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<TITLE>Byzantine Catholic Priest: the Homilies of Father J. Michael Venditti</TITLE>
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		<td valign=top width=20%><p align=right><font face="Lydian BT" color=#7c6262 size=+1>The buffet is closed.<p align=right>Rom. 10:1-10;<br>Matt. 8:28-9:1.<p align=right>The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost.<p align=right><small>The Holy Unmercenary Healers & Wonder-workers, Cosmas & Damian.</small></font><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><font face="Lydian BT"  color=#7c6262 size=-1><p align=right>Return to <a href="index.htm">ByzantineCatholicPriest.com</a>.</font></td>		

		<td align=right valign=middle width-80%><font face="Lydian BT"><p align=justify>12:58 PM 7/1/2012 —

<blockquote><p align=justify>Brethren, my hearts desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to the truth.  For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.  For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes (Romans 10: 1-4).</blockquote>

<p align=justify>Those words are from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which we just had chanted to us very ably by the cantor.  I don’t know how closely you pay attention to the singing of the Epistle.  Probably not too much because I rarely preach on it.  Unfortunately, the translation used in our Epistle Book is far from the best; but in this case, it's just plain wrong, as the New American Bible continually translates the words Φεοû δικιοσúνην as "God's justice" or "God's justification," when what they really mean are "God's mode of action," that is, God's holiness and his plan of salvation as promised to man; in other words, "God's Truth."  By translating them banally, the NAB has completely watered-done what St. Paul is saying, which is a problem because these particular words from Romans are very timely for us, and touch on a subject we’ve discussed from time to time.*

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;This came to my mind some time ago while watching television, and this is another story I've told you before.  I was watching this show—which you’ve probably seen—called “CSI,” and this particular episode had a priest in it.  And at the end of the episode the protagonist says to the priest, “Well, I believe in God; I just don’t believe in a religion that tells me how to live.”  And naturally the response of the priest is inadequate because he’s not a real priest, he’s a Hollywood priest; and Hollywood priests never give adequate answers because Hollywood doesn’t want them to.  I’m sure you remember the show “M*A*S*H” which also had a priest in it.  But the priest in that show was such a mealy-mouthed milquetoast of a man—hardly a man at all, really—that the amoral and immoral secularism of the other characters seemed almost noble by comparison. And that was by design.

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;The protagonist in this episode of “CSI” was expressing exactly the attitude that St. Paul is warning against in the passage from Romans we just heard: in other words, they think they’re religious—they think they believe in God—but not according to the truth, because you don’t make up the truth for yourself; you find the truth in God’s word.  St. Paul then goes on to make it even clearer: “For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.  For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.”  What St. Paul is talking about is this practice, that’s just as common today as it was in the First Century, of calling yourself a religious person and a believer in God, except the God you believe in and the religion you claim to practice are ones that you made up for yourself.

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;This can be expressed in many ways.  One of the most common is when you’re involved in a discussion about something like abortion or gay marriage or anything to do with Christian doctrine on how to behave, and someone will say, “Well, that doesn’t sound very Christian.”  Says who?  The word “Christian” should have something to do with what was said and taught by Jesus Christ, shouldn’t it?  Remember our Lord’s conversation with the woman at the well in Samaria?  When he asks to meet her husband, she tells him she has no husband, and he says, “You’re right. In fact, you’ve had five husbands, and the fellow you’re with now, number six, you didn’t even bother to marry.”  In other words, he calls her a lose woman, because that’s what she is.  Now, if you’re standing there listening to this conversation, what are going to do?  Walk up to our Lord and tell him he’s not Christian? He’s Christ!  He defines “Christian.”

<br><img src="newman-ermin.jpg" align=right hspace=15 vspace=5>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;When you’re at the Old Country Buffet and you’re walking along and you take some fried chicken and you take some macaroni and cheese, but you pass on the grilled liver because that just looks nasty, that’s OK, because it’s only food.  But when you do that with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the teaching of the Church which he established, you put your soul in peril.  If I choose to belong to a Church, but I decide that I’m only going to accept those teachings of that Church that I personally approve of and agree with, then what is it I really believe in other than myself?  Why do I even bother with the whole idea of organized religion at all?  Why don’t I just go and start my own religion for myself that only teaches those things I believe in?

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;We've spoken here many times about Cardinal Newman, the Victorian era Englishman who became a Catholic and a priest, and, toward the end of his life, was made a Cardinal by Pope Leo XIII, and who was recently beatified by Pope Benedict.  Not long after Newman’s conversion to Catholicism, he wrote a very famous letter to the Duke of Norfolk on the subject of conscience, responding to the Duke’s assertion that Catholics demeaned themselves by submitting their intellects to the teaching of the Church.  And Newman responded by saying: If I believe that the Church was established by Christ himself and is guided by the Holy Spirit, why is it demeaning to me to presume that the Holy Spirit is wiser than I am?  It would be like the brush telling the artist what he should paint.

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;This is exactly what St. Paul is talking about in our Epistle when he comments on the attitude of some of the Roman Christians: “For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God” (read "seeking to establish their own truth, have not submitted to the Truth of God").  They don’t know the truth, they don’t want to know the truth, they make up their own truth and call it Christianity; but it isn’t, because only God decides what’s true.

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Now, does this mean that we, in our fallen nature, are condemned to live out our lives with this perpetual tension between our desires and what Christ teaches us?  To a certain extend, yes; but that’s not the whole story, because we haven’t been left to face life alone.  Christ did not simply throw teachings at us and leave us to our own devices.  He gave us a Church, he gave us Holy Mysteries and Sacraments, which in turn give us grace, not only grace to help us do what’s right, but also grace to absolve us when we fail and do what’s wrong—and as many times as is necessary.  Why?  For the very reason that St. Paul explains in the very first sentence of today’s Epistle: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.”  Christ did not set things up the way he did because he wanted to play some cruel trick on us, so he could sit back and get some malicious pleasure out of watching us try to follow all of his rules.  He set things up the way he did so that we could be saved, and that we could do it without surrendering that freedom of will that makes us human beings.  Take temptation out of the world and you would essentially make us all robots.  No one would do anything wrong; but there would be no joy in doing anything right, either.  What’s the point of being saved if there’s nothing to be saved from?

<br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;And this is where everything dissolves to the question of faith; which, as we discussed many times, is a gift, but a gift that must be actively received.  St. John Chrysostom, commenting on today’s Epistle, says that there are among us a lot of people who seem to be religious and who claim righteousness; but they do not have righteousness because they are not united with the person of Christ in faith.  St. Paul, in the very last sentence of today’s Epistle, says: “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.  For with the heart one believes to righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made to salvation.”  Not to suggest that all we have to do is say we believe and we’ll be saved.  That’s what the Protestants believe.  No.  But our faith has to be in Christ, not in ourselves.  And our lives must be lived according to what Christ says is right, not what we think is right.

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<p align=center><font size=+2 face="Mistral">Father Michael Venditti
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<blockquote><font face="Lydian BT"><p align=justify>* Strictly speaking, translating δικιοσúνην as "justice" or "justification" could be justified (no pun intended) in the context of a classical interpretation of the word "justify" which understands that any act of God is correct and true because God is both the author and standard of correctness and truth—indeed, God himself is Truth. Nevertheless, since the New American Bible (NAB) is specifically directed toward an American readership, the translators should have taken into account the peculiar meaning these words have in our culture, in which "justice" refers not to truth, but to retribution, restoration and punishment, and in which "justification" is a maxim of Calvinist Protestant theology. It is for this very reason that the Revised Standard Version (RSV) translates δικιοσúνην as "righteousness" rather than "justice" or "justififcation," a rendering which is both accurate and preserves exactly what St. Paul meant without causing confusion among Americans, whose interpretation of of the word "justice" is hampered by the baggage of social theory.</blockquote>

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