Pussy willows blossoming,

Monarchs dancing in the sky,

Sour grass and wild radish blossoms

Punctuating fields of wildly growing grass,

January on California’s Central Coast.

Praise and Thanks to Thee,

Great Lord of all Creation!

President Barack Obama - January 20, 2009

Today we witnessed the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama, 44th president of the United States of America. It has been a day of great emotion. I keep finding myself with tears streaming down my face at the wonder and beauty of it all. Born in the last months of Harry Truman’s presidency, I remember the struggles of the 60s for basic human rights for all Americans. (I was too young to be aware of them in the 50s, but I know the struggle didn’t begin when I became old enough to notice it.) I remember the assasinations. I remember the triumphs as well and the courage of men, women and children who kept pushing and moving all of us forward into a new social reality.

As the inauguration ceremony began and ended with prayer, the Litany of the Saints began to sing through my mind and heart. It has continued all through this day.

“Holy Mother of God, pray for us.  St. Michael, pray for us. … St. Stephen, pray for us … St. Augustine … St. Athanasius … St. Martin … St. Catherine … St. Teresa … ” And names of those not canonized but who struggled, suffered and sometimes died to make today possible joined the litany. Martin, Medgar, Malcolm, Ralph, Coretta, Dorothy, and so many, many more, … pray for us. Family members who worked for a better world and did their best to be a light for all of us, … pray for us. “All holy men and women, pray for us.” 

Today is only the beginning. There are tremendous challenges ahead for the United States and for the world. Things may well get worse before they get better.  The economic and social problems we face will be overwhelming unless we remember to pray and trust God to help us resolve them. We’ll have to work together. We’ll all have to give  some things in order to receive others. But we are all children of God, all loved equally by a God who is absolutely crazy about us. And a great cloud of witnesses is hovering around us, praying for us and believing that the kingdom has begun, redemption is here, and with God’s help we can begin to live it here and now.

Congratulations, President Obama. We’ll be praying for you and your family. We thank you for your courage. We thank you for the hope you bring to so many. We look forward to bringing hopes and dreams of a better future into reality.

And so the prayer continues cycling through my heart again and again: “Holy Mother of God, pray for us … St. Michael, pray for us …. St. Joseph … St. Peter and St. Paul … St. Mary Magdalene …  St. Martin de Porres … St. Peter Claver … All holy men and women, pray for us.”

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

This post was written January 15 by Rafael Pozos for www.21stcenturycatholic.net. It is reprinted here with permission on the national holiday in honor of Dr. King’s birthday.

Today would have been the 80^th birthday of one of the greatest Americans and also one of its own great popular theologians, the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This day caused me to reflect on this great American prophet and the impact he had on all of our society – including American Roman Catholics. It’s true he was a Baptist Minister, and a consummate rhetorician – all very valuable when one is a reform Christian clergyman – but what he had to say, and said very consistently are things that very much agree with current Roman Catholic social teaching and they both draw from the common ancient Christian tradition they share.

In terms of the place of the speech in American history, it came during the famous march on Washington DC in the summer of 1963 – only months prior to the Kennedy assassination and right around the same time as the Second Vatican Council was called. Prior to that, King had successfully lead the effort to desegregate the busses in Montgomery Alabama, was one of the founding members of Southern Christian Leadership Conference and wrote a book about the Montgomery experience entitled Stride Twoard Freedom:the Montgomery Story among other things. Just prior to the march on Washington, he had been incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama, where he had been leading a peaceful protest which had been met by attack dogs and fire hoses – all in plain view of the media – including the newly emerging television and what would become later the 24 hour news cycle.

Just as powerful as the images from Birmingham were in terms of starting to get the American public on the side of civil rights, was the setting for this key speech. It took place on the steps of the Lincoln memorial, a massive temple style monument to President Abraham Lincoln, who issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which was the first federal step to attempt to free the slaves in the US. In front of the statue of Lincoln, resplendent with his writing in the inner sanctum of the monument was where King gave the speech – which is really in a lot of ways more sermon than speech.

In this sermon, he exhorts us, using references from Amos and Isaiah to make his point. Starting with a reference to the Emancipation Proclamation, he mentions that despite it, black people still were not free 100 years later. Comparing the promise of liberty as articulated in our Constitution to a bad check, with insufficient funds, he then fundamentally rejects it in very eloquent and prophetic language which he closes with a reference from the book of Amos “….we will not be satisfied until ‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream’(Amos 5:24)”

While King was quoting this in English, the Hebrew of this passage from Amos is far more powerful “Let judgment roll like water, and uprightness like a wadi” the context of this passage is the doom of Israel. A wadi is a flood valley which is dry most of the year. However when it rains, massive flash floods occur in the valley and take out everything in sight – often with no warning. A professor of mine, Fr. John Endres SJ, who studied in Israel said that he would hear of cases where somebody had been hiking in a wadi and the flood came on so fast and so massive that they couldn’t get away and drowned, with the body being found days later washed up somewhere. While King may not have seen this passage in Hebrew nor totally known how destructive a wadi flood can be, he would have  known that this passage came during a doom sequence for Israel… an ominous oracle for those who would oppose the civil rights movement.

After this, he transitions to the great dream he has, which nearly every American student is exposed to at least once in school. Deeply rooted in not just Christian tradition but also in our Declaration of Independence, which he calls our “creed”, it is a dream of equality and equal opportunity for all. This is such a radical shift that he quotes Isaiah 40:4-5 in making his point. “ I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.” He said, and followed it up by quoting lyrics of our first national anthem, saying “let freedom ring” In a series of exhortations starting with “let freedom ring”, he goes all over the country from north to west.

Even more powerfully, he continues to call for freedom in former slave territory in the southeastern United States. “But not only that: Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia” he starts. Stone Mountain is significant because it was the main rallying point for the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacy terror organization that is still active today which also conducts terror operations against Catholics. This on top of calling for freedom in Tennessee and Mississippi, one of the worst states for segregation further reinforces his point.  He then closes the sermon by looking forward to the day when everybody can join together and sing free at last. A bold and prophetic statement of faith in America and in God’s preference for the poor and disadvantaged – all things that most believers of all confessions of Christianity can get behind.

Sadly, King was gunned down by James Earl Ray in 1968 – a very bad year for the United States. Before the assassination, he said in a speech organizing sanitation workers in Memphis, TN:

Well I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter to me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And’ He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not any fearing man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

It ended up being prophetic because the next day, he was dead. He was one of many martyrs for equality and for Christianity in general. He had a vision, a dream, and he paid the ultimate price for it just as our Catholic Latin American martyrs including Archbishop Oscar Romero and Fr. Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. did for similar ideals.

Last November, part of Dr. King’s dream came true when for some the unthinkable happened. Barack Hussein Obama, a black Christian whose name sounds Muslim, was elected President of the United States. On Tuesday, the day after the United States observes the federal holiday commemorating his birth, he will be sworn in as the 44^th President of the United States. Only in a country inspired by Dr King’s dream could something like this happen. In his policies, Obama will continue to advance King’s ideals. All of which we as American Catholic Christians we can agree on and support so we can all sing in the end “Free at last!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbUtL_0vAJk - You Tube’s recording of the full version of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech.

Megan McKenna's Nana

Megan McKenna is a theologian and storyteller who travels the world spreading the good news about God’s love and challenge to us to live out that love. Often her stories are from other cultures or religious traditions and help clarify the lessons of our own Christian faith tradition.

In Playing Poker with Nana, Megan reaches into her own life to share with us the wisdom of her grandmother, her Nana. I received a copy of the book from Megan as an Epiphany gift, and I am savoring it. Part of me wants to race from chapter to chapter (each 2-3 pages long) and devour it in a sitting. The older, and I hope wiser, part of me advises reading it one chapter, one story at a time and pondering the advice and insights her Nana shared with Megan. So most days I read just one at bedtime and let it simmer in my heart and the back of my mind through the next day.

Yesterday I read Chapter 10, “History.” Megan had quoted Martin Buber to her Nana one day in conversation. “God is always speaking, but never repeats himself, like sunrises and sunsets.” Her Nana reflected on the quote and then responded with her own thought, “It’s true. God speaks in everything, people, relationships, even all that dies, but sometimes, I’ve learned, God speaks very, very, very slowly …”

Before she finishes speaking, Nana has explained in beautiful depth her thoughts on the matter, on the very slow way God has of speaking to us most of the time.

The chapter is only three paragraphs long, but it stuck with me all day today. At Mass, the Psalm response was, “If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.” It really struck me that Nana’s words went right along with the admonition of the psalmist. Sometimes we hear God’s voice in bursts of insight or in the wonder of a particularly beautiful sunrise or sunset. But more often we hear God’s voice in the quiet reflective times, when we seek to understand what has been happening in our lives and those of people around us. Nana advises Megan and all of us that sometimes we just have to stake our lives on the hope that, hard as life is, it’s already been redeemed, so we just have to “believe and hang in there.”

As I was walking home past a calm, nearly waveless ocean on a beautiful sunny day, I found words for what I was feeling in my heart and trying to formulate in my mind. Often we as Americans have a sense that only the “hard-nosed” businessperson can be a success. Only the practical, matter-of-fact person will accomplish his or her goals. Only those who set goals and focus single-mindedly on reaching them will find security. Being “soft-hearted” is not a quality that we value very much. It tends to get lumped in with being “simple-minded” or a “bleeding heart liberal” in the minds of many. Yet that is exactly what it seems God is calling us to be. The opposite of a hard heart is a soft one. One that knows that God speaks very, very, very slowly and we might not see the whole picture just now, or be hearing the whole story.

Thank you, Megan, for sharing your Nana’s wisdom with us. May her words help us to keep hanging on, listening for God’s voice, with soft hearts ready to love and be loved.

(Playing Poker with Nana is distributed in the US by Dufour Editions. I highly recommend it.)

St. Hilary of Poitiers

St. Hilary of Poitiers was born to a non-Christian family in the early years of the 4th century. He was from a noble family and received an excellent education. On his own, he began a search to understand the fundamental questions of existence, including the source of the created world and his place within it. He found answers to his some of his questions in the story of Moses and the burning bush, with God’s self identification as “I am Who I Am.” Answers to the questions about God’s plan and purpose for people were found in the Gospels, particularly the Prologue of the Gospel of John.

Through his studies of Scripture, he became a Christian. By this time he was also married and had a daughter. He was elected bishop of Poitiers around 350 AD. This was a time in which the Arians were quite influential, having even converted the emperor, Constantius. Hilary refused to join in the condemnation of Athanasius and was sent into exile in the East. While in exile, he continued to speak out against Arianism and wrote many scholarly works in defense of traditional Christian understandings of the Trinity and other points of Christian faith.

Eventually, Hilary was allowed to return to Poitiers. He’d been causing too much trouble with his teaching and preaching in the East! When he returned home, he continued to teach and preach. He also began writing hymns. Although hymns had been a part of Christian life since its earliest years, his are the first we have with a known author.

Hilary died in Poitiers in 367 or 368. He was named Doctor of the Church in 1851 by Pope Pius IX.    

A quote from his work on the Trinity:

“For one to attempt to speak of God in terms more precise than he himself has used: — to undertake such a thing is to embark upon the boundless, to dare the incomprehensible. He fixed the names of His nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Whatever is sought over and above this is beyond the meaning of words, beyond the limits of perception, beyond the embrace of understanding.”

Celebrating Orthodox Christmas - Photo by Muhammed Muheisen, AP

January 7 is the Feast of Christmas in much of the Orthodox world. We don’t hear much about it in our Western cultures, in part because it is not the big commercial event that it has become in North America and Europe. Nevertheless, it is a time for celebration and remembering that we share the roots of our faith with these ancient communities as well.

For more information about Orthodox history and beliefs, as well as why our calendars don’t match, there’s a good explanation on the BBC’s website. The quick answer is that most Orthodox communities still follow the Julian calendar for certain feasts. That calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, so Christmas falls on January 7. 

Western Christians who’d like to celebrate in solidarity with Orthodox Christians might want to try a dish typical of Christmas celebrations in the Eastern Church. Some interesting ones can be found at: http://www.prosphora.org/page17.html.

So, as the festival arrives, we wish you a Blessed Christmas, with time for family and friends to gather and enjoy the gift of love. We also pray for peace – in our entire world, and especially in those areas torn by war. May the coming of the Prince of Peace bring hope and courage to all of us, to work together and make it real in our day.

Hieronymus Bosch - The Adoration of the Magi

The Feast of Epiphany is traditionally celebrated January 6 in the Western Church. Recently, we have begun to celebrate it as a community on the first Sunday of January after the Feast of Mary, Mother of God (January 1st).

Epiphany, from the Greek “to manifest” or “to show forth,” is a celebration of God’s presence bursting forth and becoming visible in human lives. For Western Christians, the focus has been on the visit of the Magi, the wise ones, who followed a star from the East to find the newborn king. In this story, we see God’s presence being revealed to non-Jews, to Gentiles. For Eastern Christians, the focus is on the Baptism of Jesus, when Jesus became identified as the Son of God. The feast is sometimes known as Theophany in the East. (In the Western Church, we too celebrate the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, but on the Sunday after we celebrate Epiphany.)

In many Christian countries, especially those bordering the Mediterranean and in former colonies of those countries, gifts are exchanged at the Feast of Epiphany. This is because the Magi brought gifts to the child Jesus – gold, incense (frankincense) and myrrh. The gifts named in Matthew’s gospel can be seen as symbolic of the roles Jesus would play in salvation history – as king, deity, and human victim/sacrifice – as a result of the incarnation. Songs such as “The First Nowell” and “We Three Kings” remind us of the story and tell it again to our children.

During this season of Epiphany, may our eyes be open to see God’s presence in the people around us – the children, the babies, the old ones, the ones on the street, the ones at our work or in our homes. God is forever peeking around corners, knocking on doors in our hearts, smiling out of flowers, singing through the voices of birds and trying in every way possible to shine forth into our lives. May we be gifted to see and to smile in return.