Friends
Peace be with you.
After confirmation, I started teaching 5th grade Faith Formation on Sunday mornings. My parents always preferred Saturday afternoon Mass but I figured that, since I was going to be at church on Sunday morning anyway, I would just start going to Mass by myself then. Faith Formation took place from 9:00-9:55 between the 8:00 and 10:00 Mass so, most of the time, I would go to 10:00 Mass by myself. At this point in my life, I was pretty seriously discerning what would develop into my vocation to priesthood. I remember going over to Mass after Faith Formation and reading the readings for a couple of minutes and then deciding what I would preach about if I were the priest. I can remember being disappointed if the priest didn’t preach about what I would have preached about, which was the majority of the time. Sometimes, I would look at the readings and pick out what I thought was a pretty clear theme in them only to find that the priest was doing a special appeal or that he didn’t seem to be preaching on the central point at all. For me, it was part of what spurred on my vocation because I thought that I could do better. However, as I look back at that, I wonder how many people do something similar, not because they are discerning priesthood, the diaconate, or religious life but simply because they feel like what they are hearing isn’t helping them grow in faith.
I was really struck this week by St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. It’s really important for us to listen to every sentence that St. Paul says in this passage. First, he admits that he’s been given an abundance of revelations. I’m sure St. Paul would say being born a Jew was among these because he came to know the Father of Jesus Christ intimately and how much the Father cares for him by giving him the law. However, I’m sure the pinnacle of these revelations happened when Jesus himself appeared to St. Paul to convert him to become one of his followers. Yet, despite how close the relationship that St. Paul had to Jesus, he was given what he described as a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan, given to him to keep him from being too elated, not in the sense of excited but in the sensd of puffed up or proud. St. Paul said he asked three times for it to be removed, a number symbolizing fullness or completeness, but God revealed, not a cure, but that “My grace is sufficient for you.” So, St. Paul says that, rather than boast of the revelations that he has been given or the gifts that he has been given, he boasts of what he initially called the thorn in his flesh, his failures, hardships, persecutions, constraints and other weaknesses so that when he is weak, Christ will be able to work through him in strength.
Thorns in the flesh are hard to just accept, however. For St. Paul, commentators think this was a person that made his ministry difficult. What thorns in the flesh do you have? Another way of asking this question is who makes it hard for you to practice your faith? Perhaps it is me or other church leaders, especially with how we have dealt with the clergy sexual abuse crisis or other scandals in the church. Maybe it’s a judgemental church goer that has a particular spirituality and seems intent on imposing it on you. Or maybe it’s lackadaisical family members who have abandoned their faith but who seem to be leading a better life than we who are practicing. You may struggle to believe parts of Sacred Scripture or some of the teachings of the church that don’t seem to make sense, like how the story of creation in the Bible isn’t completely contradicted by evolution and our understanding of a heliocentric universe.
Personally, I am my own worst thorn in the side. I know that faith comes from spending time with Jesus but I am pretty good about sleeping in and missing my half hour of sitting with the Lord in the morning. I know I don’t really grow in faith or intelligence when I turn on the TV but I do it all too often instead of going to my comfy chair at night to sit and read one of the journals sitting next to it. I could go on but I think you get the point.
As I look back on that kid critiquing my priest’s homily, I wish I would have been able to realize how arrogant I was being and how it wasn’t helping my growth in faith. It may have, in some ways, helped me want to become a priest but it was for the wrong reasons. I’m not saying you can’t critique homilies, don’t get me wrong. That’s not my point. Some of them are, undoubtedly, more a thorn in the flesh than a gift. But, if we put too much blame on other people for not helping our faith we may be missing the fact that our own actions are often hurting us much worse than the worst homily we’ve ever heard. How can we stop being our own thorns in the flesh?
