In January, my seminary classmates and I visited the Parisian church where St. Vincent de Paul is entombed. As you can see in the above photograph, St. Vincent's tomb is just under the large arch on the right, topped with two angels and a statue of the Saint of Charity.
When I exited the church to get back on the rainy streets of Paris that morning, I noticed some food neatly placed on the steps of the church entry-way. Why is that food there? I wondered.
Saint Vincent was born to a poor family who sent him off to seminary at the age of 15, selling some of their livestock to pay for his schooling. Becoming a priest in France in the 17th century would mean benefices for your family and a really good quality of life, especially compared with the peasant class from which he came. But Vincent would not settle for worldly riches.
While returning home from selling a benefice as a newly ordained priest, St. Vincent's ship was overrun by pirates, and the 20-something year old priest was sold into slavery. For the next few years Vincent worked in foreign lands, before his third owner was convinced by this slave's conversations concerning God and by Vincent's holiness of life that the owner should return Vincent to his home country where he would again take up ministry as a priest.
St. Vincent, because of his intellectual and spiritual gifts began teaching the children of noble families in academics and religion and giving conferences on the life of discipleship to adults and to other priests. While this might set a priest of his time up for wealth and prominent roles in the Church, St. Vincent rejected worldliness and aimed for personal poverty, the formation of other priests in holiness, and life-long, radical service to the poor.
About two years ago, I attended a meeting of the St. Vincent de Paul Society at Resurrection Parish in Evansville. A small collection was taken for the poor as we began the meeting, and while small in size, that collection would not have taken place in 2015 had it not been for the Saint who lived an inspiringly faithful life in the early 1600's.
Today there are societies of St. Vincent de Paul dotting the globe; groups of people who have taken this man's name as their own as they serve those who are in need. Men and women gather for meetings in parishes in St. Vincent's city of ministry (Paris) but also in places like Evansville, Indiana, because St. Vincent chose the standard of the Gospel over the delights of the world. His example shows us that holiness can be found and that it is worth it.
In January 2015, I got to visit St. Vincent's tomb in Paris. Why did I see food left on the step of the church when I walked out of that small church? Because even after the great work this Saint did in his day--and the great work that is carried out every day and in every place--some poor person will still come seeking the man who gave everything away, and when that person comes looking for St. Vincent de Paul, he or she will still find the Saint giving to those in need... giving through the spiritual sons and daughters St. Vincent has inspired.
A friend of mine shared an article published on Huffington Post about a cultural understanding of pornography as a 'sophisticated pass-time for adults'. It has been a while since my last post concerning the sensitive topic, and since pornography has become such a widespread plague, I thought I would share one section of the article.
The brain is designed in such a way to respond to sexual stimulation. Surges of dopamine are released during a sexual encounter—and yes, also pornographic encounters—giving the person a sharp sense of focus and an awareness of sexual craving. Dopamine helps to lay down memories in the brain, so the next time a man or woman is in the mood, the brain remembers where to return to experience the same pleasure: whether that be a loving spouse or the laptop in the den.
However, scientists are now seeing that continued exposure to porn gives the brain an unnatural high—something it literally isn’t wired to handle—and the brain eventually fatigues.
Anatomy and physiology instructor Gary Wilson notes this is the same pattern noticed when drugs are abused: the brain becomes desensitized. More of the drug or harder drugs are needed to get the same high, and the downward spiral begins. Wilson says this brings about significant changes in the brain—both for drug abusers and porn users.
One of those changes is the erosion of the prefrontal cortex—that all-important center of executive control. Dr. Donald Hilton, a neurosurgeon, shared what scientists are seeing in their research:
“A study on cocaine addiction published in 2002 shows volume loss, or shrinkage, in several areas of the brain, particularly the frontal control areas. A study from 2004 shows very similar results for methamphetamine. But…we expect drugs to damage the brain, so these studies don’t really surprise us.
Consider, though, a natural addiction, such as overeating leading to obesity. You might be surprised to learn that a study published in 2006 showed shrinkage in the frontal lobes in obesity very similar to that found in the cocaine and methamphetamine studies.
And a study published in 2007 of persons exhibiting severe sexual addiction produced almost identical results to the cocaine, methamphetamine, and obesity studies.
So we have four studies, two drug and two natural addiction studies, all done in different academic institutions by different research teams, and published over a five-year period in four different peer-reviewed scientific journals. And all four studies show that addictions physically affect the frontal lobes of the brain.”
When the frontal lobes of the brain are weakened, when the craving for porn hits, there is very little willpower present to regulate the desire. Neuroscientists call this problem hypofrontality, where the person slowly loses impulse control and the mastery of his or her passions.
The point is this: The very thing in the brain that is the mark of adulthood and maturity is the thing that is eroded as we view more porn. It is as if the brain is reverting, becoming more childlike.
Whether you have or continue to struggle with pornography, or whether you are a parent who needs to talk with your children about the dangers of this "new drug," you can read what the Catholic bishops of the USA want us to hear. Click this link; pages 16-18 are especially helpful.
If you want to know more about what pornography can do and how to find help, visit fightthenewdrug.com
Today's Gospel seems confusing at first read. Is Jesus commending a manager who deceives him? Why doesn’t the Master of the dishonest steward punish the steward? Why do we need to make friends with dishonest wealth? What is Jesus trying to tell us by this story?
The key here is the audience.
This parable continues after the parables we heard a week ago. Last weekend, Jesus spoke about a lost sheep and coin, and about a prodigal son and jealous older brother. His audience for those parables were “tax collectors, sinners," "Pharisees, and scribes.” Jesus was preaching the loving shepherd, coin-owner and father to wayward children of God. In essence, Jesus proclaimed, "Come home! The Father is looking for you and will call all of his friends and neighbors together to celebrate your return!" To the Pharisees and scribes Jesus issued something of a warning: "Don't be like that older brother in the third parable. Yes, you have been in the household of God all along, but now your 'younger brothers' are returning home. Don't be like that older brother who won't come inside. Celebrate with me and with these who were lost and have been found!"
Understanding the audience was crucial in understanding the parables last week.
Today we hear the fourth parable in this series. If there wasn't a week between our hearing of these Gospel stories, we would grasp more readily what Jesus is doing here. Having just preached to the lost and to those who might continue to hold expectations over the lost, he now says today's parable "to his disciples."
These parables follow one after the next. Jesus shared the first three with sinners, “the lost.” This parable he shares with “his disciples.” In fact, I think this parable--not the previous three--is appropriate for most of us, because we are not generally “lost.” The first three aren’t particularly pointed to push us in our lives of faith. Rather, we are disciples, just like those Jesus turned to.
Here's the parable: a steward is caught squandering his master’s wealth. After the master discovers this mismanagement, and he demands an account of the steward’s actions. This causes the steward to stop and realize what he has done. Then, this steward calls the master’s clients, those who farm the master’s property, to come and bring their contracts. The steward quickly rewrites each contract for less than it was before. In essence, the steward responds to his being caught squandering by more squandering! Regardless, the master does not cast the servant into jail and restore the higher amounts owed by his own clients; that would really make his tenants angry! Rather, he commends the steward for acting prudently based upon his visitation.
The point of the parable is how the master's visit incites more prudent action on the part of the steward, Jesus, the Master, has turned to his disciples to let them know that simply coming home again or being found is not the end of following him. No! You must now steward the mercy, richness and love you have been given.
Our material possessions are for stewarding, for using to a proper end. Every time we eat more food than we need, we squander. And a poor family who could have received canned goods may go hungry. Every time we purchase another blouse or new cap when we don’t wear the one we bought a month or year ago, we “steal” from an unemployed person who cannot afford professional clothing required to win a job interview, or we steal from a classmate who cannot purchase new shoes so the other students will stop poking fun at them in the hallways at school.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t not celebrate graduations and weddings and birthdays with great feasts. And I’m not saying we should avoid dressing nicely. But how much food do we throw out because we didn’t eat it in time? How many times have we bought clothes or other things we hardly use?
But I do not think the Master only looks at our material possessions. Disciples also have a duty to steward spiritual richness.
Every time we avoid making the Sign of the Cross at lunch in public, we squander a moment of witness to a world who needs more signs of faith.
Every time we hold our tongue instead of speaking out against immoral talk or behavior in the work place, in our high school hallways, or in our own homes, we squander a chance to teach another a better way to live.
Every time we choose excessive entertainment and unhealthy self-pleasure over service and prayer, we squander a chance to become the person and the community God is desperate for us to be.
The lost don’t need this kind of demanding call. Jesus' disciples do. And we do, as well.
These parables from Luke chapters 15 & 16 call each person from where they are in life: the sinner to come home to a merciful Father; the self-righteous to welcome the lost with joy; and disciples to reach out and "make friends" with all peoples, that when wealth fails and this world ends and our Master makes his visit, we might render the account of one who has been faithful.
My homily from September 4 audio link: In
Luke’s Gospel today, we read that “great crowds” are now following Jesus. It’s
no longer the handful of fisherman he called about ten chapters earlier in the
Gospel—maybe a few months or a year earlier in real time. But unlike many preachers or
teachers or politicians, when numbers increase, the message doesn’t get more
shallow or bland. Jesus continues to proclaim the truth.
Here’s
what Jesus says:
If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost…?
In the same way,
anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.
These
aren’t light words. Actually, these are really hard to hear. "Great crowds" have traveled with Jesus, listening
to messages of love, blessedness, renunciation, a new way, truth and life. And today
Jesus tells them to take a serious look at the demands of discipleship. He wants them to know and be prepared for what is coming.
Some
of the people in the crowd might have thought to themselves, “Renouncing my
positions of honor or giving up my wealth…I don’t know about that, but this
message today, 'hate my wife (or husband)', now that I can do!”
Seriously,
though, to think that Jesus actually wants us to “hate”—to cut off or be
mean-spirited toward our family or ourselves is incongruent with all
of his teachings on love. The point is to “hate”, or to be totally
care-less toward anything else than following God alone—to
love God more than everything else. More than our wealth, comfort, our plans, power, the esteem of
others. More than our relationships, and more
than what people will write or say about us or to us in this life or after we
have passed from it.
From the Mass of St. Teresa's canonization
Today
in Rome, our Church receives her newest Saint. Mother Teresa of Kolkata becomes
Saint Teresa of Kolkata. As a child, I remember seeing this little nun on TV,
dressed in blue and white milling about the dirty streets of Calcutta or speaking with such humility at important gatherings. I remember her very short stature, her pure smile, her wrinkly hands and
face.
Even years
before this holy Catholic nun died, Mother Teresa was already considered a
saint. Everything about her life stood as a profound witness to what she
believed: that whatever we do to the
least of our brothers and sisters, we do to Christ. And the stories of her life are many.
A
reporter once asked if she could come visit Mother Teresa in her home for the
dying in India to do an interview, and once the reporter arrived, she followed
Mother Teresa around while this little nun continued to work with the poorest
of the poor. At one point, Mother Teresa was picking maggots and bugs out of a
large sore on a man’s shoulder when the reporter just couldn’t take it any
longer.
The reporter
said, “You know, I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars!”
Mother
Teresa turned and replied, “I wouldn’t do it for a million dollars either.” And this now-Saint turned back to this man and continued doing her work for love of Christ alone.
Another
story goes like this: Mother Teresa found a starving child in the streets, and
took him into a bakery. After begging the baker for some bread for the hungry
boy, the baker spat in her face. Saint Teresa paused, wiped her face, then
looked back at the baker and said, “Thank you for that gift to me. Now, may I
have some bread for this child?”
A
final story… On February 3, 1994, Mother Teresa was invited to speak at the
National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. Seated across he stage
were revered pastors and politicians, inclduing Mr. & Mrs. Bill Clinton,
as well as Mr. & Mrs. Al Gore—the President and Vice President at
the time. The room with filled with great crowds of people, powerful people,
people who had traveled to see these speakers, much like the crowds had
traveled to hear Jesus in Luke’s Gospel.
Mother Teresa discussed peace and the need to love. Barely visible from behind the two large microphones and
wedged, dead-center on a stage in a country where abortion is legal and feet away from pro-choice/pro-abortion politicians, Mother
Teresa said:
I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is
abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the
innocent child, murder by the mother herself.
And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how
can we tell other people not to kill one another? [...] Jesus gave even His
life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped
to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to
respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must
also give until it hurts…
Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to
love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest
destroyer of love and peace is abortion.1
Hear her speak the above words at 13:25
I can’t
imagine how hard it was to decide to say these words in that setting. But Saint
Teresa of Calcutta knew the demands of Christ. She knew that following him,
that “being his disciple” meant “carrying her own cross.” I am certain she sat
and “calculated the cost” as she penned these words and prepared to stand
before so many who might disdain her, and yet she accepted and proclaimed the truth anyway.
We can
imagine that the radical discipleship of Saint Teresa of Calcutta came with
many costs: personal comfort, certain freedoms, constant tiredness… but we may
not realize all of the demands of discipleship this Saint accepted.
When I
Googled “Mother Teresa canonization” to read stories about her and get
information about the celebration happening in Rome, to my surprise, I found headlines like: “Mother Teresa’s
Canonization: Controversy Mars Nun’s Work”2 and stories about her that
question whether Mother Teresa’s Order does their ministry the right way, citing
that their lack of resources causes them to have substandard medical practices in
the gutters and slums. One author even labeled her as “a fanatic, a
fundamentalist, and a fraud.”3
It’s
hard for me to imagine. Mother Teresa spent 50 years helping people who were dying in the streets, and yet persecutions and criticisms remain 20 years after her passing. Even as she is named a Saint! These are the crosses that Jesus spoke to the crowds about. These are the demands of following Christ.
Hearing this Gospel and celebrating our newest Saint reminds us that
we may not always be greeted by people who like what we do. In fact, we may be
met with hostility, questions, or accusations. Sometimes, living the Christian life--living as Catholics--means being
figuratively or literally spat upon for embracing the teachings of Christ and
His Church. And I don’t need to tell you which teachings are unpopular. Though we may have given into pressure to relinquish the Truth in the past, today we are given a summons by Christ and a powerful witness by Saint Teresa to proclaim the Gospel.
Saint Teresa carried her crosses, and her strikingly powerful witness to joy reminds us that our duty isn’t to the demands of the world, but to the
demands of following Christ. Demands that can one day make us Saints.
