Użycz nam łaski, wszechmogący Boże, abyśmy przez zasługi św. Bronisławy otrzymali pomoc w pracy, wytrwałość w trudach, a nauczywszy się chrześcijańskiej pokory, życie pobożne i świątobliwie prowadzili. W miłosierdziu twem, Panie, mamy nadzieję, że próśb naszych wysłuchać raczysz. Przez Pana naszego Jezusa Chrystusa. Amen.
—Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written:
This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines human precepts.
You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.—
Who are the Pharisees? Are they just the Jewish legalists that Jesus encountered? Are there Pharisees walking the earth today? Are there Pharisees who call themselves Catholic?
God has certainly laid down the Law for us. He commands us to observe the Law, to observe all of the statutes and decrees He has made. Moses put it very plainly:
—Now, Israel, hear the statutes and decrees which I am teaching you to observe…
In your observance of the commandments of the LORD, your God, which I enjoin upon you, you shall not add to what I command you nor subtract from it.
Observe God’s commands and do not make more of them. Observe God’s commands and do not denigrate them.
St. James reminds us of Jesus’ words. Recall that Jesus told those questioning Him about the Law of God that Moses passed on to them:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all things have taken place.
St. James reiterates that when he says:
All good giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no alteration or shadow caused by change.
What the Father has handed down throughout history is the truth. There is no alteration, change, or shadow of meaning in God’s truth.
Jesus is God and He did not modify His commands; He clarified them and He forces us to face them honestly.
The Pharisees Jesus encountered didn’t get what Moses told them. They altered the Law and made the Law fit their style. They added many of their own humanly devised rules and regulations to God’s law, which had the effect of misrepresenting and misapplying His Law. They were not legalists; they were corrupters of God’s Law, misusing it in ways God never intended.
It is not legalistic to obey God’s laws correctly. Obeying God’s Law is acting in spirit and truth. Jesus told us that:
The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth.”
The questions before us then are these: Do we worship God in spirit and truth? Do we corrupt what Jesus has given us? Are we the Pharisees of today?
As Catholic Christians we have the most beautiful of gifts, authentic Catholic worship of God. Moreover, we have the gift of the Apostles and the Fathers of the Church, the true and faithful Traditions of Christendom as handed down to us by the Holy Church.
We are the richest people on earth, not in buildings, or gold, or personal possessions, but in what we truly and commonly possess, the faith of the Holy Church. We have before us a treasure more precious than the entirety of the universe in its splendor; we have Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity right here on this altar and in this tabernacle.
We have the immemorial festival we celebrate here, the great sacrifice and the great feast. We honor God not just with our lips, but with the entirely of our being. Would you rather be anyplace else?
The Pharisees out there see our worship of God and want to change it.
They need to fit the worship of God into their schedule and style. The Holy Mass needs to be jazzier, more modern, relevant, appealing, entertaining, or more contemporary. ‘I need to get more out of the mass.’ Others may say that the Holy Mass needs to be more ‘traditional’, but only according to their own personal recollection of tradition.
Individual tastes appeal to the individual, but we are not here for that. We are not here for a makeover or a re-do of our common worship. That would be a corruption of God’s gift. That would make us Pharisees.
We are here as a community to worship God only, worshiping in accord with the Church’s teaching and tradition as given to us by Jesus Christ and His apostles. We are here to set ourselves aside, to minimize ourselves, and to acknowledge the One who is preeminent.
How we worship God is not a matter of “personal taste.” Rather it is a total focusing of ourselves and of the whole community on being “God centered.”
We must offer our worship —in Spirit and Truth” and we must do our all to be “well pleasing unto God.” He is the only One we strive to “please” by our worship and by the way we live. We are to assure that our hearts and our lips have one focus only —“ God.
Jesus continually reminds us that it is easy to be a Pharisee and a hypocrite. That is the wide and easy path. Anyone can create church in their own image; the thousands of allegedly Christian sects out there prove that.
Jesus reminds us not only in His words, but in His very actions, including His self sacrifice on the cross; we need to repent of our self-centeredness and become “God centered.” We need to set aside our personal ideas and styles and be molded into the men and women God wants us to be.
Jesus prayed in the garden:
“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.”
And again
“My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!”
Everything we do, our worship, our day-to-day lives, our business dealings, the way we relate to each other, can be an indicator of the Pharisee within us, God’s law according to me.
With Jesus’ help and the Church’s teaching we are to set that Pharisee aside and pray every minute of every day, “Your will be done.”
Focus yourselves on God and His will. Worship Him in spirit and truth. Keep your hearts and your lips of one accord.
Wszechmogący Boże, racz dać prosimy, Kościołowi Twemu za chwalebnego obrońcę w niebie błogosławionego Stefana, króla, który nad rozszerzeniem Kościoła nieustannie pracował podczas swojego panowania na ziemi. Przez Chrystusa Pana naszego. Amen.
The Common Man
by Julian Tuwim, 1929
When plastered billboards scream with slogans
‘fight for your country, go to battle’
When media’s print assaults your senses,
‘Support our leaders’ shrieks and rattles…
And fools who don’t know any better
Believe the old, eternal lie
That we must march and shoot and kill
Murder, and burn, and bomb, and grill…When press begins the battle-cry
That nation needs to unify
And for your country you must die…
Dear brainwashed friend, my neighbor dear
Brother from this, or other nation
Know that the cries of anger, fear,
Are nothing but manipulation
by fat-cats, kings who covet riches,
And feed off your sweat and blood – the leeches!
When call to arms engulfs the land
It means that somewhere oil was found,
Shooting ‘blackgold’ from underground!
It means they found a sneaky way
To make more money, grab more gold
But this is not what you are told!Don’t spill your blood for bucks or oil
Break, burn your rifle, shout: ‘NO DEAL!’
Let the rich scoundrels, kings, and bankers
Send their own children to get killed!
May your loud voice be amplified
By roar of other common men
The battle-weary of all nations:
WE WON’T BE CONNED TO WAR AGAIN!
Here is the original:
Do prostego człowieka
Gdy znów do murów klajstrem świeżym
Przylepiać zaczną obwieszczenia,
Gdy “do ludności”, “do żołnierzy”
Na alarm czarny druk uderzy
I byle drab, i byle szczeniak
W odwieczne kłamstwo ich uwierzy,
Że trzeba iść i z armat walić,
Mordować, grabić, truć i palić;
Gdy zaczną na tysięczną modłę
Ojczyznę szarpać deklinacją
I łudzić kolorowym godłem,
I judzić “historyczną racją”,
O piędzi, chwale i rubieży,
O ojcach, dziadach i sztandarach,
O bohaterach i ofiarach;
Gdy wyjdzie biskup, pastor, rabin
Pobłogosławić twój karabin,
Bo mu sam Pan Bóg szepnął z nieba,
Że za ojczyznę – bić się trzeba;
Kiedy rozścierwi się, rozchami
Wrzask liter pierwszych stron dzienników,
A stado dzikich bab – kwiatami
Obrzucać zacznie “żołnierzyków”. –
– O, przyjacielu nieuczony,
Mój bliźni z tej czy innej ziemi!
Wiedz, że na trwogę biją w dzwony
Króle z pannami brzuchatemi;
Wiedz, że to bujda, granda zwykła,
Gdy ci wołają: “Broń na ramię!”,
Że im gdzieś nafta z ziemi sikła
I obrodziła dolarami;
Że coś im w bankach nie sztymuje,
Że gdzieś zwęszyli kasy pełne
Lub upatrzyły tłuste szuje
Cło jakieś grubsze na bawełnę.
Rżnij karabinem w bruk ulicy!
Twoja jest krew, a ich jest nafta!
I od stolicy do stolicy
Zawołaj broniąc swej krwawicy:
“Bujać – to my, panowie szlachta!”
More information on Tuwim is available from The World of English in Poetry for the Street
I wish all my Orthodox readers a happy Ecclesiastical New Year.
He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”
Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them, “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Today’s Albany Times Union features an article on the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese’s attempts to overturn a New York State law requiring that they provide contraceptive coverage as part of their health care package. They object of course based on the R.C. Church’s stand against artificial birth control.
Some pertinent excerpts from Voices of faith argue against Wellness Act follow with my perspective at the end.
Albany Diocese charity goes to court to fight state’s birth control coverage mandate
ALBANY — Lawyers for the charitable arm of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany are set to argue next week before the state’s highest court that a mandate to provide birth control coverage in its health plan violates freedom of religion, speech and association.
Catholic Charities and two Baptist churches are challenging the constitutionality of the Women’s Health and Wellness Act of 2003, which requires employers that provide group insurance coverage for prescription drugs to include coverage for prescription contraceptives.
…
Legal experts say the range of state and federal constitutional issues at hand — particularly the freedom to express religion — makes the case fascinating to watch. The Court of Appeals will be looking at which, if any, protections have been violated. While Catholic Charities argues the religious exemption is drawn too narrowly to be constitutional, court watchers point to the length of time it took the Legislature to approve and enact the WHWA, intimating it was thoughtfully and carefully created.
…
In court papers, lawyer for Catholic Charities stated: “The WHWA coerces church entities to subsidize private conduct that the churches teach is morally wrong. Government in this country has historically respected the right of organized religions to ‘practice what they preach’ and to refrain from financing private conduct that they condemn.”
By departing from that historical practice, the WHWA has placed New York in opposition to the most fundamental values that underlie both state and federal constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of association, documents said.
…
Now here’s the key fact:
More than $28 million of Catholic Charities’ $32 million annual operating budget comes from the government.
Jared Leland, a spokesman and lawyer with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, supports Catholic Charities’ position.
The group’s credo is “that freedom of religion is a basic human right that no government may lawfully deny; it is not a gift of the state, but instead is rooted in the inherent dignity of the human person.”
With contraception and abortion, Leland said, “There is no ambiguity there. Contraceptive care runs afoul of the very tenets of that faith.”
An organization shouldn’t be forced to choose between its identity and its mission, he said: “There should be an exception to the rule.”
The WHWA does contain an exemption clause for religious employers, like seminaries, but state Assistant Solicitor General Shaifali Puri is expected to argue on Wednesday it doesn’t apply to Catholic Charities.
Two courts, including the local appellate panel, ruled that Catholic Charities does not qualify as a religious employer since it provides health care, food and clothing, domestic violence shelters, drug counseling and other services to people in need, regardless of their religious beliefs.
…
The New York State Catholic Conference has said that the legislation is really intended to mandate coverage for abortion, in an attempt to destroy the church’s network of social services, hospitals, nursing homes and schools.
Albany Attorney Michael Costello will argue the Catholic organization’s case that religious beliefs prevent Catholic Charities from paying for something they believe is sinful.
More than 1,100 Catholic Charities staff members in the 14-county diocese — along with 2,100 volunteers — work at more than 100 sites, serving nearly 100,000 families and individuals annually from all faiths and walks of life.
Statewide, the Roman Catholic Church operates more than 700 schools serving some 300,000 students, 36 hospitals with more than 380,000 inpatient admissions, 57 nursing homes with 11,615 beds, and hundreds of social services agencies that serve more than 1.3 million people every year.
It is the largest nonpublic provider of education, health care and human services in the state. Services are not limited to Catholics.
Nearly 88% of their money comes from the government. Now they do many positive things with that money as the article explains. But, if an organization receives about 88% of its funding from the government, and provides services to all (without proselytizing them), can it still call itself a religious organization?
It appears that the lower courts don’t think so. So the question remains, Who do you serve and to whom are you bound?
The outcome will be interesting. Will the Church eek by or will they have to start acting like the Church in all their endeavors.
I decided to do a little more troubleshooting in regard to the 500 Server errors that were coming up on my blog’s homepage. I turned off all the plug-ins and reactivated them one-by-one. It looks like BAStats was causing the issue. I don’t know why because it worked fine before. I guess it is time to change stats packages.
It appears that all is back to normal. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Racz sprawić, prosimy Cię, wszechmogący Boże, aby przykład świętego Idziego, opata, zachęcił nas do pokory, pogardy świata i lepszego życia, i abyśmy obchodząc dziś uroczystość jego, naśladowali także jego cnoty. Przez Chrystusa Pana naszego. Amen.
Some readers may be receiving intermittent server errors (500 Internal Server Error) when trying to connect to my blog’s homepage. I’ve contacted Yahoo hosting about the issue and am waiting to hear back. Your patience is appreciated.