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PAGE 5—February 10, 1977
I would not argue that the example of holy
people is the most compelling word one might
need to speak. But since God gave me a tongue
and a mind, it seems to me that I can also
persuade people to holiness by verba) speech
and exhortation. Just because good news is
marvelously witnessed by living saints does not
mean that faith-soaked, persuasive speech will
not also urge people to holiness.
Part of the problem of holiness talk is that it
tended to be so unreal, or to float above the
earth. It lacked the earthiness that would give it
some human appeal. Having said this, 1 would
like to describe a scene from the sixth chapter
of Isaiah that deals with the question of
holiness. Here you see a proper blend of the
awesomeness and mysteriousness of being holy
along with the earthy self-evaluation of being
human.
As the story opens, Isaiah is going to the
temple for a worship service. Inside the temple
the priest is putting some incense into a pot and
clouds of smoke fill the room. The gold figures
of angels mounted on the Ark of the Covenant
reflect the candlelight. Singers are chanting
psalms. It is an ordinary service. Isaiah ponders
the ceremony in a quiet, perhaps even listless
way.
Then comes a change. The externals come
alive. Instead of seeing the external symbols of
God at the surface level, Isaiah begins to
experience the God for whom the symbols
stand. “I saw the Lord, seated on a high and
lofty throne.” The golden angels become more
than mere decorations. They worship the Lord.
The music of the psalms seems to come from
the angels and they cry out, “Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord.” The incense smoke filling the
Temple now reminds Isaiah of the presence of
God. The smoke assumes the texture of God’s
“garment” filling the temple. Isaiah feels his
very soul to be shaken.
Just as suddenly, the insight evaporates. He
is back to earth again. Momentarily drawn out
“HAVE A NICE DAY” - Mary
Maher tells of an incident on a
frustrating cold day when her car had
to be started by a service station man.
The man left saying “Have a nice day.”
“Quite honestly,” she writes, “I did not
want to. Holiness seemed far away at
that moment. Who has time to be holy
- isn’t that simply possible for those
who have the luxury of a lot of free
time for prayer and good works? It
takes so much energy to simply remain
human in our time.” (NC Photo)
Are We Too Busy To Be Holy?
BY MARY MAHER
Restoring the meaning of Biblical words is
one of the big tasks of our day. Many words
such as the one we speak of here, “holiness,”
have been dislocated from their origins. They
have picked up historical meanings which are
alien to them. As we begin thinking of holiness
we might ask ourselves: How do I image
holiness? What mind pictures do I have of holy-
men and women? Do they seem to share the
same humanity which I do? Or are my images
of them surrounded with pictures of removal
from the rigors of daily life which I. know?
I began to write this article on holiness after
waiting two hours with my ear in a phone. The
AAA’s (American Automobile Association)
telephone recording assured me each five
minutes that “counselors” would be
momentarily available. All I wanted was my
battery jumped; it had died of the Maryland
cold.
The tow truck finally came. My car started.
The driver said farewell with the new popular
“Have a nice day.” Quite honestly, I did not
want to. Holiness seemed far away at that
moment; only the raw material of life was
timely. Or was it not that in such nonsense
some measure of holiness lay? But I thought
on: Who has time to be holy - isn’t that simply
possible for those who have the luxury of a lot
of free time for prayer and good works? It
takes so much energy to simply remain human
in our time.
The Hebrew Scriptures make it clear that
holiness is an attribute to God, one which men
and women are commanded to participate in:
“Holy shall you be, for holy am I the Lord
your God” (Lev. 19,2). They are clear in
asserting that holiness is a gift of participating
in God’s creative life. It is prepared for, but
never achieved by a man or woman’s behavior,
moral or spiritual. That may seem a jarring fact.
Each of us are so used to controlling the
dimensions of our life -- should we not be able
to be holy by our own efforts?
Many structures which seemed to promise
that men and women could achieve holiness on
Kno w
Your Faith
(AM Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1977 by N. C. News Service)
their own have plagued both Judaism and
Christianity throughout the ages. When they
did not keep the giftedness of holiness in mind,
they usually led their advocates to
self-righteousness and the ultimate spiritual
shipwreck: self-conscious seif-piety. No wonder
we are timid when it comes to wanting the gift
of holiness. We have simply seen what so
probing a writer as Albert Camus saw: too
many Christians on a cross in order to give
witness a long way. How far from such
self-exhaltation are the Hebrew Scriptures!
Consider Abraham, Moses, Deborah, Job,
Isaac. The Christian Scriptures with Paul, Jesus,
Peter and Mary. What utterly colorful people
living the raw material of daily existence! Many
of them perhaps would be culled out of some
of our formal structures of holiness. They all
had a struggle contending with God in order to
find Him. Elie Wiesel, the great Jewish
storyteller, says, “God does not like man to
come to Him through resignation. Men must
strive to reach God through knowledge and
love, God loves men to be clear-sighted and
outspoken, not blindly obsequious”
(“Messengers of God,” p. 91). We can doubt
how holy they felt and can question on their
behalf and our own the “holiness equals
wholeness” equation so popular in the 1960s.
Often Biblical figures seemed less than holy on
their way to becoming whole, less than whole
on their becoming holy.
In the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures,
holiness is a gift which all nature participates in
by the creative power given it by God. Places
are holy - mountains, temples, cities, lands.
Times are holy - Sabbath, festivals. The whole
world is called to holiness, to participation in
the life of God’s power.
It is interesting how certain holy persons
whom we respect did not have much time to
consider how holy they were or were not. They
lived quite simply, as did Francis of Assisi, the
profoundly Biblical attitude which invited all
creation to join with them in sharing the
holiness of God: “For you alone, O God, are
most holy.” Perhaps, then, they could have
more humor with all the “frozen cars” of their
lives.
“ISAIAH’S CAPACITY to admit his
own sinfulness.” Father Alfred McBride
writes, “opens him to reaching out for
the holiness of God. And the Lord does
not ignore Isaiah. An angel takes an
incense coal and puts it to his lips and
says, ‘See, now that this has touched
your lips, your wickedness is removed
and your sin is purged.’ The scene
closes with God commissioning Isaiah
to go out and witness and preach
conversion from sin to holiness.” This
statue of Isaiah stands in St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, New York, N.Y. (NC Photo)
A Call
To Perfection
BY FATHER JOHN J. CASTELOT
The call to holiness goes out to all God’s
people; it is not addressed to an elite, favored
group. We read in the Book of Leviticus: “The
LORD said to Moses, ‘Speak to the whole
Israelite community and tell them: Be holy, for
I, the LORD, your God, am holy’ ” (Lv. 19,2).
It is not a peremptory demand, imposing
unfulfillable obligations on people: God does
not command the impossible. Rather, it is an
urgent invitation to become Godlike, not by
renouncing or submerging our humanity, but
by ennobling it through contact with the
divine.
Holiness is not an abstract, isolated
phenomenon; it is one aspect of a warm,
interpersonal relationship which we call, among
other things, a covenant. The Book of
Deuteronomy expresses this relationship in
moving terms when it pictures Moses as
speaking thus: “P’or you are a people sacred to
the LORD, your God; he has chosen you from
all the nations on the face of the earth to be a
people peculiarly his own. It was not because
you are the largest of all nations that the LORD
set his heart on you and chose you, for you are
really the smallest of all nations. It was because
the LORD loved you and because of his fidelity
to the oath he had sworn to your fathers, that
he brought you out with his strong hand from
the place of slavery . . . Understand, then, that
the LORD, your God, is God indeed, the
faithful God who keeps his merciful covenant
down to the thousandth generation toward
those who love him and keep his
commandments . . .” (Dt. 7,6-9).
Holiness suggests different things to
different people. For some it means moral
uprightness, for others piety or even an
THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS quoted
by Father John J. Castelot: “The Lord
said to Moses, ‘Speak to the whole
Israelite community and tell them: Be
holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am
holy’.” In this scene from “Moses -- the
Lawgiver,” Moses, played by Burt
Lancaster, listens to God after receiving
the Ten Commandments. (NC Photo
from CBS)
unattractive religiousity, for still others
virtuousness. The norm of our holiness,
however, is God himself: “Be holy, for I, the
LORD, your God, am holy” (Lv. 19,2); “In a
word, you must be made perfect as your
heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt. 5,48). But
what do the Scriptures mean when they speak
of God as “holy”? Certainly not pious or
religious or virtuous. The Hebrew word for holy
(qadosh) means “separate, other.” As Hosea has
God say: “For I am God and not man, the Holy
One present among you” (Hos. 11,9). In the
words of one modern writer, God is “wholly
other.”
Notice, however, that He is nevertheless the
Holy One “present among you.” God’s
holiness, His “otherness,” is an otherness of
nature, not a cold, impersonal remoteness. His
holiness equals His “wholeness,” His absolute
perfection. This is the profound meaning of the
angelic hymn which Isaiah heard in his
inaugural vision: “Holy, holy, holy is the
LORD of hosts! All earth is filled with his
glory!” (Is. 6,3). Quite clearly, then, the
biblical notion of holiness is much deeper,
much broader than any of the popular
understandings mentioned above. It is
all-embracing and calls for an equivalent in
English something like our word “perfection.”
Our call to holiness is a call to perfection.
Just as God is perfect in His divine nature, we
are to be perfect in our humanity. This does
not involve a denial of our authentic humanity.
On the contrary, it is an invitation to accept it
and perfect it. Just as God is “wholly” divine,
we must become “wholly” human, whole,
integral human beings. This means realizing in
act all of our wonderful God-given potential,
developing our minds, hearts, wills and
emotions, all the endowments which make us
truly human. However, no one can do this
without reference to God; humanity, after all,
is not all of reality. Each of us possess a divine
spark which must be fanned into flame. We
must, in our humanity, become Godlike.
How is this possible? How can we bridge the
chasm stretching between us and the “wholly
other”? By availing ourselves of the power
which God has given us in Christ Jesus. He
became a man to show us the way, but not only
to show us the way. When our humanity was
united to His divinity, human nature itself was
transformed, the chasm was bridged. And in His
authentic humanity He showed us how to
achieve perfection. The letter to the Hebrews
puts it so very clearly: Son though he was, he
learned obedience from what he suffered: and
when perfected, he became the source of
eternal salvation for all who obey him (Heb.
5:8 9).
It was He who told us that we are to become
perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. But
this amazing injunction does not stand in
isolation. It is the conclusion to a passage in
which He insists that we love indiscriminately,
and says: “This will prove that you are sons of
your heavenly Father, for his sun rises on the
bad and the good, he rains on the just and the
unjust” (Mt. 5,45). The lesson is inescapable:
the key to Godlikeness, to perfection, is the
practice of love. Jesus’ whole life was a
dramatic illustration of loving obedience to the
will of the Father and selfless, indiscriminate
love of fellow-human beings.
It is in conscious union with the risen Christ
in his perfected humanity that we press toward
this noble ideal.
Holiness: A Call In Our Day
BY FATHER ALFRED MCBRIDE, O. PRAEM.
“The serene, silent beauty of a holy life is
the most powerful influence in the world, next
to the might of the Spirit of God.”
BLAISE PASCHAL
Trying to call someone to holiness these
days is about as easy as stopping inflation.
There was a time when the ideal of holiness
meant something to people. But the emphasis
today on human self realization and salvation
through sciences and technology make the
matter of holiness seem both quaint and far
away. It’s not that holiness isn’t possible. The
witness of Pope John and Mother Teresa plus
that of thousands of ordinary, less-celebrated
people demonstrate that holiness is still very-
much with us. There are still plenty of holy-
people. What is missing is a language to talk
about holiness, and therefore, a fund of ideas
that would encourage those who have not yet
been made aware of the possibility of the holy
life.
of himself by the profound experience of God,
he now is thrown back on an awareness of
himself. The difference is that his new self
consciousness is of one in contrast with the
beauty and purity of God. “Then said I, woe is
jne. I am a man of unclean lips - unholy, a
sinner.”
Isaiah’s capacity to admit his own sinfulness
opens him to reaching out for the holiness of
God. And the Lord does not ignore Isaiah. An
angel takes an incense coal and puts it to his
lips and says: “See, now that this has touched
your lips, your wickedness is removed and your
sin is purged.” The scene closes with God
commissioning Isaiah to go out and witness and
preach conversion from sin to holiness.
The story deserves much more meditation
than these few lines. However the outline is
clear. Holiness is being like God and doing like
God. Holiness is a being and a doing. It is being
morally cleansed so that one reflects the purity
and beauty of God. It is doing the morally
demanding behavior that is consistent with
who we are. It requires identity with God, who
alone is the source of holiness.
The fiery coal symbolizes the fusion of God
and human person, that is, the love that binds
God to human person. This causes persons to
achieve the greatest self fulfillment, inner
freedom and sense of hope. Maybe our words
fumble when talking about holiness, but a holy
life is a voice. It speaks even when the tongue is
silent.