Walking with the Father

Lent, as we know, is a time of resolutions. Come Ash Wednesday, not a few of us come up with a whole list of disciplines to mark Lent as a truly penitential season--a season of less to prepare for more. We all give up meat on Fridays, and some give up meat for the entire 40 days. Traditionally, I always give up iced-tea. Iced-tea is my absolute favorite beverage, so to go without it is not easy; then again, it isn't the worst thing in the world.

These kinds of resolutions are helpful, because they're little reminders that this time of Lent is special. They also recall the Lord's own self-denial as he prayed in the wilderness alone--preparing for his ministry.

Some of us "take up" practices, too. We resolve to pray the rosary more, or to attend daily mass when we can. Some choose a particular book for spiritual reading, others take on charitable works. These are all very good, too--because they feed our souls and strengthen us to continue these good things even after Lent is ended. One of the things I have "taken up" has been listening to the New Testament every day, with the goal of listening to the entire NT by Good Friday. So far, I'm at the end of the Acts of the Apostles.

The number one resolution that I have seen the need for has been the need for more silence in my life. Again, I realize that I have been too much like St. Martha, busy with many good things, but not busy about the one needful thing--the keeping of company with the Lord. St. Mary of Bethany, therefore, has become my Lenten model.

Yesterday was as busy as most days, and in all the right ways. I had wonderful conversations with friars, students, and friends. But even in the midst of these fun interactions, I felt the familiar hunger for a conversation with God. It reminds me of a scene described in St. Faustina's diary. She's out dancing with her sister and friends and realized that she wasn't really having fun. She wanted, instead, to sit with God.

So, I slowed down long enough before vespers (evening prayer) to sit and invite God into my mind and heart. Sure enough, I began to see a very powerful and important image for me--the vision of myself walking with God. The scene was in a field on a large piece of property. In fact, it was the property of the father from the story of the Prodigal Son. I could hear the music of the party they were throwing for the long-lost son, and the happy noise of the party goers. Even so, God the Father and I were walking in the opposite direction. It was evening, and the sun was low, but there was still light enough to walk around and enjoy the quiet of the field. The joy of the moment was my being next to him, my father, and to know that he recognized me as his son. To be in his company was the purest joy.

This image for me is so important, because it explains to everyone my own thoughts on heaven. It explains for others why I am a consecrated religious. The whole center of my life is walking with God who is Father. There is nothing I want more than to spend my life walking with him, being faithful to him, and growing more in his image. This is what I see as the purpose of the Incarnation and Pentecost--that is, the coming of the Word and the Spirit--that is, the teaching of humanity how to yearn to be in the company of the Father. The Lord Jesus was completely oriented toward the Father during his ministry on earth, as is the Spirit. They both draw us closer to the Father, and so to healing and wholeness.

There are some today who would like to blur the image of the Father, and make God more androgynous--and don't get me wrong, I think there is a place for feminine imagry for God--but I think it's important for us to sit with the image of God that tradition has handed on to us first, and to dive into the richness of the meaning of that image. I, for example, don't think that it was an accident that when St. Matthew records our Lord's Sermon on the Mount he only has Jesus refer to God as "Your Father in Heaven".

No matter what our experiences might be with biological or adoptive fathers, God who is Father is different--he is perfect. He teaches us, defends us, chastises us, and forgives us. He waits for us patiently. He walks with us unseen, and suffers with us willingly. We, as St. Paul put it, live and move and have our being in him--and so he is our very purpose, and the answer to our deepest existential questions.

The image of walking beside the Father I had yesterday in prayer only lasted a little while. It was only a visualization of the reality I aspire to--but it was enough to remind me, again, of the purpose of Lent: the drawing near to God. As the reading from St. James declared: "Give in to God; resist the devil and he will take flight. Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you...Be humbled in the sight of the Lord and he will raise you on high." (James 4:7-8, 10)

May God give us the grace to draw close to him, and to walk with him all our days.
Br. Paul, OP~

The Catcher in the Rye

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." (p173)

When I heard that the St. Luke Book Club in St. Louis was reading Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye I knew that I should take the opportunity and finally pick up this novel and read it. Many Americans are expected to read it during high school, and you would think I would have gotten to it during my undergrad days, but my focus has always been on English Regency and Victorian novels, so I missed Salinger...until now.

I have to say, of all the novels that I have read in the past two semesters, this novel has moved me and impressed me the most. The number one reason is that the character Holden Caulfield, for all his flaws, is an absolutely beautiful soul. This is most apparent in his reflections about his siblings--especially stories about his dead twin brother Allie, and his interaction with his little sister Phoebe. He is not detached from others, or alienated; rather, he's eagerly tied to those around him, and wants to be in relationship with others, although his behavior does not always facilitate this goal. He is a teenager, after all, struggling to be a man while still very much a child.

The above quote is the window into his whole self-perception, which impresses me that the novel takes its title from this passage. See how Holden Caulfield sees the world--a place for children playing freely. It's not a place free of dangers, however; there is a cliff in the image, so Holden isn't being idealistic or romantic--but if the world is imperfect, and does present dangers, he is willing to stand and keep on guard for the sake of others. He will protect them, allowing the playing to continue. It's a powerful image and expression of the vocation to love, the vocation to be a brother to the vulnerable. It says to me, the reader, that this character is truly, at heart, a person grounded in goodness.

Holden is not perfect--but he hasn't made the cardinal mistake of thinking the world is all about him. This is clear by the fact that at the end of the story, he promises to go home. "Not my will, but thine be done,"--in this case, the "thine" refers to his sister. You can be imperfect, the novel proclaims, but for goodness' sake, be in relationship. Grave sin occurs when the ties to others (especially the tie to God) are severed and one says, "Not thine, but my will be done." For me, then, this novel is a testimony to the messiness of our human experience, but the underlying goodness of our natures, and the importance of our staying connected to one another, and putting each other first.

In a way, I see a parallel between this story and Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. Holden, like the younger son of the parable, goes out into the world and is confronted by the lure of adult pleasures--false friends and false sexual encounters; and like the younger son of the parable, the call of the genuine love offered by the family brings him back home and saves him from this "side" of the world.

In short, I highly recommend this short, but powerful novel to any who have not yet read it. I plan on reading To Kill a Mockingbird next.

Preaching Notes for Ash Wednesday

“For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

In this paradoxical statement, St. Paul gives us a clue to understanding so much of the Paschal Mystery (which Lent prepares us to celebrate) and the Central Truth of the Christian Faith. Another way to say what he said in his second letter to the Corinthians would be: Jesus had no business being arrested, being harassed, being mocked and beaten, being stripped naked, or dying on a cross as a criminal to the state.

Jesus had no business being in any of those situations, because Jesus was completely innocent. Jesus never once, in all of his life, offended God. Not once did he break God’s heart by being unjust to his neighbor or turning away from someone in need. Never did that sacred heart of his let his eyes be blind to the sick or the outcast. To his friends and family, he was their light and joy. To his enemies, he was their strongest challenger to reform. His holiness was evident through his love. Why on earth would anybody like that be rejected, abused, and left to die a horrific death?

Jesus, the Son of God, was executed both because of the sinfulness of humanity, and for the eradication of the sinfulness of humanity. He took on our sinfulness, so that we could take on his holiness. We are supposed to be a community of saints—a community of Jesuses. That is what St. Paul meant—and yet, here we are beginning another Lent, and we’re mindful, again, of just how little we have lived up to that glorious exchange.

So what are we to do? Parade around with ashes on our heads, fast for a little while, pray a rosary, empty our pockets of our change—and call it a day? No—as good as all these things are, and they are good, they aren’t enough.

What we must do is spend Lent out in the desert of Self-Reflection, and finally come to terms with the demons of our inner hatreds. The demon that tells us we’re not loveable. The demon that tells us that no one really loves us. The demon that tells us that God doesn’t really care, or that he doesn’t exist at all. The demons of hate that we have allowed to live within us for far too long. The only way to get rid of them is to start getting serious about how we love. How we love ourselves, how we love God, how we love others, and how we love the planet we have been given to take care of.

It’s only when you finally understand love that you can finally understand the meaning of the Cross. Let us all then resolve to be more loving during this season of Lent, so that when we celebrate the Triumph over Death at Easter we will be a community that is what it celebrates.

St. Paul's Witness: 1 Corinthians 15:12-20

"Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ--whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died."

I had the honor of reading this passage from St. Paul's first letter to the Church in Corinth yesterday at mass. What struck me so powerfully was the sincerity and the eagerness and the passion of these words. This is hugely important, because the whole passage speaks eloquently to the reality of Paul's encounter with the resurrected Jesus. I don't think that there's any middle ground here, either you see Paul as the apostle preaching about an astounding event he actually experienced, or you see him as a diabolical deceiver spreading a lie. He is very much aware that to preach Jesus as resurrected when he wasn't resurrected would be a grave sin on the highest level, since it would be "misrepresenting God". That last assertion, then, should be a great comfort: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died." These are the words of a man who witnessed an extraordinary thing--the glorified Jesus of Nazareth, head of a body that now encompassed everyone baptized into his death and resurrection--in short, the divine Word of God clearly manifested in his sovereignty.

This passage beautifully speaks to the early Christian understanding of the meaning of both Jesus' Cross and his Resurrection. Through the Cross, believers are delivered from sin. Through the Resurrection, believers are raised to new and everlasting life. To doubt our new freedom from sin or our hope for resurrection is to not believe in Jesus. Even while we may be challenged by this passage to contemplate the level of our belief in the freedom from sin and the hope of resurrection the passage itself gives us a powerful help--the testimony of one who actually saw Jesus raised. These are not the words of one of Jesus' followers caught up in emotion, but one who saw Jesus independently--one who probably hated the very name Jesus of Nazareth before he encountered Jesus glorified. They are words I believe we can rely on. Let us carry with us, during our time of Lent, the testimony of this extraordinary apostle, whose testimony defined his whole life and then was ratified by his holy martyrdom.
St. Paul, we believe, help our unbelief through your most efficacious prayers!
Br. Paul, OP

Old and New: What to do about the Bible?

One of the classic cases of modern religious sensitivity today is the question of what to call the two sections of the Christian Bible. Calling the first section the "Old Testament" does not seem as appropriate these days, now that Christians are doing a much better job at respecting their Jewish neighbors. Sensitivity to our Jewish neighbors is only one reason, however, to change the name for the so-called Old Testament. Recently, in my encounters with several people (students and otherwise), I found several other reasons that made me think using the label "Old Testament" was actually working against Church teaching about scripture.

Firstly, because the first section of the Bible is labeled "Old", many people take the attitude that it is no longer relevant, and, therefore, they do not need to study this portion of scripture. This, of course, is erroneous. After all--if you're arguing that Jesus "fulfills" the promises made in the Hebrew scriptures, you can't very well act as if they are no longer relevant. If they are irrelevant, than Jesus is irrelevant.

Secondly, people tend to over simplify the very complex theology found in the Hebrew Scriptures. They will talk about the "God of the Old Testament", as if that God was not the very same God that Jesus called Father. This is a grave error, as well, since the Church does not teach that the God of the Hebrew Scriptures is not the same God as the God of the Christian Scriptures. They are the same God. If there appear to be contradictions or development in thought, then those things have to be addressed, not dismissed by labelling one "old" and one "new".

[An aside: The truth is, as I see it, there are multiple presentations of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, based on the personality type of the human author telling us the story. There's the wrathful/all powerful, warrior God; the God who comes down to earth and eats and talks with people; the Good Shepherd; the Holy Spirit; Lady Wisdom; the God who demands sacrifise; the God who rejects sacrifise in favor of charity; the patient God; the impatient God; the God who rejects sinners; the God who loves sinners. It's the God who chose beloved Israel from among all the nations and tribes of the world--but who chose Israel for the sake of all the other nations and tribes. Yes--a God for the person, and a God for the world. In truth, the Hebrew Scriptures won't allow us to put God in a little definitional box. They say to us--there's more to God than our experiences of him.]

Thirdly, Christians get the impression that because they have a "New Testament" that somehow the other one is null and void. This is erroneous, too. God's covenant with the Jewish people remains in effect. "Old" is problematic here, only because it is used to sometimes means "a covenant that used to be", and not "the first or ancient covenant".

Where does the Church spell some of what I have said out?
1) The Dogmatic Constitution of the Church (Lumen Gentium) [especially ch. 2]
2) The Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate)
3) The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum)

Of course, "Old Testament" is a perfectly good name for the first section of the Bible, since it does recognize the fact that there was a previous covenant made by God with humanity before the "New Testament" given through the Incarnate Word, and it was through this "old" covenant that God prepared the world for the "new". "Old", then, in this sense, is a mark of honor, as it speaks to the ancient and revered character of this previous covenant. If only people would use the phrase in that way.

My motivation in saying all this is to spread the word that the Catholic Church honors and respects the Hebrew Scriptures as truly the revelation of God, to be studied by all the faithful as a means of understanding and loving God, his son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, author of both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. The Bible is one book made up of many stories and voices. It's only one book, and all the parts go together to give us the message about who God was for our ancestors in faith, who he is for us today, and who he will be for those to come. It is our life's work to study the text, and so live and believe what we have been taught.

The Aaronic Priesthood and its Temple Sacrifices

I was reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church today in preparation for a talk I am going to give on the Sacrament of Holy Orders and Consecrated Life for the RCIA program, when I came across paragraph 1540 which states: "Instituted to proclaim the Word of God and to restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer, this priesthood (Aaronic) nevertheless remains powerless to bring about salvation, needing to repeat its sacrifices ceaselessly and being unable to achieve a definitive sanctification, which only the sacrifice of Christ would accomplish." It goes on to say in 1541 that, although powerless, the Church sees the Aaronic priesthood as a prefiguring of the ordained ministry of the "New Covenant".

Since I have been studying Judaism more closely these past few months (and I don't claim to be an expert), I have begun to read things in a new light. This paragraph would not have posed any questions for me at a different time, but when I read it now, I can detect or imagine the difference between a Jewish interpretation of the Aaronic priesthood and the sacrifices offered and the Christian interpretation of these things.

I used to see the sacrifices offered at the Temple in Jerusalem as being pointless, since they had to be repeated (as the catechism seems to imply)--but now I would compare those sacrifices to the sacrament of reconciliation. Don't we, after all, know that even with Jesus' saving sacrifice, baptized Christians can sin gravely, and require the graces of the sacraments to bring them back into full communion with God? Who would claim that the regular reception of the Eucharist, or regular confession was a sign that these actions are impotent, simply because they need to be repeated?

So, my main question for the interpretation of the Aaronic priesthood's temple sacrifices often held by Christians would be: If these acts were never understood to be acts to bring about "salvation", rather a restoration of communion, much like the sacrament of reconciliation, why are they being compared to Jesus' Crucifixion? They aren't the same kind of thing. Wouldn't it be better to compare the temple sacrifices with the sacrament of reconciliation and Jesus' Crucifixion to the Exodus events--since then we would be comparing truly comparable things?

When you compare the temple sacrifices to the sacrament of reconciliation and the acts of penance that go along with that sacrament, then the temple sacrifices make much more sense. They had to be ceaselessly repeated for the same reason confession is repeated by someone of the "New Covenant"--not because of the inefficacy of the act, but because of the repetition of sin by the individual. Just as entering the Sinai Covenant did not guarantee sinlessness, so, too, entering the Christian Covenant does not guarantee sinlessness.

The way I see it, the Aaronic priesthood was about mediation, not salvation [just as modern day Catholic priests mediate through the sacraments, and do not save us themselves]. Salvation comes from God alone. In fact, as I wrote about earlier on a posting related to Torah, "Salvation" is a strange word, perhaps, to use with Jews (ancient or contemporary). "Relationship with God" would be the better term to use, as it is the major concern of the Hebrew Scriptures. This is why the whole Torah is concerned with God's establishment of the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and eventually their descendants at Sinai. Perhaps this is why to some Jews (I'm guessing) the Christian claim that the saving grace of the Crucifixion was required to restore the relationship between God and humanity caused by the Fall of Adam and Eve which resulted in Original Sin, sounds so odd--since God had already reconciled humanity (at least the Jews) to himself, when, for example, he called Abraham into a covenant.

If read from this light, the interpretation of the Aaronic priesthood and its sacrifices often held by Christians might need to be reworked. It seems to me like this priesthood only claimed the same power of mediation as the priesthood of today in the Catholic Church does--the sacrifices offered at the temple being the continuation of the saving event that had already happened (Sinai Covenant), not merely a foreshadowing of one to come (the Crucifixion).

I'm merely posing a question here, not really making a claim. I will continue to ponder the question. For now, at least, I have a new appreciation for the importance of the Temple of Jerusalem and the sacrifices offered there. Losing the Temple and the priesthood must have seemed to the Jews of 70 AD like a world without baptism, Eucharist, and confession would be to Catholics. Fortunately, the Torah endured, as it always will.

Preaching Notes for St. Thoams Aquinas Celebration

Dear Diary:

You’ll never, in a million years, believe what happened to me today. I was walking to Bologna with some of the other Dominican friars, including the Master General, when we stopped near Siena to get some water and rest. The Master General and the other friars had stepped inside a little inn to question the keeper about the possibility of lunch, but I stayed outside to admire the skyline of Siena’s towers. Suddenly, I heard what sounded like a whole cavalry of men charging toward me, and when I turn around, two men grabbed me by the arms and begin to try to strip me of my new habit.

Who do you think the men were? None other than my own brothers. Well, I may be the youngest, but I’m not the smallest of them, and I was able to keep the habit on. That didn’t matter to them. My mother had sent them to force me to return home. I’m writing this in a very small room at San Giovanni Castle. To tell the truth, I thought I would never see this place again. Mother has been an absolute terror to me, crying every time she sees the holy habit. I threatened not to eat anything if they didn’t at least let me study, so I have a Bible and Peter Lombard’s work to look over. Having all this free time has given me an idea for a book. I think I’ll call it the Summa. Catchy name—huh?

Well, I better get back to work. Books don’t write themselves, after all.
Until later,
Brother Thomas

Today we are celebrating our patron saint, St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas, as most of you know, is considered to be one of the greatest Christian theologians of all time. This is so, because he was able to use philosophy to explain and explore Christian doctrine, and so has left us a method for doing theology that is not only rooted in faith, but also in reason.

Because of this, people often associate his name with academics. But if you read the accounts of his life from people who knew him—and, I might add, if you pay attention to what you read in his work—it becomes very clear that Thomas wasn’t just a man interested in God on an intellectual level, he was a man who had fallen in love with God. This love for God was at the heart of Thomas’ vocation as a Dominican friar.

In this way, I have two very important things in common with one of the greatest theologians of Christian history: 1) An intense love for God that defines the very essence of who I am, and 2) A vocation to Walk with God as a Dominican friar.

To have a vocation to be a Dominican, from my perspective, is a calling to be one of those very annoying people who, whenever you talk with them, somehow manage to make the conversation be all about their husband or wife. Dominicans, like St. Dominic our founder, have a burning desire to spend our time preaching—that is, talking about God to whomever will listen. We can’t help it—we love God so much, we just have to tell everyone about him.

I think this is an important point to make, because, all too often, when people hear the word Vocation they think that it has to do with a particular action—like saying mass, praying the liturgy of the hours, or feeding the hungry—but really, the desire to do those things should come only after a person has begun to fall in love with God.

This is what I think St. Paul was talking about in his famous Hymn to Love that we heard from the First Letter to the Corinthians. He says you can do all kinds of amazing things with your life, but if those things aren’t the product of love, then they aren’t worth much.

If, on the other hand, you open your heart to loving God—truly loving him not just as one person to love among many, but as the person who defines who you are at the deepest level of your being—then any action that you do will be a manifestation of your love for him and his love for you. This kind of radical love, I think, is what vocation is all about.

I’m telling you all this, because I want to extend an invitation to those of you who are feeling, perhaps, a desire to spend your life Walking with God as a priest and/or religious brother or sister to come speak to me after mass. The Central Province of St. Albert the Great is hosting a Come and See vocation discernment weekend for men in St. Louis, Feb. 12-14th and we would love it if you came to visit us and see if Dominican life is for you. I will have information about Come and See weekends being held by Dominican sister congregations, as well.

What I found, when I went on a Come and See weekend, was a community of men of different ages, united together in a brotherhood fashioned and made strong by communal prayer, study, and the preaching mission.

These are all very good, of course,—but the thing that convinced me that I should give Dominican life a chance was the fact that I could tell that these were all men who were in love with God.

Now that I am in the middle of my third year of vowed life, I can testify that what I saw at the Come and See was true, and it is my fervent hope that I will, at the end of my life, be able to say to God, just as my brother St. Thomas did, “it was for love of you that I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught.”

I will end by saying that I am convinced that there is no risk involved when it comes to loving God. If you trust him, he will walk with you, and you will find, as the Song of Songs puts it, that God
is All Together Lovable.