Soon after my conversion to Catholic Christianity, I discovered Saint Teresa of Avila. And I fell in love with her. Upon examining that statement, I realize it’s not hyperbole, but truth.
Why?
Among countless reasons, at this writing, it’s Saint Teresa’s admonition against blaming the devil for my weakness, laziness, and cowardice. In her autobiography, she wrote, “I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? What does it mean? I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors”.
That phrase began whispering in my heart on the four hundredth–yes, that is overstatement– time I prayed and pondered this murdered man. I barely knew who he was before this terrible murder, but Charlie Kirk feels like a dear friend whom I’ve lost. I suspect that’s how many of us perceive him now that we know about the extraordinary life of Charlie Kirk, an apologist in the tradition of the great Ravi Zacharias. A lover of truth in the ilk of the ancient Greeks.
Rather than avoiding all the articles about him as I normally do, when awful things happen, I read them. Initially, I agreed with the demonic narratives opined by writers like Daniel O’Connor and Bud MacFarland. However, upon further reflection, I see the implicit danger of that which Saint Teresa of Avila writes of. Don’t blame the devil: what, blame me?
I despise precipitous judgement, made with an incomplete knowledge of facts, context, injustice. When I do it, I feel shame at my unfairness to others-at my rush to judgement. Because, of course, it’s the me I cannot stand that stares back at me. It has nothing at all to do with them. We find , if willing to look and then listen, that those most justifiable of feeling moral outrage…. don’t. Consider Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s comments about his horrendous treatment in the Gulag by Russian officials.
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
For decades, Americans have watched academia devolve into atheistic Marxism and radical activism; still, we continue to send our kids to people who not just negate, but castigate the founding principles of our nation and faith.
Although the secular media promote ideologies contrary to most of our beliefs, we continue to watch and read it.
Closer to our Christian hearts, we lead our kids to fornication. Our priests and ministers are silent about abortifacient use among our Christian and Catholic youth.
Mentors and priests stay silent about the mortal sin of “cohabitation” when young Catholics seek pre-marriage preparation.
We pretend not to notice the blasphemy of the ubiquitous “OMG.”
And invite a wide array of immoral visual and reading materials into our hearts and minds.
And so we declare, like Claude Raines in Casablanca, “I’m shocked, Shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”
The list is endless, I’ve named only a smidgen of the filth that permeates us inside and out.
Monday’s Office of Readings from the Prophet Ezekiel pierces these twenty-first-century rebellious hearts of ours:
‘Son of man, go to the House of Israel and tell them what I have said. You are not being sent to a nation that speaks a difficult foreign language; you are being sent to the House of Israel. Not to big nations that speak difficult foreign languages, and whose words you would not understand – if I sent you to them, they would listen to you; but the House of Israel will not listen to you because it will not listen to me. The whole House of Israel is stubborn and obstinate. But now, I will make you as defiant as they are, and as obstinate as they are; I am going to make your resolution as hard as a diamond and diamond is harder than flint. So do not be afraid of them, do not be overawed by them for they are a set of rebels.’
Indeed, it feels overwhelming, this realization that Kirk’s killer is who he is in part because of me.
Accepting responsibility for others’ sins is an essential, imperative step into the mind of God and our journey to heaven. The difficulty of doing so reminds us of our need to repent and follow Christ, who came to redeem all souls without exception., including, perhaps especially, murderers. At times, that first step must be made daily or even moment by moment.
We forget so readily that we can do nothing without Jesus, nothing but sin.
In one of her remarkable pieces, Jennifer Borek offers wisdom.
Oftentimes I would use the trip home to bring up things that were troubling me, since anything I asked at home was promptly answered by the aunts. Once, I must have been 10 or 11, I asked father about a poem we had read at school the winter before. One line had described “a young man whose face was not shadowed by sexsin.” I had been far too shy to ask the teacher what it meant, and mama had blushed scarlet when I consulted her. In those days just after the turn of the century sex was never discussed, even at home. So, the line had stuck in my head. “Sex,” I was pretty sure, meant whether you were a boy or a girl, and “sin” made Tante (Aunt) Jans very angry, but what the two together meant I could not imagine. And so, seated next to Father in the train compartment, I suddenly asked, “Father, what is sexsin?”
He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last, he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor.
“Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. I stood up and tugged at it. It was crammed with the watches and spare parts he had purchased that morning.
“It’s too heavy,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little daughter to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now, you must trust me to carry it for you.”
And I was satisfied. More than satisfied, wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions, for now I was content to leave them in my father’s keeping. from:
Thursday’s Gospel reading eloquently speaks to the terrible dangers of withholding love from those most in need of it. We’re reminded as we ponder the reading, that it was the great sinner, Mary Magdalene, who was the first to see and speak with the Risen Christ. Not the beloved John the Evangelist or Simon Peter, upon whom he will build his church.
She was the apostle of the apostles.
A certain Pharisee invited Jesus to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table. Now there was a sinful woman in the city who learned that he was at table in the house of the Pharisee. Bringing an alabaster flask of ointment, she stood behind him at his feet weeping and began to bathe his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with the ointment. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, that she is a sinner.” Jesus said to him in reply, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” “Tell me, teacher,” he said. “Two people were in debt to a certain creditor; one owed five hundred days’ wages and the other owed fifty. Since they were unable to repay the debt, he forgave it for both. Which of them will love him more?” Simon said in reply, “The one, I suppose, whose larger debt was forgiven.” He said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? When I entered your house, you did not give me water for my feet, but she has bathed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but she has not ceased kissing my feet since the time I entered. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she anointed my feet with ointment. So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” The others at table said to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” But he said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
I should like to ask you urgently, from now on, that you never let your past sins be an obstacle between you and Jesus. It is a ruse of the devil to keep putting our sins before our eyes in order to make them like a screen between the Savior and us… He will cast all our sins into the bottom of the sea (Mic 7:19). Do not go looking for them at the bottom of the sea! He has wiped them out; he has forgotten them. His blood has been shed; the flames of his mercy have done their work: they have burned up all of them, con sumed them all while renewing you. Our faults must remain for us a source of humility and repentance, but especially a source of immense thankfulness…
