7 Quick Takes 8/31/13

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I just returned from a family vacation in Park City, Utah.  It was wonderful, and I'm always amazed of the calming effects of certain surroundings.  My wife and I live in a nice, small town and I definitely consider my state to be a beautiful one.  In going to the mountains, however, just looking out the window was relaxing.  Our hotel was at 6,000 ft. and the gondolas went up to 8,000 ft.  The trees, mountains, little chipmunks scurrying across the pathways... wonderful!   A great place for vacation.

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My little nephew isn't quite half a year old and he's one of the happiest babies I've ever been around.  Is there anything that can make you smile bigger than a happy baby?

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Today's gospel (from Saturday) is the parable of the talents.  We can reflect on many things in the passage, but one that doesn't come up very often in Catholic preaching: a judgment awaits us.  Yes, Jesus loves us and God the Father is love... but we can't cast off the demands of the gospel to suit our tastes.  This line from Romans comes to mind: "do you presume upon the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience?  Do you not know that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" (2:4)

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I've been reading Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa's book, The Mystery of the Transfiguration, and what a gem!  Go buy it from your local Catholic bookstore (or from here) and read it.  Fr. Cantalamessa is the preacher of the papal household; I read his book on the Eucharist a number of years ago and it was one of the best I've read on the subject.  The Transfiguration is special to me, as it was the subject of my very first Scripture paper.  I experienced Scripture in a deeper way than I ever had in my life.  (see Ps 119:103)

Here are some great quotes from the book:

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[regarding the Eucharist/being at Mass] "It is a great misery and a miserable weakness that when you have Him present with you in this way, you concern yourselves with anything else in the entire world." -St. Francis of Assisi

Ouch, that hits home. Staying focused is one of the hardest things for me to do in the spiritual life, not to mention in prayer and at Mass.

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"In the case of Tabor, the meanings brought to light by the evangelists with recourse to the 'variety of Old Testament conceptions' do not, in a strict sense, 'add' anything new or extraneous to the event [of the Transfiguration] but rather 'extract' and highlight portions of its inexhaustible content." (Fr. Cantalamessa, pg. 12)

For me personally, a shot across the bow to biblical exegetes.  There's a lot of great stuff in exegetical writings; there's also a lot of garbage.  When I researched that paper on the Transfiguration, I ran across an article that filed the event under the category of "how the early Christians expressed their belief in Christ's divinity," and not as something that actually happened.  Grrrrrrrrrrr....

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"The icon of Christ, and even more so the sacramental host that contains Him, exercises its sanctifying power even through simple sight, if it is accompanied by faith." (Fr. Cantalamessa, pg. 25)

Implicitly, this references the great mystery of the Incarnation.  Our culture has so many images--not all of them good ones.  Some, even if they aren't objectively wrong, are at best, distracting.  We need to have good, holy images in our lives!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

Cologne, 2005

Yesterday I received a book in the mail, one that I ordered just as much for the nostalgia as I did for the price ($3.00!!!):  God's Revolution: World Youth Day and Other Cologne Talks, by Pope Benedict XVI.  I went into the closet in my office to find the dusty accordion file with my World Youth Day mementos.  Unfortunately, the scrapbook that I intended to make is still in said accordion file... so here's a virtual scrapbook.  Or at least a page or two.

What a wonderful trip it was!  I made some great friends that have been an invaluable blessing in my life.  I experienced the universal Church in a unique way and the love of my faith grew.  I'm incredibly grateful to the Lord for the trip!

I traveled with the group from St. Rose Parish from Roseville, CA.  I was a seminarian at the time, and I actually didn't know anyone from the group.  My sister Kristy suggested I give her friend a call at St. Rose, and he welcomed me into their group.  It was a mix of youth, their chaperones, and young adults.

I flew over to Europe ahead of time with the chaplain of the group in the trip of a lifetime--Paris, Lisieux, Rheims, Prague, Vienna, and best of all: the village in Slovakia where my great-grandfather was born.  My good friend Fr. Avram and I saw and experienced not only the glories of Europe (and Czech beer) but holy sites, cathedrals, and the most beautiful stained glass windows I've seen in my life.  

The information guide, hymnal, lanyard, special
Magnificat for English-speaking folks,
and some surprisingly unused meal coupons

That's a post of its own, however; onto my scrapbook of Cologne.

Pope Benedict had just been elected to the papacy months before World Youth Day.  It only happened to coincide with WYD taking place in his homeland.  When the St. Rose group arrived in Cologne, there was a palpable excitement.  The city was teeming with youth.  The trains and train stations were crowded until 9 p.m.; I couldn't remember being around that many people or an event that size.

Just how big was it?  I read that 800,000 people attended Sunday Mass with the Pope; I was surprised the number was so low.  More on that in a minute.

The week leading up to the Papal Mass was packed with lots of activities.  The parishes in Cologne hosted catechetical sessions, with each parish hosting groups of certain languages.  I can't offer much of a review on them, since there must've been a bit of a snafu with our assigned parish.  We arrived at the catechetical session among an oddly large proportion of Italian groups.  Once the program started in Italian, we returned to the hotel for our own catechetical session.

One of the activities later in the week was the arrival of the pope.  He flew into somewhere and got on a boat, and took the boat down the river to Cologne.  We excitedly traveled to the soccer stadium for his reception; turns out the welcoming ceremony was only on the jumbotron at the stadium.  Eh.  Some spontaneous entertainment came about as youth from countries all over the world went down onto the covered field, running around with their country's flag in the air.

My ticket into the pope's audience with seminarians
and our group's assigned place in the field for the Papal Mass

The next highlight for me was a special audience with seminarians.  I obtained a letter from my diocese, saying that I was in good standing, etc.  And I got in!  It took place at a church named St. Pantaleon, in the courtyard.  I met seminarians from Slovakia and ran into other guys from my seminary.  My one regret from the day was focusing too much on taking pictures.  I was in prime position to see the pope as he walked in, and in between taking the picture (a hair too early, I might add) and checking to see how it came out, I completely missed seeing him walk in front of me.

The last thing I want to mention is about the candlelight vigil and the Papal Mass.  We walked for about an hour from the city out to a field big enough to handle a crowd of a million people.  There was music, praying, and Eucharistic adoration during the vigil.  I was taken aback when I stood up from our spot and looked around: in the darkness around me, there were lighted candles as far as I could see.  It was like a sea of light.  At that point, I felt a strong sense of community.  I was not alone!  That feeling continued the next day at the Papal mass: the Church that I was part of and the faith that I professed enveloped me; languages and cultures blended together in a single act of worship.  It was humbling, nourishing, and life-giving and I pray that I'll never forget it.

The St. Rose group ended up becoming my spiritual family for the first two years after I left the seminary.  Last year, I went to the wedding of one of the high school kids in the group.  I grew in so many ways on that World Youth Day trip... the most important one being loving my faith and my Church even more.  I pray that everyone who attended WYD last month will experience the same thing!

Spiritual Lessons from the Book of Revelation, Part I

Somewhat recently I finished an .mp3 series on the Book of Revelation.  The seven-talk series, "Unveiling the Apocalype," was given by Fr. Alfred McBride, OPraem and one of the Catholic Courses.  The imagery in the final book of the Bible is foreign, to say the least.  Seven heads with seven crowns and four horsemen and the dragon?  Well, okay, the symbolism of the dragon is pretty obvious.  The rest of the imagery, however, can be less than obvious... hence my need for a survey of the book.

Rather than go into the decoding of Revelation, I'd rather write about the spiritual lessons that I gained from Fr. McBride's talk series.

1) One of the foundational paradoxes of Christianity is the cross and resurrection.  Suffering and the promise of heaven.  While the two concepts are opposed in human thinking, God has revealed and displayed them to be inseparable.  St. John repeatedly reminds the reader of this, exhorting them to be "faithful unto death," after which believers will be given "the crown of life" (Rev 2:10, letter to the church at Smyrna).  Suffering is a given in life, whether we face violent persecution or not.  Our response to it can lead to heaven!

2) That leads into the second point, something most often forgotten in suffering: Jesus is never absent from His Church, His people.  It's tempting to think that suffering is proof of God's absence; either He is indifferent, is otherwise busy, or does not care.  That's a very understandable human reaction... do any of us like suffering?  We wouldn't let our loved ones suffer if we could avoid it.  So why would God Who IS love (1 John 4:8) let us suffer?  This is something mysterious to us, but Jesus came to teach us and show us the way.  He revealed to us that the way to the Father (=to heaven) is through Him (John 14:6); and in following Jesus, we must take up our cross as He took up His (Luke 9:23).

In the beginning of the book, however, St. John takes this idea deeper: "I John, your brother, who share with you in Jesus the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance..." (1:9).  Jesus cannot be separated from His Church, His beloved Bride!  He has preceded us in suffering: "we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.  Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb 4:15-16).  If we ever get tempted into thinking that Jesus didn't experience the level of our suffering?  He felt the deep emotional pain of being abandoned and hated by the people he loved so dearly; he felt the physical pain of being tortured and killed in an agonizingly slow manner.  I'd think He could understand our sufferings after going through that...

3) We cannot be indifferent to spiritual warfare.  The war rages whether we act or not; indeed, our inaction is a weapon in the hand of the enemy.  he who has been cast down into the pit (whose name I won't type) is aggressive and seeks humanity's destruction.  St. Peter saw this, warning of a "roaring lion, looking for someone to devour" (1 Peter 5:8).  Revelation 12 describes the evil one as coming "down to you in great wrath"; he is not a harmless, red, horned sprite.

4) There are great catastrophes depicted in Revelation, with the four horsemen (ch. 6), seven seals (ch. 6-8), and seven trumpets (ch. 8-10, 11:15ff).  This echoes back to #2 above, why would God let humanity suffer such a fate?  It's important to see these catastrophes as calls to conversion.  It's also important to note that the tribulations are not penned by a capricious God.  Much of these judgments were consequences of sin and of human free will.

Stay tuned for part 2...