"And as funny as it may seem..."

I have a pretty involved post on Eucharist and liturgy that I was going to finish and post today. Frankly, it's a bit heavy duty for what I want our Friday traditio. to be. Without a doubt, there's no end to other pressing matters about which I could weigh in. In reality, I am exhausted with what's going on in the world, which is not to say that I don't care. I do, very much.

I am even more exhausted with social media. The idea that posting something on Facebook, X, Blue Sky, MeWe, et al. has any effect at all is delusional. So many people are deluded into believing they are in some way influencing opinion and that opinion, in turn, has impact on decisions, etc. What it really achieves for the most part is more and more ideological polarization. In almost every case, the algorithm kicks your ass and takes your lunch. No matter your politics, when you're raging on social media, you're literally raging with the machine. And I don't mean "literally" in a lazy colloquial sense that really means figuratively. More than a paragraph on this would be self-defeating.

Life is temporary. Temporary, to widen the scope, means timebound. Temporality is an antonym of eternity. Because life is temporary, everything in life is temporary. While "I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come," something I profess each Sunday, it is something I have to take on faith. Let's be honest, even though I believe on the basis of what God has revealed in life eternal, I can't claim to really know what happens after death.

Friendships, which run the gamut from friendly acquaintances to deep connections that move between philia and eros, are almost always temporary, despite our adolescent assertions to the contrary. This is not helped by the fact that we are, despite our internal urge to protest, fickle and contradictory creatures. One minute I can't get enough of someone or s/he can't get enough of me. The next, you're an annoyance, a bother, a needy beggar who needs to just go away. Of course, it's rare that someone will say, "We're done, leave me alone." Let's face it, there are those we can't live with or without. That's life. C'est la vie. Que sera, sera, pick a pithy cliché.

In our automated society, in which everyone is a therapist well-trained in that vaunted therapeutic method of posting memes, which largely consist of out of context quotes by authors with whose work the erstwhile therapist has no acquaintance (Nietzsche in this realm has superseded Freud), and everyone who's ever crossed me is a narcissist, life is not only a cliché but a bad one. Just as constant complaints about the narcissism of others is a sure sign of genuine narcissism, serious people, like myself, are usually the least serious people.

I have to say, staring down the barrel at 60 is a bit daunting. It's not the end of the world, but it brings me closer to the end of the world. This awareness is, uh, let's go with sobering. I have to say, I've been enjoying watching an episode of One Foot in the Grave each night. I read an article this week about this very thing: "I pride myself on being a miserable middle-aged man." I probably enjoyed it more than I should have. My only quibble is with the denial inherent in the assertion of middle age.

Speaking of the end of the world, here in northern Utah we've been having late July/early August weather. What I mean by that is high 90s to low 100s. It's as hot as hell. I was notified, via my "smart" devices of a "fire weather warning." Maybe I can use this as preparation for awaits me at the end of the world. I mean that somewhat humorously, I think. I hate the heat. Since I, too, can qualify as an online therapist, I may have something like reverse seasonal affective disorder.

Julian of Norwich's "all will be well" remains for me a well-intended proposition that may yet turn out to be true. My hope is in the name of the Lord. For me, hope takes the form of something deep within me that features a rather sharp, defiant edge. This defiance has saved my life, literally.

I will end with saying how very spiritually useful I have found reading Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy. His three novels are a continuous story about World War II. The final installment, which I am now finishing, is Unconditional Surrender.

Guy Crouchback, the main character, is from an aristocratic English west country Catholic recusant family. The novels are loosely based on Waugh's own experiences during the war. Crouchback is Waugh's creation of who he really wanted to be but was not. The second novel of the trilogy, Officers and Gentlemen, culminates with the Battle of Crete. Waugh was in this battle, which resulted in Germany taking Crete. While Waugh's is a fictionalized account, it is written in such a way that only someone who has experienced war could've written it.

Through it all, I find Crouchback's deep and abiding faith, which is neither naive nor sentimental, something of a balm for my soul. While I would say I am not naive when it comes to faith, I do tend to be a bit sentimental. At times, very sentimental. At the risk of being pedantic (a mode that is easy for me to lapse into), I would distinguish between sentimentality and affectivity. Affection is inherent to faith.

While it is probably a repeat (I don't know, I haven't looked), David Lee Roth singing "That's Life" is our Friday traditio. It was either that or "Goin' Crazy," which is also on Roth's Eat 'Em and Smile album. At nearly 60, I can repeat myself now and then, n'est ce pas?

Written by Dean Kay and Kelly Gordon, "That's Life" was first recorded in 1963 by Marion Montgomery. The song was made famous by Frank Sinatra, who recorded it three years later. At least for me, this is reminiscent of "I Did It My Way." Along with John Lennon's "Imagine," "I Did It My Way" is one of my least favorite songs.

When it comes to being a showman, nobody out does Dave:

Year I Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Readings: 2 Corinthians 6:1-10; Psalm 98:1-4; Matthew 5:38-42

In our reading from Saint Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, in a passage anyone interested in ministry should study, the apostle uses his own experience in ministry to show his brothers and sisters how not to receive God’s grace in vain. He exhorts them and us to follow the teachings of the Lord set forth in our Gospel regardless of circumstances.

One thing Paul is clear about: this is not easy. A Christian follows Christ, according to the apostle:

by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness,
in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech,
in the power of God;
with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left
through glory and dishonor, insult and praise

If we remain content to live by the lex talionis, which requires an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, then we are no different than the pagans who surround us now as they did the Christians of ancient Corinth. Living differently, even weirdly, by adhering to the Lord’s teaching come what may is precisely how the Lord’s salvation is made known.

In our Gospel, which comes from the heart of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is not speaking elliptically, parabolically, hyperbolically, or figuratively. Rather speaks plainly and unequivocally. The way of the Gospel is the path of maximum resistance as it pertains to our natural and socially reinforced tendencies. The lex talonis seems to be the human default setting.

Endeavoring to become like our Lord is how we receive God’s grace in earnest. What the Lord calls His followers to in this passage is radical trust in and total dependence on God, on God’s provision and God’s justice. Jesus doesn’t just tell us; He shows us by walking His talk.

Too often in the aftermath of some bad experience at the hands of another, I hear something that starts like, “I’m a Christian, but…” This disjunction is usually followed by an intention to do something not in line with the hard teachings of Jesus. Yet, we often persist in justifying ourselves.

Don’t receive God’s grace vain. The Lord perhaps provokes us as much as He consoles us. Take heart. A provocation, by definition, is something for your calling. You are called to eternal life.

Year C Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

Readings: Prov 8:22-31; Ps 8:4-9; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

It may surprise many to learn that Christian theology does not begin with the Most Holy Trinity. Christian theology begins with Jesus Christ. It is Christ who reveals God as Father. It is Christ who sends the Holy Spirit to remain present in, among, and through us. It is by means of the Holy Spirit that the Father and Son come to dwell in us.

Perhaps the best way to conceive of the Holy Spirit is as the love between the Father and the Son personified. When we contemplate the phrase that occurs twice in the span of eight verses in the fourth chapter of First John, “God is love,” lest it be narcissism, love requires a lover and beloved.¹ Since love is profuse, that is, outward-looking, it bears fruit.

Love is at the heart of the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity. It is love that enables us to make sense of our profession of one God in three divine persons. Because love is fruitful, when someone has experienced the love of God through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, which experience is what makes you a Christian, you are impelled to share this Good News.

In theological terms, a mystery isn’t something unknown. Rather, a divine mystery is known because God has revealed it. While we cannot apprehend divine mysteries by reason alone, what God reveals is not and cannot be contrary to reason.

This is why the best definition of theology remains the one given by Saint Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century: faith seeing understanding. Far from being unknowable, divine mysteries are endlessly knowable. No matter how much you know, grasp, understand, there is always more. One of the attributes of God, after all, is infinitude.

This is just what Jesus is getting at in today’s Gospel, which, again, is taken from the Last Supper Discourse from Saint John’s Gospel. By taking from what the Father has given Him, which is literally everything, the Son gives us the Spirit to guide us into all truth.² All the Father had to reveal He revealed through the Incarnation of His Son. Here we are nearly 2,000 years later being drawn ever more deeply into the mystery of God in Christ by the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth.

Let’s not forget that, according to Sacred Scripture, “the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past… has [now] been manifested.” What is this mystery? “Christ in you.”³ Christ comes to be in you through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit who, through our trials and tribulations, our woes and sufferings, our afflictions, produces genuine hope where otherwise there would be despair.

Hope is the most difficult of the three theological virtues to understand. One thing is certain; hope is not optimism. Hope lies on the far side of optimism. Hope is that tiny flickering flame that is left when your optimism has run out. Very often, optimism is about what I want. Hope, by contrast, is about seeking, knowing, doing and accepting God’s will come what may. It is the realization that my ways are not God’s ways.

I believe that philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was correct in his insistence that it is better to show than to say. This is what the saints do for us. Through their lives, they make what is abstract concrete. Their witness makes the metaphysical existential, the transcendent immanent, the hard to grasp graspable.

On Trinity Sunday 1925, a non-descript man was making his way up Granby Lane in Dublin, Ireland to attend Mass at Saint Savior’s church. While walking he collapsed. In the next day’s edition, the Irish Independent newspaper reported: “An elderly man collapsed in Granby Lane yesterday and, on being taken to Jervis Street Hospital, was found to be dead. He was wearing a tweed suit, but there was nothing to indicate who he was.”

Matt Talbot, used Under a Creative Commons License

Once at the hospital, while treating him, the doctors discovered that he had wound a chain around his waist and more chains around an arm and a leg, as well as cords around the other arm and leg. The chains found on his body at death were not weird self-torture. Rather, they were a symbol of his devotion to Mary, Mother of God, to whom he had entrusted himself completely. This man’s name was Matt Talbot.

Talbot was born into a relatively poor working-class family in Dublin. Like a lot of young men of that time and place, Matt started working full-time to help support his family at the age of twelve. His first job was with a wine merchant. To make a long story short, by the age of thirteen, he was considered a hopeless alcoholic.

Fifteen years later, broke and unable to drink on credit, Matt waited outside a pub he frequented hoping a friend would invite him in for a drink, a favor he had extended many times to broke friends. After several friends walked past him into the pub without inviting him in, he went home. Upon arriving home, Matt told his mother he was going “to take the pledge” and give up alcohol.

Matt followed through on his promise, pledging not to drink for three months. “The pledge” also consisted of making a general confession and attending Mass daily. At the end of three months, he took the pledge for another six months and then for life. Through an austere, prayerful, penitential manner of life, he remained sober for the rest of his life, right up until that Trinity Sunday when he collapsed on Granby Lane.

As it turned out, Matt was not hopeless. Hope was all he had. It was through his affliction that he came to understand hope, to live in hope. “It’s as hard to give up the drink as it is to raise the dead to life again,” he noted. “But” he insisted, “both are possible and even easy for our Lord. We have only to depend on him.”

The first several years of his sobriety were very difficult for Matt. But he prayed, attended Mass, went to confession, read and learned about his faith, supported the missions and charities from his modest earnings. In other words, he made use of the means of grace that Mother Church provides for all her children. During two general strikes, being single and living a very austere life, Matt gave money to fellow strikers who were married with children.

After he sobered up, Matt sought to repay all his debts. Once, while in the throes of alcoholism, Talbot stole a fiddler’s fiddle and sold it for money to buy booze. After he was in his right mind, he searched for the fiddler whose instrument he stole to pay him back. He failed to find him and so he gave the money to have a Mass said for the man whose livelihood he took.

Venerable Matt Talbot became a beacon of hope. He led an austere life of deep, even mystical prayer. But apart from knowing that he was “religious” and went to Mass a lot, his fellow workers, neighbors and even his siblings did not really understand the depth of his sanctity until after his death. He was quiet, soft-spoken, unremarkable, unassuming, someone who’s yes meant yes and no meant no. In the eyes of the world, he was literally a nobody.

Of course, not every Christian (or even most Christians) is called to live a life of extreme penance like Matt Talbot. We are, however, called to place our hope in Christ with the same love and devotion, to have the same commitment to our Savior, recoginizing our need and honoring what He has done for us.

And so, you don’t need to look for the Trinity up in the sky, or in some abstract philosophical construct, as useful as these can sometimes be. God is always right in front of you, if you have eyes to see. Another of God’s attributes is omnipresence. Being a Christian is an existential commitment, a commitment to living each day in what is now and has always been a peculiar way. Genuine hope is weird. As Flannery O'Connor put it: "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you odd."

Walking with the Lord can sometimes seem like a dry and dusty path to nowhere. But Venerable Matt Talbot, along with other holy women and men, shows us what it means to walk the road of faith, which gives us access to the grace in which we stand.

---

1 1 John 4:8.16.^↩
2 John 16:13.^↩
3 Colossians 1:26-27.^↩

"A Long [Week] in the Universe"

Two competing but untimately reconcibilable narratives: ICE raids are the reason for the L.A. protests. And,these protests are, quite clearly, planned and materially supported by organized groups. Hence, the L.A. protests have been violent and destructive from the get-go by design.

This is the circus that passes for our politics. I could unpack this more but will forego such commentary. Nothing will come of such theater one way or the other. Of course, most reporting on what is happening in L.A. is predictably, even woefully, incomplete. As usual, there is a lot going on that is easy enough to find out if you look but that complicates the simplistic narrativeswe have foisted on us day after day. It isn't just theater, it's a particular kind of theater: an annoying morality play. Morality plays are neither complex nor subtle nor interesting.

It would be hard for me to care less about what's on tap for tomorrow, either the upcoming "big" event or the protest against it. In any case, looks like rain.

Used Under a Creative Commons License

What is causing a reconsideration of hardcore immigrant deportation policies are complaints by farmers and those in the hospitality business. Such complaints, which do not seem to be falling on deaf ears, bring into bold relief how important immigrant labor is to the functioning of our economy. This should prompt another attempt at comprehensive immigration reform.

This reform would necessarility include, among other things, a guest worker program. Such a program would protect immigrant laborers and allow certain industries to remain profitable. While securing the border, there are ways to move forward as a country on immigration, even to create a win/win situation. Neither side is inerested in that, this is clear. It is also way I am on neither side.

Today's Friday post is a bit delayed. It's been a busy week. As I am sure you know, there are different kinds of busy. For me this week, it's been the annoying and not terribly productive or enjoyable kinds of busy-ness.

My wife and I did celebrate our thirty-second wedding anniversary. This means we watched So, I Married an Axe Murderer. Apart from that, we kept things pretty low-key.

We love So, I Married an Axe Murderer. It's a fun movie. It also came out the year we were married. We saw it twice at the dollar movies because that was entertainment we could afford at the time. I can't say that we've watched it each and every year of our marriage. We have watched it nearly every year. I still have the CD of the film's soundtrack, which consists of great early nineties music.

I was 27 when we married. So, as of four years ago, I've been married for longer than I was single. I keep waiting for marriage to "get" easy. I have to remind myself that any marriage involving me will likely never be easy.

I also keep waiting to reach that age when I will have things figured out. In the latter case, I am not referring to life's big questions, but merely to those things that pertain to my own life. I am quite certain I will never be a wise man, old or otherwise. I am okay with that. A certain amount of foolishness seems to suit me well.

If I may be permitted to blog about blogging for a moment, I am pretty happy with 2025 thus far in terms of this effort. I am especially happy with the fact that I haven't really missed a Friday traditio and the year is nearly half over! Because today's is so late, I don't admitting that I had to force myself to step up.

I am preparing to lead a series of seven adult study sessions on Pope Saint John Paul II's 1995 encyclical Evangelium vitae. This to mark the encyclical's thirtieth anniversary. I hope to do another series on Pope Francis' Apostolic Letter on liturgical formation, Desiderio desideravi, followed by an Advent study of Isaiah's Servant Songs.

Our traditio for our first Friday back in Ordinary Time (even though today is the Memorial of Saint Anthony of Padua, a Doctor of the Church- a good day to find lost things), which is the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time is from the soundtrack for So, I Married an Axe Murderer. The song? "Long Day in the Universe" by The Darling Buds. In all honesty, the song barely features in the movie, but it's on the album and I like it:

Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church

Readings: Genesis 3:9-15, 20; Psalm 87:1-3.5-7; John 19:25-34

Our readings tell of two trees. In the lush verdant garden, there is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. On a barren, dusty hill outside the holy city, is where we find the tree of life.

While the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is living and flourishing, its fruit tempting and seemingly irresistible, two intersecting pieces of dead wood make up the tree of life.

Just as there are two trees, there are two women (in our Gospel more, but one on whom we turn our focus). Both are mothers: Eve, the mother of the all the living and Mary, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of all reborn through baptism. The first woman, desirous of becoming like God and seeing the delicious fruit, partakes of it, despite God’s dire warning. The second sits grieving underneath the tree of life, the fruit of which is the bleeding, dying body of her only Son.

Between these two poles unfolds the time and space of God’s plan of redemption, in effect from the foundation of the world. In his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul sets this forth succinctly:

creation was made subject to futility, not of its own accord but because of the one who subjected it, in hope that creation itself would be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God¹

It is vital to grasp that the death and resurrection of His only begotten Son is not God’s Plan B. Jesus Christ is and was from the beginning not just God’s Plan A, but God’s only plan. As Paul notes, this is a great mystery. Stated analytically, this mystery is about squaring divine providence with human freedom. We certainly have no time for that now.

Maybe it is because we are made in God’s image that we have an inherent desire not only to be “like” God but to be God. Maybe this is what gives birth to the human desire to determine for oneself what is true, right, and just.

This original sin is at the root of every personal sin. First and foremost, each sin is a sin against God, whom should be loved above all things. Sin consists of loving myself above all things. This is deadly both temporally and eternally. The serpent strikes at your head by exploiting your human vulnerability; your creatureliness ultimately betrays the lie of any divine pretensions.

How is this deadly blow thwarted? In the theo-drama that is salvation history, it is foiled by a humble, nondescript teenage girl in the village of Nazareth with the words, given in reply to archangel’s announcement that she is to bear God’s Son, “May it be done to me according to your word.”² Her selflessness is what breaks the cycle of human self-absorption, our fascination with nothingness.

The Marian principle is the heart of the Church. The Marian principle is nothing other than her selfless fiat, her total “Yes!” to God. Mary is the creature who places the analogia entis (i.e., the relationship between the beings in creation and the being of God) into bold relief. In contrast to Eve, Mary does this by accepting the lowliness of creaturehood.

On 18 November 1964, at the end of the Third Session of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Saint Paul VI, in his weekly General Audience, noted:

Mary… occupies a very singular position; she too is a member of the Church, she is redeemed by Christ, she is our sister; but precisely by virtue of her election as Mother of the Redeemer of humanity, and by reason of her perfect and eminent representation of the human race, she can rightly be said morally and typically to be the Mother of all men, and especially ours, of us believers and redeemed, the Mother of the Church, the Mother of the Faithful [translation mine]³

Somewhat controversially, due to ecumenical worries, Pope Paul declared that he was ending this session of the Council “in the joy of recognizing Our Lady's rightful title of Mother of the Church ‘Mater Ecclesiae’.”⁴ Mary is Mother of the Church. Being deeply Marian, the Church, in turn, is our mater et magistra- mother and teacher.

Mary was in the midst of the earliest Christian community at the beginning of the Church at Pentecost.⁵ The Church exists to elicit, enable and sustain and our total “Yes!” to God.

On 11 February 2018, the Memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, which marked the one hundred sixtieth anniversary of the Blessed Mother’s apparitions to another humble, nondescript young woman- Saint Bernadette Soubirous, Pope Francis signed the decree inserting the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church into the Roman Calendar, to be observed the Monday after Pentecost.

Don’t hesitate to fly unto our Blessed Mother. Go to her. Stand before her, sinful and sorrowful. Implore her not to despise your petitions, but in her maternal care and concern, to hear and answer your prayers. Pray the Rosary often, daily if possible. Pray the Memorare. Now that we are back in Ordinary Time, pray the Angelus three times a day: morning, noon, and evening.

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1 Romans 8:20-21.^↩
2 Luke 1:38.^↩
3 Pope Paul VI. General Audience, 18 November 1964. ^↩
4 Ibid.^↩
5 Acts 1:14.^↩

Pentecost- Mass During the Day

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Ps 104.1.24.29-31.34; 1 Cor 12:3b-7.12-13; John 14:15-16.23b-26

Today, sisters and brothers, is a glorious day! Our observance of Pentecost is second in importance only to Easter. Yes, Pentecost is more important than Christmas. Sadly, we often do not observe it as if this were the case.

Pentekostos in Greek means fifty. Pentecost, then, is observed fifty days after Easter. Originally Pentecost was (and remains) one of the eight major festivals around which the Jewish religious calendar revolves. The Hebrew name for this celebration is Shauv’ot, which means “weeks”.

For Jews then as now, the first of the three days of Shauv’ot, calculated from the first day of Passover, is fifty days. Because Greek was the lingua franca of the ancient Mediterranean world, Shauv’ot was called Pentecost. Originally a summer harvest festival, in time Shauv’ot became the commemoration of God’s giving Torah through Moses on Mount Sinai.

For observant Jews, Shauv’ot is the time each year to renew one’s acceptance of Torah. It is the time one recommits to adhere to God’s law. This bears some similarity to the renewal of our baptismal promises at Easter.

Far from supplanting or replacing Israel, as Saint Paul observed in his Letter to the Romans, the Church is “a wild olive shoot” grafted onto the olive tree that is Israel. As a result, Christians, according to Paul, “have come to share in the rich root of the olive tree.”¹

Therefore, the apostle warns Christians in ancient Rome, not to boast against the natural branches of the tree- not to boast against the Jews. “If you do boast,” he warns, “consider that you do not support the root; the root supports you.”² This is why, during another period of intense anti-Semitism, Pope Pius XI emphatically insisted “Spiritually, we are Semites.”³ No Law, no Gospel. No Torah, no Pentecost. No Moses, no Jesus. No Israel, no Church.

The reason so many Jews from throughout the known world were present in Jerusalem, was to observe Pentecost. But this event became one much greater than God revealing Torah. The descent of the Holy Spirit, who is now the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence in and for the world! This is the beginning of the fulfillment of the words of the risen Lord in the account of His Ascension found in the previous chapter of Acts that the apostles would give witness to Christ’s resurrection beginning at Jerusalem.⁴

Just as Christians are not, in essence, a people of the book, as is sometimes supposed, but a people of the resurrected Lord, Jesus is not a new Moses. He is Messiah and Lord as well as God and man.

As God, He is giver of Torah. As man, He is the one- the only one- who fulfills the Law. Jesus accomplished in His own person what neither Israel nor the Church can achieve without Him. The Law is holy, we are not. Christ alone is why we can call the Church “holy.”

Pentecost is reckoned to be the beginning of the Church because it was then the Gospel began to be preached, was received in faith and, as a result, people were baptized. Being verum corpus Christi, Christ’s very Body, extended through time and space the Church is utterly essential for salvation. Without the Church, there is no salvation.

Pentecost, used Under a Creative Commons License

Our Gospel reading comes from the Last Supper Discourse found in Saint John’s Gospel. Obviously, the disciples were distressed about what the Lord was telling them would happen. In light of His impending death, they wondered how might God’s kingdom might be established. The Lord tells them that if they love Him and endeavor to keep His commandments, which is to love each other as He loves them, He will send them an Advocate to remain with them always.

The Holy Spirit, whose mission is not to reveal novel things- this is the stuff of sects and cults- but to continually remind us of all that Jesus taught and guide us deeper into this mystery. As Saint Paul insists in our second reading, you cannot arrive at the truth “Jesus is Lord” apart from it being revealed to you by the Holy Spirit.⁵

Theologically, mysteries are not things unknown. Instead, they are known because God reveals them. While divine mysteries are not discoverable by reason alone, they are consonant with and even constitutive of reason.

In this sense, a mystery isn’t unknowable as much as endlessly knowable- you will never reach the end because there will always be more to know. That doesn't mean we can't know anything. God has given us reason and revelation, scripture and tradition.

Being the mode of Christ’s resurrection presence in, among, and through us, the Holy Spirit is how the Lord fulfills His promise to remain with the Church always until He returns. Hence, the Holy Spirit does not bear witness to the Holy Spirit but to Jesus Christ, our kyrios and theos, our Lord and our God.⁶

The descent of the Holy Spirit is the third of the Glorious mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary. Its fruit is God’s love for us. Christ’s love for us is sealed by sending the Spirit as the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise never to abandon His Church. When she is unfaithful, He is ever faithful.

Elsewhere in his Letter to the Romans, Saint Paul, reminds members of the Church in Rome, “you are not in the flesh; on the contrary, you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.”⁷ “If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,” he continues, “the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you.”⁸

On this Pentecost, let us reaffirm our commitment to live life in the Spirit. This is life in Christ, it is ecclesial life, the apex of which is what we’re doing here now: Eucharist. Indeed, life in the Spirit is rooted in gratitude. It is rooted in gratitude to God who demonstrated His love for us by giving “his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”⁹

“We do not pretend that life is all beauty,” Pope Saint John Paul II pointed out. “We are aware of darkness and sin, of poverty and pain,” he continued. “But we know Jesus has conquered sin and passed through his own pain to the glory of the Resurrection.”¹⁰

And so, as this Easter season ends, let’s continue to live in the light of Christ’s Paschal Mystery- the mystery of His Death and Resurrection. Let us remember, in season and out, always and everywhere, “We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song!”¹¹

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1 Romans 11:17.^↩
2 Romans 11:18.^↩
3 G.M. Willebrands. Church and Jewish People. Paulist Press, 1992, p. 60. ^↩
4 Acts 1:8.^↩
5 1 Corinthians 12:3; Matthew 16:17.^↩
6 John 20:28.^↩
7 Romans 8:9.^↩
8 Romans 8:11.^↩
9 John 3:16.^↩
10 Pope John Paul II. Angelus, 30 November 1986.^↩
11 Ibid.^↩

Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Easter concludes this Sunday with the Church's observance of Pentecost. Because Easter was late this year the season goes well into June. Even so, May remains the month of Mary and June is the month of the Sacred Heart.

Celebrated the Friday after Corpus Christi, this year the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus will be celebrated on 27 June. Typically, the Saturday following the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Roman Catholics observe the obligatory Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. But, in years when the Memorial of Immaculate Heart of Mary occurs on the same day as another oligatory Memorial, both obligatory Memorials become Optional Memorials.

A photo from our living room

Since this year the Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary happens on the same day as the Obligatory Memorial of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, who is a Doctor of the Church, its observance is optional. As a result, the celebrant has the option to celebrate the Memorial Immaculate Heart of Mary or the Memorial of Saint Irenaeus or neither.

It's a joke in our house that all holidays are about love. Yes, we poke fun at the overlyl sentimental view of holidays. I would say that the exception are national holidays all of which have become Veteran's Day. Of course, this does no justice to, say, Labor Day or our more recent national holiday, Juneteenth.

I have been known to say, quoting Jackie Moon, "Hey, ELE!" Indeed, the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Memorial His Mother's Immaculate Heart are truly about love. A love so unfathomable that it ultimately lies beyond our comprehension.

Last week Cardinal Francis Leo, Archbishop of Toronto, Canada, issued what I think is a beautiful message for the "Month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus." In addition to urging Catholics to consecrate themselves, their families, and their homes to Jesus' Sacred Heart, His Eminence urges everyone to read Pope Francis final encyclical letter Dilexit Nos: On the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ, which he promulgated last October.

Moving into undoubtedly controversial territory, though it should not be for Catholics, Cardinal Leo points out in his message:

Symbols are important as they convey meanings in what they represent, and they point beyond their own reality to something else, someone else. Our very own Catholic symbols help us to deepen our faith and shape our prayer life, not to mention the lives we lead and the choices we make. They are like bridges joining together the material and spiritual worlds, and reveal to us the Gospel truths. They showcase what our values are, what is important to us and how we intend to live our faith. We need to make sure that the symbols we use are consistent with our Catholic faith and not borrowed from ideological fora, promoted by lobby groups and endorsed by political movements. We ought to honour and respect our traditions and not compromise the integrity of the faith by using symbols that are contrary to God’s divine revelation. We do good to use our own symbols to tell our own story without resorting to trendy, misguided and inadequate symbols that do not represent us as Catholics but rather contribute to confusion, distortions and ambiguities about what the Catholic faith truly teaches regarding the human person, human nature, and natural moral law

Given Cardinal Leo's notanda, I am going to write about porneia again. My reason for so doing was a short article by Justin Giboney for Christianity Today: "Sermons with Benefits." It is a good article because Giboney starts with how Christians have too often made caricatures of ourselves in the realm of sexual ethics. But he also points to a recent attempt, a very amatuerish one at that, to insist that Church's sexual ethics have been wrong from the beginning.

On what foundation is such an audiacious claim made? The argument rests on the insistence that the Greek word porneia refers exclusively to prostitution. Let me just say, this would earn a failing grade in any New Testament exegesis class.

What I like best about Giboney's article is that it is not merely academic. In fact, it isn't academic at all. The author outsources the critique of the porneia-only-means-prostituion claim to others who, in the author's view, have countered it adequately. Links to both the claim and the rebuttal are available in the article.

The article is rooted in Giboney's own experience. There is so much Pope Saint John Paul II's theology of the body still has to offer all of us. This week, I repeat love is not sex and sex is not love. I will add, love and sex should go together. Yes, I used the word "should," which is practically blasphemy these days. Without putting too fine a point on it, there are reasons that married people, contra the prevailing narrative, report higher rates of sexual satisfaction.

I know first hand how tempting it is to acquiesce in these matters. Not giving in doesn't mean not caring and lacking understanding or even seeking to further understand and navigate the complexities of human sexuality. It certainly doesn't preclude just encountering each and every person as a person, as someone who bears God's image, and not as a persona, let alone a clinicalized abstraction. In the age of social media, it's easy to think of yourself and others as personae instead of as persons.

It bears noting, too, that for the first full month of his papacy, Pope Leo has but one prayer intention. Unsurprisingly, the Holy Father's intention is very much in tune with June being the month devoted to the Lord's Sacred Heart: "Let us pray that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his heart, learn to have compassion on the world."

That's enough for now, I think. I can't help but post Aztec Camara's "Somewhere in My Heart" as our traditio this week.

Going away in order to remain and remain more powerfully

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Psalm 47:2-3.6-9; Hebrews 9:24-28.10:19-23; Luke 24:46-53

I don't want to gripe too much, but griping a bit seems appropriate. I am not a fan and never have been of transferring the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord from Thursday to the following Sunday. Rooted in scripture (see Acts 1:3), Ascension comes forty days after Easter and Pentecost ten days later. Casting this liturgical arithmetic aside strikes me as somewhat damaging.

A lot can and probably should be said about the Lord's Ascension. There are two things that strike me each year. First, Christ ascended not to distance Himself from you and not only to be closer to you but live in you (and me). Second, because we "have" Christ in us, our gaze is levelled.

Christ ascends so the Holy Spirit can descend. He goes to the Father so He can send His Holy Spirit, who is also the Spirit of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the medium through whom Christ comes to dwell in, among, and through us. This better than Him standing over there, as it were.

Of course, the most concrete sign of this is the Eucharist, especially the high point of the Eucharistic celebration: the Communion Rite. Our progression from Easter to Ascension to Pentecost to Trinty to Corpus Christi is mystagogically important and, therefore, liturgically important. This why the transfer of the Ascension matters. Also, do we celebrate Pentecost as the second most important observance after Easter? In most cases, I think not.

I love the words of the men in white who suddenly appear alongside the awe-filled apostles as they stand amazed watching the Lord ascend into heaven: "Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven" (Acts 1:11). Gaze leveled.

As Christian we are to engage in the world. We are to be salt, light, and good leaven. Our business and overriding concern is to establish, instaniate, incarnate God's kingdom, taking seriously the petition: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." It is to this end that we receive our daily bread. This circles back to Christ ascended not only to be closer to us but to be in us. Let's not forget that, according to scripture, this mystery revealed by God is nothing less than "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Colossians 1:24-27).

Ascension, by John Singleton Copely, 1775

Especially in the crazy times in which we live, a time when the spirit of anti-Christ seems almost regnant. This is typified by a counterfeit gospel that puts one's own concerns and comforts before all else and everyone else. An economized, that is, material, philosophy that sets up a zero sum game. On this view, someone receiving what s/he needs deprives me of what I want and think I deserve.

While it is the work of the Church (meaning that is the work of individual Christians) to incarnate God's kingdom, God's kingdom will not be realized through worldly governments. God's kingdom is not about restoring the ancient kingdom of Israel, as even the Lord's apostles supposed right up to His ascension, nor is it about the restoration of so-called Christendom.

All worldly domains are utopias in the strict sense of the word: they are nowhere or paths to nowhere. This is just to say that worldly governments are not the path to destiny. This is not to say that from a Christian perspective one form of government is not better than other forms. Clearly, forms of government that permit and foster genuine freedom, which many late modern democracies do not no matter which side holds the reins of power, are better than oppressive and repressive regimes. But the Church not only has survived but thrived under the rule of many different forms of government, even highly repressive ones.

As our reading from Hebrews (one of my favorite books in all of Sacred Scripture!) reminds us- optimism is not hope. Christ is my hope no matter the circumstances in which I find myself:

...let us approach [God' sanctuary where Christ is High Priest] with a sincere heart and in absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope, for he who made the promise is trustworthy (Hebrews 10:22-23)

Luke and Acts are two volumes by the same inspired author. Acts picks up where Luke leaves off. As we can see from today's readings, when it comes to the Lord's ascension, there some overlap. In both Luke and Acts, the Lord promises to send His Holy Spirit upon the apostles. In Luke, He tells them to remain in Jerusalem. In Acts 1, they are in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is where they remain not only until Pentecost but until the great persecution that caused many to flee. As the stoning of Stephen seems to indicate, one Saul of Tarsus seems to have played a keen role in this persecution. But this remains only the beginning of the story, which is not yet complete. Christianity, as I often note, is a religion of paradox. One and three, human and divine, virgin and mother, etc. Ascension, too, presents a paradox: going away in order to remain, even to be present more powerfully.

Love and sex

For reasons explained in that post, in my reflection for last Sunday's readings, I focused on the first reading from Acts 15, which tells of the result of the council of Jerusalem. I focused on the canons or decrees handed on from those Christian leaders who gathered to consider the burning question as to whether Gentile converts had to be circumcised (their decision on this was no). There were four such canons or decrees.

Three of those had to do with dietary laws (i.e., what one could not eat). Since one of those three is textually suspicious and the other two were dealt with later by Paul, I zeroed in on the Greek word that the NAB(RE) translates into English with the phrase "unlawful marriage." I noted that this word (i.e., porneia) is probably better translated in that context by the phrase (used in other credible translations) "sexual immorality."

I then provided a short list of some of the things the prohbition on sexual immorality included while acknowledging this word can refer to any one of those things, some of those things, or all of them together. Unlike the dietary restritions, what constituted sexual immorality remained consistent in the New Testament and beyond.

In accordance with the matters addressed in Acts 15, ethical concerns predominated in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. At the beginning of the first chapter of his book Reading the Early Church Fathers: From the Didache to Nicea, James L. Papandera notes

Early Christian catechesis focused more on ethical concerns than on theology, and from the very beginning it was extremely important to draw the lines of distinction between Christian morals and the morals of the rest of Greco-Roman culture and society (page 7)

This surely includes sexual morals.

Since posting that I have run across two things that I think are relevant. One of them was a post made to the Facebook account of a group called "Catholic Dress Code." This is a rather conservative group run by Catholic women encouraging women to dress modestly. While I certainly have my viewpoint, I don't wade into discussions of what someone should wear or not wear.

Because of its length, I am not going to post the whole thing. You can follow the link I provided above to read it all. But I am going to repost several paragraphs that I think are the most salient:

No one told me the truth about sex before I had a lot of sex... (reposted)...

They say sex is just physical. But I’ve felt the aftershocks of a single night echo through my nervous system for months. I’ve stayed too long with men who weren’t good for me...not because I didn’t know better, but because my cells already believed we were one thing. Because oxytocin doesn’t understand red flags. Because dopamine will make a prison feel like paradise. Because orgasm isn’t just a climax, it’s a binding contract written in chemistry and signed in vulnerability....

What they don’t tell you is this: sex rewires you. It maps your memory, it softens your instincts, it makes you stay when every part of your logic is screaming “run.” And even if you tell yourself it doesn’t matter, even if you say you’re detached, your body still remembers. There is no such thing as casual when your nervous system is that involved.

And we don’t need to shame the wild. I’m not here to be shaming choices. I believe in sacred chaos. In lust that tastes like lightning. But let’s stop pretending that we can do it like animals and not feel like ghosts when it’s over.

Because sex, real sex in your soul felt sex, isn’t just about climax. It’s about collapse. It’s about letting someone inside your orbit so deeply that your whole inner world tilts. And that? That should be earned. That should be sacred.

So no, sex was never just a handshake. It’s a soul exchange. And if we remembered that, maybe we’d stop giving our bodies to people who haven’t even earned our eye contact [emboldening and italicization mine, not in the original]

One woman wrote a comment that I "Liked" because it echoed my own reaction to this: "This is the first post here i totally agree with. Dont be prudish. Read it again. Emphasis on the last paragraph [what is highlighted]. Then read it again."

A second thing I read on Monday. It is from Zena Hitz's book A Philosopher Looks at Religious Life. "Celibacy" is a section of chapter four: "The Family of Humanity."

I have been severe on sexuality, not out of prudishness, but to counter the overwhelming rhetoric on the other side. We act as if life without sex is impossible, and entertain the thought, even if less commonly nowadays than in my youth, that sex with strangers is harmless. Both cannot be true. Either sex reaches down to the core of our being, and so ought to be treated with reverence and caution, as something which might bear life's meaning for us, or it is harmless, like chewing bubble gum, and can be given up without a second thought. The fact is that the depth and significance of our sexual desires make celibacy very difficult, but it is by no means impossible (page 121)

In short, sex is not love and love is not sex. I could easily move from this to one of the progressive aspects of Pope Saint Paul VI's Humanae vitae (there is more than one!): the unitive purpose (see section 12). By the way, the Holy See's website has a makeover!

Both of these quotes, which are negative in tone (i.e., why not to), are only a starting point. One might add Saint Paul's observation that when you have sex with someone you become one in body with that person (1 Corthians 6:15-20). Of course, the apostle is writing to Christians in ancient Corinth, a port city rife withe prostitution both sacred (pagan) and profane.

In this instance, surely Paul's point transcends the context. And so, something written above becomes an affirmation: "...because my cells already believed we were one thing. Because oxytocin doesn’t understand red flags. Because dopamine will make a prison feel like paradise." Beyond that, as Irish writer John Waters noted, there has to be something after no. But no has its reasons.

Why not Howard Jones' "What Is Love?" as a Friday traditio? While we're at it, let's go with the Big, Beautiful version.

Counsels of a council: principles and canons

Reading: Acts 15:1-2.22-29

Where I live, the Solemnity Lord's Ascension is observed the Sunday following the fortieth day after Easter. Stated more clearly, instead of celebrating "Ascension Thursday," we celebrate Ascension Sunday on what is otherwise the Seventh Sunday of Easter. So, we do not observe the Seventh Sunday of Easter.

As a result, for the readings for the Sixth Sunday of Easter the second reading and Gospel for the Seventh Sunday of Easter may be used. This leaves the first reading from Acts 15 as the reading that cannot be replaced.

It is an important reading because it tells of the somewhat anachronistically-named "Council of Jerusalem." While what this reading conveys is something about a council not of the early the Church but the primitive Church, it is not, juridically speaking, a council in the fullblown sense of later Councils, like Nicea and Vatican II. This gathering was certainly synodal in nature.

Being a council (as opposed to a "Council"?), this meeting in Jerusalem, like Nicea and most subsequent Councils, canons or juridical decisions were promulgated. The immediate cause for this gathering was to adjudicate the claim that in order to be saved, Gentile converts to Christianity had to be circumcised. The matter was brought to Jerusalem by Paul and Barnabas.

Presiding over this proceeding was James the close relative of Jesus. He is known as James the Just. During their missionary activity among the Gentiles, among whom they were establishing the Church, so-called "Judaizers" were teaching, contra Paul and Barnabas, both the necessity of circumsision and even full-blown adherence to the Law.

After deliberating, named representatives were sent with Paul and Barnabas from Jerusalem to Antioch to deliver their judgment on this and other divisive matters pertaining to Christian praxis. Before taking up specific issues, a principle is given: not to place on anyone any burden beyond what is necessary. What did they deem necessary?

First, not to eat meat sacrificed to idols. Second, not to eat blood. Third, not to eat the meat of any animal that was strangled. Fourth, not to enter into unlawful marriages.

Now, each of the four canons or rulings are derived from Jewish law. It bears noting that the prohbition against eating the meat of strangled animals is omitted from some ancient manuscripts and sources.

The Greek word translated by the phrase "unlawful marriage" in our lectionary and in the NAB(RE) (the revision of the Revised Edition of the New American Bible consists only of a new translation of the Old Testament) is πορνεία. Transliterated, porneia- the origin of the English pornography. It is a Greek word used to refer to several specific sexual matters or all of them together, making translation very dependent on context.

In this context, I believe the best translation, as found in other versions, like the New International Version, might be "sexual immorality." The reason for this is that covers all the specific things to which the word refers: adultery, fornication, homosexuality, sex with close relatives, even sex with a divorced person, etc.

Whether one likes it or not, one of the things that made Christians stand out from the beginning in the ancient world of the Roman Emprie were strict sexual ethics. While Paul later attenuated the stricture against eating meat sacrificed to idols (i.e., don't do it if you're going to scandalize a fellow believer), he never wavered on matters pertaining to porneia.

Despite being quite easy to demonstrate, such an assertion these days strikes many as controversial. But then, we live in a time and culture that has all but reduced human personhood to sexuality. Calesco ergo sum?

Wisely, the council determined that circumcision, seemingly the most contentious issue, is not required of Christian converts. One can imagine the impact such a requirement might have on evangelization! Elsewhere, Paul takes this issue up with his characteristic directness. He emphasizes that one becomes a Christian through baptism and that baptism is open to men and women, slave and free, and to Jew and Gentile alike (see Galatians 3:27-29).

For Christians, water is thicker than blood- this, too, is a fundamental principle! This principle should be focused on all the more during Easter.

Speaking to Members of Pontifical Mission Societies, Pope Leo highlighted something that dovetails nicely with a reading concerning the intense missionary activities of Paul and Barnabas. After noting that "The promotion of apostolic zeal among the People of God remains an essential aspect of the Church’s renewal as envisioned by the Second Vatican Council, and is all the more urgent in our own day," the Holy Father went on to note "the importance of fostering a spirit of missionary discipleship in all the baptized and a sense of the urgency of bringing Christ to all people."

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Program note: as I mentioned last October when I resumed blogging in earnest here, this will be my primary participation in social media. I will maintain my other accounts almost exclusively for the purpose of posting what I write here. Comments, while moderated, are open. I don't mind comments on my posts on other platforms, which I may or not get to. It is past time for me to make this change. I project one more post during May: Friday's traditio.

"I hope he don't hate us..."

It's Friday. Am I in love? A strange phrase that, "in love." What does it really mean to say "I am in love?" Perhaps, more to the point, what can it mean to say that?

What is love? This gets back to a familiar theme, namely that the English word "love" bears a lot of weight. Frankly, too much. Again, as my readers know Greek has four words to express different aspects this one word.

Of course, we have English words for those Greek words: for philia friendship; for eros, well, eros or erotic, which, in English, tends to be used synonymously for sex or sexual, for agape selflessness, for storge, familial love.

The Sower, by Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

As a Christian, I believe God- who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit- is love.This not, however, reversible. Love is not God. Nonetheless, this is often reversed and to ill effect and bad affect.

Because God is triune, He is love, a relational, self-giving love. God is, in a word, agape.

So, yes, I am in love, always in love. It is inescapable, try as I might to evade or avoid. Evasion and avoidance, like the original people in the garden who, after eating the forbidden fruit, tried to hide. God doesn't seek me in order to punish me. God seeks me to love me. You know what? Sometimes I would prefer punishment.

I heard something recently that struck me. A brother deacon was talking about his experience of Christ during low ebbs, during sinful times in his life. He said that it was amazing to let the Lord "love me through it." He leaned into Christ instead of hiding in the shadows of guilt and shame.

It is unavoidable, you are in God's love. It is marvelous, revelatory to revel in the love of God given us in Christ, which is the work of the Holy Spirit. To live in the awareness of God's love is to live in reality.

Sometimes I don't know if it's harder to let myself be loved than it is to love others. But then, the one necessarily precedes the other. I am not sure I am capable of loving if I don't first experience being loved.

It's very much the case that sometimes I don't want to be loved. Even worse, there are times that being loved kind of upsets me. Beyond that there are times when I want to be "loved" in a manner of my own choosing, which is a stance utterly at odds with love. It's an attempt to take when love can only be received.

Because I suck at relationships I realize the miracle performed by those who keep loving me. It's amazing. I am making peace with the fact that I am not a example of loving well but only of being loved and I am not really great at that either.

Being loved is as risky as loving. In the catechesis for his first General Audience the day before yesterday, Pope Leo taught on the Parable of the Sower found in Saint Matthew's Gospel. He said this, which very much resonated with me, even more than his exposition of Van Gogh's painting of the sower:

We are used to calculating things – and at times it is necessary – but this does not apply in love! The way in which this “wasteful” sower throws the seed is an image of the way God loves us. Indeed, it is true that the destiny of the seed depends also on the way in which the earth welcomes it and the situation in which it finds itself, but first and foremost in this parable Jesus tells us that God throws the seed of his Word on all kinds of soil, that is, in any situation of ours: at times we are more superficial and distracted, at times we let ourselves get carried away by enthusiasm, sometimes we are burdened by life’s worries, but there are also times when we are willing and welcoming. God is confident and hopes that sooner or later the seed will blossom. This is how he loves us: he does not wait for us to become the best soil, but he always generously gives us his word. Perhaps by seeing that he trusts us, the desire to be better soil will be kindled in us. This is hope, founded on the rock of God’s generosity and mercy.

I probably could've just posted that. It's useful for me to work through all of this. I pray there may be some value in it for you, too, dear reader.

Our Friday traditio is Pixies singing their song "The Vegas Suite" I think it kind of gets to our tendency to evade and avoid, inescapability, etc.

Monday of the Fifth Week of Easter

Readings: Acts 14:5-8; Psalm 115:1-4.15-16; John 14:21-26

Before you can obey the Lord’s commandment you must first know what it is. In context, the commandment to be kept is Jesus’s “new commandment” as set forth in the previous chapter of Saint John’s Gospel. This “new commandment,” as we heard in our Gospel yesterday, is that, as His disciples, we love one another as He has loved us.¹ Esto es claro, ¿si?

Christ’s love, then, is the standard. The Lord’s standard clearly exceeds my ability, even on my best days and even when it comes to my closest relationships. Hence, I must recognize my need for help to love others as Christ loves me. The help God gives me to love beyond my own capacity is grace.

Too often, I am happy whenever I live a day during which I don’t say, do, or in my heart commit some gross violation of the Lord’s command to love. In other words, a day during which there is no egregious sin of commission. Indeed, we spend a lot of time discussing and agonizing over sins of commission.

As a result, we rarely mention sins of omission- those situations in which I could’ve and should’ve done something good but did not. This is reflected in the Act of Contrition that we pray in confession between confessing our sins and receiving absolution: “In choosing to wrong and failing to do good, I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things.”

In saying this prayer, we recognize that our sins, all of them, are failures to love God above all things. In failing to do good, maybe it’s the case I love my comfort and seek to preserve it by not getting involved.

As Pope Francis noted in the wake of a very defective public exposition of the ordo amoris, one that sought let us off the hook far too easily:

The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan,”² that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception

This is the fundamental imperative of love: to do good and avoid evil. Focusing exclusively on avoiding evil is like playing not lose instead of playing to win. In 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul urges Christians to “Run so as to win.”³

A secret of the spiritual life, of a Spirit-driven life, is that the more you “do good” out selfless motives, the less inclined you are to “do evil.” “Above all,” scripture teaches, “let your love for one another be intense, because love covers a multitude of sins.”⁴

As the Lord intimates, it is not the Holy Spirit’s remit to reveal new things. All that God could reveal is revealed in and through Christ. Jesus Christ is the full revelation, the final word of God to man.

It is the Holy Spirit who seeks to bring us to an ever deeper understanding of the full revelation of God in Christ. He does this by constantly reminding us of “all” Lord has told us. Chief among these is a wholehearted love of God, which results in love of neighbor.

According to the scriptures, my love for God can only be a response to God’s love for me: “In this is love” asserts the inspired author of 1 John, “not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.”⁵ Therefore, he continues: “if God so loved us, we also must love one another.”⁶

Loving as Christ loves is what it means to be holy. Becoming holy, quite literally, consists of nothing else. "God is love."⁷ This is what makes the true God different from false, pagan gods, like Hermes and Zeus.

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1 John 13:34.^↩
2 Pope Francis. Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of the United States of America, 10 February 2025; Luke 10:25-37.^↩
3 1 Corinthians 9:24.^↩
4 1 Peter 4:8.^↩
5 1 John 4:10.^↩
6 1 John 4:11.^↩
7 1 John 4:8.16.^↩

Pope Leo XIV on the Pontificate- "loving as Jesus did"

In his homily for his Mass of Inauguration for his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV summed up the Petrine ministry beautifully in one short paragraph:

Peter is thus entrusted with the task of 'loving more' and giving his life for the flock. The ministry of Peter is distinguished precisely by this self-sacrificing love, because the Church of Rome presides in charity and its true authority is the charity of Christ. It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving as Jesus did

At least for me, Pope Leo, in addition to being his own man, combines wonderful characteristics of his two predecessors. He has the missionary fervor and deep concern for those on the periphery of Pope Francis. Like Pope Benedict, he speaks clearly and precisely from a deep well of love for our Lord and for His Church. At least in profile, he looks quite a bit like Pope Saint John Paul II.

Love is all you need, but what is love anyway?

Readings: Acts 14:21-27; Psalm 145:8-13; Revelation 21:1-5a; John 13:31-33a.34-35

"Love" is a used and abused word. In English, Latin, and in quite a few other languages, there is one word for love. Hence, this one word does a lot of heavy lifting.

In Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written, there are four words for love, each referring to a different kind of love. In Jesus' new commandment- that His disciples love one other as He has loved them- the word is agape. Agape is self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Jesus sets His love for us (collectively and individually) as the standard by which His disciples can be known. Hence, it is a love that requires us to transcend our own limitations.

Elsewhere in the Johaninne corpus this is laid out:

The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him? Children, let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth (1 John 3:16-18)

To love like Christ loves is what it means to be holy, nothing else. Literally, holiness means nothing else than loving like Christ loves me (and you, thus us). Yet, it is hard, really hard, to love like Christ loves. It is so hard that to love like Christ loves requires God's grace. Grace is the means by which I am able to overcome my limitations.

"In this is love", pay attention- "not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another (1 John 4:10-11).

Adherence to the Lord's new commandment, which can never amount to stringent rule-keeping but is always a matter of the heart, of what we might call the proper interior disposition, is how the One who sits on the throne makes all things new.

La Jérusalem céleste, extraite de la Tapisserie de l'Apocalypse du Château d'Angers, France.

Salvation history begins in a garden. It culminates, however, in a city, "the holy city, a new Jerusalem" (Revelation 21:2). A city is where people live together. Like a lot of people my age perhaps, when I think of a harmonius city or town, my mind goes to Richard Scary's Busytown. Granted, this is highly sentimental but it gives me a toehold. Perhaps a better and certainly a more theological starting point is Jacques Ellul's The Meaning of the City.

Loving like Christ loves or, stated another way, living out of Christ's for me, is how I am made new. As Saint Paul observed: "So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). This requires me to experience Christ's love, His tender gaze, His unfailing patience, His limitless mercy. Like most people, I respond to tenderness better than I respond to confrontation.

As it turns out, in the end, The Beatles were right, "All you need is love." It bears asking, à la Howard Jones, "What Is Love?" According to the Lord, the kind of love you need requires your all, requires all of you.

Newness brought about by love, by agape, is a rich vein that runs throughout our uniquely Christian scriptures. It is also why, in the words of Paul and Barnabas taken from Acts, "It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). To love the way Christ loves is suffer like Christ suffers. At the end of the day, this and only this is the cost of discipleship.

I will be the first to admit, I have a long way to go. Frankly, I suck at loving others the way Christ loves me. It's so much that I fail as it is that I often outright refuse to love. I don't only do this frequently but daily, even several times a day.

"Swim out past the breakers..."

When I decided to reinvigorate this little piece of cyber space late last year I could never have predicted all the excitement 2025 would bring. What a year so far! We've experienced the good, the bad, and the very ugly. But in the face of this, there is reason for hope. Solidarity seems to be springing up tace not just the challenges but the crises we are living. As Pope Francis noted earlier this year, while speaking in his beloved basilica of Saint Mary Major, where he was laid to rest, “Today, we are not living an epoch of change so much as an epochal change.”

In my view, the first quarter of the twenty-first century has been an awful epoch, a paradigm has emerged that badly needs to be changed. Maybe the next quarter century will be better, a time when we start asking why to technology, regulating it smartly, and rejecting stifling ideologies. Maybe it's time, to quote the late Joe Strummer, "to take the humanity back to the center of the ring..."

In the same speech cited above, Pope Francis noted: “The situations that we are living today pose new challenges which, at times, are also difficult for us to understand. Our time requires us to live problems as challenges and not as obstacles.” Above all, he reminded us, “The Lord is active and at work in our world.” The seemingly hopelessness of death overcome by unexpected resurrection.

Catholic social teaching, which is built on the pillars of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, and solidarity, offers a lot in this regard, even for non-Catholics, non-Christians, and non-believers. This is why I found the Pope's choice of the name Leo so encouraging.

Speaking of need for change, Fr. Sam Sawyer, S.J., who serves as editor of America magazine, wrote what I think is a great opinion piece for The New York Times yesterday: "Pope Leo XIV May Be a Stern Teacher for American Catholics." I won't rehash Fr Sawyer's short piece. I will just encourage you to read it.

We can all rest easy, Pope Leo is on social media.

With everything going on, I have been "blogging" up a storm. With this, I have posted as many times already as I posted last year. Of course, last year was nearly the end of Καθολικός διάκονος. Hey, it's Easter- Resurrection time!

Καθολικός διάκονος remains for me a labor of love. Writing here is something I want to do, not something I feel I have to do. I re-started in earnest because I was poorer by not doing it. From the beginning, I felt this to be part of my diaconal vocation. It is my prayer that there are others who benefit from what I post, too.

This week's Friday traditio is one of those great '90s grungy kinda ballads" "Santa Monica" by Everclear. Why? In the words of "Bluto" Blutarsky, "Why not?"

Mass of Thanksgiving for the Election of Pope Leo XIV

Readings: Acts 11:1-18; Psalm 42:2-3.43:3-4; John 10:1-10

Our Gospel today continues the theme of the Good Shepherd. While this is certainly fitting for Monday after Good Shepherd Sunday, is especially fitting for our celebration of the Mass of Thanksgiving for the election of our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV. It is important to bear in mind, as no doubt the Pope does, that there is only one truly Good Shepherd, that is, a shepherd who is good in and of Himself: Jesus Christ.

Hence, all the Church’s shepherds depend on Christ the Good Shepherd to carry out their pastoral ministry. This, of course, recalls Pope Francis’ exhortation to bishops and priests to smell like the sheep entrusted to their care. It is by being among the sheep that you come to smell like them.

Being a confidant and friend of Pope Francis, Pope Leo seems to have taken this to heart. “To be a good shepherd, our new Holy Father insisted, “means to be able to walk side-by-side with the People of God and to live close to them, not to be isolated.”¹ Priests are not doctrinal enforcers. Bishops are not managers. Popes are not kings. It was Pope Saint Paul VI who abolished the papal coronation ceremony and who retired the triregnum, the papal crown that indicated that the pope was governor of the world, which is unfitting for the vicar of the King whose kingdom is not of this world.

Pope Leo’s first words to the Church and to the world echo those of the risen Lord to His disciples: La pace sia con tutti voi!- “Peace be with you all!” In this same inaugural address, noting his spiritual heritage as an Augustinian, he quoted Saint Augustine, saying- “With you I am a Christian and for you a bishop.” Then, in his own words said, “In this sense, we can all walk together towards that homeland which God has prepared for us.”²

For those of us who follow these things closely, it was astounding that the Cardinals chose someone from the United States to serve as Roman Pontiff. But that they did. Since the instructions for this Mass both permit and even encourage sharing a biography of the new pope, it seems most fitting to do so.

With his two brothers, Robert Prevost grew up in a Catholic family, where his father served in their parish as a catechist, in the suburbs south of Chicago. Being from the south side, the Holy Father is a White Sox fan, as footage of him watching a 2005 World Series game wearing Sox jersey and jacket and the testimony of his brother demonstrate. I have it on good authority from several friends from Chicago that Catholics there tend to root for the Sox, not the Cubs. But the Pope's mother, who was from the northside, seems cast doubt on that!

Rather than entering seminary after attending minor seminary for high school, the Holy Father, matriculated at Villanova University in Philadelphia. There he studied mathematics and philosophy. After graduation, he taught math and physics to high schoolers. Eventually, he discerned a call to religious life in the Order of Saint Augustine.

Prevost earned his Master of Divinity, which is the seminary degree, from the Catholic Theological Union (CTU) in Chicago. A good friend of mine, Father J.T. Lane, who now serves as provincial for the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament for the United States, also attended CTU. Because he was the only member of his order in formation at the time, he spent a lot of time at the Augustinian house. He remembers Father Bob, now Pope Leo, as a kind, intelligent, and relatively quiet person.

At age 26, the young Robert Prevost was ordained a priest in Rome by Archbishop Jean Jadot, who has served as Apostolic Delegate to the United States (there was no nuncio until the U.S. formally established diplomatic relations with the Holy See under President Reagan) and who was then serving as President of Secretariat for Non-Christians. He then went on to earn both a licentiate and a doctorate in canon law from the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

He went back and forth between Chicago and Peru. By all accounts, in both places, the future Pontiff lived simply, even in an austere manner. Eventually, he was elected by his Augustinian brothers to serve as Provincial of the Augustinians in Chicago. He also taught canon law to seminarians both in the U.S. and in Peru. Upon election as their Prior General by Augustinians worldwide, he returned to Rome, where he lived from 2001- 2013.

After briefly returning to Chicago, in 2014 Pope Francis named him bishop of Chiclayo in Peru. In January 2023, Pope Francis called him to Rome as Prefect for the Dicastery of Bishops and created him Cardinal in the Consistory of 30 September 2023. In his address Urbi et Orbi on the day of his election, the only words Pope Leo spoke that were not in Italian (he is now the Bishop of Rome) were words of greeting, spoken in Spanish, to members of his former diocese in Peru.

Prior to Pope Francis, the last pope who belonged to a religious order was the Camodolese monk who, in 1831, became Pope Gregory XVI. So, having two popes back-to-back from religious orders is an anomaly, especially given that only thirty-four of 267 popes have come from religious orders. But then, since the establishment of Benedictines in the fifth century and the rise of the Dominicans and Franciscans in the thirteenth, religious orders have been instrumental in reforming the Church.

In his address to the College of Cardinals last Saturday, the Holy Father explained why took the name Leo:

There are different reasons for [choosing Leo], but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour³

For those who may not know, Rerum Novarum launched the Church's modern social teaching. In this letter, Pope Leo XIII noted that "Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice- with that justice which is called distributive- toward each and every class alike."⁴ Distributive justice is concerned with the just distribution of resources, goods, and opportunity in a society. Distributive justice sees to a just and equitable distribution of wealth, one in which workers share in the profits their labor generates.

It's easy to forget that in his 1991 encyclical marking the one hundredth anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Centesimus Annus, Pope Saint John Paul II warned of the spiritual vacuity of consumerism, which like Marxism, reduces the human person "to the sphere of economics and the satisfaction of material needs."⁵ Neither must we forget Pope Saint Paul VI's still prophetic encyclical Populorum progresso in which he warned that "during troubled times some people are strongly tempted by he alluring but deceitful promises of would-be saviors. Who does not see the concomitant dangers: public upheavals, civil insurrection, the drift toward totalitarian ideologies?"⁶

Speaking to journalists earlier today, the Holy Father said that Church recognizes of the witness of journalists who take risks to tell the truth.

I am thinking of those who report on war even at the cost of their lives – the courage of those who defend dignity, justice and the right of people to be informed, because only informed individuals can make free choices. The suffering of these imprisoned journalists challenges the conscience of nations and the international community, calling on all of us to safeguard the precious gift of free speech and of the press

He the same address, he noted: "The Church must face the challenges of the times...Saint Augustine reminds us of this when he said, 'Let us live well and the times will be good. We are the times.'"⁷

Pope Leo's episcopal motto is In Illo uno unum- "In the One we are one." It is in the Eucharist that the Lord's prayer to the Father is realized, if not yet fully.⁸ May God strengthen, bless, and guide Pope Leo XIV as he walks in the shoes of the Galilean fisherman. May the Good Shepherd give him the grace to serve His flock in truth and love. Vive il papa!

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1 See La Croix, "Cardinal Prevost's warning in the face of polarization," 9 May 2025.^↩
2 Pope Leo XIV. Urbi et Orbi- Prima Benedictio 8 May 2025.^↩
3 Pope Leo XIV. Address to the College of Cardinals, 10 May 2025.^↩
4 Pope Leo XIII. Encyclical letter Rerum novarum (On Capital and Labor), sec. 33.^↩
5 Pope John Paul II. Encyclical letter Centesimus annus (On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum novarum), sec. 19.^↩
6 Pope Paul VI. Encyclical letter Populorum progresso (On the Development of Peoples), sec. 11.^↩
7 Pope Leo XIV. Address to Representatives of the Media, 12 May 2025.^↩
8 See John 17:20-23.^↩