Mixed Motivations

In the end we will be purified of our mixed motives by the purity and brilliance of the vision of God. Until then, let us endure our situation of impure motivation and allow it to teach us humility. My homily for this weekend is posted here.

Heavy Metal Friar

This brother is my new favorite friar: Cesare Bonizzi, the heavy metal Capuchin!

St. Bonaventure's Perfect Science

Today is the feast of St. Bonaventure, the great doctor of the Franciscan family. In his honor I preached on a line from his Breviloquium, which is a kind of short summa of theology.

The Seraphic Doctor writes:

And so theology is the only perfect science, for it begins at the beginning which is the first Principle, and proceeds to the end, which is the final wages paid; it begins with the summit, which is God most high, the Creator of all, and reaches even to the abyss, which is the torment of hell. Breviloquium I:1:2.

It seems to me that this is a good meditation for us late modern people who live in a world so dominated by the power of natural science and human technology. As amazing as these human efforts and understandings are, they do not approach the questions asked and resolved by the first of the sciences, theology. Theology, after all, is the scientific reflection on divine revelation.

Here we have to struggle against two contemporary tendencies: scientism on the one hand and so-called fundamentalism on the other.

On the one hand we must live and preach against the error that natural science and human effort has priority over the truths of revelation and Sacred Scripture. Too often we give in to the "God of the gaps" model in which God is only left in charge of those areas of understanding that have not yet been explained by natural science.

On the other hand, we must also struggle against those of our brothers and sisters of faith who deny the rightful place of natural science and understanding. We believe that the cosmos was created through the Word of God, the logos as John the Evangelist puts it, and that this same Word or Wisdom of God became human as Jesus Christ the Lord. Therefore the natural world is a revelation of God in continuity with the revelations of Sacred Scripture and the Incarnation. So to understand the mysteries of the natural world is to reveal something of the mind, Word, or Wisdom of God. Those who deny, in favor of a very narrow "understanding" of the Scriptures, this full sense of the contuition of the human mind with the Wisdom of God in understanding the natural world do God's own revelatory intentions a grand disservice.

Pray for us, St. Bonaventure!

Ecumenical Moment

We had a real ecumenical afternoon here in our parish. A Melkite rite Catholic man who is an alumnus of our parish high school married an Orthodox woman in our Latin rite church. A bi-ritual Catholic priest led the ceremony. It's our parish policy to allow alumni to have their weddings here, even if they've moved away or aren't parishioners.

I was surprised to discover that with the permission of our pastor (for inter-rituality) and a dispensation from the Melkite bishop (for the man to marry an Orthodox), all of this is entirely possible. Since neither party is a Roman Catholic, however, we have no jurisdiction in their case and their marriage will not appear in our records.

It was really something to watch with all of the Eastern liturgical elements and chanting in Arabic going on under our image of St. Margaret Mary!

The Generous Sower

The grace of God is given generously to all, but it's up to us to notice, receive, and appreciate it. My homily for this weekend is posted here.

XT3

A couple of years ago I was excited to read that the folks who administer vatican.va were working on a social networking site, a kind of Myspace or Facebook for Catholics. I've been looking for it ever since, but it hasn't appeared.

Nevertheless, yesterday I discovered that such a site has been launched for World Youth Day 2008. Presumably it will remain after the event as a place to meet and network.

Check out XT3 and sign up!

Note to Men: Get Married

In the parish where I work we average just over a hundred funerals a year. So I've had a lot of experience with wakes, funerals, and committals in the year I've been here. I've made a lot of observations in the course of this, but here's one of the most striking: there is, generally, a remarkable difference between the funeral of an old maid and that of an old bachelor.

Now I'm no sociologist, and I don't know any real statistics, but it seems to me in my anecdotal experience that old maids live just as long as their married sisters. What's more, they seem to have just as many friends and associates who show up for their wakes and funerals.

It ain't so with old bachelors. They seem to die younger than their married brothers. They also usually have many fewer people show up for their wakes and funerals.

If I may wildly and irresponsibly extrapolate from my experience, it seems that for men, staying single is bad for you. For women, it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Anybody who really knows anything care to correct or corroborate my conclusions?