I am browsing through a trough of five-dollar movies at Wal-Mart. I see Jumanji and think maybe I can find a movie or two for the kids. A younger man walks by me and says, "Those movies are all in Spanish, sir."
Embarassed at my mistake, I look up and say, "Sí."
I had the pleasure of seeing and listening to Scot McKnight and Tony Jones on Friday night with about 30 others. A more intimate conversation was scheduled for Saturday, but I couldn't justify (leastwise not to my wife) being away from the family both Friday night and all day Saturday. Nevertheless, it was interesting hearing the two men speak about "Keeping Jesus Revolutionary." Their differences were intriguing.
It seems that Scot's view of keeping Jesus revolutionary has much to do with gaining a less subjective understanding of Jesus and His mission as revealed in the Gospels. What he has to say is quite profound.
I was able to speak briefly with Scot afterward, but regretted that I didn't have Jesus Creed with me for him to sign (lack of planning) and that I couldn't sit down with him over a coffee (or whatever his poison) to discuss ecclesiology.
Last week, I had a rather extended quote that revealed the hierarchy of the early Church, indeed a hierarchy that goes a step further than anything that is clearly revealed in the New Testament. By saying that it is a step further than what the New Testament delineates, I am not suggesting that the Church has already gone off the rails by the time St John has died. St Ignatius, the disciple of St John, reveals the organization and hierarchy of the Church and how it had developed (rather properly developed) even in St John's lifetime (one would suppose, since at the time St Ignatius authored this letter it would have been only a few short years since St John's death).
"See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid." – St Ignatius of Antioch (Epistle to the Smyrneans, Ch. 8 – somewhere between A.D. 98 and 118)
I'm not going to belabor the quote. I only think it an important look at the structure of the early Church - indeed the apostolic Church. We need to be cautious in our treatment of hierarchy and authority, especially in an age that devalues it. The authority structure within the Church is not a power play. Though there have certainly been abuses (and there will certainly continue to be - as in any institution that includes us sinners) the hierarchy of the Church is and continues to be about service.
Theology is about prayer more than it is study. It is about silence more than it is about words. Theology is a life lived, not contrary to the doctrines of the Church, but compassionately and humbly within them.
I was praying this morning after dropping my girls off from school (it will probably be how I die, praying while driving). As I was praying the Our Father, the lines "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" struck me as being a particularly dangerous prayer. It is dangerous to self in light of Christ's passion and His prayer in His passion - "Not as I will, but as You will." A prayer of surrender. I then began to consider how the coming of God's kingdom, of our making present His kingdom in our world, requires the death intrinsic within these words. God's kingdom requires of us our lives, a kenotic reverberation - united, gloriously, with the reality of Pascha.
We recently had some visitors from Tennessee at our house. Fortunately it was our friends Reid and Robin rather than the salmonella. But we could have had both. By the time we heard about the recall on Peter Pan Peanut Butter, we were already almost all the way through our jar. Yikes!
God is merciful. Certainly merciful, even when we are unaware of it.
Lent begins. It is a season of penance, of conversion.
I want to convert and convert and convert until I am converted. I want to be born again, again. Wash my feet, Lord. Make me fragile and light, incarnating hope and expectation and wonder. Jesus. To set aside myself for her and him and you and them. I want Christ to be delivered into the heart of my world, to pick up where I have left off, to do what I have failed to do, to be when I am not.
I want to want it.
Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness.
Lent is the time to come back to our self. It is a time of particular intimacy with God, in the secret of the heart and of the conscience. It is in this private intimacy with God that the essential work of Lent is accomplished: the work of conversion.
And in this inner secret, in this intimacy with God in the full truth of the heart and of the conscience, words like those of the psalms of today's liturgy resound as one of the most profound confessions that man has ever done to God: “Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense. Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me. For I know my offense; my sin is always before me. Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight that you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn” (Ps 50,1-6).
These are words that purify, words that transform. They transform man from the inside. Let us recite them often during Lent. And above all, let us strive to renovate the spirit that leads them, the inspiration that has rightly so given these words a force of conversion. For Lent is essentially an invitation to conversion. The works of alms of which the Gospel speaks about today open the way to this conversion. Let us practice them as much as we can. But first of all, let us try to meet God interiorly in our whole life, in all it is made of, so as to reach this conversion in deepness, of which the penitential psalm of today's liturgy is filled.
– John Paul the Great, Homily for Ash Wednesday, 1983 (©Libreria Editrice Vaticana)
I just heard that the Donut Man has become Catholic.
I was watching The Journey Home on EWTN tonight, and there he was sharing his testimony. He came home Easter 2006.
Jack Henry was born at 11:38 a.m. on February 13. He weighs 8 lb. 4 oz. Both he and Mom are doing great.
Thank you for your prayers.
If I can ever work out this uploading files/pictures problem, I'll post pictures.
Woo-hoo!
