Haiti and God's Providence

There's been a lot of nonsense lately about Haiti - everything from remarks about it being divine retribution, to attempted pleasantries about it all being for the best.

Something I've been focusing a lot on lately, for personal reasons and because of more public affairs, is the authentic meaning of joy and hope.

St. Therese of Lisieux asked in a letter how it was that Jesus, without ever being deprived of the joy of the beatific vision, could yet experience such utter emptiness and abandonment on the cross. She answered herself that she did not know, but only knew that it was possible because she herself was experiencing it during her own painfully fatal conflict with tuberculosis. Joy, for a Christian, isn't mere happiness any more than love is mere warm feelings toward another. Joy is the knowledge of the presence of God's Kingdom, the knowledge of His will at work - even when it is hidden-and-not-yet-present.

The cheapness of religious cant isn't that it's false to say that God's Providence includes even the catastrophic suffering of innocents. If God's Providence doesn't include suffering and death, then it's worthless. It isn't false to say, "God has a plan, and this, eventually will be drawn into the good." But also isn't the point, and it is cheap to say to someone who is in the throes of suffering, unless you are darn sure they are prepared to hear it.

The cheapness of religious cant is that it subsumes one reality - that of pain, suffering, and death - into another one: the victory of God. It tries to make the sorrow "go away," and not for a commitment to truth or to the person suffering, but simply out fear of the discomfort of facing the truth of the person suffering.

When we are suffering, it is good to remind ourselves of God's Providence, and that He is as displeased with the pain we are experiencing as we are, and to ask ourselves, and Him, honestly, what role this might play in His plan for our lives. When others are suffering, it is probably better just to listen presently at whatever length, help them practically in ways they might need or request, let them ask their own questions in their own time, and let our presence in persona Christi serve as an unspoken answer.

Proverbs that Might be True, pt. 5

Barbarism is not a picturesque myth or a half-forgotten memory of a long-passed stage of history, but an ugly underlying reality that may erupt with shattering force whenever the moral authority of a civilization is lost.

Christopher Dawson

(Ok, so it's a bit long for a proverb, I admit...)

It's Over - But Really, It's Just Beginning

Well, folks, it's over. Christmastide, that is. Now we are back in the day-in day-out of ordinary Christian living marked governed by the ordinary ordinances of Ordinary Time. And it's no coincidence that this period begins today with the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord. Isn't it baptism that begins all of our lives in the Lord?

Here is the first reading from today's Mass (Is 42:1-4, 6-7):

Thus says the LORD:
Here is my servant whom I uphold,
my chosen one with whom I am pleased,
upon whom I have put my spirit;
he shall bring forth justice to the nations,
not crying out, not shouting,
not making his voice heard in the street.
a bruised reed he shall not break,
and a smoldering wick he shall not quench,
until he establishes justice on the earth;
the coastlands will wait for his teaching.

I, the LORD, have called you for the victory of justice,
I have grasped you by the hand;
I formed you, and set you
as a covenant of the people,
a light for the nations,
to open the eyes of the blind,
to bring out prisoners from confinement,
and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

So many messages for the Christian life:

"Here is my servant whom I uphold": God upholds us, as a Church and each of us individually.  We can rely upon Him.  He does that not upon our own meritorious character, but because of our intimate union with His Son: the "chosen one" with whom he is actually "well pleased."  In the beginning, all of creation was "very good," (Gen 1:31) but sin damaged all of creation very badly.  Now, in Christ, we can be a new creation (2 Cor 5:17) that is again pleasing to God the Father (Heb 13:20-21).

The Christian follows Christ in bringing forth "justice to the nations," but he does not do it with riots, rebellions, crying out, or "shouting... in the street."  Instead, the Christian brings uprightness to the nations without breaking even anything as fragile as "a bruised reed."  The ways of the world are not the ways of a Christian, who is always on guard to be delicate, delicate with souls, lest he "quench" the "smoldering wick" of someone's embryonic faith.  He persists in his pursuit until the very edges of the world, the "coastlands" hear his teaching - because they are eager for it.

The LORD, the great I-AM, calls us "for the victory of justice."  He grasps us by the hand as a father takes his little boy, his little girl, and leads them step by step.  The distance seems far to us only because we are small, but our Father is very great, and he will grow us, form us into Christian men and women.  We will serve as a living covenant, a living sign of the commitment of God to His creatures and of those as of yet unruly creatures to their God.  The very way we live our lives - uprightly, doing what is right whatever it cost us, merciful to the weak and the poor - will make us a "light for the nations."  Our life in Christ will "open the eyes of the blind" so that they too can come to know His immense love for them.  People who are "prisoners" to the "confinement" and "darkness" of sinful ways of life - irresponsible borrowing and spending, excessive eating and drinking, shallow and broken relationships, promiscuity, lies, wrecked families, dependency on glamorous false solutions to life's problems - these people will see Christ in the conduct of our lives, and they will come to follow Him and be saved.

Or not.

The difference could very well be in how effectively we set our egos out of the way and let Him work in us.  We will do this setting-aside by taking up our cross daily (Lk 9:23) and following Him, even if it is to a place we would rather not go (Jn 21:18).  In this daily voluntary setting-aside of our desires when we cannot legitimately set aside our sufferings, we will know joy.  Joy is not ecstasy.  Daily ecstasy would be too much to bear for us right now anyway.  Joy is knowledge of the of the acting of God, of the providence of God, kingdom of God, in our daily lives.  It does not make the suffering go away, but it makes everything fit into a big picture, and makes even our sufferings sufferable.  Ordinary Time is the time to practice this daily joy in the midst of daily suffering for the daily sanctification of the world.

Ordinary Time doesn't sound so ho-hum now, does it?

Africa Need Not Starve

The more one reads on the overpopulation myth, the more one is liable to become disturbed.  The problem is not too many people, but too much injustice - domestic within hungry countries, and internationally between the West and the Global South.

Open Letter of the CMA on Health Care Reform

You know that I try to avoid, though sometimes give myself into the purely political. The difficulty is that so much that is political is also moral, these days. I mean, face it, we are rarely arguing about where to put a highway or whether to enter a trade treaty on fishing with the Danish. Wouldn't it be nice if those were our major political concerns?

Now a number of our Catholic organizations have given us precious little guidance about health care reform. After simply noting that health care is a "right" (whatever that means) they say something to the extent that any reform is better than no reform, leaving the implication that we should support whatever the President proposes. These premises are all questionable.

The first is questionable if only because the idea of a "right" is now so vague in our society as to be almost meaningless. It is certainly becoming confused with "entitlement". Reading the Bill of Rights, one will note that all the rights enumerated can be rephrases as something like, "The government will stay the heck out of..." my house, my saying what I please, associating with whomever I please, owning the weapons that people me, etc., etc. Nowadays, though, many "rights" do not seem to be expressible in such formulas. Nowadays, they have to be reworded something more like, "The government will give me..." which is to say, "Everyone else will give me..." That shift strikes me as dangerous.

The second is questionable simply because change can always be change for the worse.

The last is questionable simply because our president has proposed in the past some questionable propositions.

The Catholic Medical Association, though, has put together an open letter explaining the parameters of discussion as they see it: health care reform in general, a Catholic's perspective on it, and how we should engage the broader society with our ideas. Click the picture, or here, to read it. Would that more of our Catholic organizations were helping us to question critically what is being presented to us for a rubber-stamping.

Neocons and Catholics

The Holy Father's latest encyclical Charity in Truth has certainly caused a stir. Most notable, though, is how little stir it's caused, or rather, the lack of stir among certain elements of the population. In the U.S., because of the abortion wars and some other political struggles, most practicing Catholics find ourselves in alliance with the Republican party. The Republican party, for its part, is wrapped around the Neocon finger. Anything that even hints at a whiff of "justice" or "social" is branded as socialism and roundly condemned as unchristian. Folks like George Weigel who otherwise sing the praises of popes as they stand against abortion, are dead silent, or in Weigel's case go so far as to wonder in writing if the pope in question has been listening to the wrong people too much.

This article, by Donald Devine, does a good job of refuting the Weigel's claim that the encyclical is somehow a departure from Catholic doctrine. Devine explains why both "conservatives" and "liberals" will be unhappy with the encyclical of a pontiff who refuses to be categorized so easily. "Liberals" use terms like "social justice" to engineer statist centralization of power. Neocons use terms like "free market" to rationalize a fascist oligarchy of corporations. The Holy Father, on the other hand, truly believes in the freedom of the human person fulfilled in a caring community organized around principles implanted in reality by its Creator.

That is, the Holy Father is a Christian. When Christ strikes America as liberal, then the Holy Father is "liberal," if you must. When Christ seems to Americans to be conservative, then let the Holy Father so seem as well. He is committed to neither side, and seems to see both sides as being artificial and unnecessary. He is committed to no political party. He is committed only to Christ. Please God we who populate the pews of Catholic parishes will give it a try.

I Love Fr. Frank Pavone

I am honored and flattered to have him speak on our behalf as Christians in the face of a culture that cares little for human life. He undoes stereotypes.

Soraya and the West

Last night I went to see The Stoning of Soraya M. with a number of friends, and I have a lot that I want to share about it. First off, as a friend pointed out, the movie is not entitled The Almost-Stoning of Soraya M. That's important. So is the plot, though the plot has no amazing twists and turns. You know how it ends from the outset, especially if you've read the book upon which it is based. A man (Navid Negahban) accuses his wife, Soraya (Mozhan Marn), of adultery because he wants to be rid of her so he can marry another woman. Sharia law as interpreted under the Ayatollah apparently prohibits divorce without the wife's consent, which Soraya will not give because she hasn't any independent means of supporting their children. So her husband, Ali, accuses her of adultery and demands justice - stoning. The entire village, where they live and where she has spent her whole life, knows that she is innocent, but nonetheless go along with the charade for their various reasons. Only her aunt Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo, Exorcism of Emily Rose, House of Sand and Fog) comes to her defense. The town has a closed-door sham trial after which she is taken to the town square, buried to her waist, and pelted with stones until dead. The next day a French-Iranian journalist (Jim Caviezel, The Passion of the Christ, Frequency) is stranded in town by car trouble. Zahra meets him and tells him her story of Soraya with the hope that he will deliver her message to the outside world. The story is true, and the movie apparently hews close to the book and to reality.

I haven't wrecked anything by telling you the plot, dear reader, because the plot, while the point, isn't the principal power of the movie. The same plot might have been delivered lamely and wrecked everything. Instead, the cast and crew have delivered the viewer a masterpiece: gripping cinematography, powerful visuals, powerful score, and heart- and gut-wrenching acting that develops all characters involved immensely in a remarkably short period of time. The characters all feel real enough that if I met the actors on the street, I would have difficulty remembering that the man who played the Ali, Soraya's husband, isn't actually lustful and malicious, that the actor who played the mullah isn't actually a brazen hypocrite and opportunistic toady. Yet the movie laudably avoids generalizations or flattening characters out with self-righteous portrayals. The central characters, with the exception of Ali and Zahra, are complex creatures, and even these two can hardly be called superficial or false. Their roles and motivations are simple, and the actors' delivery makes them real and human.

The violence inflicted upon Soraya is gripping, but the violence imposed upon her is hardly the worst horror. And it would have come across as just another violent movie except for the humanity of the characters so manifest through the actors' artistry. Soraya's sham trial, at which she is not even permitted to be present or to face her accusers, will leave any Westerner open-mouthed with disbelief. The malice of her husband is astounding. The tension that builds in the one's heart and stomach is almost overwhelming as one watches the plot move inexorably forward toward the merciless murder of a perfectly decent and innocent woman.

I heartily recommend the movie to every adult with the stomach for it on two bases: (1) its artistry and craft, which are superb; (2) the lessons, both general and specific, that it contains and transmits without preaching. Still the caveat must be given that women in the theater were openly weeping; the movie is both extremely graphic and emotional, especially at the end.

Soraya's story has to teach us about a number of general lessons about which reviewers have commented. Mob mentality can block out reason and go to extremes. Check. Evil lurks in the human heart. Right. Fine. True.


I have seen one more specific lesson mentioned by reviewers, that Sharia law is hopelessly inadequate and that we in the West must be careful about embracing or tolerating it. There should be no talk of finding a niche for it in civil society, in the way that society allows corporations and churches to have their own internal by-laws. True there, too.

What I have not heard a lot about is the fact that the action depicted in the movie still persists in Middle Eastern countries today. Feminist groups like NOW should be up in arms but are oddly still. Intellectuals and the universities should be railing against draconian laws and irrational concepts of justice but haven't stirred. As pro-reform demonstrators were gunned down in Tehran a couple weeks ago, our President, just back from a trip to schmooze with the mullahs, was oddly silent. In fact, there is a deafening silence from our establishment. The movie is inconvenient for these groups in our civil society.

Most feminist groups in the US have gradually become flattened in their composition and purpose, from a diverse group of radicals for a range of legitimate rights, to a lobby of largely upper-middle and middle-class white women rationalizing abortion. This President is committed to helping them, so they leave him alone. He's better than George W., after all, they say. Barack Hussein Obama, for his part, is committed to detente with the Muslim world (appeasement?) as a path to peace and probably to keep oil affordable for a few more years. So he says nothing, not so much as "boo" to sheiks and mullahs considering their treatment of human rights. And the Islamist world continues merrily plotting the destruction of the West. The media and intellectual establishments say nothing because they are enamored of the President, too busy reminding us that Islam is a religion of peace, and have their hands full rationalizing abortion to an increasingly pro-life populace.

And poor Soraya will fall out of our minds almost soundlessly, like, well, a stone in soft sand. That is, if we ever bother in the first place to think about her and those others toiling under Sharia law with her. We forget her at our own peril though, because she was immolated by the same enemy that wants to grind us up as well. While I agree with Islam that adultery is immoral, I don't agree that folks (let alone only women) should be stoned for it. That makes me lax in Sharia's mind. The fact that the West tolerates things like women's hair makes us lewd, in their mind. While there is a great deal of lewdness here in the West, women's hair is hardly the issue. They seriously believe that justice is serve when an accused has no opportunity for a defense. There is an irreconcilable clash of worldview here, and those who oppose our view hate us for holding it. We'd best remember that when getting chummy with them.

If You Can Lend a Hand...

The IRS has decided to lay a heavy fine on Catholic Answers (www.catholic.com), an apologetics organization devoted to catechesis of Catholics and the presentation of our holy faith to non-Catholics. The reason for the fine?

Catholic Answers had the audacity to give Catholic answers. It's shocking that they should do such a thing, I know. What's not shocking is that the IRS is shocked. It seems that during the 2004 election cycle, Catholic Answers presented the Church's view as to why pro-choice Catholic politicians, specifically John Kerry, should not be admitted to the altar rail. At no point did the organization tell anybody how they should vote. Four years and more pass, and now (with a new Administration less friendly to Catholic teachings?) the IRS has decided that its regulations for tax exempt organizations were violated. Hmmm...

One immediately wonders if other tax-exempt organizations like NARAL, NOW, or various urban churches are being investigated under the new, more rigorous standards that seem to apply and (suddenly) to prohibit non-profits from even mentioning political figures.

Happily, Catholic Answers is not taking it lying down. They estimated they will need $100,000 for their lawsuit to fend off the Man in court. This lawsuit is an important opportunity to defy a government that has for a while become increasingly partisan and totalitarian in its behavior. Perhaps the courts will still defend the citizenry from the Administration and assert that we still have rule of law in America, and not merely rule of rulers. Instructions for donating to Catholic Answers are available on their website. I have already made a contribution to Catholic Answer's cause, and hope many others will as well.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

A friend of mine just shared this story with me. A twelve year old girl in Canada decides that for her persuasive speaking topic, she will speak against abortion.



Take two or three minutes to read the full story about what this kid had to deal with just to speak her mind (in the enlightened and free West).

The Birth of the Word that Made the World

When God created the world, according to Genesis 1, he did so by speaking a word. "Let there be light," He says, and again, "Let there be a firmament," and so on. The world that He made "very good," (Gn 1:31) quickly fell away from Him. It might be more accurately stated that Man, His finest creation, was seduced into a rebellion against Him by an evil spirit. Man, in his turn, brought the greater part of the material world with him.

God promised through the prophets to create a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth (Isa 65:17; 66:22), where justice and peace would "kiss," (Ps 85:10). Genesis recounts what we might consider a "false start" of sorts in this new creation: God floods the earth as if to wash away sin. The same account, of Noah and the flood, tells how the flood killed most human beings, but failed to kill sin living in each human being. A mere bathing of the world would not suffice - in this new creation, in which we would have not stony hearts, but soft hearts of living flesh (Ez 36:26), we would need a bathing of conscience (Heb 9:13-14).

The new creation would start with a new Man (Eph 2:14-16). And just as the first creation began with a word, so would the new creation. The new creation began when the Word became a man. So it is fitting that the first mass on Christmas day, at midnight, starts with an antiphon the first words of which are, "The Lord said..." The eternal Godhead, the divine origin of reality, the transcendent unmoved Mover became a little baby in the womb of a little woman in a little corner of a little province. And that virginal conception was the hidden beginning of the new creation. When He emerged from her womb, leaving intact her virginity unruptured by His miraculous conception therein, the new heavens truly made their first appearance on an earth being recreated by Him as His mother swaddled Him in her arms. The event was so momentous that heaven could not contain itself. Angels burst forth from heaven to celebrate and announce the fact.

St. Peter, after our Lord's death, resurrection, and ascension made more clear what sort of thing this new creation would be, continued speaking about it (2 Pet 3:13), echoing the very words of the prophet Isaiah before him. From the time of our Lord's ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, we have in the Church the means to share in our Lord's new way of existing, in the new creation. Baptism, firstly, is the sacrament by which we are scrubbed more deeply clean than the flood could manage. It washes us in the sacrificial blood of Jesus that wins the forgiveness of sins. Confirmation seals us and ratifies this new life in us. Penance restores that purification when we squander it, and the holy Eucharist sustains and strengthens it, and most perfectly unites us to Him. Marriage draws the otherwise-natural union of a man and woman into this supernatural way of living. Holy Orders configures men to represent Christ more perfectly to the rest of the Church. Anointing prepares us for the final transition from the last stages of this life, to the fullness of the life that Baptism begins in us.

This new creation in Christ, that every baptised person carries about in his soul, necessarily overturns the existing world order of sin, or else is overturned by it. The two cannot coexist forever. We must be standing with God and waging war, even if slow and faltering, against sin in our hearts and around us; or else we are standing in sin, and sinking, even if slow and faltering, into deeper and deeper sin until we can stand no more.

Christmas presents to us more than a new baby boy. It presents us with a challenge to choose between that Baby and all that He came to undo: sin, suffering, and death. We do ourselves a great disservice if, as we pay homage to the King, we neglect to mind His Kingdom.

That said, it's only a heavy thing if we do not want to choose Jesus. If we love goodness and are even willing to suffer a bit rather than sin, having God in our corner is very, very good news indeed. Merry Christmas.

I Don't Normally Get Political...

But does anyone else think that a multi-gajillion (that's 700 with about a billion zeros following it) dollar bail-out right now is a bad idea? I mean, we've already floated $10,000,000,000,000 in debt in the last 8 years. That's ten trillion dollars, if you lost track of the zeros. No joke. That's $33,500 per man, woman, and child - citizen, visitor, undocumented migrant in the entire USA in debt in the last 8 years. About 70% of it is owed to Chinese interests, I believe. Now, who still thinks a bail-out right now is very smart? Maybe I'm being too conservative or old-fashioned. I mean, what's another trillion or so dollars borrowed from our bossom buddies? I mean, I've got an extra $33,500 laying around to pay off what we already owe - don't you? And so do each of our children, or retirees, and our well-paid guest workers.

At the very least, does anybody else think that some personal responsibility is called for?

Now, we don't want our economy to tank (by objective standards left unreported, it is not doing badly at all, and certainly not in a recession). And we certainly don't want to see lots of new homeless. Perhaps a solution this mess might be something like:

1) Defaulted adjustible-rate mortgage (ARM) loans are legally cancelled and their collateral (the house) is reclaimed by the lending institution, which then has no further recourse against the borrower.

2) Banks get the houses, but will receive no further money, so should not auction them too cheaply. What they do with the houses (probably auction them) is their business.

3) Dispossessed (and presumably bankrupt) borrowers are given, as a one-time gift, a voucher for two months' rent (a LOT cheaper than bailing out the mortgage industry) so they have some time to get their lives in order without being homeless.

4) Laws prohibiting the current nonsense, repealed in the 1990s and 2000s, are restored with criminal penalties attached to irresponsible lending. Whatever laws (still) exist that could possibly be applied to land as many of these yahoos in jail as possible, for as long as possible, would be well applied right NOW.

---

Of course, all these steps are intermediate steps to a more permanent solution. I actually stand with the consensus among the world's traditional ethical systems (including the Jewish and Christian) in holding that lending at interest is immoral. Not just high interest, but at any interest. Investing with a share of the risk and profit is perfectly alright, but to expect money to grow on trees (that is, to give someone money, and without working for it, or knowing what they are going to do with it, expect more to be given back - NO MATTER WHAT) is ludicrous. They are looking for something for nothing. The whole present problem is caused by greed - the greed of investors, of bankers, and of potential home-buyers. We are seeing some fallout from that; how many bailouts before we recognize that the massive industry exploiting usury is just flat-out stupid. With the exception of a house (which is very expensive, and also a very solid investment, generally) - if you cannot afford it, you do not need it, and you shouldn't take out a loan for it.

---

If I've offended anybody out there, or hurt their feelings, GOOD. STOP being stupid and greedy and indebting us all to the Chinese! If you're a friend of mine, it's not personal, really. You still need to stop getting us all into messes, though, even if I like you a lot. This is serious.

If you have been living irresponsibly with respect to finances, and I did for most of a decade, and got into and only recently out of a LOT of debt, I cannot recommend the following link highly enough. Dave Ramsey makes his living teaching people sound principles of personal finance. No get-rich-quick schemes here, but just learning how to work hard, save your money well, and retire comfortably with your responsibilities met. But I warn you, it is a real call to conversion that Dave sells. Back in the springtime, I went through his 13-week program (for a whopping $95) and it changed my life.

Resquiat

We must pray that the memory of the events of this day in 2001 do not bring us to demands of vengeance, but to a national life of justice, and to prayer for the deceased, and for our enemies.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and may perpetual Light shine upon them; may their souls and all souls, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Question from the Late JPII

"But I ask you, is it better to be resigned to a life

without ideals, or rather to seek truth, goodness, justice,

working for a world that reflects the beauty of God,

even at the cost of facing the trials it may involve?"

- Servant of God, John Paul II (pp 1978-2005)

Eucharist and Love of Neighbor

Mathias, a seminarian for Lansing, MI, and a friend of mine, sent me this text, a portion of a catechesis given by His Excellency Luis Antonio Tagle, Bishop of Imus, in the Philippines. Beneath it, I have included my friends response (in dark red) and then my own thoughts (in dark blue).

“Jesus' sacrifice uncovered the link between the worship of false gods and insensitivity to the needy.An idolater easily loses compassion for the weak. Though he was judged, Jesus was the one actually judging the untrue worship that kept people blind and deaf to the true God and the poor. The Church that lives the life of Christ and offers his living sacrifice cannot run away from its mission to unearth the false gods worshipped by the world. How many people have exchanged the true God for idols like profit, prestige, pleasure and control? Those who worship false gods also dedicate their lives to them. In reality these false gods are self-interests.

To keep these false gods, their worshippers sacrifice other people's lives and the earth. It is sad that those who worship idols sacrifice other people while preserving themselves and their interests. How many factory workers are being denied the right wages for the god of profit? How many women are being sacrificed to the god of domination? How many children are being sacrificed to the god of lust? How many trees, rivers, hills are being sacrificed to the god of "progress"? How many poor people are being sacrificed to the god of greed? How many defenseless people are being sacrificed to the god of national security?
The Church however must also constantly examine its fidelity to Jesus' sacrifice of obedience to God and compassion for the poor. Like those who opposed Jesus in the name of authentic religion, we could be blind to God and neighbors because of selfrighteousness, spiritual pride and rigidity of mind.”

Mathias: In other words, the more we worship the true God, the more we are drawn to service and love of the weak and the poor. This is a sort of litmus of true worship of the Eucharist. The bishop’s words, therefore, are a gut-check for all of us, a call for us to examine whether or not our self interests have become idols that render us blind to the needs of the weak and vulnerable. Worshiping God in the Eucharist, therefore, does not just concern the proper worship of Holy Mass or Eucharistic Adoration (which is indeed important), but it also necessarily encompasses a loving compassion toward the weak. You can’t have one without the other.

Ryan: The word used in Genesis 1 for image, as in "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them," (Gn 1:27) is the same word used in Exodus for the sorts of things we are not supposed to carve out of stone to worship (Ex 20:4). If we want an image with which to reverence God, He has already provided us with one: our neighbor. We are not to worship images of false gods because the gods are false and their images will distract us from the reverence we are to show one another. We cannot honor God rightly without honoring rightly those He loves, those He cast in his own likeness. The Eucharist, the very name of which means "thanksgiving," is the right worship of God because it is a thanksgiving composed of Christ's self-sacrifice, of Christ's self-gift - to which we are to unite our own. Rather than worshipping false gods to attain our own purposes, we Christians worship the True and Living God to attain His purposes. In worshipping the Eucharist we learn to be like Him: humble, obedient, chaste, grateful, self-giving. Not only to we learn to aspire to His kind of love, but by consuming Him, the Perfect Sacrifice, we are filled with the ability actually to attain His kind of love. Not only are love of God, godly love, and selfless love of neighbor intrinsically connected, they are bound together by the Eucharist. Even those who do not know the Eucharist for what it is - Christ Himself in eternal self-sacrifice and thanksgiving - are still nonetheless nurtured in godly love by it.