Holy Ghost Parishoner

2007-02-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

I have not posted anything here in well over a year, but I'm thinking that since Lent is nearly upon us, that it might be time to start putting some of my thoughts down again.

I've been busy with life. Last fall we started doing a youth group at Holy Ghost, and we have done some great things. I expect I'll write a litte of that here as well.

2006-02-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

Owing to all of the excitment over Rod Dreher's new book, Crunch Cons, I went out and bought it. Ouch! was it pricey! $25 at the local megabookstore. I haven't paid a sum like that for a paltry 260 pages in years.

I'll have to be sure to lend it out a few times to make it worth the price.

2006-02-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a good post I missed a while back.

2006-02-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

Today is the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter.

It has been a long time since I have posted. A lot has been going on lately. Most importantly, for the month or so following the birth of our newest daughter, I was off of work. So I spent the time productively engaged in spending time with my children, doing household projects and doing some more in-depth reading than I typically have time for.

Durring my time off I read three books by the Seraphic Doctor, St. Bonaventure: The Soul's Journey to God; The Tree of Life; and The Life of St. Francis.

All three were excellent and have given me a lot to think about. I'm sure something bonaventurian will come up in a future post, but not today.

I've also begun to think about Lent in the last several days, so expect some posts on that.

Furthermore, I recieved some heavenly consolations durring Mass a couple of weeks ago in the form of spiritual insights. So I'll probably post on that too.

But nothing really today.

2006-01-13T20:30:00.000-07:00

My newest daughter was born this afternoon. She will be born into Christ on Sunday.

Thanks be to God.

2006-01-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

Today is the Memorial of Bl. Andre Bessette, who was largely responsible for the construction of St. Joesph’s Oratory in Montreal, and who, in concert with St. Joseph, obtained many cures for the sick during his earthly life. One of the things I find most interesting about Bl. Andre Bessette is that he is responsible for the common practice of praying to St. Joseph for help with real estate transactions, especially the need to sell a home. The story behind this practice comes from Bl. Andre’s lifelong desire to see a church dedicated to St. Joseph built on Mount Royal. The Holy Cross Brothers, the order to which he belonged, had also long wanted to build a chapel on Mount Royal, however the owners of the land refused to sell. Bl. Andre and some holy accomplices climbed the mountain and planted is with medals of St. Joseph. Shortly afterward, the owners yielded. Bl. Andre had to continue to depend on St. Joseph to provide both the funds and laborers to complete the oratory, which is now the largest church dedicated to St. Joseph in the world.

Since I am currently trying to sell a house, I’d like to ask for the prayers of both Bl. Andre and St. Joseph that it sell quickly and at a good price.

***

In most of the rest of the world today is the Solemnity of the Epiphany, which we will celebrate on Sunday in the United States. The Epiphany takes on a special luster this year with our new Pope having so recently made a pilgrimage with hundreds of thousands of young people to the relics of the Magi in Cologne. The Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of Christ to the Nations. It is fitting therefore to recall that at Vespers on December 22nd the Church prayed:

O King of the Gentiles and their desired One, the Cornerstone that makes both one; Come, and deliver man, whom You formed out of the dust of the earth.

O Rex Gentium, et desideratus earum, lapisque angularis, qui facis utraque unum: veni, et salva hominem, quem de limo formasti.

This is the penultimate “O” antiphon, prayed on the evening before we pray O Emmanuel, O Lord with us. In this prayer, looking forward to the birth of the Lord at Christmas, we contemplate the Love God shows by sending His Son to rule over all of us and bring His salvation to all of the Nations. The prayer for the Rex Gentium, the King of Nations to come and deliver us is celebrated with special majesty on the Epiphany. It is an important part of the Christmas Season. In a special way the Epiphany invites us to welcome the Savior in life by submitting ourselves to Him and subordinating ourselves to His Rule. Like the Solemnity of Christ the King it is an occasion to meditate on the Lordship of God and the nature of His Kingdom. Such thought brings us immediately to the call to Holy Poverty once again:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

The citizens of the Heavenly Kingdom, the Subjects of Christ the King are the poor. For only the truly poor, the spiritually poor, are capable of acknowledging the Lordship of Christ appropriately. For to truly acknowledge Him as Rex Gentium means simultaneously acknowledging that we are lords of nothing whatsoever; the power and the glory are all His.

The Roman Rite retains the gesture of prostration only for ordinands during the Sacrament of Orders; however, it is retained for the people in several special liturgies in the Byzantine Rite. I had the privilege of experiencing one of these liturgies several years ago on the Feast of the Exultation of the Holy Cross (September 14). I found prostration before the Cross of Christ to be an extraordinarily powerful experience.

To truly prostrate oneself before the King of Kings, a gesture of humility through which one shows his assent to the Lordship of Christ, is a sign of the total giving of the self to the Other as a gift. This is because it is a giving ones own lordship over oneself and all of one’s own personal power over to the good of the Other. It is an act of total self-abandonment to God.

The Magi, prostrate before and gift-giving to the Christ Child show us the mark of discipleship. They show us how to follow, how to be men before God, and point towards the Christian life of self-sacrifice on the Cross.

So let us pray to the good Saints Caspar, Balthasar, and Melchoir, that we might follow their example of spiritual poverty and attain the Kingdom of Heaven.

And let also us pray to our Seraphic Father Francis that we might join with him and become heralds of the Great King.

2005-12-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The slaughter of the young boys of Bethlehem is especially difficult for a father to contemplate I have two boys two years old and under. Two of mine would have been massacred under Herod’s order.

But it seems to me today that this feast is about Hope. Just four days ago we celebrated the birth of Hope, the Radiant Dawn, the King of Nations, Emmanuel. However, Hope requires something of us. While our Hope truly is a gift from our Heavenly Father, it is one that requires a response from us and our participation to grow and bear fruit in our lives. A few weeks ago I wrote about Fr. Doran’s homily on the First Sunday of Advent, when he spoke about the silence of God and our need to nurture and cultivate our Hope.

On the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Fr. Doran spoke to us about the Homily of Pope Benedict XVI on the Immaculate Conception, which was very fitting because these two Solemnities had the same Gospel reading. These two paragraphs from Holy Father struck me with particular force:

The human being lives in the suspicion that God's love creates a dependence and that he must rid himself of this dependency if he is to be fully himself. Man does not want to receive his existence and the fullness of his life from God.

He himself wants to obtain from the tree of knowledge the power to shape the world, to make himself a god, raising himself to God's level, and to overcome death and darkness with his own efforts. He does not want to rely on love that to him seems untrustworthy; he relies solely on his own knowledge since it confers power upon him. Rather than on love, he sets his sights on power, with which he desires to take his own life autonomously in hand. And in doing so, he trusts in deceit rather than in truth and thereby sinks with his life into emptiness, into death.

Linking these various threads together: the Nativity, Herod’s slaughter of innocents, the necessity to cultivate Hope and the mistrust of God in preference to personal power, we can see what this day teaches about Hope. Herod’s response to the Hope offered by Christ is to exercise his own personal power in a terrifying way. By his horrifying response, Herod teaches us that hope and power are opposites. Trust is the proper response to Hope. Trust is the activity of cultivating Hope, and in trusting we abandon ourselves and we give our lives over to Another, and this is the activity that bring us to the Cross.

One Other Thing…..about today. It is good in these times when illegal immigration is so much discussed and poor families have become the object of so much contempt for daring to seek some method of providing for themselves in America that we remember that the Holy Family in their flight to Egypt were uninvited by their hosts, were poor and without a means to support themselves, and were fugitives from the justice of Herod, the legitimate ruler of Judea. How much better it would be if we saw in every illegal immigrant the reflection of the Holy Family.

2005-12-12T11:02:00.000-07:00

Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum

Advent continues to be difficult, but of course God also continues to supply the means necessary to get through it. Yesterday, the 2nd car broke down and won’t run. We now have 2 cars which are not running. When I called my mother to ask if I might borrow her 2nd car for a couple of days, I learned that her 2nd car is also not running. O, the joys of Advent. I think that God uses Advent to trim away my pride, and to curtail my personal power, so that I will become ever more dependent on Him—or at least realize the extent to which I am dependent on Him already. I expect that by the 23rd I will be begging fot Christ to come ever more quickly. Indeed, although we pray for the second coming every time we pray the Our Father, I rarely do it consciously. But this past weekend I found myself actually praying with intensity that God would bring the final judgment and put an end to the world of sin, especially my sin.

We had a great homily at mass yesterday, and then when I got home I prayed the Office of Readings, which contained a reading from a homily by St. Augustine. Both of them spoke of the difference between the voice of John the Baptist, and the Word that both preceded and outlasted him. Both the homilist at Holy Ghost and St. Augustine spoke about how the voice fades away, but the Word is everlasting. St. Augustine went on to talking about his own experience of sharing the Word, and spreading the faith to others. He says:

In my search for a way to let this message reach you, so that the word already in my heart may find place also in yours, I use my voice to speak to you. The sound of my voice brings the meaning of the word to you and then passes away. The word which the sound has brought to you is now in your heart, and yet it is still also in mine.

When the word has been conveyed to you, does not the sound seem to say: The word ought to grow, and I should diminish? The sound of the voice has made itself heard in the service of the word, and has gone away, as though it were saying: My joy is complete. Let us hold on to the word; we must not lose the word conceived inwardly in our hearts.Do you need proof that the voice passes away but the divine Word remains? Where is John’s baptism today? It served its purpose, and it went away. Now it is Christ’s baptism that we celebrate. It is in Christ that we all believe; we hope for salvation in him. This is the message the voice cried out.

So it goes with me and Advent. I must follow John who says “He must increase; I must decrease”

Rorate coeli desuper et nubes pluant justum

2005-12-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

On the way home from work in the afternoon I usually listen to the Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman show on KHOW radio. They have an interesting show, Craig Silverman is a prominent Democrat and former Denver DA, and Dan Caplis is a prominent republican trial lawyer and although he has never held public office he is well known in the Denver media. He is married to a former local television news anchor. The show is delightful because, although Craig and Dan disagree with one another on a great number of issues, they are always polite cordial and friendly in their disagreements. What makes the show even more interesting is that Dan Caplis is also one of the more prominent public Catholics in the City, and Craig Silverman is Jewish. Yesterday they had an interesting topic on their program: whether or not we should wish people a Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, when we don’t know their religion. Dan of course thought that wishing people a Merry Christmas was a good thing. Craig, although not offended by the phrase Merry Christmas, thought we ought to be a little more thoughtful of others and show more respect for their beliefs. This difference was to be expected. However, what was not to be expected was Dan Caplis’ rather lackluster defense of the practice of wishing people a Merry Christmas.

So many callers were afraid of Christian proselytism, and they were also afraid of denying the significant celebrations of other traditions like Chanukah and Solstice. Dan did not confront these issues head on, and he should have. Wishing people a Merry Christmas is an evangelical activity, its function is to celebrate and broadcast the Good News that the Savior was born. As Christians we are commissioned by the Lord to spread the Gospel. One way we do this is by a continual invitation to the rest of the world to share our celebration of Christmas, and the joy we have at the birth of Christ. Wishing people a Merry Christmas really and truly ought to be oriented toward the conversion of all people to Christ, for this is what is best for them. Dan should have talked about this. If this was a source of stress in his relationship with Craig, whom he calls his “brother from another mother”, he should have reflected on the words of the Lord, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man 'against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's enemies will be those of his household’.”

Dan should also have been able to articulate a Christian response when Craig brought up the other holidays of the season, Chanukah and Solstice, which he said were older than the celebration of Christmas, and were not about Christ. This is not true. While both of these holidays were celebrated prior to the birth of Christ, the birth of Christ is ontologically prior to both of them. This is illustrated by the fact that both of these point towards the revelation of Jesus, the name above every other name. Let’s look to Chanukah first. Chanukah is the celebration of a miracle at the rededication of the Temple after it had been defiled by Hellenists. The Jews had only enough oil to burn only one day, but it lasted eight days, the time needed to procure more oil. Now this would seem to have little to do with Christ. However, all we need to remember that Christ is the temple, and then we begin to see a connection. But the real connection to Christ is in the miracle of eight days. The fact that the Chanukah miracle lasted eicght days shows that it points towards Christ. Any time we see the number eight, especially in scripture and tradition, we should pause and think of Christ. It is not for nothing that the solemnities of Christmas and Easter are proclaimed for an Octave, for eight days. Eight is the number of the fullness of creation and the number of days in the Christian week. The week at the center of the universe, the week that gives meaning to time itself, is Holy Week. And this week runs eight days, from Palm Sunday to Easter. Ancient and venerable tradition tells us that on Easter Sunday, the eighth day, Christ finished the work of creation, for in His death and Resurrection all things were made new. For this reason the number eight has long been associated with baptism and regeneration. It is an ancient tradition for baptisteries to have eight sides, and the reason why God would have given the Jews an miracle centered on eight days, so that they would recognize the True Light when He Rose on the eighth day.

Like Christmas and Chanukah, the Winter Solstice is also a festival of light. God designed the world to have signs and meanings that would point towards Christ. From the very beginning God appointed the Winter solstice to point towards and remind us of Christ who is the victory of light over darkness. The Pagan celebration of the coming of longer days and the victory of light, points to Christmas. When they say the Christians copied them by placing Christmas on the Solstice, they have it precisely wrong. God made the Solstice a sign of Christ, in whom creation was perfected.

2005-11-28T16:11:00.000-07:00

I was finally back at Holy Ghost for the First Sunday of Advent. It felt great. Fr. James Doran was the celebrant and the choir sang the Orbis Factor Mass.

Fr. Doran gave an awesome and inspired homily on Sunday about the silence of God. The silence of God is a recurring theme I’ve heard Fr. Doran speak about in prayer workshops and in the confessional before, but I had not yet heard him preach about it at Mass. The First Sunday of Advent was the perfect time. He took the reading from Isaiah as his starting point:

Return for the sake of your servants,the tribes of your heritage.Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,with the mountains quaking before you,while you wrought awesome deeds we could not hope for,such as they had not heard of from of old.

Here the prophet is imploring the Lord to make some noise, to do something so that His people would listen to Him. The Prophet believes if only people heard more from the Lord that their behavior would improve, and they would be more faithful. The psalmist seems to agree; we all said with him on Sunday:

Lord, make us turn to you; let us see your face and we shall be saved.

We all have the desire for more consolations from God, to see Him and hear Him more often and directly, and we believe, with the psalmist that if we could only see Him that we would be saved.

Yet despite our longing the Lord is silent, and He requires us to live by faith. Fr. Doran spoke of the profession of St. Therese of the Child Jesus, Doctor of the Church as a Carmelite. According to her own diaries, her espousal to Christ was an occasion of spiritual aridity. And this great Saint was ever more thankful for the silence of God on this occasion because in it He gave her the greater gift of proceeding by faith alone.

I wish I had that kind of Faith!

I really needed to hear this homily. Advent for me is often a time of spiritual difficulty. I’m not sure that before Sunday I would have called it dry, or silent, although those terms apply; instead I might have called it arduous or just plain difficult. Advent has always been a trial in our family. In the early years of our marriage finding ourselves broke and nearly destitute in Illinois, packed what belongings we could afford to ship into boxes, shipped them UPS and then took off in our barely functioning vehicle across the country retreating to the arms of family having no idea what the future would bring with our two children in tow and my wife pregnant. Advent seems to have repeated this early pattern in some form (although less severe) ever since. In this time of preparation (and it is impossible preparation—how do you prepare for the coming of perfection?) with too many things to do, and too many people to please, God, and His mercy seem to recede into the background of my experience. Often, it is during Advent that I find myself struggling to maintain hope, and wishing that God would come and rend the heavens and re-work the clay of my substance and do the preparation for me. I find it difficult at times to proceed by faith and not to loose hope. But of course Fr. Doran spoke on that theme Sunday as well. He told us hope is like a seed received at baptism, and that for it to grow, our hope must be tended and cultivated. We must cultivate our own hope. This, of course brings us to the Gospel on Sunday with Our Lord’s command to “Be watchful! Be Alert!”

It was good to be back at Holy Ghost.

2005-11-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I missed mass at Holy Ghost again this past weekend. I was at St. Therese in Aurora instead. Two of my children won awards in their annual pro-life poster and essay contest, and they had requested that we attend so that the parish community could give some acknowledgement of this achievement. So, although missing Holy Ghost for a second week in a row was difficult, it was a great moment for me as a father, especially since my home-schooled children performed so well in the filed of contestants which include both kids from the parish school and the local public schools.

One of the really great things about going to St. Therese on Sunday was that it gave me a chance to see Fr. Angel Perez-Lopez, whom I met last may at his ordination, and of whom I wrote about on this blog the last time I went to St. Therese. This young priest (he is not yet 30) is a real blessing to the Church and a source of hope. Fr. Angel is from Spain and attended the Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Mission Seminary of Denver, so at some point he may travel to work elsewhere, but how awesome it is to have him here now. Now the Denver Redemptoris Mater Seminary, like the other around the world, is associated with the Neocatechumenal Way, which has an excellent track record of building communities of faith around the world and a heavy charismatic influence. The Neocatechumenate is a powerfully appealing charism that I’m sure will yield great fruit in the Archdiocese, especially among the immigrant communities, where protestant charismatics and pentacostals have been so busy stealing sheep from Peter’s flock.

Fr. Angel had a column in the bulletin on Sunday that was truly outstanding (in both English and Spanish). It was primarily addressed to couples with children involved in parish activities living in irregular unions (in un-p.c. terms this is known as shacking-up). What was truly wonderful about Fr. Angel’s approach is that he began his discussion by appealing to the love that all parents have for their children. “I’m sure that you want the best for your children. I’m sure that you would be willing to sacrifice anything for them.” And then he continued “What is best for your children?” And then, and this is the truly great part. He attacked the answers that too many social workers, teachers, friends and relatives have given them. “To study and have a career and in this way lift themselves out of poverty is a good thing but it is not what’s best for your children. There are a lot of people with college degrees who are unhappy. Neither is money the best you can give to your children. It also will not bring happiness to them.” Fr. Angel went on to teach, just as a good priest should, especially on the Solemnity of Christ the King of the Universe that the faith is what is best for children, and then, “But do you think you can give something you don’t have?” “Your children will understand the faith is important to you if you are the first to live it, if you are the first to be active in the parish, and if you are the first to celebrate the sacraments including marriage.” This is, as Fr. Neuhaus might say, “Bracing Stuff.”

But then Fr. Angel ended with the real message. “Don’t be afraid. Christ awaits you with open arms to give you his grace.”

What a blessing we have in this priest. He gives us permission to put Christ first and to serve Our King. He gives us permission to ignore the social workers and the teachers and the relatives and our friends and to answer Christ, and to answer Him for our Children.

Viva Cristo Rey!

2005-11-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

Great post over at The Fifth Column by Steve Kellmeyer.

The money quote in my opinion is:

"Children need to be socialized, that is, they need to learn how to need a commodity, how to be a commodity and how to treat others like a commodity. "

2005-11-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

I went to visit my grandmother last weekend in Emporia, Kansas. I attended mass at Sacred Heart Church in Emporia Saturday evening. I had never been there before. The Church building was beautiful. It was just exactly the kind of architecture and style that you would expect of an old Catholic Church on the Great Plains.

I was particularly pleased that recent renovations made owing to a recent fire had kept the tabernacle front and center and that the apse was dominated by a large crucifix. There were three things about the Mass that left me a little unsettled though. One of them is extremely common, and does not bother me too much anymore. They changed the words of the Agnus Dei; I believe that OCP materials actually instruct music directors and liturgists to do this, so I reserve my disappointment for the powers at OCP, and not pastors and musicians at the parish. The second thing that troubled me I have also seen elsewhere, and it is a more serious matter. The presiding priest wore the stole over the chasuble. This disrupts the symbolism of the chasuble, which is supposed to represent the charity of Christ and cover all things, the stole represents the yoke of Christ, and its placement over the chasuble by this priest may illuminate some of the reasons behind the third liturgical oddity that really bothered me. And this one really bothered me. The priest added the word “unnecessary” before “anxiety” in the doxology after the Our Father. He said “…Delivery us from every evil and protect us from all unnecessary anxiety as we wait in joyful hope…” That just left me ill at ease. I have way too much necessary anxiety that I need to be delivered from.

2005-11-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

From Pinnochio:

"Tomorrow your five gold pieces will be two thousand!"

"Two thousand!" repeated the Cat.

"But how can they possibly become so many?" asked Pinocchio wonderingly.

"I'll explain," said the Fox. "You must know that, just outside the City of Simple Simons, there is a blessed field called the Field of Wonders. In this field you dig a hole and in the hole you bury a gold piece. After covering up the hole with earth you water it well, sprinkle a bit of salt on it, and go to bed. During the night, the gold piece sprouts, grows, blossoms, and next morning you find a beautiful tree, that is loaded with gold pieces."

"So that if I were to bury my five gold pieces," cried Pinocchio with growing wonder, "next morning I should find--how many?"

"It is very simple to figure out," answered the Fox. "Why, you can figure it on your fingers! Granted that each piece gives you five hundred, multiply five hundred by five. Next morning you will find twenty-five hundred new, sparkling gold pieces."

"Fine! Fine!" cried Pinocchio, dancing about with joy. "And as soon as I have them, I shall keep two thousand for myself and the other five hundred I'll give to you two."

"A gift for us?" cried the Fox, pretending to be insulted. "Why, of course not!"

"Of course not!" repeated the Cat.

"We do not work for gain," answered the Fox. "We work only to enrich others."

"To enrich others!" repeated the Cat.

"What good people," thought Pinocchio to himself. And forgetting his father, the new coat, the A-B-C book, and all his good resolutions, he said to the Fox and to the Cat:

"Let us go. I am with you."

2005-11-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

Legalism for the Lender

A couple of weeks ago (10/23) we had this reading from Exodus:

"If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people,you shall not act like an extortioner toward himby demanding interest from him. If you take your neighbor's cloak as a pledge,you shall return it to him before sunset;for this cloak of his is the only covering he has for his body. What else has he to sleep in?If he cries out to me, I will hear him; for I am compassionate."

Clearly this is a prohibition of usury in Israel. I believe in the Advent of Christ, through whom membership in the Chosen People is offered to all, this prohibition against usury is made universal. Clearly there are elements in the Christian tradition which universally and categorically condemn usury. St. Thomas Aquinas says:

"…it is by its very nature unlawful to take payment for the use of money lent, which payment is known as usury: and just as a man is bound to restore other ill-gotten goods, so is he obliged to restore the money which he has taken in usury."

Now, on October 23rd, the Oblates who serve Holy Ghost were at a national meeting, so we were blessed to have the Most Reverend James Moreno celebrate mass for us. Fr. Moreno, in addition to being a man of great piety and devotion is an adjunct faculty member of the St. John Vianney Seminary in Denver, and more notable, is the Judicial Vicar for the Archdiocese of Denver. He is a very learned man. So, even though his homily dealt more with the Gospel readings about the two great commandments, and not usury, I thought I would take the opportunity of his visit to Holy Ghost and ask him to recommend some further reading, written more recently, about the Catholic understanding of usury.

Fr. Moreno recommended that I take a look at Germain Gabriel Grisez’ theology manual. I finally had time yesterday afternoon to go the Archbishop Vehr Theological Library and look it up.

I have to say I was disappointed. I was able to find only one page of text in Grisez that dealt directly with usury, and the gist of his appraisal was that the Church had never condemned all forms of interest, but merely excessive interest. Basically, he said that interest was acceptable if it compensated for this like administrative costs, the risk of non-repayment and inflation, all of which seems logical to me, for such items seem to have to do with the genuine equity of exchange. However, he went on to say that some of the condemnations of usury in the past had been rooted in an earlier concept of money, where money that was not in use simply sat idle, and the wealthy man had an obligation to keep his goods in circulation. However, the nature of money has changed, and surplus money can now be invested in productive enterprises that yield the investor a legitimate return (e.g. stock ownership). It seems that according to Grisez, this changes the game, because interest can be charged on the money because the original owner will miss out on the possibilities of using his money for other, more productive endeavors. I think some economists would call this opportunity cost. There is opportunity cost in lending money, and interest may be charged to account for this cost.

To me this sounds suspiciously like the "hierarchy of goods" talk people use to try and justify contraception. They talk of the good of having time and resources to spend on your children, and suppose that is the thing chosen, instead of the pill--because going off the pill would involve some sort of opportunity cost in being a responsible parent to the children you already have.

Besides, it seems to me that this “new development” in the nature of money was already addressed in 1745 by Pope Benedict XIV , in his encyclical Vix Pervenit he said:

"One cannot condone the sin of usury by arguing that the gain is not great or excessive, but rather moderate or small; neither can it be condoned by arguing that the borrower is rich; nor even by arguing that the money borrowed is not left idle, but is spent usefully, either to increase one's fortune, to purchase new estates, or to engage in business transactions. The law governing loans consists necessarily in the equality of what is given and returned; once the equality has been established, whoever demands more than that violates the terms of the loan."

Benedict XIV obviously had this “opportunity cost” objection in mind because he later went on to clarify:

"We do not deny … that it is very often possible for someone, by means of contracts differing entirely from loans, to spend and invest money legitimately either to provide oneself with an annual income or to engage in legitimate trade and business. From these types of contracts honest gain may be made."

This all seems very clear to me; but the apologists for bankers will answer immediately, even in the venerable Catholic Encyclopedia that the words of Benedict XIV are not infallible pronouncements, indeed; he may not even have intended them to have broad application, for he addressed his letter only to the Italian Bishops.

2005-11-07T14:39:00.000-07:00

On la nouvelle theologie, Chris Burgwald said:

"I’d submit that the vast majority of Americans fail to structure their lives according to their faith at an ontological (as opposed to moral) level."

I stand as one indicted by this charge, and guilty. Yet, I'm not sure what to do about it.

"Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people."

From Ash Wednesday by T.S. Eliot

2005-11-04T15:52:00.000-07:00

Looking to Locke (posted below) we see that there is a fundamental basis of all economic goods in both the creative productivity of man and God. Locke’s analysis of the roots of property rights views ownership, and one might infer the production of economic goods, as the result of the mixture of human effort or labor with the bounty of God’s creation. Now this process may be as simple as the act of picking an apple on common lands, whereby my labor as harvester is able to transform the apple into something owned by me, or as complex as building an automobile; but, after the raw material of God’s creation is transformed into property through labor, it is then an economic good, and I may use it in economic exchange.

What is extraordinarily interesting about money though is that it doesn’t seem to fit this model. Surely it did long ago when precious metals were mined and minted into money. Both labor and natural resources were used in the production of money. But this is no longer the case. Although money might sometimes take the form of coinage or paper currency, the materials in these products do not have much relationship to the essence of money. In fact, while at one time the paper notes produced by the Treasury Department used to represent gold and silver held in federal depositories, since Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971, and allowed the dollar to float on the full faith and credit of the United States Government, the last remnants of the connection money had to the natural world seem to have been severed. Money in the United States today, while sometimes represented in paper currency or metal coinage, is most fundamentally tracked and accounted for in what are called Fed Funds, with are electronic credits and debits, there is nothing behind them they are entires in the memory of a computer, and accounting, and no more, they are without material substance in themselves, even though sometimes materials are used to track them. Money in the modern economy is wholly the product of human invention. Alone among economic goods, money is not the result of a mixture of human activity and God’s creation.

I find this curious.

2005-11-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

So what is money anyway? Let’s consider the origin and basis of property. I think a good place to start here is John Locke’s second treatise on Government, where he says (this is a long quotation):

Sect. 27. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.

Sect. 45. Thus labour, in the beginning, gave a right of property, wherever any one was pleased to employ it upon what was common, which remained a long while the far greater part, and is yet more than mankind makes use of. Men, at first, for the most part, contented themselves with what unassisted nature offered to their necessities: and though afterwards, in some parts of the world, (where the increase of people and stock, with the use of money, had made land scarce, and so of some value) the several communities settled the bounds of their distinct territories, and by laws within themselves regulated the properties of the private men of their society, and so, by compact and agreement, settled the property which labour and industry began; and the leagues that have been made between several states and kingdoms, either expresly or tacitly disowning all claim and right to the land in the others possession, have, by common consent, given up their pretences to their natural common right, which originally they had to those countries, and so have, by positive agreement, settled a property amongst themselves, in distinct parts and parcels of the earth; yet there are still great tracts of ground to be found, which (the inhabitants thereof not having joined with the rest of mankind, in the consent of the use of their common money) lie waste, and are more than the people who dwell on it do, or can make use of, and so still lie in common; tho' this can scarce happen amongst that part of mankind that have consented to the use of money.

Sect. 46. The greatest part of things really useful to the life of man, and such as the necessity of subsisting made the first commoners of the world look after, as it cloth the Americans now, are generally things of short duration; such as, if they are not consumed by use, will decay and perish of themselves: gold, silver and diamonds, are things that fancy or agreement hath put the value on, more than real use, and the necessary support of life. Now of those good things which nature hath provided in common, every one had a right (as hath been said) to as much as he could use, and property in all that he could effect with his labour; all that his industry could extend to, to alter from the state nature had put it in, was his. He that gathered a hundred bushels of acorns or apples, had thereby a property in them, they were his goods as soon as gathered. He was only to look, that he used them before they spoiled, else he took more than his share, and robbed others. And indeed it was a foolish thing, as well as dishonest, to hoard up more than he could make use of. If he gave away a part to any body else, so that it perished not uselesly in his possession, these he also made use of. And if he also bartered away plums, that would have rotted in a week, for nuts that would last good for his eating a whole year, he did no injury; he wasted not the common stock; destroyed no part of the portion of goods that belonged to others, so long as nothing perished uselesly in his hands. Again, if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its colour; or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or a diamond, and keep those by him all his life he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his just property not lying in the largeness of his possession, but the perishing of any thing uselesly in it.

Sect. 47. And thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life.

Sect. 48. And as different degrees of industry were apt to give men possessions in different proportions, so this invention of money gave them the opportunity to continue and enlarge them: for supposing an island, separate from all possible commerce with the rest of the world, wherein there were but an hundred families, but there were sheep, horses and cows, with other useful animals, wholsome fruits, and land enough for corn for a hundred thousand times as many, but nothing in the island, either because of its commonness, or perishableness, fit to supply the place of money; what reason could any one have there to enlarge his possessions beyond the use of his family, and a plentiful supply to its consumption, either in what their own industry produced, or they could barter for like perishable, useful commodities, with others? Where there is not some thing, both lasting and scarce, and so valuable to be hoarded up, there men will not be apt to enlarge their possessions of land, were it never so rich, never so free for them to take: for I ask, what would a man value ten thousand, or an hundred thousand acres of excellent land, ready cultivated, and well stocked too with cattle, in the middle of the inland parts of America, where he had no hopes of commerce with other parts of the world, to draw money to him by the sale of the product? It would not be worth the enclosing, and we should see him give up again to the wild common of nature, whatever was more than would supply the conveniencies of life to be had there for him and his family.

Sect. 49. Thus in thebeginning all the world was America, and more so than that is now; for no such thing asmoney was any where known. Find out something that hath the use and value of money amongst his neighbours, you shall see the same man will begin presently to enlarge his possessions.

Sect. 50. But since gold and silver, being little useful to the life of man in proportion to food, raiment, and carriage, has its value only from the consent of men, whereof labour yet makes, in great part, the measure, it is plain, that men have agreed to a disproportionate and unequal possession of the earth, they having, by a tacit and voluntary consent, found out, a way how a man may fairly possess more land than he himself can use the product of, by receiving in exchange for the overplus gold and silver, which may be hoarded up without injury to any one; these metals not spoiling or decaying in the hands of the possessor. This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing in the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the right of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions.

2005-11-01T16:36:00.000-07:00

I went to mass at a different parish this morning for Holy Day. My employer was courteous enough to give me a couple of hours off, and to make the day more convenient for them and my family, we went to the closest church and earliest mass we could find, which was not Holy Ghost, but a larger, suburban church. It was built within the last decade, and is constructed “in the round”, although there is some nice art and the tabernacle is behind the altar. Still, there is something a little distracting for me and my wife about attending Mass when there are people sitting directly across from you. It was also distracting singing the Marty Haas hymns. Still, the mass was edifying nonetheless. In the past several years, I haven’t attended the Mass celebrated entirely in English very many times, and today I found myself stumbling though some of the responses.

The Gospel today was the Beatitudes, which has got me thinking about money again. I’ve been thinking a lot about money and its relationship to God the past several months. It seems that everything I hear and read of scripture lately has been about money. It is strange that I’ve heard and read these same passages before, and I wasn’t really struck by thoughts about money, but lately I am. I think God wants me to do some serious meditation on money, so I think I’m going to use the space here on the bog to do that.

I’ll begin by saying that what struck me today was that in the Beatitudes, Jesus tells us, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.” (Vulgate “Beati mites quoniam ipsi possidebunt terram”) For the first time I was really struck by this phrase. Ordinarily most of my attention is captured by “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” but not today. Looking in the footnotes in the NAB (which is sometimes fraught with danger, but the concordance is almost always reliable), I was directed to Psalm 37:11, a good lead: “But the poor will possess the land, will delight in great prosperity.” (Vulgate “Mites autem hereditabunt terram et delectabuntur in multitudine pacis”)

So in the Latin it is “meek” in both places, not “poor” in the verse from the psalm (as in the NAB), although the poor do show up in other verses in this psalm; further, the Latin uses “inherit” in the Psalm, and “possess” in the Beatitudes—the NAB switched it. But this, though interesting, is not important.

What is interesting is the thought of the Earth or the Land. Now the NAB footnotes say that the referent here is to the Promised land, and this no doubt is true, however, I think there is a deeper reference here than Israel, and that is the land of Adam, Paradise. In Genesis, in both accounts, we see that there are two major divisions in creation, the heavens and the earth, the celestial world and the land. Now, everything on the earth came from the earth. We read in the second chapter of Genesis that the Lord not only brought forth all of the vegetation from the land, but also “the LORD God formed out of the ground various wild animals and various birds of the air.” Adam alone is a mixture of the earth and the heavens, for surely the breath of God is celestial. Eve of course share this having come out of the Man. What is interesting is that Adam has dominion over all of the earth and the creatures of the land, the fish and the birds of the air. Adam posses the land in Paradise, he must be meek then, and poor as well. He has, only one thing that is really his, one thing that came out of him, and that is his wife. All else belongs rightly to the Creator. Perhaps there is something to learn hear about the nature of poverty, and certainly of poverty of spirit.

Another notable thing is that Adam is our father. What is his should rightly be our inheritance. So why don’t we have it? Psalm 37 suggests that it has been usurped by the wicked. The first line reads: “Do not be provoked by evildoers; do not envy those who do wrong.” The psalmist, David, speaks later in the psalm about the wicked drawing their weapons against the poor, and he also says, “Better the poverty of the just than the great wealth of the wicked.”

So there is something amiss here. In some way the wicked have disinherited us from the land we ought to possess in our meekness it should be our wealth and prosperity. What is also interesting here is the equivalence of land and wealth. This is an old and ancient equation. Land has often been the source of wealth. The only other source of wealth with a history is slavery. This makes a great deal of sense. The source of wealth should be something productive like land that can produce a yield on a regular basis. Land being the source of wealth also shows a connection to God’s creation. He is wealthy who has dominion over what God has created. There is something intuitive here.

But wealth is not like this any longer. Bill Gates, the wealthiest man in America is not a great land owner. That largest individual land owner in America is Ted Turner, who owns 1.8 million acres, worth $750 million. Of course Ted is worth $2 billion, so real estate, while a sizable portion of his wealth, doesn’t account for even half of it. Bill Gates is worth $51 billion, and owns less land than Turner. Wealth today is not about land, it is about money—dollars.

But what is money anyway? It is not land, and it does not seem to have much of a relationship to land either.

2005-10-31T16:14:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was our annual All Saints party at the Knights of Columbus. We have been hosting a party at the Knights for about five years now, and most of the attendees are homeschooling families. This year we had 56 children attend with their families and our theme was the Crusades. I think everybody had a good time. My favorite part of the event is when we pray the litany of the saints. We do it in an unusual way. Nearly every child comes dressed as a saint. When it comes time to pray the litany, we pray to the saints the children are dressed as. This year we were fortunate because the local Missionaries of Charity came to pray with us.

2005-10-22T16:36:00.000-06:00

The following is an article authored by my wife, Melissa, which explains Mexican All Saints traditions for Americans at a Knights of Columbus party we host annually. We apologize for formatting.

Celebrations of Life
Practices of All Saints' and All Souls' Days:
Halloween and El Día de Las Muertas

The Cathedral Knights of Columbus will host a Día de Las Muertas or "Day of the Dead" celebration for families, a fully Catholic, ancient tradition of Mexico. The event will begin with Mass at the Hall and lunch, games, prizes, a children's parade, Litany of the Saints and candy will follow. The purpose of this article is to better inform interested families about this custom. This informative article was greatly aided by Father Joseph Ganssle and was reviewed by him.

I. Introduction

Halloween is a holiday observed on the evening of October 31 in most areas of North America and in some areas of Western Europe. Halloween falls on the eve of All Saint's Day. The name is derived from archaic terms for the day, Allhallows Eve. Originally a pagan festival of the dead, All Saints' Day was established by the Church in the 9th century to honor Christian saints. All Saints, on November 2nd, is a holy day established in the 10th century. The Day of the Dead or El Día de Las Muertas, the Mexican practice of All Saints' and All Souls' Days, transforms into Catholic tradition the pagan Native American celebrations of the dead.
II. Origins of Halloween—Samhain

Many of the ancient peoples of Europe marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn. The most important of these holidays to influence later Halloween customs was Samhain, a holiday observed by the ancient Celts. Samhain began at sundown on October 31 and extended into the following day. According to the Celtic pagan religion, known as Druidism, the spirits of those who had died in the preceding year roamed the earth on Samhain evening. The Celts sought to ward off these spirits with offerings of food and drink, a sort of precursor to the Trick-or-Treat tradition in America.
In the process of incorporating the Celts into the Church, the holiday was adopted and adapted to Christian principles; although, it was not until 835 that the holiday shed the remainder of its pagan tendencies. It was then that Pope Gregory IV sought to replace Samhain with All Saints' Day. Later, All Souls' Day was first instituted at a French monastery in 998 and quickly spread throughout Europe.

Throughout Europe costumes represent popular expressions of Catholic piety. The Irish celebrate All Saints' Day by dressing as devils to show how death and Satan have no power over Christians and how we live in the protection of God. The Irish expressions are truly meant to mock Satan and his minions. Mediaeval Europeans staged Morality Plays in which actors dressed as devils and angels representing vices and opposing virtues in real world situations as a catechetical technique. After the play the actors and audience members would go out into the community and portray the spiritual battles. Ultimately this process of costuming and the accompanying rewards became our familiar costumes and trick-or-treating.

The jack-o'-lantern is probably the most ubiquitous symbol of Halloween. It was originally carved from a large turnip rather than a pumpkin and it developed in medieval Scotland, rather than Ireland. The jack-o'-lantern derives its name from a character in British folktales. According to these tales, the soul of Jack O'Lantern was barred from both Heaven and Hell and was condemned to wander the earth with his lantern. He symbolizes purgatory, the eternal separation from the warmth of God and Jack's fate, and consequently Jack himself, are feared. The jack-o-lantern serves as a reminder to remain faithful in order avoid his punishment.

II. Origins of "Day of the Dead"—Miccailhuitontli (meek-all-wee-TONE-tlee)

The original celebration of Day of the Dead can be traced to the festivities held during the Aztec month of Miccailhuitontli (meek-all-wee-TONE-tlee), named for the goddess Mictecacihuatl (meek-tec-a-kee-WHA-tl), the "Lady of the Dead". In the Aztec calendar, this ritual fell roughly at the end of July and the beginning of August, but it was moved by Spanish Jesuits to coincide with All Hallows Eve or Día de Todos Santos (All Saints' Day).

Often, the day begins with Mass and a Rosary for loved ones who have passed to their reward. Gatherings take place in cemeteries decorated to overflowing with orange and red flowers such as marigolds and chrysanthemums. Incense is burned. Many families construct elaborate ofrendas or tables heaped with food and drink and lit by candles even during the day. Special loaves of bread known as pan del muerte or "bread of the dead" are baked for the holiday. It is sweet, dry bread decorated with sugar to resemble skeletons, skulls, and mummified bodies. Other food offerings are selected with a specific individual in mind, including dishes the deceased person enjoyed in life. Sometimes even gifts of coffee, cigarettes and money grace the offrenda. Despite appearances to the contrary, the people are warm, congenial and celebratory, not sad or frightened.

Gifts are sometimes exchanged from godparents and parents to children. Small tokens of affection like Saints' medals, Santos (small statues of saints), rosaries, and holy cards are common as well as the secular gifts of plastic and candy skeletons. Unusual to Americans but a frequent gift all the same is the bendita. It is not unlike the scapular in devotion and purpose and represents the incorporation of Native Americans into Catholicism; it is a dried deer's eye upon which the image of a saint is painted. It is given to bless and protect children from influence and temptation and the intentions of ill-disposed people.

III. Conclusion

There are no traditional European-American celebrations surrounding the holy days of All Saints' and All Souls' Days. Beyond Mass attendance on All Saints' Day, few families celebrate in any meaningful way. But for those who do, in attempt to avoid the common pagan manifestations of Halloween, many families attempt a secular, innocuous "harvest" theme. The secularization of Catholic feasts and holidays is shameful and the celebration is ultimately more pagan than before. This practice fails to fully celebrate the days which honor those who have passed before us into Heaven and those who have passed but who are in need of our prayers. Death is an integral part of our temporal existence as it marks the passing from this life into eternity and these holy days are tributes to this coming life. While it is natural to be cautious and respectful of death, it is only to be feared if we fail to live according to the teachings of the mother Church. All Catholics should often contemplate their lives and coming death and truly evaluate our existence and these celebrations facilitate such thought. Children are certainly no exception.

Further, there is little need to invent traditions for these feasts when there are authentic, long lived, Catholic traditions for the new world. While these traditions and customs are strikingly different from secular practices they are not pagan. Truthfully, the are the result of pagan practice absorbed by the Church and transformed into Christian tradition; however, the same can be said for many of the Church's feasts. The Christmas tree and the Easter egg are examples of the Church's moves to set aside pagan ritual and replace it with authentic Christian symbols. The painted egg, once a fertility symbol of ancient Egypt, now holds a revered place in most Catholic homes at Easter as it now is symbolic of the Resurrection. Saint Mary Magdalene is often depicted with an egg, as she was the first to see the resurrected Christ. No one refutes the Christian representation of the egg, despite its pagan origins.

To Americans, El Día de Las Muertas celebrations may appear morbid or macabre but should be interpreted with the appreciation of the cultural significance. Mexicans have little fear of death and dying in the life well lived and see it as the natural completion of the Earthly vocations. The symbols of this process, specifically the skulls, miscellaneous bones, and mummies are really signifying only the visual and tangible elements of this completion. The celebration is of life, the temporal and eternal, and death is only a touchstone, a marker if you will, separating these. The celebrations permit one to fully embrace life and all of its manifold characteristics, including this division. This necessarily means coming to terms with death's more recognizable elements.

The American avoidance of the less savory aspects of life, specifically the imagery of death, and the turning to more "harvest" associated celebrations while not specifically pagan do not fully escape the pagan themes. The earliest celebrations were centered on the harvest as a significant touchstone for the turning of time and the change of seasons. In failing to recognize the existence of death, one simply encourages the Culture of Death in which we sanitize the end of life and demean life. This is evident in the language used to promote abortion and euthanasia.

The practice of popular expressions of piety surrounding life and death in general, and the feasts of All Saints' and All Souls' specifically do not demean life in anyway. Instead, life is elevated to a revered position and we warmly recall all those who have passed into their reward as well as honoring the reward itself. While it may not be a comfortable act for many Americans who are heavily influenced by the strongly Protestant and yet Pagan dominated culture here and the accompanying fear and avoidance of death, it is a helpful practice to explore. Not all manners of devotion provide the same meaning to all people, but people should expose themselves to all manner of devotion to determine if one may satisfy their spiritual needs. Above all, the rich and meaningful celebrations of Catholic feasts should not be feared but welcomed by the community of the faithful. Protestants fear Halloween because it is intimately Catholic and Pagans fear it because it recalls their empty lives void of the sacraments and this is true whether these individuals or associations realize it or not. Catholics should take back their Catholic holiday and celebrate it happily.

2005-10-20T12:35:00.000-06:00

Last Sunday we heard the Gospel reading about giving to Caeser what is Caeser’s and to God what is God’s. Fr. James Doran, OMV preached an excellent homily, as always, which focused on the duties we have as citizens in working with the civil authorities for the common good. He quoted from the Catechism, especially the section on the 4th commandment and talked about how our duties to the state are similar to our duties to our parents. These are issues that I have thought about and struggled with for a long time.

Also recently, on two of the blogs I regularly read (la nouvelle theologie and Caelum et Terra), Justin Nickelsen has asked questions about the political philosophies of the blog hosts, and in one case spoke of an un-American tone. Over the course of this week, reflecting on the Gospel of Sunday, and reading about similar issues in the blogoshpere has given rise to some thoughts that I really need to flesh out better. So I’m going to use this space to do that.

A few weeks ago we went to a different parish, St. Therese, in Aurora, instead of Holy Ghost. We were privileged to have a newly ordained priest, Fr. Angel Perez, celebrate the mass. That week the Gospel was about the landowner who planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants, who refused to turn over the produce, and eventually killed the servants and the son of the landowner. Fr. Angel spoke about the Lordship of God over all things, and he particularly stressed the Lordship of God over goods we think of as our own: out homes our families, our bodies, our country and our money. He even brought up the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus taught us that you cannot serve both God and mammon.

To complicate matters more thoroughly, I read some of the materials linked to by Daid Jones on la nouvelle theologie by Eugene McCarraher. One of the articles, “Mammon’s Dealdly Grin: The New Gospel of Wealth and the Old Gospel of Life” dealt with these issues directly. He claims that we live in a Corporate-National-security-Entertainment state directed towards the un-holy triumvirate of mammon, mars and saturn.

Then Thomas Storck reported on the Caelum et Terra Blog that Stephen Kobasa had been fired from his job at Cathedral High School in Bridgeport, Connecticut for refusing to display an American Flag in his office. This story was mentioned again on Mark Shea’s blog. The Bishop of Bridgeport is William Lori, who is also the Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus. One of the four principles of the Knights is patriotism, the other three are charity, unity and fraternity. When you see knights dressed in their regalia (the fancy hat, cape and sword), you can rest assured that they have attained their patriotic degree. Only a knight who has attained the patriotic degree is entitled to wear the regalia; the Knights want their public face to be a patriotic one.

I am not a fourth degree knight, and I have not taken my patriotic degree. Yet, I have promised on several occasions to live according to the principles of Columbianism, the most notable instance being when I was sworn in as Grand Knight of my council for a term of office that ended a few months ago. Being grand knight during the Bush v. Kerry election gave me even more opportunities to think about the connection between serving God an my country. I even took the opportunity of using my position as Grand Knight to give a reflection on patriotism to my council last October. It focused on patriotism being rooted in a love of the land and neighbors, and came something close to what Daniel Nichols refers to as a “sense of place”, or what Caleb Stegall calls “practicing a discipline of place.”

However, the Sunday readings have been taking us through Matthew lately, so I have been looking for some answers there. The readings this coming Sunday are awesome. From Exodus we are going to get a admonition from the Father to be merciful to aliens, which is especially important as illegal aliens have been scapegoated in an election to raise taxes in Colorado this year. We are also going to get the command from Sinai against Usury. From Our Lord in the Gospel we are going to get the two commandments:

You shall love the Lord, your God,with all your heart,with all your soul,and with all your mind.This is the greatest and the first commandment.The second is like it:You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.

We are getting ready, through these readings for Christ the King Sunday, you can see easily that the Church is going to relieve us somewhat from the stress of pondering the tension between our duties owed to the state and those owed to God which was highlighted last Sunday. It will be a welcome relief. However, I notice that the Church, in her wisdom, confirms to us as we make this transition that the tension shouldn’t be there in the first place. After Jesus tells us the greatest commandment, he tells us that the second is just like it, and it is from this second commandment that we get the duty to render unto Caesar. Maybe the answer lies in the readings of a couple of weeks ago about the landowner and the bad tenants in his vineyard. Perhaps if we behave as if the state were God’s vineyard, our duty will take care of itself. We will cooperate with the government when they are doing what is right for the vine.

I don’t know where this leaves Stephen Kobasa though; perhaps he is with St. Francis and Brother Leo on the way to St. Mary of the Angels, learning about Perfect Joy.

2005-10-14T09:29:00.000-06:00

Over the summer I sat next to a nice Indian woman at work. She was a faithful and practicing Hindu. I have not had much opportunity in my life to speak with people born into Hinduism; most of my contact has been with disaffected suburban American young people who have embraced Hinduism or the Hare Krishna sect as a part of their rebellion against their parents. But my co-worker was not like that. She was a Hindu from birth, from India and with Indian Hindu parents and had just recently come to America.

One day, when we were speaking of religion in India she told me, “You know Ben, not to be offensive or anything and you don’t seem like this, but in India, only the poor are Christians; all the Christians are poor—they are the people who have nothing.”

I thought to myself that sounded about right.

I wish I was more like that.

2005-10-11T11:10:00.000-06:00

Psalm 93

The LORD is king, robed with majesty; the LORD is robed, girded with might. The world will surely stand in place, never to be moved.

Your throne stands firm from of old; you are from everlasting, LORD.

The flood has raised up, LORD; the flood has raised up its roar; the flood has raised its pounding waves.

More powerful than the roar of many waters, more powerful than the breakers of the sea, powerful in the heavens is the LORD.

Your decrees are firmly established; holiness belongs to your house, LORD, for all the length of days.

Last winter I participated in the Prayer and Life Workshop, which was created by Fr. Ignacio Larañaga, OFM Cap. The workshop was facilitated by Fr. James Doran, OMV, the parochial vicar of Holy Ghost. Fr. Doran learned how to teach the workshop while he was a missionary in South America. He served in Brazil for 18 years. The workshop lasted about three months and consisted of daily prayer exercises and a weekly meeting. It was valuable to my faith and prayer life in many ways, but one of the greatest benefits I received was learning how to pray the Psalms.

I had not previously given the Psalms too much thought. Of course I prayed the responsorial Psalm at Mass, and read through them on occasion. I knew that they formed the foundation of the Breviary and were the cornerstone on monastic and religions prayer. I knew their place in scripture and that they were prayed by Christ, the Apostles, Fathers and Doctors and all the Saints—but I didn’t really know them. I knew they were pious devotions, but I saw them fundamentally as part of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Scriptures, I didn’t see them as specifically Christian prayers. Now I do; and thanks to my closer relationship to the Psalms, I have come to appreciate more just how fundamentally integrated the Old and New Testaments are, and most especially, just how much the Old Testament is about Christ—He permeates every page.

Take a look at the Psalm above; I picked it at random. Ostensibly, it is about the dominion of the Lord over nature, it speaks of His power over the waters of the floods. Now this points very obviously to several events in the OT. First, it speaks to the creation where God separated the waters and called the dry land out of the flood. Then, it speaks to the Flood, and while we think of the Flood, we should recall the covenant with Noah. The Psalm also evokes Exodus, where the Power of God split the sea for the passage of Israel, and we should recall here covenant on Sinai. These three events, and these covenants, the Psalmist obviously had in mind when he composed the hymn to our God. However, this Psalm also speaks more directly and profoundly of Christ. Our Lord Jesus clearly demonstrated his dominion over water when he walked on the seas; however, He submitted to baptism by John. In this he showed a submission to the needs of His creation. In baptism the flood and the corresponding covenant are brought to their fullest expression. On the Cross, the Lord consented to die in the deluge with us and in baptism we die again with Him.

As we so recently witnessed in New Orleans, floods are frightening things. The natural world can be a terrible master, and we are subject to her. Despite the best laid plans of mice and men, the levees failed the Big Easy; nature reminded us of her dominion over us. It is good for the psalmist then to remind us that nature does not have the final say, that “The LORD is king, robed with majesty; the LORD is robed, girded with might. The world will surely stand in place, never to be moved.”

We need to remember that God is in command of all creation. At the same time we need to remember that in Our Lord Jesus, God establishes the eternal covenant whereby He suffers with us and defeats death; and through this defeat of death He unseats nature from her dominion over men so that nature is no longer Master but Brother Sun and Sister Moon.

2005-10-10T09:39:00.000-06:00

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,
From whose embrace no mortal can escape.

Woe to those who die in mortal sin!

Happy those She finds doing your will!
The second death can do no harm to them.

--St. Francis of Assisi

The above words are from the Canticle of Creatures by St. Francis, and they served as the basis for a reflection on the Feast of St. Francis that Fr. Tom Carzon, OMV, the Pastor of Holy Ghost Church in Denver gave to my Knights of Columbus Council at our regular meeting last Tuesday, which coincided with the Feast of St. Francis. Fr. Tom told us about a friend of his from back east, whom he had known since before he entered the seminary who was dying. This friend of his was still young (not yet 40), and did not believe she had the opportunity to become the great saint she had wanted to be; however, Fr. Tom reported that she was facing death with great courage, and was unafraid of her fate. We all have something to learn from her, he said. He invited us to consider the possibilities of our lives if we were unafraid of death. If we accepted the teachings of Fr. Francis and understood in our hearts that death was a part of God’s creation to be loved and praised, what would be left to be afraid of? We would be free to live great lives of Christian abundance.

Father’s meditation on death was prescient. On Thursday we lost Brother Knight Frank Kiernan. Frank was an institution in our council, and had been an active member longer than I have been alive. Unlike many of the older Knights in our Council, Frank still came to the meetings every month; he served on committees and volunteered to help at events. Everybody knew Frank. About half of our active members had their first degree conferred by Frank. He is going to be missed terribly. He lived a live of service as a Catholic Gentleman.

Death is the final means by which God shows His dominion over men. It is the final moment when we are called to an ultimate poverty before Him. In our death we become completely dependent upon Him and upon His Judgment. There is nothing left for us to do. Death is the ultimate poverty, because it is the state of the most extreme dependence on the Mercy of the Creator. It is not surprising that the Seraphic Father would praise Sister Death in the same way he praised Lady Poverty, his beloved spouse. However, Fr. Francis teaches us that we need have no fear for our brother knight Frank. Franks spent his life in service, turning himself over to God. In a way, all of that was practice for his final moment. If we can comfortably stand poor and dependent before our Father in death, we have no need to distress:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

2005-10-08T16:17:00.000-06:00

I'm the father of six, the seventh is due in January. My son Raymond wants to say hello to everyone.

2005-10-08T16:12:00.000-06:00

This is my first post on my new blog.