What Should We Do?

“What should we do?” the crowds asked John the Baptist. As well they might! After all, what question could possibly be more basic? Or relevant? Or universal? Isn’t that why we have advice columns, website medicine, talk show chatter, expensive psychotherapy, spiritual directors, psychic hotlines, and personal “life coaches” – that all try or pretend to answer that question for us?

No surprise, then, that the crowd asked that very same question of the Apostles on the first Pentecost Sunday [Acts 2:37]. On that occasion, Peter told the people to repent, and be baptized. John’s answer was similar, but he went into greater detail. Particular groups – tax collectors and soldiers, for example – each got specific answers targeted to them, tailored to the specific moral challenges connected with their professions. In our society, certainly, we largely define ourselves by our work. Everybody understands what is being referred to when someone is asked “What do you do?” John was neither the first nor the last to observe that one’s work matters, what one does at work matters, how one works matters. And not just what one does at work. When all is said and done, we define ourselves by whatever we actually do – or fail to do – in all the arenas of life – at work, at home, at play, with those we love, and with those we don’t. What I do – or don’t do – demonstrates who I am, the kind of person I am choosing to be, and, in the end, determines who I will be for all eternity. As one of the 4th-century Fathers of the Church, Gregory of Nyssa [335-395], once said: “we are in a sense our own parents, and we give birth to ourselves by our own free choice of what is good.”

Of course, we now all live in a world, which has in some ways turned all that upside down and encourages us to shift responsibility to everyone and everything except ourselves. That’s what makes this Gospel story so especially appropriate at this Advent midpoint. The crowd’s questions and John’s very down-to-earth practical answers, as seen in the context of the Gospel’s entire message and as heard in this Advent setting, all seem to highlight just what is supposed to happen when we take the Christmas story seriously today.

Now the people, Luke tells us, were filled with expectation. For what? Santa Claus? Not likely! Their year-end Christmas bonus? Probably not that either! For that matter (and more to the point), what are we expecting this Advent? Surely, we’re not in expectation for Christ to be born. That already happened – a long time ago at that! We’re not play-acting here, as if living a Christian life were like some sort of perpetual Christmas pageant! The people, so we are told, all were asking in their hearts whether John might be the Christ. John assured them that he wasn’t; and, with the benefit of hindsight, we know even better than his hearers. In his exhortations to the tax collectors and the soldiers and everyone else, however, John did tell them where to look. Repeating those long-ago exhortations to us today, John is telling us too where to look – in what’s going on in the here and now and the day-to-day. Because what was ultimately so especially extraordinary about Jesus Christ’s becoming part of our world is precisely how his coming has transformed the seemingly ordinary in human life from being, at best, merely more of the same, into an opportunity for something altogether new.

Today is Gaudete Sunday, the mid-advent Sunday when the Church decks herself out in cheery-looking rose vestments (in place of penitential purple), when we once again hear Saint Paul’s powerful message, the message that gives Gaudete Sunday its name, a message simultaneously so comforting and so challenging: Rejoice in the Lord always. Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. Have no anxiety at all [Philippians 4:4-6].

It’s nice to be told to rejoice. The lights and sounds of the season, the greetings we get in the mail, not to mention the shopping-inducing messages our commercialized, consumerist culture keeps sending us from every direction, are all telling us to rejoice. But what about the rest of Paul’s message? How about Your kindness should be known to all, and Have no anxiety? Just how are we supposed to do all that?

How can anyone do that, with all the daily worries that weigh us down, the bills that never stop coming and seem to get bigger all the time, the sense so many people increasingly have (especially in the last 30 years or so) that the economic deck is stacked against them, not to mention the big picture problems of the larger world that are anything but faraway - climate change, faraway wars and not so faraway violence in our schools and even our churches, not to mention whatever private and personal problems we may be experiencing? The fact that St. Paul made his point with such emphasis, even repeating himself, suggests that anxiety must have been as real and present a problem for his 1st-century audience as it is for us, and that they too may have found rejoicing a bit of a challenge.

Saint Paul could talk the way he did because the rejoicing he recommends is not some passing sentiment, not some egg-nog induced holiday cheer, but rather is rooted in the new identity we now have from our experience of God’s mercy, revealed to us in Jesus. For it is not the ups and downs of our lives in the world that define us. It is who we are becoming by our experience of God’s mercy that enables us to rejoice and that counteracts the anxieties that would otherwise overwhelm us.

Advent expresses the fundamental character of our Christian experience, lived (as it must be) between Christ’s 1st coming in history and his final advent as our judge - and defined (as it also must be) by the Risen Lord’s continued and active presence among us, here and now. And so, our fundamental attitude (and not just at Christmas) must be to rejoice, in spite of whatever anxieties threaten to dominate our days. Our choice to rejoice results, Saint Paul suggests, in peace – not some superficial social or political peace, but the peace of God which surpasses all understanding [Philippians 4:4-7], the peace which makes possible the kind of  authentic and morally compelling life which John recommended to those who asked his advice), the peace which penetrates through our personal and social anxieties as surely as the rising sun on Christmas morning will penetrate and defeat the deep dark of the long winter night.

Homily for the 3rd Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 16, 2018.

A Dutch Church Service That Doesn't End

Good religion news is not abundant in contemporary secularized western Europe. Yesterday's NY Times, however, contained some good, indeed edifying, news in a story "To Protect Migrants From Police, a Dutch Church Service Never Ends." 

(To access it online, go to: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/world/europe/migrants-dutch-church-service.html?emc=edit_th_181211&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=383939231211).

The story is about a marathon church service that started some six weeks ago in The Hague's Bethel Church as a way of shielding one immigrant family of Armenian refugees from deportation. So far, more than 550 clergy from some 20 denominations have taken turns keeping the service going, taking advantage of a Dutch law (leftover, no doubt, from that kingdom's once vibrant Protestant religious culture) that prohibits police from arresting someone during a religious service.

According to the Times article, the story began in a seaside town southwest of Amsterdam, where the Tamrazyan family ended up after the father was forced to flee Armenia for political reasons in 2010. Over the years, Dutch officials twice tried to deny the family asylum, and were twice defeated in court, but finally won on its third attempt. To avoid deportation to danger back in Armenia, the family took refuge in a local church. When that church ran out of resources to help them, the leadership of The Hague’s Bethel Church welcomed the family, and has been providing education for the children who can no longer safely attend school outside. The Protestant Church in the Netherlands has endorsed this effort and publicized it.

So far, the Dutch government has refused to back down. So it is hard to see how this will end. Meanwhile, however, the Church keeps doing its job as best it can - visible even in super-secularized western Europe.

"Lame Duck" Mischief

The scandalous assaults by some Republican state legislatures on democratic constitutional norms are serious business. It is worth noting, however, that they are possible in large part because of a particular peculiarity in our system - "lame duck" legislative sessions. Some states strictly limit the length of a legislative session - a relic of the older idea of part-time legislators who have full-time jobs in their communities. In such cases, "lame duck" sessions are rare, requiring the executive to summon a special session. The same would be the case with Congress if it completed its business on time and adjourned earlier in the year. Nowadays, of course, Congress has become so polarized and in such a state of permanent electoral campaign that it has become legislatively dysfunctional to the point that things that absolutely have to be done (e.g., spending bills) get kicked down the calendar to virtually the latest possible date, increasingly requiring a "lame duck" congressional session, such as is taking place now (accompanied by predictable Republican mischief such as pointlessly summoning former FBI Director Comey to testify yet again about Hilary Clinton's emails).

It was to minimize Congressional "lame duck" mischief that the 20th Amendment to the federal constitution was adopted in 1935. The original constitution had prescribed an annual meeting of Congress on the first Monday in December. The constitution itself, however, had gone into effect on March 4, 1789. So the terms of office for Senators and Representatives (as well as President and Vice President) were calculated to begin and end on March 4 in the odd-numbered year following elections the previous November. As a result, the newly elected Congress did not take office until March; but, unless for some reason a President called a special session, the new Congress did not actually meet until the following December, 13 months after election. Meanwhile, the old Congress met, as prescribed, for its second annual session in December after the election - an election in which some at least (and sometimes many) congressmen had been defeated for reelection. This "lame duck" session met until the morning of the following March 4. 

The 20th Amendment ended this bizarre system. It specified that The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin. Its second section then provided The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

So, since the 1930s we are no longer required have to have "lame duck" congressional sessions . We have them now, not by necessity, but by congressional choice. Meanwhile mishchief on a minor or major scale is increasingly threatened by such sessions - major mischief as we are witnessing in the state legislatures on Wisconsin and Michigan and as we famously saw in Congress when President Clinton was maliciously impeached in a "lame duck" session in December 1998.

Congress could, of course, get its house in order and complete its business in a more reasonable time-frame (i.e., ending before the November elections), thus making "lame duck" sessions rare. It could actually legislate such a time-table for itself (although we know from experience how unlikely Congress would be to remain faithful to its own "regular order"). 

In fact, forcing Congress to conduct its business in a timely manner (before the November elections) would be a great benefit. It would minimize the kind of post-election mischief we have become accustomed to and facilitate a far more logical - and more representative - system. In practice, however, the only way to force this on Congress would be to amend the constitution - either to require Congress to adjourn by, at the latest, November 1 or to advance the start of the new congressional terms to, let's say, December 1. Of course, amending the constitution is a challenge under the best of conditions, and these are not the best of conditions right now. So a solution through constitutional amendment remains highly unlikely, although depending on their different processes some states might be more successful in amending their own constitutions and preventing their own state legislatures from indulging in "lame duck" sessions..

The only realistic recourse at the federal level is public anger and public pressure (also not particularly likely) to demand an end to such "lame duck" sessions. Until and unless something like that happens, we shall continue to see this aberrant and bizarre system continue with all its potential for minor and major  mischief.

Thomas Merton - 50 Years Gone

Today is the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of Fr. Mary Louis, OCSO,  better known by his secular name, Thomas Merton, undoubtedly the most famous and influential 20th-century American monk. (The mere notion of a famous and influential 20th-century American monk itself speaks volumes!) Born in 1915, young Merton lived an interesting life on both sides of the Atlantic, after which Merton was received into the Church 80 years ago, on November 16, 1938. A few years later, after a few more twists and turns, he entered the Cistercian monastery at Gethsemane, Kentucky, on December 10, 1941.  (With typical triumphalist hyperbole, he had called Gethsemane "the center of America" when he first visited there in April of that year.) Admitted to the novitiate the following year, he professed solemn vows in 1947 and was ordained a priest in 1949. 

Had he been just an ordinary monk, the wider world might never have heard from him again. But being no ordinary monk, Merton meanwhile authored some 70 books and numerous articles - at times a widely welcomed part of the era's triumphalist Catholicism that he had enthusiastically embraced, and at other times challenging that same triumphalist (and complacent) Catholicism and pushing both the Church and religious life in new directions, addressing the world beyond the cloister on such sensitive subjects as race and war, as well as on more conventionally spiritual and Catholic concerns.

In my high school years in the early 1960s, I spent a lot of time in the public library. The plus side of that was that I really read a lot – history and biography, in particular. It was at this time that I discovered Thomas Merton – not just his famous autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), but also his monastic journal The Sign of Jonas, which I read and reread and which so many decades later still remains my favorite Merton book! At the time, I was thoroughly taken with Merton’s life story, his spiritual journey (although I am sure I would not have used such a term then) from agnostic secularism to the certitudes of mid-20th-century Catholicism, and also by Merton's somewhat romanticized depiction of his monastic vocation (part of that time's triumphalist Catholic culture which he had embraced and which I then simply assumed as a given). 

Although the NY Times excluded it from the weekly best-seller list on the grounds that it was "a religious book," the original cloth edition of The Seven Storey Mountain sold over 600,000 copies in the first year alone. Since then it has sold multiple millions of copies and been translated into more than 20 languages. It is, therefore, a "classic" (defined by Merton's friend Mark Van Doren as "a book that remains in print"). Graham Greene called it "an autobiography with a pattern and meaning valid for all of us." It was certainly that for me, however limited my understanding of it when I first read it as a teenager. But that is the thing about Merton: the more mature one's understanding of his writing the more attractive and aspirational it becomes.

In The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton recalled purchasing a “set of four books, bound in black leather, marked in gold.” That purchase of the 4-volume Breviarum Romanum during the period between his conversion and his actual entry into the monastery, represented his decision “that if I could not live in the monastery, I should try to live in the world as if I were a monk in the monastery.” Of course, in the end Merton did become a monk. In imitating Merton by buying myself a Roman Breviary in 1968, consciously choosing to do the same thing that he had done (or at least something similar), did I too hope that something similar might someday happen to me?   

Merton himself had not been not much older than I was when he made that decision, but he certainly had had much more experience of life. He was also much more widely and better educated and culturally engaged, all of which was the intellectual foundation that made possible both the quantity and quality of his enormous literary output as a monk, which - refined in the unique experience of his monastic vocation - spoke (and amazingly still speaks) to the world with a relevance few "spiritual" authors attain to.

As for me, in 1968, I had only the most minimal intellectual and cultural foundation. Obviously I could not hope ever to imitate Merton's literary output and cultural influence. I could barely imitate him in his spiritual aspirations. Also my Latin was minimal, hardly up to the challenge of reciting – let alone, properly praying – the Divine Office, as Merton regularly did while commuting to his pre-war teaching job. Fortunately for me, however, by this time priests in the United States were permitted to pray the Office in English; and the pre-conciliar simplification and codification of the rubrics had shortened the Office somewhat and so had made it feasible to print the entire Office in one Roman Breviary volume.  So it was that single English-language volume of the Church’s official prayer that I purchased for myself, in my modest effort to imitate Merton and maybe in some confused manner to follow him on his journey.  

“The inspiration to do it,” Merton wrote, “was a very great grace.” He said he could remember few things that gave him more joy.  It drew him “into that atmosphere, into that deep vast universal movement of vitalizing prayer, which is Christ praying in men to His Father.” That "movement of vitalizing prayer" is at the heart of any authentic religious vocation. whether monastic or (as the fictional 12th-century monk-detective Brother Cadfael might say) "in the world."

It was Merton's great gift to flourish in that monastic "atmosphere" in a way which intersected so powerfully with the Church "in the world." And so it was especially fitting that Pope Francis invoked Merton's wisdom (along with Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, and Dorothy Day) when he addressed the U.S. Congress in September 2015.

Last year, while in Louisville for a meeting, I visited the historical marker (photo) commemorating a major moment in Merton's life. On March 18, 1958, at what was then the downtown Louisville corner of 4th and Walnut, Merton suddenly realized that no one could be totally alien to him. It was, he said “as if waking from a dream.” Suddenly, he realized that he could have no “more glorious destiny” than as “a member of the human race … since the Word was made flesh and became, too, a member of the Human Race!”

A Voice from the Desert

This past Thursday, the Church celebrated one of its most popular saints, Saint Nicholas, the 4th-century Greek Bishop of Myra (in what is today Turkey). Nicholas lived from 270 to 343 and became known and celebrated for his generosity. In some parts of Europe, Saint Nicholas still comes to bring gifts on the eve of his feast day – as, 37 years ago, he did for us novices at the Paulist Novitiate in Oak Ridge, NJ. Nowadays, in much of the United States, Santa Claus has already arrived in a multitude of Thanksgiving and Christmas parades, but we must still wait patiently another few weeks for his presents.

Of course, Santa Claus isn’t the only figure whose annual appearance heralds the coming of Christmas. As she always does on this 2nd Sunday of Advent, the Church introduces us to the mysterious figure of John the Baptist, who comes out of the desert each Advent proclaiming: “Prepare the way of the Lord” [Luke 3:4; Isaiah 40:3].

John the Baptist is a very mysterious figure, appearing briefly at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, then quickly getting himself arrested and executed. All four Gospels mention John in connection with the beginning of Jesus’ public life, but Luke’s Gospel goes further and links John and Jesus not only as adults but at the beginning of their lives as infants. As the future founder of the Paulist Fathers, Isaac Hecker, wrote in his Diary eight months after he had become a Catholic [April 2, 1845]: “We have much to learn before we know all that union with God means … Alas how few live solely for God – Mary – John the Baptist – these from their birth were consecrated to his work alone.” Hecker echoed the emphasis in Luke’s story of John’s consecration as priest and prophet from Day 1 - how John was by birth a Jewish priest, summing up and fulfilling all that the Old Testament was about, and a prophet, going before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare a people fit for the Lord [Luke 1:17; Malachi 3:23-24].

But how to prepare a people fit for the Lord? How do we prepare for the Lord?

John’s message may be timeless, but Luke the Gospel writer went to great length to pinpoint precisely when in historical time John made his first public appearance. What one notices immediately is the special solemnity of the story's language - the style of an official imperial proclamation, complete with the names of the reigning emperor and his representatives. That's Luke the historian, telling us who, what, when, and where - situating John's message in the larger sweep of human history.

All of this suggests that, however out-of-the-way the Jordan Valley may seem to us (despite its regular prominence in the news of the world), the real stage on which John's solemn pronouncement is being proclaimed is not some far-off desert oasis but at the very center of society - symbolized in the Gospel by that list of names of the emperor and his representatives. While the message itself may indeed be timeless, God’s grace and mercy come to us in real time, in the specific circumstances in which we happen to find ourselves. That was what the Prophet Baruch was explaining to the people in the sad and troubled time that followed the Temple’s destruction and Israel’s exile to Babylon. Baruch invited the people to put aside their mourning and contemplate the exiles’ return at the time of the fall festival when the autumn rains bring new life to the parched land. He portrayed the return of the exiles as if they were on a pilgrimage, a pilgrimage brought about by God alone, who is revealed in his mercy and justice.

Some 25 centuries later, we read and hear this prophecy in a world which once again is witness to a seemingly endless procession of exiles – refugees from Central America who are presently stranded on our own southern border and others around the world where war and chaos currently destroy lives and families and the very fabric of society itself. Wherever they come from and wherever they go, our obligation, as the United States’ Bishops have reminded us is “to care for and stand with newcomers, authorized and unauthorized, including unaccompanied immigrant children, refugees and asylum-seekers, those unnecessarily detained, and victims of human trafficking” [Faithful Citizenship, 81] .

The similarities between then and now remind us that the stage on which John's solemn pronouncement is being proclaimed is not just some far-off 1st-century desert oasis but every time and place, including notably our own.

The geographical desert was just John's starting-point - as it had been Israel's starting-point way back when. Rather than remain in the wilderness, the word of God takes John out of the desert and into the world. God's word wants to be heard - by everyone, where people actually are. In the words of the prophet Isaiah that Luke quotes: all flesh shall see the salvation of God [Isaiah 40:5].

For most of us, preoccupied as we inevitably are with our busy day-to-day lives and our here-and-now concerns, John the Baptist reminds us what Advent and Christmas are all about - God's word's active movement into our world. Isaiah said all flesh shall see the salvation of God, but in John that future is already happening in the present. And, as in Isaiah's day and as in John's, there are certainly plenty of valleys to be filled and mountains and hills to be leveled by God’s grace and mercy in our world.

Advent, as we are always being told, is all about waiting and eager expectation. But waiting for what, exactly? Surely not just for Santa Claus! For Christ? Yes, for Christ - but surely not for Christ to be born! That happened a long time ago in Bethlehem. Otherwise, we wouldn't be praying here in this church today! If I may quote Isaac Hecker again: Christ has come. Christ is here, now upon earth. Christ ever abides with [us] according to His word. What the age promises [us] is the rending asunder the clouds of error which hinder [us] from seeing that Christ is here. [The Church and the Age, 1887]

Like the first coming of Christ, which John proclaimed way back then, the day-in, day-out, here-and-now, coming of Christ, which the Church lives all year long, invites a convinced and committed response on our part. That kind of response can only be sustained when we become convinced, as Saint Paul so clearly was, that the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus [Philippians 4:7]

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 9, 2018