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2011-09-06T06:56:00.000-07:00

But thou, O LORD, art a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head.

My Christmas Present for Baby Jesus

2010-12-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

How can the inspiration of the Holy Spirit be described? I have heard no heavenly voices, but there have been times when an idea from the Lord seems to arrive, to have been placed in my heart by God.

I like Evelyn Waugh's analogy of God as a fisherman who, once he gets a hook in the fish, will give the fish as much slack line as it wants. The fish will run and run, and when it has worn down its strength in trying to escape, it is that much easier for the fisherman to pull it out of the water with a quick tug on the line. ("the twitch upon the thread").

This is not to say that I've been trying to run away from God, but believers will know what I mean when I say that the heart experiences from time to time the tug of a rope that yanks your attention straight out of the flow of time, and for a brief moment you are like a fish who has been pulled into the air, and sees the wider world beyond the pond. And it is the great cosmic joke and tragedy of human existence that this arrives as a surprise even the fifth and tenth and twentieth time it happens. Our minds are that dim.

Twice this fall, I have been called.

My present for Baby Jesus this Christmas is a resolution to reform my life in a specific, yet immaterial way. I will probably fail at first, because what I'm going to try to do ultimately is to make a clean break with the zeitgeist (the "spirit of the times").

The seed of the idea, at the moment of inspiration, was to swear off sarcasm and "negative humor". But I quickly saw that reining in my toungue is only a first step -- because knowing my own weakness, I will not be successful for very long if I don't also obey the same resolution in my thoughts, and again knowing my own weakness, I will not keep control of my interior life for very long if I don't alter my intellectual diet. So I'm going to be cutting a lot of sarcastic humor and time-wasting diversion out of my rss reader as well.

So before I have even started, the idea of it has snowballed into something very ambitious and frightening. It has grown into nothing less than to unite my whole interior life with the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Seeing it on such a grand scale, I am sure that I will fail. But, even so: The Ring must be destroyed.

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

For the Unemployed

2010-10-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

Judith 8: 25-27

Besides all this, we should be grateful to the Lord our God, for putting us to the test, as he did our forefathers. Recall how he dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that happened to Jacob in Syrian Mesopotamia while he was tending the flocks of Laban, his mother's brother. Not for vengeance did the Lord put them in the crucible to try their hearts, nor has he done so with us. It is by way of admonition that he chastises those who are close to him.

When these words are spoken, the Israelites are doing a specially difficult kind of waiting -- they are under siege and running out of water. I thought this part of scripture might lift up those who are struggling with the agonizing wait of being unemployed. It is a hard thing to accept, the suggestion to be thankful for our trials.

But we are not to simply sit. Judith takes bold action that you might not expect after reading those words. She dolls herself up in her finest outfit & jewelry, marches into the enemy camp, catches the eye of their leader, and ... well,

Judith was left alone in the tent with Holofernes, who lay prostrate on his bed, for he was sodden with wine...

When all had departed, and no one, small or great, was left in the bedroom, Judith stood by Holofernes' bed and said within herself: "O Lord, God of all might, in this hour look graciously on my undertaking for the exaltation of Jerusalem; now is the time for aiding your heritage and for carrying out my design to shatter the enemies who have risen against us."

She went to the bedpost near the head of Holofernes, and taking his sword from it, drew close to the bed, grasped the hair of his head, and said, "Strengthen me this day, O God of Israel!" Then with all her might she struck him twice in the neck and cut off his head.

She rolled his body off the bed and took the canopy from its supports. Soon afterward, she came out and handed over the head of Holofernes to her maid, who put it into her food pouch; and the two went off together as they were accustomed to do for prayer. They passed through the camp, and skirting the ravine, reached Bethulia on the mountain. As they approached its gates, Judith shouted to the guards from a distance: "Open! Open the gate! God, our God, is with us. Once more he has made manifest his strength in Israel and his power against our enemies; he has done it this very day." (Judith 13)

God's blessing on all those suffering under the siege of unemployment. Do not despair, and do not abandon the spirit of boldness!

2010-07-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

Marco reflects on some things from Story of a Soul.

The Narrow Gate

2010-06-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

This sequency of sayings is very hard to deal with.

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter through it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but underneath are ravenous wolves. By their fruits you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Just so, every good tree bears good fruit, and a rotten tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So by their fruits you will know them. Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?' Then I will declare to them solemnly, 'I never knew you. Depart from me, you evildoers.'

Matthew 7:13-23

But what is the fruit by which we are to judge? Obviously it is not prophesy, it is not driving out demons in the name of Jesus, and it is not acknowledging Jesus as Lord, for he says that even the damned call him 'Lord'. In fact Jesus implies that these false prophets believed they were doing his will and expected to be saved! How can I be sure that my hope for salvation is any more valid than theirs?

There's a further enigma in his response to the false prophets. "I never knew you." At first gloss I read it as "You never knew me." But no. What can we do to change how well an omnipotent God knows us? We can only present ourselves to him on a regular basis. (mass, adoration)

How transient are the concerns of this life, compared to such danger, as if the whole universe were being sucked down a drain with the bath water. Swiftly and inexorably the last bits of this life are wrapping up...

It is incredible that Jesus says those who find the narrow gate are "few". What a devastating remark, and it is spoken with such surety. And by one who has reason to know. Devastating. How the mind of modernity rejects such a claim!

The chapter ends thusly:

When Jesus finished these words, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.

Yeah.

Book Recommendation

2010-05-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading The Weight of Glory, one of the few popular C S Lewis books that escaped my attention when I was a teenager. I can recommend it highly.

In the first section, he has managed to speak about two topics that have puzzled me recently. The first is the nature of beauty, both in art and in the natural world. The second is the religious concept embodied in the word "glory". In the space of only a few pages, Lewis not only shed surprising light on both these conundrums, but he showed how they are connected. What a gift from God to be once again be racing through a work of C S Lewis, finding new lights being flicked on in my mind and soul from page to page!

Follow-up to the previous

2009-11-06T04:43:00.000-08:00

Quoted here, this is from a 1984 address by Pope Benedict (long before he was Pope) to seminarians in Germany.

The ability to accept and weather suffering is a fundamental condition for succeeding as a human being. Where it is never learned, existence is doomed to failure. Being up-in-arms about everyone and everything contaminates the ground of the soul, so to speak, and turns it into barren land. The priest must learn how to cope with pain -- formerly one spoke of asceticism in this context. No one likes this word any longer; it becomes more palatable when we translate it from Greek into English -- training. Everyone knows that without training and the will-power that goes with it there is no success. Nowadays one trains for all kinds of skills with enthusiasm and persistence, and in this way record performances in many areas are possible that were once deemed inconceivable. Why does it seem so outlandish to train for real life, for the right life -- to practice the arts of self-denial, of self-control, and of freeing ourselves from our addictions?

I think "freeing ourselves from our addictions" is an important thing to talk about, but here I'm afraid it sells short the importance of the idea of "training". For many people the importance of this insight is that such practice - going through the motions to prepare a routine response to difficulty - is emphatically not restricted to such dramatic situations, but should be used in whatever primary way our path to unity with Christ is blocked. We should be practicing, learning by rote, what our response will be to the next time we a tempted to so much as a bad attitude.

Of course!

2009-10-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

You know your adversary the devil is going to oppose you. Don't wait until he shows up to contemplate the battle. Plan for his attack. What's his "in"? How is he going to strike? Have a plan so that when trouble begins, your response is automatic. If you were fighting a war, you wouldn't say, "I'll wait until my forces are engaging the enemy, and then come up with a strategy." Anticipate. Practice. Expect your opponent to probe you for weakness and strike where you are vulnerable. Decide how you will react before it happens. Periodically review your strategies.

It sounds obvious, but even among the "religious", how many people do this?

Readings October 4, 2009

2009-10-04T10:27:00.000-07:00

Sunday's readings have the obvious theme of human marriage.

"This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh ... That is why a man leaves his father and mother ... and the two of them become one flesh."

"Blessed are you who fear the LORD ... Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine"

"What God has joined together, no human being must separate."

Of the four scriptures used, including the Psalm, only the New Testament epistle (Hebrews 2) does not specifically speak about marriage. Instead we hear a teaching about Christ's suffering and humiliation, how he was made "lower than the angels" in order to bring us to "glory". It's this text I want to talk about, to weave it back into the theme in the other readings. Enlightened by the greater context of scripture and tradition, we can understand this as having to do with the spiritual marriage between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5), which meshes nicely with Paul's theology of uniting ourselves to Christ on the cross in order to join him in his resurrection (Romans 6).

As in marriage, we must become "one flesh" with Christ the Bridegroom. We become a part of Christ's body in baptism, and we receive his body in the Eucharist.
United with him in suffering, we come to share in his glory as well, just as married couples follow the same path together through life.
Just as Jesus teaches that no human being must separate those joined in marriage, we are told in Romans 8 that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, ... will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." It is notable that the stronger phrasing is reserved for the heavenly marriage - our bond with Christ is greater than human marriage, which ends with death.

All this makes the connection between human marriage and the bond between Christ and the Church very clear, so it is fitting that in order to arrange this union to occur, God had Jesus take on a human nature as a man, the bridegroom.

I find I am interested in the line, "Therefore, he is not ashamed to call them brothers." Before the crucifixion, Jesus extended his friendship to his disciples; "I no longer call you servants, but friends." After, that relationship is deepened even further in the similar-sounding "Therefore, he is not ashamed to call you brothers." Both statements invite us into a deeper intimacy with Christ.

One the one hand, you might explain that this is where the metaphor breaks down. Our relationship with Christ is not a marriage in exactly the same way marriage exists between two humans, and the word "brother" is in essence an additional metaphor to add more understanding. On the other hand, while recognizing the dissimilarity between these two "marriages", we have not necessarily abandoned the metaphor even here. In the Song of Songs, the human bridegroom addresses his spouse as "my sister, my bride". If Christ the bridegroom can say to a Christian woman "my sister, my bride", then it follows that his address to the Christian man as "my brother" is of one and the same quality -- in the realm of the spirit, the sexual falls away and for all of us, men and women, brotherhood with Christ is fundamentally a spousal relationship.

Again and again, as a man or woman return to their spouse at the end of each labor, our souls return to Christ in worship. Again and again we return to him, and weave our lives into his life. So much could be said of the similarities between spousal love and our relationship with the savior. But fundamentally, at the end of it all, the ties that bind us to him remain, when every other bond breaks and falls away. It is that cord that preserves us from the sucking abyss that will take even the ground beneath our feet. Tethered to the cross, we are swept up into the glory of he who was "for a little while" made "lower than the angels".

Here below the angels, we ponder the man of whom such a thing needed to be said.

Readings September 20, 2009

2009-09-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Theme: Throw away your love for contention and spend your time working for what is good.

I love contention because I love being right because I love me more than you.

Readings September 6, 2009

2009-09-04T10:51:00.000-07:00

I struggle with the gospel stories like this week's, when Jesus heals the deaf man. Of course it is a remarkable testimony to Jesus's authenticity that it actually happened, but for a reader who is already convinced of his divinity, it makes a rather bland allegory for salvation. I've never been deaf or blind, never experienced a physical healing, and I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to go through that. That's not to say I haven't experienced healing -- I certainly have been touched by God in the heart, in ways that created real changes in my life. In a way that makes this gospel even less compelling: I don't need an allegory to appreciate Jesus' touch. The story of a physical healing falls short before what I've experienced, has nothing to add to it.

A much more appealing image is found in the first reading. First it predicts Jesus' healings, "Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, ... then the tongue of the mute will sing." But it continues, "Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steppe. The burning sands will become pools, and the thirsty ground, springs of water."

A burst of water, welling up from beneath the desert sands. There is God's work. In addition to the personal healing of the Holy Spirit throughout our lives, we can also interpret this to be foreshadowing Christian baptism, which arrived along with the healing of the blind, lame, and deaf, with the Incarnation of Christ. Those are two wildly generous gifts from the Father, both so well suited to the image of the spontaneous transformation of the desert. Just writing about them moves me to praise God for his generosity, which I do even as I write this. That taste of thankfulness must be something like what the deaf man experienced in today's gospel.

Finally, the first reading begins this way:

Thus says the LORD: Say to those whose hearts are frightened: Be strong, fear not! Here is your God, he comes with vindication; with divine recompense he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,...

Isaiah points out that a catalyst for God's intervention is our own witness to one another. God is saying, "look what great good can happen if you just open your lips to encourage the doubter and console the fearful."

I take this as an admonition and also as an encouragement, because I play both roles. Firstly, I am secure in my belief, and able to put together expositions like this one for the encouragement of someone who might read it. For too long I have kept my faith reserved and quiet out of some overdeveloped sense of propriety. Secondly, I am one of the fearful who need encouragement. Heck, I get nervous about making small talk with the nicest of folks. It is reading about the generosity of God's gifts and reflecting on them that strengthens me to become an encourager.

So I think that opening line touches very close to my motivation and purpose in starting this blog. An appropriate second post. Do I have any readers yet?

Readings: August 30, 2009

2009-08-29T18:45:00.000-07:00

In tomorrow's Gospel reading, the Pharisees respond with understandable confusion when Jesus and his disciples casually disregard the Jewish hand-washing tradition. Jesus says,

You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition...

First, it is challenging that Jesus sets aside a Jewish tradition that is so easy to fulfill. Why doesn't he just wash his hands? We often hear him described as an "observant" Jew, when someone wants to explain his words and actions in that context. We can probably overstate his fidelity to Jewish law. He is, after all, here to fulfill and transcend the old covenant and establish a Church that leaves those traditions behind. But it is still probably true (or maybe not) that he would observe the Jewish traditions unless he had a good reason not too. It seems likely to me that he wanted to raise the question so that he could make the response that he makes, in order to teach.

Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile. From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile.

Consider each item in the list separately. Go ahead.

It's quite a little reflection, isn't it? We should pause to acknowledge how unusual our "normal" human behavior is. This is not the way people were designed to function. We are malfunctioning, badly. It's embarrassing. We defile ourselves.

The second reading says,

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

A priest told me today in confession, "Acts of charity drive out sin." That's the solution. Take the focus off of your own desires. Remember, all those sins Jesus mentioned come from within. Turn your focus outward, and let them wither for lack of attention.

Easier said than done, right? Man...

Suffice to say, we need a savior. We need a "rebirth". The second reading again:

He willed to give us birth by the word of truth... Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls.

Did you catch that "able to"? This is referring, I think, to the parable of the sower.

The seed has been planted = We have heard the word. We have taken it into us, right into our hearts, the same hearts from which Jesus said come all those nasty sins.

But that doesn't mean we're saved.

It has the power to save us.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves.

Charity drives out sin.

The truth is, I have a deathgrip on my personal desires. The idea of spending any amount of time doing "extra" good works seems awful to me, because I have a good idea of my own mortality and there are a lot of fun things I want to do before I die.

And I'm definitely one of those people who notices if somebody violates the GIRM.

Well did Isaiah prophesy about you hypocrites, as it is written: This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts. You disregard God’s commandment but cling to human tradition.

I'm a Pharisee. Oh, and welcome to my new blog.