Ponder: "the evil spirit of defeatism"

"While painfully aware of our own frailties, we have to march on without giving in, keeping in mind what the Lord said to Saint Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness' (2 Cor. 12:9).  Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil.  The evil spirit of defeatism is brother to the temptation to separate, before its time, the wheat from the weeds; it is the fruit of an anxious and self-centred lack of trust."

Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 85.

IMNAHRY

“The Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing.”  St. Luke 10:41-42

As I was driving home on Tuesday evening, I was intrigued by the dark red car in front of me.  The driver had obviously discovered my favorite shortcut to get around the lights on Baron Cameron, and he was pushing on at quite a clip.  When I pulled up behind him at the stoplight, I took one glance at his vanity license plate and nodded to myself.  It said IMNAHRY—the driver had taken out all the spaces and most of the vowels—rather appropriately—but it all fit. 

IMNAHRY-some days I wonder if that’s not really the motto of Northern Virginia.  The driver may just have been trying to keep people out of the left hand land—INAHRY, so you’d better get out of the way.  Perhaps he liked to taunt policemen with speed guns.  Maybe he was wearing his great list of responsibilities like a badge of honor, as we all sometimes do. “How are you?” “Very busy,” we sigh, as if so very much depended on us.  Maybe the driver was just trying to be a comic, or a prophet, pointing out all the bustle and wondering what in the world it’s all worth.

My mind went back to a country song that’s almost 25 years old now, but whose words haven’t aged a bit. 

            “I’m in a hurry to get things done;” Alabama crooned.

            I rush and rush until life’s no fun.

            All I really gotta do is live and die.

            But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.”

Ponder: "to decline the wearisome ways of the world"

"Does not the Light Itself call us to this rest when It says, Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest: Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For My yoke is easy, and My burthen is light,  For what heavy yoke does He put upon our mind's neck, Who bids us shun every desire that causes disquietude?  What heavy burthen does He lay upon His followers, Who warns us to decline the wearisome ways of the world?  So let the holy man consider with himself, that by the mystery of the Incarnation 'the Light' rescues the wicked from heavy toil, while It takes clean away all the aims of wickedness from their hearts; let him reflect how every converted person has already here below a taste, by inward tranquility, of that rest which he desires to have throughout eternity, and let him say, There the wicked cease from disturbance, and the weary in strength are at rest."
Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job IV,66.

Drugs or Jesus

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap.”  St. Luke 21:34

I’d been asked to give the prayer for the Law Day ceremony.  This was an annual event in the little town where I last served, a gathering of the County Bar Association in the chamber of our handsome Victorian Courthouse.  They’d recognize new lawyers, remember those who had died.  There was a prayer and then an address, presented this year by Judge Burns, long respected on the bench, looking the quintessence of judicial dignity in his long black robes.

I was expecting something suitably grand and rhetorical on the meaning of law, liberally sprinkled with quotations from the Constitution and Blackstone’s Commentaries.  But Judge Burns told us instead about a pending crisis.  Cheap heroin was beginning to flood into our rural community.  The police aren’t equipped to handle it, he said.  We don’t have nearly enough treatment facilities.  Petty crime is going to go through the roof.  We’re going to see overdoses among the young, a whole new class of people incapable of holding jobs and participating in civic life. 

Burdens, Freedom and the Heart of the Law

‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”  St. Mark 7:6

When I noticed that today’s Gospel lesson was about burdensome laws, I had to smile.  Because for the last month, my life has been dominated by one particular burdensome law—Virginia Civil Code 46.2-1177.  That’s the law that requires that all Fairfax County vehicles pass an emissions test prior to registration.  Now, in principle, I think it’s a very good law.  I think we have a responsibility to limit carbon emissions, and I want my kids to breathe clean air, and I’m sure that auto mechanics do work that contributes to the common good.  But in practice—well let’s just say I’ve made eight trips to Sunset Hills Automotive, and we haven’t passed yet.  I’m on a first name basis with everyone in the shop.

 I drive a big old car, which I inherited from my grandfather.  He always liked a pretty car and this one was his last one and his favorite.  Sometimes, when I climb into it, I can still smell my grandmother’s perfume.  I love the leather seats and the leg room, but the car has reached a certain age, and apparently its valves, sensors and gas cap appear to be hurtling down the “way of all flesh.”  Over at Sunset Hills, they test it, and when it fails, they find something wrong and fix that.  Then I have to drive it for fifty miles at varying speeds to reset the monitor and first thing in the morning, they will test it again.  And the process repeats, and the repair bills rise, and I’m left a rather less enthusiastic environmentalist than I was when I first moved to Virginia.  All those trips back and forth to the mechanic’s, all that steam being released from my ears—when you stack up those emissions against the ones escaping from the minuscule gaps around the sides of my gas cap, I just wonder how that computes.