The following exchange occurred on the way home from mass today:
Dom: Dad, where do accents come from?
Me: Eh? You mean the way people talk?
Dom: Yeah.
Me: Well, from the way people pronouce their vowels, mostly. In certain regions, people hear each other and repeat how they speak to each other and it forms a self-sustaining pattern of speech,
Dom: Oh. Huh.
Me: Where did you think they came from?
Dom: The climate?
Sunday, October 30, 2011
This Man was Innocent Beyond Doubt: Distinctive Features of Luke’s Passion Narrative
Luke’s passion narrative contains
several distinctive features not found in the other Gospel accounts. Three of
these features in particular are the direct confrontation with evil, the need
to follow Jesus, and the salvation that comes from the cross.
Luke begins his account by stating
that “Satan entered into Judas[1].”
This identification of Satan as the agent acting through Judas has two effects
on the narrative. It establishes that it was not a mere human being, and a
friend at that, that turned Jesus over to the authorities, but rather evil
personified. Unlike the accounts of Mark and John, where Jesus is pitted purely
against the religious and political forces of this world, in Luke, Jesus is
pitted against evil itself. Therefore, the events that follow are not a matter
of God versus man, but God versus evil. In a battle of God against man, there
is no hope for man, but in a battle between God and evil, man has hope indeed
in the eventual vanquishing of evil. Standing in counterpoint to the introduction
of evil personified is Luke’s establishment of the setting of Passover, “the
day for sacrificing the Passover lamb.[2]” With
this detail, Luke presents Satan on the one hand and the slaughter of the innocent
lambs on the other. This is the context into which Luke places the Passion:
pure evil versus unblemished innocence. This scenario takes the events to an
unexpected level, one of cosmic forces engaged in a spiritual battle. Jesus
does not only overcome the forces of this
world, as significant as that is; he conquers the very forces of hell itself.
Another distinct feature of Luke’s
account is found in the actions of Simon of Cyrene. While the synoptic Gospels
all state that Simon carried the cross for Jesus, only Luke adds the seemingly
minor detail[3] that while
Simon carries the cross for Jesus, he does so by “taking up the cross and
following Jesus” (Senior and Collins 2006).
While taking up one’s cross and following Jesus is a common Christian theme,
what seems to be rarely considered is where that journey leads: to Golgotha, to
death. If we pick up our own cross and carry it, if we persist in carrying that
cross, sooner or later we will get nailed to it. Yes, we all have our crosses
to bear, but who bears a cross but one who is about to be crucified? Our martyr’s
death may be a physical one or a spiritual one, but in either case, we die with
Christ.
Of course, if that’s where it
ended, what would be the point? Why would anyone do this of their own volition,
pick up this cross of death? The answer comes from the cross: “Today you will
be with me in paradise[4].”
In Luke’s Gospel alone does Jesus offer these words of salvation to the man hanging
next to him. Hanging next to “the outcasts that were central to his ministry” (Hill 2004),
Jesus promises heaven, salvation, from the cross. Thus, Jesus reveals the power
of the cross in that moment, by demonstrating “how salvation is available to
the community through the crucified and risen Lord” (Hill 2004). By taking up
our cross and following Jesus, we too participate in the saving act. This gives
meaning to the cross we bear.
The forces of evil turn Jesus over
to the powers of this world. The powers of this world send him to death. But
evil, human power, and death have no hold on him. The battle against evil leads
to taking up the cross – the powers of this world will lay the cross upon you
or you can take it up yourself. What the powers of evil, and of this world,
never see coming is the victory that comes from that very same cross.
Bibliography
Hill, Brennan R. Jesus the Christ: Contemporary
Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004.
Senior, Donald, and
John J Collins. New American Bible Second Edition. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Vatican Calls for New World Economic Order
Vatican Calls for New World Economic Order
Still pondering this one. Not sure what to think about it.
Still pondering this one. Not sure what to think about it.
They Knew Him in the Breaking of the Bread: Meals and Miracles
The Gospel stories present frequent
accounts of Jesus’ miracles. A significant portion of the Gospels is devoted to
telling of His miraculous cures: healing the sick, casting out demons, raising
the dead. It is no accident that the Gospels place such emphasis on miracles.
Those who have experienced them know that “sickness, possession, and death are
three examples of God’s absence” (Statnick 2008). In illness, evil, and death, we are acutely
aware of our perception that God is not there. In contrast to our perceptions,
Jesus’ miraculous works make a bold proclamation of God’s presence. Like the
miracle accounts, a significant part of the Gospels recount Jesus sitting down
to eat with his disciples, friends, and various members of the community. And
like the miracles, Jesus’ participation at meals also serves as a proclamation
of God’s presence, of God’s reign extending into our reality. By miracles and
meals, Jesus makes God’s reign manifest.
Miracles are an insight into what
God’s kingdom looks like. In God’s kingdom, the people who are cured are the poor,
the lowly, and the outcasts. Jesus’ healing is directed to people on the fringes
of society, those whose sickness has driven them to the margins: lepers, hemorrhagics,
the blind, and the lame. These are the people whom the strong, the successful,
have pushed aside as human refuse. When these dispossessed see Christ, when
they see their opportunity for healing, they do not hold back. Like the blind
man along the road who called out to Jesus, they know that this Jesus is their
only hope for health. They cry out, unashamed of their need for healing. But these
miracles do not merely heal infirmity and disease or cast out evil and
darkness. With each miracle, people are restored to their rightful place (Statnick 2008). Justice reigns: the leper
returns to society, the hemorrhaging woman is made clean, and the blind and the
lame may enter the temple. The miracles are an announcement of God’s reign being
at hand. The kingdom of God is a kingdom of healing, of turning to God in
faith, of sin and darkness being cast out and light and healing being brought
in.
The implications of the miracles
for us are powerfully direct. We too are to be about the work of healing, of
casting out evil, and even of raising the dead. We heal through the corporal
and spiritual works of mercy, by feeding and clothing and counseling and all
that we do out of love for each other. We cast out evil when we confront sin in
ourselves, in our communities, and in our nation. We cast out evil when we
resolve, day by day, to confront sin, to call it for what it is, and to consign
it to return from whence it came. We raise the dead when we bring life where
there was none, when we bring hope, faith, and love to those who live in
despair.
In contrast to the miracles, the
Gospel accounts of His sitting down to eat present a very human side of Jesus. Yet
for Him, meals are never merely a source of nutrition. They are a call to
transformation and conversion. Jesus sits down to eat with whores and thieves
as well as the rich and powerful. Jesus never declined an invitation to sit
down to eat with anyone, regardless of their motives. His radical hospitality
extends to all, is open to all, regardless of who or what they are. In his
example we truly see a new kingdom where “God and man at table are sat down.” (Stamp 1972). The meals, like the miracles, are
insights into what God’s kingdom looks like. But make no mistake. By sitting
down at table with whores and thieves, Jesus was not merely displaying a
high-minded tolerance. He was not engaging in a show of condescension. Jesus
did not go slumming. Likewise, by sitting down to eat with scribes and
Pharisees, Jesus did not intend to legitimize these people or their rule.
Rather, every meal with them ended in a confrontation and a call to repentance.
That Jesus would sit down with us to eat is then at once a sign of hope and a
call to conversion. We find our hope in His desire to be with us, despite our
fallen state, and we find our conversion in knowing how far we have yet to go
to be in God’s kingdom. This hope and conversion are how we come to recognize
Christ Himself and Christ in each other:
“Meals are so
important. The Disciples knew Christ in the breaking of the bread. We know
Christ in each other in the breaking of the bread. It is the closest we can
ever come to each other, sitting down and eating together. It is unbelievably,
poignantly intimate.” (Day 2002)
In this intimate union with God, we
find ourselves gathered around a table, eating, talking, arguing, and
listening. In partaking in this intimate act with us, Jesus poses to us the
question: is this how we live with each other? Is this how we reach out to each
other, in our poverty and sinfulness? Do we welcome each other, the poor and
the sinful, as desired guests at our tables and our lives? Are we living the
kingdom?
The miracle and meal accounts in
the Gospels are remarkable for what they do not tell us. After the miracles, we
do not know what became of the healed. We do not know what was served at the
meals or who supplied the food. We do not know what happened to many of the
people who met Jesus. What we do know is a moment in time, captured, when God
and man come face to face, together, not as Lord and slave, but as friends.
Through the miracles and the meals, people come to deeper spiritual insight.
The blind see themselves as they truly are, the hungry receive true bread for the
soul, and the rich and powerful have their own famine exposed. What happens
next is up to us.
Bibliography
Day, Dorothy. Dorothy
Day: Writings from Commonweal. New York: Commonweal, 2002.
Hill, Brennan R. Jesus
the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third
Publications, 2004.
Stamp, Robert J. God
and Man at Table are Sat Down. 1972.
Statnick, Roger.
"Lecture: Christology." Greensburg, September 10, 2008.
Thursday, October 27, 2011
A Challenge to Radical Conversion: A Short Study of the Sermon on the Mount
Matthew sets the Sermon on the
Mount early in Jesus’ ministry. In the preceding narrative, Jesus has fasted in
the desert, faced temptation, and called his first disciples. Having witnessed
Him preach in the synagogues, cure the sick, and drive out evil spirits, crowds
have begun to follow Jesus. The crowds are not just from the local towns and
villages of Galilee, but from the surrounding regions as well, as far as Syria and the Decapolis.
This narrative presents an enthusiastic beginning to Jesus’ ministry. The
narrative that follows the Sermon relates Jesus’ healing of a leper and of the
centurion’s servant. In the leper we find an unclean social outcast while the centurion
is not only an unclean gentile but is an authority for the occupation forces in
Judea: one is a completely powerless outcast,
one a symbol of brutality and strength. Juxtaposed between these images of a
growing messianic movement and the ironic opposites of leper and centurion, the
Sermon on the Mount unites the themes of a reinvigorated understanding of
ancient traditions, radical conversion to God, and the universal call to
holiness.
In the preceding narrative to the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus contends with the devil, quoting scripture to reject
the devil’s temptations. Jesus again quotes scripture in the Sermon, but this
time He rejects the traditional understanding of these passages to draw his
listeners to a new understanding. Six times Jesus reminds the crowd, “you have
heard it said,” but then challenges the “political-religious structure of his
time” (Hill 2004) to rethink what these
passages mean. In doing so he challenges his listeners to “return to the best
of their traditions” (Hill 2004). Not
satisfied with the status quo, Jesus asks us to reconsider the things we say
and do that are too often done by rote. Jesus takes to task the conventional
wisdom of the day regarding adultery, retaliation, enemies, and more, and
confronts, upsets, revises and extends this understanding. It is not enough to
exact justice; rather, the mercy that God shares with us we must share with
others. It is not enough to love one’s neighbor; rather, one’s enemy is as much
a child of God as we are and is therefore our neighbor. It is not enough to
apply the cold dictates of law to marriage; rather the law of love must rule
hearts and relationships. It is not enough to be loving with the “righteous;”
rather, the outcast and the sinner are just as deserving of our friendship. Even
with prayer, our intimate discourse with God, Jesus asks of us to reconsider
our habits and assumptions. Furthermore, in the narrative that follows, Jesus
puts his words into action, healing the leper (the very definition of the outcast)
and the centurion’s servant, showing healing love to the enemy himself. Jesus
shows by word and deed how to put this new understanding into practice.
Jesus preaches a radical conversion
to God. In the narrative preceding the Sermon, Jesus calls his disciples and
they leave everything to follow him, abandoning boats and nets, family and
friends. In the Sermon, the Beatitudes call to us to get on with our own
conversion. By inverting our understanding of what holiness is, the Beatitudes
demand of us just as radical a conversion as the one experienced by the first
disciples.
We don’t think of the poor and the
powerless as being particularly happy. Those who have actually witnessed
poverty - true poverty - would argue that the destitute, in their wretched
condition, are rarely happy people. Jesus himself would have both witnessed and
experienced the poverty of 1st century Palestine. Yet he knows the poor, the meek,
and the persecuted are, by virtue of their destitution, in the position of
being closer to where we ourselves need to be with God: they have no choice but
to place themselves at God’s feet, to cast their lot on God’s mercy and
providence, to become totally dependent on God. And it is this, this total dependency,
which grants us happiness, for it is in dependence on God that we find that it
has been God’s grace all along that has worked to uphold and sustain us. Therefore,
to convert ourselves to God means to value what God values, not the things the
world values. Instead of power, riches, fame, and glory, Jesus proposes we look
to “the impoverished, the downtrodden” (Hill
2004). By converting our vision to God’s vision, we begin to see how to
be perfect as God is perfect. Continuing this theme, the narrative following
the Sermon casts a leper, obviously one of the poor and destitute, as being blessed,
but also the centurion, in his humble admission of unworthiness, shows his own blessed
poverty in spirit.
Jesus preaches a universal call to
holiness. In the narrative preceding the Sermon, the multitudes that follow
Jesus are not only from the immediate region of Galilee, but also from gentile
regions of Syria and the Decapolis. The Decapolis is especially remarkable as
centers of a Hellenistic culture often clashed with the Semitic cultures of the
Levant. In the Sermon, Jesus preached
“holiness of life to each and every one of His disciples of every condition.” (Second Vatican Council 1964). All people of
every social and religious background are included, even those outside of the
Hebrew faith. Continuing this theme, the
narrative that follows shows both the Roman centurion and the leper as
recipients of Jesus’ healing, and these two extremes, in their being made
whole, continue the theme of the universal call.
The outcast is transformed, made
whole, healed and renewed. The outsider’s faith is a marvel. Jesus accepts them
both. All are called to be radically transformed to faith and to love. In
living this call, all are made holy.
Bibliography
Hill, Brennan R. Jesus
the Christ: Contemporary Perspectives. New London: Twenty-Third Publications, 2004.
Second Vatican Council. "Dogmatic Constitution On The
Church." Vatican Web Site.
November 21, 1964.
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19641121_lumen-gentium_en.html .
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Charity in Truth: A Book Review
In 2008, my 401(k) and IRA
portfolios were reduced to a tenth of their former value. What had taken my
wife and me 20 years of scrimping and saving to accumulate was reduced to
almost nothing in a few days. I was powerless to act and could only watch
helplessly as forces beyond my control destroyed our diminutive nest-egg with
breathless and brutal efficiency. The destruction of my minor wealth was, in
the scheme of things, a trivial event compared to the misery and pain being
felt by others around the globe. In fact, I could not help but be struck by how
many people were so deeply affected. The global financial crisis was, and
continues to be, not simply a problem of governments or multi-national
financial entities, but a dilemma for everyday persons who suddenly realize
that their lives are interconnected in innumerable ways; did the people of
Iceland ever imagine that their existence could be so troubled by a mortgage
company in California whose annoyingly ubiquitous advertisements they had never
even seen? When I learned that Pope Benedict's encyclical Charity in Truth
was written in response to this global crisis, I was anxious to read what he
thought, to see what problems he identified and what solutions he saw.
Benedict begins his encyclical by
identifying Christ's mission to humanity as
the “principal driving force behind the authentic development of every
person and of all humanity” (1) and by firmly committing the Church to
“promoting integral human development” (11). In fact, he describes human
development as a vocation, a definition that raises human development from mere human activity to the level of a
sacred calling, to human and divine activity working in concert. Understanding
human development as a vocation introduces God into an otherwise mundane
process. With God, human development is not merely having more or doing more or
knowing more, but it is being more. Human development then is a matter of
becoming. This, of course, begs the question, “what is it that we are to
become?” In short, we are called to become a whole person, more human, and in
becoming more human to “love our brothers and sisters in the truth” (1). Human
development, in all its facets and varieties, is the vocation of all persons,
and all persons aid and benefit from the doing and the being, from growing and
from helping others to grow. As a vocation, one must understand themselves not
from the point of view of a “giver” alone, as a person who “has” giving magnanimously
to those who “have not,” but as a person partaking in a reciprocal encounter in
which both parties give and receive. Finally, as a vocation, human development
is a calling that one must constantly discern, not as a personal choice alone,
but discerned in and with a community of persons. The discernment process
applied to this vocation, as to all vocations, includes the rational, the
personal, the communal, and the sacred.
Understanding human development as a vocation has implications beyond
one's own personal growth. In fact, it is most important that one's vision
extend to the growth of community and culture. Benedict rightly asserts that,
as a vocation, human development “offers a wonderful opportunity for encounter
between cultures and people” (59) and can be an avenue to become Christ to
others and to discover Christ in others. In the act of performing the vocation
of human development, both the persons serving and being served find Christ in
each other. In being Christ to those of another culture, new ways of
understanding how to be Christ and how to build the Kingdom can emerge. In this
way, cultures interact not on a purely human level, but also on a sacred level
that raises the cultures to the life of the Trinity, to be sanctified in the
life of the divine. What is good in a culture is made better and what is
lacking is exposed to the light of charity and truth. However, charity finds
what is lacking in any culture, so that not only the culture that is being
served but also the culture providing the service benefit from God's truth and
love. Developed nations may rediscover in their roots what contributed to their
level of human development in the first place, and emerging nations may
discover that they have a real contribution to make - a contribution of wisdom
and understanding - and that they are not merely subservient receivers of
charity, as it were, but vocational partners in the growth and development of
persons.
The interactions that occur between cultures frequently take place in
the context of the global economy as transactions between distinct parties.
Benedict identifies commutative justice as regulating “the relations of giving
and receiving between parties to a transaction,” (35) while distributive
justice applies not only to the parties involved in the transaction, but also
to "the wider network of relationships within which [the market]
operates" (35). Transactions in the marketplace can never take place in
isolation: the existence of the marketplace itself attests to this fact, given
that so many are involved in its creation and maintenance. The human activity
in the marketplace occurs in the context of local, regional, national, and
global communities. Therefore, not a single transaction can be thought of as
isolated, but must be understood by the breadth and depth of the various
relationships that support, create, are sustained by, and are affected by the
means and ends of the transaction itself.
In this increasingly diverse and global marketplace, the meeting of
peoples and cultures has yielded the fruit of human development in what
Benedict identifies as “hybrid forms of commercial behavior” (38). In fact,
what Benedict identifies in terms of potentiality is already an actuality, and
rather old news at that. Hybrid forms, that “without rejecting profit, aim at a
higher goal than the mere logic of the exchange of equivalents,” (38) have
already emerged, as is seen in the OpenSource movement in software development.
OpenSource provides a unique model of subsidiarity and solidarity in which
anyone with the skills needed can contribute to the development and use of
sophisticated systems and computer software[1].
Benedict goes on to suggest the need for additional funding for
underdeveloped countries from the more economically developed countries.
However, it should be obvious that additional funding requires reform. The
United States alone sends 5.7 billion USD in financial aid to Sub-Saharan
Africa annually[2]. For
this amount of money, we would expect to see some improvement in conditions in
the continent, in the quality of human life and in human development, but
accountability is lacking, and without accountability there can be no
development. There needs to be cultural development in addition to fiscal aid
and until that occurs, the vocation to human development is simply not there;
it is purely technical aid at this point and aid without justice, at that.
Justice itself cannot be seen as limited to those who exist in one
particular place or time, as Benedict points out in discussing intergenerational
justice (48). Justice is a concept that crosses time and space, past, present,
and future. We have received the fruits of human activity, “ecological,
juridical, economic, political and cultural,” (48) from past generations who
toiled to develop themselves and the world for our benefit. We have stewardship
of the same ecological, juridical, economic, political, and cultural contexts
for this moment. Having received what was given to us, we must remain mindful
of what we intend to pass along to future generations for their own needs and
development. Justice demands that what we do now must take into account the
needs and dignity of future generations.
If we are serious about the task of intergenerational justice, the
environment is one obvious area that will be of continued concern to future
generations. Benedict invites us “to a serious review of [our] life-style” “in
which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness, and communion with others for the
sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices” (51).
As a small-holding farmer, I take the environment and my stewardship of it
seriously. We use green technologies, such as composting and bio-fuels, as much
as possible. We limit the use of herbicides, pesticides, and antibiotics on our
food and animals. We buy locally as much as possible from fellow farmers, and
we buy crops and goods that are grown with the same attention to the
environment that we give. Even so, we can further decrease our environmental
impact by reducing our fuel consumption, especially fossil fuels, through the
pooling of resources, trip planning, and efficiency. However, I must point out
that one of the major sources of fossil fuel consumption in my life is the
weekly 120+ mile round-trip I make to Seton Hill every week. For my job, I am
able to telecommute from home and collaborate on-line with fellow employees
around the world in real-time, so I find it distressing that we waste natural
resources in order to be physically present in a classroom. While I understand
the need for community and formation in relation to ministerial education, new
and more complex understandings of community need to be developed so that
education and formation may be done on-line. This is not going to be optional.
Soon, there will simply be no other choice, and I think it would be better to
get started on making the transition now.
On the topic of technology itself, Benedict asserts “the development of
peoples goes awry if humanity thinks it can re-create itself through the
‘wonders’ of technology” (68). Man has the ability to increasingly identify,
predict, and control the material world, from atoms to weather patterns, from
his own DNA to the forces that ignite the stars. Man's ability to control the
material world has increasingly encroached on what used to be thought of God's
domain alone. These things that we control were proven not to be God's sole
domain at all. The former understandings of God that gave our life context and
a sense of destiny have been lost. However, without God as a context and
destiny, our purely human ability to predict and control the material world
results in such horrors as the Holocaust and atomic warfare, embryonic
stem-cell research and human cloning. Technology alone cannot solve our
problems; we need new ways of understanding God as our context and destiny. We
need to have God involved.
What became apparent to me as I read the encyclical is that reason and
natural law, which form the basis of Benedict's encyclical, must be presented
anew in order to find an audience in the post-modern world. The language of
story, the sharing of an event as opposed to an academic presentation of facts
and argument, is what appeals to the post-modern ears. The arguments that
Benedict makes must be made real and present in terms of people's everyday
lives, in ways to which everyone can relate. This is one of the challenges in
using a document like Charity in Truth in a parish setting. In addition,
the American concept of “rugged individualism” is a major obstacle to the sense
of global community and interdependence that Benedict describes. For a great
many people, human development is seen as a competition between individuals
rather than a cooperative effort between persons. A certain dose of formation
in the nature and practice of Christian community will be required before Charity
in Truth receives a friendly welcome at many American parishes. Until then,
I would continue to emphasize the reality of the very familiar and local forms
of interconnectedness and interdependence that everyone is comfortable with,
and I would work to build on this foundation to help develop a truly global
perspective. For my part, I would hope to gain a new appreciation for the
myriad of ways in which my friends and neighbors are already working to help
each other, by living their vocation everyday, to develop and grow as persons.
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