Our souls have a natural desire to seek after God. All things have something for which they are designed - an end, a goal, or a purpose. In philosophy, the word telos is used to refer to this primary thing for which another thing exists. For humanity, it is quite obvious; God is our telos. Our journey towards God, however, has been made more difficult by the introduction of sin into our lives. Sin itself does not necessarily derail us from seeking after our telos, but it certainly makes the journey more difficult. It is as if we have been cloaked in darkness as we travel towards God. For some, this darkness is certainly an impediment, but one that can be overcome. For others, the darkness may become too much and completely derails them from seeking after God. 

St. John of the Cross was a powerful figure in the Church’s counter reformation after the Protestant Reformation, and a Doctor of the Church recognized for his great works in Catholic thought. His most famous work, and perhaps one of the best works in the Catholic Tradition, is his famous poem The Dark Night of the Soul and his subsequent commentaries on it. John was able to nail down precisely what this darkness from sin has done to mankind. It is a spiritual darkness, a darkness that clouds the soul individually rather than a darkness that all souls must travel through. All souls go through this dark night; great saints have gone through spiritual crises that test their faith and their trust in God, but God calmly encourages them through the darkness. He does the same for us, but it takes us to be still and listen to His voice through the darkness. 

The darkness of night is a theme that we see throughout the year in certain liturgical practices and acts of devotion, especially during the preparatory seasons of Lent and Advent. Things such as vigil liturgies, nocturnal adoration, and other nightly practices can sometimes last from sundown to sunrise. We spedt these nights in constant prayer while focusing on the purpose of those seasons like Lent and Advent: we are staying up, being watchful for the coming of our Lord which is fast approaching, either in the humble nature of his birth or in the powerful glory of his Resurrection. But we do not spend these nights in prayer alone. Not only do we pray and stay up with those around us in our community, but these events focus also on the presence of God and His Church, with none more important and emblematic than Mary and her role in also waiting for the coming of her son or in his Resurrection. We gather in her home so that we can join her through these dark nights. We are reclaiming the dark nights that once indicated our aimlessness, and are now dedicating them to waiting up with Mary. In the darkness, Christ comes to us, but we need to be vigilant and on watch for his coming.

A person’s innermost thoughts are a cherished possession. It is rare, and for good reason, for anyone to simply speak exactly what is on their mind at all times; there are certain things that we should keep to ourselves to maintain an appropriate interaction with those around us. Our thoughts are also one of the few things that both genuinely belong to us and can be kept from others. You may have all of your possessions stripped, but there is no way someone can force you to give them your thoughts. To share what is really going on in your mind with someone, then, is a sincerely vulnerable action. You are handing over something that previously belonged only to you, maybe for the sake of trust, camaraderie, or love. When your innermost thoughts are shared, you are revealing something deeply personal about yourself to another.

Think of those with whom you are comfortable sharing all of your thoughts without fear of judgment or rejection. These are the people who know you best. Think of those who have shared their own thoughts with you - why did they do so? They most likely trust you, value you, and love you. If all of this is true, then we are faced with an astonishing revelation from this passage: St. Paul tells us, “We have the mind of Christ.” Jesus Christ chose to share with us his innermost self in his teachings, his works, and his revelations. Not only does this reveal just how much he loves, trusts, and cherishes those within his Church, but we should be particularly attuned to the fact that it is the mind of God that is being revealed to us; this is overwhelmingly profound. Albert Einstein once famously said, “I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are details.” Einstein had wanted to know God’s motives and designs for His creation, but all he needed to do was look at the life of Christ shared with us in the Gospels to find the answer. God’s thoughts are simple because they are all oriented towards one single thing: His unimaginable love for us. This is clearly revealed in the life of Christ. In the Gospel, we are given a glimpse into the spiritual aspect of creation through the mind of Christ: a demoniac acknowledges him, and he casts the demon out. It’s a simple scene considering everything else that happens in the life of Christ, but it tells us one thing we must keep in our own minds: Christ’s command of all creation, both spiritual and corporeal, is an act of his participation in the Holy Trinity, namely as the Word.

The mind of Christ is ultimately the mind of God, but there is a specific duty that each person in the Trinity exercises to reveal to us the Divine Mind. The Holy Spirit is the thought itself, the Son (in the person of Jesus Christ) is the Word that enables us to know and understand the thoughts of God, and the Father is the one who shares His thoughts to us through the Word, His Son. Demonic activity has been prevalent throughout all of human history, but it was only through Christ, the Word, that demons were forced to obey the power of God’s Mind. Today, a priest will exorcize demons only in the name of Christ because the power comes from Christ alone. This sentiment is a simple reminder to us of just how wretched our lives would be had God decided never to share His mind or His thoughts with us through His Son. How blessed we are to deeply know the innermost being of the Holy One of God.

In 2005, the papal conclave was the epicenter of a great shift in the Church. After almost 27 years of Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals differed in their opinions on which direction the Church should go, some believing that another younger candidate should be elected with others believing that a more experienced candidate be elected for a shorter reign. Ultimately, Pope Benedict XVI stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica - the Cardinals had chosen experience and the likelihood of a short reign over youth and longevity. Benedict’s first words to the public as Pope became an underlying theme found throughout his papacy: “Dear brothers and sisters, after the great Pope John Paul II, the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord.” Before his election, even during his first public appearance, and for the next 8 years under his papacy, the simple and humble Benedict would always be compared with his larger-than-life predecessor.

It is yet to be seen how history will treat Pope Benedict. You will find it difficult, though, to find anyone who would disagree with the fact that Benedict was a deeply humble servant of the Lord. Multiple times in his career, he desired to retire to Germany to write books and dedicate himself to a life of prayer. He was denied each time by his predecessor so that he could further serve the Church. It was a tremendous and often-times overwhelming responsibility. By all accounts, he was deeply fearful and reserved about the possibility of becoming Pope, yet the Holy Spirit seems to have willed that for him, as well. In the face of fear, Benedict answered every single call the Lord gave him simply because, as he mentioned, he was a humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord, obedient to his master until the very end. The life and service of Pope Benedict calls to mind the message of correction Paul issues to the Corinthians in the this passage. This community of believers was attaching itself too closely with the individuals who shared Christ with them, unintentionally ignoring Christ himself. They called themselves followers of Paul or followers of Apollos, but not of Christ. Paul rightly and profoundly tells them that he was simply a gardener in the vineyard of the Lord planting seeds and that Apollos who came after him was simply one who watered those seeds. Ultimately, it was God who ordered the seeds to sprout and grow.

For most of us, we have lived through three significant papacies: John Paul II, Benedict XVI, and Francis. There are different opinions and different levels of admiration for these three, but we risk falling into the same trap as the Corinthians in this letter by doing so. Who is the Pope anyway, if not the vicar of Christ on earth? The man who occupies this office may be dynamic or reserved, powerful or timid, strong-willed or weak-minded, on any given day. Ultimately, it was the Holy Spirit that put this man at the helm of the Church. If we trust that God, who has ultimate power through His mere Word over nature, spirit, and life, worked through the Cardinals to choose these men, we must remember that they are merely co-workers in the vineyard and we are the field they have been requested to tend. It is God who grows and controls the Church appropriately; His workers have simply accepted the call to aid Him in this work.

Many of these reflections on Scripture tend to focus on those within the Church with the most responsibilities, namely religious, priests, bishops, and popes. It becomes increasingly clear that so much of Scripture outlines exactly how these leaders in the Church must act in order to serve those who are in their care. This matters - the Church will die without those willing to dedicate their lives entirely to provide the sacraments and serve the Church. While it can be frustrating for a layperson that these insights do not necessarily apply to you or how you live out your faith, you still play a significant role in the formation and the correction of Church leaders. The shepherd may lead the sheep, but it is the sheep who make the shepherd.

This passage is a continuation of Paul’s message to the Church in Corinth. The Christians within this community were focusing on two things they should not have been: they were beginning to distance themselves from their leaders as if their leaders were somehow divine by their positions, and they were placing too much emphasis on the authority of their leaders instead of focusing on the authority of Christ from which all other authority flows. We see this same issue in today’s Church when we decide to choose which church to go to based on the priest, which diocese to live in based on the bishop, and which rite to celebrate based on the Pope. It is a deeply unhealthy behavior that Scripture itself warns us against. These are the underlying elements of Church behavior that lead to schism; schism arises when there is an unwillingness to charitably correct our leaders when they are wrong and to take it upon ourselves to fix the issues of our Church community from within. Quite clearly, we as the laity play a role in how the Church exercises its mission, but the Church is not a democracy. It is our responsibility to form young men into solid priests, to ensure that solid priests are chosen as good bishops, and good bishops will inevitably make strong popes. Saints Gregory the Great and Leo the Great were two of the few popes called the “Great” because of their leadership and love for the Church. But how does one get to the point in their earthly life when they are deserving of such a title of distinction?

Pope Benedict XVI will probably never be known as “Benedict the Great”; he is a simple and humble man whose papacy was short-lived and ended in confusion. But his profound handle of Theology made him recognize greatness without ever desiring to obtain it for himself. There is a common quote attributed to Benedict that encapsulates the calling of those of us within the Church: “The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” You were made for greatness. Comfortable times cannot produce great individuals because greatness is ultimately an act of the will in the face of challenge or difficulty. When the Popes, bishops, and priests of the world begin to falter due to their human weaknesses, it becomes necessary for the faithful to lift them back up, not tear them down. A great community will produce a great leader. Though you may never be in a position of leadership in the Church, model yourself after Benedict, acknowledge your own call for greatness, and work towards perfecting your own community from within. Perhaps one day your loving acts of service to your church will inspire a young man to become one of the next “Greats” of the Church.

You are not your own. This claim made by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians flies in the face of everything we are told in modern society. In a culture that supports individuality and autonomy above all else, we might find it difficult to hear from someone telling us that we are actually part of a greater whole. In this context, though, Paul is specifically referring to the physical body. Many early heresies within Christianity believed that the body was corrupt and that only our spirits were holy; the modern heresy of humanity is that we are just our bodies, our bodies are the sole property of our individual selves, and (ironically) it doesn’t matter what we do with our bodies. In reality, the person of Jesus Christ not only sanctified the human body in a new way through the Resurrection, he took on a body himself to teach us that our physical selves have always been a valuable and necessary part of who we are.

Scripture reveals to us the link between our physical bodies and our creator; we learn of this by witnessing the different components of the make-up of God. St. Thomas Aquinas taught and argued that God as the Supreme Being of the Universe is not complex, but rather divinely simple. He is One. The intricacy of God is found in His creation, because it is through His creation that He gets to reveal every facet of His nature with us. Consider the complexity of His simplest object of creation and you will recognize His infinite Intellect and Wisdom. His creation is an instrument through which He reveals Himself, and the first moment He revealed Himself to us was through His Word, when He spoke the things of this world into existence. This is the same Word that called out to Samuel in the Temple; with nothing but his hearing, Samuel sought after God even though we are told he was not yet familiar with the Lord. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, as John the Evangelist tells us, in the person of Jesus Christ. In other words, the Word of God took on a physical body, revealing Himself in an entirely new and tangible way that spoke to our senses. The reason why Paul tells the Corinthians that we, as human beings, are not our own is because we “have been purchased at a price.” That price was the physical sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Sacrifices are not mental, or spiritual; they are physical. And God, making Himself physical for us, sacrificed Himself for us.

The physical component of God, that which can be found in His creation, did not end with the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven; why would God only reveal Himself physically for a mere 33 years? He became one of us so that we can be physically united with Him here on earth for the rest of our earthly existence. He spent His public ministry passionately teaching this truth, and His presence now remains with us through the sacrament of the Eucharist (if you have a hard time believing that this is how Christ wanted to be with us physically, reread chapter 6 of John’s Gospel). Now, every time we are about to unite our physical bodies with God’s, we hear the words of John the Baptist: “Behold, the Lamb of God.” To be members of the Body of Christ is not some esoteric or spiritual concept; if it were, it would directly contradict Paul’s message to the Corinthians. So if our bodies are for the Lord, and we make up the Body of Christ, what does this mean? How would this work? Through a physical union - when all of us at once consume the physical presence of God in the Eucharist and physically become united with one another through the Lord and for the Lord.

One of the most difficult issues to reconcile with our understanding of God and eternal life is the purpose of an earthly existence. If our lives are eternal, why is our fate determined by the comparatively infinitesimally small span of a lifetime on earth? Why is it that our decisions here define the rest of our existence? There are a few things we must keep in mind to begin wrestling with this problem. First is the state in which we were created - in Paradise, not in Heaven; there is something about our human nature that ties us to an earthly, physical existence and not a strictly spiritual life on earth. Second is the decision for God Himself to participate in the span of a human life that lasted only 33 years. Within those 33 years, He was able to instruct us with an eternity’s worth of wisdom through His public teachings, but also through the most important act of sacrifice on the cross.

Clearly, this earthly life gives us the opportunity to show God that, on an individual level, we are reorienting our human nature to the state of our creation before the Fall. Through Baptism, through the Sacraments, through prayer, and through charity, we are perfecting our souls just as God had intended. This life is not a test to determine which path we take in the afterlife; rather, this life is our opportunity to purify and perfect ourselves in order to be with God, because we must first be perfect so that we do not taint the perfection of God when we participate in it. This is purgatory, and purgatory begins through suffering in this life. Purgatory is purification that makes us worthy of participating in God, but it is painful. Suffering that purifies comes from sacrifice, and sacrifice is an act of love. If we want to prepare ourselves for Heaven, we ought to order our lives on earth just as they will be in Heaven. There is no war in Heaven. There is no human marriage in Heaven. There are no possessions in Heaven. This is why Paul instructs the Christians of the early Church to sacrifice participating in earthly things in order to be prepared for what is to come; this means no participation in wars or military, no marriages to the ones you love, and no ownership or attachments to material things. This is the more noble life - to adopt the virtues of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But this is not always possible. War is sometimes necessary to prevent war. Marriage is necessary to grow the Kingdom on earth as we await Christ’s return. Material possessions are necessary to share and meet the needs of the community.

Our attachments to the things of this world keep us in this world. It is very difficult to hear Paul tell us that it is better not to be married or not to own a single thing. But there is a place for those of us who must do so in order to serve the Church Militant on earth. We need good Christian marriages to make saints and to build the domestic Church. We need those blessed with material wealth to provide for the Church. We need those who are able to fight for those they love against the enemies of peace. Even in our weak attachments to this world, God uses them to better prepare ourselves for when we are eventually invited to participate in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. These things cannot be taken with us when we enter into eternal life. However, their purpose is to purify us, strengthen us, and teach us what it means to act in love for the sake of others. The purpose of this life is love, but it is a lifelong process to learn that love is an act of the will. Use what God has given you to serve your neighbor, just as Christ took his death and used it for the salvation of all the world. 

What does it look like to love someone? Everything in our religion, from daily prayer to Sunday Mass to charity work, is essentially for one simple reason: to express love towards our neighbor in the way that God loves us. The issue is that so few humans really spend any time reflecting on what love actually is. We confuse emotional attachment with love when, in reality, love is an act of the will. Love is not an emotion. To truly love another person is to actually work for them with only them in mind; there is no expectation for anything in return, but love’s reward for you is the joy of the one whom you love. It doesn't matter where you are in life, who you surround yourself with, or what opportunities are available to you: every single one of us is obligated to love. 

The hesitancy of being open to loving another person can be due to two things: the first and most simplest is pure selfishness. Love is difficult and requires sacrifice, and sometimes we would rather remain in the comfort of our own desires than to work for the sake of others. The second and more difficult cause of hesitancy is fear of the unknown. We are only able to love because we are loved. We want to love others because we desire to be loved in return; but the reciprocity of love is not guaranteed. Are we willing to go out of our way to say yes to love even in the event of rejection or the recipient of our love being unappreciative? We must, since this is the surest way to know that our love is sincere. When we are open to the will of God and when we desire to live according to His will, He will inevitably present to us opportunities to love others. These opportunities are often difficult and may give rise to suffering that would otherwise not be experienced if we avoided love, but this is not simply a suggestion from God. We are obligated to do what God asks of us and to pursue what He puts in front of us, even if we are unwilling. Our reward in pursuing this type of love is simply the honor of glorifying the Lord. If your ultimate desire is to receive anything else in return, you ignore the source of all happiness, all joy, and all love. But as the fruit of love, God will ensure that you are blessed with His grace which will flow into all aspects of your life.

Love is work. It’s hard work, but it has purpose and meaning. In this passage, Paul says something remarkably profound: when God asks you to work hard for something, put your heart and soul into it. Run so as to win: you may not receive what you desire at the end of the race, but the whole point of entering a race is to win. Love others as if they are your sole motivation for living. They may never reciprocate your love, but be comforted by the fact that you yourself will never be able to reciprocate the love God has for you. In love, there is no need to be competitive, but there is a need to work hard, and to work constantly. The purpose of love is to strengthen the other, and those who love you in return will strengthen you. Christ loved us while asking for only one thing in return - that our holiness is strengthened by his love. Truly loving someone places us in the position of Christ. If we “love” for the sake of receiving something from the other, we turn into hypocrites. Instead, use your love as an opportunity to find companions for growth. Learn from the master of love, Christ, who loved unconditionally and freely, and through whom all love flows. 

Food is a critical component of human culture. It’s strange to consider that something as simple as the nourishment we need in order to survive can become so culturally significant, but this is the essence of the power of human nature given to us by God. We take what is as simple as a basic necessity for life and we turn it into something beautiful, sincere, and community-building. This is also why it is so meaningful for us that God can come into our presence through the Eucharist not just in the form of food, but food that was crafted as the work of human hands. Bread and wine are not natural: they are a symbiosis between the gifts of the natural world given to us by God (wheat and grapes) and the rationality of human nature that enables us to change one thing into something substantially better. Food is life - literally, metaphorically, spiritually, and theologically.

Just as it is the case with all things beautiful and innately human, the culture of food can be abused, disordered, or spoiled by excess. All seven deadly sins are possible to fall into because they are sins of excess; included among these is the sin of gluttony. Gluttony is particularly egregious because it not only causes you to fall into excess, but it also makes you numb to the reality that so many in the world are unable to have their basic needs met when it comes to food. The Church is a unique home where all are welcome to share in a meal where there is enough food to satisfy all hungry hearts. In the supper of the Lamb, there is no possibility for excess or gluttony; you are given the supersubstantial bread from Heaven no matter your background, your wealth, your poverty, or your status. This food is spiritually nourishing, though. It is the only food that is required for our souls, but we still live in this world, and as a result, it is necessary for us to find food that is physically nourishing, as well. St. Paul reminds us in this passage, though, to take the sentiment of the spiritual common meal during the Mass into the outside world. If you have more than you need, share it. If you are at risk of falling into gluttony, surround yourself with those in need to remind you of the necessity of temperance and so that they may be recipients of your charity. The reason why food is cultural is not because of the food itself; it is what food brings out - community, shared experiences, selflessness, and collaborative work. Food on its own is meaningless; it is given meaning only by those who share in it.

Before we participate in the spiritual nourishment of the Supper of the Lamb at Mass, we prepare ourselves for this shared, communal meal by reciting the words of an unnamed, gentile centurion: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” These are the very last words we utter before receiving the Body of Christ. This unnamed individual plays one of the most important roles in the unity between God and His people - we can only prepare ourselves to be worthy of receiving the Body of Christ by first humbling ourselves precisely in the same way as this centurion did. In that humility, Christ deems us worthy of his presence, just as he did for the centurion’s servant. Our humility is the preparation necessary for approaching the heavenly meal. In the community and in the meaning of this meal, we unite ourselves as one body in the Church with the Body of Christ himself.

As participants in the universal Church, we are each called to give back according to our abilities. If we truly believe in the teachings of the Church, we should believe that God gave to us the gifts and abilities that seem most natural or most appropriate to us so that we could use those gifts to glorify Him in return. This also means that we are each born with different and unique gifts so that, collectively, we build up the body of Christ to be as effective and as successful at glorifying God as possible. If we come together to glorify God together in the best way we can, it will be a perfect testament of our faith to others so that the message of the Gospel is shared through us.

As Catholics, we are also called to act just as Christ did. However, when we hear the stories of the Gospels, it seems impossible to model Christ; he performed miracles, healed the sick, drove out demons, etc. - all things that seem impossible for us to do. If we see these actions as impossible for us, it makes Christ unapproachable and it minimizes his humanity. But everything Christ did in the Gospels was recreated by his followers: miracles were performed in his name, the sick were healed, and evil spirits were driven out of people. These were performed by seemingly insignificant figures, all because they were followers of Christ with a deep and authentic faith in his powers. Jesus did not do these things so that he could prove he was divine; after all, we are even warned that the “antichrist” will be someone who can perform these signs so that they may impress others. Jesus performed these miracles, healings, and exorcisms because they were a lesson to his followers that the natural world is under the authority of God and that we, too, can “move mountains” if our faith in him is strong enough. 

When was the last time you did something truly miraculous? When was the last time you saw a miracle? The world around us has become so technologically advanced and so focused on scientism that the very idea of a miracle is dismissed as something that could never happen. There are even believers who dismiss the miracles of the Gospels as exaggerations or symbols of easily explainable actions. This is why we do not recognize “miracles” today. Our faith has been stripped so much that the possibility of God speaking to us by directing the natural world is implausible. We can overcome this by modeling the followers of Christ: God has given us unique gifts, placed us in specific times and places, and introduced us to specific people so that we can lead all those around us to Him. When we look back on the moments when our gifts drew people to us, when we were at the right place at the right time, or when we met those most important to us, we do not see them as mere coincidences. These are miracles - God directing the world so that we can grow to know Him a little more. Only our faith allows us to recognize this. 

The role of the Blessed Virgin Mary within Christianity looks very different according to the different denominations within the Church. Clearly, she holds a significant role in Catholicism and is venerated deeply, but because of this, many other denominations have reduced her to merely a figure who birthed the Son of God into this world and faded into the group of other disciples. Mary is far greater to the Church than we can realize, even among the denominations and groups within the Christian Church that do not appreciate her importance. Mary is, after all, the living embodiment of the Church herself. Mary is the personification of who and what the Church is - our life, our sweetness, and our hope, who unites us in this world to the angels and saints in Heaven. Anyone who considers themselves Christians and members of the worldwide Church are participating in a divine relationship with God because of Mary. 

There is one thing that should unite Christianity even among all of our differences and disagreements: we must hold dearly to a profession of faith that is attested to in the Scripture. In Catholicism, both the Apostle’s Creed and the Nicene Creed succinctly address all of the fundamentals of our faith and unite us under a very specific set of beliefs that all must follow. But even in this passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, there is a clearly formulaic profession of faith that must have been shared and recited frequently among the earliest Christians: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve…” The formula of these words and the words that follow is structured, while at the same time, Paul tells the Corinthians that he is handing on to them these words that he received himself. This profession of faith is centrally focused on one idea - that Christ died for our sins. This can be found in both the Nicene and Apostle’s Creeds, as well, but those contain a very human element in addition to this most important detail: he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and made incarnate of the Virgin Mary. Jesus’ most significant act on earth, his sacrifice on the cross for the atonement of the sins of humanity, was only made possible through his entrance into this world through a human woman. This woman was his mother. There is no clearer example of divinity acting through humanity than the bond of a mother and her child; she lives through her child in such a way that she experiences all of his joys, pains, heartaches, and accomplishments with him.

Mary participated in the passion of Jesus Christ. She continues to bear with her son the sins of the current age, and in her sorrow, prays for us and asks us directly to atone for our sins. Mary is the embodiment of the Church, and although she is fully aware of the ultimate victory of her Son’s Church, she deeply desires that all humans participate in that victory. Her continued sorrow is for all of those souls who choose to be on the other side. During the apex of both Jesus’ and Mary’s passions, this was when Christ decided to hand her over to us through John to be our mother. The Church is our mother. Her warm, welcoming embrace is the embrace only familiar to those who experienced it through their own mothers. Christ desired that we experience the same warm embrace he felt from his own mother. It is an embrace of pure, perfect, motherly love, and it was gifted to us in sorrow and pain. Comfort your mother. Serve the Church. Do what you can to alleviate her pain.

Humans seem to have a natural understanding of what makes something “good” versus what makes something “bad”. Of course, personal preferences play a role in determining how good something is, but there are also certain things that seem objectively good and objectively bad. The only way that humans could possibly be able to discern the goodness of things is either through an innate knowledge of what goodness actually is or a constant comparison to the things we experience. Both are true: we have been given a natural ability by God to discern goodness, and we are able to exercise that natural discernment process through comparisons. However, there are many people in the modern day who reject objective goodness, which only enables them to accept goodness through comparing two things and their attributes. Even in this case, though, we begin to see how God has crafted the world to teach us how to recognize goodness.

Apply this concept to the people you meet on a daily basis. Based on your interactions with an individual, you can start to think to yourself, “this person is a really good person” or “this person is horrible.” You are able to make those decisions only if you have met good people before to whom you could compare them or if you have met bad people to whom you could compare them. But how do you determine what makes someone good? There must be something perfect that all other things compare to in order to determine goodness. If this applies to human beings, there must have been a perfect human with whom any other person could be compared. As Christians, this is clearly the person of Christ because he is perfection itself, the most absolute quality of God and the divine, but in the form of a human person. His behavior should be perfect, his life should be perfect, his disposition should be perfect, and we should all try to model ourselves after him if we want to try to be perfect. But we know the story of Christ; it was messy, he was mistreated, he suffered at the hands of others, and was ultimately put to death in the most brutal manner. If Christ is perfect, then, his life should teach us what perfection and goodness actually is: it cannot exist in this world or in this life. Perfection and perfect goodness can only be found where perfection resides - in Heaven. But in his perfection, Christ brought accessibility of Heaven to earth in his resurrection. As Paul states in this passage, we will participate in the same resurrection of the dead if we are good because the perfect human being did so.

Christ paved the way for human behavior. It was he who was at the beginning and brought creation into existence out of nothing. When it was the perfect time, the creator became a human being to model human behavior to us. All of those who came before Christ lacked the one thing that kept humanity stagnant: God’s power over death in the resurrection of Christ unlocked for us our own resurrection from the dead and participation in the pure perfection of Heaven. This all began with a simple human being who developed a small group of followers, which eventually grew into billions of adherents. The reason we follow Christ is because he is the perfect model of humanity, and we are ardently seeking after perfection. Humanity was perfected at the moment of his resurrection. He now invites us to follow him and participate in that perfection.

J.R.R. Tolkien, the writer of the Lord of the Rings, coined the term eucatastrophe by adding the Greek prefix eu- (meaning “good”) to the word catastrophe. For Tolkien, this concept was a literary exercise that enabled his writing to focus on an idea that great things can come out of seemingly catastrophic circumstances, almost as if the resolution of a story could only be accomplished through the conflict. This can be clearly seen in his own written stories, but he instead considered it a fundamentally human thing - if human history is considered a story, then the “eucatastrophe” of human history was God becoming man. The “eucatastrophe” of the incarnation, the pinnacle of all human events, was Christ’s resurrection from the dead. 

Tolkien understood that eucatastrophe can be found in any story and in any person. We all have had moments in our lives in which we have gone through utter catastrophe, when everything seems to be lost and there is no way out of it. For some unexplained reason, though, things may have worked out. The worst moments of our lives set up an opportunity that we otherwise would not have that led to great growth or great accomplishments. We shouldn’t misunderstand this, though: good things do not have to come through disaster or great suffering. Rather, there is the smallest element of goodness or the simplest bit of hope in the catastrophes of life that blossom into the very thing that saves us from completely giving up. There is no better example of this that all humans experience than death. When we experience the death of our loved ones, it can be one of the most difficult things to get through. In our own deaths when our time comes, our only understanding is that this life is over. There could be nothingness on the other side. Death is irreversible. No one escapes death. So it must be, then, that the greatest triumph in human history was the conquering of death by Jesus Christ. The one thing that all humans are susceptible to, Christ overcame. The one thing that cannot be overcome, Christ overpowered. But in order to defeat death as a consequence of sin, Christ had to die. He was not an immortal, but instead underwent the most excruciating form of death so that he could open up the pathway to new life for all human beings. In your own life, you will notice that the greatest catastrophes did not destroy you, but gave you the opportunity to discover more about yourself. They led to goodness. These are mini deaths, but we will all have to undergo a final death to determine whether it destroys us completely or leads us to new life.

Through Christ, God shared with us the hope and assurance that there is life after death. When we undergo suffering and catastrophe, we either forget about hope in the resurrection or we distract ourselves with the comforts of sin. But as Pope Benedict XVI may have once said, “the world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort. You were made for greatness.” You are the hero of your story because God determined it to be so. You will be lost and led astray if you consider yourself capable of leading yourself through catastrophe. Only God can lead you out of it, but he will lead you to something far greater. You must pass through the trials and the catastrophes to get to the goodness. On the other side, you will find the fullness of your life, your purpose for living, and the ultimate source of all goodness - the loving embrace of your Heavenly Father.