Afternoon meditation: the sin(s) of David

Rembrandt, David and Uriah

Today's first reading is so very, very sad, not to mention so descriptive it could be the basis for a movie.

As a woman, I can't help but think of Bathsheba. All unawares, she was "made an adulteress in the heart" of the king leering at her from his rooftop vantage point. But it was no adultery that ensued; it was plain old rape. "David sent messengers and took her." Then he sent another message and "took" her husband. As in "took him out."

I find myself asking why we refer to this as the "sin" of David, when the working title for that hypothetical movie could be along the lines of  "David and the Seven Capital Sins." They all seem to be there. Even sloth. (What was David doing taking a siesta in Jerusalem when it was the time of year that "kings went on campaign"?) Wrath seems muted, to say the least, but it is just as present, even if in a cold, calculating form. (My theology teacher from long-ago, Father John Hardon, once defined wrath as "the desire to remove obstacles that are not legitimately removable.")

As we'll see tomorrow, stories can confront us with truths we might well prefer to avoid. Today's reading leads me to pray that I will hear the story the Lord is telling me...

Afternoon meditation: Present to the Presence

Image by Jastrow [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons

For years now, I have made a point of preparing for the Mass by reviewing the readings the night before. (Sometimes I even write my "liturgy haiku" for Twitter then!) Last night, the first reading stopped me short in the very first sentence:
"After Nathan had spoken to King David [delivering the message in yesterday's reading], the king went in and sat before the Lord and said..."

"The king went in." Went in where, exactly? None of the translations say! Presumab
ly he went into the tent where the Ark of the Covenant was. Where in the tent? Into the curtained-off Holy of Holies? What if the scriptural vagueness is an invitation to go beyond the materiality of just where David went? In the light of all that follows (David's amazed, heartfelt outpouring of gratitude), I found myself reading this passage from 2 Samuel in the light of the Sermon on the Mount: "When you pray, go to your inner room..." (Mt 6:6). From what I have learned, the Greek can also be rendered "go to the inner room of you"--go into your inner sanctuary, your heart.

"The king went in and sat before the Lord."  This simple, direct movement of David: through the door, into the nearest chair and right into conversation. This is what really hit me. The easy familiarity of David with the Lord reminded me of Moses, with whom the Lord spoke face to face, "as one man speaks to another" (Ex 33:11). There had been no delay between his receiving the prophet's word and eventually making his way to prayer. David processed the message in prayer "before the Lord." (Just in case you were tempted to think that the message itself was just one more example of ancient exaggerations or time-bound cultural expectations, the Psalm response is taken from the Gospel of Luke--from the Annunciation to Mary, where Gabriel quotes the prophetic promise. David was right to go straight to God, blown away by the gift.)

If this one line from today's liturgy were all we knew of David, the tradition would still be justified in considering him a model of prayer. He would have shown us all we need to do; all that Jesus would sum up in the Sermon on the Mount: "The king went in and sat before the Lord."

Big News! (Now it's personal)

It's interesting about religious life. One day you're peeling potatoes and the next day you get a phone call that changes everything. 

Guess what? 

I got the phone call.

Image from Wikipedia Commons.

Our sisters in England asked for a bit of extra help in the area of social media and the Internet ministry in general, and I was asked to be the helper. As it stands, in between fulfilling my commitments here in Chicago, I will be packing my books and things for storage in order to be ready for departure on April 22. I expect to be stationed in London, where we have a bookstore (just like the one here in Chicago) on one of the main shopping streets. The assignment lasts one year.

Details to follow as we figure them out. Meanwhile, there was a $1.99 sale of Kindle titles yesterday, and I downloaded a book called Londoners to help me begin to familiarize myself with the local culture…

Please spare an extra prayer as I attempt to organize deadlines, commitments and…packing. Thanks.

The Jewish Cardinal: coming to theaters (near you? not sure about that)

On this feast of a great Jewish convert, it seems only right to highlight a more contemporary model! Like Paul, Aron Jean-Marie Lustiger (who became a Catholic as a young teen) never abandoned or denied his Judaism; he saw himself as fulfilling the Jewish vocation of being "a light to the nations."

Here's something to look forward to, even if it only appears in the local art house theaters, in French, with subtitles: a film about "The Jewish Cardinal," the late Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Lustiger.

Conversions come in small packages

Conversion of St Paul; from Santa Maria in Traspontina (Rome)
(I adjusted the image; the fresco is on a curved ceiling)

Today's Feast of the Conversion of St Paul just may be responsible in some small way for an erroneous notion that can have big ramifications in a person's spiritual life. I mean, of course, the idea that "conversion" is a great, once-and-for-all spiritual experience--to be revisited often in memory and in prayer (we certainly find that in Paul), but never to be repeated.

Whoo, boy, is that all wrong!

Damascus Road notwithstanding, if our spiritual life is at all functioning, conversion should be a daily experience. Blessed James Alberione was on solid ground when he recommended that we take three moments each day to take stock of how our relationship with God was unfolding in the particular circumstances of that day, making a kind of "course correction" if necessary.

First thing in the morning, conversion takes the form of a quick glance ahead: where am I likely to be challenged when it comes to serving God today? "Lord, what would you have me do--in the hours of this day?" In the Hour of Adoration, a more thorough 24-hour review helps us recognize the movements of grace and the welcome they received (or not... and why); thanksgiving forms an especially important dimension of this form of conversion. And at night, an overview and a prayer means that even if during the day I took a detour, I can realign my will with God's.

This ongoing conversion is punctuated (and assisted) by frequent confession--but then, it also makes frequent confession somewhat easier, too! Each celebration of the sacrament can be another Damascus Road moment in which we let ourselves be met by the Lord, and place ourselves wholeheartedly (and once more) at his service: "Lord, what would you have me do?"

On the Air

Back in the saddle...

It's my turn to host the "Winds of Change" show today. If you're in Chicago, turn your radio dial to 750 AM to listen the old-fashioned way. Otherwise, click the link! 

I'm talking about Pope Francis' message for the 48th World Day of Social Communication (hint: it's based on a kind of major theme of his), the movie Gimme Shelter (which opens in theaters today), and interviewing the director of a Chicago home that's one of our local "Gimme Shelter" counterparts.

Hey, if you missed the show when it was live, here you go! I asked Mary Zeien from "The Well of Mercy," "The movie 'Gimme Shelter' is 'based on a true story.' From your experience, having seen the movie, is it true?" Wait 'til you hear what she said.

Here are the showtimes for Gimme Shelter in the Chicago area; it's important to get there for the opening weekend to "vote" for movies with this kind of focus on the human person and genuine human values. To get showtimes in your area, just Google "Gimme Shelter showtimes" (trust me, it will know your location…).

An afternoon meditation: Exorcising the Green Demon

There's something about today's first reading that put me in mind of King Herod. Not that surprising, actually. In today's reading, King Saul seems like nothing more than a Bronze Age version of Herod the Great, fearing for his throne and plotting violence against the innocent who seems to threaten it. But there's a difference between the two, and not just that Saul was able to be talked out of murder.

"Anger, Envy and Fear" by George Romney;
Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. J. Richardson Dilworth, B.A. 1938

Saul's real problem was a double whammy of jealousy (protective of his prerogatives) and envy (displeasure at the esteem and praise given to David). David's only offense was having defeated Goliath--"not by sword or scimitar," but by the will and word of the Lord. Anointed himself, David was a servant in the King's household, and probably did not conceive of himself succeeding Saul until the King's natural death. But Saul was obsessed with him.

And then came Jonathan the Exorcist. Actually, Jonathan the son of Saul and friend of David. Next thing you know, David is back in the King's household, playing the lyre.

How did he do it? Did Jonathan just effect a natural sort of reconciliation, being--as he was--dear to both parties? There seems to be something very much more at play, and I think it could be helpful to anyone suffering the onslaughts of the capital sin of envy in its varied manifestations. Because in one way or another, envy and jealousy tend to keep their victims on a very short leash, like a dog tied to a post. The worn circle in the grass consists of thoughts, analyses, desires, fears, all bound up with me and the object of my--let's call it what it is--lust (no matter that it may not be sensual at all). That's certainly been me, it may have been you, and it sure seems to have been Saul.

What Jonathan did was introduce a completely new and unexpected element: the transcendent. Suddenly, it wasn't about Saul and David; it wasn't about the kingship. It wasn't even about a strictly human series of events. It was "the Lord who brought about a great victory for Israel." God acting on behalf of the whole people. Able to see things from a broader perspective, Saul was pulled from the whirlpool of his own self-focused preoccupation. For now, the demon was gone and Saul was free.

This tells me that there is a healing power in faith itself. Faith makes the transcendent present and effective in a situation that can be humanly unworkable.

What does this suggest about the New Evangelization?

Facing Goliath

@StudentsforLife on Instagram

Could today's Mass readings be more appropriate on the day of the annual March for Life? I think not.

As tens upon tens of thousands (if not more; we'll never really know) descend upon Washington DC calling for the overturning of a long-established "right" (not to mention a huge moneymaker, besides), the Church's liturgy tells the old, old story of a little boy going mano a mano with a giant. The boy doesn't have much in the way of weaponry: a few rocks. He's clearly not the favorite in this confrontation. But he's there to save lives--to save the people Israel from the threat of war.

In the Gospel we have another face-off, and Jesus makes it very clear that this confrontation, too, is about saving lives, even though the laws in place would seem not to favor that. "Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath... to save life rather than destroy it?" Jesus was
also not favored to win this: it was him alone against an established, entrenched, and very well-connected bloc.

@Katlynngrace on Instagram

In both cases, the "weapons" (a few rocks, a spoken command) wielded disproportionate results, because "It is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves." This is especially clear in today's Gospel, in which Jesus gave his life for the well-being of the crippled man before him. The US bishops ask all Catholics today to observe a day of prayer and penance: prayer for the defense of innocent life, and penance, something that costs us personally, in reparation for the evils legalized abortion has visited upon our country: millions of lives lost, women subjected to fear, violence and threats, fatherhood lost and manhood diminished--and how many marriages broken up, too, by secret abortions? All of these sorrows call out for the "sincere gift of self" in imitation of Jesus.

@Hey_Jude_1994 on Instagram shared
the Pope's tweet; as I post this, Pope
Francis has been retweeted 6,915
times, and favorited 5,938.

It is this attitude of Jesus that must permeate all pro-life efforts if they are to be really effective. It won't do to wield the truth like a sword (an approach that some still insist on taking, even though it can backfire fatally). Cardinal O'Malley, in his homily for the Vigil Mass last night, made it clear: "The antidote to abortion is solidarity"; "the only way we can save those babies is by saving the mothers."

Today I will be visiting a place where those mothers and babies are saved: over at Chicago's "Well of Mercy," mothers in need find a place to live, learn life skills, complete their education in a supportive environment. The director and I will be screening the movie "Gimme Shelter," and we'll be talking about that experience, and the real-life experience of the families of the Well of Mercy, on Friday when I host the "Winds of Change" radio program. (The movie opens Friday in limited release; if it is in a theater in your area, be sure to show your support!)

An Afternoon Meditation: Not as Man Sees

Today's readings (and, it goes without saying, the psalm!) both point us to the future king, David. And the first reading and Gospel also seem to conspire to communicate the same theme: things are not always what they seem. "Man sees the appearance, but God sees the heart."

The little boy David would not grow up to be only a giant-slayer  or singer of psalms; he grew into a man "after God's own heart." Even as an outlaw, on the run from the murderously jealous King Saul, the Gospel seems to hint, he interpreted the Law of God according to the mind of God--while the Pharisees, pointing to the letter, missed the point. Jesus, meanwhile, moves from calling himself "the Bridegroom" (yesterday's Gospel passage) to claiming the title "Lord of the Sabbath" with the authority to tell us just what the Law was intended for.

I kind of need that reminder today. There seem to be two default positions on sacred Law in our sin-infected world. The first considers the Law as a nice recommendation, a sort of ideal that is in no way actually binding (especially not for me); the other extreme would subordinate every thing and every one to the letter of the Law, making of it a kind of idol and of themselves its divinely appointed guardians. I find I can switch sides, depending on just what area of "law" is involved. (My inner Pharisee really gets going--as happened today--when a celebrant puts his fingerprints all over the liturgy!)

We're challenged (and Pope Francis is making this challenge a hallmark of his ministry) to "put on the mind of Christ," whether we need to pay more attention to the "Sabbath as made for man" or to the "Lord of the Sabbath" and his claims on us.

(Lord of the Sabbath, may your Spirit rush upon me as upon the boy David!)

A Tale of Two Sauls

In today's first reading we are introduced to the Man Who Would Be King: the first king of Israel, that

is. Saul, son of Kish the Benjaminite, is introduced to us in just way you would expect a future king to be presented: "a handsome young man…[who] stood head and shoulders above the people." And yet Saul's reign was not a particularly happy time for Israel, even though he did indeed lead the people into victory over and over. Later, we see Saul fall into horrific depression. The prophet Samuel even diagnoses it: Saul, although anointed "commander over God's people," is "little in his own eyes." He overcompensates, using all the resources available to control his world--at one point even hiring a medium to summon the prophet Samuel from the land of the spirits. Unable to escape the experience of failure, the first anointed King of Israel died a battlefield suicide.

Little in his own eyes--and everyone
else's--Paul put his confidence in the
Christ who called him.

On this third day of the novena for the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, it is hard not to think of the King's much later namesake, Saul of Tarsus. Physically, this Saul couldn't have been more different from the King. Where the son of Kish was strikingly tall and handsome, the man of Tarsus is traditionally described as bald, bowlegged and sickly. But Saul, our Paul, was also "little in his own eyes." We have ample testimony in his own writings:  "I am nothing" (2 Cor. 12:11); "I am less than the least of the holy ones" (Eph. 3:8); "I am the least of the apostles" (1 Cor. 15:9). And yet Paul, as well acquainted as he was with suffering, abandonment and times of darkness, does not fall into the frantic hyper-controlling ways of the first king.

What makes the difference?

I think we find the secret in today's Gospel: the call of Levi. Jesus didn't just call Levi; he used the occasion to describe his own vocation. "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Saul of Tarsus cheerfully recognized himself in this number: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of these I am foremost" (1 Tim. 1:15). And it seems that every time Paul experienced his littleness, he reaffirmed his confidence in the call of God: 

• "Although I am less than the least of all the the holy ones, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ" (Eph. 3:8).
• "I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may rest on me" (2 Cor. 12: 9).
• "I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect" (1 Cor 15:9-10).

Failure--no matter in what--is an extremely difficult thing to accept with peace. Sickness, accident, death: all these are patently beyond our control. But failure…that's where self-reproach has free reign.

Paul shows us a great strategy for confronting the temptation to dwell on failure. He uses his own experiences (and, yes, Paul the Apostles knew failure from the inside: read 2 Cor. 12 for a list) as a trampoline that allows him to spring even higher in recognizing the grace of God in him. Anytime someone would say, "Paul," he would respond, "Yes, but Christ!" 

The Responsorial Psalm gave me a good way to turn all of this into prayer; see how the Psalmist, too, referred every success to God!

Afternoon meditation: Careful what you pray for!

The Mass readings do it again. This time it is a question of authority. In the first reading, the Israelite people want to be "like the other nations," even though they were "a people set apart" precisely not to be like other nations. They were tired of being "in the world, not of the world," witnessing to the invisible Lordship of God. They wanted to make a good show, according to the customs of the peoples around them. They wanted a king.

Samuel warned them: This will be a king who takes. He will take your sons and daughters; he will take your crops and fields; he will take your freedom… All because he does not have authority of his own. Just as he must draw his authority from elsewhere (hopefully from God), he must depend on his subjects for his sustenance. The kind of king you want has nothing of his own to give you.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," Shakespeare knew (Henry IV). The kings of Israel (and Judah) knew this well enough, too. Every so often they had to shore up their authority with appeals to David, or claims of divine sonship (a typical enough understanding in ancient societies), the way American politicians invoke the Founding Fathers or "traditional values."

The Gospel shows us a King who gives. This is the kingship that was rejected in the first reading. This king has an authority that is not delegated or received; he brings the unexpected, not the established. His kingship surpasses all our categories.

It is easy for us even today to try to anoint a king for ourselves; an attractive or effective spokesperson who can hold his own with the great ones of this age; a TV star to represent us on the stage of the world. How many of these idols have already fallen of late! It is as if we want to be like other special interest groups. But God still has his original plan in mind: a people set apart witnessing to God's kingship by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in their lives until the people around them have to glorify God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this."

Christ the Prince of Peace, from the Crypt of St. Peter's Basilica.

Afternoon meditation: the "Why?" and the wait

Yesterday's first reading: Hannah prays before the Ark of the
Covenant. Eli the priest was the father of the two who fell in
the battle narrated in today's reading.
Detail from the Walters Art Museum, used under the Creative Commons License.

Today's readings convinced me (as if I needed convincing!) that the best way for a Catholic to enter into easy familiarity with the Scriptures is to read them with the Church, day by day, using the Mass readings. Even though they were never intended to "match," the way the Word of God is, most days you can't help but find a connection between the first reading and the Gospel for daily Mass--and in today's lineup, the Responsorial Psalm plays a stupendous role in uniting the two.

The first reading (we're still in 1 Samuel, the pre-history of the kings of Israel), the Philistines have utterly humiliated the Israelite army. The experience is well expressed in the Psalm, which reproaches God: "You have cast us off and put us in disgrace, and you go not forth with our armies. You have let us be driven back by our foes; those who hated us plundered us at will…. Why do you hide your face…?" The problem is, the people in 1 Samuel did not go to God with their reproaches. They simply asked themselves, "Why has the Lord permitted us to be defeated?" And proceeded to take action, commandeering the Ark of the Covenant ("of the Lord of hosts, who is enthroned upon the cherubim," the text adds meaningfully) and bringing it to the battlefield. Where it was taken among the spoils of war by the again victorious Philistines.

In the Gospel, a leper approaches Jesus in the way the Israelite army ought to have approached the Ark: kneeling and begging (much like Hannah in the illustration). I can imagine the words of the Psalm in the leper's heart, too: "You have made us the reproach of our neighbors, the mockery and the scorn of those around us…. Why do you hide your face, forgetting our woe and our oppression? For our souls are bowed down to the dust…" The same complaints, the same "Why?" but with the focus on the "you…you…you." "If you wish to, you can make me clean."

The Israelites took matters into their own hands, quite literally. The leper and the Psalmist seem content to wait for the Lord to "stretch out his hand" (the words of the Gospel echo many of the passages in the Old Testament telling of God working his wonders).

Right now, God is permitting me an occasion for exercising a lot of patience. These readings remind me to keep turning my attention not to the as-yet-unresolved situation, but to the "Lord of hosts, who is enthroned upon the cherubim." When he wills it, he will stretch out his hand to me, too.

What invitation is hidden for you in today's readings?

An afternoon meditation

Disciples who haven't yet learned to
pray during the night...

Today's incredibly rich set of readings could probably suffice for all of 2014. Following on yesterday's sweet reading from 1 Samuel about the suffering Hannah's infertility caused her, and then the beautiful way that "the Lord remembered her" and gave her a son, today we find that little boy serving at the Temple (not the grandiose Temple of Solomon--that would wait another two generations, at least!--but still a tent, like the one that had made the Exodus from Egypt). In the Gospel, the new Temple (the one not made by hands) is still, unrecognized, journeying with the people.

As I reflect upon the readings, Samuel's simple "Speak, Lord, your servant is listening," may be the most enlightening sentence. How many times we may wonder if God is listening to us! That's not the issue at all.

What unites both readings is the sense of prayer: for both Samuel and Jesus, God's will was manifest after prayer in the dark of night. The Responsorial Psalm (40!!!!) perfectly expresses the prayer of both the little boy Samuel and the miracle-working Jesus: "To do your will, O God, is my delight!" You could even say that the disciples, eager to be associated with a miracle man, were tempting Jesus not to follow the will of God that he had discerned and admired in prayer; they wanted to drag him back to the town where "everyone is looking for you." But he knew that his work was elsewhere; moving on to the next village, and the next "throughout the whole of Galilee."

It's a good start for the journey through Ordinary Time!

Receiving the grace of the Lord's Baptism

John "giving in" to "what must be done to
fulfill all righteousness."

Yesterday's Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord was for the liturgy what the event itself was for the Lord: a moment of transition from the "private life" of Christmas and Nazareth to the "public life" of ministry. We've shifted, overnight, from the Christmas season to Ordinary Time, the time when grace is manifest less in terms of guiding stars in the heavens and more in ways we can take for granted--and fail to recognize as grace.

In some ways, the way yesterday's Gospel ended teases us to ask questions about God's fatherhood: what kind of fatherhood are we talking about? If Jesus is the "beloved Son" in whom God is "well pleased," where are we? I can't speak about anyone else, but there is a whole lot in me that can't be all that "well pleasing" to God. And yet St Paul insists that we are "in Christ," grafted into the well-pleasing Son. God never sees me without seeing that Son "who loved me (me, by name, personally) and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

But wait! There's more!

I am kind of stuck seeing myself as I am in the here and now. (Sometimes I can be stuck with the way I was in the past, too.) But God sees me where I "am" in eternity: permanently and completely "conformed to the image of the Son" (Rom. 8:29). Looking "there," he really can and does say of me "in whom I am well pleased." He speaks (is speaking now!) with delight at the image of the Son in its "unique and unrepeatable" expression (to use an expression of Bl. John Paul II) in me; delight in what the Son's grace has done in me; delight at the unique and unrepeatable praise I alone can offer.

God sees the whole picture; the finished story, and he says, "You--yes, you--are my beloved, in whom I am well pleased." (In a way, it is the divine form of the virtue of hope!)

• Pope Francis started a series of talks on Baptism! Read his talk from last week ("A Date to Remember") and look for more to come, each Wednesday.
• Look up the date of your Baptism and find a way to celebrate it: how about doing something extra special each month on the recurrence of the date?

too busy to pray!

Every time I walk into my office, I face a big pile of temptation in the form of half-finished projects. There's a pile of books behind me right now, all of them filled with bookmarks for me to transcribe in view of talks and retreats (and future blog posts); an email I printed so I remember to reflect on it and respond to it; an open notebook (more notes to type up); a manuscript that is about 75% completed, but not a high priority; folders for upcoming meetings; even a little box of Coke caps with codes to enter (I save up the rewards points and use them for magazine subscriptions for the community. Plus a messy stack of business cards that I haven't figured out where to file, and a few printed sheets that are on the floor in my doorway so I remember to deal with them. 

I know that doesn't look like too many people's definition of temptation, but it sure is just that for me.

See, one of the biggest threats to my prayer life comes in the form of the impulse to "make room for prayer" by clearing up my to-do list--or at least knocking off a bunch of those annoying little half-done tasks so I can focus on the Lord and his Kingdom without that distraction. 

Here at the tail end of the Christmas season, St. Joseph is clarifying the matter for me. Kneeling with him before the crib, things are not so much "taken care of" as they are reduced to their proper proportions. By trying to get them all out of the way first, I am giving them too much weight!

I'm so glad to have this important lesson at the start of the year: 2014 may really be a "new" year for me!

...Hasten to Help Us!

If you grew up in New Orleans, I don't have to tell you what day it is...or what the invocation is that today's post title corresponds to. It's one of the most Old World of devotions still to be practiced in the continental U.S. of A. and dates back to a promise made by a French nun over 200 years ago.

That's probably not the reason the devotion is still so strong, though. That would be what happened on January 8, 1815 when the city, only a dozen years after it had become an American territory (one in which the dominant language was still--and would remain for almost another 100 years--French) was caught between two warring forces: its own newly adopted (but poorly equipped) Americans and the British, still fighting the War of 1812 (which, unbeknownst to the combatants, was actually over).

The devout people of New Orleans spent the night of January 7 in vigil before Our Lady's shrine at the Old Ursuline Convent. The Mother Superior went so far as to vow that if the Americans won, a Mass of Thanksgiving would be celebrated every year.

That Mass is being celebrated for the 199th time today by the Archbishop of New Orleans in the  "new" shrine (consecrated in 1928).

Our Lady of Prompt Succor, Hasten to Help Us!
The statue in its home, the National Shrine of O. L. of Prompt Succor, New Orleans

My connections to the shrine, besides a lot of invocations during Hurricane Season? It's located in the chapel of the Ursuline Academy (former Brescia College, my Mom's alma mater), where I and two of my sisters went to school for three years. Two of my sisters were married in the chapel, too!

So celebrate Our Lady's Day (in New Orleans, it's considered a solemnity) today--how about some King Cake?

Out with the Old and In with the Cold!

It's still officially New Year's for me (we're not even one week in!), but it seems as if this New Year's the motto should be "Out with the old and in with the COLD"! Here in Chicago, the Polar Vortex brought the thermometer below zero sometime Sunday night, and it's still down there. (We are promised a trip to "above zero" this afternoon; I can hardly wait!) A few people stopped in our bookstore yesterday to keep warm while they waited for the bus; one of them even bought a book (our one sale of the day!); by 2:30 we locked the door and turned off the lights. Today will probably be a repeat of that, giving the sisters time to catch up on a multitude of tasks. Yesterday I even took advantage of the relaxed pace (and forced enclosure!) to make my first-ever, baked-from-scratch King Cake for the start of King Cake season. (Sister Edward Marie got the baby. Oh, and here's the recipe I used.)

My own plans have had to change, too. Sister Gemma and I were looking forward to this evening's pre-release screening of the movie "Gimme Shelter." The movie is scheduled to open in theaters starting Jan. 24--which happens to be the day I am hosting the "Winds of Change" radio program. It would be ideal to be able to talk about the film sometime during that hour. But the showing is an hour's drive away--on a good day. With the Illinois Department of Transportation showing the highways "covered in snow and ice" all the way out there, I am simply afraid to risk it. So...I'm asking the folk at Carmel Communications if they will send me a "screener." (Here's hoping!)

 

Three Kings

From a 15th century East Anglian manuscript in the collection of the
Walters Museum of Art, used under the Creative Commons License.

The Devil You Don't Know

Now that we are past the Christmas octave, but still in the (very short!) Christmas season, the readings at Mass have done a sharp turn. No more stable or shepherds or manger. The first reading leapfrogs into the early Christian community, with all its controversies--and the Gospels show the first steps of the public life of Jesus, but from the unique perspective of John (not the matched set of the Synoptics). Since the first readings are from the First Letter of John, we are getting a strong dose of the Johannine mind this week, and it's not always easy.

Yesterday, for example, John went on (and on) about "those who act in righteousness." These, he says, are the children of God, and that righteous behavior is the proof. Today there more of the same, though the Devil gets his due: "Whoever sins belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil." But John's understanding of "sin" is not what we might assume at first. John is not talking about any naughty behaviors, or even commandment-breaking stuff. Only at the end of today's first reading do we realize that for John, "sin" is chiefly a matter not of what you do but of what you don't do. John is primarily concerned about sins of omission, and he names the two big ones:

No one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God,nor anyone who does not love his brother.

There's enough there to keep us reflecting clear through to Lent!

Joy of the Gospel!

What the bulk discounts look like:
5 – 10 copies 10%
11 – 25  copies 15%
26 – 50  copies 20%
51 – 100 copies 25%
over 100 copies 30%

The Joy of the Gospel! It's in your heart, but is it on your bookshelf?

Be sure to let your parish ministry team know that the handy paperback edition  of Pope Francis' document is ready to ship--and that there are bulk discounts available (at $9.95, it's already the least expensive version out there, and the bulk rates start at only five copies!).

Here in Chicago, I'm committing myself to not just study the document, but to guide a Lenten adult faith program on it. (That way I have to study it--but will also equip myself to offer presentations on Francis' prescriptions for spiritual health.)

Meanwhile, some of the mega-wealthy are taking umbrage at what the Pope had to say in the document about the idolatry of money. Some are even hinting that if that's how the Pope feels, maybe they won't be so generous in donating to Catholic causes...thus pretty much proving the Pope's point. (This is going to be an interesting discussion in our Lenten program!)