In the Gospel for today, John the Baptist points out Jesus as the "Lamb of God" to his disciples Andrew and John. Following Jesus at the command of the prophet, the Lord can find some asked them what they want. They want to know where he is" staying", and he invites them to "Come and see". After spending the afternoon with Jesus, Andrew sets out to bring his blood brother Simon to meet the Lord, who Andrew is convinced is the Messiah of God. Jesus looks at him, and gives him a new name- "Peter" - "the Rock."
Each of us has received a call from God pointed out by one who knows the mind of God for us, whether that is Eli teaching Samuel what God's call means, John the Baptist pointing out the Lamb of God to his disciples, lower our power parents in the present day presenting us for baptism: they direct and lead us us to the person of the Son of God made flesh. This is a road is not traveled in a moment; it is the work of a lifetime. But the daily task before us is the same as the destination: to "stay with Christ" - moment by moment - in this life today and for ever in the next. "Staying" with him does not mean merely an intellectual assent to the truth he teaches. We need rather to persist in his presence, to "stay with Him", in mind, in word, in the sacraments, and in deed. To think Christ's thoughts, to chew on Christ's teaching, to do Christ's deeds,-this is the life of the Christian exemplified by all the Saints, our Lady in the first place. This choice to become a saint is not optional for Christians. There is only heaven for the Saints and hell for the damned in the world to come. We need to choose Christ with our whole heart, and to stay with him, stay with his Heart. Simon, whose name means "twice" in Hebrew, has to turn to Jesus at least twice as he follows him, weakly and falteringly - but Jesus gives him a new name - "Rock" -and upon this Rock made strong by faith Jesus will build his Church.
So that means that everybody who has been baptized is called; indeed that is the root meaning of the word for church in Greek, "Ekklesia": "the assembly of those who are called." All are called to "stay with Christ", - to cling to him like a shipwreck victim clings to a life preserver -for that is what Jesus is for each of us. And to do that that in spite of the world's substitution of a different "wisdom" which is in fact a deadly poison. The danger for us is to forget exactly how wicked that world is, and what kind of danger our souls are in, the more we think the world's thoughts, talk its talk, and "stay" with it in our deeds.
Roe versus Wade has another anniversary this coming week; then I'm happy to say some of my parishioners are going down to the March for Life in Washington. I would've gone myself except for the little matter of the apparently leaking fuel tank that that has to be replaced at the school - the EPA is involved, and I dare not be absent from my post. We are having a Mass for pro-life intentions and an end to legalized abortion this country on Monday night.
Hitler killed 7 million Jews; Stalin murdered 20 million Russian citizens. We have so far, in less than a generation, killed 48 million children in this country by abortion. 48 million children. We are making the monsters of the 20th century look like pikers in comparison to the evil of our own society. And yet most of us are insensitive to it. People sometimes ask what German citizens under Hitler were thinking while the death camps were burning those viewed as a threat to that society's comfort and flourishing. I'll tell you; those Germans were were no doubt thinking the same thing we are, as American children daily die under the knife of the abortionist - they were doing their level best not to think about what was happening. Like Sodom before its destruction, we "modern" people love our luxury, our comfort, the way of life we have, which includes an easy sexuality and promiscuity - and to that end the Supreme Court, in U.S. versus Casey, has said that abortion is necessary. We insist that nothing disturb our comfortable way of life and our absolute control of it, not even the innocent life of a child. And so many people are complicit in the evil: not only the women who had abortions, but the men who impregnated them, the grandmas and mothers who brought their daughters to the abortion clinics, the killers - medicine is about healing, not killing- who use their science to destroy innocent life; the politicians who fund abortion, for voters who support the politicians, the clergy and laity who keep silent for fear of what people might say or think about them - all complicit in the wickedness.
We deserve to be wiped off the face of the earth for this evil alone. It may happen yet.
The rescue is in Jesus, in staying with him, in thought, word, and deed. The sacraments are there to give us light, and strength: we're making a spiritual journey between the two streams that flow from the pierced side of Christ on the cross -the water of our baptism, by which we enter into the person and death of Jesus Christ and receive its saving grace, and the progress into the ministry of the saving blood of Christ made manifest and tangible for us in the Holy Eucharist. It's here that we find the house of Christ, the disciples of Christ, a symbol around the Master himself, as he summons us out of darkness into light, out of vice into virtue, out of death into life, out of this world - call it Egypt, Babylon, Sodom, Jericho, Rome, or America - into the New Jerusalem which is built on the eternal heights, from whence has come our Help, - he who gathers us during this life into the truth and goodness and beauty of the life to come.
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