The Mystery of Love

Sunday is the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, a mystery beyond compare.  When we hear the word mystery, the modern inclination is to think of it as something to be solved by logic and rational thought.  However, there are certain mysteries simply too complex for the human mind, such as God and love.  When St. John says “God is Love,” he was not using a metaphor but rather, defining the very essence of God.  The mystery of God’s existence goes beyond our belief that He is the uncaused Cause that brought all existence into being, something we will never fully comprehend.  When Moses asked God His name, the answer He got was simply, “I AM.”   God is the very essence of “Being,” not merely a creature of greater knowledge and power than us, but Being Itself. 

In revealing Himself as The Trinity, God clarifies that His very being is a community of Love, Love so powerful that the three are One Unity of Being.  In human terms, God is Love itself, Love so powerful and productive that it created all matter and energy.  My own meager understanding of this, in words that don’t do adequately explain the miracle of existence, is that the Love of God is the energy that caused the Big Bang, converting energy (God’s Love) into all matter that exists throughout the universe.  As we have come to realize the immensity of the universe, and the complexity that underlies its, and our existence, we realize that only an Intelligence far greater than anything we can contemplate had to have been the underlying cause of it all.

The mystery of Love is far more than the confusing feelings we experience about affection, desire, compassion, and a host of other emotions.  Because we have been created in the image of God, vague though it may be, we are capable not only of rational thought and the ability to comprehend the miracle of existence and the complexity of life.  We are also capable of love, though imperfectly.  When we love as God loves, without selfish motives, but selflessly, we are privileged to participate in the inner life of the Holy Trinity.  Although it is impossible to describe the Love that is God in His fullness, we know that He is all-merciful, forgiving even the most grievous offenses; Self-sacrificing, even to the point of enduring suffering and death for us, despite our unworthiness; and Life-giving, not only creating us out of love, but conquering death on our behalf so that we too can share eternal life with Him.   

The closer we come to loving as God loves, the more fully human and fully alive we become.  One of the consequences of such love is that it brings meaning, fulfillment and joy into our lives, regardless of our age, health, wealth or circumstances.  When God created us male and female, and imbued us with the ability to love one another, He offered us the opportunity to share in His creative, life-giving love.  Every parent who holds their new born child gets a glimpse of that unconditional, self-sacrificing love that is the essence of God’s existence.  The unity of husband and wife, willing to sacrifice themselves for one another and for their children, forms a family as God intended, and is accompanied by a purity of love that hints at eternal life.  Spouses are often privileged to experience moments of such great love that it portends the ecstasy of eternal love in the Presence of God.

Unfortunately we are imperfect creatures, and often fall short of loving as God loves, choosing instead our selfish motives and desires, in the false hope of immanent happiness or the momentary joy of physical emotion and sensation.  In doing so, we pervert the love of God and settle for fleeting moments of pleasure, even though our actions may only draw us further away from Real Love, as God intended for us.  The further we travel from the Love of God, the more likely we begin to believe that we do not need Him in our lives.  Though we may wander away from Him, He never leaves us.  The concept of grace, is that God is with us.  In the “state of grace,” we are closer to God and more likely to be striving to lead a virtuous life.  The further we distance ourselves from God, the more likely a virtuous life will elude us and we will pursue the false promise of happiness in all the wrong places.  Money, status, and pleasure, attained at the cost of our virtue, make us less human, less fully alive; in fact we may be starving our soul of true happiness.  When we put ourselves at the center of every decision and every word that comes out of our mouth, we become less loveable and less able to love. 

Notions about the absolute autonomy of the individual, and the complete freedom to do as we please, are symptoms that we have distanced ourselves from God.  God meant for us to live in Community, as He does in the Trinity.  We need one another, not for what we get from the other, but so that we may have opportunities to give of our selves.  One of the great mysteries involves pain and suffering.  We may ask why God allows it, but it affords us the opportunity to reach out to others and serve them out of love and compassion.  Some of the most loving people in the world are those who care for the sick out of love.  When my mother cared for my father during his long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, she demonstrated the power of love, and throughout the ordeal she grew even closer to God.

Our culture is becoming increasingly God-less.  The contraceptive (anti-life) mentality is the pathway to rationalizing abortion.  The assisted suicide movement is moving us a step closer to euthanasia.   And the marriage equality cause promises happiness at the expense of the rights of children and the importance of family (father AND mother) as the basic unit of society.   All of this diminishes our humanity, rather than upholding and celebrating it as children of God and heirs to His kingdom.  As bleak as this may seem, no matter how far we stray from God, He is always present to us, always ready to forgive and to restore us to life.  This is because His Son, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, became man and established a New Covenant on behalf of all humanity, promising that He would send His Holy Spirit who would never leave us.  Because of Jesus, and only because of Him, we have hope of salvation and hope for the world.

The mystery of God is the mystery of Love.  We enter the mystery ourselves when we strive to love as He loves, forgive as He forgives, and sacrifice ourselves for the love of others, as He did.  In doing so, we not only find meaning and fulfillment in our lives, but we provide witness to the mystery of The Holy Trinity.

Memorial Day and The Spirit of Truth

When Jesus foretold His death and Resurrection, He also promised to send the Holy Spirit whom He referred to as “The Advocate” and “The Spirit of Truth.”  Sunday we celebrated the birthday of the Church, Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, infusing them with the gifts they would need to go out into the world and establish the Church.  If the Holy Spirit had not descended upon the first Apostles and their followers down through the ages, it is unlikely the nascent Church could have survived the onslaught of persecution they endured, nor the many flaws of Church leaders down through the centuries.

Christians are once again being persecuted worldwide.  Not only are people being robbed, tortured, raped, beheaded, crucified, and more in the Middle East and Africa.   Christians in America who refuse to change their religious belief in the dignity and human life and the sanctity of marriage, as taught by Jesus Himself, are being sued, fined, and threatened with imprisonment.   Authentic Christians, those who adhere to the Word of God as it appears in scripture and in the teachings of Jesus, are being singled out as “intolerant,”  “homophobic,” and opposed to women’s rights.  Now more than ever, we need the strength, wisdom and courage offered by the Holy Spirit.  When were baptized and confirmed, we received the Holy Spirit in a covenantal agreement in which we promised our lives to God, and He promised never ever to leave us.  Even though we fail God from time to time, He will never fail us or leave us, offering instead His mercy, forgiveness, and grace, regardless of how unworthy we are of Him.

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Fortitude, Piety, and Fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:2-3)  Without delving into the theology of these Gifts, suffice it say that when we receive these gifts, they help us in achieving virtue in many aspects of our life.  For millennia, all the great philosophers taught that the attainment of virtue is the path to happiness and fulfillment.  It is also a necessity for the flourishing of civilization.  Historically, we know that when societies declined in virtue, they began to unwind and lose their ability to sustain themselves.   Immorality in leadership and in the populace inevitably resulted in either tyranny or anarchy, until the national or ethnic identity of the society disappeared or was subsumed into a new, more viable form of governance and new identity.

This weekend we celebrate Memorial Day to honor those who fought for our country.  The men and women who made tremendous sacrifices to defend our country, did so because they believed in the principles that define our nation.  They fought at great peril, not only to protect their families at home, but for the doctrines on which our society was established: freedom and democracy.  They were and still are proud of the cultural values that have made our nation great, powerful, and prosperous.   In effect, they fought to defend our boarders and our way of life, as they understood it. 

Sadly, our current President has been working hard to “fundamentally transform America.”  In doing so, his administration has been methodically attempting  to redefine our national culture and values.  Freedom to practice our faith and adhere to our religious beliefs is no longer guaranteed.  Just last week, the Justice Department prevailed in district court, insisting that the Catholic Diocese of Washington D.C. and its co-defendant, Priests for Life, (a pro-life organization) pay for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs.  DOJ is still pursuing the Little Sisters of the Poor and dozens of other overtly religious employers, over the same issue which will eventually go all the way to the Supreme Court.

Despite the fact that 28 States have passed laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman, DOJ continues to challenge the democratic process by which these laws were passed, and impose their will on State and local governments. 

This is more than just a war of ideologies.  What’s at stake here is the very Truth about life itself.  The liberal political view is now overtly anti-Christian, in that it attempts to redefine the Word of God with respect to the murder of unborn children, and the nature of marriage and family.  The scary part of this is that so many people buy into these new values, denying that the family is the basic unit of society.  How can a society remain vibrant if it is killing children and tearing down the very definition of family?   Yet Hillary Clinton’s stump speech demands that religious beliefs be amended to conform to her vision, her definition of the common good.  She wants to be “the champion of the people” and lead us all into her vision of the future where the individual and his/her desires take precedence over marriage and family commitments; where a woman’s right to choose trumps the life of a baby; where religious beliefs must conform to her word, not the Word of God.

This is not what my grandfather and father fought for in World Wars I and II.  These are not the national values I was willing to defend when I was commissioned into the Army, during the Viet Nam war.  My father, an ardent, conservative Catholic, would be incensed at these new cultural norms.  He would recognize that they undermine the common good and violate the principles upon which our nation was founded and has flourished for nearly 240 years.  He would be appalled at the untruths being preached to an increasingly secular society, who is lapping it up in hopes of greater autonomy, when in fact they are inviting societal disaster.  The contraceptive, abortion-mentality, combined with attacks on the family have already impacted birth rates significantly, and threaten to collapse our economy over the next generation.  The number of seniors keeps increasing even as the number of new children declines, virtually guaranteeing that our government cannot sustain Medicare and Social Security as-is.  Furthermore, we are creating a welfare state with open borders, so of course people from poverty-stricken countries will flock here to improve their circumstances, putting further burdens on our debt crisis.  

These are just a few of the Truths we must contend with.  We need the guidance and grace of the Holy Spirit to overcome the lies and deceit being foisted on our society.  It’s not enough to be outraged at what is happening to our country.  We must act now with Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Knowledge, Fortitude, Piety, and Fear of the Lord, if we are to save our nation.  Above all, pray for a righteous leader to emerge, one who can get us back on the path to Truth, so that we can once again be a virtuous society, not one so self-absorbed as to fall victim to one lie after another; a society that values life and recognizes the paramount importance of traditional families as the crucible of civilization.

The Good, The True and The Beautiful

Over the past week and a half I had to opportunity to attend two May Crowning liturgies, the first with St. Mary’s grade school, and the second in the retirement community where my mom lives.  Both were accompanied by songs recalling the importance of St. Mary, mother of Jesus.  Mary was Jesus’ first disciple and is revered as the penultimate saint whose love and faithfulness stand as an icon of holiness, faith, and love, for all of us to imitate.  Coincidentally, the gospel readings for the past week were from chapters 15 and 16 of John’s gospel in which Jesus exhorts us to “love one another” and to “remain in His love.”  Jesus explains that, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love.” (John 15: 10)  We know what God’s commandments are, and the commandment of Jesus, that we love one another, but how exactly does that play out in everyday life? 

Following the letter of the law, but neglecting the spirit of the law, is one of the dangers of being overly scrupulous.  In perhaps the worst case example, Islamic Jihadists kill in the name of religion, with the misguided notion that they are somehow following God’s commandments.  For ages, philosophers and theologians have noted that all that is Good, True, and Beautiful comes from God.  In his apostolic exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis calls for a “way of beauty,” in which “every expression of true beauty can be acknowledged as a path leading to an encounter with the Lord Jesus.”  For millennia, classic art and literature attempted to replicate the natural beauty of the world and of all life, including the human body.  The great classics of literature and poetry proclaim the mysteries of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.  In doing so, they reach for Truth and Good.  Modern art and literature, on the other hand, seem to distort beauty, or mock it by constructing grotesque caricatures of life and nature.  Similarly, literature has taken a turn away from truth and beauty by glorifying all forms of human desire and holding up individual happiness as the greatest good in life.  And of course this is the daily fare in our entertainment industry.  The innate beauty of the human body and our sexuality has been perverted and reduced to nothing more than a means of self-satisfaction.  Fertility, our greatest gift, and the opportunity of bringing new life into the world in a loving, permanent commitment of love, must now be abated or destroyed, so as not to interfere with our carnal desire.  This is a perversion of the Truth, and does great violence to the Beauty of our creation, especially when children conceived “by accident” are seen as a burden and an impediment to our happiness.  

The absence of beauty in the world has left a hole in our thinking.  People instinctively seek beauty and admire it, even more so than logic.  That’s just the way God created us to think and react.  But beauty is easily perverted.  For example, if we fall in love with ourselves, we put our own selfish desires first and define good as what’s good for us, first and foremost.  When the common good is redefined to serve personal freedom at all costs, the good of society and civilization is put in peril.  This is exactly what is happening in America where the right to personal happiness is now commonly perceived as the greatest good, and even a “civil right.”   In order to perpetrate and perpetuate this lie, our language has been distorted so that these new “civil rights” are made to sound noble and logical.   The euphemisms “women’s health” and “reproductive rights” conceals the Truth that we are thwarting our fertility and when that fails, killing unborn children in the name of personal happiness.  Similarly, “marriage equality” is meant to sound fair and noble even though it is a subterfuge for imposing secular beliefs on those who hold, as matter of religious belief, that children have a natural right to both a mother and a father, and that human biology itself reveals the Truth that man and woman are created to be complementary, both physically and emotionally.

In our fallen human nature, it is impossible to overcome our sinfulness on our own.  Fortunately, God Himself saves us from ourselves.  Not only has He sent His only begotten Son for our salvation, but He also sends us His Holy Spirit.  This Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Ascension of Christ.  Before He ascended into heaven, Jesus promised His disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit who would baptize them “in the Spirit,” and empower them to overcome evil as they went into the world to spread the gospel.  When we receive the Holy Spirit we get a glimpse of our own beauty as sons and daughters of God.  This, in turn, inspires us (notice the root of the word inspire?) to surrender ourselves more fully to the love of God, and to our faith which enables us to detect the Truth and see through the lies so prevalent in our increasingly secular society. 

The Holy Spirit concretizes beauty in the Church, which puts it this way in The Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The Spirit prepares men and goes out to them with His grace, in order to draw them to Christ.  The Spirit manifests the risen Lord to them, recalls His word to them and opens their minds to the understanding of His death and resurrection.” (CCC 737)

We need the mystery of Christ to be present in our lives because He reveals the Father’s plan of loving goodness.  When Jesus commands us to “Love one another” He is calling us to rise above our selfish desires and laziness, so as to love sacrificially, as He loves us.  This is the True path of Goodness and Beauty.   These Truths are far more meaningful and important than the constant drumbeat of secularism which promises happiness only when we rend ourselves free of the shackles of religion and make ourselves gods. This is a boldface lie.  The wondrous Truth is that the authentic path to happiness and joy is ours through the incomparable way of Beauty that comes to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, which we celebrate next Sunday.

Has Hillary Declared War On the Catholic Church?

Well, it’s official.  Hillary Clinton kicked of her presidential campaign declaring war on “religious beliefs.”  The presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency is insisting that Catholic belief in the sanctity of marriage, and the right to life from conception to natural death, “must be changed.”  Here are her exact words:

“Far too many women are denied access to reproductive health care and safe childbirth, and laws don’t count for much if they’re not enforced. Rights have to exist in practice — not just on paper.  Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will and deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”  (Speech at Columbia University, April 28, 2015)

Are women in America really being “denied access to safe child birth?”  Or did she mean ‘safe child-killing’?  Ironically, Hillary started off the speech saying, “Every life matters,” referring to the black man who died in police custody in Baltimore.  If you’re a black man, breaking the law, your life certainly matters, but if you’re an unborn child it has no value.  With all this talk about African-Americans being targeted, hasn’t anybody noticed that the abortion industry targets predominantly black neighborhoods, and that black women abort nearly half their children in urban areas?   Invoking her new grandmother image, Hillary commented that “every single child should be cared for, as if it were our own.”  Although I read the entire text of the speech, I don’t know which child she was referring to, presumably the man-child arrested by the police, because her next sentence called for reforming our criminal justice system so as to be more fair to black people.  She praised President Obama for his calling on police to wear body cameras.

That same week, Hillary spoke at the Women in the World Summit where she warned that, “women will not have full access to reproductive health care, until deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases are changed.”  She used the exact same words, apparently part of her stump speech as she campaigns for the presidency.  So, if Hillary becomes our next president, she is promising to call for changes in religious beliefs.  President Obama has already begun this process through the administrative laws that require employers, including religious organizations, to provide contraception, sterilization and abortion drugs or pay enormous fines.  In this vein, he has directed to Justice Department to pursue cases, like the one against The Little Sisters of the Poor, all the way to the Supreme Court.  He has also endorsed legal action against businesses that refuse to participate in gay marriage ceremonies and celebrations, ignoring the decades old Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed into law by that paragon of religious propriety, Bill Clinton, (under duress from a Republican-controlled Congress).

On a more positive note, last week Congress voted to prevent the city of Washington D.C. from revoking an ordinance that protects religious institutions from being sued for failure to comply with “reproductive health” demands of citizens who want sterilization and abortion services from hospitals and doctors whose religious beliefs prevent them from offering those services.  The city can appeal this all the way up to the president, and if the Mr. Obama overrides Congress, there are probably not enough votes in the Senate to prevent a veto.

Clearly, the tide is turning against religious beliefs.  Hillary is appointing herself the arbiter of what constitutes acceptable religious beliefs, and she demands that we must all hold and adhere to her judgement.  In her world, apparently, she gets to do as she pleases with regard to following the law governing things like her official correspondence when she was Secretary of State, but as President of the United States, she would dictate what religious beliefs the rest of us must adopt.

Another story in the news the past few weeks had to do with the Hollywood couple who are fighting in court over their fertilized eggs, now that they are no longer a couple.  I haven’t followed the story very closely, but my understanding is that the guy wants the frozen embryos to remain in stasis and not destroyed, so that in the future it might be possible for him to father these unborn children.  The woman apparently does not want to have his children anymore, and does not want him to have them implanted in a surrogate and raised by him.  In the process of reporting on this story, one news outlet mentioned that nationally, there are about 600,000 frozen embryos.  What no one seems to recognize is that each and every one of these embryos is a nascent human being, waiting to be born.  They are not “property” nor are they merely “tissue.”  They are frozen human persons, each imbued with the miraculous gift of life, each having a right to that life.  But like the Who’s of Dr. Seuss, they are so small, everyone denies their existence, and their right to life.  Our culture has become so accustomed to discarding unborn babies that no one thinks twice about the fact that approximately 3000 babies are destroyed in their mother’s wombs every day, and that’s just here in America.  Fifty million Americans have been killed before birth since abortion became the law of the land 42 years ago.  Imagine how much more vibrant our economy would be with 30 million more people in the workforce and 20 million more in school.  Those tax dollars and increased productivity would have been a huge economic stimulus, and probably precluded our staggering national debt.  Medicare and Social Security would surely be in better financial shape, and who knows what genius and potential we’ve destroyed that might have made substantial contributions toward solving the medical and scientific challenges we still face?

It’s going to be a long, long election season.  I detest all the political ads we’ll have to endure, and I especially hate all the mud-slinging that elections bring on.  Nevertheless, we are a democracy and the worst thing we can do now is give up on our country in disgust over the political process as it plays out.  I hope and pray there will be a candidate who is capable of restoring the greatness of our Republic by addressing the crisis of culture that is leaning further and further to the left, even to the point of criticizing religious beliefs.  . In last Sunday’s gospel Jesus warned that He is the vine and we are the branches.  If we are cut off from the source of all life, we will wither and die.  We are losing our moral footing as a nation and as a culture.  We need a strong leader who is willing to fight for a return to our roots (the True Vine) and the moral basis on which our society was founded.  Let’s pray for the right candidate to emerge and successfully challenge Hillary before it’s too late for our once great nation to recover from the onslaught of lies and the culture of death we seem to have adopted.