days with the apostles and met only two of them matters not for his transformation or conversion. The two weeks with the big boss, Peter, followed by a handshake and a sit-down with James, Jesus’ close relative through his aunt Mary, identified his status. The James that Paul met had stature; he headed the church in Jerusalem. For context, James was the first apostle to be martyred, killed by the scribes and Pharisees.

Peter and James had strong credentials. But the two did not grant Paul apostolic authority. He conferred with the apostles, but was a man among equals. Paul did not credit himself in any of this defense of his authority. He did not seek to exalt himself. He grounded his claim in God’s orchestration, a formation that preceded even his birth. Ananias represented the older method of anointing Paul, a person God had chosen specifically.

“But when [God], who from my mother’s womb had set me apart and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles.”

We should not dismiss the historical and spiritual importance of Paul’s authority, framed in the term “an apostle.” This authority applies to all the apostles. These men were not only champions of Christianity, but also founders of the Mystical Body of Christ on earth. They were like the prophets, priests, and kings of the ancient Hebrews, anointed with direct channels to God.

Consider that the Old Testament prophets spanned millennia, with usually only one or two alive at a time. The apostles of Jesus lived within the same two to five decades after Jesus’ Ascension. They all enjoyed the special indwelling of apostolic honor.

We must listen to them. They are the roots of our current Magisterium, an unbroken core of holy men beholden to God, driven by the Holy Spirit, and not only representatives of Peter in the papal vestige, but active recipients and stewards of revelation. Paul represents this unification of apostolic recognition under one mantle—Jesus Christ.

Paul’s final words in our reading, the last verse in Chapter One, explain that significance. “So they glorified God because of me.” Because of what God did with him, what God expected of him, and what he delivered as his mission to God. Both witness and testimony mark holiness.

Galatians was written between 50 and 53 AD, only 20 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. It includes the full breadth of Church doctrine. In 67 AD, Paul penned his final letter, in 2nd Timothy. As with his apostleship title in Galatians, Paul began 2 Timothy similarly. “Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the promise of life in Christ Jesus.”

Paul wrote that “the Lord stood with me and strengthened me” (2 Timothy 4:16-17). He wrote with certainty that he “fought the good fight” and, beyond a charge of narcissism and hubris, Paul admitted that a “crown of righteousness” was put on his head (verses 7-8).

He could say boldly, “So they glorified God because of me.”

Mom was a bit untouchable. Reserved. Lauren Bacall and Jackie Kennedy demeanor. Not aloof. Just naturally cool. Staring into the distance threw us off. She wasn’t paying attention to us, we thought. But a “Harump,” or a “Tsk tsk,” reminded us that she had magic radar, jotting down a history we won’t get to review until we sit down with her in heaven.

I usually share a story or poem when offering a tribute for relatives we love. I’ve done that twice already for Mom, so enough of that. For Mom’s 100th birthday, gone 27 years ago, I thought a generic homage would be better.

We all have distinct images of Louise, the mother of us seven blessed offspring. One immediate image is her sitting, legs tucked, on a couch, reading a mystery novel or a cookbook. She cut an iconic figure, posing for a statue carved lovingly by Michelangelo.

Mom read, sat, smoked, and sipped her favorite white wine while people around her did all kinds of things, from watching TV to racing around the house on imaginary horses.

Louise drove a car or sat in the passenger seat with the same focused demeanor. She was always the steady, same-wondering woman. Not intense, not dismissive of others, and certainly not dangerous. Rather, zeroed in on some ineffable thing out there in the distance. If you asked what it was, she might not answer.

• Each of us superseded her passion-managed limits differently. I remember her silence more than the infrequent outbursts. Not sure, but that was probably true with all of us. If she got exceptionally angry, it was probably pent-up angst over distasteful behavior from someone she loved deeply.

• We didn’t take it to heart. Not sure about that either. I don’t remember any of us needing therapy. More than one sister and brother corrected me, but it may have been teasing—something Mom didn't do very well, while we have all become professionals. Weird how that happened. Maybe we need therapy after all.

Mom was not always sitting, of course. Her walk, though, usually meant duty, something to get done. In the 1950’s, everything took lots of time. Hand whisks and forked egg beaters, a litany of stirring, sweeping, and gathering essential ingredients.

Eventually, vacuuming with an overly heavy machine for a tiny mom did help pick up everything from sand to fingernail clippings. A larger freezer space helped. So did the microwave. On-hand popsicles and ice cream bars, only available earlier from the singing trucks, provided rare treats that never came by in the winter. She could package saved-up pre-cooked things along with doggie bags from a restaurant. Mom never ate those things. Leftovers lacked class.

I grew up and left home for the eating-out years, the ready pizzas, and something called “takeout.” The lucky last of the litter had no idea about their largesse. Mom became less active, because that wasn’t always the norm.

Some of us remember her diving off the edge of the pool at Los Alamitos, smooth, hands clasped in front of her, dropping into the calm surface of the water with barely a ripple behind her. She did that at lakes, too. Even in the ocean. Effortless, followed by a few smooth strokes, and then a sashay back into a chair, wrapped in a towel. Happy.

I can hear her mumble, “The pool was a good idea, Jack.”

Louise Marie Cosgriff/McKay Pearring also used to lie on her back on the living room floor when we had little kids in the house. I remember the youngest, Molly and Lisa, crawling all over her, vague memories of each of us doing the same thing. Lots of giggling going on. It was out of character in one sense, and entirely Louise in another. She seemed to love it. A low, throaty giggle. A cigarette chortle.

Mom’s inhale on a Chesterfield was an epic event. I don’t know how she did it. I smoked cigarettes for five years and tried to copy that. She dragged on a cig like she was at the doctor’s office, with long and slow exhales. The smoke flowed out of her nose and mouth for what seemed too long. The cigarette would have an inch of ash after the first drag. Truly amazing. Likely one of the reasons I quit early — besides Joanne’s disdain. I didn’t have the chops for smoking as my mom did.

Christmas presents were a big deal for Mom, too. Presents at any time, really. She would open the most meaningless things and be immediately thankful, smiling graciously. “Oh, thank you.” You could barely hear the “you,” and we always hoped she meant us. “Thank you,” just like “I love you,” from across the room.

“Oh, Jack,” was her ready refrain to anything Dad did. Not flirty. Not really upset. Just, “Oh, Jack.”

She didn’t swear. Not really. Damn was about it, and she used it appropriately. “Damn it, you had me worried. Don’t ever do that again.” Straight delivery. No hyperbole. Just the facts. The demure feminine version of Jack Webb’s Joe Friday. Some of us made her say “damn” more than others. I got confirmation of that. “I only remember ‘Hell’s bells’” said more than one sibling.

Still, our Mom was a bit untouchable. Reserved. Lauren Bacall and Jackie Kennedy demeanor. Not aloof. Just naturally cool. Staring into the distance threw us off. She wasn’t paying attention to us, we thought. But a “Harump,” or a “Tsk tsk,” reminded us that she had magic radar, jotting down a history we won’t get to review until we sit down with her in heaven.

I don’t remember Mom threatening me, not even “When your dad gets home.” She was a genius at the little comment. A “Really?” or a “We’ll see about that” was about as corrective as she got. Almost all of us thought we were the black sheep in the family at one time or another, though me being the only one to hear “Damn it” might land only on my resume. Mom’s disappointment made passive-aggressive look like Disneyland rides.

I could be wrong. When I chat with the sibs about Mom, which is eerily seldom and unfortunate, Mom’s lovely side papered over all of the unsure things about her.

I know this. There were three Louises. The Laurie, John, and Mike Mom. The JD and Lindy Mom. The Lisa and the Molly Mom.

You can envisage the three by her cooking. Fish sticks, fried sliced potatoes, homemade Thousand Island Dressing, and Kool-Aid for the older three.

Then there was the casserole Mom for Lindy and Jim — as James David, now “JD,” used to be called. I got to be around that version of her in short, delicious periods. She kept jars of cooking chocolate and Hershey kisses on the counter. It was shocking. Party chips and dip and canned soups, canned corn, and Maraschino cherries. Very different menu items. I worked jobs in high school, played sports, signed up for theatre, and missed most of that Mom. Teenagers can be stupid.

Our Lisa and Molly Mom was elusive, a woman deep in her own thoughts. Mom told me, with rare fear, that she was unsure who the President of the United States was. That was a very strange lunch, back home for a bit, when she told me. She was fighting demons, she said. Turned in on herself a bit.

Following her carotid artery surgery, she called me with big news. She knew who the President was. Both of us laughed at that. She didn’t think anyone noticed, and she might have been right.

A little while after that last phone call — Mom clear in her thinking, sure that the extra blood getting to her brain was repairing her view of everything — we got the news that she was in the hospital, stroked, intubated, with just days to live.

Dad was a shell of the confident, when’s-the-next-party guy, sitting next to her shrinking body in the hospital. He spoke positively about the color of her urine, wanting to be hopeful. He was crumbling, and we all knew the baton was passing to us. That was 27 years ago. Since then, Louise has met more family arriving in heaven than I can list folks in the passed-on generation. Only Aunt Joi sits as the remaining torchbearer.

People didn’t notice this one thing about her, but I think Dad’s head was twice Mom’s size. Not only was he twice her size, but his head ballooned over hers. When you look at pictures of them, you’ll never see their heads the same way again. The hair on mom’s head fluffed outward, but even when dad’s skull went bald, his cranium was massive compared to hers.

For birthing so many large kids, she was the tiniest mother I knew. My friends' mothers looked like giants next to her. She got even tinier over the years. Aunt Joi, also quite short, made her feel normal.

Heaven’s not like here, in that way. Our Church tells us we don’t get our bodies back until the great resurrection after the end of the age. Ominous stuff. That works out fine for our pondering, thoughtful, staring-off-into-the-distance mother. The character of the Spirit life fits her just fine — reserved, speaking in whispers, prompting her progeny with prayers and sighs.

Mom’s waiting for us to reunite with her. She’s had plenty of time imagining our arrival. Can’t help but want Louise to smile at me again, forgiving, grateful we belong to her, and she, the holy marker of Mother Mary in my life, is now not worried about a damn thing.

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“From you shall come forth for me …” Yes, prophecy is fulfilled — the line of David, the Messiah, was to be born in Bethlehem. Yet within one verse, one chapter, one book—packed into the Old Testament — the impact of its prophecy is felt for hundreds of years, and then is expressed definitively in the chapters and verses of several write…

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The camel-through-the-eye-of-the-needle story is one of many metaphors Jesus combines into one message. Nothing, including your body, your reputation, your knowledge, your credentials, and your coin collection, will exist when you die. It’s just your heart and soul that pass on.

Tuesday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
Ezekiel 28:1-10
Deuteronomy 32:26-27ab, 27cd-28, 30, 35cd-36ab
Matthew 19:23-30

The modern, 21st-century version of the “rich” man in Matthew 19:16-22, who will have great difficulty getting into Heaven, totters between two false premises. Our understanding of wealth and the definition of “hard.”

We falsely envision Jesus’ focus on the wealthy young man as a rarity—a member of the 1st Century’s selfish, gold-encrusted 1%. A pathetic fellow, saddened at the prospect of giving away his stuff if he wants to follow Jesus.

He was likely very wealthy—for he had many possessions—but that’s not Jesus’ focus. Jesus speaks not about the actual wealth, but the encumbered weight of possessions. It’s a drag upon where our obsessions belong. Possessions take us away from God.

“Who then can be saved?” asked Jesus’ disciples. They themselves were men of possessions. In truth, getting possessions—from clothing and paychecks to housing—marked the daily chores of everyone they knew; 100% of people are hunter-gatherers, and those behaviors are required to survive.

Up to this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has generally condemned the elite as prideful, materialistic, and legalistic. This rich fellow exudes holiness at a more authentic level. In fact, he asked Jesus what more he could do. “What do I still lack?”

In truth, he senses something is missing in his spiritual life. That’s a surprising admission. He assuredly has everything he needs.

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to [the] poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Many of us hear that, and we steer our monetary minds into a false assumption. Possessions are evil. Really? The math is illogical. We give our evil stuff to some other poor slob so they can be burdened? Jesus isn’t playing hot potato.

The poor are no better attuned to possessions than the wealthy. Most poor folks dream of being wealthy. Envy politics takes advantage of this reality. It’s the scam of both left- and right-wing campaigns. They promise to give you what you don’t have by taking it from the rich, or promise to make sure you can keep what you own by insisting the poor are poor because they didn’t take advantage of the opportunities to be rich like you are.

If both the rich and the poor are sodden with temptations, why does Jesus focus upon the person with many possessions as the one who will find it hard to get into Heaven?

There are three important principles here that Jesus wants us to consider. First, perfection. Second is unloading our possessions, specifically, benefiting the poor. And third is the shifting of our sense of treasure to our heavenly reward. Perfection, unloading, and treasure are not really “steps” in a formula. Rather, two of them are preconditions for becoming perfect so we can fully follow Jesus.

Consider them in reverse. Our treasure is in heaven. Unload your material burdens. Desire to be perfect. These promptings from Jesus can be in any order, but they are necessary for us to be Christ followers. These mindsets must exist before we can become disciples. Be unburdened, love your neighbor, and desire to be perfect for the treasure of eternal life in Heaven rather than the treasures of this life.

The second general false assumption is that the wealthy won’t be able to enter Heaven.

It’s simpler than that. None of us will take possessions to Heaven. Duh.

The camel-through-the-eye-of-the-needle story is one of many metaphors Jesus combines into one message. Nothing, including your body, your reputation, your knowledge, your credentials, and your coin collection, will exist when you die. It’s just your heart and soul that pass on.

(Oh, and your DNA goes with you, which God needs to resurrect your body. But that’s all part of that Heavenly treasure promise. DNA is a metaphor, kind of.)

Jesus is making a point, of course, about the wealthy fellow and his possessions. It’s all about the possessing. Any one of us, maybe even those of us poorer than dirt, can have possession issues.

Purgatory is likely full of folks still hanging onto one or the other of the earthly essentials that are no longer essential after death. These things, including ideologies and influences, are wafts of memories. They must be purged, because they are gone. I mean, poof. No longer in your possession. Ergo, the concept of purgation will clear our souls and clean our hearts. It’s both a period of time and a notion of a place — Purgatory — because we’re spatial beings even in Heaven. (That’s way over my pay grade, so don’t get too wrapped up in my statement.)

Back to the disciples’ question. “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, ‘Who then can be saved?’”

The young man was holy, considerate, searching, and authentic. If that guy is going to have a hard time getting into Heaven, then the rest of us are doomed.

Exactly. If your mindset focuses upon perfection as an attainable feat, that is. “Hard” means brick wall, steep cliff, and swallow the ocean, all in one word. Except for the wholly innocent (the aborted babies come to mind), anyone who’s wanted a second piece of pie and then took it grasps the frailty of imperfection. We can try, and we should, but we won’t be perfect. We are, then, imperfect, burdened, and self-centered folks who need God.

Jesus looked at them and said, “For human beings this is impossible, but for God all things are possible.”

And there you have it.

Desire perfection, but expect you’ll need forgiveness, and even a dramatic rescue, if we’re honest.

Unburden yourself of all your possessions, but expect instead to be showered with so much that you’ll need help from both friends and strangers to properly use up, eat, maintain, and store all that stuff.

Dream of the glorious existence of your upcoming everlasting life with God and the hosts of angels, cadres of ancients, and fellowship of saints.

For as hard as everything is, for God, all things are possible.

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Ezekiel often extended God’s messages through symbolic, dramatic presentations. For example, in Ezekiel 4:1-8, he built a model of Jerusalem and laid siege to it for 390 days, representing the years of Israel’s sin. These actions served as powerful visual representations of God’s judgment and the consequences of disobedience.

Memorial of Saint Clare, Virgin
Ezekiel 2:8-3:4
Psalm 119:14, 24, 72, 103, 111, 131
Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

The weird just gets weirder in Ezekiel, all the way to the end, when God maps out the “New Israel” boundaries of the temple. We get the hint as to what’s going on in verse 17 of Chapter 3:

Son of man, I have appointed you a sentinel for the house of Israel.j When you hear a word from my mouth, you shall warn them for me.

Ezekiel is on a march through visions from God. When Israel is wont to listen, he will be able to speak. When they are stubborn, he will be mute.

Only when I speak to you and open your mouth, shall you say to them: Thus says the LORD God: Let those who hear, hear! Let those who resist, resist! They are truly a rebellious house. Ezekiel will face fierce opposition with the determination and resistance shown by his opponents.

The entire book of Ezekiel is a series of visions. By chapter 8, we have seen horrifying things.

Do you see the great abominations that the house of Israel is practicing here, so that I must depart from my sanctuary? You shall see even greater abominations!

Here’s the context. In response to the rebellion of Jehoiakim of Judah in 601 B.C., Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian ruler, besieged Jerusalem. When Jehoiakim’s successor, Jehoiachin, surrendered in 597, Nebuchadnezzar appointed Zedekiah king and deported Jehoiachin and the royal family to Babylon, along with upper-class members, including the priest Ezekiel.

Jerusalem was destroyed in 587–586 after a lengthy siege. It wasn't until 582 that large numbers of the best elements of the surviving population were forcibly deported to Babylonia.

Ezekiel's role in all this is as a conduit for God. He first has to convince his audience that they are responsible for the punishment of exile and to justify the Lord’s decision to destroy their city and Temple.

By chapters 36 and 37, Ezekiel argues that the Judahites who embrace his preaching are the people the Lord has chosen as a new Israel, enlivened by a new heart and imbued with new breath. Ezekiel’s a winnowing prophet.

His prophetic ministry began around 593 BC, and continued for at least 22 years. In your reading, you’ll notice the theme of his preaching shifts from God's harsh judgment to the promise of the future.

God gave Ezekiel symbolic actions, strange visions, and even trances, prompting him to teach the people with unforgettable messages. The pinnacle of his stories rests upon the one we heard today. He eats a scroll on which words of prophecy are written, in order to symbolize his appropriation of the message.

Ezekiel often extended God’s messages through symbolic, dramatic presentations. For example, in Ezekiel 4:1-8, he built a model of Jerusalem and laid siege to it for 390 days, representing the years of Israel’s sin. These actions served as powerful visual representations of God’s judgment and the consequences of disobedience.

Ezekiel does not make it back to Israel; he prophesies while he’s in Babylonian exile. However, Ezekiel does bang on about Israel’s eventual restoration to the land; that is prophecy, not an account of his return.

His prophecies come true, though with a continued bit of hyperbole. St. John used many images of Ezekiel in his writings, specifically in the Book of Revelation. Today, Ezekiel marks Israel's unflagging, resilient resurgence as a leading nation in the world, a lynchpin in God’s constant involvement in our history.

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Simple citizen and patron requests for our appearance, summons from on high, prepare us for the holiest one. An authority that we must respect and answer hails us to come. We either submit to the requests, or we ignore them and suffer the consequences. What do we practice?

Memorial of Saint John Vianney, Priest
Jeremiah 30:1-2, 12-15, 18-22
Psalm 102:16-18, 19-21, 29, 22-23
Matthew 14:22-36
Matthew 15:1-2, 10-14

When I summon him, he shall approach me;
how else should one take the deadly risk
of approaching me? says the LORD.
You shall be my people,
and I will be your God.
(Jeremiah 30:21-22)

Right there in the middle of those verses is the bottleneck that rattles our courage. These “deadly” words are from the mouth of God. “How else should one take the deadly risk of approaching me?”

How else?

We must recognize that God is dangerous. Jeremiah spends chapters and verses identifying the might and justice of God.

For thus says the LORD:
Incurable is your wound,
grievous your injury;
There is none to plead your cause,
no remedy for your running sore,
no healing for you.
All your lovers have forgotten you,
they do not seek you.
I struck you as an enemy would strike,
punished you cruelly;
Why cry out over your wound?
Your pain is without relief.
Because of your great guilt,
your numerous sins,
I have done this to you.
(Jeremiah 30:21-22)

This detailed list should give us pause. “I have done this to you.” Incurable wounds of injustice, running sores, and lost lovers. The brutality of our treacherous lives is laid out in front of us. And, because God allowed these horrors to take place, punishing us in cruel fashion for our “great guilt,” we recoil at the idea that being summoned by God awaits us.

Still, after establishing the actions and consequences of a sinful life, God insists that when we are summoned — even though he has allowed harm to come to us, and even though we have treated him badly — we should approach him.

We know the angst of a summons. Every unflinching notice we have found, in a letter or taped to our door, bears the weight of dread. We failed to pay our water bill last month, for any of a dozen reasons, and we’re threatened that the city will turn off our water.

Or, how about that jury summons? “You will appear at court on the 24th of October at 7:00 a.m.”

These notices come to us from both failure and duty — our negligence and our mere existence. We “must” respond.

Simple citizen and patron requests for our appearance prepare us for the holiest one. An authority that we must respect and answer to hails us to come. We either submit to the requests, or we ignore them and suffer the consequences. What do we practice?

The first notion, that an authority demands our respect and obedience, says it all. We learned this recognition as a little child. Few of us did what we were expected to do. Parental authorities are the proving ground for our adult life.

Yet, what authority can claim to be the source of every overseer, every Mom, every city administrator, and every judge? “All authority comes from God” (Romans 13:1).

God has every right to speak to us in this way. When we ignore or refuse him, we forgo all logic. To deny God’s desire for us to be drawn to him comes with “deadly” results.

It’s not a matter of no water, or a large fine for not showing up for jury duty. It’s worse than that. We can’t lie our way out of showing up for God’s summons. Avoiding or hiding from God isn’t foolish. It’s ridiculous. It is, frankly, stupid.

If you’ve spent a lifetime ignoring authorities, forging your innocence, and demanding to be left alone, it’s time to adjust your behavior. The summons from God has no exit door.

So when is this summons from God? The clearest answer is at every moment. But the dramatic answer is when we are afraid. “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

What do we think God is going to do? We already know. We have the wounds. Some deformities and damage have come to us unbidden. We didn’t ask for the pain through our guilt. God still allowed it. We have a limp. We can’t see out of one eye. “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Isaiah said it first: “Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.” (Isaiah 41:10)

Peter said it last: “So be truly glad. There is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold.” (1 Peter 1:6-7)

Our trials are our opportunities for witness. But more than that, they are our entry into our necessary intimacy with God. We are his collaborators, his friends, and his charges answering to his summons.

If that is not enough, then consider the endgame, the final picture.

Behold, I am about to do something new; even now it is coming. Do you not see it? Indeed, I will make a way in the wilderness and streams in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19)

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Without grasping that God removes guilt by pardoning our sins and then selflessly offers us a kinship, we are denied a physical and spiritual familial connection that allows us to participate in the goodness and riches of everything that is his.

Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Micah 7:14-15, 18-20
Psalm 85:2-4, 5-6, 7-8
Matthew 12:46-50

Who is there like you, the God who removes guilt and pardons sin for the remnant of his inheritance? (Micah 7:18)

How often do we put those two things together when we explain or ponder the character of God? Seldom, I think. However, consider that without joining these two, we cannot know God. We won’t experience God’s love, and we won’t enjoy his company.

It’s a dangerous, drastic premise to posit. It might be presumptive, meaning some folks think they operate just fine without forgiveness and grace (the standard religious summary of the Micah verse). Yet, “just fine” isn’t a mission worth pursuing with only death at its apex.

Without grasping that God removes guilt by pardoning our sins and then selflessly offers us a kinship, we are denied a physical and spiritual familial connection that allows us to participate in the goodness and riches of everything that is his.

We’ll get none of what we truly want and need. This leads to existential fright. What we want, instead, is authentic joy from intimacy with the ultimate love.

Without divine forgiveness, God’s gift of intimacy will be hidden in a bubble of our own making — or more sadly, someone’s bubble that we admire — faced with two possibilities. We are either ruined, sure that our sins are unforgivable and must be erased from anyone’s view to eke out what’s left of our lives, or we deny that every soreness and calamity caused by us were sins at all.

The second path is disingenuous. It does allow self-satisfaction at a terrific pace before our ultimate oblivion. So, there’s that to look forward to.

The highly intelligent, or steely honest person (which is almost the same thing) can’t head down the hedonous path without drugs, I think. These folks are quick to see that God is actively addressing them. God’s triple offer of evidence (boldness of the Trinity) is immediately convincing to smarty pants. The bane of intelligence, the bad news, is that all else, every single temptation out there, looks pretty darn good too.

God’s expectations of constant opportunities — dramatic witnessing and heartfelt testimonies — can be pretty exhausting for intelligent people. Extreme intelligence, I’m afraid, recognizes all the other options offer pleasures as better than fealty to God. Unrelenting brain synapses hurry up the call of the deadly sins. They appear as opportunities rather than cliffs for super-thinkers. Sin can be very inviting.

The vast array of druggery available to the accelerated mind has exploded in recent centuries. Mind-altering influences now include deep dives into entertainment, sports, violence, and hubris overdoses along with the chemical kind. Wacked-out authors, painters, politicians, and celebrities are all the proof I need to cement that point.

I, thankfully, believe that average intelligence succumbs to evil at a less speedy pace. We “normals” don’t lose hope so easily and can grasp God’s forgiveness with gracious relief. We’re not immune, though. Just not challenged the same as the braniacs. Pray for them.

About us average folks. We need each other to remind us that God can get in the way of our plans when we veer off course. When our plans don’t work out, we often make the mistake that God failed us. God’s not that great after all, we conclude. So, make friends with people who are not afraid to step into our lives and stop that kind of stupid.

It’s not so much that we start to believe there is no God, but that our definition of God lacks breadth. A limited God can’t cure our illness, habits, proclivities, dastardly behavior, and certainly won’t be able to reset our history. We’re trapped, so say our meager minds, by bad fortune, insufferable miseries, and toxic relationships.

The fear of toxicity distances us from the kindest of folks as much as it does those who might see us for who we are. Worse, the ugliness we see in relatives and friends furthers the revolting, wretching reminder of the darkness and filthiness of sin that makes us run away.

Our burden of guilt removed by the pardoning of our sins is, then, the necessary beginning for shifting into intimacy with God. Only our stubbornness and fear of God keep us from bending our knee, pleading for help, and turning away from our often mundane and surely limited path.

If God can remove our guilt and pardon us, then we must choose him. Even our dismissal of him, our conspiracies against him, and our spitting anger over what we know he has allowed us to experience can all be forgiven.

As Micah said, no one else can do this. “Who is there like you?” There is no one else.

The proof that this pardoning is real rests in God’s desire to share the future with us. The wonders of Heaven will be ours, and the restoration of the universe is all going back to God. The remnant of his inheritance isn’t some code. It’s plain speech. What God gave to us in the beginning of creation, stewardship and life with the fullness of divinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — remains, awaits, and engulfs everything we dream about.

Come, and get it.

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Jesus tells common men, and us two millennia later, that whatever the Holy Spirit has in mind is surely exciting and remarkable, but it’s going to require difficulties that will test your mettle. Stay the course.

Tuesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Hosea 8:4-7, 11-13
Matthew 9:32-38

Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness. (Matthew 9:35)

Jesus reminds us that he is not an ordinary man. In both severe and normal human moments, he reveals his place in creation and time. God is always on duty. Jesus’ responsibilities to his followers do not cease. Everything he does, both big and small, reverberates through eons.

The verses we hear today in Matthew end a litany of several amazing healings and the dramatic miracle on the stormy sea. Wedged within the healings, reads an out-of-band story — an over-eager follower and a reticent disciple. Their conversations with Jesus follow an exhausting rush of healings that began late in the day and must have lasted deep into the night, and they precede a severe storm in which Jesus fell asleep in a rocky boat due to his weariness.

Physically spent by hordes of ill people, Jesus remains needed. He must get on a boat where he plans to rest, but must instead rebuke the winds and the sea to protect and calm the frightened men who follow him.

Both the eighth and ninth chapters of Matthew deal with cleansing of lepers, healings, cures, and driving out of spirits. This is a remarkable display of fervent repair. If someone were to travel through the towns and cities along Highway 24 today, doing the same things Jesus did, the crowds would be huge. The internet would go nuts. News services would be recording his every move. Folks would gather around to hear speeches and to get a peek at the person performing miracle after miracle. This is what Jesus and his followers were dealing with in his time.

Matthew describes, in brief but precise detail, the draining of Jesus’ energy from the growing exhaustion of constant healings amid the ardors of travel to perform his miracles wherever he must go. In the evenings, they brought him many who were possessed by demons, and he drove out the spirits by a word and cured all the sick, to fulfill what had been said by Isaiah the prophet: “He took away our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

These healings are more than a man going to a Church meeting on a Wednesday evening after a hard day’s work. Jesus performs serious hands-on restoration. After that is done, rather than stopping, Jesus told the disciples they’ve got to hop into a boat and head off to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. There’s a whole set of new towns to blast through. We can see that Jesus is going to use the boat trip to rest and recharge his spent body. But on that trip, where Jesus tries to nap, his rest is interrupted by a severe storm.

The harangue of weather and fearful men in the face of his exhaustion is still not too much to bear. Rushed awake, Jesus still teaches, reveals, and leaves us all with insight for recorded history.

This is who Jesus is. Steady, ready, determined, and successful.

Nothing in scripture, we know, is filler, extra words to pump up the volume or provide relief. Jesus isn’t the president of the United States dropping into stadiums all over the country to give speeches. He doesn’t dress to impress or work a room full of people to curry favor. He doesn’t fly in a jumbo jet, napping quietly between gigs. He doesn’t have a crew monitoring his every move and parting the crowds as he wanders around.

Jesus doesn’t see his entourage as pawns on a chessboard or replaceable minions. Jesus’ followers eat on the run, hobnob with the diseased, and live lives of expectancy. Each person has a place and a purpose and is fully loved by Jesus.

Jesus tells common men, and us two millennia later, that whatever the Holy Spirit has in mind is surely exciting and remarkable, but it’s going to require difficulties that will test your mettle. Stay the course.

Remember, Jesus hand-picks each person who joins him. He calls us individually in ways that we each will grasp. When we respond positively or negatively to Jesus, he molds us and speaks to our hearts. Once we’re on board with him, the work flows like a deep river.

Jesus asks for constant intimacy rather than convenient attendance. The patterned life of the secular world has no permanence, no real consistency. Necessity quite often is not necessary at all.

Jesus speaks the truth and personally attends to everyone who engages him. He has designs on our lives. In the midst of everything going on, “Pay attention,” he tells us. “I am paying attention to you. I know who you are. You know who I am. Listen to what I am telling each of you. I am always with you. Keep your eyes, ears, and heart focused on me.”

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Those two years since Jocelyn died went by fast, though not hurried, more like dragged, scraped along by a racing memory gripping a vein attached to our hearts. This is not bad news, nor good, just the description of relentless time being damaged as it furiously marches on. OK, so it’s mostly bad.

Then, there’s this:

She’s likely happy as a clam.

The family is still wrecked, distanced by the exhaustion of processing and dealing, as they say. Yet, a little less. Distanced also by blossoming new family structures, branched out from the two old folks who planted the tree 53 years ago. That development is all lovely. We’re marching forward rather than dragged. Dancing and singing are involved. It’s really good stuff.

I have happy days, and see happiness in each grandchild. Joanne holds onto me still. We smile at Josie/Jocelyn's memories now. Not quite as often as grief allows. Sheesh, it’s so relentless.

We treasure the hugs from Xander, which we get most weeks. God, that man is great. Judy reaches for us and holds on, and now Phil, a much-needed light in our family. Got one from Jill just weeks ago, in Denver. Twice. All the grandkids are huggers, even when they don’t really want to. You can tell they have good hugging skills, though.

Thank you, those who I see have similar pains in your eyes, who have many more years at whispy, emotional carriage. You know how to care, and we all appreciate it. None of us wants the ability to recognize deep, heavy loss, but it’s endemic. (Sorry for the “but” — poor writing, so Jenelle taught me — left it in anyway — maybe she’ll call me).

Shattered, but sturdier. Weepy, but unashamed, followed by a good gaze out the window, and things to do.

Xander gave me some 20 boxes of Jocelyn’s books to slowly go through. Five boxes have already been opened and perused, and she continues to astonish me. Anglo-Saxon Spirituality? Who knew.

I didn’t do a Christmas letter last year. This isn’t a replacement or an apology. It’s June 23.

I haven’t started talking to her. I’m thinking she’s still pretty busy getting acquainted with the unimaginable. Like when she went on a retreat or flew off to Taiwan. It’ll have to wait until I catch up to her. The Holy Spirit is talking to me about her, though. Not a report or anything. Just whimsical images. Giggles. The things I need.

God bless you.

You might think about the three things I’ve been holding onto, if you’re of a similar mind. First, Jesus is not nervous. That’s a good one to know. No matter what’s happened or is going on, Jesus is aware and locked and loaded. Second, the Holy Spirit is a big fan of Guardian Angels, as much as Jesus, actually. I didn’t know that until just recently. Third, the Father knows how to do that whole fathering thing so well. All of us, men and women, want to be so much like Jesus, but we men really want to be good fathers.

The thing about the Father is that he isn’t ashamed of us, or disappointed, or too busy. Ever. Never entered his mind. Isn’t that great?

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The journal of Ahab’s malicious reign, compared to the catalog of our many-faceted positions of authority, might not appear similar. Yet, as baptized Catholics and Christians, and as father/mother, son/daughter, friend/neighbor, supervisor, and so on, in both family lineage and anointed roles, we have as many responsibilities as this ancient man. His legacy is a warning signal for those of us who fail to recant, repent, reconcile, and influence those we love.

Tuesday of the 11th Week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 21:17-29
Psalm 51:3-4, 5-6ab, 11 and 16
Matthew 5:43-48

Today’s dramatic report of repentance in the scriptures portrays God as merciful and just. That justice shivers our timbers. We hear the rebuke that forced Ahab’s hand, and cringe as we follow the trajectory of these biblical reports with our own lives in mind. It’s difficult to position ourselves within the frame of Ahab, as if we are similar to his ilk. Yet, our similarities are not such a stretch as you’d think.

Indeed, no one gave himself up to the doing of evil
in the sight of the LORD as did Ahab,
urged on by his wife Jezebel. (1Kings 21:25)

That’s not a list of evil doers we want to be on. Ahab tops it. His wife, Jezebel, does him no favors. Can we imagine this for us?

He became completely abominable by following idols,
just as the Amorites had done,
whom the LORD drove out before the children of Israel. (1Kings 21:26)

The journal of Ahab’s malicious reign, compared to the catalog of our many-faceted positions of authority, might not appear similar. Yet, as baptized Catholics and Christians, and as father/mother, son/daughter, friend/neighbor, supervisor, and so on, in both family lineage and anointed roles, we have as many responsibilities as this ancient man. His legacy is a warning signal for those of us who fail to recant, repent, reconcile, and influence those we love.

Ahab served as one of the 19 kings of Northern Israel for 20 years. Scholars debate the exact timeline, but their combined research confirms his existence sometime between 869 and 853 BC, 150 years and six kings after the united Israel under David split after Solomon’s worsening reign at the end of his life.

His foibles and fraught behavior, marked by deception and anger, are not far from the relationship and authority skirmishes we have had. How often have we exhibited behaviors that rolled God’s eyes? Maybe we’ve stopped short of murder, but sin is sin.

Ahab wasn’t alone in his immoral and murderous rule. Practically every King of both Israel and Judah was a cad, and only a few recanted. Sins of pride, pleasure, and idols drove a wedge, rupturing the loving relationship between God and the authorities he anointed. By Ahab’s time, God declared that the gig was up.

I don’t think I’m the only one who has felt God’s disappointment, though this next verse and a half hopefully won’t fit God’s anger with any of us.

Because you have given yourself up to doing evil in the LORD’s sight,
I am bringing evil upon you: I will destroy you
and will cut off every male in Ahab’s line,
whether slave or freeman, in Israel. (1Kings 21:20-21)

Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, was a deceptive and horrifying woman, aligned fiercely with Baal, the devil’s mocked visage of evil in a god. Jezebel’s name is famously attached to the worst of the worst in a woman’s character. Her fate surpassed Ahab’s. Biblical commentary cites her as a harlot and sorcerer. No repentant was she. In a religious community, her and Ahab’s rule was an affront to God.

“The dogs shall devour Jezebel in the district of Jezreel.” (1Kings 21:23)

Elijah, the prophet who listened to God, proclaimed this horrifying condemnation. As with many Old Testament prophets, Elijah did not enjoy an easygoing relationship with the nation he was appointed to mentor. If you’ve run a company, been lord or lady of a household, or a member of a family of more than one person, you likely know what unhappy wisdom and counsel will bring you if you speak up when you’re supposed to. What’s worse? That we didn’t speak up, or we did?

Elijah had just returned from a self-imposed exile. He did not expect joy from this encounter. Still, he did what God asked. Amazingly, and out of the blue, Ahab repents.

When Ahab heard these words, he tore his garments
and put on sackcloth over his bare flesh.
He fasted, slept in sackcloth, and went about subdued. (1Kings 21:27)

Hallelujah, right? Well, as God’s forgiveness plays out and his knowledge of the future becomes evident, we find that mercy encounters speed bumps we erect. If not laid by us, they will be by our descendants.

Since he has humbled himself before me,
I will not bring the evil in his time.
I will bring the evil upon his house during the reign of his son. (1Kings 21:29)

The failures of Ahab’s lineage explain the resulting consequences that follow repentance. So too with us.

God will repair everything that we fret about when we cry out for mercy. But repentance leads to cooperation with God, and unfortunately, repairs are often violent and destructive. If you’ve ever remodeled a kitchen or renovated a deck off the side of your house, you know what I’m talking about. The new build looks great, but the process of getting there affected you and your family, your neighbors, and your friends. “Will this ever get finished!” Almost always forgotten is that renovations require ongoing maintenance.

In Ahab’s family, no, the repairs didn’t get finished, and no one kept up any renovations that began with Ahab.

Such was the effect of Ahab’s damage, a pattern that didn’t get adjusted. God wasn’t able to repair any of it. The next 12 kings of the Northern Kingdom seldom called upon God. Ahab may have repented, but few others did. Eventually, the dastardly lives of Ahab’s descendants end in disaster. When Hoshea’s line ended in 722, so did any further generations of Ahab. The entire institution of the Northern Kingdom cratered.

Some of us look to our pasts and our roles as fathers, mothers, brothers, wives, and friends. It’s a long list with multiple and intimate connections. We are charged with orchestrating a loving leadership of a family, as husband and father, wife and mother. We also attend to follower roles in the orchestra of siblings and friendships. We are led by others. How are we doing as supporting members of a cast?

Calumny, foibles, and errors of all kinds force us into a constant string of apologies and reconciliations. We’re not ‘perfect’ is an understatement. Do we follow Ahab’s lead and publicly reconcile? Not always. Often, we ignore the apology, wishing the infraction and embarrassment away. By doing so, we leave behind wastelands.

The lessons of Ahab’s humbled penitance speak volumes. It’s not so much how many times we failed as it is how ignorant we’ve been when burdened by our miseries and not paid attention to the needs and necessary love those around us both need and wish to express. How do we respond to the Elijah who calls us out?

The psalm today properly expresses our chagrin over this, followed by what should be our desire for reparation.

Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin, cleanse me. (Psalm 51: 4-5)

We can get mired down in thinking that God was unfair in passing judgment on Ahab’s offspring. It’s a poor positioning of scripture’s framing of Ahab’s tale. God knows what the subsequent leaders of the Northern Kingdom would do. We can take some happiness in Ahab’s reconciliation with God, but the weight of repentance falls on all of us, all the time.

As Catholics, we regularly confess. That’s important, but we need to pray that those who witness our faithfulness and constant return to God are encouraged to do so also. It’s a public confession that prompts others. Sans the ashes and pesky sackcloth, true shame and regret when wrong, and submission to God’s will when penalized for our faith, becomes fuel for God’s graces for those leaning toward him.

Our families need repair. It’s a lot of work left for us to do. Repentance and penance aren’t the whole story. We must operate in love by cooperating with God as he rebuilds our broken decks and renovates our neglected kitchens. It’s not about us. It’s all glory for him.

Our love, expressed as coming from a merciful God, is the only salve for those we touch and encounter. In our stumbling, the plea for forgiveness that we voice is the only influence that can calm the waves we sent crashing into those that we love.

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“Well, hello John.” Those three words might take Bob half a minute to say. By the time you reached out to shake his hand, time had slowed to the pace of a custom’s officer studying your passport, reviewing your history as he looked into your eyes and focused upon you and nobody else. But without the angst and worrisome indignation of a border patrol agent, of course.

Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time
2 Peter 3:12-15a, 17-18
Mark 12:13-17

Seventy is the sum of our years,
or eighty, if we are strong,
And most of them are fruitless toil,
for they pass quickly and we drift away. (Psalm 90:10)

Some of us imagine conversations we’ve had with old friends that never took place. We wish we had said things we never really said. And when they die, our sadness is multiplied by the many things left unsaid.

That’s simply not so with Bob Schlut. From what I can remember, pretty much everything that needed to be said came right out in the open. He talked on any subject, from taking out the garbage to the price of tea in China.

“Why do we care about the price of tea in China?” he said, more than once. You couldn’t tell if he was serious, unless you knew him. He was a professional tease.

The psalmist, above, didn’t know about Bob Schlut. Fruitless toil? No, that’s not him. Pass quickly and drift away? In the larger scheme of things, perhaps, but Bob hung on longer than most, and when he died, he took an airplane to heaven. Bob was no drifter.

True to form, Bob beat the “strong” prophecy by one year.

The real problem we have about our dead friends is that most of us can’t replay those heartfelt conversations. Our friend has passed away, and we struggle to remember the gist of our conversations. What was it that Bob said?

Again, that’s not so with Bob. Bob had a way of bringing every important debate and deep thought down to the same conclusion.

“It’s a mystery,” spoken as he rubbed his forehead and pondered the thought, or jutted his jaw forward for emphasis. “It’s a mystery.”

He often reminded us that we’ll find out about all the mysteries later.

I’ve known Bob for round-about 35 years, along with hundreds of other close friends he’s gathered. He was unforgettable. Bob’s conversational tone and his vocal pace slowed you down.

“Well, hello John.” Those three words might take half a minute to come out. By the time you reached out to shake his hand, time had slowed to the pace of a custom’s officer studying your passport, reviewing your history as he looked into your eyes and focused upon you and nobody else. But without the angst and worrisome indignation of a border patrol agent, of course.

Bob would like that analogy. He’d laugh and call you clever. And he’d wait for you to say something else. He’d look in your eyes with a comfortable, casual, genuine interest in what was going on in your life. “What’s going on in your life, John?”

If you asked Bob the same question, he’d respond, “Oh, you know, the same ups and downs and comings and goings.”

He joked about his health problems and his disabilities, especially his traumatic near-death experiences. “I guess God decided I’m not ready, yet.”

Over the last several years, Bob has asked his friends to pray for him. He did that in the most humble, non-pretentious, sincere way. Then, with an authenticity rare in any man, he’d thank us when he would recover. “You were all so kind to ask God to keep me here for a while longer.”

These are simple, rare expressions of one of the loveliest men I’ve ever met. I once told him he reminded me of Padre Pio. He was incredulous. “That’s all I need, John. Bleeding hands and feet to go along with all the other stuff I have.”

Then he’d laugh. And so would you. You couldn’t not laugh when Bob laughed.

And if you continued to compliment Bob, he would thank you and then embarrass you with something sweet he knew about you. The man was a treasure to be near.

We often worry about our friends who pass away, and worry more for the family left behind. Oddly, though, none of us worry about Bob, and our sadness for the family is couched in a certainty that the yet undeclared St. Bob Schlut is already hard at work praying for them. He’s likely visited the future mansion sites for his family, excited to know they’ll be within walking distance from his just-finished abode.

Oh, and he can already clap again*. Probably a whole lot of that going on.

*For those a bit confused, Bob spent most of his adult life without the use of his left arm.

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The Spirit led us from confusion to an awakening we knew came from a loving God. We would actually get excited and try to explain that to others. It was in those attempts that we knew the truth needed to come from God, not the mind or purpose of a human. “Ask him yourself” is where we end up.

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Easter
Acts 20:17-27
John 17:1-11a

Some of us were fortunate and properly groomed to deal with the oddities and realities of the Catholic faith. However, that history of formation didn’t plant the faith in us. It revealed it, but the planting needed to come from a divine source. The Catholic faith, both ancient and suffering, is impossible to grasp with human logic and commitment alone. It takes an all-loving, holy, clever God to do that.

Our formations educated us on the wonders and perils of our faith, but the ultimate sales pitch had to come from someone other than holy examples. We need an intimacy with the characters in this story to believe it is true. Thankfully, God gives us three persons who each, individually, can do that. And they do it as one.

(See? We can’t really sell that.)

You may remember the early hurdles of attending rituals, sitting still, keeping quiet, and performing reverent acts of bowing, kneeling, and responding “Amen.” God as Father, our parental kinship creator, nurtured us there. A number of us rebelled, but that loving Father’s hold touched both our hearts and bodies to be obedient.

Few of us knew what the dickens was going on, but we could acknowledge it had elements of the sacred. The sign of the cross marked us over and over again.

If we skipped, missed, or abandoned that fostering relationship, it remains available to us even as old men and women. Reverence stills our souls.

The Word of God had no less a pathway of gauntlets, an obstacle course of painful and even torturous turns. Remember the difficulties in the seemingly endless string of skeptical studies? We heard that a man became God, which was absurd. We finally spoke up and were corrected. “No, God became man.” That reset us, but was no less absurd.

When we finally read the scriptures on our own, do you remember the published plots of the Jews, which included apostles thrown in jail for preaching about the Messiah? Their disdain led to the executions of Christians, including Saul’s observance at Stephen’s stoning. How could that reporting inspire us to become Christians? How could a monster like Saul become the apostle Paul?

The Holy Spirit likely had a hand in our being inspired. A second lens appeared in our view. Stephen’s holy glow at entering heaven as his body was smashed is not an interpretation that we could manufacture. The words in verse after verse came alive, and we began to hear and see the truth.

The Spirit led us from confusion to an awakening we knew came from a loving God. We would actually get excited and try to explain that to others. It was in those attempts that we knew the truth needed to come from God, not the mind or purpose of a human. “Ask him yourself” is where we end up.

Seeing Jesus from the pages of scripture into our daily life may well be the height of surrender. Jesus spoke of being glorified, himself having nothing to repent, while calling us to cry out to him. We found out he wasn’t just a holy prophet, or a martyr, or an effective teacher. He believed and acted as if he were God. When we found that out, there was no denying the truth.

Folks had every right to ask. “Why the heck did he think he was God?”

Jesus wasn’t self-deprecating, which is one of the highest signs of a humble, intelligent, and genuine human being. That doesn’t sound right. He wasn’t brash, but he was bold. He corrected those who told him what to do, including his mother. He never walked back anything. That’s not a typical human being. Even a narcissist would question whether Jesus was a great human being.

Paul spoke that his life was of no importance, because it belonged to God. All of his apostles, except one, died as Jesus did. They bore witness to already living an eternal life with God, because the Spirit indwelt them. They were connected to Jesus in the Eucharist, and the Father loved them. They said all that was a good thing, and more than anything the world could offer.

Our 2,000-year-old Church, embodied by many knuckleheads, but more saints, gets hit with bad PR, devilish disasters, and intractable doctrines that butt heads with the intelligencia and the authorities. Yet, we’re staunch members, apologists, and sacramental witnesses that this is where all humanity needs to belong. That’s worthy of applause and respect, but it’s not all that convincing.

We can’t convince anyone that our faith is true, even with our example and our clarity as the Holy Spirit speaks through us, or as the Father gives us authority. No one really buys the pitch that Jesus walks with us. But pitch it we must, even though we look and sound like fools.

And that is good.

The intimacy of God, which continues to mold us, is not the message. Rather, we claim that God was born into our humanity, the humanity that he created. He lived, died, was buried, and was resurrected, conquering the finality of death. His Spirit gathers us for lives lived in holiness, as we await the second coming. That message must be told by us, but God does the awakening.

We, the fools, trigger God’s opportunities. Even, sorry to say, in our deaths.

Jesus exited creation in order to send his Spirit, not just available to us, but to live in us — to “temple” in us. Jesus does the will of his Father, still, and urges us to do the same. He’s here in the Eucharist, in the icons and imagery, and the holy words.. The three-in-one theology isn’t just symbolism. It’s perfection. It’s an overwhelming revelation hitting us from every realm.

We’ve got documents, encyclicals, miracles, rosaries, and holy sacraments. We’ve also got cosmic stuff that’ll knock your socks off, like saints praying for us, and angels guiding us. But none of these are enough.

It’s not humanity or any construct of created beings that converts, even though the Holy Spirit gathers us together for support, stewardship, witness, teaching, preaching, and testimony. That’s a lot we’ve got to be doing, with holy ones enveloping us, but that’s not the essential thing.

Surrender to God, repent for your sins, and live in His love (all the stuff above we’ve been talking about). That’s the faith. Only the Holy Trinity gives us faith, because God wants us to be his. Nothing makes sense until you do that.

I’d say, take it from us, but that misses the point. Take it from God.

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Like a vice, the rescuing grip of God’s creation begins with Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The squeezing of evil’s juice from our world has been tightening for two thousand years. Soon, it will be completed. Sin will be excised, and righteousness will prevail.

Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter
Acts 16:22-34
John 16:5-11

You also might turn your head a bit when hearing the last four verses in today’s gospel.

“And when he comes he will convict the world in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation: sin, because they do not believe in me; righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will no longer see me; condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned” (John 16-8-11).

John writes the words above, announced to the disciples in his last discourses before his arrest. Much has been said about the “he” identified here by Jesus as the Holy Spirit. So, we should be good at making that assumption. The visual reminder is that the Holy Spirit has been given the authority to grasp the universe with the ultimate authority of God.

Consider this teaching within a further context. This is a capsule summary from Jesus on Trinitarian authority. Jesus’ work is finished. He is returning to the Father, the person of the Trinity who exhibits all authority. Jesus has surrendered himself to the Father, setting aside his shared authority within the Trinity while he lives out his incarnation.

The Holy Spirit, whose profile in cloud and fire was translated into a dove-like entity at Jesus’ Baptism, foreshadowed the future for all of further human life. Instead of Jesus wandering within the confines of a space less than the size of Colorado, the Holy Spirit will alight upon and then enter, worldwide, into our bodily selves. No longer reserved as a prophetic anointing for the few, the Holy Spirit will be the authority of the living Church, anointed and exhibited in all of its members.

That’s an authority shift unknown by creation since the fall of Adam and Eve.

We shouldn’t get too twisted up in our thinking on this, because it’s likely we’ll get turned around on matters of three persons in one God. The theology on how the three persons interplay is a never-ending study — something our eternal lives can chew on forever.

But this we do know. Jesus is about to display his Lordship of the universe, his authority over all creation, as a holy preparation for Pentecost, the dramatic entrance of the Holy Spirit. The creation was built for Jesus, by the way, not as its only godly member, but as God incarnated. That makes Jesus the physical Lord.

In a day or two from this discourse, Jesus will finalize his submission to the wiles and weaselly ways of a creation run by satanic forces. He will then arise and conquer death, giving proof of life — eternal life — for those who want to and will know him.

He won’t perform his earthly physical function anymore in person, not quite yet, unless you count the Eucharist, as most of us do, as his physical presence. Again, it’s easy to confuse ourselves with the intricacies of God’s movements. So Jesus' real presence in the Eucharist is affirmed. We’re talking instead about the exercise of authority. A shift took place upon Jesus’ prophecy that the Comforter, the Counselor, would come to indwell the followers of Christ — “I will send him to you.”

And what does the Holy Spirit have on his task list? The Holy Spirit convicts the world regarding sin, righteousness, and condemnation. Jesus outlines this. Those are mouthful words, but worthy of our study.

In essence, the Holy Spirit reveals sin through the behaviors of those who do not believe in him. We each know this behavior.

The Holy Spirit reveals righteousness in Jesus’ upcoming Resurrection and Ascension when he officially exits from the boundaries of creation. In other words, by his unfettered travel from this realm into Heaven, he opens a portal unavailable before to everyone of us. Jesus will even go into the depths of hell to retrieve everyone of righteous nature to join him. He then would shatter the grip that death had on all who have already died!

Jesus tells the disciples this before the shift takes place. These cosmic changes have not yet taken place as he teaches them. However, one thing has been accomplished:

“… condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

Unlike our existence, a tragedy of errors and repentance, we live in sin, and the angels do not. That is, those of us who survive long enough to grasp the personal choice of sin (not the aborted, certainly, or those taken in infancy or who died as a young child). Jesus has a message for us, but he also includes the consequences of another realm of creation. It’s important that we hear this because we must choose the righteousness of Jesus over the sin of the evil one and his minions.

The angels did not, and do not, experience time as we do. Their choice of holiness over evil was offered differently. They, as a host, chose the way of evil or to remain among the heavenly union in a cataclysmic event. One third balked at God’s plan for them. They were left to live in the universe as beastly barnacles and poisonous beings. God allowed them to take over the hierarchical stewardship of creation, a fallen world. This decision by the creator fits well into the realm of “God only knows why.”

Yet, here we grasp that Jesus declares the cosmic reality for these fallen angels under satanic rule in the same breath as he announced the Holy Spirit’s weaving into the fabric of every willing human life.

“… condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.”

This is not a pithy dramatic phrase at the end of a fantasy novel. This is the vice of authority over the entity that offered, manipulated, and coerced humanity into choosing death.

Like a vice, the rescuing grip of God's creation begins with Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. The squeezing of evil’s juice from our world has been tightening for two thousand years. Soon, it will be completed. Sin will be excised, and righteousness will prevail.

Our heads are supposed to be turned. We should be shocked. Each of us has our time to decide which entity we want to live in. There is no other bigger decision to make. Our decision is lifted up against the choices made by the angelic realm.

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The sinner’s lament is answered by the saint’s plea, because the sinner is he or she who becomes a saint. This is an important issue for Catholics — despite their holiness, the saints were human and capable of failure. The grace, mercy, and forgiveness of God led to their forgiveness.

Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter
Acts 7:51—8:1a
John 6:35ab

St. Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, was likely mentored by St. Paul. The very same St. Paul that used to be Saul and audienced — with some sense of pride and certainly with his approval — the martyrdom of St. Stephen.

How do we know this? Because Luke wrote about it in the book of Acts. Paul (Saul) knew St. Stephen, and applauded his death. Luke knew Paul well and interviewed him for the Book of Acts. Imagine the conversation, after Paul’s conversion, when Luke must have whispered to Paul. “Uh, what were you thinking?”

“Well, Luke, the rumors are true,” Paul might have said to Luke. “I’m the self-same murderer of Christians that is now an apostle of the risen Christ.”

Can you see Luke holding text in his hand, and worriedly asking, “Well, I’ve written the account as you confirmed it, Paul. Are you sure you want me to publish this?” He handed it to Paul, who read it out loud.

The witnesses laid down their cloaks
at the feet of a young man named Saul.
As they were stoning Stephen, he called out,
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”
Then he fell to his knees and cried out in a loud voice,
“Lord, do not hold this sin against them”;
and when he said this, he fell asleep.
Now Saul was consenting to his execution.

Paul surely paused for a bit, scratching his forehead, and might have said, “It sounds a lot worse when you write it down.”

Imagine Peter and Thomas standing nearby. They had been privy to Luke’s hankering for details. They may even have reviewed Luke's report on Stephen’s speech and death. Would Thomas have spoken up first? “Paul, John convinced me an honest portrayal of my insolence and doubt was important. Everyone else left me alone, but I think John’s got the goods on me. You should take it like a man, Paul.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard about that,” admitted Paul, “but my transgressions are a lot worse. Criminey.” Everyone certainly nodded in agreement.

“Yes, but look at the embarrassment of my cowardice,” Peter might have piped up. “For goodness sake, Paul. I’ve looked the fool, and the traitor! Matthew and that fellow Mark have been writing about me. They even bring up the fine details about me sitting by the fire. Sheesh. I don’t imagine that Luke, or John would hold back, now that everyone knows my faux pas.”

“OK, then,” Luke might have said, meekly shrugging his shoulders, “I’ve messed up, too,” though he assuredly didn’t think anything he did was akin to murder. The silence went on a bit too long. Luke broke the chill with, “Remember, though. Stephen said it best: ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’”

Enough of that.

The sinner’s lament is answered by the saint’s plea, because the sinner is he or she who becomes a saint. This is an important issue for Catholics — despite their holiness, the saints were human and capable of failure. The grace and mercy of God led to their forgiveness.

That’s not the important part, though. God’s grace and mercy are ‘necessary’ for us to become saints. Failures do not deny a person’s sanctity. They are required steps toward a growing and eventual total submission to the love of God.

St. Stephen identified the battle we undergo in that submission as a refusal to follow the leading and promptings from the Holy Spirit. “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always oppose the Holy Spirit …” He’s harsh, but hey, they were holding stones in their hands. Stephen’s lashing out is not a condemnation. He knew their bullheaded natures could still result in an awakening. His murder would have reverberations.

How, though, are we to know what the Spirit wants? That’s not an easy question to answer, but it is a vital one to solve. We begin by focusing on God and not our own calculations. Set aside all the noise coming at us from those who are not listening to the Holy Spirit. You can tell who they are. They are handing us stones to throw at the person who is submitting to the word of God. Translate “stone” for any weapon, including insults, lies, and defamation, as well as guns and rifles.

Stephen doesn’t give us much wiggle room regarding the promptings of the Holy Spirit. He said, “You received the law as transmitted by angels, but you did not observe it.”

His introduction of angels speaks of God’s breadth of communication methods. Angels don’t seem to be an acceptable, modern method of God speaking to us. But consider all that God does to help us understand that, in our failures, he fights to offer us an eternal relationship with him, rather than the short-sighted mob mentality, deviants, and selfish options marketed as desirable options. The presence of evil spirits is actually proof that angels exist.

Angels prod us, in the same vein as they spoke to the prophets, to Mary and Joseph, to Mary Magdalene at the tomb, and so many other places in scripture. The overarching point about the angelic realm is that God created innumerable, unimaginable ways for us to know him, including through creatures beyond our cosmic boundaries. The great lengths he’ll go to, not just to get our attention, but to draw us to him. To make us his sons and daughters, his friends, and his compatriots in missions he’s designed specifically for us.

He allows the experience of pain, poor choices, and even ignoring him, so that we know the difference between true joy, glory, and forgiveness and the degenerate results of ungodly behavior. It’s a bizarre reality that ugliness sends us running into his arms, but God knows what he is doing.

In addition to his Holy Spirit dwelling inside of us, which we must willingly allow or the Spirit will not enter our hearts; and, in addition to the Father who has also put into our hearts the notion of right and wrong and the love of us that no other creature can match, which we can accept or reject; and, in addition to the friendship, kinship, and leadership provided to us by Jesus Christ, whom we can ignore for other friendships; God also provides us with angelic personages to assist us in accepting God in so many ways. Do we reject the angels, too?

What else must God orchestrate for us? Miracles? OK, he does that. Change our very DNA, our spiritual makeup, with the Eucharist? Check, he does that. Give us the Church, stewards of the truth that dates back to the results of three years of ministry and confirmed at Pentecost? Yes, he did that too. Leave a written word, compiled by authors compelled to communicate the truth for all of history. Check, check, check, and check.

There is a tragedy in our misuse of all that God does for us, and that is our more ready willingness to sin. Acts tells us that Stephen gave the speech that led to his death, “to the people, the elders, and the scribes.” No one is left out in their complicity with Stephen’s murder. It’s surely at Saul’s behest, and the anger of those he seemed to condemn, but the stones were thrown by those whom Stephen called “just like your ancestors. Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They put to death those who foretold the coming of the righteous one …”

In John’s gospel, he writes in chapter six, “The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” Jesus referenced their example of God’s manna miracle in the desert, “the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

So they said to Jesus,
“Sir, give us this bread always.”
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Each of us hears what we are willing to hear.

Drop the stones.

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The criteria for designating a 1st Century saint usually begin with martyrdom, followed by records of a personal association with Jesus and a courageous act in defense of Jesus, the Church, or the apostolic community. In a sense, Nicodemus qualified for all four.

Tuesday of the Second Week of Easter
Acts 4:32-37
John 3:7-15

It’s very likely that the first St. Nick was not St. Nicholas, the 4th-century Greek bishop and precursor to our two-century-old Santa Claus personality. Rather, the inquisitive, practical Pharisee, Nicodemus, might be called our first St. Nick.

The two saintly men, however, are similar to us in legendary status. Yet while traditions and myths surround St. Nicholas, we know little of Nicodemus beyond what is found in scripture. (That, however, means everything!)

As icons, they have been discussed and studied for centuries. Both men were from wealthy backgrounds, looked up to by their peers, and landed in the hallway of legendary Christians. We imagine them as icons, but while St. Nicholas became a patron saint of everything from toymakers to sailors (a list citing 20 different patronages), St. Nicodemus has no formal patron identification. None.

It seems an odd status for a famous saint, but not uncommon for a saint’s bench behind the big names. Instead, Nicodemus is known for his close relationship with Jesus, as proof that Jesus associated with the elite Pharisee community. The idyllic notion that Jesus only accompanied the poor and the diseased falls apart under the scriptural recognition of his affiliations with military Romans, the wealthy, and the Jewish hierarchy. Nicodemus opens theology to a broad-minded incarnated God.

Nicodemus, and likely many other Jewish leaders, were moved by Jesus’ teaching and his miracles. Nicodemus was ultimately convinced, as revealed in scripture, a man primed for sainthood.

Within the first five centuries of the Church, the practice of declaring saints shifted from popular acclamation to a more detailed process. The first saints were identified from a mix of Christ and apostolic credentials, especially when supported by scriptural records and nods from Church Fathers. The process was not formal. Historians note that the early saints were named by both God and the people (vox Dei and vox populi).

By the time of St. Nicholas, vox populi would build a “cult” around someone to be named a saint. Next, a bishop must name, decree, and then declare a person a saint. Folks from a Catholic community would request a formal decree of sainthood, then the pastor would approach the bishop. A biography and records of the person’s death were required. In most cases, remains (relics) were provided.

Martyrdom was, and still is, the common qualifier. Over time, confirming martyrdom required an appointed, dedicated body to conduct more rigorous investigations among a larger body of witnesses. By the 10th Century, a declaration went further — a papal acclamation.

The status of Nicodemus’ sainthood falls into the earliest of processes. Scripture told the story. He was also likely martyred because, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, his relics were discovered along with those of Stephen, the first saint; Gamaliel (the revered teacher of St. Paul); and Saint Abibas (a son of Gamaliel). All four were declared martyrs.

The criteria for designating a 1st Century saint usually begin with martyrdom, followed by records of a personal association with Jesus and a courageous act in defense of Jesus, the Church, or the apostolic community. In a sense, Nicodemus qualified for all four.

Besides being Jesus' debating partner during a nighttime escapade (John 3:1-21), Nicodemus defended Jesus at the Sanhedrin (John 7:50-52). Most lovely, however, was his assistance with Saint Joseph of Arimathea at the preparation of Jesus’ body in Joseph’s tomb (John 19:38-42).

Nicodemus has been honored in poetry, artwork, and tales over two millennia. He’s been portrayed in movies, Christian television series, and on the radio.

A website called Saint for a Minute describes Nicodemus’ impact. “While he does not have a specific patronage assigned to him, his life serves as an inspiration to all who seek to follow Christ faithfully and boldly. Saint Nicodemus’ story is one of courage, faith, and a willingness to stand up for what is right. His secret discipleship, nocturnal meetings with Jesus, and defense of Christ’s rights showcase his unwavering commitment to the truth. May Saint Nicodemus inspire us to be bold in our faith and unyielding in our pursuit of justice.”

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Why didn’t Jesus come as the King of the world among a powerful nation, and an exceptional throng of people that could influence a worldly empire, instead of riding upon a donkey? Perhaps the plan was to evolve differently, but the tribal people of God’s choosing weren’t up to that more expected, international, and glorious setting. The sorry story of a failed people and the violent death of their Messiah, though, sets up the background for what happened next. Death has been conquered.

Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Numbers 21:4-9
John 8:21-30

Why does scripture present us with God as Jesus, the Christ? An all-powerful and mighty God, a Father of us all, who made the universe and everything in it, isn’t enough? It’s logical, too, that the Spirit of God travels through the wind and whispers into our ears all that the Father wants us to do and accomplish. Isn’t that enough?

As odd as it is, no, that’s not enough.

It’s not so much that something is wrong with the reality of a God who created everything and lives with us all in his Spirit. God wants more than recognition. He wants to be among us in the flesh, to live and die as we do — humiliated, ravaged in age or some other horror. He wasn’t a contrived revelation or a creative addition to the universe. He is the true holy manifestation, a materialized person of the Father and the Holy Spirit who pre-existed creation itself.

The cosmic divinity of God is above my pay grade. Let’s just land on this: God decided all along (or, whatever you call “before time”) that he wanted to be one of us, among us, as shepherd, kin, king, victim, and redeemer.

“The one who sent me is with me.
He has not left me alone,
because I always do what is pleasing to him.”

God the Father and the Holy Spirit didn’t tack on a holy human trope, a puppet to delight us. This Jesus is an essential, existential character of God, tied to the sails of the Holy Spirit, and the engine of the Father, as a ship on wild waters. (Metaphors are less logical the more you review them.)

Jesus is our human and divine Lord. We must believe and follow a flesh and bones being like us, not for a season, a term, or an age, but for all eternity.

Not to skip over the fact that this reality came from the words and teaching of Jesus. It’s important to show the receipts, credentials, and provenance of this Trinitatian God. He clearly defined the person of God as Father, and the Spirit of God as Holy. No one else told us this, based on human calculations and concoctions. It sounds silly to attribute this to a notion made up by Moses or St. Paul, two fellas from over town.

In addition, the earthly manifestations of God had already been revealed in pillars of fire and cloud, a burning bush, and in incredible displays of warfare and miraculous rescues. Angels, too, announced God’s presence. They weren’t aliens from another planet, but “pre-time” (a waffly dating) creatures. God also spoke to prophets and called himself “I Am.”

From the earliest records of the Hebrew scriptures, the Messiah, the Christ, was foretold. But the shocking reality that Jesus was among the singular God, revealed in a trinity of persons, was not articulated until Christ himself claimed, “I am.” Until he said it, no one knew the assurance of Jesus’ divinity.

“When you lift up the Son of Man,
then you will realize that I AM …”

Unlike the God of fire and cloud, whose voice dropped people to their knees, spread the waters to free people, and drowned armies, Jesus healed outcasts and cured peasants. Unlike his Holy Spirit, who touched every living thing not just over the eons and around the globe, but throughout the universe, this Jesus bar Joseph led a regionally bounded and lackluster life growing up as a carpenter’s stepson. After 30 years of an ignominious existence, Jesus revealed his divinity and asserted his Lordship by spending a mere three years on a mission with a blue-collar band of unexceptional people in a place the size of a few Colorado counties.

This Jesus amazed and rankled a tiny portion of one tiny planet among bazzilions (innumerable billions) of interstellar environs. Basically, a place the size of a molecule on a gnat’s whisker. Jesus Christ ruffled the religious leaders of an odd-looking, ritual-obsessed, and politically and militarily failed small community of tribal origin. He didn’t conquer Rome. He was conquered and killed by an annoying, unruly people who no longer had land of their own, and their leaders had severely restricted powers.

The Jews were the conquered remnant of a dozen nomadic tribes. An unfortunate disintegration of the wealthiest ruler in ancient history, to be fair, but a testament to Jesus’ divine arrival among a weakened people held under the thumb of two pompous overlords — the Pharisees and the Romans.

Jesus’ interactions and miraculous activities took place under an unimportant umbrella in a concealed corner of one empire. During his lifetime, his efforts intrigued only a couple of local Roman officials curious about his parochial celebrity. Without much consideration and less legal weight, the local Roman landlords acquiesced to unreasonable clerics and a protesting horde of their supporters. They crucified Jesus like a common criminal, mocked as a King of not just Jews, but also the Romans and Greeks. His murder was assumed to be another annoying and forgotten execution.

Why didn’t Jesus come as the King of the world among a powerful nation, and an exceptional throng of people that could influence a worldly empire, instead of riding upon a donkey? The plan was meant to evolve differently, but the tribal people of God’s choosing weren’t up to the task. This story of a people of history selected to be the beacon of the God of the universe tells us they were unprepared to convince anyone that Jesus was the Lord of the universe or that he sat upon a throne as the second person of the Holy Trinity. The sorry tale of a failed people and the violent death of their Messiah, though, sets up the background for what happened next.

Because he was God, assisted in both influence and indwelling by the Holy Spirit, Jesus placed himself, as we should be, under the guidance and order of the Father. He did this with a dramatic and epic reveal.

Jesus then rose from the dead. Resurrection is our future.

His prophecy and promise during his missionary life came to fulfillment. This is all that matters to a world of evidentiary truth. Show me that this man is Lord, say the interpreters of history, and ardent study with the gift of faith will do just that.

To rise from the dead as a resurrected being with capabilities and powers that astound science stamps a divine seal on the conqueror of death. The risen Jesus countermands a decaying premise of creation’s design. Jesus turned upside down, or rather upside right, the foundation of creation. He rose so that everyone, for all time, will have a marker that distinguishes Jesus from any other man by exposing a better eventuality.

The original and only logical expectation of a holy creator is that all creation will have eternal life. To deny that, in the face of Jesus’ revolutionary exclamation of life forever under his tutelage, relegates us to a doomed, deadly end, left with eternal existence, but without the feasting and beatific vision.

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

The simple truth of Jesus as Lord, shown in the dusty countryside of Jerusalem, is told today in the same parochial and insignificant fashion. We humans, in our leadership and worldview, remain a failed partner with Jesus, the Father of us all, and the Holy Spirit who yearns to live in us.

Regardless of the concentration upon the glorious Vatican compound and the remarkable cathedrals that dot every city on the globe, the truth of Jesus as Lord, as the risen Son of God, is primarily told on the streets, in the neighborhoods, on automobile bumpers, and in the common gathering places of the world. The vast majority of Christian testimony takes place beneath and outside the pantheons of government councils, executive boardrooms, and mansions of the wealthy.

And still, the testimony powerfully transforms the population.

We bless our meals in the name of the God who lives, offering up our thanks to “Christ our Lord, Amen.” We discuss our families and mention the ones that are sick, upset, lost, anxious, and maybe dying. We casually and sincerely add all these people to our prayers, mouthing “We pray to the Lord” and “Lord hear our prayer,” while we drink coffee and tea and enjoy each other’s company.

We are witnesses, testifying among each other, and in public. “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.” In almost all such cases of shared faith, restaurant managers and serving staff, others around us on the beach, and those who hear us on the subway, all bow their hearts, encouraging us to be faithful.

Our thinking and attention must be formed and focused toward a singular relationship to one man, scripture tells us. We gather in faith, hold hands in prayer, and object to Jesus' insults by changing the reception on our radios, the channels on our televisions, and the images on our phones. The airwaves and digital spaces offer plenty of faithful options and opportunities. We have even chosen to teach our children at home when no other choices exist. The effect of eternal life is unstoppable.

So, many of us wear crosses to remind us, some attached to rosaries, and others hanging from our rear-view mirrors. Our churches display the cross of the man, and we enter in packs and droves to make our statement with our feet. Our churches are everywhere, whether common in their space or glorious in their steeples.

While many of us may struggle to grasp that an all-powerful and loving God exists, the seemingly complicated story of an obscure birth, life, and death has morphed into a perfectly good notion of the almighty that has crashed through the barrier of the invisible. We shake each other’s hands at our services and claim the Spirit’s urging. “Christ be with you.”

When someone curses, “Jesus Christ,” we murmur the added words and finish their sentence with, “is Lord.” When we see old friends, and they exclaim their shock at seeing us, “Jesus Christ, it’s you!” We answer, “No. It’s just me, John. But thanks for seeing him in me.”

God insists that the basis for everything we should believe rests on this single, central, recurring statement: Jesus is Lord. He’s the Lord of me, he’s the Lord of all. Lordy, Lordy, Lordy.

We are told that at the core of our being, in our heart, our acceptance must be resolute and confident enough to confess that belief out loud, and the simplest expressions are the ones that course through society where two or three are gathered.

We do this because “Their voice has gone forth to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.”

(Oh, and Jesus is returning, likely in the international and glorious visage that we think is more appropriate. However, the “how” will be just as unexpected.)

[A rewrite of my OMG reflection from 11-30-16]

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We each have one sin that tortures us, insisting upon constant repentance. Most of us have more than one, doomed under a Gatlin gun of sorrows. We cower and hide, paranoid, unable to request, yet again, a worn-out “forgive me.” How do you put up with us, God? It must be the combined power of a trinity. “I want to smote him,” says one. “I’ve got this,” says another. “Good,” says the third person. “I tried everything in my power, and I’m moving on.”

Tuesday of the Third Week of Lent
Daniel 3:25, 34-43
Matthew 18:21-35

Forgiveness begins with sin. Without sin, forgiveness is moot. But not to worry. Sin is rampant, so forgiveness need always be handy. We should keep a storeroom full of forgiveness for others. They’ll need shelves of it for us.

Sin and forgiveness do not get wiped away, except in the eyes of God. Transgressions vibrate longer than the ring of one bell. Sins are not moments that pass. We call upon forgiveness for each sin over and over again because one sin can be decades-long, flashing in an unending stream of reruns. Sin after sin plays on all our channels at once, ad nauseam, in unrelenting, obnoxious cycles.

Confession works. It washes. But our memories grieve us.

We each have one sin that tortures us, insisting upon constant repentance. Most of us have more than one, doomed under a Gatlin gun of sorrows. We cower and hide, paranoid, unable to request, yet again, a worn-out “forgive me.” Forgiveness from those we love has a limit. We can see it in their eyes. 70 times 7 passed by long ago. God’s admonition to forgive seems absurd for them to do, but absolutely necessary for us to hope for. What must our family members think of us? I cannot forget. How can they? How pathetic we all are. How does God do it?

Thankfully and unfortunately, we are not alone. For every snowball of sin we throw, we get seven back in retaliatory clusters. After we brush ourselves off, we yell “I forgive you” to a host of people whom we don’t even know, while the one we hit lies comatose. We whisper to God and cry for mercy.

The daily infractions we encounter and cause can number in the dozens, dating back to when we were just teenagers. Sure, we’ve forgotten most of our sins. That’s frightening enough, considering the volumes of sins we can’t forget. Several times a day, many of us shudder and weep.

We all know the knucklehead who repeatedly offends. It is often us. Seventy times seven forgivenesses come to 490 for each repeated sinful act, per person. They struggle to embrace us at some point. We know more than one knucklehead like ourselves. We seldom remember to forgive them, an act required thousands of times a year. And that’s just for the crap that happens to us. How about the indecencies and calumnies we caused, that we pray have been forgiven?

Dear Lord, what a mess.

Science estimates that we blink 30,000 times a day. The older we get, the more forgiving acts (from us and to us) must reach saturation. Our blinking will come awfully close to the times we are forgiving folks and being forgiven. Cussing will surely be involved. The sinning-and-forgiving continuum, where sparks are flying, could fuel entire planets.

We also breathe nearly 30,000 times a day. Those are similarly daunting numbers. The sinful cadence of our lives catches our breath more often than physical exertion. Literally. If we’re not careful, we’ll stop breathing.

Sins are a tricky thing to compile because we humans have a propensity to find a sinful adventure in just about everything we do. Different sins seem to require different provisions of forgiveness. Some are easier to forgive than others.

Proverbs tells us about the incalculable breadth of sinful stuff we can accomplish, but in one stretch of verses, the author highlights the worst of the worst. In true biblical form, God specifically hates seven things. I’ve thought other things were worse, since I’ve practiced most of these for 70 years. We are doomed.

“These six things the Lord hates, yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
A proud look,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
A heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that are swift in running to evil,
A false witness who speaks lies,
and one who sows discord among brethren.”
(Proverbs 6:16-19)

How do you put up with us, God? It must be the combined power of a trinity. “I want to smote him,” says one. “I’ve got this,” says another. “Good,” says the third person. “I tried everything in my power, and I’m moving on.”

God’s forgiveness through Jesus’ life hints at how we should forgive. We would be wise to consider his example. The sins that God hates require immense forgiveness. Judas pulled off almost all of these sins against Jesus by himself. Though forgiveness was within his reach, it apparently never reached his closed heart. When he took his last breath, eviscerated and hanged at his own hand, he refused God’s power to restore him. Our refusal to face the music, choosing self-harm instead, sadly mirrors Judas’s stubborn rejection. “Alas, Judas. I know him well.”

We know the great lengths to which God went to establish permanent forgiveness for our egregious sins. His vocal command would be enough, we think, but he chose dying on the cross, took a dreaded gurney ride into hell, and then rose from the dead to a shocked, unbelieving retinue of the very folks who needed his forgiving self.

Pope Gregory I, who served the church at the beginning of the 7th century, catalogued seven “deadly” sins, or infractions that can block the redemptive forgiveness of Jesus altogether. As with Judas’ self-destruction, the list matches the Proverb list. The deadly sins of pride, greed, lust, wrath, gluttony, envy, and sloth fall away under God’s forgiveness. Who among us wouldn’t provide the necessary participatory remorse? Forgiveness expects a plea for mercy. We plead 70 times 7.

It all sounds quite complicated. We’re tied up like pretzels in the cycle of these things. We return to the washing machine like dirty clothes, get cleaned up, only to be immediately dirtied again. And just like our dirty hair, we have to wash, rinse, and repeat this exhausting theatre for the rest of our lives!

Gregory offers some help for all awful and dreadful sins. To delay our normally quick return to the laundry room, Gregory implemented countermeasures. These are activities of the heart that help us to stall our activities of the flesh — faith, hope, charity, justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude — the seven virtues. They counteract the deadly sins. The virtues appear at first to be acts of forgiveness but are better defined as acts of love. The proper grasp of forgiveness is to understand that to forgive means to love.

We bow to God’s mercy. We accept God’s grace, get washed again in the confessional, and in our socially available acts of repentance. And then, we love.

We most likely express our love as faith, hope, charity, justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, but we practice love in waves of blinking and breathing. These are the autonomic parts of our lives. Although they occur automatically, we can exercise them manually. We can manually inhale/exhale and stare/blink, an exercise that trains us to refrain when we can, and repent when we can’t.

Blinking and breathing 30,000 times a day constitute the proper amount and actions of our love for each other. They fulfill the countermeasure to 30,000 acts of sin, forgive everyone we encounter, and meet our necessary pleas for mercy.

Consider that closing our eyelids expresses our remorse. The opening of our eyes extends our plea for mercy. In the breaths we take, we inhale our forgiveness, and our exhales mete out God’s mercy for all to share.

Set aside the compilations, calculations, considerations, and conundrums of chaotic causality. It’s an unnecessary exercise of probable futility.

All we have to do is blink and breathe. Just blink and breathe.

[A rewrite of my OMG reflection from 8-11-16]

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Further study will help us go deeper into the Our Father prayer, a pure, rich, and divine treasure for Christians. Catholic theologians organize the Our Father into seven petitions, following the opening phrase — Our Father — which recognizes us in the presence of God as the Father of all. That’s the proper position to take in all prayer. “Our Father.” He is our protector and our intimate guide.

Tuesday of the First Week of Lent
Isaiah 55:10-11
Matthew 6:7-15

A huge part of the Our Father prayer is the protection of our souls from evil. Our bodies will be crushed and ultimately destroyed. But our souls, our spiritual natures, will remain forever.1 Jesus structures this prayer of petitions for our salvation. But this prayer is not for us alone, as if we were singular planets in the universe. No. We are members, relational beings, tied to a world of both animate and inanimate beings. And God wants to protect us.

We find our membership in the Body of Christ, gathered by the Holy Spirit into the Holy Catholic Church, and bound up — if we are willing — into the Communion of Saints at the behest of the Father. We call upon the Father in this Our Father prayer, but it is given to us by the Son, and prayed at the prodding of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The entire purpose and urgency for creation is embodied in this one, short prayer.

There are two general controversies in the wording of the prayer, both at its finishing phrases. First, there is a historical translation debate (well, not really a debate) over “temptation” and “final test.” Second, is a doxology added on — “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen.”

The “sort of” debate addresses the traditional, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” with which we are all familiar. However, this prayer in Matthew ends in many translations with, “and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.” Hear that one more time: “and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.” That is an entirely authentic ending to the Our Father, by the way. It’s not a mistake in scripture translation nor a confusion about what Jesus taught.

In essence, there are two endings.

This is an apologist’s delight. God allows such things to happen, cementing the details to reveal slight differences in his intent. He does this to further study, but also to draw us into the contrasts of what seems like a multi-headed truth, but is really two (or many more) perspectives on the same theme. Roll these over in your head. “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil,” plus “and do not subject us to the final test, but deliver us from the evil one.”

The two phrases sound at first blush like the same thing, but “final test” is a rather disconcerting phraseology from “into temptation.” Also, “evil one,” or Satan, is quite specific from the fiery, general category of “evil.”

“Final test” in Jesus’ day could refer to the end times, and may just as well refer to saving us from our slow descent into partnership with evil.

I like the scholars’ and apologists' teaching on Matthew’s Chapter [6:13] “final test” wording, especially the folks who worked on the New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE). These heady folks refer us to John Chapter 17:15, and 2 Thessalonians 3:3. The gist of these two scriptural references balances two dictums about God. “The Lord is faithful; he will strengthen you and guard you from the evil one.” His faithfulness is where we must place our trust. God’s faithfulness follows us through the broken world, strengthening and guarding us. Which means, we remain in a broken world.

In John 17:15-17, the apostle John captures a dialogue, a prayer from Jesus to the Father. “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world. Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.”

The more traditional words of the ending Our Father petition — “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” — might miss the more pointed trajectory of Jesus’ emphasis on living with temptation by relying upon God’s protection of our souls. That is, we may interpret God as leading us into temptation, and we plead with him to change his mind. Rather, God allows us to be tempted, certainly, but his warnings, if we are in synch with the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ teachings, and the Father’s love, will win out.

One theologian describes the understanding of temptation that the Our Father intends. Peter, following Jesus as he was carried off by the Roman soldiers, is an example of our intimate relationship with God as we encounter evil. Rather than stand outside with the rest of the disciples, away from prying eyes, Peter entered the gate, sat with the guards, and put himself in danger. He went to “see.” Jesus had already warned the disciples, specifically after Judas had betrayed him. “Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father and he will not provide me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?”

Peter was confronted by the guards’ friends and succumbed to fear, denying Jesus three times. He had no business being there, but did not listen. Still, Peter was restored.

You might be familiar with the phrase, “fools rush in.” That was Peter. (That is us.) The full proverb, “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” is from Alexander Pope’s 1711 work An Essay on Criticism. We do not need to go where God warns us not to go. Of course, when we are “taken” where we do not want to go, he will give us the courage and words. Peter was warned that he would betray Jesus, that he would fall prey to a temptation, a hubris of his rank and power, and that he would misunderstand what Jesus was doing.

“As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” There is an important distinction between our curiosity and impulses, and being sent into the world by Jesus. Peter acted on his impulses. Temptation is often seen too simply, as a clear choice between good and bad. Au contraire.

Further study will help us go deeper into the Our Father prayer, a pure, rich, and divine treasure for Christians. Catholic theologians organize the Our Father into seven petitions, following the opening phrase — Our Father — which recognizes us in the presence of God as the Father of all. That’s the proper position to take in all prayer. “Our Father.”

The Catholic Catechism aligns the prayer and the seven petitions into two major sections. “The first series of petitions carries us toward him, for his own sake: thy name, thy kingdom, thy will!” See the repeated pronouns — thy, thy, and thy. The second set of 4 petitions focuses on us, us, us, and us. “In none of the three petitions do we mention ourselves …” (Part 4, Article 3). In the last four, we are the focus.

The first three:

1. Hallowed be Thy name — We give God praise to strengthen our faith.

2. Thy kingdom come — We have hope, shown in our desire for God’s reign in the world.

3. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven — We accept God’s divine will over our will.

   The second series of petitions (4-7) offers up our expectations with four intercessory verbs: “give us … forgive us … lead us not … deliver us …”

4. Give us this day our daily bread

5. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

6. Lead us not into temptation

7. Deliver us from evil.

The catechism tells us, “the fourth and fifth petitions concern our life as such — to be fed and to be healed of sin; the last two concern our battle for the victory of life — that battle of prayer.”

The Catechism then summarizes all the petitions, saying, “By the three first petitions, we are strengthened in faith, filled with hope, and set aflame by charity.” Our pleas admit we are creatures and sinners. In the last four, Jesus instructs to petition for “us.” We are not alone, but as the Catechism submits, “bound by the world and history, which we offer to the boundless love of God.”

To see these petitions, and their deep wells of meaning and supplication, the repetitive nature of prayer makes sense. We instill not just the words into our minds and hearts, but we also ingest them. God works them into our spiritual marrow, tying us to him like cars on a train or creatures no longer needing a leash.

One last issue left to the Our Father is the doxology “For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, Amen.” These words are not in the original text of Matthew. Several non-Catholic translations tack the words at the end, but most identify them as “amplified” and “extended” phraseology. Their reasons are sound.

For centuries, and even millennia, doxologies, or exalting the glory of God, have been used at the conclusion of prayers. It was very common in Jesus’ time. The Didache, likely the first catechism, dating to the 1st Century, hinted at this very doxology. In the 5th and 6th Centuries, St. Jerome and Gregory the Great both included a doxology at the end of the Our Father.

The English version, our current doxology, dates to 1525, when King Henry VIII of England was still a Catholic. It’s falsely framed as a compromise between Catholics and Protestants, though a part of that politically was surely in the minds of both religious expressions. You’ll find the addition of the doxology improperly used for two reasons: as a cudgel and a peace pipe.

Instead, the added doxology reveals the Church's prerogative and should not be a political or misguided liturgical tool. We pray as a Church, rightly incorporating the ancient Jewish faith and adopting the wisdom of the saints into our spiritual language.

In a lovely way, the doxology used by the Protestant and Evangelical communities reflects the broad nature of the larger Church and the savvy willingness of our Catholic scholars and stewards of the faith to recognize the Holy Spirit's influence.

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