The Word Of God Addresses The Mind – 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Sermon by Father Levine

Fr. Joseph Levine; Holy Family Catholic Church and Missions, Burns, Oregon; July 7, 2024

In today’s 1^st reading the Prophet Ezekiel is sent to proclaim the word of God to the Jewish exiles in Babylon, but they are a rebellious house and refuse to believe. In the Gospel, Jesus teaches in the synagogue in his hometown, Nazareth, and is amazed at their lack of faith.

Last Sunday I touched on something that connects to the obstinacy of the Jewish exiles and the lack of faith of the people of Nazareth. I said: “All too often we get ourselves caught in the mentality of this passing world, which calculates everything in view of how things work in the present order of things and in terms of goals to be achieved in this world. We end up living our lives within a narrow horizon, as dwellers in a deep mountain valley who live in complete ignorance of the vast world beyond the mountains.” Obstinacy and lack of faith often results from an unwillingness to learn about the world “beyond the mountains”.

Jesus had grown up in Nazareth but did nothing to reveal his identity as Son of God, or any extraordinary gifts. As far as his townspeople were concerned, he was just another boy growing up in their midst; if he stood out in any way, it would have been for his goodness. As for the life of the people of Nazareth, we could imagine them as devout and observant Jews, but their practice would have been little more than a support sustaining and giving meaning to their day-to-day life, their struggle to live and survive amidst many hardships. If they had any glimpse beyond the deep mountain valley of the day-to-day life, it would have involved their hope for the coming of the Messiah, the Christ, who would – they thought – deliver them from Roman tyranny.

When Jesus taught in their synagogue they were astonished at his teaching because, as we learn from the other Gospels, he proclaimed that he was himself the fulfillment of the Isaiah’s messianic prophecy: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me … to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. (Lk 4:18-19) Further, he caused offense by suggesting that the Gentiles would receive his message, while the Jewish people would reject it. (cf. Lk 4:24-28)

Faith is the proper response to the word of God. The word of God is addressed to the mind – God shows his graciousness by speaking to us – but it is either accepted or rejected by the will. You can consider how you feel hurt if someone does not believe what you tell them. If it were something evident to the mind, personal trust would not enter the picture. But when someone refuses to believe your statement, they are refusing also to trust you. When we refuse to believe God’s word, we insult him, we declare him, truth itself, untrustworthy.

The rebellious Jewish exiles did not want to accept the word of God proclaimed by Ezekiel. The people of Nazareth did not want to accept the word of God proclaimed by Jesus. They found it offensive. Jesus had opened up to their view a vision of a world in which they would have to be associated with believers far beyond the confines of the Jewish people, even Romans; they did not want any of that.

The word of God is addressed to the mind. This strike us today as an odd statement. People would generally be more inclined to say the word of God is addressed to “the heart” and would be hard-pressed to say what “the heart” really is. Yet, whatever the heart is, people generally connect it more with “feeling” than “thinking” and “knowing”. This has led to a sort “emotionalism” in which faith is reduced to feeling and everyone has their own feelings, so everyone has their own faith.

Rather, it is reality, it is truth, that unites, not feeling. If we are to be united in feeling that is because they are the feelings that are an appropriate response to reality. If two people are looking at the same sunset, the sunset is the reality. If one of them says, “What a beautiful sunset,” he is showing an appropriate emotional response to the reality. If the other agrees, the reality has given rise to a shared feeling, which is fitting. If he disagrees, he has shown a defective attitude towards the reality, but maybe he cannot appreciate the beauty of the sunset at the moment, because his wife just died.

So the word of God does address the “heart” even if that be understood as something distinct from the mind, but it addresses the heart through the mind. Love must follow knowledge.

Consider the account of Jesus healing a leper. A leper came to Jesus beseeching him, and kneeling said to him, ‘If you will, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I will, be clean.’ And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. (Mk 1:40-42) That is certainly a highly charged emotional scene, one that should touch our hearts as Jesus touched the leper, but the power of the scene is first of all rooted in the reality of the deed, apprehended by the mind. Jesus really did touch and cleanse the leper. If that didn’t really happen, then it is nothing more than a nice story.

Yet, there is even more that the mind needs to apprehend. First there is the faith of the leper who says, “If you will, you can make me clean.” Now, who has the power, by a simple command to cleanse a leper? Only God. Jesus responds, “I will, be clean.” Jesus responds as God. He commands and it happens, just like when God created the heavens and the earth. The same God who created everything has mercy; he shows mercy to the leper through the person of Jesus Christ, who does not merely act by invoking God, or in the name of God, but as God. There is even more for the mind to understand, because the physical healing of the leper is itself a sign of Christ’s power and will to cleanse the soul from the leprosy of sin.

If the mind does not get involved, all we have is an emotional scene, we are moved by the healing, and might want to experience healing in our own lives, but we are left without insight into the source of the healing, the nature of the healing we truly need, how it is to come about, and what will be required of us. We are finally left without any real relation to God himself.

The great spiritual masters of the Church, like St. John of the Cross, teach that, in the beginning of a soul’s conversion, God often gives powerful emotional consolation, to make known his presence and to show the soul that he is the author of all consolation, that his gifts are better than those the world furnishes. Then, after drawing the soul to himself, he submits the soul to trials, to wean the soul from sensible consolation and to teach the soul to love God purely, for his own sake, to love the God who gives good gifts, rather than the good gifts of God.

Very often it happens that a person learns to pray because he has found delight in prayer, but then when he no longer finds prayer delightful, he stops praying. When he stops praying he soon resumes sinning. It is necessary, for that reason to insist that prayer is a discipline. We must pray in order to seek God, to honor him, and because we need his help; we must pray whether we feel like it or not. Only when we persevere in prayer, even in the midst of difficulty and dryness, do we begin to discover the true delights of prayer.

If our relation to God cannot be sustained by mere emotion, then the mind must get engaged.

“It is truly right and just always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, Almighty and eternal God, through Christ our Lord.” To give thanks to God, we must recognize the benefits he has bestowed on us in Christ. We must recognize not only the benefits that we have received, each one personally, but the benefits he has bestowed upon the whole human race and especially upon the faithful, benefits in which we all share. Again, that means that our mind must get engaged.

Jesus said to the Apostles at the Last Supper, I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from the Father, I have made known to you. (Jn 15:15) What has been made known is the mystery of God, the mystery of the Holy Trinity, and the plan of salvation in Christ. If we are to be friends of Christ, friends of God, then we must receive his teaching in faith, seek to understand what he had made known about God and the plan of salvation, so as to share in his work as intelligent collaborators. That is what it means to love God.

Pope Benedict XVI had as his motto “Cooperatores Veritatis” – cooperators of the truth, or co-workers with the truth – which he took from the 3^rd Letter of St. John (v. 8). That is what Jesus asks of his friends. He invites us to leave aside our own projects and plans so as to enter into his project, to join in the common work of salvation. If, according to his will, we do retain our own projects and plans, they need to be subordinated to and integrated into his work.

The common objection to the role of the mind in the life of faith come from the words of St. Paul: Knowledge puffs up, but charity builds up. (1 Cor 8:1) It is important to understand the first part of that statement correctly. Because of our inclination to pride, knowledge (and any other excellence) easily provides an occasion for pride.

If you were to take a tour of the universities of the world you would find countless professors who use their learning to exalt themselves, who take pleasure in and live for the honor given them on account of their knowledge. They do not delight in the truth – if the truth be told many of them are truly ignorant – but in the praise they receive from others. You do not have to visit universities to find “know-it-alls”. Nor do you have to go far to find someone who prides himself on his own stinking opinions, about secondary matters no less.

If someone loves the truth, rather than the mere possession of knowledge, if someone seeks wisdom, rather than praise, he will discover in the light of that truth and wisdom how small he really is. He will rejoice in his own littleness, so long as he can rejoice at the same time in God’s greatness. His knowledge will not puff him up, because he will possess at the same time the charity that builds up. The charity that builds up seeks to know God more, so as to love him better.

Finally, let us return to the negative example of the exiles in Babylon and the people of Nazareth. Their rebellion involves a willful refusal to believe the word of God. They are puffed up by the tiny bit of knowledge they have, or think they have. The problem is not that the word of God lacks credibility – even now that is not the real reason for lack of faith – but because it interferes with their plans. They are like the men in the parable who invited to the wedding of the king’s son, refuse the invitation because they have, in their mind, something better to do, something more important. The activities of the valley buried deep in the midst of the mountains take priority for them.

It can be that way in our life. We do not want to believe, because the word of God, its promise, its invitation, calls us out of the narrow horizon of our life. We prefer that deep mountain valley because it is familiar and because we think that we can control things in that narrow scope.

To really believe we must be willing to accept the big world of God, to enter in and live in that world, which is the real world, even if the better part of it is invisible to our eyes.