Happy Faults, Good Thieves, and Divine Mercy

This weekend’s beatification of Pope John Paul II means that the spotlight will shine even brighter on Divine Mercy Sunday this year.  While a few liturgical purists criticized the late pontiff for injecting such “Polish piety” into the liturgical calendar so close to Easter, it seems to me that divine mercy is at the heart of the Easter message.

If this intuition isn’t obvious, perhaps it’s because we’re in the habit of selling mercy short.  And if we fail to grasp how beautiful, how shocking, how dazzling mercy is, perhaps this is because we’re inclined to confuse it with a legal acquittal or a God who shrugs his shoulders and says “Whatever” to our sins.  Mercy, it seems to me, is much, much more than that.

We often say we’re sorry, usually without much thought, and in reply we usually hear, “That’s OK,” “Don’t worry about it,” “No problem.”  Rarely, if we knock over someone’s coffee cup or show up late for a meeting do we hear in reply, “I forgive you.”

Perhaps it’s best that such weighty words are not expended on social trivialities, but we shouldn’t so disassociate forgiveness from apologies that we begin to think that when confronted with our sins God just mutters “No problem” and gets on with running divine errands.

Some Jesuit-themed books

Over the Christmas break I had time to do a little Jesuit-themed reading.

The more scholarly of the two books I read is Trent Pomplun’s Jesuit on the Roof of the World (2010).  It chronicles the life and travels of Ippolito Desideri, an eighteenth century Jesuit missionary to Tibet.  Born in Pistoia, Tuscany, Desideri entered the Society of Jesus in 1700 and realized his dreams of becoming a missionary in a region almost completely unknown to Europeans.  His detailed accounts of Tibetan religion, culture, and politics have led some to consider him the father of “Tibetan studies.”

Desideri’s career involved harrowing sea voyages, bouts of snow-blindness in the Himalayas, and fleeing from invading Mongol armies.  Of his fourteen years outside of Italy, he spent six in Tibet and the rest of the time in transit—or trying to avoid superiors who might send him back home.

Desideri was a man of immense courage, intellect, and faith, but his mission was not ultimately successful.  He finished his career as a missionary embroiled in ecclesiastical litigation with the Capuchins over which religious order had rights to the Tibetan mission.  At times hotheaded and vain, Desideri launched an ill-considered lawsuit against the Capuchins, which ended his own missionary career and forced his return to Rome.  His account of Tibetan life was published only after his death at the age of forty-nine.

Gifts of Gold

I’ve been thinking about presents.  After all, it’s Epiphany week, and in my house Epiphany always meant a visit from the Befana.

The Befana, for those who don’t know, is a legendary old woman who brings gifts to Italian (and Italian-American) children on the feast of the Epiphany, a sort of Signora Santa Claus.  According to legend, the Befana was a particularly fussy housekeeper who lived along the route taken by the three kings on their journey to worship the baby Jesus.  When the Magi stopped at the Befana’s house, they offered to let her tag along and visit the newborn Messiah, but she claimed to have too much housework to do and declined.  Only after the Magi had left town did the Befana regret her decision and hurry to catch up… but by then it was too late, and the wise men were out of sight.  Since that first Epiphany she has been leaving presents for the children of every home she visits in the hope that one of them will turn out to be the Christ child.

I’ve also been thinking about presents because of an exhibit I recently visited at Chicago’s Field Museum.  The exhibit was about gold.  Of all the commodities Melchior, Balthasar, and Caspar came bringing, the only one which seems to have held up in market value is gold.  I’m afraid I wouldn’t know what to do if I found a box of myrrh under the tree, but gold would be nice, especially in today’s economy.

Gold, I learned at the Field Museum, has many unique properties.  It does not tarnish or rust.  It is found in small quantities throughout the world, on every habitable continent.  And, of course, it shines brilliantly.  There are other qualities too—gold is a great conductor of electricity and can be pounded into sheets mere microns thick—but these first three made me think about how appropriate it is that gold should show up time and again in religious rites.

Beauty, Basilicas, and Barcelona

Beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs.

—Benedict XVI

7 October 2010

 

On Sunday Pope Benedict consecrated the Basilica of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain, a truly awesome rite.  Construction of the basilica, Antoni Gaudí’s masterpiece, began in 1882 and is not expected to be complete for another decade and a half.  In that respect, the Sagrada Familia is like many of the other great churches of Europe which took centuries to complete.

Today, the Church celebrates the dedication of another great basilica, St. John Lateran, Rome’s cathedral.  To some, this might seem a rather strange feast on the liturgical calendar, commemorating as it does a building rather than an event in the life of Jesus or a saint.  Some might even disapprove of lavishing such attention on a structure, a sentiment that finds expression in a line from my least favorite liturgical song, “Gather Us In.”  “Gather us in,” the ditty goes, but “[n]ot in the dark of buildings confining.”

The idea of church buildings as “confining,” however, does not do justice to artistic marvels such as the Sagrada Familia or St. John Lateran, wonders as much spiritual as they are architectural.  These buildings are, in fact, a true and profound expression of faith.

Jesuit daily reflections

There are a growing number of good resources for Ignatian spirituality on the web, and I discovered a new one today, daily reflections sponsored by the Magis Institute.  Today’s reflection was written by my good friend Joe Simmons, SJ, who was a part of the Jesuit Mission Band mentioned earlier on these pages.

I admit, I love the painting too.

I have heard Jesuits preach about Caravaggio’s famous painting, “The Calling of St. Matthew,” for the past four years now.  Are all Jesuits this unoriginal, or is there something especially compelling about this painting that speaks to the heart of the sons of St. Ignatius?
Michelangelo Caravaggio depicts a gaunt Jesus pointing at Matthew, who is seated around a table of well-dressed tax collectors in a shady customs post.  An oblique ray of light cuts through the darkness just above Jesus’ pointed finger.  The light bathes Matthew’s face, which betrays a look of tempered surprise – “surely, not I Lord,” he seems to say.  Matthew knows he is not a wholly worthy disciple of Jesus – look at the company he keeps and the life he lives, after all!  And yet there is Christ, pointing at him and summoning, “follow me.”

Change!

Ah, yes, change.  Something that we both crave and fear.  The theme of Barack Obama’s victorious presidential campaign and now the mantra of his Tea Party opponents.  A more or less neutral value in itself, since change can be for good or ill.

Sometimes change is predictable (and perhaps, therefore, not really much of a change at all) and sometimes unexpected, shocking, unsettling.  I experienced one such unexpected change last month when I found the most recent issue of First Things in my mailbox.

There was a picture on the cover.

What had happened, I wondered.  Was this some sort of belated April Fool’s Day issue?  Or a sign of the impending apocalypse?  I scanned the horizon and saw no horsemen, so, gingerly, I opened the cover.

Melville, Hemingway, and new Mass translations

Last month the Holy See gave final approval to a revised English translation of the Roman Missal, a long process not without its share of comedy, tragedy, and controversy.  I, for one, am enthusiastic about the change, even while recognizing that change often takes a bit of effort to get used to.

The new translations have come in for a bit of criticism on the web and elsewhere, including a rather odd online petition drive.  The criticism mostly stems from the fact that the new translations, which hew more closely to the Latin original than the translations now in use, employ a vocabulary and syntax that is likely to sound a bit foreign to most contemporary English-speakers.

The desire for the words used at Mass to be comprehensible to most people is straightforward and laudable, but simple comprehension is not the only quality we should expect in our worship language.  In fact, sometimes it’s desirable for language to sound unusual and, yes, even foreign.  To help me make this point, let me call on two old friends from my days as an undergraduate English major:  Herman Melville and Ernest Hemingway.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Since the weekend’s big feast, Pentecost, is sometimes colloquially referred to as the birthday of the Church, I thought I’d offer a little birthday greeting.  I couldn’t fit two thousand candles on a cake, so I came up with a top ten list instead.  Maybe it’s not really my top ten, but here are ten things I love about the Church.  (The New York Times doesn’t want you to know this, but, yes, it’s still okay to love being Catholic.)

10.  Songs about Mary. Whether it’s Pavarotti belting out “Ave Maria” or tone-deaf Jesuits (like yours truly) humming their way through the “Salve,” the Blessed Mother brings out something sweet and beautiful even in the gruffest of us.

9.  Relics. They may seem a little weird to contemporary American tastes, but think about all that relics say about the importance of the body, the embodied nature of our faith, and our hope, ultimately, in the resurrection of the body.

Wrong turn revisiting Brideshead

I am a bit of a Brideshead Revisited junkie.  Evelyn Waugh’s novel is among the best of the 20^th century, and the 1981 BBC miniseries, staring a very young Jeremy Irons, along with Anthony Andrews, Sir Lawrence Olivier, and the delightfully passive-aggressive Sir John Gielgud, is arguably the greatest TV miniseries of all time.  Both the novel and the miniseries are elegant, wry, and subtle.

You can imagine, then, the wailing and gnashing of teeth that ensued when I watched the 2008 film “adaptation” of Brideshead, which had all the art and nuance of Melrose Place. Make that outtakes from Melrose Place.  The characters were flat and banal, and the plot drooped.  The cinematography was elegant enough—a good period piece—and the acting passable, but Waugh’s masterpiece had been left behind.

Now this is not the lament of a literary purist—I am a junkie, not a purist—for whom even the slightest alteration smacks of treason.

Does a song have any meaning if it’s not shared?

Sufjan Stevens is the most interesting musician I know.  To be clear: he is not the best singer, he is not the best lyricist, he is not the best songwriter or composer.  What he has done, up to now, is combine a love for complex, beautiful music, and a deep love for God.   It’s a combination that has fascinated me.

I had the rare privilege of seeing him in concert the other night at a tiny venue in Philadelphia called Johnny Brenda’s. Sufjan had not toured since 2006, and the crowd’s anticipation in the room seemed at times literally breathless — people hardly daring to exhale for fear of spoiling the moment. Is he going to play new stuff? old stuff? weird stuff?  And beneath it all, there lingered the dominant question – will any of his songs move me tonight the way they have moved me before?

Let the Earth Bless the Lord

"When everything is done apart, we forget our connection to each other and the world." Ken Burns at the 2009 Boston College Commencement

In a few other posts I’ve taken up the theme of theology as practiced by artists,  filmmakers (both cinema and television) and fiction writers. Once again, television audiences this past week were witness to a bit of theologizing. This time Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker who changed the way documentaries are made with his Civil War, offers his take on God and nature in The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.

Readings of the Week

Here are a few things I’ve run across during the week that I enjoyed and were also related (sometimes very tangentially) to a few of our posts. Hope you enjoy.

1. SAINT PETER RELEASED FROM PRISON and THE BAPTISM OF THE NEOPHYTES.  Two poems by Linda Gregerson from the Atlantic‘s most recent fiction issue. 

2. MANHOOD FOR AMATEURS: The Wilderness of Childhood. A beautiful short non-fiction piece by Michael Chabon on the loss of childhood wildernesses in the New York Review of Books. I still think nostalgia is dangerous, but this is too exquisite to pass up. Just proof that beautiful is not always true.

3. HOW TO LICK A SLUG. Nicholas Kristof’s stab at mourning lost childhoods. He and Chabon must be vacationing together. Very entertaining piece.

4. LIKE I WAS JESUS: How to bring a nine-year-old to Christ. A long piece from Harper’s apropos to our discussion about how to find the “contact point” when ministering to youths. It’s by Rachel Aviv and unfortunately available only to Harper’s subscribers, but I thought I would include the link anyway.

The Spiritual Curl

We can get stuck, spiritually, in a pretty deep muck: down on ourselves, focused on the faults of others, turned ungraciously inward. Generally, God doesn’t want us mired down, rather God wants us shining with the glory of creation. Shining from within of God’s glory, we can draw others towards the source of light and life. Radiant from within we more easily act as ambassadors for the King of Glory, the Son of Man. Since I am about to begin a retreat this often repeated dynamic in my relationship with God has been on my mind, and I think that the poet Galway Kinnell’s “Saint Francis and the Sow” serves as a nice reminder of the need for returning to God in the intimacy of prayer and retreat. Here’s the whole poem:

WD’s WhyTunes, Vol. 1: Welcome To The Welcome Wagon

But it all began as a way just for Monique and I to sing to God, and to sing to each other.

Sufjan Stevens

In the face of the commercialization of music, there is something powerful about a project such as The Welcome Wagon.  At its core, it is the husband and wife team of Vito and Monique Aiuto.  Vito is a Presbyterian minister and pastor of Resurrection Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, and Monique is a designer and visual artist.  Needless to say, they didn’t start out with the idea of making an album.  In fact, neither one of them were all that musical.  What they loved, however, was the way that songs allowed them to express their faith in God together.

Solzhenitsyn and the Bones of Norilsk

Every June when spring finally arrives in the Siberian city of Norilsk, the bones appear, unearthed by the thaw and washed to the city by the melting snows.  The bones are the remains of prisoners who labored in Norilsk decades ago when the city was a prison labor camp, one of the remote frozen islands of the Gulag Archipelago.  The citizens of Norilsk want to forget the grisly origins of their city.  But the bones force them to remember.

The world came to know of the horrors of the Siberian camps largely through the efforts of one man, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who died one year ago today.  While some of his fiction, such as the novellas One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Matryona’s Place, is among the best of 20th century Russian literature, the work for which Solzhenitsyn will always be known is The Gulag Archipelago. Using mathematical mnemonic techniques to remember in breathtaking detail the events of his eleven years in the Soviet prison system, Solzhenitsyn – like the spring thaw unearthing the bones of Norilsk – brought the horrors of the Gulag into the light of day.  As he wrote in a prefatory note to The Gulag,

By an unexpected turn of our history, a bit of the truth, an insignificant part of the whole, was allowed out in the open.  But those same hands which once screwed tight our handcuffs now hold out their palms in reconciliation: “No, don’t! Don’t dig up the past! Dwell on the past and you’ll lose an eye.”

But the proverb goes on to say: “Forget the past and you’ll lose both eyes.”

Art, Thou Art Blessed

"Hail Mary" by Sam Fentress

So, I’m Christian, and I love great, beautiful things.  You know: music, books, paintings, movies, and even capital-A Art.  But as a Christian, this is difficult: on the one hand you have the great quantity of Christian Art (Contemporary Christian Music, Christian Novels, Christian Devotional Paintings — you know what I mean) that is just badly done.  It is preachy, or one-dimensional, or uses God like a chew-toy to keep the pets quiet.