Here's to God laughing

“To Err is Human; To Forgive Divine”
By Susan Fox
Love your enemies -- who would believe that such a basic tenet of Christianity would convert the son of a founding member of Hamas, the ruling party of Palestine recognized for its brutal suicide bombs and other attacks against Israel.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, age 30, came to the United States two years ago, but only recently made the decision to go public with his conversion to Christianity. His famous Muslim family back in the Middle East is really suffering because of what he has done, but he came to my attention at Christmas because all my Catholic friends are talking about him.
“Hamas, they are using civilians’ lives, they are using children, they are using the suffering of people every day to achieve their goals. And this is what I hate,” Mr. Yousef said in an interview last summer. After a chance encounter with a British missionary nine years ago, Mr. Yousef began secretly reading the Bible, stuck by the central tenet “love your enemies.”
Now as a Christian living in San Diego, Calif., Mr. Yousef hopes to found an international organization to educate young people about Islam and preach a message of “forgiveness,” the only way – he says -- the endless cycle of violence between Israelis and Palestinians can be broken.
A relationship with Jesus Christ changed Mr. Yousef’s heart and gave him the courage to publicly declare his belief that faith in Jesus is our only hope for an end to the violence that plagues the Middle East.
It is a great theme for the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, which was celebrated by the Church this past Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI explained that this feast points to the “everydayness” of a personal relationship with the Lord. For Baptism – by desire or by formal sacrament – marks the beginning of this transforming relationship.
“Through the immersion in the waters of the Jordan, Jesus united Himself to us,” the pope said. Baptism is like the "bridge that [God] has built between him and us, the road by which he is accessible to us [...] the gateway to hope and, at the same time, the sign that indicates the road we must take in an active and joyous way to meet him and feel loved by him."
Mr Yousef is on the same track: "I have met politicians. I have met presidents and prime ministers. I have met all the leaders of that (Middle East) region," Mr. Yousef said. "None of them have a magical solution for this issue. They are leading people but they don't know where they are going.”
"Jesus is not going to give them a political solution, but He has changed me and He can change those people to a better people. He can teach them how to forgive, how to love," he said. "Everybody on both sides is hurt -- not only Israelis, not only Palestinians. Now, as it is, there is no hope for them but Jesus. It's that simple."
Now we see the power of the Word of God. For in reading Holy Scripture, Mr.Yousef has been digging deep into the mind of God. And the conclusions he has drawn show that he has been imbibing deeply in the Rivers of Living Water.
I am amazed to see the Holy Spirit speaking so loudly all over the world. His voice is showing up in the lives of ordinary people in every nation, religion and culture. When things look really grim in the government and economy, we have to remember that all God has to do is laugh and the evil plans of men will be brought to naught.
Mr Yousef and his Muslim family is suffering persecution for his public revelation of his Christian conversion. His father – now in an Israeli prison -- has so far refused to disown him as that would give jihadists permission to kill his son. It’s interesting that his plight has been indirectly championed by Pope Benedict, who in negotiating a meeting with leaders of Islam is demanding that the topic be religious freedom. The Imams want to discuss "love of God and love of neighbor," but the pope is holding out for religious freedom. I asked my husband, why that was because it seemed to me that the topic, "love of God and love of neighbor," would lead to a discussion of religious freedom. But my husband said that the Muslim faith does not really understand those concepts, and they definitely would not conclude that love of neighbor means religious freedom. In fact, the opposite. We are lucky to have such a smart pope. Here’s to God laughing.

Rivers of Living Water

by Susan Fox

On Monday, Dec. 8, 2008, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Dong Yun Yoon, age 37, lost his wife, his mother-in-law and two young daughters, ages 2 months and 15 months, when a military jet crashed into his house in San Diego, killing all four people.

Instead of railing again God or blaming the pilot who safely ejected, the Korean immigrant encouraged everyone to pray for the pilot so he would not “suffer from this accident.”

The man lost his entire family, but his only question to reporters was how should he go on with life after this terrible loss? “Tell me how to do it,” he said. May God give him the strength. He certainly showed us how to live as a Christian. Mr. Yoon is a Methodist – very familiar with the “Our Father.” He not only knows the words, but he also lives them. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” And in his great moment of forgiveness and grief, Mr. Yoon saved his own soul, and probably many others.

St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, known as God’s Secretary of Divine Mercy, was told by Our Lord that God’s greatest attribute is His Mercy. Perhaps it is this attribute that is the hardest for many of us to understand and imitate, but Mr. Yoon undoubtedly showed us the way.

So if you were waiting for a big hammer to drop on your head for your faults and failings, don’t hold your breath because God also said that the greatest sinner had more right to his mercy than the just man. We have only to reach out for God to receive this gift of mercy.

This reaching is done with our heart. This week, I was privileged to meet a soul who had served God her whole life. She is dying of cancer, but suffers terribly because she can no longer actively go out and do works of service for God. Plus she can’t remember the words of the prayers she has recited her whole life, the Our Father and the Hail Mary. God doesn’t look at it the way she does. He sees her desire, her thirst for Him. She wants to pray. She thinks she can’t, but in the very act of wanting, she prays. Desire for God is the highest form of prayer. Jesus taught us this prayer on the cross, when He said, “I thirst.” But perhaps because He is God, His thirst was the mirror image of ours. He thirsts for us. We thirst for Him.

After He met the Samaritan woman at the well, who confessed she had no husband because she had in fact had had many, his apostles came and tried to make Him eat food. “Rabbi eat,” they said. But Jesus had just pulled in a big fish, the Samaritan woman herself and all the people from her town who came to see Him because she said, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have done.” So Jesus told the disciples, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” They wondered if someone had brought Him food while they were gone. But Jesus explained: “My food is to do the will of the One Who sent Me and to finish His work.” Many of the Samaritans of that town began to believe in Jesus because of the word of the woman who testified: “He told me my sins.”

And in fact, while we were still in our sins, God so loved the world that He sent His Only Son. That is what we are waiting for this Christmas -- the tiny infant Word, Who was made flesh and dwelt among us.

The first to receive God’s Word was the Blessed Virgin Mary on whose feast day, Mr. Yoon’s family was killed. “Be it done to me according to your word,” she told the angel when he announced that she would become the mother of the “Son of the Most High God.” The Catholic Liturgy of the Hours during this time of waiting for the Birth of Jesus talks about the conception of Jesus in His mother’s womb, making a reference to the fruitfulness of a gentle rain.

“May the Holy One from heaven come down like gentle rain; may the earth burst into blossom and bear the tender Savior.”

I grew up in Washington State where we have very gentle and constant rain. I remember my mother used to look out the window at the rain, and say, “Isn’t God good?”

Isn’t He good? Look what He has given us this Christmas – Himself, coming like gentle rain into the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Himself available anytime anywhere at any moment you ask. Just ask. Be thirsty. “Let anyone who thirsts come to Me and drink.” (John 7:37)

May God bless you during this Christmas Season.

Susan Fox

Twilight's Confession

--> by Susan Fox

"And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come into the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.” (John 3:19-21)

Welcome to the Light: the Sacrament of Reconciliation is an intimate encounter with Jesus Christ in His Tribunal of Mercy. The movie Twilight contains a  scene that demonstrates the power of this sacrament.  Sometimes a good movie can help us understand something about human nature.

Twilight is about the love between a human girl and a vampire. It has all the magic and power of Shakespeare’s tale of Romeo and Juliet, a star-crossed pair of lovers whose relationship was doomed because their historically feuding families would never agree to their marriage. In Twilight, Edward and Bella fall in love, but their relationship is doomed from the beginning because in order to be consummated it means her death. Edward is an honorable vampire in this piece of literature based on the book by Stephenie Meyer. He therefore refuses to end her life in order to bring her into his life, which can be very brutal at times. 

There is a confessional scene in the movie in which Bella, learning that Edward is a vampire, confronts him. He reveals that he is a tortured soul, loving a girl, but afraid that he’ll accidentally kill her: “You can’t love me because I’ve killed people. I’m a predator. I’m the bad guy. If you wanted to get away from me you couldn't.” And when she turns to him and says, “I trust you. You won’t hurt me.” He then concludes she must see what he really looks like. Now the whole movie is charmingly filmed in Forks, Wash., which is located in a rain forest and it’s always cloudy and raining.

One of the things that Bella finds out about Edward and his “family” of other teenage vampires (foster vampire children with adoptive vampire parents) is that they do not come to high school classes when the sun shines. So Edward must fly Bella up to the top of a mountain above the cloud cover so she can see what he looks like in the sunshine. It’s a glorious scene in which he walks up out of the clouds, the gray, the dark and the rain into a tiny slash of sunlight. It’s filmed in the woods. She sees his face and the skin on his chest. Now this is a fantasy and Edward is not your traditional ugly dead thing. Instead as he walks into the sun, Bella marvels, “Your skin is like diamonds. You are beautiful.” Now on a very human level, hopefully that is what every bride says to her bridegroom on their wedding night.             But in a spiritual sense that is what happens to every soul that walks into the Catholic Church and goes to Confession. If we could see our souls after confession, we’d exclaim, “You are beautiful!” (Confession is for people who are already baptized, and have sinned. If you are not baptized, the same thing would happen when you are baptized.) St. Faustina calls the Sacrament of Reconciliation the Tribunal of God’s Mercy.

 Those who avail themselves of this sacrament have not loved the darkness, but they have come to the Light. They have come to Christ to show Him just exactly what they are – warts and all – so they might be healed. And in the Light of that encounter with Jesus Christ, we are indeed healed. I speak from years of experience. Just as the woman at the well came to draw water and instead received living water (the Holy Spirit) when she met Jesus Christ. “Sir, give me this water that I might not thirst, nor come here to draw (water).” (Jn 4:15) Ah, but first she must be cleansed. So to facilitate this, Jesus, says, “Go call your husband, and come here.” (Jn 4:16). He knew what she would say next: “I have no husband.” Jesus says to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you said truly.” Her sins were confessed, and she repented. And she believed: “Sir I perceive that you are a prophet.” Christ revealed to her that He was the Messiah. The encounter with Christ completely turned her life around. She became an evangelist who told everyone in the village about Jesus: “Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (Jn 4:29) And that led everyone in her village to come out to Christ. And in the tradition of the Catholic Church we celebrate her life as that of St. Photina, who converted her own family, Emperor Nero’s daughter, Domnina, and in doing so enraged the emperor. He killed Photina, her sons and her sisters – all for the Christian faith. Such was the marvelous fruit of the Samaritan’s woman single encounter with Jesus Christ at the well.

Now what about poor Edward? Does his stepping into the sunlight and confessing his sins to Bella, his love, heal him in the same manner? Absolutely not. After she says, “You are beautiful,” he walks back into the darkness and announces, “I am a monster.” What a dramatic scene. The man had such beauty, and yet his soul concludes, “I am a monster.” So do we all without the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Ah, but St. James said, “Go confess your sins to one another.” Why couldn’t Edward be healed by confessing his sins to his friend? Why could not anyone be healed by confessing their sins to their friends? We must read Holy Scripture in context: “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.” (James 5:14-17) St. James is recommending getting your sins forgiven by the presbuterous – elders, root of the English word priest. Saint Ambrose said, “Christ granted this power to the apostles, and from the apostles it has been transmitted to the office of priests alone.” St. John Chrysostom said, “Priests have received a power which God has not given either to angels or archangels . . . they are able to forgive our sins.”
Why can’t I just talk to God in a mirror or my friend and confess my sins? Why did Edward walk back into the darkness and say, “I am a monster”?

ONLY GOD CAN FORGIVE SINS.

This past week, I was privileged to read and discuss “Lord, Have Mercy: The Healing Power of Confession,” by Scott Hahn, former Presbyterian minister turned Catholic theologian. Hahn points out in this book that when Jesus said to the paralytic in Mark’s Gospel, chapter 2, “Son, your sins are forgiven you,” the scribes sitting around watching this thing unfold disbelieved He could do this. In their hearts, they said, “Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” They knew that only God can forgive sins. The only thing they hadn’t figured out was that Jesus Christ was God. Jesus wasn’t ignorant of the teachings of his people. He knew what they would think if he said, “Your sins are forgiven.” So he healed the man to show that He could forgive sins. By forgiving his sins, He revealed that he was God.

I wish someone would do a romantic movie like Twilight about Christ. He is really phenomenal, and none of it has to be made up. It’s real. So if only God can forgive sins, why are sins forgiven in the Catholic Sacrament of Reconciliation and Penance? In our Catholic discussion group this past week, my husband of 25 years told us a story I had never heard before. In his youth, he had attended well, a “holy roller” Church. And he said it was very satisfying rolling around on the floor and crying about his sins. “Oh God, please, forgive me.” But when he went back the next week, they were still rolling around on the floor. And the same thing happened the third week. He concluded they did not recognize that they had been forgiven. And the one thing he knew from his life as a Catholic was that Jesus Christ has given the power to forgive sins to the apostles and they handed that power down to the prebuterous – the priests. So the next week he went to Confession for his sins.

After the Resurrection, Jesus came among his apostles in the locked upper room, and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” (John 20:21-23)

Jesus gave the apostles a divine power that night, the power to forgive sins. No man had ever held this power before. Now we know the apostles were human and they were not perfect people (Peter denied Christ three times). But yet they were human men given a divine power. And to what purpose? So that we might be healed. Was it only that generation that would be healed of their sins? No a divine power is given in every generation because Jesus Christ said He would be with the Church until the end of time. And He is not a liar. So the line of succession from the apostles has remained unbroken in the Catholic Church. Men of every generation have been given this power to forgive sins since the time of Christ. Good men, bad men, but still a divine power given so that the people who repent, who seek the Light of Christ might indeed have an encounter with Jesus similar to the one of the Samaritan woman at the well.

Does it work? Yes, after I go to confession I don’t walk around thinking I am a monster. I feel restored to my rightful place as a beloved child of God. The healing of the Tribunal of Mercy is something that no mere man could do. It is a divine power. I tried explaining it once to a teenage girl: I go to confession and confess my sins, and I reveal my temptations. Now I have done this many times, and the temptation has completely left me. If I had confessed my sins to a man, he would have had to follow me out of the confessional and say constantly, “Susan, don’t commit that sin again.” Over and over again. But the priest doesn’t do that. He doesn’t follow me out of the confessional. He doesn’t even remember what I told him. Yet the desire, the tastiness of the sin so to speak is completely gone! That is divine power. I thank God that Jesus has given this power to Catholic priests, and I can avail myself of this sacrament of the Catholic Church frequently. I may have loved the darkness at one time, but I have come into the Light enough times to know "But he who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God." (Jn 3:21)