Wisdom 11:22-12:2
Psalm 145:1-14
2 Thess 1:11-2:2
Luke 19:1-10

"That We Might Be Made Worthy
of the Promises of Christ"

As you know, the Sacred Mass is a cosmic drama in two acts: the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharistic Prayer. Act One is a period of contemplation. It includes self-examination and a thorough "making ready" to enter into union with the Lord in the mystery of the Blessed Sacrament. And it is a time to explore our beliefs through mental and spiritual introspection as appointed readings are recited.

Underlying these readings and subjects for reflection are two great wheels: the Sanctorale, a round of saints days which rotates once in a year, and the Temporale, whose sequence of readings rotates once every three years. As we celebrate today's turn of the Temporale, we have just celebrated a feast in the Sanctorale commemorating the Apostles St. Simon the Zealot and St. Jude, who were martyred in Persia. These two sets of readings are interrelated in several ways and are deserving of our closer attention.

The purview before us is wide. The Book of Wisdom calls our attention to God's Creation of the universe while St. Paul's Second Letter to the Church at Thessalonika broaches the subject of the parousia, or the Second Coming of Christ. We have before us the beginning and the end. And in the midst of both is the subject of our worthiness. St. Paul prays that Christians gathered at Thessalonika be made worthy of God's call. Of course, with all Franciscans for the past seven centuries, our morning prayer and Mass has already begun with that same formula: "Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God, that we might be made worthy of the promises of Christ." In the Eucharistic Collect for Saints Simon and Jude we prayed, "grant us so to be joined in unity of spirit by their doctrine; that we may be made an holy Temple acceptable unto thee." These are passive constructions expressing an external force that is to shape and form our worthiness.

What exactly does it mean to be made worthy? On the face it, we might wonder if the gift of our sovereign freedom is being abridged? When we pray the Prayer of Fatima, we petition the Lord to lead all souls to Heaven, which is very different from bringing all souls to Heaven. After all, our journey to Heaven is ours, to seek, to strive for, to endure. We are not being kidnapped or shanghai-ed; we are not being compelled. It is an active journey, not a passive one. And it is not an easy one. If the Second Great Commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, we must admit that there are many, many people who are thoroughly unlovable, and the more unlovable people drift into the excesses of selfishness and self-indulgence, the less lovable they become. Worthiness is no small thing. What does it mean then to be made worthy?

The Apostle Simon the Zealot may shed some light on this elusive concept. The Zealots were an anti-Roman movement active in Jerusalem who opposed (among other things) Roman taxes and the Jewish tax collectors who collaborated with them. Their worldview is submerged in Jesus' question whether it is possible to serve God and Mammon? That is, they recognized God as being their only king and rejected the claim that the Roman Caesar was emperor and king. Historians pass along the bland formulation that the Zealots were seeking a political Messiah, like King David, not a spiritual one, but this would have been a distinction without a difference to the Zealots. For only God could be their king. As we consider what it might mean to have God as our only government in the practice of daily life, we begin to understand the related concept of being made worthy.

But let us begin at the beginning. What would the removal of all county, state, and federal governments look like? Reports from the earliest English-speaking colonies in the New World, before Church and police were established, describe a libertine world spinning out of control, where every vice had mainstreamed into acceptable social conduct, not very different from the American Wild West. Yet, every Christian knows that ultimately government is not necessary. God has given us His Book of Life. We know what a just, fair, and good society looks like. Where inevitable conflicts arise, then there is Christian humility, the imperative to place oneself last, to resolve things. For all of that, Historical examples of this just and good society are hard to find. Perhaps Simon the Zealot would point to the Scripture passage that we call 1 Samuel:

It is here that we should pause to make a distinction between the king of our eternal souls and the king of our temporal and mortal bodies. For what the people Israel demanded at Ramah was civil authority. Well, this is something we that understand, for this is our world today. If we could speak to the elders of Israel, what would we tell them? What would we say about our civil government, which rules our temporal bodies and minds? First, it is worthy noting that every mother's son or daughter at about the age of reason and decision makes a familiar cry: "the world just isn't fair!" Later in life, they might say, "You can't fight city hall!" And this, of course, is true. We might name hundreds and thousands of court decisions and civil law outcomes that were neither fair nor right nor good. Our better informed teachers tell us that the function of law is not to draw a distinction between right and wrong, but to order society, to do what is expedient. This usually means, expedient for those are are able to bring the greatest pressure to bear on lawmakers. The more significant examples of expediency make the point forcefully: our laws oversaw the near-total extinction of the native peoples who lived on the North American continent; our laws directed the death of 1,353,000 people in Viet Nam though Robert McNamara, who was the chief engineer of that war, admitted it was a colossal mistake; our laws prescribed the systematic subjugation and persecution of all African-American inhabitants of the U.S. for centuries. The list of enormities overseen by federal and state laws is famously a long one. These civil governments impose their will from the outside. Dictates come in from external forces, and we obey them upon pain of imprisonment or even death. We are made worthy by them in the sense that they constrain our behavior for the sake of other people's agendas, but they do not edify. In fact, the opposite result commonly pertains. Our interiors cry out for a better, kinder, and more godly world. Needless to say, the unlovable people whose agendas have compromised our lives become even less lovable however great the compulsion to love them. While charity covers a multitude of sins, a false compassion or charity distorts relationship, and in such cases, the Lord Jesus bids us to "move on."

The laws that govern our souls are entirely different in every way. First, we are absolutely free to disobey them at any time and in any place. Of course, some of them coincide with civil laws -- we think of murder or theft, for example -- but insofar as they do not result in criminality, our freedom to obey or disobey God's laws proceeds unimpeded. This is the atmosphere of Eden. We are free, entirely free. It is only our desire for friendship with God that "enforces" God's law (if we may even use that verb). Moreover, relationships with other people who also love God bring in whole new dimensions of that sought-after friendship. We are inspired and encouraged by them. Our love for Him overflows as we share our experiences of the "good life" He has given us, and others who have been blessed by it respond with shared enthusiasm.

Over time, we discover that we are being formed by this love and this life. Our nature is changed by it. And we find that we have begun living virtuously almost by instinct, instincts which we cherish and enjoy, and that any thought of doing something that might displease Him also displeases us .... until any act that would not be in accord with His Book of Life becomes unthinkable. Perhaps everyone who has arrived to this state of formation understands the ancient prayer, which we all learned as children:

For the past two centuries, the Kalendar of our faith has directed us to celebrate this day as the Feast of Christ the King. At His birth three mysterious kings journeyed, perhaps for months, to arrive to an agricultural out-building crowded with work animals, the homeless, and the outcast (for shepherds were the bottom rung of society). Their array and their costly gifts bespoke the glittering kingdoms from which they had journeyed. At His death three kings met -- the King of Galilee and Perea; the Emperor of the Roman Empire in the person of his viceroy; and the King of the Universe, the Lord God Jesus. And He said (among the very few words that proceeded from His royal lips), "My Kingdom is not of this world."

His Kingdom is far above and beyond this world. Its vast and splendid character are only hinted at by the heavenly body that guided "star-led wizards" from the East (to borrow Milton's phrase). Yet, His kingdom also includes all of our world, the eternal dimension of our world, whose only markers are the boundaries drawn by our immortal souls .... as He tells Pilate, "everyone who hears the truth."

No, He is not a civil servant who sends Certified Mail, nor is He a President or a Prime Minister, who orders millions of men and woman off to their unnecessary deaths. He is the Lord of all Life -- the instrument of Creation and the Giver of our sovereign freedom. Marvelously, He has deigned to come into our sordid and broken world of injustice and oppression. And He has called us to be His friends. Happy are they who have been made worthy through and by His wonderful love. Amen.