Holding hands

Father asked us why we joined across the aisles holding hands.
Some gave response, “T’ show we are one community of believers.”
“To show unity in prayer.”
He observed that this tradition of ours was started in the seventies; it is nowhere in the mass. Fine as it may be, it actually disrupts the first part of the prayer. As we set things down and spread out seeking hands to hold, maybe forcing in some recalcitrants, we lose a beautiful part of this pivotal prayer in the mass. “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
By the time we say “Give us” we are back into the prayer.

I wonder, is this part of our problem in Christianity today? We are so focused on the doings and the hand-holding. Do we forget to stand still in the presence of Our Father to seek his will? Do we forget that God Our Father has a transcendent will that is not encompassed by our missions, our desires and comforts? Do we forget Our Father because we are so caught up with our brothers and sisters?

"Do you still believe in one another?"

(Written Saturday, 25 of November)

So, I hadn't known that there was going to be mass this morning, but it is the 25 of November, St. Catherine of Alexandria's feast day. This is significant because I am in St. Catherine's (of Alexandria, not Sienna) parish.

I arrived during the homily about the time Father Michael was asking what gave St. Catherine the courage to confront philosophers and teachers of her day. The answer was her faith in God. He reminded us of the importance of being built in Jesus Christ as our foundation. Reminded us from St. Paul's epistles that in Christ we can do anything, in the context of living faithfully and confronting trials and vexations. He also brought in the early reading from Maccabees I which told of Antiochus sorrowful recognition that much of the ill that had befallen him was because his persecution of God's people, the Jews. Father Michael pointed out that it did not say he repented. When we repent, there is a turning away from past sin or error to something else. There is a change in direction. We can be sorry all our lives, but to repent takes more. He reminded us of the abundant grace God gives in the sacrament of confession to not continue in sin and even "to avoid the near occasion of sin." 

God is so gracious. He even includes us in his work, like a gracious father who lets untrained and often clumsy little ones help on important tasks so that they can learn and grow and work alongside their father.

Father also reminded us during the course of the mass of a pious tradition concerning St. Catherine, that she would always come to the aid of those who asked. He also reminded us that, being under her specific patronage, we were at the top of the list. He encouraged us to take stuff to her for her to pray for us in our daily lives and in stuff dealing with the parish. She will intercede. The saints who have gone on before, that great cloud of witnesses, are eager to help and encourage us in the faith. This is what it means to believe in "the communion of saints."

When I got back out to the car, the cd, unbidden began to play "Hey, brother," and I opened my mouth in wonder at how appropriate to thinking of the communion of the saints. I could see them in the instrumental bridges, great martyrs and holy servants of God, preaching the word, being thrown to lions, chained, St. Jeremiah being left in that well, St. Joan with her banner leading the soldiers, St. Joan being burned at the stake, St. Stephen seeing the heavens open and "one like the son of man seated at the right hand of God, Stephen being stoned, St. Catherine confronting the philosophers, and many others trekking through wildernesses, witnessing miracles. I almost cried at, "What if I'm far from home?

Oh, brother, I will hear you call.

What if I lose it all?

Oh, sister, I will help you out."

Isn't that what the saints would say? "Let me pray for you. If you are far from home, brother, God still is near; call. If you lose everything, are you still in Jesus? Let me pray for you, that if you find nothing else, you find yourself in him."

"And if the sky comes falling down, for you there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do."

On the way....

Here goes.

When I was young, back up when we went to Kingston Christian Church, possibly when we lived in Kingston, for all I know, I was not allowed to receive communion. I was not aware of this until another little girl was sitting with our family and took the wafer and cup as the plates passed by. I wanted to know why I could not. My mother explained to me the seriousness of what these elements were; they represented Jesus, God who died to take away our sins. I do not remember a time when I had not a perfectionist streak in me. I saw that I needed Jesus to be perfect. I saw that his death was very serious and that the wafer and the cup were connected to this. Whatever I grasped I grasped that Jesus loves me and this was part of how he showed his love. I wanted it.

I accepted Christ at a young age and was baptized some years later in Tennessee. I realized as time went on that I was not yet perfect. At times I rebelled against what I knew, in my own quiet way. I realized that with knowledge comes responsibility and wished I did not know as much about the Bible; maybe then I would not have to be good. Though, I did want to do what was right, even when it meant I felt cheated when others ate out of the candy jar without permission. Still, I did want to please God, because God loves me.

I struggled at times with feeling like a failure; it can be so difficult to forgive people, it could be so hard to keep my mind and heart pure, especially when I have such a vivid and curious imagination.

I realized at one point, when I was still in high-school, that my “mind drifts” were not a good idea. Here is the premise behind that term: I would let my mind drift into whatever stories it happened upon, whatever characters showed up. Mostly the stories were adventure stories like, Grey Wolf being a sort of Robin Hood-like female character, without the band of merry men—just a loose association of honorable, well, brigands; or Charles the scorned son, rejected by his mother and family, who nonetheless went on be the honorable one who saves lives and stuff; or the Island Princess, on a cold island in the north Atlantic, who must learn much in England before returning to her homeland to wrest it from the English; and on and on I could go. If that was all, not necessarily bad, but what about the blind servant who was raped? Later I changed it to have her rescued, but still it was not good. The verse about taking every thought captive convicted me. I knew that I needed to not allow my mind to live into each story that came along; some must be rejected.

Along the way, especially after getting into college, I learned that I really needed to avoid movies and books with sexual content. The problem was not that I would replay those exact images, it was that it fueled the side of the imagination that led me accidentally into a bad mental sexuality that included masturbation. It did not happen all at once, took a few years, really, and even then there were the words that I knew to be wrong, but I heard them so often that they became excuses--”natural”, “healthy”, “normal”. I heard them in movies and tv shows, sometimes not explicitly but out of the way in which the subject was treated. When I first heard the word “masturbate”, it shocked. I did not know what it meant, could guess, but did not want to know.

Why would I tell all that? Because, it plays a role in a particular story of spiritual growth. See, it got to this point where I would pretty much monthly either struggle against or surrender to sexual imaginings of characters who were only in my mind, but the imaginings affected my body—call it mental porn. It was frustrating, because I knew it felt good temporarily, was wrong, and kept coming back. I would pray, on better days. Sometimes I would sing or read the Bible or just try to focus on something else. I would think I had victory, and the next month the mental porn was back. (I did not notice the monthly cycle of it immediately). 

In the mean time, some years back I had the thought that I could write history with more sympathy for the Catholics then what I grew up on. As someone who was not Catholic, maybe people would pay more attention, give it more credit. At another point I described myself to our Cumberland Presbyterian Chaplain at college as a “Catholic-leaning Cumberland Presbyterian.” I often during those years would describe myself as Christian “officially Cumberland Presbyterian”. A few years before that, my family had joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. I still remember them telling me what they were doing and inviting me to go up with them to join. I asked what they believed and was given the Confession of Faith. I did not see anything stand out as particularly wrong, and I did see the importance of the church as a body, being dependent on one another, helping one another, holding each other accountable. My family was going, so would I.

I appreciated the more liturgical balance of the service, though I thought it more businesslike than what I remembered of the mass. I enjoyed teaching in Sunday school or going to Sunday school before the main service. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church has a missionary focus that is energetic and admirable. When a new pastor came, and there was greater emphasis on the CP identity, he led a class on the Confession of Faith. It was very helpful and interesting; the main thing I remember explicitly is the conversation on infant baptism.

Somewhere during that time frame, I got to teach world history, much to my delight. I ordered a few books off a list I made for my students to read some of the philosophical works of the past. Among these was Apologia pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman. I began reading it. It is a very interesting book, but I set it aside because he might have persuaded me to become Catholic. That was an uncomfortable thought, not because I did not like Catholics or Catholicism nor because I did like them, but rather because I was teaching at a school where the history books are anti-Catholic and I knew my mother would not like it and I was afraid of how people might react.

I knew where I was headed.

We receive this lovely, thoughtful magazine called First Things. Its premise is that religion matters a lot in the public square. In it, schools and conferences are advertised, but I do not tend to pay much note to those. I am more interested in reading the book reviews, the correspondence pages of continued conversations about past articles, or the articles about such things as truly looking at people, the Syro-Phoenician woman, or the “Back Page” with all its curiosity. There was this add, though, “Challenging the Secular Culture” and I thought that it might be good to go, as a teacher. Maybe I could learn something that I could pass on to equip my students to face the world with boldness. I asked advice, mostly of my father, and went up to Steubenville, Ohio’s Franciscan University.

It was lovely. It was invigorating; I enjoyed listening and taking notes, breathing in the cool air and occasionally talking to people.

I went to mass on Saturday, because I would be traveling on Sunday and wanted to go to church. It was a large, not particularly attractive building from the outside. They had a band to the left of altar down along the wall. That was odd to me, as last time I had been to mass with a choir or band of some sort they played in the back in a choir loft. But when we celebrated the liturgy of the Eucharist, I wept. It did not matter that I stayed back in my pew kneeling and praying and trying to not be in people’s way. I knew it was more important to be here where the body and blood of Jesus were. 

I had been studying John’s gospel. It took me a while, but I had the Ignatius Study Bible of John, with its questions in the back and a Dallas Theological Seminary online course. It was really amazing. One of the things that was very clear to me, is that when Jesus said that he would give us his own flesh and blood, he meant it. Many disciples left. I did not want to leave.

I also did not want to leave. I did not want to leave off following Jesus, but I did not want to leave the comfort of where I was. I had felt the need to stop some of my roles at Liberty, because I did not believe what the Cumberland Church teaches on Communion and on what were the books of the Bible. While studying John, running into troublesome passages, I began restudying the Confession alongside What we Believe by which was written to explain Cumberland Presbyterian beliefs. I could see their scriptural reasoning behind revising the Westminster Confession, but I was not readily able, through internet digging, to find out why the subsequent revisions which continued to subtract from and soften the Confession of Faith. It was bothersome. I do not know how I found Church Militant and Catholic Answers on YouTube, but I did listen to them. I also picked up Responding from the Scriptures with Catholics by Ron Rhodes from a Goodwill. I figured I wanted to hear both sides.

Here is what it came down to: I cannot hope to understand every passage of scripture in every possible theologically correct way. I cannot rely on my reason alone, but I do see Jesus plainly starting his Church with Peter as recorded in Matthew--”You are Peter (Rock) and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” I do see that Jesus body and blood are present in the Eucharist just as he says it is as recorded in John. If the gates of hell did not prevail against the Church, it is still present and it is the one called Catholic. I wanted to receive the body and the blood of Christ that he tells us, gives us eternal life, and to eat and drink in memory of him. I had to become a Catholic.

When I returned home, I started to go to Saturday vigil masses from time to time. I asked my father about joining the Catholic Church. He said he would rejoice. I asked my mother; she said I needed to follow God wherever that led me. I continued to attend Liberty with my family, but also became more regular in my attendance to mass.

Just before October, it was announced that October was the month of the Rosary. Now, I knew a little about the Rosary already. There is this girl in a story who is Catholic. Her mother died and she goes to live with her father she has not known and his family. It is very much a struggle, but she prays the Rosary pretty regularly, so I had to look up the prayers. It was a Monday in the story, which means one is to reflect on the Joyful Mysteries—how wonderful!--remembering the announcement to Mary, her visit with Elizabeth, the birth of Jesus, his presentation in the temple, and his being found in the temple. Joy! That was what my girl needed. So I saved a pile of prayers and continued typing. Well, now, here I am however long after that all happened hearing that October is the month of the Rosary. I might take another look at those prayers and stuff, but then a lady at St. Catherine’s gave me a Rosary. During October, most days, I prayed the Rosary in the evenings. After October, I was not as diligent. It was also in or around October, that I began to go to RCIA—Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults—a class for adults who are interested in the Catholic faith. It was not the most brilliant class, but some of the videos were interesting and educational. I was given a slim volume on Catholic teaching, which I sometimes read alongside the Confession of Faith. It was deeper and more particular about doctrine.

A couple months passed, and it occurred to me that I had not struggled with mental porn since before October. I think I was reminded by a fleeting temptation that was so easily brushed aside with prayer. I was so happy; God had used meditating on the gospel through the Rosary, he answered our prayers, and protected me. I am grateful for Mary’s, and Joan’s and Jeremiah’s, intercession; and mostly I am grateful for the great work of Jesus.

Easter of 2017, I was confirmed in the Catholic Church. It is more important to me than my graduations past.

I do not know everything; I know I am still not perfect; but I do know that God is still working with me. I will still face temptations, but I know that God is cleansing me of all unrighteousness and that I do not fight alone. I do not like the division between me and people that I still love that has happened as I have continued to follow Jesus, but I still hope for that time when the whole Church will be united under Christ and the world will know that we are Christians by our love.

An unfinished love story

Let me tell you a story.

There was a man who loved a homeless woman. She said she loved him back and they were married. They shared everything. One day, though, the woman decided to move. She liked the work the man had been doing and enjoyed being a part of it, but she decided she would go open her own shop. She stopped being physically present with the man; she no longer shared with him everything. She took some of what had been given to her in her husband’s house with her and built her own house. She kept the name he had given her and still called him her lover, her husband.

She said she still loved him. When he would call, she would sometimes talk with him. They would sometimes talk about work. He would often ask how she was doing and remind her that his place was still her place. She would even occasionally call herself, usually when she needed to be bailed out of a problem or she had a question about work; and he would help. 

 

She said she still loved him. She could talk for some time about his voice, his looks, and that sort of thing, but the closest she got to allowing him to touch her was once a week. He invited her home many times. His door was always open to her; and he would also invite her out to supper. They would meet once a week to sit at the same table. Their eyes might meet, though she was often busy looking around or past him. They might touch fingertips, but that was all.

The woman would say how amazing it was to be his wife and talk about how much she loved him. She would sometimes thank him for the time he rescued her. She would talk about how amazing things were now, and he would listen. He would try to tell her of how much he loved her, but, while she was sure she would be home someday, now was not the time. She might cry about some grievance from the week, but when he would reach out to hold her, she would turn away. She might even complain that he had not been there. 

 

He still leaves his doors open and prays for her return. He calls her to remind her that he loves her. He still goes out to rescue her and take care of problems that arise when she calls, and sometimes when she does not. He still loves her.

She still calls herself by his name that she had taken on when they were first married. She still talks about how amazing he is. She does not accept his body. She rejects his kisses. She insists on seeking her own path. Does she still love him?

Communion....Eucharist

What is it? When fellow believers come together to eat that bit of bread or wafer, to drink that bit of grape juice or wine, what do we believe about it?

Some believe in Transubstantiation, the Catholic Church in particular teaches this doctrine. What does that mean? Well, simply put it means that the bread and the wine become the body and blood of Jesus and only the appearance of bread and wine remain.

Some, particularly Lutherans, believe in Consubstantiation. This is similar to Transubstantiation in that this doctrine holds that the wine and bread become the blood and body of Jesus, but dissimilar in that it teaches that the bread and wine are still also bread and wine.

Others believe in the bread and wine/grape juice as only symbolizing the body and blood of Jesus. In other words, while they may say “And Jesus took the bread, broke it, and offered it to them, saying, 'Take, eat; this is my body broken for you.'” They believe that those words are to be taken symbolically not literally. Jesus broke bread, and the bread was still bread―maybe with heightened spiritual significance, but still bread. A symbol, a memorial, but only truly bread.

What does Jesus say, though? Jesus says, “This is my body,...This is my blood...” Look it up―Matthew 26, Mark 14, Luke 22. Read also John 6 where Jesus says that unless we eat his flesh and drink his blood we have no part in him. He is actually quite insistent on that point. Some will say, “Read a bit further and he say that the ‘flesh availeth nothing’, so clearly he is not talking about his actual flesh.” Let us consider this in the context of this entire conversation and in the context of John's gospel. Go read John 6. 

Did you notice how Jesus makes sure that these disciples hear that they must eat his flesh? The conversation is very dramatic. They want bread from heaven, He says that the Father gives the true bread from heaven which is “that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Who does that? At that point, they want the bread, but then He says that He is the bread. They object to His claiming to come down from heaven, and He does not lay so much stress on that as that He is the bread of life, the living bread and that those who eat this bread will live forever, “and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” Now they are even more disturbed. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (Do people, even those who are called Christian, still ask this question?) But Jesus does not let up. His response: “I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day.” When “many of his followers” start complaining to each other and objecting to His words is when He says: “Does this upset you?” (He offers no comforting, “it’s a symbol, guys,”) “What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” And many leave. Peter and the other twelve stay, and apparently also Matthias and Joseph Barsabbas, but many disciples leave after that. 

 

So what does that phrase about the flesh mean? Does it mean that really, Jesus did not mean what He said earlier? Or that we have to understand Him as saying that His body as bread is only in a spiritual sense, as some would have it? Or is it perhaps more straightforward than that? Perhaps they are the ones reasoning according to the flesh when Jesus’ words are actually true, spirit and life.

Here are some other times that Jesus speaks of the flesh in a similar way.

Read Matthew 16. “Flesh and blood” did not reveal who Jesus was, they would not have known, but “my Father which is in heaven” did.

Read John 1. While you are at it, just read the whole book of John. He speaks of those born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” You can see a continuation of this theme in John 3—do you remember it? “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

The flesh of man “profiteth nothing”, the flesh of the Son of Man is eternal life for us. This is revealed to us not by “fleshly” reasoning, but by revelation from God as given in the gospels. Next time when you hear those words, “This is my body, broken for you. And this is my blood, the blood of the new covenant, shed for you” do not ignore them. Give thanks to God for His miracle of love, that He gives us in the flesh His body and blood to be our spiritual food and drink. And He will raise us up at the last day.