NOT SEEING IS BELEVING

On December 27 the Church celebrates the feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. The two readings at mass make for a good meditation on the gift of Faith. 

First, there are the opening verses of the First letter of John:

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life —for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us— what we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We are writing this so that our joy may be complete. (1 Jn 1-4)

The words in bold print seem to indicate that John was handing on to us things which he had actually experienced. He had seen, heard, and even touched with his hands. That doesn't sound like the faith that you and I are called to. 

But then there’s the gospel passage. As you remember, on Easter morning Peter and John run to the tomb to see for themselves what Mary Magdalene had reported. John gets there first and peers into the empty tomb, but waits for Peter to catch up and enter first.

When Simon Peter arrived after him, he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there, and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place. Then the other disciple also went in, the one who had arrived at the tomb first, and he saw and believed.

In this passage John is no longer dealing with the Jesus who walked the roads of Galilee preaching and healing, the one whom John saw and heard and touched. Now John is encountering the resurrected Christ and sees only the empty tomb and yet believes! This the kind of faith that you and I experience.

John's feast comes only two days after Christmas. After weeks of listening to the Old Testament prophets foretelling the coming of the great King, the Messiah who will deliver us form sin and suffering, what do we get on Christmas morning? Just a newborn, helpless infant. Yet we keep returning with great joy and devotion to the manger. We take for granted  the wonderful gift of faith that allows us to see in that babe the long-awaited Savior.

On this feast each year I remember a certain woman I met in a pizza parlor some years ago. I was sitting at the counter. When thus woman comes and sits on the stool to my left, the waitress, who knows both of us, says to the new customer, "He's a priest."  Almost immediately this woman says to me, in a sad tone of voice, "How I envy you! I wish I could believe the way you do, but I just don't have your faith. I wish I did!" As I remember it, we had  a pleasant conversation for some time sitting there at the counter.

She gave me a great gift that evening, one which I hope I'll always remember: Gratitude to God for the gift of faith. During this season when we are thanking God for the gift of His Divine Son in the stable at Bethlehem, I always think of that lady who keeps reminding me of what a special, incredible gift I have in the gift of Faith. 

PERSPECTIVES ON ADVENT

The following are some notes I borrowed from various internet sources for a presentation to our junior monks at the beginning of Advent 2019. I hope you find this post informative. 

I  Theology of Advent

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy describes Advent:

“Advent is a time of waiting, conversion and of hope:” 

waiting-memory of the first coming of the Lord in our mortal flesh; 

waiting-supplication for his final, glorious coming as Lord of history and universal judge; 

conversion, to which the liturgy at this time often refers, quoting the prophets . . . 

joyful hope that the salvation already accomplished by Christ . . . and the reality of grace in the world, will mature and reach their fullness, thereby granting us what is promised by faith.

When you look at the liturgical calendar, you’ll notice that Christmas isn’t the Church’s major holiday. It never has been. Church Fathers such as Augustine didn’t include a commemoration of Christ’s birth in their lists of holidays at all. Early Christians focused their attention on Easter, the holiest day in the Church’s calendar, the solemnity of solemnities.

II   Easter: the queen of feasts

 In fact, our pattern of activity each week still echoes the Easter Triduum. That’s why every Friday has always been a day of penance (it still is, by the way—the rule is either no meat or an equivalent penance, every Friday).

Saturday was originally a day to lie low and keep quiet, which is why we have two-day weekends instead of laboring six days, as it says in Genesis. Sunday is the “little Easter” commemorating the Resurrection in the splendid liturgies of the principal Mass of the week.

 The early Church recalled this more explicitly in its weekly liturgies, but in the old days Easter itself was surrounded by vigils, processions, songs, presents, feasts, and parties for which everybody bought new clothes. 

Today we’ve shifted much of the fuss and festivities to Christmas, and we pass over Easter almost entirely. But Easter still overshadows the commemoration of the birth of Jesus—spiritually, theologically, and liturgically—as the high holy day, the most solemn and joyous holiday of all.

 III  The development of Christmas celebrations

 That’s undoubtedly why we didn’t get around to commemorating the birth of Christ in the liturgy until about the late fourth century. 

 The earliest surviving record of a specific celebration of the Nativity is a sermon by St. Optatus, bishop of Mileve in Africa, from about A.D. 383. Evidently, Optatus was the first to put a Feast of the Nativity into his diocese’s calendar.

The idea caught on almost immediately, but the feast was celebrated on different days in different places any time from November to March. It wasn’t set at December 25 for the whole Church until about 650, and even then it wasn’t a major holiday. It wasn’t called “Christmas” until about the year 1000. The Feast of the Nativity didn’t get loaded down with all secular customs of Christmas—the caroling, the banqueting, and the elaborate exchange of presents—until about 500 years later.

Christians in northern Africa, the Middle East, and the Mediterranean were still observing Christmas low-profile around the year 1500. 

 But it was different in northern Europe. About that time, that part of the world experienced a mini-Ice Age. Suddenly there was snow in the winter, lots of it; people had to work all summer to store up food for the weeks and months they’d be kept indoors. By the end of December you’d probably be stringing the dried fruit into endless garlands and singing incomprehensible songs anyway, holiday or no.

Certainly, having the neighbors in to sit around a blazing Yule log wouldn’t cut into your workday. All of the extras that naturally settled around Christmas—which comes just after the winter solstice—were not so much a burden as a welcome excuse for some social and physical activity. The parties back then were a well-earned celebration of a whole year’s work harvested and gathered into barns. 

 Nowadays, of course, we wear ourselves out doing all of that stuff in addition to our normal daily workload, which negates the whole point of it. Simplifying things to a leisurely level would be a courageous countercultural stand. But as our forebears in faith filled their empty hours with Yuletide cheer, they did something else, too, in the weeks before Christmas, something that can still put the holiday in perspective: they observed Advent. 

IV  A season of anticipation

 Advent is really a lot like Lent. Both are roughly monthlong seasons of preparation for a joyful holiday. In fact, starting in about the sixth century, Advent and Lent used the same liturgies, Mass for Mass, in the Latin Rite. During both seasons, you would see the purple vestments of mourning, symbolism echoed today by the colored candles of the Advent wreath.

 In the reign of Innocent III (1198-1216), the vestments of Advent were black. Long after that, pictures and statues were covered, the organ was silenced, and flowers were banned from the churches, just as during Lent. Even in the Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites, where there was no special Advent liturgy, there was still a requirement to fast during the season before the Nativity. It was designed to remind us of the need to repent in preparation for a holy season.

 In Protestant denominations, of course, Advent has largely faded away. That’s probably why the secular observances of Christmas, as they rushed in to fill the void, got out of hand. Advent fasting and almsgiving used to keep people aware of the proper use of material goods and of the need to offset other people’s poverty with the excess from our own prosperity. If you take the penitential observances away, the secular celebrations can seem somehow obligatory, somehow the essence of Christmas. 

 Well, you wouldn’t get far asking people to give up Santa’s jolly red suit in favor of sackcloth and ashes. But there’s one crucial difference between Lent and Advent: Christmas doesn’t have Passion Week preceding it. The penitential observances of Advent always had a festive character to them. The idea was to contain your excitement before Christmas and to use that energy in preparing for Christ’s coming.

 So people took on these penances joyfully—something that only a Christian could do. They’d pause in their celebrations to acknowledge their sins and to clean house spiritually, overjoyed that Christ came to us, but aware of our unworthiness to receive him. 

 V   Celebrating Advent today

We still use Advent calendars and wreaths to measure out joyful anticipation, but we can learn a lot from the old Advent practices that we’ve forgotten. Kids probably begged Optatus himself for Christmas presents, but  

for a month before that they would collect pennies for the poor, going door to door with a little Christ-child doll in an Advent variation on trick-or-treat.

Families would have meager meals and give the unused food to the needy. 

Parishes used to have penitential feasts after Mass during Advent, with menus that were abundant but austere: bread and water, maybe, or fish, but plenty of it.

People had a good time keeping Advent, although music and dancing were forbidden then, just as during Lent. It was all part of a “discipline of joy” that is still an important part of our heritage today. Listen to the Mass after the Lord’s Prayer: “In your mercy keep us free from sin . . . as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” That’s Advent, right there.         

How might we recapture this uniquely Christian attitude of joyful penance? 

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

NEED A LITTLE ADVENT?

I don't know how you feel these days about the state of our world, our country and our families, but when I think about these and so many other topics I feel a deep need for Advent.

The name "advent" comes from the Latin word "adventus" which means "coming, arrival." Starting four Sundays before Christmas, as you know, it's a period of preparation for the coming of Christ. I've been pondering the theological meanings of the season, hoping to make advent this year as meaningful as possible in the face of all the worries that confront us. Here are some of my ideas so far.

The Crucible

The crucible: One of God's best tools

Advent reminds us of the thousands of years during which the just were waiting for the coming of a Savior. This expectant longing was especially evident in the Jews, whose prophets kept telling them that one day the messiah would come to deliver them. (No wonder the prophet Isaiah is given center stage in the liturgical readings during this season.) The prophets' message of hope was a very hard sell during periods of exile or foreign oppression, but it was precisely in the crucible of suffering and darkness that Judaism was formed into the People of God that the Lord had in mind. So here's a good reminder for me: No matter how grim or depressing things seem, the Lord's plan is working itself out in history, in the wide sweep of world events and in my own life. The period of advent-waiting is a good reminder that humanity's weakness and sinfulness cannot overcome God's loving plan for us -- and that in fact the Lord makes use of our weakness and sinfulness to achieve his final victory.

The Tension 

At the heart of advent is a contradiction: Christ has already been born years ago, yet we are anxiously awaiting his birth. A classical image the church uses to express this contradiction is that we are living in an in-between time, in the tension between the "already" of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem and the "not yet" of his final coming when he will return to set things right once and for all. Tension is a central element of the natural world: Think of the tension produced by the blood in your arteries pushing outward against the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. If that tension is not there, and your have a peaceful BP reading of 0 over 0, you obviously are not alive. To use a rather playful image, I remember the advertisements in the back of comic books touting the body-building exercises of Charles Atlas, based on the secret of "dynamic tension:" The secret was that growth comes when you make the right use of tension. Advent is like that, I think -- a time for experiencing the tension between the fact of Christ's birth in Bethlehem and the not-yet of today's sin-sick world. The secret is to use this tension to strengthen our faith and hope.

Our Lady of Sorrows - Titian

Mary: The Advent Attitude

This is why the church has always made Mary a central figure during advent, seeing her as the first person to keep advent. Despite any confusion or wondering, despite not knowing clearly what was happening to her, Mary held steadfastly to her confident belief that God would take care of her, that "the Lord's words to her would be fulfilled." We sometimes honor her as "our Lady of Sorrows" who in the midst of all her trials never lost hope in God's promise. She'll be a good companion for me over the next four weeks.




Let's pray for one another and for our world that so badly needs Advent's message of Hope.

Amen! Come Lord Jesus!

THE KINGDOM IS AT HAND

 HEAVEN TOUCHES EARTH

This post from a couple of years ago still has a message for us. 

For most first-century Palestinian Jews the phrase “The Kingdom of God is at hand” would have meant that God was sending a military messiah to re-establish the Davidic monarchy by expelling the Roman occupation forces. But there was a more ancient and more authentic interpretation of the metaphor of the “Kingdom of God." Let me first repeat a couple of ideas from last week. In the Old Testament God was always acting in history to deliver and save. For the Israelites, heaven could and indeed often did touch earth: in the Law, for example, in which God came into intimate contact with the hearts of humans. But the most special place where heaven touched the earth was in the temple in Jerusalem, where "God dwelt among his people." Much of this material on the Kingdom is borrowed from a wonderful book by N.T, Wright entitled "Simply Christian."

Jesus picked up on this idea in his preaching that the Kingdom of God had arrived, by teaching that heaven and earth had come together in his own person. That’s why he was such a threat to the priests: He saw himself as the new temple that would replace the old temple as the place where God dwelt among human beings. Further, he told his followers that they, too, the new people of God, were also the new temple, the place where heaven meets earth.

And we followers of Jesus, the new People of God, the new temple, are now the place where heaven touches earth in the twenty-first century. Jesus, God-made-man, in whom heaven touched earth, showed us by the example of his life how to live out the Kingdom in our lives: A kingdom of gentleness and peace, a kingdom of giving more than receiving, and a kingdom built on self-sacrificing love, on “not my will but yours be done.” Yesterday (Saturday of the first week of Advent) at our community mass, Father Philip preached on the first reading in which Isaiah paints a picture of a time when God will draw close to us humans, when heaven will touch the earth. It reads in part:

Yet the LORD is waiting to show you favor, and he rises to pity you; For the LORD is a God of justice: blessed are all who wait for him! People of Zion, who dwell in Jerusalem, no more will you weep; He will be gracious to you when you cry out, as soon as he hears he will answer you. The Lord will give you the bread you need and the water for which you thirst. No longer will your Teacher hide himself, but with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher, While from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: "This is the way; walk in it," when you would turn to the right or to the left. And you shall consider unclean your silver-plated idols and your gold-covered images; You shall throw them away like filthy rags to which you say, "Begone!" (Isaiah 30:18-22)

Father Phil concentrated on a single verse (v.21): “While from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears: ‘This is the way; walk in it’” In the Kingdom God is close enough to whisper in my ear, “This the right path over here, now follow it.” Heaven is touching earth. And I am located at the very point of contact. Now I have to decide. Do I follow the quiet voice sounding in my ears, or do I listen instead to the dozens, the hundreds of other voices from other kingdoms, the alluring voices of “silver-plated idols and gold-covered images.”
The Baptist’s cry in today’s gospel says that the Kingdom has drawn near and that I must respond by a conversion of heart. But how do I know what that means for me in practical terms? Well, I now have two guidelines that can help me:

First, I can look at Jesus’ lived example of how to live the Kingdom. Gentleness, humility, obedience, peace-making, self-offering.

Second, I can be quiet this Advent and listen for a voice from behind sounding in my ears, "This is the way, walk in it," a voice that points out my personal idols of silver and gold that are keeping heaven from touching earth in my life.

Let’s pray for one another that each of us can indeed be a place where heaven touches earth and the Kingdom comes into being. More about the Kingdom next week.
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.........."The Kingdom of God Is Among You"
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CHRIST STILL THE KING

I've posted this reflection a few times, but I think it may be more relevant today than ever before. Rationalists have banished God to "upstairs," where He is totally irrelevant, isolated from the concerns of the 'real" world. I'm not trying to pick a fight with anyone with this post, but I am suggesting that now, after humanity has been "liberated" from its servile superstitious belief in a Deity, and we humans have been in sole charge of the universe for some years, I don't see much visible improvement in the condition of the world. 

Pope Pius XI

In December of 1925, Pope Pius XI wrote an encyclical entitled "Quas Primas" establishing the feast of "Jesus Christ, King of the Universe." The world at that time was experiencing the rise of secularism as well as an increasing number of dictatorships in Europe.The pope saw a connection between the two. Christian Europe had been cut loose from its moorings of religious faith, and even Christians were rejecting the belief that God was somehow in charge of the world.

What Pius XI saw and responded to was just the earliest stages of the secular worldview that has swept around most of the world. His declaration that the world ultimately makes sense only when we see it as part of a larger picture (the story of a loving God , etc.) is more relevant than ever. He was writing in 1925, before Hitler and Hiroshima, before Stalin and Socialism, before global capitalism and greenhouse gas emissions. The brave new world that secular humanism promised has, to put it politely, yet to materialize.

So, against this background, celebrating a Feast of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, rejects the rationalists' two-storied version of the world, and offers us a couple of optimistic messages: First, this troubled world is not all we get: There's more to our existence than simply imprisonment in a meaningless world devoid of any ultimate purpose (that's the best that the two-storied world can offer us). Second, despite the chaotic mess that we humans are making of our world, God has a mysterious plan that we cannot understand (our intellects being no match for God's), and this plan is the Good News that one day we and our world will be transformed into the New Jerusalem under the reign of our infinitely loving Brother, Jesus Christ. Third, Jesus Christ became one of us, and is present with each of us in every place throughout the universe, rather than living like a recluse locked in a room on the second floor of the rationalists' universe.

Jesus Christ the King

Another pope, John XXIII once told us that world peace has to start first in the heart of each one of us. Perhaps we might suggest that Christ's reign as King of the Universe likewise has to start in the heart of each one us. Tomorrow's feast is a good opportunity to ask myself if Christ is reigning in my heart, or have I replaced him with someone or something else, gradually moved him upstairs and out of my everyday life.

GOD AS TEACHER

Earlier this week a friend of mine texted me asking about this quote “The one whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.“ She wanted to know if this was from the Bible or from somewhere else.

The quotation is from Hebrews 12:6. There are various translations in which God\“punishes” "corrects," "disciplines" and “chastises.” Not that I have thought about this verse a lot in the past, but it strikes me at first as a little bit negative. 

Some translations can sound to me as if they are defending a God whose main occupation is to inflict punishment on his children. This would be the God whom a lot of people seem to believe in: A vengeful scorekeeper who exacts punishment for every little mistake we make.

My friend's inquiry made me look deeper into this quotation. Happily, as soon as I looked at the original Greek, the verse took on a different feel. The verb that is translated “chastises” is paideuei. My Greek lexicon lists three meanings for this verb: 

> to teach 

> to discipline 

> to punish. 

So you get your choice of how to translate it. “The one he loves he punishes” seems a little harsh at best. “The one he loves he teaches” on the other hand risks missing the point. So what about the middle road? “The one he loves disciplines?”

This third one makes a lot of sense to me as someone who spent over fifty years in the classroom helping high school boys to grow into young men. Kids have to learn that there are consequences for their actions, they have to learn where the limits are, they have to be taught the proper way to act. And so a teacher uses various methods such as keeping a kid after school, or giving a punish lesson or some other unpleasant exercise so the student will improve his behavior.

Now, thanks to this Greek verb, when I read that verse from Hebrews I will think of God as a loving and caring teacher, rather than as a vengeful, ill tempered disciplinarian.

This morning I began reflecting on What would happen to a couple of Jesus‘s parables in the gospel of Luke if the Lord were trying to tell us that God is into punishing.

“Which of you having 100 sheep and losing one would not leave the ninety-nine and seek out the lost sheep. And when he finds it, he beats it terribly so that it won’t wander off again.“

Or The story of the prodigal son: “When the father saw his son returning, he ran out to meet him And began to beat him severely As he deserved because of his ungrateful behavior.”

I hope that this rewriting of Jesus‘s parables strikes you as terribly irreverent. Our Lord told us these parables precisely to show that his heavenly Father is loving and forgiving. We can’t just decide to rewrite them.

May God our loving Father continue to guide us and teach us how to walk in His ways. Amen.

ON THE LAST THINGS

THAT TIME OF YEAR

This afternoon our monastic community made our annual visit to the monks' plot ion St. Mary's Cemetery to honor oar deceased brothers. This is the time of year when the falling leaves and the liturgy conspire to turn our thoughts once again to the so-called "last things," the end-time and our own mortality.

Coincidentally, today, November 9, is the feast of the dedication of the Pope’s parish Church in Rome, the Basilica of Saint John Lateran.  Many of the readings and songs on this feast add to the theme of the end time: the Church as the communion of saints in heaven and on earth, for example, and the vision of the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from heaven.

As I was reflecting on these things this morning I thought of the words of the Creed we recite each Sunday, “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” and the equivalent in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.”

BORING AS HELL

If I’m not careful I can start thinking of “life everlasting” in terms of the only life I really know: My life just keeps going on forever... and ever... for countless billions of years. Now, I don’t know how that makes you feel, but that prospect makes me want to yawn. After a few billion years it would get boring as hell.

The good news is that that Jesus Christ adds to this concept something absolutely crucial: We’re not just “immortal humans,” but we’re given the literally indescribable gift of living in Him and in the Father in a union of LOVE. It’s indescribable. St. Paul warns us not to bother wondering about what it will actually be like, because we’ll never even begin to come close to the truth:
"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Cor.2:9) 

SO WHAT?

But even this can leave us with simply the belief of "pie in the sky when we die" unless we make

still another escape from our limited human way of thinking. More good news: Jesus assures us "The Kingdom of God is among you." Our transformation has already begun! We are already being transformed into Christ. We are His presence wherever we are, whether in our workplace or at home or at the mall, we are Christ. And so is each person we encounter. Heaven is breaking in all round us today, here and now. 

BETTER QUESTIONS

In the gospel, the Sadducees, who do not believe in a resurrection of the dead, ask Jesus the inane question about whose wife will that widow of seven husbands be. They do that deliberately to try to make Jesus look silly. But in our unguarded moments we who believe in a resurrection of the dead can also ask equally inane questions: Will there be pepperoni pizza in Heaven? Will I see my dog Fido in Heaven? Will there be soccer in heaven? What age will my resurrected body be in heaven? Those are bad questions. Paul's advice to the Corinthians is worth repeating here: 

"Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love him." (1 Cor.2:9) 

Jesus offers us a much more positive set of question to ask:

- How am I reflecting God's boundless love to the people around me?

- How am I being Christ to my sisters and brothers today?

- How am I already living out the life of God's eternal love in my home, my place of work?

These are the things we need to be worried about. We need to be building up the Kingdom NOW, foreshadowing and even hastening the everlasting love of heaven.

Let God worry about the pizza and the pets in heaven!  
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