Saturday after Ash Wednesday

Today's Mass Readings

Plenty of people are funny but can’t tell a joke. Each week I get a taste of that hosting our seminary’s community night, News & Views. I start out with a joke, and let’s just say that often my humor differs from our seminarians. They think I’m funny, true, but they don’t always laugh at my punchlines. Why? Because they don’t understand the jokes’ premises. There’s the very infamous “orange for a head” joke that I have not yet lived down…

I had a similar experience a couple times at parishes when quoting the English novelist and Catholic convert, Evelyn Waugh, and no one – I mean no one – got his point. He remarked in his usual satire: “The Protestant attitude seems often to be, ‘I am good; therefore I go to church,’ while the Catholic’s is, ‘I am very far from good; therefore I go to church.” I don’t think the folks in the pews got his point because they thought they were in fact good because they go to church; just showing up to Sunday Mass fulfills all the requisites of heaven.

Is church the repository for the spiritually healthy or a field hospital for sinners? Notice the verbs that Luke uses today. Sinners follow Jesus – they walk the walk. The Pharisees and their scribes complain – they talk the talk only. Perhaps we do not understand the premise of the sacramental life: it is not a pretty but empty ritual, not merely therapeutic, not harder than faith alone. Actually, the sacraments make it easier to get to heaven. And we need to use the ones we need (e.g., Reconciliation) and not just the ones we like (e.g., the Eucharist). Christ took the stuff of human experience from womb to tomb and made sure we knew when Almighty God bestows grace. We can’t touch, taste, smell, hear, or see grace – but we can do all those things with a sacrament. And I need the sacraments because I am very far from good; through them, though, I become more like the One who enacts them.

Reflection by Fr. Pachomius Meade, OSB