Fr Stephen Freeman has an excellent post on the Feast of the Dormition, Marian theology, and communion with Christ/salvation in general. I would encourage you to read it in order to edify your faith or to better explain why Mary figures prominently within the Church (or ought to).
Here in America, the Catholic Church has abrogated our holy obligation since the feast (Aug 15) falls on Monday.
It is the feast day of St. Lawrence, a third century martyr. Here's a legend about him via American Catholic:
As deacon in Rome, Lawrence was charged with the responsibility for the material goods of the Church, and the distribution of alms to the poor. When Lawrence knew he would be arrested like the pope, he sought out the poor, widows and orphans of Rome and gave them all the money he had on hand, selling even the sacred vessels to increase the sum. When the prefect of Rome heard of this, he imagined that the Christians must have considerable treasure. He sent for Lawrence and said, "You Christians say we are cruel to you, but that is not what I have in mind. I am told that your priests offer in gold, that the sacred blood is received in silver cups, that you have golden candlesticks at your evening services. Now, your doctrine says you must render to Caesar what is his. Bring these treasures - the emperor needs them to maintain his forces. God does not cause money to be counted: He brought none of it into the world with him - only words. Give me the money, therefore, and be rich in words."
Lawrence replied that the Church was indeed rich. "I will show you a valuable part. But give me time to set everything in order and make an inventory." After three days he gathered a great number of blind, lame, maimed, leprous, orphaned and widowed persons and put them in rows. When the prefect arrived, Lawrence simply said, "These are the treasure of the Church."
The prefect was so angry he told Lawrence that he would indeed have his wish to die - but it would be by inches. He had a great gridiron prepared, with coals beneath it, and had Lawrence's body placed on it. After the martyr had suffered the pain for a long time, the legend concludes, he made his famous cheerful remark, "It is well done. Turn me over!"
It is unconscionable that people, children, are dying for lack of food or water. It is unnecessary. Even in drought or famine, such as in Somalia, the deaths that are happening are tragically unnecessary. They could be prevented but for tyranny. And tyranny takes many forms.
Revise Us Again, by Frank Viola, is a patchwork quilt of sorts, at times poorly sewn. This is an editorial and organizational criticism more than a criticism of the content of Viola's thoughts. The theme of revision, though used throughout in chapter subtitles, seems to be imposed on the book, as if it were applied as an afterthought and whose idea was better than its execution. So for me the writing never gains the necessary momentum to carry me along. The intended thesis is never fully realized and ends up feeling like a compilation of musings about what's bent or broken in Evangelicalism without a clear enough focus or a proper framing. The idea seemed forced to me - or reached for and missed.
I do, however, appreciate several themes that Viola does present in Revise Us Again. First, my Christian life requires as honest an examination as I can give it. I don't think this theme consistently reaches the level intended, that of revision, though perhaps it could have had it been worked at a bit longer. Second, I am happy that Viola gets at the idea of community as an expression of charity. This idea is so terribly important and so awfully missed in so many of our church communities. And third, Viola seems downright charitable in this book - this is not to say that he normally isn't, Revise Us Again is my first encounter with Viola's work, but I appreciate his generosity toward others. He doesn't condemn in this book, he doesn't berate - he points and suggests, nudges the reader as if to ask, "What do you think about ... ?" The book scored highly for me in this respect - Viola desires that his book draw the Body of Christ together rather than divide it. This is a noble goal and one not easily attained when writing about what we do poorly or get wrong as Christians.
Now I did take issue with Viola in Chapter 9, "Stripping Down to Christ Alone: Revising the Holy Spirit's Ministry." I read this chapter wrongly every time, and I believe it's because I don't share Viola's history - I'm not "post-Charismatic" as he labels himself. Perhaps if I had a similar background to Viola's, this chapter would make a great deal of sense to me, or even seem necessary. But as it is it seems, at best, off. So when he includes the following sentence in the chapter, "To my mind, the Holy Spirit has but one job: to reveal, to make known, to magnify, to glorify, and to make central and supreme the Lord Jesus Christ," I cringe. (And what bothers me about the sentence is the phrase, "has but one job.") Most likely, I am quibbling. But it doesn't seem an apt description of "the Lord, the Giver of Life," or comprehend the Orthodox prayer "O Heavenly King ..." If we must talk about the Holy Spirit having "but one job," it is important to understand that this one job is the same one job the Father and the Son are busy about - the restoration of all things, reconciliation, redemption. Of course, speaking about the Most Holy Trinity makes me nervous to begin with because I fear we often err by saying more than we ought to, that we speak of things too great and marvelous for us.
Don't misunderstand, every time someone writes about more than one person of the Most Holy Trinity, I do not expect an orthodox treatise on the proper relationship between the three persons of the Godhead. But Viola sets it up in such a way that it needs to be discussed or qualified in some way because he juxtaposes Son and Spirit, and in such an arrangement there seems to this non-post-Charismatic that the push back Viola gives pushes back too hard and too far. Now his audience may need the heavy push, the shaking that says, "It's Christ." So I must assume the best and pray that it helps many others as they wrestle with their own histories. Nonetheless, the chapter deserves some clarification and needs a positive assertion about the unity of the Divine Persons rather than to do what it does - push off from one in favor of another (this is not Viola's intention, but it is my impression).
All in all, I liked Revise Us Again. I have my differences and my opinions, but the re-evaluation of "What is it we are about?" is relevant when there seems as much upheaval as stability within Evangelicalism. And it is always timely in my own life in respect to the Church, the community, within which I live and worship. There are weaknesses within the work and the project seems, in places, to reach beyond what it attains. But the thinking within the book is sound and the spirit of it leans toward restoration.
The last day of school, a little milestone, a moving forward - change. I'm not good at it. Time is a stream that carries all things with it. I am a soddened stick near the bottom, bumping slowly along in my unwillingness to move forward. I am not the leaf, newly fallen, that dances with current and ripple.
It is the milestone that slaps me across the face. That shakes me and yells at me to wake up. I am weighed down by anxiety and fear - it is so frightening to be present. I run from Today - backward or forward. Anywhere, really. I have difficulty moving forward because I have not lived today. And I missed yesterday. I have missed it. And fear will make me miss all of it.
Sometimes we must dress devils red, with pitchforks and barbed tails. I think the teaching about the Rapture, specifically Harold Camping's Rapture, is such a devil.
Camping's prediction is one of those that leave you alternately laughing and crying. His exegesis is inane - shoddy work at best. It is a morning's mist. And the morning of May 22nd will show it to be so - though Sunday morning will not be enough to convince the people who follow Camping. (Traditionally, Sunday mornings convince few.) If I were his neighbor, I'd meet him at his door in the morning, with doughnuts and a paper, and kindly invite him to Mass. Mr. Camping needs our prayers and perhaps our pity, but his belief, the idea itself, calls for a reasonable amount of scoffing. Camping is neither the first nor the last of these terribly specific wearers of menacing sandwich boards.
The teaching about the Rapture in general, and the way some teach it, is fraught with problems - devils even. My wife, for instance, has very real fears associated with the teaching about the Rapture. The teaching is laced with fear. It was and is used "evangelistically," which is a Christian way of saying it is used to scare the hell out of people. And when we scare the hell out of people, the only thing we accomplish is putting a bit of hell in their hearts. Fear is a part of hell. And hell worms its way out.
The teaching of the Rapture derives from and buttresses an us-them theology, it is uncharitable and fosters arrogance. And it is escapist. (The rescue aspect of the teaching is what endeared it to me for so many years). I used to believe in the Rapture (pre-tribber), but no more. The Rapture is Darby's invention, a man who was a contemporary of Darwin and Lincoln. It is not the teaching of the Christian faith - believed by all, at all times, and everywhere (as St Vincent of Lerins says).
I do believe, however, as the Creed says, that "[Christ] will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end." I do believe that we will be caught up in the air, but only to descend again with the coming King (no going off to heaven for some specified or unspecified amount of time). This is how peoples in the Middle East greeted kings and conquerors. They rode out of the city walls to greet and escort him back into the city. For us it is like meeting family or friends at their car or on the porch when they visit - we go out to embrace them and kiss them, and then we lead them inside.
Christ might come tomorrow or 3,000 years from now.
Here is a quote from Pope Benedict's most recent book:
A further key element of Jesus' eschatological discourse is the warning against false Messiahs and apocalyptic enthusiasm. Linked with this is the instruction to practice sobriety and vigilance, which Jesus developed further in a series of parables, especially in the story of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt 25.1-13) and in his sayings about the watchful doorkeeper (Mk 13.33-36). In this last passage we see clearly what is meant by "vigilance": not neglecting the present, speculating on the future, or forgetting the task in hand, but quite the reverse - it means doing what is right here and now, as is incumbent upon us in the sight of God
.....
Jesus' apocalyptic words have nothing to do with clairvoyance. Indeed, they are intended to deter us from mere superficial curiosity about observable phenomena (cf. Lk 17.20) and to lead us toward the essential: toward life built upon the word of God that Jesus gives us; toward an encounter with him, the living Word; toward responsibility before the Judge of the living and the dead (Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazereth: Holy Week, end of Chapter 2).
This is what eschatology is about. Unfortunately, we have spun it onto its head. It is not about our rescue. Not about the destruction of evil men (i.e., those who didn't say the Sinner's Prayer or those who believed differently than I believed). Not even about my reunion with Jesus. It is about the consummation of the reconciliation of all things that began with Mary's fiat. It is the Kingdom of Heaven come. It is me loving my neighbor and helping the poor. It is the redemption of the cosmos. And so we say Maranatha! but we mean it differently. We mean it credally - "The Lord has come!" and we mean it longingly, "O Lord, come!" But even as we long for his coming we do not mean simply that time when he returns. We mean it in the context of the Lord's Prayer - of getting heaven into this world and getting heaven into my own heart. The Lord is near.
So I scoff because we are not called to some kind of spiritual meteorology. "Why are you looking at the sky?" said the angels at the Ascension. And then they offer an eschatological statement for the purpose of its robust and joyous implication: "Get to work!"
In this sense, the urgency of evangelization in the apostolic era was predicated not so much on the necessity for each individual to acquire knowledge of the Gospel in order to attain salvation, but rather on this grand conception of history: if the world was to arrive at its destiny, the Gospel had to be brought to all nations (Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazereth: Holy Week, Chap 2).
God loves Harold Camping and those who follow him. He loves us. And he says to us: Go and love others as I love you. Working is how we wait.
It was the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Fort Wayne, Indiana. My wife and I, though Evangelicals, walked into the church twenty years ago to observe a daily Mass. Holy men, wooden statues, greeted us within the narthex, nearly showing us cowards. Further in, we found only a few people in a building that swallowed them. It was quiet, somber, and dark. Lifeless.
What does it mean to be follower of Christ? What does it look like? Does the countenance of a woman matter in worship? Do we know what lies in a man's heart?
We make so many judgments.
Every morning we see ourselves from a place of mercy. The challenge for us, our mandate, is to show the same mercy, even more, toward our brothers and sisters and toward all people. To see them, as St Paul says, as better than ourselves. To see ourselves as sinners so that we might cry out for Christ's presence every moment of our lives.
I used to look at the Catholic Church (not a particular church, but the entire structure) from without it and, at my best, be saddened by all they thought they had to do to please God - what salvation meant to them. There was baptism and all the other sacraments, Mass and so many other things that, left undone, they thought would incur God's wrath. Perspective is so important. We are constantly in danger of misreading the other. It's all too natural. Now as a Catholic I sometimes wince even still, five years later, at the obligations laid upon me. And when I do so it is because I have lost perspective and forgotten that the Church is my Mother. Her goal is to nurture and nourish our sanctity, to draw us to Christ and drag us when necessary. She says that this or that obligation or precept is important for us if we want to pursue holiness, if we want to become like God, if we want to be clean. Here, she says, are graces - food that costs no money, wine that is free - come and be satisfied. Open wide your mouth, she says, and I will place God in it.
Nowadays I look back at Evangelicalism, and I see there the other I once saw in the face of Catholicism. I see the morality, the obligations, that each little community imposes on itself, the unwritten but real codes: Be like this. Listen to this music. Eat this. Don't drink that. Fellowship here. KJV only. Anything but KJV. Read your Bibles. Do not do all these terrible things. Pretend as if you do not want to do all these terrible things. Smile. Clap your hands. Believe this and that. Here is the list of what it means to be Christian - to be part of this community. And I remember that they too need mercy and grace, that they are supplicants before God's throne just as I am. They are my brothers and sisters. It is true that they are sinners, every one of them. But they are better than me.
I, well, I am broken. I court death. I am in need of constant care, placed in the inn by my Brother - that one good, true Neighbor - to be cared for by the innkeepers, to be healed by the sweet oil and wine that is kept there. This is why I am Catholic.
I watched Chariots of Fire over the weekend for the umpteenth time. Though I disagree with him, Liddell's resolve to honor God is admirable. It fascinates me how God responds to Liddell's, "I won't run on the Sabbath." Liddell is very strict in setting apart the "Sabbath" as holy. And while I believe the Lord's Day ought to be set aside for liturgy, rest, and family, I don't think one has to be as absolute about one's inactivity (i.e., one's participation in sports or work) as Liddell was. So it is my opinion that God's and Liddell's view of the Lord's Day are not entirely the same. Assume with me for a minute that I am correct. Even so, God honors Liddell. And this is how God is, isn't it? He honors what we have to give - whether it is a small thing, seemingly insignificant, misguided, or even wrong. We can only give what we are able to give.
And he is goodness and mercy to us.
