Easter Sunday: March 23, 2008

The Easter celebrations continue on Sunday, though the Masses aren’t nearly as elaborate as the Easter Vigil Mass held after sunset on Holy Saturday. For the most part, Easter Sunday Masses are very similar to Masses on any other Sunday but for the larger attendance and the greater number of new dresses and pretty hats. In the Roman Catholic Church, it’s a requirement that the priest lead the congregation in a renewal of baptismal promises but some priests use that form rather than the Profession of Faith on other Sundays as well.

Most of us are with family or will be soon. We struggle to pay attention to the Mass but our stomachs and heads anticipate ham and deviled eggs and far too much chocolate.

It’s a wonderful day and hard to understand why the baptized don’t all come to church, hard to understand why so many have never sought to be baptized. And then while we bask in the glow of our anticipated Easter feasts followed by our entry into Heaven, many years from now we hope, we who are Catholics find ourselves crossing our heads, our lips, and our hearts and the deacon begins to read from the Gospel of St. John:

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So, she ran, and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Peter then came out with the other disciple, and they went toward the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first; and stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. [John 20:1-9]

As we hear those words for the umpteenth time, we can ask ourselves if we’ve ever really listened. Have we sunk into complacency?

Mary Magdelene saw the empty tomb and thought someone had stolen away the Lord’s body. The other disciple, almost certainly St. John, admitted that he and Peter had not even thought of Jesus rising from the dead until they saw the empty tomb. In fact, some of the translations leave matters unclear: did they believe when they saw the empty tomb or did that merely start the thinking process that led to the realization that the Lord Jesus Christ had risen from the dead?

We should enjoy the celebrations of Easter, in church and at the dinner-table and on the front porch watching the children play.

The Lord Jesus Christ has risen.

Yet again, we should ask ourselves if our faith has come by our good luck. Some of us were raised by devout Christian parents and some had friends who had spoken the Good News to us, lovingly and aggressively or lovingly and gently. They had loved us and the Lord enough to try to bring us to Him.

When we have a few quiet moments, we should ask ourselves if we’ve done our part. The pews are noticeably empty of young adults. Have we done our part to impart a love of God to our children and the young adults in our families? The pews rarely have strangers in them and most of those strangers seem to be already practicing Christians judging by their awareness of liturgical practices. Have we ever brought a friend or acquaintance to church with us? Have we ever spoken to a lost soul about God’s love?

What have we done to pass on the Gospel, the Good News, we celebrate so joyfully on Easter Sunday?

So you also, when you have done all that is commanded you, say, “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.” [Luke 17:10]

Have we even done so well as those unworthy servants? I know I’ve not done so well as those unworthy servants.

Easter Vigil: March 22, 2008

[As is my custom, I use the RSV rather than the translation used in the missal used for the Roman Catholic Mass in the U.S.]

The Easter Vigil Mass is celebrated after sunset on Saturday of Holy Week. It begins with a lighting of a fire which is used in turn to light the Easter candle. The Easter candle is carried to the altar at the front of the church in a solemn procession during which the Exsultet is sung, beginning with the verse:

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God’s throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

After the Easter candle is set in a place of honor, the mass moves on to the Liturgy of the Word, the reading and hearing of appropriate chapters or verses from Sacred Scripture. There are seven Old Testament readings followed by a reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans and then Matthew’s account of the Resurrection.

The first Old Testament reading, [Genesis 1:1-2:2], is the account considered by some to be a description of God’s Creation of this world. There’s a reason why this reading is important on this night. The Lord of Creation has been resurrected. If we don’t know what Creation is, we can’t know what that means. If we don’t know what Creation is, we certainly won’t be able to have a rational idea of Heaven. And, in this modern world, where we know the empty reaches of space from documentaries and sci-fi movies, we don’t know where we might find Heaven, the world where Christ waits for those who belong to Him.

Let’s see if a meditative journey can help us to find the world of the resurrected as our Christian ancestors once found it in the heavens that we now know as outer space. Then we’ll have rational terms for discussions and descriptions of Heaven as those earlier Christians did.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. [Genesis 1:1-2]

Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and scholar with wide-ranging knowledge and credentials, has shown in Genesis 1 Through the Ages [Thomas More Press, 1992] that the word translated as ‘created’ in the above verses actually means ‘cleave’ in the sense of separate. For most purposes, we can mentally translate the word ‘create’ in the book of Genesis as ‘shape’ or maybe ‘organize’.

We Christians believe God did create from nothing all that is not Him, but we can’t see or describe that event, even in our imaginations. Science tells us the same though some individual scientists would like to find an equation to describe a creation event — logically impossible since mathematics doesn’t describe existence as such. The so-called Big Bang is not a creation event but rather a transition from some prior state of being.

God shaped this world out of some very strange stuff which He had created as the basic stuff of all Creation. That basic stuff lies on the other side of the Big Bang, though maybe far on the other side. Many other phases might lie in between the rawest levels of Creation and our universe. If God shaped this world out of that stuff, we can have faith that He can shape Heaven — the world of the resurrected out of that same stuff.

In the beginning, God shaped this world from the basic stuff of Creation. God had created the basic stuff of Creation from nothing. God has also shaped a world in which Christ and those who belong to Christ will live with Him for time without end. We know this world of the resurrected exists because the risen Christ has visited this mortal world and given marvelous signs of His perfected body, a body St. Paul called a ‘spiritual body’ in 1 Corinthians 15, a wonderful discussion of these issues. Those who belong with Christ, those who will live with Him for time without end, will have spiritual bodies, much like that of the resurrected Christ. It’s perhaps even more fitting to say that our resurrected bodies will be us in the most complete sense.

Christ is the Lord of Creation. So long as we have faith in Christ and in His God, we can be confident that Christ’s promises will be kept. But we need a vision of the world in which those promises will be kept, else those promises will become no more than feel-good illusions to us and our children. We can gain such a vision if we have the courage and faith to mediate upon Holy Scripture in light of what we modern human beings know about this universe, this phase of Creation.

Friday of Holy Week: March 21, 2008

Good Friday has arrived and we have a chance to celebrate the Lord’s Passion. The Gospel reading [John 18:1 -- 19:42] for this celebration is long, two full chapters of the Gospel of St. John. This reading starts as the Last Supper has ended and Jesus walks to the Kidron valley with His disciples and ends with the Lord being laid in His tomb.

Some Christians have become obsessed with the account of the Passion of Christ which occurs during this reading: His suffering at the hands of the Roman soldiers as they flogged Him and placed a crown of thorns upon His head, as they marched Him off carrying His own cross, and then nailed Him to that cross.

We should honor those who stayed with the Lord, watching Him suffer so greatly — especially His Holy Mother. We should also wonder at those who think it to be some sort of educational experience, let alone entertainment, to watch ‘realistic’ reenactments of the sufferings of Jesus along the final journey of His life on earth. We know that watching violent Terminator movies numbs us, perhaps seriously damaging our moral natures and those of our children. Why would we think it would do us any good to watch reenactments of the horrible sufferings of the Lord of Creation? Are those critics right who use the term ‘religious snuff movie’ for Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ? Will viewing those sorts of movies, will dwelling upon gore in our prayer-life, prepare us to follow in Christ’s footsteps? Will that sort of obsession with blood and suffering merely harden us to suffering as it does in the case of violent military or science fiction movies?

We should remain aware of our Lord’s sufferings but not bask in gory thoughts or images. We should instead think of His greater sacrifice: His offering of His glory in Heaven that He might make an act of perfect sacrifice to the Father. We should remember that we approach death and then are gone with no further awareness unless God is to resurrect us but He raises us anew rather than dragging us through of a state of death and decay. In fact, a creature couldn’t experience the time when it is dead. The Son of God continued to exist as part of Him, His human nature, died. Only the Son of God has truly known death. We know only rumors of death.

We should give up our man-centered views of Christ’s work and have the consistency and the courage to say that the world was created so that Christ could be crucified. The center of time in this world comes during a single verse in this long reading:

When Jesus had received the vinegar, he said, “It is finished”; and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. [John 19:30]

In a world of death, the Son could sacrifice Himself to the Father, conquering death and delivering to the Father all who had been given to the Son.

But it’s Friday. The Lord has died and has been put in His tomb. We should join with Mary and the disciples, feeling their fear and loneliness, wondering what is to happen.

Thursday of Holy Week: March 20, 2008

We have reached the Triduum, the three holy days which precede the holiest day of the Christian liturgical year: Easter. In the Gospel reading [John 13:1-15] for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we hear of the Lord Jesus Christ washing the feet of His disciples. The reenactment of this event, the celebration of the Mandatum, the priest washes the feet of twelve others, but the word ‘mandatum’ has a peculiar meaning, not having an obvious connection to the acts of Jesus or the reenactment by the priest.

Under Roman civil law, a mandatum was a strange sort of contract which wouldn’t be legally binding under American civil codes nor those of many other countries. For a contract to be binding in the United States, both parties have to give something of value. In a mandatum, only one party gives something of value and he gives it without recompense of any sort from the other party. It’s essentially a gift.

The reading tells us this in other words:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciple’s feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. [John 13:3-5]

Near the end of the reading we find these words from Christ:

If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. [John 13:14]

He was the Lord of Creation and He bent over to wash the feet of His Apostles.

We have received all from our Lord and Creator and then He bends over to wash our feet with His own hands and then He gives still more by teaching us to do as He did. He gives freely but asks us to also give freely that we might be His, that we might share His Life, the Life He shares also with the Father and the Holy Spirit.

Wednesday of Holy Week: March 19, 2008

In today’s Gospel reading for daily Mass [Matthew 26:14-25], we hear of Judas going to the priests to betray Jesus. Later, when it was evening, they sat down to eat the passover.

When it was evening, he sat at table with the twelve disciples; and as they were eating, [Jesus] said, “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to him one after another. “Is it I, Lord?” He answered, “He who has dipped his hand in the dish with me, will betray me. The Son of man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.” Judas, who betrayed him, said, “Is it I, Master?” He said to him, “You have said so.” [Matthew 26: 20-25]

Jesus goes about His last hours, knowing what’s going to happen and doesn’t use His powers to stop it. More surprisingly, He speaks not a word to Judas to draw him back from the evil path he has chosen.

We can understand Jesus not saving Himself in terms given us by St. Paul:

And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.

Jesus didn’t deviate from His path because He was perfect in obedience to the Father.

At first it’s harder to understand His acceptance of the treachery by Judas and the consequences to Judas, a man He’d loved and brought into His inner circle. All Jesus says is, “You have said so,” the same response He made to the question of Pontius Pilate, “Are you the King of the Jews?” [Matthew 27:11]

He gave this response to Judas’ question where the answer proved to be, “Yes,” and also to Pilate’s question where the answer proved to be, “No,” once the followers of Christ knew beyond the shadow of doubt that their Master had made no claims to such forms of power though all power in Creation is His. The phrase, “You have said so,” isn’t an endorsement of the truth of a statement.

“You have said so.” The die is cast in both cases. For months, if not years, Judas has been nurturing an attitude which blossomed into outright treachery. For years, Pilate has been nurturing his skepticism while practicing administration and politics in a brutal and corrupt manner. Each of those men had become what they had shaped themselves to be.

We see evidence that God isn’t going to violate the measure of freedom He has awarded us. He is ever willing to help us in our weakness so long as we turn to Him — however fitfully or cowardly, but He will let us train our eyes and our minds so that we don’t recognize Him when He stands in front of us. Conversion is always possible, but Judas and Pilate had each reached a state where conversion would have been very painful at the very least and each seems to have wavered but not had the courage to turn towards God.

This is a fearful possibility to face and we should all worry about it. There are ways for a man who is seemingly a devout Christian to turn his eyes and mind from God as surely as Pilate did. One way is to transform our God-centered thoughts into thoughts centered upon an idol we prefer, perhaps one who will shower fire down upon the sinners or perhaps an idol who will suddenly show a willingness to eliminate poverty and disease and famine and war.

Tuesday of Holy Week: March 18, 2008

From the first reading for Mass on Tuesday of Holy Week [Isaiah 49:1-6], we hear in part:

Listen to me, O coastlands,
and hearken, you peoples from afar.
The Lord called me from the womb,
from the body of my mother he named my name.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away. [Isaiah 49:1-2]

The prophet Isaiah is speaking of himself but also speaking of all men for all men are called to holiness and not just prophets and priests. To be sure, it seems to be uncommon for God to call a man or woman so clearly as He called Isaiah to the demanding life of a prophet.

Yet, each of us is the object of a particular love of God, flesh-and-blood that we might have objective existence and some measure of freedom possible and appropriate for the sort of creature we are. It’s that creaturely freedom which is the problem.

Do we try to discover what God wishes us to be? Few of us are called to such a demanding vocation as that of Isaiah or St. John the Baptist. Some vocation directors at monasteries or seminaries will tell you that a man can’t be a good monk or priest unless he could have been a good husband and father. There may be exceptions but that’s probably a good guideline. The important point is to realize that that man should have passed through a discernment process which might have resulted in a decision to form a God-centered marriage, a decision to be a God-centered man as a layman.

We should all ask:

For what life did God call me from my mother’s womb?

Sometimes, we may even ask:

For what specific task did God shape me in my mother’s womb?

These are different questions from the ones we usually ask when we make our important decisions, though often the answer to the wrong question might be the same as the answer to the God-centered question. A fellow who wishes to marry and raise children may choose to become a lawyer and God might be pleased with that choice, but his future decisions may raise questions about his understanding of his own calling. When he accepts that big-city job with a big-money firm, is he pursuing a better life for his family? Is he instead tearing his children from their extended families and a safe and loving community in order to gain a more prestigious position and to buy an over-sized house in a gated community?

God calls us and He calls us during each and every important decision in our lives. A man could freely and morally raise his children to be Yankees or Red Sox fans without being too concerned about God’s preferences. But God may prefer that he not raise his children to be professional sports fans at all if professional sports is in a state of serious moral disorder.

Maybe God does call each of us to a life which can be as demanding as that of Isaiah but we refuse to hear Him when He says something we don’t like. Over the remainder of this week, as we watch Jesus Christ move towards His cross, we should pray for the openness which will allow us to discern God’s will for us in all the little and big decisions of our lives.

Monday of Holy Week: March 17, 2008

In the Gospel reading for daily Mass [John 12:1-11], we hear of the anointing of the feet of Jesus by Mary the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus had raised from the dead. And then we hear:

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he [Jesus] was there, they came, not only on account of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. [John 12:9]

Some may have personally seen the miracle itself, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and others may have missed it, but the great crowd came to see the result of that spectacular miracle.

And many would travel the relatively short distance to Jerusalem to welcome Christ riding on a donkey, throwing palms in front of Him and acclaiming Him as the Son of David, the Messiah.

And few indeed would remain with the Lord Jesus Christ on His journey to the Place of the Skull where He was nailed to a cross. We might wonder if there is a a relationship between this abandonment and the fascination with spectacular miracles.

When we seek spectacles, we’re trying to look at God and His actions as if we somehow existed apart from Him. We should instead be seeking a true union with God through Christ so that we move with God in His Creation rather than trying to find Him as if He were a beautiful sunset to stare at. We should be wishing to think with God and not to think about God, to pray with Christ and not to pray to Christ, to speak with God in all our words and not to speak sometimes to our neighbor and sometimes to God. Those who achieve such a union with God will be going about the work that God has set for them. They will be living in God and He in them. They won’t need to go see Lazarus being raised from the grave or to see the risen Lazarus walking about.

Lenten Meditations from 2007

If anyone would like to check out my Lenten meditations from 2007, they can be found, starting with Ash Wednesday, at February 21, 2007: Ash Wednesday. You can follow forward from that posting. I won’t be writing any Lenten meditations this year, because of my schedule and a certain level of exhaustion because of my schedule over the past few months.

I wrote a meditation for every day of Lent up until Palm Sunday. This year, I’ll try to complete this task by posting short meditations for the days of Holy Week and maybe continue writing some meditations during Easter season.

I also wrote an overview of the liturgical calendar, The Importance of the Liturgical Calendar, which might be of some interest.

I plan on collecting all of these meditations into a short book though I don’t know if I’ll try to publish it in paper form or release it on one of my blog sites: To See a World in a Grain of Sand and Acts of Being.

April 1, 2007: Palm Sunday

COMING IN FROM THE DESERT

We’ve come in from the desert of Lent but few of us went deeply into that desert. We made short trips, looking for oases as soon as our feet hit the sand. We didn’t go far from the more comfortable regions. We haven’t the strength, but we must ask ourselves if we have the concentration or the persistence to acquire a little more strength for the next Lent. Will we face the Lord one day in the position of the servant who buried the talent left in his care? For now, we can relax, hoping we’ll learn something from later contemplations upon our failures.

Now, our appointed task is to observe the journey of the Son of God as He moves towards Jerusalem, towards His final torments and His death. He Who didn’t ever have to know death, will be dying for us.

But this is a day of joy as Jesus Christ enters the City of David in temporal glory, acclaimed by those who will desert Him and those who will be too confused or too weak to make much effort to support Him in His trials. Let us at least acclaim Him on this day of joy and pray for the strength to stay with Him in the Garden, to accompany Him as He carries His cross, to stand below the Lord nailed to that cross and wait with Him as He dies, and to wait openly and with faith as He lies in the tomb.

In all of this, we must remember this is not a joke, not just a game, not mere rote. By living our lives in a proper liturgical rhythm, by living out the history of Israel as the messianic hope grows, by living alongside Jesus during His birth and early life, His mission and His crucifixion, we prepare ourselves to also join Him in the resurrection. It won’t be the case that we earn a share in that resurrection but only the case that we’ll be letting Him unite us to Him. We just have to open ourselves to friendship with God, to put Him first in our lives. He’ll do the rest.

March 31, 2007: Saturday of the Fifth Week of Lent

FERTILE VIRGINITY

In the intercessions for Morning Prayer, the leader reads:

May the blessed Virgin, your Mother, pray for all those vowed to a life of virginity,

and the others respond:

that they may deepen their dedication to you and to the Church.

A vow of virginity starts with a resounding “Yes” in response to the love of God and the need of the Church for those willing to serve others. It’s not so much different as some would think from the “I do” in an exchange of marriage vows. In both cases, it’s an affirmation of the goodness of human fertility.

It doesn’t take much of a search through history books to find examples of many non-Catholics and even some Catholics who took a vow of virginity at least partly because they despised the body and sexuality, but those are few. The Church always condemned those views when they became an issue.

To find the truth, we don’t even have to go through any history books. It’s sufficient to speak to older priests and nuns. We’ll find that a high percentage of them came from large families and most of those had or have siblings with fertile marriages. Ireland was still a land of large families and overflowing seminaries and noviates two decades ago. Then, almost overnight, Ireland found itself prosperous in the style of the United States, Canada, France, England, and other industrialized countries. The size of families and the number of those applying for entry to seminaries, monasteries, and convents dropped rapidly.

The gods of the marketplaces have taught us and our children to say, “No,” to the call of God and of Church. They have taught us the way of death and that way is wide and smooth with all sorts of pleasures and amusements to be found in the booths that exploiters set up along the way.

And, yet, there are still some who respond to God’s call, to the priesthood or the religious life, to marriage intended to be fertile or appropriate forms of the single life — including the ancient and deservedly honored life of the Consecrated Virgin. There is something special about those who are faithful to their calling and to its special duties: mothers who give their lives to raise their children properly, fathers who have gone to the battlefield or to dangerous or dirty jobs to feed and shelter their familes, priests who give their all to their parishioners or students or patients, nuns and monks who pray and teach and study holy works.

There is something special about those women who take and live up to vows of virginity because they are both the reality and the sign for others of the faithfulness which we should all return to God — for He is always faithful. The example of a faithful virgin causes us to stop and think, perhaps to first make that mistake of thinking the vowed virgin despised her own body or sexuality. Then something, perhaps a personal glow or perhaps many selfless acts of service, will tell us that something else is going on.

In her prayer life and her active life, in the comfort she gives to others, we can see the fertility that is the match for a married mother of many children. The vowed virgin has many children for she is married to the Source of all fertility: God Almighty. She follows in the footsteps of the Virgin Mary. The vowed virgin is the mother of all those that God sends her way as Mary is the Mother of all who belong to Christ.