Category: Reflection

Photograph – A picture that I took of a Celtic cross in the cemetery of Drumcliff, County Sligo, Ireland.

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24)

The cross is the central gathering place for we who call ourselves Christian. The first symbolic gesture in Roman Catholic baptism is the tracing of the cross on the forehead of the one to be baptized. Just yesterday, many people had the cross signed on their foreheads with ashes.

The cross is the penultimate paradox as Paul expresses so clearly in his first letter the Corinthinians. “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 21-25)

It is an error as we gather at the foot of the cross, to perceive the cross as the end point of Christian life. As we gaze upon the cross, we must look through it to that which lies beyond the cross, which is eternal life. The cross, as it were, is nothing but a thin veil, through which we can see eternal Life. The carrying of our crosses is to pass through this veil to the Life which awaits us. It was through the carrying of his cross that Jesus journeyed ultimately to the Resurrection. It is the pathway to the Resurrection and Life with God for us as well.

When we pick up our cross, in whatever form that cross may take, Jesus reminds us that we do not do so in isolation. Rather, as we carry our cross, he who first carried the cross, knowing firsthand its weight, assists us in our burden, helping us to carry our cross when we feel crushed by its weight. Jesus will not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by it, but rather will carry us and our cross into the Resurrection.

As St. Paul writes, “Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” (Romans 6:3-5)

The other day, as I was preparing for a Word and Communion service at the local nursing home, I stopped off at church to get the consecrated hosts for the service. I routinely loaded the hosts up into the ciborium I use for these services, counting out 60 hosts. I reverenced the tabernacle as I closed it, and as I did so I suddenly became very aware of Christ’s perfect love for me, and how imperfectly I love Christ in return. Audibly, I prayed, “Thank you Jesus for loving me so perfectly. Please know that I love you so very much, even though I love you so imperfectly.”

To be loved so perfectly by God, only to know how imperfectly I love God in return, is very humbling. Yet, it is also a great comfort. As I get older I have found comfort in the God that I use to fear as a child.

The Catholicism I was taught as a child emphasized how severe the consequences were of not following strictly the letter of the law. God was an exact and vindictive Deity, swift to judge, and judge severely. The words, “Lord have mercy,” were more a plea to not be condemned to everlasting damnation and was reflected in the wording of  Tridentine Canon (Eucharistic Prayer) of the Mass.

In this Year of Mercy, proclaimed by Pope Francis 1, we encounter not the God who notes down all of our transgressions, but the God who loves us, and our imperfections, perfectly . The context of mercy is no longer a plea to be saved from condemnation, but a word indicative of the overwhelming love and mercy of God. I follow Jesus because I have come to fully realize that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life; the pathway to eternal love.

This Year of Mercy negates all the superfluous embellishments people attach to prayer and religious practices in order to bargain or buy their way into heaven. The overwhelming Mercy of God strips away the false intentions that people attach to such things as indulgences or praying certain prayers on certain days of the month to assure them eternal life. As the Psalmist writes in Psalm 51, “For in sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse, my sacrifice, a contrite spirit. A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.”

It is out of this well of gratitude that I humbly follow Jesus, like Zacchaeus, imperfectly the rest of my life. I may love God imperfectly, but I am comforted and delighted that God, nonetheless, loves me perfectly.

(picture from the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Janesville, MN. (c) 2004 by Deacon Bob Wagner OFS)

I believe we spend our lives trying to discover our true selves. This is beautifully expressed in Psalm 139, prayed most often in the Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. We want to know our selves as God knew them when we were created in our mothers’ wombs.

From the time I was in 3rd grade (about the time this photograph was taken of me at camp), when I first sat down at a piano, I knew my life revolved around music. By the time I reached my 12th birthday, I knew that my life’s purpose was composing music. Against the advice of my high school counselor, I continued to pursue music as my major in college, and though there were many more talented and skilled musicians around me, I held my own among them. It was not my chief purpose to be a music educator or performer, however, those occupations did put bread on the table and have helped to provide for my family. And, so, I wrote music. I have written a lot of music. Any of it published? No. I have never really pursued publication. I wrote for the sheer joy of writing music. Is any of the music worthy of publication? I believe some of it might have some promise in that area.

So why all this music now? While I was laid up recovering from a fall I had in late summer, I could only really sit at the dining room table. So I started to look over all the music I had written and began painstakingly transcribing it to a digital format on my computer. Were someone to ask me who are you? I would tell them to listen to the music I wrote, particularly the piano music. It is within this music that my true self is found. The greatest benefit of that fall which forced me into this endeavor was a rediscovery of myself, that person whom God named while I was being created in my mother’s womb.

There is a great overreaching arch that stretches from the point of our birth to the point of our death. Throughout that arch I have found my life revolving around music, my beloved Ruth, and the Church. As I am on the downward side of the arch I have reencountered my self as composer of music. In all the transcribing I have done and continue to do, I am rediscovering my self, where I began and where I am today. And when the transcribing is completed, I will pick up where I left off and continue to compose music, just like I intended to do when I first sat down at a piano keyboard in 3rd grade.

For those of us in church ministry, Christmas is a journey. It is a journey into weariness, especially when, like this year, the Christmas liturgies begin on a Thursday, end on a Sunday, only to recommence on a Thursday to end on a Sunday. Throw a funeral or two in the midst of it all and by the time the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord arrives signalling the end of the Christmas Season and ushering us into Ordinary Time, we are all ready to exit the metaphysical wormhole that is the Christmas Season.

For myself, the mystery begins with me being quite the curmudgeon on Christmas Eve, with Ruth eager to bid me adieu as I leave for the first of many Christmas Masses. Why I am a curmudgeon? I haven’t the slightest clue. Why do I return from the first of many Christmas Masses totally changed? I haven’t the slightest clue. I can surmise why, but I have never been able to accurately pinpoint the reason why. Welcome to mystery.

Ultimately, Christmas is a Journey into Mystery, not just of human behavior but the behavior of God. Why on earth would the Logos, the Word of God through whom all life was and is created, so be diminished to take on our frailty, our weariness, our curmudgeonly natures? While one can say with quite assurance, the reason is Love, and I certainly wouldn’t argue that reason, could not God have chosen some other way to express God’s love for all of us? Of course, God could. Why God chose to incarnate in human form is a mystery. However, I am very thankful that God chose to do so.

We hear time and time again in Luke’s infancy accounts of Mary pondering the mystery of her baby incarnating the presence of God. Mary invites us to emulate her example. She invites us to be drawn deep into the Mystery of the Incarnation, to ponder anew the incarnation of her Son throughout this season and throughout the rest of the Liturgical Year. God is present around us and within us. As this Christmas Season concludes may we continue to ponder in our hearts the mystery of the God who delights in surprising us!

 

We sadly have the tendency to look at all issues in life from a absolutist stance. In a serious study of history, Absolutism has led to incredible tragedy in the course of human life. For centuries, Religions, especially Catholicism, believed in Absolute Monarchies, believing that no matter how despicable a king or queen might be, no matter how ruthless or how immoral a monarch’s behavior, that monarch was ordained by God to rule. We now know how baseless that absolute belief was. On the other side, world governments, from the time of Robespierre’s Reign of Terror in France to the Communist revolutions saw all religions as an absolute evil and were ruthless in their persecution of religions. Absolutism serves no one. Absolutism does not build up the human community but rather tears apart the fabric of human life.

Today we have absolutists on both sides of the political divide that has led to a strangulation of the United States government, with the common good suffering as a result of the resolve on the part of the absolutists. We tend to lump organizations into all or nothing categories. Planned Parenthood is a good example of this. Moral absolutists condemn Planned Parenthood for the abortion services it offers women. What the moral absolutists refuse to acknowledge is that Planned Parenthood is not just an abortion mill. Planned Parenthood offers low income women, at little to no cost, many needed gynecological services that low income women cannot afford, especially in States that provide little to no medical aid to the poor. While I am vehemently opposed to the abortion services, I just as strongly support all the other important services Planned Parenthood provides low income women. Were we to apply the same standards to our religious and political institutions, they would quickly be ended and dissolved.

Absolutism totally abandons the teachings of Jesus who taught by word and example that one must learn to sift that which is valuable from that which is not. Jesus taught that because there may be weeds growing in a field of wheat, you don’t burn down the wheat to rid the field of weeds. It is important to harvest the crop and sift the weeds from the wheat. As Christians living in a pluralistic world, we must learn to do the same if we are to be faithful disciples of Jesus.

(this was a bulletin insert for the Solemnity of Christmas)

INCARNATION
From the time I studied choral direction in college, I have been heavily immersed in Christmas carols. Well do we know the carols based on the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke that elicit fond memories of our past Christmases. What would Christmas be without “Joy to the World,” “Silent Night,” and other Christmas greatest hits? However, more fascinating are the many carols written during the Middle Ages that are not found in our normal diet of Christmas hymnody. These carols like “The Holly and the Ivy,” and “My Dancing Day” contain within them symbolic language, and in some, direct language foretelling the Paschal death of the adult Jesus. Mystics, such as St. Francis of Assisi, spoke and wrote about the first death, the death to self, that the 2nd person of the Trinity underwent in order to be born as the infant Jesus. Out of love for humanity, the “Word” of God, through whom humanity was created, grew less so that humanity could grow more and be saved. We do not often hear these carols, for who wants to think about death at Christmas? However, in being caught up in the “Fa, la, las” of popular Christmas culture, we miss out on the deep expression of God’s love found in the Incarnation of Jesus. Within the baby Jesus stories of Christmas is the greatest love story of all time. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life (Jn 3:16).” As truly festive as the celebration of Jesus’ Incarnation is, let not the manufactured dazzle of Christmas blind us from the real story of God growing less to become like us, so that we might grow to become more like God.

When Ruth and I were first married, we waited to put up our Christmas Tree until Christmas Eve. However, that late into Advent, the trees left in a Christmas Tree lot were basically a trunk with needleless branches. The next year, we decided to begin a new Tradition, decorate the house and put up the tree on Gaudete (Rejoice) Sunday. This family Tradition has been retained the past 40 years. On this Rejoice Sunday we begin to focus on the first coming of Jesus, when the Light of God’s love came into the darkness of human existence. The misery, the violence and bloodshed, the political unrest, the sickness and death that filled the ancient world into which Jesus was born, is still present in our world. On this Sunday, we re-experience the collective memory of the longing and hope that filled the hearts of our Jewish ancestors. On this Sunday, rather than fall prey to the negativity and darkness around us, we are called instead to open our hearts and minds to the peace and hope that only God can give to us. We are called to open the manger of our lives and welcome with joy the Light of the World that Mary and Joseph bring to us. We recall that Emmanuel means “God With Us” in all aspects of our lives. From the moment of his birth, Jesus has never left us or abandoned us, but rather is so united with us that he is a part of our DNA, closer than the breath that feels our bodies. As we light up our houses, and bake all the Christmas goodies, set up our trees and decorate in festive colors, let us light up the interior place of our hearts and minds with Emmanuel, God ever with us.