"Empty prayer, empty mouths talk about the passion"

Friday and time for our traditio. I am trying to avoid mentioning how quickly time passes and concomitant reality that I haven't listened to a lot of music this week. Not listening to music makes the quality of my life poorer.

Because I have a difficult time falling asleep even at the end of a 14-hour day, which makes it impossible for me to read- tired, not sleepy: a condition that is most unpleasant- I have been serially watching two Danish television shows: Borgen and Herrens Veje (Riding On the Storm). Both shows were created by Adam Price. Both shows are intense, even a bit melodramatic, but good.

Having spent some time in Denmark throughout the ninties and being something a devotee of Kiekergaard, I appreciate how these shows deal politics (Borgen and religion (Herrens Veje) in contemporary Danish society. It's interesting, Danes don't seem to be that into Kierkegaard. I am tempted to spout something trite referencing a prophet in his own country. In reality, Danish society ultimately bought into Søren's critique of Christendom. They did not disestablish the Church but the status of the national Danish (Lutheran) Church is much reduced.

I find myself wishing that Birgitte Nyborg Christensen (the main character in Borgen) could run for president. Just like I am trying avoid the rapidity of time's passage, I am also avoiding politics in this post.

I am going on retreat by myself next week! I am leaving Thursday and coming back on Sunday. I've never felt the need to get away more acutely than I do right now.

Because Fridays are penitential days and because I am still going through my REM revival, our traditio for this September Friday is "Talk About the Passion," off Murmur, their debut album on the legendary IRS Records. It contains a line I sometimes need to remember: "Not everyone can carry the weight of the world."

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Readings: Num 21:4b-9; Ps 78:1bc-2.34-38; Phil 2:6-11; John 3:13-17

Even though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not regard our debased understanding of divinity as something to clutch. What do I mean by our debased understanding of divinity? I mean seeing God in a pagan way: powerful, self-serving, manipulative, perhaps capricious. Far from being contrary to the being of the one true God, it is the essence of God's being to be self-emptying.

Nonetheless, we hold that one of God’s attributes is omnipotence. What does it mean to say God is omnipotent? Yes, it means God is all-powerful. What it often means is that God can and does use power coercively to get his way. But in reality, God chooses the power of powerlessness.

This is why, from a Christian perspective, it is utterly silly to be worried about God striking you with lightening or the Church falling down because a sinner entered. Here’s news: sinners have been entering the doors of this church for 40 years and it’s still standing!

Christ’s cross shows the power of powerlessness. Saint Paul discovered this, which is prompted him to exclaim, “when I am weak then I am strong.”¹ This what Jesus means when he tells us: “Take up your cross and follow me.”² You can't trust God more than when you relinquish control, even to the point of loving and doing good to your enemies as well as bearing wrongs patiently.

Christ on the Cross, Leon Bonnat, ca. 1874

Today especially, we worry that the political power of Christianity weakening. Why? Jesus never sought to take control of the Roman Empire or even the small Roman province of Palestine. At every turn, Jesus rejected calls urging him to seize and/or exercise power, including when he was chided: “If you're the Son of God, come down from the cross!”⁴ He even had to deal with this after the resurrection when his still clueless disciples ask “are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”⁴

No nation is a Christian nation even if, maybe especially if, it claims to be one. As Christians, one of the biggest threats to our faith is its usurpation for political purposes. Success in this only succeeds in dividing the Body of Christ, thus compromising the Church’s witness.

Another name for the power or powerlessness is agape. Agape,a Greek word, refers to self-sacrificing, self-emptying love. Power is divine love radiating from Christ's holy cross. Here at Saint Olaf parish, we are blessed to have the large crucifix over the altar. What seeing this should put us in mind of is “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”⁵

A Christian understands that she succeeds by failing. To paraphrase Saint Paul: where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more.⁶ For God’s will to succeed in your life, you must fail. As Jesus said to some scribes and Pharisees: “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.”⁷

Our refusal to accept God’s humiliation on the cross as the fullness of divine self-revelation renders us little more than pagans. Triumph only comes through failure. Nonetheless, we remain success-oriented.

Jesus tells us our riches and ease are obstacles to God’s Kingdom, not sure signs of God’s blessing. But we persist in our pursuit of wealth and luxury. Jesus tells us to love and forgive one another, to build community, but we're quick to walk away when things aren't to our liking. But then, we only sacrifice for what we truly love.

My dear friends in Christ, on this Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, let us recommit ourselves to following Jesus along the path to glory. The path of glory is a different way than the path of glamor.

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1 2 Corinthians 12:10.^↩
2 Matthew 10:38; Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23.^↩
3 Matthew 27:40.^↩
4 Acts 1:6.^↩
5 John 3:16.^↩
6 Romans 5:20.^↩
7 Mark 2:17.^↩

Additional thoughts on today's Gospel

Matthew 18:21-35

In thinking more about our Gospel for this Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Sunday Lectionary, I felt the need to address its threatening ending. If you remember, the master turned the wicked servant over to the torturers until his debt had been paid. The master did this because the wicked servant, after being forgiven a large debt, went and squeezed a fellow servant, literally choked him, for a much smaller debt. Jesus then tells his disciples: "So will my heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart" (Matt 18:35).

This has a similar ring to "Beatings will continue until morale improves," does it not? I am not just to forgive the brother or sister who has sinned against me but to do so from my heart. I take "from your heart" to mean to really and truly forgive. This is very different from when one of my boys hauls off and hits his brother for some real or perceived slight or injustice. When I insist he apologizes, he says in an unconvincing voice, not making eye contact: "I'm sorry." I then insist the other boy accept the apology out loud, which is often given with the same lack of sincerity.

The point I am trying to make is that dire threats can't change my heart. Yet Jesus insists I must have a change of heart toward the person who has sinned against me.

Exegetically, this pericope makes a dialogue between Peter and Jesus from a teaching in Q (the source that Matthew and Luke have in common that is not the Gospel According to Saint Mark). It is probably what is termed "a homiletic midrash" on a section of the Lord's Prayer and a teaching that immediately follows it (see Matthew 6:12 and Matthew 6:14-15). This midrash (a Hebrew word that refers to the interpretation of a text) was likely written by the author of Matthew as a hellfire and brimstone statement to bring home the importance of forgiving others, which is what it means to be holy as God is holy.

Hence, there is no little irony if not an outright contradiction in warning his disciples that if they do not forgive not only will God not forgive them or they certainly can't expect God to forgive- Sirach's rather holistic take on the issue, echoed in the Lord's Prayer- but God will harshly punish them. It's like yelling at your children for yelling at each other or spanking a child for hitting another child, etc. On the other hand, there is some resonance with the fact that in the Gospels Jesus is only harsh with those who are harsh with others.

Let's not forget what our Psalm today tells us: God is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion.

Something else is worth noting: the punishment is not everlasting. It seems at some point the debt will be paid. What is payment but a changed heart? As it is stated in Psalm 51: "a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn." (Psalm 51:19).

Do you really think God seeks to change your heart after the manner of the state in Orwell's 1984 à la Winston and the rats? Is learning to love God by loving your neighbor by making yourself a neighbor by forgiving your neighbor like learning to love Big Brother? I can't believe for one second that's how it works. God is not, contra a certain theologica take, a moral monster.

In her beautiful Treatise on Purgatory, Saint Catherine of Genoa observed that in Purgatory one can no longer ignore his/her issues, that is, those habits and affections that landed her/him there. Bearing witness to God’s great mercy and love, she went on to observe, "I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise."

What matters in this parable, as Luke Timothy Johnson points out, is "forgiveness becomes the characteristic attitude of those in the Church" (The Writing of the New Testament, "The Gospel of Matthew," 207). The late New Testament scholar, Father Raymond Brown, observed that "this has a very real application in church life, for the number of people who turn away from the church where they have not found forgiveness is legion" (An Introduction to the New Testament, "The Gospel According to Matthew," 193).

Forgive

Readings: Sir 27:30-28:7: Ps 103:1-4.9-12; Rom 14:7-9; Matt 18:21-35

"Forgive." This is the word that leaped out at me, stuck in my mind, on which I meditated during my lectio on this week's Gospel reading. During my meditation, I did a kind of Examen. I tried to think about everyone against whom I hold a grudge. On the one hand, it's not a lot of people (less than 10). On the other hand, the bitterness and resentment I have toward some of those who came to mind still run pretty deep. This is one of the difficulties with forgiving: when I call to mind a wrong I have endured at the hands of another the scab is ripped off and the wound bleeds.

Through my personal and pastoral experience, I have come to realize that forgiveness is a process, a conversion if you will. By the grace of God, I have long since ceased being someone who seeks revenge. Frankly, I can't ever recall wishing something terrible would happen to someone else. Maybe this is because I have endured trauma and suffering myself to the point of not wishing it even on my worst enemy. The questions for me are: Can I really come to love a person who, at least in my view, has wronged me in a scarring way? Can I truly wish that person well and even do good to them? Tough questions.

It's important not to be glib about forgiveness. For example, I think of someone who has been raped and what the imperative to forgive might mean for that person vis-à-vis her/his rapist. While I am among those who do not think that a woman must die rather than be raped (a rape is in no way her fault), I find Saint Maria Goretti's example of forgiveness powerful in much the same way I find power in Saint Stephen's plea, which he made to God on behalf of those who were stoning him to death. In both cases, there was repentance and conversion: Alessandro Serenelli and Saul of Tarsus.

I've never believed that forgiving means forgetting. Nonetheless, it is sometimes said that when we repent God forgets. I really don't know if this is true. I doubt it. But I don't think God remembers for the purpose of holding a grudge against me. Generally, I think forgiving means no longer holding the wrong against the person who committed it. This is what makes forgiving a process or a choice I have to make over and over until it "takes," if it ever does. I know that if I forget the sins God has forgiven, I forget God's great mercy. I forget Christ.

Our first reading from Sirach imparts something we know empirically: anger and wrath are more destructive of my soul than they are of the person against whom I harbor anger and with whom I am committed to getting even. Echoing the Lord's Prayer, this passage expresses the impossibility of being unforgiving and yet expecting to be forgiven: "Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the LORD? Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself, can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins?" (Sirach 28:3-5).

Forgiving, I think, is one way we die and rise with Christ. Like dying, forgiving can be painful and scary. One who chooses to forgive often worries about justice. I mean, what kind of world would it be if everyone who did wrong was simply forgiven? It would be a bizarro world. It would be the Kingdom of God. I have long been an advocate of restorative justice. In my judgment, it is much better than the retributive justice we often seek. Personally, I don't see much difference between retributive justice and revenge. That said, the shape and form forgiveness takes depend very much on circumstances.

In one part of an on-going dispute concerning capital punishment, theologian David Bentley Hart points out that the New Testament "overwhelming" forbids "Christians to exact retributive justice" (see "Further Reflections on Capital Punishment (and on Edward Feser)"). Because the "Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion," those who worship and claim to follow him should strive to be that way too.

The words the inspired author of Matthew places on the lips of Jesus to forgive "seventy-seven times" means to forgive as many times as your brother (or sister) sins against you. It is interesting that in Matthew we encounter the same words used in the Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures, known as the Septuagint, found in Genesis 4:24: "If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times." This leads Jewish commentator Aaron Gale to wonder if "Matthew's phrasing may contrast an ancient blood feud with the intimacy of Jesus's community" (The Jewish Annotated New Testament, "Matthew," 45).

Gale notes Matthew's possible allusion to Genesis only after stating rabbinical teaching: "All who act mercifully toward their fellows will be treated mercifully by Heaven, and all who do not act mercifully toward their fellow creatures will not be treated mercifully by Heaven" (Ibid.). That this is consistent in Jewish theology is partially borne out by our passage from Sirach.

Willingness to forgive does not seem to be humanity's default setting. It certainly isn't mine. Baptism, to stick with the metaphor, is supposed to reset us to our manufacturer's (i.e., Creator's) settings. Our participation in the Eucharist is our pledge to be changed, reset, converted.

"Rescue me from bloodshed, O God"

Today is 9/11, the nineteenth anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. So vivid is the footage and the resulting images that it seems like it just happened. 9/11 also ushered in the seemingly endless War on Terror, which marked the beginning of the age of military intervention. This is more than an eye-for-an-eye and a tooth-for-a-tooth. It is an eye, ear, mouth, and nose for a tooth.

It is an eye, ear, mouth, and nose for a tooth. Thankfully, over the past several years these interventions have slowed. The U.S. has even begun to back away from places like Syria, Libya, and Iraq. But not before creating a great deal of instability and uncertainty in those places. One tenet of Just War Theory is that the end state should be better than what came before it. Another, to which I've already alluded is proportionality.

The potentially endless nature of the so-called War on Terror makes it eerily akin to the perpetual state of war the exists between Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia in Orwell's 1984. In terms of government expenditure, this has huge impacts domestically.

When Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans quotes the Law, which asserts "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord," he highlights that vengeance is just another way human beings like to play at being God (see Romans 12:19; Leviticus 19:18; Deuteronomy 32:35). One tip-off for this is that the first name for U.S. operations in Afghanistan was "Operation Infinite Justice."

Nonetheless, American Christians love to talk about Jesus angrily overturning merchants' tables in the courtyard of the Gentiles in the Jerusalem temple. There is no table Jesus overturned with more force than the one we might call "natural morality," from whence arises the lex talionis.

None of the above detracts from or diminishes the horror of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 nor does it imply in any way that the people who were killed or who subsequently died from the effects of the attacks in any way deserved what happened to them. They did not. Ordinary people going about the daily business of their lives murdered in an unimaginably horrifying way. I remember them today and I pray for them as well as for those who survive them. What happened that day is almost unspeakably evil and can in no way be justified, especially by an appeal to God. How one responds to evil matters a great deal.

I typically take a break from social media on 9/11. Today is Friday, which for Christians is traditionally a penitential day. Morning Prayer for Friday in all four weeks of the Psalter begins with Psalm 51. Known among Western Christians as the Miserere, Psalm 51 is penitential. The composition of most of the psalms have historically been attributed to King David. Of course, it was David who forcibly slept with the wife of one his commanders and then had the commander, Uriah the Hittite, killed. Hence, David had serious things to be penitential about.

Praying Psalm 51 this morning with a bit more intention and attention than I sometimes pray it, I was struck by this:

Rescue me from bloodshed, O God,
God of my salvation,
and then my tongue shall ring our your righteousness
O Lord, open my lips
and my mouth shall proclaim your praise

The last sentence of this passage, of course, is used to start all the offices in the Liturgy of the Hours after the first office of the day, which begins with an invitatory Psalm (traditionally Psalm 95).

Choral versions of Psalm 51, which is usually called in Latin after its opening line Miserere mei, Deus, have been a feature of the Καθολικός διάκονος Friday traditio for years, including not many weeks ago when I re-started it. Today it seems most fitting.

The version I chose as today's traditio is a recording of King's College Choir from 1963, making it even older than me! But then sin and sorrow are as old as humanity:

Year A Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Ezk 33:7-9; Ps 95:1-2.6-9; Rom 13:8-10; Matt 18:15-20

It seems that as we are inherently passive-aggressive. With the advent of social media, this tendency has become far more pronounced. What do I mean by “passive-aggressive”? Something like, when I have an issue with you, I talk to somebody else or, as is sometimes the case, everybody else, avoiding discussing it with you directly. Often this includes spreading gossip.

It’s possible to use confession in a passive-aggressive way. Sometimes it’s easier to tell the priest hearing my confession about some wrong I’ve committed against someone than it is to go to that person, confess, and say I am sorry. Isn’t it easier to say an Our Father and three Hail Mary’s than to humbly apologize, putting yourself at the mercy of another?

Being merciful, like Jesus, makes it easier for others to place themselves at your mercy. Mercy, which is most recognizably expressed as forgiveness, breaks the cycle of resentment, which is a vicious and violent cycle.

In the Lord’s Prayer, we pray: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”¹ As he was nailed to the cross, Jesus implored, “Father, forgive them...”² In his first post-resurrection appearance Jesus told his disciples: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven.”³ In both the Nicene and Apostles Creed we profess belief in the forgiveness of sins.⁴

In our second reading, Saint Paul insists that, as Christians, we owe each other the debt of love. Releasing another from a legitimate debt s/he owes you is what it means to forgive. While it may not seem so at first glance, this passage is about forgiveness. Love, Paul plainly points out, fulfills the law.⁵ The law is but the means to the end of loving God by loving your neighbor as you love yourself.

Too often, we don’t just want to get even but to get ahead. While we don’t want to owe, often we want to be owed. But the path down which Jesus leads anyone who follows him is the path of loving your neighbor unconditionally. This not only means the willingness to forgive but to do the hard work of reconciliation. Forgiveness and working for reconciliation are requirements of being in communion.

Our Gospel today is about the Church, which is a community founded on sustained by forgiveness and reconciliation. Like God, the Church is a communion of persons, all too human persons. Hence, like the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, the Church, too, is unity in diversity. "Unity in diversity" is a beautiful phrase but the reality is often messy. The Eucharist is the source of our unity.

Community is indispensable for anyone who seeks to follow Christ. Belonging to a community centered on communion teaches one to forgive and be forgiven. Life together teaches you not to judge harshly, not to act rashly, or to hold grudges. Communal life together enables us to overcome our tendency to be hard-hearted.

If the Church is not a sign of unity, then we fail to be the sacrament of salvation in and for the world. As Catholics, when we discuss Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, we typically leap straight to his presence in the consecrated bread and wine. But Christ’s Real Presence in the Eucharist, as the Second Vatican Council teaches, is fourfold.⁶

Each Mass culminates in the Communion Rite. But this is only made possible by what precedes it. Otherwise, it runs the risk of becoming a conjuring trick. Chronologically, the first way Christ is really present is in the gathering of the baptized. This is what scripture means when it says: “where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”⁷

My dear friends, as our responsorial bids us, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”⁸ You have heard his voice in today’s readings. A hard heart is an unforgiving heart. An unforgiving heart cannot be a grateful heart. Let’s never forget that Eucharist means thanksgiving.

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1 Matthew 6:12; Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 124.^↩
2 Luke 23:34.^↩
3 John 20:23.^↩
4 Roman Missal, The Order of Mass, sec. 18-19.^↩
5 Romans 13:8.^↩
6 Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy], sec. 7.^↩
7 Matthew 18:20.^↩
8 Psalm 95:7-8.^↩

"They hate you if you're clever and they despise a fool"

I don't know about you, but I'm glad summer is nearly over. My least favorite time of the year is late July to late August. I find the heat insufferable. There is always that day in late August when the weather turns toward the cooler. The angle of light changes, night comes sooner, and morning later. Yes, I grasp this has to do with the earth's position relative to the sun.

During this time, I find sleeping difficult and exercise unpleasant. As a result, I grow tired and impatient. Contrary to popular wisdom, which I find not to be very wise, it is during this time I struggle most with depression. Winter is not nearly as bad, not even close.

As I've mentioned, my current spiritual reading is the journal of the Cistercian martyr Blessed Christoph LeBreton: Born From the Gaze of God. Fittingly, this week I am reading his entries from August 1994. Writing about the heat is his entry for 4 August 1994, he states: "I accept with open arms this day offered me. There is fatigue- an invasive lassitude- in the hot air." Indeed, there is.

A friend this morning brought this lovely article to my attention, which I take as a sign of hope: "In praise of autumn, the best of seasons." I replied: "Far and away my favorite time of the year. Maybe because it falls immediately after this damned heat. There's a reason hell is traditionally thought of as hot."

Hey, it's Friday, which doesn't mean much to me these days given my commitments, which keep me busy 7 days a week. I suppose for some people in this unrelenting culture, Friday still marks the end of the week and remains an evening to relax and enjoy life a little. Hey, this week it's Labor Day weekend! For a lot of people, even now, this means an additional day off work.

There is no irony whatsoever in celebrating Labor Day by taking a day-off. On Labor Day the U.S. celebrates the Labor Movement. Among the achievements of the Labor Movement in the United States is the forty-hour work-week, which means weekends off and paid holidays. Of course, we live in a time when many of these achievements are eroding: paid time-off, holidays, sick leave, etc. Fewer and fewer workers don't enjoy such benefits, let alone healthcare.

We need a new Labor Movement. A renewed Labor Movement is something that can bring a lot of things together for the common good. Just think about the discrimination black people and women experience in the workplace and generally in terms of employment.

Circling back to the heat, let's not forget the impact of hyper-capitalism on the environment.

The world lost a brilliant analyst of all this a few days ago with the death of David Graeber, who was just 59. Graeber is the author of such books as Bullshit Jobs: A Theory and Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

Our traditio for this Labor Day weekend is this live cover of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero."