My Salvation

Those who have met me in recent years may be surprised to know that I was a somewhat melancholic teen.  For years I saw the world as very black and white; I saw good and bad.  I wanted everything to be good, and I was unhappy that some things were bad.  Despite my own happy childhood I looked around at the world and saw what I considered to be a negative place.  I couldn’t figure out how I fit into it or how it could ever feel “right.” 

I remember a conversation I had with the man who mentored me through those teen years and many years beyond – a parish priest who put up with my melancholy and who succeeded in the careful balancing act of loving me just as I was while simultaneously bringing about a substantial change in me.  One day I told him just how bad this life is, just how miserable.  I was armed with a quote from St. Teresa of Avila that I thought captured the whole awful mess of life.  “Life,” I said, “is like a bad night in a bad inn.”

I was sure that God and all his angels and saints agreed with me.  But Fr. Tim didn’t.  He didn’t agree with me at all.  And his response shifted the entire worldview going on in my teenage brain.  It changed the way I saw everything including myself, him, God, suffering, my future.  It changed the way I saw my world and how I fit into it.  Fr. Tim told me life isn’t a bad night in a bad inn.  “Life,” he said, “is the moment of your salvation.”

I have never stopped believing that.  I have never stopped seeing my world and my life from this fuller perspective – one that recognizes life as a gracious moment, a time of encounters and relationships that bring me closer and closer to the heart of God if only I will allow it.  Sure, sometimes the inn feels run down or drafty or even dangerous.  Sometimes the other people in the inn rob, cheat and steal – or gossip or disappoint or annoy me.  Sometimes it is dark and the night in the inn feels long.  But the moment of my salvation is long, long enough for me to settle into the beauty of this inn and its people, long enough to learn how to live here with them and with myself, long enough to grow into my own salvation.  God has not left me here to flounder until morning comes.  He lives with me here, in this time and place.  This is the moment of my salvation.

To Change the World

“An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world.”

 -- Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 183

Corpus Christi: 3 Prayers

In the rhythm and beauty of the Church’s liturgical year, Sunday brings the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ.  Here are three short prayers that I hope will enhance your preparation for and celebration of this life-giving feast. 

The first prayer is from the book of Psalms.  The psalmist is recalling one of God’s wondrous deeds – the feeding of the hungry Israelites with manna in the desert.  Exodus 16:35 says that the Israelites ate this manna for 40 years, until they came to the land God had promised them.  The manna, which they considered to be “bread from heaven” (Ex. 16:4), was their food for the journey, just as the Eucharist is ours.  We can read these ancient words in a “Eucharistic sense.”  (If you have time to reflect on Exodus 16 in the next few days, please do.  You will be amazed at the Eucharistic parallels!)

In the second prayer, Thomas Merton captures many truths of the Eucharist in a poetic way.

I especially love the last prayer from The Didache* – using the imagery of scattered wheat gathered into bread, it envisions the Eucharist as a source of unity for the Church, the Body of Christ.  In some ways our Church still appears to be scattered across the hills.  May the Eucharist heal our divisions and unify us in the love of Christ.

*****

God commanded the skies above,
    and opened the doors of heaven;
he rained down on them manna to eat,
    and gave them the grain of heaven.
Mortals ate of the bread of angels;
    he sent them food in abundance.

-- Psalm 78:23-25

O God, give peace to Your world.  Give strength to the hearts of men.  Raise us up from death in Christ.  Give us to eat His immortality and His glory.  Give us to drink the wine of His Kingdom.

-- Thomas Merton, Entering the Silence

We thank you, our Father, for the life and knowledge which you have made known to us through Jesus your Servant; to you be the glory forever. Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever.

 -- The Didache 

*****

*The Didache is an early Christian “handbook” of sorts, likely written around the turn of the first century C.E.  It is a brief, fascinating document that gives a flavor of the early Church.  It can be read in its entirety at www.earlychristianwritings.com.

The Last Supper by Fra Angelico

All Is Vanity!

There are a few books of the Bible that I really find amusing.  My students know that one of them is the Book of Tobit.  In fact I apparently made one too many jokes about that book and was pointedly told by one of my students (thank you, Sr. Mahilia) that I needed to rein it in! 

The Book of Ecclesiastes is another book that amuses me.  That is, when it isn’t making me totally depressed!  Let’s put it this way – Ecclesiastes may not be the book to read when you’re already having a bad day.

The best-known verse in the Book of Ecclesiastes is probably:  “Vanity of vanities!  All is vanity” (1:2).  “Vanity” is the typical English translation of the Hebrew word hebel, which literally means “vapor” or “breath.”  The word is used 38 times in the Book of Ecclesiastes to describe the fleeting and even futile nature of life.  The Good News Bible (not known for its technical accuracy, but pretty good at capturing the "gist" of things) even goes so far as to translate the verse this way:  "It is useless, useless.  Life is useless, all useless."  

The author goes on to write other things we might find surprising.  He writes that seeking wisdom is an “unhappy business” (1:13); there is nothing better for human beings than to eat and drink (2:24); we aren’t really any better off than animals – not in life or death (3:18-21); and the dead (all of them) “know nothing” and “have no reward” (9:5).  

Sure, there are a few uplifting verses in Ecclesiastes (a lovely passage on the value of friendship, for example; 4:9-12), and the author does retain and encourage a stalwart faith in the midst of his observations of life’s futilities (3:12-14; 4:18-20).  But those who try to paint over this book with an overly optimistic gloss are ignoring its brooding tone and many of its messages. 

Some have even questioned whether this unusual book belongs in the canon of Scripture.  After all, doesn’t the maxim “life is vanity” contradict the basic biblical belief that life is a sacred gift from God?  But there is a stark realism here, written down and poured out on the sacred page.  That is why I don’t find it strange that the Book of Ecclesiastes found its way into the canon.  I don’t think the ideas we read here mean that life really is hebel, or futile.  I don’t think the author’s own uncertainty about the after-life means that we need to be uncertain.  But this book allows us to express our frustrations and fears, and it comforts us.  It allows us to have dark moments and say, “I don’t get it” and “It isn’t fair.”  It allows us to read and say “I’m not sure either” and “What is death, really?” 

If nothing else, this special book reminds us that opening the Bible always begins a conversation with God.  We can express every emotion, ask every question, and enter into every mystery.  And when we enter into the very honest and very human ideas we find in the Book of Ecclesiastes, we can be assured that our God understands and responds:  “I hear you, my people.  Keep talking to me.”  

Article in "The Bible Today"

If you subscribe or have access to the biblical journal The Bible Today, you’ll find an article I wrote entitled “The Garden as a Place of Agony” in the current issue (May/June).  It is based on my blog post "Agony in the Garden," which one of the editors read and asked me to expand for the journal.  The issue includes other “garden-themed” articles, exploring topics such as the Garden of Eden, garden imagery in the prophets, and John’s use of creation/garden motifs.

Below is an excerpt from the article.  This section explains the gospels’ use of the term “Garden of Gethsemane” (or lack of use, really!) and what we know about its location based on the gospel accounts.

* * * * *

Parallel accounts of Christ’s suffering in what is commonly referred to as “the Garden of Gethsemane” can be found in Matthew 26:30-56, Mark 14:26-52 and Luke 22:39-53.  While John’s gospel does not narrate the suffering of Christ in the garden, it does place his arrest there (John 18:1-12).  Interestingly, none of the four accounts actually identifies the place as the “Garden of Gethsemane.”  Matthew and Mark write of Jesus and his disciples going to “the Mount of Olives” (a place mentioned with some frequency in the Gospels) after their last meal together, and then coming to “a place called Gethsemane,” probably a smaller part of the larger Mount of Olives area (Matt 26:36; Mark 14:32).  Luke refers only to “the Mount of Olives” and makes reference to the fact that it was “his [Jesus’] custom” to go there (Luke 22:39).  Notably, only John refers to the place as “a garden,” which he describes by mentioning its location as “across the Kidron Valley” (John 18:1), a vague geographical note that corresponds with the location of the Mount of Olives.  John also mentions that this was a place Jesus often went with his disciples (John 18:2). 

While it is important to note the distinctions among the gospel accounts, it is also fair to conclude that Gethsemane was indeed a garden-like area within the larger land area known as the Mount of Olives.  Clearly the indigenous olive tree was the dominant plant of the region (fittingly, “Gethsemane” means “oil press”), and one might imagine a secluded grove of these trees coexisting with other naturally growing vegetation.  This place would be peaceful and semi-private, a suitable place for Jesus and his disciples to withdraw from time to time for quiet and refreshment.  Although the exact location of the actual garden is unknown, it is reasonable to place it at or near the current site of Gethsemane, which is located on the lower west slope of the Mount of Olives. 

 -- The Bible Today, May/June 2015, Vol. 53, No. 3

* * * * *

UPDATE: The complete article is now available as a pdf. Click here to read it.