About an Old "College Friend"

 

I came across the above quote and picture of J.R.R. Tolkien. It seems a good conclusion to the Christmas Season, since Christmas for me is marked by "food and cheer and song.".

 

"John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892-1973) was a major scholar of the English language, specializing in Old and Middle English. Twice Professor of Anglo-Saxon (Old English) at the University of Oxford, he also wrote a number of stories, including most famously The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), which are set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which he called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth. This was peopled by Men (and women), Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Orcs (or Goblins) and of course Hobbits."  (http://www.tolkiensociety.org/tolkien/biography.html)

　

I was first introduced to Tolkien in my University years. Today his popularity has grown again through the movies of his writings. I first read his epic high fantasy work, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy in those days (and in those days of the late 70's/early '80's there was a wine and cheese café called "Bilbo and Gandalf’s." I had a number of pleasant evenings there with friends). I lived with Catholic College students at the time and my social life was surrounded by committed Catholic peers. In the house I lived in a few blocks from St. Augustine Church and the University, there was no TV. Thank God! I had fun with my roommates and the Catholic circle, and I got to read works like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

 

From the first page of the Trilogy I was hooked. One of my professors, Dr. Corbin Carnell taught a course that dealt with media and imagination. He advised us that we needed to regularly rejuvenate our lives with good resources for the imagination. The Trilogy was that for me and its themes of good versus evil and the triumph of good after much struggle inspired my "religious imagination." (For more on the role of imagination in faith see entries for July 5, 2012 HERE and July 12, 2012 HERE)

 

Tolkien was Catholic and was a friend of C.S. Lewis and was partially responsible for Lewis’s conversion from atheism to Christianity (Lewis didn’t become Catholic but joined the Church of England). Tolkien was influenced by his Catholicism in the writing of the Trilogy.

 

"Tolkien acknowledged this himself:

‘The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion', to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.’

 

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#Religion)

 

Here is another quote from Tolkien that fits the end of a Season of feasts:

 

"Well, you can go on looking forward," said Gandalf. "There may be many unexpected feasts ahead of you." (The Fellowship of the Ring)

 

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He Came to Lead Us into Beauty

"Good Shepherd" by William Dyce

At Christmas, especially, many Catholic Churches are decorated as beautifully as possible. Some Protestant churches are suspicious of such decorations, fearful that all that "stuff" will distract from a "pure" worship and focus upon God. Yet the Catholic instinct, as soon as the early persecutions ended (by mid-4th century), has been that beauty in our churches focuses and deepens our appreciation for God’s beauty, for we believe God is All-Beauty.

I have reflected upon this previously (HERE) and I believe it is part of the sacramental approach of the Catholic Church, shared by the Orthodox Churches and to some degree by certain Protestant churches, as well. 

This is how the Catechism (CCC#41) explains it:

 "All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his creatures' perfections as our starting point, 'for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator'."  (Wisdom 13:5)

I have studied the subject of "religious beauty" for a number of years now. It is quite fascinating to me. I remember once reading a certain Christian author’s critique of the Church’s preaching and teaching. He said, many do not dispute that what we teach is true or reasonable (though many others  would disagree); rather we have not made our teaching and preaching beautiful enough. Love should attract...

The late Pope John Paul II wrote about the "Consecrated life" of those men and women in religious orders, such as Sisters. But we are first consecrated by Baptism, so I believe that the Pope’s words can apply appropriately to all of us:

Saint Augustine says: "Beautiful is God, the Word with God ... He is beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth; beautiful in the womb, beautiful in his parents' arms, beautiful in his miracles, beautiful in his sufferings; beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up his life and beautiful in taking it up again; he is beautiful on the Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in heaven. Listen to the song with understanding, and let not the weakness of the flesh distract your eyes from the splendour of his beauty."

The quest for divine beauty impels consecrated persons to care for the deformed image of God on the faces of their brothers and sisters, faces disfigured by hunger, faces disillusioned by political promises, faces humiliated by seeing their culture despised, faces frightened by constant and indiscriminate violence, the anguished faces of minors, the hurt and humiliated faces of women, the tired faces of migrants who are not given a warm welcome, the faces of the elderly who are without even the minimum conditions for a dignified life.

              Quoted in John Paul II, POST-SYNODAL APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION
                                        VITA CONSECRATA. March25, 1996: 24 &75)

For a long time I have seen that in our Catholic Faith, Beauty and Justice are partners in serving God. Beauty without justice (especially caring for those unjustly treated), could lead to an escapist aestheticism. But justice without beauty would be a diminished justice, since justice is to bring us into "right relationship" with  God, who is Just, Good, True, and Beautiful in his love. (To read more about this: HERE)

If we follow Christ, he will lead us as the Good and Beautiful Shepherd into his beauty and truth and empower us to work to restore beauty and dignity to people’s lives, the original beauty for which God created us. This is why he came into our world and why we make Christmas as beautiful as we can.

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Long Weekend Away and How We See Things

I returned on Tuesday from what I suppose can be called a long weekend where I crammed as much as I could into 3 days (plus 2 days there and back). I had planned a longer time of vacation, but plans fell through I ended up only spending time in Charleston, South Carolina, where my brother and his family live and also two evenings and a day at Pawley’s Island about an hour north of Charleston on the coast. I’d only read about that area by accident and wanted to visit and see it.

Charleston is one of my favorite cities to visit. I love to see the different architecture of the homes, some from the 18^th century, some from the Antebellum period, many with interesting and sometimes eccentric designs.

 I had a few shops to explore, looking at local art and crafts. On one such exploration with my brother and sister-in-law and my nephew who is 15, I discovered that my nephew had taken an art painting class in school. I was glad to hear that. As we discussed the benefits of learning about art, someone mentioned that learning to paint a subject trains one to see the ordinary differently.

I was immediately inspired by this observation. If you read any "back entries" of this blog, you learn that the way we see things, especially the "hidden revelation" of things, is a theme in my thinking. That’s why I like and quote a line from poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (read the entire entry HERE "Seeing God in the Ordinary"):

       "Earth’s crammed with heaven.

        Every common bush aflame

            with the fire of God.

        But only those who see it take off their shoes.

        The rest sit around and pick blackberries."

We might look at a blackberry bush and all we see are leaves and berries. I found a photo of a blackberry bush, but even photos make us stop and look at something more carefully, if we take the time, like this photo:

I wondered how some artists may have painted blackberry bushes. What would their painting invite us to see? I found one by an artist named Sören Dawson. Here it is:

Blackberry Bush

I have so many questions I’d ask about this painting. I wouldn’t have known it was a blackberry bush except that the artist names it so. And yet, this seems to be Browning’s bush that she saw. For it is aflame with a fire it seems.

The point might be made even more with a photo of an autumn bush (how timely) in Massachusetts:

As I wrote before, Browning is alluding to the burning bush in which God spoke to Moses. Moses who removed his shoes in humility and worshiped (See Exodus 3:1-5 HERE). The burning bush was for Moses an epiphany, i.e., a revelation of God speaking to him, yet from an ordinary bush that was not so ordinary.

This is what an artist seeks, I think, in painting something ordianary in such a way that we see "something more." Perhaps it’s simply that we see the beauty of something we had not seen before. But beauty is an attribute of God also.

There is something in good art that invites us to slow down and ponder deeper things, or meanings.It is the same in beautiful places of nature. When I was traveling this weekend, I sped by many places, and in speeding by I barely saw them. To see the architecture I so love looking at in places like Charleston one must slow down if in a car, but better yet, get out and walk to see what’s there to be seen.

I had stopped in Savannah, Georgia, on the way home and browsed some art studios and their paintings and other works of art. But I found it somewhat difficult to take in all the art because so many works invited contemplation–really looking at them and appreciating color and technique and subject. After awhile I had to stop looking because I was just "speeding by."

In another one of my blog reflections (HERE) I quoted Fr. Ron Rolheiser about the "mystical imagination," that is, a deeper way of seeing (imaging) reality:

"The mystical imagination can show us how the Holy Spirit isn't just inside our churches.... But how do we learn that?

"A saint might say: ‘Meditate and pray long enough and you will open yourself up to the other world!’

"A poet might say: ‘Stare at a rose long enough and you'll see that there's more there than meets the eye!’

"A romantic might say: ‘Just fall in love real deeply or let your heart get broken and you'll soon know there's more to reality than can be empirically measured.’

"And the mystics of old would say: ‘Just honor fully what you meet each day and you will find it drenched with grace and divinity.’"

How do we find the time for that? I tell on myself by earlier mentioning tmy attempt  to put many things and experiences in a very short period of "time off". Is that the habit of our time, always being in a hurry, on the go, preoccupied with the next thing? I know it is.

My last two evenings and the day in between spent at Pawley’s Island was at a more leisurely pace.By mere chance (or God’s design) I booked a hotel on the beach in the "off season." There were a lot less folks around and a more quiet pace than Charleston. The clerk was kind enough to upgrade me to a beach side room on the third floor with its own balcony. It was breath-taking to see the big wide ocean outside my sliding door windows and balcony. Here was the scene I was treated to for the duration:

Pawley's Island Beach in Novemeber

I woke early and enjoyed sitting on the balcony, praying, and taking in the scenery. Every now and then a person passed by walking on the beach. One was a man who looked like he was walking for exercise. He was also reading a book as he went! Another had on ear phones! Why not listen to the crashing of the waves and the sea gull cries? Why not look around and see the beauty of such a place? Were those beach walkers representative of our constant "sleep walking" through life?

Of course, I don’t live there and so everything was fresh and new. But that’s the challenge: to wake up, at least for moments, to look up and see.

Now I’m back home, still off the schedule until Tuesday, so I can catch up with a lot of work. It’s nice to go away, and nicer to come home!

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For All the Saints

Growing up a Protestant, like my refection last week when I shared that I knew nothing in my youth about Purgatory, indeed the teaching was refuted, so it was the same with the Intercession of the Saints. In the United Methodist Church  we did profess in the Apostle’s Creed "I believe in...the Communion of Saints," and we sang "For All the Saints," which was actually written by an Anglican Bishop in the late 19^th century. (Listen HERE You can tell that they are probably Protestant as they are all singing with gusto!)

But although the saints are in heaven, for me as a Protestant youth they weren’t doing anything in particular. When I read the Book of Revelation, I would have read about saints. For example, Revelation 5:8 mentions certain figures in heaven: "Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints."

But Methodists don’t have saints! It was explained to me that the word "saint" was the translation of a Greek word meaning "holy one." Yet it is undeniable that in heaven the prayers of these "holy ones" are present. Are these the prayers only of Christians on earth or does it include the prayers of holy ones who had also died and are in heaven?

I’ve mentioned that when I was in College here at UF, I became interested in understanding why Catholics believe what they do. I met some very religious Catholic College students and others, some with whom I came to live with, who believed in Christ (surprise!) and read the Bible (another surprise) and seemed to differ from my faith only on certain (strange to me at the time) doctrines–like the Intercession of the Saints. Only later would I realize that there is a basic difference of approach to religious matters between Catholics and Protestant. (Episcopalians and Lutherans still had some of the Catholic view on certain things–a kind of Catholic-Protestant hybrid at times). That difference I’ve written about: the Sacramental Approach (Here and Here).

After thinking as thoroughly as I knew how in those College days about this matter of the Saints praying for us and asking for their prayers , I realized that if a Christian dies and goes to heaven, that Christian would be a better Christian than he or she was on earth, because there would be no more temptation to sin or the distractions of this earthly life. And what is it that a Christian is to do? Pray and worship and love God and one’s neighbor.

And it occurred to me that if on earth the Christian prays for others, why not in heaven as well? It would seem strange that a Christian would intercede on earth but not in heaven. And if we would ask a holy Christian on earth to pray for us, why not ask a holy Christian in heaven? And just as on earth we are attracted to certain personalities, why wouldn’t the same hold true about the saints in heaven? I believe that in heaven all love one another perfectly, but we on earth will be drawn more to some saints than to others; thus, our Patron saints or special saints of whom we ask for intercession.

St. Francis

It was in those days of investigation also that I read The Little Flowers of St. Francis. It’s a book of early stories about St. Francis and I was totally charmed by the personality of Francis and his early companions. As you may know, he’s very special to me.

Later I would also come to cherish St. Benedict (My first year at a seminary was St. Meinrad’s with Benedictine monks).

Even though my middle initial "M" stands for a family name, Morris, in the program at my ordination it had Michael as my middle name. I decided St. Michael was being given to me as a special Guardian angel.

St. John the Beloved

And of course, there is my name John. My first Patron Saint is St. John, the Beloved Disciple and Apostle of divine love.

I’ll share a personal detail about my morning prayers. Every morning I pray the Liturgy of the Hours required of priests and religious (recommended to the laity also). I also pray as I put on my medal of the Sacred Heart and Our Lady of Mt. Carmel and my Crucifix:

"Father, may I live this day

by the Cross and Resurrection of my Lord Jesus Christ,

and by his Ascension into Heaven,

your sending of the Holy Spirit

and Christ’s  return in Glory.

May I and the parish be consecrated this day

to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

May we have the Intercession of Mary,

the Most Holy Mother of God. (Then a "Hail Mary")

May we have the Intercession of St. Michael, Strong in battle.

May I have the Intercession of St. John, Beloved Disciple:

may I, too, become a beloved disciple of the Lord.

May we have the Intercession of St. Francis and St. Benedict.

O Holy Guardians, pray for us.

O holy men and women of God pray for us."

So you can see I've become quite a Catholic boy when it comes to the saints! I conclude this personal sharing with a quote from our Holy Father Pope Benedict about the saints which sums up some of what I’ve been sharing:

"There are very dear people in the life of each one of us to whom we feel particularly close, some of whom are already in God's embrace while others still share with us the journey through life: they are our parents, relatives and teachers; they are the people to whom we have done good or from whom we have received good; they are people on whom we know we can count.

"Yet it is important also to have "traveling companions" on the journey of our Christian life....I am also thinking of the Virgin Mary and the Saints. Everyone must have some Saint with whom he or she is on familiar terms, to feel close to with prayer and intercession but also to emulate.

"I would therefore like to ask you to become better acquainted with the Saints, starting with those you are called [named] after, by reading their life and their writings. You may rest assured that they will become good guides in order to love the Lord even more and will contribute effective help for your human and Christian development.@ (Pope Benedict, General Audience 8/25/10)

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The Meanings of Bread and Wine in the Eucharist

The Church has the Gospel of Mark read every three years (it is called Year B; Year A is the year for Matthew and Year C for Luke). We are in this time of the proclamation of Mark and because Mark is the shortest of the Gospels, the Church includes several weeks of reading John, Chapter 6. We have been hearing how Jesus calls himself the Bread of Life.

All Scripture Scholars agree that this discourse by Jesus in John 6 is about the Eucharist. The central material elements in the Eucharist are bread and wine. Bread and wine "speak" to our imaginations on many levels. Bread and wine are more than food and drink; they also have a number of symbolic meanings. Cardinal Francis George of Chicago writes:

"We take two material gifts, bread and wine and, through the power of the Spirit, we ask that they may become ‘the bread of life’ and ‘our spiritual drink.’ [from the Offertory Prayers at Mass]

"On the one hand, these gifts represent ourselves, as we long for ever greater Eucharistic transformation. The bread represents all our united human efforts that contribute to the building up of a civilization of love on this earth. The wine represents all the pain, suffering and death involved in the discharge of this holy task---all once again embraced by the Eucharistic Body of the Lord.

"On the other hand, the bread and wine represent material creation itself, which awaits its own Eucharistic transformation, ‘a share in the glorious freedom of the children of God’ (Rm. 8:19-23). The Spirit's presence in this moment of offering is often made explicit in the Prayer over the Gifts, which concludes our preparation of the altar and the gifts."

I love to think about the symbolic meanings of the bread and wine. Cardinal George expresses it rather elegantly, but what he is saying is that bread is the use of a God-created reality, i.e. wheat, that is changed into bread by human labor. So it can very well stand for "our united human efforts to the building up of a civilization."

Wine is also the combination of created reality and human art. But also, wine is pressed and so "suffers" and is often red like blood poured forth. So as the Cardinal says, it can represent "all the pain, suffering, and death in life..."

Paradoxically, wine in the Scriptures is more often associated with festivity and joy (as any party-goer knows). Bread is more associated with the necessities of life. We speak of earning the bread we eat.

And yet another meaning of bread and wine is that each involves bringing together many grains and many grapes to make one loaf and one cup. The early Church saw this as very significant because we are made one in the Eucharist. (1 Corinthians 10:17: "Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.")

Perhaps you may want to think about bread and wine ands other meanings they have which might be brought to the Eucharistic celebration and understanding.

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The mystical imagination

I came across this quote recently from Fr Ron Rolheiser. In light of my previous blog entries about the Catholic imagination, Fr. Ron brings out yet another facet of this imagination, referring to the mystical (a personal experience in which an individual reports contact with a transcendent reality):

"The mystical imagination is the other half of the scientific imagination and, like science, its purpose is to help us see, imagine, understand, speak about, and relate to reality in a way beyond fantasy and superstition. But the mystical imagination can show us something that science, wonderful though it is, cannot, namely, it can show us the many grace-drenched and spirit-laden layers of reality that are not perceived by our physical senses.

"The mystical imagination can show us how the Holy Spirit isn't just inside our churches, but is also inside the law of gravity. But how do we learn that?

A saint might say: ‘Meditate and pray long enough and you will open yourself up to the other world!’

A poet might say: ‘Stare at a rose long enough and you'll see that there's more there than meets the eye!’
A romantic might say: ‘Just fall in love real deeply or let your heart get broken and you'll soon know there's more to reality than can be empirically measured.’

And the mystics of old would say: ‘Just honor fully what you meet each day and you will find it drenched with grace and divinity.’"

For me this other way of seeing and sensing that transcends the scientific approach to reality is invoked in a number of ways. For example, one of my favorite times of day is dusk, when the sun is setting. Most of the time I don’t even notice this time of transition. But sometimes I am somewhere where everything gets bathed in that special light of sunset, at the beach or in a park or even in the city apart from all the artificial light, and I begin to sense a dimension of reality that is, as Fr. Ron describes, drenched with grace and divinity.

As Hamlet says to Horatio, the model of scientific reason,

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

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Church Art: Symbols of the Four Evangelists

So many of my reflections for this Blog have so far detailed the Catholic or sacramental imagination. This refers to how Catholics see (or image) reality: both about God and the world. Obviously this is one of my "passions."

As I wrote about the Catholic Spiritual Journey:

"Those who were raised Catholic do not always understand how this 'Catholic way' of seeing things differs in certain ways from how Protestants see things. Why, for example, do Catholic churches typically have statues and candles and crucifixes and holy water and incense and in general use a lot of 'stuff' in worship and a Baptist church has none of these things? Proponents would say it’s a different way of approaching God; the Catholic way is more symbol and creation friendly and the Protestant way is more symbol and creation cautious."

[More on the Catholic or sacramental approach HERE]

This week, as part of the Church Beautification Project, we are hanging the tapestries of the Symbols of the Four Evangelists in our church. The parish has had these tapestries for many years, but I wanted them to be displayed for maxim effect and now we are able to do so.

The origin of these symbols is from an interpretation of the early Church concerning the mention of the Four Beasts in the Prophet Ezekiel 1:4-10 [Read it HERE] and in the Book of Revelation 4:6-8 [Read it HERE]. The original authors of these two Bible books were not thinking of the Four Gospels, i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but each beast or figure got associated later with the Four Gospels and their authors (or Evangelists).

Here are the explanations for each symbol as interpreted in the early Church:

"St. Matthew: Winged Man, [which also symbolizes The Incarnation].—To St. Matthew was given the creature in human likeness, because he commences his gospel with the human generation of Christ, and because in his writings the human nature of Our Lord is more dwelt upon than the divine.

"St. Mark: Winged Lion, [which also symbolizes The Resurrection].—The Lion was the symbol of St. Mark, who opens his gospel with the mission of John the Baptist, ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness.’ [lions lived in the wilderness]. He also sets forth the royal dignity of Christ [compare: the lion is king of the beasts] and dwells upon His power manifested in the resurrection from the dead. The lion was accepted in early times as a symbol of the resurrection because the young lion was believed always to be born dead, but was awakened to vitality by the breath, the tongue, and roaring of its sire. 

"St. Luke: Winged Ox, [which also symbolizes The Passion].—The form of the ox, the beast of sacrifice, fitly sets forth the sacred office [of Christ the High Priest], and also the atonement for sin by blood, on which, in [Luke’s] gospel,[Luke] particularly dwells.

 "St. John: The Eagle, [which also symbolizes Ascension].—The eagle was allotted to St. John because, as the eagle soars towards heaven, [John] soared in spirit upwards to the heaven of heavens to bring back to earth revelation of sublime and awful [i.e., awesome] mysteries."

　

From Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art, by John Vinycomb, [1909]

　

　The Four Evangelists Tapestries: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

　

　

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The Splendor of Our Catholic Faith

So I have been writing about this "thing" called "sacramental imagination" a.k.a. the "Catholic imagination" which results in a way of being Christian that is "traditional" (it is the original way Christianity was lived and developed in the first several centuries of the Church) and positively embraces creation, human culture, and human relationships to image, i.e. perceive and grasp in some way the reality of God.

Jesus Christ is described in the New Testament as The Image of God (see Colossians 1:15). He was part of creation as having flesh. He lived in a human culture and indeed made things himself as a carpenter. His relationship with God was imaged as that of God the Father and the Beloved Son. He inspired and instituted in the Church which he established by his Death and Resurrection the use of creation and human realities including relationships in the Seven Sacraments and in the way Catholics (and Orthodox Christians) worship and express devotion.

This week, I hope you get a chance to view this Youtube Video (HERE) on Fr. Robert Barron’s Book and DVD series on Catholicism. See the use of images and human culture as communicating the Catholic Faith through the generations and across the world today. This is an example of what is meant by the Catholic sacramental imagination.

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More on the Catholic Imagination

Thought I might just share this excerpt from Fred Herron, Wood, Waterfalls and Stars: Catholic Schools and the Catholic Imagination, pp.101-103:

"[1.] The first characteristic of Catholicism is its benevolent understanding of the human condition. That is, Catholics exhibit a ‘realistic optimism.’ While sickness, sin, and death are reality checks for us all, the Catholic imagination clings to a positive and hopeful view of life. Catholicism is not naive about the sinfulness of the human condition. The Catechism notes that while human ‘nature bears the wound of original sin,’ human beings still ‘desire good’ and ‘remain an image of (the) Creator (#s 1707 & 2566).

"[2.] A second characteristic of Catholic Christianity is its belief regarding the sacramentality of life. Thomas Groome puts the case comprehensively: ‘This principle reflects the conviction that God mediates Godself to humankind, and we encounter and respond to God’s grace and desire for us through the ordinary of life–through nature and the created order; through human culture and society; through our minds and bodies, hearts and souls, through our labors and efforts, our creativity and generativity; in the depths of our being and through our relationships with others; through the events and experiences that come our way; though what we are doing and what is going on around us; through everything and anything of our world.’

"[3.] Catholicism has an essential belief that humankind is made for each other and emphasizes community and relationship. While affirming the rights and dignity of the individual it insists that humanity has an essentially communal nature. Our stories are meant to be shared. Our search for salvation is not a solitary one. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, as well as our own.

"[4.] A fourth characteristic of Catholic Christianity is its commitment to history and tradition. The Catholic imagination sees tradition as a lived reality which permeates our identity. Tradition seeps into the ‘marrowbone’ and shapes who we are. Religion, for Catholics, is not a preference as much as it is a world-view. It is not [only] what we believe but who we are.

"[5.] Catholics appreciate wisdom rationality. Langdon Gilkey has argued that ‘there has been throughout Catholic history a drive toward rationality, the insistence that the divine mystery...insofar as possible be penetrated, defended and explicated by the most acute rational reflection. Reason and revelation are partners.’

"[6.] Seeking holiness in our lives is an essential Catholic characteristic. This spirituality is nurtured within an ecclesial context which involves the sharing of images and stories.

"[7.] A truly Catholic Christianity is committed to working for justice. There is a dual commitment to the dignity of the person and to the common good of all. Basic justice has three elements to it: its commutative (one on one), distributive (group to person) and social (person to group). A Catholic understanding of justice is rooted in its anthropology as it treats people with dignity and teaches them to promote the rights of all.

"[8.] James Joyce wrote in his Finnegan’s Wake that ‘Catholic means here comes everyone.’ The root of the term ‘catholic’ means including everything and everyone. Perhaps the best synonym we can find for ‘catholic’ is ‘inclusive.’ This notion challenges us to become a community that demonstrates a hospitality and an oneness to all."

If you haven't already, you may wish to read last week's personal reflection

on this subject

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Seeing God in the Ordinary

In the bulletin for Sunday, July 8^th, I write about how we are presented with an exalted vision of the Mass (It’s heaven on earth, Christ is Really Present, it is the source of every grace, etc.) and yet the Mass can seem so ordinary.

By ordinary, I mean that the Mass is celebrated by ordinary people (few of us are celebrities) with ordinary gestures and ordinary "stuff" of this world like bread and wine. We do try to dress up the Mass to signal that there is something going on that is more than ordinary: the bread usually looks like a round wafer, and the wine is not in a cup but a "chalice," and the priest is dressed in robes (vestments) one would never see outside the Mass.

Yet for all that the round wafer is still made of bread: wheat and water; the chalice is still a cup; and the priest wearing those robes is still a human being, often very ordinary himself.

What we need, as I write in my Pastor’s column, is "a new way of seeing beyond or within the ordinary things of our worship the extraordinary God who became one of us–except for sin–so that we could be lifted up higher into his love."

I go on to write: "We need to learn to see in a way captured by poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In an allusion to the burning bush in which God spoke to Moses who removed his shoes in humility and worshiped (See Exodus 3:1-5), Browning remarks:

"Earth’s crammed with heaven.
 Every common bush aflame with the fire of God.
 But only those who see it take off their shoes.
 The rest sit around and pick blackberries."

I like that passage very much. It is the intuition of the Catholic vision of things: "earth’s crammed with heaven." We also call this the Catholic or Sacramental Imagination (how Catholics image God through the things and people of earth). Thus, in an interview with author George Weigel, he says:

"Why do we have ‘sacraments’? Because the world has been configured by God in a ‘sacramental’ way, i.e., the things of this ‘real world’ world can disclose the really real world of God's love and grace. The Catholic ‘sacramental imagination’ sees in the stuff of this world hints and traces of the creator, redeemer, and sanctifier of the world..."

So Elizabeth Barrett Browning gives an example of how "earth’s crammed with heaven" or as the Sacramental Imagination would say, "the things of earth can reveal God to us": "Every common bush aflame with the fire of God." She is, as I noted, referring to that extraordianry epiphany to Moses, when God spoke to him through a bush that was burning but not consumed by the fire. Moses removed his shoes, a gesture in his time of worship and humility.

Browning’s religious insight is that it was an ordinary bush that God used for this God-revelation; so God uses many ordianary things (and people) to reveal "the real world of God’s love and grace" (Weigel, Ibid.)

However, Browning makes an important claim: "But only those who see it take off their shoes. The rest sit around and pick blackberries." Some can see God in the ordinary and take off their shoes. Others see nothing but an ordinary bush and pick ordinary blackberries and that’s all.

How do we come to "see" God’s Presence in the ordinary? As Catholics we are introduced to such a vision from the earliest moments of our life: through the Mass and the sacraments, through "sacramentals" (Read more about sacramentals HERE) like holy water and medals and statues, through the art and decoration of the church, through the stories of our faith (Bible stories and stories of the saints).

We also need to understand what we are doing at Mass. But I shall say more about that next week.

To read more about the Catholic/sacramental imagination click HERE

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