wonderingstill

November 6, 2024

Remember…

“God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure… be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.”

- Philippians 2:13-15 (RSV-CE)

So, what should be the posture of Christian-Catholics and other faith-based communities today and going forward? Whichever presidential candidate is elected, our role will have to be, as it is often already, that of resistance. As a stark warning, we remember the largely craven non-responses of the Christian churches as Nazis took power in the last century. The failure of those denominations was a historical failure, a monumental scandal and it led to enormous tragedy.

-Joseph Nangle, OFM (Pax Christi USA 2023 Teacher of Peace)

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

September 9, 2024

Paul's roots as a Pharisee are showing today. Faced with a case of sexual impropriety that even Roman law found too skeevy (a man marrying his stepmother), Paul responds as a first century Pharisee: separation from moral and ritual impurity.

You are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. – 1 Corinthians 5:5 (RSV-CE)

To him the real offense isn't the sin committed but rather the damage the church does to itself by permitting it in its midst.

Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. – 1 Corinthians 5:6-7 (RSV-CE)

And it makes sense in this Hellenistic universe of these early Christians. If being joined to Christ’s mystical body in the Church separates one from the forces of “sin and death” through baptism, then the active, ongoing sin of one member re-exposes the whole community to forces of decay. Better for all to remove that one member. He can take his own chances with his own physical health, knowing that his spirit at least is entrusted to Christ.

In this thinking, Paul stands in the long tradition of Israel. We hear it echoed even in today's psalm:

Make them bear their guilt, O God; let them fall by their own counsels; because of their many transgressions cast them out, for they have rebelled against thee. – Psalms 5:10 (RSV-CE)

But then what?

That's the uncomfortable question left unasked.

If that same Christ is the Logos of God acting in the world, is he content to leave it at that? Does the Living Word have any questions?

Pharisees of his time present Jesus with just such a case: a man excised from the community because his physical ailment endangers the ritual purity of them all. In this worldview, sickness results from sin, so exposure is contagious both ritually and physically. Healing one forgives the other and vice-versa, and that puts everyone at risk.

Clearly, Christ is no stranger to this thinking.

But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come and stand here.” And he rose and stood there. And Jesus said to them, “I ask you, is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?” And he looked around on them all, and said to him, “Stretch out your hand.” And he did so, and his hand was restored. – Luke 6:8-10 (RSV-CE)

A moral reading of the lectionary sees a mystic connection between the man with the withered hand and the sinner of Corinthians. As if receiving for judgment the very one Paul cast out, the Christ receives the man suffering for his sin. He doesn't challenge the judgement upon him. He just asks what happens next.

Are you excised from God's holy people? Rightly or wrongly, do you find yourself beyond communion? Stretch out your hand. Leave it to Christ to ask what happens next.

Saint Peter Claver, pray for us.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

August 14, 2024

Where is God?

In today's readings for the mass, Ezekiel receives a supersensible meaning to the confounding events of the sensible world: our city is gone because God has departed from it, appalled by our unfaithfulness. His vision makes sense of Jerusalem’s destruction as a divine evacuation.

And the glory of the LORD went up from the cherubim to the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the glory of the LORD.

Then the glory of the LORD went forth from the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. – Ezekiel 10:4, 18 (RSV-CE)

Where, then, is God?

Without a temple to house his glory on earth, where can we find the shelter of his presence?

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. – Matthew 18:20 (RSV-CE)

There are two of us here together now, are there not?

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

May 12, 2024

He who descended is he who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things. -Eph 4:10 (RSV-CE)

Not “save your soul.” Not “judge the wicked.” Certainly not “prosper the righteous.”

The Christ ascends to fill all things.

All things.

Every element. Every being. Every nature.

The very Logos of God descends into time and space, takes form subject to decay and entropy and death. Through his temporal life, he imprints God's very image onto reality. Through his suffering, bleeding, and death he permeates the very soil and bedrock of Creation, right down to the abode of the Dead.

And from there he rises, and with him all things, suffused by God's Christ.

We participate in his work as we enter his sacramental life. Elements remade to convey his grace, transmuting our every vice into corresponding virtue:

pride (superbia) into humility (humilitas)
greed (avaritia) into charity (caritas)
wrath (ira) into patience (patientia)
envy (invidia) into kindness (humanitas)
lust (luxuria) into chastity (castitas)
gluttony (gula) into temperance (temperantia)
sloth (acedia) into diligence (diligentia)

Broken nature into restored nature.

Entropy into regeneration.

Death into life.

Self into communion.

Humanity into divinity.

Thanks be to God.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

March 6, 2024

Saint Augustine explained that the New Testament lies hidden in the Old and the Old Testament is unveiled in the New. In historic (Catholic) Christianity, Scripture is a unity and it points beyond itself to the principal revelation, the Logos Incarnate in Christ.

If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. – John 5:46 (RSV-CE)

We read Scripture, then, neither for instruction, nor for inspiration. We read it to meet the reality of Jesus in the heart and in the symbol of the world.

How did Moses write of the Christ this day? Lessons for Morning Prayer are grumbling through Exodus with the Israelites for Lent.

When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” And he cried to the Lord; and the Lord showed him a tree, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. -Exodus 15:23-25 (RSV-CE)

The human being moves through the desert of the world, but is unable to draw life from the water of soul. The soul itself is bitter, permeated by the mineral flavor leaching in from the desert soil.

God provides a cleansing wood. Grown of earth and water itself, it absorbs or counteracts the bitterness. Christ is that cleansing wood who makes the water of soul-life drinkable.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

February 28, 2024

Outside, the sound of rain.

Inside, words of water changing form.

In water, we see the changing states of matter, from vapor to liquid to solid and back round again. Water makes visible the inner workings of the invisible. That makes it the natural medium of the Christ. It is why we use it to join the human person to him in baptism.

The Daily Office readings during Lent turn to Exodus and John's gospel. Reading both for signs of Christ, we hear him working wonders over water.

And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your rod and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, that they may become blood; and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, both in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’” – Exodus 7:19 (RSV-CE)

Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the steward of the feast.” So they took it. – John 2:7-8 (RSV-CE)

A surface reading sees only contrast between Old Testament and New, one a plague the other a blessing. Trouble the water. Read deeper.

Wonder works through water because God is who God is. The very essence of God is God’s existence. And the Logos as God the Son reveals an even deeper mystery: God incarnates, making spirit into form. God pours Spirit into form to make a world, like clouds becoming rain becoming ocean becoming glacier.

These are stories of transmutation: the form of water becomes something other, revealing the one who works the change. We see the One working changes in many ways.

We see the ordinary life of Jesus transfigured, his body a brilliant lens to focus our vision on his Divine reality.

The eyes of faith see his Incarnation culminate in transubstantiation, the form of bread and wine remains while its substance, its nature, becomes something new. When received in faith, he enters us even more deeply and, through us, enters into the world as we emerge from every mass.

That human self, therefore, is an image of the invisible God’s incarnating action, Christ's means of penetrating this visible world. Like the signs in these readings, both our being and the world it inhabits signify beyond themselves to the one from which we flow.

How then, do we choose to flow? Are we blessing or curse?

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

January 9, 2024

Jesus in John's gospel speaks the language of the mysteries. “Some Greeks” approach him through Philip, likely a Greek himself given his name. It's not entirely clear what they want with a Jewish holy man, but Jesus responds to them in their own symbol vocabulary.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. – John 12:24-25 (RSV-CE)

This is the language of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the annual initiation into the cult of Demeter and Persphone.

Drawing upon the myth of Demeter’s descent into the underworld to rescue her daughter Persphone whom Hades had abducted, initiates achieved an elevated consciousness, likely realizing an innate connection between the seasonal cycles of nature's rebirth and the fate of their soul in the underworld. Though we don't know much about the precise rituals of this premiere secret society of the Athenian world, thanks to the Church Father Hippolytus, we do know that initiates achieved this new spiritual awareness upon being shown “an ear of grain, in silence reaped.”

The Christ speaks to each culture in the language of its own dreams. For these Greeks, the Jewish Messiah revealed all the richness of their most esoteric tradition. What mystery does he reveal today?

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

January 1, 2024

Original Christians didn't have a New Testament. They relied solely on the Logos, the Word of God, for at least two generations before anything like a New Testament existed.

Of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel which has come to you… as you learned it from Epaphras our beloved fellow servant. He is a faithful minister of Christ on our behalf…. – Colossians 1:5-7 (RSV-CE)

I grew up in a Christianity that looked only to the Bible for God's revelation. One of the most freeing parts of becoming Catholic was that it put the horse back in front of the cart. God reveals himself first through his Incarnate Word, the Christ. Scripture is one essential component of the Deposit of Faith, but it's not the only one. Equally important is Sacred Tradition, the authoritative oral teaching handed on by the Christ to us through his apostles and their successors, the bishops. The earliest Christians became Christian not because they had a canon of Scripture, but because they had people like Epaphras revealing the mystery of Christ in word and deed.

This frees my soul because it means the Christ continues to speak. From the realm of Spirit, the Word Incarnate sounds in Scripture and Tradition, yes, but also through reality when the mind stills what the senses convey. That happened for me an hour ago in mass when, in a quiet moment, I pondered the figures in the parish nativity scene.

Among the usual suspects present at the birth, a young, innocent looking shepherd held up a lamb toward the infant Christ. Symbolism of the sacrificial lamb, certainly, but it took on new prominence when I noticed his companion, an older, more rustic shepherd positioned behind Mary. Seemingly lurking behind the Virgin Mother, his careworn, frankly creepy pose revealed something interesting. Instead of a lamb, he was holding a basket of fresh fruit: apples and a cluster of grapes.

Suddenly, I saw not two shepherds but echoes of Cain (the farmer) and Abel (the herdsman). In silence and in symbol, this simple nativity scene preached a secret homily: the Incarnate Logos is restoring our reality fractured by the original murder, reconciling violence and victim in the presence of his mother. If these shepherds paying homage suggest Cain and Abel, then the Blessed Virgin Mary between them becomes their new Mother, a new Eve, giving birth to them in the new creation of her divine son in the manger.

This wasn't in the homily. It's certainly not in the Scripture. And though consistent with Tradition, it is no explicit human teaching. It is simply attentiveness to what the Christ is saying, this first day of the New Year, the feast of Mary, the Mother of God. So like Epaphras, I offer it to you.

He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son… He is before all things, and in him all things hold together… and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. – Colossians 1:13, 17, 20 (RSV-CE)

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

December 25, 2023

I don't feel it. At all. I wish I did. But life has burned it out of me.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government will be upon his shoulder, and his name will be called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” – Isaiah 9:6 (RSV-CE)

This prophecy and its fulfillment we celebrate this holy night is for wounded souls like ours.

For this child is not just born “a long time ago” and “once apon a time.” The child is born now and always here, in the worn-out manger that is my soul. And perhaps yours too.

No mere self-help guru, this Incarnate Christ is the very Wisdom of God behind the universe entering space and time. His is the impulse that shines through the sun. Unite with him, my wounded soul, and be joined to the return of the light as solstice passes.

Merry or not, it is Christmas. O come, let us adore him.

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

December 21, 2023

Everything changes in Chapter 8. This is the esoteric heart of Mark's gospel. Here, the text confronts the reader like a mystery play. We enter it as a character, and the Christ speaks directly to us from the world of Spirit.

Until now, the impulse of the Gospel has been to hint at Jesus’ nature through demonstrations of power: weather and feeding miracles, supersensible knowledge of his opponents’ thoughts, healings, and, most of all, exorcisms. All these moments share one thing in common: whether wind, or thoughts, or illness, or unclean spirits, Jesus commands spirit forces in the material world. The question everyone keeps asking is “How?”

Finally, alone in a boat with his disciples, Jesus initiates us to the higher reality of what we've been seeing:

Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember? – Mark 8:18 (RSV-CE)

He plays a quick number game: how many baskets of leftovers were there after each feeding miracle? The answer: 12 and 7.

Twelve: the number of months of the celestial year, time and space marked by the procession of the twelve signs of the zodiac rotating slowly through a year of nights. Twelve is the complete turning of the sky, revealing the complete rim of the visible cosmos turning in its creator’s hand.

Seven: the number of the wandering lights, the planets that move erratically against the backdrop of the fixed stars. To many in the ancient world, these were the celestial intelligences governing human fate. To the wise, and certain magi, while they may not have dictated human events, at the very least God makes his wisdom known in their movements.

In these two numbers, Jesus sums up the point of entire gospel thus far: Jesus holds authority over the visible cosmos and every invisible power that moves within it. He is from outside the system. No mere teacher, or prophet, or magician, his power is truly from out of this world.

Chapter 8 is the hinge of this gospel. Now that it's settled “how” Jesus does what he does, the rest of the Gospel pivots to tackle the “so what.”

Notice how deliberately Mark structures this transition. To make sure we're seeing clearly now, Jesus next tests our perception in the figure of a blind man he heals in two steps at Bethsaida.

And he looked up and said, “I see men; but they look like trees, walking.” Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and was restored, and saw everything clearly. – Mark 8:24-25 (RSV-CE)

Of the Twelve chosen apostles, Peter is the first to join us in this new revelation. Well, almost.

And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” – Mark 8:29 (RSV-CE)

He recognizes Jesus is the Lord Christ, the anointed one prophesied of old as coming to restore God's kingdom, but his vision is limited to the sensible world. Peter imagines a cosmic king coming to restore an earthly throne. Jesus' vision knows no such bounds.

Where Peter's perception is shaped by Daniel’s Son of Man (Daniel 7:13-14), Jesus reveals a suprasensory reality shaped by Isaiah’s Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52-53). Combining the two, he unveils an esoteric mystery: he will open a way of life to those who join themselves to his dying.

For his part, Peter prefers his original, triumphal, temporal view.

And he said this plainly. And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.” – Mark 8:32-33 (RSV-CE)

In scolding him, Jesus reveals his full human Incarnation. Cosmic Son of Man or no, clearly he'd prefer a happier ending for himself. Like Peter. Certainly like us.

And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” – Mark 8:34 (RSV-CE)

The rest of the Gospel enacts the Divine reality Jesus reveals here. Now that the mystery has been revealed, do I deny myself? Or do I just stay part of the crowd?

Except where otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.