wonderingstill

November 29, 2024

Even after two millennia of the gospel, wealth remains the measure of character. The more one has, the more one deserves it. Possession is virtue. Prosperity is God's favor.

Today, on “Black Friday,” Jesus commands all who would follow him to sell everything they have. It is as astonishing to America as it was to the Hellenistic world.

‘Then who can be saved?’ (Mk 10:26 RNJB, emphasis mine)

The Lord, the universal heart of creation, has some bad news for “good” people:

‘By human resources it is impossible…’

Basically, you're screwed. Anything you cling to in this world keeps you from the kingdom. A heart that treasures the things of time cannot inhabit eternity.

‘…but not for God: for to God everything is possible.’ (Mk 10:27 RNJB)

That's the good news. Your own soul is the insurmountable barrier to God. Time and attachment form a closed system. Nothing you do, say, own, buy, or believe will ever raise your humanity above it from within. Only God can, from without.

November 27, 2024

In a time when Faith serves Empire, and those who count themselves righteous lay siege to conscience, O Lord give us a faith worth hating.

You promised “You will be hated by all on account of my name.” (Lk 21:17 RNJB) Instead we walk among those who hate for you. O Lord, let us “be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relations and friends.” (Lk 21:16 RNJB)

Hear the prayers of all who come to you for shelter, O Lord, not Dominion. Ignore the boasting of the crowd. Hear only the weeping of those your servants crush. We wait for you, “standing by the lake of glass.” (Rv 15:2 RNJB)

November 24, 2024

There is one “ruler of the kings of the earth… him who loves us and has freed us… and made us a kingdom, priests to his God….” (Rv 1:5-6, RNJB)

We must reconnect the main image of today's mass readings, the Son of Man “coming on the clouds of heaven, as it were” (Dn 7:13, RNJB) with the false images it dispels: “Four great beasts emerged from the sea….” (Dn 7:3, RNJB) Each beast the form of a predator, each predator a conquering kingdom of the ancient world: Babylonian, Median, Persian, Alexander's Seleucid.

Cut loose from the preceding verses, the meaning of the Son of Man is obscured. This reading from the Jewish apocalypse of Daniel, interpreted through the Christian Revelation to John, hides behind the tenth trump card of the Tarot: the Wheel of Fortune. Humanity that lives for Empire descends into the subhuman. Humanity that lives for God is raised into the truest human form.

This is a stark warning to all who govern: you may hold power now, but you hold it for the one who holds you. Serve him, or become the beast. It is a consoling promise to all the misgoverned: there is only one true authority here, Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

Praise only him.

Serve only him.

Become only his.

November 8, 2024

Pledging our hearts to a convicted felon and his anti-Christian platform violating every tenet of Catholic Social Teaching, America and the Christian Church in it “behave as enemies of Christ’s cross.”

We are to be feared. We are not to be trusted. All our historic allies of Europe must plan now for a new America that will align itself with expansionist Russia and its plans to regain its lost Soviet territories. As American Christians, we are carrying the world to an accelerationist brink of destruction. So the reading from mass today seems hauntingly on point.

For there are many people of whom I have often warned you, and now I warn you again with tears, who behave as enemies of Christ’s cross. Their end is destruction… But our citizenship is in heaven and from there we are expecting a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform this wretched body of ours into the mould of his glorious body, through the working of the power which he has, even to make all things subject to him. - Ph 3:18-21 (RNJB, emphasis mine)

It's true. As a Christian, I am now alienated by my own nation, my own people, and even my own faith. I am not safe here, and know I never will be again. To the end of my days, this world can never be my my hope, my family, or my home. We are a shattered colony of heaven, living in the wild. How I long for my homeland.

Is that really what Paul means? Deliverance from the fallen physical world and the life of the body? In his other letters, when he speaks of the body, he usually speaks of the Church itself… not yet an institution, but a people comprising Christ's mystical body here and now. Is that the sense of the passage above?

Can this “wretched body” of Christ truly transform into the glorious mould of his own once again?

I wonder.

November 6, 2024

Remember…

It is God who works in you both the desire and the practice of his good pleasure… Remain faultless and pure, unspoilt children of God in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine out like stars in the world.”

– Ph 2:13-15 (RNJB)

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)

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.

Hand this man over to Satan for destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord. - 1 Co 5:5 (RNJB)

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 realise that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Clean out the old yeast so that you can be a new batch. - 1 Co 5:6-7 (RNJB)

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:

Declare them guilty, O God. Let them fail in their designs. Drive them out for their many offences, for they have rebelled against you. - Psalms 5:11 (RNJB)

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 with the withered hand, ‘Get up and stand in the middle.’ And he got up and stood there. Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you: is it permitted on the Sabbath to do good, or to do evil; to save life, or to destroy it?’ Then he looked round at them all and said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was restored. - Lk 6:8-10 (RNJB)

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.

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.

The glory of the LORD rose from above the cherubim, towards the threshold of the Temple; the Temple was filled by the cloud and the court was full of the brightness of the glory of the LORD.

Then the glory of the LORD came out over the Temple threshold and paused over the cherubim. - Ezk 10:4, 18 (RNJB)

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 meet in my name, I am there among them. - Mt 18:20 (RNJB)

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

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.

May 12, 2024

The one who ascended above all the heavens to fill all things is the same as the one who descended. -Ep 4:10 (RNJB)

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.

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 it was about me that he wrote. - Jn 5:46 (RNJB)

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 reached Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore the place was named Marah. The people complained to Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’ Moses cried to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. When he threw it into the water, the water became sweet. -Ex 15:23-25 (RNJB)

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.

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.

The LORD said to Moses, ‘Say to Aaron, “Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt – over their rivers and canals, their marshland, and all their reservoirs – and they will turn to blood. There will be blood throughout the whole land of Egypt, even in sticks and stones.”’ - Ex 7:19 (RNJB)

Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water,’ and they filled them to the brim. Then he said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the president of the feast.’ They took it. - Jn 2:7-9 (RNJB)

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?