February 24, 2013AD

  The  Mystery beyond the Mystery

             When Catholics use the word “mystery”, it does not mean the same thing that “mystery” means to others. When people in contemporary culture hear the word, they think “whodunit” or a copout for those with the inability to respond without mystifying language.  Catholics understand “Mystery” to mean something that is ultimately knowable and unknowable at the same time.  Mystery is paradox. Life is full of paradoxes. Indeed, life itself is a mystery, as Madonna sang back in 1989.  Ergo, God is a Mystery.  Ultimately, you are a Mystery too, especially to yourself.  As Hermann Hesse wrote in many years ago. “The greatest mystery each of us has to transcend or fathom is oneself.”

Always, on the Second Sunday of Lent, we hear the account of the Transfiguration, wherein Peter, James and John get a glimpse of Christ Jesus in His resurrected state.  Whatever happened that day, Jesus had gone up to the mountaintop to pray.  St Luke is known as the “Evangelist of Prayer”.  Before anything monumental in the life of Christ Jesus is about to happen, Jesus goes to pray in solitude in advance. He does this before He begins His public life, before He elected the 12 and gave His great Sermon in Luke 6, in the Garden before Good Friday and finally on the Cross.  Jesus was into prayer bigtime.  Clearly by example, Jesus wants us to be as well.

When Jesus went to pray, in some cases, spending the entire night in prayer to God, what type of prayer did He say?  We know that Jesus could read, yet it doesn’t say that He brought any biblical scrolls with Him, nor the Jewish version of Rosary beads. 

In all probability, like many Jews of His time, Jesus would have memorized many prayers.  We imitate Him this Lent as we try to get Psalm 23 down this Lent as a community. 

However, chances are that Jesus was big into contemplative prayer, viz., prayer without words.  Prayer in which we remain as silent as possible and let God speak to us in the Silence.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said, “God speaks to us in the silence of my minds and hearts.  Our job is to slow down and listen to the silence. Then, we translate what we heard by the way we treat others, especially the poor.” Her namesake from 16^th century Espana, St Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church wrote, “The minute you start to pray to God out there, you miss the whole point!” One hundred twenty-five years ago, the Little Flower, now a also Doctor of the Church said, “God is always at home in me; I am usually the one who is out to lunch.”   

All the major religions of the world, both East and West, have a contemplative tradition.  Some call it the highest form of prayer when one slows down and shuts down and let God speak to us in the Great Silence. 

However, Americans frequently find silence as something pathological.  We owe this to our Puritan ancestors who taught us, “the idle mind was the devil’s workshop.”  As a result, “it was early to bed, early to rise” …. you know the rest.

One priest-psychiatrist wrote about this as early as 1992, “There is a reason that more people do not find the silence and listen to the Inner Voice. They are afraid to do so. The truth is that, in our culture, we fear the Silence precisely because something from within might speak to us.  Therefore, we prefer the noise and fear Silence because in that silence, the unconscious might make its presence felt.  This consciousness might contain all that we have been repressing and denying about ourselves. It is impossible to listen to the small, still voice within without coming to terms with the unconscious.” It is not for nothing that children have an easier time with contemplation than most adults. Are adults afraid of what the Silence might say to us?

The greatest Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Fr Karl Rahner,  spoke of Gratia non Creata, viz.,Uncreated Grace.  He said that this was the immanent and permeating Divine Presence in all.  Fr Rahner understood Gratia non Creata as another name for the immanent and permeating  Presence that Christians call the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit lives in all; all live in the Spirit.  While God is ultimately a Mystery, both knowable and unknowable simultaneously, transcending all Reality, God is also immanent, present in all.  Maybe that was what Jesus was tapping into when He went up to pray before big events in His life.  Maybe, He wants up to do the same.  Recall the distinction made several weeks ago.  If you listen to Jesus, you become a disciple.  If you don’t, then you remain in the crowd. Which is it going to be? 

How do we respond? As mentioned last weekend, treat yourself to a twenty minute sit in God’s Presence in our church or any church.  Plan to learn Psalm 23 and use it as the handy prayer tool that your ancestors have done for the past 3000 years.  There is a reason why the Psalm has perdured.  Find out the reason by learning the Psalm yourself from the heart.

Join Jesus on the mountaintop (or in our parish church or anywhere).  Let God speak to you in the silence. Peter, James and John heard God say to them, “This is my beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” We probably will hear a reasonable facsimile thereof. What do we do next?    022413AD  jfq                     

February 17, 2013AD

 Terrorism of the Tongue — East and West

              Many years ago, Maria Regina HS ran a Lenten series for students and faculty entitled, “That all may have life.” It was an effort to show how all human life issues were connected and how one had to be consistent, not selective on life issues. In an effort to teach non-violence to the young Catholic students, implicit in consistent life ethical thought,  one of the suggested practices was to practice “non violence in terms of speech, viz. terrorism of the tongue.”, viz., to avoid gossip for the 40 days of Lent. Two students at Maria Regina HS walked down the hall and one young lady said to the other. “Wow! Do I have something to tell you about insert name, but it has to wait until Easter because I gave up gossip for Lent.” One would hope that she would have forgotten the item when Easter rolled around.  Still, she made the effort.

St James tells us that the tongue is the rudder of the body. “If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide their entire bodies. It is the same with ships; even though they are large and are driven by harsh winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot’s inclination wishes.”

In the same way, the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions.  Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire. It exists among our members as a world of malice, defiling the whole body and setting the entire course of our lives on fire…No human being can tame the tongue… With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse our fellow human beings made in the likeness of God. From the sane mouth come both blessing and curse. This needs not be so. (James 3. 3-10)  What we say can have devastating effects of those to whom we speak.

Catholic mindfulness speaks of the need to follow the practice of wholesome speech. Addressing a universal situation, the Buddha wrote of fourfold steps: 1) truthfulness; 2) compassion; 3) gentleness; 4) edification.

First, there is the need for truthfulness in speech. Each of us can find opportunities, many of which we use, to stretch the truth. What we say is not exactly what we should be saying, but what is the difference?  Why do we not always speak the truth? Is it a need to appear in a certain way, an expression of our ego, our false self, viz., how we would like to appear. We should reflect on the consequences of not being truthful.  As some said, those who are liars need great memory skills!

Second, we are to speak compassionately, in a way that will benefit the listener.  Thus, when we have something to say that may hurt, we might have to hold off for a time.  Silence is golden, but sometimes words need to be said. Think of an addiction intervention when families and friends have to talk turkey and talk tough to a person with a destructive addiction.  Still, there is a need to ask oneself why am I saying this now.

One important caveat these days is the danger of teleological (from a distance) effects of emailing, Facebook, Twitter, etc. We have an news item that we want to share. We share on technological means things that we would never say to the person’s face. One solution to this is to wait a day or two before sending out a juicy item on another person.  In the Latin was the expression, “scriptum manet, the written word remains.” 

Third, there is the need to speak gently, not in a dominating way.  One of the principal ways of doing so is to listen quietly to what others say to us. Give others a chance to speak. It will be a means to remind ourselves that we are not the center of the conversation, let alone the universe.  Avoid harsh talk or vulgar talk and the desire to shock and dominate, just be silent sometimes and don’t add anything until emotions settle.

Fourth, there is the need to speak constructively and edifyingly. Do I need to say this? Don’t say anything just to fill up the silence. 

It is hard to imagine life without gossip. Gossip is useful if the news is interesting and/or beneficial. However, gossip can quickly become vicious. Sometimes we look for opportunities for schadenfreude, viz., enjoying hearing something negative about others, even of friends or family because somehow, it seems to secure us.

All in all, Catholic mindfulness is meant to foster wholesomeness in our speech.  Only say what one needs to say, what I know to be true, what I know will not be hurtful and what I know will be beneficial and edifying.

St Paul speaks of the radical revolution that Jesus worked on Roman culture, viz., the system. Rather than fit into the normal paradigm of patron-broker-client, i.e., who is codependent on whom. St Paul speaks of the talents that each Jesus Movement person can bring as an “individual in community”, a cell in the Body of Christ, containing the DNA of the Crucified and Risen One. The Spirit of Christ Jesus energizes us in each and every situation in which we find ourselves. Try not to gossip about bad things in the 40 days of Lent.

The process of neural pruning makes it to form neural grooves through a practice of mindful repetition to do so. It takes as little as 21 days to form new neural patterns in our brains. Therefore, the forty days of Lent are an opportunity to work on neural grooves governing our speech patterns.                                                               One hopes that the student at Maria Regina kept her promise to avoid gossip and refrain from terrorism of the tongue. One would wonder if she forgot the item by Easter Sunday. One would wonder if we might put a little Catholic mindfulness into our Lenten speech, as well.    021713AD jfq         

February 10, 2013AD

  To the Future in Christ Jesus

Fewer and fewer of the community remember personally the Spirit-filled days of the Second Vatican Council. This meeting was called by Father Karl Rahner the first truly ecumenical world council because every continent was re-presented. The council was called by the Holy Spirit (aka God’s energy for (integration)) through Blessed John XXIII (not to be confused with the better known John Paul II) who was Bishop of Rome from 1958- 1963. (Note: others said that the council still represented 50% of the Church. Do the math.)

The former paradigm of the Catholic people was transformed from what was called the “Old Quadruple Helix”, viz., pray, pay, obey and stay. The Holy Spirit inspired the Council Fathers recover the traditional concept of the universal call to integrity. The concept reflects St Paul’s clear challenge to the Roman patriarchal system of patron, broker, client in which someone is always “beholdin’” to someone else, read power and control to a community in which some held power over others.

The Holy Spirit brought us to a new quadruple helix. Around here, we call it acquaintance (Mass on Sunday), acquaintance (some positive involvement in human betterment in Christ’s Name; 3) family (taking seriously the family as the first teachers in the ways of faith and hope in Jesus); intimacy with God in Christ Jesus in the Deep Incarnation.  One strand wraps around and enhances the others.

Historians long ago have named the principle of unintended consequences, which means that events sometimes have follow-ups that were not intended. For example, when slaveholder Thomas Jefferson wrote, “All men (sic) were created equal and were endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”, little did he expect that the principle would segue logically into reform movements such as the abolitionist movement, the women’s rights movement and reform of both mental care and of the penal system. Other later spins-off were rights of native Americans.  Now, people wonder about how we handle the biblical triad of tending the widow, the orphan, and the alien when it comes to immigration reform. It is all related, all connected, none of which the slaveholding Jefferson foresaw in 1776.

      In Catholic history, we remember the baptismal hymn from 55AD (25 years after Good Friday and Easter) quoted by St Paul in Gal 3.28 and which St Paul knew that his audience heard before. “In Christ there is not Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. All are one in Christ Jesus.” It took the church 1800 years to get to the second duality (slave or freemen) and 1900 years to get to the third duality (male and female) in the hymn.

More recently, many would say that it was the line from the all important Council document, Lumen Gentium, the Light of Nations about the universal call to holiness (integrity) that let the horse of the Holy Spirit out of the barn.  The principle stressed that there were no more in the Jesus Movement. God’s plan for each person is the high road to integrity or holiness for that person, maybe not another. About twenty years after the close of Vatican, the Catholic reporter, Peter Hebblethwaite, published a book entitled, the Runaway Church. It applied the principle of unintended consequences upon the universal call to integrity (holiness). Maybe what the bishops meant was not the same as the result.  “The Spirit cannot be stopped and who knows the Mind of God?”

The Jesus Movement in Armonk and throughout the world strives, in Christ Jesus, to keep the Jesus tradition alive through our acquaintance, familiarity, family ties and intimacy with the Lord. The tradition nourishes us in taking seriously the Deep Incarnation, that God lives in us now and we live in God now (the Fourth Dimension), the reminder of the paradox of the Cross. Granted, the image of Christ, crucified and risen, does not appeal to a bourgeouis mindset, old or young, the call to accept seriously the common humanity of all people, the need to be non-violent and tolerant of others. The African principle of Upkesha stresses that we cannot know ourselves completely so how can we think that we know others, especially our enemies. Finally, a sense of gratitude when we realize that everything, everything is a gift. Ergo, we all stand before God with empty hands. All of this is personified in the Person of Jesus of Nazareth, our Absolute Savior!

The Holy Spirit drives us (impels us) to sail into different seas.  Stasis (non-change) is a sign of pathology. Our church needs to respond to a changing world with a sense of playing our hand in Christ Jesus, confident that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is smarter than we are.  Our church has been praying for transformation ever since Blessed John XXIII convened Vatican II. Maybe, God hears our prayers all along, but we don’t like what God’s agenda is, so we try to restore the past. God has plans for us that we cannot imagine. Think of the law of unintended consequences identified in history and theology and other fields as well. What does God really have up the Divine Sleeve in the years ahead?  021013AD jfq   

                  

February 3, 2013AD

Jesus, Jeremiah Paul and Friends

             This weekend, we hear the conclusion of Jesus’ opening address in the synagogue of His hometown of Nazareth. Last weekend, He got off to a good start because He spoke of God’s compassion for all people.  He did all right until He pushed the envelope by making the statement that God cared about everyone, even those “others”, “those people” whom the Nazareth folks had written off.

All of a sudden, the mood changed.  The crowd turned on Jesus and planned to hurl Him off the cliff.  God spared Him.

Several key themes make their appearance here.  First, as we said last week, Catholics believe that God is always with us.  Still, there are special times in which we become conscious of God’s Presence in our lives.  St Luke stresses these moments through the words, today (semeron) and now (nuun).  For example, Jesus said “Today, this Scripture reading is fulfilled in your hearing.”  Do you believe Me or not?   

St Luke describes Jesus as the consummate Jewish prophet-martyr. Jesus speaks, then and now, what God wants to be said. On Good Friday, it brought the prophet-martyr to the Cross. We hear a hint of what is to come today when Jesus’ townfolks try to hurl Him over the cliff.  What Jesus said that turned the audience off was that the God of the Jews loved everyone desiring their salvation, even those outside Jewish parameters. Sometimes, prophets become martyrs when their audience don’t like what they hear. 

Jeremiah survived his career, just barely, but not all others have been as lucky. Jeremiah challenged his audience 1) YHWH’s tender love is infinite; 2) YHWH expected to have that tender love reciprocated by right relationships; 3) YHWH would have to somehow practice tough love to straighten out the situation.  4) YHWH had a version of what the Catholic Catechism today calls “structural sin”, viz., the evil that human institution can perpetrate against innocent victims. Just as individuals bear “the law of built-in punishment” for their actions, a similar kind of “karma must govern institutions”.  Therefore, Jeremiah made his famous statement, that people should not feel false confidence by saying “This is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord.”  Behave as God wants you to behave.  Not all his hearers agreed with him.  

This week, we commemorated the 64th anniversary of the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi, who tried to bring non-violent change to India.  So many of his one liners still speak poignantly 60 years later. 1) “As humans, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the false myth of the atomic age – as in the ability to remake ourselves.”  2) Cooperation, not competition, is the law of the human species ultimately”.  3)  “Be the change you want in the world.”

Please God, the line of prophetic figures might continue today when people like Jim Wallis come along.  His book, Rediscovering Values – on Wall Street, on Main Street and Your Street, ( NY: Howard Books, 2010), which our parish community read in Lent, 2010AD) has something about prophecy about it.  It might deserve another read.  It is in the tradition of God’s Politics and The Great Awakening.  It contains many insights about a Judaeo-Christian response to the social, economic and political scene in today’s America.  It is recognized as a masterpiece by most mainline churches, though not all TV networks.

In a prophetic fashion, he stresses three moral lessons that men and women of good will from whatever religious background might observe. 1) Relationships matter (on a big and a small scale).  Einstein’s theory is applicable universally.  Nothing can be understood in its entirety unless it is understood in relationship to everything else. The notion of autonomy is a fallacy of Western intellectual hubris. 2) Social sins also matter. (Here Wallis speaks in the train of thought that began as early as Jeremiah, whence our first reading this weekend through to Popes John Paul and Benedict. 3) Our own immediate good is ultimately tied up with the common good.     

He speaks of a “seventh generation mindset”, making decisions today with a view that they will effect our children seven generations hence.  Our parish community has discussed this very concept on several occasions.

An interesting feature of the book is the use of sidebars which stress salient points in the text that deserve special emphasis.  One may not agree with them all, but they are conversation starters for with civil people. Several examples bring points home more easily.  “The God of the Bible seems not to mind prosperity -- if it is shared.” (p. 82) “Ultimately, the common good is our own good, and the best thing for all of us is the right thing for the least of us.” (p. 94) “What is good for our neighbor is not just the right thing but is usually a good thing for us as well. (p. 131)   “A budget is a moral document.” (p.171)

Finally, he concludes with 20 moral exercises that individuals, families, groups, communities can reflect upon together in a clarification of values. For example, (# 16 Watch and Pray):  Exercise the regular habit (and teach your children to do it too) of communicating with political representatives.

We conclude this month of new beginnings, as we reflect on prophets, then and now, Jeremiah, Gandhi, John XXIII, John Paul, Benedict, Jim Wallis, and Jesus Himself. Maybe, pick up and/or re-read a copy of Rediscovering Values as another way to make New Year’s resolutions. 020313AD jfq