galea salutis

Since the 1960’s (and even earlier), the young in this country have been characterized by rebellion at worst or reaction at best. What’s the deal? The desire to seek the truth is built in to us; by nature, we strive to grow close to God. Part of this desire is need to be challenged. We are restless to enter the quest for God, as Saint Augustine says. We are born with a inclination to struggle for something greater. Ultimately, that desire only finds its fulfillment in serving and loving God. We all know, though, that this desire many times gets derailed, in sublte ways just as much as in obvious ways. The rebellion of the youth is an instance of an obviously misguided search for God. Now, what was the older generations response to this rebellion? They began to dumb everything down, pandering to them, reaching out so far that they forsake their principles. The effect? Miserable and utter failure. That method does not work–its absurd, nor does it attract. In the prosperity of modernity, not many in our culture have to struggle for a living. Nonetheless, the ‘restlessness’ in us still impels us to apply ourselves at a struggle. Since no struggle readily presented itself to the youth, they created their own.

The reality is that the real struggle is only too present, the struggle for truth. These kids did not want to be told they’re special or important, but to encounter something real, truth. The same approach, presenting the truth, is all that our Blessed Savior did on earth. This may seem obvious, but it is a very popular idea today that Christ came to make us all feel good about ourselves or, if that is not the case, that should be the priest’s approach to ministry. I know it sounds completely ridiculous, but people eat this stuff up. It’s really sad. Priests do not need to worry about telling people they are loved or making sure their self-esteem needs are taken care of. We need to worry about the truth; it is the only message worth sharing. Knowledge of God’s love and the dignity of each person will flow out of this, because these things are true, but they are true because God decreed they should be, not because we express them to others or because we ‘feel it.’
To be continued…

The object of Eucharistic adoration is the divine Person of Our Lord Jesus Christ, present in the Blessed Sacrament. There is nothing greater or holier we can do on earth than this adoration.

-St Peter Julian Eymard, The Victim

If you think about it, any life which is to be lived in his presence must begin and be rooted in his full, real presence. In our times, Jesus is most easily recognised under the accidents of bread and wine. By seeing with the eyes of faith, we encounter our Blessed Savior, through prayer and adoration. Thus, we train ourselves, so to speak, in serving Him. If you train enough, we begin to serve him everywhere, particularity in our neighbor. The applications of service cannot and must not be separated. However, that service is based on a firm belief of Christ’s presence and a love for Him. Our Savior gave us the grace and means for this belief and love. He instituted the Holy sacrifice of the Mass, our divine encounter, where we form and strengthen our belief and love, whence we take it to share with the entire world. A sure sign of selfish vainglory is the tendency to oppose adoration and service of neighbor. To leave our Lord or avoid Him to ‘actually’ help fellow man, is an escape from the great Love of God and into the cave of our selfishness. Conversely, if we avoid or neglect others, justifying it with pious private acts, we sin just as gravely. In order to maintain a balance, Christ, and not our actions, must be our central focus. Central is our love of Christ, our relationship with him. When we loose sight of that, we will stray to on extreme or the other. One of hardest parts of Christian living is this constant ‘course correction.’ It is a battle, though, that our peace of soul demands.

Today in the Church, there is a wide spread trend to be a pacifist, to the point that, at least it seems in my diocese, it is an expectation for the presbyterate. It creates the demand and image of the priest as diplomat (between people). It becomes his mission to please everyone. Out of this mentality flow instances such as refusing to preach against abortion out of fear of upsetting the democrats in parish. In a real sense, the priest is a diplomat–between God and man, he is a diplomat from God to man. His mission should be to accurately communicate God’s message to man. The priest is not concerned with changing the message to please the hearers. If he does that, if he fails at communicating the message correctly, he is not a good diplomat, or messenger; he is not a good priest. The priest must bring God’s message to man, not bring his message nor bring God’s message according to someone else. There is a particular instance in my past when a fellow seminarian refused to vest before serving at Mass, an ordination Mass no less. He instead opted for a business suit with a horrible tie (just kidding, I do not even remember what the tie looked like). On inquiry, his response was, “Our diocese isn’t quite there yet.” I was speechless. We are not where? He was referring to the strong lay leadership movement in the diocese that has not yet completely died off. And by lay leadership movement, I mean the people who think that the priests have been keepin’ all the lay brothers down and oppressed them and that priests should just be ’sacramental minsters’ and lay people should run the show. So he decided, rather to simply do as the Church asked and, incidentally, as every single one of the rest of the seminarians was doing, to feed into that movement and try to please that crowd. I was crushed. I mean here is someone who has actually convinced himself that he can do something better than what God has asked him to do through the Church. He was trying to be a crowd-pleaser. On top of this, proponents of this ‘pacifism’ call this being ‘pastoral.’ Now, the different uses of the word may be accounted for, but when I use ‘pastoral’ I describe the caring, shepherding, pastoring of souls. Say what you may, but denying the Church (denying God) can never, ever be pastoral. It was out of love of souls that we decided to do as the Church asked and vest, because the Church has reasons for what she asks and those reasons are to help us reach Heaven. This other seminarian, rather the ministering to the soul, was trying to minister to the emotion or tastes of a person. That, however, is not the ministry Christ calls us to, in fact, I believe he warned specifically against being showy to attract the admiration of others. While in theory this crowd-pleasing may be called ‘pacifism’ in practice it is nothing more than indifference, laziness. Rather than risk (here it comes, the ultimate evil) –not being liked by someone–(oh! it’s so horrible), he neglects the soul–his job–and sits around in laziness. There is a reality that these guys should know. Every priest has people who like him and people who don’t, no matter what. No matter how nice they are, no matter how much they dumb-down the faith, no matter how much they avoided saying things that might make people not feel good about themselves, some people will just not like you. So grow up! Stop worrying about things you can’t change and start worrying about bringing Christ’s message–and only Christ’s message–to the people who need it so much. In other words, priests, please, don’t quit your day job!