The great
thing about living with other priests, serving with deacons, and in our case
having the blessing of a seminarian living with us who is in the thick of his
theological studies opens the door for many interesting and challenging
discussions, ranging from hot button issues such as reforming the annulment-divorce
process to asking, “Who is God?” I love
these types of discussions, I always have.
I can remember hanging out with the boys from Fairview when we were
teenagers and sometimes “religious” stuff would be discussed and I always took
the lead, I guess it was in me, to be a priest though not realizing it at the
time. My friends would come to me with
Bible questions, religious questions, philosophical ones, etc. The whole time I was thinking about marriage
and making coaching my career.
Interesting how God has different plans. Anyway, back to some of the challenging “stuff” in our day.
Just the
other day we had a discussion about heaven and hell, how hell is a backwards
movement from God and heaven a forward movement towards God. More importantly, for our discussion we
asked, “Why do some preach and or teach from “hell’s” point of view. For instance there are those who preach about
black and white when it comes to morality, i.e. every moral dilemma can be
answered and either you choose virtue or vice.
Moral dilemmas have all been defined by St. Thomas Aquinas and now we
know beyond a shadow of a doubt if you committed a mortal sin or not. Trust me, I am a big fan of St. Thomas and
you don’t get much better than him except for a couple of others. However, that kind of thinking is not from
the Gospel nor is it based on anything the Church Fathers taught. St. Thomas himself never taught anything like
that. It is true that I may know if I
committed a mortal sin and mortal sins there are, but you can never know if I
did or not, unless I tell you and you take me at my word. It is the job of the priest to help a person
discern what is venial and mortal, but even in that discernment the person was
not sure therefore the sin was not mortal but may be so
afterwards since the person now has knowledge. Nevertheless that kind of
teaching is not meant to be “fear based” i.e. you better get to mass otherwise
you are under the pain of mortal sin. That
kind of teaching is fear driven, not based on relationship, one that starts
with rules instead of persons.
Fear tactics
never work people naturally rebel. Tell
a child you can’t have a twinkie and what will they do they will take one
behind your back. Tell a young person
you can’t drink until your twenty-one and 99% of them will drink. However, when a person is invited into
relationship and knows they are loved they respond differently. I am not saying we are not to have rules,
there has to be regulation in all aspects of life, but that is only to keep us
in check, it’s not the beginning point or the end point, that is a person and
His name is Jesus Christ.
Telling
people about sins, rules, hell, etc. must be done in its proper context and
done with pastoral wisdom. Why not begin
with the man from Nazareth who only had TWO rules, “Love the Lord Your God with
your whole heart, with all your strength, and all your mind, and the second is
like it, Love your neighbor as yourself, everything else flows from these two
commandments.” We know have over 2,000
rules in Canon Law. Rules and laws have their
purpose, to teach us when we are within the boundaries of right and wrong, if
those rules are used for any other purpose then the rules have become
harmful. “Woe to you, teachers of the
law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices--mint, dill
and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the
law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without
neglecting the former.” Jesus is referring to the Spirit of the Law, taking
into account all the circumstances involved in a person’s life.
Are we not
supposed to preach about a Gospel that invites people to relationship with
Jesus? Or are we supposed to be catechizing
about rules and making sure we tell people “make sure you do this and don’t do
that otherwise you are under the pain of mortal sin and you can lose your soul!”
Jesus died
in order to win us, to take us to Himself.
Either you think He loses more than He wins because you believe more
people go to hell than heaven, that is also against Scripture since, God “…
wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 1 Tim
2:4. I know it is still undetermined,
but our desire should be God’s desire? Shouldn’t we
as Christians lift one another up, remind each other of the promises Jesus has
made to us, how God has forgiven even the worst of sinners, murderers,
adulterers, fornicators, perjurers, liars, cheaters, tyrants, addicts of all kinds,
even people who left the Church? Shouldn't we begin with heaven and relationship with Christ our Lord? I think we should because then and only then
do the rules make sense and we preach rules as a barometer between virtue and
vice not whether one is saved or not, nor if it is the barometer in our
relationship with Jesus. Do parents stop
loving their children when they make awful mistakes and commit terrible
sins? Let me be clear, a person can
choose hell by not wanting repentance or refusal to bend the knee, if you will,
to God, that possibility exists and even then God still loves them but respects
their own choice, but we are spending too much time there and way too much time
on the rules.
Let me end
this with St. Paul’s understanding of the promise that Jesus has made to all
who come to know and love Him. “For I am
already being poured out like a libation, and the time of my departure is at
hand. I have competed well; I have
finished the race; I have kept the faith. From now on the crown of
righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the just judge, will award to me on
that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his
appearance.” 2 Tim 4:6-8 This longing
for his appearance is not just in the 2nd coming but Jesus’
appearance to us each every day, an appearance in the heart that transforms and
that elevates towards God, which is an upward and forward movement towards
heaven and not backwards like those who still live behind the law and the
rules. FJ
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