REST WELL PAPA

Sitting in my car one afternoon in the fall in Wickenburg, Arizona I hit a beautiful brick wall.  It was not the physical one but a stopping point of limiting my lens anymore for an old institution.  The book was written by a “new kid on the block” relatively for me named Joseph Ratzinger.  The world knew him better by that day as Pope Benedict XVI.  

I was received into full communion with the Catholic Church months later in 2013.   

Within weeks of soaking in more of the heart and mind of the Church I woke up one morning to see a surreal headline that he was the first pope to resign in over 600 years.   This was confusing but yet with a beauty in the act and reasons in the decision.  

Years later having read more of his books and his papal encyclicals I am in awe of his humility as much as his intelligence and wisdom.  He wrote dozens of books but perhaps his greatest lesson was in saying to the Body of Christ and the world “It is not about me.”  

Though I cannot be sure if this was the quote that was the final straw in my discernment of the Catholic Church, this was at least the theme in the book I was reading at that time.  

And so we return to the “two trumpets” of the Bible with which we started, to the paradox that we can say of Christ both: “You are the fairest of all men”, and: “He had no beauty . . . his appearance was so marred.” In the Passion of Christ the marvelous Greek aesthetic, with its tentative contact with the divine (which nevertheless remains ineffable), has not been abolished but rather transcended. The experience of the beautiful has received a new depth and a new realism. The One who is beauty itself let himself be struck in the face, spat upon, crowned with thorns—the Shroud of Turin can help us realize this in a moving way. Yet precisely in this Face that is so disfigured, there appears the genuine, the ultimate beauty: the beauty of love that goes “to the very end” and thus proves to be mightier than falsehood and violence. Whoever has perceived this beauty knows that truth after all, and not falsehood, is the ultimate authority of the world. It is not the lie that is “true”; rather, it is the truth. It is, so to speak, a new trick of falsehood to present itself as such and to say to us: Over and above me there is nothing in the long run. Stop seeking the truth or even loving it; you are on the wrong track. The icon of the crucified Christ sets us free from this deception that is so overwhelming today. Of course it presupposes that we allow ourselves to be wounded with him and to trust in the Love that can risk setting aside his external beauty in order to proclaim, in this very way, the truth of beauty (Cdl. Joseph Ratzinger, On The Way to Jesus Christ).  

Now I am coming up on ten years as a Catholic and now an Aspirant to become a deacon reflecting on that attitude.  I hope to be of service in formation and, if God wills, as a deacon.  

Though he was Pope Emeritus when he died, there will be some talk about church politics.  Some of it will be needed but much not.  My hope going forward for the Church is that we learn from his love for Jesus, the Church, the Bible and ecumenism with our fellow Christians (e.g. Catholic- Lutheran Accord of 1999).  I also hope that the body of his written work is recognized on a fast-track for him to be canonized and even designated a doctor of the church.  Less than 30 people in 2,000 years with that designation. 

May we all hear the call of Christ and be “doctors” who speak in our spheres to the “truth of beauty” we find in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Pope Benedict XVI – — Requiem In Pacem.  

OUR FATHER

Imagine being an abused and then delinquent child with authority issues and various trauma from adults. Imagine having your day in juvenile court with an anxiety feeling like butterflies in your stomach.  It is Judgment Day after all.  Then you find out that this stranger in a black robe with a gavel wants to declare you not guilty, adopt you and take you home. You may see an offer of acceptance but you may not find it acceptable.   

Acquittal from conviction is one thing, to reside with one with the power and authority is another.  Such is the struggle for those looking from the outside, and in some ignorance from the inside, of Christianity. One may be fine with God the Son but God the Father is another thing.   

Thus it is important to know God as Father the way Jesus talked to him.  Through a lens of the gospels, we see dimensions of God the Father and what it means to be adopted. We see this in how Christ spoke of him as holy, righteous, familiar and familiarity.    

God the Father is holy but not punitive.  Holy means set apart but with God there was no one above him for that.  The nature of the Blessed Trinity is ipsemm esse, or, sheer act of being. His identity transcends classification of species, object or time. Thus with God nothing is impossible. 

Jesus spoke about this holiness as beneficial in intentionality.  “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11b).   God in the same holiness told Moses to say “I AM sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14b) in saving his chosen people of his day.  So is his faithfulness to protect his children born in the Spirit in love and unity. 

The unifying point has deep ties to the holiness of God like one lost in the woods relies on the North Star: it is orienting and stabilizing as this Father never leaves. Being children of the Father we have and eternal stability in him.   

Next, we read Jesus prayed to God as Righteous Father.  “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me” (John 17:25).   

At first glance, “Righteous Father” regarding God could be seen as a contradiction ot terms.  We can see that in the definition of righteous.  Strongs Concordance notes it is, “used of him whose way of thinking, feeling, and acting is wholly conformed to the will of God, and who therefore needs no rectification in the heart or life” (G1342, IAiii).  

This fits from a Christian point of view.  Jesus allowed himself to be examined in the temple when he taught in Passion Week.  It was fitting they examined him since he was the Lamb of God.  He was mocked, yet prophetically, in that context when he was on the cross.  True holiness can be tested and found blameless. 

Likewise, Jesus was able to say in the Garden of Gethsemane that the Father was blameless.  He points to the right standing or blamelessness to be evident for first in the Father and then the Son who always points back to the Father.  

Then there is the matter of “Abba, Father.”  It is a term of endearment so deep that in the New Testament, though written in Greek, the text uses Aramaic emphasizing familiarity.  It shows an affective state of childlike trust, vulnerability and receptivity.  Jesus spoke this way to God the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane.  “He said, ‘Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.’ “ (Mark 14:36).  

A wrong assumption could be that this is familiarity for the Son of God exclusive to him; but further verses shows us different.  Paul, who had before had misunderstood grace before later saw the “Abba” intimacy and writes it that way.  One could say he wrote with a Grace accent.  “And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ “ (Galatians 4:6).  

Paul wrote this way in part to supersede assumptions of servile fear. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ “ (Romans 8:15).  

John the apostle in a way went further in describing God the Father to us.  

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure (1 John 3:1-3).

John writes about the past mysterious work of adoption but in the context of sacrifice of Christ on the cross who came in flesh.  Then he pivots to the reality of what we are in the present.  

Does a Christian’s DNA change at conversion?  No.  But a metaphysical reality in being born again likewise means that in our adoption.  Just because conversion and adoption in Christ do not have CGI-like effects does not mean the reality does not happen. John points to how things will be revealed someday when the physical reality matches the metaphysical reality.  

So how do we “purify ourselves?”  We receive the love of the Father and respond to him as holy, trustworthy and intimate in a rightly ordered way.  It can go something like “Our Father, who is in heaven…..”   

I am a child of God the Father. He is holy, trustworthy and infinitely accessible.  

FOUR WALLS, ONE FREEDOM

I read once about the cosmopolitan playboy turned priest that the day he entered the monastery was entering the “four walls of my new freedom” (Thomas Merton, The Seven Story Mountain). When we think of religious structure one may see great freedom or one may see nominal freedom and detrimental walls.

There are very different views on formal prayer. For religiously faithful, it is rhythmic educating towards the good, true and beautiful.  Secular humanists may see it as stifling and predictable.  

I come from an experience of the whole spectrum on what is called the Our Father or The Lord’s Prayer.  I know the views as an outsider and insider on that prayer. As a clinical social worker, one would assume I “evolved” from insider to outsider.  

But that assumption would be incorrect.  

I was born and raised by parents who were nominal at best on any intentional Christianity.  In the rare occasions I went to church I had intolerable boredom.  Due to my older siblings, a cousin and some friends I began an active Christian life when I was 14.  In evangelical, charismatic Christianity the preferred term is The Lord’s Prayer and rare in groups. “Let the spirit flow” was the sentiment.  Decades passed with exposure to various Christian denominations but little that were of the high church liturgical variety who pray this regularly.   

Then my relationship with this prayer, taught by Jesus himself, changed in context for me at 42.  It was a few months after my family and I moved out of state that I began to ponder the Our Father backwards, forwards and sideways. “What does it mean?” I thought.  My ponderings trickled in my conscience to the point my prayer bubbled up adding “Lord, what does it mean about the kingdom coming? I felt should have seen it more fully by now but something is missing.”  

After a few months of that I stumbled on persuasive Catholic material which gave me more context of the Our Father.  This context opened up prayerful, historical, scriptural and sacramental lenses.  I entered the Church early the next year.  From then and for the rest of my life I will be going to mass where the Our Father comes shortly before the Eucharist.  In the Our Father we in the mass pray this earnestly desiring to receive all of God’s grace.  

But that is not the end of it.  Recently I have been praying the second highest liturgy only to the mass called Liturgy of the Hours.  Catholics can pray this solo or in groups.  This has become a staple in my life especially because I may make a promise in four years in a deacon ordination in the Catholic Church to pray it twice a day.      

In my formation toward the diaconate I pray it twice a day including the Our Father. The graces that flow from that have been grounding me more in the love of the Blessed Trinity. 

Case in point the other day. When I was in the confessional a deeper sorrow for my sins welled up in my heart yet in the absolution I sensed a grace on me more than any other time I had gone into confession.  What I used to find stifling I now see as liberating.  The Our Father has been like a constant and key companion in this journey. 

But the closest and central lens for this prayer is in Christ himself.  Without Christ, the Our Father is only a spiritual poem.  Christ gives context by being God Incarnate as God the Son in how “the Word became flesh and dwelt [tabernacled] among us” (John 1:14).  The Incarnation is a founding context for the Our Father and complete with the Atonement and Resurrection.  

It is in that sense Christ gives us the gospel by which we pray the Our Father.  “But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God’ “(John 20:17b).   Before the Cross, Christ taught the Our Father with knowing God as Father being a lofty concept.  After the Cross, it is a living reality. It is because of Jesus “who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification” (Romans 4:25).     

The closeness of God the Father in the words and work of Christ can be a context of healing to those who have father-wounds. “Father” may be a scary term to those with wounds by earthly fathers. They reflexively may say they like Jesus but not Father (nor the Holy Spirit also).   

Ponder the words of Christ who countered this assumption. He said at the Last Supper, ^“Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’ (John 14:9)?” Praying to God the Father with the Our Father is ideally Christ praying to the Father in us and through us by the Spirit.  

We can pray to God boldly even through dryness.  We can pray with expectation drawing from the deposit of the faith knowing more fully who the Father is.  Then we contemplate who we are as his children more fully.  

So what is stopping us?  If you read this as a Christian you are a breath of faith away from praying the Our Father.  If you are not a Christian, you are a breath of faith away from stepping into the transcendent adoption in Christ.  So be humble. Be trusting.  

“I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father but through me” (John 14:6).