How Star Trek Explains Faith

  Star Trek explains faith? How does it do that?

Star Trek Explains 

     This isn’t just an excuse to write about one of my favorite television franchises.  I have a serious point.  Really. My thesis here is that the TV show that promises to take us “where no man has gone before” can help us understand what faith is . . . and what it isn’t. Spoiler alert: faith, and certainly Christian faith, is not what Star Trek thinks it is.

     There can be no doubt that the Star Trek television and film franchise has been and remains an important cultural influence. It’s certainly one of the great entertainment success stories of the past half-century.  I myself have enjoyed watching its various iterations since I was a child, at first because it was great fun, but more recently for another reason as well.  I’ve discovered that, although most of the action is set several centuries in the future, Star Trek provides a useful window into the outlook of late twentieth and early twenty-first century cultural elites.  It embodies the view of the world spread and reinforced through the popular media.

 

 Rightful Heir 

   Consider the following, for instance. In later versions of Star Trek, Earth seems to be the only planet whose inhabitants have “outgrown” their need for religion. I see this as a reflection of the way that western opinion makers want to celebrate every culture in the world but their own (which they tend to treat with disdain). Everyone else in the galaxy is still fully engaged with the traditions of their forebears.  The interactions of the (mostly human) main characters with these other beings nicely illustrate how our secular friends view those of us who take religion seriously.

    The episode “Rightful Heir” from the series Star Trek: The Next Generation is a good example. It focuses on the the religious practices and beliefs of the fictional alien race of Klingons. The Klingons believe that Kahless, who had founded their empire 1,000 before, would return to them in the flesh.  A Klingon claiming to be Kahless does indeed make an appearance, and a DNA test confirms his identity.  There are incongruities, however, and he is eventually discovered to be a clone created by Klingon priests.  Nevertheless, despite the disappointment of their hopes and the trickery of their religious leaders, at the end we see most of the Klingons still confidently awaiting the coming of their savior.

A Leap of Faith 

  I found one scene at the end of the show to be particularly interesting.  It is a dialogue between two of the regular characters. One of the characters is Data, who is an android, a human-like robot. He has, apparently, achieved something like consciousness (this is science fiction, after all). The other is Worf, the only main character of Klingon parentage. The events surrounding Kahless have raised some questions in Data’s mind:

 

Data and Worf discuss faith

Data: May I ask a question?  In the absence of empirical data, how will you determine whether or not this is the real Kahless?

 

Worf: It is not an empirical matter, it is a matter of . .  . (pause) . . . faith.

 

Data: (musing) Faith . . . (gesturing to Klingons kneeling before the empty throne of Kahless) They insisted upon waiting here until they see Kahless again.  Their “faith” appears unaffected by his inability to defeat Gowron. They still believe. (thoughtful pause) I once had what could be considered a crisis of the spirit.

 

Worf: You?

 

Data: Yes. The Starfleet officers who first activated me on Omicron Theta told me I was an android – nothing more than a sophisticated machine with human form. However, I realized that if I was simply a machine, I could never be anything else; I could never grow beyond my programming. I found that difficult to accept. So I chose to believe… that I was a person; that I had the potential to be more than a collection of circuits and subprocessors. It is a belief which I still hold.

Worf : How did you come to your decision?

Data: I made . . . a leap of faith.

 

  “O Man of Little Faith” 

    Two thoughts immediately come to mind when I watch this scene.  First, this is just how secularists perceive religious faith. They see faith as feelings based on no “empirical evidence.” It’s either pure intuition, as in Worf’s case, or a “leap of faith” in the sense that Data uses the term. This is not Kierkegard’s leap of faith.  Here it means that the leaper chooses to believe that something is true simply because he wants it to be true.

     The second thing that struck me is that neither of these versions of “faith” correspond to the Christian meaning of the word.  To see the difference, compare the scene above to the following passage from the gospel of Matthew:

 

And in the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea.  But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out for fear.  But immediately he spoke to them, saying, “Take heart, it is I; have no fear.”  And Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water.”  He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me.” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased.  (Matthew 14: 25-32)

 

Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?”

 Not Blind Faith 

   Peter does not need to take Data’s “leap of faith,” nor is he relying on intuition.  He not only sees with his own eyes Jesus walking on the water, he actually walks on water himself.  Then, when his faith falters, he sinks.  You can’t get much more empirical than that.  When Jesus tells him that his faith is weak, then, he clearly is not talking about believing something with no evidence. He means trusting what you have truly seen and experienced. Christian Faith is not blind faith.

  The Stark Trek understanding of faith is the same as the view that Peter Kreeft ascribes to the “modern world.”  Kreeft says:

 

The most pervasive mistake the modern world makes about faith is to subjectivize and psychologize it, as if believers constructed their religion out of their own psyches.

 

     Christian Faith is very different.

 

    St. Peter himself would later write “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15), and in fact there is no shortage of reasons, and no lack of evidence, for God and for Christianity.  There are cogent philosophical arguments from St. Thomas Aquinas and others, well-attested miracles, and the witness of countless Christians whose lives were transformed when they put their trust in the promises of Christ.  The evidence is there.  What is lacking is the will to see it for what it is, to trust what we have seen and heard.

 

 The Truth 

    It is important to bear all this in mind when discussing faith with those who don’t share it, or who have not been well-formed in their faith.  Our faith, pace Worf, is empirical. It’s based on trust in the Christ whom we have experienced. If we accept the Star Trek version of Christian faith we force ourselves to defend a position built on fantasy.  The reality, however, is that we do have the Truth, and we really are prepared to give an account of the hope in us. Let’s leave the science fiction explanations to the other guys.

 

 Speaking of Star Trek, you might also enjoy: “Cardinal Sarah was Right: Darmok and Jalod Ad Orientem” 

Cardinal Sarah was Right: Darmok and Jalod Ad Orientem

Does Jesus Really Expect Us To Be Perfect?

     Be perfect? Is he serious?

      It’s funny how different things can look from just a slightly changed perspective.  I remember an incident when I was a fallen-away Catholic college sophomore. Responding to what must have been a Divine prompting, I picked up a copy of the New Testament and started to read.  I can’t say why I didn’t first seek out the sacraments or a priest.  After all, I was a cradle Catholic, on a (more or less) Catholic campus. I suppose I could blame the post-Vatican II catechesis I received in the ‘70’s.

     In any case, I felt the call of the Lord.  I began with the first chapter of Mathew’s Gospel. Things were looking pretty good, actually, until I came to the Sermon on the Mount.  Here I began to entertain the unpleasant suspicion that a Journey of Faith might entail some Demands (horribile dictu!) upon me.  I continued nonetheless until I came to chapter 5, verse 48: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

     Here was a roadblock. I needed to be perfect? Seriously? This was asking way too much.  I put the book down. It would be almost another ten years before I gave serious thought to returning to the practice of the Faith.

It’s Greek To Me 

     And yet that passage troubled me on and off for a long time. It’s odd because I was studying Latin and Greek, and then went on to teach those languages.  It didn’t occur to me to look up the original Greek word that was translated into English as “perfect.”  If it had, I might have found Jesus’ pronouncement in Matthew 5:48 less overwhelming. On the other hand, honestly, at the time I may not have wanted that badly to be saved from my sins.

     Eventually, however, it did happen.  As an older and (somewhat) wiser man I was explaining to my students about the Latin word perfectus.  It had not yet completely taken on its modern connotation of flawlessness or moral perfection: its primary meaning was “finished” or “complete.” That, I explained, is why the verb tense denoting completed action is called the perfect tense.  At that point, the proverbial light went off in my head. I went ten years back into the past, to my college dorm room. Was this the word St. Jerome used in translating the Gospel from Greek in the fourth century?  If so, what did the Greek word really mean?

“. . . for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45)

(Pixabay photo)

A Little Greek Goes a Long Way 

  What I found changed my entire perception of the passage.  The Latin is indeed  perfectus,  a translation of the Greek word τέλειοι (teleioi). τέλειοι is related to the noun τέλος (telos), “end.” The adjective τέλειοι signifies something that has reached its proper end, or fulfillment, i.e., is complete. There was more. I also realized, for the first time, that verse 48 is intended as a conclusion to the verses preceding, indicated by the word “therefore” οὖν (oun). When I looked at the passage as a whole, it all began to make more sense:

But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:44-48)

Just as God loves completely (i.e., everyone), and forgives completely, so must we.

 The Road Map To Perfect

  Now, that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t calling us to strive for perfection as we understand the word today.  Clearly, he is.  On a literal level, however, he is telling us to love with a perfect, i.e. complete love, and he gives us a “road map”, if you will, to show us how to get there. That’s still a pretty tall order.  At the same time, it seems less hopelessly impossible when we can see that Jesus is proposing concrete actions. He’s not simply commanding us to be, well, perfect.

     I don’t want to make it seem that my difficulty with one scripture verse held me back from rejoining the Mystical Body of Christ for a decade.  I needed more experience of life, of realizing the futility of trying to do things “my way”, and particularly of the Mystery of the Cross, to soften my heart and lead me back to the Lord.  Nevertheless, coming to a new appreciation of Christ’s call to perfection in Matthew 5:48 removed one small but significant barrier on that journey.

Featured image top of page: The Sermon on the Mount, by Sebastiano Ricci, 1725

Have a Blessed Easter! (Jesus Christ is Risen Today)

Christ is Risen, Alleluiah!

Christ is Risen indeed.

And what could be more fitting this day than the joyous Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today”? The video below features the amazing fresco of The Resurrection by Piero della Francesca. The Huddersfield Choral Society & Joseph Cullen provide the music.

May the Lord bless you on this Solemnity of His Resurrection!

Featured image top of page: The Resurrection of Christ, by Piero della Francesca, c. 1463-1465

 

 The Triduum 2022: 

Christ Came to Serve – Holy Thursday

Is it I, Lord? – Good Friday

Something Strange is Happening – Holy Saturday

Something Strange is Happening – Holy Saturday

 Something Strange 

Something strange is happening—there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.

These are the opening sentences in the non-scriptural reading in today’s Office of Readings. The author, it seems, is unknown.  The liturgy simply tells us that it is “an ancient homily on Holy Saturday.”  The description rings true. Holy Saturday is not quite like any other day in the liturgical calendar.  We experience a pause after the intense liturgical activity of Holy Thursday and Good Friday.  There is a sense of expectancy, and, as the author of the reading above put it, “a great silence and stillness.”

     So it seems, to us.  If we read on, we see that The King may appear, to us, to be “asleep” but that is not really the case:

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.

 Jesus Doesn’t Rest 

The period between Death and Resurrection is one of stillness and waiting in our world, but Jesus doesn’t rest.  And why would Christ, fresh from crucifixion and death, seek out Adam and Eve? It does seem like something strange, doesn’t it? Our homilist shows him telling out first parents:

I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image.

Christ addresses these words here to Adam and Eve, but He also addresses them to us, their descendants. God did not create our first parents in order to hold them “prisoner in hell.”  Nor did he create any of us for that purpose. Out of his love for all of us he is calling us away from Death: Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

“The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory.“

The Harrowing of Hell or Christ in Limbo, by Albrecht Durer, 1510

 In Search of the Lost Sheep 

The picture our homilist paints here of Christ is a reflection of what Jesus says of himself in the Gospels.  Consider this passage from the Gospel of Matthew:

If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?  And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. (Matthew 18: 12-13)

God is Seeking Us

This is one of numerous passages that show us how intent Our Lord is on gathering us to himself. We often speak of ourselves as “seeking God,” but that’s not really the way it works, we’re deceiving ourselves. The Benedictine Mark Barrett in his book Crossing: Reclaiming the Landscape of Our Lives says:

Biblical images of God – shepherd, farmer, lover – always make God the one who is active.  He takes the initiative . . . God is the seeker, and we are the object of the search.  This is the strangest lesson of all.

Yes, something strange is happening.  While our world seems silent and still, under the surface Our Lord is working out of our view to bring back all his lost sheep. We might want to take some time during the quiet of Holy Saturday to meditate on Christ’s saving action, and prepare ourselves to return to him when the Resurrected Lord comes back for us on Easter Sunday.

Feature image top of page: Christ in Limbo, by Fra Angelico, c. 1450

The Triduum & Easter 2022:

Christ Came to Serve – Holy Thursday

Is it I, Lord? – Good Friday

Have a Blessed Easter! (Jesus Christ is Risen Today)

Is it I, Lord? – Good Friday

Is it I, Lord?

It seems all too easy for us sometimes to see the Apostles, in their bumbling humanity, as almost comic figures.  They certainly don’t appear too dignified, for instance, when they argue over which one of them is greatest (Luke 22:24, Mark 9:33, etc.); they look almost like clamoring children, who are clearly missing the point of their Master’s teaching.  We see another example in last evening’s Holy Thursday reading from John’s Gospel (John 13:6-10), where Peter just can’t understand what Jesus means when he washes the Apostles’ feet.

Matthew’s Gospel shows us a further instance of Apostolic confusion in its account of the Last Supper.  After the Apostles have assembled for the meal with Jesus, the Lord says a remarkable thing: “Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” (Matthew 26:21)  Were it not so serious a moment, we might be tempted to laugh a little at the Apostles all frantically asking “Is it I, Master?” (Matthew 26:24).  On the one hand, you would think that they knew their own hearts, on the other, well . . . maybe they’re on to something.

We All Betray Him

    As it happens, not all of them doubt.  Peter confidently asserts, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.” (Matthew 26:33)  He’s in for a rude awakening:  Jesus gently corrects the man he named “the Rock”, saying “Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times” (Matthew 26:34). And of course, Peter does just that. The other Apostles, as it turns out, had a better understanding of their own weakness.

     Yes, it tempting to put a comic spin on the Apostles’ reactions, but that would be a mistake, and not simply because they are holy people to whom we owe respect.  When Jesus says to them, “You will all fall away” (Matthew 26:31), he’s not speaking only to his Apostles, but to all of us who have been his disciples in the millennia since, as well as all those in the years  to come.  They all betrayed him; we all will betray him; I betray him (is it I, Lord?).  Constantly.  That’s why we need the Sacrament of Confession.

“Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” (Matthew 26:21)

“The Last Supper” by the Master of Portillo

It is I, Lord

     That’s also why we venerate the Cross and meditate on Christ’s suffering on Good Friday: because on the Cross Jesus died for us, because of our betrayals, because we fall away . . . because it is I, Lord; I fall away, not just three times, but over and over again.

O Jesus, Who by reason of Thy burning love for us

hast willed to be crucified

and to shed Thy Most Precious Blood

for the redemption and salvation of our souls,

look down upon us here gathered together

in remembrance of Thy most sorrowful Passion and Death,

fully trusting in Thy mercy;

cleanse us from sin by Thy grace,

sanctify our toil,

give unto us and unto all those who are dear to us our

daily bread,

sweeten our sufferings,

bless our families,

and to the nations so sorely afflicted,

grant Thy peace,

which is the only true peace,

so that by obeying Thy commandments

we may come at last to the glory of heaven. Amen.

Featured image top of page: Christ Carrying the Cross, by Titian, 1575

The Triduum & Easter 2022: 

Christ Came to Serve – Holy Thursday

Something Strange is Happening – Holy Saturday

Have a Blessed Easter! (Jesus Christ is Risen Today)

Christ Came to Serve – Holy Thursday

Christ Came to Serve – The Mass of the Lord’s Supper

Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples, by Giotto. c.1305

“It is enough.”

He said to them, “But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one.  For I tell you that this scripture must be fulfilled in me, ‘And he was reckoned with transgressors’; for what is written about me has its fulfilment.” And they said, “Look, Lord, here are two swords.” And he said to them, “It is enough.” (Luke 22:36-38)

    I often find it easy to identify with Peter and the other Apostles when they are slow to catch on to what their Master is saying.  Take the passage above, for example, from Luke’s account of the Last Supper. There’s an almost comical quality to their too literal understanding of Christ’s sword imagery.  I picture Jesus shaking his head, with just a hint of a wry smile, as he says “It is enough.”

  And yet this is a very serious moment. It represents the Lord’s last instructions to his closest associates before he goes out to meet a horrifying death.  And later that same evening, Peter uses one of those two swords. Int the Garden of Gethsemane, he mutilates a man in the gang that has come to arrest Jesus.  Nobody smiles at that.

“But now, let him who has a purse take it, and likewise a bag. And let him who has no sword sell his mantle and buy one.” (Luke 22:36)  

St. Peter Cuts Off Slave’s Ear, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, c. 1300

 

“Lord, do you wash my feet?”

     In the passage below from John’s Gospel, one of the readings at this evening’s Mass of the Lord’s Supper, we see something very similar:

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper, laid aside his garments, and girded himself with a towel. Then he poured water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded.

He came to Simon Peter; and Peter said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.”

Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you.” (John 13:3-10)

 

Pride and Humility

     When he takes on the servile task of washing the Apostles’ feet, Jesus doesn’t simply speak. He acts out his message, in the manner of an Old Testament prophet.  He is showing the Apostles through his example that the purpose of their office is to serve, and not to exalt themselves. As Christ came to serve, so must they.

    But look what happens next. Jesus notes that Peter does not understand what his Lord is doing. Peter, in turn, confirms it with a curious mixture of pride and humility. He is indignant that his Master should lower himself in this way! Jesus tells him, in effect, that this is the price of discipleship.  At this point Peter, thinking that now he gets it, goes to the opposite extreme: in that case, wash everything!  As in the passage from Luke, Christ seems, in effect, to shake his head patiently and move on.

 

The Power of the Holy Spirit

St. Peter Preaching in Jerusalem, by Charles Poërson, 1642

     There are many other examples like these in the Gospels. All too often, Peter and the other Apostles just don’t understand.  Then, when they think they finally do get it, well, no, they still don’t understand.  And yet, these are the men Jesus has chosen to carry on his mission.  

     This tells us something about what it is to be human. None of us can figure it all out on our own.  We need the Power of the Father, the Saving Grace of Christ, and the Guidance of the Holy Spirit. That’s why the Peter we see in the Acts of the Apostles is so much more consistent and confident.  He has experienced the Power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (see Acts chapter 2). The Peter we see after Pentecost is much more believable as the Rock upon whom Christ will build his Church (see Matthew 16:18).

Christ Came to Serve

      The washing of the feet also points to the much greater events that are about to unfold.  Christ’s death on the Cross was a servile and degrading form of execution.  Roman citizens, St. Paul for instance, underwent the more dignified penalty of beheading with a sword. Christ’s self-sacrifice was the ultimate act of Service, because it was all for us:

Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)

Who can blame Peter for finding that hard to accept?  But eventually he does accept that Christ came to serve, through God’s Grace.  I pray that I also, in the commemoration of Christ’s Passion and the glory of his Resurrection, find the grace to understand and to accept His service to me, and to follow his example in my own life.

 The Triduum & Easter 2022: 

Is it I, Lord? – Good Friday

Something Strange is Happening – Holy Saturday

Have a Blessed Easter! (Jesus Christ is Risen Today)

Crucifixus Etiam Pro Nobis: Lotti’s Musical Meditation on the Crucifixion

The Crucifixion, by Giambattista Tiepolo & Giandomenico Tiepolo, 1745–50

Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato:

Passus, et sepultus est. (Nicene Creed)

 

Crucifixus Etiam Pro Nobis

Crucifixus etiam pro nobis: He was also crucified for us. That brief statement in the Nicene Creed refers to one of the two most important events of all time. The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his Resurrection three days later form the fulcrum of human history.   

We commemorate the Crucifixion Friday of this week, Good Friday.  Our penitential and  liturgical preparation for that event began five weeks ago, on Ash Wednesday. It will build in intensity over the next few days to reach its culmination at the end of the week. Fasting, the Stations of the Cross, and the Veneration of the Cross will mark the Death of Jesus. Next, the silent, watchful waiting of Holy Saturday. Finally, we come to an explosion of joy in the Easter Vigil and the services of Easter Sunday.

Musical Treatments

Numerous composers over the centuries have looked for ways to invest the bare statement of the Nicene Creed with that intensity.  Howard Ionescu of Winchester College gives us two examples. He contrasts Johann Bach in his Mass in B Minor, and Antonio Lotti in his Crucifixus. Bach, he says, “depicts Christ’s suffering in continuous descending chromatic lines, with the voices plummeting to the depths of their vocal range and then hushed to a silence.” Antonio Lotti (whose Miserere we heard last week) goes in a different direction. Ionescu says of his Crucifixus:

Written for 8 voices, each part enters bar by bar starting with the lowest basses, piling up the musical texture with suspensions (musical crunches in the harmony) and creating a piercing intensity by the time the highest voice enters.

Bach’s setting creates a powerful impression of the living spirit departing the body as it dies.  Lotti’s composition instead feels like the Divine Soul of Jesus building up to the point where it bursts the confines of its human body.  

Lotti’s Crucifixus

Both treatments are extraordinarily beautiful and moving musical representations of the Passion and Death of Christ. Bach’s O Sacred Head Surrounded was our final musical selection of Lent last year, however, so we’ll give Lotti the honor this time around. His Crucifixus will be the last music we share on this site until we celebrate the Resurrection next Sunday.   

The NMH choir sings Lotti’s Crucifixus in the clip below.

Which Crowd? Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday

Ecce Homo, by Antonio Ciseri, 1871

And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”     (Matthew 26:40-41)

 

The Inner Struggle

One could make a good case that many of the purported reforms of the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council were not a good idea. I admit, I did once compare the so-called Spirit of Vatican II to a rabid raccoon.   On the other hand, I’m not a rad-trad, either.  Some recent reforms are, in fact, improvements.  The restoration of the Easter Vigil to Holy Saturday evening after dark, for instance (it had become customary to celebrate it Saturday morning).  Granted, this reform dates from before Vatican II. Pope Pius XII instituted it a few years before the council, in 1955. It was a part, however, of the movement of liturgical reform that culminated in the Mass of Paul VI fifteen years later.

The Spirit of Vatican II?

We can see another positive (or at least more positive than negative) change in today’s liturgy.  Passion Sunday used to be the Sunday before Palm Sunday (as I discuss at further length here).  Now the two liturgical observances share the Sunday before Easter.

The downside of the change is that we have lost the clear demarcation Passion Sunday used to give us between the earlier part of Lent and Passiontide. We gain something, however, from seeing the joyful palm-waving crowd welcoming Jesus and the angry crowd demanding his death in the same liturgy.  We see a reflection in today’s mass of the struggle within each of us between the desire for salvation and the allure of sin.

 

Which Crowd?

Let’s start with those two crowds.  I used to wonder as to what extent both crowds were composed of the same people. If they were the same, what had changed their minds in so short a time? After my last post on the subject, a reader convinced me that the two crowds did largely consist of different members.  At the very least, the disciples of Jesus dominate the Palm Sunday crowd; the Sanhedrin and their supporters the mob demanding that Pilate crucify Him.

That’s the literal import of the two events.  Scripture works on multiple levels, however.  What is the liturgy showing us by putting the two crowds together?

Jesus’ Triumphal Entry Into Jerusalem, James Jacques Tissot, 1896

One key to the bigger picture is St. Peter, humble fisherman become fisher of men.  As chief Apostle he plays a prominent part in all the Gospel accounts of the events of Holy Week.  In this year’s reading, from the Gospel of Luke, we see Jesus telling him:

 

“Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded
to sift all of you like wheat,
but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail;
and once you have turned back,
you must strengthen your brothers.”

 

The Turning Back

The Lord is entrusting Peter with a critical mission, but there’s a warning here, too.  What does he mean by “once you have turned back”? Turned back from what?  Peter doesn’t seem to notice, because be immediately blurts out: “Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you.” If only it were that simple.  Peter must have been stunned by Jesus’ response:

 

The Denial of Peter, by Gerard van Honthorst, c. 1623

“I tell you, Peter, before the cock crows this day,
you will deny three times that you know me.”

 

And, of course, Peter does just as Jesus says.  He does turn back to strengthen his brethren in the end, but he has his ups and downs along the way. He genuinely wants to stand boldly in defense of his Lord, but fails at  critical moments.  He disavows any knowledge of Christ in response to the questions of a mere servant of the high priest.  He and his fellow Apostles can’t stay awake when Jesus most needs their company.  And of course, he is nowhere to be found when Christ is dying on the Cross.  Matthew and Mark preserve Jesus’ summation of the situation when he finds his biggest supporters asleep on the job: “the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”     (Matthew 26:41)

Our Challenge

We can also see a reflection of ourselves in the two starkly different crowds in today’s separate Gospel readings.  There’s a part of us that wants to welcome our Messiah with loud hosannas.  There’s a part that, like the religious leaders of the time, fears that embracing Christ will get us into trouble with the human powers-that-be out in the world.  There’s also a side of us that we see in both crowds. Both contain a large number of people who are not there from a sense of commitment to one side or the other. They are simply following the mob, they are Jesus’ proverbial man who builds his house on sand (see Matthew 7:26).

The liturgy shows us at the beginning of Holy Week what our challenge is going to be.  We all start out with the cheering crowds waving palms.  Will we stay with Jesus the whole time? Will we fail for a time, like St. Peter, but turn back to Christ?  Will the crowd shouting “Crucify Him!” sway us to their side?  Where will we stand in the end?

Body and Soul, or, When A Church Is Not A Church

The interior of St. Ann’s Woonsocket, RI (rimonthly.com, photo by Sarah Farkas)

Body and Soul  

     The Devil is in the details.  He is indeed.  Take this whole body/soul thing, for instance.  We have a very hard time giving each its due.  The world of the flesh is constantly trying to pull us away from the life of the spirit.  It’s always tempting us with mere stuff.  In our efforts to resist the world we often overcompensate.  We try to behave as though we were pure spirit, like the angels.  Ironically, that often leaves us more immersed in the world.

     Given that, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that the history of the great heresies is the story of our failure to comprehend the balance of the material and the spiritual.  The Arians, for instance, simply couldn’t accept that a fully human Jesus was also fully God.  They erred on the side of the flesh, and decided that Jesus was a created being.  The Docetists couldn’t conceive of God truly incorporating human nature, and so erred on the side of the spirit.  They taught that Christ’s humanity, and therefore his death and resurrection, was an illusion.

     Jesus Christ Himself, on the other hand, tells us, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). The Latin word perfectus is a translation of Matthew’s original Greek τελείως (teleios). The most literal translation of the Greek word is “finished” or “complete.” Christ is the perfection, the completion of humanity, and he’s inviting us to model ourselves on him.  We are not incorporeal angels, and we aren’t earthy beasts. We are body and soul.

“You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

The Sermon of the Beatitudes, by Jacques Tissot, 1896

 Body and Soul: Destroying the Temple 

     Our difficulty in grasping that duality with our finite minds is a vulnerability. The Devil can exploit that weakness to separate us from our true selves, and from the true God. Consider the case of another heresy, Albigensianism.  The medieval Albigensians believed that matter (including the body) was bad, and that spirit was good.  The application of this belief to the actual details of their lives led to some odd results.  Since the body was bad anyway, you could hardly make it worse by using it in sinful ways.  Many Albigensians, therefore, saw no problem in embracing a life of carnal ingulgence.

     The most advanced members of their sect, however, however, went in a different direction.  They called themselves (ironically) the perfecti, or parfaits in French.  Since the material body was bad, they reasoned, the ultimate good deed would be to deny it all material sustenance.  The culmination of Albigensianism, therefore, was the endura, the act of starving oneself to death. In their quest for holiness they destroyed the vessel that Holy Scripture call “the temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

Temples of Stone and Brick

     The Albigensians themselves are no longer with us, but something of their spirit lives on. Over the last century or so we’ve seen an echo of the violence that they visited upon the temples of their bodies.  In our day, however, the urge to destroy is instead directed at the temples of stone and brick in which the body of the faithful offer up their worship to God.  Last week I discussed the former St. Mary’s Church in Lewiston, Maine. This one-time Catholic church is now a community center and museum.

     I remarked that “I was struck with the realization that this secular hall still looked more like a Catholic Church than many recent church buildings still being used for that purpose.” That’s good for the Franco Center (the building’s new name). It’s bad for those of us who must worship God in a structure that’s as ugly as sin.  

 Libido Delendi 

The Franco Center, Formerly St. Mary’s Church

    The design and appearance of our churches is not a trivial matter. I touched on this point in another recent post, on The Basilica of St.s Peter and Paul (also in Lewiston, as is the former St. Mary’s). I described church buildings as  “enormous sacramentals, consecrated objects that can help connect us to the Grace of a God who is pure Spirit.”   We are body and soul. Human beings need material means to approach the immaterial God. The means need to be suited to the end, or we’re liable to go astray.  For that reason, destroying the beauty and religious distinctiveness of our churches does real spiritual harm.

     Crisis magazine published one of the best explanations of the important connection between faith and the spaces in which we worship several years ago.  The article is by Anthony Esolen,  who uses the magnificent St. Ann’s Church in Woonsocket, RI, as his vehicle for discussing what he calls the libido delendi, “lust for destruction.”  This odious force has had its way with the Catholic Church over the past few decades. It doesn’t limit itself to matters relating to church art and architecture.  It has wrought havoc upon language, liturgy, and much else.   As it turns out, the indefatigable Prof. Esolen published a second essay on The Catholic Thing website at about the same time. Here he examines the theme of tradition and destruction through the posture of prayer in the Mass (ably assisted by Homer and his Odyssey).

A Great Symphony of Stories

     Esolen’s articles have not lost any of their relevance over the past eight years.  If anything, the problerms he identifies have come into sharper focus.  His overarching theme is the incarnational nature of Catholic worship. The art, architecture, language and posture of prayer are not only the direct tangible connection to the experiences of our predecessors in the Faith. They are also all part of our experience of God.  As he says in his Crisis article, referring to the former parishioners of the beautifully frescoed St. Ann’s:

 

Every time they entered their church, they walked into a great symphony of stories. Here is Abel, the smoke of his sacrifice ascending straight toward the heavens. Here is Cain, ducking, his arms held before his head, the smoke of his sacrifice blinding and choking. Here is God the Father, bringing light out of darkness. Here exactly opposite Him is the prophet Jonah, spat out by the whale de profundis onto the shore. You cannot understand the paintings and their placement in the same way in which you understand a bald message, such as, “The last person to leave the church must lock the doors.” You cannot come to an end of understanding them. They are mysteries, familiar and utterly unfamiliar at once. They cause you to be at home with wonders.

It’s worth noting a connection, by the way, that St. Ann’s has with both St. Mary’s and the Basilica of St.s Peter and Paul. Poor French Canadian millworkers, not the wealthy and well-connected, built the Church and commisioned the artwork.

At home with wonders: Jonas fresco, St. Ann’s (detail from photo by Sarah Farkas, rimonthly.com)

The Original Smashers of Images

We worship the God Who Became Flesh with our entire being. We can’t contain that experience within our limited minds and in narrow categories of our own devising.  In The Catholic Thing  Esolen describes the church/liturgy/doctrine wreck-o-vators as people who simply don’t grasp this expansive understanding of Catholic practice (and, really, human existence):

Over-schooled people, long sheltered from the physical necessities of life, from plowing, sowing, digging, sawing, stitching, bleaching, ironing, mowing – they are most prone to lifeless abstractions, and most dismissive of the bodily gestures that people who work with hands and shoulders and backs understand.

And as he points out, again in the Crisis article:

Intellectuals are the original smashers of images. It was not quarry workers who demanded that their communion rails be knocked out with sledge hammers. It was not little children who pleaded with their pastors to cover paintings with whitewash. It was not housewives who demanded that the high altars with all their draperies and candelabra be replaced with tables so bare and spare that they would not do for an ordinary kitchen.

Our intellectual understandings need to be refined by the real corporeal experience of the Faith, as handed on and as lived by generations of believers. Esolen suggests that when we separate ourselves from the tangible signs of that history, we get the de-mystifiying. We get the leveling, and the whitewashing. In sum, “as an ultimate but never to be realized aim, the destruction of Christ’s Church on earth.”

 Why Not a High Altar? 

The reredos at the Franco Center (francocenter.org)

    I found myself entertaining similar thoughts as I sat in the former St. Mary’s Church in Lewiston, Maine. I was there to hear a lawyer who is also a Baptist preacher. He was talking, ironically enough, about the deconstruction of the U.S. Constitution.  The original  reredos (the structure that stands behind an old-fashioned high altar) still towered over the stage. There, keeping her original place in the reredos, the Blessed Mother cradling the Baby Jesus looked down on it all.  

     The whole time I kept thinking of so many newer churches I’ve seen. They just don’t seem to know what to do with the space behind the new-style free-standing altar. One of the better choices I’ve seen is a large wall painting of Christ Pantocrator [sadly this, too, has now been painted over]; a large Crucifix is also appropriate; less suitably, I’ve seen shelves or plants. The worst solution I can recall was a piano occupying the area behind the altar, as in a concert hall.

     One thing I’ve never seen on the back wall in any church built since 1965 is a high altar, with or without a reredos.  This was one of the most distinctive architectural features, perhaps the only essential architectural element, of every single Catholic church built from the time of Constantine seventeen centuries ago up until the mid sixties. Somehow, it doesn’t occur to anyone involved in designing Catholic churches as the solution to the problem of what to put behind the new altar – even if only for the sake of appearance.  

Maybe Our Ancestors Were on to Something?

      It reminds me of the people I’ve seen doing the awkward dance of holding a squirming baby in one arm while trying to receive communion in the other hand. There’s a danger of dropping either the Sacred Host or the child.  They seem unaware that they could simply hold their youngster securely with both hands and put their tongue out to receive. They could protect the safety of the child, the sanctity of the Sacrament, and their own dignity all at the same time.  Again, the long-standing tradition of our predecessors is both more elegant and more practical.

The high altar at St. Ann’s (tripadvisor.com)

     The high altar, as an architectural element, also does something else as well. It serves as a natural focal point. A reredos or a baldacchino (a canopy-like structure over the altar) gives it even more emphasis. In a church of traditional design, all the elements naturally draw the eye toward the high altar. Here the miracle of transubstantiation takes place, the Word becomes Flesh. Just above that is the Tabernacle, containing the Body of Christ. Even on an unconscious level we understand that Christ is at the center. We know that our encounter with Him in the Eucharist is the Source and Summit of the Christian Life.  Now, compare the esthetic confusion of many contemporary altars and churches to the still profound impact of a former church like the former St. Mary’s in Lewiston . . . or St. Ann’s in Woonsocket.

Empty Altars

     Did I mention St. Ann’s, like St. Mary’s, is no longer a church?  That’s a detail that Prof. Esolen seems to have left out of his otherwise excellent essay.  Both churches were originally expressions of the Catholic faith of poor French Canadian laborers. Both are now non-religious meeting halls. You can visit the web site of the St. Ann Arts and Cultural Center here.  The Diocese intended to tear down one of the most beautiful, and one of the most theologically engaging, parish churches in the United States.  A secular group recognized its the value. They saved it along with its treasures of sacred art and inspiring architecture.

       Now its gorgeous frescoes look down on wedding receptions and the like. There is no longer any regular celebration of the mass, however. There is a link on the website labeled “Church Services.”  The only services, however, are the Firm Foundation Christian Church’s Sunday morning worship service, and Friday evening Bible study.  Of course, it’s good to see there is still some connection to Christian worship. But unfortunately, both the high altar and the free-standing post-Vatican II altar seem to be little more than relics.  

Angels in the architecture: detail of a fresco from St. Ann’s

The Sons Of This World Are Wiser . . .

     How odd, and sad. “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Secular groups are willing to save, on purely esthetic or sentimental grounds, sacred treasures that have been entrusted to us but which we are trying to throw away. The church buildings are only one target of the libido delendi.  The project of eradicating the old and beautiful also includes sacred art, sacred language, traditional devotions, and much more. As Anthony Esolen argues, it ultimately aims to destroy the Church by destroying any sense of identity among its members.

       Totalitarians smother opposition by separating people from each other and from their history. They want people to have no strong sense of self, of who they are.  They divide body and soul. St. John Paul II understood this well. By recalling the Polish people to their national and Christian identity, he led the way to the overthrow of communism.  So why are we trying so hard to destroy our own Catholic identity?

 

Legions of Angels, the Adulteress, and Christ’s Sacrifice

                    Christ and the Adulterous Woman, by Nicholas Poussin, 1653

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 46: 53-54)

 Legions of Angels 

     Many Years ago I taught in a (more or less) Catholic high school. One day a certain student wanted to know how many soldiers were in a Roman legion. Around 6,000, I answered.  “Well,” he offered, “Jesus said that if he asked, his Father would send him twelve legions of angels.”  I acknowledged that he had (see Matthew, 26:53).  The student’s face then broke into a huge grin as he blurted out, “That’s a whole lot of angels!”

     I wasn’t sure at the time, and I’m unsure still more than two decades later, what my student was getting at.  Was he making a joke of some sort?  Did he really admire Christ’s power to command the hosts of Heaven? I do know that Jesus was serious. His point wasn’t the exact number of angels he could summon.  Now, I’m sure that the number twelve is meant to correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel, the twelve apostles, etc., but that’s secondary. Christ’s immediate point was that he had all the power he could want.  He had the power to save Himself . . . if he chose.

 

 How Then Should The Scriptures Be Fulfilled ?

The Arrest of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, studio of Giuseppe Cesari, c.1600

     It will be helpful to look at the context for the comment about legions of angels.  Jesus’ affirmation of his authority over angelic armies comes during Matthew’s Passion Narrative.  He is in the Garden of Gethsemane with his Apostles. At that moment Judas arrives, “and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people” (Matthew 26:47). Judas identifies Jesus with a kiss,

 

Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword, and struck the slave of the high priest, and cut off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 46: 50-54)

 

     Jesus surrenders willingly to the violent mob, not because he can’t free himself, but because he chooses to surrender. He allows the crowd to take him, knowing that it means an agonizing death by crucifixion.

 

 The Passiontide 

     This is a good time to talk about the Passion of Jesus, by the way, because we are now in that part of the Liturgical Year that we call the Passiontide. This is the last two weeks of Lent, when we focus our Lenten observance more explicitly on the suffering and death of Jesus.  The transition to Passiontide, unfortunately, is no longer as obvious as it was when we called the Fifth Sunday Passion Sunday. The TLM still follows the the traditional practice; in the ordinary form, however, Passion Sunday has now moved one week later to combine with Palm Sunday.

     While it may not be as obvious as in the traditional arrangement, the liturgy is still pointing us more directly in the direction of events of the Triduum. Consider the Gospel reading for this past Sunday, the Woman Caught in Adultery from John’s Gospel (John 8:1-11).  As in the Passion narrative we have a violent mob, eager for blood. The difference is, here Jesus does frustrate the crowd’s murderous designs, and he does it without so much as a single cohort of angels.

   

 The Guilty And The Innocent 

King of Sorrows, by William Burton Shakespeare, 1897

     That’s not the only difference between the two passages.  Isn’t it interesting that the woman Jesus saves really is guilty: she was caught in the act.  Jesus himself, on the other hand, is totally without sin, and yet he allows himself to be taken.  In fact, it is because of her sin (and mine, and yours) that Jesus surrenders his own life.

     That doesn’t make sense, without the eyes of faith.  But of course, “the wisdom of this world is folly with God” (1 Corinthians 3:19). And in fact, that surrender of his own innocent life is an act of power greater than anything the “wisdom” of this world can imagine.  All the legions of angels together can’t match its power.  For the sake of sinners such as the adulteress (and me, and you), Jesus Christ conquered Death.

     Yes, Christ has freed us from death.  The freedom he purchased for us by his own free choice, however, has a purpose.   After he tells the woman, “Nor do I condemn you” Jesus adds, “Go and sin no more.”  Our liberty in Christ isn’t license.  He didn’t suffer and die on the cross in order to enable us to continue our lives of sin.  He gave us freedom so that we, too, might freely choose the good. It’s an awesome gift, and an awesome responsibility.

     This coming Sunday we will celebrate Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday.  Over the week that follows we will relive the events of the Passion and Death of Jesus Christ. Let’s remember that, if he chooses, Jesus can ask his Father for twelve legions of angels.  Instead, Jesus chooses to suffer and die: not because he’s guilty, but because we are.