20th Sunday in Course 2015
Wisdom has set up her seven pillars. In ancient architecture, pillars were the support of the roof, which protected the household. You’ve heard the names of these pillars, because they are the support of what protects us, individually and as a community. Why seven? In the Hebrew, seven is shevah, derived from savah, which is a word for completion, perfection. There are seven because that is enough. We call these pillars, in our individual lives, gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are the gifts God gives us to help us become the best versions of ourselves. Their names are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.
Today I want to share with you some thoughts about the gift of counsel. Remember, these gifts bring some natural trait to perfection. Counsel perfects the virtue of prudence. It is prudence that enables us to judge what we should do in a difficult situation, what is right and what is wrong. Then fortitude is the perfect courage that enables us to actually do the difficult good, or say “no” to the easy evil. That’s because the easy path often leads to sin, guilt, shame and death. That’s the worst version of myself, and of your self.
St. Paul is not known for political correctness. But his words are exactly what we need to hear today. Our times are evil, just as his were. In fact, these times may be more evil, because we now have governments telling us that goodness is evil and evil is good. We have to exercise wisdom at every moment, because every secular influence seems to lead us down the wrong path. The will of the Lord is directed only toward our good. When God defined marriage as one man and one woman committed to each other for life, for mutual support and the procreation of children, He did that because it is best for the man, the woman, the children and society as a whole. When God made our reproductive systems, He designed them perfectly for that kind of family. How do we know this? Because whenever we have tinkered with that perfect design, with that wonderful starship to heaven, the ship has crashed. Divorce, adultery, premarital sex, homosexual deviance, in-vitro fertilization, contraception and abortion have each contributed to the unholy mess that Western civilization has fallen into.
So let’s put on our wisdom cap for a few minutes and consider what happens when we don’t listen to the words of St. Paul, and the consistent teaching of the Church. Let’s zero in on the top five party schools, as listed on a popular website: Tulane in New Orleans, UC Santa Barbara, University of Georgia, Ohio University and the University of Iowa. What does it mean to be a party school? St. Paul saw it almost two thousand years ago, “getting drunk, leading to debauchery.” That’s students in their late teens and early twenties illegally drinking beer and wine and hard spirits, using psychotropic drugs, and using the marital act outside marriage. At best, it leads to ferocious hangovers. At worst, it brings STD’s, pregnancy, and the murder of not-born children. In every case, it leads to faces that, in biblical language, “blush with shame.” Science tells us why it is particularly wrong to do this at that age: the frontal lobe, where we make our decisions, doesn’t develop fully until our mid-twenties. And alcohol and drugs mess with the development of that decision-making center. So you make a bad decision, a self-destructive decision, and its effect on your brain leads you to make worse decisions.
I’ll tell you a story that I wish I hadn’t heard, and probably shouldn’t have heard when I did. It was over twenty years ago, I was waiting in a family waiting area in a local hospital for the results of a family member’s surgical procedure. A young man was in one corner, and a middle-aged couple was on the other side of the room. A surgeon in scrubs came out to talk to the couple, who I realized were the mother and father of the girl the doctor had operated on. The young man stood off to the side, and he had a face that was laden with shame. The doctor explained the results of the girl’s surgery, and with my scientific education I knew what had happened. The boy had given their daughter a disease that had attacked her reproductive system and, after the surgery, left her forever unable to bear children. I will never forget the looks on their faces. What tragedy came from what we today call a “hookup.” But maybe “hookup” is the right word for it, when a boy and a girl treat each other like objects, like two cattle cars on a rail line.
God made each of you, like me, in His own image and likeness. He gives us infinite dignity, and blesses that dignity with supernatural virtue through our baptism and our coming together in the Eucharist. We have organs that are called genitals for a reason–they are given us for the generation of life. They are sacred, like the vessels of life that the priest and deacon administer on the altar. Now we wouldn’t use the paten that holds the Sacred Host like a Frisbee ®, would we? It’s not a toy. Within the sacrament of matrimony, our sexual faculties are sacred instruments. They are bridges of unification between two people, a man and woman, bringing them together in lifelong marital fidelity. They are not toys. Moreover, they are bridges between generations, between husband and wife and their children. If in any way we treat these sacred vessels as toys, we are abusing them, and abusing ourselves and each other. Like all abusive action, it may feel good for a little while, but its inevitable result is remorse, alienation, spiritual and physical illness, and death.
Opposed to this kind of abuse is God’s wisdom. With the virtues of prudence–capped by counsel–and temperance–capped by fortitude, we will spend our energies building our families and the family of God. Instead of drunkenness, we share the cup of salvation, the Blood of Christ. We are filled with the Holy Spirit, and realize our dignity as children of God by singing enthusiastically the psalms and hymns of the Mass and Divine Office. The culmination of this divine service is the Consecration and communion in the Body and Blood of Christ. For only His presence in our hearts and minds and souls and bodies can enable us to become the best versions of ourselves, to make this human family a truly divine community.
So if you want to know how to occupy your spare time, build up your spirit and mind and body with a good book, a Catholic website, a family conversation about matters that are important to your family growth. Take your kids to one of the many cultural venues about the city, or make a pilgrimage to one of the missions, or the shrine of the Little Flower or Padre Pio. Get involved with Habitat for Humanity. Volunteer to help out with our religious education program. Ask your neighbors to buy a raffle ticket to help us pay off our $2 million debt. Join one of our choirs; volunteer as a cantor and learn to chant the psalms. Spend your time in these wholesome activities and you’ll have no time to get into trouble. When we work with the Holy Spirit to become the best versions of ourselves, we are asking God to remake us into the images of Jesus and Mary. Is there any better way to occupy our time, as we await the final summons to enter the everlasting embrace of the Father?
