HOLY WAY OF LIFE
Father Thomas Mailloux CSB always began his Masses with the words, Brothers and sisters, we are called to a holy way of life. These are stirring words. They embrace, they reach out, they speak to the heart. When I first heard them as a parishioner of St. Anne Catholic Church in Houston, TX I knew the truth in my heart.
We are called to a holy way of life. This thought crystallizes for me the meaning of the Christian life. To say brothers and sisters explains much about the pronoun “we”. To say “we” means that one must include himself. But not merely his own family or friends. We means you and I.
HOW HARD TO SEE CLEARLY
But not merely our own particular families and friends. Still less does it mean one’s own exclusive rat pack. By saying brothers and sisters, Father Mailloux reminded everyone that the “family of faith” in Jesus Christ enjoys a sacred reality above and beyond that of any earthly family. For blood relationships—like all things in this present world—are passing away. For as St. Paul has written, “When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away”. [1Cor 13:9]
We know what the apostle is talking about when he says, “for now we see in a mirror dimly” and “then face to face”. [1Cor 13:12] He’s talking about human beings who are flesh and blood, and how hard it is for us to see things clearly. Even God’s own Spirit is restrained from giving us perfect spiritual sight while we are in the flesh and prone to sin.
“KEEP IT” AND “DO IT”
But we are taught by Christ what we must do. And Our Lord is emphatic that the “family of faith” receives the greater blessings from God:
A WOMAN in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!" But he said, "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" [Lk 11:27-28]
And in another instance, while Jesus was teaching in the midst of a crowd in the village of Capernaum, his mother Mary and his brothers arrived unexpectedly from Nazareth. When he was told, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you”, he replied, "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." [Lk 8:19-21]
GOD’S VOICE IS FIRST MUSIC
Now we may understand clearly what Father Mailloux meant. He used the word “we” to refer to all persons everywhere who desire to be brothers and sisters of each other. Of course, this cannot be accomplished by blood (tribal) relationships. Only the Spirit of God has the power to create the “family of faith” into which we have all been called.
The words “we are called” are extraordinarily important. We, all of us, are called by God and no other. We may have restless hearts (cf. St. Augustine) or burdens that overwhelm us, but it is God who calls. God’s voice is the first music heard in the hearts of men and women everywhere who search for him. No one is drawn to God to live in loneliness and isolation.
RECEIVED BY ADOPTION
Every person is called by God to be an actively participating brother or sister in God’s “family of faith”. And not merely to one another in the human realm. We are known as “brother” or “sister” first and foremost our father in heaven has received us by adoption into his heavenly mansion—the family of faith—precisely because of our Lord Jesus Christ through his saving passion, death and resurrection on our behalf.
We are brother and sister in Christ, because Jesus pleads pardon for us unceasingly as our eternal High Priest. He, the God-man, fully human and fully divine, possesses the authority to name his follower brother, to name his follower sister. We are his family members—mother, brother, sister—if we “hear the word of God and keep it”, if we “hear the word of God and do it”.
RECEIVING ONE AS BELOVED
All of this is encompassed in the word, friend. This common word takes on uncommon meaning when one receives into his heart another person whom he has come to know in a way, quite beyond his own powers to accomplish anything, as beloved. We must take to heart the life-changing words of Jesus:
NO LONGER do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. [Jn 15:15]
Kinship in Christ consists in this: "Not that we loved God but that he loved us". [1Jn 4:10] If one must speak at all, it is far better to venture Jesus calls me friend, because this puts the emphasis on Christ where it belongs. Jesus calls me friend reminds me that his friendship is a gift, a manifestation of grace I can never earn by my own merits or cleverness or distillation. Christ will never offer his friendship to me as a thing or title or magnet. He will always offer his friendship to me as grace.
A SHARE IN THE DIVINE LIFE
Christ wills friendship with me into reality. His grace is the power that sustains it. Indeed, I should hasten to clarify that grace is a share of the divine life of the Holy Trinity itself. Grace is the continual outpouring of divine friendship (reality) from Christ to those faithful brothers and sisters whom he and he alone names as friends.
“But I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." [Jn 15: 15] What Christ continually offers is what I always should be conscious of receiving, in fact, living out.
NOT THE PEER OR EQUAL OF CHRIST
I say receiving to mean life-giving. Grace is the down-payment of God's gift of salvation by which our mortal humanity can be made immortal. God gives grace to me for the express purpose of drawing me into relationship with him and sustaining me in his friendship. No aspect of my humanity has power to accomplish this. No object or shiny thing in my possession can summon it.
Grace is the life-blood of friendship with Christ. By grace, the Lord calls me to be his brother or sister, yet categorically not his peer or equal. The fact that I have been adopted into the household of God as son or daughter does not privilege me to go eye-to-eye with the Son of the Eternal Father--either to God's face or behind his back. Nor may I walk away from him as if I had never met him.
LIGHT OF TRUE SILENCE
We need to prostrate ourselves before the Lord Jesus in sorrow for our most grievous unworthiness. Because overwrought tongues and under-worked minds are to be silent before the Lord who, if he were hungry, would not tell them. [cf. Psa 50:12] Before one can open his soul to receive the Will and Truth of Christ, however, he will have to turn off the overheated motors driving his own will and words. Bonum est praestolare cum silentio salutare Dei. (It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of God.)
In the unfamiliar light of true silence in my soul, what does the Lord say? If you love me, you will obey me. "For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments." [1Jn 5:3] What is service to Christ but the perfection of my obedience to his will and truth? To prefer his will and truth is to choose Christ himself and to cherish the relationship he graciously deigns to share with me.
SAY, JESUS CALLS ME FRIEND
Therefore the proof of friendship with Christ is evidenced when one continually receives God's will and truth and puts them into action. "Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother", says the Lord. [Mk 3:35] Take care, therefore, not to trivialize your friendship with Christ. Avoid saying, Jesus is my friend. This is the stuff of human pride. Strive to say, Jesus calls me friend. This is the substance of divine-human love.
SHORT CREDO
Father Thomas Mailloux’s invocation for Mass can be understood as a short credoencapsulating truths of our Christian faith. As brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not wandering around. We have somewhere to go. We are called by God to God who is holy and whose divine attribute of holiness encompasses all others known and unknown.
Thus, the “family of faith” is on a journey of faith, one that leads to the Father and to the Son who sits at his right hand in glory. But we are not alone. The family of faith is a bodyand the head of the body is Christ. Thus the savior whom we seek is the savior who leads us to his heavenly father and to himself.
WHERE CHRIST LOVES TO DWELL
Going somewhere is not enough if we are not prepared for a journey, sustained along the way, or worthy of the company of the one whom we seek. We must not only “keep” and “do” God’s holy Word. We must “go” to God who is holy and “be” holy ourselves. It is God who declared to our ancestors in faith, “For I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.” [Lev 11:44] To this very thought, Jesus Christ commends his brothers and sisters to take action: “If you would enter life, keep the commandments.” [Mt 19:17]
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to a holy way of life! We must purify ourselves by allowing God’s Spirit to make our heart a holy place where Christ loves to dwell, a home he furnishes with beautiful things, his love, his friendship, his truth, the virtues of faith, hope and love, and above all these, a dwelling worthy of the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and the divine family of the most Holy Trinity.
PREFERABLY WITH SOMEONE WHO LOVES US
The apostle Paul has written that Jesus Christ was “designated Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holinessby his resurrection from the dead”. [Rom 1:4] Therefore, we must take to heart the “grace and apostleship” that we have received as the Body of Christ—
. . . TO BRING about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ. [Rom 1:5-6]
The only way that we may be sure of a grasp on reality is to share with someone else, most preferably with someone who loves us. [Thomas Aquinas “whatever is real in nature is placed between two knowing agents” qtd. in JOSEF PIEPER, AN ANTHOLOGY. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989. 96. Print.]
GRACED TOGETHER TO SEE
Our ability to see things as they really are depends on this. As much as one may try, merely human relationships—those in the flesh—are capable only of helping us to see things dimlyand to know things only partially. [cf. 1Cor 13:12]
But when that someone else is a beloved sister or brother in the family of faith—and named as friend by Jesus Christ—they may, in the words of St. Paul, be graced together to see God “face to face” and to understand fully, even as God fully understands them. This is what it means to walk in the light as a child of the light. [cf. 1Jn 1:7; Eph 5:8]
