I remember exactly where I was the first time today’s Gospel
reading really hit me in the gut. I was attending the Saturday evening vigil
mass at St. Noel’s, after which I would meet with Father Tom Dragga for an
interview before entering college seminary.
“I have not come to establish peace on the earth…but rather
division”, in other words, following Jesus may not always be the popular thing,
his truth might contradict popular opinion, you might lose friends because him,
your family might not understand you, they might even come to hate you because
of him. Hopefully not! But to me, this
Gospel always speaks of how counter-cultural being a disciple of Jesus Christ
really is.
This past week was packed full of amazing, holy, courageous
counter-cultural saints, a “great cloud of witnesses”-- who followed Jesus
Christ even when it was the hard thing to do.
We began the week, on Monday, with the feast of Saint Dominic.
Dominic became aware of two very serious problems in Europe. One, northern
Europe had not been evangelized, it was largely Pagan. And two, a terribly
heresy called Albigensianism had divided the Church in France. The activity of
the heretical Albigensians was distancing people from the truth of the faith.
When Dominic brought these challenges to the pope’s
attention, the pope personally asked Dominic to devote himself to preaching to
the Albigensians. He countered the error
of heresy, by spreading devotion of the rosary and the truth of the Gospel. And
judging by the lack of Albigensians running around these days, Dominic must
have been successful…have you met any Albigensians lately?
There is a story that while his mother was pregnant with
Dominic, she dreamt that a dog leapt from her womb and began to set the world
on fire. Jesus himself said in the
Gospel today, “I have come to set the world on fire, how I wish it were already
blazing.” The saints are the instruments God uses to set the world on fire.
Tuesday, we celebrated Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, also
known as St. Edith Stein. Young Edith was born into a Jewish family, where the
faith was not practiced. As an adolescent she became a devout atheist, but as a
young woman with profound intellectual gifts, she studied philosophy under the
renowned philosopher Edmund Husserl. Her search for the truth led her to the
Catholic faith and she converted to Catholicism.
10 years after he conversion, Edith entered the Carmelite
convent and took the name Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in honor of
Theresa of Avila, the great Carmelite mystic.
It was 1933, Adolf Hitler was Chancellor of Germany. Persecution of Jews
and Catholics had already begun, Sister Theresa was both, a Catholic of Jewish
blood. In 1942, Teresa was arrested by the Nazi’s. She and her sister Rosa were transported to
Auschwitz in Poland by boxcar. One week
later, Sister Teresa died in a gas chamber.
As a teenage atheist, she never would have imagined dying
for Jesus Christ as a contemplative nun. But the Lord set her heart on fire,
and being faithful to him despite the worldly pressures became her greatest
joy. Her goodness stood contrary to the culture of death spread by the Nazis.
On Thursday we celebrated the patron saint of our parish,
Saint Clare of Assisi. Talk about a woman who was counter-cultural. Clare was born
into an aristocratic family. She lived in a castle, she had every luxury. She
was destined to marry a prince and live happily ever after.
But, at the age of 15, she refused to give in to her
parent’s wishes for her to get married. She had been attracted to Gospel
poverty through the preaching of a homeless man named Francesco, who dressed in
tattered brown robes. Her heart was set on fire with love for the Lord Jesus,
and when her parents locked her in their castle, she escaped to the dilapidated
chapel of San Damiano. At the altar of Our Lady, she traded her rich clothing
for the rough brown woolen habit of the Franciscans, exchanged her jeweled belt
for a common rope with three knots to symbolize her poverty, chastity, and
obedience, and caught off her long golden hair to take the veil. Thus she became espoused to Christ, she did
marry a prince, the Prince of Peace! Her
sister Agnes, 14 years old, soon joined her, as did several other women, in the
following weeks.
They lived a simple life of poverty, austerity, and
seclusion from the world. Clare and her
sisters went barefoot, slept on the ground, fasted from meat, and observed
almost complete silence. Yet their lives were full of burning joy.
Talk about counter-cultural. Our modern culture tells our
young girls that they cannot be happy unless they, like a Disney princess,
marry prince charming and lives in a castle filled with all the luxuries money
can buy, or acquire the sort of job where she can buy her own castle and live
life according to her own whims and fancies. Clare’s poverty and virginity is
the antithesis and antidote to our culture’s promiscuity and materialism.
St. Clare, shows us, like Dominic and Theresa Benedicta of
the Cross, that our greatest joy, our greatest fulfillment, our hearts deepest
longing is for Jesus Christ. He wants to set our hearts on fire, he does not
want mediocre lukewarm followers, but followers who are willing to stand
against the tide, stand for truth even when the culture says there is no truth,
stand for purity, when the culture grows perverse, stand for prayer, when the
culture shoves iphones in front of our faces, stand for self-discipline, when
the culture tells us just to give in to every impulse we have.
Many people become afraid of really surrendering to Christ
because of fear—they fear his fire. Pope Benedict said “The fire of God, the
fire of the Holy Spirit, is that of the bush that burned but was not consumed
(from the exodus story). It is a flame that blazes but does not destroy, on the
contrary, that, in burning, brings out the better and truer part of man.”
We see in the saints, men and women who have allowed the
fire of God to bring out the best of them. As gold is refined from its
impurities in the furnace, so too, the saints. And, they encourage us, in our
simple lives, to draw near to that the fire of God through prayer and acts of
charity. Every day should be filled with those two things, prayer and acts of
charity. Without them, how can we be surprised when our faith grows lukewarm or
mediocre.
Last night at the 4:30 Mass, we honored a young woman whose
own heart no doubt has been set on fire with love of Christ and the desire to
serve the Church. We gather in great thanksgiving today, to celebrate St.
Bridget Heisler’s profession of her final vows as a Sister for Life.
Like St. Clare, Sr. Bridget’s religious community take the
counter-cultural vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, with an additional
fourth vow to protect and enhance the sacredness of human life.
In a culture where life is cheapened, commodified,
objectified, what a beautiful witness to all of us, to remind us always to
value the life which Christ gives us, both natural and supernatural.
This parish family of St. Clare was a place where Sr.
Bridget’s vocation was able to flourish. To all who served as Catechists,
liturgical ministers, sang with her in the choir, or simply walked with her as
a friend on her journey, you should have a very healthy and holy pride, that
the Lord used you to inspire her vocation.
I have known many young people who were too afraid to
embrace the vocation to which God had called them. I have known many families
who have pressured their children not to follow God’s call. But the Holy Spirit
was at work here at St. Clare, and we celebrate, Sr. Bridget saying, “yes”, and
hopefully she will not be alone in doing so.
Our Lord comes to us today in word and sacrament, in the
Holy Eucharist, to kindle fire in our hearts, may we respond generously,
wholeheartedly, to him, that he may give us the courage and strength to be his
faithful followers as witness to his truth and instruments of his grace for the
glory of God and salvation of souls.
No comments:
Post a Comment