St. Augustine in reflecting on psalm 146 points out that, “A psalm is not a song like any other; it is sung to the accompaniment of a psaltery.” (A psaltery is a musical instrument similar to harp. It was designed to accompany song.) “Anyone who sings psalms does not therefore use the voice alone; he takes up the instrument known as the psaltery and, with the aid of his hands, harmonizes it with his voice. What about you? Do you want to sing and play psalms, which are praises to God? Then not only must your voice sing God’s praises, but your actions must keep in tune with your voice.”  (Taken from Expositions of the Psalms, New City Press, 2004)

In the first reading from the prophet Zephaniah, we hear these words, “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth…” But then the prophet goes on specifically to say, “seek justice, seek humility…” “Where is God?” “How might I grow in relationship with God?” These are two common questions of life and of the journey of faith. Both Augustine and Zephaniah advise that the starting point in answering these questions is to look at how we are living our lives.

If we praise God with our lips but our actions remain silent then we are out of tune. If we seek God but deny justice to our neighbor and puff ourselves up with pride then we will get nowhere. “If you want to praise God,” writes Augustine, “do not sing with your tongue alone but take up the psaltery of good actions as well…”

True praise of God consists of both voice and life.

It has been noted that in the Beatitudes we find a portrait of Christ. Jesus fully personifies each beatitude and in that he is “blessed”. In light of our analogy of psalm and psaltery we can also say that in the Beatitudes we hear the tune of Christ where voice and life are in harmony.

In each beatitude there is a choice made and an action taken. The choice and action is to turn toward God in every situation. In the time of sorrow – to seek God. In the time of confrontation and tension – to seek God. In the time of trial – to seek God. Tuning not just our words but our actions and our very lives toward Christ and in this we are “blessed” because God is encountered.

The insight of Augustine and Zephaniah is the same truth expressed in the Beatitudes – to begin seeking God we must look at how we are living our lives.

For a few weeks now I have been working through “Verbum Domini” (Pope Benedict’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation on the word of God and the Church).  I have been reading this as I exercise on the stationary bike and the elliptical machine at the gym on campus.  I am sure it is quite the sight for others in the gym! 

The exhoration is very rich and is giving me much to mull over – some of which will make it into future blogs I am sure – but today a passage that caught my attention dealt with the word of God and Vocations.  Below is the passage.

In stressing faith’s intrinsic summons to an ever deeper relationship with Christ, the word of God in our midst, the Synod also emphasized that this word calls each one of us personally, revealing that life itself is a vocation from God. In other words, the more we grow in our personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, the more we realize that he is calling us to holiness in and through the definitive choices by which we respond to his love in our lives, taking up tasks and ministries which help to build up the Church. This is why the Synod frequently encouraged all Christians to grow in their relationship with the word of God, not only because of their Baptism, but also in accordance with their call to various states in life.

Here we touch upon one of the pivotal points in the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, which insisted that each member of the faithful is called to holiness according to his or her proper state in life.[263] Our call to holiness is revealed in sacred Scripture: “Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev 11:44; 19:2; 20:7). Saint Paul then points out its Christological basis: in Christ, the Father “has chosen us before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him” (Eph 1:4). Paul’s greeting to his brothers and sisters in the community of Rome can be taken as addressed to each of us: “To all God’s beloved, who are called to be saints: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!” (Rom 1:7).

The exhortation can be viewed as a summons for the whole Church to continuously encounter the word of God but this passage speaks specifically to the word of God, vocation and its discernment.  In Scripture we encounter the living Lord and he speaks to our heart; so by growing “in relationship with the word of God” we necessarily grow in awareness of our vocation, our calling in life. 

We can readily call to mind the witness of various saints throughout the ages whose vocation was made clear through the proclamation of and encounter with a scripture passage.  I think of St. Anthony of the desert and St. Augustine; both of whose stories make a dramatic turn through an encounter with the word of God. 

The Holy Father points out that the synod specifically stressed that the word of God, “calls each one of us personally“.  God’s word is, indeed, alive and it does speak to the heart and when we approach God’s word authentically, respectfully, prayerfully and within the proper context of church then great insight and sure knowledge will be gained regarding God, faith and even our vocation. 

To help discern a vocation – spend some time daily with Scripture.  Let it speak to you and see where it leads.      

This last Sunday I and some others members of the Catholic Center boarded a bus to Washington, D.C. at 5:00 a.m. to attend the national March for Life.  We joined with one hundred and sixty other people on this trip organized by Chattanoogans for Life.  The March is held every year on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion on demand in our nation.  Since that decision fifty million unborn children have been aborted.

This is the ninth March that I have attended.  It is always a whirlwind trip and very tiring.  You ride up, some years you are able to make the Vigil Mass held in the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, you sleep on a gym floor, you rise very early the next day to get ready and to get your things packed up and thrown back on the bus, you get to the site of the Rally and Mass and then you go to the Mall for the speeches (standing quite a while in the cold), then the March (which itself takes time to just get started because – I have noticed – the crowd is always much larger than that which is reported by the media and it takes a while to get such a large group moving together.)  After the March you pack into Union Station with thousands of other marchers.  You take a train to your bus and then you are back on the road again.  This year our group was dropped off at the Kingsport exit at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning.

All of this begs the question; “Why?” – and believe me it is a question I asked myself as I dealt with lack of sleep and a crick in my neck from trying to sleep on a bus.  As I reflected on this question two people came to my mind and I believe that this year I marched for them.

The first is Sophie.  Sophie is four years old and I had the privilege to hold her in my arms the day of her birth.  In many ways I consider her my spiritual grandchild.  I have known Sophie’s dad (Brad) since my first assignment when he was in the youth group.  Brad and Hannah (Sophie’s mom) actually met at a youth retreat and they like to joke that I was a little frustrated with them at the retreat because they were more focused on one another than on the retreat itself.  Go figure…  I was the celebrant at their wedding.  I was there the day Sophie was born and I was the celebrant for her baptism.  Sophie and I go way back. 



Brad, Hannah and Sophie

Whenever I visit their family the first words I hear from Sophie are always, “Fr. Michael, lets go play.”  Obviously, I cannot refuse – Brad and Hannah just smile and roll their eyes – and the next twenty minutes are spent with me usually sitting on the floor playing with dolls or with the latest game.  Of course, Sophie makes the rules.

Sophie is not perfect (she is a typical four year old and she has her moments – as Brad and Hannah will attest) but she brings great joy to my heart.  I find the world a brighter place knowing that she and her family are out there.  The world would not be as bright without her.  I marched for Sophie this year and I marched for all the children who we will never know.

Secondly, I marched for a lady whom I will name “Rachel” and her tragic story.  A while back I got to know Rachel through my ministry.  She was a very accomplished person – successful in her career, well thought of and respected.  Yet, in her heart there was a deep hurt.  Over time Rachel shared with me that she had procured two abortions and how she now truly regretted those decisions.  She had confessed both abortions but the pain remained.  We talked about regret and contrition, mercy and forgiveness and God’s love for her and her two children.  A number of times I encouraged her to attend a “Project Rachel” retreat (a retreat that helps women and men find forgiveness and healing after an abortion).  She never seemed to find the time to attend the retreat but she did find great consolation in the knowledge that God had not forgotten her children.  Rachel committed suicide.  To this day I believe that the pain was just too much for her to bear.  She once told me that one of the great pains of the abortion myth is that you are not even allowed to grieve.  “Its not a person, its just a bunch of cells – so put those thoughts away” was the message she was left with; yet those thoughts would not go away.  Rachel was not even allowed the opportunity to mourn.  I marched for Rachel and I realized that the world is not as bright without her.

I marched for my friends and I will continue to march until we as a nation realize that there is a better way and that where we are now is just not acceptable.         

    



With a little friend at an orphanage in Quito, Ecuador

 I want to let you in on a little known secret.  Priests and religious enjoy their lives and the numbers are there to prove it!  Consistently in surveys measuring job satisfaction and fulfillment Catholic priests and religious score in the very top percentile reporting overwhelming satisfaction with what they do.  Even in the midst of the scandals, even in the midst of what many people see as the deprivations and burdens of the life of the priest and religious; overwhelming satisfaction continues to be reported in survey after survey.  Why is this?
 
On the surface and as the world measures things it does not make sense.  One certainly does not get rich in working for the Church so satisfaction cannot be measured by comfort and things acquired.  The hours are definitely long and unpredictable.  Control of ones schedule is often thrown out the window.  Control of ones own life, for that matter, also is gone.  Participating in tense moments is a daily occurrence.  Privacy often takes a backseat to being a public person.  The automatic prestige once given clergy and religious is a thing of the past.  Often, one has to deal with unrealistic demands and expectations.  Yet, priests and religious consistently report overwhelming satisfaction in what they do … why?  

“But the person who is truly happy is not so much the one who has what he or she loves, but the one who loves what is worthy of love…” (St. Augustine of Hippo)  These words by the bishop of Hippo – a man intimately familiar with all the above struggles of the priest and religious (and even more so) – bring us, I believe, to the reason.  And, further, the joy found in the lives of priests and religious witnesses to the wisdom and truth of Augustine’s insight.   

The priest and religious – even in their stumbling humanity – strives to love that which is “worthy of love” – Christ and His Church.  (One cannot truly love Christ without also loving that which Christ himself loves – the Church.)

I say “stumbling” because I know that from my own experience – every day I stand in need of God’s mercy, love and guidance – and yet I have been graced to love that which is indeed worthy of love.  Despite all the above – and paradoxically, even through all the above – the very life of the priest and religious witnesses that there is indeed a joy which comes from striving to love that which is worthy of love!  It is indeed a joy that goes beyond this world and beyond anything one may be having to endure in the moment. 

God blesses with an abundance of joy the one who strives toward him!

Happiness is found in loving that which is worthy of love!    

This last fall there was a synod of bishops gathering held in Rome focusing on the word of God.  The theme of the synod was, “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church.”  During the synod there were some noteworthy happenings: His Holiness Bartholomew I, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, offered a meditation for the participants and for the first time in history a Synod of Bishops invited a Jewish rabbi to offer a reflection on the Hebrew Scriptures.  Both reflections were well received and respected by the participants and added much to the discussion and thought of the synod. 

It is also worthy to note – and the focus of this blog – that in his post-synodal exhortation (“Verbum Domini”) Pope Benedict moves quickly from the contemplation of God in His being and essence to an understanding of the human person.  This all occurs within the first section of the exhoration.  Below is the central quote. 

“The novelty of biblical revelation consists in the fact that God becomes known through the dialogue which he desires to have with us.  The Dogmatic Constitution ‘Dei Verbum’ had expressed this by acknowledging that the unseen God ‘from the fullness of his love, addresses men and women as his friends, and lives among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company’.  Yet we would not yet sufficiently grasp the message of the Prologue of Saint John if we stopped at the fact that God enters into loving communion with us.

In reality, the Word of God, through whom ‘all things were made’ (Jn 1:3) and who ‘became flesh’ (Jn 1:14), is the same Word who is ‘in the beginning’ (Jn 1:1). If we realize that this is an allusion to the beginning of the book of Genesis (cf. Gen 1:1), we find ourselves faced with a beginning which is absolute and which speaks to us of the inner life of God.

The Johannine Prologue makes us realize that the Logos is truly eternal, and from eternity is himself God. God was never without his Logos. The Word exists before creation. Consequently at the heart of the divine life there is communion, there is absolute gift. ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 4:16), as the same Apostle tells us elsewhere, thus pointing to ‘the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny’. 

God makes himself known to us as a mystery of infinite love in which the Father eternally utters his Word in the Holy Spirit. Consequently the Word, who from the beginning is with God and is God, reveals God himself in the dialogue of love between the divine persons, and invites us to share in that love. Created in the image and likeness of the God who is love, we can thus understand ourselves only in accepting the Word and in docility to the work of the Holy Spirit. In the light of the revelation made by God’s Word, the enigma of the human condition is definitively clarified.” 

The Holy Father knows that a correct understanding of the human person is necessarily linked to a correct understanding of God – fully revealed in Jesus Christ and encountered throughout the length of Sacred Scripture.  St. Jerome is credited with the saying, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ” to this we can also add, “Knowledge of the God revealed through Christ is knowledge of the human person.”  I believe that the Holy Father, by linking Scripture and anthropology in such a manner at the very beginning of his exhortation, is inviting the Church to an intentional reflection on the distinct anthropology discovered and revealed only through the Christian revelation experience.    

From the first chapter of Genesis we learn that humanity is made in the very image and likeness of God (indeed a reality wounded by sin, to the point of our being lost and standing in need of a savior, but yet a reality not totally destroyed).  From the first letter of John we are told that God is love.  If 1. God is love and 2. we are made in the image and likeness of God then it can be surmised that at the very core of our identity is also found the dynamic of love.  Further, this truth points out that our fulfillment in life can only be achieved through the dynamic of love which is fundamentally the giving of self for others.  The Holy Father points out that it is in and through the revelation; ‘God is love,’ that we arrive at ‘the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its destiny’.

Why is the Holy Father doing this?  He is, I believe, bringing the study of Scripture to its proper focus – not a dry academic discourse dealing with dusty old volumes of the past but saving wisdom, awareness and new life for today which brings insight into the lived human condition.  Pope Benedict is bringing to our attention the value of Scripture to answer the nagging questions of anthropology that beset our day, age and individual existence.  What, exactly, is the human person?  How do we define ourselves?  What is at the core of our identity?  Why is there sin in the human condition?  How do we find our fulfillment?  Is the human person just an isolated individual disconnected from others and any larger reality or at the core of the human person is there a point of connection with others that is fundamental and cannot be denied?

Sacred Scriptures addresses these questions. 

“God is love” is a uniquely Christian claim.  God as a communion of persons whose very natures are defined by gift of self is also a uniquely Christian claim.  Humanity made in the image and likeness of God is a fundamental Judaeo-Christian premise.  All these claims and premises do eventually add up (at least, if one is being authentic) and through them we are brought to a specific understanding of the human person that we, as Christians, must acknowledge if we are, indeed, to be honest in our faith and our mission as the Body of Christ in our world.

Fundamentally, the Holy Father and the Synod is saying that we need to know ourselves as rooted in love and communion if we are to meet the brave new world that awaits us and that stands in need of the proclamation of Jesus Christ. 

This knowledge is there to be gained through reflection on Sacred Scripture and what it says about God and ourselves. 

In iconography one does not “paint” an icon.  Rather, one “writes” an icon because an icon is considered visual theology.  Icons also have rhythm, movement and structure to them and in the encounter with an icon one encounters the heart of God himself – open in friendship to us.  I find that when I write an icon or reflect on one my own heart finds peace and a needed healing … often from the debilitating effects of worldly images and distracting thoughts thrown at us all day.  The peace and healing come, I believe, from the encounter with God’s own heart who in sublime condescension comes to our lowly condition through Christ and invites us to friendship. 

On the icon St. Theodore the Studite offers these words, “For is it not glorious for the lofty when they humble themselves, as it is shameful for the lowly when they exalt themselves?  Thus for Christ, who remains on His own summit of divinity, glorified in His immaterial indescribability, it is glory to be materially circumscribed in His own body because of His sublime condescension toward us.  For He who had created everything became matter (that is, flesh).  He did not refuse to become and to be called what He had received, and it is characteristic of matter to be circumscribed materially.”  (taken from “On the Holy Icons“)

Thanks to the Christmas generosity of some friends I was able to purchase the six volume set of St. Augustine’s “Expositions of the Psalms” (published by New City Press).  I am already enjoying delving into the collection which took about thirty years (scholars suggest) for Augustine to compile.  More than any other of his considerable works the “Expositions” covers and presents the development of Augustine’s thought over the span of his ministry.  I know that I will be using the set as a continual resource in many ways for the rest of my life but one way that I have already begun to make us of the collection is as a means to study and reflect on the responsorial psalm for the coming Sunday readings.

The “narrowing” is in part a purifying of motives.  Augustine alludes to this is his mentioning of those who seek a relationship with God in the hopes of acquiring wealth, or honor, or because it looks good.  God, in this case, becomes more of a means to an end rather than the true end itself.  “Let go of those temptations and considerations,” he is telling us, “go a step further onto the narrower path.”  “…simply ask for God.”  

It is the “law of foundation” – objects strain toward their foundation, their proper place.  The Church throughout all history, cultures and contexts strains toward the future, toward a more just and equitable world, precisely because it is being obedient to the law of its foundation!  The Church’s foundation is Christ and the fullness of the Kingdom of God!  The Church does not give in to this world and the gravity of decay but rather is formed and pulled by the gravity of grace.  Yes, there is “uneasy movement” as the Church continually seeks its proper place and foundation – straining through the weight of this world and itself being purified of this weight – but we know where our true home lies because its pull on our heart is authentic and true.  Christ is our foundation and it is toward heaven that we strain!