Mass readings for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Wisdom 2.12, 17-20 Psalm 54.1-4, 6 James 3.16-4.3 Mark 9.30-37
Last week Jesus rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” We don’t take that as Peter being possessed by the devil. We understand Satan as a person; but we recognize in the word “satan” the idea of something contrary to Christ. “Anti-Christ” in the Church tradition can refer to a person, but also to something contrary to the gospel – an idea, an activity can be “anti-christ” or “satanic.”
So, when we hear today the disciples discussing who is the greatest, it’s another instance of Satan, of anti-Christ. In the perverse instinct of fallen human beings to see power over others, either through wealth, celebrity, or violence, as the answer to all our problems that Satan most commonly comes among us.
Jesus has been trying to explain to them that his plan of salvation involves radical servanthood. Israel as a nation was created by God to serve. Indeed, the great prophet Jeremiah, in foreseeing the destruction of Israel by Babylon, put the tragedy down to the nation collectively saying to God, “I will not serve.” (Jeremiah 2.20) – we are the people of God, but only on our terms. And if you know your Milton, remember that Satan’s motto is the Latin, non serviam – I will not serve.
So, Jesus is trying to restore Israel, and through Israel, humanity to its proper vocation of service – service to God, service to truth, justice, compassion. Serve God, and these virtues for their own sake, and the result will be the peaceable kingdom longed for. But the world will tell you otherwise: no, take control, and by the exercise of power, impose a solution.
To illustrate his teaching, but also challenge the disciples, Jesus places a child among them saying, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me…” In the ancient world the child was the least of people. Despite the obvious truth that children are the future, that they have potential to benefit society, a little boy or girl had no particular value outside their own family; they were non-persons. Only when they came of age, and were seen contributing to broader society were they regarded in anyway valuable. And Jesus says, these you must serve; those who cannot repay your service, and may never.
“Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all,” Jesus says. This might confuse. Is he not our Lord, is he not called “master” by the apostles, “teacher” by the disciples? Yes, but what Jesus holds over them is not power. He has access to ultimate power, yet does not use it in the slightest. Rather, he asserts his authority; from scripture, from the tradition, he demonstrates his authority to be legitimate. The feeding miracles, the healings, the exorcisms, the resurrections, all these are evidence of his divinity, but none are ever imposed on people; and they always serve to illustrate his authority, which again, he shows to be rooted in the ancient tradition of Israel – he comes to fulfil the law and the prophets, not overthrow them; I come to serve, not be served, says our Lord.
The Church is to continue in that vein. We serve, we are not served. None of those who volunteer at the Church are properly speaking serving the Church – rather through the Church one serves Christ, and Christ is served in others.
When one hears the Church attacked as an unnecessary middleman in the spiritual economy, an institution leveraging access to the sacraments and, really God, as a means of having power over people, I shake my head. Now, to be fair there have been instances in Church history of the corrupt who as gatekeepers to the holy shook down people for money, by fear tried to control others. But really, these abuses are exceptions, and always led to correction and reform.
A pastor serves as a shepherd serving his sheep even as he is clearly apart from, and in a narrow sense, above the sheep: he’s to be on the lookout for danger, and to lead the flock away from harm because he’s learned from older shepherds what the threats are. With respect to a person’s relationship with God, priests are to be humble facilitators, helping those who are on the journey of faith. We all need help; none of us has immediate, unmediated connection to God. Priests are among many human mediators for God: the publisher of bibles is a mediator – without whom we don’t have that precious text to study. Go to a Bible study and aren’t those attending not in mutual service to each other, helping to open up God’s Word? The musicians who play and sing sacred music, the sacristan who dresses the sanctuary, the altar server who lights the candles, all serve us, helping us to approach the divine prayerfully, reverently. Are these people seeking power over us, to compel us to accept what they offer on their terms, not those of Christ?
Well, that is sometimes the case, and that’s when we fail.
In a letter written fifty-two years ago by Pope Paul VI but not released until 2018, we have on the part of a past pontiff a sense of this happening. Paul VI had an increasingly clear impression that there was something deep and negative afflicting the Church. He wrote,
“… We would say that, through some mysterious crack—no, it’s not mysterious; through some crack, the smoke of Satan has entered the Church of God. There is doubt, uncertainty, problems, unrest, dissatisfaction, confrontation…”
Reflecting on the Second Vatican Council which had ended with such great hope, he further wrote,
“… It was thought that, after the Council, sunny days would come for the history of the Church. Nevertheless, what came were days of clouds, of storms, of darkness, of searching, of uncertainty … We tried to dig abysses instead of covering them …”
Last week I introduced the Forward Together in Christ document, the report from a two-year process led by Bishop Lobsinger. I mentioned his comments at the September Priests’ Seminar; that he asked rhetorically, “does this report mean we’ve been doing it wrong all this time?” And then he said, “No… well, yes.” So, that wasn’t an emphatic “yes” but one trying to acknowledge that something corrupts our efforts. My two cents worth of comment was that the source of this wasn’t a matter of belief, of ideology, of any particular convictions around theology, but rather we’ve been formed with the attitude of modernity – that disdain for the past, skepticism toward authority, but also the prideful assumption that we are the best and brightest who’ve ever been; and this was not sufficiently tempered by Christian humility. As a result of this unconscious attitude, ubiquitous as it is in the culture, we were approaching our problems with a mindset of the world, and not of God, and that is why we fail. We are like fish unaware they live in water until pulled from it; we are too often like Peter and the Apostles in seeking power within the Church so as to implement our plans, put into effect our solutions to what troubles her. More insidiously, we find people, clergy and laity, willing to leverage their contribution to the life of the Church so as to have power.
In my time among my colleagues, there were more than a few stories of threat and counterthreat of abandoning ministries, withholding tithes, quitting parish councils, etc. as a means of bending others to one’s will. In some instances, this went both ways, because clergy in desperation, but also in their own pride, can descend to playing the power game. In my own ministry stretching back to my days as an altar boy, I’ve seen and experienced the pressure on pastors to compromise their ordination vows that call them to a higher loyalty: to Christ and the Apostolic faith.
We heard in the discussions that our parish participated in earlier this year, over and over again, the same tired suggestions to fix the problems with our worship, our teaching of the faith, of our evangelizing efforts, and so on. However, at long last, there were some who began to point out that trying what has failed yet again was not only pointless, but would discourage the faithful. But then, what to do? And into the silence that follows that unanswered question, has come from the Holy Father, not so much an answer, but a fresh means of finding answers. Francis says “synodality” but we’d be mistaken if we think this something new, or as I put it last week, some kind of revolution in the structuring of power in the church, or an abandonment of the Apostolic Faith.
No, it’s really a call to come together, but to leave behind worldly thinking, and the satanic pursuit of power that is at the root of the contentiousness and division. We are to listen to the Holy Spirit. And to discern according to the authority of the Church’s deposit of faith, the Apostolic tradition, just as Christ rooted his teaching in the scripture and authentic tradition of Israel.
If we’re going to do that, we better know what our faith is so as to know what is inspired by the Spirit, and what comes from ourselves, or more darkly, from Satan.
I’m a convert, and my conversion, ironically enough came through my seminary training for a Protestant community, the Anglican Church. I was sent to a Catholic seminary because Ottawa doesn’t have an Anglican college. It was through study under Catholic professors of the sacraments, of scripture that I learned this Catholic faith. I even did a course on the Second Vatican Council, despite at the time not being Catholic. From that adult formation I came to see what I had been taught as a child and youth, that the Church of England was the most reasonable, sensible form of Christianity, really wasn’t. And so, painfully, I made a break with what I had known, what was a big part of who I was. I acknowledge the Anglican community was a place of spiritual nurture for me, that despite its deficiencies, I came to know that Christ is my saviour. However, because the fullness of the faith lies in the Catholic Church, especially when it is at its most authentic, I am now here and working to manifest that authenticity.
I will commend again our “What we believe” course beginning Sunday at 1:15. There are a extra copies of the needed books, so if you’ve been wrestling with making the commitment, show up.
In the New Year, likely in Lent, we will be doing an all-parish study of the documents of Vatican II – the four constitutions of the Church concerning Liturgy (that is our worship), Dogma (what the Church teaches), Divine Revelation, and lastly concerning the Church in the modern world (how to evangelize as that is the Church’s mission). We will learn how to read them as a bringing forward of our tradition, distilling all that has come before, and so, made useful in addressing the challenges we face in the modern world. But if we don’t know the tradition, rely on just what we know from the world, we will struggle in the synodality we’ve been called to by the Holy Father.
As the Apostle James tells us today, the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. So, we leave the argument of who is greatest behind, and seek God’s wisdom to live by, the wisdom of God taught us by Christ, first in the flesh, then by his Apostles and their successors, all in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.