The Christian Religion

As I was saying my prayers this morning, I was struck by the collect for today:

Ever-living God, in the birth of your Son our religion has its origin and its perfect fulfillment. Help us to share in the life of Christ for he is the salvation of mankind, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

'Religion,' to me, is a funny term in its usage and connotations. On the one hand, there's the modern dichotomy between 'religion' and 'spirituality,' which has its truths but is also the source of grave and insidious falsities. On the other hand, there is the use of 'religion' as a genus for various forms of human behavior without much critical account of how they relate to each other. For example, it's fairly easy for me to see how Judaism and Christianity are the same sort of thing, or how Islam is the same sort of thing as the other two, but I have never been able to hear a coherent or satisfying account of how something like Buddhism or Hinduism is the same sort of thing as Christianity, such that they could be put into one genus called 'religions.'

One of our teachers in college, Mr. Woody, whom I remember fondly for many of his doctrines, used to intervene whenever a student committed the vagueness of saying, 'There's a sense in which...' He used to say something like, 'There is also a sense in which a bear and a pig are the same thing, but the purpose of critical inquiry is not for you to tell me that there is such a sense, but to give me an account of what that sense is.'

So before I tried to embark on a reflection on the use of 'religion' in this prayer, I checked it against the typical edition, and there it was again: totíus religiónis inítium perfectionemque. So the question arises, what do we mean by the Christian religion?

I don't think anybody is quite sure whether the root word of religio is ligo, to bind, or lego, to read, pick out, choose, etc. (e.g. from which we derive "elect," for example.) The former etymology seems to have more currency in the Christian tradition. Religion is that to which we have bound ourselves in order to be again where we were meant to be in the first place.

But here is exactly where we must be careful in our reflection. In the eyes of the world, the act of religion is the binding of oneself to a set of practices and beliefs. In the Christian sense, then, the Christian religion would be the binding of oneself to the beliefs, teachings, and practices that come to us from the Sacred Scriptures authentically interpreted by the apostles and especially by their successors gathered in ecumenical council. But this is only secondary. That we are bound to the content of our faith, no matter who true and sublime, is not the primary thing in the Christian religio. That we are bound to its rituals and practices, no matter how beautiful and salutary, is not the primary thing either.

The Chrisitan religio is, first and foremost, about being bound to a Person. Every other aspect of the believed and practiced religion flows from this Encounter. To me, this is what is prayed in our collect today. The birth of Christ is the beginning and perfection of our religion, because the Lord's Nativity is God's initiation of this Encounter. God has willed that humanity will be the site of his revealed Presence in the world, and has given us the means (i.e. faith, prayer, sacramental life) to find ourselves within that divine humanity which is Jesus Christ. To be a Christian, in the strictest sense, is not really to bind ourselves to anything, but simply to consent to God's Delight to bind our humanity to his Joyful Trinitarian Perfection in the humanity of Christ. That is what is meant by the Christian religion.

Some Christmas Music

I just wanted to post a couple of pieces of Christmas music I have been enjoying during the Octave.

First, the introit of the Mass at midnight from Westminster Cathedral, which I first saw on NLM. I have been listening to this over and over; it's just so hauntingly beautiful to me, and illustrates what reverence and beauty could be accomplished if we just let go of this practice of substituting the actual antiphons and texts of the Mass with hymns and songs.

Second, from a Facebook post of a very old friend, Ronnie James Dio singing God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. I think that's the great Tony Iommi on guitar.

Homo Incurvatus

Fearing that if I started to preach on Simeon and the Nunc dimittis, I would involve myself--and torment the daily Mass crowd--with an overblown account of the whole Lukan project and end up at least at Pentecost, if not Paul's trials, I decided to preach on the first reading today. I concentrated on the very end: "Whoever hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes." (1 John 2:11)

To love is to think straight. If we do not love, that is, if we fail to bother to act out of a desire for the good, happiness, and flourishment of the brother and sister creatures around us, we are confused and our thinking is distorted.

This is why we sin even though we think we don't really want to, as in St. Paul's famous complaint, "For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want." (Romans 7:19) Even though we know--or part of us knows--that it is not what our heart really wants, we continue to sin. Because we are not completely loving we are not thinking straight and can't make clear decisions about our behavior. We are the homo incurvatus, the 'bent over' human being who doesn't see the whole picture of light and goodness.

Let us repent of anything that is not love in our hearts and behavior, stand up straight, and see the perfect Love made flesh in Jesus Christ. Let us take care to fix our eyes on this Love, that we may always imitate the mystery we have received, and not fall back into confusion.

Overheard at the Parish Office

Caller: Is this St. Clare?

Receptionist: No, this is Alison.


Reminds me of another of my favorites:

Sergeant Stedenko: Radio dispatch, do you know who this is?

Cheech Marin: No, who is 'this is'?

Vocation, Communion, Sacrifice, and Dread

Today I am thinking about one of the most graced days in the whole of my vocation discernment, which was when I went for an interview with my home diocese in January 1999.

It had been three years since leaving my first experience of religious life on Christmas morning of 1995. In the course of a couple of weeks, both the DRE and the nun who coordinated lectors and EMoHC at my parish, as well as an old friend and a permanent deacon I met on retreat, had all mentioned the diocesan priesthood to me. Thinking that this might be a communication from the Holy Spirit, which it certainly was, I acted on it and made an appointment with the vocation director. In any case, whether it was going to be priesthood or religious life or something else, I had come to realize that I was not promotable in the company where I was working, and I knew I had to start thinking about what was going to come next for me.

I went to the seminary early so I could visit the chapel before my interview. It was a steamy, unseasonably warm day. I remember praying that the Spirit would use the interview to enlighten my discernment and guide me on my path. I think I went into the interview with the idea that I was a pretty good candidate, and that the vocation director ought to have been very glad to see me. After all, I was young, (26) had a perfect undergraduate transcript for entering the seminary, and was active in my parish. So I was very surprised when the meeting went very poorly! It was so bad, in fact, that I started to laugh as soon as I got away from the vocation director. He was very unimpressed with my answers and dismissed me with this advice, which I wrote in my journal as soon as I got back to my car: "Search your soul, try to make friends with some priests, and if you want you can call me again in a year."

My career in the secular clergy had ended before it started. What made my interview go so badly? For one thing, Fr. Vocation Director probably found me scandalously loose and informal. To that point, my only real experience of the clergy was through the college chaplaincy and the easy-going life of a Franciscan friary. I'm sure I didn't know how to act in the diocesan world. But on the other hand, in fairness, I didn't have real and discerned answers to his questions. I had not really reflected at all on the idea of priesthood; at that point in my life I had considered my vocation mostly in terms of religious life. (In fact, some years later when it came time--from within religious life--to decide whether or not to declare myself a candidate for ordination, I had to find a different means of discernment entirely.) In fact, my prayer in the chapel was answered in the sense that I arrived home from the seminary that day convinced that my place was in religious life.

I remember part of the response the priest gave me, which I also wrote down: "In all that you have said I have heard nothing about uniting yourself to the sacrifice of Christ or about the Eucharist." Fair enough, I realize now, but at the time I barely understood the critique.

All of this comes back to me now because I remember not really getting it at the time, but how now such language is a part of my interior life on a daily basis. It's like how I can remember being little and looking at text without being able to read, or how--this one really amuses me--I puzzled over the unknown word, 'contrition,' on the SAT, a word that would become a heavy-laden part of my daily reflection and vocabulary just a couple of years later.

I think of my diocesan vocation director's words sometimes when I receive Holy Communion. Of course I am grateful as I make the prayers, Corpus/Sanguis Christi custódiat me in vitam ætérnam, and receive, but often I am filled with a little bit of dread as well. This is the broken and sacrificed Body of Christ before me, and his Blood poured out in ratification of an eternal covenant. This is a God so sublimely humble that He abandons everything it ought to mean to be God (in human terms) and puts himself into the womb and hands of our Blessed Mother as a powerless and vulnerable infant. And so with Mary, as with us, except in reverse; he puts his Vulnerable Self into our hands that he may enter and live within our bodies. This is, in fact, the exitus and reditus of the Incarnation, drawing us into itself through the Eucharist.

Am I prepared for this? Am I ready to receive such a sacrifice and such a humility into my body? You are what you eat, after all. By putting the broken and sacrificed Body and Blood of Christ into my body, do I know what I am getting into? Have I really consented to have my life and flesh united to that Sacrifice?

Holy Family

Looking at it again, it's not my most inspired work, but you can follow this link for my homily from this weekend three years ago, which I am moving from this blog over to my homily blog, Praise and Bless. It wasn't quite three years ago that I started a separate blog for homilies, so I'm still moving some material over there from the four month period after I started preaching on Sundays and before I started the homily blog.

Priesthood Fail

One thing that really gets me is when someone is evaluated or judged on criteria that have not been articulated or previously agreed upon. It just seems so unjust to me. But am I also guilty, in a way? Here's what I'm thinking about:

One of the most unpleasant duties of my employment as parish priest is when I have to thwart what folks want to do. A couple of examples will illustrate what I'm talking about. Many times in the course of my ministry I have the singularly rotten duty of trying to explain to the recently bereaved that if they choose to cremate their dead, they are still obligated to bury or entomb the remains. Cremated remains are due the same respect, and are to be handled in the same way as a body. On the other side of life, I often have to tell new parents that the persons they have chosen as their child's godparents are ineligible for the role, either because they have not completed their own sacramental initiation, are not (yet) seeking convalidation for marriages contracted outside of canonical form, or are simulating marriage through cohabitation.

To these, and many other similarly combative assertions I have to make, I often receive the very annoyed answer, 'Well, I never heard of that.'

Now I'm not forgiving the voluntary ignorance of Catholics who have not made any effort to be informed about the faith. But have I been complicit with it?

How often have I tried to stir up the eagerness of adults to complete their sacramental initiation through Confirmation? Have I preached that eligibility for joys like sacramental sponsorship presupposes it?

How often have I preached on the expectations of Catholics with regard to marriage? How often have I preached against cohabitation or getting married at city hall? And if I have not preached on the meaning of marriage, should I be surprised when Catholics have such an impoverished sense of what marriage is that they don't automatically see through this nonsense about same-sex marriage being some kind of 'civil right'?

How often have I preached--apart from funerals themselves--on the meaning of Christian death and the destiny of the physical body?

Have I preached against the crime of abortion? Even though the warnings of Humanae vitae have turned out to be uncannily prophetic, am I still afraid to preach against artificial birth control and other so-called 'reproductive technologies' that deny the dignity of the human person?


I say all this because I don't think I've done it, nor is it my experience that priests tend to preach on such things. Most priests want to be nice, so we don't preach in such a way as to make demands, or tell people what they have to do. But if I don't do these things, should I be surprised when folks say, 'Well, I never heard of that.'? If they have never heard of some Catholic teaching or ordinary expectation of Catholic life, it's my fault, and I can expect to be held accountable for it at my judgment, at least in part.

It's not fair for me to call people on their ignorance if I have refused to be their teacher.

May God help me to live up to Presbyterorum ordinis 6:

Priests therefore, as educators in the faith, must see to it either by themselves or through others that the faithful are led individually in the Holy Spirit to a development of their own vocation according to the Gospel, to a sincere and practical charity, and to that freedom with which Christ has made us free. Ceremonies however beautiful, or associations however flourishing, will be of little value if they are not directed toward the education of men to Christian maturity. In furthering this, priests should help men to see what is required and what is God's will in the important and unimportant events of life. Also, Christians should be taught that they live not only for themselves, but, according to the demands of the new law of charity; as every man has received grace, he must administer the same to others. In this way, all will discharge in a Christian manner their duties in the community of men.