Contemplation is not something Americans excel at; after all, we focus on working hard and playing hard. Contemplation seems like a waste of time because is nothing accomplished when we are done. In fact, contemplation is not even relaxing due to the mental strain and effort required. In Happiness and Contemplation, Josef Pieper challenges his readers to develop a life of contemplation if we wish to fulfill our human nature as rational animals. While contemplation may seem self-serving, nothing could be further from the truth. The Sisters of Charity attend mass and Eucharistic adoration before they serve the poorest of the poor. Without listening to Christ’s Word and experiencing his presence, our own efforts will not bear fruit. St. Thomas Aquinas summarized the Dominican tradition beautifully with this statement: "To contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation." Each week we gather as a faith community and contemplate God’s plan of salvation. We leave with a treasure to be shared with others. Pass on the fruits you received at mass by listening to the sorrowing, feeding the hungry, and visiting the sick. At mass, we receive many gifts and in turn, we become a gift to others.
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So often, we think that the Bible is a book yet we forget that the Bible is really a collection of books composed at different times and places. The context of the Psalms is different from the context of the Book of Revelation. Even the written form that we possess today is different from the oral traditions passed down from generation to generation. One of the largest issues in Scripture scholarship over the past hundred years is how to interpret Sacred Scripture. Some scholars suggest that we must look at the historical and cultural context surrounding the text in order to understand its meaning. Other scholars say that the form of writing takes precedence and gives clues as to how we should interpret the text.
I believe these are all valid concerns but I want to make three points. First, one modern school of interpretation says that Scripture can be reduced to several basic structures of meaning. What they are saying is that the parable of the Prodigal Son means X and X only. For instance, the parable means that God always forgives His children. This school neglects the fact that Scripture has a surplus of meaning. While certain interpretations are wrong, these inspired texts take on a life of their own and can provide hope to those facing diverse circumstances and so forth. This problem assumes great significance when applied to Christ. We might say that Jesus Christ is the messenger from God and this is completely true. A problem arises if we leave it at that; if Christ is only a messenger then once we have the message the messenger is disregarded as incidental. Secondly, since Scripture has a surplus of meaning then we must return to the texts say after day to seek deeper meaning. We can’t say that once we know the story by heart then we know the meaning. Every word, every detail has great significance and challenges us to wade deeper into the waters of God’s revelation. Lastly, the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard reminded his readers that they should read Scripture as they would a love letter. Kierkegaard said that if you receive a love letter but did not understand the complete letter you would fulfill those parts that you understood. He went on to say that if we don’t understand all of God’s revelation this does not excuse us from fulfilling those parts we do understand. Kierkegaard went on to say that Scripture is like a mirror rather than a statement of objective truth. It is a mirror because Scripture confronts us and asks us if we are guilty of sin rather than just presenting facts that have no relevance for us. As you have already experienced, I use a great deal of incense at the celebration of mass. Several people asked me why we use incense, so I hope to explain this practice. Like so many of our practices, the use of incense comes from the Jewish traditions. If you recall, God established various sacrifices and ordinances in the Old Testament. God commands Moses in Exodus 30: 1-10 to build an altar where incense is offered up to God. Other sacrifices such as lambs, bullocks, grain, and oil were sacrificed on a different altar as commanded by God. Furthermore, God commands Moses how to make incense in Exodus 30:34-38. Incense was commonly burnt at the Jewish temple and the clouds of smoke symbolized the presence of God. There are several images regarding incense in the New Testament but the most interesting is in Revelation (cf. Revelation 5:8, 8:3-5). Abbot Vonier explains, “The altar which figures so prominently in Revelation is not the altar of holocaust, but the altar of incense. In the Exodus, the children of Israel receive God’s command to fashion articles for the divine worship. The altar of incense and the altar of holocaust are different in style and purpose.” Vonier is saying that incense symbolizes the perfect form of worship in heaven which is adoration and praise. The sacrifices of the Old Testament were used to take away sin, to ask for God’s intercession, and to fulfill the responsibilities of the covenant but these are no longer necessary in heaven. Heavenly worship is adoration and praise as the saints look upon God and this is symbolized in the use of incense. Incense was not used among the early Christians; in fact, many Christians were martyred because they refused to offer incense to the pagan gods. It was not until the 400’s that Christians commonly used incense or at least this is assumed to be the case since there is a lack of references concerning incense in early Christian writings. This historical reconstruction may not be accurate since the liturgy was protected under secret lest pagans and unbelievers mock the catholic faith. At any rate, the use of incense became widespread due to the lack of hygiene among the crowds, the smell of the dead at funeral masses, and its symbolism of heaven since the church represents heaven on earth. The psalmist prays that his prayer may arise to God like incense (cf. Psalm 141:2) and at mass we pray that our prayers may arise like incense in God’s sight. St. Augustine expressed frustration as he tried to interpret Scripture. Certain fundamentalists believe Scripture is self-evident. According to them, all you have to do is read the Bible and follow the words as they are written. Scripture needs no interpretation according to this view. This fundamentalist view ignores difficulties found in Scripture itself; after all, Scripture was revealed by God to people at various times and places. In his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Augustine denies a fundamentalist reading regarding the days of creation and he reminds Christians to listen to the best science available.
Often Scripture uses metaphors to speak about God rather than providing a direct description of what God is. According to the medievals like St. Thomas Aquinas, God has no definition because definitions imply limitations; nothing can circumscribe the infinite God. So why does Scripture use metaphors? According to Aquinas,” For God provides for everything according to the capacity of its nature. Now it is natural to man to attain to intellectual truths through sensible objects, because all our knowledge originates from sense. Hence in Holy Writ, spiritual truths are fittingly taught under the likeness of material things.” None of us can directly see God in this life. We can have knowledge of God through revelation and by investigating God’s effects. Revelation uses concrete physical images to paint a picture of what God is like. The metaphors do not mean that God literally has a right hand or is a rock, but they attempt to put into finite human words the mystery of God’s being. Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate provides a defense of Christianity from the perspective of a nonbeliever. He illustrates the necessity to reason about the Christian faith, yet the Christian faith is irreducible to the reasons we have for believing its message. For instance, I believe that my wife is faithful to the promises she made in the sacrament of marriage. My reasons for believing this must be greater than the available evidence. While our faith is rational, our faith also transcends reason and that is the mystery thought cannot penetrate. Eagleton says, “In Robert Bolt’s play A Man for All Seasons, Thomas More advances a very Catholic defense of reason, declaring that man has been created by God to serve him ‘in wit and tangle of his mind.’ When a new version of the oath of allegiance to the king is produced, More eagerly asks his daughter what the exact wording is. ‘What does it matter?’ she replies impatiently, taking a stand on the ‘spirit’ or principle of the document. To which More himself replies in typically papist semantic-materialistic style: ‘An oath is made of words. I may be able to take it.’ Yet it is the same More who, when berated by his daughter for not seeing reason and submitting to the king, observes: ‘Well in the end it’s not a matter of reason. In the end it’s a matter of love.’ Reasons run out in the end. But the end is a long time coming” (p. 129-130). We must push ourselves to know our faith but in the end, there will always be more questions than answers. We can always say our faith is a mystery but that fails to give God thanks for the gift of intelligence bestowed upon us. The past few years saw a noticeable rise in ‘new atheists’ with people such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens writing books like The God Delusion and God is Not Great. Two Christian authors wrote important books that provide an alternative worldview to Dawkins and Hitchens. The Eastern Orthodox thinker David Bently Hart wrote Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. Hart is most famous for his column regarding the problem of evil in the Wall Street Journal after the tsunami of 2004 killed over 200,000 people. The column eventually was transformed into the book, The Doors of the Sea - Where was God in the Tsunami? God, Philosophy, Universities: A Selective History of the Catholic Philosophical Tradition is the other excellent book written by Alasdair MacIntyre which counters the ideas of modern atheism.
Recently, I read another book challenging the ‘new atheists’ but this book comes from a different perspective. Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate attacks the presuppositions of Dawkins and Hitchens, but Eagleton is not a religious believer. Despite him not believing in God, he thinks that Christian believers have more going for them than Dawkins and Hitchens recognize. Eagleton says, “We find ourselves, then, in a most curious situation. In a world in which theology is increasingly part of the problem, as Ditchkins” - Eagleton’s term for Dawkins and Hitchens - “rightly considers, it is also fostering the kind of critical reflection which might contribute to some of the answers. There are lessons which the secular left can learn from religion, for all its atrocities and absurdities, and the left is not so flush with ideas that it can afford to look such a gift horse in the mouth” (pg. 168). There are many reasons why people do not believe in God in today’s world. Atheists can pose many intellectual challenges to our faith and most of us cannot answer them. We should read up on the issues, but most importantly, we should live our faith in a convincing manner. Often people wonder why we cannot directly perceive God in this life. Why must we have faith about God rather than direct knowledge of God? In the book, The Philosophical Approach to God: A New Thomistic Perspective, Norris Clarke writes, “I share with you an interesting experiment I have tried with marked success on many student groups and individual people. It is an attempt to answer the common complaint that one so often hears: Why is it that God remains so obscure and difficult to find? With His omnipotent power, you would think it would be the easiest thing in the world for Him to reveal Himself with perfect clarity to almost anybody, without having to pass through the obscurity of faith or the difficulty of philosophical argument.
My answer is this. All right, suppose you are God, omniscient and omnipresent. Now suppose you wanted to reveal your true nature to humans as Infinite Spirit. You could use any means – but not faith, or direct mystical experience, because most people are not prepared for that and could not receive it or interpret it properly; it takes a long process of purification to receive it without distortion. You think it would be an easy job –if you were God. Go ahead and try. What would you do? Some come up with sensational physical cures. I laugh and point out that some higher spaceman could do that. Others would produce great natural cataclysms, whirling planets, and so forth. I point out that these things do presuppose a much higher power than ours, but not an infinite power, let alone a pure spirit. I keep on knocking down every physical or psychic feat they produce as nowhere near the mark. When they have finally given up, I suggest that maybe it’s not such an easy thing to do after all, even for God” (p. 31-32). God’s obscure ways of revelation and faith may be the best and only way possible for us to know God given our limitations and God’s situation. In the book, The Philosophical Approach to God: A New Thomistic Perspective, Norris Clarke recounts a personal experience. On pages 27-28 he writes, “One day I was in a cab in New York City. The cab driver being very talkative, I decided to turn the conversation to some useful purpose. So I asked him if he was happy. ‘No, too many problems,’ he answered. ‘What would make you happy then?’ I asked. ‘Give me a million dollars and all my problems would be solved. I’d be a happy man and could enjoy life.’ ‘All right,’ I replied, ‘you have a million dollars. Now what?’ Then he said he would pay off all his debts. ‘All right, they are paid. Now what?’ Then he said he would buy a house. Several, in fact. ‘Done,’ I replied. ‘Now what?’ Then he got himself a nice wife – in fact several, in different cities. ‘Done. Now what?’ Then he traveled, went through a whole long set of things he wanted to do; and each time I replied the same: ‘Granted. Now what?’ Finally he began to quiet down. Then he suddenly turned all the way around, in the middle of traffic, giving me quite a scare, and said: ‘Say, something funny is going on here. I can’t seem to get to the bottom of all this. What am I really looking for after all?’”
1 Peter 3:15 says, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” Like Clarke, God calls us to evangelize people and to give reasons for the hope we possess. Everyone is searching for happiness and we must invite others to ponder what they are searching for. Our happiness does not consist of pleasures, wealth, friends, or bodily goods; rather, in the joy of participating in God’s Trinitarian life. Make an effort this week to share the good news of Jesus Christ with someone else. If you don’t, who will? In his work, Taking Ourselves Seriously & Getting It Right, Harry Frankfurt, of Princeton University explores the importance of what we care about. Frankfurt investigates the roles of reason and love in our lives. Frankfurt points out that even if our thinking tells us we should care about something, it does not mean we actually care about it. Something may be valuable, but not valuable to us; something may not be valuable in the eyes of others, but it has intrinsic worth to us. For instance, a drawing from your child or grandchild may be garbage in the eyes of others, but it is valuable to you.
After Frankfurt critiques Kant’s moral thinking, Frankfurt says, “What a person really needs to know, in order to know how to live, is what to care about and to measure the relative importance to him of the various things about which he cares. These are the deepest, as well as the most immediate, normative concerns of our active lives. To the extent to which we succeed in resolving them, we are able to identify and to order our goals… It is our understanding of what to care about, then, that is the ultimate touchstone and basis of our practical reasoning” (pg 28). This may seem rather abstract, but I think Frankfurt reminds us of something important. We care about many things, but we must live for something. This something that we live for transcends our ability to reason about it, because love is stronger than reason, and love itself makes reasons for why something is valuable. At the end of the day, is what we live for God’s will? If not, then we still have a long way to go and we must depend on God’s mercy to carry us through. Imagine a teacher who came in the classroom and rarely taught your child. Maybe the teacher came in once a week and taught for a few minutes. The rest of the week this teacher read the paper, watched TV, or was too preoccupied with other tasks to care about your child. Your child fails to comprehend the material and fails several subjects because of this teacher. When it is time for your parent teacher conference, the teacher has the audacity to say, “Your child is failing several subjects because your student cannot learn the material.” As a parent, you would protest that your child is not the problem. The problem is the teacher does not fulfilling his/her responsibility to convey the material to your child.
YOU are the primary teacher of religious education to your child. How often are you teaching your children the Catholic faith? If your child is not learning about the Good News of Jesus Christ from you, they are hearing it far too little. The Catholic faith sustains us when we are weak, assures of us victory over addiction and sin, guides us to live an authentic, virtuous life, and promises eternal life in the age to come. As we begin this PSR year, make a commitment to be the best of religious educators to your children. We at St. Boniface want to empower you to be the best of teachers. |
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June 2011
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