A Tainted Libation
"I
am already being poured out like a libation, and the time of
my departure is at hand.
I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the
faith."
2 Timothy
4:6-7
Have
we been poured out as a libation for Christ Jesus?
Probably not.
In fact, the point
of our being Christian at all very likely has had little bearing
on any significant consequences in our lives.
In other words, if we have not suffered for the sake of Christ
– shame, humiliation, disdain; if we have not been marginalized
as fanatic, a fraud, a "holier than thou" – if we have not been
castigated, ridiculed, even threatened, for being too
faithful to the Pope, the Magisterium,
Rome, Jesus Christ, the Gospel – if no epithet has been hurled at
us to make us look like fools – then we have not been poured out.
We've kept our cup
and we have savored it; perhaps we have even been applauded for
it.
Why, then, is Saint Paul's fate so different from our own?
Following Christ literally cost him his head in Rome.
The answer is found in the previous verses omitted from today's
readings:
| "For the time
will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine
but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity,
will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to
the truth and will be diverted to myths."
(2 Timothy 4:3-4) |
"...
People will not tolerate sound doctrine."
Let us put Saint
Paul's words in a more contemporary setting:
"Following our own
desires and insatiable curiosity, we accumulate teachers (theologians,
homilists, CCD teachers, RCIA instructors) who will
satisfy our desires", in other words, who will teach us what
we want to hear, not what we must
hear; who will teach us that sin and corruption, properly understood,
are acceptable to God after all, and that this whole "Roman thing"
doesn't apply to Catholicism in America, Europe, or, for that matter,
to any "enlightened" culture any more. It is hopelessly outdated,
unenlightened, "patriarchal", stifling, and ... socially unseemly.
Even embarrassing!
This attitude explains why we have kept our own heads (in a manner
of speaking), while Saint Paul lost his.
We have no libation to pour out – because no one has filled
our cups ... or if they have, the substance is profoundly diluted,
tainted. Instead of sound doctrine, our cups have, by and large,
been filled with myths to satisfy
our desires ... which are not the same
as God's. And this really is the root of the problem.
We still want God's "stamp of approval", and since Rome
will not give it to us, we seek out theologians, clerics, ecclesiastical
functionaries more perverse than ourselves who will give
us both: our own corrupt desires and a counterfeit stamp of God's
approval.
This is what the Roman State wanted from Saint Paul.
And it is precisely
what Saint Paul would not give them.
I know: you say that this appears terribly harsh. After all, aren't
we supposed to be comforted?
No.
We are supposed
to be converted.
But ... for Heaven's sake ... let us not lose our heads over it.
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