Category: 20Ordinary

Heart and Soul, I fell in love with you

Hooking ’em all up

JMJ
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The Readings for the 20th Friday, Tempus per Annum (C2)
Memorial of Bl. Jordan of Pisa, friar and priest

Our bones are dried up, our hope is lost, and we are cut off.

Ezekiel 37:11b

WHAT WAS OUR LORD DOING, amending the Sh’ema? You might not notice it if you quickly read through the text in English. Yet, compare:

Deuteronomy 6:5 (RSVCE) You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Matthew 22:37 (RSVCE) You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Might and Mind sound close to each other (in English)… but not quite. The Greek in the LXX uses dynamis (might or power) following the Hebrew which uses m’odecha, but in Matthew Jesus says dianoia, mind or insight. All mainstream English bibles follow the text here, although a couple of fringe Bibles adventure a correction (not all, however). Luke retains the use of Mind but adds (back) strength as well. Likewise, Mark. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”

Since Matthew was writing to a largely Jewish audience, they would not have missed this change. Even if Luke and Mark have both “mind” and “might” Matthew – with his audience – stuck with only “mind”. What can we see here?

I’m going to stick with the Greek διανοίᾳ dianoia being the important thing.

Thayer’s Lexicon notes that sometimes this word was used in the LXX for “heart” (Hebrew, Lev or L’vav). But we already have a “heart” in this verse so, is there a reason to have “heart” and “heart again”? (Or in the case of Luke/Mark, “heart, soul, strength, and also heart”.)

There is a clue in the LXX, in the Prophet Jeremiah. In Hebrew it’s Jeremiah 31:33. God promises to write the New Covenant on the “hearts and minds”. In The Greek (because of the way the text is laid out) has it in 38:33. It uses the same words, dianoia and cardia. And there, I think, is echo that Matthew’s Jewish audience would hear in this text. Yes, it’s the traditional Sh’ema, the Covenant, but augmented with the promise of a New Covenant being expounded by the Lord and written directly on our hearts and minds instead of on tablets of stone.

The use of dianoia also directs one toward contemplative prayer. To love the Lord (using the Greek agape) is to welcome and to conform oneself to him: to apprehend in the mind and in the heart and then to make all of one’s life to be one with him. We can only achieve this through the Grace of God and the Sacraments.

St John Eudes, whom we also celebrate today, wrote:

Finally, you are one with Jesus as the body is one with the head. You must, then, have one breath with him, one soul, one life, one will, one mind, one heart. And he must be your breath, heart, love, life, your all. These great gifts in the follower of Christ originate from baptism. They are increased and strengthened through confirmation and by making good use of other graces that are given by God. Through the holy Eucharist they are brought to perfection.

From a “Treatise on the Admirable Heart of Jesus” by Saint John Eudes, priest (2nd Reading at Matins for his feast).

Love him with all your being and unite yourself wholly to him. He will draw you deeper into that union until you become one with him.

Then, and only then, will the dry bones rise up as Ezekiel has prophesied. Hope is not lost, but he will restore all things in himself.

Come as you are. But…

Cast Out.

JMJ
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The Readings for the 20th Thursday, Tempus per Annum (C2)
Memorial of Bl. Mannes, brother of St Dominic

My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?

Matthew 22:12 (AV)

ONE CAN READ the King’s Question as rather snobbish: this is a wedding. Why are you not dressed right? It can be imagined to be clear why this man isn’t dressed right. The servants were told, “Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.” It makes sense that some would not be ready, right? No, actually. It doesn’t. There are two possible ways to read this man’s presence at the feast.

Given that everyone else went home and changed clothes, this man came running to grab food and paid no attention to social traditions. That, in and of itself, is a bad show. The King recognized someone who just taking for granted his largesse instead of coming to celebrate the wedding (which is what this is about – the wedding). The second reading, the Fathers all agree, is that a “garment” is a symbol for virtues. Coming to the banquet is not enough, it has to have an effect on us.

There is a great hew and cry among the liberati that “Jesus eats with sinners”. This is true. But the reason he does so is to change them into saints.

None of us can come to the banquet and stay in our normal clothes.

The Eucharist is the meal that consumes us, that changes us. It has been compared to the way metal heats up in a fire: although the metal (our soul/life) never burns the fire “catches” inside and the metal glows red hot with the heat. The fire is there in another form, doing something to the metal that the metal cannot do on its own, nor can anything else except fire do it. The Eucharist sets us aflame, if we but let it, and we are changed.

The Gospel is open to all, but it will leave none of us alone.

We can fight it off, mind you. We can demand our rights. We can insist on doing things. our own way. We can fail in obedience to the Church, the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit. Then we will be cast, “into the darkness outside,
where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Come as you are, but be ready and willing to change on all points. It will do us no good simply to ignore Jesus on this point: Many are invited, but few are chosen.

Pray to be chosen.

What You Need and Nothing More.

Gathering the Manna

JMJ
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The Readings for the 20th Wednesday, Tempus per Annum (C2)
Memorial of St. Hyacinth of Poland, friar and priest

Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

Matthew 20:15 (AV)

THE PAIRING OF THESE TWO readings seems strange, or perhaps funny. The Gospel is about the landowner who – by modern lights – is very unjust and the 1st Reading is about shepherds who treat their sheep unjustly. Not seemingly unjustly by modern lights, mind you: they are actually unjust.

When the Israelites were told to gather the manna, each person in the family could gather a jar full of the stuff: larger families had more jars. But at the end of the day, what was not eaten could not be stored. You could gather the same amount, but no matter what you ate (or did not) you had to gather again tomorrow. Those who gathered too much had just enough. Those who gathered too little had just enough.

Gather one jar full (per person) eat what you want. Tomorrow you’ll need to gather again. God provides a superabundance, but you get exactly what you need.

The landlord in the Gospel paid what he should have paid. He did so for increasingly less work. We are never told what was needed, but, everyone got paid for the day.

I think about Jesus’ parable when people talk about “living wages”. We used to have something like living wages in this country. You see it in old movies: an employee gets married or has a kid and, because of the change in life, he asks. for a raise. We don’t think about this, but a system of “living wages” would do away entirely with “equal work for equal pay”. This latter is not just and ensures only that everyone gets the same wage: not that the wage is “living”. For what a living wage is for a parent of three kids is very different from the same living wage for a childless person. A living wage for a married person is less than that of a single person unless the married person is the only bread winner. A single mother with kids needs more to live than a bro living in a bro house. No one really thinks through the idea of “living wage”: it’s just political manoeuvering. So, notice that what we think of as “living wage” would require the boss to be “generous” and entirely “unfair” by modern standards. He would have to give more to someone who needed more – even if they were doing the same work.

Are you envious because I am generous? (NABRE)

God is infinite life bestowed on us in infinite love. Any sin (no matter how small) is a choice for death over life, for self rather than self-gift, for solitude rather than love. Yet when we return to God his gift is fullness it cannot be otherwise if the choice is made now, later, or even on the deathbed. God’s living wage is always this infinite life poured out on us. We do tend to want that for ourselves, but seeing it given to others can be really difficult, especially if the others have been unjust – even moreso if we have been the target of their injustice.

What do we do when our own forgiveness requires more of us? If yo’ve been given infinite love, what do you do with it? We are envious, sometimes, when God’s love is poured out. This is like the story of the servant who was forgiven – but cannot forgive (Matthew 18:21-35). This is the story of the older son who cannot forgive the prodigal brother (Luke 15:11-32). This is the story of the whole church in dealing with unjust sheperds. What do we do when they want to come back?

Aretha and von Hildebrand

JMJ
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The Readings for the 20th Sunday, Tempus per Annum (C2)

Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us

Hebrews 12:1b

THE GOSPEL TODAY is one of the Hard Sayings of Jesus. The Prince of Peace says, “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!… Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth?v No, I tell you, but rather division.” People who, by earthly standards, should be together are going to be divided by Jesus. If you think his family list is hard to read, just remember that Jesus’ Gospel sets Americans against each other. Following Jesus’ Gospel sets Russians against each other. Following Jesus’ Gospel sets together Jews and Palestinians, Whites and Blacks, Democrats and Republicans, and worse. Anyone who says they are a Christian first (and everything else second or not at all) is united together. Anyone who puts Christian second… is instantly divided off. You can be a Catholic American. But you can’t be an American Catholic.

I’ve been reading Transformation in Christ by Dietrich von Hildebrand. It’s a bit of a hard slog because so much of what he says strikes home. It started with this episode of the Catholic Stuff podcast. From the opening line, he had me, “Readiness to change is the fundamental precondition to transformation in Christ.” I knew I had to read the book and so I’m doing so. But there is it, the invitation to change.

Nearly 20 years ago, I asked on the blog, “What if the one thing I think I know about myself is the one thing I’m wrong about?” I’ve been wrestling with that question and with the implications of every possible answer for the last 20 years. What is my identity? Is it possible that the thing I call my “identity” isn’t. And is it further possible that the thing I call my identity is one of these burdens that hold me back? What if the one thing I think I know about myself is the one thing that’s wrong?

As von Hildebrand explores his topic, he leaves the reader aware that one can hold nothing back from Jesus. The word “Catholic” means “whole”. One must be “whole” to be a Catholic. One must be wholly whole, and wholly holy as Miss Franklin sang, and to get there one must give oneself wholly to Christ as an offering, as the clay gives itself wholly to the potter and says, “do with me as you will”. And there’s no telling what will come off the wheel then. But holding something back, saying “change everything except this one thing…” is to not be catholic, to not be whole. Everything must be carried to God in prayer. Hold anything back is to fail.

And is not to change.

Von Hildebrand writes that we must make the choice to serve God from our free center. We cannot respond from our fallen nature or from any false identities. This is what St Paul says about tossing aside all this extra weight and the sin that besets us. Baptism has set a free place in our heart and from there we can address our assent to God. But even to get there – away from all our fake selves, our desires for praise, our self-interest – this is an act of God in his all-powerful love giving us the grace to do this. Yet we have to be willing to dance with our lover to the song he sings or it’s all for naught. When we turn it all over to him we can be changed in his fire to a plan not of our own choosing. When we hold back, the dance can’t even start.

Yet by turning it all over is to move from that free place in our heart to authentic freedom in Christ. Jesus will cut us off from the world and make us whole.

As I say. Not as I do.

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JMJ

The Readings for Saturday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Omnia ergo quaecumque dixerint vobis, servate, et facite : secundum opera vero eorum nolite facere : dicunt enim, et non faciunt.
Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.

Back when I was an Episcopalian teenager and pretty much everyone was convinced I was going to seminary, I used to find myself in conversations with people that, really, I wouldn’t want to know now. But these were rich and powerful clergy, and they were initiating me NOT into a pattern of sexual abuse, but rather into a curious and double life of another sort. So, for example, one of the most conservative seminaries of the Episcopal Church ended every Sunday with a solemnly sung Vespers service followed by Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. The solemn repetition of the same content over and over had so bored several generations of seminarians that they did not call this by its traditional Victorian, Anglo-Catholic name of Evensong and Benediction, but rather, “Evenscreech and Cookie Worship.” 

It’s a joke only a religion nerd could get – especially one at a very conservative parish in Atlanta that had weekly the same practice. But it’s also an irreverent blasphemy that should not be repeated by a pious teenager at all, let alone to a Sunday School teacher.

And when I had so profoundly scandalized the Sunday School teacher that she didn’t want to talk to me any more, I thought, this is probably something to bring up in confession.

And I was told by the priest – who had gone to that very seminary – that such jokes were perfectly fine. But shouldn’t be repeated in front of the laity.

See: everyone was making assumptions about my future. This was at a parish where sexuality was not a topic of conscience, but rather of strict adherence to tradition. But some jokes shouldn’t be repeated in front of the laity…

So when I hear Jesus say those guys teach well enough, but don’t do what they do, I realize this has been a problem for a long, long time.

When I hear of Catholic Clergy having sex – but not getting married – and calling that “celibacy” because they abstain from marriage, I’m perhaps too realistic for my own good but I wonder why it surprises folks to learn that people can be that duplicitous. Evidently some of this stuff never got repeated in front of the laity.

We have entire schools of thought (clerical ones and lay ones) set up to tell us why we can use condoms, or why it’s ok to deviate from the sexual teachings of the church as laity “using their conscience“.  We have a “pro choice” Senator who piously goes to Mass in SF. And a Catholic-school educated Governor. Why should it surprise us that some folks in Church-power would claim the same “primacy of conscience” to do whatever they might want as well? What purpose is served by imagining the clergy to be different?

To be fair, the Catholic teaching is not that the Conscience will always lead us right, but rather that a Conscience, properly formed by the Church into conformity with the Law of God will always lead us right. As Catholics, we must submit to the teaching of the Church even if our erring conscience would lead us elsewhere. 

As Catholics we believe the Church is sinless but she is filled with sinners.  This is one of the contradictions of the Church, one of the mysteries… Here we are where the folks who taught us “conscience should be your guide” then went off the rails dragging the rest of us with them. And we see it.  We see folks who claim to be Catholics and yet rape children. Or kill them in the womb. Or destroy their lives with economies of Greed. We see folks who claim to be Catholics and disagree with nearly everything taught.

If you’ve been following along this last week or so in the readings from Ezekiel you know that Israel went very wrong because his shepherds were very bad. Then God said, “I guess I’ll have to do it myself!” and “I will be Israel’s shepherd.”  Today in Ezekiel, God shows up, walks into the temple, sits down, and says, “I’m here. I’m going to do this job now!”

Christ is enthroned on every altar of adoration even when he’s ignored by the walkers on the street. Christ is lifted high at every mass even when the clergy don’t believe what they’re doing any more. Christ is glorified at every painful turn of a soul away from a sin embedded so deep that it’s become a false identity. And you, my dearest sister, beloved brother, can heal the Church with sincerity of heart.  And love.

And since God is love.

There is hope.



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The Subversive Wedding Feast

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JMJ

The Readings for Thursday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Simile factum est regnum caelorum homini regi, qui fecit nuptias filio suo.
Similar is the Kingdom of Heaven to a man who was king, who made a wedding for his Son.

In this story, the kingdom of God is like the image of a king making a wedding for his son. It implies all the planning and expenditure, all the love and care, all the generosity and all the personal investment. Think of how a mother and father bend over backwards to make the wedding of their daughter the most amazing thing ever. Or, as is often the case in social circles of SF, think of how the children, earning dozens of times more than their parents, might pay to have the entire family carted off to Costa Rica or some other place where they can share the joy of the man and woman getting married. It’s a huge production, it requires more than just a couple and a justice of the peace – and that’s true, even in today’s secular world where for many a marriage is just another disposable commodity and a wedding, per se, just a fun thing to do. How much more so was this the case in the ancient world where a wedding meant an excuse for the entire community to celebrate, sometimes for days on end, and where one’s wealth and position only mean that more people would be expected to come. There were the family, yes, and the invited guests, yes, but also, according to one’s station, all the classes lower down in the pecking order. A king making a wedding for his son had to feed everyone from his nobles to the beggars on the street. 

So, this king… 

Is making this wedding. 

And the invited guests don’t come. The thing is, they all had perfectly good excuses. “I have business to take care of.” And they were all on the A-list so you know they were important. Cardinals, Bishops, and the like… (There is a faux patristic quote going around that no one really said about some part of hell being paved with the skulls of clergy… but the point is well made.)

The thing is: we all have better things to do, I think. It’s not making light of the scandal to say, “This is not the only sin Christians have.” And, as the priest said on Sunday, the real scandal is that the vast majority of American Catholics (and Orthodox, I’ll add) don’t even darken the door of a Church on the vast majority of Sundays. The further we are from the wedding feast, the more likely we are to be replaced.

I’ve been invited to partake in so many pious actions in the last week: acts of reparation, acts of prayer, a group rosary, fasting… God is putting a new heart into his people.

This is supposed to be normal Christian life. This is the wedding feast of the Lamb. Let’s act like it. Not just now, but forever. Or we’re going to end up with our city burned down. And, to be honest, we can be replaced.

So the invited guests don’t come…and the other folks who – you’ll remember – would have shown up for scraps and morsels anyway – are suddenly turned into the guests. The folks who were the also-ran are now the only show.

And the ones that didn’t come – even though they were invited – get killed. And their city burned to the ground.

That will be us if we don’t get to the feast on time.

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The Final Mystery of the Rosary

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JMJ

The Readings for the Memorial of Queenship of Mary
Wednesday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Alleluia. Vivus est enim sermo Dei, et discretor cogitationum et intentionum cordis. 
Alleluia. The word of God is living and effective, able to discern the reflections and thoughts of the heart.

It’s tempting to take this reading about the bad shepherds and go someplace dark. It’s tempting to take the bit about the generous landlord and the non-union workers and go someplace political.

Even the Alleluia verse about Jesus can be seen as a threat. It can almost sound like “He knows when you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake.”

Yet the very Logos of God – Jesus himself – is alive and present in this messed up place. There is hope. God says he will shepherd his people himself. It is the feast of the Queenship of Mary: and that’s worth so much hope, so much joy…

I’m new here. The whole “convert” moment still has that new car smell for me. Mindful, of course, that my conversion came in spite of this scandal, which was on the front burner when I was leaving ECUSA. Having decided I was wrong then to let my pride keep me away, it was sort of an inoculation preventing such an event. And so I’m thankful that I can celebrate this feast with the titles lavished on her in the Litany of the Blessed Virgin:

Queen of Angels, 
Queen of Patriarchs, 
Queen of Prophets, 
Queen of Apostles, 
Queen of Martyrs, 
Queen of Confessors, 
Queen of Virgins, 
Queen of all Saints, 
Queen conceived without original sin, 
Queen assumed into heaven, 
Queen of the most holy rosary,
Queen of the family, 
Queen of peace.

And this Queen is also mother, Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, as the Litany reminds us. And:

Mother of divine grace, 
Mother most pure, 
Mother most chaste, 
Mother inviolate, 
Mother undefiled, 
Mother most amiable, 
Mother most admirable, 
Mother of good counsel, 
Mother of our Creator, 
Mother of our Redeemer.

This lady is praying for us in heaven. And she’s concerned about us. Not just abstractly, but as her children, the sisters and brothers of her only son. Is any mother concerned about her children only in the abstract? No. She remembers us each. And so the visionaries at Lourdes, at Fatima, at La Sallete, at Walsingham, at Penrhys, at Glastonbury, and at Knock all remind us. In our sadness, in her sadness for us, she comes to us as your own mother would come to you. Or, perhaps, as your own mother never did. And Francis (and other Saints) have taken God as their Father and this lady as their Mother.

She is the Joy of All Who Sorrow, the sign of God’s triumph, even in darkness. She is the shower of the way, and the gate of heaven, the unploughed field that produced the heavenly manna, the ladder, and the lampstand.

She is the mother of all in the Church and of the Church herself, the bride of Christ as Mary is the Bride of the Holy Spirit. So on this feast I’m joyously letting her pray. For I know she does. And I shall let her reign, too. In my heart as she reigns in the highest heaven.

Most Holy Theotokos, save us!

The Price of Admission

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JMJ

The Readings for the Memorial of Pope St Pius, X
Tuesday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Multi autem erunt primi novissimi, et novissimi primi.
Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first

This is one of those verses like the song of the Magnificat, that needs to leave us trembling more. We sing the Magnificat without so much as batting an eye:

He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.


And, perhaps, if we fail to pay attention, we imagine we are the hungry, or the humble. Perhaps we think we are the Last.

As the kids now (rightly) say, Check your privilege.

Christians in this country whine because we can’t get a Macy*Mart employee to say “Merry Christmas”. Despite the fact that she’s earning $7 an hour and has no benefits because she’s part time and it’s the Holidays so come 5 January she’ll be unemployed. “Anti Christian bias,” we’ll say as we ask for a refund.

We may use our funds to purchase other products, never mindful of the near slave-like conditions that exist in those other countries. I’m no fan of the current administration, but their erection of tariff walls means that some of those slave will have to get laid off, and some of those production lines will have to move back to the states where, at least, the workers will get insurance, we hope. Free trade only benefits us, it’s rarely ever been free for folks outside of the First World.

I used to self-identify as a member of a persecuted minority. But I’ve not been able to justify that since a book that came out in the early 90s pointed out that, as someone living in NYC (and later SF) I was at the upper end of the finances in that persecuted group. And, further, I was actively or passively involved in oppressing others in the same group by virtue of their race, class, or geographic location. What did I care about Egypt as long as I could get their cotton sheets for cheap? We formed our own corridors of power and ran whole industries by virtue of our fiscal strength. This was true in the Church and outside the Church.

Median household income in Kentucky: 46,659
Median household income in SF: $78,378
Median household income in Mexico: $11,700
Gaza: 9,288
Manila: $5,010 

The first will be last.

You might want to say that this has to do with sinners, and prostitutes being in the kingdom before Pharisees, and so on, but the whole passage is about rich versus poor.

I don’t really know how this works, but there are no camels in America. So we might be missing the point. 

But I think for all of us it will be hard to get into the Kingdom.



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Hashtag BernOp

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JMJ

The Readings for the Memorial of St Bernard, Abbot and Doctor of the Church
Monday in the 20th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Ait illi Jesus : Si vis perfectus esse, vade, vende quae habes, et da pauperibus, et habebis thesaurum in caelo : et veni, sequere me.

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”


In the sixth century, St Benedict went to Rome and found corruption and vice. So he moved to the country and started a community of monks to be saved despite all the problems. Benedict, like every great reformer, but salvation, his and other’s, first, before culture, or even before the institution of Church. His order grew, becoming not only the salvation of the Catholic Church, but also of the culture of Europe, storing up knowledge lest it be lost in the final collapse under invading barbarians. 600 years along, however, it was the order that needed saving.

The recent scandals in the church seem a perfect attack: dividing brother against brother and giving ammunition to those who would spread heresy and immorality. It adds fuel to the fires of those advocating both for a change in sexual morality and those who are advocating for a near Donatist purge of the church from all they deem evil and impure; even sometimes including the laity in a sort of “red scare” sort of mentality. At the same time, this is all playing into the hands of those on the outside who would weaken the Church not by virtue of laws or persecution, but rather by attrition, both of population and moral authority. This active inculcation of indifference is as deadly as a “culture war” without any of the blood or emotions.

We have to admit that a wealthy, comfortable, culturally ensconced church, not only embedded in the world, but down right in bed with it, is without moral authority any way. 

So here’s St Bernard, the man who took the Order of St Benedict and spun it back to its roots because it (the Order) had grown fat, powerful, and lazy. This Spiritual Obesity had led to hardening of the arteries, and an advanced case of necrosis in several places. This was echoed in the Church as well: for when the monastic orders begin to fail the Church is unhealthy at her heart. Bernard put salvation first.

Yesterday, Fr Joseph Illo preached a homily I hope will end up online (update: here it is) calling out the darkness in the Church and noting that he would rather sell the parish and the school if it would mean the defeat of the corruption in the Church. Salvation first.

I’m a new Catholic. I’m not as familiar with the names of those involved as I would have been if this were Orthodoxy or the Episcopal Church, but I’ve lived through the same sort of thing in both of those Churches. And in both the Bishops stayed in denial. No one talked about the financial and sex scandals in ECUSA, ditto in Orthodoxy. Everyone is talking about it in Rome just now, so maybe it will mean something else. 

And yet, at the same time, as Christians, the world will still try to bully us into following the world’s rules.

The Church is not the 100% Pure Virgin Bride, she is the Abominable Bride. But she is growing more and more pure as this moves. I take great comfort that the report in PA covers events that are nearly all before 2002. The Church can move forward. But at the same time, the Cardinal McCarrick affair is ongoing. Most churches in SF (even the most conservative ones, Orthodox and Catholic) have gay couples in them. In most cases not only the pastors but also prelates are aware. And this article by Fr Dwight was a painful eye opener, but I was already aware of this particular issue by virtue of friends who had dated clergy, and clergy who had counselled me to be sure to use condoms…

It’s all the same culture: the laity have no place to call out the clergy (and vice versa) as long as we each have our own favourite sins. For every clergyman acting out, there’s a couple with condoms, or a pro-choice Catholic politician taking communion from a knowing pastor. We’re dying from the inside – but it’s all of us together, not just from the top down. And I’m not above tying some of this (but not all) to grandstanded, irreverent liturgies partaking of the Heresy of Formlessness. 

So, there we are. That’s the Church we have just now. The Abominable Bride. I’m too new: I don’t know everyone’s names, but I’m not angry, I’m just being realistic. We are Christians and we must save – and forgive – even those who are here with less than honorable intentions, even nefarious ones. We must love them. Fully. In the hopes that some of the weeds can become wheat again. Salvation first. At one time, with her own courts, the Church knew that salvation required honesty about sins and yet avoiding the secular power structures. St Thomas Becket died to preserve the Church’s right to her own courts – even in the case of murder.


Sadly we’re not there any more. And Paul’s counsel not to bring one another before the secular courts (in front of non-believers) fall now on deaf ears. Yet Fr Illo reminded us that God can use even the secular courts as a scourge, as certainly as God used the Philistines, Nebuchadnezzar, and Darius. So we’ve set ourselves up for this one. Fr Illo is right: because a church devoid of riches, social position, and political power would be far less attractive to folks who are not here for anything else. And Pope Benedict XVI agrees:

From today’s crisis will emerge a church that has lost a great deal. It will no longer have use of the structures it built in its years of prosperity. The reduction in the number of faithful will lead to it losing an important part of its social privileges. It will become small and will have to start pretty much over again. It will be a more spiritual church and will not claim a political mandate flirting with the Right one minute and the Left the next. It will be poor and will become the Church of the destitute.

We need a Bernard to loop us back to the very beginning. To pull us, again, towards Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel: sell all you have and come follow me. We need one fast, before God lets the world force us to do so.


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Scribes AND Pharisees


Today’s readings:

Dicunt enim, et non faciunt
For they preach but they do not practice.
Matthew 23:3b
Oh this is so rich. The Greek word play is between “using words” (logos) and “making” (poetas). They use their words, yeah, but they’re certainly not poets…
As a Catholic (and before, as Eastern Orthodox) a common lament heard all over the place from all sorts of people: to my liberal friends, I am too conservative. To my conservative friends, I’m too liberal. The Church can’t fit into modern cultural categories very easily. This thing of “loving the sinner but hating the sin” leaves us sort of stranded a lot. We have to welcome all comers – especially the outcasts who don’t fit into any of society’s power agenda. But we leave none of them unchanged. When you realize the important struggles are not about power, your heart opens to Love.
I hear the word Pharisee thrown around a lot. No one gets called a “Scribe”. But there are a lot of folks accused of being Pharisee. Yet, in Jesus’s time, those would have been the Good Guys for a lot of the culture. They were the liberals. You could play with the Bible in their tradition. You could make up stuff based on cultural guesses. They were sticklers about the rules they made up, but they were way more liberal about it than the other party, the Sadducees. These were literalists – only what was in the Bible, thank you: none of that finagling around! If the Sadducees were fundies, the Pharisees were more, pardon me, Jesuitical.
In one of my favorite stories from the Talmud, the liberal camp – meaning the camp that says they can debate the meaning of words – wins an argument with God who admits defeat by saying “My children have bested me.”

In one way of looking at things, the division between Jews and Christians is simply this: one group of Rabbis says Jesus is the Messiah. Two other groups of Rabbis (both Conservative Sadducees and liberal Pharisees) say he is not the Messiah. In the end the Pharisees win the debate within Judaism, even recasting the scriptures to fit their modes of debate. The Messianic rabbis drifted off and became the Church.

And so there: they preach and yet they do not practice. Sure, they are using all their words… but they don’t know what those words actually mean.

On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus opens the minds of Luke and Cleopus to his presence in all the scriptures. Jesus wants us to listen to the teachings of Israel. But he wants us to know what those teachings really mean – not the empty words of the Pharisees, or the Scribes, or the Sadducees.  We cannot find our common ground with either the fundamentalist Sadducees of our time who would deny the mysteries of our faith, or with the liberal Pharisees of our time who would deny the doctrines God has revealed. We’re not to fall in the fundamentalist literalism of either the left or of the right. We must hold fast to both words (the logos) and the poetry (poetas) of scripture and tradition, the both/and of Catholicism.  We must follow our vocational call to the poetas, the poetry and dance of the real meanings of the scriptural words.

The poetry of the Logos, the making of all things new, is the rite of the Faith dancing through the world. We spin like dervishes, opening our minds and hearts to the wisdom of God’s Holy Spirit. Bread is made flesh. Wine is made blood. God made man. What is old made new.

God has opened the eyes of the blind. Meanwhile those who claim to see are shown to be liars who walk in darkness.