Reconciliation Lectionary: Deuteronomy 6:4-9

When I was looking at this passage, and the Collegeville Bible commentary on it, it struck me that the commandment Moses is bringing to the people is to love God. Can love be commanded?

Here is the passage from the Rite of Penance, number 106:

In those days
Moses said to the people:
“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone!
Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your whole heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength.
Take to heart these words which I enjoin on you today.
Drill them into your children.
Speak of them at home and abroad, whether you are busy or at rest.
Bind them at your wrist as a sign
and let them be as a pendant on your forehead.
Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates.

The Franciscan Scripture scholar Leslie Hoppe explains that the Israelite understanding of love in this context is tied up closely with obedience. The Chosen People have an experience of liberation, a relationship with the One God. They owe no loyalty to any other god. The singular focus of their covenant with the One God has a consequence: pour all of what they have into the relationship. This relationship encompasses all feelings, all religious devotion, every fiber of their being. It includes the current and the future generations.

This reading seems good for form II, when a preacher can deliver the message of a communal commitment to God. The Christian consequence is that we have heard Jesus’ affirmation of the Greatest Commandment (Cf. Matthew 22:36-37, Mark 12:28-30) and we are prepared to adhere to a total commitment to Christ and to his Gospel.

It might seem a no-brainer to include this Matthew passage (RP 51) or Mark’s (RP 187) along with this selection from the Pentateuch. But I think a pairing with a Gospel reading that describes the extravagance of God’s love would be equally effective.

The bottom line is that God loves us deeply. Our response to this love is advised, urged, commanded (if you will) to be as deep as we can muster.

@pontifex_ln

You’ve probably already heard that the pope’s Spanish Twitter followers have surpassed those in English. Would you believe that his followers on @pontifex_ln now outnumber those who want it in Polish, and have tied German speakers? Vatican officials were expecting 5,000 Latin followers, tops. Today they have twenty times that number.

Audio piece from NPR here.

Latin is so excellent for Twitter, so some say. What do you say?

On My Bookshelf: Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic

Matthew Kelly is popular among many of our people at the student center. We have a handful of his books in the library. For about a decade, I’ve heard of his speaking appearances.

When Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic showed up at the parish earlier this year, I read the first half of it in one sitting. I finished it up the other day.

Mr Kelly’s four signs are simple enough: pray, study, be generous, and evangelize. Do these, and the Catholic is undoubtedly on the right track.

Mr Kelly tells good stories, gives good examples, and if a Catholic is inclined to follow his suggestions, I suspect that person’s life will become richer, holier, and naturally more dynamic.

This book falls just short of the game-changer that I found Rebuilt. I know what, but I’m guessing as to why. Matthew Kelly is a speaker and consultant. From his biography, I don’t see him with pastoral experience in parishes. So he primarily gets two groups of people coming to his lectures and reading his books: the already-converted and the seekers.

Those of us in parishes have to deal with a tougher house: the skeptics. And I mean both skeptics within Catholicism, as well as people who come to us giving us one last chance (or whatever) and something important seems like it’s on the line.

Another problem in Mr Kelly’s book is that he occasionally falls back on the cliché. “… the last remaining socially acceptable prejudice in America is to be anti-Catholic.” Please. I read news stories from around the world, and while individual Catholics and Catholic policies may be criticized, it’s nothing compared to what happens in other places, especially it seems, Muslim countries.

I also thought his jumping on the relativism bandwagon was a bit much. What is needed is a deeper look not at relativism but at evasion, which I think is the root problem he and Pope Benedict were aiming at. People decide on behaviors, be they sexual activity or “saving” the Church from scandal, and they go off looking for an excuse to justify it. They evade the truth, and they have innumberable ways to dodge. Relativism is but one sin, and not even one exclusive to the Left.

Like the Rebuilt guys, Matthew Kelly is not afraid to look outside of Catholicism for answers to the hemorrhaging of baptized Catholics into non-denominational Christianity or unbelief or inactivity. I think he might rely too much on programs instead of a more basic approach of sharing faith, of the big 3 of liturgy (music, preaching, and welcome), and of small groups. But on evangelization, I think his thoughts are spot on.

I did like his suggestion in his final chapter of finding one big, bold project that all Catholics could get on board with. Ending child poverty, for example, would be an effort no sane person could criticize and would refocus both the critics who always have something negative to say, as well as apathetic believers in our midst.

It is disturbingly clear that our present efforts are focused more on surviving than on thriving, on containment than on expansion, on the institution rather than the people the institution exists to serve. And a little tweak here and there is not going to turn the tide. In fact, our current approach is failing even to stem the tide. Are we brave enough to rethink our direction?

Bravery: now that’s a quality I hadn’t considered as essentially Catholic. But it something we need. Whether or not you read this book, think about whether you have the signs of dynamism.

Ecclesia de Eucharistia 16

Receiving communion is given a very high priority:

16. The saving efficacy of the sacrifice is fully realized when the Lord’s body and blood are received in communion. The Eucharistic Sacrifice is intrinsically directed to the inward union of the faithful with Christ through communion; we receive the very One who offered himself for us, we receive his body which he gave up for us on the Cross and his blood which he “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Mt 26:28). We are reminded of his words: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me” (Jn 6:57). Jesus himself reassures us that this union, which he compares to that of the life of the Trinity, is truly realized. The Eucharist is a true banquet, in which Christ offers himself as our nourishment. When for the first time Jesus spoke of this food, his listeners were astonished and bewildered, which forced the Master to emphasize the objective truth of his words: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life within you” (Jn 6:53). This is no metaphorical food: “My flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed” (Jn 6:55).

We remain bewildered, some of us, to this day. It must be better at times, to observe at a distance. Certainly better than allowing Christ to insert himself into a disordered life. But that is part of the invitation. We may feel unworthy, and that might not even be a false sense of humility. But the urge should be strong for us to reform, renew, then receive.

It is the difference between knowing something is right, a kind of morality at a distance, and doing the right thing, or fully immersing ourselves in the action.

Bottom line: the disciple should always be ready to receive Communion.

Pacem In Terris 146: Pastoral Exhortations

We come to the final major section of Pacem in Terris. In Part V Pope John offers a series of “pastoral exhortations.” Lay people should  not retreat or withdraw from the world, but engage it, and bring Christ to it by means of their activities:

146. Here once more We exhort Our (daughters and) sons to take an active part in public life, and to work together for the benefit of the whole human race, as well as for their own political communities. It is vitally necessary for them to endeavor, in the light of Christian faith, and with love as their guide, to ensure that every institution, whether economic, social, cultural or political, be such as not to obstruct but rather to facilitate (human) self betterment, both in the natural and in the supernatural order.

Essentially optimistic.

I think repressive fatalism is such an obstruction. You know what I mean: the attitude that concedes that because human beings can never be perfect, we can never work to make things better. I think we have to enter the world with the intention of facilitating the best possible self of everyone we encounter, as well as the best possible expression of communal aspects. Of course sin will get in the way. Our government, swim club, or knitting circle will never be perfect, nor will it ever reach its full potential. But pessimism is as much a grave flaw as any other moral transgression we throw out there.

Belated Father’s Day

Two fathers, and kids.

I had meant to post this or something like it on Sunday. I’ve been giving the young miss a hard time about “Father’s Week,” since Disney had that nice Dwayne Johnson vehicle airing yesterday afternoon. When they mentioned “the power of the father,” I flexed my muscles in a most un-Johnson like way.

Anyway, that image my wife took goes back to the first day of kindergarten, more than ten years ago. Ah, the days of plaid jumpers over polo shirts seem very, very far away.

At top right, a rare color photo my mom snapped of me with my dad in March 1959.

The young miss didn’t arrive in our home until age 4, but we are grateful for her second foster family. They took a lot of pictures. One’s up there, too.

So Happy Father’s Week to all you dads out there. Remember the power. Use wisely and with love.

On My Bookshelf: Weird Life

David Toomey’s smart and sassy book, Weird Life is a quite enjoyable read. I was paging through it about the same time I was reading The Hydrogen Sonata. Fascinating contrast. I’ll get to that.

The author takes the reader through a natural progression. We start with a recent history of biology, chiefly the recent discoveries of life in most unexpected places. Then chemistry blends into an exploration of the basic definition of life. Then Dr Toomey goes off-planet and looks at places in the solar system as well as between the stars. From there, we’re launched into the realms of speculation. What could weird life be like? Will we even notice it when we see it? How have respected scientists pushed into SETI, (the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence)?

Dr Toomey wraps up his book with a foray into fiction. There are a lot of weird aliens in science fiction, and he covers just a sliver of them.

The reader ends up in the realm of physics, and how changes in the basic laws of physics might affect life. Or we might find weird, slightly changed versions of life–and ourselves–in some very close, but parallel universe.

Weird Life has a heaping helping of many different sciences, plus a little history, literature, and philosophy. Packed into less than 230 pages. Very good read. Very well-presented and with enjoyable prose.