Faith & Current Events Archives - Page 5 of 63

January 21, 2013May 29, 2015

Prophets Aren’t Perfect. They’re Prophets. A response to Critics of an American Prophet and a Defense of a Brother Blogger

Help me and another brother out here. I am getting concerned again. One of the best Catholic Bloggers, and a great promoter of Catholic presence on the Web, Brandon Vogt, is being lectured to by his “disappointed” his readers since he spoke of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a “hero and prophet.”(His post is here: Martin Luther King – Hero and Prophet)

Wowza, his combox really lit up with lecturers and various levels of excoriators who hastened to remind him of King’s foibles, and of his political leanings that were not comfortable enough to them.

Truth be told, no true prophet really fits in, whether it be Dr. King or Brandon. Yes, we are dealing with stuff that is actually pretty much the norm for prophets. I am particularly mindful of Jeremiah, who was cast into prison for being “unpatriotic” (cf Jer 37-38), for he had prophesied that the Babylonians would conquer, if Israel did not repent.

Prophets just don’t fit in. They break through political distinctions, and tend to offend just about everyone, even as they also affirm across political boundaries.

Jesus was crucified “outside the gate” to symbolize that he fit nowhere in Israel’s little systems and categories. He was hated by all the political parties of his day: The Herodians, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Zealots. They agreed on nothing, except this one thing: “Jesus has to go.” The Book of Hebrews admonishes, Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore (Heb 13:13). Here is a true disciple, a true Catholic, a true follower of Jesus, one who does not fit into the little parties of his day but thinks and acts beyond such restrictions.

I am not sure if Dr. King were alive today if he would be Republican or Democrat. I am not even sure if he would be pro-life. I think he would, and perhaps he could have saved the Democratic Party from signing on to its, pro-death platform. His niece Alfreda seems to think he would have been prolife. I don’t personally know. But you know, it is a sad truth that we did not afford him the possibility to speak for himself.

Yes, we like our ancestors, tend to kill prophets, especially those who do not fit in to our little categories. Jesus had little patience for our categories, parties, factions and other little nicities:

Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your forefathers who killed them. So you testify that you approve of what your forefathers did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all. (Luke 11:48-52).

Yes, we abort our babies and kill the prophets, and while we like to make nice little distinctions, in the end, dead still means dead. And Dr. King is no less dead in his imperfection than our babies are in their innocence.

We kill many who God sends to us. And instead of chirping about whether they belonged to the right party or were 100% virtuous, we ought to repent for what we have done as a nation. God’s martyrs don’t fall so nicely into our little worldly categories.

And as for those who will bring forth the “womanizer/adulterer charges against Dr. King, let us further reflect that prophets are not perfect. Moses was a murderer, so was David, and an adulterer besides. Isaiah went about preaching naked, Jonah was reluctant and an ultra-nationalist, St Paul had a bad temper, Jacob was a shyster, Peter was inconsistent and a denier, the Samaritan woman was adulteress, Mary Madelene had demons, seven of them, St Augustine was a fornicator, Jerome had an anger management issue. etc.

St. Paul, (did I mention that he had conspired to murder Christians, and had a bad temper?) spoke of us as carrying our treasure “in earthen vessels” (2 Cor 4:7).

If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that I do not make light of sin. But if we are going to start insisting that priests and prophets be sinless and without struggles, then every blog must go dark, every pulpit go silent, every ministry and apostolate go inactive.

I do not know Dr. King’s sins. I have heard the rumors. But that is what they are, rumors. You will tell me you read it on the Internet and that the FBI “has a file.” Great, show me proof in writing, and make sure it is not fabricated. Until then, beware that gossip and the ruination of reputations is a very serious matter, and we need to be certain before to spread rumors.

And to the degree that Dr. King may have sinned and sinned seriously, what of the others listed above. But they repented you say. Yes I pray they did. But are you sure Dr. King did not? Are you certain that as he lay dying he did not call on God’s mercy?

We need to be very careful. For the measure that we measure to others will be measured back to us (Mat 7:2). Only the merciful will obtain mercy (Mat 5:7), and if we have not forgiven others neither will we be forgiven by the Father (James 2:13, Matt 6).

In the end no one can deny that Dr. Martin Luther King helped bring forth greater justice in this land. And he did so in a way that was profoundly in keeping with Jesus’ way, the way of love and non-violence. If God used an imperfect man to do this, that is God’s business not mine.

And as for Brandon Vogt, he is a fine Catholic and superb blogger who deserved better than to be treated as he was by many in his combox. I have noted many times before, (and paid dearly for it) that far too many Catholics are political before they are Catholic or biblical . Catholicism and Biblical Christianity do not fit into anyone nice little worldly category or political philosophy. Good prophets love God’s people and are just as likely to afflict the comfortable as comfort the afflicted. (We are all in both categories). True Catholicism does not fit perfectly into any political party. Catholic needs to trump party at every turn. Sadly it does not always do so.

If Dr. King doesn’t fit into our Catholic world perfectly, that should not wholly exclude him, We cannot, and should not canonize him, to do so would be patronizing. But in the end he did something important for this country and paid dearly for it. The Lord Jesus himself gives us a critical norm to follow in assessing others:

Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. (Mat 7:17-20)

Maybe that is the best we can do with Dr. King, honor what God was able to accomplish through him, whatever his personal struggles, or hidden faults. The fruits of what he did were necessary even if “our party” or “our Church” was not the main way God chose to work it. It is horrifying and embarrassing to think that we tolerated as a country “Whites Only” signs, and “Colored” areas.

I pray one day we will be just as horrified that we ever tolerated and called a “right” the killing of the unborn. But killing prophets and narrow-casting Catholicism is no way to get there. Until we can demonstrate that we stand above narrow little political distinctions, our credibility and prophetic bona fides are easily assailed by a cynical world. We are not the Democratic Party at prayer, neither are we the Republican Party at prayer. We are Catholics and the Body of Christ at prayer.

Help me out here. I must once again lament the “death by a thousand cuts that we Catholic so easily visit on one another. Are there not enough secular opponents and critics that we must do this to one another? Come on Church, are you prayin’ with me?

Also here is a recent prayer of a Protestant minister and old friend of mine, Rev. Rob Schenck (His Brother Paul is a Catholic priest). Both are pro-life warriors and speak prophetically, praising what can be praised, and laying out what must be repented of.

January 20, 2013May 29, 2015

Light and Darkness: Some thoughts on this Presidential Inauguration Rooted in another Inauguration in 1865

Many thoughts move through my mind on this third Monday in January. Just up the street from where I live, the Second Inauguration of President Barack Obama is taking place. Today is also the official celebration of the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And also, later this week, my rectory will be filled to overflowing with priests and seminarians here for the March for life, which takes place on Friday. Yes, so many thoughts: thoughts of civil rights and racial justice, thoughts of the unborn, and their right to life, thoughts of a president, and this nation. So many thoughts.

Somehow, my mind drifts back to 1865, to the 2nd Inaugural Address of President. Abraham Lincoln. Many things also came together on that day: the nation was reeling in the aftermath of the terrible war that killed almost 600,000 soldiers and others. (If that number were projected forward percentage-wise to today’s population, it would mean that over 6 million people in this country would have lost their lives).

President Lincoln, likely out of grief and surely out of reverence, kept his remarks brief that March day. He too thought of life, and he also thought of racial justice, and the connection of a great moral issue to the health of this nation.

Surely he, and the whole nation, was relieved that the war was ending, but President. Lincoln also reflected, in this brief Second Inaugural Address, on the Justice of God, and how that justice cannot ultimately stay silent in the face of grave evil. Lincoln ponders in the address, if the just concluded war was not somehow an exercise of God’s justice: God allowing the war as a way calling the question of the grave evil of slavery, and by extension, calling us to greater racial justice.

Looking ahead, Lincoln also seems to warn that our sufferings may not be ended if we failed to act with justice in the critical days of reconstruction that lay ahead.

I would like to present excerpts from President Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address and then apply some of it to us on this third Monday in January 2013, a day so filled with meaning regarding race, and life, and the fundamental question: “Whither our Nation?” Here are some excerpts:

[Slavery] constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war…[No one] expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained….Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but….The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” [Matt 18:7].

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses….He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” [Ps 19:9]

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. [Abraham Lincoln, March 4, 1865]

Yes, a grave injustice had bewitched this land, Slavery and racial injustice. And Lincoln saw something of the justice of God in allowing a terrible punishment to grip this nation, a punishment meant to sober us and avenge the injustice that long awaited God’s decisive action.

This is not to sanction every act of the North in the Civil War, only to say that injustice sets loose evil, and that, at some point, God delivers us to our collective iniquity and that we who would sow in the wind, must now reap the whirlwind (Hosea 8:7). For every drop of blood exacted by the slave holder’s wrath, for every dollar gain through injustice, now the blood would be required back from an unjust nation, and from a nation that had profited on injustice every dollar would be paid back.

That was 1865. What of 2013? The blood of injustice still flows, especially through abortion. And many of the same arguments used for slavery are now used for abortion: personhood, privacy, personally opposed but unwilling to infringe on others rights (?!) to abort, etc. (More on that HERE) The blood has reached epic proportions and cries to heaven for vengeance, (Gen 4:10; Rev 6:10ff). God’s justice cannot remain forever silent.

It is a great irony that today a President is re-inaugurated whose presidency speaks to us of racial healing and justice, a theme that so occupied the mind of President Lincoln and the nation in 1865. And yet, that same president stands wholly in support of an equally and arguably worse injustice, a bloodshed whose numbers (in gallons of blood) far outweigh the grave injustice of Slavery and Jim Crow.

As of today when I write this, 54,559,615 children have been unjustly murdered in this land by abortion. And it is not just the mothers who have done this that are culpable. It is this nation, collectively that is guilty. It is those who have sought abortion, those who perform them, those who pressure women to have them, those who vote to uphold this evil as a “right.” It is those who remain silent and those who vote for those who uphold this grave evil, or downplay its horrific reality. It is those who fail to provide reasonable alternatives and resources for women in crisis. It is those who live unchastely and fail to reproach those in their family members who live that way.

Yes, to a large extent few of us can fail to escape the fact that we have contributed to, even indulged in an unchaste, unjust and and unholy culture that leads to the death of millions every year. Abortion results largely from unchastity and the refusal of Americans, collectively to accept the consequences of our sin.

The President who stands before us today is largely a product of our culture. It is easy to demonize him. He is, in fact, the most virulent advocate of abortion who has ever occupied the Oval Office. So extreme is he in this view that many members of his own party cannot stand with him in this matter. He supported partial birth abortion, a procedure so grim that even “pro-choice” Americans are largely aghast. He also voted against legislation that children “born alive” i.e. children who survive the attempt to kill them in abortion, should then be allowed to live. No, said the President in his Senate days, such children who make it out of the womb alive after a “botched” abortion can still be killed thereafter, with impunity. Even most pro-choice Americans find this a bridge too far. Yet our President voted for such measures.

But as I say, he is a product of “us” collectively speaking. It is easy to demonize him, and he is certainly wrong. But blaming, or simply focusing on him, does not let the rest of us off the hook. We will have to collectively pay for our national sin. God’s justice will not remain forever silent.

And so, on this day of Inauguration, many thoughts flood my mind: prayers for a president, gratitude for racial healing, but also the alarming, ironic and paradoxical reality that a President (Mr. Obama) who points to the healing of one sin, but also points to a new and grave injustice.

We are so often selective in our moral assessments. God help our nation. For even as we celebrate a growing victory over injustice (slavery and racism), and it is/was a grave injustice, we tolerate another grave injustice with an even higher death toll.

President Lincoln rightly warned, with the searing drama of an ancient prophet that God would only tolerate injustice for so long. We cannot go on living outside of God’s justice and expect good results. Sooner or later we will encounter the consequences of what we do. Lincoln said that every drop of blood unjustly shed would be repaid, every dollar unjustly earned would be exacted, that we would pay to the full for our injustice. What was true in 1865 is no less true today.

Our only hope is collective and national repentance. Only then can the floodgates of mercy open. But, as our sad history often shows, collective repentance is hard to come by. Too many are on the take, too many profit by sin in a temporary and worldly way. The usual human story is that we are stubborn in our injustice, and only the severe measure of God handing us over to our iniquity has salutary effects.

Would that we could repent, but as for now the scales of justice are steeply tipped against us, our repentance seems unlikely, and the blood of the murdered cries ever louder from the rich soil of this land. God will not remain forever unmoved from that cry for justice.

I realize that it is not possible for me to write these remarks, or for you, dear reader, to read them, outside the prism of politics. But I want to be clear that as a Christian, and an American, I pray for our President (and nation) this day. I ask God’s blessing upon him, and his family. I pray that God will give him strength, and above all, wisdom. I cannot, and do not align myself with some Americans who seem to have a very personal dislike of President Obama, or who demonize him as though he were personally evil. I do not think this of him, nor do I dislike him. As a Catholic, I see it as my duty to pray for him in accord with the words of Scripture:

I [Paul] urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior. (1 Tim 2:1-3)

If the early Christians could pray for Nero, I can surely pray for our current leaders.

That said, it is clear that there are a number of positions and policies of our current president is gravely troubling, especially issues related to human life and religious liberty. Let me be clear though, my remarks in this blog should not be seen as directed and one man, President. Obama. My remarks are directed ultimately to us collectively as a nation.

As President Lincoln spoke of his concerns in 1865 for the nation, he did not simply focus his remarks on one man, e.g. Confederate “President” Jefferson Davis, or merely on one segment of the nation, the South. He spoke of a nation, and to a nation and summoned us to remember that we must act justly, and that if we chose to live outside of God’s justice, the toll, already so high, could become far worse.

And what of us today? Today we inaugurate for a Second Term an African-American President and we rightfully celebrate significant progress in racial justice. And yet, another, grave, and newer injustice has entered this land, the shedding of vast amounts of innocent blood in abortion. And this nation continues to legally sanction that very killing of the innocent as a “right.” This cannot stand.

I speak to day of the President only to pray for him and for his conversion in terms of the sacredness of human life, the proper understanding of Marriage and sexuality, and the proper respect for Religious Liberty. But in praying for him, I pray also for this nation, so soaked in blood. May we repent before it is too late, before the dam of God’s mercy breaks and we are drowned by the very innocent blood we have individually and collectively shed.

God bless our President and the Congress, and Go bless the United States of America.

January 18, 2013May 29, 2015

An Inspiring and Beautiful Video for Altar Servers

The Video at the bottom of the page was sent to me today and I want to say that I find it beautiful.

What makes the video so good is that it inspires a spirituality for the server that includes some of the following encouragement and advisement:

That the Mass is mystical, beyond mere human sight, and that the server must learn to be sensitive to what lives beyond ordinary perception and become more spiritually aware.
In so doing he should lead others to greater reverence by the example of supreme awareness of the presence of God.
He should also, by his reverence lead others to understand that what takes place on the altar is the making present of the most important moment in all of human history.
The Altar server also provides practical leadership for the congregation as to when to sit, stand and kneel.
Even the folded hands, pointed upward are meant to direct attention upward to God.
The manner of his clothing (e.g. dress shoes, pressed trousers etc) are meant to and ought to show that what he is doing is a matter of utmost seriousness and importance.
Our body, (posture etc) and our clothing impact our disposition, so all we do should be to help our hearts worship, and lead others to the same.
Prayer, especially the rosary, is a good way to prepare one’s heart to be a better server.
The goal is to have your heart in the right place.

A couple of other things I like about the video, that the man interviewed models well a piety that is serious but not somber looking. Not everyone gets this balance right, and some who are trying to look prayerful merely look sad, angry, or bored. But the man in this video shows an appropriate balance, a kind of natural and serene sobriety well suited to the Mass.

The images throughout the video are also beautiful and the photography is wonderful.

I suspect (sadly) that not all will be happy with some of the more traditional elements in the video: the ad orientem celebration of mass and the expressed preference for the cassock and surplice, rather than the alb. There is also no reference to girls serving. However, none of these aspects is forbidden. Perhaps a word about each.

The ad orientem celebration of Mass (I speak here of the Ordinary Form), while less common, is not forbidden. I use it occasionally, after proper catechesis, in smaller settings in my parish. We have several side altars in the Church that I use on occasion, and I have also used the high altar for that purpose from time to time. The catechesis I use includes the fact that the priest does not have his back to us. Rather we are all facing God, looking to the liturgical east for Christ to come again. I will say I would not adopt this position in my main Sunday liturgies at this time without consulting with the Bishop, simply out of respect for the fact that he is the chief liturgist of the diocese. But for smaller liturgies of a more private or intimate character, I do use the eastward orientation occasionally.
The cassock and surplice – the preference here for this vesture is traditional. And while the current norms speak of the alb as being the common vesture for ministers of every rank in the Mass, (GIRM # 336). However the cassock and surplice are not forbidden and tend to be worn today especially by clerics who assist at mass but are not celebrating or concelebrating. As such, the cassock and surplice have a more priestly look. For this reason I think it unadvised that a girl or woman should wear the cassock and surplice. In my own parish the seminarians that assist us, as well as some of the older men wear the cassock and surplice. The younger boys and all the girls and women wear the alb.
That only males are envisioned as servers – Here again, while it is common in most parishes today that box sexes serve, it is not required that the pastor observed this permission. For pastoral reasons, such as encouraging priestly vocations, the pastor may employ only men and boys as servers if he sees fit. In my last parish that is what we did. In my current parish, I inherited a server program that uses both sexes, and younger as well as older people. The mix is good and I see no reason to change it. But it is neither wrong for a pastor to make use of only males in this role. Neither is it wrong for the lay faithful to seek to encourage this sort of approach, as the video makers do.

I hope you will find this video as inspiring and beautiful as I do. And, just as the video we looked at last week did not please all, I do pray and ask for charity toward, and the presumption of good will by those who have made and produced this video. It is a good effort and has an important message in regard to reverence and spiritual preparation for altar servers.

January 16, 2013May 29, 2015

A Beautiful Summary of Eucharistic theology in an antiphon by Aquinas

There is a great hymn, an antiphon actually, written by St. Thomas Aquinas for the Office of Corpus Christi. It is O Sacrum Convivium and it serves as a wonderful summary of Eucharistic theology that is worth our attention. With that in mind I’d like to make a brief reflection on some of its compact teachings. First the text, then some commentary:

O sacrum convivium!
in quo Christus sumitur:
recolitur memoria passionis eius:
mens impletur gratia:
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

O sacred Banquet
In which Christ is received
The memory of his Passion is recalled
The Mind is filled with grace
And Pledge of future Glory is given to us.

O Sacred banquet (O Sacrum convivium) – In recent decades there was perhaps a tendency to over emphasize the meal aspect of the holy Mass, without due and balanced reference to the sacrificial aspect of the holy Mass. But the necessary correction in more recent times, back toward emphasizing that the Mass makes present the Sacrifice of the Cross, should not lead us to forget the mass is also a holy banquet, a sacred meal with the Lord.

For the Lord says, For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink (Jn 6:55). Thus, the Holy Eucharist is no mere sign, or symbol, but is in fact the true food of Christ’s true Body, true Blood, Soul and Divinity. The Eucharist, is also a foretaste, a praegustatum, of the great banquet in heaven, of which Christ says, And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Lk 22:29-30). And yet again, Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me (Rev 3:20).

Note too that the Latin word convivium, of which “banquet” is an adequate translation, but also contains nuances that go beyond a mere meal. The Latin emphasizes a kind of coming together a sort of celebration of life. Con (with) + vivere (to live). Hence, the meal here is no mere supplying the food or calories. It is a coming together to celebrate new life. We receive the food of Christ’s Body and Blood, which not only gives an ingredient for life, but is in fact the true and very life of Christ.

In the Eucharist, we receive Life Himself, for Christ said of himself, I am the life (Jn 14:6). And further, he declares, As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will have life because of me. (Jn 6:57).

Of this life, he further describes it as “eternal life,” a term which refers not merely to the length of life, but also to the fullness of life.

Thus the Holy Eucharist is a meal, but no mere meal, it is Life, it is a convivial celebration of that life; it is a banquet which gives Life Himself.

In which Christ is received (in quo Christus sumitur)– Here again, is affirmation that we do not receive mere food, we receive Christ himself. This is no mere symbol, no mere wafer, no mere memory. It is Christ himself that we receive.

The verb here, sumitur, is in some sense bold. More literally translated than “received,” it is more literally translated as “taken up.” It is a present passive indicative form of the verb. And this indicates the great humility of our Lord. He lets himself “be taken up.”

Imagine, the Lord being in a moment of a passive relationship with us. He lets himself be taken up, or taken in by us. He is taken up, and becomes our food. Here is an astonishing humbling by our God, who then allows himself to be assimilated by us, and thereby assimilates us into him.

His humility, is meant to conquer pride in us. Yes, in this great banquet Christ himself is taken up, is received, is assimilated by us. And in this humble manner we are taken up into him, taken in, more perfectly to be a member of his body.

The memory of his passion is recalled (recolitur memoria passionis eius) – The Eucharist is not only a meal, it is the making present of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In every mass, we are brought to the foot of the cross, and the fruits of that Cross are applied to us.

We are also at the resurrection, for in Holy Communion we receive Christ who is living, present, and active.

The Latin verb recolitur, is properly translated “recalled.” However, once again there are nuances in the Latin verb which are hard to render with one English word. The Latin verb recolere means “to cultivate anew.” This somewhat agrarian image points to a kind of careful and intentional growing and fostering of something, in this case the memory of Christ’s Passion.

To cultivate in agriculture, is also to prepare for, and or pave the way for the growth of something. It means to prepare the soil.

In non agrarian settings, to cultivate anything implies a kind of care for it, and intention to foster the growth of something, to further or encourage something.

In all these images we see that the memory of Christ’s Passion is something that we should cherish, encourage and foster. It is something in which we should prepare the ground of our heart for ever deeper insights and for new growth in the memory of what He’s done for us

The other word, “memory,” is also a very precious word. What is memory and what does it mean to “remember?” To remember is to have deeply present in my mind and my heart what Christ has done for me, so that I am grateful, and I am different. It means to have it finally dawn on us what Christ has done for us in such a vivid and real way that our hearts and minds are grateful, transformed, and different. Our hearts of stone are broken open and God’s light and love flood in and we are changed. This is what it means to remember.

It is of course and ever deepening process to recall the memory of His Passion, not a mere one time event.

The Mind is filled with Grace (mens impletur gratia) – There are many graces of course that come with holy Communion:

Our venial sins are forgiven, our holiness is increased, our union with Christ becomes more perfected, we gradually become the One we receive, we receive strength and food for the journey across the desert of this world unto the Promised Land of Heaven, we receive life, and begin to participate in eternal life, our union with Christ and membership in his body is strengthened, as is our union with one another, and our union with the saints in heaven.

Yes, so many grace are infused, are poured forth into the mind and heart!

And a pledge of future glory is given to us (et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur) – with the reception of Holy Communion come promises from Christ:

But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever….Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day….Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your forefathers ate manna and died, but he who feeds on this bread will live forever.” (John 6:50-58)

Yes, here is a pledge of future glory, of victory. Jesus alludes to the manna in the wilderness that sustained them for forty years in the desert. It was a sign of the victory to come. For why would God sustain them in the desert if he did not will to lead them ultimately to the Promised Land? It is the same for us. That God feeds us in this way is a sign and promise of his will to save us and bring us to the Promised Land of Heaven. He blesses and strengthens the journey and so adds surety and the pledge of the destination of future glory.

To this pledge the Lord also adds a warning: I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you (Jn 6:53)

And St. Paul also adds: Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Cor 11:27-29)

Not a bad little summary of Eucharistic theology, all in a short antiphon.

January 11, 2013May 29, 2015

Answering an Atheist and Asking for Fairness and Accuracy

Susan Jacoby, an author and atheist wrote a column in last Sunday’s New York Times entitled “The Blessings of Atheism.” In it she proposes that atheism has a lot to offer, especially in times of tragic loss and that it frees human beings from having to ask and answer difficult question. As you may imagine, I am not so sure that asserting a question can be avoided means that it has actually been avoided, or that what she calls blessings are in fact blessings.

I would like to excerpt her article and make a few comments. Her original writing is in bold, black italics. My comments are plain red text. These are excerpts. For the full article CLICK HERE

In a recent conversation with a fellow journalist, I voiced my exasperation at the endless talk about faith in God as the only consolation for those devastated by the unfathomable murders in Newtown, Conn. Some of those grieving parents surely believe, as I do, that this is our one and only life. Atheists cannot find solace in the idea that dead children are now angels in heaven. “That only shows the limits of atheism,” my colleague replied. “It’s all about nonbelief and has nothing to offer when people are suffering.” …..

Just a minor quibbles here, the Christian faith does not teach that “dead children are now angels in heaven.” Human beings never become angels, we always remain quite human.

Secondly, I am not sure that what her friend said should be allowed to represent what all Christians think of atheism. I for one do not hold that atheism “has nothing to offer.” People generally do not cling to philosophies that offer them nothing. Atheists clearly do have reasons for holding to their philosophy and it must offer them something. For some it is their response to the problem of evil or the seeming absurdities of this world. For others it is merely that the existence of God is inconvenient to their moral life, or worldview. For still others, it is a way for detaching from what they see as the problems posed by belief (e.g. our concepts of sin, guilt, judgment, and so on). Yet others have many complaints about the Church. I am not trying to speak here for atheists, or put words in their mouths, but the bottom line is people usually hold to things for a reason.

Ms. Jacoby goes on, in a part of the article not reproduced here, to trace the origins of her atheism to the problem of evil and suffering. She saw a friend die a lingering death from polio back in the 1950s. Being dissatisfied with the answers faith provided, she detached from faith and sees atheism as an alternative to believing in a God who would allow such things to happen.

So it would seem that atheism does have something to offer her. She seems to think that the non-answer of atheism is an answer and that denying the existence of God means she can avoid struggling with the questions related to evil and suffering. As we shall see, I propose that here solution offers neither an answer, nor an escape from the problem of evil.

[But] it is primarily in the face of suffering, whether the tragedy is individual or collective, that I am forcefully reminded of what atheism has to offer. When I try to help a loved one losing his mind to Alzheimer’s, when I see homeless people shivering in the wake of a deadly storm, when the news media bring me almost obscenely close to the raw grief of bereft parents, I do not have to ask, as all people of faith must, why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen.

I am not sure why Ms. Jacoby considers herself free of having to ask this question. I think the problem of evil and suffering is something that perplexes every human being on the planet, and Ms. Jacoby cannot so easily exempt herself from the questions surrounding it. While she may not direct them to God, she cannot ultimately avoid the universal human struggle to inquire into the meaning of all things, including evil and suffering.

Human beings seek meaning, seek reasons. I am not at all convinced that her demurring from the question of suffering is either possible or authentic. The only truly authentic “refuge” from this question is to insist that life and this world really has no meaning at all, to insist that everything is ultimately meaningless, absurd, and pointless. But I have never met a human being, let alone an atheist, that “brave” to live in a world of utter meaninglessness. And hence even Atheists search for meaning, something to work for, base their lives on, something by which to navigate. They too seek answers.

So unless Ms. Jacoby is insistent that nothing has meaning, then she too must somehow wrestle with the basic questions we all wrestle with. Questions that underlie our alarm at the presence of suffering and evil, even before God is included in the question. For example:

Why does anything exist at all?
What is existence?
Why do we value existence over non-existence?
Why is there Love?
Why do we ponder meaning, assign value, grieve loss and celebrate gain, in ways that other animals do not seem to do?
What is justice?
And how do we come to know it and distinguish it from injustice?
Why are its basic concepts so ubiquitous?
And why do humans ponder justice whereas animals do not?
Why does injustice trouble us?
What is suffering?
Why does some suffering alarm us more than other forms?
Why does death alarm us and life please us?
Why are we alarmed at what happened at Sandy Hook?
Why do we say it was wrong or evil?
Why do we seek ways to prevent it in the future?
Where does human wickedness come from?
Why do we call it wicked?
Why do we do such horrible things to each other (things not even animals do) and why does it bother us?
Why do we even have these questions?
Why do we seek answers for them?
Why do we care at all?

I am not trying to be impertinent or playful. But just dismissing “the God question” does not let Ms. Jacoby off the hook. She like all of us, is stuck with trying to make sense out of all this. And there are a ton of underlying questions and imponderables beneath tragedies like this.

I am sure that Ms. Jacoby would have to say, to many of these questions, “I don’t know for sure. I have some ideas but I cannot answer all this.” And that is a fine and honest answer. And you know, I cannot answer it all either.

But then why do we suddenly have to have a clear answer to the God question? Why does Ms. Jacoby say that all people of faith must ask (and I presume answer?) as to why an all-powerful, all-good God allows such things to happen?

Honestly, I don’t have a simple pat answer. And if Ms. Jacoby is ready to answer all the questions above thoroughly and with air-tight completeness that maybe I’ll answer this one. But until then, I don’t know why believers are required to answer such a mysterious and complex question, while she goes free.

To be sure faith does supply some answers to aspects of the problem (e.g. God allows suffering for some greater good or purpose, God draws good from struggles, one moment in time is not the full picture and God will reward those who have suffered, many who are last shall be first, etc.) But none of these are full answers to the great mystery of suffering, evil and iniquity. In many places God is clear that we cannot comprehend all his ways, and believers are content to recognize in humility that we only see a very small part of the picture.

But Ms. Jacoby’s implicit insistence that we must have an air-tight answer to “the God question” is no more binding on us or reasonable to demand than that she should also have air-tight answers to the thousands of other questions that underlie incidents like Sandy Hook. Neither can she reasonably claim to be wholly free of having to ask these questions and both answer them to some extent and admit that she does not have complete answers either.

It is a positive blessing, not a negation of belief, to be free of what is known as the theodicy problem. Human “free will” is Western monotheism’s answer to the question of why God does not use his power to prevent the slaughter of innocents, and many people throughout history (some murdered as heretics) have not been able to let God off the hook in that fashion.

Her assessment is not fair or correct. Theodicy is not “Western monotheism’s answer” to the problem of suffering or evil. The Church does not have a simple answer to the very deep mystery of suffering. Theodicy is surely one of the factors in a framing of the discussion, but the truth of human freedom is held in tension and balance with God’s sovereignty. This is what orthodoxy does, it often holds competing truths in balance and tension. Human freedom is part of the picture, but it is not alone the answer, and we do not propose it as such.

Hence, her statement as written is incorrect.

Her parenthetical remark about the murdering of heretics is gratuitous, and displays the negative animus she brings toward believers and the Church. In this she tips her hand. I will agree that if she will not mention those murdered as heretics, I will not mention 100+ million who were murdered in the last century under the aegis of Atheistic Communism and other secular philosophies.

The atheist is free to concentrate on the fate of this world — whether that means visiting a friend in a hospital or advocating for tougher gun control laws — without trying to square things with an unseen overlord in the next. Atheists do not want to deny religious believers the comfort of their faith. We do want our fellow citizens to respect our deeply held conviction that the absence of an afterlife lends a greater, not a lesser, moral importance to our actions on earth.

Her remarks here fail in terms of relevance. Believers are no less interested in the matters she describes than atheists. The Christian faith has had a remarkable role in inspiring countless people to undertake works of charity. The Church has founded and runs a huge number of hospitals, orphanages, shelters, soup kitchens and many other such outreach. Her implicit suggestion that atheists place a higher moral importance on our actions on earth is not only insulting, it is wrong and misinformed. I’d like to see some statistics to back up her claim. Meantime, I’ll continue put the outreach of Christians and other believers up against any group and I’ll bet we have nothing to be ashamed of.

We must speak up as atheists in order to take responsibility for whatever it is humans are responsible for — including violence in our streets and schools. We need to demonstrate that atheism is rooted in empathy as well as intellect. And although atheism is not a religion, we need community-based outreach programs so that our activists will be as recognizable to their neighbors as the clergy.

Fair enough. But I wonder how atheists would do this as a group since there is no real way they consistently come together in large numbers that I know of. Perhaps that will change. But as it is now, atheists do not seem to be a group that come together or act together in any large.

Robert Green Ingersoll, [an agnostic], frequently delivered secular eulogies at funerals and offered consolation that he clearly considered an important part of his mission. In 1882, at the graveside of a friend’s child, he declared: “They who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have no fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be, tells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest … The dead do not suffer.”

Yeah, well, it’s a kind of the “death as therapy” thinking. Frankly death is a very strange therapy. But I find it is common today among many to esteem death as therapy. For example, some applaud abortion because otherwise the child might be born in poverty, or have a birth defect or something.

But death is a very strange therapy. To folk who talk like this, I wonder how they would feel if someone from the government came to them and said, “It must be tough earning less than $27,000 a year, so I’m going to kill you.” Or if someone lost an arm in an accident, and the doctor said, “Gee, it must be awful having a defective body. Here let me kill you.” At any rate the “death as therapy” movement is pretty active in this country via abortion and euthanasia.

I suppose I can relate to the fact that it’s good when suffering ends. But I’d kinda like to be alive to experience the relief, if you know what I mean. And even if I could say of my father, when he died, “I am glad his suffering is over,” I’d kind of like for him to be alive somewhere to experience that relief. I’m not really sure what good a benefit of any sort is when you’re not alive to experience it.

Too bad that this is the best consolation that Ms. Jacoby could cite. There’s just something about life and existence that seems essential for consolation to really matter. Non-existence just doesn’t “get me right here.” I’m looking for something with a little more heart.

In the end, a simple request of Ms. Jacoby. How about a little accuracy and fairness? Consistently in her article she has misrepresented what we teach. And while she thinks that “the God question” should have an airtight answer for a believer (it does not for it contains mystery) she would not likely insist on such an answer to any number of other questions apart form the God question. So in fairness, please answer, (with an airtight answer), “Why does anything exist?” And for a bonus question, “Why is there love?” Perhaps there is not a simple answer to such questions. And perhaps there isn’t a simple answer to the problem of suffering and evil. And perhaps that’s OK. Maybe we’d like complete answers, but maybe we can live without them too.

January 9, 2013May 29, 2015

A Source-text for Serenity

I saw a YouTube video today by a fellow Catholic who was quite concerned and animated over what he describes as the desperate condition of the Church. It is true that there is much to be sober about in these troubled times, and we have discussed them quite thoroughly here. There are current and necessary struggles in which we are engaged, especially in seeking to re-evangelize our increasingly disordered culture.

But in all this we cannot afford to lose our serenity. Unsettled warriors are ultimately ineffectual for we cannot bring peace to others unless we first have it ourselves.

I was meditating recently, just before Christmas, on a text from Isaiah and I found it most encouraging, and a kind of source text for serenity. I would like to present the reading and then consider in four parts how a proper understanding of God can help give us greater serenity.

Hear me, O house of Jacob, all who remain of the house of Israel, My burden since your birth, whom I have carried from your infancy. Even to your old age I am the same, even when your hair is gray I will bear you; It is I who have done this, I who will continue, and I who will carry you. Remember the former things, those long ago: I am God, there is no other; I am God, there is none like me. At the beginning I foretell the outcome; in advance, things not yet done. I say that my plan shall stand, I accomplish my every purpose. I call from the east a bird of prey, from a distant land, one to carry out my plan. Yes, I have spoken, I will accomplish it; I have planned it, and I will do it. Listen to me, you fainthearted, you who seem far from the victory of justice: I am bringing on my justice, it is not far off, my salvation shall not tarry; I will put salvation within Zion, and give to Israel my glory. (Isaiah 46:3-4; 9-13)

I. God is Tender. The Text says, Hear me, O house of Jacob, all who remain of the house of Israel, My burden since your birth, whom I have carried from your infancy. Even to your old age I am the same, even when your hair is gray I will bear you; It is I who have done this, I who will continue, and I who will carry you.

One of the great misconceptions of the Old Testament portrait of God is that God is described there only in cruel and punishing terms. It is true that God was dealing with a hardened people in very tough and cruel times, a people who lived in ancient times largely unschooled in law and what we would even call today “civilization.” Tough times, and tough people sometimes called for very tough measures.

And yet despite this, some of the most beautiful and tender passages describing God’s love and rich mercy are in the Old Testament. These opening lines from our passage is one of them, speaking of God lovingly carrying us as a kind a blessed burden from our earliest youth, all the way through old age. Yes, he carries us. As a loving father and he feeds and provides for us. Hosea has a similar passage:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheek; and bent down to feed them…. My heart is moved within me; all my compassion is aroused. (Hosea 11:1-4; 8-9)

How true it is, as Hosea describes that we often run from God, when he merely stoops to feed us. We forget that he is the one who taught us to walk. We forget how in tender mercy he has held as close to his cheek. Instead, we run from him in rebellion and fear. God speaks through Hosea in terms that are almost heartbroken, quite sad at how we run from him.

Yes, God is a father who loves us, who cherishes us, and who, in a mysterious way, grieves that we run from him. In all of this he continues to carry us, he does not forsake us.

And here is an important source of serenity for us: that we recall that God is a tender Father who loves us and wants to save us, who is grieved at our running and joyous at our return. If we can know and experience this love, we are more serene and confident.

II. God is Tried and True – The text says, Remember the former things, those long ago: I am God, there is no other; I am God, there is none like me. At the beginning I foretell the outcome; in advance, things not yet done.

The Lord invites us to ponder the memory of his providence deep in our hearts. To treasure and meditate on his providence of the past, is to grow and hope for today, and trust for tomorrow. How critical is for our own mental health and sense of well-being that we should dedicate ourselves to thankfulness, and meditate frequently on how God has delivered us in the past. He has provided for our most fundamental needs and, whatever our struggles, they have not overcome us. Even our burdens often mysteriously bless us, and are gifts in strange packages. All things work together for good for those who love and trust the Lord of the called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

And whatever our concerns for tomorrow whatever our fears, God is not fearful. God has already provided. Tomorrow is just as present to God as our yesterday and this very day. (Providentia Providebit)”Providence will provide.” God knows and foretells every outcome. There is no panic in heaven, just plans. Such a deep conviction, that God is tried and true, a conviction of providence rooted in gratitude is key to our serenity.

III. God is Triumphant – The text says, I say that my plan shall stand, I accomplish my every purpose. I call from the east a bird of prey, from a distant land, one to carry out my plan. Yes, I have spoken, I will accomplish it; I have planned it, and I will do it.

In God the victory is already won. For us life unfolds in stages, but for God all is accomplished. From the cross Jesus said, “It is finished.” Yes, the victory is won: in dying he destroys our death, in humility he conquers pride. The battle is the Lord’s, and the victories is His, it is already won, only the new has not yet leaked out.

If we could but learn to live as though the victory were already ours. Yet so easily we are conquered by negativity troubled by thoughts of doom. The world is lost, the cause is failed, or so we think. But we are deceived, even deluded. And in this delusion, our peace and serenity depart from us, and so often fear and depression take their place.

If we could but understand ponder the God has already won the victory, if we could but recall how many nations and empires have risen and fallen in the age of the Church. Yes, and how many of them have menacingly threatened God and his Church. They have come, had their night, and always been replaced by the day. Light always conquers the darkness. The Church has buried everyone of her undertakers. Where is Cesar now? Where is Napoleon? Where are the Soviets? Whoever will contend with God soon enough are history and the Church will remain.

Philosophies too come and go, but the truth of the Gospel remains. Currently many atheists stand proud, announcing the age of faith is over. They too will have their night, and the light returns again. God’s plan will stand.

We may be puzzled over temporary defeats and setbacks that God mysteriously permits. But here too, he is working his purposes out, he’s pruning and strengthening his Church, purifying his people, and distinguishing those who accept him, and those who reject him.

Recalling that the victory is already won, that the triumph has already been announced, that the winning team is already announced and assured, this too is a source of great serenity for many of us who would fret over momentary setbacks.

IV. God is Trustworthy – The text says, Listen to me, you fainthearted, you who seem far from the victory of justice: I am bringing on my justice, it is not far off, my salvation shall not tarry; I will put salvation within Zion, and give to Israel my glory.

To all those who are anxious and fearful God gives the simple remedy, “Listen to me!” Yes, if we will but listen to God and his Word, we will see how. again and again, he has delivered his people. Is this not what we do it every Mass? We gather and listen to God’s Word. We tell our story that does describe the difficulties of living in a fallen world, but always, in the end, these same texts describe victory and vindication for those who trust God. Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? Didn’t he deliver the Hebrew children? Didn’t he vindicate Joseph, and uphold the dignity of Leah? Didn’t the Lord free Paul and Silas, as well as Peter, from prison? And why not me too?

Not only does God tell us to listen, but also to look again. He speaks to those who seem far from the victory of justice. But to seem is not to be. To say that something “seems” is to indicate that what it appears to be, in fact it is not. And thus, to the fainthearted, the doubtful, the doomsayers and all the negative minded, God says that help and salvation are on the way, they shall not tarry. God may not bring all solutions and salvation on our own terms, but he will establish justice in a very little while.

An old hymn says:

Harder yet may be the fight;
right may often yield to might;
wickedness a while may reign;
Satan’s cause may seem to gain.
But there’s a God that rules above
with hand of power and heart of love;
and if I’m right, he’ll fight my battle,
I shall have peace someday.

So here to serenity is rooted in surety. A Surety that knows the victory is already won, and though the news has not yet leaked out, it will soon be clear for all to see.

Here then is a kind of source-text for greater serenity. If we can remember that God is tender, tried and true, triumphant and trustworthy, we can be well assured that greater serenity will be ours. This serenity is crucial for us who would fight the battles necessary today. Serenity will preserve us from wild flaying actions, and imprudent and hasty actions. Serenity helps us to be well rested, even in the storm, as was Jesus in the boat on the storm-tossed sea. Having rebuked the storm he turns to his disciples as asks, “Why were you afraid?”

January 9, 2013May 29, 2015

Faith has to Become Flesh

In yesterday’s post we pondered the insistence of the Johannine scriptures on the fact that Christ Jesus came in the flesh, was incarnate. To the deny the incarnation is a serious heresy that not only misunderstands Jesus, but misunderstands the nature of the faith as well. For if Jesus came in the flesh, if the Word become flesh, then so also must our faith be fleshly. We cannot reduce it to mere ideas. Those ideas, and all doctrine must bear real fruit in our lives that extends to the created and material word, to actual deeds in space and time. Our faith has to become flesh.

At Christmas we celebrated the fact of the Word Becoming Flesh. God’s love for us is not just some theory or idea. It is a flesh and blood reality that can actually be seen, heard and touched. But the challenge of the Christmas season is for us to allow the same thing to happen to our faith. So again, The Word of God and our faith cannot simply remain on the pages of a book or the recesses of our intellect. They have to become flesh in our life. Our faith has to leap off the pages of the Bible and Catechism and become flesh in the very way we live our lives, the decisions we make, the very way we use our body, mind, intellect and will.

Consider a passage from the liturgy of the Christmas Octave from the First Letter of John. I would like to produce an excerpt and then make a few comments.

The way we may be sure that we know Jesus is to keep his commandments. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, the love of God is truly perfected in him. This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to walk just as he walked. (1 John 2:3ff)

Faith is incarnational – Note first of all what a practical man John is. Faith is not an abstraction, it is not about theories and words on a page. It is not about slogans. It is about a transformed life, it is about the actual love of God and his Commandments. It is about the actual love of of my neighbor. True faith is incarnational, it takes on flesh in my very “body-person.” Remember, we human beings are not pure spirit, we are not intellect and will only, we are also flesh and blood. And what we are cannot remain merely immaterial. What we most are must be reflected in our bodies, what we actually, physically do as well. Too many people often repeat the phrase, “I’ll be with you in spirit.” Perhaps an occasional absence is understandable but after a while the phrase rings hollow. Actually showing up and actually doing what we say is an essential demonstration of our sincerity. We are body persons and our faith must have a physical, flesh and blood dimension. Our faith is to be reflected in our actual behavior and the physical conduct of our life.
A sure sign – John says that The way we may be sure that we know Jesus is to keep his commandments. Now be careful of the logic here. The keeping of the commandments is not the cause of faith, it is the fruit of it. It is not the cause of love, it is the fruit of it. Note this too, in the Scriptures, to “know” is always more than a mere intellectual knowing. To “know” in the Scriptures means, “deep intimate personal experience of the thing or person known.” It is one thing to know about God, it is another thing to “know the Lord.” So, what John is saying here is that to be sure we authentically have deep intimate personal experience of God is to observe the fact that this changes the way we live. An authentic faith, an authentic knowing of the Lord will change our actual behavior in such a way that we keep the commandments as a fruit of that authentic faith and relationship with the Lord. It means that our faith becomes flesh in us. It changes the way we live and move and have our being. For a human being who is a body-person faith cannot be an abstraction, it has to become flesh and blood if it is authentic. John also uses the image of walking: This is the way we may know that we are in union with him: whoever claims to abide in him ought to walk just as he walked. Now walking is a very physical thing. It is also a very symbolic thing. The very place we take our body is both physical and indicative of what we value, what we think.
Liar? – John goes on to say Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not keep his commandments is a liar. John uses strong language here. Either we believe and keep the commandments or we fail to keep the commandments and thus lie about knowing the Lord. But all of us struggle to keep the commandments fully! John seems so “all or nothing.” But his math is clear. To know the Lord fully, is never to sin (cf 1 John 3:9). To know him imperfectly is still to experience sin. Hence, the more we know him (remember the definition of know from above!) the less we sin. If we still sin it is a sign that we do not know him enough. It is not really John who speaks too absolutely. It is really we who do so. We say, “I have faith, I am a believer, I love the Lord, I know the the Lord!” We speak so absolutely. Perhaps we could better say, I am growing in faith, I am striving to be a better believer, I’m learning to love and know the Lord better and better. Otherwise we risk lying. Faith is something we grow in. Many Protestants have a bad habit of reducing faith to an event such as answering an altar call, or accepting the Lord as “personal Lord and savior.” But we Catholics do it too. Many think all they have to do is be baptized but they never attend Mass faithfully later. Others claim to be “loyal” even “devout” Catholics but they dissent from important Church teachings. Faith is about more than membership. It is about the way we walk, the decisions we actually make. Without this harmony between faith and our actual walk we live a lie. We lie to ourselves and to others. Bottom line: Come to know the Lord more an more perfectly and, if this knowing is real knowing, we will grow in holiness, keep the commandments be of the mind of Christ. We will walk just as Jesus walked.
Uh Oh! Is this salvation by works? Of course not. The keeping of the commandments is not the cause of saving and real faith it is the result of it. The keeping of the commandments is the necessary evidence of saving faith but it does not cause us to be saved, it only indicates that the Lord is saving us from sin and its effects. But here too certain Protestants have a nasty habit of dividing faith and works. The cry went up in the 16th Century by the Protestants that we are saved by faith “alone.” Careful. Faith is never alone. It always brings effects with it. Our big brains can get in the way here and we think that just because we can distinguish or divide something in our mind we can divide it in reality. This is arrogant and silly. Consider for a moment a candle flame. Now the flame has two qualities: heat and light. In our mind we can separate the two but not in reality. I could never take a knife and divide the heat of the flame and the light. They are so together as to be one reality. Yes, heat and light in a candle flame are separate theoretically but they are always together in reality. This is how it is with faith and works. We are not saved by works but as John here teaches to know the Lord is always accompanied by the evidence of keeping the commandments and walking as Jesus did.

Faith is real. It is incarnational. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, really and physically. So too our own faith must become flesh in us, really, physically in our actual behavior in our very body-person.

I put this video together with a lesser known carol (composed by Richard Proulx). The translation is as follows:

Verbum Caro Factum Est (The Word was made flesh)
Habitavit in Nobis (And dwelt among us)
Alleluia
Notum fecti Dominus (The Lord has made known)
Salutare suum (His Salvation)
Alleluia
Prope invocavit me: (Near is he who calls me: )
“Frater meus est tu!”” (“You are my brother!”)
Alleluia

January 7, 2013May 29, 2015

Living on the Dark Side of the Cartesian Divide. A Reflection on the Gnosticism of our Times

There is a line in the first letter of John (read on the Monday of this week), a line that proves of critical important to many difficulties today with heresy, unbelief and moral decay. The line says:

Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist... (1 John 4:1-3)

John also writes in the second Letter:

Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. 2 John 1:7

One of those fundamental principles at the heart of the Johannine scriptures is that the Word become flesh. Jesus actually came in the flesh, we could touch our God. The true faith is incarnational. In Jesus Christ, God takes up the physical order, Justice, Truth springs up from the earth (cf Ps 85:11). God actually becomes man. The love of God and his salvation are tangible, and real, not merely ideals, wishes, or hopes, but real and tangible. Faith is about reality. This is John and the Holy Spirit’s insistence, and it is adamantly expressed that we not let this true slip from our understanding even for a moment.

For there are, and have been, many Gnostic and neo-gnostic tendencies down through the centuries which seek to reduce faith merely to intellectualism, to ideas or opinions, and to remove things from the world of reality. Thus St. John and the Church have had to insist over and over that Jesus is real, that faith is real, and is about real, tangible, even material things.

When Jesus came among us, He was not content merely to speak of ideas. He did not simply advance ethical theories or set forth merely philosophical notions. He also spoke to actual human behaviors, not merely speaking of them, but actually living them, and modeling them in the flesh. He demands for his followers not mere intellectual affirmations, but an actual walking in his truth, using our very bodies, and living his teaching. We are to renounce unnecessary possessions, actually feed the poor, confess him with our lips, reverence human sexuality through chaste living, accept suffering, even embraced it, for the sake of the kingdom, and so forth.

Yes, faith is about real things, about actual concrete behaviors that involve not only what we think, but actually how we physically move our body through the created order, how we interact with the physical order, and with one another.

Jesus also took up and made use of the physical and created order in his saving mission. Obviously he took it up in the incarnation, but he also referenced creation in many of his parables, pointing to the lilies of the field, to the sparrow. He made paste with saliva and mud, anointed with oil, change water to wine, laid hands on the bodies of countless individuals in healing, took bread and wine and change it to the body and blood. He took up The wood of the cross, lay down his body in suffering and death, and raised it up again on the third day. Then He took his body, yes his physical body with him to heaven and sat down at the right hand of the Father.

Yet despite this radical physicality seen in the Gospel and the work of God, there remains a persistent tendency on the part of many to reduce the faith by removing it from the physical and temporal order rendering it a merely ethical notion, an intellectualism, or a set of ideas, and even mere opinion. Faith rooted in daily reality, and with measurable parameters, is set aside, and sophistry takes place. Never mind what a person does, all that seems to matter to many us what they think about it, or what their intentions are.

Gnostic tendencies have existed in every stage, but were most severe in the early centuries among heretical groups, only to resurface in recent centuries, especially since the so-called enlightenment where human reason is exulted unreasonably.

The Protestant revolt took up the rationalism of those “enlightenment” times and brought the first great blow to the house of faith by rendering the Sacraments mere symbols, no longer the touch of God. No longer for them does baptism actually save us by washing away our sins, for many of them it only symbolizes faith. Holy Communion for most of them was no longer the actual Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, but only a symbol of him, something that evokes thoughts and memories what he said and did. For the Protestant groups, most of the other Sacraments simply fell away. No longer was it necessary to lay hands on the sick, to lay hands on to ordain or bless. All such things were unnecessary, even abhorrent to many Protestants who took up enlightenment rationalism, and reduced faith to intellectualism, ideas, and words on the page.

Along with the Sacraments, many of the Enlightenment-era Protestants banished most beauty in the churches with iconoclastic tendencies. No longer should creation in the pigmented paints, beautiful stained glass, precious metals, candles incense and so forth be raised up to the glory of God. This too is far too incarnational for the the “purity” of the rationalist mind. Stark white-washed churches were exulted, and the feast of the senses common in Catholicism was frowned upon. Faith that was “purified” of all this incarnational “excess” and was to exist only in one’s mind and heart.

The use of the body to worship in Protestantism was also largely banished. Kneeling, sitting, standing, signs of the cross, vestments, all of this was banished. Afterall what did the body have to do with it? It was in the mind, and in the heart that one worshiped God. Why bend the knee when it sufficed to bow in one’s heart?

And thus, there was a great retreat from the bodily aspect of the incarnation.

We should be clear, that not all Protestant denominations equally indulged iconoclastic and rationalistic tendencies in this aftermath of the enlightenment. There remained many great artistic and musical accomplishments within the Protestant realm, to include architecture. But the general pattern is clear to some extent in all the denominations founded by men after the “Enlightenment.” Worship and faith moved more into the mind, and world of ideas and away from the created, tangible and physical realities of this world.

Many other moral troubles of our day also bespeak a Gnostic, anti-incarnational tendency. For example the exultation of intention over actual behavior. Never mind what a person actually does. The only morally significant matter is what they intend, that they mean well.

Yet another tendency is the word-smithing of our day. It’s not abortion, it’s choice. It is not contraception, it is reproductive choice. I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual. They’re not fornicating, they’re cohabiting, it’s not an act of sodomy it is “gay” etc. The more vague, vapid and non-descriptive the word the better. Abstractions and generalities replace clearer and reality based descriptions.

Here then is a brief tour of the Gnosticism of our times. We can see why St. John and the Holy Spirit were so passionate to warn against any false teachers who denied the incarnation, call them not only false teachers, but “antichrist.” We live on the ever darker side of the Cartesian divide, living in our minds, denying that creation or our bodies are revelation or have anything to say to us.

Of course this is antichrist, it is a slap in the face of God who made all things and established the created by his Word, the Logos. And since all things were made through Christ, the Logos, then all creation has a “logike” (a logic) that is clearly perceived in what God has made. To go on denying this is “illogical” is “anti-logical” is contrary to the Logos, the Word through whom God created and sustains all things. Contrary to the Logos is just another way of saying, “antichrist.”

(One paradox to all this is the flourishing o the material (physical) sciences in our times. I have written more on this paradox here: Cartesian Anxiety)