"What will separate us ...?"

For the 5th consecutive Sunday, the 2nd reading today is taken from the 8th chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans [Romans 8:35, 37-39]. Today’s text is a rhetorical flourish, which concludes both this chapter and the whole 1st half of St. Paul’s letter.
What will separate us, St. Paul dramatically asks, from God’s love for us as revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord? His answer: nothing will! Not that there isn’t plenty out there to get in the way of our experience of God’s love! Not for Paul the complacent, self-satisfied posturing that pretends that there are no obstacles and that everything is automatic! Paul knows only too well what obstacles there are and how powerful they seem to be. He even enumerates a bunch of them: anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword.
Paul’s point is not that these things are no longer real or that they don’t threaten us, but that God’s power is greater than the forces that oppose it – and so can overcome all obstacles that threaten to separate us from God and the salvation his love intends for us.
Nor does Paul confine his concern to impersonal forces. Like most people for most of human history, he experienced his world as affected by the presence of powerful beings, demonic beings, who make this world a very dangerous place. In Paul’s time – as again in our own increasingly re-paganized society – desperate people turned to the falsehoods of astrology in order to cope with the threats from present things and future things.
Paul’s conviction, which he intends should become ours as well, is that God’s power is greater – awesomely greater – than that of any being that might oppose him in order to separate us from the salvation God’s love intends for us.
I know I’ve told this story before, but one of the 1st phone calls I had in my 1st assignment after seminary was from a someone who was anxious because the Devil was throwing books at her. Nothing had particularly prepared me to respond to this particular problem. So what I did was to try to assure her that God really is more powerful than the Devil, and that in Jesus God really has defeated the Devil once and for all.
That may or may not have been what she wanted to hear. If, however, we really believe in God’s omnipotence and in his love for us as revealed in Jesus, then we will react differently to the many stresses and challenges we might otherwise be beaten down by. The point is that we have to believe in both God’s omnipotence and his love. A God who was not all-powerful would be of at most limited value for us in this threatening and dangerous world. An all-powerful God who didn’t also love us, however, would only add to the danger. That was precisely the problematic premise of the pagan religions the Gospel was liberating so many Paul’s contemporaries from. No wonder scared, terrified pagans consulted astrologers! Can you blame them?
If God had not revealed himself – and his love for us – as he has done in his Son Jesus, we too would be equally desperate, clutching at any superstitious practice that promised to placate perhaps and maybe manipulate such dangerous powers.
God, however, has revealed his love for us – not as an abstraction, but as a person, Jesus, whose heart is moved with pity for us and satisfies us with food we could never buy on our own.
There will always be an insurmountable gap between our meager human resources – our 5 little loaves and 2 fish [Matthew 14:13-21] – and what God can accomplish on our behalf. Once we are willing to put ourselves at his disposal, however, God’s great love for us, present and active among us in Jesus, will transform us by his blessing and enable us to accomplish, on his behalf, what we could never ever have imagined doing on our own – to conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.
And so the same Christ who feeds us whenever we assemble in his presence also commands us – as his disciples, as his Church – to join him wholeheartedly in feeding the world with the bread of joy that comes from recognizing and sharing his presence in our world.

Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate conception Church, Knoxville, TN, July 31, 2011.

"Martha, Martha ..."

Congressmen are sometimes categorized as either “workhorses” or “show horses.” When I was in seminary, we used a somewhat similar dichotomy to categorize one another. Based on Luke 10:38-42, one was either a “Martha” (burdened with much serving) or a “Mary” (who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak). Such stereotyping obviously was surely unjust – perhaps even to those who were being so characterized, but certainly to the two holy women in the Gospel.

On this feast of St. Martha, it seems only right to recognize Martha’s many merits. After all, Jesus and his disciples presumably expected to be fed when they visited Martha’s and Mary’s home! Perhaps it has always been the lot of a housewife that her housework – absolutely essential for the efficient running of the home and for hospitality to one’s guests – gets taken for granted. I am sure Martha was neither the first nor the last homemaker to feel somewhat underappreciated – or to ask for help! The Gospel of John’s account of Jesus’ dining at the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus in Bethany omits any hint of complaint on Martha’s part, but is in other respects completely coherent with Luke’s picture. What are the two sisters and their brother depicted as doing? True to type, Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with Jesus, while Mary anointed the feet of Jesus with costly perfumed oil (John 12:2-3).

I think Jesus valued Martha’s service to him and his disciples. He valued her hospitality (and the home her care maintained for his friends Lazarus and Mary). Jesus’ retort to Martha, as recorded by Luke, sounds to me less like a reproof than some sympathetic advice: Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. Jesus appreciated Martha’s work ethic, but he warned her not to let it get out of hand, not to focus so much on her hospitality, for example, as to miss the focus on her guest.

In ministry, that is always a ever present problem. Pope St. Gregory the Great (540-604) famously lamented in his Homily on Ezekiel: “Since I assumed the burden of pastoral care, my mind can no longer be collected; it is concerned with so many matters … With my mind divided and torn to pieces by so many problems, how can I meditate or preach wholeheartedly without neglecting the ministry of proclaiming the Gospel?” As a pastor myself- with admittedly only the tiniest fraction of Gregory’s responsibilities – I can certainly identify with Gregory’s dilemma. In all the paperwork and meetings about material things, one could, if one were not careful, lose one’s focus on the point of it all. Even worse, one can revel in one's worldly responsibilities as a kind of escape from nurturing one's spiritual life.

But, then again, Jesus and his disciples assuredly expected to get fed and housed suitably in Martha’s home. Clearly no one can effectively focus on the better part (as Jesus praised Martha’s sister, Mary, for doing) while long neglecting the material needs of Christ’s body, the Church. It may be a perennial challenge to figure out how to neogitate the apparent tension between one's spiritual life and the demands of a pastoral vocation and the even more challenging tension between a spiritual/pastoral vocation and the day-to-day demands of administration. The challenge is not met, however, by devaluing or ignoring any of those components.

Invoking the 14th Amendment

On this date in 1868, the famous 14th Amendment to the U.S. constitution was ratified by the required ¾ of the states. Its purpose was to undo the damage done by the Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott decision (Dredd Scott v. Sanford, 1857) – the 19th-century political equivalent of Roe v. Wade – that held that persons of African descent were not U.S. citizens and were not protected by the Constitution. In 1866, the post-Civil War Reconstruction Congress corrected that monstrous policy of the Judicial Branch with a constitutional amendment whose expansive first section leaves no doubt about the basis for and inviolability of American citizenship: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

As an enactment of a victorious Union, having successfully defeated a rebellious secessionist movement, the 14th Amendment rightly reflected federal supremacy and the need to establish forever in the Constitution a clear basis for the exercise of federal power on behalf of the rights of citizens. In the century-plus since its adoption, the 14th Amendment (particularly its due process and equal protection clauses) has been construed in some potentially problematic ways – for example, in the legal fiction that corporations are “persons” and in the peculiar practice of “selective incorporation,” by which certain provisions of the Bill of Rights (initially intended to limit only federal power, not state power) have been imposed on the states, thus creating, for example, a host of church-state controversies, which probably should never have arisen in the first place. Of course, as with all political acts, judicial decisions may be substantively good or bad – depending on one’s particular point of view.

Now, the 14th Amendment is being cited by some (among them former President Bill Clinton and Iowa Senator Tom Harkin) as providing the President a way out of the debt-ceiling impasse. This time, it’s the amendment’s Section 4 that is being invoked: The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. In its original context, that provision was meant to ensure the payment of Union debts after the Civil War and (in the sentence the follows the one I just quoted) to disavow Confederate ones. As written, however, it seems legitimately to suggest a more universal interpretation. Moreover, the Supreme Court has held (Perry v. United States, 1935) that this does not apply just to public debt incurred in connection with the Civil War.

Now, the little constitutional law I learned years ago hardly qualifies me to adjudicate this question. But it does seem that the moral argument that Congress cannot rightly refuse to pay bills it has already authorized the U.S. to incur (which is really what this is all about) may also take the form of a straightforward legal argument. Of course, to say that, having ordered (a rather expensive) lunch, the country cannot rightfully refuse to use its credit card to pay for it does not, ipso facto, say that the President can unilaterally raise the debt-ceiling by invoking this provision. But it is, at least, a plausible interpretation. American constitutional history is, after all, full of examples of Presidents assuming unilateral powers no one had thought they had beforehand (much as the Supreme Court also has done in presuming to review congressional legislation). Like the President’s power to commit American forces to combat without a prior congressional declaration of war, a presidential power to increase the debt-ceiling unilaterally could in time become one more presidential power we will become accustomed to – and for much the same reason, inasmuch as Congress cannot effectively conduct foreign policy and maybe cannot (any longer) effectively deal with this issue.

Of course, Congress used to raise the debt-ceiling routinely. So the analogy is not perfect. But the political reality is comparable. Certainly someone would challenge the President’s action in federal court, and such a prospect would hardly safeguard the markets’ confidence in the security of our public debt. Even so, I could easily imagine Congress breathing a (private) sigh of relief at not having to vote on this anymore!

The President’s present public posture seems reluctant to embrace this option – no doubt for very good reasons over and above the President’s much noted tendency to be excessively cautious in such matters. Still it merits consideration – and having it on the table might just motivate a reluctant Congress to save some shreds of its dignity and actually do its job.

Grandparents

The current fiscal crisis and accompanying political impasse have highlighted the imbalance in our society whihc essentially transfers wealth from younger workers to older retirees and benefits seniors (and Baby Boomer soon-to-be-seniors) at the expense of future generations, whose educational and career opoportunities are being curtailed and who are being saddled with such significant public debt. That's perhaps to be expected in a democratic political system, which rewards voters (older people who demand benefits and cling ferociously to them) and ignores non-voters (the unborn, children) and those eligible to vote but less likely to do so (young adults, the poor). It's probably human nature (i.e., a consequence of original sin) that people who have acquired privileges want to hold on to them. So it's only fair that those of us at the older end of the age spectrum, who have been beneficiaries of the system that has led to this presernt mess, should be challenged to look again at what matters to us and what that says about who we have become.

That said, today is the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary and hence grandparents of Jesus - a day to look at the bigger picture and celebrate and honor grandparents and other elders who have contributed - and continue to contribute - to society and the formation of future generations.

Of course, when it comes to the actual Joachim and Anne, what we know about them - even their names - is derived entirely from 2nd-century apocryphal literature, such as the Protoevangelium of James. The story of the pious but childless elderly couple, Joachim and Anne, seems modeled on the story - and (in Anne's case) even the name - of the prophet Samuel's parents, Elkanah and Hannah, in the 1st Book of Samuel.

According to the legend, one day when Joachim went to offer sacrifice in the temple, he was refused, on the argument that men without offspring were unworthy to be admitted. Deeply saddened, Joachim went away. Meanwhile, Hannah (Anne), having learned the cause of her husband’s absence of her husband, prayed to God to heal her sterility, promising (like her Old Testament namesake) to dedicate her child to the service of God. An angel revealed to her that her prayer had been heard. Joachim returned - their reunion celebrated in tradition as “the Embrace at the Golden Gate” (see picture).

In traditional extended family arrangements, grandparents often play a prominent role in family life and in the socialization of children. I was unfortunate in that I never knew my father's parents or my maternal grandfather, but very fortunate in knowing my maternal grandmother, who lived with us in our Bronx apartment until her death in September 1967, when I was 19. She spoke no English, and so I had to learn at last a minimal smattering of Italian (Sicilian dialect). She was the living link back to the family's European past that had been left behind and would otherwise have had much less influence on our very Americanized lives. she was also extremely devout, a daily communicant and candle-lighter, who passed on to me early on a great love for the Church and its ritual.

One of the ostensible hallmarks of modernity has been the decline of extended family networks - and the elevation of the narrowly defined nuclear family - father, mother, children - to normative status. But, with the corresponding post-modern decline of family life (a catastrophe symptomatic of a larger pattern of social breakdown) grandparetns have often had to step in as supplemental - and in many cases even primary - caregivers for their grandchildren. The many grandparents who have stepped up to this responsibility are performing an essential function for our society, which sadly seems to place less and less priority what is required for the formation of subsequent generations.

Reminiscences of Compostela

One of the highlights of a parish pilgrimage to Spain some seven or eight years ago was our group's visit to the famous shrine of Santiago de Compostela, the supposed site of tomb the Apostle St. James the Greater (whose feast the Church celebrates today) and the traditional end of the great medieval pilgrimage route known still today as the camino. (There were in fact several different pilgrimage routes that constituted the camino, depending on one's starting-point, all of them eventually converging, of course, in Compostela in Galicia). The camino has experienced a certain resurgence in popularity in post-modern Europe, especially among the young. A New York acquaintance of mine recently told me how he will travel part of the camino next month prior to participating in World Youth Day in Madrid.

Like World Youth Day, the camino can be physically demanding and is presumably best done by the young. I did, in fact,go on to attend World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany in 2005, but, needless to say, I have never attempted the camino. Our group traveled to Compostella on a tour bus, and we were pilgrims only in regard to our destination, not the journey itself. Still, it was a wonderful experience to visit that shrine and to celebrate Mass there and to associate oneself, however tangentially, with what remains a living tradition, still capable of attracting adherents.

One of the more picturesque customs connected with the shrine at Compostela is the famous botafumeiro, the enormous thurible that swings through the air to the delight of all who watch it. My fondest memory of Compostela, however, is the silver statue of St. James behind the altar, which one ritually embraces as part of one's visit to the shrine. Not everyone has the physical strength or stamina to undertake the rigors of the camino, but pretty much everyone can express his or her devotion by hugging Santiago's silver statue!

Santiago (St. James) is, of course, the patron saint of Spain, a country that has been quickly transitioning away from its Catholic Christian heritage. (World Youth Day will, one hopes, serve as something of a shot-in-the arm for the beleaguered Spanish Church). But St. James was also the first apostle to be martyred - the only one whose martyrdom was recorded in the New Testament (Acts 12:2). As today's Gospel account (Matthew 20:20-28) of James and John's ambition reminds us, the Church's earthly pilgrimage is not about glory and honor and rewards, but is rather a time of struggle, suffering, and danger.