A friar who was ordained to the priesthood yesterday invited me to be the preacher at his first Mass. Here's the homily I gave.
(Trinity Sunday, A)
When I was a new priest—and had even less good sense and tact than the precious little I have now—I used to say that one of the benefits of becoming a priest was that you didn’t have to listen to any more Trinity Sunday homilies.
You know; they can be brilliant, but sometimes, not so much. It goes something like this: God is three, God is one, it’s a mystery, you can’t really understand it…please stand for the Creed.
And this is unfortunate; this business about ‘you can’t understand’ the mystery of the Blessed Trinity. We cannot have a full comprehension, of course, but this doesn’t mean we can’t have some understanding. In fact, all of us who are Christians can have some understanding of this great mystery, precisely because we have all had an experience of the Blessed Trinity.
To get at what I mean, let’s turn to something we all know well: Christmas. What is Christmas all about? As we read in the gospel of St. Matthew:
Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the holy Spirit. (1:18)
Showing posts with label Salvation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Salvation. Show all posts
March 22, 2015
Salvation
The mini-season of Passiontide isn't explicit in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, but it is there. On the Fifth Sunday of Lent the readings for Mass shift toward the Passion. The Letter to the Hebrews, with its emphasis on sacrifice and the priesthood of Jesus Christ, begins in the Office of Readings.
Hebrews 2:3 caught my reflection this morning.
how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?
For the 'ignore' that the New American Bible offers, the Italian breviary has the verb trascurare, a word I have used in confession for something I have neglected or overlooked, something I ought to have done but have not. The original verb is ameleó, which the dictionary tells me means 'to neglect' or 'to disregard.'
How shall we escape if we disregard so great a salvation?
I am grateful to be reminded today that the salvation we have in Jesus Christ is something that is ours to neglect or disregard. That is to say it is not something that is ours to obtain or attain to. It is freely lavished on our humanity through the humanity of Christ, if only we surrender to it and consent to receive it.
Of course, given our attachments and our concupiscence, this is not as easy as it seems. It is furthermore not so easy because it is a consent and a surrender that must be made each day, and will also include the suffering of giving ourselves for the sake of the salvation in Christ of others, those God gives to us in our lives, and of the poor. Without becoming a vehicle for salvation, we have not been saved. This is the mystery of the Cross as it takes shape in the journey of each baptized person, and without the Cross there is no Resurrection.
Hebrews 2:3 caught my reflection this morning.
how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation?
For the 'ignore' that the New American Bible offers, the Italian breviary has the verb trascurare, a word I have used in confession for something I have neglected or overlooked, something I ought to have done but have not. The original verb is ameleó, which the dictionary tells me means 'to neglect' or 'to disregard.'
How shall we escape if we disregard so great a salvation?
I am grateful to be reminded today that the salvation we have in Jesus Christ is something that is ours to neglect or disregard. That is to say it is not something that is ours to obtain or attain to. It is freely lavished on our humanity through the humanity of Christ, if only we surrender to it and consent to receive it.
Of course, given our attachments and our concupiscence, this is not as easy as it seems. It is furthermore not so easy because it is a consent and a surrender that must be made each day, and will also include the suffering of giving ourselves for the sake of the salvation in Christ of others, those God gives to us in our lives, and of the poor. Without becoming a vehicle for salvation, we have not been saved. This is the mystery of the Cross as it takes shape in the journey of each baptized person, and without the Cross there is no Resurrection.
March 28, 2013
Much in Many
Melito of Sardis is wonderful in the Office of Readings today:
Here he is who bore much in many; here is the one who was killed in Abel and in Isaac had his feet tied, who roamed, a foreigner, in Jacob, was sold in Joseph, exposed in Moses, had his throat slit in the lamb, was pursued in David, and in the prophets dishonored.God's response to a broken and violent world is not to magically remove the suffering we have insisted upon for ourselves and each other--and thereby take away also the freedom which is his likeness--but to identify himself with it, that, if we consent to the salvation he is just dying to give us--literally--all the death we have purchased for ourselves might be destroyed from the inside by the divine humility joined to our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.
January 23, 2013
Touches and Imperatives
It's probably because trying to learn Italian makes me more attentive to grammar, but as we've started once again to journey through St. Mark in the daily lectionary, I've been thinking about how Jesus heals people.
Sometimes it's by a touch, as in Peter's mother-in-law or the leper in chapter one. Later on, in chapter five, we'll see that the touch works the other way too, when the woman with the hemorrhages is healed just by reaching out and touching Jesus' garment. These touches exist for us in our prayer, as we strive to reach out to God through the crowd of our distractions and attachments, and as God touches us in so many ways, noticed and unnoticed, but especially in Holy Communion.
But touch isn't the only way Jesus heals. The paralytic in chapter two and the man with the withered hand in chapter three are healed by a word. And it's not just a word, but an imperative, a command. 'Rise, take up your pallet and go home.' 'Stretch out your hand.' The new wholeness for each came in obedience to the command, and the imperative holds within itself the power to be effected. Divine speech is creative in its very utterance--'God said, and so it happened'--and by just the command of Jesus these two people are created anew, renovated.
It seems to me this sort of reflection can save us from two ways our sense of religion gets impoverished sometimes.
First, without quite knowing it, we can start to think as the world does in viewing the imperatives and 'rules' of the faith as arbitrary or oppressive. But the truth is, though they may seem otherwise to our minds made confused and wills made disordered by sin, all of the commands of God are of the form, 'rise' and 'stretch out,' that is to say ordered to our wholeness, flourishing, and happiness.
Second, sometimes I hear hints of an impoverished sense of God's will with regard to salvation, a sense that salvation is something God simply offers to the world for anyone who might be fortunate enough to find it and diligent enough to accept it. Holding such an idea, even half-consciously, can be attractive because it lets the believer think himself a little special. "God, I thank you that I am not like other men." But the truth is that salvation isn't just something God offers to the world, but something God wills for the world. Indeed, God commands us to be saved, willing and desiring passionately that we should become free to be the creatures he made us to be for his glory and one another's salvation. And just like the imperatives that healed the paralytic and the man with the withered hand, God's command is effective; it contains within itself the power to stand up, to stretch out hearts and minds turned in on themselves in misery and sin.
Sometimes it's by a touch, as in Peter's mother-in-law or the leper in chapter one. Later on, in chapter five, we'll see that the touch works the other way too, when the woman with the hemorrhages is healed just by reaching out and touching Jesus' garment. These touches exist for us in our prayer, as we strive to reach out to God through the crowd of our distractions and attachments, and as God touches us in so many ways, noticed and unnoticed, but especially in Holy Communion.
But touch isn't the only way Jesus heals. The paralytic in chapter two and the man with the withered hand in chapter three are healed by a word. And it's not just a word, but an imperative, a command. 'Rise, take up your pallet and go home.' 'Stretch out your hand.' The new wholeness for each came in obedience to the command, and the imperative holds within itself the power to be effected. Divine speech is creative in its very utterance--'God said, and so it happened'--and by just the command of Jesus these two people are created anew, renovated.
It seems to me this sort of reflection can save us from two ways our sense of religion gets impoverished sometimes.
First, without quite knowing it, we can start to think as the world does in viewing the imperatives and 'rules' of the faith as arbitrary or oppressive. But the truth is, though they may seem otherwise to our minds made confused and wills made disordered by sin, all of the commands of God are of the form, 'rise' and 'stretch out,' that is to say ordered to our wholeness, flourishing, and happiness.
Second, sometimes I hear hints of an impoverished sense of God's will with regard to salvation, a sense that salvation is something God simply offers to the world for anyone who might be fortunate enough to find it and diligent enough to accept it. Holding such an idea, even half-consciously, can be attractive because it lets the believer think himself a little special. "God, I thank you that I am not like other men." But the truth is that salvation isn't just something God offers to the world, but something God wills for the world. Indeed, God commands us to be saved, willing and desiring passionately that we should become free to be the creatures he made us to be for his glory and one another's salvation. And just like the imperatives that healed the paralytic and the man with the withered hand, God's command is effective; it contains within itself the power to stand up, to stretch out hearts and minds turned in on themselves in misery and sin.
November 25, 2012
The Funny Feast of Christ the King
I woke up this morning thinking about today, the last Sunday of Ordinary Time, the solemnity of Christ the King. In a way that it hadn't before, it struck me as an odd day. I'll try to explain how.
The most powerful doctrines are the ones we hold as assumptions, moods, 'interpretive keys,' 'lenses,' and the like. The less they are explicitly taught and simply absorbed from one's surroundings, the more powerful and normative they become. One such doctrine I learned early on in my Catholic journey and theological education was a certain way of understanding the relationship between history and eschatology.
It was said that in the past there was too strong a focus on an other-worldly salvation, on an eschatology which was reduced to the four 'last things' (death, judgement, Heaven, hell). This absolved Christians of taking seriously enough the need to serve the salvation and well-being of people in the here and now. But since we modern Christians knew well that we would be judged according to our never-questioned reading of the Judgment scene in Matthew 25, our work was less in preaching, catechizing, 'making disciples of all nations,' but in serving the needs of the 'least of our brothers and sisters.' Our ancestors in the great modern flowering of apostolic religious life did this by finding new forms and building new institutions to serve the needs of people. For us it wasn't to do such things ourselves, but to try to make civil authorities do them instead. This was called the shift from 'charity' to 'justice.' It was one of the great dogmas of my Catholic upbringing.
Now maybe I make a caricature of these things and thus a straw man, but the theological insight behind them is solid; eschatology isn't about a far-away world that renders the current reality less important, but about a Kingdom that is transcendent, always and everywhere present, available, and inviting history into its beatitude.
To reiterate the the basic doctrine: we used to talk about other-worldly salvation, but now we are about peace and justice in the here and now. But here's the funny thing about Christ the King; as an observance, it has journeyed along the opposite trajectory.
The reformed liturgy presents the feast of Christ the King as a celebration of the rule of the cosmic Christ, the alpha and the omega. The day crowns the apocalyptic theme of the last days of Ordinary Time and makes us ready for the similarly apocalyptic first Sunday of Advent. The readings for the Mass and the Divine Office seem to emphasize Christ the King as a day to reflect on the end point of time, history, and God's purpose, without a lot of interference of the messiness of the 'here and now.'
It's funny because the feast of Christ the King used to be a lot more pointed toward the current moment, with much heavier political overtones. Here are a couple of quotes from the encyclical Quas primas of Pius XI, which established the observance:
That's 1925. Kind of shocking, isn't it? Somewhere along the forty years between Quas primas and Vatican II, the Church decided to make friends with the project of European modernity, and with it the idea of secular, pluralistic, modern democracy. And so, as we turned from other-worldly salvation to justice and peace, the funny feast of Christ the King had to take the opposite path and be changed from a politically-charged observance to a work of awe and wonder at the world to come. The politics of Christ the King went out of style, but since you can't just get rid of a feast day instituted by a Pope, the best thing you can do is to make it mystical.
But now, another fifty years on since Vatican II, perhaps the concerns of those who made such a fuss about 'modernism' are looking a little less stuffy and reactionary, as the happy friendship between the Church and modern liberal democracy starts to show some signs of stress.
The most powerful doctrines are the ones we hold as assumptions, moods, 'interpretive keys,' 'lenses,' and the like. The less they are explicitly taught and simply absorbed from one's surroundings, the more powerful and normative they become. One such doctrine I learned early on in my Catholic journey and theological education was a certain way of understanding the relationship between history and eschatology.
It was said that in the past there was too strong a focus on an other-worldly salvation, on an eschatology which was reduced to the four 'last things' (death, judgement, Heaven, hell). This absolved Christians of taking seriously enough the need to serve the salvation and well-being of people in the here and now. But since we modern Christians knew well that we would be judged according to our never-questioned reading of the Judgment scene in Matthew 25, our work was less in preaching, catechizing, 'making disciples of all nations,' but in serving the needs of the 'least of our brothers and sisters.' Our ancestors in the great modern flowering of apostolic religious life did this by finding new forms and building new institutions to serve the needs of people. For us it wasn't to do such things ourselves, but to try to make civil authorities do them instead. This was called the shift from 'charity' to 'justice.' It was one of the great dogmas of my Catholic upbringing.
Now maybe I make a caricature of these things and thus a straw man, but the theological insight behind them is solid; eschatology isn't about a far-away world that renders the current reality less important, but about a Kingdom that is transcendent, always and everywhere present, available, and inviting history into its beatitude.
To reiterate the the basic doctrine: we used to talk about other-worldly salvation, but now we are about peace and justice in the here and now. But here's the funny thing about Christ the King; as an observance, it has journeyed along the opposite trajectory.
The reformed liturgy presents the feast of Christ the King as a celebration of the rule of the cosmic Christ, the alpha and the omega. The day crowns the apocalyptic theme of the last days of Ordinary Time and makes us ready for the similarly apocalyptic first Sunday of Advent. The readings for the Mass and the Divine Office seem to emphasize Christ the King as a day to reflect on the end point of time, history, and God's purpose, without a lot of interference of the messiness of the 'here and now.'
It's funny because the feast of Christ the King used to be a lot more pointed toward the current moment, with much heavier political overtones. Here are a couple of quotes from the encyclical Quas primas of Pius XI, which established the observance:
In the first Encyclical Letter which We addressed at the beginning of Our Pontificate to the Bishops of the universal Church, [Ubi arcano Dei consilio] We referred to the chief causes of the difficulties under which mankind was laboring. And We remember saying that these manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics: and we said further, that as long as individuals and states refused to submit to the rule of our Savior, there would be no really hopeful prospect of a lasting peace among nations. (1)
Nor is there any difference in this matter [i.e. the "empire of our Redeemer"] between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society... If, therefore, the rulers of nations wish to preserve their authority, to promote and increase the prosperity of their countries, they will not neglect the public duty of reverence and obedience to the rule of Christ. (18)
When once men recognize, both in private and in public life, that Christ is King, society will at last receive the great blessings of real liberty, well-ordered discipline, peace and harmony. (19)
That's 1925. Kind of shocking, isn't it? Somewhere along the forty years between Quas primas and Vatican II, the Church decided to make friends with the project of European modernity, and with it the idea of secular, pluralistic, modern democracy. And so, as we turned from other-worldly salvation to justice and peace, the funny feast of Christ the King had to take the opposite path and be changed from a politically-charged observance to a work of awe and wonder at the world to come. The politics of Christ the King went out of style, but since you can't just get rid of a feast day instituted by a Pope, the best thing you can do is to make it mystical.
But now, another fifty years on since Vatican II, perhaps the concerns of those who made such a fuss about 'modernism' are looking a little less stuffy and reactionary, as the happy friendship between the Church and modern liberal democracy starts to show some signs of stress.
Christus vincit, Christus regnat, Christus imperat
October 17, 2012
Vocation and Pathology
From time to time I'll see something ranting against celibacy, saying that it's a pathological choice or at least can't be healthy, etc. It seems to me that these usually fall into the kind of black and white thinking that doesn't take seriously the work of grace.
Sure, some people take up the celibacy of religious life or the priesthood for imperfect reasons, and even from pathology. And, of course, some celibacies end in disaster and suffering not only for the would-be celibate, but also for others, as we know all too well in our time. In religious life one has the joy of seeing old celibates for whom the charism has worked as advertised, having broken them open to a chaste and non-exclusive love for the world which reflects the love of God in its own particular way. But one also gets to see the celibacies that have gone wrong, leaving celibates dried up in an affective dead-end.
One can say the same things, mutatis mutandis, of marriage, or of any vocation we enter into with every good intention, but as the wheat and weeds of our blessed and broken selves.
The danger is to think that reasons and motivations are all good or all bad. We are mysterious messes, made of the goodness in whose image we are created together with the festering and rotten injuries left by the effects of sin. Can God call us to the vocation he gives us for our salvation--and for our chance to participate in his salvation of the world--as this total person? In other words, can God call us to our vocation with both our good reasons and bad for our attraction to the choice, with both our sanctity and our pathology at work? Yes. It's called redemption.
When it works, when someone succeeds in surrendering to this work of salvation, it's a truly blessed and amazing thing. Pathologies are flipped, turned inside-out--pick your metaphor--by the opportunities for grace and growth that the vocation brings and become gifts given for the encouragement of others and their salvation. Just because it sometimes doesn't work when we don't succeed in surrendering to grace, just because sometimes pathology swallows up what would have been sanctity and uses it for its own rotten and meaningless ends, that doesn't make it the fault of the vocation.
Sure, some people take up the celibacy of religious life or the priesthood for imperfect reasons, and even from pathology. And, of course, some celibacies end in disaster and suffering not only for the would-be celibate, but also for others, as we know all too well in our time. In religious life one has the joy of seeing old celibates for whom the charism has worked as advertised, having broken them open to a chaste and non-exclusive love for the world which reflects the love of God in its own particular way. But one also gets to see the celibacies that have gone wrong, leaving celibates dried up in an affective dead-end.
One can say the same things, mutatis mutandis, of marriage, or of any vocation we enter into with every good intention, but as the wheat and weeds of our blessed and broken selves.
The danger is to think that reasons and motivations are all good or all bad. We are mysterious messes, made of the goodness in whose image we are created together with the festering and rotten injuries left by the effects of sin. Can God call us to the vocation he gives us for our salvation--and for our chance to participate in his salvation of the world--as this total person? In other words, can God call us to our vocation with both our good reasons and bad for our attraction to the choice, with both our sanctity and our pathology at work? Yes. It's called redemption.
When it works, when someone succeeds in surrendering to this work of salvation, it's a truly blessed and amazing thing. Pathologies are flipped, turned inside-out--pick your metaphor--by the opportunities for grace and growth that the vocation brings and become gifts given for the encouragement of others and their salvation. Just because it sometimes doesn't work when we don't succeed in surrendering to grace, just because sometimes pathology swallows up what would have been sanctity and uses it for its own rotten and meaningless ends, that doesn't make it the fault of the vocation.
August 15, 2012
Ferragosto
The holiday today has been good. In it God has provided some graces of realizing this moment in my vocation.
This little friary where I'm living now is the first place in my religious life where the Office of Readings is prayed in common. I don't think I prefer it, actually. I'm just so used to being able to take the readings at my own pace, stop and use the dictionary, etc., and then take some time between the readings and responsories to reflect a little. Nevertheless, it's a good thing and good practice. Being the friar in the house with the least Italian, I usually don't have to do one of the readings. Today, though, due to friars going out to offer Masses, there were only two of us and I ended up with the long reading from Munificentissimus Deus. Despite the many instances of incorruttibilità over which I stumbled each time, it went o.k. Sometimes I think I can feel the neural ruts being dug for Italian syntactical and grammatical logics.
Because the friars knew there would be few of us here today because of vacations and the soon-to-begin Capuchin general chapter, I was asked a while back if I would go today to offer Mass at the Discepole di Gesù Eucaristico, an institute of sisters that has their generalate here in the neighborhood. It was the first time I have offered Mass in Italian outside of a friary chapel. I did o.k., but not great. Nevertheless, the experience reminded me of my vocation. It was like, 'Oh yeah; this is what I'm meant to do in this world.'
I had put off writing the homily much longer than I usually would; my thought was that since I'm supposed to be learning more Italian each week, it would turn out better if I waited. I'm not sure it worked. It was too short, and also too short on presenting the hopefulness of the day.
It's funny about eschatology; you need some pretty advanced verb tenses to do it right. There are very delicate senses of time and eternity, of what has been, as well as the already fulfilled for which we still groan in expectation. Mary, the Immaculate Conception, is free from every burden of original sin. Today we celebrate her freedom from the most searingly obvious of the effects of that sin, the bodily corruption of our temporal death. In her we see our hope as she anticipates the resurrection for which we all have a sure hope in Christ. And yet we know all too well that even though we are free from the guilt of original sin by the grace of baptism, the effects of that sin still smolder and rot within us. All of us sinners, may God have mercy on us, know this as we face daily the anguished unmeaning of knowing how we have, with our sins, insisted on our own misery--and worse--insisted on the misery of others.
Mary's Assumption shows us that the fruits of Christ's victory are available to our humanity. The victory has been won; it is ours to surrender to it if we can only find the willingness. Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great. But she still fascinates, and so often we still hook our attention to her and drag each other down to the hell into which she eternally falls. But our hope in the confusion of our woundedness is that God wills our salvation. Salvation isn't a commodity held out by some merchant or landlord of a deity for those who might care to buy it. It is the very self-giving of God as it is experienced by a cured but still healing creature. In Mary, through whom this self-giving of God comes to be given to the world, we are shown today the destiny that God is just dying--literally--to give us.
This little friary where I'm living now is the first place in my religious life where the Office of Readings is prayed in common. I don't think I prefer it, actually. I'm just so used to being able to take the readings at my own pace, stop and use the dictionary, etc., and then take some time between the readings and responsories to reflect a little. Nevertheless, it's a good thing and good practice. Being the friar in the house with the least Italian, I usually don't have to do one of the readings. Today, though, due to friars going out to offer Masses, there were only two of us and I ended up with the long reading from Munificentissimus Deus. Despite the many instances of incorruttibilità over which I stumbled each time, it went o.k. Sometimes I think I can feel the neural ruts being dug for Italian syntactical and grammatical logics.
Because the friars knew there would be few of us here today because of vacations and the soon-to-begin Capuchin general chapter, I was asked a while back if I would go today to offer Mass at the Discepole di Gesù Eucaristico, an institute of sisters that has their generalate here in the neighborhood. It was the first time I have offered Mass in Italian outside of a friary chapel. I did o.k., but not great. Nevertheless, the experience reminded me of my vocation. It was like, 'Oh yeah; this is what I'm meant to do in this world.'
I had put off writing the homily much longer than I usually would; my thought was that since I'm supposed to be learning more Italian each week, it would turn out better if I waited. I'm not sure it worked. It was too short, and also too short on presenting the hopefulness of the day.
It's funny about eschatology; you need some pretty advanced verb tenses to do it right. There are very delicate senses of time and eternity, of what has been, as well as the already fulfilled for which we still groan in expectation. Mary, the Immaculate Conception, is free from every burden of original sin. Today we celebrate her freedom from the most searingly obvious of the effects of that sin, the bodily corruption of our temporal death. In her we see our hope as she anticipates the resurrection for which we all have a sure hope in Christ. And yet we know all too well that even though we are free from the guilt of original sin by the grace of baptism, the effects of that sin still smolder and rot within us. All of us sinners, may God have mercy on us, know this as we face daily the anguished unmeaning of knowing how we have, with our sins, insisted on our own misery--and worse--insisted on the misery of others.
Mary's Assumption shows us that the fruits of Christ's victory are available to our humanity. The victory has been won; it is ours to surrender to it if we can only find the willingness. Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great. But she still fascinates, and so often we still hook our attention to her and drag each other down to the hell into which she eternally falls. But our hope in the confusion of our woundedness is that God wills our salvation. Salvation isn't a commodity held out by some merchant or landlord of a deity for those who might care to buy it. It is the very self-giving of God as it is experienced by a cured but still healing creature. In Mary, through whom this self-giving of God comes to be given to the world, we are shown today the destiny that God is just dying--literally--to give us.
April 18, 2012
The Blessed Between
This past Sunday was my last Mass at the parish where I have been going since last year. Leaving this little 'help out' has thrown me deeper into the liminal space, the in-between time, that first crashed open when I got the call about the Rome job back in September and realized that I wouldn't be finishing the doctoral program at BC.
At the Mass one of the songs was Dan Schutte's Blest Be The Lord.
Music hooks itself into memory so deeply. For example, I can't hear the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication album without being taken back to another very liminal period, the six weeks or so in between my graduation from college and my first entrance into religious life. Though I have no desire to do so, if I were to listen to the albums House of Pain or the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, I would certainly be taken right back to the cheap pool hall at University College Galway where I spent so many afternoons in the spring of 1993. Those were the only two records they had, and they alternated loudly and continuously. But a game of 8-Ball was only 35p, so what do you want?
Of course I would rather have a Graduale romanum or a Liber usualis in my hand than an OCP hymnal and even though Blest Be The Lord is pretty hokey, at least it's a psalm. But in any case it sure takes me back. At the Saturday vigil Mass at Harkness Chapel on the campus of Connecticut College, Blest Be the Lord was in very heavy rotation back in the fall of 1992 when I was a new Catholic. It will probably always remind me of the sense and feel of my neophyte days.
Hearing and singing this song at Mass on Sunday has stuck with me during this week. It has come into prayer as the gratitude for the way a liminal time, in its concentration of endings and beginnings, brings back the clarity and innocence of early inspirations. Grace uses the peculiar openness of the time to re-member the journey of self and the salvation God delights and desires to give.
At the Mass one of the songs was Dan Schutte's Blest Be The Lord.
Music hooks itself into memory so deeply. For example, I can't hear the Beastie Boys' Ill Communication album without being taken back to another very liminal period, the six weeks or so in between my graduation from college and my first entrance into religious life. Though I have no desire to do so, if I were to listen to the albums House of Pain or the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Mother's Milk, I would certainly be taken right back to the cheap pool hall at University College Galway where I spent so many afternoons in the spring of 1993. Those were the only two records they had, and they alternated loudly and continuously. But a game of 8-Ball was only 35p, so what do you want?
Of course I would rather have a Graduale romanum or a Liber usualis in my hand than an OCP hymnal and even though Blest Be The Lord is pretty hokey, at least it's a psalm. But in any case it sure takes me back. At the Saturday vigil Mass at Harkness Chapel on the campus of Connecticut College, Blest Be the Lord was in very heavy rotation back in the fall of 1992 when I was a new Catholic. It will probably always remind me of the sense and feel of my neophyte days.
Hearing and singing this song at Mass on Sunday has stuck with me during this week. It has come into prayer as the gratitude for the way a liminal time, in its concentration of endings and beginnings, brings back the clarity and innocence of early inspirations. Grace uses the peculiar openness of the time to re-member the journey of self and the salvation God delights and desires to give.
March 30, 2012
Inverted in Many Ways
The other day I was paging up a breviary and I came across the holy card from this post, and Fr. Venantius's reflection on a priest seeing his reflection in the chalice during the consecration. (I have three sets of breviaries going right now: Latin, English, and Italian.)
I was just thinking about how, most of the time, the reflection one sees in the chalice is inverted. It's like when you see yourself in a spoon; the concave surface refracts such that your reflection is upside-down.
Thinking on this, I'm reminded that the person I think I know as myself is not the same person known by the Creator. My distraction and sin distorts my self-knowledge. Coming to know myself as God sees me is the substance of the spiritual journey. So it turns out that you really should take the advice of your kindergarten teacher when she said to 'be yourself.' Trouble is, it's not something you can just do, but a long and sometimes terrifying work of the spirit.
Perhaps it's a trite reflection, and if it is I apologize, but maybe when I see my inverted reflection in the chalice I can be reminded that Jesus Christ died and rose into the Eucharist and the other sacraments precisely that I might be 'reverted'. That I, one who finds himself as a homo incurvatus in se, a human being bent over and turned back in on himself, might learn to stand up and be the flourishing creature willed by God. This new person, as he emerges in the course of my journey of prayer, might appear upside-down and foreign because of my confusion and my attachment to false selves, but this is an optical illusion of the spiritual vision. The image that appears to be upside-down only looks funny because my confusions and disordered affections have distorted my perspective; in the end it is he who will turn out to be the real me.
I was just thinking about how, most of the time, the reflection one sees in the chalice is inverted. It's like when you see yourself in a spoon; the concave surface refracts such that your reflection is upside-down.
Thinking on this, I'm reminded that the person I think I know as myself is not the same person known by the Creator. My distraction and sin distorts my self-knowledge. Coming to know myself as God sees me is the substance of the spiritual journey. So it turns out that you really should take the advice of your kindergarten teacher when she said to 'be yourself.' Trouble is, it's not something you can just do, but a long and sometimes terrifying work of the spirit.
Perhaps it's a trite reflection, and if it is I apologize, but maybe when I see my inverted reflection in the chalice I can be reminded that Jesus Christ died and rose into the Eucharist and the other sacraments precisely that I might be 'reverted'. That I, one who finds himself as a homo incurvatus in se, a human being bent over and turned back in on himself, might learn to stand up and be the flourishing creature willed by God. This new person, as he emerges in the course of my journey of prayer, might appear upside-down and foreign because of my confusion and my attachment to false selves, but this is an optical illusion of the spiritual vision. The image that appears to be upside-down only looks funny because my confusions and disordered affections have distorted my perspective; in the end it is he who will turn out to be the real me.
March 3, 2012
The Salvific Un/Willingness
Mainstream religious life, at least in my cultural context, faces some large and fundamental challenges. Hardly anybody would disagree with that. What we disagree on is how to go forward. Some think we need to retrieve what has been lost and restore what once was. Others see our trouble as having failed to complete or commit to the process of renewal and updating called for by Vatican II. Sometimes I think I have an opinion on this, and sometimes I don't. More and more I feel like most of what I hear in this debate has hardened into unwisdom.
But here's one thing of which I am increasingly convinced: A religious must be maximally willing to lose his life for Jesus Christ through the charism of which the Holy Spirit has made him a steward. At the same time, however, a religious must be maximally unwilling to lose his soul to the state of religious life as a human institution.
The most dangerous temptations religious face both individually and corporately seek to invert this stance, to help us find ways to protect our lives from the invitation of the charism while simultaneously tricking us into losing our souls and salvation to the institution.
It is a difficult and, at times, harrowing discernment to follow this stance in the small moments of daily life as well as the larger contours of one's vocation. But it is the burning love of the Crucified within, and it is salvation.
But here's one thing of which I am increasingly convinced: A religious must be maximally willing to lose his life for Jesus Christ through the charism of which the Holy Spirit has made him a steward. At the same time, however, a religious must be maximally unwilling to lose his soul to the state of religious life as a human institution.
The most dangerous temptations religious face both individually and corporately seek to invert this stance, to help us find ways to protect our lives from the invitation of the charism while simultaneously tricking us into losing our souls and salvation to the institution.
It is a difficult and, at times, harrowing discernment to follow this stance in the small moments of daily life as well as the larger contours of one's vocation. But it is the burning love of the Crucified within, and it is salvation.
February 8, 2012
Whining and Salvation
Once I was trying to pray and I realized I wasn't praying but whining. I was trying to pray in contrition for my sins. By God's grace alone I noticed that I wasn't contrite. In fact, I was annoyed at my sinfulness. The same thing went for trying to pray in temptation. I might have thought I was praying for the strength to fight, but really I was whining to God about having to deal with being tempted.
Sin bothered me because it wasn't really God that I loved. Instead, I was in love with the idea of myself as a holy person. My sins and faults kept pointing out to me that this wasn't the case and I was annoyed. This is the passion of vainglory. Sometimes a subtle commercialism would get into it too; I realized that part of me expected certain graces and holy victories in exchange for what I had 'given up' by becoming a religious.
To our shame sometimes we try to sell religious life this way; the emotional rewards of ministry and the fraternal intimacies of community are supposed to supply what we have renounced by our obedience, poverty, and chastity. Of course this doesn't work out, and we can come to see ourselves, half-consciously perhaps, as cheated. The flesh, after all, fights against abnegation; it wants something in exchange for what it is denied. Failing that, it wants something to numb it, and any number of self-medications are readily available in religious life, publicly and to our shame: alcohol, food, internet, video games, etc. All of this is very pleasing to the devil. Not that he's happy. In fact, he's miserable, and that's part of why he wants everyone else to be miserable too.
Every time I have any sort of trial or temptation--and by the grace of God they have become more terrible and subtle as the years have gone on--and I try to pray through the experience, the whine is there. It's the whining complaint of the unregenerate man who feels as though any suffering is an injustice to him, and any difficulty is an outrageous imposition. Fortunately and after some years I recognize him right away most of the time. I thank God for him as far as he teaches me the humility of knowing I have hardly made a beginning of living a spiritual life, and I turn my intention to thanking God for the tremendous gift of being tried or tempted.
Trials and temptations are the school in which God trains us in letting go of ourselves, our arbitrary tastes, and our attachment to our moods, opinions, and cravings. Not that this is an end of in itself; the purpose of it all is to help us to a greater freedom for charity. God desires that I become free from the tyranny of self so that my love of neighbor can be more complete and transparent. That's salvation. That's the Kingdom of God.
Sin bothered me because it wasn't really God that I loved. Instead, I was in love with the idea of myself as a holy person. My sins and faults kept pointing out to me that this wasn't the case and I was annoyed. This is the passion of vainglory. Sometimes a subtle commercialism would get into it too; I realized that part of me expected certain graces and holy victories in exchange for what I had 'given up' by becoming a religious.
To our shame sometimes we try to sell religious life this way; the emotional rewards of ministry and the fraternal intimacies of community are supposed to supply what we have renounced by our obedience, poverty, and chastity. Of course this doesn't work out, and we can come to see ourselves, half-consciously perhaps, as cheated. The flesh, after all, fights against abnegation; it wants something in exchange for what it is denied. Failing that, it wants something to numb it, and any number of self-medications are readily available in religious life, publicly and to our shame: alcohol, food, internet, video games, etc. All of this is very pleasing to the devil. Not that he's happy. In fact, he's miserable, and that's part of why he wants everyone else to be miserable too.
Every time I have any sort of trial or temptation--and by the grace of God they have become more terrible and subtle as the years have gone on--and I try to pray through the experience, the whine is there. It's the whining complaint of the unregenerate man who feels as though any suffering is an injustice to him, and any difficulty is an outrageous imposition. Fortunately and after some years I recognize him right away most of the time. I thank God for him as far as he teaches me the humility of knowing I have hardly made a beginning of living a spiritual life, and I turn my intention to thanking God for the tremendous gift of being tried or tempted.
Trials and temptations are the school in which God trains us in letting go of ourselves, our arbitrary tastes, and our attachment to our moods, opinions, and cravings. Not that this is an end of in itself; the purpose of it all is to help us to a greater freedom for charity. God desires that I become free from the tyranny of self so that my love of neighbor can be more complete and transparent. That's salvation. That's the Kingdom of God.
January 31, 2012
Per Ardentissimum Amorem Crucifixi
I'm always fascinated by the way words and phrases swirl about and reiterate and recombine not only in the mind but also in community. One brother articulates something, and the words or phrase can enter the general discourse of the community. Sometimes this can be constructive, giving the group a common critical vocabulary. Other times it can be destructive, as when we reduce each other to labels and explanations.
Anyway, that's not my point today. I was just thinking about how, according to this sort of phenomenon, a title from a few posts ago perhaps came to me from a song without my being aware of it. The song is "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane" by Jeffrey Lewis:
The seventh rule (I hope you understand)
Is not to look to deep into your soul
Or you might find a hideous, hopeless hole
Of hatred, hunger, infinite, idiot
Mindless, meaningless, nothingness, nothingness,
Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness
Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness
Nothingness
And that's what I did
And every aspect of life that I selected
Was instantly and brutally dissected
I saw the horrible emptiness within
The reasons behind everything
And it was at that moment that I went insane.
That's the trouble with the ersatz spiritual experiences one might have through drugs, or with the endless journey of personal archaeology to which we are invited by the therapeutic culture: You arrive at the searing experience of your interior poverty, but with no good news on the other side.
The spiritual life, that is, a life lived in and according to the invitations of the Holy Spirit, reveals the saving discovering that our horrible interior poverty is not a cause for insanity or even sadness, but something to be embraced because it is exactly where God wills and delights to meet us in the burning love of Christ crucified.
The self-emptying of God who is Jesus Christ is the healing of our horrible emptiness within, the poverty of God in Christ condemned and crucified is the redemption of the poverty of our hearts.
Via autem non est nisi per ardentissimum amorem Crucifixi.
"There is no way but through the burning love of the Crucified." (St. Bonaventure's Itinerarium, prologue)
Anyway, that's not my point today. I was just thinking about how, according to this sort of phenomenon, a title from a few posts ago perhaps came to me from a song without my being aware of it. The song is "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane" by Jeffrey Lewis:
The seventh rule (I hope you understand)
Is not to look to deep into your soul
Or you might find a hideous, hopeless hole
Of hatred, hunger, infinite, idiot
Mindless, meaningless, nothingness, nothingness,
Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness
Nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness
Nothingness
And that's what I did
And every aspect of life that I selected
Was instantly and brutally dissected
I saw the horrible emptiness within
The reasons behind everything
And it was at that moment that I went insane.
That's the trouble with the ersatz spiritual experiences one might have through drugs, or with the endless journey of personal archaeology to which we are invited by the therapeutic culture: You arrive at the searing experience of your interior poverty, but with no good news on the other side.
The spiritual life, that is, a life lived in and according to the invitations of the Holy Spirit, reveals the saving discovering that our horrible interior poverty is not a cause for insanity or even sadness, but something to be embraced because it is exactly where God wills and delights to meet us in the burning love of Christ crucified.
The self-emptying of God who is Jesus Christ is the healing of our horrible emptiness within, the poverty of God in Christ condemned and crucified is the redemption of the poverty of our hearts.
Via autem non est nisi per ardentissimum amorem Crucifixi.
"There is no way but through the burning love of the Crucified." (St. Bonaventure's Itinerarium, prologue)
January 12, 2012
The Gift Is Not Like The Transgression
The feast of Bernard of Corleone today was my first chance to pray the new preface for "Holy Virgins and Religious." There was one change in particular for which I was grateful:
...For in the Saints who consecrated themselves to Christ
for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,
it is right to celebrate the wonders of your providence,
by which you call human nature back to its original holiness...
I appreciate the "holiness." (The Latin is sanctitas) The old preface said "innocence."
The change reminds me that "the gift is not like the transgression." (Romans 5:15, NAB) The redemption we have in Christ is not just a restoration of the original innocence--or even the blessedness--of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Our salvation goes beyond even this to raising us to the holiness of the Origin himself, that we might come to participate in the infinite delight, joy, and creativity of the Blessed Trinity.
Jesus Christ is not God's 'plan B' for fixing what was lost in the fall. Christ accomplishes this, of course, but does even more, fulfilling God's eternal plan to make his rational creature a sharer in the originary, creative delight out of which everything else that is comes to be.
...For in the Saints who consecrated themselves to Christ
for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven,
it is right to celebrate the wonders of your providence,
by which you call human nature back to its original holiness...
I appreciate the "holiness." (The Latin is sanctitas) The old preface said "innocence."
The change reminds me that "the gift is not like the transgression." (Romans 5:15, NAB) The redemption we have in Christ is not just a restoration of the original innocence--or even the blessedness--of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Our salvation goes beyond even this to raising us to the holiness of the Origin himself, that we might come to participate in the infinite delight, joy, and creativity of the Blessed Trinity.
Jesus Christ is not God's 'plan B' for fixing what was lost in the fall. Christ accomplishes this, of course, but does even more, fulfilling God's eternal plan to make his rational creature a sharer in the originary, creative delight out of which everything else that is comes to be.
December 19, 2011
Born Again
I love how the Sunday and weekday readings intersect this week such that yesterday we had the scene of the Annunciation and today we have the angel Gabriel's announcement to Zechariah of the birth of John the Baptist.
At first glance, the parallelism of the scenes might seem to reveal an unfairness. Both Mary and Zechariah question the announcements they receive; Mary because, presumably, she knows where babies come from, and Zechariah because he knows that he and Elizabeth had been unable to have children and had grown too old by then anyway. In response to Mary's questioning, the angel gently describes what will happen. Zechariah, on the other hand, is struck mute in punishment for his questioning, and remains speechless until John is born and named.
What gives? Is the angel Gabriel just nice to young women and mean to old men?
On the contrary, this difference in the scenes reveals the good news of Christmas.
Zechariah, because he knew the scriptures, ought to have recognized what God was up to. Several times previously in the history of the people of God, a birth from parents who were previously unable to have children or too old, or both, had signaled the beginning of new moment of salvation. So it was with Samson, Samuel, and Isaac. What was announced to Zechariah was something God was known to do, and Zechariah should have known it.
With Mary the case is different. For her, in her conception of Jesus, God doesn't just stretch the capacity of nature but goes beyond it. The miraculous births of Samson, Samuel, and Isaac are new beginnings of what already was; the birth of Jesus, as a break in the cycles of ordinary human generation as it has occurred since Adam and Eve, is a new humanity. Because what Gabriel announces to Mary is a entirely new thing that God was doing, her questioning is forgiven.
In the Nativity of Jesus, humanity has a new birth. And this is good news for all of us who know the ennui and weariness of life in the old Adam, because this 'born again-ness' is available to us by baptism into Christ's death and Holy Communion with his broken and risen humanity.
At first glance, the parallelism of the scenes might seem to reveal an unfairness. Both Mary and Zechariah question the announcements they receive; Mary because, presumably, she knows where babies come from, and Zechariah because he knows that he and Elizabeth had been unable to have children and had grown too old by then anyway. In response to Mary's questioning, the angel gently describes what will happen. Zechariah, on the other hand, is struck mute in punishment for his questioning, and remains speechless until John is born and named.
What gives? Is the angel Gabriel just nice to young women and mean to old men?
On the contrary, this difference in the scenes reveals the good news of Christmas.
Zechariah, because he knew the scriptures, ought to have recognized what God was up to. Several times previously in the history of the people of God, a birth from parents who were previously unable to have children or too old, or both, had signaled the beginning of new moment of salvation. So it was with Samson, Samuel, and Isaac. What was announced to Zechariah was something God was known to do, and Zechariah should have known it.
With Mary the case is different. For her, in her conception of Jesus, God doesn't just stretch the capacity of nature but goes beyond it. The miraculous births of Samson, Samuel, and Isaac are new beginnings of what already was; the birth of Jesus, as a break in the cycles of ordinary human generation as it has occurred since Adam and Eve, is a new humanity. Because what Gabriel announces to Mary is a entirely new thing that God was doing, her questioning is forgiven.
In the Nativity of Jesus, humanity has a new birth. And this is good news for all of us who know the ennui and weariness of life in the old Adam, because this 'born again-ness' is available to us by baptism into Christ's death and Holy Communion with his broken and risen humanity.
November 15, 2011
For Better Or For Worse
Sometimes I hear the complaint that the Church is more likely to canonize priests and religious than lay people, and that this somehow displays a discriminatory tendency.
But I think it's an important counterpoint to keep in mind that there is also probably a greater proportion of priests and religious in hell. So it goes both ways.
God gave me my religious and priestly vocation not because I was special, but as an act of mercy. This was God's best bet for saving me. It's the best way for me to become a saint. But I also know that if I become worse on account of religious life and the priesthood, I will be far worse than I could have ever become without them.
As the variously attributed quote goes, 'the path into hell is paved with the skulls of priests, with bishops as the sign-posts.'
But I think it's an important counterpoint to keep in mind that there is also probably a greater proportion of priests and religious in hell. So it goes both ways.
God gave me my religious and priestly vocation not because I was special, but as an act of mercy. This was God's best bet for saving me. It's the best way for me to become a saint. But I also know that if I become worse on account of religious life and the priesthood, I will be far worse than I could have ever become without them.
As the variously attributed quote goes, 'the path into hell is paved with the skulls of priests, with bishops as the sign-posts.'
November 4, 2011
Passion for Salvation
Traveling last weekend I was caught in the snowstorm and took refuge at our friary in Middletown, Connecticut. It was good to see the friars, and to enjoy the peace of the empty, found time. One of the things I did while I was there was read some of a book on the lives of the North American martyrs.
One scene struck me especially. In the midst of torture, one of the priests wrung a few drops of water from his wet clothes in order to baptize another victim who was ready to accept Christianity. That's just one of many moments that illustrate how driven these missionaries were, how convinced they were that the eternal salvation of souls was at stake in their ministry.
How far we have come from such zeal! Yes, of course it's a good thing that we have removed superstition and magical thinking from the practice of the sacraments. But on the other hand, do we really believe them necessary? I once heard a homily at an infant baptism in which the priest said that the baptism was simply an outward celebration of the divine adoption that the child had already received. Is this what the Church teaches?
One of the friars I live with suggests that we should examine our consciences on whether or not we have a 'passion for salvation.' Perhaps that's something like what used to be called a 'zeal for souls.' Do we really believe, as ministers of the gospel and priests of Jesus Christ, that the eternal salvation God desires for every person has some dependence on our faithfulness to our own call, to our finding the energy and motivation to become the holy religious and priests we have promised to be?
Or have we accepted, either consciously or in subtle, uncritical ways, the creeping universalism of our time, in all of its power to absolve everyone from responsibility? How many funerals have you been to in which the immediate, beatific destiny of the deceased is beyond question, and there is no sense in which the Mass is an offering for his or her continuing salvation? If everyone (and their dogs and cats) automatically 'go to heaven,' then what zeal could there be for the baptism with which the Risen Lord sends forth his disciples to all nations?
Or how much have we accepted the comfortable, civil theology of 'many paths to one divine something-or-other' as we stick our 'Coexist' bumper stickers on our cars and congratulate ourselves on our enlightenment? Never mind the fact that this 'theology' implies that God is an incompetent self-revealer; many of us have let it into our heads so that we don't have to say that anybody else might be wrong, the cardinal sin of our relativistic world.
Let us cast off these glittering errors of the world and allow grace to cultivate within us the direct imitation of God which is a zeal for souls and a passion for salvation.
One scene struck me especially. In the midst of torture, one of the priests wrung a few drops of water from his wet clothes in order to baptize another victim who was ready to accept Christianity. That's just one of many moments that illustrate how driven these missionaries were, how convinced they were that the eternal salvation of souls was at stake in their ministry.
How far we have come from such zeal! Yes, of course it's a good thing that we have removed superstition and magical thinking from the practice of the sacraments. But on the other hand, do we really believe them necessary? I once heard a homily at an infant baptism in which the priest said that the baptism was simply an outward celebration of the divine adoption that the child had already received. Is this what the Church teaches?
One of the friars I live with suggests that we should examine our consciences on whether or not we have a 'passion for salvation.' Perhaps that's something like what used to be called a 'zeal for souls.' Do we really believe, as ministers of the gospel and priests of Jesus Christ, that the eternal salvation God desires for every person has some dependence on our faithfulness to our own call, to our finding the energy and motivation to become the holy religious and priests we have promised to be?
Or have we accepted, either consciously or in subtle, uncritical ways, the creeping universalism of our time, in all of its power to absolve everyone from responsibility? How many funerals have you been to in which the immediate, beatific destiny of the deceased is beyond question, and there is no sense in which the Mass is an offering for his or her continuing salvation? If everyone (and their dogs and cats) automatically 'go to heaven,' then what zeal could there be for the baptism with which the Risen Lord sends forth his disciples to all nations?
Or how much have we accepted the comfortable, civil theology of 'many paths to one divine something-or-other' as we stick our 'Coexist' bumper stickers on our cars and congratulate ourselves on our enlightenment? Never mind the fact that this 'theology' implies that God is an incompetent self-revealer; many of us have let it into our heads so that we don't have to say that anybody else might be wrong, the cardinal sin of our relativistic world.
Let us cast off these glittering errors of the world and allow grace to cultivate within us the direct imitation of God which is a zeal for souls and a passion for salvation.
October 23, 2011
Theses on Love of Neighbor
To love means to will the best for the beloved, that the beloved might enjoy the best in happiness and flourishing.
God is the best 'thing' there is.
God, in giving himself to his creatures by adopting us in the Spirit into his own blessed life by the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son, is the perfect practitioner of love of neighbor.
Therefore, if we wish to love our neighbor, our desire must be that our neighbor have God.
But since God has already given himself to our neighbor in Christ, we must not think that it is our job to give God to our neighbor.
Instead, both love of self and love of neighbor mean the facilitation and encouragement of the acceptance of and surrender to the Gift already given in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, we who are Christians much ask ourselves each day how we may live our lives such that those around us will desire what it is we have come to have in Christ. If the joy, peace, and confidence in God we have in the Spirit attracts someone else to the acceptance of the Gift who is Jesus Christ, then we have loved our neighbor in the most supreme way.
God is the best 'thing' there is.
God, in giving himself to his creatures by adopting us in the Spirit into his own blessed life by the death and resurrection of the incarnate Son, is the perfect practitioner of love of neighbor.
Therefore, if we wish to love our neighbor, our desire must be that our neighbor have God.
But since God has already given himself to our neighbor in Christ, we must not think that it is our job to give God to our neighbor.
Instead, both love of self and love of neighbor mean the facilitation and encouragement of the acceptance of and surrender to the Gift already given in Jesus Christ.
Therefore, we who are Christians much ask ourselves each day how we may live our lives such that those around us will desire what it is we have come to have in Christ. If the joy, peace, and confidence in God we have in the Spirit attracts someone else to the acceptance of the Gift who is Jesus Christ, then we have loved our neighbor in the most supreme way.
September 30, 2011
My Pears
The other day I got into a conversation that reminded me of one of my early experiences of religious people.
Folks like to make fun of St. Augustine and the big deal he makes about stealing the pears in the Confessions, but I get it. I get how childhood experiences become ways into an understanding of the depth of the problem of sin.
I was in the first or second grade. Some earnest religious kid asked me if I was 'saved.' Partly curious and partly making fun of him I answered his question with another: "Saved from what?" The kid didn't have a ready answer.
When I think of having said what I said, it fills me with awe before the mystery of sin. For that from which I needed to be saved was with me always: I was a sad and anxious kid, and already at that age I felt--felt, not knew--that there was something very out of sorts with my particular being-in-the-world.
Sin is not just the unreality that robs us and our societies of the good that ought to be there, but it also clouds our minds and perverts our thinking so that we lose our sense of the most fundamental thing of all, our need for salvation. If we were well aware of our need for God and the deliverance that God wills to give us, we would immediately become filled with such devotion and missionary zeal as to become like the saints. Indeed this is what sanctity is; not that we should conform ourselves to some religious standard by agonistic effort at 'personal holiness,' but that we should surrender to the need and desire for God which is our own deepest identity.
Even for us who are baptized and have been delivered from the burden of the guilt our first parents earned for us by their sin, the injury left by original sin remains in us. All of the actual sins of our life have kept the wound festering. The whole rotten business makes it hard even to think straight about things, which is something that should teach us theology students a lot of humility.
Even in my unhappiness I could ask from what I needed to be saved. That's the mystery of sin in its deepest and most sinister.
This is not to say that the purpose of salvation is to make us feel better or to help us arrive at a better mental health situation. The purpose of salvation, at least as long as we remain in the Church on earth, is to get us free from carrying our own selves around as a burden so that we can give ourselves to each other in love, open and responsive to how God wants to make use of us for the salvation of others.
Folks like to make fun of St. Augustine and the big deal he makes about stealing the pears in the Confessions, but I get it. I get how childhood experiences become ways into an understanding of the depth of the problem of sin.
I was in the first or second grade. Some earnest religious kid asked me if I was 'saved.' Partly curious and partly making fun of him I answered his question with another: "Saved from what?" The kid didn't have a ready answer.
When I think of having said what I said, it fills me with awe before the mystery of sin. For that from which I needed to be saved was with me always: I was a sad and anxious kid, and already at that age I felt--felt, not knew--that there was something very out of sorts with my particular being-in-the-world.
Sin is not just the unreality that robs us and our societies of the good that ought to be there, but it also clouds our minds and perverts our thinking so that we lose our sense of the most fundamental thing of all, our need for salvation. If we were well aware of our need for God and the deliverance that God wills to give us, we would immediately become filled with such devotion and missionary zeal as to become like the saints. Indeed this is what sanctity is; not that we should conform ourselves to some religious standard by agonistic effort at 'personal holiness,' but that we should surrender to the need and desire for God which is our own deepest identity.
Even for us who are baptized and have been delivered from the burden of the guilt our first parents earned for us by their sin, the injury left by original sin remains in us. All of the actual sins of our life have kept the wound festering. The whole rotten business makes it hard even to think straight about things, which is something that should teach us theology students a lot of humility.
Even in my unhappiness I could ask from what I needed to be saved. That's the mystery of sin in its deepest and most sinister.
This is not to say that the purpose of salvation is to make us feel better or to help us arrive at a better mental health situation. The purpose of salvation, at least as long as we remain in the Church on earth, is to get us free from carrying our own selves around as a burden so that we can give ourselves to each other in love, open and responsive to how God wants to make use of us for the salvation of others.
September 26, 2011
A Picture of Salvation
In the first reading for Mass today, the prophet Zechariah presents an interesting picture of salvation:
"Thus says the LORD of hosts: Old men and old women, each with staff in hand because of old age, shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem. The city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets." (Zechariah 8:4-5)
The city which has received the salvation God offers displays the following attributes:
"Thus says the LORD of hosts: Old men and old women, each with staff in hand because of old age, shall again sit in the streets of Jerusalem. The city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in its streets." (Zechariah 8:4-5)
The city which has received the salvation God offers displays the following attributes:
- People mingle freely in public
- People grow to old age
- Old folks have the support they need ready at hand
- Children play freely and safely in public
August 31, 2011
Incomplete to Failing to Passing
The other day I got an email from the kind folks at the Boston College School of Theology & Ministry telling me that I wasn't registered for any classes and wondering whether I was still a student there. You see, I've never been able to figure out how to use the registration software, so at the beginning of these past two semesters I've gone to another nice lady in the school office (or as it seems to be called, the 'Service Center') and had her register me. But in order to get my scholarship money I have to be registered, so the person with whom I was emailing kindly enabled me in my incompetence and registered me from something called "TM 980," which is what you're in when you aren't in any actual courses anymore.
Following this email conversation I thought that the very fact of it perhaps meant I no longer had an 'F' in the Medieval Trinitarian theology seminar from last semester. And behold, when I checked my BC identity online, the F had been changed to a passing grade. So my grade in the course journeyed from an 'I' for incomplete at the end of the semester to an 'F' for 'administrative failure' on August 1 and then finally to a passing grade.
Of course in my vanity I enjoyed having an F in the course, at least for a little while, and even though it wasn't really an F. I had never had an F before. A couple of Ds along the way, but no F until now.
I got to reflecting on this as a metaphor for the spiritual life. We start out with the incomplete; without God there is something missing. Then, having let ourselves be found by God, we discover ourselves as a failure, unable to live up to the desire this new Presence works in our souls. And we live in the hope and prayer that this God who has come into our life is gently renovating our humanity so that in him we will become a passable human being. Perhaps with all of our resistances and hardness of heart we won't succeed in letting God make us into saints in this life, but in his mercy God has provided the searing joy of Purgatory as a mercy for those who need to continue this process after the end of earthly life. Either way, in the humanity of Christ our blessed incompleteness is offered salvation from the failing mess we tend to make of it, and that's what is meant by Christian hope.
Following this email conversation I thought that the very fact of it perhaps meant I no longer had an 'F' in the Medieval Trinitarian theology seminar from last semester. And behold, when I checked my BC identity online, the F had been changed to a passing grade. So my grade in the course journeyed from an 'I' for incomplete at the end of the semester to an 'F' for 'administrative failure' on August 1 and then finally to a passing grade.
Of course in my vanity I enjoyed having an F in the course, at least for a little while, and even though it wasn't really an F. I had never had an F before. A couple of Ds along the way, but no F until now.
I got to reflecting on this as a metaphor for the spiritual life. We start out with the incomplete; without God there is something missing. Then, having let ourselves be found by God, we discover ourselves as a failure, unable to live up to the desire this new Presence works in our souls. And we live in the hope and prayer that this God who has come into our life is gently renovating our humanity so that in him we will become a passable human being. Perhaps with all of our resistances and hardness of heart we won't succeed in letting God make us into saints in this life, but in his mercy God has provided the searing joy of Purgatory as a mercy for those who need to continue this process after the end of earthly life. Either way, in the humanity of Christ our blessed incompleteness is offered salvation from the failing mess we tend to make of it, and that's what is meant by Christian hope.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
