March 19 is the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the day we recognize the role of Our Lord’s foster father. The Saint was in my thoughts as I prayed the Benedictus or Canticle of Zechariah this morning.

The background for Zechariah’s song is birth of his son, John the Baptist (Luke 1:57), and the presentation of John for circumcision (1:59-63). John’s conception had, of course, been miraculous—given Zechariah’s and Elizabeth’s advanced age (1:5-25).

Yet Zechariah’s song does not only celebrate his son’s birth, but Our Lord’s. For The Blessed Virgin Mary visited Elizabeth after the angel Gabriel announced Christ would be born to her by the power of the Holy Spirit (1:26-38). When Mary arrived at the home of Elizabeth and Zechariah,  John leapt within the womb of Elizabeth (1:39-41). Elizabeth then acknowledged this recognition of the unborn Christ Child (1:42-45). Mary responded with the Magnificat, acknowledging “the Mighty One has done great things for me” (1:46-55).

All of this is background to Zechariah’s song and St. Joseph’s role in Our Lord’s life. From the Benedictus:

Luke 1:69: ”. . . born of the house of His servant David” (Joseph’s line is the fulfillment of the prophecy that the Redeemer would come from the house of David, Jeremiah 23:4-6 and Matthew 1:1-17)

Luke 1:71: ”. . .  [God] promised to save us from our enemies, from the hands of all who hate us” (Joseph protected the Christ Child and the Blessed Virgin Mary from Herod’s wrath, taking them into Egypt, Matthew 2:13-15)

Luke 1:75: ”. . . holy and righteous in His sight all the days of our life” (God the Holy Spirit said of St. Joseph in scripture, that he was “a just (righteous) man,” Matthew 1:19a, just as God has given us the marvelous promise that we shall be holy and blameless before Him in Christ, Ephesians 1:4)

May we celebrate with joy the Solemnity of Our Lord’s foster father, Saint Joseph, giving thanks for his God-given role in our Savior’s life.  St. Joseph, pray for us!

In the 1970s, the popular evangelical writer, Francis Schaeffer, wrote a book titled How Should We Then Live?  In the years since, other Christian authors have implicitly acknowledged Schaeffer’s work with titles like How Now Shall We Live and How Then, Shall We Live.

Why does this question occupy our thoughts? It does so because—if we are not alone in the universe; if we are not simply the evolutionary product of time and chance—then we want to know what expectations of us exist; how to guide the conduct of our lives. And if we are not alone, but belong to an Other, how shall we know that Other?

Psalm 24 is a great help. Perhaps that is why it is among the Invitatory Psalms (Psalms 95, 100, 24) that open The Liturgy of the Hours. After acknowledging God as Creator, the psalm goes directly to the question “How shall we know You? And how shall we live?”

Who shall climb the mountain of the Lord?
Who shall stand in his holy place?
The man with clean hands and pure heart,
who desires not worthless things,
who has not sworn so as to deceive his neighbor.
He shall receive blessings from the Lord
and reward from the God who saves him.
Such are the men who seek him,
seek the face of the God of Jacob.

Consider “How Should We Then Live?” as a fruitful theme for Lenten meditation. Read and pray over Psalm 24. Consider the four cardinal and three theological virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, and faith, hope, and love). And give thanks to God that, in the riches of His grace, we are not without instruction. We have His revelation in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition to guide our paths. That is Christianity Richly!

It is fitting to begin, once again, with posts to Christianity Richly during Lent. Lent is a time for beginning again with God. Lent is a time during which the Holy Spirit speaks more plainly; more urgently, if we are listening.

So it was this morning: “Before They throne, O God, we kneel; give us a conscience quick to feel.”¹ End my coldness, O Lord. Speak, for your servant is listening—or trying to.

What then? What did God say? And how? My mind wandered back to a recent journey, during which I knew in advance I would be tempted to be judgmental and unloving. “Don’t judge. Just do. Just love.” By God’s grace, during that trip, I believe I did. Yet how quickly we drift! How have I done lately?

Not well, apparently. For I was reminded of a meditation, also in Magnificat, that I had dog-eared to remind myself to return and read more carefully. “Jesus loves as pure gift . . . He makes others better by loving them. Not only does he not accuse their mediocrity . . . but He takes up their defense . . . He defends Mary Magdalene, as he defended the Samaritan woman and Zacchaeus.“²

“Experience has shown me too late that we cannot judge people by their vices, but on the contrary by what they hold intact and pure, by the childlike qualities that remain in them, however deeply one must search for them.”³

Well, there we have it! My marching orders for the day. Let’s get to it. “Don’t judge. Just love. Just do.”

¹ From Magnificat, the hymn beginning Prayer for Morning, March 6.

² Fr. Bernard Bro, O.P., quoted in Magnificat, “How We Can Love Our Enemies,” March 3, 2012.

³ George Bernanos, quoted in the same Magnificat meditation, by Fr. Bernard Bro.

A friend committed suicide this morning. I don’t know what demons were chasing him, only the ones that pursue me.

But, two words:  Don’t. Ever.

“The door to the confessional is our door of hope”—Fr. Jay Scott Newman. Forgiveness and healing are offered to all. Even if our failures seem overwhelming, Christ waits for us at the confessional door. Look to the richness of God’s mercy in Christ.

The new English liturgy says, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof,¹ but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.” This morning I thought, “That is folly, Lord, that you would enter under my roof given my faults, repeated failings, and mixed motives.”

But no! Remember Jesus was asked how He could eat with tax collectors and sinners? Our Lord responded, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:12-13). God runs toward us with super-abundant, overwhelming love (Luke 15:20). The story of the prodigal son who fell into sin is actually a story of prodigal love—God’s prodigal love for us, without limits (1 John 4:10).

Are you troubled? Are you ashamed? Do you feel like you are alone in the darkness? Have you thought of taking your life? Don’t. The very fact you are troubled is confirmation that mercy is available. “The judgment of conscience remains a pledge of hope and mercy.”² Read the Old Testament prophet Hosea. Even in the valley of Achor (trouble),³ God opens a door of hope.

How I wish my friend had just re-read Matthew 9, once more, to see Christ healing longstanding problems: the paralytic, the woman with a hemorrhage, the two blind men, and the mute man. What are your problems and mine? Debt? Professional failure? Grave sin? None are beyond our Lord’s mercy. Christ even brought the official’s dead daughter back to life! God delights to heal and restore. (Amos 9:11) What was the only question Jesus asked the man who had been ill for 38 years?  ”Do you want to be well?” (John 5:6)

Christ waits for you, and for me, in the person of His priest in the confessional. “The door to the confessional is our door of hope.” Meanwhile, I can only pray for my friend . . . “May the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.”

¹ The humility shown by the centurion in Matthew 8:8 and Luke 7:6-7.

² Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1781.

³ Hosea 2:17 (in protestant translations, 2:15).

Two years ago, during  the Easter Triduum, I wrote about Margaret Ridgeley Partridge’s text, “Pilgrim Pavement,” which Ralph Vaughan Williams so beautifully set to music. My purpose was to try to illuminate the nature of our Holy Week pilgrimage.

During the time since that post, I have often meditated on the richest line of her text:

O changing wheaten wafer, that veils the changeless One!

Think, if you will, how often—and in how many ways—our Savior is veiled.  I was reminded this morning, while reading Fr. William Barry’s, Finding God in All Things, that our Lord was literally veiled within the Blessed Virgin Mary: “Imagine . . . sending the Second Person of the Trinity to become a fetus, how tiny and frail the vessel of our salvation is at this point in time.”¹

Then imagine our Savior—The Changeless One of Eternity—veiled as a newborn in swaddling clothes. God in the flesh? Then imagine Him, veiled as a child, remarkable and seemingly precocious (Luke 2:41-50), but a child Who caused His parents to worry nonetheless. Our Lord and our God? Then imagine His glory, veiled during the years of His public ministry, standing in the temple declaring, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:22-31). One with the eternal I AM? “Blasphemy!” the religious elite declared. Then imagine His power, veiled, as He died on the cross in apparent defeat. This man was God? “If you are the Son of God, come down and we will believe!” (Matthew 27:40-42) Then imagine Him today—veiled in His Church, the mystical Body of Christ—at times frail, faltering, and even sinful. Really? This Church is really your mystical Body, continuing your work on earth, Lord?

Having pondered these things, is it so hard to accept that the true body, blood, soul, and divinity of our Lord is present in the Eucharist—the substance of the bread and wine transformed, as it was during the Last Supper and First Eucharist?

Thus we may pray as we approach the Altar, “O changing wheaten wafer, that veils the Changeless One!”

Jesus Christ. Christianity Richly!

¹ William Barry, SJ, Finding God in All Things (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 1991), p. 81.

First and most of all, blessed Easter, followers of Christianity Richly.  I’m grateful if you have found something here previously, which has brought you back on this Easter Sunday. This Easter post jumps very far-forward in the Gospel in Glass series, to the top of the window behind the altar at St. Mary’s. But this ascent seems entirely fitting on Easter, when our Savior is risen!

At the top of the altar window, the risen, ascended Christ is pictured holding a white flag or banner, with a red cross superimposed on the white field. “Normal,” one might think. “Kings and armies carried banners. That’s typical of the historical period, in centuries before and since.”

Ah, but to imagine that is to miss the biblical richness of the Gospel in Glass! For Song of Songs 2:4 says:

He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

Most Bible translations use the word “banner,” although the NAB translates the Hebrew word as “emblem.” Even if the word were emblem, however, that would not change the meaning. What is Jesus Christ’s banner or emblem over us? Not an abstraction. Not hostility propitiated (as the NAB note on Romans 3:23-25 points out). Christ’s banner over us is Love!

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins (1 John 4:10).

A banqueting house? Yes! Could there be a more perfect picture of His Church, within which Christ offers Himself in the Eucharist?

Take and eat; this is my body (Matthew 26:26).

May God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be praised on this glorious Easter Day for His love. May the richest possible blessings be granted to all the Catechumens and Candidates who entered the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church at Easter Vigil. And may we all look to our Savior, Whose banner over us is love!

“There was a garden” (John 19:41).

On this holy day of quiet waiting, we give thanks “there was a garden”—a garden in which our Lord’s body could rest in anticipation of the Resurrection; a garden from which His casting-off of death promises the same to us!

I first heard the garden theme preached more than two decades ago, by a fundamentalist who had a love for literature, drama, and the arts. Those interests infused his message with a richness, confirming Hemingway’s observation that 90% of the power of good writing (and preaching) lies below the surface—giving it power and weight—like the invisible bulk of an iceberg below the sea. Yet this man lacked an understanding of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church; its richness, indeed its fullness (Ephesians 1:18-23).

What a joy then, this Holy Saturday morning, to read our Holy Father’s book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week from the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection and encounter the passage quoted below. It is a fitting and rich meditation for today.

Saint John . . . gives a theological interpretation to the place when he says: “across the Kidron valley, where there was a garden” (18:1). This same highly evocative word comes back at the end of the Passion narrative: “In the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid” (19:41). John’s use of the word “garden” is an unmistakable reference to the story of Paradise and the Fall. That story, he tells us, is being resumed here. It is in the “garden” that Jesus is betrayed, but the garden is also the place of the Resurrection. It was in the garden that Jesus fully accepted the Father’s will, made it his own, and thus changed the course of history.¹  [Italicized emphasis mine]

How has your Lent been this year? Have your prayer, fasting, and almsgiving been consistent? Have you made progress in self-mastery and sensed the movements of the Holy Spirit in your life? Have you felt close to the Lord?

If you answered “yes,” your Lent has been better than mine. Why? Interior inattention? I pray that has not been true of me. External distraction? Perhaps. An increasing awareness of my sin without equivalent progress overcoming it? Certainly that is true. This has been a difficult Lent—following hard on the heels of a disappointing Advent (not in the sense of Christ’s coming, but rather, disappointing because of my failure to make abundant room for Him in the “inn” of my schedule).

What, then, are you and I to do, if you’ve had a difficult season of reflection and repentance leading up to Easter? This is Holy Week. Easter is upon us. In our most discouraged moments, we may even be tempted, with the people chronicled in Jeremiah 8:20, to despair, “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved,”¹ not from our sin; not from ourselves.

Benedict XVI’s recently published, Jesus of Nazareth—Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, has been a huge help in this respect. He points out that “if man is to enter God’s presence, to have fellowship with God, he must be ‘clean.’ Yet the more he moves into the light, the more he sense how defiled he is.”² He further stresses that we are never to give up; never stop believing in forgiveness, as Judas did; never lose certainty that the Light of Christ will overcome darkness.³ Unlike Judas, or the people of Jerusalem described by Jeremiah, when we fall we must get up and return to the Lord.

In John 8:12, forgiving and freeing the woman caught in adultery, and John 9:5, healing the man born blind, light overcomes the darkness! Never doubt Jesus Christ can, and will, and is doing the same thing for you. “Light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth,” Ephesians 5:9 reassures us. We are even told we are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14).

How can this be? This is because, through the overwhelming goodness and power of God in Jesus Christ, we who were once darkness, now are light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8). In the words of Benedict, “Faith takes flesh” in us. The Church becomes the Body of Christ. And in this we have the assurance, “No one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the Church, because we are members of His body” (Ephesians 5:29-30).

Take heart, brother and sister in the Lord. If this has been a difficult Lent, persevere. The light of Christ shines in the darkness—the darkness of this world; the darkness of our failures—yet the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5), and it shall not! That is Christianity Richly.

¹ Most translations say “saved,” but the NAB uses the word “safe”

² Page 57

³ Pages 69, 92

In St. Mary’s altar window, second only to our Lord in importance, is the Lord’s mother. Divisions in Christendom starting in the 16th century have robbed non-Catholic communities of the blessings Christ intended, when He said, “Behold your mother” (John 19:27). So let’s look at the richness the Blessed Virgin Mary adds to The Gospel in Glass, without even going into areas about which there are misunderstandings.

First, based on the biblical record, we know—so who can object?—that our Lord’s Mother was faithful to the end. Would we not want such a Mother to stand by us, even at great personal cost? Simeon’s prophetic blessing (Luke 2:34-35) is powerfully portrayed in the window: a sword not only pierced Mary’s Son, but pierced her soul, as well (2:35), as she watched the Child she had cradled, nursed, and guided die in agony.

Second, also from the biblical record, can we not deduce Mary may have lived most of her life with this expectation for her Child’s death? Mary and Joseph were warned in a dream after Christ’s birth not to visit Herod on their way home. Herod had said, “Search diligently for the child . . . that I too may do Him homage” (Matthew 2:8), but we know how that story ended (Matthew 2:16). Yet if Jesus’ death was among the things Mary pondered in her heart (Luke 2:19) from Simeon’s prophecy and Herod’s hatred, her faith never wavered. She lived-out her Magnificat to the end (Luke 1:46-49):

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.  For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness, from now on will all ages call me blessed. The Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is His name.

How many of us can say “God has done great things for me” in great tragedy, or in anticipation of tragedy? How many of us would have had the love, courage, and strength to stand at the foot of the cross? How many of us do today?

May we follow the faith of the Virgin Mary and share her complete commitment, even at great personal cost, to her Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the Gospel in Glass and Christianity Richly!

It’s the “morning after”—the morning after the threatened shutdown of the government.

According to the New York Times, agreement was reached at the last hour to fund the government. This morning’s cable news tended to cover everything but this agreement—with MSNBC doing a feature several minutes long about a book on amusement parks. One might wonder why our current politically obsessed, do-nothing Congress did not qualify as an amusement park, but no mention was made.

So what happened? With the Times article reporting conflicting statements by Democrats and Republicans, we should be thankful for Life Legal Defense Fund’s website. Consider supporting their good work in the defense of life.

LLDF’s site had a link to LifeNews.com, which offered this analysis. Apparently, HR 1363 restricts funding for abortion in the nation’s capital, as well as requiring Senate Democrats to allow a vote on health care repeal and Planned Parenthood funding. Thanks are due LLDF.org and LifeNews.com, given the almost impenetrable language of the legislation itself. Want a look?

• HR 1363: The bill that averted shutdown.
• Public Law 111-117: Legislation to which key portions of HR 1363 refer.
• Public Law 111-148: Legislation to which a part of HR 1363 refers.

We can be thankful for some progress on pro-life issues.  We can only wait to see how the subsequent votes are cast on healthcare and Planned Parenthood.

Republicans understand the issues of pre-birth health and right to life. Democrats understand and respond better to this issues of life post-birth. May we see continued movement toward compassion and “choice” for the unborn, matched by social responsibility toward the living.  I wish I were more hopeful.  But given the theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—let’s strive to hope, while speaking up to make a difference, my Christian brothers and sisters.

Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood (PP) was on MSNBC as I began this post. Her argument was that PP does preventative care, affordable early detection of breast and cervical cancer, and family planning. Lawrence O’Donnell, one of my favorite commentators, appeared later in the day reading an email endorsing PP that left him all choked up.

Planned Parenthood does provide medical services that are a huge help to the medically under-served in the U.S.  And PP should be commended for that. But the overriding argument here is not about the good PP does. It is about the non-negotiable horror they inflict. Click here: “abortion is a safe and legal way to end pregnancy.”

You be the judge.  First, look at the Life Legal Defense Foundation’s website. Then read Harry Reid’s approach to the issue here. Then look at Magaret Sanger’s views (she is closely identified with PP, as you’ll see here). Despite her controversial views on many subjects, including contraception, even she was opposed to abortion: ”While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization.”

This is not women’s health. Look at Priests for Life’s site (be warned: there are graphic photographs that show the horror of abortion, but those photos are not on the home page). Imagine, God help us, the terrors of a partial birth abortion— because the parent didn’t intend for for the child to live, but waited to exercise “choice.”

This is not “choice,” the mantra that has been attached by advocates to the issue. “Choice” has great resonance for U.S. voters, like motherhood and apple pie. But abortion is the “choice” to destroy of thousands of human lives daily (by some estimates, 3,500 per day). Read Princeton professor Robert P. George’s The Clash of Orthodoxies. The value of human life is intrinsically good (based on what we are), not merely instrumentally good (based whether the life will be useful, or even “convenient”).

Now, perhaps turnabout is fair play. Let me make all my conservative friends angry. With the horrific exception of abortion, the Democrats are a lot closer to “getting it right” than the Republicans. The Democrats are the party of compassion.  That has been demonstrated over decades.  Even today, do any of us really think that cutting taxes, repealing healthcare, and cutting state and federal services is a Christian response to societal needs around us?

Consider, too, that much of Washington is driven by corporate money. Corporations are legally chartered to be pathologically selfish. “They sell the just man for silver, and the poor man for a pair of sandals. They trample the heads of the weak into the dust of the earth, and force the lowly out of the way.” The quotation from Amos 2:6-7 is a fair  description of the impact of large corporations (I’m not talking about small, family companies).  If you want a more current assessment than that of Amos, watch the film, The Corporation, or read the book. And it might be interesting to add Inside Job and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room to your “films to be watched” list.

Shut the government down if we must. Abortion cannot continue. But please don’t imagine the Republicans have all the answers.

Having established that the person at the foot of Christ’s cross is Mary Magdalene, let’s survey the remaining figures, saving attention for Our Lord’s Mother until later.

Various women are represented in the window. In addition to Mary Magdalene, there are figures who must include Mary’s sister and Mary the wife of Clopas, all mentioned in John 19:25. Mark 15:40 mentions Salome. Matthew’s Gospel adds, “There were many women there, looking on from a distance” (Matthew 27:55). Luke adds, while Simon the Cyrene was carrying Our Savior’s cross, the followers included “many women who mourned and lamented Him.”  Would we have followed, mourning and lamenting, or would we have run?

There is no key in the iconography to distinguish one from the other, unless we assume the sister of our Lord’s Mother would stand nearest her.   We cannot identify more. Yet the window is faithful to Matthew’s record: “Many women . . . followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to Him.”

In addition to the women, in the background, to the right, we see the centurion who exclaimed, “Truly, this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:54) and, in Luke’s account, “this man was innocent beyond doubt” (Luke 23:47).

Finally, we see the Apostle John on the right, dressed in green, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 19:26). It was to St. John and to His Mother that our Lord addressed His final, tender instructions: “When Jesus saw his Mother and the disciple there whom He loved, He said to his Mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your Mother’” — given to the disciple and to the Church.  Given to us!

Christianity . . . Richly!

Back in August, I began a series, Gospel in Glass — examining the figures and images presented in the altar window at St. Mary’s Church (Greenville, SC). For more than a century, this “Gospel in Glass” has offered worshippers an opportunity to meditate on Our Lord’s Passion. Let’s return to the window, with thanks and praise to Jesus Christ, the central figure.

Earlier posts suggested how to “read” the window, and begin with the paving stones at the very bottom of the scene. The next posts were about St. Mary Magdalene, prominently shown in the window (see here and here).

Much remains to be written about other figures in the window, most of all, Our Savior.  But while anticipating that, one of the first things a viewer notices in all of the windows at St. Mary’s is a charming anachronism: the image in each window is framed by The Church — not St. Mary’s, but a large, stone Cathedral, in which each scene is set.

The interpretation is not difficult. In God’s eternal plan, He foreordained that Christ would give His life for us, establishing His Church, and nothing will ever prevail against His glorious work (Matthew 6:18). Thus, all of salvation history is set in the context of The Church.

Thus, when we pray in The Liturgy of the Hours, “surround your people, Lord, within the safety of Your Church” (Tuesday, Week III, Evening Psalm-prayer), we see that prayer literally represented in the windows at St. Mary’s.  In praying this prayer, we are also praying for all Christians. There is “one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, one God and Father of all” (Ephesians 4:5-6).

The Gospel in Glass shows that unity:  God’s people, from the Old Testament to the New, surrounded within the safety of Christ’s Church.  May this cause us always to give thanks to Jesus Christ, the Church’s One Foundation — anticipated and foreshadowed in the Old, and gloriously realized and established in the New.

Christianity Richly!

The photo is a sculpture of The Holy Family, located in the library at Ignatius House, Atlanta, GA.  If you have visited Christianity Richly before, you’ll have seen the photos taken at my December 2010 retreat.  However, you won’t have read much after that date.  Life during the following 60 days was filled with Christmas, New Year’s, and helping open a new business.

The time has come again to resume Christianity Richly. How I admire writers who have the discipline to produce something every day!  As a writer, I often feel like the man in Luke 11:6, who ran next door to borrow three loaves from a neighbor because, “A friend of mine is come . . . and I have nothing to set before him.”

May it not be so for the remainder of 2011. If you’ve seen something of God’s grace here at Christianity Richly in the past., then please ask Our Lord to give me the strength and perseverance to write in 2011. Your prayers will be much appreciated.

I pray not just have something to set before you, but in Christ’s abundance, something for you that nourishes richly!