Today I am happy once again to be taking part in Elizabeth Esther’s Saturday Evening Blogpost. Elizabeth is a bit behind on with her monthly opportunity for bloggers to share what they believe to be their best post of the previous month, but I am glad to see that she is back in the game. This month I am sharing a very recent post that addresses the question that often surfaces among Christians of whether we as humans are basically good or evil. You can find my post here.

Please visit Elizabeth’s site to see the best posts of my fellow bloggers!

Today I am happy to be participating again in Elizabeth Esther’s Saturday Evening Blogpost. I was fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time over at her blog last month discussing a book called Evangelical Is Not Enough, By Thomas Howard. This month I have chosen one of the more commented upon posts from that discussion. It is always my goal to create a space for dialogue on this blog and although there were some heated moments in the discussion of this post, I felt the comments were heartfelt and honest. You can find a link to that post, with comments, here.

Today I am happy to be participating again in Elizabeth Esther’s Saturday Evening Blogpost. I am choosing to share a post called Forgiveness as Participation in the Divine. The words of Metropolitan Anthony have continued to echo in my heart and mind for some time now. Please make sure you check out the many other bloggers’ favorite January posts over at Elizabeth’s blog.

A Position for Prayer

Howard spends a good deal of time speaking about the proper position for prayer. He describes his journey to understanding the value of kneeling for prayer. As a Catholic growing up in the South I have always had to field questions about why we are constantly in motion during our celebrations of worship. We sit, stand, kneel…..sit, stand, kneel….genuflect, make processions, cross ourselves, etc. Our worship is a very physical act which again harkens back to the Incarnation of Christ. Christ did not come only to bring salvation to our spirits, or to our minds, but to our entire being. This includes the physical and so our prayer mirrors that. It is impossible to get around the fact that we are physical beings. We need to eat, sleep, exercise and do many other physical tasks in order to live. Our prayer mirrors this.

Posture in prayer is a powerful tool. Traditionally I can think of three primary postures that can aid us in prayer. The first posture is the most ancient which is standing. Standing with arms outstretched is the oldest posture of Christian prayer. It physically mirrors the image of Christ crucified. We use this posture today to communicate praise and thanksgiving. In our Catholic liturgy we see it most often used when we are singing, when we are addressing a prayer directly to God the Father, when the Gospel is proclaimed and in many countries for the praying of the Eucharistic Prayer. It makes sense to me that we would choose to stand upright when giving praise and thanksgiving to God. The second posture for prayer we often see is sitting. Sitting is a posture of reception, one that indicates a willingness to listen to God and to receive what he offers to us. In the liturgy we see this posture most readily in the proclamation of the readings from Scripture. We sit in order to receive the Word of God. The third posture is kneeling. Kneeling has long been seen as a gesture of penitence but also in our country has come to symbolize reverence, which is why in the United States we kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer.

From Attitude to Act

Howard notes also that,

Worship, in the ancient tradition, was not thought of as an experience at all, it was an act.

This past December our parish took on the challenge of what is being promoted by a group of Christians as the Advent Conspiracy. One of the four tenants of the Advent Conspiracy is the challenge to “Worship Fully”. This past year I have spent a good amount of time reflecting upon what it means to worship fully and my conclusion is that it involves offering our entire life fully to God. We gather each Sunday to give thanks to God for all he has given to us and we offer Him our lives. We place our triumphs and our failures upon the altar of sacrifice. Doing this each week should draw us each week closer to the God who gave Himself completely to us in His life, death and resurrection.

In Spirit and In Truth

One of the things that certainly tends to be a sticking point between the Evangelical churches and the more Liturgical ones is the use or non use of set prayers. We as Catholics use many set prayers, but not to the exclusion of spontaneous prayer. Our prayers used for worship follow a set pattern. We pray to God the Father, through God the Son, in God the Holy Spirit. There are many different words that we use throughout the liturgy and throughout the liturgical year, but they all come back to this set structure that the Church has followed from the early centuries of Christianity. Probably the most important reason we do this is to protect those of us who have received the faith from error. When looking at the history of the early Church it is easy to see that words matter. Changing one or two words like changing one degree of the compass when setting a direction can lead to disastrous results. This seems to be one area, in my opinion, where Evangelicals seem to follow a similar course. At least when it comes to the Bible, all Christians–Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants–would agree that we cannot change the words of the Scripture.

It also seems from my own observations that most Evangelicals do follow a pattern in prayer. Usually the prayer begins by addressing God the Father, it then moves into a section of prayer of thanksgiving or praise (we just praise you for your care for us), there is a petition (we ask you to watch over us with your care) and the prayer ends with the phrase, “in Jesus’ name we pray”. This doesn’t seem at all that different from the Catholic pattern that is described above.

Howard also notes something that he noticed with regards to repeated or memorized prayer by pointing out the beautiful tradition of hymns that have developed over the centuries in the protestant church. Hymns composed by the likes of John Wesley and learned by countless Christians have helped us to pray and to maintain our faith through repetition and song.

Attire

As a priest who often is seen wearing vestments while leading prayer, Howard’s comments on attire seemed right on target. It has often suggested to me that perhaps we Catholics have it wrong in dressing our clergy in special attire that is meant to draw more attention to them. It has always been my understanding that the vestments are meant to draw our attention away from the person wearing them. Catholic clergy first put on the white garment of baptism to remind us of the common call we share with all Christians. Then we wear vestments as a sign that it should be Christ who is speaking through us. This, in fact, is another reason for having set prayers for the Eucharist. In these most significant prayers it is the words of Christ that matter most, not my words or the words of any of my brother priests. We are, in a sense, to become invisible through the wearing of vestments so that that Christ can be made more visible.

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Thanks again to Elizabeth for beginning this book discussion. It has been very enjoyable and engaging so far and I hope many of you will continue the respectful dialogue which she has begun.

Thomas Howard’s chapter entitled, “Spirit and Flesh” struck me as being centered very firmly around the central tenet of Christianity, that being the Incarnation of Christ. Christians have spent a great deal of time over the centuries debating the implications of the Incarnation and we as modern Christians are no different.

One of the continual questions that I have faced as a Catholic in the Bible Belt is why we worship statues. First of all, I must say that we as Catholics do not worship statues, but we do adorn our churches and homes with holy images of both Christ and the saints in the same way that most of us place pictures of family and friends in our homes and workplaces. One of the most common challenges I hear to this from my friends who are part of evangelical churches comes from the book of Exodus, specifically from the decalogue,

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.(Exodus 20:4-6)

Have them make a chest of acacia wood—two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. Overlay it with pure gold, both inside and out, and make a gold molding around it. Cast four gold rings for it and fasten them to its four feet, with two rings on one side and two rings on the other. Then make poles of acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Insert the poles into the rings on the sides of the chest to carry it. The poles are to remain in the rings of this ark; they are not to be removed.  Then put in the ark the Testimony, which I will give you.Make an atonement cover of pure gold—two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the Testimony, which I will give you. There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites. (Exodus 25:10-22)

Concerning the charge of idolatry: Icons are not idols but symbols, therefore when an Orthodox venerates an icon, he is not guilty of idolatry. He is not worshipping the symbol, but merely venerating it. Such veneration is not directed toward wood, or paint or stone, but towards the person depicted. Therefore relative honor is shown to material objects, but worship is due to God alone.

I do not worship matter, but the Creator of matter, who for my sake became material and deigned to dwell in matter, who through matter effected my salvation…

If someone had asked me why we disallowed crosses on the one hand but at the same time permitted wedding rings, which are, after all, solid objects in the physical world whose sole function is to represent and embody something that exists in a much more profound realm, I am not sure what answer I would have given. I had heard it said, especially with respect to the crucifix, that we worshipped a risen Christ, not a dead one. The eventually came to sound facile to me, since no Christian can pretend that the Cross does not stand forever as focal for Christian vision; to pit the Resurrection against it is flippant. Furthermore, the same people who said this had little objection to manger scenes; they would have jibbed, however, if someone had asked them if they worshipped a Christ who was still an infant.

What I find increasingly fascinating and important in our modern debates over Christianity is this very thing. Too many times we look only at the disagreements at the surface level, failing to recognize that these distinctions arise from a difference in belief on a much deeper level. Those of us who practice our faith primarily through sacraments understand the faith not only with our intellects, but in many ways with our entire being. Sometimes our intellect almost doesn’t matter at all. One example that comes to mind is the observance of Ash Wednesday that we will soon be celebrating. Every year it is one of the most widely attended celebrations in the Catholic Church, but it is not a holy day of obligation. People attend because somehow they know it is important to receive these ashes on their foreheads that remind us of our mortality and the continual need for conversion. It is a very physical act.

Christ, in His Incarnation, has healed the brokenness of the Fall not by showing us the way to some world that is devoid of flesh, but by becoming flesh. In His body, God and humanity has been reconciled. One of the most beautiful passages in Howard’s book describes well what happened in the Fall, of how God’s design for the human race was warped,

Our work, formerly synonymous with our freedom and dignity, is now drudgery. It breaks our backs. Childbearing, presumably in some sense the crown of human experience–something that we, made in the image of God, would experience and the angels only could envy–is now marred with pain. Our bodies, the very statuary of God so to speak, are now torn from our spirits in the ultimate division called death, which yields in the place of the noble creature called man two pitiable horrors, a corpse and a ghost. When the physical is divided from the spiritual, there results the cacophany that brays and clashes in the abyss outside the harmony of the divine order. Division. Hell.

First, I must thank Elizabeth for recommending this book. So far it has been challenging and thought provoking. I do not share the experience with the author that she does of having grown up in an evangelical church, but can relate to much of what is presented in chapter one from growing up in an area where Catholics were the vast minority in an area of the country saturated with evangelicals. One of the qualities that strikes me as I continue to read the book is the way Howard is able to point out the strengths of this group known as Evangelical, while at the same time showing what is lacking. One perspective I would like to bring to the conversation is that of a member of the Catholic clergy who still believes we have much to learn from the evangelical tradition. There seem to be areas concerning our faith where we could stand to learn and grow while not losing sight of the places where we might share our strengths.

Howard begins his book by stating,

I have never come upon Christian believers of any ilk who exhibit more clearly than do the evangelicals the simplicity, earnestness, and purity of heart that the gospel asks of us.

In many ways I would have to agree wholeheartedly. There is certainly a simplicity in those I have encountered among this group of Christians whose basic understanding of the faith is to rely on the salvation of Jesus Christ and to trust what is said about Him in the Bible. While I disagree with the maxim of Sola Scriptura and ironically see it as one of the principal traditions of many evangelicals, the attention given to the Bible by them is something many times lacking in our Catholic population. We are slowly becoming more comfortable with the Scriptures, but still have quite a ways to go. One of the things noted by Howard is the role that the emphasis on the importance of giving witness to the faith plays in motivating evangelicals to learn the Scriptures, many times memorizing large passages word for word. I had never thought about it in this light, but if one believes strongly in the necessity of bringing others daily to Christ, it would be wise to be have the Bible at our disposal without having to even pull it off the shelf or out of a briefcase. We Catholics many times use the excuse that we don’t know the Bible because we were taught as children to emphasize other things more, like the Eucharist and other sacraments or the stories of Mary and the saints. For many of us this may be true, but the longer I have contemplated this, I don’t think we as Catholics are any less capable of learning the Scriptures or making time for a deeper meditation upon them than are the evangelicals. In fact, it is amazing to me to see adult converts to evangelical churches go from zero knowledge of the Bible, to familiarity with it in very short order.

Another advantage evangelicals may have in this realm can be summed up in two words, Sunday School. I can’t remember a non-Catholic friend growing up who didn’t just go to church for worship on Sunday, but who didn’t have to stay for at least another hour for Sunday School, and it wasn’t just limited to the kids. It also seemed that we never scheduled anything in town on Wednesday nights for the same reason. I never had to go to Sunday school as a kid, since I was attending Catholic school during the week and went to mass everyday before starting classes as well as daily religion class. It was only recently that it struck me that not everyone had the privilege of attending Catholic school and therefore got much less catechesis on our faith, the Bible included. I’m not simply saying that we should adopt the same methods and strategies that the evangelicals employ, but we shouldn’t give up the struggle to change the mentality among Catholics that we are unable to engage the Bible on the same level as other Christians. I know that we can never exhaust the depths of wisdom to be found within it’s pages.

One of the points that Elizabeth mentions in her video is her agreement with many evangelicals that Christians should look different than the rest of the world. While I don’t necessarily agree with all of the ways described by the author such as avoiding dancing and card games (though I do recognize them and remember ones that were not included on his list!), there is a value to recognizing we as Christians are called in many ways to be different. Our baptismal promises call upon us to follow Christ and doing so should look like something.

It is a wonderful opportunity to take part in this book discussion and I hope some of you will consider joining in as well.

–1–

For real country sausage, the best you ever tried, pick up a pound or two of Tennessee Pride!

This has been the song stuck in my head all week long. It started with a search for Jimbo Whaley’s cover of a Journey song that I heard him perform a few months back. What I had forgotten was that he also recorded the Tennessee Pride theme song.

–2–

The news in Haiti has loomed large in my mind this past week, as I am certain it has for most of the world. It is really hard to imagine things being worse there than they already were. Many Catholics in Tennessee feel as special closeness to the Haitian people due to a longstanding Parish Twinning project that many parishes are involved in. The twinning program has given me the opportunity to visit Haiti twice. I was happy to learn from Jude Jean that in Boucan Carre most everyone was fine, but that many had lost relatives who lived in Port au Prince.

I still remember how hot it was in Haiti on my first visit and the frustration of not being able to speak the language. Then I found a guitar in the house where we were staying and several of us took turns sharing songs and playing the drum. It taught me that communication is not always about words. May our actions communicate to the Haitian people our love and concern for them in this time of need.

–3–

Many people are focusing their prayers in a special way this month on the sanctity of all human life. I came across this picture from my seminary days. Fr. John O’Neill and I both look a bit younger in the photo!

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Elizabeth Esther is hosting an online book discussion on Thomas Howard’s Evangelical Is Not Enough that begins next week. I began reading the book last week and am very much looking forward to the discussion. When reading the list of his heroes in the front of the book, I came across quite a few of mine as well. Thanks for the recommendation Elizabeth!

–5–

Last weekend’s Search retreat went very well, but it certainly wore me out. I was tired for several days afterward. It was a great reminder of the power we have as Christians to build one another up through prayer and encouragement. This week following has also shown me the importance of taking time for rest.

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Here’s hoping the weather continues the warming trend we have been seeing here in Tennessee. The hills seem to be calling me to strap some extra weight to my body and go for a little walk in the woods. I’m also praying for more rain as I need to do some experimenting with a tarp before committing to an idea we have that would involve leaving behind our tent.

–7–

Yesterday a surprising email arrived in my mailbox with a request from Bishop Stika that I share my reflections on priesthood with our presbyterate this coming Monday. We began this tradition of having a few priests who are celebrating milestone anniversaries speak to the group as a whole last year and it is an honor to have been asked.

I am not yet certain what I will say in the few minutes allowed to me, but it will most likely be along the lines of this reflection written last year entitled, Take this heart…