A Homily by Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O. P.
Sunday, January 24, 2010

Blaise Pascal, the 17th century philosopher, has an aphorism (n. 236) in his book, the Pensées, that reads, “There is enough light to enlighten the elect and enough obscurity to humiliate them. There is enough obscurity to blind the reprobate and enough light to condemn them and deprive them of excuse.”

The elect and the reprobate are terms being used here for processes that do not work in similar or symmetrical ways. The elect cooperate with God’s grace, and all that they have and do that leads to their salvation, they have from God. “What do you have,” says St. Paul, “that you have not received?” (I Cor. 4:7) The reprobate, meanwhile, are not those who are not offered the possibility of life with God, but rather, those who are offered that life but who refuse the offer, and therefore come under deprivation of the light, by their own choice and are without excuse.

But the interesting thing about the passage is not really the contrast of the elect and the reprobate, but the way the mixture of light and obscurity that are present in faith work, working in two different ways. In those who cooperate with God’s grace, the light of Christ fills the mind, and illumines the heart, but the obscurity of the revelation also works positively to recall humility, obedience, service, and patience. In other words, even the obscurity of faith purifies the heart to make us love more deeply. In those who are confounded by the truth of Jesus Christ, who do not wish to avail themselves of his message, there remains the witness of the light that they turn away from: St. Paul says this in II Thessalonians (2:10): “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.” No one in this world is left completely without signs, if they wish to find them. And yet the obscurity of the faith also plays a role there as well: if veils the personal mystery of God from human curiosity, and manipulation, and suggests the triumph of God over every form of human intellectual self-exaltation or vain moral self-righteousness.

All of this is present in the Gospel today, in the proclamation of the Lord in his native town, in which he claims that the messianic promises of Isaiah are being fulfilled in him, a humble and un-extraordinary carpenter from Nazareth. How should one judge this? The life of Christ is set out amidst the backdrop of rather humble circumstances and seemingly humble origins. He does not fulfill the messianic prophecies according to the ordinary expectations of eschatological drama or political history. His miracles and sayings begin to emerge, however, as claims that are absolute against this very ordinary backdrop, and he says extraordinary things about himself and about God as his Father….things no other man has ever said. And most extraordinary, his death leads to the new day of eternity, through the mystery of his physical resurrection and glorification. Light and obscurity. The extraordinary amidst the seemingly quite ordinary. Grace amidst the continuing tribulations of human nature and its wounds. The Church and her mystery in the midst of a secular world, one still enslaved in many ways, to the power of this world. “Today,” I tell you, “this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

What scripture confronts us with is necessity of making a choice, not just one time in our lives, but habitually, to interpret the world (realistically we might add) in light of the word of God. It is a choice because the light is not connatural to us, a mere property we possess by virtue of our human nature and its reason, but it is a given light- a light dawning in Christ. Yet it is also a light still present amidst the backdrop of the ordinary and the obscure. It is a light that invites us to joy but also humility. We are invited to become the disciples of this humble teacher who is a carpenter, and his lowly and pure Mother, as they journey toward Jerusalem.

All this being said, the mind is in a sense made for this light, this supernatural light. For all of its challenge and its obscurity, the supernatural light of the word of God is the one thing that can finally, fully, satisfy the mind of man and the restless stirrings of the human heart. For we could imagine God’s revelation making no claim on us, so that we could live our ordinary lives, without reference to the Lord. Alas that is what many people do. But we also know simultaneously that this would be something like going back into Plato’s cave, the cave he mentions in the Republic (Book VII (514a–520a)), a world of entertainment where shadows and images are cast upon the wall to distract us, and where we never have to be confronted by serious religious questions. There is something in the human soul, however, that deeply longs to philosophize, to come to the light, to ask the questions that will lead us inevitably down religious path ways if we let them. The world has its own obscurity and this is something that is in fact much darker than any night of faith. It is the darkness of lovelessness, and the primary lack of love in the world today is the failure to love the truth, and to seek the truth unrelentingly.

The failure to love the truth, then, is something radically destructive of the health of a culture, and it is something we are directly called upon, as Christians and as Dominicans, to seek to remedy. Like Socrates in a new secular city, asking the questions of the real meaning of things. Gadfly questions—philosophical and Christian questions—the majority might not want to hear, but which are the real questions. The reading from Nehemiah today shows the power of the word of God to convert a culture to the primacy of the intellectual search for the truth. The people have returned from Exile and the nation of Israel is being re-founded after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and of the Davidic monarchy. There are precious few public institutions of the state that remain intact. But what there is, and what Ezra and Nehemiah read from, is the word of God: the living word, that cuts deeper than any two edged sword (Heb. 4:12). The sword of truth, that cuts into the marrow of the soul and the fibers of the heart to penetrate into our lovelessness and to call forth from us the love for the truth. Jesus says in John’s Gospel (John 8:31-33): "If you continue in My word, {then} you are truly disciples of mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." The truth frees us to love. The Catholic Christian should be known for his or her avid love of truth: “Catholic” here also meaning “universal”: universal truth….the mendicant of the truth being a beggar who wishes to find the truth where ever it is truly spoken. To discriminate, to distinguish, to discern, truth from falsehood, insight from error, but also always to be searching, to be desirous of the truth, and to want to communicate the truth, to make the truth loved above all things, for its own sake, because that is what most ennobles the human heart and the human mind, to come to its full dignity, to find and abide in the truth. "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

Let us conclude with St. Paul: “But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it. Some people God has designated in the church to be, first, apostles; second, prophets; third, teachers.” (I Cor. 12: 24-28a) The Dominican is a person called upon to instruct faithfully in the doctrine of the faith, to preach the Word of God, to re-enliven the culture, like Ezra and Nehemiah, so that all men may come to hear the Gospel, so that all people may be invited to come to love the truth, and so be saved. But this communication of the truth, this teaching is also a teaching made to a suffering humanity, a humanity in which other members of Christ’s body suffer, a humanity which stands under the shadow of the Cross.

Ultimately when we participate in this mission of the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, this humble carpenter who appears simultaneously so ordinary and so extraordinary, we should remember that this is most true of all at the Cross: how ordinary to die, how extraordinary that by his death Our Lord should bring life to the world. And that means our own teaching is conducted in this same light and obscurity, under this same sign of mercy and compassion that is the crucifixion, that stands over all of our lives. And so, our call to search the truth, to love and serve the truth and the communicate the truth, is inseparable from the calling to love, to forgive, to abide in mercy, and to be deeply and really compassionate to the suffering members of Christ’s body, indeed to all those for whom Christ died, to all human beings. To hold truth and love together, that is the deepest challenge in the vocation of a Christian, and it is precisely in loving the truth above all things and in being true in the way we love, that we will bring the light of Christ to the world. Our Lord tells his disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another…By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 34-5)