The Death of Innocence

January 2, 2000

In 1987 an American educator, Allan Bloom, wrote a book entitled, The Closing of the American Mind. Its thesis is contained in its title. The book contends that today, in the Western world, we are becoming ever more shallow of soul, narrow of mind, and limited in horizon. Many analysts would concur with that. However what is more unique to Bloom is that part of his thesis is that the real culprit behind this flatness of soul (which, he feels, is bleeding us of passion, motivation, heroism, and all that is sublime) is the death of innocence. Innocence, he asserts, is the real key to depth, happiness, passion, and sublimity.

At one point, he shares a personal story. As a young man, enroled in a very prestigious university, he was greeted by his professor on the opening day of class with words to this effect: “You have come here from your various parochial backgrounds, with all your youthful biases and ignorance. Well, I am going to bathe you in truth and set you free!” Bloom comments that this professor reminded him of a little boy who solemnly informed him when he was six years old that there was no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. But, adds Bloom, “he wasn’t setting me free, he was showing off!” So too was the professor.

Reflecting on this, Bloom tells us that what he learned from that professor was that he himself would forever teach differently. For his part, he would start his classes by pointing out to his students how experienced and sophisticated they already were and how, because of this, he would try to teach them to believe again in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny – so that they might have a chance of again being happy.

I share this story because we are a generation that is rich in everything, except innocence and happiness. We pride ourselves on our experience, our sophistication, our lack of naivete. We are ashamed to admit that we aren’t experienced, that we haven’t been everywhere, that we don’t know everything, that there is still an innocence within us. Innocence is identified with naivete and is generally looked upon either with condescension or with positive disdain. Lack of sexual experience particularly is stigmatized. We see innocence as ignorance.

Moreover our culture extends this equation to faith in God. Most of the culture, consciously or unconsciously, believes that contemporary experience, present development and insight, have unmasked faith as a superstition, an ignorance, a lack of nerve, a lack of sophistication, a narrowness, a fear, a bias even. The common perception, especially among intellectuals, is that contemporary experience has brought about a collective loss of faith because, at the end of the day, faith is an ignorance that is cast out by a fuller experience. To believe in God is to be naive, however sincere.

Thus we identify faith with innocence and innocence with ignorance and we are positively ashamed to be either of these. We pay a high price for this, as Adam and Eve did. Scripture tells us that the price of eating the apple was not that their minds were darkened (as our catechisms told us) but that their eyes were opened. After eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve knew a lot more than they ever knew before. They just weren’t as happy. Something precious had been shattered, as is always the case in the death of innocence, and there was now the need to begin to hide things. Experience brings new knowledge and new sophistication, but, and this is the point, not everything we know and experience is good for the happiness of the soul. Nor, indeed, is innocence always an ignorance. Naivete is ignorance – but innocence is not necessarily naivete.

Paul Ricoeur, whom nobody could ever accuse of being naive, tells us that, as adults, the real goal of our lives is to come to something which he calls “second naivete”. Real maturity is ultimately about revirginizing and coming to a second innocence. This however is not to be confused with first naivete and natural innocence. We are born naive and innocent and the task of growing up is precisely to move beyond this childishness to adulthood. This is done, as our culture rightly intuits, by growing in experience and sophistication. For a while, this is good. First naivete in an adult is not innocence but ignorance.

However, and this is where our culture unfortunately misunderstands the thing, growth beyond the natural ignorance of a child, becoming sophisticated, is itself meant to be a temporary step. Our real task is ultimately to become post-sophisticated – childlike and virgin again.

At some point in our adult lives, we should again – in a different way and for different reasons – begin to believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Then we have a chance at happiness. Jesus tells us that children and virgins enter the kingdom of heaven quite naturally. A world that prides itself on its adultness, sophistication, and experience might want to ponder that.

Celebrating a New Millennium

December 21, 1999

Certain occasions test a columnist. How to do justice to an event? What do you say at the turn of a millennium? What do you say to propose a toast at Jesus’ two thousandth birthday party?

The temptation of course is to let an event of this magnitude – and Jesus 2000th birthday, the event by which we date time on this planet, surely is an event of such magnitude – seduce you into a bit of grandiosity, where you feel called upon (and competent to!) to propose the religious agenda for the next hundred years (“The Spiritual and Ecclesial Agenda for the Next Millennium”). Too grandiose altogether, my Gaelic friends would say. Yet it’s even less forgivable to not address the event at all. Imagine ignoring the turn of a millennium and acting as if all was simply business as usual? Let the world have its hype and its parties, that’s nothing, let’s you and I talk about proposed new changes in the liturgy!

To my mind, the proper balance is struck by Pope John Paul II in his pastoral letter on the Millennium, Incarnationis Mysterium, where he shows what can lie between grandiosity, secular hype, and apocalyptic nonsense on one side and insensitivity, pseudo-sophistication, and post-Christian bias on the other. What the pope proposes in this letter is that, while there is no magic in numbers and there is theology of numbers, there are occasions that are unique in their symbolism and afford us unique opportunities for grace. The turn of a millennium is such an occasion, a Kairos. What Incarnationis Mysterium invites us to do is to turn the year 2000 into a Jubilee year. What is a Jubilee year? According to a biblical custom, based on Leviticus 25, there is to be, every fifty years or so, a year of Jubilee, a year within which slaves are given back their freedom and all the land reverts to it previous owners. The pope is inviting us to make the year 2000 that kind of year. But how to do this practically? How do we set slaves free and return land to its proper ownership?

The perfect can be the enemy of the good. If we try to do too much we may end up doing nothing. There is no perfect, literal, way of living this out; still there are many things we can do, both communally and individually, to help set slaves free and return land to is proper ownership. What are these?

Literalism can also be an enemy of the good. Jubilee is ultimately about forgiving debts, trying to set free those who are under restraint, ending dominance, and practising restorative justice. The means for this are always the same. To do this, each of us must try to reconcile with our enemies, live a simpler life, acknowledge the holy, respect the integrity of creation, admit our past mistakes and how these have hurt others, and acknowledge in gratitude the life and grace that have been given us.

In line with this, Incarnationis Mysterium then suggests that, next year, as faith communities, we might consider doing one, or several, of these things:

Have a dinner to which we invite the poor and homeless in our area
Have a special reconciliation service with another denomination, religion, or with some ideological group with whom we have had a less than cordial history.
Give away some of our material goods directly to the poor in our area.
Commit ourselves to a simpler lifestyle, in a tangible way.
Organize a pilgrimage or go on a pilgrimage to a holy place.
Do at least one concrete ecological project that manifests our concern for the integrity of creation.
Have a special, public, healing service to confess some aspect of our “dark past” as a community; analogous to the Pope’s acknowledgement of the church’s historical arrogance in treating Galileo.
Hold a special remembrance service for particular “martyrs” within our own recent faith history.

Beyond the communal, there is of course the private. We need, each of us, to do some individual things too in each of these areas. Again, this will be, most times, not a question of literally setting slaves free and restoring land to its rightful owner, but of a deeper, inner, circumcision-of-the-heart. We can, for instance, celebrate Jubilee by:

Forgiving a long-standing grudge.
Celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation more frequently and more honestly.
Writing off a debt that someone owes us.
Giving away some of our own money directly to the poor.
Adopting a poor person into our life.
Taking a homeless person out to dinner.
Simplifying our lifestyle.
Going on a pilgrimage or making within our own home a place for pilgrimage and worship.
Attending a prayer service within another church.
Recognizing, in gratitude, those who have suffered to give us both faith and maturity.

The turn of the millennium is a privileged opportunity for grace. Is this statement a divine counsel or a worn cliche? That depends … entirely upon each of us!

The Christmas Symbols

December 14, 1999

My fiftieth year has come and gone, but, at Christmas, I’m a child, delighting in the creche, the lights, the carols, the Christmas tree. I’ve always loved Christmas, loved everything about it. Partly this is simple luck and has nothing really to do with Christmas as a religious event. I’ve always been handed the long straw as regards Christmas joy. As a child, this was the most special time of the year for our family. At Christmas, everyone came home and the family had its major reunion for the year. All the stops were pulled. We got to spend a week eating all the best foods we could afford (and some which we couldn’t!), a tree and beautiful lights livened up our old house, peaceful old carols played non-stop on our Fleetwood phonograph, and we enjoyed unpressured time with each other, doing nothing but enjoying life. What kid, or adult, shouldn’t love this? Part of the luck too, unlike for some of my friends, is that none of my Christmas days, so far, have ever been interrupted by tragedy, the death of a loved one, or by serious illness (touch wood! the Christmas crib is made of it).

Moreover, our family was also religious and Christmas was, first of all, a spiritual time for us. There was special food, but there was also special prayer. Santa never visited our home (he was only allowed to do his thing at school). Instead the Christ-child brought us our gifts and his visits were just as ingeniously arranged by my parents as Santa’s visits are arranged by other parents.

So, given this history, the Christmas symbols are still very meaningful me. I love the creche, the lights, the carols, the tree. Moreover, as I get older, the meaning of these things, which as a child I simply felt in my heart, is becoming more clear, and dear, to me. What do these symbols – creche, crib, tree, lights, and carols – represent?

The creche? It’s an image of heaven. Everything about it radiates peace, love, fulfilment, the end of longing, the lack of tears. It’s an icon of Isaiah’s vision of the lion lying down with the lamb, of God wiping away every tear. The baby, appropriately enough, is always asleep because the whole scene depicts eternal rest, namely, what it means to sleep “in heavenly peace”. Silent Night, beautiful song, combined with a creche is a good a holy picture of heaven as you’ll get this side of eternity.

The crib itself? The crib is a trough, a place where cows, sheep, oxen, and horses come to eat. It’s appropriate that Jesus – who is food for the life of the world – should be lying in a trough, a wooden one too. The wood of the crib will later on become the wood of the cross, that place where Jesus gives himself completely as food for the life of the world.

The Christmas tree? Its job is to join heaven and earth, to be a ladder for the incarnation, a vehicle God can use to climb down to earth. That is why there should always be either an angel or a star on top of it (for what else do you find in the sky than stars and angels?) and why the presents are under the tree. In the German tradition of Christmas within which I was raised (O Tannenbaum has Germanic origins) it is not Santa who comes down the chimney and puts gifts into a stocking by the fireplace, but it is Jesus, as Christ- child, who comes down the tree and puts gifts under the tree.

The Christmas lights? They represent the light and warmth of God, but in a special way. The custom of putting up Christmas lights originates in the Northern Hemisphere. Here Christmas comes just after the winter solstice, that is, pretty well on the coldest, darkest day of the year. Originally, before electricity, lights were real fire, bringing both heat and light. The idea then is that, just when it’s darkest and coldest, God’s light and warmth break into the world. The custom of having midnight mass, which some trace to Francis of Assisi, has the same rational. At the coldest, darkest hour on the coldest, darkest day of the year the warmth and light of God break through.

Christmas carols? What are they trying to do? Obviously they celebrate our joy at Jesus’ birth but they are also meant to mimic the song of the angels at the first Christmas.

Beautiful symbols. Joyous symbols. Sometimes over-commercialized, it is true. But even this, is it all bad? If huge department stores, public buildings, and multi-national head-offices choose to spend millions of dollars putting up colourful lights to celebrate Jesus’ birth, to help announce that God’s light and love have come into the world, should I complain? Karl Rahner, fine theologian that he was, used to say: In Christmas, God gives us permission to be happy! Why decline the offer?

Readying Ourselves For Christmas

December 12, 1999

John the Baptist tries to prepare the way for Jesus by calling people to repentance: “Repent for the kingdom if heaven is near.” Whatever else that means, it includes the idea that one of the best ways we can prepare for Christmas is by making a good, honest, searing confession. To repent means to confess our sins.

This notion has fallen out of favour. The idea of confession is very much challenged today. At a practical level, less and less people are in fact going to confession. The old line-ups at the confessional box are becoming shorter and shorter. As well, more and more people are challenging, theoretically, the idea of sacramental confession. Arguments against it take many forms: “I don’t find it meaningful!” “It’s too privatized!” “There isn’t any need to do this to have one’s sins forgiven! God doesn’t need our mediation.” “It gives undue power to the priest!” “This is an affair between God and myself.” “It’s adolescent!” “The priests don’t have time to do it properly.”

Whatever the objection, and there are many, less and less people are going to confession.

This is an unfortunate development because private confession is one of the pillars of the spiritual life. At a certain point in one’s growth, there is no progress without it. Why? Why confession? Why the need to tell ones sins to a priest? Surely the radical mercy and forgiveness of God are not contingent upon telling our sins to a priest? Surely God’s mercy cannot be controlled by or limited to one prescribed ritual? In both scripture and church tradition it is clear that our sins are forgiven through sincerity of conscience and through touching the body of Christ (and this has many forms). The Christian community itself is the radical sacrament of reconciliation and God’s mercy can never be tied down to just one vehicle of grace. So why confession?

Simply put, confession is the sacrament of the mature and one grows mature by confessing one’s sins. Mature people face themselves and apologize explicitly – and people grow mature by apologizing. The critics of the sacrament of reconciliation are right in saying that God is not tied down to one vehicle as an avenue for the forgiveness of sins. They are wrong however when they denigrate the importance of private confession. One may not have to confess one’s sins explicitly to another human being to have them forgiven, but one does have to confess them explicitly if he or she hopes to live a transparent life, free of addictions, rationalization, and dark skeletons in the closet.

“You are as sick as your sickest secret!” That’s an axiom popular among people working in 12-step programs. They know the truth of that through personal experience. They also know that until one faces oneself, in searing honesty, before another human being and there acknowledges openly his or her sins, there will always be addictions, rationalization, and lack of real transparency. It has taken us a long time to understand the nature of addictive behaviour and even longer to learn how to deal with it. One of the things we have learned, and this is a pivotal and non-negotiable step in every 12-step program, is that there has to be an open, honest, and searing admission of sin, face to face, before another human being. Without this, at a certain point, all real growth stops. The church has always had its own version of this. We called it confession, the sacrament of reconciliation.

It can of course still be argued: Why before a priest? In the letter of James in the New Testament, we are encouraged simply to confess our sins to each other. So why a priest? Because a priest symbolically represents the whole community. In confessing to a priest, we are, in a manner of speaking, confessing to the entire community. A friend of mine is fond of saying that sacramental confession, as presently practiced, is an unhappy compromise, far from ideal. That is correct, though not in the way my friend thinks. We owe our confession to the whole community (since it is the entire community that is wounded by our sin) and the ideal way to confess would be to go in front of a packed church on a Sunday morning and begin our confession be saying: “Bless me community – for I have sinned!”

Confession is not so much about having one’s sins forgiven as it is about coming to maturity within the community and being able to live a transparent life, free of dark secrets, addictions, and rationalization.

The Baptist’s message is as true today as it was 2000 years ago. To make straight the path for the coming of the Saviour, to make a proper advent, to prepare ourselves to have Christ born in our lives, we need to undergo a baptism for the remission of sin. In simple talk, that means, among other things, making a searing, honest, open, confession.

A Theology Of Longing And Desire

December 5, 1999

In our longing we intuit the kingdom of God. Our desires and our daydreams are what point us towards heaven. How so?

Nearly thirty years ago, Richard Bach wrote a little book, more metaphor than story, that became an instant phenomenon. Entitled Jonathan Livingston Seagull, it chronicled the flights of a bird named Jonathan. Jonathan was a seagull, though hardly a happy one. He found it too suffocating, too limiting, to remain simply a bird. For him, life had to offer more than just the basic struggle to eat, fight, and occasionally mate. He wasn’t exactly certain what else there was, nor indeed what he wanted, but he had the gnawing certainty that what he had right now was not enough. He wanted more, needed more, everything inside of him ached for more, and he decided he would try for more. So, without really knowing where it would lead him, he set out to fly higher and faster than any seagull had ever flown. From flights of speed to flights of fancy, he tried in every way to break the asphyxiating limits of being a seagull.

But the limits of this life are not so easily broken. His efforts wrecked the tranquillity of his life and nearly wrecked his body as he flew alone, in lofty solitude, often crashing into rocks even as he was trying to smash through the very barriers of mortality. He ended up a driven bird, congenitally restless, scanning always the distant horizons, haunted by an insatiable yearning for something he didn’t know, didn’t have, but couldn’t live without.

This something – something that we don’t really know, don’t fully have, but can’t live without – is what Jesus called the kingdom of God. Moreover scripture tells us that this kingdom is not a matter of eating and drinking, but is about being together in justice, peace, and community of life in the Holy Spirit. In our desires we intuit this. But how does desire lead us to this insight? How does desire work? What, ultimately, do we desire and long for?

Looking at desire and longing within us we see that, for a good part, we can name what we yearn for. We yearn for love, for intimacy, for friendship, for admiration, for success, for health and beauty of body, to be seen, to be known, to be noticed, to be famous, to leave a mark. We yearn too, powerfully and more than platonically, for consummation, for sex, for all-embracing union. We yearn for ecstasy, especially the ecstasy of sexual embrace. Our uncensored daydreams are not the stuff of platonic philosophy or ascetic spirituality. Rather, in them, we are as much mammal as angel, physical as spiritual, and considerably more sexual than celibate. In our daydreams we luxuriate in embrace. Moreover, in them, we are never petty, small, mean, ugly, and ungracious. In our dreams we are big persons, objects for admiration.

But, at the end of the day, daydreams are still only dreams, elusive horizons that keep slipping away from us. Thus, like Jonathan Livingston Seagull, we end up suffocating inside of lives, bodies, and relationships that are perennially too small for us. Our real lives pale in comparison to what we intuit in our daydreams. In our dreams we are always capable of flying, wonderfully beautiful, perfectly consummated, and locked in a dance, body and soul, with the deep rhythms of the universe. Reality however is not so kind. In our actual lives, we find ourselves always heavy, bound to the ground, limited, flawed in body, painfully alone, limping, out of step. In that tension, in the insufficiency of everything attainable, we come to know, as Karl Rahner once said, that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.

But it is the former, what we experience in our daydreams, not the latter, what we actually experience in our lives, that points towards the kingdom of God. In our longing we intuit that kingdom. In our daydreams, particularly in those that are far from platonic, we have a vision and a foretaste of the kingdom of God because it is here, in our daydreams, where the lamb lies down with the lion, where we are at the messianic banquet table, where the valleys are filled in, the mountains laid low, and where God wipes away every tear.

The kingdom of God is about immortality and consummation, about knowing and being known, about luxuriating in ecstatic embrace, and it is precisely these things that we dream of in our most uncensored daydreams. It is indeed towards these things that we are relentlessly propelled by every aching cell inside us. Yearning for the kingdom is written into our very DNA.

Thus, in our longing we intuit the kingdom and experience advent because the fantasy we have of the great embrace is ultimately predicated on the stable scene in Bethlehem, where, finally content, a quiet, peaceful child rests on the kind of loving breast that can provide all it ever longed for.

Two Concepts of Holiness

November 28, 1999

There are two classical concepts of perfection, one Greek and the other Hebrew. In the Greek ideal, to be perfect is to have no deficiencies, no faults, no flaws. Perfection, to the Greek mind, means to measure up to some ideal standard, to be completely whole, true, good, and beautiful. To be perfect then is never to sin. The Hebrew ideal of perfection is quite different. In this mindset, to be perfect simply means to walk with God, despite our flaws. Perfection here means being in the divine presence, in spite of the fact that we are not perfectly whole, good, true, and beautiful.

Our concept of holiness in the West has been, both for good and bad, very much shaped by the Greek ideal of perfection. Hence, holiness has been understood very much as a question of measuring up to a certain benchmark. In such a view of things, a view many of us were raised in, sanctity is understood very much as achieving and maintaining something, namely, moral goodness and moral integrity.

Such a view is not without its merits. It is a perpetual challenge against mediocrity, laziness, giving in to the line of least resistance, and settling for what is second-best. Such a view of perfection (and the spirituality it engenders) keeps the ideal squarely in view. The flag is always held high, ahead of us, beckoning us, calling us beyond the limits of our present tiredness and mediocrity. We are always invited to something higher. This can be very healthy, especially in culture that is cynical and despairing of ideals.

But such a concept of perfection also has a nasty underside. Nobody measures up. As John Shea so graphically puts it: “Nobody does God very well!” In the end, we all fall short and this leads a whole series of spiritual pitfalls: First of all, we beat ourselves up with the false expectation that we that can somehow, all on our own, through sheer willpower, fix all that is wrong with us. Willpower, as we now know, is powerless in the face of our addictions. Because we don’t recognize this, we often grow discouraged and simply quit trying to break some bad habit. Why try when the result is always the same? The temptation then is to do what we in fact so often do, namely, split-off holiness and project it onto to a “Mother Theresa” and let her carry this for us (since we are unable to do so). Worse still, when perfection means measuring up, we find it hard to forgive ourselves and others for not being God. When the dominant idea of holiness is something that only God can measure up to it is not easy to give others, or ourselves, permission to be human. We carry around a lot of discouragement, guilt, and lack of forgiveness because of this.

Hence, despite the positives that are contained in the Greek concept of perfection, we might well profit from incorporating into our lives more of the Hebrew ideal. Perfection here means walking with God, despite imperfection. How precisely do we do this?

The gospels abound with examples, but let me offer just one: The account of the rich young man who comes to Jesus seeking life ends with an interesting exchange between Jesus and the disciples. The young man has just rejected Jesus’ offer and, as the text so poignantly puts it, has gone “away sad.” Jesus then turns to his followers and says: “I tell you truly that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Luke’s gospel then tells us that the disciples were stunned (literally). They understood clearly what Jesus was saying and they understood just as clearly that they were not capable of ever doing what was just asked. In simple terms, they understood then and there that they would never measure up. Peter gave voice to this consternation: “If that is the case, none of us will go to heaven!” This is one of the few times in the gospels that the apostles actually got things right. They expressed their helplessness, their inability to ever measure up, (“We aren’t capable of doing this!”) to Jesus and he was pleased with that: “For you, these things are impossible, but everything is possible for God.”

We, all on our own, can never measure up. We can never be perfect in the Greek sense. But that is not what God is asking of us. What God is asking is that we bring our helplessness, weaknesses, imperfections, and sin constantly to him, that we walk with him, and that we never hide from him. God is like a good parent. He understands that we will make mistakes and disappoint him and ourselves. What he asks simply is that we come home, that we share our lives with him, that we let him help us in those ways within which we are powerless to help ourselves.

Descartes’ Children

November 21, 1999

For nearly ten years, I was part of a pastoral team that conducted a program for young couples preparing for marriage. My job was to give the talk on the sacrament of marriage. The scenario was always the same. We would meet, about fifty couples and myself, in church basement on a Monday evening. There would be the standard introductions and then I would give a fifty-minute lecture on the theology of marriage, followed by a question period.

The first question was always the same: “Why do we have to take this course?” This was fair enough given that, of the fifty or so couples present, only about four or five of them actually wanted to be there. The rest were there conscriptively, with reluctance, meaning they came only because they had been told that if they didn’t take this course they could not get married inside of their respective churches. So their first question usually reflected this resentment. But it reflected something more as well, namely, the near total absence in them of any sense of the corporate body of humanity, of our interdependence in that body, and of the body of Christ. Invariably they would justify their reluctance to be there in this way: “Why do we have to take this course? Whose business is this anyway? Why are my parents, the church, and society trying to interfere in my life? This is my life, my choice, my marriage, my honeymoon, and skin off my teeth if it doesn’t work out! This is not your business, the church’s business, my parents’ business, or society’s business! What’s your stake in my life?”

In that objection one hears the lonely voice of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), all those centuries ago, settling on the one thing that he could be sure of and build upon: “I think, therefore I am!” These young people, for all their sincerity and goodness, were, at least at this stage of their lives, more children of Rene Descartes than of Jesus Christ.

Rene Descartes, the seventeenth century French philosopher whose ideas helped to shape both the enlightenment and many of our modern ideas, began his philosophy with the idea that the only thing we can be sure of as real is our own reality (Cogito, ergo sum). We are inside of ourselves and our own reality is massive, real, and undeniable. Everything else appears less real and is real mainly in relationship to us. In common sense language, what this says is: I am real. My life, my thoughts, my feelings, my heartaches, my headaches are real. Everything else is outside of me and less real. I can relate to it, but it is separate from me. I am independent of it and it is independent of me. In the end, we are all separate from each other, lonely little subjects floating in space, able at times to temporarily penetrate each others’ reality, but ultimately separate, alone, independent. What’s real is me – my life, my experience.

In the Western world today, we are very much the children of that idea. Moreover it has its positive side: Our belief in this idea is one of the reasons why we cherish and defend equality and individual rights. Western democracy and the various charters of freedoms that we so much take for granted have, to some degree, been underwritten by Rene Descartes’ influence within Western history. For this we should be grateful. However Descartes’ emphasis on individuality has a less healthy underside. This is reflected in the false freedom and lack of a sense of interdependence that is so manifest in the objections those young people have to being asked to take a marriage course. In their minds, nothing is necessarily owed to family, community, and humanity. Why should there be? After all we stand independent of these and we can decide, all on our own, to what degree we want to buy in, get involved, give ourselves over, participate in, and acquiesce to others’ expectations of us. Others have their lives and I have mine!

We see this, in spades, in the cavalier attitude people (of all ages) have towards marriage today: “Why do we need to get married? This is just between the two of us. We have our own commitment to each other and that is enough. Who needs a piece of paper? This is nobody’s business but ours.” Such an attitude could be valid, if we weren’t in our very make-up social beings, irrevocably bound to each other for life itself. How different from Descartes and the modern world is the Christian idea that we are all parts of one body, a single organism, within which one part can’t say to the other: “This is my life and it is no business of yours?”

Two voices, two choices, two visions of individuality … Rene Descartes and Jesus Christ: One speaks of freedom, loneliness, and private reality; the other of interdependence, community, and shared life.

Praying for the Dead

November 14, 1999

Why pray for the dead? Does this make any sense? What possible difference can our prayers make to a person once he or she has died?

These are valid questions. A number of objections can be raised against the practice of praying for the dead: Do we need to call God to mercy? Does God need to be reminded that the person who died was in fact a decent, warm-hearted, person? God already knows this, is already as merciful as mercy allows, and needs no nudging from us to be understanding and forgiving. Cynically, the objection might be put this way: If the person is already in heaven he doesn’t need our prayers and if he is in hell, our prayers won’t help anyway! So why pray for the dead?

We pray for the dead for the same reason we pray for anything, we feel the need and that is reason enough. Moreover the objections raised against praying for the dead are just as easily raised against all prayer of petition. God already knows everyone one of our desires, everyone of our sins, and all of our good will. So why remind God of these? Because prayer builds us up, changes us, not God.

This is the first, though not foremost, reason why we pray for the dead. Prayer is meant to change and console us. We pray for the dead to comfort ourselves, to stir and celebrate our own faith, and assuage our own guilt about our less than perfect relationship to the one who has died. In praying for the dead we do two things: We highlight our faith in the power of God and we hold up the life of the person who has died so as to let God take care of things, let God wash things clean. That is one of the purposes of a funeral liturgy, to clearly put the dead person and our relationship to him or her into God’s hands.

But this is not the most important reason why we have funeral liturgies and why we pray for the dead. We pray for the dead because we believe (and this a doctrine, the communion of saints) that we are still in vital communion with them. There is, death notwithstanding, still a vital flow of life between them and us. Love, presence, and communication reach even through death. We and they can still feel each other, know each other, love each other, console each other, and influence each other. Our lives are still joined. Hence we pray for the dead in order to remain in contact with them. Just as we can hold someone’s hand as they are dying, and this can be an immense consolation to them and to us, so too, figuratively but really, we can hold that person’s hand through and beyond death.

Perhaps the words and prayer forms we use seem to indicate something else, since they are addressed to God and not directly to the person for whom we are praying. Thus, for example, in praying for the dead we use words like: “Lord, have mercy on her soul!” “Lord, we place her in your hands!” “She loved you in life, radiated your gentleness, Lord, give her peace!” The words are addressed to God because it is in and through God that our communication with our loved one who is deceased now takes place: God’s bosom is the venue for our communication, God’s power is what is holding both of us in life, and God’s mercy is what is washing things clean between us. We can of course also talk directly to the person who has died, that too is valid enough within the doctrine of the communion of saints, but given the critical place of God’s love, power, and mercy in this situation, our prayer is generally addressed to God so as to highlight that it is within the heart of God that we have contact with our loved ones who are deceased. Hence, our prayers for the dead generally take this particular form.

And classically, within Roman Catholic theology at least, we have believed that our prayers help release this person from purgatory. What’s to be said about this?

Purgatory, properly understood, is not a punishment for any imperfection nor indeed a place distinct from heaven. The pains of purgatory are the pains of adjusting to a new life (which includes the pain of letting go of this one) and the pains of being embraced by perfect love when we ourselves are far from perfect. By praying for the dead, we support them in their pain of adjustment, adjustment to a new life and to living in full light. Purgation eventually leads to ecstasy, but the birth that produces that ecstasy requires first a series of painful deaths. Thus, just as we tried to hold their hands as they died, so now, in praying for loved ones who have died, we continue to hold their hands, and they ours, beyond the chasm of death itself.

Biblical Metanoia

November 7, 1999

“Repent and believe in the good news!” These are the first words out of Jesus’ mouth in Mark’s gospel and they are meant as a summary of the entire gospel. But what do these words mean?

In English, the word “repent” is often misunderstood. It seems to imply that we have already done something wrong, regret it, and now commit ourselves to live in a new way. Repentance, understood in this way, means to live beyond a sinful past. Biblically, this is not quite what is meant. In the gospels, the particular word used for repentance is metanoia. Literally this means to do an about face, to turn around, to face in an entirely new direction. But what direction?

Robert Barron, a young theologian out of Chicago, offers a simple, yet profound, understanding this. In his view, within each of us there are two souls, a little soul (a pusilla anima) and a great soul (a magna anima). On any given day we tend to identify more with one or the other of these and we are a very different person depending upon which soul is reigning within us.

Thus, if I take my identity from my little soul I will inevitably feel bitter and angry. It is here, in the pusilla anima, where I am petty, afraid, aware of my hurts, and constantly nursing the sense of having been cheated and short-changed. In my little soul, I am paranoid and defensive. When I relate to life through it, I am short-sighted, impatient, despairing, and constantly looking for compensation.

But I also have within me a great soul. When I let it reign, I become different person altogether. I am relating out of my great soul at those moments when I am overwhelmed by compassion, when everyone is brother or sister to me, when I want to give of myself without concern of cost, when I am able to carry the tensions of life without a breakdown in my chastity, when I would willingly die for others, and when my arms and my heart would want nothing other than to embrace the whole world and everyone in it.

All of us, I am sure, have had ample experience of both, identifying with the great soul and with the petty soul within us. Sometimes we operate out of one, sometimes out of the other.

When Jesus asks us to “repent”, to do metanoia, what he is asking is that we cease identifying ourselves with the little soul and instead begin to live out of our other soul, the magna anima. The very etymology of the word metanoia implies this. It takes its root in two Greek words: meta – beyond; and nous – mind. Literally, metanoia means to move beyond our present mindset, beyond our present way of seeing things.

When one looks at the miracles of Jesus, it is interesting to see that so many of them are connected to opening up or otherwise healing someone’s eyes, ears, or tongue. These miracles, of course, always have more than a physical significance. Eyes are opened in order to see more deeply and spiritually; ears are opened in order to hear things more compassionately; and tongues are loosened in order to praise God more freely and to speak words of reconciliation and love to each other. To put it metaphorically, what Jesus is doing in these miracles is attaching the eyes, ears, and tongue to the great soul so that what a person is now seeing, hearing, and speaking is not bitterness, hurt, and pettiness but rather compassion, gratitude, and praise.

Many of us are familiar with a famous passage in Thomas Merton within which he describes a revelation he had one day while standing on the corner of Fourth and Walnut in Louisville. Among complete strangers in the middle of a shopping district on a very ordinary day, Merton had the sense that his eyes, ears, and tongue were suddenly attached to a bigger soul: “I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all of those people, that they were mine, and I, theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness … Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin, nor desire, nor self-knowledge, can reach the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only we could all see each other that way all the time! There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose that the big problem would be that we would all fall down and worship each other.”

To repent is let the great soul, the image and likeness of God, reign within us so that, like Merton on the corner of Fourth and Walnut, we are so overwhelmed with compassion that indeed we do turn and face in a completely new direction.

Needed: Three New Saints

October 31, 1999

If I had a wish-list for the church today, it would include a request for three saints of old to re-appear in a new guise. What the church needs today is a new Augustine of Hippo, a new Francis of Assisi, and a new Thomas More.

First, we need a new Augustine: St. Augustine was a rare genius, an intellectual, an artist, a brilliant person who, before his conversion to Christianity, looked upon Christianity as a superstition, a naivete, a gentle myth which, while it sustained his mother whom he loved, lacked the intellectual rigor to be real truth. His original attitude towards Christianity was one of condescension, he saw it as something beneath him, beneath his intellectual and artistic dignity. Slowly, through the very honesty of his own intellectual search, he came to see the truth of Christ. A day came when he dropped to his knees, committed himself to a truth that he had once despised, and then for the rest of his life put his great genius at its service.

What he did then was to marry Christian revelation to the experience, language, art, and intellectual life of his time. In terms of an image, he wrote a software for Christianity that has, for the most part, lasted for nearly 17 hundred years. Bill Gates may have given us Windows 98, but Augustine gave us Christianity and Common Sense 400 AD. In the Western world, this software has endured essentially intact down to this very day.

A new Augustine is called for today. What the church would most need is for some young, post-modern genius, an intellectual and an artist, to convert to Christianity and, right by the dynamics of his or her own conversion, show that the enlightenment and what follows from it is not what it espouses itself to be, namely, something intellectually beyond Christianity, but rather that it, in its best expressions, is simply a cousin in truth. We need too for that person to write a new software for Christianity. We need a new Augustine to again make Christianity an intellectual and aesthetic option for a culture that perceives it as lacking in both.

Then too we need a new Francis of Assisi: We need someone, man or woman, who can re-inflame the romantic imagination of Christianity. Francis was a saint, but he was more than that. He was also a man of rare imagination. He was someone who, like a great artist, could reshape the collective imagination. What Francis was able to do, among other things of course, was to give to the world a new and a more attractive vision of how Christianity is connected to nature, how a life of simplicity itself can be an aesthetic, and how the altruism which lies at the heart of Jesus’ message can be more attractively imaged and lived. What he said, did, and founded became, almost instantly, something analogous to a great work of art, it drew people to itself and inflamed their imaginations. Hundreds of years later, it is still doing the same thing. But his images no longer fire the imagination as powerfully as they once did. We need a new Francis, a post-modern man or woman, who can again inflame the romantic imagination of world in the same way that Francis once did. This is badly needed in an age that all but militates against simplicity, altruism, and nature. In a time of morally-authorized greed, where celebrity is divinity, and where restlessness and grandiosity have been taken to new levels, in a world of high-rise living, some great artist must again show us that what we really want is to live simply, altruistically, and in harmony with nature.

Finally, we need a new Thomas More: We need someone, woman or man, who is a top-level lawyer, a politician, a great humanist, a lover of the arts, fully immersed in the affairs of culture, and yet is able to combine all of these involvements, and such a love of the world, with a simple faith, an uncompromising integrity, human attractiveness, an enviable wit, and a capacity for moral martyrdom. This woman or man too, unlike Augustine and Francis, needs to be married, with children, not a monk, priest, or nun. We need models of non-celibate sanctity. Thomas More was driven by two great loves and two great loyalties – love of the world and loyalty to it and love of God and loyalty to God. His life – that of a great humanist and a great Christian – continually radiated both those loves and both those loyalties. In the end, of course, they weren’t equal. God was given a certain priority, but, even then, love for the world was never denigrated. He loved both, God and the world, solidly to the end, modelling what a healthy, full, joyfilled and faithfilled life can look like. We need a new Thomas More today.

And so the want-ads are out: Wanted – A new Augustine of Hippo. Wanted – A new Francis of Assisi. Wanted – A new Thomas More. Applications anyone?

Our Real Loss of Innocence

October 22, 1999

Within all of literature few tragedies compare with the biblical story of Saul. The story begins with a young man, Saul, who at this time in his life has no equal in terms of being handsome, gracious, and good. The people recognize this and make him their king. But, and this is the tragedy, the story doesn’t end there. We read on as this young, good, gracious man, blind to what is happening inside himself, slowly becomes a petty, bitter, jealous man who eventually commits suicide in anger.

What happens here? How does this happen? Can someone, in a way that is imperceptible to himself or herself, turn from being gracious, idealistic, and good to become bitter, petty, jealous? It seems so.

In the book of Revelations there is a haunting passage where God speaks to a certain church. He tells it that he is pleased with its dedication, its zeal, its commitment to truth, and its generosity, but He has this one thing against it: “You have less love in you now than when you were young!” _{(Revelations 2,4)}

This is our real loss of innocence – “You have less love in you now than when you were young!” How sad that we can move from being the young Saul, full of the natural idealism and goodness of youth, to being the old Saul, full of all the anger and bitterness that comes from the debilitating self-awareness of age. It is funny how when we are young and immature we are often free of bitterness. I remember as a young man, living in a seminary-community of some forty other young men, all roughly the same age, how, despite the handicap of being confined within a rather cramped physical space (and an even smaller psychological one) and having to deal with each others’ immaturity, we got on rather splendidly. We were all rather raw and naive, but we enjoyed each other’s company. Today, with all of us in mid-life, for all of our maturity, if we tried to live together we would end up killing each other because now all of us have within us too much of the old Saul, namely, the bitterness, anger, and jealousy that so naturally beset the heart in mid-life and old age.

Of course, we can rationalize and justify this bitterness by linking it to cause, concern for justice, concern for orthodoxy or political correctness, or by seeing it as prophetic, a passion for truth. In the end, however, it is only what it really is – spite, bitterness of spirit, the old Saul jealous of the young David (“He has his ten thousands when I only have my thousands!”). What’s refreshing in young people is that while they aren’t wise, mature, or particularly responsible, they aren’t angry either, at least not with the ugly anger of mid-life and old age. Aging, it would seem, takes its toll.

There’s a cruelty in nature. Aging has this bitter rhythm. As we get older, slowly, imperceptibly, the body begins to lose some of its natural fragrance. We snore more loudly, and slowly a subtle sourness begins gradually to seep through the pores, the breath, the feces. That’s nature’s way, of no moral consequence. What is of consequence is that, too often, the same process happens in the soul. Here too a subtle sourness can begin to seep through when in fact the opposite should be happening. As we age a mellower fragrance should to seep through the pores of the soul. The real task of the second half of life is to stop this sourness of spirit.

In her powerful novel, The Stone Angel, Margaret Laurence tells the story of one Hagar Shipley, a once-beautiful, bright, young woman who has gradually through the years grown into a shapeless, dour, bitter, spiteful woman who, while having already lost almost all of her friends, still considers herself a gracious, good, and beautiful person. One morning, reduced to delivering eggs from door-to-door as a way of making a living, Hagar rings a doorbell and is greeted by a bright young child who, upon seeing Hagar, hollers to her mother: “That nasty, old egg-woman is here again!” Stunned at this description of herself, Hagar, immediately upon leaving the house, goes to a public toilet where she examines her own face at length in a mirror and is stunned at what she sees … stunned that she no longer recognizes herself, stunned at what others must be seeing and what she herself has been blind to, and stunned at how imperceptibly it can all happen – how we, blind to what others are seeing, can become the old Saul, full of all the bitterness, spite, and jealousy we so detest in others.

All of us who are in the second half of life need periodically to spend some time scrutinizing our faces in a mirror, courageously discerning whether it is the young Saul or the old Saul that is staring back.

Peace To Those Who Enjoy God’s Favour

October 17, 1999

At one point in her novel, Men and Angels, Mary Gordon describes a young mother who, each day has a little ritual as she waits for her children to come home from school. She sets a chair by the window so she can lean on it. In that way she can see her children as they run up to the house but she can also use the chair to steady herself. For indeed, some days, she needs it because when she sees her children running up to the house, with their coats undone and with their books and back-packs flying all about, she is so overcome with love, so overwhelmed with the need to protect, that she feels her heart is about to erupt and she gets weak and needs something to lean on to keep her balance.

That picture can serve as an icon for it is an image of how God loves us. God is looking at us in just that way right now. Why do I say that? Because this is what scripture reveals.

When the angels announce Jesus’ birth, they say this: “Glory to God in the highest and peace to those on earth who enjoy God’s favour.” (Luke 2, 14) The last part of that sentence might more accurately be translated like this, “and peace to those who receive God’s pleasure, who realize that God takes pleasure in them.” Given Mary Gordon’s image, we might paraphrase this to read: “Life will come to those who realize that God, when he looks at us, is so overcome with tenderness that he needs a celestial chair with which to steady himself.”

That is an incredible belief, but it is part of the essence of our creed. To say that we believe in God, as Jesus revealed God, is to believe that God takes pleasure in loving us, that it gives God delight to be our parent, and that God takes joy in continually offering us forgiveness and love. To believe that God sees us in this way is to make an act of faith in the God that Jesus revealed. Moreover, what is important is that we draw life from believing this. How? How does the realization that God takes pleasure in loving us give us life? We see the illustration in Jesus himself.

When Jesus’ head emerged from the waters of the Jordan as he is being baptized by John, the gospels say the skies opened and a voice from heaven said: “You are my beloved son, in you I take delight.” In many ways, this was the turning point in Jesus’ life. Prior to this, he had lived his “hidden life”; hidden not just in that his years of anonymity in Nazareth opposed his public life, but hidden especially in that, until hearing those words, Jesus’ real identity was as hidden from him. Now, with these words searing his soul and circumcising his heart, Jesus knows his true identity. He is the beloved child who gives God pleasure. From that realization, that he so enjoys God’s favour, he draws his stability, his unique capacity for altruism, his exceptional courage, and that deep joy that nobody and no event can ever take away from him. Jesus knows that he gives God pleasure and from that he draws his life.

Mary Gordon’s description of the young mother contains essentially the same idea: Imagine if these children could ever appropriate what that mother feels when seeing them. If they could ever really accept this, they would draw from it an identity, a stability, a capacity for altruism and courage, and a joy that nothing could ever strip them of. If they realized what their presence did for their mother they would then (this is the biblical term) begin to enjoy her favour. From that, life would begin to well up within them for they would know blessing.

Biblically this is what it means to be blessed. You are blessed, receive a blessing, when you draw life from someone else’s pleasure in loving you. As the angels themselves put it at Jesus’ birth: “Peace on earth to those who can receive God’s pleasure.”

But how to believe that? What is so difficult in the act of faith is not to believe that God exists or that the world of spirit is just as real as the physical world or that Jesus rose from the dead. What is harder to believe is that, right now, at this moment, despite everything that suggests that we are unworthy and despite all sin and infidelity, God is looking at us in the exact same way as the young mother Mary Gordon describes looked at her children – with a heart so full of tenderness and pleasure that He/She feels dizzy and must lean on some celestial chair for support. Such is God’s pleasure in loving us. Such is what Jesus revealed. If we could ever accept that we would begin to understand more exactly what the angels meant when the announced Jesus’ birth.

Satan And The Devil

October 10, 1999

We need a healthier theology of satan. Rather a strange thing to say! Can there be a theology of the devil? Perhaps not in the strict sense. Theology after all is meant to be words about God (Theos-God; logos-word). However in the wider sense of the word (theology as a view of something through the prism of faith) we need a theology of the devil. Why? Because for the most part, today, the devil is either naively ignored, as some dark superstition from the past, or is falsely attended to, as some underworld force that can throw little girls into mustard-spitting convulsions, as in the infamous movie, The Exorcist. Indeed, most today people do not even believe in the devil, either as a person or a force. What is to be said about the devil?

The gospels name the forces of hell in two ways: Sometimes they speak of the devil (diabolus) and at other times of satan (satanus). Are the terms synonymous? Not exactly: Diabolus means to divide, to tear apart; whereas satanus, most curiously, means almost the opposite, it connotes a frenzied, sick, group-think that accuses somebody or something. In essence what the gospels tell us is that the powers of hell, satan and the devil, work in two ways: Sometimes they work as the devil by dividing us from God, each other, and from what is best within us. Sometimes they work in just the opposite way, as satan. Here they unite us to each other but through the grip of mob-hysteria, envy-induced hype, and the kind of sick unity that makes for gang-rapes and crucifixions.

And at the root of both lies the same thing, envy. It is no accident that, among the ten commandments, only envy has two inscriptions against it. Jealousy is the devil’s tool and satan’s weapon. Through envy, the devil works at dividing us from each other. From envy we get the kind of paranoia, jealousy, sense of being wronged, and bitterness that dissipates families, communities, churches, and whole nations. The devil tears us apart. Satan, using the same weapon, works differently. As satan, envy unites us so as to put us into the frenzied, mad pitch of the lynch mob, the crowd hell-bent on crucifixion. Satan uses envy to pit the crowd against an outsider. Thus, the devil causes us to be distant and distrustful of each other, whereas satan that causes us to be caught up in a sick unity that comes of scape-goating, vicious gossip, and the kind of group-hysteria that leads to blood-letting. The devil is always using envy to divide the house, whereas satan is always using envy to gear the whole house up for a crucifixion.

In Jesus we see the opposite. The first word out of his mouth (“metanoia“) is a word uttered against the power of the devil: “Be un-paranoid, do not let envy and suspicion divide you from each other, God, and what is highest inside yourself!” Everything else Jesus says and does is intended precisely to lead us beyond division, dissipation, and being apart from each other. The kingdom he preaches is about coming together (the opposite of the devil). As well, nearly everything that Jesus says and does is anti-satan. He resists always the amazement of the crowd, group-hysteria, and the type of hype (even when it is in his favour) that wants to over-exult someone and kill someone else. He, himself, always drew his vision and energy from a deeper source, his Father’s will; known, not through group-think, but through deep interiority and prayer inside one’s own heart. It is no accident either that Jesus so often warned: “Do not be amazed!” and that when he looked for guidance he lifted his eyes towards heaven, not towards the crowd. He knew the dynamics of Satan. When crowds are under the grip of amazement there is very thin line between wanting to make someone their King and wanting to crucify that same person.

In the novels of Czechoslovakian writer, Milan Kundera, there is invariably one major character, often an artist, whose role it is to resist something Kundera likes to call “the great march”, namely, a group-think that inflames itself through moral rhetoric and then sets off marching on some kind of crusade. For Kundera there is always something frightening, blind, indeed satanic, in any “great march”, no matter what the cause. When group energy takes over, he fears, there will soon be a crucifixion done in God’s name. Jesus, its seems, agrees.

The devil and satan are real. We should not be naive on this score. But the real danger is not little girls writhing on a bed and throwing up mustard. Rather it is our hearts writhing in a paranoia and a jealousy that tears us apart from each other and crowds writhing in a sick energy that wants, in God’s name, to spill some blood.

Critics And Artists

October 3, 1999

In the literary world a distinction is made between a critic and an artist. A critic assesses things, an artist produces them. Would that we made such a distinction within theology and church circles because what we most desperately need today is not more criticism but more art, not more theological critics but more gospel artists.

This is particularly true as regards the issue of evangelization within the Western world. It is pretty generally agreed upon that we need a new enculteration of the gospel, a new missiology, a new look at what communications technology is doing to us, and a new model for adult education. Everywhere there is a sense that the old ways are no longer working well enough and that we need a new breakthrough.

And we are not short on energy, effort, literature, workshops, and courses on the subject. We are just short on results. Despite our best efforts, we are nowhere near a breakthrough. Why? Because, first of all, it is easier to make a diagnosis than to find a prescription. Hence, the literature is long on diagnostics but short on real remedy. I say this with sympathy. It is not easy to know what we should be doing today to more effectively give the faith to our own children. As a result, most of the time we talk about the problem, point out how important it is, and go on to say that we must address it.

Valuable though this is, ultimately, it is still talk about the medium, about technique, about process, about starting conversations, about paradigm shifts, and about our present malaise. None of it is yet the gospel itself. It is criticism in the technical sense, valuable in its own way. But, as we know, the critic is not the artist. The critic talks about something that somebody else produces. In the end, he does not write the play, produce the movie, paint the canvas, carve the stone, or make the music, poetry, or dance. The artist does. He or she produces what the critic talks about. Too often in theology and church circles, because we do not distinguish between criticism and art, criticism passes itself off as theology with the result that we get ever more sophisticated analytical tools but do not produce very much at all.

Our poverty today as regards evangelization is not so much lack of good critical thought as lack of good artists, gospel artists. What we really lack are theologians, philosophers, preachers, teachers, song writers, painters, and the like who can reshape the imagination, make new images, and create a new language that can take the word of God, with all the timeless truth and revelation it carries, and give it positive flesh, genuine aesthetic expression within today’s actual experience. No easy task. Good art never is.

Moreover this involves more, infinitely more, than simply finding a better technique, a more sensitive process, or using the media in an ever more sophisticated ways. Good preaching or teaching (religious “art”) is never a question of being the cleverest, of using the most modern techniques or sensitive processes, of finding the really imaginative stories, or even of having a fertile imagination. It is, first of all, having within oneself a real integration of faith, personal integrity, genuine empathy, and the capacity to carry tension. That is the initial basis, though more is required to be a religious artist. To be a gospel artist, one has to create a new language. Unless, like a Mother Theresa, one’s very person has become a sacred word, it is not enough to simply repeat the classical words of scripture, dogma, Christian history, and classical piety – good and true though these be in themselves. To preach effectively is to make up a new language, as the original gospel writers did and as good art does. In this case, that language has to carry the truth of revelation, fire the imagination, speak directly to actual experience, and, like every other language, have such an inner rhythm and aesthetics, such an integrity of sound and image, that it implants itself naturally in the mind and heart as a software. Trying to do this is in fact like learning a foreign language, only more difficult, because in this case you have to create the language as you learn it. There are no short-cuts to this. Like learning how to play the piano or figure-skate, it takes countless hours of painful work to get anywhere and the initial efforts are generally discouraging.

The good news though is that some of it is happening. Slowly, partly in baby talk, a new language for preaching and teaching is emerging. We do not, as yet, have a new St. Augustine, but, among others, in the Henri Nouwens, Thomas Mertons, Daniel Berrigans, Jim Wallises, John Sheas, Elizabeth Johnsons, Robert Barrons, Richard Rohrs, and Mary Jo Leddys of our time we see some fragments of real gospel art. We need to show some of this to our children.

Being In Solidarity With A Mixed World

September 26, 1999

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in his Mass for the World, shares how he personally understands the offering of the bread and wine at the Eucharist. When the bread is held up in offering, he says, we are holding up this world, with all its achievements, legitimate glories, real progress, and many strengths. In offering the bread, we identify with the world’s triumphs, celebrate them, and ask God to bless them. Conversely though, one second later, we hold up the wine, crushed grapes symbolizing blood. In the wine, we hold up all that has been crushed and brutally trampled on as human progress moves forward. In offering the wine, we identify ourselves with what is broken, crushed, crucified, and dying in this earth and we ask God to empathically identify with it and bring divine power to bear upon it. Thus, in the central ritual of Christianity, we offer to God both the glorious and the crushed bodies of this earth. We bless and celebrate the former, even as we identify with the latter.

There is more in that understanding then merely a rich theology of the offering at the Eucharist. In Teilhard’s insight, I believe, there is also a secret that can help us to maintain a proper attitude towards the world because, as we know, our world is a very mixed place and it is not easy to keep things in proper perspective. Why?

Because on the one hand, undeniably, our world is full of a beauty, goodness, and love that honours its creator and accords dignity to its inhabitants, us. There is so much around us and within us of which we can rightly be proud. Humanity is not without its legitimate achievements. More obviously, we see these in the areas of technology, communications, the arts, sports, entertainment, food, and health. Daily we see progress, fabulous achievements, beautiful things, advances in health and beauty as these pertain to the human body, and a myriad of other steps forward in terms of the quality of our lives and the opportunities that life can offer. Moreover this is true too in the areas of love, worship, and morality. There is a history, even in the present, of altruism, prayer, and sanctity on this planet. Today too, like in every other age, saints and moral martyrs stalk the planet.

On the other hand, just as undeniable, is the fact that our world is full of greed, crass egoism, blind selfishness, the drive for power and privilege, unspeakable cruelties, hardness, constant betrayal, and straight old-fashioned sin. Evil too stalks the planet. Daily on our newscasts, we are made aware that millions of human beings suffer from hunger, violence, exclusion, and injustices of every kind. There is more than enough within us and around us of which we cannot be proud and which dishonours both the creator of this world and its habitants, us. We also have a history, even today, of selfishness, godlessness, and sin.

Hence, as we can see, progress is not without its price … but the price is also not without its progress. As some of our world moves forward, other parts are crushed; and as some parts are crushed, others move forward – all as part of the same movement. There is something within this that speaks of more than simple moral ineptitude on our part, though that obviously is part of it. The dynamics of nature, it seems, are themselves cruel, brutal, almost Darwinian; nature all on it own is ruthless enough to make one wonder about a creation within which some parts have to eat others to remain alive and grow. But this innate brutality within nature is a mystery for which there is no full answer. Rather a certain attitude is asked of us.

What Teilhard so brilliantly captures in his understanding of the offering of the bread and wine at the Eucharist is the attitude we might ideally have in the face of so mixed a world. Simply put, unlike the one-sided view of so many today, we may not simply see our world as cesspool of evil, ignoring its real beauty, goodness, moral and technological achievements, and legitimate triumphs. To be blind to these is to be dishonest. It is also to ignore many seeds of hope. Conversely, we should not unequivocally bless this world either, as if millions were not being crushed as part of the very cost of progress and as if all the blood that is spilt, all the lives that are crushed, and all the hearts that are broken might be deemed an acceptable price for progress. In a Christian, another attitude is called for, one which takes into account both the triumphant and the crushed bodies on this planet. So what are we to do?

Like Teilhard we must recognize and celebrate our world’s progress and achievements, even as we identify with those parts that are being crushed – and then hold them both up to God.

Three Prophetic Challenges for our Generation

September 19, 1999

Our world stands in need of prophecy. No one doubts this. It would seem too that there is no shortage of voices which claim to be prophetic. From every kind of religious and ideological camp there issue forth numerous voices, each one claiming to bring the particular challenge needed. But what does our generation most need to hear in terms of prophetic challenge? Which voices resonate with the great prophets of Israel? Which voices are most consistent with the challenge left us by Jesus?

The first thing that distinguishes the prophetic voice, long before any criticism issues from it, is love. A prophet does not make a vow of alienation, but of love. The role of a prophet is not first of all to be angrily in your face, but to reveal God’s challenge, but only as this first finds itself inside of God’s blessing, love, and forgiveness. More would need to be said about this because all of us know the negative impact of criticism when it is divorced from love. Given that background, and with the hope that what follows radiates more love than anger, this column will try to name those issues on which our generation most stands in need of prophetic challenge. Where are we as a generation particularly blind, morally and spiritually? We need, I believe, to be prophetically confronted on three counts:

On how we treats our widows, orphans, and strangers.

Beginning already hundreds of years before Christ, the Jewish prophets laid down a singular principle: The quality of our faith depends upon the quality of justice in the land and the quality of justice in the land depends upon how we treat three special groups of people – widows, orphans, and foreigners (those with the least status in the society). Christ not only endorsed this, he deepened it and made it a condition for entry into the kingdom. In Christ’s vision of things, the last are first, the poor are central, there is no place of privilege, and the person who is the most marginalized and least powerful in any group is the cornerstone that binds that community together.

Our culture, despite a growing rhetoric to the contrary, does not do very well either in understanding this or in living it out. Simply put, widows, orphans, and foreigners still do not fare very well, anywhere in our culture. Hence we must try to make ourselves see how our present cult of affluence, celebrity, glamour, sexual attractiveness, achievement, physical health, and eternal youth blinds us to the poor. And indeed we are blind to them. Our culture offers nothing more than scraps to anyone who is not somehow economically, physically, or intellectually endowed. Widows, orphans, and foreigners (those who cannot work the system to their advantage and privilege) are still everywhere the crucified ones.

On our lack of courage to look at personal sin.

Beyond our culture’s insensitivity to its poor, we also suffer from a concomitant callousness within personal conscience. More and more, we have less and less courage to look at personal sin; and indeed to even mention the word itself. Crassly stated, when we feel the need to write long, angst-laden, treatises on why it is therapeutically dysfunctional for us to sing the timeless words of AMAZING GRACE (“that saved a wretch like me”) it is time for some biblical prophet to step up and call us not just to conversion but simply back to sanity. Each of us needs to be challenged to appropriate the words of Paul: “I cannot understand my own behaviour. I fail to carry out the things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.” Anyone who feels that these words do not apply to him or her is rationalizing. Moreover, when private conscience is calloused, so too will be our social action; when private conscience makes moral exemptions, so too will we discriminate in the way we act socially; and when private conscience rationalizes, we cannot hope to have real integrity at a wider level.

On our tendency to see things only against a temporal horizon.

To live in faith is to see things always against an infinite horizon. We do not do well on this particular score. The weighty realities of death and eternal life are rarely factored into any of our equations, let alone our personal, life decisions. Even within church circles, death and eternal life are rarely talked about. It has become both easy and fashionable (so long as we feel healthy, strong, and not greatly threatened) to slide into a comfortable nihilism – within which distraction becomes a functional substitute for religion and we live as practical atheists in regards to having any real sense that this life is not all that there is. Our narrow horizon needs to be challenged.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, where are you?