Latest / Omnia Christus / 11/5/26 Oh Happy Fault

Transcript

11/5/26 Oh Happy Fault · Omnia Christus

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: From this parable, we see Jesus saying something which seems strange to us,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: and if it seems strange to us, it would have been absolutely crazy to his audience,
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: which is that it is better to be a tax collector than a Pharisee.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: The reason why that would have been crazy is because tax collectors were sort
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: of social pariahs, people who preyed upon their own brothers and sisters,
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: their own people who had turned traitor, who served the enemy.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: People who were, you know, betraying their own state, their own country.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the Pharisees were sort of the religious leaders
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: who spent all their time reflecting on the word of God.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: So how could that be worse than being a tax collector?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking of C.S.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis' wonderful book called The Great Divorce. It's a beautiful book.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't read it, you should.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's short and enjoyable.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's a sort of an analogy of heaven. C.S.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis likes to use his imagination.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so he imagines sort of these,
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: it's sort of people coming up from purgatory into heaven and the dialogues
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: that they have with sort of people that they know they're coming down to meet them,
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: trying to help them along their way.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And one man, he has this lizard on his shoulder that he can't get rid of.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: The lizard is always whispering in his ear, and he wants to get rid of the lizard,
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: but then he finds that he can't, and he's attached to it.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the lizard is lust. It's a salute for lust.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the lizard is sort of saying to him.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: The lizard's like, oh, you know, you can't get rid of me,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: and what would you do without me, you know?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And believe he knows that it's a slavery that he has this thing on his shoulder.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's an angel there that wants to kill it.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: The angel says, let me kill it.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, he gives the angel, it's super hard for him,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: but he gives the angel permission to kill it.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the angel kills the lizard, but the lizard doesn't die.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, the lizard is transformed into a beautiful and majestic stallion
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: upon which the man gets and he rides towards heaven,
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: towards his spiritual fulfillment.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And C.S.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis says what he's reflecting on is after,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: and he was also reflecting on the case of this woman who she couldn't be satisfied
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: because she didn't have her son.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I don't care.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Even if I have to have my son in hell, I'll be happy if I just have him.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: She would happily have taken her son down to hell if she could have possessed him
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: because she was so possessive of him.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so Lewis's reflection is that it's easier
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: to mistake a good love When it's not,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: then it is to mistake something that is clearly wrong, right?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the man who suffered from lust,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: he wasn't tempted to think that his lust was taking him to God.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: He knew it was something that he had to get rid of.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But this woman who had an inordinate attachment to her child,
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: such that she didn't care really in a sense, even if her child was suffering,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: as long as she could possess that child, that love was more dangerous to her.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's a higher love, it was more likely to stand in the way
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: of her spiritual perfection than the love that man suffered from,
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: which is the basis sort of carnal desire.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought it was interesting to think about that in terms of the Pharisees
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: and the tax collectors.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: The tax collectors, they knew what was wrong with their lives, right?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was very clear to them every day that what they were doing was bad and bad for them.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was easier for them To renounce that and to come to Christ,
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: whereas these Pharisees who have this good love,
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: we're studying the Bible all the time,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: they can't see that what they have is actually putting an obstacle between them
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: and Christ.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really important for us.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy for us, the better that we are,
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: to think that we're good and not to work on changing our lives.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a fatal mistake because none of us are good.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: All of us are very far from God.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of work to do to change our lives.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why even sometimes the Lord allows us to sin and to fall.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody makes us do it.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: But he definitely allows us to experience our weakness.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I always tell people this when they come into confession, because it's been true in my life.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And someone once said that to me.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: He said, if you fall and you have pride, you smash.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But if you fall and you have humility,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: you can be like a bouncy ball that bounces up even higher.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because of that fall, right?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because the fall shows you, I am not good. I'm not great.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: All these stories that I've been telling myself about myself, they're not true.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really in deep need of conversion.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have that humility and you don't ever experience a fall,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: you might think you're doing really good, right?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't see, come face to face with your weakness and your humanity,
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And you might live in this illusion that, oh, I'm really good.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like these Pharisees. Oh, wonderful.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm, I'm a religious person.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I read the Bible.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, you're filled with pride.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the worst thing that there is.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's much, it's much better to struggle with painful, embarrassing faults,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: like faults against chastity.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's better to feel that,
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: to realize what you are and to fight that and to overcome that and to remember
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: That God's love and strength is there then to be living this illusion
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: of a perfect life. Wow, yeah, I'm doing really good. I've made it.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't sin anymore.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And meanwhile, that is the deepest pride.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we have to learn from this and allow the Lord to illuminate our lives
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: and remember that the things that we suffer from, our faults, our failings,
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: our weaknesses, those can be powerful means of bringing us to Christ just like
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: the tax collectors experienced If we put them into the hands of God,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: if we accept what we are with humility,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: if we know that God is our strength in our life and we turn over that life to Him.