June 30th

June 30th, following the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, we celebrate the early Christian martyrs put to death by Nero after the disastrous fire that burned down much of the city July 19, 64 AD. If I were in Rome today I would go to the church of Saint Peter in Chains or to the gardens of Saints John and Paul on the Celian Hiill to remember them.

The two apostles were put to death around this time and many (we don’t know how many) followed them.

There’s a blog and a video on the church of St. Peter in Chains here and here.And a video on the Stations of the Cross in the gardens of Saints John and Paul here. There’s also a video on the Quo Vadis story here.

The persecution and martyrdom  in 64 throws light on the creation of the Gospel of Mark, which many think was written in Rome afterwards.

One thing I think this feast and the Gospel of Mark suggests: the Church of Rome did not flee from the uncertainty and persecution it faced then. I think the Quo Vadis story indicates that. It didn’t give up.

We pray today:

Father,

you sanctified the Church of Rome

with the blood of its first martyrs.

May we find strength from their courage

and rejoice in their triumph.

We ask this through our Lord, Jesus Christ, your Son.

Peter and Paul

Today, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, the Vatican began a new website on the internet that combines a number of their websites under one portal: www.news.va

Good idea, nice and simple. Begun on the Feast of the two apostles who are considered the founders of the church of Rome it’s a website addressed to the world. And on its opening page there’s the pope playing with what’s surely an iPad. May others do likewise. I’m not quite sure about Peter, but I’m sure Paul would have loved one of those things.

One story on the new site is about a new discovery archeologists made of a 6th century portrait of St. Paul, the Apostle, from a catacomb near Naples. Paul, is described in the story as looking like a Roman philosopher. He peers out from the side of an arcosolium, a burial place, at the mourners who come to honor their dead. He who saw the Risen Christ carries news of new life.

His portrait looks like other early portraits of him, just a Peter’s portrait is pretty much established early on. Peter looks like a rough and ready fisherman–which I’m sure he was. I think he would be uncomfortable to hear himself described as “the prince of the apostles.”

Not that he was a shrinking violet. In today’s readings, St. Augustine claims that the three affirmations of love Jesus called him to make, according to the Gospel of John, were to conquer Peter’s “self-assurance.”

“Quite rightly, too, did the Lord after his resurrection entrust his sheep to Peter to be fed. It is not, you see, that he alone among the disciples was fit to feed the Lord’s sheep; but when Christ speaks to one, unity is being commended to us. And he first speaks to Peter, because Peter is the first among the apostles.

“Do not be sad, Apostle. Answer once, answer again, answer a third time. Let confession conquer three times with love, because self-assurance was conquered three times by fear. What you had bound three times must be loosed three times. Loose through love what you had bound through fear. And for all that, the Lord once, and again, and a third time, entrusted his sheep to Peter.”

“There is one day for the passion of two apostles. But these two also were as one; although they suffered on different days, they were as one. Peter went first, Paul followed. We are celebrating a feast day, consecrated for us by the blood of the apostles. Let us love their faith, their lives, their labours, their sufferings, their confession of faith, their preaching.”

The Glory of God

I was surprised to see Harold Camping at his usual place on television the other night. The rapture didn’t happen May 21st, he explained, because God wanted to alert the world that the end was going to come this October. A caller wondered if we could do anything about helping this world of ours, but Harold was quite firm that God was going to destroy it completely. It’s an open sewer, according to him. Nothing’s worth saving.

How different from the Christian vision of St. Irenaeus, the 3rd century  bishop of Lyons, whose feast we celebrate June 28th. He condemned the gnostics– favorites of new age thinkers today– for their dismissal of creation as evil. The One God is the source of our created world and we know him through it, Irenaeus taught. We cannot know God if we depreciate or ignore the world God has made; it mirrors his glory.

“The glory of God gives life; those who see God receive life. For this reason God, who cannot be grasped, comprehended or seen, allows himself to be seen, comprehended and grasped by us, that he may give life to those who see and receive him…  God is the source of all activity throughout creation. He cannot be seen or described in his own nature and in all his greatness by any of his creatures. Yet he is certainly not unknown.”

The Word of God has a twofold role, according to Irenaeus, revealing God in creation and finally coming in the flesh to complete this revelation in Jesus Christ.  No  one has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has revealed him.

“He revealed God to us and presented us to God. He safeguarded the invisibility of the Father to prevent us from treating God with contempt and to set before us a constant goal toward which to make progress. On the other hand, he revealed God to us and made him visible in many ways to prevent us from being totally separated from God and so cease to be.

“Life in us is the glory of God; in human life one can see the vision of God. If the revelation of God through creation gives life to all who live upon the earth, much more does the manifestation of the Father through the Word give life to those who see God.”

Harold should read that wonderful story from the Book of Genesis we read yesterday at Mass about Abraham bargaining with God for the salvation of Sodom and Gomorrah. The world’s worth saving.

We are His Flock

 

Last Saturday I celebrated Mass in a parish whose pastor was retiring and a new one was coming in to take over. It was the Feast of Corpus Christi, a vivid reminder of the presence of Jesus Christ among us. He is our shepherd and we are his flock.

We’re very conscious today of human leaders, whether they are politicians, business leaders, bishops or pastors. We want them to keep things going, to solve problems and to lead us into the future. When things go wrong, they’re the first we blame. Often they are all we see.

But there is another who leads us. “We are his people, the flock of the Lord.” St. Augustine comments on this verse from the psalms:

“  In this song we have declared that we are his flock, the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hands… You are my sheep, he says. Even in the midst of this life of tears and tribulations, what happiness, what great joy it is to realise that we are God’s flock! To him were spoken the words: You are the shepherd of Israel. Of him it was said: The guardian of Israel will not slumber, nor will he sleep. He keeps watch over us when we are awake; he keeps watch over us when we sleep.

A flock belonging to a man feels secure in the care of its human shepherd; how much safer should we feel when our shepherd is God. Not only does he lead us to pasture, but he even created us.”The words we have sung contain our declaration that we are God’s flock: For he is the Lord our God who made us. He is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hands.

Human shepherds did not make the sheep they own; they did not create the sheep they pasture. Our Lord God, however, because he is God and Creator, made for himself the sheep which he has and pastures. No one else created the sheep he pastures, nor does anyone else pasture the sheep he created.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” we say. And he shepherds the world as well.

Seeing God

St. Gregory of Nyssa has a beautiful reflection in today’s readings on the beatitude, “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.”

He begins by saying that “It does not say that it is blessed to know something about the Lord God, but that it is blessed to have God within oneself. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“I do not think that this is simply intended to promise a direct vision of God if one purifies one’s soul. On the other hand, perhaps the magnificence of this saying is hinting at the same thing that is said more clearly elsewhere: The kingdom of God is within you. That is, we are to understand that by purging our souls of every illusion and every disordered affection, we will see our own beauty as an image of the divine nature.

“Our own beauty as an image of the divine nature,”

We are sharers in the divine nature. We’re not God, who is transcendent, inaccessible, beyond our minds and knowing, but we can “see” God in ourselves, our own image, as we are purified from our illusions, our sins, our disordered love. Like many early eastern theologians, Gregory appreciates the basic goodness of human nature restored by the grace of the Redeeming Christ. No demeaning of humanity here.

The saints goes on:

“And those pure in heart are blessed because, seeing their own purity, they see the archetype reflected in the image. If you see the sun in a mirror then you are not looking directly at the sky, but still you are seeing the sun just as much as someone who looks directly at it. In the same way, the Lord is saying, although you do not have the strength to withstand the direct sight of the great and inaccessible light of God, if you look within yourselves once you have returned to the grace of the image that was placed in you from the beginning, you will find in yourselves all that you seek… the sight of God.”

Going a step further, can the saint’s words apply also to creation itself? If our created world as well as our human world mirrors God, aren’t we meant to see God there too? If it is marred and disfigured by human greed and loses its place as a sacrament of God’s presence, does the beatitude about purifying the human heart also extend to renewing and purifying creation?

Birth of John the Baptist

Jesus himself praised John the Baptist for his holiness so it’s not unusual that the church celebrates John’s birth and death in its liturgy. Luke’s gospel recalls John’s birth in detail,ending its account with the words:“The hand of the Lord was with him. The child grew and became strong in spirit,and he was in the desert until the day of his manifestation to Israel.”

Notice,though,that like Mary and Joseph,Elizabeth and Zechariah are recognized in Luke’s gospel for their role in the birth and raising of the child. However lonely and independent a figure John appears to be in the gospels,he didn’t come from nowhere. He was nourished and raised by parents and an extended family who left their mark on him. “The hand of the Lord was with him,” but human hands on him as well.

He had faith like his mother,Elizabeth,who recognized the Spirit’s presence in her pregnant cousin Mary visiting her from Nazareth. John would point out the Lamb of God among all those who came to the Jordan River for baptism.

He had faith like his father,Zechariah,who devoutly celebrated the mysteries of God in the temple of Jerusalem as a priest. At the Jordan River,John called pilgrims on their way to the Holy City to participate in the Jewish feasts by preparing the way of the Lord in their own hearts.

Undoubtedly,John was a unique figure,a messenger from God,a voice in the desert preparing the Lord’s way. But there were also faithful people behind him,as they are behind us.

Trinity Sunday

A story’s told that St. Augustine, one of the great intellectuals of our western world, was walking along the seashore one day and saw a little boy playing on the beach, taking water from the sea in a small bucket and pouring it into a hole he had dug in the sand. Back the forth the boy went. “What are you doing?” Augustine asked, “Do you think you can put the whole sea into that little hole?”

“No,” the little boy answered, “And neither can you put God into that small mind of yours no matter how smart you think you are.”

The story reminds us how limited our minds are before the mystery of God, even the smartest, most brilliant minds,   God is beyond us. The Feast of the Holy Trinity is a reminder of how incapable we are to know God completely.

And yet, this feast also reminds us that God has approached us and revealed  himself to us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As Father, God’s the creator of heaven and earth. All creation ultimately comes from God’s hand. The gift of life, the gift of all things. God, our Father and Creator, has given us everything. Through these same gifts we come to know him.

God has also made himself known to us in Jesus Christ, who was born of Mary over two thousand years ago, who walked this earth and died on a cross, who rose from the dead and remains with us in his church and his sacraments.  We have his words, his actions, his promises. He’s our Savior and Redeemer, a sign of God’s love;  he’s promised us life eternal..

The Holy Spirit also is God with us, within us, guiding us and our world to our common destiny.

Yet,  though we believe that God reveals himself to us, we’re still like the little boy on the seashore. We’re looking at an unmeasured sea that we approach with the little buckets of our minds. We can’t grasp it all.

You remember the story of the conversion of Paul the Apostle; one of the most dramatic stories in the scriptures. Saui, the unbeliever, was on his way to the City of Damascus to persecute the followers of Jesus, when suddenly a blinding light throws him from his horse. “Who are you, Lord?” Paul cries out. “I am Jesus whom you persecute, “ the voice from the blinding light says.

Jesus Christ is like the blinding light of the sun. He shares in the nature of God, who is brighter than sunlight, who blinds us when we try to see him. God dwells in light inaccessible, the scriptures say. So, even though we know so much about Jesus from the scriptures, even though great scholars can describe him, he is still beyond anything we can know.

Like the sun, Jesus is like a blinding light, yet, paradoxically a light that shines into the darkness of creation to give life and light. At the beginning of his gospel,  St. John says: “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” (John 1,18)

As people of faith we’re not like those who say you can’t know God at all or like those who say God doesn’t exist because my mind cannot grasp him. Yet, as people of faith we know God little by little. That’s why we come to church week by week, that’s why we pray for our daily bread, that why we search for God in life as it unfolds day by day.

As we consider the mystery of God today we also have to recognize that we are children of the Enlightenment, that movement in our western world that tells us there’s no need to pay much attention to God. Pay attention to the world at hand. Pay attention to yourself.  That’s the important thing.

But, we should never leave the sea. We’re meant to stand before the mystery of God and reach out to him with our minds and to love him with our hearts, small as they are.

There’s a trivialization of the mystery of God today.  I think you can see it in the way the name of God and the name of Jesus Christ are tossed about in our ordinary talk. “You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain.”   You can see it in God’s absence from our culture, our schools, our media. our homes. You can see it in the belittling of our church and the signs of God’s presence. Even churches can become human gathering spaces, instead of holy places where we meet God.

The Feast of the Holy Trinity is a holy reminder of the mystery of God at the center of our life and the life of our world.

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Fighting the Good Fight

 

The Passionists of my province offer daily homilies based on the readings of Mass. I contribute to the website, which I recommend. Here’s my homily for today:

I suppose we all try to visualize what famous people looked like. Many of them, like Paul the Apostle, left no portraits, but artists have imagined them for us. His fiery personality shines out in our first reading for today from his Letter to the Corinthians.

The statue of Paul at the entrance to the old pilgrim church of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome is one of my favorites. Paul’s portrayed as an old man, clothed in a heavy traveler’s cloak, bent and tired from coming a long way. He holds a great sword firmly in hand, but he’s not a military man. It’s the sword of faith he’s holding, a symbol of the faith that won hearts and banished darkness.

He has “fought the good fight” and “kept the faith;” his earthly journey’s ended. Pictures on the church doors recall his final hours, when Paul died decapitated by an executioner’s sword not far from this spot, after a period of imprisonment in Rome.

Did he review his own life then? I’m sure Paul wondered at the mystery of it all, especially the time a blinding light threw him from his horse on the way to Damascus, and then those hard journeys to towns and cities where he labored hard to bring faith in Jesus to so many. I don’t think he spent much time fighting old battles, though. Like those he had with the rival teachers who invaded his turf in Corinth.

When it’s all said and done, it’s not our judgment that counts at the end.  It’s God’s judgment that counts.

Looking higher up on the façade of that great church that bears the apostle’s remains, we can see Paul the Apostle, pictured in the light of glory, his traveling days done. With Peter, a fellow disciple, he sits at the feet of Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord whom he loved so much. “Who are you, Lord?” Paul once cried, thrown to the ground. Now he knows,  granted the grace, unmerited like all others, to see Jesus face to face.

What’s a Retreat?

I’m preaching a retreat for priests next week and I’m wondering what to say. As usual,  I ask myself –what is a retreat anyway?

A car tune-up comes to mind.  I usually delay getting it done because I wonder if I really need it; after all, the car still runs. Why go on retreat we say; we’re still going along spiritually? But the car needs to be tuned up; the oil needs to be changed; the tires need to be balanced and any unusual noises need to be checked out.

The concept of balance stands out. A retreat is a time to regain spiritual balance. That’s suggested by a commentary on the Our Father by St. Cyprian I read recently.

God is “our” Father; we pray for “our” daily bread; we ask that “our” sins be forgiven, the saint stresses. Early commentators like Cyprian emphasized  a common approach to God as they reflected on the prayer taught by Jesus.

It’s not just me and God.  We go to God together, not alone, the saint says. My voice joins with others. I have to ask for others as well as myself. I have to pray that “Our bread–that is, Christ,” the cosmic Christ who embraces us all, be given to us all.

“ We must fear and pray lest anyone should be kept at a distance from salvation who, being withheld from communion, remains separate from Christ’s body. For he has given us this warning: Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you will have no life in you. And therefore we ask that our bread – that is, Christ – may be given to us daily, so that we who live in Christ may not depart from his sanctification and his body.”

We live in an age of  “expressive individualism,’ as Charles Taylor describes it, and we need to rebalance ourselves by entering into communion with other realities besides ourselves.  We’re imbalanced towards individualism, and  imbalance is dangerous.

What realities? Certainly we need to open ourselves to other human beings. We belong together and we need each other. We tend today to become preoccupied with ourselves, which leads to isolation and loneliness. We  might need rebalancing.

“As generous distributors of God’s grace, put your gifts at the service of one another.” ( 1Peter 4,9) It’s not enough for me to have gifts; it’s wrong to hoard gifts;  I have to use them for the service of others. That will cover a multitude of sins, St. Peter writes, our personal sins.

In an age of expressive individualism, it’s easy to fall into a selfishness that causes us to look out for ourselves and turn away from others.

It’s not just the human world we must commune with. What about the natural world? The fragile world of nature so endangered today? Some say we have become imbalanced because we have lost our connection with the universe. We come from the dust of the earth;  besides giving ourselves to our human family, we need to put our gifts as the service of our natural world as well.

Finally, we must remember our union with God, our creator, the One who sustains us; the one who calls to intimacy and lasting communion. “God is my refuge and our strength,” we say in the psalms. “Without me you can do nothing, “ Jesus says.

In the recent issue of the Jesuit magazine American (June 6-13,2011) Fr. Richard Hauser SJ reviews a book by Louis Savary call The New Spiritual Excercises: In the Spirit of Teilhard de Chardin, (Paulist Press)  It’s an attempt to re-envision Ignatian retreats in the light of de Chardin’s evolutionary and cosmic perspectives. Good idea, the reviewer says.

Is a retreat a time of rebalancing, renewing our communion with God, our human family and our world? Is a retreat a time to become aware of where we fit in the evolution of things, in the cosmic picture? I think so.

We Go to God Through Questions

I’ve been talking to a number of people lately who have questions about their faith. I emailed this to one of them today:

Here are some sources you might find interesting as you look again at the faith you learned long ago.

Just a few months ago a new Catholic bible was published called the New American Bible Recent Edition. NABRE. The last printing was 20 years ago, but since so much new archeological material and textual discoveries have become available since then, they thought a new edition was due. Part of what we are experiencing today is an explosion of new knowledge in these fields and in other fields of human knowledge. I’m going to pick up that new bible soon myself. It has wonderful notes and introductions to the books and it’s also the translation we read in church.

I was in a Barnes and Noble store yesterday and looked at the section of bibles, but I could hardly locate the New American Bible among the other editions. With the decline of Catholic book stores it’s hard to get the books we might be looking for. The media don’t help either with some of their sensational productions on religion.

The pope’s two new books, “Jesus of Nazareth”. are also good to read. I’ve been reading his last one about the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus, and I find it stimulating. He’s using much of the latest scholarly materials and offering some wonderful insights. and he’s not afraid to take on tough questions.  We are all doing the same thing: learning and learning again.

I like a recent catechism published by the American bishops: The United States Catholic Catechism for Adults. You can get it at Amazon.com. It approaches the different aspects of faith simply and offers a person, whether a canonized saint or not, who exemplifies that aspect and tells their story. Faith is better seen when it’s lived by people.

Since you were impressed by your recent visit to the Holy Land you may be interested in some entries I did for our pilgrimage from St. Mary’s from October 16 to November 20, 2010. You can find them on Victor’s Place, my blog, at https://vhoagland.wordpress.com/

I think I told you what one of my theology teachers told me long ago. “We go to God through questions. You find one answer and ten more questions are there waiting to be answered.”

Questions are part of our search for God.