Luceat!

I remember my first time within the Abbey walls at St. Benedict’s in Atchison, KS. When I entered these monastic walls, it was not too long before I meet the person of Jesus and fell in love with Him and His Church. I remember seeing men walking in long black robes with great reverence and peace in their every step. There was something majestic about the world I found myself in.

At the time I was a senior in high school on the tour of the many college campuses that I was visiting to see where I would pursue my college education. I distinctly remember driving away from Benedictine College and knowing that I had to go there. It would only be later that I would realize that I was responding the promptings of the Holy Spirit and the invitation of a 1500 year old saint.

Within 6 months of that visit, I found myself going to the Abbey daily and attending Mass and Vespers with the monks. I fell in love the solemn chants and manly silence that filled the choir stalls where the monks would pray. I found myself going there to ask God for forgiveness for my many sins and strength to walk in a lonely time. It was in the walls of St. Benedict’s Abbey that I met some of my best friends to this day and first came to believe in the Church.

In St. Benedict’s Rule, I found a masterpiece that taught me how to live! Benedict taught me order, moderation, and joy in sacrifice. He was a practical man, realizing that even things like taking your knife out of your robe before sleeping is not too small to mention. He understood the world would be changed through stability and obedience. We needed to learn to love each other and serve each other as Christ has charged us. He reminded us that wisdom often speaks through the lips of babes, so we should always listen to the younger in our care. Silence, humility, and constant conversion were his daily creed.

In our age, Pope Benedict XVI, has chosen for his namesake the name of this great monk. Some would argue that Benedictines were the foundation of which Europe was built and the reason St. Benedict was named patron of Europe in 1964 by Pope Paul VI. As we are faced with a culture that runs from commitment and embraces a false sense of freedom, we can cling to St. Benedict to help start to rebuild the world we live in once again. Today, as we celebrate his feast, we must pray for the courage to fight the battles in our own times, especially with the “weapon of obedience” (Prologue of the Rule of St. Benedict). May we learn from our Father Benedict, who is a great a patron our day!

St. Benedict…Pray for us!

Once again on the front page of national news media is another archaeologist proclaiming that his most recent discovery exposes Christianity as fraudulent. A tablet called, “Gabriel’s Vision of Revelation” is said to contain evidence that Jews 100 years before Christ were anticipating a messiah that would die and three days later rise from the dead. Israel Knohl, the scholar who proposed this translation of Line 80 of the tablet says, “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

One catch is that the tablet isn’t a new discovery. The tablet has been known by archaeologists for sometime. In the first publication of the text line 80 was not fully translated because it was too difficult to determine what words were written. Knohl claims that line 80 says, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.” Not all archaeologists are convinced yet by Knohl’s claim, though some are and others at least acknowledge its plausibility.

This proposal, like the many others we’ve had to bear over the past few years, is really a questioning of the historicity of the Gospels of the New Testament. Whether the Jews were expecting a messiah who would die and rise three days later or not really doesn’t matter in the fundamental question that Christianity is concerned with: Is the tomb empty? If the tomb is empty, if Jesus really is risen, then it doesn’t really matter if people were expecting it or not. Some will say their expectations support the Christian claim, others argue that it hurts the Christian claim. Either way, their expectations have no effect on the outcome of reality.

It seems that the “Gabriel’s Vision” tablet shows that the type of Messiah Jesus was stood in contrast to the type of messiah the Jews expected. The tablet tells of a man who was leading a rebellion against the Romans. This is what the Jewish people were expecting. They expected an earthly Kingdom established by a coming messiah. Of course, what we see in Christ is a messiah whose ‘kingship is ‘not of this world.’ Who goes out to the ‘Hill Country of Galilee’, a place of revolution, and says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Who tells his people to go ‘two’ miles when a Roman soldier makes you carry his bags. So, whether you want Jesus to be a messiah who is completely unexpected or a messiah who lives up to mainstream 1st century Jewish expectations, you can have both in the “Gabriel’s Vision” tablet.

In the end, expectations don’t have any effect on reality. The real question lies in whether Christianity’s claim of the empty tomb is true or not. The reality is that Jesus Christ walked this Earth and his tomb was found empty without a ‘reasonable’ explanation. After witnessing to this his followers spread throughout the world becoming the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. The Saints that have been raised up and the miracles that have been chronicled and witnessed too are innumerable. If it is all a lie then I hope someone proves it soon, but until then the evidence is too great not to react.

Today is Pentecost, a feast that has been celebrated for thousands of years; first by our Jewish brothers and now more fully by Christians. The promise of our Lord that he would send us another advocate who would teach us all things and help us remember all that He had taught us is fulfilled on this day. The Apostles, who have been praying and fasting with Mary, the mother of Jesus, are now filled with tongues of fire and holy boldness in proclaiming Christ risen from the dead.

No one can read over today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles and think that Christianity is a boring and dead religion. What we find, when we open this small reading is fire being placed on the tongues of the Apostles, a thunderous sound erupting in their midst, and people speaking and understanding languages they had never heard.

They were inebriated in the Spirit, while men even thought they were drunk.

Now, let’s take a step back from the excitement. Where did this feast come from? We find two interpretations in the Old Testament. There is the feast of harvest, also called the feast of sevens. This is when the first fruits of grain were offered to God, but also it is the feast of Israel receiving the law and covenant on Mt. Sinai. The Holy Spirit comes on the day of the law, because the Holy Spirit is the new law. And now the law will not be written on stone tablets but on flesh, on our hearts.

The Holy Spirit brings life. On the day Pentecost, St. Peter preached and baptized 3000 people into the Church. This is drastic in comparison to Israel’s days on Mt. Sinai. After the people of Israel build and worship the golden calf, the Levites are commissioned to go and kill those continuing to partake in the horrific incident. They slaughter 3000 people on that day.

Jesus desired to send us the Holy Spirit, because we would then enter into the life of God. This Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts, gives us courage in the face of danger and many gifts to spread throughout the Church.

Finally, we should be aware that the Holy Spirit still works in amazing ways, even in our day. I have a friend who prayed over a man, who had been born with a deformed armed. Praying in the name of Jesus and asking for the healing power of the Holy Spirit, my friend saw this man’s arm be made new. The arm had no traces of ever being deformed! Do not be afraid of the Holy Spirit dwelling in you. Answer the promptings of the Spirit, for to do so is to set out on the greatest of adventures.

A recent Zenit article summarizing the Pope’s address to Cuba said, “On the subject of the pastoral care of marriage and the family, the Holy Father encouraged the prelates ‘to redouble their efforts so as to ensure that everyone, and especially the young, gains a better understanding of — and feels ever more attracted by — the beauty of the true values of marriage and the family.’”

At first glance, we may be tempted to ask our Holy Father what he means by ensuring that young adults feel “ever more attracted by” the sacrament of marriage. Isn’t marriage a natural vocation and desire of most human beings? However, on campus, I run across a mentality of fear and apprehension regarding marriage. [Read more →]

I know how relentlessly busy the last few weeks of school can be as a student (or as a missionary!) It seems like one endless stream of important and urgent tasks and somewhere in the middle of that you must find time to eat, sleep, pack, and pray (well, maybe not the first three). However, as you transition out of this caffeine propelled hyperactivity, I have a challenge for you–stop and smell the roses. Literally, make time to encounter beauty in your life.

In FOCUS, we frequently talk about the true and the good. I think 75% of my conversations as a missionary end up at least touching on a truth of our Faith in relation to some intellectual scrap from a class or mentioning a moral issue. However, rarely do I make a point to talk about and share a third transcendental–the beautiful. I was reminded of this by two things recently, experientially by an afternoon at an art and jazz festival with a good friend, Jennifer, and intellectually by a wonderful article I was sent by my “concert buddy” in Washington DC.

The article, “Beauty Goes Underground,” mentions a test done by The Washington Post last year. They placed Joshua Bell (a renown violin artist) dressed as a street musician with his Stradivarius violin in a NYC subway tunnel and asked him to play. They wanted to see if people were so entrenched in their daily routine that they would not even notice the casual concert in the corner, an experience that would usually cost them $100+ a ticket. Out of over a thousand people walking by in the 45 minutes he played, only 7 stopped to listen, a crowd never formed around him, and he collected a meager sum of $30 [he usually plays for $1,000 a minute]. Interestingly, the article also points out that almost every child that passed him tried to stop and listen and get their parents to do the same.

As a child, everything beautiful made me halt in awe. I still remember admiring a single blowing leaf for as long as it was visible on the ride home from school, and I vividly recall spending hours searching through our gravel driveway to find small “gems” of quartz rock. What changed? Why have we become so cold as a society? Are we really so busy that we have no time for the beautiful and only care for the utilitarian and shockingly unusual?

I propose that we reclaim the love of the beautiful in our lives. In the article, John Murphy cites Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete as “formulat[ing] the relationship this way: without beauty, truth becomes legalism and goodness becomes moralism. Beauty is how we find pleasure in truth and goodness.” If this is true, and I would assert that it is, than it is not merely good, but also necessary that we take time to incorporate beauty into our lives. How? Well, I began today by listening to my favorite men’s polyphony group as I made breakfast. Soon after, I took a deep breath of fresh air outside to appreciate the weather God gave us. After Mass, I knelt in front of a beautiful statue of Our Lady in prayer today because she lifts my mind to Christ more naturally than the “superman Jesus” statue behind the altar. I took some time to read some of Pope Benedict’s writings. Later, I put a beautiful piece of artwork on my computer desktop.  And on my way home, I paused to admire a brand-new family of ducks swimming next to my apartment.  It is easy to end a day saying, “Life is BEAUTIFUL!” if you only take the time to smell the roses.

Lastly, a beautiful life is an attractive life.  We are all called to evangelization, and an essential part of that vocation is to show others through the way you live your life and view the world something about how God lives and views His Creation.  God is the creator and essence of the Beautiful.  Let that divine attribute radiate through your life so that you may introduce others to the Source of Beauty.

This just in: Venerable John Henry Cardinal Newman to be Named ‘Blessed’!

Being largely the product of a Newman Center formation, and somewhat acquainted with his life and works, I’ve long had a distinct admiration for the good Cardinal. It’s been nearly a decade since I first took refreshment from the font of the saintly don’s prolific intellect…

On a clear, brisk afternoon in the fall of 1999, I stood in the stone arch doorway on the east side of the courtyard of Newman Hall at the University of Illinois. I had gone outdoors to savor the relative quiet, the good weather, and some excellent pipe tobacco. Yes, I could have written “Confessions of an 18-Year-Old Pipe Smoker,” except that the narrative would have been rather thin. I had come to the U of I as an English major with a lot of idyllic (and antiquated) images in my head of what the college experience ought to look, sound, and feel like, and on this particular afternoon I intended simply to look at the world and think.

I stood there, doubtless in odd contrast to my peers: overweight, bespectacled, probably too young to be thoughtfully smoking a pipe, backward-turned Ivy League cap on my head. One of the most unfortunate things about my otherwise completely acceptable living situation, I thought, was that the hardwood-paneled lounge inside didn’t allow for my current pastime, else I could have been reading something (which would have perfectly completed the pretentious picture).

So, in want of more substantial reading material, I decided to ponder the large metal (bronze?) plaques adorning either side of the doorway. One quoted George Washington’s farewell address:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

The other cited Newman’s The Idea of a University:

Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk, then you may hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man.

While I recognized that our first President’s warning was well worth heeding, the vividness of Newman’s word-images impelled me to commit his cautionary gem to memory. I had nary an inkling then how much my years as a student–and later as a missionary–would be marked by contention “against those giants”. Still less did I realize that the most intense struggle wasn’t to be found ‘out there’ in illuminating the darkness of other souls. The intervening years have shown me the truth of Chesterton’s answer to the question “What’s wrong with the world?”: I am. The good Cardinal knew that conversion wasn’t simply a matter of neat formulas and tidy arguments to change the mind, but the more miraculous transformation of will.

I grappled off-and-on with other Important Questions during those shining years of student-hood: Why am I here? Where am I going? Who am I to become? As I stumbled through the fog, Newman’s famous “The Pillar of the Cloud”–suggested to me by an insightful priest–offered consolation I remember in my better moments of trust-in-confusion:

Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’ encircling gloom
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home –
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene — one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path, but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.