4th Sunday OT
Fr. Philip Neri Powell,
OP
OLR, NOLA
It
wasn't until I got into seminary that I realized just how strange
Catholicism really is. When I go home for the holidays – to my
Baptist family – I am reminded just how odd we Catholics are. I
wore my full habit to my niece's non-denominational wedding. I'm
pretty sure I heard the word “Jedi?” whispered. John Zmirak, a
Catholic layman, describes our faith well. He writes: “The Catholic
faith is neither [simply bland nor inoffensive]. In fact, like really
authentic Mexican food (think habeneros
and fried crickets),
it is at once both pungent and offensive. It offends me all the time,
with the outrageous demands it makes of my fallen nature and the
sheer weirdness of its claims. It asserts that, behind the veil of
day-to-day schlepping, of work and laundry and television and
microwaved burritos, we live on the front lines of a savage spiritual
war. . .” As an example of the “sheer weirdness” of our faith,
we need look further than the Sermon on the Mount. Just about
everything Jesus says in this sermon is “pungent and offensive”
to just about everything our culture wants us to believe to be true,
good, and beautiful. Living as faithful Catholics in this world is an
exercise in contradiction and opposition. Our witness to Christ is
itself a kind of weirdness.
It's
pretty clear that Paul understands just how weird our commitment to
Christ can be. Who does God call into His Church? Paul answers, “God
chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the
weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and
despised of the world, those who count for nothing. . .” Rather
than picking the wise, the strong, the highly placed and well-loved
of the world, God chooses the foolish, the weak, the lowly, and the
despised. Imagine pitching this enterprise to a group of American
investors. Do you think the investors would jump at the chance to
buy into this project operated by the dregs of society? Or would they
tell you that your plan was “sheer weirdness” and walk out? To
the modern American sense of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, everything
about the Church God has given us reeks of weirdness, laxity,
pomposity, and backward superstition. The Catholic Church even takes
in fallen-away Baptists and lets them become priests! How absurd!
Of
course, we don't have to imagine that God planned a Church
like the one presented to the investors. He, in fact, established
just such a Church, and we are it. Christ tells us who we are.
The poor in spirit; those who mourn; the meek; those who hunger for
righteousness; the merciful and the clean of heart; the peacemakers
and those persecuted for righteousness' sake. Find a wretched soul,
broken and beaten by the world, persecuted for his or her trust in
God, a soul steeped in mourning, yet thirsting for justice, and you
have found the Church God established. Everything about this picture
of our faith is just weird, simply bizarre. What could be more
offensive and pungent to the world than an organization that prizes
above all else the blessedness of mercy, forgiveness, meekness,
poverty of spirit, self-sacrifice, obedience, moral restraint,
charity, and life-long fidelity? That Christians are the single most
persecuted group of religious believers on the planet tells us that
there is little about our strange faith that pleases the powers of
this world. That Christians – especially Catholics – are safely
ridiculed, discriminated against, and openly slandered tells us that
the Church sits in the midst of our culture like a pungent, offensive
prophet – a living sign of contradiction, a witness against the
vanities of the world and the futility of trying to be wise without
God.
The
Sermon on the Mount is both a prediction and a promise. Jesus
predicts our persecution and promises us blessedness. He makes it
perfectly clear that following him back to the Father will be not
only difficult but dangerous as well, potentially deadly and most
definitely discomforting. And even if we weren't persecuted for
standing against the demands of a culture without God, the outrageous
demands of the Church herself would be difficult enough. Think for a
moment about what it is that we are asked to believe. We are asked to
believe that there is an all-good, all-knowing, ever-present god who
loves us. Yet, evil seems to flourish. Disease, violence,
unimaginable suffering, natural and man-made disasters. We are asked
to believe that this god took on human flesh and sacrificed himself
for our benefit. We are asked to restrain perfectly naturally
passions and desires so that we might imitate the goodness of this
god. Perhaps the most outrageous demand for modern Americans is that
we are asked to sacrifice in order that others might flourish, to set
aside our own needs, our own wants and work diligently for the
benefit of strangers and for our enemies. What sane person helps
those who would see him dead? But therein lies blessedness. That's
not just a promise made by a crackpot preacher 2,000 years ago.
That's a promise made by the Word made flesh, God Himself, a promise
already fulfilled and waiting for us to claim.
Living
in this world as faithful Catholics is an exercise contradiction and
opposition. We stand against a culture that promotes death as a
solution to unwanted pregnancies, terminal illnesses, and
inconvenient suffering. We stand against a culture that promotes the
goodness of satisfying every base desire regardless of the
consequences. A culture that rewards lying, self-promotion, greed.
But while standing against the tides of this world, we stand with the
blessed: the poor, the diseased, the oppressed, those persecuted for
the faith. We stand with self-sacrifice, unconditional mercy,
boundless hope, and the promise of freedom from the slavery of sin.
Most importantly: we do not stand alone, as individuals but together
as one Body in Christ. With all of our weirdnesses, all of our
outrageous demands, with all of our pungent and offensive beliefs, we
are of one heart, one mind, and we give God thanks and praise with
one voice. Our hope lies in a single truth. Though we are engaged on
the frontlines of a spiritual battle, the war has already been won.
God is victorious. Our work—as His faithful sons and daughters—is
to make sure that His victory shines through everything we do,
everything we think, everything we say. As living, breathing
testimonies to His redeeming love, we stand—as weird and offensive
as we can sometimes be—we stand always as witnesses for His will
that all of creation return to Him, whole, pure, and perfected in
Christ.
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