Spiritual literature has always highlighted the primordial struggle between good and evil, and this has generally been conceived of as a war, a spiritual battle. Thus, as Christians, we have been warned that we must be vigilant against the powers of Satan and various other forces of evil. And we’ve fought these powers not just with prayer and private moral vigilance but with everything from Holy Water, to exorcisms, to a dogmatic avoidance of everything to do with the occult, the paranormal, alchemy, astrology, spiritualism, séances, witchcraft, sorcery, and Ouija boards. For Christians these were seen as dangerous venues through which malevolent spirits could enter our lives and do us harm.

And scripture does, seemingly, warn us about these things. It tells us that for our world to come to its completion and its fulfillment Christ must first triumph over all the powers that oppose God. And for that to happen, Christ has to first vanquish and destroy death, darkness, evil, the powers of hell, the powers of Satan, and various “thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers.”

What, concretely, are these powers and how is Christ ultimately to triumph over them? How should we conceive the battle that’s taking place?

We are clearer about how death will be defeated: We believe that the resurrection, Jesus’ and our own, is how that battle is to be won. As to Satan and hell, each of us has her own idea of what these are, but what we share in common as Christians is the belief that these will not be vanquished but will continue to exist, alongside and opposed to God and heaven, for eternity. That’s the common Christian belief, though not the universal one. There have always been theologians and mystics who believed that the full triumph of Christ will occur when the Satan himself converts and goes back to heaven along with everyone else in hell. The love of God, they believe, is so powerful that, in the end, nobody, not even Satan himself, will hold out against it. Eventually love will win everyone over and Christ will be fully triumphant when hell is empty.

But that still leaves us with what scripture calls the “thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” Are these simply another way of referring to Satan and his powers? Or do these refer to spiritual forces that many believe are hidden inside the occult, alchemy, astrology, spiritualism, séances, witchcraft, sorcery, and Ouija boards?  How might we conceptualize evil spiritual forces?

To the extent that we do not dismiss them out of hand as purely mythical, each of conceptualizes them in some way, usually in the graphic images given us in the Book of Revelation and by centuries of Christian artists. And so we picture some kind of spiritual warfare happening beneath the surface of things, a spiritual battle between good and evil, a warfare wherein, eventually, Christ will triumph by defeating and destroying all these malevolent powers, akin to the primordial battle wherein Michael, the Archangel, initially defeated Satan and threw him out of heaven.

But those are archetypal images, not meant to be pictured literally but intended rather to point us towards something deeper. What really are the “thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” that are opposing Christ and how are they to be defeated? How might we conceptualize the spiritual warfare going on beneath the surface of things?

The spiritual warfare that is being described in scripture and inside all authentic spirituality has less to do with the occult and exorcisms than it has to do the malignant grip of narcissism, greed, anger, bitterness, hatred, lust, wound, grudges, and ignorance. These are the real “thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” that oppose Christ and the struggle against them is the real battle between good and evil.

Authentic spiritual warfare is to be pictured this way: Inside our world and inside each of us there’s a fierce battle waging, a war between good and evil, and these are the contestants: Hatred is battling love; anger is battling patience; greed is battling generosity; bitterness is battling graciousness, jealousy is battling admiration; choosing to remain inside our wounds is battling healing; holding on to our grudges is battling forgiveness, ego and narcissism are battling compassion and community; and self-hatred is in a bitter battle with the acceptance of love and God’s unconditional embrace. Paranoia is waging a war against metanoia. That’s the real war that’s going on, in our world and inside each of us.

Hatred, anger, paranoia, greed, bitterness, lust, jealousy, non-forgiveness, and self-hatred are the “thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers” about which scripture warns us. Hence the final triumph of Christ will occur when the last of these forces is eventually subdued, when we are finally at peace with goodness, with love, with trust, with ourselves, with others, with our history, with our mistakes, with those who have hurt us, with those whom we have hurt, with our shortcomings, and with our impatience with God.

In the meantime, there will be spiritual warfare, primordial battles all around.

All of us struggle, and we struggle in three ways. First, sometimes we struggle simply to maintain ourselves, to stay healthy and stable, to stay normal, to not fall apart, to not have our lives unravel into chaos and depression. It takes real effort just to maintain our ordinary health, stability, and happiness.

But, even as this is going on, another part of us is forever reaching upwards, struggling to grow, to achieve higher things, to not waste our riches and gifts, to live a life that is more admirable, noble, and altruistic.

Then, at another level, we struggle with a threatening darkness that surrounds and undergirds us. The complexities of life can overwhelm us leaving us feeling threatened, small, excluded, and insignificant. For this reason, a part of us is forever conscious that we stand one season, one breakdown, one lost relationship, one lost job, one death of a loved one, or one thing that we cannot even foresee, away from a descent into paralyzing depression, an illness, or a dark chaos that we cannot control.

In short, we struggle to maintain ourselves, struggle to grow, and struggle to keep depression and death at bay. Because we struggle at these three levels, we need three kinds of spiritualities in our lives.

At one level, we need a spirituality of maintenance, that is, a spirituality that helps us to maintain our normal health, stability, and ordinariness. Too often spiritual teachings neglect this vital aspect of spirituality. Rather we are forever being challenged to grow, be better persons, to be better Christians, to simply be better than we are at present. That’s good, but it naively takes for granted that we are already healthy, stable, and strong enough to be challenged. And, as we know, many times this isn’t the case. There are times in our lives, when the best we can do is to hang on, not fall apart, and fight to regain again some health, stability, and strength in our lives, to simply get one foot in front of the next. At these times in our lives, challenge isn’t exactly what we need, rather we need to be given divine permission to feel what we’re feeling and we need to be given a warm hand to help draw us back towards health and strength. The challenge to grow comes later.

And that challenge comes with an invitation that invites us upwards, towards a spirituality of the ascent. All spiritualities worthy of the name, stress the need to make a certain ascent, to grow beyond our immaturities, our laziness, our wounds, and the perennial hedonism and shallowness of our culture. The emphasis here is always to reach upward, beyond, towards the heavens, and towards all that is more noble, altruistic, compassionate, loving, admirable, and saintly. Much of classical Christian spirituality is a spirituality of the ascent, an invitation to something higher, an invitation to be true to what is deepest inside of us, namely, the Image and Likeness of God. Much of Jesus’ preaching invites us precisely to something higher. Confucius, one of the great moral teachers of all time, had a similar pedagogy, inviting people to look to beauty and goodness and to forever reach in that direction. In our own time, John Paul II used this very effectively in his appeal to young people, challenging them always to not settle for compromise or second-best, but to look always for something higher and more noble to give their lives to.

But the challenge to growth also needs a spirituality of descent, a vision and a set of disciplines that point us not just towards the rising sun, but also towards the setting sun. We need a spirituality that doesn’t avoid or deny the complexities of life, the mad conspiracy of forces beyond us, the paralyzing losses and depressions in life, and the looming reality of sickness, diminishment, and death. Sometimes we can only grow by descending into that frightening underworld, where, like Jesus, we undergo a transformation by facing chaos, diminishment, darkness, satanic forces (whatever these may be), and death itself. In some ancient cultures this was called “sitting in the ashes” or “being a child of Saturn” (the archetypal planet of depression). As Christians we call this undergoing the paschal mystery. Whatever the name, all spiritualities worthy of the name will, at some time in your life, invite you to make a painful descent into the frightening underworld of chaos, depression, loss, insignificance, darkness, satanic forces, and death itself.

Life reveals itself above us and below us and on the flat plain of ordinariness. None of these may be ignored. And so we need always to maintain and steady ourselves, even as we reach upwards and sometimes allow ourselves to descent into darkness.

And there’s still time to do all of this. As Rainer Marie Rilke once wrote:

You are not dead yet. It is not too late

To open your depths by plunging into them

And drink in the life

That reveals itself quietly there.

It’s not only love that makes the world go round. Resentment too is prominent in stirring the drink. In so many ways our world is drowning in resentment. Everywhere you look, it seems, someone is bitter about something and breathing out resentment. What is resentment? Why is this feeling so prevalent in our lives? How do we move beyond it?

Soren Kierkegaard once defined resentment in this way. Resentment, he suggested, happens when we move from the happy feeling of admiration to the unhappy feeling of jealousy. And this, sadly, happens all too frequently in our lives and we are dangerously blind to its occurrence. Me resentful? How dare you make that accusation!

Yet it’s hard to deny that resentment and its concomitant unhappiness color our world. At every level of life, from what we see playing out in the grievances and wars among nations to what we see playing out in the bickering in our board rooms, class rooms, living rooms, and bedrooms, there is evidence of resentment and bitterness. Our world is full of resentment. Everyone, it seems, is bitter about something, and, of course, not without cause.  Few are the persons who do not secretly nurse the feeling that they have been ignored, wounded, cheated, treated unfairly, and have drawn too many short straws in life; and so many of us feel that we have every right to protest our right to be resentful and unhappy.  We’re not happy, but with good reason.

Yes, there’s always good reason to be resentful; but, and this is the point of this column, according to a number of insightful analysts, both old and new, we are rarely in touch with the real reason why we are so spontaneously bitter. For persons such as Thomas Aquinas, Soren Kierkegaard, Robert Moore, Gil Bailie, Robert Bly, and Richard Rohr, among others, the deep root of our resentment and unhappiness lies in our inability to admire, our inability to praise others, and our inability to give others and the world a simple gaze of admiration.

We’re a society that, for the most part, can’t admire. Admiration is, for us, a lost virtue. Indeed in the many circles today, both in the world and in the churches, admiration is seen as something juvenile and immature, the frenzied, mindless shrieking of teenage girls chasing a rock star. Maturity and sophistication are identified today with the kind of intelligence, wit, and reticence, which don’t easily admire, which don’t easily compliment. Learning and maturity, we believe, need to be picking things apart, suspicious of others’ virtues, distrustful of their motives, on hyper-alert for hypocrisy, and articulating every reason not to admire. Such is the view today.

But what we don’t admit in this view of maturity and learning is how we feel threatened by those whose graces or virtues exceed our own. What we don’t admit is our own jealousy.  What we don’t admit is our own resentment. What we don’t admit, and never will admit, is how our need to cut down someone else is an infallible sign of our own jealousy and bad self-image. And what helps us in our denial is this: Cynicism and cold judgment make for a perfect camouflage; we don’t need to admire because we’re bright enough to see that there’s nothing really to admire.

That, too often, is our sophisticated, unhappy state: We can no longer truly admire anybody. We can no longer truly praise anybody. We can no longer look at the world with any praise or admiration. Rather our gaze is perennially soured by resentment, cynicism, judgment, and jealousy.

We can test ourselves on this: Robert Moore often challenges his audiences to ask themselves this question: When was the last time you walked across a room and told a person, especially a younger person or a person whose talents dwarf yours, that you admire her, that you admire what she’s doing, that her gifts enrich your life, and that you are happy that her path has crossed yours? When was the last time you gave someone a heartfelt compliment? Or, to reverse the question: When was the last time that someone, especially someone who is threatened by your talents, gave you a sincere compliment?

We don’t compliment each other easily, or often, and this betrays a secret jealousy. It also reveals a genuine moral flaw in our lives. Thomas Aquinas one submitted that to withhold a compliment from someone who deserves it is a sin because we are withholding from him or her some of the food that he or she needs to live. To not admire, to not praise, to not compliment, is not a sign of sophistication but a sign moral immaturity and personal insecurity. It is also one of the deeper reasons why we so often fill with bitter feelings of resentment and unhappiness.

Why do we so often feel bitter and resentful? We fill with resentment for many reasons, though, not least, because we have lost the virtues of admiration and praise.

Although I grew up in a loving, safe, and nurturing family and community, one of the dominant memories of my childhood and teenage years is that of being restless and somehow discontent. My life always seemed too small, too confined, a life away from what was important in the world. I was forever longing to be more connected to life and I feared that other people didn’t feel that way and that I was somehow singular and unhealthy in my restlessness.

I entered the Oblate seminary immediately after high school and carried that restlessness with me, except that now, entering religious life, I felt even more worry and shame in carrying this disquiet. However, midway through that first year of training, a year which religious congregations call novitiate, we received a visit from an extraordinary Oblate missionary named Noah Warnke, a man who had received numerous civic and church awards for his achievements and who was widely respected. He began his address to us, the novices, by asking us these questions: “Are you restless? Feeling isolated in this religious house? Feeling lonely and cut off from the world?” We all nodded, yes, he’d clearly struck a live-chord. “Good,” he replied, “you should be feeling restless. My God, you should be jumping out of your skins, you’ve all that red-blood, and fire, and energy and you’re holed-up here away from everything! But that’s good, that restlessness is a good feeling, you’re healthy!  Tough it out with the restlessness, it’ll be worth it in the long run!” It was the first time in my life that someone had legitimatized how I was feeling. I felt like I had just been introduced to myself: “Are you jumping out of your skin? Good, you’re healthy!”

Immediately after that novitiate year, I began my theological training and one of the persons we studied in depth was Thomas Aquinas. He was the second person who helped introduce me to myself.  I was nineteen years old when I first met his thought and, although some of his insights were a bit beyond my young mind, I understood enough to find in him not just some legitimization for how I was feeling but also, more importantly, a meta-narrative within which to understand why I was feeling the way I did. Aquinas asks: “What is the adequate object of the human mind and heart?” In other words, what would we have to experience in order to be fully satisfied? His answer: All being, everything! What would we have to experience to be fully satisfied is everything. We would have to know everything and be known by everybody, a human impossibility in this life, and so it shouldn’t be a mystery as to why we live in perpetual disquiet and why, as Pascal says, all the miseries of the human being come from the fact that we can’t sit still in a room for one hour.

The third person that helped introduce me to myself was Sidney Callahan. Reading her book on sexuality as a young seminarian, I was struck by how she linked sex to soul, and how desire, not least sexual desire, has deep roots in the soul. At one point she makes this simple statement. I don’t have the exact quote, but it is words to this effect: If you look at yourself and your insatiability and worry that you are too-restless, over-sexed, and somehow pathological in your dissatisfactions, it doesn’t mean that you are sick, it just means that you are healthy and not in need of any hormone shots! These were liberating words for a restless, over-sensitive twenty year-old.

A couple of years later, I was introduced to the writings of Henri Nouwen and he, perhaps more than anyone else, gave me permission to feel what I feel. Nouwen, as we know, was such a powerful writer because he was so honest in sharing his own neediness, restlessness, and disquiet. He had a singular talent for tracing out the restless movements within our souls. For instance, in describing his own struggles, he writes: “I want to be a saint, but I also want to experience all the sensations that sinners experience. Small wonder, that life is a struggle.”

Finally, of course, there’s St. Augustine and his famed opening to the Confessions wherein he summarizes his life-long struggle in the words: “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”  We carry infinity inside us and thus should not be surprised that we will never find full consummation and peace within the finite. Augustine also gave us that wonderful rationalization that we all use to put off into the indefinite future some of the things that we need to do now: Lord, make me a chaste Christian, but not yet!

Some people talk about the five people they would like to meet in heaven. These are the five people who have helped me understand what it means to walk on this earth.

Have you ever noted how we spontaneously react to a perceived threat? Faced with a threat, our primal instincts tend to take over and we instantly freeze over and begin to shut all the doors opening to warmth, gentleness, and empathy inside us.

That’s a natural reaction, deeply rooted inside our nature. Biologists tell us that, whenever we perceive something or someone as threatening us, paranoia instinctually arises inside us and has the effect of driving us back towards a more primitive place inside our bodies, namely, the reptile part our brain, that remnant still inside us from our evolutionary origins millions of years ago. And reptiles are cold-blooded. So too, it seems, are we when we’re threatened.

This, I believe, helps explain much of the paranoia and violence in our world today as well as the bitter rhetoric that, almost universally, is blocking any real possibility of meaningful discussion apposite our tensions today within politics, economics, and our churches.

We live in a bitterly polarized world.  All of us recognize this, and all of us see a lot of cold-bloodedness inside world politics, inside the politics within our own countries and communities, and, sadly, not least, inside our churches. What we see in nearly every discussion today where there is disagreement is a cold, hard rhetoric that is not really open to genuine dialogue and is, invariably, the antithesis of charity, graciousness, and respect. What we see instead is paranoia, demonization of those who disagree with us, ridicule of our opponents’ sincerity and values, and blind self-defensiveness.

Moreover this bitterness and disrespect, so contrary to all that’s in the Gospels and to all that’s noble inside us, is invariably “sacralized”, that is, it is rationalized as demanded by “God” because we believe that what we are doing is for God, or for truth, or for country, or for the poor, or for mother-nature, or for art, or for something whose transcendent value, we believe, justifies our bracketing both Jesus and common courtesy. If you doubt this, simply turn on any radio or television station that does commentary on politics or religion or listen to any political or religious debate today. We are, as John Shea puts it, more skilled in justification than in self-examination; but, then, we can sacralize our disrespect and lack of elemental charity.

But, in doing this we are far from the Gospel, far from Jesus, and far from what’s best inside us. We’re meant to be more than the reptile part of our brains and more than the instincts we inherited from our ancient ancestors, the beasts of prey. We’re called to something higher, called to respond to threat beyond the blind response of instinct.

St. Paul’s own reaction to threat can serve as a template for what our ideal response should be. He writes: When we are ridiculed, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we respond gently.  (1 Corinthians 4, 12-13) Earlier, in the same Letter, he had already given another counsel in regards to dealing with opposition. His counsel: Live with enough patience inside opposition so as not have to defend yourself, let God and history do that for you: “It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal; I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me, but I do not hereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord. Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time.”

Admittedly, this is difficult. Our instinctual self is not easily subdued. Like everyone else, I struggle a lot with this. Every time I hear or read someone who dismisses my preaching and writing as heretical, or dangerous, or (even more biting) as light-weight fluff, the reptile part of my brain stirs to do its ancient job and my natural instincts bitterly resist the high road that St. Paul so wisely counsels. Natural instinct does not want to try to understand the position of the one who has belittled us, nor does it does not want to bless and endure and respond gently. It wants blood. I suspect that everyone’s instincts work in the same way. Natural instinct doesn’t easily honor the Gospel.

But, that’s the test; indeed one of the litmus tests of Christian discipleship. When we look at the core of Jesus’ moral teachings and ask ourselves, what more than anything else sets Jesus apart from other moral teachers? What particular challenge of his might serve as a litmus test for genuine discipleship?

I submit that at the core of Jesus’ teaching lies this challenge: Can I love an enemy? Can I bless someone who curses me? Can I wish good to someone who wishes me evil? Can I genuinely forgive someone who’s been unfair to me?  And, perhaps even more importantly, can I live in patience when I’m in tension, not rushing to defend myself, but leaving that defense to history and to God?

A friend of mine likes to humor about his struggles in growing up. When I was in my twenties, he quips, I felt that by the time I was forty I would have grown-up enough to let go of my bad habits. But, when I turned forty, I gave myself an extra ten years, promising myself that by age fifty, I’d have conquered these habits. Well, now I’m my fifties and I’ve promised myself that by age sixty, I’ll be more mature and more serious about the deeper things in life.

Most of us, if we are honest, have a similar story. We’re well intentioned, but we keep pushing the things we need to change in our lives off into the future: Yes, I need to do this, but I’m not ready yet. I want more time. Sometime in the future I’ll do this.

That’s a near-universal sentiment, and for good reason. The tension we experience between our desire to grow-up and our perennial procrastination and infinite stalling in doing that, reflects in fact a tension that lies at the heart of Jesus’ message, a tension between God’s promises as being already here and God’s promises as still coming. Simply put: Everything Jesus promised is already here and everything Jesus promised is still coming. We’re already living the new, resurrected life, even as we’re waiting for it still to come. What lies inside this paradox?

Biblical scholars and theologians tell us that everything Jesus came to bring us (the Reign of God, the Kingdom of God, the New Age, the Final Age, the reign of justice on this earth, new life, the resurrection, eternal life, heaven) is already here, except that it’s also still coming. It’s here now, but not fully; a present reality, but in tension. And it’s still coming, in its fullness; still to arrive, in ecstasy. It’s already here and it’s still to be realized. For instance, when Jesus says that he has come to bring us new life, he is not talking simply about our future our lives in heaven; he is also talking about our lives here, already now. The new life is already here, he assures us. Heaven has already begun.

Jesus preached this very clearly and the problem was not that his hearers didn’t understand him. They understood; but, almost universally, they resisted that message. Much as they yearned for God’s Kingdom to be already here, like my friend who keeps asking for another ten years to get his life in order, they preferred to push things into the future. Having God become concrete in their lives was far too threatening.

Gerhard Lohfink, the renowned Biblical scholar, aptly articulates both the resistance that Jesus’ hearers had to this part of his message and the reason for that resistance: “Jesus’ hearers prefer to push everything off into the future, and the story comes to no good end. The reign of God announced by Jesus is not accepted. The ‘today’ offered by God is denied. And that, that alone, is why ‘already’ becomes ‘not yet’. …. It is not only in Nazareth that the ‘today’ of the Gospel was not accepted. Later also, in the course of the church’s history, it has again and again been denied or rendered toothless. The reason was the same as in Nazareth: apparently it goes against the human grain for God to become concrete in our lives. Then people’s desires and favorite notions are in danger, and so are their ideas about time. It can’t be today, because that would mean that our lives have to change today already. Therefore it can lie, hygienically and snugly packed, at rest, inconsequential.”

I suspect that all of us can relate to that: It’s very threatening to have God become “concrete” in our lives, as opposed to God simply being a reality that will one day become very real. Because if God is “concrete” already now that means that our worlds have to change now and we have to stop pushing things into the indefinite future.  This isn’t so much a fault in faith as it is a procrastination, a stalling, wanting of a little more time before we need to get serious. We’re like the guests in the Gospel parable who are invited to wedding banquet. We too want to go to the feast, intend to go to the feast; but, first, we need to attend to our marriages, our businesses, our ambitions. We can get serious later. There’s time. We fully intend to take Jesus seriously; it’s just that we want a little more time before we do that.

We are all, I suspect, familiar with St. Augustine’s infamous prayer. After converting to Christianity at age twenty-five, he struggled for another nine years to bring his sexuality into harmony with his faith. During those nine years, he prayed this way: Lord, make me a chaste Christian … but not yet!

To his credit, unlike many of us, at least eventually he stopped pushing things into the indefinite future.

The past five years have seen a growth in interest in studies on human happiness. Numerous books have been published on the topic, not least Sonja Lyubomirsky’s, The Myths of Happiness, which has become for many a secular bible for happiness and meaning. In a recent book, Called to Happiness, Sidney Callahan critically evaluates many of these studies. Whatever the merit of these studies, all of us nurse our own secret dream of what will bring us happiness and often that fantasy is at odds with what we know to be true at a deeper level. What will make us happy?

In a recent interview (July 29, 2014) for the Argentine weekly, Viva, Pope Francis weighs in on this topic, submitting his own “Top 10 Tips” for happiness. What are Pope Francis’ tips for happiness or, as he puts it, “for bringing greater joy to one’s life”?

In presenting these, I will be faithful to his captions but, because his commentary on each one was rather lengthy, I will risk synthesizing his central point in my own words:

1. Live and let live.

All of us will live longer and more happily if we stop trying to arrange other peoples’ lives. Jesus challenged us not to judge but to live with the tension and let God and history make the judgments. So live we need to live by own convictions and let others do the same.

2. Be giving of yourself to others.

Happiness lies in giving ourselves away. We need to be open and generous because if we withdraw into ourselves we run the risk of becoming self-centered and no happiness will be found there since “stagnant water becomes putrid.”

3. Proceed calmly.

Move with kindness, humility, and calm. These are the antithesis of anxiety and distress. Calm never causes high blood pressure. We need to make conscious efforts to never let the moment cause panic and excessive hurry. Rather be late than stressed.

4. A healthy sense of leisure.

Never lose the pleasures of art, literature, and playing with children. Remember that Jesus scandalized others with his capacity to enjoy life in all its sensuousness. We don’t live by work alone, no matter how important and meaningful it might be. In heaven there will be no work, only leisure, we need to learn the art and joy of leisure not just to prepare for heaven but to enjoy some of heaven already now.

5. Sundays should be holidays.

Workers should have Sundays off because Sunday is for family. Accomplishment, productivity, and speed may not become our most valued commodities or we will begin to take everything for granted, our lives, our health, our families, our friends, those around us, and all the good things in life. That is why God gave us a commandment to keep the Sabbath holy. This is not a lifestyle suggestion, but a commandment as binding as not killing. Moreover, if we are employers, the commandment demands too that we give our employees proper Sabbath-time.

6. Find innovative ways to create dignified jobs for young people.

If you want to bless a young person, don’t just tell that person that he or she is wonderful. Don’t just admire youthful beauty and energy. Give a young person your job! Or, at least, work actively to help him or her find meaningful work. This will both bless that young person and bring a special happiness to your own life.

7. Respect and take care of nature.

The air we breathe out is the air we will re-inhale. This is true spiritually, psychologically, and ecologically. We can’t be whole and happy when Mother Earth is being stripped of her wholeness. Christ came to save the world, not just the people in the world. Our salvation, like our happiness, is tied to the way we treat the earth. It is immoral to slap another person in the face and so it is immoral too to throw our garbage into the face of Mother Earth.

8. Stop being negative.

Needing to talk badly about others indicates low self-esteem. Negative thoughts feed unhappiness and a bad self-image. Positive thoughts feed happiness and healthy self-esteem.

9. Don’t proselytize, respect others’ beliefs.

What we cherish and put our faith into grows “by attraction, not by proselytizing.”  Beauty is the one thing that no one can argue with. Cherish your values, but always act towards others with graciousness, charity, and respect.

10. Work for peace.

Peace is more than the absence of war and working for peace means more than not causing disharmony.  Peace, like war, must be waged actively by working for justice, equality, and an ever-wider inclusivity in terms of what makes up our family. Waging peace is the perennial struggle to stretch hearts, our own and others, to accept that in God’s house there are many rooms and that all faiths, not least our own, are meant to be a house of prayer for all peoples.

Offered with apologies for whenever my own thinking replaced that of Pope Francis.

In 1991 Hollywood produced a comedy entitled, City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal. In a quirky way it was a wonderfully moral film, focusing on three, middle-aged men from New York City who were dealing with midlife crisis.

As a present from their wives, who are frustrated enough with them to attempt anything, the three are given the gift of participating in a cattle drive through New Mexico and Colorado. And so these three urbanites set off to ride horses through the wilderness. The comedy part of the film focuses on their inept horsemanship and their naiveté about cattle and the wilderness. The more serious part of the movie tracks their conversations as they try to sort through both their own struggles with aging and the larger mysteries of life.

And one day as they are discussing sex, one of the three, Ed, the character with the least amount of moral scruples, asks the other two whether they would be unfaithful to their wives and have an affair if they were sure that they would never be caught. Billy Cyrstal’s character, Mitch, initially engages the question jokingly, protesting its impossibility: You always get caught! All affairs get exposed in the end. But Ed persists with his question: “But suppose you wouldn’t get caught. Suppose you could get away with it. Would you cheat on your wife and have an affair, if no one would ever know?” Mitch’s answer: “No, I still wouldn’t do it!” “Why not?” asks Ed, “nobody would know.” “But I’d know,” Mitch replied, “and I’d hate myself for it!”

There are volumes of moral wisdom in that answer. Ultimately nobody gets away with anything.  We always get caught, not least by ourselves and by the moral energy inside the air we breathe. Moreover whether we get caught or not, there will always be consequences. This is a deep, inalienable moral principle written into the very fabric of the universe itself. Universal human experience attests to this. Nobody ultimately gets away with anything, despite every protest to the contrary.

We see this articulated, for example, in the very heart of Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and virtually all Easter religions in a concept that is popularly called the Law of Karma. Karma is a Sanskrit word which means action or deed, but it carries with it the implication that every action or deed we do generates a force of energy that returns to us in kind, namely, what we sow is what we will reap. Hence, bad intent and bad actions will ricochet back on us and cause unhappiness, just as good intent and good actions will ricochet back on us and bring us happiness, irrespective of what is seen or known by anyone else. The universe has its own laws that assure this.

Jesus was no stranger to the idea. It is everywhere present in his teachings and at times explicitly stated: “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6, 38)

In essence, Jesus is telling us that the air we breathe out is the air that we will re-inhale and that this is true at every level of our existence: Simply put, if we are emitting too much carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide into the air we will eventually find ourselves suffocating on them. And this is true at every level of our lives: If I breathe out bitterness, I will eventually find myself breathing in bitterness. If I breathe out dishonesty, I will eventually find myself breathing in dishonesty. If I breathe out greed and stinginess, I will eventually find myself gasping for a generosity in a world suffocating on greed and stinginess. Conversely, if I breathe out generosity, love, honesty, and forgiveness, I will eventually, no matter how mean and dishonest the world around me, find life inside a world of generosity, love, honesty, and forgiveness.

What we breathe out is what we will eventually re-inhale. This is a nonnegotiable truth written into the very structure of the universe, written into life itself, written into every religion worthy of the name, written into the teachings of Jesus, and written into every conscience that is still in good faith.

Where does this principle ground itself and why can it never be violated without consequence? The principle is alienable because the universe protects itself, because Mother Earth protects herself, because human nature protects itself, because the laws of love protect themselves, because the laws of justice protect themselves, because the laws of conscience protect themselves, because God has created a universe that is moral in its very structure.

Being moral or not is not something we can choose or not choose. We don’t have that prerogative because God created a morally-contoured universe, one that has deep, inalienable moral grooves which need to be honored and respected, irrespective of whether we get caught or not when we cheat.