Faduma Sakow Abdullahi and
her five children tried to escape starvation in Somalia by journeying to a
Kenyan refugee camp. Only one day before they reached their destination, her
4-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son died of exhaustion and hunger. At first
the 29-year-old widow thought the two were merely sleeping when they wouldn’t
get up after a brief rest. She had to leave their bodies under a tree,
unburied, so she could push on with her baby, 2-year-old and 3-year-old. … On
her way to Dadaab, Abdullahi said she walked with friends for three days before
she and her children lagged behind. She saw around 20 children dead or
unconscious abandoned on the roadside. “I saw two elderly people on the road,”
she said. “They cried out, ‘Ma’am, give us a helping hand.’ They wanted to
sweet-talk me, but I said to them ‘I can’t help’ and moved on. You will feel
kind only when you have something, … I wanted to give the little water I had to
my children.”
Sunday, July 31, 2011
18th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Isaiah 55:1-3 / Romans 8:35, 37-39 / Matthew 14:13-21
This account was written a few weeks ago for the Associated Press in coverage of the drought and famine in East Africa, where the worst drought that region has endured in 60 years has brought over 12 million people at risk of malnutrition and starvation. Dadaab, the refugee camp in Kenya to which this mother made her tragic, 37-day-long trek for assistance, is now the largest refugee camp in the world, designed for 90,000 persons, and now housing over 440,000 refugees, with more arriving every day, most from the over 800,000 who have fled from Somalia. Food prices in the region have soared, from up nearly 60% in Kenya to up 250% in Somalia.
You will feel kind, she said, only when you have something.
While the scale was different, Jesus in today’s Gospel also confronts crowds, those who followed him on foot from their towns to the deserted place to which he had withdrawn to be by himself. Jesus, no doubt troubled by the death of his cousin John the Baptist, not merely losing someone he loved, but also reminding him of the pain, suffering, and death it was his mission to endure, might easily have been only all the more burdened at the sight of the crowds, afflicted with illness of countless kinds. However, our Lord did not flinch or feel sorry for himself.
When he disembarked and saw the vast crowd, the Gospel tells us, his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.
In the face of such need, we can easily become overwhelmed. Whether the global scale of the famine in the Horn of Africa, the regional scale of the several towns who brought their sick to Jesus, or the personal scale of a panhandler on the streets or an appeal sent to us through the mail, we do not know what we can do. We do not know how our few resources, so little in the face of such hunger and thirst, will ever do anything other than impoverish ourselves, and add no more than a drop into an impossibly large bucket. Better to send such requests away, we say to ourselves, and hope for the best.
This is a deserted place and it is already late, said the disciples. Dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.
I wanted to give the little water I had to my children, said the Somali widow.
Opposed to this bleak vision stand the bright promises of the Lord, promises of drink for the thirsty, of grain to eat, wine and milk to drink, without paying and without cost. Where we see a mounting and insoluble humanitarian crisis, God Almighty speaks through the prophet Isaiah of eating well and not merely surviving, but of delighting in rich fare. Through his apostle Paul he assures us that no earthly calamity nor demonic force, no anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword … will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, the same Lord Jesus who, seeking time to be alone by himself, nonetheless found his heart was moved with pity for them. This same Lord Jesus who did not merely show pity, but fed the crowds — they all ate and were satisfied — with an abundance still remaining.
There is no need for them to go away, Jesus said to his disciples, give them some food yourselves.
The Gospel today challenges us to show to ourselves, to one another, and to the world, where we truly have placed our hope. When we hear the promises from Isaiah of abundant and rich food and drink without cost, when we hear St Paul assure us that the worldly and spiritual powers arrayed against us cannot and will not prevail, when we hear of Jesus’ merciful heart and the miraculous feeding of the crowds, and when we receive him today in the Blessed Sacrament, do we believe that God can and will make good on all he has promised? Can we cease to spend our money for what is not bread; our wages for what fails to satisfy — whether political programs, frivolous or seductive pasttimes, or strange philosophies promising enlightenment? Are we ready to give the little that we have, our five loaves and two fish into the hands of the Lord Jesus, confident that he will make good on whatever we present to him, and abundantly so?
Brothers and sisters, Jesus did not expect the disciples to feed the crowds by their own resources. St Paul did not promise that our victory in Christ means the end here and now of distress from physical or spiritual evil through our own efforts. God’s promise of abundance in food and drink through his prophet Isaiah did not suggest that our ingenuity would solve and meet every human need. It is God, and God alone, who is the food that satisfies, and therefore it is God, and God alone, who can provide what we so desperately need.
What then are we to do? How do we respond to the world’s craving, its hunger and thirst? We are meant to do precisely what Jesus asked of his disciples: Give them some food yourselves. While we must do our best to give wisely, to be prudent in our charity, human limitation and our own inability to satisfy the world’s hungers is no excuse not to feed others as we are able. We are to give, and give generously, of our money, yes, but also of our time, our kindness, the pity in our hearts, and most of all our prayers to God. We need not worry that it will not be enough. That is for God to do. Instead, we are to cultivate the same love in our hearts as Jesus showed the crowds and not to be stingy with our five loaves and two fish. It may be all we have here, but in Jesus Christ, our little is more than enough to satisfy the desires of a hungry world.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
17th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
1 Kings 3:5, 7-12 / Romans 8:28-30 / Matthew 13:44-52
Sometimes we need to know that all is not as it appears in order to make the right response to the world around us. Unless we can see the real significance of things, we are likely to find ourselves confused and frustrated, perhaps even horrified, by the choices we or others make. We have all no doubt seen the trick in which a magician saws his pretty assistant in half, only to find her, at the end of the trick, healthy and whole. At first glance, the calm of the magician, the delight of the audience, and even more the gleeful willingness of the assistant defy comprehension. After all, we have been shown that the blades to be used are quite solid and sharp, the box to all appearances secure. If we did not know any better, if the magician and his assistant did not know that this was merely an illusion, if the audience, even when ignorant of the mechanics of the trick, were not equally certain that what they seemed to see was not really the case, then it would be hard to explain, much less justify, a young woman willingly permitting herself to be dismembered for the entertainment of an audience. It is only from inside the experience of those involved, only because everyone — the magician, the assistant, and the audience — knows this to be an illusion, that all is not as it appears to be, that they can look on not with horror, but with pleasure and delight.
For those of us who have lived a long time in the faith, perhaps from infancy, or perhaps for many years after being baptized or received into the Church later in life, it can be easy to forget how strange the life of the Gospel seems to those not yet conformed to the image of the Son of God. For some of us, the strangeness is dramatic — professing vows of obedience and living out the evangelical counsels without a family of our own for the love of God and the proclamation of the Good News. For others, the strangeness is perhaps less public and dramatic, but no less off-putting to the world. Whether something as simple as abstaining from meat on Fridays, giving up a lazy Sunday morning in bed to get dressed and go to church, taking time in the middle of the day to read the Bible or pray the rosary, or something more painful and difficult, like carrying an unplanned pregnancy to term even when another child will stretch an already stretched budget, or passing up a promotion which would have involved common and widespread but no less objectionable moral compromises, or choosing to bear insults on the playground or the lunchroom rather than return them with some of our own, living the life of the Gospel does not, on the face of it, make a great deal of sense. It is not that being kind, even occasionally heroically so, is hard to understand — atheists and agnostics can and have done as much. Rather, it is our willingness to give up what may seem to many to be the best pleasures the world has to offer, to make sacrifices our neighbors cannot understand or even see as reasonable — this is what makes the Gospel unavoidably strange.
Of course, this should come as no surprise. Jesus Christ, in his parables of the Kingdom, has already told us as much. By any reasonable calculation, selling all you have to buy a field, staking all one's business and fortune on a single pearl, are not simply risky choices, they are irrational and self-destructive. What would we say, after all, of a man who risked his own livelihood, and the security of his family and all his employees, on a single purchase, a single object which, to any passerby, had nothing special about it? However, we know, as do he men in the parables, that the field conceals a treasure, that the pearl is not ordinary, but priceless. From their perspective, what they did was not risky at all. Their other possessions were, in comparison, worthless, nothing compared to the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price. They had nothing to risk and everything to gain, no fear of loss and unshakeable assurance of immeasurable profit. Like the magician and his assistant, they know there is no danger involved, and nothing to lose, however foolish and self-destructive it might appear to anyone who was not in the know.
This is why the gift of wisdom is so important in the Christian life. We are called, after all, to a life of immeasurable value, called to the kingdom of heaven, called to be conformed to the image of the Son of God. That predestination and calling, however, are sometimes hard to see. They include suffering and hardship, pain and loss, being misunderstood and being struck down not merely by enemies, but by those we counted as friends as well. That it, they involve being conformed not only to the Resurrection and Glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ, but to his Passion and Death as well. This call and predestination also means sharing a life in the Church, in the great haul of fish, with both saints and sinners, with those who live in accord with the Gospel and with those who will cause scandal and sorrow both within the Church and in the sight of those all too happy to discredit the faith. In the face of all of this, we need not merely courage to endure hardship, but the wisdom to see with St Paul that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. We need not blind obedience, but like Solomon we need the desire for an understanding heart ... to distinguish right from wrong.
But how are we to gain this wisdom? How do we see the treasure in the field or recognize the pearl of great price? There is no technique, no class, no training or exercise we can do. The wisdom we seek is not of that sort. Rather, the wisdom we seek comes from above, from our lively and sustained relationship with the Father through his Son Jesus Christ and the friendship of the Holy Spirit. It is in our daily moments of intimacy with God dwelling within our hearts — in small acts of charity with our neighbor, in daily reading of the Scriptures, in taking time for quiet and prayer, learning to silence our own expectations and be in stillness with the Lord — this is how we cultivate true wisdom. In the end, wisdom is not like knowing a magician's trick. It is the insight we gain from loving, from daily listening to him whom he love and who loves us in return, finding that, in time, we have learned to see the world not only with our own eyes, but also with the eyes of our divine Lover. It is through love, through communion with the Trinity in faith and charity, that we will see the world as it really is. It is in wisdom arising from love that the strangeness of the Gospel will pass away, and what remains will be only the delight at finding a treasure, a pearl of great price, eternal life with the very source of our happiness, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Sometimes we need to know that all is not as it appears in order to make the right response to the world around us. Unless we can see the real significance of things, we are likely to find ourselves confused and frustrated, perhaps even horrified, by the choices we or others make. We have all no doubt seen the trick in which a magician saws his pretty assistant in half, only to find her, at the end of the trick, healthy and whole. At first glance, the calm of the magician, the delight of the audience, and even more the gleeful willingness of the assistant defy comprehension. After all, we have been shown that the blades to be used are quite solid and sharp, the box to all appearances secure. If we did not know any better, if the magician and his assistant did not know that this was merely an illusion, if the audience, even when ignorant of the mechanics of the trick, were not equally certain that what they seemed to see was not really the case, then it would be hard to explain, much less justify, a young woman willingly permitting herself to be dismembered for the entertainment of an audience. It is only from inside the experience of those involved, only because everyone — the magician, the assistant, and the audience — knows this to be an illusion, that all is not as it appears to be, that they can look on not with horror, but with pleasure and delight.
For those of us who have lived a long time in the faith, perhaps from infancy, or perhaps for many years after being baptized or received into the Church later in life, it can be easy to forget how strange the life of the Gospel seems to those not yet conformed to the image of the Son of God. For some of us, the strangeness is dramatic — professing vows of obedience and living out the evangelical counsels without a family of our own for the love of God and the proclamation of the Good News. For others, the strangeness is perhaps less public and dramatic, but no less off-putting to the world. Whether something as simple as abstaining from meat on Fridays, giving up a lazy Sunday morning in bed to get dressed and go to church, taking time in the middle of the day to read the Bible or pray the rosary, or something more painful and difficult, like carrying an unplanned pregnancy to term even when another child will stretch an already stretched budget, or passing up a promotion which would have involved common and widespread but no less objectionable moral compromises, or choosing to bear insults on the playground or the lunchroom rather than return them with some of our own, living the life of the Gospel does not, on the face of it, make a great deal of sense. It is not that being kind, even occasionally heroically so, is hard to understand — atheists and agnostics can and have done as much. Rather, it is our willingness to give up what may seem to many to be the best pleasures the world has to offer, to make sacrifices our neighbors cannot understand or even see as reasonable — this is what makes the Gospel unavoidably strange.
Of course, this should come as no surprise. Jesus Christ, in his parables of the Kingdom, has already told us as much. By any reasonable calculation, selling all you have to buy a field, staking all one's business and fortune on a single pearl, are not simply risky choices, they are irrational and self-destructive. What would we say, after all, of a man who risked his own livelihood, and the security of his family and all his employees, on a single purchase, a single object which, to any passerby, had nothing special about it? However, we know, as do he men in the parables, that the field conceals a treasure, that the pearl is not ordinary, but priceless. From their perspective, what they did was not risky at all. Their other possessions were, in comparison, worthless, nothing compared to the treasure in the field or the pearl of great price. They had nothing to risk and everything to gain, no fear of loss and unshakeable assurance of immeasurable profit. Like the magician and his assistant, they know there is no danger involved, and nothing to lose, however foolish and self-destructive it might appear to anyone who was not in the know.
This is why the gift of wisdom is so important in the Christian life. We are called, after all, to a life of immeasurable value, called to the kingdom of heaven, called to be conformed to the image of the Son of God. That predestination and calling, however, are sometimes hard to see. They include suffering and hardship, pain and loss, being misunderstood and being struck down not merely by enemies, but by those we counted as friends as well. That it, they involve being conformed not only to the Resurrection and Glorification of our Lord Jesus Christ, but to his Passion and Death as well. This call and predestination also means sharing a life in the Church, in the great haul of fish, with both saints and sinners, with those who live in accord with the Gospel and with those who will cause scandal and sorrow both within the Church and in the sight of those all too happy to discredit the faith. In the face of all of this, we need not merely courage to endure hardship, but the wisdom to see with St Paul that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. We need not blind obedience, but like Solomon we need the desire for an understanding heart ... to distinguish right from wrong.
But how are we to gain this wisdom? How do we see the treasure in the field or recognize the pearl of great price? There is no technique, no class, no training or exercise we can do. The wisdom we seek is not of that sort. Rather, the wisdom we seek comes from above, from our lively and sustained relationship with the Father through his Son Jesus Christ and the friendship of the Holy Spirit. It is in our daily moments of intimacy with God dwelling within our hearts — in small acts of charity with our neighbor, in daily reading of the Scriptures, in taking time for quiet and prayer, learning to silence our own expectations and be in stillness with the Lord — this is how we cultivate true wisdom. In the end, wisdom is not like knowing a magician's trick. It is the insight we gain from loving, from daily listening to him whom he love and who loves us in return, finding that, in time, we have learned to see the world not only with our own eyes, but also with the eyes of our divine Lover. It is through love, through communion with the Trinity in faith and charity, that we will see the world as it really is. It is in wisdom arising from love that the strangeness of the Gospel will pass away, and what remains will be only the delight at finding a treasure, a pearl of great price, eternal life with the very source of our happiness, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
A Little Respite
For the few of you who come to this site, you may have noticed that I have not posted for a bit. This is because I am away from Rome and taking a little time to relax, which means also not attending as much to my blog. Ne timeatis! I will (eventually) get back to posting!
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Corpus Christi
1 Corinthians 11:23-29 / John 6:56-59
For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come.
How often should a faithful Catholic receive the Body and Blood of the Lord? When does the laudable refraining from sacramental communion because of the consciousness of guilt or of insufficient preparation become a culpable refusal to accept the mercy and grace offered by our Lord Jesus Christ not in spite of, but precisely because of our unworthiness and sin? Take ye and eat, this is My Body, which shall be delivered for you. On the other hand, when does the laudably frequent reception of communion become a source of spiritual danger to oneself and of scandal to others and to the world? Therefore whoever shall eat this bread, or drink of the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord.
The question is not an idle one. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, and as he reminds us, the reception of communion is quite literally of vital importance; to eat or drink, and to do so well, is truly a matter of life and death. His is also right, as we are right, to see this question of the worthy eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of the Lord in moral terms. How we are disposed with regard to the Lord, his teachings, his Church, and the way of life he called upon us to follow are important not simply on their own terms, but in terms of our being open or not to enjoying union with him in the Sacrament. Likewise, as Paul was concerned to point out to the Corinthians, how we are with regard to our neighbor, and not merely strangers or someone far off in need, but indeed of our fellow Christians who join us at the table of the Lord, will make of our communion either a faithful witness or a deadly sham. To receive the Body and Blood of the Lord is to be committed to our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ with the same love with which he loved us, and so not to be concerned, and actively involved, in their welfare, not to will their good and share their burdens, not to remove whatever obstacles stand between them and full flourishing in this life and the life to come, is to make a mockery of the very unity and love which the Eucharist both signifies and effects.
However, the Eucharist, the sacramental presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord in and for the life of the world, is more than a moral exercise. It is the presence, here and now, of the risen Christ, of the Lord of the universe, come among us in visible and palpable signs so that he might abide with us, and we with him, until his return in glory. In other words, at its heart, the Eucharist is fundamentally not about us, but about Christ. The question of the reception of communion, however central to our sacramental life, cannot be allowed to obscure from us the fact that our celebration of the Eucharist, our adoration of his abiding sacramental presence, whether reserved in the tabernacle or exposed for public veneration, is at root and evangelical act. It is a proclamation, a showing forth to the world, the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, who suffered and died that we might die to sin, and rose again to new life that we might live forever, ascending to the right hand of the Father to complete his work by the sending of the Spirit, that we might be conformed more fully to his likeness, and thereby come to share in the very life of the Trinity. As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me.
The question, then, is not how often we ought to receive communion, but whether we acknowledge to ourselves, to one another in the Church, and to the world, that Jesus Christ is alive and abides with us. The question is whether, in our communion and adoration, the world will come to see and understand the heart of the mystery of faith. When we gather before the altar of the Lord, and the world looks upon what we do, will they see the death of the Lord until He come?
For as often as you shall eat this bread and drink the chalice, you shall show the death of the Lord until He come.
How often should a faithful Catholic receive the Body and Blood of the Lord? When does the laudable refraining from sacramental communion because of the consciousness of guilt or of insufficient preparation become a culpable refusal to accept the mercy and grace offered by our Lord Jesus Christ not in spite of, but precisely because of our unworthiness and sin? Take ye and eat, this is My Body, which shall be delivered for you. On the other hand, when does the laudably frequent reception of communion become a source of spiritual danger to oneself and of scandal to others and to the world? Therefore whoever shall eat this bread, or drink of the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord.
The question is not an idle one. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, and as he reminds us, the reception of communion is quite literally of vital importance; to eat or drink, and to do so well, is truly a matter of life and death. His is also right, as we are right, to see this question of the worthy eating and drinking of the Body and Blood of the Lord in moral terms. How we are disposed with regard to the Lord, his teachings, his Church, and the way of life he called upon us to follow are important not simply on their own terms, but in terms of our being open or not to enjoying union with him in the Sacrament. Likewise, as Paul was concerned to point out to the Corinthians, how we are with regard to our neighbor, and not merely strangers or someone far off in need, but indeed of our fellow Christians who join us at the table of the Lord, will make of our communion either a faithful witness or a deadly sham. To receive the Body and Blood of the Lord is to be committed to our brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ with the same love with which he loved us, and so not to be concerned, and actively involved, in their welfare, not to will their good and share their burdens, not to remove whatever obstacles stand between them and full flourishing in this life and the life to come, is to make a mockery of the very unity and love which the Eucharist both signifies and effects.
However, the Eucharist, the sacramental presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord in and for the life of the world, is more than a moral exercise. It is the presence, here and now, of the risen Christ, of the Lord of the universe, come among us in visible and palpable signs so that he might abide with us, and we with him, until his return in glory. In other words, at its heart, the Eucharist is fundamentally not about us, but about Christ. The question of the reception of communion, however central to our sacramental life, cannot be allowed to obscure from us the fact that our celebration of the Eucharist, our adoration of his abiding sacramental presence, whether reserved in the tabernacle or exposed for public veneration, is at root and evangelical act. It is a proclamation, a showing forth to the world, the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Word of God made flesh, who suffered and died that we might die to sin, and rose again to new life that we might live forever, ascending to the right hand of the Father to complete his work by the sending of the Spirit, that we might be conformed more fully to his likeness, and thereby come to share in the very life of the Trinity. As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth Me, the same also shall live by Me.
The question, then, is not how often we ought to receive communion, but whether we acknowledge to ourselves, to one another in the Church, and to the world, that Jesus Christ is alive and abides with us. The question is whether, in our communion and adoration, the world will come to see and understand the heart of the mystery of faith. When we gather before the altar of the Lord, and the world looks upon what we do, will they see the death of the Lord until He come?
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Trinity Sunday
Romans 11:33-36 / Matthew 28:18-20
Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
Why are we commanded by our Lord to teach and to baptize, rather than simply to teach. Surely if all things whatsoever Jesus Christ commanded are good, right, and reasonable, as indeed many non-believers assert to be the case, then sacramental initiation into the Body of Christ seems redundant at best, covetous for souls and minds at worst. This is the anxiety that even many Christians have about the missionary impulse. Surely, they opine, what Christ has taught, his message of love and of suffering for the sake of the beloved, and especially for the poor, is a credible message to all peoples, whether washed by the waters of the font or not. To attach following the commands of Christ to assent to a specific account of the divinity connects, on this view of things, two unrelated activities, the one having nothing to do with the other.
However, such a view is deeply mistaken, and forgets that at the heart of the whole Christian revelation, indeed at the heart of man's communication with God since Adam, is the invitation to know and partake in the interpersonal life of the one, true God, who is a Trinity of Persons, a unity in Trinity, a triune Unity. What this means, among other things, is that the truth of the Trinity is at the foundation of all that is. It is what philosophers today would call "properly basic." That is, there is no other truth, no other foundation, no other basis from which to judge and understand, to analyze and categorize, the Trinity. Rather, the Trinity is the one and only basis from which anything else has any meaning, indeed the sole foundation upon which anything else has any existence whatsoever.
This is why we say, in biblical language, that God beholdest the depths and sittest above the Cherubim. That is, there is nothing distant from him, whether the lowest or the highest, because he is the sole and absolute source of any and everything that is. Because the Trinity is the foundation of all without itself any foundation, the basis and norm of all reality which admits to no deeper or more fundamental category or truth, the revelation of the Trinity and partaking in the interpersonal divine relations which are the one, true God just is what it takes to observe all things whatsoever Jesus has commanded us.
In response to those who would think they could reduce the commandments of Jesus to a more fundamental level, something which would be more basic, more foundational than God himself, Paul directs his pointed questions: For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him? There is no principle, no truth, no basic intuition which is prior to God, nothing which comes "first" before there is the Holy Trinity. To know this is to be open to any and all truth, to the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God. To be closed to it, to seek some "deeper" truth which would make the Trinity plausible, into which we can fit this "account" of a "perfect being" is radically to be cut off from knowing the world as it really is.
This is why baptism, and the mystery of the sacramental life, is prerequisite to being open to the fundamental truth of all that is. To know reality we must know God, and there is no God other than the Trinity, nor could there be any other God. This is a truth of which we can be certain, but which, because it touches on the inner life of God himself, will forever elude even our best attempts to decode or analyze it. It is only when remade into new sorts of creatures, only when we have been transformed, not by our own power and insight, but by the working of the Holy Spirit, and only when that transformation is nothing other than sharing in the very Person of the Son of God, such that we will share with the Father even as he and Son are one, that we can, even here and now, have a glimpse of what the world, and more directly what our lives, are all about.
This is why we proclaim the Trinity today and every day, This is the deepest mystery of our faith. We are proud to profess it, and to make it known to the whole world: Blessed by God the Father, and the only-begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Ghost; because He hath shown His mercy to us.
Going therefore, teach ye all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
Why are we commanded by our Lord to teach and to baptize, rather than simply to teach. Surely if all things whatsoever Jesus Christ commanded are good, right, and reasonable, as indeed many non-believers assert to be the case, then sacramental initiation into the Body of Christ seems redundant at best, covetous for souls and minds at worst. This is the anxiety that even many Christians have about the missionary impulse. Surely, they opine, what Christ has taught, his message of love and of suffering for the sake of the beloved, and especially for the poor, is a credible message to all peoples, whether washed by the waters of the font or not. To attach following the commands of Christ to assent to a specific account of the divinity connects, on this view of things, two unrelated activities, the one having nothing to do with the other.
However, such a view is deeply mistaken, and forgets that at the heart of the whole Christian revelation, indeed at the heart of man's communication with God since Adam, is the invitation to know and partake in the interpersonal life of the one, true God, who is a Trinity of Persons, a unity in Trinity, a triune Unity. What this means, among other things, is that the truth of the Trinity is at the foundation of all that is. It is what philosophers today would call "properly basic." That is, there is no other truth, no other foundation, no other basis from which to judge and understand, to analyze and categorize, the Trinity. Rather, the Trinity is the one and only basis from which anything else has any meaning, indeed the sole foundation upon which anything else has any existence whatsoever.
This is why we say, in biblical language, that God beholdest the depths and sittest above the Cherubim. That is, there is nothing distant from him, whether the lowest or the highest, because he is the sole and absolute source of any and everything that is. Because the Trinity is the foundation of all without itself any foundation, the basis and norm of all reality which admits to no deeper or more fundamental category or truth, the revelation of the Trinity and partaking in the interpersonal divine relations which are the one, true God just is what it takes to observe all things whatsoever Jesus has commanded us.
In response to those who would think they could reduce the commandments of Jesus to a more fundamental level, something which would be more basic, more foundational than God himself, Paul directs his pointed questions: For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him? There is no principle, no truth, no basic intuition which is prior to God, nothing which comes "first" before there is the Holy Trinity. To know this is to be open to any and all truth, to the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God. To be closed to it, to seek some "deeper" truth which would make the Trinity plausible, into which we can fit this "account" of a "perfect being" is radically to be cut off from knowing the world as it really is.
This is why baptism, and the mystery of the sacramental life, is prerequisite to being open to the fundamental truth of all that is. To know reality we must know God, and there is no God other than the Trinity, nor could there be any other God. This is a truth of which we can be certain, but which, because it touches on the inner life of God himself, will forever elude even our best attempts to decode or analyze it. It is only when remade into new sorts of creatures, only when we have been transformed, not by our own power and insight, but by the working of the Holy Spirit, and only when that transformation is nothing other than sharing in the very Person of the Son of God, such that we will share with the Father even as he and Son are one, that we can, even here and now, have a glimpse of what the world, and more directly what our lives, are all about.
This is why we proclaim the Trinity today and every day, This is the deepest mystery of our faith. We are proud to profess it, and to make it known to the whole world: Blessed by God the Father, and the only-begotten Son of God, and also the Holy Ghost; because He hath shown His mercy to us.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Habemus priorem provincialem!
The Dominican Province of Saint Albert the Great (U.S.A.) is happy to receive its newly elected prior provincial, Charles E. Bouchard, O.P. Fr. Bouchard served eighteen years as president of Aquinas Institute of Theology in Saint Louis, Missouri, where he had also taught Moral Theology. In the past few years, he has served as Vice President for Theological Education for Ascension Health, a network of hospitals and health centers in the U.S.A., the largest Catholic and largest non-profit of its kind.
Pray for the friars of the Central Province of the U.S.A. and for our new prior provincial!
Pray for the friars of the Central Province of the U.S.A. and for our new prior provincial!
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Pentecost
Acts 2:1-11 / John 14:23-31
Faced as we are with the diversity of tongues in the world, and with that diversity, a multitude of cultures and ways of understanding the world at least as great as the number of languages, and no doubt even greater, we are normally tempted to one of two positions. On the one hand, we might be tempted to promote one language or one culture as the sole way in which people ought to come to the truth. Our choice of which language that might be could be the result of simple chauvinism (asserting our own language as best), it could be an appeal to the historical prominence of a given language (say, promoting Latin or English), or it could be a desire to set aside any actual, living language in favor of a supposed "international" language which all could speak (such as Esperanto). On this view, our variety of cultures and modes of expression are, in the end, barriers, albeit vincible ones, to communication. Coming to truth, on this view, except for the privileged few whose natural language is selected as the lingua franca, means abandoning our best way of understanding and being understood, letting go of whatever native genius there might be in our received way of understanding for the sake of a universal, and thus somehow more "truthful," language.
On the other hand, we might be tempted to regard true and full communication across languages and across cultures as impossible. We might think of language and culture as, in some sense, properly basic, irreducible to something else, and as such concede that what is communicated in one language can never, truly, be made known in another. On this view, perhaps even more so than the other, culture and language are barriers to the communication of truth. Or, said more precisely, truth is itself subordinate to culture and language, and thus the hope of there being some one thing, some one claim, that might be held equally across all languages is understood to be in vain. While such a view leaves us intact in our native language, it does so only at the price of barring forever any fundamental communication outside of or across the differences that characterize human experience.
The descent of the Holy Spirit, however, puts a lie to both of these claims. Empowered by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the Apostles preached the Gospel to a dizzying variety of languages and cultures who were visiting Jerusalem. Yet, by the power of that same Spirit, they heard every man their own tongue wherein they were born. That is, the same Gospel the same proclamation, made by Galileans in their characteristically Galilean way, was, without ceasing to be a Galilean proclamation, nonetheless perfectly intelligible to Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews also, and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians.
What is astounding here is that the miracle of Pentecost, the beginning of the new age inaugurated by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit not on this or that person by prodigally on a large crowd representing the diversity of the known world, did not simply reverse the penalty of Babel. It was not as though this international gathering, with their diversity of languages and modes of thought, we somehow delivered from that diversity into a one, new or ancient, single tongue and celestial culture, abandoning who they were and their inherited modes of thought in order to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nor was it that the Good News proclaimed by these Galileans as received by the Galilean Word made flesh, needed somehow to be supplemented, or corrected, or accompanied, by intrinsically alien ways of thinking and being. Rather, by the power of the Spirit, the truth of the Gospel found itself heard and manifest to each through the native genius of his own tongue, each capable of delivering, even in what humanly seemed to be insuperable differences, the very same Good News.
This truth ought to remind us about our own evangelism today. On the one hand, we must never proclaim the Gospel as though presuming that those who receive it, in order to receive it, must abandon who and what they are to be successfully a disciple of Jesus Christ. Pentecost reminds us that there is no language, no culture that is not capable, through its own native genius, of bearing the message of the Gospel. On the other hand, and for the very same reason, we must reject the worry that in spreading the Gospel, we are somehow asking people to lose something precious in their culture and their language. It is of course true that we never receive the Good News of Jesus Christ without being transformed, without dying to the old man so as to rise again in the new. Even so, this dying and rising, this being born again, simply makes clear to us what was good and wholesome in our speaking and our thinking, in our culture, and what was ultimately an obstacle to our flourishing.
In Pentecost, we see in a way only hinted at before, that God who revealed himself in our human nature in a specific place, in a specific time, to a confined and finite number of people, in doing so did not render the Good News of salvation distant to those from far away who speak different tongues. In the Spirit, we encounter a unity beyond any we might dared have hoped for, a unity that joins us without remainder to our fellow men, without in the slightest compromising the unique qualities that set us apart. This is the Gospel of love announced on that fiftieth day of the Resurrection long ago, and it is the same Gospel we proclaim today.
Come. O Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful: and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
Faced as we are with the diversity of tongues in the world, and with that diversity, a multitude of cultures and ways of understanding the world at least as great as the number of languages, and no doubt even greater, we are normally tempted to one of two positions. On the one hand, we might be tempted to promote one language or one culture as the sole way in which people ought to come to the truth. Our choice of which language that might be could be the result of simple chauvinism (asserting our own language as best), it could be an appeal to the historical prominence of a given language (say, promoting Latin or English), or it could be a desire to set aside any actual, living language in favor of a supposed "international" language which all could speak (such as Esperanto). On this view, our variety of cultures and modes of expression are, in the end, barriers, albeit vincible ones, to communication. Coming to truth, on this view, except for the privileged few whose natural language is selected as the lingua franca, means abandoning our best way of understanding and being understood, letting go of whatever native genius there might be in our received way of understanding for the sake of a universal, and thus somehow more "truthful," language.
On the other hand, we might be tempted to regard true and full communication across languages and across cultures as impossible. We might think of language and culture as, in some sense, properly basic, irreducible to something else, and as such concede that what is communicated in one language can never, truly, be made known in another. On this view, perhaps even more so than the other, culture and language are barriers to the communication of truth. Or, said more precisely, truth is itself subordinate to culture and language, and thus the hope of there being some one thing, some one claim, that might be held equally across all languages is understood to be in vain. While such a view leaves us intact in our native language, it does so only at the price of barring forever any fundamental communication outside of or across the differences that characterize human experience.
The descent of the Holy Spirit, however, puts a lie to both of these claims. Empowered by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the Apostles preached the Gospel to a dizzying variety of languages and cultures who were visiting Jerusalem. Yet, by the power of that same Spirit, they heard every man their own tongue wherein they were born. That is, the same Gospel the same proclamation, made by Galileans in their characteristically Galilean way, was, without ceasing to be a Galilean proclamation, nonetheless perfectly intelligible to Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews also, and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians.
What is astounding here is that the miracle of Pentecost, the beginning of the new age inaugurated by the pouring out of the Holy Spirit not on this or that person by prodigally on a large crowd representing the diversity of the known world, did not simply reverse the penalty of Babel. It was not as though this international gathering, with their diversity of languages and modes of thought, we somehow delivered from that diversity into a one, new or ancient, single tongue and celestial culture, abandoning who they were and their inherited modes of thought in order to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Nor was it that the Good News proclaimed by these Galileans as received by the Galilean Word made flesh, needed somehow to be supplemented, or corrected, or accompanied, by intrinsically alien ways of thinking and being. Rather, by the power of the Spirit, the truth of the Gospel found itself heard and manifest to each through the native genius of his own tongue, each capable of delivering, even in what humanly seemed to be insuperable differences, the very same Good News.
This truth ought to remind us about our own evangelism today. On the one hand, we must never proclaim the Gospel as though presuming that those who receive it, in order to receive it, must abandon who and what they are to be successfully a disciple of Jesus Christ. Pentecost reminds us that there is no language, no culture that is not capable, through its own native genius, of bearing the message of the Gospel. On the other hand, and for the very same reason, we must reject the worry that in spreading the Gospel, we are somehow asking people to lose something precious in their culture and their language. It is of course true that we never receive the Good News of Jesus Christ without being transformed, without dying to the old man so as to rise again in the new. Even so, this dying and rising, this being born again, simply makes clear to us what was good and wholesome in our speaking and our thinking, in our culture, and what was ultimately an obstacle to our flourishing.
In Pentecost, we see in a way only hinted at before, that God who revealed himself in our human nature in a specific place, in a specific time, to a confined and finite number of people, in doing so did not render the Good News of salvation distant to those from far away who speak different tongues. In the Spirit, we encounter a unity beyond any we might dared have hoped for, a unity that joins us without remainder to our fellow men, without in the slightest compromising the unique qualities that set us apart. This is the Gospel of love announced on that fiftieth day of the Resurrection long ago, and it is the same Gospel we proclaim today.
Come. O Holy Ghost, fill the hearts of Thy faithful: and kindle in them the fire of Thy love.
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