"Inadequate" faith

"Dysmas has faith smaller than a mustard seed, and it blossoms into a tree of eternal life, a tree of paradise. Christ's response to our faith is ever so much greater than our faith. Give him an opening, almost any opening, and he opens life to wonder beyond measure."

"When our faith is weak, when we are assailed by contradictions and doubts, we are tempted to look at our faith, to worry about our faith, to try to work up more faith. at such times, however, we must not look to our faith but look to him. Look to him, listen to him, and faith will take care of itself." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I knew I had to have previously blogged on some of this, or on the later, somewhat repetitive one that was underlined by my friend Ellie who gave me this book at a time when I was concerned over the weakness of my faith. I think we put so much stress on ourselves concerning our perceived lack of faith because we are so often tempted to think of our faith as the way we earn or deserve our salvation. It's especially tempting when we've been told that we're saved by faith alone, putting the emphasis slightly in the wrong place compared with the scripture that says we are saved by grace through faith. Luther added "alone," and insisted that the "papists" would never get it out. 

But "faith alone" can still give us the wrong impression that our salvation is up to us. Our faith is itself is a gift God gives us. Yes, we have a responsibility to respond to it, but that response is also God's gift to us. It's all grace. We don't in any way earn our place in Christ, even by our response to him. All we do is cooperate in his plan for us, but that participation is still his gift. This is why the "faith alone" versus "faith plus works" argument is such a futile waste of breath. It's all grace. 

And that's why it's so useless to try to debate who has forfeited their place by the way they have failed to cooperate with grace. We have all failed in some way to do so. Over-focusing on our faith is like over-scrutinizing our sin: both things take our focus off of Jesus and his call and example, though that's an inadequate word, to love. It's inadequate because what we really need is for Jesus to love through us, to work through our will and actions to express his love into the lives of those around us. 

Envying the "Good Thief"

I'm not leading off this post with a quotation right now, and if you just read one it's because I came back in and added it when I get that far in the book. Also, I've written a little about this thought before, from a different angle. But I have been thinking about the implications of yesterday's post and wanted to capture this thought.

I think it says a lot about our miscomprehension of sin that we either begrudge or envy those who experience deathbed conversions. "They're sneaking in at the last minute!" we protest, "It isn't fair!" When he told us that we can only enter the kingdom as little children, this isn't what the Lord meant! In fact, Jesus told an entire long parable about this issue so that we wouldn't miss the point. Still, we don't get it.

Maybe that's partly because, due to the creation narrative concerning our fall from grace, we view work as a necessary evil that we must bear, so neither we nor the workers in the parable consider meaningful labor as God's gift to us. Even when it's the incredible opportunity to share God's love with the beloved, we think of the labor as a chore. And secondly, because we have partaken of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (really? four "of's" in one phrase?) we decide for ourselves that sin is pleasant to engage in, and even good for us. As a result, we are jealous of those who "get" to partake in sin their whole lives and never "have to" do any work to promote the kingdom, yet still manage to squeak into "their heavenly reward" at the very end of their lives. 

I could offer the concept of Purgatory as a solution to this issue, and as a Catholic I believe it's a valid one with a good Scriptural foundation. But I think the point that Fr. Neuhaus is going to make, probably somewhere in this chapter, is a more pertinent one. The truth is that God has not and will not withhold from us anything that is truly good for us. He may be in the business of using even our sin to achieve his purposes, to bring us to our senses so we return home to him. But we are still better off when we choose to walk with him at every opportunity. The real reward of serving God in his kingdom and knowing his love even while we walk on this earth is that we get to know and serve God, which is a greater joy and blessing than any sinful temptation. 

And doing so doesn't make us less of an undeserving recipient of grace that the good thief or deathbed confessor. It just allows us to receive more joy as we journey through this world toward our eternal home.

I'm a thief!

"Recall now the two criminals. Mentioned in all four Gospels, they were called thieves by two of the Gospel writers. Whatever else they had stolen in their lives, the one, commonly called 'the good thief,' stole at the end a reward he did not deserve." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I am convinced that the chief obstacle to Christians living our calling is our failure to realize that we are all, at best, the good thief. At whatever point we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we enter into the transformative journey to become Christ present in the world. And yet, rather than embrace the truth that we remain unworthy of the priceless gift that God has given us through Jesus, we often live our lives as though the purpose of our faith is to help us reach the point at which we no longer need a Savior. I'm pretty certain that isn't God's plan for us, but rather that we continually embrace our complete dependence on God's grace and mercy as poured out for us in Christ Jesus. 

We think of heaven as a reward, and indeed it is. But it is Jesus' reward, not ours. At our best moment, we are the good thief, undeserving of grace but receiving it because God is love and we, wretched though we be, are God's beloved sons and daughters. We deserve that no more than we do our own conception. 

The Great Reversal

 "Yet it hardly seems possible that injustice could be set right by a still greater injustice, that wrong could be set right by a still greater wrong. That is what St. Paul seems to suggest, however, in the passage in which he speaks of God in Christ reconciling the world to himself:  "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God." The language is radical. It is not simply that he bore the consequences of sin, but that he was made to be sin. The great reversal reverses all of our preconceptions: God must become what we are in order that we might become what God is. To effectively take our part, he must take our place." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Fr. Neuhaus goes on in the next few pages to further probe this idea of how we struggle to accept this truth because it fundamentally offends our sense of justice. Everything in us screams that this cannot be right, despite our having everything to gain from it. 

So why do we resist it? Could it be because we are afraid to embrace its implications? Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation" (Lk 11:4). If God has taken the judgment we deserve upon himself, the first part of this verse calls us to a response that portends potentially great consequences. As for the second part, we have long believed the lie that our desires are a good thing and our sin is no big deal. We're fond of our temptations, and embracing the great reversal means that we must recognize the truth so that we can receive the mercy we have been given.

There is no way to accept God's mercy without becoming vessels of it for others.

Giving myself timelessness

I do not ask you to forget the present and imagine that it is Holy Week. Rather, I invite you to be open to the thought that you are now calling the present is Holy Week, for all time was there, is there, at the cross. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I have previously blogged on this passage here, and given the subject matter I shouldn't be surprised that it still seems relevant as I start reading this book for the fifth or sixth time. I've reflected on it so often that I will probably often find, as I'm prompted to write again by this excellent read, that there are few passages I haven't already written about. Still, this is part of my enjoyment of this great book, and I am certain it will continue to be relevant to my faith journey. I will therefore share, probably with no audience, my thoughts as I progress through it again in the upcoming Lenten season. After all, I'm in a different place from where I've ever been before, so I can expect to have new insights. 

I have actually tried to pick this book up a couple times in more recent years, since my last total reading. But I've always concluded that I've waited too late into Lent or Holy Week to read the whole thing. I've therefore skipped over this beginning part, and as a result missed coming back to this central point that makes the entire rest of the book work for me, as I discussed in that previous post. Relationships deepen when the present obscures other urgencies. So this year I hope to give myself the gift of fully rediscovering this treasure as I take the time to reflect on Jesus' love as revealed in this defining purpose of His Incarnation. I hope to keep the demands of life from distracting me from reading and meditating until I find something I want to reflect on, perhaps for the second or third occasion. I hope to enter more deeply still the relationship to which my loving God always calls me, being drawn more fully into the unfathomable depths of boundless Love.

Lenten journey

Nice day. Good men's group. Ok retreat on a subject I love. Glad i didn't go to Columbus, as tired as i was. Soup stock cooking. Decent nap. Nice games with wife and granddaughter.

Challenges nonetheless. It is hard being the only one in a relationship who recognizes when they should apologize.

More strange glory

In the cross we see that of which humanity is capable: self-transcendence in surrender to the Other. All the evidence to the contrary, we are capable of love. The sign of shame and death becomes the sign of cosmic possibility. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

It is certain that I am again not going to complete this book this Lent, even despite having very few times I have been inspired to write about new passages on which I haven't previously reflected. Taking two weeks off will do that, I suppose.

Fr. Neuhaus speaks of the strange glory of the cross. Even before first reading this excellent book, I was in agreement with him, as I spoke of the cross in a specific context. Considering Ephesians 5, I have often referred to a paraphrase I once read of the verse Husbands, love your wives as Christ loves the Church, which was rendered, Husbands, go the way of the cross for your wives. I would tell my fellow married friends how we consider the cross something to be avoided, but Jesus shows us that it is something to be embraced, that there is in fact no love without sacrifice. Love is selfless, and avoiding pain is not.

In the midst of a hurt, we can have trouble thinking of the harm that someone has done to us in such terms. It can seem unhealthy to keep leaving ourselves vulnerable. But I have seen, even recently, how the right focus on the other in the context of what I have been forgiven can serve to bring healing. It isn't easy, or natural, but it can be a glorious thing.

Reflection, Good Friday, 2014

First of all, I felt a little cheated today by having not remembered to claim two hours on the adoration schedule instead of just one. I could have stayed longer, but I know the guy who comes after me treasures some time alone there as much as I do - though of course either of us would be glad for company by more participants who wish to keep watch for a while in the night.  (Post-adoration additions are smaller and in parentheses.)

God's plan is not to rescue a religious elite from an otherwise botched creation, but to restore all things in Christ. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Through him all things were made - Nicene Creed, 1975 ecumenical version (ICET)

Are made. We must be restored in Christ, are not whole until we are indeed fully restored in Christ, precisely because we are made in him. In him we live, and move, and have our being, as St. Paul professed to the Athenians (Acts 17, 28). Why do we expect to find ourselves in any way other than the Way, the Truth, and the Life?

(Oh, there is so much more to be said about this! I could not capture it all in the moment nor, I suspect, in a hundred lifetimes!

Why do we insist on viewing our existence as something outside of or independent from God? Earlier Fr. Neuhaus has lamented that even those who serve God with their lives have this tendency to think of our corporeal world as the real one and our spiritual world as, well, something less than real.  

Knowing that we would reject him in the Garden of Eden and repeatedly throughout history, God nevertheless loved -- I should say "loves," as God is eternally in the present tense -- us so much that he created us anyway, along with the plan for our deliverance back to him. So we are made through the eternal Son and restored in him. There is nothing else for us to be restored to!  Yet we insist on keeping "our" stuff -- our family, our career, our finances, our entertainment, our recreation, our "real lives" -- to ourselves and seeking God to what we consider the minimal degree necessary to accomplish our goals: being rescued, becoming the people we think we ought to be. Anything beyond this and we begin to think that we are the ones being crucified by God's unreasonable demands of us.

God longs to fully restore us in Christ, and is waiting only for us to want to be truly and fully restored.)  

(That Christ is the only way of salvation:) Many Christians are embarrassed by this claim. They are intimidated by a culture that decrees that all truths are equal. Who are you to claim that you have the truth and others do not? That is indeed an intimidating question, unless we understand that we do not have the truth in the sense that it is ours by virtue of our having discovered it; we do not have the truth in the sense of it being a possession under our control . . .  

But Christ is not my truth or your truth; he is the truth. He is not one truth among many. He is the truth about everything that is true. He is the universal and cosmic truth. Everything that is true -- in religion, philosophy, mathematics or the art of baseball -- is true by virtue of participation in the truth who is Christ. The problem is not that non-Christians do not know truth; the problem is that they do not know that the truth they know is the truth of Christ. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

What is truth? - John 18, 38 (Pontius Pilate)

(This passage is so stunningly complete that I can add only a prayer:)

Lord, help me to stop chasing the world for a truth that accommodates me (and my desires, my vision). We each have a truth, or understanding(, to which we cling). Let mine no longer be more important to me than you are. Help me to see that the biggest obstacle to all things being restored to you -- the biggest for which I have responsibility, at least -- is my selfish, stubborn insistence that I have been "restored enough," so that I might cling to my sinful unrestoredness.

A certain cognitive humility is in order at this point and at all points in our talking about God and his ways . . . . Now all our talk about God, including the God-given talk of the Bible, is by analogy. That is to say, the mind of God infinitely surpasses the human mind, the Creator infinitely surpasses the creature. Analogy means that we can draw inferences and make comparisons. We can say, for instance, that God is to the world as the artist is to his or her work. But in saying that we should not think that we thereby understand God or his relationship to the world. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 put it very nicely: "No similarity can be found so great but that the dissimilarity is even greater." God is always infinitely "more" and infinitely "other." . . . Therefore it is rightly said that all theology is finally doxology. That is to say, all analysis and explanation finally dissolves into wonder and praise. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Cognitive humility indeed. Yet we insist that our minds are individually -- or, at least, collectively -- capable of (comprehending and) containing all truth. Could there be a prouder concept? And Christians are -- I am -- as guilty of this as anyone. "The truth is nothing other than I understand it to be," we think in our conceit. Even as revealed by God's very Word in sacred Scripture, the sum of all that all of our minds know about God is still infinitely less than God himself, and will be for all time, for God is beyond time. But Jesus restores us to himself in time so that all of his creation may enter into a God and an eternity that we cannot otherwise begin to even conceive.

(How timely relative to my rereading of this relationship of theology and doxology is Pope Francis' reminder this week to the theologians of the Church to remain rooted in prayer, and especially of the dangerous effects of theology that is not thus grounded. In Christian circles we often refer to the difference between knowing about God and knowing God personally, in a relationship that can only be made possible by the Holy Spirit's --  God's -- presence and movement within us. When we spend too much time studying and analyzing and not enough time praying, we become foolishly proud of what we think we have figured out about God. We scorn the humble simplicity that must form the foundation of a right relationship with a God who is utterly unreachable except by his grace-full condescension to his beloved creatures.)

I thankfully find myself, at the end of this hour, dissolving into worship and praise. May it always be so! You are so worthy, Lord!  Help me to trust in you, to entrust my life to you, to know that you are the only Way, Truth and Life that ever matter, and to be the only One that I ever desire.

More on humility

The story is told of the rabbi and cantor who, on Yom Kippur day, the Day of Atonement, lament their sins at great length, each concluding that he is a nobody. Then the sexton, inspired by their example, laments his sins and declares that he, too, is a nobody. "Nuh," says the rabbi to the cantor, who is he to be a nobody?" - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

How this story sums up our struggle with true humility. My mom was a huge Mac Davis fan, and I'll always remember his tongue-in-cheek song,

O Lord, It's hard to be humble, when you're perfect in every way
I can't wait to look in the mirror, 'cause I get better looking each day
To know me is to love me. I must be a hell of a man
O Lord, it's hard to be humble, but I'm doing the best that I can.

There's a pretty clear difference in my mind between thinking that I must be more humble and realizing that I think entirely too highly of myself. There is also a difference between humility and self-deprecation or worse, self-loathing.

I think that perhaps Fr. Spitzer's emphasis on striving to identify with our contributive identity rather than the comparative one serves us well on this topic, too. If I find my own value only through perpetual comparison with others, I am unlikely to able to find healthy humility. On the other hand, if the primary sense in which I come to realize that I am somebody is an awareness that I am somebody the eternal Son was willing to come carry home, then I have both the humility of knowing I need him and the worth that comes from knowing that I am his.

There remains an interesting trap, though, in allowing the Spirit to apply this humility to all areas of our lives. We can be completely in balance in some areas and have others that remain problematic for us.

So while he had the wrong reasons in mind, Mac at least had the title right.

Dealing with the overwhelming

God became man.  We say it trembling.  We say it puzzling.  But more often we say it rotely, counting on routine to buffer what we cannot bear.  - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

There are many worthwhile passages throughout this book about which I have previously reflected and posted, yet my checking always results in the discover that, yes, I've written about this passage, but not about this thought that occurs to me as I read it now.

In this case, Fr. Neuhaus has captured succinctly the idea that I find myself drawn to and expanding on. Our limited minds must reduce the overwhelming to things we can manage.

This is why children of alcoholism or abuse get "stuck," developing and reinforcing and ultimately internalizing the coping mechanisms which suit us for surviving our immediate threats but which serve us ill for dealing with life as adults. All I could concern myself at those times when my dad was raving drunk was being invisible, not becoming the thing he was mad at. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have struck me in his drunken frustration, but it was obviously a thing to be feared. And it worked consistently, just like my dog barking at the mail carrier every day works: just as the postal worker leaves every single day, my invisibility every drunken evening kept the unknown big meltdown from happening, and he was always okay (for at least a while) the next day, and we could both mostly pretend that nothing untoward had happened, and I grew to believe that not making waves was how to survive life.

(I can't remember if I've written, either here or in the book, about the night he lost his balance and broke the three-legged table in our living room. I don't recall if this is a real memory or not, but I seem to remember trying to fit the broken leg back in place so it could be glued, and it not staying in place because we didn't have a clamp handy that was shaped properly to hold it. I think I thought that, if I could just help him fix that table leg, whatever his motivation - the avoidance of mom's ire, for instance; I suppose he was every bit as fear-driven as I was - maybe he would finally be proud of me. I think that it was without any rancor toward me - rather with a sense of his own guilt - that he told me pretty quickly not to worry about it.)

The recurring experience of his inebriation, and that other one from that summer morning, left me with a well-developed "pretend-normal" dynamic when it came time to deal with the repeated sexual abuse I later experienced. (My abuser's skill at redefining what he did to me as something very different played a big role in that, too.) Yes, the brain absolutely does what it has to in order to deal with things that are too big for it to handle.

And God is definitely too big for our finite faculties to handle. Even the (comparatively) smallest parts of our theology can be too big to get our minds around fully or for very long. The Incarnation is a centerpiece of Christian theology, and it is incredibly simple and unfathomably HUGE. We cannot grasp all its implications, so as soon as we get a piece of it we cling to that part as if it's the whole thing, and repeat it by rote - literally, in the creed, "and became man" - without allowing ourselves to grapple with the full truth of what it means. Even the most fervent and studied of us fail to make more than a surface connection between Bethlehem and Calvary, no matter how much we tell ourselves that we get it. Like the Pharisee and the tax collector, when we think we've "gotten" God, we have probably actually moved further from fully entering into the mystery.

Unlike the dysfunction in which I was raised, The beyond-me-ness of God isn't really a thing to be afraid of. (We seem to be back to the idea of the fear of the Lord again, which is a good thing and far different from the things we fear in the normal sense.) Yet we are trained - ingrained, reinforced, internalized - with the idea that things that are so much bigger than us are indeed to be feared in the ordinary sense of the word. Rote minimization of God into a routine we can manage is the natural way of dealing with it, just as it was how I dealt with alcoholism and abuse. But just as I've had to unlearn my thoroughly-integrated ways of looking and experiencing - a process which is doubtless still ongoing - so must we all learn to stop applying our inadequate ways of understanding if we are to fully embrace God with abandon!

A poor reason, and some good ones

Some scholars speculate that "Good Friday" comes from "God's Friday," as "good-bye" was originally "God be by you." But it is just as odd that it should be called God's Friday, when it is the day we say good-bye to the glory of God. Wherever its name comes from, let your present moment stay with this day. Stay a while in the eclipse of the light, stay a while with the conquered One. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

I find myself referring to quotes I've referenced on previous readings of this magnificent book, but in new ways. I've reflected before on the first part of what I've quoted here, but am now really wanting to focus on this latter part; I've only included the first two sentences of this citation because the part I wanted to include refers back to them.

I've been told before by a Catholic adult catechist, almost dismissively, that Catholics do a great job of focusing on Good Friday and a terrible job of truly celebrating Easter. Honoring Fr. Neuhaus' invitation to not rush to the resurrection, I nonetheless find that I am utterly convinced that the reason we're so bad at rejoicing in Jesus' (our) victory is that we are, in fact, just awful at truly entering into all that Good Friday should mean for us. If it were primarily about making us wallow in our guilt then, yes, we would excel at it! If the purpose of our meditation on this day is to make us more neurotic about the terrible thing that we did to Jesus, many of us could stop right now because we have that part down pat! As Jesus told his disciples about being clean, though: But not all. There are definitely some who do not associate enough of their lives with sin that something must be done about. And when I enter into eternity, I pray that I don't find that I am one of them.

But there is so much more about Good Friday for us to enter into than just the surface ideas at which we often stop: that it was my sin and guilt that Jesus bore on the cross so that I could be free from it, that God's love for me is so great that Jesus was willing to do this for me. Please don't think I'm being dismissive of these great tenets of our faith! So many of us have failed to grasp even the surface implications of these glorious truths.

But because God is infinite and eternal and Jesus is God, there is so much more depth to enter into in our reflections on this holy day, more than we can get in a full human lifespan, let alone in the time that most of us spend at the foot of the cross. It will take eternity for us to know it fully, just as to know God fully, in the personal-relationship sense. The purpose of a redeemed soul's prayerful reflection on Good Friday is not to increase our sense of the guilt from which Jesus has set us free, but neither is knowing that we are free from our guilt a good reason to forsake any further reflection.

I find that learning more of the depth and details of this mystery into which we enter (by the Holy Spirit) fills my heart with a greater sense of awe at God's infinite glory as revealed incomparably on the cross. It strengthens my desire to share God's love with those around me who have not chosen (or been able) to immerse themselves in the unfathomable depths of this incomprehensible love. It causes me to marvel at my increased understanding of the infinite vastness and infinitesimal detail of this glorious love. It gets my eyes and thoughts and heart fixed on something - someOne - inexpressibly beyond the limits of my mind.

And it makes me more aware of the utter abandon with which I am called to lay down my own life.

Have a blessed Lent!

The ironic, thirsting truth

I thirst. - Jn 19: 12

I saw this quote last night on the poster which is still up in our church for the Tajci concert the weekend before last, and a fresh (for me) irony hit me right in the face.  Though I've previously reflected and written on this sixth of the Seven Last Words of Christ, in a moment of clarity I realized aspects of it that I had never considered.

God, who has no lack whatsoever but rather is fully complete in Godself, and therefor has no need of us as we experience need or lack, nonetheless thirsts completely for our sake, that is, on our behalf. If you think about it, this makes sense: God is infinite love, and love always desires and seeks the best for the beloved, and desire is thirst, and the best for us is found only in God.

We who have no way of being complete except to find ourselves made whole in God's love often fail to thirst for God in a way that leads us to our fulfillment.  We are too frequently unable to recognize that for which we truly thirst, and we substitute every lesser thirst for our true one.

God's thirst for us, his desire for us for our own sake, is so great that he was willing to go to immeasurable lengths so that we might be satisfied.  Unlimited Christ forsook his glorious eternal throne to become a human bound by time and the rest of physical limitation.  In a very real sense, while he remained fully God, Jesus gave up his godly glory for our sake.  By comparison, the humiliating crucifixion he endured was a small thing, and anyone who really thinks the cross was a small thing doesn't grasp it in the slightest (which is the most that any of us can grasp it). As a result of all he did, God is no more complete than he would have been had he done nothing at all for us. We, on the other hand, receive the opportunity to become completely fulfilled because of God's thirst for us, that is, for our sake.

Yet we are too frequently unwilling to give up any of ourselves for the sake of others or for God, even when it is really the only way to become fully ourselves. Rather, we cling to the tiniest bit of ourselves as if it is our very essence.

So God, who needs us not at all, thirsts greatly for us and seeks us at all cost, while we, who completely need God, often fail to thirst for him or seek him at even the slightest cost.

Hungry

This season of Lent has been too full.  There hasn't been nearly enough emptiness.

It's amazing how even a renewed dedication to regular prayer and reflection can become another thing filling my life, keeping me from entering into the depths of the desert and finding there the spring flowing from the Rock which alone can quench my thirst.

Too, I should be watchful for spiritual snobbishness, be on guard against grasping for an experience rather than a way of walking humbly with the Lord.  I ought not cast aspersions on what God has led me to do thus far.  Let me instead just keep redirecting my attention back to him, knowing that I am not leading myself along this journey, but merely trying to follow where he leads.

My unexpected day

The beginning and end of my day were as expected.  Everything in between was a surprise.

I hadn't gotten the message that there was a funeral this morning, but even if I had I probably wouldn't have realized I wanted to go.  It wasn't until Teri told me whose mom it was that I realized I wanted to go and support the family in their grief.  So instead of getting the second attempt at transferring pictures out to my sister-in-law via e-mail, I showered and dressed and went to the funeral.

I'm pretty sure I've never had a string break in mid-service on one of my classical guitars before today.  About midway through the first communion hymn I heard that distinctive snap, then had to get the broken string out of my way so I could finish the service with the other five.  It was very odd - enough to cause me to miss receiving communion.

After the service, I went downtown to pick up replacement strings.  I knew I was due to change the set even before the one broke this morning, so this was a good opportunity.  Then I stopped at market and picked up a pound of raw honey.  I love raw honey!

When I got home, I was asked to immediately get out of my suit and help finish bathing the dog.  I have no idea how she'd have managed had I not come in.  Then I put together some shrimp salad with the leftovers from last night, (oh, an additional thing that went as planned!) and proceeded to change the strings on my classical.  I basically finished in time to change my clothes for mass, which I wanted to attend because I thought we might have some other area folks in the church for the concert.  My new strings held tune surprisingly well; I just discreetly fine-tuned them once during the service.

The concert was wonderful.  Wonderful!  Tajci and company - including her sister Sanya - provided a very nice musical reflection on Jesus' sacrifice for us.  It was uplifting and moving; I loved how she worked in songs and hymns with which we'd be familiar, yet in new ways that were so interesting.  Pescador de Hombres in Russian, then Spanish!  Via Dolorosa.  A wonderful arrangement of Were You There.  Ah, too many to remember all of.  I loved how she refused to break the narrative, keeping the music going so that we didn't have a chance to offer applause.  It was the first chance I've really had to miss Jubilee; my Lent has had plenty of reflection, but my Fridays have been so busy I haven't had a chance to miss our wonderful Way of the Cross ministry.  After they completed their reflections on Good Friday, they offered some more concert-like selections, even bringing Tajci's sons up to sing on a few songs.

After helping them get torn down following the concert, we finished the evening by being just in time to get Taco Loco to bring home for a late supper.

Ahhhh.

Mysteries (slightly revised)

(4/9)


"God became man." "The Word became flesh." "Incarnation." The words are so familiar to Christians that we become dulled to the astonishing thing they say. The cross shocks and scandalizes and reastonishes, and never more so than in the cry of dereliction, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


I wonder if Fr. Neuhaus put this seeming non sequitur here just to grab our attention. It certainly caught mine. The thing is, it's exactly right to put these two ideas together. These first three phrases happened with the eternal Son's full knowledge of where this miracle would lead. It isn't that the fully human Jesus couldn't have chosen otherwise, it's that God's Son knew in eternity, before the foundation of the world (or, where "before" and "after" have no meaning, for all is now, except that somehow that still implies an element of time which does not exist in eternity if indeed that is more than the "time without end" which may be the best that our time-locked minds can truly grasp), that he did not.  We do not understand how the fully human and fully divine natures of Jesus fit together, do not know "what happened" to the things that God the Son knew in eternity outside of his conception in Mary's womb.  These mysteries are beyond us, not that we should not ponder them.  But that the Incarnation should lead to this dereliction should indeed be a cause for shock, scandal and astonishment for us.

We spoke earlier about the necessity of our speaking about God by analogy. Speaking by analogy, by comparison, can mislead us into thinking there is a smooth correspondence between realities divine and human. But analogy does not mean that there is a neat correspondence between similarities and dissimilarities, that we can gain an approximate and more or less satisfactory understanding of God by reference to our own experience.  No, wherever there is similarity, we discover that the dissimilarity is infinitely greater. - ibid.

I think this final idea was likely borrowed from an earlier writer - St. Augustine, maybe? This seems another non sequitur relative to what comes before it, but again they fit together.  We must get out of our heads the notion that we comprehend God.  The best our finite minds which are bound by time can hope for is the smallest, briefest glimpse of insight into the infinite God who dwells in eternity.  We can never fully understand God, though striving to do so insofar as we are able is a fitting task on which to focus a lifetime of effort.  Some might protest that this would detract from time and effort we should be spending helping our neighbor, when the truth is that our striving to see God more fully always leads us to reach out to our neighbor more than we ever would otherwise.  The Incarnation and the dereliction fit perfectly together in God, even if our understanding of God is insufficient to fully make the connection.

Also, if the most that we can get is a glimpse of God, and that only by analogy, then it must be up to God to reveal Godself to us in the ways which we are able to grasp.  It is fully the work of grace, not of our own understanding nor of our own faith, that delivers us into the presence of God for these brief, astonishing, shocking, scandalous, eternal moments.

And when we cooperate with grace, when we embrace the mystery that is beyond us for all time but will be ours for eternity, we are awestruck.

Good Friday adoration, 2012

Come, let us worship Christ, the Son of God, who redeemed us by his blood. - Good Friday antiphon for the Invitatory Psalm

[Here are my reflections before the Lord in Eucharistic adoration this Good Friday. Square brackets are added at the time of posting]:

Come. Let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us. Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving, and sing joyful songs to the Lord." Ps 95, first stanza.

The Rock through whom God delivered us through the Red Sea is the Rock through whom he gave us water in the desert is the Rock of our salvation from sin and death, is now in the Garden [Gethsemani, but also Eden], in agony. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies, (Rom 8, 22-23) the redemption won for us, but it must groan all the more for what we are doing to the One who created us, the Rock of our redemption. How dare we presume to put him to death?

[I know, it isn't quite like that for us, exactly (see stanza 2 reflection). Still, it is good in moments of temptation to remember the connection between our choice and his suffering under the weight of our sin.]

The Lord is God, the mighty God, the great King over all the gods. He holds in his hand the depths of the earth, and the highest mountains as well. He made the sea, it belongs to him; the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hand." Ps 95, second stanza.

What love the Creator has for us, in submitting to our judgment.
It is the judgment we deserve or, at least, the one we have chosen rather than choosing to be the sons and daughters which God has created us to be. God alone knows enough to judge properly - at least about what really matters: the condition of my/our heart and soul - yet chooses instead to take our judgment upon himself, be it our judgment of ourselves, our judgment of one another, or our presumptuous judgment of him. [When we choose sin we choose our own eternal death over the abundant eternal life that our loving God desires for us. But Christ loves us too much to let this decision which we make in our ignorance stand unchallenged, and so chooses to be put to death for our sake.] He is the One who created everything from nothing.  He didn't merely rearrange what was already there, as we do in grabbing materials to build a wondrous, towering, glorious edifice, or a combination of sound frequencies and amplitudes that have never been put together in precisely that way before, or a neural connection that results in a thought over which others might ponder or wonder (ponder or wander?). Yet he who alone can create something out of nothing is in the Garden, in agony over how he is to be reduced to the nothing of our contemptuous judgment of him. [If we trust in God, we know that we are not reduced to nothing by our death; still, we routinely make others, and most especially God himself, as nothing to us. No one is as nothing to Christ, and these hours demonstrate it as nothing else ever has.]

Come, then, let us bow down and worship, bending the knee before the Lord, our maker, for he is our God and we are his people, the flock he shepherds. Ps 95, third stanza.

The angels come to be with you, Lord, to comfort and encourage. I, who am about to judge you, Lord, who has judged you so often, dare to approach you here, as well.  Full of sorrow for how I have dared and will dare to judge you, is there any comfort at all that I can bring to you for what my sin is bringing you to?  If I cannot bring succor to you, Lord, please at least let me worship you and marvel at the depth of your love and your submission.

Our desire to comfort you is like an abusive parent trying to comfort their child by being tender toward him after hurting him terribly. The child's trauma remains, Lord, just as we are told that the marks of our judgment remain upon the Lamb of God for all eternity.  It is how we recognize you [and our place in you. I can't find the scripture reference to this. I'll add it later if I run across it, but the idea is that, like Thomas, we will recognize Jesus in heaven by his scars].

Today, listen to the voice of the Lord. Do not grow stubborn as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meribah and Massah they challenged and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works. Ps 95, fourth stanza

[I have written so often about this psalm, and alluded to these in my notes from this morning, yet can't seem to find the place where I observed the insights that are gained when we reflect on the two ways the first verse of this stanza are interpreted: as above, and "If today you hear his voice . . . " They both provide important points of view for our approaching and responding to God's presence.]

The Rule of St. Benedict begins with the words Listen carefully, my child, to your master's precepts.  I've also reflected on a couple occasions about the significance of this psalm verse in calling us to reflect on Christ's words from the cross, three of which we will hear in today's Passion reading. And over these last three Lenten years I have written at exhaustive length as inspired by Fr. Neuhaus' book, Death on a Friday Afternoon. It is valuable for us to listen to what you say, Lord, and reflect on what each word means for us. We have stubbornly judged you, concluding that your will and your evaluation are less applicable than our own to our lives. We will doubtless do so again, determinedly hardening our hearts, trusting ourselves and our judgment rather than yours, trying to remake you and your will and your word according to our own image of you rather than allowing you to remake us in yours.  No matter how much we witness the works born in the extremity of your love, we challenge and provoke you.

Forty years I endured that generation. I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not know my ways." So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest." Ps 95, fifth stanza

We cannot enter into our rest in you while we cling to our right to judge in your stead. Do we not see how our judgment leads to agony rather than rest?  The writer of the letter to the Hebrews writes (Heb 4) about our entering into the Lord's sabbath rest. This is the archetype of the eternal "rest" in which we praise and worship you for all eternity!

Pange Lingua Gloriosi!
Sing, my tongue, the Savior's glory!
Of his flesh the mystery sing,
and the blood, all price exceeding,
shed by our immortal King! - St. Thomas Aquinas

[I won't quote all of this wonderful ancient hymn. But it has a special meaning on this holy night as I reflect on what the Lord is and will be experiencing for my sake.] Oh, I won't be able to convey all the thoughts which have flooded me in praying this hymn in this eternal moment!

The Eucharist demonstrates for us how every created thing in nature is transformed in you [including ourselves if we allow it]. It is more than a mere archetype, for this mere matter has actually become you, Lord. [Perhaps, in the end, this will be true for all of your creation?] Yet every thing, all of creation, bears you, by your grace and action.  Yet you are uniquely present in these elements Lord, which bear your body and blood, soul and divinity, to and for us.

Why this tumult among the nations, among peoples this useless murmuring? 
They arise, the kings of the earth; princes plot against the Lord and his Anointed . . . 
Now, oh kings, understand. Take warning, rulers of the earth; serve the Lord . . ." Ps 2

As we cast our judgment upon God, are these verses not speaking of us? Though we may feel powerless, how often is that not in response to a course which we ourselves have put into action [as king and ruler over our own life] when we choose what we deem best for ourselves and our loved ones: a career, a hobby, an addiction, a way of life?

Let me instead do you homage, here now in the Garden and later beneath your cross, Lord, so that I might also do so in your glorious presence for all eternity!

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Ps 22

We often feel forsaken.  I've heard it suggested that Jesus may have prayed this entire Psalm from the cross, and the gospel writer used shorthand to convey it to his audience. [Alternately, Jesus may have been invoking the entire Psalm to his hearers, lacking the energy to pray it aloud entire.]

Whatever our emotional state - joy, despair, excitement, abandonment, sadness, longing - we can find its counterpart in the Psalms, and know that we are praying these emotions using the very words which Jesus prayed, too.

The Hebrews reading from today's Office of Readings (also the source for the Psalms on which I've reflected thus far) is especially powerful to spend some time in on Good Friday!  [I didn't record any specific reflections on it this year, but relished it nonetheless. But I wanted to spend some time with Fr. Neuhaus before the Lord in this special time.]

At the entrance of the chapel of Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity in the Bronx are the words, "I THIRST, I QUENCH." These are the same words at the entrance of the community's chapels all over the world . . . In Rome I said Mass for the Missionaries of Charity in their plain little chapel just outside St. Peter's Square. Six sisters, including two from India, one from Indonesia and a formidable Valkyrie, perhaps from Sweden, operate a soup kitchen and refuge for the street people of Rome. The intesity of the sisters' devotion and the simplicity of their lives embarrassed me.  How complex and cluttered with plans and projects is my life compared to theirs. Then it came to me: Their austere attentiveness was a thirsting for the water of life. It was an ecstatic thirsting. In the communion their thirst was quenched and, at the same time, intensified." Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

[Fr. Neuhaus is writing on the fifth word, I thirst. Many (including me) have written on this word extensively, about how Jesus' physical thirst is a sign of the thirst which led the eternal Son to become incarnate knowing we would judge and condemn him.  His thirst for his beloved prodigal sons and daughters is greater.

After reading the passage above, I seemed to sense the following message:]

Enter into my thirst, and allow me to slake it.
You hunger and thirst already, not realizing what you truly need to have your longing satisfied.
I am all you need.  Every other longing of your heart and your life - beyond your physical needs for food and shelter, which I supply - is really your longing for me, which you so often misattribute and misinterpret. You turn to that which can never satisfy your thirst when I am waiting with a fountain of my love and my presence [for they are inseparable]. It is no mere sip of wine on a sponge that I offer you, but a river of grace that leads to an ocean of love. Yet it is true that when you allow me to quench your thirst, you will find yourself sharing instead in my thirst for my people whom I love.  I long for you, my dear one, and you will know when my thirst for you is quenched, because you will thirst for your brothers and sisters. This wholesome thirst would drain you, were I not its source and its fulfillment.
I am thirsty.  I know that you thirst, as well.  Enter in, and discover my true thirst, and find its quenching in me.

[I then continued reading, to encounter this paragraph in the next half page, as if in verification:]

From the cross, "I thirst." And those who kneel at his cross share his thirst, which is both a thirst for him and for all for whom he thirsts. - ibid.

[The final quotes I jotted down prior to leaving the chapel this morning are too disjointed to quite work as posting.  Fr. Neuhaus refers to this event by and in which the world is refounded, and quotes a half dozen scripture passages in which it is clear that these events now fulfilled were planned "from the foundation of the world." To understand this properly we must enter into the mindset of eternity again, not "time without end" but the absence of time, in which our thoughts and actions are not "foreseen" so that we have no choice in them, but seen as we will choose them. It isn't that God had to respond to our fallen condition by sending a Savior who fulfilled all the conditions he had established through prophecy. It is rather that God has seen our need, has seen the choices we are making, and prepared for us the law and the prophets so that we would recognize this Deliverer because of them.  This was his plan in response to us from eternity before there was such a thing as "before," and as it is fulfilled in Christ and in our embracing of Christ, is the plan for eternity when there is no longer any such thing as "after."

Lord, help me to enter more fully into the eternity you have prepared for me.]

Behold

"Come follow me," Jesus says.  The invitation resounds through all the time there is and ever will be, and all who respond in faith - all who exchange their "I" for the "I" of the Christ who lives within them - make their way, one way or another, to the foot of the cross. There they find themselves with John and Mary and a host of bedraggled saints and sinners whose hour has come. And to each of these brothers and sisters in whom he forever lives, to each of us, Jesus says, "Behold, your mother." And to Mary, "Behold, your children.  Behold me." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


So much theology in one brief quotation.  Fr. Neuhaus has spent pages developing these thoughts:

• the role of our earthly mothers in nurturing our sense of our self.
• that Christ was telling Mary, John, and - most of all - us that he lives in us insofar as we are willing to allow him to, by the Holy Spirit's presence. 
• that it is not our own initiative that brings this potential into reality in our lives, though it will only be real to the degree that we must cooperate with God's love.
• how much John must have learned about the Lord's Incarnation and the early days of his life as Mary spent the latter days of hers with him.
• the nature of the exchange in which we so unfairly exchange our mortal, limited lives for God's immortal, eternal life.

Yet sometimes I insist on clinging to my own "I."  There are sometimes parts of me that can seem more important to stubborn me than reflecting Christ in all things.  I suspect this is true for everyone.  Don't you do it, too?

How sad for us.

And yet our hope and our way is immeasurably greater than our limited ability and willingness to give ourselves over to his grace. So patient with us, he ever leads us to embrace his "I" more fully.

Wonder and wisdom

In wonder is wisdom born.  The most elementary and at the same time the most profound of questions is, "Why is there anything at all and not nothing?"  Why am I?  we must never get embarrassed about asking something so basic, so apparently naive. In our supposed sophistication we may suppress the question, we may become practiced at forgetting it, but we never really get beyond it. The fact that I find myself in a boundless world of innumerable existent beings is astonishing beyond measure. - Fr. Richard John Neuhuas, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Our worst response to these questions is not suppression nor jaded forgetfulness, but disdain for those who insist on looking for an answer to them.  The current egotistical line of thought is that we are above needing an answer to such a question, that the search for significance is a fool's errand and the wise person is beyond it.  And there go both the wonder and the wisdom it engenders.

I don't need an explanation for my existence; if I am a mere insignificant speck in the vast universe, I can live with that for another few fleeting decade-attomoments and make the most of the life and love with which I am blessed therein.  But though I may not need it for the sake of my ego, I am thrilled to have one, and such a wonderful Answer that alone explains every mystery over which I wonder.  All of salvation history points to him, as on the cross he fulfills every prophetic foreshadowing which God knew we would need to recognize him.

Jesus, Mary

Ad Jesum per Mariam. "To Jesus through Mary." The Latin inscription is over the altar of a small parish church in Quebec near where I was born. The phrase appears frequently in Catholic architecture and devotional literature. One might object that it should be Ad Mariam per Jesu. After all, our access to Mary and all the saints, both living and dead, is "through Christ." But the two ways of saying it are not in contradiction nor even in tension. At least, they need not be. We have said that to think about Jesus is to think about Mary.  Even more it is the case that to think about Mary is to think about Jesus. From the very beginnings of Christianity, what Christians have said about Mary is a consequence of what they said about Christ. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon.


"What we have said" is stuff I haven't written about here, but Fr. Neuhaus has already made the case that it is necessary to consider Mary in considering Jesus if we are to enter into any meaningful reflection into how he could have been both fully God and fully man. As I have written, just earlier today, his mother was there at the very beginning and at the very end of Jesus' earthly life, so there is that to think about.

It was the role of Mary - as it is true of every saint - to bear Christ into the world.  In looking to follow Christ and to fulfill our mission and calling, it is good for us to consider how others have done so, and marveling over the work which Christ has done includes being amazed at how he has worked in the lives of others.  God's grace transforms, and seeing how he transforms others allows us to participate in his transformation of us.

The greatest gift

Stabat mater dolorosa. At the cross her station keeping. There was nothing else to be done, except to be there.  The presence of our helplessness is our gift to the helpless. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon


Not understanding this is why so many people struggle to find some way to comfort the grieving, and end up saying such hurtful things in the process. I'm likely as guilty as anyone of this. We're taught to resist our helplessness, not to embrace it, so we struggle for some words of ours that will bring comfort when only our presence will make any difference at all.  The gift of our self is the best thing we have to offer.

It is the gift which God offers to us.