Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Telephone Poles and Other Poems © 1961 by John Updike. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House Inc.

The Blessed Virgin Mary has many beautiful titles. St. Mary at Easter Tide is my very own. Scripture is very silent about the Mother of Jesus after the Resurrection. We know that she is present in the upper room when the Spirit comes upon the Apostles at Pentecost. At the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel tells her nothing about her future, except that her Son will be destined for the rise and fall of many in Israel. Mary’s first post-partum visit to the Temple portends a life of sorrow. According to Simeon, a sword will pierce her heart seven times. This most beloved young woman is left to ponder these things in her heart.

There are many good years together, until He leaves to find his cousin John at the Jordan. Then things go from bad to worse. Her friends and neighbors toss Him out of Nazareth. Jesus dies a horrible death; His mission a failure; her maiden’s vision becomes a bitter delusion. In his final words, Jesus entrusts St. John and Mary to each other – a final testament that seals the depth of grief.

There is no record of how Mary hears the news; of how she reacts. Who tells her? Jesus Himself? It seems that this duty falls to us. The noonday prayer echoes a wonderful joy – Regina Coeli laetare alleluia! Queen of Heaven Rejoice alleluia! … Resurexit sicut dixit! He has risen as He said (he would)!

Even though the words echo from my childhood at “Mid-century,” how well I remember and still experience the delightful childish skip in our hearts and step that we shared at Easter Tide. These are not the inspired words of the Gospel in the Hail Mary, nor the briefest of summaries of the Mystery of the Incarnation in the Angelus. For a prayer, Regina Coeli seems strangely out of character. There is no formality, no reserve. In our joy, we proclaim the Good News to the Mother of the Word Incarnate. God has turned our mourning into joy, but how could we ever begin to fathom what his news meant to the woman whose faith gave birth to us all?

For those who love Christ, remembering His passion and death is always an occasion for sorrow. However, such human acts as compassion are never simple. The pain of the impending loss of a loved one – anticipatory grief – can be worse than the actual loss. In fact, when death finally comes, we often feel guilty about experiencing relief. My friend Jim lost his father when Jim was in eighth grade, after a protracted two year battle with cancer. When we talked about it a couple of years later, Jim confessed that he still felt more relief than grief.

Of course, we couldn’t experience compassion without a close identification with the other. This becomes very complex in the person of the Christ. He did not fight his enemies. He did not curse. He did not condemn. He forgave. He blessed. This human-divine reaction to an injustice that is almost as inconceivable as it is enraging provides no adequate psychological outlet for the post-Freudian soul. How can we proclaim and fight for justice if God Himself did not? Tragically, the consolation in the Gospels and the wider testimony of the New Testament – that no evil, no matter how overwhelming, how senseless, can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus – escapes us. (Romans 8:38-39) Instead of experiencing this Passover of the Lord – the Blood of the Lamb on the door posts and lintel of our home that spares us from the Angel of Death – we run out into that night of despair by focusing on the ways we have been complicit with that evil.

When we hear that we are saved from a life defined by suffering and pain without meaning and no exit, we can think that we were saved from something we deserved. “Evil as you are … who among you would give his son a scorpion when he asked for bread?” (Loosely taken from Luke 11: 11-13) is a stark reminder to the disciples that Jesus could not conceive of His Father wanting anything less than we ourselves would want for our own children. Just as our children are all too much in our own image and likeness, we are in God’s. The teaching and life of Jesus in this regard is at odds with the vengeful patriarch of the Old Testament who punishes and chastises. (Lest we be tempted to think that Jews hold or held onto to this concept, we should remember that Jesus was not the only Jew who presented a view that had grown beyond it. The are interesting similarities between Jesus and his contemporary, Hillel the Elder.)

Enter God’s protectors:

“Ah hah! Now he has said it on his very own blog! Your own words condemn you. God doesn’t care about sin, you say. There are no consequences, no punishment, no reckoning. You present a God who is merciful, but not just. If Christ did not die for our sins how was the Father appeased? How is he the sacrificial victim?”

The Blogger Offers a Parable:

Once upon a time, there was a wonderful teacher who healed by word and touch and saved people from all kinds of physical, psychological, and social maladies. He made the mistake of speaking truth to power and telling religious and civil leaders that outward observance only made them into whitened sepulchers. They waited for the right time and got a close friend to betray him, and they took him off to Guantanamo, and then transferred him to a third world country, where he was tortured to death by specialists trained at the School of the Americas. Like so many thousands of his time, he was supposed to have become one of the disappeared. Fortunately for us, He didn’t stay dead and he didn’t stay hidden. Strangely though, he left again, said he would return, and in the meantime the were supposed to wait for a Holy Wind to make everything clear.

Yet His disciples wanted an explanation. If He was truly God’s Son, how could this have happened to Him? If he really was the Messiah, how could he have failed? He was just as maddening as those parables he used to tell them. Where are the answers? It was like one of those Eastern religions. “The question is the answer.” And that other junk the Beatles found in India, under the influence of something other than the great American mystic, Jack Daniels.

God finally sent them someone they could understand – sort of. “Like, well, yuh see, dude- God don’t need sacafices, ” The voice of the aging surfer was hoarse with too many years of funny cigarettes, his faced etched with too much salt and sun, his eyes opaque while he waited for the waves to rise. “It’s like, all ’bout love. All God wants is love. The torture and sufferin’ part, that’s what we do to us and each other. Man, like the Teacher Dude, the Guru Guy, like he couldn’t hang out forever. ‘Cause like, you guys were all brain dead on a kind a gnarly bad trip. Like he let it happen. The tube was closin’. Like there was just the wipeout; like really bad at Mavericks. He did it to show y’all that if yah stay in the water and go for it, sooner or later it’s gonna happen if ya stay true to the search for the Big One.  Dude, got some extra change? My old lady’s on me for the rent, like ya know.”

The words of reproach, as the seeker turned away, were familiar. “That sucks man. What a waste. I came to hear some guy explain some @$#%?! blogger’s crappy parable. I could’a been watchin’ the game on my big screen.” So he zipped up his jacket and marched straight home, out of the saving mystery, ignoring the glory of the sky, the dazzle of the water, and the carpet of color and bird song all about him.

Holy Week on the California coast, from Pt. Mendocino above San Francisco to the Mexican border, is a place of spring time sun, deep blue skies, and blossoming flowers. At the Equinox, the ocean loses its grayness and picks up more yellows, subtle greens and muted turquoise. The salt air becomes more pungent, as the kelp forests put on new growth to accommodate the explosion of trillions upon trillions of sea plants and animals. The succulents and coastal chaparral burst out in purples, roses, and pinks, peppered with the bright yellow of sour grass blossoms. The Santa Cruz redwoods seem to stretch, fresh washed from the winter storms, looking forward to the morning and evening fog that gives them sustenance and flourishes their layered ecosystems that change every 20 feet upward, dancing in the dappled ray filled sunlight of the forest canopy.

It is a time of happiness and rejoicing. Sunglasses come out, flip flops slap the pavement, and shorts replace the winter denim, even though the day time temperatures are barely in the mid-60s. It is the coming of First Summer, before the Fog Season that begins on Memorial Day in late May and ends on Labor Day in early September. On the Central Coast, we host our first guests during Spring Break and settle in to enjoy the peaceful days before our June to August onslaught of shivering, fog-bitten visitors and their much welcome tourist dollars.

Aren’t we supposed to be down or at least subdued during Holy Week? How can we rejoice Saturday evening and Easter if we have somehow not rationed that joy? We should at least lament our unfaithful adherence to our Lenten resolutions – right? Christ’s terrible torture and death stayed the arm of a rightfully vengeful Father, so shouldn’t we show at least some token of fear for not being swept out into hellfire? If God’s Spring and Passover are any indication, maybe Cotton Mather had it wrong. Maybe we are a lot more than “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”

If we, and all creation, are the overflowing love of the Trinity, are we the products of a God who can somehow demand the death of the the Eternal Word Made Flesh, God’s very immediate recognition and instantaneous self-acceptance, who shares the eternal dance of the Three in the joy of the Holy Spirit? Yes, much of the language that shapes our souls is a reflection of the fallen world where the Word “pitched his tent” – the actual Greek expression we use in the Creed. Yes, Jesus died and saved us in his rising from the dead. Yes, Jesus is the Lamb of God. Yes, we are the reason, we are his motivation for sharing our lives and submitting to the capital punishment of being tortured to death by an occupying superpower. Perhaps, the gravest sin of pride is to even think that we were the cause. Yes, God as Love couldn’t bear to leave us to the fate of hatred, despair, and alienation.

Why should people celebrating their rescue be glum, depressed, lost in narcissistic guilt? Why is this night different from any other night? It is the Passover of the Lord. If we are not washed in joyful Spring, can we share the Passover meal? Can we have any part in Him?

Like every newborn, he has come from very far.
His eyes are closed against the brilliance of the star.
So glorious is he, he goes to this immoderate length
To show his love for us, discarding power and strength.
Girded for war, humility his mighty dress.
He moves into the battle wholly weaponless.
                                                     – Madeleine L’Engle

This lovely poem was quoted in our local diocesan newspaper, Observer, in the January 2008 edition. It seemed perfect for the feast of the Epiphany. For the entire article, see http://www.dioceseofmonterey.org/observer/2008/jan/newborn.htm. 

The Feast of the Holy Family falls on the Sunday between Christmas and the Feast of Mary, Mother of God, January 1. The readings for the day focus on qualities that make for happy relationships between people, including members of families.

Sometimes when we focus on the Holy Family as the model for family life, we get bogged down with the perfection of Jesus and Mary, the holiness of St. Joseph, and the impossibility of actually living a perfect life ourselves. Then we write off their example as just another bit of pious nonsense that has nothing to do with the reality of crying babies, mortgage payments, difficult bosses, and all the other stresses that come with marriage and family. For those who are not married and/or don’t have children, the feast can seem irrelevant or even be a painful reminder of unfulfilled hopes.

So, I find myself wondering, what is it that makes a family, any family, “holy?” It seems to me that if the Holy Family is to be a model for the rest of us, that must mean that we are also to be “holy.” What made them holy?

Being holy does not mean having no problems or challenges in life. Holiness, it seems to me, lies in how we handle those difficulties that come in every life. After all, without the problems, difficulties, challenges, “crashes,” struggles, “hitting bottom,” or whatever we call it, we would never need to turn to God for help. We could just continue blithely on our way, assuming everything is fine, and in the best American cultural sense, be “rugged individuals” who can make it on our own.

But that isn’t what the spiritual life and journey are all about. Our spiritual lives are about learning from our mistakes, growing in wisdom, reaching out for help and community, being purified in God’s love, so that we can run joyfully to the Lord at the end of our days.

When we look at the lives of Mary, Joseph and Jesus, we find that they were filled from the beginning with many of the same challenges faced by other families. An unexpected, unplanned pregnancy, one outside the marriage; governmental demands that upset a family’s plans; taxes; inconvenient timing of a birth; the necessity to leave home and become refugees in another land; a child who feels grown up enough to go off on his own at the age of 12 without telling anyone where he’ll be; the death of a spouse or parent; a child whose life choices and career don’t meet the expectations of the family or community; the untimely death of a child. All these things were part of the lives of the Holy Family, as they can be part of our own lives. What made Joseph, Mary and Jesus holy as a family was their response to these challenges and their loving support of each other through them.

Joseph’s first recorded response to Mary’s pregnancy was compassion. He did not want to expose her to the penalties of the Law. He loved her and wanted her to be safe. When the angel told him in a dream that Mary had not been unfaithful, he accepted her as his wife. He made a home with her and supported her through the pregnancy and birth. He took her and Jesus to safety in Egypt, again following the instructions received in a dream. When it was safe, he took them back to their home in Nazareth cared for them and made a home for them.

Both Mary and Joseph must have “pondered” many things along the way. Many things did not make sense at the time. They really didn’t know what God had in mind. Jesus was a normal child. He had to learn how to be a man and how to respect and love the people around him. Mary and Joseph taught him by their actions as well as their words, just as we teach our children more by the way we act than by our words. It’s no surprise that people in families tend to share many gestures, facial expressions, attitudes and beliefs. The Holy Family would not have been different in this. So the characteristics we seen recorded about Jesus were probably in great part those he learned from his parents.

So in this week following the Feast of the Holy Family, as we enter a new calendar year tomorrow, I hope we can take their example as one that exemplifies the kind of relationships that result from heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, and love (Col 3:12-17). These qualities are not ones that stem primarily from feelings, but rather they are attitudes and behavioral choices to which we are all called.

December 27 is the feast day of the beloved disciple, St. John the Evangelist. St. John was one of the 12 apostles. He and his brother James had been followers of St. John the Baptist. They were fisherman who worked with their father Zebedee. Sts. Peter, James, and John have a special place in the Gospels. They are called away by Jesus to hear and witness things in which the other disciples are not included. St. John is presented in the Gospels as a young man and a very close friend of Jesus – the disciple whom he loved. As Jesus was dying on the cross and all of the other male disciples had fled, St. John was there with Mary the mother of Jesus and some other women. Jesus, in his dying words, entrusts His mother to St. John.

Tradition names St. John as the author of the fourth Gospel, the Book of Revelation and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd letters of John. Some scripture scholars in the last quarter of the 20th century have challenged this traditional notion of St. John as the common author of these works. Some scholars refer to the “Johannine school “- a group or a community of students of St. John - as the source of these works.

The Gospel According to John is unique. It bears very little resemblance to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three Gospels are called the Synoptic Gospels because you can line them up side by side in three columns and see that they are parallel documents, with elements from the same source and a great similarity of phrasing and story content. The Gospel According to John sees signs and wonders in the life of Jesus and has layer upon layer of symbolism and meaning. Yes, the basic story line is the same, but there are soaring heights of poetry in sections such as the Prologue – introduction – and the prayers of Jesus after the Last Supper.

Fr. Raymond Brown – one of the great scripture scholars of the 20th century – sees a weaving of the history of the Johannine community of believers within the Gospel. The conflicts and tensions of the early church are mirrored in those of the characters in the Gospel story. This is especially true of the conflict between Jews over the message and meaning of Jesus. As a book written by Jews for Jews, the Fourth Gospel has many very negative things to say about Jews. As family fights go, this one was no exception in its bitterness. Eventually, Jewish authorities saw quite correctly that the followers of Jesus, who proclaimed his resurrection from the dead, had stepped beyond the boundaries of the Jewish religion that they were attempting to preserve after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans and the obliteration of Jewish life in Palestine.

The Second Vatican Council, in its decree on Non-Christian religions – Nostra Aetate, In Our Age – makes it clear that using this and other material to justify attacks on Jews or anti-Jewish hatred is historically incorrect and cannot be justified morally. After the destruction of the Temple and Israel in 70 AD, Rabbinic Judaism came to the fore and those groups that would later be called Christian began to develop a separate identity.

The other theme in the Fourth Gospel is the focus on the Incarnation - that Jesus is both human and divine. There was a very strong movement among some early followers of the Jesus movement who looked on him as a god masquerading as a human. Spirit would never truly be one with something so abject and base as matter in their way of thinking. Some of these early followers saw creation as a cosmic mistake by an errant creator figure. In broad terms, we can call this movement Gnosticism, based on the Greek word for knowledge. This true and secret knowledge came to the elect and enlightened them to the fact that they were spirits trapped in bodies. Granted, this is an over simplification of a very complex topic, but it is important to note that the Fourth Gospel uses many of the themes of light and darkness, of the mystical living word of God in Jesus, to convey a message and understanding of the meaning of Christ which enobled creation and our very humanity.

The letters of John, 1, 2, and 3 are exhortations to the followers of Jesus to live in love, peace, and mutual respect. Again, the theme of the human and divine reality of Jesus comes through loud and clear. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.”(I John 1)

Scholars differ on whether the Apocalypse (Revelation) of John was produced by the author or authors of the Fourth Gospel. We can spend years reviewing the direct and hidden meaning of the Book of Revelation but that will have to be the topic of several other posts.

It is hard to directly link the beloved disciple of the Gospels, the man to whom Jesus entrusted his mother, to the writings which bear his name. However, the voice of tradition cannot be discounted either in the case of such a favored and remarkable young man.

Christmas carols and secular “holiday” songs start assaulting us the day after Thanksgiving. The constant barrage on the radio, in elevators, shopping malls, and fast food outlets is a far cry from the caroling of my childhood and the joy my neighbors gave me and my family the other night as they came singing to our door.

For refreshment take three Palestrina and call me from heaven:

Here are three selections from Palestrina’s Christmas Mass – O Magnum Mysterium – O Great Mystery

The Introit or Opening: Puer Natus Nobis – A Child is Born to Us, A Son is Given to Us

The Kyrie Eleison – Lord Have Mercy – Penitential Rite

The Communion Motet – O Magnum Mysterium – O Great Mystery

As beautiful and soaring as the polyphony of the Kyrie and Communion motet are, it is important to remember that traditionalists at the time saw it as a vulgar deviation from the purity of the plain chant of the Introit.

The coming of God in the Flesh at Christmas and in the arts is ever new and startling.

(Christmas Eve: Goa, India)

There can be a strange misconception that Christmas ends on the morning of December 26. Many people take down Christmas trees and other decorations and gear up for a secular New Year of parades and American football games. It does make some sense, because many people have been exhausted going to “Christmas” parties since early December, eating and drinking a lot, while chasing through the shopping malls.

Christmastide, however, from December 25 to January 6 – the former feast of the Epiphany when the Three Wise Men came to visit the infant Jesus – is actually the time for celebrating. In many Latin countries, gifts are exchanged on the Epiphany in honor of the gifts of the Magi.

The white fish recipes that are part of gourmet menus for Christmas Eve are actually an echo of a time when December 24 was the last day of Advent – a time of preparation. Christmas Eve was a day of fasting and abstaining from meat.

There is still time to reclaim the joys of Christmastide. Relaxation, reflection, some daily exercise and a slower pace – just spending time with each other - is the acceptance of the Gift beyond comprehension – Emmanuel – God with us.

“In the twenty-fourth day of the month of December;
In the year five-thousand one-hundred and ninety-nine from the creation of the world, when in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;
In the year two-thousand nine-hundred and fifty-seven from the flood;
In the year two-thousand and fifty-one from the birth of Abraham;
In the year one-thousand five-hundred and ten from the going forth of the people of Israel out of Egypt under Moses;
In the year one-thousand and thirty-two from the anointing of David as king;
In the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
In the one-hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
In the year seven-hundred and fifty-two from the foundation of the city of Rome;
In the forty-second year of the reign of the Emperor Octavian Augustus;
In the sixth age of the world, while the whole earth was at peace —
JESUS CHRIST
eternal God and the Son of the eternal Father, willing to consecrate the world by His gracious coming, having been conceived of the Holy Ghost, and the nine months of His conception being now accomplished, (all kneel) was born in Bethlehem of Judah of the Virgin Mary, made man. The birthday of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the flesh.”

A reading from the Roman Martyrology for December 24.

This proclamation is often sung or recited when placing the Christ child in the manger in the home.

Peace to all in the great joy that God is in our midst.