ad laudem Hieronymi

Is it merely coincidental that Google added Latin to its automated translation service precisely on the feast of the great biblical translator, St. Jerome?  I've actually been hoping for something like this to help me navigate blocks of text that are just too much for my two years of high school Latin to cope with.
Would that Jerome had it so easy!  Not that he started out to translate the whole bible; he was just supposed to rework the extant Latin versions into something accessible (and reliable). As he got deeper and deeper into the project, though, Jerome couldn't bring himself to stop. He betook himself to the Holy Land. There a rabbi taught the scholar of Ciceronian Latin biblical Hebrew, and Jerome tackled the whole of the Hebrew scriptures. In the process, he became the first scripture scholar in the modern sense--applying critical tools to his work, and insisting on working from the original languages (Aramaic, too).
With all that Jerome did to make the Bible available to the ordinary reader (and following on the Pew Forum's findings about American religious knowledge), I wonder how much we actually read the Bible. I know that for myself, I tend to focus especially on the liturgical readings. Many times my daily portion of Scripture is what the Church hand-feeds me in the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours. But that's really not adequate. What about you?

Create your SurveyMonkey with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Another review of Bransfield's "The Human Person"

Thanks, Sarah!

Recently, I dubbed The Human Person According to John Paul II, by J. Brian Bransfield, “one of the best books I’ve read in a lonnnng time (maybe ever).” It’s time to support that statement with a few reasons why you should not only pick it up and read it, but also buy it for your parish library and your best friend.
This book is approachable. The most compelling reason I have for wanting to stand from my rooftop and trumpet to everyone I know that they should read this book is that it’s approachable AND that it makes the whole idea behind Theology of the Body (republished in an expanded form recently as Man and Woman He Created Them), John Paul II’s great masterpiece (which is also online), approachable.
TOB is a HUGE undertaking to read and an even bigger undertaking to understand and unpack. I’ve read a host of other authors who have tried it, and who have done well. But this is the first book that I felt like I could hand to my friends, my husband, and my pastor with absolutely no compunction. It’s one of the only books I have purchased after receiving a review copy, and one of an even smaller number that I know I’ll be buying again.
There’s heavy, deep stuff in this book, because that’s the topic, but it’s written in a way that makes you comfortable. My husband thought, for the first two-thirds of the book, that I was reading a novel, and his eyebrows were lost in his hairline for a day or two when he found out it was nonfiction.

Read the rest here. 

American piety: Blissful ignorance?

Yesterday's release of the study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirmed what you may have suspected: Americans may be a religious people, but we sure don't know an awful lot about religion--not even our own. (See how you fare on this half-sized survey.) And the atheists and agnostics in our society are the most religiously literate people of all!
One thing that is especially disheartening is that only about half of the Catholics surveyed got the question about the Eucharist:

"About half of those polled (52%) say, incorrectly, that Catholicism teaches that the bread and wine used for Communion are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus. Just four-in-ten people correctly answer that, according to the Catholic Church, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus. Even many Catholics are unaware of their church’s teaching on this topic; while 55% of Catholics get the question right, more than four-in-ten Catholics (41%) say the church teaches that the bread and wine are symbols of Christ’s body and blood, and 3% say they do not know what the church’s teaching is. Still, Catholics perform better on this question than does any other religious group."

Yes, the whole sacramental system is based on symbols and signs, and that includes the Eucharist. (If the "sign" is compromised, the Real Presence is lost.) But the survey question did not allow for theological nuancing: it was an either/or: According to Catholic Church teaching, (a) the Eucharist is a symbol or (b) the Eucharist really becomes the Body and Blood of Jesus. You can't really play the nuance game with that. As Flannery O'Connor said, "If it's just a symbol, to hell with it!"

People with a "high level of religious commitment" got, on average, only one more question right than the average respondent. And the more educated the person, the higher the score.  This has some atheists and agnostics crowing contentedly that the survey shows that smart, educated people do not believe the silly or moralistic tales that satisfy lesser minds. But the survey was not about faith: it was about religious awareness--religious "literacy" in the overall sense. And overall, Americans are embarrassingly ignorant. 3%, (that is, six of the 3,000+ participants) couldn't get a single answer right. 49%, asked a "general knowledge" question (to establish a baseline), were unable to name the current Vice-President of the United States.
As I look over the survey questions and results, it strikes me that this would provide the basis for a wonderful adult education program on basic religious knowledge. I think I see my next project coming together!

Fire from Heaven

Yesterday, John had come to Jesus relating how he had tried to muzzle someone who was using the Lord's own name to expel demons when that person wasn't even so much as a disciple. Jesus did not approve. "Whoever is not against us is with us." Today, seeing Jesus refused a welcome by the Samaritans simply on the basis of his destination, the hot-headed "Sons of Thunder" wanted to call down fire from heaven (and presumably watch the conflagration from a safe distance). Jesus simply took another route.
Two weeks ago in the Gospel, we heard Jesus say to "turn the other cheek." Today we see him doing it. Anger is a natural human reaction to rejection; righteous anger is no different--it just adds the spice of self-assurance to what is essentially payback. Jesus brings something new to the human equation. 
Between yesterday's and today's Gospel, we get a very important message for our polarized societies.

Confident contingency and joyful hope

Today we begin reading from the Book of Job. The expression of grief and faith that we find in the very first paragraphs of the book ("The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: Blessed be the name of the Lord") isn't just remarkable in itself; it has given words to people in their own times of profound loss and suffering. Years ago, I was deeply moved by the story of a woman who lost her son and her husband on the same day. Over and over, she repeated, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away: Blessed be the name of the Lord." The words of the Bible gave her a way to express her twin convictions of sorrow and trust. I think that's one of the biggest blessings that familiarity with the Bible can offer.

Job tells us that we are contingent beings*. The Liturgy offers us a number of occasions for affirming our confident contingency in praise; they kept striking  me today at Mass. "Heaven and earth are full of your glory"; "all glory and honor is Yours..."; "Amen!"

What a loss when people are left on their own, without this inspired support built into their culture. I'm thinking of some young adults whose parents were brought up in Christian households, but who did not transfer that Christian "culture" into their own homes. One mom my age was shocked that her adult children were unable to pray the Lord's Prayer at their grandparent's funeral. But how could they, when it was not a part of their upbringing in a family that did not reject Christianity, but did not practice it, either? When life's hardest moments break on those young people, they have only their own resources to rely on, or the somewhat flimsy supports that come from the surrounding culture.

*Fr Barron offered a great reflection on this at the Islamic Cultural Center in Niles, IL.

Blessed--at any age!

Last week we witnessed the beatification of an 89-year-old Cardinal from the Victorian Age. Today, the Church sees the beatification of an 18-year-old who died a century later. Holiness certainly doesn't depend on one's lifespan or state in life! And in another one of those coincidences that is God working in disguise, today's liturgy tells us, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth"... 

Ecclesiastes describes the diminishments of extreme old age in a poetic manner; Chiara Badano, young as she was, experienced them all in the course of her battle with cancer, and grace was so alive in her that she sanctified each progressive loss. She began to live with her heart and mind in Heaven. Chiara's life and death are especially meaningful now, I think, because she "translates" in terms of a typical teen the spirituality we usually associate with the cloistered life of a St. Therese--and she had a lot less time than even the very young Therese!

Chiara (nicknamed "Chiara Luce" or "Bright Light") will be the first "Blessed" of the Focolare Movement. Focolare rose up from the ashes of World War II, another sign of the action of the Holy Spirit in "real time" and not just back in the apostolic era.
Here is Chiara's story as reported by the Focolare Movement, of which she was a member,
and here it is in the Zenit news.

Beautiful in its time

If there's any Bible passage people are generally familiar with, it's probably either St. Paul's "ode to charity" (Love is patient, love is kind... the reading of choice of brides everywhere) or today's first reading (which my generation will at least recognize as the lyrics to a #1 hit recorded by The Byrds):

There is an appointed time for everything,
and a time for every thing under the heavens.
A time to be born, and a time to die...
... God has made everything beautiful in its time.

This would be consoling enough on its own, but the way the Liturgy of the Word is constructed today, it packs even more of a punch. The responsorial psalm refrain is "Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!" That suggests that if there is "an appointed time for everything," it is because all things exist in God. What we experience as a succession of events is the playing-out in time of God's fullness; a created approximation of the Trinitarian mystery in which there is no such thing as time or succession, but total presence. We see things following one after the other; God sees them in completeness: Ills healed, swords beaten into plowshares, death overcome.
Then we get to the Gospel. Jesus is looking ahead to his "time to die" (and his "time to rise")--what John called his "Hour." Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem and to his death, in perfectly divine peace. He is, in effect, telling the apostles that even this is "beautiful in its time."

St. Augustine wrote a magnificent meditation on this mysterious aspect of beauty:

Beautiful is God, the Word with God …
He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth;
beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents’ arms,
beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his sufferings;
beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death,
beautiful in giving up his life and beautiful in taking it up again;
he is beautiful on the Cross,
beautiful in the tomb,
beautiful in heaven.

Same old same old?

Well, today we got Qoheleth's "Vanity of Vanities" as our first reading. You hear that (or, as I did for our community Mass today, proclaim it) and it seems so inconsistent with that closing statement, "The Word of the Lord," doesn't it almost come naturally to say, "Wait, really?" But there it is. "There is nothing new under the sun. Even the things of which they say, 'See, this is new," has already existed in the ages past." Qoheleth looked around and saw the same old same old: nature and history stuck in a repetitive cycle, seemingly without escape.
Is he right?
In the light of today's Gospel, you could say that he was right at the time. (In the Gospel, Herod hears about Jesus' miracles, and all the people are saying he must be one of the ancient prophets--or maybe John the Baptist--back from the dead. It couldn't be...something new, could it?)

Qoheleth's pessimistic poetry becomes a reminder of the hopelessness of the human situation when we are left to ourselves: "Salvation we have not achieved for the earth, the inhabitants of the world cannot bring it forth" (Is. 26). But with the coming of Jesus into the world, we can't take Qoheleth totally at his word.

Through a virgin you have brought forth a new birth in our world;
Through your miracles, a new power;
Through your suffering, a new patience;
In your resurrection, new hope;
And in your ascension, a new majesty.
(From the Liturgy of the Hours)

Now every day really is new; God is always up to something we could never even dream of. All we need are eyes to see and ears to hear (and "the eye is never filled with seeing, nor the ear with hearing" the infinite wealth of God's grace). 

One day at a time

Both of today's Mass readings conspire to tell me to take life one day at a time. The first reading, from Proverbs, includes this daring prayer: "Give me neither poverty nor riches, provide me only with the food I need." Then in the Gospel, Jesus sends the Twelve off and gives them only "power and authority," while forbidding them to take their own provisions. If I understand correctly, the Jesuits still send their young members at one point in their formation out the door for several weeks with only enough money for a single day's needs. Some of them have written about the surprising experiences of God's providence that this opened them to.
Maybe that's the point. Maybe God put things like this in the Bible (along with "consider the lilies of the field"; "give us this day our daily bread") because he wants to opportunity to reveal himself as a caring Provider of all our needs. When we are busy providing for ourselves, as Proverbs hints, we may see everything that comes our way as our just desserts, in which God is only a marginal player (or maybe just a distant observer). Making the effort to be content with our "daily" bread keeps us from getting entrenched in the search for security. It leaves us free to be sent, like the Twelve in today's Gospel.

Full day!

Wow.  Right now, we have one guest sister in the house (just happens to be Sr. Frances' own sister, here for a conference). Tonight, another sister arrives, this time not from the Boston motherhouse, but from our Latin American "central office" in Colombia. Then tomorrow, one more motherhouse sister and the Mother Provincial from our Mexican community. Thursday, two more sisters (maybe a sister and a postulant) drive in from St. Louis, and Sr Helena drives off to her media literacy classes in North Carolina. (The Tuesday-Thursday arrivals are for the national Hispanic ministry conference this weekend.)
We'll have a full house through the weekend, so it should be lots of fun. And lots of menus to plan! I just got back from grocery shopping with Sr Frances. (There went the grocery budget!) Meanwhile, the printer is running off copies of a brochure I finally finished designing. (I hope! Just yesterday Sr. Margaret discovered a typo that had me fixing the file for the I'm-not-exaggerating 12th time.) The brochure is to let pastors and other people in ministry know about the adult faith formation talks I give. Now that the brochure is ready (or will be when I back up the copies I'm making), I can get back to actually creating the content for the next big talk on the calendar--an all-day workshop for the Archdiocese of Boston catechists. Sr Helena and I will be team-teaching this at that magnificent (and totally wired) Pastoral Center in mid-November. (Prayers to the Holy Spirit appreciated.)

And now? Jesus has patiently waited all day for me to hear his "Come, follow me" in an Hour of Adoration. Bye!

Let it Shine!

Good words for right now. (It's pouring outside.)
Again the first reading and the Gospel are a great match! The book of proverbs tells us to do the good that's in reach, and not put it off, whether out of arbitrary whim (which is what the reading seems to hint at) or just procrastination. And Jesus tells us that the light we have been given is not meant to be hidden away or kept for ourselves: it has work to do!
I found myself thinking of the words our Founder's spiritual director wrote in his own journal: "You will conquer the world with something the world does not have." That's the light that must not be hidden!  And that's the work that must not be delayed.

The Hijacking of John Henry Newman

With Cardinal Newman's beatification just a day away, we are being treated to a wild assortment of views on the saintly Churchman. John Cornwell (he of "Hitler's Pope") takes it upon himself to declare that Newman has been "pontifically hijacked" by a "backward-looking" Pope. In other words, "Hands off, Pope! Newman belongs to 'us' " ("us" being the broad-minded who "see both sides of every question and to follow conscience wherever it may lead" as opposed to...?). The National Catholic Reporter named Cornwell's biography of Newman its book club pick of the week.
So is the Pope just pulling a fast one, beatifying the much-admired Cardinal in order to co-opt his intellectual heritage? 
In steps Father Robert Barron. Cornwell, he says, is guilty of using "tired and unhelpful categories to characterize the thought of serious people."
"Cornwell presents the great cardinal as something of a 19th century romantic, uninterested in "clever arguments" and seeing religion as "falling in love." Any other approach (defending objective truth, for example) would just be small-minded. But, Barron says, "it is glaringly obvious that this sort of approach to religion -- privatized, subjective, feeling-based, and relativistic -- is prevalent today. And this helps to explain why Joseph Ratzinger, who has identified the "dictatorship of relativism" as the chief spiritual problem of the present day, is happy to make common cause with John Henry Newman."
Read all about it. Special thanks to ABC.com for bringing the genial Barron on board: what a refreshing change from the commentators of the past! Be sure to add your own comments to the Barron post.

By Sunday we'll be able to pray: Blessed John Henry Newman, Pray for us!

Looking at Jesus

Everything in the liturgy today conspires to focus our attention on "Jesus Christ, and him crucified," even though at first glance it's not that obvious.
I mean, the first reading is Paul reminding the Corinthians of the centrality of the resurrection: without faith that Christ is raised from the dead, they "have believed in vain." Their "hopes are centered on this life only" and they are "the most pitiable of all people."
The Gospel is a tiny bridge passage in Luke. All it tells us is that as Jesus went around preaching the Good News of the Kingdom, he was accompanied by the Twelve and "many women" whom he had healed in some way. Three of the women are named.
Where the cross comes into play is that we find "the women who accompanied him from Galilee" back on the scene in Luke's Gospel at the crucifixion of Jesus. And again, it is "the women who came down with him from Galilee" who watched the burial, prepared the usual spices, and returned on Sunday to discover the empty tomb. The testimony Paul bore to the resurrection came from the lips of those very women Luke wrote about.
But wait, there's more! Today (just days after the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross) the Franciscans celebrate the feast of the Stigmata of St. Francis. Francis was the first person known to have shared the marks of the crucifixion in his own body, as a mystical kind of communion with the Lord. Adrienne von Speyer, a mystic and stigmatic herself, wrote interestingly about Francis' experience. She said that he did not look at those painful wounds in his own hands and feet and marvel at what was happening to him. Instead, he experienced them as simply a closer look at, a deeper form of contemplation of the sufferings Jesus endured "for us sinners."
Friday is traditionally set apart for our own contemplation and communion with Jesus in the mystery of his suffering and death. That's what's behind the old "fish on Friday" discipline. And even if the fish has become an option on the penitential menu, the penitential focus on Friday was not supposed to be mitigated, but deepened.
What do you suggest for renewing and refocusing our attention on the mystery of the Cross each week?

B16 and the Modern World

Watched a bit of the Pope's talk on the first stop of his UK visit. One of the comments he made concerned the influence of British media around the world, because of which, "the British media have a greater responsibility than most." 
The Church has been attentive to the influence of the media for a long time. I'm preparing a talk on the Church's history with media, and one of the things I noticed is that even back in the early days of "modern communications," the Church had a unique (and largely positive) stance, one that was taken up again at Vatican II. The Church's understanding of media can be grasped in part by a simple reflection  on the language Church documents use. Not "the media" or even "communications media" but "the media of social communications." Media, the Church says, is for, by, and about people.
And the Church wants us to pay attention to quality media: to familiarize ourselves with it, recommend it, praise it.
One of the media productions the Vatican has singled out for recognition is the 1927 (silent) film, Metropolis. This lengthy science-fiction piece is precisely a look at technology and people. Maybe that is why it ended up on the Vatican's 1995 list of the 45 best films of the 20th century.  A few months ago, Metropolis was in the news when a film canister in Argentina turned out to contain an almost-complete archive copy of the movie, providing long-lost footage of scenes that had been cut out to shorten the movie from its original 153 minutes to something more endurable for an audience that was not yet used to sitting in a theater for a full two hours. 
Soon the restored Metropolis will be on DVD. Meanwhile, you can watch the trailer:

Tidbits

Thanks to Twitter, I can catch up on some of the news that I (you, too?) would have otherwise missed... 

• Among the items: we can look forward to a new, weekly, nationwide Catholic perspective from the intelligently engaging Fr. Robert Barron. His Sunday morning program debuts in October. More here.
• At least nineteen people in India are dead in violence provoked by minister Terry Jones' announcement last week of his intention to burn the Quran. "We Christians are more insecure than ever before," says a local Catholic bishop. More here. 
• And the UK has one more day to prepare for Pope Benedict's arrival. The beatification of Cardinal Newman (much admired by Benedict) is set for the 19th. The Cardinal's feast day will not be the customary anniversary of his death, but October 9, the anniversary of his reception into the Catholic Church. (The good Cardinal has already been recognized as a saint by the Anglican Church, and assigned the usual anniversary-of-death feast day.) Who knows? Maybe when the actual ceremony is held, the traditional date will again by on the calendar, as an ecumenical gesture.  More here.
• How did the Statue of Liberty inspire the founding of a religious order? More here!

The Crosses in our day

And I don't mean "cross" in the metaphorical sense! Just reflecting on the homily from today's Mass of the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (which commemorates St. Helena's "finding of the True Cross" in Jerusalem" in the early 4th century). Father pointed out that we daily Mass-goers sign ourselves with the Cross five times during the course of the liturgy alone; add the blessing as we enter Church, the gigantic crucifix we face in the sanctuary at St. Peter's and the even bigger one we pass under as we enter and leave the Church, that's a lot of contact with the mystery of the Cross, just in the course of formal prayer. Then there's the Sign of the Cross before and after grace at meals (before and after?) (just checking); the Sign of the Cross when you pass a Catholic Church (do people still do that?), when traveling, when rising or going to bed or starting to pray the Rosary (not to mention before a key play in an athletic event)... All reminders of what the Entrance Antiphon for today's Mass said (in words that are also part of the Eastern liturgy): We should glory in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: he is our salvation, our life and resurrection. Through him we are saved and set free.
When  else do you typically make the Sign of the Cross?

Wedding Pics

I'm back in Chicago, with about 200 photos... so you get to share the love. This was the first "non-traditional" wedding I've ever been to.  (When they are ready for the sacrament, I have a friend who is a priest in the diocese where they will reside in Evangeline Parish; he'll take them through the whole process. In God's good time.)

Jane (holding the umbrella) was one half of our family's Katrina wedding miracle.
 

Nell (at Mom's house) with her soon-to-be stepdaughter. (Is it me, or did Nell get a disproportionate share of the "good looking" genes?)

The judge was my brother's former girlfriend. Come to think of it, the hostess of the ceremony and reception was my brother's former girlfriend, too! (And now she's my sister's sister-in-law!) 

 Here's the new family.

A Word from New Orleans

I'm home for the weekend! Ten days ago my youngest sister surprised the whole family with the announcement of an impending wedding, and now here we are. The family is gaining two more children through this union. I have never seen my sister so happy (and peaceful) in her life. So please pray the bride and groom, the children, and this very large (very happy) extended family.
I'll be back in Chicago on Monday.

Is Terry Jones a Terrorist?

The thought came to me this morning as I read the Gospel for the day. Isn't Rev. Jones engaging in his own version of jihad? And with very little concern for the lives his action (and even his mere threat) would endanger? This is just how the Muslim ideologues of September 11 acted. He obviously doesn't know the Gospels. Maybe Jones is an  uncover Taliban agent, sent to stoke the passions of war under the cover of American civic religion! (Just kidding. Kind of.)
I have to say, though,the antics of this Pistol-Packing-Pastor helped me to hear today's Gospel like never before:

To you who hear I say, love your enemies,
do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you,
pray for those who mistreat you.
To the person who strikes you on one cheek,
offer the other one as well.
....love your enemies and do good to them,
and lend expecting nothing back;
then your reward will be great
and you will be children of the Most High,
for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Be merciful, just as also your Father is merciful.

Thanks to Rev. Jones and his irresponsible proposal, I am more aware than ever of how much the Gospel would change the whole world--if we Christians would let it first change us. To the extent that Jesus' words remain suspended in mid-air while we put them on hold, the world and history (exemplified by Rev. Jones' attitude and convictions) will continue as always, responding to insult with insult; declaring war on entire populations whose fringe members have done us wrong.
St. Paul (in the first reading) issues much the same challenge as Jesus, though applied in a very specific setting.  He points out that the more scrupulous members of the Corinthian community were being scandalized by the thoughtless expressions of "freedom" taken by the bolder members. In the nitty-gritty of a community's life, those who consider themselves strong have to bow before the weakness of the fragile ones; they have to bear that weakness, even though it means not exercising all possible freedom. They must "be merciful, just as the Heavenly Father is merciful" toward "that brother for whom Christ died." This is to see the other as the Heavenly Father sees all of his children.

Bonfires that backfire

Shouldn't the whole story have been completely dismissed? A preacher in an unaffiliated congregation (comprising all of 50 members) goes public with his plans to make a statement on behalf of the entire American population. Who would pay attention—and why?
Rev. Terry Jones seems to be staging a publicity stunt for his tiny “worldwide” organization, threatening, and then coyly saying he would “pray about” the burning of copies of the Quran. Sad to say, worldwide media outlets couldn't resist giving Jones the biggest pulpit in his life. My first encounter with the story came as I crossed Daley Plaza on my way home from evening Mass yesterday. The giant TV screen from the CBS studio across the street showed a mustachioed man standing in front of a beige church building. Without my glasses I couldn't follow the text on the screen, and left it until this morning's Tribune to learn the details. Later, I was watching the Italian national news channel (my “Italian lesson” in view of the October movie-making trip): lo and behold, the Rogue Reverend and his insistence on making a statement to a billion Muslims in the name of all Western Civilization.
Book burnings are nothing new. Even the Caesars ordered them. Would Jesus burn the Quran? Jones claims that he would. The Reverend would probably send us to the Bible's very own Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 19 where we read about the burning of books in Ephesus, while the Apostle Paul was preaching there.
Is Jones a latter-day St. Paul?
Although art typically depicts Paul presiding over the burning of the books of magic in Ephesus, a reading of the actual account does not support that. Paul didn't order the new Christians of Ephesus to collect immoral or pagan literature and consign it to the flames. Instead, the early community members themselves, having received the Gospel from Paul some time earlier, themselves went home and gathered up “scrolls of magic” (possibly lists of deities' names) and burned them, confessing their sins. The Ephesians weren't burning “books”: they were burning their bridges, setting out on a new life, making a clean break with their own past—not with someone else's.
Maybe Jones should pick up his Bible on Saturday. He seems not to have gotten that message.

What a difference!

St. Paul acts all horrified in today's first reading. What? So the members of the Church of Corinth were suing one another; maybe they had reason to.
To which St. Paul says, "So what?" Aside from the fact that the little community went straight to the legal system and not to the Gospel to solve their difficulties ("When your brother wrongs you, tell him his fault between the two of you... If he does not listen, bring two or three others in"), St. Paul wonders if they even realize that once they have turned from a life of greed or lust or untruth, they have entered an entirely new realm of existence. He hints that they are lacking the spirit of the Beatitudes: "Why not rather put up with injustice? Why not rather let yourselves be cheated?"
That really is a different realm of existence! And yet St. Paul seems to say that people who really believe the Gospel and surrender their lives to it will almost be unable to live by the old standards; their lives need to express the radical change that has taken place at the core. They will be true followers of Jesus.

Longing for the Sabbath

St Paul continues defending his ministry among the Corinthians in today's first reading. With his typically ironic style, he admits that the Corinthians "have already grown rich," while he and the other Apostles are disrespected, hungry and thirsty, roughly treated, wandering homeless, ridiculed, persecuted and slandered. Sounds a lot like the treatment Jesus and the disciples receive in the Gospel for today! That means we should...expect this to be the norm for Jesus' followers through the ages.
And yet even under that kind of treatment, Jesus remains the Lord of the Sabbath who can still say "Come to me, all of you; you will find rest."
In the Scriptures, the Sabbath stands for all sorts of wonderful things, rest being only the first-named. The Sabbath represents the fullness of creation, delight, presence, contemplation, Godlikeness, dignity, stillness, peace, detachment, providence, contentment, "enoughness." Jesus is the Lord of each of those Sabbath qualities.
All of which gave the Apostles, like Paul in the first reading, the wherewithall to bear with so much "in Christ."
How many people live without a Sabbath! Even if they do have leisure (not everyone does), that down time can be so unrestful. Do our Sundays have these qualities of rest, delight, contemplation, peace? If not, is Jesus really the Lord of our Sabbath?
What can we change, as the vacation "season" ends and the work year begins, to maintain a sense of Sabbath?

Tasting the New Wine

Wow, today's readings cast a lot of light on the rather unsettling experience I had yesterday with that (vocally judgmental!) priest. For one, St. Paul reminding the Corinthians not to make "any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes." St. Paul knew what it was like to be weighed on the scales and found wanting before a human tribunal, being measured against the wrong standard like new wine being compared to a prized, aged vintage.
The Church will always need a new wineskin in its heart because the Holy Spirit will never stop introducing the unexpected into her life through the charisms of the saints. How many saints endured untold grief from the entrenched authorities of their day who were judging the new wine the saints brought by too narrow a conception of holiness, truth, ministry...  Jesus himself was dismissed on that account.
The new wine of the Theology of the Body (even if it is the "same old" Church teaching we had before, it is as yet unknown to the majority of practicing Catholics) requires a new mind, like a new wineskin, to be able to take it in. But many still want the old wine they were used to, or that they were taught to expect. May the Holy Spirit keep us from becoming entrenched in the familiar or the comfortable!

Proof of the TOB Pudding?

We had a surprisingly heated discussion this morning with the priest who came to celebrate Mass at the convent chapel. (It may still be going on; after an hour and a half I excused myself.) Father's not exactly a fan of the Theology of the Body (thinks it's old-school "physicalism" in a new, artistic package), and that it is pastorally arrogant for a Pope to tell contracepting couples that their body language is lying... Lately, especially, Father has been harassed by rather legalistic souls--one of them not only called the Archdiocese about the (massive) parish crucifix not being in the center of the Church, but, getting no satisfaction there, called the priest's Superior General to "report" this alleged liturgical violation. Things like this do nothing to open a progressive clergyman's heart to other matters that tend to be espoused from the right side of the pew: he lumps Theology of the Body in with nit-picking, hyper-critical political style conservatism, and wants to have absolutely nothing to do with it.
There's not much chance of getting Father to read our recent titles, "The Human Person According to John Paul II" or "Women, Sex and the Church." Or to read the Catholic mommy blogs of women who were brought up with all the culture's presumptions about sexuality, choice, contraception and women's rights--and who (to their profound amazement) discovered that the Catholic Church had something not just different, but redeeming, to offer them. If he could at least be open to what these women had to say about the difference it makes in their lives, he might be a little less harsh (not to say scornful) of what he sees as the Church's "thou shalt not" mentality.
Anyway, here are a few of the posts I would love to share with that priest, and other people, lay and ordained, who, like him, are convinced that all the wonderful gains of Vatican II are being destroyed and we are moving back into the Dark Ages of a small Church of the elect, safe in their circled wagons. These mommies are not keeping their light under a bushel, but letting it shine brightly:
Jennifer
Abigail
Elizabeth
Kristen (who writes from her experience of infertility)
More links coming!
(Later in the day...)
Oh, I forgot to add the guy's perspective: for starters, here's
Marcel
and Brantly
(It's amazing to me how many of these extremely articulate and committed TOB people are converts to Catholicism!)

New online study starting soon!

Our Theology of the Body class will resume on the 2nd Saturday of the month, beginning in just 10 days. Instead of going through the tome of John Paul's Wednesday talks ("the" source of the Theology of the Body),  we will be studying Karol Wojtyla's earlier work, "Love and Responsibility." People who think that the Theology of the Body was just the Pope's after-the-fact attempt to justify the Church's teachings in the widely-scorned encyclical "Humanae Vitae" will be surprised to see that "Love and Responsiblity," first published in Polish in 1960, is the real precursor to the Theology of the Body. Wojtyla had a new book ready for the publisher when he was elected Pope; circumstances being what they were, he had to adapt his manuscript to a new format of Wednesday talks.
I, for one, am looking forward to a systematic run through "Love and Responsibility" so I can have a better sense of where the Pope is coming from in the Theology of the Body, which may be his most enduring charismatic gift to the Church.

Basic class info:
Meet here at the bookstore or online every 2nd Saturday of the month, 10:30 US Central Time.
Text: Love and Responsibility
Spread the Word!