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.

Toward Chastity

Last night I went to chapel early so I could pray my Franciscan Crown before Vespers. I thought to pray for the young Indian woman who has been in the news. Last night she was still alive. This morning I read that she had died.

While I was praying for her I found such a terrible sadness. It was, on the one hand, grief at the meaninglessness of her suffering and the loss of her life. It was clear yesterday that even if she were to have survived the injuries inflicted by her attackers, it would have been with a mutilated body. On the other hand, my sadness was for the knowledge that the roots of such violence and unchastity live also in my own heart, and every time I have been unwilling to suffer anything rather than indulge and nourish them, every time I have given in to the world's wish to co-opt and collude with them for its own vile purposes, I have made myself, spiritually, an accomplice of those miserable men.

It is not enough to be chaste, if by chastity we mean solely a personal project focused on the self. It might be the one of the most difficult things in the world to begin to mortify our own acquisitive gaze, our tendency to objectify and instrumentalize other persons, and our own lust for control and coercion, all in the name of achieving some degree of physical and affective chastity according to our state in life. But it's not enough. The world is so injured by the terrible, destructive power of sexualized violence that if our chastity is to mean something, it must also be a positive force directed outward into the situations and relationships of our lives.

I used to think about and pray on this back when I was working at the parish. At the beginning I was put in charge of the altar children. As I worked with the kids I used to wonder to myself what it should mean for me, given that some of my brother priests, doing this same ministry, had abused the children in their care, leaving their lives wounded forever. Of course it meant that I had to carefully observe and implement all of the plans and guidelines that had been put in place to make sure that we had a 'safe environment.' I knew that it meant keeping a calm but watchful eye on things, always being aware of where the kids were and who might be with them. But in my prayer I realized that it had to mean more than that. I realized that in how I worked with the kids, in how I spoke with them, in what I would say and how I would say it, I had to notice and take opportunities to recognize their human dignity, to build them up, to let them know, somehow, the great dignity of their very being. Over time I began to know that this was, in fact, my primary ministry with the children. All the practicalities were secondary. The most important thing was for me to actively and purposefully treat the kids as integral persons, as creatures seen as good by the Creator and as human beings infinitely dignified by the Incarnation of the Word. In my prayer I knew that I had to do this if I wanted to have any hope of being faithful to the children who had suffered such abuse from my brother priests.

In the same spirit I pray today for the eternal rest of that Indian girl and for the consolation of her family. I pray in thanksgiving that our society is still outraged by her suffering and death, and I pray that it might come to see more clearly how it accepts and even celebrates other forms of violence and unchastity continuous with them. Finally, I pray that God let me know how I may begin to do penance for what she has suffered, and for the loss of her life.

Christmas

Twice already today I've started to write a Christmas post, but it's not coming out.

I had a fun post in my head about the Missa in nocte last night: the beautiful homily from the Minister General, the friars singing Tu scendi dalle stelle as a Twitter friend told me to hope for, the Nativity Scene with the slightly-too-glamorous looking Blessed Mother and the baby Jesus with a touch of the jaundice, the 'agape' afterwards and how it made clear to me a certain saying of Abba John the Dwarf.

I had a dreadfully serious post in my head too, all about our world's desperate need for the real good news of Christmas.

Perhaps I find myself, as I often do on Christmas, taken up inside by the anniversary of my departure from the novitiate of the OFM, still easily the most difficult but ultimately fruitful event of my Christianity.

But I guess none of it feels like expressing itself today; not my awful solemnity, not my goofy pieties, not even my pet archaeologies. After all, it's all straw before the mystery at hand. But the newborn Lord wills to rest on straw, and that, precisely that, is our hope.

Christmas Eve

The first entry in the Marytrology strikes me this morning:

Commemoratio omnium sanctorum avorum Iesu Christi, filii David, filii Abraham, filii Adam, patrum scilicet, qui Deo placuerunt et iusti inventi sunt et iuxta fidem defuncti, nullis acceptis promissionibus, sed longe eas aspicientes et salutantes, ex quibus natus est Christus secundum carnem, qui est super omnia Deus benedictus in saecula. 

The commemoration of all the holy ancestors of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam, namely those fathers who pleased God and were found just according to the faith of the deceased, who didn't receive the promises as fulfilled, but gazed on and hailed them from afar, from whom Christ was born according to the flesh, he who is the blessed God above all forever.

It's especially interesting as a kind of preparation for St. Matthew's genealogy in the gospel for the vigil Mass of Christmas and for the Christmas Proclamation, which is found in the Martyrology for tomorrow, but which ought to be proclaimed tonight ahead of the 'Mass during the night.'

On the morning of Christmas Eve, the Martyrology offers us a liturgical commemoration of all the ancestors of Jesus Christ, and reminds us that the Word became flesh not just in an abstract human nature, but as a historical human life in a particular place and culture with specific ancestors. To me it invites a reflection on the doctrine many of us have absorbed that culture is basically fungible, that the cultural elements of the time and place of the incarnation are ultimately accidental. More and more it seems to me that this set of assumptions impoverishes the doctrine of the incarnation.

We commemorate this morning the faith of all of those who looked forward to Jesus Christ come in the flesh, gazing on the great mystery in the obscurity of the night that preceded the first light of his birth and the full dawn of the Resurrection, the Resurrection that is the full meaning of the 'let there be light' by which the Word of God brings into being the first day of the new creation.

In Vino Veritas

This is a very random and rambling post. Just a warning.

I've been led recently to recall what I think was the first sermon of Christian doctrine I ever heard. I was around twelve years old, maybe. A friend from the neighborhood invited me to the ecclesial community he attended with his family on Sundays. I must have gone more than once, because I remember having some kind of religious ed leaflet with a picture of a kid in the figurative 'full armor of God' and taking it back for another visit. So I must have gone at least twice.

On one of these visits I found myself in a smaller group of boys that was being taught by a man who must have been a junior preacher or a disciple of the main preacher or something like that. He was teaching on what had to have been 1 Corinthians 8. In fact, the illustration he used was pretty good. He said that he liked to have a glass of wine with dinner, but that if he was eating out somewhere in the neighborhood of the congregation, he wouldn't have any so as not to risk scandalizing any fellow believer. (Obviously this wasn't a Catholic church.) Though he had every right to his wine as a free child of Christ, omnia munda mundis and all that, he put the thought of injuring the faith of his brother ahead of his own preference. Anyway, for whatever reason, I've always remembered that. I wonder what that guy is doing today. I said a prayer for him this morning.

This bit of ancient personal history came to mind because I have found myself in a similar, though converse, position.

This is Italy, after all. One always has wine at meals. The regular wine we get here comes in a big bottle, a little bigger than an American 40 perhaps (to take up a standard measure of intoxicating drink from home). The brothers say that it isn't very good. But I don't mind it because I don't know the difference. That I don't know how to tell if the wine is good or bad  is actually the result of one of my early failures as a Capuchin. A rather illustrative and seminal failure, perhaps.

You see, at one point during my religious formation, there was an ongoing opportunity to learn about wine, how to tell the good from the bad, obtain a working, if basic, knowledge of its critical vocabulary, etc. I, however, secretly refused to learn anything because I was bitter about the bad coffee we got at the time. I had complained about the coffee, but felt rebuffed. So, I said to myself, if the Order will not admit the existence of a critical vocabulary surrounding coffee, I shall refuse to learn one for wine. And I succeeded marvelously in my effort to remain ignorant.

So, perhaps you say, what's the problem? With my ignorance I can happily drink the bad wine. But it's not that easy. You see, sometimes on a special day, a Sunday or solemnity or someone's birthday perhaps, we get what is said to be better wine. These wines come in regular-sized bottles with fashionable labels, and the brethren sample them and praise them while the homely big bottle of the everyday wine sits lonely somewhere else. At first I kept going to the wine that's said to be bad even when the special wine had been put out. Since I don't know the difference, I thought, why should the good wine be wasted on me? Such seemed sensible and humble and charitable to me. But I was wrong. I was wrong because my behavior turned out to be scandalous to my brothers. What was wrong with me? Did I not care to celebrate the occasion at hand? Had I not seen the better wine?

So now--so as not to seem ungrateful or given to vainglorious gestures of false humility (which of course I am)--when they put out the special wine, I take it. And I still don't know the difference. But like my old friend the young preacher who followed the teaching of the Apostle by giving up his wine, I take the wine in the same spirit.

Prayer of Compunction and Adoration

Most High, good and loving God, there are so many things for which I used to pray. But now I just don't anymore.

I used to pray for forgiveness of my sins. But now I don't, because I know that you are the merciful and forgiving God, and if I don't feel forgiven it's because, in my hardness of heart, I have not accepted the vulnerability and humility of receiving your mercy. Or perhaps I have not forgiven from my heart my brother who has sinned against me.

I used to pray for the graces to overcome the sins that weaken my life with you and hurt my soul. But now I don't, because so many times I have thus prayed in vain, asking wrongly, to spend it on the passions. (James 4:3) For I didn't want to overcome sin in order to give you glory, but for the vainglory of thinking myself devout and holy.

I used to pray to know the next steps in the journey, both in exterior life and in the interior journey of prayer. But now I don't. Since I have not yet fulfilled what you command publicly and plainly in your Scriptures, loving you with all my heart and caring for your poor, what business do I have asking for further, personal instructions?

So many times I have constructed clever personal tales that recount the work of your grace over my life, emphasizing unimportant details that appealed to my vanity and paying no mind to what you were really doing. Since I have been unable to interpret clearly the work of your grace in the past, what makes me think I understand it well enough in the present to presume to direct it? Most of the time I have been for you like an anesthetized patient, dreaming pious theater while you were at work on my soul in some way from which I was more or less distracted.

So I just pray that you keep at it.

I pray also for conversion, for I know it is your will that I be converted. I pray that my heart and mind be converted to you, that my thoughts and hands be converted to the salvation you give to my brothers and sisters, especially your poor.

But most of all I pray in thanksgiving. For I know that the whole mess of my being, the meager bits of good that I have let you accomplish in me together with all the misery I insist upon for myself--and my neighbor--with my sins, you take to yourself in the broken Body of Christ crucified. And I know that, on all the altars in all your churches throughout the world--with a humility so deep that it shrouds how it works from our proud minds--you make that broken Body nourishment and salvation for me and for the world.

And for that I adore you.

Reek of Stupefaction

Yesterday I finally got to confession. It had been too long. In fact, it had been since the day of my pilgrimage to the bleak Via Ostiense 131/L. I just didn't know whom to ask. It's so much easier to walk up to a confessional box. When you have to pick someone, knock on his door, and ask him if he has a moment to hear your confession, that's something different. But I had been praying that the Holy Spirit let me know to whom I should try to go, and, perhaps spurred on by the beginning of the second stage of Advent yesterday,  I finally managed it.

In his counsel, the priest invited me to live these days of immediate preparation for Christmas con cuore stupito. It probably just stuck in my mind because it sounds funny to the ear of an English-speaker. 'With an amazed heart' or 'with an astonished heart,' I guess you could say. 'With a stupefied heart' doesn't really do it, but it's not an entirely useless thought; perhaps it captures something of being overwhelmed by contemplation of the mysteries at hand.

In one of the little synchronicities of grace, later on I happened to pray Night Prayer in Italian. (As I have mentioned, I don't really prefer it.) When I came to the Alma Redemptoris Mater in Italian, there was the substantive of the same word:

O santa Madre del Redentore,
porta dei cieli, stella del mare,
soccorri il tuo popolo che sta cadendo,
che anela a risorgere.
Tu che accogliendo quell'Ave di Gabriele,
nello stupore di tutto il creato,
hai generato il tuo Genitore,
vergine prima e dopo il parto,
pietà di noi peccatori.

That's the Latin natura mirante that translates in our American-English breviary as 'to the wonderment of nature' if I remember rightly.

A certain amazed, astonished, joyful wonder is the spiritual climate of Christmas. We are amazed to see that the birth of Jesus Christ reverses everything that our insecure and acquisitive minds think power and mightiness should mean. The Word of God, through whom all things are created, is born as one of us, born to plain parents, born away from home, born into a people and a place that were considered important by no known criterion of human civilization.

But Christmas is not only astonishing because it is an amazing and even scandalous revelation of God; Christmas is also invites us to wonder because it reveals who we really are, what creation really is. The creation, and we ourselves as created beings in it, as full of wonder and beauty as it all is even just on its own terms, finds in the newborn Jesus its true destiny, that we and all created being exists precisely so that God might be with us, incarnate among us. And our prayer is to sit in wonder, con cuore stupito, at the astonishing realization that we exist so that the overflowing Love we call the Blessed Trinity may love all the more by drawing us into the dynamic relations that are Himself. This is why it is the Holy Spirit--the Love the proceeds from the Father and the Son--who conceives Jesus Christ, that in the humanity of Christ we might be invited, drawn, and folded into the eternal, blessed and infinitely happy generation of the Beloved by the Lover.