THE FEAST OF THE VISITATION

Monday 1 June 2019

St. John’s, Newport, Rhode Island

From the Collect for today’s Feast: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the virgin mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him, but still more blessed in keeping thy word…”

This Collect gives us two reasons why the Virgin Mary is called the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was blessed in bearing the incarnate Son of God the Father. But she was still more blessed in keeping God’s Word. And both blessings, the Collect reminds us, came by the grace or gift of our Father in heaven.

The Collect mirrors the double blessing that Elisabeth pronounces in the Gospel that we’ve just heard. When Mary enters the house, Elisabeth cries out, “Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” That’s Mary’s first blessing: to be the Mother of the incarnate Lord. But then Elisabeth adds a second blessing: “And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things that were told her from the Lord.”

Saint Luke records Jesus himself repeating a similar double blessing later in his Gospel. In Chapter 11, verses 27 and 28, we read: “And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked.” The language is a bit more anatomically graphic that we might feel comfortable with today; but it’s clearly a blessing on the Lord’s mother. In response, he does not deny what she has said, but adds the second part, “Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it.”

Part of the genius of the Collects and other liturgical texts in our Prayer Book tradition is that they’re able to weave such a rich web of biblical allusions in so few words: “Father in heaven, by whose grace the mother of thine incarnate Son was blessed in bearing him but still more blessed in keeping thy word …”

Then comes the second part of the Collect, where we ask God for some specific gift or grace related to the day’s liturgical theme: “Grant us who honor the exaltation of her lowliness to follow the example of her devotion to thy will …”

So the question that the Collect places before us is how we can become more attentive to God’s Word and deepen our devotion to following God’s will. Let’s think about that question.

Many of us, I know, are deeply distressed by what’s happening in our country and the world. What is the safest and most responsible way out of the pandemic? How do we come out of the lockdown and restart the economy so that people have the opportunity to regain their livelihoods while at the same time minimizing new outbreaks of the disease? How do we begin dismantling systemically racist structures that result in people of color fearing death at the hands of the very forces we employ to protect and serve all citizens? And how do we respond to the rage that we’ve seen boiling over into rioting, looting, and arson across our country?

I don’t pretend to have any new or original answers to these difficult and painful questions. But I will say that as Christians the one unique contribution we can make is to attend to God’s Word. We can listen to what God is saying to his people in the Scriptures. In reading, meditation, and prayer we can begin to seek God’s will—for us, for our nation, and for the world.

The Church commends many kinds of practices to help us read and meditate on Scripture, from the Divine Office, to lectio divina, to spiritual exercises in the Ignatian tradition, to daily devotional commentaries like Forward Day-by-Day. Different methods suit different individuals; there’s no one-size-fits-all plan. But today’s Feast invites us to consider what practical steps we might take to strengthen our engagement with God’s Word and deepen our devotion to doing God’s will.

By following Mary’s example, we not only receive God’s blessing, but we also become a blessing to others. The beauty of the Visitation story is this quality of mutual blessing. Mary’s arrival bearing the unborn Jesus is a blessing to both Elisabeth and the unborn John the Baptist who leaps for joy in his mother’s womb; Elisabeth in turn blesses Mary and the fruit of her womb. All these blessings originate in Mary’s simple attentiveness and obedience to God’s Word announced by the angel: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord: be it unto me according to thy word.”

But they don’t end there. In the song we know as the Magnificat, Mary sings the radical vision of a world transformed: “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

So, when I suggest that our first response to the challenges of our time needs to be hearing and keeping God’s Word, I’m not proposing anything safe, timid, or escapist. On the contrary, Mary points us in a way that is full of excitement, creativity, risk, and promise.

The Blessed Virgin Mary alone is the bearer of the Word-made-flesh, the Mother of God. That is her unique vocation, her unique place in the economy of salvation.

But as baptized Christians we all have the vocation to be bearers of God’s Word: to one another and to the world. That mission begins when we who honor the exaltation of Mary’s lowliness learn to follow her example of devotion to God’s will. Then we shall be blessed as those who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Mary Ark of the Covenant

4TH SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C 

December 23, 2018

Luke 1:39-45, 56

One of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s traditional titles in such devotional texts as the Litany of Loreto is “Ark of the Covenant.” At first glance, it may seem a strange title. But in today’s Gospel of the Visitation, Saint Luke makes a number of subtle allusions likening Mary to this sacred object from the Old Testament.

A bit of background may be helpful. The Ark of the Covenant was a gold-covered wooden chest constructed according to God’s instructions to hold the two stone tablets of the Law that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Also placed in the Ark was a jar of manna, the bread from heaven that fed the Israelites in the wilderness, and Aaron’s rod, the staff that miraculously bloomed to prove God’s choice of Moses’ brother Aaron to be Israel’s first high priest. The Ark was about four feet long, three feet wide, and three feet high. Attached to its corners were four gold rings through which two poles were inserted to carry it about. On its lid, known as the Mercy Seat, were the golden figures of two Cherubim.

During the forty years wandering in the wilderness, the Ark went ahead of the people. Wherever the Israelites camped, they placed the Ark in a special tent known as the Tabernacle or the Tent of Meeting. The Ark was, in effect, God’s throne upon earth. Whenever Moses wanted to consult the Lord, he entered the Tent of Meeting, and the Lord came down upon the Mercy Seat. A luminous cloud known as the Shekinah would overshadow the Tent of Meeting signifying the divine presence within; when Moses emerged out of the Tent his face glowed with supernatural light, so that he had to veil himself to avoid terrifying the people.

After the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the Ark resided for two hundred years at a place called Shiloh. Eventually, King David brought it to Jerusalem (about which I will say more in a moment). Later, David’s son King Solomon constructed the Jerusalem Temple to house the Ark in its inner sanctum, the Holy of Holies. After the Babylonian Conquest of Jerusalem in 586 BC, the Ark disappeared from history – although all sorts of weird and wonderful theories abound as to where it ended up. In the time of Jesus and the apostles, however, the Holy of Holies remained empty, although even without the Ark, it was still most sacred space, God’s dwelling on earth.

Now, the original readers of Luke’s account of Mary’s Visitation to Elizabeth would immediately have recognized its parallels with the story of David bringing the Ark up to Jerusalem. When David made Jerusalem his capital, the Ark was in a place called Kiriath-Jearim, about nine miles away, in the hill-country of Judah. Returning victorious from a battle with the Philistines, David went with thirty-thousand men to retrieve the Ark. When the oxen pulling the cart stumbled, however, a man named Uzzah put forth his hand to steady the Ark and was immediately struck dead for daring to touch it. In great fear, David exclaimed, “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?” So, David took the Ark aside to the house of a man called Obed-Edom; and there it remained three months.

When David learned that, contrary to all expectations, Obed-Edom’s household was greatly blessed by the Ark’s presence, he went again and brought the Ark up to Jerusalem with great rejoicing, shouting, merrymaking, singing, and dancing. And, bringing the Ark into the city, David leaped and danced before the Lord with all his might.

Now, fast-forward about a thousand years to the beginning of the New Testament. When the angel Gabriel appears to Mary in Nazareth and announces that she will give birth to the Messiah, her natural question is, “How shall this be, since I have no husband?” The angel answers: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most-High will overshadow you; therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.” “Overshadow” is exactly the same verb used to describe the cloud of the divine presence covering the Tent of Meeting when the Lord came down from heaven.

Then, in the Visitation story, the parallels multiply. The setting is once again the hill-country of Judah, where the Ark once resided. At Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth exclaims with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women! And blessed is the fruit of your womb!” This is the sole occurrence in the New Testament of the Greek verb here translated as “exclaim” (anaphoneo) – but in the Greek version of the Old Testament, this same verb is used of David’s shouting out in joy before the Ark on the way up to Jerusalem. Elizabeth’s question, “And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” is almost a direct quote of David’s “How can the Ark of the Lord come to me?”

The unborn John the Baptist leaping in his mother’s womb replays David leaping and dancing before the Lord with all his might. Mary’s three-month sojourn at the house of Elizabeth recalls the Ark’s three-month stay at the house of Obed-Edom. Finally, just as the Ark goes up to Jerusalem, and ends up in Solomon’s Temple, so, forty days after the Nativity, Mary goes with Joseph up to Jerusalem to present Jesus in the Temple of the Lord.

In all these ways, Luke indicates that the Blessed Virgin Mary is the Ark of a New Covenant. Just as the Ark carried within it the tablets of the Law, the Word of God inscribed on stone, so Mary carries in her womb the Word-made-flesh. Just as the Ark carried a jar of manna, the miraculous bread from heaven, which fed the Israelites in the wilderness, so Mary carries within her womb the true Bread from heaven, who feeds us in the Holy Eucharist with his own Body and Blood. And just as the Ark held the rod, which confirmed Aaron’s high priesthood, so Mary carries in her womb the true high priest, the final mediator between God and humanity.

The point is not that Mary “is like” the Ark of the Covenant. That is to get things the wrong way ’round. Rather, the Ark was like Mary. That’s how biblical typology works. Although it had its own meaning and significance in its own time, the Ark nonetheless pointed beyond itself to the Mother of God, and the One she brought into the world. Like so many other features of Old Testament religion, the Ark was a type and shadow of the infinitely greater things to come.

The message for us today is, I think, very simple. God’s coming among us is cause for great rejoicing. Who are we that the Son of God should come to us? At the presence of the Lord, David leaped and danced before the Lord with all his might. John the Baptist leaped for joy in his mother’s womb. At our Christmas services beginning tomorrow evening, the Church invites us to join the celebration. Let us go out to greet Him.

Carl Heinrich Bloch, The Shepherds and the Angel, 1879
Frederiksborg Castle, Denmark

CHRISTMAS 2018

At the Solemn Mass of the Nativity
Monday 24 December, 10:30 pm

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased! (Luke 2:14)

This year, it's occurred to me that for the shepherds in the Christmas story, the most memorable event in the night’s proceedings was most likely not their visit to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in Bethlehem, but rather the prior appearance of the angel announcing the birth of the Savior, and then the sky filled with the multitude of the heavenly host praising God. The swaddled newborn in the manger was the sign confirming the truth of the angelic announcement. The gift of new life is always beautiful, to be sure. But an infant in the company of his parents was something the shepherds had probably all seen before, in a variety of times, places, and circumstances.

The angelic appearance was, however, awesome and even terrifying: as Luke tells us, the shepherds were “filled with fear.” It’s not for nothing that the first words an angel usually speaks after appearing to human beings are “Fear not!” or “Do not be afraid!”

The Bible depicts angels as fulfilling three principal functions: they serve as messengers from God to human beings; they protect and defend God’s people on earth, and they worship and praise God in heaven. In the Nativity story the angels play the first and third of these roles. First, the lone angel delivers to the shepherds the good news of the Messiah’s birth. Then, the shepherds are granted a glimpse into heaven itself where the angelic host worships God with the song of praise: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth among men with whom he is pleased.”

Glory to God in the highest. The phrase “in the highest” signifies heaven, the place of God’s dwelling. And peace on earth among men. The angels proclaim that just as Christ’s birth brings God glory in heaven, so it brings peace to human beings on earth. Specifically: peace among men with whom he is pleased. This last phrase presents a bit of a translation problem. Sometimes it’s rendered as “goodwill towards men,” or “to men of goodwill.” Each of these translations is defensible. Nonetheless the basic parallelism of the angelic proclamation is clear: The birth of Christ brings glory to God in heaven, and peace to human beings on earth.

But what does “peace on earth” mean? Some commentators suggest that having mentioned Caesar Augustus, the Gospel-writer Luke is taking a subtle dig at the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. Augustus was often praised for having brought peace on earth; and, indeed, his reign was marked by unprecedented political tranquility maintained by force of Roman arms. So, perhaps the suggestion here is that it’s Christ, not Caesar nor any other earthly ruler, who brings true peace on earth.

But then the question presents itself all the more insistently: What kind of peace does Christ bring? For clearly, the world’s history in the two millennia since Christ’s birth has not been marked by what we usually think of as peace. On the contrary, it’s been a sad chronicle of conflict, war, revolution, massacre, and genocide. If God’s reign of justice, love, and peace is real - and the Church teaches that it is - its time is not yet but still in the future.

Nevertheless, the New Testament uses the word “peace” 92 times: most often to describe a reality and gift of God that’s available to us here and now. When the risen Jesus appears to his disciples, he says, “Peace be with you.” The authors of the New Testament epistles often begin and end their letters to the churches with such greetings as “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” From the earliest days, the Church’s liturgy has included the ritual greeting “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” Then the response: “And with your spirit.”

The English word “peace” translates the Latin pax, and the Greek eirene, all of which hark back to the Hebrew shalom. It’s often pointed out that shalom signifies far more than just the absence of active hostilities or a state of armed truce – which is what usually passes for peace in our world. Instead, shalom implies wholeness, well-being, flourishing, reconciliation, forgiveness, unity, and harmony. All this is signified when the angels proclaim peace on earth, or when in church we greet one another with a sign of peace.

It seems to me that the peace that Christ brings has three dimensions: peace with God; peace with one another; and peace within ourselves. Peace with God comes first. In the biblical understanding, the basic human predicament is that we’re not at peace with God. Collectively, humanity has rebelled against God; we’ve attempted to put ourselves in God’s place. Our first and greatest need, therefore, is the forgiveness and reconciliation with God that Christ came into the world to bring us. That peace can be ours when we repent of our sins and ask God to forgive us by the merits of his Son’s death and resurrection.

Then comes peace with one another. As our Lord says in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” Just as Christ has reconciled us with God, so we’re under a positive obligation to seek reconciliation with one another. Nothing is more soul-destroying to any of us than harboring resentments and bearing grudges for wrongs, injuries, and injustices received. So, if we have anything against anyone, or if anyone has anything against us, we need to pray for that person, and pray for the grace to forgive. It may be humanly impossible, but all things are possible with God. An indispensable component of the peace for which Christ was born in Bethlehem is the presence on earth of a Church whose members are called to work tirelessly for reconciliation and peace among human beings.

Last but not least is peace within ourselves: “the peace of God, which passes all understanding.” In what seems a curious contradiction of the angels’ proclamation, later in Saint Luke’s Gospel Jesus says: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace on earth? No I tell you, but rather division …” He goes on to foretell the sufferings that his disciples will undergo on his account, including persecution even from their closest family members. Still, it’s the peace within, the peace that Christ gives in our hearts, that enables us to withstand all turmoil, conflict, and persecution without.

“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased.’” The peace on earth that Christ’s birth in Bethlehem brings us consists of peace with God, peace with one another, and peace within ourselves—even while peace remains conspicuously lacking in the world around us. As one of my favorite hymns puts it: “The peace of God, it is no peace, but strife closed in the sod; Yet let us pray for but one thing: the marvelous peace of God.”

Sermon for Proper 25, Year B

Mark 10:46-52

Nicolas Poussin, Jesus Healing the Blind of Jericho (1650)
The Louvre. Paris, France

One of my favorite prayers, from the Eastern Orthodox tradition, is called the Jesus Prayer. It’s a repetitive prayer, meant to be said over and over again, like a mantra. It goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” One way of reciting this prayer is to coordinate it with one’s breathing: breathe in – Lord Jesus Christ; breathe out – Son of the living God; breathe in – have mercy on me; breathe out – a sinner. (Or, some people break it into two breaths instead of four: breathe in – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God; breathe out – Have mercy on me, a sinner.) 

Rhythmically reciting the Jesus Prayer in this way can be very helpful when we want to pray, but don’t know yet quite what we want to say, and just need to settle down, be quiet, and focus. The priest who taught me this prayer remarked that in just a few words, it brings home to us profound truths of the Christian faith: we call upon the Name of Jesus as Lord and Messiah; we confess him to be the Son of God; we implore his mercy; and we acknowledge ourselves to be sinners.

The Jesus Prayer echoes several prayers recorded in the Gospels. One is that of the tax collector in the temple who stood afar off and would not lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast and cried out, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!” Another is the cry of Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.” For Bartimaeus, it was a repetitive prayer as well: Many ordered him to be quiet, but as the Greek text literally says, “he kept on crying out, ‘Son of David, have mercy on me.’”

Who was this Bartimaeus, the blind beggar sitting by the roadside? Saint Mark tells us that he was the son of Timaeus, which is exactly what the name Bartimaeus means. (In Hebrew and Aramaic the prefix “Bar” means “Son of.”) Of the hundreds of blind, lame, deaf, and sick people healed by Jesus, only a few are actually named in the Gospels. Some modern commentators have speculated that they’re the ones who became members of the Church and were known by name in the communities for which the Gospels were written. In the early fifth century, however, Saint Augustine suggested that to be named in Saint Mark’s Gospel, Bartimaeus and his father Timaeus must have been prominent and prosperous residents of Jericho, but that Bartimaeus had fallen on hard times when he went blind. That he was not blind from birth is borne out by the Greek text, where a better translation of his request, “Master, let me receive my sight,” is actually something more like, “Rabbi, let me see again.” And a better translation of the concluding sentence, “Immediately he received his sight …” is, “Immediately he regained his sight …”

Saint Augustine also proposes that blind Bartimaeus begging by the roadside symbolizes the condition of fallen humanity. He once could see, and he enjoyed great wealth and possessions; but now he sits in darkness, having lost almost everything, unable to help himself by himself.

A basic principle of Christian spiritual theology is that in those dry spells when we feel forsaken by God, when it seems that that we’re sitting in darkness—when we can’t pray, and wouldn’t know what to say if we could—at such moments our sense of being far from God, our very desire to pray, and to be in relationship with God, no matter how hopeless a prospect that may seem, is indeed evidence of the Holy Spirit moving within us. We’re not abandoned, because God himself is drawing us in. As Saint Paul says in his Letter to the Romans: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

Moved by the same Spirit, Bartimaeus calls upon the name of the Lord. When he hears that it’s Jesus who’s leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great multitude, he’s able to articulate and repeat the simple supplication, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”

On hearing his cry, Jesus stops and tells his disciples, “Call him.” This command foreshadows the Risen Lord sending his apostles into the world to preach the Gospel and to bring to him peoples of all nations. The disciples obey the command and call the blind man: “Take heart, rise, he is calling you.” As Bartimaeus springs up, he throws off his cloak – probably his most valuable possession. Here, the contrast is palpable with the rich young man who just a short time ago went away sorrowful because he was unwilling to part with his wealth in order to follow Jesus.

Jesus invites Bartimaeus to specify his request: “What do you want me to do for you?” It’s exactly the same question he asked last week of James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Their answer was full of pride and ambition: “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” By contrast, Bartimaeus’s answer is humble and basic; and it perhaps reflects a deeper understanding of what Jesus has to offer: “Master, let me regain my sight.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” Both the Lord’s question and Bartimaeus’s answer call to mind a story from the Old Testament First Book of Kings. The Lord appears to King Solomon in a dream and says, “Ask what I shall give you.” Solomon replies: “Give thy servant an understanding mind to govern thy people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this thy great people?” This answer pleases the Lord, because Solomon has not asked for anything for himself, such as long life, or riches, or victory over his enemies. So, the Lord grants Solomon the gift of great wisdom, as well as long life, riches, and honor.

In like manner, Jesus grants Bartimaeus his request: “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” But instead of going his way, Bartimaeus follows Jesus on the way: that is, the road from Jericho up to Jerusalem, where Jesus will suffer, die on the cross, and after three days rise again. In the early Church, however, the Christian faith itself was known as “the Way.” Bartimaeus has not only regained his sight, but he has also been transformed from a blind beggar sitting on the roadside into a model of faithful discipleship.

The challenge for each of us this morning is to imagine Jesus asking us the question: “What do you want me to do for you?” How shall we answer? Do we have the courage to ask for the wisdom, understanding, and vision that will enable us to cast aside every encumbrance and follow Jesus on the road that leads to eternal life?

Sermon for Trinity Sunday, 2018

Pierre Mignard, The Holy Trinity

Fresco (detail), Interior of Cupola of Église du Val-de-Grâce (1663)

Paris, France

Today we celebrate the profound and inexhaustible mystery of one God in Three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. My hope this morning is to communicate something of the excitement, wonder, and awe that the self-revelation of the Triune God has elicited in successive generations of Christians down through the centuries.

A good place to begin is with God-in-himself. Try to imagine God as he was before he created the world. Even then God was one God in three Persons. The Son and the Spirit are not ways in which God appears to us and becomes present in his creation. Even before Jesus Christ is conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary without the aid of a human father, he has already existed as the Son of his Father in heaven from before the beginning of creation. Even before the Holy Spirit descends on the Day of Pentecost, he, too, has already existed with the Father and the Son from before time began. Even if God had never created the world, he would still be one God in three Persons.

The Eastern Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware writes: “There is in God genuine diversity as well as true unity. The Christian God is not just a unit but a union, not just unity but community. There is in God something analogous to 'society'. He is not a single person, loving himself alone, not a self-contained monad or 'The One'. He is triunity: three equal persons, each one dwelling in the other two by virtue of an unceasing movement of mutual love.” (The Orthodox Way, p. 33)

A bit further on, Ware unfolds the implications of this picture of the divine nature: “the doctrine of the Trinity means that we should think of God in terms that are dynamic rather than static. God is not just stillness, repose, unchanging perfection. For our images of the Trini­tarian God we should look rather to the wind, to the running water, to the unresting flames of fire. A favourite analogy for the Trinity has always been that of three torches burning with a single flame.” (The Orthodox Way, p. 35)

C. S. Lewis makes much the same point: “in Christianity God is not a static thing … but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.” (Mere Christianity, p. 95) Speaking for myself, I find these dynamic pictures of God’s inner life enormously appealing and exciting.

The Nicene Creed, which we recite at Mass almost every Sunday and major Holy Day, distills the wisdom of the first three centuries of the Church’s accumulated theological reflection on the Scriptures. The Creed uses two active verbs to describe the relations among the three divine Persons: begetting and proceeding. The Father begets the Son; the Holy Spirit proceeds—either from the Father alone, as in the original Greek version of the Creed; or, as in the later Western Latin version, from the Father and the Son.

The Creed further specifies that the Son is “begotten, not made.” We don’t use the words “beget” and “begotten” much in contemporary English. But they’re critical to describing the relationship between the first two Persons of the Trinity. Here again, C. S. Lewis comes to our aid, writing of the difference between begetting and making: “When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set ...” (Mere Christianity, p. 86)  It follows that what God begets is God.

When we say that the Son is the “only-begotten” of the Father, we’re to understand that he’s not a creature like us, with a beginning in time, but rather a second divine Person, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. To quote C. S. Lewis again: “we must think of the Son always, so to speak, streaming forth from the Father, like light from a lamp, or heat from a fire, or thoughts from a mind. He is the self-expression of the Father — what the Father has to say.” (Mere Christianity, p. 94) Here Lewis is alluding to the New Testament image of the Son as the divine Logos or Word. Another way of saying that the Father begets the Son is that the Father speaks the Word.

The third Person, however, is not begotten but “proceeds.” Following Saint Augustine of Hippo, the Latin West has tended to understand the Holy Spirit as the personification of the love between the Father and the Son: a love so real that it becomes a third divine Person. So, the Western Church added the clause to the Nicene Creed saying that the Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son.” Eastern Orthodoxy has never accepted that formulation, however, and maintains that the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone. Resolving that dispute is above my pay grade. A point that I find helpful, however, is that in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, the word “Spirit” means “breath,” “wind,” or “life.” One lovely Trinitarian analogy is that the Son is the Word the Father speaks, while the Spirit is the breath by which he speaks it. 

So, the Son is begotten; the Spirit proceeds; the Father is the source and origin of both. Still, they’re not three Gods, but one God. No one of the three ever does anything without the other two. All three share the same divine essence or nature; all three act with the same divine will. They’re distinguished only by their mutual relations; that is, their distinct personal identities arise only through their relationships with one another. 

The absolutely crucial point is that those relations are relations of Love. The Father pours himself out in begetting the Son and sending forth the Spirit; the Son and the Spirit offer everything they are back to the Father and to each other. This eternal round of going forth and returning is the “dance” to which C. S. Lewis refers in the passage I quoted earlier. The New Testament says that God is Love. That is, Love not only defines the relationships among the three Persons, but also constitutes the divine nature or essence they share as one God. Love is thus at the very heart of reality itself. 

Well, it’s time to wrap up, and you may have noticed that I never got around to the role of the three Persons in creation, let alone redemption! But we’ve got the rest of the year to talk about that. Suffice it to say that God the Holy Trinity created us, and, when we fell away, the Son and the Spirit came into the world to reclaim us and gather us up into the Trinitarian life. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity thus teaches us not only who God is, but who he invites us to become—by sharing in his life and in his love for all eternity.

Sources

C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity. Geoffrey Bles. 1952.

Kallistos Ware. The Orthodox Way. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 1986.

ASCENSION DAY, 2018

Hans Memling, Ascension
c. 1490; Louvre, Paris

Thursday 10 May 2018
Saint Martin’s Church, Providence

Acts 1:1-11

Luke  24:44-53

Our knowledge of Christ’s Ascension comes principally from Saint Luke’s Gospel, and from Luke’s sequel to that Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles. After his Resurrection, the Risen Christ appears to his disciples for a period of forty days. Then, at the village of Bethany on the Mount of Olives, in full view of the apostles, he lifts off from the earth and disappears into the clouds. Two angels appear, promising that Jesus will return in the same way he went into heaven. The apostles then return to Jerusalem, where they devote to themselves prayer and waiting for the promised Holy Spirit.

We don’t make nearly as much of the Ascension in the contemporary Church as we might. I suspect that many today find the imagery somewhat embarrassing, on the grounds that we no longer believe in a three-story universe, with hell downstairs, heaven upstairs, and us here in the middle. But it’s not clear that people in the biblical world believed in such a triple-decker universe either. They knew better than to think of God as located spatially somewhere “up there” in the sky. They understood perfectly well that God exists outside time and space as we know them. As King Solomon prayed at the dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem: “Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain thee …”  (1 Kings 8:27).

While I’m no physicist, my understanding is that post-Newtonian cosmology—with its relativity, black holes, worm holes, and parallel universes—affords plenty of room for movement between one kind of space-time and another. The visual image of Jesus disappearing into the clouds signifies his transition from our created realm of time and space into God’s uncreated realm of eternity. Just as he once entered this world to take human flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, so now he returns to his Father taking with him the fullness of his humanity and divinity. And who’s to say that the Ascension didn’t happen pretty much as Luke describes it? To rule it out a priori would be narrow-minded indeed.

This evening, however, I want to focus on an oft-neglected aspect of Christ’s Ascension: namely, his enthronement. At the Ascension Jesus takes his place at the right hand of his Father in heaven. The New Testament states this in multiple places: for example, in the First Letter of Peter, who writes of “the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers subject to him” (3:21-22). The Feast of the Ascension thus pairs naturally with the Feast of Christ the King, celebrated annually in the Church’s Calendar on the Last Sunday after Pentecost.

The New Testament makes it clear that from his birth Jesus is a king—albeit not after the pattern of earthly monarchies. In Matthew, when the Wise Men come from the East bearing their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they ask: “Where is he who has been born King of the Jews?” (2:2) In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, when Philip brings Nathanael to meet Jesus, Nathanael ends up exclaiming: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel!” (1:49) When Jesus makes his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the crowds who greet him cry out: “Blessed is the King who comes in the Name of the Lord” (Luke 19:38).

In all four Gospel accounts of his trial and crucifixion, Jesus is charged with having claimed to be a king, and the inscription on the cross proclaims, “The King of the Jews.” He never denies the charge, though in John he offers the clarification, “My kingship is not of this world” (18:36). Moreover, the very title “Christ,” meaning Messiah or “Anointed One,” identifies Jesus throughout the New Testament as bearing the threefold office of Prophet, Priest, and King.

So, if Jesus has been King all along, what’s the significance of his Ascension? It seems to me that the practice of monarchical succession, even in the modern world, affords a loose analogy. In a constitutional monarchy such as the United Kingdom, when the reigning monarch dies, the successor is proclaimed almost immediately: “The King is dead; long live the Queen!” Legally, the successor is the new monarch from the very second of the predecessor’s death. Even so, there’s always an interim period of waiting and preparation, sometimes as long as a year, before the coronation.

The American Presidency follows a somewhat different pattern. When a new President is elected, the victorious candidate becomes President-elect from the moment an undisputed election result is announced, usually a day or so after the election. But then there’s always that interim period before Inauguration Day, when the new President takes the oath and enters into the duties of office. This interim period is a time of preparation: of assembling a cabinet and forming an Administration-in-waiting.

The forty days between Christ’s Resurrection and his Ascension can be understood as such an interim period. His conquest of sin and death has confirmed that he’s indeed king, not just of Israel but of the entire cosmos. In his Resurrection appearances he teaches his disciples and prepares them for their mission to the world. Only then does he take his place at God’s right hand in heaven. Ascension Day is thus something like Coronation Day or Inauguration Day.

What, then, does all this mean for us, here and now? Well, the first implication is that in the Risen and Ascended Christ we have a King who is alive and reigning over all creation. No longer confined to the local presence of his human body on earth, he becomes available to each of us, in all times and places, wherever and whenever we most need him. At my parish of S. Stephen, on the masthead of our website and email communications, we quote the words of the Protomartyr himself at the critical moment of his trial before the Sanhedrin: “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). The Ascension reminds us that the heart of Christianity is not the memory of a first-century rabbi and his inspirational teachings, but rather communion and fellowship with a living Lord and a reigning King.

The second implication follows closely from the first. If Jesus is our King, then we’re called to be his loyal subjects and servants: literally, his ministers in the world. As members of his Body, the Church, we’ve been commissioned as heralds and agents of his reign on earth: a reign of forgiveness and reconciliation; a reign of justice, love, and peace.

We cannot fulfill this calling by our own unaided efforts. But the Ascension makes Pentecost possible. Having taken his place at God’s right hand, Christ pours out the Holy Spirit upon his Church on earth, empowering us for the ministry of his kingdom. But that is to get ahead of ourselves. This evening, we rejoice that Christ our King has ascended far above all heavens that he might fill all things; and we pray for the grace to continue his faithful servants until the day of his return.

Sermon for Easter 6, Year B

Acts 10:44-48
I John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

A key theme of today’s readings is love. For those of us old enough to remember, the songs of the 1960s and 70s presented love as the solution to all the world’s problems. The Beatles gave us one of the anthems of that era when they sang, “All you need is love.” A bit naively idealistic, perhaps, but few of us would dispute the supreme importance of love for human life and happiness.

A curious feature of today’s readings, however, is that they present love as a matter of keeping commandments. Our Lord says in today’s Gospel: “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, as I have kept the Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.” A bit further on, he continues: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Saint John, in the Epistle, writes: “we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.”

Here we have a clue that by the term love the New Testament means something different from what contemporary culture understands. We tend not to think of love as something that can be summoned up at will in response to a command.

When I prepare couples for marriage, I point out that nowhere does the Prayer Book service ask whether they’re “in love” with each other. I always enjoy watching their reaction. The precise wording of the question is “Will you love him / her?” In the exchange of vows that follows, the couple promises to do just that: to love each other until parted by death. The kind of love implied by that question is not so much an emotion as a decision—although it certainly can encompass and build upon romantic feelings and physical attraction as well. And these vows are humanly impossible to fulfill without divine assistance, which is precisely why the couple comes to church seeking God’s blessing.

In his classic work published in 1960, The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis analyzed four principal Greek words for love: storgē, philia, eros, and agapē; usually translated as affection, friendship, romantic love, and charity.

Storgē—or affection—is our love for family members and others with whom we share a deep natural affinity. I love my mother, my brother, my sons, and my extended family members in the first instance simply because of the family ties themselves. They don’t have to do anything to earn that love; but when they’re likeable people, so much the better.

Philia—or friendship—is the bond that grows with someone we like based on shared interests, common experiences, and mutual understanding. Notice that this second type of love may or may not be built on the first: we can become close friends with the members of our family or, conversely, with those who begin as total strangers.

By eros, Lewis means something slightly different from the popular conception of the term as unbridled lust, which is not love at all. Rather, he means that overwhelming attraction to another person which combines romantic feelings with physical desire. It’s what we typically mean when we say that we’re “in love” with someone.

Now, the important point to get clear before we go any further is that Lewis, with the Christian tradition behind him, regards all three loves just described as perfectly natural and good. There’s nothing intrinsically evil or shameful about any of them.

Like all natural goods, however, these three loves can become distorted and disordered. They each combine what Lewis calls “need-love” and “gift-love.” That is, they fulfill our own needs, and they afford us the opportunity to help fulfill the needs of others. With each of them, selfishness and self-centeredness can overwhelm generosity, or, conversely, extreme generosity can become controlling and smothering. Still, in and of themselves, storgē, philia, and eros are naturally good – the building blocks of human happiness in fulfillment of our nature as social creatures made for life in community.

Lewis believed that these three natural loves inevitably do become corrupted unless they’re purified and completed by a fourth type of love, which he calls by the New Testament Greek word agapē, in Latin caritas, in English “charity” (although the English word has taken on other connotations). This fourth type of love is not natural but supernatural: not human but divine. It is unconditional. It persists through changing circumstances because it doesn’t depend on the fulfillment of our own needs.

Our Lord is talking about this type of love when he says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.” Then, to make his meaning clear, he explains: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Such divine love is totally self-giving and completely self-sacrificial.

The classical Christian definition of love is willing and doing the good of the other, no matter what the cost to oneself. Such love is the very antithesis of selfishness and self-centeredness. It ultimately entails dying to self, taking up the cross, and following Jesus. In Lewis’s terms, agapē or caritas is pure “gift-love.”

Thus defined, agapē is not a virtue that we can achieve ourselves by unaided human effort. It can only be received as a gift from God. So, why does Our Lord present it as a command, as if it were something that we could summon up by our own willpower? The best answer comes from Saint Augustine of Hippo, who in the late fourth century wrestled with this question in his Confessions; and ended up praying, “Command what you will, O Lord, and give what you command.”

Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes Peter’s baptism of the household of Cornelius the Centurion, the first recorded instance of the incorporation of Gentiles into the apostolic Church. Its depiction of the Holy Spirit descending upon the newly baptized in a replay of Pentecost reminds us that at our baptism we also received the Holy Spirit. As Saint Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”

Again, in today’s Epistle, Saint John alludes to both Baptism and the Eucharist in that wonderfully mysterious saying, “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood.”

The tie-in is that our ability to love God and one another as God has loved us comes first in Holy Baptism and then in the Holy Eucharist. Indeed, liturgical scholars believe that the Mass of the earliest Christians was originally celebrated in the context of a common meal known as the agapē, or “love feast.”

Today, then, we pray God to stir up in our hearts the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to us in Baptism and renewed in us every time we receive Holy Communion. In this way we have the capability to become a people who love God and one another with the same unconditional agapē love with which God has loved us and loves us still.

Sermon on Easter Day

Fra Angelico, Noli me tangere, 1440-1442

John 20:1-18

The Church’s faith in the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead hinges upon two items of evidence attested in the New Testament (and a third, about which I will say more presently). The first bit of evidence is the empty tomb. The second is the series of the appearances of the risen Christ to the disciples beginning on the first Easter Sunday.

These New Testament accounts are remarkably spare and restrained. Nowhere do they attempt to describe what happened inside the tomb when Jesus came back to life. They confine themselves simply to the eyewitness testimony of the women and disciples who were there that morning on the first day of the week, and in the days and weeks following: the empty tomb and the appearances of the Risen One.

Neither bit of evidence signifies that much on its own. An empty tomb by itself could result from the body being stolen or hidden, as Mary Magdalene supposes in the Gospel we’ve just heard. And appearances of a dead person to the living were not all that uncommon in the ancient world – just as some would argue that they’re not that uncommon today either. Over the years, a number of people, both parishioners and friends, have told me about departed loved ones appearing and speaking with them in the days following death and burial. Ghosts, spirits, hallucinations, or over-active imaginations? You decide.

No, it’s the combination of the two, the empty tomb and the bodily resurrection appearances, that amounts to the strongest evidence that something utterly unique and unprecedented happened that first Easter Sunday morning. And the Gospel reading from John, traditionally appointed for the principal Mass of Easter Day, explicitly brings out both these elements in wonderful detail: the tomb is found empty; the Risen Lord appears to Mary Magdalene.

Part of the beauty of John’s account is the way he describes the respective responses of three principal characters at the tomb: Peter, the Beloved Disciple, and Mary Magdalene. Before dawn, while it’s still dark, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, finds the stone rolled away, and the interior empty. She runs to tell Peter and the other disciple, whom Jesus loved. This other disciple, by the way, is generally believed to be John, the author of this Gospel, so this really does purport to be an eyewitness account.

Peter and the Beloved Disciple run to the tomb. John is probably younger and in better physical shape than Peter, so he gets there first, but he doesn’t go in – perhaps out of deference to Peter’s position of leadership among the disciples. When Peter arrives, they both go in. At this point, John’s description really does suggest eyewitness testimony: the linen cloths are lying there, and the linen napkin which had covered the Lord’s head is rolled up separately in a place by itself: not the sorts of details that are likely to be made up.

John does not explicitly tell us Peter’s reaction. But Peter seems to take it all in, not knowing what to think for the time being. By contrast, the Beloved Disciple sees and believes. Neither of them yet know the scriptural prophecies foretelling that the Son of God must die and rise again. But the Beloved Disciple—that is, John himself—has an almost mystical intuition that if Jesus isn’t here, he must be alive. Then, having seen all that there is to see, the two disciples return to their homes.

I’ll wager that some of us here today are more like Peter, while others are more like John. Some come to church, listen to the biblical stories, take them all in, and don’t know what to think. The jury is still out. Others have no difficulty hearing and believing. Notice that John doesn’t say that either response is better than the other. He simply notes them both and moves on with the story.

Mary Magdalene doesn’t return home, but remains outside the tomb, weeping. Unlike Peter and the Beloved Disciple, she thinks she knows exactly what’s happened: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” And even when she encounters two angels inside the tomb who ask her why she’s weeping, she persists in this belief: “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When Jesus appears and asks why she’s weeping and whom she seeks, she doesn’t recognize him. Supposing that he’s the gardener, she pleads, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

It’s only when he addresses her by name, Mary, that the realization dawns on her. The penny drops. We can only imagine her joy as she exclaims, “Rabboni! Teacher!” Down through the centuries, commentators have spilled much ink on the meaning of the Lord’s mysterious words, “Do not hold me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father …” But at least part of their meaning is that the Jesus Mary Magdalene has been seeking is Jesus as he was, the Jesus who died, the corpse for whom she wanted to complete the rites of burial. He calls her to let go of all that. Instead of trying to hold on to the past, her mission now is to look to the future: to go and tell the disciples what she has seen and heard, and so bear witness to the Lord’s Resurrection.

And again, I’ll wager that Mary’s experience exemplifies the pattern for many of us. C. S. Lewis writes somewhere that “humanity’s search for God” – the topic of innumerable lectures, articles, and books – is a bit like the mouse’s search for the cat. That is, it gets things completely the wrong way round. We may search for God and God’s truth all we want, but ultimately the end of our quest comes not when we find God but when God finds us, calls us by name, and gives us some task or mission to fulfill during our earthly life. This was certainly my experience when I came to faith in Christ: not one of finding God, but of being found by him. It’s not a little unnerving, because one realizes that one isn’t nearly as much in control of one’s life as one thought.

And so the third bit of evidence upon which hinges the Church’s faith in the Resurrection – after the empty tomb and the appearances of the Risen One – is the difference it makes in our own lives here and now. I believe in the Resurrection of Christ because I encounter the Risen Jesus here, in the life of his Church, in his Word and Sacraments, and not least, in the faces of his faithful people. The Church’s Easter proclamation is that Christ is alive. And if we seek him, he will find us.

Christmas 2017 -- Solemn Mass of the Nativity

“And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, and lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:12)

Earlier this evening, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ at Saint Catherine’s Basilica in Bethlehem. Some of the Palestinian Christian families present at the celebration claim to be descended from the first Christians in the vicinity, who in the first and second centuries kept alive the memory of the exact location where Christ was born—a cave among trees at the end of a ridge, so it was said.

Saint Justin Martyr wrote of this cave in the mid-second century, and Origen of Alexandria wrote of it in the third – even though the Emperor Hadrian had turned the site into a pagan shrine of Adonis in a vain effort to wipe out all vestiges of Judaism and Christianity in the region after the Bar Kochba revolt (of 132-135 AD). In the fourth century, the Emperor Constantine constructed a Christian basilica at the site, which was rebuilt by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century, and has been restored and renovated many times in the years since.

To this day, one can descend a stone staircase to visit the Grotto of the Nativity, located directly underneath the basilica’s high altar. Set in the stone floor, a silver star marks the spot with the Latin inscription, Hic de Virgine Maria Iesus Christus natus est: “Here Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary.” Close by, a small side chapel marks the location of the manger.

Saint Luke’s Gospel tells us that Mary wrapped her newborn in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger “because there was no place for them in the inn.” Recent cultural-linguistic and archeological research suggests, however, that “inn” is a misleading translation. The Greek word kataluma is more accurately rendered “guest room.” And this translation invites us to re-imagine some of our traditional pictures of the Nativity.

When Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem, one of the villagers – perhaps a relative of Joseph’s – would have given them lodgings. The customs of hospitality demanded no less. But since many others had come to Bethlehem for the census, all the available guest rooms in the village were occupied. In that area, peasant dwellings were often built against hillsides in front of, next to, or above natural or man-made caves used for family activities during the day and to shelter animals during the night. So, Mary and Joseph probably stayed as guests in just such a cave, because there was no place for them in their host’s guest room. Most probably, they were among family; Mary likely gave birth surrounded by caring relatives, even if distant relatives of Joseph.

In Luke’s Gospel, the word translated “manger,” phatne, is derived from the Greek verb “to eat,” and denotes a feeding trough or stall for cattle or horse feed. In the Latin Vulgate, Saint Jerome translated this word as praesepium, whence we get the title of this evening’s choral Mass setting, George Malcolm’s Missa ad praesepio, or “Mass at the Crib.” Of course, the English word “manger” has a similar derivation, coming from the French verb manger, to eat. The cave in which Mary and Joseph received lodgings would have been furnished with a stone manger or feeding trough for the animals, ready to serve as a makeshift cradle for the newborn Jesus.

We don’t know at what time of year Jesus was born, but Mary’s bundling him up in swaddling cloths suggests that it was cold, even if not "the bleak midwinter." In any case, the sight of a newborn wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger was sufficiently unusual that it could serve as an effective sign confirming the truth of the angel’s announcement to the shepherds of the birth of a Savior, the Lord Messiah.

Some early Christian writers, such as Saints Ambrose and Augustine, noticed that the image of Jesus at his birth, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a stone manger in a cave foreshadows Jesus at his death, taken down from the cross, wrapped in a linen shroud, and lying on a stone slab in another cave. The symbolism is that his death fulfills the purpose for which he was born into the world.

There was no place for them in the guest room. The word kataluma, translated “inn” or “guest room,” appears only three times in the New Testament: here, and in Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels where Jesus and his disciples have entered Jerusalem, and Jesus sends Peter and John to prepare the Passover meal, telling them: “When you have entered the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you; follow him into the house which he enters, and tell the householder, 'The Teacher says to you, Where is the guest room, where I am to eat the Passover with my disciples?' And he will show you a large upper room furnished; there make ready.”

It’s interesting and perhaps more than a coincidence that the same Lord who was denied the guest room at the time of his birth, occupies another guest room on the eve of his death, and there hosts the Passover meal where he institutes the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. But again, that is why he was born into the world in the first place. And that is why we’re here this evening: to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, where he promises to become sacramentally present with us, just has he became physically present with Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the wise men in Bethlehem.

Every December, we’re subjected to somewhat tiresome polemics about putting Christ back into Christmas, and Christmas back into “the holidays.” Various devotional commentators write columns and letters about how to discover the real meaning of Christmas, and where to find Christ amidst all the busyness and commercial glitz of the season: perhaps in quiet moments or quality time spent at home with gathered and reunited family members. I want to suggest, however, that this evening we’ve come to the right place; before we find Christ anywhere else, we find him here.

In Hebrew, the name Bethlehem means “House of Bread.” This evening, this church is “Bethlehem in Providence” – the house where Jesus the Bread of Life comes to us and feeds us. The manger, a feeding trough, signifies that he is our spiritual food and drink. By sharing in our life and death, he invites us to share in his Resurrection to eternal life, beginning here and now, in this sacred and sacrificial banquet.

I give the last word to Sir John Betjeman, who sums up far better than I can all that I’m trying to say:

  No love that in a family dwells,
    No caroling in frosty air,
  Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
    Can with this single truth compare –
  That God was man in Palestine
    And lives today in Bread and Wine.

Acknowledgment: some key ideas for this sermon came from Aidan Nichols, O.P., Year of the Lord's Favour: A Homiliary for the Roman Lectionary, Vol. 2, pp. 61-62.

Sermon for Epiphany 4, Year A

Fra Angelico, Sermon on the Mount, 1436-1443

Matthew 5:1-12

In my childhood, the comic strip Peanuts popularized the slogan beginning with the words, “Happiness is.” Happiness is a warm blanket. Happiness is a fresh pile of autumn leaves. Happiness is a home run. The craze soon spread to advertisements, T‑shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers. The point was that you could fill in the blank in an almost infinite variety of ways. Happiness is a new car. Happiness is a perfect golf game. Happiness is a vacation in the Bahamas. And so forth.

Throughout history, philosophers and other observers of the human condition have remarked on our natural desire to be happy. Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our inalienable human rights include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The question is where true and lasting happiness is to be found. The Peanuts philosophy seemed to imply that each individual is free to define his or her own subjective meaning of happiness. But in the Church’s traditional teaching, happiness is something objective and given, more to be revealed and discovered than invented or constructed. And the paradigmatic Christian understanding of happiness is nowhere summed up more succinctly than in the collection of sayings from Saint Matthew’s Gospel known as the Beatitudes. The word beatitude means blessedness or happiness. And the beatitudes give us our Lord’s answer to the question of where true and lasting happiness is to be found.

Down through the centuries the Church has made use of easily memorized lists that sum up its teaching about the Christian life. The Ten Commandments give a basic set of do’s and don’ts. The Seven Deadly Sins give a comprehensive picture of the destructive patterns of behavior that separate us from God and one another. The four Cardinal Virtues and the three Theological Virtues portray the ideal of Christian character. The seven Gifts of the Spirit and the twelve Fruits of the Spirit describe God’s movement and action in the Christian life.

Entire books have been written on each of these catalogues of commandments, virtues, vices, and gifts. But the Church has always given pride of place to the nine Beatitudes as the clearest statement possible of the goal of Christian life as the blessedness and happiness of the Kingdom of heaven.

The Gospel readings for today and for the coming three Sundays are taken from the Sermon on the Mount, which opens with the Beatitudes. Jesus goes up on the mountain. When he sits down, his disciples come to him and he begins his discourse.

Notice that here Jesus is speaking to his disciples, who’ve left everything to follow him. They are the ones who are blessed because they’ve become—or are becoming or will become—poor in spirit, meek, merciful, and so forth. The ninth and last Beatitude makes this point clear, when our Lord shifts from the third person to the second person and declares, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil falsely on my account.”

So, here we have Jesus beginning his most famous sermon by pronouncing a series of blessings upon his disciples. Each blessing has two parts: a present condition, and a future reward: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. In each case the present condition describes a quality of those who follow Christ, and the future reward describes some aspect of true happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Notice that the people whom our Lord pronounces blessed are the very opposite of those whom the world thinks blessed. We tend not to think of the poor in spirit or those who mourn as being particularly happy. The wisdom of the world is that nice guys finish last. But here our Lord subverts the world’s values. It may seem so now, he says, but the time is coming when this-worldly fortunes shall be reversed. The meek shall inherit the earth. The kingdom of heaven belongs to those who now suffer persecution and exile—and no humanly constructed wall or humanly issued executive order will be able to keep them out.

We don’t have time to go through each of the Beatitudes in detail. Entire books have been written on the Beatitudes; each one of them alone could easily be the subject of an entire sermon. Not so long ago some preachers would give nine-week sermon series, taking each of Matthew’s beatitudes a Sunday at a time.

Suffice it to say that Jesus himself is the perfect fulfillment of everything he says here. He displays perfectly what it is to be poor in spirit, to mourn, to be meek, to hunger and thirst for righteousness, to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to make peace, and to be persecuted, reviled and spoken against for righteousness’ sake. First and foremost, the Beatitudes are a portrait of Christ.

And it’s only in Christ that we make the Beatitudes our own and enter into the happiness that they describe. A number of commentators point out that their wording is not, “If you want the kingdom of heaven, then be poor in spirit; if you want to be comforted, then mourn.” That is, they’re not so much prescriptive as descriptive. They’re not so much a how-to manual as a promise and reassurance of the divine reward held in store for those whom the world counts least blessed in this life.

But what we can’t achieve on our own our Lord can and will achieve in us. We’ve been baptized into his Body, the Church, and we receive his life in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. If we persevere in making use of the means of grace he’s appointed for us, he will make us into the very people that he describes in the beatitudes, a people on the way to true and lasting happiness, the goal and end of human existence, a reward great in heaven.

Sermon for Epiphany 2, Year A

Jan van Eyck, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, 1432
(Click on image for larger view)

John 1:29-42

About thirty years ago, on a road trip in Belgium, we stopped in the city of Ghent—on the highway from Brussels to Bruges—for the express purpose of going into Saint Bavo’s Cathedral and seeing the treasure of late medieval religious art known as the Ghent Altarpiece.

Designed by Hubert van Eyck, the Altarpiece displays twenty panels painted by his younger brother Jan van Eyck between 1430 and 1432. (It was stolen and returned to Ghent twice in the twentieth century, once each during the two World Wars, but that’s another story.)

The largest and best-known panel is called the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. By any estimation it’s a magnificent painting. It’s also significant in art history not only for its unprecedented realism and attention to detail, but also for being one of the earliest Western European paintings executed in oils rather than egg tempera.

At the center of the painting an altar stands in a verdant meadow bordered by lush foliage. On the altar stands a Lamb. From a wound in his breast a stream of blood pours into a chalice, also on the altar. Yet the Lamb is serene, showing no signs of pain or suffering.

Above the altar, at the top of the painting, the Holy Spirit hovers in the form of a dove, radiating beams of supernatural light that illuminate the entire landscape without casting any shadows. In the foreground, at the bottom of the painting, stands the well of the water of life. Visible on the horizon are the towers and spires of the heavenly Jerusalem.

A group of angels surrounds the altar, worshiping the Lamb. Two are swinging censers; others bear the instruments of the Lord’s Passion: the Cross, the Crown of Thorns, the spear that pierced his side, and the pillar where he was scourged.

Four groups of human worshipers approach the altar from different directions: in the foreground, contemporary monks and bishops to the right, Old Testament prophets and virtuous pagans to the left; in the background, virgin martyrs and holy women to the right, and martyrs and saints of past centuries to the left.

An inscription on the altar identifies the painting as a visual commentary on the words of John the Baptist in today’s Gospel: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” It also has a mystical visionary quality, affording a glimpse of worship in heaven as described in the Book of Revelation, where the Risen and Ascended Christ appears as a Lamb who has been slain and yet lives.

The first part of today’s Gospel reading from John comprises John the Baptist’s reflections on the Baptism of Christ, which we commemorated last Sunday. Here John speaks of what appears to be a mystical vision that he himself experienced at the Baptism of Jesus: “I saw the Spirit descend as a dove from heaven and it remained on him.”

Interestingly enough, in the parallel passages in the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it is not John but Jesus who sees the Spirit descending in the form of a dove and alighting on him. But just before that, the Synoptics include another detail missing from John’s account: “[Jesus] saw the heavens opened...”

It’s easy to skip over that little detail: he saw the heavens opened. But that’s the stuff of mystical visions. At the risk of doing what we were told in seminary never to do—namely, conflating John’s Gospel with the Synoptics—we may well ask: did John the Baptist also see the heavens opened? And, if so, what did he see?

Following this line of questioning, theologian and preacher Aidan Nichols OP speculates that at the Baptism both Jesus and John the Baptist received a glimpse into heaven, where Jesus saw himself, and John saw Jesus, as the Lamb of God on the heavenly altar. This is admittedly just speculation, but if true it would definitely account for John’s subsequent identification of Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”

This motif of seeing the heavens opened recurs in the New Testament. Almost immediately after the events related in today’s Gospel, Jesus himself declares to Nathanael, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” And at the moment of his martyrdom, our patron, Saint Stephen, gazes into heaven and testifies to his accusers, “Behold I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.”

The image of the Lamb in the Old Testament is multilayered. It could refer to the lambs sacrificed twice daily in the Jerusalem Temple, morning and evening, or to the lambs that individual Israelites could bring to the Temple to offer as sacrifices for their sins. It could refer to the Passover Lamb, sacrificed every year to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt when the blood of the lamb on the Israelites’ doorposts caused the angel of death to pass over their houses. And it could refer to the Suffering Servant in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, who “opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter …"

Another possible meaning is the Apocalyptic Lamb. In certain Jewish writings dating to between the Old and New Testaments, the figure of a lamb represents Israel’s Messiah, opposed by an array of ferocious wild beasts representing the nations of the earth. Against all odds, the lamb defeats and subdues these wild beasts, inaugurating the arrival of God’s kingdom and the messianic age.

Some scholars have thus argued that when John the Baptist proclaims that Jesus is the Lamb of God, his meaning is simply that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, God’s anointed one. It seems to me, however, that when John adds that this Lamb takes away the sin of the world, he is signifying something more: namely that Jesus has come to shed his blood in a sacrificial offering that will reconcile a fallen world to God.

At every Mass, we sing or say the threefold hymn Agnus Dei: “O Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.” Then the priest shows the consecrated host and chalice to the people, repeating the words of John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb of God; behold him that taketh away the sins of the world.”

These words invite us to look beneath surface appearances, and see into the heart of a deeper reality. Visual artists like Jan van Eyck communicate something of this reality in their paintings. Music can also be its vehicle, as can various forms of prayer, meditation, and silent contemplation. Whatever the vehicle, if we’re faithful, persistent, and attentive, it just may be granted us also to see the heavens opened, and the Lamb standing at the throne of God.

Sermon for Solemn Mass of the Nativity

Giotto di Bondone, 1304-1306

Saturday 24 December 2016

From early childhood, many of us grew up to associate Christmas with the giving and receiving of presents. In my parents’ secular household, the miracle of Christmas was the nocturnal visit of Santa Claus to leave all sorts of delightful toys and games under the tree to be discovered and unwrapped, opened and assembled, in the first light of morning.

It wasn’t until I started attending church as a young adult that I came to think of Christmas primarily in religious terms as the occasion of Midnight Mass to celebrate the Lord’s Nativity. But that’s another story.

From my childhood, well into my teenage years, the question, “What would you like for Christmas?” was of momentous importance. In school, my classmates and I would excitedly tell one another what we were hoping to get for Christmas this year. In high school, this topic of conversation prompted one of my friends, who was a semi-competent artist, to submit to the student newspaper a cartoon showing a child sitting under the Christmas tree ripping the wrappings off a mountain of presents, with the caption, “Tis the season to be greedy!”

This cartoon caused indignation among the more literal-minded types in the student body who, not realizing that it was satire, thought my friend was purposely overthrowing the religious and spiritual meaning of Christmas. The truth was the opposite; he was in fact a practicing Episcopalian who wanted to lambast the day’s commercialism and materialism.

But the giving and receiving of material gifts in no way contradicts the Christian understanding and observance of Christmas. In 1923, the noted writer and Catholic apologist G.K. Chesterton published an essay on Christmas presents. He began by saying that he’d recently seen a statement by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, that while she had no objection to Christmas presents per se, she herself didn’t give presents in any “gross, sensuous, terrestrial sense, but sat still and thought about Truth and Purity until all her friends were much better for it.”

This plan, Chesterton commented, was not necessarily impossible or superstitious, and it had a certain economic charm. But, he continued, it was definitely un-Christian. “I do not know,” he wrote, “if there is any Scriptural text or Church Council that condemns Mrs. Eddy’s theory of Christmas presents, but Christianity [itself] condemns it, [just] as soldiering condemns running away.”

He went on: “The idea of embodying goodwill—that is, of putting it into a body—is the huge and primal idea of the Incarnation. A gift of God that can be seen and touched is the whole point of the … Creed. Christ himself was a Christmas present.”

It occurred to me as I read these words that Chesterton effectively demolishes the proverbial adage that it doesn’t matter what you give someone because “it’s the thought that counts.” No, says Chesterton, the thought by itself doesn’t count, and cannot count, until it somehow becomes embodied and tangible, because we are embodied creatures living in a material creation that God saw was very good.

It’s true that material presents fall short when given as substitutes for loving care and attention, or as attempted compensation for neglect or worse. But, conversely, the act of thinking good thoughts about those dear to us also falls short unless those thoughts become incarnate in gifts that effectively let the recipients know that we’re thinking of them.

I recall reading somewhere that if you’re invited to dinner at someone’s home in France, it’s customary to take along some such gift as a bottle of wine or a box of chocolates, much as here in the United States. But one needs to be careful to choose a gift of high quality and good taste because, unlike in this country, the idea that “it’s the thought that counts” just doesn’t fly over there. More precisely, the quality of the gift given communicates more than we might realize the extent of our respect, esteem, and affection for the recipient.

In any case, Chesterton’s main point is that even among those for whom Christmas has become a secular cultural holiday rather than a solemn religious observance, the practice of giving gifts preserves a vestigial memory of the Christian teaching that Jesus Christ is God’s greatest gift of all: a Christmas present of infinite quality expressing infinite love because it’s the gift of God himself present among us.

About a month ago, in my capacity as Superior of the American Region of the Society of Mary, I was pondering what to do about the situation in one of our Wards in Texas. The Ward Secretary was retiring after 24 years of dedicated service, and her last meeting in that capacity would be on the first Saturday in December. I wondered whether I should phone, write a letter, send a gift, or some combination of all three.

Finally, I realized that whatever else I did, the best gift I could offer by far would be to fly down there, attend the meeting, and greet her in person. And so I did—taking along a letter of commendation and the gift of a little statue as well. As every priest learns in the exercise of the pastoral ministry, sometimes on critical occasions there’s just no substitute for showing up in the flesh. But that is the incarnational principle of Christianity.

God himself sets the pattern. Contrary to Mrs. Eddy’s theory, when the human race had fallen and become subject to sin and death, God did not just sit in heaven thinking thoughts of Truth and Purity until we were all the better for it. On the contrary, God came down from heaven in person—in the Person of his Son—to share in our created human life so that we in turn might share in his uncreated divine life. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. That’s the good news that the Church proclaims and celebrates every year on the Feast of the Lord’s Nativity.

So there we have what we might call the Catholic doctrine of Christmas presents. By cheerfully giving them, we grow in the virtues of generosity and unselfishness. And by gratefully receiving them, we remind ourselves that all the truly valuable and worthwhile things that we have in this life are not those that we can take or earn for ourselves, but those that come to us from God as gifts freely given, beginning with our very existence, and ending with heaven itself. The practice of giving and receiving gifts, not only at Christmas but also throughout the year, thus becomes a spiritual discipline, a means of growth in grace and holiness.

And when we kneel at the crèche and gaze at the infant Christ, we behold the first and best Christmas present of all: the gift of God himself in the flesh. The wrapping is swaddling clothes, and the box is a manger. So we give thanks to God for such a wondrous gift, and adore.

Acknowedgments

Some key ideas for this sermon came from Aidan Nichols, OP, Year of the Lord's Favour: A Homilary for the Roman Liturgy, Volume 2, pp. 60-61. Excerpts from the Chesterton essay are here.