Shadows and Sunshine

The shooting in Aurora CO prompts reflection. What motivated the shooter? My theory: The killer's cold anger at the meaninglessness of existence. Why didn't he kill just himself? Because all living beings participate in this huge charade, which is more exposed when death overtakes more.

On my way home from work a day or so after the shootings I heard the host of a secular talk show speaking with a theologian. The mere fact of such a talk reveals what is missing in our world for so many: a sense of a positive meaning of life and of each person's place in it. Meaning is found, ultimately, only in religion, which makes an absolute claim, beyond opinion.

The Christian religion's claim to meaning is striking: that the dying universe is also a rising one, revealed by Christ's own salvific act of dying and rising. And the meaning of our lives is to participate in Christ's continuing mission of salvation, through our own relationship to God, how we live, and how we interact with others. The world we live in is NOT ultimately meaningless to a Christian worldview. We respond to the world not in angst and anger, but with thanks.

So this day I thank God for this world, for my life and the lives of those I know and care for. Life is a cause for joy, not sorrow, in the face of life's tragedies and shadows.

Why is Jesus' Yoke "Easy"?

In the gospel for today Jesus says, "For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." Mt. 11:30. Our pastor asked, why is this so? He answered, "what you do out of love, is easier to do." My commentary (Living With Christ, July 2012, at 142) reads: Jesus seeks to satisfy the law in accordance with its original purpose, i.e. "when it is serving the end for which it was made."

Is there a link between acting out of love and acting to serve the end for what something is made? Yes, for love serves the other's good, which is the "end" for which the other was made. To serve that end and to love, are the same thing. When I sacrifice for another's good, I love her and work for her proper good, her proper end.

So, Jesus counsels, to carry an easy yoke, a light burden, act out of love, which is to act for the good or "end" of each person.

Nature and Human Nature

Spending a week in the mountains of Colorado brings front and center the beauty and power of nature.  Craggy mountains, wheeling hummingbirds, shockingly bright yellow stars, burbling mountain streams.  During the week I also had the good fortune to read some of Robert Spaemann's Essays in Anthropology, his effort to locate man in nature, and to understand nature and man together.

Spaemann's basic point is that nature must be understood in terms of man, its pinnacle, rather than from below.  This "anthropomorphic" understanding of man, anathema to scientism, shows nature in a starkly different light than the "passive material open to manipulation" that scientism sees.

Nature has a telos, says Spaemann, an anticipation toward an end it has not yet reached, a goal toward which it strives and yearns.  What is that end?  Spaemann quotes Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle:

The ultimate end of the motion of all being . . . is 'the attainment of a divine likeness' (quoting Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book III, 22).  That thought, too, can already be found in Aristotle.  Methexis, 'participation in the eternal and divine,' is the end towards which all things strive, that for the sake of which they do what their nature enables them to do." (quoting Aristotle, De Anima 415b).

Yet because humans alone are able to construe this end as particularly their own, the following applies:  'man is the end of all generation'. (Aquinas, Ibid.)  Only insofar as he transcends nature does the human being recover it.  Only in human beings does what nature really is intrinsically manifest itself.  Why?  Because only in him does nature's purposive structure become free of ambiguity and appear as both free will and the free recognition of a foundation and end he did not posit himself.

Spaemann, Essays in Anthropology, 16.

At the stunning Maroon Bells, to which one travels on a bus in order to reduce human impact, a sign on one of the fourteener's warns potential climbers, "You take care, for the mountain does not care."   Ellen and I went on a hike with a young naturalist, Kyle, who knew the answers to all of our questions and was passionate in his concern for the ecosystem.  I thought and said, "Nature may not care about man, but Kyle, you certainly care about nature!"  In terms of the passage above quoted, and the sign that I read, I thought that the sign more accurately might read, "I care, but I have no hands or arms to act.  I rely on your your arms and legs, your care, climber!"

If nature finds its end in the human being, nature's "highest peak," can't it also be said that man finds his end in caring for nature as his trust, and yearns for his own proper caretaker, the Divinity?  Our telos, our destiny is a divine one: To care, and to yearn for divine caring, to love and to yearn for divine love.

God of My Brothers

More from Karl Rahner.

You have sent me to work among men. O God … ordered me out among men. These men to whom I have been sent are of your choosing Lord … and I must not be their friend, but their servant.

O God, what strange creatures these men are. … They usually want everything but what I’m trying to bring. They want to tell me their little cares and worries … . What a disheartening mixture of the comical and the tragic, of small truth and big lies, of little trials that are taken too seriously and big sins that are made light of!

And what do these men want of me? … they look upon me as some kind of celestial insurance agent, to take out an accident policy for eternity, to make sure you that never  break in upon their lives with the Omnipotence of your Holiness and Justice.

How seldom does anyone say, “Lord what do you want me to do?” How seldom anyone wants to receive the gift of your grace the way it really is: austere and plain, for your honor, not just for our consolation, chaste and pure, silent and bold.

These are the men you have sent me … the field in which you … want me to sow the seed of your grace and your truth …. I don’t mean to say that I am any better than they. I know my own heart, and you know it still better. It’s no different from the hearts of the men I must approach in your name.

When I complain to you of the heavy burden of my vocation … I am acting like a small man who wants to be consoled, who is always thinking of his own sorrows, who can't for a minute forget his own troubles in his own comfort to lose himself in silent admiration of what a great thing it is to spend one's life in unselfishly serving you.

When you assigned me the task of going out among men, you were only repeating to me your one and only commandment: to find my way home to you in love. All care of souls is ultimately possible only in union with you only in the love which binds me to you and thus makes me your companion and finding a path to the hearts of men.

You are waiting to be found in love, and that which is the heart and soul of true love of you, prayer. If I had prayed more I would be closer to souls. For prayer… is not merely a useful aid in my work for souls, the very first that last act of my apostolate.

Lord, teach me to pray and to love you. Then I shall forget my own wretchedness on account of you, for I shall be able to do the one thing that lets me forget it: patiently bear the poverty of my brethren into the land of your riches. Then… I shall really be able to be a brother to them.

Chain Reading

Of course, we've all heard of chain smokers. Well, I'm a chain reader. Some of the posts I've made recently are from the work of Karl Rahner. Rahner happened to mention, or someone did, that Rahner was a big fan of John Ruusbroec, a 15th century mystic. So I couldn't resist the urge to grab a book written by John Ruusbroec. So now I am puffing on that and happen to inhale the following passage.

I found it interesting that human nature is assigned feminine pronouns. I don't know if I have ever heard of the incarnation of Christ referred to as a wedding of Christ with human nature. Even if I had, it struck me as poignant in this passage. What a striking encapsulation of man's fall and Christ's redeeming act this reading presents.

Ruusbroec writes:
"See, the bridegroom is coming. Go out to meet him" (Mt. 25:6). These words, written for us by St. Matthew the evangelist were spoken by Christ to his disciples and to all persons in the parable of the virgins. The Bridegroom is Christ and human nature is the bride, whom God created according to his own image and likeness. In the beginning he placed his bride in the noblest and most beautiful, the richest and most luxuriant place on earth, that is, in Paradise. He subordinated all other creatures to her, adorned her with grace, and gave her a commandment so that through obedience to it she might deserve to to be made firm and steadfast with her Bridegroom in eternal faithfulness and so never fall into any adversity or any sin. But then came the evildoer, the enemy from hell, who in his jealousy assumed the form of a cunning serpent and deceived the woman. They both then deceived the man, in whom human nature existed in its entirety. Thus did the enemy seduce human nature, God's bride, through deceitful counsel. Poor and wretched, she was banished to a strange land and was there captured and oppressed and beset by her enemies in such a way that it seemed that she would never be able to return to her homeland or attain reconciliation.

But when it seemed to God that the right time had come and he took pity on his beloved in her suffering, he sent his only-begotten Son to earth into a magnificent palace and a glorious Temple, that is, into the body of the glorious Virgin Mary. There the son wedded his bride, our nature, and united her with his own person through the purest blood of the noble Virgin. The priest who witnessed the bride’s marriage was the Holy Spirit. The angel Gabriel brought the message. The glorious Virgin gave her consent. Thus did Christ, our faithful Bridegroom, unite our nature with himself. He came to us in a strange land and taught us through a heavenly way of life and with perfect fidelity. He worked and struggled as our champion against our enemies, broke open the bars of our prison, won the struggle, vanquished our death through his own, redeemed us through his blood, freed us through his water in baptism, and made us rich through his sacraments and his gifts, so that, as he says, we might "go out" with all virtues, "meet him" in the palace of glory, and enjoy him forever in eternity.

The quote is taken from the Prologue to the Spiritual Espousals in the book,
John Russbroec the Spiritual Espousals And Other Works
translated by James A Weisman, O. S. B.

Privacy and Propriety

Society imposes limits on what one person can, with propriety, know or say about another.  Once when I was taking a video shot of a student who had been hurt on the soccer field, a teammate chastised me for such an insensitive act.  "Videotaping a person in pain is off limits."  Once I asked a co-worker who declined a beer, "Are you in AA?"  It turns out he was, an association that is to be kept private!  A friend of mine doesn't like it when I ask, "What did that bicycle cost?"  "Hey," she answers, "What business is that of yours?"  (My curiosity here wasn't how much money a person was spending, but how much the manufacturer thought the merchandise was worth.)

There certainly are limits to publicizing the private.   One senses devaluation when something inherently private is publicized.  That, it seems, is one of the chief evils of pornography.  The human sexual act is inherently private and to publicize it is to change it, to demean it, to objectify it, to render it "consumable."  When we do that with people, we degrade their inherent dignity by depicting them as no more than animals in heat.  This is why the paparazzi are despised, at least by the persons whose pictures are being taken.  (The rest of us seem to crave the publicity, perhaps to "cut down to [our] size" the celebrities who fascinate us so.)

Respecting privacy indeed is a form of reverence, a treating something as off-limits, as sacred, as therefore as of inherent value. Politeness in address, and the formality of our dress, bespeak attitudes of respect -- or lack of respect -- towards others.  That is part of why we treat the Eucharist with reverence, remaining in silence after communion, and waiting to recommence the chatter of life until after mass is over.

Privacy is one aspect of a larger concern with "propriety," which "makes an issue of the fittingness of our conduct to our places or circumstances, even to our hopes." Wendell Berry, Life is Miracle, 13. We cannot but act in a context (which includes others) and so should not ignore our influence on others in that context, which supplies a standard for our conduct.  Propriety, thinks Berry, "is the antithesis of individualism.  To raise the issue of propriety is to deny that any individual's wish is the ultimate measure of the world." Ibid, 14.

Berry thinks that questions of propriety, since they are questions of context, are local questions, calling necessarily for small answers.  And he worries that the professions, and science in general, eschew the local, in favor of "big answers that will make headlines, money, and promotions." Ibid., 15.  Berry worries that the local no longer restrains big science, which is now all essentially "applied" rather than "pure," since it is dominated by big corporations who determine what research takes place and when. "Pure" science, if it exists at all, says Berry, "now needs to move fast (and beg hard) to keep its skirts from being lifted by the ever randy and handy corporate giants." Ibid, 17.  As a result, contends Berry, science has failed "to attend to the possibility of small-scale or cheap or low-energy or ecologically benign technologies.  Most applications of science to our problems result in large payments to large corporations and in damages to ecosystems and communities.  These eventually will have to be subtracted (but not, if they can help it, by the inventors or manufacturers) from what has been gained."  Ibid, 21.

I, like Berry, worry that technology -- from medical technology to bicycle technology -- is less and less "governed" by considerations of propriety.  Technology's dynamism seems driven by the corporate search for profits in a "blue sky" of new products, each of which promises ever more refined and mesmerizing effects, at . . . oh, yes . . .an ever higher cost.

Propriety, if Berry is right, means fitting into the local,  the simple, the small, the less expensive.  With an economy recently puffed up by consumerism, and now deflated, maybe attention should again be paid to propriety, and the local and small (but ultimately most helpful) answers it promises.

Finally, while we all need to be sensitive to privacy and propriety, at pain of properly being called "off limits," there also seems to be a scope for questions that try to expose the impropriety of "high tech," expensive solutions to some of our most pressing non-problems.

Read about the picture above:  High Tech Trash.

for the Love of God

from the "Glory of the Lord" vol. 6, pp. 239-245

In these pages von Balthasar talks of the prophet Hosea.

“Something completely new is beginning to surface in Hosea. Israel's falling away from the God of the covenant to the Canaanite fertility gods and their rituals was literally a sinking down to a culticly justified fornication. When the people 'departs' from Yahweh to 'go whoring' (4. 12; 9. 1), this ends in the drastic situation in which sexuality becomes central, the situation that shows the depth of the abandoned and desecrated covenant in a completely new light.… God takes hold of the sexual dimensions of his prophet Hosea in order to portray himself therein in his supra-sexual relationship to Israel. God embraces the sphere of male and female gift of self in the flesh, in order to make use of it as an instrument of revelation on the basis of

Von Balthasar, through quotations from Hosea shows how God and his wrath first strips Israel of it's identity and shuns her. The wind of the Lord shall come, rising from the wilderness: and his fountain shall dry up, his spring shall be parched. Thus the fertile land, the perceptible sign of the covenant, will be dissolved backwards into a wilderness that bears no fruit--precisely the wilderness out of which Israel came to begin with. This is God's judgment: I will strip her ,the unfaithful one, naked and make her as in the days she was born and make her like a wilderness and set her like a parched land, and slay her with thirst.

Unable to maintain his anger, despite her unfaithfulness, he cannot abandon Israel. God recalls his first relationship with his chosen people. From chapter 10 of Hosea, 'When Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son… It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of compassion, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who lifts the child up to embrace it; and I bent down to it and fed it.

And then the God who judges woos his people again. 'therefore, behold, I will lure and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her… And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt".

Quoting von Balthasar:

“Thanks to the mediating obedience of the prophet in the most intimate sphere of human life, there occurs in Hosea a disclosure of the heart of God which is new and unheard-of when compared with all that has gone before. In pure obedience, Hosea overcomes… the world of the mythical deities which have fallen prey to sexuality, and is able precisely through this, to bring to light the love of God which is supra-sexual. God suffers under Israel's false love affairs, he cannot bear them, and we see him as it were wavering between mercy on the guilty wife and the necessity of punishing her ruthlessly. 'What shall I do with you, O Ephriam?' (Hosea 6:4). It is love that wins the day: 'how can I give you up, O Ephriam!… My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephriam; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst' (Hosea 11:8-9). Although the word is not used, it is the kabod [glory] of Yahweh that reveals itself in a new, incomprehensible depth as the love that lies beyond wrath and has to do with God's being God, with his absoluteness. But this unattainablely transcendent element is at the same time profaned by human beings in the world and humiliated by them, since it's love carries it to the point of defenselessness. The adulteress is purchased for fifteen shekels of silver…’ (3-2), so that she may sit still beside the Lord once more. And he 'allures her seductively' (2-16) so that he may speak to her heart. Hosea is commanded to 'love' this woman: this is the word that expresses the love between man and woman ('hb), with the difference that in him it is selflessly helpful while in her it is lascivious and full of desire. Hosea’s message meets with no greater acceptance than that of the major literary prophets: 'The prophet is a fool! The man of the Spirit is mad!' (9-7); he is expelled from the land. Even in this fate, he declares something of the ‘foolish’ God's love as he runs after a faithless harlot. God has begun to do something here that will not come to a stop until Golgotha."