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Hearing

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


You have to love this proverb: “Whoever makes a fortune by a lying tongue is chasing a bubble over deadly snares.”

In other news, the readings of today subtly but powerfully point to Our Lady as the model creature, she who, among those without divine nature, provides us with the best example in the universe of what it means to walk by faith.

Mary is the model par excellence of one “who hears the word of God and acts on it.”

But what does this mean in Mary’s life?

We get a hint from the first reading. This passage from Proverbs mirrors the Magnificat. It decries haughtiness and arrogance and predicts their punishment, prefiguring Mary’s statement: “He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones but lifted up the lowly.” Even the format of the first reading reminds one of the format of Mary’s joyful proclamation to Elizabeth. We may well imagine that it was through meditation on passages like this one that the Holy Spirit cultivated Mary’s beautifully fertile heart throughout her youth. When you meditate on Proverbs, Wisdom, Sirach, Samuel, and Kings, you may well be meditating on the very same passages that Mary prayed on as the Holy Spirit crafted the heart of a mother for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.

And therein lies the hint for us. In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus does not simply say “My mother and my brothers  are those who do God’s will.” He says, “My mother and my brothers  are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

So often we jump right to the acting, and neglect the hearing. When Jesus later praises Mary of Bethany for choosing “the better part” in contrast to Martha’s laudable acts of service, it is to this “hearing” that He is referring.

Even though the passages referencing Our Lady are relatively few, they are full of allusions to this “hearing.” For example, “And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.” (Lk. 2:19)

As often happens, today’s psalm puts a cherry on top of the message of readings of the day. “Guide me, Lord, in the way of your commands.” The attitude is one of listening to discern where the Holy Spirit is leading. An attitude of “hearing.”

Maybe, just maybe, the entire secret to the Christian life is laid bare subtly but openly in today’s readings, for anyone who should wish to discover it: To have a desire for God’s guidance as our sole priority in life, and to listen attentively to the Holy Spirit, through time dedicated to prayer and throughout our activity, trusting in the marvelous promise of Christ in Lk. 11:11-13:

“What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him?”

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to give you the trust in His promises that you need to listen for and hear the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Ask Him to overcome your doubt, by which perhaps you fear that you will hear only your selfishness and be deceived. Contemplate the example of Our Lady, who, through her trust and attitude of listening, seemed effortlessly to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit. Speak with her, and ask her to intercede before her Son, to overcome the less worthy voices within you with the quiet, breeze-like, but all-powerful voice of His Spirit.

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Donuts and Demons

Donut

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.


There are few things more insipid than “Christianity Lite,” whereby our religion is reduced to weak coffee and glazed donuts in the community center, bingo night, and good feelings about neighbor.

Similarly, there are few things more repulsive than self-righteous, taciturn, sour Christianity that reduces all to a set of rules to follow in order to make the cut–it creates Christians who are at once self-satisfied and superior, and also bitter because deep down they realize that they have missed the happiness they were looking for in Christianity.

Conversely, what a gorgeous picture of Christianity St. Paul paints in the first reading today. He shows as an image of a Spirit plunging deep into the infinite bowels of God where no man can tread and touching and feeling the most impenetrable aspects of the nature of God. Then, approaching the human heart–by contrast so superficial, so distracted, so finite, so petty, that Spirit dives into it, filling it to overflowing with the divine nature. Thus that little human soul is exalted far above and beyond its own natural limitations, and comes to know a joy that it couldn’t have dreamed of. And, it is gifted with an unexpected faculty to assist powerfully in the transformation of other souls as well.

This work of the Holy Spirit is the “pearl of great price” Jesus speaks of in the Gospel (cf. Mt. 13:46). It is to this action that He refers when He says, “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Cf. Lk. 17:21).

Nor does a shift to this rich understanding of Christianity require more complicated and esoteric theology. On the contrary, if anything, it requires a simplification of the heart vis-a-vis “Donut Christianity” or Christianity reduced to a rule book.

Still, today’s gospel does remind us that there is a price to pay for this pearl of great price. When we contemplate Jesus casting out demons, we have trouble relating. We admire Him for His divine power, but find little relation to our own lives,

Yet, Jesus teaches us elsewhere in the Gospel that to the extent that a soul is not filled with the Holy Spirit, it is occupied by other spirits (cf. Mt. 12:43-45). Perhaps this is not demonic possession strictly speaking–but to the extent that we are attached to creatures, self, sin, fear, to that extent, real, hellish, living demonic spirits have a stranglehold on us. And extricating the barb that is injecting the venom of sin into us is a costly process indeed, which involves discipline and even some suffering. And militant consistency in daily prayer, where we insistently and recklessly abandon ourselves to God’s love and Providence, holding nothing back.

But it is so worth it–not just to avoid the ruin of ourselves, but to attain that pearl of great price. That pearl of God’s full possession of our hearts is so disproportionate to what we sacrifice, that it is almost unjust. God could have chosen simply to fill our nature with happiness in proportion to that nature’s own limitations. But the joy He gives us surpasses that natural happiness as far as His infinite nature is above our own.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask the Lord insistently not to hold back His demands from you, in the face of your weak freedom. Tell Him with all your heart that you give yourself wholly to Him, and beg Him to send His Spirit to push out your sin, fear, and attachments, so that He can take full possession of your heart and fill you with the joy that no tongue can describe.

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