maimino sees the world

What is truth?

2013-11-06T17:16:00.002-05:00

We hang our sense of self-worth upon the mere trifles of life, mere specks in a vast ocean of time. In the thick of the battles of everyday life, we forget that all these daily concerns are not our ultimate ground or our destiny; it is not for these things that we were made, but for the glory of God. Regardless of whether we think we are "winning" or "losing" in life, the truth is, God never stops loving us.

“What is truth,” Pilate asked Jesus. The truth to which Jesus testified was not the sort of truth that one can objectively examine and measure. Jesus taught that God is love. So what is true and what is false when we have no empirical data to guide us? When confronted with the things of the heart, when making the decision to believe in love, how do we know that love is the right thing to do?

When speaking of love, we are not speaking of something tangible, of something that we can examine, measure, weigh, and consider. We are left to ponder the qualities that love makes manifest through its presence. We recognize love by what love does. We recognize love by how it manifests itself in our lives. We make a decision to live for the things of love or to reject the things of love based on the way that love works in us and around us. So, then, what are the manifestations of love? Paul tells us:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogantor rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

But is love the right thing to believe in? If we’ve been hurt by those that said they loved us, perhaps we may think that love is a false pretense, something that only a fool, and a damn fool at that, would continue to believe in. Having been hurt by those that claim to love us, we may resolve to never to fall for the lie of love again. We reject love as a reality for our lives. There is a bit of truth in this. Yes, it is true that people will let us down. In fact, sooner or later, everyone will let us down in some way.

Yet we cannot quiet the restless longing in our hearts. We may fashion for ourselves a vision of being a solitary rock, strong and serene, which needs no one and certainly does not need love, yet the restlessness disturbs our serenity. We attack the restlessness with a myriad of substitutes, with all the diversions and pleasures that the world has to offer, yet despite all our efforts we feel disconnected, isolated, and insignificant. Our life becomes reduced to an endless desperation, waiting out the seconds and minutes and hours for death and oblivion to overtake us.

So it comes down to this: love is a risk. We take a chance on love. By love, I do not mean the mere emotion that comes and goes, but real love, the love that endures all things, no matter what. We take a chance on loving and not being loved in return, on giving and getting nothing back, on sacrificing and our sacrifice being counted for naught, for such is the way that God Himself has loved us. God loves us even though we reject him; he loves us and we do not love him in return; he sacrificed everything for us and we consider it nothing. Despite all that, God persists in loving us into life. We take a chance on being let down, hurt, and betrayed because we recognize the power of love to transform and move us, to inspire and to bring us life. Everyone will let us down, sooner or later, save one: God. God will not stop loving us. Even when life has fallen into pieces and all our plans have come to nothing and all we see is failure, when death itself is but a moment away, God still loves us.

We stand, as it were, on a precipice. We have a choice to make. Step out into the nothingness, into the vast chasm, and trust that love will catch us, or remain where we are, fixed and frozen. It is an act of faith, and faith is also a risk. We may see others take the leap and see that they do not fall, but our own step forward is still marked by hesitation and fear. We turn inward and fixate on all the times that people let us down. We do not see that even at that moment, even before we take that step forward, that God loves us with all his Being. Yes, it is an act of incredible courage to believe in love, now more than ever, in our world of hate and manipulation and exploitation. But the chasm into which we are stepping is not the chasm of the world, and what appears to us to be a chasm is not a chasm at all, but an entirely new world that we did not –could not– see from where we are before we take that step. We step forward into the unknown and find that love was there all along. Jesus taught that God is love and then showed us the love of God in action. The love of God is total surrender to God, trusting him to love us no matter what. Do we dare take him up on it?

Living in Charity

2012-07-24T15:44:00.000-04:00

The woman stood under the overpass, where there was some shade and protection against the sun. It was 95 degrees in the shade, and she was wilting in the heat. A man in a shiny new Jeep just ahead of me, inching along in the traffic entering the construction zone, rolled up alongside her. The driver put down his window and spoke to her. I could not hear what was he said, but her reaction spoke volumes: she stared at the ground, winced, and closed her eyes, tightly clutching the small cardboard sign scrawled with her request for money.

Why do they stand along the road, begging? Aren’t they looking for money for drugs or alcohol? Aren’t there shelters, agencies, places where they can go for the basics of life? So we stare resolutely ahead as we pass or, if we feel the need, we might even take the time to stop and curse them: filthy, lazy, shiftless, worthless, get a job, get a life, get out of here.

Personally, I cannot find it in me to insult or revile a person who is begging for money, regardless of what that person’s true motives may be. That said, not knowing what they would actually do with cash they collect makes me very hesitant to hand them any money. As I passed by the woman, I made eye contact with her and gave her a meek smile. She stared back at me blankly and I had to wonder, what should be my response? What are we supposed to do in this situation?

As a person of faith, I accept that that my response should be based on two guiding principles: subsidiarity and solidarity. Luckily for me, the church provides significant detail on what these words mean. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “the principle of subsidiarity is broadly concerned with the limits of the right and duty of the public authority to intervene in social and economic affairs” (Mulcahy, 567). The Church also tells us that subsidiarity is, “economic, institutional or juridical assistance” (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 187).

Solidarity, as defined by Pope John Paul II, represents ‘‘a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say for the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all’’ (John Paul II, 38).

In practical terms, solidarity means that we are working towards a society that is concerned with the common good of all, not just a few, and trying to make life better for everyone. We are not focused on our own status or consumed solely with our own well-being or welfare, because when we take care of one another, everyone benefits. The old saying is true; a society is measured by how it cares for its weakest members. We recognize that our relationships do not end with our friends and families, but that what affects any one person affects us all. Subsidiarity, practically speaking, means that we recognize that larger social institutions, like the state and local governments, have a duty and an obligation to help and support smaller institutions that help those in need. We have an obligation to give our consent, at the very least, to the support that the larger social institutions provide. Moreover, we need to actively support the help that smaller social institutions provide. It is important to recognize that subsidiarity and solidarity must go hand-in-hand. Faith and reason tells us that “solidarity without subsidiarity, in fact, can easily degenerate into a “welfare state,” while subsidiarity without solidarity runs the risk of encouraging forms of self-centered localism” (Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, 152).

Making these principles part of our lives is not all that difficult. Voting for candidates who promise to work for the common good and personal development of all, and who will also work to support the social aid we provide for the poor, is an obvious example. We can donate to charities that work with the poor and the marginalized.

However, meeting the material needs of the poor is not the whole story. Governments and social institutions, while having an important role to play, are not the entire answer. While they address some of the needs of people in distress, there is also a kind of poverty that all the riches of the world will not help. I’m thinking of poverty of the spiritual sort. This sort of poverty is harder to see and to identify. A person’s material needs may be met, but may they be suffering from spiritual needs. In the face of this sort of suffering, we should not be afraid to meet people, to see their faces and hear their voices and to let them see us. Doing so means that we recognize the poor as people with dignity, as people who deserve contact with other persons and who deserve to know that someone, a person and not just an institution, cares about their well-being. So we can also volunteer our time to a food bank or a soup kitchen, or to a homeless shelter, or to a retirement home. And, perhaps most importantly, we can make time to pray for justice and for peace.

The people we see on the street and under the bridges are easy targets for our anger. Sometimes they are easy to ignore. Sometimes we wish they would just go away. But they remind us of a crucial reality. They remind us that this world is not finished; there is work that needs to be done to make sure that everyone everywhere has their basic needs met. The reasons for their circumstances are not simple, and the efforts we need to take to help them are not simple either. The work is daunting, but for the good of every one of us, we need to persevere.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Halfmann, Janet. New Catholic Encyclopedia. 2nd ed. 15 vols. Washington, D.C.: Gale, 2003.

Mulcahy, R.E. "Subsidiarity." In New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. Detroit: Thomson/Gale, 2003. 567-569.

John Paul II. " Sollicitudo rei socialis." Vatican: the Holy See. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis_en.html (accessed July 22, 2012).

Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Washington, D.C.: USCCB Communications, 2005.

Who Do You Say That I Am?

2011-11-05T08:00:00.000-04:00

“We don’t need God anymore.”[1] Our culture holds belief in God to be, at best, a fanciful myth of a primitive pre-enlightenment people or, at worst, the cause of most of the atrocities of recent history. In the face of this range of responses, trending from amused indifference to indignant hostility, the question of the significance of the person of Jesus Christ to the modern world isn’t a mere academic exercise: it shines a blinding light upon the heart of the modern culture and on the struggle of the Church to either be relevant or be ruthlessly discarded and forgotten by that same culture. If this Jesus that we profess, if the message that he has entrusted to us, is to be anything more than a caricature from an dusty tome, the answer has to be loud and clear if it is to be heard at all.

Jesus is a person. Not an individual, but a person. An individual is a lonely, pathetic thing, a solitary, unconnected unit, but a person is a being that relates to others, connects with others, forms bonds and relationships and is faithful to others. It is part of our human nature to develop relationships. We are a social creature that longs to be with each other and that finds joy in companionship and relationship. Our relationship with each other is based on dialog, with intimate communication that reveals and accepts ourselves from one to another. Jesus, as a person, is like us. He is a man like us who by virtue of his presence among us can enter into a dialog that produces a relationship.[2] He is a man like us, with the same struggles and desires, the same hopes and fears, the same joys and sorrows. “He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart.”[3] Jesus knew every human limitation and every human freedom that we experience. But unlike us, he is also God. Jesus is the divine man, unique in all of history. The expression of his divinity is this: he was a man like us in all things but sin.[4] He was a man like us in all things but one thing. If we eliminate everything but that one thing, if we take away everything that he holds in common with us, then what we're left with is his divinity: he did not sin, he forgave sin, he healed sin, and he conquered sin. In his power over sin, the person of Jesus, the divine man, relates to us sin-besotted beings in a unique way, not as a judge or an executioner, but as a divine-human sojourner who, unique in all who travel this earth, extends to others the healing power over sin.

Jesus calls to us. His is not a voice from the past, a distant echo of a long forgotten shout, but a voice heard in the here and now, at this very moment. He calls to us, beckons us to come to him. “Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”[5] He calls us to repentance, to metanoia, to the fundamental changing of one’s mind that is not merely an exchange of like for like but is rather a radical conversion to God, an uprooting of all that we cherish and value. In answering his call, we exchange our existence for something completely new and different. Not satisfied with merely remodeling our human existence, with subtle and incremental change, he instead strikes at the root of all that afflicts us. His call to conversion takes aim squarely at what ails us, at what keeps us from him and from each other. Sin, death, disease, poverty, hatred, ostracism, chaos, and confusion are all evils he firmly rejects. But not satisfied with simply rejecting that which is evil, he offers us in his life the very alternatives to these evils: life, mercy, peace, simplicity, healing, virtue, and understanding. This he does “for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."[6] Moreover, as we gather around him, answering his call to come and to convert, he extends to us his own hospitality. His hospitality extends to all, is open to all, regardless of whom or what they are. In his example we truly see a new kingdom where “God and man at table are sat down.”[7] In following him, in answering his call, he asks of us to imitate him, to follow him wherever he goes and to do whatever he does, to continue to allow him to call to us, to beckon to us wherever we are, and to continue always to change our hearts and minds. Thus we continually gather around him and sit down with him in hospitality and fellowship.

Jesus offers us salvation. There is not much to recommend a transformed life if it just leads to the same end that life has always had, to suffering and death and permanent loss. The transformed life he offers is much more than mere window dressing on an otherwise futile existence. As the events of his life demonstrate, he leads us to eternal life itself. Jesus has saved us, he is saving us now, and he offers to us the hope of salvation.

Jesus has saved us. By coming to live among us, he has given our fragile human nature a new existence, a hope that it never had. His incarnation among us redefined our lives and our deaths in a wholly unexpected way. Humanity and divinity have been forever joined together in a new creation. Likewise, his passion has united God with our own sufferings. His passion illustrates the nature of salvation in the kingdom of God. Living the kingdom leads to self-sacrifice, death to one’s self, taking up the cross, suffering, and finally dying with Christ. By hanging next to “the outcasts that were central to his ministry,”[8] Jesus promises heaven, salvation, from the cross. Thus, Jesus reveals the power of the cross in that moment, by demonstrating “how salvation is available to the community through the crucified and risen Lord.”[9] By taking up our cross and following Jesus, we too participate in the saving act. However, his saving act did not end with death. In his resurrection, he displays the great transformation that leads to life. The transformed life that he offers to us has the power to make even us poor souls into images of Jesus himself. “Frightened, guilty, and confused disciples were gradually transformed and became empowered by the Spirit of the Lord to proclaim the good news to the world.”[10] It was the experience of the transformed, resurrected Christ that in turn transformed the apostles. In each of His post-resurrection interactions with the disciples, Jesus did not cure anyone, or relate a parable, or feed a multitude. All the time that he was with them before His passion and death seemingly did little to change them – as soon as he was gone, they started to drift back to their old selves, their old ways of life. It was presence of the resurrected Christ that truly made Simon into Peter and doubting Thomas into believing Thomas.

Jesus is saving us now. The present state of our life cries out for salvation. Drugs, alcohol, and anti-depressants are used in such large quantities for a reason. They are inadequate substitutes for the justice, peace, freedom, and love that we crave. Jesus acts here and now to heal our sin and our painful separation from God and each other. Jesus continues the work of salvation through the members of his body who are his hand in the world. His work of salvation continues through his word being proclaimed daily. His disciples in this day and age continue to call our attention to those things that keep us from God. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations.”[11] The followers of Jesus are sent to spread the news of the resurrection, of salvation in the here and now, not only in the past, to the outcast, the beggar, the unwanted and unloved. They have an advocate, a voice, in Jesus and in us.

Jesus offers to us the hope of salvation. We live in a kingdom that is now and not yet. Jesus proclaimed the arrival of the kingdom of God and he also taught us to pray, “thy kingdom come.” Our salvation is now and is a thing still hoped for, an eschatological hope that at the end of our lives, salvation awaits as we persist in answering his call and following him. “We wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” While the end of our world comes for each of us by turn, while inevitable death still comes for us, we still yet wait in hope, hoping to persevere until the end, because of his promise to us.

Jesus forms us as a community. His call to us, across time and space, gathers his followers together and forms a community. His Church is an intentional community that is being added to, renewed, and reinvigorated by the new additions, passing on what has been held to be true. It is a community that is directed towards salvation through the person of Jesus Christ.

Jesus gives us work to do. He gives to us the gift of the work of salvation. It is our work to heal the effects of sin; restore people to their proper dignity, and make people whole again in body and soul. Our work is not purely spiritual or metaphysical, but includes both tangible reality and spiritual reality together as one. Ours is the work of saving ministry, announcing the kingdom of God, teaching the kingdom, living the kingdom by word and example, so that all who see us know that Jesus is truly present among us. We extend our presence out into the world, as an offer of help and friendship, so that others too may come to know Jesus in our lives and come to know him for themselves as he is.

Jesus sustains us. He did not abandon us. “I will be with you until the end of the age.”[12] His life and his salvation continue among us in our lives, in his word, in doing what we do in remembrance of him. His words continue to nourish us, restore us to right relationship with God, and uphold our spirits and bodies.

Despite our illusion of being sufficient unto ourselves, noble rugged individuals, there is underlying our self-confident swagger an unfulfilled desire for a sense of belonging, of being part of something larger than ourselves, whether it’s a family or a tribe or a community or a socially-conscious movement. At the same time that we long to belong, we are keenly aware of those things that keep us from belonging. We stand on the outside, looking in. We stand on separate shores, looking across the waters at each other, wondering what will bridge the gulf. Addiction, poverty, terror, ostracism, illness, sin, death, and our own self-absorption conspire against us, to keep us from truly being and from being together. Into this dilemma comes the person of Jesus Christ. He comes proclaiming the kingdom of God, a call from a person to a community to do saving work, all the while sustained by the very one who calls us. Are we truly listening?

Bibliography

Hill, Brennan R. Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004.

Hogarth, Jimmy. We Don't Need God Anymore. Comp. Jimmy Hogarth. 2006.

II, Pope John Paul. "Like Us in All Things Except Sin: General Audience February 3, 1988." Vatican web Site. February 3, 1988. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19880203en.html (accessed April 23, 2009).

Ratzinger, Joseph. Introduction to Christianity. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.

Stamp, Robert J. God and Man at Table are Sat Down. 1972.

[1] Hogarth 2006

[2] Ratzinger 2004

[3] John Paul 1988

[4] Council of Chalcedon

[5] Matt 11:28

[6] Lk 19:10

[7] Stamp 1972

[8] Hill 2004

[9] Hill 2004

[10] Ibid

[11] Mat 28:19

[12] Mt 28:20

A conversation with a 14 year old

2011-10-30T14:45:00.000-04:00

The following exchange occurred on the way home from mass today:

Dom: Dad, where do accents come from?

Me: Eh? You mean the way people talk?

Dom: Yeah.

Me: Well, from the way people pronouce their vowels, mostly. In certain regions, people hear each other and repeat how they speak to each other and it forms a self-sustaining pattern of speech,

Dom: Oh. Huh.

Me: Where did you think they came from?

Dom: The climate?

This Man was Innocent Beyond Doubt: Distinctive Features of Luke’s Passion Narrative

2011-10-30T08:00:00.000-04:00

Luke’s passion narrative contains several distinctive features not found in the other Gospel accounts. Three of these features in particular are the direct confrontation with evil, the need to follow Jesus, and the salvation that comes from the cross.

Luke begins his account by stating that “Satan entered into Judas[1].” This identification of Satan as the agent acting through Judas has two effects on the narrative. It establishes that it was not a mere human being, and a friend at that, that turned Jesus over to the authorities, but rather evil personified. Unlike the accounts of Mark and John, where Jesus is pitted purely against the religious and political forces of this world, in Luke, Jesus is pitted against evil itself. Therefore, the events that follow are not a matter of God versus man, but God versus evil. In a battle of God against man, there is no hope for man, but in a battle between God and evil, man has hope indeed in the eventual vanquishing of evil. Standing in counterpoint to the introduction of evil personified is Luke’s establishment of the setting of Passover, “the day for sacrificing the Passover lamb.[2]” With this detail, Luke presents Satan on the one hand and the slaughter of the innocent lambs on the other. This is the context into which Luke places the Passion: pure evil versus unblemished innocence. This scenario takes the events to an unexpected level, one of cosmic forces engaged in a spiritual battle. Jesus does not only overcome the forces of this world, as significant as that is; he conquers the very forces of hell itself.

Another distinct feature of Luke’s account is found in the actions of Simon of Cyrene. While the synoptic Gospels all state that Simon carried the cross for Jesus, only Luke adds the seemingly minor detail[3] that while Simon carries the cross for Jesus, he does so by “taking up the cross and following Jesus” (Senior and Collins 2006). While taking up one’s cross and following Jesus is a common Christian theme, what seems to be rarely considered is where that journey leads: to Golgotha, to death. If we pick up our own cross and carry it, if we persist in carrying that cross, sooner or later we will get nailed to it. Yes, we all have our crosses to bear, but who bears a cross but one who is about to be crucified? Our martyr’s death may be a physical one or a spiritual one, but in either case, we die with Christ.

Of course, if that’s where it ended, what would be the point? Why would anyone do this of their own volition, pick up this cross of death? The answer comes from the cross: “Today you will be with me in paradise[4].” In Luke’s Gospel alone does Jesus offer these words of salvation to the man hanging next to him. Hanging next to “the outcasts that were central to his ministry” (Hill 2004), Jesus promises heaven, salvation, from the cross. Thus, Jesus reveals the power of the cross in that moment, by demonstrating “how salvation is available to the community through the crucified and risen Lord” (Hill 2004). By taking up our cross and following Jesus, we too participate in the saving act. This gives meaning to the cross we bear.

The forces of evil turn Jesus over to the powers of this world. The powers of this world send him to death. But evil, human power, and death have no hold on him. The battle against evil leads to taking up the cross – the powers of this world will lay the cross upon you or you can take it up yourself. What the powers of evil, and of this world, never see coming is the victory that comes from that very same cross.

Bibliography

Hill, Brennan R. Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004.

Senior, Donald, and John J Collins. New American Bible Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

[1] Luke 22:3 New American Bible

[2] Luke 22:7 New American Bible

[3] Luke 23:26 New American Bible

[4] Luke 23:43 New American Bible

Vatican Calls for New World Economic Order

2011-10-28T10:39:00.003-04:00

Vatican Calls for New World Economic Order

Still pondering this one. Not sure what to think about it.

They Knew Him in the Breaking of the Bread: Meals and Miracles

2011-10-28T08:00:00.000-04:00

The Gospel stories present frequent accounts of Jesus’ miracles. A significant portion of the Gospels is devoted to telling of His miraculous cures: healing the sick, casting out demons, raising the dead. It is no accident that the Gospels place such emphasis on miracles. Those who have experienced them know that “sickness, possession, and death are three examples of God’s absence” (Statnick 2008). In illness, evil, and death, we are acutely aware of our perception that God is not there. In contrast to our perceptions, Jesus’ miraculous works make a bold proclamation of God’s presence. Like the miracle accounts, a significant part of the Gospels recount Jesus sitting down to eat with his disciples, friends, and various members of the community. And like the miracles, Jesus’ participation at meals also serves as a proclamation of God’s presence, of God’s reign extending into our reality. By miracles and meals, Jesus makes God’s reign manifest.

Miracles are an insight into what God’s kingdom looks like. In God’s kingdom, the people who are cured are the poor, the lowly, and the outcasts. Jesus’ healing is directed to people on the fringes of society, those whose sickness has driven them to the margins: lepers, hemorrhagics, the blind, and the lame. These are the people whom the strong, the successful, have pushed aside as human refuse. When these dispossessed see Christ, when they see their opportunity for healing, they do not hold back. Like the blind man along the road who called out to Jesus, they know that this Jesus is their only hope for health. They cry out, unashamed of their need for healing. But these miracles do not merely heal infirmity and disease or cast out evil and darkness. With each miracle, people are restored to their rightful place (Statnick 2008). Justice reigns: the leper returns to society, the hemorrhaging woman is made clean, and the blind and the lame may enter the temple. The miracles are an announcement of God’s reign being at hand. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of healing, of turning to God in faith, of sin and darkness being cast out and light and healing being brought in.

The implications of the miracles for us are powerfully direct. We too are to be about the work of healing, of casting out evil, and even of raising the dead. We heal through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, by feeding and clothing and counseling and all that we do out of love for each other. We cast out evil when we confront sin in ourselves, in our communities, and in our nation. We cast out evil when we resolve, day by day, to confront sin, to call it for what it is, and to consign it to return from whence it came. We raise the dead when we bring life where there was none, when we bring hope, faith, and love to those who live in despair.

In contrast to the miracles, the Gospel accounts of His sitting down to eat present a very human side of Jesus. Yet for Him, meals are never merely a source of nutrition. They are a call to transformation and conversion. Jesus sits down to eat with whores and thieves as well as the rich and powerful. Jesus never declined an invitation to sit down to eat with anyone, regardless of their motives. His radical hospitality extends to all, is open to all, regardless of who or what they are. In his example we truly see a new kingdom where “God and man at table are sat down.” (Stamp 1972). The meals, like the miracles, are insights into what God’s kingdom looks like. But make no mistake. By sitting down at table with whores and thieves, Jesus was not merely displaying a high-minded tolerance. He was not engaging in a show of condescension. Jesus did not go slumming. Likewise, by sitting down to eat with scribes and Pharisees, Jesus did not intend to legitimize these people or their rule. Rather, every meal with them ended in a confrontation and a call to repentance. That Jesus would sit down with us to eat is then at once a sign of hope and a call to conversion. We find our hope in His desire to be with us, despite our fallen state, and we find our conversion in knowing how far we have yet to go to be in God’s kingdom. This hope and conversion are how we come to recognize Christ Himself and Christ in each other:

“Meals are so important. The Disciples knew Christ in the breaking of the bread. We know Christ in each other in the breaking of the bread. It is the closest we can ever come to each other, sitting down and eating together. It is unbelievably, poignantly intimate.” (Day 2002)

In this intimate union with God, we find ourselves gathered around a table, eating, talking, arguing, and listening. In partaking in this intimate act with us, Jesus poses to us the question: is this how we live with each other? Is this how we reach out to each other, in our poverty and sinfulness? Do we welcome each other, the poor and the sinful, as desired guests at our tables and our lives? Are we living the kingdom?

The miracle and meal accounts in the Gospels are remarkable for what they do not tell us. After the miracles, we do not know what became of the healed. We do not know what was served at the meals or who supplied the food. We do not know what happened to many of the people who met Jesus. What we do know is a moment in time, captured, when God and man come face to face, together, not as Lord and slave, but as friends. Through the miracles and the meals, people come to deeper spiritual insight. The blind see themselves as they truly are, the hungry receive true bread for the soul, and the rich and powerful have their own famine exposed. What happens next is up to us.

Bibliography

Day, Dorothy. Dorothy Day: Writings from Commonweal. New York: Commonweal, 2002.

Hill, Brennan R. Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004.

Stamp, Robert J. God and Man at Table are Sat Down. 1972.

Statnick, Roger. "Lecture: Christology." Greensburg, September 10, 2008.

A Challenge to Radical Conversion: A Short Study of the Sermon on the Mount

2011-10-27T18:00:00.000-04:00

Matthew sets the Sermon on the Mount early in Jesus’ ministry. In the preceding narrative, Jesus has fasted in the desert, faced temptation, and called his first disciples. Having witnessed Him preach in the synagogues, cure the sick, and drive out evil spirits, crowds have begun to follow Jesus. The crowds are not just from the local towns and villages of Galilee, but from the surrounding regions as well, as far as Syria and the Decapolis. This narrative presents an enthusiastic beginning to Jesus’ ministry. The narrative that follows the Sermon relates Jesus’ healing of a leper and of the centurion’s servant. In the leper we find an unclean social outcast while the centurion is not only an unclean gentile but is an authority for the occupation forces in Judea: one is a completely powerless outcast, one a symbol of brutality and strength. Juxtaposed between these images of a growing messianic movement and the ironic opposites of leper and centurion, the Sermon on the Mount unites the themes of a reinvigorated understanding of ancient traditions, radical conversion to God, and the universal call to holiness.

In the preceding narrative to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contends with the devil, quoting scripture to reject the devil’s temptations. Jesus again quotes scripture in the Sermon, but this time He rejects the traditional understanding of these passages to draw his listeners to a new understanding. Six times Jesus reminds the crowd, “you have heard it said,” but then challenges the “political-religious structure of his time” (Hill 2004) to rethink what these passages mean. In doing so he challenges his listeners to “return to the best of their traditions” (Hill 2004). Not satisfied with the status quo, Jesus asks us to reconsider the things we say and do that are too often done by rote. Jesus takes to task the conventional wisdom of the day regarding adultery, retaliation, enemies, and more, and confronts, upsets, revises and extends this understanding. It is not enough to exact justice; rather, the mercy that God shares with us we must share with others. It is not enough to love one’s neighbor; rather, one’s enemy is as much a child of God as we are and is therefore our neighbor. It is not enough to apply the cold dictates of law to marriage; rather the law of love must rule hearts and relationships. It is not enough to be loving with the “righteous;” rather, the outcast and the sinner are just as deserving of our friendship. Even with prayer, our intimate discourse with God, Jesus asks of us to reconsider our habits and assumptions. Furthermore, in the narrative that follows, Jesus puts his words into action, healing the leper (the very definition of the outcast) and the centurion’s servant, showing healing love to the enemy himself. Jesus shows by word and deed how to put this new understanding into practice.

Jesus preaches a radical conversion to God. In the narrative preceding the Sermon, Jesus calls his disciples and they leave everything to follow him, abandoning boats and nets, family and friends. In the Sermon, the Beatitudes call to us to get on with our own conversion. By inverting our understanding of what holiness is, the Beatitudes demand of us just as radical a conversion as the one experienced by the first disciples.

We don’t think of the poor and the powerless as being particularly happy. Those who have actually witnessed poverty - true poverty - would argue that the destitute, in their wretched condition, are rarely happy people. Jesus himself would have both witnessed and experienced the poverty of 1^st century Palestine. Yet he knows the poor, the meek, and the persecuted are, by virtue of their destitution, in the position of being closer to where we ourselves need to be with God: they have no choice but to place themselves at God’s feet, to cast their lot on God’s mercy and providence, to become totally dependent on God. And it is this, this total dependency, which grants us happiness, for it is in dependence on God that we find that it has been God’s grace all along that has worked to uphold and sustain us. Therefore, to convert ourselves to God means to value what God values, not the things the world values. Instead of power, riches, fame, and glory, Jesus proposes we look to “the impoverished, the downtrodden” (Hill 2004). By converting our vision to God’s vision, we begin to see how to be perfect as God is perfect. Continuing this theme, the narrative following the Sermon casts a leper, obviously one of the poor and destitute, as being blessed, but also the centurion, in his humble admission of unworthiness, shows his own blessed poverty in spirit.

Jesus preaches a universal call to holiness. In the narrative preceding the Sermon, the multitudes that follow Jesus are not only from the immediate region of Galilee, but also from gentile regions of Syria and the Decapolis. The Decapolis is especially remarkable as centers of a Hellenistic culture often clashed with the Semitic cultures of the Levant. In the Sermon, Jesus preached “holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples of every condition.” (Second Vatican Council 1964). All people of every social and religious background are included, even those outside of the Hebrew faith. Continuing this theme, the narrative that follows shows both the Roman centurion and the leper as recipients of Jesus’ healing, and these two extremes, in their being made whole, continue the theme of the universal call.

The outcast is transformed, made whole, healed and renewed. The outsider’s faith is a marvel. Jesus accepts them both. All are called to be radically transformed to faith and to love. In living this call, all are made holy.

Bibliography

Hill, Brennan R. Jesus the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004.

Second Vatican Council. "Dogmatic Constitution On The Church." Vatican Web Site. November 21, 1964. http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html .

Charity in Truth: A Book Review

2011-10-26T12:53:00.000-04:00

In 2008, my 401(k) and IRA portfolios were reduced to a tenth of their former value. What had taken my wife and me 20 years of scrimping and saving to accumulate was reduced to almost nothing in a few days. I was powerless to act and could only watch helplessly as forces beyond my control destroyed our diminutive nest-egg with breathless and brutal efficiency. The destruction of my minor wealth was, in the scheme of things, a trivial event compared to the misery and pain being felt by others around the globe. In fact, I could not help but be struck by how many people were so deeply affected. The global financial crisis was, and continues to be, not simply a problem of governments or multi-national financial entities, but a dilemma for everyday persons who suddenly realize that their lives are interconnected in innumerable ways; did the people of Iceland ever imagine that their existence could be so troubled by a mortgage company in California whose annoyingly ubiquitous advertisements they had never even seen? When I learned that Pope Benedict's encyclical Charity in Truth was written in response to this global crisis, I was anxious to read what he thought, to see what problems he identified and what solutions he saw.

Benedict begins his encyclical by identifying Christ's mission to humanity as the “principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity” (1) and by firmly committing the Church to “promoting integral human development” (11). In fact, he describes human development as a vocation, a definition that raises human development from mere human activity to the level of a sacred calling, to human and divine activity working in concert. Understanding human development as a vocation introduces God into an otherwise mundane process. With God, human development is not merely having more or doing more or knowing more, but it is being more. Human development then is a matter of becoming. This, of course, begs the question, “what is it that we are to become?” In short, we are called to become a whole person, more human, and in becoming more human to “love our brothers and sisters in the truth” (1). Human development, in all its facets and varieties, is the vocation of all persons, and all persons aid and benefit from the doing and the being, from growing and from helping others to grow. As a vocation, one must understand themselves not from the point of view of a “giver” alone, as a person who “has” giving magnanimously to those who “have not,” but as a person partaking in a reciprocal encounter in which both parties give and receive. Finally, as a vocation, human development is a calling that one must constantly discern, not as a personal choice alone, but discerned in and with a community of persons. The discernment process applied to this vocation, as to all vocations, includes the rational, the personal, the communal, and the sacred.

Understanding human development as a vocation has implications beyond one's own personal growth. In fact, it is most important that one's vision extend to the growth of community and culture. Benedict rightly asserts that, as a vocation, human development “offers a wonderful opportunity for encounter between cultures and people” (59) and can be an avenue to become Christ to others and to discover Christ in others. In the act of performing the vocation of human development, both the persons serving and being served find Christ in each other. In being Christ to those of another culture, new ways of understanding how to be Christ and how to build the Kingdom can emerge. In this way, cultures interact not on a purely human level, but also on a sacred level that raises the cultures to the life of the Trinity, to be sanctified in the life of the divine. What is good in a culture is made better and what is lacking is exposed to the light of charity and truth. However, charity finds what is lacking in any culture, so that not only the culture that is being served but also the culture providing the service benefit from God's truth and love. Developed nations may rediscover in their roots what contributed to their level of human development in the first place, and emerging nations may discover that they have a real contribution to make - a contribution of wisdom and understanding - and that they are not merely subservient receivers of charity, as it were, but vocational partners in the growth and development of persons.

The interactions that occur between cultures frequently take place in the context of the global economy as transactions between distinct parties. Benedict identifies commutative justice as regulating “the relations of giving and receiving between parties to a transaction,” (35) while distributive justice applies not only to the parties involved in the transaction, but also to "the wider network of relationships within which [the market] operates" (35). Transactions in the marketplace can never take place in isolation: the existence of the marketplace itself attests to this fact, given that so many are involved in its creation and maintenance. The human activity in the marketplace occurs in the context of local, regional, national, and global communities. Therefore, not a single transaction can be thought of as isolated, but must be understood by the breadth and depth of the various relationships that support, create, are sustained by, and are affected by the means and ends of the transaction itself.

In this increasingly diverse and global marketplace, the meeting of peoples and cultures has yielded the fruit of human development in what Benedict identifies as “hybrid forms of commercial behavior” (38). In fact, what Benedict identifies in terms of potentiality is already an actuality, and rather old news at that. Hybrid forms, that “without rejecting profit, aim at a higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents,” (38) have already emerged, as is seen in the OpenSource movement in software development. OpenSource provides a unique model of subsidiarity and solidarity in which anyone with the skills needed can contribute to the development and use of sophisticated systems and computer software[1].

Benedict goes on to suggest the need for additional funding for underdeveloped countries from the more economically developed countries. However, it should be obvious that additional funding requires reform. The United States alone sends 5.7 billion USD in financial aid to Sub-Saharan Africa annually[2]. For this amount of money, we would expect to see some improvement in conditions in the continent, in the quality of human life and in human development, but accountability is lacking, and without accountability there can be no development. There needs to be cultural development in addition to fiscal aid and until that occurs, the vocation to human development is simply not there; it is purely technical aid at this point and aid without justice, at that.

Justice itself cannot be seen as limited to those who exist in one particular place or time, as Benedict points out in discussing intergenerational justice (48). Justice is a concept that crosses time and space, past, present, and future. We have received the fruits of human activity, “ecological, juridical, economic, political and cultural,” (48) from past generations who toiled to develop themselves and the world for our benefit. We have stewardship of the same ecological, juridical, economic, political, and cultural contexts for this moment. Having received what was given to us, we must remain mindful of what we intend to pass along to future generations for their own needs and development. Justice demands that what we do now must take into account the needs and dignity of future generations.

If we are serious about the task of intergenerational justice, the environment is one obvious area that will be of continued concern to future generations. Benedict invites us “to a serious review of [our] life-style” “in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness, and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices” (51). As a small-holding farmer, I take the environment and my stewardship of it seriously. We use green technologies, such as composting and bio-fuels, as much as possible. We limit the use of herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics on our food and animals. We buy locally as much as possible from fellow farmers, and we buy crops and goods that are grown with the same attention to the environment that we give. Even so, we can further decrease our environmental impact by reducing our fuel consumption, especially fossil fuels, through the pooling of resources, trip planning, and efficiency. However, I must point out that one of the major sources of fossil fuel consumption in my life is the weekly 120+ mile round-trip I make to Seton Hill every week. For my job, I am able to telecommute from home and collaborate on-line with fellow employees around the world in real-time, so I find it distressing that we waste natural resources in order to be physically present in a classroom. While I understand the need for community and formation in relation to ministerial education, new and more complex understandings of community need to be developed so that education and formation may be done on-line. This is not going to be optional. Soon, there will simply be no other choice, and I think it would be better to get started on making the transition now.

On the topic of technology itself, Benedict asserts “the development of peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can re-create itself through the ‘wonders’ of technology” (68). Man has the ability to increasingly identify, predict, and control the material world, from atoms to weather patterns, from his own DNA to the forces that ignite the stars. Man's ability to control the material world has increasingly encroached on what used to be thought of God's domain alone. These things that we control were proven not to be God's sole domain at all. The former understandings of God that gave our life context and a sense of destiny have been lost. However, without God as a context and destiny, our purely human ability to predict and control the material world results in such horrors as the Holocaust and atomic warfare, embryonic stem-cell research and human cloning. Technology alone cannot solve our problems; we need new ways of understanding God as our context and destiny. We need to have God involved.

What became apparent to me as I read the encyclical is that reason and natural law, which form the basis of Benedict's encyclical, must be presented anew in order to find an audience in the post-modern world. The language of story, the sharing of an event as opposed to an academic presentation of facts and argument, is what appeals to the post-modern ears. The arguments that Benedict makes must be made real and present in terms of people's everyday lives, in ways to which everyone can relate. This is one of the challenges in using a document like Charity in Truth in a parish setting. In addition, the American concept of “rugged individualism” is a major obstacle to the sense of global community and interdependence that Benedict describes. For a great many people, human development is seen as a competition between individuals rather than a cooperative effort between persons. A certain dose of formation in the nature and practice of Christian community will be required before Charity in Truth receives a friendly welcome at many American parishes. Until then, I would continue to emphasize the reality of the very familiar and local forms of interconnectedness and interdependence that everyone is comfortable with, and I would work to build on this foundation to help develop a truly global perspective. For my part, I would hope to gain a new appreciation for the myriad of ways in which my friends and neighbors are already working to help each other, by living their vocation everyday, to develop and grow as persons.

[1] http://opensource.org/docs/osd

[2] http://www.globalissues.org/article/35/foreign-aid-development-assistance

Regula fidei, sensus fidei, and analogia fidei

2011-10-26T08:20:00.000-04:00

In the Catholic tradition, we have the terms regula fidei, sensus fidei, and analogia fidei. Translated, they mean, "the rule of faith," the "sense of faith for a person," and "the analogy of faith." In practical terms, what do these ideas mean for the Catholic Christian?

If faith were a purely personal matter, if we were individuals, unrelated and separated, who personally believed in some “god,” then every individual believer would be free to make up their own faith as they saw fit. They could change the tenets of their faith whenever they felt the need, and they would never have to give an account of what they believed or why, nor would they feel the need to explain their beliefs to another. They would never feel the need to relate their beliefs to another person. In fact, such a situation would make relationships exceedingly difficult.

It is, however, part of our human nature to develop relationships. We are social creatures, not lone individuals, but creatures that long to be with each other and that find joy in companionship and relationship. Our relationship with each other is based on dialog, with intimate communication that reveals and accepts from one to another. As created beings, we are made in the image and likeness of our Creator who, while in a wholly different category of being than ours, did in the very act of creating us impart within us an openness to hear the Word of His revelation. Therefore God initiates a relationship with us, a necessity dictated by the very nature of God as a being wholly other than us and beyond our ability to perceive or perfectly comprehend. As created beings, we are created to recognize the truth of God’s revelation. We have a God-given, ability to sense and grasp the meaning of God’s revelation, especially the revelation of God given in the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. In practical terms, when we hear the Gospel with an open mind and heart, we sense that there is more here than myth or fable or story. The truth of the message speaks to the truth that God has placed in our being, and truth knows truth; it recognizes itself and responds. Our response is faith. We believe.

But we are not simply individual believers in the Gospel. The revelation of God calls us together. In calling us together, God has formed us as a community: the Church. We are a community of believers, gathered together by the Gospel message, focused on the Gospel message, and working to proclaim the Gospel message. And as believers in God, as a community founded by His revelation and for His revelation, our community has a rule. But it is not a rule like some might expect. Our rule is not like the worldly rules that merely govern specific behaviors, that allow and deny certain actions, or that determine where you may go or not go. The rule of faith is an expression of what we share as a community. The rule of faith is at the very heart of what makes us a community, for what we share as a community is an experience of God’s revelation of Himself to us. Therefore, as a community formed by God and centered on His revelation, we likewise have been gifted with the ability to sense and grasp the meaning of God’s revelation. The community exercises this ability as a whole, doing corporately and simultaneously what the individual believer does in the presence of God’s revelation.

Our experience of God is a revelation of love and truth. As a result of that shared experience, of God revealed as love and truth, we recognize that we must take care that what we proclaim about God is true, and that it cannot contradict itself – truth cannot be opposed to truth, nor can love be opposed to love. All that we say about God must be in harmony with the truth that God has revealed to us in Sacred Scripture and in our Sacred Traditions. Being in harmony means that as we live our faith in community, we each express the gifts and abilities that God has given us. Though we have many gifts, the gifts work together for the community in order to help build up the community and to further the work of the community. Likewise, the various elements of the faith are interrelated. They work reciprocally so that no one element negates another or attempts to falsify any other element of the faith.

In the Catholic Church, that community formed by the experience of God-love-truth, we hold the Scriptures and Sacred Tradition as the exposition of the shared experience of the revelation of God. Our community hands on what it has received in the revelatory experience of God-love-truth. The teachings that we have received, in Scripture and in Tradition, reveal a consistency within themselves, a “pattern of teaching” (Rom 6:17). Over time, our community has reflected on the truth it has received. As a result of these reflections, the members of the community, exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit, may propose developments to the understanding of the faith. These developments are always accepted or rejected on the basis of the rule of faith which we have received, understanding that God, as revealed truth, will never contradict or oppose Himself. Therefore, any proposition that does not hold fast to the rule of our faith is categorically rejected.

Chickens - Be Nervous

2011-10-25T16:36:00.000-04:00

Getting to be time for our roosters to find new digs - in our freezer. So I found this by way of review. If you are the least bit squeamish, don't blame me for your nightmares if you watch this video. I warned ya, now. Best quote: "Save the heart. Dems good eats." Part 2 of the video shows how to cut the bird up, which I can do in my sleep (thanks Dad).

2011-10-25T16:27:00.000-04:00

I watched this video and I am now fairly certain I suffered dain bramage. Dain bram... dain bramage!

William Shatner - Bohemian Rhapsody

Hello!

2011-10-25T16:17:00.001-04:00