JtB

In Advent, we hear a lot from Isaiah and John the Baptist. Isaiah has big time prophecy about the coming of the messiah, and John is the prophet who directly precedes the messiah. So their testimony is pretty relevant.

Shocking as it may be, I'm not super learned on Old Testament matters, so I'm going New Testament on this one. Let's talk Jay Tee Bee.

John was not the Light, but He came to testify to the Light.

There we have it.

Well, let's backtrack.

Jesus Christ was and is God. The Son is a person of the Trinity. Jesus is God-become-man, the Word-made-flesh. Jesus' ministry and preaching is distinctive because it is literally the words and actions of God. He is unmediated, direct revelation. Jesus Christ was and is God.

John, on the other hand, was not and is not God; he is a prophet, a human preaching and acting humanly on his faith. His contemporary, Mary, is a beautiful model of human service to us as well (fun fact: did you know Mary is the only person assuredly present in all three eras [The Law and the Prophets, The Life, Ministry, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, and The Church] of salvation history?). She is an example in her contemplation, her motherhood, and her 'yes' to God's will, but her immaculate conception is an element of special grace that distinguishes her a bit. It doesn't make her less human; it shows us how someone can integrate one's own faith and heart with God's grace to realize the peace of freely aligning one's will with God. But John is yet another of the many amazing models we have in our tradition of faith.

A wise man once concluded, "On a basic level, John the Baptist was a faithful follower of Christ, ultimately martyred after being jailed. So, as someone who almost certainly died in faith in Christ, he is someone Christians should hold as a saint, 'part of the one holy catholic church comprised of Old Testament and New Testament believers alike.' John’s life and mission were righteous and fulfilled the prophecies of the messiah’s forerunner. John’s answering this call to prepare the way for Christ and faithfully serving God through his preaching and baptisms are evidence of John’s goodness and his obedience to God’s will. His service to God prompts Jesus to call him 'the greatest among men.'"

Hey, I had to quote my thesis.

The greater point with John is that he wasn't Christ, and he knew that. No matter what people wanted him to be, no matter how many people badgered him, he insisted he was just preparing a way for his Lord.

John had disciples following his lead. He had throngs of people coming to listen to his message. He had people piling in to receive baptism. However, he remained committed to the reality that what he was pointing toward was greater and bigger than him.

It's a beautiful reality that John baptized people into what would become our Church because baptism into Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is an initiation that commits a person and his/her life to the reality that they are part of someone and something bigger than themself. Just as John kept humble in anticipation of Jesus the Lord and Savior who was to bring salvation to humanity, we too must embrace the call to service and ministry in the name of He who gave us life.

Christ is God, so His example is perfect. Jesus' words and actions show us perfect mercy, compassion, and love. Idealism is helpful to us because the effort to try to be perfect calls us to constant self-reflection and improvement toward the perfect love of God. However, we ultimately cannot be Christ. We are not Gods but rather God's - mediators of the grace of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In this reality, where we are conduits for the grace of Christ through our faith and our relationships, John gives us a model: John was not Christ but persistently pointed the way to Christ and cleared a way for Him in the world and in hearts.

We must strive to be like Christ. Though we are imperfect and cannot be Christ, we can be vigilant in prayer to grow into being fuller mediators of God's love and grace. Additionally, though, we can completely be John the Baptist's. This is not an idealistic pursuit that cannot be fully attained; it is a realistic and realizable goal for our journeys of faith. We can always be pointing to Christ in our words and actions, and we can make a way for Christ in the world.
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Added @ 5:10pm, a post-script - from the conclusions of my thesis' section on John:

"... [There is] great responsibility placed in the hands of everyone invited to Christ’s Kingdom: John’s imperfections amid his righteousness were excused in part due to ignorance; the citizens of Christ’s Kingdom have the fullness of God and His revelation in the prophecies of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in Christ and the New Testament, Christ’s Church, and its Tradition. In the Old Testament, earthly promises were the focus as the fullness of the Kingdom was yet to come. Now that Christ has come, “that man from the time of John the Baptist is assured of a speedy entrance into such an everlasting and blessed Kingdom, [and] it is no longer necessary for those promises of earthly well-being to be brought forward.' Given the fullness of God in the Incarnate Word that is Christ, Christians can access the fullness of God and taste the Kingdom through Christ. The unique actions of God with His Chosen People in the Old Testament are historically past—God’s love and care has been newly offered through humanity’s redeemer. It is up to the faith of God’s renewed people to embrace the fullness offered in Christ and grow to realize and experience His Kingdom."

Don't Knock It 'til You Try It

So here we are: Advent 2011. The dreaded new translation of the mass is upon us in full force, with all of its (con)substantial changes and roof homecomings.

We who have gone seeking have heard so much from many angles, decrying the archaicness of the text, the misguided efforts of the Church dedicating attention to something that isn't that important, and how we don't even know what these new words mean. There's plenty of truth to a lot of these opinions.

Some of the wordings aren't as smooth as we might like; restoring the balance of Latin and Hebrew poetic structure and faithfully translating a no-longer-spoken-conversationally language is not going to sound conversational. The Church does have bigger problems, from the lingering shadows of the abuse scandals to the tensions between clerical and lay ministry/leadership. Some of these wordings are confusing- consubstantial? God of Hosts? under my roof?

My question is, "so what?" At the end of the day, it's all part of an effort to be more faithful to the liturgical tradition of our Church, which stands on the two legs of Scripture and Tradition. It's a way for English speakers to say words that more closely follow the Latin that is the basis for every language's translation of the mass, so that from east to west - er, I mean, from the setting of the sun to its rising - we all have as similar a mass as our universal church can have across borders and language barriers. One of my favorite practical effects of our transition: smaller language groups that lack the resources in terms of Latin scholars and studies translate their mass from English to their own language rather than directly from Latin. So by giving them a more faithful English translation as a starting point, we are coming closer to their celebrations of the mass as well.

Something to not lose in all this: the priests, part of the hierarchy so often criticized and derided, the hierarchy that approved this change, have even more than us to learn and review. Their parts have changed more than ours, and new things have been added to the giant Roman Missal that guides them through their celebrations of our masses. Don't overlook the beauty of some of their new words.

My two favorites:

1. As the priest lays his hands over the gifts to call the Spirit over them, he prays, "Make holy, therefore, these gifts, we pray, by sending down your Spirit upon them like the dewfall." What a beautiful image to use! It is a mystery of our faith that Jesus becomes present in the bread and wine as His Body and Blood through the Eucharist, and part of the prayers that effect this is this calling of the Spirit. How can we explain this loving action of our God? What if we just invoke the image of dew in the morning? When we awake, the grass and lawns of our neighborhoods are damp with the gentle, benign moisture of the morning, water that hasn't come from rain or storms that we can see and hear or from hoses or watering cans when we tend to our lawns; it is water that appears through a fairly easily explained process but nonetheless invokes some childlike awe and wonder for the simple splendor of it. So give this new imagery a shot - the Holy Spirit coming over the gifts to prepare them for Christ like the morning dewfall!?

2. After the gifts have been presented and the altar has been prepared, the priest invites us to begin the prayers over the Eucharist with him. This change to the invitation is so subtle that you might miss it, but when you catch, it will change your 'tude. "Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable..." That's right. No longer is our participation in the sacrifice of the Eucharist only implied or understood; it is explicitly invoked in prayer. Our sacrifice - our self-offering of our sins, our penitence, our prayers, our gratitude - is invited specifically to the altar. The reality that we are united in our baptism in Christ as we gather as His Body to celebrate the Eucharist invites us to share all of those things of our self with each other in the Eucharist. Then, we, like the bread that is His Body, Jesus and His people, are broken, shared, and sent forth. It begins with this invitation from the priest. So listen and let your heart be drawn in anew as you're specifically invited to the reality of the Eucharist that has been there all along but not spoken so specifically to us until now.

I could go on and on about pros and cons of the new words. The major point is that no one should really be too opinionated either way. People should talk with one another to share their feelings in community, but the point is for us to continue to deepen our spiritual commitments and live our faith. The mass - the Word and the Eucharist - is the basis and rhythm for doing this. So let's engage it prayerfully, but remember the end we all are working toward is relationship with ourselves, with others, and with God. And hey - give it a shot and spend a few Sundays and daily masses with it before you get to fired up either way. Don't knock it 'til you try it.

Bread and Word

Remember how for forty years now the Lord, your God, has directed all your journeying in the desert, so as to test you by affliction and find out whether or not it was your intention to keep his commandments. He therefore let you be afflicted with hunger, and then fed you with manna, a food unknown to you and your fathers, in order to show you that one does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of the Lord. 

-Deuteronomy 8:2-3

I first came across this bit of Scriptural gold during senior year of high school. After school one day, I was in the chorus room having a grand old time with my fellow improv-ers during our weekly practice. Across the way, in the band room, my choir's director was practicing some stuff for our all-school Easter mass later in the week. My friend Lisa was cantoring, and the Gospel Acclamation that they were using had a verse that went up pretty high for the solo. Lisa had the range no problem, but singing a high-F for the acclamatory verse was coming off pretty hot. So Marcie and Lisa called me over to try it out. Moral of the story: don't send a soprano to do a tenor's job. We practiced it a few times, and I was all set to acclaim the Gospel at mass: "One does not live on bread alone! But on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God!'


Today, Molly and I had the chance to utilize this beautiful bit of Scripture. We are planning a mass for our fifth-graders at the primary school we're working in. The mass is for the Body and Blood of Christ, so we chose readings in that vein. (Also, the kids make suggestions for the Prayers of the Faithful and Offertory around this intention of the mass.) The Gospel we settled on was "I Am the Bread of Life" from John. In order to give our cantor something extra for her simple ministry of leading the Alleluia, we wanted to include a Gospel Acclamation verse in her little script. This verse is the one I settled on: "One does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God."


But the real reason why this verse reentered my prayer mindset is because of a book I've recently taken to simply called, "A Prayer Book for Eucharistic Adoration." While Katherine and I were in Galway, we spent time looking around the cathedral, praying there and going to mass. We also spent time in the bookshop, and I settled on this nice little prayer aid. Katherine offered to get it for me - a truly grace-filled gift. And it is even by a Notre Dame guy and published by Loyola Chicago Press. Needless to say, it was a good call. 


The reason for choosing this book off the many shelves was to restart weekly visits to the Blessed Sacrament. I've gone for three weeks now and prayed with the help of the series of seven visits to the Blessed Sacrament. I was really struck last week by the First Reading in the middle of Day Two's prayers. It was the reading I included at the top of the post from Deuteronomy 8:2-3. The power of that verse I had belted in my head-voice four-and-a-half-years ago echoed anew in the quiet of that chapel. I spent the moments of silent reflection on the way this Old Testament wisdom prefigures the beauty of the Eucharist.


The theme of manna continued through the prayer - the following responsory was "God rained down manna for their food and gave them bread from heaven." The Second Reading for that day's prayer came from St. Ambrose of Milan and talked about the words of Christ. Here's the second half of it:

Perhaps you say, "The bread I have here is ordinary bread." Yes, before the sacramental words are uttered this bread is nothing but bread. But at the consecration the bread becomes the Body of Christ. Let us reason this out. How can something that is bread be the Body of Christ? Well, by what words is the consecration effected, and whose words are they? The words of the Lord Jesus. All that is said before are the words of the priest: praise is offered to God, the prayer is offered up, petitions are made for the people, kings, for all others. But when the moment comes for bringing the most holy sacrament into being, the priest does not use his own words any longer: he uses the words of Christ. Therefore, it is Christ's word that brings the sacrament into being.

So here comes a whole 'nother layer of meaning for our truth from Deuteronomy. One does not live on bread alone; one also needs the Word of God. This begins as a nice way to understand how the Word in the readings and Gospel works together with the Eucharist to nourish us in the mass. St. Ambrose takes it steps further.


We can't live by just eating bread. We need the nourishment of God's Word. How do we get it? Ambrose would surely affirm the Scriptures and the Liturgy of the Word as beautiful media for nourishment. But his words for us here deepen the reflection. We receive bread that is not bread alone; we become able to live on more than bread because that bread is the Word. The bread takes on a different meaning because its inner elements are changed so it becomes the Body of Christ, and this happens because, after a series of prayer that is just the humble "words of the priest [or the Church]," the priest speaks Jesus' words. He prays the words of the Word Made Flesh. The words of the Word make our bread become the Body, the Word Made Flesh.


Christ's words - the Word's words - are what bring the Body of Christ to us. It is by being baptized into the Word, into Christ's death and resurrection, that we become members of the Body of Christ. It is by Christ's words, said by a priest, that Christ comes to be with us in the Eucharist. We do not live by bread alone but by bread that is the Word that comes from the mouth of God -- this is the very essence of what this Old Testament passage to be essential to our beings. It's a gentle irony that we can receive the nourishment that will lead us to eternal life in receiving bread, but it's by the very direction of this passage that this becomes possible.


We cannot live by bread alone. We need each word that comes from God. So, we come together to receive bread. But we receive the bread that comes from the Word, from the mouth of God. We say our Amen to the bread that is broken and shared in remembrance of the One who saved us, using His words - the words of God - to make the bread, at once, both bread and the Word that comes forth from God. I could dance around this until the end of time, and I think I just might.

Un Buen Camino

Oh, dear friends, what follows is going to be a futile attempt to concisely try to sum up some of the profound value of the pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago. (Originally, I had typed here that I'd attempt brevity and conciseness, but that has gone by the wayside as I've written.)

First, the nuts and bolts of it...
Molly, Colin, Kurt, and I walked 112km across four full days and 2 hours of a fifth morning.
We began in Sarria, arriving via train from Madrid.
Day 1, we walked 22km to Portomarín.
Day 2, we walked 23.5km to Palas de Rei.
Day 3, we walked 29km to Arzúa.
Day 4, we walked 32km to Monte de Gozo.
Day 5, we walked 4.5km to el Catedral de Santiago de Compostela.
There, on All Saints Day, we attended pilgrims' mass and received our compostela certificates, certifying our journey on foot with our declared motivation being religious pilgrimage. Check out pictures here. (Additionally, my friend Colin's travel blog has AWESOME pictures and additional insights to the mindset of a Camino pilgrim.)

Community

Overall, walking the Way added a new depth to my understanding of community, not just due to the conversation we had toward the end of our trek in which my companions thoroughly challenged me on my attitudes toward reconciling my personal opinions with the life of the community and its greater well-being and mission.

There is a sanctity to embarking on such a journey together, knowing that your teamwork, cooperation, and support is needed not just to help one another make it 112km on foot but to  fuel each other's spirits, both mentally/emotionally and faith/prayer-wise. We couldn't just be talking and laughing and smiling - though that was important - we had to be sharing prayer and intentions and reflective thoughts to help each other have the pilgrimage we all desired.

Also, more practically, we were a family for five days. And it became that way because we weren't just choosing restaurants or ordering of menus. We did that for a day at the end in Santiago, but each night of our walk, we hit up a supermercado or fruteria, shopped the aisles, and hit the cocina at our albergue to make family dinner. Cooking together in quaint kitchens, sitting at a table with a hodge-podge of dishes, and cleaning it all up together really sews the days up and brings you together in a way quite befitting of the pilgrimage we forged.

And an extra note, sharing the path with dozens of other pilgrims of various motivations and from different parts of the world (we met some from at least USA, Spain, France, and Japan) surrounds you in this gentle bond of community with strangers, where you always at least have the universal greeting of <<¡Buen Camino!>> to share with each other. And that brings you closer together more than you might think, which brings me to my next point.

The Body of Christ

There is a beautiful enfleshing of the mystery of the mystical Body of Christ on this pilgrimage. You get wonderful glimpses of it in the hospitality that pervades the walk (with the exception of the awkward bocadillo shop, "No Camino," whose owner/counter-lady was brisk and cold). The baseline, the constant, of the walk is the seemingly simple exchanges of <<¡Buen Camino!>> between pilgrims, but it grows from there. You begin to want to say hello to each person you see, whether a shepherd moving his animals up the street, a woman hanging clothes or picking fruit in her yard, or people on their porches and doorsteps in the villages. You find the confidence to engage people in shops and albergues in their native language, embracing a humble approach and finding at least hospitality if not a deeper welcome and embrace from someone receiving you in their country and language. And most importantly, your fellow pilgrims become your friends, sometimes through conversation but often through an unspoken bond that I can only trace back to the mysticality of Christ as our companion.

So we had the chance to talk to a few people, largely through the boldness of my companions. We got the stories of a French man who was resuming his trek to make it from Lyon that had been cut short year last year and two gals from Seattle taking time away from work and business. But alongside them, we interweaved our journey with a batch of older Asian men and women who soldiered their way down the roads, a young couple holding hands ahead of us, and a Polish girl who we met 30 days into her journey and saw collapse into a pile of joy in the cathedral plaza. A bond formed among all of us, above, below, or beyond our motivations or intentions. We all were aiming for the mass, the cathedral, the communal experience waiting in northwest Spain. And on All Saint Day, we made it. We prayed at the kneeler by James' final resting place, and we hugged his statue, the one over the altar that shows him as a pilgrim, as one of the many gunning for this summit of joy. And just to cement all of that, as I walked past the queue of people moving through the stairway to the statue and down toward the tombs, I made eye contact with the guy and gal who had made it hand-in-hand, and having never spoken more then a buen camino to them, we exchanged a wave and a smile.

Pilgrimage

And running over and under it all is this vast sea of grace called pilgrimage. These are the people, the faces that enflesh what went on, and it's this idea of pilgrimage, of making a trip or vacation into a spiritual journey that is physicalized, that deepens the meaning of the whole encounter. These people walking the Way with us made up part of the journey symbolism that made the pilgrimage real to our eyes.

Starting with the first morning, we walked through morning/sunrise fog that shrouded the path ahead and limited our visibility - well isn't that face-value symbolism if I ever saw it. We would come out of the fog little by little as the day went on, but it would return in the morning. Added to the fog, we were walking a path without a map or compass or any clue of what the road should look like; we were at the mercy of milestones (well, kilometer stones) every 0.5km or so and yellow arrows that might seem suspect if we didn't know to trust them. However, at each spot were there were different directions to go, a yellow arrow appeared on the side of a house, the ground, a wall, or a stone. Each time we followed, and each time the arrows pointed us to Santiago. We had to trust the arrows as well as the pilgrims we could see in front of us that we were on the right path.

The whole thing was just saturated with beautiful discernment metaphors made concrete by the action of physically undertaking the walk. The whole thing reiterated to us repeatedly to trust. Amid the fog, the lack of a map, the ignorance about the way we'd reach Santiago, and the length of the walk (especially given I'd never hiked more than a few miles before), trust in the whole equation of the pilgrimage - from directions to food to lodging - is what sustains you. Trust in your companions, the fellow pilgrims, the hosts at the albergues, and the God that brought us the whole way enabled the journey to be a way of peace.

And now, after returning, the processing continues. I haven't quite made it to wrapping my head around it, but I know the peace endures and upholds me when I realize how the pilgrimage goes on, especially while abroad here trying to serve our Church in Ireland. I yet lack a lot of the perspective as to how the depth of contextualizing life in terms of pilgrimage will illuminate things. However, a quote from a past pilgrim included at the end of the leaflet in the pilgrims' office in Santiago de Compostela begins to shed light on this for us:

"Now that I arrived to the end, I realize that these last weeks have been just a stage in the long Way of life towards God. It is here that I can really say to St. James: 'Show me the Lord,' and then recommence my Way."

The Dignity of our Baptisms

First of all, an update - my previous post on Catholicism in Ireland has been published! After I published the post, I shortened it to fit the word limit for The Irish Catholic's letters to the editor section and submitted it by e-mail. In the most recent issue, they printed my letter, complete with my Irish hometown and county and the title "Renewing the Church." Thanks for supporting me to the point where I could confidently send my thoughts in and have them published in a national paper!
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Recently at Clonard, we've been having evenings of conversation with adults from the parish that are dedicated to offering some input on some central issues to living one's faith today. We've offered some simple input on issues that are not specifically doctrinal or dogmatic but rather elements of the faith we can try to live. We based our presentations on teachings of the church and tried to aim our remarks toward practical ends.

We covered liturgy, living Eucharistically, the universal call to holiness, living like Christ and understanding the idea of there being other Christs, and embracing and understanding Confirmation as one's personal commitment to the answer the baptismal call. Our final night was yesterday, and our more open, conversational format took us through some intriguing dialogues.

We talked about confronting pain, suffering, and life's challenges. We talked about disagreeing with the Church and the harshness or softness (depending on who you ask) of the Church. Perhaps most interesting, though, was our discussion of priests. We had a person claiming that priests should be seen as very special while a priest tried to explain that he isn't that special.

Casting aside the way I just totally oversimplified a fascinating discussion into a reductive sentence, the great moment came when a sister from our parish brought the conversation to the important point. The dialogue was showing me that one side felt priests were to be deeply revered and almost set apart while the other side sought to bring priests back toward the level of the laity a bit. The voice of reason came from our sister who grounded us in the profound dignity we all have from our baptism.

The priest is formed and ordained to perform the sacraments and be our spiritual leader, but he is simply responding to the scope of the call he received from God to put his gifts to use to meet the needs of the world. Meanwhile, the lay people are similarly responding to the scope of their calls by being bankers, teachers, secretaries, and pursuing careers that allow their own gifts to meet the needs of the world.

The workplaces may differ; the elements of the jobs' tasks my differ. However, every baptized person needs to answer their call to holiness by remembering their baptismal call. We are grounded in the idea that we are part of something bigger, of someone bigger - the God who became man, gave us the ideal for loving and serving by living it, and left us Himself in the Eucharist and the Church.

We are all baptized into the royal priesthood. While only some become priests or religious, all of us are called to a priesthood. We are all called to be priests in as much as we minister to others, serving others in the awareness that our baptism has anointed us with the call to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to give of ourselves to others in the example of Christ, whose life, death, and resurrection we are baptized into.

The Church struggles when only a small percentage of its members are answering their calls. If only a few people are living out their baptismal call - the priest in his preaching, sacramental duties, and leadership; the pastoral staff in organizing and training lectors, EMs, acolytes, and ministers of hospitality; those ministers serving those roles; the directors and musicians leading the music; the people leading parish social clubs and local service organizations - then we are left with a Church that is incomplete. Priests and liturgical ministers cannot be the only ones answering their calls. We then become a people made whole in Christ but a people that does not realize its full potential.

Every person who passes through the waters of baptism into Christ is anointed to be a priest in His name. No matter what social class or salary, career or lifestyle, hobbies and interests, or state of life one is in, every baptized Christian has been sealed with the Christian name by which God knows and calls them and loves them. What if we only recognized the dignity and tremendous hope that God places in us in this baptism?

Catholicism in Ireland as I See it Now

Having been in Ireland for almost six weeks, early impressions of the country and of the Church here are starting to crystallize into larger patterns and perceptions in my mindset.

Beyond the interactions with people from our choirs and those we see around the parish, I've really enjoyed grabbing a copy from the stack of newspapers in our parish lobby. The Irish Catholic is a really great weekly edition that turns up on the table outside the sacristy for me to enjoy.

The newspaper is long and not short on quantity of stories. A healthy blend of columnists, national reporters, and local reporters combine to create a newspaper full of stories long and short, micro and macro, opinion and fact.

One of the repeated features has been a two-page spread in the middle, profiling two opposing national journalists' opinions as told to a reporter in separate interviews - the question: is the Irish media biased against Catholics and the Church?

The answers have been largely what you'd expect but given from a perspective of professional legitimacy and experience. This week's responders gave some typical insights but with some new tilt. The man defending the media championed the watchdog element of journalists, not giving free passes or deference to the Church. The fellow criticizing the media put a new spin on "don't shoot the messenger," suggesting that this phrase implies the messenger just passively relays something true and discovered; he suggests not using this phrase for the media, since the media constantly makes decisions about what to pursue, what to report, how to report it, etc.

The long and short of it is that different people will give you different answers, and no consensus will really emerge I don't think. The Irish Catholic does a wonderful job of pursuing a variety of stories relevant to Catholics, from health and family to politics to ministry, but at the end of the day, they're overtly Catholic in their reporting. They give a lot of stuff at face value, but their evaluation of the information and columns are building the Kingdom, as they should - good for them for providing Catholics a good periodical. I'm certainly a grateful reader.

What I'm starting to learn from readings here and on RTE online and from conversations and perceptions is a view of the Church that is pervasive. Whether among Catholics who've lapsed or shrunk away or among non-Catholics or even non-Christians and seculars, the feeling I get is that the Irish people are ready and eagerly desiring Catholicism to fall away into a societal niche.

It seems on a national level that, regardless of the rhetoric or precision of his words, PM Enda Kenny's summer speech against the Church in light of governmental investigations was welcomed by the people. The country seems to embrace a pushback against a Church that has enjoyed such entitlement, if not institutionally/formally but certainly socially, personally, and culturally.

I don't think I'd go so far as to say that people want the Church to disappear or for Catholicism to shrink. It just appears that people wouldn't mind it stepping off to the sidelines and becoming more of a bit part than a lead actor.

A small thing in the defender's response in the two-page feature tipped me off to something - he described himself as an Irish Catholic agnostic. Beside the fact that this is an impossible thing to be, it demonstrates a growing viewpoint: Irish Catholic is no longer a flavor of Catholic devotion; rather, it is a secular, everyday classification that people put on without a desire to add to it a depth of lived faith, lifestyle, or outlook. It exists now more so as a modifier to a classification.

The Church as it stands seems destined to remain a large body but one where a few people carry the burdens of upkeep, outreach, and ministry while the vast sum desire to baptize and confirm their kids at least, or at most, pop in and out of Sunday mass before the inner community can subsume them and invite them personally to become active in some way.

This all in the larger picture of the country wanting the Catholic Church to become more like a charity or benevolent social organization, fading from its place as a prevalent institution in the national landscape to the boy who has taken his punishment, learned his lesson, and sits quietly in class, trying to answer questions correctly now and then, offering a meek helping hand, and trying not to make trouble.

This is not meant to incriminate the Irish Church or its Catholics or to imply that the Church in America is above these problems. The same push-and-pull plagues America, a nation founded on Protestant Christianity that aims to be affirming of a watery, civil, deist, vaguely Christian civil religion that embraces plurality and tolerance. And our parishes are full of inner/outer dichotomies, parishes that struggle to bridge the gaps between twice-a-year-church-goers, in-and-out Catholics, and the ones who decide to dedicate themselves more fully to faith in community.

The challenge for us - American Catholic volunteers living among this Church - is to figure out what ways, if any, we can draw upon our sensibilities to guide the Church into its rightful place in society. Pope Benedict XVI recently suggested secularism can do some good for the Church inasmuch as it helps to purify the Church of its overly worldly ties - cozying up with government preferences, taking advantage of taxes to name a few.

At the end of the day, the best renewal comes from people choosing lives of faith in the Church out of their own freedom. So the general solution is to work with the people already involved people in Church life to try to provide welcoming opportunities to the people in the heart of the community as well as those on the fringes.

In this vein, in a concrete way, tonight we are starting a three-evening sequence of "Conversations on Being Christian Today - Adult Faith Formation" (or at we've been calling it CoBCT-AFF). We're rolling a simple intro question into simple presentations into group sharing and some prayer to give adults a simple but hopefully useful venue to plug back into exploring their faith, knowing that some or many may not have done much since their own confirmation except baptizing their own children. We'll cover vocation (universal/baptismal call to holiness), liturgy, and tough stuff (problem of pain and so on). We may not get tons of people to come or much participation from those who do show, but our aim is to have prepared and offered it faithfully to give the people in our community a chance.

So if the Church is destined to fall out of the default Irish perspective and assume a place characterized more as peripheral or one in a chorus of moral, charitable, or spiritual voices, let's hope that the committed lay people and the steadfast Irish clergy can speak the heart of the Gospel in their lived faith and help to rebuild the Catholic image not through savvy PR or rhetorical tactics but through humble self-offering.

I'm not rendering a verdict that this change is bad or good or even that I've made a mostly accurate assessment. The role of society and family in cultivating an atmosphere based on Christian values, morals, and faith that it has found to be life-giving remains paramount, but I will say that embracing a culture where spirituality, Christianity, Catholicism, and our Church are embraced freely is a good thing. Though the culturally foundational place of Catholicism is a beautiful thing and an integral part of Catholic (and I'd hope Irish) Tradition, an environment where people choose Christ freely is beautiful. I'd hate for the Church to shrink or contract, but I welcome an increase in the likelihood that people's Catholic faith can come from their decision to live out the things began at their baptism and affirmed in their confirmation.

Pilgrimage

The idea of a pilgrimage never really came to me until college. After I made the Folk Choir and our introduction to the year-end tour info began, Steve and company described it as a pilgrimage, or at least a pilgrimage tour.

The idea is that we were taking a trip with an intentionality to it. We weren't just traveling from stop to stop, taking pictures and seeing the lookout points. We were visiting abbeys and singing for monks, staying with parishes' host families and singing concerts and masses, and raising money for local Catholic communities' needs. Our trip had a purpose beyond leisure, relaxation, and sightseeing.

All of our tours took on that connotation to some extent, and interacting with so many priests, host parents, children, and choirs added a depth to our travels that legitimized the idea of its being a pilgrimage - even when our comp-ed trip to Disneyland or visit to Fenway Park might have rerouted the path to different areas of religion.

I enjoyed adding the element to my travel sensibilities. My family vacations were always great combinations of fun, but we rarely incorporated pilgrimesque elements into our plans beyond Sunday masses. It's now an integral part to all my travel planning. My trips now always involve some kind of search for a church or holy site. Our wanderings in Vienna and Krakow in March 2010 were entirely guided by church-searching, or as we called it, a church crawl.

Things have gotten so advanced now that the first trip I have set out for myself to a destination beyond Ireland is Spain for the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage walk. Along with Colin - studying in Toledo - and Kurt and Molly, the four of us will walk 114km from Sarria into Santiago, arriving at the great cathedral built on St. James' tomb. We'll hug the 1000-year-old statue of the saint, attend pilgrims' mass (with butafumeiro for All Saints Day we hope), receive our compostelas (pilgrim certificates), and pray with an international community of pilgrims all along the way.

Only because of a centuries-old stream of tradition and prayer can a four-day-walk through a strip of northern Spain become a destination. In the footsteps of so many others seeking to dedicate some time and effort toward a spiritually-infused journey, our flights and train and lodging all become a part of a different kind of trip, more than an itinerary.

We will journey to a sacred place, using the mysticality of the Body of Christ as the way we unite with not only each other but our fellow pilgrims along the way, the ones who walked before us, and all of those who we carry along our way in our hearts. It's gonna be awesome.

Catechizing, Theologizing, and Conversing...

I have recently discovered the online version of America Magazine. At some point when I am stateside again, I'll probably subscribe. But, in the meantime, I've been enjoying the things that are posted online for guests to read.

I just poured over this article by Michael G. Lawler, professor emeritus, and Todd A. Salzman, a professor of Catholic theology at Creighton. It analyzes the roles and boundaries of magisterium and theologians/lay teachers/catechists. 

I found too many nuggets and quotes to seize upon, so if you'd like a reading companion to the article, I pulled a bunch of things that stuck out to me and commented below. It's lengthy, but much of it is quotes and my explanations are only suggestions from a humble blogger - Enjoy!

"To avoid conflicts with the magisterium that may lead to investigation and censure, the theologian should focus his or her efforts on explaining and defending magisterial positions."

- At first glance, this guideline seems a bit alienating. Why can't theologians be clever, reflective, and faithful enough to initiate thinking on a certain issue or position? After thinking about it for a moment, I realize that this is dangerous ground. The laity, at least in the Catholic Church where we affirm a hierarchy of leadership and trust our teaching body of bishops and priest, must not get ahead of those we entrust with interpreting the deposit of faith. However, much like with Scripture study and reading, I think it is an activity we can undertake mutually with our leadership. I think rather than approaching such a potential conflict with skepticism and frustration, it is an opportunity for theologians and lay people to test the things they come to in investigation of their faith by sharing it with other people, especially those who have been consecrated in their lives toward that end.

"Theologians considered unsafe—those whose positions differ from the magisterium’s on open or noninfallible questions—are discounted. This procedure is a double-edged sword. One edge permits the magisterium to claim that the pronouncement has been made with theological consultation and agreement; the other edge provokes a response from theologians who have not been consulted."

- This is a touchy issue. In most situations, people thinking critically and analytically will pursue radical thought and disagreement in hopes of strengthening their case. Anticipating arguments can help your original case. However, in cases of truth, it is difficult to seek out those who profess things we know to be false. Would you want to have an atheist in the room when elucidating the Christological two-natured doctrines? Some people would say yes; I'd lean towards no. I think a legit alternative here is to have firmly confident Catholics play the devil's advocate and put on a mask of skepticism to scrutinize theology. What's the difference between that and a legit skeptic? This person's end is still truth, Christian truth, while the atheist is seeking to tear the whole thing down. You sort that one out further if you'd like.

"In fact, however, many theologians are forced into the inaccurate classification of dissenters because they have been deprived of a consultative voice that might have been helpful in the beginning." 

"Polarization permeates the theological community as well. The magisterium, by consulting only those it expects to agree with it, implicitly endorses one school of theology over another and provides a quasi-sanction for that school’s work. Then debates are settled by a claim of authority, as when Bishop Olmsted ruled that St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix was no longer Catholic."

- The flipside of this issue is alienating those who believe themselves to be faithful Catholics by labeling their scrutiny and criticism as overly radical or even heretical. It's tough when you ace out someone who believes themself to be faithful because you may have alienated them to the point of making them what you claim to be by that action of allegation. I'm not familiar with the processes of institutional elucidation and choosing those who help to be the filters, but I imagine edgy, radical folks are left out of consideration, and this is where the alienation comes from. If I were them, I'd feel pushed aside and belittled. My hope is that those on the fringes who are definitely faithfully and theologically Catholic will keep their hearts burning and keep trying to bring challenging ideas into dialogue with the faith. Easier said than done.

"The lack of broad theological consultation, which freezes out the “unsafe,” also damages the entire body of the faithful who detect the tension between the magisterium and a large majority of theologians. These tensions are frequently aired in the media and often escalate into outright hostility."

- Here comes the alienation that so many Catholics feel and that makes Catholicism so easily criticizable by Protestants and non-Christians. By having a centralized and institutionalized and hierarchical organization to our Church, we naturally create tensions just by virtue of how things transpire. Our Church still is home to plurality of belief. However, Catholics are asked to approach creedal and moral beliefs with the attitude that even if they can't completely say they believe and understand something entirely, they will still profess a hope for deeper understanding and grasp when they pronounce "I believe." By belonging to our Church, you're not asked to agree with everything and understand it entirely, but you are asked to profess belief in those things as a pledge that you will make conscientious effort to wrestle with those parts of being Catholic that are most difficult, troubling, or perplexing to you.

The side-effects to this are two major things...

(1) People will either leave an issue of tension behind them, unincorporating it from their faith and creating buffet or pick-and-mix Catholicism, or forsake active Catholicism as a result of one or more of these tensions, creating lapsed Catholics. This is easily fixable if we encourage an atmosphere of conscientious dissent that seeks to investigate disagreements and incomplete understandings rather than use them as cause for laziness or apathy.

(2) The disagreements between authoritarian decisions and loudly dissenting priests or laity become framed in disjunction and disconnect because of how people present themselves/their thoughts or how the media responds. If priests and laity alike would present their dissent in terms of seeking deeper understanding and a desire for perpetual dialogue to increase understanding, the disagreements could be baptized into good faith rather than attention-grabbing and alienating episodes.

"Since the [Second Vatican] council, however, theology has become largely a lay profession exercised predominantly in both Catholic and non-Catholic colleges and universities. This change has introduced voices, especially women’s and third world voices, that had never before been part of the conversation."

- This is a beautifully good thing. The perspective of women helps to widen the scope of eyes and voices that witness to the faith, and the rise of "third-world" Christianity only deepens it. But, since the thoughts are new, it will take time for people to grow used to the outlooks of the newer voices. It doesn't excuse prejudice or ignoring these voices, but hopefully it will give pause and patience to those pushing too hard for the growth to continue. Again, easier said than done to be patient, especially with those who don't care to hear these newer voices.

"Professor Crowley describes sensus fidelium as 'the mutual inspiration by the Holy Spirit of teachers and learners in the Church, the pastorum et fidelium conspiratio...the delicately balanced relationship between the teaching function of the church and the role of the laity in arriving at an explicit knowledge of the content of faith.' True dialogue recognizes that both are gifted with 'the charism of learner-teacher,' the charism that is available to the whole communion—church, bishops, theologians and the entire body of the faithful alike."

- This is just a great understanding of the authority vested in the people of the Church as a whole. Leadership, especially in teaching and exclusively for sacramental worship, is entrusted to the clergy, but all baptized people - the universal call to holiness - have the gift of "learner-teacher," no matter what vocational call they answer.

"For its part, the magisterium must be patient in allowing open debate on open, controversial topics among theologians and slow to intervene prematurely to close debates. That patience requires what John Paul II called a 'dialogue of charity' between the magisterium and theologians, without threat of disciplinary or punitive action (“Ut Unum Sint,” Nos. 17, 51 and 60)."

- I really love this part. While not settling the question entirely of "safe" v. "unsafe" theologians, it encourages those issues to be aired out patiently and with understanding. Grievous errors in dialogue must be confronted; those who speak anti-truth still occupy a very dark grey place on the spectrum. However, critical voices ought to heard with patience, so that their qualms and comments, if truly advancing false point, can be fully and clearly refuted. The conversation must be a patient and open process of charitable reception. Listening up, down, and across is crucial to complete conversation.

"Bishop [Gerald] Kicanas [of Tucson] asserts: 'Clearly there needs to be room in an academic community for disagreement, debate, and a clash of ideas even in theology. Such debate and engagement can clarify and advance our understanding. In discussions with local bishops, faculty need to be able to disagree and question with mutual respect.'"

- And good ol' Kicanas brings it home by adding the caveat of respect - not just patience and charity but respect. We must add a layer of dignity to our exchanges. Careful listening and the offer of opportunities for voices to make their points must all happen under a sense of dignity, that each person, no matter how true or false their point may be, gets the treatment that they are a child of God. Each person must receive from us Catholic people the sense that their words are received by someone who views them as a valid, human, dignified source of insight. Disagreements must be colored by interpersonal care for one another. This is how we can convey our faithfulness and Gospel values despite differences of opinion or belief, whether within our Catholic Church, across the lines of the Christian Church, or through the spectrum of human belief.

Let Him In.

I was sitting at daily mass the other day, and as I looked diagonally to my left, in my sightline to the altar and the Eucharistic prayer, there were two special needs adults with their helper. I struggled to keep my gaze fixed on the altar as their simple movements and jitters were a part of their participation in the mass.

New translation and responses aside, the man held the card with the words printed on it upside down as he briefly studied it, and the woman stood and sat with gentle self-awareness, knowing she was in the front, without a kneeler and with everyone's eyes behind her.

The man gingerly followed his helper out after mass. The woman dutifully brought her water bottle to the holy water dispenser and filled it up almost to full.

A week earlier, I sat behind two older ladies and their grandchildren. The kids squirmed and fussed during mass, the boy being more antsy than the quietly composed girl. They played with each other and sometimes looked to their elders for affirmation and attention. They hardly knew they were in a sacred place, and their attention was scattered. The girl fending off playful attacks from the boy, and the boy plotting his next sporadic move.

I struggled differently to connect with what was going on in the sanctuary those days, but it focused my connection through the people around me, the Body of Christ in front of me in my fellow congregants.

I thought to myself - how lucky are we to not have our distractedness, our sometimes uninspired sense of obligation, our short attention span, our unsureness about what to do or think or say... how blessed are we that all those things remain inside us, only to come out as we see fit to share them?

Mass would certainly be a lot harder for me if my short attention span or my tangential reflection (sometimes good, sometimes excessive) were externalized and put on display. My self-awareness would spike, and I might close up pretty severely.

How blessed am I that my sins, my struggles, my crosses are things that I can share with people as I desire, as I build trust, as I attempt vulnerability?

Little kids and mentally challenged adults are some of those who don't get the chance to keep it in inside. Thank God most children have families who practice patience as their children grow and mature, and thank God that people like Sarah and Flan join programs like L'Arche to care for those people that need the extra attention to realize their dignity as created children of God.

Meanwhile, we should be grateful that we have the chance to sort it all out within us and share it with others as we need. I am grateful that my faults are not all completely broadcast externally. I have the control to let people into my challenges.

The hardest challenge can often be letting God into our internal struggles. I use the right words, say the right things, but the trials of my hardest challenges can be mitigated somewhat by God to the degree I commit to prayer and allow Him to shoulder the load with me and for me.

Your Love Is Strong

Ok, so thanks to the influence of my brother Tim, who gave me the songs to add to my iTunes, and my friend Jason, who lovingly plays the songs incessantly on guitar and turned me onto the easy playability of them, I have gradually come under the spell of the EP's of Jon Foreman.

He falls into the category, at least most of the time, of music that is Christian but is not necessarily Christian Music. I tend to be a little averse to the latter but gravitate strongly to the former. And it's probably a case of predisposition, but I really enjoy Jon Foreman and Dustin Kensrue for these reasons.

My most recent haunt is Your Love Is Strong, from the Spring EP (one of four for each season). Often times, refrains of songs will bring home the points we need to hear, but in this case, it's a little bridge that takes me somewhere. Let me work my way into where the song overlapped with the trains of thought running in me already.

The root of my daily, lived faith is that I really enjoy finding God, finding Christ, in the interactions I have with people. I need to be better about placing in interactions with strangers and those I don't know, but when it comes to people I know and those I am meeting, I find it every time and it's spectacular.

Here in Ireland so far, it's been ubiquitous. Of course, the parish staff, which backs and supports and emboldens us, have been incredible in helping us out. People have blown through the house to add a few things - a fence and gate, a toilet paper roll holder; people at mass have been warm and welcoming in introductions - Kurt and I even ran into a woman at the grocery store who noticed us and gave us a lift home; we mingled with high schoolers after a prayer service who were delightfully friendly and talkative; a parishioner connected Kurt and I to a local running club; the club's coach offered us free membership and gave us the full training schedule to join as we could. That's not nearly the exhaustive list. It's been no problem to bask in the hospitality of Christ over here.

But before this, I could come from a position of strong faith. Most recently, it's been my Vision communities. 2010 helped solidify me as the person I have become, affirming my gifts and embracing me as a listener and talker alike. 2011 took the torch and ran with it. I was stronger and more mature, and my new family let me gently lead them while giving me so much at the same time to grow. They taught me the power of walking a journey in community, sharing so that you learn and grow together, forging a powerful bond that transcends being dispersed abroad and away.

But before this (at least Vision 2011), I found incredible stability and great love with my girlfriend, Katherine. We profoundly founded our relationship on honesty, and that, coupled with the love we have come to share, has created a mutual support system that allows both of us to be completely who we are. We can share things without fear making the other mad, and everything we're thinking and doing is welcome to be talked about anytime. It makes for a really life-giving relationship that makes me more comfortable and confident being myself, and it's the type of relationship that is the model for all my other friendships, where I can give and receive love because I'm knowing it there.

But before this, I had Folk Choir. I spent four years immersing myself in a community where one receives absolute and complete permission to be his or her self. We share a common goal in giving permission to people to pray through song, whether in the basilica loft or on the road across the country. But we share a deeper, familial bond because of the time we spend together and the way we let our lives into our community. We become brothers and sisters, more than just colleagues - chatting it up on buses, sharing host families, and frolicking on campus and on tour. Our music ministry is an extension of the lives we spend together.

And before this, I had my high school. I had campus ministers and religion teachers who cared about me. They took special interest in me and encouraged and affirmed me to participate and later lead others in religious things. I had retreat leaders who gave a damn - people who wanted more than a faith-related resume line, who shared themselves to help me see how I could do it, too.

But it all started with my family. It took my mom and dad's deciding to baptize my brothers and I and raise us in a Catholic household. We went to mass as a family event. I went with my dad to the Easter Vigil because it was fun to share that major liturgy in our faith with someone I loved who loved to be there. I got to go to Catholic school through their commitment, and my mom taught at our school because she delights in teaching children about the sacraments and preparing them for their firsts.

Love begins to be taught somewhere, and I have been blessed enough to have started learning it at home, from the start, with Christ involved. It has followed me through all my days to here.

And it's because of this that I am able to build friendships where that love of Christ can flourish. Love that affirms and permits but also criticizes and cautions. Love that wants what's best for me, but not at the cost of who I am or who I could be. I have parents and brothers and a girlfriend and best friends and friends who offer me the ear of Christ and the voice of Christ.

I am not saying that each person's every word is the will of God articulated in speech, but I believe I can trust my relationships to be - albeit not the fully disstilled version - the will and peace of God given to me. Grace mediated to me from my Christ in others.

You all send me on my way with your care.

So why Jon Foreman? The first bridge from this song asks,

So why do I worry?
Why do I freak out?
God knows what I need.
You know what I need.

Your love is strong...

If I am faithful, if I am reflective and prayerful, if my eyes keep opening to grace, you - my friends, my family - can be the love of God, very real-ly in my life. And your love is strong. :)

There I Can Be

The readings for this Sunday encourage us to take action in helping one another with our problems. The trajectory of the readings takes us through our approach to this Christian outreach.

The first reading gives us the sometimes harsh justice and bluntness that the Old Testament often provides. It tells us that if we tell a wicked person that they are wicked but do not seek to help them alter their life, then God will hold us responsible for their downfall. However, if we do seek to help the wicked, even if they refuse, God will not deride us. Rather, in this "you shall save yourself."

Our second reading gives us a chance to associate self-preservation with this challenge to help others. Surely, we all take great care to set out an attractive life for ourselves. To varying levels of success, we seek to know ourselves well enough to learn those things that we must improve on. I have found myself to be too often deficient in compassion, and I have learned that I am compassionate toward newer friends -- whether week to week with high schoolers at Vision or those people I meet day-by-day -- but am too short with my closer friends. We usually take these words of Paul -- "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." -- as something like "treat others how you'd like to be treated," but why not incorporate some sense of self-help into this? If we seek to treat ourselves with a sense of self-improvement and care, let's offer ourselves to others in this way.

It's hard for Catholics who don't espouse an exuberant evangelism of biblical stories and verses and specific preaching points. However, our Christian living can involve some of this. One way that I've come to understand as a way that can work for me is providing an example. To use a gardening analogy, I try to keep my grass green and my flowerbeds bright. My hope is that people will see my landscape and seek to improve their own, whether through conversation with me or without my ever knowing. The challenge here is to not be entirely passive. I have no secret formula for that.

There is no secret formula for any of us. We want to be independent, individualistic, self-sufficient. We don't want the help. We don't want people to act high and mighty or holy-roller-ish or condescending. But hopefully, we can build friendships and relationships of love where the times we must call each other out or pose challenges can come from a genuine, established place of love that mitigates the aversion to help that we can sometimes cling to. For as Jesus tells us this Sunday, and always, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

May we remember that as we love one another and as we criticize and confront one another, especially if we build relationships for love and not popularity or superficial means, that Christ is there with us and in us.

Bits of Bread

So I'm here in Ireland, having just completed the verification process to assure the Googles that I am not a hacker but rather the same poster who has managed this blog for almost two years, just signing in from a new locale. I won't be keeping a blog specific to Ireland because I'll be posting every fourth post on our community website's blog and trying to keep this blog up, which will surely be contextualized if not influenced supremely by my experiences here.

We went to mass yesterday together, attending the 7pm Vigil mass that our Vigil Choir will usually provide the music for. However, yesterday, we had no responsibility. We just went and joined the community for the weekly Eucharist.

I definitely did not walk away with Eucharistic revelations based upon the awe and wonder of going to mass at my new parish where I will work and love for a year. Actually, it was just the opposite. The music and choirs are still on break, and Fr. Sean is the only priest on hand for the weekend. This resulted in a 35-minute musicless mass, catalyzed by Fr. Sean's deliberate way of rolling through things and the Irish people's love of responding with their parts of the mass before the priest has really finished his part. All part of the learning curve.

Yesterday capped a process of deepening Eucharistic understanding that should really always be happening, and for me, it happens anew as the seas of the faith journey rise and fall throughout the days, weeks, and months.

Through mass on last Saturday alongside my friend Becky (my last Basilica mass for a while) and our Send-off Mass on Monday, I was really embracing the idea that only in being broken apart does the Body of Christ become whole. Only by going through the fraction rite does the bread and wine go into the pieces and bowls and cups for us to each come up and take the Body and Blood of our Lord. And only by leaving the mass as Christians freshly filled up by Christ can we be Christ's hands and feet in the world.

Only by leaving the Lady Chapel and Notre Dame and the US can Teach Bhride Season III get its members and be God's in this mission. Only by going back to our families and homes and returning to school or the year's new challenges and tasks can each summer of Vision mentors and participants let their refreshed outlooks and hearts take root in their whole person and be God's in their worlds. Only by sending seniors and graduates out into their world and receiving new newbies can the Folk Choir continue to proliferate, cycle, and share its love at Notre Dame and throughout the universal Church. Only by commencing and going forth can the Class of 2011 and all its predecessors change the world; we leave our places to new people for new opportunities and bring our Notre Dame to the world.

Only by leaving the mass, by taking the piece of Christ's Body and Blood given to us in our Eucharist -- a piece that is quantifiable by physical standards but mysteriously transcends all that to be full of the same joy and renewal that all of Christ's reaching out to us brings -- can we do Christ justice and freely give the love that he has offered us.

Christ says, "Do this in memory of me," but he doesn't just mean the action of the Eucharist. I think he is referring to the whole thing. I realized at our very basic celebration of the mass yesterday that it is all there. I try to steer clear of evaluating masses and rather center myself upon the One God present in every Eucharist celebrated, regardless of the priest's charisma or vigor. And there in our mass was the whole thing. The Body of Christ in the Eucharist, in how Jesus comes to be with us, and the people assembled to receive Him and go forth. In the announcements, the bulletin, the greetings and exchanges.

We do this all in memory of Him. Not just the blessing and breaking. The coming and going. The loving. The giving and receiving. We are the Body of Christ, and our lives must be reflections of that in more than just the second half of the mass. Man, this sounds real good on paper...

How We Are His

We have all heard the song You Are Mine.

Do not be afraid; I am with you. I have called you each by name. Come and follow me; I will bring you home. I love you, and you are mine.

This is sometimes overused, but the power of it is still not lost on me or a lot of other people. It comes from Isaiah 43, where God tells us not to fear, for He has redeemed us and we are His.

One of our speakers at Vision used it as a cornerstone of her speech on self-love, telling us if she could read it to us hundreds of times she would. My spiritual director harped on it to me to try to connect me straight to God. David Haas put it to music for us to use throughout our worship.

The power of this passage is deep. And I want to take it in what was for me a newer direction.

I have noticed as my opportunities for leadership, especially in ministry, have multiplied that learning people's names and calling them exactly by name in conversation is huge. People respond more brightly and openly when you gently and lovingly call them by name, saying "Hey, Tim" instead of just "Hey" or sticking their name into conversation rather than using you's and he's and she's.

Your name is a beautiful thing. Your parents thought long and hard (hopefully) about what to name you, often with a friend or saint in mind.

And not only is our name on our birth certificate and in birth announcements, it is on our baptismal certificate. When our parents and godparents brought us before the Church to be baptized into it and the death and resurrection of Christ, we were baptized with the Christian name our parents gave us.

Our first name is not just a identifying item for attendance lists and driver's licenses. It is the way that we were first brought into the embrace of Jesus and His Church. It is the name that our parents offered to God as the way for Him to look with love upon the child of His that they were bringing into His embrace.

When Adam first came to know the creatures God had created around Him, he named them. God gave us dominion over the earth, and Adam exercised that by naming the animals. He named them to show his loving care over them, to show his lordship yet his love. The Jews abstained from saying God's name so as to not act as if they controlled or lorded over The Lord.

In this baptism by Christian name, our parents offer a gesture of loving care. But it is not just a power trip by them to lord over us. Nor does it stop with their love and care. They bring the child they have made with love to God, share the name with God, and promise, along with the godparents, to love the child and to make it part of the Church.

Parents name their child to show their care, but they embrace the support of the Church, especially the godparents, in raising the child and more importantly entrust the child to God. Our parents believe that by sharing the child with God by name, they have sacramentally celebrated that God has redeemed this child, as a Christian baptized into Christ's death and resurrection, that God loves the child, and that the child is God's.

Sometimes, our temptation is to be indifferent towards our names or prefer a nickname, and there isn't anything inherently wrong with that. But let's not underestimate the beauty of this mystery enfleshed in our baptism.

Our parents and godparents entrust us to God who knows us by name, by our Christian name. God looks upon me and says, "Dan, I love you. And you are mine."

Screwtape Letters

Here's a couple of Screwtape Letters I wrote for my term paper for my philo-class, Philosophical Reflections on Christian Beliefs. The first letter is based on the passage from A Grief Observed that I used a few posts ago. The second letter is based on The Great Divorce, mainly the idea that for those who leave the twilight place it was purgatory but how for those who stay it is hell -- God can reach back to one's past to show the heaven that was there all along while we can reject that and conform our pasts to the darkness of evil.

Letter 1
My Dear Wormwood,
The pitfalls of your patient’s life lend you a wonderful opportunity to move him more firmly into our grasp. His friend’s sudden diagnosis of terminal illness shook him suddenly, and his termination from his job has led him to a point of great vulnerability and increased uncertainty as to faith in his god. Now is when you must strike. We must not lose him as we lost Job; let him understand suffering as only a negative experience, and do not allow the pain to guide him back to the Enemy.

You must tempt the man and tilt the balance in favor of pessimism. Infiltrate his prayer life: focus his intentions to the state of people and their souls. Guide his intentions toward considerations of a spiritual soul and heart that he does not really understand. You must steer his prayerful hope away from intercessory prayers and toward petitions for inner wholeness that neglect the more obvious and clear suffering that he and his friend are going through. You cannot dilute the strength of prayer to the Enemy, but if he focuses more on the abstract and not on things his prayers may directly help, you can take away something that actually may bring him closer to his Lord and make him more susceptible to Our Father.

Give him reason to suspect more bad around him. This is a pivotal time when we cannot let him delve into the Light enough to realize that our Enemy can and will find good in anything. You need to clarify to him the hardship of sickness and unemployment and have him dwell thoroughly in it. Our Enemy too often gains stronger influence over these patients because they go through suffering into his Light; we must keep your patient in the darkness of doubt, in his hatred of sickness, and entrenched in the frustration and loss of self-worth that accompanies unemployment.

Remind him of the human construct that bad things must happen in threes. If you can guide his eye toward the seeds of suspicion, if you can inflate his paranoia, he will invent more pain and suffering for himself. He will heap bad on top of bad, but this new bad will be of his own design. It will not be the bad that the Enemy utilizes to strengthen his hold, but rather, it will be Our Father’s delightfully dark gravitational pull.

The Enemy wants them to see the trials of life as surgeries -- painful processes that culminate in fuller wellness. We must intervene after the Enemy has made his incision and dissuade the patient from seeing through the operation to its completion. If you can convince the patient that his hardship is nothing but hardship, you can prevent him from gaining the recovery and healing that brings him closer to the Enemy. You can cause him to leave his wounds open and vulnerable to reinfection. You can cause his pain to turn into awful scars that linger longer than he could ever desire.

You must take his half-full glass of optimism, and pour it into his wounds until he is full of pessimism.

Blind him from the good. Highlight the bad. Convince him to surrender to difficulty.

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

Letter 2
My Dear Wormwood,
You have done well to nurture this man’s paranoia. His suspicions of his fiancee’s infidelity are very constructive for our designs. Any suffering that he invents for himself puts another layer of distance between him and the Enemy. But our work is not done. You need to be wary of how our Enemy can reach into the past and undo all of the work you have done so far.
Our Father thrives when our patients give in to the patterns of difficulty that appear to plague their lives because it confirms the suspicions that they create, suspicions that connect their lives more to the lies we endorse than the terrible Truth that our Enemy perpetuates. It becomes your task to goad your patient into the darkness of surrender that we desire rather than an enlightened surrender -- a surrender of free obedience that gives our Enemy the satisfaction of proving their travails to have been oriented toward Light all along. Now this is a crossroads for your task: will you allow him to utilize the freedom he retains to return to his Lord? Or, will you belittle his freedom until his surrender turns out to be one of defeat, his ultimate succumbing to Our Father’s darkness?
You need to remember that any speck of lingering hope, any morsel of remaining desire for the Enemy, any remnant of freedom is a sliver of light for the other side that casts a wide shadow of doubt over our work. The Enemy thrives on the strength of being able to exploit any remaining hope in people, which requires that you work indefatigably until you have consumed your patient entirely. His increasing suspicion of his woman helps to keep your momentum going, but if his growing paranoia and doubt only distract him partially or ephemerally, you must redouble your efforts to assure his total captivity for Our Father.
You must extinguish the fire, annihilate the light source, and make the sun set forever. If his freedom and hope remain intact in the slightest way, the Enemy retains a constant upper hand. The Enemy will accept any free request of penitence, so the door’s being open even a crack is lethal to our cause. Be sure that you close that door and lock it securely.
Your dear uncle
SCREWTAPE

Good Friday Reflection

I was troubled today as I walked the Way of the Cross in my dorm's chapel today. Going station to station with my little reflection book (done by John Kyler!), I could hear people yelling and swearing in the nearby stairwell and loud music pumping through the walls and ceiling of the building. Being fully aware of how the power of Jesus' person and actions still has yet to permeate the lives and faith of others and myself, the Stations remind me -- especially #12: Jesus dies on the cross -- that Jesus takes all of our imperfections and sins upon Himself, loving us first and always, even before we make our penitence and return to God (or come to Him for a first time).

The reflection I want to share comes from hearing the Gospel of the Lord's Passion from Matthew on Palm Sunday. I had one of those light-bulb moments that the Scriptures can so often occasion within us.

In the middle of lengthy narrative, Judas reappears with his band of police to arrest Jesus. One of Jesus' friends draws his sword and severs the ear of a soldier. Jesus rebukes him and delivers the famous line about living and dying by the sword. However, his next line is the one that hit me anew:

"Do you think that I cannot call upon my Father

and he will not provide me at this moment
with more than twelve legions of angels?
But then how would the Scriptures be fulfilled
which say that it must come to pass in this way?” (Matthew 25:53)

In a world and a life where we have access to God and His enduring love, we nonetheless screw up on a regular basis. We fall into old habits and negative patterns that we just can't seem to shake. Sometimes the simple reality that we can do something makes us think, even implicitly or subconsciously, that we should do it, or are at least allowed to do it.

This is an especially tough problem for those negative behaviors that happen behind closed doors, in our own privacy, or even in our minds and hearts. There is no enforcer and governing body inside us. We are left to our own conscience, our guilt, our hearts, to monitor ourselves. We use prayer and the Church and liturgy to find solidarity with others and remember the place that God can and should have in it all.

However, we are ultimately left to our own freedom -- this freedom that God gave us as a gift so that we would come to know His love through free embrace of it.

Let us look to the example of Christ: facing what He knew would be His brutal, painful death of torture and crucifixion, moments after praying that the cup pass Him by but deferring to God's will, Christ is faced with His arrest. Not only will His friends try to save Him -- advancing on Jesus' captors with violence -- but also, Christ knows He can use His power to call down the forces of heaven to save Him.

This is another time when Christ is giving us the perfect example. In the face of death, He resists the urge to do what He can to do what He must. He does not divert from His path of perfect freedom: He continues to align His will perfectly with the will of God. Rather than submit to selfish desires, He embraces the will of God that He offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice to expiate our sins and begin the most powerful display of love ever seen.

Here is the ideal that we strive after. We must resist those temptations to do whatever we are free to do. We must utilize our freedom to discern and follow God's will. Our free will is a gift from God. Rather than program us to follow His directions, God gives us the gift of freedom so that we might make our own free decision to love.

It all begins with the little decisions we make. Can we follow Christ's example and resist the opportunity to do things just because we can?