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| A child at the parish brought Baby Jesus a Birthday Card |
Latin: O Radix Jesse, qui stas in signum populorum, super quem
continebunt reges os suum, quem gentes deprecabuntur: veni ad liberandum
nos, jam noli tardare. |
| King David in Prayer by Pieter de Grebber |
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| The Infant of Prague |
By far the most interesting session at the recent Society of Biblical Literature Congress in San Francisco was one I wandered into by chance. I am always curious about what is going on in biblical archeology, so one afternoon I decided to skip the dozen or so sessions dedicated to Bakhtinian Decontextualization of Identity Construction in Persian Yehud (I had to tear myself away) and go hear about the excavations at a certain site called "Tall-el-Hammam." I had no idea what I was in for. After about five minutes into the session, I realized that the archeological team assigned to this dig was convinced that they had found the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah. After another half-hour, it seemed they had most of the participants convinced as well. The sites fit the geographical and temporal context into which Sodom and Gomorrah are placed in the biblical texts. The cities at the site were suddenly and completely wiped out in the Late Bronze Age, which makes a reasonably good fit with the biblical accounts of Abraham and Lot. The entire presentation was very convincing, but never once did they deal with the "elephant in the room": what caused the sites to be suddenly abandoned? As soon as the session was over, I was the first to raise my hand. "Did you find any arrow heads? Signs of invasion? What happened to them?" The lead archeologist paused for a moment. "I didn't want to go there," he said. Another pause. "I'm preparing material for publication." Pause. "All I want to say 'on camera' is, they appear to have been wiped out in a 'heat event'."I love it when scholars find out that things in the Bible might actually be *GASP* real! I look forward to hearing about the findings of the dig. More can be found at the their official site HERE.
A "heat event"!? What?!
"If you want to know more, I'll talk after the session off the record."
I wish I could divulge what he said to a small group of us clustered around the podium after the session was over, but it would break confidence. We'll have to wait for the official peer-reviewed publications.
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| Preaching of John the Baptist by Domenico Ghirlandaio |
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| Our Lady of Lourdes - "I am the Immaculate Conception" |
Two ingredients that have become central to the celebration of Jesus' birth are fat and sugar. I bemoan this not because I do not like fat and sugar, but because I really like foods that have lots of fat and sugar. Celebrating a feast historically included such things because the feast had been preceded by a period of fasting. However, Christmas now is preceded by Thanksgiving and a bunch of Christmas parties.Amen, Father. These gifts would certainly warm the heart of any priest.
With a priest shortage, I would like to recommend some things to get for your priest that do not involve sugar or fat. (These words were difficult to write, but I managed through the grace of the Holy Spirit!)
1. Your Neighbor - Bring your neighbor to Mass and introduce him/her to the priest. Growing numbers and a new soul tops even a cream pie.
2. Spiritual Bouquet - A note with a promise to say some prayers for your priests is a wonderful Christmas gift. Quite frankly, looking at our world, it is clear that some serious spiritual battles are going on. Your prayers are the invisible powerhouse that allows the priest to face the most difficult situations with joy. If your pastor is a bit grumpy, maybe it is because you don't pray for him enough.
3. Live Your Baptism - I pray each day for my parish not only that they will come to Mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist, but also that they will bring him to the world. As Jesus is the Great High Priest, this gift is probably more for him than just for your local pastor. Being a great mom/dad/son/daughter/friend/employee/ boss and being truly a person a faith is a challenge. But heroes and saints are people who face challenges. So stand up and tell the world that you're proud to be a follower of Jesus. Let people see how you love his Church. Say grace before meals, go to Mass on vacation. Take your kids to Confession. Defend the faith.
4. Encouraging and Praying for Vocations - We just opened Blessed John Paul II Seminary in the Archdiocese of Washington because we have good numbers of men following the Lord to discern a call to the priesthood. The movement of the Holy Spirit is clear, but we need to pray that young men will be preserved from things that block them from hearing Christ's call. This is where you come in. Encouragement of a young man and prayers for those already in the seminary MUST be part of your daily regimen. This is a great gift not only to the seminarians but to the whole archdiocese.
5. Food for the Poor - Write a note to the priest, "I gave your cookies to the hungry." Once his blood pressure lowers, which it probably needs to anyway, he will be very grateful. We need your generosity more then we need your chocolate chips. (Once again the Holy Spirit helped me pen that sentence.)
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| St. John the Baptist preaching repentance |
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| Open for Business! |
When Leila asked me to write about gay marriage, the first thing I found out was how little I know about it. If I wanted to say anything coherent, I'd have to have definite beliefs about some deeper, thornier subjects first: the relationship between civil and moral law, just for starters. Even if I were sure enough of myself to talk about those things, I doubt I could do it in a blog-sized article.So I'll have to do it in a more personal way. That might be better anyhow.I have heard a lot about how mean the Church is, and how bigoted, because she opposes gay marriage. How badly she misunderstands gay people, and how hostile she is towards us. My gut reaction to such things is: Are you freaking kidding me? Are we even talking about the same church?
When I go to Confession, I sometimes mention the fact that I'm gay, to give the priest some context. (And to spare him some confusion: Did you say 'locker room'? What were you doing in the women's...oh.) I've always gotten one of two responses: either compassion, encouragement, and admiration, because the celibate life is difficult and profoundly counter-cultural; or nothing at all, not even a ripple, as if I had confessed eating too much on Thanksgiving.Of the two responses, my ego prefers the first -- who doesn't like thinking of themselves as some kind of hero? -- but the second might make more sense. Being gay doesn't mean I'm special or extraordinary. It just means that my life is not always easy. (Surprise!) And as my friend J. said when I told him recently about my homosexuality, "I guess if it wasn't that, it would have been something else." Meaning that nobody lives without a burden of one kind or another. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel said: "The man who has not suffered, what can he possibly know, anyway?"
Where are all these bigoted Catholics I keep hearing about? When I told my family a year ago, not one of them responded with anything but love and understanding. Nobody acted like I had a disease. Nobody started treating me differently or looking at me funny. The same is true of every one of the Catholic friends that I've told. They love me for who I am.Actually, the only time I get shock or disgust or disbelief, the only time I've noticed people treating me differently after I tell them, is when I tell someone who supports the gay lifestyle. Celibacy?? You must be some kind of freak.
Hooray for tolerance of different viewpoints. I'm grateful to gay activists for some things -- making people people more aware of the prevalence of homosexuality, making homophobia less socially acceptable -- but they also make it more difficult for me to be understood, to be accepted for who I am and what I believe. If I want open-mindedness, acceptance, and understanding, I look to Catholics.Is it hard to be gay and Catholic? Yes, because like everybody, I sometimes want things that are not good for me. The Church doesn't let me have those things, not because she's mean, but because she's a good mother. If my son or daughter wanted to eat sand I'd tell them: that's not what eating is for; it won't nourish you; it will hurt you. Maybe my daughter has some kind of condition that makes her like sand better than food, but I still wouldn't let her eat it. Actually, if she was young or stubborn enough, I might not be able to reason with her -- I might just have to make a rule against eating sand. Even if she thought I was mean.
So the Church doesn't oppose gay marriage because it's wrong; she opposes it because it's impossible, just as impossible as living on sand. The Church believes, and I believe, in a universe that means something, and in a God who made the universe -- made men and women, designed sex and marriage from the ground up. In that universe, gay marriage doesn't make sense. It doesn't fit with the rest of the picture, and we're not about to throw out the rest of the picture.If you don't believe in these things, if you believe that men and women and sex and marriage are pretty much whatever we say they are, then okay: we don't have much left to talk about. That's not the world I live in.
So, yes, it's hard to be gay and Catholic -- it's hard to be anythingand Catholic -- because I don't always get to do what I want. Show me a religion where you always get to do what you want and I'll show you a pretty shabby, lazy religion. Something not worth living or dying for, or even getting up in the morning for. That might be the kind of world John Lennon wanted, but John Lennon was kind of an idiot.Would I trade in my Catholicism for a worldview where I get to marry a man? Would I trade in the Eucharist and the Mass and the rest of it? Being a Catholic means believing in a God who literally waits in the chapel for me, hoping I'll stop by just for ten minutes so he can pour out love and healing on my heart. Which is worth more -- all this, or getting to have sex with who I want? I wish everybody, straight or gay, had as beautiful a life as I have.
I know this isn't a satisfactory answer. I don't think any words could be. I try to make my life a satisfactory answer, to this question and to others: What are people for? What is love, and what does it look like? How do we get past our own selfishness so we can love God and our neighbors and ourselves? It's a work in progress.Beautiful.