Sunday Reflection on Divine Mercy Sunday (April 27, 2014): Finding Faith Through Doubt

Posted on April 26, 2014 by William Ockham

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” — John 20:25

Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, or Divine Mercy Sunday. You can find the readings here.  The Gospel includes the famous story of St. Thomas and his doubt about the Resurrection of the Christ.  St. Thomas is one the apostles I can most easily identify with due to his skepticism.  If I were St. Thomas, I likely would have been thinking something along the lines of the following:

“I had put my whole life into believing a charasmatic leader that I thought was going to be a prophet to lead Israel to freedom from Roman occupation.  My leader was summarily executed during Passover by the Roman authorities.  I was afraid for my life.  My colleagues were delusional, taking about “seeing our leader”.  That was impossible.  I saw him crucified.  I am a pious Jew.  People do not rise from the dead, except perhaps at the end of times.  Peter, John mentally ill and seeing things that cannot exist.  I have no occupation or home to return to, and I am surrounded by crazy people.”

Such thoughts must have been going through the minds of St. Thomas . . . until everything changed when he saw the Risen Christ.  The story of Christianity has been around for 2,000 years and has become so familiar that we are desensitized to its profoundly shocking origins and message.  Many believers take the Christian story for granted and non-believers view it as a collection of superstitious myths that should be relegated to history.  The story of St. Thomas reminds us that the Christian story of God becoming Incarnate in the form of a poor peasant from a backwater town in the Roman Empire, having a short public ministry, being executed in a gruesome manner and rising in a new spiritual and material form was as absurd to the original disciples as it would sound to us today.  In fact it is so absurd, if there were not hundreds of personal witnesses who have changed their life in ways that are counter-intuitive, it would not be believable.

For St. Thomas, it was not believable, so he publicly questioned those who claimed it was.  Ultimately, the Risen Christ appeared to Thomas and he believed.  However, the lesson is that it is important to ask questions and to confront our doubts, as these doubts can lead us to a deeper understanding of our faith and a deeper relationship with Christ.  As Pope Benedict XVI said about Thomas in his wonderful reflections on the apostles:

“his question also confers upon us the right, so to speak, to ask Jesus for explanations. We often do not understand him. Let us be brave enough to say: “I do not understand you, Lord; listen to me, help me to understand.”  In such a way, with this frankness which is the true way of praying, of speaking to Jesus, we express our meager capacity to understand and at the same time place ourselves in the trusting attitude of someone who expects light and strength from the One able to provide them.” (Benedict XVI, Pope (2011-03-04). Jesus, the Apostles and the Early Church (pp. 92-93). Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition).

During my “reconversion” back to Christianity, I had many doubts and I still do.  Isn’t the Resurrection simply a nice tale that the early Apostles made up to promote their agenda? Isn’t the story of Jesus simply another fable of the God-Man archetype?  If there truly is a God who can create the wondrous universe out of nothing, why would He care about creates as insignificant as humans?  These are all great questions to which I respond as follows:  Yes, the story of the Jesus fits a common archetypical pattern but for me that only adds to its authenticity.   The story is so imbedded in the collective unconscious across cultures and generations that it seems only natural that if there is a God that wants to speak to humans, he would do so in a manner such as this.  Further, the story of the Resurrection is so contrary to human experience that even the disciples, the people who were closest to Jesus, could not believe it until they saw the evidence.  Moreover, the disciples changed their lives to promote a radical message of love and peace despite enormous personal suffering; they had no personal ego-centric agendas they were pursuing.  There are many resources discussing what exactly the Resurrection means but two outstanding resources by modern scholars include N.T. Wright’s “The Resurrection of the Son of God” and James Arraj’s “The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus“.  The latter is available online for free here.  

Yes, I still have my doubts about the Christian story but the witnesses of the early Christians, the intellectual justification of people far smarter than I and most importantly, some personal experiences that I have had convince me that the story is true.

 

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Deep Resurrection: The Martyrdom and Resurrection of Creation in Our Day

Posted on April 23, 2014 by William Ockham

Another good reflection in the spirit of Teilhard de Chardin during the Easter Octave, this time from Christine McCarthy of Daily Theology:

“This person, Jesus of Nazareth, was composed of star stuff and earth stuff; his life formed a genuine part of the historical and biological community of Earth; his body existed in a network of relationships drawing from and extending to the whole physical universe. If in death this ‘piece of this world, real to the core,’ as [Karl] Rahner phrases it, surrendered his life in love and is now forever with God in glory, then this signals embryonically the final beginning of redemptive glorification not just for other human beings but for all flesh, all material beings, every creature that passes through death. The evolving world of life, all of matter in its endless permutations, will not be left behind but will likewise be transfigured by the resurrecting action of the Creator Spirit. The tomb’s emptiness signals this cosmic realism. The same early Christian human that recognizes Christ as ‘firstborn of the dead’ also names him ‘the firstborn of all creation’ (Col. 1.15).”

Christine E. McCarthy's avatarDaily Theology

By Christine McCarthy

The Long View of History: From Eternity to the History of Time

Photgraph by Justin Ng, Your Shot Photgraph by Justin Ng, Your Shot

Fox’s reboot of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is an experience not to be missed. Its vivid photography and animation set to an elegant scientific narration sublimely invites the general public into a state of wonder at the cosmos and gratitude for our own rare, brief, and precious existence.  There are few moments as powerful as when Tyson paraphrases Carl Sagan’s famous explanation to the Cosmos’ audience that, “the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars.  We are made of star stuff.”  The beauty and power of this knowledge are decentralizing: we are moved out of a moment-to-moment, day-to-day tunnel vision to contemplate…

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Redemption for the Natural World

Posted on April 22, 2014 by William Ockham

Happy Earth Day!

Andy Otto's avatarGod In All Things

pelican eggs If Easter is about the redemption of humankind, what about the rest of the created world? Elizabeth Johnson, in her new book Ask the Beasts: Darwin and the God of Love, gives a theological voice to the plants and animals. What role does God play in the natural world? With extinction happening at an enormous rate it’s worth pondering. Johnson gives one example of the pelican.

A mother pelican typically lays two eggs. The one that hatches first is given the attention. It’s fed and cared for by the parents. The second chick to hatch is usually ignored, starves, and dies. For pelicans, if you’re the second to hatch, you have a 90% chance of dying; you were mainly there as insurance in case the first chick died. This is how nature works for the pelican family. So we must ask, where is God in this?

Johnson points to…

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Teilhard de Chardin Quote of the Week (April 21, 2014): The Parousia and the Omega Point

Posted on April 21, 2014 by William Ockham

alpha_omega

 

“Christian faith . . . by the very fact that it is rooted in the idea of the Incarnation, has always based a large part of its tenants on the tangible values of the World and of Matter . . . [This connection is so intimately] linked with the essence of Christian dogma that, like a living bud, it needed only a sign, a ray of light, to cause it to break into flower. To clarify our ideas let us consider a single case, one which sums of everything. We continue from force of habit to think of the Parousia, whereby the Kingdom of God is to be consummated on Earth, as an event of a purely catastrophic nature — that is to say, liable to come about at any moment in history, irrespective of any definitive state of Mankind. This is one way of looking at the matter. But why should we not assume, in accordance with the latest scientific view of Mankind in an actual state of anthropogenesis, that the parousiac spark can, of a physical and organic necessity, only be kindled between Heaven and a Mankind which as biologically reached a certain critical evolutionary point of collective maturity?” — Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, pp. 266-267.

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Does the Beauty of the Gospel Story Attest to Its Truth?

Posted on April 20, 2014 by William Ockham

The original blog includes this quote from Alistair McGrath’s biography of C.S. Lewis which summarizes correspondence between C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien:

Tolkien argued that Lewis ought to approach the New Testament with the same sense of imaginative openness and expectation that he brought to the reading of pagan myths in his professional studies. But, as Tolkien emphasized, there was a decisive difference. As Lewis expressed in his second letter to Greeves, ‘The story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.‘

The reader must appreciate that the word myth is not being used here in the loose sense of a ‘fairy tale’ or the pejorative sense of a ‘deliberate lie told in order to deceive.’… For Tolkien, a myth is a story that conveys ‘fundamental things’—in other words, that tries to tell us about the deeper structure of things. The best myths, he argues, are not deliberately constructed falsehoods, but are rather tales woven by people to capture the echoes of deeper truths. They are like splintered fragments of the true light…

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Sunday Reflection for Easter Sunday (April 20, 2014): It’s Not About the Bunnies

Posted on April 19, 2014 by William Ockham

easter

This weekend we continue the Triduum Celebration and reach the climax of the Church year with the Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday. The readings can be found here and here.

Today’s reflection comes from James Martin, S.J., the Chaplain of the Colbert Report. The article below was originally published in the Washington Post in 2011, but I can no longer find an on-line copy to link to. I apologize if I violate any copyright laws by posting the full article but I promise to give 100% of the royalties from this post to the Washington Post or James Martin or whoever owns the copyright 🙂

“Easter Sunday: It’s not about the bunnies”
By Fr. James Martin S.J.

It’s not about bunnies. It’s not about coloring eggs. It’s not about chocolate. It’s not about flowers. It’s not even about spring or signs of “new life” in nature after a long winter. So what is Easter about?

It’s about something almost terrifyingly serious: Jesus rose from the dead.

That’s one reason why Easter hasn’t been completely subsumed by the consumer culture. (Though department stores and cheesy movies like “Hop” try their best to do so.) Christmas, which can be cast as the cozy story of Mary and Joseph and their little baby Jesus surrounded by cuddly animals in a manger, is easily domesticated. Easily tamed. More easily sold to the masses.

Easter, on the other hand, is untameable. The man whose followers imagined him to be the Messiah, the one who would forcefully, even violently, deliver them from the hands of their oppressors (For isn’t that what the Baptist said?) was tried, beaten and executed like a common thug. What’s more, after the crucifixion the Gospels portray the disciples not as stalwart stewards of their master’s legacy, but as abject cowards, cowering behind locked doors for fear of someone trying to arrest them.

Then on Easter Sunday everything changes. It changes so much that it’s hard for them to take it in. In one of his first of Jesus’s many “appearances,” one of the women doesn’t even recognize him. Several disciples refuse to believe the story—one until he actually touches the man. But Christians believe, and I believe, that it’s true: Christ has risen from the dead.

Sounds strange said so bluntly, doesn’t it? But the resurrection is the heart of the Christian message. If you don’t believe it, then you’re not Christian. Not really, as St. Paul would say elsewhere: “If Christ is not raised, your faith is in vain.”

About that new life: it is in fact “new.” Christ is not simply “resuscitated,” that is, brought back from the dead with the understanding that he’ll die some time in the future. No, he lives “forever and ever,” as the Bible (and Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus) say. It’s a completely new kind of life. And a completely new kind of reality.

That may be one reason why the Gospel accounts of Jesus’s appearances after his resurrection are so confusing. As I said, in one passage he is mistaken for the gardener. But for the disciples he was the most important man in their lives: How could they not recognize him? In another account, he seems like a ghost—for he seems to pass through doors and suddenly appears before the disciples. And in another passage he is clearly physical. “Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke. What’s going on?

To my mind, the confusing accounts point out impossibility of describing what the disciples were seeing. What was it like? Well, he was like a ghost…but not really. He was flesh and blood…but something else. No one had ever seen anything remotely like this; no words could encompass the reality of what theologians call the “glorified body.” So everything changes on Easter. And what Jesus said during his earthly ministry (love one another, pray for your enemies, give to the poor) now takes on added meaning for the disciples. 

Easter is not about bunnies or chocolate or eggs. It is an event that makes a claim on you. Either you believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead (or his body was stolen, or the Gospels are made up, or the disciples simply “remembered” him and passed on his message). Or you believe he was raised from the dead. In which case everything changes for you, too.” (emphasis added)

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Good Friday Reflections on Mother Teresa, Suffering, Blood Sacrifice and Kenosis

Posted on April 18, 2014 by William Ockham

Mother_teresa5

As we continue the reflection and celebration on the Easter Triduum, I would like to include several reflections from my favorite resources.

First, is from David Backes, Professor, Deacon, author and owner of the outstanding blog New Wood.  Set forth below is an excerpt of Professor Backes’ reflection for this week but I encourage you to check out his blog here as it also includes wonderful statements from Paul’s Letter to the Romans and The Way of the Cross by St. Teresa of Avila.

The wood of the cross symbolizes, among other things, our destruction of nature in our quest for power, domination, and material status. A tree, torn down, and used for purposes of death rather than life. Nature carries the cross of suffering, and shares in the hope of transformation. The wood of the cross shows both aspects of this: the wood of suffering becomes the throne of glory, and it also stands as an invitation.  Christ invites us to follow the same holy way of fulfillment by making the cross part of our very identity, which means identifying with the poor, the lonely, and all those who suffer, human and otherwise. The cross is the safest way to the true heart of Christ, and therefore the safest way to ultimate fulfillment.

The second reflection, also from David Backes, is from a Homily Professor Backes gave three years ago on Good Friday talking about Mother Teresa and the cry of “I Thirst” by Jesus on the Cross. The full homily can be found here, but set forth below is an excerpt:

“What Mother Teresa experienced that day on the train was our Lord’s incredible thirst. Yes, he thirsts for justice, for all those who are marginalized, for the lonely, the suffering, for those who cry out to Him with their own thirst for hope and love. Mother Teresa experienced the depths of this thirst, and that alone would have been enough to change her life. But underlying all that is an even deeper thirst, and she experienced this, too. There, on the cross, Jesus looks at every single one of us, calls our name, and says, “I thirst.”

He thirsts for each one of us, and we are the only ones who can quench that part of his thirst. Jesus showed Mother Teresa a scene of a large crowd, covered in darkness. It was a sea of anguish, and in the midst of it was Jesus, on the cross. The only light shone down from above onto the cross, and from the cross itself. The people were unaware that Jesus was right there with them, not only sharing in their suffering but turning it into seeds of resurrection.”

Kenosis

Finally, is an excerpt from the Living Space reflection by the Irish Jesuits.  The reflection talks about four points, including the significance of the tearing of the Temple veil in two upon Jesus’ death (the division between God and humanity is eliminated), the history and meaning of blood sacrifice and the transformative psychological impact of the Cross as described by St. Paul. You can find the full reflection here, but set forth below is an excerpt:

“For so many centuries people have been spilling blood to get to God. But in the crucifixion it is reversed – God spills his own blood to reach out to us. This is to take away our old fear, that by spilling blood we try to appease an angry God. There is no such thing as an angry God – only an unconditionally loving God.

Paul tells us that Jesus emptied himself. He emptied himself of all egoism, of all anger, fear and anxiety, of all human dignity in the sight of others. He let go of everything and because he did so, he was fully taken up in union with his Father. For us it has to be the same. Our lives are so tied up with all kinds of concerns, desires, ambitions, fears and anxieties. We need to remove these blocks and just let go.

To break down the barriers separating us from total union with the Source and Goal of all being. The Way is shown clearly in the Gospel and most of all in the Way of the Cross– leading to resurrection, new life and ascension, union with God in Christ. Paul was very close to it when he said: “I live, no not I, but Christ lives in me.” (emphasis in original)

Sources:

New Wood Blog
Living Space

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Teilhard de Chardin and the Cross as Symbol for Purification of Being

Posted on April 17, 2014 by William Ockham

 

cross_fire

 

[O]n the panoramic screen of an evolutive world which we have just erected, the whole picture undergoes a most impressive change. When the Cross is projected upon such a universe, in which struggle against evil is the sine qua non of existence, it takes on new importance and beauty—such, moreover, as are just the most capable of appealing to us. Christ, it is true, is still he who bears the sins of the world; moral evil is in some mysterious way paid for by suffering. But, even more essentially, Christ is he who structurally in himself, and for all of us, overcomes the resistance to unification offered by the multiple, resistance to the rise of spirit inherent in matter. Christ is he who bears the burden, constructionally inevitable, of every sort of creation. He is the symbol and the sign-in-action of progress. The complete and definitive meaning of redemption is no longer only to expiate: it is to surmount and conquer. The full mystery of baptism is no longer to cleanse but (as the Greek Fathers fully realized) to plunge into the fire of the purifying battle ‘for being’—no longer the shadow, but the sweat and toil, of the Cross.

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2002-11-18). Christianity and Evolution (Harvest Book, Hb 276) (Kindle Locations 1078-1086). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

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Teilhard de Chardin on the Redemption Suffering of the Passion

Posted on April 16, 2014 by William Ockham

creation-or-evolution-science-evidence-jesus-christ

The following was written based upon his experience witnessing the carnage of trench warfare in World War I:

What a vast ocean of human suffering spreads over the entire earth at every moment! Of what is this mass formed? Of blackness, gaps, and rejections. No, let me repeat, of potential energy. In suffering, the ascending force of the world is concealed in a very intense form. The whole question is how to liberate it and give it a consciousness of its significance and potentialities.

The world would leap high toward God if all the sick together were to turn their pain into a common desire that the kingdom of God should come to rapid fruition through the conquest and organization of the earth. All the sufferers of the earth joining their sufferings so that the world’s pain might become a great and unique act of consciousness, elevation, and union. Would not this be one of the highest forms that the mysterious work of creation could take in our sight?

Could it not be precisely for this that the creation was completed in Christian eyes by the Passion of Jesus? We are perhaps in danger of seeing on the cross only an individual suffering, a single act of expiation. The creative power of that death escapes us. Let us take a broader glance, and we shall see that the cross is the symbol and place of an action whose intensity is beyond expression. Even from the earthly point of view, the crucified Jesus, fully understood, is not rejected or conquered. It is on the contrary he who bears the weight and draws ever higher toward God the universal march of progress. Let us act like him, in order to be in our existence united with him. (“The Significance and Positive Value of Suffering,” quoted in Human Energy, HarperCollins)

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Teilhard de Chardin on The Cross as Symbol of Future Union of Humanity

Posted on April 15, 2014 by William Ockham

cross

“[I]n spite of the profound readjustments that are being made in our phenomenal vision of the world, the Cross still stands; it rears itself up ever more erect at the common meeting place of all values and all problems, deep in the heart of mankind. It marks and must continue more than ever to mark the division between what rises and what falls back. But this is on one condition, and one only: that it expand itself to the dimensions of [today], and cease to present itself to us as primarily (or even exclusively) the sign of a victory over sin—and so finally attain its fullness, which is to become the dynamic and complete symbol of a universe in a state of personalizing evolution.”

* * * 

In view of the present confusion, it should be made plain that ‘to bear the weight of a world in evolution’ does not minimize the role of sacrifice, but adds to the pain of expiation the more constant and demanding pain of sharing, with full consciousness of man’s destiny, in the universal labor which is indispensable to its accomplishment. Seen in this light, there is even greater force in Christ’s summons: ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’ (Luke 9:23).”

Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre (2002-11-18). Christianity and Evolution (Harvest Book, Hb 276) (Kindle Locations 2914-2919, 2622-2625). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

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