For a parent with six small(ish) children, Mass can feel like a rodeo. I’ve got to lasso a bunch of wandering little minds and try to point their attention to the miracle happening right now on the altar! Some days are worse than others.
During a recent Sunday, my frustration peaked after about 45 minutes of serious calf wrangling. “God, what IS this?” I prayed at the top of my interior voice.
“I’m destroying your illusion of holiness.” God doesn’t mince words.
Whitewashing My Sepulcher
As I prayed through it after Communion, I came to understand it in two different senses. The first sense is this: I had a vision of what holiness was supposed to look like, and it was a vision that I wanted to see fulfilled at church. It looks like this: I sit up in the front pew with my kids, who behave perfectly, are quiet, still, and reverent. We are the “Sincere and Devout Big Catholic Family,” the exemplary model of a family at church.
Instead, what all the people behind me see is a father actively corralling a herd of wild buffalo, trying to keep them from scattering across the plain. I don’t have a bullwhip, but sometimes I want one.
God pointed out that my vision of holiness is akin to what He chastised the Pharisees for doing. I want the appearance of piety. The Pharisees did all the right things. They wore the right clothes, washed their hands at the proper time, and tithed their dill and mint. But these external things did not make them holy. In fact, it made them proud and hard-hearted, the very opposite of holy.
Having perfectly behaved children will not make me holy. Being admired for my children’s piety and attention will not improve my standing before God. It might actually lead to significant dangers if I allow it to become a near occasion of spiritual pride (or wrath, which is the more common problem).
Into the Muck
So what is holiness? This was the second point that God wanted to make, and by far the more important. The Gospel of the day was the story of the man born blind, who receives healing when Jesus smears mud on his eyes. Jesus performed the healing on the Sabbath, and the Scribes and Pharisees couldn’t get past the fact that He broke the Law.
I imagine Jesus, His hands filthy, smearing mud on the face of a desperate blind man. Healing occurred because Love played in the dirt when He wasn’t supposed to.
This is what holiness looks like.
Holiness isn’t sitting beatifically surrounded by glowing light as you contemplate God in silence. Well, maybe it looks like that sometimes. But God wanted me to see it as bringing the power of love into the mess and muck of life.
Jesus gives us the perfect example, but we can also look at the lives of the saints. So many of them jumped into the mire to care for people. St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Francis of Assisi. The list goes on and on. HolyMess. They bring God’s love into the mess of life.
Holiness is Possible
A few weeks after this revelation, I went on retreat with my spiritual director and eleven other men he directs. We do it at a hunting lodge on a magnificent 14,000-acre ranch in South Carolina.
Providentially, the theme of the retreat was “Holiness is Possible.” On Sunday of the retreat, I woke up with a scripture ringing in my mind and heart. “Without Me, you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) I looked up the verse and found that it is part of the True Vine discourse.
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:1-5)
God wanted to emphasize that holiness is not something that I can accomplish on my own, but this passage is about fruitfulness, not powerlessness. God wants me to be fruitful, He wants me to be holy. The Gospel reveals that the condition for this fruitfulness is abiding in Jesus and allowing Jesus to abide in me.
In my life, that looks something like Jesus spitting in the dirt and taking the mud and putting it on a blind man’s eyes. I can bring His love into the mess and the stress of life. I will get dirty. But I will bear fruit.
What is the fruit that God wants me to produce? It’s love. It’s joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. In a word, it’s holiness.
Burning with Love
While walking through the woods at the ranch, I came upon a striking scene.
On the left, you see the remnants of a conservation burn. The short trees are all brown from the heat and the ground is covered with black char. A plowed road runs away in front of me. On your right, you see golden knee-high grass surrounding untouched green trees.
The image of the burned-out forest is so striking because it’s the work of the vine grower at scale. Forest managers do controlled burns to make the forest more fruitful, more productive. A burn clears out the old dead things so that new life can come through the ground. At first, it looks terrible, but with time, it will come back lusher and more beautiful than ever.
Christ’s Passion was the ultimate controlled burn. Jesus allowed Himself to be tortured to death and put in the grave, knowing that resurrection Sunday was coming. He gives me a new example. He doesn’t want me to whitewash the tomb. He wants me to enter it.
The death of my impossible visions for what my family life should look like clears space for something new. The Holy Mess. Instead of looking at my children and seeing sinners that need correction and punishment, I should see blindness that needs to be healed. It doesn’t mean that I stop trying to clean up the mess, but that I do it with a joyful heart. With gentleness and generosity. And with more love for the person than for the rules.
The mess of family life isn’t an obstacle to God’s plan. It is the plan. God has chosen this particular mess to make me holy.
