I’ve been reading a very good book titled In His Sandals. It is a short book of six reflections by Mother Angelica, founder of the EWTN network, on our walk with God. Her words and wit keep you attentive, and EWTN has created a course to accompany the book, having six 5-minute videos, discussion questions, and links to references, including some of Mother Angelica’s television talk shows, but I’ll review that further after I’ve gone through the program and book a few more times. The Gospel today fits right in with that book’s tone, on what our walk entails.
The Gospel of Luke today (5:27-39) speaks of Jesus calling to Levi, a tax collector: “Follow Me”. Surprisingly (to me) we read: “And leaving everything he got up and followed Him.” The video series, The Chosen, presents this scene very well. Levi was a very well-paid Jew, with a degree of respect by the Romans. While religious Jews looked down on him, the poor may have envied him. In many ways, “he had it made,” but, he left it all on the spur of the moment, when he heard Jesus call him.
The Pharisees and scribes criticize Jesus for associating with the tax collectors. He explained to them that He came to call sinners, but they probably didn’t get His point, so He told them a parable. “No one tears a piece from a new cloak to put it on an old cloak … it will not match, and nobody puts new wine in old skins … no, new wine must be put in fresh skins. And nobody who has been drinking old wine wants new. The old is good, he says.” He is saying we are reluctant to change.
The Better Part, Meditation 167, reflects on this Gospel better than I ever could:
Following Jesus involves change.
St. Luke tells us that Levi’s response requires ‘leaving everything’. Jesus is not a TV show that you can turn on and off when you feel like it. … Jesus is God. … We have to be willing to give up whatever Jesus demands we give up. … Christ teaches us that life on earth is a mission, not a vacation, … a journey, not a destination. Jesus is constantly demanding more from followers. … because love does that, it settles only for the very best, which means continual growth in virtue and wisdom (along with the required growing pains).
When Christ comes into our lives, he brings new clothes and new wine, and responding generously to his call means making an uncomfortable and at first unpleasant adjustment. (You can’t put his teaching into our old ways, the wine skins will break. We can’t use part of His teachings like a patch for our old ways. It’s hard to change; we’ve grown used to our old clothes, and the old wine tastes good.) He continues to surprise us with another set of new clothes, with another batch of wine…. Christ always has more for us to learn to do, and TO BECOME (to change to new ways, put on a new skin, and not be like the person we were before.)
He is the bridegroom of every heart; he gazes on us with personal determined love and leads us into the everlasting adventure of indescribable intimacy and communion with God.
Lord, you gave me faith and showed me the purpose of my life, to know you and love you, and to help build up your kingdom. I don’t need to know anything else. Thy will be done in my life.
Lord, sometimes I wonder why you keep asking me for more, why you keep sending me more crosses, more missions. Why can’t we relax and take it easy? I know the answer: because you love me too much, … you suffered and died to win us grace, and you want that grace to fill us and lead us to true meaning and lasting happiness. Lord Jesus, I trust in you.
Give me a heart like yours, one that responds like Levi to your every wish, and in turn reaches out to others as you have reached out to me. Teach me, Lord.
And then we must change, and follow in his sandals. Sometimes it seems a lonely walk for me, but I have friends for the journey. Still, there are hard points, and pain. But that’s what change does, surgery hurts --- for a while, but then things are better. Mother Angelica reflects on these things and helps you see them as things of great joy, and points out how important it is that others see our joy, even with the pains. We are on an adventure, to eternity.
Why doesn’t God fix things? He came to change things, not fix them how we want them to be. Because we don’t need to patch the old; we need to celebrate the new wine he provides, and drink deeply.
I think the sermon I heard this morning closed with words, good words, about how we should positively approach the changes Jesus presents to us. The priest concluded: “Let us not instruct Him; let us take His instruction.”
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I liked Mother Angelica’s words from In His Sandals’ last chapter:
If you can accept your age with all its aches and pains, you would be a magnificent witness to youth today. You know, youth look at the older people in such distress --- older people trying to be young. You know, then I see someone eighty years old in the mall with shorts on, I think that’s terrible! If they could see themselves in a mirror to see how they look, trying to be young!
Why can’t we be honest? And be what we are --- old! That should give us joy. You see, the youth today are not able to look at the elderly or the senior citizens and say, “Hey! It gets better as you get older!” Or “Hey! I have something to look forward to!” They look at most old people today who are sad-sacked, disgruntled, unhappy, sour, fighting to remain in this life, acting as if there were no eternity. You know, the youth of today look a that, and they don’t look forward to tomorrow. They don’t look forward toward to age. … I think all of you that are senior citizens have a beautiful mission from God, and that mission is to radiate the joy of the coming of the Kingdom. … I hope I live till I’m one hundred, because I realize that every moment I have in time, I can love God more, I can love my neighbor more. You see, it’s not a matter of whether you’re sick or not sick or whether you can do something or you’re famous or unheralded by the world. That doesn’t matter; the thing that matters is my capacity to know God and love God.
What I’m trying to bring out is that those of you who are up in your years --- sixty, seventy eighty, nineties, God has kept the best wine for you till now. Old age is that best wine, as far as your individual soul is concerned. And those of you who are younger, you look upon the old with awe and with respect, because their capacity for God has grown very great.
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Early this morning, the Bible study guys were in Matthew, in the garden where Jesus was arrested. Peter pulled out his sword, but Jesus said put it away, and told him only soldiers are meant to die by the sword; you’re not a soldier who fights that way. And then one of them ran away, and the guards chased him and tore his garment off, and he ran away naked. Some of us don’t want to change, our garment has to be torn off from us; He makes us change to ways we did not plan. I was reminded of the changing of a baby’s diaper. Some babies scream at being touched; something they don’t understand is happening. Other babies look up at the parent doing the changing and they feel loved; things are changing, but they know it is done in love. I think God loves all babies, but He loves in a special way those who know his love, and return it --- and trust Him, even in bad times.
In the Bible, then Peter denied Jesus three times, and the cock crowed. The Bible Study guys reflected how sometimes we sin and don’t even notice, but then while reading Scripture or perhaps in quiet prayer, we recall that sin --- and the cock crows for us; the Holy Spirit opens our hearts to see it as Jesus does. And then – and I think this is a critical insight we had --- Peter reacted. I think we often are made aware of our sins; we hear the Holy Spirit telling us we have sinned, but sadly very often we find ourselves saying: “Yes, but …”. Somehow in this case what I did was justified. I did it for a reason. After the cock crowed, Peter could have thought: “Yes, I betrayed Him, but if I didn’t, I may have been arrested too. He said that I’d be a fisher of men; I can’t do that if I’m in jail (or dead).” Peter could have thought that; perhaps in his shoes I LIKELY would have thought that. But what did Peter really do? “He went out and wept bitterly.”
When the Holy Spirit opened Peter’s heart to his sin, Peter’s heart changed. He donned a new cloak. He began to really taste the new wine. And things would now be radically different than he thought, but he now chose God’s will, not his own. Perhaps with the sword or in his denials he thought he was doing God’s will --- he’d fix things. Why didn’t God fix things? Peter thought he’d be God’s instrument, but then he realized that the reason God didn’t fix these things was because they were not broken. This was God’s plan, His will, even though Peter thought or wanted it to be different. But he had to change, and did. He, at that moment of weeping for his sins, grew in holiness. It’s what we are all called by the Holy Spirit to do. And Mother Angelica summarized these moments of tearful, hard growth: “They should bring us joy!”
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