St. Thomas More Chicago

Father Robert Behnke

The Third Sunday of Lent, March 27, 2011
I can’t begin to imagine what all those many, many people who believe everyone automatically goes to heaven do with this episode in the Gospel, in which Our Lord not only casts outs demons and speaks about devils and demons, but speaks about …the last state of that man becomes worse than the first…, referring to a man whose house is invaded by seven times the additional unclean spirit initially present.  And Our Lord is quite clear and to the point when He sums up His teaching on casting out demons and devils by stating…He who is not with Me is against Me…; Our Lord’s meaning and intention seems clear—it is possible for people to be against Our Lord.  This may seem obvious to you and to me, but I don’t think that it is so obvious to everyone today, judging from some of the actions of especially those who profess belief in Christ—and I believe that lack of belief in hell is responsible for just about every problem and serious difficulty in the life of the Church today.
 A few Sundays ago, I spoke about my experience of having people say, both inside and outside of the confessional, say something like …I really don’t have anything to confess….  Of course those who say such things outside of the confessional usually see no need to place themselves inside of the confessional.  And then there are those funerals—those funerals that are imitations of either a canonization or a roast—or both.  Underlying all this, of course, is a denial of free will, a belief that sufficient grace and efficacious grace are always one and the same.  But if you and I don’t have free will—if we are unable to choose freely between the good and the bad—then why are we here, here in this place?  How then did we get here right now?  Were we driven by some irresistible urge to make the journey to St. Thomas More this morning?  And without free will, then I guess heaven would be automatic for everyone; but then why did God give us those Ten Commandments?  Why did Our Lord talk so much about sin, the devil, penance, demons, forgiveness?  Why especially did He choose to die?  From what exactly can His death save us?  Why did He give us Himself in the Blessed Sacrament, if even without It, everyone will get to heaven anyway.  Years ago, in speaking to a then young adult whom I still know very well, about his lack of attendance at Sunday Mass on most Sundays, I said that I feared for his eternal damnation.  Because I cared what could happen to him, I told him the truth.  He became very upset—but not because he feared eternity in hell, but because I could speculate that he could land up there.  He was convinced hell could not happen to him, so he was genuinely insulted and quite angry with me.  I still can’t imagine what runs through the minds and hearts and souls of those who say to themselves God will understand my little un-repented habits of gossip, or lies, or stealing, or marital infidelity, or pride, or murder either within the womb or after birth, or on-again off-again attendance at Mass, because all those little un-repented actions reveal our use and misuse of the freedom we each have from God.  And these are not atheists about whom I am speaking; these are people who profess a belief in the Christian God!  To believe that God automatically will send everyone to heaven is to believe that God negates or somehow interferes with His gift of free will—which means God does something against His nature as God—which is something God cannot do.  God cannot act against His nature as God; if He did, He would not be God.

This past week, I came across this little piece on universalism, which is the belief that God does save everybody, that God does indeed bring all souls to heaven, that no matter what one does on earth, he will automatically go to heaven when he dies.  The piece, as you will quickly see, is heavily laden with sarcasm—which is probably what makes it so appealing to me:  It is titled:  A Non-judgmental Response to Universalism from Gentle Christ-followers:

An armed intruder under the cover of darkness slips into a child’s bedroom and stands over the child’s bed. The intruder, however, is not quite as stealthy as he’d hoped and he wakes the child’s parents sleeping in the next room. Dad and mom rush in to find their child slung over the man’s shoulders and the man preparing to exit through the window. The father pipes up, ‘Why, hello there. Welcome to our home!’  The intruder, startled, freezes in his tracks.  ‘Can we help you?’ the mother inquires.  ‘Well,’ says the puzzled man, ‘I was just about to take your child for a nice little drive.’  ‘Oh, that’s rather kind of you’ answers the father, ‘You know, traditionally, it has been expected that guests come in through the door and, I suppose, in the past parents have tended to look down on this sort of thing but you seem to be a nice man and we’re a nice family so why not.  Have a great time but please be sure to have back him back in time for school in the morning.’ ‘Er, I will’ says the intruder as he steps back out through the open window carrying the child, ‘I will.’  ‘What a nice man’ the child’s mother says as they turn back toward their bedroom.  ‘And I’m so proud that you welcomed him in such an open non-judgmental way.  Not many fathers would’ve shown that kind of Christ-like maturity.’  ‘Thank you dear. I couldn't help but think the same thing.  If only more families were as open to new experiences as we are.’
The first written response following this blog-piece stated …Mr. Intruder; meet Mr. Twelve-gauge….
Some, both in the time of Our Lord and in our own time, think that God…will understand and so overlook...,” or, worse, that…God does not count the actions of the human heart and the human will against us…; in Our Lord’s time, that belief accounted for the profanation of the first court of the temple, the Court of the Gentiles, making it into a market place, believing that God both understood and accepted their un-repented sacrilege; the temple authorities forgot that God’s ways are God’s ways, not man’s.  God’s anger is real.  Our Lord demonstrated that by driving the merchants out of the temple.  Since God is immutable, unchangeable, God’s anger is no less real in our own time than it was then.  Last Friday afternoon I was stuck in traffic behind a van; on the van was a sticker that read …pro-faith, pro-family, pro-choice….  Having to follow that van for several miles with my eyes riveted on that sticker, until the van maneuvered away and I lost sight of it, gave me a little taste of what God’s anger must be like toward those who use their freedom to do what they wish, for what they feel is good for themselves, believing that God will…understand…that God will automatically bring everyone to heaven no matter what they have done.
The Church teaches with certainty God’s universal salvific will: God indeed wants everyone to be saved.  Likewise, the Church teaches that we cannot know with certainty if a particular individual ends up in hell; we know with certainty there are certain men and women in heaven—the canonized saints.  Who may or may not be in hell, we cannot know: God has not revealed that; the certain identity of souls who have died in mortal sin—that’s God’s business, not yours nor mine.  But God has revealed that every man has free will, that God does not take back that gift of free will nor will He interfere with it, and that the free and complete rejection of God that we call mortal sin, if not repented at death, will cause an eternity in hell.  I heard an interesting story also last week about how God uses people and circumstances to bring men to use their free will to move them to knowledge and love of Him.  As March is the month dedicated to St. Joseph, it seems especially appropriate today; this story
…describes one of those experiences that sometimes comes our way—a chance meeting which we might never have had if we'd been just a few minutes earlier or later, but something that ends up changing the course of everything in our lives.  Perhaps I should say that these things seemlike chance, but it's all part of God's wonderful plan for us. Here's the story….  I was a young Episcopal cleric just returned to Rhode Island from a stint of serving in the Anglican Diocese of Bristol, England.  The parish I had come to was middle-to-high: vestments, occasional incense, a few statues strategically placed.  There was a parishioner who wanted us to have a new statue of St. Joseph.  The old statue was small and not in terribly good shape.  I was deputized to find a new one, but there were a couple of requirements.  It had to be two feet tall and it had to be cheap.  The only solution was to go to a local religious goods store and look for something that might look half-way acceptable if the lights were dim.  I found one.  It wasn’t beautiful, but it didn’t look as though it had been dragged behind a truck either.  ‘Wrap it up and I’ll take it,’ I told the clerk.  ‘Sorry, sir, but this is the last one and we don’t have a box for it,’ was the reply.  A dilemma.  I was driving a Volkswagen, and the back seat was already fairly full with a child’s car seat and other assorted items.  The only option I could see was to stand it up in the passenger’s seat and strap the seat belt around it, which I did.  I was just closing the passenger door.  St. Joseph was safely strapped in, facing ram-rod straight ahead.  I heard a voice behind me.  ‘You might want to let him drive.’  I turned around to see a young priest about my age, with a grin on his face.  We exchanged quips about the statue with the seat belt, and then began to chat about other things.  We quickly discovered that my Episcopal parish and his Catholic parish were located fairly close to one another.  We seemed to click, we made lunch plans, and one of the most important friendships of my life began.  We got together regularly to talk.  It didn’t take long for our discussions to turn into question and answer sessions – me asking the questions, and him giving the answers.  I wanted to know about the Catholic faith.  And he told me.  He was always gentle in his answers, but he never watered down the truth.  Even if the issue was a difficult one, he always told me what the Church teaches.  I was grateful for that.  I would have resented it if I had discovered that he was tailoring what he said to make it fit what he might have thought I wanted to hear.  I learned Catholic truth, and when it was presented to me in its fullness and in its beauty, I knew I had to embrace it.  I believed it completely.  How grateful I always have been to St. Joseph.  Without saying a word, he helped bring me into the Catholic Church by introducing me to a faithful Catholic priest.  The statue may not have been very beautiful, but everything else in the story is.  Our parish has a St. Joseph Shrine, which is the partial fulfillment of a promise I made to the gentle Spouse of the Blessed Virgin and Foster-father of our Lord.  The full promise is that we will have a dedicated Chapel in his honor.  That will come, but meanwhile my gratitude for the prayers and guidance of St. Joseph are pretty-near boundless, and I've followed the advice given to me by the wonderful priest who befriended me, ‘You might want to let him drive.’
This Episcopal priest became first a Catholic, then a Catholic priest, and with about a dozen other former Episcopalians, founded the Anglican Use Catholic Church of Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio; today that Catholic parish has over 500 families and a school with several hundred children.  God used the combination of man’s free will and His divine will that all men be saved to enable this accomplishment that gives Him glory.  Without this one man’s free will used for God’s glory, not man’s glory, this wonderful Catholic parish would not exist.  God’s ways are not the ways of man.  God commands us to love our neighbor as ourselves; He never commands us to love everything our neighbor does out of a false sense of human respect, or toleration of evil, or kindness with no guts.  God is not forever mocked.  Remember the flood in the time of Noah, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the punishment of Israel for worshipping the golden calf, the lost tribes of Israel, the exile into Babylon, the rending of the temple veil from top to bottom.  Recall also all the holocausts of the 20th century; recall, especially, the holocaust of abortion, extending from the 2oth century into the 21st.  The hand of God’s anger is not forever withheld; God is not forever mocked.  If you don’t believe it, when you finally get the chance, ask one of those beaten and bruised money-changers thrown out of the temple by the God of love…by the God of tough love.

Fr. Robert Behnke