Month: June 2014

Some years ago when I was in the seminary, an older priest in a rectory where I stayed had an unusual piece of furniture in his sitting room. He used it like a chest or large travel trunk. He stored books in it. I told him it looked like a coffin. He said it was. “One day I will be buried in that.”

Sure enough, at his funeral some ten years later, I saw that plain pine box that had sat against the wall in his sitting room. What once held the treasure of his books waiting to be read again now held the treasure of his body waiting to rise again.

Coffins, often called caskets today, have become a bit too removed from the old wooden boxes that once sufficed for most. Made of strong steel, with airtight seals and cushioned satin interiors, they seem designed to insulate not only the dead, but also us from the reality that the earth must reclaim our bodies until the great resurrection of all the dead. Add to that the fact that these sealed capsules are then placed in concrete liners (to preserve the level of the round above), and burial really doesn’t seem to be burial anymore. It’s more like storage in an underground basement or cellar. Modern life can be very insular, even in death.

I do not wish to appear insensitive. Burial customs vary from age to age and have various things to recommend them and to critique about them. Death is perhaps the hardest reality we face, not merely our own but also the deaths of those we love.

The beautiful video below shows a man making a traditional wooden coffin. For him it is obviously a very spiritual act, deeply rooted in his Catholic Faith. Such care and thoughtfulness goes into each action of the process!

It might strike you as odd to watch a man build a coffin. But take the time to watch this three-minute video. The coffin maker speaks great wisdom and love as he plies his craft. It is clear this is no mere box; it is a precious and sacred container for the body and a doorway for the soul.

Here are a couple of his quotes that I find especially meaningful:

I never feel like it’s finished. But I guess that’s a fit thing since that’s how we likely feel at the end of our lives too.

I think one of the most important aspects of the coffin is that it can be carried. I think we’re meant to carry each other. Carrying someone you love is very important when we deal with death … to know that we played a part and shouldered our share of the burden … If we make it too easy we deprive ourselves of a chance to get stronger so that we can carry on.

Enjoy this strangely beautiful video.

The Coffinmaker from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

http://mariancaskets.com

There is a rather humorous aspect of the story of the Tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis. You likely know the basic story, which begins with the men of that early time saying, Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves (Gen 11:4). It was an image of pride, of grandiosity.

The humor is that when the great tower, with its top reaching to the heavens, is finally built, it is actually so puny that God has to come down from Heaven in order to see it! The text says, And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built (Gen 11:5).

Now of course God, as omniscient,  clearly sees everything, and the humor in the text is not in some primitive notion of God. Rather the humor is for our benefit. In effect it says that our greatest, tallest, most prominent and glorious work—a tower that we saw as reaching Heaven itself—is in fact so small that God has to stoop to “see” it. He has to descend to get even a glimpse of it. What ultimately DOES alarm God is how colossal our pride is, and thus he has to humble us by confusing our language and scattering us about the planet.

I recalled this story as I viewed the video below. It is wonderful footage of Earth, taken from the Space Shuttle. There is audio commentary by a NASA scientist explaining some of the features we are seeing and where on the globe we are looking as the images pass by. The view is truly remarkable. But what is even more remarkable is what we do NOT see: us!

It is an astonishing thing that even though the shuttle is passing over highly populated areas there is no visual evidence that we even exist. No cities or buildings are visible; no planes streak through the skies; even large scale agricultural features seem lacking. There is only one mention of a color difference across the Great Salt Lake, and that is due to a railroad bridge preventing circulation. But the bridge is in no way visible, only its effect.

We think of ourselves as so big, so impressive. And yet even in low Earth orbit, we cannot be seen. It is true that at night our cities light the view, but during the day next to nothing says we are here. Even the magnified picture on my 30″ iMac screen shows no evidence of us below.

And having viewed the video, I think of Psalm 8:

O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens … When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? Yet, You made him a little lower than the angels and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Yes, we are so powerful (by God’s gift) and yet so tiny as to be nearly invisible from a short distance into space. Our mighty buildings rise, but they rise on a speck of space dust called Earth, which revolves around a fiery point of light called the Sun. And our huge sun is but one point of light in the Milky Way galaxy of over 100 billion stars. And the Milky Way galaxy, so huge to us as to be nearly incomprehensible, is but one of an estimated 200 billion galaxies.

What is man O Lord that you are mindful of him? Jesus says of us, And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered (Matt 10:30). Yes God, who knows the numbers of the stars and calls them by name, also knows the number of the hairs on each of our heads. Nothing escapes him.

And old preacher’s saying goes, “We serve a God who sits high, yet looks low!” Indeed, never forget how tiny you and I are, yet never cease to marvel that God knit you together in your mother’s womb and sustains every fiber of your being. We cannot even be seen from low Earth orbit, but God, who sees all, looks into our very heart. Do not cease to marvel that, though tiny, you and I are wonderfully, fearfully made (Psalm 139), and He has put all things under our feet.

I write this blog post humbly confessing that I am not an economist or a politician. I am not an expert on the oil industry or on “alternative fuels.” Neither am I an agricultural expert.  I write as a priest and a moral theologian to ponder a puzzling trend that I might provocatively title “Burning food for fuel.”

Most notably, this is done in the production of ethanol, which uses corn. Increasingly, the government, likely pressured by certain industries and lobbies, is requiring that 10% of fuels be composed of ethanol.

Of course this requires an enormous amount of corn, which would seem to skew agriculture and the food supply. At a bare minimum it would seem that the price of corn would rise. Corn is a fairly basic staple of the world’s food supply and raising its price would seem to harm the poor especially. Further, as corn becomes more lucrative, it seems likely that more of it would be planted and less of other necessities such as rice, barley, and other grains. This doesn’t seem very good either.

Consider some excerpts from an article (on Oxfam America’s website) that I read recently:

Ethanol has been touted as the solution to our energy and climate crises. [But] Ethanol is not the answer to our oil dependency. Even if all the corn grown in the US was used for fuel, it would replace only one out of six gallons.

Meanwhile, ethanol is contributing to global hunger. Last year, 40 percent of corn grown in the US went to fuel instead of food. If all the land used to grow biofuels for the EU in 2008 had instead been used to grow food, it could have fed 127 million people for an entire year. Major land grabs are happening all over the world, often propelled by the market’s demand for biofuels, leaving marginalized communities without access to traditional land and water to grow food….

The governors of North Carolina and Arkansas have asked the EPA to waive the renewable fuel standards mandate, which requires at least 10 percent of unleaded gasoline be made from ethanol. Waiving the corn ethanol mandate will lead to an estimated 7.4 percent drop in global corn prices, which will in turn lower prices for meat, milk, eggs, and more. For people living in poverty who spend up to 75 percent of their income on food, this small change can make a big impact.

Turning corn into fuel only compounds global hunger. America cannot build our own energy security on the back of people living in poverty—it is morally indefensible and wrong for our own energy, climate, and national security interests. We have an opportunity right now to press the pause button on misguided US corn ethanol policy by telling the EPA to waive the corn ethanol mandate.

These are excerpts; the full article is here: Burning down the house to heat it.

I cannot vouch for or verify all of the points in this article, and I know nothing about Oxfam. But to put it again in a provocative way: burning food for fuel seems to go against common sense to me.

Food is a very precious and necessary commodity. Fuel is surely important, but it is secondary to food. Given that we can easily fuel our machinery with something other than food, it seems foolish to burn large quantities of food for fuel.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. Perhaps you will want to school me on some basic economic issues that I’m forgetting. Perhaps it is possible that we have such an overabundance of food that burning some of it for fuel actually makes sense.

But something tells me this is a very bad idea—maybe even immoral if it has severe effects on the poor and the hungry throughout the world, as I suspect it will.

Something else tells me that this is rooted more in an irrational fear and hatred of the petroleum industry, pressure by agricultural lobbies, and a misguided environmentalism that worries more about pollution than feeding the hungry.

But I realize these are complex issues, and what I really want to do is generate a discussion, share information, raise concerns, and perhaps alleviate some of them. Let me know what you think.

Here’s a different point of view:

The first reading from today’s Mass is Paul’s farewell speech to the presbyters (priests) of the early Church. Here is a skilled bishop and pastor exhorting others who have pastoral roles within the Church. Let’s take a look at this text and apply its wisdom to Bishops and priests as well as to parents and other leaders in the Church.

Paul’s Farewell Sermon – The scene is Miletus, a town in Asia Minor on the coast not far from Ephesus. Paul, who is about to depart for Jerusalem, summons the presbyters (priests) of the early Church at Ephesus. Paul has ministered there for three years and now summons the priests for this final exhortation. In the sermon, St. Paul cites his own example of having been a zealous teacher of the faith who did not fail to preach the “whole counsel of God.” He did not merely preach what suited him or made him popular; he preached it all. To these early priests, Paul leaves this legacy and would have them follow in his footsteps. Let’s look at excerpts from this final exhortation. First the text, and then some commentary:

From Miletus Paul had the presbyters of the Church at Ephesus summoned. When they came to him, he addressed them, “You know how I lived among you the whole time from the day I first came to the province of Asia. I served the Lord with all humility and with the tears and trials that came to me … and I did not at all shrink from telling you what was for your benefit, or from teaching you in public or in your homes. I earnestly bore witness for both Jews and Greeks to repentance before God and to faith in our Lord Jesus … But now, compelled by the Spirit, I am going to Jerusalem … But now I know that none of you to whom I preached the kingdom during my travels will ever see my face again. And so I solemnly declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you, for I did not shrink from proclaiming to you the entire plan of God … (Acts 20:1-38 selected).

Here then is the prescription for every Bishop, priest, deacon, catechist, parent, and Catholic: that we should preach the whole counsel (the entire plan of God). It is too easy for us to emphasize only that which pleases us, or makes sense to us, or fits in with our world view. There are some who love the Lord’s sermons on love, but cannot abide his teachings on death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Some love to discuss liturgy and ceremony, but the care of the poor is far from them. Others point to His compassion, but neglect His call to repentance. Some love the way He dispatches the Pharisees and other leaders of the day, but suddenly become deaf when the Lord warns against fornication or insists that we love our spouse, neighbor, and enemy. Some love to focus inwardly and debate over doctrine, but neglect the outward focus of true evangelization to which we are commanded (cf Mat 28:19).

In the Church today, as a whole, we too easily divide out rather predictably along certain lines and emphases: life issues here, social justice over there; strong moral preaching here, compassionate inclusiveness over there. When one side speaks, the other side says, “There they go again!”

And yet somewhere we must be able to say, with St. Paul, that we did not shrink from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. While this is especially incumbent on the clergy, it must also be true for parents and all who attain any leadership in the Church. All of the issues above are important and must have their proper places in the preaching and witness of every Catholic, both clergy and lay. While we may have gifts to work in certain areas, we should learn to appreciate the whole counsel and the fact that others in the Church may be needed to balance and complete our work. It is true that we must exclude notions that stray from revealed doctrine, but within doctrine’s protective walls it is necessary that we not shrink from proclaiming and appreciating the whole counsel of God.

And if we do this we will suffer. Paul speaks above of tears and trials. In preaching the whole counsel of God (not just your favorite passages or politically correct, “safe” themes), expect to suffer. Expect to not quite fit in with people’s expectations. Jesus got into trouble with just about everyone. He didn’t offend just the elite and powerful. For example, even His own disciples puzzled over His teachings on divorce saying, “If that is the case of man not being able to divorce his wife it is better never to marry!” (Matt 19). Regarding the Eucharist, many left Him and would no longer walk in His company (John 6). When Jesus spoke of His divine origins, many took up stones with which to stone Him, but He passed through their midst (Jn 8). In addition, Jesus spoke of taking up crosses, forgiving your enemies, and preferring nothing to Him. He forbade even lustful thoughts, let alone fornication, and insisted we must learn to curb our unrighteous anger. Yes, preaching the whole counsel of God is guaranteed to earn us the wrath of many.

Sadly, over my years as a priest, I have had to bid farewell to congregations. This farewell speech of Paul is a critical passage whereby I examine my ministry. Did I preach even the difficult stuff? Was I willing to suffer for the truth? Did my people hear from me the whole counsel of God, or just the safe stuff?

How about you? Have you proclaimed the whole counsel of God? If you are clergy, when you move on; if you are a parent, when your child leaves for college; if you are a Catechist, when the children are ready to be confirmed or have reached college age; if you teach in RCIA, when the time comes for Easter sacraments—can you say you preached it all? God warned Ezekiel that if he failed to warn the sinner, that sinner would surely die for his sins but that Ezekiel himself would be responsible for his death (Ez 3:17 ff). Paul is able to say he is not responsible for the death (the blood) of any of them for he did not shrink from proclaiming the whole counsel of God. How about us?

The whole counsel of God; not just the safe stuff, the popular stuff, not just the stuff that agrees with my politics and those of my friends. The whole counsel, even the difficult stuff, the things that are ridiculed. The Whole Counsel of God.

This video contains the warning to the watchmen (us) in Ezekiel 3. Watch it if you dare.