Love Me, Love My Church (saith the Lord)

Jesus’ responds to Peter’s confession by speaking of the Church: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church”. What do these words mean? Jesus builds the Church on the rock of the faith of Peter, who confesses that Christ is God.

The Church, then, is not simply a human institution, like any other. Rather, she is closely joined to God. Christ himself speaks of her as “his” Church. Christ cannot be separated from the Church any more than the head can be separated from the body (cf. 1 Cor 12:12). The Church does not draw her life from herself, but from the Lord.

Dear young friends, as the Successor of Peter, let me urge you to strengthen this faith which has been handed down to us from the time of the Apostles. Make Christ, the Son of God, the centre of your life. But let me also remind you that following Jesus in faith means walking at his side in the communion of the Church. We cannot follow Jesus on our own. Anyone who would be tempted to do so “on his own”, or to approach the life of faith with kind of individualism so prevalent today, will risk never truly encountering Jesus, or will end up following a counterfeit Jesus.

Having faith means drawing support from the faith of your brothers and sisters, even as your own faith serves as a support for the faith of others. I ask you, dear friends, to love the Church which brought you to birth in the faith, which helped you to grow in the knowledge of Christ and which led you to discover the beauty of his love.

Homily, Closing Mass of WYD Madrid, August 21, 2011 

Reflection - We continue to reflect on Pope Benedict’s words to the WYD pilgrims. In the previous post, taken from the same closing homily, knowing Jesus Christ meant entering a life-long relationship, a communion which draws us into the depths of mystery and love. Now, we see that this same knowledge, this same relationship, and this same mystery of love is one with the mystery of the Church.

We cannot have Christ without his Church. Why not? Because he ordains it so. The head is not separate from the body, the shepherd from the sheep, the king from the kingdom, the bridegroom from his bride, Christ from his Church. To be in relationship with one is to be in relationship with the other, or we are not truly in relationship with the One.
This is difficult, admittedly. Not only is it difficult in our individualistic era, but always. The Church has always been made up of sinful human beings; some of the structures, policies and procedures of the instituational Church are of human origin, not divine, and are fallible, and all of the Church’s leaders are human beings, prone to fall short on many levels great and small.
All of this means that, as Flannery O’Connor put it, the Catholic has to suffer as much from the Church as for the Church. But this too is part of the mystery of Christ and our knowledge of Him. He died for the Church; we suffer from its human failures. And in this we are called to an ever-deeper intimacy with our Beloved.
And the Church itself in all its messy humanity invites us into a permanent overcoming, an ongoing thwarting of our ego, our self-enclosed ways and means and viewpoints. It’s not unlike getting married, or joining a religious community. You make the commitment, and then, there you are, and there is the other person or people. And they’re not going to change, particularly, and you have to deal with that. You have to find a way of living with that man, that woman, those folks. They are a constant and at times very painful  reminder to you that you are not God, not in control, not the one calling the shots about life (at times the reminder can be delightful and joyful, too!). But commitment to any vocation places us into that deeply humble position.
And our total commitment to the Church has the same effect. It strips us of any illusion that we are the center of reality, that we are the measure of all things. There is this Thing (as Chesterton called it) that Christ created, that He loves, and that He commands us to love and be in communion with. Our choice to obey his command places us, as nothing else does, in a deep place of humble crying out for grace, for help, for vision, for mercy. And so it is all bound up together – Christ, the Church, our own self – in the mystery of love, pain, and communion, a mystery that has it joyful, sorrowful, and luminous aspects, but which bears us day by day to a glorious consummation in the kingdom of heaven.

Knowing Jesus

There are many people today who feel attracted by the figure of Christ and want to know him better. They realize that he is the answer to so many of our deepest concerns. But who is he really? How can someone who lived on this earth so long ago have anything in common with me today?

The Gospel we have just heard (cf. Mt 16:13-20) suggests two different ways of knowing Christ. The first is an impersonal knowledge, one based on current opinion. When Jesus asks ‘who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ the disciples answer: ‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ In other words, Christ is seen as yet another religious figure, like those who came before him. Then Jesus turns to the disciples and asks them: ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter responds with what is the first confession of faith: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Faith is more than just empirical or historical facts; it is an ability to grasp the mystery of Christ’s person in all its depth.

Yet faith is not the result of human effort, of human reasoning, but rather a gift of God: ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.’ Faith starts with God, who opens his heart to us and invites us to share in his own divine life. Faith does not simply provide information about who Christ is; rather, it entails a personal relationship with Christ, a surrender of our whole person, with all our understanding, will and feelings, to God’s self-revelation. So Jesus’ question ‘But who do you say that I am?’ is ultimately a challenge to the disciples to make a personal decision in his regard. Faith in Christ and discipleship are strictly interconnected.

Homily, WYD Closing Mass, August 21, 2001 

Reflection – ‘It’s not enough to know about God – we have to know God.’ These were among the first words I remember ever reading of Catherine Doherty’s, although I’m not sure where I ran across them. But they resonate with the ‘two ways’ of knowing Christ the Holy Father speaks of here. To know the historical facts, or even the doctrinal tradition and dogmatic definitions about Jesus is one thing; to know he is Messiah and Lord is another. To know and be able to intelligently discuss the ‘truth claims’ of the Christian religion is one thing (although it is an increasingly rare thing in our age of religious illiteracy, frankly); to know Jesus is another.

And this knowing of Jesus is no small thing. After all, do we really ‘know’ Jesus? In what sense? We’re talking about God here, after all, assuming the Christian faith is true. We know him, yes, but this knowing is not some brash confident certainty. It is, rather, a plunge into deep mystery, really a commitment to a lifelong journey of faith, of ever-deepening knowledge, but a deepening of knowledge that many times feels like a plunge into darkness and confusion. I often feel like I ‘know’ much less about the Lord than I did twenty years ago, and I fully expect to feel the same twenty years from now.
Pope Benedict here summons us to embark on this journey, the path of discipleship. The movement from the head to the heart it is sometimes called, from knowing about Jesus to a living relationship with Him which plunges out life into an adventure, a mystery, a perilous voyage into the heart of God which leads us into the hearts of men. It is the way of the Cross, true, but this itself is the deepest intimacy of knowing Christ. The cross is the marriage bed of Christ, as Catherine loved to repeat. And it is this nuptial union which alone brings us into the fullness of divine life which we are destined to share with Him.

To Cultivate and Beautify Creation

In the reading which has just been proclaimed, we heard a passage from the Gospel which talks of welcoming the words of Jesus and putting them into practice. There are words which serve only to amuse, as fleeting as an empty breeze; others, to an extent, inform us; those of Jesus, on the other hand, must reach our hearts, take root and bloom there all our lives. If not, they remain empty and become ephemeral. They do not bring us to him and, as a result, Christ stays remote, just one voice among the many others around us which are so familiar. Furthermore, the Master who speaks teaches, not something learned from others, but that which he himself is, the only one who truly knows the path of man towards God, because he is the one who opened it up for us, he made it so that we might have authentic lives, lives which are always worth living, in every circumstance, and which not even death can destroy…

Of course, you know that when we do not walk beside Christ our guide, we get lost on other paths, like the path of our blind and selfish impulses, or the path of flattering but self-serving suggestions, deceiving and fickle, which leave emptiness and frustration in their wake… Indeed, there are many who, creating their own gods, believe they need no roots or foundations other than themselves. They take it upon themselves to decide what is true or not, what is good and evil, what is just and unjust; who should live and who can be sacrificed in the interests of other preferences; leaving each step to chance, with no clear path, letting themselves be led by the whim of each moment. These temptations are always lying in wait. It is important not to give in to them because, in reality, they lead to something so evanescent, like an existence with no horizons, a liberty without God.

We, on the other hand, know well that we have been created free, in the image of God, precisely so that we might be in the forefront of the search for truth and goodness, responsible for our actions, not mere blind executives, but creative co-workers in the task of cultivating and beautifying the work of creation.

Welcoming Ceremony for the Holy Father, Plaza de Cibeles, August 18, 2011

Reflection – One of the lovely things about World Youth Day for me was hearing the Pope presenting some of his most central and deepest insights, themes which I have studied at length in some of his most scholarly works, to the youth of the world. He has a gift, generally, for expressing profound theological truths in simple language; in Madrid, that gift was at its fullest expression.

In Spe Salvi he talks about the Gospel being ‘performative’ instead of merely ‘informative’; in Madrid, he simply says that the words of Jesus must take root and bloom in our lives. In many of his writings he analyzes the necessary unity of truth and freedom and their common root in God; there, he reminded the young people of the destructive path so many of their peers are on, living for the moment, making up their own rules as they go, a path that leads nowhere but to the death of both innocence and innocents.
It is the beautiful vision of true freedom, though, which is so captivating in this passage. We are not mere ‘blind executives’ (great image!) but creative co-workers with God. And our job is not to make up some form of reality from whole cloth, but to ‘cultivate and beautify’ the creation God has already made. It is such a positive vision given here, and this is what young people (and us not-quite-so-young people) need so much. What are we to do? What on earth are we to do with our lives? Pope Benedict knows, and he is happy to share his knowledge with us, in simple language accessible to everyone.
This is why I’ve started this blog, and am so grateful for the readers I have, and would like (pretty please) to have a few more readers. It’s not (please God!) for my own personal ego-satisfaction. Rather, this man truly has a vision which, if people read him, absorbed it, and made it their own, would truly solve the horrible anguish of our post-modern world, give a way out of the terrible darkness we have fallen into.
Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI knows the way out, knows where the path of light can be found, precisely for us post-moderns and the specific situation we are in. To be slightly (!) repetitive, I encourage you to read him.

A Universal Call to Friendship

I would say that these WYDs are a sign, a cascade of light -- they give visibility to the faith, visibility to the presence of God in the world, and thus give the courage to be believers. Often, believers feel isolated in this world, somewhat lost. Here they see that they are not alone, that there is a great network of faith, a great community of believers in the world. [They see that] it is lovely to live in this universal friendship, and in this way friendships are born that cross the borders of cultures, of countries. The birth of a universal network of friendship that unites the world with God is an important reality for the future of humanity, for the life of humanity today… I think WYD should be considered as a sign, as part of a great journey; it creates friendships, opens borders, makes visible that it is beautiful to be with God, that God is with us.

Press Conference on World Youth Day, August 18,2011

Reflection – In this introductory reflection about World Youth Day, given to reporters while travelling to Madrid, it is significant that Pope Benedict focuses on the word ‘friendship’ as a central meaning of the WYD phenomenon.

WYD is about friendship: friendship with other Christians, other believers, friendships across nations and cultures, friendships built up within and among the pilgrim groups as they travel together and experience both the joyful and trying elements of the event: both beautiful liturgies and line ups for Porta-potties, if you will.

Friendship is a really important word, isn't it? I’m sometimes a bit surprised at which posts on this blog attract the most readers. The ones about sex, of course, are quite popular and that’s no surprise, but one that startled me with its popularity was this one on the nature of friendship in Christ. It has out-performed the ‘sex posts’ by a wide margin!

The whole business of friendship seems crucial to our humanity. Now, I have to admit that I tend to be a pretty solitary guy. I am truly content, by and large, to be left alone with my own company and thoughts. This is a helpful trait to have if you’re a writer. But God in his mercy gave me a vocation to live in community, to live with people who are not me, have their own thoughts, ideas, personality quirks and who I am asked to love and be friends with, in the truest sense of that word. So friendship is something I’ve reflected on quite a bit over the years.

Friendship: what does that word mean, anyhow? It’s a word thrown around a lot, debased perhaps (I have over 500 friends on Facebook!!!!! But how many could I pick out of a police line up?). To call someone a friend means, I think, that this person’s welfare matters in my life. My own individuality, my narrow frontier of concern for myself above all, is compromised. I have been expanded in my humanity: no longer is it all about me, no longer is the story of my life a one-man play, no longer am I only seeing through the one narrow lens of self-concern and self-direction.

To have a friend is to have a second self, to have another human being whose thoughts, opinions, reactions, feelings matter to me in some sense. It is a question of being broken out of the prison of the self, and this is the central task of our humanity, the task of love and charity.

WYD, then, is about friendship in a radical, global, universal sense. We all come from some little corner of the planet, whether it’s the Upper Ottawa Valley or New York City. We all are shaped by that little corner, bearing the cultural norms and traditions of our society. WYD, among other things, breaks us out of the limitations inherent in this and calls us to embrace, enjoy, celebrate the diversity and richness of the whole human fabric, and to make that diverse and beautiful fabric our own in whatever way we can. And all of this is wrapped up in this beautiful profound word, friendship.

On Pilgrimage, Part Two

'God alone suffices.' So I ended my previous post, as we got on the bus for the short trip from Avila to Madrid.
God alone suffices... but it was anything but 'God alone' for the next week! Me and 1.5 million of my closest friends rattling around in the beautiful city of Madrid, in temperatures topping out in the upper 30s (Celsius - that's around 100 in Fahrenheit), each day packed with catechesis, liturgies, talks, celebrations, and people, people, people.
It is impossible to convey WYD in words - I know that many of my blog readers have been at one some time or another, so I don't necessarily need to. The enthusiasm, energy, sheer volume of the young crowds, the intensity of moving around in such a vast throng of people, the endless variety of nations, and then the intimate little personal encounters with this one or that one in the crowd as you wait in line or press together on a subway car or against a railing waiting for Mass to start.
At times there can be a bit of skepticism, even cynicism about WYD - I've run across some pretty negative stuff on the Internet since returning, which I won't bother linking to. A sense can be had that this is just a party for well off young Catholics who don't necessarily believe any of this nonsense, but just want to cut loose in Europe for a few days.
Well, it may be that for some - who knows? I didn't interview 1.5 million people! But that wasn't my general impression. What was my general impression? Three things summarize it:
1) Teaching - The volume, and sheer quality of the teaching was impressive. Our group attended a catechetical session with by Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Canberra, and two with Archbishop Timothy Dolan. Christopher West was there giving a powerful presentation of the Theology of the Body, and the Knights of Columbus sponsored a series of panel discussions at the English-language Love and Life center, covering topics like religious freedom, evangelization of culture, the theology of the body, social media, prayer, entertainment. The quality of the speakers was world class, and the depth of the teaching being given was thoroughly adult. Perhaps this stood out for me because of my own avocation as a teacher, but it really was terrific stuff. And the young people seemed receptive, listening, receptive. The Word of God was preached - that's the main thing. Who receives it and who doesn't is a mystery hidden in the hearts of those present.
2) Reconciliation - I took two stints of three-hours each in the confessional. Obviously I won't discuss anything said there, but I can testify to those who may question the fruits of WYD that, at least for the couple of dozen people I encountered in the sacrament, God was definitely on the move. Graces being received, deep struggles and secret places of the heart being poured out, serious calls to repent, to change, to recommit to Christ--that was what I encountered. And it was beautiful.
3) Silence - 1.5 million people gathered for the Vigil at Cuatro Vientos. I will pass over the blazing heat, shortness of water, and violent storm in the evening. My lasting memory, though, is two moments of total silence in the crowd. When the Blessed Sacrament was exposed, this vast throng of very enthusiastic, very noisy young people fell absolutely quiet. It was unearthly, really. A moment, a minute, two minutes - how long was it? But everyone was still. The same thing happened during the Mass the next morning, after the homily. By then the crowd was probably over 2 million (but what's another 500 000 among friends?) - and again, utter silence, utter calm, utter quiet.
What's it all about? What's it all for? What comes of it? That's for God to know, and to say. But this little pilgrim touched something very deep and beautiful in Spain. Truth and grace and silence moving through what was, yes, a big Catholic party (and there ain't no party like a Catholic party...).
But God was there at the party, and yes, that alone suffices. 

On Pilgrimage, Part One

Coming to write about my experience of World Youth Day, I realize right away an unfortunate fact about the ‘blogosphere’, namely its extreme temporality—the journalistic imperative of the present tense exponentially increased by the immediacy of new communications. WYD Madrid was a whole entire week ago – who wants to hear about it now? Bearing in mind that pretty much every other blogger in the world has moved on to whatever’s happening this week (Hurricane Irene, anyone?), I want nonetheless to reflect a bit on my experiences, for a post or two anyhow, and ongoingly reflect on this blog on some of the Pope’s words to the young people in Madrid. The intense temporality of the blogosphere should not have the last word here: WYD exists so as to plant seeds that will sprout and grow and bear fruit. How can this happen if it is forgotten two days after it happens?
So to set the stage, myself, another priest from the Pembroke diocese, and ten young adults went to WYD together! First, though, we took five days to do a whirlwind tour of Fatima, Compostela, and Avila. I want to reflect briefly on those experiences in this post. My reflections will be entirely impressionistic and personal—simply what happened to me and my heart as we pilgrimaged around these holy places.
Fatima: Truth be told, I didn’t have much of a devotion or interest in Fatima before going there, compared to, say, Lourdes or Guadalupe. I know the story, of course (what pious Catholic of my generation doesn’t?). But it never grabbed me, somehow.
The first thing that struck me about Fatima was that I was home there. Home, for me, is Mary. I live in a Marian shrine year round, which is pretty cool actually, and my experience in any place dedicated and hallowed to the Mother of God is simply that it’s just another room in my home. So that was nice—here I am, here’s my mama, all is well.
What struck me powerfully about Fatima specifically, though, was a certain quality of seriousness about it. The Fatima apparitions are serious business. Mary came there to call her children to action, to battle. In Guadalupe, she asked her poor children to come and tell her their troubles; in Lourdes, she is there for the sick to bring healing.
In Fatima, we are told that the world is in dire trouble, and that every Christian needs to get down on their knees, to pray, to fast, to consecrate themselves in deadly earnestness to Jesus through Mary. And the seriousness, the apocalyptic urgency of the Fatima apparition, pervades the place. It’s not a warm fuzzy Marian shrine; here, Mary like a good mother is warning us about the peril we are all in (Young man, you stop what you're doing right this instant! You are so grounded!). And she tells us what we need to do to survive it.
I had brought a large envelope of prayer intentions from Madonna House with me, and took a couple hours in the old basilica to go through it, praying for each intention, along with my own rather voluminous regular prayer list. Something came over me as I did this, and it became a very intense experience of intercessory prayer: Mary, help this person! Mother, come to the aid of that person! Jesus, have mercy on us! Very much in the spirit of the place.
In all that, though, it was beautiful and joyful. Where Mary is, there is joy, because where she is, the battle has been won. Our time in Fatima happened to coincide with my birthday, and I began my 46^th year of life on earth concelebrating Mass in the Chapel of the Apparitions, sitting just a few feet away from where Mary appeared to the three children. That was cool.
Santiago de Compostela: Due to circumstances beyond our control, our time at Compostela was a little truncated. We were supposed to have a two hour guided tour; it got truncated to one hour (we had the fastest-talking English-speaking Spanish tour guide ever, though!), and that one hour tour was conducted while WYD pilgrims poured into the church from all sides. So it was all a bit chaotic and noisy. We did have a beautiful Mass there with a pilgrim group from Bretagne, who had paid to have The Thurible lit at the end of Mass. You all know about The Thurible, right? Size of either a large refrigerator or a small automobile, takes a hundred pounds of incense, attains speeds of sixty miles an hour in full swing, which swing took it directly over our heads… a rather peculiar, albeit impressive experience, really.
But my Compostela experience really was mostly one of feeling rushed and frustrated… I wanted to spend so much more time there, see it more fully, pray there more deeply. But, on reflection, isn’t this how life is? We usually want things to be just a bit easier, to go just a bit differently. We want just a bit more time to reflect, to pray, to stop. And it usually doesn’t happen: life just keeps chugging along, bearing us with it. A bit noisier and more chaotic than we would choose, the tour guide a bit hard to understand, the crowds jostling us, weird smoking objects sailing past us at high velocity. What’s it all about?
And isn’t ‘pilgrimage’ really a vast metaphor for life? We go on pilgrimage, on sacred journeys, to touch the deep reality that our whole life is a vast sacred journey to the heart of God. And this journey proceeds, not as we like it, but as God ordains it. A bit harried, a bit rushed, a bit ‘not what we had envisioned’ – well, that’s the journey! Take it as it comes, and trust the Father is going to lead you through it to Himself.
Avila – Ahh, Avila. ‘The silent city’, our guide Lucia told us it is called. The beautiful medieval walls, the churches, the convents, the plazas. Here too there were WYD pilgrims on all sides, but even they (we) were stilled by the place.
There’s something about Avila… the presence of Teresa and John and so many holy Carmelites, the prayer, the silence, the deep contemplation—it has soaked into the very stones there, into the walls. A mystical city.
A high point for me was the visit to Teresa of Avila’s birthplace, now a convent with a church attached to it. The actual room she was born in has become, of course, a chapel. Now I have a deep love and devotion for Teresa – she’s one of ‘my saints’, truly. In my brief career as a composer I wrote a musical setting on of her most famous prayers. So imagine my joy when, in the chapel of her birth, our tour guide Lucia pulls out prayer cards and leads us in praying the very words:

Let nothing disturb thee
Let nothing afright thee
All things are passing
God never changes
Patient endurance
Attains all things
Who possesses God
Wants for nothing
God alone suffices.

And turning to us with a beautiful smile, she says to us “It’s true!” Amen, Lucia. And so, armed with that deep quiet faith in God’s sufficiency, carrying us through the seriousness of our times and the rush and chaos of our days, we got on the bus to Madrid.

To be continued…

Hasta La Vista!

"So, are you going to blog World Youth Day?" Several people asked me this after I had started the blog. And my immediate reaction was simple: "No way!"
At first, the thought was strictly practical and technical: the only equipment I have to blog on is my big, clunky laptop, and there was no way I was going to lug that around Portugal and Spain for two weeks. I also couldn't imagine having time and energy to write posts in the midst of all the action.
But really, as I pondered it, it wasn't those practical considerations at all that make me say, "Hasta La Vista" (and not in the terminator sense of the phrase...). It is a spiritual consideration, instead.
I am going on a pilgrimage, on a sacred journey with the Lord and a few (hundred thousand) of his closest friends. The technological culture, for all of its benefits and obvious goods, places us in a certain mode of analysis, distance, filtering of life so as to put our spin, our presentation on it. To blog while on pilgrimage would be, in my opinion, to put several layers of insulation between me and the Lord's journeying with me these next two weeks.
Pilgrims don't blog. Or at least, this pilgrim doesn't! So, this is my last post for awhile (a great sigh of relief goes up from the peanut gallery). I assure you of my prayers for you at the holy places and in the crush of bodies and souls in the crowds of Madrid. And, yes, I will blog all about it when I get back at the end of the month. Talk to you then!