Crossover Post

Every other Friday, it's my turn to post to my community's blog, the House of Brigid (http://www.houseofbrigid.org). This week, I decided I'd copy my words on over to here, to give a taste of what we write about in updating our family, friends, and benefactors on our lives over here, and bring any of you into the loop who didn't realize this was going on (how many blogs does this guy have!?). So enjoy, and feel free to stalk the community once in a while...

"Conference Calls"


Since October, I have been volunteering as a member of St. Vincent de Paul's St. Patrick's Conference, the group that serves the needy people within Clonard Parish.

Most Tuesday nights, I get a lift down to St. Michael's Hall to join a handful of other volunteers for a two-hour meeting. We receive whoever has come down to ask for help in person, hearing their stories and requests one-by-one as they come in to talk with us. After that, we review the call sheet from the week to discuss all the people who have texted or called the conference mobile to make requests for help.

Most people need food vouchers to buy some groceries or otherwise enable them to divert cash toward other bills and expenses. Sometimes, people need coal to heat the house or a check to subsidize their electricity bills, which have often gone into arrears. Whatever the request, it is the charism of the Society to make the visits in person rather than sending envelopes through the post.

So each Tuesday night, the call sheet turns into a schedule of visits, assigned to pairs of volunteers to go out and make the visits, splitting 10-20 calls into sets that two or three pairs will to tend to in the coming days.

This week, I went out on visits again, and I am starting to get the hang of it. I'll never be able to catch up to the Irish ability to catalogue the details of the locals' lives and families; they have a disposition toward internalizing everyone's stories that feels a bit gossipy at times but is mostly evidence of their compassion. I am often briefed by my partner as we drive from one visit to the next so that I can have a basis from which to begin listening to our next conversation partner.

We hear stories of people waiting on welfare programmes to pan out in their favor or efforts to renegotiate balances on outstanding bills, of people on the cusp of bouncing back while others are mired in debt and must be referred to financial consultants. I find that they do most of the talking - listening is maybe our greatest service - while my Irish partners do most of the responding, bantering back and forth at a pace and rhythm that leaves me half a step behind. I try to sit back because I'm just a temporary helper trying to broaden my perspective in order to see the whole of local life here, but occasionally, I want to ask a question or put in my two cents. This week, we visited one lady who was intrigued by my accent, spoke just as much to me as to my partner - an unusual departure from the norm of being the third party to what is usually a one-to-one discussion - and even asked me questions about myself toward the end of our encounter. She was very complimentary of what I said I was doing here and wished me the best of luck.

Sometimes our work hours revolve largely around planning and administering different things from our seats in the office or putting voice and music to the praise of God from our corner of the church at masses, so I can start to feel a bit detached from the people who I hope are helped by what we're doing.

Being with the Vincent de Paul volunteers and going out with them to visit our neighbors is not only grounding and humbling; it's fun. It's a great chance to embrace a servile, humbler, complimentary role and just be present to the conference's volunteers and to those we try to serve.

The Catholic in Education

Thank God for the way that Catholic education is set up in the United States. Thank God for its almost-total separation from the public school system.

Those are the thoughts that cross my mind when I read about the crisis facing Catholic schools in Ireland.

The system here is way different than what we'd be used to as Americans, but here's what I've gathered:

• National Schools are state-funded schools, all of which teach religion as a core subject, They are allowed to espouse a specific ethos, which is usually religious and most often Catholic.
• "Rule 68" allows schools with such an ethos to permeate the whole of their curricula with that ethos. So Catholicism's influence isn't limited to the time spent on religion.
• Religion class in Catholic schools is taught mostly off a standardized national curriculum, and sacramental prep - Confirmation included - is tended to mostly, if not entirely, within the school and within the subject's time during the school day.

This kind of entanglement of everything is one of the things I can't handle in the Irish socialized (as in "socialism") society.

Various politicians are currently throwing around new initiatives that would require a significant number of National Schools that espouse a Catholic ethos to drop it while other ideas suggest banishing Rule 68 and/or requiring that exclusive religious teachings are banned and comprehensively inclusive teachings are instituted.

This kind of tension shouldn't exist. When I think about what's right or wrong here, my thought process is clouded my the entirely foreign concept of the state funding schools that overtly endorse a religion. Doesn't it seem kind of backwards to reality that in increasingly secular Europe, schools have state funding and a religion? As an advocate of our school system, flawed though it may be, I would be in favor of removing religion from state-funded schools in Ireland, except that such an action would be the end of religious schools in this socialized system.

My fuller instinct is to defend religion, not just Catholicism, especially as the coverage of it that I get - mostly from the Irish Catholic - includes outcry from Church of Ireland, Methodists, and Presbyterians, fewer though they may be.

On principal, I think there has to be a place for religiously motivated schools, and I think if all schools are state-funded, provision has to be made and respected to allow for that within the system. At the same time, it's hard to argue with people who don't want state-funding to go toward the proselytizing of a specific religion or its ethos. BUT AT THE SAME SAME TIME, isn't it silly to say state funding can go to a school that espouses Catholicism but is required to teach, with equal validity, potentially conflicting tenets of other faiths? I'm not sure the proposals would go that far, but the line of thinking carries a fair deal of preposterousness.

My only experience of this is with the primary school I've done some work in here in the parish. The children are well-behaved and have solid discipline, and the teachers are very hospitable to our coming in to do our catechesis. However, some basic things aren't part of the experience at the school, mainly regular visits to the Church and mass. We had to bring ashes to the school and administer them in two assemblies and a handful of classroom visits because, not only do they not have a meeting space big enough for the school to assemble in (an unfortunate problem of space currently being addressed with new construction) but they don't have any kind of a chapel or sacred area. 

If this whole stream of commentary seems watery and incoherent, it's because it is. I don't know how to engage with these criticisms. I agree with some principles on each side, and, as is so often the case with how my college-educated and Notre-Dame-formed mind sees the world, I want to scrutinize and pick apart the flaws in the system. If the State didn't (have to) fund every school, a private school network could support those seeking religiously influenced education and leave others to go to non-religious schools and seek out supplemental religious schooling from the parish.

It's a tough sea to sail in this culture of increasing Irish hostility to faith and its institution mixed in with austerity and recession. The Catholic Church here will need its leaders to hold strong, and I only hope that the future of the overlap between politics and the Catholic Church will be brighter in Ireland, America, and around our world.

In the NAME of Love

I'm off from work at the parish this week, a welcome respite after a Holy Week full of commitments - enjoyable, spiritually nourishing commitments but time on the clock nonetheless. So, a few days at home and a few days on the road means not making powerpoints in the office, not organizing binders of music for masses, not exchanging pleasantries with parishioners and office staff, and not being mistaken for my housemate.

You see, my housemate and co-worker and dear friend Kurt looks somewhat similar to me. We're both 6'1"-ish, pretty slim, and are often wearing similar outfits (jeans with a t-shirt or hoodie/pullover). So, for some reason, that causes Irish people - despite having known us for 7+ months now - to constantly mix us up. Many of those don't even realize that they've done it.

Sometimes it grates on me - I've been here trying to serve and build a presence for over half a year, and you still don't have my name matched to my face? Are Kurt and I just a homogeneous blob of person? Those moments are undeniable, but there are also plenty of times where I just chuckle to myself. Kurt and I even decided at one point that maybe we should just change our names - he'll start going by Theobold, and I'll be known as Haywood. It's harder to mistake a Haywood for a Theobold, right?

The times when I do get called the right name are heartening, especially when it comes from someone who I recognize or know vaguely or or only met once or twice - like the time I went to shake for peace with a man who followed his wish for peace with my name or the volunteer mothers from our parish's other school who knew my name even though my housemate was their school's confirmation program coordinator or the little kids from the school I help at who shout my name from their soccer games in the grassy areas by the sidewalks. The profound effect of calling someone by name is something we have all felt at some point, whether in a foreign country where people often mixup your name or in the most common and mundane situations.

Our first names are often known also as our Christian names. These are the names with which we were baptized into the Church, the names under which our parents brought us to God and His people to join in the communion with Christ. In Isaiah 43, God tells us, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name: you are mine." Our names are how everyone knows us, including God. It is how God identifies us and calls us to Him individually, each as His son or daughter.

Yesterday, I decided to keep to my usual morning and head to Wexford town for daily mass at a town church. Amid the change-of-pace factor of joining with a different community and different dynamic, the Gospel reading struck me. Within the Easter octave, we remain in the pinnacle of Easter joy, this day - Tuesday within the Easter octave - bringing us John's account of the empty tomb and Mary Magdalene's encounter with the Risen Lord.

Mary is overwhelmed with emotion to the point of weeping and thinks Jesus is just the nearby gardener coming to tend to the land. How does she go from confusion and uncertainty to the realization that the Risen Lord is right in front of her?

"Jesus said to her, 'Mary!'
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, 'Rabbouni,' which means teacher."

Behold the Church

"Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold, your son.' Then he said to the disciple, 'Behold, your mother.' And from that hour the disciple took her into his home."     -John 19:25-27

Often when people think of the beginning of our Church, they look to Pentecost. The Holy Spirit came to Jesus' followers and emboldened them to go forth from the room they cowered in and preach to all the nations. The small nucleus of faithful that had followed Jesus received the inspiration to do something with the good news that filled them with joy. They shared it with the people, and many were constantly added to their number.

I have no problem with this wondrous event marking the beginning of our Church, but what if we look earlier? Let's consider a perspective of the history of our God and His action in our world.

The span of our salvation history is often considered in three "eras":

(1) the Law and the Prophets - the time of the Jews as God's Chosen People and revelation chiefly through prophets

(2) the life and ministry of Jesus - the time when God became man and was with us in human form, walking and living among us

(3) the Church - the time when we pray and worship and live together as a community founded on Christ and looking forward to the time of fullness when our Lord will perfect our work on building the Kingdom in His eternal glory and our life with Him

This is a nice way to think of the evolution and progression of how God has intervened in human history, active in our lives and our world. The thing that separates the time of the Church from the time of Jesus' life is not that Jesus is no longer with us; it's that Jesus is with us through the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit within us and guiding our Church rather than physically walking among us as in His human life.

So, what if we look to the foot of Jesus' cross for the beginning of our Church? There is a potential pitfall as well as an inspiration in going to this moment. The hang-up is that is comes within the life of Jesus, the era preceding the Church, so it blurs the line a bit. But maybe that's just right.

The last thing Jesus did in His life, during those last hours when He was tortured and beaten then affixed to a cross, was commend His mother and His best friend to one another. He made sure to express His love for two of the dearest people to Him by matching them to each other, by telling them to continue sharing the love they had come to know in Christ with one another. It is in this beautiful reality that we can see the beginning of our Church.

Christ left us with the Eucharist, with His Passion and Resurrection, and Peter (the first pope) and the apostles (first bishops) to give us the foundation for His Church, for the way that His love would be known and shared through communities of prayer and worship where people could know the love of Christ through communion with Him and with one another. Where did/does this love come from? Jesus Christ - from His life, ministry, Passion, death, and Resurrection.

He gave us the perfect example. And in His last interpersonal action, before He died on the cross to offer salvation to all people, He looked to His most dearly beloved and told them to share their love with one another. And John took her into His home. And there and then, that might have been when our Church was born.

So as we gather as the communities of Christ, together within His Body as one community, let us remember that crucial moment of love shared, when the love of Christ came from Jesus Himself but was first shared between two believers whose love would be the foundation for the Love that pervades our Church.

Gospel, Wednesday of Holy Week

Here is a reflection I've done on today's Gospel reading from Matthew around the betrayal of Judas:

We're lucky, or maybe blessed, that our betrayals of Jesus aren't as high profile that of Judas. We're also pretty lucky that the payout for our double-crossings isn't made in cash because some of us, me included, could get rich pretty easily.

Judas' transgression is maybe the best-known sin against Jesus, and we follow in his footsteps pretty seriously. We, like those gathered at the Last Supper, come to the table with Christ as His friends in the Mass and the Eucharist. We look right at Jesus, say Amen, and pray our prayers, and even if we haven't pre-arranged a deal, we turn and make new mistakes.

However, unlike Judas, we can know and have the forgiveness of Christ. We don't have to turn to the dark recourse that Judas takes in his hour of darkness; we can return to God with all our hearts. We can come in repentance to Christ in the Eucharist and in Reconciliation and make amends for our mistakes, for those times when we turn ourselves away from our God who never leaves us.

So maybe today's Gospel is an opportunity to realize that we sin and come short like Judas, but to also realize that we can diverge from Judas' dark path. We can emerge from our darkness and realize our shortcomings. We can come back to Christ and share in Him who is Life.

The Greatest Apology

Apology: "a regretful acknowledgement of offense or failure."

When we think of an apology, we typically will think of trying to make amends for some way we've done wrong by others. Apology is a crucial precursor to forgiveness. We must repent of our mistakes to God and the people who we have done wrongly.

But theologians are nerds. And we specialize in another kind of apology: "a reasoned argument or writing in justification of something." Theologians have been spinning defenses of Christianity throughout the tradition of our church, trying to explain in rational terms why their faith seems so coherent and cogent. Much ink has been spilled by wonderfully bright and gifted humans trying their best to use limited intelligibilities to defend and uphold a faith and truth that exists within our faith-informed reason but also transcends it.

There is great merit in their efforts, and I like to think that some of my musings here have qualified as faithful efforts toward Christian apology. However, I, and most of my predecessors and cohorts, would admit the inadequacy of our writings. We are gesturing at a God who can only be successfully described negatively. We are dancing around an infinite truth with finite means.

So where can we look for the greatest apology for our faith? Where are the greatest words and strongest arguments? They come from the One for whom we apologize, our Risen Lord who made the greatest apology.

In the deep reaches our tradition, the prolific theologian Origen provided us some amazing theology, including the quote that has bannered my blog since its inception. In the prologue to his book Contra Celsum, an apology written against Celsus, a critic of Christianity, Origen shares what he views is the greatest apology ever made for our faith. His opinion? The silence of Jesus Christ in His trial.

Here I share with you the profound first section of his prologue and link you in to the full six section introduction to his great work:

"When false witnesses testified
against our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
He remained silent;
and when unfounded charges were brought against Him,
He returned no answer,
believing that His whole life and conduct among the Jews
were a better refutation than any answer to the false testimony,
or than any formal defence against the accusations.
And I know not, my pious Ambrosius,
why you wished me to write a reply
to the false charges brought by Celsus against the Christians,
and to his accusations directed against the faith of the Churches in his treatise;
as if the facts themselves did not furnish a manifest refutation,
and the doctrine a better answer than any writing,
seeing it both disposes of the false statements,
and does not leave to the accusations any credibility or validity.
Now, with respect to our Lord's silence
when false witness was borne against Him,
it is sufficient at present to quote the words of Matthew,
for the testimony of Mark is to the same effect.
And the words of Matthew are as follow:
And the high priest and the council
sought false witness against Jesus to put Him to death,
but found none, although many false witnesses came forward.
At last two false witnesses came and said,
'This fellow said, I am able to destroy the temple of God,
and after three days to build it up.'
And the high priest arose, and said to Him,
'Do you answer nothing to what these witness against you?'
But Jesus held His peace.
And that He returned no answer when falsely accused,
the following is the statement:
'And Jesus stood before the governor;
and he asked Him, saying,
"Are You the King of the Jews?"
And Jesus said to him, "You say."
And when He was accused of the chief priests and elders,
He answered nothing.
Then said Pilate unto Him,
"Do you not hear how many things they witness against You?"
And He answered him to never a word,
insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly."

May we remember the profound silence of our Lord, who chose to let His incredible love in action speak where words would fall short. May you have a blessed Holy Week and Triduum as you anticipate the resurrection of the Lord.