The Presence of God

Second and Third Weeks in Ordinary Time

In ancient times the gods were thought to intervene in human affairs on a regular basis.  The Greeks even had a word for it: theophany, which is defined as “manifestation of the deity.”  In Christian culture theophany refers to an appearance of God, or a sign of His presence that is tangible to the senses.  There are many examples of theophanies in the Old Testament when God appeared, but not always in human form.  He spoke directly to prophets or through messengers referred to as angels, and sometimes in dreams.   Christians believe that God Himself became present to humanity in the person of Jesus.  During His lifetime and ministry, Jesus actions were often accompanied by visible, audible and tangible signs of God’s presence.  We read about these theophanies during Advent and the weeks following Easter.  Mary encountered the Angel Gabriel, Angels visited Joseph in his dreams, and the wise men, directing them to alter their return route.  When Jesus presented Himself to John the Baptist, God spoke aloud, announcing Jesus to be His beloved Son.  This coming Sunday we’ll read about Jesus preaching that “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mark 1:15).  

When Pope John Paul II introduced the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, he chose five events of Jesus life which are all examples of God manifesting Himself in visible, audible and tangible ways in and through Jesus, including the Transfiguration, the wedding feast at Cana and when He instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper.    The Catholic Church teaches that the seven Sacraments are all visible signs of the invisible reality of God’s Presence. 

There’s another form of theophany I’d like to explore in this meditation, and I want to make clear at the outset that these thoughts are my own, and not necessarily the teaching of the Church.  Specifically, I’ve been thinking about the way God manifests Himself in and through human beings.   We are taught that our bodies are “temples of the Holy Spirit.”  We also believe that each and every human being possesses an inherent and inviolate dignity because we have been created in the image of God and because Jesus Himself became man, elevating humanity to the status of children of God.

Combining these beliefs with recent discoveries in the area of physics makes me wonder about the nature of our reality.  For centuries we’ve come to rely on the laws of math and physics to describe reality in ways that are predictable and repeatable.  However, new observations about quantum entanglement, gravitational fields and the phenomenon referred to by Einstein as “spooky action at a distance” reveals the possibility that all matter is stranger and less predictable than we have long thought.  These ideas infuriated Einstein and he spent the last 30 years of his life trying to disprove them, but over the past 50 years it has become increasingly apparent that quantum mechanics, as strange as it all seems, is more likely to be a better description of reality than either Newton or Einstein’s simpler, more logical models. 

Quite a few years ago I had one of those strange dreams in which something important seemed perfectly clear and understandable, but in the light of day I could not adequately describe it.  I dreamt that gravity was the key to understanding the meaning of life and the universe.   But when I tried to put my interpretation of the dream into words, it didn’t measure up to how clear it all seemed in the dream.   Of course, the subconscious mind communicates in images and symbols, rather than words, so I’ve been struggling to describe why gravity is so important.   For many years I thought of gravity as the attraction of objects to one another; the greater the mass of the object, the greater it’s gravitational pull, hence lower gravity on the moon, and zero gravity in outer space.  

It occurred to me that we are attracted to one another as a kind of reflection of the gravitational forces inherent to having bodies and souls.  However, Einstein redefined gravity as a field that is distorted by the mass of objects.  He used lots of images to describe his theories and the best one for describing a gravitational field is the idea of a very heavy bowling ball sitting in the center of a trampoline (the gravitational field).  The mass of the ball distorts the trampoline so that if an object passes nearby, it will literally fall toward the ball.  Using this model, Einstein came up with his theories about the nature of space.  Physicists used to think space was full of some strange substance they called ether, which served to transport light in waves, the way sound travels through air.   Einstein correctly deduced that light possessed mass (quanta) and was not merely energy traveling in waves through this mysterious ether, but had properties of both waves and particle.  

As progress was made in physics and the properties of subatomic particles became known, things began getting strange and unpredictable.   Photons, or packets of energy, that cause electrons change orbit around a neutron, have now been split and are considered “entangled,” resulting in behavior demonstrating that entangled photons travel faster than the speed of light, which Einstein and his contemporaries considered to be the limit of speed and a constant throughout the universe.    

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with our nature as human beings, or God’s presence in our lives?   It occurs to me that our very bodies are comprised of atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons, which make up our mass.   String theory even suggests that these subatomic particles are themselves a form of energy.  This makes sense according to Einstein who famously discovered that matter and energy are interchangeable (E=mc2).   According to the commonly accepted “big bang” theory of the origin of the universe,  all matter was compressed into an infinitely dense singularity which then exploded, ejecting all the mass of the universe, setting time and space into motion.

 The matter that makes up the atoms of our body was present in that big bang.  The incredible complexity of our bodies defies the notion of entropy, and our ability to think, to love and to use reason in arriving at an awareness of all this, is a testament to intelligent design.   In all this, what seems to hold the stars, planets and our very bodies in place, despite the earth  spinning 1000 miles an hour, and traveling  around the sun thousands of times faster than that, even as our galaxy hurtles through space at breakneck speed, is ...(wait for it)… gravity, or more specifically, gravitational fields.   It is as if God Himself holds us together, keeping the electrons in our atoms from spinning off,  keeping our cells together,  and our bodies from floating off into space.   Perhaps the very matter that makes up our bodies has been derived from the Pure Energy of God Himself and the gravitational fields that make our existence possible are (metaphorically) the hands of God holding us in existence, causing us to be drawn to each other in love which is the essence of His nature.

Created in the image of God, we are imbued with love because God loves us, and by our nature we long for the infinity of His love, striving to imitate His love when we are at our best.   Perhaps we long for God and for love because down to the very fiber of our being, we are His creation, His beloved progeny, His energy, converted to mass and held in existence and in motion by the power of His infinite love.   And in His grand design we love one another because we sense the presence of God in each and every person.

Psalm 138 captures these ideas in the beautiful prose revealed to the Psalmist more than 2000 years ago:

“Where can I go, then, to take refuge from thy Spirit, to hide from Thy view?  Thine are my inmost thoughts.  Didst thou not form me in my mother’s womb?  I praise thee for my wondrous fashioning, for all the wonders of Thy creation.  This mortal frame has no mysteries for Thee, who didst contrive it in secret, devise its pattern, there in the dark recesses of the earth.”   (Translation by Ronald Knox) 

Epiphany and the Election Year Ahead

The Epiphany of the Lord

Isaiah 60:1-6; Psalm 72; Ephesians 3:2-6; Matthew 2:1-12

The feast of the Epiphany is sometimes referred to as “little Christmas” commemorating the visit of the Magi and their offering of gifts that reflect the kingship (gold), holiness (incense) and death (myrrh) of Jesus. The three ‘wise men’ are portrayed as kings, men of worldly knowledge and power, yet they paid homage to the infant child of a poor unknown couple who were reduced to living in a stable at the time of Jesus’ birth. This paradox of worldly power bowing down before the heavenly glory of the infant Jesus brings to mind the question of how heaven and earthly power interact. What is the relationship meant to be between God and humanity?

God could have entered humanity with power and might, rightfully claiming His authority to govern the earth, but instead He chose to come as a powerless, impoverished infant, at risk of being executed shortly after birth, by the paranoid hatred of the earthly king, Herod. God and all His goodness and mercy were embodied in the infant Jesus, while earthly power was wielded by the murderous Herod who executed his wife, sister and two of his sons out of fear of losing his kingship. Is that any way to govern? As terrible and archaic as that sounds, the pattern has been repeated over and over again, as power hungry dictators kill thousands, even millions of people in order to maintain their control over government. Modern history is replete with examples of men like the late Kim Jong-il of Korea whose father came to power in 1948 under Stalin and declared himself a god. When his father died, Kim Jong-il declared himself ‘son of god’ and imprisoned over 100,000 Christians who refused to accede to his demands. He starved millions of North Koreans in order to spend nearly 80% of the national budget on the military.
Everybody knows Jong-il died a couple weeks ago because the news dominated the national media for several days, but no mention was made of another international leader who died the same week. Vaclav Hovel was the Czech writer and dissident who, after serving 5 years in prison for creating a petition for personal freedom during communist rule, became the first president of the new Czech Republic when the country threw off the shackles of Communism. During Communist rule, Havel wrote numerous plays and essays condemning the loss of personal freedom, most notably “Power of the Powerless” in which he decried the fact that people were forced to “live within a lie” under the Communist regime.
In this election year presidential politics will dominate the news ad nauseam, and because of all the political rhetoric and negative ads, there’s a temptation to put our head in the sand and wish that it would all just go away. Of course that’s what political activists are hoping for, so that a small percentage of the most politically engaged can make decisions for everyone else. As messy as democracy has become, we have an obligation to assert our beliefs and engage in the process. Archbishop Charles Chaput wrote a timely and insightful book entitled: “Render Unto Caesar” with the subtitle “Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.” In the book he makes that point that, “Loving our country implies a lot more than following the public opinion herd, or muffling our Catholic convictions about right and wrong, in the interests of social etiquette.” He advocates for Catholics and all who believe in God to remain engaged in the political process because the very soul of our country is at stake. Too many of us have forgotten what made America great: our Christian faith. The French philosopher, de Tocqueville, after visiting America observed that, “Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness, did I understand her genius and her power. America is great because she is good and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” De Tocqueville observed a country with little bureaucracy and deeply rooted moral values, a distinct contrast to the increasing bureaucracy and secularism that was overtaking Europe 170 years ago.
The Roman statesman Cicero once said, “Nothing can be useful if it is not at the same time morally good.” There is a hierarchy of truths about human behavior and it needs to guide our decision making. Some things have more weight than others, for example cheating on a test is bad, stealing is worse, and murdering your neighbor is the worst. Sanctity of life issues are not just religious beliefs, they are foundational because killing the innocent is always inexcusably wrong and paves the way for attacks on every other aspect of human dignity.
One of the first thing Communist and totalitarian regimes have all had in common is their determination to remove personal freedom, starting with religious freedom. When the freedom to practice our faith is jeopardized, all other freedoms are threatened. When religious convictions are banned from the public forum, the very fabric of free society is damaged. By secularizing their society and legalizing abortion and homosexual marriage, Europe has done irreparable damage to its future. As Cicero predicted, these changes are not useful because they are immoral. The decline in marriage and childbirth in the European Union will result in a 7% decline in the number of workers by 2030, while at the same time, the number of people older than 65 will increase by 50%. This is not only an economic nightmare for the E.U., it puts incredible pressure on social policy where assisted suicide is already legal and the healthcare systems already denies coverage to the elderly because it is not cost-effective.

During this upcoming presidential election, it behooves us all to assert our moral beliefs and demand candidates who are willing to restore the greatness of America by returning to our moral roots. In a blatant disregard for religious freedom, our government is now demanding that Catholic schools, hospitals, and adoption agencies disregard their moral beliefs and provide employees and customers with access to contraception, sterilization and abortion services. The Justice Department is working to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, and anyone to disagrees with gay marriage is branded as a bigot. It is time to speak out against these infringements on religious freedom, and demand that we repeal human laws that violate God’s natural law. If our religious freedoms are taken away, the morality that made our nation great will continue to erode and we can expect to suffer the same fate as the E.U. We are a Christian nation and that’s a good thing, because it demands that we respect the fact that there are eternal truths which take precedence over human law. Separation of church and state does not mean separating our faith from our political life, it simply means the State does not tell the church what to do, nor does the church have control over the state. It also implies that government is limited to the extent that it must not violate the freedoms granted by God Himself, including the freedom to practice our faith openly, not only in private. Lets elect a president who understands and respects the importance of restoring religious freedom and morality to our national laws, not one whose primary concern is to retain power and restrict freedom of religion.  We need a president who pays homage to God, recognizing the primacy of God’s authority and love, not one who uses his power to fund the murder of unborn children, directs government authorities to diminish the institution of marriage, and attacks religious freedom.

Feast of the Holy Family

Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph
Genesis 15:1-6, 21:1-3
Psalm 128
Luke 2:22-40
Normally the Feast of the Holy Family is celebrated on the Sunday after Christmas, but this year, because Christmas was on a Sunday, we commemorated the Holy Family on Friday since the octave of Christmas (New Year’s Day) is always celebrated as the Solemnity of Mary, the mother of God.
During his weekly public audience talks, early in his pontificate, Pope John Paul II spoke frequently about marriage and the family, and over the course of five years, those talks became known as his “Theology of the Body.” Given the sad state of decline of marriage and family in the modern world, some of John Paul the Great’s thoughts on the subject are worth recalling as we begin a new year. John Paul believed that the family finds its identity and mission in God’s plan for humanity. Here’s what he said:
“In God’s plan, the family has been established as an intimate community of life and love, and the family has the mission to become more and more what it is, that is to say, a community of life and love. The essence and role of the family are in the final analysis, specified by love. Hence the family has the mission to guard, reveal and communicate love, and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God’s love for humanity and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church, His bride. Every particular task of the family is an expression and concrete actuation of that fundamental mission.”A “community of life and love.” What more could we hope for in our own families? This is God’s plan for us and for the continuation of humanity. This is how we are meant to beget and raise children: in a community of life and love, father, mother and children. Every parent knows that when a child is born to them, everything changes. The entire world takes on a new context because love abounds in the birth of a son or daughter. We become transfixed with the joy of loving that child and wanting to make virtually any sacrifice to ensure their safety and well-being. Marriage and family, John Paul says, reflects the inner life of God Himself in the Holy Trinity, a community of love so intense that the three persons are a singularity, comprising the One True God.
The mission of the family described by John Paul II is “to become more and more of what it is, a community of life and love.” As parents we nurture and cherish our children, teaching them what it means to love, to forgive, to take responsibility, to become fully human. We teach these virtues by words, actions, and example, which necessarily requires discipline of ourselves and our children. We perform these actions out of love and respect for the inherent dignity of each person, father, mother and each child, so that we may all grow in love. In imitation of Christ, we make many sacrifices for the life and love of our family, knowing that the gift of self is more important than any material goods we can give our children. No gift if more important to a child than the gift of love as expressed between husband and wife, demonstrating the strength and security of the family itself.
As parents we also have a responsibility to teach our children the great truths about good and evil, right and wrong. If children don’t learn these truths in the context of their family, they will never learn them. At the heart of these great truths is Jesus Christ who described Himself as “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” When standing before Pilot, Jesus revealed the reason why He came into the world:
“The reason I was born, the reason why I came into the world,
is to testify to the truth. Anyone committed to the truth hears my voice.”
(John 18:37)Sadly, many people in the world have forgotten or ignored the Truth as revealed by Jesus, and they live as if God does not exist. Relying on themselves alone and choosing their own truth, they hold up the individual as the most important and basic unit of society, rather than the family. It’s no wonder then that marriage is at an all time low ebb, with only 51% of American adults being married. That’s down from 72% just 25 years ago. People are more focused on themselves and their personal freedoms, rather than a spouse or family. Not only have birth rates plummeted throughout the world, more children than ever are born out of wedlock, and raised more often than not in poverty, with a single parent who struggles to serve as both father and mother. In this cult of individualism, children are not welcomed into a “community of life and love,” but rather, seen as a burden to be avoided, and in many cases, destroyed before birth. Having lost sight of the Way, the Truth and the Life, this worldview epitomizes the culture of death where marriage is under attack as attempts are made to deny it’s sacred status and its very nature as the institution in which children are brought into the world. Redefining marriage as merely a legal arrangement diminishes the true purpose and mission of the family.
Recently a group of students at Harvard, that bastion of liberal thought, published a column in the student newspaper calling for young adults to “Reclaim Marriage.” They got it right when they wrote:
“Marriage is not merely a union of hearts and minds, nor is it only a romantic or sexual partnership. It is a comprehensive union that unites a husband and wife across all dimensions of the person. These norms mean that marriage fosters a distinctive stability and provides an extraordinary opportunity for the flourishing of those who enter into it. In marriage, a husband and wife share all the challenges and joys of life -- especially the burdens and blessings of raising a family -- making the former less trying and the latter more bountiful. Compare that to schizophrenic lifestyles of casual sex, open relationships, cohabitation, etc, all of which lack the uniting value that makes marriage so fulfilling. These types of relationship are poor imitations of marriage, aiming for fulfillment, but flying wildly off the mark.” (The Harvard Crimson, Oct 25, 2011)As we begin a new year, let’s all pray for our families, and for the sacred institution of marriage and family. If we make Christ a part of our marriage and family, we invite His guidance as spouses and parents. In doing so we are sure to receive His grace and blessings on our efforts to create a “community of life and love” that defies the culture of death and promotes the culture of life. By “guarding, revealing and communicating love” we live the mission of our family and we prepare our children to become loving, forgiving, and able to find their own fulfillment and happiness in this life and the next.