St. John Bosco

Patron saint of youth; extraordinary example of how Jesus' "leaven" metaphor of evangelization works in some of the seemingly most hopeless circumstances; artisan of the moral imagination of youth via his sacred 'dreamscapes' - this man, no mere adornment of dessert, is well placed in the midst of Catholic Schools Week.
Visualize John Bosco.

Also of note these days is the unrest in Egypt, with a particular focus on ongoing plight of the Coptic Christians. But B16's vision offers hope.

Pope Shenouda, the Coptic Patriarch, is beloved by Egyptian Christians; and I think a taste of his words will help you see why...

Here's a way to prayerfully unite with Copts from within their own world of worship.

Eternal rest, grant...

I wish to honor the memory of St. Augustin parish's organist/ accompanist, Scott Neel, whose tragic and all-too early death stole from us a joyful noise and a good man.

Please remember him and his family in your prayer. May the angels and saints welcome him into their blaze of song where the Mass never ends...

St. Thomas Aquinas, 1/28/11

Tomorrow is a great feast, and happens to be my Name day. May I live up to this extraordinary man to whom I look up, Tommaso D'Aquino. This genius' panoply of achievements by the time of his death at age 49 inspire in my 40-something self both awe and humility.

A summary list of his writings and a look into only one of those texts will help you see my perspective.

In Thomas' honor I want to recount a story about him that is probably a mix of fact and legend. But it teases out a core truth about him.

It was 1264 when Pope Urban IV instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi. The pope wanted a special Mass and office written especially for this feast, and he commissioned both Sts. Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas to present texts for consideration.

Bonaventure was known to be a more lyrical writer than Aquinas, seemingly far more likely to produce poetry worthy of liturgy.

But au contraire.

On the appointed day both men, each with manuscript in hand, came before Urban. St. Thomas was to go first, and kneeling before the pope, began to read what he had written. Both Pope Urban and Bonaventure listened with tears of emotion, and while St. Thomas was still reading, Bonaventure quietly turned aside and tore his manuscript into small pieces. When St. Bonaventure's turn came, he admitted what he had done and told them that he was no longer in possession of his manuscript. Bonaventure explained that he considered Thomas’ work alone worthy to be used in this liturgical feast.

Aquinas demonstrated a crucial quality of theology: truth must find company with beauty, and thinking-faith must always be capable of turning to worshiping faith. In fact, our lives are to be the most artful witness to faith's true beauty; poetry in motion. So let's start painting!

Let's also listen to one of these exquisite texts penned by the Angelic Doctor...

Conversion of Saint Paul

In honor of today's raucous Feast, I share this excerpt from St. John Chrysostom on St. Paul.

In-Vitro makes for In-Soluble dilemmas

The editorial this weekend in the Des Moines Register, railing against the move to block state funding for stem-cell research on human embryos, exposed what Catholic theo-logic long ago argued was the root-problem with creating human life outside the womb: in-vitro technology, even though it possesses the potential to overcome infertility and bring a new life to birth, also possesses equal potential to create human lives destined for destruction. The latter fact in particular is what makes in-vitro ethically wrong.

As the Register so clearly states: "The embryos used by researchers were never going to become babies. They are left over from in vitro fertilization and slated for destruction anyway."

Linguistic Slight of Hand

Here we see a linguistic slight of hand: what in-vitro disallows is that embryos "become babies." The language sidesteps the more important questions: when do embryos "become human" or "become persons"?

The same slight of hand lurks at the core of abortion legislation: because we cannot agree on when "personhood" appears in utero, we should presume non-personhood until birth...or 3rd trimester...or when the the fetus can feel pain...or can breathe on his/her own, or...choose your arbitrary personhood marker.

But the facts are quite clear: once conception occurs and our genetic stamp is complete, there is no sudden moment in development when we become someone wholly other. Our identity at and after conception is a continuum of development; or in the language of personhood, the unfolding of an "I" and not of an "It-to-an-I."

Elsewhere in the article, the the editorial opines: "Opponents argue destroying a microscopic clump of cells is analogous to taking a life. It's not."

Sed contra: First of all, regardless of what you judge the zygote/embryo to be, the zygote/embryo is a life; and destroying the zygote destroys life. Slight of hand: destroys life = destroys human life = destroys a person's life.

Science Has Revealed the Complex Microcosm of the Human Embryo

In addition, the unborn human person's full-humanity can be empirically perceived in the extraordinary and elegant biological beauty of who they are: a wholly new, genetically unique and 'personal' identity that comes into being at conception and does not cease to become until death. Science has opened to us a beauty we could never have imagined in the design of life in its inception. Indeed, no biologist gazing on the delicate and complex microcosm of the embryo could employ the analogy of a 'clump of cells.' Rather, the newly conceived human person is a micro-icon of all that we, the already-born, are.

But weighed down by politically charged ideology, some wish to render the transparent beauty and humanity of life's origin opaque, de-personalized and dehumanized to justify the license we have given to our society to destroy the unborn of any stage at will. The will, and voice, of the unborn is lost in this ideology and linguistic obfuscation: unseen means unprotected; voiceless means defenseless.

The analogy to the injustices wreaked on other classes and races of people in times past and present is, to me, crystal clear.

The Church must always stand up as the champion of those who are rendered invisible, inaudible or de-humanized by individuals, societies, institutions, cultures.

Promise for Cures is in Adult Stem Cell Research

Lastly, the article mentions this: "[Embryonic stem cell research] holds promise for developing treatments for debilitating diseases." Really? Where is that data? On the other hand, see the ever-growing data regarding embryonic vs. adult stem cells.

Let us speak the truth in love.

1/22/73

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade court ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S.

The U.S. Bishops have declared it to be a mandatory and national day of penance. Fasting is a most ancient expression of penance, but any form of self-denial wed to an intention of reparation to God and prayer for an end to what John Paul II called abominandum flagitium abortus - the unspeakable crime of abortion - serves well to fulfill our Bishops' mandate.

Even the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill weighed in recently; and in lieu of the Russian experience of abortion his words bear special gravity.

One particular news item came out yesterday that lays bare the all-too-often hidden horrors of our nation's oxymoronic commitment to secure the legal right to slay unborn human life.

We respond, like MLK, with the non-violent and prophetic force of love and truth. We may not remain silent. We cannot allow apathy to lull us into the moral sleep of apathy...

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged him on a tree.
They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary.
They crowned him with a crown of thorns, red were his wounds,
and deep,
'Cause those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap.
When Jesus came to Birmingham, they simply passed him by.
They wouldn't touch a hair of him; they left him there to die.
'Cause folks had grown more tender now, they wouldn't cause him pain.
They simply passed on down the road, and left him in the rain.
Still Jesus cried, 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do'.
And still it rained a bitter rain, that drenched him through and through.
All the folks had gone by now, there was no one there to see,
As Jesus crawled against a wall, and sighed for Calvary.
- Geoffrey Anketell Studdert Kennedy

Unity

We are in the midst of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

Pope Benedict chimed in on this.

Prayer is the soul of ecumenism, as unity in the Body of Christ is above all else a work of the Holy Spirit.

In a special way, I long for unity with the Orthodox Churches. Orthodoxy still breathes mystery and awe in its Liturgy, and has not yet succumbed to secularization's corrosive power to de-mystify divine mystery.

We hope.

As an aside, I happened on this remarkable video of a little girl named Rhema, gifted with a stunningly lovely voice and a tragic story. Beauty and pain seem to be bedfellows in this life. Her voice is truly a word from God.

Oremus. Let us pray.

MLK Day

A quick post here to feature another post by a favorite author of mine, Albert Raboteau, who offers some substantive reflections on King's legacy.

Also, to honor the recent anniversary of Haiti's devastating earthquake, here is an article of penetrating insight from yet another favorite theologian of mine.

God is...

Today is the liturgical date of the great feast of the Epiphany,
though in the U.S. the celebration is transferred to a prior
Sunday. Unfortunately the making of this feast into a movable
feast makes the celebration of the 'twelve days of Christmas'
untenable.

But wrangling with the tangle of modern liturgical adjustments is
for another day.

Epiphany is the manifestation, the appearing of the Messiah to
the nations in the persons of the Magi. These Magi from the 'east'
seem to have come from Persia, which is both outside the bounds of
the Roman Empire and home to a robust Jewish diaspora community
that originated during the 6th century B.C. Babylonian exile of the Jews.

That exile was catastrophic, a veritable 'passion of the Jews.'

Interesting to note that it was the exile and its aftermath that
gave birth to a rich and ever-expanding hope for 'the Messiah' -
and so when the Messiah is born, seekers inspired by that hope
emerge from the east where the living memory of that exile perdures:
in the Jewish community left behind in Babylon.

And these Magi from the east were also astrologically savvy, seeing in the dome of the starry heavens, as the ancients did, portals to the divine dispensation of history; windows that leaked Heaven's glory into a darkened world. Indeed, the cosmos itself conspired to welcome its Maker's birth; even while it hid in shame at His death.

There is so much material for meditation in these mysterious Magi.
But I will resist the temptation.

I do want to dwell for just a brief moment, though, on one facet
of this appearing Epiphany. Yesterday's first reading from 1 John at Mass contained a phrase of incomparable beauty in Scripture:
"God is love."

So exquisite, it is worth seeing the Greek text of it:
ὁ θεός ἀγάπη εἰμί

What is it that has appeared in this helpless infant born in the
House of Bread, the City of David the Lowly Shepherd?

It is the spinner of the 500 billion galaxies, who knows of no
origin and whose power knows no horizon.

What has appeared?

God, who has come to radically redefine the word love by shattering the meanings it once cupped.

Not by argument or theory; not by a study of 'normality' extracted
from the lives of broken, fallen men and women.

Rather, love redefined by its appearing - or, better, by its unleashing
in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus would refill the newly fashioned Cup of Love with nothing other than His very self.

And this shattered and remade Cup is first poured into that stunning, singular and untainted re-echo of Christ: the woman who dared cradle the lowly Most High God.

As we enter the days of 'counting', unhappily named Ordinary time,
let us behold the unfolding of that untamed epiphany of infinite love
that will stretch our finite frame beyond our wildest imaginings.

On Sunday, watch for the rip in the skies....

New Year

A blessed Eighth Day to you!

A feast of Mary the God-bearer,
the day of circumcision for Christ,
the day of peace for our world.

Let's remember in a particular way
the plight of the Christians in the
mid-east who suffer under the yoke
of fear.

Especially today our Coptic brothers
and sisters in Christ who suffered
violence.

Lamb of God, grant us peace.