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Between Faith and Belief is Christian Life

Posted in Homilies, Scripture with tags , , , , , , on April 7, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

the-holy-bibleIt can be difficult to distinguish between what is meant by faith and belief. For some, such a distinction doesn’t exist; to “have faith” means to “believe in X,Y,or Z.” Yet, for others (and I would put myself in this camp) there is an important distinction that must be made, while recognizing that they are interrelated aspects of our lives. Faith does not require the same sort of thing that belief does. And that thing is cognitive, conceptual, thematic, reflexive, explicit, propositional awareness, understanding, or assent related to a claim about Christianity.

We can see this in a more practical way when we pause to consider how we use the two terms in everyday usage. For example, to say that “I have faith that things will work out” suggests that the how or in what way a situation might be resolved doesn’t come to the fore. But to talk about like, “I believe that this thing will happen,” requires a particular object of  consideration.

Faith is much more than belief.

Faith is the grounding of our very selves in the love and existence of God that oftentimes escapes conceptual reflection and concrete expression. It is about the relationship or experience of an encounter with God in our lives and in our world. It is what provides, as Karl Rahner might put it, the very condition for the possibility of belief — the fiducial context out of which our doctrines, scripture, and shared expression of that experience arises.

Just because someone cannot or will not “believe” in something, does not mean that the same person doesn’t intrinsically and in a very profound way have faith.

Perhaps there is no better example of this dynamic of human existence in relationship to God playing out than in our Gospel for this Sunday — the famous encounter (or initial lack thereof) between the Risen Lord and Thomas, called Didymus, and more popularly called “the doubter!”

Thomas’s doubt shouldn’t, I believe, be mistaken for a lack of faith.

Why? Thomas’s faith — that experience of God in Jesus Christ that led him to transform his life (metanoia) in following in the footsteps of the Nazarene — is what brought him to the moment when the question of belief and unbelief arose. I have no doubt that Thomas was well aware of the mystery of God’s action in the world and in his life in particular, but that doesn’t mean that he had an easy time making sense or conceptualizing or understanding what was happening in the everyday, categorical experience of his quotidian life. On the contrary, the author of the Gospel of John tells us that he, like the other disciples, were rather confused, uncertain, and deathly afraid (literally — they feared the same fate as Jesus). He was, like so many women and men — really, like all women and men, unsure of what to believe.

The story traditionally paints Thomas as something of a loser, a “bad guy,” a holdout. But, I think he’s the most genuine figure for which any modern disciple could hope. He is us, and because we are losers or holdouts or weak in faith. On the contrary, the experience of Thomas reveals that just because we have faith in the God who is love, who is our ground, who sustains us and, like we read in Exodus 3:15-17 in the theophany to Moses, is the God who is concerned about us and cares for us, does not mean that our belief in all aspects of our tradition will come easily and that we will always understand what is happening in our lives with clarity.

The end of the Gospel account from John reads:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples
that are not written in this book.
But these are written that you may come to believe
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,
and that through this belief you may have life in his name.

The author of this Gospel seems to make it clear that the purpose of the concretized, historical medium of kerygma or early experience and proclamation of the Christ event, is to serve as a means for Christians who would come after to believe. It presupposes the faith that is intrinsic to each of us by virtue of our being loved into existence by God and, therefore, seeks to help us make sense of what our lives are about, what it is we are supposed to do, and to understand better who God is.

That is the whole point of God becoming a human person in Jesus of Nazareth, something that God planed and desired from all eternity: to enter into an ever-more intimate relationship with all of humanity and creation. That is the point of John 1:18 when the author, at the end of the prologue, explains that the purpose of the Gospel that follows is to present what it means for the Son to reveal (exegete or express) the Father.  That is the point of the Good News (Gospel), to lead our faith to belief, to give an account of what it means to bear the name Christ and to make sense of the faith that is already always present, even if we choose to ignore it.

Thomas isn’t such a bad guy, he’s just very real and extraordinarily normal. He helps show us that what brings us to God through Christ is the faith that is an expression of our a priori relationship with our creator, and that it is then the purpose of the Christian community to encourage one another so that we may then “come to believe” and, then, “through this belief you may have life in his name.”

Photo: Stock

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We, The (not so) Prodigal Sons

Posted in Scripture, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on March 10, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

rembrandt-return-of-the-prodigal-son11The Gospel for this Fourth Sunday of Lent is a familiar one to nearly all people. Even those who aren’t Christians, but have some cultural familiarity with Christian themes and classic parables, have likely heard about the “Prodigal Son” in some form or another. It is one of the most drawn upon and considered pericopes of all the Gospel accounts, so it seems like there might not be anything new to say about it. I admit that up front, because what I’m about to share is likely not entirely new to many readers, but I think it’s an important way to consider this parable and helpful for us on our lifelong Christian journeys, especially during this season of Lent.

Historically, most people focus on the two “main characters” of the parable: the younger son and the father. Traditionally, it seems, the point of the parable shifts between these two people — the selfishness and arrogance of the spendthrift younger son and the gratuity that marks the father’s forgiveness and embrace. Rembrandt’s famous “The Return of the Prodigal Son” illustrates this central narrative tension well with the focal point of the piece highlighted by a light source illuminating the father’s embrace of the son. This presents a sign of love, forgiveness, second chances, and other predictable tropes.

Most people, if asked, would likely say that the father represents God and the younger (aka: “prodigal”) son represents us, the finite and sinful people who often miss the mark, focus on ourselves, and exhibit a hubris that is only rivaled by the classic images of Adam and Eve in the garden. And, to be sure, this is a fair and reasonable way to consider the story.

We are prodigal with regard to the gifts God has given us, focusing on ourselves, wasting the resources and the time we have on ourselves at the expense of others. We, like the younger son, say to God and to other people in our lives “I wish you were dead, I want to do as I please right now!” which is just another way to talk about a son demanding his inheritance from a living parent.

And, surely, God is equally prodigal in the distribution of unconditioned love. Like the father of the story, God — as Jesus reveals to us in word and deed — embraces the sinner, forgives without question, and practically throws a party in the joy that accompanies our return to our true selves, our recognition that we are indeed children of God, and the metanoia (conversion or “turning toward”) that brings us into the embrace of the absolutely gratuitous God who always already wishes to be in relationship with us.

This, however, always seems to me to be too simple, too neatly packaged.

How easy is it, one might ask, to justify the occasional stupidity and sinfulness of our actions by focusing on the return of the so-called prodigal son? It actually seems to me to be analogous to the critiques leveled against Roman Catholicism and its Sacrament of Penance: “You can do whatever you want and then go to confession!” Obviously, this is not how it works, nor am I really claiming that this is what is going on in the parable of the younger son. But this is how some might read the story.

What is more difficult is to take a closer look at the story, a closer look at Rembrandt’s masterpiece, a closer contemplatio — gaze, focus, honing — on the mirror that reveals ourselves. What we might see is a much darker, much blurrier, much more complicated revelation of who we are and who God is.

While the Rembrandt painting foregrounds the younger son and father in the glow of warm light and embrace, there is something else happening in the shadows.

The older son is also painted into this scene as Jesus paints him into the landscape of the parable. At first glance, the older son seems to be a secondary character, a village extra on the tableau of the “prodigal son” drama. But I think he is the main character of the story. And he is us.

Like a peripheral butler in a murder mystery, the older son is always there, seemingly unrelated to the point of the story. But, in truth, the butler did it — and we need to be honest about what that means for us.

The older son is like most Christians who understand themselves to be decent and ordinary people. He does his work, he takes care of his family responsibilities, he goes to church, and so on and so on. He says as much when his rotten, no-good, spoiled-brat-of-a-brother makes his “grand” return:

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 is furious because… because, why?

Surely, this is not righteous anger, for nothing has been leveled against the older son that was unjust or malicious. Quite the opposite. The older son, as the father explains to him, has received the love and embrace of the father and shared in the comfort and life of the family consistently. 

So why is he angry? Why does he get upset about the generosity of the father for the other son?

The same thing can be asked of us when we are upset about the possibility that God might forgive those for whom we think forgiveness is impossible: those who have hurt us, those who threaten others, those who seem to be nothing but evil. But, is God’s love a zero-sum game? Do we get less of God’s love or only part of God’s embrace when God loves others, forgives others, embraces others?

How often have you or I been in the place of the older son, self-confident of our “trying to do the right thing,” only to be envious, furious, or just upset about the goodness that is show to others whom we believe “don’t deserve it?” The mirror of this parable and the illustration of the painting can, should remind us of the shadow such perspective casts on us as we, like Rembrandt’s older son, lurk in the darkness, cursing it and God and others and ourselves for what goodness or blessings others receive while we, not without our own bountiful share of goodness and blessings, self-righteously resent the younger sons in our lives.

This Lent is a time for us to recognize where we stand in the darkness of judgment and condemnation so as to move into the light with the father. As the father tells his older son, so God tells us:

‘My [child], 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.’”

Can we rejoice in the gratuitous love of God for us and for all? 

Photo: Stock 

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Christianity and Repealing the Second Amendment

Posted in America Magazine, Social Justice, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , on February 22, 2013 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

gun_violenceIt is quite astonishing how some of the most radical and justice-based ideas of the last two-and-a-half centuries have elicited some of the most vitriolic responses imaginable. That no human beings should be treated as chattel, to be owned and sold, abused and dehumanized. That women should have the right to vote and participate in society as full citizens. And now, that private gun ownership should be prohibited apart from a few reasonable exceptions for hunting and certain sporting activities.

Each of these things sought to be overturned were previously enshrined in the Constitution of the United States: Slavery was legal; women could not vote; private citizens had the right to not have their ownership of firearms infringed. That last one is, of course, in order to keep a “well regulated militia” and the type of “arms” that were described muskets and not semi-automatic handguns, but that’s getting ahead of myself.

Last week the editors of America magazine published a bold editorial titled, “Repeal the Second Amendment.” In it they unmask a number of unsightly truths that gun-ownership advocates wish to ignore or deny. One is the (il)logic of popular constitutional and social perception, which leads to a circular sense of problem-solution responses summarized by the editors in the following way:

 The culture of violence in America has spawned a deadly syllogism: Guns solve problems; we have problems; therefore, we need guns. Yet consider the tragedy in Aurora. Imagine if just 10 other people in that movie theater had been carrying guns. In the confusion of the onslaught, would fewer people or more people have died when those 10 other people opened fire in the dark? More important, is this really the kind of world we want to live in, a world in which lethal power can be unleashed at any moment at any corner, in any home, in any school?

They continue from this point, after already laying out other statistical evidence that begs our need to question the maintenance of outmoded and, frankly, dangerous right that I personally associated with the “right to own slave” and the “right of only men to vote.” Gun ownership made sense in a seventeenth-century milieu at a time when this fledgling colonial rebellion was reacting to threats that can never be the concern of the only imperial superpower currently present on this planet.

The editors summarize their proposal here:

Both Australia and Britain, for example, experienced gun massacres in 1996 and subsequently enacted stricter gun control laws. Their murder rates dropped. Yet in the United States, the birthplace of pragmatism, our fundamental law proscribes practical, potentially life-saving measures.

Americans must ask: Is it prudent to retain a constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms when it compels our judges to strike down reasonable, popularly supported gun regulations? Is it moral to inhibit in this way the power of the country’s elected representatives to provide for the public safety? Does the threat of tyranny, a legitimate 18th-century concern but an increasingly remote, fanciful possibility in the contemporary United States, trump the grisly, daily reality of gun violence? The answer to each of these questions is no. It is time to face reality. If the American people are to confront this scourge in any meaningful way, then they must change. The Constitution must change. The American people should repeal the Second Amendment.

I agree entirely.

By way of full disclosure I should acknowledge that I am a staff columnist for America magazine, however I am not an editor nor on the editorial board, so I first read this editorial when everybody else had occasion to do so. Not everything expressed in the magazine’s editorials always reflect my personal opinion, just as not everything I write reflects that of the editorial board’s opinion. Nevertheless, on this point I’m in full agreement!

The editorial brings up very good points as far as constitutional law and the history of amendment and repeal are concerned. For example, the editors, having acknowledged the gravity of their proposition, explain:

The Bill of Rights enumerates our most cherished freedoms. Any proposal to change the nation’s fundamental law is a very serious matter. We do not propose this course of action in a desultory manner, nor for light or transient reasons. We also acknowledge that repeal faces serious, substantial political obstacles and will prove deeply unpopular with many Americans. Nevertheless, we believe that repeal is necessary and that it is worthy of serious consideration.

Our proposal is in keeping, moreover, with the spirit in which the Constitution was drafted. The Bill of Rights belongs to a document that was designed to be changed; indeed, it was part of the genius of our founders to allow for a process of amendment. The process is appropriately cumbersome, but it is not impossible. Since its adoption in 1787, the American people have chosen to amend the Constitution 27 times. A century ago, leaders like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson raised serious questions about the Consti-tution. Amendments soon followed, including provisions for a federal income tax, the direct election of U.S. senators, women’s suffrage and the prohibition of alcohol. The 21st Amendment, which repealed prohibition, established the precedent for our proposal.

Yet, despite their absolutely legitimate point about the possibility of such repeal, albeit a far chance in our contemporary political and social climate, what I find most convincing is the truth that I have often times reflected on here on this very blog: Whether or not all people can agree in a pluralist democratic society to repeal the second amendment (or at least pass stricter gun-control laws), Christians have no choice in the matter — to be Christian is to be nonviolent and that Gospel commitment to nonviolence bears certain practical implications that we must peacefully pursue.

This is something that Roman Catholic bishops have reiterated time and again. The editors remind us that, “In the most comprehensive statement on gun violence to come from the U.S. bishops’ conference, in 1975, a committee identified ‘the easy availability of handguns in our society’ as a major threat to human life and called for ‘effective and courageous action to control handguns, leading to their eventual elimination from our society’ with ‘exceptions…for the police, military, security guards’ and sporting clubs.”

Furthermore, in recent times, prominent Catholic leaders have reiterated this point, as the America editors explain:

In a recent interview, Tommaso Di Ruzza, the expert on disarmament and arms control at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, explained that an individual does not possess an absolute natural right to own a lethal weapon: “There is a sort of natural right to defend the common interest and the common good” by the limited use of force, but this applies more to nations with an effective rule of law, not armed individuals. In the wake of Newtown, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said that “the fight for greater gun control in the country” is a pro-life position. “The unfettered access to assault weapons and handguns, along with the glorification of violence in our ‘entertainment’ industry…is really all part of a culture of death,” Cardinal Dolan said.

I can say a lot more and in the future I have no doubt that I will, here on DatingGod.org and elsewhere. For the time being, I wanted to officially go on the record to offer my support and explicit endorsement of this proposal. I, too, feel that the Second Amendment should be repealed. Those who have already leveled their uncharitable remarks at me for informal allusions to this proposal have, it seems, made the Constitution and the Second Amendment of that document into an idol. They have replaced the right of a nation-state to self-govern with the right to defend one’s self (from what exactly?) at any cost. They have replaced, as Stanley Hauerwas and other theologians have so keenly pointed out, the God of Jesus Christ with the “god of America.”

I worship the God of Jesus Christ, not the god of America. I recognize my baptismal vocation to follow in the footprints of Christ according to the Gospel, not defend outmoded “rights” that cause or world and society to be less-safe, more violent, and increasingly representative of a “culture of death.” I believe that Christians have no other choice but to support such a reasonable, if serious, measure. What Would Jesus Do?

Yes, repeal the Second Amendment.

Photo: Stock

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From Bad News to the Good News of Christ

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on September 13, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

In the current issue of America magazine, a former professor of mine, Edward McCormack, of the Washington Theological Union, has an article titled: “As it is in Heaven: Can Re-imagining the Gospel revitalize the Church?” This essay focuses on several important and timely themes including the popular understanding of the Christian narrative, the responsibility and role of the “new evangelization,” and the centrality of good preaching in the mission to evangelize well (and, for that matter, correctly). There is a latent critique in McCormack’s view of one possible — perhaps, likely — effect of the pope’s call for a “new evangelization.” This is simply the reiteration and repetition of the status quo, the largely uninformed re-inscribing of the “popular piety” (to use McCormack’s term) view of the “good news.”

What Professor McCormack keenly points out is that this “popular piety” version of the Gospel, passed on from generation to generation in large part due to ineffective preaching and poor catechesis, is that it really only offers a “bad news” or even “dull news” version of what we believe as Christians. McCormack explains:

Instead of proclaiming the good news, we often proclaim the bad news or the dull news.

In popular Christian piety, the Gospel is presented in the following manner: the Son of God came to earth, died and rose to forgive our sins. He opened the gates of heaven so that if we live a good life, our souls will go to heaven when we die (and the souls of those who do not will go to hell). In this version of the Gospel, Christian hope is reduced to life in heaven when we die. Homilies, especially funeral homilies, hymns, catechetical lessons and books on popular piety have embedded this story deep within the Christian imagination.

Yet there are many problems with this understanding of the Gospel. It neglects important aspects of the New Testament, such as Jesus’ kingdom ministry, the centrality of Jesus’ crucifixion and bodily resurrection, life in the Spirit, discipleship, the mission of the church and God’s creative renewal of the whole of creation. This telling also assumes that the Gospel story moves from earth to heaven, which orients the Christian imagination toward life after death. As a consequence, Christians do not expect to encounter Christ at work in their daily lives. Directing our energies and desires toward heaven makes earning a place there the focus of the Christian life, rather than knowing and serving Christ in this world.

This popular version of the Gospel gives Christians no reason to transform society, and its otherworldly nature has little chance of re-energizing the Christian imagination. Perhaps Catholics are reluctant to share their faith because it seems to have little to offer those who struggle with everyday life.

The significance of moving from the status quo of uninformed and blasé devotional views of the Gospel to the rich, challenging, and “Good News” Truth of the Gospel is easy to see.

Drawing on his extensive background in Ignatian Spirituality, McCormack highlights the need for us to use our Catholic Imaginations to see the Good News of Christian life correctly.

To read it correctly, we must reorient our imaginations regarding the direction of the Gospel story. This story moves from heaven to earth instead of from earth to heaven. It moves from God’s future world into the current world. This is why we pray that God’s will “be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

This is powerful challenge and one that will certainly bring about a degree of discomfort in the pews and inside many pulpits. But why is that so? Partly, it is due to the fear of change and the desire for consistency that human beings seek. We “know” what we are going to hear each Sunday and what we want — although, it is not what we need — is to hear what we already believe told back to us.

Put another way, we want the homily each Sunday to be tailored to our particular preconceived notions of what is right and what is wrong. We want to hear homilies the way that we want to hear other “news,” changing the channel to our particular partisan cable news channel of choice. And, like watching FOX or MSNBC (if you subscribe to such a cultural binary), we will surely get a “version” of the “news,” but it will be saturated, packaged, and delivered in the editorializing hue of our preference. It will not be the Christian “Good News,” but a domesticated or abridged or “re-branded” version.

McCormack is making it very clear that as women and men of faith, we have a responsibility to stand up and take our medicine (to draw on a Lucan Gospel image). Christ is indeed the doctor-in-the-house, but few of us are ready to be seen at our appointment, and the last thing most people want is to go in for a check-up for fear that the physician will tell us that something is wrong with our lives.

With all of this talk of the “New Evangelization,” we should take McCormack’s exhortation to heart: return to the Gospel and proclaim what the Christian narrative, the kerygma, is to the world. The story, challenging and beautiful, comforting and discomfiting, is our collective story from which we should not shy. McCormack reminds us that:

This way of reading the Gospel also has profound implications for the way we understand our lives as Christians. It presents the Christian life as an event of God’s new creation, emerging out of the resurrection of Jesus. Cast in these terms, Christianity is a way of life coming from the future into the present, energized by the Holy Spirit and informed by the values of God’s new creation. It is a new kind of existence made possible by the risen Christ, who stands in the midst of our church communities and at the center of our lives. Christ fills us with God’s life and with all we value most—life, justice, peace, freedom and love. This new kind of existence motivates us to resist all that is opposed to God’s new creation. It compels us to share the good news with others.

Our we willing and ready to let Christ actually enter into our lives and change our way of living? Are we ready to hear the Good News and be agents of its proclamation in word and deed? Or are we simply content to live in our own worlds, reiterating the “bad” and “dull” news of the compromised Gospel?

Photo: Stock

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The 15th Anniversary of Mother Teresa’s Death

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , on September 5, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the death of one of the most revered and well-known models of Christian living in our age: Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. She entered eternal life on September 5, 1997, I was just about fourteen years old at that time and I remember it well. It was a bizarre week with Princess Diana having been killed in a car crash less-than-a-week earlier. Within a week two of the most well-known international public figures had embraced sister death and became the cause of mourning and reflection. Fifteen years later we are offered an opportunity to pause and reflect again, to pray for our sister in faith and to ask for her intercession, because Mother Teresa continues to journey with us as a member of the communion of saints.

Today’s Gospel (Luke 4:38-44), which recalls Jesus’s encounter with Simon-Peter’s mother-in-law, is a perfect reading for today’s anniversary and the memory of Blessed Mother Teresa. Oftentimes people hear that Jesus heals this woman and are stunned to see that the first thing she does in her newfound health is get up and serve her guests. It almost comes across as a patriarchal, unfair, and almost cruel turn of events. How could this woman who was so ill be healed almost as if to just go immediately to work?

But what is missed is the symbolism of what’s happening in the faith life of those touched and healed by God!

Simon’s mother-in-law becomes a model for all Christians because, in some way and in some form, each person has and continues to be touched and healed by God. We were lovingly brought into existence, we are companioned by the Creator throughout life, we experience the loving embrace of relationships, we recognize the beauty and gift of the rest of creation, and so on.

What the woman in the Gospel does is respond to the literal touch and healing by serving others, the diakonia (in Greek) that all disciples of Christ are called to live. She recognized the gift of God’s love and healing in her life and understood, if only in some intuitive way, that she needed to bring that love and healing to others in the world around her. She was given and continued to receive an abundant grace, and she shared that with the world.

This, in a sense, is what Mother Teresa had done. She recognized God’s grace in her life and knew that to follow in the footprints of Jesus Christ, she had to reach out to share with others the love and healing she had always already received from God. Most remarkably, she did this even at times of deep uncertainty about her own faith and belief. Surely, this is something to which we can all relate at one time or another.

May we today and always remember the example of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Simon’s mother-in-law, taking what we have received from God in Christ and sharing it with the world in loving service and solidarity.

Mother Teresa, pray for us!

Photo: File

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When God Gives a Mouse a Cookie

Posted in Homilies, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on August 5, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

So, those who have heard me preach often or speak about the Gospels will know that one of the problems contemporary Christianity has is the distance or inability for modern-day Christians to appreciate what is happening oftentimes in scripture. Usually, this is most clearly seen in the Gospel parables when, because we’ve heard them a million times or because we don’t really understand the images, relationships, or history of the examples, we miss the actual point that Jesus was conveying and that the Gospel writers were passing on to us. Such is, I suspect, the case again this weekend with the readings from Exodus (16:2-4, 12-15) and the Gospel of John (6:24-35).

In order to help us “get it,” I want to share with you one of the most significant works of fiction that has been published in the last thirty years, a book of tremendous importance: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff. Now, in my homily this weekend I actually read the very short book, but because I cannot reproduce the entire text here, I encourage you to go check it out yourself.

There are many ways to understand the “point” or “moral” of this story about an insatiable mouse, a silent boy who tries his best to meet the mouse’s needs, and the disregard that the mouse exhibits in his constant desire to have more. But it is something of a combination of these three themes that play out strongly in the reading from Exodus with the grumbling of the people of Israel to Moses after they are led out of captivity and into the desert.

There are numerous clichéd sayings we can draw from to highlight what is happening here. The grass is always greener on the other side. Or, if you give them an inch, they’re take a yard. And so on. But what the story about giving a mouse a cookie and the story about the people in the Book of Exodus have in common is the lack of satisfaction that comes with the human (er… and mouse) condition.

It isn’t enough that the People of Israel have been freed from slavery, but now they’re grumbling about the lack of food. So dissatisfied are these people that they start to lament leaving the life of captivity, where “at least they got something to eat,” for the life of freedom that isn’t as easy as they had previously dreamed. They want more.

In this case, God gives them a cookie — the manna and quail. But, as the Book of Exodus will continue afterward, this doesn’t satisfy them for long.

Such is the case with us as well.

As human beings we seem to be insatiable when it comes to what we want and we can (a) never have enough and (b) always want more. Our popular culture plays into this and a whole marketing industry plays off of this inherent restlessness and hunger that we have for more.

We are sold many bills of goods that we are made to believe (or want to believe) will finally make us happy, whole, complete. Perhaps it’s the latest car or iPod or computer or vacation. It might something I’ve never even heard of, but something that some advertiser has creatively sold to you by drawing on this human weakness.

In the Gospel Jesus calls out the people who are following him on precisely this point: you don’t know what you want! He essentially tells them. They are following him not because of who he is or why he is among them, but because they get some sort of immediate need met (food in this case) and they want more.

He makes it clear that we will hunger and want for so many things that are perishable and ultimately unimportant in our lives, and those things will never satisfy us, we will still want a glass of milk or a straw or a nap or any of the many things the mouse demands after getting his cookie.

The answer to this problem, Jesus says, is God. The Bread of Life is not perishable, it is what is most important. It is only God that can satisfy our deepest longings, which we try to satiate with all sorts of material and fleeting things.

Perhaps instead of getting a cookie in the first place, we might focus more of our energy on our relationship with our Creator and live in such a way as to reflect that relationship in the rest of our lives. When we’ve got God, to borrow the famous Gershwin line from the song I Got Rhythm, “who can ask for anything more?”

Photo: HarperCollins Publishers

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The ‘Spiritual Low-Carb Diet’ and the Bread of Life

Posted in Homilies with tags , , , , on July 29, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

This reflection is now available in Daniel P. Horan, OFM’s book Franciscan Spirituality for the 21st Century: Selected Reflections from the Dating God Blog and Other Essays, Volume One (Koinonia Press, 2013).

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St. Francis and Being True Peacemakers

Posted in Franciscan Spirituality with tags , , , , , , , on July 25, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Those familiar with the famous Canticle of the Creatures of St. Francis will know that when he finally mentions humanity, after naming the elemental and non-sentient dimensions of the created order, the way in which human persons best live up to the expectations of God and live as they were created to be (much like the Sun lives as it was created to be by shedding light, the wind by bringing various forms of weather, etc.) is to be peacemakers and those who forgive. Peacemaking, this is the central vocation or responsibility of the human person in the eyes of St. Francis. In his Admonition XV, Francis again brings up peacemaking and, starting with the beatitudes, elaborates every so briefly on what it means to be a true peacemaker.

Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.

Those people are truly peacemakers who, regardless of what they suffer in this world, preserve peace of spirit and body out of love of our Lord Jesus Christ (Admonition XV).

This is perhaps no easy task and echoes, in some sense, the question that Jesus asks his two ambitious disciples in today’s Gospel: “Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?”  Can we, following in the footprints of Christ, even to the point of being pushed to the margins of society and treated as a criminal, “preserve peace of spirit and body” and be peacemakers in the world? Do we know what we’re getting into in claiming the name “Christ” for ourselves in bearing the name Christian? Are we willing to live as the fully alive human persons God intends us to be, as St. Francis says, as peacemakers and those who forgive?

Photo: Stock

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Religion, Politics and the Gospel Life

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , on June 5, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

As today’s Gospel, the famous “Give unto Caesar” incident, reminds us, the mixing of politics and religion has been problematic dating all the way back to the time of Jesus. This is not to suggest that there isn’t a clear Christian or Gospel imperative about what it means to be a follower of Christ in terms of political engagement. Instead, it means that what such a call entails might not exactly match up with one’s expectations.

This is what happens in the case of those religious leaders who try to entrap Jesus. Realizing that they are not going to beat him at “his game,” that is religion — for Jesus out serves, out loves, out forgives, out cares for the people of his day. What Jesus does in welcoming the despised, embracing the forgotten and hearing the voiceless is threaten the power structures and security that the religious establishment of his day enjoyed.

This was not, I might add, Jesus’s intention. Rather, as the Gospels make very clear time and again, Jesus’s mission was simply to follow the will of God his Father. It just so happens that following the will of God stood in direct conflict with the agenda of many of the religious leaders.

In response to the threat, the religious leaders seek to silence the voice that challenges their security and hegemonic authority by drawing on political issues that are divisive and polarizing. The impetus: taxes. The goal: showing that Jesus wasn’t a “true patriot” (to use today’s language).

Yet, in the creative and prophetic way that he so often engages such nonsense, Jesus surprises his questioners. Pay taxes, who cares? Is Jesus’s response. In other words, there’s nothing about being an active citizen that is overtly contrary to God’s plan for humanity.

BUT — and this is a big caveat — Jesus explains that one must keep his or her priorities straight! One should never confuse being a good citizen with being on good terms with his or her creator, or with following God’s will.

For, while it’s right and proper to pay taxes to Caesar, one must return to God all that belongs to God…which is everything!

What is owed to God is our entire life and the way we return to God all that belongs to God is by following the model of Jesus Christ. We are to serve the least ones, surrender our power for the sake of others, speak on behalf of the voiceless and stand up against the injustices of our day.

There are so many people today that fit the modern role of the “Pharisees and Herodians” that were sent to Jesus to ensnare him. They are the religious leaders and politicians of our day that seek to confuse religion in politics for their own personal gain and to silence the prophetic voice of those who see injustice in the Church and world.

The Second Letter of Peter we also read today warns us about these characters, telling us to be on our “guard not to be led into the error of the unprincipled” and to fall from our own stability. Instead, we are to “grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

We must be awake and aware of those who wish to do to us today what the Pharisees and Herodians did to Jesus in his time. Be alert about what religious leaders and politicians say in getting us to defend our “patriotism” or “loyalty” to the State, when in truth this is a ploy to polarize and divide. Be aware of who is benefiting from claims of liberty and justice, and who stands to suffer — is it the wealthy and powerful or the poor and marginalized?

Photo: Stock

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Seeing With the Eyes of God

Posted in Uncategorized with tags , , , , , , , , on January 17, 2012 by Daniel P. Horan, OFM

This reflection is now available in Daniel P. Horan, OFM’s book Franciscan Spirituality for the 21st Century: Selected Reflections from the Dating God Blog and Other Essays, Volume One (Koinonia Press, 2013).

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