Pentecost

"When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

"Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, 'Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God' (Acts 2:1-11).

Jews from every nation were gathered in Jerusalem for Shavu'ot, the Festival of Weeks, also known by its Greek name, Pentecost. This festival is written about in the Torah (i.e., the Pentateuch) in Leviticus 23:15-16.21: "Beginning with the day after the sabbath, the day on which you bring the sheaf for elevation, you shall count seven full weeks; you shall count to the day after the seventh week, fifty days. Then you shall present a new grain offering to the LORD... On this same day you shall make a proclamation: there shall be a declared holy day for you; no heavy work may be done. This shall be a perpetual statute through all your generations wherever you dwell."

In addition to being an agricultural festival marking when the first fruits were harvested and brought to the Temple, known as Hag ha-Bikkuri (i.e., Festival of First Fruits), it is also a celebration of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, and is also known as Hag Matan Torateinu (i.e., the Festival of the Giving of Our Torah).

Pentecost, then, is the surest proof that as Christians we are not People of the Book, but People of the Holy Spirit, who is the risen Christ's resurrection presence in and among us, the Gospel being poured into our hearts, transforming us and empowering us to transform the world- "Come Holy Spirit and fill the face the of earth!"

Sex and sanity: knowing who('s) you are

Few topics draw as much interest as sex. It doesn't really seem to matter what aspect of sex you might be discussing, be it encouragement to healthy sexuality or discussing the less healthy aspects of it. This goes to show how obsessed we are with sex and how confused we are about this aspect of being human. I readily acknowledge that few things turn people away from discussions of sex than getting all doctrinal about it, or a long discourse on chastity, especially when chastity is used as a code word for the inherent "badness" of sex. Nonetheless, I think it very worthwhile to quote what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about chastity:

Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being. Sexuality, in which man's belonging to the bodily and biological world is expressed, becomes personal and truly human when it is integrated into the relationship of one person to another, in the complete and lifelong mutual gift of a man and a woman.

The virtue of chastity therefore involves the integrity of the person and the integrality of the gift (par. 2337)

I think this helps us tremendously because it tells us a lot about our sexuality, which is part and parcel of our humanity, but only a part. In other words, we are not defined by our sexual preferences of proclivities. This is why I don't define myself as an heterosexual. I am a male human being who is heterosexual, but there is a lot more about me than that, Deo gratias!

This evening, as we enter into the great Feast of Pentecost, a day when the Sacrament of Confirmation is often administered by bishops in their cathedrals, it is important to ruminate on our true identity. The Lord Jesus' confirmation took place immediately following His baptism by John in the river Jordan: "On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased'" (Mark 1:10-11). The word we use to describe this mystery, "confirmation," is used in a very ordinary sense. What was confirmed as Jesus came up out of the water was His identity as the Father's only begotten Son. What is confirmed when we are anointed is our baptismal identity as children of the Father, through Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. For a Christian, this is who you are, it precedes and under girds anything and everything else about you!

St. Paul is very adamant about this throughout his letters. This is what he meant when he wrote to the Church in Corinth, "So whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Cor. 5:17). While this is by no means limited to our sexuality, it certainly includes it. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, the apostle, after likely writing about the immorality of engaging pagan temple prostitutes, the apostle wrote: "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). The exploitative nature of ancient temple prostitution was highlighted by Pope Benedict in his first encyclical, Deus caritas est, in answer to the question Nietzsche posed and answered in the affirmative, Did Christianity destroy eros? The Holy Father noted that, like many other ancient cultures, the Greeks thought of eros "principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a 'divine madness' which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness" (par. 4). In part, the way this understanding was religiously and cultically lived out was through "'sacred' prostitution which flourished in many temples. Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine" (par. 4).

The religion of Israel always stood in opposition to this deformed religion, even in the northern lands of Israel, where such fertility cults flourished to the point that many Israelites, who were always called back to fidelity to their covenant with God, participated. The Holy Father insisted that this was by no means a rejection of eros, but a vehement rejection of what he described as "a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it" (par. 4). He goes on to note explicitly something Paul only implied in the sixth chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians, namely that the temple prostitutes, whose job it was "to bestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing 'divine madness': far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited" (par. 4).

The pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake is not, Pope Benedict insisted, "an ascent in 'ecstasy' towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man" (par. 4). Hence, to be truly human, "eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns" (par. 4).

In his apostolic exhortation, Familiaris consortio, Blessed Pope John Paul II, who more than any other pope, and probably more than any bishop even prior to becoming pope, understood and articulated the sacramental nature of marriage, noting that like all of the seven sacraments, marriage "is a real symbol of the event of salvation" (par. 13). As with each sacrament, the sacrament of matrimony is a symbol of the event of salvation in a particular and unique way (par. 13). Because spouses participate in the sacrament of matrimony precisely as a couple, the first effect of marriage, according to Pope John Paul II, is "the Christian conjugal bond," which he identifies as "a typically Christian communion of two persons” because it is symbolic of the mystery of Christ’s nuptial relationship to the church (par. 13; Ephesians 5:32). Then he noted something that is vitally important, namely that conjugal relations between spouses constitute the “content” of their participation together "in Christ’s life" (par. 13).

This is so, John Paul II reasoned, because "conjugal love involves a totality, in which all the elements of the person enter- appeal of the body and instinct, power of feeling and affectivity, aspiration of the spirit and of will" (par.13). Hence, marital love, which is conjugal by nature, seeks the realization of inter-personal unity in which becoming one flesh in and through sexual union is necessary in order for the spouses to form "one heart and soul" (par. 13). This is perhaps the primary reason that marriage is indissoluble and requires spousal fidelity to the other "in definitive mutual giving; and it is open to fertility" (par. 13).

The surety of confident silence

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh?' he whispered.

"'Yes, Piglet?'

"'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"

This post is a collaborative effort between A.A. Milne, my lovely friends Marymargaret and Lara Serene, and me. I guess you could call this sentimentality, but it is really nostos algos, a longing for home.

"The Greek word for 'return' is nostos. Algos means 'suffering'. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return" (Milan Kundera). If I were forced to pick a musical selection for this today, it would have to be There is a light that never goes out.

"There's always someone around you"

Our traditio for what is shaping up to be a dark, rainy Friday here along the Wasatch Front is The Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning." This is one of three beautiful and wistful songs about Sunday morning, which retains, even in our rapidly de-Christianizing culture, a day apart. The other two songs that come to my mind are "Sunday Morning Coming Down," especially as sung by Johnny Cash, and Morrissey's "Every Day is Like Sunday", which was a traditio several years ago. Are there others? If so, drop a comment.

Sunday morning/brings the dawn in/it's just a restless feeling by my side

Year B Solemnity of the Ascension

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ps 47:2-3.6-9; Eph. 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20

On this Seventh Sunday of Easter we are celebrating the Solemnity of the Ascension of our Lord, Jesus Christ, which is ordinarily and by ancient tradition celebrated forty days after Easter, meaning it always falls on a Thursday. We learn from our reading of the Acts of the Apostles that during the time between Christ’s resurrection and ascension into heaven that He appeared to the apostles “during forty days” and spoke to them “about the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3), teaching them the doctrines of the kingdom. What Jesus taught the apostles between the time of His resurrection and ascension is traditionally known as The Gospel of the Forty Days.

The Gospel of the Forty Days is important because as the fathers of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council stated clearly in their Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, “there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and Sacred Scripture” (par. 9). They went on to note that both Sacred Scripture and sacred tradition flow “from the same divine wellspring” and “merge into a unity and tend toward the same end” (par. 9), namely making known the Lordship of Jesus Christ, in and through whom the Father revealed all there is to reveal. We consider the writings that comprise the Bible to be Sacred Scripture because each one was written “under the inspiration of the [Holy] Spirit” (par. 9). Sacred tradition works in a slightly different way; by handing on “the word of God entrusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the Apostles” and their successors “in its full purity, so that led by the light of the Spirit of truth, they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it, and make it more widely known” (par. 9). The English word “tradition” comes from the Latin noun traditio, which, in turn, derives from the verb tradere, which means to hand over, to give for safekeeping. So, our English word “tradition” can be used as both a noun and a verb referring both to what is handed on as well as the act of handing on.

The Gospel of the Forty Days constitutes the foundation of sacred tradition. The fathers of the Council of Chalcedon, which was the fourth ecumenical council, held in 451 AD, whose main contribution was the dogmatic definition of what we call the hypostatic union, that is, the uniting of two natures, one human and one divine, in the single person of Jesus Christ, in their concluding statement of faith, made the claim that everything the council taught came from a single authority: “the Holy Scriptures as Christ had interpreted and fulfilled them according to tradition” (Pelikan, Acts 38). Just as Jewish tradition holds that there was an oral Torah given to Moses during his forty days on Mount Sinai alongside the written Torah, Christian tradition has constantly held that what Jesus taught the apostles during these forty days is an oral Gospel, alongside the written Gospels (Pelikan 38). As we look forward to our celebration of Pentecost next Sunday, let’s not forget that Pentecost was and remains a Jewish Festival that celebrates Moses receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Because the Acts of the Apostles is a follow-on to St. Luke’s Gospel, we can see that Christ’s post-resurrection instruction began on the road to Emmaus, when, before making Himself known in the breaking of the bread, He instructed the two distraught disciples, interpreting “to them what referred to him in all the scriptures… beginning with Moses and all the prophets” (Luke 24:27).

A part of the Gospel also included in our first reading today, an aspect we must not neglect, even though it is often dealt with in various silly ways, something we must believe with divine and catholic faith, is our conviction and hope that Jesus Christ will return in glory. As the apostles stood looking up as Christ ascended, the angels said to them, “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). Hence, being a Christian does not consist of standing there dumbstruck looking up to heaven, but calls us to full engagement in the world, making way for God’s kingdom by seeking to bring it about “as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ” (Roman Missal).

This brings us to our Gospel, which is St. Mark’s version of the Great Commission, wherein Jesus tells His disciples, “go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). The Lord then makes it clear to them that this is a matter of life and death, a matter of the utmost urgency, meaning nothing is more important (Mark 16:16). I recently saw the results of a poll that indicated only 38% of Catholics in the United States believe they have a duty to share their faith. My brothers and sisters, this means that 62% of us don’t grasp what our Lord commanded, what Pope Benedict XVI has said repeatedly, reiterating something emphasized by two other very evangelical popes, Paul VI and John Paul II, that the Church is missionary by her very nature and will be until Christ returns. So, if you are a baptized believer, you are part of the Church’s mission, meaning you are a missionary. It’s striking, especially in light of the angels’ exhortation to the apostles in Acts, that after relating that Jesus “was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God” (Mark 16:19), the sacred author begins his next sentence with the disjunction “But.”- “But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs” (Mark 16:20). Of course, the Lord worked with them and confirmed what they taught by accompanying signs by the power of the Holy Spirit, which descended upon them at Pentecost.

For Christians marriage "is a status, an office"

"Marriage is more than your love for each other. It has a higher dignity and power, for it is God's holy ordinance, through which he wills to perpetuate the human race till the end of time. In your love you see only your two selves in the world, but in marriage you are a link in the chain of the generations, which God causes to come and to pass away to his glory, and calls into his kingdom.

"In your love, you see only the heaven of your own happiness, but in marriage you are placed at a post of responsibility towards the world and mankind. Your love is your own private possession, but marriage is more than something personal—it is a status, an office. Just as it is the crown, and not merely the will to rule, that makes the king, so it is marriage, and not merely your love for each other, that joins you together in the sight of God and man. As high as God is above man, so high are the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of marriage above the sanctity, the rights, and the promise of love. It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love."

Maria von Wedemeyer

The above is a wedding sermon written while Dietrich Bonhoeffer was in prison. It is important to note that prior to being arrested, imprisoned, and ultimately hung naked with a wire just days before Germany's surrender that Bonhoeffer was engaged to be married to Maria von Wedemeyer. They were never married.

Simon, Alexander, and Rufus

In my post last Monday for the Feast of St. Mathias, the thirteenth apostle, I mentioned Simon of Cyrene, who, we learn from reading St. Mark's Gospel, was the father of Alexander and Rufus. I made the comment that it seems Simon, Alexander, and Rufus were known members of the earliest Christian community in Jerusalem. Well, this aside prompted my dear friend and brother deacon Norb, who is always educating me in reality, to convey to me that my writing about this family reminded him of a friend of his who is an African-American minister. This friend of Norb's heads up several independent pentecostal churches that are notable for the fact that they are bi-racial, which is awesome, given that Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours of the week in the United States.

It was this friend who let Norb know that Simon of Cyrene is held in high esteem by African-American Christians because he was from Cyrene, which is in modern-day Libya, that is, Africa. He is identified by many as a black African, along with his sons Alexander and Rufus. Of course, this has a lot of implications that can be easily unpacked.

Now, whether Simon was actually black is a matter of dispute. It is most likely that he was a Jew who had either immigrated to Jerusalem, or was in town on an extended stay for Passover. It seems to be a well-established archaeological fact that the ancient Mediterranean city of Cyrene had a large Jewish community. It is also pretty well-established that in Jesus' day the Jews of Cyrene had a synagogue in Jerusalem where they gathered for major feasts, such as Passover and Pentecost.

An ancient tradition has it that Simon's sons, Rufus and Alexander, became missionaries. One attempt at validating this tradition, given that Mark's Gospel originated from Rome, is to suggest that naming these brothers by name indicates they held some standing within the Christian community in ancient Rome. Some even hold that the "Rufus" Paul named in Romans 16:13 is Simon's son. Some also link some or all three with the "men of Cyrene" mentioned in Acts 11:20.

This brings us full-circle. Perhaps Rufus bears some resemblance to Chris Rock after all.