Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2020-11-01-usccb-daily-mass-readings

Solemnity of All Saints – November 1, 2020

Welcome to the one hundred and thirty-sixth episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Solemnity of All Saints. (Cycle A) Our Gospel for this Sunday was from the Sermon on the Mount and Jesus’ teaching known as the Beatitudes. The Catechism says, “The Sermon on the Mount, and the apostolic catechesis describe for us the paths that lead to the Kingdom of heaven. Sustained by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we tread them, step by step, by everyday acts. By the working of the Word of Christ, we slowly bear fruit in the Church to the glory of God.” (CCC 1724)

What does all that mean? I admit I’ve dismissed the Beatitudes and haven’t tried to “tread them, step by step by everyday acts.” That’s because I didn’t understand them and so I couldn’t apply them to my everyday life. Why would I want to be poor, mourn, be meek, or persecuted? How can these attributes benefit me in business? Desiring these would certainly be countercultural.

But as I was studying this week’s scripture and seeking understanding and application, I listened to a few of Bishop Barron’s homilies and podcasts on the subject and I finally got it. So, I owe my reflection this week to him. But he’ll tell you that he owes it to the wisdom of St. Thomas Aquinas who is beholden to St. Augustine.

Everyone Wants to Be Happy

Jesus taught about those who are “blessed,” but the Greek word most versions of the Gospel interpret as “blessed,” can also be translated as “happy”. Everyone wants to be happy, and according to the Catechism, “The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it.

St. Augustine said, “We all want to live happily; in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated.” In Confessions, he wrote, “How is it then, that I seek you, Lord? Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul and my soul draws life from you.” St Thomas Aquinas sums it up saying, “God alone satisfies.” (CCC 1718)

But what does the culture tell us will make us happy? Pleasure, wealth, power, honor are the false gods of modern-day culture. Note, there is nothing wrong with any of these things, in and of themselves, but they will not satisfy the longing within, so we continue to them pursue them even more in hopes of satisfying the desire of our hearts. We know that we need God, but we try to fill that void with something that is less than God, and happiness continues to elude us.

Measuring Happiness by Wealth

Why would I want to be poor, mourn, be meek, or persecuted? How can these attributes benefit me in business? Perhaps the answers to these questions aren’t as obvious as their opposites. Is it better for business when everyone is seeking personal profitability? Is it better for business when everyone is seeking personal comfort? Is it better for business when everyone is prideful? Is it better for business when no one can speak up for the truth?

Look at how these pursuits of false-happiness can negatively affect our workplaces. An unbridled pursuit of personal wealth and corporate profits clouds our judgment. While there may be short-term gains, it’s unsustainable in the long run. Just look at MCI-WorldCom and Enron, two companies that imploded under the weight of the fraudulent business practices that were designed to maximize wealth. More recently we heard that Purdue Pharma agreed to plead guilty to federal criminal charges, pay $8 billion, and close the company, because of their profit-driven sales practices that fed addictions to opioids. The drive for profits at all costs resulted in Wells Fargo paying $3 billion to resolve their potential criminal and civil liability over fraudulent sales practices, and last month, Citigroup agreed to pay $590 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of hiding tens of billions of dollars of toxic mortgage assets, thereby defrauding their shareholders.

Wealth is morally neutral. When we make wealth our idol or the center of our lives, it becomes our downfall. Of wealth and honor, St. John Henry Newman said, “All bow down before wealth. Wealth is that to which the multitude of men pay an instinctive homage. They measure happiness by wealth; and by wealth they measure respectability… It is a homage resulting from a profound faith… that with wealth he may do all things. Wealth is one idol of the day and notoriety is second… Notoriety, or the making of a noise in the world—it may be called “newspaper fame”—has come to be considered a great good in itself, and a ground of veneration.”

We know this is true of our culture. Is it true for you?

Pleasure is Not the Path to Happiness

If we examine our culture’s addiction to pleasure and we’ll find a root cause of the problems of obesity, drug addiction, adultery, sex-trafficking, and pornography. These kinds of over-indulgences distract us from what we should be doing and instead we pursue what we feel like doing. It’s symptomatic of a lack of self-discipline. We just can’t say no to the desires of the flesh, even though it doesn’t make us happy.

In the workplace, this weakness presents itself as an exertion of power for the purpose of pleasure. The prevalence of this problem was exposed when the #MeToo movement brought this darkness into the light.

I worked for an organization where the culture crossed the line from customer entertainment events to an excuse for excessive drinking and partying (and worse) on the company’s dollar. The business purpose of these events became second to the opportunity for people to overindulge, and the behavior that followed was unprofessional, to say the least.

Pursuing pleasure, wealth, power, and honor as a means to happiness are not always immoral or illegal, however they are always ineffective. They cannot satisfy the longing in our hearts. Jesus knows this and this is why he gave us the Beatitudes. As countercultural as they appear, they are the antidote to the pursuit of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor.

The Path to Happiness is the Path to Holiness

Jesus said, “Blessed are poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 5:3) Bishop Barron explains, this is not a romanticization of economic poverty nor a demonization of wealth, rather it is a spiritual formula for detachment. How lucky for you if you’re not addicted to material things. They can never satisfy us. Blessed are you if you are not attached to material things if you have not placed the goods that wealth can buy at the center of your life. When the kingdom of God is your ultimate concern, not only will you not become addicted to material things, you will be able to use them with great effectiveness for God’s purposes. When you hunger for righteousness you’ll know what to do with the money you have.

Jesus said, “Blessed are they who mourn, they will be comforted.” (Mt 5:4) Bishop Barron says, how happy you are if you are not addicted to pleasure. Good feelings, pleasant sensations—physical, emotional, and psychological—are wonderful, but they’re not God. If we turn them into God, they become the focus of an addiction and an addiction to pleasure is off the path to sanctity. Doing the will of God involves anything but pleasure. How lucky and happy and blessed you are if you’re not addicted to good feelings. Detachment gives you spiritual freedom.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. (Mt 5:5) Bishop Barron says, happy are you if you’re not addicted to power. Jesus is not passing judgment on institutions of power, as he is showing a path of detachment. How lucky you are if you’re not attached to the finite good of worldly power. You are detached from power when you walk the path of meekness.

Jesus said, “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me. Rejoice and be glad for your reward will be great in heaven.” (Mt 5:11)  Bishop Barron says, if being poor in spirit defeats the addiction to wealth, and mourning the addiction to pleasure, and meekness the addiction to power, persecution for righteousness sake gets in the way of the addicting attachment to honor. If you’re addicted to worldly honor, how lucky you are if they humiliate you. If pride is a problem then humiliation is a path to holiness.

The Catechism sums this up by saying, “The beatitude (happiness) we are promised confronts us with decisive moral choices. It invites us to purify our hearts of bad instincts and to seek the love of God above all else. It teaches us that true happiness is not found in riches or well-being, in human fame or power, or any human achievement—however beneficial it may be—such as science, technology, and art, or indeed in any creature, but in God alone, the source of every good and of all love.” (CCC 1723)

Oh, How I Want to Be In that Number

“Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.” (CCC 1024) It is no wonder we had these readings for the Solemnity of All Saints. The saints got it. They understood and lived the Beatitudes and therefore the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

We should want to join them. No other goal in our life should be more important to us than holiness, not more pleasure, more wealth, more power nor more honor. Nothing! But we know that there are obstacles to accomplishing any goal, and the pursuit of holiness is no different. So, we can look to the saints for help to overcome these obstacles.

In his book, Rediscover the Saints, Matthew Kelly says, “The saints are great teachers, primarily because they teach with their actions as much as with their words. Their lives raise questions about our lives, and when we ponder those questions, amazing possibilities begin to unfold within and around us.”

If you are struggling with getting over your past, look to St. Augustine for help. If you need help creating healthy habits, look to St. Benedict for inspiration. If you’re struggling with an unhealthy need for physical pleasure, St. Teresa of Avila can direct you. If you need to grow in emotional intelligence, ask St. Ignatius of Loyola for guidance. If you need to discern right from wrong, seek St. Thomas More’s wisdom. Whatever your weakness, there is a saint (or two) who have overcome it. Their lives are witnesses to the grace of God at work in our world. Rediscover the saints, and you’ll discover how you can change yourself and change the world.

Cheering Us across the Finish Line

In a YouTube post about All Saints Day, Fr. Mike Schmitz shared a wonderful story about competing in a triathlon as a metaphor for how the saints are at work in our lives. He was talking about an Ironman race and said most of the athletes aren’t competing against each other, they simply are competing against their own personal best time or to just finish within the established time limit to be considered as an Ironman athlete.

Fr. Mike described a race where there was a triathlete who had been on the course all day, swimming, cycling, and running. With only fifteen minutes left to make it in under the deadline, this runner still had two miles to go. So, the other competitors who had already finished the race went out to meet him, ran alongside him, and motivated him. The crowd cheered and encouraged him. After swimming 2.4 miles, cycling 112 miles, and running 24 miles, the guy finished the last two miles in under 15 minutes. He crossed the finish line with a crowd of supporters running in behind him. On his own, he wouldn’t have been able to do it. But, because all these other racers who had already finished the race were there cheering him on, he finished strong. The saints do the same for us. They can’t run the race for us, but they can inspire us to finish strong.

There is only one real sadness in life…not to be a saint. Everything else—wealth, power, pleasure, and reputation—is trivial. What matters only is being holy – being the person God wants you to be. We know that pursuing sainthood in the business world is not easy, so let’ look to St. Homobonus for guidance.

Who you ask? St. Homobonus, the patron saint of businesspeople. He was a married layman who believed that God had allowed him to work in order that he would be able to support the poor. His name is derived from the Latin homo bonus which means “good man”. And he was a good man who strove for integrity in his business and gave much of his profits to those living in poverty. He was both a holy man and a good businessman, able to successfully integrate his faith into his daily endeavors. So, as we head into work this week, let’s try to do the same and ask St. Homobonus to pray for us.

Beloved and charitable St. Homobonus, your honesty and goodwill served your community and the Lord well. Help us to follow your example, making the will of God the focus of our lives instead of wealth, pleasure, power, and honor. Help us follow your example and not give in to greed and easy shortcuts that can harm others. We ask for guidance in our work, so that we may prosper by choosing virtue over pride, avarice, and laziness. And, as things get tough this week, we ask for your intercession that we may be granted the strength, wisdom, courage, and self-control to carry on.

May God bless you abundantly this week and may you glorify the Lord by your life.

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