I am always struck by the sixth Chapter of John’ Gospel, and not just by its clear and beautiful Eucharistic theology, but by the fact that in it Jesus offers his audience everything. In the Gospel today Jesus offers us the solution to our hunger and thirst, which of course is an analogy for our souls deepest needs. Maybe in our day and age, in which extreme hunger is rare, at least in the US and certainly in seminary(!), this analogy with physical hunger fails to move us, but in Jesus’ day people knew what it was to hunger. And so Jesus offers them the bread of life the answer to man’s anxiety over his impending doom and the answer to our hunger for life without end.
So, what is the crowds response? In just a few verses we will hear it: they start to grumble and then they leave Jesus en masse, and they don’t just leave him, some even start plotting to kill him.
Ok sure, maybe they didn’t understand his words, but offering them his flesh and his blood, Jesus was offering them his very self in toto, and yet they refused it. Its not that he hadn’t earned a little bit of credibility, up to this point in His ministry Jesus had: changed 6 barrels of water to wine; cured a child at the point of death; restored strength to those born lame
and at the beginning of this sixth chapter John tells us; that He even fed the very same multitude who soon thereafter will reject him. We will have to wait another few chapters in John’s Gospel before Jesus restores Lazarus to life and its not until the end of John’s Gospel that Jesus performs his most miraculous miracle, The Resurrection, but even without these confirmations of His authority it seems that Jesus had made a good case for himself, and for his ability to deliever on his promises.
And so when today he promises: I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst, I question, how could the crowds,
who had just eaten the miraculous feast, not take him seriously, and at least give him a chance? I wonder why they so quickly rejected him?
Jesus offers the crowds hope. If only they had a little Faith in Him, He could offer them hope for eternal happiness, which begets life changing LOVE. Maybe it’s because precisely because of this, because Jesus threatened to stir things up and to change things.
People were miserable, they were hungry, they wanted more, their hearts cried out for fulfillment, as they still do today, and yet in Jesus’ day, just as today people were accustomed to things the way they were to our falleness, to the seeming unobtainability of happiness. By proposing a way to happiness Jesus is offering us our hearts desire, but with it the requirement of change. In seeing the way, they were afraid to take it and in not taking it, they feel regret and guilt. As is written in the book of Wisdom, they said: Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings… merely to see him is a hardship for us,
When everyone abandons Jesus—Jesus turns to His Apostles and asks, will you leave me too? They would not; Lord to whom would we go, you have the words of eternal life. Peter confesses not understanding, but faith in Jesus, faith in the truth of His words and more importantly faith in His person. It is this faith, combined with the witness of the resurrection, that prompts the first Christians to continue preaching Jesus’ message. The result is the same: at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem. Time and time again Jesus will be persecuted for offering people their heart’s desire, and we too, the body of Christ, will be persecuted with him. As Jesus says: the servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you
In spite of this persecution, in fact by means of it, we must continue to preach Christ, and Christ Crucified. We must preach the message of absolute love, we who have received everything from God, must now give everything, AND expect some people to reject us for it. We can do this because of our Hope: I am the bread of Life Whosoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, will have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. This is the faith, the Gospel, that we preach, and the faith by which we preach it.
What Recompense can I give to the Lord?
Ordination to the Diaconate
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Consecration of my Chalice
My former spiritual director Msgr. William Callahan consecrates my chalice with Sacred Chrism at the altar of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Strangely enough both of my former spiritual fathers who are now bishops were in town this week, it was nice to be able to say hello to Msgr. Dan Thomas and also to have Mass with Msgr. Callahan at the altar of Mary the Mother of God and S. Gregory Nazianzus on the feast of the Annunciation.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
The Liturgy
In the venacular, the dail liturgy at the Dominican House in Krakow is one of the most beautiful Reform of the Reform liturgies I have ever been to. The Celebrant chants his prayers, and a schola answers them in Polish but using melodies derived straight from the Latin tradition. The Mass parts are sung in Latin, using a ussual setting. True there is a little flare of Eastern Catholic tradition that slips in here and there, but this is fitting for Polish Catholicism, located at the center of Europe and at the Latin Churches borders with the East. All in all it is a beautiful liturgy.
Chalice
While in Poland I picked up my chalice. It is a gift from my mom and dad to me on the occasion of my First Mass, which God willing, we be celebrated June 29th 2008. The Chalice is Silver, plated in Gold. Around the cup are the words of the famous 116th Psalm written into an enamel band. The base of the Chalice has an intricate series of filigree work with blue stones set into it.
There are a whole series of photos of this on Flickr.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Back from Vacation
I have been delayed in posting this since I came down with a bad stomach bug that is going around Rome:
I just got back from a nice two week vacation in Germany and Poland. It wasn't all fun and games; I spent a good portion visiting my family and friends, including my sick Aunt, Veshia, for whom I ask prayers. Since I was traveling alone though I had a lot of time for rest and prayer and to think, and so I have a few thoughts that came to my mind over the past weeks that I want to share.
However, before I do that I want to announce that the Pontifical North American College has recommended that Bishop Coleman call me to Holy Orders!! Its almost surreal!
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Das ist Berlin
The first few days of my trip were spent in Berlin. Berlin is a great city; it is very spread out, not too congested. Much to my liking there are lots of parks and green spaces throughout the city. This is possible because Berlin only really became a city 200 years ago with the rise of Prussian power in the Holy Roman Empire. After the fall of the Hapsburgs as Emperors of Germany, Germany reorganized itself under Prussian princes, creating the German Empire under Wilhelm I. It’s a quite interesting story which I didn't know much about. Anyway, Berlin is really a conglomerate of two dozen towns that where pieced together to form a city. Even today there are twenty or so town halls (or Rathauses) in Berlin. The effect is a quaint feeling of being in a very large town, rather than a city. A town with one of the best public transport systems I have seen! The various neighborhoods all have there own town hall, but also shops, churches and character. In the midst of these town centers a capital city was built, which like Washington DC, is obviously a city that was created to be a political capital, thus it is dominated by many government buildings and palaces.
Sadly, not happy with a good thing, Berlin seems quite pretentious, wanting badly to be what it is not: a cultural center of Europe akin to Vienna, Paris or Rome. Since the fall of the wall the German Republic and the city of Berlin have spent billions to make Berlin a metropolis. In fact, I understand that the city is almost bankrupt because of government efforts to build up the city. Sadly this is a bad time in history to build a cultural capital, if that is possible at all. It seems to me that culture is a living thing and grows where the hearts of people provide rich soil. Sadly our day and age is a time of banal low culture, and so Berlins attempt to make itself what it is not results in many post-modern glass and steel cathedrals of materialism, as well as many museums, but not much else. One sad note is the large number of Churches that have been converted into art galleries and concert halls. Of course the Prussian rulers of Berlin were protestant and so according to the grotesque dictum cius regnum eius religio many ancient Catholic Churches today stand in protestant hands.
One thing that Berlin has a lot of is museums. History being a longtime interest of mine, I visited the key historical sites and the Museum of German History, while in Berlin. I was saddened though by what I perceived to be a state of denial about the reality of the Second World War. This view was confirmed by my cousin, who lives in Berlin and is a professor of History. Much of the material I read at the various exhibits about the rise of Nazism seems an apologia pro vitae nostrae. I was quite concerned that the focus of every exhibit, without exception, seemed to be on how Germans were victims of the Nazis. This of course is certainly true, once in power the average German had to live in a climate of ever increasing oppression, constant war, food shortages, horrible bombings, and finally urban warfare and occupation. However, the fact of the matter is that Germany was a democracy before 1930, and the Nazis came to power through popular support and a general acceptance of ideological warfare--that in truth covered the entire political spectrum. Before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, communists and Socialists on the far left, contended with Nazis in the center and Conservatives on the Right, and these power struggles were often violent. Germans tolerated this climate, and were willing to do anything to relieve there economic suffering. This is a reality that profoundly interests me and should interest the free world, least we be doomed to repeat this lesson of history. Yet in Berlin, the center of Hitler’s Germany the pain of the cold war and the Berlin wall, the pain of the occupation, any years of air raids, the pain of the destruction of Berlin, seems to overshadow the reality of the Nazism that took root there. Halters bunker, sits in ruins, with the German's unwilling to open it to the public, the ruins of the Gestapo HQ, form an outdoor historical exhibit called the Topography of Terror, but a permanent museum on this location, as well as the extant exhibit itself, are highly controversial. In the newly restore Reichstag one plaque proudly proclaims: Hitler never set foot in the Reichstag as chancellor, and another notes that the farce parliaments of the Nazi government never ruled from the Reichstag. While the Reichstag may have been burned by arsonists before Nazi ascendancy the fact of the matter is that the very act of arson that preserved the Reichstag’s "purity" from Nazi governments is highly symbolic of the political climate that Germans allowed to exist before the Nazi takeover. In a democracy, or democratic republic, it is easy to fall into an us versus them mindset, but if this happens we are just steps away from violence. Aristotle noted that Democracy was the least desirable form of government because it most quickly and covertly descends into mob rule. At the same time he concedes that most often its perversion is the mildest form of perverse government. This is born out by the fact that although Germans democratically turned to Nazism, its worst offenses occurred when all pretense of Democracy was cast aside. Democracy, in one of its several forms, for better or for worse is the predominant form of government in the Western world at the moment, and so it is very important to note how easily democracy changed to mob rule, which transformed into dictatorship. As free citizens of democratic states we are not just responsible for our own candidate, but for the level of divisiveness we tolerate. As citizens we are responsible for the common good and not just for our own agenda--and responsible for the defense of the rights of others possibly even before the assertion of our own rights. On this account, I think the American candidate for the presidency; Sen. Barrack Obama has it right. The level of divisiveness if Washington, and around the world, must change. Berlin seems an ideal place for a reflection on these themes, sadly honest reflection seems quite lacking.
Sadly, not happy with a good thing, Berlin seems quite pretentious, wanting badly to be what it is not: a cultural center of Europe akin to Vienna, Paris or Rome. Since the fall of the wall the German Republic and the city of Berlin have spent billions to make Berlin a metropolis. In fact, I understand that the city is almost bankrupt because of government efforts to build up the city. Sadly this is a bad time in history to build a cultural capital, if that is possible at all. It seems to me that culture is a living thing and grows where the hearts of people provide rich soil. Sadly our day and age is a time of banal low culture, and so Berlins attempt to make itself what it is not results in many post-modern glass and steel cathedrals of materialism, as well as many museums, but not much else. One sad note is the large number of Churches that have been converted into art galleries and concert halls. Of course the Prussian rulers of Berlin were protestant and so according to the grotesque dictum cius regnum eius religio many ancient Catholic Churches today stand in protestant hands.
One thing that Berlin has a lot of is museums. History being a longtime interest of mine, I visited the key historical sites and the Museum of German History, while in Berlin. I was saddened though by what I perceived to be a state of denial about the reality of the Second World War. This view was confirmed by my cousin, who lives in Berlin and is a professor of History. Much of the material I read at the various exhibits about the rise of Nazism seems an apologia pro vitae nostrae. I was quite concerned that the focus of every exhibit, without exception, seemed to be on how Germans were victims of the Nazis. This of course is certainly true, once in power the average German had to live in a climate of ever increasing oppression, constant war, food shortages, horrible bombings, and finally urban warfare and occupation. However, the fact of the matter is that Germany was a democracy before 1930, and the Nazis came to power through popular support and a general acceptance of ideological warfare--that in truth covered the entire political spectrum. Before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, communists and Socialists on the far left, contended with Nazis in the center and Conservatives on the Right, and these power struggles were often violent. Germans tolerated this climate, and were willing to do anything to relieve there economic suffering. This is a reality that profoundly interests me and should interest the free world, least we be doomed to repeat this lesson of history. Yet in Berlin, the center of Hitler’s Germany the pain of the cold war and the Berlin wall, the pain of the occupation, any years of air raids, the pain of the destruction of Berlin, seems to overshadow the reality of the Nazism that took root there. Halters bunker, sits in ruins, with the German's unwilling to open it to the public, the ruins of the Gestapo HQ, form an outdoor historical exhibit called the Topography of Terror, but a permanent museum on this location, as well as the extant exhibit itself, are highly controversial. In the newly restore Reichstag one plaque proudly proclaims: Hitler never set foot in the Reichstag as chancellor, and another notes that the farce parliaments of the Nazi government never ruled from the Reichstag. While the Reichstag may have been burned by arsonists before Nazi ascendancy the fact of the matter is that the very act of arson that preserved the Reichstag’s "purity" from Nazi governments is highly symbolic of the political climate that Germans allowed to exist before the Nazi takeover. In a democracy, or democratic republic, it is easy to fall into an us versus them mindset, but if this happens we are just steps away from violence. Aristotle noted that Democracy was the least desirable form of government because it most quickly and covertly descends into mob rule. At the same time he concedes that most often its perversion is the mildest form of perverse government. This is born out by the fact that although Germans democratically turned to Nazism, its worst offenses occurred when all pretense of Democracy was cast aside. Democracy, in one of its several forms, for better or for worse is the predominant form of government in the Western world at the moment, and so it is very important to note how easily democracy changed to mob rule, which transformed into dictatorship. As free citizens of democratic states we are not just responsible for our own candidate, but for the level of divisiveness we tolerate. As citizens we are responsible for the common good and not just for our own agenda--and responsible for the defense of the rights of others possibly even before the assertion of our own rights. On this account, I think the American candidate for the presidency; Sen. Barrack Obama has it right. The level of divisiveness if Washington, and around the world, must change. Berlin seems an ideal place for a reflection on these themes, sadly honest reflection seems quite lacking.
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