Modern Prometheus, Part 2

The difference between a person and a program

05/30/2024

We climb back into the ring now of my brotherly boxing match over which is superior: an AI teacher or a human teacher. Now if someone can tolerate my preliminary assumptions – about the soul, God, and immortality, and not everyone can, by the way, like Richard Dawkins and modern atheists – I can begin to build my case for the advantages of a human teacher over an AI teacher. I would like to suggest three notable advantages. Think of each advantage as another round in our boxing match between Rocky Balboa (who was full of soul) and Ivan Drago (who was full of skill). The first round as we saw went decisively to Drago, but now the bell rings to start the second round.

Since a human is a composite of body and soul (matter and spirit), he is capable of actions that have symbolic and even spiritual meanings. For example, a meal between two friends is not just an occasion for refueling the body – like you recharge your Tesla self-driving car with electricity – but an opportunity for social intercourse, sharing food means sharing friendship. You will not go out to lunch with your AI teacher because it does not desire your food, and it does not need your friendship. If spouses sit down at table, breaking bread together can symbolize a lifetime of sharing and caring, even if the man and woman seldom say a word. Someone sent me a cartoon where an older married couple is sitting on the couch. The husband says somewhat forlornly, “For the last thirty years, all you have done is find mistakes in anything I say.” The woman replies, “Thirty-one years.” In other words, a few words can communicate an entire library of meaning. Human actions and words, you see, are multivalent, existing simultaneously on multiple levels, operating not only a surface level but also on a symbolic level.

Josef Pieper makes this point forcefully: "At the same time it is one of the characteristics of man, a corporeal and spiritual being, that it should be his spiritual soul which informs the physical and sensitive realms – to such a degree that taking food in man and animal are two utterly different things (quite apart from the fact that in the human sphere a “meal” may have a spiritual or even a religious character). It is so true that the spiritual soul informs the whole of man’s nature that even when a man “vegetates” it is ultimately only possible because he is spiritual – a cabbage can’t vegetate." The reason a cabbage cannot vegetate is because it lacks intentionality or free will to choose to be lazy. A cabbage lacks an inner immaterial source of choice and thus cannot vegetate by watching its favorite Netflix shows. A robot teacher, although far more complex than a cabbage, also cannot vegetate in the teachers’ lounge (even if its feet are up on an ottoman) like a human teacher could because it lacks that invisible source of intentionality called free will located in the soul. Why is that? Because at root, an AI teacher is not a person, but a program. Only persons enjoy the freedom of self-determination because they have a “self” to determine.

Now, here is the real surplus value of a teacher with a soul or with a self, and thus we move from the symbolic level to the spiritual level. A human teacher in front of the classroom is able to teach not only math, science, history, even religion – all of which an AI teacher could do far better – but also stands before the classroom as an exemplar, a model, of what is uniquely human, that is, as a person, not as a program. The human teacher is not purely material but also spiritual – neither zombie nor ghost, but a wholesome combination of both – and therefore endowed with an inherent capacity to mirror or reflect God. As you know, the soul comes as a gift directly from God. Gn 1:26 says man is created in God’s “image” and “likeness.” An AI teacher, by contrast, is only created in man’s image and likeness. Human beings are the product of God’s creative genius. But an AI robot is merely the product of man’s creative genius. Can you catch the difference?

I am a big fan of the sci-fi movie series called “Matrix” starring Keanu Reeves as “Neo.” But I commented to a friend, “You know, these movies can only be as great as the minds of the Wachowski brothers who directed them.” That is, every movie has a glass ceiling of greatness, namely, the mind of its creator. A human being, on the other hand, can be as great as God who created us because the mind of God is our “glass ceiling.” God has made us persons like him, whereas we can only make programs like us. It is like the old adage, “water cannot rise higher than its source.” Persons can rise as high as heaven (God is our source), programs can only rise as high as Harvard (human beings are their source). In the final analysis, with an AI teacher, “what you see is what you get,” but with a human teacher what you see is only the beginning of what you get.

Put differently, a human teacher standing before human students can become the occasion of an extraordinary encounter. It can be compared to Adam’s wonder and fascination when, after Adam had examined all the animals and found them unsuitable partners, God finally brought Eve before his eyes. When Adam saw Eve, he exclaimed: “Wo-man!” Actually, he said: “This one is at last bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh” (Gn 2:23). Pope St. John Paul II touchingly described this Edenic encounter of our first parents: “They see and know each other, in fact, with all the peace of the interior gaze.”  That is, they see each other as God sees them. Christopher West, a popular commentator on John Paul II, says that the best way to understand “intimacy” between two people is the parsed phrase “in-to-me-see.” In a similar fashion, a truly perceptive student might exclaim when a human teacher enters the classroom: “This teacher is ‘bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.’ This teacher is essentially like me, for we share a spiritual principle that makes us God-like." That is, this is a person is a with a self, not just a program with a lot of skill.

Martin Buber, the twentieth century Jewish philosopher, distinguished between experiences and encounters to help us understand the value of human persons. He explained that we “experience” a sunset or a video game; whereas we “encounter” persons and God. According to Buber, at the other end of an experience is just an “It” but at the other end of an encounter is a marvelous “Thou.” He states succinctly: “The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It. The basic word I-Thou [on the other hand] establishes the world of relations [between persons].” 

Further, Buber believed that every genuine human relationship bears the remarkable potential of leading to a relationship with God, the ultimate “Thou”. Buber observes: “Every single Thou is a glimpse of [the eternal Thou]. Through every single Thou the basic word addresses the eternal Thou.”  In other words, true and meaningful relationships are only possible in the world of spiritual beings (that is, between persons), but this is notably absent in the world of artificial beings (that is, between a person and a program), where an “I” merely meets an “It”. Human teachers alone, therefore, can give students the opportunity for a rich “I-Thou” encounter, whereas AI teachers can only provide students with a superficial “I-It” experience.

But sadly, many people do not seek an encounter, they settle for an experience. About a month ago I was walking Apollo around the school and some parents of one of our students stopped to talk to me. The husband was fascinated with Apollo. He knelt down to pet him, and looked up and remarked: “I would much rather spend time with my dog than with other people.” I was astonished at his words since his wife and daughter were standing close by and clearly heard him. But they simply replied, “Yeah, that’s true!” and rolled their eyes. That man’s comment pin-points the precise problem of our modern culture: many people would rather spend time with a pet or a program than with a person. They are avid for experiences and avoid encounters. Ding, ding! End of Round Two.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Modern Prometheus, Part 1

Assessing advantages of human versus AI teachers

02/28/2024

Arguably one of the greatest challenges to the Church and to the world today is artificial intelligence, or AI for short. All technology is a tool, like a hammer, an abacus, or a search engine, and can be used for good or for ill. So, too, AI. It is not inherently malicious. A local restaurant uses a robot server to deliver pizza to customer’s tables using AI software - pretty harmless. Over the past few years my brother and I have had intermittent conversations about the proper place of AI, trying to pin-point its true value. It began on a car ride to Tulsa where we casually started a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of human teachers compared to a robot teacher endowed with artificial intelligence. We humorously harangued over which teacher would be superior. With my background in classical liberal arts (philosophy, literature, history), I championed the side of the human teacher, while my brother, who is well-versed in information technology (senior vice president in information technology, no less) gravitated to the AI teacher.

The first round of the debate went decisively to the AI robo-teacher. That is, every time I raised a possible advantage for the human teacher, my brother’s AI teacher delivered a counter-punch with greater force, leaving my human teacher looking like Rocky Balboa after his first round with Ivan Drago. For example, I said the human teacher would be more empathetic to needy or shy students than a cold, unfeeling robot could be. My brother countered that the AI teacher would instantly marshal from the Internet all the best-practices of teaching a needy or shy student and discern what this particular student (having learned everything about the pupil as well) needed most. The AI teacher’s ability and speed in assessing, evaluating, and reacting to a struggling student would be lightning fast compared to the slower and clumsier reaction rate of a human teacher. In sum, an AI teacher would be smarter than Albert Einstein, more compassionate than Mother Teresa, and more attractive than Taylor Swift, and sing better, too.

Since that initial defeat in the first round, I did not stop thinking about what is unique and unrepeatable in a human teacher that is utterly out of a robot teacher’s reach. I was convinced that this elusive quality of being human – whatever it might be – was also the human teacher’s edge, and just might land the knockout punch in our brotherly boxing match. My initial hunch was that human superiority hinges on a spiritual soul. Wasn’t it precisely Rocky’s intangible and indomitable spirit (his soul) that finally overcame the technically and genetically superior Drago in the fifteenth round of the movie “Rocky IV”? The purpose of the following essay, therefore, is to answer the hypothetical question – which may not remain hypothetical for long – is a human teacher superior to a robot teacher with artificial intelligence, and if so, in what way?

Romans Catholics, and most Christians, believe that a human person receives a spiritual, animating principle, called the soul, at conception. That is, the mother and father each contribute twenty-three chromosomes to the begetting of a new person. But that combination of forty-six chromosomes does not complete the human picture. At the same instant of conception, God infuses a spiritual soul into that individual. From its first moment of existence, therefore, a human being is inextricably a body-soul composite. This body-soul composite marks the radical newness and unrepeatability of every human being vis-à-vis all animals, all artificial products, and even all angels. No scientist can inject a spiritual soul into a robot because souls are immaterial and therefore cannot be captured, manipulated, exchanged, reproduced, manufactured, or studied under a microscope. A soul always stands a few inches beyond a scientist’s reach.

Suggesting the presence of a spiritual soul inevitably raises the critical question of preliminary assumptions. You know, of course, what happens when you assume something, right? You make an “ass” out of “u” and “me”. That is, before we take up a position from which we can argue, everyone assumes certain “givens” which we accept without debate or doubt. For example, in mathematics we begin with the integers “0” and “1” and everything else we build (or prove) in mathematics is constructed upon that foundation. In the art of painting the preliminary assumptions are the primary colors blue, red, and yellow; all other colors being an admixture of those three. Each science or discipline – indeed any discussion – begins with a set of assumptions. First, therefore, we must agree on what a human being is – that is, our assumptions about the constitution of man – if we hope to make the conversation about the difference between human teachers and AI robot teachers productive. Otherwise, we will only make an ass out of you and me.

It is no exaggeration to say that most modern scientists (and modern society in general) consider human beings as essentially and only composed of genetic material, that is, man is forty-six chromosomes sans spiritual soul. A good example of such modern scientist would be Rickard Dawkins, the Oxford professor of evolutionary biology and zoology. In his New York Times Bestseller, The God Delusion, Dawkins maintained:  "An atheist in this sense of philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomenon that we don’t yet understand." Interestingly, later in the book he argues for the impossibility of immortality, asserting: “Many religions, for example, teach the objectively implausible but subjectively appealing doctrine that our personalities survive our bodily death. The idea of immortality itself survives and spreads because it caters to wishful thinking.”  Surprisingly, Dawkins and I do agree on one point: the soul, God, and immortality are a package deal, that is, these are things which we assume without doubt or debate. We either accept all of them as givens (as I suggest) or we begin with other purely material criteria for human beings and all reality (as Dawkins does).

In other words, if the purely material conception of a human person is the unquestioned starting point of our conversation about human and AI teachers, the AI robot will have the upper hand, as we saw back in the first round. If scientific, material, and observable measurements are all that are used, what human teacher could compete with the Albert Einstein-Mother Teresa-Taylor Swift teacher? I would not start at that “given”, however, but rather with a human who is essentially an ensouled-body, or contrariwise, an enfleshed-spirit. Dr. Peter Kreeft once explained the reason we are afraid of ghosts and zombies is that each represents only half of a healthy, normal human. Zombies are bodies without souls, and ghosts are souls without bodies. The reason we love scary movies is because they agree with our fundamental assumption about a human being as a body-soul composite, otherwise there would be nothing startling or eerie about them. So, my starting point – my assumptions – are that each person is a tightly knit body-soul composite who has received his soul directly from God at conception and is destined to live forever. And it is only if we can agree on the assumptions that we can have a productive conversation. Otherwise, we just end up making an ass out of you and me.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Suffer or Squander

Appreciating our inheritance by suffering for it

05/27/2024

Mk 10:17-27 As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before him, and asked him, "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; you shall not defraud; honor your father and your mother." He replied and said to him, "Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." At that statement, his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions. Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!"

Have you heard of the old saying that “the first generation earns it, the second generation maintains it, and the third generation squanders it”? In a sense this is the story, and the cycle, of the American Dream. The history of the United States, like the history of Immaculate Conception Church, could be told in terms of waves of immigrants. The first parishioners of I.C. were the Irish, the second the Italians, and the third the Indians, like me and Fr. Bala. Just kidding. Obviously, the most recent wave are the Hispanics.

In each immigrant wave the first generation arrives on these shores poor but hungry to work hard and achieve a legacy for their family. The second generation tries to maintain that wealth because they saw the sacrifices of their parents. But the third generation that grows up in comfort and luxury feels entitled to their wealth and makes no sacrifices and squanders it. In other words, when you face suffering, adversity, and need, you grow in character and maturity. But when everything is handed to you on a silver platter, you take things for granted and become lazy and selfish. The key to opening the door to the American Dream is suffering, without it, the door remains shut, or we soon find ourselves on the outside again.

In the gospel today we see a similar dynamic in the spiritual life. A wealthy young man asks Jesus, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answers that he must keep the commandments, to which the young man replies that he has. But then Jesus challenges him to embrace some voluntary suffering by adding, “You are lacking one thing. Go, sell what you have and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.”

But the young man “went away sad, for he had many possessions.” In other words, just like the second and third generations of American immigrants slowly – or speedily! – squander their family’s wealth because they know no sacrifice or suffering, so, too, as Christians we become luke-warm and lazy in faith, take it for granted until we squander our spiritual inheritance. Put simply: we either suffer or we squander.

A few weeks ago a faith-filled couples came to talk to me about wanting to get involved in our youth ministry program. We only have a hand-full of teens every week and they wanted to help and make the program better. I was impressed by their dedication, and we talked for about an hour about different methods and strategies. At the end of the hour, I said rather bluntly: “Do you know what will really bring our youth back to Mass and the sacraments? It’s suffering. It is because their lives are too comfortable, easy, and everything is handed to them on a silver platter that they have grown lazy and self-centered. They think they are self-sufficient, but that is an illusion. And suffering pricks and bursts that bubble of self-sufficiency.”

In other words, suffering makes them turn to God. Suffering makes everyone turn to God. Some of the most fruitful places of ministry is in hospitals and on death-row. Why? Because suffering has pricked the bubble of the illusion of self-sufficiency, and we realize we need God. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “How hard it is for those who have wealth – those who are comfortable, at ease, have no suffering – to enter the Kingdom of God.” Suffering is the key to open the door to the American Dream, and suffering is the key to open the door to Paradise.

Today is Memorial Day and we remember the courageous men and women who shed their blood and gave – as Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address – “the last full measure of devotion” for this country. In a sense, every generation of American soldiers that dies for this country becomes like that first wave of immigrants willing to sacrifice and suffer for the American Dream. Their suffering unlocks the doors for the rest of us to be able to enter. The question that remains, though, is what will we do with this wealth? And there are always only two choices: suffer or squander.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Second Word, Part 5

Understanding life according to the Holy Spirit

05/20/2024

We pick up our fork for a fourth and final time to take a bite of the elephant of chapter two of Pope St. John Paul II's theology of the body. It is no exaggeration to assert that no Christian has understood the teaching of Christ better, interpreted it more faithfully, or applied it more precisely than the intellectual and spiritual giant, Paul of Tarsus. I was pastor of St. Edward’s in Little Rock for five years, from 2000-2005. The interior of that Gothic church has twelve pillars with statues on top of each one. When I gave elementary school students tours of the church, I would ask them a trick question: “There are twelve columns with the twelve apostles on top of each one. Now we know Judas betrayed Jesus, so his statue is not up there. Who, then, is the twelfth apostle?” They had all sort of guesses, but I eventually explained it was St. Paul. St. Paul gives a clue to his impressive credentials in Acts 22:3, where he states: “I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicea, but brought up in this city [Jersualem] at the feet of Gamaliel,” who incidentally was one of the most renowned rabbis of the day. Paul was practically his prized pupil, or as Will Smith said in the movie “Men in Black,” Paul was “the best of the best of the best.” Indeed, his reputation was so immense that subsequent saints and scholars would refer to St. Paul simply as “the Apostle,” as if he were in that category all by himself. It should not surprise us, therefore, that as Pope St. John Paul II rounds out chapter two and his reflections on Jesus’ second word about “adultery in the heart”, he turns to the Apostle to understand Jesus’ meaning more exactly and completely.

When we began our study of Christ’s second word, we compared the transformation Jesus wants to produce in the human heart with what scientists fictionally did to Steve Austin’s body by building the first bionic man. By rebuilding Austin’s body bionically, the scientists were not content to merely restore his body back to ordinary, average functionality. Rather, they wanted it to be “better, strong, faster.” In the same vein, St. Paul will explain, especially in Galatians, 1 Thessalonians, and 1 Corinthians, that the Holy Spirit will enable man’s heart not only to be healed of concupiscence but to perform actions hitherto entirely unimaginable and indeed humanly impossible. First, the pope will reflect on Paul’s notion of freedom in Galatians 5; second, on the Apostle’s exposition of the virtue of purity in 1 Thessalonians; and finally, how Paul understands the gift of piety in 1 Corinthians 6. Just as Steve Austin’s body was able to perform actions that were “better, stronger, faster,” so the heart healed and helped by the Holy Spirit will be able to act in ways that are “freer, purer, and more pious.” Or, to put it in the words of the Apostle himself: “life according to the Spirit” (cf. Rm 8:5).

The first way the Holy Spirit makes the human heart more bionic is through a more enhanced experience of freedom. We read in Galatians: “For you were called to freedom, brethren; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13). John Paul believes that the point at which such freedom becomes bionic is when it leads to new possibilities of action, new choices. When Fr. Daniel Velasco was associate here at I.C., he gave me tennis lessons. One time during practice I accidentally hit a forehand slice, my racket cutting below the ball to create backspin. He immediately chided me: “You do not have a forehand slice. There is no such thing as a forehand slice. Don’t ever hit a forehand slice.” Later when I was watching a professional tennis match wit Fr. Daniel, someone hit a forehand slice. I complained: “Hey, she just his a forehand slice!” Fr. Daniel calmly answered: “Well, they can, but you can’t.” In other words, professional tennis players enjoy a different level of freedom in their shot selection to which I as a beginner am not privy. WE might say the same “spirit of tennis” that lives and moves in them has not yet been infused in me.

Perhaps a more serious and spiritual example would be St. Damien of Molokai, who ministered to lepers on the Hawaiian island for sixteen years. St. Damien finally died of leprosy on April 15, 1889 at the age of forty-nine. That is, just like I should not attempt to hit a forehand slice until I am more fully imbued with the spirit of tennis, so most Christians should not work in a leper colony until we are more filled with the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, for those souls in whom the Holy Spirit is strong, a new range of freedom of action becomes possible, namely, in the saints. John Paul expresses it this way: “In fact, Christ realized and showed the freedom that finds its fulness in love, the freedom thanks to which we ‘serve one another’; in other words: the freedom that becomes the source of new ‘works’ and of ‘life’ according to the Spirit.”  In brief, life in the Spirit makes heroic sanctity attainable.

A second way the Holy Spirit makes the heart more bionic is by producing the fruit of “holiness and reverence” which bestows a new power of purity. St. Paul speaks about this new p power in 1 Thessalonians: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and [reverence], not in the passion of lust like heathens, who do not know God” (1 Thess 4:3-5). We might compare this new power of purity to IV fluids. When I was considering different seminaries to attend, I visited Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. One night we ate dinner on the wharf, and I ordered the Captain’s Platter, which was the first and last time I ever ate raw oysters. Without getting into digestive details, I was so dehydrated I ended up in the Emergence Room. They gave me IV fluids, and after the first bag I felt I could jump out of bed and run home! John Paul elaborates: "Paul considers purity not only as an ability (or aptitude) of man’s subjective faculties, but at the same time as a concrete manifestation of life “according to the Spirit” in which human ability is made fruitful from within and enriched by what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit” (Gal 5:22). The principal point, of course, is that purity gives man new strength of heart to love others, especially those of the opposite sex, with new enthusiasm and energy that it did not enjoy previously.

The third way “life in the Spirit” makes the human heart bionic is by giving it new eyes as St. Paul describes in 1 Cor 6:19: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you do not belong to yourselves?” When young couples come to me for marriage preparation I try to encourage them to use Natural Family Planning instead of contraceptives, which usually goes over like a lead balloon. Nonetheless, I tell them that the woman’s body is a walking miracle because in her womb is the “cradle of life” where a new human being will come into the world. And just like Moses removed his sandals before the burning bush, so we must approach the female body with great respect and reverence, removing any contraceptives. The female body is holy ground.

John Paul, however, leaves behind Old Testament analogies and underscores human dignity as it is rooted in Jesus. He writes:

The fact that in Jesus Christ the human body became the body of the God-Man has the effect of a new supernatural elevation in every human being, which every Christian must take into account in his behavior toward “his own” body and obviously also toward another’s body: man toward woman and woman toward man.

By the way, this is one reason I wear my priestly collar everywhere I go. That Roman collar reminds everyone who glances at me of the “supernatural elevation” I received by the sacrament of Holy Orders. But in a broader sense – although not in exactly the same sense – by Jesus’ Incarnation, uniting himself to a human nature, he has extended that “supernatural elevation” to all human beings. Jesus was referring to this new vision in his Sermon on the Mount when he taught: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Pope John Paul II would add, “they shall see God in the human body.” The pope puts this dramatically: “Purity is the glory of the human body before God. It is the glory of God in the human body, through which masculinity and femininity are manifested.”  The Holy Father identifies this new way of seeing by the heart as the gift of piety (in Latin, donum pietatis), one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

In summary, John Paul II has outlined three ways “life according to the Spirit” (using St. Paul’s profound exposition) enhances the capability of the heart to love. First, the heart becomes bionic through a new level of freedom, which affords new options to express love, sometimes heroic love like we see in the saints. Second, the heart becomes bionic by a new injection of power in the virtue of purity, like IV fluids going through our veins makes us feel like Arnold Schwarzenegger. And third, the heart becomes bionic because it is equipped with new eyes to see “the glory of God in the human body” so that each human being must be treated with the utmost dignity as a child of God. In other words, when the heart has been healed of the cancer of concupiscence and infused with the new powers available through “life in the Spirit,” the human person is properly prepared to marry its divine Bridegroom, Jesus. And now I hope you will agree with me why I tell engaged couples that the heart-work is truly the hard work of marriage preparation. And the pope-saint would add “this is something truly worthy of man.” Indeed, it is indispensable.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

A Clashing Cymbal

Learning to love in multiple languages

05/19/2024

Acts 2:1-11 When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language?

Sometimes people ask me, “Fr. John, how many languages can you speak?” I tell them that I can speak English, Spanish, and Malayalam, but I can only read Latin and French. Would you like to hear these four foreign languages, since after all, it is Pentecost, and the apostles spoke multiple languages as we heard in the first reading from Acts 2? I will say the Hail Mary (which you know well) in each language. See if you can catch any words!

First, Malayalam, my native tongue: “Nanma Niranja Mariyamme, Swasthi. Karthaavu Angayodu koode, Sthreekalil Angu Anugrahikka pettaval aakunu. Angayude Udharathin Bhalamaaya Eesho Anugrahakkipettavan aakunu. Parishudha Mariyame, Thamburante Amme, Papikalaaya Njangalkku Vendi, Epozhum Njangalude Marana Samayathum Thamburanodu Apeshikaname. Amen.” Second, Spanish: Dios te salve, María, Llena eres de gracia, el Señor es contigo. Bendita tú eres entre todas las mujeres, y bendito es el fruto de tu vientre, Jesús. Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros, pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte. Amen”.

Third, French: Je vous salue, Marie pleine de grâce; le Seigneur est avec vous. Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni. Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu, priez pour nous pauvres pécheurs, maintenant et à l’heure de notre mort. Amen. Fourth, Latin: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum. Benedicta tu in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc, et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”

Are you impressed by that display of linguistic skills? Well, don’t be! Why not? Well, because St. Paul warns us in 1 Co 13:1, “If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clashing cymbal.” In other words, on Judgment Day, God will not ask me if I can speak Latin, French or Malayalam fluently. Speaking several languages may get you into Harvard, but it won’t get you into heaven.

Rather, God will ask me if I have mastered speaking the language of love. Why? Well, because love is the language of heaven. And just like we Americans get upset when foreigners enter this country and cannot speak English well, so the saints and angels will have little tolerance for us if we are not fluent in love. In other words, the tables will be turned and we will be the immigrants knocking on the doors of Paradise. We better start practicing the language of Paradise today.

And by the way, how do you know if you are becoming fluent in this heavenly tongue? I remember studying Spanish in Mexico and we students often discussed when someone becomes fluent in a language. One person said when you dream in that language. Another insisted it’s when you can understand poetry or music in that language. Yet another said sarcastically: it’s when you stop asking if you’re fluent because you know you are. If you’re still asking, it is because you’re not fluent yet.

In the gospel, Jesus teaches that fluency really comes with forgiveness. And so he gives his apostles the Holy Spirit to give them a crash course in forgiveness and become fluent in love. The Holy Spirit didn’t just give the apostles the ability to speak a lot of languages. He taught them the most important language of all, namely, love, the language of heaven. In other words, we have only mastered the language of love, when we can truly forgive our neighbor – and maybe also forgive ourselves – from the heart. If you cannot forgive someone – a spouse, a sibling, and neighbor, a co-worker – you are not yet fluent in love.

We have a columbarium here at Immaculate Conception, and sometimes when people come in to buy a niche for themselves, they sort of ask on the sly: “Who is in the niche next to me?” And if it is someone they do not get along with or particularly like they say: “Well, forget it! I don’t want to spend eternity next to that person!” And I say to them: “Well, guess what? That is exactly the person you will be next to in Purgatory. That is the point of Purgatory: to love, forgive, and cherish the unlovable and love them like your own children, or better, like your grandchildren.

No one can get into heaven holding a grudge or lack of forgiveness toward another human being. Think of all the people you don’t like or love. You don’t have to be next to them in the IC columbarium, but you will be next to them in Purgatory. That purification is a kind of “immersion program” to learn the language of love. Just like I went to Cuernevaca, Mexico to learn Spanish, so we will all go to purgatory to learn to speak love. And we will have to practice speaking with those whom we love the least.

My friends, the best reason to learn other languages is to be able to say “I love you” in a way that more people can understand you. For example, to tell Hispanics: “Yo te quiero!”, to tell the French: “Je t’aime!”, to tell the Malayalalees: “Njaan ninne snehikkunnu!”, to tell the old Romans: “Ego te amo!” The more people you can say “I love you” to, the more ready you are for heaven. Otherwise, you are just a clashing cymbal.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

The Second Word, Part 4

Dealing with objections and opponents

05/14/2024

We pick up again our theological fork to take a third bite of the elephant of chapter two of Pope St. John Paul II’s groundbreaking theology of the body. In sections four and five (out of seven total sections) the pope feels the need to address important objections to Christ’s teaching about adultery in Mt. 5:27-28. Right off the bat, John Paul acknowledges Christ’ words about adultery in the heart are “demanding” – recall how the heart work is truly hard work – but he insists it should not, for that reason, be dismissed as impossible or irrelevant. I once heard a golf pro say that there are a hundred ways to hit a golf ball wrong, but only one way to hit it right. Likewise, there are many ways to misunderstand Jesus’ words about adultery in the heart but only one way to understand it correctly, namely, what John Paul proposes in the theology of the body. The pope will identify six such ways to get adultery in the heart wrong while defending the only way to get adultery in the heart right. In this way, the pope-saint follows in the footsteps of one of his intellectual masters, St. Thomas Aquinas. In Aquinas’ masterpiece, the Summa Theologica, the Angelic Doctor first lists the objections to the truths of the faith – to give the Devil his due – and then proceeds to debunk them. John Paul II, then, in sections four and five, turns to meet such objections, or we might say, to deal with his opponents.

The first objection (or opponent) is his most formidable foe and rears his ugly head repeatedly throughout the theology of the body, namely, Manichaeism. The pope explains: “Manichaeism, which sprang up in the Orient from Mazdean dualism, that is, outside the biblical sphere, saw the source of evil in matter, in the body, and therefore condemned all that is bodily in man.” Have you heard of the modern phenomenon of “cutting,” where teenagers have the habit of cutting their arms or legs as a way of mitigating the deeper anxieties they feel? They punish the body as if it were the culprit for their problems. Cutting is one manifestation of Manichaeism which see the human body as the root of human evil. Today’s teenagers practicing cutting blame the body (like modern-day Manicheans) for their problems. But just like the Jews erred in crucifying innocent Jesus, teens, too, condemn the innocent body when they should point an accusing finger at the guilty party, namely, concupiscence.

Next John Paul II considers three objections (or opponents) together, a trifecta of trouble-makers, that is, the modern thinkers Friederich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. Each thinker reduces a person to one or another critical component of what it means to be a human, but also fails to see the whole picture of the person. Their predicament is like the Indian folklore of the six blind men who tried to learn what an elephant was. One touched its side and declared: “It is smooth and solid, the elephant is a wall!” The second grabbed its limber trunk and said, “An elephant is a giant snake!” The third touched its pointed tusk and exclaimed: “An elephant is a deadly and pointed spear.” The fourth felt the elephant’s leg and decided: “We have here an extremely large cow!” The fifth found its large ear and determined: “An elephant is a huge fan or maybe a flying carpet.” And the sixth touched the tail and pronounced: “Why this is nothing more than a piece of old rope.” In other words, like so many modern philosophies, Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud missed the forest for the trees.

The Holy Father translates the thinking of this trifecta back into biblical terms in 1 John: "In Nietzschean hermeneutics, the judgement and the accusation of the human heart corresponds in some way to what biblical language calls “pride of life”; in Marxist hermeneutics, to what it calls “concupiscence of the eyes”; in Freudian hermeneutics, by contrast, to what it calls “concupiscence of the flesh." Put simply, one man sees people only in terms of power, the second judges man as he deals with money or material goods, and the third only concerns himself with human sexuality and ignores the rest. There is, to be sure, some truth in each philosophical system, but that also turns out to be their critical flaw. There is “some” truth but they surmise it is the whole truth. The theology of the body, by contrast, presents the whole truth about the human person in a panoramic perspective that leaves out nothing. The theology of the body comprehends the whole elephant from trunk to tail.

The fifth objection the pope confronts is “eros” or the “erotic.” In modern usage, we associate the erotic only with what is both sexual and shameful, euphemistically called “adult entertainment.” But John Paul wants to rescue eros and recover its more ancient meaning which is quite sublime and even hints at the holy. He explains: “According to Plato, ‘eros’ represents the inner power that draws man toward all that is good, true, and beautiful.” The pope cautions us in two directions: on the one hand, not to dismiss all sexual desire as disordered and evil – like the Manicheans did, throwing the baby out with the bathwater – nor, on the other hand, glorifying or exaggerating its value like Freud did. Rather, like in the case of the body being basically good, so man’s deepest impulses, especially his strong sexual desire for the opposite sex, is fundamentally good, as long as it is not tainted with concupiscence. John Paul insists: “Further, if the words of Matthew 5:27-28 represent such a call [to the true, good, and beautiful] then this means in the erotic sphere, ‘eros’ and ‘ethos’ do not diverge, are not opposed to each other, but are called to meet in the human heart and to bear fruit in this meeting.” It is hard to miss the conjugal connotations the pope implies in that statement. That is, the ethical and the erotic are called to become one in the heart, like a bride and groom become one on their honeymoon. Thus both couples are called to bear fruit. I will let you decide which spouse symbolizes “eros” and which one is “ethos.” Thus, the pope lays the objection of eros, as the exaggerated and exclusively erotic, to bed.

The sixth opposition the Holy Father faces is called “the problem of erotic spontaneity.” The pope puts the problem succinctly: “People often maintain that ethos takes away spontaneity from what is erotic in human life and behavior; and for this reason they often demand detachment from ethos ‘for the benefit’ of eros.” Again, as he showed with the shallow and one-sided understanding of the body, and also with eros, so he will demonstrate in the case of erotic spontaneity: such objections are spurious and “superficial.” It may help to compare the truly spontaneous man and the only apparently spontaneous person with someone who can have two or three alcoholic drinks versus the alcoholic who has no self-control. The alcoholic may claim to be more “spontaneous” when he drinks himself under the table. But such spontaneity is a farce and fools no one who is sober. The pope points to a more mature spontaneity, arguing: “At the price of mastery over these impulses, man reaches that deeper and more mature spontaneity with which his ‘heart,’ by mastering these impulses, rediscovers the spiritual beauty of the sign constituted by the human body in its masculinity and femininity."

What is ultimately at stake in the question about sexual spontaneity is who acts freely and who is simply a slave to his passions. A slave cannot be spontaneous because he is shackled to his sins. John Paul elaborates: “In addition, [the man overcoming concupiscence] gradually experiences the freedom of the gift…” In the final riveting scene from the movie “Flight”, Denzel Washington plays an alcoholic pilot who has had his license revoked and is sentenced to prison for crashing landing a plane while inebriated. Seated before other inmates, Captain Whip Whittaker humbly acknowledges: “But at least I am sober. I thank God for that. I’m grateful for that. And this is going to sound real stupid coming from a man locked up in prison, but for the first time in my life, I’m free.” Only the fully free man is truly spontaneous. That glorious freedom from slavery to all forms of addition, especially concupiscence, is precisely the hope of the theology of the body.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

Nourish and Nurture

Continuing Jesus’ maternal ministry in the Church

05/12/2024

Mk 16:15-20 Jesus said to his disciples: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

Doctors have discovered that human eyesight develops gradually. When a baby is born, for example, it can only perceive objects about 8 to 10 inches away from its face. That also happens to be exactly the distance between a baby’s face and his mother’s face while breast-feeding. A very special – and in some ways an unbreakable – bond is created between the baby and its mother while nursing.

Not only is the baby nourished physically with mother’s milk, it is nurtured emotionally by learning to trust in his or her mother’s love. The little baby begins to believe: my mother will always be here for me. That is why Isaiah writes rhetorically speaking for God: “Can a mother forget her infant, be without tenderness for the child of her womb? Even should she forget you, I will never forget you” (Is 49:15). All this is pre-programmed into the tiny baby’s heart while he breast-feeds and can only see 8 to 10 inches and beholds his mother’s face.

This nurturing and nourishing relationship between mother and baby can also help us understand today’s feast of the Ascension. How so? Well, since God had already compared himself to a loving mother back in the book of Isaiah, it should not be a stretch to say the way Jesus interacts and instructs his disciples bears some striking similarities to a mother and baby, too.

For example, Jesus feeds – practically nurses – his apostles with his own Body and Blood in the Eucharist, like a mother feeds her baby with her own body. Jesus teaches his disciples to trust him and that he will never abandon them, like a mother is always there for her baby. In a sense, for three years Jesus’ face had been very close to the apostles, easily visible, up-close and personal, like the 8 to 10 inches between a baby and its mother’s face.

But at the Ascension Jesus is taken up into heaven and the apostles will have to carry on Jesus’ maternal ministry by, as he charges them in the gospel: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” Then he commands them to baptize, to lay hands on the sick, and to drive out demons. Jesus was using symbolic language to refer to the sacraments of baptism, anointing of the sick, and reconciliation, where we drive out demons of sin.

I remember Msgr. Hebert, my first pastor, said that whenever a baby cried as he poured the water over its head during a baptism, he remarked: “That was the evil spirits coming out.” By the way, we hear a lot of evil spirits coming out at Mass, too! And of course, nowhere does the Church carry out this maternal ministry of Jesus more intimately and closely than when a priest distributes Holy Communion. A person’s face and a priest’s face are about 8 to 10 inches apart at that moment as Jesus feeds his people, his children, with his own Body.

This is Mother’s Day weekend here in the United States and we rightly celebrate our beloved mothers. We owe so much to our mothers that we really cannot repay them or tell them “thank you” or “I love you” enough. We cannot even imaging some of their excruciating sacrifices, like childbirth. But we still have to try with roses, and chocolates and phone calls, dinners and spa days.

My parents now live in Springdale so they are close to my brother, Paul. But I go up to Springdale every Friday to visit them. And my mother is almost as excited to see me as she is to see my dog, Apollo! Just kidding…sort of. I have learned so much from my mother: especially from those early days when she nursed me at her breast, and even today as she beautifully embodies joy, grace, dignity, wisdom, faith, and above all, tender love.

On a natural level, my mother did for me what Jesus did for his apostles during his earthly life. She taught me a mother’s love, how to nourish but also how to nurture. And in that way, although she didn't know it, she also prepared me to become a priest, because that was is precisely what I do on a sacramental level: nourish and nurture my spiritual children. Thank you, mom, you were the first to teach me how to be a decent man and a dedicated priest.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

Two Imposters

Treating both triumphs and disasters the same

05/12/2024

Jn 16:20-23 Jesus said to his disciples: "Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. On that day you will not question me about anything. Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you."

Let me share with you the same advice I offer families before the funeral of a loved one. We gather in the vestibule of the church with the deceased in the casket. I welcome everyone and give some directions about how we’ll go through Mass. Then I say: “There will be some light-hearted moments when we may laugh at funny stories. And there will be some heavy, sad, moments when we will really miss our loved one, and feel their absence. But in all those moments, keep your eyes on Jesus, and everything else will be okay.”

Then I go on: “That is the way we make it through life: in all the highs and lows and in-betweens, you keep your eyes on Jesus, and everything else will be okay.” Now that is a sober thing to remember because life always brings highs and lows, triumphs and tragedies, joys and heart-breaks. The happy fool thinks my life will always be butterflies and unicorns, springtime and sunshine. Or, the sad fool thinks my life will always be a long time of defeats and disappointments, doom and gloom. But the wise man knows that fortunes change. And the Christian knows in addition that the only sane and stable attitude is to keep your eyes on Jesus, like the peaceful eye in the center of the storms of life.

As Rudyard Kipling remarked in his poem, “If” – If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two imposters just the same.” Boys and girls, whether you are rejoicing because of some triumph, or mourning your losses due to some disaster, treat them both with an even hand. Like kids used to say when they didn’t want to hear bad news: “Tell it to the hand.” Or, as Hannah Montana once said rather distastefully: “Tell it to the booty, cause the hands off duty.” The point is: Triumph and Disaster are both imposters. The only real McCoy is Jesus, so keep your eyes on him.

In the gospel today, Jesus also tells his apostles to be on guard against these two imposters. He says: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.” How will the disciples’ grief finally become joy? Jesus explains a few verses later: “But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you.” In other words, the world is full of the two imposters of Triumph and Disaster. Instead of tying your hopes for happiness on their coattails, hang on to Jesus in whom we can rejoice, and then “no one will take your joy away from you.” Jesus alone is the peaceful eye in the midst of the storms of life.

Let me draw out two implications of being wary of these two imposters, a personal one and a relational one. The end of a school year is filled with recognizing triumphs, and maybe even reflecting on some disasters. Maybe you will receive rewards, honors, certificates, or have been elected for some leadership role. Those achievements are wonderful and I am sure you have earned them by working hard.

But in a sense they are “imposters” so don’t get a big head or think you are a hot shot or the BMOC (big man on campus). Keep your eyes on Jesus. On the other hand, maybe you reflect at the close of this year on struggles and set-backs you’ve experienced: poor grades, lost games in a particular sport, not winning a leadership role. Again, think of these as “imposters”, and instead of focusing on them, keep your eyes on Jesus.

We meet these two imposters again in our relationships with others. Perhaps you have met the man or woman of your dreams and feel on top of the world. You will feel a sense of exuberant triumph and believe your love is larger than life. And maybe this person is the one you will marry and have 20 kids with. But in all marriages there are struggles and stumbles, and you may feel this is not what you signed up for. That euphoria of falling in love is an “imposter” because it doesn’t last. Don’t be fooled by it, and keep your eyes on Jesus instead.

Or maybe you have been really hurt in a relationship and want to write off all boys or all girls. Maybe you will take revenge on all women by becoming a priest. Or avenge yourself on all men by becoming a nun. “Ha! That will show them!” we think. But such relational “disasters” are also imposters. Don’t be fooled by them, and keep your eyes on Jesus. Because "that is how we make it through life: all the highs and lows and in-betweens. Keep your eyes on Jesus, and everything else will be okay."

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

The Second Word, Part 3

Analyzing four meanings of the word adultery

05/10/2024

We take up now section 3, in a sense, the very heart of chapter two of the theology of the body, and take another bite of this elephant. Do you know what a philologist is? It is someone who loves and studies words, especially as they appear in literature and shape cultures. C. S. Lewis was a self-proclaimed philologist, and so it comes as no surprise that one of his last books was a study of the word “love” called The Four Loves. It was published in 1960 and Lewis died on November 22, 1963, incidentally the same day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. In his analysis of arguably the most charged and potent word in the English language, Lewis examined four Greek words often translated into English as “love.” First, he looked at storge, which is affection or family love, like a mother loves her children. Second, he identified philia or friendship love, like between King David and Jonathan in the Old Testament, or more recently, between Batman and Robin. Third, he explored eros which he described as the powerful feeling of being in love, like falling head-over-heels in love like Romeo and Juliet. And finally and supremely, he considered agape or God’s own love, which is entirely selfless and seeks only the good of the other. Lewis puts it forcefully: “We begin at the real beginning, with love as the Divine energy. This primal love is Gift-love. In God there is no hunger that needs to be filled, only plenteousness that desires to give.” Lewis’ reputation as a philologist and theologian had also reached the ears of John Paul II, who quotes Lewis’ The Four Loves in the third section of chapter two, which we will now turn to consider.

In this third section the pope also styles himself as a philologist, not studying the word “love" like Lewis, but rather its contrary, “adultery." Love and adultery are polar opposites. John Paul narrows his examination of adultery mainly to the Old and New Testaments, especially what Jesus means by “adultery in the heart” in Mt 5: 27-28. But the Holy Father does not ignore the communal human heritage of this word, which is why he quotes C. S. Lewis. Similar, also to how Lewis distinguished among four meanings of the word “love,” so John Paul II will explain there are four unique senses or meanings of the word “adultery” in the Scriptures. Also, ,just like the three preliminary meanings of love sort of crescendo in agape, so too, the initial three senses of adultery build up and prepare the reader for the astounding sense of adultery in the heart that Jesus means.

The pope-saint first points out two different ways adultery was understood in the Old Testament; first in the law, and second in the prophets. In the legal texts of the Old Testament, like Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, God specifically forbids adultery. But adultery was given a meaning that sounds almost contradictory, or self-defeating. For example, in Gn 16:2, Abraham’s wife, Sarah, encourages him to have sexual relations with a maidservant (Hagar) in order to have children. And later, Kings David and Solomon not only have several wives but also numerous concubines. According the 1 Kgs 11:3, Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. The meaning of adultery, therefore, was circumscribed, limited, only to situations of sexual relations with another man’s wife, but it did not preclude polygamy or sexual relations with someone who was not married. The pope sums up this first rather narrow view of adultery: “By adultery one understood only the possession of another’s wife, but not the possession of other women as wives next to the first one…Adultery is thus combated only within definite limits and within the circumference of definite premises that make up the essential form of the Old Testament ethos.” Put differently, even though the Decalogue (Ten Commandments) expressly prohibited adultery in the sixth and ninth commandments, the additional legislation of the Old Testament still found loopholes for polygamy and promiscuity. The first meaning of adultery in the Bible, we could say, was very restricted and minimalistic.

In the prophetic books, the pope finds a second, more spiritual, interpretation of the word “adultery.” Focusing especially on texts drawn from Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel, John Paul describes the defection from true faith in God as “adultery.” The pope writes: “Because of its idolatry and desertion of God, the Bridegroom, Israel commits a betrayal before him that can be compared to that of a woman in relation to her husband: it commits, in fact, “adultery.” In this second sense of adultery, we are not dealing with individuals so much as with the corporate body of the Chosen People. Nonetheless, it helped the Jewish people to begin to see that the only way to live their monotheistic religion was in a monogamous way with their Creator. The Holy Father notes: “In many texts, monogamy seems to be the only right analogy of monotheism understood in the categories of covenant, that is, of faithfulness and trust in the only true God-Yahweh, Israel’s Bridegroom.” It would, of course, take time for the people to put this connection between monogamy-monotheism into practice in their personal lives. But the prophets were adamant that monotheism and monogamy go hand-in-hand, as the pope observed: “Adultery is the antithesis of this spousal relation.”

The pope then moves his reflections on adultery into the New Testament to address Christ’s words specifically, in particular the notion of “looking lustfully.” John Paul believes a person’s look reveals their heart’s depths, like the saying, “The eyes are the windows of the soul.” John Paul elaborates: “Through the look, man shows himself on the outside and to others; above all he shows what he perceives in his ‘interior’.” Leadership guru John Maxwell related this story about President Abraham Lincoln: “An advisor to President Lincoln suggested a certain candidate for the Lincoln cabinet. But Lincoln refused, saying, ‘I don’t like the man’s face.’ ‘But sir, he can’t be responsible for his face,’ insisted the advisor. ‘Every man over forty is responsible for his face,’ replied Lincoln.” Jesus would agree with Lincoln about the importance of the look on one’s face: it reveals the depths of one’s heart and therefore one’s moral character.

The way this look becomes a third form of adultery is through the intention of the person who looks lustfully. In his mind, in his intention, in his desire, the beautiful woman a man beholds is reduced to an object rather than revered as a person. The pope recognizes this new form of “being intentionally,” writing: “It is enough to point out that the woman…is deprived of the meaning of her attraction as a person so that this attraction…has become a mere object for the man: that is, she begins to exist intentionally as an object for the possible satisfaction of the man’s sexual urge that lies in his masculinity.” Forgive me if this parallel is too crude, but sometimes my dog Apollo tries to have sex with my leg. My leg, to him, has been reduced to an object for the possible satisfaction of Apollo’s sexual urge. I assure him, “I love you, too, buddy, but not like that.” The third form of adultery lies in the eyes, in the look on the face, in “the intentionality of the man’s very existence in relation to another.”

The fourth and final meaning of adultery shocked and scandalized everyone who first heard it. It may surprise you as well. John Paul has already come a long way from the casuistry and loopholes of the Old Testament by insisting that adultery can happen in the heart without even requiring physical contact, namely, by the lustful look. But the pope takes another shocking step by saying that a man could commit adultery in his heart with his own wife. See if you can follow the inner logic of this stunning conclusion of the theology of the body. The Holy Father explains: "The man who “looks” in the way described in Mt 5:27-28 “makes use” of the woman, of her femininity, to satisfy his own “drive”…A man can commit such adultery “in the heart” even with his own wife, if he treats her only as an object for the satisfaction of drives.” Put bluntly, adultery happens if a husband treats his wife like Apollo treats my leg, reducing his wife to an object. Sometimes people think marriage is an excuse for doing whatever you want in the bedroom, but that is not what Jesus or John Paul teach. Such misguided belief is only an excuse for the caner of concupiscence to metastasize. The fourth meaning of the word “adultery” is selfish, lustful sexual relations with one’s own wife.

In these four versions of adultery we have traveled from a minimal meaning in the Old Testament – adultery only if it is with another man’s wife, while still tolerating polygamy and concubinage – to a maximal meaning of adultery in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount – where a man can commit adultery with his own wife if he uses her as an object to satisfy his passions. Just like Lewis articulated agape as the maximal meaning of love, so John Paul II might agree that lustful relations with one’s own wife is the maximal meaning of adultery.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

The Second Word, Part 2

Taking the first bite of the elephant to explore concupiscence

05/09/2024

There is an old Indian proverb which asks: “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer is, “One bite at a time.” I think that means go slowly and steadily and you will eventually eat it all. Reading Pope St. John Paul II’s chapter two of the theology of the body can feel like eating an elephant. It is not only one hundred and fifty-three pages long, it is incredibly dense, and at points, blindingly insightful. It is hard to eat it all in one sitting. The pope divides chapter two into seven sections, as well as adds an appendix, the elephant’s tail. I propose we consider these seven sections in four groupings, which will correspond to the next four homilies including today. We will tackle the first group today (sections one and two), and examine how the pope presents Jesus’ teaching about adultery in the heart and describes how the heart has been broken because of concupiscence. Next time we will study the substantial section three, where the Holy Father notes the shift in the center of gravity of morality from mere actions to the deeper movements of the heart. This section is ideal for those who complain: “I can’t think of anything I do wrong!” We can sin with movements of the heart as well as movements of the body.

That will be followed by a third homily reviewing sections four and five dealing with trusting the heart and how eros (the erotic) and ethos (the ethical) interplay within the heart. And finally, we will look at sections six and seven where the pope analyzes St. Paul’s contribution to growing in purity of heart with the power of the Holy Spirit, or more simply, “life according to the Spirit.” Can you see how John Paul’s main concern in chapter two is with the heart: its brokenness, its trustworthiness, its healing, and ultimately, its elevation to new heights of holiness? In other words, the pope’s chapter two, like my second bucket of marriage preparation, focusses on the heart work, which is really hard work. But John Paul will insist in the face of all doubters or naysayers: “One should add that this task can be carried out and that it is truly worthy of man." Don’t lose hope in the goodness of the human heart and in the power of the Holy Spirit to make it better, or as I like to say, bionic.

We take the first bite of the elephant of chapter two by glancing at sections one and two. Like the pope did back in chapter one and as he will do in chapter three, here also he bases all his reflections on a “word” of Christ. The real Teacher of the theology of the body, let us not forget, is not the pope-saint but Jesus himself. John Paul begins chapter two stating: "As the subject of our future reflections – during the Wednesday meetings – I want to develop the following word of Christ, which is part of the Sermon on the Mount: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you: Whoever looks at a woman to desire her [in a reductive way] has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Mt 5:27-28). "

John Paul does not want us to miss that Jesus is principally preoccupied with the heart work, the hard work, of preparing humanity to marry him. He does not want to marry a bride with a broken heart, but with a bionic heart. Like an expert cardiologist, the pope first runs tests on humanity’s heart in order to properly diagnose its illness, its brokenness. John Paul finds a spiritual eco-cardiogram, we might say, in 1 Jn 2:16-17. The pope notes: "We are referring here to the concise statement of 1 John: ‘All that is in the world, the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. And the world passes away with its concupiscence; but the one who does the will of God will remain in eternity’ (1 Jn 2:16-17).” Think of concupiscence like a cancer that consumes the heart. Once he has diagnosed the cardiac malady as concupiscence, the spiritual doctor investigates its roots in Genesis 3, the story of Original Sin, where the cancer originated.

Recall how in examining Christ’s First Word about Gn 1-2, the pope recognized three original experiences of Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness, so now John Paul explains how Original Sin will undo those authentic experiences and make them feel foreign. Back in the 17th century, when the British poet John Donne was having marriage trouble with his wife, Anne, he wrote this memorable epigram: “John Donne, Anne Donne, Un-done.” The pope acknowledges this undoing of Original Sin: “The words of Genesis 3:10, ‘I was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself,’ confirm the collapse of the original acceptance of the body as a sign of the person in the visible world.” That is, with Original Sin man went from feeling how singular and superior he was in the world (the meaning of Original Solitude) to how simple and subservient he was to the world. Instead of amity and closeness there arose animosity and distance between man and the world in the wake of Original Sin. Henceforth mankind would suffer from this symptom of the cancer of concupiscence.

The pope then turns to explore how concupiscence undoes Original Unity and causes “a second discovery of sex.” Whereas Adam and Eve, through their naked bodies easily communicated love, care, and mutual support, they now feel fear, suspicion, and even opposition toward each other, and so cover their nakedness. John Paul writes perceptively: “This necessity [to cover themselves] shows the fundamental lack of trust, which already in itself points to the collapse of the original relationship ‘of communion’.” Put simply: communion has been replaced with conflict. This difference in male and female motives and mindsets is aptly captured by the adage: “Men use love to get sex, and women use sex to get love.” In any case, Original Unity has been undone and replaced by an obstinate opposition, or at least a lurking suspicion of each other. But don’t believe me, just ask any couple who is married for more than five days.

Thirdly, John Paul turns to the earlier notion of Original Nakedness and shows how concupiscence deforms it, almost obliterating it entirely. Nakedness in this context should not be understood simply as a naked body, someone in the “birthday suit,” as we euphemistically says. Rather, nakedness is a form of transparency that allows man to see through the body and perceive the soul. When parents try to teach their children the awkward dynamics of human sexual relations, what analogy do they typically reach for? They call it “The birds and the bees.” Why? Well, because parents erroneously equate what a husband and wife do in the act of sexual intercourse with what animals do when they copulate. The reasons parents capitulate to that comparison is because the body no longer transparently reveals the soul. Rather, it has become opaque and hides the soul. The body does not reveal, it conceals. The loss of this nakedness (this transparency) of the body causes people to believe humans and animals are essentially the same kind of creature. All dogs go to heaven, right? Perhaps more tragically, the loss of Original Nakedness makes man forget he is created in “the image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:26), and believe he is more like an animal than an angel.

The pope describes this in his characteristically precise but circuitous way: "The human “heart” experiences the degree of this limitation or deformation above all in the sphere of the reciprocal relations between man and woman. Precisely in the experience of the “heart,” femininity and masculinity in their mutual relations seem to be no longer the expression of the spirit that tends toward personal communion and are left only as an object of attraction, in some sense as it happens “in the world” of living beings (birds and bees, for example) which like man have received the blessing of fruitfulness (see Gen 1)." Can you see now why the heart work of marriage preparation is truly hard work? Indeed, such heart work would not only be hard but impossible without the grace and gifts of the Holy Spirit. Human hearts suffer from the cancer of concupiscence, by deforming and debilitating Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness. Changing metaphors, the pope puts it in stark terms: “The ‘heart’ has become a battlefield between love and concupiscence.” And by the way, that was just the first bite of the elephant, sections one and two.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

The Second Word, Part 1

Undertaking the heart work of marriage preparation

05/06/2024

Last year we studied Pope St. John Paul II's theology of the body in a series of homilies. We looked at Christ's First Word and Third Word. I now want to dedicate a few homilies to Christ's Second Word. I celebrate a lot of weddings every year. In fact, one friend who works at the diocese and processes marriage certificates for the whole diocese said that I do more weddings than any other diocesan priest. I feel like Adam Sandler in the movie, “The Wedding Singer.” My brides don’t want to hear a song, they want to hear a sermon. When a young couple comes to me for marriage preparation, I try to break-down the rather complex process by saying: “Think of marriage preparation like trying to fill three buckets. The first bucket is called “paperwork” and we fill it with baptismal certificates, marriage license, parish registration, etc. The second bucket is called “heart work”, which sounds a lot like “hard work” because it is. You will give your heart to another person and they will entrust their heart to you. You must both learn how to hold it with tenderness and care. The third bucket is called “wedding work,” like the rehearsal, the music, the photography, etc. of the big wedding day. But by far the most critical bucket is the heart work, the hard work, of giving and receiving another person’s heart.

In Pope St. John Paul II’s theology of the body, the Holy Father believes that the heart work is also indispensable, and in a sense, central. John Paul II divides the first half of his monumental work called Man and Woman He Created Them into three chapters (chapters sound more classy than my buckets, but my buckets are more memorable). The first chapter he devoted to discussing Christ’s first word on our original experiences modeled by Adam and Eve: Original Solitude, Original Unity, and Original Nakedness. These Edenic experiences preceded Original Sin which fundamentally changed all subsequent human experiences, and set in motion human history marred by sin and death. John Paul’s third chapter was dedicated to study the resurrection of the body, life in heaven, which will essentially be a wedding. Rv 19:9 virtually read like a wedding invitation: “Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Surprisingly, John Paul’s first and third chapters correspond closely to my first and third buckets. The first chapter, like the first bucket, is concerned with preliminaries like paperwork and setting the proper stage for marriage preparation to commence. The third chapter, also like the third bucket, focusses on the wedding work, the completion of marriage preparation and the celebration of love.

If we step back to survey all human history in the light of these three chapters or three buckets, we discover that humanity’s sojourn on earth is nothing other than living chapter two (or my second bucket) of Pope St. John Paul’s theology of the body. This is the answer to the basic question all sane people sooner or later ask: “What is the meaning of my life?” The answer is: “We are here to learn how to love.” That is, we must dedicate ourselves to the heart work, which is really the hard work, of being a human being created in the “image and likeness of God” (Gn 1:26). And what we finally learn is that earthly life is truly marriage preparation, initially to a human spouse, but ultimately to our divine Spouse, Jesus. That is what is going on here.

The pope uses a distinctive word highly suggestive of marriage preparation, namely, pedagogy, which is a form of education. He writes at the end of chapter two, as if in summary of what had preceded: "If Christ appeals to the human “heart” and, before that, his appeal to the “beginning” allows us to construct or at least to outline an anthropology that we can call “theology of the body,” this theology is at the same time a pedagogy. Pedagogy seeks to educate man by setting the requirements before him, giving reasons for them, and indicating the ways that lead to their fulfillment."

Do you remember the beginning of the old television show called “The Six Million Dollar Man”? In a sense, that introduction describes the reeducation or reconstruction of the heart that John Paul wants to undertake. The show began after the crash of a space shuttle, when the voiceover says: “Steve Austin, astronaut, a man barely alive. Gentlemen, we can rebuild him, we have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before, better, stronger, faster.” John Paul’s purpose in the theology of the body is not so much making the body better or bionic, but the heart.

And when we remember that earthly life seen as marriage preparation, which really means giving your heart to another person and holding another’s heart with unspeakable tenderness, then we don’t want to exchange broken heart barely alive, but healed and whole hearts. Because of Original Sin – with damage compounded by our own sins – our hearts are more mangled and mutilated than Steve Austin’s body was after his near-fatal crash. In other words, the technology that scientists had to rebuilt Austin’s broken body parallels the theology that John Paul II presents to rebuild humanity’s broken heart. Indeed, as the pope will explain in this second chapter, our hearts have to be even “better, stronger, and faster” than normal because our Spouse is Jesus Christ, the perfect Man. Many years ago a friend of mine shared his two rules for dating women. First, never date a friend, because if you break up, you lose the friend as well. Second, never date a woman who’s better looking than you because you will always be jealous. Well, humanity has broken both those rules by falling in love with Jesus, who is our best Friend, and also better looking in every possible way.

This capacity of the human heart to love in a way that is “better” or “bionic” is what St. Paul called “life according to the Spirit.” The Holy Father elaborates on these new-found powers of the heart:

"If mastery in the sphere of ethos manifests and realizes itself as “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-mastery” – as we read in Galatians – then behind each of these realizations, these forms of behavior, these moral virtues, stands a specific choice, that is, an effort of the will, a fruit of the human spirit permeated by the Spirit of God, which manifests itself in choosing the good." That is, the principal Protagonist in this marriage preparation program called the theology of the body will be the Holy Spirit. Only the supernatural technology of the Holy Spirit can teach, train, and finally transform our human hearts to love our divine Bridegroom, Jesus.

This second chapter – or second bucket – of the theology of the body is also based on a word of Christ. You will recall that in our Lord’s first word, the pope analyzed Mt 19:3-8, where Jesus invited his interlocutors (and us) to return to the beginning in Genesis 1-2 to understand God’s original plan for marriage. Jesus’ third word that the pope examined came from Mt 22:24-30, where Jesus pointed the Sadducees (and us) to consider the resurrection of the body, and life in heaven, as the full realization of God’s plan for human love, ultimately in a mystical marriage to Christ. And now the pope-saint devotes no less than one hundred and fifty-three pages to Christ’s second word taken from our Lord’s magnificent Sermon on the Mount, particularly Mt 5:27-28. There Jesus declares quite surprisingly: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” As he begins this new chapter the pope is quick to point out: “At that time [in chapter one], we were able to realize how vast was the context of a sentence, or even just of a word, spoken by Christ." In other words, the pope urges us to buckle-up for an adventure as we explore this second chapter of the theology of the body, the second bucket of marriage preparation, the Second Word spoken by Christ.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

The Dying Church

Seeing how the Church lives on the Holy Spirit

05/04/2024

Jn 15:9-17 Jesus said to his disciples: "As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love. "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you. This I command you: love one another."

My friends, is the Church dying? Or, we might ask, is the Church already dead? This past week the priests of our deanery met to talk about our struggling youth programs and why young people don’t come to Mass after Confirmation or graduation. Would many young people in high school and college say that the Church is dying, or at least that it feels irrelevant?

On April 22, 2024 USA Today published an article called “Share of US Catholics backing legal abortion rises as adherents remain at odds with church.” The author observed: “Catholics tend to be older than most Americans, the [Pew Research] survey found: About 6 in 10 Catholic adults are ages 50 or older, compared with 48% of the overall US population.” Catholics are older than the average American.

Then it pointed out important issues where Catholics disagree with Church teaching, saying: “Among all Catholics, 83% say the church should allow the use of contraception, 69% say priests should be allowed to marry, 64% say women should be allowed to become priests, and 54% say the church should recognize same-sex marriage.”

Then the article drew this rather dire conclusion: “That should be a wake-up call for bishops. One of the reasons people leave is because of rigid instruction on sexuality. An all-male celibate hierarchy is making the rules, and there’s this chasm between what Catholics believe in practice and what the church is teaching. They are leaving the people behind.” According to this article, therefore, if the Catholic Church isn’t already dead, it is definitely on life-support.

The article sounded a little like that old joke about the one dollar bill and the fifty dollar bill, both about to be retired from circulation. They meet on the conveyor belt headed to the shredder and starting talking. The one asks the fifty where it has spent its life. He replies proudly: “I’ve been to Las Vegas, on Caribbean cruises, and in the finest restaurants.” The fifty then asks the one: “How about you, little buddy?”

The one answers somewhat sadly: “Church, church, church, church, church.” The fifty asks: “Excuse me, but what is a church?” In other words, if you base your conclusions on statistical and sociological research, then the Catholic Church seems to be dead, or at least with one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel.

But I am convinced those are exactly the wrong criteria to evaluate the health and strength of the Church. Why? Well, because we miss what the Church really is. You see, statics or sociology will never show us how the Church’s true power and engine is the Holy Spirit. Jesus says in the gospel how he freely chooses those who receive the Spirit: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”

And in the first reading from Acts, St. Peter bears fruit because he is an instrument for the Holy Spirit. We read: “While Peter was still speaking these things, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who were listening to the word.” And later they are all baptized. That is, if the Pew Research Center had conducted sociological or statistical surveys in the first century, it would have said that the Christian enterprise was hopeless. Dead on arrival.

But the Church is far beyond the capacity of such surveys because it is not a human institution but rather divine, the Body of Christ. And just as Jesus (the Head) rose and reigns forever, so too will the Church (the Body) continue to spread and grow until, as St. Paul boldly predicted in Ep 4:13, “Until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ.” The Church will one day stand fully erect, even if we only receive one dollar bills in the collection.

Let me leave you with a lengthy but brilliant quotation from C. S. Lewis’ book “Mere Christianity.” Listen carefully now: “Compared with the development of man on this planet, the diffusion of Christianity over the human race seems to go like a flash of lightning – for two thousand years is almost nothing in the history of the universe. (Never forget we are all still ‘early Christians.’ The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething.” I love the image of the Church as a baby who is “still teething.”

Lewis continues: “The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age,” like that USA Today article argued. Lewis goes on: “But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying: dying by persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements.” Here he means Nazism, Communism, etc.

Lewis concludes: “But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man [Jesus] came to life again. In a sense…that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started [the Church]: and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place” (pp. 221-22).

In other words, changing metaphors, the Author who is writing the story of the Catholic Church is not human – you or I – but Divine, namely, the Holy Spirit. And if you bother to ask the Holy Spirit what he thinks about the vitality and the future of the Catholic Church, he would answer: “The Church is not dead, its story is only getting started. I’ve only written the Introduction of the book.” Or, like the kids say today: the Holy Spirit is just getting the party started.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

 

Squabble over Semantics

Understanding the controversies that shaped the Creed

04/30/2024

Jn 14:27-31a Jesus said to his disciples: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. You heard me tell you, 'I am going away and I will come back to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father; for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it happens, so that when it happens you may believe. I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just as the Father has commanded me."

There is a small line in the gospel today that caused a great deal of dispute and even division in the early Church. Did you happen to catch it? Jesus says, “the Father is greater than I.” Now when you first hear that statement, what do you think? Well, we might surmise that in some sense Jesus is “lesser” or “inferior” to God the Father. And of course, what Jesus says is true since he had just said a few verses earlier in Jn 14:6, that he is “the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus does not, indeed he cannot, lie.

And furthermore, the Holy Spirit who inspired St. John to record those words in the gospel did not err because we believe the Sacred Scriptures are inerrant regarding matters relating to our salvation, that is, concerning faith and morals. So what Jesus said is true and accurate, but in what sense did he mean it?

Well, in the 4th century (300’s) there was a priest named Arius who interpreted Jesus’ words (there and elsewhere) to mean that the Son of God, in his divine nature, was not “co-eternal” with God the Father. That is, within the Holy Trinity itself, God the Father was greater than God the Son. At the same time, however, St. Athanasius taught the Father and Son were perfectly equal, but that Jesus’ words referred to his human nature.

That is, insofar as Jesus has a human nature – which he received from his Mother Mary – “the Father is greater” than the Son. Now, I know this might all sound like an insignificant intermural squabble over semantics, or as Shakespeare said, “much ado about nothing.” But it was a huge controversy in the 4th century to such an extent that the majority of bishops adhered to Arianism, and at one point St. Athanasius was exiled.

So, how was this raging fire of faith finally extinguished? Well, it took two major church councils, the first convened in Nicea in 325 and the second in Constantinople in 381. Thanks to these first two councils of the Church, every Sunday we stand after the homily and profess our faith, the Creed. Those words have been shared and spoken by Christians for 1700 years.

Now maybe you can understand why we emphasize Jesus’ equality with God the Father when we say: “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial (equal) with the Father; through him all things were made.” Can you hear the Arian controversy behind those words of our Creed? And even moreso, can you hear the correct interpretation the councils were giving to Jn 14:28, where Jesus said (truly and accurately) “the Father is greater than I”?

Folks, I know today’s homily about a few words in Jn 14 might sound ho-hum and boring, like making a mountain out of a molehill. But it was anything but that in the 4th century. Bishops were declaring each other heretics. Saints and theologians were being condemned and exiled. And people were being put to death for what they believed (rightly or wrongly). In other words, our Catholic faith was forged in the fires of white hot controversy, and articulating the true faith was nothing less than a matter of life and death.

Let me bring this 4th century controversy in to the 21st century. During the RCIA process those who are learning about the Catholic faith are presented with a copy of the Creed at the first scrutiny during Lent. For me that is always such a significant gesture. Why? Well, because RCIA candidates who become Roman Catholic have experienced at least a little of that fire and controversy of the 4th century of the Church.

They have struggled to articulate their own faith, and sometimes in the face of tremendous pressure from family and friends that they were making a huge mistake. It would not be an exaggeration to say some even feel they have been exiled from their former social and spiritual groups. In other words, on a smaller scale, many of our RCIA participants have re-lived the Arian controversy in their journey to the Catholic Church. Don’t tell them that professing the true faith is simply a squabble over semantics.

Praised be Jesus Christ!