Fr. Frank Majka, SJ – The Bridge

Hate in Other Words

Sometimes the words of Jesus are provocative, as in the following from Luke, chapter 14: Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters . . . cannot be my disciple. Taken literally, these words would contradict natural human instinct as well as God’s commandment to honor one’s father and mother. So we’re forced to look for a way to understand them that makes sense.

For me it’s about who is at the center of my life. If I put God or Jesus there, then every other relationship will find its proper place (that’s the belief that Ignatius Loyola expressed at the start of the Spiritual Exercises). But if I put someone else at the center, then everything will be out of joint and distorted.

If that’s so, then the hatred Jesus talks about could be seen as a way to say “If you want to follow me, then put me where I belong. If you do that, then every other relationship will get the love it deserves.” And what may seem like hatred is actually a way to insure that we will not impose a terrible burden on people and relationships that, dear as they may be, were never meant to take the place of God. For other people, no matter how wonderful and lovable, are not strong enough to bear the burden of being God. We do them a disservice by expecting them to.

And even though we might think we’d like our spouses or children or students to treat us as though we were God sometimes, if they really did that, wouldn’t it make us feel very uncomfortable? Honestly, if we truly know ourselves with all our flaws as well as all our good points, who among us would want the responsibility of being somebody else’s deity?

So, if we are letting someone other than God take God’s place, then, even if it hurts or looks like “hatred,” let’s put God back where he belongs. That will let us acknowledge as God’s gifts the people we love, not make them rivals to the God who also loves them and shares them with us.

Faith and Trust (part two)

If, as suggested in my last post, faith and trust go together as two sides of one coin, then it is our actions which put that coin into circulation. And I witnessed many actions of faith and trust this past week, most involving parents taking their children to school.

Last Wednesday the parents of Marquette High freshmen brought their sons to school (it’s an all-boys school) so they could register, get their pictures taken, and put their books into their lockers in preparation for the first day of class. That same day, twenty blocks to the east, other parents were bringing their sons and daughters to Marquette University, delivering them to dormitories for check-in and unloading boxes of clothes and room furnishings.

These were actions of faith and trust. The parents were trusting that the schools they were sending their children to would help them get a good education and become better people; they also had faith in their children’s ability to expand their minds and widen their view of life and of the world. Ultimately, they were making an act of faith and trust in God’s care for their children. And make no mistake, those actions of faith and trust were difficult for many parents, as their quivering chins and moist eyes that day made plain. But they did them anyway, out of love.

So, all those parents who have this year — or ever — brought their children to school deserve a salute. They can also be confident that their acts of faith and trust, which arise from God and return to God, will hopefully bring God closer to them and their children and bring them and their children closer to God.

Faith and Trust

Airplanes need two wings to fly. Similarly, in our lives as Christians we need the support of both faith and trust to keep our relationship with God airborne and moving forward.

As a matter of fact, faith and trust come together and feed each other. We trust God because we believe in God, and we believe in God (really, deeply believe in God) because of experiences we’ve had when we trusted God. Our faith leads us to new levels of trust, and our acts of trust bring us to new levels of belief.

Furthermore, if we wish to have an idea of how healthy our relationship with God is, all we have to do is ask ourselves two questions. First, how much ambiguity can we tolerate? Does everything have to be crystal clear all the time? Can we have faith in anything or anyone?

Second, can we allow ourselves to depend on someone other than ourselves? Do we always have to drive our bus or can we surrender control when it’s right to do that?

At certain times, one may be more active than the other, but faith and trust belong together if our relationship with God is going to fly.

Samaritans

In the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and the Levite knew that the Law told them to love God and love their neighbors. Nevertheless, they walked by a bloodied, beaten man lying in a ditch. The Samaritan, though, knew that you don’t pass such people by; you go to their aid. The parable clearly tells us we must try to be like the Samaritan.

But that is not always easy. In our world, plenty of people are lying in ditches, some literally as in the case of the homeless or those who are victims of violence and war. It can be a challenge to know how to help them in effective and lasting ways, but many individuals and organizations are working hard to improve these situations and provide for the people caught in them.

Others are lying in ditches figuratively, such as those trapped in resentment, anger, bitterness, cynicism, addiction, or self-hatred, robbed of their dreams or beaten up by injustice and society’s callousness towards them. It’s not always easy to know how to reach out to them effectively, and, paradoxically, some of them may even reject our efforts, leaving us to be Samaritans whose help is not welcome.

Still, we can always pray for them, remember they are there and try our best to do what we can for them. They are our “neighbors,” after all, and Jesus tells we have to love our neighbors (in fact, love even our enemies). And, though we might not always be able to help as we’d like, we can’t shirk our responsibility to try to be like the Samaritan whom Jesus held up for us to imitate.

Partial Credit

As far as I know there’s no patron saint of partial credit, but I’d like to nominate St. Peter for the job.

Peter’s finest moment came when he declared that Jesus was the Messiah sent by God, and Jesus told him this was just the kind of faith that would make Peter a solid foundation for the church. Peter’s answer had been right, very right.

But shortly after that (according to St. Matthew’s gospel), Peter showed that he didn’t fully understand what he had said, for when Jesus spoke about the need for the Messiah to suffer and die, Peter told him he shouldn’t talk like that. Jesus recognized that Peter was saying the same thing that Satan had said in the desert. So he told him, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Still, Jesus did not send Peter away. He knew that though he didn’t understand what Jesus’ being the Messiah would entail, at least he knew that Jesus was the Anointed One of God. That was a lot. And Jesus trusted Peter would keep on learning what that truly meant because his heart was in the right place.

When it comes to following Jesus, aren’t we like Peter? We have affirmed Christ as our Lord, even though the depth of what that means and will demand of us is something we must keep on learning. But we can be consoled by the realization that having even a partial understanding is far better than being totally in the wrong and that, as long as we do our best to follow him, Christ will help us learn the other things we need to know.