June 29, 2011
Fun Size Paschal Candle
Somehow I think the symbol isn't quite functioning here. Oh well, it's only until the end of the Easter season. Uh...wait a sec...
June 28, 2011
Fleeing From Sodom
In religious life and ministry we're all familiar with the pejorative sense of 'pastoral.' It's when in the name of being nice or avoiding difficult conversations we compromise the orthodoxy of our teaching or fail to give real pastoral care. For example, if a parish priest provides sacraments and services to everyone who calls or comes to the door, no questions asked, he is not really the kind and 'pastoral' minister he thinks he is, but has avoided real pastoral relationship just as much as the mean priest who discourages and dismisses people with all kinds of conditions, demands, and paperwork.
I have to say that one of these 'pastoral' moments comes up in the lectionary in these days. Between yesterday and today the gentle editors of the lectionary have us skip over the first part of Genesis 19, the sin of the Sodomites. Yesterday Abraham was pleading for Sodom, and today Lot and his family are escaping its destruction. What happened in between is safely omitted.
What was the sin of the Sodomites? Was it homosexual acts as it is in the common cultural imagination? Or could it be more properly violence, rape, and an egregious failure in hospitality? The lectionary, by omitting the passage, relieves sacred ministers from having to preach on these questions, and gives the praying Church permission not to reflect on them and wonder what grace of new understanding God might desire to give us.
And how salutary such a reflection might be in a Church which needs to struggle with its own legacy of the sexualized abuse of power!
But thanks to the lectionary today, we have one more nice little way to excuse ourselves from that challenge. How pastoral.
I have to say that one of these 'pastoral' moments comes up in the lectionary in these days. Between yesterday and today the gentle editors of the lectionary have us skip over the first part of Genesis 19, the sin of the Sodomites. Yesterday Abraham was pleading for Sodom, and today Lot and his family are escaping its destruction. What happened in between is safely omitted.
What was the sin of the Sodomites? Was it homosexual acts as it is in the common cultural imagination? Or could it be more properly violence, rape, and an egregious failure in hospitality? The lectionary, by omitting the passage, relieves sacred ministers from having to preach on these questions, and gives the praying Church permission not to reflect on them and wonder what grace of new understanding God might desire to give us.
And how salutary such a reflection might be in a Church which needs to struggle with its own legacy of the sexualized abuse of power!
But thanks to the lectionary today, we have one more nice little way to excuse ourselves from that challenge. How pastoral.
June 27, 2011
Encouragement From Sodom
Today's first reading, Genesis 18:16-33, in which Abraham haggles with God for the sparing of Sodom, is one of my favorites in the daily Mass lectionary. I find it very encouraging and inspiring. I'll explain.
Even though we know that things didn't really work out for Sodom, it doesn't change the fact that God was willing to spare the whole city for the sake of ten innocent people, having been haggled down from fifty. I find this encouraging because it suggests that even though I'm a lukewarm religious and barely repentant for my sins, I could still be saved for the sake of the saints around in my in my friary, neighborhood, and world.
This means that it is in my best interest to help other people become saints, especially if it's not going so well for me. After all, it is the highest charity to assist others in coming to holiness, and this is what religious communities are meant to be at the most basic level: mutual associations for the sake of common and individual holiness.
God's oaths on the sparing of Sodom reveal that such charity, the giving of self for the sake of the holiness of others, is not just altruism. It is in my self-interest to give myself away for the sake of others arriving at holiness, because it may be because of their sanctity that a sinner and tepid religious like me could also come to salvation.
Even though we know that things didn't really work out for Sodom, it doesn't change the fact that God was willing to spare the whole city for the sake of ten innocent people, having been haggled down from fifty. I find this encouraging because it suggests that even though I'm a lukewarm religious and barely repentant for my sins, I could still be saved for the sake of the saints around in my in my friary, neighborhood, and world.
This means that it is in my best interest to help other people become saints, especially if it's not going so well for me. After all, it is the highest charity to assist others in coming to holiness, and this is what religious communities are meant to be at the most basic level: mutual associations for the sake of common and individual holiness.
God's oaths on the sparing of Sodom reveal that such charity, the giving of self for the sake of the holiness of others, is not just altruism. It is in my self-interest to give myself away for the sake of others arriving at holiness, because it may be because of their sanctity that a sinner and tepid religious like me could also come to salvation.
June 26, 2011
Theses on Holy Communion
For the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ today, I was just reflecting a little on Holy Communion. I was putting some theses on Twitter, but then I decided to make a blog post out of them:
1. Holy Communion is God's passionate desire to unite His divine life with us, not our reaching out to try to grasp some grace we might think we need.
2.. Holy Communion is not a reward for good behavior, but medicine for those striving to be converted from sin.
3. The words of the minister, "The Body/Blood of Christ" are a personal address. At this moment we are called by our deepest name, our most durable identity. This is why it's reducing and misguided to say, "So-and-so, the Body of Christ."
4. To receive Holy Communion is to consent to becoming the Body of Christ, a Body both broken for the healing of this world and glorified for its salvation.
5. Thus, receiving Holy Communion is both a consent to be converted and the very source of this willingness.
6. In Holy Communion we consent to take the sacrifice of the Cross into our bodies and thus become instruments of the divine humility which defeats all human violence and misery.
7. Holy Communion both signifies and accomplishes the unity of all the faithful, but it also displays to both the Church and the world the judgment between those who assent to revelation and those who do not. Sometimes we try to dismiss the sign of division that Holy Communion becomes, but this is to impoverish the real unity it accomplishes.
1. Holy Communion is God's passionate desire to unite His divine life with us, not our reaching out to try to grasp some grace we might think we need.
2.. Holy Communion is not a reward for good behavior, but medicine for those striving to be converted from sin.
3. The words of the minister, "The Body/Blood of Christ" are a personal address. At this moment we are called by our deepest name, our most durable identity. This is why it's reducing and misguided to say, "So-and-so, the Body of Christ."
4. To receive Holy Communion is to consent to becoming the Body of Christ, a Body both broken for the healing of this world and glorified for its salvation.
5. Thus, receiving Holy Communion is both a consent to be converted and the very source of this willingness.
6. In Holy Communion we consent to take the sacrifice of the Cross into our bodies and thus become instruments of the divine humility which defeats all human violence and misery.
7. Holy Communion both signifies and accomplishes the unity of all the faithful, but it also displays to both the Church and the world the judgment between those who assent to revelation and those who do not. Sometimes we try to dismiss the sign of division that Holy Communion becomes, but this is to impoverish the real unity it accomplishes.
June 25, 2011
Motorcycle Blessing
This is a perfect example of the stuff I miss from being a parish priest. On my way to the provincial chapter last month I stayed a weekend with the friars at my old assignment. I asked the pastor if I could help out by taking one of the Sunday Masses. The Saturday was fairly busy--it's wedding season, after all--so he offered me the vigil Mass.
While we were in the back of the church getting ready for the procession, a couple came in and approached me. "After Mass, Father," they asked, "would you bless our new Harley?" Of course I would, I told them, and then instructed one of the altar girls to bring down the holy water bucket and aspergillum when we recessed out of the sanctuary at the end of Mass.
By the end of Mass it was pouring rain. But I said I would bless this motorcycle and I was going to do it. So I took off the chasuble and went out. I told the altar girl that she didn't have to come, but she seemed to want to. (She's dedicated, and always remind me that she served at my first Mass.) So there I was, standing the rain, vested in alb, cincture, and stole, accompanied by my acolyte and the two proud new Harley owners, praying over the new motorcycle. This was witnessed by a large number of parishioners who were waiting out the rain on the portico.
One always feels a little funny sprinkling holy water in the rain.
That's just the sort of prayerful adventure that I miss from being a parish priest. I don't think I even knew the couple, but somehow they found out who I am, because they managed to deliver to me this glass as a thank-you present.
While we were in the back of the church getting ready for the procession, a couple came in and approached me. "After Mass, Father," they asked, "would you bless our new Harley?" Of course I would, I told them, and then instructed one of the altar girls to bring down the holy water bucket and aspergillum when we recessed out of the sanctuary at the end of Mass.
By the end of Mass it was pouring rain. But I said I would bless this motorcycle and I was going to do it. So I took off the chasuble and went out. I told the altar girl that she didn't have to come, but she seemed to want to. (She's dedicated, and always remind me that she served at my first Mass.) So there I was, standing the rain, vested in alb, cincture, and stole, accompanied by my acolyte and the two proud new Harley owners, praying over the new motorcycle. This was witnessed by a large number of parishioners who were waiting out the rain on the portico.
One always feels a little funny sprinkling holy water in the rain.
That's just the sort of prayerful adventure that I miss from being a parish priest. I don't think I even knew the couple, but somehow they found out who I am, because they managed to deliver to me this glass as a thank-you present.
June 23, 2011
Heavy Metal Cloister
One of the little spiritual boundaries I try to keep for myself is not looking at any social or news media before I've said my prayers and done my spiritual exercises in the morning. One of the funny side effects of this is that sometimes on days when I go to offer morning Mass at the Poor Clares, I first hear about big news stories from them. Today it was Whitey Bulger. Some weeks ago it was Osama bin Laden. It gives a friar a shot of goofy vanity in the morning, to think that he is so unworldly as to get his news of current events from cloistered nuns.
It reminds me of the great graces of my life, and one of the periods when God was working very hard on me. Not that I knew it at the time; in fact, I was almost totally ignorant. I was like an anesthetized patient; grace was operating on me and I was unaware of it.
At some point in early 1987 I had a dramatic conversion that was to have far-reaching effects in my life. Around the time I turned fifteen, I became a metalhead. I grew my hair long, I took up the uniform, I turned the radio dial all the way to left, from the popular music stations down to WNHU from the University of New Haven, which had an all-day Heavy Metal show every Saturday. Distracted by the noise and macabre mood of it all, I was distracted from the grace God was working in me: the experience had firmly rooted me in a critical turn with regard to tastes and values; I had discovered that the things everybody did, liked, and believed were not necessarily the right or best things.
From this my ongoing conversion proceeded in stages: to thrash, crossover, second wave hardcore, punk, Oi!, anarcho-punk, spirituality, Christianity, Catholicism, Franciscanism.
I rehearse all of this personal mythology just to make another point. When I first fell into the metal subculture, I became separated from popular culture. From early 1987 or so, I became almost totally unaware of popular songs, television, and movies. In fact, I didn't come to be aware of these things again until I entered religious life the first time in the fall of 1994. This was one of the things that made my adjustment to religious life so hard the first time I tried it; I was surprised to find televisions in friaries, and even more shocked to see things like People magazine. For years, it hadn't even occurred to me to watch television or pay any attention to the vapid popular culture of the world. At the time I thought of my entrance into religious life as a kind of culmination of a conversion process; how was it that I found therein a culture that seemed more entwined with the world's inanities?
All of that is another story and another complaint. I only bring it all up because I want to thank God for inspiring the flight from the world that was my 'cloistered' period. That awareness helps me to remember to keep good boundaries with this world's media.
It reminds me of the great graces of my life, and one of the periods when God was working very hard on me. Not that I knew it at the time; in fact, I was almost totally ignorant. I was like an anesthetized patient; grace was operating on me and I was unaware of it.
At some point in early 1987 I had a dramatic conversion that was to have far-reaching effects in my life. Around the time I turned fifteen, I became a metalhead. I grew my hair long, I took up the uniform, I turned the radio dial all the way to left, from the popular music stations down to WNHU from the University of New Haven, which had an all-day Heavy Metal show every Saturday. Distracted by the noise and macabre mood of it all, I was distracted from the grace God was working in me: the experience had firmly rooted me in a critical turn with regard to tastes and values; I had discovered that the things everybody did, liked, and believed were not necessarily the right or best things.
From this my ongoing conversion proceeded in stages: to thrash, crossover, second wave hardcore, punk, Oi!, anarcho-punk, spirituality, Christianity, Catholicism, Franciscanism.
I rehearse all of this personal mythology just to make another point. When I first fell into the metal subculture, I became separated from popular culture. From early 1987 or so, I became almost totally unaware of popular songs, television, and movies. In fact, I didn't come to be aware of these things again until I entered religious life the first time in the fall of 1994. This was one of the things that made my adjustment to religious life so hard the first time I tried it; I was surprised to find televisions in friaries, and even more shocked to see things like People magazine. For years, it hadn't even occurred to me to watch television or pay any attention to the vapid popular culture of the world. At the time I thought of my entrance into religious life as a kind of culmination of a conversion process; how was it that I found therein a culture that seemed more entwined with the world's inanities?
All of that is another story and another complaint. I only bring it all up because I want to thank God for inspiring the flight from the world that was my 'cloistered' period. That awareness helps me to remember to keep good boundaries with this world's media.
June 21, 2011
Anatomy of a Temptation
Vanity and pride are among the most insidious temptations. They try to trick you into thinking you have greater virtue than you really do, and you end up not having much virtue at all because you've been fooled into thinking only of yourself.
We should be grateful for such temptations when they are obvious and we see them clearly; such experiences can help us to know our particular sorts of spiritual undoing. Examining them can help us to understand ourselves and the pitfalls that are particular to our temperament and thus help us to avoid them in the future.
This morning was a good example for me. The morning is the best time for me to write, and what I really need to be doing in these days is working on my leftover term paper from the spring semester. But instead of getting a good start on the writing today, I got sidetracked. I had to clean up the broken vigil lamp from the previous post. Then a visiting classmate wanted to catch up. Then I had to make another friar's breakfast. He's recovering from surgery and only has use of one arm.
So now when I finally get back to my desk it's already going on ten o'clock and I know right away that I'm not going to make any progress with Alexander of Hales today. The disappointment gets mixed in with the general frustration, difficulty, vocational anxiety and self-doubt that surrounds the whole project.
Into this moment of slight emotional depression comes the temptation, inviting me to think of myself as virtuous: after all, I gave up my own will, cleaning house, listening attentively, and then serving the sick. Look what a good and selfless religious I am, abandoning my own will in humble service to the brothers! Vanity tries to make these little good deeds into a big deal, even though they were demanded by the minimum of ordinary charity. The temptation invites me not to think of all the people in the neighborhood and the world whose charity, patience, and self-sacrificing care for their children and sick family members go far beyond anything I do or will to do.
So I laugh at myself instead, and ask God to continue to deliver me from my selfishness. As a sign of my desire for such a grace, I pray in thanksgiving for all of the folks doing secret, heroic charity out there in the world, and ask God to make me their servant.
We should be grateful for such temptations when they are obvious and we see them clearly; such experiences can help us to know our particular sorts of spiritual undoing. Examining them can help us to understand ourselves and the pitfalls that are particular to our temperament and thus help us to avoid them in the future.
This morning was a good example for me. The morning is the best time for me to write, and what I really need to be doing in these days is working on my leftover term paper from the spring semester. But instead of getting a good start on the writing today, I got sidetracked. I had to clean up the broken vigil lamp from the previous post. Then a visiting classmate wanted to catch up. Then I had to make another friar's breakfast. He's recovering from surgery and only has use of one arm.
So now when I finally get back to my desk it's already going on ten o'clock and I know right away that I'm not going to make any progress with Alexander of Hales today. The disappointment gets mixed in with the general frustration, difficulty, vocational anxiety and self-doubt that surrounds the whole project.
Into this moment of slight emotional depression comes the temptation, inviting me to think of myself as virtuous: after all, I gave up my own will, cleaning house, listening attentively, and then serving the sick. Look what a good and selfless religious I am, abandoning my own will in humble service to the brothers! Vanity tries to make these little good deeds into a big deal, even though they were demanded by the minimum of ordinary charity. The temptation invites me not to think of all the people in the neighborhood and the world whose charity, patience, and self-sacrificing care for their children and sick family members go far beyond anything I do or will to do.
So I laugh at myself instead, and ask God to continue to deliver me from my selfishness. As a sign of my desire for such a grace, I pray in thanksgiving for all of the folks doing secret, heroic charity out there in the world, and ask God to make me their servant.
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