Monday, August 15, 2011
"That’s How I Treat All My Friends"
The episode in this morning’s Gospel – the meeting of Our Lord with the Canaanite woman – puts me in mind of another conversation Our Lord had with another woman - with St. Teresa of Jesus – Teresa of Avila. There are several versions of this famed conversation, including one involving Teresa’s having fallen into a puddle of mud. But the one I like the best focuses on St. Teresa’s life in her religious community. Teresa was a Carmelite; she was also a mystic; she was sometime in such metaphysical, transcendental, communion and conversation with Our Lord that others at times observed her to be levitating, especially during the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Now one might think that those fellow sisters, seeing this miraculous occurrence, would have been edified, and perhaps even perceived and even used it as an actual grace sent by God for themselves. And perhaps some did, but others of her sisters evidently did not, instead accusing Teresa of all kinds of mischief; some even saying she was in league with the devil. Much of this accusation took the form of backbiting and gossip; does this at all sound familiar?—gossip was not an invention of the 20th or the 21st centuries. Finally Teresa had had enough, and so, in one of her mystical conversations with Her Best Friend Our Lord, she complained…Do You see how they all treat me. Why do You allow it? Came the answer…Teresa, that’s how I treat all My friends….It’s no wonder You have so few, Teresa replied.
Imagine having the kind of closeness, that deep friendship, the genuine intimacy with Our Lord, that you could say that to Him and get away with it. Yet that is precisely what Our Lord wants for each of us. He doesn’t want us to be strangers, or just acquaintances, or even just on good terms; He wants to be our Best Friend - yours and mine.
The woman in the Gospel this morning is a Canaanite. St. Matthew says Our Lord and his disciples had withdrawn to the region of Tyre and Sidon. This is the only time in the Gospels that speak of Jesus coming close to leaving the borders of the Holy Land. Tyre and Sidon still exist today; they are in Lebanon, north of Israel, and so going beyond the boundaries of the Holy Land is quite significant in Our Lord’s ministry. And in the Bible, over the centuries, the Canaanites are cast in a very bad light. Among their false gods and goddesses were Baal (who was reduced to a laughingstock by the prophet Elijah) and Astarte; the Canaanites practice fertility rites, child sacrifice, and many other abominations. The Book of Leviticus in the Old Testament declares about them… The land itself vomits out its inhabitants…. This helps to explain both Our Lord’s initial and protracted coolness and the disgust of the apostles (…Send her away, Lord….). Yet she calls Our Lord…Son of David…, perceiving in Him His power to cure her daughter of her demonic possession. Her initial approach to Our Lord shows us that God will offer His sufficient grace to everyone, no matter whom, where, or when–even to this daughter of pagan gods, goddesses, and multiple abominations. And she takes that initial actual grace from God in hand, and she persists in it, against all obstacles (even the sting of being referred to as a…dog…). She turns even that around and tells Our Lord that there are…dogs… and then there are…dogs…–there are the unclean scavengers who roam through the garbage, and then there are the domesticated house animals that lie near the dinner tables of the children of Israel. She takes that little initial actual grace and persists in it until it has the effect she desires. One might imagine Our Lord with a look of satisfaction–even perhaps a slight grin–as He tells her…O woman, great is thy faith. Let it be done for you as you wish….
God gives each one created in His image and likeness–which is to say every person, including each one of us–that same grace. It is always there; we don’t need to ask for it. Our Lord wants to be the Best Friend we have–and He is the Best Friend any of us could ever have. But we must persist in that friendship so that grace will have the desired effect in us. But it would seem that, today—in our own day and age—too many Catholics do not have friendship with Our Lord and, even worse, many either have little interest in that kind of relation with Christ or—worst of all—many do not know how to go about allowing Our Lord to be their best friend. They simply do not know how to persist in the life of grace—in God’s life available to every man. This lack—of divine friendship, of interest in divine friendship, of awareness of how to gain an intimate friendship with Our Divine Lord—manifests itself in all kinds of ways today. The large number of Catholics who are so casual about the practice of the Faith—not faithful to Sunday Mass, never going to confession, hardly ever praying; or, once in church, do not genuflect because they have no understanding of toward Whom and toward Where their genuflection should be placed; those who dress inappropriately for Mass; those who see little difference between a church and an amphitheatre; those who during the homily spend a lot of time conversing, texting, or reading the parish bulletin. Or those Catholic politicians of either political party who try to live spiritually schizophrenic lives, by claiming personal opposition to, but yet consistently voting for, abortion, same-sex marriage, contraceptive permissiveness for school-aged children, assisted suicide, or any of the other anti-life issues that is embraced by so much of our culture. These behaviors indicate a deep misunderstanding of what it means to be Catholic, coupled with a tendency to take one’s cues from the prevailing ideas of the culture rather than from the Church herself. For the Church teaches infallibly in matters of faith and morals (commonly called Catholic doctrine, or when formally proclaimed as such, Catholic dogma). Catholic doctrine is guaranteed by God Himself; but when those claiming to be Catholic and claiming to understand what that means assert that doctrine is a matter of opinion, while specific social strategies can be dogmatically approved or rejected, then we are no longer dealing with a Catholic mind, and that person can never have a truly intimate relation in the life of divine grace with Our Lord, because He tells us that He Himself is the Truth. The Catholic whose mind and attachments are primarily formed by the world will then relativize doctrine and absolutize their own opinions, rather than submit to all that the Church teaches must be held as true. They can then never know the Truth Which is Christ; not knowing Him Who is Truth Itself, they can not have an intimate relation with Him.
Likewise, a similar obstacle to intimacy with Our Lord can occur in one’s evaluation of the Church herself, for the Church has both human and Divine elements, both fallible and infallible. For example, if a Catholic is willing to cooperate with grace, Catholic doctrine and the sacraments infallibly then engender holiness; however, the Church’s administrative programs bear fruit only according to their prudential matching of the right action to the right situation, and the behavior of individual churchmen bears fruit according to their own individual personal conformity with Christ. For this reason, when a Catholic says…I am leaving the Church—especially because of this Church teaching, or because Father or Bishop So-and-so did this or that—and so they in effect say…I don’t need the Church to have intimacy or friendship with Christ…because they dislike or react negatively to particular programs and policies or to things that particular churchmen have done, they can never have an intimate friendship with Our Lord, because Our Lord gave us the Church as the sole means of intimate friendship with Himself. A Catholic reacts with a Catholic mindset only if he distinguishes such human things as bad administrative decisions or sinful churchmen from the essential holiness of the Church herself. The tendency to dismiss the Church because, in this or that era, the actions of some Church leaders were either immoral or ill-suited to the needs of the time, is to characterize incorrectly the Church by her human element. This tendency to judge the Church by her human and fallible elements, which are very frequently alleged as reasons for rejecting her infallible teachings, is simply another example of a mind and heart formed not by Christ but by the world—today by instruments like The New York Times. And a mind and heart formed by the world (formed by the Times or The Chicago Tribune) can never be one in mind and heart with Our Lord, Who gives us not the world but the Church as our means of salvation.
And recall that the Canaanite woman came to Our Lord not for herself but for the healing of her daughter. So in our own friendship with Our Lord, we must persist especially in hope and in prayer for those who may have lost their own friendship with Christ; He desires to be their Best Friend too. Intimacy with Christ—having Our Lord as our best friend—cannot ever mean that we exclude others from the relation we have with Our Lord. Again, Our Lord gave us the Church as His chosen means of, not only my salvation or your salvation, but of the salvation of everyone. To speak of Jesus and me to the exclusion of anyone else automatically will exclude Jesus Himself, Who told us over and over again to see Him and find Him in the faces of both our neighbor and the stranger, in both our loved ones and our enemies. Very likely, as in the case of St. Teresa of Jesus, if we face sufferings, especially at the hands of those who should be closest to us, it means our friendship with Our Lord is growing; recall His words to Teresa…I treat all my friends that way…. And if we truly persist in grace by prayer, by our communion with the Church and especially by faithful reception of the sacraments, Our Lord will surely remain our Best Friend; even if, as St. Teresa said…it’s no wonder you have so few…; even if He is the only Friend we have, He really is the only Friend any of us needs absolutely, because He is, always and only, the best.
The Twentieth Sunday of the Year
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