Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
Father Don Wolf, a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, offers a Catholic perspective on the issues confronting each person today.
Living Catholic with Father Don Wolf
January 5, 2025 | "New Year, Same Call"
The episode explores the significance of the New Year as a time to reflect on our past choices and prepare for the future with intention. Through discussions on progress, faith, and the impact of our decisions, it emphasizes the importance of our participation in God’s work and the divine fulfillment of our lives.
• Importance of intentional choices for shaping the future
• Differences between cyclical views of life and progress toward fulfillment
• The symbolism of Gothic cathedrals in expressing faith and resilience
• Reflection on the restoration of Notre Dame and its implications
• Addressing the societal challenge of assisted suicide and the sanctity of life
• Encouragement to engage in community life and everyday acts of faith
• Resurgence of interest in sustainable and meaningful living
• Celebrating each New Year as an opportunity for spiritual growth
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Father Don Wolf is a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. Living Catholic also broadcasts on Oklahoma Catholic Radio several times per week, with new episodes airing every Sunday.
This is Living Catholic with Fr Don Wolfe. Living Catholic is a fresh look at issues confronting each of us today. This show deals with living Catholic, what that means for Catholics, as well as the impact on the rest of society. You certainly don't have to be Catholic to enjoy this show. And now your host, Fr Don Wolfe.
Speaker 1:Welcome Oklahoma to Living Catholic. I'm Fr Don Wolfe, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish and rector of the Shrine of Blessed Stanley Rother. And here we stand at the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the year, it's common to take a gander at what's coming and to make ourselves ready. Of course, no one knows what's going to happen, so our efforts constitute our desire to control as best we can what, basically, is out of our control. So spending too much time focused on the future can be fruitless, as a friend of mine once said. In August of 2001, we could have used all of the resources available to us from sociology, tourist agencies, travel bureaus and the New York City Police Department to estimate how many visitors would be at the Twin Towers in New York City on September, the 12th of that year. What we could not have done is predict that they wouldn't be there. At the same time, looking into the probabilities of the future is the only prudent thing we can do. We human beings learned a long time ago that the conduct of today conduces to tomorrow, so that what we decide today can make a huge difference in the prospects of what will happen tomorrow. It's only logical we spend a little time getting ready for what's likely to take place. After all, when the Twin Towers were built, it was because the men of the times were concerned to have a place for the business and economy that passed through the veins of commerce in New York City. Only because they looked forward and made provision for what would happen did they build what they needed there on that site. Looking at what's in prospect is a good thing, so, in my opinion, here are a few things to pay attention to. The 21st century is almost a quarter over. This seems impossible to imagine, but here we are in 2025. The millennium celebrations seem quaint in our memories. What was a powerful moment of recollection and solemn acknowledgement of our history is now fading into the abyss of the past. That always happens, of course. There isn't anything about this year and its passage and distance from a quarter century ago. That wasn't true about last year. It's just that we find it convenient to pause and mark the signal numbers, and this is one of them. We're now a quarter of a century in.
Speaker 1:I have a hard time keeping up with the perceptions of those who are outside of my generation. It's hard for me to keep track of the experiences and notable moments of those who are younger than I. That's nothing new. I suppose every generation in the modern era has had the same comments about those who have not lived through the same experience of the world it has. This came home to me in an anodyne moment a couple of weeks ago when I was at the vocations carnival at the parish gym at Sacred Heart in El Reno. I commented to the younger priest who was there that it was the first time I'd been back to the gym since a Curcio retreat there in 1983. He paused and said that's a long time ago. When I thought about it I realized that was about 10 years before he was born.
Speaker 1:The point is keeping track of the passage of time and realizing its effect in our lives and appreciating what it brings to us is a necessary part of our participation in it. Time goes by and if we don't note its passage, we're likely not to appreciate its gift to us. It's also normal to enter the new year with a note of optimism. Perhaps it's because we can put a new calendar on the wall and begin a new moment of our accounting. We are modern people after all, and we like the notion of progressing. There's nothing more fundamentally progressive than making our way through the world year after year. This is a fundamental aspect of the religious heritage that we're a part of. According to the revelation we've received, we're on our way toward the fulfillment of God's will in the world, and that's nothing to ignore. Time is a resource for God's will in the world, and that's nothing to ignore. Time is a resource for God's work in the world.
Speaker 1:In the ancient world, it was common to imagine all of life as an eternal cycle, turning and turning but never actually going anywhere. In fact, one aspect of this notion was its connection to reincarnation. The reincarnate soul was one that entered the world time after time, slipping into the worn ruts of life to circle around all of the various aspects of life and death. Nothing much ever changed in the concourse of life. Nothing was really different and there was no real progress in the furniture of life. Every soul, no matter how many times it had entered the portals of life, lived on the same stage and was surrounded by the same props. All of life was one enormous turn around the same track. That's also why the most perspicacious believers of reincarnation thought of it as a horror to escape. There was no progress, no way out and no purpose to the chapters of life except as a bitter road to endure.
Speaker 1:In our view of the world, we're on our way to the fullness of life and creation endowed us by the Creator. We're not simply slogging through the sludge of broken nature. We're on the path toward a life that's coming closer to what God desires for us and for the whole world. In fact, by our participation in life, we can cooperate with the energies God has established and the currents running through the occasions of our history. Rather than passive and poor victims of the circumstances that gang up against us, we are the agents of God's work. Our hands are how the work of God happens among us. So when we begin to size up the challenges of life and begin to understand our options, we expect that our decisions can cooperate with what God wants for the world. We can choose for the divine presence at work in our lives, and God has not simply chosen that the world should glow with the divine presence at work in our lives, and God has not simply chosen that the world should glow with the divine. God has initiated his saving plan for all of creation. Life is not simply the cycle of being turned into an endless gyre, exposing the hidden machinery behind the curtain of being born and living and then dying. To be present in the world is to be part of God's desire to redeem, to save, to rescue and to restore, and we're all part of this divine work in the world. We're on our way toward God's will. We're not just marking time until our days are done.
Speaker 1:For the most part, we in the West have co-identified this sense of progress toward the fulfillment of God's will with technological sophistication. Since the scientific revolutions of the late Middle Ages, we've made spectacular additions to the normal content of our daily lives by the machines we've built and the understandings we've uncovered. In the world, organized according to the Christian ideal, everything has been transformed by the early adoption of the succession of new ways of approaching the world and getting our work done. This has been so overwhelmingly true that it's often the only thing we think of when we talk about progress. We don't think of coming closer to the kingdom of God among us. Instead, we think of how fast we can travel from, say, berlin to Bucharest. Instead, we think of how fast we can travel from, say, berlin to Bucharest. But the gains made in science and materials are a product of our confidence in God's revelation, not a substitute for it. Some of the greatest achievements in our civilization were realized before this revolution in scientific thought began. We still regard the cathedrals, for example, as some of the most astounding buildings ever built. We still regard the cathedrals, for example, as some of the most astounding buildings ever built, all of which were begun long before we had any notion of the movement of the planets, the durability of steel or the configuration of atomic structures.
Speaker 1:The Gothic structures rising out of the cities of northern Europe were the product of the confidence of their builders' trust in God's revelation and the promise of God's graces poured out over them. They thought the time given to them was to be used to bring glory to God in a way that would participate in the unfolding of God's will throughout history. They weren't conquering time by their efforts. They were cooperating with it. As they did, they produced masterpieces. Not only that, they established a symbol of what it meant to trust in the efficacy of God at work in our world. Want to know what it's like to enter the promise of a new year? Take a look at Notre Dame in Paris.
Speaker 1:Of course, we do have to acknowledge that the solidity of cathedral building has been followed by the foolishness of war and destruction that has marked just about everything in the West. Certainly following the catastrophe of the 20th century in Europe, no one can brag too completely about the greatness of anticipating the inevitability of progress. Horrors beyond imagination were perpetrated in the name of progress, of racial unity or technological sophistication or national identity, and everyone suffered. But this could also be a hallmark of the power of true identification with the work of the Lord's promise. There's the haunting picture that we've seen often, that comes out of the World War II, of the great Gothic cathedral in Cologne, germany, rising above the gutted walls and absent roofs of the ruined city following years of Allied bombing, with the ferocity of technological progress unleashed on the people of this ancient fortress town. The walls of the medieval cathedral towered above the rest, that is to say those builders who spent generations refining their craft and completing their project to glorify God's will. For them, they enacted true progress of charity and forgiveness, going forward toward what God will do in our world as the divine initiative is unleashed. That is what we must do as the years pass and time unfolds.
Speaker 1:Speaking of Notre Dame, we can't let go of the truth of its revival following the Great Fire six years ago. After more than half a billion dollars of repair, the Cathedral Church has reopened for public masses and as a repository of the artistic inheritance of France. It has been an astounding moment to realize the power of this building to symbolize the enduring desire of all of us to find ourselves part of the promise of God present among us in our lives. No sooner had the damage been described than promises were made from some of the wealthiest people in the world to finance its restoration. Certainly, given the outcry concerning its place in the patrimony of the Western world, there is something to its presence that marks our collective soul. Maybe it really is true that we are part of the great journey toward God's work in the world. And it may also be true that, as we scratch below the surface of our cynicism and doubt, we are so thoroughly woven into the promise of God among us that we cannot imagine not being surrounded by these types of reminders. The facade of Notre Dame, towering over the Ile-de-France, calls out the reminder that it is God's will we are headed toward a promise greater than ourselves and greater than the hiccups of our individual errors and foibles. That's something to get excited about as we remove the last calendar page from 2024 and hang up the first of 2025. We might also note that there is a great deal more to living out our progression in God's will than architecture.
Speaker 1:While the plastic arts are important in defining our civilization and orienting our sense of self, we live out the fullness of life by way of the small indents of our individual decisions and attitudes. If we do believe that God has endowed us with the capacity to recognize and participate in the divine will, then our lives are glowing with the potential to enter into the veins of worldly activity. We have our place in what happens in the world. We're not spectators that's an anodyne common. It's been repeated everywhere, by everyone, from St Augustine to Stephen Covey. But rather than simply being pushed down the streams of life, floating on the currents of the day, what we're doing is engaged in making the world.
Speaker 1:Our days do not simply unfold as if they were a set of shirts and pants taken out of a suitcase that, with one snap, come undone and ready to wear. No, we make our days. They are the product of our doing, according to what we decide and how we intend the world is made, and while we don't influence the geopolitics of nation-states or the capital flows throughout the credit industry. We do make the world around us, the world we're a part of, may be no larger than the footprints our shoes make when we stand on our household carpet, but it is real and it does matter. What is it that every child is taught? Every Catholic child? That everything you do and every decision you make matters, and not only that it makes a difference, it matters eternally. We have to keep this element of our lives in mind in our day, because we will be haunted in these years to come by the specter of the cry for assisted suicide in our society. It has already taken up residence in some of the states of the Union and has now taken on an additional energy by being recognized and empowered.
Speaker 1:In Britain, there seems to be an illimitable push to make the process of self-destruction a tool in our everyday lives. As the argument goes, we should have the option available to us to plan and to carry out you might even say execute our own self-immolation. It's not just the power to kill ourselves. Anybody with access to a bottle of bleach or enough vodka could do that. It's the willingness to weave this promise into the regular fabric of society that makes it so lethal. Once people begin to entertain the option of disappearing from the rigorous energies of living their lives, the whole tenor of life everywhere changes. While we could play out this theme with just about every aspect of society, just think of what medical care for the elderly would begin to look like once this prospect has become allowed and then become common and then become expected. Imagine going to the doctor to talk about the treatment options for an unpleasant diagnosis, only to hear that one of the options is simply to go home and end your life. Now imagine hearing that from your insurance company, from your grandkids or from your spouse. We might think such words would be so hard-hearted as to be unimaginable in polite society. But think of what has recently been said about the rightness of abortion up to the moment of delivery, and said by national figures of power and repute. What seems impossible to imagine from any right-witted person, if it is said as part of the national dialogue, soon becomes not only tolerated but expected.
Speaker 1:Believing we are part of God at work in the world, progressing toward the coming of God's kingdom, means we have a place in the world that cannot be conditioned by inconveniences or ruined by imperfections. The time given to us is the resource we have to enact our contribution to God's work in the world, and as a principal resource, it overshadows other resources like intelligence or aptness or status, which means even if we are feeble and sickly, even if we're unable to work or are frustrated in our capacities, our presence in the passage of the days of our lives matters. For example, it may be the case that an elderly person, having passed the productive days of his life and is now suffering from the incapacity of a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, has a place at the center of God's will for the world. It could be the need to reach across the boundary that separates a healthy, willing person from one weak and unable might be the reason for the incapacity itself. Or, to say it better, one person's weakness might be the reason for another person's charity. If it is, then there is a place, a divine place, for weakness that is at least as important as the charity that is done.
Speaker 1:Simply killing the part of our society where weakness resides is no way to progress to the kingdom of God. This is as true if the killing is chosen by the one who is to die as it is of those who choose it for another. To be clear, all of the talk about assisted suicide will result in the killing of those who don't want to die. It has happened wherever these laws have been put in place. But the violation of the promise written into the covenant of our progress through the years is as offensive when it is enacted voluntarily as when it is forced on an unwilling victim.
Speaker 1:As we go through this new year, we should be attentive to what we know and what we feel about the potential written into our lives. We're given a calendar to mark the time and the seasons. As a gift to us Every day is the promise that what has not yet been built will come to be, even if we don't feel completely apt or able to be a part of it. After all, whenever we get out of bed and turn on the spigot at the bathroom sink, we are active agents in the world, in a world that will be created by what we do. We should also know that such things, done in our name or to satisfy our needs, is also done to make the world into something new. The world is made by us. A world in which we remove ourselves is a world made less. We should never forget that it's an interesting aspect of our times that there seems to be a longing to return to a more robust sense of participation in the everyday aspect of life. I know of people raising chicken in the backyard or planting gardens and eating from them, or making soap in the kitchen, or choosing to walk when we could ride. These are all aspects of making life more significant. This may herald a new version of an energetic future. This is, in fact, technological progress, not in the sense that there are new machines that do more things in faster ways, but in the sense that we're interested in using the machines we're familiar with to make our lives richer. It's a relief to see this energy in action.
Speaker 1:The essayist Wendell Berry, in a book published more than 40 years ago, opined that the real heroes of our society were the Amish. They were heroic, he said, because they were the only group who said yes to technology but were willing to limit its presence in their lives. You can own a phone among the Amish, for example, but it has to be outside of the house, since to have it in the house would disturb what goes on there. You can use engines to run machinery, but it shouldn't power the machines to travel, since you ought to appreciate the land and the landscape in all of its details and differences, and a hundred other adaptations to the needs of life and community. For them, technology exists to leverage good living, not to create a world around it or to destroy a world because of it. This energy seems to be catching on somewhat. Paul Kingsnorth, an essayist and a novelist, writes about buying a small farm in Ireland and settling there with his wife and children. He goes on and on about using a scythe to cut the hay for his sheep and to take care of the weeds in his garden, and his poetic description of each square yard of his smallhold ranks as truly good reading in our day and time.
Speaker 1:I think that in the year to come, we will become more and more familiar with this energy in our lives, and while we might not be able to act it out with the same decisiveness as Kingsnorth, who made the money necessary to quit the rest of the world in order to sit in his house and write, or, alternatively, to stoop over his squash plants and harvest what he needs for the evening meal, in our day and time, as we're passing through 2025, there is the building conviction that there is something to the definition of life than more, than bigger, than greater. It's simply the insight of our society reasserting itself. We do believe we are on our way toward the kingdom that God has promised us. Our encounter with this kingdom is not well described by the promise of better machines or more intricate schedules, but instead by a more profound connection to the work of God amid the intimacies of our lives. This also is the promise of the year to come.
Speaker 1:And finally, we should keep in mind that we belong to the Catholic Church. The Church is founded on the promise of God's kingdom come among us and is active in bringing that kingdom about. While we almost always are limited to noting the small things in church life, the ebb and flow of our prayers and the solemnity of our celebrations, we must also pause for a moment to appreciate how powerfully our lives are made new by being enfolded by the life of the Church. We Catholics are members of the oldest human institution in the world and in the history of the world it has provided the means and the energies for the life of Christ to remain present among the interstices of the world for 20 centuries. Being a Catholic matters we can look forward to the life of the Church continuing to flower in the year to come, not everywhere and not in everything, but Jesus himself promised that the powers of destruction and the poison of sin would not prevail against it. The Church exists in order to prompt our encounter with Christ. Christ will come to be present to us more thoroughly, more completely and more intimately in the year to come than in the year past, and this is the church for us. So watch, pay attention, celebrate. This is our legacy. It is the year of our Lord, 2025. We have a lot to look forward to the Lord, above all. Back in just a moment.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to our final segment Faith in Verse. We have a poem today called Bless Me Father. Bless me, father, for I have sinned, they say as they all come in. I've chosen to do the wrong, although my choices were full and long, and I seek the forgiveness on offer. That which is the heart of God's proffer exactly for the valence of the heart that I might live out my part to have in God's kingdom my own place to conquer in life's endless race to answer goodness is our first counsel that God's graces may be found still, for it is in the precise sinning spot we find the divine missions plot, so that especially there, there where God extends his care, his dare is free and fair. That's bless me, father, I hope that you can join us for further exploration of what it means to be Living Catholic in the weeks to come.
Speaker 2:Living Catholic is a production of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City for Oklahoma Catholic Radio. To learn more, visit okcrorg.