Two Ways to Be Close to God

At my parish worker's Mass this morning, Msgr. Brennan, our pastor, had a very brief but worthwhile homily about today's readings (Tues after XXV Sun in Ord: Ez 6:7-8, 12b, 14-20; Ps 122; Lk 8:19-21).

He briefly noted that Ezra and the Jews were set free from Babylon by the Persian king in order to go rebuild the Temple of God. For them, this was the ultimate blessing because God's Temple was literally where He resided, where He was at home, where they could be close to Him.

In the New Covenant, because of the Eucharist, we have the presence of God, physically and really, in every Catholic parish in the world. If we cannot feel His presence out in the world, surely we will be aided by going into our neighborhood parish.

Luke recounts our Lord saying that they are close to Him who do His will. By moral conformity to God's will, by allowing Him to change our hearts to be like His, we can be close to Him at all times - so close as even to be kin, his brother or his mother.

Of course, in receiving holy communion we receive the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, into our bodies. If we do so in a state of grace, the grace (the shared life of Christ) we already have inside us will be multiplied in proportion to our willingness to follow him, our conformity to the moral law. We thus become living tabernacles, living temples of God, and then bring Him with us wherever we go, so far as we don't go far from Him.

Sandpaper Friends to Make a Fitting Temple

"Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Cor 3:16) St. Paul asks the Christians of Corinth. Every time we receive Holy Communion, of course, we receive the Body and Blood of our Blessed Lord. Because the Three cannot be divided, Father and Spirit come into our souls as well: we become living tabernacles, living temples of the Living and Triune God.

But there's a problem: "Lord,... I am not worthy to have you come under my roof," (Luke 7:6) the Centurion said to Jesus. True enough. And yet, by the sheerest grace, the same God that made the fallen universe enters into it; the same God that made the sinner enters into him. We cannot earn the privilege of having God come into our home, our heart. But we can at least do our best to spruce the place up when he comes for a visit. To make my point more strongly, Paul says that by our baptism we are joined, as parts, into a single body of Christ, and that therefore we leave behind our sin, put on Christ, and mature into a new creation. The shanty of our soul cannot simply be spruced up - it must be made into a temple.

Ok. That's hard. Building a temple takes a lot of work - teamwork. This teamwork is one of the reasons why God made the Church. It's probably one of the reasons that God made Eve. Even without sin, Adam would still need to grow up, and that could only happen with the help of others to rub him the wrong way. Sometimes, even those we love the most rub us the wrong way, and present us with opportunities to grow in charity, to grow into temples of the Holy Spirit. I once heard such people called "sandpaper personalities." But a sandpaper personality needn't be someone we don't like or that annoys us. In fact, because of the odd perversity that comes to us through original sin, sometimes the people we like the most can irritate us the most. Maybe it is because of our affection for them, our felt closeness to them, that they can get so close that they even get under our skin. Things we would easily forgive in a stranger with whom we had little interaction can become real trials between closer friends: poor table manners, blabbing harmless but personal information, overly frequent and unreciprocated favors, etc.

The sanding is an essential process though, because it makes the visible surfaces smoother and more beautiful, and the hidden surfaces fit together better. Without the little day-to-day sanding, we are likely to end up all ugly and out of joint when big difficulties come along. I am currently searching for good responses to the sanding that other people provide us.

Right now, here's my best policy about it:
(1) See what's being rubbed the wrong way, and whether it needs to be rubbed off all the way;
(2) offer up the irritation and ask God to bring me by means of it to perfection;
(3) remember that if the person is bothersome right now, still we will all benefit only if we make a decision to continue loving each other.

Maybe next time one of my sandpaper friends rubs me the wrong way, I'll smile, thank them, and tell them how smooth they make me feel, and hope I can return the favor some day.

Bringing Back Exiles

Last night I was listening to a lecture by N. T. Wright, given in Connecticut about 12 or 13 years ago. In it, he said that to understand the gospels we must understand how deep was the sense among 1st century Jews that their Exile had not yet ended. Sure, they were back from Babylon. On the surface, to us, things might seem as if they were great. But in fact, the exile was a deeper phenomenon than simply not being home. The exile was not being about what they should be doing, not being God's people, alienation from God's plan. Their continuing exile was most poignantly revealed to them in not being able to worship God in His home. The Temple was newly rebuilt, or almost rebuilt, in Jesus' time; but something was missing. God.

Solomon built the first Temple. Upon its completion with the installation of the Ark, the temple was filled with the Shekinah cloud, the sign of God's physical, tangible presence. When the Temple reconstruction project was finished by King Herod, there was no Ark because it had been lost during the Exile, and there was no Shekinah. The Temple was incomplete, and the worship of God, Israel's living relationship with God, was also incomplete. On the surface, they had been restored and their relationship renewed - the Temple was rebuilt. But inside, nothing substantial was happening, only sacrifices that didn't seem to do very much.

It is in this light that we are to read the Gospel, the Rev. Dr. Wright says. Jesus, by entering into the Temple, literally restores God's presence to it in his own person. Wright makes a good case that Jesus understood his ministry as a preparation for this re-entry. God restored to his Temple, God himself would restore the priesthood and the value of the sacrifices by offering up himself.

Those of us who are waiting on God's will are a lot like the Jews waiting for the Shekinah to return to the temple. Day by day, doing our best to do our best, we are never sure exactly what God has in mind, and the temptation to feel as if He has nothing in mind creeps in. It can feel like an exile from God's plan, an exile from God.

The third psalm from today's Morning Office (IV Thursday Ord. Time) is Psalm 147. The Psalmist sings, "The Lord builds up Jerusalem and brings back Israel's exiles, he heals the broken-hearted, he binds up all their wounds... he calls each one by name." This passage is a powerful reminder that God does have a plan for us, and moreover, that God is the one who will accomplish it. He wants to do His will in our life. It will make us perfectly happy, drying up every tear. We have only to let Him. The psalm continues, "His delight is not in horses nor his pleasure in warriors' strength. The Lord delights in those who revere him, in those who wait for his love." When we feel barren and cannot see how God is acting in our life, I propose that the best course of action is this: examine our conscience and confess our sins; receive communion as devoutly as we can, asking the Blessed Virgin for her help; and pray that beautiful prayer, the Hail Holy Queen, that says, "To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus." And then wait. We must let God show us in His own time.

And when we really cannot wait to know how the whole thing turns out, Psalm 40 might be handy: "I waited, waited for the Lord, who inclined and heard my cry, and brought me up out of the muddy pit..."