Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4
Psalm 95:1-9
2 Timothy 1:6-14
Luke 17:5-10
Sisters, I sometimes wonder if there might not be people who take our many misfortunes to be a sign ... a sign that God is not with us, but rather quite the opposite. Early Americans had a name for such people: Jonahs. These pathetic figures were pictured as having little storm clouds just above their heads. The natural inclination was to give such people a wide berth, ... even to throw them overboard lest their misfortunes come near to bystanders! I am sure you are familiar with Protestant "prosperity theology," which holds that God blesses the ones He is "with." People who attach themselves to this theology believe they can expect abundant material wealth as a sign of God's favor. Why, just look around and see the outsized examples! Billy Graham, has a personal net worth of $25M! Jerry Falwell's private fortune exceeds $10M! The roster of Evangelical minister millionaires is too long to call, but you get the idea. Those preachers who have not acquired wealth strain to seem as if they had, renting big, black cars and sumptuous homes. For in the eyes of the "prosperity theology" crowd, poverty is the kiss of death. Who wants to follow a threadbare televangelist? That is not where the money is!
The background for this in American history are the Puritans of New England. They were Calvinists who left England to avoid persecution by Anglicans, for Puritans subscribed to a theology that Anglicans could not accept: predestination, the notion that God has already set apart people for salvation since before their birth. These are deep waters theologically, which we shall defer till a later time, but for now let us agree that predestination certainly gives rise to daunting thoughts and for the Puritans complex social consequences.
No question, Puritans feared misfortune as all people do, but their greater fear was over the appearance of misfortune. For once it got around that God had marked one for reprobation, those Jonahs would surely be shunned. After all, there is no sense in building up friendship with people who were not going to Heaven. The Puritan Meetinghouse was where the Members of the Body of Christ came together as one. And the disfavored were manifestly not Members of that Body. And a Puritan minister who suffered chronic misfortune? Unthinkable! .... and certainly fatal to his career in the ministry. Prosperity. That was the thing! And perhaps this where "keeping up with the Joneses" began.
"How peculiar!" we might say. How can the faithful read the Bible so faithfully, see the example of the Apostles who suffered for the faith and then of Jesus Who was born into poverty and then throughout the Gospel stories "had nowhere to lay His head," and then decide that worldly prosperity is the mark of divine favor? Moreover, by long tradition, worldly prosperity has always been associated with the favor of the Prince of this World. From the Temptations of Jesus, to Whom he offers all the kingdoms of the world; to Dr. Faustus who is promised all earthly favor and knowledge; to the husband character in Rosemary's Baby, whose career suddenly takes off following a certain negotiation; it is Satan, not God, who bestows worldly favor. The human desire for more, however, is not to be denied, for people want a counterfeit Heaven here and the real one afterwards ... with the Lord repeatedly warning that a rich man cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven with the disciples gasping, "then who can be saved?"
Our own Franciscan story shares in these sad chapters of Christian history. During St. Francis' lifetime, revolt broke out among his vowed-religious disciples. The two opposing camps were known as "Spirituals" and "Conventuals." (I hasten to add that our own Community's name does not signify a connection with this group but simply that we live in Community in a religious house practicing intentional poverty.) The party of Spirituals continued to live the Gospel life of their Founder Father embracing Lady Poverty. The latter wanted a more comfortable life to the point that England in the fourteenth century was plagued by friars preaching heresy in nearly every town designed to enrich themselves at the cost of corrupting the faith of the people. And then there were the Pardoners licensed by the Vatican to sell indulgences. (Their bumper sticker motto was, "when your gold coin in my alms bowl rings, a soul from Purgatory springs!") In addition, there were the Summoners who dragged people before ecclesiastical courts mostly for heresy and adultery, touching potentially all people and greatly enriching local dioceses, who were noted for their sumptuous palaces and costly vestments. Needless to say, the Church continues to be plagued by priests and bishops who enrich themselves at the cost of the people, for such is the collateral damage brought about by careerism, a blight that Benedict XVI identified as being a foremost threat to the Roman Church. Material wealth casts a mighty spell. And few people, the religious among them, want to hear about suffering.
I recall visiting St. Thomas More Chapel during the seven years I spent at Yale. The high ceiling and narrow nave are memorable imparting a sense of verticality, of a certain lifting-up. Yet, where the crossing Rood should have hung in the high, sacred space above the chancel step was suspended a large doughnut. I saw a priest near the foot of the nave and walked over to him. He was already irritated before I could complete my sentence, "It signifies unity," he said. And as I departed after thanking him for the orientation, I could hear him say lowly in exasperated tones, "Can't we all just have a nice day?!" Later, following my prayers in this empty space, I walked around exploring the chapel. The crossing on the Gospel side led to an open passageway into a dark room. I walked into this blackness and then felt the heavy feeling of a large presence near to me watching. It was just off my left shoulder and behind me. I turned and then shuddered with a gasp. It was the enormous corpus of our Lord with His anguished face looking directly at mine. The old crossing Rood was hung on a wall in this large storage room -- the Lord of Life consigned to darkness and a solitary confinement where His wounds and disquieting passion might be forgotten ... so that the sereneness of unity might not be disrupted.
No question, the cozy place of comforting symbols can be violated by the disquieting truth of the Gospels -- the hard truth that this very face looked upon twelve good and pious men, calling each of them away from wives and families and lives of relative comfort, in the sure knowledge that nearly all would be tortured and martyred. I recall the words of a mother at an ordination I attended in St. Louis many years ago. Pointing up to the huge Crucifix that hung before the seated congregation, she asked, "What mother wants to a see her son begin down a path the ends here?!" She might have added, "What kind of people devote themselves to a faith and to a communion of saints who, nearly all, have lived lives of suffering and privation? And we recall St. Teresa of Avila's retort to the Lord, "No wonder you have so few friends!" when she heard Him say that He entrusts His closest friends with the greatest suffering. This premise, of course, is neither ancient nor sixteenth-century history. The number of Christian martyrs of the twentieth century exceed those of all previous centuries combined.
Yes, most Christians do not want a God Who suffers, much less an invitation to join Him in suffering! They want prosperity -- nice neighborhoods with nice people and a God Whose Gospel proclaims niceness. But expectations for this world have not been sufficient to secure it. For people now living have seen something very remarkable. They are the generation to witness the end of decency. And Christian life itself is on the verge of being outlawed on the grounds of promulgating hate speech. The late Eugene Cardinal George, OMI said it trenchantly: "I will die in my bed. My successor will die in jail. And his successor will die a red martyr." Prosperity and niceness are not the great issues confronting Christianity today. And we shall all learn eventually what anyone who has lived in Haiti knows: the world suffers. Poverty and hunger are the norm in the world for the greatest number of people by far. And the few who enjoy plenty live in a bubble. But that bubble, as the gap between haves and have-nots widens, is rapidly shrinking. In the U.S. the economic middle class is gradually being supplanted by an upper class that controls unprecedented wealth and a lower class that is the largest in American history.
Suffering. It is the master subject and mystery of religious life. As St. Paul reminds us through his Second Letter to St. Timothy, we who received the laying on of hands were not called to be cowards but to share in suffering for the Gospel. We are called into fellowship, even intimate friendship, with our Lord. And as He suffers, we are called alongside Him bearing some part of the Cross that He bears and drinking some portion of the Cup from which He drinks and practicing the hospitality that He practiced. He and His disciples lived on the edge -- a counterculture so radical as to be more rooted in Heaven than on earth. And in this heady air, He founded a community of divine love that, mysteriously, was to be of the world but not in it, to love the people of the world but not love the world, and for His disciples, ourselves included, to pour out their lives for this love, not with their eyes fixed on an earthly reward, but wholly transfixed by the ultimate anti-world, which is Heaven.
Sisters, our work here at the Hermitage is to build a refuge for the beleaguered people of God, who serve in this world so unfriendly to Christians and who minister to a people who, by and large, have already been captivated by the toxic culture that has claimed so many families, children, and, yes, even the Church. These servants are worn down, used up, and exhausted unto their souls as they have poured our their lives freely like a libation. Yet, they have not arrived to their final destination and so need a little portion of Heaven to restore their energy and to rest their souls and bodies before returning to their ministries. Here we can provide quiet. We can provide a culture free of television, radio, newspapers, and Internet. We can guide them into the foothills of Heaven so bountifully present on the Big Island of Hawaii. We can feed them with beautiful Masses and soothing Evensong. And we can encourage them and hear them, for what they ask us to hear and to hold is holy -- God's own work in the lives of many.
With them, we have been called to hardship, pressing on in heavy weather, and doing ... merely the work that we are obliged to do by His command as our Gospel this morning reminds us. Like Good King Wenceslas, whose feast we celebrated a couple of days ago, we gather up what little we have to give to those who have need of it. It is God Who has sent us. And we plant our footprints in a world that is cold to us, compelling us to lean hard into fierce winds, so that others might step into our bootprints as we advance together to our ultimate destination, to the One Who has called us: to Him and to each other. Amen.