Satan, the Master of Verbal Deceit

 

(First Sunday of Lent (A): This homily was given on February 26, 2023 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Genesis 2:7-3:1-7; Psalm 51:1-17; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: First Sunday of Lent 2023]

One day shortly after her husband’s death, Judy got together with a friend of hers at the local coffee shop.  At one point during their conversation Judy said, “Did you know that my husband Joe was a real cheapskate?  He didn’t even leave me any insurance money!”

Her friend said, “Well if he didn’t leave you any insurance money, where did you get that beautiful new diamond ring you’re wearing?”

Judy paused for a few seconds.  Then she said, “Well, okay, I’ll tell you the truth.  Joe did leave me $10,000 in his will.  Out of that money, $1,000 was to be used to buy a nice casket, and $9,000 was to be used to buy a nice stone.”

Then she smiled, held up the diamond ring and said, “And this is a very nice stone indeed!”

 

Now I would like to think that Judy simply misunderstood her husband’s request, but it’s pretty clear from the details of the story that she knew exactly what he wanted: a nice gravestone over his remains at the local cemetery.

But she wanted a diamond ring instead, so she conveniently and deceitfully twisted the meaning of his words to justify her action.

Which, incidentally, is exactly the kind of thing that Satan does!  Satan is the Master of Verbal Deceit; he loves to twist the meaning of words; he loves to play games with words—for the purpose of leading human beings into sin and eventually into hell!

He even tempts people—like Judy—to play games with their words in order to rationalize their sinful behavior.

And so very often, it works.

It all began in the Garden of Eden, as we heard in today’s first reading from Genesis 3.  When Eve said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; it is only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden that God said, ‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die,’” how did the serpent respond? 

He responded by twisting the meaning of God’s words, in order to lead Eve and her husband into sin!  He said, in effect, “God didn’t mean that you would actually die!  He said that because he really doesn’t care about you.  He wants to hold you back and keep you down and squelch the incredible potential that you and Adam have as human beings!”

Then Satan played the ultimate word game to seal the deal and get Eve to take the big bite.  He said, “If you [and Adam] eat this fruit, you’ll be like gods who know what is good and what is evil.”

The key word in that temptation, of course, is the word “know.”  Yes, it’s true, God does know the difference between good and evil—as the devil said.  But he knows it like I know the difference between good health and typhoid fever.  For me, typhoid fever is something that’s “out there,” because I don’t have the disease personally (thank God!).  I know it in my mind only; I don’t know it experientially!

God “knows” evil in the same way.  It doesn’t touch his inner life; for him, it’s always “out there”.  But when Satan said to Eve, “If you eat this fruit, you’ll know evil too,” he meant something very different.    He meant, “If you eat this fruit, you’ll know evil—because you’ll actually experience it!  You’ll know it from the inside.   You’ll know it in the sense that it will come into your heart and make you miserable and ruin your entire life.”

This is why I called Satan “the Master of Verbal Deceit.”

Twisting the meaning of words is one of his most despicable talents.

And it’s one that he’s still utilizing today, in our generation, by getting people to redefine words and concepts in order to justify their evil actions.  For example, think of how the word “freedom” has been redefined in recent years—in order to justify everything from pornography to so-called “gay marriage.”

Think of how “rights” have been redefined in our civil laws so as to exclude the “right to life” of the unborn.

Think of how the meaning of the word “person” has been changed, in order to justify evils like embryonic stem cell research.  These men and women say, “The embryo is not a ‘person’ according to us, so we can do whatever we want with it.” 

Prior to the 1960s, in medical textbooks, “pregnancy” was rightly said to begin at the moment of conception.  That’s how the word was defined.  But certain doctors who wanted to justify the use of abortifacient contraceptives (like the IUD and the birth control pill) succeeded in changing the definition, so that now medical textbooks say that pregnancy begins at the moment of implantation.

How diabolically convenient!

There are literally dozens of words that fit into this category.  Take the word “marriage,” for example.  Marriage used to mean one man and one woman, but now in certain circles it can mean just about anything.  The same is true of the word “gender”—which, until recently, signified a person’s biological sex (male or female).  Now it means whatever an individual says it means.  It’s become so confused (and I would say insane), that the newest Supreme Court Justice couldn’t even define the word “woman” during her confirmation hearings.  That was a moment Satan must have loved! 

Obviously the word “normal” in 2023 means something very different than it meant 60 or 70 years ago.  The same is true of the words “virtue” and “vice”.  In fact, in some segments of our society right now the meanings of those two words have been completely reversed: virtue has become vice and vice has become virtue! 

All these words and many others have been redefined in our culture for the sole purpose of defining deviancy down, and making sin acceptable.

It’s a clever strategy that comes straight out of hell.  And it will continue to work—as it worked with Adam and Eve—unless by the grace of God we resist and put a stop to it, beginning in our own personal lives.

The choice, as always, is ours.

 

What will the Ashes I Wear Today be a Sign of?

 

(Ash Wednesday 2023: This homily was given on February 22, 2023 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Joel 2: 12-18; Psalm 51; 2 Corinthians 5: 20-6: 2; Matthew 6: 1-18.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Ash Wednesday 2023]

Our bishop, Thomas Tobin, writes a column each week in our diocesan newspaper, the Rhode Island Catholic.  This past week he wrote on the subject of what people wear, and how what we wear often reflects, as he put it, “our belief or our loyalty”.  What we wear, in other words, is often a sign of something.  He begins by commending the Catholic school students who were kicked out of the Smithsonian Museum recently for wearing hats that said, “Rosary Pro-Life.”  He commends them for having worn something that was a sign of “their commitment to life.”

I’m sure some of you heard about that incident.  It happened right after the annual March for Life.

So much for freedom of religion.

Bishop Tobin goes on to say, “How often we proudly wear a t-shirt, a sweatshirt or a hat bearing the name and logo of our favorite team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, for example.  [Or, I would add, the Green Bay Packers!]  Sometimes we wear things that have religious meaning. Christians wear a cross to identify themselves as followers of Christ. Catholics wear medals or pins to share a favorite devotion. When a priest wears a purple vestment for Mass rather than a white vestment, it means something.”

Then he mentions the fact that on this and every Ash Wednesday we will all leave church “wearing” something. We will be wearing ashes!—we will be wearing ashes on our foreheads. At that point he gets to what I would call the “crux” of the matter.  He says that these ashes will be (and here I quote) “a very visible sign.  But a sign of what?”

That’s the key issue for us to consider this morning: What will the ashes I wear today be a sign of?

·        Will they be a sign of the fact that I intend to make my spiritual life—my relationship with Jesus Christ—my top priority during the next 40 days?

·        Will they be a sign of the fact that I intend to pray more, and to read Scripture more often; that I intend to come to Mass faithfully every Sunday—and maybe even during the week?

·        Will they be a sign of the fact that I’m going to take an honest look at my life during the next 40 days, so that I can identify those things I need to change?  And will they be a sign of the fact that I intend to bring those matters—those faults—those sins—to the sacrament of Reconciliation at some point during the season of Lent, so that they can be forgiven?

·        Will they be a sign of the fact that I intend to seek reconciliation with people I’ve offended in my life, and that I will seek to grow in charity during this holy season?

·        Or will wearing these ashes today simply be a sign of the fact that I somehow paid my “spiritual dues” on February 22, 2023—that I went through the motions, and did what many Catholics (probably most Catholics) think they’re supposed to do on Ash Wednesday every year?

Those are crucial questions, my brothers and sisters.  They’re the questions that need to be answered by us, and by everyone else who “wears” ashes on their forehead today.  But the thing is, we can’t answer those questions right now!  That’s impossible!  We can only answer them 40 days from now when Lent is over, and when we reflect back on what we’ve done—and on what we have not done—during this very important season of the year.

May that reflection back help us to see, happily, that the ashes we wore this Ash Wednesday were a sign: a sign of the great spiritual growth and personal improvement that we would experience—and which we did experience—in our lives during the 40 days of Lent in 2023.

Loving Your Enemies: What It Means and What It Does NOT Mean

 

The 9 shooting victims

(Seventh Sunday of the Year (A): This homily was given on February 19, 2023 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Leviticus 9:1-18; Psalm 103:1-13; 1 Corinthians 3:16-23; Matthew 5:38-48.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Seventh Sunday 2023]

On June 17, 2015 a 21-year-old white supremacist named Dylann Roof walked into a Bible study class at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.  There he shot and killed nine innocent people—all African Americans—in a sick, demented attempt to start a race war.  Many of you remember the tragedy, I’m sure.  It was all over the news when it happened. 

As far as I know Dylann Roof has expressed no remorse for what he did on that June night eight years ago.  From all external indications, he remains a bitter and hate-filled man, as he sits in a maximum security prison in Indiana awaiting his execution.   

Now what’s really amazing is this: In stark contrast to Roof’s hatred and bitterness was the love and forgiveness that some relatives of the victims expressed afterward.  In fact, just a few days after the murders, family members had the opportunity to speak directly to Roof and tell him whatever they wanted to tell him.  Here are some of the things that were said on that occasion …

Nadine Collier, the daughter of one of the victims said, “I forgive you. You took something very precious away from me. I will never get to talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again, but I forgive you, and have mercy on your soul. … You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people. If God forgives you, I forgive you.”

The sister of another victim said, “That was my sister, and I’d like to thank you on behalf of my family for not allowing hate to win. For me, I’m a work in progress. And I acknowledge that I am very angry. But one thing that [my sister] always enjoined in our family … is she taught me that we are the family that love built. We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive. I pray God on your soul.”

The granddaughter of one of those killed said, “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof—everyone’s plea for your soul—is proof that they lived in love and their legacies will live in love. So hate won’t win.”

Finally, the relative of another victim, when asked about the message she would want Dylann Roof to hear, stated: “I would just like him to know that, to say the same thing that was just said: I forgive him and my family forgives him. But we would like him to take this opportunity to repent. Repent. Confess. Give your life to the one who matters most: Christ. So that He can change [you] and change your ways, so no matter what happens to you, you’ll be okay.”

Now I’m not sure what passage of Scripture they were studying at that South Carolina church right before this tragedy occurred, but it would have been fitting if it had been the text we just heard as our gospel reading this morning—especially the part where Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.”

This, of course, is one of the most difficult commandments of Jesus to obey in the concrete circumstances of our daily lives.  We all know that—by experience!  It’s difficult for us because we all share a human nature that’s tainted by original sin.  Consequently, our first instinct as human beings is to hate and curse our enemies, not love them.  But loving them is certainly possible—as the four people I just mentioned made clear to Dylann Roof by the things they said to him just a few days after he murdered their loved ones.

But it was hard!  One of them made that fact crystal clear when she said that she was “very angry” and that she was “a work in progress” with respect to forgiveness.

God bless her for her honesty.

But the important thing to note is that she was moving in the right direction by making the effort (that is to say, the choice, the decision) to deal with her anger, and love this man who had so brutally killed her sister.

Here we get a few important insights about what it means (and what it does not mean) to love your enemies.

First of all, to love your enemies is a choice, it’s not a feeling; it’s a decision, it’s not an emotion.  “Liking” is an emotion: we all have certain people whom we like more than others.  And there’s nothing wrong with that; that’s normal human behavior. 

“Loving” is different.  Loving, in the sense that Jesus uses the term here, means (in the words of Scripture scholar William Barclay) “unconquerable benevolence, invincible goodwill.”  In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, Barclay says this: “If we regard a person with agape [the Greek word for love that’s used in this text], it means that no matter what that person does to us, no matter how he treats us, no matter if he insults us or injures us or grieves us, we will never allow any bitterness against him to invade our hearts, but will regard him with that unconquerable benevolence which will seek nothing but his highest good.”

That’s a key insight, because it reminds us that it’s possible to have “unconquerable benevolence” and “invincible goodwill” toward everyone—even toward people we dislike.  Make no mistake about it, my brothers and sisters, the four people whom I quoted a few moments ago do not like Dylann Roof and what he stands for; they probably have had very few (if any) good feelings about him or toward him.  But, by the grace of God, they have made the decision to desire what’s best for him—his “highest good,” as Barclay would say.  That’s especially evident in the comment of the last woman, who said, “I forgive [Dylann Roof] and my family forgives him. But we would like him to take this opportunity to repent. Repent. Confess. Give your life to the one who matters most: Christ. So that He can change him and change your ways, so no matter what happens to you, you’ll be okay.”

To desire that the person who murdered your loved one, someone near and dear to you—to desire that such a person repent and go to heaven someday: that’s love!  That’s Christian, agape love.  That’s the kind of love Jesus is talking about here in this text.

It doesn’t mean you pretend that the evil your enemy did never happened.  It doesn’t mean you have to be “best buddies” with him or her from now on.  It doesn’t mean you have to dispense with justice and punishment—not at all!  Believe it or not, sometimes agape love requires those things.  As Barclay put it, “If we regard a person with invincible goodwill, it will often mean that we must punish him, that we must restrain him, that we must discipline him, that we must protect him against himself.”

Of course, it will be remedial punishment, not vengeful punishment—but it will be punishment nonetheless.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, “The real test of the Christian is not how much he loves his friends, but how much he loves his enemies.”

Since that’s the case, I think it’s safe to say that the four grieving relatives I quoted a few moments ago in this homily were, at the time they made their statements to Dylann Roof, passing the “test”—with flying colors!  In the midst of a situation in which it would have been very easy for them to hate their enemy, they chose to love him with agape love

By the grace of God that we receive at this Mass, may we make the choice to follow their example of agape love in our lives.

 

Light Only Makes a Difference Where There Isn’t Any

(Fifth Sunday of the Year (A): This homily was given on February 4, 2023 at St. Pius X Church, Westerly, R.I., by Fr. Raymond Suriani.  Read Isaiah 58:7-10; Psalm 112:4-9; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Matthew 5:13-16.)

[For the audio version of this homily, click here: Fifth Sunday 2023]

If you walked around on a bright, sunny day in July with a lit flashlight in your hand, acting as if you needed it to see, people would probably think you were crazy!

Why?  Because light only makes a difference where there isn’t any—and there’s plenty of light around on a bright, sunny day in July!

If you went down to Westerly Town Beach after Mass this morning with a big box of salt, and poured the contents of the box into the water, saying, “The ocean needs this,” people would definitely think you were crazy!  I sure would!

Why?  Because salt only makes a difference where there isn’t any—and, as we all know, there’s more than enough salt in the water off Westerly Town Beach.

Now this may sound obvious to us—and maybe it is in the physical dimension of life—but it definitely is not obvious in the spiritual dimension.  Christians, for example, will listen to the Gospel we just heard today—where Jesus tells us that we are to be the salt of the earth and light of the world—and they’ll respond by saying, “But that’s hard, you know.  It’s not easy for me to be a Christian at work, where people are swearing and telling dirty jokes and back-stabbing each other every day.  It’s not easy to resist the temptations my friends throw at me on the weekends to drink and cause trouble.  It’s difficult to be patient with my family and to forgive the people who hurt me.”

They make this complaint, as if being “light” and “salt” is supposed to be easy.

But it’s not supposed to be easy!  And that’s precisely the point Jesus is making by using these images!  Light only makes a difference where there isn’t any!  When Jesus tells us to be “light” for the world, he’s presuming that we’ll be surrounded quite often by darkness—the darkness of hate, the darkness of unforgiveness, the darkness of greed and materialism, the darkness of lust and impurity.  He’s presuming that we will face these realities at work, and at school, and in the Church, and even sometimes at home!  When he tells us to be “salt” for the earth, he’s presuming that we will constantly be confronted with “tasteless” situations (if you’ll pardon the pun)—situations, in other words, where faith, hope, love and truth will not be present.

I ask you, why was Mother Teresa considered to be such a brilliant “light”?

It wasn’t because she lived in the midst of saintly people who loved God and one another with a perfect love.  It was because she lived and worked in the midst of terrible darkness—the darkness of poverty, illness and death.

Her light made a difference, precisely because there wasn’t much light around her. 

Now most of you (if not all of you) are lay people who live and work “in the world.”  That means you’re called to be light and salt in a unique way.  Here we encounter a truth which is not commonly understood by Catholics today, and it’s one of the biggest reasons why we’ve had many of the social problems we’ve had in our culture in the last 50 years.  Let me read to you now paragraph 898 of the Catechism, which quotes a passage from Lumen Gentium, one of the documents of Vatican II:

By reason of their special vocation it belongs to the laity to seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will. . . . It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are closely associated that these may always be affected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer. 

This means, quite simply, that as lay people you are called to be light and salt by bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ into the marketplace—i.e., into the ordinary, mundane situations of daily life.  You’re not supposed to forget about your faith—and the principles of your faith—when you’re at work, or at school, or at the soccer field.  You’re supposed to take your faith with you everywhere, such that it influences what you do and don’t do, what you think, how you conduct your business, and how you treat other people.  That’s what the Catechism means when it says you’re to engage in temporal affairs and direct them according to God’s will.

As I said a few moments ago, the failure of Catholics to understand this truth is at the root of many of our contemporary social problems.

I’ll give you one example.  I once heard a talk by the late Dr. William Marra, who was a philosophy professor at Fordham University for many years. In this talk Dr. Marra asserted that one of the major reasons that abortion became legal in our nation was because the majority of Catholic doctors, nurses, lawyers, judges, and college professors were silent on the issue in the years prior to Roe v. Wade, when the subject was being hotly debated in our society.  He said that if they and other Christians had been “lights” in their professional lives and had stood up for the truth, their witness for life could not have been ignored.  But they chose not to be lights; consequently, we saw yet another verification of Edmund Burke’s famous maxim, “All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” 

But let’s be clear about it: some of these lay people failed because their priests failed to be good examples for them and to teach them the full truth of the Gospel concerning the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death! 

There are some Christians who believe that Jesus calls us to retreat from the world, and ignore the moral, social, and political issues of the day.  Jehovah’s Witnesses (who are not Christians) have a similar perspective, which is why you don’t see Jehovah’s Witnesses getting involved in public life.  In attempting to justify their position, those who embrace this view will quote a Biblical text like 2 Corinthians 6:15 which says, “What accord is there between Christ and Belial, what common lot between believer and unbeliever?“  Their attitude is, “Forget about the world, because it’s going to you-know-where in a hand-basket, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

The Catholic Church teaches exactly the opposite, as that quote from the Catechism indicates.  The Church says that lay people are called by God to be a leaven for positive change in every dimension of our culture.  To paraphrase Jesus in John 17, Christian lay people are supposed to be “in the world” but not “of the world.”  The attitude of some Christians is, “We would never seek employment in radio or television or journalism, because the media and the secular press are so anti-Christian.”  The Catholic Church responds by saying, “That’s all the more reason for you to get involved!  How else will things ever change for the better?  We need good Catholic lights in Hollywood, and in television, in radio, and in the secular press, precisely because there isn’t much light in those places at the present time.  Remember, light only makes a difference where there isn’t any!”

But why should we make this effort to be salt and light when it’s so incredibly difficult?  Simply because our own salvation is at stake, as well as the salvation of many other people.  When Jesus talks here about salt losing its taste and being thrown out and trampled underfoot, he’s warning us that if we don’t take this message seriously we put our eternal salvation in jeopardy.  And the final line of the text makes clear that others may not make it to heaven if we fail them in this regard.  As Jesus said, “Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father.”

Those words of Jesus bring to mind Jill Gaccione.  Some of you have been around long enough to remember Jill.  She lost her only brother when he was murdered at 19 years of age, and then she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma during her senior year of high school.  She died, tragically, just one week after graduation.  But Jill had experienced a conversion to Christ at a Steubenville summer youth conference a couple of years before her death, and that newfound faith burned brightly in her heart throughout her illness—so much so that it converted her stepfather.  “Your light must shine before others . . .”  He could sense the peace and strength Jill had through faith and the sacraments of the Church—he knew it was real—he knew she wasn’t faking it—and it changed his life.  He perceived that she had something special on the inside, and he wanted that grace for himself. 

Cancer is unquestionably a horrible form of “darkness”—as some of us know by experience.  But that’s precisely why Jill’s witness was so powerful!  Light makes a difference where there isn’t any!  Her light made a visible difference precisely because she was living in the darkness of a terminal illness.  And that changed her stepfather, who was eventually baptized and received into the Church.

So let’s not be like those Christians who complain about how hard it is to be light and salt; let’s resolve, by the grace of God, to be light and salt—and to help change the world, or at least our little corner of it.