bearing blog

Shadows. A very quick post.

Today's reading in the Office of Readings: the beginning of the tenth chapter of Hebrews, starting with

Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of them, it can never make perfect those who come to worship by the same sacrifices that they offer continually each year. Otherwise, would not the sacrifices have ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, once cleansed, would no longer have had any consciousness of sins?

But in those sacrifices there is only a yearly remembrance of sins, for it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats take away sins. For this reason, when he came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; holocausts and sin offerings you took no delight in. Then I said, ‘As is written of me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do your will, O God.’”

I never noticed that bit about the shadow and the "very (I.e., true) image." Quite like Plato and the cave. I googled around a bit this morning to see if scholars thought that Plato had actually influenced the epistle (though obviously many people, including presumably translators, have been influenced by both), and I came upon a Google Books reference on the subject.

I can't copy the whole piece, or even read it all online, but at least part of the discussion touched on the nuances in the Greek of the relationship between the "shadow" and the "true form." Does it suggest that the "shadow" is an inferior, flat sort of copy of an original "true image" that precedes it, or does it suggest that the "shadow" is a preliminary sketch or draft version of a perfected form that is yet to come?

I just thought I would like to draw attention to this specific kind of distinction between two ways of viewing the same sort of concept, that the material world is an inferior or "flat" version of a higher reality. I have always thought of Plato's cave as a proto-Christian concept; but I really like the notion that one kind of inferior-image-of-a-greater-reality is a shadow or copy cast by an original, and another kind is a prefiguration or draft that is to be fulfilled by its perfected form.

We can, of course, go all meta on the subject by suggesting that Plato's concept was itself a shadow of the Christian version. And that the directionality of that relationship gives us a hint, embedded in the universe of human culture, to the direction we should assign to the relationship of image-and-reality.

Now I feel like rereading Anathem and Flatland and The Last Battle and drawing directed graphs.

Posted with Blogsy

Satisfying bleakness.

I left Mark and his dad with my daughter in her hospital room yesterday afternoon so I could go to Mass at a parish on this side of town. The rest of the family will go this morning, the usual place, the usual time. Now that the 9- and 13-yo boys are both serving Mass, we have a little less flexibility than we used to.

I'm not naming names, but when I opened that door I walked into the bleakest-looking sanctuary I have ever seen.

+ + +

It isn't ugly, per se; there was a symmetry and a proportion to it that satisfied the mathematical eye. And it isn't haphazard or cluttered; clearly someone had inflicted this design with a sense of purpose. So I wouldn't call it painful to look at.

But it isn't a place of spareness and simplicity, either, which has its place, if only among monks. It is more like a basketball court repurposed as a tasteful dungeon.

The sanctuary there has no foyer; one walks through the double doors and finds oneself immediately at the entrance of the center aisle, face to face with a smiling usher handing out photocopied 11x14 sheets with a couple of hymns and the Nicene creed printed on them. The pews are arranged in forward-facing ranks. The space is a large box, with recessed can lights in the ceiling far above, pointed straight down. There are square windows crisscrossed with bars that break them into triangles, of frosted glass that filters the light to thin gray, around the very top of the walls. The total effect is very dim despite the large number of can lights. The quantity of light is enough to see by, but its quality is that of a late afternoon, with thunderclouds gathering but never releasing their rain.

The walls themselves are beige brick all the way up to the ceiling. A couple of wide rectangular pillars, the same beige brick, rise on either side of the altar area. Low on the broad face of one is bolted a dull metal Madonna-and-child, symmetrical, hooded, expressionlessly gazing straight forward from mask-like, slot-eyed faces. This piece is surrounded by tea lights each also bolted to the wall.

There is a crucifix, too small for the vast space, hanging on a surface that serves as a signifier of a reredos. This reredos rises in a peak -- so it also serves as a signifier of a sanctuary-shaped space -- and is made of vertical bands of dark wood. The bands are so high-contrast that if you gaze at them or at the crucifix for more than a few seconds and then look away, their ghosts stay imprinted on your retinas, casting stripes everywhere that then disappear.

The tabernacle is a cube with a square pattern of black squares, tucked behind the Madonna's pillar. The altar cloth is plain. Behind the altar are hung three plain narrow banners, off-center, for Ordinary Time. There is a single pot of orange mums next to the priest's chair.

I took a seat in a pew near the front. I was ten minutes early, and there were maybe five other people in the pews. I put down a kneeler and tried to kneel on it, but the kneeler was set so close to the pew in front that my pregnant belly could not fit, so I had to sit back down.

An older man carrying an iPad and wearing a tie was dashing about asking questions; his voice echoed in the space, muffling his words, but it was clear enough that he was tasked with filling vacant slots, perhaps trying find a parishioner who would agree to serve as lector. He leaned over and asked a question of the woman behind me; she said she didn't have her reading glasses. Meanwhile, parishioners were starting to come in through the double doors from the parking lot. They spoke to each other and the reverberating rumbles of their voices in the bare brick box grew louder and louder, their words still indistinct.

"Father." The one clear word came from behind me and startled me so that I half turned. The speaker was a youngish man seated in a pew back and to my left, leaning forward over a metal rubber-tipped cane. I supposed he had been greeting the priest, whom I could not see but who might have been the man dressed in a black short-sleeved shirt and black pants disappearing just now behind the reredos. When I turned the young man with the cane stared back at me and I turned back, a little embarrassed.

Even though the space objectively offended my sight and hearing, something about the sanctuary atmosphere felt weirdly appropriate. I have had a bleak sort of week, starting out by missing Mass in favor of signing in to the emergency room downstairs. I have been plunged into knowing what it is to be sinful and sorrowful; I think a piece of the Memorare has fallen into place for me this week. I have been tired and afraid and lonely, and anguished, and watched my daughter be tired and afraid and lonely and hurting. I have not done any of the things I meant to do this week, and I find I don't care.

So I sat there and thought: Maybe this is perfect, the cherry on top. I get to go to Mass here in this place. God is here too, and I know that, and maybe this is just the reminder I need, that God is in the bleak places.

I sat back, thinking to myself in an Eeyore sort of way, that it was a rather satisfying end to the week.

Then the dashing-about man walked up from the side and put the book of the gospels on a stand at the edge. Next the priest, vested, came out in front and announced that the pianist had not shown up and so the Mass would be "somewhat abbreviated." "Please rise," he said cheerfully. And he climbed right up the steps and launched into "The Lord be with you."

And Mass started, processionless, music-free, chant-free. Readers, there was no Gloria, not even a spoken one. There was no Alleluia, not even a spoken one. I found myself somewhere sparer even than Lent.

Well. I wasn't even sure if this was allowed, but I guess (in an Eeyore sort of way, or perhaps by now we were crossing into Marvin the Paranoid Android territory) it was even more satisfying than I had originally thought.

+ + +

The readings being the story of Aaron and Hur holding up Moses's arms until Joshua defeats the Amalekites, and the parable of the widow pestering the corrupt judge until in exasperation he rules in her favor, the homily turned out to be an exhortation on spiritual persistence.

Okay then.

Afterwards, after kneeling for a brief prayer of thanksgiving (well, sort of, with my butt on the pew to make room for my belly), I determined to leave quickly and quietly, getting back to my daughter. I remembered what St. Francis de Sales wrote in the Introduction to the Devout Life:

When you have finished your meditation, take care to keep your heart undisturbed lest you spill the balm it has received: in other words, keep silence as long as possible and transfer your attention to other things quietly, trying to retain the fruits of your prayer as long as you can.

A man who carries a vessel full of some precious liquid walks very carefully, looking neither right nor left but straight ahead to avoid stumbling over a stone or making a false step, making sure that the vessel is well balanced.

This is how you must act after prayer, trying not to be too quickly distracted; for example, should you meet someone you must speak to, accept this as unavoidable, but keep a guard on your heart, so that you spill as little of the balm of prayer as possible.

As I passed by, the young man with the cane looked straight at me and said: "God bless you."

I looked back at him and replied automatically, "You too." I didn't stop but went on out to the car, pondering, hefting my balm.

Posted with Blogsy

Big-person questions.

Yesterday morning my daughter, who was sitting in a wheelchair next to her IV pole, looked across the rumpled hospital bed at me and asked, with a nearly expressionless face, "Is this the kind of sickness that can make me... that can make people... die?"

I said: "When people have an appendix that gets as sick as yours did, if they don't get the surgery you had, then yes, they do sometimes die. You were very, very sick before your surgery. But we took you to the hospital, and the radiologist figured out what was wrong, and right away you went into surgery, so you are going to get better. Almost everyone gets better after they have the surgery you had. And this is a very good hospital."

She thought about that for a while.

I said: "Were you worried about that?"

"Yes."

"I'm glad you asked me about it so I could answer you."

She looked back at me with almost no expression on her face. There had been no hint of weeping or of anger or of anything else.

Then she said: "Why does God make some people get sick?"

My first thought was: Am I living in some kind of schlocky TV show where children get sick and ask "Why does God make people get sick?"

And then I thought, I just got handed a major Catholic-parent pop quiz. Better get this one right.

So I said something I keep in my pocket to buy myself time:

"That is a question that many very smart people have been talking about and discussing for a very long time. It is one of the most important questions that people have ever come up with. So I am glad you are thinking about it, because everyone has to ask it eventually."

And then I said:

"Some people think that it isn't God who makes people get sick. They have the idea that it was when original sin came into the world, that sickness and suffering came into the world with it."

She looked at me expressionlessly.

I continued: "And other people say that God lets some people get sick so that all of us can learn how to be compassionate and kind to each other. By helping the people who are suffering."

She nodded -- not in a "yes, I agree with you" way, nor in a "That makes sense, Mom" kind of way, but in a "That's enough out of you" way. She looked down into her lap.

I waited a moment and then I added, "That really is an important question. People have been talking and wondering about the answer to that since before Jesus was born, even. It's in the book of Job."

She asked to be put back in her bed. I helped get her in -- she is able to scoot herself around a little bit, and I am able to lift her a little bit, so together we can do it -- and soon she dropped off to sleep.

+ + +

I sat back down in the vinyl recliner in the dimmed room -- the sunlight filtered through the curtains we had drawn across the east-and fired up iBreviary for the first time since we got here. Yesterday was the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, one of my favorites. I clicked the "Lauds" button and decided on the common of martyrs.

The reading was second Corinthians 1:3-5:

Praised be the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation! He comforts us in all our afflictions and thus enables us to comfort those who are in trouble, with the same consolation we have received from him. As we have shared much in the suffering of Christ, so through Christ do we share abundantly in his consolation.

What do you think? Did I pass the quiz? I think maybe I got a fifty percent.

+ + +

This morning things are looking up. Catheter is out, although she has a job to do before she can be sure that she won't have to have it in again; also, she has been promised a chance to try mashed potatoes at lunchtime. Mark went to work for a couple of hours. I am about to comb her hair while she sits in a wheelchair and watches The Price is Right.

The surgical team is optimistic that she will not develop a secondary infection, since there has been no fever. We are basically waiting for the digestive system to start working again, including fluids in and out, before she can come off the IV and be discharged.

Thanks for all your prayers. If you feel moved to add more, let's all ask that she not need another catheter because that part wasn't any fun at all....

Posted with Blogsy

Interpreting the Beatitudes: on not reinventing the wheel.

A few days ago the Office of Readings contained an excerpt from Sermon 95 of St. Leo the Great, "Homily on the Beatitudes, St. Matthew 5:1-9." I hadn't been familiar with that particular Homily and the excerpt piqued my interest, so I searched out the entirety -- it really isn't very long -- and read the whole thing.

There must be countless homilies and other reflections on the Beatitudes out there for the picking, I thought as I read it over. They are much-examined, in part, because they offer a blueprint for holiness: if we can only (with God's help) follow the directions faithfully, become the kind of people that The Lord calls "blessed," then we cannot go wrong. Simple! But the other reason the Beatitudes are much-examined is that they are also kind of cryptic, at least to moderns reading them in translation. Poor in spirit? They that mourn? The makers of what sort of peace? What do those words mean? What is going on here? Exactly who are these people called blessed, and how can we become like them?

I can't be the only one who has listened to the Beatitudes proclaimed from the pulpit, or read them and read again, and considered what I think they might mean more precisely. As someone who lives far from poverty, who has little to mourn, handicapped in peace-making and mercy, who rarely feels pure-hearted or righteous... I tend to look for loopholes.

But you know, I am always trying to read between the lines every time I read it, or most any Scripture passage. I figure that I am pretty smart. I can figure something about it out, maybe not everything, but something.

And then sometimes I come across something like this -- some piece of explication and interpretation that has been around for centuries. And it is perfectly straightforward. And I wonder: what the hell am I doing expending so much brainpower trying to come up with my own spin? Why am I reinventing the wheel?

(Not that it is a pointless exercise to consider what one can find on one's own in the depths of the Gospels... but one should remember that we need not leave it at that. Wiser people than I have written down things worth reading, against which I could measure and evaluate my own thoughts. If nothing else they might provide a counterbalance, originating as they do outside myself.)

What does St. Leo say to illuminate the blueprints for holiness? What are these people like, that the Lord calls blessed?

"Poor in spirit," he explains, means the humble: the submissive, those who do not exhibit loftiness of mind and (in the case of the rich) those who use the abundance they have "not for the increasing of ... pride" but "on works of kindness."

It would perhaps be doubtful what poor He was speaking of, if in saying blessed are the poor He had added nothing which would explain the sort of poor: and then that poverty by itself would appear sufficient to win the kingdom of heaven which many suffer from hard and heavy necessity.

But when He says blessed are the poor in spirit, He shows that the kingdom of heaven must be assigned to those who are recommended by the humility of their spirits rather than by the smallness of their means. Yet it cannot be doubted that this possession of humility is more easily acquired by the poor than the rich: for submissiveness is the companion of those that want, while loftiness of mind dwells with riches.

Notwithstanding, even in many of the rich is found that spirit which uses its abundance not for the increasing of its pride but on works of kindness, and counts that for the greatest gain which it expends in the relief of others' hardships. It is given to every kind and rank of men to share in this virtue, because men may be equal in will, though unequal in fortune: and it does not matter how different they are in earthly means, who are found equal in spiritual possessions.

"Those that mourn" means, says St. Leo, specifically those who mourn sin and iniquity:

This mourning, beloved, to which eternal comforting is promised, is not the same as the affliction of this world: nor do those laments which are poured out in the sorrowings of the whole human race make any one blessed. The reason for holy groanings, the cause of blessed tears, is very different. Religious grief mourns sin either that of others' or one's own: nor does it mourn for that which is wrought by God's justice, but it laments over that which is committed by man's iniquity, where he that does wrong is more to be deplored than he who suffers it, because the unjust man's wrongdoing plunges him into punishment, but the just man's endurance leads him on to glory.

The "earth" promised to the "meek" -- the gentle, the humble, the modest, those who are "prepared to endure all injuries" -- that is, all those who practice self-mastery over their passions -- is defined as the heavenly transformation and perfection of their own bodies, when the passions of the body will no longer struggle against the will of the soul in union with the will of God.

To the meek and gentle, to the humble and modest, and to those who are prepared to endure all injuries, the earth is promised for their possession. And this is not to be reckoned a small or cheap inheritance, as if it were distinct from our heavenly dwelling, since it is no other than these who are understood to enter the kingdom of heaven. The earth, then, which is promised to the meek, and is to be given to the gentle in possession, is the flesh of the saints, which in reward for their humility will be changed in a happy resurrection, and clothed with the glory of immortality, in nothing now to act contrary to the spirit, and to be in complete unity and agreement with the will of the soul.

For then the outer man will be the peaceful and unblemished possession of the inner man: then the mind, engrossed in beholding God, will be hampered by no obstacles of human weakness nor will it any more have to be said "The body which is corrupted, weighs upon the soul, and its earthly house presses down the sense which thinks many things" (Wisdom 9:15)...

Blessed are they who "hunger and thirst after righteousness," i.e., those who crave "to be admitted to all the deepest mysteries" and to know God. I have always read this as a desire for justice, but St. Leo seems to think that it includes a desire for the grasping of Truth. I suppose the two are pretty closely linked!

It is nothing bodily, nothing earthly, that this hunger, this thirst seeks for: but it desires to be satiated with the good food of righteousness, and wants to be admitted to all the deepest mysteries, and be filled with the Lord Himself. ... spurning all things temporal, it is seized with the utmost eagerness for eating and drinking righteousness, and grasps the truth of that first commandment which says: "You shall love the Lord your God out of all your heart, and out of all your mind, and out of all your strength" : since to love God is nothing else but to love righteousness.

Blessed are the merciful, recast here as "those who do good":

The faith of those who do good is free from anxiety: you shall have all your desires, and shall obtain without end what you love.

Blessed are the pure of heart, which St. Leo says means those who strive after the virtues implicit in the other beatitudes, and not after their opposites:

What, then, is it to have the heart pure, but to strive after those virtues which are mentioned above? And how great the blessedness of seeing God, what mind can conceive, what tongue declare? And yet this shall ensue when man's nature is transformed, so that no longer in a mirror, nor in a riddle, but face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12) it sees the very Godhead as He is (1 John 3:2), which no man could see ; and through the unspeakable joy of eternal contemplation obtains that which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man.

Rightly is this blessedness promised to purity of heart. For the brightness of the true light will not be able to be seen by the unclean sight: and that which will be happiness to minds that are bright and clean, will be a punishment to those that are stained. Therefore, let the mists of earth's vanities be shunned, and your inward eyes purged from all the filth of wickedness, that the sight may be free to feed on this great manifestation of God.

The "blessed peace-makers" must mean not those who seek just any sort of peace and harmonious coexistence. It can refer only to those who in their peace are in accord with God in the unity of the Spirit and in alignment with the universal law of good:

This blessedness, beloved, belongs not to any and every kind of agreement and harmony, but to that of which the Apostle speaks: have peace towards God ; and of which the Prophet David speaks: Much peace have they that love Your law, and they have no cause of offenses. This peace even the closest ties of friendship and the exactest likeness of mind do not really gain, if they do not agree with God's will.

Similarity of bad desires, leagues in crimes, associations of vice, cannot merit this peace. The love of the world does not consort with the love of God, nor does he enter the alliance of the sons of God who will not separate himself from the children of this generation. Whereas they who are in mind always with God, giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace Ephesians 4:3, never dissent from the eternal law, uttering that prayer of faith, "Your will be done as in heaven so on earth" (Matthew 6:10). These are the peacemakers...

 

Besides these clarifications of terms, St. Leo links each beatitude together and implies that having attained one, a person approaches another, and so on.

I am sensing a general theme here in St. Leo's concept of the Beatitudes, which could be summed up in a single sound bite:

"You will receive exactly that which you seek."

Posted with Blogsy

Judging by loving.

Pope Francis's address at the Way of the Cross on Friday contained an element that was, I think, joyful enough to save for an Easter post.

The Cross is the word through which God has responded to evil in the world. Sometimes it may seem as though God does not react to evil, as if he is silent. And yet, God has spoken, he has replied, and his answer is the Cross of Christ: a word which is love, mercy, forgiveness.

It is also reveals a judgment, namely that God, in judging us, loves us.

Let us remember this: God judges us by loving us.

If I embrace his love then I am saved,

if I refuse it, then I am condemned, not by him, but my own self,

because God never condemns,

he only loves and saves.

The last sentence points  to a certain dichotomy of choice.  In the constant presence of the love of God I have the choice to embrace His love, and be saved; or to refuse it, and be condemned.  

This field of love is, so to speak, a self-correcting test.

In the context of the Via Crucis,  what immediately comes to mind is the personification of this dichotomy in the two thieves crucified alongside Jesus, described in Lk 23:39-43.

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us." 

The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, "Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation?  And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal." Then he said, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." 

He replied to him, "Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

The two thieves crucified with Jesus are literally  in the presence of the mercy of God.  One responds by "reviling" Jesus:  If you were really the Son of God, you would get down from here.   (This line parrots what the rulers say, and what the soldiers say, and it's not far from the words Luke puts in Satan's mouth in Chapter 4:  "If you be the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.")  

The other responds, first by defending Jesus, then by making what amounts to a confession ("we have been condemned justly... but this man has done nothing criminal" can certainly be read that way -- perhaps the man does not even realize quite how true it is), finally, by embracing that love:  "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom."

And he is answered -- canonized from the cross.  

The story of the two thieves is too iconic to mean nothing more than "a story of two thieves."  It shows us two ways to respond to the "problem" of suffering in the presence of a just and merciful God -- the whole problem of pain.  One response is rejection:  God cannot be God, because if He were God, He would not allow this to go on.  The other response is acknowledgement of the debt we owe, embrace of suffering, and entering into a conversation with the acknowledged King.

I suppose either response is equally logical; but one is a response of rejection, and the other is a response of embrace.

Judging by loving is not a dereliction of duty on the part of the judge.  It does not mean "no judging," or "love instead of judgment."  It is a method of judging.

Something to think about. 

+ + +

 

Side note:  I find it interesting that the feast day of St. Dismas, the "Good Thief," is March 25 -- the same date as, and so usually eclipsed by, the Annunciation.  (Another feast of making an important choice to embrace God.)  But the Annunciation got booted till later because it was superseded by Holy Week, and so St. Dismas came out from behind the angel's wings this year.  More on this from Fr. Z.

The suspension of reliability.

I pray the Divine Office only sporadically, but today I managed to get away to the Perpetual Adoration chapel long enough to "do" Prime and Lauds back-to-back. The D.O. always feels to me as if it'll be a chore to get through, right up until the moment that I finish arranging the bookmarks (or in today's case, a crumpled index card and a stubby pencil) to mark the day's pages and settle in to begin. Then I am always instantly glad, fed and watered when I didn't know my own hunger and thirst. I don't know why this experience has to keep repeating itself; you would think I would have learned by now; but that "chore" feeling comes back day after day, even though it is always followed by the "refreshment" feeling -- that is, when I do manage to trudge over to the chair and open the book. I don't always make the trudge. And every time I do, I wonder why on earth not.

Because of this conversation I keep having with myself, I typically experience the Invitatory Psalm (Ps. 95, the opening psalm for each day's prayer) the same way every time I pick up the breviary: sheepishly, like a kid who's been reminded for the umpteenth time about the same fault.

"Today, listen to the voice of the Lord: Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness, when at Meriba and Massah they challenged me and provoked me, although they had seen all of my works."

Complain, complain, complain. That's me. And surprised every day to taste water in the desert.

+ + +

It's unusual that the Invitatory sparks a new thought, but it happened to me today, so I'll share. The Invitatory psalm contains this text, excerpted by me to highlight what jumped out at me today:

Today, listen to the voice of the Lord:

Do not grow stubborn, as your fathers did in the wilderness...

I said, "They are a people whose hearts go astray and they do not know my ways."

So I swore in my anger, "They shall not enter into my rest."

Today (Saturday, week IV) the antiphon repeated after each stanza is

Let us listen to the voice of God; let us enter into his rest.

I got to thinking about the cause and effect implied in these stanzas, and how we are to read them.

One of the problems of interpretation of the Old Testament is how frequently it explicitly depicts God changing his mind about things, reacting in response to some action or plea of human beings. So, for instance, we have God "repenting" or "regretting" that He had made man, in Genesis 6 (the story of the flood); and we have the book of Jonah, where it says God "relented" or "repented" of His threat to destroy Nineveh. Here is another one, where God is angered -- has a change of heart, so to speak -- in response to the stubbornness of the people.

It is not philosophically straightforward to deal with these images of a God who can change His mind, at least not when you take it as an article of faith -- as Christians do -- that God is eternal, perfect, unchanged and unchangeable. Christian philosophers can and do deal with it, but it is one of those mysteries that can be approached many different ways.

The antiphon "Let us listen to the voice of God; let us enter into his rest," which is, by the way, a prayerful response to Scripture rather than Scripture itself, is not just a response we can make with our voices; it's also a suggestion for a response we can make with our intellect to the "problem" of an eternal, perfect being who nonetheless responds and reacts to mortal, imperfect ones. The antiphon voices absolute confidence that, if we listen to the voice of God, then we will enter into His rest. The one follows the other naturally -- as day follows night -- well, maybe it is really "supernaturally," but what I want to get across is this idea: that the very nature of "listening to the voice of God" is that it forms you into a being who "will enter into His rest."

If that's so, then we can look at the Psalm and perhaps perceive the opposite side of the coin, the choice. The opposite of "listen to the voice of the Lord" is "grow stubborn" like the people in the wilderness, specifically as in the episode at Meriba and Massah (see Exodus 17 to delve more deeply into the allusion). A person who fails to listen, who grows stubborn in this way, who "challenges" and "provokes" God despite having seen His works, perhaps causes himself to become the sort of person whose heart goes astray, who doesn't come to know God's ways -- note that the people have "seen all of [his] works" but "do not know [his] ways," an intriguingly deliberate distinction.

It is because of the condition of their hearts and intellects that God is said to swear in His anger that they shall not enter into His rest.

And here I think maybe the "anger" of God is, from within a more primitive concept of God as changeable, anger-able, a way of expressing a consequence that is written right into the nature of human beings and therefore into the nature of the relationship between God and human beings (because that relationship is part of our nature). If we do not listen to the voice of God, if we grow stubborn and our hearts go astray, we will not enter into His rest -- we simply will not because we cannot, because listening to Him is a prerequisite for acquiring the capability.

That the writers of the story understood this as a face of God's "anger" may have been poetic. It may have reflected the limited way that they could conceive of a divine being. But it would be consistent with a belief that God was predictable and reliable. Remember Psalm 19, where the heavens declare the glory of God? Or in Psalm 50, where the heavens proclaim his justice, for God himself is the judge? The heavens are beautiful, vast, and the source of all our light -- but I think maybe the defining characteristic of "the heavens" for ancient peoples was their regularity: the rising of the sun and its setting, the swinging of the stars through the years: the reservoir of lodestars and timepieces; of constellations that appeared exactly where people looked for them, as long as anyone could remember. If the heavens declare the righteousness of God, then surely one aspect of this righteousness is reliability, predictability; each day has its night, and each failing has its consequence.

If this is one way of interpreting the manifestation of divine anger: as the consequence that is only to be expected; well, then what can mercy be but a miracle?

"He answers all our needs."

Last Sunday, to accompany the story of the feeding of the five thousand, we heard Psalm 145. The antiphon was

The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.

Isn't that a remarkable thing to say? He answers all our needs. How, exactly, are we to understand this to be true?

Because -- I am sure there are a lot of people in the pews who could say, honestly, "No -- I am not getting all my needs addressed. I don't get what I need. Or I haven't got it yet, and don't see a way to expect it."

Accepting this strongly probable assertion makes the antiphon more than a little disturbing -- stained by association, maybe, with the heresy of the prosperity gospel. The hand of the Lord feeds us and he answers all our needs -- so if you remain hungry, needy, you aren't one of us. Something's wrong with you. Or else, it opens the singer to mockery: some Lord, eh? He didn't answer when your needs came knocking, did He now?

So let's consider some plausible alternative interpretations of the line, other than "we never perceive a need because God favors us." Because there's some serious issues with certain attitudes that go with that interpretation.

I'll restrict myself to the English antiphon as it appeared in Sunday's psalm, and not fiddle with translation issues here. In other words, I am just going to assume good faith and accuracy on the part of the translator.

Possibility #1: the psalmist is confined to a particular community at a particular time of spiritual fruitfulness and material prosperity. When it was written, it could truly be said "He answers all our needs," even if it is not so here and now.

This might make the reader wonder, "If that's so, then why sing it here and now?" but I think this possibility seems stronger the more experience one has praying the psalms in regular rotation as one does with the Liturgy of the Hours (or, indeed, with the Mass). It is said that whatever your situation, there is a psalm to fit it, but the corollary to this is that at any given time there are many psalms that don't fit at all. You may be feeling on top of the world and wanting to express gratefulness to God for His abundant blessings, but if it's Friday of Week III, you're stuck with "Let my eyes stream with tears day and night, without rest, over the great destruction," and so on. At first it is jarring, but eventually you figure out how to go with the flow, remembering always that this is the prayer of the Church, not the prayer of me, and someone's life somewhere is intimately fed by this psalm, and we can all join in it whatever our situation.

So we can understand this as: God answers someone's needs somewhere, and we can join in acknowledging it.

Possibility #2: We are to understand "needs" more restrictively here; not everything we might think is a "need" really is.

In this case, the antiphon could even be turned around: it isn't really a need unless God meets it. I am not particularly fond of this interpretation because I fear that it could be abused to minimize others' real suffering. But there is some precedent for this, if you allow (first of all) that securing our salvation is the sole true goal in life, and (second) that the people of God who sing this song are aware of, and accept, the primacy of that salvation. Food, clothing, shelter, security, human kindness, can certainly help us along the path to salvation, but the Christian knows that they are not actually prerequisites. The martyrs had none of these at the point of the blade. You could say that the antiphon, interpreted this way, reminds us that the only true need is grace, and that God grants it abundantly.

Caution, though: we should never assume that other people have no true need for food, clothing, shelter, security. The song says God answers all "our" needs. Quite possibly we can serve as the channel of grace to others in need of compassion, by helping to meet others' physical needs. It is much easier to realize that salvation is more important than food when you are not hungry all the time.

Possibility #3: The emphasis is on the word "He." "It's the hand of the Lord who feeds us; it's He who answers all our needs."

I think this is the strongest candidate of all the interpretation. When our needs are met, it is God to whom we owe our thanks and praise. Whatever food we eat, our clothing, our homes, the people who care for us, the powers of our own and others that keep us safe -- all of that is ultimately a gift from God. Sometimes it comes with the cooperation of others, other times without it; sometimes we ought to thank other people, too; but ultimately we owe God thanks for every good gift in our lives.

Imperceptible change.

From today's Office of Readings (Prime).  I arranged the paragraph breaks and indentations to highlight the parallelism.

We are afflicted...

but we are not crushed;

full of doubts, 

we never despair.

We are persecuted 

but never abandoned; 

we are struck down

but never destroyed....

While we live we are constantly being delivered to death for Jesus' sake,

so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our mortal flesh.

 

This is, of course, part of the "earthen vessels" discourse in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians (chapter 4).

 I am particularly taken, this morning, with 

[F]ull of doubts, we never despair.

The common conception of faith is that it is the opposite of doubt -- that we have faith in just exactly the measure that enjoy freedom from doubt.  Not so.  

It's true that "never despairing" is technically the flowering of the virtue of hope, but it's in the face of doubt that hope does all its work -- and you can't tell me that hope only blooms where faith fails.  Doubt, therefore, cannot be a failure of faith.  

Like the afflictions, persecutions, and blows with which it is made parallel in the passage, doubts are, I think, something that happens to us.  

Faith and hope are among the possible responses to such doubts, those responses being something that is  engendered by us -- that  comes from us -- in cooperation with grace.   

I maintain that it's quite unfortunate that fides -- faith -- has come in English to connote mostly "belief" or "lack of doubt."  Much better to think of it via its cognates fidelity and faithfulness.  These carry a connotation of action, of a series of decisions.  "Faith" in English has come to mean something that happens to you.  "Fidelity" and "faithfulness" still mean something you choose daily -- like hope and charity.

I'm also taken, today, by

While we live we are constantly being delivered to death...

and, along with it, the line a few paragraphs later that goes

We do not lose heart, because our inner being is renewed each day even though our body is being destroyed at the same time.

Probably those lines were originally meant to encourage and strengthen people who are looking death right in the face.  I come at it from another point of view, at least now.  If we are healthy and feeling pretty good, it is possible to forget that "while we live we are constantly being delivered to death."  

It's true, though.  The cells die every moment.   The collapse has been going on for a long time.

If only my inner being could be renewed each day, as imperceptibly but steadily as my body is being destroyed.    Hope is, I think, believing that it can be so; faith is deciding to live as if we are certain.

Misremembering beholding.

Have you ever gotten a meditation wrong?  

We have a number of decisions to make right now; some discernment is called for.  I have a busy nature, am always doing something, and so one of the few times that I have for my mind to wander freely is in the pool while I swim; can't listen to music, can't write, so I think.  I was there, swimming, thinking, and casting about for images to meditate on in an effort to bring some insight to my mental processes, and I settled on the Annunciation, and "I am the handmaid of the Lord."

I spent several laps considering "I am the handmaid of the Lord."  I was thinking about how the first response to the angel's greeting is "How can this be?" and then, after a certain explanation, the self-identification, followed  by the assent.   I found it intriguing, the one piece of information that, to the betrothed virgin, is apparently both necessary and sufficient for the identification, the assent.  It was interesting to think about, and then, as I passed from the English to the Latin (Ecce ancilla domini) I realized -- wait, that isn't quite right -- it's not "I am," but "Behold."  

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord."  I knew that, of course, but I misremembered.  

Anyway, Ecce is translated to "Behold" rather idiomatically -- it isn't precisely a command to look upon something, as far as I can tell, and can also mean "Here is..." or something along those lines.

I had to laugh at myself, because I rather think it would have made a difference to us -- perhaps disastrously -- had it come out as "I AM."

The difference between faith and belief.

"I do believe; help my unbelief!" -- Mark 9:24

+ + +

Darwin excerpts a cordial discussion between some theists and some atheists about the meaning of the word "faith."

 It's worth reading on its own, and I am not going to respond to the entire excerpt, but just make my own comment and expand on it here.

Some proposed definitions from the excerpt:

• "Faith is knowing by testimony rather than by experience. I believe that the Earth orbits the Sun, because the scientists tell me so, and I believe them. "
• "[F]aith is what fills in the gaps of the probabilities. If, say there is a 70 % probability something is the case then to conclude more than that 70% probability is faith..."

Darwin chimes in to make two points.  First, what "faith" originally means:  

The old Catholic Encyclopedia in its article on faith describes the Old Testament use of the term to be essentially "trustfulness" or "steadfastness".... This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Second, 

faith is an act of the will.

Darwin's points are both correct, but he does not go as far as I do.  He classifies "faith" as being an act, and this is correct; but it seems that he identifies it too much with "belief," or with being convinced "enough" of something.  Here is the statement of Darwin's that I disagree with:

This usage still informs the way that we use the term in reference to interpersonal relationships. I have faith that my wife loves me. She has faith that I am faithful to her. Etc. 

Obviously, in this sense one can have faith in any number of things or people, and as it notes, faith in this sense necessarily presupposes belief. I can hardly have faith in my wife's love (as in, trust in its existence and steadfastness) if I don't really believe that I have a wife or don't really believe that she loves me. When Christians talk about "having faith" however, they're pretty specifically talking about "having faith in God" -- that combination of believing in God's existence and of trusting in God to remain steadfast and trustworthy in His love for us.

Darwin is failing -- at least clearly -- to make a distinction between "I am faithful to my wife" and "I have faith in my wife."

The first is concrete.  The second is the metaphor.

The faith that Christians are supposed to have is not the same thing as trust that God's love exists and is steadfast to us.  The faith that we are supposed to have, I am certain, is faithfulness *to* God -- fidelity to the laws and precepts that He sets out for us insofar as we are aware of them.  When we are told to have faith,  this is not at all a command to believe something.  (How can you be commanded to be convinced of a truth?) It is a command to do  something:  to live your life, in your body, in your mind, in accord with the will of a God.

Faith is not trust in God's steadfastness; it is a firm determination to remain steadfast to God.  It is as the original Hebrew meant.

And the point that I want to make, the point where I disagree with Darwin, is that faith understood in this way does not presuppose belief.  

Faith understood the way (I think) Darwin is trying to understand this would presuppose belief, because he is identifying faith with belief.  "I can hardly have faith in my wife's love if I don't really believe that she loves me."  Well, of course, if "faith in my wife's love" == "belief that my wife loves me."  

But my understanding of faith does not presuppose belief.  Darwin could choose to remain faithful to his wife -- by which I mean nothing more nor less than the earthy sort of "faithful," i.e., he could remain sexually faithful to his wife, forsaking all others, and not abandoning her or their children -- even if he lost all confidence in her love for him.  Indeed, he could (and should) choose to remain sexually faithful if Darwin became thoroughly convinced that MrsDarwin did not love him at all.

And what if he did not believe that he even had a wife?  Well, millions of still-single people find themselves in that situation every day, not having promised marriage to anyone, and yet they can still be "faithful" to the future spouse they might or might not have by living a chaste life.  Such is faith:  steadfastness.

One may be "faithful" while having severely impaired belief, even no belief at all. (Which raises the question:  Why would someone who did not believe in God ever strive to live according to God's laws?  I will not answer the question here, and maybe will bat that question back to Darwin, but I will simply note that it is not logically impossible to be faithful in this way without belief; whereas if faith == belief, it does become logically impossible to have faith without belief.)

The idea of "faith" as a purely mental or spiritual assent to a theological statement is, I suspect, a highly Protestant innovation.  Because if you understand "faith" to mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity," then there is no distinction, none at all, between faith and works.  The whole concept of "faith vs. works" presupposes that it is even possible to segregate a thing called "faith" away from the daily acts of living and interacting with other human beings and with our God.  I say, it is not possible.

Here is the second chapter of James:

What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?ⁱ 15If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, 16and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?^j 17So also faith of itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18Indeed someone might say, “You have faith and I have works.” Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. 19You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble. 20Do you want proof, you ignoramus, that faith without works is useless? 21Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar?^k 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by the works. 23Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called “the friend of God.”^l 24See how a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25And in the same way, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by a different route?^m 26For just as a body without a spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.

 

The Greek word for "faith" in James 2 (the faith and works discourse) is the same Greek word (pistis) translated as "belief" in the passage from Mark that I quoted above.   Does pistis mean "steadfastness" in any way?  Or does it only mean an intellectual assent?  It goes on to use pisteuis in the next verse to mean "believe" as in "You believe that God is one" and then "pisteuousin" in "Even the demons believe, and shudder."   The "faith" mentioned in James is then the same as the "belief" which even demons can have.  

I don't really think of demons as "steadfast."

Anyway, as I said in my comment to Darwin's post, the image of a faithful spouse is apt.  Faith in, and faithfulness to, a spouse are very precisely designed to be an image of faith in, and faithfulness to, God. They are so bound up in each other as to not be separable; but at the same time, it is possible to "be faithful," to "do faithfulness," even in times of doubt or -- God forbid -- abandonment.  

This is what I would like to get across to anyone who says they wishes they could have faith but that it has never come to them. Anyone can, without committing a single act of intellectual dishonesty. It is simply a matter of becoming a faithful servant, or spouse, or child of God. To act faithfully -- the precise nature of the "acts of faith" depends on our state in life and our circumstances -- is to have faith. The ability to act faithfully, the possession of faith, both come from grace, the only thing by which we are saved.