The First Exorcism

No, it's not a bungled-up movie title. It's today's Gospel, set in the synagogue at Capernaum--a significant locale in all four Gospels. For Luke, the exorcism at Capernaum is the first of Jesus' miracles; a sign of his whole mission to free us from the grip of the devil and restore us to true freedom. Once again, the first reading from St. Paul sheds some remarkable light on the story. Let's start with Paul and what may be the most outrageous statement in the whole Pauline corpus: "We have the mind of Christ."
The mind of Christ? What might that look like? We get a clear picture of what it doesn't look like when we go with Jesus to that synagogue in Capernaum. According to Luke, Jesus, his hair still damp from baptism by John, was "filled with the Holy Spirit," and, "led by the Spirit," he had been tempted (but victorious) in the desert. "In the power of the Spirit" he had come to Galilee and proclaimed (as we saw yesterday) that the "Spirit of the Lord" was upon him. Now there is a face-off with a very different spirit in the form of a fragile, tortured villager. And the evil one immediately betrays his own mind when the possessed man cries out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?"
Destroy. This word is Satan's hallmark. The mind of Satan reveals itself in terms of destruction, chaos, devolution. Look at what the demon is insinuating (it's a common enough supposition even in our culture today!): that Jesus has come to ruin things, to interfere, intrude, disrupt our equilibrium, spoil the little fun we can have on earth. In the mind of Satan, Jesus is a destroyer.
But Paul tells us that "we do not have the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God," giving us to speak "words taught by the Spirit"; we "did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear" (Romans 8), but a spirit of adoption, crying "Abba, Father!" How very different that cry is from the cowering, protesting, whining cry, "What have you to do with us?"
"The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Romans 8); when we say "Abba, Father!" it is not we who speak, but the Spirit we have received, giving us the mind of Christ.

Converging on the Word

Today's readings would be a lectionary masterpiece if they had been planned to converge, as they do, on the power of the Living Word of God. But since it is a matter of two self-contained cycles just "coincidentally" matching perfectly, it has to be chalked up to the Holy Spirit as one of those unappreciated divine masterpieces that we live in so nonchalantly.
The first reading is from St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. (My dad, a longtime lector, used to say, "Seems like all we ever read is Corinthians...") The English translation gives us just three sentences from this "apologia" of Paul's. He is not apologizing in any sense for failing to decorate the Gospel with rhetorical flair and a hint of his vast knowledge. "Weakness and fear and much trembling" are not exactly the first terms that would come to mind if we were asked to describe the Apostle Paul, but this, he says, it was characterized his preaching in Corinth. All to prove that the only thing worth knowing was "Jesus Christ and him crucified": This is certainly not the Jesus the people of Nazareth knew that day in the local synagogue. They commented about how well Jesus preached that day from Isaiah, he, Jesus "the son of Joseph." Focused on gracious words, they took a pass on the grace itself!
The responsorial psalm is a set of strophes from Psalm 119, the Goliath of the Psalter (176 verses!). The section chosen for today is a perfect expression of the prayer of Paul at Corinth, or Jesus at Nazareth. If it had also been the genuine prayer of the people of Nazareth (all but Mary, sad to say) they could have welcomed the "sublimity of words and wisdom" Jesus spoke and not just admired it.

Getting back to "normal"

I'm in that weird end-of-summer place, trying to pull things together so that by Labor Day I feel I am really starting out freshly organized, my goals clear, my ways well-defined. That means I have another week to plow through the odds and ends that I really hoped to have plowed by summer, even though my summers typically include over a month in Boston (and the odds and ends are typically in stacks in my office in Chicago). This week I didn't make as much progress as I had hoped: our nightly visits from "Louie" (more about him in the future, when things will have hopefully been resolved) took a real toll on my sleep, leaving me barely able to function. So for the present, I'm camping out in a downstairs room, away from the rooftop activities. (Say a prayer for Louie's conversion in the meantime.)
Meanwhile, this week brings with it a real blessing to the community as three young women enter our postulancy program in St. Louis.  Postulancy is a kind of transition program, a halfway house between an ordinary self-regulated "life in the world" and the life in community for mission lived in apostolic religious life. It can mean taking on a new "culture," the culture of the particular community, as well as conforming to a different sort of discipline in life and prayer. Some people find that their prayer life takes a real hit when they enter the convent, of all things. Not that they are praying less or even praying worse, but that enough is different (communities also have their own "flavor" of prayer) that the "felt," devotional dimension of prayer gives way to something less immediately reassuring. You can imagine what a trial that would be for someone who has just left her job, her car, her apartment--and suddenly finds that she must also, in some way, leave behind "her" prayer! The "official" entrance day for our new postulants is August 31; how about a special prayer for each of them, for their companions in the postulancy, and the director? Thanks.

The new parable of the Bridesmaids

Okay, it's new, but I'm not going to develop the whole story line, just offer a few more contemporary details.
Instead of bridesmaids waiting with oil lamps,
     How about any number of people with cell phones
          All awaiting important calls?
And some chatted all evening long, counting on "call waiting" to signal the incoming, highly anticipated call.
     And others left their phones alone, conserving juice.
And as the chatters' phones began to darken from dying batteries, they asked the others,
    "Loan me your cell phone so I can give it as an alternate number; otherwise, I'll miss my call!"
But the prudent said to the wise, "Go find your charger and juice your own phone; otherwise we'll both miss our call."

And while the chatterboxes went home (to look for their chargers), the others were answering the long-awaited call. But the Mystical Caller was sent straight to voicemail for the others, for their phones were all dead.
"Therefore I say to you, stay awake, for you do not know when your call is coming."

Louie, Louie or, Things that Go Crash! Bang! Boom! in the Night

Last night was the third night in a row that I have been awakened at (or after) midnight by the sound of our building shaking. Since an action movie is being filmed in our neighborhood, I assumed that this was only part of the action, albeit a very LOUD part. (I didn't think those Hollywood explosions would actually shake buildings blocks away!) But there was definitely something different about the crashing sounds last night. For one thing, they had a sort of "footfall" pattern, as if someone were actually walking on the roof above our heads. (Our little cubicles are on the top floor. And there's a skylight.) Then there was the dull thud of something very heavy falling down, causing debris to clatter on the ceiling tiles in my room.
This was no movie.
I peeked out of my room and saw Sr. Helena tromping down the hall to call 911. Sr Margaret Michael (national vocation director, still here from the discernment retreat) peeked out of her cubicle, too. Satisfied that Chicago's Finest would take to the fire escape and save the day (or the night), we closed our doors and went back to... well, not sleep, that's for sure. (I tried, but... So I prayed for the truly unwelcome visitor, whom by this time I had named Louie in honor of today's saint.) At 3:00 the crashing started again, more vigorously than ever. No more peeking out of rooms. Before long, all five of us were in the hall, and Sr. Helena was again trying to explain to the 911 operator that someone, probably a homeless person, was really on our roof, and that we were really worried about the skylight situation, and no we were NOT going to go up on the fire escape to see for ourselves and describe the person. (By this point, the lights were on.)  Eventually, a police officer did come, and Sr. Helena followed him up the fire escape. They didn't find Louie, but they did see that he had been in the elevator shaft area (unlocked!). The policeman locked the access door and gave a few after the fact sort of recommendations, and we were back to our cubicles for what remained of the "night." And I felt a twinge of pity for poor Louie who will probably make his way back to our roof, and find perhaps that some of his belongings have been locked away (until we can find a key to that room; that's why it wasn't locked).  Needless to say, we all slept in today!

Jacob's Ladder (the story within a story)

Today is the feast of St. Bartholomew, so we have the Gospel of the call of ... Nathanael. (The slightly different lists of names of the Twelve Apostles led to the assumption that Bartholomew and Nathaniel are one and the same.) And the call of Nathanael is important for several reasons. In John's Gospel, Nathanael is the last of those called to follow Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry. And Nathanael's call involves a particular self-revelation on Jesus' part, when Jesus tells "him" (but speaks in the plural, so he's really broadcasting this to the group of disciples), "You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man."

That should have given all Twelve of them pause. Jesus was claiming to be, himself, personally, the ladder their ancestor Jacob had seen in a mysterious dream on his way out of the Promised Land. (Jacob had another mysterious experience on his way back to the Promised Land decades later.) Jacob could only dream about it; Jesus was saying that he himself was the pathway between heaven and earth. "No one comes to the Father except through me," he would later say at the Last Supper.

And it was Nathaniel who, in a certain sense, "evoked" this self-revelation from Jesus, preparing the way for it by his own exclamation of faith. Because Jesus didn't find Nathanael and say to him, "Come follow me." It was Philip who roused Nathanael (from under the fig tree?) and led him to Jesus, "the one about whom Moses wrote in the Law." When Jesus hinted to Nathanael that he not only knew him through and through, but saw him "under the fig tree," Nathanael simply said, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel." In these words, John is offering us (at the beginning of the Gospel--this is Chapter 1) both a "Christology from above" and a "Christology from below"; a "descending" Christology coupled with an "ascending" one. As Son of God, Jesus is the One who "came down" to us; as "King of Israel" (and Jacob's new, God-given name was Israel), Jesus leads us to heaven.

Centuries later, Therese of Lisieux would update the ladder image by speaking of Jesus as an elevator (!); our Founder spoke of Jesus, Way, Truth and Life, as a car or vehicle. Whatever the image, Jesus sums up in himself all access, all communication, between God and humanity.

Discernment and Vocation

We've just bid adieu to a group of women who spent the weekend here on a discernment retreat, so I suppose that made me more attentive to the links I discovered today through the Communio website. This fabulous journal of Catholic thought (co-founded by--ahem!--Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar) performs the invaluable service of making some of its most insightful material available in pdf format. So here is some spiritual reading for the week. Maybe even for the year:

Vocation (Hans Urs von Balthasar)

Of Spouses, the Real World, and the "Where" of Christian Marriage (David S. Crawford)

Priesthood: A Sacrament of the Father (Jose Granados)
The Evangelical Counsels and the Total Gift of Self (Jacques Servais)

Be sure to visit the Communio site and browse through the table of contents for each of their back issues for more essays on that same thoughtful level on a variety of key topics.

Gift Shop Now Open!

Doing something new here in the Pauline blog world, testing a CafePress site that will allow you to support the mission of the Daughters of St. Paul and get some unique (and generally practical) items. Happily, this trial coincides with a "free shipping" offer at CafePress ("free" for orders over $40).
So far there are only two main themes: Books and New Orleans (you probably guessed that much). You might recall the basic "book" design from several months ago when I was creating signage for our Chicago location. I liked the Chesterton quote so much, I hated to see it limited to a single poster!
Here are a few samples of the items you can get through our CafePress link:

The mug and the book bag have a quote from Chesterton: "Literature is a luxury; Fiction a necessity." The apron says, "I'd rather be reading!"

And from the "Geaux Getters" department:

Sweet Home, Chicago

Good to be back in Chi-Town, but what mess I came home to! A Hollywood mess, that is, and the crew of Transformers 3 promises that they'll leave our alley cleaner than it was when they found it. Which will be a real bonus! I came down from the green line, trundling my suitcase (with the HEAVY tag removed, thank you) and my computer case, and had to be given permission to go through the alley. Overturned cars (even a school bus), piles of "brick" and other debris filled it. There was even a big hunk of fake rock blocking our garage door! Sr Helena got some (verboten) cell phone pics and video of the scene a few days ago. (They're packing up now, moving to Navy Pier--for some water scenes, I suppose.)
I had to read Sr. Helena's blog post to get caught up to speed.
And now, after a very long day of travel, off to Mass!

And it's a wrap! (Official!)

This morning there was a photo shoot instead of rehearsal. I am trying to put a little movie together of clips of us sitting, standing and kneeling around the trees and shrubs of the Arnold Arboretum. Must have been quite a sight for the dog walkers and joggers there this morning. Then, mid-afternoon, Sr. Julia and I were called down for our duet: "The Prayer" (immoralized by Andrea Bocelli and Celine Dion). I was Celine. Sort of. I expected this to be the most fun song of all to sing, but it turned out to be the most labor-intensive, because instead of soaring orchestral tracks, all we had in our headsets was a (very subtle) piano accompaniment. Didn't quite do the trick. An hour and a half later, we think we may have nailed it....

Meanwhile, back in Chicago... you can now get a T-shirt and help support the documentary Sr. Helena is writing about our Founder (see sidebar trailer):

Standard black T with white letters. $10 each. $5.00 postage. S, M, L, XL 

Contact: Sr. Helena hburns@paulinemedia.com Put "ALBERIONE" in email subject line.

And, courtesy of the multi-talented (and omnipresent) Matthew Warner, here are a few of the many media apostles at the CNMC (we're going back two weeks now) who, like Alberione, use media to spread the Good News:

Parables that make people mad

Today's Gospel is one of them. You know, the parables that stick in your craw because there's just something totally unfair about them. There's the parable of the wily steward who rewrites the bills so that when he's fired, he'll have "friends" to go to. Then the one about the hidden treasure: Shouldn't the finder have informed the original owner of the true value of the field before negotiating to buy it? (In my heart of hearts, I know that the Prodigal Son is one of these parables, too, but it's not very comfortable finding myself an ally of that whiny elder brother...) And then there's today's story of the workers in the vineyard, paid the same whether they worked twelve hours or only one.
Of course, the whole point of a parable is that it sticks in your craw: it's meant to keep at you like an itch until you discover the real message, which is fully redeeming. Even today's parable! It's not about social justice (paying so disproportionately for labor isn't "justice," although we could still draw some valuable social justice conclusions from the story); it's not about people's varying degrees of merit, either. It's a description of GRACE: the workers who were hired toward evening didn't have a contract to rely on; they didn't strike a deal with the owner about pay rates. They took him at his word, "I will give you what is just." Like Abraham, they believed, and in the end, just as their faith in the owner was justified, so they were justified in trusting him. They were not paid "according to their works" but "good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over." The disproportion between their labor and their pay was a sign of the overflowing goodness of the owner, not a reflection on the relative worth of the laborers--which was the conclusion the first-hired workers drew. (They were seeing things as if it were all about them; very subjective--as our culture is today.)
The parables are not about us: they are about God. Almost all of them seem to begin with "The Kingdom of heaven is like.." And that expression "the Kingdom of heaven" is a circumlocution for "God."
I can't help thinking in terms of the 4th Joyful mystery of the rosary: Simeon and Anna at the Temple, rejoicing to see the Messiah. These very elderly people had "borne the burden of the day and of the heat" for decades, counting on God to fulfil his promise. And when he did, they did not hoard the beauty that had been revealed, but shared it freely--Anna, especially. She did not presume that people would have to wait until they, too, were eighty-four and had spent long years in fasting and prayer at the Temple before they could receive the Good News. Instead, she spread the wealth around to everyone who was awaiting the Consolation of Israel.

Snatching a minute

It has been pretty much non-stop, except maybe for Sunday--and even Sunday was quite outside the norm: Cardinal O'Malley celebrated the community Mass, and stayed for brunch and a visit to our recording studio. In the radio department, he recorded something for Sr Ruth's Spanish program, and then in the music studio, he listened to two of the more completed tracks. Before leaving, he gave a special blessing to the choir and to all the people who will be touched by the new album.

Monday morning, it was back to our 9:00 practice and 2:00 recording session, which we were able to stream on the "Choir-Cam." (No Choir-Cam today; the computer was getting a check-up in the Pauline tech department. Hopefully, we'll be streaming video, but not audio, again tomorrow as the choral recording finishes up and the solos and duets begin facing the microphones.) Tomorrow night we are also having an anticipated "wrap party" (Thursday is the scheduled finish date, but several of us have Friday morning flights back to our communities to prepare for.)

As we have been singing these "inspirational pop" lyrics, I have been filling them up with prayer. So if you don't hear from me for a few days....you'll know my days are full!

Singing Sisters

Yesterday, podcaster Pat Gohn spent some time with us as we rehearsed and recorded. Sr. Margaret Kerry shepherded her through the motherhouse complex. (Should I say "complex motherhouse?" It kind of is)

From Moscow with Love

Sister Roberta, our girl in Russia, has to return Stateside every year (I think that's it) to get her visa renewed. It's one of the hassles that comes with the territory. (Used to be Americans got longer visas.) Anyway, it gives her a chance to make her retreat in English, and give us an update on the sisters and all their endeavors. The community of Moscow was part of a big wave of new foundations we started...as soon as we could! We also opened in Prague, Budapest, Bucharest... you get the idea.
So here's the update we got on Moscow.

Choir Cam

If you read this during our studio sessions, you can watch the action (no audio, sorry!) from the Choir Cam, located in an isolation booth in our studio. We rehearse in the morning and record in the afternoon (usually from 2-6).
This project is quite different from the last three we've done: instead of ancient Latin hymns, we are singing inspirational pop-style songs (several decades' worth). (The CD jacket will probably enhance the songs with a more explicit dimension of faith and prayer.) It will be the sort of gift you can give a person who does not have any religious faith, but which will still offer an uplift or encouragement, and maybe even genuine hope.
Counting on your prayers for us as we record, and for the people this album will reach, especially those who will encounter it at a time of deep need.

Do you pray like this, too?

Sadly, I gotta say I can relate. Sometimes. Maybe.
You?

The Catholic Foodie: a Pauline Connection

At the CNMC Sr Margaret interviewed Holy Family Institute member Jeff Young, host (with wife Char) of The Catholic Foodie podcast. Jeff lives in the New Orleans area (the "north shore"), so he and Sr. Margaret and I have that connection in addition to the Pauline one. (Sr Margaret and I went to high school together in Metairie.)

Bl. James quotes for bloggers

At the CNMC blogger's panel, I shared something our founder had written in 1926; several of the participants really liked the quote, so here it is with a few other gems. For more about Blessed James and his media apostolate, watch the trailer.


“The world needs a new, prolonged and profound evangelization…. Adequate means are necessary, along with souls on fire with faith. No other means is as adequate for providing this except the press, and no other apostles use it as ardently as young people…. New missionaries are necessary! New missionaries for this new and fruitful apostolate!”

More good quotes from Alberione:
“The Pauline writer is in a special position inasmuch as he is a preacher, not with spoken words, but with paper and film. A preacher must always ask himself two questions, and the writer must do likewise in his/her own field. The first question is: who is it I am addressing?.... It is not enough for you to do your spiritual reading for yourself alone. … What truths do you want to communicate? Pray for all our readers, to have the grace of understanding their needs and finding the way to their hearts.”

“The Daughter of St. Paul should never have to ask herself what to write about when the world is starving for the crumbs of what she knows.”

And when he prayed:
"We thank you, Lord, for having given us the most ingenious, most rapid and fruitful means of communication."
(We have a whole list of prayers he wrote for the media!)

CNMC report

Last year I was the only sister at the Catholic New Media Celebration in San Antonio. That didn't happen this year, with the CNMC held a few miles from our Boston motherhouse! This year there were four Daughters of St. Paul and one Little Sister of the Poor in the Archdiocese's new office center. Among the speakers were Fr. Reed from Catholic TV (originated with the TV Mass in 1955 under the media-appreciating Cardinal Cushing), Lino Rulli and Cardinal O'Malley (another media-appreciating Cardinal). You can get a sense of the whole from Fr. Jay (iPadre) Finelli's podcast, full of on-site interviews. The iPadre was the first podcasting priest, and just recorded his 200th episode. (Note to Mom: you can hear me exactly halfway through the show at 30:15.) (Congratulations, Fr. Jay! I hope you can make it to our studio while the choir records the next album.) K of C communications specialist Brian Caulfield prepared a wonderful blog post summing up the conference, if you don't have time for a podcast.
I have to say I found Rulli's presentation the most thought provoking. With his background in broadcasting, Lino now makes a living as the "Catholic Guy" on Sirius Radio. He is smart, funny and articulate. He can also be pretty crass. As one sometime listener put it, "some of his content is unredeemed." But he insists (adamantly) on his hallmark of his as central to what he is trying to do: reach the "unredeemed" among cultural Catholics. Careful, pious language may be comforting to the devout, but it leaves the cultural Catholic cold, maybe even alienated, thinking, "I have nothing in common with these people; Church stuff really does not have a message for me." Here's Lino in his own words:

What do I, as a blogging nun, have to learn from a 38-year-old Italian guy who refers to things that make me blush? A lot, really. Because what Lino said (in his own inimitable way) sounded very much like something Ronald Knox wrote before Lino Rulli was even born; before I was even born! Here it is:

The hardest part of the author's task, as I see it, will be to introduced some human element.... He will portray the teaching Church, not as a harassed official 'handing out' information at a series of Press-conferences, but as a patient pioneer washing out the gold from the turbid stream of her own memories. Everything will come alive at his touch...

Lino and others (especially the podcastanswerman Cliff Ravenscraft) also repeated that a podcaster (or blogger, as the case may be) can't try to speak to everyone, broadcast, as it were, but focus on what he or she is passionate about. Not only will the person then be able to speak or write fluently about it, other people who are passionate about the same thing will flock to join the conversation.

From the CNMC

I'm at the Catholic New Media Celebration in Boston, surrounded by prominent Catholic podcasters and bloggers (including Cardinal O'Malley, who will be addressing us in a few minutes). Ironically, that means it's harder for me to actually post anything thoughtful! Even the pictures are pretty well locked in my camera... Hopefully, I'll have time on Monday to offer a well pondered reflection on the role of Catholics in social media. And then Tuesday we begin recording the next album. (You do follow the Daughters of St. Paul choir on Facebook, right?)

Tabor and Cana: Two of a Kind?

Yesterday I came across a scrap of paper (actually, it was an old church envelope!) on which I had scribbled, "Cana and Transfiguration: they saw his glory." That certainly was timely; I didn't even realize until later that night that today would be the Feast of the Transfiguration. So I am letting that little note guide my meditation.
It's not as odd a pairing as it seems at first glance: there's more to these two events than the shared theme of the disciples' witnessing Jesus' glory (although that may be the strongest common element).
Here's what I am finding:

• At Tabor, as at Cana, the story hints that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament.
• At Tabor and at Cana, we are told explicitly to listen to Jesus.
• Tabor and Cana both look ahead in some way to the Cross.
• And then there's the glory thing (explicit in both stories); there are two "dimensions" to this one.

Jesus as the fulfilment of the Old Testament.
If you were Matthew, Mark or Luke, the way you would say "Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament" would be to take two persons who, together, summed up in themselves the "Law and the Prophets" and set them alongside Jesus. Behold, Moses and Elijah.
If you were John,  you would say "Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament" by using the great theme of the wedding (present implicitly in Adam and Eve--"the woman" of Genesis--as well as in the prophets, like Isaiah, Ezekiel and Hosea). Not only does John situate Jesus at a wedding, he makes sure "the woman" is there, too, so we get the point.

Listen to Jesus

That command "Listen to him" comes at Tabor from the shining cloud: "This is my chosen Son; listen to him."

At Cana, it is Mary who tells the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." 

Tabor and Cana look ahead to the Cross
We hear the Gospel of the Transfiguration at couple of times in the liturgical year, most dramatically on the second Sunday of Lent, where it carries out the role it did for the apostles: preparing us for the events of Good Friday by giving a sneak peak of the ultimate triumph to come. Luke makes sure we get the connection by telling us that Moses and Elijah "spoke with Jesus about his exodus which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem."
At Cana, John uses two key words to hint at the same mystery of our salvation. The code word "glory" in John always refers to the Paschal Mystery in its fullness, but the word "hour" focuses especially on the Passion. When Jesus tells Mary "my hour has not yet come," he is clearly saying that what she is asking is closely related to the crucial contest he is to undergo to fulfill his mission on earth.


They saw his glory
Matthew and Mark start the Transfiguration story right after reporting that Jesus spoke of coming "in his Father's glory with the holy angels." Six days later, they say, Jesus took Peter, James and John up that mountain, always the place where God would be met in majesty. Luke says that as Jesus changed in appearance, and even his clothing glowed, Moses and Elijah "appeared in glory." Today's second reading, from 2 Peter, assures us that Jesus "received honor and glory from God the Father when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory" (a double-header). Plenty of glory, right before Jesus begins the journey to Jerusalem that will lead straight to the Cross. 
At Cana, Jesus did this, "the beginning of his signs... and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him." It's hard for me not to hear this, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, as an echo of what John wrote in his prologue: "We saw his glory, the glory of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth.... For while the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is the only Son, God ever at the Father's side, who has revealed him."


Tabor and Cana both speak of heaven
As the Church reads the Transfiguration and prays over it liturgically, she sees not only a foreshadowing of Christ's own post-resurrection glory, but even "the glory to be revealed in us" when God will "raise our lowly bodies and configure them to Christ's glorified body" (as St. Paul put it). To share Christ's glory is to share the source of that glory: the divine life itself. Even now, through grace, we are "partakers in the divine nature."
Cana also foretells something of the life of the world to come, but John stresses the aspect of intimate communion, hinted at in the ancient biblical image of spousal love (as in a spiritual reading of the Song of Songs).

I'm not saying that for John, Cana was the Transfiguration, but it sure does look like Cana assumes, in John's Gospel, some of the meaning of the Transfiguration (which John, being John, treats in an entirely unique manner--see John 12, especially verses 20-33). At any rate, I am finding this pairing of scenes very helpful for prayer. How about you?

Ramblin' Man has a new blog

J.T. (nunblog commenter formerly of J.T.'s Ramblings blog) can now be found "under the broom tree" with his liturgical reflections. God bless you, J.T.!

Peter and the Fallen Angels

One of the customs our community inherited from the Founder's seminary days is that of dedicating the first week of the month to particular devotions: Sunday obviously gets pride of place, going beyond “devotions” to the Blessed Trinity, and Friday and Saturday area already “assigned” by Catholic devotional tradition. That leaves Monday-Thursday. Today being the first Thursday, we look especially to the Holy Angels.

Looking toward this, I found myself yesterday reflecting on the mystery of the fall of the angels. We find just a hint of it in today's Gospel, with Jesus' surprisingly sharp words to Peter: “Get behind me, Satan! You are not thinking as God does...”

Wasn't that the problem all along?

Spiritual writers (and Catholic tradition itself) usually speak of God subjecting the angels to a “test.” Just today I read from Blessed Columba Marmion, “It is necessary that here below, such a creature [rational and free] be on trial before God, and that it renounce, freely, its own gratification so as to recognize God's sovereignty and obey his law. The holiness and justice of God require this homage.”

I find the language more juridical than theological, so I stayed with this “problem” a bit. What if there were an even more basic dimension to that first sin than “failing a test”? What if the whole issue came down to the mystery of love as a “sincere gift of self” (which is also the characteristic of Trinitarian life)? To “enter into the joy of your Lord” a creature would necessarily have to be conformed to the Lord, be like the Lord in what constitutes joy for Him. Otherwise, the joy of the Lord would be no joy to the creature, any more than my sharing a favorite Bach cantata would be a delight to Sr. Helena, a jazz aficionado.

Of course, it is something more foundational than superficial enjoyment we're talking about here. When Jesus told us that someone who seeks himself (or seeks his own life) will lose it, and the one who loses his life “for my sake” will find it, he was not telling us of an arbitrary law: this is the nature of life. So what if the “test” of the angels was really an opportunity of love and adoration that some of the angels rejected, thus choosing an existence characterized by self-seeking (which cannot lead to happiness)?

I imagine that God and the angels, his first creatures, could have enjoyed millennia of paradise together in the angelic equivalent of Eden. What if then, as they were “walking in the garden at the breezy time of day,” God floated the idea (with God, as good as done) of creating a material cosmos, and angel-like (free, rational, relational) creatures made from its very dust, so that he could take on a body like theirs and walk among them, too? (According to the Fathers of the Church, the fall of the angels was related somehow to the mystery of the Incarnation.)
The very proposal was, for each angel, an occasion to marvel at what was, truly, a revelation made to them, a gift of divine self-disclosure, and so an offer of a deeper relationship with God.

Some (and tradition suggests that they were not the majority) received the Gift in serene surrender and adoration, and were surprised at the overwhelming increase of grace and glory they experienced as the Heaven of Heavens opened up before them. Their response was itself a “sincere gift of self” (angels have no other “self” to give than their intelligent freedom). But there were others who spurned the invitation, despising the very thought that the God of glory should be so insanely self-emptying. They turned away in disdainful refusal and set out on their own path. They would no longer walk with God, ever.

In a case like this, we have not so much a “test” (which could be misinterpreted in an arbitrary, jump-through-the-hoops manner) as an offer of love that, rejected, “proved” to be “for the rise and the fall of many.” (I don't know what it's like in other languages, but in Italian, the same word means both “test” and “proof.”)

And now we have Peter in today's Gospel. He enjoys communion with the Lord on a day to day basis, and this has just been confirmed: “Blessed are you, Simon, Son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Heavenly Father!” And so Jesus began to broaden that revelation to include the mystery of his suffering. We can also read into this his unspoken invitation, “Stay with me and keep watch with me.”

The gift of this revelation wasn't set up to be a test, but it turned out to be one when Peter couldn't bear to hear Jesus' shocking, dismaying prediction--and look whose side he ended up on! “Get behind me, Satan!” Those were the same words he used in dismissing the Tempter in the desert, who offered him all the kingdoms of the world—for the price of an act of worship. (How crazy is that: Satan wanted from Jesus the worship he himself withheld upon the very idea of the Son of God coming in flesh!)

I am beginning to suspect that we “fail the test” (no matter what the immediate circumstances) when we don't see it in terms of communion with God, but only see its implications for us.  

Bonhoeffer, spot on

I was transcribing some notes from Bonhoeffer's, “Life Together” ( read it on retreat and soon the whole text was bristling with sticky bookmarks!) and among the passages was this incredibly insightful words on the power (and grace) of disillusionment (pg 35-36). Even though he was specifically speaking about people in communal life settings (such as the seminary he was creating on a monastic model), Bonhoeffer speaks (and how clearly!) to one of the central pastoral issues of our own day (see Monday's post and comments):

On innumerable occasions a whole Christian community has been shattered because it has lived on the basis of a wishful image. Certainly serious Christians...bring with them a very definite image of what Christian communal life should be...but God's grace quickly frustrates all such dreams. A great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves, is bound to overwhelm us as surely as God desires to lead us to an understanding of genuine Christian community. By sheer grace God will not permit us to live in a dream world even for a few weeks.... The sooner this moment of disillusionment comes for the individual and the community, the better for both. ... Every human idealized image that is brought into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be broken up so that genuine community can survive. Those who love their dream of a Christian community more than the Christian community itself become destroyers of that Christian community even thought their personal intentions may be ever so honest, earnest, and sacrificial.

“God hates this wishful dreaming because it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. Those who dream of this idealized community demand that it be fulfilled by God, by others, and by themselves. They enter the community of Christians with their demands, set up their own law, and judge one another and even God accordingly. They stand adamant, a living reproach to all others in the circle of the community..... So they first become accusers of other Christians in the community, then accusers of God, and finally the desperate accusers of themselves. Because God already has laid the only foundation of our community, because God has united us in one body with other Christians in Jesus Christ....will not the very moment of great disillusionment with my brother or sister be incomparably wholesome for me because it so thoroughly teaches me that both of us can never live by our own words and deeds, but only by that one Word and deed that really binds us together, the forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ?

Isn't that just what people need when they think that "the Church" is going "backwards" or is "too liberal" or is "anti-gay" or "anti-woman" or just not what one (or even Jesus) might desire?

Theology of Abundance

Sunday's Liturgy of the Word is still the "lens" for my morning meditation, even though I'm meditating on the daily readings. Sunday, you will remember, we heard that "all things are vanity," like the situation of a person who works hard and builds up a sizable estate...that goes to someone who didn't work a day in his life. Vanity of vanities! The Gospel used a similar image: a man with a harvest too big for his barns. He had it made! Only one hitch: death was around the corner, and "you can't take it with you."
The alternative opening prayer for Mass this week begins, "gifts without measure flow from your goodness."  If you live by a river, you don't store up barrels of rainwater. All the water you need is flowing in abundance. You only store up goods or provisions when you believe they are limited.
A "theology of abundance" is the secret heart of the Sermon on the Mount: "Look at the birds of the air: they do not sow or reap, but your (your!) Heavenly Father feeds them; consider the lilies of the field..." (Monday's Gospel was the multiplication of the loaves and fish.)  You didn't see St. Paul lugging around cartloads of supplies on those journeys of his: in abundance and in scarcity, he knew how to get by. I think it was because he knew how to find those "gifts without measure" that were and are constantly flowing from God's goodness. That spiritual vision is really something I need to grow in.
What difference would a "theology of abundance" make in your own life, choices, anxieties--or do you already operate from this vision of faith?

Mary Ann Glendon on the calendar

Some time back, I put a "save the date" notice up for you readers in the New England area. Now's the time to fill in a few of the blanks! The "Afternoon Tea" benefit for the Daughters of St. Paul education fund* will honor Mary Ann Glendon with the first ever Cordero Award. Glendon will be speaking on "The Lay Vocation in a Media Culture: New Challenges."
Glendon doesn't usually accept honors, so that is already an honor! So mark that calendar for Sunday, Sept. 12 at 3:00, and call Sister Christine to reserve your place at the Jamaica Plain motherhouse. (Yes, it's expensive. This is a fund raiser. *If you ever wanted payback for the nuns you had in school, here's your opportunity: send some nuns to school!)
If you're not in New England, call Sister Christine and sponsor someone else! Or send this info to your Boston friends; they can go in your place... Seriously, this is an opportunity.

Contact info:
Sister Christine Setticase, fsp
617.522.8911
csetticase [that's at paulinemedia.com]

Anti-Catholic Catholics and Change in the Church

I'm back in the Boston motherhouse (for three weeks!), where I perused yesterday's edition of the Globe Sunday magazine. A cover story a couple of weeks ago detailed one Catholic's love-hate relationship with the Catholic Church (here it is). The vast majority of the letters to the editor were from disaffected Catholics who could totally relate to the article. Overall, it was pretty sad. You know the picture: the older person who insists that he or she is a lifelong Catholic, but who wants to see so many changes made in terms of structures, hierarchy (maybe a doctrine or two) that they are intensely frustrated that things are actually going (as they see it) "backwards." While the article didn't have that tone, the letters, for the [most part, did.
There are a lot of frustrating things happening in Catholic circles. I'm probably frustrated personally by the exact opposite of things that frustrate most of those disaffected Catholics, but there's plenty of room for improvement especially anywhere a clerical mentality dominates (something that happens just as much in the progressive subcultures as in the more tradition-oriented ones; it just takes a different form!). Even St. Therese, the "little flower," made rather pointed observations about the clericalism and mysogynistic attitudes that affected her life in the 19th century. Of course, Therese did something extraordinarily positive to remedy those attitudes: she became a saint and a doctor of the Church, so that her influence will continue through history, while the narrow-minded priests she had to deal with lost all their earthly influence the day they died.
When people say "Catholicism is mine" or "I'll continue to be a Catholic, but in my own way," when they snap about the Pope "going back to Munich" if he "doesn't approve," there's something more than simple frustration being expressed. These are people who truly do not know what Catholicism really is. "The Church belongs to the people, not the clergy" just isn't true: the Church belongs to Christ. All of us, lay and clergy, are branches on a vine that is way bigger than the configuration we can see; and this vine extends through time, not just space, so that what any of us do now may only "bear fruit abundantly" when we are no longer around to evaluate the productivity that is even now underway.When I feel disillusioned, sometimes I find that I need to address, not the situation that falls short of my expectations and desires, but the "illusion" in my expectations and desires. I suspect that many of yesterday's letter-writers need to make that sort of self-examination. It can be a moment of profound conversion, so that instead of being angrily disaffected Catholics, they can be contributors to a lasting good in the Church--though it may be a lasting good that does not match their current (all too narrow?) specifications. (That's what Therese did when her plans were derailed by priests.) But how can such an approach be proposed to people who, while wanting desperately to see change in the Church, appear so inflexible themselves?
Any ideas?