Divine Mercy Sunday: Jesus, I trust in You

Readings: Acts 4:32-35; Ps 118:2-4.13-15.22-24; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31

Over the years I have posted a lot about Divine Mercy. The main reason for this is that I became well-acquainted with St Faustina, not then a saint and barely a "Blessed," and the Divine Mercy devotion in my early years of being a Roman Catholic. Given the key role Pope St John Paul II played in my conversion, my interest in the Divine Mercy devotion is rather predictable. Back in February 2013, while leading a retreat at National Shrine of Divine Mercy, I was privileged to meet Maureen Digan, who was miraculously healed of lymphedema while praying at St Faustina tomb. I pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy often (I try every day to recite at least a few of these prayers during the afternoon 3 o' clock hour- the hour of mercy- and say the Chaplet on Friday during that same hour, as well as keeping the Divine Mercy Novena, which begins each year on Good Friday). Many times throughout the course of almost every day I utter the words, "Jesus, I trust in You."

Because the Sacraments of Baptism and Penance are so closely linked (Penance being an extension of Baptism) celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday on the Second Sunday of Easter always strikes me as pitch perfect. The first gift the Risen Lord gave to His Church after His glorious resurrection was the sacrament of Penance, which is the sacrament of Divine Mercy. Of course, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that all of the sacraments are outpourings of Divine Mercy. Why was this gift His first gift to His Bride after His rising from the dead? Just think about how virtually all of the Twelve beat feet as soon as Jesus' sorrowful Passion began. Consider especially Peter's three-fold betrayal, which is depicted so dramatically by the Evangelists.

Rather than obsessing over the betrayal of the Twelve, consider your life since your own Baptism. I can only comment about myself: I was baptized twenty-five years ago at the age of 24. My post-baptismal life has been far from perfect! I am grateful for the Father's mercy given us through the Son by the power of the Spirit in the Sacrament of Mercy.

Our reading from the fifth chapter of 1 John summarizes what I am trying to communicate beautifully:

In this way we know that we love the children of God when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith. Who indeed is the victor over the worldbut the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (verses 2-5)

In both teaching and counseling I often tell people that I don't go to confession to admit my failure. Confession is where I go to claim the victory Christ won for me over sin and death!

Mercy is necessary to live the abundant life that Christ's Easter victory, which is our victory, bestows on us by the Holy Spirit's power. What does life in the Spirit look like. For this we need to look back to the primitive Church in the immediate aftermath of the first Christian Pentecost. So, our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles gives us a fairly detailed idea of this life. These three verses are worth considering here in their entirety:

The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common. With great power the apostles bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great favor was accorded them all. There was no needy person among them, for those who owned property or houses would sell them, bring the proceeds of the sale, and put them at the feet of the apostles, and they were distributed to each according to need (Acts 4:32-35

Let me be clear, while we may believe without seeing, we do not need to believe without experiencing firsthand for ourselves the effects of Christ's resurrection, which is nothing other than Divine Mercy. The sacraments remain the chief effects of that cosmos-shattering event. So, never hesitate to avail yourself of Divine Mercy.

Jesus, I trust in You.

Doubting Thomas, belief, unbelief, certitude, defeasibility

In our Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter, which is Divine Mercy Sunday, taken from St John's Gospel, Jesus says to "Doubting Thomas," "Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed" (John 20:29).

I'll be honest, people who claim and act as if they have no doubts frighten me. They frighten me whether they believe in God or not. I sometimes wonder, "Don't aggressive atheists ever doubt their unbelief?" On the whole, believers seem pretty straightforward in admitting that we sometimes doubt. 

In his posthumously collected and published work On Certainty, Wittgenstein made an important distinction "between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain.'" He goes on to note that this distinction isn't really a significant one at all, "except where 'I know' is meant to mean: I can't be wrong" (3e). Hence, when Von Balthasar, Giussani, Ratzinger, et al. insist that faith and reason work together to help us arrive at knowledge, they are not making a mistake by including faith in their epistemological assertions.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, by Caravaggio, ca 1601-1602

In his book The Religious Sense Giussani gives a rather detailed example of how it is we employ what can really only be called "faith" to grasp even everyday things that we would not hesitate to say we "know," even while admitting there is a possibility we're wrong. Giussani rightly points out "that man can err using the scientific, philosophical, or mathematical methods" (22). His point is that making a mistake when employing one of these methods does not necessarily invalidate the method being employed. One the things about which Giussani was fervent is that faith, too, must have a method. Such a method is not something esoteric, or even really unique to believers.

The late Michael Spencer, better known, perhaps, as the "InternetMonk," or, simply "IMonk," once confessed: "I wonder if God exists. I sometimes see the universe as an empty place. Oh, I frequently see it filled with the glory of God and singing his majesty with all its created energy. I’m often filled with the assurance of faith. But not all the time. Sometimes tragedy, emotion, age, disappointment, depression, dark moods….they visit me and I doubt. I wonder and question. This is my human experience. God gives me faith. My humanness still gives me doubt."

Some knowledge claims can only be sensibly arrived at by the use of what is called defeasible reasoning. Defeasible reasoning is a certain type of non-demonstrative reasoning. By non-demonstrative is meant that one does not arrive at a complete or definitive demonstration of the knowledge claimed by employing defeasible reasoning. When it comes to God, when it comes to the great question of being (Why are there things rather than no-thing?), so painstakingly retrieved by Heidegger, how could it be otherwise?

Very often it seems to me that unbelievers claim to have much more certitude than most believers would ever dare claim. Personally, I don't think that kind of certitude has much epistemic warrant. Rather, I think the mystery of being requires a lot of humility for believers and unbelievers alike.

"And there I find You in the mystery"

In his homily for the Easter Vigil, which he celebrated in St Peter's Basilica on Saturday night, Pope Francis said:

“Entering the tomb”. It is good for us, on this Vigil night, to reflect on the experience of the women, which also speaks to us. For that is why we are here: to enter, to enter into the Mystery which God has accomplished with his vigil of love.

We cannot live Easter without entering into the mystery. It is not something intellectual, something we only know or read about… It is more, much more!

“To enter into the mystery” means the ability to wonder, to contemplate; the ability to listen to the silence and to hear the tiny whisper amid great silence by which God speaks to us (cf 1 Kings 19:12).

To enter into the mystery demands that we not be afraid of reality: that we not be locked into ourselves, that we not flee from what we fail to understand, that we not close our eyes to problems or deny them, that we not dismiss our questions…

To enter into the mystery means going beyond our own comfort zone, beyond the laziness and indifference which hold us back, and going out in search of truth, beauty and love. It is seeking a deeper meaning, an answer, and not an easy one, to the questions which challenge our faith, our fidelity and our very existence.

To enter into the mystery, we need humility, the lowliness to abase ourselves, to come down from the pedestal of our “I” which is so proud, of our presumption; the humility not to take ourselves so seriously, recognizing who we really are: creatures with strengths and weaknesses, sinners in need of forgiveness. To enter into the mystery we need the lowliness that is powerlessness, the renunciation of our idols… in a word, we need to adore. Without adoration, we cannot enter into the mystery

For this Friday in the Octave of Easter our traditio is Hillsong's "Oceans (Where Feet May Fail)," which complements the words of the Pontiff very well, at least I think it does:

The historical reality of Jesus Christ

For Easter I am delving into the the Acts of the Apostles. I am doing this by means of reading two books: Jaroslav Pelikan's theological commentary on Acts, published as part of the excellent Brazos series of theological (as opposed to exegetical) commentaries, and the late German New Testament scholar, Martin Hengel's Acts and the History of Earliest Christianity.

Hengel, a Lutheran who died in 2009, left a legacy of truly important New Testament and early Church scholarship. He had no patience for the pointless speculation that often flies under the flag New Testament scholarship. His work has the kind of scholarly precision that speculators and generators of fanciful tales that pass for source criticism would rather avoid. 

He taught primarily at the University of Tübingen, but also the University of Erlangen. The story of his quest to be a full-time scholar is quite an interesting one. You can read a short biography here. 

Along with Peter Stuhlmacher, Otfried Hofius and Hartmut Gese, Hengel formed what was sometimes called "the second Tübingen school," the first, or original "school" being that of the hyper-liberal scholars, who rejected much of what is orthodox Christianity on the basis of their often rather dubious exegetical methodologies. Central to those belonging to this so-called second school was a "biblical theology in which Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and Son of God who gave his life as an atonement for the sins of the world..."

Hengel's work was mentioned by Pope Emeritus Benedict in his letter to Piergiorgio Odifreddi, a mathematics professor at the University of Turin, author, and outspoken atheist- something of an Italian Dawkins: "I recommend especially the four volumes which Martin Hengel (an exegete of the Protestant Theological Faculty of Tübingen) published together with Maria Schwemer: it is an excellent example of historical precision and of the broadest historical knowledge."

The Morning of the Resurrection, by Edward Burne-Jones, 1882

Hengel's book on Acts is an edited edition of a seminar he led in Tübingen in the mid-1970s, parts of which he delivered as lectures elsewhere later. In the first chapter, entitled "Sources of the History of Earliest Christianity," Hengel wrote about the essential harmony of the Gospels, even as he insisted that the author of John's Gospel was aware of Mark's work but used it critically. The main point I want to draw from this chapter is a point well-known to those who are very familiar with basic Gospel studies. I pass it along because Hengel made this point so well and, of course, because it is Easter:

Finally, the dominant goal of all four evangelists is the account of Jesus' arrest, condemnation and execution on the cross in Jerusalem and the subsequent Easter events, the discovery of the empty tomb or the appearance of the risen Christ" (20)

A bit later in the opening chapter, Hengel takes aim at something that, inexplicably, seems to be a working assumption among many New Testament scholars: "The idea cherished by form critics for decades, of individual traditions completely detached and in 'free circulation' as isolated units, is just as unrealistic as the attempt to write a life of Jesus" (25). This follows on the heels of Hengel's insistence that, even if we reduce what we know about Jesus of Nazareth to what is credible, we probably know more about Him than we do about virtually anyone else in antiquity. By asserting that it would be "unrealistic" to "attempt to write a life of Jesus," he was referring back to his response to the silly observation, usually employed to assert outrageous things about Jesus, that it is not possible to write a biography of Jesus that "could stand up to the demands of modern historiography" (24).

Like any scholar, Hengel's work is not above reproach or immune from criticism, but, in the view of many, his work is a corrective, bringing a healthy, well-reasoned, and historical rigor to New Testament studies.

Rosaria Butterfield: sexual sin is enslavement

What can I say, when it rains, it pours? This, at least for me, is especially true when it comes to posting here these days. I apologize up-front for all the links in the post that follows below.

Today, a friend of mine, a brilliant guy, who is one of the most diversely talented people I know, even though our acquaintance thus far has been exclusively on-line, Dr. Michael Martin, brought to my attention an article posted this Easter Monday over on Desiring God, a Reformed Christian website. The piece, "The Dead End of Sexual Sin," was written by Dr Rosaria Butterfield, about whom I have posted previously (see "God's kingdom, a place of unimaginable hospitality"). Back in November 2012 I read Rosaria's autobiography The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert (I also plan to read her expanded version, to which I provided the Amazon link). I read her story in less than 24 hours.

While she did not go into much detail about this in her autobiography, Rosaria divulged that she was raised Catholic. She wrote about a discussion with the Reformed pastor who was instrumental in her conversion, about having a pretty religious upbringing. She also mentioned being confirmed. Sadly, she wrote about the reason she left the Catholic Church: when she was in her mid-teens, one for her friends, also a teenager, divulged that she was having a sexual relationship with one of the priests at their parish.

In "The Dead End of Sexual Sin," Butterfield notes the instrumentality of the writings of Puritan theologian John Owen, especially his book (originally published, as she noted, as three separate books) Overcoming Sin and Temptation, in her transformation- hers is a great testimony to how we must cooperate with God's grace at work in us.

What is notable about John Owen and several other of the best Puritan writers is that they actually maintained and built upon much that was Catholic, especially much that was monastic, á la Luther via St Bernard of Clairvaux (see "'Homo curvatus in se' - attempt at skimming the surface," "Jesus came to liberate you: faith and works revisited," "[T]hese benefits shed like dew from heaven upon us," and "Discipleship costly for all who follow"). In terms of how sin works in our souls, Owen remains a good diagnostician and gives his readers many good prescriptions, like immersing oneself in Sacred Scripture. But I'll bet, like many others, especially many who have left, Rosaria never learned anything like this as a Catholic, which I find deeply distressing.

Given all the battles over sexual identity, as someone who was quite easily and comfortably a lesbian, Rosaria Butterfield's credibility, whether you agree with her or not, is unimpeachable. Hence, I really appreciate this from today's article:

Be wise about your choice sins and don’t coddle them. And remember that sin is not ever “who you are” if you are in Christ. In Christ, you are a son or daughter of the King; you are royalty. You do battle with sin because it distorts your real identity; you do not define yourself by these sins that are original with your consciousness and daily present in your life

And this, which is found a bit further on- "Indeed, our identity comes from being crucified and resurrected with Christ." She is referring, of course, to the new life we receive in Baptism, which is really what Saturday's Paschal Vigil was all about. In Butterfield's article this is indicated by her citation of St Paul from his Letter to the Romans (6:4-6).

Even as a Reformed Christian, Rosaria Butterfield would agree that the central sacraments are Baptism and the Eucharist (for her and other Reformed Christians these remain the only sacraments). Yesterday I began reading Jaroslav Pelikan's theological commentary on the Book of Acts, in which he pointed out that, according to the theology of Acts, Baptism, not the Eucharist, is "the sacramental foundation of the church" (40). It seems to me that this was a major issue for the Reformers and also why there was so much emphasis placed on the importance of Baptism at the Second Vatican Council - which, in my view, was the Catholic response to the Reformation, whereas Trent, in many respects, was the Catholic Church's reaction to it, as necessary as it may have been at the time - and the universal call to holiness that arises from being baptized.

Being baptized means dying and rising. Dr Butterfield describes this beautifully throughout her article, but particularly towards the end:

In the writings of John Owen, I was shown how and why the promises of sexual fulfillment on my own terms were the antithesis of what I had once fervently believed. Instead of liberty, my sexual sin was enslavement. This seventeenth-century Puritan revealed to me how my lesbian desires and sensibilities were dead-end joy-killers.

Divine Mercy: from competition to complementarity

Just about every year during Easter week, as we approach Divine Mercy Sunday, which is the Second Sunday of Easter, there arises some tension between those of us who have a devotion to Divine Mercy and the vast majority of Catholics who do not. As with all things of this nature both sides have people on the extremes: on one side, there are those who think that preparing for Divine Mercy Sunday by praying the novena of Divine Mercy is, or at least ought to be, obligatory and, on the other, those who insist that it gets in the way of both the Triduum (the novena begins on Good Friday) and our celebration of Easter itself, and should, for this reason, actually be avoided.

It seems to me that Roman Catholics have become very adept at creating false dilemmas. I find this all the more puzzling because part of the Catholic genius is to take a both/and, or, as it is expressed in Latin, et/et (i.e., and/and- this and that, rather than this or that), approach whenever possible. Taking such an approach does not mean failing to recognize that there are some genuine dilemmas, divergences that cannot be reconciled in light of God's revelation. To wit: praying the novena of Divine Mercy is absolutely not obligatory for anyone at all, just as praying the Rosary, or any other devotion, is not.

But isn't it great that there are many thousands, perhaps even tens or hundreds of thousands, of people who observe these holy days by making recourse to Divine Mercy by observing the novena? It seems to me that the genuine dilemma when it comes to Divine Mercy is, are we to view it as somehow in competition with our observance of the Lord's death, burial, and resurrection, or as a complement to it, whether we chose to participate or or not?

For sure, devotions, which proliferated during the centuries when people often felt themselves to be spectators at the liturgy, should not obscure or in any way obstruct our view of the central of mysteries of our faith. Ideally, devotions should not only make these clearer, but be a means of our entering into them more fully. Hence, for some they can be a distraction, but for others an efficacious means of grace. This requires something to which we pay a lot of lip service, but shrink from actually doing because it can be difficult- making a spiritual discernment. In other words, two very spiritually discerning people can arrive at opposite conclusions about their personal devotion to Divine Mercy.

My response to the question posed above can easily be guessed: rather than view Divine Mercy as somehow in competition with the Triduum and the octave of Easter, I think we should view it as complementary, even should you choose not to pray the novena or feel in anyway obligated to incorporate the Divine Mercy devotion into your own spiritual life. Undeniably, the first gift the risen Lord gave to His Church after His resurrection was the Sacrament of Penance. In our Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Easter, Jesus says, "'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained'" (John 20:21-23).

This gift of mercy, of forgiveness, of reconciliation, instituted by Christ Himself as a sacrament, is only made possible because of His death and resurrection. He then sends those on whom He "breathed" to bestow this on the whole world. I can't imagine how this does not merit a lot of serious consideration during Eastertide. Praying the Divine Mercy novena in advance of Divine Mercy Sunday strikes me as one very specific and concentrated way of keeping this is the forefront of one's awareness, but it is by no means the only way to do so.

After a pause, due to the busy-ness of Holy Week and the Triduum, I resumed reading Fr Jim Martin's Jesus: A Pilgrimage this morning. The chapter I read was on the Beatitudes. Looking at the Beatitude that bids followers of the Risen One to be merciful, mindful of the fact that while the Gospels were composed in Greek, Jesus spoke Aramaic, or perhaps Hebrew (the two languages being closely related), Fr Martin proposes that we consider the very plausible idea that when Jesus taught this He may well have used the Hebrew word chesed for what we read in English as "mercy" or "merciful."

Fr Martin rightly notes that translating chesed as "mercy" "doesn't do it justice" (173). He turns to the well-known expositor of the New Testament, William Barclay, who wrote: "Chesed, mercy, means the ability to get right inside other people until we can see things with their eyes, think things with their minds, and feel things with their feelings" (Martin 174). At least according to Barclay, mercy contains a heavy does of empathy. I think this is applicable to the annual tension that arises among many Roman Catholics during the Octave of Easter over Divine Mercy.

Pope Francis' gift to pilgrims

Based on the evidence, it seems that Pope Francis, who recently declared an extraordinary Jubilee of Divine Mercy, which will begin later this year on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception and end on the Feast of Christ of the King in 2017, has more than a passing familiarity with and more than a general appreciation of Divine Mercy. This was evidenced by, among other things, a gift he gave to pilgrims who gathered in St Peter's Square back in November 2013. The Holy Father gave the pilgrims what he called "medicine". This "medicine" came in a box that contained a rosary along with the chaplet of Divine Mercy. At the top of the broadside of the box, in big, blue letters, appeared the word Misericordia (i.e., "Mercy"). He told those in St Peter's Square, to whom he gave these boxes, that it was "a spiritual help for our soul and to spread love, forgiveness and fraternity everywhere."

Jesus, I trust in You.

Urbi et Orbi Easter 2015

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS

Easter 2015

Dear Brothers and Sisters, Happy Easter!

Jesus Christ is risen!

Love has triumphed over hatred, life has conquered death, light has dispelled the darkness!

Out of love for us, Jesus Christ stripped himself of his divine glory, emptied himself, took on the form of a slave and humbled himself even to death, death on a cross. For this reason God exalted him and made him Lord of the universe. Jesus is Lord!

By his death and resurrection, Jesus shows everyone the way to life and happiness: this way is humility, which involves humiliation. This is the path which leads to glory. Only those who humble themselves can go towards the “things that are above”, towards God (cf. Col 3:1-4). The proud look “down from above”; the humble look “up from below”.

On Easter morning, alerted by the women, Peter and John ran to the tomb. They found it open and empty. Then they drew near and “bent down” in order to enter it. To enter into the mystery, we need to “bend down”, to abase ourselves. Only those who abase themselves understand the glorification of Jesus and are able to follow him on his way.

The world proposes that we put ourselves forward at all costs, that we compete, that we prevail… But Christians, by the grace of Christ, dead and risen, are the seeds of another humanity, in which we seek to live in service to one another, not to be arrogant, but rather respectful and ready to help.

This is not weakness, but true strength! Those who bear within them God’s power, his love and his justice, do not need to employ violence; they speak and act with the power of truth, beauty and love.

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