"That long black cloud is comin' down"

Our one day late Friday traditio is Bryan Ferry covering my all-time favorite Bob Dylan song, which for me is like a hymn: "Knocking on Heaven's Door." As both of my long-time readers know, a few years ago I posted several covers of this song. Frankly, we're overdue. Bryan Ferry covers Dylan frequently and beautifully.

A deep diaconal bow to my friend Mark for opening to me the panoply of Bryan Ferry's Dylan covers. This one goes out to Mac who is headed to Seattle this morning and is truly knocking on heaven's door, as is Tami this weekend. Bring them both healing and wholeness and give them the peace that only You can give.

Lord Jesus you told us that the Father has handed "all things" over to You because only You know the Father. You reveal the Father to us through your gentle love, which is why You say, "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:27-30- ESV).

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

The deacon proclaims the Gospel

In the course of the Sacred Liturgy there are several times when the ministers say prayers sotto voce, as it were. One of those times is immediately following the reading of the Gospel, when the deacon, or, in his absence, the priest, according to the Missal, whether in the Ordinary or Extraordinary Form:

Then he kisses the book, saying quietly:

Through the words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.

Gospel book cover with central carving by Jonathan Pageau

In Latin:

Per evangelica dicta deleantur nostra delicta.

It is also interesting that in a Church built facing east, that is, ad orientum, originally meaning the altar was against the east wall towards which the priest, the other sacred ministers (i.e., deacon and subdeacon, and, in a Pontifical Mass sung by a bishop, the assisting priest), and servers faced when at the altar (the congregation always faced that way), that the deacon sang the Gospel from a special ambo facing north, not west towards the congregation. Why north? There are two reasons. The first and most practical being that the deacon should not turn his back to the altar or priest. As a result, in such a configuration, he is not able to face the congregation full-on. Facing north, then, represents what might be called the half-way solution. There is also something to be said for the reasoning that, given the Mediterranean locus of the Church's ancient origin, north, in the words of Martin Mosebach, "is the abode of the pagans." So, the Good News is broadcast through the wall to those who have not yet heard and received it. I like the second reason much better. I agree with Mosebach who asserts, "We should almost always be suspicious of these attempts to derive [liturgical] practices from profane utility."

I agree that one of the legitimate criticisms of the Ordinary Form, the so-called Missal of Pope Paul VI, is the insistence on being so didactic, so linear.

Matthias or Rufus: the thirteenth apostle

Contrary to Kevin Smith's assertion in his movie Dogma, the thirteenth apostle was not a black man named Rufus, but St. Matthias, whose feast we celebrate today.

According to Acts 1:15-26, Matthias was chosen to take Judas Iscariot's place among the apostles:

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.” And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles (Acts 1:21-26-ESV)

It's not as though there is no Rufus in the New Testament, however. According St. Mark's account of our Lord's Passion, Simon of Cyrene, who was enlisted to help Jesus carry His Cross, was the father of Alexander and Rufus, indicating that Simon and his sons were members of the early Christian community, perhaps known to some of the readers, or at least known to the author of the Gospel. In this regard, it is interesting to note that a very ancient tradition holds that the origin of Mark's Gospel is the preaching of St. Peter in Rome.

"Deus caritas est"

At the beginning of a homily delivered quite a few years ago, Msgr. M. Francis Mannion noted that to profess that God, as a communion of divine persons, is love is quite different from professing that love is God. After all, syntax matters, n'est ce pas? Because God is love, God loves us. How do we know God loves us? Is God's love simply a nice sentimental thought that gives us a warm feeling inside as we take a stroll at sunrise? What about those times when life proves difficult, challenging, even excruciating? Our New Testament reading, or, in Anglican parlance, lesson for this Sixth Sunday of Easter tells us how we know: "In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10). God's love comes first, seeking to elicit our response.

God's love is not sappy, soggy, and sentimental intended to give us a case of spiritual diabetes, but real and reliable, proven through crucible of experience. most especially through suffering. I think this is an appropriate enough Scripture for Mother's Day because perhaps the closest human analog to the God who is love is a mother's love for her child. Of course, this can't help but put us in mind of the great Mother of God, Mary most holy, who was, as the wise, old Simeon predicted, pierced by a sword on account of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Being selfless, dying to ourselves and living for others for Christ's sake and the sake of God's kingdom is the call of every Christian and the hallmark of a true disciple. Plus, it's difficult even to the point of being impossible to do it on our own, which is why Jesus said of Himself with regard to us: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends" (John 15:13).

Our failures constitute Christ's victory

Jesus' Easter victory is our victory, or so we profess, at least according to the logic of lex orandi, lex credendi (literally- the law of prayer is the law of belief, more accurately how we pray articulates what we believe). I'm going a bit more radical, a bit more Martin Luther, who, in a letter to Philipp Melanchthon wrote: "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly. For he is victorious over sin, death, and the world. As long as we are here we have to sin. This life in not the dwelling place of righteousness but, as Peter says, we look for a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells." This is actually to take one's cue from St. Paul, who wrote to Christians in ancient Rome: "Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 5:20-21 ESV). I would suggest that our failures are Christ's victory.

Christ Triumphant Over Sin & Death, by Peter Paul Reubens ca. 1615-1622

"For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith" (1 John 5:4- ESV). This is why Christians should never be discouraged. Discouragement means you are relying on yourself, thinking you are your own savior, which leads to the temptation of giving up, throwing in the towel. Friends, we know how it ends, we win! We are always already victorious. So, be neither afraid nor discouraged. It's like going to confession. We don't go to confession to find out whether God will forgive us. We're always already forgiven. We go to experience God's love and mercy firsthand, up close and personal.

This is the boldness of the Gospel, which is why it is attractive and doesn't need to be watered down, to be made difficult because of our individual and sometimes collective need to feel we are righteous, which is nothing but self-righteousness. The Church is screwed up because we're screwed up, which is why we chose and were called to belong to Christ, who is ever-faithful, especially when we are not.

"All your yesterdays are pictures lost in time..."

Okay, still chillin'. I have a post for tomorrow and one for Sunday, which feels pretty good. I am late with this week's traditio, which is a brand new one by The Offspring, "Days Go By."

This is one of those songs that struck me the first time I heard it:

Never enough/Towers crumble to dust/Looking back on the moments of our lives... What you had and what you lost/They're all memories in the wind/Those days go by/And we all start again

"on Easter morning, there begins the new creation..."

Well, dear readers, my unplanned and unexpected Easter blogging hiatus keeps expanding. Now that we are well into the month of May, which is the month of our Blessed Mother, I hope to post several times a week, including our Friday traditio and a reflection on the Sunday readings, focusing on either the first reading or the New Testament reading.

One great advantage of this Easter season for me has been the great gift of time, which I have spent reading and absorbing, instead of trying to read synthesize and write about. I am firmly convinced that anyone who writes, in order to write anything worth reading, must spend at least as as much if not more time reading than writing.

A lot that I would have normally commented on has transpired over these weeks, both in the Church and in the world. I am not going to make any attempt to get caught up. A few years back I proposed for Christian bloggers what I dubbed "the Ephesians 4:29 rule," which bids bloggers to heed the exhortation given to members of the ancient church at Ephesus: "Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear" (ESV). I feel more and more compelled to follow this because I personally tire of what I call scandal-mongering. As a certified and long-time member of the loosely constituted Catholic blogosphere I am well aware that when I weigh in on whatever controversy is currently brewing or bursting in some part of the Church the number of people who read what I write increases. It is the Catholic blogosphere's version of "if it bleeds it leads."

One of the many books I have read over these blessed weeks of Easter is Martin Mosebach's The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy. While there is much in his treatment of the post-Vatican II liturgical reform I take issue with, there are, at least in my view, many more valuable insights. In an appendix to his book of short essays and insights entitled "This Is My Body," Mosebach includes an extract from Charles Péguy's profound poem "The Portal of the Mystery of Hope":

"Jesus Christ, my child, did not come to waste the little time
      he had in telling us trifles.
What are three years in the life of a world?
What are three years in the eternity of this world?
He had no time to lose, he did not squander it on tomfoolery
      and guessing games,
intellectual guessing games,
subtle charades,
riddles,

ambiguities and wretched strained witticisms.
No, he had neither time nor effort to lose.
He didn't have the time.
 - Oh, tremenedous efforts he had to make! -
No, he did not prodigally pour out his whole being,
he did not make this vast, terrible self-emptying,
this emptying himself, of his being, of everything,
and at such a price,
merely to give us coded messages to work out,
tricks to solve, silly pranks, sleight of hand,
clever deceptions like a village sorcerer,
like a country trickster,
like a vagrant fool, like a quack in his cart,
like the local card-sharper, like the most cunning fellow
      in the tavern."

Then, seeking to demonstrate this, Mosebach continues by saying, "Péguy expresses what emerges from the Gospels' literary context" even as he "expresses something that goes beyond this context." Noting that in this magnificent poem Péguy calls Jesus, who Mosebach descibes as "the man who in all earnest refers to a piece of bread as his body," Salvator mundi. In this poem Péguy, according to Mosebach, "professes the Church's faith that Jesus is God's Son, the second Person of the Trinity, who became a creature to rescue creation." Then Mosebach provides us with a lovely exposition of Holy Week:

Holy Week mirrors the six days of creation with astonishig exactness: on the first day of creation, when light was created, Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph. On Holy Thursday, the very day the mammals were created, he eats the Easter lamb. On the day when man was created, the God-man (crucified over what, according to an ancient tradition, was the site of Adam's grave) redeemed mankind, which had sinned in Adam. On the day when the Creator God rested, Jesus lay in the tomb. Then, on Easter morning, there begins the new creation of humanity that is now able to free itself from its inherited burden of guilt

It's still Easter and during the glorious spring weather we're enjoying here along the Wasatch Front it is easy to experience this, especially on a glorious Sunday such as this when creation is so in synch with the mysterium tremendum of the Paschal Mystery.