Our Lady's Rosary, updating Guardini III

The First
Luminous Mystery

The Baptism

"... Who was Baptized for us."

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. John tried to prevent him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and yet you are coming to me?" Jesus said to him in reply, "Allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he allowed him. After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened [for him], and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove [and] coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Matt 3:13-17)

The Father declares His pleasure with His Son before Jesus begins His public ministry. Jesus is not accepted by the Father after He has done what the Father finds pleasing. The Father is eternally "well pleased" with His Son. The Father is pleased with the Son because the Son is. This is true paternity. Divine love is the pattern for all paternity.

In all four Gospel accounts of Jesus' encounter with John the Baptist, the Baptist recognizes Jesus as the One whose forerunner he is. In John's Gospel, the Baptist sees Jesus on two consecutive days. Upon seeing Him, John, the seal of the prophets, proclaims: "Behold, the Lamb of God" (John 1:29.36).

Il Battesimo di Cristo by Giotto, ca. 1305

It is easy to miss that, in addition to being baptized, Jesus is also confirmed on the banks of the Jordan. What is confirmed, or made more certain? His identity as the only begotten Son of the Father. He is anointed directly by the Spirit. He does not need mediated signs and symbols, a prayer invoking the Spirit, or sacred chrism. He is the Anointed One, the Messiah. Hence, the theophany.

The Lord's Baptism makes explicit what, until now, is implicit. Even so, His identity as the Lamb of God, the only begotten Son of the Father, remains discernible only to those with eyes to see and ears to hear. Grasping that Jesus is the Lamb of God, points to the understanding that He is bound to become a sacrifice. It is not intuitively obvious to casual observers that Jesus is "the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

Just as Mary received what could easily be taken as a rebuke by her Son after she reproved Jesus for staying behind in the Temple when he was twelve years old (Luke 2:48-49), no doubt His departing from Nazareth to do His Father's will, which led Him to the Cross, was painful for His Mother to accept.

In addition to being the eternally begotten Son of the Father, Jesus is also the time-begotten Son of Mary. Just as in His divinity He is one in being, or consubstantial, with the Father, so in His humanity He is consubstantial with His Blessed Mother and, through her, with us. It is the mystery of Jesus' full divinity and full humanity that enables us to become children of God and, by extension, children of Mary, through rebirth in Baptism. At the risk of turning apologetic, this is why an orthodox understanding of who Jesus is remains so important for giving Baptism its ontological, as opposed to merely canonical, validity. Like Jesus, our Baptism makes what is implicit explicit. God made us and redeemed us for Himself because Deus caritas est ("God is love").

While His Baptism makes Jesus known publicly, it is not until He emerges from the wilderness, where He is led to be tempted of the devil, that His public ministry begins in earnest.

While this is longer than Guardini's "interpretations" of the mysteries of the Rosary, I reach nowhere near his depth. I am not surprised. Four more to go and so, to be continued...

Our Lady's Rosary, updating Guardini II

After his first mention of the mysteries of the Rosary towards the end of the fourth chapter of Part 1 of The Rosary of Our Lady, the next place Romano Guardini mentioned the sets of mysteries that together make up the Rosary in its entirety is in his introduction to Part 2.

Fr Romano Guardini walking in the foreground

In the 1998 Sophia Institute Press' paperback edition of The Rosary of Our Lady, Part 2 is entitled, "A Short Interpretation of the Mysteries of the Rosary." It is in this section that Guardini next mentioned the cycles of mysteries that together compromise the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the edition I am using, it is the second paragraph of page 65. Below is my attempt to integrate the Luminous mysteries into the introduction to Part 2. Again, my words are in brackets. I think figuring out what words of von Schuecking's translation I have changed is easy enough:

There are [twenty] such mysteries, divided into [four] cycles named in accordance with their character: the Joyful, [the Luminous], the Sorrowful, and the Glorious Rosary. The first one contains the events of Jesus' childhood, the second those of His [earthly ministry], [the third] those of His Passion and death, [and the fourth] those of His glorification. In this way they span His whole life, and, united with His own, the life of Mary

Again, it surprises me that the lacuna between the Joyful and Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary remained all the way until 2002, when Pope St John Paul II added the Luminous mysteries. In order, the mysteries of Light are: His Baptism by John in the Jordan, the Miracle at the Wedding Feast of Cana, His Proclamation of the Gospel after His 40 Days and Nights in the Desert, His Transfiguration, and His Institution of the Eucharist.

It seems pretty obvious that the three cycles did not, as Guardini suggested, span the whole of the Lord's life. There was a huge gap between the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph finding Jesus in the Temple, which is the last of the Joyful mysteries, and His Prayer in the Garden, which is the first of the Sorrowful mysteries. What happened during that "time"? That was the "time" of what is reckoned to be His approximately 3 years of ministry, which culminated, at least in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e., Matthew, Mark, and Luke), with His going up to Jerusalem, where the events of His Passion, death, and Resurrection occurred.

Next comes the difficult part - providing "A Short Interpretation" of the 5 Luminous mysteries. I am doing this for no other reason than I want to as a devotional act during Lent. Yes, it's weird being me. I happen to like it.

To be continued...

Our Lady's Rosary, updating Guardini I

One of the books I am reading for Lent is the late Romano Guardini's little tome The Rosary of Our Lady. I read much of the book over Advent, but laid it aside for reading during this season due to other, more pressing, things. Since Guardini originally wrote the book in 1955 (he composed it in German with the title Rosenkranz unserer lieben Frau) and died in 1968, the book knows nothing of the Luminous Mysteries added to Our Lady's Rosary by Pope St John Paul II in 2002 in his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae. The Luminous Mysteries fill a lacuna in the mysteries of the Rosary by proposing mysteries of the Lord's earthly life and ministry for our contemplation along with the mysteries surrounding his birth, passion, and resurrection.

In addition to reading Guardini's little book over the first part of Lent (Guardini's depth makes up for any perceived lack of breadth, one of his short chapters gives me more than enough to reflect on), I wanted to attempt to integrate the Luminous mysteries into the book. This requires supplementing his text in some places as well as composing a whole new chapter on these light-filled mysteries.

The first place in the book where Guardini broke the Rosary into its constituent mysteries was in Part 1, Chapter 4, entitled simply "Mary". In the Sophia Institute Press paperback edition, first published in 1998 as an exact reprint of their 1994 hardbound edition, translated by H. von Schuecking, Guardini's mention of the mysteries of the Rosary begins at the bottom of page 38 and continues on page 39. It consists of one paragraph. Below is my attempt to integrate the fourth set of mysteries, named Luminous, into that text. My additions are in brackets. I think the changes to von Schuecking's translation are pretty obvious:

As a doctoral candidate in Germany in the 1980s, Pope Francis considered writing his dissertation on Guardini. Sadly, he did not complete his doctorate

The whole, as it is expressed in the chain of beads, includes five decades and thus forms a cycle of five mysteries. There are [four] such cycles. The first is the Joyful Rosary; its mysteries deal with the sweetly serene and yet overshadowed youth of Jesus. [Second, the Luminous Rosary, which begins with Jesus' Baptism by John in the river Jordan and concludes with His Institution of the Eucharist, is concerned with the mysteries of the Lord's earthly ministry. The third], the Sorrowful Rosary, comprises His death on the Cross. [The fourth], the Glorious Rosary, deals with the glory of His Resurrection and Ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and Mary's fulfillment

The passage in Chapter 4 that struck me today was Guardini's answer to the question, "Who is Mary?" In reply, he wrote:

Let us say it as simply as it can possibly be said: she is the woman for whom Jesus Christ, the Son of God and our Redeemer, became the main purpose of life. This fact is as simple and at the same time as far beyond all human understanding as is the mystery of our Lord's Incarnation (pg 33)

Every Sunday before one of our parish's three Masses, which includes our vigil Mass on Saturday evening, we pray the Rosary together. Various groups in the parish send representatives to lead us in this prayer. Being the deacon of the parish, at least for now, I have the privilege of leading on my own. So, this morning, prior to the 9:00 AM Mass, I had the privilege of the leading my sisters and brothers in praying Our Lady's Rosary. We prayed the Luminous mysteries, which seemed wholly appropriate for this First Sunday of Lent.

To be continued...

Misery is the need for mercy

Readings: Gen 2:7-9.3:1-7; Ps 51:3-6.12-13.17; Rom 5:12.17-19: Matt 4:1-11

Lie/die; lying/dying. These may seem like random associations, but random they are not. Words that rhyme have at least that in common, which is a lot, especially when one thinks of that most effective means of human communication: poetry. In today's first reading we hear about what we have simply come to know as "the fall." We did we fall from? The succinct answer is grace. We fell from God's grace. You see, God made us to live in a state of grace, which is an old-fashioned and somewhat stilted way of pointing to the fact that we are made for communion: communion with God, communion with each other, and communion with the whole of creation.

Our deadly fall from grace was the result of believing a lie. When it comes to the account of the fall in Genesis, as well as to both creation accounts, taking it too literally drains the narrative of much of its revelatory meaning. What is easy to overlook is how true, how utterly brilliant, are these pre-historical narratives in telling us, not how things came to be, but why there is something rather than nothing. At the end of the day, as fascinating as discovery can be, how questions are not nearly as interesting as why questions. Investigating the how of things, which often fills the investigator with wonder and awe, seems almost always to lead to asking Why? The account of the fall in Genesis is an inspired way of telling us how the world, how our lives, came to be in the state they're in. Humanity's alienation from God because of sin is real, observable, and empirical.

Even if you don't believe in God it's likely you very often experience the world as a messed up place. In fact, the very real problem of evil, what philosophers and theologians call theodicy, is one of the main reasons many people lose faith in God. To see how messed up things are, however, you need to look no further than yourself, your own thoughts, words, and actions. Again, whether you believe in God or not, you are implicated in the messy state-of-the-world today. Hopefully, you are also implicated in efforts to overcome the world's messiness, as well as your own.

In the account of the fall, the serpent tells two lies. The woman recognizes and rejects the first lie, which is the question about God telling her she could not eat from any of the trees in the garden. The truth of matter is, she was free to eat from each and every tree in the garden, except "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" God put in the middle of garden. The second lie was that eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would make the woman (and the man) "like gods." Being like god, or being God, enables one decide for herself what is good and what is evil. It is a rejection of one's creaturliness, a denial of that fact she did not make herself. It was this second lie for which the woman fell and fell hard, as did the man subsequently, predictably falling for a far less subtle argument. Lest we be too hard her, it's the lie we fall for every time we sin too.

Sin is knowing that something is wrong, having some understanding as to why it is wrong, perhaps even believing that it is wrong in our more lucid moments, and yet choosing to do it anyway. This often takes the form of what we call rationalization, which simply means, in God-like fashion, granting yourself an exemption from the truth. In the words of St Paul from the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans- "They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and revered and worshiped the creature rather than the creator" (Rom 1:25). The lie for which the woman fell in Genesis is the same lie we believe over and over. As a result, we sometimes seem stuck in the swamp of our own making.

Far from being God's punishment, the result is what naturally follows not only believing, but living a lie. This is why today we can sing our Psalm response with great fervor: "Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned." Our Psalm this morning is Psalm 51, sometimes known by its old Latin name the Miserere, which comes from the Psalm's first words: "Have mercy on me..." To be miserable is to be a person in need of mercy. During Lent, in place of the Gloria, after the Confiteor or penitential litany, we sing, or say, Kyrie eleison, Christi eleison, Kyrie eleison, which is Greek for "Lord, have mercy, Christ, have mercy, Lord have mercy."

In our New Testament reading from St Paul's Letter to the Romans we receive hope. Sin and death do not have the last word, at least not if you don't want them to have it. In this passage, the apostle assures his readers that God has heard their cries for mercy and has taken pity on their misery: "And the gift is not like the result of the one who sinned. For after one sin there was the judgment that brought condemnation; but the gift, after many transgressions, brought acquittal" (Rom 5:16). A gift is free but judgment is the price you pay for living a lie. In short, sin is costly. Last year, during the Jubilee of Mercy, Pope Francis wrote a book: The Name of God is Mercy. If the name of God is Mercy, then Mercy is but another name for Jesus Christ, who is Divine Mercy.

In our Gospel today, the Lord resists and overcomes all the temptations, all the lies, for which frequently fall. He does for us what are not able or not willing to do for ourselves. The inspired author of the Letter to the Hebrews stated it thus:

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has similarly been tested in every way, yet without sin. So let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help (Heb 4:14-16)

As we come forward to receive communion, we approach the throne of grace, as we go to confession, we approach the throne of grace, as we pray, fast, give alms, and selflessly serve others, we approach the throne of grace. Grace is nothing other than God- Father, Son, and Spirit- sharing their divine life with us. Hence, to receive grace is to receive nothing short of God's very self. Every human being is created in God's image, what we traditionally call the imago dei. While the imago dei is ineradicable, it cannot be lost, we lose our likeness to God through sin. How God sets about restoring the divine likeness, through Christ by the power of the Spirit, is grace.

Lent is a season of grace. It is the time for you to step back and take an account of your life. I think we can fruitfully conceive of Lent as a spiritual Spring cleaning. In Christ Jesus, God has been merciful to us because we have sinned. If we were to read just one verse more than what the Church has given us in our reading from the fifth chapter of St Paul's Letter to the Romans, we would encounter these words: "where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more" (Rom 5:20b).

"Hunger stays till it's fed"

Ah, the first Friday of Lent. The first obligatory meatless day of the year. A penitential Friday to be sure. Our traditio? Prefab Sprout's song "Appetite" seems like a perfect fit.

St. Olaf Parish Bountiful, Utah, by Deacon Scott Dodge, 25 February 2017

At least in some measure, Lent is about tempering our bodily appetites. I know that for me, this holy season includes efforts to squelch the signal to noise ratio between my appetites and what it is that I really desire. Another metaphor might be, attempting to create some space in order to give the Spirit room to work. In order to realize my deepest desire, I need to change, to be converted, that is, repent, so I can fully live the life I was reborn to live when I was baptized. Christian life is redeemed life. Letting myself be set aright is part of God's setting the world aright. As Tolstoy wrote in his pamphlet "Three Methods of Reform"-

There can be only one permanent revolution — a moral one; the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself

Appetites are not bad in and of themselves. Where we would be without them? Without appetites, life could neither be sustained nor perpetuated. It certainly wouldn't be enjoyed. It does us good, however, not to always and immediately indulge them, not just during Lent, but all the time.

Let's not hide our lamp under a bushel

Right now I am reading the late John Macquarrie's Pathways in Spirituality and the late Bernard Häring's Christian Existentialist. To be frank, these works have more to do with living as a Christian in the world today than many of the contemporary books I've read on the subject over the past several years. Along these lines, I read two things today that go a great distance to expressing my point-of-view on contemporary matters. The first is an article ("Dutch Church leaders speak out against populist shift") that summarizes both an ecumenical letter issued by Catholic and Protestant leaders in the Netherlands and a pastoral letter issued by the Dutch bishops in advance of national elections later this month.

In their ecumenical letter, Christian leaders noted, "The church isn’t a political party, nor is any political party a church. We have a separation between church and state – since if the two sit together on anyone’s lap, we get a political and religious dictatorship which serves, not God or the people, but only those in power," before going on warn those who would exploit Christian culture for political gain that "Christians are not voting cattle – their kingdom isn’t of this earth and their king isn’t from here." The leaders continued, "You can call this dreamy or dangerous, since Jesus had no message for Caesar. But we will always work for the promised kingdom to be given shape in the country we live in." In their pastoral letter, the Dutch bishops wrote:

The spirit of the times seems to have brought a stress on differences and divisions, rather than a search for connectedness and unity – but let us not indulge in anger, intolerance, indifference and polarization... When we stand in the voting booth, we must ask how, in the light of the Gospel, we can contribute to a society based on human dignity, solidarity, fundamental rights, social justice, subsidiarity, tolerance and peace between religions and cultures

The second piece, by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig, is a review of Rod Dreher's new book The Benedict Option: "City of Rod: A Benedictine retreat from political life cannot be the answer for today’s Christians." Her critique, while not brutal, is pretty unsparing. Since I began reading about the Benedict option several years ago it has struck me as quite antithetical to living as a Christian in the modern milieu. I urge you to read Stoker Bruenig's review in its entirety.

There is always the temptation to go back to a better time. There are two replies to this. First, the "better" time, such as it was, probably wasn't any better and is not as good as it is portrayed. This includes the so-called Medieval "Age of Faith." Second, it is simply not possible to roll back the clock. Stated simply, calls to bring back a past time are neither desirable nor possible. It's important to engage reality as we experience it and not as we wish it to be.

I think calls to withdraw from politics, to vacate the public square, must be resisted. As Stoker Bruening observes: "Withdrawal may have been a permissible option when citizens had little to no say in the laws of their governments, but we do, and a pretense of powerlessness registers as a flimsy excuse not to exercise it." Of course, Christians should engage culturally, seek to build and form meaningful communities, and many things besides politics. She hits the nail-on-the-head when she writes:

There never will be another Medieval subject. All of us in the Anglophone world see with liberal eyes and hear with liberal ears, and to some degree think with liberal minds: Indeed, the lament that we’re no longer Medieval is a comically typical liberal refrain (think of the Romantics, with their Gothic revivalism, or the pre-Raphaelites, with their knights in shining armor). The will to be Medieval subjects again is the desire to return to an age of faith, but this is not an option

Such endeavors, in my view, would need a much firmer foundation that what I have seen proposed by proponents of the Benedict Option. For centuries there have been Christian communities that live apart, like the Amish and the Bruderhof, among others. I don't discount for one minute the witness of these Christians now or over the centuries they've existed. I also understand why the Benedict Option might appeal to some people. But I do not think the Church in toto is called to withdraw from the world. Rather, I believe we are called to engage along the lines suggested by the Christian leaders of the Netherlands.

Once again this year I will participate myself, at least for 3 weeks, in the original Benedict Option when I travel to Mount Angel Abbey and Seminary, Oregon, for the second of three academic residencies in pursuit of my doctorate in ministry. I look forward to it. By the third week of last year it was once again clear to me that living in this beautiful, ancient, and venerable manner is not my vocation.

Ash Wednesday: Lent begins

In addition to being the Feast of St. David of Wales, Dewi Sant, today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. For Roman Catholics, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting. While one can eat a fairly considerable amount, as long as you avoid the meat of warm-blooded animals, and still meet the canonical definition of fasting, the idea is to eat and drink as little as possible, even if that is nothing. It is interesting to note that St. David of Wales was called Dewi Ddyfrwr (i.e., "David the Water Drinker") because water was the only beverage he imbibed. Like many saints, he was given to much fasting and abstinence. Fasting and abstinence, doing good to others, or even hours dedicated to prayer, it must be noted, do not sanctify you, that is, make you holy. Only God can make you holy. But these are means the Lord himself gave his disciples to use towards the end of becoming holy, which is to be like him.

Lent is a 40 day liturgical season during which we prepare for Easter. Stated simply, Lent is a time of baptismal renewal. In baptism we died, were buried, and rose with Christ. If Easter is resurrection and Ash Wednesday is the day we face our mortality (a clean way of saying it is the day we remember that some day we are all going to die), then Lent can be fruitfully conceived as a time of burial, the time between dying and rising. When Roman Catholics receive ashes they hear either the traditional words- "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return," or the words "Repent and believe the Gospel." In either case, the person receiving ashes is invited to prepare for what is ultimate, which means distinguishing what is ultimate from what is provisional, temporary, and fleeting. Understood in this way, Lent takes on an eschatological dimension. Our intensified practice of the spiritual disciplines of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving are an invitation to make God's reign a present reality as we await its final fulfillment.

While Lent has everything to do with penance, it has nothing to do with punishment. Penance starts inward and moves outward. Punishment comes from outside of us, causes fear and usually resentment. In an article on Lent written quite a few years ago, Owen Cummings cited an Ash Wednesday sermon delivered by Passionist Fr. Harry Williams that bluntly tells us what Lent is not about:

It is a pity that we think of Lent as a time when we try to make ourselves uncomfortable in some fiddling but irritating way. And it’s more than a pity, it’s a tragic disaster, that we also think of it as a time to indulge in the secret and destructive pleasure of doing a good orthodox grovel to a pseudo-Lord, the Pharisee in each of us we call God and who despises the rest of what we are

Far from despising you, God loves you. God's love for you is never in question. I think a fruitful Lenten question is, "How much do I love God?" This question is answered, at least in part, by how well I love my neighbor. To repent means to have a change of mind, a change of heart. Therefore, we must begin with the question, "In order love God and neighbor the way I want to, what in me must change?" I would suggest that for many of us, certainly myself, the biggest change is accepting the incomprehensible love the Father has given in his Son. Such acceptance is, of course, the work of their Spirit. Anyone who comes to know and accept God's love changes.

Ash Wednesday has to be right up there with Christmas when it comes to a day when a lot of people flock to Church. Based on my own experience, I'd go so far as to assert that, at least in many places, more people come to Church on Ash Wednesday than on Easter. This is not to castigate people. I am glad they are there on Ash Wednesday, but I'd also love for them to come on Easter. Why celebrate dying but not rising? I often surprise people by stating what is true: for Roman Catholics, Ash Wednesday is not a holy day of obligation. We are obligated to fast, but not go to Mass let alone to receive ashes.

When it comes to receiving ashes, I think all the "Show your ash" Ash Wednesday promos are antithetical to observing Ash Wednesday. I suggest we file the "Hey, look at me and my ashes" phenomenon under misadventures in the New Evangelization. These things are well-intentioned but fall far short of the mark when it comes to entering the holy season of Lent with the proper disposition. The tension generated between the Ash Wednesday Gospel reading and receiving a clearly visible smudge of black palm ashes on my forehead always gives me pause, just as it gives me plenty to ponder concerning the meaning of the practice of receiving ashes as well as the meaning of the season of Lent.

What I have to share about Lent this year is perhaps best summarized by the final verse of my favorite Lenten hymn, "Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days", the words of which tend to vary while retaining essentially the same meaning -

Abide with us, that through this life
of doubts and hope and pain,
an Easter of unending joy
we may at last attain