holy cross, dallas

from gregory of nyssa's commentary on the canticle of canticles

2009-06-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

It is the angels to whom the Gospel precept compares us. Be like unto men who await their master returning from the marriage feast. They awaited the return of the Lord from the marriage feast, keeping close to the gates of heaven, constantly watching for Him so they would be ready to open the gates for the Lord as He came from His wedding feast to enter into supracosmic blessedness, 'like the bridegroom who leaves his wedding chamber,' after having united Himself, in the regeneration of the sacraments, to the virgin who had prostituted herself on idols -- that is, with us, having restored our nature in all its virginal integrity. The wedding feast is over, the Church is united to the Word (for according to the word of St. John, 'he who has the bride is the bridegroom') and has been admitted into the wedding chamber of the sacraments; the angels await the return of the King, raising up the Church to share in His own blessedness.

holy cross sermon for pentecost 4 / proper 8 / year b / june 28 2009

2009-06-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

Power made perfect in weakness.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Gospel reading treats of Jesus raising a twelve year old girl from the dead. The passage begins with the girl’s father coming to Jesus and beseeching him on her behalf: “seeing Jesus, [the little girl’s father] fell at [Jesus’] feet, and besought him, saying, ‘My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live’” (vv. 22-23).

This passage teaches us several things. First, it shows us something about prayer. In prayer, we come before the Lord, and we ask him for things, just as the father of the little girl has done. Moreover, the father of the girl shows us a kind of prayer that has transcended superficiality in one important respect: he is not praying for himself and his own needs.

Perhaps the most superficial kind of prayer is the kind where we ask God for a million dollars – something we think we want. But a soul that has been cleansed, to some degree, from self-seeking, will turn first toward the Lord, seeking him for his own sake, and then for the sake of others. And we see this in the father of the girl: he comes to the Lord in supplication, and he comes because of his love for his daughter.

We should also notice that the man comes to the Lord BELIEVING IN THE POWER OF THE LORD TO DO WHAT HE ASKS. Prayer must begin with faith in Christ: believing that Jesus is who he says he is – namely, that he is the Lord. And being the Lord means that he has power over every circumstance – both our own, and the circumstances of those whom we love.

We must learn to ask the Lord for good things, and we must ask him out of faith in him, and out of love. We know that the Lord’s own desire is to give us good things – indeed to give us EVERY good thing. Jesus said, “If you… know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matt. 7.11). Why then do we so often find ourselves bereft of goodness? Saint James answers that question: “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4.2). We must learn to ask the Lord for GOOD THINGS.

What are good things? In short, as the father asks for his little girl: that we may be made well and live. Good things are things that pertain to life – and not simply the humdrum life of the world, but things that pertain to the kind of abundant life that is ours in Christ. We must learn to ask him for things like healing, contrition, forgiveness, wisdom, discernment, prayer (pray for the gift of prayer!), joy in doing his will, the peace of God, and that we might be made vessels of his grace.

While Jesus is on his way to the house of the little girl, “there came from the… house some who said, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?’” (v. 35). There is a worldly vantage point, and there is a heavenly vantage point. To the eyes of the world, many situations seem hopeless. But we should always be mindful of the fact that “with God, nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1.37), and that Jesus tells us “if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, `Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you” (Matt. 17.20).

And so we find the Lord exhorting the faith of the girl’s father, who has just been informed by the clamor of the world that the situation is hopeless. Jesus ignores the clamor of the world. The passage says, “Ignoring what they said, Jesus said to the [man], ‘Do not fear, only believe,’” (v. 36).

When they get to the house, the house is filled with the same clamor of hopelessness, the kind of noise that does not come from faith in the power of God, but in the inevitability of the natural. Jesus says to them, “Why do you make a tumult and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” And those who have no faith in his power laugh at him.

Very often Christians encounter what seem like hopeless situations. And often the Lord, in his providence, allows situations to seem hopeless so that we might call out to him in faith and so draw closer to him, and secondly so that he might make his power known. It is easy to give in, in the face of what we think is the inevitability of the natural. The situation is hopeless; end of story. But the Lord desires us to bring our hopelessness and fear to him in prayer – firstly so that we may be drawn more closely into his presence and his care, and so that he can manifest his power.

In 2 Corinthians, Saint Paul tells the brethren about a troubling and difficult situation – he doesn’t say exactly what it was, but he does say that he prayed repeatedly to the Lord about it, and the Lord spoke to Paul’s heart: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12.9).

So in the Gospel, the little girl is dead to the world, but to God she is sleeping. St. Bede says that sub specie aeternitatis, from the divine vantage point, “both the soul was living, and the flesh was resting, [in order] to rise again”. Jesus quiets the clamor of the faithless crowd: he puts them all outside, and taking the girl’s father and mother, along with Peter, James, and John, he enters the room, takes the girl by the hand, and says to her, “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (v. 41). “And immediately the girl got up and walked” (v. 42).

The power of the Lord extends over the whole creation, and over every circumstance, even death. He desires to give us good things. Very often we do not receive good things for the simple reason that we do not ask for them. At other times, we are unable to see or to understand what is truly good. For example, we may pray for money, but God may know that were we to get it, we would rest in the security of our wealth rather than in his power. “For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses himself?” (Luke 9.25).

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2.9). God has unutterably good things in store for us. And we can begin to receive them even now, this side of Paradise. We have only to trust him, to love him, and to beseech him out of trust and love. “You do not have, because you do not ask.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

'that catholic show' -- priests

2009-06-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

holy cross sermon for easter 5 / may 10 2009

2009-05-10T22:43:00.000-07:00

Our Lady of light and life, pray for us! (From here.)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s readings set before us the great mystery at the center of our faith: the mystery of love, and the great commandment of Christ: that we love one another as he has loved us.

There is perhaps a seeming incongruity in the commandment to love: namely that it is a commandment. How can love be undertaken in obedience? This apparent incongruity arises from our aptitude to misconstrue love as a sentiment, as something purely touching our affections, our FEELINGS.

But while love does indeed touch our feelings, while it does dispose us to feel a certain way toward the object of our love, yet this feeling is a symptom of love and does not constitute love itself.

Indeed the love that is enjoined on us as Christians persists through whatever we feel. And we know that our feelings can be fickle, that we are prone variously and at times to feelings of elation, satisfaction, disappointment, despondency, and everything else. Yet obedience to Christ’s commandment to love is possible no matter how we feel. In the Epistle reading, St. John says “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (v. 16).

We learn what true love is through the contemplation of Christ. When we consider Jesus, his life and his death for us, we come to know what it is truly to love. We come to see the connection between love and life – that love is the gift of life; and likewise how “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death” (v. 14) – and so why it is that “any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (v. 15). Because love is the gift of life for the beloved. “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.”

So likewise we see the reason for the Church’s otherwise puzzlingly dogged devotion to LIFE wherever she finds it, her persistent proclamation of the dignity of every human person, no matter who they are, no matter how good or wicked, no matter how sick or malformed, and no matter how apparently hopeless a person’s situation may be. The unchanging truth of the Gospel, to which we bear witness, is that every person has a God-given dignity, integrity, and beauty, and that the gift of life is to be cherished and defended wherever we find it, from conception until natural death. Because “by this we know love,” that God has given us life – even the life of his only and eternal Son.

Here too we see the Church’s lament at the cultural situation of our day, where we find love having grown cold, and where all to often we see a cynical disregard for the gift of life and the dignity of the human person. Before we congratulate ourselves on being enlightened, modern people, we should remember that there have been more people killed in war in the last century than in all the wars of the rest of human history put together. Mothers and fathers kill their own children in the womb. Young people speak of murder with truly horrifying nonchalance. Movies, music, and magazines celebrate death and violence. Fashionable clothing is emblazoned with skulls and images of violence and invective. Our culture begins to think of euthanasia as a convenient way to rid ourselves of the elderly and the infirm, the lives of whom we have so devalued, or who have so devalued their own lives, as to be unable to see them as anything but problems to be solved by death. We have a criminal justice system that is very often more interested in getting convictions and being “tough on crime” than it is concerned with honestly pursuing justice. Right here in Dallas, thanks to the efforts of our District Attorney, Craig Watkins, over 20 men have been exonerated through DNA evidence that was not available – or that was simply not admitted – at the time when cases went to trial. Some of them spent 20 years or more in prison for crimes they did not commit. Some were on death row. How many innocent people have we executed over the years? Why does this not bother us more?

“But if any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.” (1 John 3.17f).

In order truly to love, one must cultivate an open heart; one must come to Christ with an open heart. The Lord spoke through the prophet Ezekiel, saying that in the days of Messiah, “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36.26). Jesus Christ is the one whose heart was truly open, the one who loved God perfectly and completely, who held on to the promises of God, to his eternal communion with the Father, no matter what the world hurled at him, through slander and abuse, through derision and scorn, through being scourged and beaten and nailed to a tree, through his three hours of bleeding and suffocation, Jesus showed us what loving communion with the Father looks like; he showed us the Father’s gift of life, and he empowers us to receive and to offer that same divine life, to ransom the world from its enthrallment to suffering and corruption and death. Through his denunciation and the heartbreaking cries of “Crucify him! Crucify him!” – even as he was being nailed up, the Lord announced the dignity of human nature, and his gift of divine life, in the conviction of his prayer, “Father, forgive them.”

Through the oblation of the cross, the gift of divine life was poured out on all flesh. That is what the gift of the Holy Spirit means – the gift of God’s own inner life, the gift of eternal and mutual communion-in-love of Father and Son. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you desolate; [but] I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me; because I live, you will live also. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (Jn. 14.15ff).

In Christ alone we not only learn what love is, but we receive the power to love others, as God has loved us, and to bear witness, in our own time and place, to the love and mercy of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon for easter 4 / may 3 2009

2009-05-10T22:33:00.000-07:00

The above 4th century image is from the Catacombs of Peter and Marcellinus in Rome. It depicts Jesus with the iconographic attributes of Orpheus -- the Phrygian cap, the lyre, etc.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s Gospel lesson, the Lord tells the apostles that he is the “good shepherd”. The idea of the good shepherd has been a very popular one in the Christian imagination, almost from the very beginning. There are very ancient murals and mosaics from the catacombs depicting the Lord in this way. Indeed many of the ancient Romans saw a reflection, however pale, of Christ in the myth of Orpheus; and many scholars and art historians have noticed strong affinities between the iconography of Christ and of Orpheus. In at least one fourth century mural from the catacombs, the Lord is depicted AS Orpheus.

Its little wonder. In mythology, Orpheus was a great poet and singer. So enticing was his voice that even wild animals were tamed at the sound of it, and would follow him with docility. Perhaps the greatest part of the Orpheus myth was the story of his descent into Hades in search of his wife Eurydice, who had been bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus is said to have secured Eurydice’s release from the dead by the power of his singing; but he lost her again because he failed to obey the condition laid down by the gods that he not look back at her until they had again reached the land of the living.

Its no wonder that at the dawn of Roman Christianity, in the Church’s earliest days, pagans who converted to faith in Christ discerned something Orphic in the Gospel narratives. In the passage just before today’s Gospel reading, for example, the Lord introduces the figure of the sheep, the shepherd, and the sheepfold, and he says, “The sheep hear [the Shepherd’s] voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice” (Jn. 10.3-4).

The Lord is here referring to the experience of spiritual awakening and illumination. Jesus is saying that those who belong to him, those who are on the side of love, as he is love; those whose hearts are open, as his heart is open; those who find themselves awakened to the thirst for God – they recognize in Jesus, in his person, the object of their most profound desire. “Cor ad cor loquitur” – “heart speaking to heart” – or as the Psalmist puts it, deep calling to deep in the thundering of God’s cataracts (Ps. 42.7).

Christ’s song entices those whose hearts are open, those who have made their hearts vulnerable to the wounding of love. We know the voice of the Lord to be the call of love because of what Jesus goes on to say in today’s reading: “I am the good Shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (Jn. 10.11). As he says elsewhere – a verse we all know well – there is no greater love than “that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13).

After Jesus is betrayed, as he stands before Pilate, as he is about to lay down his life for his friends, he returns to the theme of his own hearing his voice. Pilate asks Jesus whether he is a king, and Jesus replies, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born and for this I have come into the world: to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice” (Jn. 18.38). And Pilate, in a moment of world-weary and hard-hearted cynicism, asks that famous rhetorical question, a question that echoes down the corridors of our own self-consciousness: “What is truth?”

The devotees of Orpheus knew better than Pilate. The story of Orpheus’ pursuit of Eurydice into the land of the dead speaks of a fundamental intuition in the heart of man: that the hold of death over the beloved devastates love’s peace – that love rages against the power of death, love’s most bitter enemy. But an air of melancholy hangs over the story of Orpheus, because he fails; in the end he loses Eurydice forever. Orpheus was under the power of the gods, and the power of the gods proved stronger than Orpheus’ love for Eurydice.

But when Christ descends to the dead in search of his Bride, in search of humanity, he descends there as the Lord of Lords, the one “to whom all things in heaven, on earth, and under the earth bow and obey” (BCP prayer at Unction), the one who startles the nations, and at whose voice kings shut their mouths (cf. Isaiah 52.15). Unlike Orpheus, Christ is not compelled by the power of the gods, but rather announces that their dominion has been destroyed by the power of the Father’s love, the victory of Christ crucified.[1]

This is what the Lord is talking about in today’s Gospel reading: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep…. I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

Finally, it must be said, that unlike the story of Orpheus, which was mere myth, the Gospel is true. It is about a man, a person. It is about Jesus Christ, who is real, who really died, and really rose; who is alive forever, and who calls to our hearts. This is why it is so important to cultivate prayer, to practice prayer daily. Because prayer is the language of the heart, the place in which we listen for the Lord’s voice; as the Lord revealed to the Seer of the Apocalypse: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him...” (Rev. 3.20).

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

[1] This is the meaning of the otherwise obscure passage from 1 Peter 3.18-20: “For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.” “The spirits in prison” are the evil spirits (i.e. the gods) of the underworld, bound by God in Tartarus for their disobedience “in former times”. Cf. 2 Peter 2.4.

america

2009-04-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

Its sometimes helpful to remind ourselves that America is not the Kingdom of God. As much as I love it, and as grateful as I am to have been born in this nation, it is not eternal, and it will pass away. Some parts of it already are. Like Detroit.

Go through these haunting images from photographer James D. Griffioen.

holy cross sermon for easter 2009

2009-04-18T23:17:00.001-07:00

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

“Then Simon Peter came… and went into the tomb; he saw the linen cloths lying, and the napkin, which had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths but rolled up in a place by itself Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not know the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”

Alleluia, Christ is risen.

Today the Church sets before us the Father’s seal of approval on the work of his Son. Time and again in the Gospels, Jesus goes around doing things and saying things that his disciples do not understand. And the chief object of their misunderstanding, and OUR misunderstanding, is what Jesus did on the cross. And it should not be surprising that the cross should be so misunderstood. St. Paul said: “we preach Christ crucified, a scandal to Jews and folly to Gentiles” (1 Cor. 1.23). And the Gospel of John records, with reference to the things relating to the Lord’s suffering and death: “His disciples did not understand this at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written of him and had been done to him” (Jn. 12.16).

This is indeed the experience of most of us. Very often we fail, or we refuse to understand that “it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Acts 17.3). This is the pattern of our lives and the hardness of our hearts. We go through life, and when things are fine, when we have our health, when we have our family and our friends, when we are provided for physically and financially, we tend not to be much interested in recollection. We have a kind of meta-satisfaction with our satisfaction. We are content with the contentment we get from our circumstances. And when suffering comes, as it inevitably does, as it MUST, when we hear from our doctors some dreadful diagnosis, or when the phone rings in the middle of the night with some horrible news, when we have to watch a loved one slowly drift beyond our reach into death – then our tendency is to wall our hearts off from the recollection that Jesus said only comes by the Holy Spirit: “it was necessary for the Christ to suffer…. AND TO RISE FROM THE DEAD.”

And we do not like to remember that “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master; it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house [a devil], how much more will they malign those of his household” (Matt. 10.24). We do not like to remember what the Lord said as he was being led away to be crucified: “…do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children…. For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23.28ff). We do not like to remember that the Lord said that “whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14.27).

It is a natural human tendency, a kind of defense mechanism, that we harden our hearts in the face of suffering and death. A kind of Darwinian instinct for the purpose of self-preservation, and sometimes the pain is simply too much to bear. But there was one who did not harden his heart. There was one who refused NOT to love God, who was willing to be afflicted and abased, to be misunderstood, mocked, derided, cursed, defiled; there was one who loved God, who believed in him to the bitter end; one who would not let go of his intimate communion with the Father, no matter what the world threw at him, no matter how much he was denounced as a lunatic, or a blasphemer.

And today we see the Father’s seal of approval on the determined love of Jesus Christ: the empty tomb. For God will not abandon his beloved to Hades, nor let his Holy One see corruption. The communion-in-love of God and man – the communion which Jesus Christ shows us, which he himself IS, and which he makes possible for us, is a communion in love that cannot remain in the tomb, because that communion is the will of God, and he will see his will carried into effect. He loves us, he desires us, he wants to be with us, to meet all our needs and to fulfill all of our desires – that is his will. And the openness of hearts to the carrying-out of that will means openness to affliction in the world, but it also means our inhabitation of God’s omnipotence, that we become a part of his victory over every unclean thing, every evil. It means an empty tomb, and not just Christ’s, but – through the power of God in Christ – it means the emptiness of our own tombs too.

The Holy Father recently said, “... St. Paul makes clear how decisive is the importance that he attributes to the resurrection of Jesus. In this event, in fact, is the solution to the problem that the drama of the cross implies. On its own, the cross could not explain Christian faith; on the contrary, it would be a tragedy, a sign of the absurdity of being.” The empty tomb is the lens through which we can understand the cross. “His disciples did not understand [these things] at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that this had been written of him and had been done to him.”

Then the disciples went in to the empty tomb, and they saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon for good friday 2009

2009-04-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

There are two ways of understanding the Lord’s suffering and death. Both are “correct”.

1) That the wrath of God the Father, because of human sin, was placated by the suffering of Jesus.

Isaiah: “But he was wounded for our transgressions,

he was bruised for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that made us whole,

and with his stripes we are healed.”

2) The other way flows out of the first, and clarifies it. God never pours out his wrath on us. He hates one thing only: that which keeps us from his mercy, his compassion, his love for us. I.e. sin. Sin is what keeps us from him. Everything we do that keeps us from the realization that God ALONE is our life, our peace, our fulfillment, our joy, our healing, our blessedness – everything that keeps us from realizing God to be the fulfillment of every authentic desire is SIN. That really is the definition of sin.

All God ever desired for us was that we should LOVE him, and so find happiness and peace in his embrace. That’s all. For ages he waited for someone in the world to love him perfectly. And that someone is Jesus. Jesus is the person who comes into the world and loves God with all his heart, mind soul, and strength. With every ounce of his being, with every action he undertakes, with every breath, with every step… he LOVES GOD – perfectly and completely and unfailingly.

And so God is satisfied. It is not that is wrath is appeased, but that finally there is a person, a man, who has done all that God every wanted from men: to be loved. And that is the other way to understand the cross: here is the nuptial bed of divine nature and human nature. Here is God loving man and man loving God in perfect communion, WITHIN A WORLD CORRUPTED BY SIN. That’s why Jesus suffers. Because he loves God within the world, a world that had grown old and embittered by its failure to love God.

So when a man comes into the world who loves God, he is mocked, derided, disbelieved, abused, misunderstood, scorned, rejected, tortured, and finally, he is killed. Because mankind had grown accustomed to his failure to love – our hearts had grown hard, and we had created a world for ourselves wherein hardness of heart had been canonized and enshrined into law. Where the best we could do was to build walls of separation to keep from tearing each other apart. As Isaiah said, “we have turned every one to his own way….” But “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Jesus is the man who shows us what perfect love looks like. And within this world, still full of people like you and me, who turn “everyone to his own way” – within this world, perfect love means suffering, because it means having an open heart.

If you want to know what love looks like, come to the cross. If you want to know God, come to the cross. If you want to learn to love God, come to the cross. If you want to be learn how to live for God, come to the cross. If you want to know how much God loves you, come to the cross. If you want to know how much God desires to be with you, to make you happy, and to give you his peace, come to the cross. If you want to know the lengths to which he was willing to go to save you from death and hell, come to the cross. If you want to know how much you should forgive others, come to the cross. If you want to learn to be humble, come to the cross. If you want to learn to believe and obey God, come to the cross. If you want to learn selflessness and generosity, come to the cross. If you want to live well, come to the cross. If you want to die well, come to the cross.

The cross is the source of every good thing. Every divine gift flows from the sacred heart of Jesus, pierced by a spear, opened for our sake. He shows us the way to life and peace because he assumed our humanity. We might wonder how it is that God could die. Jesus is God, and as such, he is impassable, immutable, immortal, unmoving, unchanging. How then is it possible for him to suffer and die? He suffered and died because he took on our broken nature. He assumed our flesh, he became one of us. And by becoming one of us, he assumed our ability to suffer and to die. God assumed the our life, human life, and he died our death. He died as a men die, alone, in agony and trepidation.

And he shows us the rout to God. The cross is the source of every good thing. To find perfected humanity, to find deified humanity, go to the cross. And the Lord has left doorways to the cross. They are prayer, meditation, and chiefly they are the sacraments, especially confession and the Eucharist. If we want what God offers to us, “let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely” (Heb. 12.1). We have to rid ourselves of every evil in order to make room in ourselves for the good that God desires to give us. That is why confession precedes communion. We lay aside and forsake those things that keep us from God, those things which he hates, so that we can make room in our hearts for the grace and blessing he gives us from the cross.

If the doorways to the cross are prayer, meditation, and the sacraments, the keys to those doorways are humility, love, and an open heart. The heart of God calls to us, and we must answer him from the heart. Psalm 102 says “Deep calls to deep in the noise of your cataracts.” On the cross, God calls to us from the depths of his being, from his heart. His infinite desire reaches out to us, and if we would answer his call, we must be willing to forsake all that is not him, and to grasp his hand.

This poem was written by the great priest-poet of the 17th century, George Herbert. I want to read it to you because I think in it, you can discern the outstretched hand of God, his invitation to love him.

OH all ye, who passe by, whose eyes and minde

To worldly things are sharp, but to me blinde;

To me, who took eyes that I might you finde:

Was ever grief like mine?

The Princes of my people make a head

Against their Maker: they do wish me dead,

Who cannot wish, except I give them bread;

Was ever grief like mine?

Without me each one, who doth now me brave,

Had to this day been an Egyptian slave.

They use that power against me, which I gave:

Was ever grief like mine?

Mine own Apostle, who the bag did beare,

Though he had all I had, did not forbeare

To sell me also, and to put me there:

Was ever grief like mine?

For thirtie pence he did my death devise,

Who at three hundred did the ointment prize,

Not half so sweet as my sweet sacrifice:

Was ever grief like mine?

Therefore my soul melts, and my hearts deare treasure

Drops bloud (the onely beads) my words to measure:

O let this cup passe, if it be thy pleasure:

Was ever grief like mine?

These drops being temper’d with sinners tears

A Balsome are for both the Hemispheres:

Curing all wounds, but mine; all, but my fears:

Was ever grief like mine?

Yet my Disciples sleep; I cannot gain

One houre of watching; but their drowsie brain

Comforts not me, and doth my doctrine stain:

Was ever grief like mine?

Arise, arise, they come. Look how they runne!

Alas! what haste they make to be undone!

How with their lanterns do they seek the sunne!

Was ever grief like mine?

With clubs and staves they seek me, as a thief,

Who am the Way and Truth, the true relief;

Most true to those, who are my greatest grief:

Was ever grief like mine?

Judas, dost thou betray me with a kisse?

Canst thou finde hell about my lips? and misse

Of life, just at the gates of life and blisse?

Was ever grief like mine?

See, they lay hold on me, not with the hands

Of faith, but furie: yet at their commands

I suffer binding, who have loos’d their bands

Was ever grief like mine?

All my Disciples flie; fear puts a barre

Betwixt my friends and me. They leave the starre,

That brought the wise men of the East from farre.

Was ever grief like mine?

Then from one ruler to another bound

They leade me; urging, that it was not sound

What I taught: Comments would the test confound.

Was ever grief like mine?

The Priest and rulers all false witnesse seek

’Gainst him, who seeks not life, but is the meek

And readie Paschal Lambe of this great week:

Was ever grief like mine?

Then they accuse me of great blasphemie,

That I did thrust into the Deitie,

Who never thought that any robberie:

Was ever grief like mine?

Some said, that I the Temple to the floore

In three dayes raz’d, and raised as before.

Why, he that built the world can do much more:

Was ever grief like mine?

Then they condemne me all with that same breath,

Which I do give them daily, unto death.

Thus Adam my first breathing rendereth:

Was ever grief like mine?

They binde, and leade me unto Herod: he

Sends me to Pilate. This makes them agree;

But yet their friendship is my enmitie:

Was ever grief like mine?

Herod and all his bands do set me light,

Who teach all hands to warre, fingers to fight,

And onely am the Lord of Hosts and might:

Was ever grief like mine?

Herod in judgement sits, while I do stand;

Examines me with a censorious hand:

I him obey, who all things else command:

Was ever grief like mine?

The Jews accuse me with dispitefulnesse;

And vying malice with my gentlenesse,

Pick quarrels with their onely happinesse:

Was ever grief like mine?

I answer nothing, but with patience prove

If stonie hearts will melt with gentle love.

But who does hawk at eagles with a dove?

Was ever grief like mine?

My silence rather doth augment their crie;

My dove doth back into my bosome flie,

Because the raging waters still are high:

Was ever grief like mine?

Heark how they crie aloud still, Crucifie:

It is not fit he live a day, they crie,

Who cannot live lesse then eternally:

Was ever grief like mine?

Pilate, a stranger, holdeth off; but they,

Mine owne deare people, cry, Away, away,

With noises confused frighting the day:

Was ever grief like mine?

Yet still they shout, and crie, and stop their eares,

Putting my life among their sinnes and fears,

And therefore wish my bloud on them and theirs:

Was ever grief like mine?

See how spite cankers things. These words aright

Used, and wished, are the whole worlds light:

But hony is their gall, brightnesse their night:

Was ever grief like mine?

They choose a murderer, and all agree

In him to do themselves a courtesie:

For it was their own case who killed me:

Was ever grief like mine?

And a seditious murderer he was:

But I the Prince of peace; peace that doth passe

All understanding, more then heav’n doth glasse:

Was ever grief like mine?

Why, Caesar is their onely King, not I:

He clave the stonie rock, when they were drie;

But surely not their hearts, as I well trie:

Was ever grief like mine?

Ah! how they scourge me! yet my tendernesse

Doubles each lash: and yet their bitternesse

Windes up my grief to a mysteriousnesse:

Was ever grief like mine?

They buffet him, and box him as they list,

Who grasps the earth and heaven with his fist,

And never yet, whom he would punish, miss’d:

Was ever grief like mine?

Behold, they spit on me in scornfull wise,

Who by my spittle gave the blinde man eies,

Leaving his blindnesse to my enemies:

Was ever grief like mine?

My face they cover, though it be divine.

As Moses face was vailed, so is mine,

Lest on their double-dark souls either shine:

Was ever grief like mine?

Servants and abjects flout me; they are wittie:

Now prophesie who strikes thee, is their dittie.

So they in me denie themselves all pitie:

Was ever grief like mine?

And now I am deliver’d unto death,

Which each one calls for so with utmost breath,

That he before me well nigh suffereth:

Was ever grief like mine?

Weep not, deare friends, since I for both have wept

When all my tears were bloud, the while you slept:

Your tears for your own fortunes should be kept:

Was ever grief like mine?

The souldiers lead me to the common hall;

There they deride me, they abuse me all:

Yet for twelve heav’nly legions I could call:

Was ever grief like mine?

Then with a scarlet robe they me aray;

Which shews my bloud to be the onely way

And cordiall left to repair mans decay:

Was ever grief like mine?

Then on my head a crown of thorns I wear:

For these are all the grapes Sion doth bear,

Though I my vine planted and watred there:

Was ever grief like mine?

So sits the earths great curse in Adams fall

Upon my head: so I remove it all

From th’ earth unto my brows, and bear the thrall:

Was ever grief like mine?

Then with the reed they gave to me before,

They strike my head, the rock from thence all store

Of heav’nly blessings issue evermore:

Was ever grief like mine?

They bow their knees to me, and cry, Hail king:

What ever scoffes & scornfulnesse can bring,

I am the floore, the sink, where they it fling:

Was ever grief like mine?

Yet since mans scepters are as frail as reeds,

And thorny all their crowns, bloudie their weeds;

I, who am Truth, turn into truth their deeds:

Was ever grief like mine?

The souldiers also spit upon that face,

Which Angels did desire to have the grace,

And Prophets, once to see, but found no place:

Was ever grief like mine?

Thus trimmed, forth they bring me to the rout,

Who Crucifie him, crie with one strong shout.

God holds his peace at man, and man cries out:

Was ever grief like mine?

They leade me in once more, and putting then

Mine own clothes on, they leade me out agen.

Whom devils flie, thus is he toss’d of men:

Was ever grief like mine?

And now wearie of sport, glad to ingrosse

All spite in one, counting my life their losse,

They carrie me to my most bitter crosse:

Was ever grief like mine?

O all ye who passe by, behold and see;

Man stole the fruit, but I must climbe the tree;

The tree of life to all, but onely me:

Was ever grief like mine?

Lo, here I hang, charg’d with a world of sinne,

The greater world o’ th’ two; for that came in

By words, but this by sorrow I must win:

Was ever grief like mine?

Such sorrow as, if sinfull man could feel,

Or feel his part, he would not cease to kneel.

Till all were melted, though he were all steel:

Was ever grief like mine?

But, O my God, my God! why leav’st thou me,

The sonne, in whom thou dost delight to be?

My God, my God ------

Never was grief like mine.

Shame tears my soul, my bodie many a wound;

Sharp nails pierce this, but sharper that confound;

Reproches, which are free, while I am bound.

Was ever grief like mine?

Now heal thy self, Physician; now come down.

Alas! I did so, when I left my crown

And fathers smile for you, to feel his frown:

Was ever grief like mine?

In healing not my self, there doth consist

All that salvation, which ye now resist;

Your safetie in my sicknesse doth subsist:

Was ever grief like mine?

Betwixt two theeves I spend my utmost breath,

As he that for some robberie suffereth.

Alas! what have I stollen from you? Death.

Was ever grief like mine?

A king my title is, prefixt on high;

Yet by my subjects am condemn’d to die

A servile death in servile companie:

Was ever grief like mine?

They give me vineger mingled with gall,

But more with malice: yet, when they did call,

With Manna, Angels food, I fed them all:

Was ever grief like mine?

They part my garments, and by lot dispose

My coat, the type of love, which once cur’d those

Who sought for help, never malicious foes:

Was ever grief like mine?

Nay, after death their spite shall further go;

For they will pierce my side, I full well know;

That as sinne came, so Sacraments might flow:

Was ever grief like mine?

But now I die; now all is finished.

My wo, mans weal: and now I bow my head.

Onely let others say, when I am dead,

Never was grief like mine.

this is pathetic

2009-03-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

The Episcopal Church's House of Deputies regularly produces a "Blue Book Report" for the consideration of General Convention, based on survey's of Episcopal Church congregations. It is out. Here is an article about it.

And here are some highlights:

"In a similar survey undertaken in 2005, 37 percent of congregations reported serious conflict that resulted in at least some members leaving. About one-third of those responding in 2005 attributed the conflict to decisions made during the 2003 General Convention. In a similar survey conducted in 2008, 64 percent of congregations reported some level of conflict over the ordination of homosexual clergy, with most reporting such conflict to be serious."

"Overall, 47 percent of Episcopal congregations had serious conflict over this issue, 40 percent indicated that some people left and 18 percent indicated that some people withheld funds...”

"The report noted that The Episcopal Church has an average 19,000 more deaths than births each year, which is comparable to the loss of an entire diocese annually."

"In 2005, 44 percent of congregations reported experiencing some degree of financial difficulty. By the 2008 the figure had increased to 68 percent."

"Only one domestic diocese, South Carolina, reported growth in active members and communicants in good standing between 2003 and 2007."

Well done, Episcopal Church. When you forsake the Gospel and persecute the orthodox, when you exchange your birthright for tepid folderol about carbon footprints, when your religion consists only of what you can plunder from the secular left's most vapid sloganeers, people aren't interested. Particularly the youth. I went through a brief phase, for about half an hour, at some point during high school when I thought Woodstock and its values and blandishments were kind of interesting. Then I got over it.

father and kristen and claire olver

2009-03-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

Father Matthew Olver, curate at Church of the Incarnation, has been a friend, supporter, occasional celebrant and guest speaker here at Holy Cross. He was supposed to be one of our speakers on prayer during our Lenten series, but had to cancel because his daughter, Claire, is today having the third and final of a series of three surgeries to repair a congenital heart abnormality.

Please pray for Father Matthew, his wife Kristen, and for Claire as they go through this difficult time. Pray for the medical staff who will be tending to Claire, and that the operation will be glitch-free, painless, and that Claire's recovery will be swift and total.

The Olvers have set up a blog for friends to follow their progress. It is here.

derrida

2009-03-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

Unlike many strident traditionalists, I have a love for Jacques Derrida. In particular, I have a great love for his work Sauf le nom, which he wrote in 1993 as a solicited response to a conference on apophatic theology. Many think that Derrida was an atheist. His thinking and his writing had a tendency toward opacity, and its difficult to say. But it seems clear that he was scrupulously honest, and it seems to me that he had an open heart which, biblically, is itself an acceptable sacrifice.

This passage comes from the end of Sauf le nom, after Derrida's long and ambiguous commentary on the epigrams of Angelus Silesius. Derrida is sort of asking himself why he is drawn so much to the idiom of apophatic theology.

Here you have to believe in the accident or in the contingency of a (hi)story: an autobiographical chance [alea], if you like, that is happening to me this summer. I chose to bring here with me this given book, the Cherubinic Wanderer (and only extracts at that), to bring it to this family place, in order to watch over a mother who is slowly leaving us and no longer knows how to name. As unknown as he remains to me, Silesius begins to be more familiar and more friendly to me. I have been coming back to him recently, almost secretly, because of sentences that I have not cited today. And furthermore, it takes up little room when one is traveling (seventy pages). Isn't negative theology -- we have said this enough -- also the most economical formalization? The greatest power of the possible? A reserve of language, almost inexhaustible in so few words? This literature forever elliptical, taciturn, cryptic, obstinately withdrawing, however, from all literature, inaccessible there even where it seems to go [se rendre], the exasperation of a jealousy that passion carries beyond itself; this would seem to be a literature for the desert or for exile. It holds desire in suspense, and always saying too much or too little, each time it leaves you without ever going away from you.

And here is an excerpt from Silesius, which I have quoted here before:

"The most impossible is possible
With your arrow you cannot reach the sun,
With mine I can sweep under my fire the eternal sun.

sermon for the fourth sunday in lent -- church of the holy cross, march 22, 2009

2009-03-24T08:56:00.000-07:00

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s Old Testament reading from 2 Chronicles tells a very condensed version of the story of destruction of the temple by the forces of the Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, and of the exile of the Jews from their home for seventy years, the “Babylonian Captivity”. This was an incredibly significant and traumatic event for the Jewish people, and a much more replete account of it can be found elsewhere in the Old Testament (2 Kings, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, inter alia).

In today’s reading, the Chronicler tells us the SPIRITUAL reason for the destruction of Jerusalem: “King Zedekiah and all the leading priests and the people were exceedingly unfaithful, following all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the house of the Lord, which the Lord had hallowed in Jerusalem.”

It is important to remember that the commandments of God are given to us for our own good. God does not need our service. Our righteousness adds nothing to his greatness or his glory, and our sinfulness, our disobedience to his commandments does not harm God in any way whatsoever. He has not given revealed his will to us because he gets something from our obedience. In the book of Job, one of Job’s interlocutors (the only one, as it turns out, with any wisdom – and he was the youngest of all of them) makes this point. He says: “Look at the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds, which are higher than you. If you have sinned, what do you accomplish against [God]? And if your transgressions are multiplied, what do you do to him? If you are righteous, what do you give to him; or what does he receive from your hand? Your wickedness concerns a man like yourself, and your righteousness [only has to do with mortals]” (Job 35.5ff).

This, incidentally, sheds light on the reason we protect holy things: why, for example, it is not alright to receive communion if we are in a state of serious sin which we have not confessed – not because somehow it brings dishonor to God; but rather because it is bad for US. God forbids it not to protect himself or his glory, but because he is a consuming fire (Heb. 12.29), and unless we are willing to become like him, to be reformed in his image, then careless closeness to him will destroy us.

The broader point is that God has revealed his will to us, he has given us commandments, because he LOVES us. This has ever been the case, because he is LOVE. He always has been love, and he always will be love. He cannot NOT be love, because he cannot be other than himself. His love is the reason he brought the universe into being. He did not need it. And this is one of the most mysterious truths there is: God created us because he loved us. And the story of our relationship with him, chiefly as told by the Bible, is the story of his seeking to do us good in EVERY instance.

That should be in the back of our minds as we read today’s Old Testament lesson about the destruction of Jerusalem, about God’s judgment and his wrath toward Judah. And the Chronicler points out that God had persistently wooed his people, even after they had forsaken him and gone whoring after other gods: “The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; but they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words, and scoffing at his prophets.” And then the Chronicler says something that we are apt to misunderstand in the light of God’s unfailing love. He says “the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, till there was no remedy. Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged; he gave them all into his hand.”

How are we to reconcile this account of God’s wrath with his unfailing love? How can he at once love us, always and unconditionally, and yet wrathfully deliver us to destruction and death? The answer is that he does not deliver us to destruction and death. Rather, when we persistently turn away from him, when we are presented with his law, which he has given us for our own good, precisely to SAVE us from destruction and death, when we go our own way and ignore his determined seduction of our souls, then we take ourselves into death and destruction. Our relationship with God comes to be characterized only by our distance from him, because WE have run away. And when we find ourselves distanced, by our own self-will, from the source of our life and sustenance, we find ourselves sliding into destruction.

God allows this to happen because he honors our freedom – because our ability freely to choose is the bedrock of our ability to love God and one another – because when love is constrained or forced it is not love at all. But if we exercise our freedom in turning away from the one who loves us and who always and only gives us life, then we find ourselves, as did the Jews in today’s OT reading, at the mercy of the forces of evil arrayed against us in the world. We find ourselves subject to those powers that seek our destruction. And we EXPERIENCE ourselves as the objects of God’s wrath, though in fact he is only honoring our freedom, the material condition of our reciprocal love for him.

But what happens when we find ourselves in such a situation, as we all have done, or will do, to one degree or another, at some point in our lives? What do we do when we find ourselves under God’s judgment? As the prophet Isaiah says, “let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, and he will have compassion, and to our God, for he will richly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55). God has the power to bring good out of evil, to bring life from death. This is the essence of our faith as Christians. When we profess our believe that Christ has died, but is now risen, we bear witness to our dogged insistence that God is ALL ABOUT bringing forth good – even, and especially, from the worst conceivable circumstances, and even from out of his wrath, because we belong to him: “you have been buried with [Jesus] in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Col. 2.12). Nothing can alter that fact. The Lord said “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand” (John 10.28).

And we see this as well in the reading from 2 Chronicles. After a period of 70 years, there arose a new empire, that of Persia, which defeated and overthrew the Babylonians. The King of the Persians was named Cyrus. And, as the Chronicler says, “the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: ‘Thus says Cyrus king of Persia, “The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may the Lord his God be with him. Let him go up.’”

The Lord did something for his people that they could have never foreseen, but his ways are not our ways, neither are his thoughts our thoughts. Right in the middle of their deepest darkness, he raises up Cyrus and the Persians, who conquer and subjugate the Babylonians, and become the instruments for God to call his people back to Zion. Because of his benevolence toward God’s people, the Bible has only good things to say about Cyrus. Isaiah the prophet even calls him God’s anointed [the messiah] (Isaiah 45.1).

And in this, of course, Cyrus prefigures Jesus, God’s true anointed: another king raised up by God at a totally unexpected historical moment – Jesus, who just as significantly, emerges, if we allow him to, in our own lives, in our times of desolation, there to proclaim our kinship with him by the will of the Father. He is the one that brings us home from exile, sheds light on our darkness, and brings us out of desolation and death into his abundant and eternal life, if we will only follow him.

In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life (jn. 5.40)

2009-02-21T07:26:00.000-08:00

Apparently both CNN and NBC refused to air this ad. Hypocrites.

sicut cervus

2009-02-14T17:45:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, the Psalm at mass is Psalm 42: "As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God." Here is what Augustine says:

“It [the deer] destroys serpents, and after the killing of serpents, it is inflamed with thirst yet more violent; having destroyed serpents, it runs to the water-brooks, with thirst more keen than before. The serpents are thy vices; destroy the serpents of iniquity, then wilt thou long yet more for the Fountain of Truth.”

Verse 2: "My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?"

Verse 3: "My tears have been my food day and night, while all day long they say to me, 'Where now is your God?'"

Verse 3 is reminiscent of Ecclesiasticus: "[Wisdom] will feed him with the bread of understanding, and give him the water of wisdom to drink."

So penance is the route to wisdom. Therefore "My tears have been my food day and night" etc.

St. Bonaventure considers the vindication of the wise and penitent soul: "What would I not give to behold the multitude, composed not only of victors from among every tribe of men, but of Angels, of Archangels, of every dignity of the celestial hierarchy? Of these I may speak: of these I can perchance think: but of the King Who is in the midst of them, -- but of the Lamb That liveth, and yet hath, as it were, been slain, what voice of man can say a single word, what heart of man can think a single thought? My soul is athirst for that city which is the dwelling-place of all Angels, all Saints: where eternal salvation abounds as from an overflowing fountain; where truth reigns, where none deceives or is deceived, where nothing that is beautiful can be ejected, where nothing that is wretched can be admitted.”

Amen; I say. Amen.

a life without division

2009-02-03T21:53:00.000-08:00

More from A Simple House. Read more. Or read it all.

To live a life without division entails that there is no ‘going home’ or ‘getting off work.’ Although it is helpful to have specific times reserved for prayer, we are also told to ‘pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:17). In the same way, there may be certain events related to evangelization, but we should also constantly evangelize. A Simple House is trying to live ministry and Christianity.

Pope Benedict XVI points out:

For what faith really states is precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish office and person; with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. Here there is no private area reserved for an “I” which remains in the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can be “off duty”; here there is no “I” separate from the work; the “I” is the work and the work is the “I”.

And precisely because this being, as a totality, is nothing but service, it is sonship. To that extent it is not until this point that the Christian revaluation of values reaches its final goal; only here does it become fully clear that he who surrenders himself completely to service for others, to complete selflessness and self-emptying, clearly becomes these things – that this very person is the true man, the man of the future, the commixture of man and God.

Jesus calls us to an adopted sonship when he says, ‘whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother’ (Matthew 12:50). A Simple House is an attempt to pursue sonship through complete service.

how would jesus live?

2009-02-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

Awesome. Read it all.

At Simple House, as at other Christian intentional communities, the answer demands devotion and sacrifice. None of the missionaries at Simple House has an outside job. Laura earns just $200 a month to minister to about two dozen families in Southeast, doing everything from delivering food to helping a couple deal with their daughter's suicide attempt. She and her housemates have taken vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. They pray every morning and evening and attend Mass daily. In their rowhouse on T Street NW, they have no TV. No Internet. No alcohol inside the house. And no sex. Ever. What the young women lack in amenities, they make up for in sightings of rats and roaches.This is what it looks like to reject careerism and affluence in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. This is what it looks like to become a modern-day radical.

holy cross sermon for epiphany 3 / january 25, 2009

2009-01-25T18:39:00.000-08:00

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week we heard the account from the Old Testament of the Lord calling the first of Israel’s great prophets, the prophet Samuel. He was in the temple of the Lord as a child; he “did not yet know the Lord”; and “the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him” (1 Sam. 3.7). But the Lord called to him in the night, and Samuel learned to discern the Lord’s voice, and he answered: “Speak Lord, for your servant hears” (1 Sam. 3.10).

Today the Gospel lesson sets before us the account of the Lord calling Simon and Andrew, James and John. “Now after John [the Baptist] was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1.15).

Our lectionary has us hearing this text today, on the heals of our commemoration of the Lord’s Baptism, because the Lord’s baptism marked the beginning of his public life. It meant the end of the era of the Old Testament, and the beginning of the New, the dawning of the Kingdom of God. I have said many times that Jesus is himself the Kingdom of God, because his life, every moment of his life, and every ounce of his being, was given, 100%, to the carrying-out of God’s will. He was the instantiation, the INCARNATION, of the divine will. And so he is not only the King, but he is the Kingdom, the place where God reigns.

We can see, therefore, why he should come onto the scene of history saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand…” Because HE HIMSELF is at hand. He has arrived. The world can see him – can see the Kingdom. It – and HE – are THERE. You can lay eyes on him; you can listen to his voice; you can lay hands on him; he can be touched; he can even be killed.

This supreme and preeminent fact of the history of the cosmos demands a response from those who encounter it. The Incarnation of the eternal Word is the axis around which human history now turns – we measure our years by it – it confronts us. God’s presence in the ambit of history is not an object of curiosity. The Lord did not come among us to be studied and scrutinized, he came to CALL US to himself. His presence is an invitation to be accepted or declined, but it cannot be ignored.

And so we return to the voice of the Lord: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; REPENT, AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL.” That is the substance of the Lord’s invitation. He calls us to be his disciples. He calls us to repentance: to stop whatever else it was we were doing, or whatever it is we are inclined to do, and to follow him. The manifestation of the kingdom means that we can no longer find fulfillment, we can no longer earn a living, we can no longer find ourselves, in ANYTHING or ANYONE other than Jesus Christ.

“And passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea… And Jesus said to them, ‘FOLLOW ME…’ And IMMEDIATELY they left their nets and followed him. And going a little farther, he saw James… and John…. And immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and followed him.”

Notice how Saint Mark repeats the word “immediately”. This word draws out attention to the fact that an encounter with the Kingdom, with the incarnate Word, is an encounter with a PERSON. Jesus Christ calls to us. Do discern the will of God, to listen for his voice in our lives, does not mean to consider a set of abstract propositions; much less does it mean to follow a set of rules. Rather it means to answer the call of Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, and Son of Mary. He is many things, but perhaps before anything else, he is a person… a person who loves us, who has come to us, right into the middle of our circumstances, our isolation or our confusion… who calls us by name.

This is the call we will recognize. And throughout the Gospels we see the personal nature of the call of Jesus. Just last Sunday we heard the Lord call Nathaniel, and the personal nature of the Lord’s call – the fact that the Lord KNEW him (Jn. 1.48) – so moved Nathaniel that he confessed Jesus, then and there, to be “the Son of God, the King of Israel” (John 1.49). And perhaps the most moving instance of this in the Gospels is Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Lord at dawn on Easter morning. Mistaking Jesus for the gardener, the anguished Magdalene says “they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him” (Jn. 20.13). And Jesus simply said to her “Mary”, and with joy, she recognizes him.

The Lord calls us each by name. And he calls us anew each day. To each of us he says “Follow me.” And immediately we are faced with a decision. To follow him means that we must trust him. Ultimately to trust him means to trust that he will lead us home, that we will be enfolded in his mercy, in the quiet, unyielding sweep of eternity through the arc of history; that we will be enfolded in his holy incarnation at Bethlehem, and carried on the ebb his passion and death, over history’s visible horizon to the shores of heavenly Zion.

But as it was for Mary Magdalene, for Nathaniel, for Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John, it begins by our listening for his voice. It begins with vigilance and daily prayer. Peter and Andrew had their nets, James and John had their father Zebedee, and so too we have a thousand preoccupations and commitments, and a part of repentance means the reordering of our priorities, and a reconstruction of the hierarchies of our lives in the light of our confession of faith in the Gospel.

Jesus Christ alone is our salvation, our only hope, our light and our peace. Apart from him there is only confusion, disorder, and ultimately death. But he is the way, the truth and the life. And to each of us he says “Follow me.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

holy cross sermon for epiphany 2 / january 18, 2009

2009-01-21T08:37:00.000-08:00

I Have Heard You Calling in the Night: Listening for the Lord's Voice

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s readings set before us accounts of what was called in Latin, vocatio, or vocation: the Lord’s call in the life of the believer.

In the Old Testament lesson we read about the call of the boy Samuel, who would grow up to become the first great prophet of Israel, and who would anoint Israel’s first kings, Saul and David.

The passage begins by saying that “the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; and there was no frequent vision.” And we learn that even the old priest’s, Eli’s, “eyesight had begun to grow dim.”

The lesson to be drawn from this passage is that even when you find yourself in a time of desolation or spiritual draught, it is important to serve the Lord anyway.

I often think that we are in such a time now. There seems to be plenty of desolation and confusion in the Church, and especially in the world, and there is certainly “no frequent vision.” Yet like Samuel, even though we are in the midst of such a time, our task is to “minister to the Lord” – to serve him with assiduity and dedication within the context in which the Lord has placed us, and in fidelity to what has been handed down to us.

The passage says that “the lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down within the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.” It is hard not to see in this passage a foreshadowing of the presence of God within his Church – not just spiritually, but his Eucharistic presence in our tabernacles, indicated by the perpetual burning of the sanctuary lamp.

One lesson to draw from this passage, is that despite the fact that the Lord may at times SEEM to have abandoned us, though he seems to be silent, he is in fact always with us, that indeed sometimes we experience his presence AS absence, for any number of reasons. But the fact is that he has promised never to fail or forsake us (cf. Heb. 13.5).

We do well to remember as well that very often in the midst of what seem to us to be times of desolation – such as, for example, the current “economic crisis”, which is affecting many of us, we can very easily jump to the conclusion that God has forsaken us, or that God has allowed catastrophe to come upon us, or that he has fallen down on his main job which is to protect us from this kind of thing. But this kind of attitude – into which we are all prone to fall – betrays a latent tendency to idolatry in our hearts.

If when our money or our material circumstances forsake us, and we conclude that THE LORD has forsaken us, what does that mean about what we thought of the Lord? It means that we had misidentified him with those things that we now find diminished. So desolation can be a tearing down of idols, an invitation from the Lord to examine our priorities, to ask who or what REALLY has ruled us: who or what had really hitherto been our Lord?

But the lamp of God, and his tabernacle, should be a constant reminder that “the Lord is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold” (Psalm 46.7). I sometimes walk or drive by the church at night, when all the lights are out, and I look in the window out there, and see the flame of the sanctuary lamp flickering in the darkness. In fact, the darkness only serves to make it seem brighter. Its there all the time, but when the church is lit up by all this artificial light, you don’t really notice it. But when its dark, when there’s no other light, it can fill your vision, and draw out the otherwise unnoticed or unremarkable contours of your surroundings.

The Lord is like that. We should remember the Lord calling Elijah at Horeb, that the Lord “was not in wind… not in the earthquake… not in the fire”; but was in the stillness and silence. “And when Eli'jah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out” (1 Kings 19.13).

We’re prone to missing the call of God in our lives because we cannot hear him over the din of our circumstances. And things can get so bad that when our circumstances begin to fail, we are apt to conclude that the Lord himself has failed. We can be a “foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not” (Jer. 5.21). We are often like Samuel, who, according to today’s reading, “did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” And one wonders whether it wasn’t precisely because Eli was physically blind that he had such keen spiritual sight, and was able to open Samuel’s heart: “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.’”

If you want to hear the voice of the Lord calling you, you have got to learn to listen for it. The way to listen for the voice of the Lord calling to you is first of all to be quiet; to enter into the silence of your heart, and to close your eyes to the light that reflects so insanely off of the material world with which we are surrounded every day. As today’s Psalm puts it: to meditate on the Lord “in the night watches” – in darkness and silence.

This is not as easy as it sounds. I would encourage you, some time this week, to go to a place where you cannot be disturbed, and to pray. Ask the Lord to speak to you, to open your heart, and to call to you, as he called to Samuel and to Nathaniel. And then close your eyes, and be silent for five minutes. Do nothing but listen in your heart. Just five minutes. You will see how hard it is. But do it. And do it again. Make a habit of doing it.

By degrees the Lord will open your heart, and open the eyes of your spirit, until one day “you will see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” What a thought! That our mortal nature is capable of perceiving such a sight! But it is. We were made to see it. We are restless until we see it.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

sermon for the first sunday after the epiphany: the baptism of our lord

2009-01-14T11:03:00.000-08:00

Preached at the Church of the Holy Cross, January 11, 2008. By Father Will Brown

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Happy Epiphany. Last Tuesday was the feast of the Epiphany, and shortly after the Epiphany, within its “octave”, the Church sets before our minds the Baptism of the Lord.

In the Nicene Creed we say that we believe in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins”. The Church teaches that Jesus had no sin. So why was he baptized? It was not until I was in college that it occurred to me to ask this question. And when I asked it, I was given a rather poor answer by a well-meaning priest, who told me that maybe Jesus didn’t know who he was until his baptism, and that this was kind of his way of figuring things out for himself, a kind of coming-of-age experience.

Part of the problem with this answer is that it ignores the Scriptural data. In St. Matthew’s account of the Lord’s baptism, John the Baptist tries to prevent Jesus from being baptized. John is flabbergasted, and says to Jesus: “I need to be baptized by YOU, and do you come to ME?” (Matt. 3.14). And Jesus answers John: “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (v. 15).

The plentitude of God’s righteousness is part and parcel of the manifestation of the Kingdom of God, which as I have said time and again, is Jesus himself . What is happening in the mystery of the Baptism of Jesus, and the reason the Church presents it to us during the Epiphany Octave, is that the identity of Jesus is being disclosed for the first time: it is the beginning of his public life and his public ministry as the Messiah. For when Jesus comes up from the water, “he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice from heaven [saying] “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”

And so Jesus is identified, in the sight of all “the people”, as the plentitude of righteousness and so the fulfillment of God’s promises through the prophets. “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.”

In today’s reading from Isaiah, for example, we hear one such prophetic messianic expectation: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him”. And in today’s Psalm we hear another: “He will say to me, ‘You are my Father, my God and the rock of my salvation.’ I will make him my firstborn and higher than the kings of the earth.”

The episode of Jesus’s Baptism is there first of all to bear witness to him as the one of whom Isaiah and the Psalmist and the other prophets were speaking of in hope with respect to God’s promise of deliverance and the establishment of a kingdom of justice and peace. At Jesus’s baptism, he is revealed to be this long-awaited “fulfillment of all righteousness”.

But there is a diachronic dimension to the Lord’s Baptism: It serves as an example for us to imitate. For now, a part of our comportment and conformity to the “measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4.13) – a part of our growing into the shape of his life, death, and resurrection, is our going down into the waters of Baptism not merely in obedience to him, but in IMITATION of him.

On an ontological level though, all of this leaves unanswered the conundrum about the purpose of Baptism. If it is FOR the forgiveness of sins, and if Jesus is without sin, then why is he being baptized? Is it merely an example for us, or does it actually DO something? Might it not have been easier for Jesus simply to have said to the disciples, “Look guys; you need to be baptized into my death to be forgiven – I don’t need it, because I’m me, sinless, etc.”

The truth is that there is a paradoxical reversal at work in this mystery, for rather than being purified by the waters of the earth, the Lord is in fact purifying the waters with his body, and making them capable of regeneration. It is the waters of the earth that are receiving baptism at the hands of the Lord, when he goes down into them, not the other way around.

The ancients had seen in the waters’ depths, an only dimly-understood domain of dark power, capable of wrecking ships, drowning men, and flooding entire countries. But from now on, with, through, and in Christ, the waters of the earth will be the condition of possibility for our regeneration and deliverance. Our being “renewed” by the power of God, and capable of communion with him, and so of deliverance and fulfillment.

The Fathers of the Church saw in this mystery the fulfillment of OT prophecies, as for example when the Psalmist speaks of the Lord “dividing the sea” and “shattering the heads of the dragons upon the waters” (Psalm 74.12). This is a prophetic trope that emerges repeatedly in the Old Testament – how “in that day” (cf. Joel 3.18), when God’s righteousness appears, God’s chosen will go down into the waters and fight against and kill the evil that dwells there (cf. e.g. Job. 26.12).

It is as though, in the Baptism of the Lord, God speaks again as he did at the first: “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures” (Gen. 1.20), only now, rather than dolphins and sharks, in Jesus Christ , the waters bring forth sons and daughters.

That is the real truth of Jesus’s baptism: by a kind of spiritual synecdoche, it means that the Lord has entered into his creation, has taken our flesh, brought light to the darkness, wrought healing through weakness, bestowed riches by means of poverty, and brought what was dead to life. The good news of the mystery of the Lord’s baptism is that what hitherto held violent sway over us has now, by and in the power of Christ, been renewed and made into something salutary. So we have no longer to be afraid. Nothing in this world can harm us, but everything – the physical world, our life-circumstances, whatever they are, our enemies, the powers that oppose us and try to drag us down, EVERYTHING has become a means to our salvation in Jesus Christ.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

more on hilaire belloc...

2009-01-07T20:35:00.000-08:00

From 1906 to 1910 he was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South, but swiftly became disillusioned with party politics. During one campaign speech he was asked by a heckler if he was a "papist". Retrieving his rosary from his pocket he responded, "Sir, so far as possible I hear Mass each day and I go to my knees and tell these beads each night. If that offends you, then I pray God may spare me the indignity of representing you in Parliament." The crowd cheered and Belloc won the election.

Via wikipedia.

mory's to go on indefinite hiatus

2009-01-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

This is honestly one of the saddest things. My time at Yale was largely a very happy time. I honestly grew to love the University and its traditions and institutions. My memories of countless meals with friends at Mory's are some of the happiest. The notion that Mory's is "elitist" is ridiculous, particularly when it is accused of elitism by Yale students. It is one of the most egalitarian institutions at Yale. The truth is probably just that many Yale people are angry at the preppy culture that made Yale great in the 19th and 20th centuries, they hate broiled calf's liver, and they can't be bothered to put on a tie. These things often go hand in hand.

I hope that they at least publicize the recipe for Baker's Soup should the worst happen.

The picture above is from one of my last dinners at Mory's.

holy cross christmas eve sermon 2008

2009-01-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Every year at Christmas the television and the print media are filled with stories trying to get at the “truth” of the Christmas story. They address topics like “the historical Jesus”, and they try to scrape away the centuries of pious mythology, to salvage the nuggets of whatever might be empirically or historically verifiable from the elaborately mythologized Gospel narratives. There are whole cottage industries devoted to this scraping and pruning of the narratives, and most Biblical scholars at prominent universities and seminaries are hired precisely because they have demonstrated themselves to be adept wielders of the pruning hook of scientific standards and empirical benchmarks.

But that is not what Christmas is about. Several nights ago, in a moment of acute romanticism, I purchased “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and watched it. It’s a wonderful little cartoon, and I highly recommend it. It recounts Charlie Brown’s frustration with the commercialism and abstraction into which the celebration of Christmas has descended in Western culture. This, indeed, is the perennial concern of many of us, particularly those of us who are prone to sentimentalism. Charlie Brown goes around looking for the true meaning of Christmas, and he’s frustrated at every turn. Finally in a moment of exasperation, he cries out “Isn’t there anybody who can tell me what Christmas is all about?” And then Linus says very quietly and straightforwardly: “I can tell you what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” Linus asks for lights and a microphone, and he proceeds to read the Gospel lesson from this mass:

And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyre'ni-us was governor of Syria.) And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David,) to be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

And Linus concludes: “That is what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

We are not here to remember something that can be placed under a microscope or laid-bear before the critical scrutiny of the unimaginative. We are here to commemorate and to re-enact a myth, something that was and is and will always be totally and completely impossible. It is somehow fitting that Linus, an unreal, one dimensional, cartoon character, should be the one to remind us of what is most real and most true. For virgins do not conceive. Almighty God, whom the whole world cannot contain, is not laid in a manger. God does not grow up. God is certainly not nailed to a tree. And dead men do not live again. It is IMPOSSIBLE …Yet this is our teaching. This is our faith. This is the TRUTH. We believe and confess what is “most impossible”.

[Cf. Angelus Silesius:
"The most impossible is possible
With your arrow you cannot reach the sun,
With mine I can sweep under my fire the eternal sun.”]

The great Anglican lay-poet W.H. Auden saw the great impossibility of salvation, and he wrote a poem about it called “For the Time Being” –

Alone, alone, about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood.

Where is that Law for which we broke our own,
Where now that Justice for which Flesh resigned
Her hereditary right to passion, Mind
His will to absolute power? Gone. Gone.
Where is that Law for which we broke our own?

The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odoured ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.

We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.

We, who must die, do not seek what is possible; for what is possible is telluric, “of the earth” – it is mundane, and it cannot save us. We who must die demand a MIRACLE. We DEMAND the impossible. Why? Because we want to be SAVED, and salvation is not possible.

But we believe and confess that the impossible is nevertheless ACTUAL. Virgins do not conceive. And yet a Virgin conceived. God Almighty is totally beyond our ken, out of reach; we are cut off from Heaven. Yet the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth – and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

That is the MIRACLE of Christmas – the miracle of our Christian faith – the impossibility of the ACTUAL in the narrative of salvation (for with God, NOTHING will be impossible): “to YOU is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

hilaire belloc

2009-01-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

In light of the barrage of distressing and at times cataclysmic economic news and prognosticating, I have renewed my interest in Agrarianism, which was born in me in part because I was occasionally, but regularly, exposed to farm life as a child, and partly probably because of a streak of Southern chauvinism awakened in me through my reading of Fugitive poetry, New Criticism (very much still the critical assumptions informing those who taught literature at Sewanee when I was there), and Agrarian essays in college. This recipe has lately and naturally been supplemented by Communitarian and Distributist sources in 19th and 20th century Catholic intellectual history.

To shuck it all down to the cob (to use an Agrarian metaphor), this has all led me this morning to the Wikipedia entry on Hilaire Belloc. I thought this quote was hilarious:

A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship at All Souls College in Oxford. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin and placing it before him on the table during the interview for the fellowship.

Which would lead me to conclude: who needs them anyway? But I know a little of the disappointment of not winning an All Souls fellowship. That happened to a very talented friend, who was indeed very disappointed.

the holy father's christmas message to the roman curia

2008-12-27T08:38:00.001-08:00

Well worth the time it takes to read it all. A notable and timely excerpt:

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to its faithful only the message of salvation. She has a responsibility for Creation, and it should validate this responsibility in public.

In so doing, it should defend not just the earth, water and air as gifts of Creation that belong to everyone. She should also protect man from destroying himself.

It is necessary to have something like an ecology of man, understood in the right sense. It is not outdated metaphysics when the Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and asks that this natural order be respected.

This has to do with faith in the Creator and listening to the language of creation, which, if disregarded, would be man's self-destruction and therefore a destruction of God's work itself.

That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation (nature) and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.

The tropical rain forests deserve our protection, yes, but man does not deserve it less as a Creature of the Spirit himself, in whom is inscribed a message that does not mean a contradiction of human freedom but its condition.

The great theologians of Scholasticism described matrimony - which is the lifelong bond between a man and a woman - as a sacrament of Creation, that the Creator himself instituted, and that Christ, without changing the message of Creation, welcomed in the story of his alliance with men.

Part of the announcement that the Church should bring to men is a testimonial for the Spirit Creator present in all of nature, but specially in the nature of man, who was created in the image of God.

One must reread the encyclical Humanae vitae with this perspective: the intention of Pope Paul VI was to defend love against consumer sex, the future against the exclusive claim of the moment, and human nature against manipulation.

bread of life, baked in rhode island

2008-12-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

The New York Times: "One company makes about 80 percent of the altar bread used by the churches in the United States."

Read it all.