The Apostles…. The Big Dawgs of the Catholic Faith

The Twelve – they so often adorn facades and rest atop pillars, gilded, massive, epic figures, each Atlases on whose shoulders the Church rests…. or so we grow up imagining. But what do we know, really, about these figures when the dust of millennia settles and we glance back at Sacred Scripture?

We know their names. We know they were mostly an “uneducated” lot (though schooled strong in the Book of Nature). We know they didn’t always have a clue what their Master was saying. We know all but one abandoned Him at the moment when He would have needed them most. A pretty shaky foundation for a Church, you might be thinking. But we also know that they came back to Him, and preached His Name from the rooftops, and in every conceivable way they poured themselves out for Him. That’s about it. But isn’t that what it’s all about?

The good news is that this shaky foundation has Christ Jesus as the capstone, and through Him the whole structure is held together. The good news is that Simon and Jude and all of the Apostles were madly in love with the God Who had become flesh for us. They cared little about themselves anymore. It was always Jesus.

The bad news is… this cornerstone has been rejected. So were all but one of the Apostles (John died in exile in his old age). Jude, whom we celebrate today, was eventually murdered with an ax, and Simon, also celebrated today, was beaten and cut to pieces. Destroyed, just like their Beloved Master.

They died for Jesus. What else do we need to know? They were open to God. That’s the key. They were martyred by the world, that’s the lock. They were open to the possibility that God had come in Jesus… They were closed off and shut up by a world that did not want to hear it. A world afraid of the possibility that the Door they opened might lead to Sacrifice, to Suffering, to Real Love, and to Mercy Immeasurable. Too much work for many of us.

Simon and Jude lost their lives but found themselves. And they now point us to that Cross-Shaped Door that leads to our true selves, for in Heaven we shall know as we are known. Let us pray that we too can stretch out our arms, clutching nothing, for a chance at winning everything.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Tough Love – Isaac Jogues and Company

This morning in chapel, I got zapped by one of the prayers we heard. Jesus “put himself into our hands.” Incredible… Talk about becoming vulnerable, dependent, helpless. Didn’t he know the risks involved? Unrequited love, betrayal, indifference, even a scalding hatred that would end in tearing his very flesh from him and hanging him on a cross? Yes, he knew the risks, but he did it anyway. Jesus “put himself into our hands.”

Isaac Jogues, John de Brébeuf and Companions
Today, we celebrate a group of men – missionaries – who also knew the risks. They came from across the sea with the burning conviction that God had broken into our world, took on a body like us and offered it freely to ransom us from hatred and violence and indifference. But some of the Huron and Iroquois men, men who felt their power and position, their very paradigm of life, challenged by the missionaries, grew violent themselves. They cut off Isaac’s fingers so he couldn’t offer the Mass, they would cut out a man’s tongue so he couldn’t speak a word of the gospel, burned and scalped and brutally beaten… But Isaac and his companions kept preaching with their very bodies, as they moved about the villages…. They said with their very bodies: Peace… Mercy… Love… Forgiveness, in a violent and bloodthirsty region.

After much torture and an escape from his captors, St. Isaac actually returned to France, and was hailed as a hero. And then, guess what he did? He “put himself into their hands” again. He returned to North America, to that place of torture, to speak of his love of the God Who was tortured for us.

Two summers ago, I took my nephew Sean on a whirlwind tour of New England, a real vision quest, as a gift for his confirmation. Our first stop… the North American Martyrs Shrine in New York state. There we learned of one of St. Isaac’s little practices of evangelization…. carving the Holy Name of Jesus into trees around the little Mohawk village he ministered to. Today the shrine simply tacks on the wooden letters, and they’re everywhere! St. Isaac, like a lover, carving his Beloved’s name into an old oak.

At the southern tip of the Adirondak Mountains, Isaac was brutally killed by the Iroquois League, witnessing to Christ. We stood on that holy ground where these men made their sacrifice. Later, their love bore fruit in the birth of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks… on that very spot.

Was it worth the risk? Well, my nephew was moved, and he knows now that faith can make a man out of you. The root of virtue is vir…. Meaning manly, masculine. Sean knows a truth worth dying for, and that Christianity is not a religion for “wimps.” We are made for a tough love, one that is willing to lay down our life for our beloved. May we pray for and receive such courage and trust from the martyrs of North America. Their blood cries out from our own soil… Believe, Trust, Love… and Forgive.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org