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Posted by on Mar 20, 2008

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

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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?

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Posted by on Jan 25, 2008

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

Feast of the Day: Conversion of St. Paul – January 25

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January 25 is the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul (Acts 22). Most of us are familiar with the story. Saul – his original name – was a Pharisee who was persecuting the very first Christians. (At that early stage believers called themselves Followers of the Way. The name Christian would come about later in Antioch)

St. Paul was on his way to Damascus with documents authorizing him to arrest and bring back Christians to Jerusalem for trial by the religious authorities. Scripture makes no reference to a horse, which is usually part of the depiction of the scene in which St. Paul is blinded by a bright light and falls to the ground. He hears a voice utter the now famous words “Saul, why are you persecuting me.” In the exchange, St. Paul asks who it is that is speaking to him – the response, “I am Jesus, the Nazarene..”

According to scripture, we know that Paul was from Tarsus and that he was also a Roman citizen. His letters to the early congregations (churches) are the oldest documents in the New Testament. They reveal a man who is thoroughly Jewish in his mode of thinking and speech. Yet he is Christianity’s link to the larger Hellenistic world.

For those who like to emphasize the important role of St. Peter in the development of the Church, it can come as a shock that he and St. Paul disagreed so strongly about the incorporation of non-Jews, or gentiles. Some of us contemporary Catholics – with a certain sense of ironic humor – see this conflict as the first among many between a Pope and a theologian.

What is most significant about St. Paul’s conversion is his acceptance by the leadership of the early Christian community. Although they had substantial reasons to distrust his sincerity, they forgave an enemy – even one who had been an accomplice in the stoning of St. Stephen, the first martyr. They forgave a man who arrested and imprisoned their family members and friends. The book of the Acts of the Apostles shows that the leadership and the community had their misgivings, but they helped the repentant Saul to demonstrate his conversion, acting as mentors, teachers, and friends. Some helped more than others, and many not at all, yet it was enough.  And as they say… the rest is history.

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Posted by on Dec 31, 2007

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

The Feast of the Holy Family

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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. The characteristics we seen recorded about Jesus were probably in great part those he learned from his parents.

In this week following the Feast of the Holy Family, as we enter a new calendar year, I hope we can take their lives as ones that exemplify 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.

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Posted by on Dec 1, 2007

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

A Limrick for Christ the King

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It’s nearly a week now since the feast of Christ the King, but today I received a limrick in the mail that was written last Sunday by a member of my home parish, St. Patrick Parish in Spokane, Washington. On this last day of the liturgical year, I share with you Dennis Johnston’s reflection on the readings for Christ the King. (The accented syllables are the ones to be stressed when reading the limrick.)

Sure we célebrate nów Christ the Kíng,
To his lóve and light álways we clíng.
In His Kíngdom Etérnal
We shun dárkness inférnal —
For forgíveness, faith, mércy we síng!

Thanks, Dennis, for your gift of this poem.

And thank you, Yom Jae Won, of Korea for your painting, “The Exalted Jesus” shown here.

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Posted by on Nov 29, 2007

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

Don’t Feed the Bears or the Deceiving Spirits

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When I was growing up, Yogi Bear was a popular cartoon. Yogi lived in “Jellystone Park” and, with his sidekick, Boo-Boo, took it as his mission to defeat the park ranger and get picnic baskets from the tourists. It was all very silly and funny to watch.

In the actual world, “Don’t Feed the Bears” was and is a serious statement. Bears are wild animals and play an important role in the environment. However, bears that get used to eating human food or bears that come close to humans can be dangerous. Cute little cubs have fiercely protective mothers who do not hestitate to defend them.

As an adult, I have come to observe that there are other beings who should not be fed. This is the story of one person’s encounter with one of those beings.

It had been a difficult day. The children were out of sorts. She was short of sleep. Her husband was worried about problems at work. Nothing seemed to be going right. To top it all off, like the proverbial cherry on the banana split, he had criticized her housekeeping or some such thing. (Later she couldn’t even remember what it had been.) She got the children to bed, the dog to the kennel and went to bed herself.

Usually, when she’d had a day like that, a good night’s sleep took care of the problem and the next day went better. But that night she couldn’t sleep. She was too angry. She kept going over and over in her mind what had happened and how unfair and unjust it all had been. The time dragged on and she couldn’t calm down. She tried praying the rosary, because often that helped her go to sleep when she was upset or worried, but that didn’t help either.

Finally, it occured to her to ask God to take away the anger and resentment so she could get some sleep. No sooner said than done! Her eyes were closed and she was lying on her side. She had the sensation of the blankets being flung back off of her – and at that instant, there was a cold, bright, bluish flash of light which stung her leg and then was gone. She no longer felt angry or resentful, but rather peaceful and ready to sleep. Thanking God, she drifted off to a restful night of sleep.

A couple of weeks later, she was talking with a friend about what had happened. The friend has the gift of healing, so she knew he wouldn’t think she was making it up. She described what had happened and he said that he could see, looking with his mind’s eye at the scene, what she had not seen. Behind her as she lay on the bed, a golden light appeared. (Golden light is often associated with the divine or the holy – as in halos around the heads in pictures of saints.) The golden light moved over her and exposed the deceiving spirit, forcing it to flee. The spirit had stung her as it left, in anger at being exposed. Then the golden light had covered her and let her rest.

I have often reflected on this woman’s experience. I had never really thought of anger, resentment, jealousy and the other negative emotions as spirits or as having any real “being” outside of the individual person. It would seem that I was mistaken.

I am now very careful about what emotional states I nurture. When I am angry, I try to remember not to feed that “spirit” by dwelling on how I have been wronged. Feeding these deceiving spirits only strengthens them and allows them to reach out and hurt others through me. They tell me I am the one who was hurt, but in my heart of hearts I know that “it takes two to tango” and despite what they might have me believe, I am rarely a totally innocent victim.

In these days of the ending of one liturgical year and beginning of the next, when the readings speak of the last days and of judgements to come, maybe we would all do well to make a sign and post it in our hearts, “Don’t Feed the Deceiving Spirits!”

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Posted by on Nov 23, 2007

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

Apocalypse – The End of the Liturgical Year

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As we approach the feast of Christ the King, the cycle of readings reminds us of the end of days. Christianity is almost unique in its focus on the end and culmination of all things and the Second Coming of the Lord. The images are very different from the entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. St. Stephen, the first martyr, sets the tone, declaring to his judges that the time is coming when they will see Christ descending on them in glorious judgment.

There were many books about the end of days published before the millenium. The biggest publishing success was the Left Behind series, a group of novels by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins. The series combined a literal approach to the Book of Revelation, also known by its Greek title, The Apocalypse, with a theology which came primarily from the tent revival meetings of the 20th century in the United States. There is a very strong dose of Calvinist predestination, Anabaptist altar calls to conversion, and Medieval delectatio morosa – delight in the suffering of the others, especially the damned.

Horror movies are always popular in American culture. Perhaps they are a secular celebration of evil that twists what is supposed to be the encouragement apocalyptic literature offers to those undergoing persecution. Of course there is the old technique of fire and brimstone sermons to scare the “hell” out of people. Apparently many people liked and still like the horror entertainment value of these sermons, which seem to create a god who is far from loving.

The end of the year and the beginning of the new year is a time to focus on more than the settling of scores. It is a time to show the mercy we want to receive on that Last Day.

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Posted by on Nov 14, 2007

Holy Thursday on the California Coast

What’s in A Word? – To Divorce and Forgive?

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R. Rafael Pozos – my oldest son, string bassist, web programmer, and linguist – had an interesting comment on my post about Evangelicals rethinking divorce.

“Interestingly enough, Greek uses the same verb ‘aphiami’ for divorce and to forgive. It implies a very forceful leaving or remission. It’s what the apostles do to their boats and to their families when they go to follow Jesus, as well as what happens when a man dismisses his woman (no term for wife in antiquity really) , and also when an obligation is dismissed. Therefore, it is one loaded word.”

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