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“Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself. Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections, but instantly set about remedying them, every day begin the task anew.”
— St. Francis de Sales
//The Catholic Company//
“Rules? There Are Rules?”
Father Peter Fitzgibbons
May 8 – 9, 2021
Gospel: John 15:9-17
Now, when I was in seminary we had to study…a lot. “So, Father, you learned a lot of rules.” Maybe. We had a semester in Moral Theology. Then there was the Canon Law course which we took twice, because there are two different versions…the one we were living under at the time and the one that would be in effect five years down the road. The funny thing about that is the first part was the one we had to study and were tested on, but it was only written in Latin. It could not be translated into English, because there wasn’t a precise translation, and Canon Law is very precise. So, you sit there in class with a Latin dictionary. Great! One year of Latin in high school just didn’t quite cut it. So, yeah, there are a lot of rules, if you want to look at it that way. If you look at them without love, then they are RULES. But, if you at them with love, they are the way God gives us His healing power and keeps us from harm. So, they aren’t really RULES.
You know what else has RULES? Flight school. Anybody can take a plane up, and everybody can land it…but, landing the plane safely is the tricky part. You know who else has RULES? Doctors. Medicine has lots of RULES. You can’t do this and you can’t do that…well, you could, but a good outcome would be doubtful. What’s the first rule in. Medicine? Do no harm. Great idea! That philosophy almost applies to military doctors. Doctors study all these RULES so they can bring God’s healing gift to you. Otherwise, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t be here today. What are the RULES for? Through the actions of our health providers, the RULES are there so that God’s healing gifts may be granted to heal us, to console us, and to comfort our families. It’s the same with God’s Commandments. If you follow them, you get what He promised. The RULES of medicine are acts of love. The emptying of oneself, because you don’t know everything, allows God’s healing power to flow from you to the other person.
The same thing is true with the Church. The RULES are set in the Gospel as Commandments. What are they? They are works of love. “If you love me, keep My Commandments.” So, the Commandments are works of love. They are not RULES. What makes people look at the Church and say, “There are a lot of RULES” is ego. We call that “king baby.” “I want what I want when I want it.” Now, I am blessed to have a wonderful cardiologist. He’s a very, very gifted man and a wonderful healer, except he lacks something in his education. Maybe, he was sick that day in medical school. Apparently, he doesn’t know that bacon is heart healthy, and I can’t quite convince him that it is. I want what I want when I want it. Those are people’s RULES.
God loves us unconditionally, because God is love itself. He created us out of love, and He saved us out of love. God continues to loves us even when we tick him off by sinning. We have to accept His love and give that love back. But, we put conditions on receiving Him as if we are the ones making the RULES. Is anybody here perfect? Bea, don’t put your hand up. So, no one. That’s why we need a Savior, and that’s why we are here. This is a hospital for sinners – not hotel for saints. We do not set conditions on His love; instead, we seek it. He wants to give Himself to us, but not if we aren’t prepared to receive Him. These are the RULES so that the gift of His love will not be insulted, mocked, or held up for ridicule. We take His love and make a mockery of it.
Even though God’s love is unconditional, we cannot do whatever we want just because God will love us anyway. “I can do this because God loves me unconditionally.” “I’m going to do that because God will love me anyway.” No…you cannot. In the Gospel, our Lord said, “Whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple” (Matthew 10:38) and everybody left Him. When He declared that marriage is between one man and one woman (Matthew 19:4-7), everybody left Him. When our Lord told His disciples, “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53), everybody left Him. Christ said, “If you keep My commandments, you will remain in My love” (John 15:10). These are the RULES. We have RULES to guide us so that we understand what acts of love are and what they are not.
We all make mistakes, and we are judged on them. “My conscious is my guide.” Well, it shouldn’t be. The judgement of the Church should be your guide, because it is infallible in matters of faith and morals. My own judgement is not too good. Remember bacon? There are rules about Holy Communion. Non-Catholics and non-practicing Catholics cannot receive. Saint Paul wrote that whoever receives the Eucharist unworthily “will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor. 11:27-30). They are not guilty of being impolite – they are guilty of His death. Instead of loving Christ, those who receive unworthily are taking His gift and throwing it in His face. “I don’t care what You want, this is what I want.” Be sure to read the black part of Scripture, and leave the white part alone. These are not RULES. There are no RULES in the Church…only acts of love. If we find His Commandments and the Church’s rules to be odious and burdensome, that’s our ego from the first sin. Remember, it was not committed by Adam and Eve, but by Lucifer who said, “I will not serve.”
The next time you hear someone say, “Catholics have a lot of RULES,” just say, ‘”You know, if you read the Gospels, Jesus had a lot of RULES. But, those RULES tell us how to die to ourselves so that He can live within us.” Yes, we have RULES, but they are acts of love. If we have a problem with the RULES, then we have a problem with our love of God.
How will you apply this message to your life? Are you making a mockery of His love by following your own set of rules instead of His Commandments?
You can read all of Father Fitzgibbons’ sermons by going to: https://annunciationcatholicalbemarle.com/ and clicking on “Blog” then “Categories” and then “Sermon Notes.” From a cell phone, click on “Blog” then “Menu” and then “Categories” (located at the end of page). There is also a search box if you are looking for a specific topic.
That tragic tension between surrender and disbelief that tries to hold on, mirrors all of us who are born reaching out for the food of intimacy and who die trying to lift our arms to embrace and be embraced by our mother who birthed us and our spiritual mother who rebirthed us into a new life in God. Mother. Food. Intimacy. The images of the Incarnation and the death of Jesus. Mary is there, his mother and ours. She is there in our beginning and in our end. And in her Assumption she, with the Father and the Son, is there in our final embrace of the intimacy we were born for. All of it in the Spirit, which overshadowed her and returned at Pentecost to overshadow the disciples and us in our Baptism and Confirmation, our new birth and new life of purpose in the Mystical Body of Christ. Mary. She is the one who is there when we are born and when we live and when we die. Mother. Mary. Intimate Presence. Pray for us “now and at the hour of our death.”
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
St. Matthias the Apostle (1st c.) followed Jesus during his entire earthly ministry and was one of his 72 disciples. Matthias was chosen by the 11 Apostles to replace Judas Iscariot after his betrayal of Christ and subsequent suicide. After Christ’s Ascension into heaven, St. Matthias devoted himself to preaching Christianity among the pagans, some of them barbarians and cannibals, all over Judea, Cappadocia, and Ethiopia for over 30 years. Many miracles are ascribed to him as the pagans sought to kill him: that he was unharmed after being forced to drink poison, that he once hid by becoming invisible, and that the earth opened up and swallowed his attackers. St. Matthias also preached the need for mortification of the flesh as an aid to growth in holiness. Eventually, at God’s appointed time, he was martyred for the cause of Christ, though there are conflicting traditions as to exactly where and how. St. Matthias is the patron saint of carpenters, tailors, and reformed alcoholics. His feast day is May 14th.
Matthias is not mentioned by name anywhere else in the New Testament.
Reflection
What was the holiness of Matthias? Obviously, he was suited for apostleship by the experience of being with Jesus from his baptism to his ascension. He must also have been suited personally, or he would not have been nominated for so great a responsibility. Must we not remind ourselves that the fundamental holiness of Matthias was his receiving gladly the relationship with the Father offered him by Jesus and completed by the Holy Spirit? If the apostles are the foundations of our faith by their witness, they must also be reminders, if only implicitly, that holiness is entirely a matter of God’s giving, and it is offered to all, in the everyday circumstances of life. We receive, and even for this God supplies the power of freedom.
//Franciscan Media & The Catholic Company//
“The reason why the soul not only travels securely when in obscurity, but also makes greater progress, is this: In general the soul makes greater progress in the spiritual life when it least thinks so, yea, when it rather imagines that it is losing everything …There is another reason also why the soul has traveled safely in this obscurity; it has suffered: for the way of suffering is safer, and also more profitable, than that of rejoicing and of action. In suffering God gives strength, but in action and in joy the soul does but show its own weakness and imperfections. And in suffering, the soul practices and acquires virtue, and becomes pure, wiser, and more cautious.”— St. John of the Cross, p.149
//The Catholic Company//
“Heaven is filled with converted sinners of all kinds, and there is room for more.”
— St. Joseph Cafasso
//The Catholic Company//
Mary is the model of what it means to love because love means helping those who need us, even when we ourselves might be in need. Mary is not self-absorbed. She even teaches her son, Jesus, that those in need take precedence even over the ministry or work we think is all important.
What about us? Who do we spend most our time thinking about? Whose needs are always on our mind? Isn’t it usually ourselves? But what is Mary telling us? Mary is our spiritual mother, and she is saying to us, as she said to her son, “Don’t forget those who have a more pressing need than you do. Remember to remember others. How can you be of help?”
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
St. Julian/Juliana of Norwich (1342–1416) is a Benedictine nun who lived as a recluse in Norwich, England. Little is known of her life with certainty. At the age of 30 she was suddenly struck by a severe illness which almost took her life. During this illness she received a series of visions of Jesus Christ in sixteen separate revelations. When she recovered from her illness the visions stopped. Fifteen years later, Our Lord appeared to her to give her the meaning of her visions. St. Julian wrote her visions down in a book called Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving book in the English language known to have been written by a woman. After these revelations she began to live a solitary life as an anchoress in a little cell built into the wall at the church of St. Julian in Norwich, not far from London. During her life the Church was in schism, and England was caught in a long war with France. The book contains a message of optimism based on the certainty of being loved by God and of being protected by his Providence. She received visitors to her cell and gave them guidance on the spiritual life, becoming a spiritual mother to many. St. Julian is an important medieval mystic whose response to the problem of evil is cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 13th.
//The Catholic Company//