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Lifeline to the Faithful

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The faith is a demanding thing, and the way may well be impossible.

You are a creature, in the flesh, and subject to the stresses and demands of physical survival.  You can no more extract yourself from the natural world than you can leap off the Earth and land on the Moon.

We will ever be at odds with the world, and if we are not, that shall be a warning to us.  As it is, the more one is faithful, the more he will be hated.

The darkness is always closing in.

 

The world then, with its powerful and mighty, its famed and fortunate, has an appeal the faithful can never capture.  There is enmity and it cannot be bridged.  The advantage, so long as we are in the world, belongs to the worldly.

So you may find yourself beaten down.  In a world upside-down – as it will ever be – your virtue is a drag on your success, your kindness is weakness, your modesty is a limit beyond which your competitors race to defeat you.

You may come to think that, despite the echoes of your dreams, dreams from a far-off place, you are destined to a middling life.  Gray and sluggish, commoditized, leaving no impression by which you will ever be remembered.

But you’ve got it all wrong;  You have swallowed the lie.

 

I am your brother, listen to me:  You have closed yourself off from God.

God – does not – permit mediocrity.  He will spit you out, and perhaps He has.

 

Here is how you will find the moment of expectoration:  When did you last avoid a good action because of fear?   It is that simple – in your family, in your business, in your spiritual life, when you have found something good to be too much, or too dreadful, you assumed the temperature of the room.  You were no longer pleasing to the taste, giving satisfaction to the thirst.

 

The lie is that, as a child of God, you are bound to defeat.  No need to begin fighting, it will all end in flames and ashes.

The enemy is no fool.  He knows that if he can demoralize you before you’ve begun to fight back, he’s already won.

The game is rigged against you, he says.  He holds all the cards.  Go ahead, make a run at it – see how easily you are slapped down?  And what are you resisting sin for, after all?  If it is all for God and the ultimate victory, why does God not win right now?  Why does He make it all but impossible for you to succeed?

 

Now, do you see how you have been poisoned and duped?  Do you see how the world has trampled upon your God-given dignity, and has stifled the mighty works God meant to work through you?  It is time to go in, whips in hand, and throw the tables over.

The truth is, you have not trusted God enough.  You have accepted, from fear or disappointment, that He will not come through for you.

Perhaps you are inadequate (you are).  Perhaps you are imperfect (doubtless).  Yes, you have failed, and you have shamed yourself, and you have given every earthly reason to any worldly power that you are not up to the task.

Do you see the lie?  You will see it when you hear the truth:  You do not answer to a worldly power.  You answer to the Almighty.

Therefore!  It does not matter if you have failed by worldly measures, over and over again.  It does not matter if you have showed yourself inadequate for the task, lacking in perseverance, intelligence, skill.

Fool!  IT. IS. NOT. ABOUT. YOU.

Do you wonder why Adam and Eve ate of the apple?  First, clean your lips of that bitter sweetness… you have sunk your teeth into the lie and devoured it whole.

 

Let’s put it starkly, written in a flame against the blackness of night:  The Devil has isolated you from God, and proceeded to devour you.  This is why you are demoralized, beaten down, perpetually inadequate, in motion and going nowhere.

The Devil is virtually a god and has convinced you that you must face him under your own power.  Every failure, every weak moment, every grasp at evil is one more victory for him, and one more defeat for you.  And you have no hope of overcoming him…

 

…alone.

But of course he has lied to you.  He rigged the game, he set you up for destruction.  Now, you know better.

You, as always, must call on the Almighty.  You must call on Him with all of the desperation of a drowning man, because truly you cannot defeat the waves.  You must call on him as though the enemy came fully armed, has you surrounded, and is counting down to your annihilation.  Because you cannot defeat death.

 

But He can.

And there it is, my brother, my sister.  Look to Him, always.  Pray to Him, at every moment, for every good thing – especially in your need.

Then, simply hold on.  Work and strive and fight with everything you have, reinforced by the power of God.  One day you will barely be able to stand, and the next you will be lifting mountains.  First, you will strain to walk, then you will race with all speed to the ends of the earth.

Many will doubt, and then you will succeed beyond all of their expectations.

Many will forecast doom, and you will deliver victory.


Unfathomable

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It is difficult to capture the miracle of the Resurrection.

On the one hand, we all experience it every day, arising from our sleep.  On the other, none but a small child believes he goes to sleep for the last time when he lays down his head.  (Is it a terror of existential darkness that causes young children to avoid bedtime?)

The finality of death is a cleft in the mind, the pit into which all fall and none recover.  What one makes of this creates a divide, while there is no division about waking up each morning.

What happens after we die?  Many guesses.

Whether death is an end, whether it just is the observed failure of the body to persist, whether it is the excising of a very particular person and presence from the world in the way she was commonly known?  Yes, no one argues this.

Put it this way:  Say you believe a loved one lives on, and well he might.  Now you observe him in little signs, a serendipitous word from a stranger, a rare species of flower where one does not ordinarily find it, an annoying thing he always did that comforts you now.  Here is the test:  Would you rather have these little signs for another 10 years, or one more day with him, in his fullness?

Death forces your hand, leaves you the scraps when you crave the feast.  It is a savage compromise, but that is the Universe we are in.

So much for the true and severe loss of death.

Now Good Friday is the collapse, the utter devastation and lifeless plummet into the pit.  It is the heavy-weight fight, the clash of Titans – Life vs. Death.  And Life, as expected (though recklessly hoped against) staggers and falls from unimaginable height to unimaginable depth.

One loses his breath.  Of course he does – he watches the Source of that breath, breathing His last.  He goes under, lost, never to return.

 

Easter Sunday is the unfathomable resurgence, the great inhale, the impossible gasp.  It is the cure of all depression, it is cause for an old man to leap to his feet and run like a child, it is fire and purpose to accept, stare down, … praise God for a torturous death.

Or become child-like again.  If the night brings terrors, what does the day bring?  What irrepressible joy comes with the dawn of a new sun?  What verve of anticipation passes through your bones just to think of Christmas morning?  (And why Christmas morning, and no other?)

Run, and never grow weary.

 

Easter is our great Hero finding the bottom of a bottomless pit.  It is saving the souls of the irredeemably lost.

It is slipping into darkness, clawing to stay awake, alive…the sheer terror of all joy, all love, all of everything being ripped away…

…and then you wake up, and there are no more tears, and all you know is love and joy and the thrill of existence.

See – It is death that is impossible.  You will live.

Happy Easter.


Why every day cannot be Christmas Day

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I write this at peak Christmas.

Peak Christmas does not happen on Christmas Day – it happens the night before.

All of the preparation, the carols, the extra coins in the red bucket at the grocery store, the stories of good will toward perfect strangers, the re-focusing on just what Christmas is all about, the magic of the nighttime, the anxious awaiting of dawn…

It reaches a head just before bedtime on Christmas Eve.  You could stride along, atop the sheer anticipation.

There are those universal moments – the story of a stranger pulling over to help someone stranded on the side of the road, or a famous person discreetly providing toys to poor children, or a church getting together to feed the homeless a hot meal – which elicit the lament, “Why can’t every day be like this?”  Or you sometimes hear it declared, ambitiously – “Make every day Christmas day!”

It would be nice, wouldn’t it?  A universal disposition toward concern for others, finding satisfaction in bringing joy to others, making impossible things happen – even the gaiety of spirit one experiences, alone, driving along a dark road with Christmas lights shining brightly.

Why can the people in darkness not see a great light, every night?

 

In the classic carol, “Little Drummer Boy,” there are two lines which go:

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum 

I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum 

This verse presents the Incarnation in a striking way.  A boy who is weathered by the elements, who knows hunger, who is always only days away from wasting away – this boy empathizes with the King of Kings, because the King has so completely relinquished His power.

He has arrived utterly powerless, utterly impoverished, an infant lying among beasts.  Of course a shepherd boy could relate.

What’s more, a few lines later – “Then He smiled at me.”

This can be our Lord’s simple pleasure at a shepherd boy’s humble song.  Then again, if you hold in mind the shared poverty, something else emerges:  It is a blessing.

The baby to the boy:  Your humble station, your poverty, are not the shackles you think they are.  You are here before the Almighty, aren’t you?  Did you not see the heavens open up, and angels arrayed like a mighty army, singing my praises?  And with Me, what will be impossible for you?

 

Of course, on the one hand, we cannot have our own birthdays every day.  Even if you tried to celebrate every day this way, it would – very quickly – exhaust your body’s ability to feel pleasure and your mind’s ability to call it happiness.

So that is the first answer:  Celebrations stand out from ordinary time, and require the experience of ordinary time in order to create the contrast, the novelty, the superlative atmosphere for which they are known.

See it another way – our ordinary experience in the modern world is Christmas-like for those from another place or time.  That the ordinary is no longer special is not only tautological, but part of the human condition.

The second answer rides aloft upon the first:  We are not home yet.

The Incarnation was a rescue mission, an invasion by God Himself to save His children when nothing else would work.

That He arrived as a baby was a profound stratagem, one that brought Him deftly behind enemy lines.  He evaded the princes and principalities, and He softened the guard each of us keeps on our hearts.

That the Almighty became frighteningly vulnerable; that the all-knowing became ignorant of His own name; that He who is Holy, Holy, Holy was tempted to sin…

All of this was done, to save you.

Nothing could be more extraordinary.  “Christmas every day” could never capture it, and it is undesirable in any case – because it would be a fraud.

What Christmas gives us is a flickering light through a dark glass.  It is nostalgic, like the memory of a long-deceased father who loved us very much.  It is one frame per second of the memory we wish could play over and over again.

It is, in short, a reminder of our true home.  Not even Christmas – not the best, most magnanimous, most inclusive, most abundant moment of Christmas – can truly accomplish what is longed for when we ask for Christmas every day.

That is achieved when God remakes the heavens and the earth – this world, the darkness, will pass away.

Everything else is a paltry imitation, and even the holy day itself merely points to this.  You will know it is really Christmas when you hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”


Spirit and Letter of the Law

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The Pharisees made an art and a science out of observing the Law of Moses, cowing many followers into observing the endless minutiae and machinations they had devised.  It was indeed a heavy burden – was God really like this?

Or should the commandments of God liberate us from sin, and cut a path to His love and mercy?

Along comes Jesus, who earlier permitted his disciples to pick grain to eat on the Sabbath, and now was healing on the Sabbath.  How could he explain this over and above the endless strictures concerning the day of rest?  -which strictures certainly appeared to take the command “Keep holy the Sabbath” as seriously as possible.

Jesus’ justification is two-fold:  First, a man is more valuable than a sheep (and the Pharisees would certainly rescue their own sheep from harm on the Sabbath).

Second – of course it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.  The whole point – of all God’s commands – is that we ought to do good.  But we sin, so we require God’s mercy and guidance to do good rather than to sin.  The commandment regarding the Sabbath was directed toward being holy – not toward following a rule.

The commandments are not for nothing.  They are the pattern of behavior, the focus and discipline of a man’s spirit toward the will of God.  If you follow them because you love God, you will do well!

If you follow them because you love power and influence, because you leverage them so that men will grovel at your feet or struggle to be conformed to your image, now that you have sufficiently misshapen the Law…

Right then, it is time to turn back.  Immediately.  Turn around – you’ve gone far, far off the path.

But take heed… a viper would be found far off the path.

 

See it again, one more time:   If there had been no Fall, there would be no Law.  We would be inclined toward the Good, and thus “all things are permissible.”

As it is, there was a Fall – and therefore we are profoundly broken.  We see good, and perceive that it is evil.  We see evil and imagine it is good.  It is an honest mistake, or it would be a diabolical one.

To counter-act this, God established rules-laws-patterns of behavior that would settle all disputes within the will (and the community).  My fallen nature urges me toward an illicit act.  But it is powerful and feels genuine – why not act on it?

There might not be any reason to avoid doing so, except the Law.  Of course, even that was violated, but at least we could then recognize we had sinned, and were in need of a Savior…

Therefore, the Law was good – profoundly good, so that not one iota would be altered until heaven and earth disappear.

And it was this profound good that the Pharisees had appropriated for their own gain.  The promise of God, that one would find true peace and prosperity and joy in following the commandments (“Lord, I love your commands!”), became a long chain of shackles hammered together by men too small to let their brothers live free.  It became an admixture of their neuroses and scruples, their leverage from a distance of a great weight upon their brothers.

This weight they attempted to foist upon and trap Jesus, the Messiah.  As if to anticipate the old atheist riddle, they burdened the Son of God with a weight they imagined he could not handle.

Notice, though:  There is a rock so big that God cannot lift it.  That is, of despair.   And with so many laws, and laws upon laws, and consequences of laws that must be addressed by still more laws, one could easily find, say, lepers and paralytics and tax collectors laden with such an impossible weight.

For love of them – the lost – Jesus flares up with indignation.  His Law – an instrument of liberation – bent back upon itself and sharpened into an instrument of condemnation.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.”

 

No – the purpose and the end are God.  They always were.  It was always – dimly – the Beatific Vision, the “well done, good and faithful servant!”  The Fall was a happy fault, because God would not, even then, abandon us.  He would find a still more incredible way to point us back to Him, and deliver us.

And we might say – He’ll be damned if His own rules are going to be used against Him.  How true.


Rules of Engagement

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“I was sensitive to the fact that, for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that evokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs, and so forth”

– President Obama

After I had heard that the president stated his support for gay marriage I was listening to and reading various reactions in the media. Of course there were the standard “this group hates it / this group praises it” sort of reports. But when I listened to the commentary by many pundits I heard some of the same patterns that echo what the president stated above. Today on WLS Roe Conn and Richard Roeper were both in agreement with a sentiment along the lines (and I’m paraphrasing here) of marriage is a religious institution, and if churches don’t want to recognize it, that’s fine, but whatever you want to do is up to you, it doesn’t affect me.

And that got me to wondering.. is that true? Is marriage just a “religious institution?” Is it simply something that Jews, Christians, Muslims, and other people of faith just one day came up with and now has stuck around for generation after generation? Is it, as the president states, something rooted in tradition and in religion?

To me marriage goes beyond the blessings in a church, and goes beyond a couple as well. To me a strong marriage is the foundation of a strong family. And strong families are the foundation of a strong and just society and THAT is why what two other people do DOES affect me. Not only me, but it affects our entire society and way of life.

So the question that I think this entire debate begs but that no one often asks is, does gay marriage (and eventually families raised by gay couples) help contribute to a strong and just society?

This to me is a foundational question, and when the commentary by people like the president and other talking heads misses this point it makes me wonder how strong their position is.

The issue here is not then the secularization of marriage, because at the end of the day marriage should not just be relegated to the religious realm. It shouldn’t just be seen as a “powerful tradition” , marriage should be seen as the bedrock of a just society. And when our lawmakers, policy makers, and opinion shapers miss this point it makes me very concerned that they want to make any changes to it.

Now obviously my position is that I do not support gay marriage, nor a gay lifestyle. But I do wish that anyone who wants to engage in this debate, who wants to be a man or woman of good will, who wants to discuss this issue openly and honestly, that they do at least have the rule of engagement that sees marriage in the bigger scheme of human affairs and its absolute importance for a just society. Because that, to me, is where the true debate it. That, to me, is where we really should be questioning whether or not two people of the same gender should be making a life long commitment, and then bring children who could never be naturally conceived by them into their commitment. Whether those two people and their eventual attempt at a family can contribute to a just and well formed society, that is the question, and really should be our national rule of engagement on this issue.

Sadly I am afraid that this argument is often made on the grounds of romantic notions of love. Or to put it another (relatively snarky) way, the same country that “loves” Jersey Shore and Two and a Half Men is the same country that is making emotional appeals based on “love” and is looking to radically alter the course of a human institution that is as old as history.

So in the end I am interested in hearing more from both sides on this issue, but I hope the rules of engagement are clear: civil discourse without hatred or bigotry, and a view of marriage outside of just simple “love” and as the foundation of a just society. Who knows? With those rules we might just be able to find a way to true civility in discourse.

Rapturegate Redux

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I’ve received some feedback for my first Ratpuregate post so I wanted to clarify my thinking on this issue. I also learned an important lesson: you should try to avoid heavier topics when looking out over San Francisco Bay from your executive suite at the Hilton – sometimes there is a time and a place for deeper thought. : )

Before I clarify my point it’s important to point something out. First – Mr. Camping should be pitied and also feared for his ability to mobilize the campaign he did. Pitied because he has squandered quite a bit of his fortune on such a foolish pursuit; feared because he was able to take so many other people with him, many of whom risked much more than he did.

The point I wanted to drive home which, upon further reading, I missed the mark on is this: why was the whole world so fascinated with this? Facebook, Twitter, Google News, TV news, print news have been frenzied over this prediction. Why?

There are some who think it was like watching a train wreck with Mr. Camping and his followers being the ill-fated train. Others who think this was a way for anti-religion to run amok.

My thesis is simple, different (and I strongly desire to restate it): we are hardwired for God, and this event – to me – proves it. Now this is not just some whimsical and romantic notion, it’s also a sobering one as well. There are parts of us – deep down in places that we don’t quite understand – that recognize our separateness from God and our need to reconcile ourselves back to Him (groaning, as it were, for redemption). How many times have you been in a conversation, heard someone make an off-colored remark, and say “Man you’re totally going to hell for that!” Judgement Day, our day of reckoning before God, has a way of subconsciously being in the midst of our culture.This prediction took that innate, subconscious thought and brought it to the forefront of our national (and even international) conversation unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. For me I see this as opportunity. I see this entire episode as something that confirms that the harvest is plentiful – that people are still thirsty for God, and that we should not give up hope in our evangelical efforts. That, no matter how far our culture tries to run away from God, it is so very quick to bring our separateness to the front pages of our newspapers.  Certainly there have been many jokes, some of them vicious, about Christianity in general about this whole thing.  But I also think it’s a natural human tendency to joke and even vilify that which makes us the most uncomfortable.  Yet, beyond all of this lies the fact that news editors everywhere spent considerable resources to report this story.  I just can’t quite accept that this has had so much attention just as a means to hate on Christianity.

I genuinely believe there is a “good” spiritual aspect to this entire situation.  For me, I hear the groaning of creation crying out for redemption. And I hear it as a drum beat to be called to the battle of New Evangelization (because frankly we need to not let the Mr. Campings of the world guide the national discourse). This is my thesis and my argument, and I wanted to clarify it. This also helps you, dear readers, to engage in disagreement. This is my argument – feel free to agree or disagree, but at least (and I HOPE) it has been now well stated.

I hope this clears things up. And Josh, don’t give up yet….

Rapturegate

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The only thing more fascinating than someone spending $100 million on a campaign advocating a bunk prophecy is how much play this has gotten in the press. Flipping through the channels in my hotel room last night, talk about Harold Camping’s bold (and now, utterly false) prediction was inescapable. Now I know atheists are planning post rapture days on Sunday and those who utterly despise religion are using this to show the foolishness of the entire faith enterprise, but I think this points to an all together wonderful and escapable truth – we are created for God.

A recent study by a professor of psychology from Bristol Univrsity has put forth a proposal that our brains are literally hard wired for God. While I don’t propose to know the science behind this, I, for one, believe it. And I think this entire rapturegate (I hope I’m the first one to throw “gate” at the end of the word rapture in the history of media) is a fascinating case study in the inescapable metaphysical reality of God.

We are created by God, for God. It’s in the deepest parts of us. St. Paul teaches us that the whole of creation groans for the salvation found in Christ. It just so happens that every once in a while, an event so bizarre makes that groaning obvious and ever present for us. Jesus was spot on when he told His disciples “the harvest is plentiful.” So – while Harold Camping may be an absolute (and filthy, filthy rich) nut – even his insanity displays the glory of God.

Our world is crying out for our Creator. We, the poor banished children of Eve, desperately desire all we were created for. These are the stakes of the New Evangelization. You can decry our society and all of its ills, point out all of its flaws, and all together give up on it. Or you can flip on the television, hear this wonderful groaning, and wake up to the New Evangelization. The workers are few. Are you willing to sign up?

Dignity

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When I look at this picture, I see a kid with a huge smile on his face.  I see a teenage kid with his family posing for another family photo.  He could easily think he’s too cool for it, but he wants to get in on the fun. You can sense a closeness in this picture.  A genuine joy.

Almost 40 years after this photo was taken we have the one below, snapped as the news of that same kids’ assassination spread across the globe.

What happened?

How did this kid, smiling with his family on a bright sunny day, become responsible for the blood of 3,000 men, women, and children?  How did this kid become a man who could dream up using a passenger jet as a missile? How did this kid’s death become the cause for chants of “USA! USA! USA!” and waving American flags?

In looking at the contrast between these two photos one thing struck me, Osama Bin Laden was never just a man in the collective consciousness of our culture.  His name was a symbol the moment it first came into our living rooms.  It was a symbol of hate, of murder, of terror. Of evil, embodied.  And so Osama Bin Laden became larger than life, he became more than a man to us. This allowed many to gather and cheer when he was killed.  We held rallies, press conferences, and photo ops.  We all breathed a collective sigh of relief.  Our nation had slayed the boogeyman, we can now lay our heads back on our pillows and finally get some sleep.

And as we lay ourselves down to sleep, deep down inside of us, in that place we don’t like to always talk about, one simple truth remains: Osama Bin Laden was just like us.  He got in fights with his mom and dad, and with his siblings too.  He had to do menial chores like take out the garbage and do the laundry.  He probably tutored his brother in math, and helped tuck his little sister in at night.  No matter what propaganda teaches us, Osama Bin Laden was just a man.

I don’t write this to make Bin Laden a sympathetic character.  We know that this kid would soon become a religious zealot.  He would walk down a dark path of religious fundamentalism.  He would preach his message with the goal of gaining enough followers to unleash a “holy war” on the west. He became bloodthirsty, and eventually would concoct a plan of mass murder that puts him on a short list of human beings who have had their hands in treachery of unthinkable proportions.

We can label him a monster.  We can buy into the symbol of evil incarnate. In doing so, we  may be able to sleep easier at night.  But the truth is deeper.  Osama Bin Laden was a child of God, fearfully and wonderfully created in His image.  His birth was a gift to his parents, and to our world.  He was loved deeply by His creator.  He was a boy.  A teenager.  A man.  Never more, never less.

I still don’t have an answer as to how this happened.  I certainly don’t think I ever will.  But I cannot get over how deeply this picture has touched my heart.

It’s pictures like this that make the beatitudes possible.  Praying for our enemy seems heroic until you whittle it down and realize that our enemies are just like us.  When I see this picture I think to myself, I wish I was there that day, it seems like it was a lot of fun.  I wouldn’t mind meeting this family and that gangly kid with a green shirt and blue bellbottoms.  I think, if given time, we might have been friends.  I might have grown to love him.

If only…

Holy Day of Obligation (or, why this is anything but Ordinary time)

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Author’s Note: I’ve spoken to quite a few friends recently who have mentioned that it has “been awhile” since the last time they went to Mass. That led me to write the following.

Truly remarkable, life-altering occasions seem to come rarely in our lives and the lives of those around us. Certainly those in my age bracket may beg to differ as the costs of bridesmaid dresses and groomsmen tuxes seem to pile up summer after summer. If this describes a recent, but distant, history then you might now be familiar with the baby showers, Christenings, and first birthdays that come with such a blessed past. But upon further reflection it appears that these events certainly are rare – a handful at best, two at most. Knowing this intuitively we have a natural tendency to describe anything that happens with frequency as quite routine. Mundane. Old hat. Even our liturgical calendar is currently set to “Ordinary” time.

It’s quite easy for us to perhaps be lax during this time between Christmas and Lent.  Perhaps what is seemingly ordinary doesn’t quite rouse up the “extraordinary” out of us. Certainly we’d get out of the routine for a wedding, a Baptism, or another special occasion – but for some reason ordinary Sunday Mass is something that can be become optional. And of course it’s harder to turn down an RSVP to a very special occasion than it is to skip out on a routine duty.

And this got me to thinking – do we sometimes forget the invitation that we receive to gather at Mass every Sunday – and for every Holy Day of Obligation? Do we forget that it is God Himself, appealing through His Son, to come to Table to taste and see that He is good? Do we not realize that God thirsts for our prayer and worship (even though it adds nothing to His greatness)?

Ultimately to be lax in our Sunday obligation is seen as a very grave sin by the Church – it has been this way for as long as men and women have been gathering for the Eucharist. This is not so we can pad the collection plate, or give Catholics something new to feel guilty about – No this is because God Himself is present to bring about a miracle at every altar where the Eucharist is shared. The sacrifice of the Cross – the true Pole of the earth – is re-presented to all each and every time the faithful gather for Mass. And God provides us with the opportunity to have the most intimate union possible with Him – to partake of the very flesh and blood of His only begotten Son. If this is something that you cannot make time for you must ask yourself – what is it that I am making time for? What is it that is more important than giving the proper worship that God deserves and desires? What could possibly be getting in the way of accepting the free invitation of a God who pleads for you and is always patient for the sake of your Salvation?

This time may certainly be called Ordinary, but it celebrates something Extraordinary every day.  The Mass is never ordinary.  Indeed, Ordinary time is called as such because it’s the time given to us.  It’s the time given to celebrate the human project that was, is, and will be (God willing).  Ordinary time is our time.  It’s the time of our growth, of our pain, of our struggles, of our joys, and our suffering.  It is the time for us to continue to “work out our salvation.”     Do not be fooled by the frequency of Mass – there is nothing ordinary about it. The Mass IS the most remarkable and life-altering occasion there is, and the frequency of its celebration should not be a cause for laxity or a mundane disposition, rather it should make us realize the abundance that God wants to bestow on us.  Now that is a God worth giving time for every Holy Day of Obligation.

To forsake that abundance, to decline God’s invitation, this has real consequences for your relationship to Him, and to His Church.  Do not be fooled.  Declining God’s absurdly generous RSVP indeed is a grave matter, one that can have eternal consequences – not because He’s keeping score or taking attendance – but because He eagerly desires to spend eternity with those who eagerly desire Him.

So if it’s been a while since you’ve been to Mass, stop on by Confession, feel the forgiveness offered in Christ and then go on and celebrate that forgiveness and God’s radical love for us this, and every, Holy Day of Obligation.

A clean soul

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Ed’s wonderful reflection on the sacrament of Reconciliation led me to my own thinking.

I don’t have any profound insights to share on this other than a desire to strongly encourage you to build a better habit of visiting the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I often hear of Catholics who don’t attend often, or haven’t been back since they first received the Sacrament! (Pastors haven’t helped this, I cannot call the last time I heard a solid homily in a parish setting on the sacrament – if at all)

There really is no better feeling in life than walking out of a confessional. I can never help but have a smile on my face, and am sometimes surprised when other penitents don’t.

If you think it’s weird, or you don’t feel comfortable, or are afraid the priest is going to judge you, well get over that IMMEDIATELY. I heard a great homily by a former Benedictine abbot who is living with us at the Seminary on sabbatical about this issue. His message was clear: do not discount the overwhelming grace that the confessor receives from the sacrament. By hearing the struggles, the pains, the sorrows, and the suffering of people a confessor has the opportunity to grow in sympathy, love, and compassion for others.

Cardinal George once said “some of the most important conversations on earth happen in a confessional.” It’s hard to argue with that.

So if you haven’t been to confession in a while, go! There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Speechless

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The opening of the Gospel of John continues to inspire and amaze.  John boldly proclaims “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be.”

As Catholics we believe that the world was created ex nihlio, that is “out of nothing.”  The Creation account consistently repeats the phrase “and God said..”.  God didn’t roll his sleeves up, prepare the materials, gather His tools, and create the world.  No, he SPOKE it into existence, out of nothing.

And we know that all things were created through Christ who was the  Word.  And when it came time, at just the right time, Christ became flesh.  He who spoke the world – all we see, all we taste, all we touch, all we feel – into existence came onto the scene as an infant.  The etymology of our modern word infant comes from the Latin “infans” meaning “unable to speak.”

And so, on this Christmas morning we ponder the infant Christ, born of a Virgin, foretold by prophets, heralded by angels, blessed by shepherds and made possible through Spirit.  Let us set our minds on the manger of Bethlehem, where the Word made flesh humbled Himself in the most unimaginable way possible  as the Word, unable to speak.

Faith and Reason

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If there is no resurrection of the dead, then neither has Christ been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then empty (too) is our preaching; empty, too, your faith. Then we are also false witnesses to God, because we testified against God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. (1 Cor 15:14-19)

These are the words of St Paul to the Corinthians (emphasis mine).  Here we catch a glimpse of the wonderful Catholic Tradition of Reason. St Paul makes it very clear – if what we teach and what we preach isn’t actually true – then we should be pitied! Such a proclamation might be offensive to modern, relativistic sensibilities, but its reason is sound.  The consequences of what you believe are the impetus behind how you act, and how you act then defines your personhood.  And if you’re not basing your belief on fact, on truth, then why bother?  Especially when it comes to living the Gospel – a Faith that calls one to radical discipleship, to a death to ones self.   If these things aren’t true, then we should be pitied.  Look at how many religious live in monastic communities, giving up all of their lives, making vows of poverty and forsaking a family.  Look at how many lay faithful make radical sacrifices to help the greater good – to minister, to evangelize and forsake all worldliness for the sake of Christ.  If what we believe is not true, then yes indeed we should be pitied!

St. Paul was of course responding to a controversy of his time regarding the teaching of the resurrection and how some in Corinth were preaching contrary to the faith in the resurrection in Christ and the resurrection of those who fall asleep in Christ.  It is the work of the apostles then and now to meet modern controversy straight-on and to help guide the faithful.  Perhaps one of the greatest controversies that has caused great scandal in the last 2 centuries has been that of a proper understanding of Creation in light of the theory of evolution.

Many biblical literalists proclaim a literal reading of the Genesis account and call their followers to abandon what modern science has taught us about how the Human Project has come to be.  In the book “In the Beginning .. A Catholic Underanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall” Pope Benedict (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) lays out a well reasoned defense of how Catholics should interpret the findings of science in our time and a proper understanding of the Creation account.  His conclusion is simple: that these two things needn’t be mutually exclusive but rather are very complimentary to one another.  What I love about how he arrives to this conclusion is how he harkens the same spirit of St. Paul – a spirit that affirms human reason, thinking, and knowledge as given by God and therefore should not need to be contradicted nor completely ignored in order to understand our world and how God interacts with it.  In discussing the Genesis creation account Ratzinger boldly states:

“Yet these words [the Genesis account] give rise to a certain conflict.  They are beautiful and familiar, but are they also true?  Everything seems to speak against it. …. Do these words then count for anything? … Or have they perhaps, along with the entire Word of God and the whole biblical tradition, come out of the reveries of the infant age of human history, for which we occasionally experience homesickness but to which we can nevertheless not return, inasmuch as we cannot live on nostalgia? “

What boldness is proclaimed by the Holy Father in speaking like this.  It shows that the Catholic Faith is not afraid of asking the tough questions – even though today they are portrayed as a stodgy boys club who cling to traditions and medieval thought in a world that is eclipsing them.  Yet this is simply not the case.  The Catholic tradition has long since respected human reason, and sees it as one of the most precious gifts from God, and therefore is a force to be reckoned with when it comes to religious belief.  Because, if one is truly discerning and one truly uses the power of reason then they know that if what we believe isn’t true, well then we truly are the most pitiable people of all.