Downtown Monks

THE CHALLENGE OF SILENCE

2012-02-10T21:02:00.011-05:00

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ON EATING ALONE

This morning I gave my sophomore New Testament students the following in-class journaling assignment:

Jews at the time of Christ considered sharing a meal to be an important, even a sacred act.
- How important to you is eating together with family or loved ones?
- How often do you eat a meal with your immediate family? Is this something you would like to do more often?

My students’ responses were for the most part predictably appalling. In one class of 19 kids only one student reported eating with his family on week nights, and a couple said that they usually had Sunday dinner as a family. They tried patiently to explain that since grown-ups are boring and corny, teenagers don’t want to hang around with them. Sharing a meal with family members was a foreign concept that seemed to make almost no sense to the majority of the kids.

Several spoke about how nice it is to just come home, grab something from the fridge and go your room (read “private fully-furnished apartment with TV, computer, phone, etc.”) and close the door. You never have to talk to or even see your parents. Nice arrangement, right?

Then one student said, “You have to understand, Father Al, that we teenagers like to be alone.” Lots of heads nodded in knowing agreement.

Well, they haven’t heard the end of this topic!

If kids “like to be alone” then why do they compulsively text one another into the wee hours of the morning? Why are they addicted to Face Book and Twitter and so on? What could “alone” possibly mean in such an environment?

If I go on in this vein this post will become a disgruntled complaint – exactly the kind of thing that makes kids want to avoid us adults! So instead I’ve decided to turn inward and see if any of this has to do with my own spirituality.

NOISE, SILENCE AND SOUL-SEARCHING

“Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10)

Why do most of us have such a difficult time with silence? Why have we become so addicted to “background music” and the meaningless mumble of radio or television that serves merely as an acoustical version of wallpaper? From my own experience I suspect that we’re often afraid of silence because of what we might hear coming from the quiet depths of our hearts. Our instincts tell us that if we’re completely silent and still some serious things might start happening. We might start encountering questions that we’ve been studiously avoiding or truths about ourselves that we’d rather not know. Silence is scary stuff!

So, if he controls who talks to him by locking his door and having caller i.d. on his phone, and if he can keep the ambient noise loud enough to drown out the inner voice of the Spirit, then a teenager can supposedly escape being hassled by anyone. No probing questions or unsettling challenges. But I too have my own adult versions of that teenage isolating behavior. Or should I call it “insulating” behavior. In fact, I use it as a kind of barometer. When I find myself wanting to keep the radio on in my room constantly, I ask myself, “Okay, so what’s going on? What’s upsetting me that I don’t want to think about or deal with.”

Sitting quietly with a scripture text can be a great exercise in listening. If I can still my mind and heart enough, I may be able to hear something the Spirit is trying to say to me. Even if I have to leave some urgent work undone, some inspiring words unsaid or some uplifting insight un-blogged.

A spiritual life without silence is a contradiction in terms. So is a spiritual life that is isolated from challenges and difficulties. You can think of the countless ramifications of this for your own life, so I’ll let you turn off the radio and the computer and try it.

A PARTING SHOT

I noticed that the students who said that they ate with their family every night also said that it was a time when people talked to one another about what had happened during the day; and they seemed grateful for the experience. My prejudice is that these kids will grow up knowing a little bit more about themselves as persons, be more at ease speaking with people older than themselves, and have more of a sense of what it means to belong to a community.

I’m sure that spending half an hour in some virtual voluntary online “community” via a chat room can be stimulating for a teenager, but somehow it doesn’t seem as human as a real live encounter between brothers and sisters and parents over plates of real (not virtual) spaghetti and meatballs. Of course, now and then a teenager may get so upset that he needs to get up from the table and run to his room and slam the door and stare at the wall for fifteen minutes to cool off. That kind of aloneness is healthy (psychologists would call it essential). But alas, odds are that he will probably not have that valuable experience of just staring at the wall, but will instead reach immediately for his phone and start texting.
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.....TEEN CONTEMPLATING SACRED TEXT

FOR MANY OR FOR ALL?

2012-02-04T13:19:00.017-05:00

DIDN'T JESUS DIE FOR ALL?
One of the most troublesome changes in the new English translation of the mass is the revised version of the words of consecration said over the chalice: “This is the chalice of my blood... which will be shed for you and FOR MANY.” Frankly I had never noticed that there was this discrepancy between the official Latin text and the English translation until I was chatting one day a few years ago with Francis Cardinal Arinze, the then Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship (talk about name dropping, huh!). He mentioned to me that his office had been getting some vehement written protests over the mistranslation of the Latin words of consecration which should read “for you and for many,” not “for you and for all.” So I wasn’t shocked when I saw that the new translation had gone back to the literal translation of the Latin.

But just why did the translators decide to change Christ’s words from “for all” to “for many?” Before answering the question let me point out a couple of assumptions about theology that grew out of the post-Vatican II era.

Assumption #1. For centuries Catholic Christians had been taught an image of a strict, authoritarian God whose main jobs seemed to be things like making rules, keeping count of sins and punishing people in purgatory or hell. Pope John XXIII and the Council fathers were at pains to show the world another side of God as the loving, compassionate and all-forgiving One. The fear of God drifted into the background in light of this new emphasis, and we children of the Vatican Council got comfortable dealing with only the “nice” aspects of God and of religion, and so have little patience with any negative concepts such as sin.

Assumption #2. We children of Vatican II also make an assumption based on the idea behind translating the mass into English: The texts for the mass and the other sacraments were translated into English so that everyone could understand easily what was going on. So we automatically assumed that everything in the liturgy must be immediately and completely comprehensible to the average person the first time it is read or heard. This was surely one of the assumptions driving the English translation of the mass texts that we’ve been using the past 40 years (in which so many rich prayers got simplified to the point of being downright pedestrian). This assumption is, not surprisingly, the basis for one of the chief criticisms leveled at the new translation: “All liturgical texts should be simple enough for everyone to understand immediately upon hearing them, but the new texts are sometimes complicated and difficult to understand.”

I’m mentioning these two assumptions in order to caution the reader that they might not necessarily be correct, or at least may get in the way of appreciating what's behind some of the new translations. With regard to Assumption #1, maybe some of the translations will point out certain theological concepts that have been pushed into the background in the past half-century, such as human sinfulness and our need for redemption. And, contrary to Assumption #2, maybe some of the new translations actually require (God forbid!) deep reflection and instruction over time before we can appreciate the more profound mysteries they express.

“FOR MANY" and "FOR ALL"

So, why DID the translators decide to change Christ’s words from “for all” to “for many?”
Remember Assumption #1 above, that everything must be understandable immediately and effortlessly? Well, that won’t work on this passage. We will need to do some work in order to do it justice. If you’re willing, let’s start with Sacred Scripture.

WHAT DOES SCRIPTURE SAY?

One of the so-called "Suffering Servant passages" (Isa 53:12), often seen as a prophecy about Christ, reads “he bore the sin of MANY, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Jesus echoes this passage in his preaching about humility: “whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for MANY” (Mk 10:43b-45).

In his commentary The Gospel of Mark, (Sacra Pagina Series, Liturgical Press, 2002) John R. Donahue, S.J. says on page 313 “The [Greek] term pollon literally means ‘many’ but can also carry the sense of ‘all’ (e.g. ‘Many have been created but few will be saved’ (4 Ezra 8:3)).”

Now let’s take a look at the account of the last supper in Mark’s gospel, in which Jesus’ words over the cup are “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for MANY (hyper pollon.)” (Mk 14:24). Once again using Donohue’s commentary (p. 396) we find that although in English “many” is often equivalent to “not all,” in Aramaic and Hebrew “many” can be understood in these two passages from Mark as equivalent to “all.”

In an article in America magazine Msgr. Richard Antall reminds us that these words [“for many”] have been translated first from the original Aramaic our Lord spoke, then from Greek to Latin and from Latin to English. The Latin phrase “pro multis” never changed when the new order of Mass appeared after the Council. What changed was the translation of the Latin.
Partly, this new translation was based upon biblical studies that said that, for all practical purposes, the two phrases meant the same thing. (By the way, apparently Aramaic didn’t even have a specific word for “all.”)

In what seems to me to contradict Fr. Donahue, Msgr Antall writes that the problem was that the Greek preserved the distinction between “for many” and “for all.” He says that the “Greek of the New Testament did not express the equivalence that the liturgical translators insisted upon.” In other words, the Greek NT word does not have the sense of both “many” and “all.” This assertion is borne out in two Greek lexicons I consulted.

In any case, the official Latin version was and is still “pro multis” which means “for many” and is translated as such in the Greek, Syriac, Armenian and Slavic Oriental Rites of the Eucharist. Now the new English translation is in line with the official Latin. The other languages (e.g. French, Spanish and German) that had opted for the interpretive translation “for all” must also change their translation.

BUT DIDN’T JESUS DIE FOR ALL OF US?
So, is this new translation saying that Christ did NOT die “for all”? Certainly, a lot the people in the pews must be wondering about this. And they aren’t the first Christians to reflect on the phrase and its implications.
The church’s greatest theologian, Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) comments on why the Gospels and the Mass say “for the many” and not “for all.” He makes a fine distinction which it is worth trying to follow. “The blood of Christ has been shed FOR ALL concerning its sufficient power [i.e. it certainly is intended to save all] but ONLY FOR THE ELECT as regards to its efficacy [i.e. in fact it does not necessarily have to work in every case].”

This is very far from the “double predestination” taught by John Calvin, who said that Jesus’ blood was the redemption of only an elect group, with the rest of the people basically created to go to hell. St. Thomas clearly says that “for many” does not imply that God does not desire salvation for all. IT SIMPLY RECOGNIZES THE POSSIBILITY THAT SOME WILL NOT BE SAVED.

This rubs many moderns the wrong way (remember our Assumption #2 above). In the back of their head lurks the idea that-- no matter what-- everyone is going to end up in heaven. This is the other extreme from Calvin’s “double predestination” (by which the elect are predestined to heaven and the others to hell).

No, what’s at issue is simply this: If hell doesn’t exist, that means that everyone is dragged into heaven whether they choose it or not. But that would mean that we are not truly free, and that human freedom would become a myth. Contrary to Assumption #1 we should not think that there are only happy endings in the universe: Our human freedom is a wonderful and a terrible thing, because we can lose our souls.

Perhaps, some suggest, the translators made a pastoral mistake by changing "for you and for all" and upsetting people who aren't trained to make fine theological distinctions. But, since the change is now in place I suggest (as I always do on this blog) that rather than complain about it we should see what we can learn from it instead.

WHAT’S ALL THIS MEAN FOR ME?
What can we take away from the phrase “for many” which we will be hearing at mass for the rest of our lives?

One lesson that I’ve drawn from the new translation of “for many” is that it implies that my personal salvation is not automatic, but requires that I cooperate with God’s grace. It reminds me, in other words, that I mustn’t take my eternal salvation for granted, but rather that I must cooperate freely and responsibly with God’s grace at work in my heart.

A second lesson I can take away from “for many” is based on an idea I found in Fr. Donahue’s commentary cited above concerning Jesus’ offering of the chalice “for many” at the last supper: “The Markan Jesus understands his imminent death as bringing about a covenant community that will benefit all humans” (p.396). But I am part of that covenant community (the "MANY") through which Jesus wants to benefit ALL of humanity. What am I doing to help extend Christ’s saving sacrifice from “the many” of which I am a part to “all people” according to Christ’s plan for the Kingdom? Do I extend myself toward others in Christ-like kindness and generosity? Do I bear witness to sacred joy by my demeanor? In what ways do I help make Christ present to more people every day?

If the new translation “for many” still rubs you the wrong way, try letting it remind you not to presume that you are automatically saved, and perhaps it can even encourage you as one of the "many" to go out and by your actions extend Christ's love to “all.”

GRIEVING FOR A FRIEND

2012-01-28T08:19:00.004-05:00

I lost a valuable friend this past Wednesday. Fr. Matthew Wotelko, O.S.B. of our community is now singing in the heavenly choir. His funeral is this morning (Saturday) in about a half hour.

Fr. Matt was a friend for about 45 years. He was a complicated guy, as you might glean from various obituaries. But I want to take this post to thank him publicly for the gift he gave me.

A PUBLIC THANK YOU

On New Year’s eve a few weeks ago we suddenly found out that he had cancer and the prognosis was very bad (three to six months turned out to be three weeks). So on new year's eve I wrote him a three-page handwritten letter to let him know what a difference he had made in my life and to thank him for that. He got the letter on New Years' Day, and was in the hospital by Jan 2, after which he went downhill amazingly quickly. He died here in the monastery. I'd written just in time.

As a recovering alcoholic who worked his program faithfully and fully and who met God in the midst of that struggle, he had this way of constantly demanding that same honesty of others and challenging them to risk, to reach into areas that were “scary” for them as he put it. When I was in my late twenties he did me the favor of pushing me that way. Sometimes I went unwillingly, but he was a relentless and demanding advisor.

I told him in my letter that I truly believe that if he hadn’t forced me to look at myself and take certain leaps of faith as a person, then I would never have had many of the relationships I have enjoyed, I suspect that I would have been too timid to pack up and go off by myself on a sabbatical year, and would have had nothing very interesting to say about risking or love of God or neighbor. So those six books of mine would never have been written.

I’m grateful to him for his example of introspection, unflinching honesty and dedication to the task of opening himself to God’s grace. I’m grateful for prodding and encouraging me on my own journey to see things I would have missed and to go places I would never have thought of going.

He faced his impending death exactly as I would have expected: with the serenity, courage and wisdom of someone who has struggled for decades to be open to the Lord and to the divine will. His last words to me were “Pray for me.” So now I’m asking him publicly to pray for me.

Thanks, Matt!

AN OLD NEW WORD

2012-01-20T12:20:00.022-05:00

WHAT’S "CONSUBSTANTIAL" ANYWAY?

At every Christmas get-together I attended this year people wanted to talk about the new translation of the mass. Of all the changes in the new English translation of the mass, none seems to have raised more criticism than the word “consubstantial” in the Nicene Creed. It used to be translated “one in being with the Father,” but now reads (following the technical Latin vocabulary) “consubstantial with the Father.”

Since we’ll be living with this seemingly incomprehensible word for the foreseeable future, I suggest that we try to make friends with it by learning something about its background, its meaning and it's practical implications for our spiritual journey. This long post is a short step in that direction.

IT’S ABOUT JESUS

Have you ever asked yourself a question such as “Exactly what do I believe about Jesus? Is Jesus God? If so, doesn’t that make two Gods? If he’s God’s Son doesn’t that make him inferior to the Father? Or is he the same as God, or equal to God but not the same as the Father? What’s the deal here?”

If you have ever asked such questions, you should know that these were also the central questions for the church in the third and fourth centuries, and it took two hundred years of painful struggle and division to come up with a satisfactory way of dealing with them.

During its first 200 years or so, the early church accepted Jesus as a man and confessed and worshipped him as God. It placed him on the same level as the Father and the Holy Spirit. It did this naturally and without any feeling of contradiction. The church recognized, of course, that the person of Christ was a deep mystery that we would never fully understand, but rather than debating the mystery it simply adored and revered it.

By the fourth century, however, the Church had spread into Greece and Asia Minor, the land of Greek philosophy, where people loved to intellectually dissect difficult problems in philosophy and theology. So it was probably inevitable that the mysterious nature of the person of Jesus would eventually come under intellectual scrutiny, and questions would be raised to which there were no answers in the New Testament. For example, what was the relationship between Jesus and God the Father? How was Jesus both human and divine? Exactly what is the Holy Trinity about? The various attempts to invent an appropriate vocabulary for answering these questions fill the history of the church in the fourth century.

The mystery of Jesus is set out clearly at the beginning of John’s gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,* full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 14)

So people began to ask analytical questions about this passage: How are we to understand that the Son of God (whom John calls “the Word”) and who became a human being in Jesus the Messiah, is both with God and is God? How can God be at the same time one and more than one? Just how is the Son related to the Father?

These questions, which are all interrelated, led to tremendous controversy. At issue was the very identity of Christ himself. The church considered several competing answers to the questions, often with bitterness and bloodshed, before arriving at an “answer” that most could agree on. The dispute led eventually to the church’s formulating the doctrine of the Trinity.

ARIUS GETS IT WRONG

The heresy of Arianism that eventually engulfed the church in a firestorm, began as an abstruse disagreement between the bishop of Alexandria and one of his priests, a man named Arius. Although it started as a local quarrel about exactly the questions mentioned above, Arius went outside Egypt to enlist the support of bishops and scholars around the near east, so that before long the entire Greek church was bitterly divided over these issues.

Here are some of the beliefs that Arius was teaching. See how they compare with what you've been taught. Being concerned about the unity of God he taught that the Father alone is without a beginning. The Son, the “Word” (in Greek Logos) had a beginning; God created the Logos in order that he might create the world. Since the Logos was the first and highest of all created beings, Arius was willing to call the Logos God. But this was only a manner of speaking. The Logos was a creature.

In Arius’ view, Jesus had a human body but not a human soul. The Logos took the place of the soul in Jesus. He was therefore a creature who was neither God nor man. He was not God because the Logos that was in him was created; he was not a man because did not have a soul. Moreover, the Logos was subject to change: He could become a sinner.

GOSH WAS HE WRONG!

This Jesus of Arius doesn’t sound very much like the Jesus you and I know and pray to. We'll look at the practical implications of this heresy in the last section of this post. You can skip to that part now if you want, but first I want to finish the story with the church's response to Arius and his heresy.

THE CHURCH GETS IT RIGHT

Arius began teaching his errors in the year 311. Despite being condemned by various local councils of bishops his doctrines kept spreading until the controversy reached into every part of the East. The common people, although they did not understand the issues, nevertheless aligned themselves with one side or the other.

At this point the emperor Constantine realized that he had one empire and two churches – Arian and non-Arian. So for reasons more political than theological he moved to restore unity in the Catholic church by calling for a council of bishops to settle the dispute. The Council of Nicea (325), soon to be reckoned the first “ecumenical” or world council because of the range of representation there, included about 220 bishops, most of them Greek. At the solemn opening of the council Constantine urged the bishops to achieve unity and peace.

Skipping over the political and theological details, we can say that the bishops at Nicea ended the controversy over the questions concerning Christ and the Trinity by formulating a document that we now know as the “Nicene Creed” that is recited by Catholics at mass every Sunday and on important feasts. It is sharply anti-Arian.

Arius had claimed that the Son of God "came to be from things that were not" and that he was "from another substance" than that of the Father. So the Council condemned these beliefs by stating in the Creed that the Son of God is "begotten, not made, of the same substance as the Father." The Latin word for “of the same substance” is “consubstanialis.” The recent translators of the Creed have chosen to translate this with a single English word, “consubstantial” to refer to our belief that Jesus and the father are distinct but equal, which is precisely what Arius had denied. If the translators had given us the equally accurate phrase "of the same substance as the Father," they might perhaps have created less of a stir. But we now have "consubstantial," so let's just deal with it.

Well, so what? Whether we say "consubstantial" or "of the same substance" what does it have to do with you and me as we try to live the gospel every day? Here are a couple of thoughts.

THE BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY BEHIND “CONSUBSTANTIAL”

“Consubstantial” tries to capture the beautiful fact that Jesus is both completely human and fully divine. We believe that long ago God decided to set things right with our broken world, and could surely have done so from a distance, like changing the channel with a TV remote control. But instead God chose to come into the world in person, to become one of us in an incredible, totally unforeseen supreme act of self-giving love. And so “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” God came and shared everything human except sin.

Another implication of the doctrine of “consubstantial” is a famous quotation (which doesn’t sound sexist in the original Greek or Latin) variously attributed to St. Athanasius and Saint Augustine and others. It states “God became man so that man might become God.” Doesn’t that seem pretty bold, even arrogant? But it’s true nonetheless. But it could never be true if Arius is correct. That’s why we need to believe that Jesus is truly human and truly divine – consubstantial with the father.

Celebrating Christmas each year has gotten us so used to the idea that God became a human being that we forget that this incarnation business is incredible, unfathomable, and way beyond our ability to understand – which is why it’s called the “mystery of the incarnation.” In theology, a “mystery” refers not to a belief that is totally incomprehensible to us, but rather to one that we will never come to understand fully: There will always be more to understand about a mystery. So, when we reflect on the mystery of the incarnation we need to remember that we are on very sacred and mysterious ground. It is a time to be humble in the presence of an awesome and beautiful aspect of God’s love that we cannot ever fully understand.

Several people have objected to me that the new translation “consubstantial with the Father” is incomprehensible, and that the translators should have used a simpler word that everybody could understand. At least when we used to say that Jesus is “one in being with the Father” we understood what the words meant. The problem was that the latter expression didn’t really say very much about Jesus: everything in creation somehow participates in God’s being, so you could argue that plants and animals and rocks are all “one in being with the Father.” But the Council fathers at Nicea were trying to get at something much deeper and mysterious: that somehow God and Jesus are not completely different but "of the same substance" while being at the same time distinct entities. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives more information about this in parag. 465

Let me offer a homely example that might help you understand a little bit more about “consubstantial.” If you take a handkerchief and tear it in half, the two pieces are of the same “substance” but are distinct entities. This rough and ready comparison is, of course, inadequate, but it gives us at least a glimpse of the truth that Arius denied when he insisted that God and Jesus were of two different substances, and thus Jesus was not divine.

So if “consubstantial” sounds like gibberish at least it doesn’t give anyone the false impression that we thoroughly understand what we’re talking about in the incarnation! It reminds us rather that the incarnation is a mystery that is ultimately incomprehensible, and that if we think we understand the incarnation completely, well, sorry, we don’t. Because we can’t.

I hope that this post has helped you to understand “consubstantial” a little better. If not, I hope that it will at least remind you to be grateful to those bishops at the Council of Nicea whose courage and determination preserved for us our belief in the ineffable mystery that Jesus who walked among us, sharing our sorrows and our joys, our desires and out dreams, our sufferings and our limitations was also God, the Divine Word made flesh.

To Him be glory and everlasting power! Amen.
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A LESSON FROM PSALM 97

2012-01-13T22:26:00.017-05:00

I wonder if writing a weekly blog draws one into undue concentration on oneself? In any case I had an embarrassing moment during my morning meditation this week.

Tuesday morning I was reading one of my favorite commentaries on the Book of Psalms, Busco Tu Rostro, by Jesuit Father Carlos Vallès (translated into English as Psalms for Contemplation)

The floods have lifted up, O LORD,
the floods have lifted up their voice;
the floods lift up their roaring. (Ps. 97:3)

Padre Vallès’ reflection on the Psalm begins (my translation from the Spanish) “I contemplate with fear the eternal spectacle of the furious waves of a rebellious ocean dashing themselves ceaselessly against the high rocks of the immovable coast.”

I was sure that the reflection was going to be about the incessant, stormybattle of my prideful, selfish will clashing constantly against God’s will for me. This was more of the same from last week’s reflection about the Kingdom that’s full of holes in the places where I've refused to do God’s will and have left certain things undone. So I was startled when the next sentence of the meditation launched instead into a reflection on God’s infinite might as shown in the power of the sea.

More majestic than the thunders of mighty waters,
more majestic than the waves of the sea, majestic on high is the LORD! (Ps. 97:4)

Padre Vallès says he never tires of reflecting on the divine power displayed by the waves and the surf. He then goes on, “Me regocijo al ver destellos de tu omnipotencia, al verte como Dueño absoluto de la tierra y del mar, porque yo lucho en tu bando, y tus victorias son mìas,” “I rejoice to see flashes of your omnipotence, to see you as the absolute Ruler of land and sea, because I'm fighting on your side, and your victories are mine.”

NARCISSUS LIVES!

I was jolted and a little embarrassed by the realization that I had completely overlooked the obvious point of the Psalm (God’s supreme power and might as shown forth in the ocean) and had immediately assumed that the Psalm was all about ME! Instead of thinking about God I was thinking about my puny efforts at rebellion against God.

LECTIO AND NAVEL-GAZING

Of course the whole idea of lectio divina is to challenge myself with the question “What is this sacred text saying to me?” and “What does this reading have to do with my life?” So you can see how I might be tempted to fall at times into a little navel-gazing. But the first step in meditating on a scripture passage is to ask "What is the sacred writer's intention in writing this? What is he getting at?" Another version of the same question is "What does this passage tell me about God (or about Jesus)?"

Only after answering these fundamental questions do you move on to "What is this passage saying to me?" or "How does it apply to my life?" And now the answers to the latter questions will make much more sense because they're being asked in the context of an all-loving and all-powerful God who is with me always to guide and guard, to sustain and help me at every moment of my life. So even when I'm asking "How does this passage apply to me" it's not really about me at all, but about God.

It also occurred to me that the psalms are never really about psalmist. He never sounds like a narcissist: his mind and heart are always lifted toward the Lord. Whether he’s marveling at the moon and the stars in Psalm 8 or simply calling on God for mercy in Psalm 51, he always seems to frame the issue much more in terms of God than of himself.

What a great model for prayer! I hope I'll remember Tuesday morning's lesson concerning prayer: It's not about me! This is of course a good lesson for living in general, but it's especially true of prayer. The Psalmist reminded me that even the most inward-looking prayer is still going to be more about God's goodness, might and love than it is about me and my brokenness and sins. ..

....Life before starting to practice humility and obedience.
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THE KINGDOM AND SWISS CHEESE

2012-01-05T20:14:00.025-05:00

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GOD'S PLAN FOR ME?
Certain translations of Psalm 57 (56) verse 2 read:

“I cry to God Most High,
to God who fulfils his purpose for me (NRSV).”

I came across this verse yesterday and immediately began to muse on the idea that God has a plan for me.

THE GOOD NEWS
It’s wonderful to think that I’m not a useless speck in the universe, a meaningless bundle of electrons, but rather someone who is special to God -- so special that God actually has a plan for me. The Lord needs me to fulfill that plan if the Kingdom is to reach its planned fulfillment.
When I was in about fourth grade we memorized a poem the contained these two lines: “Dare to do right, dare to be true, you have a work that no other can do.” I Googled it and found that it’s actually a Sunday School hymn from the late 1800’s. Without the repetitions it reads:

Dare to do right!
Dare to be true!
You have a work that no other can do;
Do it so bravely, so kindly, so well,
Angels will hasten the story to tell.

Dare to do right!
Dare to be true!
Other men’s failures can never save you.
Stand by your conscience, your honor, your faith;
Stand like a hero and battle till death.

This little song takes the same view as that psalm verse: God needs me to do certain things with my life that nobody else can do.

When I was a freshman in college at St. John’s in Minnesota, we minor seminarians had to take the MMPI psychological profile, presumably to weed out potential chainsaw murderers, etc. Well I was romping along through the questions about being afraid to touch doorknobs when suddenly I came to a sudden stop. I found myself staring at this question (these may not be the exact words but they’re close): “Do you believe that you have been specially chosen by God?” Talk about a Catch-22! If I answered “No, I have not be specially chosen by God” then I’d have been saying that I didn’t have a vocation from God (so why was I in the seminary?). But if I say “Yes, I’ve been specially chosen by God” then the psychologist would flag my answer and say, “Aha! This kid is delusional, with a messianic complex!” I took my chances and came down on the side of honesty -- I answered “Yes” to the question. I guess it turned out to be the right answer!

NOW FOR THE BAD NEWS...

But here’s the down side of the idea that God actually has a plan for me: The Lord needs me to fulfill that plan if the Kingdom is to reach its planned fulfillment. I have a work that no other can do. That’s the same as the up side, right? But that’s a lot of unwanted pressure, you know? I mean, what if I flub it? I start picturing the Kingdom with a bunch of Swiss-cheese holes in it due to my refusal to go along with God’s plan for me.

ON THE OTHER HAND...

I'm afraid to dwell on this image for too long, so let me end with a quotation that a good friend just gave me concerning God's plan for us.
For surely I know the plans I have for you,
says the Lord,
plans for your welfare and not for harm,
to give you a future with hope.
Then when you call upon me
and come and pray to me,
I will hear you.
When you search for me,
you will find me;
if you seek me with all your heart,
I will let you find me, says the Lord,
and I will restore your fortunes. (Jer. 29:11-14)

This quotation seems like a good way to end my musings about God's plans for me. Forget the swiss cheese and just seek the Lord with all my heart.
Sounds like a plan...

NEW YEAR'S REFLECTION

2011-12-31T13:31:00.008-05:00

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2012

This is the time of year when the mass media publish their retrospectives of the events of the past year. It's a natural tendency, I suppose, to want to look back and get some perspective on the many things that happened in the past twelve months. I usually spend the evening of December 31 engaging in my own little "year-in-review."

A friend recently suggested, however, that on New Year’s Eve instead of looking over my shoulder and reflecting on 2011 I might more profitably reflect instead on what lies ahead for me in 2012.
That approach makes a lot of sense -- primarily because it’s much more challenging. I’m good at seeing patterns in past events. It would be a comforting exercise then, to look back in my prayer journal and organize the main events of 2011into coherent strands that I could then weave together into a comfortable spiritual blanket.
The attempt to look into the near future, however, is anything but comforting. At this moment 2012 just a series of questions with no answers, a bundle of possibilities over which I have at best only uncertain control.
Some of the harder questions are not about what will happen to me but rather what choices will I make:

"Will I be able to respond generously to some event even when that means giving up my own plans or my own comfort?"

"Will my response to some frightening experience in 2012 be to draw closer to God or to run farther away?"

I’d rather think about the more positive questions such as

“What will turn out to be the most life-giving experience of 2012?”

“In what ways will I wind up growing in my faith or becoming a more trusting child of God?”

"What people will God use to help me to love Him better?”

“What people will be touched in a special way by me in 2012?”

I pray that questions like these , especially the last few, will sharpen my vision and help me to recognize opportunities for growth when they present themselves during the New Year.
Yes, it seems that this approach of looking ahead into the unknown has some definite advantages! Tonight maybe I’ll reflect on these questions instead of going back into the comfortingly familiar territory of the past twelve months.
May the Lord bless you with a peace-filled 2012!

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

2011-12-23T20:45:00.017-05:00

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CHOOSING THE RIGHT GIFT

I recently read about some research on people's attitudes toward gift-giving. (John Tierney, “In Pursuit of the Perfect Gift? It’s a Lot Closer than You Think,” NY Times Dec. 12, 2011.) Social scientists have done various experiments and interviews probing the complex interactions that underlie the practice of gift-giving. Some of what they found out disappointed me.

One of the findings that particularly struck me was that although giving a gift that you found after hours of painstaking thoughtful shopping may make YOU feel great as the giver, the recipient is far less likely to share your enthusiasm about the surprise gift, and would, truth be told, much rather have received something that was on his or her wish list. One researcher put it this way:

“… The recipient usually doesn’t know how much time and effort you put into finding just the right thing, so it doesn’t necessarily strike them as particularly thoughtful. Instead, your idea of the right thing may strike them as just wrong.”

Then there’s the whole thing about online gift registries; do you dare ignore them? “With a gift registry, they’re telling you what they want, and you’re saying, ‘No, you want something else, because I know more about you than you know about yourself.’ The result is not joyous gratitude, as Dr. Flynn found in a series of studies with Francesca Gino of Harvard.”

Do you like to be creative and surprise people with your gifts? Well, consider this (from the same article): "When married couples were asked about the wedding gifts they’d received, they reported liking the ones from the registry more than the unsolicited ones. When people were given money to buy presents for one another on Amazon, the gifts chosen from the recipient’s wish list were more appreciated than the surprises."
Oh well!

CHRISTMAS WITHOUT GIFT-GIVING?

At a meeting of our Benedictine Oblates two weeks ago an African woman remarked that in her country Christmas was celebrated without the exchanging of gifts; people got new clothes, dressed up and went to midnight mass to celebrate the birth of the Savior, then spent the day visiting one another’s homes. There was no feverish “Christmas shopping” or giving of presents.

This got me trying to image what Christmas would be like if there were no gift-giving involved. I was surprised at how much of the celebration would still be left if we were to drop the custom of exchanging presents. Many of us have lots of other ways of marking the celebration, including rituals such as the Advent wreath, the putting up of the manger scene, trimming the Christmas tree, putting up decorations, cooking and baking, and enjoying Christmas music -- and this isn’t even counting going to church!

In addition, visiting family and friends at Christmas without the exchanging of gifts might help us to appreciate more the deep message of the Nativity of our Lord: God’s becoming present to us in the flesh points us toward a more conscious and more loving presence to one another. What if instead of worrying about presents we were to concentrate on this new kind of “Christmas Presence” and become a gift to each person around us?

So dropping the shopping part of Christmas would actually enhance the celebration. Of course it would bankrupt the whole retail sector of the U.S. economy in the space of two months, so it might not happen any time soon!

GIVING GOD A GIFT?

All of this thinking about gifts made me reflect on the idea of giving God a gift. (Talk about finding a gift for someone who has everything!) The idea is a very old one, of course, prompted by the gospel account of the magi coming to Bethlehem to present their gifts to the newborn King.

Here is a lovely meditation on the theme:

……..…..ROYAL PRESENTS
The off'rings of the Eastern kings of old
Unto our Lord were incense, myrrh and gold;
Incense because a God; gold as a king;
And myrrh as to a dying man they bring.
Instead of incense (Blessed Lord) if we
Can send a sigh or fervent prayer to thee,
Instead of myrrh if we can but provide
Tears that from penitential eyes do slide,
And though we have no gold; if for our part
We can present thee with a broken heart
Thou wilt accept: and say those Eastern kings
Did not present thee with more precious things.
…………………-. Nathaniel Wanley, 1634-1680

So, I started thinking about what gift I might give God for Christmas. Maybe I could be extra nice to a certain brother monk, or be a little more careful to avoid distractions during my meditation period... Then I suddenly thought: Does God have a gift registry?

GOD’S GIFT REGISTRY

Some entrepreneurs have picked up the popular wish for an orderly and practical way to get the gifts you want and need while avoiding the totally useless and unwanted ones. Enter the Christmas Gift Registry! This spin-off of the “bridal registry” and the “baby registry” is a grownups’ version of mailing your Christmas list to Santa c/o the North Pole. If it sounds a little tacky and unsentimental to publish a list of what you really want for Christmas, you have to admit that it is at least extremely practical – and we Americans are famous for our pragmatism.

So then it hit me: instead of giving God what I want to give, what if Jesus had a Divine Gift Registry intended just for me where I could find out with complete certainty what he wants from me this Christmas? If I could access such a list on the internet would I dare to look at it or would I just keep trying to surprise the Lord with my own ideas of what he wants from me?

The researcher’s words quoted above now took on an ominous tone, “With a gift registry, they’re telling you what they want, and you’re saying, ‘No, you want something else, because I know more about you than you know about yourself.’” I asked myself, “Do I have the guts to ask the Christ Child what He really wants from me this Christmas? And if I were to find out, would I be willing to give him what he was aking for?” Maybe I’d be better off not knowing.

Quiet introspective prayer, the prayerful reading of scripture, and the insights of a good soul-friend can all be pretty effective ways of accessing Jesus's Gift Registry, personalized uniquely for me. I pray that I’ll have the courage to consult mine and then, of course, have the courage to give him at least one of the things on the divine list!

Have a blessed and a Joyful Christmas!

..........Haitian nativity set, clay figurines

WHAT IS GOD'S WILL FOR ME?

2011-12-17T10:32:00.013-05:00

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THWARTING GOD'S PLAN?

On Thursday of this week the gospel at mass ended with Jesus speaking about John the Baptist:

I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.’ (And all the people who heard this, including the tax-collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves.) (Lk 7:28-30)

I was struck by the phrase, “[they] rejected God’s purpose for themselves.”
Other translations include: “[they] frustrated God’s purpose for them (Phillips Bible)” and “[they] thwarted God's plan for them (NJB).

When I was reflecting on this passage about the people who “frustrated God’s plan for them” and applying it to myself I decided that instead of looking at the hundreds of ways I frustrate God’s plans for me, I would take a more positive approach and look at what happens when it DO cooperate with God’s plan for me. The exercise was tremendously gratifying.

I discovered that the events or periods in my life that have been most satisfying usually show one of two characteristics: risk-taking or putting myself second. And these just happen to be the characteristics of the two principle personalities of the Advent season: The Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.

THE VIRGIN MARY’S COURAGE

The Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Dec. 18) is the story of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel gets Mary’s consent: “Mary said, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said.” Mary is the perfect example of willingness to cooperate with God’s plan. But of course, Mary had an angel appear to her and tell her what God expected of her. That made it a lot easier, right? We keep wishing that God would just send US an angel the way He did to Mary, and tell us what he wants. Then we’d be able to do God’s will much more easily.

But Luke makes it pretty clear that Mary was in fact uncertain about what was happening and what she was getting herself involved in. Think about it: She was saying yes to something that was unheard of, unthinkable in fact, that she would conceive through the Holy Spirit 'the Son of the Most High God." This makes her “Let it be done to me” that much more impressive. She had to keep “pondering all these things in her heart,” trying to discern God’s will for her. She is actually a good model for us who are living with uncertainty in our lives and who have to take risks without the security of knowing for certain if this is the right thing to do.

So, in my own reflections I found that two of the most blessed times of my life involved risk-taking, venturing out of the comfortable circle of the given into alien, unknown places. Specifically, when we decided to re-open St. Benedict’s Prep in 1973 we were leaping into the dark because it seemed to be what God was asking us to do at the time. The second life-changing event was when I left the security and routine of monastery for an eleven-month sabbatical, traveling to completely new places both physically and spiritually. There’s no doubt in my mind that these two decisions were part of “God’s plan” for me.

JOHN THE BAPTIST’S HUMILITY

As I reflected on how I’ve managed to “follow God’s plan for me,” I found that often this involved putting myself second. This seems, in fact, like a universal property of life at least in my experience, like one of Newton’s three laws of motion: the less self-centered I am, the more satisfying my life becomes. When I go out of my way to stop and pay attention to a little child who wants to say something to me, that is always rewarding – and it’s clearly God’s will for me. When I skip my afternoon walk to talk with a troubled student who needs a sympathetic listener and a word of encouragement, that is always a rewarding experience – and it feels like God’s will for me.

The Advent model for putting myself second is, of course, John the Baptist. The gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent (Dec.11, 2011) tells of how John bore witness to Christ. “I am not the Christ,” he told those who asked him. His job was to decrease so that Christ could increase, to point out to people “Look! There is the Lamb of God.”

John is the perfect model for “It’s not about me!” If I want to follow “God’s plan for me,” then, I need to follow John’s lead and remove myself from the center of the stage so that Christ can become visible to people through my actions, words and attitudes.

ADVENT ADVERBS

“Does God want me to put the house on the market now?” “Does God want me to start looking for a new job?” “Does God want us to take our daughter out of the school she’s attending and transfer her to another one?” We shouldn’t expect help from God in the form of answers to these questions. (Sorry!) The answers are simply not going to come.

But we can be sure of THE WAY in which God wants us to approach those questions. We get two good adverbs from the example of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.

The first adverb is “confidently:” “Does God want me to trust in his goodness as I try to decide to accept this job offer?” “Does God want me to wait in joyful hope as I wait for the results my medical test?”

The second adverb is "humbly:" “Does God want me to grab the limelight and make myself the center of attention as the family is grieving over the death of my aunt, or does He expect me to help people meet Christ through my humble loving words and my quiet sharing in their various ways of dealing with their grief?”

It’s clear HOW God expects me to act in these cases even if I don’t know exactly WHAT I should do. But it’s the “how” that I'm going to be judged on, it seems to me. Did you act humbly? Generously? Openly? Considerately? These ways of acting are without any doubt “God’s plan for me.”

And I’ve found that they are also the keys to living a life that is rewarding, fruitful and life-giving..

,,,,,Henry Owassa Turner "The Annunciation"
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AN IMAGE OF HOPE

2011-12-09T15:59:00.014-05:00

MY FAVORITE CHANGE

I’d like to follow up last week’s post about the new English translation of the mass by reflecting briefly on one of my favorite changes so far, a particular metaphor that for some reason was omitted from the first translation of Eucharistic Prayer II but appears in the new one. Originally, you remember, the first paragraph of the Eucharistic Prayer II read:

Lord, you are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness.
Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy,
so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

but the new translation reads,

You are indeed Holy, O Lord, the fount of all holiness.
Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray,
by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall,
so that they may become for us the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

The image of the Spirit’s descending “like the dewfall” has become an immediate favorite of mine.

Eucharistic Prayer II is based on a third or fourth century anaphora in a document called the Apostolic Tradition. When the post-Vatican II church used this ancient “anaphora” (canon of the mass) as the basis for a new Eucharistic Prayer, the word “dewfall” was imported from a seventh or eighth century text in the Gothic Missal, an example of how varied sources have contributed to the Catholic liturgical tradition over the centuries.

DEW IN THE BIBLE

In the arid land of Israel, especially in the dry months, dew was a major source of moisture and therefore life for all vegetation. Not surprisingly, then, Old Testament writers use the metaphor of “dew” fairly frequently. For instance, in Hosea the Lord says:

I will be like the dew for Israel:
he will blossom like the lily;
He will strike root like the Lebanon cedar,
and his shoots will go forth.
His splendor will be like the olive tree
and his fragrance like Lebanon cedar (Hos 14:5, NAB)

Notice how the dew causes plants to take root and blossom grow in strength and beauty.

Then the psalmist compares the pleasantness of life in community to dew falling on a mountain, a sign of God’s blessing in this psalm:

How good and how pleasant it is,
when brothers dwell together as one!
Like fine oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
Upon the beard of Aaron,
upon the collar of his robe.
Like dew of Hermon coming down
upon the mountains of Zion.
There the LORD has decreed a blessing,
life for evermore! (Ps. 133:3).

Finally, in Isaiah the Lord asks the heavens to bring down the dew of righteousness in these words:

Let justice descend, you heavens, like dew from above,
like gentle rain let the clouds drop it down.
Let the earth open and salvation bud forth;
let righteousness spring up with them!*
I, the LORD, have created this (Is. 45:8).

Of course, we moderns know that dew doesn’t fall from the sky but condenses on the ground, yet the metaphor is still a powerful and beautiful image. It has a more dynamic sense in other languages where “dropping like dew” is a single-word verb. Just as in English “rain” can be used as a verb (“It is going to rain”), so in Latin you can also say “It is going to dew (rorare).” In fact this is exactly the verb that was used when the above passage from Isaiah inspired the Latin Advent veriscle:

"Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum.
Aperiatur terra et germinet salvatorem"
(“Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just one,
Let the earth be opened and bud forth a Savior").

This little verse was assigned in various places in the Advent liturgy to ask the heavens to send forth the savior like life-giving dew. It is also the first line of the beautiful Advent hymn, “Rorate Coeli.”

LISTEN FOR THE DEWFALL

In the past few days I've been asked to pray for a couple of little children whose father committed suicide, for someone addicted to drugs, for someone diagnosed with cancer. So, when I pray the “new” Eucharistic Prayer II these days, I’m conscious that I’m leading the community in a prayer for the Holy Spirit to come down upon the bread and wine "like the dewfall" so that just as those desert flowers draw life from the dew, all of us, especially those experiencing the sufferings of the desert in their lives, may draw new life and beauty and nourishment from the presence of the Spirit of God in the assembly and in the bread and wine on the altar.

So, I hope that whenever you hear Eucharistic Prayer II from now on, you too will be encouraged and inspired by the words “like the dewfall” and draw strength from this rich and ancient phrase and its image of flowers blooming in the desert -- a symbol of Advent hope at any time of the year!

A REQUEST: If you enjoy reading about my experiences with the new English translation of the mass, please let me know in the "comments" space so that I can decide if it's a worthwhile direction to pursue at least now and again in this blog. Let me know what you think.

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THE NEW MASS TRANSLATION

2011-12-01T21:00:00.026-05:00

WELCOMING THE NEW TRANSLATION

On Sunday, November 27, during the first mass at which we Catholics were using the new English translation of the mass, I gave a quick summary of the main points behind the changes. I got such nice feedback about my remarks that I thought I might as well share the ideas with you. If you already know all of this, you can skip this post.

There is only one official mass text for the Roman Catholic Church, and this is in Latin. All the language groups in the church translate this text into their own language. In the year 2000, to mark the new millennium, Pope John Paul II caused a new Latin mass book to be produced one that included lots of additions (e.g. prayers for newly canonized saints, masses for various needs, etc.). This meant that a new English translation needed to be produced. It is this text that was officially used on the First Sunday of Advent, 2011.

WHY CHANGE?

For the past 40 years we have been using an English translation of the Roman missal; why do we need a new translation? Here are a few thoughts.

- The first translation was a first attempt at translation liturgical texts into English for use in the liturgy. (Remember that such a task was brand new for the Church – we’d never had to come up with a translation from Latin into a “vernacular” language to be used for worship.) No one can expect to get everything right on the first try. Considering the monumental task and how quickly it was accomplished in 1972, the translators did a great job. But since we’ve been living with the text for four decades we’ve come to see its shortcomings as well as its strengths.

The first translation was done using a different set of guidelines for translation which allowed for paraphrasing, for departing from the exact Latin wording to achieve something similar but perhaps with a different “feel.” For example, the orations at mass in the Latin were all addressed to “God” (Deus), but in the English the word was translated “Father” instead, in an attempt to make the prayers seem less cold and distant.

MORE FORMAL LANGUAGE

The new set of guidelines used for the recent translation require a much more faithful rendering of the words of the Latin text, with no allowance for paraphrasing or adjusting the meaning for various purposes. This closer faithfulness to the Latin text has resulted in a different “feel” to the English translation, a “feel” that is quite deliberate on the part of the translators. Here are just a few examples of such changes.

We Catholics spend a lot of resources on making our worship spaces beautiful and decorated appropriately. Most churches request that people come to church dressed in a way befitting the sacred nature of the liturgy. This notion of sacred formality was not very evident, however, in the first English translation, in which “accessibility” and other such characteristics were aimed at instead. Cultural anthropologists will tell you that the language used in religious rituals in any religion is always a step “above” normal everyday language. So, the language of the new translation is more formal, as befits sacred liturgical language. Two characteristics of this kind of “sacred” language will be immediately apparent in the new texts:

(a) First, the sentences are longer and more complex, reflecting the more complex theology of the original Latin. On a personal note, when the first English translation appeared 40 years ago I remember feeling disappointed that the English of the mass orations lacked the nobility and theological richness of the Latin prayers. The first translation broke the long Latin sentences down into simpler phrases and shorter sentences. The idea at the time went something like this: now that the texts are in English they should be completely understandable to the hearer the very first time they’re heard. Modern English doesn’t use long complex sentences. Now there’s something to be said for the latter argument, of course; and maybe we’ll find that the newer translation sacrifices too much by introducing these long Latin-style sentences, but I personally think the longer sentences may sound more solemn, which is not a bad thing. The more complex sentence structures will certainly demand more “work” (i.e. closer attention) on the apart of the faithful in the pews and more careful preparation on the part of the priest who has to proclaim them aloud in a way that they make sense to his congregation.

(b) A second difference is that the vocabulary in the new translation is much wider and richer and includes many words which are not used in everyday English, e.g. words such as “beseech” and “chalice.” This latter word is a good example of the purpose and effect of the new translation. The priest used to say “When supper was ended he took the cup” but in the new text the priest says “he took the chalice.” The word “chalice” is obviously a very specialized word, one that is pretty much confined to biblical passages and ritual contexts. “Cup” is an everyday word that is at home at the breakfast table, at Starbucks and in the local diner. “He took the chalice” helps locate us in a special, sacred context. What we are engaged in around the altar is not any old supper but a solemn ritual meal. The new vocabulary will help us feel that.

CLEARER CONNECTIONS TO SACRED SCRIPTURE

One of the characteristics of the original Latin mass it its frequent allusions to sacred scripture. Many of these references were lost in the first translation, however, in favor of simplicity and clarity. A good example comes up at the communion rite. The old text says, “Happy are those who are called to his supper,” but the new translation restores the scriptural reference from the book of Revelation, “Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.” Rather than depriving the faithful of this reference to a beautiful passage in the Book of Revelation (“They’ll never understand the connection with scripture”) the new translation puts the burden on priests and other teachers to educate people and make them aware of the connection. This will take time, but not everything has to happen instantly – even in America in 2011!

The response of the faithful to the priest also contains a similar scriptural citation. The old translation said, “Lord I am to worthy to receive you. But only say the word and I shall be healed.”

The new translation, based on the original Latin, says “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” This is based closely on a quotation from the miracle story of the healing of the centurion’s servant (Mt 8:5-13; Lk 7:1-10) in which the centurion tells Jesus “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof; but just say the word and my servant will be healed” (Mt 8:8). Is that scriptural allusion really so hard to grasp? I’m happy that it’s been restored.

One final scriptural allusion that has been re-introduced to us English-speaking Catholics comes in Eucharistic Prayer II. The priest now prays over the gifts: “Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Holy Spirit upon them like the dewfall….” In Israel during the dry months every year, dewfall means water and therefore life. The bible refers in several places to God's life-giving gift of dew. In the early centuries of the Christian church, the church Fathers loved to refer to the Holy Spirit as descending like the dew, quietly giving life to the world. So this change also takes us back to our early Christian roots in the great writers like Augustine and Gregory the Great. I can’t wait to give a homily or two on this new phrase in Eucharistic Prayer II!

MORE THEOLOGICAL DEPTH

This topic is a bit more controversial, but we need to stay open and see how this all feels after we’ve lived with it for a few years.

The most obvious example of a theological nicety that has been restored comes in the common response to the priest’s greeting, “The Lord be with you.” The Latin “Et cum spiritu tuo” was simplified in the first to translation to “And also with you.” This made it seem like a simple exchange of greetings in which the priest says “Greetings, everyone” and the faithful respond “You too, father!” Well, that’s friendly enough, no doubt, but it loses the theological meaning of this second-century greeting of the people to their priest. What they are saying by their response of “And with your spirit” is something like “And with the Spirit that you received in the sacrament of ordination which gives you the grace to fulfill the office of priest at this celebration.” It reminds everyone of the role of the Spirit in the heart of each person present, and is another way of acknowledging that this a special kind of event, one in which various people play specialized roles. There are plenty of good homilies hiding inside of this exchange of greetings!

Another change, and one I will find harder to get used to, comes in the Nicene Creed that we recite every Sunday. It’s the phrase that used to be translated “one in being with the Father,” but which now reads (following the technical Latin vocabulary) “consubstantial with the Father.” What in the world were the translators trying to accomplish by using this seemingly indecipherable technical Latin word? Well, here are a couple of thoughts. First, to say that Jesus is “one in being with the Father” doesn’t say very much about Jesus: everything in creation somehow participates in God’s being, so you could argue that plants and animals and rocks are all “one in being with the Father.” But why this big Latinate word that nobody can understand at all? Well, the reasoning here (whether you agree with it or not) is that the Council of Nicea fought long and hard over the best way to express the doctrine of the Trinity, including Jesus’ nature and his relation to the Father. The bishops at the council settled on a Greek word which is set into a Latin equivalent word “consubstantialis” to express the divinity of Jesus. This was no mere dispute about words: the doctrines of the incarnation and of the Trinity itself were at stake. So now in the 21st century the word “consubstantial” will send priests and teachers scurrying to find out just what the word means and why it was so important back in the 300’s. And that’s okay. A few sermons about the divinity of Christ won’t hurt any of us. Besides, contrary to what most modern American Christians might think, not everything in our liturgical texts has to be immediately understandable. In the case of "consubstantial"it may be enough for now to realize that our ancestors in the faith struggled with the problem of how to express the relationship between God the Father and Christ, and this tongue-twisting word is a reminder of their struggle.

One final change that you’ll notice is in the Eucharistic acclamations. Why did we drop the one that went “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again?” This acclamation was never one of the three in the original Latin mass. The reason it is being dropped is, as I understand it, because the acclamations are all addressed TO Christ, they’re not ABOUT Christ. Look at the other acclamations and you’ll see what I’m talking about. This acclamation was dropped because it is not in line with the idea of the Eucharistic acclamation.

DON'T CHOKE ON THE BONES!

Change is always difficult, and our emotional attachment to sacred texts makes a revised translation that much more difficult. The art of translation is tricky in any case, and the task of the translators of the new Roman Missal was well nigh impossible. I hope that my little excursus may have helped a couple of my readers to appreciate the good points about the new translation. As for the points that bother you about the new translation, try thinking of it this way: When you sit down to a chicken dinner you may find a few bones in the meat. You’ve got a choice: you can decide to choke on the bones or you can just put them to one side and enjoy the rest of the feast. Don’t go to mass to choke on the bones!

SLANTS ON THANKSGIVING

2011-11-21T17:45:00.021-05:00

It was Thanksgiving Day 1994 that I experienced something that I already knew: Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I was on a sabbatical year and happened to be enjoying the Benedictine hospitality of the monks of Worth Abbey in England. I had to keep reminding myself “Today is Thanksgiving Day.” Of course it didn’t feel like Thanksgiving or look like Thanksgiving or smell like Thanksgiving. That’s when I found out for sure how much this day means to me.

THANKSGIVING NEW TESTAMENT STYLE

This year, 2011, I decided to look up the New Testament verb eucharisteo, “to give thanks,” to see what insights the sacred scripture could add to make this Thanksgiving Day even more special. Maybe some of what I found out will help make your own Thanksgiving a little more special too. Here are a few scripture passages where the verb "to give thanks" occurs. I've added my own reflection after each passage.

“Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father” (Eph 5: 19-20).

Giving thanks “always” not just one day a year, and not for a list of specific things but rather “for everything.” This Thanksgiving Day I’m going to try instead of making a long list of things to be thankful for, to work on developing a conscious attitude of thankfulness in general, especially to God, “from whom all blessings flow.”

“…giving thanks to the Father, who has made you fit to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light” (Col 1:12).

And even if you do make a list of things to be thankful for, at the top of the list is the one greatest gift to be thankful for: Salvation in Christ.

"So, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him, rooted in him and built upon him and established in the faith as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving” (Col. 2:6-7).
And because of this gift of salvation in Christ we are encouraged to “abound” in thanksgiving. The verb “abound” is used to describe the scene of plenty after the miracle of the loaves and fishes when twelve baskets of scraps “remained over and above.” Imagine if our attitude of thanksgiving overflowed with such abundance!

And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17).

Here thanksgiving does in fact overflow, permeating our lives by becoming the motive for everything we say or do. That’s an interesting criterion to apply when judging my own actions: “How does this particular action reflect my gratitude to God for everything I’ve been given?”

"In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:18).

Giving thanks in “all circumstances” translates the Greek en panti, literally “in all things.” However you translate it the phrase must mean to give thanks not only in good times but also during difficult and trying ones.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

This brief excursion into the New Testament verb for “giving thanks” has given me some challenging meditations that may help me to a deeper appreciation of this beautiful American holiday and the opportunity it gives us to “abound in thanksgiving.”

I pray that the Lord will fill your holidays with thanksgiving this year!

HALL OF FAME NIGHT

2011-11-19T15:17:00.012-05:00

A DIFFERENT CELEBRATION
Thursday evening I attended the Saint Benedict’s Prep Hall of Fame dinner. We honored athletes from all various decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s.

At these school events I’m one of the lucky ones for whom the evening is not simply one of nostalgia, not a matter of suddenly jumping back over a chasm of twenty or forty years to revisit some golden bygone days of ghostly schoolboy glories. For me these banquets are not homecomings at all -- I’m already home after all --rather they’re celebrations of community and continuity.

On Thursday night as I moved around the huge banquet room saying hello to people I hadn’t seen in decades, I was gliding back and forth along a single unbroken strand extending back in time, along which the years and the people flow together to form one single plot, one story from my days as a freshman in 1956 through my returning to teach in 1969, the closing and re-opening of the school in the early 1970’s right up until 2011. I experienced a feeling of wholeness, a sense of being carried along by the dynamic life of a beautiful community.

We also have an annual banquet at which we honor people who have contributed in various ways to our school, while the Hall of Fame Dinner, which happens only every few years, is pretty much restricted to athletes. The printed program of the latter always includes a list of the impressive athletic accomplishments of each inductee to show why the committee chose them to be honored.

THE ONE CRITERION

But later on as I flipped through the biographies in this year’s Hall of Fame program I wondered what God sees when looking at my life. What are God’s criteria for success? I already knew the answer, of course, so last night I started perusing an old copy of Ernesto Cardenale’s Vida en el Amor (1970) (translated into English in 1972 as “To Live Is to Love.” ), looking for a good way of expressing the criteria needed to get into God's Hall of Fame. After just a minute or two I found the following few sentences that seemed a pretty good summary of the criteria that are important to God [my translation]:

Man was created for love, only to love his creator. And whatever time he does not spend in this love is wasted time.

Love is the single law that governs the universe. That law that moves the sun and the other stars, as Dante says, because it is the law of cohesion uniting all things. The material out of which the universe is made is love.”

I sensed this love present in the vast banquet room as I shared stories and jokes with dozens of people. Love was the single thread "uniting all things:" God’s divine love uniting teammates, athletes and coaches, and also uniting the years and the experiences of my life, the triumphs and the trials (mine and those of my brothers and sisters), helping make sense of everything.

I came away as I always do after one of those dinners, thankful to be part of a monastery and a school community that has provided the possibility for this much love to pour itself out on the earth among so many varied people. “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

STRESS AND THE LAST SUPPER

2011-11-11T21:56:00.013-05:00

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GUESS WHO'S PRAYING FOR ME!
This past Wednesday I had one of those days when a whole lot of stressors seemed to pile up all at once. It got so bad that I sat down that evening and started listing them in my prayer journal, trying to hand them over to the Lord. A couple of looming deadlines, a certain difficult situation in school, a sick friend and so forth…

This strategy of writing them out in my prayer journal usually works fine. But not this time. The next morning as I sat in church at 5:15 in front of the blessed sacrament I was still feeling the stressors, still feeling all tight inside. I was stuck there stewing in front of the Lord. Finally out of frustration I said, “Okay, this is getting nowhere. Let me just do my lectio and see if the Lord can use that to tell me something I need to hear."
I’m currently reading my way through the gospel of Luke and am almost finished. So I opened to the verse where I’d left off the last time, Luke 22:32, and began to read. Jesus was speaking to Peter after the Last Supper shortly before they left for the garden of Gethsemane.

I began reading Jesus’ words: "Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail”

And that’s as far as I got. I was captivated by the idea of Jesus’ praying for Peter. What a tremendous idea! Can you imagine the power of that prayer? Jesus requesting something from his Father!

Suddenly I heard Jesus speaking to me: “Albert, I’ve been praying for you, too, that your faith may not fail.” I spent the rest of the meditation time letting the warmth of that consoling thought melt away all of my stress. It worked, too!

LEXICON LESSONS

This evening I spent a few minutes with my Greek New Testament and my Greek Lexicon, checking out a couple of words from that beautiful passage.

The Verb translated as “prayed” is deomai, “to pray” in the sense of prayer of petition. A fairly common word in Luke, it means to beseech, to request. In 5:12 a leper “bowed with his face to the ground and begged (deomai) him, ‘Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean;’” In 8:38 “The man from whom the demons had gone begged (deomai) that he might be with him; in 9:38 “a man from the crowd shouted, ‘Teacher, I beg (deomai) you to look at my son; he is my only child.’” But in our passage from the last supper Jesus is not being beseeched, he’s doing the beseeching. And he’s praying for ME!

The pronoun “you” in the passage is in the singular: Jesus is telling Simon Peter that he’s praying not for the apostles as a group but for him, Simon, as an individual. It’s quite personal and intimate. This means that Jesus is praying for ME, as if I were the only person in the world!

When Jesus prays “that your faith may not fail” Luke uses ekleipo, to “run out, fail.” (Money can “run out” or “fail” as in 16:9.) Jesus is praying that Peter’s faith won’t fail under the pressure of Jesus’ impending arrest, trial and execution. He’s praying for me too, that my faith won’t fail under the stresses of everyday living – especially this week.

Thursday morning I was in no mood, really, to open my bible; I was feeling too stressed out. I’m so glad that I accepted the Lord’s invitation anyway, and opened to Luke 22:32. Otherwise I’d have never heard Jesus’ consoling words, “Albert, I prayed for you.”
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....................Mosaic of Christ, Hagia Sophia

SUPERHEROES WEEK

2011-11-05T14:40:00.012-04:00

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DARK KNIGHT DESCENDS

The big news in downtown Newark this week was the presence of dozens of trailers, trucks, vehicles, actors and cameramen filming scenes from the next Batman movie, “Dark Knight Rises.” I made sure that my daily walk took me near the center of the activity, so I got to see dozens of police cars from the Gotham Police Department along with a couple of armored SWAT vehicles from Batman’s home town. Thursday and Friday were definitely Batman days around here!

Meanwhile, back at the abbey… We had already celebrated the Church’s heroes and heroines on Tuesday, All Saints’ Day. The saints are definitely not in the same class as “Superheroes,” because they are real-life, flesh and blood persons, not fictional creations. They just did little things extraordinarily well, or managed to let the Lord work though them to do some extraordinary things.

FIGHTING IN CITY HALL!

On Thursday, the film crews spent hours shooting scenes of an arch-villain’s den inside the highly disguised rotunda of Newark’s City Hall. Meanwhile, back at the abbey five blocks away up the hill, we were celebrating the feast of Saint Martin de Porres. Born in 1639 in Lima, Peru of a black-slave mother and a Spanish father, he had very little education. He was accepted as a brother in the Dominican order, and soon he quietly set to work with extraordinary energy and endless kindness to help the poor, slaves, mulattoes and other outcasts of Lima. His fellow Dominicans, including priest theologians started coming to him for his wise spiritual insights and counsel. (He was friends with another non-superhero, Saint Rose of Lima.) Even before his death he was venerated not as a superhero but as Saint Martin de Porres.

GOTHAM COPS INVADE!

On Friday, they did take after take of dozens of Gotham cops running down into the lightrail station on Broad Street. Meanwhile, back at the abbey ten blocks away, we were celebrating the feast of Saint Charles Borromeo. His mother was a Medici. In 1559 his uncle was elected Pope Pius IV and the following year, named him his Secretary of State and created him a cardinal and administrator of the see of Milan. (It didn’t matter that he wasn’t a priest.) He was poised to be a world-class power-broker, and could easily have chosen to become a man of immense wealth and political influence. But he chose instead to dedicate himself to the reforming of the Church and especially of the clergy in those days when the Protestant Reformation was splitting Christendom. His life’s story is not that of a rich power-broker nor a superhero but of a holy man who by his determination and courage made the Church a holier and more Christ-like institution.

So, superhero week was quite a success here at Newark Abbey, as we hobnobbed with All the Saints on Tuesday, with a mulatto Peruvian on Thursday and on Friday with a might-have-been wealthy prince who passed up the opportunity in favor of serving the church.

None of these folks had jet-powered batmobiles or superhuman tricks to help them. Instead they relied on God, in whom they managed to place all their trust. Sounds risky, doesn’t it? I break into a cold sweat at the idea of putting myself totally into God's hands. Batman only has to do stuff like rappel down the side of a 50-story building in seconds or drive down a crowded street at 300 hundred miles an hour. Who’s got the easier challenge, him or me?

HOUSEHOLDS AND SACRED STONES

2011-10-29T13:10:00.010-04:00

Friday Oct. 28 was the feast of the Apostles Simon and Jude. The second reading at mass, from Ephesians, spoke to powerfully me so I want to share with you some ideas about the passage.

The message of the reading for me centers on the Greek word oikos.(house, household); it’s the root of English words such as “economy” and “ecumenical.” The passage from Ephesians contains no less than six words based on the word “oikos.” In the passage that follows I’ve inserted the original Greek word in parentheses next to the appropriate English word.

Brothers and sisters:
You are no longer strangers (paroikoi = outside the household) and sojourners,
but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones
and members of the household (oikeioi) of God,
built upon (epoikodomethentes) the foundation of the Apostles and prophets,
with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone.
Through him the whole structure (oikodome) is held together
and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord;
in him you also are being built together (oikodomeisthe)
into a dwelling place (katoikterion)of God in the Spirit.
(Ephesians 2, 19-22)

So what’s all this emphasis on the house and the household?

First, in this chapter the writer is celebrating the good news that through baptism the gentiles (the “you” of the first line above) now share in the prerogatives once reserved for the chosen people of Israel. God’s “household” now includes the whole of humankind.

But the image changes quickly and naturally from “household” to “building.” This is where things get interesting for me. Unlike Paul’s image of the church as Christ’s body (I Cor. 12), the image of building brings out the idea that the church must be a carefully planned and structured group deliberately willed by God. It’s not some kind of club that we’ve made up.

The foundation of this building is the teaching and preaching of “the apostles and prophets” (the latter being most likely not Old Testament prophets but the members of the early church who had the gift of prophecy).

The capstone at the top of the building that holds it all together, the point toward which the entire faith is aiming, the climax of the whole enterprise, is Jesus Christ. In the following verse we find that this is not just any sort of building, but “a temple sacred to the Lord.”

Suddenly Christ is no longer the capstone but is rather the whole building into whom we are being built: we are inserted into Christ through baptism, like stones in a temple. This metaphor of a holy temple emphasizes a couple of aspects of church that got pushed into the background after Vatican II, namely the divine and cultic character of our union with Christ.

This reading on the feast of two apostles gave me some good food for thought. I’m not saved as an individual; this is not a solo project concerning only Christ and me. I’m being saved precisely as a members of something larger. Do I see myself as part of this “temple” built on the foundation of the apostles, or do I normally think in terms of my own efforts and God’s personal grace given to me as an individual?

Do I work toward building up this holy temple or do I opt out because the temple is too had to deal with, as source of irritation or even pain because of its human imperfections?

The writer of Ephesians is well aware of the shortcomings of the various church communities, yet insists nevertheless that it is through this katoikterion, this structure, this dwelling place of God, that we are connected with Christ and with one another.

As the Catholic Church in English-speaking countries prepares to introduce some needed changes in the translations of the mass texts in English, it’s a good time to remember that the church is indeed a “temple sacred to the Lord,” and that the sacred services that we celebrate there need to reflect a certain sacred seriousness and reverence, something that has been lost over the years. So as we introduce changes that are intended, in part, to enchance the feeling of sacredness in our central sacred ritual, we need to be patient with the shortcomings of our church -- it may be a sacred dwelling of Christ, but the stones that make it up (including you and me) are often imperfect!

Go back and reread the passage above and ask the Lord to speak to you , too.

LIVING PSALM 100

2011-10-21T20:55:00.018-04:00

Since I spend a lot of time praying the psalms each day in the Liturgy of the Hours I'll often pick a particular psalm to study and meditate on. This week I'd spent some time with one of the great praise psalms, Psalm 100. I thought you might be interested in hearing how it came to life for me on Friday.

SUDDENLY AWARE

Thursday I had occasion to read an interesting paper written by Ivan Lamourt, our Assistant Headmaster, in which he detailed a dozen or more scholarly books and articles on education theory concerning the education of inner-city youths, and then showed how the research is corroborated in our monastery's school, Saint Benedict's Prep. This reading had made me realize how much we at St. Benedict’s have gotten right just on pure instinct and common sense. The reading also sharpened my perception and awareness of the extraordinary things that go on in the school each day, things that most of us here just take for granted. This morning (Friday) my heightened awareness helped me to appreciate one daily event that is truly extraordinary, our daily school meeting, which we call “convocation."

MORNING CONVOCATION

Our 550 boys, grades 7-12 had crowded as usual into Shanley Gym. The daily meeting was being overseen and run entirely by students who were in charge of keeping order and seeing that things got done in an orderly fashion. (I suppose that's pretty extraordinary in itself, come to think of it.)
In the midst of the noise and milling around, the senior in charge stood in the middle of the gym floor and raised his hand for quiet. Quickly the signal spread until everyone had his hand raised, and after a few more seconds the whole place had fallen silent. That’s pretty extraordinary too!

Then attendance was then taken out loud, with the student leader from each homeroom group calling out the names of any absentees. Having the students being responsible for such a task is extraordinary enough, but how about this: in this inner-city school with its 85% minority population our daily attendance averages about 98%!

A JOYFUL NOISE

Then came the heart of “convo,” the prayer service. It began as always with a song. The singing was led by students playing three guitars, three bongo drums and a little Peruvian charango (pictured to the right) while Dr. Fletcher added some color with his tenor saxophone and Dr. Lansang accompanied on the upright piano. At this point things got truly extraordinary: the thunderous sound of 550 teenage boys singing with full voice came very close to what the psalmist must have had in mind when he wrote the opening lines of Psalm 100 (King James Version):

“Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands.
Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing.”

After we prayed a psalm and listened to the day’s gospel reading Fr. Augustine gave a brief and insightful reflection. (He, too, is a Ph.D. -- is it extraordinary for a Catholic inner-city high school to have five doctors on the staff?) Then came a period of spontaneous petitions in which students and staff prayed out loud for various intentions, especially for people who are sick or suffering. After the final oration it was time for a closing song.

ALL YE LANDS SING PRAISE

Picture the 130 freshmen sitting in ranks and files covering the entire floor of the gym (nobody tell the Newark Fire Department, please!). As we began singing, dozens of freshmen began spontaneously reaching to put their arms around the shoulders of the classmate on either side and to sway, as they sat, in time with the music. Their sense of joy was palpable. Typical of our school, these kids singing with arms draped comfortably around one another were a diverse group: African-Americans, South and Central Americans, European-Americans and several natives of Africa. They were a living example of King David’s “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands,” with the clear emphasis on “all ye lands."

THE FLOCK THAT HE SHEPHERDS

As I watched, it struck me that each of these kids was exulting in the feeling of belonging to a community. Did you know, by the way, that research shows that creating in a young person a sense of belonging to a community enhances self-esteem and has a positive effect on academic performance? (Wow, what a surprise? Who knew, right?) As I watched this spontaneous celebration of camaraderie I realized that these kids were experiencing the next line of Psalm 100 (NAB trans.):

Know that the LORD is God,
he made us, we belong to him,
we are his people, the flock he shepherds.

Each of us is a member of the one same flock. Each of us in our school community knows that he or she is a member of the family. We are not a random collection of sovereign autonomous souls, but members of one another.

THROUGH EVERY GENERATION…

As the song was ending, I looked up at the twenty-some class banners hanging along the edge of the elevated track. This year we’re displaying those from the anniversary years of 2006, 2001, 1996, and so on back through the 1940’s. The students are surrounded by reminders that they are part of a line of St. Benedict’s men that goes back to 1868. That kind of permanence in the middle of an American city is an extraordinary thing these days. It’s also a living example, by the way, of the final line of Psalm 100:

“good indeed is the LORD,
His mercy endures forever,
his faithfulness lasts through every generation.”

I walked out of convo this morning feeling Psalm 100 in my bones and more appreciative than ever of the great gift that I’m privileged to be part of every day. It’s certainly enough to make one want to sing and make a joyful noise for the Lord!
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CONTEMPLATION AND UNEMPLOYMENT

2011-10-15T09:46:00.011-04:00

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ENO’S POND

Early this week we had a day off from school so I took the opportunity to visit a cousin and his wife who live at the New Jersey shore. I sat for a couple of hours on a bench at the beach reading and writing with the soothing swish of the surf in the background.

Then after lunch I went to Eno’s Pond County Park where I took a short walk through the woods to the beautiful pond that gives the park its name. Once again I sat on a bench, this time enveloped in silence broken only by the occasional honking of geese. I took out a small sketch pad and did a drawing of the pond, trying to capture the magic of the scene: tall pines towering above other trees whose leaves were starting to turn crimson and purple, dark green shrubs crowding up to the edge of the inky-black mirror of the pond that reflected the pewter gray of the sky. A few more geese flew across the far end of the pond in a carefully kept line as if being pulled on an invisible string.

This was one of those times when it’s easy to sense the presence of the Creator all around you. In fact it would be hard to miss it. Words of praise and thanks rose from my heart unbidden to join in the quiet chorus of praise being sung by the red leaves, the silver ripples, the gray clouds, and the wild geese honking for God.

HONKING FOR JOBS

Yesterday I was the chief celebrant at our daily community mass at 5:00 p.m. I was irritated by the background noise during the entire celebration -- not the murmur of surf or the honking of wild geese but the droning murmur of a man’s voice distorted by an electric megaphone. He was standing in front of the courthouse a block away from the monastery, and although his words at this distance were completely unintelligible, I knew what he was saying. He and others like him have been shouting the same message every day for weeks between 5 and six in the evening.

He was calling to passing commuters as they drove home, “Honk your horn for jobs! Honk your horn for jobs.” This call was interspersed with his constant loud patter of words of complaint, accusation and exhortation concerning the high unemployment rate in our country and especially here in Newark. But soon he would inevitably come back to the refrain, “Honk your horn for jobs! Honk your horn for jobs.” Often drivers would encourage him with long, loud beeps on their horns.

SURPRISE OFFERING

So there I was at the offertory of the mass holding up the big silver paten with the host on it and praying, “Blest are you Lord, God of all creation; through your goodness we have this bread to offer…Honk your horn for jobs! Honk your horn for jobs!” The voice from down the street had now intruded on the holy sacrifice and placed on the paten, next to the sacred bread for the sacrifice, the heartaches and fears of all of the unemployed people in the city. The paten got heavier as I realized that I was offering not just the sufferings and the hopes of people in the city, but of my brothers and sisters across the United States and around the entire world.

The vision lasted just a second or two, but it gave the rest of the mass a new and deeper meaning, especially as the disconcerting voice down the street kept droning on determinedly, competing with the words of the Eucharistic Prayer “This is my body which will be given up for you... Honk your horn for jobs… this is the cup of my blood ...it will be shed for you and for all… Honk your horn for jobs!”

“Let us proclaim the mystery of Faith: … Honk your horn for jobs... Christ has died, Christ is risen, honk your horn for jobs!”

After mass I wanted to sit in the quiet of the monastery garden and meditate on scripture. But I knew that the voice was going to be even louder out there. So instead I sat inside and prayed for folks who can’t find work.

Sometimes I need to sit by Eno’s Pond and listen to the wild geese honking for God. But yesterday whether I wanted it or not I got a different kind of honking that brought me out of my self-centered comfortable world to remind me of the suffering of my brothers and sisters outside the monastery. It was as much a gift to me as my quiet visit to Eno’s Pond. “Honk your horn for jobs! Honk your horn for jobs.”

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.........................Honk if you love God!

JESUS THE TRANSLATOR

2011-10-08T16:08:00.015-04:00

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Bi-Bi-lingual Sunday

ago I had the honor of celebrating two Sunday morning bilingual masses. The first was my usual English-Spanish one, and the second was English-French for a special celebration of the French-speaking African community at St. Mary’s, the abbey’s parish. The following is the text of my homily (delivered in English) at the second mass. I thought you might enjoy it.

The Prism of God

Imagine a pure white light, a hundred times brighter than the sun. It’s so bright, of course that you can’t look directly at it. Well, see, we can’t look directly at God either – God is just too much for us to comprehend!

But think about this: scientists have long had a way of analyzing sunlight: the use of a prism – a piece of crystal or glass, for example, that allows sunlight to pass through it, but then breaks down the sunlight into the various colors that make it up, from red at one end to violet at the other end of the spectrum. This, as we know, is what makes the beautiful colors of a rainbow.

I want you now to think of Jesus as a prism. He takes the incredibly bright light of God’s pure being which is totally incomprehensible to us humans and breaks that divine light down for us into more manageable rays into understandable terms that we human beings can see & relate to.

Now look at this morning’s second reading with me for a moment.

Have in you the same attitude
that is also in Christ Jesus,
Who … emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.

This is Christ the prism, breaking down the mystery of God’s love into human terms:
He’s telling us that God is eternally giving himself for others – indeed for US
Of course we can’t understand exactly what that means, because God is ultimately beyond our understanding, but we can at least try to grasp a little bit of the blinding truth about the mystery of this God we believe in, this God we pray to.

Especially on Calvary Jesus has “broken down” God for us: And by his suffering and death, Our Lord has shown us not the Old Testament God of Hosts, the God of armies, but rather God DISARMED, hanging on the cross. You thought God was rich and powerful, and he certainly is, since he’s infinite. But Christ lets you see deep into God’s very being:
God’s richness lies not in possessing but in giving. It’s the richness of a total self-offering, with no reservations or second thoughts.

Simultaneous Translation

But there is a second image that occurs to me this morning, maybe a better one than a prism; appropriately enough it is the image of a translator. Sometimes a student of mine will be absent from school because he had to go with his parent to translate for them

Some of you may have had the experience of depending on a translator to tell you what was going on. Without the translator you would have had no idea of what was happening around you.

I had that happen to me in Hungary. I don’t speak or understand any Hungarian, and so I had to depend on a Hungarian friend to translate for me all the time. Especially at the family dinner table: “They’re discussing where they should take you sightseeing in Budapest tomorrow.” “My mother is asking how you like her goulash.” She’s asking if you want some more – and she says you’re too skinny”

You depend on the translator to tell you pretty much everything, so that you can understand what’s going on.

Well, imagine Jesus as our translator, as the one who translates God for us, a God who is otherwise so infinite as to be far beyond our comprehension. By becoming one of us, Jesus became the “WORD MADE FLESH”

God became a word, a word that translates the divine nature for us. Jesus our brother translates God into human deeds and actions, and so reveals to us the blindingly beautiful truths about the inner life of God. And what does he say, what does he teach us about God?

From the manger in Bethlehem Jesus translates God, telling us: “God says he loves us so much that he wants to become one of us that he is infinitely humble and gentle.

In the miracle of healing a blind beggar Jesus translates God for us: God is Light that enlightens your life if you let him, that dispels the darkness of your sin and sorrow and ignorance.”

When he calms the stormy sea he is translating God for us: “God has power over everything, the creator is in complete charge, so all you need to do is put your trust in the Lord and you will have nothing, absolutely nothing, to fear.”

From the cross on Calvary, as Paul reminds us in the second reading today, Christ is still translating God for us: In giving us his son, God gives us himself. In not sparing his only Son, God did not spare himself, but gave himself for us. God became a slave and died the death of a slave

Through his life, death and resurrection and through his life of total, constant self-giving, Jesus has translated God for us.

Do You Speak God?

But there’s more to the story. Again let’s look at the second reading: Paul advises us there,
“Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus.”

Well, there it is. We are, it seems, being recruited as translators ourselves!
“Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,”

Have any of you ever been called on to translate for someone in some situation or other? Where someone depended on you to put something into a language that they could understand? Well Paul is calling on all of us this morning to become full-time translators

When you have Christ’s attitude of selfless love, of humble service and self-sacrifice, then your actions and your words will begin to reveal something about God to those around you.

Your humble attitude of service to someone you work with will translate God for them: Not a God of domination or armies but a God disarmed, a God of infinite patience and boundless, self-giving love.

Your patience in bearing suffering or trials will translate God for someone close to you who knows what you’re going through.

Your act of forgiveness when someone has wronged you will translate for that person as God who is infinitely forgiving, who loves us unconditionally, no matter what.

Like a bright, clear prism, like Jesus himself, you can “break down” the blinding brightness of God for people and help them to see something about God. By your example you give a priceless gift to others -- especially a glimpse of a God acquainted with suffering, a God who carried a cross so that your own suffering would take on an ultimate meaning. So that your own cross would become a path to glory.

What a gift to give someone! What a ministry! What a beautiful service to perform for another! Even better than translating Ibo or French for them. You translate GOD!

Let us pray that each of us, no matter what our native language, may take up St. Paul’s challenge this morning and become “translators of God” for those we live with, for those we work with, for our friends and our foes.

USING YOUR HEAD

2011-09-30T21:58:00.004-04:00

Last week I was reading Luke 16:1 ff, the parable of the Dishonest Steward. You remember the story: when he heard that he was about to lose his job as steward, this clever guy went out and made friends with a lot of people by reducing the amount they owed to his boss. Jesus tells us “his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. (16:8)"

SAINTLY SHREWDNESS

It seems odd to see Jesus commending someone for cheating, but you have to remember that this is a parable – the rules are different. This is not a story about moral principles and business ethics, so we have to ignore that aspect of the tale and concentrate on the main point Jesus is making. He himself tells us the point: Christians ought to devote as much thought and foresight to their Christian life as people in the larger culture give to their business dealings.

The Greek word translated as “shrewd” is phronimos, which is based on the Greek root phren-, “intellect, mind, understanding.” So Jesus is telling us that we should be more “intelligent, prudent, sensible, or wise” when dealing with matters of the Spirit. I’m sure many of us don’t score high in this category, since we often don’t act on our basic Christian beliefs but instead act selfishly, without using our brain.

ME, FRAGILE?

As I was reading this parable in my French Bible de Jérusalem I noticed the note in the margin. Here’s what it says [my loose translation]: In this parable Jesus isn’t concerned about morality. He is inviting us to look closely at the hard work that a man is doing on himself because he has suddenly become aware of his fragility.” That really struck me: this important official has suddenly become aware of his fragility and is sharp enough to respond accordingly. I spent the rest of my meditation time that

morning looking at my own "fragility." I’ve become progressively more aware of my physical limitations in the past few years, and I’ve made peace with that kind of fragility. But I had to spend more effort in identifying and admitting the other (and more important) kinds of “fragility” in my life. And this kind of mental effort is exactly what Jesus is exhorting us to in the parable. It’s precisely what Luke means by the word phronimos.

But I already know that my Master is going to put an end to my service and demand an accounting of what I’ve done with my gifts. So it’s time for me to start “using my head” and being phronimos. The unjust servant in the parable settled on the strategy of GIVING to others. His giving was of course based on cynical self-interest. But my own shrewd actions as a Christian in an equally “fragile” position must also involve giving; except it’s the self-giving of love in imitation of Christ.

SELF-GIVING SERVICE

So I have started to look for any and every opportunity to be a giving person. As a teacher I have tons of opportunities every day. The same with being a member of a community, and a priest celebrating Sunday mass in a parish And then there are friends in need of an email or a phone call, and on and on. I pray that I’ll be able to stay phronimos and become more and more of a giving person until that day when the Master really does come and say “Okay, your service is at and end.”

If I’ve been as shrewd as the steward in the parable then the maybe Lord will also add, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

In what ways is the Lord expecting YOU to a be more giving person? What opportunities for giving will you need to account for on the day when your stewardship finally comes to an end?

TOO BUSY FOR GOD?

2011-09-23T20:55:00.000-04:00

In analyzing the forces in our culture that work against asense of contemplation, Ronald Rolheiser puts “pragmatism” high on the list.The following thoughts are from pages 40 and 41 of his book The Shattered Lantern.

YOU BUSY?

As far back as 1989 a Time Magazine cover story entitled“The Rat Race: How America is Running Itself Ragged” pointed out that time hadbecome the most precious commodity in the world. Parents in 1989 had tomake appointments to spend time with their own children, and technology had“increased the very heartbeat of today’s generation.” For many people back thenthe demands of staying on top of their careers took all their time and energy.That was then. We can see how much worse the problem has become since thattime. “In our world” says Rolheiser, “there is simply no time or energy (oreven the capacity) to pray or be contemplative.”

He goes on to argue that when self-worth depends onachievement, then very few people are going to spend much time in prayer orcontemplation since these are by definition not utilitarian efforts. They'reuseless in practical terms, a waste of time. Contemplation and prayer don’taccomplish anything, produce anything, or add anything concrete to life. Henotes that we feel better about ourselves when we’re doing something useful.

REFUSING THE BANQUET INVITATION

“We have little time for what is useless and, for that, weare contemplatively the poorer. Caught up as we are in the efficiency demandedby our culture, we often end up like the people in Christ’s parable who refusethe king’s invitation to the wedding banquet (Lk 14:16-24). They did not turndown the invitation explicitly at all; they simply never showed up. They weretoo busy” (40-41). This interpretation of the parable seems to put the issuepretty starkly. The folks who had been invited had nothing against the kingpersonally, they were simply too preoccupied with measuring land, testing oxenand going on honeymoons to accept his banquet invitation. Doesn’t that describe pretty well the situation of a whole lot of good people these days? They’re simply too busy to respond to the invitation to the Lord's banquet!

OUTGROWING MY NEED TO BE PRODUCTIVE

But I don’t want to point too big a finger at others either.Even in the monastery, where lots of time is carved out explicitly for quietprayer, there is sometimes the American temptation to prefer to be doingsomething more “useful.” As I’ve gotten older the temptation has subsided quitea bit – not because I overcame it but because I outgrew the need to beconstantly producing and achieving. I hope that in this present stage of mylife I will indeed be able to continue to shed my American attitude toward productivity so as to devote myself more wholeheartedly to the“useless” activities of contemplative prayer and meditation.

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TRANSLATIONS AND TRANSCENDENCE

2011-09-16T20:21:00.018-04:00

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OUR LOST SENSE OF REVERENCE

Ronald Rolheiser in The Shattered Lantern offers this citation from a favorite author of mine, Annie Dillard. It’s from her book Holy the Firm, in which she shares with us her quandary about which church to attend.

Nothing could more surely convince me of God’s unending mercy than the continued existence on earth of the church.
The higher Christian churches – where, if anywhere, I belong – come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as a certain word which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high churches today they saunter through liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it at any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom. (p.59)

There's a story about a holy rabbi who used to say goodbye to his wife and family before he started his daily prayer because he sensed that if he got too close to the infinite presence of the Almighty in the course of his prayer he might not survive the experience.

Several times in his book Rolheiser mentions modern man’s loss of such experiences as awe, a sense of the holy or anything beyond the pragmatic limits of time and space. But what frightens me is how so many of us believers ourselves sometimes play right into that mentality by reducing God to an object that we can control through quasi-automatic rituals or the appropriate prayers.

I listen to sincere pious people rattle off the responses at mass as fast as they can, like spiritual machine guns. Do you ever see a priest or minister presiding in church in such a manner as to give the impression that for him the sacred rite is something automatic, rote, and in fact quite under his professional control?The sense of awe is nowhere in evidence at such times.

WHAT'S IN A WORD?

One of the purposes of the new translations of the mass texts (that will appear on the First Sunday of Advent this November) is to bring more of a sense of reverence and formality back to our worship. Not a bad idea, frankly! Here are just a couple of instances of where a translation can help make the mass feel more reverent:

1. "The Lord be with you - and with your spirit."
Older Catholics remember the priest greeting the people with the Latin "Dominus vobiscum" and the faithful responding "Et cum spiritu tuo." Well, we English speaking people are the only Catholics who have not been responding to the priest with the words, "And with your spirit" (we've been saying, your remember, "And also with you"). It was apparently thought by the original English translators that this would seem a more welcoming and less stuffy response. But as a translation of "Et cum spiritu tuo," "And also with you" misses an important theological point. The idea is not that the faithful respond to the priest's greeting with "And hello to you, too!" Rather their response to the priest's greeting conveys this idea: "May the Lord be with your spirit, the spirit that you received in your ordination to the priesthood that puts you in the special position of presiding over the assembly and celebrating the sacraments." So "And with your spirit" is one more way of pointing up the special nature of what we're doing at mass.

2. "... for this is the chalice of my blood, the blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you ...
The priest's words of consecration spoken over the wine will now be more formal. I heard a woman complain recently about this translation: "Why do they use the word chalice? I don't have any chalices on my dining room table." I responded to her "Bingo! You got it! Mass is not Sunday dinner! It's a solemn ritualized meal that has its own special ritual vocabulary!" I'm not sure she was comfortable with my response, but I think she understood what I was saying. Can you see the same point being made with the other new words in the same sentence? "Everlasting" replaces the former "eternal," and "poured out" replaces "shed" because these two new words convey a more formal and ritualized feeling (in addition to being more poetic). Once again, the language is meant to help us recognize that the holy sacrifice of the mass is not just any old get-together, and the language used within the solemn ritual attempts to reflect and enhance that point.

It seems to me that the revised translations offer us priests and other religious teachers a golden opportunity to educate people about the deeper meaning of the various aspects of the mass, and reintroduce the idea of a solemn, formalized ritual. These last three words bring me back to where I started, with Annie Dillard's critique of the way we in the high churches approach God in our rituals. I hope that the new translations may help us to experience a little more of that wonder and awe, humility and reverence that was lost at the time of the Vatican II reforms and reflected in the English translations at the time.

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God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then God said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ (Ex.3:4-5)
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CAMERA IN THE CLOISTER

2011-09-09T16:32:00.022-04:00

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I’ve mentioned in a previous post that our community has given Jerome and Marylou Bongiorno, a couple of freelance documentary filmmakers, permission to make a documentary about Newark Abbey. This involves access to the school and the cloister and hours of personal interviews. They’ve pretty much finished the filming phase and will now get to the more challenging part – editing the hundreds of hours of footage into a coherent 60 or 90 minute film. I promise to keep you posted as the project progresses.

But in this post I want to tell you a little bit about the several ways in which I have already benefited personally from the experience of being interviewed and filmed. (I know that the Bongiornos follow this blog, so I have to watch what I say!)

WALKING THE TALK

First of all, in formal on-camera interviews I’ve launched into long monologues about such topics as who we are as monks, how our vision of reality affects the way we run our school, how prayer influences my life, and what I personally think of our community’s current situation of diminishing numbers. Having to articulate for someone else my deepest convictions and the principles that guide my life has, naturally enough, sharpened and clarified those convictions and principles for me. I’ve become more aware of my vowed commitment to live my life in accord with those ideals.

THE PERSPECTIVE OF FORTY YEARS

Second, in several interviews and filmed discussions I’ve been asked to go back to the years 1971 through 1973 and offer some perspective on the events surrounding the death and resurrection St. Benedict’s Prep. This exercise, too, has heightened my awareness and made me appreciate once again just how good the Lord was to us back then and in fact how good he has been to our community and to me personally over the intervening years.

A VIDEO CLIP IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Third, the abbot agreed to allow the Bongiornos to film a monk starting his day in his monastery room early in the morning and then follow him down to the church for meditation and Morning Prayer. I think the abbot was also the one that suggested that Fr. Albert might be a good subject (victim) for their proposal. If that request had come when the Bongiornos first arrived many months ago I would have simply declined. (You have to admit, the idea has the potential of being super tacky.) But I’ve come to trust them to the point that I said yes to their request. So this Thursday morning there was a camera over my shoulder as I washed my face, shaved and put on my habit. It was a weird feeling to say the least, and I’m hoping that they'll reduce the whole sequence to just a few seconds for the purpose of showing that monks are regular people who wash their faces and shave in the morning just like millions of other people. (Still I'm praying that it won't come across as tacky!)

But an unintended up side of having a camera invade my monastic cell was that in preparation for the invasion I took a look at my room and critiqued it in terms of what I’d been telling these people about my vision of monastic life –such as simplicity, frugality, awareness of ones surroundings and having an uncluttered heart. Looking at my room through that lens I saw that although my room was very simply furnished, there were several burial mounds of accumulated stuff on my desk, and various piles of papers that should have been discarded long ago. There were also dust bunnies hiding in the corners and a lot of little extraneous things that tended to give my room a cluttered appearance. So I did a monastic version of spring cleaning. Well! Too bad you can’t see my room now! It’s free of almost all clutter (except for one pile left on my desk) and looks the way one might expect a monk’s room to look: simple, neat, uncluttered and pleasant. I like the feel of it so much that I’m sure I’ll really work at keeping it this way.

THROUGH OTHER EYES

The fourth and final benefit of having the filmmakers filming scenes in church during Morning Prayer and Vespers and in other places in the monastery has been watching and listening to their reactions to both our daily life and our physical surroundings. For instance, they filmed us singing Christmas Vespers and thought it was so beautiful that they immediately emailed a clip of the footage to a lot of their friends as a Christmas greeting. Their response made me realize that Christmas Vespers had indeed been a beautiful prayer experience. Then this past Thursday morning they pointed out how beautiful our church looks in the dark during our 5:00 a.m. meditation time with just a couple of lights shining down on the altar and a few candles lighted. Although I experience that silent scene every morning, now that they’ve pointed out how peaceful and prayerful it is, I've come to appreciate just how helpful the atmosphere is for someone who wants to pray. On a couple of occasions I’ve seen Jerome, the cameraman, suddenly stop in a monastery hallway to get a close-up of a painting or an icon that I’ve been walking past for years. So then I've stopped beside him to take a closer look at the object myself and have usually had to agree that it was in fact a really lovely work of art.

BOTTOM LINE SO FAR

So in conclusion, the experience of having filmmakers around has helped me to renew my commitment to my monastic ideals and has given me a perspective on how good God has been to us over the decades. Further, it has reminded me to keep my room the simple and pleasant place it's supposed to be, and to see with new eyes how beautiful our monastic life at Newark Abbey is both in terms of our physical surroundings and the spiritual ideals we try to live up to as brothers in Christ.

SO WHO KEEPS YOU HONEST?

I hope that you have someone in your life who occasionally reminds you of your ideals, who asks you to articulate what's most important in your life and then challenges you to live accordingly. I hope you have people in your life who point out things of beauty around you that you might otherwise have missed. Without intending to, the filmmakers have done all of those things for me.
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.............................."Through Other Eyes"
..................painting by Dawn Hough Sebaugh
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HURRICANES, HEARTACHES AND GOD

2011-09-02T20:38:00.026-04:00

Hurricane Irene did minimal damage to our monastery and school here in downtown Newark, but left many of our suburbs submerged for days and damaged for years. The loss of property is staggering. "The Newark Star Ledger" is still running pictures of people bailing, pumping and shoveling out what’s left of their homes. This is one of those times that make some folks wonder, “If there is an all-powerful and all-good God, how could he have let this happen?”

God on Trial

As I mentioned last week, I happen to be reading Richard Rolheiser’s “The Shattered Lantern.”In one section he treats of this very problem in terms of the pragmatists’ worldview that does not allow for the existence of anything beyond the limits of our senses. This way of seeing the world, of course, rules out concepts such as “ultimate meaning” and confines us to the limits of the time-space box to which we are consigned by the limits of our senses. So, in preparation for teaching the same material to my new students next week, I want to share with you some of Father Rolheiser’s approach to the question of “How could a good God let this hurricane happen?” Most of the rest of this post is composed of direct quotations from "The Shattered Lantern."

From the start, Rolheiser warns us against “approaching God through the categories of human understanding rather than through the categories of faith, making God meet human expectations, metaphysical, psychological and moral” (100). [I love that part: we write up all these rules and then expect God to obey them!]

He continues with a brief account of a famous Canadian journalist, Gordon Sinclair, who died several years ago. Sinclair’s heart and mind had been unable to reconcile his many experiences of suffering and misery in India and elsewhere with the existence of God. As the journalist put it, “God is simply not imaginable in the face of that kind of suffering and meaninglessness. (103)”

[Slight paraphrase:] Rolheiser answers him, "You’re right! In the face of that kind of suffering, one cannot imagine that God exists! But belief in God and faith in God is not had on the basis of being able to imagine his existence. In fact, if you try to imagine God, and look very hard at certain issues, you will end up an atheist! Why? Because all attempts to picture God and to understand rationally how the existence of such a Being can be consistent with what we see in life is an enterprise that, by definition, undercuts out ability to believe in God (103).

“When one goes out at night and looks at the stars, the light of those closest to us, traveling at the unimaginable speed of 186,000 miles per second, has taken four years to reach our eyes. The light from those that are most distant from us has taken 800,000 years to reach us ... and scientists have seen stars through x-ray telescopes whose light has not yet reached the earth, stars that are six trillion light years from our earth. The enormity of our universe stuns the imagination. These distances cannot be conceived of. Given that there are perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies with trillions of light years separating them, and given that on each of the planets within each of those galaxies there are hundreds of trillions of phenomena occurring every second over billions of years, can we really believe that somewhere there is a person, a heart so supreme that it created all this? And that, right now, it knows minutely and intimately every detail and that it is passionately concerned with every event?

"Our planet is one of many billions of planets. During each second of time on earth thousands of people are being born, thousands are being conceived, thousands of others are dying, are sinning, are doing virtuous acts, are suffering, celebrating, hoping, praying, despairing, and all of this has been happening for hundreds of thousands of years. Can we really believe that a God exists who is Lord over all of this so that 'no sparrow falls from the sky or no hair from a human head' without that Lord knowing and caring deeply?

"The answer is no! When one considers evil and the sheer immensity of phenomena, one cannot conceive of a God who could truly be lord and master of it all. Our minds and imaginations cannot stretch far enough. We cannot picture it. But that is precisely the point: the divine reality cannot be grasped through a finite imagination. The limits of human imagination and its frustrations vis-à-vis imagining the existence of God are not the same as the existence or non-existence of God. The fact that we cannot imagine God speaks more about the finitude of the mind than it does about the likelihood or unlikelihood of the existence of an infinite being.

"Many difficulties arise from our failure to recognize and appropriate this. Suppose one night I lie in bed and stare holes in the darkness, trying to imagine the existence of God. But I cannot and I begin to panic: "Dear God, I am an atheist! I can no longer imagine and feel that God exists! God doesn't exist!" On another night, I lie in bed and I feel very secure in my sense that God exists and I can imagine that existence. Does this mean that on the one night I have no faith in God and on the other I do have faith? It would be more accurate to say that one night I have a weak imagination and on the other night I have a strong one! The difference lies not in God's existence or non-existence, but in the capacity or incapacity of the imagination to crank up its own constructs which either give one the sense that God exists or leave one unable to feel it.

"Frustrations in attempting to conceive of and feel God's relationship to creation tend to lead, as they did in Gordon Sinclair’s case, to the unfounded conclusion that, because we cannot think, picture, or understand how it is possible, then God does not exist.

My Two Experiences

Since last weekend’s hurricane I’ve had two experiences that will be a good way to bring this post to a close.

On Monday I drove up to our house in the woods and stayed overnight. The electricity was out, of course, which meant no lights and no water. So it was an early bedtime. But before I retired I stood outside and looked up at the stars. With no lights nearby, thousands of stars were sparkling spectacularly and cheerfully against the inky blackness of space. I could see why our earliest ancestors looked to the night sky for ideas about a Supreme Being, the afterlife and the meaning of everything. Rolheiser is right, “The enormity of our universe stuns the imagination. These distances cannot be conceived of.” I had to admit that this was all too much for my poor brain to grasp.

Then on Thursday I happened to be in the lovely suburban town of Cranford, N.J., walking through Nomahegan Park, looking at the streams and the lake that had by then gone back to their normal depth. Across the street, facing the park, were these beautiful homes. Lining the curb in front of each house was an unbroken wall of soggy furniture and mud-stained toys, ruined appliances, dripping file cabinets and waterlogged carpeting. The grim scene was accompanied by the unbroken rhythmic coughing of gasoline-powered generators and pumps. The whole experience was a heartbreaking. I asked myself how God could let all these good people experience such heartbreak? I had to admit that this disaster, like the vastness of the night sky, was all too much for my poor brain to grasp.
.. ..The Andromeda Galaxy (only 2.5 million light years away)
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LIGHT IN THE DARK NIGHT

2011-08-25T21:14:00.018-04:00

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IMITATING CHRIST

This week I was reading Ronald Rolheiser’s The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering A Felt Presence of God. In a section about John of the Cross, Rolheiser writes about the saint’s description of the “night of the senses,” which includes “a deliberate attempt to meditate upon the life and person of Christ and a concomitant effort to appropriate Christ’s motivation as the basis of our own action and choice. To move beyond the attainment of pleasure and self-satisfaction, a new motivation for action is needed. In the active night of the senses, we study Christ’s motivation so we can imitate it on our own life" (p. 81).

I started thinking about Christ’s passion and his motivation of pure love in the face of awful suffering. I began wondering how good I am at imitating his motivation. I then was struck by the thought that our monastic community seems to be entering into a period of suffering and diminishment as our numbers keep decreasing. More than ever we need to have the mind of Christ, to imitate in our thoughts and decisions HIS motivation of self-sacrificing love and unwavering confidence in his heavenly Father. If we do that, then what have we to fear, really?

A LIVING LESSON

In the midst of these thoughts I suddenly started picturing a remarkable incident that had happened last Sunday as I was setting up for that afternoon’s annual Newark Abbey picnic (we call it “Monkfest”). Ten volunteers and I were bustling about on the big field preparing the dozens of tables under the huge white tent for the arrival of over 400 guests, when someone said to me: “Some lady is here; she wants to drop off a couple of coolers.” As a student volunteer named Tariq and I started walking toward the gate to meet our mystery donor I saw a thin woman walking toward us pulling two bright orange barrels, the kind with spigots and handles that you use for cold drinks at picnics. As we met her near the edge of the field I noticed a word written in bold black felt marker on the white top of each cooler: “Peace.” I knew right away what this must be about, but didn’t dare believe it.

Then she introduced herself: “Father Al, I’m Rob Peace’s mother.” Rob Peace was a thirty-year-old alumnus and teacher of ours who had been murdered last May. (I wrote about him in this blog at the time.) “We used these coolers at the repast after his funeral,” she continued, “and now I really don’t have any use for them. So I thought maybe you could use them for the Monkfest. They’re a gift to the monks; just keep them.”

A jumble of emotions crowded into my heart: I was stunned at the strength of character she showed in coming back to the monastery, pulling those two coolers right past the very church where Rob’s funeral had been held just a few weeks ago. I was deeply touched that she could be so thoughtful at a time when she must be still grieving deeply for her son. I was humbled that she thought of us when she wanted donate the coolers to someone.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to her, but I know it was said with a warm, sympathetic smile of wonder and gratitude. And after thanking her I said, “Well, don’t you think this calls for a prayer? Would it be okay if we prayed together for a moment?” “Sure,” she answered, “that would be good.” So she, Tariq and I held hands in a little circle around the coolers as I thanked the Lord for the gift of love and children in our lives and asked for strength in the face of horrible, mysterious tragedies, that we might hold fast to our faith in an all-good, all-loving God whose mysterious ways are sometimes far too deep for us to fathom. After the prayer we shook hands and exchanged a few parting words. Then she quietly turned and walked away.

That was the incident that came to mind as I was reflecting on John of the Cross’s “we study Christ’s motivation so we can imitate it in our own life.” Mrs. Peace’s kind gesture had given me a powerful, eloquent example of how to live by Christ’s motivation. As John of the Cross knew so well, living out Christ’s motivation on earth is often accompanied by pain, sometimes a lot of it, perhaps even including a deep “dark night” when God seems completely absent. I wondered how much of a “dark night” our community is destined to go through on our way to ultimate victory in the risen Lord.

I don’t know the answer to that, but I know one thing: Last Sunday, Rob Peace’s mom gave me an example of how, even in the midst of the darkest of nights, a Christian who is imitating Christ's motivation can still be courageous, thoughtful and loving toward others.
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INTERTWINING LAWS

2011-08-19T20:28:00.019-04:00

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A Surprise

A couple of weeks ago I was at a wedding (you may have read my homily from the mass in an earlier post). At the reception I found myself chatting with a young woman. (I hope she won’t mind my relating a little of our conversation.) I asked her what she did for a living. “I work at a shelter for homeless women” she answered. Thinking immediately of my friends, the Missionaries of Charity, who run such a shelter here in Newark, I enthused, “What a beautiful ministry! How do you like it?” Her face gave away her answer before her words did. She replied something like, “Well, actually I find it pretty depressing and well, I don’t know…”

As I was wondering what that was all about she added as a clarification to this priest from New Jersey, “Well, you see, I’m an atheist.” I wonder I my face gave me away at that point? What I said to myself was, “Well, no wonder you find it depressing to work with difficult, miserable, victimized, suffering people!” But I didn’t say that. It turned out that she had done graduate work in ethics and moral philosophy, but those studies didn’t seem to be sustaining her in her work with the homeless women. So we moved away quickly from the topic of work and into a delightful conversation about the development of conscience and moral growth in adolescents.

Okay, put that little encounter on hold for a minute while I tell you what made me think of her today.

The Two Great Commandments

It happened when I was studying the following Gospel passage, the one assigned for the daily mass for today (Friday). Here is most of it:

and one of [the Pharisees], a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’ (Mt 22:35-40)

As many of you may know, scholars tell us that Jesus’ summary of the Law is not original with him. It’s a combination of a couple of Old Testament passages. In fact, there’s a Jewish document called The Testimonies of the Twelve Patriarchs dating from just before Christ, in which this combining of the two great commandments is found stated in much the same words as Jesus used.

So what was so special about Jesus’ response? It seems that in the similar passages in Jewish sources the two commandments, love of God and love of neighbor, stand side by side, serving together as a convenient summary of the entire Law. But we know from reading the gospels that Jesus understands the two commandments not as simply parallel to one another but as interlocking in a new and radical way: You cannot have one love if you don’t have the other love as well.

For example, if you don’t love your neighbor, Jesus taught, you can’t say you love God. “I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.” Jesus continually identifies with the poor, the outcast, the oppressed. You love the divine Lord by loving his poor. There’s no such thing in Christianity as "I love God deeply, I just don't love people."

On the other hand our Savior teaches that if you don't love God your love of neighbor will be just a barren emotion with no solid basis, no real roots. "Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing" (Jn 15:4-5). This is where my friend at the wedding reception comes in. Without trying to speak for her, it seems to me that her motivation for working with homeless people, whatever it was, was wearing pretty thin. Giving oneself to others on the basis of philosophical conviction or humanitarian principles clearly works for some, even many generous people, and I applaud them for their generosity. I just want to point out that from Jesus' point of view such earthbound motivations are of their nature limited and can very easily evaporate when adversity comes.

Mother Teresa's Secret

I frequently have the privilege of watching the Missionaries of Charity interact with poor people. And as a priest who says mass for them at least once a week I also know their secret: their boundless energy and simplicity come from a vibrant spirituality based on private prayer, common prayer, and daily mass. Everyone in the neighborhood knows, for example, that the sisters' soup kitchen is closed on Thursdays because that’s their weekly retreat day. Their foundress, Mother Teresa, knew that her sisters could never keep performing their demanding ministry day after day if they were not in close contact with Jesus, the compassionate Healer, the suffering Servant of the Lord, the despised and rejected One who rose victorious from the tomb.

For her Missionaries of Charity, love of God and love of neighbor are indeed intertwined in a single beautiful unity. The sisters live out the intimate connection between the two inseparable laws of love just as Christ laid it out for us in the gospel.

St. Benedict's Approach

Saint Benedict, writing in the 500’s, showed the same insight into the connection between love of God and love of neighbor. In Chapter 53 of his Rule for Monks, “The Reception of Guests,” he wrote:

All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say: I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matt 25:35). …. All humility should be shown in addressing a guest on arrival or departure. By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored because he is indeed welcomed in them. …. Great care and concern are to be shown in receiving poor people and pilgrims, because in them more particularly Christ is received…

Thus our famous Benedictine tradition of hospitality is founded on those two intertwined laws in today's gospel: love of God and love of neighbor. I can only hope that the two will always work that way in the various aspects of my own life -- as a community member, a teacher, priest and so forth.

I pray for the Missionaries of Charity and for my young atheist friend that they all may continue in their own way to minister generously to God’s poor people.
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Mary's Assumption: So What?

2011-08-13T07:40:00.008-04:00

On Monday the Church celebrates the feast of Mary's Assumption into heaven. I liked last year's reflection on the feast, so let me offer it to you again: "Mary's Assumption --So What?"

.....From the Abbey of Keur-Moussa, Senegal

A BASEBALL IN THE GAP

2011-08-06T15:40:00.010-04:00

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What's It Worth to You?

I’m currently teaching a course called “The Wisdom of Saint Benedict” in our high school. The course involves a lot of reflecting on certain topics (e.g. values, greed, community, obedience). The students then post their reflections on a team blog. (By next week I hope to have the routine down for being sure that the writing is corrected and revised before it gets posted. Once I’ve accomplished that I’ll invite you to look at our blog site.) The following is an example of a reflection on values by a student who looked at the person who caught the home run ball that was Derek Jeter’s 3000th hit. Apparently the lucky Yankee fan owes a lot of money in student loans and is about to get married. Suddenly he’s holding a baseball that is worth six figures in the sports marketing world. Here is one student's take on what happened:

Christian Lopez and the 3000th hit ball

Earlier this week, we spent time discussing an avid Yankees fan by the name of Christian Lopez. Christian Lopez was set apart from many other fans at the Yankees Stadium when he caught the ball that happened to be the ball that was used for Derek Jeter’s 3000th hit. The ball was a valuable one indeed, and Christian Lopez knew of this along with many others. Mind you, Lopez had been struggling with certain finances and this ball could have been the end to all his problems. He could have received a six-figure payment if he had sold the ball and lived a debt-free life from then on, but instead he did what most men wouldn’t even consider doing: he gave the ball back to Derek Jeter. He didn’t just give back a baseball; he gave back an end to all his troubles. To do something like this takes a huge amount of sacrifice and consideration for another person’s achievements. Lopez did the right thing by giving the ball to the man who deserved to keep it, and he will always be remembered for the choice he made. Although some would laugh at the choice he made, many can agree that the choice was one most men don’t have the courage to make, and he should be proud that he did it. (Contributed by MW)

I had students do a worksheet analyzing the values at work in this incident. Toward the end of the sheet I asked them to answer the question “What would you have done?” followed by the assignment “In the space below write an email to Mr. Lopez telling him what you think of his action.” I was fascinated to see that a few kids who answered the question with “I would have kept the ball” then went on to “email” Lopez saying “You did the right thing by giving the ball back.” I was struck by the disconnect between what the students said they would have done and what they said was “the right thing to do.”

Someone pointed out to me in a conversation, however, that this is where moral growth and virtue start, with the perceived difference between what I know is the right thing and my practical choice to do otherwise.

Life in the Gap

The gap between who I am and who I’m called to be is the place where virtue resides, the crucible where saints are forged. I keep striving day after day to lessen the gap between who I am and who God intended for me to be when creating me. It’s in this striving rather than in arriving at “perfection” that I become a saint.

This is great news for us imperfect humans! Struggle? That I can do. But “Be perfect?” Well that’s a bit beyond my reach. I pray that I'll keep at the life-long task of lessening the gap in my own life

And I wish those students well, and pray that when they see their actions falling short of the ideal that they’ll keep striving to close that gap.

But mostly I wish Christian Lopez well, grateful to him for the challenge he posed to my students and me that Saturday afternoon. Something tells me that he's destined to lead a very happy life.
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........................Go Christian!
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MARRIAGE IN A TOXIC CULTURE

2011-07-31T09:04:00.023-04:00

On Saturday I said mass and officiated at the wedding of my cousin Emily and her husband Chris. Here's my homily.

A WEDDING HOMILY

I want you to come with me for a few moments this afternoon to visit a lovely German island in the middle of Lake Constance, called Reichenau. Drive across the short bridge with me and onto the island. The first thing you’ll notice on the narrow main street is that we are engulfed in a world of flowers. Every house is awash in bright colored blooms: whether in flower boxes or tiny garden plots, every square foot of land seems aglow with cheerful colors.

Soon, though, we’re driving along a tiny road through fields overflowing with ripening vegetables for which the island is so famous. Again it seems that every available space is being cultivated to produce some beautiful plant or flower. Besides being home to a famous Benedictine Abbey it is truly a garden spot. Reichenau Island is the perfect image of fertile ground.

I want you to hold on to that lovely image for a moment while I to turn to a less pleasant topic: Divorce.

No one here needs to be reminded of the tragic statistics -- they are only too well-known to us, and to some of us in a very personal way. I want to suggest that a lot of the difficulties married couples experience today come from the godless atmosphere of our culture of materialism, of ego-centrism, self-gratification. That kind of atmosphere is hardly helpful to anyone working on any kind of serious human relationship. In fact, I submit that many of the principles that drive our culture are actually TOXIC for human relationships.

Where can a married couple turn for some help? Where can two newly-weds find fertile soil for a lasting, happy marriage?

I suggest that we now return to that image of the fertile island of Reichenau with its abundant crops and fertile fields, and contrast it with the image of the moral wasteland that we inhabit in our present day culture. Materialism, ego-centrism and godlessness are hardly fertile ground for growing lasting relationships.

We heard some helpful ideas for counteracting these toxic influences when we listened to today’s Gospel reading from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, the “Beatitudes.” In these few sentences Jesus takes all the world’s treasured toxic tenets and poison principles and turns them upside down! He makes them into principles of life-giving wisdom.

Let’s look at just three of these beatitudes and see how they can point us toward a happy marriage even in today’s culture.

The first beatitude on the list reads “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

A world that praises fierce independence and self-sufficiency, (“I’m my own independent person beholden to no one”) seems to me to be a pretty toxic place to grow a relationship of mutual trust. We’ve all seen that marriages rooted in “me-first” are doomed from the start.

But Jesus says in the gospel “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” the anawim, God’s poor in the Old Testament, people who know that they depend on God for everything.

A marriage based on the humbling admission that “There is only one God and it isn’t me” is planted in fertile soil and will have every chance of flourishing and bearing fruit.

The second beatitude I’d like to consider this afternoon is: “Blessed are the meek.”

A world that rewards aggressiveness and in-your-face confrontations, competition, and pointing out the weakness of others is obviously a toxic place to grow a relationship of simple trust and mutual help.

But Jesus in the gospel proclaims “Blessed are the meek.” He’s not suggesting we should be doormats, but is calling us rather to have a realistic, healthy sense of our own frailty as creatures. This awareness of our own human weakness makes it possible for us to put up with the weaknesses and limitations of our spouse. A marriage based on that kind of humble self-awareness will have a good chance of flourishing.

The third and last beatitude I’d like to consider this afternoon is “Happy are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

A world that sees pain and discomfort as enemies to be avoided at all costs, that has a horror of any kind of unpleasantness for any reason, is a toxic environment in which to grow a marriage.

Jesus contradicts that toxic idea with “Happy are you when you hunger and thirst for righteousness.” There are things, he says, that are worth suffering for. There are times in a marriage when you will have to put up with unpleasantness, inconvenient demands on your time, disagreements, and illness.

We can learn a lesson from the flowers that fill the fields of Reichenau: Flowers don’t just happen. Weeds happen, but flowers demand a lot of work, a lot of tender attention. Those vegetable gardens require weeding and watering and work under a hot sun. But the hard work makes sense because of the goal: the bounty of the harvest or the beauty of the flowers. It’s like that with a good marriage, too: it requires constant attention and sometimes even hardship and inconvenience and self-sacrifice. But that’s part of the deal. It’s like raising flowers!

Let me make a closing remark about beatitudes.

In Old Testament a “beatitude” was in the present tense, as in, say, “Happy is the man who trusts in the lord because his life is filled with blessings.”

Jesus, however, does something extraordinary by changing the beatitudes into PROMISES. “You will inherit the kingdom,” he says, and you will be satisfied or comforted or filled. But not necessarily HERE and NOW. The beatitudes are promises from God.

This afternoon is a time for promises. Jesus is promising blessedness through the beatitudes, and promises to give you all the grace and strength you need to make a beautiful marriage.

And you, Emily and Chris, your solemn promises to one another are, of course, the heart of our celebration today.

As for the rest of us who are here to witness your wedding, we promise you that we will be there for you in those hard times that are bound to come. We promise to remind you of Jesus’ promises in the beatitudes that you heard today.

Finally, we pray that your married life will be as life-filled and fertile, as beautiful and abundantly satisfying as that little garden spot of Reichenau. We pray that the toxic tenets our culture will not touch you, but that you will have a life based on the beatitudes, a life together that is blessed with a love that is selfless, abundant, fruitful and satisfying, until the day when the Lord calls you home to be with him and to fulfil his promises, and when both of you and all of us will share the fullness of his joy and beauty in heaven.

....................Reichenau Abbey

THE BEST JOB IN THE WORLD

2011-07-23T15:01:00.007-04:00

I think I must have the best job in the world. Actually not one job but several. Today is a good example.

I got up at 5:00 a.m. and spent some time in lectio (reflective reading of Scripture). I’m reading my way through the Gospel of John, and spent my time praying over the story of the raising of Lazarus. I reflected that I might be called to call people to life with my own words today. Then I went down to church and prayed Vigils and Lauds with my brothers. A couple of the Psalms helped me to focus on that whole other level of reality, salvation history if you will, that is constantly running beneath the surface of our lives.

After breakfast I went to my room and did some housekeeping things but was back in church at 8:45 for community mass, celebrated by Bishop Anthony Obinna, of the diocese of Owerri in Nigeria.

After mass I spent a couple of hours preparing worksheets for my course , “The Wisdom of Saint Benedict,” that starts on Monday July 25. I really enjoy preparing for this class because it’s an opportunity to challenge high school kids to look critically at the values that our culture tries to sell them, and to ask them to come up with a much more satisfying set of values by which to run their lives. We’ll be using Joan Chittister’s “The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century.”

The parents of new students were here for a long orientation session today, so I stopped over to the auditorium and showed my face for a while before going to Midday Prayer.

After Midday Prayer and a quick lunch I returned to the auditorium. As the meeting broke up I got to meet and chat with a lot of the parents. This is something I really do love. These are all people who love their kids enough to sacrifice to send them to school here. I enjoy putting people at ease when they’re more comfortable speaking in Spanish or French. I did that with one mom who then took me to the side and explained that she was worried because she’d just been laid off of her job and would have trouble with the tuition. I was able to comfort her and give her the name of the person to call on Monday.

I also enjoyed meeting with a former student who will now be sending his son here. That's always an upper.

Then I came back to my office and did some more course planning, still enjoying it.

Later on I’ll prepare my Spanish sermon for tomorrow’s bilingual mass, do some exercises (it’s too hot for my usual walk) and read some more scripture.

I’ll play the guitar to accompany sung Vespers at 5:00. I love playing the accompaniment for Vespers -- sometimes I make believe I'm David playing his harp.

Supper at six will mean sitting with four young college grads that are starting a year of volunteering here at Newark Abbey and St. Benedict’s Prep. Since it's Saturday, there'll be talking at table, so I'll get a chance to get to know them better.

Then after supper there’ll be Vigils for Sunday (the Church likes to celebrate Sunday as early as possible).

Finally I’ll celebrate Saturday Evening Eucharist with the lively Neo-catechumenal community that meets here at the Abbey; more than half those in attendance will be teenagers, who will play guitars, sing, and help with the readings. Their energy is a real gift to me and to the other monks who pray with them.We've been doing this for less than a year, I think, but it's becoming clearer that the Spirit has sent them as a special gift to Newark Abbey,

Yeah, this has got to be about the most satisfying job in the world. I’ll have lots of opportunities to thank the Lord by the time I get to bed at 10:00 tonight.

A CITY SLICKER'S PRAYER

2011-07-16T16:02:00.010-04:00

SUNRISE, SUNSET

I spent a few days this past week at a conference held outside of Toledo Ohio at a resort on Maumee Bay, right on the shore of Lake Erie. More than once I took advantage of the opportunity sit by myself and silently watch the sun come up in the morning or set again in the evening.

Because of the nearby buildings that block my view at home in Newark I practically never get to see either of these everyday phenomena, so the opportunity would have been a treat in any case, but the clean air, the silence, the immense sky and the vast expanse of the lake made these times far more than just enjoyable: they were special gifts from the Lord.

WICKER CHAIR WORSHIP

.On one particular morning I got up and went outside with my breviary intending to say Morning Prayer as the sun rose behind a bank of ragged lavender clouds. Well, I did spend the time praying, but I never opened my book. To have taken my eyes off of the beauty around me would have seemed like a sacrilege. So I recited a few psalms from memory, especially Psalm 8, and then simply tried to listen to what the Lord was saying to me in that special moment.

Mostly I kept hearing over and over “I love you!” I felt the message in the refreshing breeze, and squinted at it the pewter ripples of the lake; I heard it in the cries of the wheeling sea gulls and watched as it burst from behind the clouds in the golden shafts of sunlight.

God’s reassuring “I love you” was the same one I hear every day in the Psalms and in the scripture readings of the Liturgy of the Hours, but the beauty surrounding me on Maumee Bay that morning made the message so much more emphatic and convincing.

I sat in my wicker chair, then, and prayed for the people whose love touches or has touched my life, and for people whom God loves in turn through me. The prayer just kept bursting out of me from somewhere deep inside, the way the sunlight was rushing out from behind the clouds.

I shared the experience that the psalmist refers to so often of meeting God in the beauty and wonders of the created world. There’s surely something to be said for praying outdoors under a boundless sky, buttoning your sweater against the breeze and watching birds doing their morning exercises against the backdrop of a glorious sunrise.

A PROMISE TO MYSELF

Afterward I realized that I had been privileged to be part of a divine revelation, and promised myself to get back my custom of spending a monthly overnight at the monastery’s house in the forest-covered mountains of northern New Jersey.

Surely the Creator can’t want all those sunrises and sunsets to pass unseen!

Benedict and the Desert

2011-07-11T20:29:00.003-04:00

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HAPPY SAINT BENEDICT'S DAY!

I've been away for a week and have to go to a conference in Toledo for four days this week. No time for a new blog post.

But it IS the feast of St. Benedict, so I'll offer something about the desert: if you want, you can click here to read one of my favorite posts, from March, 2009.

Holy Father Benedict, pray for us.

ON LOGIC AND PASSION

2011-07-02T15:23:00.008-04:00

NOTES FROM OUR RETREAT

The monks of Newark spent this past week on retreat; the conferences were given by Abbot John Denburger, O.C.S.O., the abbot of The Trappist Abbey of the Genesee in upstate New York. Let me share a couple of the thoughts that struck me most. http://www.geneseeabbey.org/

His first two conferences stressed over and over that the monk’s life must be one of desire for God, a chosen, willed passion for God. The rest of our life is the “how” of going about that passionate search for God, that wanting to be one with Christ.

The monastic tools involved in this search include such things as asceticism. The hardest kind of asceticism is not made up of the practices I voluntarily choose (e.g. fasting) but rather the difficulties that are thrust upon me in the course of daily living (e.g. the monk who sits beside me in church and always sings flat, driving me crazy).

Another concept I learned from Abbot John is that of “radical optimism,” a phrase which he stole from a book title. It refers to being completely rooted (the Latin for "root" is radix) in Christ no matter what challenges, problems or untoward events assail me.

THE THREE BASIC “CONVICTIONS”

He suggested that monastic life is a journey based on three “convictions.”

1. I must be convicted about MYSELF. I have to accept the reality of my life, always working at overcoming my weaknesses (while knowing that only God can ultimately save me). I have to learn how to live in peace with my incompleteness, at home in myself (if not there, then where?).
2. I must be convicted about GOD. My relationship with God is based on my image of God, so it’s essential that my God not be too small or too distant. True conversion comes only from a uniquely personal relationship with a god who loves me and works with me in a unique way.

3. I must be convicted about God dwelling within me. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that God really does dwell within me, and that God’s mercy and love is indeed infinite mercy and boundless love.

Without these three convictions our life would be an illusion, a sham.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

I was listening to the conferences also in terms of our monastic community’s challenge of renewing itself in the face of the great changes in our culture, in Catholicism and so forth. It's a bit like driving in the fog.

In addition, I have been reading in preparation for teaching a course in August at St. Benedict’s Prep entitled “The Wisdom of Benedict.” As part of my background reading I took up the book “A Monastic Vision for the 21st Century: Where Do We God From Here?", edited by Br. Patrick Hart, OCSO. At the end of the Introduction Dom Bernardo Olivera, OCSO, Abbot General of the Cistercians, writes concerning monastic reform and renewal for the 21st Century:

“Perhaps in the past we have been too “prudent” and now we are too “farsighted.” We need a little more passion and slightly less logic. Not however any type of passion, but God’s own passion It is this passion of divine love that made him become man, preach the revolution of the Kingdom of heaven, and finally undergo the supreme passion: dying on a cross out of love so that we also can learn to love.” (p. xvii)

I like that idea; it would make a good mantra for our community meetings concerning the abbey’s future: “We need a little more passion and slightly less logic.”

GOD AND PRONOUNS

2011-06-25T15:32:00.017-04:00

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PRONOUN PITFALL

I read and article recently written by a young Englishman who got himself in big trouble at a dinner table in Paris. Fluent in French, he had been invited to dine at the home of some Parisian friends. One of the other dinner guests was a young French woman to whom he was properly introduced. As the two began chatting in French, the young man wrote later, he accidentally addressed the young woman with the pronoun “tu” (you, in the so-called “familiar” form) instead of the formal “vous.” The woman was insulted and visibly incensed at such a breach of propriety and wanted nothing to do with him for the rest of the evening. She interpreted his use of “tu” as his making a pass at her and she rebuffed his unwanted advances in no uncertain terms. The moral is: Watch your pronouns!

A similar thing happened to me just a few days ago while exchanging greetings with a Haitian colleague. He wished me a good day, addressing me as "vous" but I answered him using "tu." As soon as the word escaped my lips I realized that I had changed pronouns on him; but I said to myself, "Oh well. Blew that one!" He'll chalk it up to my ignorance."

The same sort of thing happens in Spanish and in German, too. Your choice of pronoun sends a signal to the person being addressed; you must choose to address the other person either as distant and formal or else as familiar and personal.

GOD AND ABRAHAM

The first reading at mass this past Wednesday was from Genesis, Chapter 15. In this part of Genesis we see Abram (later to be named Abraham) beginning to discover little by little who he is relative to God.

The adventure had begun in Chapter 12 when God approached Abram and addressed him personally: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (12:1). We are so used to this idea of a God who talks to us that we miss the incredible significance of this verse in the history of religion and indeed of humanity. It was here that God began to communicate with human beings on a person-to-person basis. No other religion ever had the daring notion of a god or gods being so personally and lovingly connected with humans. Yet here is Abram listening to God’s voice and responding. Often the voice is challenging and literally unsettling (“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”), but our father Abraham keeps finding out more about himself as he grows closer to God.

Most of the time when I read the bible for meditation (lectio) I use the French Bible de Jerusalem because of its wonderful marginal meditation/notes on various verses. One of the notes on Chapter 15 of Genesis was this: “Abram is discovering himself vis-à-vis God, his ally. The force which had once set him on his journey is becoming for him a partner in dialogue, a 'tu.'”
Right from the start of the Abraham story in Genesis 12:1, ff. in La Bible de Jerusalem God refers to Abram as “tu,” and Abram responds in kind. Like that young Englishman, most of us English-speakers find it hard to get a feel for what that divine use of “tu” implies. But it is worth considering.

TREATING GOD AS “VOUS”

When God calls you or me, he addresses us the way he addressed Abraham: not in a formal, distant manner, as ”vous,” but rather as an intimate, close friend, a “tu.” The Lord would like nothing better than a deep, abiding relationship of love with each of us. God’s actions and words in Scripture reveal the Lord as someone who loves me deeply and who would do anything for me, whose love knows no boundaries.

But too often I act as if God were simply a “vous” who is distant and not someone for whom I’m willing to go out of my way. My selfish wants and needs keep me distant from this God who insists on calling me “tu.”

When God took on human flesh it was to reveal us the ultimate truth that God is love. This ultimate self-revelation of God was the perfect way of assuring us that each of us is a “tu” in God’s eyes.

And he expects us, who are made in the image of God, to reflect that kind of generous love to those around us.

......"Love Your Neighbor" by American artist Tema Okun

PSALM 8 VACATION

2011-06-20T16:21:00.013-04:00

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. Last week I enjoyed several days of relaxing vacation visiting relatives. Part of my time was spent in rural Connecticut and the rest near Barnegat Bay at the Jersey shore. Not surprisingly, I suppose, I found myself spending as much time as I could outdoors, whether on the peaceful banks of the Connecticut River, walking along country roads, or, perhaps my favorite, listening to the sloshing of little waves on the shore of Barnegat Bay.

As I was sitting alongside the bay on Thursday I read a beautiful meditation on Psalm 8 which under the circumstances really touched my heart and made me appreciate more than ever the beauty of God’s creation and my own place as part of it.

When I returned to the noisy heart of downtown Newark I was really struck by how much we city-dwellers give up by living surrounded by pavement and brick walls, where fresh air is a pleasant surprise when it happens, and seeing stars in the night sky is an exception rather than the norm.

But at least from now on when I pray Psalm 8 I’ll remember that sunny afternoon and that feeling of being one with all the rest of God’s creation.

...............................Psalm 8

How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth!

Your majesty is praised above the heavens;
on the lips of children and of babes
You have found praise to foil your enemy,
to silence the foe and the rebel.

When I see the heavens, the work of your hands,
the moon and the stars which you arranged,
What is man that you should keep him in mind,
mortal man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him little less than a god;
with glory and honor you crowned him,
Gave him power over the works of your hand,
put all things under his feet.

All of them, sheep and cattle,
Yes, even the savage beasts,
Birds of the air and fish
that make their way through the waters.

How great is your name, O Lord our God,
through all the earth!

PENTECOST GATHERING

2011-06-09T20:36:00.011-04:00

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DELICATE NEGOTIATIONS

Recently I’ve been involved in the process of melding two different parish communities into one worshiping community. When the ceiling of Queen of Angels Church fell down a while back, the parishioners were finally persuaded that maybe it really is time to leave the venerable old building and find a safer place, and one that had heat in the winter. The tentative plan is for that (African-American) community to join the (mostly Hispanic) community at St. Augustine’s, a mile away, for the 8:30 bilingual mass where which I’ve been celebrating with such joy for a couple of years.

This is the kind of scenario into which the devil loves to insinuate himself to stir up all sorts of ill will. So far, though, the preliminary meetings have indicated that people in both communities are open to the idea that some adjustments and accommodations will be entailed by both communities if the plan is enacted. But I don’t want to talk about the actual plan at all; rather I want to reflect on Pentecost, which is coming up on Sunday June 12.

COME, HOLY SPIRIT!

The feast of the Spirit’s descending on the disciples and transforming them into the vibrant community of the early Church comes just as our two parishes are negotiating this delicate change. In fact, there’s an important meeting on Saturday, the very eve of Pentecost.
This afternoon I was praying for the gifts of the Spirit for all the people involved when I decided to go and look up the various roles of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament. I used the detailed subject index in the back of Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (a book which I recommend to anyone who is interested in studying the bible more deeply). The result was tremendously encouraging in terms of the upcoming meeting. Here are just a few of the jobs and descriptions of the Spirit that one would hope to see at work on the eve of Pentecost:

The Spirit dwells in the church and is at work in believers to teach them, renew their minds, and to produce in them the likeness of Jesus through sanctification. If we at the meeting let the Spirit teach us, open our minds and make us like Jesus, then the the results will be something beautiful for all concerned.

The Spirit binds believers together in unity. Two communities are made up of minorities that have each traditionally been given the short end of the stick. The Spirit is powerful enough to overcome the suspicions and the hurts that have been there for years and “gather us into one.”

The Spirit helps believers in their intercessions, “groaning within us.” So as we pray for the success of this endeavor we will count on the Spirit’s inspiration to teach us “how to pray as we ought.”

The Spirit gives supernatural GIFTS of grace, among them words of wisdom and knowledge, and the gift of discernment. Imagine a meeting that is characterized by words of wisdom and the gift of discernment!

The Spirit produces FRUIT in the lives of those who are led by the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. If we let ourselves be led by the Spirit, an observer of Saturday’s meeting will notice a lot of love, and joy among the participants, and conversations full of patience, gentleness and goodness, and will notice that the participants treat eachother in a mild-mannered and thoughtful way.

Sounds like a pretty promising meeting, doesn’t it?

"THE DISCIPLES WERE GATHERED TOGETHER IN ONE PLACE WHEN SUDDENLY..."

Saturday's get-together will take place in the finished basement of St. Augustine’s. Maybe the building will suddenly be filled with the sound as of a violent wind, and perhaps little tongues of flame will hover over our heads and we'll all be filled with the Holy Spirit.

Why not? It wouldn’t be the first time, right?
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THE HOLY SPIRIT AND HISTORY

2011-06-05T11:29:00.016-04:00

TIME LINES

The straight line that leads history from past through the present to the future gets kind of snarled for me at this time of year.

This is graduation weekend here at Newark Abbey/St. Benedict’s Prep, which also means a lot of alumni anniversary reunions: two on Friday, two on Saturday plus the Alumni Picnic, then on Sunday the graduation of the class of 2011.

Meanwhile, in between telling the old stories on Friday night and Saturday night, Saturday morning we welcomed next year’s freshmen for diagnostic/placement tests -- they are the class of 2014.
So for me right now time is more of a swirl or a salad than a linear progression.

A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

About ten days ago I attended a book signing for Dr. Thomas McCabe’s Miracle on High Street: the Rise, Fall and Resurrection of St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, N.J. The presentation and the discussion afterward gave me a new perspective on the events of 1972-1973, when our school closed and then reopened 13 months later.

The insight was this: For the story to turn out as it did required the coming together in one time and place of a unique set of circumstances, each of which was essential to the end result. (I thought of the book The Perfect Storm.) I’ll list just a few of these elements:
1. The social, economic and political unrest in the country and in Newark at the time, especially the Black Power and Civil Rights movements.

2. The presence in Newark Abbey of two opposing points of view: some monks were for remaining in the city while others wanted to pack up the school and monastery and move to the suburbs. If all the monks had been in agreement on the first alternative, we would have tried to gradually transform St. Benedict’s step by step into an ever more African-American school – a thankless and unpromising endeavor. As it was, the division of ideologies in the monastery meant that the gradual-change approach would never be tried. The school was completely shut down instead, thus making it possible to open an entirely new school with a very different racial profile, one which we could never have achieved by gradual evolution in the 1970’s, the age of confrontation.

3. We still had at our disposal all the physical facilities needed for a high school, including science labs, a good library and one of the best auditoriums in the city.

4. The people involved in the reopening of the school proved to be just the right mixture of visionaries, practical problem-solvers, and dedicated and talented teachers. Each one of us brought unique gifts that were essential to making the new operation succeed.

Looking at this list, I realized that if any of these elements had been absent or even substantially different, the “formula” would likely have resulted in failure. The interaction of all of the elements made for a beautiful success story.

HISTORY AND THE SPIRIT

During the Easter season the church as been presenting us with daily mass readings from the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s account of the earliest days of the church under Peter and Paul. The sacred author wrote Acts as history, but a history in which the Holy Spirit was actively involved.

For example, when Paul and Timothy were on their missionary journey their plans kept getting frustrated; Luke tells us that “they had been prevented by the Holy Spirit from preaching the message in the province of Asia” (16:6). We don’t know what the impediment was, but it was serious enough to force them to abandon their plan and go elsewhere. In the very next verse we’re told of yet another frustrating setback: “When they came to Mysia, they tried to go on into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them, so they crossed through Mysia and came down to Troas” (16:7-8).

The constant revision and abandonment of their missionary plans must have tried the faith and the patience of Paul and Timothy, but Luke interprets the story of the setbacks in terms of the Holy Spirit guiding and directing the mission.

While Tom McCabe, writing as an historian, does not refer to the Holy Spirit in his telling of the story of St. Benedict’s Prep, when I look back on my own experiences and see the long list of impossible “coincidences” that made it possible I’m convinced that the most accurate way to tell the story is the way St. Luke would tell it, namely as a history of the Holy Spirit’s continued action in a community of believers to bring about an extremely improbable success in the end.

This busy weekend has helped me to see better how my own life has been blessed by being part of the story of Newark Abbey/St. Benedict’s Prep. It has challenged me, too, to remain as open as I can to the promptings of the Spirit.

Guess who the graduation speaker is this year? No, not the Holy Spirit -- the Spirit has spoken countless times already. The speaker is the author of Miracle on High Street, Dr. Thomas Mc Cabe. He should be fun to listen to as well.

.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,.Next weekend we celebrate Pentecost.
..........I’ll be praying with as much energy as ever,
.........................“Come Holy Spirit!”
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ON HIKING AND LIVING

2011-05-28T10:49:00.030-04:00

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DOWNTOWN BACKPACKERS

Monday morning commuters stared from buses and cars at the strange sight: a steady stream of teenage boys slowly filing up the stone steps into Saint Benedict’s Prep wearing big backpacks. By now I suppose a lot of people around town know of our Freshman Backpacking Project that takes place each May. (If you’re not aware of it you may want to read my previous post before proceeding any further.)
Occasionally I’ll bump into one of our kids downtown wearing an empty backpack at the end of a training day when he’s had to bring it to school or has rented it from us for a nominal fee.

At first this seems incongruous if not comical: You expect to see backpackers along the side of a road in, say, the Adirondacks, but not on Market Street in Newark. Yet the sight can also prompt some serious reflections about the journey that each of us lives every day. It doesn't take much imagination to see everyone around you carrying a backpack on the one same human journey. All the principles of backpacking apply to the journey of life. Here are just a few:

FOUR BACKPACKING PRINCIPLES

First, don’t carry any unnecessary weight on the journey. Ever notice how some people are staggering through life under the weight of burdens they keep collecting and refuse to let go of, such as resentments, prejudices, injured feelings? They're ignoring Principle #1: Travel light, it makes the trip more enjoyable.

Second, don’t hike alone: Even in New Jersey a simple hiking mishap can turn deadly if you are by yourself. A story I just heard yesterday will serve as a good example: during the hike this past week a freshman got lightheaded and dizzy (probably from dehydration) and fell, striking his head on a rock. He was unconscious when our trained EMT person arrived, driving up a narrow woods road nearby; since the victim was unresponsive the EMT called for an ambulance which in turn took the injured hiker to a helicopter for evacuation to a hospital where everything eventually turned out fine. So, that’s why we have Principle #2: Don’t try to hike alone!

Third, backpacking is NOT a virtual experience -- you do not get virtual blisters on the Appalachian Trail! Your actions have very real consequences; for example, you decide not to protect your clothes in plastic bags inside your pack and therefore wind up with four days to go and no dry clothes to wear.

I was thinking of developing a computer simulation called “Backpacker.” The idea would be that we could save the expense of dragging all those kids out into the woods, and also make the insurance companies breathe a great collective sigh of relief. The game would simulate the backpacking hike with gorgeous mountain vistas, a detailed map, and an accurate report of the weight of the player's backpack. The participant on the virtual hike would see messages on the screen such as: “There was a heavy downpour last night but you had not wrapped anything in protective plastic bags. You will therefore walk all day wearing wet clothes and carrying a pack that is heavier because of its soggy contents.” See, there would be the consequences of not following directions about protecting your stuff from rain. Now I suppose that some might say that reading about wet underwear is different from wearing it, but nothing’s perfect. Principle #3, then, sounds like real life: Make good decisions because you have to live with the consequences.

A fourth principle of the backpacking project, among many others, is that your fate is inevitably linked with the fate of those around you. You can only hike as fast as the slowest member of your eight-man team. If one of your teammates does something stupid that causes his pack to break, you have to wait while he fixes it, and may even have to help him with the repairs. Life is like that. Your car insurance rates, for instance, keep going up because of the rotten driving of people you’ve never even met. This is the result of Principle #4: You are interdependent with other people whether you want to be or not.

A CRUCIAL DIFFERENCE

For all its surprises both good and bad, however, the Backpacking Project lacks something that everyday living has in abundance: the element of mystery, and most especially for me this week, the mystery of suffering and evil.

While the freshmen were out hiking, those of us who stayed home celebrated a funeral on Wednesday in the abbey church. A graduate of our school in 1997, Rob had won the Presidential Award (our school's highest honor, given to one graduating senior each year) and went on to graduate from Yale with a degree in microbiology. He came back and taught at our school for four years before moving on. Sounds like a wonderful success story, right? Maybe he would go on to help find a cure for cancer. But here’s where the mystery of evil comes in. He came from a family background that included jail and addiction to alcohol and drugs. People who knew him well realized that he was carrying some of those very same demons around inside him his whole life, wrestling with them constantly. He did not go on to find a cure for cancer.

Instead he apparently began applying his scientific knowledge to the raising of huge crops of marijuana in sophisticated hydroponic tanks in his basement and making an estimated $1,000 a day. Until someone shot and killed him last week.

FACING THE MYSTERY
As I looked at Rob’s body lying in the open casket I noticed that the expression on his thirty-year-old face showed a hardness and grimness that it didn’t have the last time I saw him a few years ago. His recent experiences had obviously changed him greatly. There is no fathoming that mysterious kind of evil, I said to myself; we’re helpless when we try to make sense of it. But then I happened to notice the paschal candle perched in its high stand nearby, its flame flickering steadily and brightly twelve feet above the casket.

The viewing and the funeral service were held, as I mentioned, in our church. Although the atmosphere of grief and deep discouragement clashed sharply with the message of the Easter lilies and other beautiful decorations that proclaimed the joy of the paschal season, the contrast was not ironic or painful. Rather it was just the opposite: It is precisely in the face of evil and death that Easter takes on its fullest meaning.
Easter celebrates Christ’s victory over those ancient enemies, sin and death. The victory is still incomplete of course, as Rob’s life and death can attest, but our faith in the risen Lord and in his ultimate victory helps us to continue even in the face of violence, addiction, suffering and death itself.

As I turned away from the coffin and glanced around, the church decorations and the Easter flowers suddenly seemed me to take on a defiant look, as if they were quietly but resolutely insisting that no matter what things look like, one day the victory will be ours.
One day the tears will be wiped away.
One day the horrors of crime and hatred, of violence and sin will be transformed in the twinkling of an eye when the trumpet sounds and Rob and the all the rest of us rise incorruptible.

Meanwhile we go to wakes to weep for young alumni, even ones with degrees from Yale in microbiology.

HOMECOMING

The next day the first wave of backpackers returned from their long hike. As I came out of our school library across the street I stopped and studied the returning hikers, some of whom were flopped on the sidewalk in front of the school waiting for their ride home. Some looked exhausted, others happy, and others showed little emotion at all.

I wondered what was going on in their heads and hearts. What had they learned from coping with the challenges of mountains and rainstorms and difficult companions?

Then I looked at them again and wondered if maybe three years from now one of them just might get into Yale and then even, who knows, go on to find a cure for cancer.
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WALKING THE TRAIL

2011-05-20T19:51:00.019-04:00

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LACE UP YOUR BOOTS!

This Sunday, May 22, our freshmen will board chartered buses for their 53-mile backpacking hike along the Appalachian Trail from High Point to the Delaware Water Gap. To be precise, half of them will leave on Sunday and the other half on Monday.

Every day for the past three weeks they’ve been training for this culminating event of freshman year, learning the basics of camping, first aid, safety, and so on. But in fact the experience is not aimed so much at teaching them about backpacking; it’s much more about less measurable outcomes such as understanding yourself and getting along with others.

The Backpacking Project is a great example of “teaching without objectives.” I honestly do not know what any individual freshman is going to learn during his five days and four nights in the woods. But I’m confident that he’ll pick up at least some insights about life.

Think of it: Five days and four nights continuously with the same group of seven classmates, sharing the tasks of making and breaking camp, cooking, carrying supplies and equipment; sharing the discomforts of rain, heat, cold, gnats and ticks, no showers and no electronic devices. Of course the trip includes sharing lots of good things as well: the camaraderie and laughter, the beautiful mountain scenery, the satisfaction of arriving together at the assigned campsite each night. When you are linked so closely with a group for five days you’re bound to learn something about yourself and others!

Some kids, as you can imagine, have a great time and sign up the next year to be student instructors as sophomores and then maybe project leaders as juniors. Others suffer through the experience as something one has to undergo in this crazy school in order to pass on to sophomore year, but they vow never to go into the woods again.

There is another group, however: kids who have a miserable time because the members of their hiking team were constantly arguing, insulting one another, refusing to share in the work, and otherwise acting childish. I thought of this group when doing some background reading on a passage from St. John for a homily this morning.

I AM THE WAY

At the last supper Jesus says “I am the way, the truth and the life” (Jn 14:6). An equally valid and perhaps more accurate translation in the context would be “I am the way TO the truth and life.” Jesus, then, leads his followers to “truth.” The following commentary on the passage is what made me think of our freshmen and their backpacking teams:

This truth is, of course, the same truth for which Jesus came into the world, as we saw in his dialogue with Pilate. It is the critical revelation that the very purpose of our existence is to love unselfishly and that we will fulfill that purpose only if we use what freedom we have to love as unselfishly as we possibly can. Moreover, Jesus is not the way simply because he tells us about it but, far more importantly, because his life is an embodiment of this unselfishness. Accordingly, to follow his way means to become unselfish in and with him. (Demetrius Dumm, O.S.B., A Mystical Portrait of Jesus: New Perspectives on John’s Gospel, p.48)

Some developmental psychologists say that in adolescence a person passes through a second period of egocentrism, a regression to the terrible twos. So “becoming unselfish” is a major psychological task for a teenager, and the Appalachian Trail hike is a great place to work at the task. A team made up of unselfish hikers can put up with just about anything and end up content, while a team of two-year-olds is destined for a long miserable week no matter what.

FOLLOWING THE WAY

The Appalachian Trail is marked by white blazes on trees and rocks; if you follow them you stay on the trail and get to your destination. Christ has told us that he is the “way;” the Greek hodos can mean a road, a pathway, and I suppose, a hiking trail. And of course, the goal is to arrive at the end of the trail – in the case of our freshmen that means Dunnfield Ravine at Route 80 in the Delaware Water Gap. It’s a great feeling of accomplishment, you can imagine, when you hike down the side of the last mountain and across the little wooden bridge into the ravine, and you’re given your patch that symbolizes that you have indeed walked the 53 miles from High Point and are now ready to move on with your life both at St. Benedict’s and in the wider world.

I love the Freshman Backpacking Project. There’s just so much right about it. Not the least, I suppose, is that it’s such a perfect metaphor in so many ways for what we Christians are trying to do every day of our lives: to “become unselfish” by helping one another to overcome the obstacles we all encounter on the way through life, and in so doing become the Body of Christ who is himself “the Way to the truth and life.”
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........................DELAWARE WATER GAP
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CATCHING THE SPIRIT

2011-05-13T13:07:00.017-04:00

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PHILIP AND THE ETHIOPIAN

A rather well-known passage from Acts was the first reading for mass on Thursday: The story of Philip’s encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40. It is Luke the consummate story-teller at his best. There are angels, lots of physical action, and a high-ranking and exotic personage who is open to the movement of the Spirit. Philip is portrayed in the trappings of the prophet Elijah who was addressed by an angel in 2 Kgs 1:15, who ran alongside the chariot of a powerful person in 1 Kgs 18:46, and was carried from place to place by the Spirit in 1 Kgs 18:12. The text is certainly worth a close reading:

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.’ (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go over to this chariot and join it.’ So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ He replied, ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: ‘Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth.’ The eunuch asked Philip, ‘About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?’ Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, ‘Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?’ He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea. (Acts 8:26-40)

THE GOSPEL BREAKS OUT

You may know that the Acts of the Apostles recounts the growth and spread of the early church, especially under Peter and Paul. It tells how the Christian faith burst out of the confines of Jerusalem and began to spread to Samaria and nearby areas and then, in ever-widening circles, beyond Greece and even Rome itself and beyond. So then, where does the account of the baptism of the Ethiopian court official fit into this scheme?

The eunuch is returning from worshiping in Jerusalem and is reading the prophet Isaiah. So if he is not a Jew he is certainly one of those from far-off lands that the prophets predicted would come to worship the Lord at the temple in the great in-gathering of the nations:

At that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call on the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia my suppliants, my scattered ones, shall bring my offering. (Zeph 3:9-10)

Incidentally, as a eunuch he would have been barred from full participation in temple worship and even in the Jewish community. But here he is being baptized and welcomed into the Christian communion. The movement seems to be toward Jerusalem rather than away from it.

Think of how before a wave breaks on the shore the water recedes as the next wave gathers itself up to then crash with full force onto the beach. The story of the Ethiopian is like that final drawing back of the tide before the wave breaks, the last Jerusalem-centered movement before the great expansion of the gospel message begins.

The very next verse following this episode introduces us to the key player in the spread of the Gospel to the gentiles: “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus” (Acts 9:1-2). With the conversion if Saul the waves are about to begin to burst outward in earnest, breaking onto the non-Jewish world.

Indeed, Luke will immediately devote chapters 10-12 to recounting in great detail the conversion of the pagan Cornelius, an event which he clearly considers to be the great turning point since it is the conversion of the first gentile to the faith.

CHASING THE SPIRIT

I found an interesting lesson for myself in the story of the baptism of the Ethiopian official. Remember, first of all, that, as in the rest of Acts, the Holy Spirit is behind every action: “Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, ‘Get up and go towards the south,’” “Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go and catch up with that chariot,’” and “When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away.”

These dramatic interventions clearly show Luke’s fundamental conviction that “the mission is not first of all a result of human enterprise but of the Spirit’s impulse. The Christian missionaries are constantly trying to keep up with God’s action” (Luke T. Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, 160) . We have in the story of the Ethiopian official a literal example of "trying to keep up with God's action: "The Spirit told Philip, "Go and join that chariot," and poor Philip had to run to catch up with it! The text makes it clear that he was actually jogging alongside the chariot for awhile listening to the Ethiopian reading the scripture aloud.

I don’t know about you, but there are periods when I get a little winded “trying to keep up with God’s action”. When my careful plans go haywire or events get beyond my control, I have to run to catch up with the work of the Spirit. When things are clearly no longer going according to my own plan I have to hustle to join in the plan that God has in mind.

The root of the word "spirit" in both Greek and Latin is the word for "breath, wind." It sounds a little paradoxical but chasing the Spirit can leave you winded sometimes. When you start to get short of breath trying to keep up with the Spirit's action in your life you may want to say a quick prayer to Saint Philip, who must be, after all, the patron saint of joggers.
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MY BELATED EASTER PRESENT

2011-05-06T14:06:00.028-04:00

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A SURPRISE EMAIL

I get a few emails and notes each month from people who have enjoyed reading one or another of my books. There are usually several at Easter, when readers want to let me know that they have just spent the forty days of Lent on pilgrimage with me via my book Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey through Lent.

On Tuesday I opened an email entitled “My ‘shared’ Lenten journey” expecting to find just such a thank you. I love to hear from people who have benefited from my writing. But this time what I got instead was something much more beautiful than a simple thank-you; it was a glimpse into a mother’s soul. Since I have not asked her permission to share her email on my blog, I’ll just give you the gist of it.

A MOTHER AND HER SON

This Lent, she told me, she and her son shared their Lenten journey every day by using my book (to which he had introduced her), and she had then used the book as a guideline for her personal journal which she shared with her son via letters. Why letters? Because he is currently serving a long sentence in prison!

As part of our great group of Lenten “pilgrims” who were reading the assigned chapter for each day, this mother and her son strolled together along the cobblestone lanes of Canterbury, crossed a Bolivian river in a jeep, took the Amsterdam-to-Paris train overnight and visited a Cistercian abbey on a rocky islet in the Bay of Cannes.

For the son it must have been rather poignant to be able to “escape” his cell for a few minutes each day, and for his mom it must have been just as special because she was sharing those same moments with her son and then sharing her thoughts with him about what she had seen along the pilgrim road.

A pilgrimage is supposed to leave you changed. From what she said in her brief email the journey had indeed helped both her and her son to grow closer to the Lord through the cross. She didn’t say so but I’m guessing that the forty days of sharing must have helped the son and his mother grow closer to each other, too. You can imagine how gratifying it was for me as a writer to know that one of my books had played a part in that life-giving experience.

EASTER PRESENTS

Since the Church extends the celebration of Easter for a period fifty days until Pentecost, I considered this mother’s email as an Easter gift to me. So I turned the tables on her by hitting “Reply” on the email and thanking her for the beautiful Easter present.

Maybe you would like join me in praying for her and her son -- especially if you were one of the many people who were on the road with us during Lent.

If you have a story about your own Lenten pilgrimage we fellow-pilgrims would love to read about it in the “comment” box below.

...............Pilgrims Leaving Canterbury
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A STRANGE EASTER MEDITATION

2011-04-30T08:35:00.018-04:00

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THE PROCURATOR OF JUDEA

Just before Easter I came upon a short story written by Anatole France (1844-1924); its title, “The Procurator of Judea,” immediately caught my attention because of its timeliness. The odds of your ever reading this ten-page story are so slim that I think I can tell you how it turns out without fear of getting you too angry at me for spoiling the ending.

Set in Italy many years after the death of Jesus, the story consists entirely of a dialogue between one Lucius Aelius Lamia and an elderly and retired Pontius Pilate. Lamia had once been a house guest of Pilate’s for some weeks back in Judea but had not seen him since. Thus the two sat down on a shady terrace at the retired Procurator's villa to share lunch, a pitcher of wine and good conversation.

I started reading, waiting impatiently for the inevitable moment when the author would offer some insights into the death of Jesus from the perspective of Pontius Pilate, who as “Procurator of Judea” had been responsible for the most famous execution in history.

The conversation was free-flowing and wide-ranging, but eventually turned to a long discussion of the Jews, whom Pilate had governed for some years. As the two men traded opinions I sensed that we were about to get to some great self-revelation – probably Pilate’s confessing that his uneasy conscience had left him unable to sleep at night ever since that fateful Friday afternoon.

Finally Lamia started talking about a Jewish dancing girl he’d fallen in love with in Jerusalem, and how she had broken his heart when she completely disappeared one day without a word. I’ll continue his story in Anatole France’s words:

“Some months after I lost sight of her I learned by chance that she had attached herself to a small company of men and women who were followers of a young Galilean wonder-worker. His name was Jesus; he came from Nazareth, and he was crucified for some crime, I don’t quite know what. Pontius, do you remember anything about the man?

“Pontius Pilate contracted his brows, and his hand rose to his forehead in the attitude of one who probes the deeps of memory. Then after a silence of some seconds –

“Jesus?” he murmured, “Jesus – of Nazareth? I don’t seem to remember him.”

And that was the end of the story: Pilate couldn’t recall ever having met Jesus, let alone having had him killed!

PILATE AND ME

The surprise ending left me disappointed but also intrigued at its open-ended possibilities for reflection.

I was appalled that Pilate could have been so blasé and could have forgotten such a momentous event. But then, if it’s appalling that he should forget the death of Jesus, isn’t it equally as appalling that I should often be so blasé and indifferent about Christ’s resurrection?

Can I blame Pilate, a pagan and a busy Roman functionary, for not remembering that first Good Friday that had happened so many years before, when I, a baptized believer, can go about my day without remembering Easter Sunday that is happening in my heart every day?

I hope that the shocking ending of Anatole France’s story will remind me that the risen Savior is alive and present at every moment of my life and in every place in which I find myself. Saint Augustine says somewhere that a Christian is an Alleluia from head to toe. I pray that all of us Christians may live like so many "Alleluias," proclaiming with our loving actions and attitudes that the Jesus who Pilate executed is alive in our hearts and will live forever.

So, there is my strange but chilling meditation for the Easter season:
....“Jesus – of Nazareth? I don’t seem to remember him.”
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MY NEW TAKE ON EASTER

2011-04-23T12:33:00.028-04:00

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EASTER ON HIGH STREET

My experience of Easter this year will be richer than usual thanks to the book we’ve been reading at table in the monastery the past few weeks, Thomas A. Mc Cabe’s Miracle on High Street : The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of St. B enedict's Prep in Newark, N.J. As the title indicates, (our street name was changed from High Street to King Boulevard about 30 years ago) it recounts the history of our school, St. Benedict’s Prep, with special emphasis on the events surrounding its closing and subsequent re-opening.

Despite squirming several times as the author quoted extensively from “Father Albert’s journal,” it was gratifying to listen to the retelling of the story of those terrible days during and after the school’s closing in 1972, the scary days of our reopening it a year later against all reason, and the elation that came as the new school, incredibly, began slowly to come to life and even prosper. As I listened to the account I started to hear it as a real Easter story, complete with suffering, death and resurrection. The book reminded me that I had been privileged to participate in a real-life instance of the paschal truth that “through death comes life.” And the story is still unfolding.

THE LORD OF THE DANCE

This past Wednesday I used the reflection on p.162 of my book Pilgrim Road during my morning meditation period. The chapter recalls my experience of watching a large group of people dance the traditional Catalonian “sardana” in an open square in Perpignan, France. I’d written about how the experience put me in mind of a song, “My Dancing Day” (which I mistakenly referred to as “medieval”).

The familiar song, which first appeared as a Christmas song in 1833, has as its main theme Jesus as the leader of life’s dance. He describes his own life as a series of movements in a dance, and then invites us all to join him. (A couple of verses show an anti-Semitic bias, but the beautiful plot makes it worth the effort to simply ignore or get past the offending lines.) Here are a few verses:

TOMORROW SHALL BE MY DANCING DAY

Tomorrow shall be my dancing day;
I would my true love did so chance
To see the legend of my play,
To call my true love to my dance;

In a manger laid, and wrapped I was
So very poor, this was my chance
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass
To call my true love to my dance. Chorus

Before Pilate the Jews me brought,
Where Barabbas had deliverance;
They scourged me and set me at naught,
Judged me to die to lead the dance. Chorus

Then down to hell I took my way
For my true love's deliverance,
And rose again on the third day,
Up to my true love and the dance. Chorus

Then up to heaven I did ascend,
Where now I dwell in sure substance
On the right hand of God, that man
May come unto the general dance. Chorus

THE MYSTERIOUS DANCE OF SUFFERING

The reflection question in Pilgrim Road reads: “The image of the crucified Jesus leading the dance suggests that his suffering gives meaning to our own pain and affliction, making them part of a mysterious pattern, part of the dance. Think of a time when the crucified Savior has asked you to follow him in the dance by sharing his pain and suffering” (Pilgrim Road, p.162).

As I read this I immediately thought of Walking in Valleys of Darkness, my book that was just published this February, in which I recount five episodes in my life when the Lord had indeed asked me to join “the dance” through sharing his pain and suffering. The question at the end of the meditation proved to be a provocative one: “What was your response to his invitation to join in the dance of his suffering?” This led me to a series of strange and wonderful images mingling the dance with the various chapters in my book that detail some very hard times. Here are a few:

DANCING ON CRUTCHES. For eleven weeks I hobbled through the dance on crutches, learning a lot about how some folks continue to dance despite disabilities of all kinds.

DANCING IN THE DARK. I danced holding hands with my brother monks in a circle in during the process of re-opening St. Benedict’s; we went on in the pitch dark, tentatively making up the steps as we went along and trying not to worry too much about how the dance would turn out.

GETTING PULLED INTO THE DANCE. When my brother Bob died I was so weighed down by grief that I staggered and fell trying to dance – in fact, for a little while I just sat down and sulked instead of dancing. But lots of friends pulled me up and coaxed me back into the circle.

DANCING IN THE DARK – REPRISE. In the fifth chapter of Walking in Valleys of Darkness I link arms and dance in solidarity with the thousands of professed religious who, like me and my brother monks, are living in ever-shrinking communities, sharing the uncertainty and looking for God’s will for us in our radically changed circumstances. We have to make up new steps as we go, while all the time dancing in the dark. That has a familiar feel to it.

HIDDEN EASTER

On Good Friday I was wondering what all of my clumsy and unsatisfying attempts at dancing have to do with Easter. Then I came across a phrase in Out of the Depths, Bernhard Anderson’s 1970 book about the psalms. Toward the end of his chapter on the so-called “psalms of lament,” Anderson writes “Laments are praises in the time of God’s absence, or, stated differently, in the time when his presence is hidden” (p.72).

Hmm... “when God’s presence is hidden.” Yes! That little expression gave me a new way of looking at the dance.

There are times, of course, when God’s presence is so easy to see that it practically overwhelms us. For example, after the beautiful bittersweet service on Good Friday, as I was walking out of the packed church I stopped to smile at a two-month-old infant. The mother read my thoughts and without a word handed me the baby to hold. It seemed to weigh almost nothing as I held it in my arms against the pleats of my black ceremonial choir robe. The infant seemed to enjoy all the activity and, and smiled back at all the faces passing by. After the heavy somberness of the Good Friday service the contrast of this innocent smiling infant made God feel very present at that moment, and I easily pictured myself in Jesus’ dance wearing my choir robe and holding that tiny infant.

But what about those times when I’m grieving or frightened or in pain? God just doesn’t seem to be involved in the dance at all, and Easter seems like a pious fairy tale. That’s when it’s hard to keep dancing.

DANCING IN THE MEANTIME

I’m starting to realize this year that Easter is a much more subtle event than I once thought. Surely it’s about shouts of joy and celebrating Christ’s victory over suffering and death. But the issue is this: how do we, who are living in the time in between the first Easter and the final coming of Christ, how do we experience Easter while “we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”

Our experience of Easter must of necessity be limited in its scope; we cannot while on earth experience the fullness of the Easter mystery. My fellow Benedictine, Fr. Demetrius of St. Vincent Archabbey, explains it this way:

In God's loving plan, the victory was never meant to take place here, much as we would like that to happen. Thus we must endure the painful twinges that are inevitable for those who are on a journey. Legitimate but provisional attachments must give way to permit the only attachment that will never need to be broken -- our attachment to the Father in Jesus and the Spirit. We will know then that this world, though a wonderful place to visit, was never meant to be our real home. The Spirit helps us to understand this as he creates in us a kind of homesickness -- an aching void -- that can never be filled with anything less than God. -- Demetrius Dumm, O.S..B. A Mystical Portrait of Jesus, (Liturgical Press, Collegeville MN, 2001) pp. 64-65

THE PASCHAL DANCE

So this is the way I see the dance right now: We’re all holding hands in this immense sardana circle. At any given moment many of us are filled with joy at God’s many gifts0 as we dance, rejoicing in the beauties of nature and the works of artists, in our own love of family and friends, or in the awareness of being loved by God. But many of us are also dancing while weighed down by grief, worried about financial problems or our children, or burdened with physical pain or any of the countless dozens of other dreary difficulties that life usually involves. But here’s the message of the Paschal Mystery: Dancing with us all the time, usually unseen and unnoticed, is the wounded, suffering, crucified and risen Jesus who once promised us “I will be with you always, even to the end of time.”

Tonight at the Easter Vigil we will follow the lighted paschal candle in a processional “dance” into the darkened church and proclaim “Light of Christ!” May the Easter Vigil celebration with its songs and scriptures, its gestures and its candles, its incense and its bells encourage us and strengthen our faith so that we may continue to dance as best we can and help our brothers and sisters to do so as well.

Easter celebrates Christ’s winning the final victory for us, the victory that insures that one day we will all be able to join in the Easter Sardana in heaven, in one big circle with the rest of humanity, each of us dancing in our own unique way the steps of the “general dance.” At that time Jesus will no longer be our invisible partner but the ever-present and visible Lord, the Lord of the Easter Dance.

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......THE LORD IS TRULY RISEN! ALLELUIA!
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IT'S NOT ABOUT THE PALMS

2011-04-16T10:44:00.022-04:00

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PALMS AND PROCESSIONS

The idea of a Palm Sunday procession originated, not surprisingly, in Jerusalem where people could really have the sense of re-enacting various events of Jesus’ passion and death in the very places where they had occurred. It was well established by the fourth century: a large crowd, including lots of children singing “Hosanna,” preceded the bishop on a long walk from the top of the Mount of Olives into and across Jerusalem into a church to celebrate mass. It’s easy to see how such a ritual would capture people’s imaginations; and by the ninth century there were Palm Sunday processions in Spain and Gaul. The custom would take root in Rome only in the eleventh century. The actual rituals of the blessing of palms and the procession varied quite widely from place to place. The blessing of the palms could be very elaborate, for example, while in some places the bishop would imitate Christ by riding in procession on a donkey. Last year on Palm Sunday I posted some thoughts about the custom in some countries of having a statue of Christ on a donkey that was rolled along in the procession.

MISLEADING RITUALS

The detailed ritual re-enacting of various sacred actions of the gospel, begun in Jerusalem and spreading throughout the Christian world, while it is appealing to many people, also poses a danger: we can begin to think of each episode as a separate stand-alone event without seeing it as part of the single “paschal mystery” of suffering-death-resurrection.

A good example of this unfortunate splitting up of the paschal mystery is the popular devotion called the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” These meditations follow Jesus’ passion from his condemnation by Pontius Pilate through his death and burial, and end (incredibly!) with Jesus’ lying dead in the tomb. To stop the story at that point is not only misleading, it’s almost blasphemous. Worse, it implies that you and I can or should look at our own suffering and pain apart from Jesus’ triumphant victory over suffering and death at Easter. That’s real bad theology! Presently when the stations are celebrated in public, the service often ends with a sort of “fifteenth station,” a brief meditation on the resurrection – i.e. the event which gives all of the events of Christ’s suffering and death their ultimate MEANING.

A similar unfortunate separation of the resurrection from the suffering and death of Christ is reflected in the history of the so-called “holy triduum.”

THE SACRED TRIDUUM

The expression “holy triduum” or “sacred triduum” originally referred to the three days of Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. Easter was an integral and essential part of the “holy week” celebration. Saint Augustine, for instance, refers to this triduum in the fifth century. Toward the middle of the seventh century, however, a commemoration of the Last Supper was introduced on Holy Thursday at Rome (where that day had previously been mostly the day for reconciliation of penitents). This new commemoration caused an unfortunate shifting of days: the “triduum” then became Thursday-Friday-Saturday, and Easter was cut completely out of the picture! The triduum became a self-contained unit involving only Jesus’ suffering and death.

This new arrangement is misleading and could very easily distract at least some people from the full MEANING of Christ’s suffering and death (which, after all mean nothing without the resurrection). The church has revised her rituals and her language in recent years to try to counter that misconception. The official language in the church’s calendar, for example, now refers to “the Easter Triduum of the Lord’s Passion and Resurrection,” which begins only with the evening mass of the Lord’s Supper, thus restoring the original unity of suffering and resurrection.

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE PALM BRANCHES

The ceremonies of Palm Sunday can still be misunderstood in that fragmented way mentioned above by making the blessed palms the center of attention. I once saw a pastor being set upon by angry parishioners complaining vehemently that the ushers at the side door of the church were distributing smaller pieces of palm than the ushers at the main door. This outrage would color or even define their whole experience of Holy Week that year!

Try to consider Palm Sunday from the original perspective in which the events of Holy Week including Easter were not seen as reenactments of a disjointed series of events but rather as the celebration of a single unity known as the “paschal event.” Here, too, the church since Vatican II has helped us to correct our vision by revising the rituals of Palm Sunday. First, note that its official name is no longer “Palm Sunday” but “Palm Sunday of The Lord's Passion.” The preceding Sunday, formerly called "Passion Sunday" has been given back its original name, “The Fifth Sunday of Lent.” Centuries ago the Church began emphasizing Christ's sufferings and so pushed "passiontide" further back into Lent, usurping the Fifth Sunday and naming it "Passion Sunday." The Sundays in Lent, however, are clearly intended to prepare us for the resurrection. This idea is obvious when you notice that the gospel for the Fifth Sunday (that we used to call "Passion Sunday") tells the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. Sounds like a resurrection theme to me!

Secondly, besides the name change, there are the various prayers, blessings and options for the procession that now help us to focus on the more important theme of the Palm Sunday ritual, the procession. The actual blessing of the palms is limited to a brief introduction and a short prayer of blessing, teaching us that “Palm Sunday” is not about the blessing and carrying of palms that are to be brought home as almost magical tokens disconnected from anything about the Paschal mystery.

The true perspective is reflected in the fact that the blessing of the palms should be held someplace besides the sanctuary, preferably outside the church building, so that there can be a procession. There are even a couple of options for the entry into the church so as to encourage the use of a procession even in less convenient circumstances. The emphasis is where it should be: we as the People of God are accompanying the Messiah on his triumphal entry into Jerusalem where he will suffer and die and RISE again.

Thirdly, the sacramentary helps us to focus on the paschal mystery as a whole by opening the ceremonies of Palm Sunday with the priest's saying these words:

“Dear friends in Christ, for five weeks of Lent we have been preparing, by works of charity and self-sacrifice, for the celebration of our Lord’s paschal mystery. Today we come together to begin this solemn celebration in union with the whole Church throughout the word, Christ entered in triumph into his own city, to complete his work as our Messiah: to suffer, to die, and to RISE AGAIN. Let us remember with devotion this entry which began his saving work and follow him with a lively faith. United with him in his suffering on the cross, may we share his resurrection and new life.”

Notice the various emphases:
1. We have been preparing to celebrate the “paschal mystery” (passion-death-resurrection as a single event).
2. We are doing this as a community, in union with the Church throughout the world.
3. Christ is about to complete his Messianic work “to suffer, to die, and to rise again.”

A fourth help to keeping focused on the unity of Holy Week and Easter is found in the mass readings. During the mass we will listen to the reading of the passion (this year it is Matthew’s account) but this is preceded by the second reading from Philippians that includes these lines that combine the passion and the resurrection:

“he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8-11).

MY SCRUFFY PROCESSION

So when I preside at the Palm Sunday mass tomorrow morning in one of the seediest neighborhoods in Newark I will be conscious of marching up to Jerusalem with Jesus in company with the whole Church throughout the world. In our procession will be many Spanish-speaking immigrants, some suburban white folks who come to help the sisters serve Sunday dinner to the poor, and there will be some homeless and hungry people, too, along with AIDS patients and recovering addicts. It’s these last folks that will truly appreciate knowing that we are going with Jesus not just to SUFFER with him on Friday; no, we are very definitely walking with Jesus in order also to RISE again with him on Easter Sunday. And we’ll all join our voices in welcoming our Savior, singing

Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

.....Romare Bearden Palm Sunday Procession (1967-1968)

A FRIDAY IN LENT

2011-04-09T10:27:00.020-04:00

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MY SUFFERING STUDENT

He’s a kid who I like and who always comes to say hello before and after class. We’ve talked at some length about his family life, especially about his very problematic father; I found that there are some things that he's unwilling to talk about. I know that he’s been under some academic pressure lately, too. So yesterday (Friday) with less than a minute left in my Religion period he shouted an obscenity at a fellow student. I couldn’t ignore such inappropriate and unacceptable behavior, and so I walked back to reprimand him. By the time I got back there he was squaring off to fight yet another student. When I confronted him he couldn’t keep his mouth shut; he seemed compelled to answer me back every time I said something. That kind of loss of control if it happens out on the street can cost a young Black man his life these days. Yet as I spoke with him I could see that he wasn’t able to hear me. I was worried that he would get himself into in a fistfight within the next five minutes, and so as he left the room I set off in search of some help.

THE WAY OF THE CROSS

That evening I prayed the Stations of the Cross by myself. As I moved from one station to the next (each of the fourteen is represented by a small ceramic picture attached to the south wall of the abbey church) I kept seeing my suffering student in the various stations, especially the ones about carrying the cross and falling three times under its weight. Then other people started joining the walk to Calvary. I could see in my mind a friend who is worried sick about one of her adult children (the eighth station: Jesus meets the weeping women of Jerusalem and tells them “Weep not for me but for your children”), a friend who has serious medical issues, a woman I met recently whose husband is suffering from Alzheimer’s…. We made quite a sad parade as we walked with Jesus toward his crucifixion. I began feeling depressed about this whole business of suffering. The thirteenth station, Jesus is taken down from the cross (represented by Micheangelo in his Pieta), always evokes for me a vivid image of a certain young mother holding her dying child on her lap and looking at me.

THE ALMOND TREE

This morning I was back in church for my meditation period, still feeling the sadness of last night’s sorrowful parade to Calvary. I decided to start off by reading the chapter assigned for today in Pilgrim Road. It was about my visit to Assisi. Here’s an excerpt:

I smile as I remember the story from the Fioretti, a collection of edifying legends about the deeds of the wonder-worker Francis. On a cold winter’s day not unlike this one, the tale goes, Francis stopped in front of a bare almond tree and said, “Sister almond tree, speak to me of God!” And with that, the almond tree burst into a mass of lovely blossoms.”

That was quite an eye-opener at 6:10 in the morning! Here was the Lord challenging me to face all those negative feelings, all those suffering people I'm holding in my heart, and ask each of them to say something to me about God.

I thought again about my angry student, and how the episode had ended after school. I’d been so worried for him that I’d spent fifteen minutes after that class period yesterday tracking down Ivan Lamourt, our Assistant Headmaster and experienced guidance counselor, to tell him to grab this kid before something bad happens. During homeroom later in the day my sophomore friend found me and said “I’m sorry for what I did in class today.... And thank you for telling Mr. Lamourt about it; we talked and he’s going to help me.” I shook his hand and said "Apology accepted;" then I added, "Okay, now gimme a hug!" Surely he was speaking to me of God.

THE KEY

But when I tried to see the blossoms on some of those other trees of suffering from last night I had less success. Then I remembered a conversation I’d had recently with someone who had given a theological talk to the monks. He said that the typical Christian emphasis on the suffering and death of Jesus, on the crown of thorns and the nails, tends to obscure the more important underlying plot and in fact the very purpose of the whole thing: The central fact is not Jesus’ agony and death, but rather that THIS ENTIRE MYSTERIOUS SERIES OF EVENTS WAS INITIATED BY GOD OUT OF LOVE FOR US. It’s not so much about nails and scourges as it is about God’s boundless unconditional and infinitely incomprehensible LOVE for each one of us and for the whole world.

When I walk the Way of the Cross, then, with my suffering sisters and brothers, I need to keep before my eyes the underlying truth that the whole mystery of Calvary and of the resurrection and ascension, is first and foremost an expression of God's boundless love for all of us.

But since this love is infinite it will often be, by definition, incomprehensible to us. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Is. 55:8). The cross stands for the truth that God’s love is far, far beyond our logic and our human ability to understand.

In the Letter to the Romans Paul spends three chapters (9-11) trying to fathom the problem of what is to become of the Jews under the new dispensation. Is God going to abandon his covenant with them? After three chapters he has still not managed to figure out what God has in mind. So he ends his long but unsatisfactory meditation with this exclamation:

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor?" "Or who has given him anything that he may be repaid?" For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Rom. 11:33-36)

THE EMPTY STUDY HALL

This evening I’m going to go and sit under a skylight in the lovely but forlorn novitiate study hall on the top floor of the monastery. As our community continues to shrink in numbers, this study hall has not seen a novice in ten years. And I’m going to say:
............"Okay, empty study hall, speak to me of God.”
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.........................An almond tree in blossom
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A REAL PRIVILEGE

2011-04-02T21:51:00.014-04:00

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ON THE PILGRIM ROAD
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I don’t usually get this personal in my blog, but I’d like to share something that happened to me in church this morning during my meditation time as I was reading the chapter in Pilgrim Road assigned for today. (By the way, I’m very conscious of the fact that there are dozens of people in far-flung places who are on the Lenten journey with me via the book; for some of us this is our fifth year together.)

Anyway, I was reading at 6:00 this morning in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Today's chapter, as some of you may remember, takes place in a bus traveling across Paraguay as the sun is setting. Of the forty meditations this is probably my favorite. Suddenly I paused halfway through the story and closed the book. I held the little volume in both hands and said to myself “How did I ever deserve to write this book?” I was just filled with gratitude to God for giving me the privilege of experiencing all these adventures and then touching so many people by sharing my meditations with them.

ON READING ONES OWN BOOK...

Most of the reflection questions in Pilgrim Road were based on my own personal challenges, some of them many years old at the time I wrote them. It's interesting to me that I still find my own questions speaking to my heart today, and can still use the book to good effect each Lent. Is it odd that my reflections keep surprising me and challenging me even though I'm the one who wrote them, or should they be more valuable to me than to my readers precisely because I wrote them from my own experience? All I know is that I've been using my own book each Lent since 2007 and I still find it "still full of sap, still green."

REJOICE!

Whether you are one of my fellow pilgrims using “Pilgrim Road” this year or simply a brother or sister in the Lord traveling with the Church toward the joy of the Easter Feast, let us celebrate the fact that Sunday April 3 is “Laetare Sunday,” when the Pilgrim People of God rejoice that Lent is now half over.
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.....Newark's Cathedral framed in cherry blossoms in 2009
......Newark's Cherry Blossom Festival is April 9-17 2011.
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THE ANNUNCIATION IN THE KITCHEN

2011-03-25T21:02:00.034-04:00

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LET IT BE DONE UNTO ME ...

March 25 is the Solemnity of the Annunciation; nine months from today we will be celebrating the birth of the Christ Child at Christmas.

We are all familiar with the story of the annunciation from Luke (Lk 1:26 – 38) in which the angel Gabriel appears to Mary who says, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said.”

THE ANNUNCIATION: A LUCAN STORY

The following is a meditation I shared with my brother Benedictines as my homily at mass this evening. (The first part is adapted from Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Gospel of Luke; Sacra Pagina Vol 3, p. 39)

Only St. Luke would have thought to tell the story of the annunciation in just this way. He loves to give major roles to minorities (such as women) and outcasts, he emphasizes Jesus’ humble origins, and enjoys pointing out the law of divine reversal (whereby the rich become poor and the poor rich, etc.). These themes give us some new perspectives on the story of the annunciation.

In contrast to Zechariah, Mary holds no official position among the people,
She is not described as “righteous” in terms of observing Torah,
She is among the most powerless people in her society:
- she is young in a world that values age,
- she is female in a world ruled by men,
- she is poor in a stratified economy.

Furthermore she has neither husband nor child to validate her existence.
Yet she has “found favor with God” and has been “highly gifted.”

Here is one of Luke's favorite themes: God acting in ways that are surprising and paradoxical, reversing human expectations.

Luke prizes simplicity and humility; thus the most important dialogue in the whole bible, ending with Mary’s telling the angel, “Let it be done to me,” does not take place in the temple (as Zechariah’s vision does) nor in some formal setting, but rather somewhere in the obscure village of Nazareth.

FR. KILIAN'S POEM

Father Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., a monk of St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota, wrote a lovely reflection on this very theme. But before reading it, first take a look at Jacopo Bellini's 1444 painting.
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..................IN THE KITCHEN

..........................Bellini has it wrong.
..........................I was not kneeling
..........................quietly at prayer,
..........................head slightly bent
..........................to show submission.

..........................Painters always
..........................get it wrong, skewed,
..........................as though my life
..........................were wrapped in the silks,
..........................in temple smells.

..........................Actually I had just
..........................come back from the well,
..........................pitcher in my hand.
..........................As I placed it on the table
..........................I spilled some on the floor.

..........................Bending to wipe
..........................it up, there was a light,
..........................against the kitchen wall
..........................as though someone had opened
..........................the door to the sun.

..........................Rag in hand,
..........................hair across my face,
..........................I turned to see
..........................who was coming in,
..........................unannounced, unasked.

..........................All I saw
..........................was light, whiter
..........................than whitest white.
..........................I hear a voice
..........................I had never heard,

..........................walking toward me,
..........................saying I was chosen,
..........................The Favored One.
..........................I pushed back my hair,
..........................stood baffled.

..........................With the clarity of light
..........................the light spoke
..........................of Spirit, shadow, child

..........................as the water puddled
..........................large around my feet.

..........................Against all reason,
..........................against all rationality,
..........................I knew it would be true.
..........................I heard my voice
..........................“I have no man.”

..........................The Lord is God
..........................of all possibilities:
..........................with Elizabeth no flow
..........................of blood in thirty years
..........................but six months gone.

..........................From the fifteenyears
..........................of my Nazareth wisdom
..........................I spoke to the light
..........................in the joy of truth:
..........................“Let it be so.”

..........................Someone closed the door.
..........................And I dropped the rag.
. .......Henry Owassa Tanner, "The Annunciation" (1898)