Is Hate a Contradiction?

 The reason I write this is that our parish priest in his homily yesterday addressed something of interest.  The Scripture passage - the daily Mass reading from the Gospels, in this case Luke 14:26 - is a verse that talks about if you love Christ, you must "hate" your mother, father, children, spouse, self, etc.  Now, oddly, when you read the rest of Scripture (which Fr. JoseMaria, our priest, astutely pointed out) you are told to honor your mother and father, hate no one, etc.  Is this a contradiction?  That became the focus of Fr. JoseMaria's homily, and to be honest while I was listening to that a light clicked on in the deep recesses of my mind as if to scream "This makes sense!"  Now that those preliminary comments are the introduction, let's dive in. 

The word "hate" is often associated with things we morbidly hate, and in the case of people, it is tantamount to a death wish on our enemies when we say we hate them.   This is not the hate our Lord is talking about in this verse, and as our parish priest pointed out, this type of hatred has nothing to do with malicious or murderous intent, as you are not hating the person.  Rather, it means that the focus of our ultimate love and devotion must be to something greater, and if anything stands in the way of that, then it deserves to be abhorred, which is not the same as hatred.  You can love someone but also abhor what they do or stand for, in other words.  Therefore, you are not hating them as human beings, but rather you seek to distance yourself from a potential hindrance they may be causing you if it interferes with your faith.  When it is explained that way, it makes more sense, although the wording of Scripture here may be a bit confusing unless you understand the context of the passage within the whole.  Now, I will elaborate further.

Loving someone does not mean you have to like them, as some people are just downright disagreeable.  And, that can include some of our own family.  For instance, you have heard me talk about the attitudes of some of my family - to me, they are abhorrent, especially the tendencies of some late relatives to gossip and tear down others just because they get a sick pleasure from it.  I don't hate them in the sense of how hatred is understood, but I hate what they did, and due to some very wise counsel it was best I limit my contacts with those particular relatives.  I still have some cousins with attitudes like this, especially on my mother's branch of the family tree - they also treated her like this too, and she didn't have much to do with them either.  They are not people I would choose to be close with in other words, because their own attitude toward me would be toxic.  So, I stay away from them, simple as that.  And, this is kind of what Jesus was talking about in the Gospels when he said we should abhor those who seek to bring us down if they hinder our spiritual life and the flow of grace to us.  It is for our own good.  But, as I have also said before, forgiveness is still a factor too, and if some of them were to have a change of heart and mind and would seek to be better, then we extend that grace to them and give them forgiveness we seek.  Forgiveness, as I have said before, is like a gift - it is of no benefit unless the recipient accepts it.  However, like any gift, keep the offer open until they are ready to receive it, and that is called having an attitude of forgiveness. It is the same way with what Jesus is talking about in this context regarding "hating" - it does not mean that we hate their guts, but rather that we abstain from being around them if they present something toxic.  Let me give some other examples.

Let's say a boy comes of age, and he has a passion for a career.  However, his father is giving him opposition and is trying to hinder the boy from doing what makes him happy.  There is nothing wrong or immoral about what the boy wants to do, and he has a passion for it.  But the father is trying to micromanage him.  Finally, the boy has enough, and after a heated exchange with his father he decides he is going to do what he wants anyway.  Is the boy wrong?  Is he disrespecting his father?  The answer to both is no - the boy still loves his father, and just has a different outlook without totally rejecting his father but rather just his father's attitude about his own goals.  The boy in a sense is "abhorring" his father, but not coldly hating his guts, you see.  There comes those times when we have to establish boundaries with even those we love - we tell them we love them, we appreciate their input, but we also are capable of our own decisions too.  When it comes to matters of faith, it is even more intense.  Let's say a child who is raised in a Fundamentalist Baptist house - his dad may even be a pastor of a church - decides to begin to investigate the Catholic Church just out of curiosity.  In time, the kid likes what he sees, and after a long talk with a local priest, he decides it is time to "come home" to the Church.  Then, his father finds out - oh my goodness!  Keep in mind, if this kid's father is a fundamentalist Baptist pastor, a key "tradition of men" that this pastor is going to cling to is anti-Catholicism.  His dad may have preached sermons that the Pope is the antichrist, and a secret coalition of Jesuits, Freemasons, and other nefarious groups is plotting to take over the world and exterminate every fundamentalist on the earth.  To that father, it is as if his son just openly took the "mark of the Beast" and thus is eternally lost now.  The son, however, feels differently - perhaps for years he questioned his father's teachings, being as Mark Lowry so humourously said it, the typical Independent Baptist attitude is "I'm not always right, but I'm never in doubt!"  The son legitimately understands that he was probably getting only one side of the story from his preacher dad, and given God has gifted all of us with working brains, he began to start examining things for himself.  However, the preacher father invests more authority in himself than any historic Pope ever did, and for his son to "apostatize" like that is a betrayal.  Because the dad has such an unbending bias against anything even sounding "Catholic," the wiser course for the son to take is to say "You know what Dad, I love you, and I appreciate your convictions, but you are wrong, and if you cannot support my decision then I need to distance myself from you."  This is again what Jesus is saying - anything (or anyone) that hinders one's personal spiritual growth needs to be avoided.  The father would deny this with his son, although in practice he will be doing the same thing if he disowns his son (that has happened more often than not in strict fundamentalist Protestant households).  The son risks never seeing his dad again, and it is a big sacrifice to make to grow in his faith.  But, in the end he will see he made the wise choice, and these stories can also have more pleasant endings - the father may one day wise up and realize that maybe those "heathen Catholics" are not so bad after all, and perhaps just maybe they are actually fellow Christians too!  That being said, not every fundamental Baptist hates Catholics either - both Jerry Falwell and Jack van Impe were independent fundamental Baptists who had wonderful relationships with Catholics (Dr. van Impe was even a huge fan of the late Pope St. John Paul II).  And, even the controversial fundamentalist Baptist pioneer J. Frank Norris ended up forming a sort of alliance against Communism with Pope St. Pius X (I need to double-check if that is the right Pope too).  So, even fundamentalists are capable of reasonable thought too, provided their egos and their own biases don't cloud it.  So, change is possible, which now leads to the missing piece of the puzzle. 

When Jesus commanded us to "hate" some relatives, he did not say to do so in a literal, exterminating way.  Rather, he said that if they were a hindrance, we need to turn away from them - we still love them, and we pray for them, and if one day they come around we freely offer forgiveness and reconciliation with them.  This was really what the crux of Fr. JoseMaria's message was in yesterday's homily, and again, Scripture has given its eternal yet fresh wisdom on a topic that can easily appear confusing and contradictory on the surface.  So, rather than despising someone like that to the point you wish their death, you abhor their attitudes and distance yourself from them for your own mental and spiritual well-being.  I am even thinking of presenting this in some way to my 11th graders at some point during the year, as that is an important lesson for them too.  It means that although elders are to be respected, they are not perfect either and it is OK to differ with them where they are wrong.

I was not planning on writing again this soon, but I was sort of inspired by this and wanted to share it.  Thanks for allowing me to do so, and will see you next time. 

Feeling Old

 Does it ever seem like your mind doesn't want to catch up to your body?  At 55, I have been feeling it recently.  Just a couple of nights ago I woke up in the middle of the night with a pain in my leg that was just uncomfortable.  My first fear-addled thought was "Oh Lord, I have a blockage!"  A day later it wasn't quite as noticeable because it went as quickly as it came.  However, waking up out of a sound sleep with a charley horse in your calf is not the most pleasant experience.  There are facts we have to face, and I am realizing that more every day. 

A nice little proverb circulates out there now that tells us a fact of life - one in one dies.  Unless the Second Coming happens, dying is an inevitability we all will face.  At times though, we labor under the delusion of our own immortality, not realizing that our mind and body are having a difference of opinion with each other.  That whole 12-inch pizza you could polish off when you were 25?  Now, you are ready to explode after two slices because you get so full.  Also, that long walk that encompasses 12 blocks you could do without breaking a sweat at 22?  Now, climbing three stairs to your front door is a challenge.  I recall an episode of The Golden Girls several years back where Dorothy was regaling Rose with her day at the teacher's lounge where she was a substitute teacher.  She said that she was having a good time talking to a group of much younger teachers - she noted they were young and pretty, and then said "at that age you don't have to be pretty and you're pretty."  However, as Dorothy was driving home, she looked in her car mirror and said she saw this old woman staring back at her, and the comic effect was that Rose, ever the functional moron, said "who was it?"  It of course was Dorothy's reflection, and it was as if reality came rushing back at her like a 200-mile-an-hour freight train.  As most of us get older, we have those days like Dorothy did - we are feeling so good and then we catch a reflection in the mirror - oops!  A realization like that can do one of two things.  First, it can make you depressed for three weeks.  Second, it could force you to accept reality and maybe think about what you can do with your life at this point, as you still have life and don't want to waste it.  If any realization were to hit me, I would much rather it be the second.  And, that puts me in mind of what I was teaching my 11th graders this week.

The course I teach at the Jesuit high school in Baltimore I work at is called Sacraments and Morality, and a part of the Sacraments aspect of the class is understanding what the sacraments do for us.  For one, they dispense grace.  Secondly, they challenge us to live out our faith more fully, both to serve others as well as to fulfill what God instilled in us.  That is the whole point of passages in Scripture like Romans 12:4-5, as well as the whole chapter in Ephesians that deals with the spiritual gifts.  Whether we know it or not, we all have a purpose on this earth.  We may not live up to doing it, nor may we even feel like we have any value, but God creates us as individuals for a reason.  So, what does age have to do with this?  Let's talk about that a bit, shall we?

People think that when they reach a certain age, that is it - life is over, dreams die, and all we do now is just sit down and accept it.  However, is that the right approach?  Another stronger reality exists too, one I learned from reading Lawrence Welk's own story years ago in his book You're Never Too Young.  Welk, a devout Catholic who had accomplished a lot in his 90+ years on this earth, lived by a motto - work is integral to fulfillment, so do what you have passion about.  He wrote this in his late 70s, and it does speak to something.  No one is too old to fulfill their dreams, to find true love, and to have a fulfilling life.  On the contrary, it is important to keep oneself active, in mind and in body, because it improves quality of life.  And, sometimes, the opportunities to do certain things when we were younger were not there, and now that we have the time and resources, those same opportunities are now gift-wrapped at our feet - all we need to do is accept them and pursue them.  So, if a widower has another chance at love and happiness, let him do it (and widows too).  If a 60-year-old wants to earn a Ph.D. or even a Bachelor's degree, go for it.  As has been said many times, the most formidable obstacle in life is ourselves. If we can break the barrier we set up, then what lies ahead of us is one thing - possibility.  Again, one of my favorite phrases I heard from a preacher years ago is this - "your present position does not dictate your future potential." And, that includes age. That leads to another interesting thought.

I have heard folks say they cannot wait to retire, as all they were going to do was sleep until noon, and then sit in a chair vegetating all day.  It is easy to feel like that when you have a hectic schedule - I myself just wrapped up a very busy second week of the school year, and all I wanted to do was think about sleep when I got home.  Yet, it is almost 10 PM, and I am doing something I love to do - I am writing thoughts.  For most people, retirement is viewed one way until someone actually does retire, and then they almost go crazy with boredom so they have to do something.  Keeping the mind active in particular is a key factor, because an active mind will continue to stretch and challenge us.  So, keep in mind that before you start dreaming of a retirement where you lay like a drunk manatee on a beach in Florida somewhere, wait until that day actually comes.  After you spend what is probably going to be your last day at an office where you have worked for years, and you get emotional goodbyes from wonderful co-workers who also have become dear friends, you open the presents, eat the cake, and are in a pretty festive mood, then the next morning comes.  You may not feel it right away, but give it about a month and you will - you start feeling bored and restless.  You need to do something, but you are now retired - so what do you do?  This is where the value of hobbies, passions, and working to benefit others in a volunteer capacity come into the picture.  Those things give a new focus to life, and they may even open a new chapter.  So, don't let your brain hibernate when your pension starts - do something that you find fulfilling and stay active.  

This was a short reflection this week, but it was one that I am feeling immensely myself right now.  When you start reading obituaries and see a lot of people you have known over the years in them, it's time to think about your life and what it means to you.  As you do, hopefully you will find new purpose and make a difference.  Thanks again for allowing me to share. 

Summer Ends

 "The summer wind, comes blowing in, from across the sea..."  This old Frank Sinatra classic song from the mid-1960s is one of my favorites.  It is smooth, accented with organ legatos, and of course Sinatra's classic vocal.  While one usually thinks of this as a song at the beginning of summer, it seems as if the "summer wind" is blowing back out to the south from whence it came.  Today is September 1, and also Labor Day.  Although solstice summer ends in about 19 days, the summer season ends this weekend.  The timeframe between Memorial Day and Labor Day constitutes the classic summer season, as it is the peak time for schools being out, and family vacations.  Usually also, it is the day before the school year starts in many school districts, although in reality our school year where I teach started last week.  It begins a busy four-month countdown to the final days of the current year, and it means a very busy few months are ahead as summer slowly says its goodbye and we begin the slow trek to what will be in a short time the cold months of winter.  In between are holidays - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and a few other days of significance (including my own celebration of my birth, which will happen in November).  The last third of the year is generally perhaps the busiest, although each part of the year has its own significance too.  This is where we are.

I think back to when I was in school as a kid myself.  The approach of a new school year brought with it a cadre of mixed feelings.  I recall being excited with going back to school, with my 4th-grade year particularly coming to mind.  I recall that well.  It was the summer of 1979, and I had just finished up a chaotic third grade year at my dad's in Georgia and we had recently moved back in with my grandmother and step-grandfather in Augusta, WV.  Back then, they lived in an ancient farmhouse that had no indoor plumbing save a cold-water sink in the kitchen, and if you had to go to the bathroom, it was in the custom-built two-seater outhouse my step-grandfather had built just beyond the front door of the house, complete with carpet and a window to look out at the nearby slope of Short Mountain. My grandparents were the picture of Appalachian poor, and their house was an exemplification of that.  However, I did not let that deter me from the excitement of starting 4th grade that year.  I was back at Augusta Elementary School then, and had a couple of old friends I knew from a couple of years previous when we were in 2nd grade.  So, I had the big plan laid out - I spent a lot of the summer collecting an absurd arsenal of every school supply imaginable, and I would spend hours trying to organize it, including washing down my brand-new Trapper Keeper three-ring book with warm soap and water.  By the time the new school year rolled around, on my first day I looked like I was attending a nuclear summit as I even had a briefcase to carry everything in.  Of course, when the rigors of the school year would set in, a lot of that initial enthusiasm would fizzle out and the usual "Oh geez, school AGAIN??" attitude would manifest itself every morning, especially further along when winter really set in and I had to walk over a quarter of a mile to get to my bus stop. I would later find out that teachers had similar feelings, especially once I became a teacher myself. 

The idea of a school year has a pattern to it.  In the beginning is apprehension and excitement, which lasts until right after Christmas break when you start to feel burnout and apathy.  Then, around mid-April, when the traditional Spring Break happened, you are seeing the end in sight, and there are activities, testing, and other things to break up the usual routine.  Then comes the last day of school - you are both excited but also worn-out, and all you are thinking of is sleeping in until 10 AM the first day of summer break.  Summer then has its own course - you want to rest, then you get bored, but then you both dread and anticipate going back.  As mentioned, this pattern is true of both students and teachers - so if you are in school, let me assure you that the teachers in a lot of cases may share your feelings on a different level.  So, let's talk about summers a bit, shall we?

I went through 12 years of formative schooling (unless kindergarten is factored in, and then it is 13).  That means I had about 13 summers I experienced, each as different as the next, and there are many things I experienced in those summer months over the years.  During my high school years, my summers were generally good - I spent time at home creating new recipes for my burgeoning cooking interests, wildcrafting in the woods above our house then, and listening to a lot of good music.  And, church and the fact I was in the high school band then gave me a bit of a social life.  However, there were two summers I would rather forget, and let me tell you a bit about them.  The first was the summer of 1979.  I had spent the Spring in Georgia with Dad then, and when I came back I got my first taste of what bone-crushing poverty felt like.  At the time, Mom and I stayed at my grandfather's rowhouse on Schwartz Street in Martinsburg, WV, and Mom had no income, no hope for anything, and there were nights when the only entertainment we had was the PTL Network on TV and all I had to eat were fried corn cakes and my late step-grandmother's canned applesauce in the basement.  My grandfather at the time was spending a lot of his time up in Parsons, our hometown that was two hours away, courting the lady who would become my new step-grandmother, and she and Mom were not the best of friends.  So, we stayed there by ourselves, and things got very desperate after a while.  Eventually, Mom decided we had enough of living like that, so she made a call to my grandmother in Augusta, and a few hours later they came in my uncle Junior's souped-up car and loaded up what we could, and we went back with them.  But, that started what was probably the most intense 8 years of my life, as I would taste poverty for many of those years until Mom finally landed some good work as a live-in caretaker for a couple of elderly folks and our lives stabilized.  Before that happened, 1979's summer was bookended by 1985, six years later, when we were in similar dire straights and our survival was based at that point on biscuits made from scratch and vegetables jacked out of the neighbors' gardens.  That six-year period - roughly from July 1979 to August 1985 - was a time of having to grow up fast for me, and in time my school actually became less of a burden and more of a diversion from the rather bleak life I had at home.  Again though, I survived all that, and in doing so I also would later rise past it as my life became more stable as a young adult. 

I share that little snippet of my personal history to say that summers can be good or bad, depending on perspective.  Likewise, a new school year can be good or bad depending on the same factors.  I have had the good and bad of both, and the good thing is that they are just seasons of life - they come, they go, and then new challenges arise later.  Without sounding like a lame line from The Lion King, it is a sort of circle of life that revolves around the yearly changes in seasons and what those entail, and we grow from the experience.  God sometimes allows some negative for our own growth, and I have learned that much like I learned everything else in retrospection.  But we do learn, we grow, and we move on, and that is just living life as God gifts us with it. 

For those of my readers who are students or teachers, may we all have a great school year ahead, and let's try to keep the bigger picture in focus, especially on those days when apathy and dread of the daily grind get to us.  Thanks again, and look forward to next time.