Do you know what this number is?
We celebrate the Word of God coming into the the world made by God on Christmas Day. The Holy Family was turned away from the inn because there was no room. The inn of our hearts are often cluttered with sins that prevent the Christ Child from being born anew in our own hearts and lives. What better way to clear out the clutter and welcome in Christ, than by going to confession. If you haven't in a while, all the better to go now. Remember, we Catholics are required to confess to a priest at least once each year. Why not before Christmas?
Below is a brief video produced by a friend of mine on how to make a good confession.
Here's another post from the desk of Deacon Dave Wells... posted under my name while he learns to post on his own :)
God is still at work in the world, drawing all people to Himself whenever he is lifted up (Jn 12:32), and sometimes even when he is not.
Read about Kumar and Uma Krishnan, who were led into our holy Church by dreams of the Blessed Virgin. They were initiated this past September at St. Mary of Sorrows, Fairfax, Virginia.
Or read about Fr. Stephen James Taluja, born Jaideep Singh in 1981 to a Sikh family in India. His experience of Catholic education led him to embrace the faith a few years after graduating, and led him to Catholic seminary. He was just ordained a priest of Maryknoll by Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
Here is the first contribution of Rev. Mr. David Wells to this blog. I have adapted slightly, with his permission, the homily that he gave on the Feast of All Saints, about two weeks ago. Before long, his posts will appear with his own signature. Enjoy!
The Marine Corps Marathon on a recent Sunday in D.C. and I know a few people who ran in the race. One was a priest who used to be where I currently serve as deacon, at St. Jude’s, Rockville, Maryland; he goes by the name of Fr. Rob Walsh. From what I hear, Fr. Walsh finished the marathon but it was not beautiful to behold. Even with months of training, running a marathon is no easy feat. Everyone who runs a marathon follows a training regimen, more or less strictly, so that when race day comes, they don’t get to mile seven and start looking for the nearest metro stop. In other words, they have a goal—finishing the marathon—and a plan for how they will carry that out—their training regimen.Awesome, Deacon Dave! Thanks!
"My uncle was fond of saying that the goal of life is heaven. “The goal of life is heaven.” One spiritual writer puts it this way: “The ultimate failure in life is not to be a saint.” Recently, the Church celebrated the Feast of All Saints. We honor those who have reached that goal of heaven and we ask for their help and prayers to rally us on to the finish line. The saints are like those people who cheer us on after they’ve finished the race, because they know that the award is well worth the struggle. But even if we have the goal firmly established, how do we reach that goal? The last thing we want is to be like that person who decides to run a marathon and has no plan for running it.
"Now the plan for going about reaching our goal of heaven is unique for each of us. God has a distinct plan, a distinct mission, for each one of us. But that being said, there are some things we all share in common. There are certain things that if we keep them in mind and carry them out, will aid all of us in reaching our goal of heaven. I’ve come up with three suggestions, but the Lord knows there are many other things.
"The first piece of advice I have is “keep your eye fixed on the prize.” When you first begin training for the marathon and you’re sore and out of breath after a half mile; when it’s 95 degrees out and not a bit of shade on the route; and when those shoes everyone says you have to buy cost more than your last suit. When you encounter all of these setbacks, if your goal is not fixed firmly in place—to run a marathon—you’ll soon give up and head back for the air conditioning.
"The saints recognized and always kept at the forefront that the goal of life is union with God in heaven. This motivated not just their big decisions but was the motivating factor behind their small decisions as well. We should think about heaven . . . a lot. It should fascinate us. The first reading from the Book of Revelation powerfully and symbolically illustrates the glory of the saints in heaven. St. John asks who the persons wearing white robes and holding palm branches are. He is told that these are the saints who suffered great tribulations on earth but whose robes have been washed by Christ’s blood and now glorify God forever.
"In the second reading, St. John reminds the community to whom he writes that they are God’s children now. This great saint and mystic admits next, “What we shall be hasn’t been revealed.” It’s beyond our wildest imagination and surpasses our greatest hopes what we shall be like in heaven. And finally, in the Gospel, Jesus encourages his disciples to undergo suffering and face difficulties during this life, because they will enjoy great glory in heaven. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” “Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” The saints greatly look forward to heaven and to being with God forever. We, too, must keep our eye fixed on the prize, and not get too distracted by our everyday problems. This world is short, eternity is forever.
"The second thing we should keep in mind to reach our goal of heaven is that it’s possible. It’s possible to be a saint. No, this is too weak a statement. It’s expected of us, it’s normal in God’s eyes. Not only that, but God wants us to be saints and will give us every aid necessary in order to reach our goal. Sometimes it feels like God is working against us, but this is never the case. He’s our number one fan and supporter. Pope John Paul II canonized more saints in his 25 years as pope than were canonized in the previous 450 years. In doing this, he wanted to show us that not only is it possible to be a saint, it should be thought of as normal to be one. We’re all called to be one.
"One of the things that makes this difficult is that we think the saints were superhuman and we could never equal their feats. We don’t read souls, pray all day, talk with God in mystical prayer, or appear in two places at once. Well, don’t worry, because the saints, apart from Mary, were far from perfect. St. Padre Pio, an Italian, was known for being short-tempered. St. John Marie Vianney failed out of seminary and was sent to the middle-of-nowhere city of Ars, France because it was thought there he could do the least damage. St. Teresa of Avila got so mad at God once, she shouted at him, “if this is the way you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!” The saints weren’t great because they were superhuman or perfect, but because they realized they were sinners and relied totally on God. Reaching our goal is possible, because God desires it, the saints root us on, and the Church is like our mother, giving us the spiritual nourishment to accomplish it.
"The third thing to keep in mind as we strive toward our goal is that we fail daily, but we should persevere nonetheless. Discouragement is one of the most debilitating things for us as faithful Christians. Scripture says that even the just man falls seven times a day. Mother Teresa wisely said that she received so much grace because she was such a great sinner. The great St. Paul tells us that he is the foremost of sinners. But this doesn’t get him down. He recognizes his sin, and then abandons himself to god’s infinite mercy. After a century of two World Wars, countless other massacres, and many other evils, humanity is tempted to reflect and concentrate on its own sinfulness. This couldn’t be any more false. The message Christ gives us is that of mercy. His mercy completely swallows up the worst of our sins if we turn to him with true contrition. If we are faithful to the sacrament of confession, we are well on our way to reaching our goal.
"If we keep our eyes fixed on the prize of heaven, realize that it is not only possible but it’s expected of us, and if in spite of our failings we persevere in the race, we shall surely be among those who are with God forever in heaven. This is our hope and this drives us on. My brothers and sisters, let us enter the race, so that one day we may share the joy of the communion of saints in heaven. My all the angels and saints pray for us and intercede for us."
I couldn't get the story or accomapanying video to embed, so check it out here.
Also, see here for a list of some other abortion providers who have had changes of heart and no long participate in the destruction of the innocent, but instead help to save their lives.
Thanks Mary Ann, for the story.
This article at the Times (of London) Online is very exciting. It is about Eduardo Verastegui, a very popular Mexican actor who starred, most recently, in "Bella". He is co-owner of a production company called Metanoia, and the article is about how he went from being a not-interested Catholic to a very sincere and devout one - while living and working in the not-too-religious environments of the movie meccas of Mexico City and Hollywood.
As an interesting side note, the article notes that he is going to England to speak to a Catholic youth rally with about 1500 teens expected to attend. I don't know if this sort of thing is yet common in England, as it is getting to be here - I suspect not. In itself, this event is exciting because it means that the Church is stirring in England, one of the most thoroughly secular countries in the very secular West. My gut instinct is that many of the youth waking up the Church in England, responding to their shepherds' calls, perhaps traveled to World Youth Days in close neighbor Cologne, Germany, and in closely akin Sydney, Australia. However He's doing it, the Holy Spirit is sure doing something cool.
What daring times to be a Christian!
Many of us work or have worked for company's whose environments were relaxed, where "business casual" is the attire, and where we are encouraged or required to call our supervisors and even the CEO by their first name, usually Skip, or Chip, or Don. The purpose of this casualness is to make us feel comfortable, to feel at home, to think of the company as a family. Yet, everyone seems hellbent on kissing Chip's butt in a way we rarely felt inclined to kiss Dad's butt. In fact, when we kissed Dad's butt, he usually called us on it very quickly, didn't he? "Ok son, now what's this all about? What do you want? Do you need money for a date? Do you wanna borrow the car?" But Skip, Don, and the other bigwigs and supervisors at our company seem to like having their butts kissed. They are certainly aware that our desks are all straightened way a visit from them is anticipated. The modern kings, princes, and petty barons are much smoother than maybe they were in medieval times, but they nonetheless manage to make themselves felt, as Jesus put it.
The readings from today's Mass (Is 53:10-11; Ps 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22; Heb 4:14-16; Mk 10:35-45), those of the XXIX Sunday in Ordinary Time, probably go in one ear and out the other of folks intent on being worshiped, the Don's and Chip's of this world. But they might go misunderstood by those of us trying to be Christians, and should give a moment's hesitation to anyone engaged in "the culture wars." Here's why:
James and John go up to Jesus and ask him if they can be the two top dogs in their kingdom. In another account (Mt 20:20) it's their mom that does the asking. How that fact got confused between St. Matthew and St. Mark might be an interesting sociological question, but it's not really relevant to the story or to the message for present purposes. Anyway, Jesus basically asks them if they can handle it. "Of course we can," they basically say, "easy."
Easy, indeed. Now, the other apostles get all tangled up because they want to be the best in the kingdom, too. Pandemonium ensues. Jesus calms them all down by stumping them, as usual:
"You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many," (Mk 10:42-45).Now, this is a different sort of kingdom, isn't it? Not only is it a kingdom with a different goal than the kingdoms of this world, but it is a kingdom operating on a whole different set of principles. Normal kingdoms depend upon and elevate the majesty of their king; ours depends upon and elevates the crucifixion of our king. Normal kingdoms run on taxes; ours runs on widows' pennies (Lk 21:1-3). And this all makes sense: a different goal often requires different means. One packs different things for a trip to Ocean City than for a trip to Alaska, and one probably uses a different mode of transport. The Kingdom of God is different than any of the kingdoms of men, not only because it is run by a different king aiming at different goals, but also because it uses different means.
"The LORD was pleased to crush him in infirmity. If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him. Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days; through his suffering, my servant shall justify many, and their guilt he shall bear," (Is 53:10-11).When we who want to change the world are willing to suffer whatever it please the LORD to visit upon us, as an offering for sin, then we shall see the world change. If we really believed that our affliction would bring us "to the light," would we seek to dodge it. If we believed that our suffering would justify many, would we be working so hard to do it with committee meetings?
What I am suggesting is not the abandonment of formal structures in the Church. I am only urging a return to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, to penance, to service to the weakest and poorest, to those most mangled by the Kingdoms of this world. I am not suggesting that we have stopped doing those things in the Church, not at all. I only wonder if we haven't somehow gradually gotten our minds onto the wrong track, if maybe we haven't settled in a bit too much, those of us in the pews. I am not denigrating petition-signing, election-time campaigning, and blog-writing. I just hope they haven't taken the place of hairshirt-wearing and prisoner-visiting. The ancient world was converted to Christ when they saw Christians picking abandoned babies up off the sides of roads, when they saw Christians nursing people with contagious diseases, when they saw Christians giving their own last bit of food to a hungry stranger, trusting in Providence for their own next meal. The postmodern world will be converted to Christ when they see us lifting male prostitutes up out of the gutters, when they see us nurturing drug-addicted babies, when they see us living simply (and donating the rest of our salary) so others might simply live.Eunice Kennedy Shriver died on Tuesday, and today will be buried from St. Francis Xavier, Hyannis, Massachusetts. Her legacy was immensely important to me personally – she strove to help the world see the strengths of persons with disabilities, rather than as a series of shortcomings or challenges. Her efforts were largely in response to the condition of her sister Rosemary, who seems perhaps to have been mildly mentally retarded or ill until a failed lobotomy, secretly ordered by her father, reduced her to utter incapacity. Eunice and her brother Ted Kennedy were both present when their sister Rosemary passed away in 2005.
Until recently, Eunice and Ted have had very different approaches, though. One cannot doubt that both loved their sister as best they knew how. That is natural. But Eunice was convinced that every single human life was a good thing, no matter what else. She personally advocated with president after president, starting with her brother. Even though she was a card-carrying Democrat, she was an outspoken supporter of the pro-Life cause within and outside of the Democratic Party. Ted, on the other hand, along with much of the political members of the Kennedy clan, has been a strong advocate for abortion. Abortion says nothing if it doesn’t say, “Some lives aren’t worth living.”
Persons with severe disabilities challenge our easy status quo. Normally, each of us is self-sufficient. We each can take care of ourselves, and occasionally help each other out as need arises. But a person with a severe difficulty, especially a mental one, needs constant help. Oftentimes they need help for the most basic functions of life. That means we around them must pitch in, get outside of ourselves, and learn to be patient, and gentle, and do extra work. Unlike “the rest of us,” it is not possible merely to coexist with the handicapped. They need too much. That is why we will either learn to love them or we will decide to kill them.
This morning, listening to NPR on the way to work, I heard some Democrat pundits fending off accusations by those hostile to their plans for healthcare reform. They brought up the accusation that they or their approach would kill all the people with Down syndrome. “Ha! Come on!” was about all they could say. Of course they don’t support killing all who have Down syndrome. They just support extensive neo-natal testing. Oh, but wait, they also support abortion on demand, and especially in difficult situations. And of course they support, many of them at least, government funding for abortions. Hmm… one wonders why there are so many fewer people being born with Down syndrome now than in the past.
But let’s get back to Ted and Eunice. Ted’s approach is the politically expedient one (for now), and it is also the more pleasant one, that is, the one that allows social pleasantries to do most of the work. After the abortion (say, of a child with Down syndrome), social pleasantries can go into full gear. It wasn’t a child, but a choice. There was no abortion (such an ugly word), but merely the premature termination of a pregnancy. The child who never existed didn’t have a perfectly livable condition with which millions of people worldwide live happily; rather, there was a severe defect. The doctor and family did not conspire to murder for the sake of convenience a child entrusted to their care by God Almighty, but rather, they sent home to Good and Gentle Jesus a precious little one who otherwise would have struggled greatly. Do you see, dear reader, how the game is played? False words cover over the truth, and one can try to look at oneself in the mirror again.
That’s not how Eunice’s approach works, though. In Eunice’s approach, a child is born into difficult circumstances. Sometimes the circumstances are extrinsic to the child – like poverty, or an ill mother or missing father. Sometimes the circumstances are part of who the child is – like mental disability or a permanent medical problem. The child’s life is filled with frequent or even constant hardship. Those close to the little boy or girl must learn to sacrifice in new and intense, profound ways: sleep is lost, money is spent on extensive necessities rather than on yearned-for luxuries, vacations are altered or sacrificed, hopes and dreams are modified or abandoned (that’s the hardest part). It is too much for one person, so the family, friends, neighbors, and local leaders all have to pitch in together. Cooperation makes an overwhelming set of challenges manageable. New virtues are acquired that were never before needed, or are developed when before they would have been slight: patience, tenderness, discipline, flexibility. Heroic effort is needed for basic steps. Those around the child eventually learn to be amazed and joyful at very little bits of progress – oh, how a person with handicaps struggles for such little gains. I remember my amazement to discover that my own handicapped sister had learned to tie her shoes. That she was fifteen years old wasn’t my interest, but only, “Hey, Ma! Look what she can do! Did you see that? Did you already know she could do that? Holy cow! That’s great, Keelin! Good job!” In Eunice’s plan, we learn self-sacrifice, cooperation, affection. We learn love. And as the child grows and prospers modestly, or not, we learn to see a rhythm in reality, a meaning in the muddle. We learn to see how one event happened before another, though we would not have so arranged things, and that the arrangement that actually happened was, in fact, arranged. We come to see that there is a plan in the universe, and a Planner. Ultimately, in the life of a child with disabilities, we come to see the face of God.
But it’s not romantic, and it’s not easy. There is a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to be shed along the way, or else everyone would do it. We need grace – the life, strength, joy of God shared with us from on high – or else we will go the path of least resistance. We will go the way the pagan world, the world without God, has always gone. The Jewish prophets were the first to object to the murder of the weak and marginalized. They were the first to insist that personal comfort and domination by the fittest were not in accord with God’s will, with deepest reality. Christians have taken up that objection, that insistence – though some of us have been seduced into murder by pleasant words. If we do not learn to pray, to return to God, to seek His help, we will end by killing those who interfere with our plan for happiness. We will go Ted’s way.
Now, on a closing note, I’d like to be fair to Ted. It is easy for a good heart to be seduced. Moreover, he now has brain cancer, and wasn’t even able to attend his sister Eunice’s funeral Mass. His cancer has certainly incapacitated him. He was there for Rosemary, after all. Maybe his struggle with cancer and the prayers of his sisters in heaven will help him to come to know the love of God in a more profoundly penetrating way than he has before.
Eunice, thank you for all you did. Yours was a monumental life. Now you are with your Rosie and can know her as God has always known her. Please pray for us who still journey here below.
P.s.: Today Eunice's family issued a powerful statement that well summarizes a powerful life. She visited Rosemary regularly. She advocated persistently for political and social measures to improve opportunities for those with handicaps to enjoy their full human potential. She strongly challenged consciences and gently coaxed contestants. She built the Special Olympics from a backyard affair (literally) to a global showcase of talent in which each individual is fostered and cheered on. Until the last years of her life, she and her husband, Sargent, hosted a summer camp for children with and without disabilities at their home in Rockville, Maryland, so that the children could grow with each other.
"Inspired by her love of God, her devotion to her family, and her relentless belief in the dignity and worth of every human life, she worked without ceasing - searching, pushing, demanding, hoping for change. She was a living prayer, a living advocate, a living center of power. She set out to change the world and to change us, and she did that and more. She founded the movement that became Special Olympics, the largest movement for acceptance and inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities in the history of the world. Her work transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people across the globe, and they in turn are her living legacy."
P.p.s.: Another thing strikes me about Mrs. Kennedy Shriver. In every single photograph of her that I can find, she is smiling. It seems as though her path, though it be harder, is happier.
Click here for the biography on her website.
I wrote a response to a blog article on the Washington Post's online religion page. A lot of the blogs' responses are controlled by the blog owners, a reasonable measure to prevent spammer nastiness that nearly destroyed the blogs. For one reason or another, depending on the blog owner, I am sure, most of my responses never go through. Hmmm... But I am getting better. Rather than go apoplectic at my time wasted, or just sigh in resignation, I have saved my piece and am reproducing it below. (I know, heaven forbid I just do something useful!)
First, a click here to read the reasonably well considered, original post by Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J. to which I respond:
(my response follows)
I am intrigued by this thoughtful article, Fr. Reese. At first you lean into a mistake, labeling the Holy Father "left of most Americans including President Obama." This mistake is huge. The Holy Father himself, while addressing the U.N. in New York, asked them to move beyond worn-out categories of left and right. But then, as the article progresses, you indicate an awareness that the Pontiff isn't so easy to pin down.
Trammatic does a good job of summarizing how this indeciperability plays out in American politics:
"I am a practicing Catholic and find no comfort in either political party. I have either respect for life on the right or the preferential option for the poor on the left, but no place with both. On some issues I'm more conservative than most; on others more liberal. This is evident in near-down-the-middle split of the Catholic voting block."
It is because Christ was neither a liberal nor a conservative, but God. Trammatic is on to something in saying that the encyclical will be worthless here in America. That's because even most 'religious' Christians put politics before Christ, and then try to fit him into one party or the other. The only way to make Jesus Christ, the Infinite Alpha and Omega, the Great I-Am, fit into one political party or another is a grizzly process of amputation: not of his heart or mind or ideas or actions, but of ours.
That's why Americans don't, fundamentally, "get" the Church. Whatever she does, people think she is pandering for the opposite political party. She is at once a leftist for caring about migrant workers and a right-wing nut for caring about unborn children and the aged.
In reality, the Holy Father is not going to call for the world to move 'leftward' politically or economically, any more than any other pontiff has. He is going to ask the world to move inwardly, to examine its conscience, and change its way of thinking and living. He is going to call us to something entirely different than swinging back and forth on some right-left pendulum. He is going to call us to Christ.
Piety, rightly understood, is the key to understanding why the Church's "rightist" and "leftist" concerns aren't actually contradictory. Piety is the virtue and gift by which one recognizes God's fatherhood over oneself and over others as well. Consequently, we recognize our fraternity under that same Father, and His loving will that we love each other. This in turn leads to pity (in the best sense of the world), in which we show tender mercy to those who have fallen beneath us in some way, beneath our true dignity as human beings. Piety, then, inspires not only reverence toward God, but love of neighbor. Conversion, the deepening of our relationship to God as His children, will consequently and necessarily change our attitude toward each other. This does not mean socialism - a political centralization of decisions regarding economic matters - but social conscience. We become aware that our actions - whether choices in the businesses we patronize or candidates for whom we vote - affect other people who are as beloved to our Father as are we. In gratitude for His love, we share it.
Personal conversion is not on the opposite end of some tension or spectrum from social action. Quite to the contrary. In fact, any personal conversion that does not change how we regard and behave toward others is a sham. And any social action uninformed by a deep interior reflection, self-evaluation, and conversion toward God's loving will, is bound to be hollow and domineering.
This stuff isn't difficult. It will be interesting to see whether American Catholics get it, though, and whether we are able to share it effectively with our neighbors.
Ryan Haber
Kensington, Maryland
You gotta check out this video interview from WashingtonPost.com. The family has eighteen children, and they love it! Most of us aren't as saintly as they seem to be, for sure, but one has to wonder - maybe it's the willingness to love that we lack, sometimes. Certainly our life circumstances and emotional capacities don't lend themselves, usually, to such a big family... but I wonder how willing I am to stretch myself.
I am not immensely intrigued by Protestants who want the Eucharist, because their desire makes sense to me. I want the Eucharist, too. It is interesting to note that most mainline denominations in the U.S. celebrated "the Lord's Supper" regularly until about a hundred years ago, when fear of seeming "too Catholic" caused their ministers to reduce the frequency of communion services dramatically, from weekly to monthly, or even yearly. A friend of mine, a conservative Presbyterian, recently shared his frustration with me at hearing from his minister on Holy Thursday how the Eucharist is spiritual food. He summarized his frustration thus: "Then why doesn't [that minister] feed us more often than once a year?!"
What does impress me is how many Protestants seem to take it personally that we (Catholics) will not share Communion with them. They seem to take it as a sort of snootiness or arrogance on our part, as if we feel we are better than them. Feelings haven't anything to do with any of it, though. Nor does the status of their communion celebrations, or their beliefs and feelings regarding communion. While few Protestants have beliefs about the Eucharist the same as ours, most that I know do believe that is Jesus is somehow manifest in the Eucharist. That's great. It's a start. It also has nothing to do with why we will not share Communion with them. What is forming our stance is a matter of fact: in very substantial ways Protestants are not in communion with us and to share the Holy Communion with them would be to falsify communion.
When a Protestant is submits in matters of faith and morals to the authority of Church, who teaches on behalf of Christ, then the Protestant will have moral unity with the Church, and may share in our sacramental communion. Sharing sacramental communion before there is moral unity is like sharing sexual relations before there is sacramental marriage: it puts the cart before the horse, falsifies the nature of the relationship, and thereby cheapens the sacrament.
And the thing is that this teaching isn't personal. It's not like the Church has it out for Protestants or think we are better than them (although, sadly, there are many arrogant asses like myself among us). In fact, Catholics living in sin (I don't just mean sexually) aren't to go to communion either. Nor are Catholics who have eaten too recently. Of course, when the pews empty at communion time, a number of Catholics are going to communion who probably should not be - either for committing some sin, dissenting from some teaching, or from casually eating Cheetos before going to Mass. This careless communion gives cause for scandal to our Protestant brethren. "If all those flaky Catholics can go to Catholic communion, then why can't I?" The question is pretty legitimate. It would be easier to explain our doctrine about reception of the Eucharist if we as a community lived it out better ourselves.
If, at communion time, a significant number of Catholics-in-the-pew refrained from communion, as used to be the case, guests in our community would probably not feel so left out in the cold. For now, a good second best is probably to encourage friends that come with us to Mass to go up to receive a blessing - arms folded across chest, head bowed, mouth closed. And of course, there is the old multiknife of solutions - prayer.
I think there really is a reason, though, that they want our Eucharist. As previously noted, they have been starved by their own denominations from the spiritual blessing of reenacting the Lord's Supper. But there's more. Because we have priests successively ordained from generation to generation back to the apostles and our Lord himself, we offer the sacrifice that He taught us, and in that we sacrifice have Him for Whom we were made, in what merely appears to be bread and wine. We haven't just got mere symbols, or memorials, or spiritual presences. We have Him. He's attracted such a magnetic relationship upon the world for two thousand years so that one must, after reflection, either love Him or hate Him. Our hearts were made for Him, and as He predicted, the more Holy Church lifts Him up, the more He draws all men to himself (Jn 12:32).
So the word democracy comes from two Greek words. The first is deme, meaning a district, together with its dwellers. The second is kratos, meaning rule or authority. A place is a democracy to the extent that it is ruled by the people living there. The United States is an indirect, or representative, democracy because we elect people to represent us for the purposes of governance and rule. We feel ourselves to be rather egalitarian on top of it all because we don't have very clear, rigidly defined social classes. A man might be born of two beggars, and yet end up with billions. The opposite of an egalitarian democracy would be something like an oligarchic (Greek, again, for "leadership by the few") aristocracy.
Many of the world's nations are democracies in some way, shape, or form, and the United Nations (UN, or ONU in the romance languages) is ostensibly a democracy. Many Americans don't like our country being a part of it because they feel it interferes with our national self-determination. Interestingly enough, many people in smaller and less-developed countries feel likewise.
Well, to see whose sovereignty is more imposed upon, or at least to see who is making out better in this whole international way of running things, it is hard not at least to consider who's got more, and who's getting more. I don't mean that I am richer, dear reader, or that you are. Times are hard, sure enough. But does any of us in the US honestly think for a moment that we'd be doing better in Mogadishu or Brazil? Up until the last couple years, most Americans had more and more - more food, more clothing, bigger houses, and we are only now starting to think about ways to economize, to make do - and that's something 5/6 of the world's population has had to do for as long as anyone can remember.
The funny thing is that tonight, while working on my Greek, I came across the word aristos (Mt 22:4) and didn't know what it meant, so I looked it up. It means feast. Aristocracy, then, literally means rule by the those who feast. In the global economy, which is staggering everywhere, have we been the global aristocrats without even really noticing it? It's a old jibe (and wives' tale, in my experience) that even our convicted prisoners have cable TV. Whether it's true or not, it is telling. A friend of mine once powerfully observed that the West is like a great big shopping mall, with the rest of the world standing outside, looking in the windows, and we only letting them in to mop the floors.
Aristocracy, rule by the elite, by those who feast, should naturally disturb a Christian and leave him disquieted. Is it not so that we Christians worship a king who was poor?
I just picked up on this awesome article in Zenit's newsfeed from last week. Thanks to Dara for posting it herself.
I've heard the AIDS worker from Meeting Point Kampala speak. Her name is Rose Busingye and she is a part of the Communion and Liberation movement. She is amazing, and so is the work of Meeting Point. These people know what they are talking about. It is a little reported fact that of all African countries, Uganda, with its Christianity-friendly government, has led the way in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS. In fact, in Uganda, the disease has been brought almost to a standstill, not by condoms or other prophylactic measures, but by chastity-related education.
The Gospel reading for today (Wed after V Sunday in Lent: Dn 3:14-20, 91-92, 95, Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56, Jn 8:31-42) is among my favorite passages. Jesus' discourses have caused many to come to believe in Him (Jn 8:30). He adds to those who have started coming to faith, "If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples,and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free," (Jn 8:31). But at these last words, his hearers choke.
"WHAT?!" they demand, "We're not SLAVES! We're sons of Abraham! How can you call us slaves?" (Well, that's my paraphrasing. It actually says, They answered him, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How can you say, 'You will become free'?" Jn 8:32).
This snippet of their exchange needs years of delving. Let's try something brief though. The descendants of Abraham, just three generations after Abraham, went to Egypt for help during a famine, and got ensnared in the Egyptians' social structure and were pushed into a slave class. They escaped under Moses' leadership after 400 or so years of oppression. After settling in back home, they repeatedly came under the domination of neighboring civilizations, most notably the Philistines. They were only able to escape that domination by taking for themselves a king, against God's expressed preference on the grounds that their kings would come to dominate them as well. That's what happened, in fact - one king more domineering and harsh than the last. It culminated in the sacking of the northern half of Israel by Assyria, and the southern by Babylon, so that half the Israelites were hauled off into captivity in those kingdoms, and the remainder lived as subjects of them in their own homes. When Persia conquered Babylon, the Israelites there were "freed" to go home and live as obedient vassals of Persia. Then Alexander the Great came through and conquered the place, and the Seleucid and Ptolemaic dynasties of Greek rulers that came after him began to treat the Jews more and more brutally. The Jews were finally able to get the Greeks off their backs by enlisting the Romans to come in and help. Only, the Romans never left, and it is under their oppression that the Jews labored in the time of our Lord.
It is purely self-righteous stupidity, defensive unto blindness, that lead Jesus' listeners to cry, "We have never been enslaved to anyone." It would have been better if they had asked, "When have we NOT been enslaved to someone?!"
Interestingly, Jesus brushes all this political oppression aside and makes it clear that He means a much more universal sort of slavery: spiritual slavery caused by sin: "everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin," (Jn 8:34). That's a funny thing for us to hear. In fact, it probably bounces off most people's ears as one of those things that Jesus said that doesn't really make sense (anymore?). That's because we have a warped understanding of freedom that essentially says, "Freedom is being permitted to do whatever you want." So a law against using marijuana makes us less free, most Americans would agree, and it is only a question of which freedoms are good or bad.
The traditional Christian understanding of freedom is much more comprehensible to a recovering cocaine addict than to the typical American. I'm not being smart here, but very serious. I, who have never used a narcotic, am free of their power. I can choose to use a drug, or can abstain. It's all the same to me. Not so with someone in the throes of a deadly addiction, though. A chronic drunk cannot choose to abstain from alcohol - at least not for long. He is a slave to booze in a way that most people are not. After we sin, we either repent of the sin, or else rationalize it, make excuses for it, and thereby begin to incorporate it into the structure of our life. Slowly but surely we become dependent on it and cannot imagine life without it, and the thought of breaking with it becomes repugnant. Whether it is telling lies, looking down on people, using narcotics, fornicating - whatever - we begin to defend it as if it were part of ourself. It becomes first part of our lifestyle, then part of ourselves. This addictive quality of sin is what our Lord is getting at.
Jesus makes an offer, though. He says that slaves don't really have a place in the household, and will be tossed out eventually. But a son has a place, and if a son of the household frees the slave, they can have a shot at freedom, and even getting to be part of the family. This reference might be to household slaves, especially nannies, tutors, physicians, who might be freed and adopted by the family. He is hinting that the Jews could lose their place in God's household if they don't take up his offer of freedom from sin - just being a physical child of Abraham isn't enough (Jn 8:39-40).
Now the listeners, who were friendly at first to his message, but when it was clarified for them became hostile, set up a precedent followed by heretics ever since. Heretics are those in the Church who rebel against her teachings. When Jesus questions the usefulness of their bloodline, the unhappy hearers growled, "We were not born of fornication. We have one Father, God," (Jn 8:41). From that time onward, heretics have always taken shots at Mary. By defending the social legitimacy of their birth, which had not been questioned, they are calling Mary a fornicator, and Jesus her bastard. Them's fightin' words.
As the story continues, after the conclusion of the passage read in church today, Jesus basically says, "If you were from God, you'd recognize me..." and then, "You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies," (Jn 8:44).
So it is to this day. Heretics the world over, throughout history, in their self-righteous pride, have opposed their teacher, the Body of Christ on earth, and have as a rule found a bone to pick with His Mother, as well. Consequently they stay bound in innumerable sins - first and foremost, pride. They've got entirely the wrong attitude. If we can humble ourselves to the teachings of Christ, He will set us free from all manner of sins, addictions, and oppressors.
Keynesian economic principles, which have held ascendancy among our elite for some decades, indicate that we can get out of a recession by spending money. It makes sense. Kinda. Or does it?
I mean, it's what most of the media says over and over again. All the bailouts and stimulus packages are based upon that idea. But let's unravel it for a minute, and see if it holds to the light of common sense.
The recession is caused because money is tightening up - for individuals and companies. Money is tightening up because we are paying more out, individually and nationally, than we are bringing in - or at least we're getting there. A major source of payments out is the interest on debts that we owe. But if we borrow more money (and thus have higher debt service payments) we are supposed to be able to spend more money and thus everyone will earn more money.
Except, because most of what we buy is made overseas, we won't really make that money back. Other countries' residents will, just like they have been, increasingly, for 30 or so years, and especially since the free-trade bonanza of which NAFTA is a paradigmatic (but unfortunately, not a lonely) example.
So we will borrow money from foreigners so we can buy things from foreigners (or from the credit card companies we use to buy the stuff) at interest. So we owe them more money than when we started, and have higher monthly payments, and are deeper in debt, and money tightens up again and the debt is passed on, like a snowball, to our children - until it is too heavy and crushes some poor generation at last. Are we that generation?
Does anyone else think this "solution" is insane? A recipe for individual, corporate, and national bankruptcy?
We need a new way of doing things as a nation, in particular, but in the West in general.
Watch these YouTube videos and let me know what you think. One of the featured guests on the videos, Gerald Clemente, makes points that remind me of the forgotten (or perhaps never well-known) economic approach called distributism. Listen carefully to him.
The Perennial Philosophy is a philosophy not invented, but identified, by Aldous Huxley - yes, the same dude who would go on to recommend LSD as a way to gain a new view of reality. Ok, so, before he got to that point, he wrote extensively about how certain elements of thought appeared in diverse sources. The basic principles of this philosophy found among puritans and pygmies are simple. Reality is real - both spiritual stuff and material stuff, and we cannot make them whatever we like just by intending to do so, or by calling them something different. A rose is a rose is a rose, and by any other name, it still smells the same. St. Thomas Aquinas saw it. Confucius saw it, and even said that the restoration of proper names to their things was the foundation of any real reform. We have to call a spade a spade. So those are the basic principles - reality is real, and we have to call things what they are. When we get away from this path, we get into real danger, the sort of danger of a man driving a car through a shopping mall, the whole way telling his passengers, "Relax, it's just the normal 9th Street Tunnel traffic! I can handle it."
It's going to be hard for us to transcend our feelings and do what's right even when it doesn't feel good. We won't be able to do it on our own, and as a culture we've gone too far down this road of irresponsibility masquerading as love merely to tweak our course. We need wholesale repentence. Only Jesus can bring it. We who know we need it also need to pray for it. If the Pelosis of the world are leading us into moral oblivion, they will be held accountable. If we who think we know better don't spend hours fervently praying, by our prayers hitting the brakes, we will be held accountable for that.My roommate and I went for an eight-mile run this afternoon. It was in the low thirties (Fahrenheit) with gusts of wind that you cannot imagine. I saw the gusts pull off small branches from trees. It was fun to fly on the tailwinds, but the headwinds were almost impenetrable. It was a challenging, yet nonetheless a fun run.
I think that is very different from how God works. Grace, God's way of acting in the world, isn't on-again, off-again. No, rather it is constant. Nor is it overpowering or overwhelming. On the other hand, it is gentle and guiding. It prepares more than controls; coaxes but never coerces; woos and waits, but does not force or dominate. Without end or limits, His love (for lack of a better phrase) still respects our boundaries. What is inexorable about grace is God's horrible patience, how long He willingly suffers our neglect while he woos and waits, whispers and beckons. What is dominant in His love is that He will strip us of everything He has given us so that we can see our own naked neediness; but He will never compel us to come to Him to be filled. And His love is indeed a terrible thing: many have spent their lives squandering it in addictions, lusts, ambitions, and greeds. A lesser love, the less singular loves we mortals have, would walk away at some point from such wanton wretches as we. But even at the end of our life on earth, there He is, waiting patiently, to see if we will turn back to the gentle, implacable love that knows no end.
Make a New Year's Resolution. While not religious, it is one of the better contributions of our secular culture to our religious life. Maybe resolve that in the year of Our Lord 2009, you will make each Sunday a special, refreshing day for worshipping God and loving your neighbor without cost or profit. Maybe resolve to get back into better shape, not for yourself, but because your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). Maybe resolve to confess your sins more frequently, say once a month, and bear in mind that each confession of our own sinfulness is also a confession of God's godliness, of Jesus' lordship.
And God bless you with a happy New Year.
Ryan Matthew Haber
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