Sunday Reflection: Exaltation! Alleluia!

It might be that I need a hobby, but I spent an hour hacking away at various unsatisfactory translations of the Easter Sequence -- "Victimae Pachali laudes" -- and cobbled together what I think is a somewhat better, if less poetical, version. The Easter Sequence, BTW, is one of 2 sequences (musical poems) that is not optional at Mass in the Roman liturgical season. Yet I'll bet that fewer than 1 in 100 churches included it at Easter Mass. Sigh!

Christians, to the Paschal Victim give sacrifice and praise!
The Lamb ransoms the sheep!
Christ, the Innocent, reconciles sinners to the Father.

Death and life contended in marvelous combat;
The Prince of life, who died, reigns immortal.

Tell us, Mary, what you saw along the way?
"The tomb of Christ, who lives. I saw his resurgent glory; angels attesting to shroud and head napkin.
Christ, my hope, is arisen! To Galilee he goes before you."

We know that Christ indeed is risen from the dead,
To us, victorious King, give mercy!
Amen! Alleluia!

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Image from http://eutychusfell.blogspot.com/. Artist: British Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1833-1898.

Sunday Reflection: Strange Plans

I remember when I read The Passover Plot as a teenager. The book, by Hugh Schonfield, was a retelling of Passion story from the point of view of a non-believer. Basically, Schonfield believed that Jesus had personally arranged his ministry so that certain prophecies would be seen to have been fulfilled by his actions. Schonfield went so far as to suggest that Jesus had deliberately arranged to fake his own death in order to fulfill Psalm 16:10, rendered in the New American Bible as "For you will not abandon me to Sheol, nor let your faithful servant see the pit," and in the King James version as, "For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." To Schonfield, Jesus intended to outwit the crucifiers via drugs administered to him on the cross (!) by his friends, who would resuscitate him later.

While this was silly (and blasphemous to some), Schonfield made interesting points. Did -- as many of us assumed -- neat stuff just happen to Jesus? Or was there a human intelligence working behind the scenes in some capacity to move events in a certain direction?

This week, we see a clear indication that Jesus sometimes acted in concert with others who were not part of the Twelve:

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him,
“Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?”
He sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city and a man will meet you, carrying a jar of water. Follow him.
Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, “Where is my guest room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?”’ Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready. Make the preparations for us there.”
The disciples then went off, entered the city, and found it just as he had told them;
and they prepared the Passover."

A strange tale, filled with pre-arranged signals and code words, all with the intent of getting Jesus into the city and to the meal that future generations would know as the Last Supper.

We know Jesus as the one from whose lips sprang the word of God, and whom God exalted after the humiliation of the Cross. But we need not think of Jesus as one who let others determine his destiny. As today's reading shows, He seems to have shaped his "fate" to whatever degree he could, then leaving the remainder to the Father.

May we, too, not surrender our lives to blind chance. May we not allow others to shape our lives, but honor God by using the entirety of our being -- soul, heart, will and strength -- to bring about God's will, as far as our poor efforts will carry us. May we also be pleased, when our efforts are complete, to allow God to work through the efforts of others.
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Image -- "Cross Eye" -- an entry for the "Religious Shapes 5" contest put on by www.worth1000.com, a website devoted to the creative use of photo-enhancing computer tools.

Sunday Reflection: King of Hearts

(Written April 21) After the insanity of the Easter season it is time to catch up. Here's a tidbit from April 2:

"I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts" (Jer 31:33)

Time to tell you about a dream I had a night or two ago that came to mind when I read this scripture. In the dream, I was talking to a man who had come to the house to interview me for admission to a college. My prospects were not bright until I started discussing my own desire to bring people back to the faith as a result of my studies. I noted to the interviewer that when a heart was connected to God completely, then we knew that person as a Jesus or Moses.

Most of us do not have hearts connected very well to each other or to God. Our connections are frayed by lack of use; they become obsolete due to lack of a wiring upgrades as we grow older and more complex; they are overwhelmed by the impulses sent from wires that connect us to excessive amusement and other selfish pursuits. Whatever law is written in our hearts is obscured by laws that come from misinterpreted personal experience, or (note to the clergy!) from beliefs blindly accepted without personal engagement.

In my humble opinion, the heart-written law of God is not always found in catechisms and canon law. But it is often exemplified by the religious rule-breakers, who use their eyes and ears to seek out the lost and carry them home.
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Photo from Iced Out Gear (http://www.icedoutgear.com) dedicated to outfitting the world in "pimped out" style.

In the News: Prayer strikes out

Last week's Newsweek featured an article on page 15 about a $2.4 million study to determine whether anonymous prayer helped sick people. The idea was to divide 1802 coronary bypass patients into three groups. Two groups were told they might be prayed for and the last groups was told that it was being prayed for. Of the two first groups, one was actually prayed for and the other was not. Both groups did the same, with about half experiencing complications. Weirdly, the third group -- which knew it was getting spiritual assistance, actually did worse than the other two, with 59% experiencing complications!

Appropriately enough, the Newsweek article was titled, "Don't Pray for Me! Please!"

What to make of this? Does this prove that prayer does not work? Maybe. The scientists, of course could not tell which prayer groups were actually effective at asking for and receiving the benefits of intercessory prayer, leaving a huge methodological gap. Then again, maybe God was not interested in being tested. After all, one of Satan's temptations was to get Christ to test God's love by hurling himself off the heights of the Temple. Perhaps the patients' own wish to be the target of prayer was a prayer in itself; after all, no group was told that it would not be prayed for! Maybe God was ticked that people would spend so much money to prove what cannot be proven, and will not be believed (without faith) even if it is proven.

In any case, the elusive God continues to elude us and will not allow Himself to be pinned down on a microscope slide.

Sunday Reflection: Out of Sorts

Pardon the lateness of this post, but it's midterm time -- with any luck, the last midterms I'll have to take for a while.

On March 26th, we gave Mark a breather and bebopped back to John's gospel:

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.

Beautiful words of inclusion and hope for the entire race of humanity. Christ came not to condemn, but to save. And to save the world -- not only the Jews, not only the Roman and Greeks, but all the world. Throughout all of time. In all places and situations.

The next words are a little less comforting:

Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

Why uncomfortable? Because they feed into the belief system of those who believe that Jews, other non-Christians and even insufficient Christians (usually defined as groups oher than our own) are condemned. Why: because they do not express faith in the very name of Jesus.

Those who hate non-Christians (let's face it, it's about hate, not pity) see these words literally: to avoid condemnation, one must express belief in Jesus Christ, the savior acclaimed by Christians. Tough if you grew up in a non-Christian culture; tough if you grew up in the years BC; tough if you live in a place that hates religion.

But can we see Christ -- the Eternal Word of God -- as having a few more cards up his sleeve? Can Christ speak to human beings -- made in the image of the Father and imprinted with natural morality -- in ways other than by way of his followers and his Church? If we are to see Christ as more than a cosmic sorting machine -- those who know him heading to Heaven, those who don't to perdition -- we must broaden our horizons. The theologians are going to have to catch up to God on this one.
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Photo from The Wool Peddlar (http://www.recycledsilk.com/patterns.html) depicting a woman sorting colored yarns for use in making Indian saris.

In the news: New Gnostic Gospel sets heart aflutter

The newly-discovered "Gospel of Judas" (GoJ) is hitting the headlines today in the Boston Globe, the New York Times and elsewhere.

We'll have more info on this later. But in case anyone is thinking that this "new gospel" is necessarily going to shed light on Jesus, keep in mind a few basic facts:
1) The dating of the gospel seems to indicate it was written in the second century, well after the canonical gospels.
2) The GoJ is one of at least a half-dozen "gospels" written by Gnostic sects, whose vision(s) of Jesus are not typically in accord with historical realities. The Gnostics seemed to enjoy writing fictionalized versions of the Jesus story that emphasized an aspect of their own teaching.
3) We should recall that according to the canonical gospels, Judas hanged himself or was killed (disemboweled actually) in a fall after ruing his betrayal of Christ. No one is claiming that Judas came back from the dead to write this gospel.

It may shock people that Christianity was not a monolithic block in the early centuries. The GoJ should help us get over the fact that we can look back to the early days to see a purer and more faithful Christianity. In many ways, early Christianity was quite diverse and confused. Much of the energy of the early Church was spent clarifying the competing claims to try to find the truth. It was a messy and often nasty process, but the faith we have is a result. We need not fear that the GoJ or any other gospel (especially from the Gnostics!) will bring down our faith.

Scalia and O'Malley: It's not the crime, it's the cover-up

OK, kids, what was the #1 lesson of Watergate? "Everybody else did it too"? Nope. "Whatever you do, don't get caught"? Uh-uh. Don't recall? It's this: "It's not the crime that sinks you, it's covering it up." Nixon's White House learned that lesson the hard way. Today it seems that our leaders need to learn the same lesson again.

This Sunday, at a special mass for lawyers, Peter Smith a freelance photographer -- an assistant professor of photojournaism at BU, who also works for "The Pilot" the Archdiocesan newspaper -- caught Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia demonstating the Sicilian version of "The Bird" inside the Boston Cathedral of the Holy Cross. To make his meaning perfectly clear, Scalia explained that the gesture meant "Vaffanculo" which is Sicilian for wishing that a very, very wicked thing happen to your bum-bum.

So guess who got fired today. The Supreme Court justice who flipped off a cameraman yards away from a relic of the True Cross -- and then lied about it to cover his butt? Ot the photographer who told the truth and released the photo?

Give up? read on!!

The Boston Herald, by Marie Szaniszlo, Thursday, March 30, 2006
The freelance photographer fired from his job at a Catholic Church newspaper for releasing a picture of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia making a controversial gesture in church has garnered support from across the country for “doing the right thing.”

Peter Smith said he’s received dozens of e-mails from across the country praising him for standing up to “big institutions.”

“I’m feeling pretty good about it,” Smith said last night.

The Archdiocese of Boston’s weekly newspaper, The Pilot, told Smith it would no longer use his services after he released the photograph to, in his words, “set the record straight.” The picture ran on the Herald’s front page Thursday and was circulated on the Internet and shown on national TV.

Smith captured Scalia flicking his hand under his chin after a Herald reporter asked his response to people who question his impartiality on matters of church and state. The conservative jurist told Smith, “You’re not going to print that, are you?”

Later, Scalia said the Herald mischaracterized his gesture as obscene.

That’s when Smith decided to release it. Smith, who had freelanced regularly for the Catholic paper for 10 years, said the Herald had gotten the story right.

...

The Pilot said it made a “journalistic decision” not to publish or release the photograph. However, Smith said he owned the photo itself. Aly Colon of the Poynter Institute in Florida said the church isn’t going to see things the way a journalist would. “They will have a different perspective,” Colon said.

Would it have been so hard for Scalia to say, "You know, this was the wrong place to say that. I'm sorry." We at The Cranky Catholic (who have made our own share of inappropriate and embarrassiong comments) would have understood. And forgiven!!

Instead, let's rewite Scripture, shall we? None of this pinko liberal "The Truth shall set you free" nonsense. Here we go:

YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH WILL GET YOU CANNED!!

Cardinal Sean, welcome back from Rome. The honeymoon is over.