One way to get people back to Church

Matthew 21:33-43 (27th Sunday of Ordinary Time)

Recently I watched a panel on the news discuss the question of "why religion is no longer relevant". They offered different reasons explaining why many people no longer prayed, went to Church or even believed in God, including “science makes belief in God obsolete” or “belief in God was just an idea used to control people and is no longer needed.” Watching the discussion, I became frustrated; I wanted to jump through the TV and join the debate myself! The question the panel was discussing is valid and  by no means new. The reality is that people have always, for one reason or another, chosen to exclude God from their lives. The question is, what can we personally do about it? The Gospel of this Sunday provides a clear answer.

Jesus’ parable of the vineyard is a presents Salvation History, which is the story of how God has interacted with humanity, in the form of an allegory. Like any allegory, each character or element in the story corresponds to some reality. We need to unpack this parable in order to properly understand its message. A landowner built a vineyard. Jesus roots his parable in the image from the prophet Isaiah we find in the first reading. God is the landowner. The vineyard is Israel, a people God chose and formed to think, act and love like Him. Since the time of Jesus, the vineyard also refers to the Church. We are the People of God.  The landowner protected the the vineyard with a hedge and watchtower. This means that God always watches over His People and protects them. Since the purpose of the vineyard was to produce wine, the owner placed in it a wine-press. He then leased it to tenants and went on a journey. We, the tenants are meant to produce something, we have a purpose and mission. After some time, the landowner sends servants to gather in the the produce. These servants represent the prophets and leaders that God who who challenge and encourage us to do the mission God has given us. The tenants, however, brutally reject these messengers. Throughout history, we too often reject those God has sent who call us to conversion. Finally, the landowner sends his son, who the tenants seize, drag out of the vineyard and kill. This son is Jesus Christ, who was dragged out out of Jerusalem and crucified on Calvary. This, of course, was not the end of the story. Jesus did not remain in the tomb, but rose again, taking control of the vineyard.

Christ and Saint Mina. 6th-century icon from Bawit, Egypt, now in the Louvre, source

This parable reveals to us, the People of God, our role in Salvation History. Notice that the tenants were not told to hang out in the vineyard, sit on lawn chairs and relax while eating grapes! No, the tenants were supposed to produce wine. The landowner sends his servants and ultimately his son to ensure this happens. When the tenants still refuse to do their job, the vineyard is given to other tenants who will follow through. We have been given a mission. Like wine, our lives are meant to be something good and enticing.  When we live as Jesus wants, by striving to become holy, we should become like magnets. People should see our joy and peace and desire to have the same thing in their lives. Simply by the way we live as followers of Jesus, we should draw people closer to God. In carrying out this mission, we do not act as God’s puppets. We are tenants. God trusts us and gives us freedom. It is a privilege to be able to participate in God’s work of salvation. Though we are not puppets, we are also not in charge. In killing the landowner’s son, the tenants wanted to take control of the vineyard for themselves. Humanity’s great temptation is to push God out of the picture and try to take control of nature and civilization. We want to make the rules and say what we should be doing with our lives. The reality is that we are tenants, all we have is a gift from God: nature, our bodies, our mind, our creativity and our talents. We are given these things in order to fulfill God’s mission. If we refuse to carry it out, He will find other people who will do so.

We need to face the fact that one reason why numerous people exclude Jesus and the Church from their lives is because we are not living lives that draw people closer to God. Going back to that panel I heard on the news, we could say that some people find religion irrelevant because we, the vineyard's tenants, are not producing abundant wine. How do we convince people that God is relevant and they should follow Jesus? The parable of the vineyard gives a clear answer: live a holy life. Arguing and finger-wagging will not get people to go to Church or to pray. Consider saints such as St. Francis or Mother Teresa who produced such great wine in their life. In their lives people saw a glimpse of Jesus and were drawn to follow him. Do our lives have the same effect on people? Jesus’ parable of the vineyard provokes us to answer a simple question, “does the way I live attract people closer to Jesus and the Church or not?” Bl. John Henry Newman composed a beautiful prayer called Radiating Christ. It expresses in a beautiful way the desire we should have to produce in our lives good wine that draws people closer to God. Today let us ask God for the strength to do this.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go.

Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.

Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.

Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others.

The light, O Jesus, will be all from You; none of it will be mine.

It will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.

Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do,

the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.

Amen.

Conversion, holiness and the search for true beauty

Matthew 28-32 (26th Sunday of Ordinary Time, year A)

Le rire (The laugh) by Eugène Bataille, 1883, source

We spend a lot of time and money looking good on the outside. Globally, “beauty” is a $160 billion-a-year industry, encompassing make-up, skin and hair care, fragrances, health clubs, cosmetic surgery and diet pills. According to the Economist, Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do an education. Canadians spend $5 billion-a-year on cosmetics alone. Taken in moderation, there is nothing wrong with caring for how we look physically. Unfortunately, we often invest far more time, money and effort on improving our bodies - which eventually get old, die and decay - in comparison to the attention we give on developing our spiritual or inner beauty, a beauty we will carry with us for all eternity. Jesus calls each of us to develop this true beauty by growing in holiness and becoming saints. In the parable of the two sons and the vineyard, we are presented with two very different responses to this invitation.   

At times we give mere lip service to Jesus’ call to grow in holiness and become saints. When this happens, we are like the second son who who said he would go to the vineyard but never went. Jesus identifies this son with religious authorities who claim to be great religious leaders, refuse to follow Jesus. We can fall into the same trap. When I was living in Rome I used to visit an elderly couple. In their house I saw so many pictures saints, including Padre Pio - this is Italy after-all.  As the saying goes, “not everyone in Italy believes in God, but everyone believes in Padre Pio!” I said to them once that they must be fervent Catholics.  They said of course, they were 100% Catholic! Then the old lady came close to me, pointed her finger in my face, and said,“listen we are more Catholic than you!”. So I asked what Church they went to.  Their response was “oh, we haven't been to mass in 20 years”.  Just identifying ourselves as Catholic, whether it for cultural or other reasons, isn’t enough. When we simply try to do the bare minimum in our spiritual life and not take any steps to grow in holiness, we give lip service to Jesus’ call.

Like the first son in the parable, we are to have an attitude of conversion. He initially said no to serving, but then had a change of heart and went to do his father’s will.  Jesus explains that the tax collectors and prostitutes fit into this category. Their actions were a sign they had said no to living as God commanded. Unlike the religious leaders, however, when they met Jesus they experienced a conversion and chose to follow Him. We should follow their example. Sometimes conversion involves a change from a bad life to a good one. For example, I once met a middle-aged man who has a shaved head and arms covered in tattoos. Some years ago he had a dramatic conversion that caused him to leave a life of crime and sin. He now spends most of his time serving the poor. Another type of conversion - also extremely important but unfortunately not enough emphasized - is from living a good life to living a better life. We find a famous example in the life of St. Teresa of Avila, the 16th century mystic and reformer. As a teenager she chose to follow Jesus and was already living a good life. At the same time, however, she had certain weaknesses such as an immoderate interest in popular fiction about knights and chivalry, as well as an excessive care for her physical appearance. These things held her back from following Christ. One day, she had a conversion, choosing to follow Jesus more closely and live a better life, breaking some of her bad habits and spending more time in prayer.

As followers of Jesus, our lives should be marked by an attitude of ongoing conversion. Ongoing conversion is nothing other than a desire to grow in inner beauty. We should always desire to change, transforming ourselves to become more and more like Jesus. In short, we should want to become saints!   If this desire is lacking, something is amiss in our spiritual lives. Love is always dynamic, it is always growing. When we follow Jesus, there is no level ground, we are either moving up or moving down. We can consider three degrees of moral conversion.

1. First degree: conversion from mortal sin. Mortal sin is a freely chosen rejection of God. For example, murder, adultery, hatred, blasphemy, and grave injustice. If one continues in this rejection, it ends in freely chosen eternal disaster. This conversion is a dramatic 180 degree change from a life that leads away from God to one where we desire to be in relationship with Him and follow His commandments.
2. Second degree: conversion from willed venial sins. Though venial sins do not destroy our relationship or love with God and neighbor, they do wound it. Examples include gossip, overeating, rudeness and impatience. In this conversion, we recognize our faults, desire to change and make steps to do so.
3. Third degree: living as the saints did, loving God and neighbour without limit. This involves giving oneself beyond the call of duty and going all the way for God. The spiritual writer, Fr. Thomas Dubay explains that at “this stage of growth these individuals are not simply rather better than ordinary good folk - they are vastly superior in sheer goodness”.

Though each of us is weak and our lives very much a “work in progress”, we should never lose sight of the fact that we are all called to this third degree of conversion.

Holiness, which is true, eternal beauty, is something worth spending time and effort to develop. Let us not be like the second brother in the parable who did not take this call to conversion seriously. Today lets spend some effort on looking good on the inside. Try to identify one area in your life you want to work on. Perhaps it is one bad habit you want to root out or one virtue you want to develop. Let us make ongoing conversion a way of life and becoming saints our greatest dream. For, as the french novelist Leon Bloy once wrote, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

Why gratitude is the cure for jealousy.

Matthew 20:1-16 (25th Sunday of Ordinary Time)

In the movie Toy Story, we are introduced to Woody, the favorite toy of a young boy named Andy. Everything changes for Woody when Andy receives a new toy for his birthday, Buzz Lightyear. Buzz soon becomes Andy’s favorite toy, filling Woody with an overpowering jealousy that changes him from being very warm and friendly into an angry and sad toy. Much of the movie follows the personal growth of Woody as he struggles to overcome this strong jealousy. Jealousy is something we all struggle with in our life. St. Thomas Aquinas says that jealousy is the “irrational anger at the success of another”. Jealousy poisons our attitude towards life and our relationship with God. Jesus’s parable about the labourers and the landowner in the gospel offers us some important insights about jealousy and how we can overcome it.

Jealousy makes us bitter and joyless people because it causes us to lose sight of the good we have in our life. Imagine that you are driving around and you see a Lamborghini on the road. Suddenly you wish you had that car; your own seems like rubbish in comparison. In that moment, however, you have forgotten that your own car is a gift in your life. It helps you and your family get around. In fact, many people in the world would be happy to have the car you do. Or consider this historical example. Andrew Carnegie, the multimillionaire who died in 1919, left $1 million for one of his relatives. When this relative discovered that Carnegie had left $350 million to public charities, he cursed Carnegie thoroughly because he had cut him off with just one “measly” million. For many of the labourers in the parable, the only thing they focus on is that some workers got paid the same for working a shorter amount of time. In their jealousy, they forget about all the good that happened that day: the fact that they got paid an honest wage. If they had focused on this good, they would have been satisfied and happy with the efforts of their day. Instead, their jealousy poisoned their hearts. They became angry with the landowner and the other workers. Likewise in our lives, jealousy blinds us to the good we have in our life and therefore robs us of happiness.

Jealousy is linked to ingratitude, another poison of the spiritual life. The parable of the labourers presents two different attitudes to our relationship with God, represented by the landowner in the parable.

1. Boss/worker relationship: sometimes we can fall into the temptation to think that all the prayers we say and good works we do are ways to earn God’s favour. Gratitude for God and love of Him are not our motivations. God becomes an impersonal boss. Prayer becomes work, going to Mass on Sunday becomes a duty and doing works of charity become down payments on some favour we hope to receive in the future. Jesus warns against this attitude in the parable. The labourers have lost sight of the great generosity of the landowner who made the first move, reaching out to to all of them in love.
2. Father/child relationship: Jesus encourages us to base our relationship with God on gratitude. Everything that we do in our life as followers of Jesus is in response to a God our Father who has first loved us and showered gifts upon us. The reality is that we are all the labourers who were hired at the last hour. When we recognize this, our hearts should fill with gratitude and love for God. Prayer, going to Mass and doing goods works are then done as an overflow of the gratitude and love we experience.

In order to overcome jealousy and ingratitude in our lives, we need to take practical steps to recognize the blessings God has given us. At the end of the day, is it easier to remember all the blessings of that day or the things that went wrong? For me, it is all to easy to focus on the later. God is constantly blessing us each day. It can be something as simple as a conversation with a friend, a compliment someone offered us or some way in which we were able to reach out to others with kindness. In these simple, daily blessings, God shows us His love for each of us in a very personal way. Unfortunately, we so often miss and easily forget these moments of grace. In order to prevent this, it is helpful to take some time at the end of each day to review our day, recognize some blessings and give thanks for them. An easy way to do this is something I like to call the “Toothbrushing Prayer”. Since we all brush our teeth at night, it is something we can all do. While you are brushing your teeth, try to think of two or three blessing that happened during the day and give thanks for them. The more we recognize the ways in which God has blessed us, the more our hearts will be filled with gratitude and love of God and the less we will experience jealousy for the ways we believe God has blessed others.

By the end of Toy Story, Woody is able to overcome his jealousy by focusing on the blessings in his life. One blessing he is able to recognize is that Buzz is not competition but someone in his life who can become his great friend. With this sense of gratitude, Woody regains his joyful disposition. We need to take steps to prevent jealousy and ingratitude robbing  us of the joy of following Jesus, who loves us and blesses us each.  Give the Toothbrushing Prayer a try for one week and discover the difference gratitude makes. As the 14th century mystic Meister Eckhart wonderfully said: If the only prayer you said in your life was “I thank you”, that would be enough.