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Year 247: In God We Trust

John W Gillis — Fri, 07 Jul 2023 03:37:44 +0000

On a dank and dreary Independence Day Tuesday, I travelled to a neighboring town to attend daily Mass. The celebrant was a visiting priest – a kindly retired priest who was so old that he didn’t always exert enough vocal strength to be quite heard. In his homily, he spoke of the blessings of political liberty enjoyed by citizens of the U.S., and cautioned against the risk of taking our blessings for granted, since we’ve never really known any other reality. But then he said something which really struck me. He called the congregation to remember the events of January 6th, 2021, and to think about how close the country came to falling to a military coup, and how quickly and easily it could happen. I immediately agreed with his statement, although I couldn’t be sure what he meant. I know nothing about this priest apart from his name, and had no idea if his thoughts reflected a belief in the manufactured narrative of an attempted insurrection by Trump’s rioting supporters, and the threat posed by that. Or, if it was a reference to the response to the riot by the Biden administration and their allies in law enforcement, the...

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At the Heart of Liberty is the Right to Encounter and Know the Truth!

John W Gillis — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 18:53:27 +0000

Be holy. Be perfect. Be children of your heavenly father. The spirit of God dwells in you. You are the temple of God… The various liturgical readings this week come together around a common thread concerning the necessary holiness of the Spirit-filled disciple, and of how that holiness is manifest as a reflection of the loving-kindness of God. Can the sudden mad rush to post-human or trans-human existence we find Western civilization engulfed in be enlightened by reflection on this call of God to be holy/perfect/complete? 7th Week in Ordinary Time, Year A: In the Leviticus reading, God commands loving one’s neighbor as oneself as an antidote to vengeance, and explicitly identifies such love with Godliness. When He says: “Be holy, for I, the LORD, your God, am holy”, He is saying: Be Godly, for you are God’s. And to be Godly is to practice loving-kindness. In the Responsorial Psalm, we spend a few minutes reflecting on that very thing: “The Lord is kind and merciful.” In the Gospel reading, Jesus famously expands upon the command of love for neighbor to include even the love of one’s enemies, challenging his followers to be more Godly than tax collectors and pagans,...

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I will give you as a light to the nations: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

John W Gillis — Sun, 15 Jan 2023 13:31:00 +0000

First Reading: Isaiah 49:3, 5–6Psalm Response: Psalm 40:8a, 9aPsalm Versicles: Psalm 40:2, 4, 7–8, 8–9, 10Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 1:1–3Gospel Acclamation: John 1:14a, 12aGospel: John 1:29–34 The NAB Lectionary reading from 1Cor 1:2 has Paul addressing those who are “called to be a holy people.” The implications of that particular calling had changed significantly from the earlier time of the Deuteronomic covenant, when the Lord had declared: “The LORD will establish you as a people holy to himself,…if you…walk in his ways…all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD; and they shall be afraid of you” (Deut 28:9f, RSV). But the people did not “walk in his ways”, and the curses associated with that covenant (Deut 28:15-68) began to fall upon the heads of the people, including the devastation and humiliation of exile. Into such a scene stepped the prophet Isaiah, who today we hear prophesying of God doing a new thing, to restore not only exiled Israel, but to extend the restoration of salvation “to the ends...

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Celebrating Christmas

John W Gillis — Sat, 24 Dec 2022 22:19:42 +0000

Even the World Wildlife Fund had put out a statement Nov. 7 saying, “cutting a tree of this size in the midst of a climate crisis is a debatable decision,” which required “greater transparency.” I saw a Catholic News Service (CNS) article in the Boston archdiocesan newspaper The Pilot several weeks ago (Nov. 18) describing a dust-up concerning the Christmas Tree planned for St. Peter’s square this year. The Vatican had planned on installing an impressive, 98-foot silver fir taken from the mountains of central Italy, until activists started objecting to a lack of “transparency” or of “environmental impact studies”. One activist even wrote to Pope Francis, appealing to the author of Laudato Si to practice what he preached, in avoiding any unnecessary human impact on the environment. Meanwhile, forest service rangers had tree cutting preparation work halted, to complete “documentation”, and the village donating the tree eyed an alternative tree growing in a different jurisdiction. It appears the Vatican got the tree they’d wanted, although follow-on details of the story are sparse. It was hard for me to know for whom to root in this debacle. It’s easy to be contemptuous of the enviro-tyrants demanding an environmental impact study...

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Bible Review Journal

John W Gillis — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 04:35:49 +0000

The Fall 2022 edition (Vol. 9, No. 2) of Bible Review Journal arrived today, containing a print version of my Modest History of Catholic Bible Translations in English essay. BRJ is the journal of the International Society of Bible Collectors, who can be found at www.BibleCollectors.org.

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Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’

John W Gillis — Mon, 05 Dec 2022 02:05:29 +0000

The Gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Advent in Year A, taken from the Gospel of Matthew, contains a passage I think provides a key to understanding a different and controversial passage from the same Gospel. When John the Baptist saw the religious leaders coming to be baptized, he challenged them to demonstrate their repentance in concrete actions, not just in playing “show and tell”. He then said to them: “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.'” This criticism is reminiscent of a passage in Jeremiah where he warns the people of Jerusalem: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” (Jer 7:4). Again, being right with God is a matter of making faithfulness concrete, instead of assuming God’s favor based on empty words and practices, or on belonging to the right in-group: ““For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly execute justice one with another, …then I will let you dwell in this place” (Jer 7:5,7). John the Baptist further underlines this element of the teaching by declaring: “For I...

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You know not on what day your Lord is coming.

John W Gillis — Mon, 28 Nov 2022 04:55:00 +0000

Jesus’ depiction of the coming “of the Son of Man” stands in pretty stark contrast to popular ideas of how things might end, or at least of how the race my move into a new kind of future. We largely live among the “don’t worry, be happy” crowd – many of whom do not believe a word of the testimony concerning the last things, while others of them accept some notion of Divine judgment and some version or another of eternal or “heavenly” life, but who are at least implicitly and often explicitly convinced that such eventualities are of no real consequence, on the assumption that “everybody goes to heaven”, an assertion informed by a conviction that a loving God would never condemn one of His beloved children to eternal damnation. Ironically, these latter will often admit of particular exceptions to the “nobody goes to hell” doctrine (such as, guess who!!), although its far from clear how they avoid having to reconcile that with their “no loving God would do that” principle. No small number of them seem to believe that there is a corresponding (and more urgent!) mission to build heaven on earth by advancing peace and justice in...

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Let Us Go Rejoicing

John W Gillis — Sat, 19 Nov 2022 19:26:07 +0000

The liturgical year culminates this week in the celebration of the joyous and triumphant solemnity of Christ the King. In the Entrance Antiphon, the Church echoes the cry of the numberless host of heaven, witnessed to in the Revelation to St John, acclaiming in loud voices the worthiness of the Lamb that was slain (Rev 5:12). In the Collect, She prays “that the whole creation, set free from slavery,” might ceaselessly praise God – thus joining...

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Close to the Edge at 50

John W Gillis — Mon, 19 Sep 2022 04:29:36 +0000

Yes’ seminal Close to the Edge was released 50 years ago this month, on September 13th, 1972. I was twelve years old, having just started seventh grade at Coolidge Junior High School, and I was oblivious to the music of Yes, with the exception of their hit song from earlier in the year: “Roundabout”. It would be another couple of years before I was introduced to this work, but once I was, it became my favorite album, and the one I would measure all other contemporary music against, to this day. In my mind, nothing over the now many years ever did quite measure up to it, with the exception of Yes’ Relayer album, released at the end of 1974, about half a year after I’d first heard CTTE. I’m hardly alone in my judgment, as CTTE seems to be, while not the consensus pick for best prog rock album in the genre’s history, at least a pretty clear majority pick. The album’s three songs embody everything interesting that was going on in music at the time, from the wildly frenetic polyrhythmic opening of “Close to the Edge” to the competing strains of minimalism, folksiness, and quasi-symphonic bombast of “And...

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The Banned Books Scam

John W Gillis — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 04:37:16 +0000

“Banned Book Week” is September 18-24, and my local public library (the Morse Institute Library) has let its freak flag fly and got out ahead of the curve by starting its promotion early. The display was promptly praised on a local Facepalm™ group, where it received an overwhelmingly (though not entirely) positive response. I had to admit to finding it rather embarrassing. “Freedom is reading a banned book” sounds like the philosophical musings of an over-indulged 14-year old planning a coup out at the vacation house to overthrow the patriarchy, just as soon as the Che Guevara sneakers and t-shirt show up from Amazon Prime. It also smacks of disingenuity. Neither the sample books on the pre-fabricated display nor the entries being filled in by the engaged public seemed to me to be very “banned”, and I had my doubts the folks driving the campaign have in mind overturning the decades old decisions remove the Bible from public school curricula. Between the QR code printed on the display and the library network’s webpage for “Books Under Threat”, I was let to two different lists of suppressed works. The first list was topped by a New York Times #1 bestselling book,...

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