A short take on reality

This morning in my devotional reading I came across something very timely that struck me with great force: the defining characteristic of sin is that sin can be forgiven. Of course, sin is not automatically forgiven, but it is always already forgiven. So, what is required for sin to be forgiven, or for me to realize the forgiveness that is always already mine in and through Jesus Christ? Well, recognition that I sinned is a good place to start, then contrition. I read the following yesterday morning by the Desert Father, Abba Poeman: "I prefer a man who sins and repents to one who does not sin and does not repent. The first has good thoughts, for he admits that he is sinful. But the second has false, soul-destroying thoughts, for he imagines himself to be righteous.”

"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1 John 1:18). More importantly, "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

In this regard, Lawrence Cunningham noted "that faith should not be mistaken for therapy" and "should serve, at the same time, to upset and give hope."

Thoughts on the ecclesisal nature of Christian marriage

I owe a very deep diaconal bow to Sarah Pulliam Bailey, who blogs over at the Christianity Today blog Her.menutics, for this post. In her post Yes, We Can Learn Something from the Kardashian Fiasco, Pulliam Bailey observes that theologian Stanley Hauerwas, in his essay "The Radical Hope in the Annunciation: Why Both Single and Married Christians Welcome Children," "challenges the romantic notion that 'a couple falls in love and comes to the church to have their love publicly acknowledged.'" "The congregation," she goes on to note, "is not a passive on-looker while the couple independently embarks on this new journey. Instead, the congregation of family and friends makes that journey tenable in the first place." She then cites Hauerwas at length:

the church rightly understands that we no more know the person we marry than we know ourselves. However, that we lack such knowledge in no way renders marriage problematic, at least not marriage between Christians; for to be married as Christians is possible because we understand that we are members of a community more determinative than marriage. That the church is a more determinative community than a marriage is evidenced by the fact that it requires Christian marriage vows to be made with the church as witness. This is a reminder that we as a church rightfully will hold you to promises you made when you did not and could not fully comprehend what you were promising. How could anyone know what it means to promise life-long monogamous fidelity? From the church’s perspective the question is not whether you know what you are promising; rather, the question is whether you are the kind of person who can be held to a promise you made when you did not know what you were promising. We believe, of course, that baptism creates the condition that makes possible the presumption that we might just be such a people.

This put me in mind of a wonderful observation made by Dr. Owen Cummings in his still very relevant lecture "Images of the Diaconate"- "There is a tendency," Cummings insisted, "at least at the popular level, to think of the sacraments of marriage and orders as equivalent to the celebration of the rites. Thus, one hears people say, "I was married so many years ago...This way of understanding is most inadequate. The sacrament in both cases consists in the entire lives of the married and the ordained until death. The sacrament begins with the public celebration of the rite but does not end there. That is why for example getting married in church, that is, with the rite of Catholic marriage, means so very little unless being Church for the couple is an important priority. It is essentially being Church that makes the marriage fully sacramental, Church understood as the fundamental sacrament of Christ, Christ understood as the fundamental sacrament of God."

Indeed, this a very challenging understanding of marriage helps us to better grasp the sacramentality of matrimony. In light of Archbishop Sheehan's very straightforward pastoral letter earlier this year, it seems we have a lot of catechetical and pastoral heavy-lifting to do!

We do "not grieve like rest who have no hope"

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, console one another with these words (1 Thess 4:13-18)

It is very likely that St. Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians was the first written "book" of the New Testament. The only other composition vying for this distinction is Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. First Thessalonians was likely written around AD 50 and, as it usually stated in the scholarly literature, prior to AD 52. I mention this only because today's second reading encapsulates the apostle's reason for writing to the Christians of ancient Thessaloniki. The earliest Christians believed that the parousia (i.e., Christ's return in glory) was imminent, many believing that it would happen in their lifetime. Despite this, it does not appear that Paul, or anyone who traveled with him, or was sent forth by him, went all Harold Camping (or Chuck Smith, founder of Calvary Chapel, who used to predict the imminence of the end-of-the-world with regularity) on the early Church, but believed and taught the Lord's return was imminent, that is, He could return at any time. So, be ready. Two millenia on, this how we are still to live, which is still why we should not be of the world, even though we are to be present and active within it, seeking in all our endeavors to usher in God's kingdom. After all, we still believe and confess that Jesus Christ "will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead." Should the Lord not return in glory during our lifetime, the end of time for each of us is death, which this month of November bids us to recall; momento mori. So, like the wise virgins, we are to keep our lamps trimmed and burning.

The Last Judgment Tympanum at Notre Dame de Paris

The pastoral issue that arose for St. Paul with regard to the Thessalonians was that members of their Church were dying and the Lord had not returned. This obviously shook their faith in Christ. Precisely because Paul and his co-workers had not made reckless predictions about when the Lord would return, even though, they taught the imminence of His return, the apostle could take this opportunity to enhance their understanding of Christ's resurrection and to strengthen their faith. He explains that those who have died are not extinguished, they have not ceased to exist, but are "asleep." When the Lord returns, "with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God" the dead will be called forth from their graves. (This is one of those New Testament passages that give rise to our compliant, "You're making enough racket to raise the dead.") Once the dead have been raised, those saints alive when the Lord returns, along with the faithful dead, will be gathered in as well and together "we shall always be with the Lord." With these words we are to "console on another." These words should also cause us to challenge and provoke one another to live each day, each moment, in the awareness of our destiny in order that we fulfill it.

Of course, I can't comment on this passage without noting that it is the basis for the belief of many Evangelical Protestants in the so-called Rapture, that event that Harold Camping, along with Chuck Smith, has given up on predicting. It is very specious to develop an entire doctrine, one unknown to the Tradition, on the basis of one verse of Scripture, especially when it is at odds with the overall message the apostle is seeking to convey, both in the passage under consideration and in both Paul's letters to the Christians of ancient Thessaloniki. In the second chapter of his Second Letter to the Thessalonians, the apostles writes:

We ask you, brothers, with regard to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him,a not to be shaken out of your minds suddenly, or to be alarmed either by a “spirit,” or by an oral statement, or by a letter allegedly from us to the effect that the day of the Lord is at hand. Let no one deceive you in any way (2 Thess. 2:1-5)

We can say that Paul is writing speculatively and figuratively about what will happen to those who are still alive when the Lord returns and not alluding to some fully developed kind of so-called "premillennial dispensationalism." One of the best books I have ever read on the parousia, precisely because it is provocative, challenging our lazy assumptions, is Morris West's novel The Clowns of God.

During this month when we remember and pray for our beloved dead, we do not grieve like those who have no hope because Jesus Christ is our hope.

Blogging: passing along what's left

In an effort not to make blogging an exercise in navel-gazing I have started and quickly abandoned two posts about blogging over the past month. I am learning to embrace my ambivalence about my efforts here at Καθολικός διάκονος. Frankly, ambivalence is what powers this blog, well, and blogspot.


I am currently reading the first volume of Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities, which is a book I have been meaning to read for 8 or 9 nine years, at least since I read Roger Kimball's Experiments Against Reality: The Fate of Culture in the Postmodern Age. Reading a section of the novel last night under the heading "Speculations on the Intellectual Bull and Bear Market," Ulrich, who is the man without qualities, that is, the modern, or one might even say, despite Musil writing the book throughout most of the 1930s, post-modern man with a bit more of a scientific twist, asks Section Chief Tuzzi, husband of his flamboyant cousin, the irrepressible Diotima, at one of the latter's gatherings in preparation for the seventieth anniversary jubilee of the reign of Austro-Hungarian emperor, Franz Josef, "Have you ever noticed...that an incredible lot of people can be seen these days talking to themselves on the street?"


He goes on to note, apropos of blogging, "There's something the matter with people. It seems they're unable to take in their experience or else wholly enter into them, so they have to pass along what's left. An excessive need to write, it seems to me, comes from the same thing. You may not be able to spot this in the written product, which tends to turn into something far removed from its origin, depending on talent and experience, but it shows up quite unambiguously in the reading of it; hardly anyone reads anymore today; everyone just uses the writer to work off his own excess on him, in some perverse fashion, whether by agreeing or disagreeing."

Not long ago, a dear friend asked her blogging friends, What need that you have does blogging meet? It is a good question, a very good question, even an uncomfortable one, which are the most useful questions to ponder. I readily admit to often being overwhelmed by reality, by my impressions of what I experience. I cannot remember a time when this was not the case. I remember growing up sometimes feeling like I was going to explode. I still sometimes feel full to overflowing. Blogging certainly helps me with this. It's funny, people ask me, Where do you find the time to blog? Unlike my other friend's meaningful question, this is not a question I find very meaningful because the things I write about are things that arise in the normal course of a day for me; even then, it is only one of the things, typically. I write about issues that arise from my experience, at work, arising from my pastoral interactions, my personal relationships, or my interior life.

My first year of blogging in earnest I would find myself asking, Why do I do this? What value does it have? Over time I came to see that the second question was lacking an object. For whom does my blogging have value? I ultimately concluded that if blogging does not have value for me, then it is useless. My friend's question aided me in clarifying this question and posing it anew, in light of several years of experience. It's also important to consider the context, that is, the experience that caused my friend to pose her question, namely that a friend of hers, who lived near enough to get together, took to posting about things, issues, that might better be discussed with someone, another person, someone who cares, will listen, etc. So, while blogging must have intrinsic value for me, it is not a substitute for my even greater need for others, for personal relationships, connections. et al.

"I'm on my knees, I'm waiting for a sign"

Bringing this week, the week during which we observed All Saints and All souls, to an end, it seems to me that our traditio can be nothing other than the Foo Fighters Walk. Because, I don't know about you, but "I never wanna die!" I know we're never supposed to admit it, but do you ever wonder why we put ourselves through it, or wonder just how much progress we've made, thinking maybe we are regressing, at least our humanity, which is threatened in so many ways? Have a good Friday!

We built these paper mountains/And sat and watched them burn/I think I found my place/Can't you feel it growing stronger/Little conqueror... BYW- punk will never die because it is a visceral response to life's inevitable quest- ions.

A few thoughts on fall and the world economy

Ah, November! While October is lovely where I live, November is even lovelier, the time of deep fall, grayer skies, leaves actually tumbling from the trees and littering the ground. It is the month that begins with All Saints and All Souls, two of my favorite days of the year and that features the Solemnity of Christ the King, marking the end of yet another of grace. Very often, as with this year, November also ushers in a new year of grace on the First Sunday of Advent. Of course, the First Sunday of Advent this year will be the debut of much anticipated new translation of the Roman Missal, which is bound to be a little disorienting for everyone for awhile. I must admit to being excited about preaching on both the first and last Sundays of Advent this year.

I have to admit to feeling quite overwhelmed by everything that is happening in the world right now, especially the seemingly hopeless economic morass the world is mired in. I was prepared to start posting a lot on the disaster a Greek referendum on the EU bailout deal would've caused, especially if it had failed. I believe it was fear that the citizens of his country would not ultimately see that rejecting the EU bailout would spell economic doom, along with pressure brought to bear by Germany and France, that would have surely resulted in Greece being effectively kicked-out of the European monetary union, is what caused Greek PM George Papandreou to ultimately decide against holding a referendum. This decision will likely cost him his premiership and perhaps even his Socialist party their slim majority in Greece's parliament. It is one more indication that statesmanship is dead that Papandreou tried to hold a referendum in the first place and only withdrew it under pressure. Even as OWS raged on Jon Corzine was in his final days of being a Wall Street and political power. The former New Jersey senator and governor bankrupted his firm by taking reckless risks and European sovereign debt and likely illegally used clients' funds to shore-up his losses, while hoping things would turn around. I am just happy that MF Global is not too big fail. Yet another object lesson that we have learned very little over the past 3 years.

On other hand, I was very gratified to read Greg Erlandson's take on those who do not like last week's document by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems In the Context of Global Public Authority. Erlandson is the president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, which can hardly be dismissed a leading voice of the Catholic left in the United States. His editorial, Snarky attacks on Vatican financial document: The truth is that the Church is countercultural in many different ways, unsettling both left and right, seems to me spot on. In it he challenges so-called Catholic conservatives, which, at least in the United States, are by-and-large classical liberals economically-speaking. "Every one of these writers," Erlandson notes, "would consider himself both conservative and orthodox, yet there is an ideologically fueled disdain that ripples through almost all of these comments, meant to telegraph in bold letters that Catholics need not waste any time reading this document because it is wrong." This is, indeed, a false move driven by ideological concerns. As Erlandson notes, the so-called "Note" is very much in synch in Pope Benedict's most recent encyclical, Caritas in veritate. It bears noting that Caritas in veritate, promulgated in 2009, frequently references and draws from Pope Paul VI's encyclical, Populorum progresso.

 Erlandson ends his succinct editorial with these words: "Political and economic conservatives seem unsettled that such statements might not sync up readily with the conservative economic orthodoxy, and they are right. The truth is that the Church is countercultural in many different ways, unsettling both left and right. Our challenge as Catholics is to put down the cafeteria tray and both prayerfully and intellectually pay attention to the Church’s whole moral message."

All Souls

A special traditio for All Souls Day. Requiem aeternam: Death is not the end, it is but the passageway to eternity.

In his 1998 message marking the millennium of the Church's observance of All Souls, Bl. Pope John Paul II wrote: "In praying for the dead, the Church above all contemplates the mystery of the Resurrection of Christ, who obtains salvation and eternal life for us through his Cross. Thus with St Odilo we can ceaselessly repeat: 'The Cross is my refuge, my way and my life The Cross is my invincible weapon. The Cross repels all evil. The Cross dispels the darkness.' The Lord’s Cross reminds us that all life is illumined by the light of Easter and that no situation is totally lost, for Christ conquered death and opened the way for us to true life. Redemption 'is brought about in the sacrifice of Christ, by which man redeems the debt of sin and is reconciled to God.'"

Memento mori Today is one of those days that in our time we are tempted gaffe off, to attenuate in some way, to look the other way. Why? Because it confronts us with reality in a very uncomfortable and forthright way; the reality that we will, in fact, die which, consequently, brings up the question of what life is all about, and, even more practically, how then shall I live in light of what life is about and why what I do matters. Yesterday, I read a lovely meditation on All Souls by Peter Hitchens, which he gave the provocative title, We are All Doomed. He writes about depictions of the Final Judgment in England's oldest cathedrals and how, even now, they can still serve the purpose for which they were composed. I urge you to read his evocative piece in its entirety, but his ending is well-worth repeating:

"If our vain and puffed up assessment of ourselves is true, and the past was such a dark age of ignorance and superstition, why did that age of superstition produce art and music so immeasurably better than our own?

"I think we might do well to be rather more modest about our achievements. It is interesting that the modern Britain, of motorways and shopping malls and hypermarkets, largely ignores or sweeps round the old cathedral cities. In London, people walk past Westminster Abbey without glancing at it, unless they are tourists. The one fully modern city which contains one of these masterpieces is Peterborough, where the Cathedral sits in strange solitude in a city centre that has no organic connection with it at all.

"Could it possibly be that the difference between the two worlds has something to do with the fact that our forebears felt there might be a higher judgement than the one of their fellow-creatures, so easily fooled by public relations and smiling exteriors? Maybe doom has something to be said for it."