22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Jer 20:7-9
Second Reading: Rom 12:1-2
Gospel Reading: Mt 16:21-27
Two people I knew once crossed a picket line because the strike was illegal. Both of them found it difficult. However, one expected that occasionally his beliefs would require him to be different from other people, while the other remarked that this was the first time in his life he had ever had to do anything “different” because of what he believed.
Sooner or later, such choices come to us all. They are never easy to make, and it is well to be prepared for them.
Traditionally, the three enemies we must fight against throughout our lives are the world, the flesh, and the devil. “The world” means the world’s false maxims and the society of those who love its vanities, riches, and pleasures better than God.
“Worldliness” is the mental attitude of a person guided by secular rather than religious principles, whose primary concern is for well-being in this life rather than the next. St. Paul warns us against it when he says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
We cannot be “conformed to this world” and at the same time follow Christ. This is the temptation Jesus spoke of: to save one’s life in this world at the expense of eternal life. If we set our minds “not on divine things but on human things,” Christ will say to us, at the end of our lives, what he said to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan!”
We cannot make close friends of “worldly” people and at the same time keep our hearts centred on the next world. All the assumptions that underlie their conversation, habits, and activities are directly opposed to what we believe, and should make us cry out, like Jeremiah, “Violence and destruction!” To go along with them – even to keep silence – is to betray Christ.
We cannot “keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’,” says C.S. Lewis. We cannot “let our mind and heart go their own way – centred on money or pleasure or ambition” – and, in spite of this, “behave honestly and chastely and humbly.” As Christ warned, “No man can serve two masters.”
The “world” tempts us to miss Mass on Sundays to play sports or to keep our job; to speak or act dishonestly at work or school to keep “in” with the “right” people; to dress immodestly to be fashionable; to watch impure movies to keep our friends; or to commit sins against chastity to keep our boyfriends or girlfriends or even spouses.
“The world” is clearly in league with “the flesh” in its temptations against purity: the barrage of pornography we cannot help seeing as we pay for our groceries; the over-exposure of the body we cannot help noticing as we walk along the street, talk to acquaintances, or even enter a church; the approved or glossed-over immorality we cannot help watching even in a “good” movie; the dirty jokes we cannot help hearing even from “nice” people.
We must never cease to fight “the world.” Following Christ means denying ourselves and taking up our crosses, even if that makes us “a laughingstock,” as Jeremiah said. At the very least, it means mourning “the world’s” evils, as Pope Benedict XVI said in his book Jesus of Nazareth.
This means resisting endemic injustice visibly but passively, he said, refusing to ignore it, conform to it, or acquiesce in the numbing of consciences – a form of resistance “the world” cannot tolerate, regarding it as the “accusation” it is.
“The world,” the flesh, and the devil can all lead us to hell, but the temptations of “the world” are perhaps the most insidious. Indeed, the “worldly” road is “the safest road to hell,” says the devil in Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters: “soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Catholic Faith in Plain English to start up again
Father Vincent Hawkswell and Maureen Creelman will again offer their course The Catholic Faith in Plain English, starting Sept. 3.
Besides offering it in YouTube form (in print and orally), they will teach the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre (33rd and Willow in Vancouver; entry through the south door) and on Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon at St. Anthony’s Parish Hall (2347 Inglewood in West Vancouver).
“People can watch and listen via YouTube and/or download the print material so they can read it,” said Creelman, who retired in 2010 after 36 years teaching mathematics and physics in the public school system. “We are very well aware that some people, like Father Vince, take in information better by hearing and others, like me, by reading.”
Father Vince retired as a diocesan pastor in 2015. He now spends a good part of his time filling in for other priests. He and Creelman have been teaching together since 1997.
The course, which is free of charge, consists of 36 sessions, one per week, each 100 minutes long.
“Our main reference works are the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and other authoritative Church documents,” said Father Hawkswell. “This is not our private take on the Catholic faith, but what the Church itself teaches.”
“And we don’t pull any punches,” Creelman added. “After all, for all of us, the doctrine we find most difficult to accept is probably the one we most need to hear and understand.”
The two teachers are faithful to the Church’s magisterium, but they also try to explain what the Church teaches as well as they can in plain English, stressing St. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching that love is based on knowledge.
“We believe what Frank Sheed said,” Maureen explained. “Love of God is immeasurably more important than knowledge of God. However, you cannot love God unless you know him. And if we love God knowing a little about him, we should love God more from knowing more about him; for each new thing known about God is a new reason for loving him.”
“A great many faithful and loyal Catholics have questions,” Father Vince said. “Perhaps they’ve never known where to look for answers. We try to supply them, as well as we can, as St. Peter urged.”
“And when we can’t, we keep searching until we can,” Creelman added. “We revise our course every year according to the questions we receive and the answers we find. We never say, ‘Just believe it.’”
To participate, go to beholdvancouver.org/Catholic-faith-course. Every Sunday (except for a two-week break at Christmas), another session is posted and remains available until the new course starts in September. No pre-registration is necessary.
Participants who attend in-person sessions are asked to register when they first begin, but “it’s just for our own information,” said Father Vince. “If people decide to stop attending, we don’t hassle them. And they can drop in for just one session if the topic interests them.”
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