A Meditation for Holy Week: Love and Death

But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. - Romans 5:8

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:13

Christ on the Cross is the perfect sacrifice because he there embodies perfect love. The immense power of all the wickedness, scorn, and sin of the ages, when heaped upon his broken body, is met with a power infinitely greater: Love. Perfect love. And love covers all offenses. Christ’s death was not merely necessary to satisfy justice, but since only through death—a good, sacrificial death—is wickedness definitively undone, his perfect death provided true atonement for the wickedness of the ages: the sin of the world vanishes before the death of Christ as a wisp of smoke before a gale-force wind. In the beauty of God, Death, the last enemy, the wages of sin, is precisely the vehicle through which Death is overcome. Love is the giving of oneself for the sake of the other. Perfect love is giving all; perfect love is self death.

When we are baptized, we are incorporated into Christ’s death. It is no coincidence that water, the matter of baptism, is simultaneously a symbol of chaos and evil in ancient Hebrew thought and a sign of cleansing in the Law and the Prophets. Christ’s side would not have been pierced but for the evil of humanity, and yet evil is drowned in the flood which flows from him. It is no mistake that water both flooded the earth in God’s judgment and flowed from Christ’s side in God’s mercy. God’s great mercy could not have been fulfilled without God’s judgment upon the sin of the world, yet mercy triumphs over judgment. Perfect love undoes Death through Death.

What’s more, when we are joined to Christ’s death through baptism, we ourselves assume the character of perfect love, for he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. God’s righteousness is the victory of perfect love, which we cannot claim for ourselves unless it should become the character of our life. As Bonhoeffer said, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” True love is death to self. Our Christian lives therefore evince the perfect love of God through the sacrificial nature of our deeds, empowered by our incorporation into Christ’s death through baptism, by the working of the Holy Spirit.

It should come as no surprise, either, that baptism is essentially a communal sacrifice: the one baptized is incorporated into Christ’s death and into his Mystical Body, the Church. Perfect love cannot exist with a subject alone. When we are incorporated into Christ’s death, and we assume the character of that death, it can mean nothing else that we assume his perfect love for the Father and for all of humanity. As his body breaks and blood flows to reconcile the world to himself, who lives in perfect love with the Father, we who are incorporated into his body through baptism are entrusted with the message of reconciliation.

And how do we manifest that message? No other way than always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Christian life precisely in this way—it molds the Church, the Body of Christ, into a cruciform shape. As we are nourished by Christ’s body broken for us and his blood shed for us, our mortal bodies take on the essence of perfect love, of the death of the self for the sake of the other. Only this perfect love—but certainly this perfect love—is able to be the eternal unmaking of sin and death, and moreover, to restore to us our true and eternal self.

Prayer knocks, fasting obtains, mercy receives

This is from today's Office of Readings. A great Lenten meditation!

From a sermon by Saint Peter Chrysologus, bishop

There are three things, my brethren, by which faith stands firm, devotion remains constant, and virtue endures. They are prayer, fasting and mercy. Prayer knocks at the door, fasting obtains, mercy receives. Prayer, mercy and fasting: these three are one, and they give life to each other.

Fasting is the soul of prayer, mercy is the lifeblood of fasting. Let no one try to separate them; they cannot be separated. If you have only one of them or not all together, you have nothing. So if you pray, fast; if you fast, show mercy; if you want your petition to be heard, hear the petition of others. If you do not close your ear to others you open God’s ear to yourself.

When you fast, see the fasting of others. If you want God to know that you are hungry, know that another is hungry. If you hope for mercy, show mercy. If you look for kindness, show kindness. If you want to receive, give. If you ask for yourself what you deny to others, your asking is a mockery.

Let this be the pattern for all men when they practise mercy: show mercy to others in the same way, with the same generosity, with the same promptness, as you want others to show mercy to you.

Therefore, let prayer, mercy and fasting be one single plea to God on our behalf, one speech in our defence, a threefold united prayer in our favour.

Let us use fasting to make up for what we have lost by despising others. Let us offer our souls in sacrifice by means of fasting. There is nothing more pleasing that we can offer to God, as the psalmist said in prophecy: A sacrifice to God is a broken spirit; God does not despise a bruised and humbled heart.

Offer your soul to God, make him an oblation of your fasting, so that your soul may be a pure offering, a holy sacrifice, a living victim, remaining your own and at the same time made over to God. Whoever fails to give this to God will not be excused, for if you are to give him yourself you are never without the means of giving.

To make these acceptable, mercy must be added. Fasting bears no fruit unless it is watered by mercy. Fasting dries up when mercy dries up. Mercy is to fasting as rain is to earth. However much you may cultivate your heart, clear the soil of your nature, root out vices, sow virtues, if you do not release the springs of mercy, your fasting will bear no fruit.

When you fast, if your mercy is thin your harvest will be thin; when you fast, what you pour out in mercy overflows into your barn. Therefore, do not lose by saving, but gather in by scattering. Give to the poor, and you give to yourself. You will not be allowed to keep what you have refused to give to others.

On Grandeur and Intimacy

My wife and I are parishioners at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota. The building itself is a magnificent structure, filled with intricate and meaningful detail. The very grandeur that is so captivating, causing first time visitors to gasp when first stepping foot in the doors, suggests the surpassing majesty of the God who is worshipped therein. Statuary, stained glass, bronze grills, a towering baldakin set atop impossible marble monoliths, a grand dome, and so much more leave the visitor in little doubt about the lofty, sublime transcendence of God.

This is something my wife and I have come to appreciate highly. God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is majestic (and so much more so than the lone word implies). God is sublimely transcendent. Even 21^st-century Americans, many of whom have never experienced an earthly royal court, are familiar enough with the marks of honor (say, at a wedding, where the bride is so honored; or at a funeral, where the deceased is) to understand that a certain regal formality is only fitting for a king or queen. Without it, the regent (or bride, or deceased) is robbed of honor that is due. How much more so for the King of kings!

“Ah,” might say some of my Protestant friends, “but it all makes God seem so high, so aloof, so distant, and not our closest friend.” True, there exists the possibility that one might think of the God of the Cathedral of Saint Paul as one who is unreachable in prayer, unattainable in relationship, ungraspable in comprehension…

…until Mass.

The fact is, God is exactly that to those who are strangers, aliens, enemies (as says Sacred Scripture), distanced by the willful fleeing of his creatures into their own, autopetal volition. But while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And every day of the year (save one) the Catholic faithful around the world come to meet this high, majestic, transcendent God in the Way made present: the sacrifice of the Mass. And this sublime God who seems (and is) so far beyond our mental, physical, emotional, imaginational, spiritual grasp, comes to meet them through Jesus Christ’s real, sacramental presence, shared out in the most intimate way: through a union actualized by the eating of flesh and drinking of blood (which actually does happen every day), as prescribed by the Lord himself.

There is something so very right about this juxtaposition of sublime transcendence and deep intimacy. The closest friend—for indeed, He is—we receive in the Eucharist is unlike any other friend we’ve had, yet our closest friend He remains. The majestic grandeur of the Cathedral is centered around a genuflected tabernacle where He dwells and a bowed altar where He lays. Organs play, choirs sing, clergy process, incense rises, bells ring, people stand and bow and kneel, and in the center of all the ritualistic formalities and humble solemnity of the liturgy—crying out in prayer to this unfathomably great God—He comes. Not in thunder and lightning. Not in fire or wind. In bread and wine. In body and blood. In person.

…to love.

Tradition and Evangelism

"The positive relationship that has been established between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of Rome is one of the most stunning achievements of Benedict XVI's pontificate.

...To a question from www.chiesa on the factors that led to this extraordinary change, Metropolitan Hilarion responded by indicating three of these.

...the third reason is their mutual embrace of the grand Christian tradition, as the great highway of the new evangelization."

- "A Holy Alliance between Rome and Moscow Is Born," by Sandro Magister, published on www.chiesa at http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1343399?eng=y, accessed 25 May 2010.

A good discussion of the method and means of evangelism and outreach has been going on over on my friend Rick's blog. Rick, hailing from an Evangelical perspective, and I, hailing from a Catholic perspective, can tend to disagree over the role of Tradition in outreach and evangelism.

My argument runs along the same lines as that which is discussed in the article cited above: reasoned caution toward innovation for fear of borrowing and baptizing so many things in the name of relevancy that the baby becomes indistinguishable from the bathwater (a good question: would my Evangelical friends say it's all bathwater or all baby?), and a heavy reliance upon Tradition as a norm of faith, not merely contributing to, but foundational for the Church's missional existence.

As we become ever more aware of our inextricable human rooted-ness in history and tradition, it seems to me all the more important to embrace, explore, and yes, when necessary, reform, that tradition. Contrary to some popular thought, anchoring oneself in a tradition is more conducive to inter-traditional dialogue than claiming an autonomous distance from any tradition.

Hence, the Christian Tradition must needs be maintained--through study, through interaction, and through liturgical/sacramental practice--in order to continue to provide a "solid rock" on which to build our evangelistic efforts.

Thoughts?

One journey ends, another begins...

My wife and I have been "officially" in the process of becoming Roman Catholic since September of last year. We've been part of the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, MN. This last weekend was the big night, the Easter Vigil, when we were Confirmed and received our first Eucharist. A few friends have asked, so I thought I'd give a little synopsis of recent events:

Holy Week was an amazing week for us. We went to daily mass M, T, and W. On Holy Thursday, we went to the evening mass that begins the Triduum (three days of Christ's passion, death, and resurrection), which ended with a short (1 hr) vigil with Christ in "the garden" and a service of night prayer (Compline).

Friday morning, we watched "The Passion of the Christ" together (my wife had not seen it before), which set the tone well. We went to Stations of the Cross as the appropriately cloudy skies started to give way to rain. We reached the 12th station, the deacon read out "Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,' and he breathed his last," and there was this tremendous peal of thunder. It was chilling. That afternoon, we returned with my parents for the solemn liturgy of Good Friday, complete with veneration of the cross. Tears were shed.

Saturday began with a service of morning prayer and a rehearsal for the evening. We returned home to find my wife's family from out-of-town had arrived, so we went out to lunch and spent the rest of the day in preparation for the evening and night.

The Easter Vigil on Saturday night...well, I could go on and on. Let's just say it was absolutely glorious. Personally, when we were called to come forward, my heart began pounding as I moved closer and closer to the Archbishop for Confirmation, but when my time came, a sort of excited calm descended. The Archbishop anointed me, and I was saturated with joy that still, quite frankly, hasn't worn off. Our first Eucharist was stimulating, bringing forth a feeling of unprecedented connection both to Jesus and to his Church. (As a sidelight, I forgot to say "Amen" to the words "Body of Christ" until I had the host in my mouth...d'oh! Actually, subsequent masses have provided further venues to reflect on the profound gift the Eucharist is.) After the Vigil, we went home with family, sponsors, our RCIA director and his wife, and another Catholic convert who's a neighbor, to enjoy some drinks and hors d'oeuvres.

One further thing: at the Easter Sunday service, my wife & I were asked to bring the bread & wine forward. It is amazing to do so in the mammoth Cathedral. The Archbishop was again presiding, and he greeted us with a smile and "Good to see you again," and, turning to my wife, "Short night, huh?"

After Easter mass, we went home with family to a huge Easter feast. However, with the bit of dessert wine we had with our fabulous homemade carrot cake (thank you, honey!), the lack of sleep (we got about 4 hours on Saturday night) started kicking in as the adrenaline high was wearing off. We might have even been in bed before 8 PM.

New reflections on the profundity of our reception into the Catholic Church come often, including being part of a Church with a 2,000 year history; of being united with the Pope, our Archbishop, as well as billions of Catholics around the world; of receiving body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus in the Eucharist; and also, admittedly, of looking at recent unhappy news items and thinking, "this is our Church."

Gratitude and joy, peace and excitement. That's what I feel. I imagine that this is but a honeymoon stage, but honeymoons are meant to celebrate what has happened and what is to come. I welcome it!

A Gospel Summary from St. Augustine

I just ran across this eloquent summary of the good news of Jesus in my reading for a class. Apologies for the inclusive use of "man," but I feel some of the eloquence is lost if altered.

"To cure [foolish and blinded humanity] and make them well the Word through which all things were made became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14). Our enlightenment is to participate in the Word, that is, in that life which is the light of man (Jn 1:4). Yet we were absolutely incapable of such participation and quite unfit for it, so unclean were we through sin, so we had to be cleansed. Furthermore, the only thing to cleanse the wicked and the proud is the blood of the just man and the humility of God; to contemplate God, which by nature we are not, we would have to be cleansed by him who became what by nature we are and what by sin we are not. By nature we are not God; by nature we are man; by sin we are not just. So God became a just man to intercede with God for sinful man. The sinner did not match the just, but man did match man. So he applied to us the similarity of his humanity to take away the dissimilarity of our iniquity, and become a partaker of our mortality he made us partakers of his divinity. It was surely right that the death of the sinner issuing from the stern necessity of condemnation should be undone by the death of the just man issuing from the voluntary freedom of mercy, his single matching our double."


St. Augustine of Hippo, The Trinity (De Trinitate), ed. John E. Rotelle, O.S.A., trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1991), IV, 1, 4.

Two New (old) Sins

I blew it.

So, last night, it was snowing heavily in the Twin Cities, traffic going home was nearly at a standstill, my wife and I were both tired at the end of a long work day, then we were compelled to go out into the weather again to Mass, as it was the feast of the Immaculate Conception (a day of obligation for Roman Catholics). We got home around 7:30, now hungry, as well as tired. In an attempt to lighten things up, I volunteered to venture out once more and get some "to-go" food as a treat. After some debate, I ended up going to a local fast food taco joint. Once there, I just kept adding and adding stuff to our order and when I got home, not only did we (mostly I) polish it all off, I added a significant amount of ice cream on top of it. I blew it.

Some of you may know that the human inhabitants of our household have been doing Weight Watchers for a few months. (The canine inhabitant is lean & muscular, and doesn't seem to worry too much about her figure, anyway.) So, yes, I blew my "point" limit for the day. But that's not so much what concerns me. Some years ago now, I began to understand that I don't just enjoy food (a healthy thing), I love it. I idolize it. Often, I don't control it, it controls me. That's what happened last night...and that's what I blew: I fell back into an old pattern of behavior that is blatantly sinful. Yes, sinful. Traditionally (in the Bible and in Christian history), it is called "gluttony," and it has the same base characteristics as other, more readily recognizable, sins: overindulgence, idolatry, self-serving autonomy, self-slavery (creating the proclivity for further sin), etc.

Gluttony isn't spoken of much these days in terms of sins we must confess, repent of, and be forgiven for. Given the characteristic overindulgence on food, especially non-nutritious food, in the US, overeating and resultant obesity is seen as the statistical norm, which, in Aristotelian thought, becomes the moral normative. While the Church has the obligation to continue to preach such sins as sins, and to graciously and generously offer forgiveness for them, it rarely does so. Perhaps its (worldly) reasoning for not doing so is something akin to: if you drive away the gluttons by preaching against gluttony, the Church would be empty. Perhaps food, like money, is one of those "taboo" topics for homilies.

Anyway, skip ahead to today. Upon entering the room where I eat my (this time, modest) lunch at the seminary, I happened upon a fellow student named Margaret, and we fell into discussing the topic of rest. It's "crunch time" of the term (papers due, etc.), so opportunities to rest can be at a premium. When Margaret hinted that she wasn't getting much rest, I (in good humor, but probably too sharply) referred to the concept of Sabbath: that we are designed to need rest, and when we don't rest, we pridefully deny our God-given human limitations. Since Margaret has a wonderful sense of humor, she graciously chuckled and asked if one can confess the sin of not resting.

As with gluttony, the understanding of working excessively--a telltale sign of godless self-sufficiency--as sin has morphed quite a bit over the millennia, as well. In Ten Commandments days, exile and even death was prescribed for those who neglected the Sabbath (Ex. 31:14-17). Nowadays, we actually boast about being "too busy," and we idolize productivity. Can one still confess such a sin as neglecting rest? "Not only can, but should," was my response to Margaret. Nevertheless, I wonder how many confessors hear the penitent confessing their overindulgence in work, their failure to rest. Not many, I'll bet. I'm not even sure many confessors would know how to handle such a confession.

Still, I can envision a Church that adheres to preaching the dangers, the sin, of gluttony and the neglect of rest--not primarily as judgment, but as part of the "old self" that needs to be shed, that the new self, the one being remade in the likeness of Jesus Christ, can grow and become fruitful. Such a move might be radical in these times, but that's the kind of radicalness the Church needs to exhibit: Rest more! Eat less! That's the kind of Church that glorifies God and finds her ultimate fulfillment not in work, not in food, but in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Liturgy of Black Friday

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It is traditionally a time of being together, feasting, watching football and parades on television, napping, and, in Wisconsin, where my wife and I celebrate the holiday, deer hunting. Traditionally, too, it is a time to reflect on the blessings of life and to give thanks. It is this last element—giving thanks—that is perhaps the most humanizing part of this late-November holiday.

Gratitude, by which I mean a conscious, active rendering of thanks, moves us outside ourselves as it acknowledges our absolute dependence on others. It humbly celebrates being a recipient as it deconstructs our notions of autonomy and self-sufficiency. And, when our thanks are rightly directed to the author of life and giver of all good gifts, gratitude actualizes us as human beings—as finite, limited creatures who are relentlessly drawn by our loving God into a life greater than our own. Truly, the traditional liturgy of gathering around a table piled high with food and pausing to recount those things for which we are thankful, and to offer our thanks up to God, humanizes us.

The day after tomorrow has been dubbed “Black Friday.” Black Friday, as one local newspaper claimed, is itself “tradition,” and “the American way.” It is a day when many Americans, still sluggish from the previous day’s feasting, rise before the sun to patronize malls, discount stores, specialty shops, and the like in the spirit of holiday shopping. Stores have taken to opening in the wee hours of the morning and rewarding “early birds” with extra savings. Shoppers have responded by lining up outside said stores, feverishly awaiting admittance, and clamoring over one another in a frenzied pursuit of particular items—items which do not deserve the moniker “goods.” This frenzy, as we have tragically seen, has even resulted in human death.

The liturgy of Black Friday is, rightly considered, a dehumanizing liturgy. Albeit, many shoppers who flood the stores that day lay claim to a selfless motivation: they are out buying Christmas gifts for family and loved ones. However, the stated goal of buying gifts loses all its credibility if one’s attitude and actions on Black Friday are decidedly ungiving. The goal of Black Friday shopping, at its core, is still one of acquisition (in contrast to reception). This acquisition is accomplished by utilizing one’s own resources (money, time, strategy) and unabashedly competing with others, even to the point of violence—even fatal violence!—in order to obtain that which one desires. The liturgy of Black Friday moves us ever deeper into our own selves, stirring up our self-centered desires and appetites not merely without the consideration of others, but often in active opposition to others. An unfortunate few Black Friday shoppers tragically find themselves no better off than a 12-point buck caught in an open Wisconsin field. The vast majority, even if immediate ramifications are not as poignant, still suffer definitive, destructive effects.

Of course, it is deeply ironic that we can spend one day supposedly immersed in the practice of gratitude, acknowledging our own dependence and limitations, and spend the very next day immersed in the practice of consumption, relying on our independence and our ability to surpass our limitations. The humanizing rituals of Thanksgiving are sadly often lost in the dehumanizing practices of Black Friday. What is needed is for us to take a page from the liturgy of Thanksgiving: to pause before consumption, offer thanks, and let the spirit of gratitude inform, guide, and even restrict our consuming—all with a humble appreciation for, and deference to, others a la Philippians 2:3-4.

Vatican Note on New Apostolic Constitution - Catholic Online

Vatican Note on New Apostolic Constitution - Catholic Online

Huge ramifications from this, I'm sure!