By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK
No one is more noted for caring for the poorest of the poor than Mother Teresa. As a Catholic Christian she got it right, however, where so many others have gone off track.
Mother Teresa made clear to any who would listen that she was not a social worker, but served and loved Jesus in persons who were poor. Charity means seeking salvation first and finding one’s vocation to love others within the call to love God.
Many today get this precisely backwards and sometimes leave salvation entirely out of the picture by ignoring the role of faith.
Or to so twist it into an unrecognizable mess as to make it nearly impossible to assimilate.
Mercy certainly includes compassion for the bodily needs of others expressed by providing food, clothing, and shelter. But mercy must always be understood to mean first forgiveness of sins so as to receive the grace of salvation.
Mercy is an encounter above all with Jesus Christ as Savior. It is a means of receiving the greatest treasure of eternal life.
We’ve heard many words about mercy lately from men of the Church who stand in the place of Christ as our teachers in the faith. This is good. But mercy must be understood as being of the same reality with God’s justice and requiring our repentance and amendment of life.
We are told, rather, à la Amoris Laetitia, that some things like divorce and civil remarriage, that is, adultery, do not even require addressing but rather should be blessed by reception of the Holy Eucharist. This, when adultery was condemned specifically by Christ as gravely evil.
In some quarters of the Church love itself is perverted by support for the redefinition of marriage to include persons other than one man and one woman until death.
For this and other reasons, by means of such methods as nonstop synods and footnotes in papal documents, the faith has been actively undermined for years through ambiguity, misdirection, and outright contradiction of the words and divine commands of Jesus Christ.
There were problems when Benedict XVI was Pope, but his clear teaching style managed to reach and confirm the faithful in our integral tradition despite the methods of other leaders in the Church who preferred subterfuge, confusion, and mutilation of the same.
But they were lying in wait all the while for their moment to pounce. Ambiguity never belongs in the context of faith and is always a sign that something malign is afoot. Pope Francis’ style seems to serve more to enable the enemies of our faith through confusion than to confirm what has been handed down.
The Mass of Quinquagesima Sunday, the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, gives us an opportunity to meditate on the challenge to live charity in the current context as we commence once again the season of Lent.
St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, which includes the oft-quoted “hymn to love,” or charity, specifically condemns those who give everything to the poor yet lack the greatest theological virtue.
“Brethren: If I should speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have charity, I have become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And if I have prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, yet do not have charity, I am nothing. And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, yet do not have charity, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1-13)
Charity is defined as desiring the highest good of the one loved, which is eternal salvation.
Paul makes clear that we can give everything we own to care materially for others but if it is done without charity, without efforts to save their souls, we yet lack what we need to be saved, as do they due to our neglect.
We deny Christ if we are willing to give the poor everything but the one thing necessary for salvation: the true faith.
Cheapening mercy with the deceptive message that repentance for wrongdoing is not necessary for forgiveness is condemned also by Christ as sin.
The Church is going to great lengths to provide wonderful gestures such as homeless shelters, soup kitchens, and a shower for the poor in St. Peter’s Square while at the same time falsifying the saving message of Christ. The poor yet remain hungry, thirsty, and naked because they are without Christ Himself, if denied the means of salvation by those of us who are sent by the Lord to hand it on to them.
Everything material comes from the spiritual. The spiritual gift of grace that redeems the soul is of primary importance. All that is flesh will turn to dust, as we were reminded dramatically once again in the liturgies of Ash Wednesday. The material things we seek are ultimately useless if not asked for in faith.
In the Gospel for Quinquagesima Sunday we see the encounter of Love Himself with the poor blind man. The man naturally expresses his desire to have his sight restored, but addresses his request with faith as affirmed by the Lord when He responds, “Receive your sight, your faith has saved you.”
We learn that after he was healed the man changed his life because of his faith: “And at once he received his sight, and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people upon seeing it gave praise to God.”
The Gospel teaching of Christ is clear that efforts to serve the material and physical needs of the poor are without charity if they are not joined to evangelizing with the desire to save the soul of every human person.
The Gospel is also clear that without charity, that is, love for souls and their salvation above all else, we cannot save our own souls.
“And if I distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, yet do not have charity, it profits me nothing.”
“And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: But the greatest of these is charity.”
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ now and forever.
Help get my words out by tweeting or posting the link to my column, available weekly at thewandererpress.com.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress