wonderingstill

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?

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.

Amen, Amen I say to you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it bears much fruit. Anyone who loves life loses it; anyone who hates life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - Jn 12:24-25 (RNJB)

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?

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.

News of this hope reached you earlier through the word of truth, the gospel that came to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing throughout the world, so it has been among you, ever since you heard about the grace of God and truly recognised it. This you learnt from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant and a trustworthy minister of Christ to you. - Col 1:5-7 (RNJB)

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 rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of the Son that he loves…

He exists before all things, and in him all things hold together… and through him to reconcile all things to him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, by making peace through the blood of his cross. - Col 1:13, 17, 20 (RNJB)

December 25, 2023

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

For a son has been born to us, a son has been given to us and dominion has been laid on his shoulders; and this is the name he has been given, ’Wonder-Counsellor, Mighty-God, Eternal-Father, Prince-of-Peace.’ - Is 9:5 (RNJB)

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.