Last week I told a story about a recent encounter I had with my tailor. She had asked me why I became a priest, and I replied that I believe that with all the evil in the world, the priesthood can be a powerful instrument of God’s grace—his love and mercy and truth—in the world.
She replied that she had a problem with organized religion in general. She said how in her home country, the Atheist Communist Leader Stalin had outlawed religion, but when Stalin was overthrown, many of the Communist party members traded the hammer and sickle, the symbols of atheistic communism, for the cross, the symbol of Christianity. They had taken up the once repressed faith, but instead of using the terror and violence of Communism to control people’s lives, they now used religion to control people and oppress people.
I think many people have this problem with organized religion. The Communist Philosopher Karl Marx called religion “the opiate of the masses.”—seeing religious simply as a way to control people. And to be honest, there has been corruption in the Church, here and there. But, all of us here, I hope, know of the tremendous potential of Christianity, the power of grace to transform sinners into saints.
Religion: it can be the best thing around, and it can be the worst thing around. When religion functions well, according to its own deepest purpose, it brings us into friendship with God, it can bring out the best in man. But, when it is dysfunctional, when religion goes bad, it goes really bad, it can bring out the worst in us. The ancient Romans would say: “Corruptio optimi pessimo”, the corruption of the best, is the worst. When the best thing goes bad, it really goes bad. And that’s certainly true for religion. Dysfunctional religion can be very dangerous. It can create murderous terrorists who commit acts of violence in the name of God, it can create tremendous greed, it can create terrible scrupulosity where the love of God is replaced by a false image of God as a tyrant, it can lead religious leaders to abuse their power, and lay people to become addicted to false piety and self-righteousness.
The authors of the Bible, both Old Testament and New, were fully aware of this problem. The great prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Daniel, and Malachi, as well as Peter, James, John, and Paul, and of course Our Lord himself, who knew the potential of His Church, all seemed to be keenly aware how religion could be misused.
Jesus engages the Scribes and Pharisees, our Gospel today. Our Lord explains how these supposed religious leaders were preaching, but not practicing.
Notice, how even though Jesus points out the religious failure of the Scribes and Pharisees, he doesn’t discredit religious leadership altogether. Were the Scribes and Pharisees in many ways corrupt? Yes. But does that mean that the whole idea of teaching authority and religious leadership is altogether corrupt? Absolutely not.
Jesus is saying don’t let their corruption keep you from right relationship with the Father. He even says, do whatever they tell you, but don’t follow their example. In other words, when they teach authentically, listen to them, but don’t let their corruption keep you from the truth, either.
The Pharisees misused their position of authority, and placed themselves on a pedestal; they sought to be honored for their purity and supposed holiness. They made religious leadership a means of their own self-aggrandizement rather being instruments of the truth and goodness of God.
Now contrast the false religious leadership of the Pharisees with the great humility and authentic leadership of the saints., who we celebrated this week on the Holy Day of Obligation, All Saints Day. The saints are the truly holy ones in our midst, yet we don’t see them using their holiness to control others or to demean others, rather, they become conduits of God’s goodness and grace. They do not use religion to inflate their own egos, rather, they do everything they can to help others to be as holy as possible. Their humility is truly humbling, their goodness is truly inspiring. They guide us not through fear, but love. The saints never preach what they are unwilling to do themselves, but we see that they are willing to do quite a bit. They are the first ones in the confessional when they’ve sinned, and are the first ones with a cup of water, to give drink to the thirsty. The show that our faith IS demanding, but do everything they can to help us with those demands through their wisdom and good example.
Particularly, I think of St. Charles Borromeo, whose feast day is today, November 4. St. Charles was born into a wealthy Italian noble family. He received the highest education of his day, and his ecclesiastical career into the highest-ranking posts in the Church was almost guaranteed. He lived in a time of some lavishness and some corruption within the Church. And, Charles Borromeo could have become one of these terribly decadent and corrupt Cardinal Princes always vying for more and more power. Rather, Charles took, “Humilitas”—humility, as his personal motto.
He allotted most of his income to charity, forbade himself luxuries. When the plague struck his diocese, he fed thousands of people daily, taking upon himself a huge debt requiring years of repayment. Whereas the civil authorities fled the city, he stayed and ministered to the sick and the dying. He also developed a Catechism which was used world-wide after the Council of Trent to educate Catholics in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, helping Catholics know their faith, so that they could live their faith more fully.
G.K. Chesterton once said that it is not that Christianity “has been tried and left wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.” In other words, when we see corruption in the Church, in Catholics ordained and not-ordained, the problem isn’t with Catholicism. Our faith is the best thing around. It is the remedy for the ills of the world, it is the instrument God gave us for our salvation and sanctification, but if we want it’s transforming power to be unleashed, we must be faithful to it, not just the parts we like, but all of it.
We can become saints, we can become the people God made us to be through our beautiful faith. We certainly pray for our religious leaders, that they may practice what they preach. But we also take personal responsibility for our own practice of the faith, that we may allow ourselves to be taught, to be led in the authentic practice of our religion, that we may schooled in holiness, and live lives betting of the children of God, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.
The Opening Prayer of this Mass expresses the two outstanding characteristics of St. Thomas Aquinas: his holiness and his learning.
