Magna Carta

On this date in 1215, King John of England (1166-1216, King 1199-1216) signed the famous Magna Carta, the “great charter” of English liberties. The very first of those famous liberties was the freedom of the Church:

FIRST, We have granted to God, and by this our present Charter have confirmed, for Us and our Heirs for ever, that the Church of England shall be free, and shall have all her whole Rights and Liberties inviolable. We have granted also, and given to all the Freemen of our Realm, for Us and our Heirs for ever, these Liberties under-written, to have and to hold to them and their Heirs, of Us and our Heirs for ever

Of course, it takes more than a piece of paper to guarantee freedom - for anyone. The freedom of the Church had been at issue in the great conflict between King John’s much more accomplished father, King Henry II (1133-1189, King 1145-1189) and his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket (1118-1170), martyred by four of the King's thuggish henchmen (otherwise known as knights of the realm) on December 29, 1170 - and subsequently (and very rapidly) canonized in 1173. Magna Carta or no, it would continue to be an issue all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Then, with the Renaissance and Reformation, the situation would only get that much worse for the Church and for its freedom. In England, Magna Carta or no, the Church’s freedom would be eradicated completely by Henry VIII and his successors Edward and Elizabeth, resulting in many more martyrs, the most famous of whom were St. Thomas Fisher (1469-1535) and St. Thomas More, (1478-1535), both honored together on the Church’s calendar later this month.

Almost six centuries after King’s John’s signature had been rather reluctantly affixed to the Magna Carta, the First Amendment enshrined the freedom of the Church in the U.S. Constitution. The American situation and perspective were radically different from medieval England’s, of course. In the medieval case, the Church was one and universal, the State’s equal at least, a real rival superior at times in power. In the American case, the Church was divided into different denominations and sects (some of which enjoyed the privileges of establishment in specific states – the 1^st Amendment applying originally only to the Federal Government). It was religious pluralism, which provided the occasion for the American experiment.

In the Church’s self-understanding, the Church is a supernatural society, whose nature and purpose transcend that of the State (or any other social institution). In the American pluralist model, in contrast, churches are among the many and various voluntary social institutions which are at the heart of society, and whose autonomy the State is constrained to respect. Historically, that autonomy has worked to the benefit of the Church, which has thrived and flourished in the free air of American religious liberty. And it has worked well for society as well, which has benefited from the freedom of its citizens to build communities and create a network of familial, educational, and medical institutions (among others), which together have built an authentic American civil society. An activist, purposive government, which acknowledges its natural limits (and its inherent lack of transcendent purpose) will only benefit by recognizing the legitimate space for civil society and its component institutions, the Church first among them.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Even as our political system is radically redistributing wealth from the young to the old, our popular culture remains radically youth-oriented. Our society’s obsession with youth and beauty together with the fact that young people probably spend more money on movies may make our current epidemic of silly action movies and the like almost inevitable. It is all that much more refreshing, therefore, to experience a film featuring predominantly older actors portraying a period in life and its challenges that most senior citizens can well relate to.

That movie, of course, is the recently released film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (based on Deborah Moggach’s 2004 novel These Foolish Things). The ensemble cast includes such stars as Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, and Tom Wilkinson, among others, part of an oddly assorted group of British seniors, several in economically challenged circumstances, who have (somewhat improbably) settled in a retirement hotel in Jaipur, India. Operated by a young and dynamic, but impractical entrepreneur, the dilapidated old hotel is a vivid metaphor for the circumstances in which these expatriates find themselves.

The film follows the predictable plot-line of strangers getting to know each other as they struggle to adapt to alien (and somewhat difficult) surroundings, rediscovering strengths in themselves and new motivation to carry on (complete with predictable romantic entanglements). In the process, one will die happy (having reconnected with a native Indian lover from 40 years back), one will leave her husband and return home, and the others will all remain in India, their renewed lives reflected in the renewed condition of the hotel.

The predictability of the plot in no way detracts from the beauty of the story. The movie visually assaults the viewer (and, a fortiori, the characters) with the bright light and color and chaos of India – effectively symbolizing the experiential assault on the defeated, beaten down people they had become and opening a brighter path, made possible precisely by the chaos of their situation. The movie imparts a new meaning to the hackneyed expression one’s “golden” years!

The full title of the hotel is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful. Assuming what that title says grammatically is what was really intended (the Elderly and Beautiful – not the Elderly and the Beautiful), the film invites its aging characters (and through them their audience to engage in the counter-cultural thought experiment that being beautiful is not an alternative to being elderly but can coexist with it.

Reconnecting with Utopia

In 1980, I wrote a paper for the 1980 Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, in which I suggested that St. Thomas More’s Utopia, while it borrowed much from classical political philosophy, was animated by the very unclassical symbol of poverty on the monastic model. This enabled More to oppose modern political theory’s emancipation of acquisitive impulses and reaffirm the traditional subordination of economics to politics. (The title of that paper was “Alternatives to Abundance,” which certainly suggests where my head was at, philosophically, at that stage of my intellectual journey).

I pulled that paper out of storage recently, as I have been thinking about St. Thomas More in connection with the forthcoming “Fortnight for Freedom.” As no less a commentator than Joseph Ratzinger observed in 1978, “utopia, as a literary and philosophical genre, originated in the humanistic philosophy of the Renaissance, with Thomas More as its first classic author” (“Eschatology and Utopia,” International Catholic Review: Communio, V, 3).

Of course, neither More’s Utopia in particular, nor his political philosophy in general, accounts for his martyrdom or for the linking of his day in the Church calendar with the USCCB’s “Fortnight for Freedom.” More became a saint because of his martyrdom for the freedom of the Church. More might well have become a martyr had he just been a prominent lawyer and statesman and had never written or even thought of Utopia. Certainly, his martyrdom for the freedom of the Church was more important than Utopia. Even so, his earlier intellectual activity was an important component of his life story. And his intellectual prestige accounted for the especially strong resonance his martyrdom had in 16^th-century Europe. So as I reflect upon the man who became a martyr, I remain fascinated by the Utopia Thomas More the man composed.

Now few things could be more clear about More’s Utopia than the identity of its central animating symbol – poverty. Every 10 years the Utopians change houses by lot – without any of the economic advantages historically associated with selling one’s home in our even more mobile society. Utopia’s citizens all wear the same rough work clothes, and each household has to make its own clothes. And so on.

More’s Utopians, however hard and simple their lives, were not, however, in actual want. Whatever they were, they were not poor in the sense in which so many sadly still are, suffering from a lack of genuine necessities. They were however, relatively poor compared to what they could have had, had they developed their full productive capacities. In this regard, the symbolism of Utopia’s 6-hour workday is evident.

However much More the Renaissance humanist may have admired ancient philosophy, he completely broke with a principle basic both to classical political experience and to classical political theory – that personal freedom from the need to work was necessary for authentic political life. Instead, More’s Utopians are more like monks than citizens of some real or imagined Aristotelian polis. Catholic Monasticism provided More a model in which work was compatible with full membership in society – set, however, in the overall context of a rule of life which minimized material preoccupations as much as possible, not allowing them to set the agenda for either individuals or society.

A utopia, by definition, doesn’t actually exist; and the closest real-world equivalent, the monastery, is obviously not for everyone, or even for most. Still, each can still serve as a challenge to remember what we so easily tend to forget about what’s really important in our human life together.

"Son of Encouragement"

St. Barnabas, whom the Church calendar commemorates today, shares with Saint Paul the distinction of being one of the only two (outside the select group of the 12) whom the Church honors with the title “apostle.” Presumably, he has that title because, along with Paul, he was divinely commissioned for the mission. According to the account at the beginning of Acts 13, while five early Christian prophets and teachers were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." And so it was that the two set out on what we now call Paul’s 1^st Missionary Journey.

We call it Paul’s 1^st Missionary Journey and tend to think of Barnabas as Paul’s associate, but it is evident from this account of their commissioning - as well as from the later mis-identification of Barnabas with Zeus at Lystra (Acts 14:12), where the two were together referred to as apostles (Acts 14:14) – that Barnabas was at first the more senior partner. Acts 11 already told us that it was Barnabas who had been the Jerusalem community’s emissary to the new Christians in Antioch, who then fetched Saul back form Tarsus, and that the two together met with the Church and taught a large number of people.

Actually, Barnabas had appeared on the scene even earlier – as early as Acts 4:36-37. At that very early stage in the story of the apostolic Church, Joseph, also named by the apostles Barnabas (which is translated “son of encouragement”), a Levite, a Cypriot by birth, sold a piece of property that he owned, then brought the money and put it at the feet of the apostles.

Now that I am a pastor of a church (and about to replace a roof), I can easily understand why, when Barnabas brought the profits from the sale of his property to the apostles, they named him “son of encouragement”!

Money aside, what a nice name! The Church is forever in need of missionaries - apostolic evangelizers, as Barnabas was along with Paul. The Church is also forever in need of pastors – apostolic shepherds of evangelized communities, as Barnabas was at Antioch, together with Paul. But both missionaries and pastors – and those they serve – all need encouragement! In today’s world, discouragement seems so easy, and encouragement so correspondingly necessary - as I’m sure must have been the case in the apostolic Church of Acts and in every age of the Church ever since. That’s one of the reasons why I think the Acts of the Apostles is such a great book, because it is such an encouraging book!

Being a disciple has many dimensions and makes many different demands.  Obviously, not all have been called like Barnabas to be sent out as missionaries. Neither have all been called to sell their property or to supervise the religious life of a community. Spreading the gospel and living a Gospel life as a Church community challenge each of us in different ways. But all of us need encouragement – everyday! And we all need to encourage one another in the day-in, day-out drama of ordinary life, shaped and reshaped by our extraordinary story.

O Sacred Banquet

A few years back, a group of us in our Paulist midtown-Manhattan parish participated in a series of dialogues with representatives from a local synagogue. We met every month or so for about a year, and had some very good discussions with good participation from both congregations. Sometimes, however, our discussions evolved into dialogues between myself and the Rabbi - about arcane subjects, which the 2 of us (at least) found very interesting.

One such topic was sacrifice. It is well known that some form of sacrifice has characterized almost all religions. The word itself, “sacrifice,” means “to make sacred.” Historically it refers to the offering of valuable objects – of food (for example, the bread & wine offered by Melchizedek in the book of Genesis), of incense, of animals, & even of humans - all offered as an act of worship of God & in hope of communing with God. The Old Testament recounts the offerings of Cain and Abel at the beginning of human history and the sacrifice of Noah after the Flood, but perhaps the most famous Old Testament sacrifice was Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah, the future site of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Sacrifice was at the heart of what went on in that Temple, where sacrifices were offered at set times every day (including, in Jesus’ time, 2 lambs offered daily for the Roman Emperor). By then, the Temple in Jerusalem had acquired a monopoly on Jewish sacrifices, which meant, however, that, when the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, Judaism suddenly became a religion with no place to offer sacrifice. The Judaism of most of the past 2000 years, therefore, has been that of the synagogue (not the Temple), the Judaism of rabbis (rather than priests), as a rich tradition of individual and communal prayer at set times developed to take the place of the prescribed sacrifices. What intrigued us in our local Catholic-Jewish dialogue, however, was how, historically, just when sacrifice was about to disappear from Judaism, Christianity continued the emphasis on sacrifice, preserving the religious importance of sacrifice in its own unique way.

Today’s 1^st reading [Exodus 24:3-8] recalls the role of sacrifice in sealing the covenant between God and his people at Mount Sinai. Although there were many types of sacrifices – grain and incense, for example – which involved no blood, often blood was central to the sacrifice. In ancient Rome, for example, worshipers of the god Mithra would lie in a trench and let the warm blood of a just slaughtered steer flow over them. Likewise, after sacrificing holocausts and peace offerings to the Lord, Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying. “This is the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you in accordance with all these words of his.”

The New Testament portrays Jesus’ life and death as an offering of his entire self, making fully and permanently effective God’s personal alliance with us. The Gospel we just heard [Mark 14:12-16, 22-26] reports Jesus, on the eve of the annual Passover sacrifice, referring to the blood of the covenant – recalling the sacrifice we just heard about in today’s 1^st reading, but referring in fact to his own blood. This blood, it turns out, substitutes for the blood of goats and calves to seal what the letter to the Hebrews clearly calls a new covenant. Calling the Risen Christ high priest of the good things that have come to be, the letter to the

Hebrews clearly wants us to understand Christ’s accomplishment as a sacrifice [Hebrews 9:11-15].

Whereas all the sacrifices of the past served certain specific and limited purposes, however, that of Christ the High Priest, was a once-and-for-all the offering of Christ’s own self, unblemished to God through the eternal Spirit, in order to cleanse our consciences to worship the living God.

The same letter to the Hebrews elsewhere tells us that the Risen Christ is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them [Hebrews 7:25]. As priest, Christ continually offers worship before the Father on our behalf. As sacrifice, Christ becomes our worship, as he unites us with him in his body by means of his blood.

And so, in anticipation of shedding his blood on our behalf, Jesus shared his body and blood with his disciples in the form of bread and wine. He turned an otherwise ordinary meal into a sacrificial sign of the new relationship uniting us with him in his body, the Church, by means of his blood. This same sacrificial meal Jesus has commanded his priests to repeat in his memory in the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass.

And so it is that, for us Christians, sacrifice continues uniquely in Christ’s once and for all sacrificial gift of himself to his Father, made permanently present for us in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the sacrifice of Christ becomes the offering of his body and blood through his body, the Church. This sacrifice unites all Christians of all times and places in Christ’s one offering of himself, now present for us on our altar, uniting us not only with Christ but through him with one another, with all who eat and drink at his altar and who share this new life of gratitude and hope.

Established by Pope Urban IV in 1264, this feast of Corpus Christi highlights the permanent presence of the Risen Christ in the Eucharistic sacrifice. According to legend, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, both contemporaries, started composing texts for the new feast. Then, St. Bonaventure visited St. Thomas and read the antiphon that Thomas had composed for today’s Evening Prayer. When he got home, Bonaventure then threw his own manuscript into the fire. Thus it is the words of St. Thomas that summarize what we celebrate today – and every day – in the Eucharistic sacrifice: “O Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is consumed, the memory of His Passion is renewed, the soul is filled with grace and a pledge of future glory is given us.”

Homily for Corpus Christi, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 10, 2012