Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 8-14-16

Peace be with You,

Last Sunday we spoke about how faith can act as a portal that allows us to live the life of eternity beginning here and now.  Moreover, we saw that a faith-filled life is not characterized by a unique abstract mental approach to life, but rather it is characterized by an active pursuit of the life God calls us to as exemplified by our father in faith, Abraham.  Accordingly, we heard Jesus call us to pass through this portal of faith in order that we and all around might begin to live the life we were created for here and now.  This week, we are confronted with the difficult reality that living a faith-filled life can lead us down a quite painful and lonely road.

The readings for this weekend do a nice job of providing examples of the loneliness that one can experience at different societal levels as the result of living a faith-based life.  In our first reading, we find the princes of Judah demanding the life of the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah had acquired such resentment by having proclaimed to the people of Judah that to resist the powers of Babylon was futile as it had already been determined by God that the people of Judah would in fact be overtaken and exiled at the hands of the Babylonian king.  Accordingly, Jeremiah encouraged the people to comply with the will of God, and surrender to Babylon peacefully (cf. 38:2-3).  This did not sit well with the princes of Judah, who not only refused to acknowledge such a message as being divinely inspired, but wished to banish the bearer of that message from their sight!

The experience of Jeremiah is the experience of many Christians around the world today, to varying degrees of course.  In the Middle East, Christians are martyred for merely practicing their faith; while here in our own country, individuals face having their employment terminated or having their business taken to court for voicing their beliefs.  What we see exemplified in the story of Jeremiah and in modern day examples, is that the Word of God is so difficult to accept that people would quite often rather eliminate or ostracize those that live in accordance with it, and hence remind them of it, than allow them to question their way of life, however fallen it may be (cf. Wisdom 2:12).

The examples cited thus far keep us in quite a comfortable position.  After all, we may look at the world around us and say to ourselves, ‘Yep, it is a hard place for us Christians to live nowadays,’ as we give ourselves of healthy pat on the back.  But before we float off on a cloud of self-righteousness, we must ask ourselves, How far does my loyalty to the word of God go?  What and who am I willing to turn away from if it keeps me from the life God calls me to live? 

In his work, The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis tells of a woman named Pam, who, upon approaching the gates of Heaven is quite appalled to be met by her brother as opposed to the son whom she had lost during her life on earth.  Her brother proceeds to inform her that before she is able to see her son, who has already reached the eternal homeland, she will have to have her loves re-ordered.  In short, as her brother tells her, Pam’s love for her son has become a false god because it has been set up as a good on its own, apart from the love of God.  And, as her brother points out, we cannot love anything properly, not even our family fully, until we love God first (see the Great Divorce ch. 11).  We leave Pam in the place we find her, refusing to acknowledge that her loves had become disordered in this way, and thus, estranged not only from God, but from her son and everyone else as well.

In a slightly different manner, we find Jesus warning us of the division that will come to our lives should we live a life that seeks a relationship with Him instead of the world.  Today, Jesus tells us that he has not come to bring peace to the world, but fiery division (cf. Luke 12:49 & 51).  As he goes on to tell us, this division will not only divide believers from the world, as we saw in the story of Jeremiah, but will divide family members from one another.  To be sure, this is a difficult message to accept.  But before we choose to try and skirt around it as some sort of veiled message that surely means something other than what it says, let’s ask ourselves a question: why?  Why does Jesus say such a thing?

To find the answer, let’s reconsider the story of Pam.  What was keeping Pam from God was a disordered love for her son.  This type of disordered love, as Lewis tells us, is difficult to detect as it appears as a good, and because of its similarity, when “it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what we call the lower passions.  It is a stronger angel, and therefore, when it falls, a fiercer devil” (The Great Divorce, Ch. 11).  If we take a moment to consider, we may find that we have been misled to fall into similar patterns of disordered love.  How many times haven’t we excused the actions of those we love, looking the other way even when we know them to be living in a manner opposed to the way we have been taught to be right simply because they are our loved ones? 

My friends, what makes the words we hear Jesus speak this weekend so difficult to accept is that they are at one and the same time an indictment on a very personal level, and a call to live lives of benevolence, justice and self-sacrifice; i.e.  a life of true love.  Sadly, in this fallen world of ours, true love is often rejected, resulting in division, hatred, and even violence, as seen most emphatically on Calvary.  For this reason, we must, as the author of Hebrews tells us today, stay focused and persevere in the race we run we run that seeks unity with our God, and makes His love present to the world (cf. Heb. 12:1-4)!  If we persevere and stay focused on Jesus, we can be sure that we will overcome all adversity and live life to the fullest, in this life and the next!

Your servant in Christ,

Tony

Tony Crescio

Tony Crescio is the founder of FRESHImage Ministries. He holds an MTS from the University of Notre Dame and is currently a PhD candidate in Christian Theology at Saint Louis University. His research focuses on the intersection between moral and sacramental theology. His dissertation is entitled, Presencing the Divine: Augustine, the Eucharist and the Ethics of Exemplarity.

Tony’s academic publications can be found here.