The Empty Tomb and the Power of the Resurrection

The deacon read this gospel passage at the Vigil last night at St. Matthew's Cathedral:

Now after the sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Mag'dalene and the other Mary went to see the sepulchre.  And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone, and sat upon it.  His appearance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.  And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.  But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.  Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. Lo, I have told you."  So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.

Matthew 28:1-8

Here's my thought.  Most of us Christians live in this the morning of the first day.  By that I mean this: we Christians understand, mostly, that Jesus is risen from the dead.  We even understand that we are (supposed to be) somehow united to him in some way.  But we do not really understand what this all means.  It makes us happy, kinda; it makes a little afraid, too.  We are like the women, or Peter and the Beloved Disciple after them, staring into the empty tomb, confused and dazzled by the sunlight on the dawn of this new day in Christ.  Everything is different now.  We as individuals haven't all figured that out.  Some among us have.  Most of us kinda know things are supposed to be different now, but can't quite figure out what it means for our lives.  My hunch is that we, as a whole Church, are somewhere along these lines.  Among us there are some saints, radically transformed by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in everything they do.  There are others, who are bumbling about as if nothing happened, or worse, who have missed the point of God's love and are hanging themselves alongside Judas Iscariot.  Mostly, we are in the middle somewhere.  We are yearning for a new life that we have begun to live but to which we have not quite given ourselves over yet.
Jesus Christ has triumphed over death!  The very worst thing that the powers of this world can do to their victims, their most very potent weapon, has been neutralized.

Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?

1 Corinthians 15:55

Jesus Christ is the "first fruits" (1 Cor 15:23) of the resurrection.  We will be the harvest.
The power of God has been fully unleashed in the resurrection of the Son of God.  Now the tide is turned.  Sin obstructs and obscures it, but only like a sandcastle obstructs the ocean: for a few minutes, and then the jig is up.  Death's last blow will have been struck, and it will itself be dealt a death blow:

We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.  For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.

1 Corinthians 15:51-53

But what does all this mean for us here and now?  What does the resurrection of Christ mean in the life of a Christian?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

Romans 6:3-5

It is not only at the End, at the Resurrection of the Dead, that we shall be raised, but even here and now!  Here and now if we live in Christ and let Him live in us, we can have His kind of life, a life that bears immense fruit - here and now:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser.  Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.  You are already made clean by the word which I have spoken to you.  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing... By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples.  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.  If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.  This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends...  No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.  This I command you, to love one another.

John 15:1-17

How are we to live in Christ and let Him live in us?

Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world."

They said to him, "Lord, give us this bread always."

Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.  But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.  All that the Father gives me will come to me; and him who comes to me I will not cast out.  For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me; and this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up at the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day."

The Jews then murmured at him, because he said, "I am the bread which came down from heaven."  They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, `I have come down from heaven'?"

Jesus answered them, "Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, `And they shall all be taught by God.' Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that any one has seen the Father except him who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life.  I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh."

The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you;  he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.  He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.  As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.  This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever."

John 6:32-58

We need to eat His flesh and drink His blood.  But how can we do that ?

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, "Take, eat; this is my body."  And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins..."

Matthew 26:26-28

Baptism introduces us into the death and resurrection of Christ so that we can share in His life.  The Eucharist brings us into the fullness of His life.  It brings His life into us.  This mystery is the great source of power of the Christian life.  Never underestimate its power.  By it, tyrants have been humbled, janitors have been made into great heroes, kingdoms of darkness have been made into harbors of peace, and martyrs have smiled at death.  So brothers and sisters in Christ, let us not be afraid or confused by dazzling sunlight of the dawn of this, the First Day of a New Week.  Instead, let us put on Christ, live His kind of life, and show the world a sort of love that transforms life, that is "stronger than death," (Song of Songs 8:6).

An Interesting Marriage Proposal...

Msgr. Charlie Pope, of our own Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., has an interesting proposal concerning marriage.  No, he's not getting hitched - he's already happily married to Mother Church.  So what's his big idea?  It boils down to this: if the world is going to redefine marriage to suit the homosexualist agenda, then the Church should come up with a new name for what used to be called marriage.

Happily, he has an idea for a new term, or rather, an old term.  HOLY Matrimony.
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Click here to read the rest of his marriage proposal.

How Religious Communities Heal Hearts

Anchoress, thanks for this video from the Boston Globe.

It got me thinking. That's always dangerous. A beautiful couplet of books, The Man on the Donkey, Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, by H. F. M. Prescott, show a similar dynamic.  The pair of books unfold and draw together the lives of disparate historical and fictional characters living in the time of Henry VIII.  In them, a battered and abused girl is sent to a convent so that she will no longer burden her older sister by existing.  Previously, the convent had been portrayed as worldly and petty in its aspirations: life was filled, apparently, with bickering over rugs and boasting over which sister had the most gold pins to hold her veil upon her head.  As the abused girls moves into the convent, the reader begins to see another side.  In this world vastly kinder than the one into which she was born, the girl begins to blossom as a person, having encountered simple, untangled and unmanipulative love for the first time.  I myself was startled by the ease with which the author, without ever re-representing or changing the personality of the convent, shows it first from one perspective, and then from another: worldly than it ought to be, but a haven of sanctity compared to the world.

During my time in seminary I saw something of the same dynamic.  Many of the men, myself included, thought the place very much more worldly than it ought to be.  Yet visitors were always and uniformly amazed by its quiet warmth, friendliness, hospitality, and the ease with which a heart lapses into prayer in that place.  We did not live in a place of lollipops and sunshine, and there weren't love-bombs, either... which is probably a good thing.  But there was a place where genuine love could gradually, organically grow and bring about real healing and a real kind of new life in the men that arrived there.  I saw it happen.  I recall one man who was very poorly socialized, a bore and boor, and very quickly found himself nearly isolated in that house of 150 Christian men because of it.  I suspect it was not the first time people had a hard time saying, "Well, that's just So-and-so.  You know how he is," because for most people, even good people, at some point, enough is enough.

But I also think of a friend of mine, a man who lived across the hall from me - well liked and popular because intelligent, athletic, easy-going, responsible, and kind.  This man told me that he was not going to just watch So-and-so crumble and fall away.  He couldn't bring himself to think, "Good riddance."  I also know that the petty unkindness and gossip against the unpleasant man became so bad that a very popular, well-respected, and high-ranking faculty member addressed So-and-so's class in his absence.  He told them that the faculty were aware of So-and-so's problems and issues.  There was no need to keep pointing them out to the faculty or to each other.  It was best just to be a friend to So-and-so, and to pray for him.  At first, I thought it unprofessional or even reckless of the faculty member to address the class so openly about what would probably be considered their classmate's personnel matter.  At least, that's what it would be considered in the world.  But there, in that house of God, it was a personal matter - and personal matters sometimes require far more delicacy than personnel matters, and sometimes far less.

Lastly, I think about how I watched, saw with my own eyes, the growth of So-and-so.  An irritating mannerism fell away.  A new friend was made.  Someone invited So-and-so to join in.  Another perplexing behavior was moderated.  So-and-so made another friend.  People stopped saying things harshly about So-and-so behind his back.  More people were willing to invite him to more things.  It became clear that he wasn't so stupid as people thought at first, even if a bit more uncouth than they liked.  People went from defending him on principle to defending him on the basis of his actual strengths.  It turned out he was athletic enough that, his abrasive characteristics diminishing, people didn't mind - no, actually wanted him on their team.  He started to enjoy his studies.  More prayers were offered up for So-and-so, doubtless, than anyone on earth will ever know.  For that matter, So-and-so went from being known for the amount of time he spent in front of the community television to being a man noted for the discipline of his prayer.  A man who looked like he wouldn't last the first year because he was so aggravating has since progressed well on the way to being a good and holy priest, certainly of great use to the People of God.  In that seminary, that house where seedlings are transplanted like stalks of rice, that man came alive in a new way.

So it is with the Church as a whole.  In the rock tumbler of our shared life in the Spirit, we are first to grind down sharp edges, then polish natural virtues, and at last glow like gems of holiness.  It is not a romantic thing, but a gritty thing.  Well, it is romantic in the sense of being adventurous, but not in the sense of being smooth or suave.  Temptations do not flee the life of holiness, but flock to it like moths.  We in the Church are called to live in a way different than that found in the world outside.

For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; he who teaches, in his teaching; he who exhorts, in his exhortation; he who contributes, in liberality; he who gives aid, with zeal; he who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Never flag in zeal, be aglow with the Spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; never be conceited. Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." No, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, (Romans 12:4-21).

We will not always do it very well, but our company should be a place where people will encounter the healing touch of Christ made present in His people, in His priests, in His word and sacraments.  It might not happen all at once, and it certainly will not happen without bumps and bruises along the way... but the more we rely on Jesus to make it happen, the more surely we will see progress before our very eyes - the more we will see souls open and blossom in a way the world can barely conceive, let alone imitate.

For that matter, a Christian family is supposed to be very much the same sort of thing as a Christian church.

Before You Welcome Jesus

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.

Ordination, a Cappuccino, and One Hell of a Town

I am in Rome right now, visiting the Eternal City for the third time in my lifetime.  My good friend from my seminary days, Fernando, was ordained to the Holy Order of the Diaconate today, and I came to see it happen.  The pictures of the ordination at the Altar of the Chair, inside St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City, did not come out so well because of the dim lighting inside the mammoth edifice.  Here's a picture of Fernando and me during the tour he gave us of his seminary.  (He's really not that much taller than I am; it's only that I am squatting to avoid making him feel bad on his ordination day.  Lolol.)  He will, if all goes as planned, be ordained a priest of Jesus Christ at the end of June back in his home diocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The ordination was as beautiful as one would expect.  Nothing is done poorly in St. Peter's.

After the ordination, reception, and tour, my friend Trisha and I walked around Rome for a few hours, stopping for a late lunch and some souvenir shopping for friends back home.  Lunch was great.  Italians do food very, very well.  No place else could a panino, a simple ham and cheese sandwich, taste so excellent.  The gelato that followed... well, let's just say that I am a confirmed gelatoholic and have been for some time.  That is the real reason that I run, actually.  After lunch, before we began browsing our way through the shops north of the Vatican in the direction of the neighborhood where Fernando's family was holding his reception, I decided I needed a cappuccino.  Italians do coffee very well, too.  Only in Italy can it be 80* and a coffee somehow feel refreshing.  Trisha doubted me, but after a nice lunch in the shade on a pleasantly warm day, a cappuccino really did the trick.  I don't usually drink very much caffeine, but this didn't bother me.  In fact, only eight hours later, I am still wide awake blogging.  Nope, the caffeine really wasn't a problem.  As we walked and browsed back, the Holy Father drove by.  Trisha ran into the store where I was browsing Italian religious books and pulled me out just in time to see him.  That was a pretty cool treat - we were within twenty feet or so and could see him waving through the open windows of his street vehicle (not the popemobile, because this wasn't actually a public appearance... he was just appearing in public).

The reception was at a restaurant near the Chiesa Nuova, where a prayer vigil was held the night before for the deacons-to-be.  Please do me a favor and do not ask Trisha why we missed the prayer vigil.  I'll never hear the end of it.  Anyway, about the church:  The church is actually named, but never called Santa Maria di Somethingorother; I think there are too many Santa Maria's in Rome, so at some point somebody decided to start with a new name.  Chiesa Nuova, "Newchurch," if we were in England, seems to have stuck unofficially but unambiguously.  Now the restaurant near the church was called Don Mario's, and man, was it good!  First course, all kinds of appetizers: bruschette, prisciutti, polpi, formaggi, and more.  Then two pastas, one in some sort of vodka or arrabiatta sauce, the other in an alfreddo.  Then the meats: veal, chicken, pork, ham, sausage, beef, with a portion of each for everybody.  Then the desserts.  The fifth course was the coffees and the lemon sorbet, to clean out the palette.  It was really good.  I do not normally go on about food so much, but it was excellent.

After dinner we all walked back, each party going its separate way as we went.  Trisha and I took some pictures during the blue night.  There's one to the left.  I think it is of Castel Sant'angelo, that in older days guarded the way to the Vatican perhaps, but now only guards museum exhibits.  The only problem with Rome is that it is so damn ugly and un-photogenic.  I mean, really.  That's the Tiber, lazily reflecting those horrible lights.  Lolol.  Actually, if you haven't noticed my tongue in my cheek, let me come clean and tell you that Rome is beautiful.  As I type this blog post overlooking the Viale di Trastevere, the main street in the neighborhood of the hotel where I am staying, I can honestly say that sometimes seems difficult to find a spot in Rome that is not photogenic.  One of Fernando's close friends is here with his wife, and neither of the two is Catholic.  This crowning achievement that is Rome has certainly overwhelmed them, especially the gems like St. Peter's, Maria Maggiore, and the Sistine Chapel.  If they are not convinced of Catholic truth, they are certainly stunned by Catholic beauty.  We joked about how ugly churches so often are, Catholic or Protestant, back in the States.  Smaller than St. Peter's is a given, but ugly need not be.  We Christians owe it to the world to show the goodness of our beliefs and morals with the beauty of our lives and works.  We Catholics have a sacramental faith that makes physically manifest God's glory and love.  We Catholics owe it to our separated brethren to lead the way.

The Fulcrum of Reality

Our Lord was raised bodily from the dead, but we must not make the mistake of thinking that he was some sort of zombie. What Jesus underwent was not a mere resuscitation, although resuscitation was involved in a sense. The empty tomb is mentioned in all the gospels, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in St. Paul's writings. It was an important fact, and it cannot be minimized that a real, material body got up and left the tomb. The risen body was the same body that died, but now, at the resurrection, it was transformed into something new, a new kind of body. St. Paul calls this a spiritual body, writing, "It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body," (1 Cor 15:44). But we must not make the mistake of thinking that our Lord was a ghost of some sort, or that his body wasn't material. The word translated here as physical is psychikon in Greek, which normally refers to a human life, mind, or soul. The word rendered spiritual is pneumatikon in Greek, always refering in the New Testament to supernatural power - the life of God Himself. The sentence might be rendered better as "It is sown a natural body, it is raised a supernatural body." Evidence of this interpretation abounds in the resurrection accounts of the gospels. In John 20:19, we are told that, on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." A few verses later, St. John tells us that Jesus appears again and charbroils real fish, and with his hands breaks real bread (John 21:13-14). Ghosts cannot do that.

Jesus' body after the resurrection, we begin to sense, is not less real than our own, but more real, because even his body is no longer merely material. We experience our bodies as limiting factors, especially in childhood and in old age. A little kid reaches up to grab something on a counter that is hopelessly too high, and that the child simply cannot reach. An old person finds that his body doesn't work as fast as his mind does anymore, and that he cannot run or swim as he would like. Even in the flush of virile manhood, some things are simply beyond reach, and one's appetites and bodily urges often overrule, or at least interfere, with one's better intentions. Jesus, on the other hand, after the resurrection no longer experiences limitations on his body. And that makes sense - God did not give us our body to trap us in death, but as a beautiful way of living life. Sin and death intervene and interfere, but in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth, sin is vanquished and death is slain: "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" (1 Cor 15:55). Time and space, dimensions that arise to accomodate our bodies, no longer bind our bodies or dominate them. In the body of Jesus of Nazareth, all that we "know" to be real is set aside, when it comes to "life" and "the way things really are," from unruly urges to hopelessness to death. Jesus of Nazareth changes all of that, and so we recognize Him as the Christ.

But Jesus wants to live with us, and knows we need to live with him, like we live with our family and neighbors and roommates. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me," (Jn 15:4). Now Jesus did not come to be with us just to be with us, or rather them (the Apostles) for a few years and then to split, but to abide with us. Our God is NOT a deadbeat dad. Our God is a loving Father, more loving than any of us has experienced in human flesh. And he's not going anywhere, either. Jesus says to us, "I am with you always, to the close of the age," (Mt 28:20).

But how so. He certainly seems to have split, to have left the building, so to speak. Indeed.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. (1 Cor 11:23-26).

Already in just the decade following that in which our Lord suffered and died, St. Paul is reminding the early Christians in Corinth about the Lord's words. Jesus has left us his presence, not only spiritual, but physical as well, which is fitting, since he made us to be not only spiritual beings, but physical beings as well. We need both sorts of presence from the people that love us, and need to give both sorts to the people that we love. Nothing else will satisfy our whole person.

This explains the meaning of John 6. In that passage, Jesus multiplies the loaves and fishes to feed the masses. They want to make him king, because, hey, he can get the economy going again, right? Free food for everyone. You'll never have to work again. "Ugh," Jesus must have thought, and then set out to correct their mistake. He does not want to nourish them with ordinary bread. They can do that themselves. He wants to nourish them with himself. He wants to BE their bread. Think about it, our God loves us so much that he wants not only to be with us, but to be in us, to be united to us in every way - spirit and body. This is the manner in which he wants to abide with us for eternity. But how can that happen?

The resurrection provides the missing key. Because at the resurrection Jesus becomes unbounded from the normal rules of reality, time, space, and all that, Jesus can be anywhere and everywhere, all at once. Jesus can physically be in me, in you, and in the golden box on the altar, and sitting on a throne of glory in a realm we cannot attain by our own strength and senses - all at once. This is weird, and outside of our immediate experience, but it makes sense. Why should we expect the ordinary conditions of time and space to limit the Almighty who made them, or the weaknesses of a human body to cage him in, when even the tomb could not?

At the Eucharist, in the act of praising and loving God, those baptized into his body receive his body, and the new, spiritual sort of body is planted in us anew, and the new sort of life grows stronger and more vibrant in us, bit by bit, hindered only by our own willfulness and sin. Our ability to attain heaven, the life of God in perfect bliss, will not come in this life by the removal of exterior obstacles, but by the removal of the interior obstacles that prevent us from handling them in peace. The spiritual life begun in us by baptism will be awakened as we embrace it and make a concerted effort to learn to live it. On the cross, Jesus defied death to its face, and at the resurrection he overcame it. In the sacraments, Jesus has transmitted to us in bodily form this way of sharing in his bodily resurrection. The resurrection is the fulcrum on which the old "reality" is lifted and overturned, and the new one set in its place.

The Sacrifice and the Body

In my Greek class we are reading the Gospels of John and Matthew this semester. We are just about finished with John, and yes, that's a LOT of Greek for new-ish students to read. Our professor pushes us hard, and throws facts, theories, and interpretations at us like you cannot believe. It's more like being force-fed too much chocolate cake than anything else: there is no time to chew on what you would enjoy if you had leisure to do so. I am trying to counter act this by rereading the relevant texts on my own at a more relaxed pace.

In class we are reading the Passion as recorded by St. John, and so I decided to savor it in adoration. I was enjoying chewing on (what is for now) my favorite Gospel, and felt my meditation was fruitful. The narrative is electrifying. I started looking around at the other folks in the Crypt Church of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I was startled by a familiar sight: a big, athletic college student on his knees; an aging Latina woman on the same pew; some Africans or African-Americans; a couple religious sisters from Korea or maybe China; some more college students, some dressed like it, and others dressed more nicely, both young men and women in ample number; a few professor- or administrator-looking men and women; and more of the same representing probably about a hundred people. What leaped to my mind was the prediction of our blessed Lord: "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself," (Jn 12:31-2).

How amazing is Jesus! He likewise brings to their knees both the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the local and the foreigner, workers and professors, the young and the old. Is there a nation whose people are not represented in the Catholic Church, the Mystical Body of Christ? And here was a cross-section of that Body, and indeed thus of the world, kneeling before the Body of her Lord. When our Lord spoke, I think it is most likely that He was predicting His ascension and the formation of the Church by the Holy Spirit's descent upon His disciples. That prediction kinda gets at a deeper spiritual principle, that God has a sort of magnetism or force of gravity that draws people toward Him. But here, before my eyes, that prediction was being fulfilled in a very particular way. As we the Church get back to basics, back to lifting up Jesus, all these people are being drawn toward Him, the Crucified and Resurrected Lord still present among us. The seek Him, to love Him, and to receive from Him what only He can give: a share in the blessed life of the Holy Trinity and all its implications: undying courage, friendship, love, healing, peace, joy, immortality.

The shared life of God is shared with us by means Jesus' body, sacrificed for us on Calvary. We partake in that sacrifice, as the Jews partook of the Passover Sacrifice, by eating the sacrificed One. Having shared Holy Communion with Jesus, we are united with each other and with Him in one seamless movement - the two unions cannot be separated, only distinguished. The Body whose consumption sanctifies us is adored, drawing out and deepening the sanctification, the communion. What happened on Calvary was once-and-for-all (Heb 7:27) because it is once-drawn-out-forever (Heb 9:11-14; 13:20). Because Christ sits eternally at the right of the Father (Heb 7:25; 8:1-2) offering His Resurrected Body and interceding for us, we as a people from all nations gather daily to recall the sacrifice and to adore the Body that saves us.

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.

A New Conception of Humanity

We shouldn't think that any of the graces given to the Blessed Virgin Mary are weird, or out of place, even if they are singular and just for her. Everything that God has done for the Blessed Virgin in a particular way, He wants to do for us in a general way; everything for her in a miraculous way, for us in a progressive, natural way.

The Immaculate Conception is a perfect example of a grace that we shouldn't find odd. He spared her from the curse of Original Sin and all its effects from the moment of her (immaculate) conception in the womb of her mother, St. Anne. By our baptism he cleanses us of all sin, including original sin, the sin we inherit from our origins, and its effects upon us are loosened for now, and eventually, at the resurrection, obliterated entirely. Mary was granted the particular grace of the Immaculate Conception so that she would be a fitting mother to bear God into the world. We are baptized so to receive God when He comes to us, and by virtue of our baptism, are able to bear Him to others in the world. God gave Mary the grace never to go near death. He gives us daily the grace to walk away from it.

Because of her Immaculate Conception she never needed, nor ever did, taste death. She was a living challenge to sin and death, just by her manner of living and being. As the culmination to a sinless life, she was brought bodily into the realms of light before death yet scarred her. We who, unlike the Virgin of Virgins, are born into the sinfulness of the human family, taste death in our daily life - anger, hatred, mockery, violence, malice, sickness, suffering, warfare - and will finally taste death in its fullness; but not in its finality. By living a life structured by the sacraments and soaked in the Sacred Scriptures, in unity with our Christian brethren, and in as nearly constant prayerful union as we can manage, we ourselves will push back the domain of sin wherever we go, undoing hatred, suffering, and even death. Since the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have a hope that the world just doesn't get, doesn't understand - the hope of resurrection for ourselves. Because of this great hope, we can even freely embrace life's sufferings and so will not be cowed by them into sinning. Death, which does us in, is undone by Christ. This process begins for each human in baptism; it begins for humanity in the Immaculate Conception.

Don't forget that today is a Holy Day of Obligation. Yes, you just went to Mass yesterday. Sweet! We all get to go again, and praise and worship God at the Sacrifice of His Son, today for the great gift He has given us in His Mother.

A Couple of Notes

Today is the feast of St. John Damascene. Last year on this date, I wrote a piece about him, and rather than repeat myself, I will just provide a link to it. Click HERE.

For now, I will just share a brief thought I had this morning after Communion.

What a blessed people are we Christians, who may break our nightly fast by feeding on the flesh of God himself! What an amazing mystery.

"For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?" (Deut 4:7, KJV).

"You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame," (Joel 2:26, RSV).

"He has not dealt thus with any other nation," (Ps 147:20).

The End of Days

Today, for the Catholic Church, is the last day of the liturgical year. This evening we begin a new year in Christ, the year of our Lord 2009, with the vigil of the First Sunday of Advent. The introit for the First Sunday of Advent, the first words spoken in the liturgy, are Ad te levavi animam meam, "To Thee I have lifted up my soul," (Ps 25). I hope I won't sound impertinent by saying that the various caretakers of our holy liturgy have, over the millennia, decided well by using verses from this psalm to open the liturgical year.

The liturgical year might be thought of as our life in Christ lived out over the course of a year. The first half of the year celebrates Advent and Christmas, the time in which we remember our Lord God's incarnation and entrance into the world as an honest-to-God human being. Then comes a liturgical pause, known as the Ordinary Time, in which all the regular rules and ordinances of Christian living apply. In this period, the Mass readings focus especially on the basic teachings of our Lord. During Lent, the next phase, we focus on renunciation of the things of the world and interior conversion. Faith, hope, and love, so prominent in the Christian life, crystallize into prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. We remember the suffering and death of our Lord during the brief period known as Passiontide that comes at the end of Lent, followed by the Triduum, the three most sacred days of the year, in which the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ are made manifest to us again in the liturgy. The explosion of joy at the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the God-man, at the Easter Vigil and the fifty days of Eastertide (to trump the forty days of Lent) is marked by baptisms, bonnets, confirmations, May Day, parish picnics, and the rest. So the first half of the liturgical year concludes. The second half resumes Ordinary Time and its weekly, daily reflection on what it means to live as a follower of Jesus, as one who wishes to follow Him even into eternity.

And it all begins with a psalm, and sung poem inspired by the Holy Spirit, "To Thee I have lifted up my soul." The world moans in exile from Eden, riddled with sin, mourning in death and death's fall-out zone: bickering friends, starving children, despair, frustration, suffering, and all the things that God never desired for us but that we have brought upon ourselves collectively by our collective sin. We lift up our soul to God, like a mother holding a dying child, like our Blessed Mother grief-stricken and holding her murdered Son. Our heart groans and cracks under the weight of the sadness we are expected to bear, our exile from Eden, our slavery in Egypt, our bondage in Babylon, our weeping in this valley of tears. And God, in his unfathomable love and mercy, stoops down to lift us up, to lift us from the dunghill and set us on a firm rock (Ps. 40), to live with us and to love us face to face. In Advent, we reflect upon our sinful condition, we remember what God has done for us, what God is doing for us, what God will do for us. We remember His first coming into the world, about 2000 years ago; and we attend to His daily return in the People of God, in the proclaimed Gospel, in our private prayers, and especially in the Sacraments and in our sufferings handing over to Him. We look forward to His final return in Glory, the Parousia, at which He will fully, finally manifest His Kingdom, His way of doing things, and set everything to rights.

In the Gospel reading for the I Sunday of Advent (Is 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; Ps 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19; 1 Cor 1:3-9; Mk 13:33-37), our Lord warns us to watch, to pay attention, because we do not know when the End will come and so we must stay ready. Moreover, if we do not pay attention, we will miss Him here and now as He begins and continues His saving work in our life. Emmanuel means "God with us," and He is truly with us, and He is coming. This year, lift up your soul to God and watch to see what He does.

Zeal and the Fire of Faith

My politically-liberal, religiously agnostic office mate and I came upon what I think is a very good analogy for the zeal, the ardor of faith. As a bit of background to my thinking, reflect for a moment on the ideas of fundamentalism and dogmatism. Both of them get bad reputations that aren't necessarily so.

If fundamentalism is the idea that it's good to stick to the fundamentals, well, don't we all agree? I mean, who thinks it best to get off on irrelevant tangents, or to build mental castles in the sky. "Keep it simple, stupid," is a pretty American maxim. When we speak of fundamentalism as a bad thing, we don't mean architects who want to build simple buildings, or even of Christians who just want to believe in Christ. We mean people who get overzealous, irrationally (by which we usually mean unpleasantly or inflexibly) dogmatic, people who get abusive or violent. That's why we can speak of "fundamentalist Christianity" and "fundamentalist Islam" as being something alike, when adherents of either way of thinking are ready to nuke each other, and when there are, in fact, stark differences in their beliefs, worldviews, etc. What they share in common is a certain out-of-place rigidity in their thinking and overheated zeal in their attitude.

Not that rigidity or zeal are always out of place. Dogmatism, you might say, is not so much holding this dogma to be unquestionably true, as it is the attitude that makes into matters of dogma things that are really practical matters, or matters of opinion. After all, we all have dogmas - the goodness of democracy is a very American dogma, for instance. Virtually anything we don't bother to question (and we can't always be questioning everything) can settle into a sort of dogmatic position in our thinking. Dogmatism is an attitude that says "Red is the best color, and if you disagree, then you are stupid." Favorite colors aren't matters of dogma, but of preference. A dogmatist might get very dogmatic about the best route to get from A to B. Provided that A and B are both morally acceptable places to be, and that the routes in consideration are morally acceptable, the best route is really a matter of practical planning, rather than dogmatic preaching.

Now add to that dogmatism a dose of zeal, which for now we'll define as passionate self-investment. Not only is one practical path the best and others worse, as for the dogmatist, but the zealous dogmatist might very well shout you down or even shoot you down if you have you beg to differ and make your own decision. He might even bloody your nose red for having disliked the color red. This sort of person is what we usually mean by a "fundamentalist," and I think that it is becoming increasingly clear to most folks that atheists, agnostics, and skeptics might be "fundamentalist" in this sense as well.

A particularly American thought-disease to to think that everything, simply everything, is a purely practical matter: the dogma that there should be in our thinking no dogmas, just practical results. "Whatever gets the job done," is another very American saying. A first problem is that this sort of thinking gives no guidepost in our dealings, even with other people, other than efficiency. This efficiency is a very rough way of handling human hearts, aspirations, and lives. Any decent worker who's been laid off rather than retrained or relocated, for the sake of efficiency, knows what Efficiency is an ugly god to worship, or at least an ugly dogma to live by. Combined with shortsightedness, this worship of efficiency will cause disaster for all involved.

In a culture that worships dogmalessness to the point of turning her into a goddess, Efficiency, Practicality, or whatever you want to call her, the Catholic faith very easily seems very rigid and doctrinaire. "So many rules," people say, and, "How unreasonable, if they'd just change X belief or do Y or Z, they'd solve all their problems." But in reality, the Catholic faith is shockingly practical and undogmatic. One or two brief examples will do:

(1) Sunday attendance of Holy Mass, even when one cannot receive communion for some reason, is an absolute non-negotiable of the Catholic religion. Unless. Unless? Yes, unless you cannot. Then, you don't have to. If illness, care of an ill person or infant, physical obstruction, dangerous weather, or some other very serious obstacle arises, then no problem. It happens. See you next week. Now the soccer game is not a legitimate reason. Miss the game. But the blizzard? Well, these things happen. No biggy. The idea isn't one more "rule," but a new heart. Worshipping God should be our central purpose and top priority, not an obligation. Having been established in this new way of thinking, we'll probably stay on the right track. We should feel the soccer game less important, and be disappointed when a hurricane or sick baby keep us from leaving the house on Sunday. Once we've gotten to that point, the "rules" about attending Mass seem aside from the point.

(2) Marriage requires witnesses for each party and a cleric to witness the vows in a public setting. Unless. Unless? Yes, unless the right number of witnesses is simply unavailable. Then you can make do with fewer. Unless. Unless? Unless a serious fear of reprisal for undertaking the marriage requires it to be kept secret, then it can be done secretly. So if having a public marriage would reveal one's Christian faith to a hostile culture, or to parents who oppose the plan, then a secret marriage is OK, too. Unless. Unless? Unless a real impediment causes a cleric to be unavailable, then any baptized, or even in the case of no other Christians around, an unbaptized person can witness the vows, and the marriage can be registered later, and undergo any necessary regularization when things change. Unless. Unless? Unless no other person can be found to witness the exchange of Christian vows, and then the couple may do so privately, provided they regularize things when they have a chance, and provided they really intend a Christian marriage. Now a Christian marriage, what that is (the permanent, exclusive sexual union of a man and a woman for their mutual support with an openness to children) is completely non-negotiable. But the nitty-gritty details? No need for dogma, just good practice to protect the main thing - the marriage.

Now, many of us have known new Catholics, converts, reverts, etc., who, in their new found faith, have become quite "zealous." Dogmatic. Rigid. Harsh. Fiery, even. "Ardour" and "ardent" come from the Latin word for "burning." "Zeal" is related to the word for "jealous," again with the ideal of a driven passion. Such people can have an overly-rigid and simplistic understanding and bring it to the table with a fiery vengeance. They have sometimes been known to damage family relationships, alienate friends, and in general make the holy Catholic faith look terribly unpleasant. They can be like people who inadvertently burn down their own house because they weren't careful with candles or a fireplace. In their more self-righteous moments, they might think they are being persecuted for their faith when in reality they are being asked to quite down about the latest papal encyclical and to please pass the butter. These people can find themselves hemmed in and surrounded by tired or distant former friends, struggling to attain the virtues they very loudly proclaim, and running out of fuel for their fire.

I speak here of myself, but I hope in the past tense.

Two things to note about our Lord on this matter of zeal and passion for God:

(1) Our Lord was indefatigable, untiring, in His work for the good news of the Kingdom. He healed countless sick, gave His undivided attention to anyone who needed it, spent hours and hours teaching. His zeal made Him, in Mother Teresa's words, "Our only human ideal." Yet, he wasn't some kinda social worker just trying to help people. He knew the truth, and knew that only truth could really be a basis for living a real life in reality, and he wouldn't budge on the truth. Not a little bit.

(2) No weird personal, emotional baggage made it a lot easier to keep His cool. His deep, passionate desire to love and obey the Father, the zeal that fed Him and gave him energy late into the night, never once went astray and burned the wrong person. When He got angry, He didn't lose His cool but gave the exact right amount of anger to the right person for the right reason - to help that person. No temper tantrums for Jesus.

(3) Our Lord's unquestionable passion for righteousness led him not to rebuke sinners, but to the most unfathomable gentleness with them - tax collectors felt He wouldn't hold their livelihood against them; prostitutes felt He wouldn't treat them as countless men doubtless did - an object of lust or of self-righteous indignation. He never wrote somebody off or treated them as a nobody.

(4) His zeal led Him to willingness to be misunderstood even by His closest friends, without lashing out against them. At His trial, when He was arguably being most wildly misunderstood, He was arguably at His calmest. The will of His Father so consumed Him that He hardly seems to have noticed what was being done to Himself.

So, now here's the metaphor. Faith is like a charcoal fire, like a barbecue fire. An initial bit of grace, like lighter fluid, will cause a big, flashy fire. But it isn't good for much because it is so wild and uncontrolled. People standing nearby will be well advised to take care lest they get burned. In fact, such a zealous faith might, if not properly nurtured, simply burn itself out in a puff of smoke when just a bit of the first grace is withheld. A faith must be properly protected and nurtured in order to gain a deeper, more authentic zeal: baptism, honest self-examination and confession, Holy Eucharist and prayer, good spiritual reading, a strong, mature Christian community - these are the way to go. Such a faith might seem to simmer down, or never even to have flashed, but like the charcoal fire, the fire of faith is most intense, most heated, and useful when it has simmered down. Such a faith burns intensely and continually draws from the springs of the life of Jesus himself. It is not the sort of faith that sears or burns passersby, let alone burns bridges unnecessarily. But it is the sort of faith that can cook a burger, that can get the job done for Jesus. No decent person, Christian or otherwise, will hate such a faith, but be amazed by what it accomplishes.

The psalmist writes, "For zeal for thy house has consumed me,and the insults of those who insult thee have fallen on me," (Ps 69:9). If our zeal for the House of God consumes other people, maybe they should taunt us a bit. Such a faith will injure others rather than draw them to Jesus through us; such a faith will flicker and fizzle when we fatigue, because it won't have been genuinely rooted in Jesus and a life together with Him.

Encountering the Risen Christ in the Sacraments

In various ways, before ascending bodily into heaven, our Lord left for us concrete, tactile ways of making contact with Him: the sacraments. Sacrament is an interesting word. Sacramentum is what Roman soldiers called the branded tattoo on their shoulder, which read SPQR. It was a seal of loyalty to the Senate and People of Rome, and the physical manifestation of their permanent bond to their military unit. The seven sacraments of Christ have something of the same role in the life of a Christian: they seal and bind us to Him and His Church. The Eastern Christians call these same seven actions the seven mysteries. A mystery, for the ancient Greeks, was not a problem to be solved, but an interaction with the divine. In these mysteries, we Christians come face to face with the living God and share in His divine life. They are possible because in Jesus Christ, God already shares in our human life. This shared life of God is called grace, and is always freely given and only freely received. The Church defines the sacraments, the mysteries of the faith as “visible signs instituted by Christ to convey invisible grace.” It is important to note that sacraments do not merely represent grace in our life, but actually bring it into our life. This definition is not only words on a page, but it is the fabric of my spiritual life, and of the life in Christ of many, many others.

I don’t remember my baptism because I was just a few weeks old. I didn’t care much about my confirmation as a young teenager. My first communion, though, was important to me. I remember how even as a small boy, I felt drawn to the Eucharist, the sacrament by which Christians renew our relationship of intimate communion with Jesus. I couldn’t have told you why, and I know I didn’t fully understand, but I did desire it. I desired Him.

Nowadays, the Eucharist and its sister sacrament, Reconciliation, are key to my daily life. At first my thinking was, “If I botch it in life, or just need a spiritual checkup, I’ll go to Reconciliation, to make sure that I am tight with Jesus.” As time goes on now, even when I don’t have any egregious sins, I want to go to the sacrament of Reconciliation to make sure that there’s nothing between us. It’s maybe a little like a husband and wife touching bases just to make sure that nobody’s got some unvented frustration or anger. As time goes on, I find myself going more and more often. In the sacrament of Reconciliation, also called Confession, I bare my soul to the priest, and thereby give it away to the One he represents.

It’s a very small thing to give away the soul. At least, the degree to which I turn it over to Jesus is very small. I am trying, don’t get me wrong. Time after time, it seems, I confess the same sins. At any given confession I seem to confess five or six from the same pool of ten or fifteen sins. But something else deeper is happening – over years of regular confession, certain sins have dropped out, others that have been long-ingrained habits become somewhat dislodged, and still others previously undetected come to light. Each confession removes an obstacle in my relationship with Jesus, each confession uproots a rock in the soil of my soul that otherwise stunts the growth of the gospel there. Each confession confesses, in more specific language, “Jesus, I tried to do it my own way, but you’ve got a better grasp of reality than I have, and my way didn’t work, so I want to go back to your way; I tried to be like God, but you are Lord.” Every confession of sin is a confession of the humility of our condition and of the exalted Lordship of Jesus Christ. Every sincere confession of sin to one authorized to forgive on behalf of Jesus puts us back into right relationship with Him, and thus with all of creation that He is bringing, slowly but surely, into His authority. Every confession of sin unloads a burden and a weight to great for a mere mortal to bear. I along with hundreds of millions of other Catholics can attest to the relief and lifting, the ease of conscience and lightness of heart that follows a confession soaked in the genuine intention to go and sin no more, to be right with God and neighbor.

In return for kinda partly trying to give my little self to Jesus, He, the Lord and God of Heaven and Earth, fully and entirely gives Himself to me in the sacrament of the Eucharist, throwing in the beginnings of the life of heaven and a renewal of His promise to bequeath to me the whole world. It’s amazing and crazy, really. The Church fathers called it the commercium admirabilis – the wonderful exchange. In giving Himself to me, Jesus makes it possible not only for me to give myself to Him, but to discover myself, my who-I-am, in the process. In giving Himself to me, Jesus shows me in a tactile way His great love for me. He literally takes the self-sacrificial and unbounded love that led Him to Calvary, to death on a cross, and puts it into me, the way pretty much everything else is put into me: as food. Read John 6 for the most beautiful account of this reality that has ever been written.

Self-doubt riddles the fabric of my soul on so many levels, and the Eucharist, Jesus hidden behind the appearances of bread and wine, eager to dwell in my heart – so eager that He is willing to pass through my stomach – this Eucharist tells me that He loves me, that my doubts of my own worth and purpose can be set aside, because He does not doubt my worth, and for me, He has a purpose.

I am never so at piece during the day as when, after a time of hearing God’s word spoken to me, and prayerfully, quietly preparing myself, that Love that never ends makes His home in me again, unworthy tabernacle though I am. A day without the Eucharist is a waste. I plan my vacations, days off, and even hiking trips around it. This devotion to the Eucharist is not because I am a good man, but because I am a needy man. I need more Jesus in my life.

Each of the seven sacraments could have a volume written about it, but there’s no time for that. For now, I wish to make the point that the community of believers draws people into itself, and at the heart of the community of believers lay the seven sacraments, which institute the community, constitute it, and give it its shape and meaning. The sacraments bear the life of Christ using material, sensible signs to creatures made matter and endowed with senses to receive that matter. That life of Christ permeates us and, if we succeed well enough in our contest against sin – those things that oppose the life of Christ – that life will begin to radiate out from us and draw others into our company as well.

Subsequent installments of this series will address the sacred scriptures and prayer, by which Christ forms our minds and hearts more fully into the likeness of His own; and suffering, the process by which our transformative purification, started in the sacraments and guided by prayer and the scriptures, is made perfect.

...Click here for an addendum subsequently added to this post.

Ordinary Does Not Mean Ho-Hum

So, Pentecost done, we resume of Ordinary Time. Ordinary sounds so, well, ordinary, plain, drab, boring. Why would the Church call it "ordinary." That's hardly inspiring.

I want to propose an alternate understanding for this time of year. At Pentecost the Church received the wind its sails that it needs to live out the comission it received from our Lord at the Ascension: to set out into the vast horizons of the world, preaching the Good News and baptizing the whole world. The Church has just re-presented that initial descent of the Holy Spirit in the Pentecost liturgies. Now it is time for us to turn our minds back to the task of evangelizing the world. We are like Jesus' army, or navy perhaps, and we have grown into quite a massive fleet. As St. Paul notes in his letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor 12) we cannot all just do whatever we like, but we must each find our role in the broader Body of Christ. Having found our role, we need our marching instructions for how to conduct ourselves. If we were all feet, who would think? If we were all eyeballs, who would walk? Likewise, if we were all teachers, who would pray? If we were all contemplatives, who would defend the teachings and reputation of Holy Church? Our leaders, the successors to the Apostles, have over time developed a set of methods, or procedures, or "ordinances" for figuring out who does what. Some are very exact: Everyone goes to Mass every Sunday and on other obligatory observances, unless grave circumstances intervene. Some ordinances are more vague: "Teach all nations," and we are left a great deal of discretion in determining how to work them out in our day-to-day lives. These ordinances are where we get the name Ordinary Time, I suspect. It is the time when the ordinary Ordinances, without special fasts or feasts, disciplines or dispensations, apply. It is these ordinances that structure our day-to-day life as Christians.

But the work of the apostolate is hardly boring - at least, not if we are putting our hearts and minds into it. Every apostolate has dimensions of prayer, service, and evangelization, although each apostolate will have varying proportions of each, and some dimension may be mostly implicit. Work at a soup kitchen is primarily about feeding the poor, though our love for them should draw them to Christ, and we should saturate all our work with prayer. Printing apologetic tracts is primarily about evangelization, but will be of great service to teachers of the Faith, and should be saturated from beginning to end in prayer. The apostolate is the outward mission of the Church, and is to be conducted primarily by the laity, in cooperation and guided by their pastors.

The apostolate is to be grounded in the spiritual life of each Christian, and every Christian is called to participate. Our spiritual lives, infused with the Faith, Hope, and Love of Jesus by the sacraments, are to be nurtured by solid time spent in prayer, healthy Christian community, and immersion in the Sacred Scriptures. Out of this soil grows a solid plant of apostolate: intercessory prayer, service, evangelization. There is a world out there in dire need of Christ, and only Christians can bring Him to it.

To aid us in our task, the Vatican II Council produced a document Apostolicam Actuositatem, on the apostolate of the laity. I highly recommend reading the medium-sized but easy document. Some people feel awkward about looking for ways to share their love of Jesus with others. Fair enough, and I don't want to judge them because I used to feel that way too. They might even rationalize it by saying that all religions are equal or that they don't want to force their beliefs on someone else yet. They might consider this point, though. If you don't want to share it, you probably don't get it, either.