The Anchorite: Such a Deal!!! (Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – C)

by Father Mark Nolette

In last Sunday’s episode from The Adventures of Abraham, we found him sitting in the shade of a tree near his encampment as the day is growing hot.  He sees three men nearby, not coming to him but on a journey elsewhere. Abraham runs to the three men, practically begging them to give him the honor of allowing him to give them food and drink. Abraham knows well that a journey in the hot sun could be perilous.  They would need food and water to survive.  Abraham provides the nourishment.  His guests in turn, promise him that he and his wife Sarah, in spite of their advanced years, would have a son by this time next year.

In this Sunday’s episode, two of the men move on.  The third, now revealed as the Lord, decides to tell Abraham the purpose of this journey.  The people of Sodom have been accused of serious sins.  The Lord means to find out if the accusations are true and then to pass judgment on Sodom.

By this point in the story, we may be asking questions based on our Catholic doctrine about God.  If this is God, wouldn’t He already know about the evils committed in Sodom? Wouldn’t He know what He was going to do? What’s the purpose of His conversation with Abraham in the first place?  If we recall that God is beyond the boundaries of space and time, that raises still more questions for us.  How do we resolve this? Where do we find light to help us?

This story of the Lord and Abraham is similar to many of Jesus’ parables in that  it’s the story as a whole that tells us something important about God and humanity.  The picture that emerges from the entire story is the focus.  All the details are brushstrokes that paint a multilayered portrait that repays our contemplative gaze.

What can we see in this story?

First, we have Abraham, the man of faith. He proved ready, at God’s invitation, to leave everything he knew to walk toward a future that was impossible by any human standard. Abraham, having emptied himself of nearly everything, was open to God in a profound way. God then takes Abraham into His own heart, His own confidence.  Abraham is invited to be a part of God’s own inner conversation, so to speak.  God is not offended when Abraham raises questions.  In fact God seems to want these questions.  In how Abraham responds, he shows himself to be a man after God’s own heart, a Beloved of God.  Abraham speaks what is already in the Heart of God.

Then there is the conversation itself.  Abraham believes that God intends to destroy Sodom for its evils. Abraham objects that God should not treat the innocent and the guilty in the same way. “Lord”, he asks, “if there are fifty innocent people in Sodom, will you still destroy it?” The conversation goes on, until God affirms that if He finds even ten innocent people in Sodom, He will not destroy the city.

This reminds us of Jesus’ parable of the weeds and the wheat.  In that parable, the landowner does not want the workers to uproot the weeds for fear that the wheat will also perish.  Both must grow together until the harvest. We can also recall Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, and how a Samaritan village would not welcome Him because He was on His way to Jerusalem. Jesus’ disciples wanted to destroy the village for this, but Jesus rebuked them and moved on.

The story in our Abraham saga, then, affirms that God will not destroy willy-nilly because of the sins of the people.  He will offer grace and mercy.  If only ten good people can be found in the city, God will spare it.  In the same way, God does not desire any one of us to perish, no matter what our sins may have been.  If He finds even a small amount of goodness, faith the size of a mustard seed, He will forgive and offer new life.

God’s mercy is not the only part of the story.  There is also God’s justice.  As it happens, God does not find even ten innocent people in Sodom. For the sake of Abraham, God does rescue Lot and Lot’s family before destroying the city.  It is as though Sodom as a whole had rejected God completely.. Yet, it is unclear whether or not Lot is among the innocent or the guilty.  He resists the call to leave Sodom and has to be practically forced out.  His wife is too attached to Sodom and she perishes. Their daughters do not act in an exemplary way, either.  Yet God offered them one more chance.

Let’s return to our story of God and Abraham one last time. God will spare the whole city for the sake of fifty, forty, or even only ten good people. Suppose that there were fifty, forty or even only ten good people in Sodom. They would not be following the example of the others. Their beliefs score poorly on all the Sodomese opinion polls. These few people would be looked down upon, despised, by their neighbors.  Nevertheless, the city’s survival depends on these few holy ones.

Those of you who are autistic or who have some other disability may see yourselves here. You are too often ignored, even despised. Even churches organize their liturgies and their ministries with scarcely a thought to your needs, unless they are forced to do so.  You may have been told, in many ways, that you have little of value to offer.

What if this city… this parish… this country… this world exists only because the Lord loves you so much that he will show mercy on all because of you?

Mercy, Unmasked

Easter has come! Alleluia! No virus can destroy our faith and hope in the Resurrection!

Can it?

No, assuredly, not.  There is plenty of evidence to the contrary.  People are clamoring more than ever for a taste of God, and we are doing everything within our creative power to stay connected to our faith communities in any way we can.  Every social media page is filled with encouragement and song, even “COVID-cover” songs to parody the virus that has redefined every aspect of normal existence.

The liturgical calendar is just getting started with the celebrations, with Easter being (of course) the greatest and highest of our feasting.  But besides giving us fifty days dedicated to proclaiming victory over death, the Church gives us a feast-within-a-feast, Divine Mercy Sunday, which adds dimensions of depth reaching far beyond simple celebration.  Mercy Sunday deepens the Easter celebration to encourage us to realize there is even more: more growth, more life, more realization of what it truly means to have witnessed Christ now proclaimed, denied, condemned, killed, mourned and resurrected.

What an interesting time to come upon the Feast of Divine Mercy.  Who among us is not eager to pray for mercy?  The world begs for mercy… upon those dying from COVID-19 complications… upon healthcare workers and first responders… upon families who are diligently following every protocol to protect their weak and vulnerable members… upon those whose needs must be set aside to prioritize the response to the pandemic… upon those who are unemployed, or without food, or whose housing and basic necessities are jeopardized by the shutdown of businesses.  The list is overwhelmingly long.

It is an understatement to say that our coping resources are stretched to their limits, no matter who we are, no matter what we carry in our daily rucksacks of needs, challenges and obligations.

It is burdensome to imagine adding any more challenge to the mix.  I pray this is explicitly clear to those reading this post: There is nothing in my intended words meant to suggest that any reader is not doing enough, not making the most of what we can with what we have, and not responding with faith and love in the midst of all the rapidly changing mental, spiritual and physical demands.

In the spirit of building ourselves and each other in faith, then, we have the opportunity to pray for Divine Mercy.

For the past month and beyond, our civic leaders have done an excellent job communicating what we need to know, and do, to maintain our physical safety.  We have been given clear visuals on how to sanitize our hands and surfaces we touch, where to stand to maintain safe distance, and even a very concise explanation of the statistical models being used to predict the best chance at containing and minimizing the devastation that might result from the worst-case scenarios.  It has taken a few weeks to adjust and adapt, but for the most part, we are functioning as a society within very different physical guidelines, and doing a remarkably good job.

Now that we have had this time to digest, assimilate and adapt, we can begin considering how these changes might impact our spiritual health and well-being.

Readers of the Mission of Saint Thorlak will recall several themes on this topic over the past three years.  A brief synopsis might be:

  • Health of the body must first hinge upon, and flow from, attention to health of the soul
  • Health of the soul comes from recognizing and embracing our vulnerability and common human needs
  • Self-preservation is a pattern that shuts others out, eventually shutting out our openness to God
  • Love casts out all fear
  • Mercy is rooted in trust

The following is an excerpt from “The Divine Mercy Connection,” published by the Mission of Saint Thorlak in February, 2018:

Numerous teachings on Divine Mercy have been proclaimed by saints and theologians of recent time to counter the despair, fear and littleness we experience with the expanding awareness of evil in our age.  Thousands hear and turn toward God in the comfort of this loving embrace.  Yet, thousands more miss the window, maybe not even knowingly, by practicing the culture’s habits of humanism, relativism and individualism with dysphoria and distrust.  Thousands fortify themselves in self-esteem, self-justification and self-preservation because it is the backbone of individualism.  Such mindsets may be great for self-empowerment, but ultimately, they impede and reject mercy because they do not perceive any use – any need – for it.

Brokenness [vulnerability] permits mercy to penetrate the shell of self-reliance.  It is through our vulnerability that mercy reaches us. Need is the most fundamental common denominator of humanity.  We are all weak, or broken, or needy in some way.  Being comfortable with weakness will win the battle of spiritual deprivation because need is not a weapon… it is our supply pipeline… our very lifeline.  Without need, life has no purpose.  Even the staunchest individualist can be persuaded to see – and experience – the validity of this argument.

Need opens doors.

If we have no place for need, we cannot understand mercy; because, without need, mercy is meaningless.

 

Revisiting these words seems almost foreign after weeks of learning how to protect ourselves, isolate ourselves, fortify ourselves and reduce vulnerability.

It is absurd to suggest that we should ignore the safety of ourselves or others, and that is not at all the purpose of this post.  But now that we know how to be physically safe, and as we come up on Divine Mercy Sunday, I wonder if it is an acceptable time to reintroduce vulnerability, on a spiritual level… or, if that word has now become hopelessly associated with something to be shielded, fortified or avoided?

Let us start by thinking about the masks many are wearing at the urging of health officials.  I am not referring to those treating coronavirus infections on the front lines, whose masks are critically important.  I am referring to the rest of us, whose masks are nonetheless important, but in the sense that they shield us from the potential of being unknowingly exposed to an unseen threat.

C.S. Lewis posed the question through the voice of Orual: “How can [God] meet us face to face, till we have faces?”

In similar vein, I ask: How do we pray for mercy unless we are open to what mercy asks of us?

How do we pray for mercy during a time when physical safety requires shielding ourselves?

Now that we have learned how to lock down, how do we learn how to open up again?

If we go deeper, we can begin to ask the harder questions, with sincere honesty and humility: For whom, for what, would we risk exposure?  For whom, for what, will we take off our masks?  What would Divine Mercy compel us to respond?  And what if, after weeks of fear, our hearts are not yet ready?

May this be a beginning of an authentic, renewal of Mercy, for which we each might pray.