Give The Government What It Deserves

There is an appointed time for everything.*  There is a time to be silent, and there is a time to speak.  When injustice occurs, it is not a time to remain silent.  It is a time to speak.  

When George Floyd, a black man, is pinned to the ground by a police officer who is kneeling on his back despite a protest that he cannot breathe, injustice is occurring.  That injustice is heinously worsened when he dies because he could not breathe under that pressure.**  

Protesters are protesting for Mr. Floyd, because the force that was lawfully given to the police officer was unlawfully used.  When government starts abusing the powers given to it by its citizens, the citizens put the government in check.  

In today's Gospel, Jesus teaches, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”***  We give to the government what is due to it when we check its abuses one way or another.  Indeed, at the same time we also give to God what is due to God, since we are working for justice, for the respect of all persons, for the recognition of the dignity of all persons, which God expects of us in all we say and do.  

Government leaders have the power that they have only because it was given to them from above.****  Thus those in power fall short when they fail to acknowledge that moral authority which gave them the power they wield.  Those in power do even worse when they imply that they follow that moral authority but then act in exactly the opposite manner.  

Yesterday, using either tear gas or smoke canisters, law enforcement cleared a park, Lafayette Square, near the White House of protesters who, news agencies are typically saying, were peacefully protesting.*****, ******, *******  It has been suggested that the park was cleared because of violence in the area the night before.*****  Regardless of why the park was rid of protesters, what one actually does matters, not what one says or one insinuates.  Last night the President walked to an Episcopal church near the White House and a photo was taken as he held up a Bible there.  Presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden expressed that he hoped that the President "opened it once in a while instead of brandishing it."******  May the President follow the teachings of Jesus, as may we all.  May he truly lead, not rely merely on bluster and vague gestures which do not make any clear statement.  May he not only claim to value freedom, but so act as to truly value freedom.  

Today the President visited the John Paul II Shrine.  Then he went back to the White House to sign an executive order on international religious freedom.  Archbishop Wilton Gregory pointed to the rich irony of Saint Pope John Paul II’s defense of human rights as he condemned “the use of tear gas and other deterrents to silence, scatter or intimidate" protesters "for a photo opportunity in front of a place of worship and peace.”******  

Indeed, I put far more stock in what is going on right under someone's own nose, and how that person responds to those events, as an indication of that person's beliefs, of what that person holds dear, and what I can expect from that person.  In short, if the President will not protect the rights of people peacefully protesting right outside the White House, I hardly expect the President to be a champion of human rights elsewhere in the country or around the world.  

Indeed, for that very reason, that injustice was occurring right in front of him, I echo House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who said, "I am horrified he attempted to put down peaceful protests with military force," Hoyer said, calling it "the act of an authoritarian, unempathetic leader."*****

It has been suggested that police dispersed protesters who were attacking them.*****  However, no specific source was given to substantiate this claim.  Therefore, there is no way to check it, to question the supposed source of information.  I am more than a little suspicious of such a mysterious, unattributed claim.  Indeed, I call into question the acceptability, the propriety, of making such unsubstantiated claims, as they seriously endanger the search for the truth, potentially confusing and misleading citizens.  

On the other hand, I have been relieved to see a distinction made between peaceful protesters and those who inject violence into protests.  As the U.S. Attorney General, William Barr, noted, "Unfortunately, with the rioting that is occurring in many of our cities around the country, the voices of peaceful protests are being hijacked by violent radical elements."********  The truth is that many protesters are peaceful.  To label all protesters as radicals is to distort the truth.  Indeed, as I have maintained elsewhere based on a depiction of Pope Paul VI, protesters seek the truth; those who protest demand recognition of the truth that all human beings deserve to be treated with dignity.  Those who infuse violence into protests violate the dignity of others.  To protect citizens' dignity, law enforcement rightly pursues those who introduce violence into protests.  

The U.S. Attorney General asserted, "There will be even greater law enforcement resources and support in the region tonight."*****  I am grateful that the government will be quelling violence.  However, we need to address the very violence done in the first place, done against Mr. Floyd.  If those applying to be law enforcement officers were more rigorously tested, including psychologically, and denied places in law enforcement agencies when they show sufficient warning signs, then perhaps such heinous crimes by law enforcement officials, the very individuals tasked to prevent crime, more often could be prevented.  

Yet at the same time, if those in power continue ever more to fail to lead, there will be even greater momentum to vote them out of office.  If we want to uphold the truth, the truth that all human beings should be accorded the dignity we all deserve, then we will vote for security, not for leaders who make inflammatory statements which drive insecurity.  

The U.S. Attorney General continued, "The most basic function of government is to provide security for people to live their lives and exercise their rights, and we will meet that responsibility here in the nation's capital."*****  Indeed, the most basic function of the citizens of a state is to remove leaders who fail to serve, and as citizens of this nation, we will meet that responsibility as we exercise our right to vote.  

* Ecclesiastes 3:1 

** https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/01/george-floyd-independent-autopsy-findings-released-monday/5307185002/ 

*** Mark 12:17 

**** John 19:11

***** https://www.foxnews.com/politics/barr-lafayette-square-trump-protest-remarks 

****** https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2020/06/02/washington-archbishop-wilton-gregory-calls-trumps-visit-john-paul-ii

******* https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-push-to-tear-gas-protesters-ahead-of-a-trump-photo-op/2020/06/01/4b0f7b50-a46c-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html 

******** https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/30/william-barr-george-floyd-protests-290792 

All For Good

I have been remembering how earlier this year, this summer, one guest in particular stayed here at the hermitage.  He is a gentle, soft-spoken man.  During his stay of multiple nights, he came into the bookstore multiple times while I was working.  One time he came up to the counter and shared with me how he had been musing on unfortunate things which happen in our lives.  He said that it seems that horrible events are parts of God's plans.  I explained that God doesn't want us to undergo tragic circumstances.  However, God gives all of us free will.  Therefore, people, utilizing their free will, intervene in our lives and, through their choices, sometimes cause us to suffer.  God can even use such suffering to bring us closer to Him, just as He can draw us closer to Him through pleasant blessings.  For those who love God, all things work together for good.*  

* Romans 8:28.  

Assurance Of Love

Recently at Mass we heard the Gospel reading of the return of the Prodigal Son, from Luke 15:11-32.  Since it is a good reminder of the expression of God's steadfast love for us, here it is: 

Jesus said, “A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’  So the father divided the property between them.   

After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.  When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need.  So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any.  

Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger.  I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.   I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’   

So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.  His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’  But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. 

Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’   

He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him.  He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.  But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’  He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.  But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’”

In the parable, the father represents God.  The younger son is a person who ignores God's will and goes off and seeks pleasures for himself or herself.  The elder son is someone who has been faithful to God for years.  When the younger son asks for his share of the inheritance, the father gives it.  That is to say, God gives us our freedom; he gives us free will.  He lets us do as we please.  When we come back to Him, even after years of focusing on our own pleasures, God gladly welcomes us.  The elder son, that is, the faithful servant of God, might be resentful of joyous celebration of such events, after having been so dutiful for so long.  God and the angels in Heaven celebrate at such a marvelous, wonderful turn of events: he or she who was once lost, is now found.  Someone who used to be concerned so much with his or her own pleasure, is now much more concerned with serving God and his or her neighbor. 

Although I don't feel like I particularly identify with the elder son in the story, when we were listening to this Gospel reading that day during Mass, my tear ducts opened when I heard the father in the story say, "Son, you are always with me.  All that is mine is yours."  Even though I don't especially feel that the elder son in this parable resonates with me, I think that I felt so touched by these words because the words still speak to me.  Furthermore, I believe I had that emotional reaction because of who in the story was speaking them.  I was interpreting them as God's message to each one of us, and, consequently, to me.

I write this blog post from a position of relative comfort with my vocation, with my calling to the monastic life.  I know, both intellectually as I evaluate my reasons for beginning a postulancy, as well as spiritually, just in terms of how my spirit feels nourished and warmed in being here, that I have discerned well my decision to live a monastic life here.  However, already during my postulancy, there have been periods when I have felt spiritually dry.  At times God has seemed to be not close to me.  Sometimes I have prominently felt deprived of the spiritual nourishment and encouragement and guidance from the Holy Spirit which I felt on previous visits here.  Thus when I heard, in this Gospel reading, that God is always with me, and that everything He has is mine, I knew that God has been assuring me of His presence and warmth and love and guidance, even when He has seemed far from me. 

I also thought of this Gospel reading in another significant way in the last couple of weeks.  Although I don't focus on the interpersonal conflict between the two brothers in this story when I hear it or read it, I think that the dynamic between them can exist to various extents in any interpersonal relationship.  We are always at risk of becoming jealous of others, rather than sharing in the joy of their triumphs, whether it be their realizing their true vocation, or their overcoming a personal challenge.  We always have the choice of insisting on our own perceptions of a situation, rather than trying to view circumstances from their point of view.

Accordingly, I felt a certain choice I recently had to make was clear.  During Lent, we offer additional prayers.  Thus in Lent we meet in the church on Sunday evenings and say Compline, which we normally don't practice in our recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours.  Just before Compline starts, here at the hermitage there is a brief reading about the lives of some of the Desert Fathers.  Normally the novice monk here at the hermitage reads this excerpt, but on this one particular night he wasn't going to be present, so he charged me with selecting and reading a quotation.  In looking through the book before Compline, given the interpersonal tension we had just reviewed in the Gospel reading of the return of the Prodigal Son, I immediately chose the following reading when I came across it.

Two brothers would often argue.  Finally, one of them said, "What are we going to do?  We are always arguing."  The other replied, "I know what we will do.  From now on, I will argue your side, and you will argue my side."  They followed this practice for the rest of their lives. 

- paraphrased from "By Way of the Desert: 365 Daily Readings"
compiled and modernized by Bernard Bangley

From Here To There

Some people probably think I am insane.  I voluntarily left my well-paying job as an attorney.  By the time I left that job, every year I was accruing five weeks of vacation time.  We also got more than a half dozen holidays off every year.  I haven’t yet mentioned that we also got the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day off.  As you might expect, the job had excellent benefits.  I was under relatively little stress at that job.  I even felt somewhat of a sense of fulfillment in that position.  As I insinuated at the beginning, there are people who likely think I am crazy. 

          However, I was just not happy.  I was not deriving enough satisfaction out of my work.  Later, I would conclude that I had not been sufficiently nourishing my soul in that employment.  At the time, I could not articulate specifically what my vocation was; I just knew I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing. 

          Accordingly, I left my job as a lawyer.  I got accepted into the Peace Corps.  I moved to Morocco. 

          Rather than spend significant time here describing my tenure as a Peace Corps Volunteer and my time in Morocco, I refer you to the blog I maintained when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer (see the link at the side of this webpage).  For present purposes, I merely offer a couple of pieces of information.  I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the field of Youth Development.  I taught English as a second language to Moroccan youths and otherwise helped them become more well-rounded individuals. 

While I spent a significant amount of time working, I also had a great deal of spare time.  I passed much of my free time reading.  As my time in Morocco progressed, I read more and more spiritual books.  I read the entire Bible.  I slowly savored “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis.  I read works of Thomas Merton. 

I also read about spiritual disciplines, namely, solitude yet also spiritual community, as well as serving others, living simply, praying, studying God’s Word, meditating upon it and submitting to God.  I noted that these practices were all tendencies I had been developing in Morocco, and that I hoped to retain them in whatever endeavor I next undertook. 

Soon after I read about the spiritual disciplines, I read Thomas Merton’s autobiography, “The Seven Storey Mountain.”  I realized that as a monk, Merton spent time in spiritual community as well as in solitude, and that he was serving others, was living a simple lifestyle, and was praying, and was reading The Word and was studying and meditating upon It.  He was trying to submit to God as much as he could.  I suddenly wondered, “Has God been calling me to be a monk?” 

In Morocco, I often thought about what I would do once I returned to the U.S.  I had been thinking that I wanted to use my skills to help people, so that I would be serving God, and doing what He wanted me to do.  Indeed, a vocation is the job or occupation to which God calls a person.  I hadn’t realized that in trying to determine what my next undertaking would be, I had been trying to discern my vocation.  I had been trying to figure out what particular work and lifestyle God had in mind for me. 

I had found that silence and solitude had been quite helpful as I discerned my vocation.  In my discernment, I had spent much time in prayer, much as contemplative monks do.  Some people might think of contemplative monks as escaping from the world.  Contemplative monks do not seek to shut out the world and never again have contact with the world.  Rather, they seek to share the fruits of their contemplative life with those who do not live in the monastery. 

Indeed, people come here to the hermitage sometimes only for part of the day, at times coming only for Mass.  Others come and often stay overnight here at the hermitage.  They come to enjoy the silence.  They clear their heads.  Have you ever made a bad decision?  Have you wished that you took more time to more carefully and calmly consider what you were doing?  We aim to help people sit in silence and stillness so that they make bring the fruits of such contemplation back into the rest of their lives. 

In the silence and the solitude I had had in Morocco, I found that I was better able to listen to God.  Yet back then, when I was so often in such a quiet space, alone, I was not aware what God, or even I, was doing in such a place.  Rather, I was not aware what God was doing in me, how He was transforming me and gently guiding me with the Holy Spirit. 

Although it seemed like a mystery as my life was unfolding, now, looking back, it seems obvious.  God was helping me evolve so that I would be happier.  God wants us to be happy in simply being ourselves.  We are to do what we are good at doing.  We are to meet the world’s needs.  We are to serve God and our neighbor.  However, in receiving this message, we are being directed in a way contradictory to what the world often tells us.  The world leads us to believe, and unfortunately, we do often erroneously convince ourselves, that we need to buy this particular thing, we need to have this other thing, we need to look a certain way.  Unfortunately, many of these messages are trying to deceive us into following illusions, and also unfortunately, we follow many of these misleading messages.  We will not have any of these possessions with us once we arrive on the other side of the divide between this life and the next.  Therefore, the question is raised: Do we even possess any of it?  In the material sense, in this life, yes, we can legally own property.  Yet we won’t own it in eternity.  All we have eternally are our souls, are our spirits.  We do well when we tend well to the spirits of ourselves and others. 

You might think of acting well now with a view to the next life as analogous to planning prudently for retirement.  People manage the income they have coming in now so that they will enjoy their retirement later.  All the more important it is to conduct oneself well now so as to later be living in eternal life.  That’s what God wants.  And in getting there, he wants us to be happy along the way. 

True happiness is far easier to achieve than it appears.  We are called to listen to God and to obey God.  In so doing, we gain freedom.  We are set free from things, no longer enslaved to them.  We are liberated from all which draws us away from Him. 

The prophet Isaiah proclaimed

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me;

He has sent me to bring good news to the afflicted,

to bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to the captives,

release to the prisoners[.]  Isaiah 61:1-2.

Jesus explained that He was making that Scripture passage come true as He was reading it one day in the synagogue.  Luke 4:16-21.  Jesus shows us The Way, and tells us the good news, which brings us back to God.  God calls us to our vocations so that we will become more ourselves.  In setting aside work, activities and lifestyles which, for many of us, do not bring us true happiness, we set ourselves free; we are no longer prisoners to the illusions which society demands us to impose upon ourselves.  When we accept the vocations to which God is calling us, we are no longer captives to the lives we were never meant to live.  When we open our hearts, we become who God has always intended us to be.  We are then truly, profoundly happy.