Slaves of Christ

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the Gospel of God."

Romans 1:1


"What heart so cold as not to be inflamed with love by the kindness and good will exercised toward us by so great a Lord, who, though holding us in His power and dominion as slaves ransomed by His blood, yet embraces us with such ardent love as to call us not servants, but friends and brethren?"

Catechism of the Council of Trent

"We must belong to Jesus and serve him not just as hired servants but as willing slaves who, moved by generous love, commit themselves to His service after the manner of slaves for the honor of belonging to Him."

Total Devotion to Mary, St. Louis Marie de Montfort 

Slavery. That's a touchy word. Ever since the conclusion of the Civil Rights era, Americans have been extremely sensitive towards the topic of bondage. The morally reprehensible enslavement of Africans in America between the eighteenth and nineteenth century has left scars on the American consciousness. Slavery became a byword for racism.

That is why it is with no small measure of apprehension that we learn that we must be slaves of Christ. We don't like to think about our relationship with God in those terms. Our arrogant human understanding makes us want to think that our relationship with God is some sort of mutually beneficial business partnership. We like to believe that we can work to deserve God's grace. The flawed mind says that Christ's outpouring of grace is the wages of good works and faith. We like to think that we are simply the servants of Christ, for servants are paid for their work as they deserve. But what can we do to deserve God's grace? Our lives cannot justify His mercy. His grace is a gift, not compensation. Therefore, we are slaves to God, a generous master.

There are three kinds of slavery as outlined under St. Louis Marie de Montfort's Total Devotion to Mary: natural slavery, enforced slavery, and voluntary slavery. Natural slavery is the state of the creatures of the Earth. The plants and animals of Creation are slaves to God by their very nature. There is nothing that they can do to change that, because slavery to God is within their very nature. Enforced slavery is reserved for the demons and the damned. Ironically, their servitude is enforced because they chose for it to be so. By rejecting God's love, they condemned themselves for eternity. By choosing their wills over God's, they are forced to accept the will of God in their condition.

God does not want natural or enforced slavery for His chosen people. The highest and most beautiful form of slavery is reserved for the faithful. Voluntary slavery is the perfected condition of both man and angel. The most perfect union with God is the complete abandonment of our will which is replaced by the will of God.

We like to talk about making sacrifices for God. How often are those sacrifices merely physical or emotional? It is good to offer up our suffering to God. It is good to love our neighbor, even when they happen to be our enemies. It is good to sacrifice our reputation with the world in order to witness the love of God. But those are shallow sacrifices. God wants all of that and more. But what He wants more than anything is the sacrifice of our will, our desires.

God gave us freewill out of love. He did not want to create cold automaton, but rather souls that could hate and love and act of their own accord. But the true measure of holiness is giving that gift back to God.

By giving our wills to God, we do not become those same automaton. We do not condemn ourselves to a menial eternity. We are not robots. God is not a taskmaster. We know the nature of our master. He wants that which is absolutely best for us. And more often than not, we would not reach that greater good by our own volition. We become slaves to God out of faith, the simple and wholehearted trust of a child.

This is a hard pill to swallow. But let the sweetness of God's love allow us to accept this bitter medicine which holds the key to our salvation. 

Deus Vult!

The Frame and the Painting

What is your excuse for not attending Mass? Surely your schedule was not so full that you could not work in an hour on a Sunday morning or even a Saturday night; you certainly found enough time to binge watch that new series on Netflix! If you weren't too busy, then why? The Mass was boring?

The Mass is not boring. That is not a subjective opinion. That is a fact. There is something seriously wrong with the person who finds the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of God boring. It certainly seems much less boring than watching a football game. The "miracles" your team is able to pull off in overtime are nothing next to the true miracle of the Eucharist.

But the meat of the Mass is not what people find boring. It is not the mystery of transubstantiation, it is the homily, the priest, the music, or even the person sitting next to you. The music was either too old-fashioned or too contemporary. The cantor sang off-key. The homily was too long, it was too hard to understand, it was not long enough. You know for a fact that the man sitting next to you is a lazy bum who drinks the night away; what business does he have being in church? (What business do you have being in church for that matter? But that is not the question here.) It seems that parishioners can find error in almost every part of the Mass except for the actual act of the Mass.

Actually, this is how it should be. The Church is a divine institution, the body of Christ, composed of sinners. As Pope Francis is fond of saying, the Church is not a hotel for saints, but rather a hospital for sinners. It makes perfect sense, therefore, that as the people celebrating the Mass are somewhat less than perfect, the music and the homily, may not quite attain to your perfect expectations.

In the Mass, the celebrant, the priest, acts in persona Christi. No surprise, that just means that he acts in the person of Christ. At the beginning of the Mass, the priest says: "The Lord be with you." This is not simply a blessing. It is an announcement. Jesus is in the house, acting through the priest. Even so, the priest is still just a man. A holy man hopefully, but still just a man. The homily is not the newest installment of the Gospel. It is the advice and instruction of a priest of God. We have no right to expect every single Sunday homily to qualify our pastor to be a Doctor of the Church. Yes, perhaps the priest speaks with a lisp, perhaps he drones on. But the homily is not the center of the Mass. The Mass is not an oratory contest.

Few parishes have the budgets to support having Matt Maher play at every Mass. That would be nice, but also impractical. You might have to settle for Joe Shmoe, the neighborhood plumber who took piano lessons for two years. The Mass is neither a speaking event nor a concert. What matters is not the skill of the musician but rather the devotional spirit engendered by the music.

Your parish might have the worst homilist on the face of the planet. Your cantor might be confused as to whether she is a baritone or a soprano. The person you are sitting next to might not have showered for three weeks. It might be too hot. It might be too cold. NONE OF THIS MATTERS! These are external characteristics of the Mass, they are the accoutrements. They do not change the essential beauty of the celebration of the Mass!

Very rarely does garnish ruin a dish.

Let's say that you go to an art museum. You find a Picasso or a Rembrandt or a DaVinci. The painting itself speaks to your soul. You have no doubt as to its beauty. You could say that the essential nature of the painting is its beauty. But then, you take a step back and look at the painting again. A horrendous mistake has been made. Instead of the elegant, hand crafted mahogany that this masterpiece deserves, it has been framed with a worn, splintered piece of scrap wood. Yes, your artistic sensibilities are offended by this terrible choice for a frame. But be honest with yourself. Does the frame in any way detract from the beauty of the painting itself? Sure the frame might be in bad taste. It might even be a little distracting. But how can the frame change the beauty of what it contains?  A beautiful woman is as beautiful in a tarnished mirror as she is in a polished one. It is just a little easier to appreciate in the polished mirror; just as the beauty of the painting would be in a better frame; just as the Mass would be with the perfect music and a saint for a priest. But the Mass is beautiful nevertheless.

Deus Volt!

How to Fish for Men

Televangelism doesn't work. Personally, I've never liked it. I don't think we should "sell" God the same way we sell a fitness program or a pair of shoes. The reason why televangelism does not work is the same reason the First and Second Great Awakenings never lasted for more than a generation. Why? The answer is simple: relying totally on emotion makes for fickle disciples.

Emotions are by definition impermanent. Moods come and go with startling speed. We've all experienced this. One moment you are happy and on top of the world. The next, the tiniest of annoyances is enough to knock you down and ruin your entire day. That is why evangelization cannot simply rely on emotion. Televangelists can get someone to sing Hallelujah in the midst of a praise and worship session with blaring hymns, but can they get them to do the same on the streets? in the classroom? when they are all alone?

We should be careful not too rely too much on emotion when making disciples out of the nations. While some kind of emotional religious experience is often the first step in the process of conversion, it should not be considered the only step. Retreats and concerts are all good things. A single retreat, however, is not enough to change a heart completely.

In our mission of evangelization, we need only one example: Jesus Christ. It is important to remember that, if He had wanted to, Jesus could have been Incarnated in this day and age of technological communications. He could have made Himself an account on Twitter and, in messages of 250 characters or less, brought His Word to the entire world. He could have given Himself a talk show where He could perform miracles before live audiences. To our mortal minds, that would seem to make sense. Just think of the number of people He could have had for disciples! Certainly more than twelve.

But that is not what Jesus did. He was born in the most humble of circumstances. He lived among a people, the majority of whom could not even read, let alone wrap their minds around dogmatic theology. Nevertheless, Jesus, the Son of God, became Jesus of Nazareth.

Yes, Jesus did perform miracles before crowds of people. The multiplication of the fish and loaves is a perfect example. But in His ministry, Jesus kept the Twelve close to Himself. They were His friends (Judas was a bad one). It is likely that He had known them from His childhood. Peter, John, and James were Jesus' close companions in His earthly life.

As Jesus continued His preaching, those crowds began to disappear. The turning point was the hardest teaching of Jesus. People were ready to accept Him as a moral teacher, a guru. They liked His teachings about the meek inheriting the earth and treating everyone as you would want to be treated. The same was not so for the "source and summit of our faith" (St. JPII). Jesus said to the crowd, the SAME crowd, in fact, for whom He had multiplied the fish and loaves, "unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you." John 6:53.

This was hard for the people to understand. They had been caught up with the sensationalism of this miracle worker, but now He was asking them to accept something that seemed to be completely illogical. He asked them to have faith. "Then many of his disciples who were listening said, 'This saying is hard; who can accept it?'" John 6:60.

Then, and note the number of the verse here, in John 6:66, "As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him."

This is the greatest example of fickle disciples produced by emotion alone.

But something even more important happens next.

"Jesus then said to the Twelve, 'Do you also want to leave?' Simon Peter answered him, 'Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe that you are the Holy One of God.'" John 6:67-69

The friends of Jesus, those that He had kept close to His heart, the people with whom He had a personal relationship, stayed on. Even if they could not understand His teaching, they accepted it on faith.

We need the same approach when it comes to evangelization. Emotional experiences and miracles will attract people. You need the glue of a personal relationship to retain those new disciples, else you lose them to the first breath of wind.

This is how YOU should evangelize. You do not need to stand on the corner of the street, Bible in hand, shouting "Repent! Repent!" That has a way of driving people away.

What you need to do is not even necessarily evangelizing with words. It is evangelization by action. Know who your friends are, your true friends, and not the ones who would sell you out for thirty pieces of silver. Be the love of Christ to them. Be the hands and feet of God on this earth. Show them the joy and peace that you find in God, and they will be attracted to you. Plant the seeds of Truth in their hearts and let God do the rest. You can cancel your appearances on the View and skip your audition to be the next Billy Graham. All you have to do is be a Christ-like friend, brother, sister, son, or daughter.

Deus Volt!

The New Olympus

If you were to meet a man claiming to still worship the outdated deities of Ancient Greece and Rome, you would call him crazy. Perhaps, because of our excessive reliance on tolerance, you would outwardly express your acceptance for their chosen belief system. But on the inside, yes, you would call them crazy. And for good reason. The old pantheon of Zeus and Hera (or Jove and Juno depending on your preference), has died out. They and their worshipers all but disappeared with the Christianizing of the Roman Empire under Constantine.

But what if I were to tell you that there is a new pantheon of gods? Their worshipers are not limited to any geographical location, they span the globe. The sacrifices made to these gods cannot be measured in the millions but rather in the billions of dollars. There were only twelve Greek gods worth mentioning. These new gods number in the thousands. '

Who are these gods? They are not hard to find. You do not need to climb Olympus to gaze at their thrones. All you have to do is turn on the TV or browse the Internet. The Olympians of today, the gods of the culture of death, are the actors, the athletes, the musicians. The new Olympus sits in Hollywood and in New York City. The altars of these new gods do not burn with the flesh of slaughtered animals, but rather wads of American dollars.

Here's a fact. According to the Statistic Brain website, American teenagers spend $258.7 Billion every year. To give that number some context, that's just about equal to the GDP of Chile. And where does all this money go? Somehow I feel confident in venturing a guess that the majority does not go to charity. No, this money is placed on the altars of these gods. It is spend on movies, songs, clothing, all inspired by these new gods. Now, I am not saying that these are not good things to spend money on. I am merely showing the financial influence that these new Olympians have.

Money is not the issue. It's culture. St. Augustine, contemporary of the old gods of Rome, noticed the social dangers of their worship. Writing of Homer, the Greek poet who wrote about the escapades of the Olympian gods, Augustine said "These are, indeed, his fictions, but he attributed divine attributes to sinful men, that crimes might not be accounted crimes, and that whosoever committed any might appear to imitate the celestial gods and not abandoned men" (Confessions XVI).

Look at any of the myths surrounding the old Olympus. The "gods" are selfish, arrogant, petty, and deceitful. They are very human. Jove was a serial adulterer. Neptune and Apollo were rapists. Minerva was conceited. How are these supposedly divine beings supposed to serve as examples of right behavior? Their worship encourages sin! As Augustine said, any wrongdoing can be justified by saying that the Olympic gods did the same.

The same is true for our gods. It is a rare occasion indeed when the male star of an action movie is not a womanizing drunkard who acts only for his own gain. You do not need to look through your newsfeed for long before finding a story about an athlete that got arrested. As for music, all you have to do is listen to the lyrics of any Eminem song to realize the oppressive moral degeneracy of many musicians. And yet these are the people we worship!

We are more forgiving towards our famous actor than towards our best friend. Sure he abuses drugs and has seven DUI's on his record... but just look at his hair!

I am not saying that to be a good Catholic you have to renounce all modern culture and only listen to classical music or only watch movies that are rated G. We do not need cultural hermits who shudder at the name of Tom Cruise or Matt Damon. What we need is simply a greater awareness. Do not fall into the same error as the Greeks and Romans. Remember that these "gods" are not divinities given human attributes, but rather humans given traits of the divine.

Deus Volt!

The Sublime Beauty of the Eucharist

In this world, man has always been in search of that which is most beautiful. Beauty is the ideal to which sculptors, artists, writers, poets, and musicians have been striving towards since the beginning of time. But it is a vain search. The greatest beauty has already been given to us. It has been given to us by God. This apex of beauty is none other than the Eucharist.

There is no need to search for the Eucharist, to attempt to hew its form out of marble or breathe it to life from a canvas. The Eucharist is set before us, made available every day of the year.

I should have no need to explain what the Eucharist is, though for the sake of clarity, I will digress. The Eucharist was established by Jesus Christ at the Last Supper. But His final Passover meal before His Crucifixion was not the first time that Jesus instructed his disciples about the wonderful mystery of the Eucharist. The whole of Christ's teaching led up to the dual climax of the Institution of the Eucharist and Crucifixion. And it is not a coincidence that Jesus gave His disciples the Eucharist just before He gave Himself up to the Romans.

The Eucharist is beautiful because of its impossible reality. Our limited human understanding cannot so much as hope to attain so much as a child's understanding of the Eucharist. What our mortal senses perceive to be merely blood and wine is so much more than that. The "bread" is the flesh of Christ. The "wine" is His blood. This is an astounding contradiction of human reasoning.

The Eucharist is the greatest of sacrifices. Just as love is a sacrifice, the gift of the Eucharist in every Mass is the greatest expression of God's unconditional love for us. He does not hold anything back. There are no misgivings in the love of God, no terms that He sets on his affections for us. He gives Himself to us in the guise of bread and wine, giving us His all: His body and His blood. Just as human understanding cannot comprehend the Eucharist, human expressions of love cannot rival the eternal sacrifice of the Mass.

Often, the beauty of the Eucharist goes ignored. How often do we go to Mass and spend more time thinking about what the person next to us or the baby two pews ahead is doing instead of reflecting on and recognizing what is happening on the altar? How often do we receive the body and blood of Christ, freely given, and mistake it for a symbol?

God gives Himself to us, us worthless sinners. He loves us with an incomprehensible love even when we disobey Him. God sees our every flaw, He is the Witness to our every iniquity. It is difficult for us to believe that any human being could know every one of our sins and still love us. But that is exactly what God does, most fully expressed in the Eucharistic miracle.

Let us make sure that God's passionate love for us does not go unrequited. There are two ways in which we can thank God for his love, for there is nothing we can do to deserve it. We can love God through the people He has placed around us. Our love for our brothers and sisters, even if it is just a faint shadow of the love of God, brings us into closer communion with the will of God, closer to Heaven. The other thing we can do is show a greater appreciation for the Eucharist. Go to Mass every week. Reflect, not on what you will be eating for dinner or which NFL team will win the Super Bowl, but rather on the divine mystery of the Eucharist made manifest in the Mass. Eucharistic Adoration is also a worthy expression of our gratitude for the gift of the Eucharist. Kneel before the Blessed Sacrament. Bring yourself into the real presence of God.

O Lord Jesus, please help us, the Church, and the world, gain a greater understanding and love for the great act of love You have given to us undeserved. Thank you for the sublime, the beautiful, Eucharist.

Deus Volt!