FROM THE PASTOR
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| Fr. George William Rutler |
February 26, 2017
by Fr. George W. Rutler
There is nothing new in being told that we are dust and
shall return to dust. We hear it every year. Ezekiel pondered that when he saw
a valley of dry bones. The answer came when God breathed, and the bones came
alive again, “an exceedingly great army” (Ezekiel 37:10).
One of the longest
discussed, and often most harshly argued, questions for Christians has been how
much divine breath, or saving grace, is needed to give eternal life when
physical breathing stops. The idea that man is “totally depraved” took wide
hold in the sixteenth century, but had already been engaged in the fourth
century. Self-styled Reformers had lost their grasp on the original form of
creation. All heresies are an exaggeration of a truth, to the exclusion of its
subtleties. The Council of Trent affirmed the truth that man cannot be in
harmony with God’s plan, or “justified,” by his own good behavior without the
breath, or “grace,” of God which comes through Jesus Christ. This is why Christ
said that no one is good except God (Mark 10:18). But Trent also rejected the
lie that “since Adam’s sin, the free will of man is lost and extinguished.”
Dry bones and limp
lives can come alive by giving God permission (as St. Teresa of Calcutta often
said) to make us what he wants us to be. While no one is good except God, each
of us can become perfect (Matthew 5:48). This is not a contradiction. Goodness
is a quality of being; perfection is the result of contact with that goodness.
Perfectionism is a neurosis based on the confusion of goodness and perfection.
The secular progressivist dreams of building an ideal society on earth through
human effort, and learns the hard way that utopias end up being hells.
Antoine de Saint
Exupéry said that perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to
add, but when there is nothing more to take away. Perfectionism tries to add,
as though goodness were a sum, while perfection subtracts that which obscures
goodness. Michelangelo said that he sculpted Moses simply by chipping away from
the marble all that was not Moses, as Moses had been there all along.
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| Coptic Christians Martyred February 2015 |
Exactly two years
ago this month, (Feb 2017) twenty young Coptic Christian Egyptians were kidnapped by
Islamic State militants while on a work crew in Libya. They refused to renounce
Christ and chanted in chorus. . .
“Ya Rabbi Yassou!”—
“Oh my Lord Jesus!”
A black
youth from Chad, Mathew Ayairga, not a Christian, was watching and, when asked
by the captors, “Do you reject Christ?” he replied, “Their God is my God.” He
was baptized by blood when all twenty-one were beheaded. While these martyrs
had never heard of the theological disputes over grace and justification, they
were confident that Christ can raise life eternal from dust and ash.
The
purpose of Lenten disciplines,
not salvific in themselves,
is to train voices
to join their chorus of faith.
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