Ascension

St. Bernard of Clairvaux [1090-1153] is supposed to have described the Ascension as “the consummation and fulfillment of all other festivals, and a happy ending to the whole journey of the Son of God.” Back where I came from, Ascension is still celebrated on its own day, last Thursday. So, there, one is still greeted in the morning by the local news’ announcement that in the entire city what is called “alternate side of the street parking” is suspended because of the holyday. It’s even better in parts of Europe where Ascension is a legal holiday and where even the Stock Market is closed in observance of Ascension. 

Growing up, of course, what we so especially liked about the Ascension was that we got off from school! But, of course, we had to go to Mass in the morning, and at least some of us really looked forward to the wonderful ritual of ceremonially extinguishing the Easter Candle – the symbol of the Risen Christ’s presence among us – after the reading of today’s Gospel. The point of that, of course, was not just Christ’s departure, but also the new way he is now present to us. As the Church prays in the Preface of today’s Mass: he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

If you look up, just like the apostles in the story, you can see in the center of the ceiling a painting of the Ascension [photo], one of three ceiling paintings that are all that is left of a number of such paintings that were attached to the ceiling and walls of this church by a group of itinerant artists a century ago. When we replaced the ceiling in 2013, there was a lot of anxiety about preserving those paintings, and we brought in an expert from Pellissippi State College to examine and clean them. I even climbed the scaffolding myself one day just to say that I had touched one of the paintings. (I could still do that then, although I doubt my knees would let me do that now!)

Historically speaking, Ascension commemorates the last of the Risen Lord’s appearances to his disciples in the weeks after his resurrection. The Risen Jesus no longer walked earth the way he did before he died and rose, but he did, as Luke says in today’s 1st reading, appear a number of times to his disciples during that post-Easter period of 40 days [Acts 1:1-11], speaking about the kingdom of God.

So, now, if Jesus doesn’t walk the earth as he did before, where exactly is he? Theologically speaking, the Ascension celebrates what we profess every Sunday in the Creed, that he is seated at the right had of the Father, where, as the letter to the Hebrews assures us he lives forever to intercede for us [Hebrews 7:25; cf. Romans 8:34].

On the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, pilgrims can see a footprint-like depression in a rock, which purports to be the spot from which Jesus ascended into heaven. The footprint and the idea that the pushed off with such force that he left a footprint in the rock may be a bit fanciful, but it does make the important point that it is Jesus’ real human body (and thus the real human nature that we share with him) that is now with God. So the Church prays today in the Eucharistic Prayer, he placed at the right hand of your glory our weak human nature, which he had united to himself.

So the Ascension anticipates what the resurrection has made it possible for us all to hope for. Meanwhile, in this interval between Ascension and the end - a time full of problems and challenges of every sort, of crises and conflicts in the world and even in the Church, not to mention all our own personal problems and worries - in this interval between Ascension and the end, the Risen Lord remains with us though his gift of the Holy Spirit. Far from being absent, Jesus, who lived and died and now lives again forever with his Father, is still very much present among us by the power of his promised gift of the Holy Spirit, who is always at work in the Church, through which we remain connected with him, so that, through us, he can continue his work of transforming our world. Again, as Pope Francis, has recently reminded us: “In the Church, holy yet made up of sinners, you will find everything you need to grow towards holiness” [GE 15]

Homily for the Ascension of the Lord, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 13, 2018.

Strangers and Aliens No More

Every day during the Easter season, the 1st reading at each Mass is taken from the Acts of the Apostles – the sequel, so to speak, to the Gospel according to Luke – the story of what happened next, after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.  It’s the wonderful story of how a mere 120 disciples were transformed by the Risen Christ’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit into a missionary movement that spread from Jerusalem to Rome and in the process was transformed from a small Jewish sect into a world-wide Church with a universal mission.

To us, who already know the story, that all seems to have been so obvious and inevitable. For the first Christians, however, it must have seemed like one new learning experience after another. Today’s 1st reading [Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48] recounts one pivotal point in that process. The story actually began earlier with Peter, the leader of the Christian community, making what we today might call a “pastoral visit” to the disciples in a town called Joppa (near today’s Tel Aviv). While there, Peter had a dream, in which he saw various animals, not all of them kosher, and heard a heavenly voice tell him to kill and eat them. When Peter responded that he had never done such a thing, he was told, What God has made clean, you are not to call profane. That’s a good example of something the meaning of which, to us in retrospect, seems so obvious, but which at the time, in its actual context, must have seemed so perplexing.

When such situations occur - whether on world historically significant occasions such as Peter found himself a part of or in the more ordinary challenges of daily life – what is required is what our spiritual tradition calls discernment. As Pope Francis has reminded us in his recent Apostolic Exhortation on holiness, it is how we can “know if something comes from the Holy Spirit or if it stems from the spirit of the world or the spirit of the devil.” We need discernment, the Pope writes: “at all times, to help us recognize God’s timetable, lest we fail to heed the promptings of his grace and disregard his invitation to grow” [GE, 166, 169].

Meanwhile, when Peter was beginning his discernment process, pondering his perplexing dream, emissaries from a Roman centurion, named Cornelius, came calling and asked Peter to accompany them back to Caesarea, which Peter promptly did. And that is where today’s reading picks up the story.

Cornelius was a Roman, a foreigner, a pagan.  He was in fact a rather pious pagan, and was somewhat sympathetic to Judaism; but he was still a pagan, an uncircumcised Gentile! No observant Jew would normally have entered his house, but these were not normal circumstances. Already “prepped” by his perplexing dream, Peter crossed that boundary. Once inside, he spoke with Cornelius, and - no doubt as much to his own amazement as everyone else’s - he said: “I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.”  He then did what no one had yet thought of doing. He proclaimed the Good News of Jesus to a house full of Gentiles. Suddenly what had happened to the original 120 disciples on Pentecost now happened to Cornelius and his household – a “Pentecost for pagans,” as it has been called.  And so, Peter asked, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”

Thus began the momentous change that enabled Christianity to spread and take root throughout the world, becoming eventually the largest religion in the world and the largest growing religion in the world today. I say “began,” because, of course, the full implications of something so unexpected took time to sink in. There were other Gentiles sympathetic to Judaism at the time.  Some even went all the way and converted. Had Cornelius converted, become a Jew, and then acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would not have been all that different from the other early Christians, who were, of course, also Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah. Cornelius, however, had “jumped the line,” so to speak, directly into Christianity. Soon the Church would have to debate whether Gentiles needed to become Jews first in order to become Christians, and Peter would cite this transformational event as the key to understanding God’s will for this Church – that it be the vehicle for conversion and repentance for all, without exception and without restriction.

Given the apostles’ own Jewish background, the long history of separation between Jews and Gentiles, and the seriousness with which all that had been taken up until then, this was quite a radical step. And it was not taken lightly, as the debates elsewhere in Acts illustrate. But eventually it was accepted as a recognition of how God’s original covenant with Israel was now being universally fulfilled in Christ.

Of course, this didn’t all just happen. It was God who took the initiative – inspiring Cornelius to invite Peter, prepping Peter with his dream, and then dramatically demonstrating God’s plan to include the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit. As leader of the Church, Peter, through the gift and practice of discernment, recognized God’s action and accepted its implications, baptizing the first Gentile Christians and incorporating them into the community.

This story speaks volumes about the very nature of the Church – not just the 1st century apostolic Church, but the Church of the 21st century, which is, if anything, even more global and more universal than ever before. The Church is not a club, a fraternal association, a social networking group, or even a prayer group, though it may have elements of all those things. As Pope Pius XI put it, almost a century ago: “The Church has no other reason for its existence than to extend over the earth the kingdom of Christ and so to render people sharers of his saving redemption.”

As a practical matter, of course, we experience the Church largely as part of a locally defined parish community. The parish nourishes and supports us in our faith. It brings us together to hear the Good News that makes our lives so different from what they would otherwise have been. It brings us together to respond to that Good News with worship and prayer, support for one another, and service to others in the day-in, day-out dying and rising that defines a disciple’s life. But it doesn’t stop there. The parish is never just about itself. In union with Peter’s successor, the Pope, and the apostles’ successors, the Bishops of the entire world, the Church unites us across time back to the faith and witness of the apostles their first converts - pagans like Cornelius - and across space to take in the entire world, today’s world.

Precisely as Christ’s Church, we too are constantly being challenged at every level to expand our horizon. Just as the apostolic Church had its horizon expanded, we too are constantly being challenged to understand our own local experience of Church as one with that of the young, emerging Church in Africa, the aging Church in Europe, and the even more ancient Churches in India and the Middle East, ancient Churches currently endangered once again by war, terrorism, and persecution.

Likewise, we too are constantly being challenged to understand how our own middle-aged American Church is being rejuvenated and revitalized by many new members from all over the world. Here in America, we have long been a Church of immigrants in a land and nation of immigrants. In the 19th century, Isaac Hecker’s process of discernment led him to see the two as “working together under the same divine guidance, forming the various races of men and nationalities into a homogeneous people” [CA, 99]. Then as now, not everyone was ready to recognize that. Hence the particular relevance for us, in this time and place, of Christ’s command to welcome the stranger. As Pope Francis’ Apostolic Exhortation has also reminded us: we absolutely may not act as if “the situation of migrants” were some sort of “lesser issue,” compared with other moral and political priorities [GE, 101].

As we work together to welcome one another – and others – into our nation and our American Church, we are being challenged to recognize our own local experience in the wider terms of God’s great plan for the salvation of the world – God who sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him [1 John 4:9].

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 6, 2018.

Karl Marx at 200

Karl Marx (1818-1883) would have been 200 tomorrow (May 5). And, if his side hadn't so spectacularly lost the Cold War, his bicentennial might be getting much more notice around the world right now. After all, for some 70+ years of the 20th century much of the population of what, until 1917, had been the Russian Empire was held in bondage by a totalitarian government that at least formally swore allegiance to Marx's ideas. After World War II, more nations and peoples were added to those ruled by supposed disciples of Marx and believers in his theories, while Marxist parties played a profoundly powerful part in the politics of major Western countries like France and Italy.. But, whatever remaining influence he still has in rarefied intellectual circles, Marx now no longer holds serious sway over governments and politics.

But Marx (or at least certain versions of Marxism) remained very much in vogue when I was in college and then graduate school in the 1960s and 1970s. In college, I studied Marxist Critical Theory with an old German socialist, whose “New Trends in Marxism” seminar first exposed me to the Frankfurt School and other contemporary “New Left” and psychoanalytic appropriations of Marxism. I studied Ancient and Modern Political Theory with the author of All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: and Adventures in Marxism. Along with so many in my generation I was wrestling, both personally and politically, with the question of what could, would, and should a meaningful and fulfilling life look like, now that modernity had at last made it possible to imagine a world in which we could all aspire to a “good” rather than a “mere” life. For the pre-modern Aristotle, that had been impossible except for a small population of citizens. So it seemed obvious to me that a major part of Marx’s modern appeal was precisely in how he could envision that possibility of a thoroughly revolutionized, post-“pre-history,” human history.

For historical reasons, we read The Communist Manifesto and at least parts of Das Kapital. But what really engaged us was the "early" Marx, notably his so-called Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. We talked endlessly about Entfremdung ("alienation"), and we actually argued about whether Ludwig Feuerbach's "explanation" of religion in Das Wesen des Crhistentums ("The Essence of Christianity") really solved the "problem" of religion once and for all. And the Marxist idea that "the relations of production" should be determinative for the cultural "superstructure" of which religion was notably a part, was still surprisingly alive and well. I remember one classmate contending that she could understand why there would be religion in the Society Union (because of continued "alienation"), but she couldn't understand the survival of Russian Orthodoxy since "the relations of production" had changed since the Revolution. In other words, Russians under Communism were alienated enough to have religion but since they were under Communism it should be a different form of religion from what had gone before!

In point of fact, as less ideological academics acknowledged, Marx was quite wrong  in his historical analyses and even more obviously totally wrong in his predictions, but his analysis of the politics of his own time (e.g. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) could often be quite insightful. That left one with the sense that there wasn't too much in Marxist theory that was all that valid in the last third of the 20th century - except some vague invocations of "alienation" and "mystification" and the not so vague tool of class analysis. 

To me the one abiding value in having studied so much Marx is in that sensitivity to the importance of economic class for political analysis. Class never has and never will explain everything, but neither can it be ignored - as it often has been, especially in American political analysis. Religious, racial, and ethnic conflicts have been a recurring component of American history. Class analysis does not deny the distinctly religious, racial, or ethnic component of conflict, but it amplifies that analysis and calls attention to important but neglected dimensions of such social and political conflicts.

If nothing else, Marx has also left us with some famously quotable quotes, which may in fact be true - even if often in ways somewhat different from what Marx himself may have meant or intended at the time. For example:

The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation of the real man from religion (On the Jewish Question, 1843).

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it  (Economic and Philosphical Manuscripts, 1844).

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has piteously torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation  (The Communist Manifesto, 1848).

Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add:the first time as tragedy, the second as farce  (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852).

Roving Apostles' May Day Message

Today is the (twice-in-my-lifetime) reassigned feast of the Apostles Philip and James. Traditionally celebrated on May 1, the anniversary of the dedication of the Roman church dedicated to them (now known as the Church of the Twelve Apostles, the traditional stational church on the four Ember Fridays) their feast migrated to May 11 in the mid-1950s and then to May 3 in the 1969 calendar. (Photo: The Tomb of the Apostles Philip and James in the Roman of the 12 Apostles.)

The first move was necessitated by the invention of the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to co-opt the popular Communist May Day holiday.  The liturgical costs of creating this new feast not only included the displacement of the Apostles from their traditional day (which they still occupy in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer) but also the abolition of the 19th-century feast of the Patronage of Saint Joseph, originally celebrated on the 3rd Sunday after Easter and then moved by Pius X's reforms to the 3rd Wednesday after Easter. (Pope Pius IX had declared Saint Joseph the Patron of the Universal Church in 1870.) While a modern feast, its Mass and Office were nonetheless held in somewhat high regard by liturgical experts - especially in comparison with the lesser esteem in which the texts of the newer 1950s feast came to be held.   

Then the 1960 rubrical reforms eliminated the long established feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross on May 3, a Gallican feast dating from about the 7th century which 20th-century reformers saw as an unnecessary or undesirable duplication of the even more ancient September 14 feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. So, when the 1969 calendar reform set about rearranging any number of feast days, the temptation seems to have proved irresistible to move SS. Philip and James again - this time to the now empty May 3 date, which is at least closer to their traditional day.

According to the New Testament, Philip (along with the brothers Peter and Andrew) was a disciple from Bethsaida in Galilee. John's gospel presents him as one of the Baptist's disciples and the one who introduced Nathaniel to Jesus. He was also the one some Greek-speakers sought as an intermediary to meet Jesus. And at the Last Supper it was he who famously asked Jesus to show them the Father.

James, on the other hand, is a somewhat more elusive figure. He is referred to sometimes as "James the Less" - to distinguish him from the James who is associated with Peter and John in the Gospels as one of Jesus' closest disciples and who was the first of the 12 to be martyred. He is usually identified with James, the son of Alphaeus and, at least in the Western tradition, with "James the Just," the "brother of the Lord," leader of the post-Pentecost Christian community in Jerusalem, and author of the Epistle of James. The Lectionary oddly seems to downplay the latter connection by using a Pauline epistle at Mass, although the former Breviary did at least specify that the Letter of James be read from in the old 1st Nocturn.

Yet what could be more fitting for May Day than the Letter of James? It is that Epistle which offers a pointed Christian critique of wealth - and of the ever-present temptation of favor the rich. 

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments (chapter 3) Adam Smith (1723-1790) famously warned:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition ... is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. That wealth and greatness are often regarded with the respect and admiration which are due only to wisdom and virtue; and that the contempt, of which vice and folly are the only proper objects, is often most unjustly bestowed upon poverty and weakness, has been the complaint of moralists in all ages.

Saint James would surely have agreed: 

My brethren, show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man with gold rings and in fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while you say to the poor man, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brethren. Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you, is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the honorable name which was invoked over you? (James 2:1-7).

Wouldn't that be be an especially appropriate reading for May Day! Or any day!

Loveless (the Movie)

As divorce has become so completely normalized in our society, a timely foreign film has highlighted its horror. In the Russian film Loveless, Boris and Zhenya are a divorcing couple, whose relationship with each other is indeed loveless as is their relationship with their 12-year old son, who disappears after witnessing another one of his parents' arguments - a genuinely painful scene as he is shown, unseen by his parents but clearly devastated by his loveless family. Meanwhile, each of the parents already has another lover, although Zhenya at one point admits to her new boyfriend that she has never really loved anyone, including her son (and, as we eventually get to see her mother).

The film opens with a visually powerful end-of-school walk home as the boy wanders through the local woods. On the way he picks up a strip of tape from the ground (the sort that seems possibly left over from a crime scene or some other danger) and successfully throws it into the air and onto the branch of a tree.

After we get to see his self-centered parents at work and with their new lovers, we suddenly learn that their son has disappeared. His mother, coming home late from a romantic tryst with her rich lover, didn't even realize that he hadn't been home, didn't notice his absence until the school called her. In what is presumably an image of a comparably uncaring Russian state apparatus, the police appear unconcerned with what they assume is just a temporary runaway situation. In contrast - the one positive element in the story - a volunteer group that specializes in searching for missing persons is called in and quickly initiates an efficient community effort to locate the missing boy. The dedicated volunteers are the only real contrast to the bureaucratic state apparatus and the emotional horror of the missing boy's family life. They seem like nice people - otherwise apparently in short supply in this film.

It seems (unsurprisingly) that the boy is a loner, with only one real friend from school. The only relative it is thought he might have gone to is Zhenya's estranged mother, who lives a several hours' drive away. Boris and Zhenya's trip together to see her accomplishes nothing, except to increase the tension between them as well as between them and Zhenya's loveless mother. What one stereotypically expects in this sort of story is for the tragedy to bring the couple closer together, but they are both far too self-centered and consumed by their mutual hatred for that to happen. 

The search continues but with no positive results. As time passes, we watch foreign workers dismantling the family's old apartment, while the divorced parents are each now living new (but not obviously happier) lives. The final scene takes us back to the woods near the river where their son used to walk home after school. We see the strip of tape that he had thrown onto the  tree branch, now (along with the fading missing child posters) the only thing that seems left of him in this loveless world.

The film combines the visual beauty of the woods and the river and the snow in late autumn with the ugliness of modern suburban life. I particularly liked the woods, which reminded me of any area I sometimes used to play in as a child. The sledding scene also evoked such fond memories. All this is in marked contrast, of course, to the surrounding ugliness and spiritual emptiness of a loveless life in a loveless society in a loveless world.