The hidden mysteries of Divine Love humanly experienced

Today the Roman Catholic Church observes the Memorial of Saint Catherine of Siena. In 1970, along with Saint Teresa of Ávila, Saint Catherine was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI. Teresa and Catherine were the first two women Doctors of the Church.

On 14 April 1990, I was baptized, confirmed, and received my first Holy Communion in Saint Catherine of Siena Parish/University of Utah Newman Center. Fittingly, then as now, this parish and student center is run by the Dominicans. This great saint and mystic played a role in my conversion.

As I was free, this afternoon I went to my parish church at 3:00 PM to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy- a devotional practice I am trying to rekindle. Because I did not recite Morning Prayer this morning, I also went to pray the Office of Readings for Saint Catherine's Memorial. The first reading for the Office, taken from the Common of Virgins, was from the seventh chapter of Saint Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians. In this passage, the apostle wrote: "If you marry, however, you do not sin, nor does an unmarried woman sin if she marries; but such people will experience affliction in their earthly life, and I would like to spare you that."

Saint Catherine of Siena, at Blackfriars Oxford, England

On one level this is kind of funny, cohering as it does with the cultural way we joke about being married. This way of joking is surely rooted in the lived reality of most married people. On the other hand, if you think about marriage from a Catholic perspective, that is, as a sacrament, it makes sense that you experience affliction in and through being married. Keep in mind that at the beginning of the passage under consideration, Paul admits that what he is about to write about marriage is "no commandment from the Lord." Rather, he gives his opinion.

In my personal pastoral view, when lived properly, the afflictions of marriage help me overcome myself, my inherent selfishness. The afflictions of marriage help relieve me of my desire to always get my own way, my tendency to pursue my own interests and pleasures without regard for others. I am not sure why the apostles wants to spare Christians the afflictions of marriage.

The second reading for today's Memorial is taken from Saint Catherine's Dialogues, particularly her dialogue on Divine Providence. This dialogue points to the same reality towards which Christian marriage points: divine love. There is no earthly relationship, including marriage, that will fulfill your deepest desire. While there may be sublime moments here and there, it is placing way too much of a burden on any person, including your spouse, to expect her/him to fulfill you in the way you truly long to be fulfilled. At root, this is often a source of discontent and perhaps even conflict in a marriage, maybe a launching pad to serial monogamy.

"You are a mystery as deep as the sea," Saint Catherine says to God in this dialogue. "The more I search," she continues, "the more I find, and the more I find the more I search for you." She concludes this thought by admitting "But I can never be satisfied; what I receive will ever leave me desiring more."

Because God is love, love is infinite. Hence, you can never reach the end of love. This brings me back to that phrase that has resonated with me since last Saturday when I encountered it in the ninth day of the Novena- Divine Mercy is an "abyss." What is mercy but love in action? Infinity, with its negative prefix in, means unbounded. Love is an abyss, a fathomless depth.

The first stanza of the Responsory to this reading provided in the Office is:

My sister and my beloved, open yourself to me, you are a co-heir of my kingdom, and you have understood the hidden mysteries of my truth

What is love if not an opening to another? What is a wound if not an opening? This is indicated by the repeated verse of the Responsory:

You are enriched with the gift of my Spirit, cleansed of all sin by the shedding of my blood

If love, then, is opening yourself to another, and that opening is a wound, then how can married love not entail affliction. The affliction, it seems, is necessary for everyone.

For our traditio today, I am turning again to Colin Hay. This is a cover from his album of covers: "Ooh Lal La," by Ronnie Lane. First recorded on the eponymous 1973 album by Faces, a band whose members were Ian McLagan, Ronnie Lane, Kenney Jones, Ronnie Wood, and Rod Stewart.

Feast of Saint Mark

Readings: 1 Peter 5:5b-14; Ps 89:2-3.6-7.16-17; Mark 16:15-20

It is the long-held consensus among New Testament scholars that the Gospel According to Saint Mark was the first of the four canonical Gospels to be written. This first Gospel is believed to have come into being shortly after the Roman destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70. It is the backdrop of the Temple’s utter demolishment that contributes to Mark’s apocalyptic tone. For Jews in the final third of the first century of the Common Era, the destruction of the Temple seemed like the end of the world.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are together called the “synoptic” Gospels. They are designated as such because they are related to each other in various ways. According to the four-source hypothesis that seeks to explain the various relations between these texts, both Matthew and Luke used Mark’s Gospel as a source. But Luke and Matthew seem to have had another common source, which is often designated “Q.” “Q” refers to the German word Quelle, which simply means source. While thirty-five percent of Luke is unique to that text, only 20% of Matthew’s Gospel is unique material.

Together the Gospels of Matthew and Luke utilize 76% of Mark. Matthew uses another 3% that Luke does not employ, while the inspired author of the Gospel According Saint Luke uses an additional 18% that is left untouched by the compiler of Matthew. Hence, only 3% of the text that constitutes Mark’s Gospel is not utilized by the other synoptic writers. It is also the consensus among New Testament scholars that the oldest part of the Gospel According to Saint Mark is the passion narrative.

It is also bears noting that in its original form, Mark’s Gospel did not contain an account of anyone seeing Jesus risen. The original ending of the first Gospel ends with “Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome” going to Jesus’ tomb to anoint Jesus’ body.¹ As they walk to the tomb, they wonder who is going to roll the stone away from its entrance so that they can perform the ritual anointing.

As the three women arrive, they see the stone is already rolled away. Upon entering the grave, they encounter a young man in a white robe sitting on the right-hand side of the cavern. He says to them- “Do not be amazed! You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Behold, the place where they laid him. But go and tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.’”

So, the original ending of the Gospel According to Saint Mark is 16:8. What does this verse say? “Then they went out and fled from the tomb, seized with trembling and bewilderment. They said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” So, our reading this evening, while certainly considered by the Church to be inspired, was not part of Mark in the Gospel’s original form.

This sits well with our Gospel from yesterday, the Second Sunday of Easter, especially the part where Jesus says “Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.”² It is notable, too, that the young man told them to tell the others that they should all return to their native Galilee. He even reminds them that Jesus himself had told them this.

You see, in light of the destruction of the Temple, God’s presence was no longer exclusively associated with the holy city, Jerusalem and the Temple. Returning home, as it were, was where they would encounter the Risen One.

It was there, presumably, that Jesus, risen from the dead, according to the Longer Ending of Mark (16:9-18), after rebuking them for their unbelief, sent them to proclaim the Good News to the whole world. While it was the end of the world as they knew it, it was only the beginning of proclaiming the Good News.

Maybe it is in service to this call to spread the Gospel that the symbol for Mark, the Evangelist, is a winged lion.

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1 See Mark 16:18.^↩
2 John 20:29.^↩

"...have mercy on us and on the whole world"

Rooted as it is in private revelation, some Catholics don't much care for observing the Second Sunday of Easter as Divine Mercy Sunday. I am glad that since 2000 the last day of the Octave of Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday. Each year, I also pray the Divine Mercy novena, which starts on Good Friday. I usually extend the novena to ten days by praying the Chaplet of Divine Mercy on Divine Mercy Sunday.

Yes, I grasp that Saint Faustina's Diary contains some outdated as well as some controversial theological content. But I am comfortable with venerating her as the Apostle of Divine Mercy. I believe Christ sought to communicate something very deep about what, on the ninth day of the novena, is referred to as "the abyss" of Divine Mercy, to Saint Faustina.

An "abyss" is a deep or seemingly bottomless chasm, or, metaphysically, a bottomless chasm. Taking a cue from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, if the abyss is Divine Mercy, you need to not worry that "the abyss will gaze back into you." Sticking with this same Nietzschean passage, the monster you need to see to it that you don't become is merciless.

One objection to Divine Mercy Sunday is the Easter octave is a time of rejoicing, not of penitence. According to this, Divine Mercy takes us back to Lent, even Good Friday. If we take the Sacrament of Penance as the sacrament of mercy, it depends on how you understand this sacrament.

I don't view going to confession as being about admitting my egregious failures. For me, the Sacrament of Penance is where I go to claim Christ's victory over sin, which is my victory. Of course, by making an Act of Contrition, I promise to do my best, with God's help, not to keep sinning, especially not in the same ways I just confessed. You know what? Despite myself, I often return to my old ways. Yes, I get discouraged by this at times.

As Pope Francis noted several times during the Jubilee of Mercy, you will tire of asking God's forgiveness before God grows weary of forgiving you. No, this is not an invitation to sin. It is reassurance for my weakness, my forgetfulness, my fascination with nothingness.

Neither do I go to confession to find out if God will forgive me my sins. In and through Christ, I am always already forgiven. So, why go to confession? Well, confession, which is a liturgy (i.e., something I do not merely something I think), is where I experience Divine Mercy for myself. Because confession is where I go to claim victory and where I experience Divine Mercy in reality, it is a cause for rejoicing, not lamentation. It is, after all, Divine Mercy Sunday, not Lamenting Over My Sins Sunday.

Beginning with Paschal Vigil, my time of penance and lamentation is over. This culminated with my veneration of the cross on Good Friday. As I deacon, I am privileged to show the cross and to hold it while others venerate it.

So, today, on this Second Sunday of Easter, on this Divine Mercy Sunday, let us celebrate Christ's Easter victory. His Easter victory is our Easter victory. Let us rejoice and be glad.

Those, like me, who have experienced Divine Mercy are sent to extend Divine Mercy to others, especially those who've trespassed against us.

Jesus "alive and at large in the world"

Friday in the Octave of Easter, not an ordinary Friday. For starters, I had bacon for breakfast. The Easter Octave is a feast, not a fast.

While I am interested in any and all thoughtful theological "takes" on Christ's resurrection, when you get right down to it, based on scripture (the Gospels and Saint Paul especially) I am inclined conceive of it quite literally. In other words, I believe in a physical resurrection, which I confess each time I say the Creed: "I believe in... the resurrection of the body and life everlasting." Obviously, the Gospel writers go to great lengths to explain that Jesus' immediate resurrection presence is a physical, bodily presence. Now, I realize this sounds pretty limited. Left at that it is pretty limited, too limited.

Christ's Resurrection, designed by Giulio Romano and woven under the guidance of Pieter van Aelst, ca. 1520s

For help in expanding this concept of resurrection, I turn to the first part of a lecture Rowan Williams gave to the clergy of the Anglican Diocese of Winchester in 2008 when he was still serving as the Archbishop of Canterbury. What follows is what Williams takes to be "the bottom line in belief in the New Testament about the resurrection"-

to believe in his resurrection is to believe in Jesus – in the great phrase of John Masefield, 'alive and at large in the world'; Jesus set free, he's not going to die, nothing prevents him acting, he is always going to be active and not passive, always at work. And so, to say he is risen, is to say he is now free to act eternally, unceasingly, without limit. Death and its effects cannot hold him back. It's not only, then, that we are brought into the new age, brought into this final phase of human history. That final phase is shaped, controlled by the liberty of Jesus. To say he is risen is to say he is free to act. Wherever we are now in human history, after the resurrection, Jesus is active

While this all sounds very nice, it isn't often easy to see that since his resurrection Jesus is active in history. I would offer Williams' book Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel as offering some deep insights into just how Jesus resurrected is active in the world.

One clue is given in the first chapter of Acts when walking with him to where he is going to ascend, the Lord is asked by his followers, "are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6) In other words, apart from its global, even cosmic scope, Jesus' modus operandi doesn't really change after his Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit- the Holy Spirit being the one through whom he acts post-resurrection. In other words, he does not become a superhero. To paraphrase from the Book of Isaiah, Jesus' ways are not our ways.

It is of the essence of being a Christian for me to make Jesus' ways my ways. Until that happens, I won't be able to see just how present and active he is that he is, in reality, "alive and at large in the world."

Our Friday traditio is a strange one- "Blessed Easter" by Holger Czukay.

Urbi et Orbi- Easter 2022

URBI ET ORBI MESSAGE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
FRANCIS

Easter 2022

Dear brothers and sisters, Happy Easter!

Jesus, the Crucified One, is risen! He stands in the midst of those who mourned him, locked behind closed doors and full of fear and anguish. He comes to them and says: “Peace be with you!” (Jn 20:19). He shows the wounds in his hands and feet, and the wound in his side. He is no ghost; it is truly Jesus, the same Jesus who died on the cross and was laid in the tomb. Before the incredulous eyes of the disciples, he repeats: “Peace be with you!” (v. 21).

Our eyes, too, are incredulous on this Easter of war. We have seen all too much blood, all too much violence. Our hearts, too, have been filled with fear and anguish, as so many of our brothers and sisters have had to lock themselves away in order to be safe from bombing. We struggle to believe that Jesus is truly risen, that he has truly triumphed over death. Could it be an illusion? A figment of our imagination?

No, it is not an illusion! Today, more than ever, we hear echoing the Easter proclamation so dear to the Christian East: “Christ is risen! He is truly risen!” Today, more than ever, we need him, at the end of a Lent that has seemed endless. We emerged from two years of pandemic, which took a heavy toll. It was time to come out of the tunnel together, hand in hand, pooling our strengths and resources... Instead, we are showing that we do not yet have within us the spirit of Jesus but the spirit of Cain, who saw Abel not as a brother, but as a rival, and thought about how to eliminate him. We need the crucified and risen Lord so that we can believe in the victory of love, and hope for reconciliation. Today, more than ever, we need him to stand in our midst and repeat to us: “Peace be with you!”

READ THE ENTIRE ADDRESS

Triduum: Easter Vigil

My dear sisters and brothers, Christ is risen. Alleluia!

Tonight, our celebration of the great mystery of faith reaches its culmination as we celebrate with great joy the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Tonight, we celebrate our creation in God’s image and likeness, and our fall. Most especially tonight, we celebrate our redemption. You might ask, “Celebrate our fall, the loss of our likeness to God through sin?” Yes, we celebrate even that. Listen again to these stunning words of the great Exsultet, sung at the beginning of this Vigil:

O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the Death of Christ
O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a redeemer¹

Our sin, our most grievous fault, our rejection of God, did not earn us God’s wrath, but earned us Divine Mercy. How good is God? Only God can take our rejection of him, our attempt to displace him and establish ourselves on his throne, and turn us back himself through love and not by punishing us.

The orders of nature and grace go together, the one, nature, being brought into existence by the other, grace. Created in the image and, at least initially, in the likeness, of God, human beings were created for communion with God, with each other, and with the rest of creation. Being created for communion means being made to participate in God’s divine life - the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit- the life of grace.

While the image of God is ineradicable and can never be lost, our likeness to God is lost through sin. Losing our likeness to God through sin while retaining God’s image is perhaps best described as a divorce between the orders of nature and grace. The result of this great divorce is death.

Death is a sign that something is deeply wrong with us and with the world. While death is a part of nature, and so, natural, it is only “natural” because the order of nature has been disconnected from the order of grace. Christ came to restore this vital connection. He did it by his passion, death, and resurrection, thus proving that love is not merely as strong as death, but stronger than death.

It is light of Christ’s triumphant resurrection that the apostle Paul taunts death:

Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?²

Just as God delivered the Israelites from Egyptian bondage through the waters of the Red Sea, he delivers us from sin and death through the waters of baptism. Baptism is our own exodus from Egypt. This is exactly what St. Paul was getting at in our reading from Romans. “Are you unaware,” he asks the Christians of ancient Rome, “that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” You see, in baptism we die, are buried, and rise to new life, “so,” quoting Paul again, “that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”³

The new life you have in Christ does not begin when you die; it begins at baptism. Eternal life is now! For Christians there is one vocation: follow Christ. Each of us received this calling at baptism.

If Christ was not raised from the dead, then, taking a cue from Monty Python, baptism is a farcical aquatic ceremony signifying nothing at all. As St. Paul observed: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins,” before concluding, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”⁴

The good news, my friends, as the ancient Christian greeting puts it is, Christo anesti. Alithos anesti – Christ is risen! Truly he is risen! And so, we are not the most pitiable people of all. We are the most blessed people of all because, through Christ, we have conquered death.

Jesus is not merely a historical figure from the remote past, who lived a long time ago in a land far away, belonging to an ancient culture that’s difficult for us to understand. To view Jesus, either exclusively or primarily, as a historical figure is to “seek the living one among the dead.”⁵

My friends, Jesus is risen from the dead. He is alive and active through the Holy Spirit, who is the mode of his resurrection presence in, among, and through us until he comes again. In a few moments we will all witness resurrection, when our Elect are baptized. We will see, hear, and by their anointing with Sacred Chrism, even smell for ourselves the life-giving love of God generously poured out.

Since Thursday night, the Church has been in liturgy. At the end of our Mass this evening, you will be dismissed, that is, sent forth. You are sent out to tell others about what you have witnessed. It isn’t possible to keep truly Good News to yourself.

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1 Roman Missal, Sunday of the Resurrection, The Easter Vigil, The Easter Proclamation (Exsultet), sec. 19.^↩
2 1 Corinthians 15:54b-55.^↩
3 Romans 6:3-5.^↩
4 1 Corinthians 15:17.19.^↩
5 Luke 24:5.^↩

Interlude: Holy Saturday

Today is the strangest day of the liturgical year. Holy Saturday is a quiet day, a day of transition that point of balance between what has been and what will be. If you enter a Catholic Church today it should feel empty, dark, like a tomb. The tabernacle is empty, the altar is stripped, there are no flowers or extraneous decorations, no holy water, etc.

In the context of the sacred Triduum, the three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday, between our celebration of the Lord's Passion and tonight's Vigil, we've hit a pause.

In an essay entitled "Descent Into Hell" from the fourth volume of his Explorations in Theology, subtitled Spirit and Institution, Hans Urs Von Balthasar noted that "Holy Saturday is thus a kind of suspension, as it were, of the Incarnation, whose result is given back to the hands of the Father and which the Father will renew and definitively confirm by the Easter Resurrection."

This pause is not incidental. It is intentional. It is vital, that is, life-giving. For those whose lives permit, Holy Saturday can be a pause, a time for silence, recollection. A holy day, made sacred by silence.

As to the Paschal Mystery of Christ's death and resurrection, what is happening liturgically, mystagogically on Holy Saturday is liminal.

The second reading for today's Office of Readings is from a well-known ancient and anonymous homily for Holy Saturday. It is about Christ's descent into hell. In this dramatic telling, once in the netherworld, Christ's spirit seeks out that of Adam. Upon finding our first parent, tells him, referring to his body lying in the tomb- "My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell."

Iesvs Nazarenevs Rex Ivdaeorvm, by Henry Augustin Valentin, 19th cent.