Shaken, Not Affirmed

About fifteen years ago I was driving to work and came inches from being sideswiped at an intersection. I'm sure my Guardian Angel was working a double that day. When I got into my office it took me an hour or so to calm down--I was visibly shook up from almost being T-boned; my day could have looked very different were something not have stopped me at that intersection before pulling out. Death smelled my cologne, but I was still here. Everything seemed brighter that day.

It occurred to me  that I can't for the life of me remember the last time I came out of Mass feeling that way. And that's an indictment, not a positive. I have never heard a homily from the pulpit that stayed with me, that I couldn't shake, that kept me up at night. Most of what we hear every Sunday and Holy Day is safely forgettable. Why waste your time reading an easily forgettable book; you want one that you throw across the room. 

I don't know why that is apart from the fact that it is easier to deliver middle-road sermons--just enough to make us pause for a moment while still allowing us off the hook so that we don't have to actually change when we leave Mass, all the while avoiding any blow back from parishioners that might not like what you have to say.  

I remember a friend and fellow member of our parish telling me he went to a retreat that Fr. Isaac Mary Relyea was doing at the local Society chapel. He went because his wife told him he should go. He hadn't been to Confession in over thirty years, and yet the opportunity presented itself at this retreat and he moseyed into the confessional. Fr. Isaac reemed him a new one--and it was precisely what he needed to be awoken from his self-assured slumber. He's straight on the narrow now. He got shaken, not affirmed.

In the car on the way home from a friend's house today I had the scriptures on audio as I do when I'm driving. I was listening to the Letter to the Hebrews and the Lord spoke thus,

 

For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth; and he scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.

Persevere under discipline. God dealeth with you as with his sons; for what son is there, whom the father doth not correct?

But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons.

Moreover we have had fathers of our flesh, for instructors, and we reverenced them: shall we not much more obey the Father of spirits, and live?

And they indeed for a few days, according to their own pleasure, instructed us: but he, for our profit, that we might receive his sanctification.

Now all chastisement for the present indeed seemeth not to bring with it joy, but sorrow: but afterwards it will yield, to them that are exercised by it, the most peaceable fruit of justice.

Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees,

And make straight steps with your feet: that no one, halting, may go out of the way; but rather be healed. 

(Heb 12:7-13, DRV)

And verses 26-28 (in the KJV version, which is all the library had for the NT):

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

When Christ expired, the temple was shaken and torn in two. This is what should happen to our souls and consciences at the Holy Sacrifice, by the nature of the sacrifice and the Word, but also by the sermon from the pulpit which is usually nothing but a wasted opportunity to burn and sear the sheep. 

Priests typically see their flock for an hour once a week, and they have ten minutes within that hour to reset a wayward trajectory--and 99% of the time, they let it fall fallow. They let the hands of the parishioners stay comfortably in the lap, rather than shake them so that their hands drop and their knees go feeble (v. 12). Without chastisement, you have no true father--you are a bastard (v. 8). 

I don't care what it is, use it--the sin of contraception, fornication, co-habitation, presumption, receiving Communion in a state of mortal sin, lack of Confession, gossip--there's no shortage of comfortable sins 90% of Catholics are sitting like babies in a warm pool in. Most of your flock are affirmed and gently cajoled and asleep at the wheel careening off a spiritual cliff getting ready to be ejected from the mouth of the Lord (Rev 3:16). For God's sake, use that ten minutes to shake and beat them like a true father. If they are walking out the same way they came in, you are not doing your job, or at least not all of it. 

I make the analogy that since so many people are blind and asleep, you need to throw cold water in their face to shock them, then split em open. When the temple is torn in two, lob the seed of the Gospel in with the might of your arm so that it drops down in a deep recess. When they come to and are sewn back up by the world, that seed is going to sprout from somewhere deep--it may not be that day or that year, but when God calls it forth. Your job is not to sprout the seed--it's to rototill with your sermon, split the earth and sow in the furrow. 

Be a father; don't tell them what they want to hear, or what won't rock the boat, or what will keep the donations flowing. Split them open, shake the hell out of them, let them leave. We get enough affirmation from the world, we don't need it from the pulpit. You shake them now so that they will not be shaken later. For the Lord will remove those things that are shaken, that those things that can not be shaken will remain (Heb 12:27).