Excelsior or Bust
From the XIII Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
So many of us are status conscious, and that necessarily isn’t a bad thing. We want to send our kids to good schools, so they can have a good career, and a comfortable life. We get them special trainers if they excel in sports, academics, or the arts. Again, all of this is based upon a good and loving instinct, granted that that our intentions and means are good. Yet, when it comes to excelling in faith, or in matters of religion, we seem to retreat in fear.
I once knew a young man who was a very devout High Schooler. His mother, troubled, complained among her family and friends that her son may need psychological counseling because “he may be obsessed with religion.” A quick witted friend retorted, “Was Einstein obsessed with Math?” Why is it that we are quicker as believers to acclaim feats of genius, but not the supreme feat, accomplished by divine grace and human cooperation: that of becoming holy?
That is not to say there is not such a thing as true fanaticism, or where religious observance becomes something psychologically morbid. But we are talking here about the superlative development of love and of faith in the human person. It is this which we should desire.
Saint Paul in his Epistle today (2 Cor 8:8, 9, 13-15) urges the Corinthians of his day, and us here and now, to excel “in every respect”, and he names five areas: “faith, discourse, knowledge, all earnestness…and in love”. Saint Paul certainly considered it possible, even normative, for Christians to excel in these areas. So let’s unpack them.
- Christians are meant to excel in faith.
When we speak of faith, we have move from what John Henry Newman called “notional faith” to felt or relational faith, which is true faith in the theological sense of the word. For instance, I may have “faith” that a triangle necessarily has three sides, but that is in another league than if I was going to take this basic geometric shape and decide to design a skyscraper. To truly use or live a thing is to show that we truly possess it within ourselves. For instance, it would disquiet most people if a doctor had to constantly run to his medical textbooks during our sick visit. We would be concerned about his competency. But when it comes to the faith which all Christians are supposed to possess, most seem unable or unwilling to manifest the faith which we share. When is the last time we excelled in faith? When is the last time we ordered our lives and daily choices out of motivations of faith, and not for love of money, power, or pleasure? The way we perform our daily duties says a lot about whether we possess the gift of faith, let alone whether we excel in it.
2. Christians are called to excel in word.
Although the current translation translates the word λωγω (dative) here “discourse”, which is perfectly fine, Saint Paul is urging us to speak. I often laugh when people quote that line supposedly from Saint Francis of Assisi, “Proclaim the faith; use words as necessary.” St. Francis never said that. That was a man who stood before the Fatimid Sultan of Egypt and urged him to convert to Christianity. Most of his life, people couldn’t get Saint Francis to shut up about Christ.
More to the point, St. Paul tells us in his Epistle to the Romans that faith comes through what sense? By hearing. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. That is to say, faith tends to grow, the more it is spoken and heard. The more it is silenced, the more it fades from both private and public life.
3. Christians are called to excel in knowledge.
Although Saint Paul says that “knowledge puffs up, but charity edifies”, a theme to which we will return, nevertheless, he raises an excellent point: you and I can’t hand on a faith which we don’t possess and know. It has been sociologically shown time and time again that Catholics are by and large the most ignorant of their own religion out of any surveyed religious group. Let’s ask ourselves very humbly: do you and I know the Ten Commandments? The precepts of the Church? The Beatitudes? The authors of the Four Gospels? The Major Prophets? Most of us don’t. We can’t even begin to excel, if we can’t even vocalize the most basic teachings of Christ.
4. Christians are called to excel in earnestness.
This word, also translated “diligence” or “care” in other parts of the New Testament, shows us what naturally happens when we possess true faith, expanded by knowledge, which is then proclaimed by word. We become earnest. We become active. These are the believers who begin to open soup kitchens, who catechize, who volunteer, who walk out into the streets and into their workplaces and are “about the business” of making disciples for Christ. Saint Paul tells us that we ought to excel in such diligence, and not be slack therein.
5. Christians are called to excel in love.
What is the point of all these other qualities in which we are told to excel? It is love; love of God, and love of neighbor for God’s sake. How important this is! In these dark times, in which we lack so many voices of truth and of love, when so many fall silent, and the daring of those who deceive and destroy grows with every tweet and headline, how important it is that Christians, with radiant faith, likewise possess a burning love. This love, when it truly possesses a Christian, is absolutely impossible to counterfeit, and it drives away evil like wax melts before fire. Divine Love gives form to our faith, and faith gives our love substance and content. It is not mere sentimentality, but acts based upon convictions on what is true and good.
Finally, I would like to close by commenting on what Saint Paul says directly after these five superlative qualities. He urges us to excel in the “gracious act” of Christ Jesus, in his humility. He says this, I imagine, because he knows, like anyone with experience, how many good and zealous people can become corrupted by the creeping influence of the ego. No matter what we do, no matter how strongly we believe, no matter how well intentioned our works, we must submit ourselves in love to God’s Wisdom and Providence, thinking very soberly of ourselves. How many great men and women have fallen because they became inflated with self admiration! How many people have been thrown down by Divine Justice for their conceit!
Humility is so necessary, because it grounds us in the reality that we are “unprofitable servants”, but God is “all in all”. Humility helps to realize that truth and love are meant to be shared: and spiritual goods, when shared, enrich and ennoble us. When material goods are shared, they must be divided. But when we share spiritual goods, they are multiplied. Humility helps to acquire that spirit of bold generosity which moves us to action. May God make it so, in each one of us, to excel in our holy faith, and in divine love.
