Simon Bears the Cross with Jesus

As I pray the Rosary, I add certain relative clauses in order to help me meditate on the particular mystery of the decade I am reciting. So an Ave would run as follows for the fourth sorrowful mystery: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, who bore the heavy cross for us. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen." (The words in italic, of course, being the added relative clause.)

Adding these clauses aren't my idea or invention, but have been around for centuries. (Read von Balthasar's Threefold Garland for more - it's a phenomenal little book.) I have been thinking about this particular clause, "Who bore the heavy cross for us," as I meditate on the sorrowful mysteries of the most holy Rosary. Whenever I say it, or hear or read the story of Jesus' bearing the cross, I am always, and always have been, struck immediately with a qualification - something ridiculous along the lines of "with Simon of Cyrene." But this involuntary (literalist crazy) qualification strikes me as constitutive to our Christian life. Simon bears the cross with Jesus for a purpose. Ultimately God goes before us, bears us, encircles us with his grace so that it is He who acts. But I also act.

"Good works" is not a dirty word, not heresy unless I believe that it is my good works - outside and apart from Christ's work - that reconcile me to God. (There are variations of the heresy.) I cannot act righteously without God's grace. But God's grace is always present for good works. Always. Sometimes I don't allow it to work in me. (The permission itself is an act of grace. All is grace.) But God has given us human persons the dignity of freedom to respond in step with the Spirit or to quench the Spirit.

God invites us to work with him, by his grace, that we might, working with him, redeem all of creation. That we might, by his grace, do greater things than he himself did. (I don't understand this word of Christ, but believe that each of us - and not simply the Church entire - is called to these "greater works" since the Greek uses the singular "you" rather than the plural. Though it is still only by his grace.) This is not because Christ doesn't cut it or that the Father needs help, but because we are invited to participate in his Divine Life. This is conversion. This is salvation. We become - we must become - by grace, all that Christ is by nature.

Glory to God for all things.

Newborn

Sensuous, birth is full of contrasts and archetypes, meaning. It is the intercourse of heaven and earth. It is God encountering woman in her pain and joy, sweat, blood, expectancy. A kiss. A rendezvous. A revelation. We are enamored. God's breath, awake, unveiled; the Divinity reaching into clay and pulling a person from it. Two. Three.

Surprised at surprise. Caught unprepared again, thirty-eight years in, I stir to.

Life is too great, too glorious. There is suffering. There is pain. But there is, also, limitless joy that leans out from little things, like an upturned, red-capped mushroom, a defeated umbrella pooling rainwater. Like morning glory bedding on a rusted sign. Like a newborn covered in blood and vernix, trembling. Joy entwines itself in the pain, curls about it, over it, and purples. Glory subsumes all suffering, at a glance.

The Church Needs Art

Apostle St Matthew
El Greco
1606

"In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. Art has a unique capacity to take one or other facet of the message and translate it into colors, shapes and sounds which nourish the intuition of those who look or listen. It does so without emptying the message itself of its transcendent value and its aura of mystery."

Upon reading an extract of John Paul II's 1999 Letter to Artists yesterday, I pulled up the document, printed it out, and have been thinking of it since. Here's more:

"Human beings, in a certain sense, are unknown to themselves. Jesus Christ not only reveals God, but 'fully reveals man to man.' In Christ, God has reconciled the world to himself. All believers are called to bear witness to this; but it is up to you, men and women who have given your lives to art, to declare with all the wealth of your ingenuity that in Christ the world is redeemed: the human person is redeemed, the human body is redeemed, and the whole creation which, according to Saint Paul, 'awaits impatiently the revelation of the children of God' (Rom 8:19), is redeemed. The creation awaits the revelation of the children of God also through art and in art. This is your task. Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.

...

"Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savor life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. It stirs that hidden nostalgia for God which a lover of beauty like Saint Augustine could express in incomparable terms: 'Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you!'.

...

"... may your art help to affirm that true beauty which, as a glimmer of the Spirit of God, will transfigure matter, opening the human soul to the sense of the eternal."

Saints

Sometimes you write, just as you speak, without knowing a thing about a topic. Well, here I am. You've been warned.

"The only tragedy in life is not to be a saint." - Léon Bloy

What does it mean to be a saint? Most of the epistles of the New Testament could be summarized as follows:

Salutation: To the saints in Christ Jesus who are in [Philippi], grace and peace.

Body: Be ye saints.

Valediction: The grace of the Lord Jesus be with your spirit.

So in Christ we are already saints. But we are also becoming saints. We are commanded to be saints; it is God's will for us. The Orthodox have a wonderful picture of this process: God is fire and we are swords. As the sword is placed in the fire, it takes on the properties of the fire - it becomes like the fire - but it does not become fire. So we do not become God, but, as St Peter says, we become sharers in His divine life.

Some of us cringe hearing the word saint. We can think of a dozen or more reasons why we would not want to be one. But we cringe because most of the "saints" we've seen are not saints, but only sinners masked, marching around in stiff, binding clothes. And they demand that you be just like them. But saints are not wooden people in too-starched clothes, but men and women like Teresa of Calcutta. Their eyes are clear and bright. They don't walk around like Charlton Heston as he comes off his burning-bush trip with souped-up staff in hand, who does not even see his wife. Hell no. Instead, they are the most present people in our world, the most attentive, the most involved. They are full of joy. The only thing they may fail to see is themselves.

Now the Catholic Church canonizes saints. That means there are some people she knows who are in heaven through whatever means happen to be at her disposal. She officially declares someone a Saint. Anyone to whom she gives the title Saint is someone she "knows" is in heaven. All who are in heaven, of course, are saints - of the kind that the Church canonizes. And there are millions who have never been canonized by the Church but are still in the presence of God. Your dear old grandma. Your infant child. Your friend or relative who suffered through and struggled with the pain of breast cancer until her death. These are people who may indeed be in the presence of God, but are simply unknown to the Church. The Church does not make people saints by canonization, but only recognizes God's finished work in them. (Though, perhaps, part of the canonization process involves the Church's authority to bind and loose - I don't know.)

This issue is complex to explain to some because of their rejection of the theology behind it. They reject (1) the existence of a state of being that the Church calls Purgatory and (2) the authority of the Church. What they wouldn't reject, of course, is that there occurs after death some change in each of us to make us holy - with both the ability and the desire to always say No to anything contrary to God or His will for us.

So, yes, to discuss the Church's canonization of Saints, and what it means to be a saint, there is the issue of our cleansing to wade through. But perhaps I'll leave that for another time.

- to be continued -

Do Not Be Afraid

"Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song."

My meditation this week is from Pope John Paul II. And I will not be changing it for a few days. My reasons are (1) the season we find ourselves in, and (2) the poetry of the meditation has gotten into my very soul. And I want to keep it there.

But I would like to begin to explore it.

Today is Palm/Passion Sunday. It begins Holy Week. And this week is the apex of the Church calendar, within it is the totality of our being. As Fr Stephen Freeman says: All is Pascha.

John Paul the Great often said, "Do not be afraid." And these words are the exposition and rising action of our lives, our two-act plays. O! The comfort these words bring. And they lead to the blessed climax and denouement: We are the Easter people. All is Pascha.

Our lives turn upon this week. They climax in the Triduum and resolve with a shout. And after, we live in the New Day, the day without an end - we live in Pascha.

So there is nothing to fear.

But, even still, I do.

I fear failure. I fear being dismissed and rejected. I fear the darkness within and without. I fear having to die that Christ might live in me. I fear that others will discover that I am a fraud. A hack. A poser. A sinner.

What is it you fear?

Do not be afraid. Do not abandon yourselves to despair.

We are the Community of Pardon. Our gospel is reconciliation. It is peace. We, each one of us, entered the kingdom through pardon. And each one of us remains in it by that same mercy so freely given.

We are loved. Therefore, brothers and sisters, do not abandon yourselves to despair.

Belief, Brainwashing, or Both?

"Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand." - St. Anselm

For this past week's meditation, I want to do something different. I want to know what you think about this quote. I know how it has intersected my life, and I might share that tonight or tomorrow. But I want to hear what you think of it and why.

What does it say about apologetics? What does it say about belief and conversion?

What doesn't it say?

What does it say about prayer and patience? About love?

Faith Consists In ...

"Faith does not mean accepting a certain number of abstract truths about the mysteries of God, of man, of life and death, of future realities. Faith consists in an intimate relationship with Christ, a relationship based on love of him who loved us first, even to the total offering of himself." - Pope Benedict XVI

In this small quote by Papa Benedict, there is a lot to unearth, especially about what faith is not. But I'm caught up so much by the quote itself. I suppose because it is so ... catholic, as true for the Pope as it is for me. And, I suppose, because it says the very thing that evangelicals so often tell me the Catholic Church does not believe.

Our faith is not a simple litany of doctrinal affirmations. It is not merely a creed. Faith is being known by Christ and seeking to know Him. This quotation does not deny that there is such a thing as heterodoxy. But it rather shows the faith for what it is - it is God reconciling the world to Himself. And through that relationship, not through a proper understanding of the Trinity or of justification or of creed, that one is reconciled to God. Papa Benedict here makes me think of the simple (seemingly evident) idea I first heard from Tom Wright that shook how I viewed my world: We are not justified by our belief in justification by faith. We are justified by faith. Therefore, regardless of the doctrinal nuances and differences we have concerning the doctrine of justification by faith, our diversity is unified by our faith in Christ, not in our belief in the specificity of my or your understanding of the doctrine.

That being said, there is heterodoxy. And this concept is perhaps best understood under the umbrella of "To whom much has been given, much is required." Just because our faith is about relationship with Christ does not mean that we can dismiss the Church's doctrine of the Trinity, or say that orthodoxy is unimportant, or to say that orthodoxy is heterodoxy. But, that being said, the thief on the cross understood who Jesus was, but he probably did not have any knowledge of the Virgin birth or of the Trinity - perhaps no understanding of the Incarnation itself. (And who among us truly understands these things?)

As a Catholic, those are truths the Church holds and as a part of the Church I hold with her. But they are not for me measuring rods by which I go to judge another's kingdom status. There is too much I do not know about the other. And there is too much I do not know about God. So I humbly accept the orthodoxy of the Church, and while I explore ever more deeply the truths of her teaching, I try not to entertain heterodoxy.

We love Christ. A fuller understanding of the many doctrines of the Church will not make us any holier. It is in our loving Christ, in knowing Him through prayer (pray always) that we are made holier. It is His Spirit working upon ours, and our spirit responding and working with and through His.

Faith is a response to God's activity and mercy toward us. A response that requires from the responder, if one is to respond, the kind of offering that has been offered. It is not just belief, but belief expressing itself, working, through love.

When my wife offers herself to me totally, there is only one proper response: For me also to offer myself completely to her. And I'm not simply speaking sexually here - though that is a picture of what I am speaking of - I'm speaking of surrendering ourselves to one another and to Christ because he has surrendered His life for us.

Love is not simply received. If we are not changed by it, if we are not drawn into it, then we have failed to understand it.

Who You Are

“Who you are before God, that you are and no more”
– St Francis of Assisi

And no less. Therefore, love one another deeply from the heart. Judge no one. Pay no attention to position or wealth, to race or religion, to male and female. But serve one another humbly, for Christ has washed you.

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We were at a park yesterday; we picnicked and then played. It's a nice park and is always busy. It has a carousel and a train ride, some animals and other activities for kids. The park also has three play areas. The first area is wide open. The second play area - the area for the littlest ones - is completely fenced in except for where we sit to watch them play. The third, bordering the second, is for bigger kids and is completely fenced in just as the second one. Except the third play area has an open gate in the back that leads to the bathrooms and the parking lot.

So my wife and I were watching them and talking while she held Baby Jack. A young couple were standing nearby watching their two and the man began smoking. He was upwind of me, my wife, and our new baby. He eventually moved on. And when he did, I made some acerbic comments to my wife about how frustrated it made me when people lit up in public areas around children. A few exchanges and judgments of their parental abilities later, we were on to another topic.

We would occasionally do a spot check and count the four pirates we call children. The last spot check produced the three girls, but not the boy. I got up to walk the length of the area, but was unable to find him anywhere among all the slides and ladders and chaotic equipment. I walked by the second play area. My wife was up and looking by this time as well. Unable to spot him in the second or third play areas, the areas we had been monitoring, I went out the back gate near the bathrooms and parking lot and began praying as I walked toward the first play area. Will was nowhere. I tried to remain calm, and I continued to pray. I decided to walk over to the carousel and train - Will loves choo-choos. I was quite anxious by the time I got over to that end of the park, and kept looking back toward the bathrooms and the parking lot as long as I could. Soon, the trees blocked my view. I rounded the carousel and saw a park employee standing near a bench with a family. It looked like Will's head from a distance, and two fingers were shoved into the boy's mouth. As I got closer, I realized it was Will and my heart began beating normally again. The park employee looked up and caught my eye.

"Your son?"

"Yes," I said, breathing with ease again.

"This family found him. He was pretty shaken up." And there Will sat on the lap of the man, of all the people in the park that day, that I had so quickly judged. Though I had not known it, they were the most beautiful family in the park. We chatted briefly and I thanked them profusely.

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God is funny. And I, I can do nothing better than to be silent before Him. To clap my hands over my mouth and to work, with the help of His grace, to say less and to love more.

The Bible, the Whole Bible, and Nothing but the Bible

I am trying to post new quotes for my "Meditation" and "On Writing" sections of my sidebar each Sunday. I will also begin blogging about the meditation at the end of the week. For this past week's meditation, I'm writing down some thoughts today. In the future, I'll try to get it done on Saturday.

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My meditation this past week was from St Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea. He wrote:

“Of the dogmas and kerygmas preserved in the Church, some we possess from written teaching and others we receive from the tradition of the Apostles, handed on to us in mystery. In respect to piety both are of the same force. No one will contradict any of these, no one, at any rate, who is even moderately versed in manners ecclesiastical. Indeed, were we to try to reject the unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the Gospel in its vitals; or rather, we would reduce kerygma to a mere term.”

The quote describes a reason for my Catholicism. Most of my family and friends embrace the idea of sola scriptura, and I'm fine with that. I understand it. I simply cannot believe it anymore. I know that slides me into the category of apostasy for some, but while that grieves me, it is no longer my concern. I can only bring my brothers and sisters and my relationships with them to Christ in prayer.

So let me offer a brief overview of why I can no longer accept this sola.

First, and ultimately, it comes down to authority. If I say Scripture Alone, what does that mean? I can enter ten different sola scriptura churches and hear utterly different interpretations of what the scriptures are saying about divorce, abortion, homosexuality, and salvation itself. Which interpretation is valid? Are all of them valid? Any of them?

Every denominational construct forms a different interpretation of the scriptures. In some cases, every pastor. More specifically, every man or woman becomes his or her own pope/magisterium, deciding what the scriptures mean. Why is my interpretation or argument more weighty than someone who says they believe that abortion is permissible? Or homosexual activity? Or their beliefs about the atonement? Or the scriptures themselves?

Some people think those issues are cut and dry issues in evangelical Protestantism. But of course, they are not. They are not even so among the members of the Catholic Church - even though the Church herself defines its position on the issues quite clearly.

I have been involved in countless conversations about morality where it came down to a person's "interpretation." These conversations concern issues about which I grew up believing were the "clear teaching" of the scriptures. But I've found that the scriptures are simply not that clear about certain things. I've spoken with some who believe that the culture that produced the text about a certain morality is not relevant to our activity and our culture. And some of these protestations are points well-taken. (For instance, how many women cover their heads as they worship today?) The scriptures are not a handbook of propositions, or an exercise in systematic theology: You shall believe thusly about this, and suchly about that. It is a narrative - a narrative that certainly cradles propositions, but a narrative nonetheless.

So no more: I submit my private interpretation to the interpretation of the Church - what the Church has believed always, everywhere.

Some of my decision to embrace the Catholic Church, honestly, came out of my search for authority in an age when there simply is none.

(And let me say here what ought to be unnecessary: I love the scriptures and value them as having the authority of God. When I hear them read, or read them myself, it is as if Christ himself were speaking to me. And so He does.)

Second, it is important to discover what the scriptures themselves say about tradition and scripture. What does St Paul call the foundation and pillar of truth? It is not the scriptures, but the Church herself (1 Timothy 3.15).

St Paul also says that we must cling to what we have learned from the apostles - whether by letter or by word of mouth (2 Timothy 2.2; 2 Thessalonians 2.15).

Jesus also told his disciples "Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me" (Luke 10.16).

The Church is our living teacher. And her teaching has not added to or changed or taken away from what was given by our Lord or the apostles. We come to understand those dogmas and doctrines more clearly, but they cannot change.

The apostolic tradition has been handed down and entrusted to the Church. Therefore, we believe and follow this tradition as we would the written tradition. For instance, St Ignatius, a disciple of St John the Evangelist, around A.D. 110 speaks about the sacramental, real presence of Christ in the Eucharist - that the Eucharist is the actual body and blood of Christ. How can we deny what the Church has held fast to since her inception, since Christ formed her? It is, therefore, necessary that Christians believe in and follow the holy tradition of the Church - whether by letter or by word of mouth. The leaders of the Church, with Christ, form the foundation of the Church (Ephesians 2.20; 3.5). And, guided by the Holy Spirit, the Church has not apostasized (Matthew 16.18; John 14.25-26, 16.13). For her to do so would be to make Christ a liar.

Third, it was the Church who gave us the scriptures. Led by the Holy Spirit, she decided which books would be a part of the canon within the Councils of Rome and Hippo at the end of the fourth century. That canon remained the same for the next 1100 years until Martin Luther removed several books from the Old Testament canon (what most Protestants call the Apocrypha), at his discretion and by his authority alone. It must be noted that the LXX, the Septuagint, which was used by Greek-speaking Jews in Jesus' day, contained the very books that Luther threw out.

That is simply the history of the canon of Scripture. If we deny the Church's authority to do so, as Luther did, then we must, each of us, decide for ourselves the canon by our own authority.

O, lengthy harangue, wilst thou never end?

I end here, re-quoting St Basil the Great who said, "Indeed, were we to try to reject the unwritten customs as having no great authority, we would unwittingly injure the Gospel in its vitals; or rather, we would reduce kerygma to a mere term."

As always, conversation is welcome.