How God Creates a Clean Heart...

“Create a clean heart in me, O God,”¹ the Psalmist prays. But how does that happen. By loving the poor, forgiving, sacrificing…. loving purely, without any thought of what’s in it for us…those are surely ways to a clean heart. By going to confession. That works. But none of these are the surest way by which God makes our hearts clean.

The surest way to a clean heart is hinted at in the Book of Revelation when we read that the Saints have washed their robes in the Blood of the Lamb. Robes that become sparkling white when washed in the Blood of the Lamb. The Blood of the Lamb. The Blood of Jesus.

And where does Jesus’s blood flow from?  It flowed from the heart that beat within his very human chest. A Sacred Heart, which sometimes broke.

The Gospels tell us of two times the Lord’s heart broke when he went to visit his friends in Bethany. You rememeber the famous times, when, a few weeks before today’s Gospel, Jesus witnesses the dead body of his friend Lazarus.  He trembled, the Gospels tell us. The Lord trembled, and then he wept. Not sniffled. Not cried, But wept. For weeping is a sign of a broken heart.

And in today’s Gospel, back at Lazarus’ house, the Lord’s heart breaks again, as he contemplates the suffering and death he is about to endure.

 ”I am troubled.” he tells his disciples in a remarkable admission. And what troubles him is the suffering he knows he will soon endure. The scourging, the nails and the excruciating death. And, perhaps even worse, the rejection, the condemnation and the execution of their wrath.

“What should I say?” he blurts out, giving us a window into the storm of agony which inflicts his heart.  “What should I say?” Father, save me from this hour?' But it was for this very purpose that I came to this hour.” 

Jesus’ heart is negotiating with itself, the way human hearts do. This or that? Saint Paul describes what’s going on:

"In the days when Christ Jesus was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears. Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered."

And, of course, in the end Jesus chooses obedient love, faithful love: “Father, glorify your name.” And he opens his arms on the Cross. He wills to become the stone rejected by the builders, the suffering servant and the grain of wheat, crushed and buried for love of us and the glory of God’s name.

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This past week we celebrated the feast of the Great Saint Patrick. Not the Patrick of shamrocks or witty cards, but the Patrick of deep and struggling faith.

In his Confessions he writes about one of the most important turning points of his life. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Having escaped his enslavement to the Irish, he has returned home, where his family begs him to stay. But then he has a vision of a letter being read to him by an Irish saint, saying: “We ask you, holy boy, to come back and walk among us.”

Patrick tells us that the vision cut him to the heart. For he was torn between answering God’s call to convert the Irish (a life which promised frustration, suffering and exhaustion), or living a nice comfortable life back home with his family. So he prayed. And this is how he described it:

“deep within me…I heard this: He who has laid down his own life for you is speaking in you. And I was thus awakened rejoicing greatly. And again, I saw him Praying within me,”

Who did he see praying within him? “He who had laid down his life for you,” the Lord was praying within him.  He goes on:

“and I looked…way down deep inside my body…and there he was praying earnestly within me with groans…”²

As Patrick was agonizing, struggling to find the strength to be faithful, he was not alone. But rather deep within his heard, Christ was praying alongside him. The one whose heart was troubled was right there groaning along with Patrick…the one who knew temptation and fear and dread, was as close to Patrick in his agony as he had ever been, with (as Patrick wrote) “unspeakable groans which could not be expressed in words.”

And you know just what Patrick was talking about.

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Think back to the most desperate moment in your life. The time you were convinced you did not have the strength to do the right thing. The Cross was too heavy, the fear was too great and you knelt there bleeding from the eyes with a broken heart.

Maybe it was the day you were betrayed, or you had to bury the one so cruelly taken from you. Maybe it was when everyone else believed the lie about you and scoffed and whispered behind your back. Maybe it was when they told it was malignant and terminal and all that stood between you and the grave was suffering. Maybe it was…

And there you knelt, like Patrick, with a knife in your heart. And it hurt like nothing else had ever hurt before.

But at that moment, whether it was yesterday, tomorrow or even today…like Patrick, you were not alone. For the one who wept blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, knew what it meant to have a troubled heart, to doubt, to tremble from the inside out in fear…

And he is the faithful God of infinite love, the Son obedient unto death out of love for us, the Lord who walks his Passion with us when we are too little or too weak or too poor or in too much pain. He walks there beside us and he strengthens us, for he is never so close to us as in his Passion and Cross. 

For here is the great mystery of our lives: that “suffering is the inner side of love…”³

So the next time your heart is broken and you weep the prayer of suffering, look to your side and you will see Christ there, kneeling beside you, joining your Passion to his own.

And remember the advice once offered to us by St. Francis de Sales:

“The everlasting God has, in his wisdom, foreseen from all eternity the cross he now presents to you as a gift from his inmost heart. He has gazed at with his all-knowing eyes…to see that it be not one inch too large, not one ounce too heavy for you.

He has blessed it…taken one last glance at you and your courage….and sent this cross to you from heaven — a special greeting from God just to you — a gift of his all-merciful love.”

For that’s how God creates a clean heart.

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1 - Psalm 51: 12a.

2 - Confessio, part II, nos. 125 and 140, in Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland, by Maíre B. de Paor (Regan Books, 1998).

3 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to Peter Seewald.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON SAINT JOSEPH

 

The Bible does not say a lot about Saint Joseph.  Granted, Matthew and Luke, with their extensive accounts of the Nativity of the Lord Jesus, do tell us something. 

Matthew, of course, begins his Gospel with the genealogy of Joseph (to which we will make reference later), to his discovery of Mary’s pregnancy, his decision to divorce her quietly,(1) and his obedience to the angel who appeared to him in a dream and told him to take Mary as his wife.  Likewise, we hear from Matthew of the second dream warning Joseph to take Mary and the child to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.  But once they have returned from Egypt, Joseph disappears from Matthew’s Gospel. 

In the Gospel of Luke, Joseph is less prominent.  Mary is described as "a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph,” and throughout the second chapter he is constantly mentioned with Mary by name or as “they," referring to the parents of Jesus. Luke also presents Joseph as the genealogical father of Jesus, and as his reputed father.(2)

And even Mark and John make oblique references, consistent with Matthew and Luke.  Mark, for example, the earliest Gospel written, does say that Jesus comes from Nazareth (five times, in fact-(3)) and he is the only evangelist to say that Jesus was a carpenter.(4)  Which fits in with Matthew’s description of Joseph as a carpenter and the fact that anyone who ever does mention Joseph says he comes from Nazareth.

John's Gospel mentions Joseph twice: when Philip acclaims Jesus as "Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph”(5) and in a sarcastic utterance "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven’?" (6)

Beyond that, it’s all apocryphal, relying on much later non-biblical material of doubtful authenticity.  But for the Church, the Biblical record has been enough to help us to understand who Saint Joseph is and what he means to us.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

Beyond a retelling of the Biblical record, the Catechism of the Catholic Church (7) affirms that Jesus, like any good son, fulfilled the commandment to honor his father and mother perfectly “and was the temporal image of his filial obedience to his Father in heaven.”  the Catechism goes on: “The everyday obedience of Jesus to Joseph and Mary both announced and anticipated the obedience of Holy Thursday: "Not my will…” and that “The obedience of Christ in the daily routine of his hidden life was already inaugurating his work of restoring what the disobedience of Adam had destroyed.^”(8)  Finally, the Catechism also affirms Saint Joseph’s role as “St. Joseph, the patron of a happy death.”(9)

And while, as you have seen, there is much we might say of out  blessed patron, allow me to offer three brief reflections on his role in our lives and the life of the Church concerning Joseph as Guardian of Jesus, Patron of the Church and a good Lenten example for each one of us.

CUSTOS: THE SERVICE OF FATHERHOOD

First, Joseph as Father and Guardian (or as the Latin says, Custos) of the Christ, a title first bestowed on him by It was Pope Leo XIII.

Joseph was the husband of Mary and was given the role of father of Jesus.  This is why Saint Matthew starts his Gospel with the words: “The genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”(10)  That’s why Joseph has always been called “Mary’s spouse,” why the angel says to him “Do not fear to take Mary as your wife,”(11) and told him to name the child, Jesus.  Because Joseph was his father.  

Saint Joseph, then, through all those “hidden years” cares for Jesus, just as any father cares for his child.  

And there is a certain irony in all this, not to be missed.  For here you have Joseph exercising authority over the one through whom he was made, explaining the scriptures to the one who is the source of all truth and protecting the omnipotent Son of the Living God. 

Nonetheless, and here is a great mystery, Joseph was, day in an day out, the guardian of the mystery “hidden from ages past,”(12) the revelation of the face of God.

Like any good father, Joseph sacrificed for his Son.  He got up with Mary for the two am feeding, he dropped everything whenever his son needed him, forsake the pursuit of money or sleep or any other human necessity for the sake of his son.

All because he loved Jesus, showering him with “all the natural love, all the affectionate solicitude that a father's heart can know.”(13) Joseph cared for Jesus, nurtured and protected him above all other concerns.  And Jesus, in turn, obeyed him as his father and rendered to him that honor and reverence that children owe to their father.”  And through this filial and fatherly love, human bonds were deepened. 

PATRON OF THE CHURCH 

And it is because he is guardian of the Christ, that Saint Joseph has been recognized as the patron of the Church by Pope Pius IX.

It was 1870, and it seemed the whole world was against Pope Pius IX.  “In these most troublesome times,” he wrote, “the Church is beset by enemies on every side, and is weighed down by calamities so heavy that ungodly men assert that the gates of hell have at length prevailed against her…”(14)

The Papal States had just been taken away from the Pope by Garibaldi, a large portion of the people of Italy had turned against him, to the extent that he was defended against the populace by Swiss and German troops.  

Times were changing rapidly and the Pope was often besieged, sometimes not recognizing the signs of the times imperfectly, as when he wrote to Jefferson Davis in the opening days of the American Civil War, addressing him as the “Illustrious and Honorable President of the Confederate States of America.” I understand that Mr. Lincoln was not pleased.

So it seemed to Pius that the whole world was against him and against the Church he sought to steer, so he turned to heaven and in 1870, the second year of the First Vatican Council, he declared St. Joseph as Patron of  the Universal Church.

What this meant, Pope Leo XIII would later write is that, “in the same way that Saint Joseph once kept unceasing holy watch over the family of Nazareth, so now does he protect and defend with his heavenly patronage the Church of Christ.”

That’s the same Pope Leo XIII who in 1884 declared the universal Church to be under e patronage of Saint Joseph.

What does it mean that Saint Joseph is patron of the Churchl?  It means the same thing for us as it did for Jesus.

Like any good father, Saint Joseph is first an example for us of what it means to be a good man.  I have always loved the quote from Lewis Mumford that people learn ideas “not by discussion and argument, but by seeing them personified and by loving the person who so embodies them.”(15)

By loving Saint Joseph, the personification of the sanctifying love of Jesus his son, we become sanctified, we become loving.  By adopting the paternal patronage of the just man, we become just.

Thus because Joseph teaches us how to be a follower of Christ and how to be a Church which hears the word of God with reverence,(16) we find in him, as Pope Saint John Paul II described it, “the model of obedience made incarnate…the man known for having faithfully carried out God's commands.”(17)

Picture this holy patriarch cradling the Christ child in his arms as Mary sleeps, sheltering mother and child on the flight into Egypt, and in the home at Nazareth.

Up until recently, except for Padre Pio, St. Joseph was the most popular saint in Italy, although St. Francis of Assisi always gave him a good run for his money. 

It’s because St. Joseph is the accessible saint, the quiet father in the background, the good man, achieving sanctity not through mighty deeds but, through “a life lived in the greatness of every day life, but with steadfast faith in Providence.”

He is the one described by Dei Verbum, who “hearing the word of God with reverence”⁶ manifests “an absolute readiness to serve faithfully God's salvific will.”⁷ 

PRIMACY OF THE HEART

And he is the best example for us when he is sleeping.  

When an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him the will of God, he is “receptive to God’s plans and not simply to his own.”(18)

• Finding the virgin he loves to be with child, he prepares to divorce her quietly in order to spare her whatever shame he can.  But when an angel whispers into his sleeping ear: “Do not fear to take her as your wife,” he does it. 

• Threatened by Herod’s wrath, he hears the angel yet again, now telling him to take mother and child and flee to Egypt. And, again, he listens and obeys, “discreetly, humbly and silently, even when he finds it hard to understand.”

Perhaps this is why so many depictions of Saint Joseph show him sleeping.  But his is not just any kind of sleep.  It is the sleep of a man so inwardly in tune with God that even at rest “the depths of his soul are open and receptive.”(19)  It is the kind of sleep described by the Song of Songs: “I was sleeping, but my heart was awake.”(20)

And herein is the lesson this Patron of the Church leaves with us for Lent.  Listen to the quiet of your heart,

Ours is a world of sensory overload, imbued with a cacophony of beeps and tweets and incessant talk.  All trying to sell us, convince us and distract us from the sanctuary of the silent heart.  As Cardinal Sarah reminds us: “There is no place on earth where God is more present than in the human heart. This heart truly is God’s abode, the temple of silence… The Father waits for his children in their own hearts”(21)

And Pope Saint John Paul II reminded us in his great Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos(22) that this silence extends beyond our Saint Joseoph’s sleep, as we can imagine him silently plying his trade as a carpenter in the house of Nazareth.

For while we so often speak of the great deeds of men, the secret of Saint Joseph is in his silence, his putting away of all the distractions, his listening to God alone in the silence of hid heart.  Or, as his namesake, our beloved Pope Emeritus once pour it:

“Joseph, who sleeps, but who at the same time is alert to hear the voice that rings out in his soul and from on high…someone who unites inner recollection and promptness…, inviting us to withdraw a little from the tumult of the senses; to recover our inner recollection; to learn to look inside ourselves and to look up, so that God can touch our souls and speak his word to us.”(23)

So let us thank the Lord for thus Custos of the Christ, this Patron of this Cathedral and the Church throughout the world.  And let us learn from him, in littleness, silence and joy.

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1 Matt. 1:19.

2 Cf. Luke 3:23 and 4:22..

3 Mk 1:9,24; 10:47; 14:67; 16:6.

4 Mk 6:3.

5 Jn 1:45

6 Jn 6:42

7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 532.

8 Cf. Rom 5:19.

9 CCC, no. 1014.

10 Matthew 1:1.

11 Matthew 1:20.

12 RC, no. 25.

13 Pius XII, Radio Message to Catholic School Students in the United States of America (February 19, 1958): AAS 50 (1958), p.174.

14 Sacred Congregation of Rites, Decree Quemadmodum Deus (1870)

15 Lewis Mumford, The Conduct of Life (1956).

16 Cf. Dei Verbum. Constitution on Divine Revelation of the Second Vatican Council has said, the basic attitude of the entire Church must be that of "hearing the word of God with reverence,”(46)

17 RC, no. 30.

18 Pope Francis, Inaugural Homily (19 March 2013).

19 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Homily (March 19, 1992).

20 Song of Songs 5:2.

21 The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise by Robert Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat, Translated by Michael J. Miller, Ignatius Press, 2016. page 23.

22 Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Redemptoris Custos (August 15, 1989). 

23 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Homily (March 19, 1992).

On the Ten Commandments

Saint John makes a remarkably contemporary-sounding statement at the conclusion of today’s Gospel. It’s psycho-anthropological tone is worthy of Dr. Phil: “Jesus would not trust himself to them…because he knew them all, and did not need anyone to tell him about human nature. He himself understood it well.”

Which brings us back to that rather long reading from Exodus (I think they’re getting us ready for Holy Week!) in which the Lord gives us ten commandments, each based on his knowledge of the humans he had created:

The first one is simple: Follow God and him alone. The God who is one, constant, unchangeable, faithful and just: the source of all that is good and loving and true. For the very purpose for our being is to become like him. 

He is almighty, merciful, and infinitely beneficent. As the Catechism observes: “Who could not place all hope in him? Who could not love him when contemplating the treasures of goodness and love he has poured out on us?”

And the second commandment is just like it: You shall not take the name of the LORD, your God, in vain. A child interprets this commandment as a prohibition against swearing or saying bad words. But it is so much more than that. For the name of the Lord is Holy and he reveals it to those who believe in him, inviting them into the intimacy of his friendship. It is the name to be cherished and adored.

You know what it’s like to say the name of your closest friend out loud? It calls him to mind and to heart. So too, with the name of the Lord.

When we say the name of Jesus, we are called to bow our heads as a sign of respect. For, as Saint Paul reminds us, his is the name above every other at which every knee must bend in the heavens and on earth and under the earth, for Jesus Christ is Lord.

Perhaps that is why one of the most beautiful prayers, originating with the first monks of Christendom, consists only in the Divine name: just repeating over and over again: Jesus. Jesus. Jesus.

And then there is the third commandment: to “keep holy the Lord’s day,” which is why we are gathered here, on a day when we refrain from working for ourselves and rest only in him. “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”

And then the commandments tell us how to love like God. 

First to love those who first loved us, our father and mother. For just as we must love our heavenly father who created our first parents, so we must love and honor those who conceived us in an act of love, nurtured and cared for us in self-sacrificing love.

And the next time you go to the nursing home, remember the sage advice of Sirach: 

“O son, help your father in his old age…even if he is lacking in understanding, show forbearance; …Whoever forsakes his father is like a blasphemer, and whoever angers his mother is cursed by the Lord.”

But so great is the love which God has implanted in our hearts that it overflows to all the world. So, you shall not kill, certainly, but even more you shall cherish all whom God has made.

I am made to love you, not just as I love myself but as I love God. For every human being, from the weakest to the strongest, from the most powerful to the most vulnerable possesses an inherent dignity which makes us fit only for love.

It is that same human dignity which is violated when people are used as things for our entertainment, occasions for our passing pleasure, rather than mysteries to be loved. Thus, the sixth commandment.

We are called to love one another with a chaste love, a pure love which desires only the happiness and holiness of the other without self-interest. True love means that I desire only that you be led closer to God, to know that perfect peace which comes from doing God’s will and drawing closer to him.

God’s will is that all sexual activity, all acts of corporal procreation have loving meaning only with the Sacrament of Marriage and that anything short of that is a dead end and cannot lead us to holiness and truth. In the words of the Catechism, “The chaste person maintains the integrity of the powers of life and love placed in him…[tolerating] neither a double life nor duplicity in speech.”

The seventh commandment, as well, is rooted in love, refusing to steal from anyone, keep something that belongs to anyone, committing fraud, paying unjust wages, or taking advantage of someone in light of their ignorance or hardship.

And just as one sin leads to another, so greed leads to lies, for at the root of every evil is the lie, as Eve learned from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. We who seek to be like Jesus, seek to follow the one who is the Truth; and the opposite of Jesus is Satan, the father of lies. So the next time you are tempted to “fib” or tell “a little white lie” just ask yourself, who are you pleasing. Jesus or Satan?

And finally, the last two commandments are about the kind of lying which says that everything is mine and is destined to make me happy: the lie that people are things whose purpose is to bring me pleasure and the purpose of life is to grab for all the gusto I can get, no matter who gets bought or sold and no matter who gets hurt.

Ten Commandments, which the Church asks us to reflect on this Lent as a sort of Examination of Conscience. And she gives them to us because no one has to tell her about our human nature. And she knows that in these ten little commands, we are given the key to happiness in this life and in the next.