Homily: Tuesday, 19th Week in Ordinary Time

 Readings: Ez 2:8-3:4 • Psalm 119 • Matthew 18:1-5,12-14

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Jesus spent a lot of time shaping His disciples’ hearts, opening them to the Kingdom, to the Church they would soon be called on to lead. In today’s passage from Matthew, we see this shaping taking place.

The disciples ask Him a question: “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?” Jesus answers with a little “show and tell.” He calls a child to join them, instructing the disciples to be like this child, who acts in faith and humility.

“Do not despise one of these little ones…their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father.” [Mt 18:10]

We all know how different, how wonderfully innocent, children are from adults. Over 45 years ago, when our eldest was just a little girl, we lived on campus at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis where I was teaching. One morning our two daughters were playing with a bunch of neighborhood children, when the youngest came running up to us crying.

When Diane asked her older sister what had happened, she said, “A boy pushed her, and she fell down.” Diane asked, “Which boy?”, and our six-year-old responded with, “The boy in the red shirt.” We looked out at the mob of children, and there was only one boy in a red shirt. He was also the only black child there, the son of a friend and neighbor, another Navy pilot.

Now, almost any adult would have responded differently, probably saying, “the black kid.” But not a child. You see, there’s no bigotry; to the child the only differences are the externals, the red shirts, all those things that really have nothing to do with who we are.

This reminded me of our saint today: St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, perhaps better known as Edith Stein, a Jew who became an atheist, then a Catholic, and then a Carmelite nun. But her Jewish roots brought her to Auschwitz where she died a martyr 80 years ago today. She was certainly no child, but rather a brilliant philosopher who came to love the Lord. But Jesus, speaking of children and the Kingdom, brought her to mind.

You see, when I was a child of seven, we lived in Heidelberg Germany. On one of our vacation trips to Bavaria, our father took us to see Dachau, one of the Nazi death camps, this one near Munich.

You might think this would be too traumatic for a seven-year-old, but, no, it wasn’t, and my dad wanted us to see what people were capable of when they turned away from God.

I remember much of that day because it changed my life. For the first time, I saw a Godless world. I remember not understanding why anyone would do such things to others…all because I was a child, still innocent enough to disbelieve or excuse sin.

But for many, God’s love is so incomprehensible, they actually despise how God approaches us in Jesus. They hate it for the same reason Cain despised and killed his brother, Abel. The motive is clear: Jesus presents us with the reality of our better selves, but too often it’s the self we left behind when we grew up.

Like St. Teresa Benedicta, Jesus allows Himself to fall into the abuse and violence of men’s hands. But when they wound Jesus, they are covered by the tide of His Precious Blood flowing from Calvary, and from this very altar and thousands like it. For His blood has the power of absorbing into its love, and therefore neutralizing, the worst hatred of which we are capable.

Victor Frankl, the Austrian Jewish psychotherapist who spent much of World War II as a prisoner in Auschwitz, wrote a remarkable book of his experiences called, Man in Search of Meaning. In it he describes how in the midst of unbelievable brutality and the most degrading conditions he found so many examples of remarkable faith and unselfish love.

Again and again, he encountered people who had achieved victory over the sinfulness that surrounded them. And out of this experience of abject suffering Frankl had a revelation. He wrote,

“Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, ‘The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.’”

The Apostles, with the help of the Holy Spirit, also came to understand what Jesus meant when He asked them to be childlike. Let’s learn from them and today turn to the Holy Spirit. Invite Him into our hearts, to shape us, to give us the joy that only the love of God can bring. For the Spirit waits patiently, always listening for our invitation, always responding to our prayer.

 

Future Gulags - Part III

I could go on and on writing about Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago and its remarkable blend of the historical and the prophetic, but you need only open the book yourself, give it a read, and measure his portrayal of the reality of Soviet socialism against the guile and hatred expressed by today's leftists who, like their Soviet mentors, crave power above all else. You don't need me to point this out.

But because I'm on kind of a roll, in this last post on the subject I'll just leave you with a few more of Solzhenitsyn's observations that particularly struck me as I reread the book over 40 years after my first reading. 

The Usefulness of the Mob. Let me begin by starting a truth about the lack of truth: the left must always lie. In fact, the lie is perhaps their primary rhetorical tool. Because their ideas are bankrupt and have led consistently to failure, the left cannot justify or even support them through rational argument or in a debate. And so, they lie. They lie repeatedly and loudly, and they do so in concert; i.e., they all join in to ensure we all hear it. Bombarded with the lie from every direction, the uninformed and unthinking begin to believe it.

Stalin realized the mob could be useful in spreading the lie, because the mob, all screaming the same thing, provided a public legitimacy to useful lies. To this end his minions created mobs to storm the streets and shout the lie.

Solzhenitsyn offers an example related to the famines that struck the Russian people and led to so many deaths. Of course, the famines resulted directly from Stalin's policies, but that truth could not be admitted. He, therefore, found convenient scapegoats, and before the predetermined court verdict mobs were formed:

The workers and employees wrathfully voted for the death penalty for the scoundrels on trial. And by the time of the Promparty trail, there were universal meetings and demonstrations (including even schoolchildren). It was the newspaper march of millions, and the roar rose outside the windows of the courtroom: "Death! Death! Death!" [GA, p. 48]

Yes, the people demand it! And the "newspaper march" indicates how useful it can be for those in power when they also control every media outlet.

Today many of our cities continue to be plagued by the rule of the mob, mobs of Antifa and Black Lives Matter supporters, a mob that strikes fear into the hearts of weak, leftist officials. And so, these mayors and governors dishonestly label the mob's destruction and murder as "peaceful protest" and then cave to their demands. The media, of course, ignores it all because the chaos comes from the left. It wasn't until the January 6 debacle at the Capitol that the media rose to the occasion and sharpened its pens to attack the rightist wackos who accomplished nothing. But the left and the media screamed: "Insurrection!" These "Trumpers" were obviously planning to overthrow the government. Exactly how they could accomplish this has never been explained. 

I guess mobs are handy things, but it really depends on whose mob it is.

Crush Them All. Solzhenitsyn, in a masterful description of Article 58 of the Criminal Code of 1926 [GA, p. 60-67], shows his readers how this all-encompassing code could, in effect, convict anyone of anything or of nothing. For example, the interpretation of Section 10 of Article 58 was particularly broad. It stated:

Propaganda or agitation, containing an appeal for the overthrow, subverting, or weakening of the Soviet power...and equally the dissemination or preparation or possession of literary materials of similar content [GA p. 66].

In describing Section 10's application, we are told:

The scope of "agitation containing an appeal" was enlarged to include face-to-face conversation between friends or even between husband and wife, or a private letter. The word "appeal" could mean personal advice...  "Subverting and weakening" the government could include any idea which did not coincide with or rise to the level of intensity of the ideas expressed in the newspaper on any particular day. After all, anything which does not strengthen must weaken..."preparation of literary materials" covered every letter, note, or private diary...Thus, happily expanded, what thought was there, whether merely in the mind, spoken aloud, or jotted down, which was not covered by Section 10 [GA, p. 66].

Interestingly, Article 58 also treated the murder of a Party activist far more seriously than the murder of an ordinary citizen. Solzhenitsyn explains:

If a husband killed his wife's lover, it was very fortunate for him if the victim turned out not to be a Party member; he would be sentenced under Article 136 as a common criminal, who was a "social ally" and didn't require an armed escort. But if the lover turned out to have been a Party member, the husband became an enemy of the people with a 58-8 sentence [Article 58, Section 8 would likely result in execution instead of receiving a 10-year prison sentence. GA p.65]

Solzhenitsyn sums it well up by quoting the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky:

        And he who sings not with us today

            is against

                        us!

They go on to arrest the innocent, especially those who innocently speak the truth. Indeed, the very concept of guilt or innocence are "out of date concepts" that mean absolutely nothing. It's all related to the "social prophylaxis" mentioned in my previous post (Future Gulags -- Part II). One wasn't arrested for what one had done, but for what one might do. At the end of World War II, those Soviet citizens who had lived under German invading forces were given 10-year sentences, just as captured Soviet soldiers who were POWs were sent to prison for at least 10 years after they were liberated. 

Solzhenitsyn also mentioned Stalin’s apparent willingness to learn from Hitler when it came to Jews. Like his other internal targets, the innocence of Jewish citizens was ignored because of their “social origin” and their religion with its international presence. To be “cosmopolitan” was to be anti-Soviet, and a crime in itself. Solzhenitsyn describes another “wave” of arrests, this time of Jews.

During the last years of Stalin's life, a wave of Jews became noticeable. (Form 1950 on they were hauled in little by little as cosmopolitanites. And that was why the doctors' case was cooked up. It would appear that Stalin intended to arrange a great massacre of the Jews.) 

But this became the first plan of his life to fail. God told him -- apparently with the help of human hands -- to depart from his rib cage [GA, p. 92].

Yes, Stalin died in 1953, probably helped along on his journey by those tired of his capriciously deadly ways. 

Sadly, those who aide and abet the ideological left forget or have never thought about all of this. Once the revolutionary left seizes power, the first ones they come after are usually the liberals, those who helped them get there. These are the most dangerous, the ones who know too much, the ones who must be silenced, must be crushed. I’ve written about this in another post (Madness Rising) describing the dozen years preceding the 1917 Revolution.

It's All About Power and Evil. Solzhenitsyn addresses the first, as the motivator, and the second, and the underlying attitude. 

Power is a poison well known for thousands of years. If only no one were ever to acquire material power over others! But to the human being who has faith in some force that holds dominion over all of us, and who is therefore conscious of his own limitations, power is not necessarily fatal. For those, however, who are unaware of any higher sphere, it is a deadly poison. For them there is no antidote [GA, p. 147].

And speaking specifically of those in the Soviet Security Services, those who had near-ultimate power over others, he writes:

You have a power over all the people in that military unit, or factory, or district, incomparably greater than that of a military commander, or factory director, or secretary of the district Communist Party.  These men control people's military or official duties, wages, reputations, but you control people's freedom [GA, p. 148].

As for the presence of evil and its perception by those captivated by it, Solzhenitsyn rejects the usual depictions of evildoers found in literature, citing Shakespeare, Dickens, and Schiller:

The trouble lies in the way these classic evildoers are pictured. They recognize themselves as evildoers...Iago very precisely identifies his purposes and his motives as being black and born of hate...Macbeth’s self-justifications were feeble — and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and spiritual strength of Shakespeare’s evildoers stopped short of a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. [GA, p. 173]

Rejecting these literary evildoers, Solzhenitsyn then describes the very different kind of evil driven by ideology:

But no; that’s not the way it is. To do evil a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good, or else that it’s a well-considered act in conformity with natural law. Fortunately, it is in the nature of the human being to seek a justification for his actions. [GA, p.173]

Ideology — that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others’ eyes, so that he won’t hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors...Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions. This cannot be denied, not passed over, nor suppressed. How, then, do we dare insist that evildoers do not exist? And who was it that destroyed those millions? Without evildoers there would have been no Archipelago. [GA, p. 174]

Only the ideologue can take an active part in the slaughter of millions and do so willingly and without remorse because his ideology justifies it. This is the danger of ideology, whether of the left or right. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Xi Jinping, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden, Kim Jung-un, and so many others, including their thousands of followers, are happy to kill entire populations so long as it supports their ideological ends. Ideology permits anything. In the same way the pro-abortion zealots — who perpetrate the lie by calling themselves “pro-choice” — inevitably align politically with leftist ideologues. As I have often stated, someone who supports abortion will support absolutely any evil.

Enough! 

Read Solzhenitsyn as he describes the last century and learn about the century we’re facing today. And as you read, pray for our world and its conversion. Only the hand of God can heal us.

Tragedy, Grief, Forgiveness and Blessing

I just returned from the local UPS store where I shipped five large boxes filled with Christmas presents. They're on their way to our children and grandchildren, all of whom still live in the icy north. Presumably, as our children age the cold will penetrate their bones more deeply and lead them to migrate in our direction. One can only hope, since sending large, heavy boxes is not inexpensive. I'd prefer to drop them off personally at the front doors of our sons and daughters. In the meantime, however, I will add to the UPS bottom line.

Returning home from my errands, I caught the news about the horrific school shooting in lovely Newtown, Connecticut. Dear Diane and I are familiar with the town since good friends once lived there and we visited them on several occasions. But I find myself unable to juxtapose in my mind the memory of that quaint, picturesque village and the events of this sad day. It simply does not compute. Far worse, however, as a parent and grandparent I cannot imagine what the families of the victims are experiencing. My thoughts turn to my children and grandchildren, and I thank God they are safe, but I stop that train of thought in its tracks. I cannot go where it wants to take me. To have a child, one of God's precious little ones, taken so suddenly and so capriciously is something no family should ever experience. For those families in Newtown this will be the worst time of their lives, and in their grief whatever faith they have will be sorely tested.

Recognizing this please join me today in praying for the souls of those who died, for peace in the hearts of those who love them, and also for the soul of the confused and troubled young man who was apparently responsible for this massacre of innocents. We must pray for his soul because we are commanded to do so by our Lord Himself. We must pray for him because the families of most of his victims will be unable to take that step, probably for years to come. Forgiveness cannot enter a heart that is understandably filled with grief and anger, that is unable to respond in love. And so let us extend forgiveness for them who are as yet unable to do so.

And to those of you with children, please accept a little advice. Bless your children each day, for blessings are spiritually powerful acts, especially when extended by a parent. As a father or a mother, reach out and touch their beautiful heads with your hands and extend God's blessing in the name of Jesus Christ. Every morning send them into the world cloaked with God's love and your love. Let them know you love them deeply and ask the Father to protect them, for as Jesus told us, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father" [Mt 18:10].

Pray too for our country.

Are You a Child of God...or of Someone Else?

Anthony Esolen,who teaches Renaissance English literature and Western Civilization at Providence College, is one of those remarkable men -- a true Renaissance man -- without whom the world would be a duller and darker place. I got to know Professor Esolen and his lovely wife only casually when I worked at Providence College back in the mid-1990s, and I have been following his academic and literary career and enjoying his work ever since. I could fill this post with praise of him and his writings, but there's really no need. Let me just say I have never read anything he wrote that I didn't enjoy and from which I didn't benefit. I can say that about only a handful of writers. If you, too, want to share in this benefit, jump over to amazon.com and check out his books. I have been particularly enlightened by his remarkable translation of Dante's Divine Comedy and his wonderful book, Ironies of Faith.You might also visit his website: Anthony Esolen

I mention Professor Esolen because of his essay published today on TheCatholicThing.org. In this brief essay he protests against the world's view of the child as a thing lacking true worth and human dignity. Although this is nothing new, today it takes on new meaning because of its near universal acceptance among those who wield the power to spread this evil. I encourage you to take a moment now to read his essay.

He concludes his essay with a reference to Jesus' admonition to become like a child. As a deacon, I'm often asked about this teaching of Jesus, which for many seems to be one of the more perplexing, and consequently most ignored of His teachings. It occurs in a scene found in all three of the synoptic gospels. For example, in Matthew's Gospel we read:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them, and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me; but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea" [Mt 18:1-6].

Mark describes a similar scene:

"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea [Mk 9:32]...And they were bringing children to him, that he might touch them; and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, "Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it." And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands upon them [Mk 10:13-16].

...and in Luke, we find:

Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, "Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it" [Lk 18:15-17].

In the ancient world children had few if any rights. Indeed, a child was less a "he" or a "she" and more an "it". A child was totally dependent on the will of his parents and other elders. A child was in a sense unimportant in his present reality, and important only in his potential. We can see this manifested in the behavior of the disciples who rebuke those who would bring children to Jesus for His blessing. You can almost hear them say, "Why are you wasting His precious time with these unimportant children? He's got better things to do." Jesus, of course, will have none if it and not so subtly contrasts the self-importance of the disciples, who seem to have assumed a combined role of bodyguard and social secretary, with the enforced humility of the child.

The adults in the scene have active roles while the children are passive creatures, pushed forward by their parents and pushed away by the disciples. The child's humility is, in some sense, forced on him simply because of the nature of his relationship with adults. They have all the power while he has none. One translation of  Jesus' words does not use the word "humility" but instead reads, "Whoever considers himself of little account like this child..." And so Jesus is telling the disciples that they must become by deliberate choice what the child is out of necessity. This isn't a suggestion on His part, but a requirement: "...unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

The adults in the scene are certainly not acting as if they are "of little account"; rather, they are trying to control the children, each other, and Jesus Himself. One wonders if the disciples came away from this encounter with a true understanding of what Jesus was telling them. Probably not. Jesus was always turning the world of those around Him upside down, always taking the accepted wisdom and reversing it to reveal the truth. This did not make people happy.

This, I believe, is why these particular words of Jesus are so often ignored. Like the adults in this scene from the gospels, to obey Jesus too many of us would have to upend our entire world. "Unless you turn..." Unless you turn away from the wisdom of the world, unless you turn from all that you thought was right and turn instead to the source of all truth, unless you turn to Me with the same joyful heart of this child on whom My hand rests, unless you reclaim the innocence, the humility proper to your very being, unless you do this you will not enter My Kingdom.

The First Shall Be Last (James Tissot)

For many who listened to Jesus, and for many today, this is a hard saying. To reclaim one's childlike innocence in a world ruled by sin and materialism, is too much to ask. To accept voluntarily the humility that is proper to our nature, the humility we force on the child, is contrary to how we understand the world and its works. To become impoverished like the child, to become "poor in spirit", is to sacrifice our independence. It is to be like Mary, who prayed, "He has looked upon the lowliness of His handmaid."

And so, like the disciples, we watch perplexed as Jesus takes a child -- a real child, not some abstract notion of humility or innocence -- and places this little person, this real live human being, this child of God "in the midst of them." He then places this child above them, "for to such belongs the kingdom of God." Once again, the least becomes the greatest, and we are given a choice. This is what Jesus always does. This is His message. You have a choice. You can follow me and live, or reject me and die. You can live as a child of God or you can join forces with the devil. He never offers a middle-of-the-road alternative.

Today, as Professor Esolen eloquently describes, we have purged those in the womb who commit the modern sin of inconvenience. And those who survive? We squeeze their innocence from them, one drop at a time. Instead of turning and becoming like them, we force them to become like us. The guilt of the world is not a pretty thing to see, and we must pray that we heed Christ's warning: "...but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."