22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21b-22, 27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

We know we live in a fallen world—
a world haunted by evil, sin, and pain—
but some weeks you feel it more than others.
There is, of course, the ongoing pandemic,
which persists with wearying tenacity,
and the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti,
where misery is piled upon misery
and deaths number in the thousands.

But we feel the sorrow of our fallen state most acutely
in those events where deliberately chosen human actions
are the source of the pain and suffering of other humans.
And this is what we have watched 
unfolding in Afghanistan.
Some of the harmful actions 
seem to be matters of miscalculations,
errors in judgment about how events might unfold.
Some seem to be acts of garden-variety callousness,
in which those who are not of our own tribe
receive less of our care and concern.
But some of these choices—
such as the bombing of the airport in Kabul
in which over 170 Afghan civilians were killed,
along with 13 U.S. service members—
seem to deliberately embrace cruelty,
deliberately desire to inflict pain.
It is in these acts, these choices,

that we see the evil that afflicts our world
as not merely a patina on the surface of things,
but something that has planted its roots deeply in us,
something that reaches into the human heart 
and turns us not simply into victims 
of evil forces afoot in the world,
but into co-conspirators with evil.

In these events, these choices, 
we are confronted with what Saint Paul called 
“the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thess. 2:7),
the mystery of how human creatures
that God made in the divine image 
and declared “very good,”
could harbor within them a capacity for cruelty
that is chosen, deliberate, and planned—
the mystery of how beings who have at their core
a desire for God and the good,
could also be the source of such evil. 
As Jesus warns us in today’s Gospel,
evil is not an external stain that we can wash away;
rather, “the things that come out from within 
are what defile.”

What motivates such cruelty,
such willful taking of life 
and deliberate inflicting of suffering?
Is it a quest for some imagined higher good,
some noble cause used to justify evil means?
Is it a desire to usurp God 
as the one who holds in his hands
the power over life and death?
The mystery of iniquity remains a mystery;
it remains a void that we 
cannot wrap our minds around,
cannot fully grasp.

Evil remains a mystery to us
even though it is a reality 
in which we are all implicated.
Events of obvious horrific evil,
like the bombing of the airport in Kabul,
can tempt us to refuse to acknowledge
our own share in the mystery of iniquity:
it is those people—over there—in whom evil dwells.
We turn evil once again into something outside of us,
something alien to us.
But Jesus offers an extensive and varied list
of the fruits of evil,
lest we think that somehow
evil has not sunk its roots deeply into us: 
“from within people, from their hearts,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit.”
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.”
We may not steal or murder or blaspheme,
but who of us has never been arrogant or foolish—
I’m pretty sure I’ve been both 
several times already this morning.
Who of us has not been deceitful or envious,
lustful or mean? 
An act of lust or envy is, of course, 
not the same as an act of murder,
but they all come from the same source:
“All these evils,” Jesus says, 
“come from within and they defile.”

So where is the good news in all of this?
What hope do we have 
in the face of the mystery of iniquity? 
Our hope is clearly not in ourselves.
Captive as we are to sin, 
there are no efforts we can make on our own
that can uproot the sin in our hearts,
that can stem the tide of evil
that come forth from within us.
No, our hope is, as the letter of James says,
in the Father of lights,
“with whom there is no alteration 
or shadow caused by change,”
from whom comes down every perfect gift.
Our hope is in the God who has planted in us
the word of truth,
“that we may be a kind 
of firstfruits of his creatures,”
signs of God’s grace dawning already 
in the dark night of sin.
Only the Word of God joined to our human nature
can restore that nature to what God would have it be:
that which God declared to be “very good”
at the dawning of creation.
Only the mystery of divine love
can save us from the mystery of iniquity.

This does not mean
that we have no role to play
in the inward purification 
to which Christ calls us.
After all, the letter of James says quite clearly, 
“Be doers of the word and not hearers only.”
The word of truth that the Father of lights plants in us
is something that we nurture 
through prayer and penance,
through the grace of the sacraments,
through following the way of Jesus on a daily basis,
through seeking to repair the damage sin has wrought.
What can I do to comfort those
whom sin has made suffer?
What can I do to heal the wounds inflicted 
by my own arrogance and folly,
by my own deceit and envy?
How do I live a life of on-going conversion
to the way of Jesus?
These are the questions that must define our lives
if we are to be doers of the word and not just hearers.

Let us pray that the Father of lights
would show us the mystery of love
that can defeat the mystery of iniquity,
and let us pray that God 
would have mercy on us all.

 

18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Reading: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15; Ephesians 4:17, 20-24; John 6:24-35

I learned a new term this week: “the twisties.”
A friend of mine who is a former gymnast explained to me 
that this is when you lose what they call your “air sense”—
your awareness, after you have launched yourself into the air,
of exactly where you are located,
which way to are oriented,
how you are going to land—
the sense that allows the gymnast 
to turn what for most of us 
would be a chaotic tumble through space
into a graceful, gravity-defying dance.

A gymnast with the twisties is in considerable peril:
suddenly, in mid-arc, you are lost,
you literally don’t know which way is up
or how you are going to come down.
And once you lose your air sense
it is not certain when, or if, it will return.
Apparently, it was a bad case of the twisties
that led Simone Biles to withdraw 
from the team gymnastics competition
this past week at the Olympic Games.

I, obviously, am not a gymnast,
but I can relate to the twisties.
We all have dreams and aspirations 
that guide our choices
and, in a sense, give us our identity.
We launch ourselves, as it were, on various life-projects:
I am going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher;
I am going to be the best parent possible;
I am going to be famous, rich, powerful;
I am going to be an Olympic athlete,
a professional musician,
a successful student.

Some of these aspirations,
these life-projects, 
are worthwhile,
and others not so much,
but whether worthy or not,
they come to define not just what we do
but who we are, our sense of self.
This sense of self is like the gymnast’s air sense:
having launched ourselves into pursuit of our dreams,
it is how we locate ourselves,
how we keep ourselves oriented,
how we know how we are going to land. 
But we can lose this sense of self.

We all know of people—
and maybe have experienced this ourselves—
whose aspirations are thwarted,
whose dreams do not work out,
whose dedication does not pay off.
I may be a hard-working pre-med student 
who does not do well enough on the MCAT
to get into medical school.
I may be an athlete who has spent years in training
but who is sidelined by a career-ending injury.
I may be a parent who has poured myself
into providing my children 
with a happy and secure life
but now watch then struggle 
with problems that I simply cannot fix.
If I am not a doctor, an athlete,
a parent who can protect my children,
then what am I?
Who am I?
We get the twisties.
We are dislocated, disoriented,
and we don’t know how we will land.

The poet Dante begins his work The Divine Comedy
with the words, “Midway on our life’s journey
I found myself in a dark woods, the right road lost.”
In a moment of profound dislocation and disorientation,
Dante is not exactly sure how it is that he come to this point.
He too had aspirations: to be a great poet,
to achieve a kind of immortality through art,
to be a man of influence in his native city of Florence.
But these dreams seem to have come to nothing,
and he awakens in the middle of the arc of his life
as if from a dream to find 
that he has no idea how he will land.
He has the twisties.

But what Dante comes to see in his great poem
is that the one thing to which we should aspire,
the one great dream that should give us our sense of self,
the one lodestar by which we should orient ourselves,
is nothing so paltry as being a great artist or a person of influence,
nothing so fragile as having a career or honor or wealth,
but only being a follower of Jesus Christ.
Of course it is a fine thing to have aspirations—
our world would be impoverished 
without the passion of artists,
without the drive of athletes,
without the dreams of parents for their children.
But none of these aspirations is enough
to give us a sense of self that can survive
the twists and turns of fortune,
none of these can locate and orient us
in a way that will allow us to land in God’s kingdom,
none of these can make for us a self
that will be eternal.
 
In the Gospel today Jesus says,
“Do not work for food that perishes
but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
We should not base our sense of self 
on aspirations for passing things.
St. Paul speaks in our second reading 
of a self “corrupted by deceitful desires.”
We are deceived by any desire for worldly achievement
that promises to give us a self that is secure,
because the world is constantly passing away
and the self that is based on worldly achievement
passes away with it.

This is why Paul tells us this morning 
“you should put away the old self 
of your former way of life…
and put on the new self.”
When we find ourselves with the twisties—
when in the middle of our life’s journey
we find ourselves dislocated, disoriented, 
with no idea of how we will land—
God’s grace can relocate and reorient us,
give us a new aspiration that will not fail,
an aspiration for eternity.

When the people ask Jesus
“What can we do to accomplish the works of God?’ 
He responds,
‘This is the work of God, 
that you believe in the one he sent.” 
When we launch ourselves into the life of faith
we are not launching ourselves into a void
where our sense of self can slip from our grasp,
but into the hands of God.
We are launching ourselves into a new self
that is, as Paul says, “created in God’s way 
in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
We are launching ourselves 
into companionship with Jesus
on the journey to the kingdom.

It is not the case that on this journey
you will never feel dislocated or disoriented
or doubtful as to how you will land,
but in faith we trust Jesus,
the one whom God has sent,
the one who comes to meet us 
in the middle of our life’s journey
to grasp ahold of us,
to located and orient us, 
to bring us safely home.

So let us aspire to share in God’s eternity,
let us trust that God will be there to catch us when we fail,
let us pray that God will have mercy on us all.