Cat and Mouse

Playing hide and seek with everyone except God

03/24/2018

John 11:45-56  So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, "What are we going to do?  This man is performing many signs. If we leave him alone, all will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our land and our nation." But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing, nor do you consider that it is better for you that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not perish." He did not say this on his own, but since he was high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but also to gather into one the dispersed children of God. So from that day on they planned to kill him. So Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews, but he left for the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim, and there he remained with his disciples. Now the Passover of the Jews was near, and many went up from the country to Jerusalem before Passover to purify themselves. They looked for Jesus and said to one another as they were in the temple area, "What do you think? That he will not come to the feast?"

All small children love to play the game called “cat and mouse.” One person tries to hide and the other person tries to find and catch them. In fact, last Sunday I played cat and mouse with 2-year-old Reed Dubina (Preston Dubina’s son). I would hide behind Preston and Reed would run around his father and try to spot me and catch me. What makes this game so easy and fun is that children think that if they cannot see you, you have somehow magically disappeared. “Out of sight, out of mind.” Some children even think that they can hide from their parents simply by closing their eyes. If I cannot see you, you must not be there. There are probably a few adults you wish you could play that game with: I close my eyes and you so-and-so disappears.

One of my favorite Psalms of the Old Testament is Psalm 139. The Psalmist insists we cannot play “cat and mouse” with God, which, by the way, happens to be a good thing. The psalmist sings: “Where can I go from your spirit? / From your presence, where can I flee? / If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; / if I lie down in Sheol, there you are. / If I take the wings of dawn / and dwell beyond the sea; / Even there your hand guides me, / your right hand holds me fast” (Psalm 139:7-10). The psalmist forgot to mention the child’s trick of closing his or her eyes to make another person disappear, but clearly that will not work on God either.

Jesus plays a little cat and mouse with the Pharisees in the gospel today. Caiaphas declares it is better for one man to die rather than the whole nation be exterminated. We read how Jesus reacts: “So, Jesus no longer walked about in public among the Jews, but he left for the region near the desert, to a town called Ephraim, and there he remained with his disciples.” Like I tried to hide behind Preston Dubina so little Reed would not see or find me, so Jesus hides in Ephraim, out of the sight of the Jewish authorities. But Jesus was also very familiar with Psalm 139 (maybe his favorite psalm?), and he knew he would never be outside the loving reach of his Father’s loving right hand. Jesus would never lose sight of his Father, even when he closed his eyes and died on the Cross. Even though God was out of Jesus’ sight, the Father was not out of his mind.

My friends, it is okay to play cat and mouse with small children and sometimes even with adults, but be very careful you not try to play that game with God. But we do try. Unfortunately, our whole country seems to want to shut our collective eyes against God and pretend he does not exist. If we remove his presence from the public square, we childishly think, maybe God will disappear all together. Doesn’t this sum up the silliness of modern atheism Nietzsche, Comte and Fruerbach: let us close our philosophical eyes and maybe God will magically disappear. We can also be tempted to exclude God from areas of our personal life. We try to hide our sexuality from God, or our prejudices about minorities or immigrants from God, or we conceal our political views from God’s sight, or we think we can go on vacation or spend our money and those things are none of God’s business. But we really cannot hide any of these things from God’s loving gave, not even the deepest secrets of our hearts. If we were a little wiser, like Jesus, we wouldn’t want to hide anything from him.

I was moved to tears by Bishop Robert Barron’s description of the word “adoration,” like when we sit in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. It sums up what I am trying to say about not playing cat and mouse with God. Bishop Barron wrote: “The term ‘adoration’ comes from the Latin ‘adoratio,’ which in turn is derived from ‘ad ora” (to the mouth). To adore, therefore, is to be mouth to mouth with God, properly aligned to the divine source, breathing in God’s life.” Bishop Barron continues: “When one is in the stance of adoration, the whole of one’s life – mind, will, emotion, imagination, sexuality – becomes ordered and harmonized, much as the elements of a rose window arrange themselves musically around a central point” (Catholicism, 21). In other words, not only do we not want to close our eyes to God; we do not even want to close our mouth to him.

Praised be Jesus Christ!