Jesus cries out today, While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

Mother Teresa, what’s happening to my hospital?

In 1917, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to kill God. The Soviet Union’s grand social experiment was committed to annihilating any trace of God in Russia. In 1931 Stalin dynamited the largest Orthodox church ever built, Moscow’s cathedral of Christ the Savior. He began work on a colossal statue of Lenin that would take its place. Every single Catholic parish in Russia was destroyed or converted to warehouses. As a result, a great darkness closed in on the nation for 70 years. They said the Soviet Union was impenetrable to the Gospel.

Somehow, though, decades before religion was legal again in Russia, Mother Teresa and her sisters slipped into Moscow. She tells this story from those days before 1989: Where There is Love, There is God, pp. 236-237.

American Atheism

Our government has not waged war on God, at least not directly. American atheism is a personal choice, and all of us have chosen it to some degree. Our lives are growing darker as we go about our daily lives ignoring God’s laws. Take the odd phenomena of Road Rage, for example. It is barbaric, but what causes it? Well, consider what most folks listen to in their cars, some for hours on end. It’s usually rap or rock music, or news, or talk shows, that only stir up anger, fear, and discouragement because they ignore even the idea of God, and often ridicule those who believe in God. People used to have bumper stickers: “God is my co-pilot.” But rarely now do we imagine God co-piloting our cars, or our lives. Our freeways have become darker, less-friendly, more dangerous places. So have our schools, our neighborhoods, our politics. An era of barbarism is overcoming western culture because we are dismantling our Christian heritage.

Lincoln: Fervently Implore God

In 1863, the President of the United States spoke to a nation that was, in his words, “faced with a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity.”  How did he lead the nation in that crisis? He begged the American people to “fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes.”  He urged us to return to God’s will. And all the newspapers affirmed his prophetic utterance. Can you imagine any news media, liberal or conservative, urging us to trust in God’s will and His laws today?

Hope

And yet: there is good reason for hope. We know how bright life can be when we order our lives for God through regular prayer and exercise of charity. We can throw Jesus out of our world, but we can also repent and invite Him back. We can bathe in the waters of His grace, as he instructed the Blind Man: “Go, wash in the waters of Siloam,” that is, in the One Who Is Sent, Jesus Christ.

As Catholics, we have three treasures that keep God’s light brightly burning in our lives: Mass, confession, and the rosary. If we do these three things, darkness will never overcome us. Mass every Sunday, confession once a month, and the rosary several times a week. Do not underestimate the practice of the rosary. As they say, “have you lost Jesus? Look for his mother—you will find him with her.”

Joy

Russia has rebuilt the cathedral Stalin dynamited in 1931. The colossal statue of Lenin was never erected. Jesus Christ has won the war, even though the battle for individual souls rages on. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Jesus asked the blind man. “Yes, Lord, I do believe,” and he worshiped Him. For each of us, light and joy flood our lives when we echo that blind man’s faith. Yes, Lord, I do believe. I worship, not myself or any other, but God alone.

Atheism doesn’t make sense

Two years ago some folks spent $270,000 to place 1000 large signs on those big red double-decker buses in England. They said: “There’s probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy life.” It’s that word “probably” that gets me. If God does exist, and a man doesn’t believe in Him, that man is in for a very unpleasant surprise when he dies. But if God doesn’t exist, and a man does believe in Him, he’s still OK. But God does exist, and it is repulsive to human reason to deny a First Cause. Given the order and beauty of the universe; and given the scientific fact that everything that exists is caused by something else, there must be a First Cause. Atheism is contrary to human reason.

So why would Richard Dawkins spend all that money to advertise that God “probably” doesn’t exist? I think he did it for the same reason we try to avoid God’s existence: we don’t want anyone telling us what to do. We generally make everyday life decisions—what to eat, what to wear, what to watch on TV, where to go on vacation, where to invest our money—based not on God but on our own preferences. It is hard to believe that my life is not my own, and I can’t just do anything I feel like, and that I’m accountable. It’s hard to live according to the conviction that I’m a steward and not an owner.

If God exists

Now why am I bringing up the question of atheism to a bunch of faithful Catholics at Sunday Mass? You probably all prayed the rosary this morning, went to confession last Saturday, and gave 10% of your income to poor. Because we are all a little bit atheist, right? Just the way we try to get around the doctor’s rules on diet and exercise, so we try to get around our priest’s rules on prayer and charity. Undisciplined eating habits cause pain and illness, but we just can’t seem to give them up. Just so, undisciplined spiritual habits cause discouragement and grief. I’m here to encourage us all to try a little harder.

Love One Another

Let’s begin with exercising charity. All three scripture readings today urge us to be “holy,” and the way we practice “holiness” is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The famous Golden Rule. “Do unto others….” But we are great at finding loopholes in this Rule. A wealthy and not-entirely-honest investment manager once said that he runs his business on the Golden Rule: “Do unto others,… then split.”

Leviticus 19: “Be holy, for I, the Lord am holy. You shall not bear hatred for your brother…. you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” In other words, the reason we practice charity is because God exists. His existence is our only real motivation. From 1 Corinthinans 3: “Do you not know that you are the temple of God? … the temple of God, which you are, is holy.” How holy must be His temple; how pure, how beautiful, how lovely must we keep God’s temples, which we are. And Matthew 5, the continuation of the Sermon on the Mount: “I say to you, love your enemies, … that you may be children of your heavenly Father, who makes his sun rise on the bad and the good… be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Why should we take the trouble to love one another? Why not just “stop worrying and enjoy life,” as our atheist friends recommend? Because God exists, and we can’t just do whatever we feel like doing. If we give up on the long and arduous path to holiness, life becomes most un-enjoyable. We become slaves of our feelings, and worse, slaves of the feelings of those who have more power than us. Only submission to God’s ways sets mankind free.

The Soviet Union or The United States of America

What is the judgment of history on atheism? On this President’s Day weekend, consider our national history. Religious pilgrims established the United States of America. They came to found a nation in accordance with the order established by God. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were smart enough to know that God exists. In his 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation, Washington writes: "it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor. President Lincoln said in 1863 to a Baltimore synod: “Nevertheless, amid the greatest difficulties of my Administration, when I could not see any other resort, I would place my whole reliance on God, knowing that all would go well, and that He would decide for the right.”

By contrast, the other great superpower of our era, the Soviet Union, absolutely rejected faith. Marxism-Leninism denied the existence of a higher power. Stripped of belief in God, the social and economic fabric of the Soviet Union quickly unraveled. Corruption in government, business, and personal relationships ran unchecked. A particularly stubborn problem in Russia today is theft and dishonesty. People have no problem stealing anything that isn’t tied down: gas out of cars, electricity from power poles, natural gas from pipelines, crops from farmers’ fields. Government dishonesty is epic right now in the Russian Federation. And the explanation? It’s simple: if God does not exist, then it’s every man for himself. Why should I go through the trouble of making an honest living if there is no ultimate order in the universe anyway? No one to whom I am accountable, other than the government?

Where do we go from here, America? Does God exist or doesn’t He? If He does, then we must direct our federal and local government, our businesses, and our personal relationships as stewards of a Greater Authority. Belief in God alone motivates people to forgive their enemies and love those who persecute them. Let us all examine our own lives: do we believe in God enough to make personal decisions based on his will? Or have we largely given ourselves over to “every man for himself?” Authentic and lasting freedom is found in no merely human wisdom. It is found in living in accord with the natural laws of an authority greater than ourselves.