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Petersboat
Can we accept the truth about God? | The Monday After
00:22:02
If we would be truly wise, yes. By God's grace, a man can surrender his gold for the treasures offered to us in Christ, his frankincense for the true prayer that Christ shares with us, and even his own definitions of rest, which Christ also transcends and transfigures. And in fact, man must. Only then will he depart for his country by a different way, changed and intent on peace with his neighbors.
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Hello, everyone. Good to be with you again like this. So yesterday, as we celebrated the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, we actually spoke about those three gifts that the Magi brought to him, the wise men. Since we celebrated the week before the epiphany, the gold, frankincense and myrrh, they speak to us about who Christ is, therefore, what we receive in baptism. Since we receive Jesus in baptism, his very life poured into ours. But by giving him those gifts, they also say something to us about how we might live our baptism, like what it means for us to recall and to turn to our baptism or to live. From our baptism. We can give Christ our gold in exchange for his gold, our frankincense in exchange for his frankincense, or our myrrh for his myrrh. And we can talk again about what that means. These Magi, they represent nations. The Gentiles, we who were baptized into a relationship with Christ, the shepherds who came first to the Kressh, to the manger, they represent the Jewish people. So Christ comes first to the Jews as their Messiah and is recognizable only because of the Jewish tradition, but is now made available to all the nations through baptism. So the Magi, therefore, are assigned to us of what we receive in baptism and what it would look like for us to live our baptism. Okay, so we'll revisit this is what we said yesterday. And I am going to say a little word at the end too, that I did not say in the church yesterday. Hope you find that helpful, at least interesting as well. And if you're joining us from outside the parish, always good to be here with you like this, and I hope you enjoy as well. So first, a little word about the connections between the Nativity scene and then Christ being baptized in the Jordan, these two scenes from the Gospels. When Christ is born, he is at the lowest place. He's not in a king's bed up high. He's on the ground, lying in a manger. We see his humility, therefore, and God's humility and allowing His Son to take the lowest place on the earth. Like that. And then when he's baptized at 30 years old in the Jordan river, that actually is the place where he was baptized. Geographically speaking, it's the lowest place on the face of the earth. If you check it out, it's where the Jordan river meets the Dead Sea. It's the lowest place on the face of the earth, lowest place beneath sea level, and again, assigned to us of God's own humility, allowing his Son to be baptized like that. So therefore, no one's beyond his reach. And we should never feel ourselves so laid low that he wouldn't come to us because he's already been to the lowest places. And also, it's him showing us that he seeks the lowly to lift us up, raise us up. The other connection or parallel between the Nativity and the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan can be seen as we imagine the wise men, the Magi, talking to St. Joseph and our Blessed Mother about this child Jesus, to learn about him. And learning, among other things, the most important thing about him, that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. It's a pretty big deal. This is, I think, why they came to believe him to be the Son of God with us and give him that kind of honor and worship. And when he's baptized in the Jordan, the heavens are opened, the Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus like a dove. And we hear our Heavenly Father say, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. So go back to the Nativity scene. You got Joseph there saying, I am his foster father, but I have not conceived him naturally. And the Blessed Mother saying, this child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. We believe God to be his Father. And that is confirmed at the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. So again, connections between the conversation and the actions of these Magi in the presence of the Nativity. And then what's happening with Jesus in the Jordan. And therefore, like in our baptism. So those two little parallels. And now a word about those gifts. When they bring him gold, what are they saying? But here's our gold in exchange for the true treasure that we believe we can receive from you. And what is that true treasure that Christ offers us? But you know, God's grace and his presence. I mean, Christ himself is the treasure, right? But it's the grace of God that's with us always in our baptism. The gold that we bring to him could be like our material things. It represents what we consider to be riches, the stuff we own, the things we possess. But we are very often prone to a kind of materialism. We tend to get very attached to the things that we own, trying to squeeze God out of them. But we would do well to be wise and every day to say, lord, I'm grateful for the stuff I've got. But I realize that you are the true treasure given to me by the Father. And so I lay my riches at your feet for the grace and the true treasure that you want to offer me. Make sense? The frankincense. Okay, we know that they brought him frankincense because he is God with us, so giving incense to the gods, a recognition of Christ's divinity, having learned that he was conceived by the Holy Spirit. So what would the frankincense that we could bring to Jesus be? What's the frankincense that we have first in exchange for his frankincense? Well, maybe this is like our ideas about God, all of our preconceived notions about religion. I mean, the way we say things like, I'm sure God wouldn't mind if I. Or, I mean, I know the Church teaches, but I think we should just be able to. I don't know, stuff like that. Those are extreme examples for us Catholics. But, you know, in the world, there are as many ways to think about religion as there are people, or as many ways to think about God as there are people. And that's the frankincense that we've all got to lay at the feet of Jesus in exchange for true worship or true religion. Make sense then? What about, like, the myrrh? Well, maybe this is our definition of rest, what we think makes for rest because they brought myrrh to Jesus as a sign of knowing that he would be laid in the tomb, and it was to prepare him for his burial to be in that state of rest. But we think about rest a lot of times as actually escaping the cross or getting away from obligation or hardship. We think, as we said in the church yesterday, about rest as like, just socks and slides, you know, just hoodies and sweatpants. Although I do love a good hoodie and not averse to slides either. But, you know, there's times when we can relax a little bit. Not the same thing, though, as the rest that Christ has come to bring us and our baptism is constantly offering us. It's the rest that comes to us in the form of, like, peace in our hearts after the cross, after doing the difficult thing, after sacrificing ourselves. Does that make sense? So I know we think about rest as, like, inactivity or escaping the cross, but the rest that Christ comes to offer us is really that experience of peace on the other side of the cross, or having done the tough thing, having poured ourselves out or made a gift of ourselves, as he does for us. So scripturally speaking about this gold, frankincense and myrrh, the gold, the treasure that Christ offers us, like the true treasure, something even greater than our possessions in the Scriptures, we see people leaving everything to follow him. Many, many, many disciples were with Christ as his group of friends, the early church, who also had to go to work, and their families in between being with Him. But there were those apostles and some other very close disciples who did leave everything to follow Him. And they represent to us that he is worthy of our prioritizing him over our material goods every day. So, like as a priest, for you too, although not called to material poverty, still nonetheless one who has given his whole life to the mystery of Christ and the Eucharist and at the service of the sacraments, which are ultimately at the service of your baptism and mine too, nonetheless, like priests and the religious, like we do, leave dependency on the world for this relationship with Christ to be assigned to you of how we should prioritize him in our dealings with the world. So I think in the Scriptures, when you see, like those first apostles called, the Scriptures say they left their nets and followed him. And their nets weren't just like what they were doing as a pastime. They weren't. They're not like recreational fishermen. They were commercial fishermen. This was their livelihood. They left that, though, to follow him. Matthew, the tax collector, left the tax booth and followed Christ, stuff like that. So we see that in the Scriptures, laying our gold at his feet for the exchange of the grace and the presence of this Jesus that is the true treasure of God. What about the frankincense? Where do we see that in the Scriptures? If this is. This is the most interesting to me. This is asking for true worship and true religion from Christ that He makes possible. The woman at the well, she's interesting. As Christ approaches her in Samaria, he says to her, he says, give me a drink of water. And she says, you're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan. Why are you even talking to me? And he says, if you knew who was asking you for water, you would ask him for water and. And you would never be thirsty again. So at a well, a water image. He's drawing near to this woman who's there midday because she's of ill repute in the community. But he seeks the lowest place. And he's talking to these Samaritans who are the lowly, who are often overlooked because they intermarried during the exiles. He approaches her and then speaks about water at a well, all right. And then she's sassy, though, and she says, sir, you don't have a bucket and the well is deep. Where will you get this life giving water? And then he says to her, go and call your husband and come back. And she says, I don't have a husband. And he says, I know you don't have a husband. You've had five husbands. And the man you live with now is not your husband. Now, he's not trying to hurt her or humiliate her, but he is trying to show her that he knows her in truth, that he knows reality, and that he has come to give us the grace to live in reality, even if it is jarring or frightening. And that's why she does try to change the subject. And she turns it into kind of like a spiritualism. She says, our ancestors say that we worship God on this mountain. This is Jacob's. Well, they're at. And then you Jews say that Jerusalem is where true worship takes place. And then Jesus says, there will come a time when people will worship God not only on this mountain or in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth. Meaning, like wherever we are. And that's the baptism in spirit and in truth. So to be able to worship God not just with human ingenuity or human ideas about God or human spirit, but by God's own Spirit, which is pleasing and acceptable to him. Remember now, when Christ was baptized in the Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove to show that. And as he said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. It's perfect and fitting worship of God. Christ is the one who is always pleasing to the Father. And so when we're in his life thinking about God with Him, we know God in truth. And when we're living by His Spirit, we're offering him a true worship. So in spirit and in truth. And you hear that conversation at the well as his teaching about this. So we exchange our frankincense for that true worship, to worship God in spirit and in truth. And we lay at his feet all these different ways in which we define religion and worship. So what about the myrrh? The myrrh again represents that Christ will be laid in the tomb and rest after his death on the cross. So his rest is true rest, as we said. And we often think about rest as merely inactivity and escaping the cross. So where in the Scriptures do we see true rest? How about this definition of or example rather of a true rest? The blessed mother and St. John were standing under the foot of the cross with St. Mary Magdalene and Mary, wife of Clopas and some other disciples when Christ was being crucified on the cross. And that was not easy. But they had peace in their heart knowing that they were where they were supposed to be and doing what they were supposed to do, right? What the Holy Spirit was calling them to do. But those other disciples and apostles who were hiding in the upper room, hiding from the cross in order to try to secure their own safety, to rest, in that sense, they were miserable. I bet there was a lot of arguing and fighting in that upper room. I do not think there was any peace in that upper room. And I said yesterday, a lot of people on a Sunday will stay home from mass, for example, in order to rest, right? But people who actually do get in the car and sacrifice that time, but also the effort, the coordination of the family and stuff to get into the car and come to the church, they experience the true rest given to those who are willing first to die on the cross. Although we do say that staying home will give us rest, it's really when we follow the Lord that we enter into his rest that make sense. So even in our own lives, you know, like I've shared this with you before. If I do get invited or asked to do something difficult, if I get a phone call late at night or something, for example, or just even at an unexpected, an inconvenient hour to move to someone in their need, you know, the Adam in me, because of the fall, who's like, lazy and who wants to define rest as being able to do whatever I want, The Adam in me is like, don't do it, don't do it, or make some excuse so you can rest, you need to rest. And the Adam will start making those excuses. But Christ in me, the baptism, wants to move, even though it's not easy and will be a cross wants to lead me to true rest, which is being laid in the tomb after dying on the cross. So you know, like what is true rest? Is it hiding from the cross, you know, that's going to be poisoned by the shame and the guilt, you know, of fleeing the self sacrificial love for which we were made. Or is it standing underneath the foot of the cross and accompanying loved ones through tough times, even spiritually and emotionally dying with people for the sake of accompanying them, as difficult as it may be, that brings that peace, that mysterious peace that sweetens the sorrow that is the true rest that God wants to offer us. So that's another place in the Scriptures, I think we see trading our myrrh for His. His myrrh. And then we said yesterday that if each one of us lives from our baptism, the song we sing will be as unique as we are. You know, we tend to get flattened, homogenized grouped together, categorized by this culture. And we lose a sense of our individuality, which is the great irony, because I know that the world says if you live the church or if you're baptized and you live as a Christian, that you'll lose your identity and that the only way to preserve your uniqueness is to live away from the church. It's not true. It's the exact opposite. People in the world all tend to start to sound the same. People in the church are very interesting because they're all so different. And yet there's this commonality which is God's love for us and the spirit of Christ living in us, the Holy Spirit. So we said yesterday I mentioned the examples of, like, one of my favorite musicians who, when she was asked how she writes so creatively, because she does write unique and meaningful lyrics and beautiful melodies, she said, well, I don't listen to too many other songs. There's so many songs like on. On social media, in particular from other artists. And she says if I listen to all the others too much, I. I lose a little sense of the song that I'm trying to sing. She says, so I have to kind of stay in the zone. And I like that about her. And I thought that reminds me of something that I heard an old blues player, a songwriter, say once too. They interviewed him on the side of the street, and he said when they asked him what other songs and musicians he listens to, he said, I don't listen to too many other musicians. If I listen to too many other artists, I start to hear their music in my own. What an interesting way to say it. You know, it's like an acknowledgement of how sometimes we can get distracted by all the other things we're hearing. It makes it hard for us to hear our own heart or the voice of Christ in us in this case. So for us to live our baptism, which, again, the grace of God is the true treasure, that worshiping him according to his holy Spirit and his revelation of true religion, and then also that true rest comes after the cross. Those are very countercultural claims. That's the whole point. The point is that you and I, we start in the world with our gold, our frankincense and our myrrh. But he comes to us from heaven to give us his gold, his frankincense, his myrrh. So for us to really believe that, trust that, recognize that, live from that, we would do well to be careful with how much we flood ourselves with the gold of this world or the frankincense of this world or the myrrh of this world by what we listen to what we watch. So we said yesterday, and I'll remind you again today, like, we should curate our playlists and curate our. Or take care of our algorithms. And not to condemn the world, but that we wouldn't get lost if salt loses its flavor, with what can it be seasoned? Remember, Christ said that to us, Meaning, like, if we can't live from our baptism, who's going to move into the world to save the world? Remember he said we were given this gift of faith not to put it under a bushel basket, but set it on a lampstand to give light to everyone in the house. Then, yeah, we would do well to curate our algorithms and our playlists a little bit and try our best again not to condemn the world, but to help ourselves to hear Christ and to be aware of what he's accomplishing in us because of the baptism we received. And the blessed mother and St. Joseph will still be the greatest help that God is giving us to that, because that's what enabled the magi to realize what was being offered to them and this child, Jesus. So we can say, bless the Mother, please help me and St. Joseph, please help me. And then this is the one last word I want to share with you here that I did not share yesterday. And it's a simple thing, but I think you might find it interesting. I was praying about this a lot, like last week, and share it with you here. Just a little word about something I've been thinking about. You know, because we have Christ with us. We have this belief that, yeah, God is tough and he allows tough things to happen, but he's also with us redeeming everything that happens. And that's interesting because, you know, if he weren't also with us and he were just up there with this will and this intention, we might think that he's asking us down here to eradicate whoever we have to eradicate, to crush whoever we have to crush, to cancel whoever we have to cancel. Because, darn it, he's expecting us to help him to get his will accomplished. But with Christ with us, and looking at the way that he lived and how many things happened to him during his own lifetime that we would consider rejection or failure, he even to the point of being crucified, but the fact that he was rejected by most of his people, he shows us that God's will is mysterious and that it permits evil, but nonetheless is being accomplished. And I was thinking we don't have to cancel the past, then cancel our history. Nor do we have to artificially secure our future, but rather just continue to rejoice in the fact that yes, God is tough. The Father and, and his will are difficult. He's not a spoiling uncle and he's not a soft grandfather. He is a disciplining Father, but He's also with us as mercy and compassion in the Son. The Holy Spirit is making it possible for us to stay with Christ Jesus all these years. And Christ is the Redeemer, the one giving value, salvific value to everything we experience. So now we don't want to be afraid of rejection or forcefully eradicate people who maybe think differently or oppose us. We can forgive and we can always seek reconciliation and be missionaries of peace as our Holy Father is calling us to be. Okay, but without Christ, without a Redeemer with us and just God in heaven, Imagine just God in heaven alone. Can you imagine that? Like as Catholic Christians, we take for granted that he's also with us, right? And he's in us. And not just like watching us from afar, but truly animating our life and our communion with one another. If we didn't have that and he were just up here, we might be tempted to think about God as like a kind of nationalist God where He has a particular nation that he favors and his whole purpose and what salvation would look like is the exaltation of that one nation above all the others. You know, without Christ, we would probably be tempted to think about God as a nationalist, or you might think of him as just preferring one religion to the exclusion of all the others. And that he wants us to forcefully call all the nations to conversion to this one religion before his will can be accomplished. You know, I mean, there are people who think of him like that too, because they don't have a Christ with them, redeeming even rejection and opposition and encouraging them to accept the fact that there will always be people who think a little differently. The other thing we might do if we didn't have Christ with us, filling us with confidence that everything can be redeemed and that in some mysterious way God can work even through the cross, we might prefer not to think about God as Father at all, but merely like, as a philosophy or, or a kind of impersonal energy or even the way a lot of the old natural religions did, to think of him as the greatest being among all the beings and that even the devil is just another being, but happens to be malicious. Who's just against God as opposed to this thinking that Christ makes possible, which is Father, you are mysterious. We also know that you have created all the peoples of the world and you love everyone, right like you love your creation. And that the world is good because you are good and you created good. But that is we who have been deceived into distrusting you and constantly redefining reality and being so insistent as to say that we know what makes for true worth and true value, or that we know what true worship is and that we know what real rest is. We're so self assured that we lose sight of having been created by you and belonging to you and destined to be with you forever. But you have sent us your Son, Jesus, who in some mysterious way, by accepting the cross and taking the lowest place, allowing himself to be born in poverty and even to be baptized, so as to associate himself radically with our sinful condition and our need for grace to fulfill all righteousness. Unbelievable. To think that your humiliation, Lord, is your greatest attribute and your exaltation, the mercy that you show us in the way that you seek the lowest place to lift up the lowly. If Christ were not revealing that to us, we would think it irreverent to imagine that of you. You know? You know, like when the Jews and the Muslims, for example, have a hard time forgiving one another in the Holy Land right now, it's kind of understandable because I think both sides are afraid to offend God. They know he is perfectly just and he is perfectly righteous. And they're right, he is. But they also don't know the Son who has taken upon Himself the sins of the world and died for us on the cross. They don't know that God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of His Son, has reconciled the world to Himself and then poured out the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins. If they knew that, then perhaps through the ministry of the Church, they would know pardon and peace which comes to us from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. All right, as always, wish you guys a peaceful and prayerful week. God bless.