Advancing the Kingdom

“And so I tell you, everyone of men’s sins and blasphemies will be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Sprit will not be forgiven…..either in this world or the next” (Mt. 12:31)  As a kid I didn’t understand Jesus’ admonition about this ‘one unforgivable sin’ recorded in Mathhew’s Gospel.  In a spiritual work of mercy with which she instructed her ignorant son, my mother explained it to me.  Fundamentally, the sin against the Holy Spirit is obstinate pride, and it manifests itself in many ways.  Two examples are illustrative. One is the conviction that we do not need God. In his book “The Drama of Atheist Humanism” authored over eighty years ago, Henri de Lubac presaged this dangerous mindset so prevalent in today’s technological world: “ …in his desire for a liberation whose instrument must be technology, man goes to the point of renouncing everything that makes his condition dependent and…

A phrase making its way around the media these past few weeks is “the enemy within”. Those who spout it no doubt are referring to different enemies. For me, the phrase brings to mind the famous quote in the Pogo cartoon strip on Earth Day in 1971: “We have seen the enemy, and the enemy is us!”. In this celebrated cartoon the reference is to us, ourselves, and our mistreatment of the environment. However, there is another, more sinister, way in which we are our worst enemy. It concerns not the ecological splendor of the world we inhabit, but rather the mysterious splendor of the humanity we share. Consciously or otherwise, we are allowing the acidic influence of secularism to corrode the very core of our humanity, our conviction that the spirit of God dwells within us and guides us. Secularism in the Trojan horse we blithely admit into our…

And He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury, and He saw also a certain poor widow putting in two mites.So, He said, “Truly I say to you that this poor widow has put in more than all…” (Lk.21) We are taught that through the sacramental life of the Church, its ‘sacramental economy’, the Holy Spirit mysteriously empowers the significant events of our lives with divine grace. While not necessarily a significant event, the above well-known story of the widow’s mite demonstrates something about sacramental efficacy. From the lips of Jesus, we learn that the seemingly meager contribution of the poor widow is worth “more than all” the abundant gifts of the rich donors. From the perspective of our Lord this modest donation of her mites is spiritually potent, a kind of ‘might’.   What is it that makes this so? What invisible impulse prompts the widow’s sacrifice?  Are our post-modern…

Is culture dynamic? Does its dynamism have a destiny or telos? Is there a vitalizing force that supports and promotes it? Can culture devolve from a state of vigorous flourishment to one of listless function and eventually to one of inevitable floundering?  These questions are not ones most of us ask. We are beneficiaries of the millennia old Judeo-Christian culture and, admittingly or otherwise, already know or intuit the answers. If we do purposefully reflect on the nature of culture (an exercise lamentably uncommon) we realize that intrinsic to it is the concept of ‘cult’ which is religious devotion. Our culture is the fruit of the inculturation of the Good News of the Gospel into the Greco-Roman civilization as it has evolved and expanded through the centuries to the present. The vivifying force of our culture – with its morality, its jurisprudence, its aspirations etc. – has fundamentally been ‘fear…

Like tiny patches of blue peeping through stormy skies, references to cultural renaissance are appearing, albeit infrequently, in today’s troubled atmosphere.  Just as we are certain there is light above the clouds, do we dare believe these encouraging references to a cultural reawakening are harbingers of a more fulfilling future? What does cultural renaissance imply anyway? Are the any ‘green shoots’ indicating that one is underway?  The term seems to have different connotations. For those eager to escape any links with the past and its perceived limitations on personal freedom mention of a cultural renaissance is an alarming threat. For others it is an irresistible invitation to return to ‘the good old days’ when law and order were recognized as regnant, and the world at least seemed unchanging and more settled. Given the sense of hopelessness that pervades much of our world, one might wonder if a cultural renaissance –…

Are Christians globalists? The term globalism did not exist several generations ago. At that time, it was not uncommon for men to prioritize their commitments as follows: God, family, nation, and employee loyalty. Today things are quite different. We live with godless secularism, fluid definitions of family, and soulless corporations for employers. A particularly noticeable change is that a growing trend toward globalization seems to threaten national identity. Globalism means different things to different folks. However, both its advocates and its detractors concur that the concept relates to the internationalization of political, economic, cultural and even religious movements or systems.  The fact that Christianity exists around the globe raises the question: are Christians globalists? One might understandably think so. For the better part of two millennia the Nicene Creed, which textualizes the tenets of the faith, includes the claim that the Church is one, holy, apostolic and ‘catholic’.  Here, ‘catholic’…

St. Paul writes that Christianity without the cross is meaningless. The cross, of course, holds deep and varied significance. It represents shame and glory, death and resurrection, sacrifice and fulfillment, etc. One interpretation often held is that its vertical and horizontal beams symbolize the inseparability of the two great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor, respectively. The concept of being ‘our brother’s keeper’ is as old as Genesis. However, it seems that only in Christianity’s recent history has the interpretation of the second great commandment expanded from the more narrow concept of charity only toward our neighbor to a broader one that includes justice for our neighbor. The landmark encyclical “Rerum Novarum” issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 brought this distinction to the fore giving rise to CST or Catholic Social Teaching. Pope St. John Paul II a century later added his own voice to his predecessor’s…

‘The holiness of truth’. How would many of us today interpret this phrase from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians? Would the reference to holiness be so outlandish to us that we would be befuddled by its meaninglessness?  Would we, like the jaded Pontius Pilate interrogating the arrested Christ, ask ‘what is truth’? How many of us would respond with such cynical puzzlement?? Today the word ‘identity’ – as in ‘identity politics’- is much bandied about. Perhaps we should review its meaning to benefit more fruitfully from St. Paul’s quote. Identity refers to the condition that exists when two or more factors are considered the same and therefore are identical. How does this relate to the holiness of truth?  What is holiness? In both the Old and New Testaments holiness is presented as an attribute of God. The prophet Isaiah witnesses the six-winged seraphim proclaim “Holy, holy, holy, is the…

The ubiquitous presence of cell phones and the never dormant social media prompt this question.  Does the time so many of us spend gazing at electronic screens serve the purpose of recreation or of distraction?  Put more generally, for which of these two purposes do we employ what used to be called our leisure time?  Do we take time to restore and refresh ourselves in recreation? Or in distraction do we seek release from the responsibilities of our purpose? Recreation is restorative and salubrious. It is significant that the term itself contains the word ‘creation’. Even leisure can be creative and productive. The term distraction, on the other hand, shares the same etymology as ‘tractor’ and indicates a ‘pulling away’. Doesn’t distraction pull us away from our purpose? Depending on how we are raised, leisure time – more prevalent now than centuries ago – is either a blessing or a…

On this national Independence Day it is appropriate for us inhabitants of the U.S.A. to reflect on the nature of freedom. Is our freedom ‘freedom from’ or ‘freedom for’?  From and for.  How can two prepositions so similar in orthography differ so in implication? Even so, being so different, isn’t it curious how one depends on the other for its logical completion. To move out of or from one situation is to move to or for another situation. ‘From’ gives way to ‘for’. For whatever purpose we are drawn by the latter to escape the former. ‘Freedom from’ must imply ‘freedom for’ and therefore must have purpose. Still, many contend that ‘freedom from’ is unrelated to ‘freedom for’. This is an etiolated understanding of the precious gift we celebrate today.  For centuries immigrants have come to this country in search of freedom from oppression, poverty and persecution.  But their desire…

Have our post-enlightenment minds slipped so deeply and so inconspicuously into some cultural amnesia that we are no longer accepting of, or even mindful of, what our predecessors believed? Do we flatter ourselves with the hubristic presumption that because we create truth we understand and control the world? Do we decide what is real and what is fiction – a mindset which, so saturated in prosperity and void of grace, relegates our awareness of God to the tenuous bonds of our memory. Have we abandoned and forgotten the sacred? A pernicious consequence of this widespread neglect is desecration. Desecration is a word we hear seldom today. When we do, it is typically in reference to mistreatment of our national flag, appropriately enough. However, it has a more insidious application.  Should it surprise us that the decline in belief in the Real Presence in the Eucharist is contemporaneous with our diminished…

Mystery surrounds us, but do we honor it?  As with grace, do we recognize it as a gift we can either accept or decline? For those of us whose powers of logic have been secularized, it is perhaps understandable that we tend to dismiss the mysterious as unreal and therefore irrelevant. But, for us Christians, how does this square with our understanding of the tenets of our faith? With regard to the Trinity, is it possible that with our etiolated, post-Enlightenment grasp of reality we have allowed the third Person, the Holy Spirit, to be relegated to the realms of mythology? Have we done so in spite of the words we recite in the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life”?  We Catholics should refresh our understanding of the vivifying actions of the Holy Spirit. Two particularly mysterious ones come to mind which merit…