Looking at the term Charism: Does it Mean Anything for the c. 603 Hermit?

[[ Hi Sister Laurel, Sisters I know talk about the charism of their communities', and their missions. Does eremitical life have a charism? How about Consecrated Virginity? Can you help me understand what the word means? I was wondering if it would be helpful for lay people to have a sense of the charism of their own vocations. Does it make a difference for you?]]

First time questions, I think. Many thanks. In my life I identify the silence of solitude as the charism of solitary eremitical life. Because I identify solitude with more than external aloneness (I see it as a place of quiet and wholeness where the noise of human woundedness, struggle, and pain come to rest in the deepest truth of life and the peace of God), and I identify silence less with physical silence and more with hesychia or a kind of stillness that results when one's life is rightly ordered in terms relationships with God, self, and others, the silence of solitude represents the completion and fullness of life in relationship that occurs when God completes one and she exists in communion with God and God's creation (including one's own deepest and truest self).  This completion/fullness is a gift of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the life of prayer, stricter separation, silence and solitude. The word charism reflects this gift quality (gifts = charisma) and it reflects a form of community absolutely foundational others also need and are made for.

Generally, a congregation's charism refers to a unique gift quality their life and ministry represent for both Church and world given as the Holy Spirit acts in conjunction with human beings to meet significant contemporary needs. When I think of eremitical life and especially that under c 603, assiduous prayer and penance are not unique to it, nor is stricter separation from the world. The Evangelical Counsels are not unique to it either, although all of these elements are gifts of God to the hermit and others. The one central element of c 603 which, it seems to me, orders all other elements towards significant contemporary needs is the silence of solitude.  Always more than the sum of its parts, the silence of solitude takes up all of the other elements of the eremitical life, and of c 603, and transforms them into a whole that can effectively proclaim the Gospel to every person.

You see, I understand the silence of solitude as a countercultural reality which speaks not only to religious persons, but to anyone seeking reassurance that the isolation of alienation which so marks and mars our world can be borne creatively and transfigured and transformed in the process.  Eremitical solitude is antithetical to alienation and isolation; it is relational through and through. The silence belonging to this solitude is not an anguished cry of emptiness, but a distinct song that rejoices in God's love as that love-in-act completes us as human beings and we come to live in union with God and the whole of God's creation. The term silence of solitude refers to the human person made whole and holy through the power of the Holy Spirit. It refers to what occurs when we are healed of the wounds that cause us to cry out in anguish or withdraw in fear and exhaustion from the struggle to live fully. It is the human being as language event brought to her most perfect and powerful fulfillment in God.

Think what it is like to sit quietly with a friend, without strain or competition or the need to prove oneself or be anyone other than the persons we are while resting in the presence of another. That moment of selfhood achieved while at rest in the life and presence of a friend (and in fact, is, in part,  made possible by that presence) is one of the silence of solitude. We all recognize such a moment as one in which alienation is overcome, the noisy striving of everyday life is quieted, and the human potential and need for profound relationship is, for the moment, realized. When the hermit rests in and enjoys the company of God in a similar way, when, that is, she becomes God's covenant partner and allows God to be hers in all she is and does, something similar but even greater and more definitive occurs. It is this that I believe c 603 recognizes as the silence of solitude; moreover, it is something every person yearns for and hermits witness to with their lives. Thus, I identify the silence of solitude as the context, goal, and charism of the eremitical life.

Does the fact that my life is charismatic and has a specific charism make a difference for me? Yes, absolutely.  For instance, because I have a sense of the charism of my vocation it means recognizing that my life is lived for others and therefore, that the call to wholeness and holiness in silence and solitude can never be allowed to become or remain a selfish or me-centered reality. It means recognizing and committing to living this vocation well because, as Thomas Merton once said, this life "makes certain claims about nature and grace"; to live it badly is to fail to allow it to witness to the truth of such claims, namely, that whoever we are and in whatever situation or condition, our God delights in and desires to complete us and bring us to fulness of life with and in God himself. It means insisting that dioceses and candidates understand this charism so that vocations to c 603 life are understood as significant and needed vocations, and discernment and formation processes (including the ongoing formation processes of consecrated hermits as well as those of candidates for profession/consecration) are undertaken carefully with equally significant rigor. 

When we forget the charism of this vocation (or any other vocation for that matter), we open the door to professing and consecrating those who can neither live nor witness to others in the way a c 603 hermit is called to do. I have been convinced for some time that it is in neglecting the charism of this vocation (that is, in forgetting that this vocation has a charism and is essentially charismatic) that we open the door to fraudulent hermits and stopgap vocations that are disedifying and even scandalous. Once dioceses identify the charism of this vocation, they will have a better way of discerning vocations to eremitical life under c 603. I think that the same is true of any vocation, including the vocation to lay life in the Church, Understanding the gift quality of any vocation helps one to live it well and to commit to growing in this ability for the whole of one's life.

On the Need for Serious Reflection on the Sacred Secularity of Consecrated Virgins Under c 604

[[ Sister, do you think Religious Sisters are jealous of CV's being called Brides of Christ? Why would someone want to prove that CV's are Brides of Christ but not Religious women? I have the impression that there is a theological vacuum in the work being done on the vocation of the CV today. I wondered why you don't do more of this?]]

Many thanks for your questions. I think one of them was the same as asked in the last post so perhaps I didn't answer that. My bad!  Let me give it another shot! 

First, though, are religious Sisters jealous of CV's (living in the world) being Brides of Christ? No, not at all, at least I have not met one. Most Sisters know they are espoused to Christ and value it beyond saying, but we don't tend to want to be recognized for it of itself. Instead, though our experience of Christ may be nuptial in character (it is not always so), we want to be known for our hearts, our compassion, our availability, and all the ways any degree of union with Christ is evidenced in our lives and ministry. Otherwise, being espoused to Christ means very little. Many Sisters today have difficulty with the bridal imagery associated with religious life and that is fine; it simply does not match their experience in prayer or may have resonances which are otherwise problematical. Again, they love Christ and want to be known for the quality and expansiveness of their hearts, for the compassion they have for all of God's creation, for the energy and intelligence they spend on others for the sake of the Kingdom, for their discipleship. And they are. There is no reason whatsoever to be jealous.

The canonist I have been speaking with about the uniqueness of CV's identity as Brides of Christ believes this identity is rooted in a true and everlasting bond which is unlike that of Religious. I don't believe her intention is to strip Religious of their identity in this way so much as it is to sufficiently recognize and honor the nature of the vocation to consecrated virginity lived in the world. However, I am not speaking here of the virtue of her academic work or her personal motivations (which I think are valid and necessarily limited as all such work is) so much as I am speaking of the ramifications such work could have, and even more, of the reasons I have seen for others' attempts to strip religious of their identity as Brides of Christ (e.g., Religious are only engaged to Christ (built on a misunderstanding the word betrothed in regard to Jewish marriage practice) while CV's are Brides, Religious consecrate themselves with vows while CV's are consecrated by God, or the bond of the consecrated CV is eternal while that of consecrated religious is not). 

The reasons underlying what I believe is a lopsided emphasis on Bride of Christ imagery and identity are multiple. Too often CV's have been treated as women without the courage or ability to "go the whole way" into religious life. As is true with any "new" (though ancient) vocation, the bulk of the faithful neither understand nor honor this calling. As I myself once wondered about the validity and meaning of this vocation so does the majority of the Church wonder about the same things. The renewal of this vocation too often seems an act by which the Church is attempting to mobilize a new army of workers to replace Religious whose numbers are diminishing, a kind of stopgap vocation to increase or at least harden the division between male priesthood and the role of women in the Church, or a form of "religious life lite" to many of the faithful. At the same time, the faulty use of the term "consecration" for an act humans commit has led to all manner of "consecrations" which tend to empty the Divine consecration shared by consecrated persons in the Church of meaning and import. 

Everyone in the Church should be aware that in baptism and all forms of life known as "consecrated", God is the one who consecrates while the human person dedicates him/herself via some form of profession or private vow. That is especially true of public commitments. Unfortunately, it is possible to find CV's asserting that their consecration is by God while Religious "consecrate themselves via vows"! (Even more unfortunately, one can find religious congregations referring to members being consecrated via profession which then morphs into "religious consecrate themselves via profession.) The former emboldened expression is useful as synecdoche, a figure of speech where one part stands for the whole, as either the term profession or the term consecration refers to the whole event involving both the making of vows and the assumption of a new state of life via divine consecration mediated by the Church. The reference to "consecrating oneself", however, is inaccurate when used instead.

What is disappointing to me is the apparent bare nod to secularity I find in the work of most CV's writing about their own vocations today. Even the USACV (United States Association of Consecrated Virgins) provides only the barest information on the secularity of the vocation, largely limiting that to the idea that CV's living in the world are responsible for their own upkeep and the individual nature of their ministries. But the meaning and value of a secular vocation is far richer and of much greater contemporary and theological import than this! Besides, solitary hermits under c 603 are also responsible for our own upkeep and we are definitely not secular vocations. Still, I have yet found no theological reflection on the timeliness of sacred or eschatological secularity and none at all regarding the important shift to an eschatology stressing the interpenetration of the Kingdom of God with that of this world or the promise that one day God will be all in all. In light of these significant lacunae, discussions of whether or not the bond of the CV is eternal or whether religious are also truly Brides of Christ strike me as theologically analogous to the Church spending time and energy in quibbles over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin in the face of global disaster.

The vocation to consecrated virginity lived in the world is real and meaningful (potentially it is profoundly significant and enormously timely), but it cannot remain or truly be that if CVs' reflection on and living out of their vocation is limited to emphasizing a single dimension of this call (espousal to Christ) cut off from the equally necessary secular dimension of that same vocation. I have said previously that the CV's secularity is profoundly qualified by espousal; I should also say, then, that the espousal itself is profoundly qualified by secularity. These two dimensions mutually qualify one another in a single radical consecrated vocation. To miss or eschew this is to miss the nature of the whole. Only in this way do they represent an icon of the Church we so badly need today and see called for by an emerging and deeply Scriptural eschatology. 

By the way, you asked why I don't undertake this work. Let me say that I have a definite theological and pastoral interest in it, especially in terms of the eschatology involved and the way that is combined with the significance of secular vocations, but for the present I am working on a project re the discernment and formation of c 603 eremitical vocations. An occasional post in response to questions will have to do for the present. Still, given the way Pope Francis is acting to end clericalism (cf., Praedicate Evangelium) there may be an added impetus to reflect more thoroughly on secularism and eschatological secularity in the near future.

Resisting Sacred or Eschatological Secularity in the Vocation of the Consecrated Virgin

[[ Dear Sister Laurel, thanks for putting the post on Consecrated Virgins up again. Why would one want to argue that Religious Women are not espoused "properly speaking" while Consecrated Virgins are? Is there difficulty accepting the sacred (eschatological) secularity of the vocation?]]

Thanks for your questions. Let me say that the idea that CV's living in the world are truly, properly, betrothed to Christ and are to be called Brides of Christ and icons of the Church herself is right on. But this does not mean we must consider that Religious Women (and perhaps Men too!) are not properly Brides (or spouses) of Christ. 

If the entire point of the consecration of virgins under c 604 is to create women who are Brides of Christ in a way which is entirely unique to them and requires others to be deprived of the designation, then it seems to me this is, at best, a largely irrelevant vocation. But I don't believe that is the entire point of the vocation. When I first began writing about it I may have mentioned that for some time I felt it was sort of a vocation without a "job description"; more, it bothered me that when I wrote about friends being consecrated all I could say was what they were not (not a Religious, not vowed, not called Sister, etc.). So I began to read more about the vocation. Once I had read the Rite more carefully and some work by Sister Sharon Holland, IHM, et. al. I was convinced that the vocation had an important positive content, real substance, that our world needed especially at this time. That content or substance is the qualified (sacred or eschatological) secularity of the vocation.

As I have explained in other posts, the term secularity has often had a pejorative sense to it and in religious vocations there is a sense of "leaving the world" --- though there are both more sophisticated and abjectly simplistic notions of what this means. When religious make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, their relationship to the world around them, and to "the world" constituted by those who resist or reject Christ, is substantially qualified. They do not live secular vocations. Until c 604 reinstituted the vocation of consecrated virginity for those living in the world, membership in secular institutes was the one vocation that claimed secularity as part of its very nature without the pejorative connotation. Still, more often than not aspirations to religious life were more marked than the secularity of the vocation. Lay standing generally was seen as secular, but this was similarly denigrated. But with c 604 and its revival of this consecration for women living in the world and called to serve [[ in the things of the spirit and of the world]], suddenly secularity takes on a new value, namely the value of the Kingdom of God.

We are living into a new (and ancient because it is Scriptural) notion of what will come to be one day when God is all in all. Our Christian lives are not about "getting to heaven", but rather being citizens of the Kingdom of God and proclaiming with our lives that one day there will be a single reality we recognize as a new heaven and a new earth. In Christ's death and resurrection God embraces the whole of God's creation and makes it part of his own life. God takes even godless death into himself and in the process destroys it forever. Again, one day God will be all in all. That is our hope, and it is a dimension of the Good News of Jesus Christ. So, given this eschatological vision it is critical that the Church clearly recognizes the possibility of consecrating those who live secular lives. That serves as a sign, in fact, a powerful symbol of this new and ancient eschatology.

Regarding your questions:

Thanks for patiently reading to this point but the background was important, both the nod to the history of the Church's approach to secularity and to the way theologians are speaking about eschatology today. It indicates that there is a long history still needing to be shaken off and unfortunately, the CV's who with their very lives and commitments, should symbolize this step forward re both secularity and eschatology, are, in some instances not doing so. The reasons are likely complex and involve both a kind of allergy to the idea of being a secular vocation, and an ignorance of the eschatology I have spoken of above. Some will speak of "secular-lite" to characterize the secularity of their vocation rather than moving toward a truly radical vocation that affirms fully both its consecrated and its secular nature. Others, in seeking to do justice to the radicality of the vocation focus on its consecrated nature alone, that is, to the idea that CV's are Brides of Christ, but without really speaking of the secularity of this espousal. 

In all of this I think you are right. There seems to be a resistance to accepting the secularity of the vocation, so much so that there seems to be a need to deprive women (and men) religious of the sense that they are truly espoused to Christ, but in a religious rather than a secular vocation. I believe that some of this resistance comes from the longstanding sense that secular vocations are 2nd class, but also, it comes from a missing sense of the charism of the vocation --- what I once half-jokingly referred to as the lack of a "job description". The Church clearly stresses that CV's are Brides of Christ, but until CV's fully and wholeheartedly embrace the secularity of this identity, the need to distinguish themselves in other ways will continue to crop up I think. 

Moreover, until the call to an eschatological and sacred secularity is fully and radically embraced by CV's, the division between CV's and religious (to the extent this exists now) will continue and some in the Church will continue to think of the consecrated lives of CV's as "religious life lite" or as evidence of women without the courage to go the whole way and become religious. There is an incredible equality between Religious and CV's, because both are espoused to Christ, consecrated by God, and committed to the coming of the Kingdom of God. They differ in that Religious have a religious vocation which  qualifies and limits the ways they can interact with the secular world and CV's a secular call without the same limitations but having as profound and challenging a set of obligations as are found in Religious life.

My point in all of this is that so long as CV's feel compelled to stress their identities as Brides of Christ or truly espoused while giving short shrift to the eschatological secularity also intrinsic to this form of consecrated life, they will continue to be a mainly irrelevant and dubious vocation. Once they embrace the really radical combination of consecration/espousal AND the transfigured nature of secularity that is the result of the death and presence of the Risen Christ in all of reality, this vocation will gain a relevance and significance that even the identity "Bride of Christ" cannot hold for others who are shut out from such aspirations. The vocation must be a proclamation of the Gospel; simply insisting that one is a Bride of Christ (and, especially, doing so to the exclusion or minimization of the qualified secularity constituting the vocation) is not a proclamation of the Gospel nor will it speak effectively to others of the substance of that Good News.

After the End by John Shea

After the End by John Shea, STD

Like her friend
she would curse the barren tree
and glory in the lilies of the field.
She lived in noons and midnights
in those mounting moments
of high dance
when blood is wisdom and flesh love.
But now, before the violated cave
on the third day of her tears
she is a black pool of grief
spent upon the earth.
They have taken her dead Jesus,
unoiled and unkissed
to where desert flies and worms
more quickly work.
She suffers wounds that will not heal
and enters into the pain of God
where lives the gardener
who once exalted in her perfume
knew the extravagance of her hair
and now asks whom she seeks.

In Peter's dreams, the cock still crowed.
He returned to Galilee to throw nets into
the sea and watch them sink

like memories into darkness.

He did not curse the sun

that rolled down his back

or the wind that drove the fish

beyond his nets.

He only waited for the morning 

when the shore mist would lift

and from his boat he would see him.

Then after naked and impetuous swim

with the sea running from his eyes,

he would find a cook with holes in his hands

and stooped over dawn coals

who would offer him the Kingdom of God

for breakfast.

On the road that escapes Jerusalem
and winds along the ridge to Emmaus
two disillusioned youths
dragged home their crucified dream.
They had smelled "messiah" in the air
and rose to that scarred and ancient hope
only to mourn what might have been.
And now a sudden stranger
falls upon their loss
with excited words about mustard seeds
and surprises hidden at the heart of death
and that evil must be kissed upon the lips
and that every scream is redeemed for
it echoes in the ear of God,
and do you not understand:
what died upon the cross was fear.
They protested their right to despair,
but he said, "My Father's laughter fills
the silence of the tomb."
Because they did not understand,
they offered him food,
and in the breaking of the bread
they knew the imposter for who he was:
the arsonist of the heart.

After the end comes the conspiracy

of gardeners, cooks and strangers. 

More Thoughts on Faith and Doubt

[[Dear Sister, I never heard your take on the Apostle Thomas' doubt before. You don't think faith is the opposite of doubt? I always heard it was the same as unbelief and that the reading was about refusing to believe unless one had evidence. I always thought faith was about believing without evidence.]]

Thanks for writing.  I think your questions are mainly implied so let me give them a shot. First, no I don't think faith is about believing without evidence. Belief is not a synonym for faith really; it is more an intellectual assent to something. Faith involves the whole person and is an act of trust and courage; we entrust ourselves to the truth and compassion of God, and we grow in faith. Paul Tillich defined faith as the "state of being grasped by an ultimate concern," where ultimate concern is that which demands everything from us and promises us everything as well. To be taken hold of be an ultimate concern means to be taken hold of by the question of meaning and to be open to the source and answer to that question. Another way of saying this is the Benedictine aim to "Seek God" where we seek the very thing we are made to find and be found by. When we awake to this need to seek specifically after that One who is the source and end of all things, we have been grasped or taken hold of by an ultimate concern.

As for evidence, last Sunday's Gospel reading recognizes that faith requires evidence, but not in the sense that one wants scientific evidence. The evidence leading to faith is the actual and fruitful faith and witness of others, so it is significant that Thomas is absent from the community when the Risen Christ is first recognized. Thomas is concerned that the disciples' lives have been changed not by delusions or something similar due to grief, but by the crucified Christ, the One in whom most take offense. When we read the gospels or epistles of the NT, we read the witness of others who have indeed met the risen Christ and had their lives changed by the encounter. We welcome the newly baptized into a faith community and help the entire community realize their role in bringing the newly baptized to fullness of faith. We really cannot do this alone. 

We yearn for God, for the One who is source and completion of our very selves. At the same time, just as hunger points to the reality of food, our very yearning for God is evidence of the existence of the God we yearn for, though again, not in the sense of scientific evidence and not a God who will not surprise us at every turn. We entrust ourselves to any number of things as we seek God. Only some are worthy of that trust and lead us to the real God. Eventually, we may experience the witness of those who have met Christ already, and then our journey becomes one of our own personal faith as we grow in our capacity to fully entrust ourselves to God in Christ. The evidence of faith is evidence of that which only God can do -- the change of hearts, the healing and remaking of one's mind and vision, the growth of love and compassion in a soul wounded by hatred, indifference, or loss, for instance. All of these and more support our faith and they ground our continued growth in faith.

Faith is not precisely the opposite of doubt. The relationship of the two is more complex than that. Doubt allows us to question and seek adequate objects of faith; it opens us to truth, though not in an uncomplicated way. Faith, besides involving trust, is a form of courage that takes doubt into itself and allows us to move forward in any case. Doubt, as I wrote recently, does not necessarily threaten our faith; it can help purify it. Because faith is also a form of knowing and doubt an expression of not (yet) knowing, doubt is part of the critical faculty which helps a person come to deeper and deeper faith. In some ways it makes faith resilient in ways other forms of knowing and certainty are not because they cannot tolerate doubt. But faith can and does grow in the midst of doubt. Unbelief (or unfaith), on the other hand, is not the same as doubt; there is a willful refusal of faith in unbelief. One does not only doubt but says "NO!" to accepting x or y. When doubt closes itself to seeing differently, to being touched by the courage and trust of faith, we get unbelief.

Requiescat in Pace Father Andrew Colnaghi, OSB Cam

I received the news that Father Andrew Colnaghi, former prior and Oblate Chaplain at Incarnation Monastery in Berkeley died after a fall and head injury on Easter Sunday (17. April.2022). Andrew and I first met around 2006 at Incarnation around the same time I met Robert Hale, Thomas Matus and Arthur Poulin. Andrew was a lovely and joyfilled man and I will miss him.

The funeral celebration will take place at the Jesuit School of Theology at 1735 Le Roy Ave, Berkeley CA 94709, Saturday May 28th at 10:00am.

The service will begin with stories and memories of Andrew shared by all. Eucharist will follow at 11am. Come early as parking will be difficult to find in the neighborhood. For those of you who cannot attend Andrew’s funeral celebration in person, it will be live-streamed. For ZOOM links and other information including a map for the location of JST, check the website for Incarnation Monastery in Berkeley. 

Second Sunday of Easter: What's Thomas' 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, and especially, with a kind of bodiliness which transcends the corporeality we know here and now. In other words, it is very clear that Jesus' presence among his disciples is not simply a spiritual one, and that part of Christian hope is the hope that we, precisely 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, (and in fact, the whole of creation is meant to be renewed)!

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 often perceived to be 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 occurred, 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 (combined with human sinfulness) 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 have him crucified 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 (or have him crucified) 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 very many manifestations of the real God available to us today (many partial, some more or less distorted), 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 (and false "messiahs") 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, and only in this way!) their own discipleship could and would 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 putting 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 inflicted by the world of power and prestige. Everyone should be checked for signs that this God is capable of, as well as generous and merciful 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 God of Easter, 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; only this God is the One who makes all things new by loving us with an eternal love from which nothing at all can separate us.

On the Road to Emmaus in Light of COVID-19 (Reprise)

As we approach today’s readings I think we all have a much clearer, more vivid sense of how it is a single Event can change our entire world so that there is simply no going back to what we once knew and perhaps even took for granted. We know what it is like to have our usual assumptions and expectations upended, to have everyday routines and priorities thrown into disarray, and -- at least for the time being -- --- to have been robbed of many of the things that gave our lives value and purpose including relationships, school, work, and even forms of ministry and ways of "being Church".

We know what it means to be frightened: frightened of illness, frightened of death, frightened even of life itself, frightened for ourselves, frightened for others, frightened the virus will leave us in a world without a meaningful future. At the same time we know the experience of "seeing with new eyes" what has been true and right in front of us all along: Family members we are, perhaps, only now spending quality time with and coming to know; friends who, in the midst of it all, are showing us new depths of compassion and caring; people we may take for granted or otherwise marginalize: they have become "essential" while we are sidelined; they are "heroes" to us and we marvel at their self-sacrifice, generosity, and courage.

Retelling the Story:

Today's gospel lection is meant to speak to people in precisely our predicament. I would like to retell it in a way that, I hope, will let us hear it afresh. These disciples have experienced the arrest, brutalization, and execution of a Man whom they loved, followed, and trusted in, a man whom they thought held the key to any real future. But the One they thought was God's own anointed one and their hope for a new and meaningful world, was instead determined to be a godless and godforsaken blasphemer and  political terrorist. He was executed in the most shameful way possible --- a way which underscored the lie his life must really have been --- and his last cry from the cross was one which pleaded with the God of Israel who had apparently also abandoned him. Like us, these disciples had experienced a world-shattering loss.

On the road to Emmaus we find them disoriented and fearful as they make their way home where they will shelter in place -- in hiding from the authorities who will be coming for them as well. On the way they take some comfort from the keenness  of their confusion and pain in conversation and debate --- yes, about the events in Jerusalem, but also they talk about the Jewish Scriptures and what they have taught and promised. Perhaps some of these stories, stories they have lived with and from their whole lives, can ease their grief a little and make sense of the tragedy they have just suffered. After all, God has been with his People in the past. Surely he will continue with them even now, even now in their devastation.

When they meet a stranger who wonders why they are so distraught, so angry and uncertain, we can hear the edge in their response: "What!? Have you been living in a hole somewhere? Are you the only one in the entire civilized world who does not know what happened in Jerusalem?!! We were so sure he was God's chosen. . . ; and, God forgive us, we were so wrong!! The One we thought was God's own Messiah was convicted by our own religious leaders and [shudder] crucified by the Romans. We know now therefore, he could not have been the one we hoped for. The God he supposedly "revealed" and taught us to believe in was powerless to save him -- or cursed him for his blasphemy; the kingdom he proclaimed as being at hand, the realm of his God's putative "sovereignty", was apparently just another lie!!

A bit further along the road they continue to fill the stranger in on what he seems to have missed. We can hear their anger and their anguish: "You know, some women from our group told us Jesus was really alive (we had not seen the crucifixion ourselves), and they recounted stories of meeting angels --- Foolish Women! You know what kind of witnesses they make! When we checked out their story others from our group found only an empty tomb --- no heavenly messengers, no Jesus alive and well (or even alive and battered), not even his dead body --- just an empty tomb!! Some are saying the Romans stole the body to prevent the grave from becoming a focus for a martyr cult. The Romans claim we did it for the same reason. Maybe it's true that the crucifixion of an apparently-unbalanced Galilean peasant changed very little in the world at large --- but God help us!! Nothing at all is the same now. What are we to do??

In today's pandemic we face a similar journey and we know the road in front of us is long. There are great difficulties and uncertainties; neither are there easy or facile answers to the questions which haunt us. Nor, on the road to Emmaus, does the stranger provide facile answers to the desperate questions the disciples there both ask and are. Instead, he continues to accompany them on their journey. He is and remains with them. He listens and continues to listen as they pour out their hearts to him: bewilderment, anger, shattered hopes, fragile faith, and sorrow,  such immense sorrow -- he receives them all. And he challenges them rather sharply, in fact, to greater faith and continuing trust. Especially he reminds them of their scriptures and the way God has worked throughout their history.

Eventually,  in a shared meal they watch and listen as he takes bread, blesses and breaks it with and for them. And in that moment, they SEE! They KNOW! The God of Jesus, the God of the Christ has been victorious over death and death-dealing powers. He has made them his own and they are irretrievably changed by his presence. Everything Jesus told them was, no, IS true!! He has been vindicated by God, and even more astonishingly, he has been raised to new life --- not at the end of time or at the end of the world --- but right here and now in the midst of human history! Heaven, the word we use for God's own life shared with others, has broken in on and is remaking the old world into a New Creation. Nothing at all can separate us from God's love -- not crucifixion, not godless death, and certainly not pandemic. In light of all this, the disciples now see with new eyes and celebrate the truth they lamented just a short time before: NOTHING AT ALL is or will ever be the same again.

 On Our Own Road to Emmaus Today:

During this time of finding our way on a disorienting and painful journey, and especially as we find new ways to "be Church" when ordained clergy have been made relatively ineffective, this gospel story tells us one main story: we are being accompanied by the Crucified Christ even when we fail to recognize him and it is imperative that we learn to recognize and come to know him if we are to be people of genuine Hope. One of the reasons this gospel lection is critical for us this Easter especially is because it is clear he is not only to be found in Church, nor is he recognized only in the Scriptures as they are read there, nor only in the Eucharist itself. Because ours is an incarnational God who has sundered the veil between sacred and profane, and because, similarly, our faith is a sacramental one,  the One who accompanies us -- often unrecognized -- is found in the unexpected and even in what we might deem the unacceptable place. Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB, who died just last Friday**, said it this way:

(We) live in a world of theophanies.

Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary.

There are burning bushes all around (us).

We will say more about this as the weeks of Easter go on and the parish will help provide suggestions and resources, but it is in the reading of Scripture and the breaking of bread in our own homes that we will encounter and learn to recognize the Crucified and Risen Christ. Yes, as Vatican II emphasized, we ourselves are the church, a pilgrim people finding our way in a new and transitory world, a priestly people (Laos) in and through whom God is alive and mediated to that same world. Today's gospel asks that we return to that time when the larger faith community lived and worshipped in domestic and house churches.

Especially it asks that we make of these, places of prayer and that we become people who regularly pour out our hearts to the  God who receives us in every situation. It asks that we make our homes places where the Scriptures are read and reflected on so that our stories and those of our ancestors in faith become inextricable and God is allowed to pour himself out to us as we learn to receive him. And finally, it asks that we allow our homes to become places where the meals we eat are taken together joyfully, and attentively as we allow them to become something Eucharistic despite not being the Eucharist itself. After all, the Lord was with his disciples as they fled Jerusalem for home; He did not abandon or disdain the disciples at any point on the road to Emmaus. He will accompany us in the same way if we will only take the steps needed to encounter and recognize him! Amen.
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**N.B., Sister Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB wrote 8 wonderful books on spirituality. One powerful theme was finding God in the ordinary and another was living in the present moment (as an ever-flowing grace empowers us to do). The quote above is taken from A Treeful of Angels. Macrina died on 24. April. 2020 of a brain tumor. Condolences to her Sisters at St Scholastica Monastery, Fort Smith, AR. She has left the home she loved to return to the one for which she most deeply yearned. Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!! Alleluia, Alleluia!! (Reprise)

 

 For the next 50 days we have time to attend to what Jesus' death and resurrection changed, what became real because of these. You see, in light of these events we live in a different world than existed before them, and we ourselves, by virtue of our Baptism into Christ's death, are new creations as well. While all this makes beautiful poetry, and while, as John Ciardi once reminded us, poetry can save us in the dark and threatening alleys of life, we do not base our lives on poetry alone. Objective reality was transformed with Jesus' passion and death; something astounding, universal, even cosmic in scope, happened in these events which had not only to do with our own salvation but with the recreation of all of reality. One of Paul's shorthand phrases for this transformation was "the death of death," something I hope to be able to look at a bit more as these 50 days unfold. We have already begun to see what happens in our Church as Christ's own life begins to shine forth more brightly in a myriad of small but significant ways. Not least is the figure of Francis who has many of us singing a heartfelt alleluia in gratitude to the Holy Spirit.

But, it is probably good to recall that the early Church struggled to make sense of the cross, and that faith in resurrection took some time to take hold. Surprisingly, no single theology of the cross is held as official, and variations --- many quite destructive --- exist throughout the Church. Even today a number of these mistakenly affirm that in various ways God was reconciled to us rather than the other way around. Others affirm that Jesus' death was merely the consequence of his ministry -- his speaking truth to power in all the ways Jesus did this --- and that nothing besides Jesus' horrific death occurred on the cross. An entirely passive Jesus was crushed on the wheel of the world's powers and principalities. His death, they claim, was really unnecessary for God to do what God willed to do. In particular they miss the way Jesus' complete dependence upon and attentive openness (obedience) to God on the cross continued Jesus' ministry to reveal One who would be Emmanuel in even the most godforsaken and shameful places. Only in time did the nascent Church come to terms with the scandalous death of Jesus and embrace him as risen, and so, as the Christ who reveals (both makes known and makes real in space and time) a God whose power is perfected in weakness. Only in time did she come to understand how different God had made the world, especially for those who had been baptized into Jesus' death. Thus, in celebrating what happened on the cross, the Church offers us a period of time to come to understand and embrace its meaning and scope; the time from Easter Sunday through Pentecost is, in part, geared to this.

Today, then, is a day of celebration, and a day to simply allow the shock and sadness of the cross (and certainly of the past year and more!) to be completely relieved for the moment. Lent is over, the Triduum has reached a joyful climax, the season of Easter has begun and we once again sing alleluia at our liturgies. Though it will take time to fully understand and embrace all this means, through the Church's liturgies and the readings we have heard we do sense that we now live in a world where death in all its forms has a different character and meaning than it did before Christ's resurrection --- and therefore so does life. On this day darkness has given way to light, and senselessness to meaning -- even though we may not really be able to explain to ourselves or others exactly why or how. On this day we proclaim that Christ is risen! Not even sinful, godforsaken death could hold him or separate him from the love of God -- and it cannot hold or separate us as a result. Alleluia! Alleluia!!

The Crucified God, Emmanuel Fully Revealed (Reprise)

Three months ago I did a reflection for my parish. I noted that all through Advent we sing Veni, Veni, Emmanuel and pray that God will really reveal Godself as Emmanuel, the God who is with us. I also noted that we may not always realize the depth of meaning captured in the name Emmanuel. We may not realize the degree of solidarity with us and the whole of creation it points to. There are several reasons here. First, we tend to use Emmanuel only during Advent and Christmastide, so we stop reflecting on the meaning or theological implications of the name. Secondly, we are used to thinking of a relatively impersonal God borrowed from Greek philosophy; he is omnipresent rather like air is present in our lives. He seems already to be "Emmanuel". And thirdly, we tend to forget that the word "reveal" does not only mean "to make known," but also "to make real in space and time." The God who is revealed in space and time as Emmanuel is the God who enters exhaustively into the circumstances and lives of his Creation and makes these part of his own life.

Thus, just as the Incarnation of the Word of God happens over the whole of Jesus' life and death and not merely with Jesus' conception or nativity, so too does God require the entire life and death of Jesus to achieve the degree of solidarity with us that makes him the Emmanuel he wills to be. There is a double "movement" involved here, the movement of descent and ascent, kenosis and theosis. Not only does God in Christ become implicated in the whole of human experience but in that same Christ God takes the whole of the human situation and experience into Godself. We talk about this by saying that through the Christ Event heaven and earth interpenetrate one another and one day will be all in all or, again, that "the Kingdom of God is at hand." John the Evangelist says it again and again with the language of mutual indwelling and union: "I am in him and he is in me," "he who sees me sees the one who sent me", "the Father and I are One." Paul affirms it in Romans 8 when he exults, "Nothing [at all in heaven or on earth] can separate us from the Love of God."

And so in Jesus' active ministry he companions us and heals us; he exorcises our demons, teaches, feeds, forgives and sanctifies us. He is mentor and brother and Lord. He bears our stupidities and fear, our misunderstandings, resistance, and even our hostility and betrayals. But the revelation of God as Emmanuel means much more besides; as we move into the Triduum we begin to celebrate the exhaustive revelation, the exhaustive realization of an eternally-willed solidarity with us whose extent we can hardly imagine. In Christ and especially in his passion and death God comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place. Three dimensions of the cross especially allow us to see the depth of solidarity with us our God embraces in Christ: failure, suffering unto death, and lostness or godforsakenness. Together they reveal our God as Emmanuel --- the one who is with us as the one from whom nothing can ever ultimately separate us because in Christ those things become part of God's own life.

Jesus comes to the cross having failed in his mission. Had he succeeded there would have been no betrayal, no trial, no torture and no crucifixion. But Jesus remains open to God and trusts in his capacity to redeem any failure; thus even failure can serve the Kingdom of God. Jesus suffers to the point of death and suffers more profoundly than any person in history we can name --- not because he hurt more profoundly than others but because he was more vulnerable to it and chose to embrace that vulnerability without mitigation. Suffering per se is not salvific, but Jesus' openness and responsiveness to God in the face of suffering is. Thus, suffering even unto death is transformed into a potential sacrament of God's presence. Finally, Jesus suffers the lostness of godforsakenness or abandonment by God --- the ultimate separation from God due to sin. This is the meaning of not just death but death on a cross. In this death Jesus again remains open to the God who reveals himself most exhaustively as Emmanuel and takes even the lostness of sin into himself and makes it his own. After all, as the NT reminds us, it is the sick and lost for whom God in Christ comes.

As I noted back in January, John C. Dwyer, my major Theology professor for BA and MA work back in the 1970's described God's revelation of self on the cross (God's making himself known and personally present even in those places from whence we exclude him) --- the exhaustive coming of God as Emmanuel --- in this way:

[[Through Jesus, the broken being of the world enters the personal life of the everlasting God, and this God shares in the broken being of the world. God is eternally committed to this world, and this commitment becomes full and final in his personal presence within this weak and broken man on the cross. In him the eternal one takes our destiny upon himself --- a destiny of estrangement, separation, meaninglessness, and despair. But at this moment the emptiness and alienation that mar and mark the human situation become once and for all, in time and eternity, the ways of God. God is with this broken man in suffering and in failure, in darkness and at the edge of despair, and for this reason suffering and failure, darkness and hopelessness will never again be signs of the separation of man from God. God identifies himself with the man on the cross, and for this reason everything we think of as manifesting the absence of God will, for the rest of time, be capable of manifesting his presence --- up to and including death itself.]]

He continues,

[[Jesus is rejected and his mission fails, but God participates in this failure, so that failure itself can become a vehicle of his presence, his being here for us. Jesus is weak, but his weakness is God's own, and so weakness itself can be something to glory in. Jesus' death exposes the weakness and insecurity of our situation, but God made them his own; at the end of the road, where abandonment is total and all the props are gone, he is there. At the moment when an abyss yawns beneath the shaken foundations of the world and self, God is there in the depths, and the abyss becomes a ground. Because God was in this broken man who died on the cross, although our hold on existence is fragile, and although we walk in the shadow of death all the days of our lives, and although we live under the spell of a nameless dread against which we can do nothing, the message of the cross is good news indeed: rejoice in your fragility and weakness; rejoice even in that nameless dread because God has been there and nothing can separate you from him. It has all been conquered, not by any power in the world or in yourself, but by God. When God takes death into himself it means not the end of God but the end of death.]] Dwyer, John C., Son of Man Son of God, a New Language for Faith, p 182-183.

Easter Vigil: Exultet

I had never heard this hymn done with simple guitar accompaniment, but I really like it!! Also wonderful. The modal harmonies are really striking!!!

Holy Saturday: Jesus' Revelation of God Continues into the Depths of Godlessness

 When Miraculous Healings and Exorcisms are not Enough:

 Yesterday, in Madman or Messiah?) I reflected on how the darkness closed in on Jesus. Just as Judas had betrayed him and left the Passover Supper (our Holy Thursday), when things could hardly get darker or Jesus be more dishonored, Jesus cries out in a kind of exultation, "Now the Son of Man is glorified, and in him is glorified the One who sent him!"  Is he a madman or the messiah? On Good Friday, that question was sharpened; the darkness deepened, shame was heightened to unimaginable levels, and sinful death claimed Jesus. My point there was the Lord's work was not accomplished in miracles, or preaching, or exorcisms --- as important symbols of God's Reign as those were. In each case darkness and godlessness eclipsed these works of Jesus. In each case Jesus failed to bring the Kingdom of God in a final victory. The destruction of sin and evil had to occur at a much more profound level.

On Good Friday and Holy Saturday, when death seems to have the last word and swallows the Incarnate Word of God in a long and impenetrable silence, Jesus' work continues in the most profound solitude. Obedient (open and responsive to God) even to the point of godless death, Jesus' love creates an opening for God's entrance into the kingdom of sin, darkness, and death. Obedient unto death on a cross Jesus implicates the Love-in-act we call God into this very realm and thus, forever transforms it and our entire world. From another perspective we can say that through the obedient work of Christ, God takes godless death into himself and is not destroyed by it. Instead, the world is remade, a New Creation is accomplished. This is the work of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. At its heart is the revelation of God's love, not merely a demonstration of its reality and extent, but a making it real in the unexpected and even the completely unacceptable place --- even in the depths of godlessness.

The Depths of God's Love are Made Real in the Godless Place:

During Holy week we recall and celebrate the central events of our faith which reveal just how deep and incontrovertible is God's love for us. It is the climax of a story of "self-emptying" on God's part begun in creation and completed in the events of the cross. In Christ, and especially through his openness and responsiveness (i.e., his obedience) to the One he calls Abba, God enters exhaustively into every aspect of our human existence and in no way spares himself the cost of such solidarity. Here God is revealed as an unremitting Love which pursues us without pause or limit. Even our sinfulness cannot diminish or ultimately confound this love. Nothing – the gospel proclaims -- will keep God from embracing and bringing us “home” to Himself. As the Scriptures remind us, our God loves us with a love that is “stronger than death." It is a love from which, “Neither death nor life, nor powers nor principalities, nor heights nor depths, nor anything at all” can ultimately separate us! (Romans 8)

It is only against this New Testament background that we make ultimate sense of the article of the Apostles’ Creed known as Jesus’ “descent into hell”. Hell (originally Sheol or Hades, but not identical with these in more contemporary usage) is, after all, not the creation of an offended God designed to punish us; it is a state of ultimate emptiness, inhumanity, loneliness, and lovelessness which is created, sustained, and exacerbated by every choice we make to shut God out --- to live, and therefore to die, without Love itself. Hell is the fullest expression of the alienation which exists between human beings and God. As Benedict XVI writes, it is that “abyss of absolute loneliness” which “can no longer be penetrated by the word of another” and “into which love can no longer advance.” And yet, in Christ God himself will advance into this abyss and transform it with his presence. Through the sinful death of God’s Son, Love will become present even here.

To say that Christ died what the New Testament refers to as sinful, godless, “eternal”, or “second death” is to say that through his passion Jesus entered this abyss and bore the full weight of human isolation and Divine abandonment. In this abject loneliness and hopelessness --- a hell deeper than anyone has ever known before or will ever know again --- Christ, though completely powerless to act on his own, remains open and potentially responsive to God. This openness provides God with a way into this state or place from which he is otherwise excluded. In Christ godforsakenness becomes the good soil out of which the fullness of resurrection life springs. As a result, neither sin nor death will ever have the final word or be a final silence! God will not and has not permitted it!

The credal article affirming Jesus’ descent into hell was born not from the church’s concern with the punishing wrath of God, but from her profound appreciation of the depth of God’s love for us and the lengths to which God would go to redeem us. What seems at first to be an unreservedly dark affirmation, meant mainly to terrify and chasten with foreboding, is instead the church's most paradoxical statement of the gospel of God’s prodigal love. It is a stark symbol of what it costs God to destroy that which separates us from Love and bring us to abundant Life. It says that forgiveness is not about God changing his mind about us – much less having his anger appeased or his honor restored through his Son’s suffering and death. Instead, it is God’s steadfast refusal to let the alienation of sin stand eternally. In reconciling us to himself, God asserts his Lordship precisely in refusing to allow enmity and alienation to remain as lasting realities in our lives or world.

Madman or Messiah? On this Day We Wait in the Darkness (Reprised)

I admit that a pet peeve of mine associated with celebrating the Triduum in a parish setting is the inadequate way folks handle what should be periods of silence after Holy Thursday's Mass and reservation of the Eucharist and the stations and celebration of Jesus' passion on Good Friday. Unnecessary conversations, hearty and premature wishes of "Happy Easter" in the sacristy or upon leaving the Church and parking lot immediately after the Passion drive me more than a little crazy --- not only because we have only just celebrated the death of Jesus, but because there is a significant period of grief and uncertainty that we call Holy Saturday still standing between Jesus' death and his resurrection.

Silence is appropriate during these times; Easter is still distant. Allowing ourselves to live with something of the terrible disappointment and critical questions Jesus' disciples experienced as their entire world collapsed is a significant piece of coming to understand why we call today "Good" and tomorrow "Holy." It is important to appreciating the meaning of this three day liturgy we call Triduum and a dimension of coming to genuine and deepening hope. I have often thought the Church could do better with its celebration of Holy Saturday, but spending some time waiting and reflecting on who we would be (not to mention who God would be!) had Jesus stayed good and dead is something Good Friday (essentially beginning after Holy Thursday Mass) and Holy Saturday (beginning the evening after the passion) call for.

In trying to explain the Cross, Paul once said, "Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more." During Holy Week, the Gospel readings focus us on the first part of Paul's statement. Sin has increased to an extraordinary extent and the one people touted as the Son of God has been executed as a blaspheming godforsaken criminal. We watched the darkness and the threat to his life grow and cast the whole of Jesus' life into question.

In the Gospel for last Wednesday we heard John's version of the story of Judas' betrayal of Jesus and the prediction of Peter's denials as well. For weeks before this we had been hearing stories of a growing darkness and threat centered on the person of Jesus. Pharisees and Scribes were irritated and angry with Jesus at the facile way he broke Sabbath rules or his easy communion with and forgiveness of sinners. That he spoke with an authority the people recognized as new and surpassing theirs was also problematical. Family and disciples failed to understand him, thought him crazy, urged him to go to Jerusalem to work wonders and become famous.

Even his miracles were disquieting, not only because they increased the negative reaction of the religious leadership and the fear of the Romans as the darkness and threat continued to grow alongside them, but because Jesus himself seems to give us the sense that they are insufficient  and lead to misunderstandings and distortions of who he is or what he is really about. "Be silent!" we often hear him say. "Tell no one about this!" he instructs in the face of the increasing threat to his life. Futile instructions, of course, and, as those healed proclaim the wonders of God's grace in their lives, the darkness and threat to Jesus grows; The night comes ever nearer and we know that if evil is to be defeated, it must occur on a much more profound level than even thousands of such miracles.

In the last two weeks of Lent, the readings give us the sense that the last nine months of Jesus' life and active ministry were punctuated by retreat to a variety of safe houses as the priestly aristocracy actively looked for ways to kill him. He attended festivals in secret and the threat of stoning recurred again and again. Yet, inexplicably "He slipped away" we are told or, "They were unable to find an opening." The darkness is held at bay, barely. It is held in check by the love of the people surrounding Jesus. Barely. And in the last safe house on the eve of Passover as darkness closes in on every side Jesus celebrated a final Eucharist with his friends and disciples. He washed their feet, reclined at table with them like free men did. And yet, profoundly troubled, Jesus spoke of his impending betrayal by Judas. None of the disciples, not even the beloved disciple understood what was happening. There is one last chance for Judas to change his mind as Jesus hands him a morsel of bread in friendship and love. God's covenant faithfulness is maintained.

But Satan enters Judas' heart and a friend of Jesus becomes his accuser --- the meaning of the term Satan here --- and the darkness enters this last safe house of light and friendship, faith and fellowship. It was night, John says. It was night. Judas' heart is the opening needed for the threatening darkness to engulf this place and Jesus as well. The prediction of Peter's denials tells us this "night" will get darker and colder and more empty yet.  But in John's story, when everything is at its darkest and lowest, Jesus exclaims in a kind of victory cry: [[ Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in him!]] Here as darkness envelopes everything, Jesus exults that authentically human being is revealed, made known and made real in space and time; here, in the midst of  the deepening "Night" God too is revealed and made fully known and real in space and time. This victory cry of Jesus is either the cry of a messiah who will embrace and overcome evil right at its heart --- or the cry of a madman who cannot recognize or admit the victory of evil as it swallows him up. In the midst of these days of death and vigil, we do not really know which. On the third day of these three days we call Triduum we will see what the answer is.

Today, the Friday we call "Good," the darkness intensified. During the night Jesus was arrested and "tried" by the Sanhedrin with the help of false witnesses, desertion by his disciples, and Judas' betrayal. Today he was brought before the Romans, tried, found innocent, flogged in an attempt at political appeasement and then handed over anyway to those who would kill him, by a fearful self-absorbed leader whose greater concern was for his own position and power. There was betrayal, of consciences, of friendships, of discipleship and covenantal bonds on every side but God's. The night continued to deepen and the threat could not be greater.  Jesus was crucified and eventually cried out his experience of abandonment even by God. He descended into the ultimate godlessness, loneliness, and powerlessness we call hell. The darkness became almost total. We ourselves can see nothing else. That is where Good Friday and Holy Saturday leave us.

And the question these events raises haunts the night and our own minds and hearts: namely, messiah or madman? Is Jesus simply another person crushed by the cold, emptiness, and darkness of evil --- good and wondrous though his own works were? (cf Gospel for last Friday: John 10:31-42.) Is this darkness and emptiness the whole of the reality in which we live? Was Jesus' preaching of the reality of God's reign and his trust in God in vain? Is the God he proclaimed, the God in whom we also trust incapable of redeeming failure, sin and death --- even to the point of absolute lostness? Does he consign sinners to these without real hope because God's justice differs from his mercy? The questions associated with Jesus' death on the Cross multiply and we Christians wait in the darkness today and tomorrow. We fast and pray and try to hold onto hope that the one we called messiah, teacher, friend, beloved,  brother and Lord, was not simply deluded --- or worse --- and that we Christians are not, as Paul puts the matter, the greatest fools of all.

We have seen sin increase to immeasurable degrees; and though we do not see how it is possible we would like to think that Paul was right and that grace will abound all the more. But on this day we call "good" and on the Saturday we call "holy" we wait. Bereft, but hopeful, we wait.

Let's Go Forth and Blaspheme as Jesus Did!!!

Friday's Communion service here at St P's helped move us into Holy Week and where I would ordinarily end the service with the invitation to [[. . . go forth and love our world into wholeness!]] I added, [[Let's go forth and do some blasphemy!!]] And, because of the day's Gospel reading I was deadly serious in this. What do I mean?

When John the Baptist's disciples approached Jesus on John's behalf they did so with the question, [[Are you the One, or are we to await another?]] Jesus' answer was powerful. He did not claim to be God or the Messiah, or even the Son of God. Instead, he sent John's disciples back with the instruction to "tell John what you see," and citing Isaiah, he continues, [[ the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news proclaimed to them. And blessed is the one who takes no offence at me”.]] In other words, in Jesus, all the promises of God are fulfilled in their sight and hearing. Jesus does not claim to be God, much less the Second Person of the Trinity; he points instead to his works, works which only the power of God can do --- and some believe while others, who cannot see as Jesus calls them to see, do indeed take offense at Jesus.

Those who do take offense, point not to all the promises of God that are fulfilled in Jesus or the ways in which God's littlest and least are brought back into the intimacy of God's own life and People, but instead to what the leaders of this People call blasphemy. Jesus has identified himself as God's Son and made it clear that he acts in unity with the Father -- that is, he acts in the very power and presence of God. This is the essence of authentic humanity, namely, to be a person for others in the powerful love of God. More, Jesus does for the poor and marginalized precisely what the Jewish leaders are supposed to be doing and are not! Jesus says as much when he cites Psalm 82 to those who accuse him in this way: [[ Is it not said in your Scriptures, [I say to you, you are gods; you are all sons (and daughters) of the Most High]?]] In citing this passage of psalm 82, Jesus is reminding the religious leaders who take offense at him of who they really are, who they are called by God to be, and the works they themselves are supposed to doing for God's anawim. Psalm 82 refers to human beings alive with the power and presence of God in a way which makes them all they were called to be, men and women who do God's own justice in this world.

Jesus' claim is shocking to us and was shocking to those who were trying to stone him. We may avoid this line of the gospel reading thinking it is some sort of new age reference or something. But remember that psalm 82, with its reference to human beings as gods , and Jesus' use of the term "Son of God", would not and could not, in fact, have meant "Second Person of the Trinity". That theology developed centuries later as the Church grappled with Jesus' true identity and relationship to the One he reveals in space and time as "Abba". In the New Testament Jesus does the works that show who he is and who sent (consecrated and commissioned) him to fulfill the promises of Isaiah and the whole of the Old Testament. He is, in his true and exhaustive humanity, entirely transparent to the God who completes and makes him a man for others. The irony of Friday's gospel reading, is that Jesus was not being accused of blasphemy because he claimed to be God! He was accused of blasphemy because he claimed to be truly and fully human!! And he called and is calling us to the very same vocation!  Moreover, in accusing Jesus of blasphemy for fulfilling the promises of God, the religious leaders of his time also condemn themselves -- for they are the very ones whose failure is marked in Ps 82.

We human beings are each and all called to do God's justice in this world, to let the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk; to make lepers clean and to proclaim God's good news to the poor. Or, in the language of the Psalm, we must "defend the weak and fatherless, uphold the cause of the poor and oppressed, rescue the weak and needy, and deliver them from the hands of the wicked.]" We can only do all of this with the power and presence of God pouring through us to the rest of God's creation. We can only do that, in other words, to the extent we allow ourselves to be entirely transparent to the God of Life. And yes, many will take offense. We will hear cries of, letting the poor become a drain on society, replacing real justice with a toothless and incomplete mercy, and so forth. People will indeed take offense at us. Some may well call us blasphemous in mediating God's forgiveness and love to the least and littlest in our society. And this is who we are called to be.  Again, Jesus was not being accused of blasphemy because he claimed to be God! He was accused of blasphemy because he claimed to be truly and fully human!! 

Following our vocations to authentic and full humanity may, in fact, get us crucified --- in whatever way our contemporary world chooses to do that --- but the choice to be fully and authentically human through the power and presence of God is the one Jesus made at Gethsemane, and it is certainly the one we are being asked to make as we enter more fully into Holy Week, the very heart of our faith, and the week where, on Good Friday Jesus exhaustively revealed (made known, and also, made real in space and time) who God is, who we are, and what God wants us to be about. My prayers for all of us as we enter into our celebrations for this holiest of weeks. As I prayed last Friday at the end of the service as we were sent forth to love our world into wholeness, [[ Let's go forth and (in Christ) blaspheme as he did]]!! Amen.