A few years ago, during a previous Lent, I attended a mass in which the Gospel reading came from Matthew 8, which included the following passage:
. . . and behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.” And he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:2-3)
Father began his homily with the question, “Do you consider yourself a leper?” Well, I had never thought of myself as a leper . . . Father went on to explain that while leprosy was a real physical ailment and Jesus was healing real people, leprosy was also a scriptural metaphor for sin. Which means that lepers are a metaphor for us. So, I am a leper. We are all infected with sin, and, as Father put it, “sin makes the human person ugly.” But, he added, “that’s not our true likeness.” Jesus will cure us of our spiritual leprosy, provided that we, like the leper in Matthew’s gospel, are willing to be cured.
“Christ Heals Leper Man” Byzantine mosaic, detail from photo by Sibeaster
There’s the rub, as Hamlet put it. We are so used to our sinfulness that it feels, normal, natural. We wear it like another layer of skin. It may be a diseased layer of skin, but we’re used to it; its familiarity is comfortable; it’s ours. We have a hard time imagining ourselves without it.
This is not the post I had planned on writing this week. I actually spent a lot of time working on a piece drawing on an article on the Crisis Magazine website called “Toxic Chanceries“. Take a look at the original article if you want to get worked up. The author makes some very true points about what’s going wrong in the institutional Church. That was all I needed: I took her piece as my starting point, and off I went, smiting hip and thigh, decrying the lack of holiness in Church leadership . . . but then I stopped. Who am I to talk? I’m a spiritual leper. “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:19)
Before I go any further, let me say that I believe with all my heart that holiness is the answer, for all of us. It’s just that it’s so much easier to say than to do. I was making a distinction in the post (the one I didn’t write) about the difference between “gospel values” and genuine holiness. The author of the Crisis piece at one point says that “there has been a clamor among pundits that simply returning to gospel values will dispel the current problems affecting the Church.” I don’t know which pundits she’s talking about, so I don’t know if she’s correctly characterizing what they’re saying. Either way, I would have pointed out (if I had written the other piece) that “values” are a reflection of something deeper, an effect, not a cause. True gospel values are the product of holiness, which is an internal state, a putting oneself completely in the hands of God. Without true holiness gospel values are an empty show.
So, yes, genuine holiness would indeed improve the situation in our toxic chanceries. And while it might not confer administrative skills on bishops and priests, holier clerics would nonetheless lead to a better administered Church . . . a point on which I would have elaborated in the post I didn’t write.
Maybe I will write that post some day . . . or maybe not. In any case, today is not that day. Today is Sunday of the third week of Lent, Laetare Sunday, the mid point of our annual season of penitence. Holy Week, the culmination of our penitential journey, is quickly coming into view, and I would do well to pay more attention to the beam in my own eye (see Matthew 7:5). Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.
There are many things for which I should be more grateful, and one of the greatest is the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Confession. One of the graces of the season of Lent is that there are many things to remind my stubborn, sluggish brain of that fact. For instance, this past Sunday father dedicated a large part of his homily to explaining how a detailed examination of conscience can help us make a good confession, and illustrated with a model based on the Ten Commandments . He also very helpfully directed our attention to the stained glass window closest to the confessional, which happened to be a depiction of the Prodigal Son. That reminded me of a Lenten penance I received at confession a few years ago, an assignment which got me thinking . . . and led to the meditation on the Prodigal Son, the Book of Jonah, and the Power of Forgiveness that I have reposted below.
I was given an interesting penance when I went to confession recently. I was to meditate on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). My confessor emphasized that the father in Jesus’ story, who extravagantly welcomes back his wastrel son, is the true “prodigal”. In the context of the Sacrament of Confession we can see a clear identification between this father and the loving and forgiving God, with ourselves as the erring son who, having wasted his father’s generosity, returns home chastened and knowing that any kindness he receives will be more than he deserves. “Father”, he says, “I have sinned against Heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Luke 15:18).
“The Return of the Prodigal Son” (1782) by Jean Germain Drouais (angry son at right)
There is another son in the story, however, the “Good” Son, who remained faithfully at home and, as he tells his father, “ ‘Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command” (Luke 15:29). Angry that his erring brother is receiving a huge “welcome back” party, while his father “never gave me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends” (Luke 15:29), the obedient son stubbornly refuses to come in and join the celebration. He is, in fact, still obstinately standing outside the house at the end of Jesus’ parable, and the last thing we see is his father pleading with him “to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found” (Luke 15:32).
Thinking about this second son, I was reminded of the story of Jonah. I had never before considered how closely Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son parallels the last two chapters of the book of Jonah, but the comparison is striking. In the Old Testament book Jonah is sent to warn the people of Nineveh to repent their sins, or face the wrath of God. The Ninevites listen to the words of the prophet: like the Prodigal Son himself, they whole-heartedly repent, and in turn receive God’s whole-hearted forgiveness. Who could object to that? As it turns out, Jonah could, and does, object:
But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the LORD and said, “I pray thee, LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil. Therefore now, O LORD, take my life from me, I beseech thee, for it is better for me to die than to live” (Jonah 4:1-3).
“Jonah, Seated Under the Gourd, Contemplates the City” (1566) by Maerten van Heemskerck
Jonah is determined not to give up his anger. God tries to soften his heart, first with kindness, by growing a large plant to shield him from the sun. He then takes a harsher approach, in which he kills the plant and exposes the sulking prophet to the ravages of sun and wind. Jonah’s heart is unchanged: “I do well to be angry,” he says, “ angry enough to die” (Jonah 4:9). The story ends, as does Jesus’ parable, with the voice of the Father explaining to his still fuming son why it is better to show compassion for those who were lost in sin, but have found their way back:
“You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?” (Jonah 4:10-11)
In both places, it is left unsaid whether the Father’s kindly words eventually pierce the heart of his stubborn son. We leave both Jonah and the unforgiving son still brimming with anger and resentment.
Which brings us back to Luke’s Gospel. The parable of the Prodigal Son is the culmination of a series of parables illustrating that, as Jesus says, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7). He is addressing a group of Scribes and Pharisees who were grumbling about Jesus, saying “This man receives sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2). The angry son in the parable is obviously intended to represent Christ’s hard-hearted critics.
Scripture, of course, always works on numerous levels, and we can see other meanings in the unforgiving brother as well. As I meditated on this passage I could see myself in this unlovely figure; as much as I can identify with the erring but repentant son, I can also be the judging, unyielding son who refuses to share his Father’s joy in the redemption of those who had previously fallen. Sometimes, amazingly, I can be both at once.
In his way, the angry son is the worse sinner. There can be no doubt that the first son has indulged in serious and destructive wrongdoing, but because it’s so obvious, and the consequences so inescapable, he knows he needs to repent. The second son appears to be doing all the right things, and in fact he is . . . on the outside. He is really like (again) the scribes and pharisees, whom Jesus says “are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27). The appearance of probity keeps him from seeing his own sinful heart, and he willingly removes himself from his father’s house. Jesus makes the same point with a different parable in Matthew’s Gospel:
A man had two sons; and he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not’; but afterward he repented and went. And he went to the second and said the same; and he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” (Matthew 21:28-31)
This is, I think, a good point to consider as we draw nearer to Holy Week. It may be that the inspired author of Jonah, and Jesus himself with his parable, finish with a open-ended question, because we, in the person of the (self)righteous son, are being invited to give up our stubbornness and embrace the Father’s compassion. All of us need to throw ourselves on the mercy of God, Who in his prodigal love for us gave His only Son to suffer and die for our sins. What are our little resentments compared to that?
An earlier version of this Throwback Post was first published 21 March 2016.
I first published this Worth Revisiting (it’s Wednesday, right? We need to be alliterative) post seven years ago this past Sunday, on 7 February 2014. This one has always been one of my favorite pieces, and it seems a good time to take a break from all the culture war stuff. Let me tell you about how I became friends with a fellow named Paul, from Tarsus . . .
We can learn a lot from the faith of the Magi. How often do we, who have the full revelation of Jesus Christ and his Gospel, instead seek our own worldly agenda, following the example of miserable King Herod? Blog post: https://spesindomino.org/2023/01/05/epiphany-faith-vs-power/
If you’re familiar with St. Paul’s letters, you know that many of them end with some variation of: “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand” (1 Cor 16:21). Many people don’t pay much attention to these little passages, as they don’t seem to add to the theological content of the letters; they appear to have served a purpose similar to that of a signature on a modern letter, a form of authentication. Most likely, a clerk or scribe wrote out most of the letter from Paul’s dictation, while the Apostle himself put down the closing in his own hand, a sort of “autograph” which would be familiar, we may presume, to the recipients. Paul makes explicit reference to this authenticating purpose in Second Thessalonians: “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the mark in every letter of mine; it is the way I write” (2 Thess 3:17).
“Most likely, a clerk or scribe wrote out most of the letter from Paul’s dictation . . .”
Meet Paul of Tarsus
As I said, many people just pass over these “signatures”. I suppose they’re included in the Bible, in large part, simply because they were preserved with the rest of the contents of the letters when they were formally added to the Canon of Sacred Scripture. And yet I’ve always had a special fondness for them.
I had a powerful, life-changing conversion of my own on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (although I didn’t realize the significance of the date until some time after the fact). One of the first things I did in the first flush of revert fervor was to resolve to read the whole Bible, starting with the New Testament (a good place to start, as it turns out). I didn’t quite make it through the entire Bible that time, but I got to a lot of it, and I found all sorts of surprises. I had been raised in a Catholic family (not devout, really, but more or less observant) and sent to Catholic schools, so some of the surprises were things I had seen many times, but now truly understood for the first time (“So that’s what Sister meant when she said . . . “). Those were exciting. But there were also things I never expected, and at the top of that list was meeting Paul of Tarsus.
There were things in Paul’s story with which I could identify. We were both heading the wrong way, for instance, (granted, in different ways) until an unlooked-for meeting with Christ turned us 180 degrees in the other direction. But there was something more . . . there are other letters in the New Testament, and we can certainly get some sense of the personalities of Peter, John and James, but none of them seemed so real to me as Paul did. His are the only books in the Bible where the human author’s voice is so strong and distinct that I felt, after reading them, that I really knew him. Sometimes he seems just a little irascible, as in the ironic, almost sarcastic, remarks addressed to the Corinthians (my bold):
I hear that there are divisions among you; and I partly believe it, for there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized. When you meet together, it is not the Lord’s supper that you eat. For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal, and one is hungry and another is drunk. What! Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I commend you in this? No, I will not. (1 Cor 11:18-22)
Or the entire letter to the Galatians, St. Paul’s most emotional epistle, where the Apostle has scarcely finished his greeting when he expresses his amazement that they were “so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and turning to a different gospel” (Gal 1:6). He later calls them “foolish”, (anoetoi, literally “mindless”) for listening to the Judaizers who insisted that ritual circumcision was necessary for salvation (Gal 3:1). Finally, in his frustration, his expresses the wish that the Judaizers would, as the RSV translation puts it, “mutilate themselves” (Gal 5:12). Paul uses the Greek word apokopsontai, from the verb apokopto, which means “lop off”. In other words, if they’re so fond of circumcision, why don’t they just take everything off?
“Saint Paul Writing His Epistles” by Valentin de Boulogne, 1618-1620
We can see in these outbursts, which form a relatively small proportion of St. Paul’s writing, that his very human frustration springs from his great love for his spiritual children. They are also more than offset by expressions of great joy, such as we find in this passage from his letter to the Romans:
Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. (Rom 7:24-8:2)
Or by passages of radiant beauty, such as his great and much-quoted hymn to Love (agape) in 1 Corinthians 13:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing . . . (1 Corinthians 13:1-3)
The Sacramental Imagination
A big part of Catholicism is what we call the Sacramental Imagination, the sense that God is always trying to reach us through his creation. Jesus Christ himself is the supreme manifestation, of course: The Eternal Second Person of the Holy Trinity incarnating as a creature. In a lesser way the sacraments, sacramentals, the mission of the Apostles, the lives of the Saints . . . all of these are examples as well: “The Heavens proclaim the Glory of God!” (Psalm 19.1). I can even see a sacramental element in St. Paul’s autographs (you didn’t think I forgot about those, did you?), because they are a tangible reminder that his Letters, in addition to being the Inspired Word of God, were once also ordinary letters composed by a flesh and blood man, and written down in ink on papyrus or parchment. Consider this from the Letter to Philemon (my bold):
If he has wronged you at all, or owes you anything, charge that to my account – I, Paul, write this with my own hand – I will repay it, to say nothing of your owing me even your own self. (Phil 18-19)
In his eagerness to assure Philemon that he, Paul, is really offering to pay Onesimus’ debts, he doesn’t wait for the closing, but takes over from his scribe in the middle of a sentence to insert his signature. That’s the messiness of real life.
My favorite of St. Paul’s autographs, however, is this one: “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand!” (Gal 6:11). Here, at the end of the Letter to the Galatians, after he has mounted an impassioned defense of his authority as Apostle, told his correspondents they were fools, and expressed the wish that the Judaizers geld themselves, we see St. Paul pause to take delight in the sight of his handwritten letters looping across the page. How can you not love this man?
