Congress

On this day (April 6) in 1789, the US Senate met for the first time with a quorum and elected its first officers. The House had met for the first time with a quorum and elected its officers on April 1. The Constitution officially took effect on March 4, 1789, but it took until April for the 1st Congress to get its act together. Despite its slow start, however, the 1st Congress (which met in 3 congressional sessions between April 1789 and March 3, 1791) accomplished quite a lot of important national business.

The first session established the Cabinet Departments of State, War, and Treasury, and passed the Judiciary Act of 1789, which created the Supreme Court of the United States, the Federal District Courts, the Circuit Courts, and established the US Attorney General and District Attorneys. Finally, on September 25, it passed and sent to the states the first set of amendments to the US Constitution. Of the 12 amendments proposed, 10 were ratified and are collectively celebrated as our “Bill of Rights.” (One of the other two proposed amendments was belatedly ratified by the states in 1992 becoming the 27th Amendment to the Constitution. It prohibits any law that increases or decreases the salary of members of the Congress from taking effect, until the start of the next set of terms of office for Representatives.)

The 1790 session provided for the first census, passed the Naturalization Act of 1790, the Patent Act of 1790, the Copyright Act of 1790, the Residence Act, establishing the yet-to-be-built Washington, DC, as the future seat of the Federal Government), and the Indian Intercourse Act of 1790, regulating commerce with Native American Tribes.

The 3rd session (1791) chartered the First Bank of the United States, and admitted Vermont to the Union as the 14th state.

Not a bad record at all! Given that they were doing everything for the first time and that not everyone expected them to succeed, the members of the 1st US Congress left behind an admirable legacy.

Would that every modern Congress could be so productive!

Vincere

For my birthday last month, I was given some movie gift certificates, some of which I used this afternoon to see the new Marco Bellochio film Vincere. This dark film (its superb acting augmented by some well-chosen newsreel footage) traces Mussolini’s evolution - a young Socialist radical in Milan, who pompously mocks God’s existence and wouldn’t mind strangling the King with the intestines of the Pope, who then, when World War I comes, breaks with the Socialsts and embraces an ardent Italian nationalism and then after the War becomes the King’s Prime Minister and reconciles Italy with the Catholic Church. That already well known story is experienced through the virtually unknown, tragic story of Ida Dalser, a woman from Sopramonte near Trent (born when that area was still part of the Austrian Empire), who falls madly in love with Mussolini and for the rest of her life claimed to have married him in 1914. In 1915, however, the same year Ida bore Mussolini a son, Benito Albino, the future Duce married Rachele Guidi, recognized ever since as his legal wife. The story of Mussolini’s post-war rise to power is told through the story of his estrangement from Ida, whose embarrassing claims eventually cause her to be put under house arrest and finally committed to a mental institution. While both she and her son seem perfectly lucid in all other respects, both insanely persist in asserting their dangerous claims, consuming and destroying their lives in the process.

Ida can be seen as symbolic of a society, a nation, which fell irrationally in love with its power-driven Duce, whose amoral ambition in turn consumed and destroyed both Ida and Italy. The verb vincere means "to win" (in the sense of “to conquer”) and one of the last newsreel clips of Mussolini in the film ends with him saying (on the eve of war) vinceremo, “we will win.” (Since the story is experienced through Ida, once she has been abandoned by Mussolini, she – and we - only see him through newsreels).

Mussolini didn’t win, of course. Conceivably had his ambition not led him into a disastrous alliance with Germany and an even more unpopular and disastrous Second World War, Mussolini might have died peacefully in his bed, the King would still be on his throne, and Italy would have been spared what was in a sense defeat at the hands of both sides. For that to have happened, however, he would have had to restrain his own ambition for the good of Italy (becoming in effect a different person), or someone else would have had to step up and somehow stop him. In the film, Ida has some sympathetic allies, but they are all powerless, paralleling the apparent sense of powerlessness that seems to have overcome those that might have done more to check Mussolini’s ambitions. Unlike Hitler, who really did have something much more like complete control of German society, Mussolini never had comparably complete control and always had to share legitimacy with the transcendent and socially entrenched charismatic legitimacy of the Church and the admittedly much less charismatic, constitutionally legitimate King. The King did, of course, finally fire Mussolini in 1943, but that was then all too little and too late – both for the House of Savoy and for Italy. And, sadly, it was also too late for Ida and her son.

Easter Sunday

From my Easter Sunday morning Homily at St. Paul the Apostle Church, NYC.

One of my all-time favorite scenes in literature takes place on Easter Eve as a despairing Faust prepares to drink the poison with which he plans to end his pointless life. Suddenly he hears the sound of church bells. Though Faust’s faith is weak and his hope all but gone, even so just the sound of the Easter bells brings him back from the brink of death.
Like Faust, we too have all heard the Easter bells, as year after year they work their wonders in our hearts. Back in the Bronx in the 1950s, the sound of the Easter bells set in motion an important annual ritual in my home. In those days, of course, the Easter Vigil service was celebrated in the early hours of Saturday morning. So hardly anyone was in church to hear the indoor bell-ringing at the Gloria. But then, promptly at noon on Saturday, when Lent ended & Easter officially began, churches all over the world let loose a cacophony of bells. Meanwhile, my grandmother had sat us all down at the kitchen table & tuned the radio to the Italian station, where we could hear the best bells of all – the bells of Rome’s several hundred churches (recorded earlier at noon Italian time) – all peeling gloriously, as we, obedient to my grandmother’s command, cracked open our Easter eggs, which we quickly consumed in eager anticipation of our next course – our Easter chocolate!
But enough about chocolate; back to the bells! Today, those Easter bells still proclaim Christ is risen, in words addressed directly to us. As we celebrate this central mystery of our faith today, we are invited to relive the amazing experience of Mary Magdalene and the other disciples, who came to the tomb early in the morning while it was still dark.
It was way beyond the capacity of any of the Gospel writers to describe the actual event of Jesus' rising from the dead. What the New Testament does describe & what we – with Mary, & Simon Peter & the other disciple & so many others ever since (even Faust) - experience today are its effects - its wonderful effects in our lives and in our world. It matters very much what Jesus said and did in his earthly life; but, thanks to Easter, it matters even more what he is doing now.
For the Easter story, that the Easter bells proclaim so powerfully year after year, is really two interconnected stories – Jesus’ story & our story. Likewise, our Easter faith involves two interconnected claims: about Jesus, that the same Jesus who lived & died now lives again in glory; and, about us, that we, though we too must likewise die, we too will also live again with him, whose resurrection has thus become ours as well.
John’s Gospel tells us that, on the 1st day of the week, the day after the Sabbath, Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone already removed from the tomb. It was on the 6th day of creation, that God had made human beings. And it was on the 6th day of the week that Jesus, identified by Pontius Pilate with the simple words, Behold the man, did what (sadly) all of us human beings must do. He died. Indeed, he died, as John’s gospel makes such a point of emphasizing, at the very hour that the Passover lamb was being sacrificed in the Temple. Having replaced that sacrifice with the sacrifice of himself, he was buried – in a hurry because of the holiday. On the 7th day of creation, God had rested from all the work he had done in creating the world. And, on the 7th day of the week, the Sabbath, Jesus rested in the tomb.
But, on the next day, instead of staying dead (as corpses were supposed to do), Jesus did something very different. Instead of staying dead, he lives again – and lives so full of the living breath of God’s Holy Spirit that he lives a totally transformed and gloriously new kind of life. That 1st creation was over in 7 days. But the next day was the start of something new.
Even so (as we just heard), the first few to become aware of it left the empty tomb more confused than elated: For they did not yet understand the Scripture that he had to rise from the dead. Nor would we, if that were all we had of the story. Just as the disciples, having seen for themselves that the tomb was empty, having seen the burial cloths and the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head not disturbed (as they might have been by a tomb raider or grave robber), but neatly in place (as if what had been confined in them had somehow suddenly disappeared), just as the disciples, having seen all that for themselves, still needed something more before they could begin to appreciate the wonderful new thing God was doing, so do we!
In a world which seems permanently stuck in that dark, pre-dawn position, where suffering and death always seem to have the last word, the disciples needed to experience the kind of change that could only come about by the Risen Christ’s living presence among them. And so do we, which is why we are here, where the Risen Lord brings us together as no one else can, bringing us together in his Church, where we become what we could never otherwise have been, doing what we could never otherwise have done, empowered and energized by the Risen One himself alive in his Church.
So, instead of the 1st day of the week condemning the world back to business as usual, this day after the Sabbath is starting something new – not just a new week, but a new world, in which suffering and death no longer have the final say. All of us are here today because God did not stop on the 7th day, because there is now another day on which God has, so to speak, recreated the world. That new day is today – and every day from now on – until (as Saint Paul said to the Colossians) we too will appear with him in glory.
Now in his Church, some of us run fast, like the disciple whom Jesus loved. Some, beset by doubts or daily difficulties, run much more slowly, like Peter. But what matters most, the Gospel story seems to suggest, is where we finally arrive. So, whether we are runners or walkers, let us accompany the disciples to that tomb that was supposed to stay forever perpetually dark and closed, but from which the stone has been removed – in order that we too may believe.
Easter invites us to put ourselves in the position of the disciples – unexpectedly (and excitedly) experiencing something wonderfully and completely new in a world where everything else seems so ordinary and so old. That is why we have to come back, Sunday after Sunday, to be filled in on what happens next. That is why every day for the next 7 weeks, the Church listens to the experience of the very 1st Christians, as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Hearing their story, the story of those who first experienced the presence and action of the Risen Lord in their own lives, we can begin to consider the difference the Risen Christ is making right here and now in us.
The story of the disciples and those first communities of Christians shows us how to begin to live in the present that new and different future to which the Risen Lord is leading us, in which (as we just heard Peter proclaim) everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name.
So today – and every day – as we recall the death that Christ has freed us from, let us eagerly embrace the new life the he has freed us for.
Let’s keep those Easter bells always ringing in our hearts, in our lives, in our world!

Good Friday

It’s Good Friday, and all over the world - from the splendor of St. Peter’s Basilica to the smallest mission church - solemn ceremonies will bring to a close this 1st of 3 days when, united with Christians of every time and place, we contemplate Christ crucified, buried, and risen - the Passover of the Lord.

The whole story of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection is intimately connected with the story of the Passover. Jesus died, John tells us, on the afternoon before Passover, as the Passover lambs were being sacrificed in the Temple, and was hastily buried because the festival was about to begin.

Passover celebrates the most important event in Israel’s history – not just as something interesting that happened once upon a time, a long time ago in the past, but as something powerfully real and meaningful in the present and a sign of hope for the future. In the words of the Passover ritual: In every generation let all look on themselves as having personally come forth from Egypt. It was not only our ancestors that the Holy One redeemed, but us as well did he redeem along with them. In every generation they stand up against us to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hand.

Being saved! That’s what this is all about! At the exodus, the blood of the lamb marked the doors of the houses of God’s People. Later in history, the blood of the lamb was sprinkled on the altar of the Temple. Now, in Jesus, the great high priest who has passed through the heavens, the blood of the lamb has been shed, once and for all, on the altar of the cross – our doorway to salvation. Marked by the blood that saves us all, the cross has thus become the Church’s door. A dreaded instrument of disgraceful death, the cross is now, thanks to this day, our gateway to freedom and new life, a triumphant sign of glory.

Of course, in the citadels of secular society and popular culture (so like Pontius Pilate in the caustic skepticism that simply dismisses the disconcerting possibility of something so definite and restricting as truth), the cross can be only an ugly, nonsensical failure. The paradox of the cross is that Christ’s true triumph lay precisely in his not dramatically descending from the cross (like some celebrity), but in ascending the cross as a condemned criminal – a paradox succinctly summarized by the prophet Isaiah: he was cut off from the land of the living, and smitten for the sin of his people … But … the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him … and he shall take away the sins of many, and win pardon for their offenses (Isaiah 53:8, 10, 12).

It was this strangely paradoxical text that a 1st-century Ethiopian court official was reading, when he met the evangelist Philip and asked him: I beg you, about whom is the prophet saying this? Philip, we are told, opened his mouth and, beginning with this scripture passage, he proclaimed Jesus to him (Acts 8:34-35). With Philip, the unanimous witness of Christian tradition has recognized in Jesus - crucified, buried, and risen - the one who perfectly fulfills the prophet’s paradoxical words.

As the thrust of the soldier’s lance into Jesus’ side certified, Jesus really died on the cross. Then, bound with burial cloths according to the custom, his body was buried – all of which should have been the end of the story. And yet we do not mourn today, because he isn’t dead anymore. And that is why, according to the ancient language of the church’s worship, we celebrate the cross of Christ. In every generation, each one must personally look upon the cross of Christ and embrace it for oneself. That is what we acknowledge when we come forward to venerate the cross.

We venerate the cross, approaching it individually, for each one of us is challenged as a disciple to realign his or her life, to model one’s life on the mystery of Christ’s cross - despite the difficulties life puts in the way, despite the obstacles each individual personally puts in the way. We venerate the cross, approaching it together as the community of Christ’s holy Church - born on the cross in the blood and water which flowed out from Jesus’ side as a sign of the Church’s sacramental life and mission - because it is together as Christ’s Church that we continue Christ’s life and mission, effectively extending the reach of his cross into the whole world.

Passing through life this way, standing by the cross of Jesus and reborn as his Church in his blood and water, we will ourselves become Passover doorways, through which the Easter promise of salvation will flow, in a torrent, from his side to fill our entire world.

Holy Thursday

Lent ends this afternoon, and the Easter Triduum of Christ crucified, buried, and risen begins this evening. The first day of the Triduum (Christ crucified) begins with the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday evening and ends with the Liturgy of the Lord’s Passion on Friday afternoon. Fittingly, we begin the Triduum (as we will likewise conclude, on Sunday) with a celebration of the Eucharist. Together tonight, for what St. Paul called the Lord's Supper (what elsewhere the New Testament calls the breaking of the bread), we recall Christ’s death and so encounter the Risen Christ and experience new life - as St. Paul famously found new life when he encountered the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus and was introduced to a new kind of community in Christ.

St. Paul’s letters are the earliest New Testament writings. So his was the first written account of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples on the day before the Passover - an otherwise ordinary meal dramatically transformed by Jesus’ words and actions into the Church’s first Lord’s Supper, at which, offering his body and blood to his Father, Jesus gave them to his apostles to eat and drink, and enjoined them and their successors in the priesthood to offer them in turn.

In telling this story, St. Paul was telling the Corinthians something they already knew. I received from the Lord, he writes, what I also handed on to you (1 Corinthians 11:23]) Why remind them about something apparently already commonly known? Until 1969, this reading at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper was longer and incorporated the complete context, which we need to recall. When you meet in one place, Paul wrote, it is not to eat the Lord's supper, for in eating, each one goes ahead with his own supper, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk. Do you not have houses in which you can eat and drink? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and make those who have nothing feel ashamed? What can I say to you? Shall I praise you? In this matter I do not praise you (1 Corinthians 11:20-22). Paul concluded with an ominous warning: whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:27).

First-century Christians had no churches yet. They met in homes - presumably those of their more prosperous members, who had large enough homes to accommodate a group. So, like the Last Supper itself, the 1st-century Eucharist seems to have been celebrated as a domestic meal. Some people, however, started eating early. It has been suggested that perhaps the rich didn’t want to wait for the poorer people who couldn’t come until after work, and left little or nothing for the poorer latecomers! Obviously, the social arrangements of secular society had not disappeared, just because they had become Christians! Then too – then as now - the widespread tendency (even among supposedly religious people) to admire the rich & cater to their whims with servile adulation was already probably well in evidence. (In the 18th century, Adam Smith called this nearly universal tendency to admire the rich and despise the poor “the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."

St. Paul certainly understood that social and class distinctions were an integral part of Roman society – as they are in all societies. He was not asking his hearers to pretend that the laws of economics had suddenly been repealed and such distinctions had ceased to exist or were somehow of no importance in the world; but he was insisting that those distinctions have no significance whatever within the community of Christ’s Body. We may well live in a world where such distinctions matter, but we simultaneously inhabit another order of relationships. It wasn’t our natural, social, political, or economic relationships that preoccupied Paul, but our religious relationship - as adopted children of God the Father, brothers and sisters in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit - which makes everything else different.

The New Testament accounts of what Jesus said and did at the Last Supper connect it directly to Jesus’ sacrificial death: as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes ([1 Corinthians 11:26). Just as Jesus’ death decisively transforms our relationship with him, all our other relationships within the Body of Christ, his Church, must also likewise be transformed.

Hence the emphasis - throughout Church history - on the Eucharist, not only as a sign of unity in the Body of Christ but as an agent of that unity. Whether at the macro-level of the Universal Church or at the micro-level of a single parish community, this has obvious applications for our life together as Christ’s Body, the Church - for which (as St. Paul reminds us) we will have to answer. To the extent that our factions and conflicts contradict who and what we claim to be, in whatever way our behavior towards one another conceals rather than reveals the face of Christ, then the word of God may seem silent (precisely when and where it most needs to be proclaimed) and the love of God may appear absent from the very world Christ sacrificed himself in order to save. St. Paul’s warning to the Galatians to stop biting and devouring one another (Galatians 5:15) applies to us in the 21st century as evidently as it applied to the Church in the 1st century.

Yet even without any identifiable ill will, it is division – not unity – that remains fundamental to the human condition. Social, economic, ethnic, linguistic, national, and generational divisions form the structural fabric of human relations. Again the point is not to pretend that such divisions do not exist, but to recognize the challenge – to us - to live as changed people because we share in the one Body of Christ.