What are We Afraid of?

I think we've all noticed it. Every year, starting sometime before Thanksgiving and lasting until all the gifts are open on December 25^th, we celebrate Christmas. It’s a time filled with music and shopping, baking and trying to find the ugliest of sweaters to wear. It’s an overall joyful time. Even amidst the consumerism, people are more generous, more joyful, and tend to finish out the year with a bang.

However, we also hear in nearly every homily how we need to be celebrating Advent more. We need to be preparing. We need to be treating this time as the "Little Lent" it is meant to be. Jesus is coming, and we need to prepare our hearts!

And it makes sense right? I mean, the Church seems to know what she’s doing. It makes sense to keep Christ in Christmas; I mean it started because of him. But we still have to shop and prepare. Family is coming! What’s the harm in going to the Christmas parties and wearing those terrible sweaters? There is a practical preparation that needs to happen as well!

So, as a result, we do a really good job of celebrating Christmas and a really poor job of celebrating Advent. Partially because Advent gets lost in the hustle. Partially because we don’t know exactly what it means to prepare our hearts. But I think there is another element that we don’t like to talk about.

To truly prepare for the Infant Christ scares us.

Now I don’t mean the porcelain Jesus you place in the manger or the baby that Mary is holding in the picture on the wall. I mean the living, breathing, crying, squirming, delicate, newborn Baby Jesus of Nazareth. Here is the baby who’s very birth split history. Here is the baby who knew exactly who he was before he could even talk. Here is the baby who, as he lays in your arms and looks into your eyes, knows who you are, and what you have done, and what he will do for you. Yet, despite how much bigger he is and how sinful we are, consents to trust himself to your care.

As we prepare for the Season of Christmas, don’t just think of Advent as some obligatory time of quiet before we can finally celebrate. It’s not just a season of pipe down. Advent, and the preparation it offers, is the period in which we ready our hearts to accept the gravity of Jesus’ birth. It’s a time to take a deep breath and calm our shaking hands so that we can hold him more securely. Advent allows us walk with the Holy Family to Bethlehem, sit in the cave, and await the Newborn King of Kings.

So, absolutely prepare for Christmas. Buy the gifts and bake the cookies. But also prepare by taking time to meditate on how big a moment the Nativity will truly be, and open your arms wide to our delicate and humble Lord.

Happy Advent

St Joseph, father of the Holy Family, Pray for us

God, Father of our Savior, bless us

At a Loss For Words

The study of linguistics has always fascinated me. To be human is to express oneself to others, and we do that through and ever expanding structure of words and grammar that create endlessly shifting possibilities as we learn and experience language as it applies to our own lives as well as how it applies to the lives and experiences of others. We are able to speak on most anything, describe most anything, and, to an extent, encapsulate most anything into words and phrases that paint pictures all their own in the minds of our listeners.

However, no matter who we are or how eloquently we are able to speak, our language still falls short in many aspects. We can try to describe our personal experiences and feelings to others, but this operates only on the assumption that their experience overlaps enough with ours that they are able to relate. Otherwise, we stand unable to express the full depth of our experience or, for that matter, our being. We stand at a loss.

This is also the case when we talk about things that go far beyond our experience, or anyone's experience as it stands created. To speak about God or the truth of faith is to automatically bind oneself into an inherently limited framework. Yes, language has the ability to encapsulate all that stands before us as created beings, but it cannot and can never begin to fully express, let alone capture, the reality of God or of Eternal life. These things stand beyond our experience. We know them through the divine and generous revelation of God, but even these revelations, which are only a snapshot of reality, stand beyond what can be captured by words.

So we use language that is understandable. Heaven is wedding feast. Jesus the Lamb. God is Father. The Church is the Body and Bride of Christ. But even these expressions are limited. God is Father, but his fatherhood so far exceeds any fatherhood that we can know here on earth. The same applies for words spoken about Mary as Queen of Heaven, or of the many titles of Jesus. A word spoken by a creature such as ourselves cannot describe the Creator who exceeds creation. So, as a consequence, we express our faith in limited terms, not in some feigned attempt at acknowledgment, but to the best of our ability which is due to God. We can never be truly just to God because he deserves more than we can offer, but we speak as truthfully and as reverently as we can, knowing that we must fall short, but will do so by striving.

This is what we refer to as the principle of transposition; the idea that lower ranks of things attempt to encapsulate or describe high forms through varying combinations of limited expression. Take for instance a pencil drawing. I can use a line, shade or smudge in an attempt to draw a flower. The lines I use can take different shapes, but they are still lines. On the level of the image, the elements used to create the image may seem repetitive and unsatisfactory, especially when you know what it is trying to represent. You may even scoff at the idea that a line used to make a stem can also be used to make a leaf. However, when the image is seen in the light of what it is trying to represent, the lines, while limited, still express truth. This way, the lines used are pulled into the reality of the flower, and justified in relation to the higher thing by expressing truth through lower means.

Look at this principle in the realm of faith. We know heaven as a wedding feast between Jesus and the Church, but the idea is often passed over or scoffed at. We know weddings by our experience, and when we try to limit the higher image of heaven into the lower expression of the word "wedding", we shoot ourselves in the foot and lose credibility. However, when we see our metaphor in light of the higher reality, suddenly the word takes on more meaning as it describes an element of the higher reality.

So, as we can see, transposition, works in two directions. The lower element tries to describe and capture a bit of the higher truth, but it cannot until the higher truth is revealed and pulls the lower expression into itself. By this, our words are sanctified, and we can speak truth about exceeding goodness, love, and truth despite our own limited nature and expression.

So what happens with the disparity left over? What happens within the person to which truth is revealed if he cannot express it totally? This is the individual and personal love of God. He knows that the human person cannot express totally the revelation he is given, even when the revelation is itself just a snapshot. There will always be a part that goes unsaid because it cannot simply be spoken. This is the gift God gives to the person who speak of him. God provides both the speakable and unspeakable realities, and that which is unspeakable in it goodness only enriches the person gifted with it.

This is why we must pray for revelation and speak the Gospel at all times. We are speaking truth in order to receive truth. We are making known what we can with the faith that the knowledge itself is a gift.

St Joseph, pray for us.

God, Father in Heaven, bless us

I'm Laughing at your Testimony

To provide witness is central to the notion of evangelization. After all, people can refute or reject facts, but it is another thing entirely to reject the deep personal experience of another human being. You can tell me that my interpretation of a text is flawed or that my sources are wrong or incomplete, but when I tell you that my belief is based in a concrete experience, the debate takes on a different and more transcendental character. It is for this personal and central reason that to give your testimony or your witness must be taken seriously. Even Pope Paul VI, in Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975), states that "modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are first witnesses."

Thus, the personal witness of faith is to held in highly sacred esteem. However, if you have ever listened to a witness talk, or given one, you have seen that when a person lays out a picture of who they once were and the life they lived in comparison to who they are currently, it becomes very clear that every witness is comedy in the grandest sense of the word.

Now, before you grab your pitchforks and label me as one who disregards the seriousness of a witness, let us first look at what a witness is. To give one's testimony or witness is a legal proceeding. Essentially, in the case for Christ, one gives their witness before God and man of their experience, testifying to the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help them God. It is precisely because the testimony, whether religious or secular, is so highly regarded that dishonesty, or perjury, is so dramatically punished. To perjure oneself is to take what is true and knowingly misrepresent it at the moment when that truth is most essential. This is what Jesus means when he says "he who blasphemes against the Spirit will never be forgiven" (Mark 3:29). To perjure ones religious testimony is to blaspheme the Spirit and its works. It is to speak lies about God and his actions when it matters most.

So how can something so serious be considered a comedy? When one describes the lengths to which God has gone to bring them out of sin, it cannot possibly be comedic. But of course it is! In fact, it is the grandest comedy available to us. Of course, by comedy I do not just mean humor, though the humor us included and essential. When we speak of comedy, we mean the grand form which encompasses the entirety of a story and reveals to us deeper truth.

We understand comedy in two way which can both be used to describe a personal witness statement. The first, and arguably the most widely recognized is finding humor in that which is absurd. It is precisely in the absurdity presented to us, insofar as it clashes with what we consider rational or normal, that we find humor. Apply this to a witness. When one describes a life prior to conversion, especially when that former life is steeped in sin, we find absurdity. It is considered shocking and even illogical because the person who is painting this picture of him/herself is so far removed from the image being presented. These images clash and it is in this clash where we find comedy. To put the two figures next to one another is a humorous tableau. As one looks back on who they were without Christ, there absolutely should be a part of them that laughs to him/herself about the idea of who they were, and this humor and joy can only be found so far as they are removed from their former life.

The second element of comedy is what i refer to as the theatrical definition. Dicitonary.com defines comedy as:

 A play, movie, ect., of light and humorous character with a happy and cheerful ending; a dramatic work in which the central motif is the triumph over adverse circumstance, resulting in a successful or happy conclusion.

Now, how can one who has an experience of the saving power of God, and witness to the same, read that definition and not see how plainly it describes a personal testimony? To tell of the victories of God in one's life is to describe the triumph over adversity by definition. To talk of life in Christ or, to take an eternal step forward, heaven, is to not just experience a successful or happy result, it is to result in all that is success and all that is happiness. When seen theatrically, eternal life is the ultimate triumph over the ultimate adversity of sin, pointing us to the fact that each story in which these element play out is the ultimate comedy.

A personal witness is not some drab thing. If it is, you're doing it wrong! To give a witness to the power of Jesus working in your life is to speak of joy and happiness in its very essence! Yes, elements of your story are going to be serious, but what comedy exists that doesn't have a single serious moment? What we give testimony to is the power and love of a God who is love, who brought us out of sin and death through love to live an eternity of love in him! We can see through this lens that our walk of faith is meant to be a comedy, and not only that, but a romantic comedy!

So, when you tell your story, tell it with a smile on your face. Laugh at yourself! Laugh at who you were! Give testimony to the joy that you have, not just the story you like to tell. We cannot teach unless we are first witnesses, and we cannot be those witnesses without expressing the joy which has been given us.

St Joseph, pray for us
God, Father in Heaven, bless us

Scientism: A Willing Ignorance

In 1884, Edwin A. Abbott wrote Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. The book is set in a world inhabited by two-dimensional shapes that play roles within this two dimensional world. The shapes see and experience life in one dimension, much how we as 3D persons see the world as a two dimensions. The inhabitants of this world flatly deny (pun intended) that there can be a world that has more than two dimensions because, in their experience, they have never seen a 3D object, and nor can they because of their limited ability to see or measure. Therefore, they reject the idea that anything beyond flatland exists.

This is the case until a sphere passes through Flatland. The 2D shapes cannot take this sphere in fully, in fact they can only see him as different sizes circles as he literally passes through Flatland, transcending the binds of the two dimensions and experiencing his third. Not only that, but to further prove himself, the sphere takes a square up and out of flatland in order to give him a birds-eye view, and forever changing the square's outlook on reality. For a clearer summary, click here.

I want to take a moment to look at this book as a commentary on the phenomena of scientism that is rampant within our culture. Scientism is the philosophical, not scientific (more on that later), idea that, if something cannot be measured or observed by science, it cannot exist. This idea is subscribed to by everyone from leading atheists to your run-of-the-mill cultural devotee with a bone to pick against organized religion. Scientism-based thought generally come at the head of the atheistic apologetic, and is presented as being at odds with any notion of faith.

However, scientism is a philosophy that does not hold up under any kind of scrutiny. First of all, scientism is not scientific. The basis of science is to investigate and uncover that which has NOT been discovered. To say that all that exists is only what can be measured scientifically is to state one of two things. Either (a) you are basing life on the assumption that we currently fully understand and can measure all forces of nature and movements within the word, or (b) you are open to the idea that reality literally shifts every time a new discovery or theory is made. Under the former assumption, theoretical scientists simply become nerds with an imagination, and under the latter assumption, you are looking at reality itself as something that is inherently unstable, awaiting the next observation to further shift 'truth' into something else.

The second problem with scientism is that fact that it is a self-defeating proposition. To one that would say to me "all that is real is measurable and observable", I would respond by asking, "is that idea measurable and observable?" By that I mean, can you scientifically prove to me that all forces in the world are measurable and observable? Can you prove the content of that statement through the scientific method (developed by a catholic) and prove you hypothesis correct? The answer is an unadulterated "No Freaking Way!" To believe so is to contradict yourself, your purpose, and proves to me that you're simply a Dawkins fanboy with too much time to kill.

If this is you, you are terrible...

Finally, scientism does not leave room for the idea that there is something beyond our experience. Much like the inhabitants of Flatland, subscribers to scientism assume that our experience is the pinnacle of what can be known, and that our instruments for measurement are capable of measuring all that is. But if we cannot scientifically and empirically prove beyond any doubt that the basis of scientism is true, then room must be left for faith in something beyond what our 3D perspective can behold.

Honestly, I think the rejection of faith comes from our western fear of losing control. If we can measure every part of reality, we can then control and monitor every part of reality. However, if reality goes beyond what we can know with our senses, and if there is something that inhabits a world beyond our simple three dimensions, passing through yet transcending the reality we can know by observation, then it must be (a) more powerful than us, (b) beyond our control, and (c) know us better than we can know ourselves, just as we know the ins and outs of a character we draw or a shape we see.

We must allow ourselves, like the square in the story, to be lifted above what we know in order to see reality as it is, and to take in the idea that there is something more. The square did not experience the full length, width, and height of the three dimensional world, but he knew it was there. He could apply that knowledge back into his more limited reality and allow it to help shape him (more puns!). my encouragement is to ask yourself the question, "what if there are things we cannot measure?", and allow faith in something beyond the arrogant western view of self. Only then can we begin to grasp true reality.

St. Joseph, pray for us

God, Father in heaven, bless us.

Not Just About Babies Anymore...

Contraception and abortion seem to be of the go to objections by the Church about today's culture. Red flags go up when people talk about people talk about putting off or forgoing pregnancy, and the openness to life preached by Mother Church is often met with confusion, hostility, and outright anger. Why does the Church want to tell me how to act in the privacy of my own home? Why can't I make decisions for myself? What does God have to do with anything that happens in my bedroom? What seems to baffle people even more is why, when there's not even a conception through contraception, that "those Catholics" are still up in arms. The whole experience seems to come back to one pithy and standoffish comment-

"It's my life. I control what happens to it."

Who could be against this FACE!

And so, the central issue is revealed. People aren't against life, per say. I would go as far as to say that very few people are actually anti-life. People, simply put, are against losing control. The contraceptive mentality, so pervasive throughout western culture, is not just interested in whether or not babies are born. In fact, in the ongoing argument over contraception and abortion, it is the issues of control and personal autonomy that rear their heads much more often than questions of life. Women want to control their bodies. The Church is trying to control my life. I shouldn't be burdened with a child if I don't want one. Don't try to limit my freedom.

And so we see that the contraceptive mentality goes far beyond life issues. In the western world, people are afraid of not being able to be their own master and not being able to shape their lives the way they see fit. This is why we have cafeteria Christians who pick and choose the doctrines that they feel cater to their own sense of morality. This is why we have mothers and fathers that neglect or abandon their families because their spouse, children, or life don't look how they thought they would. This why we have spouses that are unfaithful to their loved ones when they get bored or aren't as attracted to the other as they once were. This is why suicide in the western world is so high. It's not simply that people are miserable on their own. It's that their lives aren't what they hoped they'd be. (Still think is has to do with misery? Then tell me how Haiti has a suicide rate of near zero.)

But this begs the question, whats so wrong with me being my on master? It's the American Dream after all! We are told from a young age that we can make our lives into anything we want them to be, and we try our hardest to do so. Success equals happiness, and this is made evident by the number of rich and successful actors, athletes, politicians, and musicians that have no problems and do no wrong because they control their own lives. 

Oh, wait, that's not the case at all! Recreational drug use is nearly equal across the socioeconomic stratum. Rich and successful people still cheat on their spouses and leave their families. Athletes and musicians still get arrested for drugs, violence, and all other manner of irresponsible and dangerous behavior. Suicide rate is highest among the wealthy. So it would seem that personal autonomy is not the way that people are achieving happiness or fulfillment.

So, whats the problem with a contraceptive mentality in which you do whatever it takes to form your life, relationships, faith, and work around your desires? The problem is that you make yourself your own god! Freedom has been misunderstood as license. Instead of trying to make ourselves available to goodness and right, we are placing our own wants and desires on a pedestal for worship.

You see, it's not enough to say that the contraceptive culture in which we live today simply offends the command not to kill, or that it can simply be rejected on the biological or human level. To truly encompass the entire problem of contraception and the contraceptive mindset, we have to see it as the worship of ourselves and our desires, and the rejection of God as creator and ruler. Within the contraceptive mindset, God is just there to make you feel good and give you the things you ask for. In a certain sense, contraception turns God into a vending machine.

Pop in a dollar, out pops a blessing

So what do we do to truly escape the contraceptive culture? How do we rise above self gratification and find true fulfillment? How do we truly open ourselves up to the fullness of life, not just in the womb, but throughout the span of a lifetime? We have to follow Jesus to the cross. In order to be lifted up, we need to lower ourselves. In order to fulfill our truest desires, we need to become a servant of others. In order to truly become sons and daughters of the living Father, we have to elevate him at a just place of authority in our lives, and from there we can find our true meaning and happiness.

We have to pray to move beyond what is easy or self gratifying. We have to put the needs of others before our own We have to overcome self-service with self-giving love for others. In a word, we need to overcome the culture of death and the fallacy of a contraceptive life by relinquishing our need for control. Only then can we begin to find some peace.

St Joseph, pray for us.

Father in Heaven, bless us.