Tag Archives: New York Times

Daily Prayer

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We celebrate the feast of St. Thomas More today, June 22. Holbein’s painting of More and his family, holding their books, portrays a family that prized learning and prayer. More made sure his daughters were well-educated.

Some of those books, I would guess, are their prayerbooks, not unusual in those days. Daily prayer is part of Catholic life and prayerbooks with psalms, prayers and personal reflections were important to those who could read and afford them.

In these uncertain days, are we being called to daily, personal prayer? Prayerbooks (and blogs) may becoming more important for us, as Sunday Mass and parish based sacraments become weaker. So thank you, More and your family, for reminding us what we might do at home.

The prayer Jesus taught his disciples, the Our Father, was a daily prayer, one of the ways we get ready for what God sends each day. We’re children of God and should act like God’s children each day.

We need to live each day with large vision, doing our part that God’s kingdom come, “on earth as it is in heaven.” We need “daily bread” of all kinds. We’re part of a messy world that’s torn apart by selfishness and smallness and pride. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” We need light to go by the right path. “Deliver us from evil” and guide us to do good.

I don’t think St. Thomas More could have lived so heroically in the world he lived in without daily prayer. It brings vision and grace to us; it’s daily bread.

Stories of Jacob, Joseph and Their Families

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Stories of Jacob, his wives and his sons continue the story of the patriarchs from the Book of Genesis we’re reading in our lectionary these days. I notices some call it the story of our ancestors, instead of patriarchs, to give it a wider net of actors.

They/ve inherited God’s promise to Abraham, and they continue his search for a land of their own. It seems like a never-ending search; God occasionally appears on the way affirming them, but there’s famine to contend with, as we see in the illustration above, and human weakness is always part of their story.

But God will get them through.

Abraham is our “father in faith”. The ancestors, especially Abraham, are examples of faith and trust in God as they face an unknown future. Faith and trust kept them going;; faith and trust keeps all humanity going. Faith and trust keeps the Church going as she makes her pilgrim way.

We can learn from the humanity we find in the ancestors, the men and their wives, their children, their friends, their servants and their enemies. They’re far from perfect. They live in a world of cruel wars and famine, stubborn enemies, political instability and unpredictable events. There are family fights, jealous brothers and sisters and sneaky deals at every step.

We can learn some important human as well as spiritual lessons from them. For example, Joseph’s brothers entered Egypt at a time of widespread famine. “In fact, all the world came to Joseph to obtain rations of grain, for famine had gripped the whole world.” (Genesis 41,57)

Egypt wisely opened its food supply to eveybody. Was it just kindness, or was it good politics too? I remember reading that the Byzantine Empire fell so quickly to the armies of Mohammed because the Byzantines neglected to care for the Bedouin tribes at their borders and along their trade routes.

US policy now is to cut foreign aide to poorer nations of the world, especially those experiencing climate related shortages of food. Inevitably, violence in those countries will spill over to ours. Ancient Egypt knew that if you take care of others in bad times you take care of yourself. We’re all bound together, whether we know it or not.

The early Christian writer Marcion wanted to do away with the Old Testament because it wasn’t spiritual enough. But there’s reality in these stories. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” He was made flesh and dwelt among sinful humanity. He didn’t come to save the saved.

Knowing our ancestors and their times helps us to know ourselves and our times. In them we see the hand of God at work.

About Suffering

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“In America, there is education for success but no education for suffering.” Ross Douthat wrote in the New York Times today. There’s no education to bear the suffering we have or deal with the suffering of others.

We’re told we can achieve anything we set our minds to and surmount any hardship that comes our way. We filter out the misery around us, Douhat says, with the filters of political party, race, social status.

Douthat confessed that while reading a book by one of his political adversaries, a book in which the man described his experience of sickness and other hardships, he realized he never saw that dimension in him. He was only someone to argue with.

Tragic moments like the shootings in Las Vegas and the storms in Puerto Rico are temporary reminders of suffering, but we quickly forget and turn to something else.

St. Paul of the Cross saw the Passion of Jesus as a book to learn about life and how to live. It seems the Passionists have a mission today, as a recent letter of Father Joachim Rego reminded us, to offer a remedy to society today with “no education for suffering.”

Why Read the Old Testament?

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Some people complain about the selections from the Old Testament we’re reading at weekday Mass these past few weeks. Too long, they say, they don’t tell us anything. They’d rather hear what Jesus is saying and doing.

Why do we read from the Old Testament? Reading from the Old Testament is a lot like reading from the New York Times or the Daily News, or following David Muir on ABC each evening. You’re not going to hear much about Jesus there either. The media gives us the news of the day as it happens and, especially these days, it’s not encouraging.

Not much encouraging news in our Old Testament reading today from the Book of Numbers either. (Numbers 13-14) Giants are out there blocking the way to the promised land. Israel’s scouts face giants as they reconnoiter the world ahead. There’s no way ahead.

Our media tells us the same: giants are blocking our way– North Korea, the Middle East, storms from climate change, political giants who seem to get in the way of a world of justice and peace. And we don’t have answers what to do.

But the Old Testament tells us more than the media. It’s salvation history. More than the story of the Jews, the Old Testament is the story of the human race and all creation on a journey, from the beginning of time to its end. Human sinfulness, tragedies and delays are there, but the story begins and ends in hope. God is there.

That makes the Old Testament stories so different from the stories the media serves up everyday. God is there from the beginning. That’s the way our selection today from the Book of Numbers begins: “The LORD said to Moses [in the desert of Paran,]‘Send men to reconnoiter the land of Canaan,
which I am giving the children of Israel.’” And God is there as his people experience the consequences of their foolishness and lack of faith.

The columnist David Brooks in the Times yesterday said he has to think less about Donald Trump or he’s going to go crazy. He needs to think more about the deeper shifts taking place in society, he says.

I wonder if thinking about the deeper shifts is enough to stop you from going crazy these days. We need hope from another source. That’s where the Old Testament and the rest of the scriptures comes in. Some prefer calling it the “First Testament.” It testifies that the first thing to keep in mind about time is that God is there, from beginning to the end. God is our Savior.

Go or Stay?

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Bill Keller in an op-ed piece in New York Times on June 18th had some hard words for the Catholic Church which, as he sees it, is governed by a dysfunctional leadership and is falling apart.  His advice:

“Much as I wish I could encourage the discontented, the Catholics of open minds and open hearts, to stay put and fight the good fight, this is a lost cause. Donohue is right. Summon your fortitude, and just go.”

Keller finds himself agreeing with Bill Donohue, a strident Catholic voice on the right, who urges leaving the church but for another reason. He’s telling Catholics not in agreement with some of the Church’s positions: Get out.

A letter in today’s Times offered a fine answer to both Keller and Donohue:

“It seems to me that both Bill Keller and Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, misunderstand the catholicity of the Catholic Church. Mr. Keller’s advice to disaffected Catholics, including priests, nuns and vowed religious, to “summon your fortitude” and leave allows no room for reconciliation, reformation and peace within conflict that is central to Christian social life.

“Christian community is not a social contract like those of liberal democracies; it is a covenant that seeks to give witness to God’s unconditional love for humanity through the bonds of community. Leaving, as Mr. Keller suggests, may serve our consumerist attitudes well, but it does little to improve community; it only weakens community.

“Mr. Donohue makes a similar misreading of Catholic catholicity by seemingly insisting on ideological purity. This is a dangerous desire that has plagued Christianity since the fourth and fifth centuries. There is no such thing as an ideologically pure church, and frequently such perceptions have led to serious abuses of power.

 

“Disaffection and ideological dispute among Catholics are a pastoral issue that should be approached within particular religious communities, parishes and lay groups with their pastoral and ministerial leadership. It is a chance for reconciliation and understanding.

MARC LAVALLEE
Arlington, Mass., June 18, 2012

The writer is a Ph.D. candidate in practical theology at Boston University.”

 The writer’s on target.

Someone said to me today: “If your father develops Alzheimer’s  do you abandon him? If your family breaks down, is split by misunderstandings, do you leave it? Is the church a political party? You don’t like the platform, join another one?”

The church is a community formed by God’s unconditional love for humanity. That same love is asked of us.

I liked another letter to the Times also:

“The behavior of the Roman Catholic hierarchy disappoints me on so many fronts that it would be difficult even to begin cataloging those disappointments. How many times have I contemplated joining the Episcopal Church? More times than I can count.

“Why do I stay? Because my own parish, with its engaged pastor, deacon and staff members, vibrant liturgy and forward-leaning membership, is a comfortable home that embraces each one of us in times of joy and sorrow and provides an atmosphere for real spiritual growth.

“I suspect that many Catholics, including a lot of the nuns who are being hounded at the moment, stay for the same reason I do, and I would suggest to those who are on the verge of leaving that they should shop around first. There are welcoming and joyful Catholic communities just waiting for you to join. I know. I belong to one.

MARION EAGEN
Clarks Green, Pa., June 18, 2012

Learning from the Bible

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In my last blog I mentioned an article about Catholics reading the bible. They don’t read it much, in fact, and those who do may read it as biblical fundamentalists do. The author quoted from a 1998 report from the Pontifical Biblical Commission, the pope’s advisors in biblical  matters, which said that “Fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide.”

It can also lead to political damage as well according to an article in the Op-Ed section of the New York Times today “Why the AntiChrist Matters in Politics” by Matthew Avery Sutton.

Especially in troubled times, some may see political consequences in the bible and its prophecies that really aren’t there.

“Biblical criticism, the return of Jews to the Holy Land, evolutionary science and World War I convinced them that the second coming of Jesus was imminent. Basing their predictions on biblical prophecy, they identified signs, drawn especially from the books of Daniel, Ezekiel and Revelation, that would foreshadow the arrival of the last days: the growth of strong central governments and the consolidation of independent nations into one superstate led by a seemingly benevolent leader promising world peace.

This leader would ultimately prove to be the Antichrist, who, after the so-called rapture of true saints to heaven, would lead humanity through a great tribulation culminating in the second coming and Armageddon. Conservative preachers, evangelists and media personalities of the 20th century, like Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, shared these beliefs.”

Last week was catechetical Sunday, marking the beginning of our religious education program at St.Mary’s. We blessed our catechists who are going to be involved in the religious education of our young people.

But religious education involves more than young people. All of us are called to grow in our faith and live what we believe. Unfortunately, as adults we may see faith as something you learn as a child in school or in a religious education program and you never have to learn about it again.

The Catholic writer Frank Sheed said the problem with adult Catholics is that they don’t keep engaged in the faith they learned as children. He used the example of our eyes. We have two eyes. Let’s say one of them is the eye of faith; the other is the eye of experience.

As children, with a religious education, we may  see the world with two eyes; but as adults losing our engagement with faith we gradually come to see the world only with the eye of experience. We lose the focus that faith gives, another dimension. We won’t see right. Faith is what  helps us to see.

“You are all learners,” Jesus said to his disciples in the gospel. It’s not just children who learn, all of us learn. We are lifelong learners. Lifelong believers, engaged believers, struggling believers, even till the end.

One of the areas we have to learn about today in the Catholic Church is the Bible. It’s there every Sunday and every day of the week. It’s our new catechism and prayerbook, one of the gifts our church gives us.  We need to learn about it and pray from it as much as we can.

Beauty every ancient, ever new

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The recent blogs from America and Commonweal magazines mention Pope Benedict’s new book, Jesus of Nazareth, Part 2, which is due out next week and which devotes a great deal of attention to the gospel narratives of the Passion. The bloggers, like the New York Times yesterday, seem interested mostly in what the pope says about Jewish responsibility for the death of Jesus. Following Nostra Aetate from the Second Vatican Council, Benedict says the Jewish people were not responsible for putting Jesus to death; the Romans and a few Jewish leaders were the primary culprits.

Yet, it would be regrettable to see the pope’s treatment of the Passion narratives only as a lengthy statement about this issue, important as it is. From what I read, he’s doing more. He’s looking at the Passion of Jesus like other believers before have done: as a book that reveals in those harsh and heroic moments the wisdom of God.

He seems to be using insights from modern scholars, new tools that can add to the way we reflect on this great story. The Passion of Jesus has always been “the well-trained tongue” that God uses to speak to us, but we may not hear it so well today, and the pope is reminding us of its power and glory.

We tend to say “I’ve heard that already. I know the story.” But it’s a revelation of God and humanity;  “a Beauty ever ancient, ever new.”

Nearing his death, Paul of the Cross was supposed to have pointed to the crucifix over his bed and said to the brother caring for him, “Give me my book.” That seems to be what the pope is doing also.

 

God in a Creche

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In The New York Times the other day Maureen Dowd’s column was about a visit she and her brother made to see a collection of Christmas crèches in New Haven, Ct. She’s a columnist who makes fun of things, and in this column she made fun of those who compulsively collect crèches. In fact, she bought for herself a bizarre crèche to illustrate how wacky it can get. As I put down the paper, though, I wasn’t laughing.  I had the impression that a crèche doesn’t mean much to her at all.

Today I read a selection from an early Roman saint, Hippolytus,  “Against the Noetic Heresy” and I thought of her and the crèche.  The Noetics, if I remember, were Gnostics who looked down on Christianity because they thought they were smarter than anything it had to offer. They were smart, sophisticated people.

Hippolytus said something like this:

“When God speaks we better pay attention, and God has spoken to us in Jesus Christ.  Look at what the scriptures say about him. Learn from what they teach. Believe in what they tell us. You don’t decide the way God reveals himself. God decides that. Look at the way he reveals himself and learn from him.”

We learn so much from the mystery of the birth of Jesus Christ. Look at the humility of God, who comes to us as a tiny infant. Look at the way he invites the rough shepherds to be the first to see him as he lights up the dark hills with his glory. So he  welcomes the poorest among us. We are invited to see him too and share in his life and light.

We should pay attention to the revelation of God we celebrate these holy days. It tells us of a God who loves us.  It says that God wants to be near us, to be part of our lives, to lead us to a new life.

The iPad

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The iPad, the new mobile tablet from Apple, was “revealed” the other day and the reviews say it may change the face of communication. It offers email, internet access, ebooks, and audio-visual features from a 9” screen. The geeks are picking it apart for one thing or another, but one reviewer may have gotten it right. Apple didn’t make this for the geeks but for their mothers.

If I were thinking of producing media content today, which I am, I should think of producing it for the iPad.

If I had an iPad now, what would I be able to carry around with me? For starters, the whole bible, the readings for Mass, video Mass homilies and short bios of the saints,  courtesy of the US Bishops. http://www.usccb.org/nab/ The entire Liturgy of the Hours by way of Universalis: http://www.universalis.com/ Documents of Vatican II, The Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Compendium of the Catechism from the Vatican site: http://www.vatican.va/

For Catholic news, there are the blogs from CNS: http://cnsblog.wordpress.com/ America Magazine,  http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/ Commonweal http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/ Zenit:http://www.zenit.org/0?l=english

I could have with me my homilies, my email, podcasts, slide and video presentations. Resources like Wikipedia, the Library of Congress, the New York Public library would be  available by way of the internet.

Not a bad treasure of  resources to carry around and work on as you go.

But, as Yeat’s poem says, “What then?”

We need to work on what we’re doing now, our websites, blogs, etc..What will they look like on the iPad?

The iPad could use simple catechetical material, strongly visual. I think it will be the basic tool for providing catechesis in tomorrow’s church, but it will mean rethinking how we catechize and what form our catechesis will take.  I like the approach used in the new US Catholic Catechism for Adults, which uses saintly people to say what faith means. Short 10 minutes or 24 minute presentations.I have been using it for retreat and mission talks.

We need good material on the Passion of Christ too. In a quote from yesterday’s blog, St. Thomas Aquinas said we human beings  find “relief through the passion of Christ. Yet, it is no less an example, for the passion of Christ completely suffices to fashion our lives.”  How can we present the Passion of Jesus on the iPad?

Let’s think about it.

David Carr, in the New York Times for  January 31, looks into the future of the iPad. It’s there, he says, now book and magazine publishers and other providers of media content have to think about it and work on prototypes and figure out the financials of it all.

The Cross in Dark Waters

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There’s a story in the NYTimes today about the writer, Neil Sheehan, whose book “ A Fierce Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon,” a history of the arms race between America and Russia, will be published tomorrow.  He’s described as “an extremely patient bat” who works long and hard, mostly at night, without research assistants, at his writing.

Sheehan’s book has been 15 years in the making.

What attracted me most were Sheehan’s remarks at the end of the article.

“I really felt I was casting light in darkness. I have a habit of going to church on Good Friday and saying a prayer that I’ll be able to cast light in what I write. And in this case I felt I was writing about a period of history that had been overlooked, and now enough time had passed that we could begin to look at it clearly.”

It takes awhile to throw light on issues like the arms race, which cast its dark shadow on so much of our world since the Second World War. It looks like Sheehan is prompted by the mystery of Good Friday to do it.

Yesterday the Greek churches in our area gathered on the Jersey Shore to participate in the beautiful ceremony in which their bishop takes a cross and casts it into the dark waters of the ocean and waits till it’s retrieved by young divers. It’s part of their celebration of the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross, September 14th.

The Cross brings a powerful blessing to the darkest of waters.