bearing blog

Depressing funerals.

Fr. Z. at What does the Prayer Really Say?  has an important post reacting to a newspaper story that described a "celebratory" funeral Mass for a Cincinnati-area priest.

Catholic funerals have gone the way of Catholic weddings:  People have certain expectations of what a "funeral" should be like, and these days a funeral is supposed to be a celebration of the life of the deceased.  That's the way that TV funerals have gone, and that's the way that design-your-own funerals have gone.  

As usual, the way we Catholics do it -- or at least the way we are supposed to do it -- clashes with the fashions of the day.

 - A funeral Mass is still a Mass.  As such, its purpose is not to celebrate the life of the deceased.  We have a means to celebrate the life of the deceased.  It is called a "wake."  It happens BEFORE the funeral.  

 - It is not okay to assume that the deceased is already in heaven.  By all means let's hope he or she has made it there, no matter what we know or don't know about how the deceased spent his or her life/last moments.   But (a) let's not give the impression, by saying "he's in heaven now" about everybody who dies no matter what, that everybody will be in heaven after he dies no matter what; (b) let's not forget to pray for the repose of the soul of the deceased.  We believe it makes a difference.

Does this come from the wider American Protestant culture, in which praying for the dead is frowned upon (not exactly sure why -- maybe I've got a reader who can explain it)?  Or is it just a kind of politeness?  ("If we suggested that we should pray for the repose of his/her soul, we'd be telling the family that we think the deceased is not exactly a saint.  Better just smile and say "He's in a better place now.")  Or does it come from the expectations created by movies and TV shows, just as people are sometimes surprised not  to hear "speak now or forever hold your peace" or "you may now kiss the bride" or Mendelssohn's Wedding March at real Catholic weddings?

Fr. Z's post reminded me that when we pray for "the poor souls in Purgatory who have no one to pray for them," these days, we might well be praying for people who had hundreds of mourners at their funerals.

Sheesh.  Hey everyone:  If I die suddenly, let's do the black vestments, the requiem, the whole shebang.  Get me a month of Gregorian masses!  And don't forget I'll need all the help (prayers) I can get.

Servants and sons.

I was reading a historical biography to Ben and Oscar this morning and came upon a sentence:

"After all, Captain Newport had made him cabin boy; he was used to telling Thomas what to do, as if he were a servant, or as if he were really a son."

It immediately called to mind the contrast between "servants" and "sons" that we say marks the difference that Christ's redemption has made in our relationship to God.

In that passage, the captain commands the boy, and the boy obeys,  as if he were a servant OR as if he were a son.  It doesn't really matter, at least not outwardly.  Both servitude and sonship carry -- or at least they once carried -- an implication of total obedience on the part of one, total authority on the part of the other.  And yet they mean something so very different.

Nowadays, for better or worse, "sons" and "servants" are not so easily mistaken for one another.  So maybe we forget how very interior and unseen the difference can be, before and after redemption.

Pageantry.

From a thoughtful post by SDG at Jimmy Akin's blog, in response to a reader's story of his wife's discomfort with Catholic "pageantry."

Ritual and ceremony are not contrived and unnecessary, except in the sense that all human culture and experience is contrived and unnecessary. Wedding rings, shaking hands, Christmas trees, birthday cakes, napkin on the left, pallbearers, tuck the children in at night, floral arrangements in church or at a wedding or a funeral, Easter eggs, “Hail to the Chief,” bride and groom cut the cake, stand up for the judge, mortar boards at graduation, hold the door for the lady, kiss each other hello and goodbye and good morning and good night — none of these are pragmatically necessary, and all of it is how we human beings order our lives — if not with these symbols, then with something else....

[The] world into which Jesus was born was full of pageantry and symbolism.  And then, when our Creator favored our race by taking on our flesh and offering us so great salvation, He left us with symbols and gestures chosen by Himself and not matters of human convention. He took bread and broke it, and wine, and pronounced them to be His body and blood. He commissioned His disciples to go about immersing people in water in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit fell on Pentecost, He did not proceed to liberate the people from pageantry and symbolism: Three thousand people were ceremonially dunked in water on the first day alone, and they immediately proceeded to devote themselves to the business with the breaking of the bread...

The whole post is worth reading. 

Via dolorosa.

Last Friday I was staying at a high-end casino and spa in Las Vegas, part of a vacation we take with Mark's family, on his parents' dime, every couple of years.  (Vegas was chosen for its something-for-everybody nature.  Even though I don't think any of us did any gambling.)

  You know how when you're on vacation you lose track of the days?  The point when I remembered it was a Friday in Lent was in the middle of a first-thing-in-the-morning facial at the spa.  Real penitential of me, I know.    (Hey, it was the first facial I ever had in my life.  Now I get why people like them so much.)

So I thought to myself, well, it's quiet here, soothing music is playing -- I can meditate, right?  I started to prepare my thoughts for a Rosary and then stopped -- well, it just seemed obscenely inappropriate to be having steam gently wafted at my pores while meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries.   I was struggling with the logical equivalent (so is it obscenely inappropriate to meditate on the Sorrowful Mysteries while having steam gently wafted at my pores, or indeed anywhere?) when it occurred to me --   at the same moment that the therapist lifted my left hand and began to massage my palm -- that I should meditate instead on the Way of the Cross.   

Oooooookay.   This isn't a devotion I do much and I don't even remember all the stations, but I went with it anyway.  I started by trying to see if I even could remember all the stations.  Mentally placing myself next to the wall in my parish church, holding my four-year-old by the hand, I pointed to each of the fourteen paintings in turn and listened to his piping voice recite the titles.  Probably not in the right order.  Jesus is condemned to death.  Jesus is made to bear His cross.  Jesus meets His mother.

And then came the small thought, one that doesn't require me to remember all the stations in the correct order:  The traditional Way of Sorrows is also a Way of Kindnesses.  Six of the fourteen stations recount encounters of love and help.  Jesus meets his mother.  Simon of Cyrene carries the cross.  Veronica wipes the face of Jesus.  Jesus meets the daughters of Jerusalem.  Jesus is taken down from the cross and laid in the arms of His mother.  Jesus is laid in the tomb. 

Almost half the Sorrows are stories of people physically helping Christ or expressing love for Him.

That was it, nothing more profound than that, and after it came I had the sense that my meditation was done.  "You can go now."  So, well, I enjoyed the rest of my facial, and then I went back to my family.  Huh.  Stranger things have happened, I suppose.

Manger.

I never laid any of my babies in a crib, not even once.  I never bought a crib, never had one in the house; I never had a stroller either.  Each newborn, each infant, slept in my arms, in the warmth of my own bed, or snugged next to my heart.  That is the natural, normal, place for mother and new, tiny infant:  together, skin on skin, all the time at first; as the weeks and months and years go by, other arms are fine for a time, other beds; but the littlest ones and their mothers are by human design meant to be together. 

Once we all knew it, right?  It's modern culture that has us putting babies in cribs, right?

Sunday was Epiphany.   What's up with the manger then?

I know about the symbolism.   He who was to be Bread of Life, Food for the world, is found in a food bin.  On the practical side, it made him easier for the shepherds to locate.  "Wrapped in swaddling clothes" isn't very specific when you're looking for a baby in a crowded city.   Adding the manger detail really narrowed it down.

Still, though, what with Mary being the feminine ideal in Catholic culture, the scene is maybe a little disconcerting to attachment parents.  She gives birth to God and then she goes and puts the baby in a crib.  What are we supposed to think?  It seems almost like a repudiation of what we know, that the natural place of a baby is in his (or His) mother's arms.  It is their nature to be together.

Except.  This is not an ordinary Baby.   Christ has two natures, and His mother has two relationships to Him.   One, her natural relationship, her motherhood to His human nature.  With it He is rightfully in her arms:

Mt 2:9-11. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.   They were overjoyed at seeing the star,  and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Two, her destiny as mother to Him in his divine nature:  to let go, to give up, to place Him upon the wood in adoration and holy awe:

Lk 2:15-17.  When the angels went away from them to heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."  So they went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in the manger.  When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about this child.

Mothers who have had newborns, who have kept them close, who know the peculiar rightness of the feeling of the baby in your arms and the peculiar wrongness and emptiness when the baby's not in your arms -- however much I needed to sleep, however welcome the words "Here, let me take her for a while and let you rest," I always felt that emptiness for an instant -- for you there is a special contemplation in the words laid him in a manger.   It is not the natural place for her to put her son, and Mary knows it, and we know it too.

UPDATE.  I received an e-mail pointing out that Jesus was swaddled, not skin on skin, and that swaddling was the norm.  I don't know if swaddling has ever been universally the norm, or indeed if it was specifically the norm for first-century Palestine, or not.  Anyway, this post is about the manger, not really the swaddling clothes.  Though I'm sure there's some fruit for contemplation there too.

UPDATE AGAIN:  Okay, okay, judging by the volume and general tone of my e-mail on this one (where are you all coming from?) clearly I am going nowhere with this one (okay, one person said she liked it).  Many of you have made very good points (not counting the people who say I think I'm a better mother than the Blessed Virgin -- that's just ridiculous), and I hereby withdraw it from the category of "something for everyone to contemplate" and place it back into "well, it helped ME, but YMMV."

Speak, show, argue, listen, rebut, correct, pray.

Doctrinal Note On Some Aspects of Evangelization, a clarification on the faithful's responsibility to evangelize, produced by the CDF.  (link is a pdf file of 14 pages).  It's an argument that positive evangelization is still necessary, as well as a caution against attempts to put dishonesty and coercion at the service of the Gospel.

This is the quote that I noticed most, from the introductory paragraphs (page 3 of the pdf):

Often it is maintained that any attempt to convince others on religious matters is a limitation of their freedom.  From this perspective, it would only be legitimate to present one's own ideas and to invite people to act according to their consciences, without  aiming at their conversion to Christ and to the Catholic faith.

The implication is, of course, that other things are also legitimate, and that these are not enough.  And that's kind of shocking.   It's hard enough to "present one's own ideas" sometimes, that is, to freely speak about what one believes, because it's frowned upon in the workplace, and in certain company religion and philosophy is a tasteless unmentionable.  And if you've been through a conversion/reversion/reawakening so that in your life there's a before and an after, it can be extremely awkward in the presence of people from your before even to acknowledge your change.  (This last isn't limited to religion of course -- ask dieters, vegetarians, recovering addicts -- you name it).

Anyway, what I'm getting at is that "presenting my own ideas" is about as far as I feel comfortable with, most of the time.  Hey, I thought that was "attempting to convince!"

So if we're to "attempt to convince," and if "presenting your own ideas" and "inviting people to act according to their consciences" isn't enough, what's implied?

"Presenting your own ideas" is only the first part of "attempting to convince."  There are four parts.  The second is to give evidence for those ideas -- that is, to lay out a set of observations, events, or facts, that the other agrees happened, or are, or can see; a set of observations, events, or facts that in your view support your thesis.   It almost goes without saying that we also have to be evidence of Christ.  The third is to show the connections between the agreed-upon area and the thesis you wish to promote:  in ohter words, to argue in the classic sense.  The fourth is to rebut, that is, to answer the other's objections.  This last bit is uncomfortable because, no matter how you finesse it, it means having to say "You are wrong."

Speak, show, argue, rebut:  why, that's a debate!  Or, because rebuttal implies listening to and endeavoring to understand the other's arguments, call it  a "dialogue" in the classical sense, not the mooshy modern sense in which we all are supposed to listen and understand and validate and never, you know, say anything.

How about "invite people to act according to their consciences?"  A moment's thought shows that there's something wrong with that too.  Shall we invite people to act according to a grossly malformed conscience?  No, we can never invite people to do immoral things even if they think they are right.  (Comes to mind the folk a few generations ago who thought race-mixing was immoral and enforced separation was right.)  We can, however, invite people to act according to a  well-formed conscience.  Seems to me that part of our duty is to spot the malformed consciences and attempt to form them, one rhetorical prod at a time.  Once again, this implies having to say "You are wrong."  Or, since we only see a malformed conscience through the moral choices a person makes, "What you are doing is wrong."

(Mind you, Christian belief and well-formed conscience are not universally correlated.  There are lots of faithful Christians with screwed-up consciences, i.e., who are easily confused by sentimentality or hard cases, and who can't derive clear moral guidance from the the Christian principles they hold; and there are plenty of non-Christians, atheists, etc., who do have well-formed consciences and easily make moral choices that are logical extensions of their beliefs.)

Speak, show, argue, rebut, correct.  Lastly, we are to do all this with the aim of conversion:  and that means to do these things only if we can do them well.  Which means discernment on our part of when to speak and when to be silent.  If we choose to remain silent, let it be because silence in that moment on our part best serves that aim of conversion, not for any other reason.   Such discernment implies that we need the help of the Holy Spirit, both on our lips and in the hearts of our interlocutors.  Ask for it.

Speak, show, argue, listen, rebut, correct, pray.

Faith ---> hope ---> charity.

A friend of mine wrote to me on my post about Spe Salvi, where I'd written

B16 begins with a discourse about the nature of Christian hope and how it intersects with faith.   He talks about the "certainty of hope," which sounded paradoxical to me at first (isn't hope something that concerns the thing you might experience, not the thing you will experience?), but I think I get it now...

My friend wrote me (if he gives me permission I'll quote him) that the tension between the certainty implied by perfect faith and the uncertainty implied by hope has made it difficult to understand.  When I replied, I quoted the passage below and added almost as an afterthough a note of my own:

Quote:

"A further point must be mentioned here, because it is important
for the practice of Christian hope. Early Jewish thought includes the
idea that one can help the deceased in their intermediate state through
prayer...The belief that love can reach into the afterlife, that
reciprocal giving and receiving is possible, in which our affection for
one another continues beyond the limits of death-this has been a
fundamental conviction of Christianity throughout the ages and it
remains a source of comfort today. Who would not feel the need to convey
to their departed loved ones a sign of kindness, a gesture of gratitude
or even a request for pardon?

"...So my prayer for another is not something extraneous to that
person, something external, not even after death. In the
interconnectedness of Being, my gratitude to the other--my prayer for
him--can play a small part in his purification. ... It is never too late
to touch the heart of another, nor is it ever in vain....Our hope is
always essentially also hope for others; only thus is it truly hope for
me too."

(this part is me writing now)
This helped answer, for me, "What need is there for hope, if one has
faith?" Well, there are probably other aspects of it, but certainly we
need to hope for others, whose faith only *they* know. Don't you think?

I've been musing about this for a while, centering hope in its rightful place between hope and charity.  Yes, hope is at least partly directed towards other people, hope in God for others.  Why wouldn't it be, since charity is pretty much completely directed towards other people?  Not really the self, and the love we have for God (at least in English) doesn't seem to be properly described as "charity," caritas. 

Faith and hope and charity are an odd little trinity, with a sort of progression, aren't they?  And aren't the three relationships among God, neighbor, and self an odd little trinity of relationships too?  (I love the number three, the way it inverts upon itself like the Star of David, there being a trinity of relationships among a trinity of persons).  If faith is about the relationship between self and God, and  Charity about that between self and other,  is hope somehow between:  some strange way the soul perceives God and the other, or God in the other?  Perfect faith implies certainty; charity needs no certainty at all, we can be completely lost inside and still have the power to practice it; is hope somehow between:  some strange place we can be certain and uncertain at the same time?   

Perhaps hope resides in uncertainty because there are things that we can not know.  We can't know the interior of another's soul.  However strong our faith, it's a misplaced faith if it pretends to be certainty about anything other than God Himself.  Not even the most comforting beliefs can really be "faith"  if they're unrevealed.  Is your loved one in Heaven?  Will you get there someday?  With few, few exceptions you cannot know, not even with perfect faith.   

And there are terrible things that might be, but aren't certain, too.  Hope is an acknowledgment of that  uncertainness.  Even perfect faith will never give us the certainty that a particular soul is lost, no matter how much we fear it might be true or even wish it were true in our darker moments. 

If hope is an uncertainty, it's a blessed uncertainty.

What started with "Why do they hate us?" became "Why does He love us?"

Just one line in one 9/11 comment  --- a line that resonated with me more than I expected.

"[T]he Father through Christ is addressing us, the ones who never left home."

Regarding being raised Catholic vs. being a convert -- I said I was going to mention an insight I'd been chewing on, and then Amber sidetracked me into the last post, which led to some good comments (thanks commenters).   

Just a day or two ago I came across B16's commentary, in Jesus of Nazareth, on the parable of the two brothers, aka the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15).  I had always read the two brothers first as the story-on-its-face, and also as representing the pagan world and faithful Israel.  Indeed B16 discusses this common and traditional interpretation.  But he also goes on to describe another angle:

...[W]hat Jesus says about the older brother is aimed not simply at Israel...but at the specific temptation of the righteous, of those who are "en regle," at rights with God... In this connection, Grelot puts emphasis on the sentence "I never disobeyed one of your commandments."  For them, more than anything else God is Law; they see themselves in a juridical relationship with God and in that relationship they are at rights with him.  But God is greater:  They need to convert from the Law-God to the greater God, the God of Love.  This will not mean giving up their obedience, but rather that this obedience will flow from deeper wellsprings and will therefore be bigger, more open, and purer, but above all more humble.

Let us add a further aspect that has already been touched upon:  Their bitterness toward God's goodness reveals an inward bitterness regarding their own obedience, a bitterness that indicates the limitations of this obedience... There is an unspoken envy of what others have been able to get away with.  They have not gone through the pilgrimage that purified the younger brother... They actually carry their freedom as if it were slavery and they have not matured to real sonship.  They, too, are still in need of a path; they can find it if they simply admit that God is right and accept his feast as their own.  In this parable, then, the Father through Christ is addressing us, the ones who never left home, encouraging us too to convert truly and to find joy in our faith.  (pp. 210-211)

It's kind of cliche (and almost new-agey sounding) to write that everybody needs to find their own way, but here is Benedict coming right out and saying it:  They, too, are still in need of a path.  Everybody needs to make a journey of conversion.  Without that, living the righteous life is just a bunch of rules that somebody else foisted on you because you happened to be born into one family and not into another.  And it's pretty discouraging when you find out that following the rules doesn't always get you where you think it ought to get you in this life.

Benedict points out that the elder brother's response is not given to us.  It's left open whether he  stomped off angrily, refusing to have anything to do with such an unfair dad, or whether he accepted the father's generosity and joined in the rejoicing.  Maybe he went off to try out being prodigal himself.

But at least it gives me a model to think of the position that the "cradle Catholics" that are my children might be in. 

Thoughts?

Heart-faith and brain-faith.

Amber commented on my post below about the temptation to wonder if a child has a better chance of coming out a lover of the Catholic faith if she is not actually raised Catholic.

I know what you mean - as an adult convert who has seen so many lukewarm and fallen away Catholics I too wonder how to keep my kids from joining that group.

...I think that it can't just be a matter of the head - cramming them full of knowledge about the faith and hoping that's enough. They have to fall in love with the faith and fall in love with Christ - their hearts have to open to him and to his Church. But you can't force love! All you can do is create moments for intimacy and closeness, try your hardest to keep out that which would create obstacles and pray that they are open enough to hear God calling to them. I think too many parents when raising their children in the faith focus too much on the head and not enough on the heart, leaving them with an anemic faith that can't withstand the rigors of puberty and early adulthood....

Gee thanks Amber.  This is exactly what I worry about!  For me the "head," or brain anyway, is so much easier.  It takes all kinds, right?  Well, my kind is an extremely cerebral, not-very-visceral Faith.    I don't relate very much to it on an emotional or "gut" or "heart" level.  It's just not my way; I don't relate very much to anything on that level.    I'm just a "brain" person.  (not the same as a head case) 

Being a "head" or "brain" kind of person, and being a homeschooling parent, and looking around and seeing a huge number of people who obviously haven't (a) been well catechized or (b) ever learned how to think logically -- just look at how most people react to, say, statistics -- my impulse is mainly to inoculate my kids against ignorance and wrongheaded thinking. 

Study the Bible.  Memorize the catechism. Learn Church history.  Stimulate the thinking with well-chosen works of Christian literature, exegesis, and theology (not to mention plenty of mathematics and natural science, because you've got to understand Creation to really appreciate the Creator).   Teach rhetoric and logic. 

I think I am going to have to rely on others to help with the "heart" part.  Some of that has already started.  And anyway, the ways of the heart are hard to see from the outside.  Who knows what will inflame this child or that?  There are certain aspects of mathematics that give me a religious thrill, a kind of cerebral ecstasy.  So do parts of the liturgy.  So has the experience of being married and raising children, just in and of themselves. 

Oscar was asking me some questions the other day.  I didn't know the answer -- it was one of those "nobody knows" questions, not something you could look up.  (UPDATE.  Oh, I remember -- he asked me what was the first language on earth.)   

He said, "I think God made some questions that are so interesting but you can't know the answer, so that we would want to go to heaven where we can find out."

And I thought -- that's it!  That's the essence of this brain-faith thing that I have, that feels so awkward in a room full of heart-faith people.   Some people express their desire for heaven as a desire to see the face of the Lord.  For me it feels a little more like a desire to know His mind.  God is Love and God is Truth.  Maybe Love and Truth are one thing.   

Maybe a desire for perfect truth that, receiving it, responds with truth -- though comparably neglected in our tradition -- is as much a means of salvation as is a desire for perfect love that, receiving it, responds with love.