St. Agnes of Bohemia

This life of St. Agnes of Bohemia, whose memorial is today, is taken from AmericanCatholic.org:

Agnes was the daughter of Queen Constance and King Ottokar I of Bohemia. At the age of three, she was betrothed to the Duke of Silesia, who died three years later. As she grew up, she decided she wanted to enter the religious life.

After declining marriages to King Henry VII of Germany and Henry III of England, Agnes was faced with a proposal from Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. She appealed to Pope Gregory IX for help. The pope was persuasive; Frederick magnanimously said that he could not be offended if Agnes preferred the King of Heaven to him.

After Agnes built a hospital for the poor and a residence for the friars, she financed the construction of a Poor Clare monastery in Prague. In 1236, she and seven other noblewomen entered this monastery. Saint Clare sent five sisters from San Damiano to join them, and wrote Agnes four letters advising her on the beauty of her vocation and her duties as abbess.

Agnes became known for prayer, obedience and mortification. Papal pressure forced her to accept her election as abbess; nevertheless, the title she preferred was "senior sister." Her position did not prevent her from cooking for the other sisters and mending the clothes of lepers. The sisters found her kind but very strict regarding the observance of poverty; she declined her royal brother’s offer to set up an endowment for the monastery.

Devotion to Agnes arose soon after her death on March 6, 1282. She was canonized in 1989.
Agnes was the daughter of Queen Constance and King Ottokar I of Bohemia. At the age of three, she was betrothed to the Duke of Silesia, who died three years later. As she grew up, she decided she wanted to enter the religious life.

After declining marriages to King Henry VII of Germany and Henry III of England, Agnes was faced with a proposal from Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor. She appealed to Pope Gregory IX for help. The pope was persuasive; Frederick magnanimously said that he could not be offended if Agnes preferred the King of Heaven to him.

After Agnes built a hospital for the poor and a residence for the friars, she financed the construction of a Poor Clare monastery in Prague. In 1236, she and seven other noblewomen entered this monastery. Saint Clare sent five sisters from San Damiano to join them, and wrote Agnes four letters advising her on the beauty of her vocation and her duties as abbess.

Agnes became known for prayer, obedience and mortification. Papal pressure forced her to accept her election as abbess; nevertheless, the title she preferred was "senior sister." Her position did not prevent her from cooking for the other sisters and mending the clothes of lepers. The sisters found her kind but very strict regarding the observance of poverty; she declined her royal brother’s offer to set up an endowment for the monastery.

Devotion to Agnes arose soon after her death on March 6, 1282. She was canonized in 1989.

Did you catch that? Seven hundred and seven years (707!) from the time she died until Holy Father John Paul II canonized her. Talk about patience! St. Agnes of Bohemia strikes me as a great saint for Lent. She spent much of her life in the secular world doing good for Jesus. She entered a convent that she founded, did not seek prominent position or honors, was a gentle servant, but uncompromising in her devotion to Jesus. This Lent, let's continue to burrow into the interior monastery that God wants us to build in our heart. Let's deepen our devotion to prayer, detachment, and service to the poor.

St. Agnes, Poor Princess of Bohemia, pray for us.

Priestly Solidarity with the Poor

I cannot tell you how happy it made me to read that the priests of the French diocese of Lyon have decided to donate a month's wage to a fund established to help those crushed under by the economic troubles we face. What an awesome witness. For your convenience, I've inserted it below:

A Different Kind of Kingdom

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.

How often do we who "fight to save the culture" fight using the very worst weapons developed by the very worst people in our culture?  We organize committee meets, develop marketing strategies or three year project goals, recruit workers, and bang! off we go.  Of course, our Blessed Lord chided us because we don't even do these things very well (in the parable of the dishonest steward, "for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light," Lk 16:8).  We use the means of the world to beat the world, but we do not use them well because our Christian faith and morals get in the way; for their own part, using the means of the world often ends up corrupting our Christian faith and morals, which are the whole point of the Kingdom of God.  Now, I am not arguing that committee meetings and marketing strategies are necessarily evil.  Evil is a very emphatic word.  But those things are emphatically not the way our Lord does things.  We are to make use of the things of the world (Lk 16:9) as appropriate, but never in a way that detracts from our true purpose.  Our true purpose is not to out-world the world, to one up the world at its own game.  Our purpose is to let God build up in us and through us a new sort of world - the Kingdom that is to come.

And that is a different sort of kingdom:

"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.

Well, in any event, I doubt many have been converted by seeing how we conduct our committee meetings.  Let's refocus our hearts.  And that, dear brothers and sisters, needs prayer.

Democracy, Greeks, and Global Affairs

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?

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.

Easy All The Way

Today's readings (Thurs after VII Sun of Ord II; Jas 5:1-6; Ps 49; Mk 9:41-50) are not pleasant ones.

First, James excoriates the rich indifferent: "Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like a fire." Their crime was that they "lived on earth in luxury and pleasure," gaining their wealth from the backs of laborers whose cries for justice have "reached the ears of the Lord of hosts." Thus they "have stored up treasure for the last days," as if gold could bribe God, as if money would appease the Maker of Heaven and Earth.

In the Gospel reading, our Lord gives us hard advice: if something of us causes us to sin, then we are to get rid of it, even going so far as to rip out an eye or cut off a hand, if it becomes for us an occasion of sin. People often say that our Lord is being metaphorical or hyperbolic on this point. He is not, and makes it clear by saying that it is better to lose a body part than to risk damnation. We can disagree only if we overvalue our possessions (even body parts) and do not understand how horrible hell is. Think about it: if we found we were holding in our backpacks a bottle of deadly poison gas, we would be very careful to distance ourselves from it. If such care is taken to protect the body, then why not the soul?

The message gains an added dimension if we recall the martyrdom of the widow and her seven sons, recounted in the Second Book of Maccabees (2 Mac 7). In that story, each of the sons willingly parts with hand, tongue, scalp, feet, or more, rather than betray the laws of God. The first brother expresses the hope of resurrection at the end of time. The second brother, disregarding his maimed limbs during his martyrdom adds: "It was from Heaven that I received these; for the sake of his laws I disdain them; from him I hope to receive them again," (2 Mac 7:11).

If we are really serious about avoiding sin then we must be willing to sacrifice the things that lead us into sin: wealth, comfort, friendships, love of self - all good things in their own right, can become inordinate and lead us away from God into disregard for our neighbor, greed, addictions, sexual immorality, and worse. We must take measures against these occasions for sin. Parting with wealth to avoid disregard for the poor; ridding ourselves of comforts to avoid sluggishness; parting with friends to avoid being tempted by them - none of these should be beyond our thinking, beyond our willingness. Whatever we cling to, even at the price of our relationship with God, will certainly drag us down to hell. Whatever we sacrifice for the love of God, we have good reason to hope will be restored to us in a glorified way at the resurrection. We have to be willing to go all the way for Jesus.

Easy now - don't go apoplectic! Usually, intermediate steps are possible between our current sinful state and a total disposal of all worldly goods. We need not break off all ties, or give away all wealth, at once. Rather, we should prudently examine ourselves. We should ask if it possible to avoid the occasion to sin by taking steps in the relationship, or parting with a chunk (but not all) of the wealth.

If a particular friend encourages me to use narcotics, might I meet with him only in safe situations? If that works, so much the better - I might end by being a good example to him. But if I think that by falling into sin with him I will somehow be a good example, or lead him out of it, I am only fooling myself. Better to cut him off than to go to hell with him. It is not my job to save others' souls, and pride alone can convince. Jesus will take care of him - perhaps seeing his good friends leaving is just the medicine needed. I cannot know. I can only do my sincere best to avoid sin at all costs, and that I must do.

Likewise, it may be that by developing a habit of tithing, I learn generosity as a virtue and begin to give to all who ask, as our Lord commands (Mt 5:42). In such cases, perhaps it is wise to keep a stock of wealth, especially if the firm intention is to invest it ethically and wisely to multiply its usefulness to God's purposes. But if I find myself obeying the commandment to tithe and then feeling self-satisfied and disregarding the vital needs of my poor brethren - well, better just to get rid of the wealth, flush it down the toilet even, so that I will be unable to help them, than to hold onto it and refuse to help them.

Prudence is the virtue of knowing what is most valuable and the best way to gain it. Heaven is more more valuable than a fat wad of cash, cool friends, or even two working eyeballs. The prudent thing is to be willing to go all the way for Jesus, to whatever sacrifice is needed (He did!), and to do it one solid step at a time.

Jesus, Judas, and the Poor

Today's readings (Monday after Palm Sunday; Isa 42:1-7; Ps 27; Jn 12:1-11) are powerful ones. The Gospel passage bears repeating before discussion:

"Six days before Passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him. Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. Then Judas the Iscariot, one of his disciples, and the one who would betray him, said, "Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?" He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions. So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. Let her keep this for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” The large crowd of the Jews found out that he was there and came, not only because of him, but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. And the chief priests plotted to kill Lazarus too, because many of the Jews were turning away and believing in Jesus because of him."

A lot of disaffected or disillusioned Catholics cite the splendor of some parish churches, or St. Peter's in Rome, the very exemplar of architectural splendor, as their reason for being unhappy with the Church. They will even make the same recrimination made in today's gospel reading, "Why was this... not sold... and given to the poor?"

It is worth noting, first of all, that this objection was Judas Iscariot's. It was he who betrayed our Lord and they are lying to themselves just as Judas did. Mary of Bethany, out of devotion to our Lord, poured out a year's wages - an enormous sum for anyone - what was almost certainly the bulk of her wealth, perhaps even her dowry and chance at marriage - upon the feet of the One who had saved her. Judas by contrast, devoted not one bit to our Lord but only to himself, was accustomed to taking for himself what had been given to him in trust for service to God.

The gifts that God has invested in us - time, talent, and treasure - we are meant to hold in trust until He comes to reclaim them. More than that, we are called to invest them to great profit in His service. The greatest investment we can make on God's behalf is to give them to those in greatest need, to those for whom He has a special affection - His poor little children. Christian stewarship is the way of life that recognize that what we have been given is not primarily for ourselves, but for those around us. The gifts we have we are given to share, in the words of a popular hymn. When we fail to exercise Christian stewardship, we act as Judas, taking for ourselves what was given to us in trust for service to God.

Judas did not understand what Jesus was about. He understood Jesus as a some sort of political or military leader, and seems to have become increasingly disturbed that Jesus was not doing a very good job of capitalizing on His immense popularity. Many modern Christians also do not understand what Jesus was about. They see him as some sort of figure head, or leader of a movement that has come to "solve" poverty or overturn a wicked economic system.

Judas did not understand that the Kingdom that Jesus had come to establish, a Kingdom that truly is ordained to overturn all the kingdoms of the world, would not be just another kingdom along the same lines - but a whole different sort of thing. Rather than governing by force of arms, it would govern by the suasion of love. Rather than murdering its enemies, it would heal and reconcile them. Rather than being founded upon the blood of its enemies, it would be built on the blood of its Founder. Judas wanted Jesus to seize power, and Jesus wanted only to give His life. Jesus understood something (well, a number of things) that Judas did not: God's inexaustible generosity. The Good News of this new kind of Kingdom isn't that we're going to invent a new politico-economic way of doing things. The Good News is that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that he has power over kings and corruption, and even over death itself.

Mary of Bethany, whose brother Jesus raised from the dead, understood that as well. She poured out her best upon the One who would pour out His best. She gave everything to Him who would give everything, who had been giving everything since the outset of His public ministry. Her gesture of pouring perfume reveals the depth of conversion that Jesus had poured into her heart. Judas, with his objection, did not reveal the generosity of its heart, but its miserliness. People who object along Judas' lines - well, let's say that I for one have never met one that tithed, or probably even gave more than a dollar or two a week at the offertory. Someone who has learned to sacrifice in order to give will have a generous heart and an easy conscience on the matter, and no objection to giving more not only to the poor, but to our Lord and His house of worship as well.

"But," many people say nowadays, "all those fine golden chalices in churches - wouldn't Jesus be happier with humble vestments and such?" This objection represents a misunderstanding of history and culture and the heart, and it is a thin cover for the same ungenerosity. If Jesus, a humble worker, used a ceramic mug for the Passover supper, you can be certain it was because He had nothing better. It would be incomprensible to a 1st century Jew as it was to a Jew 500 years earlier and as it is to a Jew now to use one's second best, let alone one's worst, in the worship of Almighty God. Any Jew would use his very best for the Passover, and like as not would have special equipment just for it. And Jesus, cared for as He was by so many doting widows, likely enough had much finer than baked mud to use for worshiping His Father.

We cushy Americans with our fancy vacations, sports cars, and video games - more wealth amassed in one nation than ever before in the history of the world - can certainly manage better for God than a ceramic mug. The whole point of Jesus living such a simply life was that He was God and gave up everything to be with us. Those of us who have given up very little give even less when we can spare nothing better than a pewter jug for the worship of Almighty God. It is not the same gesture as Mary's, or as Jesus', not at all. Such gestures do not honor and exalt but rather parody God's great humility; they do not show our appreciation for His sacrifice but our lack of gratitude for it. If the best we could do was a simple table, threadbare vestments, and a tin cup - well, that would be more than enough for God. And in places where that is the best that can be done - concentration camps, lands where Christians are persecuted, warzones - God is glad that it is done. But people in those dark places are the ones who most hunger for lavish churches and spledid symbols for God. It is only in our comfortable and selfish generation that we cannot spare a bit of gold for God.

If we will not make our best efforts for God, then we will make ourselves into Judas. For a generous heart there is no contradiction between pouring perfume on Jesus' feet and giving three hundred days' wages to the poor.