Homily, 10-30-23: Monday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time:
I had the opportunity to attend the Call to Holiness Conference on Saturday. One of the speakers was Fr. Chad Ripperger, who happens to be an exorcist. The title of his talk was “Combatting Evil as an Integral Part of Becoming Holy.”
He said that God loves all of us, but that He is more pleased with some than others. He then commented that those in the audience who are parents can understand that concept well. God is our Father as we heard in today’s passage from Paul letter to the Romans. We are His children. He wants what is best for us. He wants us to grow in virtue.
Parents discipline, or they should discipline, their children so that they grow and mature properly. Parents are merciful when their children disobey and get into trouble, but there is also a need for justice, for some type of consequence for the bad behavior if there is any hope for creating disciplined children. We discipline our children because we love them, and so it is with God. He wants us to be disciplined and so we cannot relax and count on His mercy. We must expect and accept His justice.
St. Thomas writes in the Summa: “Human goods are divided into the following three kinds: external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul.” Fr. Ripperger quoted St. Thomas as saying that God is willing to sacrifice the first two to save the last. When we lose our health or our possessions, we should consider that maybe it is God’s will for our sanctification. This is what we hear from St. Paul today when he writes: “We are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” Accepting suffering as Christ did, out of love for God and our neighbor, can be the source of glory and our sanctification, our growing in holiness.
Fr. Ripperger said that God can use our temptations because when we fight against those temptations, it results in an increase in our degree of virtue. He went so far as to say that God even allows demonic possession out of love for a person. The punishment of possession can be a form of justice used for the individual’s sanctification as they are forced to correct their lives to rid themselves of their possession.
God is our Father. We should aim to please Him as we should or earthly fathers, our papas, our dads out of love. We should honestly identify those defects that are displeasing to Him, and strive to grow in the virtues that will help to correct them.