The Fever Chart

“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” Psalm 51:16

“Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’” Matthew 9:13

This post grew out of an exchange with a good friend. Responding to my challenge to conventional atonement theology, a challenge based on the work of Rene Girard, my friend commented:

God gave the Hebrews holocausts and animal sacrifices and burnt offerings, did he not? Is [Rene] Girard saying those were only to satisfy the people’s need for scapegoats and releases ” not God’s desire for something sacramental that He received through the complete sacrificing (i.e., doing without) of valuable things? Sorry to put it in such contemporary terms, but I’ve always thought O.T. sacrifice was something like God saying to his people, “OK, you had your sin. Now give up this in order to balance the injustice you’ve created on earth and to help restore order where your sin has knocked the cosmos off kilter.” In this construction, of course, Jesus is the perfect, unblemished Lamb “sacrificed once for all so that no more lambs, goats, turtledoves or whatever would have to be sacrificed ever again. He did this not to save dumb, soulless animals but us, for whom the animals had been standing in, per His instructions.

My friend was in fact very close to the truth uncovered by Rene Girard’s work, but because he was still thinking in sacrificial, substitutionary terms, that truth eluded him. This is not meant at all as a personal criticism; the propensity to think in such terms is embedded in the very anthropology of sinful humanity, which is why the resort to “sacred violence” is always a danger, even among those most deeply immersed in the Gospel message. It’s impossible to develop this fully in this forum, but let me try to address the specific question my friend posed in his response above.

Girard would say that in order to break the spell of the “sin of the world,” the ritualized violence by which human beings had since the beginning created social harmony and appropriated a sense of the transcendent, God chose a people as his own and began the process of moving them away from the sacrificial “sacrality” that marked every other archaic religious system. He did this knowing that from this people would emerge a “light to the nations,” a perfectly innocent savior who through his radical identification with the victims of sacred violence would bring the “sword” of desacralization to the whole world. (c.f. Matthew 10:34-36) His means for achieving this end was to inculcate his people with the Law, including a set of ceremonial prescriptions that set this people apart from all of their neighbors in the ancient world.

Take the scapegoat, for instance. In ancient Palestine, the gods of Moloch (c.f. Leviticus 18:21) and Baal (c.f. Jeremiah 19:5) were dominant, and both of their cults centered on the sacrifice of children as propitiation for the sins of the community. Into this milieu God introduces the “scapegoat,” literally a goat presented once each year in the Temple. The Chief Priest lays his hands on the goat, ritually imposes the sins of the people on his head, and then orders the goat banished into the Judean wilderness. At the same time, a bull and another goat are slaughtered and immolated as a burnt offering to the Lord. Taken together, the bull and two goats represent a substitute for the human victims – the human scapegoats – of every other archaic religion. It is a radical departure from the norms of sinful human culture, a moral revolution that underlines the distinction between those who follow the one True God and those still languishing in systems based on sacrificial violence.

At the same time, through the codification of the Law and the preaching of the prophets, God announces time and again that the offerings he truly desires are obedience, purity, and love. God preserved the form of archaic religion – sacrifice – while simultaneously bringing the practice of that system in line with the moral law revealed in the Ten Commandments. He did this to ease the anthropological transition of his people from the sacrificial (sinful and man-centered) to the sacramental (divine and God-centered). In the old sacrificial system, man offered something to God as a propitiation for sin, and that something was invariably the most valuable thing he possessed – human life! But in order to hide the shame of this sinful offering, archaic religion erected elaborate myths that transformed innocent victims into guilty scapegoats and turned the one True God of love into gods full of wrath. In the sacramental system, by contrast, it is God who offers himself to Man, not to satisfy his own sense of retributive justice, but to break the myth of the guilty victim and thereby cause the sinful human sacrificial system to crumble. For us to believe that Christ’s death is demanded by the Father requires us to accept that he has reversed this entire process and reverted to what is essentially a substitutionary murder as propitiation for sin. But, in fact, all of the Old Testament points to the cessation of murder, the breaking of the sacrificial system, in the self-donation of the God-Man. He was crucified by us and for us, but not to satisfy the Father; rather, he laid down his life to break the cycle of murder and myth-making, the “sin of the world.”

This is why the author of Hebrews writes:

The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming”not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.”
Then he said, “Here I am: it is written about me in the scroll ‘I have come to do your will, O God.’” First he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them’ (although the law required them to be made). Then he said, ‘Here I am, I have come to do your will.’ He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The chief modern criticism of Christianity has been that it is just another collection of myths, and not a terribly original collection at that. This was the position of Joseph Campbell, of the PBS series and bestselling book, “The Power of Myth,” who called the Bible “tribally circumscribed mythology” and Christianity “sanctified chauvinism.” As Campbell and others point out, there are many mythical systems featuring divine saviors, holy books, resurrections, virgin births, ascensions, etc. All the elements of Christianity, they say, can be located in myths from around the world. The only thing unique about Christianity is that it rode the crashing wave of the Roman Empire and emerged from the froth as the dominant myth in the dominant West. Christian penal-substitutionary atonement theology accommodates this modern critique because it shares a sacrificial basis with all archaic religion.

The work of Rene Girard is different. By examining the anthropological grounding of archaic religion and comparing it to the biblical texts, Girard has uncovered the key to the utterly unique, essential, and necessarily divine nature of Christianity. When asked in a recent interview if he considered Christianity “superior” to all other faiths, here’s what Girard said:

Yes. All of my work has been an effort to show that Christianity is superior and not just another mythology. In mythology, a furious mob mobilizes against scapegoats held responsible for some huge crisis. The sacrifice of the guilty victim through collective violence ends the crisis and founds a new order ordained by the divine. Violence and scapegoating are always present in the mythological definition of the divine itself.

It is true that the structure of the Gospels is similar to that of mythology in which a crisis is resolved through a single victim who unites everybody against him, thus reconciling the community. As the Greeks thought, the shock of death of the victim brings about a catharsis that reconciles. It extinguishes the appetite for violence. For the Greeks, the tragic death of the hero enabled ordinary people to go back to their peaceful lives.

However, in this case, the victim is innocent and the victimizers are guilty. Collective violence against the scapegoat as a sacred, founding act is revealed as a lie. Christ redeems the victimizers through enduring his suffering, imploring God to “forgive them for they know not what they do. He refuses to plead to God to avenge his victimhood with reciprocal violence. Rather, he turns the other cheek.

The victory of the Cross is a victory of love against the scapegoating cycle of violence. It punctures the idea that hatred is a sacred duty.

The Gospels do everything that the (Old Testament) Bible had done before, rehabilitating a victimized prophet, a wrongly accused victim. But they also universalize this rehabilitation. They show that, since the foundation of the world, the victims of all Passion-like murders have been victims of the same mob contagion as Jesus. The Gospels make this revelation complete because they give to the biblical denunciation of idolatry a concrete demonstration of how false gods and their violent cultural systems are generated.

This is the truth missing from mythology, the truth that subverts the violent system of this world. This revelation of collective violence as a lie is the earmark of Judeo-Christianity. This is what is unique about Judeo-Christianity. And this uniqueness is true.

Grace Forty: An Everyday Faith

Fourteen years ago this evening, I was received into the Catholic Church in a brief but beautiful ceremony during the Easter Vigil Mass. In one fell swoop, I received the Sacrament of Confirmation and made my public profession of fidelity: “I believe and hold to be true all that the Catholic Church proposes and teaches.” Then, within a few moments I encountered my Lord for the first time in the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The gifts I had received from my wonderful, faithful parents decades earlier – an intimate knowledge of Jesus Christ, an ingrained appreciation for the the Scripture, and a thoroughly Christian world-view – reached their full flower in a matter of moments. Meanwhile, in a touchingly sad commentary on the continuing disunity of the the Body of the Christ, my mother, the finest Christian I know, sat weeping in the second pew, bewildered by what to her appeared to be a tragedy, a loss.

I have often reflected on the strange fact that the Easter Vigil passed without much much meaning or intensity for me. After so many months and years of preparation, the actual event was anticlimactic. The late hour, the incense, the music, the crowd, the bishop in his magnificent vestments; it was all a bit too much to process within the moment. We were actors in a liturgical drama that evening, moving deliberately across a grand stage in accordance with an ancent script, but with the detachment of jaded thespians. Objectively, the drama was tailor-made for a peak experience, but one of the things I realized that evening was that Catholicism isn’t about peak experiences. Catholicism is an everyday faith, suitable for the mountaintop surely, but divinely configured for the valleys in which most people spend the days of their lives.

And so, it wasn’t until the 7:00 AM Mass on Easter Monday that the truth of what had happened to me became real. I wobbled into the silence of St. Brendan Church and took my place among a tiny cluster of five or six others. The lingering scent of incense hung in the air, a reminder of Saturday night’s revelry; but the crowds were gone, the bishop decamped to his chancery, the tiny tongues of Resurrection fire extinguished, and the choir dispersed. In the half-light of a Monday morning, the 100,128th Monday morning since the Resurrection, a sleepy priest ascended the altar nearly unnoticed. He crossed himself and said in a reed-thin voice, “We begin as always in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost …”

In that moment I knew I was home.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Nine: Mother of Sorrows

Morning. 6:00 am
You never really slept last night, and now the ache is settling in. At 47, you are already quite old, and your body is beginning to betray you. This rootless existence you’ve led since your husband died isn’t helping any. Without warning an image floats into your mind of a beautiful young woman and her snuffling baby boy, the two of them curled up in sweet, dreamless repose, without back pain or worry. What you wouldn’t give …

How can I even think of sleep at a time like this? you ask yourself. Not a half hour ago, the sun rose over the baked bricks and cut stone of Jerusalem. Somewhere nearby a rooster cried and you startled from dozing. You caught a glimpse of Kephas leaving the courtyard, his head down, lips fluttering. Now none of your son’s friends are here except Ioannes. Of course, faithful Ioannes. More like a son than a nephew. Salome begged him to return with her to the little room she rented, but he insisted on remaining by your side all night, right outside the windows of Caiaphas’ palace.

7:00 am
There has been much coming and going already this morning, and the crowds have steadily grown. Angry faces flash. Brutal words are tossed and returned. Rumors swirl in little eddies of conversation, then break off and float away. Suddenly, an electric jolt and the crowd begins to move, slowly at first, then at breakneck speed. Carried along on the tide, you and Ioannes are helpless as the throng courses down narrow streets, turns left, then right, then left again before spilling into a large square before a columned courtyard. What is this place? you ask Ioannes. Pilate he answers, and you shudder at the name.

8:00 am
You would like to know what is going on, but you are wedged next to a wooden fence outside the stable, without a clear view of Pilate’s courtyard. There is a lot of shouting and cursing. The crowd roars its approval one moment, its condemnation the next. Between the roars a lone Latinate voice pierces the early morning air. What charge do you bring against this man? I find no fault in him! Shall I release him? Who do you want? As that last question ends, a low rumble begins in a certain segment of the crowd. it quickly rises to a chorus, and then a chant. Barrabas! Barrabas! You wonder Who is Barrabas? Perhaps this is all a mistake. Perhaps this is all about someone named Barrabas!

9:00 am
Somewhere you hear laughing. A man nearby shouts to his friend They just released Barrabas! That preacher is taking his place! Ioannes curses them under his breath. Taking his place how? you wonder. Suddenly, flashes of white and red dance at the edge of your vision. That sound of laughter is now mixed with the sharp retort of a whip and the dull thud of … something else. Curious, unsuspecting, you lean your head to peer through a slim gap in the fence. It takes a few moments to process the hell unfolding before you, and a few moments longer for the bile to rise in your throat and pour out of your mouth. Ioannes looks through the fence and recoils. He looks again and falls to his knees, wailing beside you. Then, as suddenly, he’s back on his feet and roughly carrying you away from the fence. Ioannes doesn’t stop until he reaches a column at the back of the courtyard.

10:00 am
Perhaps this is the worst that will come of it you say to no one in particular. Just then the crowd stirs to life once again. A Roman wearing the vestments and laurel of governor strides to his chair. Behind him the hunched, bloody figure of your son shuffles across the portico. A tattered purple blanket hangs from one shoulder. His head is encircled by a bramble of some kind. Behold the man! Pilate says, but all you can see is the boy, all skinny legs and tousled hair, with a wide grin and dark eyes. He always looked just like Joachim, and even now there is a way of standing, a set to his hips and shoulders that reminds you of your father. You watch as Pilate bargains with the crowd for his life. But they’re not buying. A man beside you screams “Crucify him” so hard that he begins to cough, his spittle splashing on your neck. By the time he recovers the portico is empty. They have taken your precious boy to be killed.

6:00 pm
Night creeps over the horizon. It is the Sabbath and you are in the room where Ioannes and his other friends are staying. Your son now lies in a borrowed tomb, his broken and bruised body spiced with myrrh and wrapped in fresh linens. Ioannes tenderly cradles you. I am your son now, and you are my mother he sobs in a hushed whisper. Suddenly, an unimaginable sorrow wells up within you as you recall the words of that old man in the Temple, the one who spoke on the day of the brit milah: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Eight: A Busy Day

You awoke today just a few miles from the city, in the village of Bethany, near the home of your friends Mary and Martha, and their father Lazarus. You could have stayed with them, as you had so many times before, but you chose to spend last night in the relative discomfort of Simon’s little hovel on the edge of the village. Simon, that simple saint, who still bears the marks of the leprosy that once ravaged him … Simon was so happy to repay your healing love with what hospitality he could muster. The others much prefer the comforable pillows and hot food at Mary and Martha’s place, but as usual they have so much to learn.

You’ve just sent a group of them off to see the man you dreamed about. They looked dubious, but you’ve never been wrong about these things (even though they keep expecting it to happen). In fact, you’ve never even missed a detail, no matter how small. The man will be there, and the room above his shop will be just right, with plenty of table space and seating for a proper Seder. And it will be located adjacent to that lovely olive grove with its winding paths and spectacular views of the Temple.

You rest your back against the low lip of a well, your legs warming in the sun, your face shaded from the glare by a nearby carob bush. What a busy day today will be. Soon, you will perform your morning ablutions for the last time. Then you will marshal the remnant of your followers for the brief walk into the city. Later, you will preside over the meal, and the words of blessing you offer will both console and confuse your friends. Finally, they will understand (or, at least, they will think they understand) what you meant when you said, “my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” But the mysterious disappearance of one of them will disturb and frighten the others, especially after you speak so darkly of memory and betrayal.

When the meal is concluded, you will lead the group out into that beautiful grove. Kephas, as he always does, will move in close to pledge his love and loyalty. Your response will leave him stunned and muttering as he slips off to sleep under a fig tree. Soon, they will all join him in sleep, even as you stroll alone down the path. Near a small, thorny bush the reality of the moment, of what comes next, will crash down upon you like a tidal wave. Wracked with fear, your body heaving, you will fall to your hands and knees and pray for deliverance; but with every entreaty the certainty – the necessity – of what you must do will become clearer and clearer. Your will, which once called the universe itself into existence, will wash away with your thick, viscous tears, dissolving into the will of your Father. When the moment has passed and the fear subsides, you will awaken your friends and turn to face the jangling, angry crowd making its way up from the Kidron Valley.

Yes, it will be a busy day. But right now, the sun feels good and you can feel your robe, moist from the early morning air, begin to stiffen. You think about your mother and the simple years in Nazareth, years that passed so slowly, and too soon. From somewhere you pick up the smoky scent of meat grilling. A rock pigeon gurgles softly nearby, as if to console you. But at this moment, you need no consolation. You think of Simon, his need, his joy, and his gratitude. You think of Simon the Leper and you are overcome with love for him … for them all.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Seven: St. Thérèse and the “Little Way”

 
Yesterday’s meditation was on the subject of humility. Humility, it was noted, is the necessary antecedent to a thorough examination of conscience, which is itself the prerequisite for genuine confession and reconciliation. Today, I write about a woman who made humility a deliberate way of life and in so doing became one of the most popular saints of the past hundred years and one of only thirty-three saints who has been honored with the title “Doctor of the Church.” In her pursuit of “The Little Way,” St. Thérèse of Lisieux would up counted alongside such giants of Christian history as Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, and Teresa of Avila!

Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin was born in Saint-Blaise, Alençon, France, on the second day of January, 1873, to a jeweler and lacemaker. She was a sickly but happy child, the youngest of five surviving girls. Thérèse’s mother died when she was four and the family moved to the town of Lisieux to live with her uncle and aunt. At 13, she had a vision of the Child Jesus and experienced what she called a complete conversion in an instant. A year later, at 14, she requested permission to enter the Carmelite order, following in the steps of two of her older sisters. In 1888, at 15, she became a Carmelite postulant, then a novice, and eventually making her final profession as Thérèse of the Child Jesus with the specific mission to pray for priests.

Throughout her time in Carmel, Thérèse made a practice of praying for and serving her fellow nuns. In fact, she deliberately sought out sisters whose personalities she found difficult or even repellent and put herself at their disposal. In pursuit of interior poverty, she even refused promotion beyond the designation “novice,” since by remaining a perpetual novice she would never be elected to any position of importance within the cloister, and would instead have to ask permission for everything from the other, fully-received sisters. She sought out the lowest place in the pecking order, in imitation of Christ, who likewise chose the “downward” path: “The foxes have their lairs, the birds of heaven their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” Thérèse did all this not in an attempt to perfect herself – she was in fact convinced that God was not offended in the least by her faults – but in order to strip herself of herself, and thereby gain union with God. There is a peculiar kind of self-absorption in the person who is constantly taking inventory of their failures and “working” on getting better. Thérèse wanted none of it. She wanted to recede from view entirely. She was small and insignificant, and that’s the way she wanted it, writing: “May creatures be nothing for me, and may I be nothing for them, but may You, Jesus, be everything! … Let nobody be occupied with me, let me be looked upon as one to be trampled underfoot. … May Your will be done in me perfectly.” The littleness of Thérèse was her joy, her obscurity the very source of her hope. As she wrote, “Love proves itself by deeds, so how am I to show my love? Great deeds are forbidden me. The only way I can prove my love is by scattering flowers and these flowers are every little sacrifice, every glance and word, and the doing of the least actions for love.” 

On Good Friday in 1896, Thérèse went to bed and was almost immediately stricken by a severe, wet cough. The next morning she found blood on her handkercheif, a sure sign of the then-fatal disease of tuberculosis. She would battle the disease – largely from bed – for  the next 18 months. Her suffering during this time was horrific, but she used the slow descent into death to continue her mission of prayer and service, and even wrote her spiritual autobiography, “The Story of a Soul,” which has become a popular classic. (Incidentally, as befits her devotion to self-abnegation, Thérèse at first refused to write about herself, but finally relented under orders from her Mother Superior.) Thérèse died on September 30, 1897, at the age of 24. It is reported that in her final hours she said, “I have reached the point of not being able to suffer any more, because all suffering is sweet to me.” Her last words were, “My God, I love you!”  Thérèse was canonized in 1924 by Pope Piux XI, and in 1944 she was named the co-patroness – along with St. Joan of Arc – of France by Pope Piux XII. She was recognized as a Doctor of the Church by Pope John Paul II in 1997.

According to accepted chronologies of Holy Week, the Wednesday before our Lord’s Passion is something of a mystery. It is a hidden day. On Sunday he rode triumphally into Jerusalem. On Monday he cursed the fig tree and chased the moneychangers from the Temple. On Tuesday, Jesus denounced the Scribes and Pharisees; preached the Olivet Discourse, which prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem, the signs of his coming, and the end of the world; gave us the Seven Parables ( The fig tree, the time like in Noah’s time, the two men in the field and the two women grinding wheat, the master of the house and the thief, the faithful and evil servants, the ten virgins, and the talents); and preached the Final Judgment.

But on Wednesday, it appears that he remained at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus in Bethany, a few miles from Jerusalem. He had a quiet, hidden day, no doubt in prayer. There would be no more public appearances for Jesus until he stood on the portico of Pilate’s House, an object of horror and ridicule. It is fitting that on the Wednesday of Holy Week we recall a saint, Thérèse, whose whole life was given over to hiddenness, to humility, to the Lord who now rests quietly in preparation for the storm that is about to arrive and is his destiny.

“We adore you O Christ and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Six: Humility

Yesterday, I wrote about the examination of conscience as a necessary antecedent to confession and reconciliation. Today, the topic is humility, which is itself the necessary antecedant to a thorough examen. In his classic, Humility of Heart, Fr. Cajetan Mary da Bergamo wrote:  “In Paradise there are many saints who never gave alms on earth: their poverty justified them. There are many saints who never mortified their bodies by fasting, or wearing hair shirts: their bodily infirmities excused them. There are many saints too who were not virgins: their vocation was otherwise. But in Paradise there is no saint who was not humble.”

Humility is the foundation of the spiritual life because it begins with an acknowledgement of this solemn and absolute truth: There is a God and I am not him! From this truth springs gratitude (only the humble person can truly be grateful); compassion (the humble recognize their own need for grace and through that recognition empathize with the needs of others); and obedience (“Not my will, but thine, be done”).

It is said that the pagans knew about the power of God, evident in the terrible beauty of nature. The Jews knew about God’s justice, as testified to in the Torah and the Prophets. But as Christians we have been shown the humility of God, through Christ, “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Philipians 2:6-8; NIV) Humility is at the heart of the Christian spiritual life because we are called to the Imitatio Christi – the imitation of Christ, who said “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

My own words are beginning to fail. Pride is my cross - God help me! – and all the deformations of character that flow from it. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever progress beyond the very first lessons in the School of Humility. And so, rather than continue writing about something with which I am only barely acquainted, I’ll turn this essay over to those who know far better the role of humility in achieving salvation and pleasing God:

Also from Humility of Heart:

God banished Angels from Heaven for their pride; therefore how can we pretend to enter therein, if we do not keep ourselves in a state of humility? Without humility, says St. Peter Damian, not even the Virgin Mary herself with her incomparable virginity could have entered into the glory of Christ, and we ought to be convinced of this truth that, though destitute of some of the other virtues, we may yet be saved, but never without humility.

From Abandonment to Divine Providence, by Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade:

Humility should be sweet and tranquil, without self-contempt, or annoyance with ourselves or others, without despondency or voluntary vexation … Far from losing, we gain all in abandoning ourselves entirely to God by love and confidence. The sight of yourself: that confused heap of weaknesses, miseries, corruption, should never distress you. It is on this account that I say boldly, all is well, for I have never known anyone endowed with this keen insight, so humiliating, to whom it was not a most special grace of God; nor who has not found in it, combined with a true self-knowledge, that solid humility which is the foundation of all perfection. I have known, and do know many saintly people who, for their sole possession have that profound conviction of their weakness, and are never so happy as when they feel themselves, as it were, engulfed in it. They then dwell in truth, and consequently in God who is the sovereign truth. If you but knew how to walk before Him, your head bowed in this spirit of self-effacement, you would find in it all that makes the spiritual life. It only remains to know how to preserve this spirit of peace and abandonment.

From Story of a Soul, by St. Therese of Lisieux:

I tried my best to do good on a small scale, having no opportunity to do it on a large scale. As it was, all I could do was to take such opportunities of denying myself as came to me without the asking; that meant mortifying self-love, a much more valuable discipline than any kind of bodily discomfort … I’ve always wished that I could be a saint. But whenever I compared myself to the Saints there was always this unfortunate difference – they were like great mountains, hiding their heads in the clouds, and I was only an insignificant grain of sand, trodden down by all who passed by. However, I wasn’t going to be discouraged; I said to myself: “God wouldn’t inspire us with ambitions that can’t be realized. Obviously there’s nothing great to be made of me, so it must be possible for me to aspire to sanctity in spite of my insignificance. I’ve got to take myself just as I am, with all my imperfections; but somehow I shall have to find out a little way, all of my own, which will be a direct short-cut to heaven. Can’t I find an elevator which will take me up to Jesus, since I’m not big enough to climb the steep stairway of perfection?” So I looked in the Bible for some hint about the life I wanted, and I came across the passage where Eternal Wisdom says: “Whosoever is a little one let him come to Me.” To that Wisdom I went; it seemed as if I was on the right track; what did God undertake to do for the child-like soul that responded to His invitation? I read on, and this is what I found: I will console you like a mother caressing her son; you shall be like children carried at the breast, fondled on a mother’s lap. I could after all, be lifted up to heaven, in the arms of Jesus! And if that was to happen, there was no need for me to grow bigger, on the contrary, I must be as small as ever, smaller than ever.

Finally, Blessed Mother Teresa fixes humility at the apex of the pantheon of virtues, because it is only through humility that we can truly love. St. John of the Cross wrote that “in the evening of our lives we will be judged by love.” True, of course, but how we are judged will depend on our progress in humility:

Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Five: The Examination of Conscience

As noted in my third reflection, the Sacrament of Reconciliation has been one of the signal graces of my journey into and with the Church.  Today, as we move into Holy Week, I would like to highlight the antecedent step in the process of reconciliation: the examination of conscience.

It is appropriate, I think, to begin the decisive week in salvation history with a thorough examen. On the Monday before his Passion, our Lord woke up in Bethany, at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. On his way into Jerusalem that morning, Jesus cursed a fig tree that bore no fruit. Later, on his way back to Bethany for the evening, Jesus passed by the tree again, but by then it had withered and died. Although this parable/event has historically been seen as a sign of God rejecting the fruitless covenant with Israel in favor of a wider, more fecund covenant with the whole world through the Church, I take a more personal view, which drives me to the examination of conscience I conduct this day.

In Baptism, we were infused with sanctifying grace and given the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit:  wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude (or courage), knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. But the gifts are given that they might bear fruit, and Scripture identifies the Fruits of the Spirit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, perseverence, meekness, faith, modesty, self-control, and chastity.

And so, on Monday of Holy Week, I ask: “In what ways have I failed to bear fruit, like the fig tree cursed by our Lord?” Have I loved enough, not just in word but in deed? Do I possess and reflect the joy and peace of the Lord? Am I patient and kind, especially to those it is difficult to be patient and kind with? Do I forgive eagerly? Do I really exhibit integrity; that is, am I the same person in private that I am in public? Have I persevered, or do I quit on God? Am I meek and mild, like Jesus, or have I been haughty and arrogant? Do I really believe, or do I just say I do? Am I modest, not only in dress, but in speech? Have I controlled my appetites, not just for food, but for other pleasures? Am I chaste; have I maintained sexual integrity, both physically and mentally? In short, have borne the fruit of virtue that is my birthright, or have I squandered the chance?

The traditional examination of conscience is organized around the “Thou Shalt Nots” of the Ten Commandments. But I find that negative construction to be an impediment to real growth in the spiritual life, a kind of lowest common denominator focused on acts rather than dispositions of the heart: Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t engage in adultery, and so on. But Christ calls us to a higher standard. He calls us to genuine virtue: “You have heard it said you shall not kill, but I tell you that every man who hates his brother is already guilty of murder.” The Christian life ought to be focused on what we are enabled and empowered to do by the Holy Spirit within us, not on a list of do’s and don’ts! Sin, for the Christian, is not simply the violation of a codex of prohibited acts. That’s legalism, in my opinion. No, to the Christian, sin is a failure to achieve the virtues we are called to. It is missing of the mark, not just avoiding the arrow. And so I often confess to having “sinned against love,” or having ”failed to live chastely.” I find that the focus on virtues rather than commandments not only reminds me of my dignity as an adopted child of God, but it also opens up for consideration vast regions of sinfulness that might otherwise have not been explored.

On this Monday of Holy Week, Jesus cursed the fig tree then continued on into Jerusalem. When he arrived at the Temple, he found its antechambers and outer courts overflowing with vendors selling substitute sacrificial animals. Fashioning a cord into a whip, he went down the line overturning tables and chasing the profiteers from his Father’s house. It is thought by many that in addition to polluting the house of God with commerce, this trade was conducted at the expense of the poor, who had to exchange their ordinary coin, at a loss, for special Temple currency, then purchase doves or sheep at confiscatory prices. I often connect this story to the discourse in Matthew 25, when our Lord promises to say, “Depart from me, you cursed,” to those who fail to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked and visit the imprisoned.  It seems to me that in cleansing the Temple, Jesus is previewing his role as the just Judge, and once again treatment of the poor is at the heart of that judgment.

And so, on Monday of Holy Week, I also ask: How have I treated the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned, the unborn, the outcast addict, the immigrant stranger, the mentally ill, the sick and infirm, the single mother, the destitute old person, the troubled child, the prisoner? Have I given something substantial of myself to them, or rather to Christ through them? How have I exercised that “preferential option for the poor” that the Church insists upon? As we move into Holy Week, can I see  that from God’s perspective we are all beggars, thieves, and lost children?

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Four: The Apologists

My journey into the Church began in late 1989 and continued for nearly seven years, until the Easter Vigil 1997, when I was reconciled. During most of that time I traveled alone, without the benefit of any Catholic intimates, much less the direction and guidance of a priest or religious. In fact, I didn’t make my first real “Catholic friend” until 1995, and then only as the result of an odd coincidence in a professional setting. (That friend, in turn, introduced me to a priest who eventually persuaded me to make a formal reconcilation.)

And yet, throughout those years of exploration, study and prayer, I was accompanied by a group of friends I think of as “The Apologists,” Catholic writers and lecturers whose work I consumed, and whose defenses of the Faith I put to the severest test. Ancient, medieval, modern and contemporary, The Apologists presented Catholicism in terms I understood well, employing Scripture, history, personal testimony and theological logic to persuade me that the Church is indeed what it claims to be. Some, like Scott Hahn, spoke to me audibly in the very rhythms and cadences with which I was familiar as a cradle-Evangelical. Others, like St. Justin, spoke to me from pages out of the dusty past, but with a clarity so pure and a passion so intense that the intervening centuries were wiped away instantly. Some, like Chesterton, could make me laugh out loud, while others, like Aquinas, forced me to bear down and concentrate. Some, like Francis deSales, were saints. Others are clearly not. Some, like David Currie, are converts. Others, like Belloc, were lifelong Catholics. What all of them shared was a love of Christ, the Church and the truth.

Let me introduce you to my spiritual companions, The Apologists:

Ancients
St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, St. Clement of Rome, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Origen, St. Polycarp, Irenaeus, St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Athanasius

Medieval & Early Moderns
St. John Damascene, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Anselm, St. Francis deSales, Blaise Pascal

Moderns
John Henry Cardinal Newman, Ronald Knox, Hillarie Belloc, G.K. Chesterton, Frank Sheed

Contemporaries
Scott Hahn, Peter Kreeft, David Currie

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”

Grace Thirty-Three: The Stations of the Cross

The Stations of the Cross is, to me, the Christian devotion par excellence. It’s a beautiful blend of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, a Christ-centered meditation on suffering and salvation but with enough participation by ordinary characters to allow anyone to read themselves into it.

Right now I’m in the middle of another man’s Via Dolorosa, his Way of Sorrows. This fellow has reached out to me for assistance in literally saving his own life, and although it’s been emotionally wrenching and physically exhausting, I’m doing everything I can because he really has nowhere else to turn. Yesterday, after Mass, I prayed the Stations of the Cross, hoping to find in the Passion of Christ an analog to my own suffering, and with it the courage and strength to persevere. Working my way through the story, I came upon the Fifth Station, “Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry His Cross,” and instantly saw my story, and that of my friend, painted there.

Here’s what the Fifth Station taught me yesterday: First, it is my friend’s passion that is central, not mine. Second, in this passion I am Simon, visiting Jerusalem on other business. Third, I would not have undertaken this task had not the Holy Spirit roughly pulled me from the crowd to aid the condemned on his way to Calvary. Fourth, it is a privilege, not a burden, to help my friend carry his cross because in so doing I am helping Jesus himself, and therefore participating intimately in His Paschal sacrifice.

All that grace and wisdom gleaned from a still-life depiction on a wall. That’s the power of the Stations of the Cross. Whatever our circumstances, we can find ourselves there, in the story of Christ’s passion and death. It is the Gospel in 14 (or 15) steps, and it continues to be an amazing grace in my life.

The following reflections on the Stations are not my own, but they are my favorites. I recommend meditating on them with the aid of the spectacular illuminated miniatures by artist Jed Gibbons, from the Chapel of Our Lady of the Ascension, St. Edmund’s Retreat, Mystic, CT.

Station One: Jesus is Condemned to Death
Beaten and weary, You are brought before a judge whose power is given to him only by You. The crowd is asked to choose and, even as You desire otherwise — yearning for the love of Your people — You know they will choose the creature over their Creator. “Barabbas” rings out and, with sad heart, You prepare for the grueling way of Calvary that started before Your birth.

Station Two: Jesus Takes Up His Cross
You accept the cross, knowing fully the agony to come. You take upon battered and bleeding shoulders the weight of all our sins. From dead wood You will bring the fruit of everlasting life. In Eden it was the living tree that brought death. Now, You turn our world upside down, as You show us the true way to life, through the dead wood, the suffering of the cross.

Station Three: Jesus Falls for the First Time
Soon after taking up the cross You fall. So early in the way You are on the ground; God, face down in the dust. The knowledge of the burden of carrying our weight becomes clearer. The nearly overwhelming impact of the hideous crush of sin, the evil pressing down, makes You stumble.

Station Four: Jesus Encounters His Mother
You meet Your Mother on the way. Seeing her brings relief and regret. For a mother to see her Son so wretched wrenches Your heart. What a pain to You to know her grief. She is helpless to save You, but is granted the power to relieve Your suffering merely by her presence. She supports You in Your way of the cross and shares in Your anguish. She is there in the intimacy of a meeting in which you are kept physically apart but are united in the Father’s mission.

Station Five: Simon of Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry His Cross
You allow Simon to assist You in carrying the cross and he is reluctant, initially refusing. How foolish of him and us to reject Your invitation to share in Your redemptive plan! Do we not know what a gift You are giving in the cross? In the cross lies our salvation and our unity. In the cross we are never alone. In the cross we are our brother’s keeper, helping each other and making reparation for the wrongs we have inflicted.

Station Six: Jesus Greets Veronica
Veronica sees Your need and offers her consolation. In such a little and tender way she reflects Your kindness and Your courage. Stepping out from the crowd, she risks jeers and public contempt and thereby obtains the only approval that counts. In wiping Your face she serves a simple need, clearing Your sight from the dripping blood and dirt as the flies gather. From this small act comes the greatest blessing. She is given Your image because she reflects You in her kindness. In helping you to see, she is given the perfect vision, the beatific image of the face of God. Touched by Your grace, and in union with You, her humanity is made holy.

Station Seven: Jesus Falls for the Second Time
Now all assistance is exhausted. There will be no more help for You, no further kindnesses to encounter on the way. You are bereft of consolations. From now on, until the triumph over the tomb, there is only the misery of loneliness. You fall in this loneliness, again overcome by the weight of evil, the physical and emotional wounds so insistently inflicted, even as you trudge with Your heavy burden.

Station Eight: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem
The women weep for You, whether in sincerity or in show. They do not realize that their own guilt and that of their children is more deserving of tears. It is they who are more grievously hurt than the innocent victim. While Your Body is wracked and deformed by pain, their piteous cries hide the deadly ugliness of sin-stained souls. It is this sin that kills You. We kill because we want to be God. But that is what You are offering us through Your Incarnation – a share in Your divinity!

Station Nine: Jesus Falls for the Third Time
Stamina utterly depleted, You fall a third time. Taunted mercilessly by temptations to turn away from Your mission, and weakened by the fatigue of constant pain, You once again stumble into the rocky dirt. Pathetic and broken, You bear the sneers and raucous insults and profanities of a blaspheming crowd that wants a worldly leader to confirm them in their own power. God in the dust? Ha!

Station Ten: Jesus is Stripped of His Garments
Men mock You in Your nakedness, thinking they are revealing how pitiful this God is. In fact, they are showing how God has exalted man by becoming man – bare in his manhood. By seeking to reveal You as mere man, we fail to realize that in Your very manhood lies our divinization. In Your incarnation You have raised us to Yourself.

Station Eleven: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
Wounded, mangled, made to bleed, You consent to the violent attack of the hammer. Patient in Your agony, You allow the cruel penetration of Your Body to make us one with You. You give Bread of life to fill us as You receive our nails. From Your love You bleed. For love of us, for love of the Father, the Child bleeds for the children. Brother bleeds for the brother who is killing Him. You become one with the cross, absorbing completely the burden of sin, allowing it to permeate You – all the rage and loneliness and anxiety and despair and hatred and lust and greed and incessant lies of all mankind through all the ages, sinking into You, filling You up. You are bombarded with poison and still You love.

Station Twelve: Jesus Dies
You hang on a cross with but a few faithful at Your feet. Your Mother is there as her Son drips to death for His human creatures. You ask for a small compassion and are given gall. Even captured on a cross and expiring from the torture, there is no mercy for You, yet You plead for mercy for us. You even give us the Mother You chose for Yourself, impressing upon us our relatedness. Still Your family torments You. And in Your passion, without solace, alone in the midst of the crowd, cut off even from Your Mother and the beloved disciple, You are man utterly alone. Defiled even as You die, cursed and ignored with no possibility of human comfort, You cry from the cross Your agony. At this moment, filled with all the despair of every human heart, You tear any vestigial veil between man and God and plunge into the total hell of sin to purge it for us. It is the final acceptance of death. And then You die in trust that the Father will receive You.

Station Thirteen: Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross
Your Body is given to Your Mother. In her womb You were welcomed into human life. Now You go to her in death. Your Mother is entrusted with the Body of Christ. She cleans it in love and wipes away the signs of the evil inflicted upon it. So it is with us. Your Mother welcomes us into her arms and heals and soothes through Your grace. She is the Mother of the Church, the Mother who accepts the mangled, the bereft, the brokenhearted, even as condemnation is heaped upon her. She takes into her embrace a Body that is accused of irreverence, of presumption, even criminality, and protects it with maternal care.

Station Fourteen: Jesus is Laid in the Tomb
Your Body is laid in a tomb, presumed vanquished, but You cannot be contained. You allow Yourself to be placed in a tomb by us. We voluntarily seek the tomb by turning away from You. To be separated from You is to consign ourselves to death. But we see it differently. We think we can place You far away, outside ourselves, in a tomb, while we live. But the only life is in You. In casting You away we give ourselves to death. We seal our hearts against You and make of ourselves the tomb. How often we do this in receiving the Eucharist, taking You into a tomb we do not open to You and treating You as dead? How often do we put the Body of Christ into a tomb, saying it serves no purpose for us, that we can live without it? We turn away from Your Church, but she will prevail in Your Resurrection. She emerges from every apparent tomb. And in our death to self the Body of Your Church is continually renewed.

Station Fifteen: Resurrection

Rejoice, heavenly powers! Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God’s throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!

Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,
radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!

Rejoice, O Mother Church! Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!
Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God’s people!

“We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.”