"They say time takes its toll on a body..."

Yes, I know Randy Travis is a drunk, an alcoholic, who, despite his earlier fame fortune can't seem to get his act together. He's country music's version of Amy Winehouse or Lindsay Lohan, someone we collectively laugh at, belittle, etc. No doubt, due at least in part to his heavy drinking, Travis is lingering in a Texas hospital experiencing congestive heart failure, then having a stroke. Just a little while back Travis was arrested, again, for drunk driving.

It's easy to forget why we know and maybe even care about Randy Travis, he's great songwriter. So, our traditio is "Forever and Ever Amen," performed at the Grand Ole Opry. Besides, it's been far too long since I've dedicated one of these to my lovely wife. More important than my love for you, is yours for me, especially given my many failures and multiple weaknesses.

Randy's predicament reminds of the fidelity my Grandma showed in the face of Grandpa's drinking problem. True love, precisely because it is selfless, is rarer than people think, but an amazing thing to behold.

It reminds of something Giussani said about true love, referring an elderly couple he said to her husband of fifty or more years, a woman could be hairless and toothless and him she is the most beautiful woman in the world.

Mark Driscoll, who frequently says lamentable things, recently struck gold by saying that your wife is your standard of beauty. Maybe he's been reading JPII, doubt it, but we can wish.

This week we're going for the liturgical day Friday and posting it a bit early:

Randy, I hope you get well soon. Hang in there brother.

Ramadan Mubarak

For Muslims throughout the world, today is the start of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. During this time Muslims fast, even from water, between sunrise and sunset. When the sun sets, the fast is broken by the itfar, a communal meal. As with the other so-called Abrahamic faiths (i.e., Judaism and Christianity), prayer, along with other spiritual practices, such as holy reading, increased attendance at communal worship, along with alms-giving go hand-in-hand with fasting. As I never tire of mentioning (truth, especially that born of and only verified through experience, bears repeating), prayer tends to be subjective and alms-giving, or serving the less fortunate, can be too outward directed, thus does fasting play an important integrating function, locating the inward and outward directly in our bodies, helping us to constantly purify our motives.

It is significant that before Ramadan ends that the Eastern Christian Dormition Fast, leading up the Solemnity of the Bodily Assumption (called the Dormition- falling asleep- by most Eastern Christians) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which goes from 1 August- 15 August, begins. Hence, creating an overlap of a few days, which is appropriate and perhaps even provendential given that Mary is venerated among Muslims.

I think it especially important in these times when humanity seems to me to be so divided, plus being the Year of Faith ushered in by the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, even while keeping in mind the plight of my Christian brothers and sisters in Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Libya, and elsewhere, that we are once again reminded of the words of the Council's Declaration Nostra Aetate: On The Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions:

The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth, who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom (par. 3)

In light of my several recent posts on the vital importance of memory, the word "forget" in the English text is not lost on me. The Latin word in the editio typica is obliviscentes, from oblivisci, which can also mean "disregard," or "neglect." It seems to me that forgiveness can accurately be described as choosing to disregard a wrong inflicted, choosing to neglect it rather to focus on it, which amounts to a refusal to nurse grudges.

It seems to many people in the West that the holy month of Ramadan is all over the Gregorian calendar. It seems this way because it is! The Islamic holy year, of which Ramadan is the ninth month, is reckoned in a lunar manner, not a solar one. So, to all my Muslim friends here and abroad, as well as to my few Muslim readers, Ramadan Mubarak; Ramadan Kareem. Through your fasting, prayer, and care for the poor, may the God of Abraham draw you closer to himself and make you instruments of his peace.

During this month I am going to watch the amazing movie Of Gods and Men.

Truth: "a question of...deep memory"

The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path (Lumen Fidei, par. 25)

To lose faith simply means to forget, or worse, to renounce memory, which, as Milan Kundera has so forcefully noted many times, is an evisceration of conscience.

Just think of the "unbaptize" movement that gained so much attention a few years back. Whatever the circumstances, even if it occurred when you were an infant and you have no personal, immediate memory of that event, if you were baptized, then you were baptized. It is a fact, something that really happened.

While you remain free, you cannot erase the fact, even the memory because you are not the only one who remembers. If nothing else, it is recorded in a big book that sits at the parish in which your baptism occurred and is, no doubt, recorded in heaven. We can rest secure in the fact that God remembers all. Jesus said: "Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows" (Matt. 10:29-31).

Hence, rooted in my own pastoral experience of helping to reconcile people back to the Church, even many who are understandably embittered, it seems to me that a big part of evangelization, at least in the U.S., is helping people remember their experience of what God has done for them in Christ.

Today as you celebrate the Eucharist do not forget that it is an act of calling to mind in order to make present (i.e., anamnesis). This is why, to quote Archbishop Javier Martínez, "the Eucharist is the only place of resistance to annihilation of the human subject." All of this even before considering what it means to deliberately forego participating in the Eucharist of a Lord's Day.

Lord, I remember. Help me in my forgetfulness!

Lumen Fidei: the witness of Father Abraham

I wish that Pope Francis' first encyclical Lumen Fidei had been made public, promulgated as it was on 29 June, the great solemnity of the Apostles Sts. Peter & Paul, prior to me composing my post "Our need to separate how from why," if for no other reason than being able to cite this passage from it:

God’s word, while bringing newness and surprise, is not at all alien to Abraham’s experience. In the voice which speaks to him, the patriarch recognizes a profound call which was always present at the core of his being... For Abraham, faith in God sheds light on the depths of his being, it enables him to acknowledge the wellspring of goodness at the origin of all things and to realize that his life is not the product of non-being or chance, but the fruit of a personal call and a personal love. The mysterious God who called him is no alien deity, but the God who is the origin and mainstay of all that is (par. 11)

Since I am currently leading on Bible study on the Letter to the Hebrews, it bears noting that, as Christians, we acknowledge Abraham as our father in faith. Because of faith (which can only be faith in the true and living God), not being his genealogical descendants, he is our father.

Abraham is first mentioned in the Letter, which most New Testament scholars believe is really an ancient homily, in the second chapter (2:16), but only in passing. He is not mentioned again until the sixth chapter, where we read:

When God made the promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, "he swore by himself," and said, "I will indeed bless you and multiply" you. And so, after patient waiting, he obtained the promise. Human beings swear by someone greater than themselves; for them an oath serves as a guarantee and puts an end to all argument. So when God wanted to give the heirs of his promise an even clearer demonstration of the immutability of his purpose, he intervened with an oath, so that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge might be strongly encouraged to hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil..." (6:13-19)

Abraham figures prominently in the seventh chapter of Hebrews, but is not mentioned again until chapter eleven. It is in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the chapter that begins by defining faith (i.e., "Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen" 11:1), that we read-

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise; for he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God (11:8-10ff)

Milan Kundera on memory and conscience- Updated

In my post "Memory and Morality: God remembers all," I wrote about the central role that memory plays in the works of Milan Kundera, literary works that I cherish and to which I return time and again. Kundera certainly grasps the necessity of remembering in order for there to be truth. Nonetheless, he also grasps that human beings are, due to our limited nature, forgetful creatures. In this he would not differ with Pope St. John Paul II, who insisted that the purification of memory consisted first and foremost in remembering accurately and not evading evil episodes, or even trying to tidy them up, or explain them away. After all, to forgive can never mean to forget, at least not entirely. To do so would wipe away the significance of forgiveness itself!

In his second encyclical, Spe salvi, on the theological virtue of hope, Pope Benedict XVI noted something of tremendous importance: "justice and grace—must be seen in their correct inner relationship. Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened" (this also serves to remind me that I need to re-read Derrida's "On Forgiveness," something I read last fall on an airplane and prompted many thoughts).

Reading from the same book of Kundera's essays, Encounter, last night I read something that helped me to tie up a loose end concerning memory and the gap between believing and not believing in God. The essay that contained the clarification is entitled "The Total Rejection of Heritage, or Iannis Xenakis (a text published in 1980 with two interventions from 2008)." The enlightenment comes from Kundera's first 2008 intervention, when, remarks on his initial response to re-reading his essay on what the musci of Xenakis meant to him after the 1968 Soviet invasion of his native Czechoslovakia:

Reading my old text, seeing the phrases "my nation had just gotten a death sentence" and "the catastrophe that had struck my country...and whose consequences will be felt for centuries," I felt a spontaneous urge to obliterate them, since these days they can only seem absurd. Then I got a grip on myself. And I even found it rather disturbing that my memory should think to censor itself. Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth...

Russian tanks roll through Prague, Spring 1968

... if we we forget our state of mind back then, there is no way to understand anything

Of course, his desire to revise what he wrote in 1980 clearly arose, in 2008, from the fact that Czechoslovkia no longer existed, there is the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, neither of which are under either Soviet or communist domination. In other words, he was tempted to see his 1980 observations as incorrect, inaccurate, in need of revision, or obliteration. He realized that such a revision is a gross violation of conscience, what happened in the interim notwithstanding. It also reminded him of the transitory nature of all earthly things. Does this not reveal the beauty of Eastern Christian response to someone's death, "May his memory be eternal"?

Update: Just this morning, as I resumed my initial reading of Pope Francis' and Pope Benedict's collaborative encyclical, Lumen Fidei, I was struck by this (which, in my view, is pure Ratzinger)- "The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness" (par. 25).

Pope St. John XXIII, pray for us

It really was not my intention to give Pope St. John XXIII short shrift yesterday. To make amends, below is a list of posts going back several years, with a preponderance from last year, here on Καθολικός διάκονος concerning Good Pope John:

30 Nov. 2006- "Papal Coronation of Blessed Pope John XXIII"- links to videos no longer active (you can find them on YouTube)

28 Oct. 2007- "Il Papa Buono-Bl. John XXIII remembered"

1 Nov. 2007 (All Saints Day)- "Good Pope, bad assessment"

5 Jan. 2012- "Bl. Pope John XXIII and the convening of Vatican II"

1 Feb. 2012- "Bl. John XXIII and the plight of Italian hens"

3 Feb. 2012- "The Council and updating canon law"

3 Feb. 2012- "The surprise of Vatican II"

20 Feb. 2012- "The task of Vatican II: Regum Dei"

20 Feb. 2012- "Libertas ecclesiae: freedom for the truth"

11 Oct. 2012- "Year of Faith"- whole text of Pope St. John's address to open the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council

Pope St. John Paul II, pray for us

Oh glorious day! Pope John Paul II and Pope John XXIII will be added to canon of saints!

Pope John Paul II, I have no doubt, is one of the main reasons I am a Catholic. In my estimation, he was the towering figure of the last half of the twentieth century. I have shared this here before, but I have a most vivid memory of Pope John Paul II's election in October 1978, when I was in seventh grade and staying at what was then my grandma's fairly remote farmhouse. It was like I felt a jolt of electricity pass through me when I saw this man, having no idea who he was apart from being the new pope.

Since today marks the public promulgation of Pope Francis' first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, let's look at Pope John Paul II's first encyclical, promulgated in March 1979, Redemptor Hominis. Here is the opening sentence: "The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history."

What else would I post today for our Friday traditio except this from Pope John Paul II's 1979 Apostolic Journey to United States, delivered in Boston, his first stop?

Pope John Paul II's fellow Pole, Artur Sebastian Rosman, on his new and very worthwhile blog, Cosmos The In Lost, posted something very good about what the witness of John Paul II at the end of his life means to atheist psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, "Kristeva’s Declaration of Dependence: On JP2.". I urge you to read the whole thing, it is really quite amazing, even stunning in certain respects, but I was struck by this, referring to John Paul II in his last years, Kristeva wrote, 'the body of the handicapped pope was and remains and invitation to know life up to its limits. And to develop this solidarity with people who are dependent–the handicapped or the aged–which modern humanism has so much difficulty doing."

My lovely wife and I have started to plan out pilgrimage to Rome. we marked our twentieth anniversary last month, but didn't have the opportunity to do anything befitting such an auspicious event. I think perhaps this was in the cards all along. The date has yet to be announced.

None of this is to slight Good Pope John, but Pope John Paul II's canonization is something very personal, even immediate, for me.