wonderingstill

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.

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

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?

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

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?

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

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)

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

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.

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

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?

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

Advent is supposed to be apocalyptic, not cozy. The total lack of subtlety and symbolic imagination in the American mind is a deadly impairment to Christian faith.

In the dying of each year, days grow darker, nights grow longer, the sun and the human heart grow colder. That's why the liturgical readings are all from the Prophets and Revelation. Traditionally at this time of the year, Christians look for the return of Christ and the total regeneration of the world. Today, however, Hallmark has trained Christians to look only for the birth of Baby Jesus, and Capitalism the coming of Santa Claus. Talk about confusing the gift with the giver.

The Revelation to St. John lays the cycle of waiting bare. As “the seven angels” wrap up their unmaking of the physical world, a new reality descends to take its place:

Then he showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. – Revelation 22:1-2 (RSV-CE)

In any pre-modern text, cycles of seven and twelve are inescapable because, before Industrialization, human awareness was governed by the sky. When we planted. When we reaped. When we bore our children or sent them off to war. Before the light bulb and chronometer, time was a function of the movement of planets (7) against the fixed constellations of the zodiac (12) through which the sun proceeded, month after month, world without end.

Here, John describes the Christian mystery revealed in the night sky, wrapped in all the richness of the Hellenistic symbolic imagination. The seven planetary intelligences governing pagan fate are in actuality seven angels serving God as his demolition team. Rubble cleared from their cosmic construction site, a celestial city descends, through which a river bright as crystal (the Milky Way) runs, straddled by a tree of life, producing twelve kinds of fruit, each in its month (the constellations of the zodiac).

Through John's visionary eyes, we see the dome of the night sky as a great tree bower sheltering us from horizon to horizon. The tree of life and the great river from God's original Paradise are restored, this time at the heart of a new polis instead of a garden.

This is the second coming. This is the new creation: apocastasis, with all the signs of the zodiac reset, balanced, and on equal footing. Now, all the heavenly powers of the night sky (“the leaves of the tree”) serve a benevolent God and the Lamb. Instead of the vagaries of fate, the stars now ray forth “for the healing of the nations.” Christ, the Lamb of God, born into time, permeates the world like yeast in dough, rising.

This is the reality for which we yearn, that the Incarnation makes possible. A world fully, elementally alive:

Let the sea make a noise, and all that therein is; the round world, and they that dwell therein.

Let the floods clap their hands, and let the hills be joyful together before the Lord. – Psalm 98:8-9 (Coverdale)

As the world and its nights once more approach their darkest, surely, we cry, this is the season everything becomes new at last. Surely this time, it is for real and for always. Surely, surely, the wait is over.

The solstice, and Christmas, comes.

Again.

We hope, we pray it's finally the birth of a new kingdom. Until it is, we hold onto the birth of a new king as the wheel turns once more.

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

The Psalm sings to us from an ancient world steeped in Hermetic philosophy. First, all “that which is above” sings praise to the one God:

O PRAISE the Lord from the heavens: praise him in the heights. – Psalm 148:1 (Coverdale)

All spirits and celestial elements begin to sing, voices rising upward through each sphere of the Ptolemaic cosmos: first the angelic host governing our sublunary realm, then the wandering planets nearest to mortals (sun and moon), ascending through the zodiac (stars and light), finally reaching beyond the very firmament of fixed stars beneath God's feet (all ye heavens, and ye waters that are above the heavens).

No silent, impartial sky, this. For the psalmist, life unites every layer of the visible universe under God and sets it all in blessed motion.

He hath made them fast for ever and ever: he hath given them a law which shall not be broken. – Psalm 148:6 (Coverdale)

Then, since “that which is below is from that which is above,” all created forms on earth echo the celestial hymn:

Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps… – Psalm 148:7 (Coverdale)

It spreads down through the elemental worlds (fire, snow, wind) into mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms (mountains, cedars, cattle, fowls). All human institutions and cultures reflect this Wisdom (kings, peoples), and every individual regardless of status or gender (young, old, men, maidens, children). Simply by existing, every one and every thing silently sings to the Lord beyond the sky. Last of all, “even the people that serveth him.” (148:13)

Advent comes in the darkness approaching the Winter solstice to remind us this union of Heaven and Earth is incomplete. What is must pass away before the marriage can be consummated.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. – Revelation 21:1-2 (RSV-CE)

The very reality we cling to, “made fast for ever and ever,” is only a reflection of its final form. We await its birth with the coming of the Christ.

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

The Gospel of Mark makes no bones about the world of the Christ. It is a world full of spirit beings: angels who minister to him in the wilderness and unclean spirits infecting human lives whom he silences with a word. Humans who inhabit his world soon divide themselves into two camps: those unfit for sacred worship who receive his authority as divine, and the observant righteous who see him only as a servant of the ruler of demons.

The Lord Christ comes that we may see the world and see it rightly, all things visible and invisible.

And he said to them, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables.” – Mark 4:11 (RSV-CE)

He reveals a secret way of seeing – and living in – this world. That it is a world of flesh and spirit. That, for the repentant heart, it is a kingdom near at hand. And that, for those who know his secret, he becomes both gate and key.

Still, even seeing that clearly, I fear his kingdom eludes me. At best I am one who treads the rocky ground, enduring only for a little while. At worst, I live among the thorns, where the cares of the world choke the word so it yields nothing.

I pray the Psalm holds hidden meaning:

Now I know that the Lord will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand. - Psalm 20:6 (RSV-CE)

Here, the Lord's anointed must be more than just the historic heir to the throne. To the observant Jew, perhaps he is the righteous one or even the entire people of Israel. To the traditional Christian, he is Christ himself. To the Christian mystic, he is the Christ in me.

Thanks to my baptism, I share in the fruit of his Incarnation. His mighty victories are against the enemies of God within my own nature. As he falls, I fall with him that, sharing his nature, I too may rise.

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.

Thankfully, God has a fundamentally different take on reality than I do.

For thou lovest all things that exist, and hast loathing for none of the things which thou hast made, for thou wouldst not have made anything if thou hadst hated it. - Wisdom 11:24 (RSV-CE)

I struggle anymore to love the things of this world. The witness of humanity these last eight years has broken that in me which looks for the image of God in other people. Yes, I pray on it. Yes, I have talked with priests I trust about it. Yes, I recognize it is a basic tenet of the faith that humanity is created as a reflection of the Divine, broken now and slowly being repaired by the true icon of the Incarnate Logos. I do not teach otherwise. I just confess that it now defies the evidence of my eyes and heart. The universe whose long moral arc once bent toward justice, now seems only to bend toward doom. Sadly, it is often the witness of the Church itself that strips me of hope.

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. - Matthew 7:15-16 (RSV-CE)

Even the best of its leaders often seem devoid of wonder, promoting a temporal belief grounded only in the world of matter and form instead of a spiritual belief grounded in the higher, unseen reality upon which it must rest. Theirs is a faith of received certainties instead of discovered possibilities, of psychological altruism over spiritual desire.

Occasionally some small movement gives me a glimmer of hope only to dash it. Last month, a scandalous, openly partisan, schismatic bishop was finally removed from his seat as the head of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas… but not, seemingly for his scandalous, partisan, schismatic teachings. Like Al Capone, in the end it was just administrative mismanagement that ended his reign. And once again, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (of which the scandalous, partisan, schismatic bishop remains a voting member) trotted out their tired election-year statement of “Faithful Citizenship” reminding American Catholics that the “pre-eminent” moral evil in post-Roe America remains abortion, without uttering a word about electoral integrity as a fundamental requirement for sound government.

That makes the readings this week especially precious, these final days as the Church year dwindles to a close before Advent. Here all the wonder of Wisdom literature and self-critical challenge of the Church finally finds a voice. Any more, I need the Gospel to restore the faith that my Church destroys in me.

Not every one who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven... Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. – Matthew 7:21, 24-25 (RSV-CE)

Before God, I am as scandalous, partisan, and schismatic as my enemy. How, then, am I to act on these words that I hear? I sit here with an angry heart, trying to pray, any Divine awareness drowned out by annoyance at the sound of spattering water overflowing the roof after having just cleaned the gutters.

For thy immortal spirit is in all things. Therefore thou dost correct little by little those who trespass, and dost remind and warn them of the things wherein they sin, that they may be freed from wickedness and put their trust in thee, O Lord. – Wisdom 12:1-2 (RSV-CE)

For as much as I distrust the witness of spirit in matter, how do I look to it for God's correction, little by little, to be freed?

wonderingstill © 2023-2024 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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.