Tag: <span>world</span>

March 29, 2021March 10, 2021

Smart Phones Don’t Bring Happiness

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

Today’s psalm: “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”

When we think of what makes our lives better, our minds might tend toward reality, or tend toward fantasy. If they tend toward reality, we might speak of health care, or convenience technology such as smart phones, which put control over many things in our lives right at our fingertips.

If our minds tend toward fantasy, we might consider the stuff of movies: If only I could find a fountain of youth, win the lottery, wield magic, etc., then my life would be utterly transformed into happiness.

When, in the day to day, we think of what makes our lives better, the first thought that comes to mind might not be Jesus.

His coming, His passion, death, and Resurrection–it was not like a lottery win. From one day to the next, for example, all the apostles’ worries were not over. Even having met Jesus, even having experienced His Resurrection, as wondrous as that was, they still had a difficult walk ahead of them to walk, one that would for most lead to martyrdom.

Nor did Jesus make their lives more convenient, like technology does for us. Quite the opposite. They went from the relatively convenient and familiar life of fishing to one of spending themselves tirelessly for others, in many cases in foreign lands.

And yet, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Mary of Bethany, who poured perfume over Jesus’ feet in love and gratitude in today’s gospel, understood this.

Jesus does not transform our external realities. Well, correction: He does help us with those as well. After all, Lazarus of today’s gospel had just risen from the dead at Jesus’ command. Jesus’ life was full of miracles of healing. Also, by God’s grace, Christians in all ages have made the world a better place, inventing the very notion of hospital care and universities, and striving to insert more justice and respect for the human person into the imperfect institutions of government.

But transformation of the exterior world is not the focus of Jesus’ mission. Rather, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Jesus brings light and salvation back into our souls. We find in our relationship with Him a permanent, overflowing joy that transcends and permeates all the imperfect, passing realities of our exterior world. As the first reading says of Jesus:

I formed you, and set you
   as a covenant of the people,
   a light for the nations,
To open the eyes of the blind,
   to bring out prisoners from confinement,
   and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

When it comes to truly making our lives better, no fantasy, no reality comes close to the experience of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ in our hearts.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus in this Holy Week to bring your heart back from distraction with the fretful external realities of this world, to the true light and joy of your life, which is His grace and friendship. Tell Him how grateful you are, like Mary of Bethany, for His gift of self for you, even if the world doesn’t seem particularly impressed by it. Ask Him for the grace to center your life on that which really brings happiness.

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February 5, 2021January 22, 2021

Against the Current

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

How we pine for a truly Christian society, one where by and large, the powers that be favor the Christian life. So much so, that sometimes we can lose our peace when, fully or partially, we find that they do not.

It is interesting to observe the political and cultural context of today’s first reading and gospel, indeed, the overall context in which Jesus lived and died, and in which the first Christians fulfilled their vocations.

The first reading tells us, “God will judge the immoral and adulterers.” Bear in mind, the culture of the world within which this was written hardly favored this teaching. The marriage bed was not held sacred, and adultery was rampant. The Hebrews to whom the letter is addressed, in fact, had long been entirely exceptional within the surrounding world, in their striving to follow the Ten Commandments.

Nor, as we see in today’s gospel, were world powers particularly favorable to the mission of John the Baptist who, as it happens, was decrying their ongoing commission of the very same sin mentioned in the first reading: adultery. He wound up losing his head for it.

But since then, we have had a taste of a Christian society. Jesus Christ Himself, without intermediaries, converted Constantine in the fourth century. He Himself thus set in place the development of Christendom, that is, an entire European empire that espoused and favored Christian principles–even though its leaders many times strayed gravely from those principles.

Vestiges of Christendom persist until our day. But as the world around us becomes more and more secular, it recognizes those cultural pillars for what they are: They are structures based on Christian principles and philosophy. Even though ultimately they are discoverable through the natural law written on every heart, their value is difficult to discern, except with the help of Christian revelation. Thus, the secular mind feels free to dispense with them–even though they were held non-negotiable as recently as a generation ago.

It is good, even important, to work for a society that favors Christian principles, because indeed in doing so, one is working for the common good. But when their deterioration threatens our peace, we must hearken back to the cultural context of Scripture–and realize that the world at large need not favor Him, for Christ to work in it with His grace.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus how He managed to work good in the world in the midst of a society of evil. Ask Him what His plan is for grace to prevail in the hearts of people, even in the midst of evil realities in our society. Pledge to Him once again your trust in His sovereign power and loving will toward us, and offer your life to Him to help Him realize His plan of good.

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January 24, 2021January 15, 2021

Gone…like That

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

“Teach me your ways, O Lord,” says the psalm of today. And the readings point out some of the key areas where we need that instruction.

The message from the brief second reading from 1 Corinthians teaches us the Lord’s ways in an area too seldom heeded by Christians of today. The reading explains how we must live in the world, and make use of it for what it is worth, but NOT drink deeply of it in an attempt for satisfaction–for the world is passing away so quickly, that (so to speak) it is as good as gone already.

We panic because of fear of socialism, we panic because of fear of fascism, we panic over fear of illness–we have a duty to build a society that is just as possible, but we panic too much because we are not heeding this message from today’s second reading. One thing is to get involved productively in politics. It is quite another to lose our serenity over it. “For the world in its present form is passing away.”

In the first reading, Jonah proclaims repentance to the Ninevites, and they repent. Well may we repent for focusing excessively on worldly goods and ills, without the peace and serenity that come from knowing that we are in the hand of Providence even more truly than we are treading on terra firma.

And today’s gospel affirms the message: “The kingdom of God is at hand.”

As people of the world, even good people, sell their souls in political rage and worldly pursuits of satisfaction, let us focus on that which doesn’t pass: God’s total gift of self to us, and ours to Him in gratitude.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus again that you give Him yourself, your whole self, with all your imperfections and all your loving effort to be more like Him. And, give Him that gift that He especially treasures: The gift of your trust. Tell Him that you trust in Him completely, as Lord of time, history, and the universe, to provide for you and for the world itself, despite the chaos and madness we sometimes perceive around us.

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August 28, 2020August 13, 2020

Wisdom and Folly

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

Today’s readings, in a sense, are all about the radical difference between the view of things from the perspective of eternity, vs. the view of them from the perspective of earthly time.

Both the first reading from St. Paul, which is one of those great, moving, passionate Pauline declarations, and the gospel from today juxtapose foolishness and wisdom: The paradoxical foolishness of the earthly and temporal view, and the deep wisdom of the eternal view.

We can share St. Paul’s passion. Consider the time we are living in. The world is obsessed with “clanging cymbals,” “noisy gongs” (cf. 1 Cor. 13). People are running to and fro in fear of this and that, condemning on social media those whose views on rapidly passing realities is not their own, with a bitterness that implies that the definitive welfare of humankind depends on unanimity on these matters.

Noise, clamor, fear, angst, hand-wringing–these are the fruits of the wisdom of the world, which St. Paul describes in the first reading. For it is the wisdom of the world that seeks an earthly utopia, achieved through power and domination. And because earthly utopia, such a tempting objective, is perennially elusive, its advocates remain perennially bitter.

The crucifixion of Christ could not appear more foolish against the backdrop of this earth-centric view. It is the opposite of all that is needed to build the earthly utopia: Weakness, powerlessness, rejection, failure. And how Paul loves it, for all that; how beautifully he identifies its deeper wisdom.

For, if power and domination are the currency of the earthly utopia, love and self-giving are the currency of eternal life and happiness. Countless willing Christian martyrs, joyful and happy to sacrifice their lives for the eternal salvation of others in imitation of their Lord, put an exclamation point on the mute eloquence of a God who takes on flesh only to sacrifice Himself for the prize of eternal happiness for souls. Paul himself was ultimately one of these.

The superficiality of the foolish virgins in the today’s gospel mirrors the flesh-deep, utopian “wisdom” of the world. They brought their lamps, but no oil. Like the seed in the parable of the sower that fell on ground with no depth (cf. Mt. 13), they could not stick with it for the long haul. So it is with superficial Christians, who buy into a feel-good religion aimed only at a happy community of friends who like each other and do nice things, rather than fully and deeply buying into the wisdom of the crucified Christ.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Rather than taking the wisdom of the cross for granted, ask Jesus why–really, why–He opted for this path rather than bringing the earthly domination of God through the most obvious means: earthly power. Then, consider the concrete areas in which you yourself are perturbed by the way the powers of the world lean away from the Gospel. How does the crucified Christ answer these perturbations? Ask Him how you can conform your life more fully to the wisdom of the cross.

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