Delight of All Saints

This post is a part of the First Friday link-up at http://www.omostsacredheart.com/

There are people who think that devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is dead. Of course, there are people who think that the saints are dead, those men and women mentioned in the Book of Revelation:

After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

On this First Friday, which coincidentally falls on the Solemnity of All Saints, the Catholic Church is here to tell you – the saints are unfathomably alive, and so is the devotion to the Sacred Heart of their Lord.

It is common knowledge that the Church holds up thousands of saints for emulation, a very biblical thing to do as St. Paul encouraged when he wrote, “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ.” Yet there is an even greater number of saints in the presence of God, faithful Christians who are never going to have a parish named after them or get their mug shot on a holy card, people like your great-uncle Joe and your grandma Theresa who died in God’s friendship, underwent purgation and now stand with the multitude before the throne and before the Lamb. On the first day of November, the Church asks us to remember not only the canonized saints, but Theresa and Joe as well, and to make sure that one day we join them….

Now, I never met your grandma or your great-uncle, but I can tell you for certain that if they are now in the presence of God, they share a vital organ with the canonized saints: the Heart of Jesus. As the Litany assures us, the Most Sacred Heart is the “delight of all saints.” All saints, the famous and the unknown, share the same important characteristic; they are not dead; their eternal lives began here on earth when He gave each of them a new heart – His Heart.

For His Heart is mine. I will say it boldly, for Christ is my Head, is not what belongs to my Head mine? Therefore as the eyes of my corporal head are truly my eyes, so is my spiritual heart my heart. Therefore, it is well with me: truly I have but one Heart with Jesus and what wonder that there should be but one heart with the multitude of believers. St. John Eudes

He brought me into such close intimacy with Himself that my heart was espoused to His Heart in a loving union, and I could feel the faintest stir of His Heart, and He of mine. The fire of my created love was joined with the ardor of His eternal love. St. Faustina Kowalska

When Mass was over I remained with Jesus in thanksgiving. Oh, how sweet was the colloquy with paradise that morning! It was such that although I want to tell you all about it, I cannot. There were things which cannot be translated into human language without losing their deep and heavenly meaning. The Heart of Jesus and my own—allow me to use the expression—were fused. No longer were two hearts beating but only one. My own heart had disappeared as a drop of water is lost in the ocean. Jesus was its paradise, its king. St. Pio of Pietrelcina

This Sacred Heart is the source of consolation for all the saints. They never tire of contemplating His pierced side from whence flowed water and blood, because they drink from that Fountain the waters of life:

It was a divine decree that permitted one of the soldiers to open his sacred side with a lance. This was done so that the Church might be formed from the side of Christ as he slept the sleep of death on the cross, and so that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘They shall look on him whom they pierced’. The blood and water which poured out at that moment were the price of our salvation. Flowing from the secret abyss of our Lord’s heart as from a fountain, this stream gave the sacraments of the Church the power to confer the life of grace, while for those already living in Christ it became a spring of living water welling up to life everlasting. Arise, then, beloved of Christ! Imitate the dove ‘that nests in a hole in the cliff’, keeping watch at the entrance ‘like the sparrow that finds a home’. There like the turtledove hide your little ones, the fruit of your chaste love. Press your lips to the fountain, ‘draw water from the wells of your Savior; for this is the spring flowing out of the middle of paradise, dividing into four rivers’, inundating devout hearts, watering the whole earth and making it fertile. St. Bonaventure

Then it was as if You opened the Heart in Your most holy body to me, so that I could look right inside of it there before me. You commanded me to drink from that source. You invited me to draw the waters of my salvation from Your fountains, You, my Savior. How strong at that moment was my desire that streams of faith, hope and charity might overflow from it into me. St. Peter Canisius

The saints give themselves up to be immolated in the Burning Furnace of Charity, and in thus losing their life, they find it:

Oh, if we could but understand the love that burns in the Heart of Jesus for us! He has loved us so much, that if all men, all the angels, and all the saints were to unite, with all their energies, they could not arrive at the thousandth part of the love that Jesus bears to us! – St. Alphonsus Liguori

Hail! O Sacred Heart of Jesus, living and quickening source of eternal life, infinite treasure of the Divinity, and burning furnace of divine love. You are my refuge and my sanctuary, O my amiable Savior. Consume my heart with that burning fire with which Yours is ever inflamed. Pour down on my soul those graces which flow from Your love, and let my heart be so united with Yours, that our wills may be one, and mine in all things be conformed to Yours. May Your divine will be equally the standard and rule of all my desires and of all my actions. St. Gertrude the Great

They proclaim His Most Sacred Heart to be their hiding place:

O Jesus! draw me into Thy Sacred Heart; and that I may dwell there, wash me from my iniquities, purify me from every stain. O most beautiful of the children of men, Thy Sacred Heart has been opened only that we may be able to dwell in it in safety and in peace. St. Bernard of Clairvaux

My Lord, I desire nothing but Thee, and never shall I find rest until I succeed in concealing myself entirely in Thy Divine Heart St. Catherine of Genoa

I wish, oh Jesus, that my voice could reach to the ends of the world, to call all sinners and tell them to enter into Thy Heart….Oh, if only all sinners would come to Thy Heart!… Come! Come sinners, do not be afraid! The sword of Justice cannot reach you Here! – St. Gemma Galgani

They expound upon His Sacred Heart, extolling It in sermons, in poetry and in prose:

To celebrate the Heart of Christ means to turn toward the profound center of the Person of the Savior, that center which the Bible identifies precisely as his Heart, seat of the love that has redeemed the world. If the human heart represents an unfathomable mystery that only God knows, how much more sublime is the heart of Jesus, in which the life of the Word itself beats. In it, as suggested by the beautiful Litanies of the Sacred Heart that echo the Scriptures, are found all the treasures of wisdom and science and all the fullness of divinity. In order to save man, victim of his own disobedience, God wished to give him a “new heart,” faithful to his will of love . This heart is the heart of Christ, the masterpiece of the Holy Spirit, which began to beat in the virginal womb of Mary and was pierced by the lance on the cross, thus becoming for all the inexhaustible source of eternal life. That Heart is now the pledge of hope for every man. How necessary for contemporary humanity is the message that flows from contemplation of the heart of Christ. Where, indeed, if not from that source will it be able to attain the reserves of meekness and forgiveness necessary to heal the bitter conflicts that bloody it? Bl. John Paul 2

In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced,

The kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together.

Here is for us the source of life.

This heart is the heart of the triune Divinity,

And the center of all human hearts

That bestows on us the life of God.

It draws us to itself with secret power,

It conceals us in itself in the Father’s bosom

And floods us with the Holy Spirit. St. Edith Stein

My God, my Savior, I adore Thy Sacred Heart, for that heart is the seat and source of all Thy tenderest human affections for us sinners. It is the instrument and organ of Thy love. It did beat for us. It yearned over us. It ached for us, and for our salvation. It was on fire through zeal, that the glory of God might be manifested in and by us. It is the channel through which has come to us all Thy overflowing human affection, all Thy Divine Charity towards us. All Thy incomprehensible compassion for us, as God and Man, as our Creator and our Redeemer and Judge, has come to us, and comes, in one inseparably mingled stream, through that Sacred Heart. O most Sacred symbol and Sacrament of Love, divine and human, in its fullness, Thou didst save me by Thy divine strength, and Thy human affection, and then at length by that wonder-working blood, wherewith Thou didst overflow. Bl. John Henry Newman

May thy heart dwell always in our hearts!

May thy blood ever flow in the veins of our souls!

O sun of our hearts, thou givest life to all things by the rays of thy goodness!

I will not go until thy heart has strengthened me, O Lord Jesus!

May the heart of Jesus be the king of my heart!

Blessed be God.

Amen. St. Francis de Sales

The Heart of Jesus is the comfort and the strength of all the saints:

No matter what my sufferings may be, I will never complain, and if I have to undergo any humiliation I will seek refuge in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St Alphonsa Muttathupadathu

And when all earthly succor is withheld, their belief in the Love that burns in the Heart of their Savior transcends the darkness:

In my heart there is blind trust in the Sacred Heart. – Bl. Teresa of Calcutta

The grace to live and die in the Sacred Heart was granted these men and women, as their holy lives bear witness. They lived and they died, and yet they live now even more fully, because it was the Heart of the One Who conquered death which beat, and still beats, in their breasts. As He promised, those who believe in Him shall never die. Neither shall devotion to that Sacred Heart, that one Heart shared by all believers, weaken or die. St. Josemaría Escrivá, lover of Jesus’ Heart, put it so simply:

True devotion to the Sacred Heart has always been and is still truly alive, full of human and supernatural meaning. It has led and still leads to conversion, self-giving, fulfillment of God’s will and a loving understanding of the mysteries of the redemption.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Delight of All Saints

I put my trust in You!

 

On the Solemnity of All Saints

Deo omnis gloria!

Photo credits:  http://eliasicons.blogspot.com/p/visit-elias-icons.html

Christmas in July

Around this time of year many people’s thoughts turn to Christmas, if only to breathe a sigh of relief that five months still remain between them and figuring out what to get for Aunt Martha. Stores have “Christmas in July” sales to drum up business, and at this time of year my daughter, when she was younger, would always beg to be allowed to play Christmas carols. It’s been 7 months since the Big Day, and in the summer heat many hearts look back, remembering the joy that accompanies the celebration of the “miracle of Christmas.”

As we all know, the “miracle of Christmas” is supposedly the birth of the God-man. Close, but no cigar. The “miracle of Christmas” actually took place 9 months prior, at the Annunciation, for when Mary gave her “yes” to God, the Incarnation began. The so-called “miracle of Christmas” is the Incarnation.

Catholics dwell on the Incarnation (literally, the “enfleshment”) all year round. But why? With every recitation of the Nicene Creed we recall the moment when “for us men and for our salvation He came down from Heaven, and by the power of the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became Man.” In the Apostles’ Creed we do mention His birth, but only for the purpose of highlighting the fact that His mother was a virgin. That Jesus was born was no great surprise – He grew inside the womb of His mother for 9 months; birth is the expected outcome. It was His Incarnation that deserved to make headlines. As an Evangelical I was steeped in the life of Christ, His sacrifice on the Cross, His triumph o’er the grave and His soon-coming again (heavy emphasis on that last part). The Incarnation was a theological concept that I was familiar with, but it really didn’t play any kind of role in my daily Christian scheme of things. Yes, the second Person of the Trinity became a Man – how else could He have offered up His Life on the Cross to save me? End of story.

As a Catholic, I now realize that the answer to the question of the Incarnation is not just “Jesus became a Man so He could die on the Cross to save me.” Not by a long shot. The Incarnation is the beginning of the story of my redemption, the middle of the story, and the ongoing, never-ending story to which I as an Evangelical never gave a second thought. The theology of the Incarnation is the underpinning of all things Christian.

Take the story of the Good Samaritan, for example, a story exceedingly familiar to Evangelicals. We preached on it and taught it to our children. I could have recited it in my sleep. A man was travelling and got mugged. As he lay by the side of the road expiring, a priest came along. The priest knew, of course, that it was important for him to help his fellow man. He also knew that by touching the poor wretch that he would be rendered ritually unclean. He passed by. A Levite also came along and neglected to render assistance for the same reason. A non-Jew, a heretic, that is to say, a Samaritan, then came along and did what the priest and the Levite should have done, putting the man on his donkey and transporting him to safety at a nearby inn. He even paid for the man’s care, promising to recompense the innkeeper for any expenditures he incurred. The story teaches us that our “neighbor” is anyone in need. End of story.

But one day, as a Catholic, I was confronted with St. Augustine’s take on this story, beginning with the words, “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho; Adam himself is meant.”

Whoa – that’s a different way of looking at it!

Yet from an Incarnational point of view, that’s a very appropriate way of looking at it. For here we find the rationale for the Catholic emphasis on the Incarnation as it relates to Jesus’ odd statement:

Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

As an Evangelical, that was something of a stumper for me. What did Jesus mean by that? Obviously, Jesus didn’t mean that He saw the Father being born in a manger, preaching the Gospel to men, eating with tax collectors and sinners, healing blind Bartimaeus…. Yet, what did He mean? And did it have any implications for the way I lived my life?

St. Augustine got it. He approached the story of the Good Samaritan not from my Evangelical “go out and help your neighbor – Jesus said so” understanding of the parable, but from the Incarnational “here’s why you are helping your neighbor” point of view – because “Adam himself is meant.”

According to St. Augustine, an alternate reading of the parable begins with God, Who comes upon fallen man lying by the side of the road. He binds man’s wounds, takes him to the Inn (which symbolizes the Church) and instructs those who work there to take care of this man, promising to compensate them for their expenditures when He returns. And it is in light of that Incarnational reading that we understand why we love our neighbor – because God loved us first, and as His body we do what He is doing.

And how could we not? For as Augustine explains in another context:

All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of Christians constitutes but one man. Let us rejoice and give thanks. Not only are we to become Christians, but we are to become Christ. My brothers, do you understand the grace of God that is given us? Wonder, rejoice, for we are Christ! If He is the Head, and we are the members, then together He and we are the whole man.

Jesus became Man so that man might become a part of His body. As a part of His body, you love as He loves, and lovingly do the works that He does, even as He does the works that His Father does. Jesus’ eyes are always seeking the lost, and His ears listening for their cries that His feet might hasten to where they have fallen, His hands raising them from the dirt and His arms embracing them, His shoulders bearing them until they grow strong enough to walk on their own. Got that? That’s you and me – His eyes, His ears, His feet, His hands, His arms, His shoulders. As St. Paul told the Corinthians, “You are not your own!” There is simply no other way to be a member of the Body. The judgment stories that Jesus tells emphasize this fact: there will be people who flaunt their faith (“Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord!'”) and even their miracles (“Did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?”) Yet Jesus fails to recognize those who are clearly not members of His body, doing what He is doing. Waving in His face His supposed “Lordship” in their lives and the miracles they have worked in His Name but independent of Him is to no avail – “I don’t know who you are!” is His answer to them.

So my Evangelical understanding that I had to love God above all things and my neighbor as myself was correct – as far as it went. But lacking an Incarnational insight into the situation, I did not understand that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us so that I, a creature of flesh, could be made a member of His body, and as a member I can do nothing of myself; I can only do what He is doing.
Through me, Jesus would tenderly raise the dying man from the side of the road and carry him to the Inn where he could be brought back to life. That the Second Person of the Trinity was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became Man is far from being the mere flashpoint of the ongoing, never-ending story of my life as a partaker of the divine nature. The Incarnation means more than I ever could have guessed, for it is the key that unlocks the mystery of all those “works” that we Protestants avoided like the plague, the works upon which the Church insists, the works on which the churches in the book of Revelation are judged (Rev 2:2, 2:9, 2:13, 2:19, 3:1, 3:8, 3:15), the works which distinguish the sheep from the goats (Mt 25:33), the works by which a man is justified (James 2:24).

To paraphrase St. Augustine, what could be a better sign of how much God loves us than the Son of God deigning to share our nature? At Christmas we celebrate just one small (but glorious!) glimpse into what the Father is doing through the Incarnation of His beloved Son. And it is something to CELEBRATE, in December or even in July.

 

On the memorial of St. James the Greater

Deo omnis gloria!

Like Jesus

The Ascension was never my favorite Bible story, containing as it did all the elements of a monumental tragedy – at least as far as I was concerned. The poor, shell-shocked disciples of Christ, barely recovered from the horror of the Crucifixion, just beginning to exult in the reality that even death could not defeat their Lord, gullibly follow Jesus up the Mount of Olives, and He leaves them! How could He?? I know, I know – He mumbled something about having to leave so that He could send the “Comforter.” Paraclete, Schmaraclete! was my well-reasoned response. I want JESUS! The story was a triumph for Him – He got to go Home! I was stuck here….

No, I was not a big fan of the Ascension. It might have helped if I had known that the Ascension was actually all about: ME.

Question: Who is the light of the world? Little-known fact: I AM.

Hang on a minute – Jesus proclaimed in John 8:12 that HE was the Light of the World.

Absolutely correct. It is, however, also absolutely correct for me to insist that I am the light of the world, because Jesus said I was, in His Sermon on the Mount.

In fact, if you read the New Testament carefully, you’ll notice that an incredible number of “parallel” claims are made along those same lines. Jesus would explain to his disciples that He was something specific like the Light of the World, and later in Scripture we would be told that WE were (or were to become) that very same thing. A few examples:

• Jesus is the only begotten Son of God. Jn 3:16
  

“For you are all sons of God
through faith in Christ Jesus.” Gal 3:26

• Jesus has been appointed “the heir of all things.” Heb 1:2
  

“Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ…” Rom 8:16

• Jesus is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” Col 1:15
  

“For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.” Rom 8:29

• Jesus is “the radiance of [the Father’s] glory and the exact representation of His nature….” Heb 1:3
  

“For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature” 2 Pet 1:4

• Jesus is “the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” Heb 3:1
  

“But you are ‘a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own….” 1 Pet 2:9

• Jesus is the “one mediator between God and men” 1 Tim 2:5
  

“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority….” 1 Tim 2:1

• Jesus was “crucified in weakness, yet He lives by God’s power.” 2 Cor 13:4
  

“Likewise, we are weak in Him, yet by God’s power we will live with Him
to serve you.” 2 Cor 13:4

• Jesus is seated “at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.” Heb 1:3
  

“And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms
in Christ Jesus….” Eph 2:6

We are called to be what Jesus is, to imitate Him in all things (except in His divine Essence – we will not become God, but we are commanded to become god-ly.) Jesus was very God of very God, but He did not spend His earthly existence sitting around marveling at this fact. Jesus “went about doing good.” This means, obviously, that we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. One small problem… We are unable to do anything of ourselves!

“Apart from Me you can do nothing.” Jn 15:5

Make that one BIG problem – Jesus just ascended to the Father, and He didn’t take us with Him! And so much is expected of us, as the “parallel” statements make abundantly clear!

• Jesus was sent: “I am not here on my own, but He who sent me is true. Jn 7:28
  

“As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world.” Jn 17:18

• Jesus became “a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth….” Rom 15:8
  

“Your attitude should be the same
as that of Christ Jesus, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant….” Phil 2:5

• Jesus said, “The Father who dwells in me is doing His works.” Jn 14:9
  

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Eph 2:10

• Jesus was “a Man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs.” Acts 2:22
  

“…he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these
he will do.” (Jn 14:12)

• The Father gave Jesus “authority over all people” Jn 17:3, to “reign forever and ever” Rev 11:5
  

“… if we endure, we will also reign with Him.” 2 Tim 2:12

• Jesus is “the one whom God appointed as the judge of the living and the dead.” Acts 10:42
  

“Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?… Do you not know that we will judge angels?” I Cor 6:2-3

• Jesus “gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.” Eph 5:2
  

“… offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God” Rom 12:1

• Jesus is “the Holy One of God.” Mk 1:24
  

“like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves
also in all your behavior” 1 Pet 1:15

• Jesus said, “I love the Father” Jn 14:31 , and “As the Father loves me, so I also love you” Jn 15: 12
  

“Love one another, even as I have loved you.” Jn 13:34

The Ascension looked to me like a recipe for disaster! So much is expected of us, yet we are simultaneously informed that without the One Who just ascended, we can do nothing! Not only does He leave us, but He insists that He MUST leave us, so that we can receive “the Comforter.”

It’s all starting to fall into place…. We aren’t the only ones who can do nothing of ourselves – Jesus said the very same thing about Himself:

…the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing….

There’s a plenty good reason that we can do nothing of ourselves. Even the second Person of the Trinity could do nothing of Himself! That’s why He makes it clear to us that the Father loves Him, and He loves the Father. The Bible tells us that God is Love – God the Father is Love, God the Son is Love, God the Holy Spirit is Love. You and I are not, obviously, but we have to be in order to enter into this progressive endowment of responsibilities and the resulting ability to fulfill those responsibilities. Love is what makes it possible for us to participate in the life of God. And therefore, the Comforter was sent to fill us, the Comforter Who is the Love between the Father and the Son, so real that He is actually a Person of the Holy Trinity. If we are expected to live the life of Christ in this world, we must be filled with the same Love He is filled with, and with the power of this divine Love. Thus, of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. We are made partakers of the divine nature. Each Christian becomes a part of this divine bucket brigade, as God’s love pours out from the Father, to the Son, to us and through us to our neighbor.

Note the divine progression of Love flowing from the Father, to the Son, to the disciples, to the world. As Jesus receives from the Father, so He also gives to us, but not so that we can sit around marveling at how privileged we are. As Jesus went about doing good, so must we. As He gives to us, we are to offer to others: love, forgiveness, prayers, assistance, forbearance, mercy. We who have received from Jesus what He received from the Father are now commissioned to react as Jesus reacted to those gifts: by laying down our lives and taking up the work the Father has prepared for us. When Scripture defines who the Christian is, and what his mission is now that he has been born again, it simply points us back to Jesus’ nature and mission, because that says it all. We were loved so much that God gave His only begotten Son to save us, so that we could lay down our lives and save others (and yes, it is legitimate to say that we play a limited, supporting role in the salvation of others, as St. Paul said, “I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.”) Jesus left us so that we might experience His life more fully, or as St. Paul put it “that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.” St. Maximus the Confessor probably expressed it best: we are called to nothing less than total participation in Christ. We, the members of the body of Christ, are literally co-workers with God (1 Cor 3:9) and partakers of the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4). As members of His actual body, how could we not be? Pope Pius XII expressed the concept in these words:

“As He hung upon the Cross, Christ Jesus not only appeased the justice of the Eternal Father which had been violated, but He also won for us, His brethren, an ineffable flow of graces. It was possible for Him of Himself to impart these graces to mankind directly; but He willed to do so only through a visible Church made up of men, so that through her all might cooperate with Him in dispensing the graces of Redemption. As the Word of God willed to make use of our nature, when in excruciating agony He would redeem mankind, so in the same way throughout the centuries He makes use of the Church that the work begun might endure.”

“…so in the same way throughout the centuries He makes use of the Church that the work begun might endure” – this is the Catholic understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation, that Jesus became Man so that men might become members of Jesus’ very body. Jesus did the will of His Father, and now intercedes for us that we might do exactly the same thing, following in His footsteps, by exactly the same Power that He relied on, the Holy Spirit Who is Love. The Ascension is a textbook illustration of the way God demands something impossible of us only to show us our need, and then steps in to do what needs to be done through us. Over the next 10 days we will see this in the story of Pentecost, as the apostles pray with the Blessed Virgin for 9 days before receiving the power necessary,the Holy Spirit, to fulfill the Great Commission Jesus gave them at His Ascension.

The Ascension was a key event in the divine plan. Our Elder Brother has been glorified, and is now praying for us as we, filled with the Holy Spirit, do the works that God has prepared for us to do. This is the reason we were created. We will be just like Him one day, to the glory of God the Father.

Practice starts now.

 

On the feast of the Ascension of the Lord

Deo omnis gloria!

Ve Haf Vays of Maykingk You Go to Mass!

One unfortunate trend in Protestantism is the growth of a denomination which calls itself by various names: Bedside Baptist, Pillow Presbyterian, or the Church of the Holy Comforter. Put in old-fashioned terms, it means playing hooky from church on Sunday morning. Though it is peripherally related in nature to the 1960’s “turn on, tune in and drop out” mindset (minus the psychedelic drugs, of course), it claims to have a Biblical basis. Proponents point to Matthew 18:20, where the Savior assured His disciples that “where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them.” This, they claim, is divine endorsement of their intention to stay home on Sundays. Members of this denominational persuasion just don’t get the point of “going to church.” Many are disillusioned with institutional churches, and have convinced themselves that “porch church” is just as good as the real thing. They can watch a televangelist or “participate” in an online church service, or they can just read their Bible and sing a few hymns with family members – all without guilt, because the Bible nowhere tells us how often we have to go to church.

You can see where this train of thought has led the Protestant world – fewer folks are sitting in the pews on Sundays. Those who have bought into the individualistic Just-Me-And-Jesus approach to Christianity and are now taking it to its logical conclusion are a hard sell as far as church attendance goes. “I don’t attend church because I am the church,” they’ll tell you. “I can worship God wherever I am; after all, He lives in my heart! I don’t need to go to a particular building to see Him!” Institutional churches, of course, aren’t too terribly pleased with this way of thinking, but far be it from them to insist that Christians HAVE TO be inside the building on Sunday mornings. While a real Christian will certainly WANT to come to church on Sunday, they will tell you, there’s no Biblical reason why he HAS TO. That, after all, is one of the many things wrong with the Catholic Church, which insists that attendance at Mass is an “obligation.” NOWHERE, Protestants will gladly explain to you, does the Bible say that church attendance is an obligation. The Catholic Church is sometimes portrayed as the religious equivalent of a totalitarian regime, forcing the terrorized population to knuckle under and show up on Sundays and Holy Days on pain of hellfire. My Moody Bible Institute friend told me of a relative of hers, a former Catholic, who was traumatized as a child by nuns who told her she would go to hell if she missed Mass. Such a crime, my friend tsk-tsked, since the Bible NOWHERE tells us that we HAVE TO go to church.

And she’s quite right – there is no 11th Commandment along the lines of “Thou shalt attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days.” The closest the Bible comes to insisting on church attendance is Hebrews 10:23-25: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near” – really underwhelming support for the Mass obligation. Of course, the book of Acts does tell us that the first Christians “devoted themselves to (a) the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, (b) to the breaking of bread and to prayer,” which Catholics believe was the Mass [(a) the Liturgy of the Word and (b) the Liturgy of the Eucharist]. Acts also says that Christians came together “on the first day of the week to break bread.” Put those two together and you certainly have a Biblical precedent for meeting on Sunday for Mass, but still no obligation. So did the tyrannical Catholic Church just make this stuff up about you having to get your tired hiney into a pew on Sunday morning?

I’ll answer that question with a question: Did your parents make that stuff up about your having to be home by 10 on a school night, and by 11 on the weekend – and no, you couldn’t eat all the ice cream you wanted before dinner? Well, if by that I mean did they make the decision to establish those rules? – yes, they did. But, after all, they’re your parents – you would expect your folks to make rules to keep you safe and healthy. That’s an aspect of parental rights – your mom and dad have the right to tell you what you have to do. And in that same fashion, the Catholic Church – our mother – has the parental right and obligation to make rules to keep us safe and healthy.

The Church is our mother? She is the bride of Christ, of course, and she nurtures the children of God. The idea of the Church as our mother goes back to the Old Testament. God is portrayed allegorically as a man who loves and marries a woman who betrays Him over and over (Jer 3, Hosea 2). Yet Isaiah 54 tells the story of how God will call back His spouse, His people “Zion” (Jerusalem), “never to rebuke you again.” This spouse in her fruitfulness will be no longer barren, but will bear her Husband many children – she will “spread out to the right and to the left,” and her “descendants will dispossess nations.” St. Paul proclaims the fulfillment of these verses in Galatians 4, calling “the Heavenly Jerusalem” our mother. The New Testament people of God make up the Heavenly Jerusalem. They are the Church, the bride of Christ, and this Church corporately brings forth new believers. Third-century bishop and martyr Cyprian of Carthage elaborated on this:

…one is not born by the imposition of hands when he receives the Holy Ghost, but in baptism, that so, being already born, he may receive the Holy Spirit, even as it happened in the first man Adam. For first God formed him, and then breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. For the Spirit cannot be received, unless he who receives first have an existence. But as the birth of Christians is in baptism, while the generation and sanctification of baptism are with the spouse of Christ alone, who is able spiritually to conceive and to bear sons to God, where and of whom and to whom is he born, who is not a son of the Church, so as that he should have God as his Father, before he has had the Church for his Mother?

As our parent, the Church has an obligation to “bring us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,” and this she cannot do if we do not present ourselves to be taught by her. The Mass obligation, Biblically speaking, is a combination of two passages of Scripture, the above-mentioned Hebrews 10:23-25 (“not forsaking our own assembling together”) and another verse from Hebrews, in chapter 13, verse 17:

“Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.”

The Church, our mother, keeps watch over our souls, and for that reason has every right to insist on our presence at Mass. Some children, of course, do view parental authority as they would a totalitarian regime. A lot of Protestant objections to the parental aspect of the Church are juvenile as well, running the gamut from adolescent rage to predictable pubescent peevishness. “That old guy in Rome can’t tell me what to think!” “I worship God in my own way – no human being comes between me and Jesus!” “I can read the Bible for myself!” Rebellious children of rebellious parents, Protestants have ascribed authority to a Book, which allows them to appear to address the authority issue while merely deferring it – for no Book, not even the God-breathed Holy Scriptures, can explain itself to us. Authority, under the Protestant system, is left up to the individual, who interprets the Bible for himself. However, according to the Bible, Jesus gave His authority to His Church (Lk 10:16, Mt 18:17-18, Acts 16:4, 2 Thess 3:14, Titus 2:15, 1 Jn 4:6), we have been instructed to obey our leaders (Heb 13:17), and those leaders have every right to command us to be present at Mass.

“The Mass is at the same time, and inseparably, the sacrificial memorial in which the sacrifice of the cross is perpetuated and the sacred banquet of communion with the Lord’s body and blood” – so says the Church. If the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist are all that the Church says they are, she would be committing child neglect if she did not require us to make ourselves available for their celebration. The Church is a good mother. She loves us, and she keeps watch over our souls.

On the memorial of Blessed Pope John XXIII

Deo omnis gloria!

A Question of “How?”

As an Evangelical, I would have told you that there was a chasm between Biblical teaching (meaning “the interpretation of Scripture to which I happen to adhere at this point in my life”) and Catholic teaching. To my surprise, after actually bothering to study the issue (Memo to self: Find out what you’re talking about BEFORE you start talking…), many of the differences between Catholic theology and Protestant theology actually boil down to something not all that huge. Many times it is just a question of “How ….?”

When I was a Protestant, the Catholic idea of “going to confession” was something that I was SURE was invented by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages in order to keep the people enslaved. It was a “man-made teaching.” After all, where in Scripture does it tell us that we have to confess our sins to a priest? The Bible tells us that “if we will confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness!” Where’s the priest in that verse? I knew that any Catholic who would just read the Bible (we all know there’s no such thing as a Catholic Bible study!) would come to the same conclusion that I had: confession was something the Church hierarchy had made up because it served their purpose.

When I studied the sacraments, though, and the sacrament of Reconciliation was presented as a “healing” sacrament, suddenly it all began to fall into place….

I attended several charismatic assemblies as a teenager; my mom once took me to a meeting led by Frances Hunter, where several people were healed of that dread malady of one-leg-longer-than-the-otherism. I have never, however, belonged to a church which preached total dependence upon faith healing. As responsible Christians, the folks at the churches I attended always marched themselves and their children over to the doctor’s office if they got sick. If we had appendicitis, we didn’t stay home praying for God to heal us – we prayed as we skedaddled over to the emergency room to have that thing removed before it burst! We did not see this as any kind of “lack of faith.” And yet I knew that that was exactly what some Pentecostals would call it. “By His stripes we are healed!” they proclaimed. “Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up.” Where’s the doctor in that verse? they would ask. And we would reply calmly that of course we believed that “the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well.” But we also believed that God was doing that healing through the intervention of trained medical personnel. We told the faith healers the story of the man trapped in the flood, sitting on his roof praying that God would rescue him. A neighbor rowed past in his boat and called out to the man to jump off the roof and climb into the boat. “No!” answered the man, “I’m trusting God to save me!” Another neighbor rowed past in his boat and they had the same conversation; the man would not leave his roof – he was waiting for God to save him. Finally the Coast Guard flew overhead in a helicopter and threw down a rope. “Climb up into the helicopter!” they shouted. “No!” the man shouted back. “I’m trusting God to save me!” The Coast Guard flew off to rescue others, and the man drowned in the flood. The moral of the story? Sometimes God does assist us directly, but very often He uses other human beings to provide what we need. It is not a lack of faith in God if we believe that His divine assistance can be provided through men.

As much as many Evangelicals try to pretend that our Christian experience boils down to “just me and Jesus,” in practice that idea falls apart. Protestants recognize this principle of relying on others as mediators of God’s gifts when they evangelize. Why do people need to tell their neighbors about Jesus? Why do missionaries go to the other side of the world to bring the natives to Christ? Because God has honored us with the responsibility of helping each other to Heaven – He does not send angels to proclaim the Good News; He leaves that job to us. We are all indebted to someone, some person, who brought us the Good News. God uses people to do His work. This is part of the Catholic teaching on justification by faith. Christians must “walk in the works which God has prepared for us to walk in”(Eph 2:10). If we aren’t doing our part, others will suffer from our negligence. Pope Pius XII put it like this:

“As He hung upon the Cross, Christ Jesus not only appeased the justice of the Eternal Father which had been violated, but He also won for us, His brethren, an ineffable flow of graces. It was possible for Him of Himself to impart these graces to mankind directly; but He willed to do so only through a visible Church made up of men, so that through her all might cooperate with Him in dispensing the graces of Redemption. As the Word of God willed to make use of our nature, when in excruciating agony He would redeem mankind, so in the same way throughout the centuries He makes use of the Church that the work begun might endure.”

God’s plan is for us to do His work. We as Catholics believe that the same wonderful plan – God’s grace poured out in our lives through the work of human instruments – is evident in the sacrament of reconciliation. In the Evangelical forgiveness formula, though, the Church is left out entirely. My sins are between me and Jesus! says the Evangelical.

Let’s face it – the Church isn’t the only thing that is left out of the Evangelical forgiveness formula. John 20:22-23 is a passage that is seldom-to-never brought up in Protestant preaching, I think for obvious reasons:

“And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.'”

It’s pretty obvious that Jesus gave His apostles the right and duty to forgive and to refuse to forgive sins. That’s what this verse says. And the Church has always understood it to mean that the men whom the apostles laid hands upon also have that right and duty, cf. St. Basil’s fourth-century insistence that “It is necessary to confess our sins to those to whom the dispensation of God’s mysteries has been entrusted.” We see in the historical record that the early Christian church believed in public confession – about as far from the Evangelical “just me and Jesus” approach as you can get! Nowadays of course we confess privately, but the concept remains the same.

Confession is a healing sacrament – that means that God uses the priest to forgive sins similar to the way He uses a doctor to bring healing. The doctor treats us, but God heals us. The priest absolves us in the person of Jesus, just as St. Paul declared that “To whom you forgive anything, I forgive also: for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes I forgave it in the person of Christ, lest Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices.” (II Cor 2:10-11) In other words, the priest declares to us that we are forgiven based on his authority as God’s representative and on God’s promise to forgive. The priest declares God’s forgiveness – it is God who forgives us.

So the seeming chasm between the Protestant theology of “how one receives forgiveness” and the Catholic theology of “how one receives forgiveness” is not really much of a chasm at all. We agree that we receive forgiveness from God. We agree that Jesus wants His disciples to walk in His footsteps, i.e., to be the hands and feet of Christ in this world. Where we disagree is on the issue of “how” forgiveness comes to us. Just as Catholics do not believe that God desires all of us to be healed directly by Him with no intervention on the part of medical personnel, neither do we believe that God has left His Church out of the forgiveness equation. God forgives us using His instrument, the Church. And this process of confession, by the way, beautifully provides for the accountability that Evangelicals are always talking about (and bemoaning the lack of).

All of this, as we see, ties in closely to the doctrine of the “Communion of Saints,” which is also the basis for the Catholic veneration of Mary. This seemingly huge divide between Protestant teaching on “the saints,” and the Catholic understanding of the issue, is also more of a question of “how?” How is the body of Christ composed? Are we all a “hand?” (1 Cor 12:20-25) Are not some parts weaker and some parts stronger? Are not some parts more deserving of honor? Are there not some whom the King especially wishes to honor? (Esther 6:6) Again, not that far from Protestant belief when you look into it. The same can be said on the subject of Purgatory: we all believe that those who die in a state of grace will enter Heaven – it is a question of “how?” Will we enter Heaven with muddy feet, or will Jesus meet us at the door with a basin of hot water and a towel?  

On the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows

Deo omnis gloria!

Pastor Bob and the New Testament Church

As I explained in my last post, I was christened in a United Methodist church in upstate New York. When we moved to Scottsdale in the 1960s, we found a wonderful Wesleyan Methodist church by the name of Our Heritage. It was pastored by a man of some renown, the Reverend Robert C. Girard. Reverend Girard, unbeknownst to me as a child, was a Big Deal. He authored two very popular books, Brethren, Hang Loose, and Brethren, Hang Together. Brethren, Hang Loose became required reading in seminary courses, and was republished by Christianity Today in the same volume with works by Billy Graham and Francis Schaeffer. Reverend Girard was a nationally known figure. As I said, I understood none of this. I knew the man as “Pastor Bob,” and what I remember most about him was that his wife found out that she was going to have another baby (their daughter, Charity) when she went to the doctor thinking she was having a gallbladder attack, leading me to develop some rather peculiar notions on the subject of where babies come from… but, I digress.

I was on fire for the Lord as a pre-teen, and asked Pastor Bob to “re-baptize” me, fearing that my infant baptism had not been valid because it was not a “believer’s baptism.” He obliged, and to this day I can close my eyes and relive the feel of the water swooshing closed over my head as I was fully immersed in the baptismal tank, waiting for what seemed like an eternity until Pastor Bob saw fit to pull me back to the surface, and carefully climbing the steps out of the tank with my robes clinging to me like suckerfish. I remember riding the church bus with my youth group to a Billy Graham crusade. I remember Pastor Bob teaching the children’s choir to sing Silent Night for the Christmas pageant.

We moved to another part of town in the early 1970s and began attending the then modestly sized Scottsdale Bible Church. Gradually I forgot about Our Heritage as I forgot the other details of my childhood, probably not uttering Pastor Bob’s name again for another 15 years until a Methodist missionary in Taiwan discovered that I had attended a Wesleyan Methodist church in Scottsdale in the early 1970s. He inquired who the pastor was. “Robert Girard,” I told him. His mouth dropped open. “You sat under the teaching of Robert Girard?!” he exclaimed excitedly and rather loudly. That was when the adult “me” first realized that Pastor Bob had indeed been a Big Deal.

Imagine my surprise when, about 15 years after that, I tried to google my old church, Our Heritage. No hits. I was stumped – I had expected it to still be right there on Granite Reef Road, or perhaps in some new location, having expanded to mega-church proportions over the years as Scottsdale Bible had. Instead, it seemed to be… gone.

I found the explanation for the disappearance of Our Heritage when I found a used copy of a third book authored by Pastor Bob called When the Vision Has Vanished. In it he chronicles the events of 1978, when he and the deacons of the church felt led by the Holy Spirit to give the church building back to the denomination and split the thriving congregation into informal house-church groups, in imitation of the first Christians. Within months, Our Heritage had ceased to exist, as the former members drifted off into other churches, reduced, as Pastor Bob put it, to “a scattered flock.”

What had possessed him to try such an experiment?

From an Evangelical perspective, it’s not impossible to understand. Most Evangelical churches give at least lip service to their goal of becoming an “Acts Chapter 2” or “New Testament” church. The Church of Christ denomination actually claims to be the restoration of the New Testament church. This concept is the natural extension of the Reformers’ goal of returning the church to its former pristine state, an imaginary era which supposedly existed before Catholicism gilded the lily. Modern-day Evangelicals, however, not only want to divest the church of Catholic tendencies; they want to divest the church of the Reformers’ tendencies, in other words, no liturgy, no vestments, no formal prayers, no perceived “stuffiness.” After all, they reason, if the Holy Spirit is inspiring worship, it must be fresh, and spontaneous, and new. As every Evangelical KNOWS, there was no such thing as liturgy in the 1st-century church!

From an Evangelical viewpoint, what Pastor Bob tried to do when he established home churches was pretty radical, but not unthinkable. In his explanation of what went wrong with the home church experiment, he informs us that the pastoral team was relying on “the practical authority of Scripture to lead the church.” Based on this, he searched the Scriptures for “principles we could pull out,” and lists 11 of them, including the principle that the church is Christ’s people who are alive in Him, gathering around the Person of Jesus Christ their Head, dependent on the Holy Spirit. The reality of the royal priesthood of believers was central to his views on leadership. Believers are led by leaders chosen from among them, and meet for the purpose of maturing in Christ, which includes learning to love fellow believers in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Evangelism will occur as a natural outgrowth of all this.

Sounds inspiring on paper, but as Pastor Bob tells it, in practice it was a mess. His flourishing congregation disintegrated, his ministerial credentials were pulled, and Our Heritage Wesleyan Methodist Church ceased to exist. Pastor Bob cited a “lack of commitment to unity” as a big factor in the collapse of the congregation. But what could have caused such a lack of commitment in an obviously on-fire-for-Jesus environment?

The problem here, I believe, is the same one that plagues Evangelicalism at large, the belief that Jesus established a Bible, and died to have a personal relationship with me. Artificially grafted onto this foundational belief is the recognition that Jesus also has a personal relationship with millions of others, and that these believers are truly our brothers and sisters, but with the underlying understanding that none of those siblings of ours should be allowed to get in between me and Jesus. In other words, for all the lip service, the Church is subtracted from the equation. In everyday Evangelical terms, it means dwindling participation in Sunday services as thousands of people ask themselves, “Why do I need to go to church if Jesus established a Bible, and died to have a personal relationship with me? I can read the Bible for myself on Sunday morning, and the Bible never prescribes a binding amount of involvement with those brothers and sisters of mine….” While Evangelicals do know that Christians are “the body of Christ,” this understanding is in a practical sense underdeveloped. The term “the body of Christ” is often abused, as when popular author Henry Blackaby teaches that the local church is “a body with Christ as the Head” (and Christ has how many bodies???). The Evangelical concept of the Body of Christ, as in “This is My Body,” is even shakier. This Body of Christ, the Holy Eucharist, is proclaimed by Catholics to be “the source and summit of the Christian life,” – “O sacrament of devotion! O sign of unity! O bond of charity!” in St. Augustine’s words. If one is seeking for the mysterious cause of a “lack of commitment to unity,” they need seek no further. The Real Presence is the cement holding the Church together. If one cannot understanding the literal meaning of the Eucharist as “the Body of Christ,” one will not be able to adequately grasp the ramifications of the Church as “the body of Christ.” For all the “fundamentals” that Pastor Bob pulled from Scripture, a fundamental misunderstanding of the body of Christ led to disaster.

“The demise of the church seems certain evidence that we missed some fundamental truths” confesses Pastor Bob poignantly. This could be the sad last confession of Evangelicalism. Pastor Bob was doing the best that an Evangelical knows how – he was relying on “the practical authority of Scripture to lead the church.” In doing so, he missed the authority of the Church. Missing the truth that Jesus established His Church (Mt. 16:17), that He built it on the foundation of the apostles (Mt. 16:19, Mt. 18:18, Lk. 10:16, 1 Jn 4:6), that the apostles passed on their God-given authority to the men they ordained (Acts 1:15-26, Acts 6:6, 2 Cor 10:6, 2 Thess 3:14, 2 Tim 1:6, 2 Tim 2:2, 2 Tim 4:1-2, Titus 2:15) and that this Church can count on Jesus’ irrevocable promise that the gates of hell will never prevail against His beloved (Mt 16:18) means missing the “authority” part of the equation. As St. Paul explained:

So Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Eph 4: 12-13

That is the Church, but that Church is not on the radar of Christians such as I once was. We KNEW the Catholic Church was a man-made religion, and so we made up all kinds of churches to take her place. Thus the one thing that could make possible all the fervent longings of an Evangelical’s heart is rejected out-of-hand, while all else conceivable is ventured in hopes of recreating what Jesus started and then allowed to fail. This Church that we sought was no farther than a few blocks down the street, and yet tragically light-years distant from our comprehension.

When exposed to authentic Catholic teaching, Evangelicals can and do convert. I am living proof of that. Evangelicals have a God-shaped vacuum in their hearts in the exact dimensions of the Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Why then did it take 45 years before I was ever exposed to authentic Catholic teaching? Why do committed Evangelicals have nothing but hearsay and rumors on which to base their concept of Catholicism? Why do good, good men like Pastor Bob end up writing books entitled When the Vision Has Vanished?

You tell me.

On the memorial of St. Joseph of Arimathea

Deo omnis gloria!