Him You Will Hear

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Ordinary Time

What does it mean to have authority? To speak with authority?

"Authority" is a loaded word in today's world. We don't like to recognize or submit to authority. Typically we see the authority of others as a threat to our own freedom. Over and above this general human tendency, as Americans we tend to look critically toward authority—with apologies to Lord Acton, "authority corrupts, and absolute authority corrupts absolutely".

So that kind of authority isn't always positive. But there's another kind we recognize—the kind that comes from within. It's the authority of someone who speaks with conviction, from experience. We are much more willing to submit to this kind of authority. We get a sense of a person's access to truth, of having "been around" and gaining perspective through the school of hard knocks. We encounter this all the time, especially in those who have authority on account of what they've suffered—war veterans, mothers against drunk driving, cancer survivors, recovering addicts, what have you.

I think there's still a third sort--the authority that comes with being given a mission, of being grasped by something (or Someone) and responding with everything we have. A young woman by the name of Maria accompanied the Kansas delegation to the March for Life and spoke to us of her experience in sidewalk counseling with women in front of abortion clinics. She was a young, intelligent, articulate, attractive personality that clearly had some success in convincing women that it was not in their best interest to abort their own child. Her presentation was engaging and convincing. You might get the impression that she had come up with this idea on her own--saying to herself: here I am, a good listener, compassionate, generous, and convicted about this particular issue. I know, I'll become a sidewalk counselor!

Yet the reality is quite different--as I spoke with her afterwards, it became clear that this was most definitely not something she dreamed up for herself. Quite the contrary--she would be physically ill in the days and hours leading up to the morning on the sidewalk. These women, these unwanted babies, aren't her problems; but she makes them her own out of love for Christ. She spoke with an unassuming authority that was extremely compelling.

So, in what sense did the Gospel writer want us to understand Jesus' authority?

In the first place, we have to acknowledge Jesus' authority went far beyond a simple authoritative tone of voice, or speaking convincingly. He backed up his words with signs and wonders—in a sense, no one would've taken him seriously otherwise, given that he was subtly claiming divinity. For the way in which Jesus "spoke with authority" here meant not quoting a respected scholar of the law or referencing a venerable tradition of interpretation, but making himself the source of truth. 

As we well know, this was more than startling—he was, in a very real sense, claiming to be God in terms his contemporaries would have understood unambiguously. "You have heard it said…. but I say …" A good Jew would never speak in that way—it would be blasphemous to point to anyone other than God as the source of truth, yet Jesus claims this very thing!

It had to be more than just a subjective kind of authority. In fact, Jesus is the one promised by Moses in our first reading, a prophet chosen from "among the people", one that they will listen to.

You may have noticed in the reading that the prophet is promised because the people cannot endure the direct experience of God's self revelation on Mount Horeb. God appoints someone to speak on his behalf, so that the people are not overwhelmed by the "great fire" of God's glory. (What a great poetic way to refer to God--a "great fire"!) In the Bible, the result of seeing God face to face is death. The appointed "interpreter" is precisely what is meant by the biblical term "prophet": not so much someone who predicts the future (though it may involve this), but a mediator, someone who is able to endure direct communication with the Most High.

We need a mediator, not because we are deaf, but because the rawness of God's presence would annihilate us. Think of prophecy, of mediation, as something like the earth's atmosphere. The sun illuminates and warms our planet, but it also emits enormous quantities of radiation extremely hostile to organic molecular structures. Direct exposure to the sun's rays would lead to the rapid annihilation of most every living thing on earth. Yet the atmosphere (the ozone layer, etc.) absorbs that radiation while letting the light and heat through. So it is with prophetic mediation.

It was God's plan to ensure that through Christ's mission, that mediation would continue even after his ascension. He gave his own authority to his apostles, on whom he founded his Church. The voice that rebukes the demon and forgives sins had one single message to deliver: love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself; the promise of resurrection and eternal life is contained therein.


It is a commandment that is infinitely simple, but as anyone who has tried to live it out knows, it is also infinitely difficult. Yet it is not only possible for cloistered nuns and monks taking a vow of silence but in the everydayness of our mundane lives. So St. Paul points out in our second reading—not dismissing the married vocation as a distraction from serving God, but pointing out how some worldly people go about their lives seeking to please everyone but God. He says clearly: Each of us has a gift from God, by which we are able to serve him undividedly, with a whole heart, with integrity.

The Church preserves that message and speaks in Christ's name, calling the world from darkness into the light of love of God and neighbor. We ignore that voice at our own peril—picking and choosing what to believe and what to obey of what the Church proposes for a Christian life. We are called not to blind, irrational submission, but a trusting discipleship in which not only our minds but our hearts are active and engaged.

The Father's voice resounded above Mount Tabor at Jesus' transfiguration: this is my beloved Son, listen to him. Many listened, and obeyed; and followed him to the Cross. Many others found his teaching difficult and went their own way.

Christ says to us: this is my beloved Church, my bride: listen to her.

Lord, may we not be deaf to your voice!

Because of her unique structure, the Catholic Church is perhaps humanity's last bulwark, of genuine appreciation of the difference between the sexes.

--Hans Urs von Balthasar

Saint Teresa Benedicta (born Edith Stein) composed these essays in the years following her conversion to Catholicism but before her entry into the Carmel from which she was eventually deported to the Nazi death camps. During this interim period, Stein dedicated herself (among many other things) to an articulation of a theological vision of femininity that both recognized the myriad changes in how women were being regarded (and how they regarded themselves) as well as the theologoumena of Christian revelation. With the upheaval generated by the first world war and the subsequent recovery efforts enlisting the help of men, women, and children alike, traditional feminine roles were called into question. Women seemed capable of accomplishment in the very areas previously denied to them. Stein sought to sort out the wheat from the chaff and present God's plan for man and woman in the midst of this world turned on its head.

I came across this book during research for a talk on the Catholic Church's reservation of priestly ordination to men alone, and Stein does touch on the issue briefly, but I found her presentation of the meaning of a particular calling for the male and female sex insightful and profound. Her philosophical training obviously shines through here, though without obscuring her points in technical terminology--most of these essays are adapted from lectures delivered to women's organizations simply interested in sorting through the rhetoric of women's emancipation. She even resorts to sampling from literary forms in her pursuit of the feminine vocation, earning a big A+ in my book for referencing a character in Sigrid Undset's quadrilogy The Master of Hestviken.

Some might consider a book written in the 1930s hopelessly outdated for a contemporary discussion on woman, but the power of her perspective has a ring of truth about it that ought not be hastily dismissed. I would encourage anyone with an interest in the subject to dive in to her essays and take her seriously.

The Desk Chair Review of Books, Continued

Armed with a gift certificate to the greatest bookstore I know, I browsed the shelves with a light heart, eager to take a risk to purchase something both worthwhile and unknown. A difficult task. The Swan Lake Trilogy beckoned to me in the children's books section (on sale, and it's always a good place for gifts for my godchildren). I picked it up because I'd read the author's name somewhere briefly and was intrigued, though I would've had little to say if anyone had asked me who he was or what he wrote. The heft of the book, its creamy textured pages and startlingly luminous illustrations demanded further investigation. I opened at random and came across this passage:

He had no desire to kill animals. This was owing not so much to compassion as to respect, for not even memory can conspire to make a smoother line than the track of a bird wheeling silently in the sunshine over blue water. And when deer step gingerly in the heather, their precision of motion is art, and that is not to mention the perfect rocketry of their escapes. Were they to go faster, the result would not be so pleasing, and were they to go slower, they would not appear to be nobly disciplining themselves against flight (p. 49).

My first reaction, after the initial exhilaration over such verbiage, was that Helprin pays very close attention to things. I was hooked.

I made my way through the book over the course of a month or so, reading before bed. The initial sense that this was not a book for children, or even for adolescents, was confirmed throughout my reading, and I would be hard pressed to argue what its intended audience might be. I suspect that, in the words of CS Lewis, Helprin found that the medium of a fairy tale best suited the tone of whatever it was he saw in his mind's eye, regardless of whether his readers were children. That the vocabulary and tone can at times overwhelm the narrative is a defect only in the sense that it causes Helprin to strike a discordant note here and there, like an exuberant prodigy improvising on the piano.

The trilogy follows the career of a girl banished from her royal inheritance by the intrigues of a usurper, in the first person and then through the perspective of those who accompany her. I found the plot to be tight, with few wasted excursions into descriptive whimsy (though it is here that his prose can be most delightful). He builds to climaxes that are surprising without being arbitrary in their unexpectedness, and knows when a chapter is over.

Van Allsburg's illustrations are full of grandeur and depth, capturing both climactic and simple moments with a remarkable eye for twilight. Before reading the book itself, I took a couple young boys age 3 and 6 through the plates, and both were captivated by the dozens of scenes lifted from the story. We guessed at what they could mean, and found ample material for imaginative prequels in the bright color and elegant forms they portrayed.

A great book? A classic? No. But a delightful find on a winter's day in Wichita, unanticipated and simple? Most definitely!

Liturgy

From the latest issue of Second Spring:

"Liturgy is communal. We don't do it for the convenience, and still less for the entertainment of individual participants. The whole point of the liturgy is that individual participants are transformed into a different kind of being altogether. It's not the individual 'I' who takes possession of the gift of the Eucharist; rather, I am received into the Eucharist, transformed into someone whose existence is formed through self-giving relations with others, relations that are grounded in love and friendship. In other words, through liturgy we receive ourselves as a gift. This creates an order within our souls which orients us to making a gift of ourselves to others. It is only by doing so that we are able to be ourselves."

--Paul Grenier

Hitchens' Legacy

Now that the dust has settled over Hitchens' headstone, more sober appraisals of his work have been finding their way into the press. In particular, I enjoyed this short reflection on Hitchens by John Haldane of St. Andrew's:

Hitchens is a case worth studying. He is more interesting than Dawkins because evidently more psychologically complex and humanly engaging. If we Catholics are right about God and humanity, why was he so wrong? Or, put another way, what can we learn from his attitude about how to understand our own religious claims and about how our lives reflect them? Hitchens pointed to the record of evil associated with Christianity and with Catholicism in particular. It is glib to reply that humanism has its own tale of terrors, and problematic if we also claim that religious adherence brings transforming grace. If I were to take up Hitchens’s campaign against religion it would be to ask again and again: “Where is your grace and your holiness?”

Read the rest here.

Incidentally, a wonderful quote from today's memorial of St. André Bessette:

Those who are cured quickly often are people who have no faith or little faith. On the other hand, those who have solid faith are not cured so quickly, for the good God prefers to allow them to suffer that they will be sanctified even more.

An excellent biography of his life can be found at catholicism.org

Faith as Joy

Well, too many months have passed, but I'd like to send Christmas greetings to erstwhile readers of this blog and pass along some beautiful words spoken by our Holy Father to the Curia this week. They have been rolling around in the pope's heart for many years, as they sound strikingly familiar to some passages from the retreat he preached in 1988 to the Communion and Liberation priests (collected in the wonderful little book The Yes of Jesus Christ). He sums up the year, a highlight of which was the gathering of youth in Madrid:

Finally, I would like to speak of one last feature, not to be overlooked, of the spirituality of World Youth Days, namely joy. Where does it come from? How is it to be explained? Certainly, there are many factors at work here. But in my view, the crucial one is this certainty, based on faith: I am wanted; I have a task; I am accepted, I am loved. Joseph Pieper, in his book on love, has shown that man can only accept himself if he is accepted by another. He needs the other’s presence, saying to him, with more than words: it is good that you exist. Only from the You can the I come into itself. Only if it is accepted, can it accept itself. Those who are unloved cannot even love themselves. This sense of being accepted comes in the first instance from other human beings. But all human acceptance is fragile. Ultimately we need a sense of being accepted unconditionally. Only if God accepts me, and I become convinced of this, do I know definitively: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being. If ever man’s sense of being accepted and loved by God is lost, then there is no longer any answer to the question whether to be a human being is good at all. Doubt concerning human existence becomes more and more insurmountable. Where doubt over God becomes prevalent, then doubt over humanity follows inevitably. We see today how widely this doubt is spreading. We see it in the joylessness, in the inner sadness, that can be read on so many human faces today. Only faith gives me the conviction: it is good that I exist. It is good to be a human being, even in hard times. Faith makes one happy from deep within.

Christmas blessings to you all.

Between the Embers and the Stars, Occupation

I tripped over this lovely quotation in a favorite book of mine, while searching for something else (serendipitous discoveries always satisfy).

It is not surprising that the rebelling children of affluence can be so easily persuaded that private property is the root of all evil and led to project as their vision of the Kingdom a condition they think “natural”—one in which the world would belong only to God or to an anonymous “all,” while each human, unburdened by possessions, would contribute his all to a common store while drawing from it what he thinks he needs. They will not be dissuaded by the recognition that animals in fact have their cherished belongings and defend them fiercely, nor by the nightmare of alienation which that vision has wrought among humans. A different truth presses in on them—the depersonalization of humans and nature alike by the quest for possession.

The conflict they are experiencing is once more the intrinsic conflict between love and instrumentality, though on a deeper level—the conflict of being and having to which neither the solution of poverty nor that of affluence can be consistently applied. We are incarnate beings: for us, having and being are inseparable. To be at all means to have a body and a place in the world which are my own.

Erazim Kohak, The Embers and the Stars

Pope Benedict on his Home Turf

Some beautiful words from his closing Mass homily, in the Berlin Olympic Stadium.

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me ... for apart from me [i.e. separated from me, or outside me] you can do nothing” (Jn 15:4f.). Every one of us is faced with this choice. The Lord reminds us how much is at stake as he continues his parable: “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (Jn 15:6). In this regard, Saint Augustine says: “The branch is suitable only for one of two things, either the vine or the fire: if it is not in the vine, its place will be in the fire; and that it may escape the latter, may it have its place in the vine."

The decision that is required of us here makes us keenly aware of the existential significance of our life choices. At the same time, the image of the vine is a sign of hope and confidence. Christ himself came into this world through his incarnation, to be our root. Whatever hardship or drought befall us, he is the source that offers us the water of life, that feeds and strengthens us. He takes upon himself all our sins, anxieties and sufferings and he purifies and transforms us, in a way that is ultimately mysterious, into good wine. In such times of hardship we can sometimes feel as if we ourselves were in the wine-press, like grapes being utterly crushed. But we know that if we are joined to Christ we become mature wine. God can transform into love even the burdensome and oppressive aspects of our lives.

It is important that we “abide” in Christ, in the vine. The evangelist uses the word “abide” a dozen times in this brief passage. This “abiding in Christ” characterizes the whole of the parable. In our era of restlessness and lack of commitment, when so many people lose their way and their grounding, when loving fidelity in marriage and friendship has become so fragile and short-lived, when in our need we cry out like the disciples on the road to Emmaus: “Lord, stay with us, for it is almost evening and darkness is all around us!” (cf. Lk 24:29), then the risen Lord gives us a place of refuge, a place of light, hope and confidence, a place of rest and security.

When drought and death loom over the branches, then future, life and joy are to be found in Christ. To abide in Christ means, as we saw earlier, to abide in the Church as well. The whole communion of the faithful has been firmly incorporated into the vine, into Christ. In Christ we belong together. Within this communion he supports us, and at the same time all the members support one another. They stand firm together against the storm and they offer one another protection. Those who believe are not alone. We do not believe alone, but we believe with the whole Church. The Church, as the herald of God’s word and dispenser of the sacraments, joins us to Christ, the true vine.

A Poem for the Kids

"At last, at last! Our prayers were heard!"
said Joachim to Ann.
"The Lord has blessed us with a child—
a child from His own hand."

They beamed and sang and waited long
within their little home
to welcome a new child at last
who'd be their very own.

Then one night Ann was sleeping fast
but had a troubled night;
for in her dream, an angel spoke
a promise full of light.

She woke and told her husband
that God had made a plan.
"Could we say 'no' to Heaven's King?"
said Joachim to Ann.

The little child that Ann would bear
another Child would bring
who by His love would save the world
and conquer death's dark sting.

"There beats a heart beneath your heart
that's destined for a sword;
beneath your heart a most pure heart
has magnified the Lord."

"... We never dreamed of such a gift,
so we can only trust.
What wonders! Why—the mother of
our Lord has come to us."

Ave Maria Purísima

Aki Iro

Taking a break from regularly scheduled homily preparation to bring you some aki iro lyrics:

(Listen here.)

When the neck tie that hangs you
makes you feel just like some super hero,
When you build man-cave to isolate you from the world outside,
When four shiny wheels get you wherever you're heading,
While four speakers blare the soundtrack for the ride -
And the plans you transmit keep you in humble submission to
The forces at work behind your TV screen,
And you subscribe to the guide for the modern man's pleasure,
You've read them once and again, pretend you know what they mean, when they say:

"If you really want to be the champion
You’ve got to let us keep you tied up in mindless entertainment.
Be the good boy and know what to ask for,
Hide yourself away in a fortress of purchasable things -
And you'll never meet harm of hand gun or hand grenade,
Never be a victim of murder or foul play, no.

We'll kill you slowly and we'll kill you softly;
Knock you off with procedure and protocol."


After you send your kids out on their own,
you'll spend quality time with wife and a marriage counselor,
After you see your marriage sucked dry,
you'll spend quality time with wife & divorce lawyer,
After you lose your job after twenty loyal years
‘cause you cracked beneath the weight of the tension,
After you lose your hair from stress,
you'll buy hair plugs, transplants, and extensions,
After you find your friend of the hour
on the internet lonely guy services chat room,
After you order your infomercialized industrial microwave
advertised on television,
After you microwave your meal
and pop that bottle of extra strength valium,
After you get all tired out, you'll go snort a line,
After you snort a line, you'll perform aerobic yoga
with your spandexed friends on cable,
After you pull a muscle,
you'll order faith healing over the airwaves from the latest televangelist,
After you wash your black socks,
check your stock portfolio
you'll ride in an S.U.V. you can't afford,
And you’ll praise the lord ‘cause you’ll know that you’ve got
Nothing meaningful eating up your time these days.

Better than Nothing

You know, I haven't updated this blog in... well, too long. And I had some great ideas for a really insightful, serious response to something I read in the New York Times (you do know that I read the New York Times, don't you?).

But it's a lot cooler to post a video featuring free runners, bikers, and skaters...

... That will also blow your mind.

The Desk Chair Review of Books

A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay

Some essays by CS Lewis on science fiction mentioned this book as a "classic" of the genre, so I picked up a copy at a recent binge at Eighth Day Books down in Wichita, and it happened to be the first one I felt ready to crack. It was to be a prelude to a re-reading of Lewis' Space Trilogy, so I was ready for some similarities. Here's what I found: whatever imaginative vision Lindsay was given managed to be at the expense of his ability to tell a good story, develop characters, and write dialogue. A third of the way through, I had basically formulated my final opinion of the book, and what crossed my lips was probably the very idea that got Lewis to write his Space Trilogy in the first place: "Even *I* could do better than this." That Lewis was far more justified in saying it is beside the point.

In Lindsay's favor, I did stick with it to the end--though, on the other hand, I don't know that I would have if I was not curious about how it might have exerted some inspirational influence on Lewis' own work that would follow it a few decades later. Lindsay seems to lack the kind of totality that lends credibility to a story and promotes the suspension of disbelief; the whole thing seems like a poorly concealed vehicle for philosophical speculation. Quite honestly, I've had similar reactions to another of Lewis' favorites, George MacDonald, whose books Lillith and Phantastes managed to lose me after a few chapters. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and ascribe my lack of appreciation to an impoverished imagination, but there it is.

One of the most frustrating elements of the book is the author's complete lack of ear for names. Obviously, his intention was to create the impression of a wild and interstellar reality, but his formulaic attepmts at doing so just sound ridiculous, as if simply juxtaposing some discordant Anglo-Saxon or Welsh words is enough to startle the reader into extraterrestrial fantasy. Nightspore? Spadevil? Wombflash? You've got--GOT--to be kidding me! Combined with the fact that the main character (Maskull. Seriously.) only has a sequence of encounters with wandering individuals far from any kind of society makes the whole story feel far, far too contrived.

That being said, there are some good moments of imaginative creativity that felt something like insight, and even a couple of scenes in which the bizarre landscape can take your breath away (I'm thinking of the underground world experienced alongside Corpang). Having chewed through Lewis' Space Trilogy once again, I suppose I'm grateful to Lindsay for having written this book and influenced what came later, but I've no reluctance to throw away the rind in favor of the fruit!

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