Tag: Faith

Simple Things

The Way the World Ends

Melissa1 Comment

She knew very early on, as women sometimes do when pregnant, that she was going to have a boy. She and her husband chose a simple and strong name for him: William Joseph. On the eve of the feast of St. Nicholas, William came into this world stillborn. He had twenty-four weeks, in the womb of his mother, to experience life: the sounds of laughter, the feeling of love and security, the darkness, and the satisfaction of nourishment. He also vicariously experienced the reality of God’s grace and the effect of conversion on the human person. 


I have faith that, in God’s mercy, William is at eternal rest with his cousins who preceded him in death. Oddly, though, William’s death brought to my mind T.S. Eliot’s famous words on the apocalypse: “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.” The coming of a child is very much like a mini-apocalypse. From the moment of conception, a child ends your world as you know it. Everything you thought you knew about life, about love, about struggle, and about yourself is blighted. This new soul holds you to account for yourself in ways you never knew existed, because they hadn’t existed before. You are confronted with the choice to either fearfully embrace growth and conversion, or fearfully withdraw into your self and eventually die with the world you can’t let go of. 

Maybe its the timing of things, but to me this also sounds a lot like the nature of Advent.  We prepare  for the birth of the Christ-child who invites each of us to let our world end and embrace a new world while we still have the choice to do so. The penitential nature and imagery of the common Advent narrative reinforces this. Unless we want to be like the inns that turned the Holy Family away, we must “make room” for Jesus by jettisoning our sinfulness. 

I suspect, though, that Advent is apocalyptic because it is a warning wrapped in hope and presented with joy. The season warns us that the end of the world will not come with great pomp and circumstance, but in moments of quiet encounter. And it will not come all at once. The Advent-apocalypse is the beginning of a bittersweet journey of vulnerability and openness to a new life shaped by those whose presence, no matter how brief, are God’s invitation to draw closer to his Son. 

 


Catechesis

Teaching the Cardinal Virtues: All Fun, No Fuss

Melissa3 Comments

I am currently preparing to speak on two topics at a diocesan conference for the first time, ever! I’m a giddy mess of facts, anecdotes, and random tidbits of far-flung Church teachings that I am organizing as a coherent narrative for my audience. Oh, and one of the two topics is that perennial favorite: Catholic morality.

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My talk on morality is centered around conscience formation, and of course the cardinal virtues make an appearance. As I collected my thoughts and random points of doctrine and Scripture, I came up with a fun way to help students of all ages remember the cardinal virtues AND connect them to the 1st Commandment as found in Deuteronomy 6:5 and repeated by Christ in Luke 10:27; “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind.”

To help students remember the cardinal virtues, have them stand up straight with their arms out from their sides (like a cross). Point at each of the following as you explain: prudence is your head, where you reason out what brings you closer to or farther from God. Justice is at your chest, the “seat” of your soul which communicates God’s image and likeness. Fortitude is your feet, for it takes courage to take a step in the right direction. Temperance is your arms, which embrace what is good and push away what is not.

And how does that connect to the first of the Greatest Commandments? Fortitude, the heart: “Lord don’t let my heart fail me now.” Justice, the soul. Temperance, your strength to say “yes” to God and “no” to sin. And prudence, your mind.

What do you think of this little mnemonic? I see it being a fun way to get students of all ages engaged in Scripture, theology and practical morality without it being too heavy or boring, or having it be forgotten in a month. If you try this out, please let me know how it works for you!

Simple Things

Profound Quotables from BXVI’s “Jesus of Nazareth”

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Long on my “need to read” list, I chose volume one of then-Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth for my Lenten reading, and finished it right after Easter began. The book shook me to my Church-nerd core, and I think my head exploded after every third page or so. For instance: offering evidence that Barabas the “thief” was truly a political rebel leader and therefore appeared more like the traditional messianic figure that Israel was expecting (hence why the people chose him over Jesus!). Or the implication that the “Our Father,” given to the disciples at their request to “pray as he does,” is literally the prayer that God the Son prays to/with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

I love little details like this! But this holy and misunderstood servant of God was firing on all cylinders, and the results are as profound as they are Church-trivia worthy.

If you never read this book, or haven’t read it in a long time, I offer below my top 10 tabbed quotes for your enjoyment and reflection.

On the role of prophet:

His task is not to report on the events of tomorrow or the next day in order to satisfy human curiosity or the human need for security. He shows us the face of God, and in so doing he shows us the path that we have to take.

On the multiplication of loaves:

This miracle of the loaves has three aspects, then. It is preceded by the search for God, for his word, for the teaching that sets the whole of life on the right path. Furthermore, God is asked to supply the bread. Finally, readiness to share with one another is an essential element of the miracle. Listening to God becomes living with God, and leads from faith to love, to the discovery of the other. Jesus is not indifferent toward men’s hunger, their bodily needs, but he places these things in the proper context and the proper order.

On Jesus’ Third Temptation throughout history:

The Christian Empire attempted at an early stage to use the faith in order to cement political unity…The powerlessness of faith, the earthly powerlessness of Jesus Christ, was to be given the helping hand of political and military might. This temptation to use power to secure the faith has arisen again and again in varied forms throughout the centuries, and again and again faith has risked being suffocated in the embrace of power.

On the Beatitude of Mourning:

The mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil; it is a way of resisting models of behavior that the individual is pressured to accept because ‘everyone does it.’ The world cannot tolerate this kind of resistance; it demands conformity. It considers this mourning to be an accusation directed against the numbing of consciences. And so it is.

On the thirst and hunger for righteousness:

Does someone achieve blessedness and justification in God’s eyes…because he has declared his opinions and wishes to be norms of conscience and so made himself the criterion? No, God demands the opposite: that we become inwardly attentive to his quiet exhortation, which is present in us and which tears us away from what is merely habitual and puts us on the road to truth.

On a pious Rabbi’s struggle with Christ as “Lord of the Sabbath,” and how it confirms Jesus’ teachings:

Jesus understands himself as the Torah–as the word of God in person…[Rabbi Neusner] is concerned with the consequences of Jesus’ centrality for Israel’s daily life: The Sabbath loses its great social function. The Sabbath is one of the essential elements that hold Israel together. Centering upon Jesus breaks open this sacred structure and imperils an essential element that cements the unity of the People of God…Communion with [Jesus] is filial communion with the Father–it is a yes to the fourth commandment on a new level, the highest level. It is entry into the family of those who call God Father and who can do so because they belong to a ‘we’–formed of those who are united with Jesus and, by listening to him, united with the will of the Father, thereby attaining to the heart of obedience intended by the Torah.

On the “Our Father”:

The Our Father does not project a human image onto heaven, but shows us from heaven–from Jesus–what we as human begins can and should be like.

On the meaning of the divine name (“hallowed be thy name”):

God establishes a relationship between himself and us. He puts himself within reach of our invocation. He enters into relationship with us and enables us to be in a relationship with him. Yet this means  that in some sense he hands himself over to our human world. He has made himself accessible and, therefore, vulnerable as well. He assumes the risk of relationship, of communion, with us.

On why Jesus speaks in parables:

Jesus is not trying to convey to us some sort of abstract knowledge that does not concern us profoundly…He shows us God: not an abstract God, but the God who acts, who intervenes in our lives, and wants to take us by the hand. He shows us through everyday things who we are and what we must do. He conveys knowledge that makes demands of us; it not only or even primarily adds to what we know, but it changes our lives.

On the reaction of the Prodigal Son’s Brother and the temptation of the righteous:

…bitterness toward God’s goodness reveals an inward bitterness regarding their own obedience, a bitterness that indicates the limitations of this obedience. In their heart of hearts, they would have gladly journeyed out into that great ‘freedom’ as well. There is an unspoken envy of what others have been able to get away with. They have not gone through the pilgrimage that purified the younger brother and made him realize what it means to be free and what it means to be a son. They actually carry their freedom as if it were slavery and they had not matured to real sonship. They, too, are still in need of a path; they can find it if they simply admit that God is right and accept his feast as their own. In this parable, then, the Father through Christ is addressing us…encouraging us too to convert truly and to find joy in our faith.

Faith and Life · Uncategorized

Magic in the Mundane

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For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.

-Leonardo Da Vinci

There is something deeply compelling about the fantastical: the ideas, the possibilities, the inhabitants, of a world that is so like ours yet alien in ways both exciting and unnerving. It fires up our sense of wonder, and a kind of nostalgia for the childlike ability to see magic in the mundane.

The idea of the Garden of Eden, a place of perfect peace and harmony between God, man, and nature, is fantastical. What does “perfect peace” mean? What does that look like? How does that even work? Eden imagery, for people of predominantly European descent, usually evokes a single moment: the one right before man breaks union with God. The world of Eden is frozen for our reflection. It is fantastic, we think, that lions and lambs and turkeys coexist without fear. It is fantastic, we wistfully say, that the world here is sunny and unbloodied. Wouldn’t it be fantastic, we think, if the world was more like this again?

29994-adam-and-eve-in-the-garden-of-eden.800w.tnWell, what if the world did retain some vestiges of Edenic harmony? What if the magic is still in the mundane? What would that look like?

The people of the Arctic and Hawai’i have a pretty good idea.

Scientists are increasing interested in studying the Arctic peoples who have a rich cultural history of communicating with whales and other animals. Their anecdotes, like that of Harry Bower, Sr. are fascinating.

Harry Brower Sr. was lying in a hospital bed in Anchorage, Alaska, close to death, when he was visited by a baby whale.

Although Brower’s body remained in Anchorage, the young bowhead took him more than 1,000 kilometers north to Barrow (now Utqiaġvik), where Brower’s family lived. They traveled together through the town and past the indistinct edge where the tundra gives way to the Arctic Ocean. There, in the ice-blue underwater world, Brower saw Iñupiat hunters in a sealskin boat closing in on the calf’s mother.

Brower felt the shuddering harpoon enter the whale’s body. He looked at the faces of the men in the umiak, including those of his own sons. When he awoke in his hospital bed as if from a trance, he knew precisely which man had made the kill, how the whale had died, and whose ice cellar the meat was stored in. He turned out to be right on all three counts…In his final years, he discussed what he had witnessed with Christian ministers and Utqiaġvik’s whaling captains. The conversations ultimately led him to hand down new rules to govern hunting female whales with offspring, meant to communicate respect to whales and signal that people were aware of their feelings and needs.

What can we take away from the experiences of the Arctic people? One, they support theories that animals have an acute awareness of self and their relationship to “other.” Two, man and animal have the ability,  on some deep level, to know each other and communicate that knowledge. Three, that man and nature have a hierarchical relationship, but one that is rooted in deep humility and respect for what each can, and should, offer the other.

Farther south, in tropical waters, the Hawaiian people have their own rich tradition of understanding and cooperating with the natural world. Nowhere better is this tradition expressed than in their creation mele (song), the Kumulipo.

The Kumulipo, composed before the arrival of European explorers, is breathtaking in it’s comprehensive and scientific understanding of how nature works harmoniously. The song speaks of the creation of all things-male and female-and how for every life in the sea there is a counterpart on land that guards its purpose:

Seaweed and grasses
Man by Waiololi, woman by Waiolola,
The Koeleele was born and lived in the sea;
Guarded by the Ko punapuna Koeleele that grew in the forest.
A night of flight by noises
Through a channel; water is life to trees;
So the gods may enter, but not man.

Like the traditions of the Arctic peoples, the Kumulipo expresses the Hawaiian understanding of reciprocity and its centrality to life. There is an awareness of self, of the “other;” we give generously and take with a profound humility for the gift that is given.

Both of these cultures beautifully express how man and the natural world can reclaim a bit of the fantastical. More importantly, they are living invitations to do more than just reflect on a frozen moment of time. They invite us to generously give now, to humbly accept now, to live now, as we were first created to do.

 

Faith and Life

New Theories and Old Traditions

MelissaLeave a comment

 

In the protective recesses of Yale’s museum is an ancient fresco fragment. To the average eye it is humble in appearance: the outline of a woman, bending down to what seems like a well. The long-held belief, logically, is that the fresco depicts the Samaritan woman at the Well, from the Gospel of John, Chapter 4.

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This simple fragment has been at Yale for decades, but is having a renewed moment in the spotlight because researcher Michael Peppard is proposing a new interpretation of this work of art: the fresco is not the Samaritan woman, but Mary at the Annunciation!

If you are at all familiar with the Lukan version of the Annunciation, you are already saying to me, “but Melissa, there is no well in the story. This guy is off his rocker!”

And you would be correct, if Mr. Peppard was not basing his theory off of another ancient text: the Protoevangelium of James. The Protoevangelium of James is a popular work testifying to Mary’s holy beginnings, upbringing, and early time with Joseph. It is a bold move on Mr. Peppard’s part to use this text since it is apocryphal, but not completely out of turn. The Protoevangelium of James is alluded to by Ss. Jerome and Justin Martyr, among other early Church luminaries, and continues to leave an impression on Catholic tradition and Her liturgical calendar. It may not be far off to say that the only reason the text remains apocryphal is because despite it’s lack of heretical over-or-undertones it never gained the universal traction and approbation that the canonical books did.

But you know one place where the Protoevangelium of James would have been very popular? In Syria, where James the Lesser (as far as scholars can tell) is believed to have preached after Pentecost! And this fresco fragment happens to be an artifact from Dura-Europos, a border settlement on the Euphrates River in modern-day Syria.

Aleteia featured the endangered site of Dura-Europos and Peppard’s fresco interpretation, and besides being a sucker for all things archaeology and Church history, I was struck by a bit of background information that the article offered:

The wall painting was taken from the small baptistery of the 3rd-century house church. Christians had met for liturgical celebrations there before Constantine allowed Christianity to be practiced openly, said a 2014 article at Vatican Insider:

The church in Dura-Europos kept its function as a private house on the top floor; but on the ground floor, around 230 A.D., a small room containing no more than 60 people became a Christian place of worship. The frescoes on the walls prove this; there are the first known representations of the Good Shepherd, the healing of the paralytic and Jesus walking on the waters with Peter. It is worth remembering that the very idea of a church separate from private houses could exist only after the 313 A.D. edict, through which the Emperor Constantine recognized Christians’ freedom of religion.

“It is worth remembering that the very idea of a church separate from private houses could only exist after the 313 A.D. edict…” Wait, what? In the early Church, churches were…domestic? Who would have ever thought of a domestic Church?

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Sadly, the reality we often forget about the early Church is that it did not have the luxury of material ability to put the boundless love of God on radiant display as in later centuries. In fact, the treasury of stone, marble, stained glass, art, and ornamentation that many of us take for granted, or take as the epitome of faithful expression, is really just the Catholic version of Solomon’s Second Temple. And that is okay!

But the reminder that the Church began, survived, grew, and conquered within the home is much-needed today. Saint John Paul II re-proposed the Domestic Church to the world, and started a frenzy. The simple Well-woman fresco, having yet another moment to evangelize to those who have the courage to hear, is also re-proposing the domestic Church but in a very specific and simple way: bring back the practice of sacred spaces in the home!

I know many people who already do this, but I know many more who don’t. I’ve wanted to set up a sacred space in our home for a while, but it just hasn’t happened yet. When we move to O’ahu in June, planning what wall gets to be our sacred space is #1 on my list.

A sacred space (a Holy Hot-Spot? called it!) is a single location in your home that you designate as a center for prayer, meditation, and a frequent visual reminder to keep Christ front and center in your life (and the life of your family). Like the home-Church in Duro-Europa, pictures and icons that speak to you and your family should decorate the area. A crucifix is a must, as is Scripture and a selection of prayers and other devotionals. Statues are always good, especially to hold your rosaries. Candles, smells, and bells are at your pleasure; add a holy water bottle and you are set! Really, just take an afternoon to browse Monastery Icons and go nuts.

Most importantly, gather your family around your Holy Hot-Spot daily. Pray, read, or just talk about your day, but do it at that sacred place in your home. Invite your parish priest over for dinner and ask him to bless the area. Use it well, and share it with others. A time is coming, as it was in the beginning, where the Church may only be allowed behind the doors of our homes. And that is okay too. It worked the first time, didn’t it?

 

Faith and Life

God Bless the C/E-ers!

MelissaLeave a comment

Happy Easter!

Christ is Risen

It’s that wonderful moment in the Liturgical year where churches around the US see members come out of the woodwork and actually go…to…church. Yay! Yay?

For those of us whose butts are in the pews every week, Easter and Christmas are probably considered the most frustrating times of the year. It’s a reminder of how seriously most people aren’t taking their faith, and how much we, the weekly warriors, are depended on to keep the parish or church community alive. If memory serves, less than 20% of a parish’s registered families provide over 80% of the time/talent/treasure needed to keep the lights on, the CCD program running, and the roof from falling in. In a boon year, we get excited that there may finally be enough to fix the A/C!

But what if we weekly warriors took a step back and reevaluated the value of a once- or twice-a-year church attendee? Consider this:

(1) They are at church! Right now! Who cares why, or what their rationale is for being there on this particular day and no other. Catholics believe that every human person conceived has until the moment of death to reconcile with God, and every moment we have is an opportunity. And what better moment to give God an opportunity to work His miracles than in church on Easter?

(2) If you only have one chance to be a Christian witness to someone, how would you do? Those who attend church once or twice a year offer us an incredible opportunity to evaluate how authentically we witness to our faith. Do we go to church every week and worship like it’s the last time before we die and face eternity? Do we first seek out the image and likeness of God in every person we see, including that gorgeous soul in the mirror? Do our yeses mean yes, and our no’s mean no? In short, are we habitually living and loving in a manner that resonates with others and creates an access point for the Holy Spirit after just one encounter?

Pharisee and tax collector

(3) Many of the encounters we read about in the New Testament are one-on-one, and are not repeated. We never hear about the Samaritan woman from the well again, or Zacchaeus, or any of the lepers, the blind, or the suffering souls who reach out to Jesus for healing. We, as Jesus likely did, only have one experience with these people before they return to their corner of the world.

Could it be that the one or two Sundays a year where weekly warriors and C/E-ers collide at church is everyone’s chance to be authentic, active participants in the Gospel, just like we read in Scripture?

We do read Scripture regularly…right? ; )