Wednesday Thoughts

Miscellaneous musings on God and life

Last Sunday, I was thinking about the first Mass reading, Acts 3:13–15 and 17–19:

It is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our ancestors, who has glorified his servant Jesus whom you handed over and then disowned in the presence of Pilate after he had given his verdict to release him.

It was you who accused the Holy and Upright One, you who demanded that a murderer should be released to you while you killed the prince of life. God, however, raised him from the dead, and to that fact we are witnesses…

Now I know, brothers, that neither you nor your leaders had any idea what you were really doing; but this was the way God carried out what he had foretold, when he said through all his prophets that his Christ would suffer.

Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out.

Just imagine what a level of forgiveness was needed to say this, to address the crowd—the SAME crowd that not too long ago shouted “Crucify him! Crucify him!” condemning your beloved Master to death, spitting on him, hitting him, cursing him—with such gentleness.

And then I realized that everything that led up to Jesus’s death and resurrection had been necessary, INCLUDING the disciples’ cowardice. When the rubber finally met the road, they all ran away; Peter openly denied Jesus three times. What this taught them, though, was empathy and compassion for the moral frailty of others.

Without it, would they have been able to extend such kindness to the crowd they were to evangelize?

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I couldn’t help but shed some tears when I saw this beautiful little YouTube Short of an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s who remembers only one thing…

***

I recently got a lesson from VatiGod about obedience. It was brought to my attention by a well-meaning friend and OCDS superior that my habit of harshly criticizing Pope Francis and the Church was unbecoming for an aspiring member of the lay Carmelite community.

She specifically named several blog posts in which I showcased the controversial “messages from God” by a small Texan faith community. The messages severely admonished the bishops as betrayers of the faith and their flocks, and accused the pope of being an illicit usurper of the seat of Peter. She also warned against taking a “too-apocalyptic view” of the Church and, in general, putting too much stock into private revelations.

As the naturally stubborn woman that I am, of course my first instinct was to launch into a lengthy argument. Emails flew back and forth.

“When does obedience to the pope become disobedience to God?” I ranted.

She wrote back,

It doesn’t. Obedience to the Pope doesn't become disobedience to God. That is the faith of the Catholic Church. It requires an accurate understanding of what is papal teaching, and even before that, a healthy ability to hear and listen to viewpoints that aren't ours, to hear the intention of another person. The latter is at least as important for us as the former, because this is how community life functions. Without openness to others and docility to hear and learn from others, we go around with hard armor surrounding our hearts, trying to do God's job, which is to keep us safe. Is it risky to be docile? It sure can feel that way. And it absolutely is dangerous when we are docile to not-God. But it is the Christian path to security. “Only in God is my soul at rest.”

“Yes, BUT,” I said, “what do you do when faced with heresy and/or false teachings coming from Church leaders? What are we going to do when they start allowing ‘trans women’ into female religious orders? Or when they say female deacons and priests are OK? Isn't it evil in itself to stand by and allow evil to happen? Shouldn't we stand up and fight?”

She replied,

“What are we going to do when” is a worry set in the future that doesn't exist. We pray for trust and the ability to live in the now with faith. Sharks gather where there is blood, and doubts and anxieties gather where we have breeches in our trust. THAT is precisely where we “fight.” We fight to have faith in God that He is the Truth and He had this crazy idea to have a Church. To know, with St. Therese, that I'm a little, helpless, needy child, for whom Abba is enough, even when we can't feel enough. To then experience Him enfolding us in our utter vulnerability. That is what Carmel aims at. To experience and to witness to. Because that is what this world so desperately needs. 

Running the Church and governing the world are not our jobs. They are God's. It is probably one of the greatest tests of faith to look at the world and to still trust God, but this is why it is important to expend our energies seeking His face and owning our need. Knowing God, knowing self—that's the locus of the Carmelite battle.

I grudgingly had to admit that she had a point. Reading this now—about a month later—I’m actually stumped how much wisdom is in what she wrote, though I couldn’t see it in the heat of the moment. So I sought out Father D. for some spiritual direction…hoping, of course, that he would side with me.

During the session, I basically argued the same positions as before, but even as I did, I could feel that my conviction just wasn’t as strong anymore. I had no illusions: I KNEW that obedience was my greatest challenge and that, sooner or later, I’d have to do something about it.

Of all the things he said in that session, three stood out to me most.

First, he told me a story that uncomfortably reminded me of myself. He told me of a time when he himself had been such a boneheaded and opinionated know-it-all that, quitting a certain job, his boss was so glad that he left that he was the only employee who wasn’t sent off with a farewell party. No one even bothered saying goodbye on his last day. A really tough lesson to learn, he said, but a necessary one.

Here’s the second thing he said. Non-Catholics would ask him, “But what if the pope announces tomorrow, ex-cathedra, that homosexuality is totally okay and should be celebrated?”

His answer was, “That can never happen—because God won’t let it happen. Jesus himself founded the Catholic Church, and He promised that the gates of Hell would not prevail against it.”

I was stumped. “You really believe that?”

“Absolutely,” he said. And then he doubled down. “After all the research that I’ve done,” he said, “and all the Bible studies I’ve done, I’m convinced that it’s either the Catholic Church or there is no God.”

My jaw just about dropped to the floor. Wow. What an enormous faith he had.

It took a few days to sink in, but in the end, I had to admit it: It was me, not the Church that needed to change.

I’m still processing the whole thing and working on it… and I’m not expecting to “get really good at obedience” anytime soon. But the seeds are sown and watered. I pray to God that they may grow and bear fruit.

God bless you!