In Memoriam: Prof Ron Olowin 1945-2017

Last night the family, friends, and colleagues of Prof Ron Olowin (astrophysics) celebrated a vigil at St Mary's College marking his very distinguished and faith-filled life and death. Today we celebrated a Mass of the Resurrection at Ron's parish home, St Perpetua's in Lafayette, CA. Last night after the vigil and reception we walked outside on the SMC campus. The night was beautifully warm and the moon was a striking crescent. Several of us (Frs John Kasper, Jan Olowin, myself, et. al) pointed gleefully to the moon showing off what we had just learned from Ron even now when someone cited his rule on how to tell whether the moon was waxing or waning: "If it is light on the right, it is getting bright; if it is light on the left, it ain't!" It was amazing how many of us had no clue how to tell the difference in this --- and now we are unlikely ever to forget it.

In theology today two strains run through everything we do: 1) the relationship between science and faith, a topic which has been made all the more acute by the scientific reductionism (some would call it the scientific imperialism) known as scientism which asserts the scientific method or science itself is the only way to knowledge and that there is nothing other than, much less beyond the material universe to be known, and 2) the cosmic nature of reality and faith so that everything we speak about in theology has a cosmic depth and our hope for a "new heaven and earth" is a hope for what NT Wright calls, "life after life after death;" Paul refers to this state as that which comes to be when God is "all in all". These two strains were definitive in Ron's life. As Christians we assert a Mystery serving as the depth dimension of all reality, an infinitely personal Mystery we call God, the Mystery which makes science possible and faith necessary. It was this Mystery and the cosmos this God created which Ron explored in his scientific work; it was this  same Mystery he knew in prayer and/or celebrated in liturgy every day of his life. And it was this Mystery he looked forward to meeting "face to face" in what was a great personal and intellectual adventure Ron entered into even more fully over these past fourteen months since his diagnosis with acute myelogenous leukemia. Rarely have I known someone dealing with terminal illness or meeting death in such an inspiring way.

Similarly, never have I heard so many distinguished scientists, educators, and theologians, comment on Ron's life and the humble and utterly convincing way he moved and inspired them as he married scientific integrity and a sincere and intellectually challenging faith he proclaimed in the teaching he did wherever he was. (Ron and his wife Mary attended a presentation I did for Contemplative Outreach several years ago; he paid me one of the highest compliments I have ever received when he called me a "born teacher".) As with any true marriage Ron knew the Love-in-Act which was its real source and ground. This same Love-in-Act motivated his life as husband, father, and dedicated teacher to all of us who considered ourselves his grateful friends, colleagues, and --- to a person --- his students. In this week of total solar eclipses we celebrate Ron Olowin's life and death in the Cosmic Christ. And so we pray: Perpetual light grant unto Ron, O Lord, and let your own perpetual (and cosmic) light shine upon and through him in your Son and Our Lord. With Ron we look for the day when you will indeed be All in All and we stand reunited in a new heaven and a new earth.

The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard (Reprise)

Today's Gospel is one of my all-time favorite parables, that of the laborers in the vineyard. The story is simple --- deceptively so in fact: workers come to work in the vineyard at various parts of the day all having contracted with the master of the vineyard to work for a day's wages. Some therefore work the whole day, some are brought in to work only half a day, and some are hired only when the master comes for them at the end of the day. When time comes to pay everyone what they are owed those who came in to work last are paid first and receive a full day's wages. Those who came in to work first expect to be paid more than these, but are disappointed and begin complaining when they are given the same wage as those paid first. The response of the master reminds them that he has paid them what they contracted for, nothing less, and then asks if they are envious that he is generous with his own money. A saying is added: [in the Kingdom of God] the first shall be last and the last first.

Now, it is important to remember what the word parable means in appreciating what Jesus is actually doing with this story and seeing how it challenges us today. The word parable, as I have written before, comes from two Greek words, para meaning alongside of and balein, meaning to throw down. What Jesus does is to throw down first one set of values -- one well-understood or common-perspective --- and allow people to get comfortable with that. (It is one they understand best so often Jesus merely needs to suggest it while his hearers fill in the rest. For instance he mentions a sower, or a vineyard and people fill in the details. Today he might well speak of a a CEO in an office, or a mother on a run to pick up kids from a swim meet or soccer practice.) Then, he throws down a second set of values or a second way of seeing reality which disorients and gets his hearers off-balance. This second set of values or new perspective is that of the Kingdom of God. Those who listen have to make a decision. (The purpose of the parable is not only to present the choice, but to engage the reader/hearer and shake them up or disorient them a bit so that a choice for something new can (and hopefully will) be made.) Either Jesus' hearers will reaffirm the common values or perspective or they will choose the values and perspective of the Kingdom of God. The second perspective, that of the Kingdom is often counterintuitive, ostensibly foolish or offensive, and never a matter of "common sense". To choose it --- and therefore to choose Jesus and the God he reveals --- ordinarily puts one in a place which is countercultural and often apparently ridiculous.

So what happens in today's Gospel? Again, Jesus tells a story about a vineyard and a master hiring workers. His readers know this world well and despite Jesus stating specifically that each man hired contracts for the same wage, common sense says that is unfair and the master MUST pay the later workers less than he pays those who came early to the fields and worked through the heat of the noonday sun. And of course, this is precisely what the early workers complain about to the master. It is precisely what most of US would complain about in our own workplaces if someone hired after us got more money, for instance, or if someone with a high school diploma got the same pay and benefit package as someone with a doctorate --- never mind that we agreed to this package! The same is true in terms of religion: "I spent my WHOLE life serving the Lord. I was baptized as an infant and went to Catholic schools from grade school through college and this upstart convert who has never done anything at all at the parish gets the Pastoral Associate job? No Way!! No FAIR!!" From our everyday perspective this would be a cogent objection and Jesus' insistence that all receive the same wage, not to mention that he seems to rub it in by calling the last hired to be paid first (i.e., the normal order of the Kingdom), is simply shocking.

And yet the master brings up two points which turn everything around: 1) he has paid everyone exactly what they contracted for --- a point which stops the complaints for the time being, and 2) he asks if they are envious that he is generous with his own gifts or money. He then reminds his hearers that the first shall be last, and the last first in the Kingdom of God. If someone was making these remarks to you in response to cries of "unfair" it would bring you up short, wouldn't it? If you were already a bit disoriented by a pay master who changed the rules of commonsense this would no doubt underscore the situation. It might also cause you to take a long look at yourself and the values by which you live your life. You might ask yourself if the values and standards of the Kingdom are really SO different than those you operate by everyday of your life, not to mention, do you really want to "buy into" this Kingdom if the rewards are really parcelled out in this way, even for people less "gifted" and less "committed" than you consider yourself! Of course, you might not phrase things so bluntly. If you are honest, you will begin to see more than your own brilliance, giftedness, or commitedness; You might begin to see these along with a deep neediness, a persistent and genuine fear at the cost involved in accepting this "Kingdom" instead of the world you know and have accommodated yourself to so well.

You might consider too, and carefully, that the Kingdom is not an otherwordly heaven, but that it is the realm of God's sovereignty which, especially in Christ, interpenetrates this world, and is actually the goal and perfection of this world; when you do, the dilemma before you gets even sharper. There is no real room for opting for this world's values now in the hope that those "other Kingdomly values" only kick in after death! All that render to Caesar stuff is actually a bit of a joke if we think we can divvy things up neatly and comfortably (I am sure Jesus was asking for the gift of one's whole self and nothing less when he made this statement!), because after all, what REALLY belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God? No, no compromises are really allowed with today's parable, no easy blending of the vast discrepancy between the realm of God's sovereignty and the world which is ordered to greed, competition, self-aggrandizement and hypocrisy, nor therefore, to the choice Jesus puts before us.

So, what side will we come down on after all this disorientation and shaking up? I know that every time I hear this parable it touches a place in me (yet another one!!) that resents the values and standards of the Kingdom and that desires I measure things VERY differently indeed. It may be a part of me that resists the idea that everything I have and am is God's gift, even if I worked hard in cooperating with that (my very capacity and willingness to cooperate are ALSO gifts of God!). It may be a part of me that looks down my nose at this person or that and considers myself better in some way (smarter, more gifted, a harder worker, stronger, more faithful, born to a better class of parents, etc, etc). It may be part of me that resents another's wage or benefits despite the fact that I am not really in need of more myself. It may even be a part of me that resents my own weakness and inabilities, my own illness and incapacities which lead me to despise the preciousness and value of my life and his own way of valuing it which is God's gift to me and to the world. I am socialized in this first-world-culture and there is no doubt that it resides deeply and pervasively within me contending always for the Kingdom of God's sovereignty in my heart and living. I suspect this is true for most of us and I know today's Gospel challenges us each to make a renewed choice for the Kingdom in yet one more way and to another more profound or extensive degree.

For Christians every day is gift and we are given precisely what we need to live fully and with real integrity if only we will choose to accept it. We are precious to God, and this is often hard to really accept, but neither more nor less precious than the person standing in the grocery store line ahead of us or folded dirty and disheveled behind a begging sign on the street corner near our bank or outside our favorite coffee shop. The wage we have agreed to (or been offered) is the gift of God's very self along with his judgment that we are indeed precious, and so, the free and abundant but cruciform life of a shared history and destiny with that same God whose characteristic way of being is kenotic. He pours himself out with equal abandon for each of us whether we have served him our whole lives or only just met him this afternoon. He does so whether we are well and whole, or broken and feeble. And he asks us to do the same, to pour ourselves out similarly both for his own sake and for the sake of his creation-made-to-be God's Kingdom.

To do so means to decide for his reign now and tomorrow and the day after that; it means to accept his gift of Self as fully as he wills to give it, and it therefore means to listen to him and his Word so that we MAY be able to decide and order our lives appropriately in his gratuitous love and mercy. The parable in today's Gospel is a gift which makes this possible --- if only we would allow it to work as Jesus empowers and wills it!

On Diocese Shopping and the Significance of Hermit Designations

[[Sister Laurel, you tend to discourage people wanting to become diocesan hermits to move from diocese to diocese shopping for one which would profess them under canon 603, right? Why do you do that? Is it like those TV shows where one wants to test the candidate's perseverance and so leaves them standing outside the monastery in the cold and snow for days and days? But people do it, see the following excerpt from another blog. Do bishops accept hermit "transplants"? Also,  did you make up the label "lay hermit"? Is the blogger I quoted referring to you? Are these kinds of designations helpful? Don't they tend to needlessly complicate things like this hermit says?]]

[[So I was struck yet again when a dear hermit wrote and mentioned he might be relocating to a different diocese because the diocese bishop designated him as an Independent Hermit rather than "bestowing" Canon Law 603. 
[Yet another example of designations and labels for hermits being creatively invented by individuals, this time a bishop making up "Independent Hermit"  That's a new one. Heard of another hermit who decided to create the label--"Lay Hermit"! Lord, have mercy on us label-making mortals!  We are silly and presumptuous.  Why complicate a beautifully simple vocation with making up additional labels and designations?  But, enough on all that.  I'm sure Jesus knows who we are and calls us as He wills and what He wills, if anything other than "child."] Returning to the thoughts of simplicity of love and simple love of Christ.  I consider once again that Christ is the end of the law.  Why complicate matters?  Why seek after others to bestow what we might want to think is our due, or a type of justice in the context of hermit life?  Seek Christ to bestow whatever upon us.  Christ is our all.  He is the end of the law.]]

Thanks for your questions. I'll try to take them in order but I do suggest you check the labels for these topics to check what I have already written. People do move from diocese to diocese to try and get professed under c.603, but it is usually an entirely futile exercise. There are a couple of exceptions: 1) the person is moving from a diocese which has determined not to implement c 603 at all; in such cases it can be unjust to make a person live as a lay hermit (a hermit in the lay state of life) without access to a genuine and mutual process of discernment, especially if this seems likely to (or even has a fair chance of) eventually lead(ing) to public profession and consecration. I would also suggest it can be unjust in this way especially if the person has begun to show a genuine awareness of the ecclesial nature of their vocation. In such circumstances simply refusing access to profession because the diocese refuses to implement c 603 for anyone at all is especially problematical and moving to another diocese may be the only solution. In such a case one might contact the new or proposed diocese (first the Vicar for Religious and then, if the Vicar supports one, the Bishop) before one moves and ask them if they will consider discerning a c 603 vocation with one in light of the situation in the home diocese. One would need to be prepared to demonstrate a strong history living this vocation and being formed in it to get the hearing one desires in these circumstances.

           Another exception might occur when 2) the person is willing to spend the time establishing themselves in the new diocese, a new parish, with a new spiritual director, etc. before seeking admission to a process of discernment and admission to profession. This could take several years and the discernment process several more with NO PROMISES it will lead to profession. One cannot effectively contact the proposed diocese for some kind of pre-approval (not even the assurance one will be given a hearing) in the absence of exception #1 above. Personally I think it is better to stay in one's own (i.e., the original) diocese and attempt to demonstrate the authenticity of one's vocation over time; however, if one is willing to re-establish themselves in another diocese completely before seeking admission to profession it suggests to me that perhaps the vocation really comes first for this person, not the quest for profession and some kind of social status.

My own concern is that the person show a commitment to living as a hermit first and foremost. My personal hope and even expectation is that they demonstrate they are not merely after the "perks" attached to being a religious while avoiding the difficulties and challenges of living in community for instance. Similarly I look for someone who feels compelled to live an eremitical life because it is the way to human wholeness and holiness for them. Dioceses that refuse to profess someone right off may be working from the understanding that the individual being considered must get the substantial formation they need before being professed and must not be mistaking being a lone individual with being a hermit. As I have written here a number of times these two realities are different; because they are a diocese must be able to see a hermit standing before them petitioning for admission to vows under c 603, not merely a lone individual seeking to validate their aloneness.

           Dioceses will certainly be sensitive to the fact that some who approach them in regard to c 603 like the idea of wearing a habit or assuming a title (Brother or Sister) or even being able to beg for money in some legitimate way even though they are not remotely hermits. They will also likely be aware that ordinarily there is very little direct oversight or supervision of these vocations and for this reason the motivations, personal discipline, and reality of a divine call which results in human wholeness and holiness must be well-established before allowing the person to live this vocation in the name of the Church. All my concerns regarding diocese shopping are concerns that the person proposing to do this shows a concern with the authenticity of the vocation and with living it as fully as one can no matter the conditions or situation. As part of distinguishing the authentic hermit I am additionally concerned that one demonstrates a strong sense of and commitment to the ecclesial nature of the vocation; moreover I am concerned that candidates for profession demonstrate the perseverance in their vocation and the patience required to allow one's diocese to come to greater openness to c 603 vocations --- something that only occurs over time. This perseverance and patience is a gift to the Church and a witness to the eremitical vocation lived in her name.

Bishops and Transplants to the Diocese

     Yes, bishops do accept "transplants" in two senses. First, they will accept hermits who have been publicly professed under canon 603 and need or desire to transfer to this new diocese for some good reason. The hermit must be in good standing with her home diocese (something the home bishop may affirm with some form of affidavit) and the new bishop must accept the responsibilities associated with receiving and supervising the hermit and her vows. Second, some bishops will accept people who have moved while seeking admittance to profession (public vows) under c 603. It is not easy to find such bishops in the latter case and the care they take in admitting a candidate to profession is usually significant.

One really cannot simply hop from diocese to diocese shopping for a chancery that will simply profess one immediately. If any such dioceses exist they would be exceedingly rare and thank God for that! I discourage diocese shopping because I believe this vocation is a significant (that is, an important and meaningful) one and because I recognize it requires significant formation, perseverance, motivation, theological understanding of what eremitism is all about, am established contemplative prayer life, a personal appreciation of monastic stability, and a commitment to living this life as an ecclesial vocation. Diocese shopping most often militates against at least some of these defining vocational elements.

On the Designation "Lay Hermit" (Yet Again!)

Your question about whether the blog author is referring to me in regard to the designation "lay hermit" is not something I can answer. Certainly I did not make up the term. It is common in the Church and is well-understood. Remember, a lay hermit is a lay person (a baptized Catholic) living eremitical life without added benefit of public profession and consecration (something mediated by the Church in a public act). In other words, they are hermits in the lay state --- that state of life lived by virtue of baptism alone. One might also live as a hermit in the clerical state if one is ordained a priest or in the consecrated state (C 603 and those publicly professed in religious institutes). None of that is complicated or difficult. We look at the person's (vocational) state of life (lay, ordained, or consecrated) and add that to the fact that they are living eremitical life. Thus, as I have said many times here, they are lay, ordained, or consecrated hermits --- each with different ecclesial rights and obligations which shape the eremitism they live. The purpose of such labeling is meant to indicate these different ecclesial rights and obligations and the commitment they define, nothing more, less, or other.

The person you are citing regularly confuses the nature of the consecrated state of life and shows a mistaken notion of how this vocational and ecclesial state of life is entered. She tends to believe and assert that an individual may "consecrate" her/himself and enter the consecrated state of life with private vows, that is, with a private act of dedication or "consecration" that is not also and publicly received or mediated by the Church. She regularly seems at least implicitly to denigrate lay vocations including vocations to eremitical life lived in the lay state by denying they even exist. She argues that as soon as one make private vows or some form of private "consecration" (dedication!) one leaves the lay state, and she affirms this despite the fact that 1) no additional canonical rights or obligations (including no ecclesial supervision or responsibility) are linked to this act, and 2) the Church herself disputes this position in her own teaching on the consecrated state of life. The result of this blogger's position purportedly leaves us without lay hermits because, she mistakenly claims, the moment anyone makes a private commitment that person ceases to be a lay person with a lay eremitical vocation.

Needless Complications?

Is this all a matter of needless complication? Isn't a hermit a hermit like any other hermit? No. When we consider all the ways eremitical life can be distorted, all of the stereotypes which still dominate the minds of folks and are evoked just hearing the word "hermit", or the extreme individualism the term "hermit" is sometimes used to justify, when we think of people like Tom Leppard (cf posts labeled with his name), the unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, the mentally ill recluse, Howard Hughes, the Maine thief who violated peoples' homes and lives repeatedly, etc, we know (or hope!) there is a significant difference between them and those persons the Church consecrates to live eremitical life in her name. When we consider that lay (non-canonical) hermits continue the prophetic vocations of the desert Fathers and Mothers in a way which differs some from canonical hermits, or when we consider the importance (and sometimes the apparent problem) of the additional rights and obligations assumed by those the Church commissions to live them as opposed to hermits who eschew such things, we come to understand the distinctions we draw are important to understand and consider.

Not every hermit has to spend time on this, nor are they called to articulate these matters or analyze the theological implications, but it seems to me that every hermit must have at least an implicit appreciation of the significance of their unique eremitical call for the entire People of God and for the world at large. That means if they are hermits in the lay state rather than in the consecrated state, for instance, they understand and have embraced wholeheartedly the uniquely prophetic nature of this vocation as well as understanding, again at least implicitly, the ecclesial nature of the consecrated eremitical life --- especially when one has rejected this option for one's own eremitical life.

More generally people need to know that the vocation the Church has chosen to reprise, honor, and celebrate in universal law  with c 603 is nothing like what often passes for eremitical life or the "hermiting" done by lone individuals asserting their misanthropy, individualism, selfishness, and brokenness with the "hermit" label. It is the fact that the term "hermit" itself is not merely little understood but widely misunderstood as well as significantly distorted that makes the qualifiers we add even more important. The terms canonical hermit, diocesan hermit, c 603 hermit, and Catholic hermit indicate that these vocations have canonical standards which are inherent to the vocation itself, while the hermit has legally and morally binding bonds made to assist her in living her call, as well as the fact that these vocations are formally received and supervised by the Church. In other words, labels or modifiers are helpful in helping everyone come to understand and honor authentic hermits, whether non-canonical or canonical as significant prophetic vocations in a world which needs them acutely even as it misunderstands them significantly.

On Reunions and the Feast of the Transfiguration

Well, the best laid plans often "gang aglay" as Robert Burns once said. I had thought I would have a post up from the Feast of the Transfiguration but the reunion weekend was just too full and wonderful and I was simply wiped out. So, here we are more than a week later and I am still thinking about the Transfiguration and how it related to the weekend. I said I wanted to write a little about transfiguration in light of it all and I would like to do that --- at least as a start.

Unlike some reunions this one was not merely a single evening spent having dinner with a group of people one no longer knows or cares about. It was not about having outgrown people and places nor was it about speaking different languages professionally or being unable to relate. It was not about bragging to set ourselves apart or lacking empathy and compassion. Perhaps that happens in earlier reunions when folks have not but begun careers and families and businesses and work on terminal degrees; I don't know.  It was, for me, and I think for at least several others of us, about, or at least a little like, what T.S. Eliot describes when he writes, "we shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." In my journal I said it this way,  "It felt like we were each pilgrims, journeying apart from one another, finding our way, struggling, succeeding, loving, sometimes alone and lonely and sometimes not, at home yet still journeying --- still not quite "home" in the way we came "home" this weekend."

"I am so blessed." That is what I feel now and it is the sincere refrain I heard numerous times at our reunion dinner as each of  about 23 of us stood with mic in hand and told our stories to our classmates and friends. So many ended their narratives by affirming for the rest of us: "I am so blessed!" I was able to stay with a friend and her husband along with another friend who flew down from Sacramento. Over the next days we were joined by two other once-close friends and spent hours together talking, eating, driving around our old haunts, attending the reunion dinner, praying and sharing about our faith (each of the five of us has her own unique faith and faith tradition. I don't know when I have sat at a table with such a diverse group of Christians: Christian Science, Lutheran, Baptist, Evangelical Christian (worshipping with Messianic Jews), and Roman Catholic. But in spite of the few difficulties (or "minor speed bumps") created by this diversity we talked for some hours regarding our faith and spirituality; what I saw with my own "new eyes", what I recognized by the resonances of my heart, was that in some incredibly fundamental way each of us have the same hearts --- hearts shaped by that faith and by the truth of God and the Gospel); but our hearts were also shaped by coming to know each other in the present. It is this entire dynamic of really coming to know each other in the present and being blessed by every surprising bit of revelation that reminds me most of the Transfiguration.

I was not surprised that each of us has grown older and changed physically in many ways. Neither should I be surprised, I guess, that each of us has grown into the extraordinary people we had the potential to become --- though our journeys were often nothing like we once anticipated they would be. But I was gratified by and a bit stunned at that. What really awed me was how little we had each changed and how truly ourselves we had become over the years. That too reminded me of the Transfiguration. I found myself knowing these people again, well on some levels, for the first time on others. First, after the initial meetings when physical differences dominated and more than anything else the years apart still defined our relationships with one another, I found myself forgetting what we each looked like 50-60 years ago; even more, I literally saw these friends transfigured by their personal stories. The images from youth which had filled my mind and remained normative for me of who these women were ceased to be normative except as images of early and essential life and potential now more fully embodied and shaped by one's history. At the same time those early images of these old friends became the dynamic form which shaped and animated their Selves now --- analogous to the way a soul is "form of the body" and "builds a body around itself". 

I also found myself realizing freshly how much I had really loved this smaller group of women with whom I spent about three days --- and how truly I loved them now. In this too I was struck by how amazingly they each embodied the abundant life and grace of God and had grown to do that as promised by Christ as the "perfection" of the potential each carried deeply within themselves all those years ago. And for the first time I knew myself in the same way. Perhaps in this way too I came to understand the Transfiguration a bit better. After all, this is the story of Jesus being revealed for who he really is to those who, for all their defects and bits of personal ignorance and insensitivity, know him better than most. But they must also come to see him with new eyes. They must come to know him not as they did when they were younger and took him for granted even as they loved him. They must come to see him as the exhaustive embodiment of God's story with and for his people. They must come to see him as someone stamped first with the shadow of the cross and then with the light of the resurrection and the fire of the Spirit. And that is how I came to see each of these women --- and perhaps it is a piece of how they came to see me.

The experience of  the Transfiguration --- the invitation to journey in the desert and eventually stand on the mountain with Jesus, to truly know him, to be known and loved by him, comes to us in ways and at times which will surprise and console, challenge and heal. This is what I experienced when I went home weekend before last. I knew these friends I had not seen in 50 years. I knew them and they opened themselves to knowing me; it is an astounding gift of God to come to know them for the faithful women they have become, to come home and have it be home in the truly profound ways we need as adults and pray for every day of our lives. In and with Christ [[We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.]] Thanks be to God!

Feast of Saint Maximillian Kolbe (Reprise)

Please note, the readings referenced below differ from today's but I hope this reprise is still of value!

Today is the feast day of Maximillian Kolbe who died on this day in Auschwitz after two months there, and two weeks in the bunker of death-by-starvation. Kolbe had offered to take the place of a prisoner selected for starvation in reprisal when another prisoner was found missing and thought to have escaped. The Kommandant, taken aback by Kolbe's dignity, and perhaps by the unprecedented humanity being shown, stepped back and then granted the request. Father Maximillian sustained his fellow prisoners and assisted them in their dying. He was one of four remaining prisoners who were murdered by an injection of Carbolic Acid when the Nazi's deemed their death by starvation was taking too long. When the bunker was visited by a secretary-interpreter immediately after the injections, he found the three other prisoners lying on the ground, begrimed and showing the ravages of the suffering they had undergone. Maximillian Kolbe sat against the wall, his face serene and radiant. Unlike the others he was clean and bright.

The stories told about Maximillian Kolbe's presence and influence in Aushwitz all stress a couple of things: first, there was his great love of God, Mary the Imaculata, and his fellow man; secondly, it focused on the tremendous humanity he lived out and modelled in the midst of a hell designed in every detail to dehumanize and degrade. These two things are intimately interrelated of course, and they give us a picture of authentic holiness which, extraordinary as it might have seemed in Auschwitz, is nothing less and nothing more than the vocation we are each called to in Christ. Together, these two dimensions of true holiness/authentic humanity result in "a life lived for others," as a gift to them in many ways -- self-sacrifice, generosity, kindness, courage, etc. In particular, in Auschwitz it was Maximillian's profound and abiding humanity which allowed others to remember, reclaim, and live out their own humanity in the face of the Nazi's dehumanizing machine. No greater gift could have been imagined in such a hell.

I think it is easy to forget this fundamental vocation, or at least to underestimate its value and challenge. 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! (And this is as true for hermits and recluses as it is true for anyone else.) Likewise, we may think of vocation as a call to religious life, priesthood, marriage, singleness, eremitism, etc, but always, these are "merely" the paths towards achieving our foundational vocation to authentic humanity. Of course, it is not that we do not need excellent priests, religious, husbands and wives, parents, and so forth, but what is more true is that we need excellent human beings --- people who take the call and challenge to be genuinely human with absolute seriousness and faithfulness.

Today's gospel confronts us with a person who failed at that vocation. Extended mercy and the complete forgiveness of an unpayable debt, this servant went out into his world and failed to extend even a fraction of the same mercy to one of his fellows. He was selfish, ungrateful, and unmindful of who he was in terms of his Master or the generosity which had been shown him. He failed to remain in touch with that mercy and likewise he refused to extend it to others as called upon to do. He failed in his essential humanity and in the process he degraded and punished a fellow servant as inferior to himself when he should have done the opposite. Contrasted with this, and forming the liturgical and theological context for hearing this reading today, is the life of Maximillian Kolbe. Loved with an everlasting love, touched by God's infinite mercy and grace, Father Maximillian knew and affirmed who he truly was. More, in a situation of abject poverty and ultimate weakness, he remained in contact with the Source of his own humanity as the infinite well from which he would draw strength, dignity, courage, forgiveness, and compassion when confronted with a reality wholly dedicated to shattering, degrading, and destroying the humanity of those who became its victims. In every way he was the embodiment of St Paul's citation, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness!"

In Auschwitz it is true that some spoke of Kolbe as a saint, and many knew he was a priest, but in this world where all were stripped of names and social standing of any kind, what stood out to everyone was Maximillian Kolbe's love for God and his fellow man; what stood out was his humanity. Holiness for the Christian is defined in these terms. Authentic humanity and holiness are synonyms in Christianity, and both are marked by the capacity to love and be loved, first (by) God and then (by) all those he has dignified as his image and holds as precious. In a world too-often marked by mediocrity and even outright inhumanity, a world too frequently dominated by those structures, institutions, and dynamics which seem bigger than we are and incapable of being resisted or changed, we need to remember Maximillian Kolbe's example. Oftentimes we focus on serving others, feeding the poor, sheltering the homeless and the like, and these things are important. But in Kolbe's world when very little of this kind of service was possible (though Kolbe did what was possible and prudent here) what stood out was not only the crust of bread pressed into a younger priest's hands, the cup of soup given gladly to another, but the very great and deep dignity and impress of his humanity. And of course it stood out because beyond and beneath the need for food and shelter, what everyone was in terrible danger of losing was a sense of --- and capacity to act in terms of -- their own great dignity and humanity.

Marked above all as one loved by God, Father Maximillian lived out of that love and mercy. He extended it again and again to everyone he met, and in the end, he made the final sacrifice: he gave his own life so that another might live. An extraordinary vocation marked by extraordinary holiness? Yes. But also our OWN vocation, a vocation to "ordinary" and true holiness, genuine humanity. As I said above, "In particular, in Auschwitz it was Maximillian's profound and abiding humanity which allowed others to remember, reclaim, and live out their own humanity in the face of the Nazi's dehumanizing machine. No greater gift could have been imagined in such a hell." In many ways this is precisely the gift we are called upon in Christ to be for our own times. May Saint Kolbe's example inspire us to fulfill our vocations in exemplary ways.

Feast of the Transfiguration: The Gorilla in Plain View (reprise)

Transfiguration by Lewis Bowman

I am reprising this post as I work on finishing another while I am away in Southern CA celebrating my fifty-year high school reunion. In that post I am looking at the difference between transformation and transfiguration --- and also the notion of seeing with new eyes. because I have experienced both on this weekend of amazing surprises,  profound trust and sharing, incredibly intimate revelations, and moments of new clarity of vision of eyes and heart. Today's actual Gospel lection from Matthew does not include Peter's stumbling, incredibly misguided, "let us build booths for them" but I think the lesson is important, ---- and something which figures into the new blog piece --- so I am not hesitant to post this reprise! Thanks for your patience. The new blog piece should be up this afternoon or evening and I am hoping this one will help "Prepare the way."

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Have you ever been walking along a well-known road and suddenly had a bed of flowers take on a vividness which takes your breath away? Similarly, have you ever been walking along or sitting quietly outside when a breeze rustles some leaves above your head and you were struck by an image of the Spirit moving through the world? I have had both happen, and, in the face of God's constant presence, what is in some ways more striking is how infrequent such peak moments are.

Scientists tell us we see only a fraction of what goes on all around us. It depends upon our expectations. In an experiment with six volunteers divided into two teams in either white or black shirts, observers were asked to concentrate on the number of passes of a basketball that occurred as players wove in and out around one another. In the midst of this activity a woman in a gorilla suit strolls through, stands there for a moment, thumps her chest, and moves on. At the end of the experiment observers were asked two questions: 1) how many passes were there, and 2) did you see the gorilla? Fewer than 50% saw the gorilla. Expectations drive perception and can produce blindness. Even more shocking, these scientists tell us that even when we are confronted with the truth we are more likely to insist on our own "knowledge" and justify decisions we have made on the basis of blindness and ignorance. We routinely overestimate our own knowledge and fail to see how much we really do NOT know.

For the past two weeks we have been reading the central chapter of Matthew's Gospel --- the chapter that stands right smack in the middle of his version of the Good News. It is Matt's collection of Jesus' parables --- the stories Jesus tells to help break us open and free us from the common expectations, perspectives, and wisdom we hang onto so securely so that we might commit to the Kingdom of God and the vision of reality it involves. Throughout this collection of parables Jesus takes the common, too-well-known, often underestimated and unappreciated bits of reality which are right at the heart of his hearers' lives. He uses them to reveal the extraordinary God who is also right there in front of his hearers. Stories of tiny seeds, apparently completely invisible once they have been tossed about by a prodigal sower, clay made into works of great artistry and function, weeds and wheat which reveal a discerning love and judgment which involves the careful and sensitive harvesting of the true and genuine --- all of these and more have given us the space and time to suspend our usual ways of seeing and empower us to adopt the new eyes and hearts of those who dwell within the Kingdom of God.

It was the recognition of the unique authority with which Jesus taught, the power of his parables in particular which shifted the focus from the stories to the storyteller in the Gospel passage we heard last Friday. Jesus' family and neighbors did not miss the unique nature of Jesus' parables; these parables differ in kind from anything in Jewish literature and had a singular power which went beyond the usual significant power of narrative. They saw this clearly. But they also refused to believe the God who revealed himself in the commonplace reality they saw right in front of them. Despite the authority they could not deny they chose to see only the one they expected to see; they decided they saw only the son of Mary, the son of Joseph and "took offense at him." Their minds and hearts were closed to who Jesus really was and the God he revealed. Similarly, Jesus' disciples too could not really accept an anointed one who would have to suffer and die. Peter especially refuses to accept this.

It is in the face of these situations that we hear today's Gospel of the Transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain apart. He takes them away from the world they know (or believe they know) so well, away from peers, away from their ordinary perspective, and he invites them to see who he really is. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus' is at prayer --- attending to the most fundamental relationship of his life --- when the Transfiguration occurs. Matthew does not structure his account in the same way. Instead he shows Jesus as the one whose life is a profound dialogue with God's law and prophets, who is in fact the culmination and fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the culmination of the Divine-Human dialogue we call covenant. He is God-with-us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. This is what the disciples see --- not so much a foretelling of Jesus' future glory as the reality which stands right in front of them --- if only they had the eyes to see.

For most of us, such an event would freeze us in our tracks with awe. But not Peter! He outlines a project to reprise the Feast of Tabernacles right here and now. In this story Peter reminds me some of those folks (myself included!) who want so desperately to hang onto amazing prayer experiences --- but in doing so, fail to appreciate them fully or live from them! He is, in some ways, a kind of lovable but misguided buffoon ready to build booths for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, consistent with his tradition while neglecting the newness and personal challenge of what has been revealed. In some way Matt does not spell out explicitly, Peter has still missed the point. And in the midst of Peter's well-meaning activism comes God's voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!" In my reflection on this reading this last weekend, I heard something more: "Peter! Sit down! Shut up! This is my beloved Son! Listen to him!!!"

The lesson could not be clearer, I think. We must take the time to see what is right in front of us. We must listen to the One who comes to us in the Scriptures and Sacraments, the One who speaks to us through every believer and the whole of creation. We must really be the People of God, the "hearers of the Word" who know how to listen and are obedient in the way God summons us to be. This is true whether we are God's lowliest hermit or one of the Vicars of Christ who govern our dioceses and college of Bishops. Genuine authority coupled with true obedience empowers new life, new vision, new perspectives and reverence for the ordinary reality God makes Sacramental. There is a humility involved in all of this. It is the humility of the truly wise, the truly knowing person. We must be able to recognize how very little we see, how unwilling we are to be converted to the perspective of the Kingdom, how easily we justify our blindness and deafness with our supposed knowledge, and how even our well-intentioned activism can prevent us from seeing and hearing the unexpected, sometimes scandalous God standing there right in the middle of our reality.

Contemplative Life and Vulnerability to Pain

[[Dear Sister, I wondered if you feel pain differently because you are a contemplative. I read that one hermit is unaware of most pain unless it becomes really intense and then she comes back to a more physical level of consciousness. The post I read gave the impression that most of the time she is in touch with God but not with the temporal. She said, [[The pain has to be enough, or coupled with such as red-pink streak going up foot from pinkish-red toe, to be enough to bring me back to more physical awareness. And, perhaps this is true, also, for bringing my mind to more conscious awareness of spiritual readings. I'm finding my mind is away, possibly close in with God, but I don't know for sure, of course. It flies from my willed awareness or forced consciousness; the thoughts become whatever God weaves within.]] Do persons of prayer feel pain less? Do you?]]

LOL! Interesting question. I'm pretty sure I experience pain the same as anyone else. I deal with chronic pain, but I do that the way most people do --- medically. I try to pray through this specific kind of pain, but generally it is too distracting so I medicate as necessary and meditate as possible. Other kinds of pain (psychic, emotional), of course, are something that can only be lived through with prayer --- no medication is possible or desirable. I think it is possible that contemplatives are actually more sensitive to these kinds of pain --- after all, they are not numb to them but vulnerable.  But what you cite raises serious questions regarding self-care and attentiveness; I wonder how appropriate it is to be so wrapped up in what one describes as some sort of non-temporal "God-consciousness" that one is generally unaware of infections, injuries, etc. Beyond this I wonder at the phrases "willed awareness" and "forced consciousness". It sounds like the writer is setting up some sort of human will versus will of God calculus or something where being in touch with God means being unaware of oneself and the needs of one's body. These ideas seem to me to be antithetical to a healthy contemplative life.

It may well be that someone's prayer life allows them to move more easily through pain and to function more freely in spite of it, but what is being described here is the presence of recognizable and, one assumes, preventable infection in one's foot for instance. No contemplative I know would EVER suggest their awareness of God or the presence of God's life and love within them detracts from the critical or essential attentiveness to reality which is part of the very definition of contemplative life. Just the opposite in fact. Contemplatives honor God and the life God has given to and entrusted them with. They, especially when they are Christian, approach reality from an incarnational perspective. They know that we are "temples of the Holy Spirit" and members of the very Body of Christ. They see the everyday, supposedly mundane as sacramental and thus, essentially sacred, and they take what care they can and must do to honor this foundational truth of creation.

It is pretty well known that throughout its history Christianity has sometimes fallen prey to an unhealthy dualism rooted in misreadings of texts that speak of detachment or despising the "things of the world" or the Pauline contrast between a body of flesh and one of Spirit. The passage you cite reminds me of some of these misreadings. Especially it reminds me that when Paul speaks of being "in the flesh" or refers to the "flesh body," he is speaking of the whole person under the sway of sin; when he speaks of being in the Spirit or refers to the "spiritual body," he is speaking of the whole person under the power of the Spirit of God. Similarly it reminds me of the piece I wrote a while back looking at the spiritual life as the life we each live under the power of the Holy Spirit. (cf., What Spirituality really Means) More specifically, it is the embodied human life we live in and through the dynamism of the Spirit of God whenever we focus on the vulnerability to Love-in-Act this involves.

In my own experience there have been times when contemplative prayer has involved occasional periods of "raptness" where I am not aware of sensations in my body and where I may even have ceased to breath for periods of time. BUT apart from these very rare "experiences" this same prayer has made me more capable of genuinely incarnational life. Many of us may have reasons which detract from this ability to live a healthy incarnation or embodiment of the Spirit of God, but the life of prayer is not one of these. Instead a healthy contemplative prayer life counters and helps heal those things which may prevent healthy embodiedness.

 One final comment on the passage you have cited. As I noted above, I am concerned with the reference to "willed awareness" and "forced consciousness" which supposedly gives way to "whatever God 'weaves within"'. Attentiveness is a central characteristic of contemplative life, but so are awareness and consciousness. These are "the way we are in the world"; they are part of what contemplative life witnesses to. In contemplative life we attend to reality; we are aware of and consciously honor reality. We are empowered by God for this. While prayer is certainly the work of God within us it is the work/dynamism which illuminates and sharpens, makes whole, empathetic, and compassionate. It is the Spirit of life and love, truth and beauty, the flame of light and comfort which thus becomes the source and ground of genuine rest (Sabbath) and "at-home-ness" (eternal life). The Divine life is the Spirit within us which does not supplant our intellects or consciousness and awareness but instead perfects them.

To float through life in some sort of dissociative state is simply incompatible with contemplative and especially with eremitical life. (Such states may actually represent part of what the NT refers to as "hardness of heart" --- something I am hoping to write further about soon.) Times of genuine prayer which take us up or carry us away from more "everyday" consciousness and awareness are wonderful and are to be honored, but generally speaking these also serve to transform the way we see things so that all reality is transfigured through it. This may mean an increased experience of pain because it will ALWAYS mean an increased vulnerability to reality --- just as it did with Jesus and his own life, passion, and death. Contemplative life is vulnerable life and vulnerable life is obedient life which is responsive to the whole of creation, including the dimensions of sin and death still at work in reality. We must be wary of labeling forms of dissociation (which need not be pathological) "ecstasy", "rapture," or Christian detachment.

Is Orchestra Consonant with your Hermit Vocation?

[[Dear Sister,
       I enjoyed the Beethoven symphony movements you put up. I think your orchestra should be proud of the job they did. I say that because you have pointed out they are an amateur orchestra. But this video raises the question for me: how can you be a hermit and get out so much? Do you think you represent the vocation of diocesan eremitical life well in this way? I am guessing your bishop approved this activity, but how can you play in an orchestra and live as a hermit? How much rehearsing does your orchestra do?]]

Thanks for your questions. You are the second person who wrote with a similar question. I am always surprised at how much time people believe I spend outside the hermitage to do this. So let me clarify this one point. Because it is an amateur orchestra, OCO rehearses one evening a week for about 2.5 hours with a 15 minute break where we can get a snack, talk a bit to one another and just generally say hey to folks we have not seen for a while. At the end of 6-7 weeks we have a dress rehearsal on Saturday morning and a concert on Sunday afternoon.

On the Sunday there's a brief warm up and then a period of waiting in the green room for concert time. Usually folks use this period: to warm up more completely by playing through difficult passages, to finish folding programs for guests, to eat and drink something light which will sustain them through the concert, and generally to get in the right space for the performance. Interestingly I think, there is a lot of solitude during this period as everyone prepares themselves for what will be both personally, physically, and intellectually demanding. (There is a lot of pre-performance anxiety and each of us deals with our excitement in different ways.) So, again, I am describing @ 3 hours per week mainly working hard to play music with one another --- working to learn parts and transform them into music together! The week of the concert is different with (usually) 2 rehearsals and the concert itself.

Apart from Mass or some other occasional activities at the parish, OCO is my major activity outside of the hermitage. It is important to me in a number of ways and while I have not always been able to play every set and sometimes have had to discern whether it is time to retire or continue, the bottom line is this is one of the ways I make sure my solitude is healthy. When I say that I do not mean that it is an outlet or escape from solitude so much as it is an extension of it; it is (or can be) a focused contemplative activity which symbolizes (embodies and expresses or mediates) the way solitude is intrinsically and reciprocally related to community. It is always important to remember that eremitical solitude is a form of community --- though a rare one which accents the hermit's physical solitude in communion with God lived as "ecclesiola" or "little church", and thus, as paradigm of the whole Church in whose name she is commissioned to live as ecclesiola. The hermit lives alone, but is not a lone individual, not in her prayer, not in her silence,  not in her joy or her suffering and not in her solitary witness to human wholeness achieved in continuing dialogue with the God she proclaims with her life

I believe profoundly in the importance (meaning) of my life as a diocesan hermit and that means I believe profoundly in the importance of a life of the silence of solitude, stricter separation from the "world", prayer and penance, etc.. But solitude in the canonical eremitical life is a rare  and even paradoxical expression of union and communion, first of all with God in Christ, secondly with God's people (Church), and thirdly with all who are precious to God. Isolation is not healthy, not for the human being generally, and not for the hermit specifically. As I have written before, even recluses in the Roman Catholic Church are supported by communities and live in relation to their religious community and the Church Universal. (The Church typically only allows two congregations to have recluses: the Carthusians and the Camaldolese.)

Do I think I live the diocesan eremitical life well in this way? Yes. More exactly perhaps, I think I live my own life as a diocesan hermit well in this way. Orchestra is written into my Rule and fits into a vision of this life which sees it as life giving and, most significantly, a way to genuine wholeness and holiness. This means it is intellectually, aesthetically, spiritually, and personally rich and challenging. At the same time it is a genuinely eremitical life which is lived according to the canonical vision of the life in the revised Code under the supervision of my bishop and delegate in accordance with my Rule and conscience.  It is not, in this way, a matter of anything goes --- nor does it leave the silence of solitude or a life of prayer and penance on the margins somewhere! These are central and orchestra supports and even enriches them. I love orchestra; I love violin, but they relate integrally to my own eremitical contemplative life. When that ceases to be true so will they.

I hope this is helpful.

Oakland Civic Orchestra: Beethoven's 5th Symphony

One of the most personally important pieces I have ever played is Beethoven's fifth symphony. It is a piece everyone recognizes with its famous first four notes: dut dut dut DUH! These notes are an everpresent reality in most of the symphony; whether we are hearing the intervals involved, the rhythmic motif, the struggle to move from minor to major, etc., these four notes drive everything. When I was in Junior High School I was struck with the thought that "never was so much done with so little"! Remember, Beethoven was struggling to come to terms with his own deafness and the potential crippling of his own genius when he wrote this symphony. It seems appropriate that in situations of personal limitation, deficiency, and also potential, I have come back to this symphony in one way and another.

This last year, when working with my director on a number of areas of personal suffering, limitation, healing, and growth, a friend gave me four tickets to the SF Symphony. It was a lecture on and performance of Beethoven's 5th --- and a great grace for me. "Never was so much done with so little," was the refrain I heard again. Then, the Oakland Civic Orchestra did this same symphony for our last set this June, right at the one year mark of my own intensive work. Again and again, four notes, a simple rhythm, an almost unimaginable potential --- and the new refrain I heard was "Never was so much hidden potential revealed in such a focused way!" For me this is the symphony I associate most with the quality and virtue of hope. I have included OCO playing the first movement above; other movements to come as Carol gets them finished! I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed playing them! (Enlarge the screen for best visibility.)



The last two movements are included below.

"When They Saw Him They Begged Him. . ." (Reprise)

I have to say that today's Gospel always suprises and delights me. At first. It is the story first of all, of Jesus' sending the demons which possess two men into a nearby herd of swine thus freeing the men from the bondage to brokennness and inhumanity which marks and mars their lives, and then, it is the story of what happens when he approaches the nearby town (Gadara) whose residents have heard of what he has done. Despite knowing how the story goes, I admit to being surprised everytime Matthew's last line which begins, "Thereupon the whole town came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him. . ." concludes with, ". . .they begged him to leave their district."

Now, granted, Jesus just destroyed an entire herd of swine, and they must have been someone's livelihood --- perhaps many people's. Some unhappiness with this would have been understandable. And Jesus has healed a couple of men whose conditions had made travel along a certain route unsafe, so one would expect a mixed response to that perhaps -- though the route is now free from this danger, these men now will need to be accommodated in some real sense --- not simply treated as wild animals or aliens of some sort. I begin to have a sense why Jesus was not welcomed here. But I admit to still hearing in the back of my mind cheers of welcome, beseechings of Jesus to come and change lives, a positive and welcoming response like that in fiction stories where the conquering hero comes back from slaying the dragon, or like the narrative in the New Testament where Jesus is welcomed as King with waving palm branches and cries of Hosanna --- temporary as that moment was! In a way, perhaps the "back of my mind" wants a costless or "cheap" grace, a "good news" fit for escapist fiction or an incredibly naive reading of the NT --- but not for the real world.

But besides surprise and delight this lection also stops me with its claim and challenge. That is so because the Gospel is good news in a much more realistic, paradoxical, and problematical way -- especially in regard to the first example above --- and today's Gospel lection highlights this for us. As we have heard over the past few passages from Matthew Jesus reveals himself to be a man of extraordinary, even divine authority --- a man with authority over nature, illness, the hearts of men and women, and now over demons. He heals, feeds on a profound and lasting level, frees, and provides true meaning and dignity for those lost and bereft. He is the Son of God (a title Matthew has on the lips of the demons in today's story)--- very good news indeed --- but he acts with an authority which is genuinely awesome and which turns the everyday world of politics, religion, simple ordinariness, and comfortable respectability on their heads. The Gadarenes in today's Gospel see this clearly and they are unprepared for it. More, he terrifies them. Far from misunderstanding Jesus and refusing to welcome him on those grounds, like the Scribes and Pharisees they understand precisely who Jesus is and want no part of him. Far better to simply ask Jesus to leave the district than to have to come to terms with who he is and what that truly challenges and calls forth in us!

One of the current complaints by some traditionalists is that Vatican II gave us a God of love (they frequently spell the word "luv" to denote their disparagement of it) and lost the God who inspires fear, etc. They may well be correct that there has been some "domestication" of God and his Christ in popular piety --- but then this is not because of Vatican II; it is a continual temptation and sin besetting the Church. After all, how many of us when faced with the daily prospect of renewed faith recognize that acceptance of Jesus' authority -- expressed as an unconditional love which is stronger than death -- will turn our world upside down and call us to a radical way of living and loving which involves renunciation, self-sacrifice, and commitment to a Kingdom that is NOT of this world and often is at distinct odds with it? The equivalent of a herd of swine or the accommodation of the mentally ill is probably the least it will cost us --- precisely because it is unconditional. How many of us choose not so much to be loved exhaustively by God -- to really open ourselves to His Presence with all that implies for growth, maturity and responsibility -- but instead (at least with some part of ourselves) would prefer to cling to a relatively undemanding (and world-reinforcing) piety which falls short of the life of the Kingdom? How many buy into (and construct our lives around) a religion which is at least as much OF this world as it is IN it?

So yes, today's Gospel both surprises and delights me --- but it also gives me pause. It does both because of its honesty; and it does so because it is genuinely good news, rooted in the awesome authority of the Christ who loves without condition but not without challenging and commissioning us to the radically transformed life that comes whenever he meets us face to face or heart to heart. Such a Christ will never be really popular I think. Many of our churches and cities are far more like Gadara than not. Sometimes, I am sorry to say, my hermitage is as well. The authority of Jesus over illness, fear, meaninglessness, and the demons that beset us is an awesome and demanding reality and our hearts are more often ambivalent and ambiguous than pure and single. I suspect that domestication of our faith is something most of us are guilty of every day of our lives.

The Gospel lection requires that we ask ourselves what parts of our lives would we instinctively desire to protect from an encounter with Jesus were we to hear he was on his way to our parish this morning? What kinds of changes would we be unwilling to make --- though we might well suspect Jesus would require them of us if we are to be true to ourselves and him? We might want to be apostles, religious, or otherwise summoned to follow Jesus in some way we ourselves esteem, but at the same time we might not want to hear Jesus say to us, "No, go home and witness to all that I in my mercy have done for you there." Would we minister in the compelling world-changing way the "demoniac" in today's Gospel lection ministered in his "lay" or "secular" vocation [to the power and mercy of God perfected in weakness] or would we reject the call because it was not the vocation we thought we should be gifted with? With these questions and today's Gospel in mind, let us summon up the courage to beg Jesus to enter into our towns, homes, churches, and hearts, and remain with us; let us give him free access to move within, call us and change our world as he wills! That is my own prayer for today.

Happy Fourth of July!

Each year this day reminds me that Christians have much to tell America about the nature of true freedom, even while they are grateful for a country which allows them the liberty to practice their faith pretty much as they wish and need. Too often today Freedom is thought of as the ability to do anything we want. It is the quintessential value of the narcissist.

And yet, within Christian thought and praxis freedom is the power to be the persons we are called to be. It is the direct counterpart of Divine sovereignty and is other-centered. I believe our founding fathers had a keen sense of this, but today, it is a sense Americans often lack. Those of us who celebrate the freedom of Christians can help recover a sense of this necessary value by embracing it more authentically ourselves. Not least we can practice a freedom which is integrally linked to correlative obligations and exists for the sake of all; that is, it involves an obligation to be there for the other, most especially the least and poorest among us.

Today the United States is in danger of choosing to "protect" our freedom by refusing to open ourselves to "the other". We have forgotten that we are free only insofar as we are open to loving others, to sharing our lives and our freedom with the other, the alien. Like love, personal freedom is lost when we fail to extend it to others and make "neighbors" of them. Once we build walls against the other so too have we walled ourselves into the narrow confines of our own fear, ignorance, or selfishness. Authentic freedom always seeks the freedom of the other. It is expansive and, to  some extent, missionary in nature. While the boundaries of American freedom involve borders and finite resources which must be honored and husbanded, its heart is global and so must its vulnerability be. 

 All good wishes on this anniversary of the birthday of our Nation! May God empower us to live up to the obligations of the freedom, both personal and national, which we recognize as both Divine gift and human responsibility.

Feast of the Apostle Thomas: What's that Doubt About? (reprise)

Today's Gospel focuses on the appearances of Jesus to the disciples, and one of the lessons one should draw from these stories is that we are indeed dealing with bodily resurrection, but therefore, with a kind of bodiliness which transcends the corporeality we know here and now. It is very clear that Jesus' presence among his disciples is not simply a spiritual one, in other words, and that part of Christian hope is the hope that we as embodied persons will come to perfection beyond the limits of death. It is not just our souls which are meant to be part of the new heaven and earth, but our whole selves, body and soul.

The scenario with Thomas continues this theme, but is contextualized in a way which leads homilists to focus on the whole dynamic of faith with seeing, and faith despite not having seen. It also makes doubt the same as unbelief and plays these off against faith, as though faith cannot also be served by doubt. But doubt and unbelief are decidedly NOT the same things. We rarely see Thomas as the one whose doubt (or whose demands!) SERVES true faith, and yet, that is what today's Gospel is about. Meanwhile, Thomas also tends to get a bad rap as the one who was separated from the community and doubted what he had not seen with his own eyes. The corollary here is that Thomas will not simply listen to his brother and sister disciples and believe that the Lord has appeared to or visited them. But I think there is something far more significant going on in Thomas' proclamation that unless he sees the wounds inflicted on Jesus in the crucifixion, and even puts his fingers in the very nail holes, he will not believe.

What Thomas, I think, wants to make very clear is that we Christians believe in a crucified Christ, and that the resurrection was God's act of validation of Jesus as scandalously and ignominiously Crucified. I think Thomas knows on some level anyway, that insofar as the resurrection really occured, it does not nullify what was achieved on the cross. Instead it renders permanently valid what was revealed (made manifest and made real) there. In other words, Thomas knows if the resurrection is really God's validation of Jesus' life and establishes him as God's Christ, the Lord he will meet is the one permanently established and marked as the crucified One. The crucifixion was not some great misunderstanding which could be wiped away by resurrection. Instead it was an integral part of the revelation of the nature of truly human and truly divine existence. Whether it is the Divine life, authentic human existence, or sinful human life --- all are marked and revealed in one way or another by the signs of Jesus' cross. For instance, ours is a God who has journeyed to the very darkest, godless places or realms human sin produces, and has become Lord of even those places. He does not disdain them even now but is marked by them and will journey with us there --- whether we are open to him doing so or not --- because Jesus has implicated God there and marked him with the wounds of an exhaustive kenosis.

Another piece of this is that Jesus is, as Paul tells us, the end of the Law and it was Law that crucified him. The nail holes and wounds in Jesus' side and head -- indeed every laceration which marked him -- are a sign of legal execution -- both in terms of Jewish and Roman law. We cannot forget this, and Thomas' insistence that he really be dealing with the Crucified One reminds us vividly of this fact as well. The Jewish and Roman leaders did not crucify Jesus because they misunderstood him, but because they understood all-too-clearly both Jesus and the immense power he wielded in his weakness and poverty. They understood that he could turn the values of this world, its notions of power, authority, etc, on their heads. They knew that he could foment profound revolution (religious and otherwise) wherever he had followers. They chose to crucify him not only to put an end to his life, but to demonstrate he was a fraud who could not possibly have come from God; they chose to crucify him to terrify those who might follow him into all the places discipleship might really lead them --- especially those places of human power and influence associated with religion and politics. The marks of the cross are a judgment (krisis) on this whole reality.

There are many gods and even manifestations of the real God available to us today, and so there were to Thomas and his brethren in those first days and weeks following the crucifixion of Jesus. When Thomas made his declaration about what he would and would not believe, none of these were crucified Gods or would be worthy of being believed in if they were associated with such shame and godlessness. Thomas knew how very easy it would be for his brother and sister disciples to latch onto one of these, or even to fall back on entirely traditional notions in reaction to the terribly devastating disappointment of Jesus' crucifixion. He knew, I think, how easy it might be to call the crucifixion and all it symbolized a terrible misunderstanding which God simply reversed or wiped away with the resurrection -- a distasteful chapter on which God has simply turned the page. Thomas knew that false prophets showed up all the time. He knew that a God who is distant and all-powerful is much easier to believe in (and follow) than one who walks with us even in our sinfulness or who empties himself to become subject to the powers of sin and death, especially in the awful scandal and ignominy of the cross --- and who expects us to do essentially the same.

In other words, Thomas' doubt may have had less to do with the FACT of a resurrection, than it had to do with his concern that the disciples, in their desperation, guilt, and the immense social pressure they faced, had truly met and clung to the real Lord, the crucified One. In this way their own discipleship will come to be marked by the signs of the cross as they preach, suffer, and serve in the name (and so, in the paradoxical power) of THIS Lord and no other. Only he could inspire them; only he could sustain them; only he could accompany them wherever true discipleship led them.

Paul said, "I want to know Christ crucified and only Christ crucified" because only this Christ had transformed sinful, godless reality with his presence, only this Christ had redeemed even the realms of sin and death by remaining open to God even within these realities. Only this Christ would journey with us to the unexpected and unacceptable places, and in fact, only he would meet us there with the promise and presence of a God who would bring life out of them. Thomas, I believe, knew precisely what Paul would soon proclaim himself, and it is this, I think, which stands behind his insistence on seeing the wounds and put his fingers in the very nail holes. He wanted to be sure his brethren were putting their faith in the crucified One, the one who turned everything upside down and relativized every other picture of God we might believe in. He became the great doubter because of this, but I suspect instead, he was the most astute theologian among the original Apostles. He, like Paul, wanted to know Christ Crucified and ONLY Christ Crucified.

We should not trivialize Thomas' witness by transforming him into a run of the mill empiricist and doubter (though doubting is an important piece of growth in faith)!! Instead we should imitate his insistence: we are called upon to be followers of the Crucified God, and no other. Every version of God we meet should be closely examined for nail holes, and the lance wound. Every one should be checked for signs that this God is capable of and generous enough to assume such suffering on behalf of a creation he would reconcile and make whole. Only then do we know this IS the God proclaimed in the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, the only one worthy of being followed even into the darkest reaches of human sin and death, the only One who meets us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place, the only one who loves us with an eternal love from which nothing can separate us.