Rightly ordering life

A life of obedience requires heeding general precepts and specific direction

I was struck yesterday at how the reading I am doing for St. Michael’s Lent, the reading I am doing in the Gospel of John, the consideration of the angels, and the Gospel at Mass all aligned. I’m sure this happens for you as well: “suddenly” there is a convergence of events and thoughts about them that leads to new insights that issue in turn into calls to action. This is one of the ways the Holy Spirit works.

The Mass I attended was for an Investiture into the Order of Malta. The Gospel at Mass spoke of Joseph being warned in a dream by an angel to flee with the Child and Mary into Egypt. It seems odd, doesn’t it, that he would be commanded to go to Egypt, that place of slavery and idolatry from which the Chosen People had been delivered centuries before. God’s ways are not ours, and obedience to His will often entails our doing thing that makes no or least sense to us. Indeed, this is one of the ways that the Lord restores order to our disordered souls and our disordered world. Joseph obeyed, the Child’s life was spared from Herod’s wrath, and I am sure that the presence of the Holy Family in that land was a motive of hope for redemption in all who saw their holy lives. The Flight reminds us that Christ is a Light to the Nations, that the Gospel is meant for everyone. The Gospel passage reminds us that the Lord often speaks to us through angels — the thoughts that occur to us are not just ours. I'm sure that like me, you’ve had those occasions where a sharp insight, a sharp realization in a moment of impending danger saved you from the worst. I think that the angels as ministering spirits are ministering to us all the time at God’s behest, and we have only to tune ourselves to their reality and presence in order to benefit greatly from their action.

The choir of angels I considered was the Cherubim — not those cute, pudgy little Renaissance depictions of harmless, babe-like creatures, but rather the second-highest rank of angels. The Chaplet of St. Michael asks us in the consideration of the Cherubim that through their intercession, the Lord would “grant us the grace to leave the ways of sin and run in the paths of Christian perfection.” The reading from Tobit set forth how Tobit kept the Law of the Lord when those around him had fallen into the apostasy of worshipping pagan gods. He offered not a tithe, a tenth of his income, but three-tenths, to the Lord, for the maintenance of the Levites at the Temple, for the costs of his own travel and worship, and for those who needed his financial assistance.

The reading reminded me of something I had learned at Yale Divinity School some forty years ago now. In a lecture on the New Testament, and I believe it was on 1 Corinthians, Richard Hays, then assistant professor of New Testament at the Div School and now retired Dean and Professor of NT at Duke Divinity, informed us that for Christians, according to St. Paul, the tithe was the starting point for Christian discipleship in finances.

I found that striking, and still do, especially in light of of the direction Joseph received to do something that likely made little sense to him and in view of our own budgets, challenged as they are by taxes and rising costs. I’m sure there are many who could give more to the Church and to Church-related and other charities, but don’t, for any number of reasons. I’m sure, too, that Tobit could have found many reasons not to make the generous financial sacrifices that he did — and yet he made them, and is held up to us as an example of righteousness. I’m sure the notion of massive sacrificial giving also makes little sense, and yet here I think that this sort of giving is directly related to the prayer that the Cherubim help us run in the paths of Christian perfection. Am I proposing that we give as much as 30% of our income? Well, no, not really, as the Church leaves us free to determine how much we ought to give. But I am sure of one thing at least: we can all give more, and probably much more, to the Church and her activities than we do, and that this sort of reordering of our financial priorities and pathways is one of the ways we run in the paths of Christian perfection.

My Gospel consideration was the changing of Jesus’ changing of the water into wine at the Wedding of Cana. The water he changed was stored in pure vessels. If we want him to turn the water in our own lives into finest wine which flows superabundantly for God’s glory and the world’s joy, then the vessels — our lives —must be pure. Let us pray for this purity, and do what the Lord tells us. As the Seraphim help us to burn with true love of God and neighbor — for there is no love of God without love of the other — so too the Cherubim will help us to order our lives such that we can run — not walk — the paths of Christian perfection. That will require change on our part, doubtless: but to this end, the Lord has given us mighty helpers, and we would do well to ask their help and heed their direction,

For He will give his angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. You will tread on the lion and adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot (Ps 90/91: 12-13).

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