The Enduring Paradox of the Cross

 “May [Fr. Jacques Hamel] from heaven—because we must pray to him, he is a martyr, and the martyrs are blessed, we must pray to him—give us meekness, brotherhood, peace and the courage to say the truth: to kill in the name of God is satanic.”    
                                                                  Pope Francis, Homily for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

Pope Francis, celebrating today the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross in Rome declared the French priest Jacques Hamel a martyr and blessed in the presence of his bishop and the faithful from his parish in Normandy.  It's yet another instance of the enduring paradox of the Cross: the kenotic humiliation of the Word made flesh that accomplishes our salvation from the violence, hatred, lust for power and pride that tragically corrupts every human heart, by dying ignominiously on the Cross.  

Armed only with the weapons of self-giving, self-sacrificing love and obedience to the will of the Father, Jesus by the Cross overthrew forever the powers of sin and death, so aptly characterized by Bl. Jacques as "satanic".   How apt to remember Bl. Pere Jacques on this feast day.

Bl.Pere Jacques's killers were misguided, not only in their evil and hateful actions, but in their mistaken idea that hatred and violence made them powerful.  Yes, they had the transitory power to frighten and hurt and kill, but as the martyrdom of Bl. Pere Jacques testifies to, the self-giving love of Jesus, who died on the Cross, even, (or especially) for his murderers, is where true power resides.  The love of Jesus and of those who make up his Mystical Body, is a love which can never be overcome, never defeated, never killed, for it is the life-giving, eternal love of God.  

It is to that undying and inexhaustible love that Bl. Pere Jacques Hamel was a faithful witness, in his life and in his death.

Blessed Pere Jacques, pray for us!

Take Me To The River

When I was about twelve I fell in love with Chinese landscape painting. I discovered the "Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting ( reproduced in translation in the "The Tao of Painting:A Study of the Ritual Disposition of Chinese Painting" , published by the Bollingen Institute at Princeton with commentary by Mai-Mai Tse) and never looked back.

This weekend I wanted to spend some time looking at my favorite Chinese painting, "Spring Festival Along the River"by the Northern Sung painter Zheng Zeduan/Chang Tse-Tuan,  Its not exactly a classical landscape painting of lonely mountains, clouds and waterfalls.  Instead, Zheng's painting is filled with people on their way  to the Sung capital of Kaifeng during Ch'ing Ming, the spring festival honoring the dead.

Its a leisurely journey along the river through the outskirts of the city, past large and small boats,  over a bridge, through the city gates and into the city itself.  It depicts people of every class and occupation engaged in every possible kind of activity as they come and go alongside the river.  Or listening to a storyteller or minding their storefronts or drinking tea in a teahouse. (Love those camels coming through the city gate.)

I never tire of looking at this masterpiece (which of course, I've only seen in photographic reproduction.)  I have a book at home that has a twelve-page spread of the entire painting in black and white, but its a not very high resolution reproduction.    So I went on line and accidentally stumbled across a site at the University of Chicago that reproduces Chinese scroll paintings.  The viewer can literally "scroll" through the entire scroll while making the very high resolution images larger (to see detail) or smaller (to see the details in their larger context.)

To take a look, go to:  
https://scrolls.uchicago.edu/scroll/spring-festival-along-river

Take Me To The River

When I was about twelve I fell in love with Chinese landscape painting. I discovered the "Mustard Seed Garden Manual of Painting ( reproduced in translation in the "The Tao of Painting:A Study of the Ritual Disposition of Chinese Painting" , published by the Bollingen Institute at Princeton with commentary by Mai-Mai Tse) and never looked back.

This weekend I wanted to spend some time looking at my favorite Chinese painting, "Spring Festival Along the River"by the Northern Sung painter Zheng Zeduan/Chang Tse-Tuan,  Its not exactly a classical landscape painting of lonely mountains, clouds and waterfalls.  Instead, Zheng's painting is filled with people on their way  to the Sung capital of Kaifeng during Ch'ing Ming, the spring festival honoring the dead.

Its a leisurely journey along the river through the outskirts of the city, past large and small boats,  over a bridge, through the city gates and into the city itself.  It depicts people of every class and occupation engaged in every possible kind of activity as they come and go alongside the river.  Or listening to a storyteller or minding their storefronts or drinking tea in a teahouse. (Love those camels coming through the city gate.)

I never tire of looking at this masterpiece (which of course, I've only seen in photographic reproduction.)  I have a book at home that has a twelve-page spread of the entire painting in black and white, but its a not very high resolution reproduction.    So I went on line and accidentally stumbled across a site at the University of Chicago that reproduces Chinese scroll paintings.  The viewer can literally "scroll" through the entire scroll while making the very high resolution images larger (to see detail) or smaller (to see the details in their larger context.)

To take a look, go to:  
https://scrolls.uchicago.edu/scroll/spring-festival-along-river

Let Us With Confidence Come Before the Throne of Grace

 

Its been fifteen years this Sunday since the terrible events of September 11th, 2001.  The anniversary falls on a Sunday this year, which means that for us as Christians we will be gathered at the altar on that heart-breaking anniversary.  Yet the altar is such an appropriate place to gather, a place where God, who loves us with such infinite compassion and mercy, wants us to confidently lay down our deepest fears and hopes, joys and sorrows before the throne of grace. 

We gather to celebrate the Eucharist, which is the sign and the reality of the measure of God’s love for us, revealed in Jesus who offered himself completely and without holding back for our sake.  Having lived a life for others, his body was broken for us and his and his lifeblood was poured out to break down once and for all the walls of hatred and malice that separate us from God and from each other.    

Remembering this anniversary, it is impossible to ignore the human family’s alienation from God: the fire and smoke only made visible the anger and hatred burning in the hearts of those who would do such a thing to their brothers and sisters.    

Yet in those same places and on that same day, we saw too the creative power of love.  For me,  the image of those doomed firefighters dragging their hoses up the steps of the World Trade Tower as they passed those fleeing the building,  is such a profound image of the Eucharist.  Do this, in memory of me, meant then and continues to mean for us, to be men and women for others, to live lives poured out in loving service without counting the cost. 

Jesus, in the simple acts of eating and drinking revealed God’s power to heal us.  In Jesus, at the Eucharist, enemies become friends, injuries are forgiven and peace is possible.  The Eucharist reveals to us our power in Christ to cast out hatred, to forgive and be forgiven, and to love even our enemies.  The sacrificial love of Jesus, which appears to be weakness itself, is always more powerful than hatred and killing, of violence and revenge.  

May we open our hearts to the mystery of the mercy of God revealed to us in the One who forgave his executioners from the Cross, confident that each day that we will be transformed more and more profoundly into the image and the pattern of Jesus.    

Longing is the Core of Mystery

Longing is the core of mystery

Longing itself brings the cure.

The only rule is: Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,

and what you want to happen

In time, sacrificed.

                                                Rumi

 

Its been two weeks since my wife Paula and I were in Sitka for the Sitka Rumi Festival.  ( Due to the ferry schedule we  only made Day Three of the festival.  But we did have the chance to listen to Coleman Barks, Rumi's best known American translator/interpreter read from his poetry.  Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Balkhi-Mevlana or Rumi, was a 13th century Sufi mystic, Islamic scholar and poet. He lived and wrote during an amazing flowering of Christian, Jewish and Muslim mystical writing and poetry.  

In our own time, Rumi (in Bark"s modern translations) has reportedly become the most popular poet in the United States.  The increasing enthusiasm for this Persian mystical poet has been occurring during a marked decrease in religious observance/identification by Americans, as more and more people, especially millenials, identify as 'spiritual but not religious.'  It would be easy to dismiss the popularity of a mystic like Rumi as yet another example of the desire for individual mystical experience, for ecstatic experience without the demanding discipline and self-denial required of anyone serious about the spiritual life.

But I wonder if the compelling attraction of a mystical poet like Rumi can be attributed more to amazement that religion has a mystical dimension at all.  I wonder if for too many Christians, faith in Jesus has been presented more like a series of philosophical propositions or moral regulations than as a deep and unquenchable longing for friendship and communion with God filled with paradox, wonder, ecstatic joy and perplexing unknowing.  Unfortunately, our own rich and abundant mystical tradition embodied in the writings of mystics such as St, Bernard of Clairvaulx, St.Francis of Assisi, St.Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross and many, many others is unknown to too many followers of Jesus.  

St.Teresa of Kolkata, Pray for Us

Life has only one tragedy, ultimately: not to have been a saint.

                                                                                        Charles Peguy

 

With the canonization of Mother Teresa today in Rome by Pope Francis amid widespread rejoicing by all who loved her and her inspiring example of compassionate love for the poorest of the poor, there are of course, the (inevitable) attacks being made on her charactor by her critics.  Most of notable of whom was the late Christopher Hitchens, who charactorized her as a "fanatic, a fundamentalist and a fraud", who not only failed to make the lives of the poor better but actually made their lives worse.  

Her fanaticism?  She opposed abortion and euthanasia.  He fundamentalism?  She wholeheartedly accepted the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Her fraudulance?  She appreciatively accepted donations from all comers to support her work on behalf of the poor.  

Was she perfect?  She'd be the first to acknowledge her frailty and sinfulness.  Was she ever mistaken in her judgements and decisions?  Yes, of course.  Did she live a holy life, worthy of emulation?  Absolutely.

What I think her past and present critics miss is that she took literally and radically the words of Jesus, that as often as you perform the works of mercy for the poor, the despised and those who suffer, you do them to me. (Mt.25:31-46). The love she showed those whom she served was, for her, love lavished on Jesus himself.  And just as importantly, she believed that what she and her sisters had to offer the poor was the love of Jesus.  This love wasn't and isn't a program to eradicate poverty or improve medical care and  public health (as laudable and necessary as those kinds of cooperative efforts are).

  Instead, her purpose was to personally go to those who were at the most extreme margins of society and love them. To take in those so poor and abandoned that they were literally dying in the streets, and show them great love  in their final days or hours.  To relieve their physical hunger and thirst, of course, but also their spiritual hunger and thirst for acceptance and welcome, for reassuring and kind words, for a gentle touch, for a smile, for love.

The charity that she exemplified is always a sign of God's presence.  Not as an act of religious propaganda, nor to convert the vulnerable and suffering people she served to Catholicism, but because God is revealed in Jesus as Love.  The divine love that transforms us from enemies into friends and from strangers into brothers and sisters.  The divine love that transforms our hearts so that we can love as He loves.  The love that transformed the heart and the life of Anjeze Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, known to all as Mother Teresa.

St.Teresa of Kolkata, pray for us!

 

A New Work of Mercy for the Year of Mercy

"Everything a baptized person does every day should be directly or indirectly related to the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy."                                                                                           Dorothy Day

Wood engraving by Ade Bethune 

In his message today “Show Mercy in Our Common Home”, for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Pope Francis recommends that we add to the seven traditional works of mercy an eighth work:, care for our common home.

(See the entire message at this link below)

 http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160901_messaggio-giornata-cura-creato.html

Referring to his encyclical Laudato Si, he explains that “as a spiritual work of mercy, care for our common home calls for ‘grateful contemplation of God’s world’ which allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us (LS 214)”

He goes onto further propose that “as a corporal work of mercy, care for our common home requires ‘simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness …and makes itself felt in every action which seeks to build a better world.”(LS 230-31)

And as always, he urges us to pray:

O God of the poor, 

help us to rescue the abandoned 

and forgotten of this earth, 

who are so precious in your eyes... 

God of love, show us our place in this world 

as channels of your love for all the creatures of this world.

God of mercy, may we receive your forgiveness 

and convey your mercy throughout our common home.

Praise be to you!

Amen 

 Today in Juneau, Alaska there will be two prayer events for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation

-- Holy Hour with Benediction  5:30pm-6:30pm at the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

-- Interfaith Prayer Service, 7:00pm-8:00pm at Northern Light United Church, sponsored by Alaska Interfaith Power and Light.

Everyone is invited, everyone is welcome, at both events.