I had the good fortune to have had a philosophy teacher who lived out of his deepest 'I.' Who he was, how he lived, what he did and what he said was as one seamless garment, cut from the same cloth. He was 'together.' Deeply in touch with himself, he spoke richly and humanly to those around him. He had 'soul.' He was happy, fulfilled in the best sense of the word, in touch with where he came from, and on track for that which he had been made. He was God-centered. We his students wanted to be like him.
This Sunday's gospel has Jesus offering one piece of advice as he ends his remarkable Sermon on the Mount: If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, do the will of my Father in heaven. 'Doing the will of my Father' is Jesus' code for or password to the kingdom of heaven - happiness, fulfillment, meaning...soul. My long ago professor had already entered that kingdom within him.
When Jesus says to do the Father's will, he is looking for something more from us than religious buzz words. Reciting 'Lord, Lord,' won't bring home the bacon. He wants substance, not image. He wants us to be good rather than just looking good. 'Actions, not words, will determine who enters God's kingdom,' writes scripture scholar Fr. Frank Matera. That Irish satirist, Oscar Wilde, may have spoken for many when he quipped, 'I love work. I could sit and look at it all day!'
We live in a culture where image, not substance, is everything. Image and appearance have not yet been exposed in our culture as being only secondary. It will be seen for what it is when the bubble of unreality eventually and inevitably bursts. The Sermon on the Mount keeps telling us that God's reality is primary, not secondary. It is in God's word is that substance is found. The first reading this Sunday from Deuteronomy draws our attention to the futility of false gods, of making values of image and appearance to be primary in our lives. We are blessed, in touch with our deepest 'I,' when we put God first. We are 'cursed,' out of touch with our real selves, disintegrated inside, dehumanized, when we put God's word aside and opt for phoniness and show.
The soullessness of our world today is the result of God being relegated to the margins of importance. How does God get back in? Through the cracks, suggested Fr. Ron Rolheiser. There are cracks in the armor with which our culture surrounds itself. Falling through the cracks are the poor and sorrowing, the hungry and homeless, the sick and dying, the unborn and the very old and decrepit. God lives and acts in these people in a special way. They are seen as a threat to society, to a culture that is fast losing its soul.
Jesus Christ, rejected and misunderstood by the establishment, had to wait until he died on the cross before anybody recognized him for who he was, the Son of God. And those who recognized him then were a bunch of Gentile outsiders - Mt. 27:54; cf. Mk 15:39. The poor and sorrowing are images of Christ dying on the cross in our world today. They are recognized as such by only the very few - people like Fr. Dan Berrigan and Jean Vanier, the late Henri Nouwen and Dorothy Day. These people have spoken of how they discovered their own soul and humanity, the kingdom of God in their hearts, when they heard the word of God speaking through the poor.
One of the most human of human beings ever to walk on this earth must have been Francis of Assisi. He was totally focused on the good life until, one night as he hastened to a party, he encountered a leper on a mountain track. Something snapped in Francis, a locked door within him was released, God's word was heard and the rest is history. Dan Berrigan spoke of how, after a working with the dying in a hospice, scales fell from his eyes and he became real for the first time in his life. God's word speaks in many ways. It recreates those who listen and makes them fully alive. It is the rock upon which our lives as Christians are meant to be lived.
PASTOR EMERITUS
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