Dwelling Richly

(Reflection prepared for our vocation department's social media)

In the first reading for the Mass of Christmas Eve morning we hear how God takes the opportunity of David’s plans to build the house of God, the Temple, to turn the discernment around: it is God, rather, who will establish a house for David. (2 Samuel 7:11)

At Christmas we see this prophecy begin to come to its final fulfillment. Mary, in bearing the Lord in her womb, becomes the first tabernacle and the exemplar of the Church to come. She is, as St. Francis of Assisi puts it, the Virgin made Church. (A Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary)

Jesus Christ, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, invites us into Holy Communion with him, that we, as the Church, might become a dwelling place for God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:22) In this way, the great feast of Pentecost, at which we recall and celebrate the Spirit as the abiding presence of Christ in his Church, peeks out even now at Christmas. Indeed, Pentecost is the fulfillment of the prophecy given to David; God builds for us a house in which he himself will dwell among us, our home and mother the Church.

As Blessed Isaac of Stella writes: “Christ dwelt for nine months in the tabernacle of Mary’s womb. He dwells until the end of the ages in the tabernacle of the Church’s faith. He will dwell for ever in the knowledge and love of each faithful soul.” (Office of Readings for Saturday of the 2nd week of Advent)

When you, faithful soul, discover the unique and unrepeatable way that Christ desires to dwell in you richly (Colossians 3:16), you have discerned your vocation.

The Brown Scapular Dubium

Years ago, during the period in between my two times in religious life, I was enrolled in the Brown Scapular at some kind of youth event. If memory serves, it was animated by the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate and at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Hamden, Connecticut. Given certain Carmelite tendencies, such as my gratefulness for John of the Cross and Edith Stein, I was always happy to have this special association with Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and the Carmelite family.

The Holy Family

Holy Family, C

The good news of Christmas continues to unfold; the mystery of the incarnation continues to reveal itself. Today we are given to contemplate Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, as a member of a family – the Holy Family – together with Mary and Joseph.

And we see that Jesus as a child in the Holy Family is part of the mystery of the incarnation. When we say that the Word of God assumed our human nature, this includes being a member of family, for it is part of our human nature to be members of a family, to be children of parents, parents of children, brothers and sisters. And given that the mystery of the incarnation in Jesus Christ not only reveals God but also our human nature as God sees it – and things only really exist in the way God sees them – perhaps this revelation of the Holy Family is important for us in our time, in which we see how forgetfulness of God quickly leads to much confusion – and the suffering that follows – about the nature and purpose of the family.

The Visitation and Charity

Today's feast, the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth as it appears in St. Luke, and the in utero encounter of Jesus and John, brings back for me one of my earliest catholic sense-memories. It was right around the time when I decided that my search for a spiritual home was coming to a conclusion; I would become a catechumen and seek baptism in the Catholic Church. It was around Advent 1991.

Always With Me

Today is a big Franciscan feast, that of Our Lady of the Angels of the Portiuncula, when, also for all the faithful, according to a certain tradition by the request of St. Francis himself, the Pardon of Assisi or Portiuncula indulgence is available at your local Franciscan church or oratory, or at your parish church, visited to honor Our Lady and the Angels, and according to the normal conditions for the gaining of indulgences, of course.

Today I'm thinking of the little holy card of Our Lady of the Angels, which I've had with me since, as best as I can reconstruct the timing, since the morning of Friday, April 23, 1993.

Saint Mary of the Angels/pray for us

All Franciscan Souls Ramble

On Saturday, in the Mass I celebrated with the Capuchin Sisters of Mother Rubatto and in the Liturgy of the Hours here at home, we had the Commemoration of all the Franciscan Faithful Departed, or All Franciscan or All Seraphic Souls.

Sister Death presides over the friars' cemetery, Yonkers, New York

I like how we Franciscans have our own All Souls Day. It's like a family thing; just as in a family folks might take care to have Masses celebrated for their dear departed, so we Franciscans have a liturgical day for ours. I forget how we do it at home in the USA, but here in Italy this day always gets scheduled for the first totally free liturgical day after November 2. So this year, having duly celebrated the days for Martin de Porres and Charles Borromeo, it was this past Saturday.

The gospel for the Mass was from St. John.

Immaculate Heart of Mary

"And his mother kept all these things in her heart." (Luke 2:51)

It's a beautiful little line that St. Luke gives us, and it reminds us that Mary kept in her heart all the mysteries of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. And not just the mysteries about which we know something, like his birth in Bethlehem and his passion and death on the Cross, but also those aspects of Jesus' life that we cannot know, like what he was like as a boy, how it was to observe him working with St. Joseph, and all the other blessed details of a daily life lived with the Son of God.

When we think about this, we realize that Mary knows Jesus better than any other person who ever lived, or will ever live. This realization forms part of our motivation for turning to Mary in our desire to follow after Jesus. It is she who knows best him whom our hearts desire and whom we wish to follow.

Let us turn, then, to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, that place of safe-keeping and cherishing of all the mysteries of the Word of God made man in Jesus Christ. May she obtain for us the grace of knowing Jesus ever more fully and deeply, and may we too keep, protect, and cherish his presence in our own hearts.

Immaculate Conception

The new creation was growing and gathering strength within the old creation long before it was definitively inaugurated at the beginning of these last days in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It was the power of this new creation that brought forth the patriarch Isaac from Abraham and Sarah, even though Abraham's body was "as good as dead" and Sarah was barren. (Romans 4:19) In them we begin to see the first light of the Resurrection.

That first light of the dawn that will be the Resurrection of Christ on the first day of the new creation is fully revealed in the conception of Mary. Her conception without original sin is a break with the past, a blessed discontinuity with the heritage of selfishness and sin in which we are all born and know all too well. As the Immaculate Conception she is prepared to be the mother of the new human being and the new creation, a creation far more glorious even than that of the first in the state of original blessing. "The gift is not like the trespass." (Romans 5:15)

Presentation of the Lord

Thus says the Lord God:
Lo, I am sending my messenger
to prepare the way before me;
And suddenly there will come to the temple
the LORD whom you seek,
And the messenger of the covenant whom you desire.
Yes, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.
But who will endure the day of his coming?
And who can stand when he appears?
For he is like the refiner’s fire,
or like the fuller’s lye.
He will sit refining and purifying silver,
and he will purify the sons of Levi,
Refining them like gold or like silver
that they may offer due sacrifice to the LORD.
Then the sacrifice of Judah and Jerusalem
will please the LORD,
as in the days of old, as in years gone by.
(Malachi 3:1-4)

I love the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. It's one of those days that just seems so mystical. Falling on the cross-quarter between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox, it recalls that the Light, born at Christmas and adored by the wise men, born away from any home, now arrives in his historical home, his Temple.

The Holy Mother of God

We celebrate today Mary, the Holy Mother of God. We celebrate the maternity of Mary not only as one of the mysteries of Christmas, but also because her vocation is ours as well.

Like Mary, we are are called to welcome the Word of God, Jesus Christ, and to "protect Christ in our lives"--as Pope Francis said during the Mass for the beginning of his Petrine ministry--in order to be able to bear him and his mission into the world and into history.

In this sense Mary is the prototype of the Church; what she has done historically we are called to do spiritually. In the words of Lumen gentium, Mary "is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come." (68)

It is the task of the Church, and of each of us as her members, to welcome the Word, to nourish and protect it, and to bear it and give witness to it in our relationships, in our projects, and in our world.

In this sense, God seeks our maternity. It is a virginal maternity because there is no earthly father, but only the Holy Spirit who conceives the Christian vocation within us as the presence of Christ.

God seeks us, as St. Francis greeted the Blessed Virgin Mary, as virgo ecclesia facta, 'the virgin made Church,' as a virginity ready to keep and hold the presence of Christ such that his presence might be born throughout the world.

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

Gaudens Gaudebo

I was relieved yesterday by the resolution of a liturgical dubium that had been troubling me. Everyone was acting as if today, December 8, was going to be the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception when it seemed to me that it should be the Second Sunday of Advent. After all, consulting the 'table of liturgical days' in the front of your breviary or missal clearly reveals that a Sunday of Advent enjoys precedence over almost everything, including solemnities of Our Lady.

301 Years Under Immaculate Mary

A little post for the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary today, which is also the feast day of my province of the Order. On the 7-language grid of the circumscriptions of the Order, to which I'm always referring in my current work, we are along the line Provincia Neoeboracensis et Nov. Angliae. So happy feast day to all the brothers at home.

In his forthcoming circular letter for the Year of Faith, our General Minister refers to an event of which I had never heard. In 1712, he says, the Capuchin Order was placed under the patronage and protection of Mary Immaculate.

Virgo Ecclesia Facta

For the feast of the Annunciation today it occurred to me to pray St. Francis's Salutation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which contains that wonderful, mystical title of Mary, Virgin made Church:

Motherhood of Mary

The Martyrology is marvelous today:

The octave of the Nativity of the Lord and the day of his Circumcision, the solemnity of holy Mary, Mother of God, whom the Fathers at the Council of Ephesus acclaimed Theotokos, for from her the Word took flesh and the Son of God lived among human beings, he who is the prince of peace, to whom a Name above all names is given.

It's all in there: the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, the octave of Christmas, the feast of the Circumcision, (which continues to be celebrated today in the Extraordinary Form), the feast of the Holy Name, of course associated with the circumcision but now having migrated to January 3, and even the the World Day of Peace, given to us by Pope Venerable Paul VI.

I know that the Motherhood of Mary, now today's principal title, is a restoration of something older and more venerable, but I've still sometimes wished that we could have the feast of the Lord's Circumcision. Maybe it's because the circumcision of my older nephew was one of the most interesting rituals I have ever been privileged to attend.

I think about this very bodily ritual by which Jesus of Nazareth was brought into the covenant of Abraham and I'm led to contemplate the mystery of his human body, out of the flesh of Mary, as the hinge that joins the old creation to the new.

I think about this sometimes at Holy Communion. It's clear that the Body of Christ we receive is not the finite, historical body of Jesus of Nazareth. (This is why I consider misled and confused those priests who replace 'behold the Lamb of God' at Communion with 'this is Jesus...') The Body we receive is Christ risen into the Sacraments of his Church. The wonder and marvelous mystery--as well as the stumbling block--of it all is that this Risen Body is continuous with the historical life of Jesus of Nazareth, born of Mary, executed on the Cross.

By our Holy Communion, we too become sharers in this mystery. We are made citizens of the new creation and are offered the grace to become new, renovated creatures, the grace of eyes to see new hope in the midst of the aimlessness and violence of the world. But at the same time we remain, in some sense, children of Adam and Eve, laboring under the confusions, pathologies, and injuries that are the whole human legacy of brutality and sin to which we are the latest heirs. Christianity makes us into very curious beings, blessed messes, weeds and wheat, rejoicing in our newly-granted citizenship in the new creation but still struggling with everything that continues to bind us to the old.


Overheard:

Friar 1: "How's your life, Father?"

Friar 2: "My life? There is no longer 'my life' but Christ who lives in me."

Friar 1: "I think Christ is a little cranky today."


It's cute, but I think it captures something. Despite the dual citizenship of the Christian, member of the 'Israel of God' which nonetheless is still in pilgrimage in history, he is not two people, but one. From the Cross Jesus gave us his mother to be our mother. By our burial into his death in baptism, we are reborn of Mary. We become the offspring of her 'fruitful virginity,' itself the great sign of the dawning new creation.

And yet it is the child of Eve who becomes a child of Mary, and the 'inner child' that was born of Eve remains. Miserable as he necessarily is, I need to treat him like the spoiled, short-sighted, tantrum-throwing brat that original sin has made him. I have to put him in 'time out' when it's time to pray and when I'm called to any kind of delicate and difficult charity for my neighbor. But I also have to look upon him with some fondness, not hating him, and not treating him with the contempt which only makes his wounds fester all the more, for he also is me.

Through the Darkness

For the feast of the Holy Family today, we have in the gospel St. Luke's scene of the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. Treating this moment in the epilogue to The Infancy Narratives, the Holy Father writes:

Saint Luke describes the reaction of Mary and Joseph to Jesus' words with two statements: "They did not understand the saying which he spoke to them," and "his mother kept all these things in her heart" (2:50, 51) Jesus' saying is on too lofty a plane for this moment in time. Even Mary's faith is a "journeying" faith, a faith that is repeatedly shrouded in darkness and has to mature by persevering through the darkness. Mary does not understand Jesus' saying, but she keeps it in her heart and allows it gradually to come to maturity there.

It seems to me that there's a lot of encouragement for us in Mary's example.

Reading 'The Infancy Narratives'

I've been reading Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives on the Sundays of Advent and finished it this morning. The first thing I would say about it is that the reader does well to take seriously what the author says about the nature of the book, that it "is not a third volume, but a kind of small 'antechamber' to the two earlier volumes." It's a sweet little book of just a few chapters, but shot through with the sort of reflection that reveals a real devotion to the events recorded by Matthew and Luke. Particularly touching in this sense is the thoughtful section on the Virgin Birth:

It seems natural to me that only after Mary's death could the mystery be made public and pass into the shared patrimony of early Christianity. At that point it could find its way into the evolving complex of Christological doctrine and be linked to the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God--yet not in the manner of a story crafted from an idea, an idea reformulated as a fact, but vice versa: the event itself, a fact that was now in the public domain, became the object of reflection--understanding was sought. The overall picture of Jesus Christ shed light upon the event, and conversely, through that event, the divine logic was more deeply grasped. The mystery of his origin illuminated what came later, and conversely the developed form of Christological faith helped to make sense of that origin. Thus did Christology develop.

Another section that makes a similar point in a more general way:

The two chapters of Matthew's Gospel devoted to the infancy narratives are not a meditation presented under the guise of stories, but the converse: Matthew is recounting real history, theologically thought and interpreted, and thus he helps us to understand the mystery of Jesus more deeply.

How refreshing that is for us who absorbed so many brittle doctrines about history and fact and meaning and God--e.g. 'yes, it's just a myth' or 'yes, it's just a symbol,' 'but that means it's more true!' or 'yes, the Bible is all true, and some of it really happened'--all of these doctrines that when they are heard by unbelievers convince them more deeply that we religious people are self-deluded and full of nonsense. More and more I tend to consign such teaching to the large category of things that seemed liberating to our parents in the faith but have not delivered on such hope.

It is said by some that the Church needs to be updated according to the times, in order to be more relevant, more comprehensible, and set free from her doctrines that are offensive to the cherished ideas of contemporary society. But what they forget is that the world doesn't hate the Church because of her teachings; the world hates the Church because it hated Jesus Christ first. And those are his words, not mine.

And why should Benedict's assertions seem strange? Do we not in just the same way work out our spiritual understanding of ourselves? It is a historical fact that in the early afternoon on August 29, 1992, I walked up and out of the basement of Freeman dormitory and down the street to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Quaker Hill, Connecticut, where a deacon of the Roman Catholic Church poured some water on me and invoked the Blessed Trinity. It really took place. You can go to the church and find a historical record of it in their office. But to know and understand what happened that day requires some theological reflection. That's how our spiritual lives work, history coming to be understood in light of God's eternity. Why should the Sacred Scriptures be any different?

I also enjoyed a little jab at academic theology delivered by the old professor. He is discussing the beginning of Matthew 2, in which Herod, following up on the inquiry of Magi, asks the chief priests and the scribes where the Messiah is to be born. Despite giving a learned and complete answer, Benedict notes that this knowledge does not prompt them to actually do anything:

The answer given by the chief priests and scribes to the wise men's question has a thoroughly practical geographical content, which helps the Magi on their way. Yet it is not only a geographical, but also a theological interpretation of the place and the event. That Herod would draw the obvious conclusion is understandable. Yet it is remarkable that his Scripture experts do not feel prompted to take any practical steps as a result. Does this, perhaps, furnish us with the image of a theology that exhausts itself in academic disputes?

maran atha

Today was my turn to be principal celebrant at Mass. Whenever my turn comes around I think first of Zechariah taking his turn in the Temple, and then of the little bits of paper you get when you 'take a number' here in Italy. (In Italy you're always taking a number.) The little thing has your number on it and written below is, è il mio turno. 'Is my turn.' There's something so cute and innocent about it, as if you were playing Uno or Monopoly insteading of waiting to attempt some arcane bureaucratic procedure in a foreign language. And once in a while it even turns out to be true, i.e. you succeed in taking your turn according to the number.

I was trying to think of something very short for a homily, such that I might have a chance to actually deliver it in Italian, but also because short is pleasing to the brethren.

It struck me as interesting that in this time of Advent, when we focus on the coming of Jesus Christ, when we are often praying in the words of St. John at the very end of the New Testament--Come, Lord Jesus!--in the gospel today (Matthew 11:28-30), it is rather Jesus who says, "Come to me."

It reminds us that we hope for the coming of Jesus Christ, that we are able to pray, Come, Lord Jesus, only because God has already given us his Spirit who prays within us.

But that's more than just a clever, pious thought. The whole mystery of Christmas is in it.

It is the Spirit who conceives the Word as the historical life of Jesus of Nazareth.

In the same way, the Spirit, whom we have received by the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist that flowed together from the opened side of Christ crucified, wills to conceive the presence of Christ in our humanity.

When we find ourselves praying, Come, Lord Jesus, this is, in fact, an experience of the Holy Spirit praying within us, working to accomplish in our humanity the mystery of the Annunciation. The whole dialogue of the Annunciation occurs within our own prayer, or, it could also be said, between the desire of our heart and the Spirit praying within us, such that our Christmas task becomes a simple making of our own the assent of Mary, Let it be done to me according to your word, that we may begin to nurture the Word conceived in us. In God's time, we will bring him to birth in the places, situations, and relationships of our lives.

The Veil

A part of the new mosaic reredos in the church here at the International College 'San Lorenzo da Brindisi' by Marko Ivan Rupnik, SJ.

Moses' veil protects him from seeing the the full glory of God, namely the incarnation, the motherhood of Mary in the burning bush.

There seem to be different feelings about the image. One the one hand, it brings forth the mystery of the incarnation in its foreshadowing and inchoate revelation in the old covenants; the burning yet unconsumed bush as a type of the virginity of Mary, the revelation of the divine name in its relation to the procession of the Word from the Father and the human conception of that same word by the Holy Spirit.

On the other hand, it brings up Paul's sometimes uncomfortable interpretation of the veil in 2 Corinthians 13, wherein the veil remains to this day, keeping the Jews from understanding the scripture when Moses is read.

To me, whatever one makes of it, the striking nature of the image invites contemplation of the Mystery who is the hope of our gaze, as we pray for our transformation "into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit." (Cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18)

Feast of the Subtle Doctor

Today is the first time I ever remember celebrating the feast of Blessed John Duns Scotus. I'm not saying that he's not on the most recent Franciscan calendars at home, but we certainly don't have any propers and I don't remember ever observing his day. In any case, he seems to be an obligatory memorial for us here in Italy, and here's his collect in the 2011 Santorale Francescano: Collectio Missarum (Padua: Editrici Francescane):

Father, source of all wisdom,
who in blessed John Duns Scotus, priest,
believer in the immaculate conception
of the Virgin Mary,
have given us a teacher of life and of thought,
grant that, illuminated by his example
and nourished by his doctrine,
we might hold fast to Christ.
He who is God, and lives and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
for ever and ever.


From the Martyrology:

At Cologne in German Lotharingia, blessed John Duns Scotus, priest of the Order of Friars Minor, who, born in Scotland, taught the disciplines of philosophy and theology as an illustrious master at Canterbury, Oxford, Paris, and at last, Cologne, with subtle genius and wonderful fervor.


Pray for us.

UPDATE: I notice that The Smithy has posted the actual collect.

Most In Need Of Thy Mercy

Lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of praying is the law of believing. So goes the old Christian axiom on the relation between faith and prayer. One of the truths that comes from this rule is that we can examine our prayer and discover what we believe. Most interesting to me, on a personal level, is to notice in prayer how my sense of God and of faith has changed over time. I think, for example, of how my punctuation of the Act of Contrition has shifted over time. Today I'm also thinking of the 'Fatima prayer.'

During the months of May and October here at the general curia, the common meditation period between vespers and supper is given to the rosary. It seems to be the custom here to use the prayer at the end of the decades: O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy. Amen. Of course here we say it in Italian: Gesù mio, perdona le nostre colpe, preservaci dal fuoco dell'inferno, porta in cielo tutte le anime, specialmente le più bisognose della tua misericordia. Amen.

I remember encountering this prayer for the first time when I was a catechumen and I went to a rosary at the parish where I was going to be baptized. It wasn't, however, present in the little booklet from which I first learned to pray the rosary, and so I've never really adopted its use. Besides, I'll admit it, when I was younger  it seemed to me a little patronizing the part about the souls in most need of Jesus' mercy. Here we were, righteous rosary-saying folks (and we all know that praying the rosary is one of the marks of an extra-good Catholic) praying for those poor souls in most need of mercy.

Over time, though, I've come to realize that it's not that way at all. Why? Because when I pray for Jesus' mercy on the souls most in need of it, I'm praying for myself. That's me, Jesus, the soul most in need of thy mercy. Even if someday I get to the point where my sins aren't as objectively grave as some of my brother and sister sinners in this world, I will be still a worse sinner because I persist in my sins and spiritual laziness even with everything God has given me.

So I've decided that I'm happy to say the prayer. And I'm grateful for everyone else in the world praying it for me and my fellow souls most in need of Jesus' mercy.