Sunday, March 17, 2024

Learning Obedience from What We Suffer

Stuart Scott
1965-2015

(Fifth Sunday of Lent (B): This homily was given on March 17, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Jeremiah 31:31-34; Psalm 51:3-15; Hebrews 5:7-9; John 12:20-33.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fifth Sunday of Lent 2024]

 

Stuart Scott was a sportscaster and anchor on the ESPN television network.  He was definitely a familiar face to anybody who watched SportsCenter on a regular basis a decade or so ago.

In 2007, he had what was supposed to be routine surgery to remove his appendix.  However later on, when the doctors tested the tissue they had removed during the operation, they discovered that it was cancerous.  For the next seven years Scott battled the disease courageously, and for the most part he continued to work at ESPN.  However, on January 4, 2015 he passed away from the cancer at the young age of 49, leaving behind a wife and two children.

But before he died he wrote a book—a book that was co-authored by a man named Larry Plath.  The book is entitled (appropriately enough), “Every Day I Fight.”

Now the reason I mention this today is because I saw Larry Plath interviewed on television not long after Stuart Scott’s death, and one of the things he said about Scott during that interview really struck me.  You know, it always strengthens my faith when I hear people in a secular environment echoing the truths of the Bible and our Catholic religion (especially when they do it without realizing that they’re doing it!).

And so it was here. 

In today’s second reading the author of the Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered.”

Well Larry Plath said something very similar about Stuart Scott with respect to his battle with cancer.  In fact Scott also said it himself.  He said that his suffering had taught him some very important lessons that he might not otherwise have learned in his life.

Let me quote now Larry Plath’s words in the interview.  He said:

There was an element of wisdom that came [to Stuart Scott].  He learned patience as a result of cancer.  I mean, that’s the paradox—right?  [Stuart] says in the book that the paradox is that cancer just might make you the man you always wanted to be.

The sportscaster who was interviewing Larry Plath responded to that remark by saying, “Unbelievable.”  I think he said that because he was well aware of the fact that many people in our world today just get angry and bitter when they experience a cross like cancer.  They rebel against God in the face of their pain, such that they actually end up learning “disobedience from what they suffer!”

And even when people do respond positively to their sufferings with a greater obedience to God, that obedience sometimes comes after a period of disobedience.  For example, how often have you seen people come back to the practice of their Catholic faith after somebody in their family dies?

It happens all the time.  These men and women are living lives of disobedience to God, but suddenly their suffering “wakes them up” (so to speak) spiritually.

And that’s great!  Praise God that they’ve seen the light.  They’ve learned obedience to the Third Commandment (“Keep holy the sabbath day”) through their suffering—and that’s wonderful!  We should rejoice whenever that kind of learning takes place.  Better late than never! 

But this is where we differ from Jesus.  When we sinful human beings learn obedience from what we suffer, we often learn it after some disobedience; whereas Jesus, because he was perfect, learned obedience through obedience—always!  In other words, in every situation of suffering in which he found himself (like the Garden of Gethsemane), he said the same thing: “Thy will be done.”

He never said, “My will be done.”

We see this illustrated beautifully in today’s gospel text when Jesus says (in reference to his upcoming passion and death), “I am troubled now.  Yet what should I say?  ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.  Father, glorify your name.”

“He learned obedience from what he suffered.”

What have you learned through your suffering?

That’s a good question to reflect on during this last full week of Lent.

I did that myself in preparation for this homily, and I came to realize that I’ve learned a lot of things—a lot of good things—through my experience of having Parkinson’s Disease—and then prostate cancer—and now multiple myeloma.  That doesn’t mean I’m happy that I’ve had these illnesses!  (Don’t misunderstand me here!)  It just means that I am aware of certain blessings that I’ve experienced in the midst of it all.  For example:

·        I’ve learned to be more empathetic (and hopefully more compassionate) in dealing with the sick and the elderly.

·         I’ve learned to rely on God more.

·         I’ve learned to put more trust in him.

·         I’ve learned to take the power of prayer more seriously (since I believe that I’m doing as well as I’m doing in large part because so many people—even some people I don’t know—are praying for me every day!).

·         I’ve learned how important it is to focus on what I have, not what I don’t have; and I’ve learned to be more grateful for the health and abilities that I do still possess.

·         I’ve learned once again not to put all my hopes in this earthly life, because this mortal life is very fragile (a lot more fragile than you think it is when you’re young and healthy).

·         And I’ve learned that God is in control, and that I am not (even in those areas of life where I always thought I was in control).

Those are just some of the positive lessons I’ve learned from the otherwise negative experience of having these illnesses.  And that has made me more obedient to the Lord.

At least sometimes it has.  Unfortunately I have had those moments when I’ve allowed things like anger and frustration and impatience to get in the way of my obedience.  Usually that happens when I’m trying to do something “really difficult” like getting dressed in the morning or turning the page of a book or cutting a piece of meat at dinner—all those fine motor activities that you never give a second thought to when you’re healthy, but which become really big issues when you have a neuro-muscular disorder like Parkinson’s.

My point in sharing this with you today is that learning obedience through suffering is an ongoing process—for all of us.

But it’s worth the effort.

As Stuart Scott made clear, the sufferings of this life do have the potential of changing us for the better.  They can make us, as he said, into the people we’ve always wanted to be.

For a Christian, that means they have the potential to help us become what Matthew Kelly calls, “the best possible versions of ourselves.”

Or, as the Church would say, “They have the potential to help us become saints!”

 

Sunday, March 10, 2024

The Wrath of God: What Exactly is It?


(Fourth Sunday of Lent (B)”: This homily was given on March 10, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23; Psalm 137:1-6; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fourth Sunday of Lent 2024]


Little 7-year-old Raymond gets into a fight with his sister and he purposely breaks one of her toys.  At that point his mother happens to come into the room and she sees what’s going on.  She says, “Raymond Nicholas, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.  Apologize to your sister right now!”

Little Raymond says, “No way.  I’m not apologizing to her.  She asked for it.  She got what she deserved.”

Raymond’s mother turns 8 shades of red and says, “Then go to your room!  Go to your room right now and you stay there for the rest of the day.  No TV; no radio; no stereo; you just sit there and think about what you’ve done, and why you need to apologize to your sister.”

Little Raymond gets upset and says, “But mom, I’m supposed to play football today with my friends.  They’re expecting me; I need to be there.  I want to be there!”

His mother says, “Too bad.  You should have thought of that before.  Go to your room.”

Little Raymond shouts out, “You’re bad!  You’re a bad mother.  You’re the meanest mother in the world.  You’re the meanest mother who ever lived!  You hate me!”

And he storms off to his room where he moans, and groans, and lives in utter agony for the rest of the day while all his friends happily play their football game.

Now before I go any further let me issue this very important clarification: the fact that the boy in this story happens to have my name is merely a coincidence.

I was always a perfect brother.

Just don’t tell my sister I said that; she might have a different opinion!

But in all seriousness, my brothers and sisters, the point I’m trying to make in telling this story is that if you understand the dynamics of it—in other words, if you understand what’s going on here between little Raymond Nicholas and his mother—you will understand what the Bible means when it speaks of the “wrath” of God.

This, of course, is a concept—an idea—that confuses many people.  And that’s understandable.  After all, St. John explicitly tells us in his first Letter that “God is love.”  Psalm 103 tells us that “the Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in kindness.”  Romans 8:38 says that “neither height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  In our second reading today from Ephesians 2 St. Paul says, “God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ.”  And finally in today’s gospel Jesus says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

These are just a few of the many Scripture verses that speak to us of God’s incredible, eternal love.

But there are also other passages of the Bible—like today’s first reading—that tell us of God’s “anger” and his “wrath”.

Listen again to the words of that reading:

Early and often did the Lord, the God of their fathers, 
send his messengers to them, 
for he had compassion on his people and his dwelling place.
But they mocked the messengers of God, 
despised his warnings, and scoffed at his prophets, 
until the ANGER of the Lord against his people was so inflamed 
that there was no remedy.
Their enemies burnt the house of God,
tore down the walls of Jerusalem, 
set all its palaces afire, 
and destroyed all its precious objects.
Those who escaped the sword were carried captive to Babylon, 
where they became servants of the king of the Chaldeans and his sons
until the kingdom of the Persians came to power.

How do we makes sense of this apparent contradiction?  Is our God a God of love or is he a God of wrath—or is he somehow a God of both?

But how can he be a God of both, since love and wrath appear to be mutually exclusive realities, diametrically opposed to one another?

Well, here’s where I think little 7-year-old Raymond Nicholas and his mother can help us.

In this regard, I would say that the words of St. John serve as a good starting point.  St. John tells us explicitly that “God is love”—all love, complete love, perfect love.

Okay, that’s great Fr. Ray.  But what about God’s wrath?  If God is pure, total, perfect, complete, 100% love, how does “wrath” fit into the picture? 

Well, very simply, the wrath of God is just the way that certain people experience his LOVE.

Yes, you heard me correctly: the “wrath of God” is the way that some people experience his love.

Specifically, people who defiantly and obstinately cling to their sins.

Think of little Raymond Nicholas.  He broke his sister’s toy and then he refused to repent and say he was sorry.  If had said he was sorry he would have been happy for the rest of the day playing football with his buddies at the local field.

But he said, “No way.  I’m not apologizing to her.  She asked for it.  She got what she deserved.”

And he ended up spending the rest of his day sulking in his room—alone.

So I guess that means his mother hated him.

No, not at all!  His mother loved him!  She loved him deeply.  She loved him more than he knew.  But because he stubbornly refused to repent of his sin, little Raymond EXPERIENCED THE LOVE OF HIS MOTHER AS WRATH!—which is why he responded to his punishment by shouting, “You’re bad!  You’re a bad mother.  You’re the meanest mother in the world.  You’re the meanest mother who ever lived!  You hate me!”

The Israelites in today’s first reading could very easily have related to the plight of poor little Raymond.  As we heard a few moments ago, they were defeated and carried off to captivity in Babylon because they stubbornly refused to repent of their idolatry—even though God, in his love, had sent them many prophets over the years to warn them about the consequences of their disobedience.

And so they, too, experienced love as “wrath”.  Their sentiments were captured perfectly in today’s responsorial psalm: “By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion.”

Now the good news is that little Raymond Nicholas eventually got out of his room, and God’s people eventually came home from Babylon.

That’s because in this life, we can always change for the better, such that we move from experiencing God’s love as wrath back to experiencing God’s love as love.

But there will be a moment—the moment when we take our final breath on this earth—when that kind of change will become impossible.  Which means that if we are still stubbornly clinging to our sins at the moment of our death, we will experience God’s love as wrath for all eternity.

In fact, that’s really an accurate description of what hell is.  Hell is where people experience God’s love as wrath—forever. That’s why repentance is so important—and why the sacrament of Confession is such a blessing.

Which leads to the obvious question: Have you made a good, thorough confession yet during this season of Lent?

And if not, what are you waiting for?

 

Sunday, March 03, 2024

Commandments, Consequences—and Confession


(Third Sunday of Lent (B): This homily was given on March 3, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19:8-11; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Third Sunday of Lent 2024]


One day a man was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman as he drove down a busy city street.  Suddenly, the traffic light just ahead of him turned yellow.  Realizing that it would be red by the time he actually got into the intersection, he stopped.  He made the right decision.  (I can’t say I always have in similar circumstances!—but he did.) 

Well the tailgating woman, who was obviously in a big hurry, wasn’t very happy.  She began honking her horn, screaming obscenities, and making obscene gestures (you can use your imagination to fill in the details there!).

All of a sudden, she heard a tap on her car window.  It was a policeman.  He told her to get out of the car and to put her hands up.

Then he took her to the local police station, where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and put into a holding cell.

Two hours later, the policeman came to get her.  He took her to the booking desk and gave her back her personal effects.  Then he said, “I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, Mrs. Jones.  But let me explain what happened.  I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, cursing and swearing uncontrollably, and making some not-so-nice gestures with your hands toward the man in the car in front of you.  At the same time, I noticed the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder on your vehicle, as well as the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bumper sticker, and the Christian fish emblem on the trunk.  Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car!”

That’s an old story, but it illustrates a timeless truth.  It shows that there is a close connection between COMMANDMENTS and CONSEQUENCES—a connection that many people today fail to recognize. 

Mrs. Jones violated the 2nd and the 5th commandments (since anger is at the root of killing), and she suffered several negative consequences in her experience with the local policeman.

In today’s first reading, Moses delivers to the people of Israel the Ten Commandments that he had received from God on Mt. Sinai.  Now it’s very important for us to understand what these ten directives are: they are the moral laws that GOD has built into the very framework of reality.  In that sense, they’re a lot like the physical laws of the universe: if you honor them, many good consequences will follow; if, on the other hand, you disobey them, you court disaster.  For example, if you decide to walk to the edge of a 1,000 foot cliff, and then take one giant step off the edge, you will not be able at that moment to determine the consequences of what you’ve done!  Reality will dictate the consequences to you.  You made the choice to do something foolish—you made the decision to violate one of the laws of nature—and now that law (the law of gravity) will take over and you will fall.  It’s a simple as that. 

You can’t drive your car into a brick wall going 70 miles an hour and then expect your car to be in showroom shape afterward.  It will be broken into a million pieces!  (And so, in all likelihood, will you!) 

You can’t drink lethal poison and expect to be in perfect physical health an hour later.  (You’ll be lucky to still be alive!)

If you violate the laws of the material universe, you can be sure that there will be negative consequences you’ll be forced to deal with.

So why do some people expect things to be entirely different in the moral and spiritual dimensions of reality?  Why do they think they can violate God’s MORAL laws with impunity?  Why do they think they can disobey his commandments without suffering any negative consequences in the process?

It’s impossible.

This, incidentally, is a not a complicated idea.  It’s a basic concept that even a small child can understand if he wants to (or if he’s forced to!).  Here’s a little story that illustrates the point.  Several years ago a woman from the parish went to visit her great nephew, who was then about 5 years-old.   The little boy spotted his aunt coming up the front walk toward the house.  He stuck his head out a window on the second floor and yelled to her, “I can’t come out of my room today.  I’ve got consequences.”

He understood—at 5 years-old!  He had done something wrong, and his parents were teaching him a very valuable lesson.

It’s the same lesson, incidentally, that C.S. Lewis taught the world in “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.”  As most of us know, in that story Edmund betrayed his 3 siblings, and violated the “Deep Magic”.  And what exactly was the Deep Magic?  Very simply, it was the MORAL LAW that Aslan and his Father (the Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea) had built into the magical world of Narnia.  Edmund violated one of the principles of that law, and the White Witch was well aware of the necessary consequence of that act: Edmund had to die!  So she demanded his blood.  And even Aslan had to agree that she was right in her demand.  As St. Paul said in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death.”

What really disturbs and worries me (and this is why I bring it up at this Mass) is the fact that so many people nowadays don’t seem to take this truth very seriously.

They scoff at the idea that there’s any intrinsic connection whatever between commandments and consequences.

Perhaps, in some places, that’s because those who have this attitude don’t know the Ten Commandments.  They couldn’t distinguish commandment 1 from commandment 8 or 9.  But I’m sure that’s not the case here.  I’m sure Fr. Paul has taught you well.  I‘m sure all of you know them by heart.  (Don’t worry, I won’t quiz you during the homily.)

But the question still remains, even if we know what they are: Do we really think that we can violate them without suffering any negative consequences in the process?

Do we really think that we can put other things before God, use his name as a curse word, miss Mass without good reason, disrespect our parents and others in authority, murder someone’s reputation, support evils like abortion and euthanasia, commit sins of impurity, steal, lie and covet—and not have it affect us (and those around us) in a negative way?

Are we living in a dreamworld?  If we haven’t done so already, it is time for us to wake up to reality!

Commandments and consequences—those two “c-words” and what they represent—cannot be separated.

Which brings us to another important “c-word”: confession!

In fact, to end my homily today I’ll put the 3 of them in one sentence (and if you forget everything else I’ve said today, try to remember this one line):

Confession helps to undo the consequences of violating the commandments.

Confession undoes the consequences (especially the ETERNAL CONSEQUENCES) of disobeying the commandments.

And that’s why we should go—frequently.

Do you?

 

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Life is a Process of ‘Letting go’

 

(Second Sunday of Lent (B): This homily was given on February 25, 2024 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Genesis 22:1-18; Psalm 116:10-19; Romans 8:31-34; Mark 9:2-10.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Second Sunday of Lent 2024]


An elderly woman from the parish went to see her orthopedic surgeon on a Friday morning.  She had been under his care—and homebound—for a few months after falling in her home and hurting her shoulder.  Well, happily, the doctor gave her a clean bill of health during that office visit, and she was looking forward to getting back to Sunday Mass and her normal routine.

But, unfortunately, shortly after she returned home that Friday, she tripped on a rug and fell again, this time breaking her pelvis and elbow!  The surgeon’s assistant later told me that when he received the call that this woman was in the emergency room at Westerly Hospital, he didn’t believe it.  He said to the nurse, “Oh no, that must be a mistake.  We just discharged her from our care a few hours ago.”

But, of course, it was not a mistake.  IT WAS LIFE!

For that elderly woman—and for each and every one of us—life is a process: a process of ‘letting go.’  Sooner or later, for example, we all have to ‘let go’ of many things.  We have to ‘let go’ of our physical health because of a fall—or because of Parkinson’s Disease or cancer or heart problems or something else. 

And it’s not easy.  Just ask that elderly woman!

We all have to ‘let go’ of loved ones when they die—which can be extremely hard if we’ve loved them deeply or had them in our lives for a really long time.  We have many funerals at St. Pius of parishioners who die in their late 80s or 90s.  The children of those parishioners are blessed to have had their parents in their lives for 60 or 70 years.  But that makes it all the more difficult for them to let go.

When people retire, they have to ‘let go’ of their work.  As we move on in life, we have to ‘let go’ of some of the recreational activities that brought us enjoyment in our earlier years.  We have to ‘let go’ of the control we’ve had over our daily activities.

Ultimately, we have to let go of what’s most precious to us on this earth.  Just like Abraham did.

In today’s first reading, we heard the famous story of how God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son, Isaac.  But we need to be clear about it: the test here was not, “Are you willing, Abraham, to kill your son for me?”—after all, we know that God never intended for Abraham to take his son’s life.

The test was about Abraham’s willingness to ‘let go’.  The Lord said to him, in effect, “Abraham, are you willing to let go of your son, Isaac?  He’s the child of the promise.  You waited 100 years to have him.  You love him deeply; you treasure him and the special bond you have with him more than anything else that you have in this life.  So, are you willing to let it all go?  Are you willing to let go of what’s most precious to you in this life and trust totally in me?”

We call Abraham “our father in faith” because he said yes—even though it had to have been the most difficult ‘yes’ he had ever said in his life.

In one way or another, we all face this very same test, don’t we?  Usually it involves someone we love.  But, unfortunately, not everyone responds like Abraham did.

As I was preparing for this homily, I thought of a scene from C.S. Lewis’ book, The Great Divorce—which, by the way, is not about marriage!

It’s a fictional book about an imaginary bus ride from hell to heaven.  All the people on the bus have the opportunity to go to heaven, but only if they ‘let go’ at some point on the journey.  First and foremost, of course, they have to be willing to let go of their sins thru repentance.  But they also have to be willing to let go of their attachments—their unhealthy, selfish attachments—to people and things; and at the same time they have to be willing to grow in their desire for God.

One person who has trouble doing this is a woman named Pam—whose son Michael died when she was still living on earth.  Her brother, Reginald, who’s already arrived in the kingdom, speaks to her at one point, and challenges her to love God first, and to let go of 0the selfish, possessive, manipulative love she had for her son when he was alive.  Reginald says to her, “[God] wanted you to love Michael as he understands love.  [And] you cannot love a fellow-creature fully till you love God.”  But Pam will hear none of it.  She blames God for her son’s death, and refuses to let go of that anger and the disordered love she had for her child.

A sad ending.  Thankfully other stories in The Great Divorce end much more happily!

There’s an old saying that most of us have heard before—and there’s a great deal of truth in it: Let go, and let God!

Pam did neither of those things.  Abraham did both—and because he did both he was rewarded beyond what he could possibly have imagined!

The Lord said to Abraham, “I swear by myself, that because you acted as you did in not withholding from me your beloved son, I will bless you abundantly and make your descendants as countless as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.”

That prophecy was fulfilled, as we all know, on the natural level, in that Abraham became the father of the nation of Israel.

I suppose he could have imagined that natural dimension of the blessing.

But, as we also know, by making this promise God was telling Abraham that he would become the spiritual father of all the redeemed!  That’s yet another reason why we call Abraham “our father in faith”!  Spiritually speaking, we all trace our “lineage” back to him.

Now there’s no way that Abraham could possibly have understood that spiritual dimension of the promise when he first heard it.

But it was there!

If we follow Abraham’s example, by letting go AND by letting God take control and do his work in our lives, then we will, like Abraham, experience many blessings—sometimes even greater than what we can possibly imagine!

When I think of my great role model for dealing with Parkinson’s Disease, Pope St. John Paul II, I think of what that illness forced him to let go of: his health, his skiing, his mobility, etc.  And yet, because he also “let God”: because he let God work in him and through him when he was battling that despicable disease, he did some of his most effective work in those later years of his life.

That fact certainly gives me a great deal of encouragement.

Some of you, like that fictional woman Pam, have lost children.  But, in the process of dealing with their deaths, you’ve actually grown closer to God and stronger in your faith.  You were forced to let go of someone who was very precious to you (you had no choice in the matter), but you did have the ability to choose how you’d respond to the tragedy.  And, thankfully, you made the choice to ‘let God’!  You made the choice to let God help you and console you and strengthen you and heal you and give you hope.  For that you have been greatly blessed; and, if you persevere in that trusting faith, you will be blessed beyond your wildest imaginings in eternity, where God will reunite you with many of your deceased relatives and friends.

Life is a process of letting go—and as such it provides us with many opportunities to ‘let God.’  May the Lord help us to take advantage of those opportunities in imitation of Abraham, and John Paul II—and all the other great saints of the past.