April – 2014 – The Catholic Spiritual Life

The Gift of Understanding

April 30, 2014 Leave a Comment

When the Holy Spirit enters into our hearts, he transforms us. The first transformation is love: he draws us into the infinite love of the Father and the Son, a contemplative love beyond the limits of mortal man. But this transformation seeps into every aspect of our personality, elevating our human nature into contact with the divine.

Isaiah 11 describes the kind of “Spirit” that will descend on the Messiah. That is, it explains what it looks like when a human person is filled with the divine: spiritual wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. We are conformed to Christ by the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and so we too receive this sevenfold gift of the Spirit.

***

These gifts touch every part of our person. Three of them touch our affections: fortitude is about our response to difficulties; fear is about what we really value, and what we cling to; piety is about the choices we make, our sense of what is right and just. But four out of the seven Isaiah names are about our outlook: wisdom, understanding, counsel, and knowledge.

It’s important to distinguish this outlook from what we normally mean by intellectualism. First, these “intellectual” gifts are not gained from study, nor are they natural endowments. Some people naturally have greater intellectual “gifts” than others – but that is not what this is about. To the contrary, this is about how the saints, even the most simple, have deeper insight than the scholars: because they love more truly, but even more, because God is present to lift up our poor human powers.

And here, the truest study is not in books – this is not about book knowledge. It’s about the knowledge of the saints. I might be able to explain things in technical terms better than some of the saints – but I do not know as much as they do. The “intellectual” gifts remind us how insignificant academic study really is.

***

Why four intellectual gifts? Because there are different kinds of insight. “Counsel” is about practical action, insight into how to deal with our problems. But not all knowledge is practical; indeed, in our relationship with God, practical questions are secondary to just appreciating the gifts God gives us.

But within this more contemplative kind of knowledge, there is one key difference, between the way we know God, as the highest, the one to which everything else is ordered, and the way we know everything else. Knowing God gets the special name “wisdom”; everything else gets the generic name “knowledge.” This distinction reminds us that, on the one hand, nothing else is God, and the way we relate to everything else is different from the way we relate to God. But on the other hand, our love of God affects the way we see everything else, too: our love of God seeps into how we view the world.

***

Finally, there is our gift for today, understanding. St. Thomas describes the difference in terms of how we know things, and how we understand statements. Again, these distinction are meant to broaden us, not to narrow us, to draw more things into our relationship with God, not to push things away. So we realize that along with knowing particular things, there is also understanding what it is people mean when they speak. That too is a way we are transformed by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

One place this applies is in our relationship with other people. My, how hard it can be to understand, to see what it really is that people are getting at. And how beautiful to say that Jesus and the saints are people of “understanding.” When you speak, they see what you’re trying to get at. We realize that this kind of understanding is divine. It really isn’t easy to appreciate another person’s point of view.

See how “contemplative” and “intellectual” aren’t as academic as they sound at first.

***

But the deeper place of understanding, says St. Thomas, is in our reading of Scripture. God has spoken to us. But how impenetrable are his words! The gift of understanding is how the saints can really “get” Scripture, when the rest of us are confused, or just nonplussed. It reminds us that the key to understanding Scripture is not book learning, but love of God, and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

It also reminds us how central Scripture is to the traditional Catholic life. One of the gifts of the Spirit, and the one closest to wisdom.

***

Do we love Scripture like the saints do? Do we ask the Holy Spirit’s help in really understanding it?

Chaput and Francis: Christ, not “Christian Civilization”

April 29, 2014 Leave a Comment

Last week I had the opportunity to hear the great Archbishop of Philadelphia, the Capuchin Franciscan Charles Chaput, speak at a conference on St. Francis of Assisi hosted by the Dominicans in New York City.

Here he speaks on a really important point today. In our cultural wasteland, lots of young Catholics are eager to rebuild a Catholic culture. But Catholicism is not about building a culture; Catholic culture itself was not built on the desire to build a culture. It’s about Jesus.

The philosopher Rémi Brague once wrote that “Christianity was founded by people who could not have cared less about ‘Christian civilization.’ What mattered to them was Christ, and the reverberations of his coming on the whole of human existence. Christians believed in Christ, not in Christianity itself; they were Christians, not ‘Christianists.’”

We need to remember that simple lesson. The Catholic faith is not an ideology. It’s a romance. It’s a love affair with God. We’re a people who believe in Jesus Christ – not the ideas, but the person of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for our sake purely out of his love for us. And living the Catholic faith should be an experience of gratitude and joy that flows from a daily personal encounter with God’s son and a communal relationship with God’s people.

There’s a reason the Church calls St. Francis the vir Catholicus, the exemplary Catholic man. Francis understood that gratitude is the beginning of joy, and that joy in this world is the aroma of heaven in the next. He reveled in the debt he owed to God for the beauty of creation, for his friends and brothers, and for every gift and suffering that came his way. He treasured his dependence on the love of others, and returned their love with his own. He gave away all that he had in order to gain the deepest kind of freedom – the freedom to pursue God, to share God with others, and to experience life without encumbrance or fear.

-“Without Gloss: Francis of Assisi and Western Catholicism,” Speech at the Catholic Center of New York University, April 25, 2014

Read the entire talk here.

One gloss: those who try to make this point today – including Pope Benedict, very frequently, despite the complete mis-characterization of him, especially by his fans, as a “culture” guy – often use the language of Chaput’s second paragraph above: “love affair,” “romance,” “personal encounter.” But I think the point is better made by the first and third paragraphs: especially, “Christ, and the reverberations of his coming,” but also, “the aroma of heaven,” “gratitude,” “the debt he owed to God,” “the pursuit of God.”

These phrases are, I think, much richer than the Protestant language of “personal relationship,” while making the same point.

“Christ, and the reverberations of his coming on the whole of human existence.”

The Father and the Son

April 28, 2014 Leave a Comment

We continue our short series on the “Glory Be.”

The word “Glory” took us into the grandeur and beauty of God. We would do well to dwell on that one word. But the prayer immediately takes us even deeper, into the interior life of God.

God is Father and Son. It all comes down to that.

The theological tradition insists that we pay attention to the words themselves. The Trinity is not just Persons One, Two, and Three, not just three “somethings.” The Trinity is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But what do these names mean? We will talk more about the Holy Spirit next week. For this week it suffices to notice that his name is generic. The Father is Holy and the Son is Holy, and they are both spirits. Whatever the Holy Spirit is, he is what they have in common.

But Father and Son name difference, and relationship. The two names push off against each other: what makes a Father a Father? A Son (or daughter). What makes a Son a Son? A Father (or mother). Father and Son name not two things, but a relationship.

***

So, what does it mean to be Father and Son? It means to be the same kind of thing, but for the Son to receive everything from the Father.

“Same kind of thing” is funny when you’re talking about God. The Son would not be a Son if he had a beginning, or anything that came “before” him, because he would not be God. That’s bizarre. It’s hard to fathom. But see that this is what it means to say “Son of God”: that he truly is God. Anything less than God would not be a Son. That means something for us, too – we’ll talk about that next week.

The sameness of Father and Son means there are an awful lot of things we can’t say about the Son: not “after,” not “lesser,” etc. That in itself is helpful: in a way, it helps point out to us that we don’t have such a grasp on God. The Trinity is a helpful reminder that, among other things, God transcends our thoughts.

But on the other hand, there is one thing, and really only one thing, that we can say about the Father and the Son: that they love one another. It is a love of giving and receiving. To say, “the Father and the Son” is to say “God is love.” And it is to say slightly more, slightly deeper: it is to say “God is giving and thanksgiving, joyfully offering everything, and joyfully receiving everything.” God is a superabundance of goodness and happiness that can’t help but give and joyfully receive.

This is what we affirm when we say, “Glory to the Father and the Son.” God, the God of glory, is love, gift, thanksgiving.

***

We can clean up a couple little problems. First, we should hold the word “person” very lightly. Person is merely a substitute word, and it is not what the Bible reveals. Augustine says, “what does ‘person’ mean? Just what there are three of.” It doesn’t mean anything; it shouldn’t give us pictures of what they are like. It’s just a place holder, to remind us that there is, somehow, a kind of threeness in God. But rather than talking about persons, we do much better to talk about Father and Son. It all comes down to Father and Son.

Of course, we should also hold the gender thing lightly. Here’s two ways to think about it. First, we say “Father and Son” instead of “Mother and Daughter” mostly just to be Biblical. It’s a recognition that this isn’t our ideas, that we don’t make up our own God. It’s not that we think God is revealed to be masculine – to the contrary! It’s that we stick with the words we are given, and ponder them.

But second, if there is any good reason for saying Father instead of Mother, it is perhaps that Mother says too much. Mothering is a much richer concept than Fathering. We’re not using masculine language to build up men. We’re using it to limit how much we say about God. All we know is that he is giver and receiver.

But what a fabulous image of God to consider: that God gives and receives everything. That is he is love, and communion, and friendship.

***

Could you love God better by spending a moment, now and then, pondering “Father and Son”? Would you be enriched at all by pausing at those words in the Glory Be?

Divine Mercy Sunday: True Mercy

April 25, 2014 Leave a Comment

ACTS 2:42-47; PS 118: 2-4, 13-14, 22-24; 1 PT 1:3-9; JN 20:19-31

John Paul II, who died on this Sunday nine years ago and will be canonized on it this year, dedicated the Sunday after Easter to a meditation on Divine Mercy. The readings show us what a rich conception of mercy Easter gives us.

Perhaps we equate mercy with leniency, not holding people accountable. But this is far too passive. The Latin word for mercy means “a heart for the suffering.” The Greek word is related to almsgiving. True mercy doesn’t just let people go. It embraces them, and heals them.

***

The first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, shows us mercy in action in the early Church. They shared “all things in common” and “divided them among all according to each one’s need.” But the heart of this sharing is the word “common,” from the root word koinonia, or communion. They shared because they were in communion with one another.

“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life [literally, to koinonia, communion], to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” Their communion was fruit of common faith: belief and trust in a common Lord. It led them to Eucharistic communion, “the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

The early Church – and real Catholic doctrine, from the Eucharistic theology of the Fathers and of Thomas Aquinas to the theology of the “people of God” in Vatican II – has an intense sense that union with God creates union with one another. In the ecclesial politics of the late twentieth century, people devised an opposition between seeing the Mass as “table fellowship” and seeing it as “sacrifice.” That’s just a false opposition. It is table fellowship because it is sacrifice: to be in union with God is to be in intense union with all those to whom he unites himself.

“They devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.” As much as they could, they still participated in the Temple, the common worship of Israel. That union of a nation gathered in worship meant much to them – and to the Church’s continual understanding of itself as the true Israel, the holy nation.

But it led them even more deeply to the Eucharist, “breaking bread in their homes.” Note again the double union of the Eucharist: it was in their homes, first, because Jesus had given an even more intense communion than that of the Temple. They wanted more, beyond even the intense common worship of the Temple. But in a second sense, their homes were a place of fellowship, of union also with one another.

Union with God makes union in the Church. This is the heart of mercy.

***

Our reading from the First Epistle of St Peter takes us deeper into the Christological roots of this communion. “In his great mercy he gave us a new birth to a living hope . . . an inheritance . . . kept in heaven. . . . . In this you rejoice.”

In his intense love, his intense mercy, God didn’t just leave them alone, he poured his joy out for them. The root of the the apostle’s communion is an intense joy, that looks to heaven. They can be patient with one another because of this overflowing joy.

“You may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith” may be proved. The real question in both suffering and acts of mercy is where our joy is. The apostles shared with one another, and were willing to suffer persecution, because in having God, they had everything. They feared no loss. Mercy is rooted in joy.

***

Our reading from St John’s Gospel takes us even deeper into the heavenly roots of this joy, by taking us to the person of Christ.

“On the evening of that first day of the week,” Easter Sunday, “when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”

Peace is the fruit of Jesus standing in our midst. Jesus settles their fears. Jesus joins them together.

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says, “whose sins you forgive are forgiven them” – actually, “sent away from them.” Jesus is mercy because Jesus is an overflowing goodness, and a joy, and a communion infinitely beyond our stupid divisions. Where Jesus is there is peace, and mercy, and forgiveness, because where Jesus is there is communion, the communion of the Father and the Son, and the communion of the Body of Christ, the Church.

***

Think of a place where you have trouble being merciful. Can the joy of Jesus overcome that?

John Paul II, who died on this Sunday nine years ago and will be canonized on it this year, dedicated the Sunday after Easter to a meditation on Divine Mercy. The readings show us what a rich conception of mercy Easter gives us.

Perhaps we equate mercy with leniency, not holding people accountable. But this is far too passive. The Latin word for mercy means “a heart for the suffering.” The Greek word is related to almsgiving. True mercy doesn’t just let people go. It embraces them, and heals them.

***

The first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles, shows us mercy in action in the early Church. They shared “all things in common” and “divided them among all according to each one’s need.” But the heart of this sharing is the word “common,” from the root word koinonia, or communion. They shared because they were in communion with one another.

“They devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life [literally, to koinonia, communion], to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.” Their communion was fruit of common faith: belief and trust in a common Lord. It led them to Eucharistic communion, “the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

The early Church – and real Catholic doctrine, from the Eucharistic theology of the Fathers and of Thomas Aquinas to the theology of the “people of God” in Vatican II – has an intense sense that union with God creates union with one another. In the ecclesial politics of the late twentieth century, people devised an opposition between seeing the Mass as “table fellowship” and seeing it as “sacrifice.” That’s just a false opposition. It is table fellowship because it is sacrifice: to be in union with God is to be in intense union with all those to whom he unites himself.

“They devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area and to breaking bread in their homes.” As much as they could, they still participated in the Temple, the common worship of Israel. That union of a nation gathered in worship meant much to them – and to the Church’s continual understanding of itself as the true Israel, the holy nation.

But it led them even more deeply to the Eucharist, “breaking bread in their homes.” Note again the double union of the Eucharist: it was in their homes, first, because Jesus had given an even more intense communion than that of the Temple. They wanted more, beyond even the intense common worship of the Temple. But in a second sense, their homes were a place of fellowship, of union also with one another.

Union with God makes union in the Church. This is the heart of mercy.

***

Our reading from the First Epistle of St Peter takes us deeper into the Christological roots of this communion. “In his great mercy he gave us a new birth to a living hope . . . an inheritance . . . kept in heaven. . . . . In this you rejoice.”

In his intense love, his intense mercy, God didn’t just leave them alone, he poured his joy out for them. The root of the the apostle’s communion is an intense joy, that looks to heaven. They can be patient with one another because of this overflowing joy.

“You may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuiness of your faith” may be proved. The real question in both suffering and acts of mercy is where our joy is. The apostles shared with one another, and were willing to suffer persecution, because in having God, they had everything. They feared no loss. Mercy is rooted in joy.

***

Our reading from St John’s Gospel takes us even deeper into the heavenly roots of this joy, by taking us to the person of Christ.

“On the evening of that first day of the week,” Easter Sunday, “when the doors were locked, where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’”

Peace is the fruit of Jesus standing in our midst. Jesus settles their fears. Jesus joins them together.

“Receive the Holy Spirit,” he says, “whose sins you forgive are forgiven them” – actually, “sent away from them.” Jesus is mercy because Jesus is an overflowing goodness, and a joy, and a communion infinitely beyond our stupid divisions. Where Jesus is there is peace, and mercy, and forgiveness, because where Jesus is there is communion, the communion of the Father and the Son, and the communion of the Body of Christ, the Church.

***

Think of a place where you have trouble being merciful. Can the joy of Jesus overcome that?

Pope Francis on Priestly Joy

April 24, 2014 Leave a Comment

Today I would like to share some of Francis’s comments from the Chrism Mass, on Holy Thursday. Francis spoke about priestly joy. There is something for all of us here.

In the first section I’ll share, he says priestly joy is “guarded” by the faithful that the priest himself is sent to guard. Sometimes I’m tempted, as a lay person, to stress only one side of this: the priest finds his joy in serving us. But the laity have a responsibility here, too: if we don’t share that joy with our priests, if we are bitter and complaining, as I too often am, our priests too will be joyless, bitter, and complaining.

Priestly joy is deeply bound up with God’s holy and faithful people, for it is an eminently missionary joy. Our anointing is meant for anointing God’s holy and faithful people: for baptizing and confirming them, healing and sanctifying them, blessing, comforting and evangelizing them.

And since this joy is one which only springs up when the shepherd is in the midst of his flock (for even in the silence of his prayer, the shepherd who worships the Father is with his sheep), it is a “guarded joy”, watched over by the flock itself. Even in those gloomy moments when everything looks dark and a feeling of isolation takes hold of us, in those moments of listlessness and boredom which at times overcome us in our priestly life (and which I too have experienced), even in those moments God’s people are able to “guard” that joy; they are able to protect you, to embrace you and to help you open your heart to find renewed joy.

A “guarded joy”: one guarded by the flock but also guarded by three sisters who surround it, tend it and defend it: sister poverty, sister fidelity and sister obedience.

Priestly joy is a joy which is sister to poverty. The priest is poor in terms of purely human joy. He has given up so much! And because he is poor, he, who gives so much to others, has to seek his joy from the Lord and from God’s faithful people. He doesn’t need to try to create it for himself. We know that our people are very generous in thanking priests for their slightest blessing and especially for the sacraments. Many people, in speaking of the crisis of priestly identity, fail to realize that identity presupposes belonging. There is no identity – and consequently joy of life – without an active and unwavering sense of belonging to God’s faithful people (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 268). The priest who tries to find his priestly identity by soul-searching and introspection may well encounter nothing more than “exit” signs, signs that say: exit from yourself, exit to seek God in adoration, go out and give your people what was entrusted to you, for your people will make you feel and taste who you are, what your name is, what your identity is, and they will make you rejoice in that hundredfold which the Lord has promised to those who serve him. Unless you “exit” from yourself, the oil grows rancid and the anointing cannot be fruitful. Going out from ourselves presupposes self-denial; it means poverty.

This is a call to us, too!

Then he talks about obedience. What I like best here is his description of Mary at the Visitation as “Our Lady of Promptness.” It’s not about following rules. It’s about generosity. And here too, the laity can learn much by standing with our priests.

Priestly joy is a joy which is sister to obedience. An obedience to the Church in the hierarchy which gives us, as it were, not simply the external framework for our obedience: the parish to which I am sent, my ministerial assignments, my particular work … but also union with God the Father, the source of all fatherhood. It is likewise an obedience to the Church in service: in availability and readiness to serve everyone, always and as best I can, following the example of “Our Lady of Promptness” (cf. Lk 1:39, meta spoudes), who hastens to serve Elizabeth her kinswoman and is concerned for the kitchen of Cana when the wine runs out. The availability of her priests makes the Church a house with open doors, a refuge for sinners, a home for people living on the streets, a place of loving care for the sick, a camp for the young, a classroom for catechizing children about to make their First Communion… Wherever God’s people have desires or needs, there is the priest, who knows how to listen (ob-audire) and feels a loving mandate from Christ who sends him to relieve that need with mercy or to encourage those good desires with resourceful charity.

Dear readers, I share this with you because too often I do not see the priests in my life this way. I pray for a change of heart, for a way of life that gives us joyful priests!

The Gift of Wisdom

April 23, 2014 Leave a Comment

We are considering the gifts of the Holy Spirit: the way that the presence of Christ’s Spirit in our hearts transforms us. We have seen that this first of all means sharing in the love between the Father and the Son. Above all, the Holy Spirit is nothing but divine love, poured into our hearts.

But the fabulous thing about this is that it actually transforms us. God’s love becomes our love. His presence changes us. So it is not just that the Holy Spirit is nearby, doing his own thing. He is in our hearts, making us love with his love. Traditional Catholic theology uses the word “grace” to point out the two sides of this coin. On the one hand, it is a free gift from God, entirely his gift. On the other hand, it is a transformation of us, so that we are different.

“Charity” is the main name for this transformation, a way of pointing out that it is not just God doing something, it is our hearts, too, which love with that divine love.

But the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit named in Isaiah 11 are a way of thinking about the deeper transformative effect of the Holy Spirit. It is not just that we love and everything else remains the same. That love penetrates into every aspect of our personality: our affections, our knowledge, both practical and speculative, our contemplation, our action – everything is transformed. “If anyone be in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17).

***

The highest of these transformations is called the gift of wisdom. That’s Isaiah’s word, but “wisdom” is a key word in the Old Testament, and the Tradition – key figures include Sts. Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Thomas Aquinas – has done a lot of work thinking through what it means.

To them, wisdom means, first of all, the ability to see the whole, to see how things fit together. St. Thomas’s favorite example is the architect. The guy laying the bricks in a house sees only the brick in front of him, but the architect sees the whole plan, the way that brick fits into his vision of the whole house.

We can have “wisdom,” in this sense, in limited contexts: the wisdom of this architectural plan, or of a general’s plan of battle, or of a strategy, or an understanding of a piece of music or art. But then there is perfect wisdom, which sees how everything fits together. When God looks at the world, he does not just see one damn thing after another, not just a heap of random occurrences. He sees how it all works together, like the notes in a symphony. Wisdom means gradually coming to participate in that vision, seeing the bigger picture.

***

A second aspect of wisdom, which must be tied to the first, is seeing the purpose of things, the why. The architect knows why the bricklayer is laying that brick.

The “why” of the universe is the goodness of God. Ultimately, apart from knowing and loving God himself, we can’t know the purpose of everything else, and we can’t know how everything fits together.

In this sense, wisdom is contemplative. As the Holy Spirit draws us into the love of Father and Son, we see the why of everything else: why there is night and day, why there is suffering and joy, why the rose has its petals, why worms crawl around, why history has taken its various turns. The ultimate meaning of it all is only in the love of Father and Son.

But this doesn’t mean nothing else matters. Wisdom finds the purpose of all things in God – but it sees that this purpose really is in all things. It sees the whole in the parts.

***

Wisdom is a gift, not a duty. It is not just that we “ought” to understand. To the contrary, on our own, it’s pretty hard to fit everything together. Indeed, in this life, where we still walk in the darkness of faith, many things will remain dark. We can’t see the meaning of all of them. But one day, we pray, we will be in the presence of God, and it will all make sense.

Until that day, we share in just a little bit of God’s wisdom. He gives us a glimpse. But he gives that glimpse only in showing us himself, and drawing us to himself. It is in the gift of the Holy Spirit that we begin to discover true wisdom.

***

Does the love of God help you understand the meaning of life? How could you let the Holy Spirit share this vision with you this week?

Glory Be

April 21, 2014 Leave a Comment

Easter Monday seems a fitting time to begin a short study of the “Glory Be,” with a meditation on the word “Glory.” This little prayer is worth rediscovering, and praying well. Like honey from the comb, we can suck incredible richness from these traditional prayers.

The Latin gloria refers to renown, as when we say “no guts no glory”; it also has connotations of shining. In the Greek New Testament, doxa is a word that means “seeming,” also related to both reputation and appearance. It is used to translate an important word from the Hebrew Old Testament that means “heaviness,” in relation to dignity.

Weightiness, influence, significance, substance, authority: in the Old Testament, a king was said to be “heavy,” or “glorious.” He is a Big Deal. But then, for example, “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps. 19). God too is a king, king of kings, more regal than kings, the most substantial, authoritative, and “glorious” of all. This is what we proclaim when we say, “Glory to God in the highest” or “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

***

But glory takes on a second meaning, not only of heaviness, but of shining, and beauty. The king wears not just fancy robes, but beautiful ones. He is “fairer than the children of men; grace is poured upon his lips”; he rides “in majesty, prosperously, because of truth and meekness and righteousness” (Ps. 45). God is beautiful.

The central motif for this is the Transfiguration, which is mirrored in the “glory” that shown on Moses’s face when he saw God passing by. “The LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend . . . . Moses said, ‘I beseech thee, show me thy glory.’ . . . When Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in his hand . . . he knew not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him” (Ex. 33:11, 33:18, 34:29).

“And as Jesus prayed, the appearance of his face was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening. And, behold, there talked with with him two men, which were Moses and Elijah: who appeared in glory” (Lk. 19:29-31).

“If the ministration of condemnation,” that is, the Old Testament, “be glory, much more does the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that exceeds it. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remains is glorious. . . . And not as Moses, who put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished. . . . Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. . . . But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the LORD” (2 Cor. 3:9-18).

The glory of God, represented by the light that shines on the face of Jesus, is communicated to us, so that we too shine with that glory. We too will share in the dignity, and the beauty of God, “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). (This is often translated less literally as “glorious liberty,” but how much more glorious that our liberty comes from that glory. To share in God’s glory is to be truly free.)

***

When we say “Glory be,” we say that God has the ultimate dignity, and we call to mind the beauty, beyond all imagining, of gazing on his supreme goodness. All in one little word, worth praying well.

But we also make a profession of faith. Historically, the “Glory Be,” and its myriad variations, which conclude all the ancient hymns, is a rejection of anti-Trinitarian heresies. The emphasis, in a sense, is on the word “and.” Not only do we say that the Trinitarian God has glory, but we say that each member of the Trinity shares in that glory.

The Glory Be says, don’t you dare say that the Son has any less glory than the Father. Glory to the Son! The same Glory as the Father! Jesus is God, very God from very God!

And Glory too to the Holy Spirit! the Spirit given to us has no less dignity, no less divinity, no less greatness than the Son; the Son communicates that dignity to us in giving us the Holy Spirit. In the next couple weeks we will see how beautiful this profession of Trinitarian faith is, and how much it means for us.

***

Do you give yourself sufficient space to consider the beauty and the goodness of God?

Good Friday and Easter Sunday: Dead to Sin

April 18, 2014 Leave a Comment

ROM 6:3-11

As we remember Good Friday today and look forward to Easter tomorrow night, let us pause to consider what the Cross and Resurrection means for us. There are so many readings the next three days, but for today, let’s just look at the reading from Romans 6 at the Easter Vigil. This is the reading introduced by the Gloria. Everything else leads up to it. The story of the Resurrection in the Gospel is, of course, the central action – but the Gloria frames the reading from Romans as the real proclamation of the good news, and it nicely explains both of these great days.

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Paul begins by reminding us that “we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.” Baptism is above all the first sacrament, the sacrament of entrance into the Christian life. To say that we are baptized into his death is to say that our entire Christian life is rooted not just in the death of Christ, but in our entrance into that death. Good Friday is the beginning and center of the whole Christian life.

Paul next says, “we were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.” Here he says two important things.

First, the death of Christ is important precisely because it is the place where God’s power over death is manifested. Death is not the last word, life is. But death is where we discover that true life comes from God. It is not that we are just fine, and have life within us. We desperately need God’s power to raise us up.

Second, Paul quickly moves from physical death and resurrection to spiritual resurrection. We are raised not just by the power of God, but “by the glory of the Father,” and we are raised not just to physical life, but to “newness of life.”

God’s power over physical life points to a much deeper power. It is his glory, our encounter with the goodness and the beauty of God, that brings new life to our soul. This is moral life, to be sure. But even deeper, it is spiritual life. This is what we are meant to encounter in the death and resurrection of Christ: the passover from Egypt to the promised land, from sin to the spiritual life.

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Next Paul says, “If we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” Easter is not about a transaction at a distance. It is about union.

Christ dies to be close to our death. He subjects himself to our sin, to the suffering we inflict on him, to be close to us while we are yet sinners, even when we refuse him. And he subjects himself to suffering, the suffering we experience, so that even our suffering can be a place of closeness to him.

He comes close so that he can raise us with him into newness of life. He became poor so that we could become rich. He unites himself to our humanity so that we can be united to his divinity. He comes to rescue us in our cruciform life so that he can draw us out of this life of suffering, the suffering we inflict and the suffering we experience, into a life where God is all in all, and all is peace.

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And he calls us to be close to him. He does it all, in one sense – but he calls us to do it all, as well. His coming close does not work by magic. We have to cling to him.

We have to cling to him in our suffering. Rather than fleeing suffering, we must embrace it as the place where Christ is near. We must be near to those who are suffering. The Cross is where we profess our trust in God. If we run from suffering, our own and our neighbors’, we proclaim that we don’t think he’s worth meeting there.

But the Resurrection is where we profess the goodness of God. We must also cling to this. We must embrace the goodness of life, and above all the goodness of God, “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor 4:6).

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How could you better live union with Christ crucified in your everyday Christian life?

Mass of the Lord’s Supper

April 17, 2014 Leave a Comment

Ugolino di Nerio, Last Supper

EX 12:1-8, 11-14; PS 116:12-13, 15-16bc, 17-18; 1 COR 11: 23-26; JN 13:1-15

Tonight we celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Each of the readings takes us into a different aspect of the Eucharist, and our Eucharistic faith.

The reading from First Corinthians is the most straightforward. It’s worth noticing that Paul reports the Eucharist. It is one of the few things reported in all the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell us the story straight. John, as always, gives a commentary. And then Paul reports it as something central to Christian worship. Even the birth of Christ is not so centrally reported in all parts of the New Testament. For the early Christians, this was the center of the Church’s life.

“On the night he was handed over, he took bread.” Paul underlines the connection between Holy Thursday and Good Friday. The Eucharist is not just something Jesus did at some point in his life. It is directly connected to his death. “This cup is the new covenant in my blood.” This is our entrance into the shedding of Christ’s blood, our communion with his death.

“As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes.” This is our memorial, our form of worship, always tied back to Good Friday. Christian worship revolves around the remembrance of the Cross, made present to us through the Eucharist.

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But we gain deeper insight into this when we know the Old Testament setting. In fact, the whole of the Old Testament culminates in the Eucharist. When he says “this is the new covenant,” for some reason modern translators have decided to obscure the matter, but what he is really saying – it’s not obscure in the Greek, or the Latin – is “this,” the Eucharist, “is the New Testament,” the fulfillment of the Old Testament. “Covenant” is another translation for the Hebrew and Greek words for “Testament.” Everything in the Old Testament can tell us about the New Testament, the Eucharist.

But most central of all is the Passover, the setting in which Jesus situates his death and his institution of the Eucharist. So the first reading for tonight’s Mass of the Institution of the Eucharist is the Institution of the Passover, in Exodus.

“This day,” too, “shall be a memorial feast for you.” Just as the Eucharist remembers the death of Christ, the Passover remembers the death of the firstborn in Egypt.

“This is how you are to eat it: with your loins girt, sandals on your feet and your staff in hand, you shall eat like those who are in flight.” The Passover is a celebration of flight, of leaving Egypt behind. This is also why it is eaten in the family home, not in a big festal gathering, and why the lamb is slaughtered that very evening, and roasted, the simplest, fastest way of cooking, with bread that has not had time to rise. The Israelites are on the run.

They are leaving behind the land of death. They eat the passover with “bitter herbs,” a reminder of the bitterness of Egypt. The sacrifice of the lamb saves them from the death that passes over Egypt.

For us, the Passover is a reminder that Jesus saves us from the world of death. His death is our flight from the land of death. Our reminder of the bitterness of the world of sin, and of the possibility of escape – not out of the world, but out of sin.

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John’s Gospel, with exquisite poetry, shows us what we escape to. John is like a commentary on the other Gospels. Where they give the multiplying of the loaves, he has John 6, the bread of life discourse: a deepening of our understanding that the true provision is in the Eucharist, which saves us from death: “if any man eat of this bread, he shall have eternal life.”

And where the other Gospels tell the Last Supper story straight, John gives us other details. He gives the long farewell discourse (chapters 13-17), where Jesus promises to prepare a place for us, says he is the vine and we are the branches, and promises to send the Spirit. All of these teachings reveal the depths of what he gives in the Eucharist.

But tonight we read about the washing of the feet. This is the promised land. Through the Eucharist we flee Egypt, but go to the land of love. “He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end . . . I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, should also do.” This is the fruit of the Cross.

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Do you take time to remember the good things Jesus does for us in the Eucharist?

First Gift of the Holy Spirit: Charity

April 16, 2014 1 Comment

In the next weeks we will be examining the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the endowments of the heart of Christ, as named in Isaiah: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. But we do well first to consider the primary gift of the Holy Spirit, charity.

God is love, an eternal communion of Father and Son. The Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son, the gift they share, the tie that binds them.

The Holy Spirit is not first of all any kind of magic trick: not miracles, or speaking in tongues. Nor is he first and foremost the seven endowments named by Isaiah. In the Trinity, none of these things is needed. There is only the God of love, Father, Son, and their infinite love for one another, the Holy Spirit.

Ultimately, this is what Christianity is all about: entering into that loving relationship, joining the Son in his love for the Father, and for all those who are also caught up in that love. The Holy Spirit names what Christianity is all about. No love, no Christianity – because Christ himself is the eternal Son, the eternal relationship of infinite love with the Father.

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To say that the Holy Spirit is essential to Christianity is to say, first of all, that Christianity is ultimately about love, and loving union. It means that spirituality is not a side issue. It is Christianity. There is nothing else but love. Or rather, everything else is there to support love. This is the point of the sacraments, the liturgy, the moral law, and devotions, to Mary or the saints or anything else. It is all ultimately about coming to love God. It is all ultimately about conversion of heart.

But to say that the Holy Spirit is essential to Christianity is also to say that this love is a gift, something we receive from God. We could put this two ways. Negatively, we can say that true Christian love is impossible without God. Our hearts are not big enough to love God as God deserves to be loved. Nor are our eyes big enough to see his goodness. He has to show himself to us, and expand our hearts to love him fully. Otherwise our love will fall short.

This is about overcoming sin, yes. But it is also about overcoming our natural limits. Even without sin we just aren’t big enough to love the Father as much as God the Son loves him.

But if it bothers you that I say “deserves,” as if God is annoyed that we don’t love him enough, you are on to something. Ultimately loving God isn’t something we get in trouble for doing insufficiently.

And so we can say the same thing better by putting it positively. God offers us more love than we could possibly imagine. To say that the Holy Spirit is essential to Christianity is to say the Christianity offers us the possibility of a love beyond our comprehension. It offers us the possibility to love God infinitely.

That is the offer of the Holy Spirit, the good news: beyond our wildest imaginings, God calls us into his own loving heart, the loving world of Father and Son in the Trinity.

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Grace is the name theology gives for the impact of the Holy Spirit on the soul. It would almost be true to say that we love with a love that is not our own, that we love with God’s love, the Holy Spirit. But the mystery of the Holy Spirit is that he makes this love our own. God who created us creates new hearts in us, hearts that love him infinitely, through the impulse of the Holy Spirit molding our hearts.

We say “grace” to show that this transformation of us does not come from us. It is the Holy Spirit who transforms us, but it is us who are truly transformed. The other seven gifts of the Holy Spirit name the multiple fruits of this transformation, the ways this transformation marks every aspect of our souls.

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Let us keep the Holy Spirit in mind this Holy Week. Jesus died of love, and died to share his love with us, to draw us into that love. The heart of these mysteries is the heart of Jesus, which he pours into us in sharing with us the Holy Spirit. It’s not meant to stay outside. It’s meant to transform us from within.

Does your Christianity sometimes forget about the Holy Spirit? How?

Month: April 2014