There’s a story told about St. Anthony of Desert, the “Father of Monasticism,” that seems appropriate for Christmas Day. As the story goes, St. Anthony’s reputation for holiness grew to the point that he began to receive letters from famous people asking for spiritual counsel. Even Emperor Constantine and the royal family wrote to him. St. Anthony, however,
made nothing very much of the letters, nor did he rejoice at the messages. But he was the same as he had been before the Emperors wrote to him. But when they brought him the letters he called the monks and said, ‘Do not be astonished if an emperor writes to us, for he is a man; but rather wonder that God wrote the Law for men and has spoken to us through His own Son’ (Life of Anthony, s. 81).
St. Anthony’s nonchalance toward the imperial letters is a bit shocking–all the more shocking, of course, when we think about our own spontaneous reactions toward celebrity. If a major-league player so much as autographs a baseball for us, we encase it in glass and make it a conversation piece; if we receive a letter from the president, we frame it and display it above the mantle (at least if it’s a president we voted for); if we wind up in the waiting room with a Hollywood actress, we post a picture of FB and we relate every word she spoke—often to our friends’ annoyance.
St. Anthony, as we now know, didn’t go in for this sort of thing. But what interests me most is that St. Anthony doesn’t attribute his remarkable indifference to any contempt for Emperors or celebrities as such. No. As he explains it, he remains unimpressed because he has discovered something far more awe-inspiring: the fact “that God has spoken to us through His own Son.”
It is almost 2012, and the world will soon be ending. At least, according to the Mayans and a fundamentalist preacher in California, it will. Even though the Church’s readings in November, the end of the liturgical year, and Advent, the beginning, point toward the Second Coming, I have, I admit, not been overly concerned.
But then I had an unusual conversation a few weeks ago with a priest who was passing through town, one of those delightful Jesuits one meets who could be described as “a little crazy, in a good way.” On the surface, this good priest appears a tad unkempt, but you can tell from the way he prays the Mass—and he is praying, not performing—that the man has real spiritual depth.
While visiting our community, this man talked about his time, many years ago, working on the Rosebud Reservation, where I am now stationed. He talked about working with prisoners and people in one of the reservation’s most depressed communities and then said, almost out of nowhere, “It was here that I realized that prisoners and the really destitute have an intuitive understanding of the apocalypse—the good news of the apocalypse.” And then his voice rose slightly and he gave his little-crazy-in-a-good-way laugh and added, “Because it is good news.”
I realized I had never thought of the apocalypse as good news before, but I should have. The Bible itself ends with an urgent prayer for the Lord’s swift return: Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev 22:20). We pray for the end of this world every day in the words of the Our Father, Thy Kingdom come.
It seems that movie reviews always call for an attitude of ironic detachment, or at least a tone of scientific indifference, toward their subjects. Allow me, however, to be frankly enthusiastic about TheLastSummit (La Última Cima—2010). This low-budget documentary tribute to a late Spanish priest, Pablo Dominguez, might be the most powerful movie about the priesthood that I’ve seen to date. It invites, moreover, searching questions about our contemporary images of priesthood.
The tragic event that forms the constant background to The Last Summit turns out to be a hiking accident, an accident that cost Pablo Dominguez his life in 2009–at only 42 years of age. Read the rest of this entry »
Second Preface of Advent (the long prayer that leads up to the “Holy, Holy, Holy”), which the Church uses between December 17 and Christmas, mentions only two saints by name: the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. Presenting them as living icons of the Advent season, the prayer recalls how “the Virgin Mother longed for him with love beyond all telling, John the Baptist sang of his coming and proclaimed his presence when he came.” In the Gospels of the last two Sundays, we already contemplated St. John the Baptist’s call to “prepare the way of the Lord,” and listened to him “sing” of the Lord’s coming with his self-denial. But in the Gospel of this fourth and final week of Advent, our gaze turns toward Mary. Outwardly, the transition from the stern “voice crying out in the wilderness” to the gentle virgin from Nazareth could hardly be more abrupt. But despite all the obvious differences in appearance and activity, Mary resembles John the Baptist in the one thing necessary: in intense longing for the advent of the Lord into her life and into the world. . She“longed for him,” as our Preface reminds us, “with a love beyond all telling.”
I’d like to make just one observation about our Gospel today that might help us to appreciate the quality of Mary’s longing. The observation concerns her famous response, “May it be done to me (γένοιτό μοι) according to your Word.” Read the rest of this entry »
Ever wonder how one could possibly fulfill Paul’s directive to the Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17)? I have, and I’ve also been asked by students how one manages such a feat. (Does sleeping count?)
Apparently St. Augustine wondered the same thing because he gives a nice interpretation of the phrase in today’s Office of Readings, which I thought worth sharing. His answer struck me as rather “Ignatian,” in the sense that Ignatian discernment trains us to be attentive to our desires and where they’re leading us. And our desire for the coming of Christ is one of the great undercurrents of this quietly joyful season of Advent.
So here he is, the ever-profound, ever-insightful St. Augustine:
[T]he desire of your heart is itself your prayer. And if the desire is constant, so is your prayer. The Apostle Paul had a purpose in saying: Pray without ceasing. Are we then ceaselessly to bend our knees, to lie prostrate, or to lift up our hands? Is this what is meant in saying: Pray without ceasing? Even if we admit that we pray in this fashion, I do not believe that we can do so all the time.
Yet there is another, interior kind of prayer without ceasing, namely, the desire of the heart. Whatever else you may be doing, if you but fix your desire on God’s Sabbath rest, your prayer will be ceaseless. Therefore, if you wish to pray without ceasing, do not cease to desire…
Not really from our time period, but it was the best I could do...
On the 8th of January 1965, on page four hundred and ninety five of The Commonweal, on the right hand side of the page, we find an advertisement. It depicts the profile of a man in a tie placing a cigarette to his lips. The matching tagline reads: “Can a priest be a modern man?” The copy below clarifies that Priests can be men of “this age, cognizant of the needs of modern men.” Free from formalism, the priest is a pioneer, a missionary to his own people, utilizing his individual talents and modern technology to preach the word of God. A clearer image of the changing demographics and temperament of the American Catholic Church (as painted by Commonweal during this time) is difficult to find.
With these issues we step not only into the middle ‘60s, but into a world and Church beginning to look like those with which I am familiar. In September of ’64 we see not only the third session of the Council opening, but also the incipient Free Speech Movement in Berkeley. November brings the victory of Lyndon Johnson over Barry Goldwater, and the initiation of English into the liturgy. 1965 sees the assassination of Malcolm X and the signing of the Civil Rights Act, the Watts riots in Los Angeles, and anti-war protests springing up across the country. Commonweal keeps pace with such modern events. In itspages we begin to see Church conflicts framed along a progressive/conservative divide and phrases such as the “post-Christian West” and the “re-conversion of Europe.” Commonweal even describes its mission as one that meshes perfectly with the signs of the times, writing in an self-advertisement: “Now, in the new climate engendered by Popes John and Paul, this widely quoted, lay-edited journal of opinion has more to contribute that in the years before.” And contribute it does, the questions are: what does it contribute? Why? And to what end? Read the rest of this entry »
Though many lament the growing “secularization” of American culture, it remains true that, at least relative to other nations of the affluent West, American Christianity enjoys a rather prominent public role. It’s not only the fact that Americans go to Church more, though this is not insignificant. It’s also that the “place” of religion in the broader civic order seems more prominent. It still seems “more American” to go to Church on Sunday, to pray the Lord’s prayer at high school ball games, and to salt political speeches with biblical rhetoric. It seems very un-European, by contrast, to do any of these things. And while it is easy for American Christians to be self-congratulatory about this difference, the success of one of St. Francis Xavier’s more indelicate evangelization strategies suggests that America’s comparative religious vitality may be more circumstantial than we care to admit.
The particular evangelization strategy that I have in mind is the violation of shrines. As I pointed out in another post (and my return to the theme might indicate an obsession), St. Francis had little-known penchant for toppling Hindu statuary. This tactic raises, of course, all sorts of theological and ethical questions. Bracketing these for a moment, however, we can still ask a question that few nowadays ask. Were these acts effective? Did they effectively distance Hindus from their religious commitments? And if so, what do tell us about contemporary secularization dynamics? Read the rest of this entry »
I noted at the beginning of my series on the “new atheists” (Contra Dennett 1, 2, and 3) that Pope Paul VI entrusted the Society of Jesus with the mission of combating atheism in the modern world. At least one commenter questioned just how effective the Jesuits—and the institutions calling themselves “Jesuit”—have been in answering the Holy Father’s challenge. That’s a fair question, one which might even prompt our least Society to do a bit of soul-searching.
I thought, therefore, it might be useful to reprint Pope Paul’s charge, which came at the outset of the Order’s 31st General Congregation in 1965. The Pope’s exhortation begins by praising the contributions Jesuits have historically made to the Church, mentioning Church Doctors St. Peter Canisius and St. Robert Bellarmine. Pope Paul’s tone is confident, speaking of the Society as the Church’s “most devoted sons.” The laudatory preamble heightens the importance of the substance of the Holy Father’s challenge:
We gladly take this opportunity to lay serious stress, however briefly, on a matter of grave importance: We mean the fearful danger of atheism threatening human society. Read the rest of this entry »
“Therefore, beloved, since you await these things, be eager to be found without spot or blemish before him, at peace” (2Pet 3:13).
One of the more notorious incidents in radio broadcasting is the 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds, narrated by Orson Welles. The producers of the program repackaged the H.G. Wells novel about alien invasion as a series of “newsflashes,” which they then played without commercial interruption. The effect of this heightened realism was that a certain number of the radio audience became convinced that the end of the world was truly at hand. Panic ensued. Newspapers reported that a few even despaired—taking their own lives, it would seem, so as not to have to die. Pope Benedict once alluded to this bizarre panic as evidence of an important rule about humanity: “We live much more on the future than on the present. A man violently robbed of his future is already a man robbed of life itself” (Introduction to Christianity, 247 fn 39). Our strength to live today, in other words, depends very much on what we expect from tomorrow.
Keenly aware of this link between present and future, the second reading today from 2 Peter exhorts us to present holiness precisely by recalling the sort of future that we await “according to his promise.” 2 Peter gives us 3 characteristics of this future: Read the rest of this entry »
But then I began to wonder if it wasn’t about that anyway. If he was holding this sign for a different reason, to deliver a more precise message. A message to a particular woman in the crowd. A young woman in, say, cinnamon leg warmers and a black tulle cocktail dress–one that with perfect irony underlines her abhorrence of all tulle-centric social occasions. Thick bangs lofted over her forehead, arms still tender from the noon class at Yoga to the People. A woman who has never really understood in all these years of their platonic friendship, ever since freshman anthro, what that man really feels for her. That he almost collapses weakly to his knees every time she gives him a hug goodnight. That it nearly kills him whenever she says to him “I love you.” When she says it in a way that is sincere, that is truly heartfelt, but is the kind of love she also might give her seven year-old brother, or her cocker spaniel.
And so here, in this moment, in the midst of the revolution, he is looking for her in the crowd, and holding up his sign. Finally she sees it. She spots it, and smiles and thinks that the sign is about everyone. Her friend from forever is saying that love can in some generalized way help us overturn corporate greed. Love can restore the goods of this earth to all the people. He is REMINDING us that it is really and ultimately all about love. What a great idea, a wonderful concept. Read the rest of this entry »
Theologian David Tracy distinguishes three publics to whom the theologian addresses him or herself: the Church, the academy, and the general populace. Spending time paging through issues of The Catholic Mind published between 1962 and ’64, I found myself struck, especially in comparison to its relative infrequency today, by the frequency with which the third of Tracy’s audiences is addressed. For it is indeed the educated Catholic public that serves as the audience for The Catholic Mind. The journal is a publication of the Society of Jesus via America magazine, and it gives evidence at being aimed to facilitating the outbreak of this educated Catholic layperson from the ghetto of insular Catholic culture in any form. That is, in order for the articles selected by the editors for inclusion in this journal to be effective, there must be an attentive, well-versed Catholic audience to receive them. In other words, there is no need to address with such zeal the integration of the secular and sacred words if these two words were not so strictly separated for the reader in the first place. Read the rest of this entry »
This is Part I of a reflection by a friend of mine, Joe Hoover, on the Occupy Movement. Part II will be posted tomorrow.
When I think of the Occupy movement, I think about a tall young man with long distressed hair and a thick earnest beard who stood silently alone amidst immobilized 18-wheelers and five thousand unemployed workers, students, union members, mothers with small children, street performers, dancing anarchists, preaching Leninists, people who usually don’t protest things, people who do nothing but protest, and people who were just there, and held up a sign that said, “I love you with all my heart.”
It was early November in Oakland. A week earlier, the city had rousted the Occupy camp in front of Oakland’s City Hall, an action which ended up with police officers in riot gear using tear gas and rubber bullets on the occupiers. A few protesters also threw bottles and rocks at the cops. An Iraq war veteran named Scott Olsen had his skull fractured by police in the melee and would be hospitalized for weeks. In response, Occupy Oakland called for a General Strike for the entire city. The capstone to the strike would be an evening march to the Port of Oakland to shut it down for business, in solidarity with longshoremen in Portland who were in a protracted struggle with their parent company EGT.
The rally began near City Hall, where the Occupy camp had already moved back to reclaim its earlier territory. In staggered waves, thousands of people marched down the streets, taking over entire boulevards. “Your greed is my poverty,” their signs said. “Education, there is no other way.” “We are the 99 percent.” “Me and fraud = jail. Banks and fraud = bonus.” “Fight like an Egyptian.” “Jobs not warfare.” “If corporations are persons, why hasn’t Texas executed one?” “Welcome to the paradigm shift.” Read the rest of this entry »
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Whosoever Desires
to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross in our Society, which we desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and the Church his Spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth, should, after a vow of perpetual chastity, poverty, and obedience, keep the following in mind." From the Formula of the Institute, 1540
Posted by Aaron Pidel, SJ 
Whosoever Desires 