Follow-up on C 603 as Paradigm: Support of Law Does Not Need to Imply Legalism

[[The canonical hermit who has done much to perpetuate various precedents created by said person, has written a lengthy and seemingly sound refutation of my comments and questions below. What this person writes in disagreeing what I have set forth, and now has added on years that have grown exponentially to what was this person's previous length of time as a hermit, is not scripturally based nor accurate other than is from the person's legalistic view of the Body of Christ and Christ as Head, of which Jesus decried such aspects that the high priests, scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees of His time on earth had so created a contorted legalistic form of religion and spiritual life in the Jewish faith and lived out in the temples as well as were imposed on the Jewish people. ]]

The comments in italics were the responses offered to my last post (cf link below). I think this view of canonical forms of eremitical life is very unfortunate. Because canonical hermits live their lives in a way the church considers normative, because they submit their lives to certain canons (norms) to serve the church in answering their vocation, does not make them Pharisees, nor does it make their attitude towards religion, spirituality, or the eremitical vocation "legalistic". Whether living eremitical life in a canonical congregation like the Carthusians, Camaldolese, Carmelite, Monastic Family of Bethlehem, et al., or as solitary hermits under C 603 as I and others do, we have simply accepted a place in the church's own service to the whole world. As I have written before, law can and is meant to serve love. The religious I know, including canonical hermits (solitary and otherwise), recognize that law helps establish and nurture the contexts in which they can live their vocations ever more deeply and faithfully. Once they are perpetually professed and consecrated, law is not ordinarily a particular focus of their lives. Still, standing in law is part of what establishes their freedom to explore the heights and depths of the world the canon(s) governing their lives establish.

I think most of us understand this. None of us live without the constraints, freedom, and other benefits provided by law. Legally we rent homes and apartments, own, insure, and drive cars, attend schools and universities, and provide for families and ourselves via wills, durable powers of attorney, mortgages, bank accounts, contracts of all sorts (even library cards represent a contract with legal terms and conditions that bind us and the libraries we patronize). All of these and many more imply and require norms that protect and free us to live without unnecessary concern for safety or inordinate liabilities. (Think again of the "lowly" library card and the vast worlds this contract opens up to us!!) If we are professionals (medical, educational, pastoral counseling, etc.) we are certified or licensed and work under specific codes of conduct. Ordinarily, we internalize these norms and refer to them only when we face more complicated or unusual situations than is commonly the case. 

As members of the Church, we know there are canons and other norms under which we live our lives -- though I would bet few could name these. Baptism results in our falling under such norms as laos, members of the laity, the People. Consecration and Ordination result in further norms that are extended to us and that we freely embrace because they serve our vocations. Such norms tend to provide us a well-defined and countercultural realm of freedom in which our lives in Christ can thrive and grow. We hardly bump up against the limits created by such canons (norms) on a daily basis nor do they become Pharisaical or the occasion of scrupulosity.

[[This manner of humankind creating what they wish and adding on to what humankind creates in legalisms yet in our times or in recent times is what most hermits such as St. Bruno, gave pause and ponder, and thus left the temporal world including the temporal system and structure, and left for the farthest reaches of the Alps in which to draw nigh on to Christ and to worship and pray, to be Christian in the freedom of silence of solitude, praise of God, and intimacy with Christ that yet lifted up and strengthened the entire Body of Christ. Bruno had lived enough of the very aspects of this person who persists in making up what is not in many aspects in fact.]] 

In fact, laws, and legalisms are different things. In a time when people cannot usually go off into a physical desert to become a hermit and leave "the world" behind, it is the creation of norms like c 603 that help allow human beings to step away from "the world" into a hermitage whose character is defined by the Church based on her long history with hermits. But Canon 603 truly is a law that serves love; it combines both the structure necessary to define a desert space dedicated to Christ in the prayer-filled silence of solitude, and the flexibility needed to respond freely to Christ in the power of the Spirit. This is Law and it is associated with legalities serving the healthy spiritual and human growth of the hermit according to the terms of the Canon and the hermit's own Rule of Life, but it has nothing to do with legalism per se.

And in fact, Saint Bruno never "left the temporal world" (until his death, that is). He did, however, resist the predations of a destructive secularity on and within the Church. After spending some decades teaching and serving in other significant roles, in a Church riven with Papal division and struggles against corruption, he refused to be made a bishop and opted for a life of eremitical solitude. However, when he went with six of his friends off into the Southern Alps, he did so under the authority of Bishop Hugh of Grenoble who installed these seven men in the first location of what would become the Grand Chartreuse. This installation was a matter of ecclesiastical law. Thus, Bruno's group became a canonical foundation and the Carthusians enjoyed the protection of the Church as well as the natural isolation of the Alps. Because of both of these factors, Bruno and his Carthusians developed a normative and unique form of eremitical life that has stood the test of time. The Carthusians today (and new institutes founded in their spirit) are canonical in the same way all religious and diocesan hermits are canonical. Law helps protect the spiritual well-being, priorities, and decisions of those living under such canons, but it neither dominates nor motivates their lives.

[[I have provided the person with more platform than is warranted or healthy for the misinformation that comes forth, so will leave off the topic of which I do believe, however, that there will be increasing "hermits" of the canon law provision, simply due to the public promotion and position, prestige of sorts, and aspect of thinking "legal" and "approved" is preferred to following in the footsteps, heart, mind, and spirit of Christ's teachings and life as He exemplified on earth and as it is in His Real Presence here and in Heaven.]]

There is no need to place canonical standing in opposition to following in the footsteps of Jesus. They are not mutually exclusive. To treat them in this way is simplistic and very short-sighted. I sincerely hope there are more properly motivated and formed canonical hermits under c 603 whose relation to law is a healthy one that opens them more fully to the Spirit of God; I am trying to do my part to contribute to this whole dynamic making sure this is the case. It is a part of my vocation that surprises and gratifies me. While many people have contacted me evincing various levels and types of interest in Canon 603 vocations, I have yet to meet a serious candidate for C 603 profession and consecration who is successful in her petition to be admitted to these, while choosing this vocation as a means to prestige, public promotion, etc. 

Meanwhile, just as I pray for all eremitical vocations, I pray for increasing canonical vocations amongst the Camaldolese, Carthusians, Carmelites, and others as well. Each of these has existed as "canonical" (with Church-approved constitutions and statutes) for many centuries --- long before there was a universal Code of Canon Law (1917) --- and above all, like all religious in the Church, members have and do follow Jesus and allow God to shape them as Imago Christi in the power of the Holy Spirit. I doubt very much the author of these comments could sincerely take exception to this observation, at least not without disparaging all religious in the Church. (cf., Christian Catholic Mystic Hermit, Note added on 9/4 to a post from 19. August. 2023.)

Thanking God for Law that Serves Love!

[[ Hi again Sister Laurel! There is someone writing against you though she doesn't use your name; while I don't want to draw you into an argument I wondered what you thought about the following thesis: "The fruit in past hermits gives us guidelines by noticing their lives lived -- not any canon laws for there were none, nor . . .on some created church laws centuries after Jesus instituted his Church, never Himself speaking of laws positively except the Law of God which is the Love. All other church laws Jesus pointed out as hypocrisies and missing the point of God Himself. . ."]]

Thanks for your questions. First, I agree completely that some hermits' lives are instructive in major ways for those of us living the life today. The Desert Fathers and Mothers and many others come to mind here. On the other hand, there are many hermits throughout the centuries that have distorted eremitical witness and lived caricatures of authentic hermit life. Additionally, and to be frank, I think the thesis regarding law and Jesus' attitudes toward law represents either a very naive reading of texts or an anachronistic twisting of the Scriptures in order to take a swipe at those who support or write about c 603, or canon law more generally. I doubt I am the only one writing about c 603. 

It sounds to me like the author you cited is used to reading Scripture in a somewhat fundamentalist way, but whether that is true or not, there are some things that must be corrected. First, Jesus gave the Church the power to bind and to loose. In part that could (and over the centuries has implied) the authority to make laws to govern both the Church as a whole and individual segments of the Church. Second, Jesus never treated law per se as hypocritical. He was harsh with the Scribes and Pharisees who opposed him (not all did), but he esteemed the Law itself as a gift of God; moreover, he kept it himself, though not in a slavish way which was careless of the way it tended toward and required greater fulfillment and transcendence. 

Just a few weeks ago we heard a Gospel in which Jesus cured a leper and told him to show himself to the priests so the Law might be fulfilled. The laws that isolated the leper were meant for the good of society in a world with no answer to contagions of all sorts. The law Jesus referenced in this reading served love because it allowed the leper to be reintegrated into the society his disease had isolated him from.  Even so, while Jesus recognized Law as a good, he also recognized that people could be hypocritical and also, that laws could be interpreted or formulated and implemented in ways which were oppressive and unjust --- the precise opposite of what the Law of God actually does. So, Jesus treated law as good, a Divine Gift, but he also demanded that law serve Love -- as it was meant to do.

While I am not a canonist and tend not to be much interested in canon law except for canon 603 and the other canons which pertain directly to my vocation (I am very interested in these and what people write about them!), my sense is that these specific canons and canon law more generally were codified to function as law serving love. I think the Church generally (though not unfailingly) does the same and requires law in order to serve love effectively. I write about canon 603 precisely so it can be better understood and implemented by dioceses in a way which serves love both for and in those persons called to solitary consecrated eremitical life and for those to whom they minister in the silence of solitude.

We cannot deny that the Church is, in part, an historical reality made up of historical elements including sinful people. Our God loved historical existence enough to create it, to call it good, and to become incarnate to dwell with his People. One day the Kingdom of God will be fulfilled "on earth as it is in heaven" and law will not be necessary, but until then, until we are all perfect rather than struggling to grow in perfection, church or canon law is a gift of God meant to and capable of serving Love. For some hermits it provides a needed "space" in which authentic eremitism as an ecclesial vocation may be lived in and for the benefit of a world that itself has little space for or understanding of hermits. We can thank God for it as well as for the Decalogue and law of all sorts!!!

Letting God Remake our Hearts: Embracing a Surpassing Righteousness

When I read the warning in Friday's Gospel, "Unless your righteous-ness sur-passes that of the Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven," I was reminded of a question I was once asked by a hermit candidate. I think I have related it here before. He wondered how it was I balanced the "hermit things I do and the worldly things I do"? When I asked what he meant by worldly things he began to explain  and listed things like laundry, cleaning the bathroom, washing dishes, etc. When asked what he meant by hermit things he explained he meant prayer, lectio, Mass, fasting, and all of the other "spiritual" things which were or were becoming a part of his faith life.  In response I tried to explain that at some point --- once he was truly a hermit in the sense he needed to be, especially in order to be professed under c 603, he would come to see that all of the everyday things he did became "hermit things" because after all, he would be a hermit with the heart of a hermit and these were the things done by him. One could not divide one's life into spiritual things and worldly things in such an arbitrary way. The aim of his life with and in God was to allow all things to breathe with the presence of God --- and as a hermit, to witness to the fact that this occurs in the silence of solitude.

There was a corollary. What was also true was that it was possible for him to do all the things a hermit does every day and never become or be a hermit. Unless his "hermitness" came from within and defined everything he did he would remain a person living alone and doing things many many people of many different vocations would do every single day. What had to change was his heart. At some point, if he was truly called to eremitical life, he would develop the heart of a hermit, that is, the heart of a disciple of Christ shaped and nurtured through the events and circumstances of his life as these are transfigured by his dialogue with God in solitude and silence. Righteousness is a matter of the heart existing in an empowered and transfiguring relationship with God and then with others. Merely observing laws may not imply the profound dialogue with God which constitutes real righteousness.

Rule of Life and the Personal Call of God:

A second story might also help explain what concerned Jesus in Friday's Matthean lection. When seeking admission to profession and consecration under canon 603 I, like all diocesan hermits, was required to write a Rule or Plan of Life. There were many possibilities for constructing such a Rule but there were two main options: 1) create a Rule which was essentially a list of things I was to do or avoid doing each day. Such a Rule would include rules for hospitality, allowances for limited active ministry, forms of prayer and devotions to be done, allowed frequency and circumstances associated with leaving the hermitage, daily schedule (rising, recreation, hours of prayer, rest, meals, study, work, retiring, etc, etc.), use of media, times for retreat, spiritual direction, contact with friends and family, the role of the Bishop and delegate, vows, etc. Over all it would be a list of do's and don'ts which constituted laws.

I realized this wouldn't work for me for a couple of reasons. First I would be setting myself up for failure. Sometimes this failure would be due to my own weakness, not only my own resistance but illness, lack of stamina, etc. Secondly though, I knew that such a Rule would not have the ability to inspire me or empower faithfulness and growth. In the short term or over the long haul such a Rule would not serve me or my vocation well. It simply would not speak to my heart or reflect the redemptive way God worked in my life. It would be about external things, important things, yes, but still only external matters. While I had to include such matters, the Rule needed to allow God to continue working within me and therefore, to create the opportunities I personally needed in order to hearken more and more fully to God's call. It needed to allow for a greater righteousness than mere codified law could ever do. In other words, it needed to reflect and express the ways God makes me truly myself. It needed, so to speak,  to be stamped with my Name on every page and too, to call me by Name to be every day of my life.

Surpassing Righteousness: Living the Law of our Hearts

Just as my Rule expresses God's personal call to me, so it expresses my truest self, and therefore, the "law written on my heart." That law, that identity or truest self is symbolized by my name. In true prayer we call upon God by name ("Abba!") as the Spirit empowers us; we give God a sovereign place to stand in our lives and world. But at the same time God calls us by name and gives us a place to stand in his own life. This is the essence of the dialogue of love that occurs between us, the way in which we are made true and empowered by God to a surpassing righteousness. Similarly, it empowers us to call others by name to be, to give the incredible mystery each person is and is called to be a place to stand in our own world without violating or judging them.

To learn to call others by name in this way is to act towards them with the same love God shows us. It was striking to me last week as I reflected on Friday's Gospel that all of this stood in direct counterpoint and contrast to a law which judges and fails to respect the mystery, the sacred and sacramental wholeness of our selves. It is this more external and lesser law which allows us to call another "Raqa" or to judge them to be a fool. It is the same imperfect and partial law which divides and allows us to accept the division of reality into spiritual and worldly things or which remains merely external to ourselves. Moreover, it is the law which drives so much of the world around us which is geared to success and competition at others' expense or to label some "neighbors" and others "aliens" and even to deprive them of names and supplant these with clinical designations or even with numbers.



Artist, Mary Southard, CSJ

Theologians like Gerhard Ebeling have noted that it is "addressibility," our divinely rooted capacity for receiving and extending personal address which is both the essence of love and, at the same time, the really unique and most human thing about us. Betrayal of this capacity is the deepest and perhaps the most dehumanizing sin we know. To name and to call upon another by name are two of the most profoundly creative acts we undertake by means of language because these allow another to genuinely exist as a person rather than as an anonymous "other" with no real place to stand in our lives or the world of human community.

I have begun thinking of "addressibility" as one central meaning of the notion that we are created in the image of God (imago Dei) and thus too, the law which God carves on our hearts; it is the "law," this "image," which Lent seeks to allow us to live more fully. Whether we do that through prayer where we call upon God and allow God to call us by name, through penance where we learn  to hear our own deepest names and become aware of our common humanity with others, or through a true almsgiving where we do not merely give things to others but rather gift them in ways which summon them to their truest dignity, where, that is, we give in ways which call others by name to be, addressibility is the gift and law we embody most profoundly; it is the surpassing righteousness to which we are called. Billy, an 8 year old described it this way, [[You know you are loved by the way someone holds your name in their mouth.]]

My prayer is that we each take seriously our call to the surpassing righteousness which allows us to call upon God as "Abba" and simultaneously lets him call us by name to be. May we allow God to remake our hearts in terms of the law written there and symbolized by our truest Name; may we be similarly inspired to "hold one another's names in our own mouths" with the genuine reverence God teaches us by the way he loves and addresses us.

"You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, your whole mind, your whole soul and your whole strength. . ."

I have to say that whenever I hear Jesus' statement of the Great commandment in Mark's Gospel --- as we hear it in last Friday's Mass, I feel a little stunned and my heart jumps into my throat. That is my immediate reaction.  I hear Jesus say to me, [[ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength,]] and I am completely befuddled or confounded. Oh, of course I want to be able to say I do this but at the same time I know that I am completely unable to do so. More, I often am stopped by a sense that I don't even know what is being asked of me in this. after all, I am not being asked just to love passionately or "the best I can". More, it asks that I love God in this way. GOD! This commandment goes beyond anything I can even imagine. I wonder how many of us experience something similar when we hear this text proclaimed in Church or read it in private. Either this commandment is merely a constant goad to guilt and shame and has been given to solely us to remind us of what we can never accomplish, or it is truly a gift which points us to something almost unimaginable in its wonder.

Fortunately, over time, I have come to know that this commandment is indeed a remarkable gift; like so many things in the New Testament it is a paradox and the key to understanding what it means (at least the things that have helped me to understand it) are also paradoxes. The first key to understanding  what it means and calls for, I think, is the nature of prayer. It is entirely natural to think and speak of prayer as something we do, an activity we undertake. But more fundamentally, prayer is what happens when God is at work in us; it IS God's work in us. Our part in this is to allow God the space and time to do his work in us, to love us in whatever way he desires.  We are most truly "pray-ers" when we allow God to pray in us.

 The second, and related key to understanding it, I think, is Paul's observation in Galatians 2:20, [["I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.]]  Just as we are most truly ourselves, most truly human, when it is Christ who lives and acts in us, so too do we "keep this command" when we have become people whose entire hearts, minds, souls, and strength are open to, come from, and mediate the God who is Love-in-act. This commandment is, most fundamentally, not about something we do ourselves --- and certainly not something we do ourselves alone, but rather the persons we are in and with the power of God. It is a commandment that we allow God to truly be God for us and through us in an exhaustive way, that we let him gift us with his presence and make us into truly human beings.


Remember that the first part of this quote is Paul's explanation in Gal 2:19: [[For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for (or to) God.]] In other words, the Law taught Paul about his own inadequacies so that he might allow the Grace (that is, the powerful and active presence) of God  to be the source of his life. Like Paul we live for and to God (and that means loving God) when we allow ourselves to be opened to God's presence, power, and action in our lives. After all it is God who is Love-in-act. As we think about this commandment during Lent we are apt to hear a commandment to change in our lives. We are called on to allow God to dispose us in ways which open us to God's love, to make us into people whose hearts, minds, spirits, and all of our strength are given over to God's own life and purposes.

The final key, then, has to do with our understanding of what it means to be human. As I have written here before: [[We sometimes think our humanity is a given, an accomplished fact rather than a task and call to be accomplished. We also may think that it is possible to be truly human in solitary splendor. But our humanity is our essential vocation and it is something we only achieve in relation to God, his call, his mercy and love, his companionship --- and his people!]] Scripture calls human beings Temples of the Holy Spirit or speaks of God as "dwelling in our hearts." Theologians note that heart is actually a theological term defining where God bears witness to Godself. The bottom line here, as with all the other paradoxical expressions of this truth is that we are truly ourselves only to the extent we live life within, with, and from the power and life of God.

The Great commandment is exhaustive in what it asks from us. It requires nothing less than the whole of ourselves. There are many ways to trivialize it: we can suggest it involves a bit of Semitic exaggeration (like Jesus' comments about hating our Father and Mother); we can argue that our feelings of inadequacy make us hear it as more emphatic than it really is so we just need to work through these personal issues of ours. We might read this commandment as simply asking us to do our best and nothing more. We might even collapse this commandment into the second one given in Friday's Gospel, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," and read these as a single commandment requiring only that we love others to fulfill it. While the two commandments are inextricably intertwined however, and while love of God inevitably includes love of neighbor, these two commandments are not one. Still, if we allow the first commandment to truly be as exhaustive as it sounds, it will function just as Law is supposed to do. Eventually it will lead us to call out to God to assist us in our complete inability to keep it ourselves --- and that, as Paul well knew and taught throughout his letters, is truly the first gift of a grace that saves.

Eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

[[Dear Sister, what does it mean to "eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?" I would think it would be good for us to know good from bad and right from wrong; I would think it would make us better human beings.]]

This past month we have been reading through Paul's letter to the Romans. Of utmost concern to Paul are 1) the situation of sin in which we find ourselves ensnared and 2) dealing with the power of sin and death which actually resides within us (which is what God does in Christ).  I want to turn to what Paul has been saying to us to answer this question. Paul clearly knew the nature of sin;  his treatment of the place of law in exacerbating the state of bondage to sin in which we find ourselves so that we might eventually become open to God saving us gives us a key to understanding what the author in Genesis meant by this original myth of the garden, and especially what it means to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Two weeks ago we read the passage from Chapter five in which Paul describes the terrible quandary in which he finds himself with regard to sin: "The good I would do I do not do; that which I would not do I do!" Here Paul confesses his tremendous weakness with regard to the Law and also to holiness more generally. He knows, for instance that if someone says, "Thou shalt not covet or lie" one almost automatically begins to consider the attraction of others' goods or gifts or, for example, one begins to consider lying and how one might do that even if one has never done so before.  Similarly, if the Law says, "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and mind, etc" the Law pushes us to try and do something on our own we can ONLY do with the grace of God. Paul summarizes the situation in the seventh chapter of Romans, [["But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead" (Romans 7:8)]] We know the situation with children (or ourselves) when the demand that we not get into the cookie jar (or think about food, etc) immediately makes us desire or think about what is prohibited. In other words, besides making us aware of our sinfulness and weakness, which the law certainly does, it also provokes to temptation and sin by putting the thing it prohibits (etc.) into our minds.


The author of the powerfully insightful myth of the garden in Genesis tells us that our original parents knew only God (and one another, etc) apart from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In terms of the narrative, there was no good or bad prior to imbibing; there was only the intimacy and wholeness that stems from complete trust in and communion with God, his creation, and one another. We refer to their original state as one of innocence. Somehow Adam and Eve were tempted to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that point a divided reality becomes something we consider and choose in one way and another. Evil (or other and lesser goods than life with God himself) become things we weigh. They have been made part of our thoughts and yearnings; we are no longer merely innocent or simply know God and that which is of God. We have taken these realities inside ourselves in some way and Law in particular can provoke these to speak or call to us when they might otherwise be quiet within us.

This is a partial explanation of the meaning of  eating of "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil". Because we are not in either the state of innocence or the state of purity or singleness of heart we will one day know in Christ, we know good and evil intimately. While you are correct that we must constantly discern the values and disvalues present in any situation and that this can be a good thing which, in Christ, make us more human, within the larger perspective  it is not what we are ultimately meant for. We are meant for a situation of complete union with God where he, and reality in him, are all we really know. When Paul refers to a time" when God will be all in all this is part of what he is referring to.

Peter, Do You Love Me? Part 2

Tomorrow's Gospel portrays the reconciliation between Jesus and Peter occasioned by a dialogue in which Jesus questions Peter, and thereby reminds him of what is deepest and truest in himself. As noted in part 1, through Jesus' questions, Peter gets in touch with his heart of hearts and with the reality of agapeic love that objectively inspires him most profoundly. (What Peter feels subjectively is affirmed in his responses, which are expressed in terms of filial love.) From this experience, this reconciliation with what is deepest in himself comes Jesus' triple commission of Peter to "Feed my Lambs, feed my sheep." And of course, Jesus then reminds him that when Peter was younger he could dress himself and go wherever he wanted, but now that he was older (more mature), someone else would gird him in a new role and lead him where he did not want to go.

The point of course, besides referring immediately to the kind of death Peter would die, is that an Apostle's vocation and commission is a difficult one; it represents a kind of freedom which is far more mature and responsible than the liberty of youth. More, while Love speaks to us in our heart of hearts and is the basis of all Christian morality and ethics (something the Church affirms again and again, not least in her teaching on the primacy of conscience coupled with the idea that conscience is that sacred and inviolable place where God speaks to us), discerning how the imperative of that voice of Love works out in concrete terms is sometimes difficult and will always have significant consequences because the stakes are very high.

In recent days we have been reminded of this latter part of tomorrow's Gospel in a particularly striking way, not only of the difficulty of working out what is most loving and most inspired in concrete situations, but of the fact that sometimes our commitment to communion which is our deepest reality and the Love which grounds it and our vocation will take us places we would really rather not but certainly must go if we are to be true to ourselves and our God.

You may know the story: Sister Margaret McBride, a Sister of Mercy and member of a hospital ethics committee was presented with a really terrible situation. A mother of four children with an 11 week pregnancy had a condition which was exacerbated by the pregnancy. If she continued the pregnancy the prospect of both mother and baby dying was nearly 100%. If the pregnancy was terminated the mother had a chance of living. In either case, the baby would die. Church directives on the matter were clear and unambiguous: direct abortion is never allowed. One may not intend evil in order to do good. The demands of love, however, were not so clear in this particular situation. The abortion was done and Sister Margaret and all who participated in it in any way were automatically excommunicated, meaning the Church hierarchy did not act to excommunicate these people but rather, those involved incurred this ecclesiastical (not Divine!) penalty themselves as a consequence of their very action.

Now the classical position on the teaching of the absolute primacy of conscience foresees such a situation. Aquinas was very clear that one MUST act in good conscience (to do otherwise is to sin) and that if one's actions will take one outside the church, that is, if they will result in excommunication, one must act according to one's conscience judgment and bear the excommunication humbly. Again, to fail to act according to one's conscience judgment is to sin; to act in good conscience is not, no matter what the consequences or the correctness or incorrectness of that judgment. Sometimes we hear people suggest that if one acts in good conscience it can only be with a well-formed and informed conscience (this is true), and further that this must mean that one can only act in accord with Church teaching (this is not true). Of course, if this latter part of the statement were true, Aquinas' analysis with its prominent conflict between law and love would be meaningless; excommunication when acting in good conscience could never occur. Similarly at Vatican II it was proposed by some Bishops/Curia that the Council's teaching on conscience be modified to state explicitly that a well-formed conscience was one which was formed to be in accord with Church teaching in any given situation. The theological commission in charge of such a modification rejected it as too rigid and narrow to reflect the scope and wisdom of Church teaching on primacy of conscience.

What we see is that sometimes there is a disconnect or conflict between law (which deals with universals) and love (which not only is a universal imperative but which deals more adequately with concrete situations than law can ever do). Church teaching and the magisterium honors the fact of this disconnect by refusing to soften the crisis (krisis is the Greek term for a moment of decision) that can occur as a result and by commissioning us each to act as Love itself demands. Only we can bring love to a situation. Law cannot. Only we can act in an inspired and creative way given specific circumstances require. Law cannot. Only we can courageously negotiate the transition from universal legal norms in a way which truly chooses life in the best way possible. We are not prevented from erring, nor assured that every decision we make is correct, but the task and challenge of discipleship is this momentous and compelling nonetheless. The charge in tomorrow's gospel passage is a somewhat stronger version of Augustine's famous dictum: Love and do what you must! Love, and do what only you can do. Feed My Sheep!!

My own prayer as we prepare to celebrate Pentecost is a prayer for the Wisdom, Love, and Courage of the Spirit (and any other gifts) necessary to accept the commission which comes with our acceptance of a mature Christian identity; it is a prayer for the Spirit which grounds, reveals, and allows our affirmation of that communion ---that agapeic reality which is deepest, most true and real within us. I especially pray for Sister Margaret who acted in good conscience (quite a high value and demanding reality), and showed us how the face of God is made manifest in the concrete situation. She did this not by thumbing her nose at law, but by relativizing it in light of the Great Commandment and the Voice of God she heard in her heart of hearts. I also pray that her Bishop will lift the automatic sanction, not because abortion is acceptable, but because sometimes, as Sister Margaret has shown us, there are even worse threats to innocent life in the concrete situation. Difficult as this situation is, we cannot allow people of faith, courage, and exceptional integrity to be automatically excluded from the Body of Christ in a way which suggests that church law trumps rather than imperfectly serves God's own Commandment.

May we, each of us, from the lowliest hermit, religious or lay person, to the highest Bishop or Pope act in ways which effectively bring the face of Christ's love, mercy, and compassion into the concrete situation. Law can assist us in significant ways, but will always fall short here. A heart forgiven by Christ and reconciled with him, a heart which knows its own frailties and failures even while it is inspired by and obedient to his Holy Spirit will not.

Continuing in Galatians, Lections for Friday 27th Week of Ordinary Time

Today and yesterday the readings from Galatians provide the real heart of Paul's arguments. Yesterday Paul called the Galatians idiots (foolish, stupid, blind and deaf) and asked if they had been bewitched. This is no mean accusation in a world populated by demons and, as Paul sees the matter, either under the power of the Gospel (which means graced and free), OR under the power of that which is anti-God. Paul's questions are incredibly shocking, and calculated for just that purpose. As Jesus' parables are meant to disorient and reorient at fundamental levels Paul's use of really harsh characterizations and either/or thinking is meant to do the same. So many times we forget that with regard to the Gospel it really IS a matter of grace OR sin, commitment to God OR commitment to that which is contrary to God, Faith OR Faithlessness, and both Paul and Jesus remind us that fundamentally our lives can ONLY be oriented one way OR the other. As I have said before, there is no neutral stance from which we can live our lives, no safe dispassionate place from which we can approach reality. We are committed to God in Christ with all that means, OR WE ARE NOT. As today's Gospel tells us, "those who are not with me are against me, those who do not gather with me scatter."

In today's reading from Galatians Paul lays out his most fundamental insight: Christ was condemned (cursed or adjudged Godless) by the LAW. And yet, as Paul's experience of the Risen Christ clearly signified, this "Godless blasphemer" was vindicated by God and raised from the dead (from Godlessness and non-being). Either the Jews (including Paul himself) were correct and Jesus was rightly condemned and crucified under the Law (which was correctly applied!), OR they had to reevaluate the place of Law and look again at what God had done in this man Jesus. Paul's theology is clear that God is working in the ultimately weak and "godless" to reveal himself exhaustively. He KNOWS the Law was correctly, that is legally, applied, and that all that Jesus did and stood for cried out for this application. He does NOT doubt that the Law was correctly applied, nor does he think that people simply made a mistake in applying it. Rather, he sees clearly that LAW is unable to cope with what God was doing in Christ; Law falls short here (hamartia, central NT term for sin = to fall short, remember) and, in conjunction with human sinfulness, becomes the very curse it accused Jesus of being.

This is the essential reason Paul does not allow for a Gospel buttressed by Law. The good news he proclaims is the gospel where God's love goes beyond anything the Law can either bring about or legislate; it goes beyond anything human beings could imagine, much less codify. It is an imperfect and transitional form of Divine wisdom which is pedagogical or instructive (and excellent for the immature!), but which is transcended by what God is doing in his Christ, for what God is doing there is remaking human beings into a new creation, a creation where Law actually holds us back from genuinely ethical behavior. (Remember the Gospel reading on the good Samaritan!) So when Paul points out that the Gospel saves, he really means the Gospel proclaimed to us transforms our very being when it is heard, and that transformation results in a higher ethic (way of being human) than Law itself could ever legislate or even express. To combine Law and Gosepl is to compromise the very truth of the Gospel which is the good news of ultimately responsible freedom --- that is the outworking of God's empowered new creation. Either there IS a new creation in the CRUCIFIED Christ or there is NOT. Either the Law is still the way we are truly human, or it is not. To straddle the line here and build on a Gospel buttressed by Law is to deny what God was doing in Christ. Paul sees that clearly, as does the Church. That is especially clear in her choice of Gospel passages today with Luke's reference to the returning demons who come to reoccupy the once cleaned out home.

As noted above, both lections today are about the notion that with regard to the Gospel there is no room for compromise. We either build our lives on it OR on some other (and antithetical) reality. (Even Law becomes antithetical here.) Luke is especially clear here, but the remoteness of the image may puzzle us rather than make this point clear. What is all this stuff about demons being cast out and then returning with others to make the original dwelling even more unfit than originally? It all has to do with neutral stances and their impossibility when God and his Gospel are at issue. What Luke knows is that the human heart can be cleansed of that which defiles it (and these things are ALWAYS matters of our own commitment), but that if one does not replace these commitments with a genuine commitment to God and his Christ, then they will be replaced by something far worse than the original defilement.

With regard to Paul and the issue of the Law, this is probably pretty clear. Before Christ it was possible to rightly understand the Law as the ultimate wisdom and gift of God. It was not perfect (though some Jews clearly forgot this!) but it was absolutely the most exhaustive way available to give oneself to God and one's neighbor despite its limitations. But after Christ, a new wisdom (power perfected in weakness) and a better way, a more perfect and exhaustively and authentically human way existed to return oneself to God and give oneself to one's neighbors was established. It was a different wisdom and way too because it did not allow one to define neighbors in terms of those who kept the law vs those who did not, nor did it allow one to put matters of legal responsibility first (like avoiding defilement in order to serve in the Temple rather than ministering to a person fallen to bandits). It demanded a new way of seeing reality and a new heart as well. One either committed to this new way of being human, this quite literal new creation, or one did not. If one did not, and, say, one recommited oneself to the Law, then one not only adopted the more imperfect ethic, but has rejected the new person one had been remade into and all that implied with regard to Christ and God.

Moreover, since one had been remade and then failed to make the necessary commitment to this new way of being, Luke knew that one would commit oneself to something far less worthy. The human heart abhors a vacuum, so once it is freed FOR this new humanity, a commitment to something will follow. IF it is to the Law instead of God's new gift -- a new creation and the freedom of the Christian, then Law becomes an idol and a heart that was newly configured witnesses against its very self. I suppose it is a lot like a drug house being cleaned up in order to be a sign to the whole neighborhood of commitment to a new way of existence, new possibilities, new hope, new life. If the house is allowed to remain vacant after being cleansed and renewed then squatters will reoccupy it and what it becomes is a worse defilement than what originally existed. If we allow God to remake our hearts, to open them and ready them for the relatedness and commitment which is part of being truly human and then fail to commit fully to him IN HIS Gospel (and his Christ), SOMETHING and someone ELSE will SURELY take their place.

For Paul, this is the story of Law vs Gospel. There is still more to say about all this (I have not even begun to talk about conditonal vs unconditioned love and salvation by grace, for instance), and more to read in Galatians, but this was the focus of today's readings especially.

Introduction to Galatians: A look at the Pauline Lections for this week and the next

This week and part of next we are reading Galatians and I have to say it is one of my favorite letters, not simply because it is Paul at his most passionate and biting, but because it is here we see one of the greatest bits of evidence that the Church came only over time to understand the Gospel and its implications; further, because it gives us a sense that church documents do not have to be studies in compromise when the truth is at stake I find it tremendously refreshing.

Galatians is the story of a man fighting for the truth of the Gospel, a truth he knew deeply and which came to him from his experience of the risen Christ. This experience led him to understand that Jesus was truly the Son of God and God's own messiah or anointed one. It was an understanding that so completely conflicted with his former pharisaical wisdom and position, especially his rightful persecution of the Church apparently idolizing a crucified man, that it overturned everything he held dear --- not least his own love of the Law and emphasis on the need to show one is a member of the covenant people by being circumcised. For Paul, it took real courage not to compromise and accept a Law-laced Gospel, not to insist that Gentile Christians also become Jews to be the REAL covenant people, but despite his love for the his own Tradition he came to see that indeed, God was doing something really new in Christ -- even while it was consistent with the best of the Jewish Tradition.

There are so many lessons for us today in this short book that it is one of those that make me thank God it was included in the Canon. Certainly life in the church would have been much easier without it: No condemnations of Peter's hypocrisy, no examples of letting go of long-held God-given gifts (Traditions) so that God could do something new, no sustained examples of genuine conversion and apostleship despite not being among the original twelve, no sharp indictment of law and its opposition to the freedom (and spirit-breathed responsibility) of the Christian, no examples of actually going against what Jesus himself APPARENTLY held onto as necessary for the time being (circumcision!)!! (Consider this last carefully because the NT certainly does not indicate Jesus ever exempted anyone from circumcision, nor was he himself exempted --- and yet, here we have Paul arguing that maintaining the practice is insufficiently sensitive to and even undermines the truth of the Gospel! For those who argue, "Had Jesus wanted x (or not wanted x), he would have DONE x (or not done x)," Galatians is a wonderful kick in the backside.) The resurrection did indeed turn things on their heads, and cultural truths as well as God-given tradtions fell in the process. And thanks be to God this is the case, for there would be no truly catholic church had this not been the case, merely a Jewish sect stamped with a need and capacity to do great good but also marked by a kind of separateness and righteousness open to the relative few.

Yesterday's readings were a great combination: the introduction to Galatians where Paul covers briefly (and sometimes merely implicitly) all the accusations made against him and states what is at stake in the Gospel he has preached, and the Lukan version of the parable of the good Samaritan. In the Gospel from Luke we see that two men doing their duty according to the Law avoid what looks like (and could well be) a dead man. The Law demanded they not defile themselves in this way, and further, that they take care of their temple duties. Hence, they passed by the injured man. Yes, the Law allowed for intervening in life and death situations, but it also leaves a lot of room for casuistry: note the scholar of the Law's final question to Jesus: "who is my neighbor?" Jesus' own ethic leaves no room for such casuistry: the one who loves even the least as God loves has discovered who is the real neighbor, and has acted as one himself. There is nothing more important than this love, no piety which is more demanding. This is a love that law cannot legislate and is dependent upon a freedom law does not give or (sometimes) even allow. It is an extravagant love that calls for no compromises beyond the canny shrewdness of the Samaritan's generosity. What Paul will be arguing to the Church in Galatia this week and the next is precisely this point: The Gospel gives is the freedom of Christ, a deeply responsible freedom which far exceeds the freedom of the Law. We combine it with Law at our own peril, but most significantly at the peril of the Gospel itself.

For now, let me make one point clear which was at the heart of things for Paul: if Christ has really been raised from the dead and vindicated by God, then nothing could go unchanged or without reevaluation. The Law especially and its place in the life and piety of Jews and Gentiles could not go unchallenged, for it was according to the Law that Jesus was crucified as a blasphemer and stigmatized as Godless. It was according to the Law that Paul persecuted Jewish Christians. It is either Law OR Gospel for Paul, because he knew that either Jesus is the risen Christ killed by the Law, or what was done to him was not only legal but the correct way to deal with a blasphemer. Galatians is largely the story of what happens when Paul, as the result of his experience of the Risen Christ, sees this clearly and others do not, but instead try to compromise between Law and Gospel.

I will try to post several more times this week (and next) looking at the daily lections and the challenges posed by Paul's letter to the Galatians. For now let me encourage readers to really spend some time rereading it in the next ten days. If you are looking for a readable and inexpensive but good commentary to use with it try NT (Tom) Wright's Paul for Everyone: Galatians and Thessalonians. James Dunn's The Theology of the Letter to the Galatians is also quite good, and Sacra Pagina's volume on Galatians is excellent, of course. For readability though, Tom Wright's books are nearly unbeatable.