Christmas and Silence

(This is Neil)

For Christmas, I wanted to briefly comment on a pastoral letter by the Bishop of Aberdeen, Hugh Gilbert, OSB, on silence (ht: Fr. Z). “We live in a noisy world,” the Bishop begins. Christmas is no exception – he speaks of the “noise, rush and rowdiness of contemporary Christmasses.”

But he wisely notes that “there are bad kinds of silence,” which is very important to say after the terrible “silencing” caused by clerical abuse – “Gentleman, I wanted so desperately to be heard,” one survivor told the USCCB. The Bishop also writes, “We all understand about babies.” And he has no desire for us to “come and go from church as cold isolated individuals.”

So, it must be asked, why is silence so important? Partially, silence is important for a bishop for similar reasons that it is so important for the conductor of an orchestra or an athlete about to begin a complex dive. The audience can’t properly encounter a symphony in the midst of chatter or if they themselves are distracted by random thoughts. So, likewise, the Bishop suggests that “we need a quiet mind to connect to the great Eucharistic Prayer.” And a diver can’t still her anxieties, and maintain an extraordinarily high degree of attentiveness to and control of her muscle groups, with sudden noises and the disturbing flashes of cameras. Likewise, the bishop quotes an elderly priest from the diocese, “Two people talking stop forty people praying.” At the very least, silence is a “courtesy towards those who want to pray,” an activity that might be a bit more like diving than we tend to think.

But there is something else. The Bishop talk about silence as a form of “reverence.” He also speaks of silence as not merely necessary to hear God, but as a way giving God the “first word.” “Only then will our own words really be words, echoes of God’s, and not just more litter on the rubbish dump of noise.” I don’t imagine speaking this way at a musical or athletic performance, even if there is a “presence” in any real work of art.

This sort of silence is necessary as a reminder of the distinction between the power of God and human achievement. For example, the exegete Susan Miller speaks of the silence of the women in the Gospel of Mark at Jesus’ tomb, “The silence of the women is reminiscent of the primeval silence at the beginning of creation before God speaks and separates creation from chaos. … After the death of the Messiah there is silence before the new creation.” Human beings cannot raise Jesus, and death is not the prior reality for anything at all. We can only wait in silence for God’s intervention.

As the Ecumenical Patriarch said in a lecture at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in 2008:

The ascetic silence of apophaticism imposes on all of us … a sense of humility before the awesome mystery of God, before the sacred personhood of human beings, and before the beauty of creation. It reminds us that — above and beyond anything that we may strive to appreciate and articulate — the final word always belongs not to us but to God. This is more than simply a reflection of our limited and broken nature. It is, primarily, a calling to gratitude before Him who “so loved the world” (Jn 3:16) and who promised never to abandon us without the comfort of the Paraclete that alone “guides us to the fullness of truth.”

It is this “ascetic silence” before the “awesome mystery” of God that is the most important kind of silence. The writer Suzanne Guthrie once discussed taking a deeply moving class on negative theology alongside (male) resident seminarians. One of the seminarians asked their teacher, “This life of prayer you’re talking about? It’s fine for priests and religious – monks and nuns – but what about an ordinary housewife? How could a person like that live this life of prayer?” Guthrie froze. God had been present to her in “solitude, silence and loving darkness.” “I couldn’t breathe.” But the teacher responded by saying, “They cannot help it. Prayer is not something that you do. Prayer is something God does to you.”

So the silence that we need is “ascetic,” “apophatic” – a recognition of God’s “first word” and “final word.”

Here’s a question for the end of the year. I suspect that if you Google something like “liturgical minimalism,” you’ll quickly find your way to criticisms of the inattentive and indifferent. But what if “minimalism” means “ascetic silence” – a simplicity, even emptiness, that represents a waiting for God to have the “first” and “final” word? Perhaps a very good example would be William Schickel’s removal of decorative elements at the church, chapel, and courtyard at Gethesemani Abbey to emphasize “light, clarity and simplicity” (see here).

Merry Christmas to Todd and all our readers. The Bishop quotes the ancient carol: “How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.”

 

Funeral Lectionary: Acts 10:34-43

(This is Neil)

A recent article on the funeral sermon in Liturgy by the theologian Todd E. Johnson reminds us that “What is being proclaimed is God’s action.” The funeral sermon proclaims that God is active here and now, amidst the tears and anger and numbness, and we can hope for resurrection even in this context. Let’s be honest. This can seem very cruel. Even if we first acknowledge pain and grief – that Jesus himself wept at the tomb of Lazarus, do we really want to proclaim that God is active before the body of a child? Do we want to speak of God’s grace before children who will grow up without the presence of the parent who had always shown grace to them? Can we refer to a just God in front of the coffin of the victim who will apparently never receive justice?

And there is a similar sense of incompleteness at the end of every single life. There is no death without loss, and nobody ever dies as the person that they should be. So what does the preacher do? It’s easy to avoid the thorny questions of God and resurrection and simply use the funeral sermon to just argue that things aren’t bad as they seem, or at least not as bad as they could be. So the preacher reminds everyone that the deceased had a good life with many blessings. She’ll never be forgotten. She made us all better people. That, perhaps, can be good enough. And we can go on.

If the temptation is just that – to avoid the risk of speaking of God, perhaps a good reading for the funeral is Acts 10:34-43. This, I think, is for two reasons:

1. In Acts 10, we read about “what has happened all over Judea, beginning in Galilee” (10:37). This mention of Galilee might seem like a random geographical detail, but the Gospels mention Galilee in some form over 60 times. In Luke, the angel Gabriel is sent “to a town of Galilee” (Lk 1:26), and when Jesus begins his ministry, he “returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit” (Lk 4:14). Galilee, as Fr Virgilio Elizondo tells us, was a frontier region, suspiciously close to foreign nations, and a place of poor peasants whose speech was perhaps even recognizably “Galilean” (Lk 22:59). Part of the shock of Pentecost is expressed by the question “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?”(Acts 2:7). For, really, as someone had asked, “The Messiah will not come from Galilee, will he?” (Jn 7:41).

Remember that there is a sense of incompleteness at the end of every life. Someone might have been a great father, but he will never get to see and guide his children as they graduate, marry, have their own children. A war hero (or war resister) will never be able to tell her stories of courage and humility to others. A young man had only just resolved to stop drinking and using drugs and perhaps head back to college. This means that death marginalizes all of us – put bluntly, it means that one day we’ll definitely never be who we were meant to be. We will only be potentially a great father or mother. We’ll inevitably be the subject of sentences that include words like “if only” and “what might have been.” Death also marginalizes the survivors, who are now, whatever else, “widows” or “widowers” or “orphans.” This is why, in my own experience, the thing that you most want to say at a funeral, but that you can’t say, is “This is just wrong,” albeit in much harsher language.

But Jesus the Galilean reveals to us that this place of marginalization, incompleteness, brokenness, is not the place of divine rejection. Fr Elizondo articulates a “Galilean principle” – out of marginalization comes a new society of love and welcome. God was present in Jesus in a poor frontera. Thus, Jesus could seem woefully incomplete – incompletely Jewish, incompletely pure, incompletely educated, dubiously loyal, and so on. But here Jesus could cross over to be in contact with people of other ethnicities, and could also reveal how sin blinds us to the possibility of good Samaritans and causes us to neglect captives, the blind, and the oppressed.

Funerals are never good things. Death is always an enemy, the “last enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). But God can still be present at a funeral. Perhaps our awareness of an inevitable marginality – our own, those of all our loved ones – can make us suddenly realize that we ourselves live in a poor frontera like Galilee and are able to reach out to others whom we previously dismissed. Families might reconcile, and a newfound community of grief can surely transcend race, class, national and religious differences and strangely approximate the “kingdom of God,” which, after all, tax collectors and prostitutes might enter before us. “God shows no partiality” (Acts 10:34). Can that realization be the presence of God among us, here and now?

2. In Acts 10, Peter tells us of “This man God raised on the third day” to which “we are witnesses” (Acts 10:39-40). We’ve already spoken about the danger of evading theological questions at a funeral and just resting content with establishing that things aren’t bad as they seem, or at least not as bad as they could be. Funerals can be about restoring some semblance of control – even if it is merely reassuring ourselves that nothing more medically could have been done, or that it was objectively better for this relative to die now without too much suffering, or that our present pain is merely a stage in a grieving process. But this can only be the semblance of control. Death is death.

The resurrection of Jesus reminds us that we are not in control. As C. Kavin Rowe reminds us, nothing arises out of death “naturally” for “death is the final boundary of natural human life.” Death cannot be the “prior reality” of anything. But that doesn’t leave us with a cold emptiness. For, as Peter had said earlier of Jesus, “But God raised him from the dead” (Acts 13:30). Rowe says that this is a “fount of new reality out of which the novum that is Christian mission emerges.” No mere optimist could have predicted the resurrection, and thus it has real generative power. The place where we were most out of control, when Jesus was nothing but dead, when there was no real future, is specifically the place of God’s intervention.

We are called to witness to this intervention – “But God raised him” – in the community of the church. Because this resurrected Christ is the Lord of all bringing a salvation to all that is not the result of human achievement or any “prior reality,” the church cannot show any partiality at all – it must include members of “every nation” (Acts 10:35) and magicians and eunuchs and governors and widows and orphans.

And, thus, strangely, acknowledging that we are out of control at a funeral and resisting attempts to restore control (“At least she had a good life”) might get us to a radical hope that can include everyone at the funeral – those who are angry, doubters, those who do not know how they feel, those who rightly deny that anything could come from this.

…

I hope this is useful – I do feel a bit out of my depth here. Please let me know what you think.

 

Bad Liturgy: When Religion Becomes Kitsch

(This is Neil)

I’m relatively sure that a few basic web searches will yield lists of bad – perhaps even “the worst”- churches, religious music, and artwork. And, yes, many of the pictures will show cringe-worthy aesthetic and architectural disasters. But there is a problem if we assume that simply expelling what is strange and unusual is actual theological work. We might still be left arguing that good liturgical music should be “reverent” and “traditional,” whatever that means, and, for somewhat vague reasons, should not resemble “secular” or “profane” music.

But it can be useful to think about what really makes bad church architecture, religious art and music “bad.” This is not because we should be fascinated with the expulsion of heretics. In fact, this process should help us question ourselves, not imagine that we can escape self-criticism and be restored to purity by ridiculing obviously silly pictures and people from time to time.

So, what makes bad church architecture, religious art and music “bad?” I don’t think that I can present a comprehensive answer here. But part of an answer is, “They are kitsch.” The Reformed theologian Johan Cilliers cites the writer Milan Kundera on kitsch, “kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence … kitsch is a folding screen set up to curtain off death.” Thus, kitsch is an example of the theologia gloriae – a theology that marginalizes the Cross and suffering, instead of saying, in the face of death, “Where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55). There is an unreality about this sort of theology.

This doesn’t mean that religious art shouldn’t be beautiful. But it can’t be the mass-produced pleasant sentimentality of – Cilliers’ examples – “pretty sunsets, artistic flower arrangements or snow-covered mountain tops.” The beauty of religious art must reflect God’s intentions with creation as it is, which, tragically, must include the Cross and a cruciform “strange beauty.” “A kitschified cross no longer drips blood but honey, no longer embodies pain but plastic, no longer mediates salvation but sentiment.” Cilliers says that this kitschified cross is not the sign of divine grace for our world, but a sentimentalized, domesticated, edgeless “self-generated healing.” Thus, it can’t penetrate to the real heart of things.

All of this might still sound vague and liable to manipulation. But Cilliers gives us six characteristics of kitsch. The key is that kitsch is a kind of generalized simulation of a reality which it actually means to bypass:

1. Kitsch uses endless repetition in a fruitless attempt to achieve “effect.” “The word alone is never trusted; therefore, words must be repeated endlessly.

2. Similarly, kitsch distrusts the power of a single, precise metaphor and strings multiple metaphors together.

3. Kitsch cuts and pastes different forms together. “Symbols and rituals are introduced, left out, shattered and fragmented without taking cognizance of the theological context, motivations, historical setting and theological and anthropological issues being put on the table via these activities.”

4. Kitsch “simplifies and trivializes complex ideas by reducing them to stereotypes,” thus oversimplifying life, handing out “how-to-do-it’s instead of wisdom and discernment.”  I suspect that we’ve all heard sermons, perhaps pietistic or just nostalgic, that do this.

5. Kitsch refuses to contextualize, and “excels in both superlatives and diminutives, linguistic structures that, in fact create realities ‘smaller or larger than life.’ Jesus is either the “little Lord Jesus who lays down his sweet head” or the “phenomenal and glorious manifestation of God’s glory.”

Here’s the question – and be honest: When do we see this sort of thing? And when does the liturgy become kitsch?

 

How the Liturgy Should Be Impersonal

(This is Neil)

My first conviction is this: Liturgy is never my own possession, or my creation.  It is something we are given, from the Father.  Therefore my own tastes, my own preferences, my own personality, my own view of ecclesiology, are marginal, of little importance, when it comes to the celebration of the Mass.  We don vestments to minimise our personal preferences, not to express or emphasise them.  Liturgy is not ours. It is never to be used as a form of self-expression.  Indeed the opposite is the truth. … I once heard that Blessed Pope John Paul never commented on a Mass he had celebrated.  It’s the Mass.

-         Archbishop Vincent Nichols, Homily, Celebration of Priesthood, Diocese of Westminster, June 7

I suppose that most Catholics will be in broad agreement with the Archbishop’s words. He is espousing what we might call “liturgical impersonality.” Of course, there will be disagreement about just when liturgy descends into mere self-expression. Furthermore, we might want to raise a few questions about the priest’s need to renounce “my own personality” – a need which seems to have shaped seminary formation before the 1970s with its discouragement of particularity, including particular friendships (see here). This renunciation of self can create space for God to act through the priest. Or it might mean that the priest replaces his own personality with an “ecclesiastical self” devoted solely to the church’s power, influence and reputation. It happens.

But, like I said, I think that most Catholics will generally agree with the idea of “liturgical impersonality.” “Liturgical impersonality,” though, isn’t something that many of our Protestant brothers and sisters might immediately recognize. I would argue that it is recognizable during the singing of traditional hymns. Still, when attending – say – a Methodist service, one usually is very aware of the minister’s presence and his or her guiding hand behind the planning of the liturgy. For most of the Methodists, the very thought of the minister facing away or using an “impersonal” chant will sound strange.

So, why might “liturgical impersonality” be a good thing? And, if it is, what might that mean?

I’d like to look at part of an older article (sub. required) on liturgy published by Fergus Kerr, OP, in New Blackfriars in 1971. (The article’s description of liturgical controversy might convince you that nothing ever really changes.) Kerr first quotes from Willa Muir’s study Living with Ballads (my emphasis):

Harry sang his ballad as if sure of understanding and sympathy from his audience. There was no need for personal invitation, emphasis, or deprecation from him. Consequently, he himself faded out of the song as he sang it. The ballad needed only to sing itself.

(In contrast, a singer of a less familiar ballad had to self-consciously “invite people to listen.”)

Now, someone might say, “Fine, the ballad needed only to sing itself. Who cares?” Kerr argues that, when “the ballad needed only to sing itself,” the song had access to a “strata of experience far deeper than the conscious and rational and civilized.” He likens these strata to “chthonic or ancestral memory.”

Later, Kerr quotes F.R. Leavis on tragic drama, which establishes:

[A] kind of profound impersonality in which experience matters, not because it is mine – because it is to me it belongs or happens, or because it subserves or issues in purpose of will, but because it is what it is, the “mine” mattering only in so far as the individual sentience is the indispensable focus on experience.

The broad similarity between Leavis’ “it is what it is” and the Catholic ex opere operato (Nichols’ “It’s the Mass”) is fairly evident. Kerr says that the point of tragic drama is to make us face “something essential about human life.”

Thus, like the ballad which “sings itself,” the tragic drama that “is what it is” has the capacity to move us at levels “deeper than conscious will,” a process that  we can liken to conversion – “a steady re-direction of the personality as a whole.” Presumably, if the liturgy doesn’t “sing itself” or isn’t “what it is” – if it is in part about the priest’s personality –  then it might teach us something or lead us to moments of emotional intensity, but it will be shut out from these deeper levels.

But, practically speaking, what does this mean? I think – and I continue to draw from Kerr – that we can say one thing that will seem “conservative” and two things that will seem “liberal.”

First, liturgy depends on a “feel” or “a whole atmosphere of reverence.” There is a significance – more than conscious and rational – that only comes through proper enactment or performance. This means that liturgy must be celebrated with care and objectivity, that gestures and tone of delivery are really quite important.

Second, “liturgical impersonality,” like the ballad or tragic drama, depends on a “community of feeling.” When this ceases to exist, a liturgy, no matter how traditional or meaningful for a past generation, really no longer works in the same way. “The priest who has to celebrate the Eucharist for people who are for the most part (as he too may be) groping and skeptical in faith cannot leave the rite to speak for itself but must intervene personally to commend it.” “Liturgical impersonality” can’t serve as a thoroughgoing argument for traditionalism.

Third, Kerr draws on the Benedictine theologian Sebastian Moore to argue that, if the liturgy is meant to reach us at deep levels, we can’t focus on the “empirical level.” For the liturgy to access the deeper levels, there has to be a degree of “light-heartedness” at the top level. “Holy fuss at the level where all should be ease and decent practicality prevents people from making their own highly personal equation of the bread and win with Christ’s body and his blood.” We can say, then, that “liturgical impersonality” demands rubrics, but dies at the hands of anxiety over rubrics.

So, the claim that liturgy should be “impersonal,” like the ballad that “sings itself” or the tragic drama that “is what it is,” might have rather surprising consequences. What do you think?

 

The Church as Sacrament of Hope?

(This is Neil)

Some of the last words of Gaudium et Spes– the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World – read:

By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope—the gift of the Holy Spirit—that some day at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord.

If it seems like the Roman Catholic Church – perhaps just in some contexts – is failing to foster that “lively hope,” we really should ask why. Put more constructively, how can the church be a sign, even a sacrament, of hope?

As I mentioned in my last post, the current issue of Theological Studies has a few articles about hope. Another one of them is written by the Australian priest Richard Lennan. Among other things, Lennan lists four elements that must be present if the church and hope are to be related. They are mostly taken from the Dominican theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet. These four elements are, in my opinion, rarely held together in most Catholic discourse.

First, Fr Lennan says that we must recognize the church as the “only guaranteed means of access to Jesus as crucified as risen.” This seems mostly argued as necessary to prevent a search for a direct “Gnostic line” to Jesus Christ, or to preempt reliance upon a mere memory of Christ – the seeking after a “corpse,” in Chauvet’s words. Through accepting the church, we hand ourselves “over to what is not the product of one’s own initiative.”

This element is an expression of hope, because the recognition of the church expresses hope that Christ is still alive – an “undreamed of possibility of love” in the words of Juan Luis Segundo – and can be encountered in word and sacrament.

(It probably should have been mentioned here that there is no reason at all to use “church” in an unnecessarily narrow sense. As the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified, “It is possible, according to Catholic doctrine, to affirm correctly that the Church of Christ is present and operative in the churches and ecclesial Communities not yet fully in communion with the Catholic Church, on account of the elements of sanctification and truth that are present in them.” See my post here.)

Second, we must recognize that the church has an institutional dimension. This is a rather unlikely expression of hope. To be sure, institutions can be effective. But they can also clearly be self-destructive. By accepting the institutional church, we hope that we can retain institutional tools – including bishops as “bearers of tradition” – without becoming the sort of institution that insulates itself from self-criticism, dialogue or cooperation.

Third, for the church to be a sacrament of hope, it has to avoid “necrotic” temptations. These all involve “claiming ownership of the grace proper to sacramental encounters.” We sense this sort of temptation when doctrine is used as an instrument of managerial control, or liturgy becomes magic – a “way to achieve an effect we desire without having to face the consequences for our inner life of a genuine encounter with God.” We also see this in works-righteousness, when grace is supposed to function mechanistically. A “necrotic” church cannot be open to conversion – there is nothing more than what it already has and carefully guards.

I suspect that part of this would have to involve a renewed, and inevitably ecumenical, commitment to the doctrine of justification.

Fourth, for the church to be a sacrament of hope, it has to remember that it is a sacrament – a sign. The church cannot confuse itself with the Kingdom of God and just focus on defining its sacred boundaries against non-Church, while strategically expanding its blessed ecclesial territory. Instead, the church must “radicalize the vacancy of the place of God.” It shouldn’t attempt to fill this vacancy.

The church actually becomes itself by being willing to recognize the presence of God in other ecclesial communities and religions and forms of belief, because that shows awareness that it neither controls nor exhausts the Holy Spirit. And what is the church but a sacrament of the union between God and not merely Catholics or even Christians but “the unity of the whole human race?” (Lumen Gentium 1). Establishing “Catholic identity” is a paradoxical endeavor, because it is an act of dispossession. The church is most itself as a sacrament of hope for the “whole human race,” when it is least anxious about its own sufficiency.

In your view, then, how can the Catholic Church foster hope among people “throughout the whole world?” Or is this simply impossible?

(Regarding our four elements, it strikes me that most writers emphasize either the first two or the last two.)

 

Is There Any Hope For the Church?

(This is Neil)

Let’s say that someone tells you, with both finality and unmistakable sadness, “There is no hope for the church.” You, hoping that she has used “hope” in a somewhat indefinite way, say, “Look, there might be no reason for optimism, since that’s based on our estimation of human capacities. And that might be pretty low right now. But hope is based on faith in God and God’s promises.” She responds sharply, indignant after reading the reports of clerical abuse in Philadelphia and Kansas City, saying that you are still idealizing the church. The church is what the church will be, and, so, we can just happily disregard all of the empirical evidence before us, content that the ever-increasing distance between present reality and future promise will be magically bridged. At least, that’s what it seems you are saying.

Does hope lead to complacency? In the present issue of Theological Studies, there are a couple of articles about hope. One of them is by Dominic Doyle. A short part of it addresses this question, arguing that hope actually destabilizes any such complacency.

First, Doyle says that we have to define the relationship between faith and hope. Following Aquinas, he says that faith is the mind’s assent to a “divine reality that exceeds the capacity of the human intellect.” There is an “obscurity” in faith because of our intellectual limitations. And this cognitio aenigmatica leaves us unsatisfied. As Aquinas tells us, “the knowledge of faith, far from appeasing desire, rather excites it, since every one desires to see that which he believes” (my emphasis).

If we are to have any chance to “see what we believe,” we need another virtue besides faith. This virtue cannot be cognitive, subject to the same limitations of the human intellect. And, so, it is hope – located in the will – that moves us closer to God. In his commentary on 1 Timothy, Aquinas says that “faith shows us the end” but “hope moves us to the end.” (It is charity that finally “unites us” to God.)

If we have hope, then, we realize that faith is still inadequate, incomplete, enigmatic. We can have faith and still need, Doyle says, to “face difficulties and own up to its own personal and collective imperfections.” As we move in hope to the end, we discover that we are not possessors, but pilgrims and wayfarers, and our journey must involve purification. The way is cruciform.

The real danger is the temptation to believe that hope is not necessary – that faith is already sufficient. When it becomes quite clear that very bad problems still exist in the church, sometimes even in the midst of self-proclaimed orthodoxy, we imagine that faith just has to be imposed more strictly or defended more harshly. We become more and more anxious when we discover that theological faith can strangely coexist with self-deception, which leads to more and more desperate forms of rigidity. Or, perhaps, we just throw up our hands and wait for the magic solution that will suddenly change present reality to future promise. This is what the Jesuit Michael Buckley has called “bad faith.”

Doyle says that hope does not change the content of faith, much less suggest that it is unimportant. Hope presupposes faith. Still –

By registering the imperfections and internal tensions within faith, the virtue of hope moves the believer to expect more. It prepares her to imagine new forms of church, to see God at work in change, not only in continuity. Most importantly in the context of the abuse crisis, it generates a mindset in which the Church can be open to the difficult changes required to prevent such widespread abuse and failure in leadership from happening again.

So, then, it can be said that hope for the church should never lead to complacency. In fact, the very opposite is true.

 

The Chicago Code and Catholicism

(This is Neil)

It might seem quite odd to write a post – especially because I write so infrequently – about a single scene from a cancelled television show. “The Chicago Code,” although I was sorry to see it go, was not a particularly great show. But it did have a very strong sense of place – the characters mentioned O’Leary’s cow and the 1995 heat wave, joked with one another about the rivalry between Cubs and Sox fans, and the very last episode was called “Mike Royko’s Revenge – to the point where, as one blogger suggested, Chicago itself seemed at times to be the “lead of the show.” The best character on the show, a corrupt and powerful alderman pursued by several police officers, could seem like “the perfect example of Chicago’s Darwinian evolution … a figure that Chicago itself may actually allow to exist in order to function.”

Given the role of the city of Chicago on the show, it was inevitable that Catholicism would appear. And, thus, we get to our scene, which occurs at the end of the second episode, “The Hog Butcher” (another Chicago allusion, here to the famous Carl Sandburg poem). It isn’t a particularly original scene, although that might be the point. It is a familiar, even predictable, scene that we can imagine happens from time to time in Chicago, or cities like it, to people named Jarek Wysocki, or with names very similar to his.

The question is whether this scene will be intelligible in, say, twenty years.

The scene, as I see it, has roughly nine essential elements:

1. The character, here the police detective Jarek Wysocki, must be in real crisis. Here, it has become clear that the corrupt alderman, Ronin Gibbons, will be harder to catch than previously thought – and catching him, besides being difficult, might involve moral compromises. Also, Wysocki is sleeping with his ex-wife while engaged to a 29-year old. Since, in the context of the show, he is a “good” character, this is unsustainable. And, most of all, perhaps behind it all, Wysocki is still dealing with the murder of his brother, an undercover cop – a crime that is still unsolved.

2. The character ends up in a recognizably Catholic church. The scene would not work in most Protestant churches. This is not simply because Wysocki is ethnically Polish. During the scene, Wysocki lights a candle, and, at one point, the camera focuses on stained glass. This seems to echo a belief in “ex opere operato” – that God is dependably present in certain places, through certain rituals, in certain gestures, however broken we, or the “world,” or even the institutional church, have become. And that’s why the character is there.

3. The character does not attend a liturgy or other “official” ritual. The character is a believer – he is present, but something, perhaps the crisis, has separated him from “official” religion. When, later, Jarek Wysocki is asked why he doesn’t come to church, he says that he doesn’t want to be a “hypocrite.”

4. The character is approached by a religious figure. Here, Jarek is approached by a nun, Sister Paul. I’m not sure if the religious figure couldn’t have been a priest – perhaps the writers used a nun because the show is about corruption and priests (alas) seem too linked with scandal, perhaps they figured that the conversation between a priest, inevitably an authority figure, and Jarek would be too agonistic.

5. The religious figure is not otherworldly or dogmatic. Jarek is able to ask Sister Paul if she’s still smoking, and she responds by asking him if he’s still drinking. Jarek notes that she always responded to a question with a question, which she says is the Socratic method – here, obviously, in contrast with issuing abstract declarations or speaking in sentimental clichés. She does ask him about his church attendance, but, first, self-deprecatingly, says that it’s her “duty.” She will ask Jarek to pray with her, but only after allowing him to describe the situation. This nun is realistic and able to enter into Jarek’s crisis, if not resolve it.

6. The religious figure gives good advice that the character can’t immediately take. Sister Paul tells Jarek that he is too “rigid” – “If I can’t be perfect, why bother being good?” It is this “rigidity,” born out of a primeval duty to avenge his murdered brother, that presumably makes Jarek a good cop, driven and incorruptible. But it is also self-destructive, since his dedication to the job comes at the expense of his unsettled personal life, and even his physical health – a later episode shows him consuming a ridiculous number of energy drinks to keep going and keep going.

7. The character and the religious figure share a common language. Obviously, Jarek can come to the place where a Sister Paul can be found. When Sister Paul asks Jarek to pray with her, they both automatically kneel and know how to cross themselves. Jarek begins to pray in a recognizably Catholic way, “Holy Father, please bless and protect the soul of my brother Vincent Wysocki. And continue to comfort and bless his family …”

8. The character can’t immediately accept the comforts of faith. Saying words expressing trust that God will “bless” and “protect” his dead brother and his damaged family comes as disorientation to Jarek. As Karl Jacobson says about contemporary appropriations of the 23^rd psalm in popular culture, this disorientation can lead to skepticism, and “skepticism (and even outright disbelief) can express itself in anger or end up in despair if the sense of disorientation is acute enough.”

Jarek suddenly adds to his prayer in an intentionally discordant way before getting up and leaving Sister Paul:

“And grant me the wisdom and the perseverance and the ability to find my brother’s killer, and Lord, when I find him, make my aim true that I may take his life … Amen.”

9. The character sets up a tense dialectic between trust and despair. When Jarek leaves the church, we can imagine that he will somehow still come to trust that a good God guides and will redeem the world, and he, Jarek, can only be tasked with behaving ethically. “Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord’” (Romans 12:19).  This was the first part of his prayer.

Or we can imagine that Jarek cannot trust this God – the God who, after all, allowed his brother to be murdered and Jarek to be plunged into crisis, and Jarek must take matters into his own hands and murder the killer of his brother, destroying himself too in this grim and unforgiving “duty.” This was the second part of his prayer.

Obviously, being a network television show, the dialectic can only be so tense.

Here’s the question: Will this scene work in ten or twenty or thirty years? Or does it depend on a sort of Catholicism that is gone, or, at least, fast disappearing? (Of course, you can also argue that I’ve completed misinterpreted the scene …)

 

Is there a word for it?

(This is Neil)

I’m looking for a word. Perhaps there isn’t such a word. Maybe there is. I think that there should be such a word. But let me clarify: I’m not looking for this word because I want to repeat it endlessly, as part of a marketing strategy, to try to gradually shape your view of reality. I’m interested in precision.

As part of a Liturgy of Repentance at Dublin’s St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral, Cardinal Séan O’Malley of Boston just said the following (my emphasis):

Jesus is always on the side of the victim, bringing compassion and mercy. Jesus is not just the healer in the Gospel. He identifies with the sick, suffering, homeless, all innocent victims of violence and abuse and all survivors of sexual abuse. The Parable ends with injunction; ‘Go and do likewise!’; just as Jesus turns His love and compassion to those who have been violently attacked or sexually abused. We want to be part of a Church that puts survivors, the victims of abuse first, ahead of self-interest, reputation and institutional needs.

Others have pointed out the disastrous consequences of focusing on “self-interest, reputation and institutional needs.” For instance, in Russell Shorto’s recent story about the Irish Church in the New York Times Magazine, the Murphy Commission is quoted as saying that the “interests of church officials ‘were the maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the church, and the preservation of its assets.’” All other considerations were “subordinated to these priorities.”

And, of course, Pope Benedict’s Pastoral Letter to the Catholics in Ireland mentioned “a misplaced concern for the reputation of the Church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties and to safeguard the dignity of every person.”

Do we have a word for this sort of “misplaced concern” for the appearance of the church? I refer to a superficial fascination with the church as universal, timeless, free from contamination, with a hierarchy immune to any possible confusion coming from undifferentiation – perhaps all to better serve as a system of control over its own members and the wider society.

This “misplaced concern” seems to be theologically problematic. Obviously, it has prevented us from recognizing that “Jesus is always on the side of the victim.” (Cardinal Schönborn: “When the victims now speak, then God speaks to us …”) And it seems quite possible that it is rooted in a desire to escape from vulnerability and mortality.

But do we have a specific word for it? Again, it really seems like we should …

 

Questions II: La Bella Figura

(This is Neil)

I’ve just read a very interesting short article [PDF] by Adam Deville in the Canadian Journal of Orthodox Christianity. (I should admit that just a short while ago, I was completely unaware of the existence of this journal.) I’ll summarize it briefly and then ask a few questions.

Dr. DeVille uses recent books by Beppe Severgnini and John Allen to define la bella figura, literally “beautiful figure.” Allen says that an emphasis on la bella figura is “undeniably influential in Vatican psychology.” This need to “keep up appearances,” Allen goes on to say, means:

1. The Vatican is reluctant to replace incompetent people or criticize their work.

2. The Vatican prefers to deal with scandal outside the spotlight.

3. If there’s a choice between doing something quickly and doing it beautifully, it will be done beautifully.

DeVille suggests that the concern for la bella figura has been used to “cover up mistakes, justify inaction, or rationalize a refusal to change bad policies.” His example has to do with Rome’s “quiet” decision in 2006 to abandon the title “Patriarch of the West.”  After a negative Orthodox reaction based on the fears that this meant a renewed claim to universal church jurisdiction for the papacy, Rome could only respond in an “unsatisfactory and thoroughly  unconvincing” manner because it just could not admit that the decision was “inadequately considered before being sprung on everyone unaware.” That was unthinkable.

There are other obvious examples. As Allen reports, during the November 2002 meeting of the US Bishops in Washington, DC, then-Bishop Sean O’Malley said:

“Church leaders dealt with sexual abuse by clergy in a modus operandi that was suggested by a theology of sin and grace, redemption, permanence of the priesthood, but also a great concern about scandal, the bella figura, and the financial patrimony of the Church.”

DeVille goes on to suggest that there might be theological problems with la bella figura. An emphasis on “beautiful figure” might be incompatible with an emphasis on the church as kenotic, or self-emptying. DeVille writes:

“Such a [kenotic] approach aims to purify the Church by emptying her of all inclination to sinful division and self-aggrandizement, and to encourage Christians to draw closer to one another and to that unity for which we all hope by means of a confession of weakness and admission of faults.”

You can’t be self-emptying and always preserve the figura.

Second, the attempt to avoid any possibility of scandal can itself become scandalous. The late Cardinal Avery Dulles, SJ, wrote:

“While some Catholics are perhaps scandalized by admissions of fault, others are scandalized by the refusal to admit such faults. They reproach their fellow Catholics for what they see as their tendency to justify everything that has been done by their coreligionists, especially by persons purporting to act in the name of the Church.”

Third, DeVille says that exponents of la bella figura often fail to understand the nature of beauty – namely, that “confession, contrition, kenosis, and even death often contain and convey a beauty that the world can neither give nor understand.”

The Jesuit Mark Bosco has said, “[I]t is precisely in brokenness that the Cross is the witness of a kenotic, self-emptying transparency, drawing the beholder up into a hidden Beauty, the self-sacrificing communication of the Absolute.”

Three questions, then:

1. Is there any serious theological justification for an emphasis on la bella figura being “undeniably influential in Vatican psychology”? (“It’s been done for a long time” is hardly a serious theological justification.)

2. Is an emphasis on la bella figura doing harm to the Church?

3. Is it realistic to think that the ecclesiastical emphasis on la bella figura can be changed?

(Thanks in advance for your responses – I’m really very interested to know what you think.)

 

Day 8 – The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 2011

(This is Neil)

“That they all may be one, as you, Father, in me, and I in you; that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21)

In this prayer of the Divine Redeemer of the world we have it clearly revealed that unity among Christian believers is not only most desirable in itself, but it is an essential and a necessary prerequisite to the full acceptance of Christ by the entire world as its Savior and King and of the resultant consummation of his universal reign over the nations of the world.

Fr Paul Wattson, Co-founder of the Franciscan Friars and Sisters of the Atonement, Radio Talk at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, 1.25.1931

Day 8

Call for the Service of Reconciliation

Readings

Genesis 33:1-4 Esau ran to meet Jacob, and embraced him … and they wept
Psalm 96:1-13 Say among the nations, “The Lord is King!”
2 Corinthians 5:17-21 God … reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation
Matthew 5:21-26 Leave your gift before the altar, and go: first be reconciled to your brother or sister …

Commentary

Our prayers of this week have taken us on a journey together. Guided by the scriptures, we have been called to return to our Christian origins – that apostolic Church at Jerusalem. Here we have seen devotion – to the apostles’ teaching, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. At the end of our reflections on the ideal of Christian community presented to us in Acts 2:42, we return to our own contexts – the realities of divisions, discontents, disappointments and injustices. At this point the Church of Jerusalem poses us the question: to what, then, as we conclude this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity are we called, here and now?

Christians in Jerusalem today suggest an answer to us: we are called, above all, to the service of reconciliation. Such a call concerns reconciliation on many levels, and across a complexity of divisions. We pray for Christian unity so that the Church might be a sign and instrument for the healing of political and structural divisions and injustices; for the just and peaceful living together of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim peoples; for the growing in understanding between people of all faiths and none. In our personal and family lives, too, the call to reconciliation must find a response.

Jacob and Esau, in the Genesis text, are brothers, yet estranged. Their reconciliation comes even when enduring conflict might have been expected. Violence and the habits of anger are put aside as the brothers meet and weep together.

The recognition of our unity as Christians – and indeed as human beings – before God leads us into the Psalm’s great song of praise for the Lord who rules the world with loving justice. In Christ, God seeks to reconcile to Himself all peoples. In describing this, St. Paul, in our second reading, celebrates a life of reconciliation as “ a new creation”. The call to reconcile is the call to allow God’s power in us to make all things new.

Once again, we know that this ‘good news’ calls us to change the way we live. As Jesus challenges us, in the account given by St. Matthew, we cannot go on making offerings at the altar, in the knowledge that we are responsible for divisions or injustices. The call to prayer for Christian unity is a call to reconciliation. The call to reconciliation is a call to actions – even actions which interrupt our church activities.

Prayer

God of Peace, we thank you that you sent your Son Jesus, so that we might be reconciled to yourself in Him. Give us the grace to be effective servants of reconciliation within our churches. In this way help us to serve the reconciliation of all peoples, particularly in your Holy Land – the place where you demolish the wall of separation between peoples, and unite everyone in the Body of Jesus, sacrificed on Mount Calvary. Fill us with love for one another; may our unity serve the reconciliation that you desire for all creation. We pray in the power of the Spirit. Amen.

 

Questions

(This is Neil)

I always feel cautious about generalizing about something like the “Catholic blogosphere,” but I think that I can say a few things. When I began contributing to Todd’s blog, most Catholic bloggers were amateurs or popular writers, often insightful, but hardly credentialed experts with institutional affiliations. Now, most magazines have regular bloggers, and theologians and even some bishops have blogs. There are disadvantages to “professionalization,” but the “Catholic blogosphere,” if there even is such a thing, seems less chaotic. This means that there is less pressure to seem more than vapid, political, or entrepreneurial. Also, most Catholic bloggers were conservative. Now, there is more diversity and less pressure to “balance” others or to speak for a different perspective.

I think that I can say one other thing: I’m not prolific enough to be a good blogger.

Thus, I’d like to do something new, at least for me. I’d like to post a series of questions. I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions – this will be true, even if at times it might seem rather embarrassing for me. I would like to know the answers, if they are answerable. I do think that these are difficult questions that can’t be answered with readily available talking points. I’d be grateful for any insight that you might have, even if you simply want to say that the questions are very badly posed.

This first post in this series has to do with Catholics and Protestants and has a pastoral angle:

1. True or false: In most Roman Catholic parishes in the United States, one can regularly attend Mass anonymously. In most Protestant congregations in the United States, this would be difficult.

2. True or false: In most Protestant congregations in the United States, there is an obvious “secondary” activity for committed participants – usually a small group, Sunday school class, or a Bible study. In most Roman Catholic parishes, there are many activities, but not any obvious “secondary” activity.

3. True or false: In a Roman Catholic parish, the priest will be bemused if someone approaches him after Mass and wishes to politely question parts of his sermon. In a Protestant congregation, even a relatively unlearned pastor will accept this as normal, and, in theory, welcome.

4. True or false: Presently, in many Protestant congregations, there is a detectable presence of ex-Catholics who bring a distinct perspective with them – usually, a belief in sacramental realism and a respect for elements of Catholic spirituality and theology, but also hostility towards clericalism and any seemingly distant and impersonal form of dogmatism and legalism.

 

Day 7 – The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 2011

(This is Neil)

“We have martyrs in all the Churches….here in Rome we have St Bartholomew’s for all the modern martyrs. I think that what John Paul II said, that between the martyrs we have perfect unity and when we see this unity, we can have new forces to make visible the unity that the Holy Spirit has given us.”

Cardinal Karl Koch, President, Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, Interview with Vatican Radio 1.19.11

Day 7

Living in Resurrection Faith

Readings

Isaiah 60:1-3, 18-22 You shall call your walls Salvation, and your gates, Praise
Psalm 118:1, 5-17 I shall not die but I shall live
Romans 6:1-4 … we have been buried with Christ by baptism into death … so we too might walk in newness of life
Matthew 28:1-10 Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid …”

Commentary

The first Christians’ devotion to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of the bread and the prayers was made possible, above all, by the living power of the Risen Jesus. This power is living still, and today’s Jerusalem Christians witness to this. Whatever the difficulties of the present situation in which they find themselves – however much it feels like Gethsemane and Golgotha – they know in faith that all is made new by the truth of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

The light and hope of the Resurrection changes everything. As Isaiah prophesies, it is the transformation of darkness into light; it is an enlightening for all peoples. The power of the Resurrection shines out from Jerusalem, the place of the Lord’s Passion, and draws all nations to its brightness. This is a new life, in which violence is put aside, and security found in salvation and praise.

In the Psalm we are given words to celebrate the central Christian experience of passing from death to life. This is the abiding sign of God’s steadfast love. This passing from the terrors of death into new life is the defining reality of all Christians. For, as St. Paul teaches, we have, in baptism, entered into the tomb with Christ, and been raised with Him. We have died with Christ, and live to share his risen life. And so we can see the world differently – with compassion, patience, love and hope; for, in Christ the present struggles can never be the whole story. Even as divided Christians, we know that the baptism that unites us is a bearing of the Cross in the light of the Resurrection.

For the Christian Gospel this resurrection life is not some mere concept or helpful idea; it is rooted in a vivid event in time and space. It is this event we hear recounted in the Gospel reading with great humanity and drama. From Jerusalem the Risen Lord sends greetings to His disciples across the ages, calling us to follow Him without fear. He goes ahead of us.

Prayer

God, Protector of the widow, the orphan and the stranger – in a world where many know despair, you raised your Son Jesus to give hope for humanity and renewal to the earth. Continue to strengthen and unify your Church in its struggles against the forces of death in the world, where violence against creation and humanity obscures the hope of the new life you offer. This we pray in the name of the Risen Lord, in the power of His Spirit. Amen.

 

Day 6 – The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 2011

(This is Neil)

For we know, though we have to work hard for unity of all the people of God, unity is not our human work and achievement; it is a gift of the Spirit, the gift of a renewed Pentecost. So for the Second Vatican Council and for me personally, spiritual ecumenism is the very heart of ecumenism. When I left office at the end of June last year I remembered a metaphor of the father of spiritual ecumenism, Abbé Paul Couturier of Lyon, who called spiritual ecumenism an invisible monastery. In a visible monastery monks live and pray together, in the invisible ecumenical monastery Christians of different Churches in different countries and on different continents live separated from one another and they pray in different languages in different places; but they all are united in the same prayer and the same longing that all may be one.

It is my impression and my firm conviction that this spiritual monastery is growing and augmenting. Though there is much disaffection and disappointment among our faithful and in our clergy about the ecumenical development, and there are reasons for it. But my hope is put on the growing and augmenting ecumenical spiritual cooperation between groups and communities from different Churches in everyday prayers and in meetings where they read the Bible together, exchange their spiritual experiences and pray together. Mostly these are small groups, or sometimes big gatherings such as those organised by the Foccolarini, Sant’ Egidio and others in Stuttgart where thousands of participants came, and soon there will be another meeting in Brussels. This shows that ecumenism is not dead; it is vibrant and it is engaging in a new and hopeful phase of its history. It is going back to its origins and roots and reaching out for the future.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, Speech at a dinner for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Church House, London, 1.14.11

Day 6

Empowered to Action in Prayer

Readings

Jonah 2:1-9 Deliverance belongs to the Lord!
Psalm 67:1-7 Let the peoples praise you, O God!
1 Timothy 2:1-8 …prayers should be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions …
Matthew 6:5-15 Your kingdom come, your will be done …

Commentary

Following devotion to the Apostles’ teaching and fellowship and the breaking of the bread, the fourth mark of the earliest Church of Jerusalem is the life of prayer. It is experienced today as the necessary source of the power and strength needed by Christians in Jerusalem – as everywhere. The witness of Christians in Jerusalem today calls us to a deeper recognition of the ways we face situations of injustice and inequality in our own contexts. In all this, it is prayer that empowers Christians for mission together.

For Jonah the intensity of his prayer is met with dramatic deliverance from the belly of the fish. His prayer is heartfelt, as it arises from his own sense of repentance at having tried to avoid God’s will: he has abandoned the Lord’s call to prophesy, and ended up in a hopeless place. And here God meets his prayer with deliverance for his mission.

The Psalm calls us to pray that God’s face will shine upon us – not only for our own benefit, but for the spread of His rule ‘among all the nations’.

The apostolic Church reminds us that prayer is a part of the strength and power of mission and prophecy for the world. Paul’s letter to Timothy here instructs us to pray especially for those with power in the world so that we may live together in peace and dignity. We pray for the unity of our societies, and lands, and for the unity of all humanity in God. Our prayer for our unity in Christ reaches out to the whole world.

This dynamic life of prayer is rooted in the Lord’s teaching to his disciples. In our reading from Matthew’s Gospel we hear of prayer as a ‘secret’ power, born not from display or performance, but from humble coming before the Lord. Jesus’ teaching is summed up in the Lord’s Prayer. Praying this together forms us as a united people who seek the Father’s will, and the building up of His Kingdom here on earth, and calls us to a life of forgiveness and reconciliation.

Prayer

Lord God our Father, we rejoice that in all times, places and cultures, there are people who reach out to you in prayer. Above all we thank you for the example and teaching of your Son, Jesus Christ, who has taught us to long in prayer for the coming of your Kingdom. Teach us to pray better as Christians together, so that we may always be aware of your guidance and encouragement through all our joys and distress, through the power your Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

Day 5 – The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 2011

(This is Neil)

Day 5

Breaking the Bread in Hope

Readings

Exodus 16:13b-21a It is bread the Lord has given you to eat
Psalm 116:12-14, 16-18 I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice
1 Corinthians 11:17-18, 23-26 Do this in remembrance of me
John 6:53-58 This is the bread that came down from heaven

Commentary

From the first Church at Jerusalem until now, the ‘breaking of bread’ has been a central act for Christians. For the Christians of Jerusalem today, the sharing of bread traditionally speaks of friendship, forgiveness and commitment to the other. We are challenged in this breaking of bread to seek a unity that can speak prophetically to a world of divisions. This is the world by which we have all, in different ways, been shaped. In the breaking of bread Christians are formed anew for the prophetic message of hope for all humankind.

Today we, too, break bread ‘with glad and generous hearts’; but we also experience, at each celebration of the Eucharist, a painful reminder of our disunity. On this fifth day of the Week of Prayer, the Christians of Jerusalem gather in the Upper Room, the place of the Last Supper. Here, whilst they do not celebrate the Eucharist, they break bread in hope.

We learn this hope in the ways God reaches out to us in the wilderness of our own discontent. Exodus relates how God responds to the grumbling of the people he has liberated, by providing them with what they need – no more, and no less. The manna in the desert is a gift of God, not to be hoarded, nor even fully understood. It is, as our Psalm celebrates, a moment which calls simply for thanksgiving – for God ‘has loosened our bonds’.

What St. Paul recognizes is that to break the bread means not only to celebrate the Eucharist, but to be a Eucharistic people – to become Christ’s Body in the world. This short reading stands, in its context (1 Cor 10 – 11) as a reminder of how the Christian community is to live: in communion in Christ, determining right behavior in a difficult worldly context, guided by the reality of our life in Him. We live “in remembrance of him.”

As a people of the breaking of bread, we are a people of eternal life – life in its fullness – as the reading from St. John teaches us. Our celebration of Eucharist challenges us to reflect on how such an abundant gift of life is expressed day to day as we live in hope as well as in difficulties. In spite of the daily challenges for the Christians in Jerusalem, they witness to how it is possible to rejoice in hope.

Prayer

God of Hope, we praise you for your gift to us of the Lord’s Supper, where, in the Spirit, we continue to meet your Son Jesus Christ, the living bread from heaven. Forgive our unworthiness of this great gift – our living in factions, our collusion with inequalities, our complacency in separation. Lord, we pray that you will hasten the day when your whole church together shares the breaking of the bread, and that, as we wait for that day, we may learn more deeply to be a people formed by the Eucharist for service to the world. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

Day 4 – The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, 2011

(This is Neil)

Day 4

Sharing, an Expression of Our Unity

Readings

Isaiah 58:6-10 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
Psalm 37:1-11 Trust in the Lord and do good
Acts 4:32-37 Everything they owned was held in common
Matthew 6:25-34 Strive first for the kingdom of God

Commentary

The sign of continuity with the apostolic Church of Jerusalem is “devotion to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers.” The Church of Jerusalem today, however, recalls to us the practical consequences of such devotion – sharing. The Acts of the Apostles states simply that “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute to all, as any had need” (Acts 2.44-45). Today’s reading from the Book of Acts links such radical sharing with the powerful apostolic “testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.” The later Imperial Roman persecutors of the Church would note with certain accuracy: “see how they love one another.”

Such a sharing of resources characterizes the life of Christian people in Jerusalem today. It is a sign of their continuity with the first Christians; it is a sign and a challenge to all the churches. It links proclamation of the Gospel, the celebration of the Eucharist and the fellowship (or communion) of the Christian community with radical equality and justice for all. In so far as such sharing is a testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and a sign of continuity with the apostolic Church of Jerusalem, it is equally a sign of our unity with one another.

There are many ways of sharing. There is the radical sharing of the apostolic church where nobody was left in need. There is the sharing of one another’s burdens, struggles, pain and suffering. There is the sharing in one another’s joys and achievements, blessings and healing. There is also the sharing of gifts and insights from one church tradition to another even in our separation from another, an “ecumenical exchange of gifts.” Such generous sharing is a practical consequence of our devotion to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship; it is a consequence of our prayer for Christian unity.

Prayer

God of Justice, your giving is without bounds. We thank you that you have given what we need, so that all may be fed, clothed and housed. Guard us from the selfish sin of hoarding, and inspire us to be instruments of love, sharing all that you give us, as a witness to your generosity and justice. As followers of Christ, lead us to act together in places of want: where families are driven from their homes, where the vulnerable suffer at the hands of the powerful, where poverty and unemployment destroy lives. We pray in the name of Jesus, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Amen.