"Civility is not a sign of weakness..."

It should also sober us all to reflect on the fact that forty-nine years ago today, while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, President Kennedy was shot and killed by an assassin's bullet. This event happened almost two years before I was born.

Rather than focus on the sadness of that day, let's look back a little further to a more hopeful day, to one of the great and most memorable speeches in our great nation's history, JFK's inaugural address.

Thanksgiving borne of vexation and humility

Even given the popularity of Steven Spielberg's movie Lincoln, not to mention Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, it seems that you can't take too much for granted these days, especially when it comes to knowledge of history, which, along with the other humanities seems to be on the wane. So, for those who are unaware, Thanksgiving was declared and became a national holiday in the United States observed on the last Thursday of November in 1863, during one the most difficult times of our bloody Civil War. On 3 October 1863 President Lincoln declared that the the nation "observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens."

Anyone who has read any credible biography of our sixteenth president knows that Lincoln wrestled mightily with God. Nonetheless, he increasingly saw the Civil War as God's judgment on the nation for the evil of slavery. As a result of this conviction, in addition to giving thanks to God, President Lincoln, in his 1863 proclamation, recommended to his fellow citizens

that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to [God] for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union

What is even less well-known is that Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy, along with Lincoln, issued several such or similar proclamations during the War Between the States. You can read all of Lincoln's and Davis' wartime proclamations here.

To my mind all of this only serves to highlight something from Lincoln's still amazing Second Inaugural address, in which he observed,

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes

Humility before God befits our nation and every nation on earth. So, to both of my readers, a happy, humble, and joyful Thanksgiving!

"a mystery of ultimate eschatological commitment"

Back in January, as a result of re-reading certain sections of Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship, I posted "Discipleship costly for all who follow." To summarize:

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

Bonhoeffer, who was a Lutheran, saw in Martin Luther's movement from the world to the cloister and back to the world as precisely the movement required for a needed correction

I would be remiss to point out that is true of rather late medieval cenobitic monasticism, especially in Europe, not of early monasticism.

Last evening I came across a passage written by Paul Evdokimov, an exiled Russian who lived in Paris and who was a professor of theology at the L'Institut St. Serge, an Orthodox seminary and graduate school, and what Evidokimov writes, even keeping in mind that they are commenting on different eras. Evidokimov wrote extensively about monasticism and was cited by Pater Tom (Merton) in certain passages of Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (my favorite of his many works):

After the concordat that established the Church in history and offered it its legal status and a peaceful existence, the testimony of the martyrs concerning the last things passed over into it monasticism and was transformed there into a mystery of ultimate eschatological commitment

As anyone can clearly see, there is a tension between what Bonhoeffer, who loved monastic life, as his time as leader of the Confessing Church's school of pastoral ministry at Finkenwalde, which was the basis of his book on Christian communal life, Life Together, amply demonstrates, and what Evdokimov writes, even when accounting for the fact they are commenting on different historical periods. As a relevant side note, Life Together was published in Germany during Bonhoeffer's lifetime. In his biography of Bonhoeffer, Dr. Schlingensiepan noted that at the beginning of his stay with the Benedictines of Ettal, where he worked on his Ethics (a most amazing book, the potential of which even today remains all to unexplored- this is another convergence between Bonhoeffer and Pater Tom, interest in a meaningful ethics), while actively participating in the conspiracy against Hitler, the discovery of which would lead to his martyrdom, Bonhoeffer "was not completely unknown to his hosts, as the abbot and some of the monks had read Life Together and wanted to discuss it with him" (pg. 253).

Reading his latest book, Dangerous Calling: Confronting the Challenges of Pastoral Ministry, Paul Tripp, while expounding on the necessity of Christian community for an authentically Christian life, mentions in passing, as a settled matter-of-fact, the failure of monasticism. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that we are perhaps turning full-circle, transitioning back to the time before the flight into the desert, when the Church's comfortable and even peaceful existence can no longer be taken for granted. This is starting to be noticeable even in the West, which is the product of Christianity (Europe is not really a geographic entity).

Among the most notable evidences of this are the failed attempt to have the Christian foundation of Europe acknowledged in the disastrous and (hopefully) now dead European Constitution, as well as the exaltation of a phrase from a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson to John Adams late in life, in which he mentions the "wall of separation" between Church and State" (at the time a rather eccentric view), to the status of infallible interpretation of the first liberty set forth in the Bill of Rights, as well as the on-going attempt to chip away at religious liberty, seeking to reduce it merely to the right to worship, limiting the Church to what we do within the walls of the Church.

Our current situation calls for a new synthesis, not unceasing political activism. It seems to me that this synthesis must arise from the tension between Evdokimov and Bonhoeffer. Perhaps this is why Pater Tom remains so relevant. This also helps us grasp Karl Rahner's insistence that unless all Christians became mystics, there will be no Christianity. We have lost sight of the fundamental fact that nothing can be accomplished without contemplation. Or, as Pater Tom stated, "action is the stream, and contemplation is the spring."

In this context I am tempted to continue, particularly writing about the (over)use and abuse of religious language, which is what made Bonhoeffer say, when he was a prisoner seeking to minister to his fellow prisoners, we must speak to people in a non-religious language.

Another partial fragment

I have several posts in the works presently. I don't really do much refining. Blogging for me is a partial and fragmentary exercise, hints of what I might seriously engage if I were an academia nut (Yes, I've been dying to use that for awhile now).

I learned today from a friend who also blogs (I hate using "blog" as a verb, yet I do it) that that the USCCB hosted something called Bishops & Bloggers. He was joking about the fact that he wasn't invited. I told him that he could rest easy because I wasn't either, despite the fact that my bishop serves as chairman of the USCCB's Committee on Communications. But what's a blogger to do?

For anyone who is truly a blogger, the answer is simple: write about it, whatever it may be.

It's worth pointing both of my readers in the direction of myfriendwhoalsoblogs' post, which is really a very good reflection on the dialectical tension generated by authentic faith. Besides, where else are you going to find a character from Narnia (the "backsliding" Susan) and The Who narratively linked together?

"Hot water bleeding our colors"

A long week on the road. I've been too tired to post anything. I did make a trip to a local bookstore where I've been staying this week. I found a little book by a philosopher I haven't seriously engaged for a number of years, the late Jacques Derrida. The book is Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. It is an interesting book, containing two of Derrida's essays, to begin as I finish Schlingensiepen's biography of Bonhoeffer.

Derrida began his essay "On Forgiveness" by noting something that should be obvious, but is not: "In principle, there is no limit to forgiveness, no measure, no moderation, no 'to what point?'"

As a Christian, this puts me in mind of an episode in the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel: "Then Peter approaching asked him, 'Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus answered, 'I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times'" (Matt. 18:21-22). The number seven appears in the Bible around six hundred time. It is a number that means fullness, completeness,and/or totality. In Hebrew, the word meaning seven is derived from the Hebrew word that means “to be full,” "to be satisfied," and "to have enough." Derrida's beginning also reminded of Brian Zahnd's amazing book Unconditional?: The Call of Jesus to Radical Forgiveness.

Our traditio this week is Cold War Kids' song "Hang Me Out to Dry."

Careless in our summer clothes, splashing around in the muck and the mire

Forty-seven years ago

Today is my forty-seventh birthday. It's strange how I experience my life. Over the past few years, since turning forty-five, I realize that I am no longer young, but neither am I old. Nonetheless, it still took me awhile to concede to being middle-aged, but that is what I am, I suppose.

Quite providentially I was born on the Feast of St. Martin of Tours (something I note on my blog each and every year). For those unfamiliar with this great saint, whose cultus has been in steep decline for several centuries, he was a holy bishop who lived in the fourth century (316-397). Despite becoming a catechumen at age ten, he did not become a Christian until later, until, while serving as a Roman soldier, he had a profound conversion by means of an encounter with a beggar; living proof of what Don Giussani asserted when speaking to the Pontiff late in life, "the true protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man's heart, and man's heart that begs for Christ." When I think of this marvelous saint, I think of being that beggar covered with his cloak.

Below is a lovely picture of St. Martin's tomb, in the Basilica of St. Martin, which is in Tours, wonderfully provided for me today by a friend. I plan someday to make a pilgrimmage there.

The convergence of St. Martin's Feast, the Armistice that ended World War I, Veteran's Day, and Remembrance day, along with it also being the birthday of Fyodor Dostoevsky, but also of Magda Goebbels, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Alger Hiss. All of this makes it a wonderful day for an ordinary person like me to have my birthday. I've always found it easy to feel connected to and, in a very small and even insignificant way, part of history. Time, indeed, is a river.

Feast of St. John Lateran

Today we also mark the Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran, which serves as the Pope's cathedral as Bishop of Rome, celebrated by Roman Catholics throughout the world. The reason today's feast is a universal feast and not limited to the Diocese of Rome, as it was initially, is that the Cathedral of St. John Lateran is the mother Church of all Christendom. Hence, today's feast is one of unity, that is, communion with the Holy Father.

Pope Benedict on the cathedra in St. John Lateran

The second reading for this morning's Office of Readings is from a sermon by Saint Caesarius of Arles, which begins: "My fellow Christians, today is the birthday of this church, an occasion for celebration and rejoicing. We, however, ought to be the true and living temple of God...God does not dwell only structures fashioned by human hands, in homes of wood and stone, but rather he dwells principally in the soul according to his own image and fashioned by his own hand. Therefore, the apostle Paul, says: The temple of God is holy, and you are that temple."

In his homily for the Mass of Possession of the Chair of the Bishop of Rome, delivered on 7 May 2005, the Holy Father said, "Presiding in doctrine and presiding in love must in the end be one and the same: the whole of the Church's teaching leads ultimately to love. And the Eucharist, as the love of Jesus Christ present, is the criterion for all teaching. On love the whole law is based, and the prophets as well, the Lord says (cf. Mt 22: 40). Love is the fulfillment of the law, St Paul wrote to the Romans (cf. 13: 10)."