Conventional wisdom over the past few decades has created an image of Jesus as a crusading liberal. He is seen as a rabbi working against the conservative and rigid Pharisees, trying to establish a more tolerant religion which accepts all people, no matter their preferences or practices.

In reaction, many conservatives have created a Jesus in their own image: he was a prophet who advocated a strict morality and did not make any attempt to overthrow the existing government structures.

Depending on whether you think Jesus was a liberal or a conservative will influence which parts of the Gospels you will emphasize.

So, was Jesus a liberal or a conservative?

The answer is neither. And both. Fundamentally, Jesus was a radical. By “radical” I do not mean the common usage of the term which associates it with 1960’s radical politics like the Weathermen. I mean it primarily as an adjective: Jesus was a radical liberal as well as a radical conservative. He was radically liberal when it came to overthrowing the calcified human traditions that had grown around Judaism, and he was radically conservative in preserving the core teachings of the Israeli religion.Whether he was conservative or liberal depended on the specific issue (Divorce laws -> conservative; Sabbath laws -> liberal), but he was always radical.

For what does it mean to be radical? The word comes from the Latin for “root”. A radical, in other words, gets to the root of a matter. And this is exactly what Jesus did. For example, when it came to divorce laws, he went to the root of the issue: what exactly is marriage? This led him all the way to the beginning and Adam and Eve. By going to the root of marriage, he taught that divorce is always wrong, and that the allowances for divorce under the Mosaic law were actually liberalizing deformations of the original meaning of marriage.

Likewise, when it came to Sabbath laws. What is the purpose of Sabbath restrictions? They are to help the individual to draw closer to God and to the people and world around him. All the additional rules added later in order to “conserve” the sacredness of the Sabbath needed to be thrown away in order to get to this root meaning of the Sabbath.

The radicals in the 1960’s would sometimes even resort to planting bombs in an attempt to undermine structures they opposed. Jesus also planted “bombs” within Judea and Galilee by his radical teachings and his radical death and resurrection. These actions lead to the most subversive organization that the world has ever seen: his Church. And this Church is called to be a destabilizing force in all generations, upending existing structures that reject God and His laws, and calling people to the roots of our human experience, which always leads to repentance, conversion, and a return to our original vocation as sons and daughters of God.

Jesus was a radical. Are you?

In recent years, a former Evangelical named Bart Ehrman has been attacking the veracity of the Bible. One of his main lines of attacks is that we cannot trust that what we read in our Bibles today is what was actually written by the original authors of the Scriptural texts. The issue he is addressing is known as “textual criticism.”

The crux of the issue is this: we do not possess any of the original manuscripts of the Old or New Testaments (just like we don’t possess the original manuscripts of almost any ancient document). What we possess are copies of those texts. In the case of the New Testament, some of the copies we possess date all the way back to the 2nd century, but many others are from centuries later. In some cases, these manuscripts disagree – one will have a verse another does not, and some will even have entire passages that others do not (such as the story of the woman caught in adultery). Sometimes, if you are observant, you will notice that a Bible might “skip” a verse; this means that the editors of that Bible decided that the verse in question was not in the most reliable manuscripts and therefore was most likely not in the original.

So how big of deal is this? Evangelical Greek scholar Bill Mounce has a recent blog post where he addresses this issue (read his whole post for more details about textual criticism), and in it, he notes the following:

About 5% of the Greek text is in question

No major doctrine is brought into question by 5%.

Ehrman, in other words, is barking up the wrong tree.

Furthermore, as Catholics, we can trust the Bible because the Church which Christ founded has declared which books are in the canon, and our tradition (which is guided by the Holy Spirit) has included passages such as the woman caught in adultery in those books. Even if this story was added later, we can trust that it was under the guidance of the Holy Spirit that this beautiful story (John 8:1-11) was included in the Gospel of John.

One of the very few non-Christian, non-baseball blogs I follow is Seth Godin’s. He is a marketing expert who writes about productivity in the business world (and in all of life) and other related topics. He recently had a post titled But it’s better than TV that I really appreciated:

At the local health food store lunch buffet, they offer stir fried tempeh.

I never get it. Not because I don’t like it, but because there are always so many other things on the buffet that I prefer.

That’s why I don’t watch TV. At all. There are so many other things I’d rather do in that moment.

Broadcast TV was a great choice when a> there weren’t a lot of other options and b> when everyone else was watching the same thing, so you needed to see it to be educated.

Now, though, you could:

• Run a little store on eBay
• Write a daily blog
• Write a novel
• Start an online community about your favorite passion
• Go to meetups in your town
• Volunteer to tutor a kid, in person or online
• Learn a new language, verbal or programming
• Write hand written thank you notes each evening to people who helped you out or did a good job
• Produce small films and publish them online
• Listen to the one thousand most important operas
• Read a book or two every evening
• Play a game a Scrabble with your family

None of them are perfect. Each of them are better than TV.

And of course, as Catholics, we could add many more to this list:

• Go to Adoration
• Pray the Rosary
• Help in a soup kitchen
• Visit your neighbor

And the list could go on and on…

I recently read the following advice from a Jesuit about how a Catholic can best interact with Protestants:

The first thing to keep in mind is that…he must look upon [Protestants] with great charity and love them in truth. And he must close his mind to all thoughts that would tend to lesson his affection for them. The second thing to be remembered is the need of gaining their goodwill so that they in turn shall love and think kindly of us. This can be accomplished by dealing with them in a friendly way on those subjects about which we are in agreement and by avoiding those disputed points in which one side might give the impression of lording it over the other. Rapprochement should be established with them in those areas in which there is concord between us rather than in those which tend to point up our mutual differences.

Who was the Jesuit who said this? Perhaps some 1970’s hipster who drank too much of the ecumenical Koolaid?

No, it is the words of Blessed Peter Faber, the first companion of St. Ignatius and cofounder of the Jesuits.

When they finally announce the actual release date for the Pope’s 2nd book in the Jesus of Nazareth series, which is coming “soon,” I think I should get one of those countdown clocks for my blog to mark the days, hours and minutes until it is available. That’s how excited I am about it.

Regular readers of this blog know how much I appreciate and love the Eastern practice of Christianity: its spirituality, its liturgy and its history. Most of my readers are Western, so I like to point out the many beauties of the East so that Western Christians will appreciate them as well. But I am a Western Catholic, not Eastern, and there are many, many things I love about being Western, so I thought I would post a few of my favorite particularly Western practices here.

(Please note: this post should in no way be taken as an anti-Eastern post or as Western triumphalism. Nor do I think Eastern Christians should adopt any of these practices [except perhaps number 10]. In the Body of Christ there are a diversity of gifts and loving one gift does not in any way denigrate other gifts).

1) The tradition of daily Mass
I am very thankful for the practice of daily Mass in the Western church. The fact that we can receive the precious body and blood of our Savior any day of the week is a great blessing, and one we should take advantage of as much as possible. Also, I love the whole simplified ethos of a daily Mass.

2) Kneeling
When I first became Catholic, it took me a while to get used to the whole kneeling thing. But over the years I have come to love the regular kneeling we Western Catholics do. It is an obvious sign of humility, and I find it very hard to be prideful in front of the Lord when I’m on my knees.

3) Eucharistic Adoration
This practice took centuries to develop in the West (and it never did in the East), but boy am I glad it did! I still find it amazing how I can walk into an Adoration chapel and immediately just know it is a holy place. The peace that comes from Eucharistic Adoration is hard to surpass.

4) Celibate clergy
I know that the East has a strong tradition of celibacy among their monks and bishops, but I am grateful for the West’s tradition of an all-celibate clergy, including parish priests. I think the sign that celibacy gives is needed even in the day-to-day of parish life, and the freedom such celibacy gives to the parish priest is very beneficial as well. (See this post for my defense of the Eastern practice).

5) Ash Wednesday
What is more humbling than walking around all day with a smudge on your forehead? I can’t think of a better way to start Lent than with this great day.

6) Diversity of religious art
There are rooms in my house in which you might believe you walked into an Eastern Christian church because there are so many icons. The Eastern icon is my favorite type of religious art. But I do greatly appreciate the wide variety of Western religious art over the centuries, and believe that this art has brought millions of people closer to Christ over the centuries.

7) The Rosary
It led me into the Church and has been my favorite form of prayer ever since. What more can I say?

8 ) St. Francis of Assisi
My all-time favorite saint is also quite Western as well. I can think of no better model for how to live like Christ (other than Christ himself).

9) Scholasticism
I recognize the potential excesses of a scholastic outlook, but I also acknowledge the synthesis of faith and reason that St. Thomas Aquinas and his colleagues brought to the Church.

10) Recognition of centralized authority/papacy
I have often written on the importance of the authority of each bishop in his diocese, and I think we in the West would do well to learn from the East in regards to regional synods and collegiality among bishops. However, I also think it is highly important that the Church have a place where the buck truly stops. And in the West, we have always (rightly) seen Rome as that place.

11) 59-minute Sunday Masses
Just kidding.

I just finished watching an address given by Houston Cardinal DiNardo at the Convocation of Houston Baptist University. His talk was focused on John 14:6 (”I am the way, the truth, and the life”).

Wow.

I’ll say it again: wow.

If you want to see how someone uses Lectio Divina (“divine reading”) to interpret a Scriptural passage and lead us to a deeper understanding of Christ, take the time to watch his address. It is just amazing. Cardinal DiNardo effortlessly uses Scripture, the Fathers, and the whole Tradition to explain this passage. And it all is for one purpose: to bring us closer to Christ.

This is sooo exciting: the Pope will soon be releasing an apostolic exhortation on the Bible, which will include the input of the Bishop’s Synod on the Bible held in October 2008. I’m holding out hope that he will declare next year the “Year of the Bible”.

Details from Rome Reports:

H/t: Michael Barber over at The Sacred Page.

If you are a member of the Latin Church, the answer, of course, is “yes”. In the West we have a strong tradition of celibate clergy, and those priests who are married – such as Anglican converts – are the exception, not the rule. Celibacy in the priesthood is a cherished tradition in the West, and there has never been a strong movement here to push for married priests.

Thus, Father Laurent Touze, a spiritual theology professor at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, was quite correct to speak of married priests as an “exception” in an interview with Zenit News Agency. However, the good Father went off the tracks a bit when he tried to apply this practice to the Christian East:

ZENIT: With this measure, do you think that one day, celibacy might become voluntary also for priests of the Latin rite?

Father Touze: No, because the Church is understanding more and more the relation between priesthood, episcopate and celibacy. It is something that could be likened to the revelation of a dogma, though it isn’t so at this time; one tends increasingly to understand that a practice must be promoted among all priests and also among Eastern Catholic priests which is truly similar to the one lived in the first centuries.

This statement of Fr. Touze’s shows either an ignorance or a disrespect for the legitimate traditions of the East. As we in the West have a strong tradition of celibate clergy, so too does the East have a strong tradition of married priests (note, however, that their bishops and monks are always celibate). To wish to “promote” a celibate clergy in the East goes against their praxis which has existed for centuries.

Furthermore, it goes against the teachings of Vatican II, which commanded that the traditions of the East be respected by those of us in the West:

“…the Churches of the East, as much as those of the West, have a full right and are in duty bound to rule themselves, each in accordance with its own established disciplines, since all these are praiseworthy by reason of their venerable antiquity, more harmonious with the character of their faithful and more suited to the promotion of the good of souls,” (Orientalium Ecclesiarum, no. 5)

Vatican II also explicitly commends the practice of married priests in the East:

“This holy synod, while it commends ecclesiastical celibacy, in no way intends to alter that different discipline which legitimately flourishes in the Eastern Churches. It permanently exhorts all those who have received the priesthood and marriage to persevere in their holy vocation so that they may fully and generously continue to expend themselves for the sake of the flock commended to them.” (Decree on Priestly Life and Ministry, 16)

Finally, the code of canon law for the Eastern Churches, promulgated by Pope John Paul II, demands that the practice of married priests in the East be “held in honor”:

“Clerical celibacy chosen for the sake of the kingdom of heaven and suited to the priesthood is to be greatly esteemed everywhere, as supported by the tradition of the whole Church; likewise, the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive Church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor.” (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, 373)

It is unfortunate that Fr. Touze chose to ignore these teachings of our Church in his public comments. We in the West should zealously honor our celibate clergy, and should always work to explain and defend the practice of celibacy in the priesthood. But that defense should not come at the expense of our brothers and sisters in the East, who have their own, just-as-legitimate, tradition of married priests.

Misdialed call connects woman who had scheduled an abortion to pro-life help

I can just see her guardian angel moving her fingers to “misdial”!

Today’s Gospel reading addresses one of the most contentious issues in the early Church:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.
I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.
Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away,
not the smallest letter or the smallest part of a letter
will pass from the law,
until all things have taken place.
Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments
and teaches others to do so
will be called least in the Kingdom of heaven.
But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments
will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.”
(Matthew 5:17-19)

Although it may appear clear to us what Jesus means here, it was not so clear to the first Christians. The debate regarding the validity of the Jewish law for Christians divided the Church for decades. Some, such as James, followed the Mosaic law very precisely and did not stop attending the Temple and celebrating the Jewish feasts. Others, however, eventually stopped following the ceremonies of the Old Covenant. And some proposed a compromise between the two extreme positions. This debate underlies much of Paul’s letters and was a constant concern for him.

So how did the Church resolve this issue? Since we no longer practice any of the ceremonial laws of the Mosaic Law, didn’t we in fact “abolish” the law, contra Christ’s explicit command? In my article Abolished or Fulfilled? I did an in-depth study of this issue and found that the  early Church divided the law into different parts, and each part was fulfilled by Christ, but its fulfillment took different forms, depending on the type of law involved.

For example, St. Justin Martyr divided the Old Law into three parts:

(1) Ethical commands
(2) Commands symbolic of Christ (such as the Passover lamb)
(3) Laws due to the hardness of the Jews’ hearts

For Justin, then, only the first type of law was still to be followed, for Christ’s work had fulfilled the others in such a way to make them unnecessary.

Another common delineation in the Law by the Church Fathers was to see two types of Law in the Mosaic Covenant:

(1) Ceremonial Laws
(2) Moral Laws

Christ’s saving works brought an end to the ceremonial laws because his life, death and resurrection brought them to complete fulfillment. But the Christian must still follow the moral laws (such as the Ten Commandments) because they were still necessary to follow Christ fully.

So in fact Christ did not “abolish” the law, but brought it to fulfillment. However, that fulfillment in some cases meant that certain particular laws were no longer necessary to follow.

For those of us who are discouraged by the seemingly constant debates that rage within the Church today should take heart that similarly intense debates also existed at the beginning, and that they were eventually resolved. Sometimes it takes hundreds of years, but the Holy Spirit is always faithful in bringing resolution to our own hardness of heart.

Over the centuries, Christians have represented the Cross of Jesus Christ in a wide variety of forms. The original Cross was most likely a simple one, but meditation on the mysteries of the Passion have lead to more elaborate Crosses which represent many theological truths about Christ’s redemptive death.

One of my favorite Crosses is the “three-bar Cross” which is typical to the East. Here is a good explanation of that particular Cross, courtesy of Fr. Theodore Jurewicz over at Charming the Birds from the Trees:

The Top Bar – The Explanation:
The top bar is the title-board, which Pilate ordered to be hung in mockery over Christ’s head on the Cross. On this board was inscribed: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin (abbreviated to the Greek initials ‘INBI’ or the Latin initials ‘INRI’ in the Western tradition). This is replaced with the Christian inscription: “King of Glory” – below the knees of the angels. On the title-board is inscribed the initials ‘IC XC’, being the first and last letters of Christ’s name in Greek. In addition, just above Christ’s arms we see the inscription: ‘NIKA’, which in Greek means: “He conquers” or “He is victorious.” Frequently, we see these last two inscriptions together: ‘IC XC NIKA’, meaning: “Jesus Christ is victorious” (over death and sin).

The Middle Bar – The Explanation:
The middle bar is that on which the Lord’s hands were nailed. On either top corner we see the depiction of the sun (left) and the moon (right), for “The sun hid its light, and the moon turned to blood.” (Joel 2:31) The inscription: “Son of God” is placed on both sides of Christ’s head, and below His arms we read the inscription: “Before Thy Cross we bow down, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection, we glorify”. The halo of Christ is inscribed with three Greek letters meaning “The Being” or “He Who Is”, to remind us that Christ is the same God Who identified Himself with those words to Moses in the Old Law.

The Bottom Bar – The Explanation:
The slanted bottom bar is the footrest. There is some question of whether it was actually on the Cross of Christ, but it is acknowledged to be a necessary attribute of the Cross, worthy of veneration and prophetically alluded to in the words [Let us] worship the footstool of His feet… (Ps. 98:5). In prayers for the Ninth Hour, the Church likens the Cross to a type of balance of righteousness: “Between two thieves Thy Cross did prove to be a balance of righteousness: wherefore one of them was dragged down to Hades by the weight of his blasphemy whereas the other was lightened of his transgressions unto the comprehension of theology. O Christ God, glory to Thee.” The meaning of this prayer is as follows: the Cross of Christ stood for a scale of justice between the two thieves: for one of them sank in to hell, dragged down by his blasphemous words; and the other, the wise thief, ascended into heaven, because of his repentance. The church fathers attempted to render tangible the thought of the unfaithful thief going to hell for his blasphemy through the just judgment of God (the lower end of the bar), and of the wise thief going to heaven for his repentance and his praise of God (the upper end).

The Images – The Explanation:
On the Cross is our Savior, Jesus Christ. Note that He does not wear a crown of thorns, and that His feet are nailed with two nails. Behind the body of Christ, on either side, are a lance (which pierced Him) and a sponge (which was soaked with gall and offered to Christ to drink) on a pole made of reed or cane. On the body of Christ is depicted blood and water flowing forth from His side. Below the feet of Christ is four Slavonic letters meaning: “The place of the skull became Paradise”. Hidden in a cave under the earth is ‘the skull of Adam’. We are thus reminded that Adam our forefather lost Paradise through the tree from which he wrongly partook; Christ is the new Adam, bringing us Salvation and Paradise through the tree of the Cross. The city of Jerusalem is depicted in the background, for He was crucified outside the city wall.

The Unitive Way
Seventh in a seven-part series
(Previous posts in this series: Part I,  Part II,  Part III,  Part IV,  Part V,  Part VI)

Now we are at the last stages of prayer, the unitive way. This is the way of the “perfect,” those who have totally abandoned themselves to God and His holy will. At these stages, the soul does not experience distractions and has a complete certitude of intimate union with God. There is no tedium or weariness in prayer, even though it is quite intense at this level. This is the highest level of purification: the saint can only make a naked act of faith. He is not dependent on any consolations, either of the senses or the higher facilities of intellect, will or memory; in other words, he does not believe in and love God because of what God does for him, but instead simply because He is God.

Level 7: Simple Union
During the prayer of simple union, all internal faculties, including the intellect and the will, are gradually captivated and occupied with God. What is not captivated? Only the external bodily senses. Otherwise, the soul is totally united to God.

Level 8: Conforming Union
This is also called “spiritual betrothal,” where both the internal and external senses are absorbed in the presence of the divine. At this stage, the person is in “ecstacy” where their body no longer responds to outside stimuli and is completely captivated by God.

Level 9: Transforming Union
If Level 8 is “spiritual betrothal,” then Level 9 is “spiritual marriage.” Conforming union involved the consent of the will to union, but transforming union is the union itself. This is the highest grade of perfection in prayer, and St. John of the Cross said it is “nothing less than a transformation into God.” It is at this stage that deification occurs, and by grace we become more divine than human. Our entire being is captivated by God and everything we do is completely united to God. The soul and God are so united at this stage that they cannot be separated.

The observant reader of this series might notice that I spent much less space describing these three levels than any of the other six. The reason for this is simple: they are so beyond human language, and they have been experienced by so few people, that detailed explanations are impossible. At these stages, one must simply follow the promptings of God as He leads you into complete union with Him.

Hopefully this blog series has whet your appetite for learning more about Christian prayer. The following books all should help you in that process. I would recommend first reading Dubay’s books (especially “Fire Within”), as they give the “lay of the land” that you need before you can really understand the works of the Spanish saints.

• “Deep Conversion, Deep Prayer” by Fr. Thomas Dubay
• “Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and the Gospel-On Prayer” by Fr. Thomas Dubay
• “The Way of Perfection” by St. Teresa of Avila
• “Interior Castle” by St. Teresa of Avila
• “Ascent of Mount Carmel” by St. John of the Cross
• “The Dark Night” by St. John of the Cross

But by far the best way to learn about prayer is to pray! So keep praying!

I recently got the following question by email:

The scriptures tell us that among those born of women there have been none  greater than John the baptist.  So how do we reconcile this with Mary being more blessed than all?

The question is referring to Matthew 11:11, in which Jesus declares:

Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

In this passage, our Lord is extolling the importance of John the Baptist in the plan of salvation. As the last of the prophets, he had the unique role as the forerunner to Christ. Furthermore, his greatness is seen in his humility: instead of his important role leading to pride, John the Baptist chose the humble path, making his whole life one that points to another. As Scripture constantly repeats, it is the humble who are exalted and the exalted who are humbled.

But does this statement mean that John the Baptist is “greater” than Mary? After all, both were “born of women”. To understand this saying of Jesus, one must understand that Jesus spoke in the way of the people around him; in other words, as a 1st century Jew (after all, he WAS a 1st century Jew). One of the common ways rabbis in that time spoke was to make an absolute statement to make a point, but which was understood as one that was not to be taken literally. For example, Jesus commanded that we call no one “father”, yet no one stopped calling their father by that name. He commanded that we cut off our hand if it causes us to sin, and none of his followers actually believed that they should dismember themselves. These “absolute” statements have a way of making a strong point that impresses upon the mind the point being made, but they are not to be taken literally.

But how do we know that this particular instance is an example of this type of “absolute” statement? Because we know for a fact that there is one “born of women” that is greater than John the Baptist: Jesus himself. After all, Jesus was truly born of Mary, and he is far greater than John the Baptist. Matthew himself in his Gospel takes pains to show us that Jesus is both born of a woman and that he is greater than John the Baptist, yet he has no problem in reporting this saying of Jesus in his Gospel. So we know that Jesus highly honors John the Baptist, but also that his statement should not be taken completely literally.

The Dark Night of the Soul
Sixth in a seven-part series
(Previous posts in this series: Part I,  Part II,  Part III,  Part IV,  Part V)

“The Dark Night of the Soul” is a commonly used phrase, but as we saw when exploring the first Dark Night (that of the senses), it is most often misunderstood and misused. The true Dark Night of the Soul is the bridge between the illuminative and unitive ways, in which the soul is purged not of the lower elements of the soul, but instead of the higher faculties of intellect, will and memory.

At this stage, even infused contemplation is not possible; every faculty of the soul experiences dryness. In many ways, it is like a purgatory before death. But God reveals Himself in this darkness, and it leads to total union with Him.

But why is this necessary? Like the first Dark Night, it purges the soul of defects. One might be tempted to think that a soul at this advanced stage of prayer has no real defects, but this is not the case. A few of the defects the Dark Night of the Soul purges include:

(a) Involuntary distractions in prayer. At this stage one can still encounter the inability of the intellect and will to keep focus.

(b) Dullness in prayer. As one grows accustomed to infused contemplation, he can begin to lack full sensitivity to spiritual things. It is a type of spiritual sloth.

(c) Temptation to over-zealousness instead of charity. It is very easy at this stage to desire the same joys for our brothers and sisters in Christ that we overwhelm them in trying to help them. Instead of relying on God to move them forward, we try to force them along.

During this Dark Night of the Soul, the person experiences the final purification of the will. Any egotism, either conscious or unconscious, is replaced by a complete acceptance to the will of God. And that is the point of this stage: to unite one’s will completely with God’s will, so that the soul wants nothing other than what God wants.

After passing through the Dark Night of the Soul, one moves onto the unitive way of prayer, which we will explore in the next (and final) post of this series.