Above: Saint Ignatius Chapel, the bell calling us to prayer. Ignatius House, 6700 Riverside Drive, Atlanta, GA. From an Advent silent retreat, 12/10—12/12/2010. Below: the font at the entry to the chapel.
This was one of the most profound experiences of my entire life in Christ. Rather than describe it, I encourage you to go. Savor the silence. Experience community without conversation. Make time in your life to listen to God, in the space silence provides.
For blog readers following the Gospel in Glass series, two apologies. The first is for the long lapse between posts. September and October are two of my busiest months. Time to write was limited. The second apology is actually the basis for this post! So, let me provide some background.
Each year during RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, the course adults take before entering the Church), one of the Deacons conducts a tour of St. Mary’s. The tour helps candidates and catechumens become familiar with the physical setting for the Liturgy. A major part of the tour is an explanation of the stained glass windows.
Although I had previously heard the Deacon identify the figure at the foot of the cross as St. Mary Magdalene, I believed it was St. John. The figure’s halo was green, a color identified with St. John, and the dramatically dejected posture mirrors what I imagine St. John must have felt seeing his Lord crucified. “Good men (the Deacon and I) simply differ on interpretation,” I told myself—particularly since, in other windows, the Deacon has pointed out identification of some figures is not absolutely clear.
Good men might differ but for one small detail: the long, curly brown locks, used to identify St. Mary Magdalene, streaming out behind the figure at the foot of the cross.
Having missed this reminded me of my younger days. I “knew” and pointed out to others that there might be Christians within the Catholic Church, but that the Church was not Christian. God forgive me! We only know what we have been taught. I hadn’t read the Church Fathers. I hadn’t paid attention to Christ repeatedly transferring authority to the Apostles. I couldn’t remember reading Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 3:15 about the Church being “the pillar and foundation of the truth,” although I had read 1 and 2 Timothy often.
But for one “small” detail!
Gospel in Glass will require so many posts to describe the entire window, an occasional interlude will be posted on other topics, in hopes they, too, will be an encouragement.
Yesterday’s Mass readings prompted this interlude. The reading from Numbers began, “With their patience worn out by the journey” (Numbers 21:4b). Depending on how you were feeling as you heard or read these words, you may not have needed more! How often have we thought, “Lord, this is hard.” Or “dear God, I am so tired.” Or “if You only gave me more money.” Or perhaps even, “Lord, let this cup pass from me.”¹
Yet, read further in Numbers 21. God sent serpents as a punishment for the people complaining about His provision and protection. The serpents bit the people and many died. This brought them to their senses and they said to Moses, “We have sinned in complaining.”²
Despite the punishment, there are two opportunities to see the immense richness of God’s grace in this passage. First note the understanding and compassion portrayed in the NAB translation. The NIV and ESV render Numbers 21:4b as “the people became (or grew) impatient on the way.” That rendering almost suggests an inborn impatience that suddenly erupted. How much more gracious, and how much more like our Heavenly Father, to recognize that their “patience was worn out by the journey.” It doesn’t make our complaining any less of an objective offense against God, but knowing that He understands our circumstances puts an open door before us to His mercy!
The second thing to notice is even more important. What was the remedy? God instructed Moses to make a symbol of the serpent and mount it on a pole. Anyone who had been bitten and looked upon this remedy, would live. This is a reminder to us that our Saviour was raised up on a cross before us! Our Saviour, our Remedy, suffered as no man ever suffered. So, as we look to Him and his cross, we should gain patience to bear the crosses we are asked to carry.
Our hope? To be like Jesus, even in this. “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”³ May we follow you, Lord Jesus Christ, and remember our crosses are small compared to Your own!
As we continue to meditate on the Gospel in Glass, let’s use this post to continue to “look around” the lower foreground of the window, before progressing to the Lord’s Mother depicted to the left of St. Mary Magdalene.
Gazing on the window, the viewer realizes the cross is set in what appear to be paving stones. In fact, at a glance it looks like a nice Tuscan garden! This is at odds with the grassy hill some of us imagined, while singing the hymn “on a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross.”
In reality, however, it is likely that Golgotha,¹ the Place of the Skull, was made of rock. The rock of Calvary can still be seen inside The Church of the Holy Sepulcher built by the Emperor Constantine to encompass the site of Christ’s tomb and the hill of Golgotha, the locations identified by St. Helena, the Emperor’s mother. Even if Golgotha were not so, the stones in the window should remind us of Christ before Pilate on the Stone Pavement,² where so many of His followers abandoned Him.
Are we following faithfully? Courageously? The world longs for . . . it knows not what! Freedom. Security. Prosperity. Love. Spirituality. Yet we achieve all that, but want more. We remain unsatisfied. We remain empty, outside full communion with the living and true God—the only way to Whom is through Jesus Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life.”³
Be a follower first. Stand with Christ on the Stone Pavement. Go with Him to the rocky hill of Calvary. Then tell others of the immense riches in Christ you have found, and that—like the bride in Song of Songs 3:4—your heart’s response is, ”When I found Him Whom my heart loves, I took hold of him and would not let Him go.”
Today we continue to discuss the immense visual richness with which we are blessed as Catholic Christians. Most of our churches contain wonderful aids to holiness, including (at St. Mary’s Greenville) the stained glass altar window I’ve called the Gospel in Glass.¹ But the point here is not to extol this particular window. Rather it is to encourage all Christians to look for visual aids that promote growth in Christ.
We will “read” this window bottom to top, left to right. Let’s begin:
Here, we must pause. Our purpose is meditation and growth in Christ, not simply to record the scenes depicted.
The kneeling figure is St. Mary Magdalene, who with Christ’s Mother and the Beloved Apostle, St. John, accompanied our Lord to the cross.
Have you ever felt utterly, absolutely crushed by events? Clearly, the posture of the Saint in the window shows us something like that feeling. So did the faces the two disciples to whom Christ appeared on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:17); their faces were downcast and sad. And so it is sometimes with us, when Christ—the great Shepherd of lost sheep—comes to seek out us and rescue us from our confusion and despair.
Praise God that like the Gospel itself, the whole conceptual sweep of this window from bottom to top preaches the blessed hope! “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).”Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). If you are burdened or in despair today, turn to Christ—Who invites you to cast your cares upon Him, in this Gospel in Glass!
¹ On St. Mary’s web site, the window is called “Crucifixion/The Risen Christ,” and a small photo is here.
The richness of the Gospel can be presented many ways. As St. Francis said, “Preach always! Sometimes, even use words.” One very important way we preach the Gospel is to live Christlike lives.
The Gospel also can be preached visually, as churches did centuries before universal literacy became the norm. In today’s word-based culture, we often fail to focus on the Gospel before us in the windows, mosaics, statuary, and icons of the Church. Yet what riches the Church has preserved for us by providing visible aids to faith and holiness!
If you have the opportunity to be at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Greenville, SC, these notes in this series of posts summarize the Gospel in glass behind the altar, depicting Our Savior’s Passion. More extensive discussions have been written about how to “read” a visual sermon¹ but for the purpose of our meditation upon the Gospel in St. Mary’s altar window, we’ll move from the bottom to the top, and from the foreground to the background.
So much encouragement, so much richness, so much of the Gospel appears in this window, it will require several postings to detail—particularly if we take time to meditate on the Gospel before us, not just to chronicle it. I pray you’ll find this series of interest, even if you are not located near St. Mary’s. Developing an appreciation for the visual aids to holiness that The Church offers us is a wonderful reason for thanksgiving to God for calling us to life in Christ.
Truly, this is Christianity Richly!
¹ See, for example, Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons.
² A collection of photos of St. Mary’s stained glass windows can be found here. ”Crucifixion/The Risen Christ” is the Gospel in glass. I only wish there were a gloriously large, high-resolution image you could print, and use for meditation and prayer!
Last week, I was in our nation’s capital. There weren’t many free hours until Saturday, when my wife and I set out mid-day to see as much as possible of the Church’s presence there. A half-day is far too little time, but let me suggest some highlights, in the event you are visiting Washington this summer.
The 12:10 Mass at Old St. Patrick’s was our first stop. This is the oldest Church in Washington, founded in 1794 for stonemasons who were working on federal buildings including the White House, a few block away. If you are downtown, walk over and have a look. Although mid-day Saturday Mass was relatively empty, the pastor was faithful about offering the Sacrament of Reconciliation for thirty minutes before Mass, and then spoke faithfully and well about St. Ignatius of Loyola. He helped remind me of my connection to St. Ignatius through the books The Discernment of Spirits and Thirty Days.
Leaving St. Patrick’s, we drove to the Catholic University of America campus. CUA, as well as The Dominican House of Studies across the street, are both a bit quiet during the summer months. However, that inactivity didn’t diminish our joy at visiting The National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception!
I had driven past The Shrine on previous trips, but was not able to go in. Having now done so, the Basilica is beyond words: the chapels, the oratories, the majesty of the building itself, the mosaics, and more. And when the organ began the prelude before Mass, you didn’t just hear the music; you felt it—it became part of you. But the most wonderful part was to be able to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation there and then attend Vigil Mass.
Remember that these sacred spaces are part of our riches as Catholic Christians. They reflect the Incarnational basis and nature of our faith. Fr. Dwight Longenecker just wrote a wonderful post on this topic—click here. Don’t miss the grace God gives us on our pilgrimages of faith, small and large. They are an important part of Christianity Richly!
The two prior posts in this series have asked the question, “What can we truly say to God, and perhaps more importantly, about God?” God, in the words of the popular hymn, is “immortal, invisible, God only wise; in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.” And although we can know Him in Jesus Christ, and rejoice that Christ took on human flesh for our sakes, we still must be careful to demonstrate sufficient reverence; sufficient Godly awe; and most of all, complete humility, when speaking about the Creator of the universe.
Our Orthodox brothers and sisters have wrestled with this issue, as perhaps all thoughtful Christians must. Early in his book, The Orthodox Way, Bishop Kallistos Ware discusses what is called the “apophatic approach.”
Recognizing that God is incomparably greater than anything we can say or think about Him, we find it necessary to refer to Him not just through direct statements but through pictures and images. Our theology is largely symbolic. Yet symbols alone are insufficient to convey the transcendence and the “otherness” of God. To point at the mysterium tremendum, we need to use negative as well as affirmative statements, saying what God is not, rather than what He is. Without this use of the way of negation, of what is termed the apophatic approach, our talk about God becomes gravely misleading. All that we affirm concerning God, however correct, falls far short of the living truth.¹ [Emphasis mine]
Quoting Cardinal John Henry Newman, Bishop Ware concludes: “we are continually ‘saying and unsaying to a positive effect.’” This “dazzling darkness,” as Bishop Ware calls it, “brings us not to emptiness but to fullness.” And I would add, to much needed humility.
By order of Him who spoke, everything will be understood at the opportune time. —Saint John of the Cross, quoted in Magnificat, January 31, 2010
¹ p. 14, The Orthodox Way
In the first post of this series, I suggested we might do well to take a lesson from Job, who decided to talk less (particularly about himself and his understanding of God) and adore more. These are odd words, almost jarring to our ears.
Yet we see Job coming to this realization in the Old Testament book that bears his name. In Job 7:11, we find Job speaking rashly: “My own utterance I will not restrain. I will speak.” Although Job’s friend Eliphaz was wrong in much his counsel, in 15:6—he offers sound insight: “Your own mouth condemns you, not I.” Yet Job doesn’t listen. In 23:3-4 he is still speaking: “I would set my cause before Him, and fill my mouth with arguments.”
But in 38:1-2, God speaks to Job: “Who is this that obscures divine plans with words of ignorance?” By 40:4, having been challenged by God, Job’s enthusiasm for speaking is spent and he simply says, “What can I answer you? I put my hand over my mouth.” And by 42:3, Job admits, “I have dealt with great things that I do not understand; things too wonderful for me, which I cannot know.”
Let us take care, brothers and sisters, when we speak casually about God, or worse, to God. Christ is our Good Shepherd, but he is also “immortal, invisible, God only wise; in light inaccessible hid from our eyes,” in the words of the hymn.
Therefore, we who are receiving the unshakable kingdom should have gratitude, with which we should offer worship pleasing to God in reverence and awe. For our God is a consuming fire.¹
Stay tuned for Part III, in which we’ll discuss an approach, a way of thinking about how to always speak humbly and reverently of God.
A Christian friend and I were discussing whether it is truly possible to say “I love God.” “One might say,” she suggested, “I reverence Him. I stand in awe of Him. I worship Him. I am extraordinarily grateful to Him.” But can we truly say we love Him?
Her point, if I rightly understood, was not simply that we fall short of Luke 10:27—i.e., that we are to love God with all our heart, being, strength, and mind. It was, rather, “How can we say we love God, when so much about God is totally Other; completely unknowable?”
Perhaps there are two paths toward answering this question. The first is that the eternal, transcendent God did come to us, clothed in human flesh. He took on the genetic and very real humanity of the Virgin Mary. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” John 14:9 tells us. Thus, the true God may be known and loved in Jesus Christ.
Yet God is God! He is a Trinity of Divine Persons, infinite, transcendent, outside time, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. So a second path toward answering suggests that, while never failing to share the Gospel, we might also do well to take a lesson from Job, who decided to talk less (particularly about himself and his understanding of God) and adore more. “God is not so much an object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.”¹
Stay tuned, as we continue this topic with a study from the Book of Job, followed by thoughts on what our Orthodox brothers and sisters call the “apophatic approach.”
¹ Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way, Revised Edition (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995).
I awakened recently thinking about how we fool ourselves. No, I don’t mean that we fool ourselves about our true nobility, in the sense of having been created in the image of God. Rather, I mean we seek to fool ourselves by the excuses we make for our sins: ”Well, of course, I did that because . . . .” And in the “because,” we imagine we excuse ourselves—or, at least, even if we remain culpable and ashamed, we hope we can somehow nevertheless turn away the penetrating light (Light!) from ourselves.
God will not have it so. He will not allow it. He loves us too much and paid too dearly for our redemption to abandon us in a swamp of self-deception. He will bring us all-the-way-through to purity; to Christlikeness; to sanctity and holiness—for without that, we cannot dwell in His presence. Nor would we want to. We would find ourselves too odious, next to his blazing purity and beauty; next to Christ’s true nobility.
The path to purity may be painful, but it is not impossible.¹
¹ John 14:15, 1 John 3:1-3, Philippians 1:6 and 2:12-13
Having completed Lent, and making the most of of Eastertide, I found myself doing some small “spiritual housekeeping” tasks today. Real spiritual housekeeping, of course, is an interior act. But most of us employ external resources to assist in that act, scripture being first among those resources, followed by The Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Some time ago, while in Washington, DC, I stopped at the Newman Bookstore, near the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and The Catholic University of America. While there, I found one of the most helpful small study aids I’ve encountered in a long time: a set of page-tabs for The Catechism of The Catholic Church (click this link is for the Catechism in print; it is the Catechism web site in the paragraph above).
Perhaps one shouldn’t find such pleasure in the simple act of mounting page-tabs. But doing so reminded me of the immense privileges and joys of being a child of God. Just the anticipation of the contents of each section should thrill every Christian: God the Father, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Church, The Creed, Sacraments, Life in Christ, Prayer—and that’s only 8 of the 26 sections tabbed!
The other effect of mounting these tabs was to remind me the Catechism is a document meant to be read. I’m not book-phobic, but a 904 page book is substantial. The tabs had the effect of breaking the book into digestible sections. ”Oh, I could read that much this morning, or before bed tonight!”
Why does it matter? Reading the Catechism reminds us of, and confirms us in, what Pope John Paul II called “the strength and beauty of the doctrine of the faith.”¹
The Church [we! You and I] . . . will become greater in spiritual riches and gaining new energies therefrom, [we] will look to the future without fear . . . Our duty is to dedicate ourselves with an earnest will and without fear to that work which our era demands of us, thus pursuing the path which the Church has followed for 20 centuries.
Yes, that is Christianity Richly.
¹ Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), p. 2.
Ernest Hemingway (a curious choice to cite during Holy Week) once wrote to his editor, Max Perkins, “Nothing is more discouraging than unintelligent appreciation.” In saying that, Hemingway showed uncommon grace—since a more typical trial (whether for Hemingway or the Holy Father) is unintelligent denigration.
Defend me, O God, and plead my cause
against a godless nation.
From deceitful and cunning me
rescue me, O God.
—Psalm 43, Liturgy of the Hours, Tuesday Week II, Morning Prayer
It is appropriate, I suppose, that as the Church’s earthly shepherd leads Catholic Christians through Holy Week, those who oppose him would rear their heads most angrily. Do we hear echoes of the crowd in Jerusalem who reviled Jesus of Nazareth two millennia ago, the Savior Whom the Holy Father constantly places before our world?
No surprise then, that MSNBC’s news program, Morning Joe, trotted out atheist Christopher Hitchens. The surprise was that Hitchens, despite all his journalistic accomplishments, had absolutely nothing to say when the program host sought his opinion about other news of the day. ”I came to talk about the Pope,” was Hitchens reply. “I’ll wait my turn.” What focus!
Terry Eagleton has written well of Hitchens and his crowd in Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflection on the God Debate. Eagleton calls them “Ditchkins,” conflating the names of vocal atheists Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. In the preface to his book, Eagleton asserts:
Most such critics buy their rejection of religion on the cheap . . . it is with this ignorance and prejudice that I take issue in this book. When it comes to the New Testament, at least, what they usually write off is a worthless caricature of the real thing . . .
. . . the agnostic left cannot afford such intellectual indolence when it comes to the Jewish and Christian scriptures . . . not only because it belongs to justice and honesty to confront your opponent at his or her most convincing [but also because] radicals might discover there are some valuable insights into human emancipation, in an era where the political left stands in dire need of good ideas.
Don’t mistake Eagleton’s indictment of “Ditchkins” as a precursor to a defense of Christian orthodoxy! But Eagleton’s view of his former colleague Hitchens succinctly summarizes Hitchens’ scowling, idea-free polemic against Christ’s Church and her earthly shepherd, Benedict XVI.
During this Holy Week, Heavenly Father,
O send forth your light and your truth;
let these be my guide.
Let them bring me to your holy mountain
to the place where You dwell.¹
¹ Psalm 43, Liturgy of the Hours, Tuesday Week II, Morning Prayer
In previous posts, I’ve mentioned Paul Claudel’s, A Poet Before the Cross. For Holy Week 2010, I’m revisiting Claudel’s wonderful book as part of my Lenten practice. I pray his meditations on the Cross will be a blessing to you.
In this post, let me quote from Wallace Fowlie’s introduction to Claudel’s volume. Fowlie translated A Poet Before the Cross from French into English.
He [Claudel] will pass beyond words and arguments and the complex arsenal of Biblical references. (p. ix)
Biblically faithful brothers and sisters, this “beyond” is not a matter of emotion or incoherence. Rather, Claudel’s objective, as Fowlie notes, is to prompt silence and prayer. We no longer think in terms of awe and wonder. Perhaps we even think too seldom of true prayer. We are so certain we have our doctrines right (I have my Protestant brothers, sisters, and family particularly in mind here), what need have we for awe and wonder? Only this: to prompt reverential worship and, ultimately, all consuming love.
The Word on the cross gives fulfillment to the words of the prophets. This is Claudel’s belief . . . This poet’s faith, which is without secrets and without hesitations, is consubstantial with his life . . . The gigantic figure of the cross is a perpetual manifestation of the Host. The poet looks upon it as the one dazzling sign which is able to pierce our blindness . . . Thanks to the cross, the universe is filled with a Presence, which give it its equilibrium, its meaning and its unity . . . The world ceases to be an enigma and becomes a text that can be read and understood. (pp. xii-xiii)
Lent begins on Wednesday, February 17. Although there are many—and more profound—perspectives on this sacred season (for example, Paul Claudel’s A Poet Before the Cross), here is a simple acrostic to help us prepare for Lent in the year 2010:
L: Longing for God. Surely we must begin here! Without that longing for God, our spiritual hunger and thirst, do we truly desire deeper conversion? A more fervent interior life? See Father Jay Scott Newman’s expansion on deeper conversion and ways to foster Christian fervency, here.
E: Energetic, earnest desire to please God. Undergirding all practical expressions of our Lenten discipline, we must remember we are in relationship with Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for us (Revelation 1:5, Titus 2:13-14). Christianity is not a system or a propositional abstraction. Seek to please Him!
N: “Nothing is more important to me than You, O Lord.” Are we ready to say that? That is the motive, that is the motivation, behind anything we give up during Lent. We are not punishing ourselves or seeking to earn God’s favor. We are saying, “You gave your all for me, Lord. I can give up this for You in pursuit of greater self-mastery, with the goal of loving you more completely and serving you more faithfully.”
T: To all of this . . . add love! ”If I give away all that I have, and if I deliver up my body [to death], but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). Let the love of Christ radiate through you to others! In most of our lives, that is far more difficult—and more needful—than giving up dessert for 40 days.
To all that you do during this Lenten season, add love . . . and live Christianity Richly!
In our study of sacred scripture, we must always read thoughtfully; read and meditate—rather than making our priority simply to finish a particular passage or chapter. When we read thoughtfully, the Holy Spirit never fails to bless time spent with God’s word.
Morning Bible study today provided a wonderful reminder of that. The Gospel of Luke opens with the apparently unremarkable words:
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us . . . . (Luke 1:1, ESV)
“The things that have been accomplished among us.” Those could be words from any CEO’s report to her/his Board of Directors. Yet think about what Luke is ready to recount. The “things that were accomplished among us” involve nothing less than the intervention of God into the universe for the redemption of man and creation!
By the miracle of the Incarnation, and the improbable vehicle of the Cross, Jesus Christ’s death, burial, resurrection, and ascension changed the course of history. Moreover, His ongoing work in us, through Word and Sacrament by the power of the Holy Spirit, transforms all of us who claim His sacrificial death as our hope; as our strength; as our merit before God.
As we begin this season of Lent, let us walk with Christ on His way to Calvary. Let us meditate on “the things that have been accomplished among us.” Let us take comfort in that, through all that was accomplished leading up to Easter, we—through the greatness of His love—have access to His house (Psalm 5:7/8) now and eternally.
“The things that have been accomplished among us,” indeed! That is Christianity Richly.
