Recommended Reading

"The film [Hugo], set in 1930’s France, explores the purposefulness of one individual’s life, especially that of a child, in the context of the life and soul of the human community.... it can be argued that children are neither always valued nor safe in our 21st Century. Child labour may have decreased and the rights of the child may have been officially sanctioned by the United Nations. And yet in so many circles the life of a child is still not seen as valuable enough to safeguard and protect. In fact today many children are threatened from the very moment of their existence in their mother’s womb."

— Renato Bonasera at A Legacy of Grace

Now blogging at . . .

http://fallingbyfaith.blogspot.com

Over and Above the Power of Shooting and Killing: For Mothers Who Pray for Their Children

"I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.”

—John 10:17-18        

In her latest update to her son's CaringBridge page, my cousin's wife wrote that she communicated to the surgeon who will be operating on Craig "our desire to 'release' him from the pressure he may feel to 'fix' the situation because in reality it's God who grants/takes life—not him" and that she and her family "would be praying for him" and the other doctor "as they make decisions during surgery."

     Shortly after reading these words, I happened to read what Pope John Paul II wrote about visiting in prison the man, a professional assassin, who shot and critically wounded him on May 13, 1981.

"It became clear that Ali Agca was still wondering how the attempted assassination could possibly have failed. He had planned it meticulously, attending to every tiny detail. And yet his intended victim had escaped death. How could this have happened? The interesting thing was that his perplexity had led him to the religious question.... he had grasped something really important . . . that over and above his own power, over and above the power of shooting and killing, there was a higher power. He then began to look for it. I hope and pray that he found it."

     Pope John Paul II was shot on the day on which Roman Catholics celebrate the appearance of Our Lady, Jesus' mother, at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. He attributed his survival to her intercession. "In everything that happened to me on that very day," he said, "I felt that extraordinary motherly protection and care, which turned out to be stronger than the deadly bullet."

     Craig's mother is putting her child's life not into the hands of his doctors but rather, like Our Lord's mother, through prayer, into the hands of God. In the process, she has been a witness to Craig's doctors (and to her readers) about God's power and about the power of faith and trust in Him—just as Pope John Paul II, through his faith and forgiveness, witnessed to his attacker. "We know that all things work for good for those who love God," St. Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans (8:28). For those who love God can see Him in Christ (see John 14:7-10), can see him even in Christ's suffering (as his Mother saw him when she stood beneath His cross), can see Him even when Christ's suffering occurs in their own body or in the body of a precious child.

     May we join our prayers to those of our Blessed Mother for all mothers who are praying for their children.

     Amen.

Because There Were Those Who Didn't Believe: Doubting Thomas and Medjugorje

"So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." (Ephesians 2:19-22, the first reading for the Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle)

“Nan told me she had stopped sharing this story with most people because at one point one of her family members hadn’t believed her and had said, ‘You were just dreaming.’ She told me it was not a dream and that it was as real to her as anything had ever been, but because there were those who didn’t believe, she had stopped telling the story.” (Mary Hendel McCafferty, Born Again . . . in Medjugorje)

Tuesday, July 3, was the Feast Day of St. Thomas the Apostle, commonly referred to as “Doubting Thomas” because of the following Bible verses:

"Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.' Thomas answered and said to him, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him, 'Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.' " (John 20:26-29)

Jesus didn’t kick Thomas out of the Apostles because he doubted. No, He gave Thomas what he needed, in the hope that he would believe—and fortunately, Thomas did.

     Jesus called “blessed . . . those who have not seen and have believed.” He didn’t say, “if you need a sign in order to believe, you are not blessed.”

     The twentieth chapter of John acknowledges that when Jesus walked the earth, He didn’t spurn those who needed signs. On the contrary, according to verse 30, “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples that are not written in this book.” And verse 31 states that the signs of Jesus that are recorded in the Gospel of John were written down for the very purpose of helping hearers and readers “to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.”

     So, although there is something extra special (or “blessed”) about being able or willing to believe without experiencing a sign, belief resulting from a sign is, nevertheless, belief.

     Certainly Jesus acknowledges elsewhere in the scriptures that for some people, not even signs are enough to inspire belief. In John 4:48, for example, He responds to a request for healing with, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.” John 12:37 reports that “although He had done so many signs before them, they did not believe in Him.” And in Matthew 12:38–39, Jesus responds even more strongly to the scribes’ and Pharisees’ request for a sign, saying, “An evil and unfaithful generation seeks a sign.”

     Jesus also acknowledges that signs and wonders are not always performed with good intentions. “False messiahs and false prophets will arise,” he says in Matthew 24:24, “and they will perform signs and wonders so great as to deceive, if that were possible, even the elect.”

     At the same time, Jesus makes clear that belief-inspiring signs will not end at His departure. He states in John 14:12 that “whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these,” and the book of Acts records numerous times that in fact “many wonders and signs were done through the apostles” (Acts 2:43, for example).

     Jesus also refers to “signs of the times” and to signs of things to come, “in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth” (Luke 21:25).

     The final book of the Bible, Revelation, also speaks of signs. Revelation 12:1, for example, describes “a great sign" that "appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.” Verse 5 says that this woman “gave birth to a son, a male child, destined to rule all the nations with an iron rod” and that “her child was caught up to God and his throne.” And verse 17 refers to “the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus.”

     Who else could this “male child” who “was caught up to God and his throne” be other than Jesus Christ, who, the Bible tells us, ascended into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of the Father (Mark 16:19)? And who could this “woman clothed with the sun” and crowned with stars be other than Mary, his Mother? And who, then, other than Mary, could be the mother of “those who . . . bear witness to Jesus”?

     If one accepts this “sign” offered in the Book of Revelation as a vision of the woman often referred to by Roman Catholics as “Our Blessed Mother” (on the basis of Luke 1:42–48), it is not such a far stretch to believe the various reports that she has appeared to and spoken with numerous people over the centuries since Jesus’ death. The “apparitions” getting the most attention in recent years are her ongoing appearances to six people in a village in Bosnia-Herzegovina called Medjugorje.

     One woman who believes is Mary Hendel McCafferty, whom I recently had the honor of helping to publish the story of her first trip to Medjugorje, in 1990. On this pilgrimage with her mother, who at the time was sixty-seven years old and who returned to Medjugorje with her daughter five more times in the next two decades, McCafferty’s life was changed, not by a supernatural vision but by the conversion of her heart.* After climbing Mount Krizevac and meditating on the Stations of the Cross along with the other pilgrims, for the first time in "a very long time" Mary went to confession—a confession, she writes, "that was more like a conversation with a friend.... I talked and cried and let go of things I had forgotten were part of my past. It was the first time in my life that I remember feeling truly sorry for my sins." On their way back down the mountain, Mary told her mother she felt "as clean as snow" and "like a newborn baby" (not realizing at the time that she was quoting Psalm 51). She writes, "Truly, that was the moment I was 'born again.'"

     In Born Again . . . in Medjugorje, McCafferty shares what prompted her to travel to Medjugorje, the experiences she had and some of the people she met there, and how her life changed, permanently, after she literally came down off the mountain. Several friends who read the manuscript (which McCafferty wrote for her mother as a Mother’s Day present) and encouraged her to publish it said that while reading Born Again they went to Medjugorje. Anyone who has been profoundly affected and transformed by reading the Gospels will understand how that is possible. One doesn't actually have to go to Medjugorje, McCafferty acknowledges, "to experience God’s gifts. He can make His presence known to me—to all of us—at any moment of any day." However, as Jesus himself understood, and understands, some of us need to touch before we can believe.

Born Again . . . in Medjugorje can be purchased at https://www.createspace.com/3910107 and at amazon.com

* The rest of this paragraph is an edited version of the original post, revised after the author pointed out errors in a few details. Thank you, Mary!

Why Trying Matters

"It's because we think we can have no effect that we remain silent--and then we have no effect."

That was my Facebook status this morning. I wrote it after several people said they doubted it would make any difference whatsoever to vote "no way" on whether Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, should be included on Time magazine's upcoming list of 100 most influential people.*

"That's the way the world works, I'm sad to say," one person commented. If that's true, I wondered, then WHY does the world "work that way"? Because of our skepticism and silence, we let it, I protested.

Then, suddenly, I thought of Jesus. It's the beginning of Holy Week. On Friday we will pay extra attention to the fact that approximately two thousand years ago, Jesus was brutally tortured and killed. He did not defend Himself.

"And the high priest stood up and said, Have You no answer to make? What about how these men testify against You? But Jesus kept silent" (Matthew 26:62-63).

He didn't let His disciples defend Him.

"When those who were around Him saw what was about to happen they said, Lord, shall we strike with the sword? And one of them struck the bond servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. But Jesus said, Permit them to seize Me. And He touched the guard's ear and healed him" (Luke 22:49-51).

If anyone could have done something to save Himself, Jesus could have. But He didn't. Was it because He thought it wouldn't make any difference?

Jesus had spent the last three years of His life being anything but silent. He had taught and preached and protested; He had demonstrated his power over evil and death. Since we were going to kill him anyway, should he not have bothered? Had it all been a waste?

Not for the individuals who were healed. Not for the souls who were saved. Not for Jesus, and not for the One who sent him.

"If we vote no, it won't be on our conscience that we didn't try. It won't be OUR fault," I wrote in response to the skeptic quoted above. Jesus tried. It mattered to many people then, it matters to many people now.

Last time I checked, there were about two thousand more no-ways than yeses for Richards. The polling ends on Friday, April 6. Anything can happen between now and then. Try. Vote no. It will matter, even if only to your own conscience.

* * * * *

* Time lists two reasons for including Richards on the list: (1) she has mobilized against laws requiring that each woman seeking an abortion be given the opportunity to view an ultrasound of her pre-born child (PP already uses ultrasound routinely as a diagnostic tool prior to and sometimes during abortions; it is considered a "standard of care"); and (2) she made and inspired such a ruckus about the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation's decision to withdraw funding that Komen apparently reversed its decision to no longer give money for mammograms to PP, which does not provide mammograms but only refers customers to other facilities that do. These actions are nothing for Richards, or us, to be proud of.

Set the Captives Free: Why (and How) Abortion Should Be Talked About in Church

"Kristen decided to share her secret with someone she trusted, a youth pastor. He told her something that forever changed her life and the life of her baby. 'Abortion is not an option,' he said. 'Two wrongs don’t make a right.' The kind pastor suggested that adoption would be a more loving option. 'His words reminded me that this was a baby we were talking about.'"

--Peter Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com, February 20, 2012

Not all Christian pastors would have spoken these words to Kristen, and not all Christian denominations teach their clergy to counsel in this way. I know this, tragically, from personal experience.

In 1987 I became "with child." I was not married and not in a relationship with the father. I had already been seeing a counselor for several months. She was a Presbyterian minister. When I told her I was pregnant, she agreed with everyone else I'd consulted that abortion was the only solution that made sense in my situation. Like everyone else, she said nothing about a baby. There was no acknowledgment that I was already my child's mother and responsible for his welfare, no warning of the great damage that abortion would do to my life, my heart, my mind, or my soul.

I'd joined the Catholic Church as a freshman in college, by myself, by my own choice. The next year I transferred to a Jesuit university. For three years I attended Mass almost daily, took more than the required number of theology classes, and centered my social life around a charismatic prayer group. For a few years after college I remained very involved with my home parish in a variety of ways. Then, in my mid-twenties I got a job at an Episcopal school, where I was employed for four years. Long before the end of the first year of that job I had stopped going to Mass and was attending the Episcopal church every Sunday instead. After the abortion I pretty much gave up on church for more than twenty years. In all the years prior to the abortion and until my return to the Church almost twenty-two years later, I did not, as far as I can remember, ever hear a sermon on abortion--not at an Episcopal liturgy, not at a Lutheran service (from age 9 to 17), not even at a Catholic Mass. I do, however, remember getting the message, loud and clear, from magazines, books, TV, teachers, and friends, that abortion was not only right, it was my right as a woman in the United States of America. Of course the real meaning of the word abortion was kept hidden behind the rhetoric.

There were many reasons that I was willing to accept this distortion of reality. As a child and teen I'd been the target of inappropriate verbal, physical, and sexual behavior on too many occasions to count or even remember. I also perceived my mother as being verbally and physically abused and interpreted her death from cancer at age forty-four, when I was sixteen, as her self-willed means of escape from a miserable situation. As I passed through high school, college, and young adulthood, the answers offered to me by the culture on how to take charge, defend myself against further damage, and avoid such an outcome became increasingly appealing, and when I heard those same answers spoken to me in church and by clergy, including women, they became irresistible.

The story of my life between the abortion and my return to the Catholic Church and to Christ (on Palm Sunday weekend in March 2008 at a Rachel's Vineyard retreat for women who have had abortions) is a long one that I am far, far from processing completely, though I hope I live long enough to write constructively about it. The turning point was when I returned to my Washington DC apartment one rainy spring night in 2006 after a few drinks and answered a phone call from a talkative friend with strong opinions who eventually brought up the subject of abortion. He was vehemently against it. I don't remember exactly what he said but I do remember considering at that moment whether or not to tell him I'd had one. I knew it could be the end of our friendship.

But it wasn't. I sobbed as I told him, and for the first time ever my long-concealed pain was validated. It was this friend who, two years later, told me about Rachel's Vineyard.

A couple of years ago the same friend discovered that not only does his church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), condone abortion in its shrewdly worded official statement on the topic, but its employee health benefits plan pays for pre-born lives to be aborted through the first five months of the mother's pregnancy, without question. (I posted about this previously.) Other Christian denominations have similar statements and policies. How many unborn lives have been snuffed out as a result? And how many women are still suffering in silence?

It's not only shame that silences a woman; just as powerful a muzzle is the fear of having one's sorrow, regret, anger, and guilt made light of and dismissed as unnecessary. For me, this denial was a long but increasingly uncomfortable and insincere refuge. What if my friend had never opened the door for me? My thoughts don't dare go there.

A couple of days ago I opened an e-mail from the Elliott Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to researching and educating people about the impact of abortion not only on women but also on men, families, and society. The e-mail announced a program called the Church Awareness Project, which urges church leaders and members to be silent no more on the topic of abortion. Churches that don't speak of abortion because they consider it merely a lawful, private choice not only fail to protect those who might one day be vulnerable to abortion, but also deny forgiveness and healing to those who are privately carrying the weight (whether they realize it or not) of their devastating secret. Churches that speak of abortion without acknowledging that many women have experienced it as an injustice, not as a choice, drive women deeper into their pain rather than set them free from the captivity where they are both bound and gagged.

For the post-abortive woman, the church should truly be a sanctuary, the way Jesus was a sanctuary for the woman he met at the well in Samaria--not by legitimizing what she did but by compassionately helping her to face it honestly. She should be set free to evangelize, the way the Samaritan woman ran to her fellow townspeople and proclaimed, “Come see a man who told me everything I have done. Could he possibly be the Messiah?” After they had met and listened to him they said, "We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the savior of the world." Why did they know this? Because he told them not lies but truth.

The Church season of Lent began this past week. Fasting is a tool commonly used by those who take this season seriously. The Old Testament lesson read at Mass on Friday (Isaiah 58:6-9) lists the kinds of fruit that fasting should produce, including "releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke; setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke...and not turning your back on your own. Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed.... Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!" Any church that preaches about setting the oppressed free and claims to do so cannot at the same time ignore the silent post-abortive women in its midst, and certainly must not teach its "own" that abortion is acceptable to God and then expect to hear God say, "Here I am."

Near the end of his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (Gospel of Life), Blessed Pope John Paul II directly addresses post-abortive women, including these words: "as a result of your own painful experience, you can become the most eloquent defenders of everyone’s right to life." What I have written here is part of my own response to that invitation, and I have pressed the "publish" button with some, even great, fear and trembling. But for a reason I can't quite pinpoint I have finally become less afraid of being judged and more afraid that by not being open about my own experience I will fail to help, or even hurt, someone. May the Holy Spirit use the words I have written here only for blessing.

Amen.

Where Counting Makes Sense: A Tribute to the Silent No More

"I feel overwhelmed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such quantity."

—Magdalena Abakanowicz

Today I was introduced to Polish sculptor Magdalena Abakanowicz by a Starbucks acquaintance who had just seen her Puellae exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. I was curious to know more about a woman who would create and arrange thirty bronze statues of headless girls.

The quote that opens this post is from a page on Magdalena's website titled "About Magdalena Abakanowicz." I imagine that the feeling she describes, like her art, originated at least partly in her experience of living in Poland during World War II and then under Soviet rule.

I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear me say that her words also summon to my mind the more than fifty million lives taken by abortion in the United States since 1973. This is indeed a "quantity where counting no longer makes sense," because fifty million of anything is virtually impossible to visualize, and because the impact of the loss of so many people is impossible to assess. It is also a quantity characterized by "unrepeatability" in that each individual human being conceived, except for identical twins, has a unique set of DNA. Yet even each "identical" twin has a distinct set of fingerprints, for example, because as each individual person develops, he or she is made even more distinctive by experience--even in the womb.

Many of Magdalena's exhibits consist of groups of sculptures that from a distance appear identical, but up close "each of her figures is an individuality, with its own expression, with specific details of skin." According to her blog, "the idea of a crowd has many reverberations in her mind. One of them is the transformation of an individual into a cog." This is what the abortion industry, and the pro-abortion mindset, does; the aborted pre-born are treated as replaceable parts, as are the born--in the economy and the marketplace, in the education and medical and political systems.

In 1980, Magdalena exhibited a "morass of 600 hand-stitched elements made of burlap, cotton, gauze, hemp, nylon, and sisal, shaped like boulders, stones, and pebbles" that she called Embryology. "Like swaddling clothes for invisible babies, these elements formed a distressing pile of organic structures, thrown on top of each other as if in a collective grave"--an image that evokes, at least for me, the "waste" generated by the many locations around the country where abortions are performed en masse.

In 2005, Magdalena won the International Sculpture Center's Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. In the statement she made at the award ceremony she said, "Today, we are confronted with the inconceivable world we ourselves created.... From time to time a civilization falls into disgrace and art is destroyed by fanaticism and wars. This happens also today. However some monuments remain along the path, which for hundreds of centuries would be otherwise unmarked. Without these milestones of his spiritual odyssey man would be lost in darkness."

The monuments that mark the fanaticism of "choice" and the war against the unwanted and imperfect unborn include the increasing number of published and spoken testimonies of women who have realized they were duped and cheated by the abortion industry. They name and memorialize their missing children. This is a counting that "makes sense." Without these women--and men and grandparents and friends and former abortionists, among others--how many of us would still be, and how many more of our nation's daughters would become, "lost in darkness"?

The Language of Action

Yesterday morning I took a cloistered Dominican nun to a doctor's appointment. When I picked her up at the monastery, she was carrying a book in her hands, which she showed to me when I asked what she was reading: Yours Is a Precious Witness: Memoirs of Jews and Catholics in Wartime Italy, by Margherita Marchione (2001, Paulist Press). When she went into the exam room she handed the book to me. I had a half hour to read a little of it.

I learned that what the book is really about is Pope Pius XII and the role he played in saving the lives of many Jews in Italy during World War II. Critics have called Pope Pius XII "indifferent" and "cowardly," claiming that he did not speak out adequately against the Nazi Holocaust. According to the book's author, however, "this is not so. He was a fearless religious leader who was also a great statesman. He had to follow a course of action, or inaction, which one or other of the warring nations would misunderstand or exploit. His words would receive a political interpretation in which the religious aspects would be completely lost and, from the papacy's point of view, no good would be accomplished" (pp. 7-8). His, wrote Margherita, "was a language of action," not just words.

When I read this I thought immediately of the old, tired accusation made by some defenders of abortion, that people who call themselves pro-life care only about "fetuses" and that we don't give a hoot about born babies and children, or sometimes even about adults (especially women). The truth is that the ranks of the pro-life population are filled with people who are quietly but persistently saving lives by helping and supporting pregnant women, born children, and families.

So, how do abortion supporters and pushers, including our country's president, demonstrate their professed moral superiority and support of born human life? By mandating that all insurance companies (which really means all American individuals, businesses, and organizations who finance insurance companies by paying insurance premiums) provide "free" contraceptives (including those that abort already-conceived human lives) and sterilization procedures to anyone who wants them! You would think that such defenders of born human beings would instead insist that free coverage be provided for pregnant women and for the medical needs of born children.

Hey folks, your hypocrisy is showing!

The sentences I've quoted also made me think of how often the defense of pre-born human life is branded merely political, and at the same time how often it is said to be merely religiously motivated, and for that reason is discounted and scorned.

In the end, it won't matter how our words, or lack thereof, are interpreted or judged. What will matter is what we did and, even more important, what others did because of our example.

Why I Believe in the Great Cloud of Witnesses

"We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1).

This verse came to my mind at breakfast this morning, as my friend and I found ourselves talking about our great-grandmothers, her brother who died five and a half years ago, and my husband, who died two and a half years ago. Each of us has had experiences that, it seems to us, cannot be explained as anything other than communication from these ancestors and loved ones.

Of course I had to look up this verse at my first opportunity, to see if I was correctly understanding who the witnesses in this "great cloud" are. The answer, I assumed, would be found in the text surrounding the verse. This is what I found:

"All these [Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Sarah] died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised but saw it and greeted it from afar and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth, for those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland.... God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.... Joseph ... Moses ... Rehab ... Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah ... David and Samuel and the prophets, who by faith conquered kingdoms, did what was righteous, obtained the promises; they closed the mouths of lions, put out raging fires, escaped the devouring sword; out of weakness they were made powerful, became strong in battle, and turned back foreign invaders. Women received back their dead through resurrection. Some were tortured and would not accept deliverance, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawed in two, put to death at sword’s point; they went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, tormented. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered about in deserts and on mountains, in caves and in crevices in the earth.... Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith" (from Hebrews 12-13).

It seems clear to me from the context that the witnesses referred to by Paul are those who have lived in faith before us, that is, those who

• saw what had been promised and greeted it from afar
• acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth
• by faith conquered kingdoms and did what was righteous
• closed the mouths of lions, put out raging fires, and escaped the devouring sword
• out of weakness were made powerful, became strong in battle, and turned back foreign invaders
• were tortured and would not accept deliverance
• endured mockery, scourging, even chains and imprisonment,
• were stoned, sawed in two, and put to death at sword’s point
• went about in skins of sheep or goats, needy, afflicted, and tormented
• wandered about in deserts and on mountains, in caves and in crevices in the earth

Paul doesn't simply call these people our models or inspirations, people merely to be imitated, though they are that. He calls them our witnesses, and he says it is they--not stories about them but they themselves--who surround us. Merriam-Webster's defines witness as "one who testifies in a cause" and "one asked to be present at a transaction so as to be able to testify to its having taken place." Those who have run the race before us, Paul thus says, are present and witnessing to us. And to what are they witnessing? They are witnessing to the transaction that has taken place! They are witnessing to the resurrection that is promised to those who "persevere in running the race that lies before us"!

When I say the Apostles Creed I confess that "I believe in ... the communion of saints." The Catholic Church teaches (and has always taught) that the saints include not only those it has given the title "Saint," but also all other members of the Body of Christ, both those who still live in physical bodies and those whose spirits have already returned to God ("And the dust returns to the earth as it once was, and the life breath returns to God who gave it," Ecclesiastes 12:7). Hebrews 12:9 calls God "the Father of spirits," and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus as saying that our Father is "not the God of the dead but of the living."

I believe in the "cloud of witnesses" that surrounds us not because I think I have heard from them but because Paul has told me they are there; I also believe I have heard from them because Paul has told me they are there. If I believe in the resurrected Christ because the Bible tells me it is so, and if I believe in angels because the Bible tells me they exist, then how could I not also believe in the cloud of witnesses that Paul describes?

"You have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering, and the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of the just made perfect, and Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and the sprinkled blood that speaks more eloquently than that of Abel. See that you do not reject the one who speaks. For if they did not escape when they refused the one who warned them on earth, how much more in our case if we turn away from the one who warns from heaven" (Hebrews 12:22-25).

 Amen!

A Letter to the Editor of the NY Times

Last night, after arriving home from an evening meeting later than my usual bedtime, I sat at my computer slicing and dicing the thoughts I posted here yesterday in response to the editorial "Republicans Versus Reproductive Rights" published in yesterday's New York Times. Several friends had suggested that I also send a response directly to the editor. The newspaper's guidelines state that letters to the editor should be no longer than 150 words. I tried for more than an hour and managed to reduce my 800-something post to 200-something words before reaching the limits of my late-night ability to focus, then gave up and sent it off. God knows if it will be published; all I know (and hope) is that at least one person will read it (whoever screens such e-mails) and, maybe, be affected.

In any case, just thought I'd share here what I wrote. Of course now, after reading it again with a rested mind, I would make additional changes. There's a saying, "It's all practice." Amen and thank God!

So, here it is:

According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, reproduction is "the process by which plants and animals give rise to offspring and which fundamentally consists of the segregation of a portion of the parental body by a sexual or an asexual process and its subsequent growth and differentiation into a new individual." Thus a woman reproduces when, after engaging in sex with a man, a portion of her body (an ovum, or egg), after being fertilized by a portion of the man’s body (the spermatozoon), differentiates itself from her and becomes a new individual human being. The moment in which this happens is called conception. The right ("a power or privilege to which one is justly entitled") to reproduce is thus the right to conceive. Abortion does not prevent reproduction; it destroys what has already been reproduced. The result of abortion is (as even Merriam-Webster's clearly states) death. Under any other circumstances, the power to cause such a deliberate, premeditated, untimely, undeserved, violent death is the polar opposite of a right, yet supposedly intelligent people (including the editors of the NY Times) have taught generations of women and men that they have the right to cause such death for unwanted pre-born human beings. The Republican candidates discussed in this editorial fully support the right of women to reproduce, and they also defend the right of pre-born children to live rather than be killed in their own mothers' wombs.

In the Beginning Are the Words: The Vocabulary of Human Reproduction

"When asked whether as Massachusetts governor he would have supported a constitutional amendment establishing that life begins at conception, [Mike Huckabee] said, 'Absolutely.' ... The assault on women’s reproductive health is a central part of the Republican agenda. It is not too early for Democrats to point that out."  (From http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/opinion/republicans-versus-reproductive-rights.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha211)

A decade ago, before the fog began to clear from the parts of my brain that store my knowledge and understanding of the topic of pre-born human life, I would have turned two thumbs up to the editorial just quoted (published in today's New York Times), but now it strikes me as shallow and clichéd, sloppy and irresponsible.

Just for starters, look at these definitions (from Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary) of terms used in this editorial:

• reproduction: the process by which plants and animals give rise to offspring and which fundamentally consists of the segregation of a portion of the parental body by a sexual or an asexual process and its subsequent growth and differentiation into a new individual
• childbearing: the process of conceiving children, being pregnant with children, and giving birth to children
• conception: the process of becoming pregnant, involving fertilization or implantation or both
• embryo: the developing human individual from the time of implantation to the end of the eighth week after conception
• fetus: a developing human from usually two months after conception to birth
• abortion: the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus
• death: a permanent cessation of all vital functions; the end of life
• right: something to which one has a just claim.... the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled

So, according to these definitions, a woman’s right to reproduce (her "reproductive rights") is the right (that is, the just—reasonable, proper, righteous, deserved--power or privilege) either to allow or to avoid or prohibit the process of giving rise to offspring by segregating a portion of her body by a sexual process and its subsequent growth and differentiation into a new individual. Reproduction occurs, therefore, when, subsequent to (that is, after) engaging in sexual activity, a portion of the woman's body (that is, an ovum, or egg) is differentiated into a new individual human being and begins the growth process that leads to birth.

So reproduction happens at the moment this differentiation occurs, that is, at the conception of the life of the new individual. The right to reproduce, or not reproduce, applies therefore to anything that happens before reproduction occurs. (Notably missing from this article's discussion of rights is the fact that this newly differentiated individual not only reproduces a woman but also reproduces a man, a portion of whose body—that is, a spermatozoon—is not optional but required in order for the differentiation of a new individual to occur.) Any anti-reproductive action taken (such as a medically or surgically induced abortion process or procedure) after reproduction has already occurred is, by definition, too late, because a new human life has already begun. Abortion (whether medical or surgical) does not prevent reproduction; rather, it ends the already underway life of a newly differentiated individual human being—in other words, as Merriam-Webster's makes clear, the result of abortion is death. Deliberate, premeditated, untimely, violently induced death. Under any other circumstances, the power to effect such a death is the polar opposite of a right, yet supposedly intelligent people in our society, media, academia, and government have taught generations of women (and men, and parents and medical professionals, and even some clergy) that they have the right—the power and privilege—to choose and cause such death for countless numbers of unwanted pre-born human beings.

The writer or writers of this New York Times editorial need to go back to the drawing board and this time, before writing and publishing a word, they need to examine what they're really saying, beginning with understanding what the words they want to use really mean. We have the right to expect at least that much from people who call themselves editors!

A Fermata

Fermata: "an element of musical notation indicating that the note should be sustained for longer than its note value would indicate. Exactly how much longer it is held is up to the discretion of the performer or conductor.... A fermata can occur at the end of a piece (or movement), or it can occur in the middle of a piece, and be followed by either a brief rest or more notes.... often only signifies the end of a phrase, where a breath is to be taken." *

Fermata: "It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20), but first, "create in me a clean heart, O God" (Psalm 51:12), because it is "from the fullness of the heart [that] the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45).

Fermata.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermata

A Woman’s Hymn of Praise

Today is the Feast of the Visitation, which celebrates the arrival of the newly pregnant Mother of Jesus at the home of her elder relative, Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant with John the Baptist. On this occasion recorded in Luke 1:39–56, not only did the two women greet each other, but so did the sons in their wombs.

When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said,

"Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how does this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For at the moment the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the infant in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."

And Mary said:

"My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord;

my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

For he has looked upon his handmaid's lowliness;

behold, from now on all ages will call me blessed.

The Mighty One has done great things for me,

and holy is his name.

His mercy is from age to age to those who fear him.

He has shown might with his arm,

dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart.

He has thrown down the rulers from their thrones

but lifted up the lowly.

The hungry he has filled with good things;

the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped Israel his servant,

remembering his mercy,

according to his promise to our fathers,

to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

Mary’s words here are a beautiful hymn of praise to God, the Father of Jesus. The words that Elizabeth speaks here are also a hymn of praise, but to Mary, Jesus’ Mother: "Blessed are you among women," Elizabeth proclaims, and "Blessed are you who believed that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled."

There are many places throughout the Bible where God too is said to be “blessed.” For example:

• “Blessed be God Most High, who delivered your foes into your hand.” (Genesis 9:26)
• “When you have eaten your fill, you must bless the Lord, your God, for the good country he has given you.” (Deuteronomy 8:10)
• “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, through all eternity!” (1 Chronicles 16:36)
• “Blessed be the Lord, the God of our fathers....” (Ezra 7:27)
• “The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock! Exalted be God, my savior!” (Psalm 18:47)
• "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and power are his.” (Daniel 2:20)
• "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has visited and brought redemption to his people.” (Luke 1:68)
• “God who is over all be blessed forever.” (Romans 9:5)
• “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and God of all encouragement....” (2 Corinthians 1:3)
• “We know that the law is good ... according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted.” (1 Timothy 1:8, 11)
• “No human being can tame the tongue.... With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God.” (James 3:8–9)
• “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ....” (1 Peter 1:3)

Of course to praise and bless God and to praise and bless Mary don’t mean exactly the same thing. I am not knowledgeable enough to say so but I suspect that (and would love to know if) in the original languages of the Bible different words with varied connotations were used for the blessed in “Blessed be the Lord” and the blessed in “Blessed are you among women.” The praise warranted by God (worship, awe, glory, submission, and so on) and the praise warranted by Mary (honor, respect, admiration, gratitude, and so on) are different. Yet praise is indeed due to Mary. To say that it is not is to discredit not only Elizabeth but also the Angel Gabriel, and to discredit God, who “favored” (chose) Mary and filled her with the grace she needed to bear and raise, support and influence their Son.

There are many reasons that Mary deserves the praise we should join Elizabeth in giving to her, not just individually but also communally. One of the most important of these reasons is that the Christian churches should be providing a very clear counter-cultural example of what it means to honor all women, especially pregnant women and the mothers of born children, but also single women and “consecrated” women (for whom Mary as ever-virgin is also a role model). All women should be called blessed and treated as blessed—not only by men but also by other women—especially when they are pregnant!

In fact, lately I have begun to wonder if there is a direct relationship, a causal connection, between the validation of abortion and the devaluation of Mary by so many Christian churches and their members. I would challenge all Christian churches, and Christians, to consider this possibility.

I Get to Be Lydia

"A woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, from the city of Thyatira, a worshiper of God, listened, and the Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what Paul was saying." (Acts 16:14)

Interestingly, this is the part of today's lectionary readings that has stayed in my mind since Mass this morning. There are, I think, two reasons:

First, I get to be Lydia every morning when at Mass God “opens my heart to pay attention"—whether listening to Paul or to another of the Bible’s authors, who all, in any case, speak on behalf of God. I get to be Lydia, no matter how much or how little sleep I had the night before, no matter what thoughts filled my head or what feelings filled my heart when I entered the sanctuary.

Second, this sentence from the Acts of the Apostles reminds me that it is indeed God who opens hearts. This is a reminder I need when I talk about God in any context, verbal or written, and when I pray for those whose hearts seem to be closed.

Now, this Scripture verse says that Lydia was already listening when God "opened her heart." It also says that she was already a worshiper of God. Does this mean that the prerequisite for receiving an open, attentive heart is to worship God and to listen?

Many of us who worship God today previously did not worship him. Obviously at some point we began to listen, then to believe, and then to worship. Was it God who opened our heart then? I was unable to find an example of this in Scripture. It seems that the fundamental shift from unbelief to belief and from not worshiping to worshiping—or the failure to make that shift—really is a choice of the believer-worshiper, not something that God does for us. Indeed, Scripture seems abundantly clear that a person can choose not to heed the invitation to believe and worship. The author of Acts, for example, quotes from Isaiah while speaking to the Jews, saying, “Gross is the heart of this people; they will not hear with their ears; they have closed their eyes, so they may not see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and be converted” (28:27).

So maybe it really is essential to the story of Lydia, and to us, that she already believed in God and was already listening to God’s messenger when God opened her heart. And maybe the point of including these details is to show that believing in and worshiping God is only a step along the journey and not the final goal. Maybe listening is the next step, and the step after that, and every step until we reach the gate of heaven. Because maybe if we don’t listen, God will not open our hearts to pay attention to what we are being told, to what is being explained to us, to what we are being asked to do. But even better, when we do listen and when our hearts are opened, maybe what we are told is our reward.

“Morning after morning he opens my ear that I may hear....” (Isaiah 50:4)

For this I am grateful.

Amen.

If God Is Our Father, Who Is Our Mother?

“Honor your father and your mother”
—Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16)

Most people, whether Christian or not, are familiar with the Lord’s Prayer, which begins with these two words: “Our Father” (see Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:24). The father addressed in this prayer is, of course, God—or more specifically, "the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.... This is my name forever; this is my title for all generations” (Exodus 3:15) When Jesus refers to God, this is the God he means. He makes this absolutely clear in Matthew 22:31-32, where he says, “Have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?”

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He reveals another name for God—a name that until then only he had the right to use: Father. And he says that this God is not only his Father but also our Father:

• “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)
• "I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” (Matthew 11:25)
• “If you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.” (Mark 11:26)
• "Abba, Father, all things are possible to you.” (Mark 14:36)
• “Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Luke 2:49)
• “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36)
• “These works that I perform testify on my behalf that the Father has sent me.” (John 5:36)
• “If you knew me, you would know my Father also." (John 8:19)
• “Go to my brothers and tell them, 'I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" (John 20:17)

The Gospels thus contain lots of evidence that Jesus considered himself the Son of God. But the Gospels also tell us that Jesus was a human being too:

• “Of Mary...was born Jesus who is called the Messiah.” (Matthew 1:16)
• “They saw the child with Mary his mother.” (Matthew 2:11)
• “Is not His mother named Mary?” (Matthew 13:55)
• “Elizabeth, filled with the holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice... ‘Why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?’”

So Jesus’ father is the “Lord of heaven and earth” and his mother is a Jewish woman from Nazareth.

When Jesus is asked what a person must do to “gain eternal life,” he responds, “keep the commandments,” including “honor your father and your mother” (Matthew 19:19). The commandments make clear that we are to honor God, our Father—by worshiping him alone, by not taking his name in vain, and by keeping the Sabbath. As a Jew, Jesus kept these commandments, but in his ministry he did even more than that: he clarified what it means to honor his Father and ours. For example:

• "You have heard that it was said to your ancestors, 'You shall not kill; and whoever kills will be liable to judgment.' But I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment....” (Matthew 5:21-22)
• "You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)
• “They questioned him, ‘Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?’ so that they might accuse him. He said to them, ‘...it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.’” (Matthew 12:10-12)

Jesus certainly would have embraced the fourth commandment (or the fifth if you’re not Catholic or Lutheran) too, wouldn’t he? There are several examples in the Gospels of how he honored his mother, Mary:

• “His mother said to him, ‘...Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety.’ And he said to them, ‘...Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" ...He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.” (Luke 2:48-51)
• “His mother said to the servers, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ ...Jesus told them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ So they filled them to the brim.... And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, the headwaiter called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves good wine first...but you have kept the good wine until now.’” (John 2:5-10)
• “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’” (John 19:26-27)

There are also examples of how he broadened the meaning of this commandment:

• “Who are my mother and my brothers?... Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." (Mark 3:33-35)
• "If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26)

It is possible to interpret Jesus’ statement in Mark 3 as a rebuff of his mother, but it is also possible to interpret it as Jesus’ taking advantage, once again, of a “teaching moment”—and so must have been his comment in Luke 14. His harsh instruction to hate father and mother certainly cannot have been meant to contradict his endorsement of the commandment to honor one’s parents. He made this comment in the context of teaching about the cost of following him. His ministry did take him away from his mother, but she had known that being his mother would cost her (“and you yourself a sword will pierce,” Simeon told her when the infant Jesus was dedicated at the Temple), and at the end of his pre-Resurrection life he honored her by giving her into the care of his disciple.

So Jesus has made it clear that we share his Father with him, and he has made it clear that none of our Father’s commandments have been made null and void, and he has made it clear that we are to honor his Father just as he does. It seems to me, then, that the final part of this equation is that we are also to honor his Mother just as he did, and presumably does. But what does that mean?

The Roman Catholic Church has a 2,000-year history of doing just that. But because this post has already become very long, I will have to say more about that later.

Amen.

The Embolism Prayer

My sister, who is not Catholic, once joked to me that you can always tell the Protestants at a Roman Catholic Mass or on any Catholic occasion when the Lord's Prayer is prayed. All the Catholics stop after "but deliver us from evil" while the Protestants launch right into the doxology ("For thine is the kingdom..."). It's not that Catholics don't pray the doxology at Mass; rather, they wait for the priest to first pray a prayer called, technically, "the embolism" (from a Greek word meaning "interpolation" or "insertion"): "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ." Then they pray the doxology.

As I heard the “embolism” said at Mass today, it struck me that this prayer is a weekly (or daily, for some of us) antidote to the kind of thinking that allowed some people to take seriously Harold Camping's rapture prediction. It's not that we shouldn't always be prepared--for the Lord's return, for the "end of the world," for our own deaths. We should be. It's not that Christians shouldn't be spreading the word and calling people to be ready. We should be. It's not that we shouldn't be willing to give up everything to follow the Lord. We should be. But when we hear theories and predictions about precisely when the Lord will return, we should remember what the Lord himself said: "But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" (Mark 13:32).

So what did happen yesterday?

• There were indeed earthquakes--in Iceland, San Francisco, New Zealand (although the one in New Zealand occurred when it was already the 22nd there)--but not the "great" one predicted by Camping.
• For the more or less 150,000 people who died yesterday, due to whatever cause, it was indeed the end of the world. (That estimate probably does not include deaths from intentional abortion but, according to various sources, there were probably about 115,000 such deaths worldwide. Of course countless more human beings also died in the womb from “natural” causes.)
• In one way or another, many of us were judged by someone yesterday (in a court, by a parent, by an employer, by a friend) and found either innocent or guilty, worthy or unworthy; some of us were repentant, some were not; and some of us were shown justice and some were shown mercy.
• A lot of joking, laughter, and even ridicule were aimed at Camping's prediction and at those who embraced it. But yesterday, as every day and everywhere in the world, Christians who believe and teach that one day Christ will indeed return to "judge the living and the dead" and who try to live their lives accordingly were made fun of, assaulted, and even killed.

After Jesus said that no one, not even he, knows when "heaven and earth will pass away," Jesus admonished his listeners, "Be watchful! Be alert!... May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping" (Mark 13:33, 36). Perhaps rather than crow and gloat over the failure of Camping's prediction and the gullibility of those who heeded him, we should turn our attention away from others' mistakes and focus instead on whether or not we ourselves are taking seriously that part of Jesus' message.

Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Blessed Indeed: Luke 11:27-28

Last night I was reading in the 11th chapter of Luke and came across these familiar lines:

"While he was speaking, a woman from the crowd called out and said to him, 'Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed.' Jesus replied, 'Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it'" (Luke 11:27-28).

I've always stumbled a little over these verses. They seem to contradict other verses in Luke, such as:

"Most blessed are you among women" (Elizabeth to Mary, Luke 1:42).

"And Mary said, '...from now on all ages will call me blessed'" (Luke 1:46-48).

Was Jesus here overruling Elizabeth, his mother, and even the angel Gabriel? And does he now frown on Catholics honoring and referring to Mary as, for example, the Blessed Mother?

Last night as I read these words again, I suddenly understood them in a way I hadn't before—as not a contradiction at all. It seems to me now that when Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it," he was speaking above all about his own mother:

"Mary said, 'Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word'" (Luke 1:38).

It now seems to me that what Jesus meant was, don't honor my mother just because she carried me in her womb and just because she breast-fed me. Honor her because she heard the word of God and observed it—and do the same!

Who Wants to Spend Eternity with Someone Like That?!

While everyone else was apparently reading Rob Bell’s book Love Wins, in which he reportedly questions the existence of a place of eternal suffering known as hell and asserts that “God’s love will eventually melt even the hardest hearts,” I read instead Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved,” with a Short Discourse on Hell, by Hans Urs Von Balthasar, a Swiss Catholic theologian and priest who lived from August 1905 to June 1988. Von Balthasar’s view could perhaps be summed up as follows: it is God’s desire to save everyone, God alone will judge each one of us, and in the end “what remains for us is not knowledge, but rather Christian hope.”

This morning I took time to read yet another commentary on Bell’s book. The author of the review offered his opinion that if there are any souls in hell, then Osama bin Laden certainly deserves to be among them, at least as a way for God to honor all the people bin Laden was responsible for killing. He acknowledged, however, that God could have “changed his heart while he was hiding out.” Yet even if God could manage to do that, many Christians will furiously resist the idea that someone like bin Laden could be in heaven. Why? Is it only because they want to see him get what he deserves for the evil he perpetrated while on Earth?

As reasonable as it may be to say that someone who has caused so much harm deserves to spend forever in endless suffering, look at St. Paul. He, as the Pharisee Saul, facilitated the persecution, including murder, of who knows how many early Christians (see Galatians 1:13-14) before Christ appeared to him on the road to Damascus. How do we know that at the moment of bin Laden's, or anyone else's, death Christ did not appear in a blinding flash as well? How do we know that bin Laden did not, if such a moment occurred, finally say, like Paul, "Who are You, Lord?" (Acts 9:5) and accept God's mercy?

Of course St. Paul's conversion enabled God to use him mightily during the reminder of his life to spread the Church and facilitate the conversion of many other souls, not only during Paul's life but also through the centuries by means of his many letters. Of what value would the moment-of-death conversion of someone like bin Laden be if God could not then transform him into someone who helped to save lives and souls rather than destroy them? The only reason I can imagine (though of course my imagination proves nothing whatsoever) is that it would be God’s last-ditch effort, because of his boundless love and mercy, to save a single soul from eternal separation from Him.

There is another reason, however, that comes to my mind, for why we resist the idea of someone like bin Laden being allowed into heaven: Who wants to spend eternity with someone like that?!

Well, if being "saved" is ONLY about getting our get-out-of-hell free card, then hey, there are people who've done far less evil things than bin Laden whom I wouldn't want to spend eternity with either if all God has done is said, “Don’t worry about it. Come on in!” If in heaven—if forever—we're all just as broken and self-centered and impatient and judgmental and vengeful and so on as we are here, then what's the point?

Which is why, as I read the Bible, it seems to me that being "saved" is not only about being let off the hook for our sins. It seems to me that being saved means even more than that—much, much more. It seems to me that it is about being willingly transformed into people who actually do live according to the moral law of God—the commandments that God dictated to Moses for the Jews, which Jesus affirmed (see Matthew 22:36-40, for example) and which God now wants to write onto our hearts (see Jeremiah 31:33).

I don't think that, by sending Jesus and, after Him, the Holy Spirit, God meant ONLY to offer us forgiveness for being incapable, on our own, of ever living up to the moral law; and he certainly didn't intend to communicate to us that the moral law no longer matters. In Matthew 19:13, for example he says explicitly, "If you want to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments." And in Hebrews 12:14, St. Paul says that without holiness, "no one will see the Lord." No, it seems to me that God meant to offer us far, far more than just a wink and a sympathetic, resigned pat on the back. I think he meant, rather, to offer us all the supernatural help we need to become the moral creatures he created us to be—forever and in God's presence.

In other words, God didn't lower his standards, didn't change heaven, didn't change himself, didn't change his mind and just decide to let us fallen beings in after all. He didn't just throw up his arms and give up. Instead, it seems to me, he graciously offered us a way—the Way—to become "perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48), the Way to get there—to moral perfection and into his eternal presence—a way that depends on him rather than on our own ability.

God gave St. Paul many years on Earth after his conversion in which to grow toward that perfection, and he has given us that same opportunity. But what about someone who has a moment-of-death conversion and has no time on Earth to undergo the metamorphosis that Paul experienced? And what about those moral shortcomings that might remain in most of us ordinary, average Christians at the time of our death? The Catholic Church points to a long list of Scriptures that support the idea that those who are not yet ready to "see the Lord" will undergo further refinement in a place or state it calls "Purgatory." The more I read the Bible, the easier it becomes for me to believe that such a transition place is not only necessary for many of us but in fact a great gift from a compassionate, merciful God.

Hope Against If: Matthias, Judas, and Us

This morning at Mass the first reading was about the selection of Matthias to take Judas of Iscariot's place among the twelve apostles of Jesus, to "become with us a witness to his resurrection" (Acts 1:22). In his sermon, the priest pointed out that the only time Matthias is ever mentioned in the Bible is in this story. Yet the story makes clear that Matthias has been around for a long time, for Peter says he was "one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which [Jesus] was taken up from us" (Acts 1:21-22). So, even though we know only this little bit about Matthias, the Catholic Church remembers and reminds us of him every year on May 14.

Why? As the priest said this morning in his sermon, to have been considered at all for this place among the apostles, Matthias must have been a worthy man. And what makes a man worthy of such a calling? Using only the available clues, it seems to me that what is primary is faithfulness--not merely faith (which, by the way, I think we have a tendency to confuse with belief), but faithfulness--constancy, dedication, loyalty, obedience, steadfastness. I think we can assume, though we have no explicit scriptural proof of this, that besides being a faithful witness, watcher, observer, Matthias was also faithful in keeping the Lord's commandment, which was presented in today's Gospel reading: "Love one another as I have loved you." We can assume that he not only heard the word but also "did" it (James 1:22).

There was at least one other man, "Joseph called Barsabbas," who was not called to be one of the original twelve yet accompanied Jesus throughout his earthly ministry. Presumably there were others as well. But the reason we know of Matthias at all is because just being there is clearly not enough. Judas of Iscariot was there too--at least until the betrayal. The scriptures don't say all that much about him prior to that point. Obviously he must have given Jesus reason to include him among the twelve. Yet Judas "turned away" (NAB) and "by transgression fell" (NKJV).

So, it seems to me, we can be called, and we can follow, yet we can still turn away, still fall--still betray the Lord. Jesus acknowledges this when in today's Gospel reading he says, "IF you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love" and "You are my friends IF you do what I command you." IF. One of the smallest but weightiest words in the English language, IF. Depending on which translation you refer to, it appears roughly 500 times in the New Testament. Here are some other examples:

• "IF you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.... IF you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven..." (Matthew 19:17, 21).
• "IF [a] servant says to himself, 'My master is delayed in coming,' and begins to beat the menservants and the maidservants, to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant's master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful" (Luke:45-46).
• "IF anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him.... the word that I spoke, it will condemn him on the last day, because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak" (John 12:47-48).

These are some harsh-sounding words from the mouth of Jesus! Of course they are only part of the story. In today's Gospel reading and in two of the three I just listed, Jesus tells us that the key to remaining in him and his love is to do as he has commanded. And what has he commanded? "Love one another as I have loved you." And how has he loved us? He has laid down his life for us--that is, he allowed us to kill him, and he forgave us for doing it. So then what has he commanded us to do? He has commanded us to lay down our lives for one another--to die for one another, even to be killed by one another, and to forgive one another in the process.

Back to Judas Iscariot. Most Christians assume that if anyone has been condemned by God, it's Judas. I can't speak for other branches of Christianity but it is my understanding that this is not official Catholic teaching. Catholicism does not presume to know Judas's fate. The Gospel of Matthew states that "Judas...seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply regretted what he had done" and "returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, 'I have sinned in betraying innocent blood," and "flinging the money into the temple, he departed and went off and hanged himself." We simply do not know how God responded to Judas's confession and "deep regret" when Judas arrived on the other side of death.

Neither, therefore, it seems to me, can we presume to know absolutely, one way or the other, the eternal fate of any other human being--even ourselves. But we can hope. Indeed, in the New Testament we are told over and over and over again to hope. Here are just a few from among the many examples:

• In Acts 23:6, Paul states that he is "on trial for hope in the resurrection of the dead."
• In Acts 24:15-16 he says, "I have the same hope in God as they themselves have that there will be a resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous. Because of this, I always strive to keep my conscience clear before God and man."
• In Acts 26:20, "I preached the need to repent and turn to God, and to do works giving evidence of repentance."
• In Romans 8:24-25, "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance."
• In Galatians 5:5, "through the Spirit, by faith, we await the hope of righteousness."
• In Ephesians 1:18, "May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call."
• In Colossians 1:21-23, "you who once were alienated and hostile in mind because of evil deeds he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through his death, to present you holy, without blemish, and irreproachable before him, provided that you persevere in the faith, firmly grounded, stable, and not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard."
• In 1 Peter 3:15, "Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope."

And what IS the reason for our hope? Do we hope in Christ, in the resurrection, in eternal life because Jesus said we can do whatever we want and in the end he will say, "Don't worry about it, I've got you covered"? Does hope mean never ever having to say we're sorry again? Or do we hope because we trust that IF we indeed do all that he commanded us to do, including forgiving others and asking for forgiveness for ourselves when we inevitably mess up, he will then be faithful to his promises to us? To the "new covenant" he made with us by his death?

"Let us hold unwaveringly to our confession that gives us hope, for he who made the promise is trustworthy.... IF we sin deliberately after receiving knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains sacrifice for sins.... You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised" (Hebrews 10:23, 26, 36). One of Christ's promises is that he has not left us to run this race alone. We have been given the Holy Spirit. We have been given one another in the Church. We have been given the Sacraments. May we not be "among those who draw back and perish, but among those who have faith and will possess life" (Hebrews 10:36, 39).

Amen.