It is not unusual to hear statements such as this whenever the issue of clergy sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church comes up: “The Catholic Church is the safest place now for children because we are far ahead of any other church or institution in the prevention, reporting, and dealing with issues related to the abuse of children. No other institution has instituted such stringent policies regarding sexual abuse like the Catholic Church.”
These words may be true but they also indicate that we Catholics are now assessing our performance by comparing ourselves with other churches and institutions. The Catholic Church is the one bride of Christ and He remains forever her invisible Head, source, and model of holiness. Sadly, she has stopped looking to Jesus Christ as her ultimate model in the way of holiness and has settled for comparing herself with other churches and secular institutions.
The Evangelist St. John teaches us three facts about Christian holiness:
Firstly, God, through Jesus Christ, is the source of our holiness. In his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, St. John heard the “great multitude” of saints crying out in a loud voice, “Salvation comes from our God, who is seated on the throne, and from the Lamb.” If our salvation is from God through the Lamb, then our ongoing sanctification is also from God through the Lamb, Jesus Christ. Without our living communion with Christ Jesus, no sanctification is possible i.e., we cannot grow beyond sin and His Spirit cannot transform us slowly into His own image.
We do not have any holiness on our own apart from our partaking in the holiness of Jesus Christ. This holiness is lovingly offered to us by our heavenly Father as His beloved children, “See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are.” Like the saints in glory, we too embrace this holiness by accepting the love that the Father offers us in and through Jesus Christ.
Secondly, the world is clueless about this divine holiness and our participating in it by grace. The world cannot be our model or standard for anything holy because it has not and cannot receive the Spirit of truth and sanctity that we received at baptism, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him (God).” Jesus says to the Father, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (Jn 17:16-17) He adds, “The world cannot receive the Spirit of truth because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you, and will be in you.”(Jn 14:17)
It is thus not wise for us to gauge our conduct by worldly standards or to unreflectively adopt purely worldly solutions. The world just cannot understand or appreciate the holiness of God or our participation in divine holiness. Neither can we settle for the world’s godless standards.
This is why the world persecutes us as we strive for sanctity. The saints are not those who succumbed and acquiesced to worldly values but those who remained faithful to what they had received from God even in the most painful trials. That is also why the angel described the saints as such: “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress.”
Thirdly, the holiness that we possess now demands that we strive to imitate Christ Jesus both interiorly and exteriorly. Our holiness now as God’s children is not a mere title but a reality that moves us to become more and more like Jesus by grace here on earth and by glory in heaven. In heaven, “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” This hope we have as God’s children demands that Jesus Christ alone be the standard of our purity, “Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes Himself pure, as He is pure.” Thus the angel described the saints as those who have identified with Christ completely in His sufferings and bore them just as He did, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are to imitate Christ on different levels if we are going to be saints that God is calling us to be. We imitate Him by sharing in His experiences before God, humans and angels. Like Jesus Christ, we too experience that unconditional love of the Father for us that sanctifies us. Like Him, we too are unjustly persecuted, attacked, and scorned by men and women as we pursue holiness according to His standards. Like Him, we are also constantly tempted by demons to keep us from being as holy as the Father calls us to be.
We also imitate Him by imbibing His own values and sharing in His own attitudes, especially the attitudes that we call the Beatitudes. These Beatitudes in the fifth chapter of Mathew’s gospel are manifestations of the Spirit of Jesus in us as well as attitudes that allow the Spirit to mold our sanctity. We also imitate Him by doing all things for the same purpose that He did i.e. for the greater glory of the Father and the salvation of souls.
A recent example that the Church has rejected Christ as her ultimate model for holiness is the current discussion about civil unions for so-called “same-sex” couples. Archbishop Bernard Hebda approves of the Church being open to such unions because he said that he sees such unions as “a kind of middle way that would allow persons of the same sex in long-term relationships to have legal benefits without a civil redefinition of marriage itself.” He continues, “While Church teaching on marriage is clear and irreformable, the conversation must continue about the best ways to reverence the dignity of those in same–sex relationships so that they are not subject to any unjust discrimination (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2358).”
His statement warrants four responses.
First, the Catholic Church knows of only one union between one man and one woman and it is called Holy Matrimony because it is a means of sanctification for the couple in their love for each other as they accept and bring children up in the faith. The Church has no business speaking about any other form of union when this call to holiness through mutual self-giving and openness to the gift of new life are neglected or even rejected as in same-sex unions. Not even the presumed or intended benefits of the partners can justify the call for such unions.
Second, the Church is focused on preserving the integral dignity of the human person by which the dignity of the human person does not flow only from being created in the image and likeness of God but also because the human person is called to fullness of communion with God as saints in heaven. Nothing diminishes this integral dignity of the human person more than mortal sin, especially the mortal sin of homosexual acts. We just cannot speak of human dignity while ignoring this deforming and degrading power of our gravely sinful choices.
Third, the benefits that the Church pursues for all persons are those that facilitate the attainment of the ultimate benefit – eternal union with God in heaven along with the saints. This is the very mind of Jesus Christ when He asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Or what can one give in exchange for his soul?”(Mk 8:36-37) It is not the mission of the Church to fabricate financial benefits for people who are seeking to have the state approve of their homosexual lifestyle. The Church as instrument of sanctification has in mind primarily the benefits that Christ has won for us on the cross by His resurrection from the dead.
Lastly, there is no such thing as a “middle way” when it comes to the call to holiness. Jesus speaks of only two ways – one that leads to salvation and the other that leads to damnation. The saints chose the way of Christ, which is the “narrow gate and the hard way that leads to life.” The reprobates in every age choose the “wide gate and the easy that leads to destruction.”(Mt 7:13-14) It is an illusion to speak of any type of middle way in the choice before us. The Church does a great disservice to her children when it suggests such a middle way.
Collectively and individually, the Catholic Church forsakes her vocation to holiness when she turns its eyes from Jesus Christ as her ultimate model and begins to compare its performance against any church or institution. Eventually the Church begins to be “evangelized” by the culture, she adopts worldly language and solutions that betray her origin, nature, and mission. We are now debating civil unions for those in homosexual relationships because the Church is no longer following in the footsteps of Christ but now being led by such worldly values as conformism, mediocrity, acceptance at all cost, relevance, tolerance, etc. We knowingly or unknowingly make up our own warped standard of holiness.
Without striving for Christlike holiness as we should, the Church becomes an ineffective instrument for salvation and ongoing sanctification. Just reflect on the number of fallen away Catholics and the growing number of Pro-abortion and Pro – “gay marriage” Catholics today. We lose that hope that belongs to us as God’s beloved children called to holiness. We all know what becomes of us when we have lost that true sanctity that makes us salt of the earth – we are eventually “thrown out and trampled underfoot by men.”(Mt 5:13)
Let us turn with confidence to Mary, the Queen of All Saints, and beg her to help us to strive for holiness with Christ as our supreme model in these times of great and unfortunate confusion in the Church. As the Immaculate Mother of God, Mary’s holiness is from God. She received it through God’s unique love for her. As the perfect disciple of Christ, she imitated Jesus perfectly and followed Him to the very end. She is helping us to become Christlike everyday of our lives by reflecting to us the example of Christ. She is praying for us and waiting for us along with all the saints in heaven. She is granting us graces in abundance, graces won for us by her Son Jesus. All we need to do is fix our eyes on her Son as our ultimate source and model of holiness and completely ignore all others.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
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Photo by Manuel Rheinschmidt on Unsplash
