St Edmund Campion

Pray for us

Let me share with you one of my guilty pleasures ...

... Edmund Campion by Evelyn Waugh.

The Pope, AIDS and Condoms

Like many, I was rather saddened that the whole condom debate, and media furore, which rather overshadowed HH Pope Benedict's trip to Africa. I have been mulling over the issues, comments and reports and just today came across this wonderful piece by Michael Czerny SJ. I'm particularly impressed that he writes out of personal experience as well as offering insightful views of those actually affected in sub-Saharan Africa. Not, like me, those with Western views and experience of the issues involved. He concludes:

The Holy Father concludes by answering again the journalist’s allegation of ‘unrealistic and ineffective?’: ‘It seems to me that this is the proper response, and the Church does this, thereby offering an enormous and important contribution. We thank all who do so.’

According to my experience, most Africans, Catholic or not, agree. To them, what the Holy Father said is profound and true. He is reiterating what they have been experiencing for years and what they continue to expect. They too thank those who implement the Church’s strategy.

Even if we don't accept his experience and knowledge of the subject, then we can listen to the voice of the Kenyan Bishops, who said, in 2006:

Even if HIV did not make pre-marital sex, fornication, adultery, abuse of minors and rape so terribly dangerous, they would still be wrong and always have been. It is not the risk of HIV or the sufferings of AIDS, which make sexual licence immoral; these are violations of the Sixth and Ninth Commandments which are sinful, and today in Kenya surely the worst of their many destructive consequences is HIV and AIDS. The Church does not teach a different sexual morality, when or where AIDS poses no danger. But this teaching is not easy for ‘the world’ including the media to understand, much less accept.

Excellent reading. Highly recommended.

Michael Czerny SJ is Director of the African Jesuit AIDS Network (AJAN)

Liturgy and Spirituality

Yesterday, I came across this post on a young Jesuit novice's blog. Have a read for yourself. I hope it gives you food for thought. Certainly, it's changed my views on what I'm doing in the liturgy. Go visit The City and The World, too, by Joe Koczera, SJ in the Bronx, NY.

As I expressed hopes of doing in an earlier post, I'd like to reflect a bit on a lecture that I heard Father Robert F. Taft, S.J. give last week at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary. As is often the case with academic lectures, some of the most insightful and provocative things that Father Taft had to say came in his answers to questions posed after his talk rather than in the text that he had prepared for the occasion. To a question on the relationship between liturgy and spirituality, Father Taft had this to say:

Basically, the main problem of all liturgical theology is how do we justify the claims that we make for Christian liturgy? How can we say in the churches, the apostolic churches that have a high Christology – my Christology is so high it’d give you a nosebleed – a high Christology, in other words, which believes that Jesus Christ is the eternal Word of God who became incarnate, as in the teaching of the ecumenical councils, that he preexisted before all time, and that Jesus Christ is the main protagonist, as head of his body, of our liturgical services – and that’s what gives them the reality that we assign to them.

In other words, that we say that it is Christ acting through the indwelling of his spirit in the Church who is the main protagonist of the liturgy. It’s not the Church that does it, separate from Christ. Liturgical celebrations are celebrations of the entire body of Christ, and the main celebrant of the liturgy, so to speak, is Christ himself. But the point of liturgy is that we are supposed to become what we celebrate. The purpose of the Eucharist isn’t to change bread and wine into Jesus Christ, it’s to change you and me into Jesus Christ – that’s what it’s all about. We are supposed to become the word of comfort and forgiveness, we are supposed to become the bread of life for the world, we are supposed to become the healing oil – and by 'we,' I don’t mean just the ordained, [but] all Christians. So there’s no possibility of separating liturgy and spirituality.

Liturgy is simply the mirror of what we are supposed to be, so that when we leave the liturgical assembly, we are supposed to go out and be what it is that we celebrate. That’s why St. Paul never once uses sacral terminology, like 'sacrifice,' 'offering,' 'liturgy,' 'priesthood' and so forth for anything except Christian life in Christ. What we do in church is simply the initiation into, and the feeding, and the restoration, if it’s lost by sin, and the intensification through preaching and the sacraments of what we’re supposed to be. If we don’t become it, we might as well stay in bed on Sunday morning, because what we’re doing is just a comedy.

So liturgy and spirituality are one – they can’t be separated, can’t be separated, or if they are separated, then we have, we have sucked all of the meaning out of what the liturgy is supposed to be. So the purpose of liturgy is that we become that which it exemplifies. Liturgy holds up to us the model of Christian life. What’s the model of Christian life? What do we put on the altar? We put on bread that was broken, and blood that was poured out, as signs of what we are supposed to be. When we put the bread on the altar and the chalice on the altar as the signs which will become through the invocation of the Holy Spirit the body that was broken for us and the blood that pours out to – we’re saying, 'I’m doing this because this is what I know I’m supposed to be.' And if that’s not why we’re doing it, why bother? What good is it?

Father Taft's trademark frankness may be off-putting to some readers, but I think it's hard to contest the truth of his central thesis. Christian liturgy should offer a model for Christian living - that is, what we celebrate in the liturgy ought to be a part of our daily lives and not an escape from it. Father Alexander Schmemann made this point when he described Christianity as "the end of religion" - the end, that is, of a false separation between the sacred and the secular that allows believers to treat worship as something alien and removed from ordinary experience.

To be sure, the transformation of the gifts of bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ is accomplished in the liturgy regardless of whether the communicants undergo the sort of inner transformation that Father Taft speaks of. Nonetheless, it is worth asking what meaning the Eucharist can truly have for those who receive communion but are not really open to receiving the grace that God offers to them through the sacrament. If your experience of the liturgy doesn't help to bring about a deeper transformation in your life, you may want to ask yourself why it does not.

More constructively, you may also wish to consider how you can make your experience of the liturgy more meaningful - not simply for you, but for those with whom you live. There is a lot more that could be said about this, but for now I'd simply like to give the readers of this blog an opportunity to sit with Father Taft's words and to reflect upon them as I have done over the past week. We would all be very fortunate, I think, if each time we took part in the liturgy we could truly say to ourselves, "I'm doing this because this is what I know I'm supposed to be." AMDG. (Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.)

Examen Prayer

As I mentioned in the previous post, we have enjoyed a Jesuit led day of recollection. During the day, one session included a detailed look at the Examen Prayer, THE Jesuit prayer. A book highly recommended on the subject is by Father Timothy M. Gallagher, O.M.V., who leads retreats on the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola. Fr Tim is also a much sought after spiritual director. The cheapest place I could find the book was with The Book Depository at £8.71 with free delivery. It is also available on amazon, as you would expect.

You may also want to look at the Oblates of the Virgin Mary website, from which I quote:

Inflamed with the spirit of an apostle, Venerable Bruno Lanteri founded the Congregation of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary in 1826 in northern Italy. He taught the Oblates to examine attentively the "signs of the times", to better guide men and women to find the answers they seek in Christ. The vision he lived is the vision we embrace.

Interesting that Ven. Bruno should be seeking the signs of the times given the recent anniversary of Bl. John XXIII calling the Second Vatican Council.

Enjoy the book!

Coldest Winter in Thirteen Years

Today, we have been led in a day of recollection by Fr Ron, a Jesuit at Manressa House, the novitiate in Birmingham, who prepared us for our forthcoming Lenten retreat. The Lenten retreat will also be led by the Jesuits, though, in fact, I will be on placement in Wolverhampton at this time.

As I looked out of the window during lunch, I noticed the first snows beginning to fall. Against the back drop of a lush green Lebanon cedar tree, the drifting snow was magnificent. The snow was falling in that wonderful wistful way in which it rises and falls with the air currents. The way that Hollywood film makers like to portray snow in those family Christmas movies. Immediately, I was transported back to my childhood. To the joy of playing outdoors, of dreams yet to be fulfilled and of wonder that such beauty could mask the whole world.

We read that it will be the coldest winter in thirteen years. With Britain set for heavy snowstorms coming in from Russia. The elderly, or those who are homeless, perhaps looked upon the same snow I was marvelling at, and were filled with fear and terror for the coming days. Certainly, I worry for my own family and those elderly people I know, and hope that they will be warm and safe.

I thank God for the wonder of creation; for the joy of seeing the snow, most especially when I am warm indoors, and I pray for the coming of the Kingdom, when we will care for the elderly and the homeless and those who suffer in the winter. What can I do to alleviate the suffering I see around me? How I can help bring the warmth of Christ's love to those who despair?