The Nativity Icon

I recently changed my Facebook profile pic to an icon of the Nativity of Christ, in honor of the Feast and the Season. My mother, with whom I share a certain sense of humor, commented that it really didn't look like me. I chuckled, and moved on, but was later drawn to think about that statement, and to make the following reflection. I share it in hopes that it edifies, and pray that it isn't found to be offensive to my Eastern Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters.




Doesn't it, though? Doesn't it look like all Christians?

Aren't we all the cave, that space that is dark and empty except that it be filled by our saving God-with-us? Are we not all, like the angels in Luke's gospel, messengers of the glorious coming of God in the flesh? Are we not like the ox and ass, creatures of God who are as dumb animals in the presence of so great a mystery, yet still drawn to the nourishment offered by our God? Are we not all wise persons, coming to make homage to the King of Kings? Are we not all shepherds, who receive the good news with astonishment, in the midst of leading our particular flocks? Are we not all like Joseph, tempted to doubt the truth of the gospel, yet overcoming doubt with trust in God's Word? Don't we all, at times, serve as the tempting devil, when we, in our times of darkness, give evidence that contradicts the good news of Christ's arrival and presence among us? Aren't we all like Mary, lovingly accepting Christ into our very beings, and striving to nurture in ourselves and contemplate a mystery we cannot comprehend? Are not we, who have become the Body of Christ, bound together and offered up as sacrifice to God the Father, for the sake of all the world?

In fact, this might be a mystical portrait of the church, all Christians, or any one of us. When God became God-with-us, we became man-with-God; so perhaps it is not unfitting to reflect upon this icon in this fashion.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Heaven and Hell

Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble,
And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving neither root nor branch, says the Lord of hosts.
But for you you fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays. - Malachi 3:19-20

The end of all things. Death, judgment, and our final destiny. What's it all about? Well, it means that how we live shapes our destiny. Pretty straightforward.

Or is it?

We live in a time when people don't believe in hell. It seems that a loving God wouldn't punish us with an eternal punishment, so hell can't be real, can it? My answer is that no, God doesn't set out to punish us. It says so right in the Bible, which is an authoritative text for all who are Christians. Oh, you can point to snippets of verses here and there, decontextualize them, and limit yourself to that as you fashion the mental idol you want to worship, but that doesn't match the image of God portrayed when you look at everything in the Bible, and keep all the snippets in context. God does not want the death of the sinner, so why would he inflict it? God's response to the most depraved sinfulness of humanity is to become human and trample death by death, fulfilling the requirements of justice we were unable to fulfill ourselves. God got us off the hook. Did he then change his mind, having given us just one last chance? As St. Paul puts it, "It is Christ who forgives us; who shall condemn?" No, God doesn't punish us for our sins.

But there is still a hell, and it results from our choices, or rather, from one basic choice we remake through all our discreet choices in life. The words from Malachi show us just how this works. Did you ever have that person in your life who thought that you just hung the moon? That person who wanted to be around you WAY more than you ever wanted to be around them? We're not talking about stalkers here, but that person who seemed to enjoy your company to an embarrassing level. Perhaps it even embarrassed you to be around them, and you limited your exposure? Now, do you have a friend who is always happy to see you, puts aside other things or changes plans to spend time with you? That person for whom you would change your plans just to have the opportunity to spend time with him or her, and around whom you feel great about being yourself, mainly because he or she enjoys your company that much, and it's really good to have someone who thinks that highly of you? One person can be either of these, depending upon how you view them.

See, a proud person, one who is an evildoer, more interested in his or her own momentary comfort than in the needs of others can't stand to be around that person. You know, you've experienced it...it's almost painful. But for those who embrace that person as an icon of God's own love for them, and who treat this person, and those like him or her, with reverence and compassion, and who have the humility to see the gift this person is, such encounters are not painful...you can choose to relax, live in the moment, and enjoy the present moment with him or her, and all the enjoyment the other person has in the encounter. That person, perhaps better than any other, is truly the image of God in that moment, because we either receive the person as gift or as torture depending solely upon our choice to be open to and embrace the encounter or resist it.

So, you might say, everyone has those experiences. Surely we're not going to be judged by them! Well, I agree partially with that. There won't be any recounting of deeds and misdeeds, weighing things in the balance, and then assigning reward or punishment based on the outcome. But how we choose to engage each of these moments shapes our disposition for the next encounter. Some become quite skillful at extricating themselves from these uncomfortable or inconvenient encounters, moving on to 'bigger and better things.' Others choose to be present to the moment, and gradually develop a comfort with engaging these moments, to the point that it can even be a delightful bright spot in one's day. Either way, we are steadily shaping our disposition toward the Other. Given enough encounters, we usually develop a pattern, either of resisting encounter or of radical engagement. So, while we aren't being judged, we are shaping our response.

We will all die. We will all be raised to eternal life. We will all dwell eternally in the light of that day without end, that day of the Lord, that day when God's love will be all the light we need. For those who are proud, and the evildoers, that love will be intolerable; it will be torturous. For those who fear and love God, who have shaped themselves to welcome the awkward friend with radical engagement, we will experience God's love as healing, setting all things right.

Which pattern are you developing? It's probably important that we all take a step back and notice. The good news here is that, given that you're alive and reading this, you have the chance to change, to begin setting a new course, newly aware of God's presence in the person in front of you, and that how you're relating to that presence can shape your ultimate destiny, if not the destination. The good news is that we can 'repent and have faith.'

May God give us open minds and hearts, alert to the many opportunities we have to receive love and not spurn it, that we may be able to receive it eternally, through Christ our Lord.

Church Squabbles

There are lots of things brewing in different churches around the country these days. Depending on your perspective, any of it can be pretty serious. In the Roman Catholic church, there is a great deal of brouhaha surrounding the new translation of the Roman Missal, the official book of prayers and instructions for celebrating Mass. In the Self-ruled Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, the status of the Bishops (other than Metropolitan Philip, the Archbishop and Primate of the Archdiocese) as either diocesan bishops or auxiliary bishops, assigned to administer the church in specific territories currently called dioceses, is the controversy in question. At stake in both of these situations is something far more significant than grammar and translation theories, or the question of titles and prerogatives; the very order of the church, or at least the ways this order is perceived to have been violated, is in need of serious consideration.

First, the Catholic Church. Apart from the technical aspects of translation, and different people's sense of what the translation should be, which is an important topic I do not want to focus on here, what seems to be at stake is a debate on the rights of different bishops and grouping of bishops. According to what is being described as the canonical norm, the Roman Curia, specifically the Congregation for Divine Worship, has no business telling the US Conference of Catholic Bishops what their English translation of the Roman Missal should be. The only role of the Vatican with regard to translation of liturgical books is to confirm that the proper canonical procedure was followed in approving the translations, i.e., that the US Bishops followed due process in approving a particular translation for the dioceses of the United States of America. What has happened is something more like Rome taking on the role of approving the translation itself, or, to put it more accurately, rewriting the translation approved by the US Bishops and telling them to use the rewritten translation. Another way of looking at it is that Rome is assuming the role of making decisions about which elements of the various English translations approved by different regional conferences of bishops from English-speaking regions and creating a single version for use in all English speaking dioceses. While this may seem like a useful idea at first glance, it gets problematic when you consider that American English is stylistically different from British English, Irish English, Australian English, etc. Even more importantly, the legitimate right of the US Bishops' Conference to make determinations about liturgical translations from the Latin into the local vernacular is being trampled underfoot. It's a squabble over who gets to be the 'decider.'

In the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, we have another question of the rights of bishops, and their status. It's a very complex story that is influenced by the uncanonical situation in which the Orthodox Christians find themselves in the New World, and parts of Western Europe. There are many overlapping diocesan structures of various autocephalous or at least autonomous Churches, such that an Orthodox Christian might say that he is with the Patriarchate of Antioch, another with the Ecumenical Patriarchate (of Constantinople), a third with the Moscow Patriarchate, and a fourth with the Orthodox Church in America (which was granted autocephaly by the Moscow Patriarch in the latter third of the 20th century, but this autocephaly is not recognized by all Orthodox churches). Hard work has been done and continues to be done to resolve this situation, such that there would be one American Orthodox church, following the ancient canon that there would, in each place, be only one Orthodox bishop in charge. In this context, when Metropolitan Philip sought the grant of autonomy from the Holy Synod of Antioch (in Damascus, Syria), concerns were raised about the use of the Arabic word for 'autonomous' (Arabic is the official language of the Patriarchate of Antioch, much as Latin is for the Roman Catholic church). The word for 'self-administration' or self-rule (which is the literal translation of the Greek-derived word 'autonomy') was suggested and accepted by the Synod as an alternative. Somewhere in there, it was insisted that the Antiochian Archdiocese be seen as one unified particular church (manifested and described as clergy and laity gathered around the bishop in the eucharistic celebration), with only one head, namely Metropolitan Philip. The problems is that at some point in the process, bishops were consecrated and installed with the understanding that they were 'diocesan bishops,' and their particular territories are called 'dioceses.' The Holy Synod of Antioch, however, decided earlier this year that all Antiochian bishops in North America, other than Metropolitan Philip, were to be considered auxiliary bishops to the Metropolitan, not as diocesan bishops having all the rights and prerogatives that belong to diocesan bishops. Well, as you can imagine, this has caused some messes, one of which has been in the news and all over the blogosphere lately, where one bishop has called into question the decision in Antioch, and has had a rather public controversy with the Metropolitan. Refusing to be transferred to another 'diocese' of the Antiochian church, he's now in the process of transferring into the Orthodox Church in America. It's a mess, and it's hard on a lot of people. The question is not easily dismissible, because it pertains to important structural understanding of what the church is, and how it is or should be ordered. Equally, it's not easy for an outsider such as myself to say which position is the 'right' one, because the variables are really beyond my frame of reference.

On top of all that, the North American Orthodox-Roman Catholic Theological Dialogue has issued a statement within the last month calling on leaders of both communions to pursue more urgently the goal of reunification, putting all sorts of questions of church order, centered mainly around the role of the Bishop of Rome in the universal church. It is the boldest statement I have seen from the dialogue, and is significant in that it calls for each communion to rethink how the church ought to be ordered. This is really the most challenging aspect of Catholic-Orthodox relations, and it will continue to be the biggest obstacle to reunion.

As a person who fervently wishes for a reunification of Catholic and Orthodox Christianity, along with all the appropriate changes that would be necessary for each church to make, I am heartened by the statement. As a disciple of Jesus, I find much of the disunity and squabbling distasteful at best, scandalous at worst, and saddening throughout. As bold as the statement was from the dialogue, I find myself not hopeful that the men involved in ordering the church will overcome human passions of vanity and envy in order to obey our Lord's desire that we all be one. The scandal is that the men who will fail to overcome these passions are the very men who are supposed to preserve and transmit the teachings of Christ for us. How are we to believe in this way of life if our own teachers can't give evidence that it is at all possible?

Well, all hope is not lost. I am reminded of two things. First, there are actually stories in the gospel of squabbling and jockeying for position among the original twelve apostles. As seminal as these writings are for the church, and as formed by the early experience of the church as they are, I can say with confidence that this squabbling is not new, and I bet the evangelists didn't think it was going to go away anytime soon. In the very propaganda they wrote to spread the gospel throughout time, they included stories of squabbling over position and precedence, and told us what we are to make of it. Secondly, in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, before the assembly professes the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, the priest (or perhaps deacon) says, "Let us love one another well..." and they exchange a sign of peace, exchanging a sort of pass-phrase: Christ is in our midst! He is and ever will be! Apparently, even before addressing the doctrinal content of our faith, which is part of the gateway through which one passes on the way to the eucharistic anaphora, it is most important to love one another and affirm that Christ is in our midst, just as he promised he always would be when two or three of us gathered in his Name.

Putting these two together, I also recall that during those periods of controversy among the first disciples and apostles of Jesus, Christ was in their midst, and isn't this the most important thing about us as church? Christ is in our midst (even when we squabble over position and prerogatives)!!! He is and ever will be!!! I wonder what church life would be like if all our bishops, Catholic and Orthodox, would follow the lead of the sacred liturgy in all that we do as church. This sacred liturgy is, after all, in the words of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II, the summit of our Christian life, and the source from which all the church's power flows. Maybe we should follow its lead, as the key interpreter of sacred scripture, through which Christ opens our minds to understand the scriptures, and makes himself known to us in the breaking of the bread.

Coming Home - aka - Re-entry

As great as the FDLC week was, though, I was tired of being away from home, whose name is Stella, by about halfway through the week. I don't know that either of us realized that the longer we were married, the more we would miss each other when we were apart. So, there was great joy when I got back to Memphis.

I flew in and arrived in Memphis about 3 on Saturday, and had a 7 pm wedding to attend. Two of our choir members were getting married (to each other). This was the first wedding Stella and I have attended since our own. It was really neat being there, seeing the happiness on our friends' faces, and having an inside scoop on what that feeling is like. I've sung many weddings, but being at this one with my wife, in the same church where we got married,at the wedding of two of the people who sang in the choir at our wedding...it was a truly beautiful experience. The couple had been taking dance lessons at the same place we have been going, so we knew to expect something. Their first dance was great. And then the father and bride dance was well-choreographed as well! Reflecting on the evening, it was as though the dance began with the entrance procession, and continued as we all joined hands in the great dance of the Trinity (perichoresis) in the sacred liturgy of the marriage rite and eucharist, and extended beyond the walls of the church into the reception. This was the first time, as well, that Stella and I had been somewhere where we could dance, so we did. We danced with each other, and we danced with other friends. Finally, we joined in that great communal dance known as the Macarena, which, by the way, is about 2 hours too long - I was actually substituting baseball signals for the real moves out of sheer boredom and exhaustion!

The next morning, however, when I served as cantor for the 8 AM Mass, I had something of a jolting return to liturgy as it usually is 'out here,' with about 1/3 of the meager assembly even moving their mouths to the songs. I formed the opinion that we really should only have one Mass on Sunday, so that all the people will be 'gathered together in one place.' It will never happen, but I think it would be altogether grand. Then we could do the rest of the liturgy, which is currently squeezed out due to the commodification of liturgy that has taken place so that we can 'drive through' on Saturday evening, or anytime Sunday morning. McEucharist. If we only had one Mass on Sunday, we could celebrate Evening Prayer I of Sunday on Saturday evening, then Morning Prayer during the current 8 AM Mass time, followed by Mass, followed by, perhaps, a larger coffee and donuts period, after which we might have several different catechetical gatherings, including some for (gasp) the adults! Then, where many parishes have the Sunday evening Mass, we could celebrate Evening Prayer II of Sunday, and thus we would fully express the Sunday liturgy of our church, with all its rich diversity of text and song. A man's gotta dream!

Fall Break

Whew! I believe we have finally finished the launch of our diocesan-wide study of the sacred liturgy: Do This In Memory Of Me. Boy am I glad to have that done. Of course, now we have to finish writing and lay out the materials for sessions 5-8, but having had the experience now, we know what we're getting into. So far, all feedback from groups who have been engaging the study has been positive.

I am so glad I set aside two weeks this month to take vacation. Life = work has been intense! I finally have dug out from underneath the pile of things tossed onto my desk as collateral detrius from my mad rush to get things done over the past 2.5 months. Having a clear desk is a glorious thing! This has been a week of tying up lose ends.

Last week I was in Alexandria, LA for two events involving the Federation of Diocesan Liturgical Commissions (FDLC). First, there was the national meeting. Now, the Diocese of Alexandria, LA, is in the same FDLC region as Memphis. It was our region's turn to host, so I flew in on Sunday, Oct 3, checked in, and then went over to St. Frances Xavier Cabrini church where my friend, Fr. Jose Robles-Sanchez is the pastor, and got busy with folks from elsewhere in the region making Derby Pies, under the masterful guidance of my friend, Judy Bullock, who is Director of Worship for the Archdiocese of Louisville, and star of the Do This In Memory Of Me DVDs. It was good to be with my friends and colleagues from other liturgy offices in my region, especially making pies where one of the key ingredients is bourbon, y'all! Suffice it to say, we had a good time. We always do, because we don't miss a chance to extend the communion we share in liturgy into our work and play together. We were working like mad to put on the customary 'Taste of the Region,' and it was uh-MAZE-ing! It was a very bad week for my diet.

The other work I had there was the workshop put on by FDLC in conjunction with the Bishop's Committee on Divine Worship (BCDW). I ran through the chants of the revised English translation of the Roman Missal. It was fun, and for about an hour, I was one of the most famous people in Alexandria. Priests I passed in the hallway kept speaking to me in chant! It was funny.

The national meeting, which began after the workshop ended, is a time when diocesan liturgists from around the country get together for a couple days of study, and time to converse with the BCDW and the personnel of the Secretariat for Divine Worship for the USCCB, to catch up on where things are. Fr. Paul Turner, whom we imported for our priest study days and a workshop with deacons, musicians, and other liturgists and catechists, was one of the presenters for our study days. Msgr. Kevin Irwin, Dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America, was the other presenter. There was a great deal of good reflection shared by them concerning the new edition of the Roman Missal and liturgy in general, and I hope to unpack some of it as the weeks go by.

Most of all, the week was a time to be refreshed and renewed in the special communion shared among those of us who are professional liturgy folk. Many people think, sometimes, that we liturgists are all about enforcing rules or trying to control the worship of the People of God. In reality, we are all aware of the depth of meaning and Presence in the sacred liturgy, and we know that good expression of that in our parish churches is the most powerful way we can evangelize, catechize and energize our church to show forth the Kingdom already drawn near, yet ever to come more fully. To be around such spirit-filled and wise people, sharing in reflection, serious conversation, gorgeous liturgy and lots of fun, too...it was refreshing to my spirit like a large dose of carbs can be for muscles tired from weeks of rigorous exercise. In fact, there's absolutely no reason why church can't be like that for all of us. If we are really aware of what it means to be church, and we let go and relax into that communion we share, we find there is a strength we can channel that is much bigger than any challenge we face. Thanks be to God for gathering us together, making us 'one body, one spirit in Christ!'

Judge Not...

This is a short one. In liturgies of the Eastern Churches, there is a very specific prayer to be prayed by everyone who will receive the holy mysteries (communion). It starts like this: I believe and confess, Lord, that you are truly the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.

We so often hear Christians speaking about 'sinners' as though this referred only to people other than themselves, as in when they speak about "loving the sinner," while hating the sin. Most often, truth be told, we are all infinitely more likely to love the sin of hating the sinner.

I want to encourage everyone who reads this (yes, all 4 of you), to adopt the practice of never saying (or even thinking) the word "sinners" without immediately adding the words, "of whom I am the worst." See if it has any effect.

Good Friday Revisited

A high school classmate posted a question on my Facebook page asking seriously why we would refer to the day when we commemorate the suffering and death of Christ as 'Good' Friday. I was glad for the invitation to comment, and did so briefly, because I was using my iPhone. The context is that we don't celebrate Good Friday as though we (well, mainly our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Christian brothers and sisters) weren't going to sing, just two days later, "Christ has risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life." Just because a dear friend said that I should put this on my blog, here it is (with all my egregious spelling errors corrected):

Great question. In fact, this day is focused not so much on the physical/mental/emotional suffering of Christ, but more on how Christ, by his voluntary suffering and death engages sin and death in mortal combat, conquering death by death and vanquishing the fear associated with the suffering of human life by his own suffering. In a very rough analogy, this is the day when the only true terrorists, sin and death, experienced the shock and awe of the Passion and Death of the deathless Son of God. It is, therefore, a day of extreme joy for us, who were the prisoners of sin and death, and are witnessing the destruction of our captors and the beginning of our liberation. In some ways, the mood might be called a grim jubilation, especially as we are aware of the lengths to which our Savior had to go to win the victory for us, but as another commentator has pointed out, Good may not be a big enough word for this day; it could seem like an
understatement of (literally) cosmic proportions!

Being a Christian – An Easter Reality Check

April 11, 2010 – Sunday in Octave of Easter

Christ is risen! Indeed He is risen!

In today’s scripture selection for the Roman Catholic Office of Readings, St. Paul gives the Colossians, and us, a hard reality check. In case the week-long Easter celebration has put us off balance, we have here a sobering tonic (without the gin, alas). We Christians, who have been raised up to new life with Christ through our incorporation into Christ’s Body through Baptism (and Confirmation/Chrismation), are to live differently because of it. No question about it. We are to stop seeking earthly things, and seek the things that are in heaven, where Christ is seated at God’s right hand. We have died, after all, and our life is hidden with God in Christ. St. Paul is not promoting some pie-in-the-sky ideology here, but is saying we have to put our money (and everything else) where our mouth is. If you say you’re Christian, then you have to live like it. But what does this mean?

St. Paul is happy to tell us, and gives us something of a checklist for our life in Christ. Being a Christian means we have to kill. We have to put to death the earthly impulses that operate in us. We have to cease cooperating with those impulses, and begin a resolute campaign of non-cooperation. We have to put to death (in ourselves) fornication, uncleanness, passion (the disordered kinds), evil desires, and ‘that lust which is idolatry,’ which I take to mean any powerful desire that places something else (even if it is good) before God in our lives. These are sins that provoke God’s wrath, and as Christians, not only should we not want to be on the receiving end of God’s wrath, we should love God so much that we don’t want to offend him, even if we weren’t going to get a helping of wrath.

St. Paul then says, “Your own conduct was once of this sort, when these sins were your very life.” Wow! This is a real reality check! How many of us who call ourselves Christians continue to have sex with people even though we aren’t married? Do we think that this was something of an option, that as long as it is ok with us, or as long as we didn’t feel very much in love with someone, we probably shouldn’t have sex outside of marriage? Wrong! If we’re giving ourselves over to our passions (and we’ll see that sex is not the only passion), then we’re not practicing Christianity! No ifs, ands or buts! Now, there is a real difference between occasionally sinning due to human weakness and allowing these sins to be our very life, right? When a Christian sins, he or she does not avoid owning up to the fact that he or she did something WRONG. A Christian does not try to continue living a life of having unmarried sex, letting himself or herself be ruled by the passions, and allowing other things to be put before God, because that would mean that he or she is not really a Christian; this is not what Christians do!

St. Paul says explicitly: “You must put that aside now: all the anger and quick temper, the malice, the insults, the foul language.” Ouch! Can this guy really be serious?!? Not only are we supposed to guard our purity by not having sex, and not allowing anything to be placed higher than God on our personal priority lists, but we have to discipline our tempers and our mouths, too? You better believe it. I know, it’s hard, when so many people (other than us, of course) so richly deserve to feel our anger, our insults, and to receive a sound cussing. However, we are to act in a particular way because we are Christians, not because other people are going to act right around us. Again, sometimes things get the best of us, but we can’t defend our misdeeds with a kind of ‘I had every right to be that angry’ argument. As Christians, we have to seek reconciliation, with the offended (and sometimes offending) parties if possible, and certainly with God in Christ.

St. Paul then goes on, “Stop lying to one another.” Well, besides the obvious ways in which we lie on almost a daily basis, what is St. Paul saying? We should be who we say we are when we allow ourselves to be honored with the name “Christian.” We are supposed to have put aside our old self and all its deeds, and put on a new self that continues to grow in knowledge as we are being formed anew in the image of our Creator. Notice that we aren’t finished in becoming a Christian; we’ve only just begun. We are supposed to go on learning and changing our ways, becoming more and more like God in all the right ways, not in the ways our first parents attempted, trying to take the place of God and determining for themselves what was good or evil. We are told that the all-too-common distinctions, for that day, Jew or Greek, foreigner, Scythian, slave or free, circumcised or uncircumcised, are done away with, because Christ is everything in all of us. We could add to that list some distinctions of our own day: black or white, Hispanic or Asian, rich or poor, Republican, Democrat or Libertarian, left wing or right wing, and a host of others. When we allow these labels to obscure our recognition of Christ in each other, then something is horribly awry, and it’s never the other person’s fault in this case. If we allow these distinctions to be more important than seeing Christ in ourselves and in each other, then we are LYING ABOUT BEING CHRISTIAN.

Well, what are we to do, then? If we can’t do all these things we see everyone else doing around us, what do we do? St. Paul gives us a prescription. As God’s chosen ones, holy (set apart) and beloved, we should ‘clothe ourselves’ with:
• heartfelt mercy and kindness
• humility (the opposite of thinking we are ‘better than’)
• meekness (the opposite of always having to have and express an opinion)
• and patience.
This means we should bear with one another and forgive whatever grievances we have toward one another (about which we must first be honest with ourselves). We should forgive as the Lord has forgiven us, just as freely and completely.

Above all, and over all, we must ‘clothe ourselves’ with love. What could that mean? It seems to me that we wear clothes to keep out the cold and other earthly elements. Perhaps it means we have to consciously remind ourselves to love, to approach all other people with a firm resolve to love them somehow. This would increase the likeliness that we could be all those things we are supposed to be. We are called to Christ’s peace, so that peace (not a desire to ‘win’ or ‘be right’) must reign (take the lead, command, rule) in our hearts.

Another thing we can and should do, which will also help us to avoid the bad and do the good, is dedicate ourselves to thankfulness. Ever count your blessings? It’s really a powerful exercise. Instead of focusing on all the things that aren’t the way you want them to be, literally name and count the things in your life that please you. None of those pleasing things had to be that way, but they are, so why not be grateful about it? It’s a gift from God, not the fruit of some great or clever work of yours. You wouldn’t have them if God hadn’t given them, or the means to acquire them, to you, so give thanks to God for them. In fact, write down how you feel today about life in general, toward people and the world, and then truly dedicate yourself to thankfulness for just this coming week (beginning whenever you read this). Three times a day, morning, noon and evening, make a mental list of all the things you can be thankful for, and then say a sincere prayer of thanksgiving to God; it can be simple and short, but mean it. In addition, anytime someone does something that helps you in any way, whether they do business with you or the company you work for, or they hold a door open for you, thank them. Whenever something goes wrong, or someone does something unkind, take a moment to ask God’s help, and grant whatever forgiveness is necessary, letting go of any claim at retribution (I’m not talking about things for which some recompense is necessary, like a car accident where the other person is at fault – do what is necessary, but be kind about it, even if the other person wants to argue). Then, after a week, see how you feel about life. I would think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Finally, we are to let the word of Christ, rich as it is, dwell in us. To do this, we have to remind ourselves daily of that word, and that means cracking open a bible and reading the gospel in a leisurely way that allows us to remember it and ponder it throughout our day. If something is to dwell in us, we can’t just quickly glance at it, and then move on with the ‘real world’ concerns that clamor for our attention. How could someone who claims to be Christian, by the way, consider the gospel not to be a ‘real world’ concern? If we think that Christ’s word is some sort of ‘la-la land’ fantasy that doesn’t touch our day to day lives, then are we really Christians, that is, real disciples of Jesus Christ who live according to his teachings, or are we rather deluded fools who think that knowing a few things about Christ is somehow going to save us? If the love of money, or sex, or food, or revenge, or drugs has any priority in our lives, then God is being shoved to the side. Is it wise to be so stupid as to attempt to shove the God of the universe to the side in order to pursue our lusts for wealth, power, or anything else? Do you want to be that stupid? Now, the way to make sure that we aren’t being that stupid is to make sure that the word of Christ is dwelling in us, occupying our memory, our reasoning, our will. Whenever we become aware that we have been this stupid, we have to repent (turn back to God), and Catholics or Orthodox Christians have to approach the sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation/Confession (whatever you call it) in order for this repentance to be real (not sure what you other Christians do for this), and keep crackin’ open the gospel. Don’t despair that you don’t become perfect this month or this year. It’s a long process, and don’t try to do it without constantly asking God for help. We aren’t strong enough to do this by ourselves. In fact, the goal is not to become more moral, but to grow closer to God in Christ. The transformation that takes place through this will make us more moral. Well, that’s a lot of work, but ain’t it great that we even have the hope of being transformed this way?!?

Happy Easter, y’all!!!