The Faith Explained with Cale Clarke

Q. Do we, as Catholics, still have to obey the Ten Commandments? After all, we’re not living in the Old Covenant age, but under the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. Even Saint Paul says, “you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14). And we know that Jesus will forgive us, even if we happen to break the commandments, right?

A. Whoa…hold on just a minute! You’ve made two assumptions in your question that are unwarranted. First, let me address your last point. Of course, it is possible for Jesus to forgive us – provided we repent. We must have true sorrow for our sins and a firm purpose of amendment to avoid sin in the future. It doesn’t mean that we have to live impeccable (i.e. sinless) lives from now on – our struggle against sin will continue for as long as we live.

I’d also like to rephrase something else you said. No one actually “breaks” any of God’s commandments – whether it be the Decalogue or any other divine command. You can’t break them – you can only break yourself against them. No one ever “gets away” with breaking God’s commandments. God created us and knows the best way for us to live. It’s like the owners manual for a car – you can “break” the owner’s manual by pouring beer in the gas tank – but the car won’t run like it should. In fact, it may even wind up irreparably damaged, depending on the severity of the action. One could be forgiven, of course, for doing such a thing, but the car in many ways will never be the same. And that danger exists for us, too, if we break the commandments of God.

This Saturday I attended Mass at a different parish, where a priest I didn’t know made an arresting illustration in his homily.

He spoke about Archbishop Oscar Romero, who did much to champion the cause of the poor in El Salvador before being assassinated in 1980. Romero was shot while he was elevating the chalice, full of the blood of Christ. Romero’s own blood mingled with the blood of the Savior as he lay dying.

Our lives, too, must be given up in a self-sacrificial union with Christ. His life, his blood, truly mingles with ours as we receive him in the Eucharist. We maintain union with Christ through the other Sacraments, our life of prayer, and our good works. This union must become stronger each day so that eventually, we will fail to see where Christ’s life begins and ours ends. We, and more importantly, others, will find Jesus is living his life through us.

This is exactly what it means to be Christians, “other Christs”.

This is the feast day of St Mary Magdalene, dubbed “Apostle to the Apostles” because of her witness to the doubting (at the time) disciples of the Resurrection of Jesus. Today’s Gospel reading from John 20 reminds us of the initial encounter the Magdalene had with the risen Lord. This very account (along with the other Gospel accounts of women discovering the empty tomb) is a huge point in favor of the historicity of the Resurrection – without which, as St Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15 – “our preaching is useless, and so is your faith”. The simple reason is that a woman’s testimony was considered unreliable – and hence, inadmissible – in a Jewish court of law in Jesus’ day (thankfully, things have changed).

Put it this way: if you’re authoring a Gospel, and your’re trying to convince Jews (and Gentiles) that Jesus is the Messiah, you would never write that women were the first to discover the empty tomb and encounter the resurrected Jesus.

Unless, that is, it actually happened that way.

In today’s Gospel (Matt 13:1-9), Jesus, because of the massive crowds pressing in on him, has to get into a boat and push off into the water. That’s the only way he’s going to get them to listen – they are forced to stand on the seashore and hear the message of the Kingdom of God. In this case, it’s the quintessential Kingdom parable – the parable of the sower.

Many scholars of the Gospels have posited a theory called the “Messianic Secret” in Jesus’ ministry: after Jesus heals people or exorcises demons, he often tells the recipient of the healing to keep quiet about what has happened. Why? Jesus’ identity – according to this theory – must be kept quiet until the appointed time to reveal it.

Hogwash. As one of my finest professors, New Testament scholar Craig A. Evans of Acadia Divinity College used to say, Jesus is the Messiah and knows it. He wants others to know it. His words and actions are practically screaming it out, without using the term itself. The reason Jesus doesn’t want his healings and exorcisms publicized has nothing to do with keeping a secret.

In the ancient world, about 1/3 of the population are very sick at any given period of time. Jesus is a one-man, walking health care clinic! Add to that the significant number of demonic possession cases, and there is no wonder that once word gets out about this, huge crowds press him, just trying to touch even the fringe of his garment, knowing they could be healed. Now, that’s all well and good, but it gets in the way of the main message – how one can enter the Kingdom of God. How one can be healed body and soul for eternity, not just for a short time in the body only. First, the message of the Kingdom. The healings and exorcisms are the evidence of the veracity of that message, not the message itself. And that’s why Jesus has to teach from the boat. It’s crowd control!

Today’s Gospel reading gives rise to a common non-Catholic assumption (pardon the pun) about Mary:

While Jesus was speaking to the crowds,
his mother and his brothers appeared outside,
wishing to speak with him.
Someone told him, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside,
asking to speak with you.”
But he said in reply to the one who told him,
“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”
And stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said,
“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matt 12:46-50).

Some have understood Jesus as being very dismissive towards his mother with these words. Not so. First, Jesus always honored his mother, as any good Jewish son would (As God, he’s the very author of the fourth commandment, by the way). Plus, no one was actually more docile, more obedient to God’s will than Mary, who be came the first Christian disciple by her famous “Fiat”. In enfleshing his Word, she proved to be the doer of the Father’s will par excellence.

The Catholic Register’s intrepid Sheila Dabu has written some front-page news about The New Mass app! It’s in this week’s edition of the paper, so be sure to pick it up at your local parish. You can also read the blog post Sheila wrote about it on the Catholic Register’s website here.

Yesterday was the feast day of St Bonaventure. Although much could be said about the Seraphic Doctor, I’d like to focus on this: he was a proponent of a fascinating apologetic, called the Kalam cosmological argument.

Now, cosmology has nothing to do with cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, or anything like that! Cosmology has to do with the cosmos -the universe, and its origins. The Kalam argument became popular among Islamic philosophers in the Middle Ages, but not so much among Catholics. One notable exception was St Bonaventure.

The argument goes like this:

1) The universe (obviously) exists. 2) The universe either had a beginning or no beginning. 3) If a beginning – the beginning was either caused or not caused. 4) If it was caused – the cause was either personally caused or not personally caused.

If accepted, the argument ends with the universe being caused by a personal God. Each part of the argument presents you with a dilemma. Once you answer one question, it presents you with another, until you come to an inescapable conclusion.

Let’s take a look at point 2: The universe either had a beginning or no beginning. There are many who claim that the universe need not have a beginning point, or a first cause. They advocate an infinite number of causes stretching back in time through the history of the universe. However, there is no such thing as an actual infinite number of causes. There is no such thing as as an actual infinite number of anything!

For example, imagine, if you will, a library where there is an infinite number of red books, and an infinite number of black books. If someone signs a red book out of the library, there would still be just as many red books as black books in the library, since there is an infinite number of each! But this is obviously not the case in actuality. Hence, there can not be an infinite number of causes stretching back through the history of the universe. There had to be a first cause, a beginning, to the universe.

In future posts I’ll take a look at the rest of the Kalam argument.

Neil McCarthy, the illustrious Public Relations Director here in the Archdiocese of Toronto, has posted an interview he did with me on The New Mass App for the Around the Arch blog. Thanks for helping to spread the word, Neil! And for all of you who live in the T-Dot and the GTA, Around the Arch is not to be missed for all the latest on our local and Universal Church!

The New Mass App has found its way on to Canterbury Tales, the popular blog by Taylor Marshall! Read Taylor’s review here. Taylor has authored an amazing book called The Crucified Rabbi, which I reviewed not long ago. I can’t wait to read parts two and three of his trilogy, which will be on St Paul and the role of Rome in Catholicism, respectively. Taylor’s a former Anglican priest who is a convert to Catholicism. He’s one of the most exciting young converts and scholars to come into the Church in recent memory. His blog is always relevant and insightful, and it’s one you’ll bookmark for sure!

Today’s first reading at Mass is the famous vision of the prophet Isaiah (Is. 6:1-8):

In the year King Uzziah died,
I saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne,
with the train of his garment filling the temple.
Seraphim were stationed above; each of them had six wings:
with two they veiled their faces,
with two they veiled their feet,
and with two they hovered aloft.

They cried one to the other,
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts!
All the earth is filled with his glory!”
At the sound of that cry, the frame of the door shook
and the house was filled with smoke.

Then I said, “Woe is me, I am doomed!
For I am a man of unclean lips,
living among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
Then one of the seraphim flew to me,
holding an ember that he had taken with tongs from the altar.

He touched my mouth with it and said,
“See, now that this has touched your lips,
your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.”

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?”
“Here I am,” I said; “send me!”

Like Isaiah, we too live among a people of unclean lips. And if we’re honest with ourselves, as was Isaiah, we must admit that sometimes we’ve been people of unclean lips as well. But if Isaiah’s wickedness was removed by a fiery coal from the altar of God, how much more can we be cleansed by the Eucharist that passes our lips – God himself, Jesus Christ. And, with his Real Presence within us, animating us, how can we fail to, like Isaiah, communicate Christ’s forgiving love to others? The living, Eucharistic Lord whom we receive at Mass empowers us to say, “Here I am, send me!”