If earth were to be visited by a Martian, our visitor would soon discover this
secret. It would start as he examined us. He would see the human body and
recognize that the body was made in duplicate: He would note the arm on the
left and the arm on the right, the leg on the left and the leg on the right.
How odd—it’s duplicated! He would even note the same number of fingers and the
same number of toes, same on the right, same on the left. He would see twin
eyes and twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. Logically,
he would take it as a law: man is in duplicate. And so, where he found a heart
on one side, the Martian would logically deduce that there was another heart on
the other side.
And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.
“How odd,” he would say to himself once more, discovering that there is only
one heart and that it is on the left. “How… mysterious.”
The Catholic Faith shares in this same secret and it is seen in many of her
teachings. We see it in the 10 Commandments, for example. To an outside
observer, the 10 Commandments would be odd. Knowing the importance of God to
the Catholic religion, and being logical, the observer would first note the
symmetry of the two tablets on which the Commandments were written. He would
expect them, then, to be divided down the middle: five commandments on one
side, five on the other. But he’d soon discover that there’s three on one side
and seven on the other. How odd.
Now, it would seem most logical
that since God is most important and our duties to him are greatest, then the
seven commandments on the one side would be entirely devoted to God while the
other three would be for our dealings with neighbor. But we know that the
opposite is true: God only commands three things pertaining to himself; the
seven pertain to our neighbor. How odd!
The outside observer could say the same about tithing. If things were
completely logical and symmetric, then when the Lord asks us to give to others,
we would expect that he would command that 50% be given to him and 50% given to
our neighbor. Or, better for us, that 50% be given to God and others while we
keep the other 50%. That would seem logical and fair. But God tells us to give
90-10. This strikes the observer as odd—because, once more, since God is most
important and all that we have comes from him, the observer would be logical in thinking that God was
asking us to give 90% to God. But here’s the oddity:
the 90% goes to us. God just wants the 10. (Odder still, however, is how the
10% quickly feels like 90%).
Yes, the whole host of the Church’s teaching has this paradox of being entirely
logical and yet, like the human heart, an inch off to the left.
Jesus is fully God and yet fully man. How odd!
He fully died. And fully rose.
Eucharist is fully Jesus’ body and blood, but not at all bread or wine—even
though the appearances are fully so. Odd
indeed!
Discovering these oddities for the first time is like a Martian that discovers
that the human heart is not in duplicate, but just left of center. There is a
mystery there that is not entirely logical. It is a secret irregularlity.
Our world does not want to admit of the secret irregularities. It wants
everything to be logical and clean and neat, fitting into a nice little system
of fairness and equality. But the human body is itself an irregularity and
inequality. Even the shape of the globe is irregular: it is not perfectly
round, but mountainous here, flat there, and bulging at the equator, not
equally dispersed with land and water.
Only in the teachings of the Catholic Church do we see the marriage of clearly
deduced and logical truths with the support of those truths that are oddly
irregular—those truths that don’t make sense at first observation, but which
require deeper investigation, like the human heart on the left side of the body
and not the right.
And only in the discovery of this grand secret, to expect the unexpected and to
be rewarded for it, is there unparalleled joy. We see it in the Gospel today.
John cries out “It is the Lord!” In
this cry of joy, not only has he pointed out the reality of the resurrected
Christ, he has also given the cry of anyone who has discovered the secret of
the universe—like a Martian who discovers the mystery of the human heart.
Peter’s response is classic. It is the response of anyone who discovers the
beauty of the Catholic faith: he tears off everything and jumps in, going
straight to the Lord. To the outside observer, this is very odd. Foolish, even.
But that’s the secret irregularity of love. It is mostly logical, but sometimes
foolish. Anyone in love knows this strange paradox.
The problem with the world today in its quest
for the neat and the clean, the systematic and the purely logical, the fair and
the equitable, is that the world flattens the adventure and the romance in
discovering things like the human heart, the resurrection, and heaven—not to
mention love.
I think of a couple examples.
Well, precisely because pantheism
sees everything as one, it does not allow for distinctions or separations. But
distinctions and separations are required for love to be love. If everyone is
one, then love is just love of that one self—and that’s not love. It’s
selfishness. Spiritual individualism, which says it needs no organized
religion, undermines love in that it says that love is just something
spiritual, something done only with mind and heart. But anyone who has been in
love knows that love needs lips in order to kiss. Organized religion gives that
needed flesh so that we might kiss—and not just one another, but kiss Love
Himself.
Like a heart being to the left and not the right, or the commandments being
divided into three and seven, there is something odd about the Church’s
teaching that marriage is only between a man and a woman. But that oddity does
not mean that the teaching is not true. It just means that it is odd and, like
discovering the heart is only one and on the left after a thorough deduction of
the duplication of arms and legs, that such a discovery might be quite shocking
when the oddity of the truth is discovered to be true.
That
is all I will say about that specific topic, because it brings me to my last
point in today’s homily. Many years ago, I nearly left the seminary, just as
nearly as many nearly leave the Catholic Church. I doubted much, including my
capabilities to be a priest. I knew for certain that I would suffer. And I
doubted whether I really wanted to carry that Cross.
But there
was an oddity: while I doubted (what I thought) was everything, there was one
thing that I did not doubt: namely, and strangely, my own doubt.
Surely, I
thought, I had deduced everything correctly. I had made no mistake. I see the
left arm and the right arm, the left leg and the right leg, the eyes, the ears,
… surely there are two hearts! Surely the fish are on this side of the boat!
But I was
surprised. I was terribly, wonderfully, and even frightfully surprised when I
discovered that I was wrong. That the heart was left of center. That I was
fishing on the wrong side of the boat and that I needed to cast my nets on the
other side—on the side where the catch of fish and the heart of God could be
found. It was on that side that I started asking the real questions:
What if the Church is right about celibacy? (and how odd!)
What if the Church is right about the confessional?
And what if the Church is right about Jesus?—God being present here in this
Eucharist?
What if she were oddly, strangely, and wonderfully right?
It was then that the Lord asked me, “Do you love me?” “Do you love me?” “Do you
love me?” One for each of my denials. One for each of the Persons of the
Trinity. One for each of the faculties I possess: mind, body, and soul. “Do you
love me?”
The questions weren’t firstly inviting me to promise to love. They were questions bringing me
back to the beginnings of love, beginnings which began to be seen at the
creation of the world. It was there that God looked at everything he created
and found it very, very good. The question, “do you love me?,” then, wasn’t
just a question of “do you promise?” but a question about God and his love. He
was asking me: “Do you find what I have done here good? Do you like my creation
and how I’ve ordered it? Notice how the heart is just to the left. Do you like
how I’ve redeemed it all? What do you think?”
I saw the heart on the left. I saw the rightness in doubting one’s doubt. I saw
the resurrection of the dead and the glory of the Eucharist. I saw the Ten
Commandments oddly shaped. I saw the world mountainously round. I saw man and
woman united in a way no other two beings could be united. It was all very odd
and, oddly, it was all very true.
“O my God," I said, "it’s
perfect. It’s stunningly and amazingly perfect….”
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