Pride and Weakness

This is a computer-generated transcription that has been included to make the homily searchable.  It has not been verified by the author.

“I must boast. There is nothing to be gained by it. But I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who, 14 years ago, was caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body. I do not know. God knows.” This is the passage that comes right before the passage we read today from St Paul. And I think it helps a lot to see what comes before that, to understand what the context of what he’s talking about, Saint Paul to the Corinthians. But there’s a lot of false teachers who have come and they’re saying that they’re much more qualified than Paul, and they’re leading people astray. And so Paul feels he has to defend himself, to defend his teaching. And so he talks about his efforts and his sacrifices, and then he goes on to talk about this vision that he had, this revelation, this experience that he had. That’s what I want to talk about today. But before I go on about that, I want to speak also just about the homilies in this new situation that we’re in. And I thank you all for your patience, because it’s a very challenging situation, and because it’s obviously the Mission of Divine Mercy is not the normal situation in a parish, but even we’re not in a normal situation that the Mission of Divine Mercy has been in for all these past years. Because in a situation in our world where there’s so much evil and so much suffering, and so a time of extreme evil and extreme suffering, and all of us sense that suffering. Now the Lord has just begun what he’s been preparing for so long, what He calls the great reconquest of the souls.  And our little mission here is called to a special role in that. And it’s very challenging to try to understand how we’re supposed to live that. And we’re reaching a lot of new listeners, both people who come here, but also people who, for instance, listen to these homilies who can’t come here. And so I feel a lot of responsibility now, a new responsibility because of the mission’s new role in this. So to try to, because the Lord is wanting to form this, what He calls His luminous army, and you’re invited to be part of this great luminous army of the reconquest. And so I’m trying to discern how to do that, but I feel like, I say a lot of responsibility every Sunday. We might be beginning a podcast which would permit us to give more, to give longer content, but so this might be challenging. Yes, so I hear different responses. Some people say, Oh, it’s the homilies are pretty long. Other people say, Well, we like it that the length is not a problem. We like it when there’s more content and so forth. So there’s different responses, but I want to give you a few ideas. One is, don’t worry about remembering everything in the homily, maybe just focus on, is there one thing, one thing that you can take away from the homily, then you can just fall asleep after that, once you get the one thing. And again, you can, if you want to, it’s often helpful, I think, to listen to them again. So we post them for that. So one thing that some people have found helpful is to take notes as a way of focusing more and being able to review the content later. Or you can simply just pray. You can simply use that time as a time for prayer. So I’ll try to be as boring as possible so that you can pray peacefully. So getting back to this passage from St Paul, you know, so he’s trying to defend himself. And so he says, “Now I’ll speak of the visions and revelations of the Lord.” He says, “I know a man in Christ,” but he’s talking about himself, “who, 14 years ago, was caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows.” And then St Thomas Aquinas thinks that Paul, in this next passage, is actually speaking about a second experience. He says, “I know that this man was caught up into Paradise, whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” So an extremely elevated, mysterious experience. And a lot of what I’ll be sharing today is following St Thomas Aquinas commentary on this passage, speaking about the greatness of this experience, of Paul the mysteries, experiencing mysteries that can’t even be put into words. And St Thomas Aquinas says, following St Augustine that Paul had an experience, it seems like Moses had had of an experience of God in His essence. Sorry, we’re trying, I think we’re trying to adapt the we’ve had some problems recently in the sound system. So I think they’re trying to work on that. So this experience, extremely rare gift, like not the experience that a person will have in heaven, but like, like already, like, a passing experience of that, not a permanent state, but a passing experience. And so St Paul, talking about this extraordinary gift that he’s been given, says, “on behalf of this man, I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast.” So St Paul is talking about that experience as in the third person, “on behalf of that man, but on my own behalf, I will not boast except of my weaknesses.” So it’s a very unusual expression. I will, I won’t boast of anything and myself. I mean, none of us like to do that, right? I mean, maybe we try not to be too boastful, but we do appreciate if people can notice the good things about us, right? And there’s some things in us that we hope that people don’t notice at all, and so that stuff that people we don’t want people to notice. That’s what St Paul’s saying, this is what I’m going to boast about. So St Thomas says there’s two things that we can consider in man. One is the gift of God, and the other is our human condition. And all the gifts we have, all the talents we have, are from God, and then all the weaknesses we have are not from God, but they’re our own, our own human condition. So he says, “if a person glories in a gift of God as received from God, that glorying is good.” That is, it’s good to say I have this gift by the grace of God, to attribute it to God. But if we, but if a person boast of a gift as coming from themselves, then that boasting is wrong. And he cites St Paul, who says, “what have you that you did not receive? There’s no good that we have that we did not receive. If then you received it, why do you boast of it as if it were not a gift.” And that’s the big problem, is treating our gifts as if we have a right to them, and not as gifts. And then this is a very key passage right here. St Paul says that “I Paul might not become too elated because of the abundance of revelations.” And so even in St Paul, there was a danger that these great spiritual gifts that he’s been given can cause him to what? He says, become too elated. In other words, become proud, become arrogant. So even these experience, these gifts, which are so exalted and spiritual, but can have a danger causing a person to become proud.  So, this danger of pride is always a danger with our gifts, whether they be human gifts. You know, whatever human gift a person has, maybe a person is a good singer or a good maybe a good artist or musician, or a person is good at engineering or woodcraft or cooking, or whatever or person has is good looking or all sorts of different gifts that a person can have. But there’s always a danger of pride, right? I don’t think I need to, that’s not a revelation. I think we all experience that we’re always a danger of taking pride in that. But it’s also a danger in spiritual gifts. In fact, it’s even more dangerous with spiritual gifts. St Paul is talking about here, because they’re higher and because they’re spiritual. And you know, for instance, here at the Mission of Divine Mercy, we talk a lot about prophetic messages and how important those are, and how important it is that we’d be attentive to those, but that’s one example of a spiritual gift, or locutions or inspirations or visions or healing. Person has a gift of healing, or even deep experiences of prayer, or feeling a great desire for prayer or desire for scripture, an intense fervor, that’s a gift from God for an intense fervor, having deep insights into the Word of God or into spiritual life, or even the gift of, we see for instance in some of the saints, the gift of making extraordinary mortifications, physical mortifications.  Or apostolic gifts, like, like some people have a great gift of preaching and conversions. So all these are gifts from God, which are very helpful, but they can also have that same danger of pride. And even, for instance, oftentimes at a moment in a conversion, the Lord will help. Well, a person who’s had a strong conversion may find that the temptations that they experienced earlier have pretty much disappeared. And the person can think, wow, I’ve made so much progress so fast because all that stuff I struggled with before, it’s not a problem anymore. But as Saint John the Cross says that often, at times, it’s not so much that the person has made so much progress. It’s that God, to help the person begin, is protecting a person from those temptations. So it’s not that they’ve overcome the temptations, it’s that God is protecting the person from temptations, and then later on, sometimes those temptations come back to the person saying, what’s wrong? Because I thought I was over those temptations. No, the Lord, you weren’t over them, but the Lord, you were so weak that the Lord took those away, but now he’s asking you to grow stronger in the battle against them. Because that’s always the danger, when we get these gifts, like you say, even at the gift of feeling an intense desire for prayer. We can begin to wow, I’m becoming very spiritual. I’m pretty holy right now. I mean, I read about the saints, and I’m kind of, I’m not quite there yet. I won’t say I’m quite a saint yet, but pretty close, you know, I’m almost there. And so that’s a big danger of spiritual gifts. And the one who had the most spiritual gifts of all the creatures, satan, Lucifer, he knows this very well, and so he tempts us. And so St Paul goes on to say, because of this danger of spiritual pride, he says, what happens? He says, “a thorn in the flesh was given to me. An angel of satan to beat me. Why? To keep me from being too elated.” So, what was this thorn in the flesh? Some people have suggested it might have been a physical ailment, a painful, maybe humiliating ailment. Maybe it was a particular temptation, like a temptation of the flesh. Maybe it was, some people said it was his fiery temperament, which always seemed to get him into trouble. Some maybe it was the fact that he was always being persecuted and rejected. Some people thought maybe it was a person. Is there any person that you would consider a thorn in the flesh, a certain person? We don’t know, but maybe that’s good, because it can represent many different things. And St Paul doesn’t just call it a thorn in the flesh. He says a messenger of satan. So this is curious. He says a messenger of satan, and he says it was given to him by the Lord. So there’s satan has his own reasons for attacking a person, but St Paul is saying that God Himself permitted this. So it might be from satan, and yet it’s also permitted by God for God’s own reasons. And so what might God’s reasons be to permit a person to be attacked by satan? And Saint Thomas Aquinas says something here which is very important, and it’s kind of shocking.  He says, “as Christ the supreme,” so what he’s saying is God can permit temptations to cure greater sins, especially the sin of pride. He says, “For Christ, as the supreme physician of souls, in order to cure greater sins, permits souls to fall into lesser sins, even mortal sins” He doesn’t say, causes souls to fall. He doesn’t say, tempts them to fall. He says, “permits.” So again, he says that “God to  protect the soul, to cure a soul against the greatest sin of all, which is pride, can permit that soul to fall into lesser sins, even mortal sins, to protect against the gravest sin of all, which is pride.” It’s funny that when you know we just finished what is now in our society called Pride Month. That’s what our society needs. A month to celebrate Pride, the greatest of all sins, right? We have pride parades. And so, I mean, the people who do that may have, may think they’re doing good, but it’s very significant that pride, it’s pride that is being lifted up. Pride is the greatest St Thomas says, of all the sins and so God can permit a person again to be humbled by experiencing all sorts of temptations to protect them against the gravest sin of pride. That doesn’t mean that God causes us to fall into sin, but He permits us to be tempted to bring a greater good. And I mean, as a confessor, I think I see that a lot of times that people come very discouraged to confession because of the struggles they’re having with different temptations. But what I often see is how much that’s making a person humble, sensing, sensing our weaknesses and being humbled. So what happens to Saint Paul? He says, “three times, I begged the Lord about this, that it should leave me.” So St Thomas says that three times might represent many times. So St Paul is praying insistently, and God doesn’t seem to be answering him. You know, the Gospel says, “Pray, ask and you shall receive.” Well, St Paul is asking, and he doesn’t seem to be receiving. And so I think all of us have had that experience of when God doesn’t seem to be listening to our prayers. But as St Thomas says, “God doesn’t always give us what we’re asking for, but he gives us what we need.” Because sometimes what we’re asking for is not what we really need. And so he says to St Paul, he doesn’t take this thorn away, but what he says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness,” and that’s the great mystery that the divine power. He doesn’t say, my power is made perfect in your power. He says, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” It’s the humility of recognizing our weaknesses that opens us up to His action.  And so St Paul goes on to say, “I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses.” So that’s a weird thing to say, right? Boast of my weaknesses. So does that mean we should try to be weak? Is that what St Paul’s saying, we should try to be weak? No, we should try to be strong. Try to be physically strong. And we’re not going to say I just got to spend all day eating donuts and drinking Coke, so I can be really weak, right? Because we should try to be physically strong, try to be physically healthy, and especially try to be spiritually, morally strong, so that we can use those strengths to the best of our, to God’s service. But even no matter, in spite of all our best efforts, there’s still a lot of weakness that we have to deal with. So even though we try to be strong, we still experience in our spiritual life a lot of weaknesses, because our spiritual life is so far beyond us, so far beyond our human ability. And why does St Paul say that I will boast of my weaknesses? He says it’s not because he was trying to be weak, but he says, “in order that the power of Christ may dwell within me.” So if he’s boasting of his weaknesses, it’s not because he wants to be weak, but it’s so that he has the power that comes from God Himself in him, and that’s the paradox. St Paul’s an extremely effective apostle, but he says it doesn’t come because of his strength, but it becomes from his weaknesses, which opens him up to letting the power of Jesus Christ act within him. Then he says, “Therefore, I am content with weaknesses.” He gives a list here and weaknesses that could be like physical illnesses and the experience of growing old and all of that, he says, insults too. Insults not just weaknesses, but insults which are so painful for us, hardships and all the hardships, all the lacks we experience, whether it’s like financially or in relationships, or all those, all those hardships, lacks. Persecutions, all the persecutions and of and especially, I think in this very it was just so much corruption which is penetrated into the Church. There’s a lot of persecutions of those who are trying to be faithful. And he says, constraints. And St Thomas says, in that word can be all the interior struggles, maybe depression and sadness, and all the different, all the different spiritual struggles that a person can be experiencing, and part of that is from satan, all the ways that satan can be attacking, it’s struggles with mental illness and all sorts, all these interior struggles, he says, So why? How could he be happy? How could he be content with all that? It’s not because of the thing itself. Now he gives the secret, he says, “For the sake of Christ.” So it’s not that St Paul is a masochist, but it’s because for the sake of Christ. And then he says, “because when I am weak, then I am strong. When I recognize my weakness and open myself humbly to the action of the Holy Spirit, that’s when I can have divine power.” And St Therese said, “I know well that it is not my great desires that please God in my little soul. What He likes to see is the way I love my littleness and my poverty,” my littleness and my poverty, “it is my blind hope in His mercy. This is my only treasure. The weaker one is without desires or virtues.” That’s pretty surprising, right? “The weaker one is,” this is St. Therese, “without desires or virtues,” The more ready one is, because even virtue, so we should try to be virtuous, but the danger is, what can our virtues cause? Pride. So that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to be virtuous, but it means we have to be careful of the greatest sin of pride. So she says, “the weaker one is without desires or virtues. The more ready one is for the operations of this consuming and transforming love. God rejoices more in what He can do in a soul humbly resign to its poverty.” So do you feel spiritually poor sometimes? Do you ever read a book about saints and think, Wow, I’m so far from what they are, and so I’m just going to shut this book, forget about it. He says, No. He says, “God can do more, in a soul humbly resigned to its poverty.” So if my reaction to that is instead of giving up, it’s using it to grow in humility. He says “God rejoices more in what He can do in a soul humbly resigned through its poverty, than in the creation of millions of suns in the vast stretches of the heavens.” And so in our country right now, where probably Christianity has never seemed so weak as it does right now in our country. But instead of losing hope, and even in the Church, it seemed like the Catholic Church feels so weak, and I think it is an extremely weak state. But instead of that causing us to lose hope, it’s the opportunity for us to make an act of divine faith, of divine trust in God. And I wanted to share with you two little passages of a message. This was the message that Lord gave to one of our community members. But I think it’s true for a lot of us. He says, The Lord says, we leave each of you, each one of us community members weak. So that’s a good, encouraging, inspiring message, right for the that’s what that we should use that for our recruitment. We leave each of you weak vulnerable, so that our work be hidden until the hour. So another reason is to hide His work so that hide it even from our own selves. And this was a message from because the Lord gave this to us in a in our community retreat that we made in 21, in 2021. And during that community retreat so Sister would often get messages for us during the community retreat, and this message was from whom. Who do you think gave this message? It was from St Michael, the Archangel, St Michael. And so here’s that passage. He says, “My brothers, in this work, do not be afraid.” So you weren’t expecting to hear from St Michael today, right? So that’s a little surprise. “My brothers in this work, do not be afraid nor worried about your poverty, your inadequacy, your weakness, your woundedness,” because that’s what we have, the mission Divine Mercy, have poverty and inadequacy, weakness and woundedness. He says, “I am neither the greatest nor the most beautiful angel created, nor one of the greatest ranks.” Who was the greatest Angel created? Lucifer, who became satan. “And yet to me was entrusted the command of all the heavenly host. I felt as you do, vastly incompetent,” vastly incompetent. How do I feel? Vastly incompetent? So I’m glad to know that St Michael felt that too. “But with the bestowing of the work, so there was the bestowing of the grace to be able to fulfill it. It descended into the center of my being, and as a flame, it ignited in me the great cry of battle. Who is like God, who is like our God, to rally all the faithful angels and to fulfill the work entrusted to us.” So he’s saying that God chose to respond to the pride of the most sublime of all the angels who had become satan. It was this humble little Archangel who became the one with this mission to lead. “The same grace shall descend into you, my brothers, at the appointed time, and you will rise fearless and with full vigor to begin your true missions. What you live now is real too, but hidden it is the preparation for the full manifestations of your mission.”  And so to conclude this.  So this passage of St Paul is making us aware of the danger of attributing God’s graces to ourselves, and why God permits trials and weaknesses, even attacks and temptations of the evil one to help us be humble and open. And so in this holy Eucharist, with our Blessed Mother, we can offer to God the very things which discourage us. We say, I can never be holy. I can never be virtuous, because I have this and this and this problem, this poverty, this weakness. It’s precisely that which can open the door to God’s action. So this is a very hopeful message for all of us. Nobody can say, Well, I’m just too weak, too lousy. No, this is for all of us. So I’ll just end by reading this, this passage of St Paul.  “The Lord said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness, I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and constraints, for the sake of Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Amen. 

KEYWORDS / PHRASES:
2 Corinthians 12:1-4
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Mark 6:1-6