Shade to Splendor

Strait from the Heart of Lent

2006-03-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

From the conversation I mentioned earlier, a word from the heart of Tyson, who has answered us all in the spirit of Truth:

Greetings Eric and Dom (et al.),

I agree that there is not need for dichotomy theologically, but it was hard yesterday speaking with a mother of a friend of mine. She lives a 7 hour bus ride outside of the city and is only able to afford a visit once a year. Her son, Alfonso, is disabled and is in a boy’s home attending an American school. She is a mother, and though she speaks Spanish with limitations (she is indigenous and speaks Quechua), she was able to express what any mother would feel, the sadness at being so far from her son, who after 5 years in this home is bored to go to the village where he grew up. We spoke about their lives, the hard work and the small pay (a family with four kids living with them earning under $2 a day), and about Canada, the cost of a flight from there to here, and how shamed I was. Sure, I am trying to make my way through this country scouting for the footprints of Christ and where they will lead, yet we are separated by my Love which does not extend far enough to those so inflicted by the injustice and inequality present in our world.

It is a good and fine thing, I suppose, to discuss whether or not my post was creating an unfair dichotomy. My philosophical / theological communication is not the greatest.I will then post some new questions, plain enough I hope for clear understanding. While there needn’t be a separation between a belief and life, why are so few Christians leaving behind their wasteful lifestyles in the north? Why do they waste on coffee in a week what some entire families survive on in a month? Why do the sermons preached about our neighbors and Love rarely lead to extreme shifts in our lifestyles?

This post is about the Church’s responsibility, right? In the context of sharing the truth which is in our baptismal confession:

“Do you reject sin so as to live in the freedom of God’s Children?”- What is this freedom? Does it not bind us with all of God’s children who are suffering? Do we then ache for their pain and poverty?

“Do you reject the glamour of evil, and refuse to be mastered by sin?”- Glamour? Vanity? Excess? Covetousness? Inequality?

“Do you reject Satan, father of sin and prince of darkness?”- He also gave birth to the gap between the wealthy and poor, to entire nations crippled by disease…

“Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?”- creator of all, Lover of all, as a father it would hurt me so see so many of my children living high at the expense of my other equally-loved children

“Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father?”- born into a poor family, a life of emptying and solidarity, is this Life our leading, or it is a one-time break?

“Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting?”- This drives us to bring the Good News, but to whom? To all, to those who know it not perhaps as a tradition, but more so to those living in the results of what its lack has done in this world. The prostitutes, the glue-sniffers, the abusing fathers, the … sick.
No, there needn’t be a dichotomy between belief and loving works, but there is because the two are very often not in accord with one another.

I post emotionally, not with a very sound or calm mind. This may be something to count against me and my perspective. But it is very hard, very very hard, to be living here and engaging people whose struggles are very much against the results of sin, and very often the sins of others.
I
love my spiritual director, a Catholic priest with an incredible heart. When I first came to him, I was thinking about becoming Catholic, he was focused on me following Christ more closely. They can be found in the same place, but it is the latter that is most important.
True belief in the heart may often express itself in different words and traditions - even faiths - but it is declared true not by these but by its fruits. Our lives should be those of gardeners, some sowing, others tending, others harvesting, all working.

My thoughts.

Peace in Christ,Tyson

It is easy for us in the West, especially the rich, educated, and comfortable, to fester in an opulence that we are blind to. We must not only recall the beatitudes, not only pray them, not only reference them to those who live them, but we must conform our lives to them. And we must always remember the story of Lazarus and Dives.

But, most of all, we must trust the Lord, as much as we are able.

And remember, that justice necessitates the eschaton, the end, the final judgment. There will be a reckoning.

Church? What do You Mean?

2006-03-06T19:56:00.000-07:00

There is an interesting conversation going on at Dom's blog. It covers a wide range of subjects, not the least of which is the question of the Church, and what it's good for. A part my contribution follows:

The Orthodox and the Catholics have a relationship with God that is personal, in the most intimate sense. God himself is present in the sacraments. ...trying to form communion with God in cultural isolation is like forming a relationship with your wife exclusively through email. You may develop a profound relationship, but you’re never sure who is on the other side of the screen, so to speak, and your relationship cannot be consummated. Through the sacraments, we consummate the relationship we have with God. It is not an alternative to prayer, it is the fulfillment of prayer; a prayer of the highest kind. It is God’s will that he stepped out of the prophylactic smoke surrounding the Holy Mountain, and revealed himself to us in material, in flesh, in the humanity of Jesus Christ. And God’s will to reveal himself to us, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, our Advocate, in material is manifest in his instituting the sacraments. Humans are cultural beings, and meaning is mediated to us through cultural products. At the heart of CULTure is cult. At the heart of the Christian cult are the sacraments. At the periphery of the Christian cult are sacramentals, signs and symbols that foster our prayerful reception of grace in the sacraments.

Many contemporary Protestant communities have forsaken the culture of the Church, and have, as a consequence, renounced the cult at the same time. The Bible remains - an object of Christian culture through which most of what they know of Christ may be derived - and so they are able to maintain a relationship with the Lord with some degree of orthodoxy. Also, many have Baptism, though recent conversations in this blog have revealed that many reject even that. The consequence is that many of these communities are not Church, but devotional associations. I believe that you can know God, and that you may even be saved from it. But it is a scraping after the minimums. It is accepting Christ as spouse, while rejecting the feast. It is elevating the relationship of words, while forgetting the joy of sacramental union, communion, courtship and consummation.

Our Baby's Heart

2006-03-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

We heard our baby's heartbeat, this evening.

Lindsay's mother is a doctor and works in a low-risk pregnancy clinic, so she invited us in after-hours to listen.

I expected it to sound percussive, like a little drum hammering away. But, it was a different sound, reminding me of what you might expect from a sheet of metal being flapped up and down.

And earlier in the day, a woman I worked with who is away on maternity leave dropped in with her month-old daughter. The girl, Mya, was beautiful.

It's remarkable, at the end of the day, how much weight is carried in the memory of eight pounds of baby and a nine week old heartbeat.

Ash Wednesdsay

2006-03-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

Lent has begun.

Catholics are called to 40 days of spiritual preparation in anticipation of the glory of Easter. On each Friday we are obligated to abstain from eating meat, and we are encouraged to devote ourselves to the good works Christ commends to us; we are called to fast, to pray, and to give alms.

And we are called to do so in a spirit of humility and smallness.

Father Edmund, our pastor, suggested that Lent is something that is, in a way, imposed on us by the Church, and for our own good. And it all begins on Ash Wednesday, a day of fasting that we are required to observe.

The forty days of Lent recall several events in the Biblical history, but none so clearly as the forty days Jesus spent fasting in the desert. There he was tempted by the devil, and prevailed.

The more seriously I take my faith, the more I understand the seriousness of what I am called to. The special character of the Ash Wednesday service is the imposition of the ashes of the burnt fronds from the last year's Palm Sunday. The palms recall the triumphant entry of Jesus the Christ into God's city, Jerusalem. Those fronds, the palms of triumphant entry laid at the feet of Christ the King, are burnt up, consumed in fire, and what remains, lifeless ash and coal, is marked in a Cross on the forehead of the devoted. And the words are intoned, "Remember, man, you are dust, and to dust you will return (Gen 3:19)".

You were not, and you will be not. You will die.

Such is our invitation to the forty days in the desert, where we are promised a struggle with the devil himself.

It is no small relief that the forty days of Lent do not include Sundays. Every Sunday is Easter, the Feast of the Resurrection.

Fast, pray, give alms.

Be humble, be small.

You will die.

This will all conclude with Holy Week: the scourge, imprisonment, indignity, execution and a tomb.

But on the horizon, the Sun is rising.

A Challenge

2006-02-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

"The Christian should reflect for a moment: Are there any Christian goods he does not owe, directly or indirectly, to what he perhaps contemptuously dismisses as 'institution' or the 'establishment'"?*

Anyone?

* Hans Urs von Balthasar from Mary: The Church at the Source (Ignatius: San Francisco, 1997)

'Duh Vinci Code' - A Temptation for Those Who Would Court the World

2006-02-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

To clarify for those who may not have heard of it, the Emergent movement is an accretion of the evangelical Church that is characterized by its radical use of cultural camouflage. The Emergent community has self-consciously adapted itself to the culture in which it lives, that is to say, Americana, in an attempt to open channels of communication with unbelievers in terms that they would understand. The idea is that the exclusion implicit in a pronounced orthodoxy and distinctively ecclesial culture is itself a scandal to be overcome by a sensitive seeker; remove the scandal and you have opened the Church to be a force of conversion. A part of the chameleon act involved in this has been the attempt to adapt to and Christianize post-modern philosophy. Much of the rationale for this movement is predicated, I suspect, on honest and earnest and self-consciously devoted Evangelicals who trusted their ability to navigate the darkness of contemporary American culture, and emerge unscathed. It is all the natural conclusion of the 'seeker friendly' heresy.

The result so far, unfortunately, is the production of massive churches that appeal to thousands who want belief without doctrine, a pastor without a crook, the Body of Christ without bones. This is not the cost of dialogue; this is the cost of compromise.

This compromise which follows the quest to 'engage the culture' has interesting corollaries that ought to make us wary of a dialogue that does not begin with the first principles of fidelity. Richard Neuhaus posted today in On the Square: Observations & Contentions on the behavior of some evangelicals in reference to the movie, 'The Da Vinci Code'. There is a fine line between 'engaging the culture' and discovering that you have adopted the culture and what follows is, in my opinion, a case study of the sort of thinking that has spawned the Emergent movement:

"Both Catholic and evangelical blogs have been exercised by the number of evangelicals who are encouraging people to see The Da Vinci Code, the movie. (The movie is known in some circles as the Duh Vinci Code.) This is, we are told, a “teachable moment” in which the patent falsehoods of the book and film can provide an occasion for opening people to the truth about Christ and the Church. Put me down as among the skeptical.

Sony is paying an organization called Grace Hill Media to sell the film to evangelicals. Among the films that Grace Hill has promoted to the evangelical Christian audience in the past are “The Producers” and “Elf.” Go figure. In the material put out by Sony and Grace Hill, we are informed that all kinds of “experts” on Christian history and theology have been enlisted to explain the significance of “The Da Vinci Code.” It has not gone unremarked that some of these experts are associated with evangelical groups that are distinctly critical of Catholicism. The book and, it is assumed, the film provide rich material for the peddlers of sinister theories about the ways of the Whore of Babylon. The experts “correct” the film by referring viewers to their own accounts of the errors of Rome.

Critics of Grace Hill and others who are party to this game are understandably puzzled about why evangelical Christians are plugging a story that alleges that the gospel accounts of Jesus are fraudulent. Of course, the line is that you can’t criticize something without having seen it. Which is nonsense with respect to more conventional pornography, and with respect to the spiritual pornography that is The Da Vinci Code. In addition to the suspicion of anti-Catholicism, one might also “think low” and ask just how much Grace Hill Media is getting paid to do Sony’s dirty work. Most poignant, of course, are those evangelicals who think they are “engaging the culture” and have hit the big time when Hollywood gives them “a place at the table” to discuss the pros and cons of blasphemy against their Lord and Savior."

Ex Opere Operato

2006-02-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

People familiar with devoted young evangelicals are familiar with the question, 'what is the minimum required for belief before one can be regarded as a Christian?' I think that this question arises again and again mainly because of the emphasis within Protestant communities on Sola Fide - Faith Alone - one of the priciples of the Reformation. Sola Fide as a theological concept was not so much about the content of belief as it was about salvation coming by faith through grace, rather than by an effort on the part of the Christian believer to contribute to his own salvation. It seems to me, however, that in the decline of theological and historical self-understanding among less traditional evangelicals the prominence of faith in Protestant belief has come to raise the question of content in relation to faith. What does it mean to be a Christian? What is a Church? Who belongs to the Church? How can we know if someone is or is not a believer in Christ?

This question troubled me in the difficult years following my conversion to Christianity. Faith alone. It can be a terrifying concept when regarded with candor and introspection. The question becomes, do I have enough faith? Salvation becomes an uncertainty, and anxiety is close on our heels.

I remember when I was in Taize I had a conversation with a woman, one of the few from Canada, who was deeply worried about this question, 'was her faith enough?' How could she know she was saved? She could say with the Apostle, "I believe, help my unbelief." But, what if that unbelief outweighed the belief?

Shortly before my baptism, it occured to me that in faith I came to the Church, and in the waters of the sacrament something would be done to me to affect my salvation. I came in faith, imperfect, unholy, a sinner, in need of salvation. And in the sacrament I was forgiven, made clean, made holy, united to Christ. This was of the utmost importance: something was done to me.

It is not my faith on which I rely. I rely on the work of the Lord, and that is brought to me ex opere operato. Ex Opere Operato means that if the communicative nature of the Christian sacraments is acknowledged, a sacrament properly performed is seen to convey God's grace independently of the faith or moral character of the celebrant or recipients. There is a touch of irony, I suppose, that I was convinced by my baptismal experience which took place in a 'seeker friendly' evangelical Church to convert to Catholicsm.

On the Debt of our Creation

2006-02-14T00:30:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Mary: The Church at the Source, a combined work that is a compilation of writings by Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope Benedict XVI while Cardinal Ratzinger. The first evening of our RCIA Purification & Enlightenment will be on Mary and her place in the Church.

From Father Balthasar, words I find especially interesting in light of our expecting:

If someone is a believer, he will never cease being struck with amazement at the mystery of the begetting of a child. How can a purely physiological process produce a human person who is free, spiritual, enjoys an immediate relation to God - how, indeed, unless the all-begetting origin, God himself, is involved. Every man who is in any way religious will owe lifelong thanks for himself, not only to his parents, but also to God. After all it was God who gave man his [man's] own self as the highest and primary of all worldly goods.

Amazement and gratitude, and a renewed respect for my parents. That about sums it up.

New Life

2006-02-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

Lindsay, my wife, is pregnant.

I want to write about this because it seems important to record my thoughts and feelings about this singular unfolding of change in my life. But now that I start, I hardly feel like I can get past those first five words, "Lindsay, my wife, is pregnant." Those who know me might be surprised if they realized how nonplussed I really am.

We are not surprised by this gift. We have been open to life, and welcoming of it, and God has seen fit to bless us with it. In the beginning of our months of trying, sitting one Sunday next to the windows depicting the Blessed Annunciation, we heard a sermon which included a phrase that settled on my mind, "In God's good time." I remembered that, again and again, as we waited and prayed and hoped to share in God's re-creation.

And now God's good time has come. Change has come with it, a change that is singular not because we will only have one child - God willing - but because we will only have one first child. As life unfolds and takes shape in the warmth and hospitality of Lindsay's womb, slowly and certainly the lives of our custom are being pulled apart and broken down, themselves passing through a tremulous re-creation.

It occurred to me, after my sister's procreative experience, that childbearing is cruciform. On of the consequences of sin, we are told, is that God "will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children (Gen 3:16)." And Jesus tells us "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit (John 2:5)." Lindsay has welcomed life, and in welcoming it has accepted the self-sacrifice and literal self-giving of childbearing, and when the great moment arrives her graciousness will be answered with manifold pain, and, passing out of the pain, a child. She will love that child, not less, but more because of the sacrifice she endured for its sake. To be born of water and Spirit, as Jesus reveals necessary, is to be Baptized and Confirmed. To be baptized is to be united to Christ's death - a suffering death of crucifixion - and so to his Resurrection; and to be confirmed is to be sealed by the Holy Spirit. The love and sacrifice of the bearer is to be likened to the love and sacrifice of Jesus; and the continued self-emptying love of the mother is to be likened to the abiding and steadfast love of the Father, through the Holy Spirit.

These changes, this self-giving and self-sacrifice, and the promise of pain in childbearing and labor, are all evident to Lindsay. She, by gift of her womanhood, feels directly the nature of the changes taking place in our lives. My experience is altogether different; more vague and uncertain. I expect to be taken off my feet in the delivery room, and, again, to be nonplussed.

At times, I feel normal, like there is no difference this month from last. In fleeting moments I feel the weight of responsibility and duty. The other day I looked into the mirror and suddenly saw, as if through the eyes of a young child, the face of a 'dad'. The more real it seems, the more love and gratitude I feel, and I am reminded again and again of a different sense of hope than I am familiar with. Sometimes I even feel relieved, especially when I step back and regard, like a beautiful vista, how remarkable Lindsay is; she will be a wonderful mother. When I think of our child, of what it might face and what we might face because of it, of who it might be and who we might become, one thing I never feel is fear.

God is good.

El Camino de Santiago

2006-02-05T22:33:00.000-07:00

One of my mentors, Charles Nienkirchen, made great efforts to teach his students about the importance of introspection. Ongoing self-scrutiny is an invaluable spiritual discipline. By searching ourselves we come to know more than ourselves; we come to see the work of God and grace in our life. And when we look at ourselves with regularity, we can perceive small, incremental changes that have been wrought over time. Small graces over long periods are how many of us are transfigured. I suppose, also, that small evils left alone to fester and corrupt can over years and decades leave us dead, and still weeping and gnashing our teeth.

It is with interest, having last posted on my memories of having arrived at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, that I re-read my online journal, written while I was on the Way. It was not meant to be a journal, as such, but a way of keeping my friends and family current on what I was experiencing. In fact, each entry was just an email, which my pastor at the time decided to post on the church website for the community to read.

I remember being at a lunch with acquaintances from the church and one asking me, "So, did you learn anything important on your trip? Did you pick up some wisdom?" I thought for a moment, and realized, perhaps for the first time, that I had learned more than I could collect, and that I could develop it over a lifetime. I replied, "Yes." And he looked at me, expectantly, waiting for an elaboration. My heart sank a little. I told him the one thing that might be of real help to him at that time, one of the most important jewels of wisdom I was graced with on our journey. I said, "I can't tell you what I learned; it just doesn't make sense without the experience."

It's true that the lesson of El Camino de Santiago is inseparable from the pilgrimage itself. I suppose that so much of our wisdom is like that. If the desert is an essential element of our spiritual life it cannot be avoided by talking or reading or praying around it. We cannot be completed in the faith by reading the gospel of the Cross; we each have to take up and bear our own crucifix.

Do I equate my time on the Way of Saint James with the cross I have to bear? No. It is, however, a part of my own via dolorosa. In reply to one of my emails Charles said that he thought all of what Jesus did from when he left the waters of the Jordan at his baptism was a part of the Way of the Cross. Did not all roads then lead to the Passion for our Lord?

And so, in good measure are the disciplines of penitence, penance, fasting, and scrutiny vindicated. They prepare us for Gethsemane and for Golgotha and for the New Jerusalem.

We Walked Past the Den of Thieves

2006-01-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

I read a post this evening that aroused in me lovely, if not melancholy, sense of nostalgia. Ashley passed through the National Cathedral, and found that "despite it's beauty, grandeur and OPULENCE, (she) felt nothing spiritual whatsoever." She "felt dirty and disgusted walking through that place" and "so incredibly sad, simply because it's a shame to see something built for a specific purpose (to inspire) and fail miserably in doing so."

Her remarks reminded me of my time in Spain, and I commented, saying:

"A friend and I walked El Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage route that runs from all over Western Europe, coalescing into the Royal French Road which leads to the route's final destination, Santiago de Compostela. Our intentions were devotional, though neither of us were Catholics at the time.

The journey was strange. Walking between 20 and 40 kilometers a day, every day, for a month is a necessarily acetic experience. And the physical toll we endured displaced most of my desire to pray, to reflect, and, frankly, to be cordial, or even civil, with my companion. We made friends that we will never forget, even though we remain out of contact. We glimpsed the mystery of Providence, and discovered out of our relative poverty the meaning of hospitality and generosity. We learned not only to endure deprivation, but to respect it, and maybe even love it, a little.

It changed us in many ways, the walk, and, although we knew it then it would take years to learn how, and to try to grasp the meaning of it for our lives.

And this peculiar experience, at once mundane and profound, was unmistakably teleological, and it seemed the goal, naturally enough, was the Cathedral, Santiago de Compostela.

But when we finally arrived, one of the first things the came to both our minds was, 'this is a den of thieves.'

There were so many 'pilgrims' who hadn't broken a sweat to arrive, and to us they couldn't seem genuine, not then.

There was no Mass at the high altar, but in a chapel on the side. The area was enclosed by sound-proof glass with a sign that read something like: RELIGIOUS SERVICE IN PROGRESS; PLEASE BE SILENT. It was like they were monkeys in a zoo, and the tourists were being reminded not to feed them peanuts.

There were things for sale, Scallop Shells (a symbol of the route), walking sticks, t-shirts, and Rosaries.

I wanted to see St. James. I was not one to venerate a Saint, but I had walked all that distance and his memory was infused with the experience. There was a long line, packed by tourists and pilgrims, and the movement of the queue was continuous. It was as if we hadn't arrived. We walked 800 kilometers to see Santiago, and didn't stop at his bones; we walked right past them, and shortly thereafter, out the door.

A den of thieves, we thought.

I would moderate that now, but what we felt was not right, not holy, and neither of us would care to see that church again.

And like you, I found peace in a simpler, humble place.

And, ironically, I have since converted to Catholicism."

There was an upside to Ashley's story, however. Upon leaving the Cathedral, she found a "garden, completely unlike the rest of the area, (which) almost looks neglected, despite being very well manicured. And therein lies the appeal of this place. Despite being overshadowed by one of the most overwhelming buildings in the city, it stands alone, complete separate..." She says that "here, I found peace and much sought after connection to something greater than I. Just in the smell and feel of the wind, the close cropped grass or the hedges, there I felt my insignificance yet utter importance for the first time in a long time. To say the least, it was kind of amazing."

And from this she draws the conclusion, "I slowly work my away towards being somewhat a pantheist. Help me."

To which I reply; "It is not a platitude to say that God made the garden in which you encountered something...amazing. And it is not pantheistic to recognize, coming out of a sense of opulence and spiritual aridity, in the cool January wind, something God-like smells."

God bless Ashley, who can count on one hand how many people address her by her full first name on a regular basis.

Scapulars, a Part of Catholic Culture

2006-01-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

A friend, Sam, asks about scapulars, wondering, "Do you know the responsibility or reasoning behind wearing one, that would be different then wearing a crucifix?"

Scapulars have a long history, which is recounted in detail here, though I warn you, the read is rather dry.

All religious apparel, including vestments, jewelry, crosses, and robes are sacramental in character. A sacramental is something, an act, rite, object or substance (i.e. holy water), that instills a disposition in the faithful that facilitates the reception of grace, especially, but not exclusively, through the sacraments.

In the Sacraments of the Catholic Church (Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Marriage, Ordination, Reconciliation, and Anointing the Sick) the grace represented in the signs is actually received, independent of the disposition of those administering the sacrament. Contrarily, the efficacy of sacramentals depends on the disposition of those who participate in the sacramental. The grace received through anointing with holy water, or through praying during the Mass, or through using the Rosary, or through walking a pilgrimage, or through wearing religious jewelry depend on the participant's faith in conjunction with the act, object, substance, or prayer. At the same time, those very acts, objects, substances, and prayers will cultivate a disposition towards faith and the reception of grace in any form.

So, praying during Mass will not necessarily be a means of receiving grace, but it will dispose you to the reception of grace in the sacraments. If one were to feed the poor, which is a sacramental act, while hating the poor, they will not receive the grace involved in the act. However, the act itself will help to form that person so that they will be more likely to perform the act with love, especially if it is in conjunction with other good and sacramental acts.

This is not to say that grace is not received through sacramentals. A person who receives the poor with love will receive grace, and will be transformed by it. However, the act itself does not contain the grace received. Contrarily, a consecrated Host, whether St. Francis of Assisi or Adolph Hitler eats it, contains the Body and Blood of Christ and that very Body and Blood will be received regardless of the disposition of the recipient. That being said, God's self-giving in the Eucharist does not overide the free will of men; moral and spiritual preparedness remains the "precondition both for the reception of other graces conferrred in the celebration itself and for the fruits of new life which the celebration is intended to produce afterwards" (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1098). The Sacrament is not made by the power of humanity, but humanity must open itsef to be re-made by the power of the Sacrament.

Both the crucifix, worn as jewelry, and scapulars are sacramentals. The primary difference between them is that wearing a crucifix does not involve proscribed rules for its use, and so does not have the same quality of disposing the wearer to grace as does the scapular.

Scapulars are adapted from the habit, or religious clothing, worn by monks, and their use, as described in the link above, has a long and varied development. Different monastic communities have developed the tradition of wearing the scapular in their own ways, and the image, color, text and size of the scapular will vary depending on the community who uses it. There are scapulars that are devoted to various saints, to Mary, to qualities of Christ, like his Blood and Sacred Heart, and to the Trinity. When a person is invested with a scapular, there are prayers or rites that are prayed over the garment, blessing it and its user. In some cases, the wearer is obligated to pray in a certain way, for example uttering the Hail Mary three times a day, or other prayers particular to the tradition of the scapular being worn. For a person properly disposed, who has worn the scapular faithfully and acted according to its regulations, indulgences are given by the Church.

Both scapulars and crucifixes can be meaningful accessories that help to remind us of God, and his works and graces. Both, again, can be more or less pointless, or even sacrilegious, expressions of personal vanity or taste.

Something of particular merit and beauty about the scapular is that it is a specifically Catholic tradition. To wear a scapular is an act that draws a person into the culture of the Church. The scapular is connected to the history of monasticism, to the saints and our veneration of their holiness, to the ongoing prayers and intercessions of the 'cloud of witnesses', and to our local parish community and priest, where it is distributed and blessed. And, despite its connection to the Church community, to wear the scapular is an individual exercise, a devotion and sacramental prayer that works continually, in our homes, work places, schools, malls, and cars. And it acts continually as a sign, reminding the wearer to pray, and to reflect the face of Christ to everyone they encounter.

It is a wonderful tradition, one among many that each new generation of Catholics has the responsibility to foster and hand down to our posterity.

An article that has been influential in my life as regards the importance of Christian Culture can be found here. I strongly recommend any of Robert Louis Wilken's writings.

On Truth, A Remarkable Post

2006-01-26T19:49:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I haven't been paying attention. A friend suggests that is the only reason I would not have heard about the minor controversy surrounding a book of the month pick for the famous 'Oprah's Book Club'. Thankfully, he has been paying attention, and has written a poignant comment on the Truth, and the way we demand to know about it:

http://thinkerlabs.ca/domruso/

Thank you, Dom.

Benediction

2006-01-22T23:56:00.000-07:00

I published my last post in quite a hurry, finishing it five minutes after I should have left for Mass. It occurs to me that I missed one of the most important points. Joe Chip finished his comments with a blessing-for which I am quite honestly grateful- saying, "May the Holy Spirit sustain you in your spiritual growth."

In kind:

May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord let his face shine on you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord show you his face and bring you peace.

Amen

More on Gnosticsm

2006-01-21T13:11:00.000-07:00

Joe Chip posted an interesting comment on my blog about Harry Potter, remarking on my brief summary on Gnosticism. He points out that "Gnostics did not and do not believe that Gnostic myths are 'the fullest comprehension of the real.'" I entirely agree with him on this point and repudiate my statement. Most mystics, no matter their tradition, would cringe at the notion that their ideas of God or the Ultimate Reality or Truth could be conveyed, comprehensively, in words. Our means of communication are intrinsically limited, and few know this better than those who have encountered the ineffable, and want to talk about it. This notion, of our limits to talk about God, is developed in greater or lesser degree depending on the theological or philosophical system through which God is understood. The Judeo-Christian tradition understands God to be a God of revelation, the culmination of which is the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate. Much of what we can say about the divine will be articulated in negative theology, saying what God is by listing what he is not, but we also have the means of articulating positive theology because of the Trinity's self-revelation in and through Jesus. Classical Gnostics did not believe that God was revealed in creation, or in the incarnate Christ, but was so unknowable that even to say, in terms of negative theology, that God is ineffable, is to say that something is known of him. As Jean Danielou writes, according to the Gnostics, "God is unknown absolutely, both in his essence and in his existence; he is the one of whom, in the strictest sense, nothing is known, and this situation can be overcome only through the Gnosis." It is in this context that the essential dualism of Gnosticism is made apparent, contrary to the claims of Joe Chip, because this unknowablility of God is "a question of radical dualism, distinguishing between the God of whom the world enables us to form some idea (who is merely the Demiurge) and the God who has no connection whatever with the world, and who can be known only by means of himself."* In this context it is clear that my sentence was inappropriate.

I find it interesting, as well, that several of Joe's statements could be read as statements of Orthodox Christianity. For example, "Gnosis is salvific insofar as it transforms our being and brings us into union with the divine, making us like Christ, little christs and all that that entails--boundless compassion, selflessness, humility, etc." Deification is the effect of salvation, and this has been well developed in Orthodox Christianity, finding its essential and distinct beginnings in the Gospel of John, and finding episcopal articulation in the writings of Athanasius.

Also, "The Eucharist is a localized transubstantiating event, a redemption of matter by alchemically transmuting it into the spiritual substance of the body and blood of Christ, bringing Christ and matter into union, a local Incarnation." The use of the word 'alchemically' is inappropriate; God's redemptive work is not a magical manipulation of material reality, but a re-creative healing of reality. However, the essential idea is true: Christ is made present in the Eucharist by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the gifts of bread and wine are substantively changed and redeemed, mysteriously incorporating the real presence of the crucified Lord. It is a local Incarnation.

That being said, I think Joe's understanding of Gnosticism reflects an anachronism common to contemporary Gnostics. The unity of neo-Gnostic thinking does not reflect the highly variegated religious, philosophical, and mystical communities and individuals of antiquity who have been grouped in modern scholarship by their common ideas under the rubric, Gnostic. Vanentinus, Basilides, and Marcion have each been called "Gnostic" by various writers, and each had a very different appreciation of the nature of reality and how it could be understood. As I wrote in the post, "Gnosticism as it existed in Late Antiquity was distinctly religious. The Gnostics were inheritors of the mystery cults and middle and neo-Platonism. To this admixture was added the ideas and stories of the Jews and Christians, a real mélange of beliefs." For support I quote Justo L' Gonzalez in A History of Christian Thought (Abington Press: 1970):

Under the general title of "Gnosticism" are included several religious doctrines that flourished in the second century, and whose main characteristic was their syncretism. The Gnostics would take any doctrine that they found valuable, without any regard for its origin or for the context from which it was taken. When they came to know early Christianity and saw its great appeal, they attempted to take those aspects of Christianity which seemed most valuable to them and adapt them to their systems... There has been a great scholarly debate regarding the origins of Gnosticism, but this debate probably can never be settled because of the syncretistic nature of Gnosticism itself, which makes use of Persian dualism as well as oriental mysteries, Babylonian astrology, Hellenistic philosophy, and practically every doctrine that circulated in the second century. (pg. 128-129)

And Paul Johnson in A History of Christianity (London: Penguin, 1988):

No one has yet succeeded in defining ‘Gnosticism’ adequately, or indeed in demonstrating whether this movement preceded Christianity or grew from it. Certainly Gnostic sects were spreading at the same time as Christian ones; both were part of the general religious osmosis. Gnostics had two central presuppositions: belief in the existence of a secret code of truth, transmitted by word of mouth or by arcane writings. Gnosticism is a ‘knowledge religion’ - that is what the word means - which claims to have an inner explanation of life. Thus it was, and indeed is, a spiritual parasite which used other religions as a ‘carrier’. Christianity fitted into this role very well. It has a mysterious founder, Jesus, who had conveniently disappeared, leaving behind a collection of sayings and followers to transmit them; and of course in addition to the public sayings there were ‘secret’ ones, handed on from generation to generation by members of the sect. Thus Gnostic groups seized on bits of Christianity, but tended to cut it off from its historical origins. They were Hellenizing it [making it acceptable to the Greeks (from ‘hellenas’=Greek)]... Their ethic varied to taste: sometimes they were ultra-puritan, sometimes orgiastic. (pg. 45)

Joe Chip's claim that "gnosis is not just for Gnostics... Anyone can have gnosis," reflects common liberal sentiments of inclusion and pluralism more than historic conceptions of gnosis. Also, his suggestion that perhaps what I "perceive as mere imagination is a kind of gnosis, the recognition that creeds and dogmas are not, in fact, reality," reflects the subjectivism and relativism characteristic of Unitarian or universalistic conceptions of reality and religious expression. The implication is that transcendent truth can be interpreted through the doctrines and creeds of various religious traditions so long as those doctrines and creeds are recognized as mere "pretty symbols pointing the way, but not the way itself, just as the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon itself."

What is most interesting to me about this is the evidence it provides for the enduring syncretistic and parasitic nature of Gnosticism, even in its contemporary forms. While still drawing on its old sources of Platonism, Christianity, Judaism, and near-Eastern paganism, it manages to draw also on nihilistic relativism, subjectivism, and universalism. This also sets into context the apparent near-orthodoxy of some of Joe's, and other Gnostic’s, statements; they are Christian doctrines, pilfered and modified to match a Gnostic paradigm.

And the paradigmatic shift from antique Gnosticism to neo-Gnosticism, which draws on the philosophical sources previously mentioned, serves to validate what I posted, that "most people in the West, being skeptical, do not actually impart religious belief to anything Gnostic." Rather, they use the fascinating and affective Gnostic fictitious formula, employed in its characteristically parasitic and syncretistic manner, to formulate a spiritually compelling story that generates a religious feeling that can cloak their essentially non-religious world-view.

I am interested to read Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism, as recommended by Joe Chip. The Penguin edition has an introduction by Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the greatest Christian thinkers of the past century.

*Jean Danielou, A History of Early Christian Doctrine: Vol 2, Gospel Message and Hellenistic Culture (Dartman, Longman, & Todd: London 1973) pg. 336-337

To Eat Phlegm for the Love of God

2006-01-20T00:08:00.000-07:00

Recently, I remembered a pericope of the Desert Fathers that stunned me as a horrible and wonderful example of self-control, and of love. From Benedicta Ward's compilation of The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, On Self Control, no. 70:

At a meeting of the brothers in Scetis, they were eating dates. One of them, who was ill from excessive fasting, brought up some phlegm in a fit of coughing, and unintentionally it fell on another of the brothers. The brother was tempted by an evil thought and felt driven to say, 'Be quiet, and do not spit on me.' So to tame himself and restrain his own angry thought he picked up what had been spat and put it in his mouth and swallowed it. Then he began to say to himself: 'If you say to your brother what will sadden him, you will have to eat what nauseates you.'

I am a man weak in spiritual discipline.

At an RCIA meeting last night, we discussed the approaching season of Lent as it relates to the stage of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults entitled, Purification and Enlightenment. It is a time of internal scrutiny, penance, prayer, fasting, and discipline - all in an effort to prepare the catechumens and candidates to receive the sacraments. Each of our weekly sessions will be orchestrated towards cultivating our sense of the Passover, the paschal mystery of the passion, the meaning and magnitude of Christ's journey to Golgotha, his love, suffering, self sacrifice, and thanksgiving.

I suggested that we strongly encourage the candidates and catechumens to fast during Lent, and to fast seriously. They should be encouraged to take on real deprivation in order to share in suffering, to hunger - physically - for the Feast of the Resurrection, and to foster the seeds of discipline in their Christian youth so that it can grow into a felicitous strength for their future lives as heirs to the Kingdom. And I suggested that we, the RCIA team, should do likewise.

My fellow RCIA facilitators, all orthodox and devoted Catholics, agreed that fasting is a valuable spiritual exercise, but made many, vigorous arguments against being too encouraging on the subject. To be fair, I think that my wording may have made it seem like I would demand of the Catechumens that they fast, and that would be wrong. And my friends pointed out that, according to the definitions published by the Canadian Council of Catholic Bishops, fasting includes not only abstaining from food, but from other good and natural activities, and from increased devotional or charitable deeds. And they make a valuable point.

The most important thing in the fasting, however, is the act of deprivation, of taking from the self for the sake of God, and of conditioning our souls, minds, and bodies to be true and faithful servants of Christ, in all circumstances. We are to train like athletes for spiritual fitness, and works of discipline are our exercise.

So to tame himself and restrain his own angry thought he picked up what had been spat and put it in his mouth and swallowed it.

It is horribly disgusting. It is a profound act of love, discipline, and sacrifice.

Would that we all might condescend to eat phlegm for the love of God.

Harry Potter, Paganism, Gnosticism, and Literary Criticism

2006-01-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

The following post is a part of an email that I sent to a friend in response to an article on Harry Potter written by the novelist, painter, and essayist, Michael O'Brien. The article can be found at:

http://studiobrien.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=69

It has been a long time since I read the article, Harry Potter and the Paganization of Children’s Culture, by Michael O’Brien. I found the it at once compelling and disturbing. Usually, this is the case when I read an article or book that has a good argument that I ‘somehow’ don’t like. The unrest that this combination gives me is nice in a way; it drives my consideration of the work and makes me want to write about it. But, with summer vacation, family life, other reading, and work, I haven’t had time to devote enough thought to fully develop my response to the article. And, frankly, the topic is not important enough to me to warrant much more consideration. So, what follows is a sketch of my ideas, and not an attempt at a comprehensive examination.

I’m not convinced that Michael O’Brien understands literature.

His introductory paragraphs deal with the definition of imagination as a tool for our minds to approach the “realization of wonder” as a means of opening us to “reverential awe before the Source of it all.” Understanding imagination in this way leads him to see the works of imagination as having an essentially religious function. It may be the case that our imagination makes us capable of the “realization of wonder” and it disposes us to contemplate the glory of God, but that is not to say that this is the singular function of literature.

Creation myths in the Near-East are a type of fictitious narrative and form our earliest recorded texts. These texts were related to the religious systems of the people who created them and they served a religious function. The early Greek works served a similar role. Homer and Hesiod recorded the activities of the deities in fiction and these works were treated as educational and religious tools alongside the cult of the pantheon. The best tragedies, works by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus, were produced for the religious feast of Dionysius, and may have had come to replace an earlier sacrificial ritual. The Bible is a complicated book that blends fact and fiction into a sometimes bewildering mixture, and it is unquestionably a religious book that is used for moral instruction and to prepare us for the contemplation of God and His ways. These books all have their origin, and some their function, in a religious context. Yet, they are all very different books and cannot be judged according to a sole criterion, ‘what religious message to they impart?’ If O’Brien thinks that Christians shouldn’t read Harry Potter for moral reasons, then he must also suggest putting away Gilgamesh, the Enuma Elish, Homer, Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Aristophanes and countless others. I wonder if he would suggest this? I don’t. Our cultivation requires that we appreciate great literature. Our edification requires that we regard great literature through the truth of the Gospel, insofar as we are capable.

It may be unwise to introduce an 8 year old to Oedipus Rex, which involves King Oedipus unknowingly killing his father and marrying his mother. But, Harry Potter isn’t as bad as that, I suggest, and a 10-12 year old should be able to manage.

The book that is regarded as the first modern novel is The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, by Miguel Cervantes Saavedra. If I had to classify it, I would say that it is 1 part comedy, 1 part satire, and 1 part adventure story. It follows a small landowner/farmer, Don Quixote, who is convinced that he is a knight errant, and, quite delusional, he wanders around with his moronic tenant, Sancho Panza, through the Spanish countryside getting into all sorts of trouble. The story is replete with sexual misadventure, toilette humor, immoral behavior, and violence. I will not venture to judge to moral value of this book. It is important to note, however, that it is emphatically not a religious text. Certainly, it reflects the culture in which it was written. But, it was not written to be used as a work of religious or moral instruction. And so, it ought not to be judged by the standards applicable to works of religious or moral instruction. If a child read Don Quixote and contemplated it as a religious work, he might develop some seriously strange ideas about holiness, or divinity.

Harry Potter is much more likely to elicit the desire for imitation among the young than Don Quixote, but I believe that it is a serious error in judgment to think a child of 10-12 years of age does not know the difference between a novel and a religious text.

There is a reason we read novels and a reason we read religious works.

I do not mean to draw a parallel between the Harry Potter series and the great works of Western civilization. I believe, however, that it is important that we pay careful attention to the role that our fears play in our assessing the read-worthiness of any book. Undue anxiety about the subconscious effects that Harry Potter stories might have on our children could prevent them from reading a book that is, indeed must be, well crafted for that particular audience. If all books that we read had the same moral direction, the same moral lessons, the same appraisal of character, the same ideas about action and consequence – in short, the same worldview – then literature as a whole would suffer. In a perfect world we are all Christian and act, talk, and think in a Christian way. In reality, we get to a perfect world, in part, by struggling with and against a fallen world. Literature, good literature, needs to include the voice of the fallen in order that we can enter into that struggle. It is a part of our duty as Christian parents to teach our children how to read religiously. That must start from birth, and must include the use of the Bible and holy texts continually so that they, as they learn to think, have the means to struggle with the works of the world. Hiding our children from the works of the world will not protect them from sin. Teaching them how to engage the works of the world will.

It is our duty, also, to decide when our children are prepared to enter into that struggle. I do not suggest blindly feeding our children any and all trash at hand. I suspect, however, that Harry Potter does not qualify as simple trash.

Near the end of his article O’Brien asks us if we would allow our children to read a book about more or less good fornicators, or about more or less good drug dealers. He is well aware that most of us who call ourselves Christians would not. He then asks us why we would allow our children to read a series of books about a more or less good wizard. By his opinion there is equivalence between sorcerers and fornicators and drug dealers. In fact, he suggests that sorcery is possibly more dangerous than the latter. In support of this, O’Brien draws on the work of Father Gabriel Amorth, author of An Exorcist Tells His Story. Both O’Brien and Amorth claim that sorcerers are real, exist, and are fundamentally connected to the demonic.

I have read Father Amorth’s book and have thought on it quite a bit. There are difficulties that people in the West have with accepting and believing in the supernatural, and these difficulties, which I share, represent a type of weakness in the collective and the individual faith of Western people. However, it is no less a weakness to presume, against the collective experience and teaching – indeed the non-doctrinal education of our pastors, Catholic and otherwise – of the Church and society that we have something to fear from sorcerers and magic. Without question, we have cause to fear the influence of the culture of sex and drugs on our children. I know people who have been addicted to drugs and who have AIDS. There is good reason to believe that the demonic is behind that. However, I have never known anyone who has had and experience of being truly hexed, truly cursed, or truly possessed. I do believe that there is meaning to the term, ‘possession’, and I do believe in the reality of demons, but I do not think that there is any immanent danger of the oppression of demonic forces in connection to almost all of the ‘occult’ in North America, and certainly not via the conduit of Harry Potter.

Finally, I would like to make a comment about O’Brien’s use of the term ‘Gnosticism’ in relation to the Harry Potter novels. Historical Gnosticism was a varied thing, and I must admit that I have not studied it directly, but have read a great deal about it while studying early Christianity. Gnosticism as it existed in Late Antiquity was distinctly religious. The Gnostics were inheritors of the mystery cults and middle and neo-platonism. To this admixture was added the ideas and stories of the Jews and Christians, a real mélange of beliefs. The mystical speculations of the Gnostics were, fundamentally, imaginative – as is all speculative theology. However, the imagination and its ability to inspire awe in the believers were not for imagination’s sake, or for awe’s sake, but, in the eyes of the Gnostic, to attain true Gnosis, true knowledge of the true reality. They believed that their imaginings were the fullest comprehension of the real. The wonder of their speculations and the incubating cult that they practiced was designed to convince the believer that he or she approached the divine. This was all very religious in a conventional understanding of the term. The fiction of the mystery cult, the fiction of the true, hidden knowledge, the fiction of the speculative theology, and the fiction of the dualistic reality (light against dark, matter against spirit) cultivated the believer’s intellect towards the Gnostic beliefs. That is to say, the system vindicated itself by producing itself.

After the Enlightenment most Westerners are profoundly skeptical. O’Brien argues this himself. And those who are attracted to Gnosticism are themselves usually skeptical. For those aware of the trend in Biblical scholarship towards equating Gnostic texts with the Gospels, it should seem clear that an at best agnostic, relativist, and anti-Christian agenda dominates scholarship dealing with Gnosticism, especially in popular publications. For those who are not aware of this trend, and who are interested in the way the Bible is handled by many of the ‘experts’, read Phillip Jenkins’ Hidden Gospels: How the Quest for the Historical Jesus Lost its Way. My point follows. Most people in the West, being skeptical, do not actually impart religious belief to anything Gnostic. However, insofar as what remains of Gnosticism is Gnostic, it is capable, as it was designed to be, of generating a sense of wonder, awe, and mystery, revolving around a secret knowledge. This Gnostic formula has been worked and re-worked into an innumerable variety of fictitious literature, of which the Harry Potter series is the latest and by far the most popular. There is nothing un-Christian about affirming the quality of the Gnostic fictitious formula, or of employing it in literature, so long as it is not connected to a religious reality, but is understood as a work of the imagination. Under these conditions, the Harry Potter series is benign.

The question might be raised, what about the New Age? What about the best selling occult, shamanism, Wicca, and so on? To this I answer, it is deadly. Is it deadly because it will lead our children to possession and Satanism? I don’t think so. It is deadly because those who practice these things are worshipping their imagination, their demi-created un-realities, rather than the one true God. The same danger threatens all who are not Christian. There is no particular danger to the New Age, I suggest. For a perspective on how the New Age developed in America, especially as it relates to Native American spirituality, read Phillip Jenkins,’ Dream Catchers: How Mainstream America Discovered Native Spirituality.

Truth be told, I recommend all of Phillip Jenkins’ books.

I am well aware that I lead by criticism. My former pastor called me a gadfly for this reason. It’s mostly because I find it boring to talk about what you agree with, and especially tiresome to write about it.

Nonetheless, I must say that I agree with O’Brien on a number of points. We should be more careful of what our children read and watch. TV is bad. We entertain ourselves too much. We don’t have enough Christian culture and the West is sliding back into pre-Christian symbolism. There is a deadening of our moral nerves when we continually expose them to immorality. We should be more ‘shockable’. We need to take the supernatural more seriously (though we need to do it well). At times, the humanities and social sciences lead discussions that would be better lead with theology. The imagination should be understood and employed (but not exclusively) in the context of worship. Etc.

Something I really appreciate about Michael O’Brien is that he is involved in the creation of Christian culture. He is a novelist who has written a number of books. I have only read the Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, the first in a series. Also, he is an artist, essayist, and edits a Catholic newspaper. I recommend his book and a visit to his website, found in my links.

And now I think I’m done with this. Maybe in a decade or so I’ll read a Harry Potter book.

Blogging Ineptitude

2006-01-16T22:32:00.000-07:00

I haven't been blogging lately, because I haven't had internet access at home lately. I am temporarily in service and will have full access in a couple of days. For the one or two people who check in on this blog, more will be coming soon.

A Treasure Making Treasures

2006-01-03T22:13:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine was in town for Christmas and I had the wonderful opportunity to meet with him and enjoy conversation over drinks. He studies Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, and is a devout and frankly pious evangelical. We both were privledged to have been mentored by a wonderful man who exposed us to the riches of Tradition, the importance of spiritual formation, and the necessity of experience and encounter with the Divine in our journey as exiles in this fallen world. Our conversations are always edifying and often leave a lasting impression on my thoughts and imagination. In this recent period of conversation, my friend opened my eyes anew to the special grace and wisdom of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA).

Initiation into the Catholic Church has been long formed by the Church's role in culture: most Catholics are born into the religion and for centuries it had been the only option available to the community in which it was situated. Children were baptized in their infancy and it was their parents' responsibility to educate them in the ways of the faith. Parental instruction was facilitated by parish programs, and through the education system of the time. But adults who were called to the Catholic Church did not have a developed rite to initiate them into the Body of Christ; instead, one-on-one instruction or small class instruction educated them on the primary doctrines of the faith, and they were subsequently baptized in a small and often private affair.

As an initiative of the Second Vatican Council the RCIA has been developed to restore the more ancient model of Christian initiation. And, like so many of the reforms articulated by Vatican II and interpreted through the papacy and the episcopate, we now have available to us a treasure that forms treasures. I have been recently asked to take the responsibility of RCIA Coordinator for my parish, and I gladly accepted the offer. I told my friend about this, and he asked me to explain what the RCIA was. I told him that the RCIA, as our diocese approaches it, has four parts: Inquiry, Catecumenate, Purification and Enlightenment, and Mystagogia.

The Inquiry period runs year-round, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month, from 7 to 9 in the evening. Interested people drop in and participate in prayer, scripture reflection, topical discussion, and have the opportunity to ask questions about the faith. Through prayer and discernment it is determined if the candidate is interested and prepared to enter into the Catechumenate.

Once in the Catechumenate, the candidate participates in the liturgical cycle for one full year. During this year, the catechumen is exposed to the liturgy, parish life, and all the major doctrines of the Church. Presuming that, after one year of catechesis, the candidate is prepared for baptism, he or she is admitted into Purification and Enlightenment, which roughly corresponds to the season of Lent.

In Purification and Enlightenment, the catechumen undergoes guided reflection, prayer, retreat, fasting, and penitence in preparation for baptism at Easter. The main emphasis at this point is not instruction, but spiritual formation and preparation in anticipation of their meeting Christ in the sacraments.

Over the glorious Triduum the candidates pass through the sufferings, death and resurrection of Christ and through the waters of Baptism, supping on Jesus' body and blood, becoming new creatures in full communion with the Church.

In the following weeks of Easter, the neophytes reflect on their experiences during Mystagogia, through mystagogy, or instruction in the mysteries.

After explaining the RCIA process to my friend, he nodded appreciatively and said, "That's what we need in our church; more of our churches need to do things like that."

I remember while I was a part of an evangelical community how often I would be involved in conversations about discipleship, Christian education, and the poverty of knowledge and experience endemic in our communities. So many of our communities had shallow experiences of the faith, or had deep experiences of God that could not be properly understood and were not properly cultivated. Precious few had any understanding of the basic theology regarding their baptisms, or of revelation, or of doctrines like the Incarnation or the Trinity. Too many churches were populated by infants of the faith and could not boast of the instruction that the author of the letter to the Hebrews described as "fundamental doctrines...turning away from dead actions, faith in God, the teaching about baptisms and the laying-on of hands, about the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment (Heb 6:1-2)."

The problem of Christian infancy is not, by any means, an issue particular to evangelicals. Catholic churches have their own burden of adult infants who would choke and wretch on solid food. But within the Catholic Church, the majority of those people are, to use a detestable term, 'cradle Catholics', who have not realized the seriousness nor the cost of true discipleship to Christ.

The same cannot be said of mature converts within Catholicism. Not, at least, within the diocese of Calgary, and within any Catholic community faithful to the teaching of the Magesterium and the council regarding the RCIA. We have been given a treasure that forms treasures, and "That's what we need in our church; more of our churches need to do things like that."

On Revelation

2005-12-20T21:30:00.000-07:00

Last night, when I should have been sleeping, I was caught up in the mystery of Revelation. Consider, for example, the call of Abraham:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Ex 12:1-3

Were this a liturgical reading, we would hear intoned, “the Word of the Lord” and reply, “thanks be to God.” It is the Word of God, revealed to us: Revelation. But, it is not the Word of God as revealed to Abraham.

I am not interested in arguing for the historicity of the person, Abraham, or of the development of the Semitic community that came to be known as the Israelites, or of any of the other sundry scholarly corollaries that my comments would properly require to be erudite and academically orthodox. I am satisfied with the faithful presumption that there was, indeed, a man called Abram and that he was, in fact, called out of the land of Haran and into the land of Canaan. But, how was he called?

“Go from your country and you kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” How did God say that to Abraham? An urge towards a fundamentalist, literalist reading of the text is natural, and in many cases probably helpful for those who are capable of it. But, for some of us it is not possible, and in all likelihood it is simply not true. Abraham did not hear, in the sense that we hear one another in conversation, the Lord say to him, “Go from your country…” How does God say it? How does God reveal it?

Adrienne von Speyr, herself a woman marked by the heavy burden and special grace of charismatic revelation, describes Abraham’s sense of mission as follows:

It begins with Abraham’s having the initially unprovable certainty—in his faith and in his prayer, in his everyday attitude, and at time when he is specifically speaking with God—that he has a mission.*

By faith, by prayer, by everyday attitude, and by ‘specifically speaking with God,’ Abraham knows his mission. What is the distinction between prayer and ‘specifically speaking with God’? What is the sound of that metaphor, 'specifically speaking with God?' Von Speyr does not imagine an audio-theophany; her next sentence is, “This mission appears to him as an imperceptible sort of choseness.”

And Abraham acted on this imperceptible sort of choseness, following his God to Canaan and becoming the father of a great nation, out of which the Messiah would be born. And the seed of revelation sown in his personal experience would be shaped through the culture of his progeny, made a reference in folklore and tradition, and eventually committed to written word thousands of years later, celebrated as Holy Scripture and understood anew, perpetually, as Revelation, the Word of the Lord. By his unprovable certitude in God’s promise, the content of his mysterious and sublime revelation, Abraham’s imperceptible sense of choseness has been vindicated. In his seed was the line of David, and, as we will celebrate this coming Sunday, from the line of David "all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

What a great mystery, Revelation.

* Adrienne von Speyr. Translated by David Kipp. The Mission of the Prophets. Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1996.

Brother Roger

2005-12-17T20:21:00.000-07:00

Remembering Brother Roger, Martyr & Saint

2005-12-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

For information about the history and activity of the community of Taize, see: http://www.taize.fr/

As the year draws to a close, the annual European gathering of the Pilgrimage of Trust hosted by the brothers of Taize draws near. And for many this event pulls us back to the tragic, violent death suffered earlier this year by the founder of the community at Taize, Brother Roger. While singing prayers together with near two thousand people 90 year old Brother Roger's throat was cut by an insane Romanian, Luminita Solcan.

I learned of Brother Roger's murder at work, having read of it on the internet news. I was shocked and sickened, and stricken by a wave of grief.

In the fall of 2002 I spent 5 weeks at Taize. My days there were among the most important of my life and it was in Taize that I first tasted the depth of peace and love that are the fruit of prayer, quiet, and devotion. At Taize I learned to listen to God, I learned the singular grace of liturgy and the ultimate value of rite and ritual in opening one's self to God and to conversion.

At the end of the evening prayers, Brother Roger used to sit to the side of the Church and whisper a blessing over individual pilgrims who had queued to see him. In my first night at Taize I watched this with cynicism and arrogance, wondering if the elderly monk would be humble enough to approach one of us for a blessing. But before I came to Taize, I prayed earnestly and honestly for God to bless my time there, and to teach me through it, to convert me through it. And before Brother Roger had left that evening, God answered my prayers and filled me with a terrible self-awareness of the poison of my cynicism, that black drink I took into myself in order to divert my attention from a man whose light revealed my darkness. I knew, by grace, that I needed to learn humility by living humility, that I needed to kneel at the feet of Brother Roger and accept his blessing as one from God. And I did. And Brother Roger, stooping down asked my where I came from and what language I spoke. In English, with long moments of silence and strain, he prayed a blessing over me and whispered something else that I didn't quite understand. A young brother next to Roger clarified: I had been invited to lunch with the community the next day.

In the weeks I spent in Taize I was benefited from the hospitality of the Brothers three times, sharing lunch with them in silence. After they had finished eating, they would talk a while about news, about the community, about their guests, the young pilgrims. Because I didn't speak French, the language of the community, between translations I watched the brothers and watched Brother Roger and saw in his eyes and in his smile a profound love and paternal pride in his brethren.

Most people who come as guests to Taize only spend a week there, but there is always a group of young people who stay longer, sometimes a year or more, the group referred to in Taize as permanents, and it was with this group that I lived. Each of the permanents had exposure to Brother Roger, and each loved him and trusted him.

I imagine most people who pass through Taize would agree that Brother Roger seemed obviously a saint. I know enough of the Roman Catholic Church to know that they would not approve of his being called as such; indeed, many resist terming John Paul the Great a saint before it is official. I am of the mind that there is value to the official classification of saintliness, but that one is not made a saint because he or she is so declared. Rather, one is declared a saint because the light of transfiguration shines from their face. As the crowds in Rome shouted "Magnus! Magnus!" and "Santo Subito" so cried the hearts of the thousands who travelled countless miles to kneel at Brother Roger's feet for a blessing. And I expect that they will continue to come, kneeling not at his feet but at his gravestone, praying to him and with him, still receiving his blessing, a blessing as one from God.

His blessing will continue also through his legacy: the community of more than 100 brothers at Taize. I pray God's blessing on the work of the Pilgrimage of Trust, as thousands will gather in Milan to meet the New Year. And in communion with our Pope, Benedict XVI I pray in concordance with his words:

Dear young people, at a time when you are living a beautiful ecclesial experience of encountering others, sponsored by the Taize Community, Pope Benedict XVI joins you all in prayer.

In expressing tribute to Brother Roger who desired these international meetings in order to root in young Christians a spirit of brotherhood and peace lived out concretely, the Pope's wish is that the dialogue among yourselves, who have come from different countries and different Christian denominations, as well as the meeting with the Christians of Milan who are welcoming you, will enable you to form new ties that will be seeds of peace among people. May the example of the founder of Taize and the tireless testimony of Pope John Paul II in favor of dialogue and peace encourage you to be peacemakers in your turn! In a world made fragile by many situations of tension, and in our developed societies marked by new forms of violence that affect the young in particular, the Pope invites you to witness with simplicity and joy to the Spirit of peace who dwells within you, as a result of the gift that the Lord Jesus made of himself, once and for all, on the Cross, for the love of all. For, as the apostle Paul says, "he is our peace" (Eph 2:14) and invites us to forgive, the sign of an absolute love.

Entrusting you to the prayer of Mary, Mother of the Lord and of all those who have become his brothers and sisters, the Holy Father grants you with all his heart an affectionate apostolic blessing, as well as to the Taize brothers, to the communities and the families who are welcoming you.

A Few Steps Backward, Confessing and Apologizing

2005-12-12T21:49:00.000-07:00

I feel the need to defend this enterprise before I properly start it. I know its an unattractive characteristic, the preemptive apologetic, one that reveals a degree of insecurity and, as is often the case with insecurity, pride. But my vices are what they are and in good Catholic manner I feel better confessing them, validating my confession with apologetic.

How do pride and insecurity play into the initiation of a web log?

Well, I write because I want to be read, or, in the more colloquial sense, to be heard. It is a lovely exercise of the mind, to write something daily. Our capacity to formulate our thoughts into words, articulating, condensing, editing, reviewing, and pronouncing that which begins ethereal until it becomes visible and comprehensible by another intellect, our ability to write, grows only through use. And the blog is an excellent medium on which to practice our skill, and to develop it. But, that isn't the reason why I want to start a blog. If that were reason alone, I would simply write in a journal, or compose essays outside of a public forum. Instead, I chose a medium that is more exposed, open to the wandering eyes of the world-wide-web and to those of my friends and family whom I invite. Because this way, I can be heard.

Is the desire to be heard an expression of pride? Or is it a natural human desire, a part of our quest for self-discovery and self-actualization? The desire for self-expression is a desire oriented, rather obviously, around the self, and so falls easy prey to the many snares of egoism. There is a thin line between the desire to express out-of-self and the desire to express self, singularly and willfully. When our self-expression is directed inward, when the message expressed is SELF, a perverse cycle of egotistical pride is generated and perpetuated.

I admit that there is some pride in my want to write a blog. But I acknowledge that SELF is usually not an interesting message, and so I will try to keep it to a minimum.

And as for insecurity, well, I am fully aware of the cliche quality of a blog on religion. There are many, many blogs of this sort and many will be better than mine. To that inevitability I say, paradoxically with humility, I will do the best I can and acknowledge that it is very little.

Incidentally, if you would like to learn more about blogs on religion and the nature of discourse on God on the internet, read Jonathan Last's article, God on the Internet, in the December issue of First Things. http://www.firstthings.com/

A Beginning

2005-12-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

A beginning blogger and a dinner request; didn't Maslow say hunger beats self-expression by a long shot? More after perogies...