Learning, Love, and Loss

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’   And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.' — Matthew 7:21-23

I have been reading about the life of Saint Anthony of Padua.  He began his religious life in the order of St. Augustine, intently studying theology.  His direction changed drastically when his monastery housed the remains of five Franciscan monks martyred while preaching in Islamic Morocco.  Then known by his baptismal name of Fernando, he begged for the opportunity to join the Franciscan Order to give his life as a witness for Christ among the "Saracens".  He was allowed to leave the Augustinian Order.  Becoming a Franciscan, he changed his name to Anthony and sought martyrdom in Morocco.  Instead of death by beheading, Anthony fell terribly ill and was forced to sail for his home in Portugal.  A storm drove the ship to port on the east coast of Sicily.  These accidents culminated in Anthony preaching at an ordination of Dominicans and Franciscans, and his eventual appointment by Saint Francis as the first teacher of the Franciscans.  To that point, Saint Francis had been opposed to learning, fearing it would encourage pride among his Order. 

Anthony, though, was a most humble person.  He spoke simply without oratorical embellishment but with a comprehensive grasp of theology and Scripture.  He thus became the "Hammer of Heretics" — not out of antagonism but through a love for truth.  Saint Anthony was an effective preacher and teacher because he lived the gospel message of humility and poverty in spirit.  So, too, should our lives align with the words we speak — heeding the warning given by Jesus.  It is doing justly and loving mercy that counts rather than lip-service.  We must obey the commandments of Christ not merely proclaim them. 

Probably best known as being the Saint called upon to restore lost items, Anthony himself had little to lose.  His patronage, however, is based upon the loss one of his very few possessions and the only one which he truly valued — a manuscript copy of the Psalms.  Not only was this a precious item in that time before moveable print, but Anthony had his own notes in the margins relating to his prayer and teaching.  The book was not simply mislaid.  A straying novice had made off with Anthony's manuscript when he fled the monastery.  Anthony prayed that his book would be returned.  The young man repented and came back, restoring the Psalms to Anthony.

Anthony traveled much through the known world of his time with very little baggage.  He traveled light in terms of material possessions, but he carried with him the Word.  In fact, one of the most common depictions of Saint Anthony shows him holding the Infant Jesus.  The life of Saint Anthony illustrates the value of learning and knowledge of theology.  Equally, he shows us that, if we are going to carry Christ with us, we cannot carry much that is of this world. 

In modern life, rich as it is with material blessings and with so many distractions into which we are tempted to invest our time and energy, we can benefit from examining the life of those who considered themselves strangers and pilgrims here.  What is it that I am carrying around?  Is that Christ in my arms?  Am I bearing the light and sweet burden of the gospel?  Or am I weighed down with the accoutrements so valued and sought after by the worldly?  Do I have possessions which I hold loosely?  Or am I bound and possessed by material objects? 

Our values are revealed by how we live, by the fruit that our life bears, by the things we obsess or fret over.  It is almost ironic that a Christ-bearer such as Anthony would be the one appealed to when someone needs help finding lost car keys or a desperately needed job.  God does, though, care about our material existence.  He does provide for us and show His concern for even our smallest losses and anxieties.  By helping us to find what is, for the moment at least, irreplaceable, He reminds us that we were lost, that He deemed us irreplaceable, and that He sought us until we were found.     

After Its Kind

Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him.

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.

No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother. – 1 John 3:4-10

For some of us this is a very troubling passage. You can hear people explain away the concept by emphasizing the word “practice” and talking about habitual, persistent sin. I think it is more enlightening to go back to Romans and read chapters 6 through 8, maybe throw in chapter 3 to start.

Speaking strictly for myself, I know that within me lies the potential -- and often the intent, to do right, and I know what is right and what is not about 95% of the time. With most decisions in the course of a day it is easy enough to know, if not always easy to do the righteous thing. There is a small but very important subset of possibilities over which we will have to pray, struggle and agonize, but a lot of life is pretty simple if we just want to do right. And therein is a key to understanding because, just as within me I find an intention to do right, there is also, very often, an impulse to take a different way, to do the wrong for my own benefit, pleasure, ease, or profit. What John is pointing out is the very obvious: Dude, listen up. The wrong? That’s not God.

Who am I fooling if I claim to be born of God yet live like the devil? Why would I do such a thing? Forget the sin part for a minute. I think in general the mainstream of Christianity spends too much time talking about what we should not do. Most of us have that down. Knowing God and being known of God is what we are after. It’s like the Karate Kid. How far along would the kid have gotten if he had just hung around outside the old man’s place and talked about how great the old guy was or how he knew all about karate? We do the good stuff which is the God stuff so that we know God, and, as Jesus says, more importantly, so that He knows us. This is why simply being conventionally and acceptably good, as many atheists are, is insufficient. They know the conventional moves to be accepted in the open class with all the rest of the losers. Chuck Norris is still going to kick their asses because they’ve never encountered the Master personally, so they don’t really know how good good is. If you are “as good as anybody else”, then as the over-all relative goodness declines, you decline with it. In the end, as with the dumbed down SAT’s or inflated currency, it doesn’t mean what it used to.

Another thing we learn here is that Christ was revealed to humanity in order to destroy the works of the devil. Focusing only on externals, it is hard to see how that has worked. The devil has built an impressive edifice, but it is founded on a lie. You can be as gods, knowing good and evil. Jesus destroyed the very foundation of the devil’s work by destroying that lie. The Lord lived never knowing evil. By knowing Him – the Good – only, we can truly be as gods. For what else would the sons of God be? (No, I’m not a heretic. It just sounds like it.) By shunning evil we are “not missin’ a thing”, as REO Speedwagon used to say.

Jesus took away sin, as the anti-type scapegoat, and thus broke down the barrier Adam had erected between God and man. Man is no longer left to an isolated, relativistic existence. In that isolation, he was not as a god but rather as a devil, for that is the devil’s nature. Don’t blame it on the devil, for, though it was his free choice once, he can now no longer help himself any more than we could. The laughable part of Satan’s lie was that “your eyes will be opened” -- quite a statement coming from the eternally blind. We were all locked in the soul subbasement together, and all we had were the remotes. Is it any wonder we did so much damage?