Καθολικός διάκονος

Year B Fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time

2012-01-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

Readings: Deut. 18:15-20; Ps 95:1-2.6-9; 1 Cor. 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

Who is Jesus? I mean you hear about Him all the time, you may even speak about Him yourself once in a while, but do you hear Him in order to know what He is saying to you? Our readings today are about three things: Jesus’ identity, the necessity of hearing Him, culminating with what the implications of hearing Jesus are.

In our first reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites that God “will raise up for them a prophet like [Moses] from among their kin, and [God] will put [His] words into [the prophet’s] mouth; [the prophet] shall tell them all that [God] command[s] him” (Deut. 18:18). Moreover, anyone who hears but does not “listen” to this “prophet” will be held to account by God. As we all know, there is a huge difference between hearing and listening.

It is useful to look at an example from Jesus’ ministry in order to clearly see Jesus as the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy. So, let’s flip ahead several chapters in Mark’s Gospel, to chapter ten, where we read about Jesus engaging in a disputation about marriage with some Pharisees. In order to test Him the Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife” (Mark 10:2)? Jesus answered their question in true rabbinical fashion by asking them a question: “What did Moses command you” (Mark 10:3)? Of course, knowing the Law and knowing that Jesus knew the Law, they answer, “Moses permitted him to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her” (Mark 10:4). Now notice that there was no question about whether a woman could divorce her husband, such a question would have been unthinkable to observant first century Jews. Nonetheless, Jesus does level the playing field, but does it, as He often did, in an unexpected and surprising way.

Citing Genesis 2:24, the foundational verse of Scripture on marriage, Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Because of the hardness of your hearts [Moses] wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother [and be joined to his wife], and the two shall become one flesh.’” (Mark 10:5b-8a). He concludes His teaching emphatically, thereby demonstrating that He is the prophet about whom Moses spoke and giving us an example of what we read about Him in our Gospel today- “for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22b) - by saying, “Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate” (Mark 10:9).

This encounter, along with many others in the Gospels, shows us who Jesus is. He is no mere interpreter of the Law. While He is like Moses insofar as He teaches what God commands, He is greater because He teaches everything God commands without compromise. In other words, Jesus is the Law-giver and the One who not only teaches us, but shows us how to fulfill the Law. Looking ahead to the twelfth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus teaches that you fulfill God’s law by loving God “with all your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and [by loving] your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:33). He says that doing this is “worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices” (Mark 12:33).

If nothing else I have said this far helps you know who Jesus is, consider the words of the unclean spirit in the synagogue: “I know who you are - the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24). His casting out of the unclean spirit coupled with His teaching that day caused those who witnessed it to ask, “What is this?” Only to answer their own question: “A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). The implication is clear: if even the unclean spirits recognize and obey Him, we should too.

It is necessary to mention here the role of the Church’s teaching authority, what we call the magisterium, as it relates to hearing and obeying Jesus. Since this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, let’s turn to what the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum:

[T]he task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit… (par. 10).

This might sound pretty scary, even somewhat self-defeating because of the challenge it presents, which is why the second thing our readings for today teach us (i.e., the necessity of listening to Jesus) is so important. Like the man with the unclean spirit and, looking forward a little farther in the first chapter of Mark, Simon Peter’s mother-in-law and the leper, in our weakness the Lord meets our needs. He meets our needs as we acknowledge our weaknesses, our inability, even our lack of desire to love God and our neighbor. Jesus us wants us not so much to need Him as to want Him, to desire Him.

Passionate desire for the Lord is assumed by St. Paul in the passage from his First Letter to the Corinthians that is our second reading. In this passage Paul writes about obediently serving the Lord without distraction or anxiety. Without a doubt, those who choose celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of God, that is, to serve the Lord with an undivided heart, choose an excellent thing indeed. However, Paul’s primary point is not, “Don’t get married,” a bit of advice likely given in the expectation of the Lord’s imminent return, which he does not offer in order “to impose a restraint” (1 Cor. 7:35), but as an exhortation for all to live in obedience to Jesus Christ.

The implications of listening to Jesus, as opposed to only hearing Him, are to love Him and to place your trust in Him, meaning to obediently follow Him. So, my dear friends, despite how you feel, you can be certain that in the proclamation of the Scriptures during this liturgy you have heard God’s voice. The question is are you listening? If you are, I urge you “harden not your hearts.”

On the memorial of the Angelic Doctor

2012-01-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

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"The abstract philosophies of the modern world have had this queer twist. Since the modern world began in the sixteenth century, nobody’s system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody’s sense of reality; to what, if left to themselves, common men would call common sense. Each (modern philosophy) started with a paradox; a peculiar point of view demanding the sacrifice of what they would call a sane point of view"- G.K. Chesterton

This is exactly the kind of smug assertion that Chesterton was so full of and that so many people admire. I think Chesterton's propensity to generate such profound insights at the rate of one every thirty seconds would quickly grow tiresome. Despite loathing modernity more than Chesterton (and expressing his disgust in a brilliant and honest, that is, artistic manner), I have often wondered how my beloved Huysmans would have responded to Gilbert Keith. I do not think his response would be favorable, which probably doesn't matter to many people apart from myself. Frankly, such observations, stated in this absolutist manner, precisely because they do not come close to taking all of the necessary factors into account, drive me nuts. Now, don't get me wrong the synthesis achieved by Angelic Doctor is amazing by any measure and has relevance for us now. Lest I provoke an overly strong reaction, I think there is also much of value in the prolific writings of Chesterton. However, to dismiss all philosophy from Descartes forward as lacking sanity and failing to address reality is not a sustainable position. If nothing else, Descartes blew away the tenability of an unreconstructed realism by showing the gap between the subject and the object. Too often such quotes are invoked to support an anti-intellectual position. After all, life's big questions become much easier if someone has figured it all out for you, n'est ce pas?

The odd thing is most people who use such quotes, like one on philosophy after Aquinas by Chesterton, have read precious little, or even no, Aquinas and they certainly have not read Descartes, let alone Wittgenstein, whose honesty before reality is breathtaking, or Heidegger, whose philosophical project was what he saw as the necessary destruction of the metaphysics of substance in order to fully recover the question of being, or Husserl, whose phenomenology, the school to which Heidegger belonged, came along as the necessary response to the gap posited by Descartes and as an attempted correction to the various idealist philosophies (Kant, Fichte, Hegel et al.) that began to proliferate in the late eighteenth century. Also, it seems to me that from a straight-up Christian perspective, one of the main grounds that cause people to question Thomism, even authentic Thomism, as opposed to the stilted school Thomism, the later of which was called into question by theologians such as the Dominicans Chenu and Schillebeeckx, along with the Jesuits de Lubac and Von Balthasar in the middle of the last century, is the overly-optimistic view of the human person, especially when contrasted with the theological anthropology of St. Augustine, whose own experience prior to his conversion, it seems to me, made him more realistic in this regard. Besides, Bl. John Paul II, who was a philosopher, not a theologian, was deeply influenced by phenomenology, especially the personalist philosophy of Max Scheler, which, like Heidegger's work and that of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (a.k.a. Edith Stein), even after her conversion (Ex: The Science of the Cross), both of whom worked with Husserl, was a notable development of the methods of phenomenology.

I am not advocating disregarding Aquinas, as if such a thing were either desirable or even possible, but putting his work in conversation with what followed. How can we do this if we dismiss all philosophy after Aquinas as insane and out-of-touch with reality a priori? Obviously, that is a rhetorical question, the answer to which is, "We can't."

It is of great interest to me that at the time of his death, according to his friend Ian McEwan, Christopher Hitchens was working on a piece about Chesterton. I am not endorsing it without reading it, but I find the prospect of an incendiary Hitch-bomb to get the party started somewhat exciting. At least in my experience, faith is more about holding things in tension instead of just letting one end go slack and, as a result, being violently thrown to the other extreme. Wasn't it the Angelic Doctor who wrote, "evil consists in discordance from their rule or measure. Now this may happen either by their exceeding the measure or by their falling short of it;...Therefore it is evident that moral virtue observes the mean" (Summa Theologica, Question 64 of the Prima Secundæ Partis).

Reaching way back, below are two posts on the Angelic Doctor from the Καθολικός διάκονος archives:

A tale of two (complementary) theological anthropologies: Sts. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas

Christians & Muslims must Worship God and "promote peace, liberty, social justice and moral values for the benefit of all humanity"

"Childhood living is easy to do"

2012-01-27T17:02:00.001-07:00

It's been a week at the end of which a little Gram Parsons is wholly called for, as opposed to all those times when I have said or done something that prompted someone to tell me, "That wasn't called for." I remember once I responded by stating the obvious: "If I waited for someone to call for it, then I would never get to do it."So, Gram's Wild Horses recorded by The Sundays is our late traditio for this late January Friday.

I watched you suffer a dull aching pain/Now you've decided to show me the same/But no sweet, vain exits or offstage lines /Could make me feel bitter or treat you unkind

"cloaks that had covered the eucharist were removed"

2012-01-26T17:22:00.001-07:00

Looking at my post from last Saturday and thinking about this year being the 50th Anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Coumcil, I was struk by something I read over on Sandro Magister's Chiesa site:

"Luther, who never doubted the real presence of Christ in the eucharist, rejected 'transubstantiation,' because it was bound to the Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of substance, which is foreign to the Church of the apostles and the Fathers . . .

"The rigidity and fixity of the Council of Trent generated a static mentality in the liturgy, which has persisted to our day, quick to be scandalized by any change or transformation. And this is an error, because the liturgy is life, a reality of the Spirit living among men. For this reason, it can never be bottled up . . .

Neo-Catechumenal liturgy

"Having emerged from a legalistic and rigid mentality, we witnessed at Vatican II a profound renewal of the liturgy. The cloaks that had covered the eucharist were removed from it. It is interesting to see that originally, the anaphora [the prayer of consecration] was not written, but was improvised by the presider . . .

This is an extract of a book written by Fr. Piergiovanni Devoto abd published in Italy in 2004- "Il neocatecumenato. Un’iniziazione cristiana per adulti, which roughly translates to The Neo-Catechumenate: A Christian Initiation for Adults. Magister notes that this book was publicly presented by Paul Josef Cordes, who was then President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum for Human and Christian Development (Cor Unum means "one heart"- he is now President-emeritus), who was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in the Consistory of 2007.

I am not so much interested in the liturgical details, but in the theology of the Eucharist very partially articulated here by Fr. Devoto , even as I realize the theology and praxis cannot be separated.

Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul

2012-01-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

"For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached by me is not man's gospel. For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers. But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately consult with anyone; nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and returned again to Damascus.

"Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and remained with him fifteen days. But I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord's brother. (In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!) Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia. And I was still unknown in person to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. They only were hearing it said, 'He who used to persecute us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.' And they glorified God because of me" (Galatians 1:11-24 ESV).

As I mentioned yesterday, today is the anniversary, the sixteenth to be exact, of Archbishop George Niederauer's ordination as a bishop. So, a happy anniversary to him as he continues to serve us.

Ordination anniversary

2012-01-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

Along with my classmates, I was ordained a deacon in the Cathedral of the Madeleine by then-Bishop George Niederauer eight years ago today, 24 January 2004. It's difficult to believe that it has been that long. Given the special relationship between a bishop and his deacons, I have always thought it significant that we were ordained just one day prior to the ninth anniversary of Archbishop Niederauer's episcopal ordination, which was 25 January 1995, the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It is pretty cool that we were ordained on the liturgical memorial of St. Francis de Sales, who, among other heavenly duties, is the patron saint of writers and journalists (anyone who undertakes to read these pages can see how badly I need his intercession!). We were ordained on a Saturday, the twenty-fifth that year being a Sunday.

So, to my brothers Manuel, Manuel, Tom, Herschel, Jack, Steve, Forrest, Dan, Marcel, Paul, John, John, John, George, Gene, Roger, Willie Willis, Ricardo, and Billy, Happy Anniversary! Today I also remember our departed classmates: Gerry, Scott, and Aniceto.

With Fr. Dave Fitzpatrick in Iraq, January 2006

In a still very relevant New Testament word study, “Behind the Word ‘Deacon’: A New Testament Study,” published in 1983, D. Edmond Hiebert notes that the Greek personal noun διάκονος, which transliterates to diakonos and comes into English as “deacon,” occurs in the New Testament thirty times. Those passages in the New Testament, apart from the Gospels, in which this word or one of its variants, shows that most occurrences do not refer to an office, ministry, or any official role in the nascent Christian community. Hiebert also asserts that “deacon” must be differentiated from “slave,” at least in 1 Philippians 1:1, where Paul seems to refer “deacon” as an office in the church. The word “deacon” in the New Testament generally denotes a voluntary servant, a minister, an attendant; only occasionally, as in 1 Timothy 3:8, does “deacon” refer to an office, as it does in Philippians 1:1 and 1 Timothy 3:12. As a voluntary servant, or minister, a deacon, according to Hiebert, is distinct from a slave. The ancient Greek word for “slave” is doulos. This distinction helps demonstrate that the term “deacon,” as it is used in ancient Christian sources, cannot be equated to “servant,” without a certain qualification. So, the deacon is one who is called forward to serve others. As Herbert Vorgrimler wrote: “In his person, the deacon makes it clear that the liturgy must have consequences in the world with all its needs, and that work in the world that is done in a spirit of charity has a spiritual dimension.”

Ad multos annos dear brothers!

"When the rain is blowing in your face"

2012-01-23T06:25:00.000-07:00

Today marks six months since Amy Winehouse's passing. Here at Καθολικός διάκονος I am doing a year-long Kaddish of sorts for Amy. The final one will mark a year.My last one was back in October- Carol King singing So Far Away.

Today is the lovely Adele singing Make You Feel My Love, by Bob Dylan. It is a lovely song:

The storms are raging/On the rolling sea/And on the highway of regret/The winds of change/Are blowing wild and free/You ain't seen nothing/Like me yet

Finally, from the Mourner's Kaddish because Amy was a daughter of Israel:

May He establish His kingdom
and may His salvation blossom and His anointed be near
during your lifetime and during your days
and during he lifetimes of all the House of Israel,
speedily and very soon! And say, Amen.

Jonah & Jesus: "Repent!"

2012-01-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many times we have readings in the Sunday lectionary from the Book of Jonah. I just know that it isn't very many. So, it strikes me as funny and a little odd that our first reading for the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, is about Jonah finally arriving in Nineveh, walking its streets and proclaiming, "Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed" (Jonah 3:4)! Looking forward to our Gospel reading for today, as well as to Lent, I suppose we can see this as an earlier version of what Mark records Jesus as saying after emerging from the desert, which 40-day sojourn was preceded by His baptism by John in the Jordan, "Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15b).

Before making it to Nineveh, Jonah, after being called by the LORD, jumped the first ship going West (Nineveh was to the North/Northeast), headed to Tarshish, which at that time was literally the end of the known world. After the onset of a great storm that threatened the ship, after it was determined that Jonah was the cause of the storm, the crew threw Jonah overboard. Then Jonah was swallowed by a big fish and eventually spit up on the shore somewhere closer to Nineveh. Finally figuring out that he could not evade the call God gave him, Jonah went and proclaimed the message in our first reading. As we see, the response of the Ninevites, who were the enemies of Jonah's people, was to repent.

It is not only the back story leading up to what we proclaim today, but what Jonah did afterwards. You would think Jonah would be happy, or at least relieved, that the people (and even the animals) of Nineveh repented. He was not. He was angry. He went outside the city and sat on a ledge overlooking the city and grumbled to God.

When we compare Jonah's mission with Jesus' mission we can see that Jesus did not have the kind of overwhelming response Jonah elicited. Like Jonah, Jesus wound up on a hill outside the city. However, Jesus was not sitting and grumbling out loud to the Father about the empirically modest result of His efforts, He was nailed to the Cross out of love for all, even (especially?) for those who did not repent and the believe the Gospel, largely abandoned by most who had responded favorably.

Discipleship costly for all who follow

2012-01-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

Even as a Roman Catholic deacon, I think the Protestant Reformation achieved something important with regards to living as a Christian, something it took Catholics all the way until Vatican II to even begin to realize, what we call the Council's "universal call to holiness."

After Christianity became a licit religion in the Roman Empire, the Church quickly became more secularized, that is, more worldly. According to Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his classic The Cost of Discipleship, what was lost was the costliness of grace. Bonhoeffer contends that the ancient Church did not lose its sense of of the costliness of grace altogether because it was preserved in monasticism. Indeed, those we revere as the Desert Fathers and (yes there were some) Mothers were driven to the desert largely by the phenomenon of the Church's rapid growth and equally rapid secularization. Bonhoeffer, taking his cue from historians of the ancient Church, marvels that the monastic movement did not result in a schism. Bonhoeffer wrote, "the Church was wise enough to tolerate this protest."

Martin Luther

Over time, according to Bonhoeffer, even monasticism came to be relativized and was used by the Church "to justify the secularization of its own life." How monasticism came to be used this way was, instead of being a form of discipleship for everybody and, hence, the way of communal life for the Church, it came to be viewed "as an individual achievement which the mass of laity could not be expected to emulate." As a result of "limiting the application of the commandments of Jesus to a restricted group of specialists," Bonhoeffer insisted, "the Church evolved the fatal conception of the double standard - a maximum and a minimum standard of Christian obedience." So, when "the Church was accused of being too secularized, it could always point to monasticism as an opportunity of living a higher life within the fold, and thus justify the other possibility of a lower standard of life" for Christians who were not monastics.

"By and large," Bonhoeffer concluded, "the fatal error of monasticism lay not so much in its rigorism... as in the extent to which it departed from genuine Christianity by setting up itself as the individual achievement of the select few... "

Bonhoeffer, who was a Lutheran, saw in Martin Luther's movement from the world to the cloister and back to the world as precisely the movement required for a needed correction, wrote: "It is a fatal misunderstanding of Luther's action to suppose that his rediscovery of the gospel of pure grace offered a general dispensation from obedience to the command of Jesus, or that it was a great discovery of the Reformation that God's forgiving grace automatically conferred on the world both righteousness and holiness. On the contrary, for Luther the Christian's worldly calling is sanctified only in so far as that calling registers the final, radical, protest against the world" (emboldening and italicizing emphasis mine).

It is no wonder that so many spiritual writers today are expounding those ancient Christian practices preserved in monasticism and applying them so fruitfully to daily living for all Christians. Several works come immediately to mind: Debra Farrington's Living Faith Day By Day: How the Sacred Rules of Monastic Traditions Can Help You Live Spiritually in the Modern World, Esther de Waal's Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict, Scot McKnight's Fasting, which is part of Thomas Nelson Publisher's "The Ancient Practices" series, and Richard Foster's still relevant and valuable Celebration of Discipline. I could list many, many more

From the fifth chapter of Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church) is entitled "The Universal Call to Holiness":

Thus it is evident to everyone, that all the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity; by this holiness as such a more human manner of living is promoted in this earthly society. In order that the faithful may reach this perfection, they must use their strength accordingly as they have received it, as a gift from Christ. They must follow in His footsteps and conform themselves to His image seeking the will of the Father in all things. They must devote themselves with all their being to the glory of God and the service of their neighbor. In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history (par. 40)

"This is why I don't mind you doubting"

2012-01-20T05:00:00.000-07:00

Our Friday traditio is "What Is Love?" by Howard Jones. Like Sting last week, this one only makes sense.

I love you whether or not you love me/I love you even if you think that I don't/Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you but I don't mind/Why should I mind? Why should I mind?

God's love, our response

2012-01-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

My friend and brother, Deacon Bob Yerhot, as is his wont, left a very thoughtful comment on my last post. It seems nigh unto impossible to discuss God's unbounded and unconditional love for us without thinking and discussing how to respond, which is by loving God with my whole being and my neighbor as myself. Any moral code not rooted in love is not authentically moral. This axiom also has a lot of bearing on why true religion is not a form of social control. Even when we look at the Ten Commandments we see this with the first three commandments being about loving God, the fourth (honoring our parents) is in a category by itself, our Dad and Mom occupying a space between God and everybody else, and the final six about loving our neighbor.

Even when I mess all that up by failing in some small, or even catastrophic, way God doesn't love me any less. Because God's relentless and unfailing love is unlike anything I have ever experienced, grasping this is not just important, but necessary- "God loves you as you are and not as you should be." I'll go further, God's love is the only way I can become who I should be, who God created and redeemed me to be. Sanctification, which is what we call the process of being made holy, consists in nothing other than loving God and others in a Christ-like way.

In Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis sagely observed, "On the whole, God's love for us is a much safer subject to think about than our love for Him." Our love runs hot and cold, even tending at times towards the Biblically-terrifying lukewarm. "But the great thing to remember," Lewis continued, "is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not." God's love, as Lewis knew, "is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him."

"Do you really believe this?"

2012-01-19T06:04:00.000-07:00

Brennan Manning on the reality of God's love for you. Yes, you.

As skeptical and untrusting as I am, I am usually the first to say, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true." I would feel that way about God's love for me if I hadn't experienced it first hand. While, God's love for me made real, concrete, actual in Jesus sounds too good to be true, it is the hardest truth to live by, to build my life on, to use to shape my relationships. I mean, what Brennan is saying is easy to grasp, that is, comprehend, but difficult to believe, but what if I lived each moment as if this were true, or even lived that way a lot of the time? Because I am forgetful and vacillating, Jesus' love for me is something I need to be reminded of over and over. Nothing is more fundamental, even elemental.

Therefore, I think when we invoke John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"(ESV), we need to keep in mind John 3:17: "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him" (ESV). You might say, "Well Deacon Scott, should we read further and include John 3:18, which talks about the condemnation of those who refuse to believe?" I would say that even if we go to the end of verse 20 we see that those who refuse the love of God condemn themselves by their refusal, not by God.

Preaching the Gospel really doesn't consist of anything more than bearing witness to God's love poured out for us. When we make it about more, which we often do, putting, say, morality up-front, like the proverbial cart before the horse, we fail Him by telling others that God will only love them as they should be and could never love them as they are. To paraphrase Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, we have no business discussing morality with someone until that person knows that God loves them just as they are and that any movement towards "should be" is a movement of grace requiring cooperation as a loving to response to the love they have received. Sure, it's a mouth full, which is why we can be brief and just say, "God loves you just as you are, right now, at this moment. Do you believe?

Lord,
true light and source of all light,
listen to our morning prayer.
Turn our thoughts to what is holy
and may we ever live in the light of your love. Amen.

Turning our thoughts to what is holy means turning our thoughts to Jesus, who sanctifies us by loving us.

How does grace work?

2012-01-17T20:15:00.001-07:00

I don't know how grace works, I only know that it does. What's so amazing about grace to me is that God always meets my need. I know for a fact that it is not because I deserve it, or because I have done something good. I guess that's the part I don't get.

A year ago today my Dad died. I've been kind of numb all day, but thinking about him. When I close my eyes I see his face. I am grateful beyond words that the last words we exchanged went something like this:

Dad: You need go be with Holly and your kids.
Me: I don't want to leave because I don't know if you'll be here when I get back.
Dad: Go, your family needs you.
Me (kissing his forehead): I love you.
Dad: Son, I love you so much.

It took me all day to be able to conjure up that memory. I was avoiding it. Anyway, here's the grace part. Yesterday, I went to the book store with a gift certificate I received for Christmas. I found a book that surprised me: Brennan Manning's recently published autobiography, All Is Grace: A Ragamuffin Memoir. If you're not familiar with Manning, do yourself a favor and read some of his books. I highly recommend two that had a profound impact on me, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out and Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging.

I read almost the whole book yesterday afternoon between the time I arrived home and had to leave to attend to some pastoral duties and lead School of Community. I hated having to put the book down, but I know now there's a reason I didn't read it all. So this evening when I arrived home I picked up the book and started to read it again. I very quickly arrived at Brennan's account of the death of his sort-of-adopted second Mom, Ma Brennan, whose last name he took as his religious name when he entered the Franciscan order shortly after mustering out of the Marine Corps. He met the woman he called Ma Brennan through his best friend, Ray, whom he met in the Marines. Ray died tragically at a young age, but Manning maintained his close connection to Ray's mom and family.

Upon arriving at home in New Orleans after a speaking trip, he learned that Ma Brennan, who lived outside of Chicago, was dying and asking for him. The next morning Brennan was on a plane to Chicago and arrived at the care facility where Ma Brennan lay rapidly expiring. Like many whose lives have been negatively impacted by alcohol, Manning has a hard time believing people like him. So, it is significant that he wrote, "Ma didn't just love me; she liked me enough, I believe, to wait until I arrived to say good-bye." As he walked in the room and arrived at her bedside, Ma pointed to her lips, asking him for a kiss. So, he kissed her. He writes, "She whispered, 'More.' I kissed her a second time, and again she smiled and said, 'More.'" Thinking back on it, he wondered how weird the nun in the room thought this was before writing, "I don't know what all a kiss holds, but that night I hoped ours held grace sufficient for the next step on Ma's journey."

Manning's motto, which he picked up from the saintly Br. Dominique during his time in France and Spain with the Little Brothers of Jesus, is "God loves you unconditionally as you are and not as you should be."

Since my Dad, through his lovely Mother, Isabelle Minnie, loved poetry, I'll post one by Leonard Cohen:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

A year ago today my life was cracked. It's tough to live in a world my Dad no longer inhabits, especially as I hold my little Evan, born last June, who never met his Grandpa. There were only two things that really bothered my Dad as he lay dying- that he would not make his 50th wedding anniversary, which was last 25 August, and that he would not meet his grandson, who was conceived, but not yet born. Today, God in His amazing grace, shone some light through that crack.

Don't forget to pray

2012-01-16T10:44:00.002-07:00

Whether we care to admit it or not, our mortal life is made up only of time. To complicate matters, we do not know how much time we have. So, how we spend our time is hugely important. Life is too amazing and wonderful to waste time or to kill time, though I suppose we all do that at least once in awhile. All of these observations make us think of things like so-called "bucket lists," a term with which I was wholly unfamiliar until very recently. Bucket lists, far from being bad, are good when used appropriately.

I remember a professor I had in college, a man who took me under his wing a little bit, who was really interested in reality. He told me once that his parents came into some inherited money and that they spent most of the money traveling the world, visiting many historical, cultural, and exotic locations. He also said that all his mother had at the end of the day were boxes full of unsorted pictures.

The calculable finitude of our mortal lives, about which the psalmist wrote, "The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away" (Ps. 90:10), should aid us in keeping things in perspective. A few years ago a heard an interview with an international journalist who, late in his career, went back and interviewed the happiest people he had met while traveling the world. He asked them to tell him the reasons for their happiness. One elderly German man insisted that to be happy you must reflect for a few minutes each day on the fact that you're going to die, not in order to be morbid, but to help you continually focus on what truly matters in life and not get distracted by all the shiny objects. As Shakespeare memorably wrote: "All that glisters is not gold." So, memento mori (i.e., remembering death) is not necessarily an exercise in morbidity. In his dialogue Phaedo (Sections 61-69), Plato's Socrates insists that philosophy is but preparation for death.

All of this is a long wind up to bring me to the point I want to make, which is about the utter necessity of prayer, our need to pray. Billy Graham once asked, "Have you ever said, 'Well, all we can do now is pray'?" He went on to observe that prayer is very (too?) often our last resort instead of our very first. Wisely, instead of lambasting his readers for this failure, Dr. Graham goes on to note, "When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God." When we consider our finitude, the inevitability of death, which is the horizon over which we cannot see, it is comforting to know that our perceived end is only God's beginning. Put another way, what we see as our end is only a means to fully realizing the end for which we were created, redeemed, and for which we are being sanctified: our loving and lovely God, who, because of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit, we say, "Abba, Father." Hence, prayer is an opportunity for us to experience, at least to some degree, the "not yet" right now.

In this same piece, Dr. Graham assured us, "We don't need to be embarrassed that we are needy. God doesn't demand that we pray in King James English, or even eloquence. Every feeble, stumbling prayer...is heard by God. A cry, a sigh, a 'Help!' are all prayers according to the Psalms."

There is a reason that praying first thing in the morning and last thing at night are time-proven practices. Don't forget, even taking time to utter feeble words of petition, lament, and/or gratitude are ways not just of remembering death and expressing our great need, but are acts of hope in the One who loved us not only to death, but enough to conquer death.

For MLK/Human Rights Day, I draw your attention to something from the archives: MLK/Human Rights Day- X Factor Ed(Add?)ition

A prayer for dispossession, a plea for ecumenism

2012-01-14T09:37:00.001-07:00

When it comes to following Christ, so-called Christian living (a.k.a. discipleship), it is often the case that Catholics feel as though Evangelicals have nothing to offer us. In my experience this bias exists for a number of reasons, but generally speaking revolves around two things: fundamentalism, also known as biblicism (i.e., reading the Bible in a very literal and flat way, ignoring the various genres found in Sacred Scripture, particularly in the Hebrew Scriptures), and what is perceived as a lack of theological and intellectual rigor. In some instances these concerns are justified and born out. Nonetheless, it is important not to approach matters by way of a preconception, judging all the trees by taking a ten thousand foot view of the forest. Plus, experience matters. Knowing the Lord is not first and foremost an intellectual endeavor, but, as Pope Benedict stated clearly at the beginning of Deus caritas est, "Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction" (par. 1).

An example of something worthwhile by an Evangelical is the late A.W. Tozer's still magnificent book, The Pursuit of God. Tozer came to Christ as a teenager while walking home from his job at a tire company in Akron, Ohio. While on his way home one day he heard a street preacher say, "If you don't know how to be saved... just call on God." When he arrived home, he went up into the attic of his family's house and called upon God. The rest, as we say, is history. Despite never receiving any formal theological training, Tozer became very respected for his learning, not only about the Bible, but his grasp of theology and the Christian tradition. Proof of his knowledge are his books, which show his erudition. When combined with his obvious love of the Lord, what he writes is eminently worth reading, pondering, and praying.

At the end of each chapter in his The Pursuit of God (you can read the whole book by going to the link where you can download it as an Adobe Acrobat [.pdf] file), he composed a prayer. Below is the prayer taken from the end of his second chapter, "The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing," which chapter gives one of the best theological expositions I have read (including Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling) of the episode from Genesis 22:1-19, in which God calls upon Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Showing forth the same view as that expressed by the fathers of the Second Vatican Council in the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, when they taught, "God, the inspirer and author of both Testaments, wisely arranged that the New Testament be hidden in the Old and the Old be made manifest in the New" (par. 16), Tozer observed that it "is frequently true, this New Testament principle of spiritual life finds its best illustration in the Old Testament. In the story of Abraham and Isaac we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life as well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude."

Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inwardbleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root frommy heart all those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so thatThou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall myheart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’name, Amen.

Since this year we will mark the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, in addition to showing certain affinities among Christians regarding Scripture and other discrete doctrines, I am including a quote from the Council's Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio: "Today, in many parts of the world, under the inspiring grace of the Holy Spirit, many efforts are being made in prayer, word and action to attain that fullness of unity which Jesus Christ desires. The Sacred Council exhorts all the Catholic faithful to recognize the signs of the times and to take an active and intelligent part in the work of ecumenism" (par. 4).

Indeed, important ecumenical strides have been made with the various Orthodox and other ancient Eastern Churches, as well as with Protestant ecclesial communions, like the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration on Justification and Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission's decree on Mary. However, in the United States and increasingly in other parts of the world, even places, like Brazil, which are traditionally Catholic, we must not neglect dialogue with Evangelical Christians, even those who are Pentecostal. After all, the tension in the Church between charisma and institution is one that needs to be held balance. As Catholics we tend towards institutionalization often at the expense of authentic charismata. I am waiting for new life to be breathed into the initiative undertaken by the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, which began with the declaration Catholics and Evangelicals Together.

What I see lacking in many Catholic responses to the popular YouTube video, Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus and to the expressed faith of Tim Tebow, is that many lack either the intelligence or the prudence with which we are called upon to engage in ecumenism (some lack both), not to mention charity. Let's not kid ourselves, the practice of our beautiful Catholic faith can and often does turn into an empty formalism/ritualism, something Vatican II, being a deliberately pastoral council, sought to remedy. One of the remedies was to engage with other Christians, those whom we now call our separated sisters and brothers, from whom we can learn and who can learn from us. There is nothing inevitable about falling into formalism and/or ritualism, but it is a tendency of which we need to be aware and to resist, even as we recognize how liturgy shapes, molds, and makes us. Part of the genius of Catholicism is our avoidance of false dilemmas, that is, seeking to embrace both/and instead of rigidly insisting either/or.

Jesus, be moved by my need

2012-01-13T09:54:00.001-07:00

For our returning Catholics group we are just beginning to read through and discuss St. Mark's Gospel. This morning as I started my way though this Gospel, I was struck in just the kind of way lectio divinia is supposed to strike me. God gives us what we need if we but ask and then attend. After all, as Msgr. Giussani taught, education in freedom implies both an education in attention and an education in awareness.

In the first chapter of Mark, after being baptized by John in the Jordan, going into the desert, calling His first disciples, teaching in the synagogue, healing a man possessed by an unclean spirit after the unclean spirit recognized Him in the synaggogue, healing Simon Peter's mother-in-law, and "many who were sick with various diseases," plus casting "many demons," and preaching throughout Galilee, the Lord encountered a leper. Approaching Jesus, the leper pleading with Him said, "If you will, you can make me clean."

Here's what moved me: "Moved with pity," Jesus "stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I will; be clean.' And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean"(Mark 1:40-42 ESV). My need is no less than that of the leper, perhaps even greater.

Lord, Jesus look on me with pity today, which is a day of penance, a day I recognize all that is unclean in me, especially in my heart, stretch out your hand, touch me, and make me clean so that I may see myself as You see me and so gaze on others the way You lovingly gaze on them.

"Everything we see we want to possess"

2012-01-13T05:00:00.000-07:00

In light of my last two posts, Sting's song "Set Them Free" off his first post-Police solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles, seemed like an obvious choice for our Friday traditio today.

You can't control an independent heart/Can't tear the one you love apart/Forever conditioned to believe that we can't live/We can't live here and be happy with less/So many riches, so many souls/Everything we see we want to possess

The poverty Love requires

2012-01-12T20:44:00.004-07:00

"The law of the I - law is a description of the stable dynamism with which a reality strives towards its destiny, of the stable mechanism with which something in motion strives towards its goal - the dynamism proper to the I, which is therefore directly derived from the dynamism of God [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], is loving, that is, giving oneself to the other, being moved. There is no dynamism of the I without this" (Is It Possible, Vol. 3, pg. 27).

To love another entails risk and truly loving someone means giving myself to them without calculation, without worrying about how I will be rewarded or what they will do for me in return. It also means loving her/his destiny. Hence, loving probably entails some suffering. After all, the result of living the Golden Rule is quite obviously not that it will always be reciprocated. Giussani's method is the method of the Gospel, not of The Secret. Instead of the law of attraction, the Gospel calls us to poverty, what Giussani terms "the law of detachment."

In his lovely book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer wrote, "There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets 'things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die." Indeed, poverty extends to relationships and this is a very difficult dimension of reality even deal with let alone accept in order to live.

Tozer went on to state the paradox: "The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. They are 'poor in spirit.' They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is what the word `poor' as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. 'Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'"

Building on my last post about hope, Giussani in the second volume of Is It Possible to Live This Way, which is on hope, said, "hope above all gives birth to poverty" (pg. 87). If our hope doesn't depend on Christ, Don Gius continued, but we place it on other people or things, then we will be disappointed to the point of despair if not sooner then later "because whatever you possess is taken away... tomorrow, by time or by a bicycle: the bicycle that violently hits the individual; he falls and, falling, knocks his head on the sidewalk and dies. The next day, instead of celebrating his wedding, you go to his funeral" (pg. 89).

"Poverty is not automatic." Giussani taught. He said that poverty "is not like one in the gutter who’s got lice and a few measly rags hanging from him." Rather, "Poverty is the use of reality according to the destiny that, with certainty, is proposed to us and awaits us."

Hope, the flower of faith

2012-01-11T21:59:00.002-07:00

The greatest trial of life is death, the fact that we will die. A year ago yesterday my Dad went to the hospital. Next Tuesday is the first anniversary of his death. Indeed, death is the biggest obstacle to hope, which is certainty about our future. Death is a horizon we cannot see beyond with our own eyes. So, we must believe in a promise. The question becomes, therefore, is the One who makes the promise reliable? We can give all kinds of eloquent answers about God's trustworthiness, but in order to really believe the promise we have to experience the reliability of One who makes it. This experience has to happen in the here-and-now. Only in this way is faith, from which hope is borne, reasonable.

What is this certainty about our future beyond death, where we fully realize our destiny? For the Christian, for the one who has faith in Jesus Christ, it is a certainty verified through experience. Christ's resurrection overcomes what would otherwise be the biggest obstacle to hope. Giussani emphatically states that "from the moment Christ rose from the dead" we have "nothing more to fear from death". Certainty about the future, about the realization of our destiny, is demonstrated by Christian martyrs. In other words, this "intensity of hope" is so "far reaching" that some "desire to die for Christ".

Let us live for Christ in the same hope come what may, even unto death.

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

2012-01-09T06:04:00.001-07:00

"On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased'" (Mark 1:10-11).

Well. today marks the end of another Christmas season. So, it is fitting, as it is always and everywhere, to pray:

Father in heaven,
you revealed Christ as your Son
by the voice that spoke over the waters of the Jordan.
May all who share in the sonship of Christ
follow in his path of service to others
and reflect the glory of his kingdom
even to the ends of the earth,
for he is Lord forever and ever. Amen.

Editorial comments on the liturgical year aside, I have to admit that over the past several years I have come to appreciate Christmas coming to a quiet end. It gives us a chance after all of the busy-ness and at the beginning of new year to reflect on the great and glorious mystery of the Incarnation, which is nothing other than the great and glorious mystery of our salvation. And, in light of this mystery we are called live, how we are going to live out our baptismal call to selfless service of others, that is, diakonia.

Epiphany observed

2012-01-08T11:04:00.001-07:00

In the United States today, that is, the second Sunday after Christmas, we liturgically observe Epiphany. Tomorrow, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, brings the liturgical season of Christmas to an end. While it is all a bit confusing, it is even more important to enjoy and celebrate these days at Church and in our homes, allowing ourselves once again to be struck by the Incarnation of the Father's Only Begotten Son, who for us and our salvation was conceived by the Holy Spirit and incarnate of the Blessed Virgin.

Epiphany, Dom Prosper Gueranger, 1870

The three kings who come to adore and worship the new born babe in the manger were Gentiles. Hence, they are indicative of Jesus' universal lordship and sign the in Him God fulfilled the promise He made to Abraham that through Abraham's descendants all the nations and peoples of the earth of would be blessed. It is in and through Christ, then, that God's covenant is extended to all. For this we are grateful, like the magi. Traditionally, the gifts of the magi have been taken as having spiritual and symbolic meaning- gold as a symbol of kingship, frankincense (used as incense) a symbol of deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) as a symbol of death.

So, today let's bring Christ our very best gift, which a humble and contrite, but joyful, heart.

The struggle to be transformed

2012-01-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

The first Saturday of 2012. I am happy to report that we had a nice snow storm overnight, which was a relief because for the past week or so it has been sunny and in the 50s. To have a warm spell in winter here in Utah is not all that unusual, as people who have lived for awhile know. Once in awhile we have entire winters that bring very little snow and that remain quite mild temperature-wise. The previous three winters have been, well, very wintry, that is, cold with generous portions of snow. So, our very dry December was disappointing to a lot of people. Looking out my window this morning is a thing of beauty, a landscape transformed!

Transformation, conversion, change. These things are on almost everyone's minds at the beginning of a new year. However, as we come to the end of the first week, my bet is that all of these renewed commitments are already beginning to wane for many people. We are changed through experience and no other way. Otherwise, what would it mean and why would it matter?

In Chapter 13 of The Religious Sense, Msgr. Giussani, after seeing in Ulysses as portrayed by Dante, especially his "daring to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules," which Giussani interprets as the "extreme limit erected by false wisdom" that seeks to provide us a false and so "oppressive security," points to an "even greater" text: Genesis 32:23-33. This is the story of Jacob's return from exile and his wrestling all night with the angel before crossing the river. At the end of the wrestling match, the angel says to Jacob, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed" (verse 28).

Referring to Jacob's all-night wrestling match, Don Gius wrote, "This is is the stature of the human being in Judeo-Christian revelation. Life, the human being is a struggle, that is to say a tension, a relation 'in darkness' with the beyond; a struggle without seeing the face of the other." In my experience, Giussani's insistence that the person "who realizes this about himself goes among others as lame, singled out" is correct. Our encounter leaves us "marked." Because I know the resolution of many in this new year is to pray more, as you endeavor to keep this resolution, it is helpful to know that prayer is often, perhaps usually, a struggle.

New Cardinals for the Holy Roman Church

2012-01-06T06:39:00.000-07:00

Pope Benedict XVI made a much-anticipated announcement today. He announced that a Consistory will be held in Rome on 18 February 2012. During that gathering of Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church he will create 22 new Cardinals. Eighteen of whom are men under the age of 80, who will, upon becoming members of the Sacred College, join the ranks of Cardinal-electors and be eligible to participate in the Conclave to select the next pope.

Among those named are two U.S. prelates: Edwin O’Brien, Grand Master of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre (Cardinal-elect O'Brien previously served as Archbishop of the U.S. Military Archdiocese and as Archbishop of Baltimore before being named as Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre) and Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York. It is customary not to elevate the current bishop of a cardinalatial see to the Sacred College until after his successor, assuming he is a cardinal, becomes superannuated, that is, reaches the age of 80, at which time he is no longer a Cardinal-elector. Cardinal-elect Dolan's predecessor in New York, Cardinal Egan turns 80 this year, a few months after the Consistory. This rule is also why Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles was not selected this time around.

Additionally, Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto was also chosen. The Holy Father will also give the red hat to four honorary members of the Sacred College for their devoted and notable service to the Church. All of these Cardinals-elect are over 80. While I was very gratified to see the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Church named as a Cardinal, I was surprised not to see Patriarch Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi of the Maronites on the list. While it is a bit ecclesially odd and awkward to name Patriarchs as Cardinals it is presently the only way for them to participate in the governance of the Church Universal. I hope that some day soon Patriarchs in communion with the Bishop of Rome will have their patriarchal dignity fully recognized, which would permit them, among other things, to participate in Conclaves without first having to be created Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church.

For the complete list, see John Allen's blog post, Pope names 22 new cardinals, including Dolan and O'Brien.

ἐπιφάνεια

2012-01-06T06:07:00.002-07:00

Epiphany means something like a striking appearance. Of course, nothing in human history was more striking in appearance that God becoming man borne of woman. So, today, which is Epiphany (except where it isn't for reasons I don't understand), our traditio is one of my favorite Christmas carols, We Three Kings of Orient Are sung in Cambridge. The Anglican tradition has such an amazingly lovely tradition of sacred choral music.

Happy Epiphany!

Bl. Pope John XXIII and the convening of Vatican II

2012-01-05T18:09:00.001-07:00

I can't help but share how exciting it was today to read something inspiring for the very first time. What I read today for the first time, as I gear up for the 50th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, is Bl. Pope John XXIII's Humanae salutis. Humanae salutis is the name of the Apostolic Consitiution promulgated on Christmas Day 1961 formally announcing that he was convening the twenty-first (at least by Catholic reckoning) Ecumenical Council. His first public announcement that he was convoking an Ecumenical Council was in 1959 on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. He made this first pronouncement in the Basilica of St. Paul Outside-the-Walls, in the presence of seventeen curial cardinals. The reaction, according to those who were present was, understandably, silence.

My source for reading this document in English is the website Conciliaria, which my brother, Deacon Eric Stoltz, recently launched, albeit softly. Humanae salutis is not available in English on the Holy See's official website. It is available, however, in Latin, Italian, Spanish, and Portugese. The English translation was done by the Rev. Joseph Komonchak, a great theologian and someone who has been very kind to me personally. It is not too much to say that during his many years at the Catholic University of America he has been a teacher and mentor to very many current Church leaders and scholars.

In Good Pope John's formal announcement one hears many precursors to his address to open the Council. For example, after fleshing out the rapid spread of what he called "militant atheism," he observed,

While distrustful souls see nothing but darkness falling upon the face of the earth, we prefer to restate our confidence in our Savior, who has not left the world he redeemed.

Indeed, making our own Jesus’ recommendation that we learn to discern “the signs of the times” (Mt 16:4), it seems to us that we can make out, in the midst of so much darkness, more than a few indications that enable us to have hope for the fate of the Church and of humanity. The successive bloody wars of our times, the spiritual ruins caused by many ideologies, and the fruits of so many bitter experiences have not been without useful lessons. Scientific progress itself, which has given man the ability to create catastrophic implements for his own destruction, has raised anxious questions; it has forced human beings to become thoughtful, more aware of their own limitations, desirous of peace, alert to the importance of spiritual values; it has accelerated that progress o closer collaboration and of mutual integration of individuals, classes and nations toward which, even amid a thousand uncertainties, the human family seems already to be moving. All this facilitates, no doubt, the Church’s apostolate, since many people who in the past did not realize the importance of her mission are today, taught by experience, more disposed to welcome her teachings

He ended his pronouncement by calling upon the prayers of the faithful and provided a prayer to pray, which is worthy of praying again as we observe the 50th Anniversary of this Divinely-appointed event in the Church's history-

"Renew your wonders in our time, as though in a new Pentecost, and grant that Holy Church,
united in unanimous and intense prayer around Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and guided by Peter,
may spread the Kingdom of the divine Savior, a Kingdom of truth, of justice, of love, and of peace. Amen."

Reality: Positively Mysterious

2012-01-04T18:57:00.001-07:00

A new year has begun with new challenges and new opportunities. I was reminded earlier this week of something that is easy to forget, namely the positive nature of reality. Since I am writing about reality, I don't mind mentioning that at least for now I am not going to pressure myself to write, primarily because I'm not that good at it, meaning the product of my effort is often not worth my effort. This is okay. I do not write nor do I ever intend to write for a living, or even for money. We'll see what that means both here and elsewhere. My genre remains uncreative non-fiction.

I read a short story today in the current issue of Commentary by Joseph Epstein, "Remittance Man." The story is about a not overly ambitious writer, but one whose talent is nonetheless not up to his ambition. In the story, while at his father's funeral the writer, Lenny, comes "to understand that he is one of life’s spectators, with a seat on the sidelines watching other people do their dance. He lives, as he has always lived, in his mind, in his imagination." This brings me back to the positivity of reality, which can only be understood through experience. In The Religious Sense, Msgr. Giussani wrote about the necessity of being involved with life in order to understand life, to grasp reality. Involvement with life inevitably brings about problems, difficulties, issues, situations, etc. "But," Giussani insisted, "a problem is nothing other than the dynamic expression of a reaction in the face of these encounters." This is not to say about life what someone once said about history, that it is "one damn thing after another." Rather, all of our experience is an opportunity to experience the positivity, the purposeful nature, of reality, especially as it pertains to me, in a specific and highly personal way.

It is easy to get syrupy and sentimental about such observations. In order to avoid this I turn to an excerpt of a poem by Czesław Miłosz, which I came across reading Gustaw Herling:

"If I had to tell what the world is for me
I would take a hamster or a hedgehog or a mole
and place him in a theater seat one evening
and, bringing my ear close to his humid snout,
would listen to what he says about the spotlights,
sounds of music, and movements of the dance."

In other words, I think the positivity of reality arises, at least partly, from the mystery it often veils. Once in awhile there is an unveiling (an epiphany, or apocalypse). In my experience, such moments pass quickly before slipping away again. Lest I slip from engagement back into merely watching, plus never being able to resist alluding, even if obliquely, to Von Balthasar, I will appeal to the theo-drama of reality via Shakespeare's As You Like It (Act II Scene 7), or, more honestly, via Rush's song "Limelight": "All the world's indeed a stage..."

St. Stephen glorified through martyrdom

2012-01-01T13:01:00.000-07:00

Even though we observed his glorious feast a week ago, on Monday, 26 December, I did not see this amazing depiction my lifelong patron, who is also the patron of Καθολικός διάκονος, St. Stephen, until today, when I saw it as the Facebook photo of my brother deacon Michele Onesti, who is a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Verona, Italy.

Michele was ordained a permanent deacon in 2003. He was in his late twenties when he was ordained, which is permitted as long as the ordinand is not married and is at least twenty-five. An unmarried man who is ordained a permanent deacon is required to take a public vow of celibacy. Michele and I have a connection because he spends a lot of time with the LDS missionaries who proselytize in the part of Italy in which he lives and serves.

He told me, "My vocation's story is a bit original: I began my theological studies to became priest then I decided to stop my presbyteral ordination to better live my diaconate and finally I decided that permanent diaconate was my life!" Having spent the past two years researching the role and necessity of married permanent deacons, one thing became clear, that when the diaconate was updated and restored, in addition to married deacons, Pope Paul VI envisioned more deacons like Michele.

This painting of St. Stephen is by the contemporary Italian master Ulisse Sartini and was commissioned by an anonymous benefactor. Sartini depicts St. Stephen dressed in a golden dalmatic with the palm of martyrdom in his right hand and the Book of the Gospels held between his left arm and his body. At the top of the picture the Cross is barley detectable. The original is in the Church of St. Stephen, Martyr in the city of Rivergaro, Italy. It was presented by the artist to His Excellency, Gianni Ambrosio, bishop of the Diocese of Piacenza-Bobbio, the diocese to which Rivergaro belongs, on 14 June 2009. Sartini is perhaps best known outside of Italy for his portraits of both Bl. John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI.

St. Stephen, pray for all deacons, that, like you, we may witnesses, that is, martyrs, of Jesus Christ.

Anglican Ordinariate for the U.S.

2012-01-01T11:18:00.001-07:00

The Holy See announced today that the Anglican Ordinariate of the United States has been established. Lest there be any doubt about the Ordinate's affiliation, it bears the name The Chair of St. Peter (the one in England was dubbed Our Lady of Walsingham). The Personal Ordinariate of The Chair of St. Peter is basically a nationwide diocese composed of Anglican-use Catholic parishes. Hence, they are not Roman Catholics, but genuine Anglo-Catholics in full communion with the Bishop of Rome.

Fr. Jeffrey Steenson, who was formerly the Episcopalian bishop of Santa Fe, New Mexico, will serve as the first ordinary. Steenson, a patristic scholar, converted to the Catholic Church in 2007. He was ordained a deacon in 2008 and a priest in 2009. Since 2009 Steenson has held the Carl and Lois Davis Visiting Professor in Patristic Studies at the University of St. Thomas/St Mary's Seminary in Houston, Texas. Because he is married, Steenson will not be consecrated a Catholic bishop. However, because he was ordained a bishop in the Anglican communion, he will be permitted to exercise a ministry that is pratically, if not formally, episcopal. According to Anglicanorum Coetibus, Pope Benedict XVI's Apostolic Constitution governing the establishment of various Personal/Anglican Ordinariates throughout the world, former Anglican bishops may:

- be appointed as the ordinary and thus exercise ecclesiastical governance equivalent to that of a bishop

- if appointed as an ordinary he is an ex officio and full member of the episcopal conference regardless of the degree of holy orders to which he is ordained

Dr. Jeffrey Steenson, ordinary for the Personal Ordinariate of The Chair of St. Peter

- a former Anglican bishop who is a member of the ordinariate may be called upon to assist in its administration

- a former Anglican bishop called upon to assist in the administration of the ordinariate serves in a role analogous to that of an auxiliary bishop within a diocese or as the "delegate" in charge of a "deanery"

- be invited to participate in the meetings of the episcopal conference, with the status of a retired bishop

- receive permission to use episcopal insignia

- these provisions do not extend to former Anglican bishops who are in so-called "irregular" marriages

Bl. John Henry Newman, pray for us. Having just finished re-reading his Apologia, I can't help but think what relief such an option would have brought the future-Cardinal Newman in his day. What a wonderful gift for the new year! May this be but one step towards healing the divisions among all who bear the name Christian. Since it was established today, the Solemnity of Mary, the Mother God, it will have a special affiliation with her, too. I am very interested to follow the developments of the Personal Ordinariate, The Chair of St. Peter.

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

2012-01-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

Writing about the events surrounding the Incarnation of our Lord, the author of Luke's Gospel, in the passage we read at Mass today, tells us, "And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart" (Luke 2:19). So, the new year begins as the last year ended, reflecting on the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God. However, today we are reminded that Jesus is Mary's son, too.

St. Paul, writing to the Galatians, states the matter simply, "When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons" (Gal. 4:4-5). Paul is not content to leave us with an abstraction. Rather, he insists that our adoption as God's children, which is only possible in and through the Incarnation, can be verified in reality, that is, through experience: "As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father!'" (Gal. 4:6)

Especially since New Year's Day falls on a Sunday this year, let us, like Mary, the Mother of God, who is also our mother, spend some time reflecting on these things in our hearts. In this light, we can begin to discern how to live as children of God in this new year, giving birth to Christ ourselves, making Him present in and for the world together.

Peace and joy to one and all on the first day of 2012!

"You believed in me, but I'm broken"

2011-12-30T05:00:00.000-07:00

Lost in Paradise by Evanescence is our last Friday traditio of 2011. The song is off the group's eponymous (i.e., self-titled) third album. "Evanescence" is that which evanesces, or dissipates like vapor. Time certainly dissipates like vapor. I have to say that this year is a year I am not sorry to see pass. It is a year that changed me more than any year I can think of going back a long way.

At least originally, "apocalypse" meant "to uncover." What has been revealed to me this year is the transitory nature of life, which is hardly a new or original discovery, I know. But more than that, what I have experienced is how much I long for what is not transitory, but that which lasts

I've been believing in something so distant/As if I was human/And I've been denying this feeling of hopelessness/In me...

It is not what I grasp abstractly, but what I learn through experience, that I really know and understand if not completely, then certainly better. Experience, after all, is the instrument for my human journey.

So, that's enough for one year. I'll catch you, dear reader, in 2012.

The transcendence of man and the limits of history

2011-12-28T20:01:00.000-07:00

In my post yesterday concerning Chiaromonte and Camus I quoted what Gustaw Herling wrote about how the thoughts of the two converged on important points, specifically about "the transcendence of man over history" and that "truth that no social imperatives can obliterate." Man transcends history because Christ is the Lord of history. This became clear to me this evening as I was once again reading Joseph Mangina's fine theological commentary on Revelation, specifically his comment on Chapter 21, verse 2, where we read about the new Jerusalem that comes "down out of heaven from God." The key point, as N.T. Wright makes clear in his book Surprised by Hope, is that heaven is not someplace we go up to, but the city that comes "down out of heaven from God."

The New Jerusalem, Gustave Doré

Apropos of both Herling's insights about Chiaromonte and Camus as well as of the new Jerusalem, Mangina writes that the heavenly city is not the product "of any human scientific or technological achievement." This new city that comes "down out of heaven from God," Mangina insists, is "sheer miracle," that is, "a gift apocalyptically bestowed at the end of history and not the outcome of history itself" (underlining emphasis mine).

Mangina is emphatic that this does not render history meaningless, or even "that God does not invite human beings to build their cities with as much ingenuity and creativity," even while honoring God by acting justly towards their neighbors.

There is a place in Christian theology for saying that "grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it" (Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae 1.1.8 §2). This is as true on the social and political level as it is in individual life. Yet such language has its limits, and the Apocalypse provides us with some sense of what those limits are

Holy Innocents' Day

2011-12-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

The Massacre of the Holy Innocents

"When Herod realized that he had been deceived by the magi, he became furious. He ordered the massacre of all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had ascertained from the magi. Then was fulfilled what had been said through Jeremiah the prophet:

'A voice was heard in Ramah,sobbing and loud lamentation;Rachel weeping for her children,and she would not be consoled,since they were no more'" (Matt. 2:16-18)

The last verse of this passage from St. Matthew's Gospel is Jeremiah 31:15, a passage in which the prophet foresees the restoration Israel, which will be celebrated with great rejoicing. Nonetheless, Rachel, the wife of Jacob and mother of Joseph, mourns her children who are no more. This lamentation is a fitting response to Herod's ruthless slaughter of innocents. It applies to us today. As Peter Hitchens wrote last year about the Feast of the Holy Innocents: "I hope as many of you as possible will recall with sorrow the continuing massacre of innocent unborn babies, our society’s greatest and deepest shame, and the one of which it most hates to be reminded."

On a much lighter note, just as the Feast of St. Stephen is a day for deacons and the Feast of St. John the Apostle a day for priests, the Feast of the Holy Innocents is a day for altar servers. Yet, in recent years and to the Church's great shame, there remains some shame borne of guilt surrounding these things as well. In March 2010, the Movement of Communion & Liberation asked, "Alongside all the limitations and within the Church’s wounded humanity, is there or is there not something greater than sin, something radically greater than sin? Is there something that can shatter the inexorable weight of our evil?" At Christmas we celebrate the coming into the world of the One who is greater than...

The invisible secret enclosed in the human heart

2011-12-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

In March 1946 Albert Camus gave a lecture at Columbia University. His lecture was published as The Crisis of Man. Upon his arrival in New York, Camus was greeted by the Italian author and activist Nicola Chiaromonte. The two first came to know each other when Chiaromonte left France, where he was in exile because of Italy's fascist government, before the Nazis took Paris, for Camus' native Algeria. Chiaromonte was also a close friend of the Polish writer Gustaw Herling, whose writing I enjoy immensely.

Four years after Chiaromonte's death (he died in 1972), Herling was reading through the third volume of Chiraomonte's selected works, which was edited by another friend. This volume contained Chiaromonte's notes on Camus' lecture. The passage that struck Herling from his deceased friend's notes was this passage:

Now that Hitler has gone, we know a certain number of things. The first is that the poison which impregnated Hitlerism has not been eliminated; it is present in each of us. Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and "historical tasks" spreads it. He is an actual or a potential assassin. For if the problem of man is reduced to any kind of "historical task," he is nothing but the raw material of history, and one can do anything he pleases with him. Another thing we have learned is that we cannot accept any optimistic conception of existence, any happy ending whatsoever. But, if we believe that optimism is silly, we also know that pessimism about the action of man among his fellows is cowardly. We opposed terror because it forces us to choose between murdering and being murdered; and it makes communication impossible. This is why we reject any ideology that claims control over all human life

Reflecting on the affinity of his friend's thought with that of Camus, Herling saw that both despised "the 'global' claims of any ideology." Both believed "in the invisible secret closed in the heart of every man, in the transcendence of man over history... and in a truth that no social imperatives can obliterate."

In his homily for the Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Year A), which he preached at Mass during his Apostolic Visit to his homeland in September, commenting on Matthew 21:32, which reads, "Truly, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him, and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him," Pope Benedict XVI said, "Translated into the language of our time, this statement might sound something like this: agnostics, who are constantly exercised by the question of God, those who long for a pure heart but suffer on account of our sin, are closer to the Kingdom of God than believers whose life of faith is 'routine' and who regard the Church merely as an institution, without letting their hearts be touched by faith."

If neither optimism nor pessimism, then what makes communication possible? In his Letter to the Romans St. Paul wrote, "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance" (Rom. 8:24-25). Writing about how Bashmachkin, the main character in Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat, and Melville's Bartleby both paint vivid pictures of alienation and how even back almost forty years ago Western society was already growing more solipsistic, Herling observed: "In times of relentlessly growing solitude, a vision of apocalypse is the last sensation we can share as a community."

Feast of St. John, apostle

2011-12-27T06:53:00.000-07:00

Oh the richness of the octave of Christmas! Following right on the heels of the Feast of Stephen is the Feast of St. John the Apostle. Just as our observance of St. Stephen's day is something of a celebration of deacons, our celebration of St. John's Feast is a celebration of the glorious priesthood. Where would we be without those who gave up all to follow and even to imitate Christ? Even though priestly vocations remain on the up-tick, we certainly need more priests to meet the sacramental and pastoral needs of the even more rapidly increasing number of the faithful.

I only have time for a short reflection this morning, but given the number of priests who have blessed my own life and the number I am privileged to count as my friends, I would be remiss to let this wonderful feast pass by without comment.

St. John, holy apostle, pray for us, especially our priests, and for more men to respond to Christ's call.

Who stood up for Stephen?

2011-12-26T11:15:00.002-07:00

Today is the Feast of St. Stephen, proto-martyr. He is my patron from birth and the patron of this blog. Stephen, along with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicholas of Antioch, that last of whom Scripture tells us was "a convert to Judaism," is traditionally identified as one of seven men who were set apart by the apostles to serve the earliest Christian community, within which some division had started to take place. The nature of the division was that the Greek-speaking widows felt that they were not being treated fairly in the daily distribution. These men were called to oversee the daily distribution, insuring it was carried out in a more equitable manner. Traditionally, 26 December is a day for deacons.

Of these seven men, we only hear more about Stephen and Philip. Both of whom took to preaching and evangelizing, Stephen in Jerusalem and Philip in Samaria. The boldness of Stephen's preaching about Jesus Christ drew the attention of the Jewish religious authorities. Stephen's martyrdom is recorded in the seventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Of course, it is in this passage that we first encounter one Saul of Tarsus, specifically in verse 58: "They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him. The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul."

Stephen's plea to God that the sins of those stoning him not be held against them was not enough to move Saul's zealous heart. Nonetheless, I cannot help but think that this was a necessary prelude to his conversion, which is recorded in Acts 9, as well as the apostle's own account in the first chapter of Galatians.

Because today is a day for deacons, I want to draw attention, especially the attention of my brother permanent deacons who are married, to a wonderful post by my friend Deacon Bob Yerhot, whose blog Catholic Faith and Reflections, is well worth reading for everyone. The post is Not Doing Enough, Deacons? Or, Too Much?.

St. Stephen, pray for us, that, like you, we may glorify the Lord by our lives.

Urbi et Orbi- Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T08:55:00.002-07:00

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
BENEDICT XVI

CHRISTMAS 2011

Christ is born for us! Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth to the men and women whom he loves. May all people hear an echo of the message of Bethlehem which the Catholic Church repeats in every continent, beyond the confines of every nation, language and culture. The Son of the Virgin Mary is born for everyone; he is the Saviour of all.

This is how Christ is invoked in an ancient liturgical antiphon: “O Emmanuel, our king and lawgiver, hope and salvation of the peoples: come to save us, O Lord our God”. Veni ad salvandum nos! Come to save us! This is the cry raised by men and women in every age, who sense that by themselves they cannot prevail over difficulties and dangers. They need to put their hands in a greater and stronger hand, a hand which reaches out to them from on high. Dear brothers and sisters, this hand is Christ, born in Bethlehem of the Virgin Mary. He is the hand that God extends to humanity, to draw us out of the mire of sin and to set us firmly on rock, the secure rock of his Truth and his Love (cf. Ps 40:2).

This is the meaning of the Child’s name, the name which, by God’s will, Mary and Joseph gave him: he is named Jesus, which means “Saviour” (cf. Mt 1:21; Lk 1:31). He was sent by God the Father to save us above all from the evil deeply rooted in man and in history: the evil of separation from God, the prideful presumption of being self-sufficient, of trying to compete with God and to take his place, to decide what is good and evil, to be the master of life and death (cf. Gen 3:1-7). This is the great evil, the great sin, from which we human beings cannot save ourselves unless we rely on God’s help, unless we cry out to him: “Veni ad salvandum nos! – Come to save us!”

The very fact that we cry to heaven in this way already sets us aright; it makes us true to ourselves: we are in fact those who cried out to God and were saved (cf. Esth [LXX] 10:3ff.). God is the Saviour; we are those who are in peril. He is the physician; we are the infirm. To realize this is the first step towards salvation, towards emerging from the maze in which we have been locked by our pride. To lift our eyes to heaven, to stretch out our hands and call for help is our means of escape, provided that there is Someone who hears us and can come to our assistance.

Jesus Christ is the proof that God has heard our cry. And not only this! God’s love for us is so strong that he cannot remain aloof; he comes out of himself to enter into our midst and to share fully in our human condition (cf. Ex 3:7-12). The answer to our cry which God gave in Jesus infinitely transcends our expectations, achieving a solidarity which cannot be human alone, but divine. Only the God who is love, and the love which is God, could choose to save us in this way, which is certainly the lengthiest way, yet the way which respects the truth about him and about us: the way of reconciliation, dialogue and cooperation.

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Solemnity of the Nativity of the Lord

2011-12-24T16:50:00.001-07:00

"While they were there [in Bethlehem], the time came for her to have her child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn" (Luke 2:6-7).

This is how Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, who became human for us and for our salvation, was born.

Incarnating God's love

2011-12-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

There's time for one more post before the great Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord commences. So, I am posting on something that is near and dear to my heart, vocation. I cannot repeat often enough that there is but one Christian vocation: to follow Christ. All vocations are rooted in and so arise from the primal sacrament of baptism. This includes, still to the vexation of some, marriage. It also includes the vocation to celibacy (i.e., not getting married) with its inherent, at least in Christian terms, requirement for perpetual continence (i.e., not engaging in sexual relations), in all the various forms this takes (i.e., priesthood, religious life, secular institutes, like my beloved friends who belong to Memores Domini, and those who simply live single in the world glorifying the Lord by their lives). The excellence of this form of life is indisputable for Christians.

In this regard it is interesting to consider Matthew 19:11, where Jesus says to His disciples, "Not all can accept [this] word, but only those to whom that is granted." It is unclear whether Jesus is referring back to His teaching on marriage and divorce, which immediately precedes this quote, or whether He is referring back to His disciples' inference from that teaching, "If that is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry" (Matt. 19:10).

New Testament scholar Dale Allison, Jr., writing on St. Matthew's Gospel in the The Oxford Bible Commentary, holds that it is likely not only a reply to the disciples' conclusion that given the level of commitment marriage requires and the difficulty of leaving a marriage that "it is better not to marry," but a correction. Allison notes that the conclusion of the disciples is a universal one, whereas Jesus makes clear, not only in verse eleven, but in the following verse, where He says, "Some are incapable of marriage because they were born so; some, because they were made so by others; some, because they have renounced marriage for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can accept this ought to accept it," that the call to celibacy is not for everyone.

Allison goes on to opine that the author of Matthew's Gospel might have been combating "a perceived excess in his community" with regard to celibacy. Allison also notes that Jesus' teaching includes two previously known categories of eunuchs, the first category being men "who had either been literally castrated or who had sometime after birth lost the power to reproduce." The second category consisted of those males who were born with defective genitalia. To these Jesus adds a third category- men who remain unmarried by choice, who have had a "duty placed on them" such that "it is best discharged outside of marriage." Allison concludes, "For these people, the good and valuable thing that marriage undoubtedly is must be sacrificed in view of the demand made up them by something greater."

Since we are on the verge of the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord Jesus Christ, it seems opportune to point out that the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose perpetual virginity Roman Catholics revere, and St. Joseph, whom we laud in The Divine Praises Litany as the Blessed Virgin's "most chaste spouse,"which I take to mean living in a continent manner though married to the Blessed Virgin, are understandably a very unique case.

John Garvey, who is a married Orthodox priest, in a lovely piece that appeared in Commonweal magazine back in 2010, "Good Gift, Bad Rule: The Uses and Abuses of Celibacy," relayed the story of a young man who asks a monk whether he should marry or become a monk. The monk wisely responded, "If you have to ask that question you shouldn't be a monk. You should be a monk if the alternative to being a monk would make you go crazy."

In a similar vein, in the film Of Gods and Men, a young Algerian woman who helps Frère Luc, a monk who is a physician, in the dispensary asks the now elderly Cistercian how to tell if one is in love. Frère Luc responds: "There’s something inside of you that comes alive. The presence of someone. It’s irrepressible and makes your heart beat faster, usually. It’s an attraction, a desire. It’s very beautiful. No use asking too making questions. It just happens. Things are as usual, then suddenly happiness arrives, or the hope of it. It’s lots of things. But you’re in turmoil. Great turmoil. Especially the first time." Seeking verification that transcends abstraction, the young woman then asks Luc the truly important question, if he has ever been in love. "Several times," he answers. Then, referring to his monastic vocation, he says, "And then I encountered another love, even greater. And I answered that love. It’s been a while now. Over 60 years."

It is this logic that has helped me assist several young people to discern and pursue not vocations that require celibacy, but celibate vocations of the kind described by Jesus, Garvey, Frère Luc, and responded to in a unique way by the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph. I often wonder why we're so scared of the Holy Spirit, which simply amounts to wondering why we don't trust God more. My experience is that the sexual excess of our current culture is exactly the kind of dark abyss that God's ru'ah (i.e., breath or wind) can sweep over bringing life and fruitfulness for God's kingdom.

Love and marriage 2011

2011-12-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

Back in July I sought to aggregate all my posts on marital sexuality vis-à-vis Church teaching. The result of my effort was Marriage as the total gift of self on Καθολικός διάκονος. I want to update this by posting, from latest to earliest, my posts on marriage over this past year, both those that deal with marital relations and those that deal with other aspects of marriage:

Papist musing about marital relations

Pledging troth, knowing to Whom you belong

Thoughts on the ecclesisal nature of Christian marriage

NFP: a faithful reality check

The joy of NFP

The ideology of so-called same-sex marriage

An academic extract: marriage and deacons

More on marriage and pastoral care

Marriage as a sacrament of salvation, a channel of God's grace

Καθολικός διάκονος- 2011 review

2011-12-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

With the Winter solstice now past and Advent slowly giving way to the light of Christmas, I am feeling a little less dark this morning. It also helps that our gray, cloudy, misty weather was cleared away the night before last by a storm. So, today is bright and sunny, if cold. While we're still more than a week away from starting a new year, I can say that 2011, while it was surely a year during which I experienced God's grace in profound ways, is not a year I am sad to see pass.

Every year I pick a post from each month that stands out for me. I suppose it is a way of self-validating what I attempt do here. I exclude my homilies because I do not write them as blog posts. I also do not choose from those posts, like the lengthy extract from Havel from earlier this week, or from the Friday traditio posts, because both amount to posting something written or created by someone else. It is also a way of drawing the attention of new readers to past content, which in this age of constantly pressing forward, easily becomes lost and forgotten. Though I have never received an overwhelming response, but I certainly invite both of my readers to share their favorite posts from 2011. Of course, in sharing something one is free to chose whatever post(s) s/he may with no restrictions of the kind I impose on my own selections.

January- What we must never lose sight of...

February- Democratic perils in Egypt

March- What is penance and why do it?

April- More on marriage and pastoral care

May- T(w)oo absurd(ists)

June- Witnessing what it means to be a father

July- Marriage as the total gift of self on Καθολικός διάκονος- This, too, is a compilation post, in which I sought to provide links to relevant posts on marriage over the history of my blog, which I did at the request of a reader.

August- Can a Catholic in good conscience vote for a Mormon for president? I think so

September- Baptism of Evan Gabriel

October- Some notes on conservatism and the priority of culture

November- Watching our language

December- Pledging troth, knowing to Whom you belong

Since I remain very ambivalent about blogging, it will be interesting to see how things develop here in 2012. It bears noting that I derive much of my energy from my ambivalence. One thing in the works for next year is participating in an effort that has been brilliantly conceived by a fellow deacon to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, an effort that will run for three years- from the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Council, which falls on 11 October, to the fiftieth anniversary of its ending, 8 December 2015.

This is the 2100th post on Καθολικός διάκονο.

"Skip a life completely"

2011-12-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

It's easy to forget that when Václav Havel became president of the still-united Czechoslovakia he wanted Lou Reed be appointed U.S. ambassador. His desire was politely declined by the first Bush Administration. I was tempted to write "wisely declined," but who knows?

So, Lou Reed doing Velvet Underground's Pale Blue Eyes is our Friday traditio. Under the circumstances, it seems quite fitting. I also forgot that this song is a Willie Nelson-esque country song, which is a good kind of song, at least in my estimation.

If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see/I'd put you in the mirror/I put in front of me.

I was happy to find a live cover of Pale Blue Eyes that REM did way back in 1984.

"I never felt so much alike"

2011-12-22T18:11:00.001-07:00

Today marks the ninth anniversary of the way-too-early passing of Joe Strummer. Strummer was only 50 when a previously undetected heart defect killed him. He is most famous for being a member that amazing group The Clash. More than any group, it was The Clash that first brought punk to the mainstream. Since this week has already become tribute week here on Καθολικός διάκονος, what's one more, especially for a man who deserves one? Besides, it's almost Christmas. Since I "do" Advent, while everyone is near to petering out, I'm just getting started. This will not take the place of tomorrow's traditio.

"Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom. But I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control." This takes me back to something of Hitch's I quoted back 2009: Morality is not faith and religion is not social control.

London calling to the imitation zone/Forget it, brother, you can go it alone/London calling to the zombies of death/Quit holding out, and draw another breath

How do I respond to grace? Not gracefully

2011-12-21T19:39:00.001-07:00

Okay, I am just going to admit this: When it comes to Christmas, I am a heel. The only presents I personally purchase are for my wife and children, meaning I buy them each one thing. My lovely wife does all the rest of it. I feel the need to admit this because every year I receive so many wonderful gifts from both expected and unexpected people. It's funny, I love Christmas, but given what's involved in gift exchange (i.e., having to go shopping), I just don't do it. It's funny, I would actually be alright with getting nothing for Christmas, with the exception of a beautiful Mass and a lovely breakfast, with mimosas, of course.

Nativity, by William Congdon

It's a ham-fisted and sentimental connection, I know, but my wholly inadequate and often awkward response to receiving gifts seems a pretty realistic response to the Mystery we acknowledge.

Václav Havel: Champion of being human

2011-12-20T19:48:00.001-07:00

I have been too overwhelmed by many things to post a fitting tribute to Václav Havel. Learning of his death Sunday morning I posted my reaction on Facebook: "I awoke this morning to learn of yet another tremendous loss. What is it these days? I'm sure it's a function of my own growing older that causes me to wonder if we will have people like Havel in the future. I certainly hope we do. A world that grows less humane by the moment needs men and women who champion humanity over and against all the de-humanizing forces we face. Havel was one of the greatest champions of being human, having experienced Communism first-hand."

Since Havel was first and foremost an artist, a playwright and poet, but also a brilliant essayist, there is nothing I can write to do him justice. So, I am putting up a long extract from "Politics and Conscience," which he originally composed as a speech to deliver at the University of Toulouse on the occasion of being awarded an honorary doctorate in 1984. Of course, he was unable to attend the ceremony. Playwright Tom Stoppard represented him. The first English translation, done by Erazim Kohák and Roger Scruton, of this work was published in the January 1985 edition of the Salisbury Review.

I am convinced that what is called "dissent" in the Soviet bloc is a specific modern experience, the experience of life at the very ramparts of dehumanized power. As such, that "dissent" has the opportunity and even the duty to reflect on this experience, to testify to it and to pass it on to those fortunate enough not to have to undergo it. Thus we too have a certain opportunity to help in some ways those who help us, to help them in our deeply shared interest, in the interest of mankind.

One such fundamental experience, that which I called "anti-political politics", is possible and can be effective, even though by its very nature it cannot calculate its effect beforehand. That effect, to be sure, is of a wholly different nature from what the West considers political success. It is hidden, indirect, long term and hard to measure; often it exists only in the invisible realm of social consciousness, conscience and subconsciousness and it can be almost impossible to determine what value it assumed therein and to what extent, if any, it contributes to shaping social development. It is, however, becoming evident—and I think that is an experience of an essential and universal importance—that a single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, ready to pay a high price, has, surprisingly, greater power, though formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters. It is becoming evident that even in today's world, and especially on this exposed rampart where the wind blows most sharply, it is possible to oppose personal experience and the natural world to the "innocent" power and to unmask its guilt, as the author of The Gulag Archipelago has done. It is becoming evident that truth and morality can provide a new starting point for politics and can, even today, have an undeniable political power. The warning voice of a single brave scientist, besieged somewhere in the provinces and terrorized by a goaded community, can be heard over continents and addresses the conscience of the mighty of this world more clearly than entire brigades of hired propagandists can, though speaking to themselves. It is becoming evident that wholly personal categories like good and evil still have their unambiguous content and, under certain circumstances, are capable of shaking the seemingly unshakeable power with all its army of soldiers, policemen and bureaucrats. It is becoming evident that politics by no means need remain the affair of professionals and that one simple electrician with his heart in the right place, honouring something that transcends him and free of fear, can influence the history of his nation.

Yes, "anti-political politics" is possible. Politics 'from below'. Politics of man, not of the apparatus. Politics growing from the heart, not from a thesis. It is not an accident that this hopeful experience has to be lived just here, on this grim battlement. Under the "rule of everydayness" we have to descend to the very bottom of a well before we can see the stars.

When Jan Patocka wrote about Charter 77, he used the term "solidarity of the shaken". He was thinking of those who dared resist impersonal power and to confront it with the only thing at their disposal, their own humanity. Does not the perspective of a better future depend on something like an international community of the shaken which, ignoring state boundaries, political systems, and power blocs, standing outside the high game of traditional politics, aspiring to no titles and appointments, will seek to make a real political force out of a phenomenon so ridiculed by the technicians of power—the phenomenon of human conscience?

Year B Fourth Sunday of Advent

2011-12-18T18:10:00.000-07:00

Readings: 2 Sam. 7:1-5.8b-12.14a.16; Ps. 89:2—5.27.29; Rom. 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38

Our readings for today cascade downward in a very useful sequence. Hence, I think we are best-served by simply looking at the Scriptures, seeing how they fit together in order to discern what God is saying to us as we enter the final week of Advent. In our first reading, taken from Second Samuel, we hear about King David, who, after vanquishing Israel’s foes and firmly establishing a united kingdom consisting of all the tribes of Israel, with their capital in Jerusalem, worries out loud that while he, the king of God’s people, dwells in a palace, the Ark of the Covenant, which was God’s presence among the chosen people, continued to be housed in a tent. The “tent” to which David refers was a portable tabernacle like the one built during Israel’s exodus from Egypt and carried around with them during their forty year sojourn to the promised land, which they now largely possessed and inhabited. This prompts David to tell Nathan, at least to hint to the prophet, that he would like to build a magnificent palace in which to place the Ark. In other words, he speaks of a plan to build a temple.

Nathan, who as we know from the Bathsheba incident, was no mere yes man, initially thinks the king’s idea is a good one and says to David, “Go, do whatever you have in mind, for the LORD is with you” (2 Sam. 7:3). But then Nathan has a dream with a message from God for King David. God asks David through Nathan, “Should you build me a house to dwell in?” (2 Sam 7:5) The LORD then recounts to Nathan, so that the prophet can remind David, of all that God has done for David from the time he was a humble shepherd called by God to lead Israel by the prophet Samuel, to where David is now (2 Sam. 7:8-11). David is also reminded that God has never asked Israel to build Him a permanent dwelling, “a house of cedar” (2 Sam. 7:7). The point of the dream is that God does not want David to build a temple. Rather, God will make of David a house, that is, a kingdom, which will last forever. God relays to David through Nathan that after David’s death, God

will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his kingdom firm. I will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. Your house and your kingdom shall endure forever before me; your throne shall stand firm forever (2 Sam. 7:12.14a.16)

This is followed in the lectionary by our Psalm, in which God is praised for His goodness and fidelity to His promises, like the promise made to David in our first reading: “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn to David my servant: Forever will I confirm your posterity and establish your throne for all generations” (Ps. 89:4-5).

We now move briefly to our New Testament reading, taken from the very end of St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, in which passage the apostle identifies Jesus Christ as “the revelation of the mystery kept secret for long ages,” who is now “made known to all nations” in order “to bring about the obedience of faith” (Rom. 16:25-26).

Ark of the Covenant Monstrance at St. Stanislaus Catholic Church, Chicago

Before looking more closely at our Gospel reading for today, it is important to note that Tradition hands on to us that the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom we revere in an especially enthusiastic way during the Advent season, is the new Ark of the Covenant. The original Ark, the one that David wanted to build a temple for, the one for which Indiana Jones searched, held three items: the stone tablets on which the 10 Commandments were written, some manna God provided to feed the Israelites during their forty years in the desert, and Aaron’s rod, the one that, though detached from the plant and its root system, re-sprouted, thus becoming a self-sufficient source of life. The womb of Mary, whom we revere as Theotokos- God-bearer, or, more commonly, as the Mother of God, held Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh (John 1:14), the Bread of Life (John 6:35), and the True Vine whose branches we are (John 15:5), the very One whom St. John tells us “pitched his tent among us” (John 1:14).

There are many parallels between the Annunciation as conveyed to us in our Gospel today and the Ark of the Covenant, beginning with Gabriel’s use of the word “overshadow” in reference to Mary conceiving God’s Son (Luke 1:35). This word is significant because it is used in reference to the cherubim “overshadowing” the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark was made with pure gold (Exodus 4ff), but Mary, whose Immaculate Conception we affirmed and celebrated a little more than a week ago, was even purer and more beautiful. There are many more typological parallels that have been identified regarding the Blessed Virgin as the new Ark of the Covenant.

So if Jesus is “The Word Made Flesh,” then Mary is “The Ark Made Flesh,” the house God promised David He would establish forever. Yes, Jesus is present here in the tabernacle, but as a result of this Eucharist, He is just as present in you and me. This is the great scandal of the Incarnation: that Christ, the everlasting God, is conceived in the womb of a humble virgin, a marginal person who belonged, at least in terms of the ancient Roman Empire, to a marginal, if trouble-making, people. During our profession of the Creed, just before we say the words, “and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man,” we bow in awe. The scandal doesn’t stop there. While Jesus is present here in the tabernacle, but as a result of this Eucharist, He is just as present in you and me. Like Mary, we are to be temples of God’s presence in and for the world. The Son of God, in this very Eucharist, makes Himself present in us by the power of the Holy Spirit! When we say "Amen" to the words "the body of Christ" and "the blood of Christ," like the Blessed Virgin, who is our model of faith, we say "Yes" to God, to serving Him, to cooperating in bringing about His kingdom.

In his homily for Midnight Mass in 2006, Pope Benedict reminded us that “God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us.” "God," the Holy Father continued, “does not come with power and outward splendor. He comes as a baby – defenseless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness." In the womb of the Virgin of Nazareth and in this Eucharist God becomes small so that we are able to grasp him, to welcome him, and to love him. As we enter into this last week of Advent, let us contemplate this great mystery. One of the best ways of doing this is by praying and meditating upon the seven “O Antiphons,” the first of which made its annual appearance in Evening Prayer last night: “O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, you govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation.”

"Forsake not the works of thine own hands"

2011-12-17T20:24:00.000-07:00

I am very disheartened, even dispirited, that I am starting to see snide, chiding, and sarcastic pieces written by Christians on the passing of Christopher Hitchens. I guess being provoked both by reality and by those who themselves are so provoked, especially those who arrive at very different conclusions, has no place in the lives of some Christians. In his book The Religious Sense, Msgr. Giussani discusses at length the "big" questions, the existential questions, that arise for all simply by being human, by being self-conscious. Humanity for Giussani being "that level of nature wherein nature becomes aware of itself and of its own purposes." These are the questions that initiate our search for meaning, which is our search for happiness, for complete fulfillment, those that constitute us as human beings. Giusanni also details the many ways, some of them quite ingenious to the point of being convincing, in which some have sought to banish these questions, or at least to attenuate them.

UPDATE: Msgr. Albacete reflects on his encounter with Christopher in New York in 2008 Hitchens/A man with a wounded heart in Il Sussidiario.

One of the great things about Hitch, as he was popularly known, is that he neither avoided these questions nor sought to attenuate them. He did go to lengths to criticize and even make fun of those who, at least in his view, did not do justice to the questions, short-circuiting them by taking a leap of faith.

Remembering his brother on his passing, Peter Hitchens wrote: "The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’. By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it." Christopher Hitchens faced the big question squarely and never more so than after being diagnosed with the cancer that ultimately killed him. In a piece that appeared in Vanity Fair- "Topic of Cancer"- he described his response to his diagnoses:

The notorious stage theory of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whereby one progresses from denial to rage through bargaining to depression and the eventual bliss of “acceptance,” hasn’t so far had much application in my case. In one way, I suppose, I have been “in denial” for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. Rage would be beside the point for the same reason. Instead, I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I’d worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again? To read—if not indeed write—the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger? But I understand this sort of non-thinking for what it is: sentimentality and self-pity

Provocative, no?

His friend, the writer Ian McEwan, who is also an atheist, wrote in Friday's New York Times about his final visit with Hitch. McEwan revealed that at the time of his passing, Hitchens was working on a long piece critical of G.K. Chesterton. I for one would love to read it because, unlike his contemporary and friend, Hilare Belloc, with whose name he was linked as Chesterbelloc, about whom even Catholics ask, Is Belloc best forgotten?, it seems to me that Chesterton has never really been subjected to much intelligent scrutiny.

Bl. John Henry Newman had an unbelieving older brother, Charles Robert Newman, who lived a very dissolute life, often only being able to eat and keep a roof over his head with the financial help of John. Nonetheless, Charles was very ungrateful and often went out of his way to demonstrate his ingratitude. He died unrepentant and unreconciled. Of course, it was left to John to see to and pay for his brother's burial. John had this epitaph carved on the headstone of Charles: "Forsake not the works of thine own hands" (Ps. 138:8- KJV).

In my view, the biggest failure we can have as Christians is to fail to see both ourselves and others the way Christ sees us, to look on others, including those whose views diverge from ours and who might despise our beliefs, with a loving gaze.

I feel that I must post the first video clip of a dialogue that took place between Hitch and Msgr. Albacete back in September 2008 because it gives me hope, unlike some of what I read today, which made me realize all over again that some of Hitch's withering criticism of religion and those who are religious were more accurate than many would care to acknowledge:

Papist musing about marital relations

2011-12-17T14:38:00.000-07:00

On 3 January 2012 the book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship & Life Together co-authored by Pastor Mark Driscoll and his wife Grace, will be released. For those unfamiliar with Pastor Mark, he is the senior pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle. He is also a leader in the Acts 29 Network. Without a doubt Mark Driscoll is one of the most influential Evangelical leaders in the United States. To understate his approach to ministry, he is very provocative. It seems that he remains provocative in his about-to-be published book, at least according to Tim Challies, who offered a preview of it in a Christian Post article last Thursday. Writing in response to the about-to-be-released book, an advanced copy of which he apparently read, Challies takes issue with what the Driscolls see as their necessarily forthright approach to questions about sex in marriage. I have addressed some of Pastor Mark's ideas on this subject before: "...we must refuse to speak in sanitized clinical euphemisms" (WARNING: It contains frank language about sex). I think how we discuss sex depends on who we are talking to, what our relationship with them is, and the context. With reference to what I wrote in my earlier post about appreciating the frankness with which Pastor Mark dealt with the topic of pornography, I still think there is a place for Christian men to speak frankly to other Christian men about sex, mostly about how we get it wrong and what we need to overcome our brokenness.

In this preview of what he says will be a comprehensive review of Real Marriage, Challies takes up chapter ten of the Driscolls' book. This chapter is called " "Can We________?" and deals with matters the authors insist are questions about sex that people are too embarrassed to ask their pastors. According Challies, the questions the Driscolls answer range from "self-stimulation to the use of sex toys and forms of cybersex. The most provocative of all involves sodomy within marriage." The real issue is whether the Driscolls, in light of the very frank and direct questions people have about sex, which curiosity arises from our current socio-sexual climate, are correct to insist, as Challies puts it, that "[i]t falls to us, as Christians, to be ready with answers." The authors of the book think that we have to be ready and willing to frankly answer these blunt questions because if we don't "people will find worse answers elsewhere." The Driscolls base all of this on the assumption that people, though mostly young men, are familiar with these things by viewing pornography.

The Driscolls' assumption about pornography, while sadly true and part of the pastoral landscape these days, really boils down to, as Challies observes, "Is it okay for me to act out porn on my wife?" I think we have to be careful about making what young people (young men in particular) see done in pornography the model for sexual relations in marriage. It's funny that in a publication warning men about the dangers of pornography on The Resurgence website, an outreach of Pastor Mark's ministry, entitled "Fornicating on the Battlefield," men are urged to imagine being engaged in spiritual warfare of the kind depicted in Revelation: "Just imagine for a moment that this is reality: You’re on a battlefield. It’s dark. Chaotic. Cold wind is whipping your face. The stench of death fills the air. Corpses of demons lie all around you and the field is soaked in blood. You can hear the sounds of armor and weapons colliding while sparks are flying... You’ve got your pants down around your ankles. You’re roaming in circles looking for the seductress that’s calling you by name. You can’t wait to fornicate on the battlefield." While I think that depicting the sheer ridiculousness of giving in to lust looked at under the aspect of eternity can be and often is useful when men speak to men, I can't help but notice the mixed and confusing message that is sent when this is juxtaposed with the marital advice on offer in Real Marriage.

Challies writes that he is not convinced that answering these questions the way Driscolls answer them in Real Marriage is wise. He thinks "there is a much better way" and so do I. He goes on to propose that if we agree that this a discussion we must have (he casts some wise doubt on the necessity of having such frank discussions), then we should seek to elevate it. "Even in an extremely sexualized culture in which most men are learning about sex primarily through pornography," Challies goes on to ask, "can we provide real, helpful, biblical answers without being as frank as what Real Marriage offers?" We most certainly can!

Blessed John Paul II, who, based on his personalist philosophy, had a very positive view and progressive view of marital sexuality, created a great stir when he suggested that lust within marriage exists and remains sinful. Though I have referred to this chapter in several posts recently, I feel compelled to return to Fr. Radcliffe's take on lust, which he set forth in the fifth chapter of his book What Is the Point of Being a Christian?, in which he writes wonderfully well on the virtue of chastity:

Lust may look as if it is sexual passion gone wild, but St. Augustine, who understood sex well, believed that lust was more about the desire to dominate other people than for sexual pleasure. Lust is part of the libido dominandi, the impulse to control and make ourselves God. Sebastian Moore, OSB wrote that 'lust, then, is not sexual passion out of control of the will, but sexual passion as a cover story for the will to be God' (pg 102)

One aspect that is necessary in keeping our wits about us when it comes to sex is not severing the connection between sexual intercourse and procreation. In the section of his prophetic encyclical Humanae Vitae in which he warned about the effects of the widespread use of contraceptives on the well-being of women, Pope Paul wrote: "Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and, disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his partner whom he should surround with care and affection" (par. 17).

"Doot Doot Doot..."

2011-12-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

Freur's Doot Doot, released in 1983, is our Friday traditio for this Third Friday in Advent.

Christopher Hitchens, "Hitch," passed away today. While I disagreed with him on the most fundamental matters, I appreciated his humanism, which is something he had in common with his brother Peter, with whom I agree on most important matters. Hitch's book Why Orwell Matters is without a doubt the best book on Orwell I have read. It is a monument to Hitch's care for the human. It seems, as his book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything attests, that his biggest problem with religion is the inhumanity that religious institutions and religious people often exhibit. One doesn't have to be an atheist or even irreligious to grasp this sad truth. I believe an admission along these lines is what endeared Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete to him during a public discussion they had on religion a few years back in New York City. Suffice it say that news of Hitch's passing this morning makes me sad.

What's in a name?/Face on a stage/Where are you now?/Memory fades, you take a bow

"The Awe Factor of God"

2011-12-15T07:10:00.002-07:00

I hope to never lose my sense of awe, my sense of wonder.

In Proverbs we read, "Fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" (1:7). Then, in both Proverbs and the Psalms we learn, "The beginning of wisdom is fear of the LORD (Proverbs 9:10; Ps. 111:10). "Fear" in these verses, I think, can be taken as "awe" and in both senses of the word. To me, the two senses of "awe" are "awful" and "awesome," which are negative and positive respectively. I think we are meant, at least initially, to take it in both ways.

Writing about Lars Von Trier's most recent film Melancholia for Relevant magazine, Brian McCracken juxtaposes this somewhat pessimistic, if not nihilistic, apocalyptic treatment with Terrance Malick's Tree of Life, which is certainly a more hopeful film. By hopeful I don't mean sentimental, or, how we use "hopeful" most of the time, as a synonym for "wishful," but realistic, and engagement with reality.

Succinctly comparing and contrasting the two films, McCracken writes that "Melancholia, like Tree of Life, vividly depicts man’s flawed, sinful nature and his temporal smallness in the grand scheme of things. But whereas Life offers a hopeful portrait of human potential for redemption and hints at the existence of a meaningful, grace-filled telos in the world, Melancholia offers a bleak, bereft-of-hope portrait of humanity as irredeemably self-destructive and helpless, at best deluded by idealized notions of love and purpose." McCracken also notes that the resonance of the films by Malick and Von Trier merely tap into our innate grasp of the temporary nature of things, at least things as they now are: "There's a sense in which every human instinctively knows the Earth will not last forever and that fiery destruction is in some way deserved."

Chan, in the second chapter of his book Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God, entitled "You Might Not Finish This Chapter," urges his reader to imagine human existence on the earth from start-to-finish as a movie. The first thing he notes is that the movie is not centered on you, or me, or any of us. God is the main character. Our role lasts for about two-fifths of a second and features maybe a sideways shot of the back of your head. I find in Chan's explication of reality a more popular film version of themes dealt with by the auteur Hans Urs Von Balthasar in his five volume Theo-drama, about which Balthasar writes:

By and large the actor’s nature and person do not coincide with the role he has to play, and this is true not only of the stage play…but also of the theatrum mundi itself. In the play that takes place on the world stage, the author, director, and producer is—in an absolute sense—God himself. True, he allows [human] freedom to act in its own part according to its nature—and this is the greatest mystery of creation and of God’s direct creative power—yet ultimately the play [God] plays is his own. In this play there can be and tragic or comic dichotomy between the actor and the role; and this produces the comedies and tragedies of world history…Only in the drama of the God-Man do we find identity between the sublime actor and the role he has to play.

What, or better yet, Who resolves "awful" into "awesome"? Jesus Christ: "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love" (1 John 4:18). Yes, the crazy love of a relentless God!

Prayer: Making our words match our hearts

2011-12-14T18:10:00.000-07:00

I came across an article today in the Christian Post that discussed the first of a scheduled seven of Pastor Francis Chan's BASIC series. In this installment Chan is talking about praying. He addresses head-on why so many prayers go unanswered, finding the answer in the Scriptures- it's amazing what you find in holy writ when you read it: "You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?" (James 4:2b-4a ESV)

Chan compares his prayers with those of Jesus' earliest followers: "As I look at the way the disciples prayed back then and as I look at the way Jesus taught us to pray, I realize it’s a lot different from what I was taught. Prayer to them was really different, they asked for things that were different from what I typically asked for." His focus on the prayer of Jesus' earliest disciples made me call-to-mind the beginning of this year's Communion & Liberation Spiritual Exercises. The theme, or focus, of the exercises "Whoever Is In Christ Is A New Creation", taken from St. Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (5:17 ESV).

At the very beginning of the Exercises, Fr. Carrón urged us to "try to identify with the disciples after Easter." Asking, "What prevailed in their hearts, in their eyes, in their self-awareness, if not His living presence?" Indeed, what prevailed in their hearts was Christ's presence and, Fr. Carrón insisted, His presence "was so evident for them that they could not rip itaway." Fr. Carrón asked, "Who of us would not desire such intensity of life?" Presumably, no one, at least nobody bothering to listen to people like Francis Chan and Julían Carrón. "But if we compare what the disciples experienced that week of Easter with what we have lived," Carrón continued, "we would all acknowledge the distance, the abysmal distance that separates us from the experience they had. This also holds for participation in the Liturgy: for them it was the moment of recognizing Him (their eyes were opened and they recognized Him), and for us it is often reduced to rite."

While Chan sees in James' letter the answer to the question, "Why prayers go unanswered," it is the Lord's Prayer that gives us not just a model of prayer, but speaks volumes about the content of prayer. He notes how we just say this prayer, without knowing what we are saying, or really, at least more often that we'd probably care to admit, without caring.

What he says is convicting. I was struck by his take on the phrase "lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil":“Haven’t you prayed that at times in your life when you were actually still were holding on to some temptation? Maybe you weren’t even ready to let go of all of your sin and yet you’re saying it. It’s like your words weren’t matching up to your heart.” I have and quite recently. As a matter of fact, as recently as last night.

While preaching and exhortation can always use some theological tweaking and improvement, I think what Pastor Chan is proposing here is sound. It is a proposal, maybe even a provocation. It is something that can be verified by experience. Consider this question asked by Chan- "Maybe we haven't seen... His power because we haven't been praying for the things that He wanted us to pray for." Like the early disciples, we too can experience Christ as "something happening" to us. As Fr. Carrón asserted, for the His first followers, Jesus "was not a doctrine, a list of things to do, a sentiment. Yes, He was an external presence, different, but one that permeated their life."

To add a thought of mine own, it seems that maybe God changes us, that is, our hearts, through prayer and then sends us to change the world- just a thought.

You can watch the entire segment, which is about 15 minutes long, on the Relevant website. I also recommend Francis' short and powerful book, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God.

Mass: A brief Tuesday consideration

2011-12-13T18:04:00.002-07:00

For what it's worth I am posting the concluding passage of a Liturgy paper I wrote several years back for a graduate course. My topic was. Why Go to Mass? In addition to improbably citing Nehemiah (who'da thought?), I also (again!) allude to Timothy Radcliffe's What Is the Point of Being a Christian? Additionally, I refer to some class notes from my professor, Msgr. Michael Clay and cite a passage from Msgr. Kevin Irwin's fantastic book, Models of the Eucharist. As with my post yesterday, the paragraph below is part of the conclusion of this paper, which centered on answering this question for young adults. In now way is my answer comprehensive. It was designed as a presentation to give young adults.

Why go to Mass? Indeed, we acknowledge that all creation is infused with the divine! Nonetheless, just as God became incarnate as a particular human being at a certain time and in a specific place, Christ is present in the eucharistic liturgy in a unique way. Christ is really present in the eucharistic liturgy in four distinct ways, two of which we have covered extensively. Allow me to paraphrase something I have heard now-Archbishop George Niederauer say many times, especially to young adults: As Catholics it is not the case that we have to go to Mass. Rather, we get to go to Mass. What Fr. Radcliffe observes may very well be true, that our eucharistic assemblies often lack a sense of mutual rejoicing. But, before we can rejoice we must find joy in the first place. Where do we find joy, in whom do we find joy? Our faith tells us that our joy is Christ who becomes present through us, in the person of the priest, in the proclamation his word, and, completing the circle, in the bread and wine, which we eat and drink and by which we are transformed. The author of the Book of Nehemiah tells Israel as they prepare to begin worshipping God in the divinely prescribed manner after exile, rejoicing in the LORD is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). How we approach the sacred mysteries enacted in liturgy also matters. What do we see as the point, purpose, or reason for gathering and celebrating liturgy?

So much of what young adults do, either in your chosen vocations or in a voluntary manner, is aimed at making the world a better place. Many of these efforts do a great deal of good in the community and in the world. Sometimes the Church can be quite disappointing in this regard. We must remember that we are now “’the pilgrim church on earth’” and “not the fully united and perfectly sinless bride of Christ” (Irwin 86). This why your presence and mine are so needed at Mass, to help God’s pilgrim people arrive at our destination. We must keep in mind that “The purpose of the Eucharist is not primarily to change bread and wine but change you and me” (Clay "Liturgy and Spirituality" 4). You and I, in turn, are sent forth to change the world, or at least the part of it in which we find ourselves.

Short posts this week due to making final revisions on my Integrated Pastoral Research paper, known in some circles as a thesis.

Jesus: A brief Monday consideration

2011-12-12T20:43:00.001-07:00

For what it's worth I am posting the concluding passage of a Christology paper I wrote several years back for my graduate Christology class. The topic was Did Jesus of Nazareth Know He Was Divine? The works I cite in this passage are Elizabeth Johnson's Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology and Raymond Brown's An Introduction to New Testament Christology. I was limited to using these two assigned texts for the course. There were, of course, other assigned texts, like O'Collins seminal work.

Because theology is largely synthetic and biblical scholarship is predominantly analytic, it is fitting to look theologically at the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, which is made known to us primarily by the canonical Gospels, through the lens of biblical scholarship. “From the way Jesus talked about God and enacted the reign of God, it is obvious that he had a special and original experience of God...” (Johnson 57). It is the originality of Jesus’ experience of God that points us toward his divinity. Many use Jesus’ reference to God as Abba as the premiere example of the originality of his relationship to God. However, there is some controversy concerning whether the Aramaic term Abba is really “a babble word,” equivalent in meaning to “papa” and “dada” (57). In the Gospels the word Abba is only transliterated into Greek once, in Mark 14:36 (Brown 86). It is not until around AD 200 that the term abba replaces abi as a child’s manner of addressing her father (86).

Jesus "advanced a little and fell to the ground and prayed that if it were possible the hour might pass by him;he said, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will'" (Mark 14:35-36) Taken from Mark's account of our Lord's prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.

Gaudete Sunday: "The Lord is near"

2011-12-11T08:45:00.001-07:00

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near" (Phil. 4:4-5).

Today is the Third Sunday of Advent. The Third Sunday of Advent is called Gaudete Sunday. "Gaudete" means "Rejoice" in Latin. The name for today is taken from the introit for the Mass, which comes from the fourth chapter of St. Paul's Letter to the Philippians, verses 4-5. It is the Sunday we light the rose candle on our Advent wreaths.

Personally I see the Third Sunday of Advent as a kind of turning point in the season, the time I begin to focus more on the Savior's birth in Bethlehem. However, intimations, hints, and explicit acknowledgments continue to keep before me the necessity of being prepared to meet Him, which strikes me as the almost exclusive focus of the first half of Advent. It is safe to say that Advent is the most complex of the liturgical seasons, thus requiring us to hold things in tension, which is a good summary of the Christian life. As the late liturgical scholar Mark Searle observed, "tension creates energy." Nonetheless, in season and out, in good times and in bad, we are to rejoice in the Lord always.

Our second reading for today is taken again from St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians. In this letter, too, the apostle urges us, "Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus." Our second reading concludes with the apostle's reassurance, "The one who calls you is faithful,and he will also accomplish it." It is the Lord's fidelity that is the source of our joy. We can also look to the next verse of the fourth chapter of Philippians, "Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God."

In a word, pray. Advent is only half-way gone. If you have managed to sucked into the swirling vortex of "the holiday season" all is not lost. Start today by going somewhere quiet and spending time in the presence of God, or go for a walk and pray a rosary. The possibility for prayer is always there, it's just a matter of our seizing it.

Archbishop Martin on acting in accord with conscience

2011-12-10T12:15:00.001-07:00

In a recently-filmed documentary, the archbishop of Dublin, the very courageous and faithful Diarmuid Martin, tells lapsed Catholics to go ahead and leave, well sorta. In the film he says, "It requires maturity on those people who want their children to become members of the church community and maturity on those people who say 'I don't believe in God and I really shouldn't be hanging on to the vestiges of faith when I don't really believe in it.'" He also talks about the necessity of the Church breaking ties with some Catholic schools, the ones that are not really Catholic. On my view, such schools are not merely neutral, but are often antithetical to faith.

Be discerning in how you read accounts of this story, how the story is spun. Like Archbishop Michael Sheehan's pastoral letter on marriage, which he promulgated in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe earlier this year, there will be many whose responses will range from, "How rude!" to those who will claim Archbishop Martin's comments are un-pastoral. When it comes these matters I have no problem playing the contrarian because groupthink and lazy assumptions sometimes reign even in the Church.

Diarmuid Martin is a truthful, loving pastor. He is urging people to act in accord with their consciences, not kicking people out. He was the lone voice among the Irish episcopate calling his fellow bishops to account and, in some cases, to resign because of their mishandling and, in a few instances, complicity with the great sex abuse scandal. Pastorally-speaking maybe it takes losing what you take for granted in order to desire it. If not, then at least your life ceases to be make-believe. In any case, if we believe what we do in Baptism, better yet, what God is doing and asking of us (which belief I doubt in many cases all around, faith being reduced to sentimentality), we are setting people up for the ultimate failure by having them make promises to God they have no intention of keeping. Being mature means living with integrity, which certainly requires one to act in accord with one's conscience.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin

It seems to me the question for those who take offense at what Archbishop Martin is saying is, "Do you believe?" If so, "Is it an act of charity to be facilitator for people acting against their consciences before God?" If, on consideration of the true nature of the sacraments, especially Baptism and Matrimony (Holy Communion doesn't present much of a problem for the reason discussed by Archbishop Martin, namely people don't tend to present themselves for it that often, but when they do the same problem persists), we discern the deficiency of our deeply ingrained pastoral practice, do those of us who at our ordinations pledged to be good stewards of the Sacred Mysteries think that we will not only be held accountable, but more accountable?

In the wake of the great Irish sex abuse scandal, which has caused so much animosity between Eire and the Holy See, Archbishop Martin, in his Easter homily back in 2010, noted, "The two factors which bring about a change in the attitude of the early disciples were their great love for Jesus and their willingness to be guided by the spirit to rightly interpret the scriptures." A bit later in the homily he asked, "But what of those who love the Church? How do we overcome our disgust and shame for the sins of Christians?" Answering his own question, he goes to say,

The sins of the Church can well be exposed by the spotlight of the media; but the Church will be converted, renewed and reformed only when it allows the light of Christ to inspire it and guide it. It is the light of Christ which will show the real significance of the darkness that has slipped into our lives. The light of Christ will expose the sins of Christians but the light of Christ does not abandon us naked and alone in the exposure of our shame and sin. The light of Christ heals, it leads; there is no way we can switch off or dim that part of the light that exposes the sad realities of the past; there is no way we should switch off or dim the light that can open the path to a new future. No generation is too sophisticated not to need the light of Christ; no generation is too sophisticated not to be able to comprehend that light and what it can bring to society

I see in his undoubtedly controversial and provocative comment the same determination, making him, at least to me, an admirable shepherd. In order to speak the truth in love, you must first speak the truth. It follows, to speak the truth means knowing and accepting it, perhaps even despite some uncertainties. Loving others by loving their destiny means trusting God totally. This also means recognizing that Christ's Church is no mere earthly and voluntaristic association, but Christ's Bride, with all that entails.

I give a deep diaconal bow to my dear friend and brother deacon Greg Kandra, author of The Deacon's Bench, for bringing the Irish Independent article to my attention.

Pledging troth, knowing to Whom you belong

2011-12-10T08:06:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading a book I would recommend to anyone, especially over the early weeks of Advent: John Henry Cardinal Newman's Callista: A Tale of the Third Century. In addition to being an inspiring tale of early Christian martyrdom, Newman manages to seamlessly write a lot of compelling catechesis. I am not making an attempt to unfold the tale, which is beautiful, as most things are, because of its noble simplicity, but merely highlighting one ancillary digression Cardinal Newman made at the beginning of the eleventh chapter about marriage. In the context of the story, it is a marriage that never happens, but turns into something much more beautiful for God on the part of both Callista and her suitor Agellius. As narrator, Newman writes from the perspective of an ancient North African Christian after the passing of the imperial persecutions, looking back on the events about which he is writing.

Agellius, who along with Callista is the protagonist of the story, has remained a Christian despite the fact that the Church in his town, Sicca, has stopped functioning as the result of previous persecutions. As a Christian with no community, Agellius is a truly like a fish without water. While he remains fairly devout, especially given his circumstances, his love of Christ has started to cool, verging on becoming lukewarm. With the help of his uncle, a committed Roman and pagan, he approaches Aristos, Callista's brother and guardian, about marrying the lovely, talented, and brilliant young woman, despite the fact that she is not yet a Christian. The passage with which I am concerned occurs as Agellius approaches the abode of Aristos and Callista.

About the contemplation of marriage, Newman writes that it is a "solemn moment," indeed, "under any circumstances...when anyone deliberately surrenders himself, soul and body, to the keeping of another while life shall last." It is certainly true that any authentic mode of Christian life has an eschatological dimension, including marriage, which cannot be seen merely as a concession to human weakness. Noting this, Newman wrote that giving one's entire person to another still requires one to reserve "the supreme claim of duty to the Creator."

When looked at objectively, Newman insists, marriage "is so tremendous an undertaking that nature seems to sink under its responsibilities." Looking at marriage by way of an analogy to religious life and, to a lesser degree, priesthood, Newman notes the supernatural strength needed to live both. In religious life and, by extension marriage, "the Christian binds himself" to God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, thus surrendering himself "to Him who is all-perfect, and whom he may unreservedly trust." However, it is of the essence of these modes of life to be subject to another human being; the religious superior, in the case of a religious, and the spouse for those who are married, marriage, according to Scripture, requiring the mutual submission of husband and wife to each other under the headship of Christ (see Ephesians 5:22-33- DO NOT SKIP ANY VERSE!). Newman rightly observes that we are naturally wary of making "such a sacrifice." Nonetheless, because faith enjoins it, the Church is required to "sanction and bless it." It stands to reason, at least for Newman, "that either the bond should be dissoluble, or that the subjects of it should be sacramentally strengthened to maintain it." A Christian recognizes the latter, thereby placing himself/herself in submission to God, in whom we "may unreservedly trust."

Fr. James Blaine giving the Nuptial Blessing to a newly-married couple in The Cathedral of the Madeleine

It is clear from the beginning of the proposition that he seek to marry her that Agellius is infatuated with Callista. Infatuation, which, according to Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP, is the mirror image of lust. Infatuation, as Radcliffe describes it, is when another person "becomes the object of all our desires and the symbol of all we have longed for, the answer to all our needs." No human being can possibly bear this weight, but that they can use it to their advantage and the to detriment of the one who is infatuated. Both lust and infatuation are idolatrous. Lust worships the self; infatuation worships the other. Callista begins their interview by recalling a slave woman, Chione, who used to be in Callista's service. According to Callista, Chione was a Christian from a Christian family who died young. Speaking of her late slave, Callista says, "She was unlike any one I have seen before or since, she cared for nothing, yet was not morose or peevish or hard-hearted." The beautiful and inspiring love of Chione for Christ becomes the criterion against which Callista judges the faith of Agellius.

Agellius keeps bringing up his "Master," expressing his wish that Callista may come to know Him, but Callista cuts him short, chastising him for never saying anything meaningful to her about Christ, despite their long-time acquaintance: "Your Master! who is your Master? what know I of your Master? I suppose it is an esoteric doctrine which I am not worthy to know; but so it is, here you have been again and again, and talked freely of many things, yet I am in as much darkness about your Master as if I had never seen you." Calling out his infatuation of her, the physically beautiful Callista says to Agellius, "Your words, your manner, your looks were altogether different from others who came near me. But so it was; you came, and you went, and came again; I thought it reserve, I thought it timidity, I thought it the caution of a persecuted sect; but O, my disappointment, when first I saw in you indications that you were thinking of me only as others think, and felt towards me as others may feel; that you were aiming at me, not your God; that you had much to tell of yourself, but nothing of Him! Time was I might have been led to worship you, Agellius; you have hindered it be worshipping me." Of the last sentence, my friend Maria Elena wrote: "best quote ever."

Hence, his infatuation with her is the reason Callista very sagely rebukes Agellius, thus slapping his conscience back to life, putting them both on the royal road to salvation. It is a classic instance of loving another by loving his destiny, of showing how veritas precedes caritas. As a result of his infatuation with Callista, Agellius failed to acknowledge that God has the supreme claim upon him, something that Callista makes unmistakably clear to her would-be suitor. This shows us that it is not always evangelical zeal, but lukewarmness, that many non-Christians, at least those like Callista who have grasped the futility of life and who are looking for what their existence truly means, for fulfillment, find so unappealing.

"I want to someone to look at my face..."

2011-12-09T20:33:00.001-07:00

Actress Erin Moon did this monologue for Student Life. It has been viewed almost 241,000 times. It is a dramatic telling of the encounter of the Samaritan woman at the well in Jesus from John 4:1-44.

In his book What Is the Point of Being a Christian?, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe OP writes that the human body "is not an object but a subject. I do not only look at her; she looks at me. The pornographer seeks the safe immunity of the voyeur, the security of invisibility." Fr. Radcliffe goes on to cite the philosopher Roger Scruton's distinction between what can legitimately be termed "erotic" over and against what is surely pornographic, "in the former," Radcliffe notes, "the beautiful body is that person, who has a face and is a centre of subjectivity."

Scruton, in the piece quoted, uses Titian's Venus of Urbino as an example of the erotic because, as Radcliffe observes, "our eyes are drawn to her face." Scruton writes of the painting:

The face individualizes the body, possesses it in the name of freedom and condemns all covetous glances as a violation. The Titian nude neither provokes nor excites, but retains a detached serenity- the serenity of a person whose thoughts and desires are not ours but hers...Venus is not beings shown to us as a possible object of our own desire. She is being withheld from us, integrated into the personality that quietly looks from those eyes and which is busy with thoughts and desires of [her] own"

It is Jesus who looks at me, Who gazes upon me with such great love and tenderness, looking at my face, seeing me, knowing me, loving me. In this vein I am reminded of two disparate things, my favorite work of C.S. Lewis', 'Til We Have Faces: A Myth Retold, which is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, and Billy Idol's song Eyes Without A Face. The last line of the chorus: "Eyes without a face/Got no human grace/your eyes without a face."

Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Zola Jesus

2011-12-09T06:47:00.001-07:00

Our Friday traditio this week is by the one-woman "group" Zola Jesus, Clay Bodies . Nika Roza Danilova is that one woman and an incredible one at that. One of her major influences is the late Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, who is someone whose music means a lot to me as well.

I love Danilova's aesthetic, but particularly this video, which put me in mind of stills I have seen of Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham from the upcoming film version of Dickens' Great Expectations

Danilova said in an interview a few years ago, "I probably read Dostoevsky and Nietzsche before I should have. I was always really into absorbing things from the past." This is why Clay Bodies is perfect for a traditio

Still converting my inner Pharisee

2011-12-07T20:11:00.001-07:00

I posted this not quite a year ago on another venue. It's funny how much has happened since then and how little I have changed. But my desire has not diminished, which is a good sign. After writing this, due to events, I read Peterson's Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Ministry, but that story was told...

When we encounter Christ in an unmistakable way we are changed. Nonetheless, after such encounters we are often left with the question, "What do I do now?" or "What comes next?" Eugene Peterson observes in the first volume of his spiritual theology, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, that "[a] common and distressingly frequent way of answering this question...is to come up with a Code of Conduct." In the parlance of younger people, you tend to "Go all Pharisee on yourself." Peterson goes on to point out that Scripture gives us multiple places to begin: the Decalogue (I like using that instead of 10 Commandments because it makes me sound smarter!), Jesus' Two Great Commandments, the Golden Rule and even the Beatitudes. Of course, each of these is important and together they give us divine guidance on how to love, which is what it really means to live.

When our response becomes exclusively about establishing a Code of Conduct, even if initially rooted in biblical injunctions and well-intentioned, we are "rarely, if ever, able to let it go at that." We give in to the temptation to make a rule for every aspect of life and so "rules are added" and "regulations are enforced and it isn't long before the Code of Conduct grows into a formidable jungle of talmudic regulation." In keeping with the physical law that often proves true socially- for action there is an equal and opposite reaction, there is the minimalist tendency that enjoins you to "Follow Your Bliss," "Do no harm," something about karma running over dogma, visualizing whirled peas, etc. Peterson concludes that "the fundamental inadequacy of codes of conduct for giving direction in how to live the spiritual life is that they put us in charge (or, which is just as bad, put someone else in charge of us)." In such a self-defeating set-up "God gets moved off the field of action to the judge's stand where he grades our performance. The moment we take charge, 'knowing good from evil,' we are in trouble and almost immediately getting other people in trouble too."

None of this is to deny to the overall usefulness of codes of conduct, but they are not primary and probably not even secondary. For those of us who follow the charism given to Luigi Giussani, which is known by the short-hand Communion & Liberation, or even as The Movement, all of the above looks familiar and we have an abbreviated way of referring to this all-too-human phenomenon Peterson describes: the reduction of faith to morals. So, it is important to note that Eugene Peterson is an Evangelical Protestant, a retired Presbyterian minister to be precise. He also taught spiritual theology at Regent's University in Vancouver, British Columbia until 2006. I point this out to show how truly radical the method set forth by Don Gius is in its Catholic milieu. He shows us that to follow Christ, to live this way, is a loving response to truth, goodness and, above all, beauty, not painting by the numbers, something Catholicism can easily become.

I am reminding myself of this because as one year ends and a new one begins, it is all too easy to reflect on what needs to change in me and what I need to change. This leads me to make lists and resolutions that look great on paper, but that I know I will break likely sooner than later. Of course, this is not to say I won't make resolutions, but hopefully fewer and better resolutions (not using "hopefully" in the throw away sense) while realizing that what really needs to change in me is a work of grace.

Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception

2011-12-07T19:39:00.001-07:00

And the angel Gabriel came to Mary and said, "'Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!' But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end'... And Mary said, 'Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word...'" (Luke 1:28-33.38a ESV).

Immaculate Conception, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, painted 1665-1670

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God"(Galatians 4:4-7 ESV).

"And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth... She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne..."(Revelation 12:1-2.5a ESV).

"We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful." (Pope Pius IX Ineffabilis Deus, 1854).

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Veni Sancte Spiritus, veni per Mariam

Memorial of St. Nicholas

2011-12-06T18:35:00.001-07:00

The story of St. Nicholas, bishop of Myrna, is well-known. What is perhaps less well-known is his cult, which developed shortly after his death. His tomb (he was originally buried in his native Myrna) became a pilgrimage destination. As Asia Minor, what is modern-day Turkey, became more and more unstable politically, there was increasing concern that pilgrims may be denied access to his tomb. Largely due to the commercial considerations of becoming a popular pilgrimage destination, the Italian cities of Venice and Bari competed have the great saint's remains transferred to their respective cities. In AD 1087, sailors from Bari succeeded to laying claim to Nicholas' bones. Once in Bari a large church was built over the crypt, Basilica di San Nicola, in which the saintly bishop's remains were re-interred. It became a major pilgrimage destination, making Bari one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in medieval Europe. It remains even today a place of pilgrimage. St. Nicholas is patron of children, sailors, and, because according to tradition he once provided dowry money for some poor young woman so they could married, St. Nicholas is also the patron of young women whose prayer is to find a husband. It is still a known practice that some young women who hope to be married come to his basilica his feast day, leave a note and place 3 coins in a box.

Tomb of St. Nicholas in la Basilia di San Nichola in Bari, Italy

It just didn't seem right to let this day pass without posting something about St. Nicholas. Along with Santa Lucia's memorial, this day is the biggest day of Advent, apart from Sundays, for our family, a little preview of Gaudete Sunday. We relax a little, eat some sweets and exchange very simple gifts. Yes, the sweets were mostly chocolate coins!

St. Nicholas, pray for us!

Beware the "pneumata akatharta"

2011-12-05T06:08:00.001-07:00

Slow as I am, I am still working my way through Joseph Mangina's theological commentary on Revelation, while simultaneously reading through Revelation during Advent. I hope to cycle through the ultimate book of Sacred Scripture at least twice more before Christmas, enriched by Mangina's insights, before Christmas.

This morning I was reading Mangina's treatment of the sixteenth chapter of the Apocalypse and I was struck by two things. First, by Mangina's pointing out John's insistence on the power of speech, what he says is "John's view of the uncanny, almost magical quality of speech itself." This observation leads Mangina to conclude, "It is not the hard power of legions and armor that the Christian should fear. Far more dangerous is the soft power of speech, language, and propaganda."

A few pages later, commenting on Revelation 16:17-21, Mangina writes about the seventh angel, who, like the other six angels, is given a bowl with a plague to be poured out, who "pours his bowl out upon the air," thus fouling the air, which, as another commentator cited by Mangina, Swete, noted, air is necessary to sustain life. Even before the seventh angel pours out the final plague, the common air, according to Mangina, "has been fouled by the pneumata akatharta, the 'unclean spirits or 'breaths' of the dragon, beast, and false prophet," who together constitute an unholy anti-Trinity. Mangina goes on to say that especially in an age when we are rightly concerned about the effects of human activity on the earth's atmosphere, "it is tempting to think of the ways in which unbridled consumption has poisoned the physical atmosphere," he insists that instead, "it might be more apt to think of the poisoning of the air by human thought and speech." He immediately points to the phenomenon of the "blogosphere," noting "its particular venom." "The lack of charity" so evident in this interconnected web of human interaction, according to Mangina, "is its own kind of poison." Those of who constitute the very loosely constituted Catholic blogosphere must take our share of the responsibility for its spiritual climate.

Indeed, as Mangina notes, "[t]here are spiritual climates as well as meteorological ones." He insists, rightly to my mind, "What John depicts here is more than just the ordinary sinful corruption of the human air, but its demonic radicalization at the end of time." Keep in mind that etymology of the word "demon," which is Greek in origin, before it is about invisible, goblin-like entities, simply means "to divide." In Christian terms, it is important to note that, even in Revelation, it is God who does all the dividing. These are certainly sobering and useful things to consider of an Advent Monday.

Lest all of this sound too dire, it is important to state that not all human speech poisons the air. Writing about unity of Christ's Body, which unity inheres in a diversity of persons and gifts, and how to maintain this Spirit-given unity, St. Paul, in his Letter to the Ephesians, instructs us:

No foul language should come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for needed edification, that it may impart grace to those who hear. And do not grieve the holy Spirit of God, with which you were sealed for the day of redemption. All bitterness, fury, anger, shouting, and reviling must be removed from you, along with all malice. [And] be kind to one another, compassionate, forgiving one another as God has forgiven you in Christ (Eph. 4:29-32)

To avoid moving from one extreme to another, negating my initial point, I have to point out that what the apostle exhorts is not merely blowing so much proverbial smoke up a certain orifice. We love someone most by uncompromisingly loving her/his or destiny. If what we say does not serve this purpose, even if it is "nice", it is not edifying.

Repentance for the forgiveness of sins

2011-12-04T11:16:00.001-07:00

Between having no internet connection at home, due to the winds that swept through our town late last week, and working to finish my thesis, I missed posting yesterday. It was good, however, to have an enforced absence from the internet for a day or two. However, as with the Friday traditio, it is customary for me to post something on the Lord's Day.

Today's readings, especially our Gospel, which consists of the first eight verses of St. Mark's Gospel and tell us about the ministry of St. John the Baptist, whose importance in the Western Church has been somewhat obscured over time. Hearing about the Baptist's call to repent on the Second Sunday of Advent is a carry-over from the old liturgical calendar, when much more emphasis was placed on the penitential aspect of Advent. So, in keeping with single-hearted simplicity of the Baptist, my reflection today needs to be simple and to the point.

"John the Baptist appeared in the desert proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4). What was the response to his challenging preaching, calling out the double-heartedness even among the pious? "People of the whole Judean countryside and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins" (Mark 1:5). Baptism is, after all, our new birth into eternal life, which, begins as soon as we emerge, not something delayed until after we die and are resurrected.

I think this highlighted well by our second reading, which comes from the third chapter of 2 Peter: "The Lord does not delay his promise, as some regard 'delay,' but he is patient with you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). What is it that shows our need to repent, that is, to change, to be converted? The fact that are not only "waiting for," but "hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire. But according to his promise we await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells" (2 Peter 3:12-13). "Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace" (2 Peter 3:14).

What is it we must repent of, which is simply a way of asking, "What needs to change in me?" As Elder Amilianos observed: "You can’t seek Christ and at the same time be seeking something else. It doesn’t work that way, even if what you’re seeking is something holy. We understand to the degree that we seek, to the extent we comprehend, as much as we make room for. That’s what we need to learn: the more we open our heart, the more we’ll receive God."

I urge one and all to respond not only to the call of the Baptist, but the call of our Lord himself, who, later in the same chapter of St. Mark's Gospel, after being baptized and having His identity confirmed, emerging from the desert, says, "This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15). Jesus is the kingdom in person, what in Greek is referred to as autobasileia. It is easy to do so by availing ourselves during this season designed to aid us in our quest for holiness by participating in any number of Advent Penance Services, or, as we do at the Cathedral parish I serve, simply going to confession, offered as it is more regularly just before the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

In light of a conversation sparked by my homily for the last Sunday in October, it bears noting the St. John the Baptist is the patron of monks, who live celibate lives for the sake of God's kingdom. Indeed, celibacy and virginity remain irreplaceable for the Church's witness in and for the world, pointing us to the fulfillment of God's kingdom among us. But, like fasting and other demanding disciplines, including prayer, we fail to see this and grow in lax in certain ways. Come Lord Jesus!

"Have mercy upon us, O Jesus."

2011-12-02T20:55:00.001-07:00

The Opening Chorus of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion is our Friday traditio for two reasons:

1) It is a truly lovely composition

2) Because Damian Thompson, writing today about a performance he recently attended, had this to say: "This week I attended an amazing performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion. It was an appropriate time of year to hear the piece: Bach’s thorny harmonies reminded us that Advent is a penitential season," thus showing that I am not the only Roman Catholic who refuses to buy into attempts to make liturgy abstract. A liturgical season with no concrete praxis is no season at all. You might as well just pour the nog and join the hootenanny, which is already well under way and will conclude well short of the season of Christimas. This is intended in no way to denigrate hootenannies. Personally, I love a good one.

Come, ye daughters, help me lament,
Behold! Whom? The Bridegroom.
Behold him! How? Like a lamb.
Behold! What? Behold his patience.
Behold! Where? Behold our guilt.
Behold Him, out of love and graciousness,
Himself carrying the wood of the cross.

A few updated thoughts on faith and politics

2011-11-30T18:00:00.001-07:00

I was very happy to read an interview that Timothy Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, did back in February with The Atlantic’s Eleanor Barkhorn, shortly after the release of his most recent book, The King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus. I was particularly gratified by his answer to Barkhorn’s question, “How does Redeemer respond to the difficulties of being a church in a place that is skeptical of religion?” Referring Robert Putnam’s new book, American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, in which, according to Keller, Putnam observes “that in the end of the '60s, the mainline liberal churches got very politically involved with liberal politics. They identified with liberal politics. And that put them way out of step with the mainstream. And there was actually a real reaction against it, and people left the mainline. It just turned them off.” In further explicating Putnam’s book, notes “that in the '80s and '90s the evangelical church did the same thing, except with conservative politics. Because it identified so strongly with conservative politics, that also put them somewhat out of step with the mainstream. The mushy middle is kind of moderate about politics, really.” He notes that this alliance has led to a backlash against Evangelicals. An example of this backlash appeared just yesterday in an article for Salon.com by David Sirota, Are evangelicals a national security threat?”.

Keller goes on to note that he has witnessed this backlash firsthand in New York City during his 20 years there. He says that “because of the identification of orthodox Christianity with conservative politics, there's actually more antipathy here than there was 20 years ago.” He attributes the success of his church to the fact that they’ve always put the Gospel first, saying, “We're about Christianity, not politics. And we know that your Christian faith is going to affect your political views. We know that—we're not saying that won't happen. But we also don't think that your Gospel faith necessarily throws you into one party or the other.”

One point I feel the need to make periodically is that while faith certainly forms and informs the politics of any Christian, we should take care not to reduce our faith to politics, thus making it an ideology. For me personally, I do not belong to any political party as a matter of conscience. I readily admit to voting for far more Republicans than Democrats, but I have never voted a straight-party ticket. While I vote most of the time and have voted more regularly as I have gotten older, I have not voted in every election for which I have been eligible. While voting is a right, as Peter Hitchens pointed out recently, it is not compulsory. I agree that when there is no serious candidate worthy of my vote I can either vote for an obscure third-party candidate, which I have done, or not vote at all. I will no longer vote for third-party candidates merely as an act of protest, which is something I have done a few times in the past, reasoning that if nothing else it may assist a third-party achieve the necessary 10% to qualify for federal matching funds, the idea being that we need more political diversity (an idea to which I still adhere). So, any third-party candidate for whom I might vote must be as worthy of my vote as any major party candidate, perhaps even more so.

I used to feel otherwise. I have written on this very blog that voting is a moral obligation. I would say now that it is not an absolute moral obligation. Not voting, as long as it is a conscientious act and not merely an exercise in laziness and/or apathy, is certainly morally justifiable in certain circumstances. And guess what? If should I choose not to vote, I have not thereby surrendered my right to complain or comment on the state of governance.

It is right and good for a Christian to render to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s, which implies knowing to whom you are ultimately loyal. As the psalmist remarked long ago: It is “[b]etter to take refuge in the LORD than to put one’s trust in mortals. Better to take refuge in the LORD than to put one’s trust in princes” (Ps. 118:8-9). Too often we act and interact as if everything depends on politics, when, in fact, everything does not, not by a long stretch.

Some thoughts on chasity and obedience

2011-11-29T19:04:00.001-07:00

Writing for Christianity Today, Gina Dalfonzo, in her article "Abstinence is Not Rocket Science" addressed the issue of abstaining from sexual relations until after you are married. She begins her article by writing about Elna Baker, a LDS young woman who wrote two articles for Glamour magazine. Baker's first article, Yes, I'm a 27 Year-Old Virgin. The title of her second article, written less than a year after the first, proclaimed, Guess What? I'm Not a Virgin Anymore!.

What caused Baker to change her viewpoint was that her throughout her life, at least up until the point she "gave in" and had sex outside of marriage, she did her best to live by what she described as "those rigid tenets" of her LDS faith because she believed that her adherence to these tenets would get her what she now says she "thought" she wanted, which was to meet a marry a fellow Latter-day Saint for time and all eternity in a LDS temple. She came close to realizing that, but it necessitated her relocating from New York to Utah, leaving behind a city and career she loved. So, it seems it was not merely a matter of getting what she wanted, but having it at little or no cost, without any sacrifice on her part.

Baker's experience might be explained in terms of LDS belief. In Section 130 of the Doctrine and Covenants, one of the three books other than the Bible revered by LDS as scripture, God, speaking to and through Joseph Smith, declares, just before proclaiming that God "[t]he Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's" that "There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated." If this tenet played a role in Elna Baker's decision, then it amounts to not being able to verify what she believed through experience. If God promises to give us certain blessings as the result our obedience, then we have every right to hold God to his word. More than critiquing LDS theology, I think Dalfonzo is quite correct to see in Baker's story "an appealing but dangerous belief," one often held by both Evangelical Christians and Catholic Christians alike- "Obedience will get you what you want."

What we want most of all is God, who is our origin and our destiny. As St. Augustine is endlessly quoted as recording in his Confessions: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."

In his wonderful book, What Is the Point of Being a Christian, Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, in a chapter entitled "The Body Electric," which is one of the very best things I have read on chastity, points out that the central act of our faith is Jesus giving us His body in the Eucharist. He asserts, rightly in my view, that this has to be our starting point for our sexuality. He points out how difficult it is to live what the Church teaches about sexuality, in this instance, that it is wrong for to engage in sexual relations with anyone to whom you are not married. Nonetheless, our approach to matters of the body is positive, not negative. "The Christian claim is that to give one's body to another person is an act with an intrinsic meaning and that if we sleep around promiscuously we are contradicting the meaning of our bodies, which is bound to lead to frustration and unhappiness." Sex without commitment is lie. The lie, according to Radcliffe, consists of saying "something with our bodies which we deny with our lives." Sex without commitment, he continues, "is like saying to someone 'I love you,' and then forgetting a minute later that they exist." If not a minute later, as in very casual sex, but sometime later, as in many relationships that endure for some period of time. In either case, it seems to me, it is the same lie.

I appreciate very much Dalfonzo's wise and practical conclusion: "Sometimes obedience doesn't get us what we imagined. But then, ... God didn't say that it would. Our hope and consolation are—they have to be—that he is worth it. No other hope or consolation will do." A lot more can and probably should be said about obedience, what it is and why be obedient, but this will have to suffice for now.

A thought for an Advent Monday

2011-11-28T17:54:00.001-07:00

It's funny how one thing builds on another. Last Friday, along with my weekly traditio, I posted an extract from David Foster Wallace's Broom of the System, which built on an observation made by Kafka. Foster Wallace wrote: "that it is the person who does not want to do the ridiculous thing who feels out of place and uncomfortable and self-conscious... in a word, ridiculous."

Today, I came across the reason why I posted that, stated very succinctly: "A time is coming when people will go mad and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying 'You are mad, you are not like us'"- St. Anthony the Great. Indeed, we live in times like that, times when we wonder out loud about what when wrong when an act of intercourse results in conception, times when, despite widespread cultural and societal breakdown, we stand not only watch the demise marriage and family, but often aid and abet in this demise, and consider those who act positively in this regard as narrow-minded and intolerant, etc. There are a lot of other directions I could go with St. Anthony's observation. For example, there is nothing more counter-cultural than one's willingness to forgive.

Year B First Sunday of Advent

2011-11-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

Readings: Isa 63:16b-17.19b.64:2-7; Ps. 80:2-3.15-16.18-19; 1 Cor. 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the day we start a new year of grace. As our Gospel and our reading from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians make plain, the season of Advent is a season of waiting in joyful hope for the Lord’s return and not just a commemoration of His birth in Bethlehem. We are all familiar with expectation from our cultural observance of the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when we wait with great excitement and expectation for Christmas morning when we hope to find everything we asked for under the tree. One feature of Christmas I remember, even from when I was pretty small, is how anti-climactic it all became once all the presents were open. Looking back, this seems to me an object lesson in not placing my hopes in things that, while not bad in and of themselves, will not ultimately satisfy the longing of my heart, which remains oriented to the infinite, to what is ultimately satisfying.

The word “Advent” refers to the coming or arrival of something, or someone extremely important. For Christians Advent is the season that shows us that our very lives are an advent, positioned as we are between the already and the not-yet. In one aspect, Advent points us backwards to the Incarnation of the Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Roman province of Palestine more than 2,000 years ago. In another aspect, the one made clear to us today in our reading of God’s word, it directs our attention to that day when Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.

This season of joyful expectation, which certainly includes a penitential dimension, prompts us to ask, “How do I live the tension of existence between Jesus Christ’s Incarnation and His Second Coming?” The prophet Isaiah, even though he wrote before Christ’s Incarnation, indicates the urgency of our lives even while highlighting our tendency to forget, to become impatient and start to live our lives as if we have no ultimate purpose: “There is none who calls upon your name,” the prophet laments, “who rouses himself to cling to you; for you have hidden your face from us and have delivered us up to our guilt” (Isa. 64:6). The good news, even then, is that God is our father, ever faithful, shaping and molding us, as a potter shapes and molds wet clay (Isa. 64:7).

Marcello Mastroianni as Rubini in La Dolce Vita

Our deepest desire, the desire of every human heart, is to be happy. Hence, the most important question becomes, “What is happiness?” The seventeenth century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, in his monumental work Leviathan, sought to overturn what moral philosophers before him had laid out, namely that human happiness consisted of “resting” the will in the acquisition of an ultimate good, a Finis ultimus, culminating in the Summum Bonum. Hobbes, who also asserted that human life is “solitary, nasty, brutish, and short,” insisted that “there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor Summum Bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers.” Rather, Hobbes claimed, happiness “is a continual progress of desire, from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.”

Dominican Brother John Sica is correct to point out that, at least in light of what had come before, “the true radicality of [Hobbes’] claim is shocking.” Sadly, it is not so shocking to us now, awash as we are in our consumeristic culture, which entices us to seek happiness in precisely the way Hobbes insisted human happiness must sought, through the endless acquisition of finite goods. According to this mode of living, we desire, appropriate, consume and discard, pursuing fulfillment simply by repeating this cycle.

Hobbes was correct in noting that our hearts are restless in our pursuit of happiness, of complete and total satisfaction. In the words of Bruce Springsteen, “Everybody’s got a hungry heart.” The answer to Hobbes’ contention that happiness consists of acquiring one thing after another was given by St. Augustine more than a millennium before Hobbes made his shocking claim. St. Augustine noted that our tireless pursuit of imperfect worldly goods results in what he termed “lassitude,” more commonly called boredom, that anti-climax we experience after all the excitement is over. Pushed to its extreme lassitude leads to hopelessness, to what Br. John terms “an existential malaise,” like that experienced by Marcello Rubini, the main character in Frederico Fellini’s ironically-named film La Dolce Vita, meaning “the sweet, or good, life,” which is a story about a week in Marcello’s life spent in Rome searching for both happiness and love that will never come.

It is not too much to say that by pursuing finite goods, we really choose ourselves as our own last end, instead of God, whose benevolence becomes measured by how easily we attain everything we want. Such a pursuit typically ends in disgust, not happiness. Our gift-giving is not in vain as long we exchange gifts as a way of recognizing our having received the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ. So, on this first day of the season of Advent, amidst all the hustle and bustle, with the Psalmist, let us pray with all our hearts, “Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.”

"always and everywhere to give [God] thanks"

2011-11-26T10:31:00.001-07:00

I am often provoked by people who fear faith so much that they want to relegate people of faith to second-class citizenship, something the current Administration seems intent on doing. I am equally provoked by others, coming from the opposite end of the spectrum, who are so worried about the purity of faith that they want to keep it safely locked away in the sanctuary. This causes me to think that perhaps the spectrum, rather than being linear, bends backwards at both ends, bringing the opposite poles into some kind of contact. What prompts this is an exception taken to the Thanksgiving Day greeting I posted on both Facebook and Google+.

For those who do not live in the United States, and even for some who do, Thanksgiving is a civil holiday set aside for the specific purpose of giving thanks to God as a nation. Hence, as a clergyman, I think it is useful to remind and encourage people in my country to recall the origin of this day and to observe it in some meaningful way.

When we gather for worship as the Church a major feature of our worship, but by no means the only one, is to thank God for what He does for us in Jesus Christ, which is certainly distinct from gathering around our tables at home. But, while distinct, the two should not be wholly unrelated. In the Sacramentary approved for use in the U.S., we even have a special Mass for Thanksgiving Day, complete with Preface.

The Greek word eucharistía is a feminine noun and refers to "the act of giving thanks." It is certainly not an abuse of the word "Eucharist" to employ it as a verb, simply meaning "to give thanks." So, there is nothing in the least untoward about encouraging people to make an act of thanksgiving, an eucharistía, if you will, to God no matter how else they observed Thanksgiving. This seems a safe enough point to make without sparking contention, but then few things are that safe.

In Eucharistic Prayer II, addressing God, the priest says (words from the new English translation), "It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Father most holy, through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ..." Yes, "always and everywhere" to give God thanks. What was I thinking? Let's not lose sight of the fact that very word "Mass" itself is derived from dismissal, helping us to see that the Eucharist is not an end in itself, but the means to God's end in and for the world.

All of this reminds me, again, of John O'Donohue's poem, The Inner History of a Day, "Where eucharist in the ordinary happens."

To those who are wondering, I have nothing to offer about the new English translation of the Mass. I am guessing this weekend will be rather clunky and awkward, but I think we will accommodate quickly. Hey, it's a great Sunday to invite someone along to Mass with you because they won't feel so self-conscious about not knowing what to do or say!

Truth and love, or love of Truth, in the Apocalypse

2011-11-26T08:40:00.001-07:00

"Then the dragon became angry with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus" (Rev. 12:17). The reason the dragon, who is that "ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, who deceived the whole world," became angry is because he was unable to destroy the woman and her child, but God kept rescuing them. The dragon is "the accuser," which is what "Satan" means in Hebrew. By contrast, as Joseph Mangina notes in his theological commentary on Revelation, Jesus Christ is "the true witness, the one who tells us the truth about us by claiming us as God's own." Indeed, we become God's children by adoption through Jesus Christ. Hence, the Church, while it is a visible reality, cannot ultimately be equated with any visible group of people, but consists of "those who keep God's commandements and bear witness to Jesus," who constitute "the rest of her offspring." This seems to me what is meant but such observations that merely going to Church does not make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car. This in no way diminishes going to Church, participating in the liturgy, which is one of the best and most explicit ways of keeping God's commandments (there are ways we love God that are distinct from loving our neighbor- worship) and bearing witness to Jesus. Participation in the liturgy is what might be called a necessary, but not sufficient condition of being a Christian.

William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Beast From the Sea, 1805-10 (National Gallery of Art, Washington)

It is precisely these who grasp what is at stake, who recognize the struggle in which they are engaged against the powers and the principalities. Commenting on some verses in chapter thirteen of Revelation, Mangina helps us to see the absolute dependence of God's children on God. In verse seven of chapter thirteen, we read that the beast, who is the spawn of the dragon, "was also allowed to wage war against the holy ones and conquer them." According to this, it seems that the saints are beaten. Mangina sagely observes that this result will only seem disappointing to those who "embrace the beast's criteria for what constitutes success." To wit: "The church that imagines it has a successful strategy for confronting the principalities and powers on their own terms had better think again. It is not only that the church, by submitting to the court of human judgment rather than to the decrees of the just judge, will lose its own soul; ironically, it will not even gain the world" (Mangina 162).

In these trying times, when everyone it seems is some sort of an economic determinist, it is useful to be reminded,as Mangina reminds us, "The realm of economics is preeminently a realm dominated by the principalities." It is "because Christ speaks the truth," Mangina continues, "the Christian, too, is summoned to a vocation of courageous truth-teller." So, any time "the Christian refuses to go along with the devil's lies, she confirms her love both of the true witness and of the neighbor who suffers the burden of the false witness."

Next week I hope to post a few words about ideology.

"I can't get through the smoke that's surrounding you"

2011-11-25T05:00:00.000-07:00

Our Friday traditio for this Thanksgiving week is the Afro Celt Sound System's wonderful song, When You're Falling, featuring guest vocalist Peter Gabriel.

This is one of those really lovely tunes that we all too easily forget, which is why I am putting it up. I could post some commentary, but one of the wonderful things about songs like this is the polyvalence it possesses.

This past week, I posted the video for my favorite song off REM's very last studio album, Collapse Into Now, It Happened Today, on Facebook. Someone expressed puzzlement as to what the video meant. While I am not into abstraction just for the sake of abstraction, I like that not everything has to be representational all the time. I guess that is why I like a lot of the literature I like, such as the works of David Foster Wallace, who I have finally been able to read again just this past week, something I had been unable to do since his suicide. In his novel Broom of the System, for example, there appear random ideas for writing fiction, the jottings of Rick Vigorous:

Ideas for Monroe Fieldbinder Story Collection, 27 August

1. Monroe watches a house burn down. Or Monroe's house burns down, symbolizing destruction of the structure of his life as estate attorney, a plunging into chaos and disorientation, etc... [skipping 2.]

3. Monroe Fieldbinder sees psychologist to bounce ideas off him. One of Fieldbinder's ideas is that the phenomenon of modern party-dance is incompatible with self-consciousness, makes for staggeringly unpleasant situations (obvious resource: Amherst/Mt. Holyoke mixer '68) for the at all self-conscious person. Modern party-dance is simply writhing to the suggestive music. It is ridiculous, silly to watch and excruciatingly embarrassing to perform. It is ridiculous and yet absolutely everyone does it, so that it is the person who does not want to do the ridiculous thing who feels out of place and uncomfortable and self-conscious... in a word, ridiculous. Right out of Kafka: the person who does not want to do the ridiculous thing is the person who is ridiculous. (Idea: Kafka at an Amherst/Mt. Holyoke mixer, never referred to by name, only as "F.K.," only one not dancing) Modern party-dance an evil thing... [skipping 4. also]

I can see through the clouds/I can walk right through the walls/Hang me off the ceiling/But I can't take the fall/Should have crossed the river/But I may get swept away/Out there on the water/You can still see me wave

A personal thanksgiving

2011-11-24T08:28:00.001-07:00

For Christians giving thanks to God is a way of life, or it should be. I admit to not always being thankful, or even as thankful as I should be. While there are many things to be grateful for, life is the first and greatest blessing. To answer Hamlet's timeless query, it is better to be than not to be, even though sometimes we may wonder. I can remember arguing with my Mom when I was a teenager and saying to her, in that particularly overwrought teenage way, "I didn't choose to be born." This is a true enough statement, but it misses the point that to be born is a gift, that is, existence is given to me by God with the cooperation of my parents.

I mention this because today marks the first Thanksgiving since my Dad's passing. When I thought about this last night I started to cry. Then I remembered something my Mom told me after my Dad's death. They had gone out to eat at their favorite Chinese restaurant one evening in the early fall of last year, a few months prior to his fatal diagnosis. Once they were seated, my Dad asked my Mom if her life had turned out better or worse than she had hoped. My Mom admitted to being taken back by the question, which was not the kind of thing my Dad inquired about very often. As she told it, her answer was tentative.

So, as just about anyone would, she turned and asked him the same question. She said he looked at her with a little irritation, like the answer should be obvious, and said, "Oh, way better; better than I could have imagined."

So, today I am thankful for life, for my Dad and Mom, my lovely sisters, my beautiful wife and six wonderful children. I am grateful for dear friends, for companions, those with whom I share the Bread of Life and who, quite improbably care about me, love me, assist me in walking my path toward destiny. I am grateful to be set aside as a servant to serve the Church and the world, even when I realize God has far better people on whom to rely than me- I am the guy with only one talent, but, unlike the servant in Jesus parable, I didn't bury mine. Even in the end, if God lets me retain my one talent only because I didn't bury it, not multiplying it, I will be grateful. I am grateful to live in these United States, which remains exceptional in many ways. This blessing helps me to realize, over and again, that where much is given much is expected.

It is important for me to express all of this because very often I expect too much out of life and feel disappointed when everything doesn't work out according to my own plans, designs, and desires. Life is beautiful, even in its terrifying aspects and moments, as these are only invitations to really trust God, to see that Christ will never abandon us. He is at our side as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Hence, we have no need fear. Apart from my life, my being, I am most thankful for Jesus Christ.

So, with the Psalmist I sing: "God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress. Thus we do not fear, though earth be shaken and mountains quake to the depths of the sea, Though its waters rage and foam and mountains totter at its surging" (Ps. 46:2-4). This is especially timely for me as I am making my way through Revelation.

On Facebook this morning I wanted to type a Thanksgiving message. So, I just started to write and here's what came out: "Despite grousing in certain quarters, I am glad that our nation sets aside a day each year to give thanks to God for all our many blessings. As with so many things, we Catholics have a fancy word for this, "Eucharist." As many will know, Eucharist is Greek for thanksgiving. "it is right always and everywhere to give [God] thanks," even (especially) in our difficulties. To one and all, however you choose to give thanks today, have a blessed day."

Tebow: "because Jesus Christ comes first in my life"

2011-11-23T14:11:00.001-07:00

As a lifelong Raiders fan it is very much in my DNA not to like the Denver Broncos. I always had grudging respect for John Elway simply because he was such a great quarterback. I must admit that despite his obvious deficiencies as a QB, I also like Tim Tebow a lot. So does Jake Plummer, the former Denver quarterback who led the Broncos the last time they were a good team. In a recent interview in which he mostly lauded the young quarterback, Jake the Snake, after saying "I think he's a winner and I respect that about him," went on to say, "I think that when he accepts the fact that we know that he loves Jesus Christ, then I think I'll like him a little better."

I certainly get where the Snake is coming from and even understand it to an extent. Be that as it may, I was really pretty blown away by Tim's response, which, as always, was respectful, but direct:

If you're married... and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife 'I love her' the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and every opportunity?And that's how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ is that it is the most important thing in my life. So any time I get an opportunity to tell him that I love him or given an opportunity to shout him out on national TV, I'm gonna take that opportunity. And so I look at it as a relationship that I have with him that I want to give him the honor and glory anytime I have the opportunity. And then right after I give him the honor and glory, I always try to give my teammates the honor and glory.And that's how it works because Christ comes first in my life, and then my family, and then my teammates. I respect Jake's opinion, and I really appreciate his compliment of calling me a winner. But I feel like anytime I get the opportunity to give the Lord some praise, he is due for it

Asked later in the ESPN interview conducted by Skip Bayless if God makes him a better football player, Tim simply said his faith gives him comfort and peace while playing.

Tebow certainly endures a lot of sniping and ridicule for being upfront about his faith. It's amazing that he never complains, or criticizes others for engaging in it, using it to put himself front-and-center or say, "Oh, poor pitiful me." A good example of this was during the disastrous game against Detroit, when Tebow's play was awful, Lions linebacker Stephen Tulloch, after sacking Tebow, engaged in "Tebowing," as did Tulloch's teammate Tony Scheffler after catching a touchdown pass in the same game.

This prompted ESPN's Jemele Hill to ask in an article after the Detroit game, "if Tebow were Muslim or Jewish, would Tulloch and Scheffler have been so quick to execute a prayer parody?" Of course, hers is a rhetorical question. She went on to observe, "Prayer is a sacred component of any religion. Making fun of someone else's spiritual connection is on par with ridiculing them about their family. You don't have to be a Christian to get that, just someone who understands the concept of respect."

I have to admit that when I first read Plummer's comments I was inclined to agree. Tebow's remarkable response, along with remembering other responses he has given to similar suggestions, changed my mind and even made me determine that this was worthy of a post. Being overt about your religious beliefs makes a lot of people uneasy. That's just life in these United States. But it should not deter us from being open about our love for Jesus Christ. As St. Paul wrote: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: for Jew first, and then Greek" (Rom. 1:16).Contra Plummer, I'd like Tim a little less if he stopped being so forthright about his faith. After all, while he is a brother in Christ, he still plays for the Broncos!

"We are not of the night or of darkness"

2011-11-22T06:51:00.001-07:00

As I prepare to read through the second half of Revelation with the aid of Joseph Mangina's insightful commentary, I was struck this morning by the reading for Morning Prayer, which is from St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians. Again, it is either this letter or the apostle's First Letter to the Corinthians that was first book of the New Testament to be written. It seems that the immediate occasion of this first letter to the ancient Church of Thessaloniki was a disturbance caused by some of the early believers dying. This was disturbing to the Church because it was the expectation of the earliest Christians that Christ's return was imminent. This was certainly Paul's expectation, too. Apparently, many were convinced that the Lord would return before any of the saints died, which understanding seems to be an element of false, that is, non-apostolic, teaching.

As might be expected, this disturbance created a further opportunity for false teachers to whip people into a frenzy. In this letter Paul takes on these false teachers in a direct way. At the beginning of the fifth chapter of 1 Thessalonians the apostle reminds his sisters and brothers of what they already know and patiently works out the implications of their knowledge:

Concerning times and seasons, brothers, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. When people are saying, “Peace and security,” then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. But you, brothers, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief. For all of you are children of the light and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness (1 Thess. 5:1-5)

What is significant about this passage is that Paul insists that the "children of light," even though they do not know exactly when the Lord will return, will not be caught off guard because, like the five wise virgins from Jesus' parable (Matt 25:1-13), they are always ready. Further, he notes that just like a pregnant woman suddenly goes into labor, or a thief who relies on the element of surprise for his thieving, it is impossible for anyone to know exactly when Jesus will return in glory.

There is the probably apocryphal story of St. Francis of Assisi at work in a garden when one of the friars asked him what he would do if the Lord returned at that exact moment, to which Francis replied, "I'd keep tending the garden." Historically accurate or not, this is the response of a true child of the light, exactly how the apostle is trying to get the Christians of ancient Thessaloniki to view the matter and how we, some 2,000 years later, are to approach this great mystery. All of this seems fitting in a year when so much false teaching about Jesus' return has created a lot of stir, just like the false teachers who frequented the ancient Christian communities of Asia Minor.

I'll end with the Church's prayer for this Thirty-fourth Tuesday of Ordinary Time:

Lord Jesus Christ,
true light of the world,
you guide all mankind to salvation.
Give us the courage, strength and grace
to build a world of justice and peace,
ready for the coming of that kingdom.

You live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.

Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary

2011-11-21T05:59:00.001-07:00

Today we observe the Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple. It is a feast generally observed both in the East and the West. Among Eastern Christians today's observance is known as the Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple. This feast originated in the sixth century around the time of the construction of a basilica in Jerusalem near the ruins of the Temple and dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, which means God-bearer.

Given my focus on Revelation leading up to Christmas, in which we read of God's plan reaching its ultimate fulfillment, of all the liturgical propers for this feast, today I was struck by the Troparion from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: "Today is the prelude to God's munificence, and the announcement of salvation of men: in the Temple of God the Virgin is seen openly, foretelling to all the coming of Christ. Wherefore let us cry out to her with all our strength: 'Joy to you, Fulfillment of the Creator's Plan!'"

While the event we celebrate can only be found in apocryphal literature, namely the Protoevangelium of James, it is worthy of celebration. It is hard for many to appreciate an observance like this precisely because it seems to not have an historical basis. It is important because it emphasizes that from the beginning of her life, the Blessed Virgin was wholly dedicated to God. Moreover, we attend to the fact that her own body became an even greater temple than the Temple in Jerusalem. After all, don't we revere her as the new Ark of the Covenant, too? While it doesn't happen every year, it seems fitting that this year this memorial falls the day after the great Solemnity of Christ the King.

Remember, O Most Blessed Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to thy protection, implored thy help, or sought thine intercession was left unaided.

Solemnity of Christ the King

2011-11-19T15:17:00.001-07:00

With sunset we usher in the last Sunday of another year of grace, which we mark by our observance of the Solemnity of Christ the King. Our faith holds that at the end of time Christ will return in glory "to judge the living and dead." This is when God's reign will be definitively, universally, and unmistakably established. His has begun among those who already recognize Him and serve Him. Christian communities a sort of like beachheads of God's kingdom in the world. When He returns, who He is will be reveled, unveiled, apokalpysised. So, it is fitting that we celebrate our hope on the last Sunday of the liturgical year. In the hope that reading it and contemplating it beforehand will help us enter deeply into the cosmic meaning of this great day, I am posting the Preface to the Eucharistic prayer for this solemnity:

Father, all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give your thanks.

You anointed Jesus Christ, your only Son, with the oil
of gladness,
as the eternal high priest and universal king.

As priest he offered his life on the altar of the cross
and redeemed the human race
by this one perfect sacrifice of peace.

As king he claims dominion over all creation,
that he may present to you, his almighty Father,
an eternal and universal kingdom:
a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace.

And so, with all the choirs of angels in heaven
we proclaim your glory
and join in their unending hymn of praise.

Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus...

In the eleventh chapter of Revelation, after the seventh angel blows his trumpet, "There were loud voices in heaven, saying, 'The kingdom of the world now belongs to our Lord and to his Anointed, and he will reign forever and ever' The twenty-four elders who sat on their thrones before God prostrated themselves and worshipped God and said:

'We give thanks to you, Lord God
   who are and who were.
For you have assumed your great
     power
     and have established your reign.
The nations raged,
   but your wrath has come,
   and the time for the dead to be
judged,
and to recompense your servants, the
   prophets,
      and the holy ones and those who
   fear your name,
     the small and the great alike
and to destroy those who destroy the earth'" (15-18).

When the seventh angel blows his trumpet all heaven breaks loose. The return of the One for whom we wait in joyful hope will be astounding! Of course, the imagery of Revelation is highly symbolic and not to be taken literally and is prone to being employed quite irresponsibly. On the other hand, it is important to realize that it cannot be dismissed, insisting that it tells us nothing at all.

"I am human and I need to be loved"

2011-11-17T20:27:00.001-07:00

I am posting our Friday traditio the evening before because in liturgical time a new day starts at dusk, plus I will preserve more time in the morning for prayer. Like last week, I am reaching back to the '80s, except this time for The Smith's How Soon Is Now? Like a lot of The Smith's music, this is a song about the difficulty of connecting on a meaningful level. In short, it is about belonging without compromising one's self. .

The difficulty of connecting the way we yearn to connect with others was dealt with beautifully by the late John O'Donohue in his book, Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong:

In post-modern culture there is a deep hunger to belong. An increasing majority of people feel isolated and marginalized. Experience is haunted by fragmentation. Many of the traditional shelters are in ruins. Society is losing the art of fostering community. Consumerism is now propelling life towards the lonely isolation of individualism. Technology pretends to unite us, yet more often than not all it delivers are simulated images. The “global village” has no roads or neighbors; it is a faceless limbo from which all individuality has been abstracted. Politics seems devoid of the imagination that calls forth vision and ideals; it is becoming ever more synonymous with the functionalism of economic pragmatism

We all seek, or at least say and often think we seek, authenticity both in ourselves and in others. We want to be ourselves, that is, who we are meant to be. In this quest we quickly recognize we have no self apart from others.

Truth in an incoherent world

2011-11-17T19:24:00.001-07:00

The veritas before caritas meme has me in its grips. This afternoon as I drove home from work I was behind a car that bore a number of bumper stickers that were placed to express the car owner's worldview. One sticker on the top of the passenger-side rear window read "Banish hate" and on the other side of some indiscernible symbol, "Invoke love." Directly below this, on the back of the trunk lid, was a sticker that urged all who read it to "Be a voice for choice," underneath which it expressed the desire for "Every child a wanted child."

I took the latter bumper sticker to mean that unwanted children should be aborted. Now, I don't impugn the intentions of the one who sought to express her/his position in this way, but what incoherence! With Bl. Teresa of Calcutta, I am hard pressed to think of anything more violent than the destruction of a child in the womb of his/her mother. How is this eschewing hate and invoking love? While seeing such things is nothing new, I was astonished in the face of the incoherence I saw right in front of me. I consciously asked myself, "How does one live in such a confused human environment?" The answer, of course, is as a witness to the Truth, expressed as love.

As many people know, "martyr" is Greek for "witness." I recognize that in contemporary English there is a distinction between a witness and a martyr. To us a martyr, at least in Christian terms, is one who is killed for his faith. In his commentary on Revelation, theologian Joseph Mangina insists that being a disciple of the One who died and rose again is a "public confession of faith leading to martyrdom." He goes on to observe that for Christians today the relevant question is whether we see "martyrdom as an exotic relic" from the past, or if we see it as still relevant. It seems to me that far too often we are willing to make peace with the powers and principalities to safeguard ourselves from the negative consequences that inevitably follow from challenging them. This holds true across the ideological spectrum, indicating that even as Christians, whether conservative or liberal, we are far too willing to take our cues from ideologies instead of from the Gospel of Jesus Christ, like the martyrs past and present.

Truth and love revisited

2011-11-16T19:30:00.001-07:00

Just as St. Anselm of Canterbury's definition of theology, faith seeking understanding, gets things the right way around by beginning with faith, so does the exhortation to speak the truth in love, by putting truth before love. In both pairings the two things are distinct from one another. However, like loving God and loving our neighbor, they are inextricably bound up. In the fourth chapter of the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians, under the heading, at least the most recent edition of the New American Bible, "Rules for the New Life," in verse 15, we read: "Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, for we are members one of another."

Msgr. Giussani had a unique way of stating this: we love another person by loving her/his destiny, which, at least to my mind, is a way of saying that friendship is not about telling my friend what s/he wants to hear, but the truth. While the truth requires me to make a judgment, it is not merely giving my opinion, a piece of my mind, or the world according to Scott. Of course, how I speak the truth matters and the circumstances under which I speak the truth also matter. Of course, there must be a relationship of trust, a friendship. As St. Paul writes, as members of Christ mystical Body, His Church, "we are members of one another."

Last night I finished reading David L. Schindler's article in the most recent issue of Communio, "America's Technological Ontology and the Gift of the Given: Benedict XVI and the Cultural Significance of the Quaerere Deum". Quaerere Deum, a Benedictine and, hence, monastic quest, meaning to seek God. The Holy Father gave a remarkable talk on how the Quaerere Deum is at the root of European culture in Paris during his visit there in September 2008. This speech is Schindler's starting point.

Schindler contends that in the U.S. our "historically dominant understanding of man embeds a voluntaristic idea of freedom, an instrumentalist idea of human reason, and a positivistic idea of religion: in a word, what may be termed a technological conception of the human act." Schindler terms this dominant American understanding "ontological pelagianism." He goes on to note that the anthropology set forth by the American theologian John Courtney Murray, SJ exemplifies how these conceptions have crept into Catholic theology and thought in the U.S. Murray was one of the main architects of the groundbreaking declaration of religious freedom issued by the Second Vatican Council, Dignitatus Humanae. It is a fascinating article, one that resonated with me because it takes aim at the theological aiding-and-abetting of Western liberal democracy by viewing God and man as extrinsic to each other, instead of God being immanently present in each and every human person as her/his constitutive origin. Giussani expressed this truth by saying that the human person is a direct relationship with the Mystery. This is no trivial point. It is fundamental. It is axiomatic. The truth about the human person matters.

Sts. Perpetua and Felicity (only because I have been thinking of martyrs all day)

To hopefully bring this post back full-circle, the question is, "What is the truth about the human person?" Schindler's contentions flow from what he sees as an inadequate "sense of the original givenness of the creature’s relation to the Creator, and, inside this relation, of each creature’s relation to other creatures." "This givenness of relation," for Schindler is "constitutive" of the human person. This relation, he insists, "is first established in us by God in his act of creating us and thus reaches to the inmost depths of our being. The relation to God, in other words, is not something first created or contracted by the creature, is not added simply posteriorly to an already constituted substance. The creature, I wish to propose, is the origin." He goes on to cite 1 John 4:10 as "the scriptural ground" for a more authentic Christian ontology: "In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us . . . ." "At the ontological level and in terms of human being," he continues, "this implies that man’s first act is a 'filial' act which somehow grasps that his being is from another, even if he himself is unaware of the full implications of this fact."

Genuine love, what is most often referred to in the New Testament as agapé, is rooted in the truth about ourselves, others, and the whole of the cosmos. The fundamental truth about the human person is that s/he is a direct relationship with the Mystery. As I see it, truth makes love concrete instead of abstract. After all, "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life" (John 3:16).

It is in the light of this truth, consciously grasped and not sentimentally intuited, that we are to live. As martyr Fr. Daniel Systoyev said in one of his last interviews before being shot to death inside his Church back in October 2009:

Trust in God alone is most important. If we do not have trust in God, then our prayer turns into a torturous rule. A spiritual father turns into a psychoanalyst. Everything else becomes only empty development. We need to trust God personally. We must remember that we are under the care of God and He is with us. God truly holds us in His Hands. And no one can separate us from Him; as the Apostle Paul says, Who shall separate us from the love of God? [Rom. 8:35] Truly, if we are with God, all the remaining virtues will be formed. Prayer will become communion with God Who is with us. Obedience will become the ability to hear His Holy Word-to make it out in the uproar of this world

A digression on fasting

2011-11-15T05:00:00.000-07:00

As Eastern Christians, Orthodox as well as many Eastern Catholics, enter the Nativity Fast (this is not a Roman Catholic observance) it seems a good time to reflect again on the necessity of fasting.

Prayer, fasting, and alms-giving are absolutely indispensable for leading a Christian life, for living as a disciple of the Lord. By itself prayer can easily become self-absorbed. In and of itself alms-giving can turn into do-goodism, into a form Pelgianism by which you seek to multiply good works and tip the scales against your sins, thus saving yourself. Fasting is necessary to bring the opposite poles of prayer and alms-giving into balance within yourself. Fasting, when done in the proper spirit, serves as something of a reality check.

The purpose of fasting is not how I once heard it described by a Protestant minister in an ecumenical setting- "starving yourself for Jesus." Rather, the purpose of fasting is to focus on what really matters, God’s Kingdom. We do this by putting aside for a time even the good things of the world. Fasting frees us from dependence on worldly things. The one who fasts faithfully, that is, in accord with how our Lord taught His disciples, fasts secretly, not judging others, nor holding himself up as an example of righteousness, not thinking himself better in any way.

It is necessary to mention some of the reasons that do not give rise to Christian fasting. As with all the spiritual disciplines, fasting is neither an end in itself nor is it a means of pleasing God. We are not asked to fast as a punishment for our sins, or as any kind of atonement. Christ atoned for our sins and offers this to us freely as a gift. Hence, salvation is not something earned through meritorious effort, which is the same danger as reducing to faith to orthopraxis (i.e., doing good things- "If I serve two hours weekly at the food pantry, I don’t have to go to Mass") at the expense of orthodoxy (i.e., right belief). I know some readers choked on these words the last time I used them in a post. I am Catholic because faith does not mean checking my intellect at the door of the sanctuary.

Jesus’ two great commandments remain: "love God with all your heart, might, mind, and strength" and "love your neighbor as yourself." It is also true that the one who says he loves God and despises his neighbor lies. However, the two are not the same. Loving our neighbor is a necessary, but not sufficient condition, of loving God. There is a tendency in Western Christianity, the most prevalent sign of which is people who identify themselves as Christians and who say, "I am spiritual, but not religious." As Pope Benedict XVI powerfully demonstrated in Deus Caritas Est, only right practice that arises from right belief is truly caritas. This is yet another example as to why veritas ("truth") comes before caritas (i.e., "charity," agape). In this context a seeming digression is necessary.

According to Fr. Divo Barsotti, Romano Amerio, author of the very important tome Iota Unum, held that after Vatican II the Catholic Church came to adopt one of "the most serious ills present within Western thought today"- placing caritas before veritas. It is here that the necessary relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis comes into bold relief. Reversing this relationship creates a disorder that, according to Barsotti, "turns upside-down the proper understanding that we should have of the Most Holy Trinity."

In a letter he wrote to philosopher Augusto Del Noce, which was the genesis of Iota Unum, Amerio explained his purpose: "to defend essences against the fickleness and the syncretism of the spirit of the age." Above all this required "defending the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity and their processions, which, as theology teaches, have an unchangeable order." He notes that Scripture unequivocally teaches that "In the beginning was the Word." In the Credo we solemnly profess "Filioque procedit" (i.e., and also proceeds from the Son). Hence, Amerio noted, "Love proceeds from the Word, and never the other way around."

Recitation of the Creed can easily become for us a vaguely comprehensible sentimental profession instead of an accurate description of reality. Truth is what makes love concrete instead of abstract. Years before he became pope, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger stated this quite plainly by insisting that you can only really love people individually because an imagined love of all humankind, no matter how sincere, remains abstract.

It is precisely from this seeming digression that the question arises, "Why do we fast?" It is here that we see fasting is what holds prayer and alms-giving in balance, it is the discipline that unites orthodoxy to orthopraxis, truth to love, in our very person. We fast to be delivered from carnal passions so that God’s gift of Salvation may bear fruit in us. In fasting we turn our eyes toward God in His Holy Church. Fasting is not obsolete or irrelevant today, but more necessary than ever. Fasting is not something to be done by someone else, like monks, nuns, and those more “religious” than you are.

To be clear, by fasting I mean fasting from food altogether and from certain foods, likes meat, dairy, seafood, for set periods of time and for specific intentions. Fasting is not incumbent on pregnant and nursing mothers, on anyone who is seriously ill, or one who has a health condition that makes fasting dangerous. Above all do not fast without prayer and without alms-giving.

Watching our language

2011-11-14T06:23:00.001-07:00

It was either Nicholas Lash or John Macquarrie who averred that a theologian is one who watches her/his language in the presence of God. By that, of course, is not meant the scrupulous avoidance of something like saying the f-word in front of your Mom. It means living with ever more awareness the mystery of your I, not truncating your inquiries into reality, being content with instrumental answers to what Garrison Keillor, in his Guy Noir skits, calls, "life's persistent questions." Or, in the words of Fr. Carrón who kept insisting in his Communion and Liberation Opening Day talk, discerning a Presence in everything that is present to you at each given moment, keeping alive our sense of wonder and awe.

This morning, for a very specific reason, I was thinking about my ministry as a deacon. As I thought an empty, throwaway phrase I often use when thinking, talking, or even writing about my diaconal service crossed my mind: "Well, I am not God's gift to pastoral ministry." During Morning Prayer, as I was praying for a number of the people I am privileged to serve in various ways, I was caught up short and quickly saw that nothing could be further from the truth from my lazy qualifier: I am God's gift to pastoral ministry!

It is a gift to be a deacon and in being a deacon I make myself a gift to others. If this is not true, then I should just hang it up. Recognizing that I am, in fact, God's gift to pastoral ministry in no way asserts that I am not limited, or that I am always super-effective. It just means that, like servants to whom the "talents" are entrusted in Matthew's Gospel, I offer the gifts God has given me in the confidence that God can use me to accomplish His purposes in the lives of those I am called to serve and to the community I am called serve. Of course, this insight is not only applicable to me personally, but anyone who offers her/himself to serve others. Catechists are God's gift to catechesis, ministers of hospitality are God's gift to the community and those they welcome, etc.

I don't mind saying that where I serve is a challenging place. There are so many hurting, wounded people who need immediate help, something akin to spiritual and emotional triage, that I sometimes foolishly think all of this gets in my way, if I may use that sorry phrase. What I mistakenly feel such situations get in the way of are my cherished initiatives aimed at building community. As Owen Cummings reminded us at our annual diocesan deacons' retreat last month, I should be more concerned about not getting in God's way! In other words, at least for me, being God's gift means putting myself in the service of Jesus Christ by serving those who seek my help, the real people in need, not some ideal community I wish create in my own image. In short, serving God often means letting go of my own plans, recognizing my own limitations, and better living my priorities. It sounds easy, but sometimes I gripe about it inwardly to God.

Earlier this year, once I genuinely discerned my need to live my priorities better, I met with a trusted friend of mine who is a priest. I remember saying to him, "I don't know what's next for me, where I am going to serve." He said, "Why does there need to be a next?" He continued, saying that in his estimation I am well-suited to serving where I serve and that he thought my unique gifts and abilities are best used there, stating that my assignment would not suit a lot of deacons, or quite a few priests. I don't know whether that was a compliment or not, but it does not matter because I quickly came to see the truth of what he said. After all, it easy to disdain ministry when it ceases to gratify my ego.

The question for all of us who follow Christ is, "How and to whom will I be God's gift today?" After all, the Eucharist, which constitutes the beating heart of faith, bringing us into communion with Christ, who, in turn, unites to each other, is an exchange of gifts. Christ offers Himself body, blood, soul, and divinity, as the traditional formulation goes, and we offer ourselves, body, blood, soul, and humanity, putting our lives at His disposal to accomplish God's purpose in and for the world. This gives me a lot to think about the day before I begin the Nativity Fast.

"an ignorance that tries to negate nothing"

2011-11-13T12:13:00.001-07:00

It has been quite sometime since I posted anything about my dear Camus. Albert Camus, along with Ludwig Wittgenstein, Robert Spaemann, Jacques Ellul, George Orwell, Friedrich Nietzsche, Saul of Tarsus, Augustine of Hippo (Camus' fellow North African), Hans Urs von Balthasar, Luigi Giussani, Joseph Ratzinger (even prior to becoming pope), Karol Wojtyla, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Anthony Bloom, Thomas Merton, Eugene Peterson, Milan Kundera, David Foster Wallace, and W.H. Auden, is one those whose thought has not only deeply influenced my own, but has shaped and formed me. No such list is ever complete, but I think I have captured those whose contribution to my formation, for better or worse, is major and permanent, as opposed to minor and/or passing. Yes, it is an eclectic group.

Reading my opening paragraph I feel compelled to write that this is not an exercise in tedious name-dropping, but one of reflection and rumination a few days after my forty-sixth birthday. What prompted this reflection? An article by Robert Zaretsky that appears in Tablet, a magazine that claims to be "A New Read on Jewish Life." The title of Zaretsky's article is "Camus the Jew". Making all of this even more personal is the fact that Camus was born on 7 November and died in a car accident, which some have speculated was a suicide, in 1960 at the age of 46. I doubt anyone, with the possible exception of George Orwell, has influenced my political thinking more than Camus. Zaretsky also wrote a book on Camus, Albert Camus: Elements of a Life

The subtitle claims that Camus "died an atheist." I think making so bold an assertion pushes the matter entirely too far, especially when we look at the blabbering idiocy of the so-called "new atheists," such as Dawkins, Harris, and their ilk, whose philosophically sophmoric rants would not merit a passing grade in an undergraduate philosophy class. I think Camus is more accurately described as an agnostic. He was agnostic about many things, that is to say, ambivalent. I use the term "ambivalent" in a qualified and precise, or psychological, sense, meaning simultaneously occurring positive and negative thoughts and feelings s toward the same person, object, or action, having the effect of drawing a person so conflicted in in opposite directions. While he was an expelled member of the Communist party who became an insightful critic of scientific socialism that is, Marxism and its terrible spawn, he was no fan consumeristic, laissez-faire, capitalism. He was far too humane to be impaled on either horn of this vicious and false dilemma.

Camus in 1957- lifted from Zaretsky's article

Apart from the unfortunate introduction, which was may not have been written by the author, "Camus the Jew" is a very good article about Camus' life-long friendship with many Jewish people and his championing, against the cultural grain, of the rights of Jewish people. The most colorful of Camus' Jewish friends mentioned by Zaretsky is philosophy professor André Benichou, a Jew who Camus and his wife Francine came to know while living in Francine's hometown of Oran, Algeria. Apparently it was Benichou's practice to proclaim "his atheism at a local café every year on Yom Kippur, Good Friday, and the first day of Ramadan." Camus was deeply offended by the Vichy regime's anti-Semitic laws, which is partly why he was living back in Algeria at the time. He vehemently denounced Vichy's Nazi-inspired laws and defied them at every opportunity. After World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel, Camus remained a staunch supporter of the Jewish state to the end of his life.

Zaretsky notes that Camus' bond with the new state "was a political bond" due to Camus' (cherished) estrangement from the French left, which, Zaretsky notes, "had grown deeply anti-Zionist in the wake of the Suez War." This brings to my mind the stir created at the recent G20 Summit at Cannes when the French president, who is of Jeiwsh descent on his mother's side, and who is as obnoxious a political leader as there is in the world today, who, along with the rest of E.U., remains in the grips of an odd and disturbing animus towards Israel, even tilting towards anti-Semitism (one under-reported element of the surge of Islam in Europe is the resurgence of a lot of anti-Semitism, like the desecration of Jewish graveyards). What was surprising about this incident was not that Sarkozy called Israeli prime minister Netanyahu a liar, but the disappointing agreement of Pres. Obama, who is certainly no friend of Israel. Camus' reasons for supporting Israel, Zaretsky continues, "still echo today: Not only must Europe accept Israel’s existence as the only possible response to the continent’s complicity in the Final Solution, but Israel must also exist as a counter-example to the oppressive rule of Arab leaders."

Zaretsky may be correct to assert that Camus was "naïve" to hope that Israeli democracy, of which Camus would almost certainly not have remained uncritical, would serve as an example for Arab leaders. He goes on to suggest "that Camus’ attachment to Israel was existential" noting that Camus' "plea for cooperation and collaboration between Jews and Arabs in Israel echoed his pleas to his fellow pied-noirs and Arabs in Algeria." Zaretsky cites Camus' journey "to Algiers in 1956 to urge a civilian truce between Arabs and French Algerians." While he was there he noted "that Arabs and European settlers were 'condemned to live together'" as evidence of his assertion, noting that his assertion about the necessity of living together was falsified by subsequent events, noting that the parties in Algeria "instead concluded they were condemned to kill one another—a conclusion, were he alive today, [Camus] would urge both Israelis and Arabs to avoid while there is still time."

What I am most interested in is Zaretsky's application of Camus' notion of the absurd, which colored how he viewed everything. To my mind, faith does little to make the world seem less absurd. In fact, in light of Christ's crucifixion, faith arguably adds to the absurdity, something about overcoming it by embracing it. "Job and Sisyphus," Zaretsky notes, referring to the biblical book and Camus's essay The Myth of Sisyphus, "are heaved into a world shorn of transcendence and meaning. In response to their demand for answers, they get only silence. Herein lies the absurdity, Camus writes: It is 'the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.'"

Job

Zaretsky article ends with this fascinating insight:

We think we know how the story of Job ends: Rewarded by God for his loyalty, Job is paid back with even more children and sheep and property. But is this the ending? A number of biblical scholars suggest the Job we hear in the final chapter, the one who accepts and resigns himself to God’s power play, is not the same Job we hear in the preceding 40 chapters. Instead, he is a throwback to an earlier story that was grafted onto the otherwise perplexing account. Instead, the real Job is Camus’ Job. He is a Job who answers God’s deafening and dismal effort at self-justification with scornful silence

Every year I re-read published fragments of a talk Camus gave to the Dominicans of the monastery of Latour-Maubourg in 1948. In his remarks he asks, "By what right, moreover could a Christian or a Marxist accuse me, for example, of pessimism?" He goes on to defend his philosophical approach by asserting,

I was not the one to invent the misery of the human being or the terrifying formulas of divine malediction. I was not the one to shout Nemo bonus or the damnation of unbaptized children. I was not the one who said that man was incapable of saving himself by his own means and in the depths of degradation his only hope was in the grace of God. And as for the famous Marxist optimism! No one has carried distrust of man further, and ultimately the economic fatalities of this universe seem more terrible than divine whims.

Christians and Communists will tell me that their optimism is based on a longer range, that it is superior to all the rest, and that God or history according to the individual, is the satisfying end-product of their dialectic. I can indulge in the same reasoning. If Christianity is pessimistic as to man, it is optimistic as to human destiny, I am optimistic as to man. And not in the name of a humanism that always seemed to me to fall short, but in the name of an ignorance that tries to negate nothing

It seems to me that it is this "ignorance that tries to negate nothing" that constitutes Camus' agnosticism. While clearly not identical to Giussani's method, which teaches us to let the nature of the object and the situation determine the method, it bears more than a passing resemblance. Both seek to overcome ideology, the all-pervasive sway of the powers. What Camus took exception to in his remarks to the friars is the reduction of Christianity to an ideology. It's a good thing that the Church has taken to heart many of these criticisms and set about correcting them.

Stay awake, alert, and sober

2011-11-13T06:36:00.001-07:00

Concerning times and seasons, brothers and sisters, you have no need for anything to be written to you. For you yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night. When people are saying, "Peace and security, " then sudden disaster comes upon them, like labor pains upon a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness, for that day to overtake you like a thief. For all of you are children of the light and children of the day. We are not of the night or of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as the rest do, but let us stay alert and sober (1 Thess. 5:1-6)

This week St. Paul addresses, again, his main reason for writing to the Church at ancient Thessaloniki, namely assuaging their concerns that some of their number had died and the Lord had not yet returned. It is important to note that while Paul, like all early Christians, expected the Lord to return soon, he made no predictions about the exact time or day, apparently not even teaching that Jesus would come before any of the first generation of believers died. It is important, however, to recognize that Paul certainly believed the Lord would return soon and almost certainly taught the imminence of the parousia as part of his apostolic proclamation.

By writing that "the apocalypsing of Jesus Christ," to use Mangina's striking phrase from his commentary on Revelation, "will come like a thief in the night," the apostle seems to be echoing words handed down from our Lord Himself (Matt. 24:42-44). Since I am already using a quote from the twenty-fourth chapter of St. Matthew, I will note that the late-developing (i.e., unknown to Tradition) doctrine of the Rapture, in addition to arising from last Sunday's second reading, also taken from St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, stems from this chapter of Matthew, specifically verses forty and forty-one: "Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and one will be left." It is sometimes amazing to me that Christians in the past often read Scripture more intelligently than many in our own day.

Paul is exhorting the saints after the manner of Jesus, "Therefore, stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come" (Matt. 24:42). We often speak in a similar manner when we say things like, "You never know, you could be run over by a bus tomorrow!" Of course, we believe in Christ's glorious return, His "apocalysing," His unveiling, but our end-time could definitely precede this cosmic event. For those who already know Jesus Christ, know who He is, who, like Peter, have had Him unveiled to them, who know Him as Messiah and Lord, will be like the five wise virgins in last week's Gospel, or the two servants who made the most of what the Master gave them. This is why Paul exhorts the Christians in Thessaloniki and, by extension, us to stay awake, stay alert, and to remain sober.

The unveiling of Jesus Christ

2011-11-12T16:49:00.001-07:00

I had great aspirations as far as composing a post for today. However, in light of of our CL-Utah Opening Day, I had to lower my expectations. I will probably get around to posting my synthesis of Fr. Carrón's very timely and in-depth presentation at some later date. In the meantime, I had the opportunity to go to confession on this day following my birthday immediately following Opening Day, which is always a grace and great way to start a new year of life, which is the greatest gift God gives us, which is why He goes to so much effort to redeem us.

Looking forward to the beginning of the Nativity Fast, which starts on Tuesday, 15 November, I have decided to read and re-read several times the Book of Revelation. I have already begun by reading the first three chapters yesterday and re-reading chapter one today. The commentary I am going to use is part of the outstanding series, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible, Joseph Mangina's Revelation. It is amazing so far and I have not yet progressed beyond the introduction

Apocalypse means something like "lifting of the veil." The veil is lifted to reveal something that was previously hidden. There are those who have already seen what is behind the veil. Hence, when Jesus returns He will be revealed to those who did not already know Him. Mangina, introducing a long quote by Douglas Harink from Paul among the Postliberals: Pauline Theology Beyond Christendom and Modernity, writes, "A properly theological understanding of apocalypse begins when we learn to use the term with a primary christological inflection." He then cites Harink:

Most simply stated "apocalypse" is shorthand for Jesus Christ. In the New Testament, in particular for Paul, all apocalyptic reflection and hope comes to this, that God has acted critically, decisively, and finally for Israel, all the peoples of the earth, and the entire cosmos, in the life , death, and resurrection, and coming again of Jesus, in such a way that God's purpose for Israel, all humanity, and all creation is critically, decisively, and finally disclosed and effected in the history of Jesus Christ

I Mangina's phrase, "the apocalypsing of Jesus Christ."

"Let us die young or let us live forever"

2011-11-11T07:40:00.001-07:00

11-11-11 marks my forty-sixth birthday. Today is the Feast of St. Martin of Tours and here in the U.S. it is also Veteran's Day. Along with St. Stephen, St. Martin of Tours, on whose feast I was privileged to be born, is my patron. Like St. Stephen, he is a good companion for my journey. Looking back on my past birthday posts, last year's effort is my best: "[H]e neither feared to die nor refused to live".

St. Martin of Tours, pray for us

This is also my first birthday without having my Dad here to celebrate it with me. He wasn't a really physically affectionate man, but I will miss him leaving my house tonight, giving me a hug, patting me on the back and saying, "I love you pal." My best gift this year is our son, Evan. I am a blessed man who believes in grace and grateful the God does give me what I deserve.

For today's traditio I picked Alphaville's timeless classic Forever Young sung Gregorian-style. If you don't like it, please cut me some slack, it's my birthday!

We don't have the power but we never say never/sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip/the music's for the sad men/can you imagine when this race is won/turn our golden faces into the sun

UPDATE:

The digital camera delay caused a few issues. (No re-try. Hey, life is imperfect. Well, mine certainly is).

Jesus Christ: Judge and Savior

2011-11-10T06:16:00.001-07:00

November is the month that Roman Catholics remember and pray for our beloved dead. So, I am trying to compose posts this month that deal with some aspect of this important and, I am afraid, disappearing aspect of our faith. Probably because it was distorted so badly, we tend to ignore Purgatory. The distortion of Purgatory was equating it with a kind of temporary hell. Well, linking back to last night's post on St. Francis and suffering, I think it is very often case that mortal life serves that purpose quite well for many people. The reading for Morning Prayer today, from the eighth chapter of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans, highlights this:

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God; for creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it,o in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God (verses 18-21)

In his second encyclical, Spe salvi, Pope Benedict notes, "Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour" (par. 47). The Holy Father, whose subject in this letter is hope, went on to write,

The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God (par. 47)

Commenting on this more hopeful way of thinking about purgation, theologian Lawrence Cunningham wrote that what he found attractive about this passage is how the pope "re-imagined [purgatory] in the light of Christology," employing "an aspect of Christology not always emphasized: Christ as (just) Judge."

This strikes me as a very good point of reflection as we come to the end of another year of grace, approaching the great solemnity of Christ the King

St. Francis of Assisi and suffering

2011-11-09T18:24:00.002-07:00

Looking back over some old files, I found a homily I preached on the Memorial of St. Francis of Assisi back in 2007. The first reading for the Mass of the Day was Job 9:1-12.14-16:

Like many holy men and women, St. Francis suffered. He suffered at the hands of his own followers, dying outside the Franciscan order. He suffered in the early days following his conversion from ridicule and abuse heaped on him by former friends and the people of Assisi, who thought he had gone crazy. As we all know, he was led by the Lord to the little, dilapidated Church of San Damiano, where, while praying before the crucifix, he was told by the Lord "Rebuild my Church." True to his trusting and childlike nature, which was a gift of his conversion, part of his transformation from a world-wise playboy and would-be merchant, he obeyed literally by rebuilding San Damiano and restoring it with his own hands. More significantly he rebuilt a Church badly in need of reform by his poverty, chastity, obedience and overall evangelical zeal, all motivated by love. Along with his contemporary, St. Dominic, he was instrumental in bringing about a revival in the Church by the breath of God, the Holy Spirit.

St. Francis accepted all the suffering, be it physical, mental, or spiritual, that came his way as a privileged channel through which, in imitation of our Lord and Savior, he was made perfect, even receiving in his own body the wounds of Christ. With genuine humility, Francis felt himself unworthy to bear the wounds of Christ and always sought to hide them, with many close to him not knowing that he had received the stigmata until he died.

Very often we are distracted from the fact that God made us to know him, love him, and serve him in this life and to live and be happy with him forever in the next life. Speaking about the effect that the Russian Revolution had on the Russian Orthodox Church, which, under the Tsars, had enjoyed such privilege, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, head of all the Russian Orthodox in Western Europe for many years, said: "During the Revolution we lost the Christ of the great Cathedrals, the Christ of the splendidly architected liturgies; and we were vulnerable, we discovered the Christ who was rejected just as we were rejected, and we discovered the Christ who had nothing at His moment of crisis, not even friends" (Beginning to Pray 17-18). Too often today, with so many preachers offering a health and wealth gospel, we are prone to believe that if things go wrong we have lost God’s favor because of our sins or lack of faith. St. Francis stands as a sign of contradiction to such distortions of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and world that rejects the salvific meaning of suffering. It is funny that Job’s friends seek to explain his afflictions, including the death of his children, to some sin Job had committed, or seek a reason why Job has lost God’s favor. However being wiser and more spiritual than his well-meaning friends, Job refuses such facile explanations, and so should we.

A short take on reality

2011-11-08T18:16:00.001-07:00

This morning in my devotional reading I came across something very timely that struck me with great force: the defining characteristic of sin is that sin can be forgiven. Of course, sin is not automatically forgiven, but it is always already forgiven. So, what is required for sin to be forgiven, or for me to realize the forgiveness that is always already mine in and through Jesus Christ? Well, recognition that I sinned is a good place to start, then contrition. I read the following yesterday morning by the Desert Father, Abba Poeman: "I prefer a man who sins and repents to one who does not sin and does not repent. The first has good thoughts, for he admits that he is sinful. But the second has false, soul-destroying thoughts, for he imagines himself to be righteous.”

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:18). More importantly, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

In this regard, Lawrence Cunningham noted "that faith should not be mistaken for therapy" and "should serve, at the same time, to upset and give hope."

Thoughts on the ecclesisal nature of Christian marriage

2011-11-07T18:18:00.002-07:00

I owe a very deep diaconal bow to Sarah Pulliam Bailey, who blogs over at the Christianity Today blog Her.menutics, for this post. In her post Yes, We Can Learn Something from the Kardashian Fiasco, Pulliam Bailey observes that theologian Stanley Hauerwas, in his essay "The Radical Hope in the Annunciation: Why Both Single and Married Christians Welcome Children," "challenges the romantic notion that 'a couple falls in love and comes to the church to have their love publicly acknowledged.'" "The congregation," she goes on to note, "is not a passive on-looker while the couple independently embarks on this new journey. Instead, the congregation of family and friends makes that journey tenable in the first place." She then cites Hauerwas at length:

the church rightly understands that we no more know the person we marry than we know ourselves. However, that we lack such knowledge in no way renders marriage problematic, at least not marriage between Christians; for to be married as Christians is possible because we understand that we are members of a community more determinative than marriage. That the church is a more determinative community than a marriage is evidenced by the fact that it requires Christian marriage vows to be made with the church as witness. This is a reminder that we as a church rightfully will hold you to promises you made when you did not and could not fully comprehend what you were promising. How could anyone know what it means to promise life-long monogamous fidelity? From the church’s perspective the question is not whether you know what you are promising; rather, the question is whether you are the kind of person who can be held to a promise you made when you did not know what you were promising. We believe, of course, that baptism creates the condition that makes possible the presumption that we might just be such a people.

This put me in mind of a wonderful observation made by Dr. Owen Cummings in his still very relevant lecture "Images of the Diaconate"- "There is a tendency," Cummings insisted, "at least at the popular level, to think of the sacraments of marriage and orders as equivalent to the celebration of the rites. Thus, one hears people say, "I was married so many years ago...This way of understanding is most inadequate. The sacrament in both cases consists in the entire lives of the married and the ordained until death. The sacrament begins with the public celebration of the rite but does not end there. That is why for example getting married in church, that is, with the rite of Catholic marriage, means so very little unless being Church for the couple is an important priority. It is essentially being Church that makes the marriage fully sacramental, Church understood as the fundamental sacrament of Christ, Christ understood as the fundamental sacrament of God."

Indeed, this a very challenging understanding of marriage helps us to better grasp the sacramentality of matrimony. In light of Archbishop Sheehan's very straightforward pastoral letter earlier this year, it seems we have a lot of catechetical and pastoral heavy-lifting to do!

We do "not grieve like rest who have no hope"

2011-11-06T07:49:00.001-07:00

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, console one another with these words (1 Thess 4:13-18)

It is very likely that St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians was the first written "book" of the New Testament. The only other composition vying for this distinction is Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. First Thessalonians was likely written around AD 50 and, as it usually stated in the scholarly literature, prior to AD 52. I mention this only because today's second reading encapsulates the apostle's reason for writing to the Christians of ancient Thessaloniki. The earliest Christians believed that the parousia (i.e., Christ's return in glory) was imminent, many believing that it would happen in their lifetime. Despite this, it does not appear that Paul, or anyone who traveled with him, or was sent forth by him, went all Harold Camping (or Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, who used to predict the imminence of the end-of-the-world with regularity) on the early Church, but believed and taught the Lord's return was imminent, that is, He could return at any time. So, be ready. Two millenia on, this how we are still to live, which is still why we should not be of the world, even though we are to be present and active within it, seeking in all our endeavors to usher in God's kingdom. After all, we still believe and confess that Jesus Christ "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Should the Lord not return in glory during our lifetime, the end of time for each of us is death, which this month of November bids us to recall; momento mori. So, like the wise virgins, we are to keep our lamps trimmed and burning.

The Last Judgment Tympanum at Notre Dame de Paris

The pastoral issue that arose for St. Paul with regard to the Thessalonians was that members of their Church were dying and the Lord had not returned. This obviously shook their faith in Christ. Precisely because Paul and his co-workers had not made reckless predictions about when the Lord would return, even though, they taught the imminence of His return, the apostle could take this opportunity to enhance their understanding of Christ's resurrection and to strengthen their faith. He explains that those who have died are not extinguished, they have not ceased to exist, but are "asleep." When the Lord returns, "with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God" the dead will be called forth from their graves. (This is one of those New Testament passages that give rise to our compliant, "You're making enough racket to raise the dead.") Once the dead have been raised, those saints alive when the Lord returns, along with the faithful dead, will be gathered in as well and together "we shall always be with the Lord." With these words we are to "console on another." These words should also cause us to challenge and provoke one another to live each day, each moment, in the awareness of our destiny in order that we fulfill it.

Of course, I can't comment on this passage without noting that it is the basis for the belief of many Evangelical Protestants in the so-called Rapture, that event that Harold Camping, along with Chuck Smith, has given up on predicting. It is very specious to develop an entire doctrine, one unknown to the Tradition, on the basis of one verse of Scripture, especially when it is at odds with the overall message the apostle is seeking to convey, both in the passage under consideration and in both Paul's letters to the Christians of ancient Thessaloniki. In the second chapter of his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, the apostles writes:

We ask you, brothers, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him,a not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way (2 Thess. 2:1-5)

We can say that Paul is writing speculatively and figuratively about what will happen to those who are still alive when the Lord returns and not alluding to some fully developed kind of so-called "premillennial dispensationalism." One of the best books I have ever read on the parousia, precisely because it is provocative, challenging our lazy assumptions, is Morris West's novel The Clowns of God.

During this month when we remember and pray for our beloved dead, we do not grieve like those who have no hope because Jesus Christ is our hope.

Blogging: passing along what's left

2011-11-05T09:59:00.000-06:00

In an effort not to make blogging an exercise in navel-gazing I have started and quickly abandoned two posts about blogging over the past month. I am learning to embrace my ambivalence about my efforts here at Καθολικός διάκονος. Frankly, ambivalence is what powers this blog, well, and blogspot.

I am currently reading the first volume of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, which is a book I have been meaning to read for 8 or 9 nine years, at least since I read Roger Kimball's Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age. Reading a section of the novel last night under the heading "Speculations on the Intellectual Bull and Bear Market," Ulrich, who is the man without qualities, that is, the modern, or one might even say, despite Musil writing the book throughout most of the 1930s, post-modern man with a bit more of a scientific twist, asks Section Chief Tuzzi, husband of his flamboyant cousin, the irrepressible Diotima, at one of the latter's gatherings in preparation for the seventieth anniversary jubilee of the reign of Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Josef, "Have you ever noticed...that an incredible lot of people can be seen these days talking to themselves on the street?"

He goes on to note, apropos of blogging, "There's something the matter with people. It seems they're unable to take in their experience or else wholly enter into them, so they have to pass along what's left. An excessive need to write, it seems to me, comes from the same thing. You may not be able to spot this in the written product, which tends to turn into something far removed from its origin, depending on talent and experience, but it shows up quite unambiguously in the reading of it; hardly anyone reads anymore today; everyone just uses the writer to work off his own excess on him, in some perverse fashion, whether by agreeing or disagreeing."

Not long ago, a dear friend asked her blogging friends, What need that you have does blogging meet? It is a good question, a very good question, even an uncomfortable one, which are the most useful questions to ponder. I readily admit to often being overwhelmed by reality, by my impressions of what I experience. I cannot remember a time when this was not the case. I remember growing up sometimes feeling like I was going to explode. I still sometimes feel full to overflowing. Blogging certainly helps me with this. It's funny, people ask me, Where do you find the time to blog? Unlike my other friend's meaningful question, this is not a question I find very meaningful because the things I write about are things that arise in the normal course of a day for me; even then, it is only one of the things, typically. I write about issues that arise from my experience, at work, arising from my pastoral interactions, my personal relationships, or my interior life.

My first year of blogging in earnest I would find myself asking, Why do I do this? What value does it have? Over time I came to see that the second question was lacking an object. For whom does my blogging have value? I ultimately concluded that if blogging does not have value for me, then it is useless. My friend's question aided me in clarifying this question and posing it anew, in light of several years of experience. It's also important to consider the context, that is, the experience that caused my friend to pose her question, namely that a friend of hers, who lived near enough to get together, took to posting about things, issues, that might better be discussed with someone, another person, someone who cares, will listen, etc. So, while blogging must have intrinsic value for me, it is not a substitute for my even greater need for others, for personal relationships, connections. et al.

"I'm on my knees, I'm waiting for a sign"

2011-11-04T00:01:00.000-06:00

Bringing this week, the week during which we observed All Saints and All souls, to an end, it seems to me that our traditio can be nothing other than the Foo Fighters Walk. Because, I don't know about you, but "I never wanna die!" I know we're never supposed to admit it, but do you ever wonder why we put ourselves through it, or wonder just how much progress we've made, thinking maybe we are regressing, at least our humanity, which is threatened in so many ways? Have a good Friday!

We built these paper mountains/And sat and watched them burn/I think I found my place/Can't you feel it growing stronger/Little conqueror... BYW- punk will never die because it is a visceral response to life's inevitable quest- ions.

A few thoughts on fall and the world economy

2011-11-03T19:01:00.000-06:00

Ah, November! While October is lovely where I live, November is even lovelier, the time of deep fall, grayer skies, leaves actually tumbling from the trees and littering the ground. It is the month that begins with All Saints and All Souls, two of my favorite days of the year and that features the Solemnity of Christ the King, marking the end of yet another of grace. Very often, as with this year, November also ushers in a new year of grace on the First Sunday of Advent. Of course, the First Sunday of Advent this year will be the debut of much anticipated new translation of the Roman Missal, which is bound to be a little disorienting for everyone for awhile. I must admit to being excited about preaching on both the first and last Sundays of Advent this year.

I have to admit to feeling quite overwhelmed by everything that is happening in the world right now, especially the seemingly hopeless economic morass the world is mired in. I was prepared to start posting a lot on the disaster a Greek referendum on the EU bailout deal would've caused, especially if it had failed. I believe it was fear that the citizens of his country would not ultimately see that rejecting the EU bailout would spell economic doom, along with pressure brought to bear by Germany and France, that would have surely resulted in Greece being effectively kicked-out of the European monetary union, is what caused Greek PM George Papandreou to ultimately decide against holding a referendum. This decision will likely cost him his premiership and perhaps even his Socialist party their slim majority in Greece's parliament. It is one more indication that statesmanship is dead that Papandreou tried to hold a referendum in the first place and only withdrew it under pressure.Even as OWS raged on Jon Corzine was in his final days of being a Wall Street and political power. The former New Jersey senator and governor bankrupted his firm by taking reckless risks and European sovereign debt and likely illegally used clients' funds to shore-up his losses, while hoping things would turn around. I am just happy that MF Global is not too big fail. Yet another object lesson that we have learned very little over the past 3 years.

On other hand, I was very gratified to read Greg Erlandson's take on those who do not like last week's document by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems In the Context of Global Public Authority. Erlandson is the president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, which can hardly be dismissed a leading voice of the Catholic left in the United States. His editorial, Snarky attacks on Vatican financial document: The truth is that the Church is countercultural in many different ways, unsettling both left and right, seems to me spot on. In it he challenges so-called Catholic conservatives, which, at least in the United States, are by-and-large classical liberals economically-speaking. "Every one of these writers," Erlandson notes, "would consider himself both conservative and orthodox, yet there is an ideologically fueled disdain that ripples through almost all of these comments, meant to telegraph in bold letters that Catholics need not waste any time reading this document because it is wrong." This is, indeed, a false move driven by ideological concerns. As Erlandson notes, the so-called "Note" is very much in synch in Pope Benedict's most recent encyclical, Caritas in veritate. It bears noting that Caritas in veritate, promulgated in 2009, frequently references and draws from Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Populorum progresso.

Erlandson ends his succinct editorial with these words: "Political and economic conservatives seem unsettled that such statements might not sync up readily with the conservative economic orthodoxy, and they are right. The truth is that the Church is countercultural in many different ways, unsettling both left and right. Our challenge as Catholics is to put down the cafeteria tray and both prayerfully and intellectually pay attention to the Church’s whole moral message."