Come Unto Me All Ye Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden

"The Father of orphans and the defender of widows is God in His holy dwelling. God gives a home to the forsaken." In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

We have heard these words and been stirred by them:

Swifter than lightning He will soon walk among us;
He will bring us new life, and receive our death.
And the keys to His city belong to the poor.

What is it about the poor? What is it about the state of the poor that should bring them so close to God? God enters the human lifeworld as a child of the poor, and He leaves it as a nameless beggar -- a teacher without disciples, a man without a name or clothes to cover Him, a body without a grave. Why should God have selected homelessness and poverty to be His own human estate? Last week, we reflected on the fact that God could have arranged for His Son to be born in an imperial palace in Rome or as Herod's heir. Rather, He was born midst animal dung and among the most despised of any social class of first-century Judea: shepherds. Well might we ask, What is it about the heart and mind of the poor that should lead to so close an alliance with God?

Let me ask this question from another direction. What is it about pridefulness or arrogance that places one at so cold and long a distance from God? Open the Psalms at nearly any page, and you will find this. And it is a theme that recurs all through the Gospels. It goes to the heart of Mary's canticle, the Magnificat. And, of course, it is the set-piece pronouncement of this morning's Gospel: Who exalts himself will be humbled.

It is the poor, we find again and again, who are favored by God. But should this be? I have heard it said that Heaven is a kind of compensation for privation on earth. Do any of you remember those jackets that came back from Viet Nam during the 1960s? "When I die, I'll go Heaven because I spent my time in Hell," they read across the back. Is this why people go to Heaven? Because they drew a short straw on earth? That cannot be true. For that would mean that the organization of Heaven, its very stuff, is governed by a worldly economy and decided on earthly terms ... a frightening prospect, to be sure. No. Heaven is about a fundamentally different kind of life than the gritty world of violence and degradation that we find on earth, not a world that is continuous with it.

The question before us this morning is a master theme of the Holy Scriptures, what the Bible and our salvation is all about. And it is this: our friendship with God. So let us go to the basics. What is the nature of that friendship, which we might share with Him and, therefore, with each other? The Psalmist reminds us this morning. It is grounded in God's goodness. It takes place in God's holy dwelling. It is about God's nature, and that good nature He would see in our own hearts. That is, we are called away from the constructs we have made here for ourselves on earth.

The problem is that we are very attached to these constructs. And the more arrogant and proud we might be, the more attached we are to our worldly catergories and the more we define ourselves by them whether we are in the public square or standing before a bathroom mirror. The problem is, the opinions we choose to win popularity among our peers and the narratives we use to think of ourselves all lead us further and further from Him. This is what is meant in the Magnificat: "He has scattered the proud in their conceit." This conceit, or false conception, is the idea that they are exemplars. The Divine Office of Rite I makes it clearer: "He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts." The idea here is to be sobered up, to smell the coffee, to get the wake-up call.

Is God impressed with the social justice opinions of our time? Is His heart moved by our "progressive" views concerning transgenderism when it seeks to blot out His image in us and our vocations as men and women? Is God impressed with our "progressive" views concerning abortion as a casual form of birth control when it nullifies an infinitely sacred life that He has made? Is God impressed with our "progressive" views concerning homosexual marriage when it seeks to obliterate His own building blocks for the human lifeworld? A man and a woman bound together in divine love, committed to each other for life, and raising together the precious fruit of that love, their children. Did you know that among all U.S. families, this is now the minority?

What of the state of our hearts, which famously is the place where we meet with God, Who is Love? This last question is the most important of all, for He will not dwell in a heart that is noxious to Him, and the alternative is alientation -- alienation from Him, from others, and finally from ourselves. The desire of our hearts defines us. As St. Augustine wrote, what we think and feel minute by minute is what we become over time, nor is it a simple thing to overcome the deeply habituated products of these thoughts.

By and large, what does the human heart dwell upon in the U.S. today? A brief survey of the culture will give us a pretty fair idea. Seventy percent of all data being transmitted over the Internet is pornography. The great issue of our time, one that has largely revised everything we once knew as a society, is homosexuality. The chief recreation of young people today is casual sex mixed with drugs to enhance sensual experience. And news headlines now commonly feature reports of elementary and high school teachers, both women and men, who "have affairs" with their students (as if young teenagers were able to act with free will in such a setting). If these markers can be trusted, it seems that our minds and hearts as a culture are mostly absorbed by illicit sex. And this should not surprise us: Erasmus wrote five hundred years ago that nothing drags so many men and women off to Hell as offenses against the Sixth Commandment (which is not limited to adultury).

But is sex really the problem? I agree that illicit sex is a defining feature of our time and has brought about the collapse of what we once called decency. The greater question is what could possibly cause people to act so boldly? For what is believed and practiced today would have been unthinkable by nearly all people only a short time ago. No, it is much more powerful than even lust or the disordered imagination of the heart. What we have before us is nothing less than a decision to reject God and all that God stands for. And only towering pride could be equal to so formidable a task. As Adam and Eve chose to become gods, so in our own time men and women commonly arrogate that role to themselves. We should remember that the forbidden fruit of Eden was knowledge of good and evil. In other words, Adam and Eve decided they would set the rules for right and wrong, which ultimately means, the rules for all human conduct. And this is our situation today.

We here at the Hermitage are vowed religious. We have stripped ourselves of the world's fashions and values and customs. Our eyes and hearts are on Heaven though we continue to labor here on earth, ... tending orchards and gardens, as it turns out. Our love of God and our desire to be guided by His will comes naturally to us. It is an expected outcome of religious life. Living vowed life, we are poor, but our poverty is one of spirit and intention.

But do you know the poor? These are the ones who did not come to religious life of their own free will. Their poverty was not chosen or practiced as a form of religious devotion. They have been stripped of the world's fashions and values and customs anyway. Have you spent time with the poor sharing heartfelt conversation? They do not try to impress you with their politically correct views. And they are wondrously sensitized to hypocrisy. It turns out, they do not see us in the same light in which we see ourselves in the bathroom mirror. They are not impressed with our progressive opinions shared over a cafe barista's expensive confection. They are, however, intimately acquainted with the rag-and-bone shop of the human heart. They are expert in the profound brokenness of our world, and they grieve for their own brokenness and for ours.

Get to know them, and talk with them. It will not take long to discover their tender hearts or to witness the flood of tears that proceed from their exquisitely sincere hearts. For long privation in the wilderness of city streets or railroad-track neighborhoods has stripped of them of all pretense and pridefulness. They might not have intended it, but being alone in this wilderness for so long, and so far from the world we know, has produced a closeness with God. Kneel beside them in any church in Haiti, and you will see tears streaming down their faces as the priest elevates the host at the Mass. For their lives are right there, at the heart's truest place, and they know the love of God as surely as they know their own sorrows. They see Him plainly -- hanging on the Cross of human arrogance; they remember that He was also born into homelessness and lived in hard poverty; and they know that He was rejected by all just as they are.

And we are touched by it. And seeing the truth of it all, water begins to stand in our own eyes. Then, swifter than lighting, we find that we are crying with God, sobbing His tears for us and ours for Him and for the torn and tattered friendships that hang upon Him. And we deeply regret all that we have done to reject Him, we are truly sorry for our obscene selfishness as we have ignored the poor whom He loves and who suffer all around us. In that moment of sincere regret, we begin to know His love, and just then we hear an otherworldly sound. At first it is faint, but then more clear. Is it the ringing of tiny bells? No, it is the angelic tinkling of silver keys and the supernal joys of His City. And our heart turns to the very first words that He spoke upon a Mount: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God." And then, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." Amen.