retro look at Dads

Cats and the American Dream
Came across this song about a Dad whose capitalist dreams drive him to spend his life fortifying a sandy kingdom, while his home is left unguarded.

Very much a re-do of Harry Chapin’s song from long ago.

Kudos to Casting Crowns.

Kids do indeed spell love, T-I-M-E.

God does, too.

Stroll {or fly} Down Memory Lane
Completely un-theological thought (I have them now and again), but I was blown away by this Site that my son introduced me to. You can enter an old street address and it will take you on a marvelous street/bird’s eye view of your old domicile. Caveat: you need to have Google Chrome to view it.

Polycarp, A Living Mass

Today is the memorial of St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna and martyr. He was a second generation bishop, who had the voice of the apostles still ‘ringing in his ears.’

Polycarp was a friend of that other fiery saint, Ignatius of Antioch; and ancient tradition tells us that Ignatius was the little child Jesus held in Mark 9:33-37 while answering the disciples’ question about the greatest in the kingdom of God.

To read their works, or works about them, is like drinking from the overflow of the New Testament. That ink they used to write must have been liquid fire, for to read them is to feel the energy of that first generation of witnesses to God-in-the-flesh.

To taste of this energy I need only recall Ignatius’ words about his own impending martyrdom: “I am the wheat of God. Let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ.”

A living Mass; just like his compadre, Polycarp.

You can read, or listen to Polycarp’s martyrdom account.

And Ignatius’ letter to him.

St. Polycarp, pray for us!

Champions of Faith

When heroic faith finds its way into film, it’s a must-see.

Of Gods and Men is one of those films that you must-see.

And read this review.

Christians in Algeria live a remarkable witness.

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer

2/20/11
In today’s Mass readings, we hear Jesus give new language to an ancient divine command.

On Mount Sinai, God gave to Moses this commandment:
“Be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.” Lev. 19:2

On the Mount of Beatitudes, Jesus gives this commandment:
“Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Mt. 5:48

First comes Sinai, then comes Eremos
The Sinai command to holiness was given in the midst of a constellation of covenant Laws that defined Israelite holiness.

The Beatitude command to perfection is given in the midst of Jesus’ reinterpretation of the Sinai Law; a radical reinterpretation given in light of the new covenant of the dawning Kingdom of God. Jesus saw his own interpretation of the Law’s holiness as its perfection; completion; fulfillment.

It is instructive to note that this remarkable call to ‘perfection’ by Jesus comes immediately after he has just commanded what is arguably the most radical of his teachings: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”

“Are you kidding?”
I imagine, having heard such counsel, the stunned hearers of this hard saying would be prepared for anything! At this point, one would be more disposed to think of the Law’s fulfillment/perfection as something clearly beyond natural human strength. How could we live this?

“I’m not kidding.”
Within our history of saints, heroes and heroines of faith, there are many witnesses to the super-natural strength of loving enemies.

I pause here to give voice to one extraordinary young woman, the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia, who was shot and killed by the Bolsheviks during the 1917-18 revolution in Russia. This poem of hers was written not long before her death.

Send us, Lord, the patience, in this year of stormy, gloom-filled days, to suffer popular oppression, and the tortures of our hangmen. Give us strength, oh Lord of justice, Our neighbor’s evil to forgive, And the Cross so heavy and bloody, with Your humility to meet, In days when enemies rob us, To bear the shame and humiliation, Christ our Savior, help us. Ruler of the world, God of the universe, Bless us with prayer and give our humble soul rest in this unbearable, dreadful hour. At the threshold of the grave, breathe into the lips of Your slaves inhuman strength — to pray meekly for our enemies.

Final Call
Let me lastly introduce you to the eloquence of Father Thomas Rosica, who mulls more deeply on the implications of holiness.

Wanna start a revolution?

“Be holy; for I the Lord your God am holy.”

Evangelizing data

The Forecast: Partly Cloudy
John Allen offers some useful data on how the U.S. Catholic Church fares in retaining and gaining members in her mystical Body.

A useful tool for a more data-driven approach to our Centennial commitment to revitalizing evangelizing energies in SW Iowa.

Maybe a few Stark facts from earliest Christian efforts will yield potent insights for us.

Maybe.

Paternal power

Dance Like David Danced
Recently I was privileged to go to a father-daughter dance with my two girls.

Aside from facing the reality of my hopeless lack of rhythm, or the concern I had over injuring my girls during the dances, the dance offered me a quiet epiphany in regard to the power God entrusts to a father in shaping the minds and hearts of his children; of his daughters.

Stewards, not Owners
A wonderful Peruvian priest I came to know in Tampa, Florida said to me after our first daughter was born, “God entrusts her to you as pure gift, with the awesome responsibility of being for her a convincing sign of His infinite fatherly love for her. HWC.”

OMG

Sacrament of Love
I realized then, and realize a bit more each year, that this truth shapes how I relate to God. More specifically, as a father I find myself seeking God less for myself and more for my wife and our children.

I have also experienced the vocational sacrament of Marriage as the tap root of the vocation of parenthood. Or, put otherwise, the sacramental grace of marriage overflows into fatherhood/motherhood, making our paternity/maternity itself a Sacrament.

A Sacrament, meaning a living, effective, grace-dealing, Christ-chosen sign. A sign of Christ, who makes known to us the Father’s strong, loving hand. Christ, who is God revealed as wholly worthy of trust.

‘The one who feeds on me has eternal life’
Which turns us back toward my initial insight into the power of fatherhood.

Sacraments nourish. Our children, my daughters, feed off of the grace my wife and I bear in our marriage. That grace is mysteriously dependent on our willingness to become living sacraments; vivid signs of Christ, Icon of the Father. Marriage, in this image, is like a spring that wells up to eternal life in the midst of the domestic church.

Our children have a right to the Sacraments; and that includes a right to be nourished by our sacramental marriage.

Our children feed off of how well my wife and I pray together; sacrifice together; forgive together; love together. And inasmuch as we fail – which we do, Kyrie eleison! – our children fail to receive nourishing grace. But even there, in the midst of the thicket of my sins and shortcomings, grace super-abounds if I repent before the Father again and again.

Holy Matrimony
That’s the pith of holiness for those of us honored by this nuptial overflow of sacramental grace called fatherhood and motherhood.

Fiat
As I danced on the dance floor with those pearls of great price, to songs unfairly targeting dreamers like me who are thinking such thoughts, I prayed: “Father, be who you are in me, in spite of me, for them…”

Amen.

Sunday Gospel

Cor of the Law
In today’s Sunday Gospel, Jesus unearths the heart of the Law of Moses.

The commandments of the Law are meant to be liberating, as they proscribe choices that thwart authentic human fulfillment; and prescribe choices that illumine the path of authentic human fulfillment.

‘I can resist everything but temptation’
In Catholic lingo, humanity has been infected with a terminal case of concupiscence – that distortion of desire that gives us a proclivity to sin; to seek fulfillment by avoiding the path prescribed by the Law of the Lord. Or, as St. Thomas Aquinas might put it, concupiscence leads us to seek happiness in apparent, but not true, goods. In fact, Aquinas would say that even the most vicious sinner is pursuing goodness; though in a distorted and wrongful manner. In his own inimitable words, people “seek whatever they seek under the formality of goodness” (I-II Q16 Ac). This is why something that feels so right can be so wrong.

Roots and Shoots
Jesus’ words today go beneath the unlawful behavior to target the lawless desire.

I used to work for TrueGreen lawncare, and our motto for weed control was: “treat the root, not the shoot.” In other words, to eliminate the weed one could not be satisfied with eliminating its appearance above ground. Rather, weed control was at root about the root.

Wade in the Water
Sage counsel for us as we seek to permit God to deal with our sins in their entirety.

As I bring my sins before the Lord each night before sleep, or in the sacrament of Reconciliation, do I attempt to seek the spring beneath the fountain; the root beneath the weed; the desire beneath the behavior; the lie beneath the sinful habits that frustrate my deepest desire for authentic fulfillment in Christ? At my baptism, I was plunged deep into Christ’s paschal tide; into the grace that alone can heal me to the deepest roots of who I am. Am I ready to jump into the Deep End?

Duc in altum. Set out into the deep.

Our Lady of Lourdes

A great feast in honor of Our Lady,
Bearer of the Giver of Life-giving Water;
Mother of the Fountain of Mercy;
Ark of the Healer of fallen mankind.

She who is Perfected in Grace.

Like the Archangel sent to her,
we are awed by the beauty
of our tainted nature’s
solitary boast…

Awed by the beauty of thy virginity
and the exceeding radiance of thy purity,
Gabriel called out unto thee, O Theotokos:
What worthy hymn of praise can I offer unto thee?
And what shall I name thee?
I am in doubt and stand in awe.
Wherefore as commanded, I cry to thee:
Rejoice, O Full of Grace.

We pray today especially for all those who suffer with illness…

And St Catherine’s honors today with a symposium.

Human Shields

Deus Caritas Est
In the midst of the unrest in Egypt, I had to share this now somewhat dated story about Christians and Muslims in Egypt. It exemplifies the powerful vision set forth by a group of 138 Muslim scholars. May it become not the exception but the rule.

The story below is excerpted from this article.

Human Shields
As the Christians in Egypt were preparing to celebrate their Christmas on January 7th – according to the Coptic Church calendar – amidst fears of another and similar deadly attack, grief and insecurity were everywhere and the danger of suspected planted bombs was hovering over almost every church gate in Egypt.

The government had increased and tightened security measures around all churches but nothing alleviated the sense of impending danger the Christians felt except the ingenious idea of an Egyptian Muslim artist – Mohamed El Sawy– who called for Egyptian Muslims to form human shields by standing close to each other joined hand in hand in large circles that would encircle and practically shield every church; and this in a clear message to the world that solidarity between Egyptian Christians and Muslims is hard to be interrupted or sabotaged.

It was a gesture that thousands of Egyptians welcomed and embraced. On the night of Christmas the fears the Egyptian Christians had over attending the Christmas mass vanished to be replaced by the warmth and sincerity displayed by their fellow citizens – Muslims who joined in to celebrate the Christmas with them.

It was the first time for some Muslims to attend the Christmas prayers with their fellow Christians but they felt they had to take a stand and make an obvious statement. They had to tell everybody that civilized people don’t yield to a terrorism plan that easily. And this is what civilized people do when they confront danger; they embrace each other and protect one another. They rally in demonstrations of love and solidarity yelling out the slogan “we live together or die together”.

Spe Salvi
Pope Benedict captured this esprit de corps well: “Those who have hope must live different lives!”

The Rite Stuff

Hollywood Theology
That new movie on exorcism, The Rite, offers a dramatic look at the role of exorcism in Catholicism.

If nothing else, entertainment culture raises a conversation within the Church that has long been sidelined as the force of secularization attempts to domesticate the supernatural.

The real life basis for the movie is also intriguing.

Resurfaced?
Exorcism showed up on the Catholic radar abruptly in 1999 when the Vatican released a revised Rite of Exorcism.

Again, last November our U.S. Bishops had several sessions on the role of exorcism in Catholic belief and practice. The interest represents, it seems, a desire to reclaim the distinctiveness of faith in our desacralized culture.

This is Our Faith
One simple insight: our catechesis must be willing to engage in this dimension of faith, especially as our entertainment culture is filled with a (morbid?) fascination with the battle of good and evil; seen and unseen. e.g. remember last year’s release on 1/22/10?

Scripture, our spiritual Tradition, the Catechism, JP2, and innumerable other sources of our Faith speak vividly of this reality.

Plenty of distortions out there, too.

One of my favorite dramatizations of the interplay of humanity and the fallen angels is C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. Entertaining and extremely insightful.

Leonine Courage
And then there is the ever-popular Pope Leo XIII’s prayer to St. Michael, here in its extended form.

Heavy stuff.