A Long Read - but a Good Reminder. From “The Catholic Thing”
Today in Holy Week is traditionally known as “Spy Wednesday.” It recalls the day on which Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus to the Sanhedrin. The Gospel of John on Monday was especially harsh in its judgment of Judas. The scene is the house of Lazarus, where Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’ feet with costly perfumed oil. Judas is outraged:
Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples and the one who would betray him, said, “Why has this oil not been sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?” He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions.
The Gospel reading for today, from Matthew, paints an equally venal portrait of the man from Kerioth (thus his label “Iscariot”):
One of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?” They paid him 30 pieces of silver, and from that time on, he looked for an opportunity to hand him over.
Later in the same reading, Jesus says “woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” Judas piously asks, “Surely it is not I, Rabbi?” Jesus answers, with exquisite irony, “You have said so.”
What to make of Judas?
The Church, like any human institution, is comprised of people. And each of those people, including ourselves, is a sinner, from plumber to pope, with the sin of greed high on the popularity list. The Vatican financial scandals of the last few decades are ugly and damaging, but they’re hardly new to Church history.
Nor are they peculiar to Rome. In 2011, the chief financial officer of a major U.S. archdiocese was fired, indicted, and convicted for the theft of nearly $1 million in Church funds.
Similar examples, of various scale, abound because money is magnetic. Money means comfort. Money means power to do and get what we want. Thus it’s quite reasonable to see Judas as just another miserable thief; a pathetic, deceitful – and in this case, disastrously misguided – crook. It would also be very unwise to ignore the guilty verdict of two Apostles with direct experience of the man and the Gospel events they describe.
Yet ordinary greed doesn’t seem to satisfy as the main, or at least the only, motive for Judas’s actions. In Franco Zeffirelli’s 1977 film for television, Jesus of Nazareth [1], Judas – played with superb complexity by the actor Ian MacShane – is portrayed as a fellow traveler of the extremist Zealot party. The Zealots seek to expel the Romans from Israel and restore Jewish liberty. Judas sincerely admires Jesus and his mission. He disagrees with the Zealots’ appetite for violence, but he shares their assumption that a Messiah will restore Israel as an independent kingdom.
The Hanging of Judas [2] by an unknown Alsatian or Southern German artist, c. 1520 [Art Institute of Chicago]. The devil removes the traitor’s soul.
Judas joins Christ’s disciples with genuine devotion. But his understanding of the Messiah’s purpose is rebuffed by Jesus. Disillusioned and confused, he becomes an easy victim of Zerah (Ian Holm), the satanically shrewd counselor to the Sanhedrin, who convinces him to hand over Jesus to the authorities so that Jesus can prove who He is to the “fair-minded” Jewish leadership. When Judas realizes Zerah’s treachery and its consequences, he commits suicide in a fit of hopeless self-loathing.
Mel Gibson takes a similar approach in his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. [3] Whatever his other motives, Judas (Luca Lionello) becomes the naive pawn of a jealous and vindictive Sanhedrin. Horrified by what he’s done, and contemptuously dismissed by his manipulators when he tries to undo the damage, he’s hounded by demons of despair and hangs himself. As with Zeffirelli, Gibson presents Judas not as a greedy, self-aware cynic but rather as a weak and deluded loser, a disposable tool of evil in a much larger game.
So the lessons of this and every Spy Wednesday are several, and worth considering.
First, humanity’s perennial, go-to Golden Calf is power in this world, here and now. So it was for the Jewish Zealots. So it is for us. It’s true that Christians should engage the civic order as an obligation of the Word of God. Human law and public authority are important because they teach and form, as well as regulate. And politics involves getting and using the power to do so – which means that politics has moral implications that the Christian can’t ignore and still remain faithful to his vocation as a light to the world. (Matthew 5:14-16)
But power is an addictive drug. We have our own Zealots today who are adroit at using religious faith for political ends. This is especially (and ironically) true on the otherwise secular Left. Much of today’s “progressive” politics is a kind of Biblical messianism without the irritating baggage of a personal God.
Second, we’re never smarter than Jesus Christ – a lesson learned bitterly by Judas. When Jesus said, “my kingdom is not of this world,” he meant it. Christianity needs to guide our everyday behavior in the world with love and justice. But it’s not finally about power, and it’s worthless without its next-worldly, transcendent horizon. Either it’s salvific in the light of eternity, or it’s a waste of time. It can never be reduced to a system of wholesome ethics or social action. We can get that elsewhere.
Third, despair is a disguised sin of pride. Both Peter and Judas betrayed Jesus; Peter by his words, Judas by his actions. The abyss that separated the two men is what they did next. Peter loved Jesus more than himself and his damaged vanity, which led to his repentance and forgiveness. Judas abandoned himself to the evil of what he did, imagined himself unforgivable, and in doing that, repudiated God’s very nature.
In our own lives, we all choose between ourselves and God. On the brink of the Triduum, Judas is simply a reminder.
Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of True Confessions: Voices of Faith from a Life in the Church .
Not really making up for lost time, but…
Ephesians 2:8-10
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
I remember reading some predictions a couple of years ago when the pandemic was first thrust upon us. Many were the voices suggesting that the church wouldn’t bounce back from the precautions taken due to COVID-19. We’d have to adjust to the new normal and we would never again invest in “brick and mortar” facilities, only social media messaging and ad hoc ministries.
To some extent, this has been born out. Thirty years ago, it was the figure of 40% of the membership being in worship which marked a healthy congregation. Today that figure has been lessened to 25% - if a quarter of the membership would be in worship on a weekend a congregation should feel some sense of satisfaction.
Sobering as that is, I was encouraged by Auguste Meyrat’s book review of sociologist Rodney Stark’s work The Rise of Christianity. “After laying out his methodology and background, [Stark] begins his argument with simple math. From the middle of the first century to the middle of the fourth century, the Christian community grew from a few hundred followers to nearly half the empire. Over three centuries, Stark determines that the Church grew at a rate of 40 percent each decade.”
“Finally, Stark discusses the physical context of Christianity’s rise, which generally took place in the biggest cities of the empire. These cities were not the orderly arrangement of columns and forums with men in clean white togas, as frequently depicted by the Renaissance painters. Rather, Roman cities were crowded, dirty, disorganized, and fractious. In his description of Antioch, one of the first sites of Christianity, Stark reinforces the larger point that Christianity ‘served as a revitalization movement that arose in response to the misery, chaos, fear, and brutality of life in the urban Greco-Roman world.’
Paradoxically, Stark’s demystification of the spread of Christianity in the first centuries leads him to conclude that there is something truly special in Christian doctrine and the subsequent faith of the martyrs to sustain such consistent growth: ‘I believe that it was [Christianity’s] particular religious doctrines that permitted Christianity to be among the most sweeping and successful revitalization movements in history.’ This is about as close to belief as Stark comes in his analysis, though faithful readers will easily see God’s truth at the heart of it.”
So how might this encourage us, seeing the need for revitalization all around us?
Meyrat continues: “And it’s important that they do. Many parallels exist between the pre-Christian and post-Christian West. And the same virtues that allowed the Church to bring order to the surrounding chaos will likely do the same today.
No doubt, there’s disagreement on how to re-evangelize the world and whether to change various Church teachings to accommodate modern audiences, but one thing must remain constant: Christians must keep the faith and preserve the culture of life. Miracles would be nice in the short run, but in the long run, a steady commitment to the true faith in everyday matters will convert the world.”
God bless your everyday life as you witness to the grace of God in all that you say and do.
Godliness with Contentment
This is a long scripture passage, with an even longer article from “Leadership”, an online resource shared by Tim Elmore. But I cannot think of where to trim any of it.
I Timothy 6: 6 But godliness with contentment is great gain, 7 for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. 8 But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.
11 But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.12 Fight the good fight of the faith.
Leadership
February 6, 2024
We Don’t Actually Want Our Kids to Be Happy
By Andrew McPeak
“To live with joy is to live with wonder, gratitude, and hope.” — David Brooks
In 2014, a fascinating report from the Harvard Graduation School of Education’s Making Caring Common Project revealed a startling contrast between the message parents intend to send to their children and the one that is getting through. The report entitled “The Children We Mean to Raise: The Real Messages Adults Are Sending About Values” surveyed over 10,000 middle and high school-aged students about what was most important to them: “achieving at a high level, happiness (feeling good most of the time), or caring for others.”
The results were striking:
“Almost 80% of youth picked high achievement or happiness as their top choice, while roughly 20% selected caring for others.”
One student in the survey summed up their opinion: “If you are not happy, life is nothing. After that, you want to do well. And after that, expend any excess energy on others.”
What’s most interesting about this blatantly self-focused perspective in our students is where they got it from. In similar surveys of adults over the same timeframe, “most parents and teachers say that developing caring children is a top priority and rank it as more important than children’s achievements.” But youth aren’t buying it:
“About 80% of the youth in our survey report that their parents are more concerned about achievement or happiness than caring for others. A similar percentage of youth perceive teachers as prioritizing students’ achievements over their caring. Youth were also 3 times more likely to agree than disagree with this statement: “My parents are prouder if I get good grades in my classes than if I’m a caring community member in class and school.”
I’d like to summarize all that we are learning here:
1. If you ask a parent or a teacher what is most important in the development of the young people under their care, they will say things like “kindness,” “care,” or “character.”
2. When you ask students what they think their parents and teachers really care about, they say things like “achievement” or “happiness.”
3. So, which answer is it? The one we are practicing, of course.
Ironically, adults’ obsession with their kids’ happiness over kindness and achievement over purpose has backfired. According to research by Suniya S. Luthar, “children from affluent communities who are subjected to intense achievement pressure by their parents don’t appear to outperform other students.” Instead of success or happiness, the most common traits these happiness-chasing students share today are stress and loneliness. Is it possible that in making happiness the goal, we were mistaken? I think so.
A Goal More Important Than Happiness
So, if success (and the happiness we think it will bring) is not the goal, what is? In his excellent book on the pursuit of the most fulfilling version of life, The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life,bestselling author David Brooks writes:
”We think we want ease and comfort, and of course we do from time to time, but there is something inside us that longs for some calling that requires dedication and sacrifice.”
What Brooks means, and we all know intrinsically, is that true life satisfaction comes not from rising above the little struggles and sacrifices in life but from embracing them. When our kids embrace the challenges and struggles they face for the sake of something bigger, instead of happiness, they find another more helpful outcome: joy. Whereas happiness results from achievement or pleasure, joy comes from meaning and purpose. Because they center themselves around a higher purpose, people with joy are not as vulnerable to life’s little obstacles, like failed math tests and athletic injuries, or life’s significant obstacles, such as the loss of a loved one. A student’s access to meaning and purpose gives them an unshakeable steadiness. Joy is a much better goal than happiness.
Sadly, not a lot of students are feeling purposeful these days. In a study for his book, The Path to Purpose, William Damon found that only 20 percent of young adults have a fully realized sense of purpose. So, how can we help our students find both purpose and the joy it brings? Here are a few ideas:
1. Young people need opportunities to discover their passions. I remember watching my brother work at his love of music for hours upon hours when I was growing up. Even back then, my younger brother had found something he was willing to give up his time and resources to chase. It’s not surprising he is still making music today — now in his thirties. Do you know where the word “passion” comes from? The root means “to suffer.” Young people need opportunities to discover the things they are willing to spend their time and resources on simply because they love them. What opportunities are your students getting to find out what they love?
2. Young people need parents, leaders, and mentors who recognize their joy. A friend of mine likes to say that “the only thing rarer than genius is the ability to recognize it.” When a young person finds a passion or purpose, it is doubtful they will also realize what they have discovered. They need adults who call out the joy they experience and encourage them to chase it. What activities are most likely to bring a smile to their face? What could they spend hours doing without even realizing it?
3. Young leaders need us to model and communicate in a better way. As we saw in the surveys, most adults believe one thing about success but teach their kids another. If you are one of those adults who genuinely desires your child or student’s joy over their happiness, then you must embody that belief. Let them chase goals that are unlikely to bring financial success. Find ways to model personal sacrifice and even talk about it with kids. Discover ways to celebrate kindness, generosity, attitude, and effort as often as you do their test scores and sports stats. It’s not that one is terrible and the other is good. The two just need to be in balance.
There is a simple way to understand the difference between happiness and joy.
Chasing happiness will bring short-term gain but long-term pain. Chasing joy might bring short-term pain, but it will bring long-term gain.
Leaders, let’s start choosing the bigger picture today. For our children’s future — and their joy — let’s lead them down a different path.