The
Fall into Grace
Introduction
Where we are
liturgically
We rounded off the liturgical cycle three Sundays ago with the feast of Pentecost: the Son, who has ascended to the right hand of the Father, sends us the gift of the Holy Spirit. So we topped off the cycle with Trinity Sunday, feast of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then last Sunday we celebrated the feast of the Eucharist which fulfills the promise of the ascended Lord to be with us till the end of time. Now we are in a six-month stretch of Ordinary Time, with its color green. It will take us through the hot summer months and into late November or early December, when we will begin the whole liturgical cycle all over again with the first Sunday of Advent in preparation for Christmas 2002.
This stretch of Ordinary Time is always a kind of
syllabus or course on the following of Jesus.
This year the course will be according to Matthew, next year
according to Mark, and the year after according to Luke.
In this opening Sunday of this year’s course, Matthew, a tax collector, is sitting at his custom table. Jesus is passing by and invites the man to follow him. That night Jesus eats at Matthew’s house where a whole gang of other tax collectors is gathered. These tax collectors are Jews chosen as puppets by the Romans, who occupy the land of Jesus. These Jews collect taxes from other Jews, and are looked upon as traitors. They are also extortioners and cheaters in their collection of taxes. So the word “tax collector” becomes synonymous with people of “ill-repute” or people “lacking righteousness” or simply “sinners.”
As Jesus is eating that night in Matthew’s house with a gang of tax collectors who lack all “righteousness,” the “righteous” Pharisees with lifted eyebrows see this and complain to Jesus’ disciples saying, “How come your master eats with tax collectors and sinners!” Jesus responds saying, “Oh, if you people only knew the meaning of the prophet Hosea’s words, `It is compassion that I want from you people, and not your sacrifices and gifts’“ (Mat 9: 9-13; Hosea 6:6).
Matthew 12:1-8:
again compassion not righteousness
Jesus pulls out the very same scripture text on another occasion. One Sabbath the apostles are on their way to the synagogue. They hadn’t eaten breakfast and are hungry. As they pass by a field of ripened wheat, they pick some of the grain, crush it in their hands, and make a sort of meal out of it to eat. They are violating Jewish laws (39 of them) concerning food preparation on the Sabbath. Again the “righteous” Pharisees, those great eye-brow-lifters, complain to Jesus saying, “How come your disciples do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?” Jesus responds, “Have you not read what David did when he and his men were hungry? How he went into the house of God, and how he and his men ate the bread offered to God which was forbidden to anyone but the priests. “ Then he quotes Hosea again. “Oh, if you people only knew the meaning of the prophet’s words, `It is compassion that I want from you people, and not your sacrifices and gifts’“ (Mat 9: 9-13; Hosea 6:6).
We recall that picture-packed parable of Jesus about two men who go up to the temple to pray, one a “righteous” Pharisee and the other an “unrighteous” tax collector. The Pharisee gets up and with raised eyebrows thanks God that he is not like the rest of men, “extortioners and adulterers.” The tax collector gets down close to the earth where humility gets its humus, apologizes to God, strikes his breast and asks God to have mercy upon him, a sinner. Scripture says, “At sunset that man, and not the other, went home righteous (made right) in God’s sight “ (Lk 18: 9-14). That tax collector, that “sinner,” was a saint because he knew that he was a sinner!
Anti-Roman
Catholicism “at its best”
We speak about sinfulness and righteousness--a timely subject in view of our present scandal. This past week I received a piece through e-mail. It ran a long trail before it got to me. Originally the writer wrote this piece for an Anglican diocesan newspaper, and then sent it on to a friend who forwarded to a friend who forwarded to another friend. And now I am forwarding it to you. I suspect that the writer is an Anglican theologian of some merit. He prefaces the piece he is sending to his friend with these words, “Dear Jim, here is an incendiary piece I wrote for our Anglican diocesan rag. It is a little anti-Roman Catholic, but you will have to live with that.”
The long and short of
what the writer wants to say, and says it well, is this: Roman Catholics have
it all wrong when it comes sinfulness and righteousness. He immediately addresses the recent crisis
in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee which sent our Archbishop into fast retirement
amid a cloud of scandal. This would
not have had to happen, he says, if the Roman Church had had in place a
decent theology and a decent spirituality about sinfulness and righteousness
which it could have brought to the whole crisis. But it didn’t have such and
doesn’t have such, and all are paying for it now.
The writer refers to a
homily delivered in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist on 26th of
May 2002, which “comforted” the faithful.
He read about it in the New York Times. The sermon condemned sexual abuse and “hush money” but also asked
for mercy and forgiveness. The news article quotes a political science
professor from Marquette University who calls the Archbishop “the victim of a
fall from grace.” To all of which the
writer exclaims, “This is really too
much for me.”
He explains his
consternation: “There is a strain in Roman Catholic theology which sees human
beings as naturally good (as born up there on some high moral ground) but who
`fall from grace’ when they commit certain sins. It is all such nonsense,” he exclaims. “The Archbishop did not
fall from some `lofty goodness,’” he writes.
He started out from where we all start out, from a human admixture of
good and evil. The Apostle Paul, he
declares, has something far more profound to bring to the present debate than
what most people are bringing. He
quotes Paul for us: “I tell you, not one of us is righteous; no, not one… We all have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God“ (Romans 3: 11, 23).
Protestants like to quote that text much more frequently than we
Catholics.
Paul, the writer continues, is not referring to one moment or one episode of sexual weakness which then brings a person crashing down into disgrace. He is referring to the daily lot of all Christian people. We all know our failures. We all know what we should have done but didn’t do. We all know what we have done badly. We all know the deceit that’s in us. We all know our cover-up jobs. “The idea that one sexual sin somehow besmirches a `clean’ record is balderdash,” he writes. “The Archbishop, as all of us, besmirch our record everyday” in big and small ways, in ways sometimes hidden and sometimes exposed.
He wraps everything up by
saying that we don’t “fall from grace.” As sinners we “fall into grace.”
We fall into the “loving gracious kindness of God our Savior” (Ti 3:4). The writer reminds us of the promise of the
Gospel. He reminds us of the “Agnus
Dei qui tollit peccata mundi” (Jn 1:29).
He reminds us of the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,”
and who does it day after day after day. And it is in this promise that we sinners can continue
confidently. Then he quotes Martin
Luther: “We are not sinners then saved,
but rather we are always sinners and are always being saved.”
The author returns to the
point he made in the beginning: Had this kind of theology and spirituality been
alive and well in the Roman Church, there wouldn’t have been such an
unnecessary crisis of such magnitude in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. And there
would have been even much more “comfort” delivered to the faithful that bright
sunny Sunday of May 26th.
Had this kind of theology
and spirituality been alive and well in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee when its
scandal broke upon it, there wouldn’t have been so many righteous eyebrows
raised. Nor would there have been so much need for “cover-up” in the first
place. He makes a very good point for us Roman Catholics when he speaks about
the hyper sexual environment which characterizes the Archbishop’s
church. An environment “in which the mere mention of homosexuality sets the
entire church on its ear.” That hyper sexual environment forces sensible
people, he says, to ”cover up” not because they are guilty but simply to avoid
all the fury and all the eyebrow raising that go with such an environment. In such an atmosphere, he write, ”I too,
without any hesitation, would have covered up.”
Then the writer concludes
just as he had started: with a “little
anti-Roman Catholicism that you will have to live with”: “The Roman Catholic Church certainly has its
right to preach and practice whatever theology it wants to, but as the dominant
religion in this country it often gives the impression that theirs is THE
Christian point of view. As a child of the Reformation and an Anglican, I say
no, it is not.”
I thank the author for
writing this homily for me.
I thank the author for
shedding such light upon our present crisis.
I thank the author for giving us Roman Catholics a chance to be humble
and to listen to others.
I thank the author for
inviting us to think. The greatest danger in our present serious crisis is the
danger of not thinking but of being “off the top of our heads.”
I thank the author for trying to free our church from its hyper sexual environment which impedes its honesty and transparency, and forces it to cover up and be secretive.
I thank the author for
trying to free us from a hyper sexual environment which has us snooping in each
other’s bedrooms, and which has us all raising our eyebrows against each other.
I thank the author for deflating our raised eyebrows of their
self-righteousness.
I thank the author for
trying to free us from our hyper sexual environment so that we might be
free for “the weightier matters of the Law, like justice, compassion, and
honesty” (Mt 23: 23).
I thank the author for
his little bit of anti-Roman Catholicism. We “will have to live with it,” and
that shouldn’t be too difficult, for it is anti-Roman Catholicism “at its
best;” it is both charitable and constructive. It is infinitely better than
that other brand of anti-Roman Catholicism that fires up our newspaper day
after day after day.
I thank the author with the very same words that came from the person to whom the piece was originally forwarded. “Thanks Bill. I think this is a very, very good response to the unjust treatment of Archbishop Weakland, one of this country’s great men, a consistent voice of love and justice for my lifetime.”
“The fall
into grace”
I thank the author for
calling us Catholics with our Catholic theology and spirituality to Paul’s
great bottom line: “I tell you, not one of us is righteous; no, not one… We all have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God“ (Romans 3: 11, 23). Now it dawns on me that when Jesus said he
had not come for the “righteous,” he had his tongue in his cheek, for no one
is righteous, “no, not one.” All
are sinners who don’t “fall from grace,” but who day after day sin, and day
after day “fall into grace” and are
forgiven.