Fourth Sunday After Easter (2020)

“For you, O God, have tested us,

You have tried us as silver is tried

You have led us, O God, into the snare,

You laid a heavy burden on our backs.

You let men ride over our heads;

We went through fire and through water,

But then you brought us relief.”

Psalm 65

It almost seems as though the Holy Ghost wrote this Psalm this morning.  So directly does it depict the suffering we bear this very day. But all the Psalmody carries this stunning relevance, which is why the Divine Office is replete with them, as well as the Church’s Divine Liturgy.  No prayers can match the pathos and depth of the human heart pleading before the throne of Almighty God.  Man’s soul is stretched, filled, consoled and purified as the psalms expresses our suffering and sorrow, our confusion and uncertainty, our misery and abandonment, our lost footing and terrors. Such as these could only fall from the fire of the Holy Ghost.  St. Pope Pius X wrote movingly of the Psalms in his 1911 apostolic constitution, Divino Afflatu:

Indeed, who could fail to be moved by those many passages in the psalms which set forth so profoundly the infinite majesty of God, his omnipotence, his justice and goodness and clemency, too deep for words, and all the other infinite qualities of his that deserve our praise?  Who could fail to be roused to the same emotions by the prayers of thanksgiving to God for blessings received, by the petitions, so humble and so confident, for blessings still awaited, by the cries of a soul in sorrow for sin committed?  Who would not be fired with love as he looks on the likeness of Christ, the redeemer, here so lovingly foretold?  His was the voice Augustine heard in every psalm, the voice of praise, of suffering, of joyful expectation, of present distress….(causing him to write in the Confessions) , “how I wept when I heard your hymns and canticles, being deeply moved by the sweet singing of your church.  Those voices flowed into my ears, truth filtered into my heart, and from my heart surged waves of devotion.  Tears ran down, and I was happy in my tears.”

Indeed, we are enduring a Johannine Dark Night.  The deaths, the pain, the hardships and helplessness are merciless in their visitations.  Yet, God’s goodness is just as palpable:  To the eyes of divine Faith.  He is at work like a mother applying the bitter medicine to her child knowing it will bring forth health. Or like a teacher instructing his pupils lessons quite challenging, but necessary for excellence.   His goodness shimmers through the trials it pleases Him to send us, just it did as His Own Son hanging on Calvary.  Original sin and its effects cause us, in Chesterton’s words, “to be born upside down (and) can’t tell when he comes right way up.  The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal life is an abnormality.”   

Straightening out the likes of us requires divine methods that confuse  those “living upside down”, for so is our logic.  God’s trials are necessary to wake us from the dreamy reveries of sin.  God’s tests indict our mediocrity and rattle our complacency.  They force us to see the dishonest settlements we have made with our sins, or the way we have begun to feel all too comfortable with the status quo.  Like a pair of old shoes, we are content with the old ways of the world, reluctant to step into the New Ways of grace.  God’s scourges are designed to upend our cleverly rationalized indulgences that have become for us merely second nature.  In summary, C.S. Lewis: “No doubt pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to a final and unrepented rebellion.  But it gives the only opportunity a bad man can have for amendment.  It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul.”

This pandemic is God shouting.  He knows that too many of us have become spiritually and morally deaf, resulting in slouching towards the world rather than marching to the trumpets of grace.  And this slouching takes the most unexpected forms. Look at Lucifer’s deceptions causing many a good Catholic to debase our Loving Redeemer into a God who sends days of darkness and illusions of ‘signs and wonders’.  Similarly, Satan delights in propagating an obsession with Satan.  This is as much his victory as convincing men he does not exist.  The humble Catholic avoids occasions of sin because these are when Catholics ordinarily see Satan’s face.  Any other of his manifestations are left to the offices of the Church.  And those who administer them never speak of them.  Beware of those who do.

Our Redeemer gently coaxes poor sinners.  He nudges and slightly shakes to move us to His Sacred Heart.  The Holy Gospels depict a Savior who takes lost sheep over His shoulder, sits with publicans and sinners, lovingly accepts a prostitute after her tears of contrite sorrow and allows a common thief, who hangs with Him on Calvary, to be the first who follows Him into Paradise.  Even to His betrayer, he quietly remarks, “Wouldst thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?”  He bears an exquisite patience with sinners, which is why St Matthew calls Him “the friend of sinners.” (Mt 11:9) He reserves anger only for those who pervert religion, and they are with us even today.  Perhaps the estimable Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange expertly teaches us in his Our Savior and His Love for Us:

God’s Providence sends afflictions not only to individuals, but to groups of men that they may come to know themselves better, find out by experience their own limitations, discover and correct their faults, aspire to a higher good and bestow a more perfect help in reaching that goal.

Dr. Peter Kreeft’s lucid thinking navigates us through the current tempests of extreme thinking by setting our sights upon the north star of the Church’s teaching:

What light, then, does the dogma of Divine Providence shed on Covid-19?  Is the virus a divine punishment for our sins?  Is it a harbinger of the apocalypse?  Is it evidence that Satan is being unleashed?  We do not know any of that.  What we do know is something much more astonishing: that the divine wisdom and power behind God’s Providential ordering of all events in the universe, from the Big Bang to the fall of every sparrow and every hair from our heads, and therefore also this pandemic, is love.  And love means “the will to the good of the beloved”, the beloved who is us: and therefore, as St. Paul writes, “All things works together for good to those who love God.”  (Rom 8:28).

During these days which seem to know no end God has placed us on a long retreat.  Like any retreat, it is a time of grace.  Don’t let those graces be wasted.  Cardinal Newman’s words in his sermon no. 3 on the Calls of Grace expresses this more vividly:

God’s opportunities do not wait; they come and they go.  The word of life waits not – if it is not appropriated by you, the devil will appropriate it.  He delays not, but has his eyes wide always and is ready to pounce down and carry off the gift which you delay to use.

May 2020