"How can I display what I know I'm worthy of"

I didn't post a traditio yesterday. In order to correct my error, here is Tom Jones singing A Boy From Nowhere live in Cardiff, Wales.

"Where good honest men grow weak and the rich grow strong, something's wrong "

Tom is was a Welsh boy from nowhere and now look at him, a great singer and a good and gracious man with a few flaws!

A brief take on the importance of marriage

I am hard-pressed to write anything really meaningful or even heartfelt at the moment, not because there is nothing on my heart or mind, but because I have been so very busy. I finished all my coursework for my graduate degree and now have to begin writing my Integrated Pastoral Research paper on the emerging ecclesial identity of the permanent deacon in the Roman Catholic Church, much to ponder there...

In light of the USCCB's document Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan and the Manhattan Declaration, both of which set forth very well the Christian view on marriage and take on many of the very shallow arguments in favor of altering the fundamental meaning of marriage, my mind is very much on this subject. If you look, you will find good things in the most unexpected places, like in the British tabloid-like newspaper The Daily Mail. Of course, it was in The Mail this past spring that A.N. Wilson announced his return to Christian faith. In yesterday's on-line edition, author Sally Emerson recounts the importance of marriage and family by recounting a torrid affair she had with Douglas Adams, author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, early in her marriage. She also recounts how she came to her senses about life and love, something many who go down that path never do. Towards the end of her lovely article, 'My wild affair with author Douglas Adams and how returning to my husband taught me the true value of marriage', she writes: "I can't understand in whose interests it might be to allow this most ancient institution to crumble. The facts and figures of countless research studies are devastatingly conclusive: children with two devoted parents tend to do better at school and have fewer behavioural problems. It is not hard to work out why.

"A government should not be trying to knock down the edifices which make us happy, but should be trying to build them up."

Prayer and the heart

It is amazing how busy my life is! Once in awhile it catches up to me. It certainly has this week. Instead of spending time writing, I am spending it reading and praying more. It's always amazing to me how much a little more effort yields, how much it changes my perspective on life, people, things. I suppose this is the purpose of Advent.

There is certainly a lot going in the world at present, including Pres. Obama's announcement that we will send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan for an eighteen month period. What bothers me is that, like the Bush Administration, Obama, in declaring Afghanistan not lost, has yet to spell out in a succinct manner just what our desired end state is, what we want to achieve politically and in terms of security (i.e., number of Afghani army and police troops trained, equipped, fielded, etc.). In other words, clear benchmarks against which we can measure progress. It seems to me that this is more important that saying by July 2011 we will begin reducing troops levels, which seems kind of arbitrary to me.

A picture taken by my friend, Carlo, last Thursday
So, many things, perhaps too many. It becomes increasingly clear to me how much prayer is needed. I am always bothered by how ambiguous that statement is. When we pray for someone or some other specific intention, we, too, need to be specific. What exactly are we praying for in any given situation? It is important for us to pray in God's will, which means to subject what we pray for to judgment. We judge our intentions against the criteria of the Gospel, not some subjective standard. While we certainly ask God to intervene, to get involved, to change the person or circumstances. What means does God use? Among the means at God's disposal, which are literally infinite, God primarily uses us, or at least wants to use us, as far-fetched as that may seem. This puts me in mind of Tolstoy's famous quip to the effect that everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change himself.

It also seems that we use in far too sentimental a way sayings like Ghandi's "be the change you want to see." By what criteria do I judge the change I may want? In other words, how can I be sure that the change I seek is for the better in the service of the good? Even assuming that the change I seek is for the good, how do I become that change? These two seemingly disparate things connect. The primary means God has for intervening is us, as far-fetched as that may seem. So, the change we pray for most of all is a change in me, in my heart. Of course, I also pray for God to powerfully intervene in affairs and in the lives of people in ways that are beyond me, over and above me, or even ways too subtle for me to detect. I do this in the confidence that God is already involved and at work. I think of what St. Paul in that beautiful passage from his letter to the Romans: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect," then pray for that God's will done in you and through you (12:2). Prayer is not calling on a God who is otherwise absent. As Pope Benedict said at the start of this Advent: "God is here, he hasn’t retired to his world, he hasn’t left us alone." This was perhaps the major point I tried to make in my homily on Sunday.

It is crucial that it all start with gratitude, not gratitude generally, vaguely, and sentimentally construed, lifted up as a half-hearted gift, as some kind of God-ordained prerequisite, but genuine thanksgiving, a movement of the heart toward God for what you face right now, which is nothing other than a step toward your destiny. I think this goes some distance to unpacking what Paul means when he exhorts us to "be transformed by the renewal of [our]mind[s]."

Year C 1st Sunday of Advent

Readings: Readings: Jer. 33:14-16; Ps. 25:4-5.8-10.14; 1 Thess. 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25-28.34-36

Today my friends we begin a new year of grace. The great season of Advent is upon us. If you’re already “doing” Christmas, it is time to slow down! Jesus is the reason for the season of Advent as well as for the season of Christmas. Our rush to bypass Advent and get right to Christmas is indicative of our desire to jump over life, skip experience, and land in God’s presence, instead of seeing our lives, what happens to us as our way of with God in realizing our destiny. “Christ does not save us from our humanity, but through it” (PP. Benedict XVI Christmas Urbi et Orbi 2006).

Our word Advent comes from the Latin advenio meaning “to come to”. So, the relationship of this season to the Paschal Mystery of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is fairly straightforward: during Advent we await the arrival of Jesus Christ. Our waiting is not an exercise in pretending that Jesus was not born in Bethlehem more than 2,000 year ago anymore than we observe Good Friday without being conscious of Christ’s resurrection. The arrival we are awaiting is his return in glory.

It is important that our waiting not merely be passive anticipation. Rather, it takes the form of active discipleship. The Christian way of life actively anticipates the Lord’s return and makes his continued presence among us by the power of the Holy Spirit incarnate. The vast majority of history is too often oversimplified as a long advent. On this view, the history of Israel is seen as nothing more than a preparation for the birth of Christ, just as the history of the church is taken as a long wait for his return in glory. However, it is important that we not reduce either of these two periods to merely long waits, lest we empty human history of the value of living. If nothing else, Advent teaches us the importance of history, of time.

Jesus did not abandon us when he ascended into heaven after his resurrection. Rather, "[r]ising from the dead He sent His life-giving Spirit upon His disciples and through Him… established His Body… the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation" (Lumen Gentium par. 48). The primary means through which the Holy Spirit makes Christ present among us are the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. It is the Holy Spirit’s active presence that makes the Eucharist more than merely a memorial, but makes Christ really present among us. We believe that "until there shall be new heavens and a new earth in which justice dwells, the pilgrim Church in her sacraments and institutions," along with the whole of creation "groan and travail in pain…" (par. 48). What we are living is not a promise yet to be fulfilled, but a down payment on what God has promised.

Jesus Christ is present in our assembly today in a number of ways. In turn, we are sent forth from here to make him present to and for the world. Hence, the most nonsensical question a Christian can ask is, "Where is the Lord?" If he is not in you my dear friends, you who, through your baptism, remaining close to him in the sacrament of penance, and your participation in this Eucharist are a member of his body, then where can he be? Faith in Christ Jesus is always far more incarnational than it is mystical. The Father only makes Christ present by the power of the Holy Spirit in our gifts of bread and wine in order for him to be present in you. Indeed, "[t]he mystery of life in Christ is that Christ can live you," but you have to let him in (Michael Card Live This Mystery).

In our reading today from the prophet Jeremiah we have a prophecy of the coming of one who, like David, will unite Israel and rule over her, a just ruler who will keep the promised land safe from invaders. Indeed, many in Jesus’ day failed to recognize him as the Messiah, as the shoot of David, precisely because, as we heard last week on Christ the King, his "kingdom does not belong to this world" (John 18:36). We make the same mistake when by receiving him we fail to understand that he wants to be present to us and through us to the world.

In his first letter to the Thessalonians, which is likely the first New Testament text written, St. Paul exhorts the community "to be blameless in holiness" in order to be prepared for "the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones" (1 Thess. 3:13). The reason Paul composed this letter is because members of that community had begun to die, but the Lord had not yet returned, which caused a lot of anxiety due to their belief in his imminent return. Hence, Paul is exhorting them to live in joyful expectation of that return, the date of which nobody knows, remaining vigilant and awake, by living the ordinary in an extraordinary way, abounding "in love for one another and for all" (1 Thess. 3:12).

In our Gospel today Jesus also exhorts his followers to live in anticipation of his return by remaining awake and alert. He warns against those things that distract us from the purpose of our lives, our new life in him. We are not to become drowsy and inattentive because we choose drunkenness and carousing,or the million other ways we trivialize life. Neither are we to be consumed by life’s inevitable and daily anxieties, which also amounts to making the wrong things the focus of our lives. This is why at Mass we pray “in your mercy…protect us from all anxiety…” Instead we are to remain vigilant and prayerful, but not out of fear, or even out of a misguided expectation that the Lord will return right away, or in 2012, but to live in a manner consistent with our reason for being.

My dear friends, confident that life in Christ is in its living, appropriate the liturgical year: set up, bless, and use an Advent wreath in your home, keep excess and indulgence at bay for a few more weeks, during this time between now and Christmas sing hymns of joyful expectation, fast, pray, confess your sins, be reconciled to others, and above all help those in need. Because faith in Christ is incarnational, the liturgy, made up of its cycle of seasons, deeply rooted in creation, is our primary work. It is how we sanctify time and how God sanctifies us. Liturgy is our active participation in the Paschal mystery, which is nothing less than participation in the very life of God- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Only insofar as we live rooted in love and "blameless in holiness" do we make present the One "who is, who was, and who is to come" (Rev. 1:8). We are called to be his witnesses by living the tension between the already and the not yet, "as we wait in joyful hope" for his coming.

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end"*

Being the compulsive blogger that I am, an end-of-the-year post is unavoidable. Because I have spent most of the morning finishing my homily for the first Sunday of Advent, I am kind of drained. It seems like there is always something to do. For the most part I am grateful for that, as having too much time on my hands (to quote the old Styx song) is dangerous for me.

Over the past several days I have been reading the first volume of Eugene H. Peterson's projected five volume spiritual theology (four volumes are published), which takes its title from a line in a sonnet by Gerard Manley Hopkins: Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology. This book doesn't take my breath away, it gives me breath, that is, inspires me. I have been resisting the temptation to just fill my blog with insights from this very credible tome.

It is appropriate as we prepare to embark on a new year of grace to remember that "[w]orship is the primary means for forming us as participants in God's work, but if the blinds are drawn while we wait for Sunday, we aren't in touch with the work that God is actually doing" (pg. 71). Why? Because as Manley Hopkins so beautifully observed:

"Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his,
To the Father through the features of men's faces."

*title from the song Closing Time by Semisonic

"She's a good girl..."

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers singing Free Fallin' is our Friday traditio. I'm not really sure why, but this came to me this morning walking down the hallway in my house. "I'm gonna free fall out into nothin', I'm gonna leave this world for awhile..." For me this song is hauntingly lovely and puts me in mind of the ultimate emptiness that results from the pursuit of a (self-)deceptive kind of personal autonomy, the kind I pursued from my early to mid-20s. It never had any substance or content, but was attractive anyways, it drew me away from reality, from the concrete reality of my own life. I renounced this when I was baptized and I rejected Satan and all his empty promises. I think free fallin' captures this zeitgeist perfectly.

Giving thanks

I'd love to have something really profound to write today, but I keep coming back to simple gratitude. I really don't think anything I could write, say, paint, photograph, or film would capture my gratitude exactly, or even really come close. I keep coming back to the unavoidable fact that God insists I show my gratitude in how I live, living for others, being kind, patient, taking the initiative instead of waiting, returning good for evil, forgiving, letting go of grudges and hurts. It is funny that I'd rather express my gratitude in some other way, no doubt because it is far easier than living!

I love that Eucharist means giving thanks. Jesus Christ is our Eucharist, showing us that we give thanks to God by laying our lives down for others. The list of people, events, and things for which I am grateful would go on and on. Most of all I am grateful for God's great love for me, which is made real in the person of Jesus Christ, for my wife who shows me Christ-like love everyday in her many selfless acts. I am grateful for five children, whose imperfections largely flow from my own. I am grateful for those I am privleged to serve in my ministry (a word that means service). I am also grateful for life's challenges, setbacks, and sufferings. Being born again, recreated, has to be painful at times in order to be real.

The particular holiness of Karol Józef Wojtyła: the role of mortification in spiritual practice

Today it was publicly made known and basically confirmed that Pope John Paul II engaged in the penitential practice of self-flagellation from time-to-time. The initial report appears in London's Telegraph newspaper. As might be expected, much is being made of this and not for the better, just like when it was disclosed by her confessor and spiritual director that after a certain point in her life Blessed Teresa of Calcutta no longer felt God's interior presence.

It is important to note that John Paul II did not propose this practice as something to be engaged in by everyone, or even by many, and certainly not by most. In fact, he never spoke publicly about it. Therefore, it constitutes nothing more than a part of his private spirituality, his deep, intense, and very personal relationship with God. The scandal arises from within a culture in which any sort of penitential practice for the purpose of putting sin to death is deemed ludicrous, even among most Catholics. This is very evident this time of year, when we leap Advent with a single bound in order to get to Christmas. After all, Advent has a penitential character and many Advent practices call for moderation, fasting, and increased prayer, which are typically the last things on anyone's mind as we wander the malls inundated by secular holiday songs while gorging ourselves. As a result, we lose Christmas as a season, one that runs from the Feast of the Nativity to Epiphany or the Baptism of Lord. By that time, we have cleaned up, taken our loot, and started to make our list for next year.

Even for those who pray the rosary on a regular basis, do we just glance over the Sorrowful Mysteries, the second of which is Jesus being whipped and scourged at the pillar, a mystery we contemplate as we ask for the gift of purity? Meditating on this mystery and its fruit should put us in mind of thought patterns and behaviors in our own lives that need to be mortified, put to death, killed. For example, most of us balk at the idea of abstaining from meat on Fridays, even during Lent when it is obligatory, let alone the rest of the year when it still constitutes the normative way of observing Friday, the day on which our Lord was crucified, as a day of penance! How many people even fast one hour prior to Mass, as we are also obligated to do? How many of us really and truly make an effort to fast on obligatory days, which for we Latins is only two days a year?

It should come as no shock that the disclosure, which was made as part of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints' investigation into his life, being conducted as part of the effort to have him declared a saint, reveals that he seemed to engage in the practice regularly prior to ordaining priests and bishops. Again, how many of us fast and increase our prayer before something like that, before being confirmed, or going to confession, or getting married? I honestly do not know the answer to those questions, but I am confident that some people do. Again, I am certainly not advocating that anyone incorporate self-flagellation into their lives and spiritual practice, let's work on praying daily and fasting and abstaining regularly, just living what throughout most of the church's history has been known as a Christian life, consisting of the regular and routine practice of the spiritual disciplines. The practice of self-flagellation is, indeed, extreme, but not utterly insane in every instance. For someone to decide to take up such a practice as a result of reading a news report, a magazine article, or a blog post would reveal a great deal of spiritual immaturity, not to mention an utter lack of discernment. In fact, no intense mortifying practice, even extra or extended fasting, should be undertaken without the guidance of a spiritual director who knows what s/he is doing.

For Eastern Christians it is customary to meet with their priest, or their spiritual director, prior to the Nativity Fast and the fast of Great Lent to determine what practice is appropriate for them, given where they are spiritually and the exigencies of their lives. While there are certain universal practices (prayer, fasting, alms-giving) and even customary times to perform them more intensely and intentionally (Advent, Lent, Fridays and even Wednesdays), one size does not fit all. By the same token, there are some sizes so peculiar that they fit very, very few. Nonetheless, these few do something valuable for the rest of us.

Papa Wojtyła, pray for us!