"Thou Shalt Be Comfortable"

It’s been awhile since I’ve written here to pour out some worries or troubles in my heart, and it’s starting to back up like a drain clogged with hair. I have a major stoppage now. I gave into the blackness and hopelessness, and didn’t attend Mass last Sunday.

The dark thoughts that are keeping me from creativity and kept me home ill from the only spiritual nourishment I receive each week stem from deep disappointment in some of the members of my Church, even those charged with the care and salvation of the flock. We are so politically correct and afraid of insult that the only commandment remaining is “Thou shalt be comfortable.”

When Zacchaeus was up the tree in the Gospel of St. Luke (19:1-10), trying to get a glimpse of the Lord, Jesus didn’t send a person from the crowd, or even one of his disciples to tell him, “Yeah, I see you. Get down already, you bother Jesus.” He went to Zacchaeus himself, and then went even further – he went to stay in the man’s house. When Saint Peter was walking out on the water toward Jesus and began to sink, Jesus didn’t tell the other disciples to row a little closer to him and save him. He restored him himself and kept him from drowning in spite of his lack of faith. When the blind called out to him for healing, he healed them. He didn’t delegate his responsibilities to others when someone directly asked him for help. He never ignored a direct plea, even when it was the demoniacs calling out to him.

It is shameful for a man of God to ignore the cries of the wounded. It is also a thing of great sorrow. In the Gospel of Saint Mark 2:15-17, we read, “And as he sat at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were sitting with Jesus and his disciples; for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.’”

It is difficult to work with sick people. Ask any health care worker, whose patience is so often admirable. Sick people can be messy. They sometimes whine. At times they annoy us with their demands when they ask for what they need. It’s not a pretty business, and it can make us uncomfortable to be around people who are sick. Yet it seems that even some of our pastors shrink from touching the sick, and do whatever they can to ignore them or let others care for them instead.

Sinners are really just messy sick people. They have difficulties about which they whine; they have strident emotions because they lack the peace of Christ; they can be obstinate in sin if they don’t receive the authoritative Word; and they take so much time and effort to heal. It is much easier to tell everyone to be comfortable, and if they are happy, then it is good. After all, why would the shepherd leave the comfort of the soft grass and shady trees to retrieve one small sick lamb that is wandering in confusion, especially if he can convince himself that the rest are grazing in peace and oblivion? He does not see evidence of confusion or sickness in them and believes as a result that there is none.

There are absolutes in this world: good and evil, right and wrong, black and white. Jesus never shirked his responsibility. He didn’t refrain from discussing the absolutes with all of the authority vested in him by his Father in heaven, even when those absolutes made his followers leave him (The Gospel of St. John, Chapter 6). Yet, many who have the authority of the pulpit and the Magisterium of the Church avoid this responsibility and consequently stray far from the image of Christ. I wonder if they would even recognize him if he came to them today. They would certainly not hear him if he spoke about a controversial topic, especially if he did so with any zeal. Yet Christ was a zealot, and he was fervent. Or do some imagine that his overturning of the tables in the temple was done quietly and politely, with respect for the opinions of the money-changers?

I have just one more question for the clergy who discounted the protection of life in the womb as the most fundamental issue at hand in the last election, in spite of the message of the Church that it must be considered as such. Why are you so concerned with war, oh men of little faith? Doesn’t Scripture tell us that this world will end in war, war like we’ve not yet seen and probably cannot imagine? War has been with us always, and will always remain with us, like the poor. It is Scripture, yet you resist the truth because the truth makes people uncomfortable when they don’t want to accept it. While you stand around comfortably dealing with the minor details of your pastoral life, putting Band-aids on the scratches of the thin-skinned, the rest of your sheep lie around you in the field mortally wounded and bleeding to death.

It is a fact of life that men will fight, and sometimes it is justified. Had we stood still against the terror of Nazi Germany, many more people would have died and our world altered by great evil. However, it is a truth of natural law, a truth of moral law, and a truth of spiritual law that there is never a justifiable reason to kill a child in the womb. If you believe there is, then you are not Christ-like and if you are leading a congregation with this veil over your eyes, you are leading them away from heaven and into the abyss.