pharisees Archives - Held By His Pierced Hands

Bipolar Faith and Its Antidote

I’m staying with a dear friend who knows me very well. Because she knows me so well, she was awfully excited to tell me that we were going to the Chrism Mass this week. I think she was rather taken aback when I wasn’t gleeful.

“Can I tell you a secret?” I asked. “I actually kind of hate long fancy Masses. Isn’t that terrible?”

I went to the Chrism Mass with her and spent the whole time reminding myself that it was okay that it was taking so long. I knew I shouldn’t be, but I was kind of annoyed that I’d spent an extra hour at Mass. I mean. come on. It’s not like I avoid time with Jesus. I just wasn’t really excited about an hour added to my usual (lengthy) prayer routine.

Yesterday, I found the only Saturday morning Mass in town. I left the church basement where I’d spent the night with a bunch of middle school girls and headed over there before 8. After spending Mass remarkably lucid (despite my 3 am bedtime), I was ready to get some prayer time in and then head back for coffee. But no. They pray a novena. And not the kind the little old lady in the front starts while people file out, either. Everybody stayed. Even the priest. And it was loooong. Like, at least 7 minutes. I tried not to be annoyed (because Mass had been short anyway), but I wanted to be done.

I had the same trouble last night. Heading to bed, all I could think about was how long Mass was going to be this morning. I knew it would be exhausting to stand through that epically long second Gospel–especially since there’s always a crowd on Palm Sunday. People always seem to show up when they know there are cool door prizes like ashes and palms. I was annoyed in advance because I was going to have to spend an extra 20 minutes with the Lord.

I make fun of other people when they do this. “Oh, you’re annoyed that Mass was 65 minutes? Good thing Jesus didn’t get down off the Cross after an hour.” “Oh, Mass is boring? You know what else was boring? Dying on the Cross!”¹

But somehow I think I’m allowed to be annoyed at long Masses and extra prayers because I’m already doing so much. “If this were my only Jesus time all week, I wouldn’t mind it being long. But I’ve already spent 2 hours at church today!”

Pharisee.

The Lord blesses me with extra time with him–time when I don’t have a single other thing to do–and I want to get out because I’ve already done my time. I stay because I have to, not because I’m letting him touch my heart. And I was there in the first place because I feel I have to be, not because I’m seeking him.

I’m shocked every year by the two Gospels from the Palm Sunday Mass, by how dramatically the tone changes and how the congregation is swung from one extreme to another. We walk into the church shouting Hosanna and waving palm branches, welcoming our Messiah with joy. Not 15 minutes later, we’re crying out, “Let him be crucified!” I thought it was strange, this bipolar shift from worship to betrayal. And then I realized it’s no accident, not just a convenient way to get the whole story into one Mass. It’s the life of a fallen Christian, crashing from praise into sin without even noticing the change. It’s my life.

I praise him at Mass and then roll my eyes when the little old lady in front of me is exiting the church too slowly. I receive Christ on my tongue and then use that same tongue to belittle the sketchy or dull or tone-deaf priest. I revel in his presence during my holy hour and rage at the person who was supposed to relieve me when I’m stuck an extra twenty minutes. Hosanna. Crucify. God help me, today wasn’t just a particularly interactive Mass–it was my life in a nutshell.

I think it’s all of us, especially those of us who are good. When we’ve been sitting around all day playing Candy Crush, it’s not so hard to get up and change a toddler’s sheets. After all, it’s about time we did something worthwhile. But when we’ve played with them all stinking day and made dinner and washed the dishes and put them to bed and someone wants a drink we’re about ready to go NUCLEAR on their cute little tooshies.

When we’ve only spent 5 minutes with Jesus and someone asks us to pray a rosary, it seems like a good opportunity; when we’ve already prayed a rosary (and a chaplet and a holy hour and the Office…) it’s just too much.

Satan’s a clever one, isn’t he? He lets us pray and do good works, sure, but he makes very sure we only do the ones we want to do. And anything done because it’s your will is always less beautiful than something done out of humility and submission. My self-centered holy hour is far less pleasing to God than my reluctant Hail Mary. Hebrews tells us that Jesus was made perfect by obedience in suffering.² Of course he was already flawless, but humanity is perfected only in obedience. And so he was obedient to Mary and Joseph, obedient to Caesar, obedient to Pilate and the Sanhedrin, obedient unto death.³ Our powerful God opened not his mouth,⁴ submitting to torture and execution not despite having done nothing wrong but because he had done nothing wrong.

As Lent gears up this week and comes crashing to a bitter end tinged with Easter glory, join me in asking yourself: what am I holding back? What crosses am I refusing to bear because they aren’t of my choosing? How has my self-congratulation gotten in the way of my hearing God’s voice? Get to confession and then make this resolution for Holy Week:

I will thank the Lord for every cross. Even the ones that are just minor annoyances that become crosses when I reject them. This week, I will live in the Hosanna. When my life cries out for him to be crucified, I will bite my tongue until I can muster the strength to thank the Lord for his mercy in allowing this red light or betrayal or stomach bug or extra litany or terrifying diagnosis or awkward conversation or rejection or commercial break. I will rejoice in the small inconveniences and allow him to break down the walls of selfishness I’ve built around my pious practices and nice deeds. I will let my piety become prayer by letting him direct it; I will let my kindness become charity by stopping at nothing. This week, I will be a saint.

And next week I will do the same. Hosanna.

Yes, I’m kind of a belligerent jerk. You must be new around here. [↩]
Heb 5:8 [↩]
Phil 2:8 [↩]
Is 53:7 [↩]

On Four-Year-Olds and Pharisees

My four-year-old nephew loves to pray. Seriously, when I talk about that kid, I feel like I’m reciting one of those ridiculous medieval hagiographies that tell you how the blessed child refused the breast on fast days. But John Paul is a little bit of a robot and his lifelong obsession has been all things Catholic. I’m more than a little proud, of course, but also rather bewildered when he wants to pray all the time. On Sunday, he went to Mass, prayed morning prayer, read the Bible all during his “nap,” prayed a whole rosary, prayed evening prayer and the office of readings, did his Saint Andrew novena, and his Magnifikid morning and evening prayer. I’m pretty sure he spent more time praying than I did.

On a given day, it’s not unusual to hear the following lines out of this strange kid’s mouth:

Just a little light reading before bed.

“No, don’t just pray one decade. We want to do ALL the mysteries!”
“Oh, I’m Jesus! I’m walking on water! Now I’m TURNING WATER INTO WINE!!”
“For my naptime story, I would like Isaiah chapter 41.”
“May I please take the Bible to bed with me?”
“No, Mom, don’t turn off the light! Wait till I finish Proverbs!!”
“No, Cecilia, you can’t be Ruth! We’re playing Pentateuch! Ruth is a Historical Book!!!“
“My favorite confirmation Saint is Saint Caius. He was a pope and martyr.”
“Oh, could we please play the martyrdom of St. Ignatius of Antioch? And then we can play my canonization party!”

Really. All in one day. He doesn’t sound real.

So you’d think, given how much he prays, that he’d be less…well…awful. I mean, I know he’s four and life is just hard. I don’t fault him for tantrums over toys and television. What gets me are the tantrums he throws while praying. Yes, while praying. Not, of course, because he doesn’t want to pray. Because he wants to do it his way.

This week, we’ve prayed morning and evening prayer together every day. His idea. And while he’s been praying the Office with me since he was only just three (I’m telling you, he’s not real!), suddenly he can’t do it right. No, it’s not that he can’t do it right. He just won’t.

"We're traveling to Bethlehem!" Riding a leopard. Pregnant with a baby doll. Maybe that's from the Gospel of Thomas. Note John Paul's outfit: a purple "dalmatic" which was our compromise when he screamed and screamed "I want a chasuble now! I want a chasuble today!!" — “We’re traveling to Bethlehem!” Riding a leopard. Pregnant with a baby doll. Maybe that’s from the Gospel of Thomas. Note John Paul’s outfit: a purple “dalmatic” which was our compromise when he screamed and screamed “I want a chasuble now! I want a chasuble today!!”

He insists on praying the Magnificat during morning prayer or he screams “NOOOO” when I read my part (because he wanted to read it) or he starts whining about praying daytime prayer before we’re halfway through morning prayer. I’m mostly happy to ignore or to allow just to keep the peace, but he doesn’t want to keep the peace. So he keeps pushing and pushing–grabbing the breviary, starting a hymn in the middle of a canticle, insisting on starting the whole psalm over so he can be side A–until he feels justified in throwing a tantrum. While praying. Over whether or not to read the italicized text or how to pronounce a word.

No joke, I’ve had to interrupt our prayer to talk about not screaming and punching during the Office every day this week. The other day he kicked me (softly, because the sweet thing is gentle even when he’s enraged) for having the audacity to finish the concluding prayer. Last night he head-butted me in the face (again, so gently it wasn’t even uncomfortable, but it’s the intention we’re concerned about) because I folded the novena pamphlet to read the back instead of turning the whole thing around.

Basically, despite all this time in prayer, he’s obsessed with himself and getting his own way. But you know what? He has an excuse. He’s four.

What’s my excuse?

Because I do the same thing. I do good things but I’m so consumed with doing them the “right” way that I end up doing more harm than good. I get so frustrated at liturgical abuses that I make the Mass about me–my desires for good liturgy–instead of about Christ. I’m so intent on orthodoxy that I forget compassion. I turn everything into evidence to support my ideology or an opportunity to feel persecuted. I do acts of charity and vilify those who work with other populations. I do good for my own ends–either to be impressive in the eyes of men or just to show off to God.¹

James Tissot: The Pharisee and the Publican

You see, I’m a Pharisee. The problem with the Pharisees wasn’t that they wanted to follow the rules. Their problem (okay, one of their many) was that they had to be right. They had to have their own way–they were fine with it being the Law’s way as long as they had chosen it. And anyone who wasn’t doing things their way was wrong. And bad. And deserved to be crucified.

There wasn’t anything wrong with following the Law. God gave it to them, after all. And there’s nothing wrong with living the liturgical year or admonishing sinners or spreading the Gospel or feeding the hungry. But if you’re anything like me, it’s not always about love of God and love of neighbor. Often it’s just self-love–if you can call it love at all.

Pope Francis described one manifestation of this pride motivating good works in his recent apostolic exhortation:

“A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads instead to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelizing, one analyzes and classifies others, and instead of opening the door to grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying.” (Evangelii Gaudium 94)

Our desire to be faithful can be distorted–as can our desires for social justice, transcendent liturgy, compassion, and all things true, good, and beautiful–when we, like the Pharisees, act out of self-love instead of love of God.

Satan’s a clever one. And when you start doing good, he can work with that. He can take your good intentions and twist them so you start resenting people who interrupt your prayer or judging people who serve differently. I think this is particularly dangerous during Advent–we start out buying gifts to please people and end up getting mad at people in the mall or the people we’re shopping for or the whole internet because things aren’t going the way we want them to. We decide to have a quiet, prayerful Advent and want to smack the sweet carolers we pass on the street corner. We go to confession so we can feel superior. We mean so well but it’s so easy to get caught up in ourselves and forget love of God and love of neighbor: the reason for the season, yes, but also the reason for everything.

God saw this in our little fallen hearts, this self-obsession, and knew that redemption alone wouldn’t be enough. Even brought back to him, we would still be so tempted to curve in on ourselves, so painfully inclined to make even selfless acts selfish. So he came down to show us what humanity was made to look like. He became man in an act of complete selflessness. The world actually does revolve around him and yet he lived as though he was nothing.

Via Maria Pureza Escano. — St. Anne and the Young Mary, by Maria Pureza Escano.

This humility begins at the Annunciation: the God whom heaven and earth adore chose to be conceived under shadow of scandal, most likely rejected by friends and family before he was even born. He was laid in a feed trough, worshiped by outcasts, and chased into exile. Each moment was a gift, each instance of pain or persecution accepted purely out of love.

Jesus didn’t use people. He didn’t heal them only to make a point–it was always about them. His conversations teach us something, yes, but they spoke far more deeply to the hearts of those he encountered. The one man in all of history who deserved to be wrapped up in himself quite simply wasn’t. When he spoke about himself–he who is the meaning of life–he was always leading us back to the Father, giving himself in love.

The reason the Gospels are so compelling even to those who don’t believe in the God they describe is that Jesus lived as we were made to: his entire life was about others. All the healings and the preaching and even the resurrection would have meant nothing if they hadn’t been selfless. If Jesus had preached to gain fame or worked miracles to demonstrate his superiority, he would have been a sham and a failure.²

Are you?

It’s a harsh question, I know. I ask it because I’m asking myself. How many of my “good works” are done out of honest love of God and man and how many are done out of pride or veiled selfishness?

John Paul is a fantastic kid, but his piety doesn’t necessarily correlate to holiness.³ I wonder how many of us are living lives of empty piety or charity. Oh, it’s better than giving up and embracing our baser inclinations. But is it everything the Lord is asking of us, this God who desires obedience rather than sacrifice? Is it really his will or have we canonized our own desires?

This nativity scene at Franciscan University has a cross as its focal point. It's all one mystery. — This nativity scene at Franciscan has a cross as its focal point. It’s all one mystery.

We don’t worship a God who merely loves. We worship a God who is love. God in his very essence is self-gift and while that’s supremely true in the dance of love that is the Trinity, it’s nowhere more obvious than in the Incarnation, the ultimate act of love that encompasses all the discomfort and tedium and ignominy and rejection and failure and suffering and death that God willingly embraced for us. Our God gave himself in love every moment of every day–and continues to do so in the Eucharist–that we might be strengthened to do the same.

So can I issue a challenge in the midst of all your shopping and creating and praying and practicing? Could you take a minute to ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing? Are you writing or decorating or speaking out of a desire to be more like that fragile God in swaddling clothes? If not, don’t quit necessarily. Just recognize it, repent, and ask for the grace to love. God became weak–there’s no shame in weakness. But a failure to love: that’s true failure.

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor 13:1-3)

15 years ago I did a minor good deed and didn’t tell anyone about it. I’m still proud of myself for that. [↩]
And not God…. [↩]
It doesn’t need to. He’s awesome. I’m just making a point. [↩]

What to Do When Mass Is Awful

One downside to being a hobo is that there’s no vetting parishes before deciding to go to Mass there. Whether it’s stopping at a parish in Kentucky because its noon Mass fit my 12-hour drive or going to the only church in Abilene, KS, I don’t always have a lot of choice in the matter. And when I do, I don’t tend to have enough information that I can avoid sketchy parishes. The result, of course, is that I go to a lot of…trying Masses.

One particularly frustrating Mass got me thinking, some time after the rain stick and before I noticed half a dozen adults chewing gum. As I tried to ignore the murmured conversations all around me (because, really, why listen to the Mass?), the Lord reminded me that there’s very little that can ruin the Mass. Oh, there’s plenty that can ruin my focus or my prayer or even the state of my soul if I let it, but almost nothing actually has the power to ruin the goodness that is the Mass.

Things that can’t ruin Mass (although not for lack of trying):¹

Not even seafoam carpeting and cinder block walls can ruin Mass. I promise.

Ugly sanctuaries. And not just the brown brick monstrosities of my youth. I’m talking a picture of MLK Jr. hanging to the right of the altar. However much you respect the work he did, the man is not a Saint.
People chewing gum. Never okay in a house of worship, but I’m sure you knew that.
People dressed immodestly. Leggings are not pants and if you’re convinced that shorts are Sunday-Mass-appropriate, please do make sure that they cover your butt. Also, what’s with all the cleavage at Mass? Or anywhere, for that matter? I tell you, friends, I just don’t get it.
Cell phones going off. Even when people answer them and talk about how they’re leaving church as they walk out on their phone. Yup, been there.
Screaming kids. By which I usually mean fussing kids whose parents scoop them up and out of the sanctuary but still get dirty looks. But even the ones who are totally indulged, driving their matchbox cars up and down the pews making screeching noises can’t ruin Mass.
Illicit liturgy. I’m talking pita bread Jesus, the congregation sitting through the whole Mass, lay people proclaiming the Gospel, the priest receiving communion after everybody else–I begin to think I really have seen it all.
Bad music. I’m rather a musical snob, so when I hear a cantor who’s a quarter step flat for a whole psalm, a pianist who doesn’t understand rests, or a guitarist playing in the wrong time signature, it’s a challenge to me. And Catholics aren’t exactly known for their music….
Heretical music. “I myself am the bread of life…” Okay, fine, John 6. “…You and I are the bread of life!” What? No. We aren’t. That doesn’t even make sense! Seriously?
If I hear that one again, I’ll text this to the deacon.

Heretical preaching. I actually heard an Easter homily once where the deacon preached that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead. It doesn’t get much worse than that.
Obnoxious neighbors. You know–the ones who say all the responses reallysuperfast or the ones who seem to be boycotting the new translation or the ones who spend the whole offertory chatting about Kendra’s new boyfriend. I’m of the opinion that the only reason you talk during Mass is if, say, one of your limbs falls off and you have to whisper to your neighbor to please hand it back to you. Otherwise, not a word.

Plenty of these things, of course, might ruin your experience of Mass, but ultimately Mass is not about your experience. It’s about the objective truth of God made man made food for us. And if it’s a valid Mass,² it is quite literally the most incredible thing ever to happen in the history of the world. When we’re dealing with a glory so stunning as the Eucharist, even the most heinous of liturgical practices can’t ruin it.

Now don’t get me wrong–good liturgy is at the heart of our faith and reverence is tremendously important.³ But when I let these relatively inconsequential things frustrate me, I’m worshiping music or rubrics or proper attire at the expense of God. And really, I’m letting the devil win. When you go to Mass, you strike a blow at Satan; when you spend your Mass frustrated or judgmental, he deflects it. And then some.

So when is Mass awful? When it isn’t Mass.

If the priest uses any words other than “this is my body” and “this is the chalice of my blood” for the “consecration.”⁴
If the priest “consecrates” anything other than wheat bread or grape wine.⁵
If the “priest” isn’t a priest.

That’s it. No matter how bad the music, how dull the preaching, or how rude the congregation, if the form,⁶ the matter,⁷ and the minister⁸ are correct, God shows up. And if the God of the universe becomes an inanimate object for you, stopping at nothing to be with you, then no amount of human failure ought to rob you of of your Eucharistic joy. A valid Mass, my friends, can never be awful.⁹ The congregation or the preaching or the music or you can be awful, but the Mass isn’t about you. It’s about God. And he is faithful, even when we’re pathetic.

So what should you do? Well, I’m a big fan of making imaginary excuses for people.¹⁰ Or finding ways not to be distracted. Or, if it’s possible, shopping around for a licit Mass with a reverent congregation.

But it really comes down to your attitude. If you approach the Mass like it’s an opportunity for you to be entertained or enlightened or pacified, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re making a mental list of liturgical abuses, I sympathize, but I remind you: unless you’re a bishop,¹¹ you are not the liturgy police. You are the faithful. And while it would be wonderful if everything was done right and everybody really did what they ought, making that your standard for a “good” Mass is pharisaism at best and idolatry at worst.

Crucifix in shadows — I totally took this picture. Be impressed.

If you approach the Mass like you’re approaching the throne of God, though, everything that’s “wrong” with a particular liturgy fades into the background. If you offer God your frustrations in atonement for your sins, if you close your eyes and beg for the grace to focus on him and not on them, if you remember that God loves us in our brokenness and wants everything we have to offer even if it’s awful, if you remind yourself over and over that however Father might embellish the Mass you’re still truly present at the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Wedding Feast of the Lamb–well, just think of the grace!

Now if you’re in a position to do anything about any of the above, please do. Make announcements about gum, preach about proper attire, ban liturgical abuses. But if you’re like most of us, with no power to change anyone but yourself and–maybe–your family, don’t let propriety trump worship. Recognize what’s wrong if you must and then look back to Christ crucified for you. In the face of that, what else really matters?

*************

Last week I mentioned that I wanted to go to Wyoming and now I am! So I’ll try it again: I really want to go to New Mexico and South Dakota but I have nobody to visit and they’re not on my way. Anybody want me to come speak? (Or anywhere else out West, really, but I’ve got every other state covered as far as excuses to go there.)

Every single one of these examples has really truly happened to me. [↩]
Meaning Jesus actually shows up. You’ve probably never been to an invalid Mass. I think I went to one once but I’m not positive that it wasn’t just hugely illicit. [↩]
Half the reason I wrote this post was to point out what isn’t appropriate at Mass. And please, before you get upset that I’m saying it’s not a big deal when things are illicit, I know that it’s a huge deal because the Mass is so important and it needs to be done right. I’m just saying that relative to the Eucharist, who is God himself, liceity is nothing. Because relative to the Eucharist, everything is nothing. I’m advocating perspective, not anarchy. [↩]
My friend once went to a “Mass” where the priest said “this is the cup of my life.” No transubstantiation, no Mass. Lame. [↩]
Leavened bread in the Roman Rite is illicit–against the rules–but not invalid. If a priest tries to consecrate cornbread, though, it’s not Jesus. [↩]
Words. “This is my body,” “this is the cup of my blood.” [↩]
Stuff: wheat bread, grape wine. [↩]
A validly ordained priest–by necessity, a Catholic man. [↩]
Except in the archaic sense of inspiring awe, in which case every Mass is awful, most especially when it’s glorious. [↩]
“He must have gotten stuck in traffic and not had time to change and that’s why he’s wearing sweatpants and a cutoff tee to Sunday Mass.” “They’re probably chewing gum because they’ve never been in a church before and they don’t know proper etiquette.” “Maybe Father’s never read the rubrics.” “That 10-year-old playing her handheld game must have special needs.” [↩]
In which case oh my gosh hi and you’re amazing and thanks for reading my blog wanna be my best friend?!?!? [↩]