Angels We Have Heard – On to a New Year
In the rush of getting back to “normal” life after the Christmas rush, here’s a reminder of the message that sends us into the new year filled with hope and joy. Our God has come to save us.
Read MoreSynod on the Family: A Brief Summary
The Synod on the Family in October 2015 had as its focus “the vocation and mission of the family in the Church and the modern world.” Meeting in Rome for a second time in as many years, and following consultation with members of the Church around the world, Bishops came together to consider the challenges facing families and make recommendations for ways to help couples and families live out their vocations.
The final report to the Pope of the Synod on the Family calls for all Catholics to reach out to couples and families and to attempt to understand and help with their needs and struggles. The church’s teaching on the importance and lifelong nature of marriage between a man and a woman has not changed. However, when people are divorced and remarried or living together without being married, the Catholic community should not reject or abandon them or their children. Catholics who are divorced and remarried outside the Church are not supposed to receive communion. However, the Synod has said that people in this situation should work closely with their pastors to examine their conscience and their relationship with God. In other words, priests and all Catholics should look on these situations from a pastoral standpoint. How do we walk with them? How do we encourage them?
The Synod recommended that divorced and remarried Catholics should be included in the life of the Church as much as possible, even as lectors, catechists, and godparents. Homosexuals should also be welcomed and treated with equal respect and dignity. Pope Francis encouraged the synod to take this approach which focused more on the person’s own conscience as opposed to focusing exclusively on Church law. What is often hard for us to understand is how it is that someone can be doing something that is objectively wrong,like living together without being married, and yet there may be internal reasons of conscience that keep them in this situation. For example, the couple involved may have come from homes in which there was violence or great unhappiness and the thought of marriage for them means repeating what they suffered as children. Sometimes they see marriage as “only a piece of paper.” Yet these couples often show a great deal of commitment and unconditional love for each other and create a happy home.
Some critics are upset that the synod did not condemn people who are not following the rules, arguing that if you are not harsh with them you are approving the wrong things that they are doing. The pastoral approach recommended by the Pope and long tradition of the Church upholds the ideal of how we should live while helping people to see what God is doing in their lives and where He is leading them.
Two reports provide some highlights:
English translation of the final report: Synod 15 – Final Report of the Synod of Bishops to the Holy Father Francis – 24.10.2015
Read MoreCatholic Social Teaching and the Kingdom
Pope St. John Paul II
On April 2, 2004 a special commission delivered a report on justice and peace to Pope St. John Paul II which he had requested. Known as the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, it is an overview of the teaching of the Church on justice and peace in society over the centuries.
This study reviews the importance of justice and peace in the Hebrew Scriptures and their fulfillment in Christ. Our salvation is not primarily an individual matter since we are called to God’s love and mercy in the community — the assembly of believers — the church. Our baptism plunges us into the death and resurrection of Christ and brings us to live in the very life of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We are part and parcel of the Mystical Body of Christ. We are called to be the compassion of God.
Justice and peace are signs that the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus preached has become a reality. Jesus devoted his entire ministry to this one project, which Jesus as the Anointed One, the Christ as Divine Word continues to proclaim and to make real in the power of the Holy Spirit. The work of peace and justice began with the prophets and becomes the main work of Jesus on earth that leads to the supreme sacrifice of the His death and resurrection. Jesus’ mission of peace and justice was a very dangerous one during the Roman occupation of Israel and it led to his being tortured to death on a cross — a punishment reserved for terrorists and rebels.
The Gospel and the work of the Holy Trinity is not a political ideology. Justice and peace happen as the Creation unfolds every day in the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus criticized and condemned the religious people of His day and their leaders for missing this obvious truth. From the earliest days of the Assembly (Church) in the Acts of the Apostles, we see prayer and worship unfold into miracles of healing, sharing of wealth, and transformation of society. Various movements, like the Franciscans in the Middle Ages, focused on bringing peace and justice and created a great European civilization.
Coal Miners – Early 20th Century
Catholic social teaching became something more focused on changing social relationships and structures in the late 1800s during the Industrial Revolution. Humans had lived for the better part of 20,000 years as farmers, fishers, and hunters. It was a world lit only by fire. Simple machines were powered by humans or animals. Human society saw more change from 1850 to 1900 than it had seen in the previous 22,000 years. As stark as this jolt was, it was nothing compared to the information age revolution we are now experiencing.
During these last 140 years of war, revolution, and upheaval, Catholic lay leaders, bishops, popes, and the Second Vatican Council have all focused on ways to bring about peace and justice in new types of societies, including today a global society which we have never before experienced.
Read MoreThe Sacred Heart Devotion – Love Conquers All
In Catholic culture, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus has become so widespread that the image has become an icon of Catholicism. Sometimes, the various forms of the image can strike us as a little bizarre, with Jesus pointing to a physical heart on His chest. Others which are more contemporary move us with the more abstract heart on fire with love. Why is this image so central to the modern or post 1500s Catholic imagination? We don’t really find it in ancient icons.
Understandings of The Fall
In the 1500s and 1600s, Calvin and other protestant reformers focused on the fall of humanity from grace or the breakup of people from their loving relationship with God when Adam and Eve sinned. The only way that this divorce could be fixed was by God reaching out in love according to St Augustine (in the 300s) because humanity was too broken and too easily fell into sin. This sinful impulse is called concupiscence. The brokenness of humanity is called depravity which comes from the Latin word for crooked. The Catholic Church has always taught that the passion, death and resurrection of Christ has restored humanity and that we are not basically at our core wicked, corrupt, or crooked. Calvin and others taught that human nature is basically corrupt and is covered over by God’s love. Only a few will be saved and God has made up His mind ahead of time who they will be. Those few are predestined by God since there is really nothing anyone can do to enter into this loving relationship with God.
These ideas found their way into a Catholic movement led by Bishop Cornelius Jansen (1585 – 1635) of Ypres in the Belgian Province of West Flanders. In part, this was a reaction to the pre-reformation Catholic notion that you could win your way back into God’s favor by doing good works. Some people had the mistaken idea that God could be “bought.” This was a distortion of the fact that we are supposed to live our faith and show our reunion with God by doing good things for other people. Basically, love is more than words. Love is shown in how we live.
The Jansenist Change of Tone and Attitude
The Jansenist movement took St. Augustine’s view of a fallen human nature and moved toward Calvin’s position that we are so fundamentally damaged and crooked that there is nothing we can do. According to Calvin, we are incapable of reaching out to God’s love but God’s love or grace is so powerful that it can sweep us up and we have no choice in the matter. That’s the only way that we can be saved. While not throwing aside Catholic teaching the way that Calvin and other reformers had done, the Jansenist movement changed the tone and the attitude of how we are supposed to relate to God. We are so damaged and unworthy that we should receive communion only rarely. We should engage in a lot of prayer and penance because God still sees our sinfulness and brokenness and is always “ticked off” or at least supremely disappointed. There was no way that you could be human — loving, caring, and inconsistent — and make God happy, because we are all hopeless “screw ups.” Jesus may have suffered and died for us, but all we do is repay him with sin. The Jansenist attitude causes the loving Jesus to be off in the distance and our relationship with him to become formal and focused on certain types of religious practices that make no allowance for human frailty, weakness, or growth.
The Jansenist attitude became a prominent part of the Catholic Church in the United States since it was brought by Irish and French immigrants and the priests and nuns who accompanied them. One could not receive communion without going to confession first. Many types of minor human mistakes, even the gestures the priest used at Mass could be gravely serious mortal sins that cut us off from the love of God completely. Eating meat on Friday was a mortal sin; owning slaves was not. Not observing certain days of fasting and not eating meat (abstinence) were mortal sins; beating one’s wife or children was not. The tragic legacy of Jansenism and the Calvinism that is a big part of Anglo American culture is that we are seen as beyond real healing and redemption. We are so messed up that God’s healing love, forgiveness, and happiness are not within reach. This has become a major reason for people to give up on God and religion altogether. Such a distorted “god” is inhuman, abusive, and unloving.
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus
In the 1600s, at the same time that Catholic and Protestant movements were focusing on the brokenness and crookedness of humanity and how far we are from God, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and St. Claude de la Colombière promoted a renewed focus on the love and forgiveness of Christ. This devotion came to be known as devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since Christ is truly human and truly divine, this vision brings us an understanding of Jesus as loving us in a completely human way but with unlimited Divine love. This is the Divine love that continuously overflows in creation, redemption, and resurrection in our lives.
The devotion to the Sacred Heart has had its own excesses. There was a tendency to actually worship the heart of Jesus itself as opposed to rejoicing and reveling in God’s love. This is called an error of logical typing, an error which would lead to eating the menu instead of the food. Another problem was to humanize the love of Christ to the point of believing that our rejection of God’s love could somehow “hurt” him in the way that we suffer rejection when others do not respond to the love we offer them. God cannot be other than God, which is love. (1 John 4:16) God cannot help Godself. The divine love is what God is. If we love imperfectly it is because we are human and we love with all of those human limitations. This is the only way we can respond to that divine love that is always creating, redeeming, and bringing new life out of death. But it is not the way God loves.
This understandably human mistaken notion that God can be “hurt” led to a number of practices such as special prayers, fasting, and mortification of the “deadening” impulses related to hunger, thirst, and sex, as well as the deadly sins of pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, avarice (greed), and sloth or laziness. While these are important parts of spiritual training or getting “in shape” (called asceticism), they were often done to somehow make up for all of the bad stuff everyone else was doing to “hurt” God. These are called acts of reparation. In this mode we focused on the transcendence of God — the loftiness of the Almighty as separated from everyday creation and living.
The Second Vatican Council (1961 – 1965) focused more on the immanence of God — the presence of God in our daily lives. The Church’s concept of itself was no longer that of a “perfect society” that was complete and sufficient within itself like a strong kingdom or empire. The Church became the People of God on pilgrimage, living in and following the living Christ of the Resurrection. This changed the expression of our devotion to the loving presence of God. Images of the Divine Word Incarnate in Jesus became more human. Jesus became more Jewish looking, more middle-eastern, and more like a young virile man. Many earlier images of a pale, wan, almost effete white man no longer matched the Catholic imagination of the post-modern period that emerged after World War II.
Not all Catholics welcomed this development. Such a generous, understanding, and lovable Jesus who is the image of the Living God seemed to downplay the seriousness and widespread nature of sin. Getting in shape spiritually (asceticism) now focused on changing structures of sin and oppression — human rights, civil rights, freedom, and equality. This was quite a shock to the Catholic imagination which had focused so heavily on the interior and heavenly direction of our relationship with God. By retreating from the world to our “perfect” society we had security due to the certainty we enjoyed. Insecurity returned when we realized that faith is the opposite of certainty. Suddenly, the life of Christ was a not a noble walk of the white Aryan with fair hair through Palestine. The life of Christ as the model for our lives became a struggle to proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven that ends in apparent failure, torture, and death. Yes, the resurrection transforms us all. The death and resurrection of Christ which we live out in our lives is God’s definitive “no” to evil and to death.
Michael Rubbelke in his post “Devotion to the Sacred Heart Today: The Heart of the Poor, Creation, and Mercy” offers an emerging vision of the Sacred Heart Devotion. The images of the Sacred Heart in his post offer a stark contrast. The first is a traditional image of the white serene Jesus. The second is a contemporary icon by Robert Lentz. This image of Jesus is a brown man with tightly curled African hair. He is portrayed in a more South Asian Hindu style, jutting forth from the icon with arms extended and stylized flames bursting from his hands. Perhaps this is the post-modern icon of the Sacred Heart. It gives expression to Pope Francis’ vision of a church of the poor for the poor, a call to be responsible stewards of creation, and a profound call to announce and to become the Divine Mercy.
This is a more challenging and less comforting Sacred Heart. It also brings more of the challenges of a direct, open, and honest love relationship with the Living God.
Image: Sacred Heart of Jesus, Joseph Fanelli,
used with permission
Connie Fortunato’s Magnificat – Music Camp International
When the Iron Curtain fell, it revealed the plight of Romanian children warehoused in orphanages. The Ceausescu regime had insisted that women have as many as children as possible, to provide soldiers for a huge army. Many of these children were abandoned and given no real love and very little food. As a music educator and the former music director of Twin Lakes Church in Aptos, California, Connie knew that music could restore these children to wholeness. At first the Romanian government wanted her to teach music only to the children of the leadership. Connie insisted on teaching the orphans and she prevailed.
He has put the mighty down from their thrones and exalted the lowly. (Luke 1:52)
Fourteen years later, Connie’s ministry, Music Camp International, has grown, yet it still flies by a wing and many prayers. Children in Ukraine and Romania are given musical instruments and a week’s instruction in playing and singing. The results are miraculous as the sound of sacred music returns to cathedrals and the hearts of children. The lowly are exalted and the future of all is brighter.
As Music Camp International’s website explains,
The healing gift of music has given hope and dignity to many who have previously been overlooked in a society that provides its resources for the “privileged” and the “promising.” Many children have held and played instrument for the first time. Many have discovered their singing voice. All have experienced the joy of music in a positive and nurturing environment. All have participated in making beautiful music with the finest professionals in their community. And ALL have discovered that in blending their talent with other children—from diverse backgrounds and social status—they can achieve a life-changing experience that is not possible alone.
Music Camp International: Developing Children, Training Teachers, and Strengthening The Global Community Through the Power of Music
Tax deductible donations can be made at www.musiccampinternational.org/
Read More
Pope Francis – Three Words for Family Harmony
St. Peter’s Basilica Dome – Public Domain CCO
On Wednesday May 13 at his General Audience in St Peter’s square Pope Francis gave a short address on the three words that are key to family happiness and well being. The three words in Spanish that are essential for health relationships are permiso, gracias, y perdón. In English they are phrases: “May I”,”Thank you!”, and “Forgive Me.”
The Pope said that sometimes in our culture these expressions are seen as a sign of weakness as opposed to a true statement of our respect and affection in our intimate relationships. He stressed the need for this respect for the dignity of our spouses, children and other family members as central to living our faith. Without this underlying bedrock respect and affection, these key relationships can rupture and damage everyone in the process.
Asking for permission is key to affirming others and makes our relationship more intimate and strong. Expressing our thanks is more than a social formality. It is a recognition and validation of our loved ones and an expression of our appreciation for their love. Most importantly, we are showing that we are aware of how important our loved ones are to us. The most difficult, according to the Pope, is “Forgive me.” Conflicts and disagreements — even arguments — are part of any honest relationship. Pope Francis even alludes to serious incidents in which “plates fly.” What is key is to ask forgiveness. Pope Francis advises us to be reconciled with each other before the end of the day. This might not always be possible since we might need more time to cool down. However, Pope Francis is making the point that being reconciled has to be done sooner rather than later to demonstrate that the strength of our love is greater than any disagreement or frustration we may have with each other.
A note on cultural differences may be helpful here. Latin cultures tend to deal with stress by externalizing it. Italian opera is a good example of this. Generally, upset and irritation are not internalized. Voices rise, arms start waving, and everything seems over the top by North Atlantic English-speaking standards. For non-Latin cultures, the expression of stress is usually more muted. The feelings are not necessarily less intense. Sometimes they are more intense since they are being internalized. This type of culturally conditioned response to conflict requires a different, more low key response. The three expressions still apply but we need to be attentive to the way our families perceive and deal with conflict. Anger, dissension, and disillusionment provide opportunities to uncover and resolve deeper conflicts. Professional help from a skilled counselor can be very useful to avoid undermining and destroying our bonds of love and affection. Politeness, courtesy, and respect are important in our speech, but they also have to be accompanied by changed behavior. As St. Ignatius Loyola says in the Spiritual Exercises “Love is shown more in deeds than in words.” These three expressions are important deeds. They are much more than words and can open the door to improved behavior and the mutual acceptance and loving response to challenges that are central to being happy and making a happy home.
Read MoreJesse Manibusan: Living in Christ
Jesse Manibusan
Jesse Manibusan has posted a new promotional music video “The Life You Live”. Jesse has taken the usual meaning of life as something that we live as something that is ours alone and turned it on its head. “The Life You Live” is all about the life of the Risen Christ. Jesse echoes the theme of St. Paul in his address to the elite of Athens. “For in him, we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)
https://vimeo.com/125638027
Read More
The Easter Proclamation and the Identity of the Deacon
In his blog, Deacons Today: Servants in a Servant Church, Deacon William Ditewig, PhD reflects on the role of the Deacon in singing the Easter Proclamation, the Exsultet: “Exult, Let them exult, the hosts of heaven.”
Deacon Ditewig traces the history of the Easter Vigil liturgy and the important role of the deacon in the lighting of the Paschal candle, as well as his proclamation of the Light of Christ in “Christ, Cross, Candle, and Gospel: An Early Lenten Reflection on the Deacon and the Exsultet.”
From the earliest times of the Church, according to Deacon Ditewig, the bishop was likened to God the Father, the presbyters (elders, priests) were viewed as the apostles, and the deacon was the Alter Christus (Another Christ). In fulfilling this calling, the deacon proclaimed the Gospel — the Kingdom of Heaven — and provided for the sick and needy in mind, body, and spirit.
The blessing and lighting of the Easter Candle and the proclamation of God’s saving power symbolize the deacon as Christ carrying the cross which is now transformed into the glorious light of salvation, dispelling the gloom and bringing new life and vision into the world.
Listen to the Exsultet sung here:
The Resurrection of Christ and Planet Earth – It’s not all about us.
The Catholic Church and the broader world community are looking forward to Pope Francis’ forthcoming encyclical on the environment. Generally, Christians tend to see the earth and all of creation as a motion picture studio back drop for God’s saving action in the Christ Event — the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. However, there is more to our relationship with the Earth and with Christ than a motion-picture-type approach suggests. Patheos, a collection of blogs focused on faith, presents a panel discussion representing many viewpoints on the impending human-caused collapse of our planetary life-support system.
Overflowing love
What we tend to overlook is that all of creation is the ongoing reality of God’s overflowing love. Nature is a major facet of God’s self-disclosure. Creation is God’s great art project, which the Holy One holds in existence. The Book of Genesis makes it clear that we are part of this great Divine creativity. Humanity is taken from the earth and given life through the Divine breath. The Christ Event is God’s very immersion into creation. The Divine Word, God’s highest and most complete God Self disclosure, becomes truly human and remains truly divine in Jesus of Nazareth. God’s irruption into human history is part and parcel of the divine irruption to bring all creation to fulfillment in Christ according to St. Paul and the ancient tradition of the Church.
The Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, gave us a post-modern vision of all creation spiraling upward to its fulfillment: the Omega Point which is the Cosmic Christ. His book, the Divine Milieu (The Divine Environment / Context), and his mystical poem, La Messe Sur le Monde (The Mass on the World), convey the ongoing creativity in the universe and that facet of creation which is the human species. This does not mean that everything is God – pantheism – any more than art we might produce is identical with us. The things we make reflect our creativity, but they are not us. According to Chardin, our gift of consciousness not only allows us to be aware of God’s activity but to take part in it by God’s out-poured love for us.
Participating in God’s saving activity
The ongoing Christ Event sweeps us and all of the cosmos toward creation’s fulfillment in Christ, the Omega point. The Second Vatican Council, in its key documents the Church and the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes – Joy and Hope) and The Light of Nations (Lumen Gentium), affirms the centrality of God’s action in human society and creation and our need to participate in this saving activity. Social and political oppression generally go hand in hand with the destruction of the environment and the human life-support system, resulting in poverty, war, and ignorance and the degradation of humanity.
As the Council Fathers wrote:
Therefore, the council focuses its attention on the world of men, the whole human family along with the sum of those realities in the midst of which it lives; that world which is the theater of man’s history, and the heir of his energies, his tragedies and his triumphs; that world which the Christian sees as created and sustained by its Maker’s love, fallen indeed into the bondage of sin, yet emancipated now by Christ, Who was crucified and rose again to break the strangle hold of personified evil, so that the world might be fashioned anew according to God’s design and reach its fulfillment. – Gaudium et Spes #2 (emphasis added)
Image: Earthrise (NASA photo ID AS11-44-6552)
public domain
A Good Homily Sheds Light
One of the biggest changes that Vatican II made in the liturgy was replacing the sermon with the homily. Sometimes the words are used interchangeably, but they are very different. The sermon in the Tridentine or Pre-Vatican II liturgy was a time for teaching and making announcements. It was a presentation of some element of faith that may have tied in with the theme of the Sunday. The homily, on the other hand, is a more conversational approach to this pivotal part of the Mass that bridges the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. Our response to the scripture and the homily should fill us with praise and thanksgiving for what God is doing in our lives. This leads us to enter into the mystery of praise and thanksgiving that is the Eucharist.
A Renewed focus on preaching
Over the last 30 years there has been a lot of emphasis on preaching. Most recently, Pope Francis has focused on the importance of the homily in his apostolic exhortation The Joy of the Gospel. The Pope has made it clear that good preaching is critically important to the life of the church. He writes, “the homily cannot be a form of entertainment like those presented by the media, yet it does need to give life and meaning to the celebration. It is a distinctive genre, since it is preaching situated within the framework of a liturgical celebration” (n. 138).
The disciples on the way to Emmaus were talking or conversing. They were engaging in homilia, as was the Stranger who accompanied them. The homilist, who can be a priest, a deacon, or an authorized lay person, listens to the needs and concerns of the assembly and discerns God’s message for the assembly. This role is similar to that of the prophets and the Ultimate Prophet, Christ. Although we tend to think of a prophet as someone who foretells the future, prophecy is much more about proclaiming, announcing, and forth-telling. That is why we refer to the scripture passages and the gospel as something that we proclaim.
The homilist may share something about his or her life if it is relevant to the message, but the homily is not about the homilist. The homily must follow the conventions of good public speaking, but it is more than public speaking. For the homily to shed light, the preacher cannot just re-tell the story in the gospel for that Mass.
Pope Francis notes that “the homily has special importance due to its eucharistic context: it surpasses all forms of catechesis as the supreme moment in the dialogue between God and his people, which leads up to sacramental Communion” (EG, n. 137). Given this context, the homily cannot be improvised or done extemporaneously. Preparing a homily takes many hours of prayerful reading of the text, reflection, study, drafting, and practicing. Being a good preacher is something that comes out of a broader lifestyle of prayer, reflection, and reading the signs of the times. Good homilists are very familiar with the lives of the people in their congregations. They are aware of all of the cultural influences, the centrality of mass media, and economic and social conditions.
Cardinal Agostino Vallini, vicar of Rome, expressed the challenge of preaching a good homily well when he said, “We want our words to set people’s hearts on fire” and want the faithful “to be enlightened and encouraged to live a new life and never be forced to suffer through our homilies.”
Shed light and set hearts on fire — the two-fold challenge of good preaching!
Image of Fr. Lee Acevo preaching – public domain
Read MoreYour subscription gift helps make this ministry possible. Thank you!
The Synod has ended. Bishops, priests, nuns, and lay persons from around the world have again gathered in Rome to pray, listen, and reflect on where the Holy Spirit is leading us as a community in this new era. As their reflections and recommendations are offered to us, we are invited to join them in prayer as we move forward, always open to the guidance and inspiration of the Spirit.
Our Supporters and Friends
