We Are People of the Cross (Reprised): Ash Wednesday 2016

Last year was an incredibly poignant Ash Wednesday. As much as it is our tendency to allow things to fade into the background of our awareness, it seems to me that reprising this post is important to help us remember who we are. Christians are still being persecuted and dying everyday in the Middle East. They trust in the Cross of Christ. In our own "first world" friends and relatives struggle with the problems of illness, meaninglessness, bereavement and all the little and big forms of death which touch any human life. They too trust in the Cross and hope to find at the end of Lent that they are better prepared to celebrate it as the victory of God's mercy in a violent and often death-driven world. I hope reprising this post is helpful in moving us toward that festive day.
           

           + + + + + + + + + + + +             

[Four] years ago I wrote an article here supporting the idea that we Christians are People of the Cross. (cf., We Are People of the Cross). I felt strongly about my disagreement with Sister Joan Chittester's point --- though I understood what she was focusing on and completely empathized with that. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that the importance of that label would be underscored in blood and martyrdom in the way that occurred just three days ago.  On that day ISIS took 21 Coptic Christians out to the beach somewhere along the Mediterranean and beheaded them for being "People of the Cross" and People of the illusion of the Cross. We have all seen the pictures: the long row of young men in orange jump suits, each accompanied by his murderer dressed in black and masked from identification; the ISIS member brandishing his knife towards the camera; the headless torso lying in a pool of blood on the sand; the sea turned red with the blood, bodies, and separated heads of these martyrs.

Families of Martyred Christians in Egypt

On Sunday our parish celebrated several baptisms of children. In each case the parents and godparents traced the sign of the cross on the child's forehead following our pastor who had first done so --- claiming these children for Christ. It was a joyful occasion also marked by our own renewal of baptismal vows: "Do we renounce. . .?" "Do we believe. . .?" and echoes of our own initiation into the People of God, "Let your light shine. . .!" "Keep your baptismal garment unstained. . .!"

Today, on Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, we will each have a cross traced on our own forehead in ashes and this cross will be visible for at least several hours as we move through our world identified as believers in either the greatest foolishness or the greatest wisdom the world has ever known. Remember, it was Paul, the last and in some ways, the greatest Apostle who said, "If Christ is not raised from the dead then we are the greatest fools of all!" ISIS is certainly not the first to claim the cross was the symbol of an illusion! They will not be the last to suggest Christians are deluded in their faith. But we know Christ crucified and risen, we know him intimately since through him our lives have been changed in ways only the Living God and certainly no mere illusion (or delusion) could do.

I have no doubt that ISIS believes the orange jumpsuits and beheadings are somehow degrading, scandalous, and shameful. (They, at the very least, literally represent a complete loss of face and the taking away of honor. In honor-shame cultures honor resides especially in the head.) Perhaps they see these in somewhat the same way the cross was perceived in Jesus' day. I am sure they believe death has forever separated these Christians from God's love. But in this case orange is the new white --- the white garment of men and women who have been baptized into Jesus' death and resurrection. The white garment of witnesses, martyrs, who know that our God loves us and all of creation with an everlasting love from which no guilt, no sin, no shame, no death, can separate us. The sign of that love, a love which enters into the godless depths of our own terrible alienation and shame  in order to bring us back "home" to ourselves and our God is the cross of Christ. We are People of the Cross --- marked by both the world's guilt and shame and the righteousness and hope of God's vindication.

Coptic Tattoos; Marked as People of the Cross

Today we will wear that sign both proudly and humbly, joyfully and in grief at our renewed recognition of all it can mean in a broken and often savage world; once again we wear that sign on our very flesh as we renew our commitment to repent and believe in the unconquerable Love-in-act made real for us in the depths of human shame and shamefulness on and through the cross of Christ. Today as we renew our own professions and identities as People of the Cross, we especially remember these martyrs, these brothers in the faith. They died with Christ's name on their lips; may our own lives similarly proclaim him and the God he revealed.

+Milad Makeen Zaky

+Abanub Ayad Atiya

+Maged Solaimain Shehata

+Yusuf Shukry Yunan

+Kirollos Shokry Fawzy

+Bishoy Astafanus Kamel

+Somaily Astafanus Kamel

+Malak Ibrahim Sinweet

+Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros

+Girgis Milad Sinweet

+Mina Fayez Aziz

+Hany Abdelmesih Salib

+Bishoy Adel Khalaf

+Samuel Alham Wilson

+Ezat Bishri Naseef

+Loqa Nagaty

+Gaber Munir Adly

+Esam Badir Samir

+Malak Farag Abram

+Sameh Salah Faruq

+And the martyr whose name we do not know, a “Worker from Awr village”

Faces of Honor: St Mark's Coptic Church
marks Martyrs with Crowns, Candles, and Flowers 

A Little on Witnessing to a Love that Does Justice in the Face of Tyranny

 [[Dear Sister, I am new to your blog and I haven't explored it very much. I am surprised to find a hermit writing about current events. Do you really not hate ISIS? I think I do. I think I shouldn't but I can't control what I feel when people kidnap and threaten to burn children alive! But here are my real questions. From other articles it seems that your vocation is pretty new and not very well known. I know we don't have any Canon 603 hermits in our parish or diocese. How many of you are there in the US? Do Canon 603 hermits exist in other countries as well? Are there many of them? Do you mind if I ask other dumb questions before I read much of your blog?]]

Welcome to Stillsong Hermitage's blog then. To be honest, I don't write very much about current events but I was asked to write about the situation in Syria and I was very moved by the murder of the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians. That this occurred just as we were preparing for Lent and the ritual of being marked with the sign of the cross in ashes made things immensely more weighty in my own mind and heart. Add to that the fact that I was just beginning to read the Scriptures with eyes more newly sensitized to the place of honor-shame in Middle Eastern cultures and to see many of Jesus' encounters with family, religious leaders, and so forth as violations of honor, occasions leading to dishonor and shame for some, and you can see why these stories had a special poignancy for me.

You see I have recently come to understand freshly the difference between what guilt-sin-individualist cultures like ours and honor-shame-collectivist cultures like those of the Middle East perceive as honorable. Consciences in these two types of society are formed in vastly different ways from one another. It is not necessarily that consciences have been turned off, as a friend recently commented to me, but rather that they are formed very differently, namely as an instance of group conscience according to what the group determines to be honorable or dishonorable. In light of this I came to see even more clearly how Jesus could be crucified or the cross could be a symbol of the most abject dishonor/shame an individual could know. I have also recently been freshly sensitized to the epidemic quality of shame in our Western culure and to how extraordinarily thin in number and depth have been the reflections of systematic theologians on this aspect of the Gospel and Cross of Christ despite the fact that exegetes regularly remind us that the Gospel writers focus on not the physical pain Jesus experienced but the shame associated with his crucifixion.

These and other threads came together for me recently within a short period of time and all of them were and are critically important. We have either lost or never had an adequate sense of how very counter cultural Jesus and the Kingdom he proclaimed were and are. If we are to begin to understand ISIS and to deal with them adequately we must recover and/or cultivate this awareness. If we are to love our enemies as well as our brothers and sisters in the faith, we must understand this. I suppose it is particularly ironic that a very small piece of this reflection on current events in light of Jesus' Kingdom message and behavior comes from a diocesan hermit living a relatively hidden and certainly silent and contemplative life. But this really is the role of contemplatives and hermits in the Church. Living in silence at the center of existence makes this possible and sometimes, anyway, even imperative. I am reminded of something Thomas Merton once wrote:

I make monastic [eremitical] silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists, and agitators, and, when I speak, it is to deny my faith and my Church can ever seriously be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, and believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also and perhaps against these most of all.

Of course, in the situation with ISIS the self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny are not those of the Church nor of Islam. But they are those of religion more generally. It is against just this kind of tyranny that Jesus stood, and against which we should stand in our own lives today. This is the reason theologians often distinguish religion from faith. Faith does not allow us to hate. Often it calls us to be weak and lacking in control but still it empowers us to love. This is so because it is rooted in trust in God's love and the power of that love to create justice. So, ordinarily my own protest is carried out in silence and prayer. Martyrdom, witness, takes many forms. When so many threads some together as happened recently, it may be time to speak.

Numbers of Canon 603 Hermits in the US and Elsewhere:

As for your "real" questions. . . numerically the diocesan hermit vocation is quite rare. While there have always been hermits --- especially in the Eastern Church (their course has been more variable in the Western Church, sometimes dying out altogether) --- diocesan hermits only came to be a possibility in 1983 with the publication of the Revised Code of Canon Law. The model and original impetus for the establishment of this new form of consecrated/religious life was a group of about a dozen hermits who had once lived solemn vows as monks in community; when they discerned a call to solitude they each had to leave their monasteries and solemn vows and become secularized; this was because there was no provision in their own congregation's proper law for solitary life, nor was there any provision in canon law --- the more universal law of the Church. Eventually they came under the protection of Bishop Remi de Roo who came to see the significance of their vocation. Bishop Remi then made an intervention at Vatican II sincerely pleading with the Church Fathers to recognize the eremitical life as a way of perfection. Nothing happened at Vatican II but the plans for a revision of Canon Law were initiated and these eventually included Canon 603 which provides for solitary consecrated hermits in universal law for the very first time.

In the US there are about 80 diocesan hermits, perhaps a small number more or fewer. The Vatican has begun to include numbers of c 603 hermits in their statistics on religious and consecrated life but I don't think any have yet been published. In some countries there are none at all. I have a friend in New Zealand who is a diocesan hermit; she is the only one there. In other countries, France and Italy, for instance, there are more than in the US but the number is still relatively small. Because canon 603 is part of a universal Code of Canon Law binding on the Universal Church, not just a single diocese here or there (as was once the case with hermits or anchorites in Europe, for instance), there are now diocesan hermits all over the world. As you can see though, relatively speaking diocesan hermits are an infinitesimally small percentage within the Universal Church.

Finally, please don't worry about questions being "dumb". I have asked in the past for folks to pose whatever questions they have. A few people do that and some even ask questions on an infrequent but more or less regular basis. They are all very helpful to me. For instance in a post I put up earlier I was able to answer a question about the meaning of the term "institutes". It never occurred to me that word could be a source of misunderstanding for someone reading canon 603 ("Besides institutes of consecrated life, the Church recognizes the eremitic or anchoritic life. . .") but it was a really great question because it made something clear to me I had not known. I think all questions can do that but quite often it is the most obvious ones that don't get asked and could be most instructive for readers, and for myself as well! So while I do encourage you to read posts linked to the labels on the right of this blog, please know all questions are more than welcome.

Update on Story of Syrian Kidnappings

Update, Tuesday, 10. March.2015: I noted today that, after several days of silence, comments regarding the kidnapping and threatened murder of the Vincentians --- priests, religious, associates, and their wives and children in Syria --- are now being added to the original report on the Vincentian site. I consider that this along with a second report linked in those comments serve to verify the truth of the story.  I am sorry (and perhaps also relieved) to say that there are, however, still no further details, no clarifications, no expansions.

Let us persevere in our silent prayer and support for all the victims and all those suffering from the terrible sense of unknowing involved. In tomorrow's first reading we hear, [[However, take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and your children's children.]] It is important not to let these people slip from mind or memory --- not because we want to sensationalize or validate ISIS or the hatred and horrific violence involved, but because we know these Christians as witnesses to faith in the crucified and risen Christ and the God revealed in those events as One who will bring good out of even the worst human beings do to one another. That is what we must teach our children and our children's children. We must continue to hold these witnesses and their loved ones in our hearts in a sacred anamnesis.

Again, the original post can be found here Horrific News From Syria.

Concerns about the Story of the Vincentians in Syria?

[[Update, Tuesday, 10. March.2015: I noted today that, after several days of silence, comments regarding the kidnapping and threatened murder of the Vincentians --- priests, religious, associates, and their wives and children --- are now being added to the original report on the Vincentian site. I consider that this along with a second report linked in those comments serve to verify the truth of the story.  There are, however, still no further details, no clarifications, no expansions. ]]

[[Dear Sister why has there been no more news on the story of the Society of St Vincent de Paul and the kidnappings in Syria? Are you concerned about the truth of the report?]]

Thanks for the question. The original post can be found here Horrific News From Syria, or just by scrolling down a couple of posts. I don't know why there has been no more news though perhaps it is an expression of prudent caution. I was concerned with the truth of the report within 24 hours of my own post because there was almost nothing else in the news. That was especially true since disinformation meant to inflame emotions and biases would serve ISIS's purposes. In any case, the only other post on this was on the Vincentian site. That continues to be true. I have checked the original site each day; the original post has not been removed, retracted, corrected, or clarified. When asked if there was any more news the only response has been there is NO additional news and that was the response of the priest who first posted the story. No additional comments have been added either.

These facts lead me to continue to believe the story is true and that the Vincentians have chosen to maintain silence in the matter. For instance, it would have been quite simple (and imperative) to report everyone is safe and the original story was mistaken if that were the case. We would all have simply rejoiced at that and let the rest go! If the site had been hacked and the report was fraudulent that too could have been easily remedied. It would have also been an important cautionary experience. At the same time I have not been asked to remove or retract my own posts. Should someone from the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, the Vatican, or my own diocesan Chancery request that, for instance, I would comply in half a heartbeat.

Until there is a correction, confirmation, or an update on the status of the people reported kidnapped and threatened with murder we must continue to pray and not allow our faith to be played off against authentic Islam. As already noted, we cannot allow ourselves to fall into hatred; at the same time we must renew our own baptismal commitments as People of the Cross of Christ. There are many Christians who are living in danger in the Middle East today. They have been deprived of homes, possessions, family, work, school, and the means to support themselves. They have lost precious worship spaces and seen the symbols of their faith demeaned, defaced, and destroyed. In a number of posts over the past year I have provided updates on Dominican Sisters in Iraq who have been in desperate circumstances. They have lost older Sisters due to stress and hardship and they have professed several young Sisters who as juniors have been thrown into vowed life and fulltime ministry under the most difficult conditions imaginable. Their story (the story of all these Christians in fact) is difficult, frightening, and also inspiring. They all need our prayers and our assistance.

Horrific News From Syria: Another Reminder of Why We Are People of the Cross

I received the following notification from a friend. She wondered if I might write a blog piece on it. I admit I am left entirely speechless by the horror described and threatened. While I sincerely hope this story is not true, at the same time I plead for readers' prayers not only for any innocent victims but for each of us to renew our Baptismal commitments to witness to the fact that in Christ: 
 

[[For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.]]

After all, this was one of our Mass readings on the very day these brothers and sisters in the Faith are reported to have been taken.

[[Special prayer request:
We have all been horrified by the news coming from Syria. As you know our Vincentian Family is spread across the world. We just got the following prayer request from one of our Vincentian Priests:

From the Vincentian Curia in Rome...
From Sister Monique, via Filles de la Charité, PARIS
Via, John Freund, CM Vincentian Website

Late Sunday afternoon on 1 March 2015, I received a message from M. Francoise, a delegate of the International Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and I managed to reach her by telephone. She was leaving for Paris, and collapsed at the news she had just received: members of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul in Syria were kidnapped, along with their wives and children. The children were isolated and put into cages. Adults who do not deny their faith will be decapitated, and their children burned alive in the cages. M. Francoise had been in regular contact with several of them before all this occurred. She asked me to transmit the news and make a fervent appeal for prayers for these people, and all who are held hostage.

Let us remain fervently united in prayer, and have as our intention the welfare of all brothers and sisters in our Christian faith who are being held hostage.]]

It is especially important to remember that ISIS is intent on inflaming hatred and escalating tensions between Christianity and Islam. We cannot treat ISIS as though it is genuine representative of Islam. We cannot allow this story, how ever true it might be, to manipulate us into betraying our own faith and falling into hatred. Prayer is the only recourse we really have here and the only response which is appropriate.  See also: We Are People of the Cross 1 and We Are People of the Cross 2

We Are People of the Cross

Three years ago I wrote an article here supporting the idea that we Christians are People of the Cross. (cf., We Are People of the Cross). I felt strongly about my disagreement with Sister Joan Chittester's point --- though I understood what she was focusing on and completely empathized with that. But never in my wildest dreams did I think that the importance of that label would be underscored in blood and martyrdom in the way that occurred just three days ago.  On that day ISIS took 21 Coptic Christians out to the beach somewhere along the Mediterranean and beheaded them for being "People of the Cross" and People of the illusion of the Cross. We have all seen the pictures: the long row of young men in orange jump suits, each accompanied by his murderer dressed in black and masked from identification; the ISIS member brandishing his knife towards the camera; the headless torso lying in a pool of blood on the sand; the sea turned red with the blood, bodies, and separated heads of these martyrs.

Families of Martyred Christians in Egypt

On Sunday our parish celebrated several baptisms of children. In each case the parents and godparents traced the sign of the cross on the child's forehead following our pastor who had first done so --- claiming these children for Christ. It was a joyful occasion also marked by our own renewal of baptismal vows: "Do we renounce. . .?" "Do we believe. . .?" and echoes of our own initiation into the People of God, "Let your light shine. . .!" "Keep your baptismal garment unstained. . .!"

Today, on Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, we will each have a cross traced on our own forehead in ashes and this cross will be visible for at least several hours as we move through our world identified as believers in either the greatest foolishness or the greatest wisdom the world has ever known. Remember, it was Paul, the last and in some ways, the greatest Apostle who said, "If Christ is not raised from the dead then we are the greatest fools of all!" ISIS is certainly not the first to claim the cross was the symbol of an illusion! They will not be the last to suggest Christians are deluded in their faith. But we know Christ crucified and risen, we know him intimately since through him our lives have been changed in ways only the Living God and certainly no mere illusion (or delusion) could do.

I have no doubt that ISIS believes the orange jumpsuits and beheadings are somehow degrading, scandalous, and shameful. (They, at the very least, literally represent a complete loss of face and the taking away of honor. In honor-shame cultures honor resides especially in the head.) Perhaps they see these in somewhat the same way the cross was perceived in Jesus' day. I am sure they believe death has forever separated these Christians from God's love. But in this case orange is the new white --- the white garment of men and women who have been baptized into Jesus' death and resurrection. The white garment of witnesses, martyrs, who know that our God loves us and all of creation with an everlasting love from which no guilt, no sin, no shame, no death, can separate us. The sign of that love, a love which enters into the godless depths of our own terrible alienation and shame  in order to bring us back "home" to ourselves and our God is the cross of Christ. We are People of the Cross --- marked by both the world's guilt and shame and the righteousness and hope of God's vindication.

Coptic Tattoos; Marked as People of the Cross

Today we will wear that sign both proudly and humbly, joyfully and in grief at our renewed recognition of all it can mean in a broken and often savage world; once again we wear that sign on our very flesh as we renew our commitment to repent and believe in the unconquerable Love-in-act made real for us in the depths of human shame and shamefulness on and through the cross of Christ. Today as we renew our own professions and identities as People of the Cross, we especially remember these martyrs, these brothers in the faith. They died with Christ's name on their lips; may our own lives similarly proclaim him and the God he revealed.

+Milad Makeen Zaky

+Abanub Ayad Atiya

+Maged Solaimain Shehata

+Yusuf Shukry Yunan

+Kirollos Shokry Fawzy

+Bishoy Astafanus Kamel

+Somaily Astafanus Kamel

+Malak Ibrahim Sinweet

+Tawadros Yusuf Tawadros

+Girgis Milad Sinweet

+Mina Fayez Aziz

+Hany Abdelmesih Salib

+Bishoy Adel Khalaf

+Samuel Alham Wilson

+Ezat Bishri Naseef

+Loqa Nagaty

+Gaber Munir Adly

+Esam Badir Samir

+Malak Farag Abram

+Sameh Salah Faruq

+And the martyr whose name we do not know, a “Worker from Awr village”

Faces of Honor: St Mark's Coptic Church
marks Martyrs with Crowns, Candles, and Flowers 

We are People of the Cross

I received a notice of a new book by Joan Chittester today. It began with the following quotation: [[Christians are not people of the cross. Christians are people of the empty tomb who know that every step on the way to light is Light.]]

Now, I greatly respect Sister Joan Chittester's work and life. I also think I understand what she is trying to say here; had she not said, "Christians are not people of the cross," I would simply agree with her comment and move on. But the assertion that Christians are not people of the Cross is wrong. Just as one does not have a sound theology of the cross without resurrection, neither does one have a sound theology of resurrection without the continuing presence of and focus on the cross. As Paul once rightly said, "I want to know Christ crucified and only Christ crucified."

There is an approach to Jesus' death and resurrection which divides the two events and treats resurrection as the undoing of what happened on the cross. It as though the cross was ONLY some sort of tragedy and not also revelatory of God and authentic human existence. What I have written here before is a second approach to the cross. It says that resurrection makes eternally valid what was revealed on the cross and that is something we must always bear in mind. Unfortunately, despite the fact that this is only a partial quote, Sister Joan's bald statement makes me think she has missed this basic point. Ours is assuredly a God which darkness cannot overcome, and one who regularly transforms darkness into light. We know this because darkness has indeed been transfigured in our own lives. Even so, as yet unredeemed darkness is also real in our world.

Therefore we are people of the cross; it is simply that we are people of the paradoxical cross of triumph as well as that of tragedy. We are people of the cross because it is the cross which reveals who we are in light of sin: we are the ones who, if our own autonomy or honor is threatened, will do whatever we can to destroy life, castigate innocence, and profane the sacred. We are people of the cross because the cross reveals that authentic humanity depends totally on God, even in the face of the worst injustice, shame, and horror we might experience. The cross makes this kind of humanity real in space and time, and baptism initiates us into THIS particular death and the new life it revealed (made known and real). But we are also people of the cross because it is the cross that reveals (again, makes known and real) the fact that our God is one who enters into the deepest, darkest, most godless places in our lives and world; he is a God who refuses to allow anything separate us from him.

Had the crucifixion remained the last word, it is true that we would not be people of the cross. But the empty tomb allows the cross to say that death did not and will never have the last word. Still, it is precisely for this reason that we cannot allow the cross to simply fade into the past as a terrible accident or a tragedy which God corrected and expunged with resurrection. In light of the resurrection the cross is capable of revealing us to ourselves --- both the horrors we become under the sway of sin and the saints we become under the sway of grace. An empty tomb does not and cannot do this. The cross is similarly capable of saying that godless death does not have the last word; God's love does. An empty tomb may merely speak of the righteous (or the messianic!) and the fact that God rescues them from death. The cross, however, reveals not only that sin and godlessness are powerful realities, but that our God loves all of us in spite of our participation in these realities and died for us while we were yet sinful, godless people.

God forbid that we become pseudo Christians somehow subtly enamored with the horror, blood, criminality, torture, shame and suffering of the cross. Pseudo-mystical misery is not what we or the cross is about. Self-proclaimed and self-absorbed "Victim souls" who, it seems, cannot begin to imagine the real degree of suffering existing in the lives of their neighbors and who seem to believe the cross was ineffective in dealing with sin, may be "into" this kind of thing, but Christians are not. While it is possible to find instances of people even today offering to suffer so that God might save someone else from cancer or other serious illnesses, such a God and such bargaining with God is contrary to the revelation of the cross itself. The empty tomb certainly helps remind us we are not people of the cross in these distorted senses. Yet, the authentic cross is the symbol of a God who will not abandon us and instead will enter exhaustively into our lives and world to redeem and recreate them. In forgiveness and mercy his justice-creating love will bring life out of death, meaning out of meaninglessness, triumph out of tragedy, honor out of shame, and vindication out of failure. In this sense we are indeed people of the cross and therefore of the empty tomb.