Posted on Wednesday, October 3, 2018

COR THOUGHTS 274: The Indissolubility of Marriage and Flat Tire Syndrome

In this Sunday’s Gospel, when the Pharisees try to justify divorce, Jesus appeals “the beginning of creation” in order to reestablish the indissolubility of marriage. It was never God’s design for marriages to end in divorce. Moses allowed divorce, Jesus tells the Pharisees, because of the “hardness of your hearts.” Because of the effects of sin, it’s as if we’re all driving around town in cars with flat tires. The rubber is shredding off the rims; the rims are getting all dented up; and we think it’s all normal. After all, everyone’s tires look this way. Jesus is saying to the Pharisees (and to all of us), “At the beginning of creation, they had air in their tires.” At the same time—and this is the good news!—Christ is injecting his listeners with hope … hope of restoration … hope of healing … hope of redemption. For “Jesus came to restore creation to the purity of its origins” (CCC 2336). Lord Jesus, re-inflate our flat tires!

Posted on Tuesday, September 25, 2018

COR THOUGHTS 273: Seeing the Gratuitous Beauty of the Human Body

In this weekend’s Gospel, Jesus employs some extreme words to warn us of the seriousness of sin: “And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna.” Modern adaptation: “If your iPhone causes you to sin, throw it away. If your laptop causes you to sin, get rid of it.” Yes, this is the seriousness with which we should seek purity of heart. But, let us also be clear on this point: If at first we must “pluck out our eyes” in our struggle against sin, “if we persevere in following Christ our Teacher,” says John Paul II, “we feel less and less burdened by the struggle against sin, and we enjoy more and more the divine light which pervades all creation.” In turn, this light affords “an ever greater awareness of the gratuitous beauty of the human body, of masculinity and femininity,” says John Paul II. “This is most important, because it allows us to escape from a situation of constant inner exposure to the risk of sin – even though, on this earth, the risk always remains present to some degree – so as to move with ever greater freedom within the whole created world [including in] our relations with … the opposite sex” (Memory and Identity, p. 29). Lord, give us eyes to see!

Posted on Wednesday, September 19, 2018

COR THOUGHTS 272: Redirecting Our Passions Toward True Fulfillment

In this weekend’s second reading, Saint James asks his conflicted audience, “Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from?” Then he points to the root cause, the war within: “Is it not from your passions that make war within your members?” There is a war within the members of our body driven by the disordering of our passions that resulted from original sin. We see the good that we want to do, but we cannot carry it out. In his Letter to the Romans, Paul wonders who will rescue him from this awful situation. Then he cries out in thanksgiving to God for the gift of Jesus Christ (see Rom 7:15-25). Christ does not want us to repress our passions. He wants to help us redirect them toward infinite satisfaction. While it’s true that our passions often draw us toward vice, we become even more lost if we think the solution to this tendency is to annihilate them. As Saint Augustine is often quoted as saying, “He who is lost in his passion is less lost than he who has lost his passion.” Why? Because to lose our passions is to become a non-feeling, non-desiring automaton. The war within ceases not as we tyrannize our passions, but as we allow God’s grace to redirect them toward everything true, good, and beautiful.

Posted on Wednesday, September 12, 2018

COR THOUGHTS 271: Losing Our Lives to Save Them

“For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it,” says the Lord in this weekend’s Gospel (Mk 8:35). It’s what Saint John Paul II called the law of the gift: “Man can only find himself through the sincere gift of self.” This teaching of the Second Vatican Council, repeated incessantly by John Paul II, unmasks the deception of a life focused on self. If I seek only to preserve myself – my interests, my comforts, my preferences – I lose everything. But if I learn to sacrifice myself, if I learn how to be a gift to and for others, I not only bless and affirm others, I find myself and “save” my life in the process. It’s a truth stamped right into our bodies as male and female. The sexual difference reveals the vocation to be a gift to and for others. Saint John Paul II called it “the spousal meaning of the body” which is the body’s “power to express love: precisely that love in which the human person becomes a gift and – through this gift – fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence” (TOB 15:1). When we consider sexuality the realm of our own self-interests and self-gratification, we “are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” and we should resist every such temptation as Christ did: “Get behind me, Satan.”

Posted on Wednesday, September 5, 2018

COR THOUGHTS 270: Jesus Wants Us to “Be Opened”

Of all the accounts of healing presented in the Gospels, this Sunday we hear one of the most visceral. It’s almost – no, it is – shocking in its physical intimacy. Jesus takes a deaf man with a speech impediment away from the crowd. Apparently, what was about to happen demanded privacy. He “put his finger into the man’s ears.” And if that weren’t enough, Jesus then spits and puts his finger in the man’s mouth, touching his tongue! I don’t know about you, but I’m not so fond of strangers probing my body like that. Who is this Jesus and what on earth is he doing?! He’s looking to heaven, he’s groaning, and he’s exclaiming, “Ephphatha!” which means, “Be opened!” He wants our bodies and our hearts to “be opened” … why? So he can enter. Yes. That’s Jesus’ deepest desire: to enter our bodies with his body, our hearts with his heart. It’s called Eucharist. And to be entered, to be filled by Christ with all the fullness of God (see Eph 3:19) – that’s the deepest desire of our hearts. It’s a spousal desire. It’s a spousal mystery. The Church is the Bride; Christ is the Bridegroom. If we want to be healed of our maladies; if we want to be filled with Infinite joy and love and life, we must “be opened.” As Pope Benedict XVI observed, this small word, ephphatha, “sums up in itself Christ’s entire mission” (Sep 9, 2012).

The Cor Project

Category Archives: Cor Thoughts

COR THOUGHTS 274: The Indissolubility of Marriage and Flat Tire Syndrome

COR THOUGHTS 273: Seeing the Gratuitous Beauty of the Human Body

COR THOUGHTS 272: Redirecting Our Passions Toward True Fulfillment

COR THOUGHTS 271: Losing Our Lives to Save Them

COR THOUGHTS 270: Jesus Wants Us to “Be Opened”