Weekly Reflection 083103AD

August 31, 2003AD

22^nd Sunday in Greentime

Servus Servorum Dei

This week, we celebrate the feast day of a great churchman from long ago. St Gregory the Great was elected Bishop of Rome in 590 AD and ministered until 604. His influence was such that several professors of European history mark the death of Gregory as the beginning of the Dark Ages in Europe, which lasted until the rise of city-states and the Renaissance.

Gregory was a Benedictine monk who would have preferred to remain in that role. However, he had had a brilliant career as a civil official in Rome before he entered the monastery. Romans remembered his adroit skill and selected him as Bishop.

He was a strong pastor who ministered to his community in a very compassionate way. He never felt superior to his people. In his style, he typified what the Church still expects of churchpeople when he adopted the nickname, servus servorum Dei , servant of the servants of God. He understood his role in what Jesus said in Mark’s Gospel, “The Son of Man came to serve, not to be served.”

He wrote a pastoral guidebook for clergy in dealing in a Christlike fashion with people. He stressed the necessity of the service of ministry with which clergy are to view their relationship with people. He understood what James spoke of in the reading today that religion has to do with ethical monotheism. For Catholics, our commitment to the Father of Jesus Christ means that we respond in the everyday reality as men and women of faith to the practical needs of others. As Jesus Himself says in today’s Gospel, the interior attitudes of people affect how we behave toward one another. Gregory caught the validity of Jesus’ words for all Catholics, clergy and laity alike.

Gregory was the one who numbered the “7 deadly sin”, viz., compulsions in people that can lead us to serious sin. They are the following: pride, gluttony, greed, sloth, lust, envy, anger. (Those who study the Enneagram would add two others to Gregory’s list, viz., self-deceit and fear.)

He stressed the centrality of the liturgy in Catholic life. His gift of the Gregorian chant, adopted today to the vernacular languages still help us to intuit the Mystery of the Absolute.

He also thought of the wider picture. Gregory was the one who sent St Augustine of Canterbury to establish Latin Christianity in southern England. (Celtic Christianity had already been well-established in Scotland and northern England 100 years earlier..

We recall that nobody is a “10” in everything. All of us, bishops of Rome included, sometimes miss the mark. For whatever reason, it was Gregory the Great who labeled Mary Magdalene the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair. Anyone who reads The Da Vinci Code, would understand the impact of this misidentification of Mary Magdalene with another woman.

Gregory took his role, servus servorum Dei, seriously. Shouldn’t all of us? 083103AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 082403AD

Sunday, August 24, 2003AD

21^st Sunday in Greentime

Where Would We Go?

We end the section of John’s Gospel known as the Sermon on the Bread of Life. Jesus refers to Himself as the Bread, the Sustenance, the Mainstay of our existence. Jesus self-refers as the total package. Whatever we need to live totally human lives, Jesus provides for us in a myriad of ways.

The sermon seems to be in two parts. The main part of the sermon speaks of Jesus per se as what we need to sustain a totally human life. (Last week’s Gospel seems to be a later addition which addresses Jesus as our Bread of Life in the Eucharist.)

Today’s concluding section tells us of the reaction of many to Jesus’ difficult words. They ask, “Who can accept it?” Jesus’ comeback speaks of the gift of faith. Faith in Jesus is a gift and faith is granted by (the) Father. Peter speaks up when Jesus asks the 12 if they were going to return to their former ways and abandon discipleship and no longer accompany (walk behind) Him. Peter speaks in the name of all gifted with faith in Jesus as he answers the Master, “To whom shall we go?” …We are convinced that (Jesus is) the Holy One of God “.

For many reasons, Catholic believers take a beating in the contemporary world. Catholics believe that faith in Jesus is worth the grief. Yes, we echo Peter’s words when we ask where else would we go? Who knows our story better than Jesus? Who knows the truth better than He?

350 years ago, in France, Catholic mathematician, Blaise Pascal, combined a brilliant left brain with a gifted right brain filled with the Power of religious experience. His objective skills in math were not diminished by the gift of faith. Rather, God’s gifts enhanced one another.

He proposed what is known as “Pascal’s Wager”, viz., it is wiser to (believe and) behave as if there is a God than to behave as if there were no God.

He also spoke of the depths of the gift of faith in Jesus Christ. He said that the “heart (gifted by faith in Jesus) has reasons (to believe) that the human mind cannot understand.”

Not all his contemporaries shared Pascal’s gifted synthesis of left brain objectivity and right brain openness to faith in Jesus. First, the Enlightenment in Europe and North America proclaimed Deism. Yes, there is a God, but God is the Divine Watchmaker. God did such a good job that the world runs on its own. The Deists did not deign to include a providential God in our journey through life. Eventually, a fusion of Deism with the American Protestant stress upon the individual led to a de facto secular humanism, when we do good things whether or not there is a God. Next, this devolves into a practical atheism. Who cares if there is a God or not? Then, this devolves further into what Pope John Paul calls “the eclipse of God and the eclipse of the human person”. We witness this each day. “Lord, to Whom would we go?” The road without You leads nowhere. 082403 AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 081703AD

Sunday August 17, 2003AD

20^th Sunday in Greentime

The N-Syndrome, Part 2

Is Christopher Lasch’s theory of the Culture of Narcissism still operative in contemporary America? Do we prefer self-improvement to the neglect of others? Do we prefer to be known as nice people, who plug into conventional wisdom in the formation of attitudes and values? Do we prefer a noisy world to a world in which a moment of solitude strikes us as a threatening waste of time?

Some also comment upon NUMBNESS in our culture. This means that since we are all going 100 mph in our minds and hearts and cars, we do not have the energy to stop and heed the problems of other people. “I have enough of my own, thank you.”

We are not bad people, but we are moving a mile a minute. Our sensitivities to the needs of others can be jaded by our own problems as well as our own hyperactivity.

Such hyperactivity can also lead to a NON-INVOLVEMENT in the unfolding of history. Several years ago, a high school student sullenly challenged the US history teacher with an accusation that US History is a waste of time. In the student’s opinion, nobody really ever used history. The teacher responded to the 16 year student, “You probably won’t yourself . However, when you turn 18, you will be entitled to vote and, in addition, you might some day be expected to defend your country. You might want to know how you got to where you are in your life.” The student was completely unimpressed. This student, and many others frequently live in an historical vacuum. They do not care to know whence they got to this moment in their lives. To quote Henry Ford, back in 1903, “History is bunk.”

If indeed, narcissism and/or niceness and/or noise and/or numbness and/or non-involvement characterize much in our contemporary culture, is there any question that an exaggerated stress on the NOW would predominate in their consciousness? Of course, the present is important. However, we have to think about the past to ascertain more clearly how we got here. We have to think about the future to assure that we will be leaving something worthwhile to our grandchildren, as well as their grandchildren.

Finally, others comment on the short attention span of contemporary culture when repetitious 15 second sound bits on TV constitute political appeals. News commentators decide for us what are the pressing issues in the world. Late night monologists get cruel laughs at the expense of others, guilty or not. Others focus on the comings and goings of current hot topics in the media. Names like OJ, Monica, Grubman, Kobe, et al. pre-occupy the minds of many. Perhaps, there is a corporate attention deficit disorder that characterizes popular culture. Some even ask, “Is American contemporary culture NEUROTIC?”

Is there such a thing as the N-syndrome? What do you think? What about Jesus in all this? 081703 jfq

Weekly Reflection 081003AD

Sunday August 10, 2003AD

19^th Sunday in Greentime

The N Syndrome ?? (Part 1)

Contrary to what many had thought prior to 9/11/01, we do not live in the Golden Age. Granted, when one looks back at the world of 1903, a hundred years ago, we would probably not want to live then. 100 years ago, when Bob Hope was born, Theodore Roosevelt was President. Pope Leo XIII died. The Wright Brothers had yet to fly at Kitty Hawk, NC. However, in August, 2103 AD, people will look back on us now in 2003 AD and pity the primitive lives that we are doomed to have. Obviously, not in a Golden Age, rather, we are part of an unfolding human history.

Many have commented on characteristics of contemporary American culture’s manifestation of certain patterns of behavior. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Christopher Lasch published a book, The Culture of Narcissism. His theory was that people were withdrawing into personal self-improvement. He attributed this to the fact that world had gotten so out of control in the sixties with political assassination, urban rioting, the morass of Vietnam and Southeast Asia, the sexual revolution on college campuses as well as in the media, the rise of the so-called counter-culture. His theory was that if you cannot change the world, at least, do the best you can for yourself. It is no accident that another best seller was published then, Looking Out for Number One.

Granted that Lasch’s book was published thirty years ago, still, many feel that our culture still tends to NARCISSISM, viz., self-love. Think about it. A term that high schoolers learn is “ethnocentrism”. This meant that one tended to judge other people and cultures by their similarity or dissimilarity to one’s own. Americans are infamous for it throughout the world. Correctly or not, others think that we conclude that life cannot be any better than it is here. Are we uncritically narcissistic in our opinions about people’s and cultures?

Others speak about public opinion, conventional wisdom, what “they”, “those in the know” are saying. We pay heed to CW frequently because that is an easy way for them to be NICE. Some want others “in the know” to let them know what to believe and how to act. If someone were to offer you a choice of People or America (the USA Jesuit weekly news publication), which would you choose for a gratis subscription?

Our culture tends to be NOISY. Many people feel the need for a TV, a radio, a CD, a video on to drown out the quiet. Some say that people might fear silence because silence might provoke a sense of solitude or self-reflection. The last thing that some might want would be a chance to slow down and ask oneself what we are doing with our lives. If you were to go on vacation and told that your digs would not include TV and/or radio, would you jump at the opportunity for a gift of silence, which could contribute to solitude and self-reflection? (to be continued) 081003AD jfq

Weekly Reflection 080303AD

Sunday August 3, 2003AD

18^th Sunday in Greentime

A GOOD SUMMER READ!

Several years ago, a sleeper of an American history book, Son of the Morning Star, became a well-read biography of General George Custer. On June 25, 1876, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse responsed to their invitations to the Big Centennial Birthday Party of the USA a few days later on July 4. Their response was the Battle of Little Big Horn.

A few years ago, the same author, Evan Connell has published a creative historical novel based on the Crusades, a pivotal event in the history of both the Church and Europe. His book is entitled Deus lo Volt. (The words mean “God wills it”). These words were the battle cry that came from Clermont, France in 1095, when Pope Urban II proclaimed “God’s desire to free the Holy Land from the Islamics”.(??)

Many of the long-forgotten names from European history come back into life in the pages of the book. The only exposure which most of us had to the Crusades would have been in history classes (in preparation for the Regents) and also, in the movies, in which violence and cruelty played more a part than history.

There is a sad and haunting irony in the pages of this book. Many had been raised in a culture in which it was assumed that no matter what one stood for, God was always on one’s side. If God were on one’s side, then, anything went when it came to enemies After all, they were also God’s enemies. It was assumed that everything was fine if one were fighting with and for God.

Back then, the enemies of the Crusaders were called “infidels”. They waged “jihads”, holy wars. To be sure, violence, cruelty and bloodletting occurred frequently. It was a tough time.

However, there were two sides to that story. In the pages of Deus lo Volt, we read similar things about our Christian ancestors. Our holy wars were called “Crusades”, a gallant word. Yet, for their part, they also used a great deal of violence, cruelty and bloodletting. Many times, the narrator describes a violent death of an infidel. Then, as a good Christian, he thanks Jesus as he thinks of the infidel’s eternity in hell.

How many people presume that God always has the same point of view that they have? Frequently, in both church and state, atrocities have been done because we (and God???) were right and our opponents were wrong.

For example, the Crusaders believed that they were fighting for God and country. As a result, anything went. In many cases, this is true when we look back to history, sadly, of both church and state. Is it a power trip?

Sadly, we know that studying history is on the wane for many. Some echo the sentiments of Henry Ford, “History is bunk.” As a result, they have not heard the words of Sir Edmund Burke in 18^th century England, “Those who do not learn from the errors of the past are doomed to repeat them.”

This is applicable to both the history of church and state. Too frequently, people are led to believe through their lack of information (self-inflicted and/or manipulated) that anything goes if God is on their side.

If you have a chance, read Deus lo Volt. Then read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Then, ask yourself the question, “How did people reconcile the Gospel, back then, with the violence of the time?” Then, ask the same question about people of today as well. 080303 AD jfq