So, despite not being sure that I was going to be having a summer Bible study for the last month or so, it looks like we will be having one for the Newman Centre - at least for May and probably June. I will admit I had thought it would be nice to take the summer off for Bible Study, but when faced with the fact that several of the regulars would still be around, and there doesn't always tend to be a lot of things out there in general for people wanting to develop spiritually as Catholics, I figured - why not? Besides, the topics is always a good one.
I told them that the focus for the summer will be on figures/stories in the Old Testament, which is something that I love! I grew up on the Bible, and the OT always fired my imagination with all of the wonderful stories, and characters, and themes - it will be hard narrowing down what we will be looking at! I figure regarding that, at least, I will require input from the people who already expressed interest in the Bible study: what are the stories or people they want to look at. It should be a lot of fun! Then again, how couldn't it be fun!
- Abraham, the knight and father of faith; so often wondering about that laugh when God spoke to him about the covenant - a laugh that is revelation, is paradox and so prepares for revelation, itself.
- Sarah, the matriarch of the faith, the mother of so many hopes and expectations along with Abraham
- Issac, poor Isaac; what did his heart and eyes see on that mountain alone with his father? How did that change him?
- Jacob! Wow, Jacob is definitely a story for the ages too! Lying, treachery, redemption, wrestling with God, heartache, love - it has it all! Even a heart-breaking love triangle! And then when he spends the night contending with the angel of God, it speaks so well to so many other such turns to God that have happened throughout the ages. God is external, something that can be dismissed, or at least not taken into oneself, on the periphery. Then, troubles come, there is tension, and God becomes more present. Then the night of wrestling, of searching and crying, and in the morning ... we are never quite the same again ...
- Joseph (the the coat-of-many-colours fame): bratty, arrogant Joseph ... or maybe we don't let him tell his whole story, maybe we don't listen to him carefully enough. I admit, I had problems understanding Joseph for a very long, until I re-read the story, letting myself try and understand Joseph, and then I caught a glimpse of a different Joseph. There, in the silence so easily glossed over, in what he never said and when he never said it, there seems to be something else going on - the person Joseph once was in transformed into something else. It's so easy to keep remembering the bratty Joseph, but isn't that more my failing to accept change in another rather than anything to do with Joseph?
- Moses, another 'wow' of a story. One of the few people to be given labels in the Bible that should make us pause, that MUST make us pause: Moses, the humblest man that lived. Moses, the leader of the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt to a new life in the Promised Land. (sigh) If his story, if the end of his story, does not bring a tear or two to the eye, I don't know what will.
- David and Elijah, two of my favorites, with stories that are better and more poinant than the VAST number of books out there, without having to be book length either! Then there's Tobit, Judith, Job ... the list goes on!
All of that to say, I'm still trying to figure out what to focus on for the summer for the Bible study. Currently, I am thinking about 3 or 4 ideas, but more are welcome! They are:
- Looking at some of the women in the Bible that too often get glossed over, or are given too minor a role in first glances (Sarah, Rebecca and Leah, Naomi and Ruth, Esther, etc.).
- The prophets (major, and or minor)
- Moses - heck, he could easily fill the summer!
- The love stories of the Old Testament. Yes, sappy, but they tell us so much about human interaction and our relation to God!
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
A Reflection on Love (A little late for Valentine's
This used to be on the Newman website, but as I took it off (after Valentine's) I thought I would post it up over here. A little late, yes, but I am - once again - trying to be better about blogging.
Everyone has probably heard 1st Corinthians 13 at one point or another in their lives, especially if you've ever been to a wedding. So often it is presented as an example of the epitome of love with little explanation or attempt at a full understanding of what it really means. This is too bad, as without a full understanding the love presented in the chapter can appear as a passive love, a weak and pushover love, and worse, the idea and understanding of love that we've created in our own head can be thought to be the image of Christ.
Make no mistake, God is love and so Christ is love. Christ is the one being talked about in the 1st Corinthians passage, but not in the way it often seems to be taken. It seems in our culture that love – and God, too, as God is love – is often understood as something sappy, wimpy, without real strength. Oh sure, there are those moments of strength – like when we watch a movie and see someone sacrificing their life for their love or something like that – but for the most part love appears tepid, afraid of the others reaction, or else so relaxed and accepting that it would be hard-pressed to see how love really changes our lives at all. This is not the love of the Bible, the Gospels, nor 1st Corinthians, and so it cannot really be love at all.
Love is not wimpy. Love is not a pushover. Love is never simply ‘okay' with what you might do, because love wants the very best for you and not simply the status quo. The same applies to Christ. Jesus is not wimpy (imagine Jesus' hands: are they soft like a office worker, or calloused like a carpenter's?). Jesus is not a pushover, when one of his best friends tried to tell him what to do – that the friend knew what was best for Jesus – Jesus told him, “Get thee behind me Satan.” Jesus never said that the life someone was leading was “okay” or “alright”. Rather, he “came so that you[sic] might have life, and have it to the full”. If we are not increasing in that fullness of life, we are dying; there is no lukewarm response in Jesus – not ever, just look in the gospels.
It is in this context, in the context of Christ's life, that we must read and understand 1st Corinthians 13; that we must understand love. Perhaps that is part of the problem: we forget that love is a person, just as Christ is a person. If I treated other people, for instance my fiancee, like I sometimes treat God, I would be facing silence and tears that would demand from me a response. But how often do we forget about, or ignore God? How often do we demand from love something it is not?
Love is patient: yes. Love is forebaring and enduring: absolutely. But what does that mean? What does that look like? When we think of Jesus, the first image that comes to mind might be his words to turn the other cheek: “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (interestingly Jesus never says anything about letting yourself be hit again, just to offer the other cheek, but I digress). Here's the thing: if Jesus is love, his life showing that love in its fullness, then we have to take that seriously. That means Jesus in the temple, making a cord of rope and driving the moneychangers out, must also in some way be an example of the patience and forebearance of love. For if Jesus is unpatient there, then Jesus is not fully love – Jesus is not God. Something is amiss: either Jesus is not who he says he is, or our understanding of patience is impoverished and we need to be taught by God what patience truly is. Considering how many times, and how easily, I know myself to be wrong, I believe it would be far safer to say that I have something more to learn about patience.
If we turn to patience as a person, it is even more borne out. Think of a really good friend, or perhaps a mother, who asks you to do something. In your exuberance, you say “sure, I'll do that!” Then you forget. A few days later you are reminded of what you said you would do. Your mother, if she is anything like mine, might be annoyed, but that doesn't mean she loves you any less: her love is patient. But if you are always forgetting to do things, she might be patient with you, but she probably wouldn't trust you too much. Love might be patiently waiting for you to get it right, but that doesn't mean you haven't just screwed up the relationship and need to do things to make it right. Love might be patient, but that says nothing about the relation you have with a person.
Love is kind: no doubt about that! It is so kind that it is willing to give of itself so that you might be the best person you can be. As 1st Corinthians 13 says later on about love, it “rejoices in the truth.” We often think of Jesus' kindness when he talks about children, or heals people: what about when he might seem a bit of a jerk? When he calls the Syrophonecian woman a dog (though in reality “puppy” might be a better translation); when he very publicly calls St. Thomas' (of doubting Thomas fame) bluff; or when he challenges St. Peter's words? All of these are examples of a hard kindness, not foreign to love, but part of it. That last one, especially, sticks out to me.
Peter: one of Jesus' closest friends. Tempetuous, tempermental, lovable Peter. After denying Jesus three times before Jesus is crucified, after the resurrection, after Peter sees the resurrected Christ, after Peter even jumps into a lake to run to the risen Jesus, Jesus' kindness extends to push Peter a little further than even he maybe wanted first to go. In front of some of the other disciples Jesus asks point blank, “Do you love me?” Twice Peter, equivocates; “You know I like you.” Then the third time Jesus asks, “Do you even like me?” still in the presence of others (I can't help but imagine there might have been some awkward coughing and glancing away going on here). Finally, Peter gets it, breaks down and acknowledges that Jesus knows his heart, in a way signalling finally that Peter is finally ready to give Christ fully his heart. Jesus' kindness extended to breaking down Peter, so that he could build him up again into something even better. That is love.
That is maybe another area that our conception of love gets wrong, that love is not persistent, not nagging or irritating. But notice chapter 13 – love is described as not irritable , it says nothing about it not be irritating at times, especially those times when it is looking after my best interests and is right, and I would prefer it wasn't. For me, it often revolves around trips to the doctor:
“You know, you might want to get that checked out?
"Psssh, it's nothing; I've had worse.
"Um, sure, whatever. You do realize you can barely walk, have been making sounds eeriely like those made by people with phenomnia, and had a delightful conversation with the wall yesterday.
“You mean that wasn't my late Uncle Charlie?
"No, that was feverish delirium."
"Still, I think I'm on the mend."
"Uh huh, I'll go call a cab and get your coat. Oh, and that's not your cat; you've been petting your toque for the last 20 minutes.”
I might really not want to go to the doctor; find any number of excuses not to go; but love is not found in saying “sure, it's all good”, but in the icy “fine, whatever; get pneumonia” that certainly is irritating, but is absolutely right and loving.
And here we get to a final key feature of 1st Corinthians 13 that is easily glossed over considering it goes so against much of what our culture says is right and appropriate. Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love does all that not because it is a doormat, but because it believes in you more than you might believe in yourself. It believes precisely that you can be better than you are right now. There's a moral judgement there, a moral judgement in a society that tries to keep those to a minimum: you are good right now, you are loved fully, but love wants you to be even better. You might never get there, might never be that much better, but love is waiting and willing to do all that it can, offer all the help and push that it can so that you do move forward – then it will rejoice ... and start gently pushing again. Love wants the best for you, and believes you can be better, even if you don't believe it yourself.
Think about it, really think: you probably remember the teachers in high school that just came in to work, maybe even forced you to do assignments simply because they wanted people to follow the rules. Then there were others, the ones that pushed you – maybe not teachers, but friends or parents – helping you in any way they could, and believed in you even when you didn't always believe in yourself. That often means being hard-nosed and making you look at yourself, or do things you didn't always want or like. Looking back, to which do you have warmer feelings? The ones who were passive, even if passive aggressive, or the ones that were active, maybe sometimes even forcing you to push yourself more than you wanted. Which showed love?
That is why love is never ending. 1st Corinthians says that love, faith and hope are all incredibly vital for us as people, and as Christians, but that love is the greatest. Why? The answer: love is never-ending, but faith and hope will pass away: you only need faith for that which you can't see, only need hope when there is more road ahead which you don't know. But love, love always wants for you greater love, greater everything – it is infinite. It is not a mere trite sentiment when in the old hymn it sings “when we've been there ten thousand years, bright shinning as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we've first begun”. Ten thousand years – sounds like a long time, but each of those days are filled with love, complete and total love. And each day, we learn, we expand to encompass that immensity of love a little more. God is infinite, God is love; each day of those ten thousand year we get to touch the infinite, touch God, a little more.
When I think of how little I really know of love in my human understanding, it makes me excited for the promise of those ten thousand years.
Everyone has probably heard 1st Corinthians 13 at one point or another in their lives, especially if you've ever been to a wedding. So often it is presented as an example of the epitome of love with little explanation or attempt at a full understanding of what it really means. This is too bad, as without a full understanding the love presented in the chapter can appear as a passive love, a weak and pushover love, and worse, the idea and understanding of love that we've created in our own head can be thought to be the image of Christ.
Make no mistake, God is love and so Christ is love. Christ is the one being talked about in the 1st Corinthians passage, but not in the way it often seems to be taken. It seems in our culture that love – and God, too, as God is love – is often understood as something sappy, wimpy, without real strength. Oh sure, there are those moments of strength – like when we watch a movie and see someone sacrificing their life for their love or something like that – but for the most part love appears tepid, afraid of the others reaction, or else so relaxed and accepting that it would be hard-pressed to see how love really changes our lives at all. This is not the love of the Bible, the Gospels, nor 1st Corinthians, and so it cannot really be love at all.
Love is not wimpy. Love is not a pushover. Love is never simply ‘okay' with what you might do, because love wants the very best for you and not simply the status quo. The same applies to Christ. Jesus is not wimpy (imagine Jesus' hands: are they soft like a office worker, or calloused like a carpenter's?). Jesus is not a pushover, when one of his best friends tried to tell him what to do – that the friend knew what was best for Jesus – Jesus told him, “Get thee behind me Satan.” Jesus never said that the life someone was leading was “okay” or “alright”. Rather, he “came so that you[sic] might have life, and have it to the full”. If we are not increasing in that fullness of life, we are dying; there is no lukewarm response in Jesus – not ever, just look in the gospels.
It is in this context, in the context of Christ's life, that we must read and understand 1st Corinthians 13; that we must understand love. Perhaps that is part of the problem: we forget that love is a person, just as Christ is a person. If I treated other people, for instance my fiancee, like I sometimes treat God, I would be facing silence and tears that would demand from me a response. But how often do we forget about, or ignore God? How often do we demand from love something it is not?
Love is patient: yes. Love is forebaring and enduring: absolutely. But what does that mean? What does that look like? When we think of Jesus, the first image that comes to mind might be his words to turn the other cheek: “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also” (interestingly Jesus never says anything about letting yourself be hit again, just to offer the other cheek, but I digress). Here's the thing: if Jesus is love, his life showing that love in its fullness, then we have to take that seriously. That means Jesus in the temple, making a cord of rope and driving the moneychangers out, must also in some way be an example of the patience and forebearance of love. For if Jesus is unpatient there, then Jesus is not fully love – Jesus is not God. Something is amiss: either Jesus is not who he says he is, or our understanding of patience is impoverished and we need to be taught by God what patience truly is. Considering how many times, and how easily, I know myself to be wrong, I believe it would be far safer to say that I have something more to learn about patience.
If we turn to patience as a person, it is even more borne out. Think of a really good friend, or perhaps a mother, who asks you to do something. In your exuberance, you say “sure, I'll do that!” Then you forget. A few days later you are reminded of what you said you would do. Your mother, if she is anything like mine, might be annoyed, but that doesn't mean she loves you any less: her love is patient. But if you are always forgetting to do things, she might be patient with you, but she probably wouldn't trust you too much. Love might be patiently waiting for you to get it right, but that doesn't mean you haven't just screwed up the relationship and need to do things to make it right. Love might be patient, but that says nothing about the relation you have with a person.
Love is kind: no doubt about that! It is so kind that it is willing to give of itself so that you might be the best person you can be. As 1st Corinthians 13 says later on about love, it “rejoices in the truth.” We often think of Jesus' kindness when he talks about children, or heals people: what about when he might seem a bit of a jerk? When he calls the Syrophonecian woman a dog (though in reality “puppy” might be a better translation); when he very publicly calls St. Thomas' (of doubting Thomas fame) bluff; or when he challenges St. Peter's words? All of these are examples of a hard kindness, not foreign to love, but part of it. That last one, especially, sticks out to me.
Peter: one of Jesus' closest friends. Tempetuous, tempermental, lovable Peter. After denying Jesus three times before Jesus is crucified, after the resurrection, after Peter sees the resurrected Christ, after Peter even jumps into a lake to run to the risen Jesus, Jesus' kindness extends to push Peter a little further than even he maybe wanted first to go. In front of some of the other disciples Jesus asks point blank, “Do you love me?” Twice Peter, equivocates; “You know I like you.” Then the third time Jesus asks, “Do you even like me?” still in the presence of others (I can't help but imagine there might have been some awkward coughing and glancing away going on here). Finally, Peter gets it, breaks down and acknowledges that Jesus knows his heart, in a way signalling finally that Peter is finally ready to give Christ fully his heart. Jesus' kindness extended to breaking down Peter, so that he could build him up again into something even better. That is love.
That is maybe another area that our conception of love gets wrong, that love is not persistent, not nagging or irritating. But notice chapter 13 – love is described as not irritable , it says nothing about it not be irritating at times, especially those times when it is looking after my best interests and is right, and I would prefer it wasn't. For me, it often revolves around trips to the doctor:
“You know, you might want to get that checked out?
"Psssh, it's nothing; I've had worse.
"Um, sure, whatever. You do realize you can barely walk, have been making sounds eeriely like those made by people with phenomnia, and had a delightful conversation with the wall yesterday.
“You mean that wasn't my late Uncle Charlie?
"No, that was feverish delirium."
"Still, I think I'm on the mend."
"Uh huh, I'll go call a cab and get your coat. Oh, and that's not your cat; you've been petting your toque for the last 20 minutes.”
I might really not want to go to the doctor; find any number of excuses not to go; but love is not found in saying “sure, it's all good”, but in the icy “fine, whatever; get pneumonia” that certainly is irritating, but is absolutely right and loving.
And here we get to a final key feature of 1st Corinthians 13 that is easily glossed over considering it goes so against much of what our culture says is right and appropriate. Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Love does all that not because it is a doormat, but because it believes in you more than you might believe in yourself. It believes precisely that you can be better than you are right now. There's a moral judgement there, a moral judgement in a society that tries to keep those to a minimum: you are good right now, you are loved fully, but love wants you to be even better. You might never get there, might never be that much better, but love is waiting and willing to do all that it can, offer all the help and push that it can so that you do move forward – then it will rejoice ... and start gently pushing again. Love wants the best for you, and believes you can be better, even if you don't believe it yourself.
Think about it, really think: you probably remember the teachers in high school that just came in to work, maybe even forced you to do assignments simply because they wanted people to follow the rules. Then there were others, the ones that pushed you – maybe not teachers, but friends or parents – helping you in any way they could, and believed in you even when you didn't always believe in yourself. That often means being hard-nosed and making you look at yourself, or do things you didn't always want or like. Looking back, to which do you have warmer feelings? The ones who were passive, even if passive aggressive, or the ones that were active, maybe sometimes even forcing you to push yourself more than you wanted. Which showed love?
That is why love is never ending. 1st Corinthians says that love, faith and hope are all incredibly vital for us as people, and as Christians, but that love is the greatest. Why? The answer: love is never-ending, but faith and hope will pass away: you only need faith for that which you can't see, only need hope when there is more road ahead which you don't know. But love, love always wants for you greater love, greater everything – it is infinite. It is not a mere trite sentiment when in the old hymn it sings “when we've been there ten thousand years, bright shinning as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we've first begun”. Ten thousand years – sounds like a long time, but each of those days are filled with love, complete and total love. And each day, we learn, we expand to encompass that immensity of love a little more. God is infinite, God is love; each day of those ten thousand year we get to touch the infinite, touch God, a little more.
When I think of how little I really know of love in my human understanding, it makes me excited for the promise of those ten thousand years.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Some thoughts on ecumenism
I was reading a article in the Calgary Herald today (for anyone who knows, my connection with Calgary runs deep) that featured an interview by Fr. Richard Rohr, talking about the “emerging Christianity”. Two things that he said got me thinking, with thinking soon leading to writing.
First, Fr. Rohr mentioned that Christians today are getting a better sense of what Jesus “was really saying to us”. Second, he focused on the need for ecumenical action. I admit I am not entirely sure, nor convinced, about Fr. Rohr’s first point though there is certainly good points that he brings up. He does a little bashing of theologians as historically being dominated by “white, over-educated males.” While bashing of things and people of academic standing has become something of a past-time in North America, where being too intelligent often seems to make someone a pariah (“you are educated, ergo you are not one of us, ergo you think yourself better than us and must be mocked and humiliated – d’uh! Did I say ‘ergo’ I meant, um, ‘yo’!), it does make one wonder if St. Thomas Aquinas would be considered one of those “white, over-educated males”, or St. Augustine, or Karl Barth ...
That aside, what did pique my interest is the question of the shape of the ecumenical action being discussed, in connection with the idea of knowing better what Jesus was “really saying to us” (okay, I admit, I have a lot of problem with this statement, but I’ll ignore most of those for the moment!). The concern is that we give up the search for Jesus for the good of common action. What do I mean by that?
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Often times when Christians come together there seems such a focus on minimizing conflict, being uber-respectful of each other, and focusing on what we can do together, that we forget the need to constantly pursue our relationship with Christ. Our relationship, however, is not just a feeling or an experience, but like any real relationship also requires that we learn (know) the object of the relationship a little better. Jesus is truth, but that means we have to strive to know what is truth – and that there is truth, which means there is also false. Regardless of what we sometimes hear, Jesus is not all things to all people: that doesn’t make him universal; that makes our image of him an idol that we create through our own desires.
A true, valid and fruitful ecumenical movement must never neglect the need to continually talk about what is truth, the way, and the source of light, and that means sometimes saying flat out “I think you are wrong, because ...”. Perhaps it’s better to think of it in another way.
In my family, I often get into deep disagreements with my mother and one of my sisters. The disagreements can be heated, especially as our conversations are over matters of fundamental belief (my mother is Protestant, my sister an “apathetic agnostic” with deep resentment over Christianity). What’s more, because I am close to both of them, they can hurt me, as I can hurt them with my words. But I also learn an enormous amount from them, and they are the ones – more than books, or priests – that force me to be aware of my arguments, and reasoning behind my arguments. We argue because we believe we are right, and are absolutely concerned about the other person and that they may be wrong. Do we do that with our ecumenical dialogues? Are we so concerned about propriety that we take it upon ourselves to water down what we think is right?
That is one of my concerns with ecumenical dialogue. More so than with interfaith dialogue, ecumenical dialogue should be marked with passion: I believe that Christ is really present in the Eucharist and that is vital for Christian living. I cannot understand claims to the contrary. My understanding – my experience - of justice, of action is shaped by my reception of Christ. If I do not bring that to the Christian family table when we get together – not necessarily in an in-your-face kind of way, but something that I don’t need to avoid either – then I am not showing you respect or love, I am showing you I don’t care. Is that what is happening with many ecumenical conversations? The perception of unity becomes more important than truly caring for another: is that what Christian ecumenism is about?
I used the Eucharist as one example, but the other members of the family shape me as well. If I talk to a Protestant friend and say, “Yeah, I need to go to confession so that I can get absolved by the priest.” I WANT my Protestant friend to look at me and say, “So, confession is some kind of magical act that gets rid of sin? Confession is just about you; where does God fit in?” That hurts, but she is also being honest – being truthful – and that concern means that my view of confession changes, or at least specific possible abuses are made manifest. If my friend were to say, “Oh, that’s nice for you Catholics” how, honestly, does that show love? How does that reflect Christ?
First, Fr. Rohr mentioned that Christians today are getting a better sense of what Jesus “was really saying to us”. Second, he focused on the need for ecumenical action. I admit I am not entirely sure, nor convinced, about Fr. Rohr’s first point though there is certainly good points that he brings up. He does a little bashing of theologians as historically being dominated by “white, over-educated males.” While bashing of things and people of academic standing has become something of a past-time in North America, where being too intelligent often seems to make someone a pariah (“you are educated, ergo you are not one of us, ergo you think yourself better than us and must be mocked and humiliated – d’uh! Did I say ‘ergo’ I meant, um, ‘yo’!), it does make one wonder if St. Thomas Aquinas would be considered one of those “white, over-educated males”, or St. Augustine, or Karl Barth ...
That aside, what did pique my interest is the question of the shape of the ecumenical action being discussed, in connection with the idea of knowing better what Jesus was “really saying to us” (okay, I admit, I have a lot of problem with this statement, but I’ll ignore most of those for the moment!). The concern is that we give up the search for Jesus for the good of common action. What do I mean by that?
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Often times when Christians come together there seems such a focus on minimizing conflict, being uber-respectful of each other, and focusing on what we can do together, that we forget the need to constantly pursue our relationship with Christ. Our relationship, however, is not just a feeling or an experience, but like any real relationship also requires that we learn (know) the object of the relationship a little better. Jesus is truth, but that means we have to strive to know what is truth – and that there is truth, which means there is also false. Regardless of what we sometimes hear, Jesus is not all things to all people: that doesn’t make him universal; that makes our image of him an idol that we create through our own desires.
A true, valid and fruitful ecumenical movement must never neglect the need to continually talk about what is truth, the way, and the source of light, and that means sometimes saying flat out “I think you are wrong, because ...”. Perhaps it’s better to think of it in another way.
In my family, I often get into deep disagreements with my mother and one of my sisters. The disagreements can be heated, especially as our conversations are over matters of fundamental belief (my mother is Protestant, my sister an “apathetic agnostic” with deep resentment over Christianity). What’s more, because I am close to both of them, they can hurt me, as I can hurt them with my words. But I also learn an enormous amount from them, and they are the ones – more than books, or priests – that force me to be aware of my arguments, and reasoning behind my arguments. We argue because we believe we are right, and are absolutely concerned about the other person and that they may be wrong. Do we do that with our ecumenical dialogues? Are we so concerned about propriety that we take it upon ourselves to water down what we think is right?
That is one of my concerns with ecumenical dialogue. More so than with interfaith dialogue, ecumenical dialogue should be marked with passion: I believe that Christ is really present in the Eucharist and that is vital for Christian living. I cannot understand claims to the contrary. My understanding – my experience - of justice, of action is shaped by my reception of Christ. If I do not bring that to the Christian family table when we get together – not necessarily in an in-your-face kind of way, but something that I don’t need to avoid either – then I am not showing you respect or love, I am showing you I don’t care. Is that what is happening with many ecumenical conversations? The perception of unity becomes more important than truly caring for another: is that what Christian ecumenism is about?
I used the Eucharist as one example, but the other members of the family shape me as well. If I talk to a Protestant friend and say, “Yeah, I need to go to confession so that I can get absolved by the priest.” I WANT my Protestant friend to look at me and say, “So, confession is some kind of magical act that gets rid of sin? Confession is just about you; where does God fit in?” That hurts, but she is also being honest – being truthful – and that concern means that my view of confession changes, or at least specific possible abuses are made manifest. If my friend were to say, “Oh, that’s nice for you Catholics” how, honestly, does that show love? How does that reflect Christ?
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Alternative Spring Break
Somebody very rightly pointed out recently that I had mentioned in the blog that I would talk more about the amazing "Alternative Spring Break" that the Newman Centre organized back in February. That was definitely an oversight on my part! But it can also be rectified. Rather than using my words, however, I thought I would let one of the students speak for themselves about the trip: it is here, on the Newman Centre website.
It's been a while ...
With the Easter Season, the end of the semester, and some of my own work looming that needed attention, I haven't been around as much as I would have liked. But hopefully I will be back now on a more regular basis again! In fact, a couple of posts should be coming out this week.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Lent: Road to Calvary AND Temptations in the Wilderness
In talking to the Bible Study group on Wednesday, I found myself in competing images when describing Lent. On the one hand, I was telling them that we were accompanying Jesus on the road to Calvary during Lent (especially as Good Friday approaches), and on the other I was telling them that it was a chance to be in the wilderness with Jesus when he was tempted by Satan. I kept on feeling it necessary to mention both, and it felt a little strange and awkward.
This morning, Metroing in to work, I found myself thinking about those images; letting myself be drawn in deeper too them and it occurred to me (probably nothing new to many) that in joining the two images together – or keeping the wilderness experience in mind as we remember Calvary – that a deeper sense of the Passion can be sensed. Let me see if I can explain better.
Though the gospels do not say that Jesus was tempted during the crucifixion, in many ways it makes sense to think there were elements of temptation during that most trying time. And it is Satan who is known as the tempter, the same Satan who was there with Jesus in the wilderness. We do not need to place Satan somehow physically there at Calvary like some modern interpretations do (cough, cough – Passion of the Christ – cough, cough), in many ways we have a far more human element: memory.
On there, on the cross, it would be easy to remember a moment of great temptation such as what happened in the wilderness. Even in some of Jesus’ words you have a potential remembrance and second answer to the temptations. The Gospel of St. John has Jesus saying, “I thirst.” Why? It would have been so easy, as the Son of God to have quenched his thirst by causing it to rain, or any number of other ways. Indeed, with someone who had learned to control his body through fasting, why would he even need to say “I thirst”? John tells us it was to fulfill prophecy, which it undoubtedly was, but it also seems to be a very good response to the first temptation in the wilderness.
In the wilderness Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger. Jesus responds by saying that humans do not live by bread alone. Flash forward to the crucifixion. It is a very human thing to do to look back over one’s life in times of great agony, especially before death. Jesus is thirsty and the memory springs to mind of Satan making the observation that Jesus could turn stones into bread – why not make water fall from the heavens?
Instead, he humbles himself and states to his persecutors, those who were partially responsible for inflicting this agony upon him: “I thirst.” What humility and restraint are in those words if we bring them into contact with the temptations in the wilderness! Who would have faulted Jesus for making a little rain so that he might quench his thirst, but that wouldn’t be right … and so Jesus humbles himself to say “I thirst.”
The next temptation Satan offers in the wilderness, according to St. Luke, is when Satan takes Jesus to a high mountain and offers him the world if he but falls down and worships him. On the cross – perhaps – a memory stirs: all of the people jeering and insulting him, all of the people persecuting him, all of them could – in an instant – be turned from persecutors into adoring fans and slaves. The soldiers who had whipped him, could be his lackeys; the people who stopped by to insult him as he was hung upon the cross would fall over themselves to worship him. All he had to do was say ‘yes’ to Satan’s temptation. Yet, on the cross, we have Jesus saying other words.
Looking down at the people insulting, jeering, and ridiculing him, he says: “Father, forgive them.” Jesus didn’t want slaves, didn’t want mindless fanatics: he simply loved them, and asked His Father to forgive them for what they were doing to the Son. Wow.
Then, the final temptation according to Luke: taking Jesus up to the temple, and Satan throwing seeds of doubt about the Father’s love for His Son. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; your Father will protect you – well, that is He would if you are the Son of God.”
Crucifixcion, for those who have heard me take about it, was not only brutal physically, but also psychologically. Part of the psychological torture was that you were not hung high up in the air, but only a few feet from the ground: you were slowly suffocating to death and you knew all you had to do was take one step – one small step – and you could breathe again. Except, it was that one step that being nailed to a cross wouldn’t allow you to take.
Jesus, on the Cross, could have taken that step. He, unlike all the others who were killed in that fashion, could have let the nails fall – what is one more miracle among so many. He could have taken that one step and eased all his suffering. Afterall, wouldn’t a father not want his child to suffer; didn’t the Father love him and would understand that simple step?
But Jesus didn’t step down. All that kept him up upon that Cross was love of us and faith in the Father. In the deepest moment of despair he does not give up on those simple facts: looking out at his mother, at John, but also looking out at those who reviled and hated him, Jesus loved them … and so he stayed on the Cross to fulfill what was needed. In the moment of anguish he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Does the Father love him? Is he truly the Son of God? It would be so easy to test God and see; test a Father’s love – how many of us our guilty of testing to see if our parents love us? Then Jesus makes a leap.
It is not a physical leap, but a very human one that we are all called to do: he abandons himself, his own dreams and thoughts, and gives himself to the Father. It is not easy, and even Jesus feels forsaken, but in the ends he has done what the Father called him to do. “It is finished.”
This morning, Metroing in to work, I found myself thinking about those images; letting myself be drawn in deeper too them and it occurred to me (probably nothing new to many) that in joining the two images together – or keeping the wilderness experience in mind as we remember Calvary – that a deeper sense of the Passion can be sensed. Let me see if I can explain better.
Though the gospels do not say that Jesus was tempted during the crucifixion, in many ways it makes sense to think there were elements of temptation during that most trying time. And it is Satan who is known as the tempter, the same Satan who was there with Jesus in the wilderness. We do not need to place Satan somehow physically there at Calvary like some modern interpretations do (cough, cough – Passion of the Christ – cough, cough), in many ways we have a far more human element: memory.
On there, on the cross, it would be easy to remember a moment of great temptation such as what happened in the wilderness. Even in some of Jesus’ words you have a potential remembrance and second answer to the temptations. The Gospel of St. John has Jesus saying, “I thirst.” Why? It would have been so easy, as the Son of God to have quenched his thirst by causing it to rain, or any number of other ways. Indeed, with someone who had learned to control his body through fasting, why would he even need to say “I thirst”? John tells us it was to fulfill prophecy, which it undoubtedly was, but it also seems to be a very good response to the first temptation in the wilderness.
In the wilderness Satan tempts Jesus to turn stones into bread to satisfy his hunger. Jesus responds by saying that humans do not live by bread alone. Flash forward to the crucifixion. It is a very human thing to do to look back over one’s life in times of great agony, especially before death. Jesus is thirsty and the memory springs to mind of Satan making the observation that Jesus could turn stones into bread – why not make water fall from the heavens?
Instead, he humbles himself and states to his persecutors, those who were partially responsible for inflicting this agony upon him: “I thirst.” What humility and restraint are in those words if we bring them into contact with the temptations in the wilderness! Who would have faulted Jesus for making a little rain so that he might quench his thirst, but that wouldn’t be right … and so Jesus humbles himself to say “I thirst.”
The next temptation Satan offers in the wilderness, according to St. Luke, is when Satan takes Jesus to a high mountain and offers him the world if he but falls down and worships him. On the cross – perhaps – a memory stirs: all of the people jeering and insulting him, all of the people persecuting him, all of them could – in an instant – be turned from persecutors into adoring fans and slaves. The soldiers who had whipped him, could be his lackeys; the people who stopped by to insult him as he was hung upon the cross would fall over themselves to worship him. All he had to do was say ‘yes’ to Satan’s temptation. Yet, on the cross, we have Jesus saying other words.
Looking down at the people insulting, jeering, and ridiculing him, he says: “Father, forgive them.” Jesus didn’t want slaves, didn’t want mindless fanatics: he simply loved them, and asked His Father to forgive them for what they were doing to the Son. Wow.
Then, the final temptation according to Luke: taking Jesus up to the temple, and Satan throwing seeds of doubt about the Father’s love for His Son. “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here; your Father will protect you – well, that is He would if you are the Son of God.”
Crucifixcion, for those who have heard me take about it, was not only brutal physically, but also psychologically. Part of the psychological torture was that you were not hung high up in the air, but only a few feet from the ground: you were slowly suffocating to death and you knew all you had to do was take one step – one small step – and you could breathe again. Except, it was that one step that being nailed to a cross wouldn’t allow you to take.
Jesus, on the Cross, could have taken that step. He, unlike all the others who were killed in that fashion, could have let the nails fall – what is one more miracle among so many. He could have taken that one step and eased all his suffering. Afterall, wouldn’t a father not want his child to suffer; didn’t the Father love him and would understand that simple step?
But Jesus didn’t step down. All that kept him up upon that Cross was love of us and faith in the Father. In the deepest moment of despair he does not give up on those simple facts: looking out at his mother, at John, but also looking out at those who reviled and hated him, Jesus loved them … and so he stayed on the Cross to fulfill what was needed. In the moment of anguish he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Does the Father love him? Is he truly the Son of God? It would be so easy to test God and see; test a Father’s love – how many of us our guilty of testing to see if our parents love us? Then Jesus makes a leap.
It is not a physical leap, but a very human one that we are all called to do: he abandons himself, his own dreams and thoughts, and gives himself to the Father. It is not easy, and even Jesus feels forsaken, but in the ends he has done what the Father called him to do. “It is finished.”
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Mary, Joseph, and the Holy Family
It is odd the little things we miss without even realizing it. I felt like that yesterday when I watched “The Nativity Story”.
First off, there are a few things in “The Nativity Story” that do not directly jive with Catholic tradition, but that is a topic for another time. One of the things the movie does do well, however, is to show an aspect of Mary and Joseph that is too often minimize, or perhaps I should say too often minimized in my own thoughts. The Gospel of St. Matthew presents some of St. Joseph’s view of what was going on before the birth of Jesus: it presents the struggles and difficulties with accepting his fiance, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was already with child, and the vision of the angel telling him what was to happen. St. Luke tells the story from the perspective of the Blessed Virgin. Two accounts of the same event from two different perspectives, that is how I always saw it.
However, there is another dimension that I so easily forget when I compartmentalize the stories: we celebrate St. Joseph, the Blessed Virign, but we also celebrate the Holy Family. The Holy Family has it’s own feast day in the calendar of the Church between Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (January 1). It is a relatively recent phenomenon, started in Canada and growing to encompass many more in the Church.
The importance for also thinking of the Holy Family was driven home to me in watching the movie. At a moment after Jesus is born and laid in the stables, you can see a faint sadness in the eyes of Joseph, a sadness that Jesus was born in a stable of all places. It is then that Mary reaches out and takes Joseph’s hand, and a note of strength returns: St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin were amazing people, chosen by God, but they – like all of us – were also strengthened by each other through God. Simply put, they were not alone, to practice and follow God on their own: they were a family, they strengthened one another through the bonds of a family.
It is odd the little things we just don’t think about that sometimes needs pointing out.
First off, there are a few things in “The Nativity Story” that do not directly jive with Catholic tradition, but that is a topic for another time. One of the things the movie does do well, however, is to show an aspect of Mary and Joseph that is too often minimize, or perhaps I should say too often minimized in my own thoughts. The Gospel of St. Matthew presents some of St. Joseph’s view of what was going on before the birth of Jesus: it presents the struggles and difficulties with accepting his fiance, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was already with child, and the vision of the angel telling him what was to happen. St. Luke tells the story from the perspective of the Blessed Virgin. Two accounts of the same event from two different perspectives, that is how I always saw it.
However, there is another dimension that I so easily forget when I compartmentalize the stories: we celebrate St. Joseph, the Blessed Virign, but we also celebrate the Holy Family. The Holy Family has it’s own feast day in the calendar of the Church between Christmas and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God (January 1). It is a relatively recent phenomenon, started in Canada and growing to encompass many more in the Church.
The importance for also thinking of the Holy Family was driven home to me in watching the movie. At a moment after Jesus is born and laid in the stables, you can see a faint sadness in the eyes of Joseph, a sadness that Jesus was born in a stable of all places. It is then that Mary reaches out and takes Joseph’s hand, and a note of strength returns: St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin were amazing people, chosen by God, but they – like all of us – were also strengthened by each other through God. Simply put, they were not alone, to practice and follow God on their own: they were a family, they strengthened one another through the bonds of a family.
It is odd the little things we just don’t think about that sometimes needs pointing out.
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