Category: Fer4

The Amazing Technicolor Nightmare Coat

✙
JMJ

The Readings for Wednesday in the 13th week Tempus per Annum (C1)

Merito haec patimur, quia peccavimus in fratrem nostrum, videntes angustiam animae illius, dum deprecaretur nos, et non audivimus : idcirco venit super nos ista tribulatio.
We deserve to suffer these things, because we have sinned against our brother, seeing the anguish of his soul, when he besought us, and we would not hear: therefore is this affliction come upon us. 
I’m not at all certain what the Committee was doing when they chopped up Genesis to get passages for this week. They leap into the middle of Joseph’s story with no backstory and they leave us with a weak opening for “Israel in Egypt”. We’ll get the Exodus story in a few days but this internecine dysfunction that plays at the heart of Israel’s story that carries past the Maccabees – and on to Bar Kochba in AD 135 – is suddenly robbed of its context.
Israel, oddly like the Church, is filled with squabbling brethren.
Bullies will creep up out of cracks in old sheds on snowy days in funny Christmas movies. They will appear in the bass section behind you to make obscene gestures with their hands on your ears. They will ooze out of the bus seats behind you to taunt you while the bus driver can’t see. They are your own brothers selling you into slavery – to the Egyptians, or to other bullies…

This act is heinous: for the brothers sell their own flesh into slavery. Joseph seems to lord over his brothers his own status as “Daddy and Mommy’s Baby Boy”. Yet the level of bulliness the brothers display is unparalleled: first plotting to kill Joseph (but not doing so only out of a fear of breaking the Kin’s Blood Taboo), then selling him into slavery.

And here they are, ten or 15 years later, still reaping the horror of what they’ve done.
Bob Dylan has this song… the opening verse describes what I imagine would be Joseph’s lament:
They say everything can be replaced
Yet every distance is not near
So I remember every face
Of every man who put me here
I’m not sure how Joseph feels. He’s crying by the end of the story… but is he crying from sheer loss, or from loss of will to torture these men who tortured him?

As someone who was bullied a lot in school, I confess I remember every face. I look them up on Facebook. This dude has a wife and kids and seems kinda happy. This other dude looks like he may have done some time and perhaps has found Jesus recently. Being bullied leaves a mark much deeper than the wounds inflicted, although you can still see my broken nose and tooth.

I’m not sure what Joseph feels here but was I to meet the members of the NCHS Warriors in a similar famine situation – even 35 years later, I’m not sure how I’d feel. Joseph is not exactly gracious. In fact, he gets a good bit of revenge before he caves in. Yes, I’m committing eisegesis: reading into the scriptures instead of exegesis, reading out. But hey, it’s my blog.

The brothers feel compunction here. Maybe not for the first time but, in a sense, finally. And as they speak Hebrew, Joseph can understand them… and I’m sure his own heart is pricked a little by the number of hoops he makes his brothers jump through.
Why does he do it? I don’t know. It’s possible to project all kinds of psychology into this story. It’s remarkably devoid of motive on Joseph’s part. First, he tries to bully them, then he makes them travel back and forth, then he breaks down.
It’s possible he doesn’t forgive them any more than I’ve forgiven my own crop of bullies. I try, but even typing this brief post as made me agitated: not angry, mind you… just… agitated. By the end of the story he seems to have reconciled with his family, but did he hang out with his brothers at all after this? Or just put them in nice houses in Goshen and leave them there? I hear echoes of mistrust and psychic wounds in the story of Potiphar’s wife, in the prison prophecy, in the story of his reunion with his father, and finally of his making his brothers promise to not leave even his bones behind in Egypt.
When he later says “You intended this for evil… but God intended it for good.” Is there any absolution or just a statement of fact?

How do the bullies feel? The brothers somehow remember Joseph, and that is as it should be: but do bullies remember their victims usually? Do they just go unthinkingly on with their lives? I would not be who I am today but for the bullies. I only went to one HS reunion – my ten year, I think – and I admit I was mortally afraid. So… yeah. I remember every face.

Joseph.
OK.

Abolish or Fulfill? Abolish or Fulfill?

✙
JMJ

The Readings for Wednesday in the 10th week of Ordinary Time (C1)

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.

There are no answers in this blog post. Some of us will hear a sermon today that says this passage means the old law has passed away. Jesus says he did not come to abolish but to fulfill. Oddly that sermon could come from traditionalists or revisionists. Jesus can’t fulfill something if he abrogates it. We want to think of fulfill in the same way we think of a card reader or fortune teller. Fulfillment means someone made a prediction and Jesus did it. It’s obvious, right? But that’s not what it’s intended here.

Fulfillment in these terms means the expansion of, the revelation of, the unveiling of the real meaning of something. There are very few prophecies in scripture where somebody says at such and such a time, such and such a thing will happen. Rather we see pictures drawn in the scriptures and then those pictures are flushed out as if they were done in simple pencil sketches and later are fulfilled in 3D video.

In a very famous prophecy Isaiah says that lady over there is going to have a baby and 800 years later it’s fulfilled in the Virgin Mary giving birth to Jesus. The sketch was that woman having a baby. The Fifth Element was the Virgin giving birth to God.

This is called Typology.

Jesus says everything else was an Antetype: he is the type, the thing itself. In my person are all true meanings revealed. He says elsewhere, “I am the way the truth and the life.” He is it. This means also that if the Bible is a unified story that needs to Jesus, even the laws and rules in the Old Testament are there to show us the way to Messiah; again, the rules are a sketch, not a prediction. It’s hard to link a forbidden shellfish salad with the coming of Jesus. Does the absence of bacon indicate anything?

How do we differentiate between various rules about food, liturgical instructions, property values, manumission, and sexual morals?

We are so used to thinking of the Torah as if it were a written totality of the Jewish law. We want to imagine 613 individual, discreet, rules and we want to be able to answer the question, Did you follow the rules? But is there any evidence that the code in the first five books of the Bible was the entirety of the law? Or is that a Christian assumption? is there a difference between saying one thing in the Bible and the gradual development of context within the Jewish tradition? Can you begin the rules in Leviticus and Deuteronomy and end up at don’t eat Chinese food and cheeseburgers are forbidden? At which point does the development become untenable?

What if the Jewish law is less like our modern codebooks of rules and regulations and more like British common law? What if the documents of the Bible are only a basis, a recording of some conversations, and not the end-all and be-all of the rules? What if the text of the Torah is only a sketch of the Law? What if “the Law” involves taking these sketches and applying them to individual cases, looking for fulfillment?

I come not to abolish but to fulfill. Jesus is part of a rabbinic discussion of the law. That Jesus “fulfills the law in his person” is a legal claim, an elaboration of the Torah. The notion that Jesus doesn’t fulfill the Law is a legal claim as well. Jesus is stating his place in the legal discussion. You can accept or reject that claim but it has nothing to do with shrimp cocktails or the use of mixed fibers in your clothing.

Paul gets all up in the Pagan Air

No, no! That’s the wrong Damon…

+J+M+J+

The Readings for Wednesday in the 6th week of Easter (C1)

I see that in every respect you are very religious…
Paul’s word for “religious” is δεισιδαιμονεστέρους deisidaimonesteros. This is the only place in the Greek scriptures where it is used. It means “fearful of the gods” or the “daimons” (which are not “Demons”.) Nowadays we say “Religion is a fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a group of people. These set of beliefs concern the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, and involve devotional and ritual observances.” And, “Religious, besides meaning “having to do with religion,” can also mean “acting as if something is a religion.” We think in terms of “organized” religion vrs “spirituality” where the latter means more along the lines of something a la carte: I get to make it up as I go along. I get to decide what and where to worship, in fact, I may not even worship, in the accepted sense of the term.
Paul, however, did not mean “religious” the same way we do. In fact, he meant “Spiritual” almost exactly as we mean it. deisidaimonésteros (from deidō, “to dread” and daimōn, “a deity”) – properly, religious (superstitious) fear, driven by a confused concept of God – producing “sincere” but very misdirected religion. Indeed, this is the mark of heathenism. (word study.) One pagan might not care at all what Venus says, but Diana of the Ephesians would be all the rave. However, we don’t want to offend Venus either, so we won’t disrespect her.
More importantly, Paul’s use of deisidaimonesteros fits nearly everyone in our modern, Western world, hung up in our culture of “offense” and “scientism”: we are superstitious about both. We have created daimonic energies around everything from sex and identity to political movements and slogans. We are fearful of offending all the daimons – the powers of the air, as Paul says elsewhere, the powers and principalities that run things. Again, these are not “demons” in the Exorcist sense. These are entirely human things. You might think of these as Cultural Constructs properly understood as “when enough people think something is true, it is.” 
We are surrounded by cultural constructs today: ideologies that function enough like traditional religion that they compete with or meld with traditional religion for the same cultural real estate. They get a victory either way. What is “MAGA” but a pseudo-religious mantra that either overrules all Christian morality or else invades and colonizes it?  Feminism can either drive out religion or become melded with it. We have Christian feminists and we have secular feminists who are “recovering Christians”. We have racialist ideologies that manifest inside traditional religious communities: Byzantine, Muslim, Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic. Yet we also have racists who reject “traditional religion” which they say is destroying “racial identity”. Economics become religions when people use “the invisible hand” or state power to overrule the God of Christianity and Judaism on the one hand or on the other to attack and destroy him. Scientism can be used to denude the spiritual content of progressive Christianity or to deny the importance of anything that sounds religious (or even philosophical) at all. We let the construct take the center stage and then try to dress it up in our various religions – instead of letting the religion dictate the direction and everything else better try and hold on. Or else we retreat from it.
Paul would know us today. These things – and many many others – all fill up the gaps in our culture created by the abandoning of the Areopagus by the Church. I know some say we’ve been forced out, but that’s only because we’ve let it happen: we’re afraid not only to speak the Gospel in public but also to model it. We don’t want to be seen as Catholics qua Catholics. We have a fear, not of having to “speak up” on a controversial topic, but rather of being asked to explain ourselves. “Behold, how these Christians love one another!” said Tertullian. We’d rather not go to the park because people might talk about us. The Church has not been driven out of the public square, she has ceded it whole cloth. She’s afraid of losing her tax status, or her safety nets, she is worried about what people might think of her, or what sins might get uncovered. Hiding in the corner is safer. The Church – compared to which not even the Gates of Hell are stronger – is worried about daimons.
Paul would challenge us to learn his language: to take the deisidaimonesteros of the culture and redirect it to God, as St Paul did when he invaded the Hill of Mars and took the field of Battle for Jesus. Preaching in public… here on of my favourite stories about John Wesley:

In the days of John Wesley, lay preachers with limited education would sometimes conduct the church services. One man used Luke 19:21 as his text: “Lord, I feared Thee, because Thou art an austere man” (KJV). Not knowing the word austere, he thought the text spoke of “an oyster man.” 

He explained how a diver must grope in dark, freezing water to retrieve oysters. In his attempt, he cuts his hands on the sharp edges of the shells. After he obtains an oyster, he rises to the surface, clutching it “in his torn and bleeding hands.” The preacher added, “Christ descended from the glory of heaven into . . . sinful human society, in order to retrieve humans and bring them back up with Him to the glory of heaven. His torn and bleeding hands are a sign of the value He has placed on the object of His quest.” 

Afterward, 12 men received Christ. 

Later that night someone came to Wesley to complain about unschooled preachers who were too ignorant even to know the meaning of the texts they were preaching on. The Oxford-educated Wesley simply said, “Never mind. The Lord got a dozen oysters tonight.” 

Would that we could be so eloquent with our lives and our actions. Would that our lives spoke the Gospel in places where we might gather such oysters.


Don’t Dubia The Import of This

✙

JMJ

The Readings for Wednesday in the 27th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Cum autem venisset Cephas Antiochiam, in faciem ei restiti, quia reprehensibilis erat.
But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. 

Paul has spent the better part of the first chapter (and some bits of chapter 2) laying out his bona fides. He’s legit. Yes, he had a private revelation, but he took it to the Church in Jerusalem and they all backed him up – Peter, James, and John. That is to say the inner circle inside the College of Apostles. They agreed with him, with his message, and his reaching out to the Gentiles. You can read about this in the book of Acts. The Council of Jerusalem was formative – not only for the early Church, but for the next 2,000 years.

And yet, a short time later, when Peter shows up, he tries to back-track. And Paul gives him what-for. Yes, he’s still Peter. And yes, he’s still the head of the Church, the Rock. In fact Paul plays up that fact in this passage, calling him “Cephas” (which is “Rock” or “Peter” in Aramaic).  And so here, the Rock, is wrong. And the other Apostles do not fear to call him out. It’s ok. It’s ok to note when the leader is wrong.

I hear, lately, a lot of folks saying that we can’t question the Pope. Oddly enough, these tend to be Pro-whichever Pope is in office folks. The Tradies liked Benedict. The Liberals like Francis. So when someone might criticize a speaking engagement of one or the other Pope (or of St John Paul II, Bl Paul VI, St John XXIII, or Pius X – XII, etc) the reaction is sadly predictable along party lines.

And yet Paul stand up and says, in faciem ei restiti, quia reprehensibilis erat. I got up in Peter’s face because he was wrong.

The Papal Defenders seem to think that questioning the Pope and actually, you know, expecting an answer, is wrong. Those asking questions seem to think failure to ask would be a greater sin. Taking as a given the best intentions on the part of both the askers and the asked (we are Christians, after all), one has to assume that there are good reasons for concern when otherwise obedient sons and daughters stand up, with apostolic fervor, and get in Peter’s face.


Wei Wu Wei

✙

JMJ

The Readings for Wednesday in the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Et qui utuntur hoc mundo, tamquam non utantur : praeterit enim figura hujus mundi. 
And they that use this world, as if they used it not: for the fashion of this world passeth away. 

The Greek in these verses is interesting and a lot of English translators (and St Jerome, as well) build it in parallels:

Those married as not married
Those weeping as not weeping
Etc

The same verb is used in the positive and negative form. It’s nearly like Lao Tzu’s “Do Not-Doing”. Cry not-Crying, Rejoice not-Rejoicing. Own not-Owning… So they get to Verse 31 and keep the parallel going: use not-using. Except that’s not in the Greek. Unlike the earlier verbs the writer doesn’t just say something and not-something but rather χρώμενοι xromenoi and καταχρώμενοι kataxromenoi where kata adds the meanings to over-use, to use fully, to use up. The Greek says “Use the Kosmos without using-up the Kosmos” or even use without abusing the Kosmos.

There is a difference between using the good things of this world and abusing them, between blessing God for a good vintage of wine and getting blotto. There are intended uses (the telos) of God’s blessings and then there is abuse of them. CS Lewis covers this in Perelandra. There are fruit so good, so refreshing that one is filling, but a second – when it’s not meal time, nor otherwise needed – would be sinful, an act of gluttony. Food is like that on earth. Sex is like that: for God gave it to us for a purpose and we’ve discovered myriad ways to over use or abuse it. Earlier in Chapter 6, Paul gave us a list of people who kataxromenoi everything to the point of becoming their overuse for Paul uses the verbs as nouns. He adds, “They will not inherit the kingdom of God”.

That’s what it means to kataxromenoi: to use up something so much as to become identified with the using of the thing. 

It is to be noted that “Kosmos” does not mean “the planet, the orbiting stars” etc. It can mean that, sure, but it means “the system”, or, literally, the arrangement. The ordered harmony of the stars but also the system of Empire, the way the world is governed. We’re not to do that: think of people who say “American then Catholic”, or who break it down even further and say “Kennedy Catholic” or some other political styling; anyone who hyphenates. When we let the worldly system define our faith, we’ve drifted into καταχρώμενοι and away from the faith that is described as “Catholic” that is, whole. 

The Catholic faith is her own Kosmos, or rather she is the breaking-in of a new Kosmos on this one. The form of this Kosmos is passing away… as the new one, the Kingdom of God, breaks in. We can use even the political system of this world as long as we don’t become hacks in it. We can enjoy the food as long as we don’t become gluttons, we can have sex adhering to the divine plan. We are to be the advanced, covert (yet somewhat overt) force of an invading army.  We are the spies with Joshua in the Promised Land. We are, as Lewis notes, in occupied territory. We can’t be going native. 

The Final Mystery of the Rosary

✙

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!

Food for the Dogs…

✙
JMJ

The Readings for the Feast of St Dominic
Wednesday in the 18th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Non est bonum sumere panem filiorum, et mittere canibus.
It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs. 

It’s a long standing bit of church-geeky wordplay that takes St Dominic’s name and turns his friars into Domine Canes the Dogs of the Lord. Yet they come by it honest, for before he was born, his mother the Blessed Jane of Aza, had a vision of a dog carrying a torch as it ran through a field, catching all things on fire. A Benedictine priest told her that her son would be a preacher, setting the world on fire for Christ.

Dominic’s first and longest standing outreach was to the Albigensian heretics of Southern France. These were, essentially, a Manichean revival, teaching that physical things were bad. Physical here includes the body. Spirit trapped in a physical shell… this is a familiar teaching to many, but it is not Christianity. The Church teaches that humanity is a spirit-flesh hybrid, and that our physical selves are as important as our spiritual and mental makeup. This is why Christians believe in “carnis resurrectionem” and “resurrectionem mortuorum”, that is the resurrection of the flesh from the dead. Since they believed the flesh to be evil, the Albigensians did not believe in the physical resurrection at all. Bringing the Gospel to these folks was a lifelong process for Dominic. 

 So on to other word play. Matthew’s Canaanite Woman.

It’s important to know that at the time of this story there were no Canaanites because there hadn’t been a Canaan for thousands of years.  It’s as much of an anachronistic misnomer as is calling Jesus as “Palestinian” for there was no province of “Palestine” at this time. Matthew’s well-trained Jewish audience would know who the Canaanites were and, since they spoke Greek, they would have enjoyed comparing the  woman as a κυνάρια, kynaree-a (canine) and a Χαναναία, a kananaia (Canaaanite).

Equally wrong would be calling Jesus a racist because of this story. (I suspect Fr Martin has already lined up his Jesuitical tweets in this regard.) The lack of actual Canaanites in this time period means there’s more than an historical/literal point here. If Jesus is God he is setting up the scene, and everyone is falling into play: Jesus solicits a show of faith from the woman just as he does from others. At Matthew’s telling, Jesus uses wordplay to force his audience to listen again. “Did he just say that?”

There are other cases of word play in Matthew’s Gospel. I think they are important. Matthew’s community is being taught something that is lost on us, perhaps because we no longer need it in our preaching. Or because we are easily offended.

Yet there is something here.

Jesus is reaching out to the Gentiles very early and using them as examples of faith. Matthew’s community probably gets mildly scandalized here. Even more so when the Centurion’s servant is described in terms of pederasty. Matthew seems to want his community to see there’s nothing wrong with reaching out to the Gentiles who, in fact, can be better at this faith game than the Jews. And he uses word play to call them out.

So back to Dominic, whose Albigensian preaching became the first really good example of enculturating the Gospel. The preachers and teachers of the heretical movement were poor ascetics. The people could see in their leaders a holiness of life that they could not see in the wealthy Catholic prelates and even parish priests, with their huge carriages and houses and domestic staffs. Dominic knew that the first thing he’d have to have was a community of preachers whose lives reflected the poverty that these folks had come to expect of their religious leaders.

So the followers of Dominic became poor that they might reach the poor, and well educated to debate with the folks who were preaching the heresies. The dogs of the Lord begged for their bread crumbs and lived lives that the locals could see as holy.

They didn’t become Albigensians, but they did find in the heresy something good, something of value that they could carry with them to bring the Gospel more fully home to these folks. It matters not that they have to give up worldly splendor and comforts to preach. In fact, as it turns out, that’s one of the greatest goods of the Dominicans, their ability to move through the world unencumbered by the things of this world and although this is a clear teaching of the Gospel, they begin using it to combat its misuse among the Albigensian communities.

This is how the Gospel must be preached today: finding the good in things (even if it is misused) and calling it out to draw others deeper into the fullness of the Spirit.



Please consider supporting my my writing via my Patreon.

A sting of pearls…

✙
JMJ

The Readings for St Alphonsus Liguouri, Bishop & Doctor of the Church
Wednesday in the 17th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Gloriatus sum a facie manus tuae : solus sedebam, quoniam comminatione replesti me. Quare factus est dolor meus perpetuus, et plaga mea desperabilis renuit curari? facta est mihi quasi mendacium aquarum infidelium.
Under the weight of your hand I sat alone because you filled me with indignation. Why is my pain continuous, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed? You have indeed become for me a treacherous brook, whose waters do not abide!

Jeremiah has figured out that following this God leaves us alone, broken off from the world and the objects of ridicule. And yet God sends us back into the world. Jeremiah says it’s like being tricked. A few chapters later (20:7) he’ll utter these sorrowful, rich words:

Seduxisti me, Domine, et seductus sum : You have seduced me, Lord, and I let myself be seduced : fortior me fuisti, et invaluisti : factus sum in derisum tota die, omnes subsannant me. I am become a laughing-stock all the day, all scoff at me. 

Even for someone deeply in love with God as a Prophet the question can appear, from time to time, “Why can’t I be normal?” I don’t think this is the same thing as, “Can I go back to Egypt?” Many faithful folks dwell in the Suburbs, if you will, of Mammon City. I think of the idea of Israel here, where faithful, pious Jews could dwell in their prayer and their daily lives, sanctifying time, but certainly living in it. Jeremiah and all the prophets down to John the Baptist live beyond the edge. This love stings. And I think it’s ok – even expected a little – for them to want to have something normal.  Sure, serving God is great and all, but why do I have to go all the way?
Simile est regnum caelorum… Iterum simile est regnum caelorum…
The Kingdom of Heaven is like… and again the Kingdom of Heaven is like… 

The preacher apologizes if he misspeaks here, but everyone misses a very fine point here. These two images come together for a reason, a very important reason.

In the first of these Similes (quite literally in the Latin, Simile est) the Kingdom of Heaven is likened unto a Treasure Hidden in a Field. And when someone – say you or me – finds the Treasure, we sell everything to buy the Field.

But in the second one, the Kingdom of Heaven is not the pearls. The Kingdom of Heaven is like a Merchant who goes looking for pearls. And when He – say Jesus – finds the pearls – say you or me – he sells everything he has to buy the pearls.

See?

This Love is worth everything for God who gave everything, even his life, to capture the Pearls of Great Price: you and me. Can you see here how greatly God loves us? Can you see here why it is that we must also give up everything and all things less to take possession of this Kingdom? So greatly are we loved, how can we not love back?

We might think we can go back to being normal. But no… once you taste this love, once you see this light, nothing else can ever be the same. Sins that used to be fun… dull. Things you used to think were love… turn out to be dross. Even the legitimate enjoyments of the world seem brief and passing when viewed in their right perspective. What we have here, real though it is, in its pains and even in its joys, it a shadow of the real stuff.  My beloved has paid for my reality.
This love cost God everything to buy the pearls…

For us to offer anything less than everything in return seems a bit selfish, n’est-ce pas?


___

Please consider supporting my my writing via my Patreon.

Some sheep go astray…

Can you get from this image to the topic?

✙

JMJ

The Readings for the Memorial of St Benedict, Abbot.
Wednesday in the 14th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Potius ite ad oves quae perierunt domus Israel. Euntes autem praedicate, dicentes : Quia appropinquavit regnum caelorum.
Go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’

Bishop Barron often makes a painful point: for every one new convert that enters the Church, six leave. In the USA alone, the second largest religious group is ex-Catholics. The largest is Catholics, as well. In the San Francisco Bay area, 25% of the population is Catholic. Although that “organized religion” thing sets us apart, the reality is that we are so lost among the 75% that folks don’t see us. And often the folks not seeing us are ex-Catholics who would rather forget about us in the first place.

Go to the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel.

Although it’s tempting to want to evangelize among folks who are already Christian, I think Jesus’ first words of direction are important here. The lost sheep do certainly include the “separated brethren,” as they are called, but they’re not lost. They do not fit under the rubric of the “Nones” who have nothing to do with Organized Religion and the lapsed who just have not come back within the last 20 years. I’ve been amazed at the number of lapsed Catholics I know. Folks who used to go, but don’t anymore. I knew folks in High School and College that put my liberal protestant piety to shame, but now probably don’t have even a Bible in the house gathering dust.

I’m sure they have stories like mine: one day I woke up and didn’t believe it. It made no sense to me – at least not as much sense as sex and a job, a commuter card benefit, health insurance, and a few hobbies. I wasn’t cavalier enough to have only 1 hour on Sunday devoted to this private hobby so I dropped it altogether. Besides, there were other religions that were so much more fun in the first place: better food, better rituals, boutique cultural contexts, more interesting DIY functions. Everyone in every bar knew what a “christian” was: Episcopalianism was only slightly less exotic than a Rum and Coke. But no one knew what a Gnostic Pagan was. 

Others may have other reasons for leaving and more heartfelt and less egotistical than mine. But there is one story. 

How does one get back? You have to be invited. I had one afternoon of emotional sap: listening to an old LP I found in the bottom of my closet cleaning out my Sophomore year dorm room. It was of 70s Christian music, and it brought back “all the feels” as they say today. And I cried a lot. Also I left it in the dorm, along with the record player I had it on. That’s how important those feels. But then one day – some 15 years later – I was invited back. The person that invited me was named Ethan. And his invite took the oddest of forms: for he only suggest that maybe, when I moved to San Francisco in 1997, I might have something in common with a local Episcopal Church. And it took me the better part of a year or two to hear the invite in my memory and respond. That community was a perfect way to get me back inside… 21 years later I think it worked, although my path has more than a thousands hairpin turns. Look, you never know how God is going to act. My invite to the Catholic Church came in the most unlikely of ways – from the husband of my Orthodox Goddaughter, who mentioned St Dominic’s to me offhandedly. When the time came Nathan’s recommendation calmed my nerves a bit. And by “coincidence” he was at the service when I made my profession of the Catholic faith.

Our job is to go to the lost sheep. We may not be the folks who “win them back” but Ethan and Nathan both extended invites to me.
How do we go to the Lost Sheep? How can we say the Kingdom of God is at hand in a way that they can hear? St Benedict, whose feast is today, has been nearly maimed into a political slogan by the ranty right, but the Father of Western Monasticism knew that living the kingdom properly wins converts.

At Mass last night, Fr D reminded us that even Dorothy Day knew you don’t do it with “social action” that comes without dogma, but that might be a way in. Finding out that the Church’s pro-life action includes housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, free education for kids and adults, justice for refugees, social services for the poor, medical consultancies (everything from foot-care to drug-interaction advice), and rehab clinics… doing these actions – you can do them all at my parish – will draw others in. Jesus said “let your good deeds shine before men” that they may praise God. Our right action will lead to others coming in for right praise. Our Orthopaxis (which can only flow from our Orthodoxy) will lead to others’ Orthodoxy and, in turn, their Orthopraxis as well.

Go out and find the lost sheep… and tell them the Kingdom is here. Now.

And invite them in.

___

Please consider supporting my my writing via my Patreon. 

Typology for the Fourth

✙

JMJ

The Readings for Wednesday in the 13th Week of Ordinary Time (B2)

Et vota pinguium vestrorum non respiciam. 
Neither will I regard the vows of your fat beasts. 

Iconoclasm is the breaking of icons. In modern usage it tends to be a good thing: destroying “sacred cows” of the culture in order to progress in a field. But historically, iconoclasm was a retrogressive heresy, an attempt to go back in time to a mythical past for the sake of safety. People destroyed the sacred images in churches. And, since the Church teaches every human is an icon of God, every attack on the image was an attack on the divine archetype. So also today, although we forgot to our peril, attacking the icon of God is attacking God, himself.

Independence day. These are some awesome readings for a random Wednesday in July. I think they are very meaningful. Matthew is unusual in that his version gives us two demoniacs rather than one possessed person. We might see in the parable of the Gadarene Demoniacs a typology for our current situation.

There are two of them, as it were political parties or even candidates. Both parties are terrified of the Son of God and his followers, even though they need our votes. Between the failed social justice motions of one party and the failed moral actions of the other, all the demons have driven all the pigs mad. And the voters all at once charge into the water.

I do not labor under the impression or even the assumption of a “Christian Nation”. We once had a society with a Christian Veneer and that made many of us comfortable, but we have been wearing down that veneer for more than two centuries: and beneath it we were no more Christian than any other nation. We downgraded the Divine Icon of every African Slave in America to get our nation started, we trade off the Divine Icon of children born and unborn now to various political ends and selfish personal empowerment. We daily deny the divine icon of self and others in our consumption of porn, and we celebrate this denial in our horror movies, our news stories, our business choices, and our cheap plastic junk.

We are engaged in wars around the globe, the fruit of 6 presidential administrations. We revere as our honored dead the largest force of colonial oppression the world has ever known, dying for “Our Freedom” to continue in our iconoclasm. We have set up the world to destroy it. We siphon the wealth and resources of entire hemispheres into our yawning maw and crap out identically unique individualities based on the stuff we own instead of the icon within us. What we now call freedom we used to call license. We were once opposed to it. Now we demand it. We pass our political shell games off to others as “liberation” when what we really need is a new factory to produce more sprockets cheaply. The only thing that sets us apart from other powers engaged in the same actions today is July 4th is our holiday, not theirs. Still, Germany, the UK, China, and Russia are all on this train with us.

Calling out the truth from within, I do not put myself above this Leviathan for I help build it, I helped enforce it. My purchases feed it. For a long time I let it emotionally move me. The seeds were planted in 1776. It has taken 240 years to being the fruit to maturity. The pips were gleaned from the fruit our first parents dropped. The tempter was the same.

We get the fat beasts we deserve. We own the demons we curate.

_____

Please consider supporting my my writing via my Patreon.