5th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Strength through Suffering

Of all people, Job is brokenhearted.  If you haven’t read the whole Book of Job in the Bible, make it a goal this week to read it.  The Book of Job explores the question of why God would allow us to experience trials, temptations, ill-fortune, sickness, and suffering.  Maybe you feel like him: “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?  I have been assigned months of misery, and troubled nights have been allotted to me.  My days come to an end without hope; I shall not see happiness again.” 

In the book of Job, we learn that it’s the devil who is jealous of Job.  He’s jealous of Job’s wealth, but most of all, he’s jealous of Job’s virtue, because Job is faithful to the Lord.  And so the devil asks God to allow him to test Job, to inflict suffering upon him, and maybe, just maybe, Job will curse God and forsake the Lord.  God permits the devil to cause Job disaster, and and in one fell swoop, Job loses his home, his children, his sheep and cattle, and his health.

There are three things to note:

1) The devil always envies those who strive to please the Lord.  That’s precisely the motivation for the devil’s hatred toward Job.  Which means that when temptations and trials occur in our life, it’s not a sign that we’re doing something wrong, but rather something right.  The temptations of the devil assail those who are on the path of holiness, because the devil wants above all to overcome the holy!  He wouldn't attack you if he didn't see that you were striving to make progress toward God!

2) God allows this to happen.  Why?  It’s to heal our pride.  God allows us to fall into temptation and to fail, so that we realize we don't have it all together, we can't do it on our own, we don't have the strength by ourselves.  We won’t be puffed up by our own greatness if temptations can humble us.  Sometimes it feels like Jesus has left us, that he’s up in the hills praying while we’re down here suffering.  He does that so we can experience what it's like not to be upheld by His power and strength, so we can see our weakness and feel how much we need him.  

In the Gospel, we hear about a whole army of Jobs who come to Jesus … all who were ill, possessed by demons.  That’s every one of us, coming to the door of Jesus’ house with repentance and faith, asking him to approach us in our need, grasp us by the hand, and help us up.  And once we've been helped by Jesus, we have to work to save the people around us, too.  To be the ones who bring others to Jesus, to invite them to Mass, invite them to become Catholic, tell people how Jesus has strengthened you, beg Jesus on behalf of so many who still need to find him!

3) God is confident that Job will pass the test … and he’s confident in us, too, in you.  Around this time of year, the NFL holds what’s known as the “combine,” where scouts and GM’s get a look at the potential draft-day prospects.  The players are put through drills and tests to see what they’re made of.  The scouts and GM’s aren’t looking for a finished product who thinks they’re God’s gift to the NFL.  They’re looking for someone who’s teachable, who’s trainable, and who’s humbly willing to grow and change.

I think that’s a fitting image for how God looks at us.  He sees our potential, but he also sees where we need to grow and change and our weak points that need strengthening and conditioning.  Like any muscle, our weak will needs training to get strong.  And just like our bodily muscles, the only way for our will to get strong is when there's an opposition pushing against it.  

Just like a football recruit needs coaching and drills to correct bad habits, so we too need drills to train our will in holiness ~ and those drills are the temptations and trials that God allows to come upon us.  How are you going to correct the evil desires in you and strengthen your will if you’re never put through your paces?

So, if you're being tempted or are in the midst of a trial, rejoice! because God's treating you as His spiritual son or daughter, an athlete-in-training, to strengthen you to run the race set before you and become strong in your will for holiness!  God’s allowing the devil to test you, because the devil’s thinking maybe, just maybe you've not really rejected him … the test of temptation and trials is the battle field where we can convince the devil of our total renunciation of him … and in the process, we learn of our growth in virtue and come out stronger and steadier than iron, thanks to temptations … and God’s confident that you can pass the test and come through!  After all, He’s the one who’s drafted us onto His team, enlisted us in his army!

Many times, doctors and physical therapists have to allow pain to be caused in order to heal you.  Think of a doctor who reconstructs your knee, and the therapist who starts to get you to move it ~ very painful!  But if they didn't do that, you'd never walk again.

God, our spiritual physician, works in the same way.  Why does God allow temptations?  Why does God allow trials and suffering and failures?  Why does he let the devil torment us?  Because the muscle of our weakened will needs exercise and strengthening!

"God treats you as sons, for what son is there whose father does not discipline them?  Our earthly fathers discipline us for a short time, as it seemed best to them, but God the Father disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.  For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness for those who are trained by it.  Therefore, lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be disjointed, but rather be healed."

What needs healing in us?  First of all, our pride.  God allows us to fail, to fall, to suffer trials and temptations so that we realize we don't have it all together, we can't do it on our own, we don't have the strength.  He allows us to experience what it's like not to be upheld by His power and strength so that when we are being upheld and defended by Him, we'll know it's not from us, but by His grace!

Our weakened will also needs healing, and like any muscle, it needs exercise to get strong!  And, just like our bodily muscles are only exercised when there's an opposition pushing against them, so too the only way our weak will is going to get exercise is if there's an opposition to what we know by reason and God's revelation is true and good and excellent.  This of course, is our fallen passions and appetites, which the demons try to exploit and inflame, to get us to choose against our reason, expressed in God's commandments.  How many times do we know what's good and right and just, yet find ourselves powerless to do it because of the force of bad habit or all kinds of forces pulling on our will to remain calcified ...

The opposition of temptations, trials, suffering, though often painful, can be turned to good when we see in them the opportunity to exercise our will and grow strong.  The hardest moments are at the beginning, when we choose to break an addiction or bad habit, or start a new good habit.  The grip of our fallen passions is strongest then, but over time, one choice at a time, we can grow stronger, until our desires actually become trained to love and do what is good and right with ease, just as with more exercise comes a desire for it.

We in no way can do this alone.  To win the battle, we need the Holy Spirit, God's power!  We need the power that flows from the God-man, Jesus Christ, available to us in the seven Sacraments, especially Penance and the Eucharist!

So, if you're being tempted or are in the midst of a trial, rejoice! because God's treating you as His spiritual son or daughter, an athlete-in-training, to strengthen you to run the race set before you and become strong in your will for holiness!

Battles with Demons

The Gospel readings for the coming Sundays record the activity of demons in human persons, with Jesus' power to cast them out.  Some people try to explain this away, but the Gospel record is clear - demons exist, and we better know their strategies in order to shore up our defenses, and rely not on our own power, but the power of Christ to conquer!

As the NFL season has wrapped up, I've been thinking of how much dedication goes into a Super-Bowl-winning season.  How much sacrifice players make to discipline their minds and bodies, to study the film and tactics of their opponents so that they can be ready to defend their goal and attack their defense.  Are we that dedicated to Jesus?  Are we that single-hearted in our study of how the devil, "the enemy of human nature," as St. Ignatius Loyola puts it, works?  We better study and be prepared, so we can fight intelligently!

St. John of the Cross wrote that the devil is "the hardest to understand," and causes the ruin of a great multitude who set out to follow Christ, and no human power can be compared to him (Spiritual Canticle, 431).

How does the devil tempt us?  Mostly, he exploits our fallen instincts and passions, our pride, and the weakness of our will to induce us to rebel against what our reason and revelation tell us is true and good and right.  And once we're in the clutches of this internal division between our reason and will, our reason and passions, he works to induce us to despair: to lose heart, to give up the battle.

Demons use our imagination, our memory, and our sensory desires to get to our intellect and will.  This is how it's been from the beginning: "So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and gave some to his husband who was with her, and he ate" (Genesis 3:6).

Most commonly, the demonic deception is through our memory: conjuring up images, past experiences, and sensory desires that then affect our emotions, which then can carry us away from acting according to reason and what we know to be good.  Instead, with my weakened will, I choose to do "what I feel like" doing.  I lose the battle,

More to come, but let's together reach out in faith and pray to Christ Jesus, visit him in the Tabernacle, and humbly beg him for his power and strength to conquer!

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time - The Power of Christ

How weird and strange Jesus is!  How distinctive from everything that came before Him!  Sometimes we hear the Gospels so often, they start to sound plain and ordinary to us.  Jesus can start to be very tame to us.

But let’s try to place ourselves in the perspective of a 1^st century Jew.  Here comes Jesus into the synagogue one day on the Sabbath, and he does what any Jewish male could do – he got up to comment on the Torah readings.  Except there’s something about the way he taught that astonishes you.  “They were astonished because he taught as one having authority, and not as the other scribes” (Mark 1:21).  Scribes would claim authority from their teacher, who in turned claimed authority from their teacher, and so forth, back to Moses, who got it from God – what greater authority could there be?

Jesus, though, didn't teach like that.  He claimed his own authority.  Remember him teaching this way?  “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not murder,’ but I say to you, ‘Anyone angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.’”  Or, “You've heard it said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those who hate you.’”

Well, where they've heard it said is in the Torah, in the Law of Moses.  Who could possibly claim an authority greater than the Torah, but a prophet greater than Moses?  Who could claim an authority greater than the Torah except someone who himself is the author of the Torah?

So you see why the scribes and Pharisees are so perturbed with Jesus.  How strange, how scandalous Jesus is!  How presumptuous!  For a 1^st century Jew, there are certain moments that if you’re there listening to Jesus, you would either have to get up and leave, because he’s claiming an authority which no Jewish man would claim, OR you would have to start seriously pondering whether just maybe, just maybe this man really is God.  Could it be, that this Jesus really is greater than Moses and the Torah?  Could it be that he really does come from the Father, from “face to face” dialogue with Him?

Right then there comes this man with an unclean spirit, crying out, “What do you have to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth, have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, the holy one of God.” Everyone’s astonished, trying to figure out who Jesus is, but the demons know!  

Notice this single person, speaking in the plural, "us."  The word diablo in Greek means “to scatter, or throw apart.”  The demonic power is a scattering power, a divisive power … God is a unifying power.  

When we've lost contact with Christ, when we start running away from the Lord, we become scattered within ourselves.  Our reason struggles against our will, one passion wages war against other passions, what we know with our mind to be good and true and right fights against other desires and passions pulling us apart – we come into the grip of the diabolic, at the level of our interior spirit, and it affects everything about us.  Jesus comes to rebuke the dark power, “come out of him” …

“And with a loud cry, the unclean spirit came out of him.”  How does darkness, how does interior division, come out of us?  Attachments, disordered desires, fallen passions, addictions, the power of cruelty and hatred, the impulses of anger and laziness and lust, how do they come out?  Convulsively, with a loud cry, as we struggle with Christ’s power in us against them …

In the Eucharist, as well as in Baptism, in Confession, in all the Sacraments, we come into contact with the power of Jesus Christ unleashed into the world through his Church addressing evil at all levels – that’s the power of the Gospel.  It's something revolutionary!  "He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him."

Jesus' power is the power to bring together what is scattered and unify our spirits in obedience to God and love of neighbor, casting out all that tears us apart!  When you go to Mass this weekend, listen to that voice of Jesus, and surrender to its power.  Open your heart to receive His power through the Eucharist – open to Him the evil that’s in your heart, the dark power that scatters and separates you from God, and ask Him to cast it out and give you strength to fight against evil!

To the Peripheries

Welcome to my blog!  I hope to post regularly to equip you for reaching the "peripheries" with the Good News of Christ!