Church, It's Time.

I will be out of town helping my father and step-mom move into their new apartment in Branson MO starting tomorrow morning. So, for the next few days I may not be blogging much. As a result of this family obligation I will also miss the big celebration going on tomorrow in St. Paul.

No, I'm not talking about the Taste of Minnesota. I'm talking about the 30 bishops and numerous other clergy who will be joining several thousand other people to wlecome Co-Adjutor Archbishop John Neinstedt to our Archdiocese tomorrow.

Sorry, Archbishop Neinstedt.

In this case family comes first, and I imagine you would approve. I will miss all the pageantry of being there when the papal legate reads the Letter of Appointment from His Holiness Benedict XVI.

The choirs, The music, The Mass, The party afterwards.

[Sigh]

But I'll use the occasion to get up on the soap box now and preach one more time about the need for unity in the Church.

Church, it's time.

We need to rally around our visible point of unity. We need to do it, because our new Archibshop has chosen as his motto "Ut Unum Sint" = "That They May Be One." It will appear prominently on his Episcopal coat of arms. Yes, I know that coat-of-arms stuff sounds kind of old-fashioned, but it's also kind of cool.

That's also the prayer of our Lord Jesus for His Church, as recorded in John 17:21-22. He prays this prayer for us before the Father.

It's also the title of Servant of God John Paul II's 1995 letter, appealing for unity inside the Catholic Church and also seeking reconciliation with our closest Christian cousins, our Eastern Christian brothers and sisters, as well as with other ecclesial bodies.

But, it's not only that. It's also a way of life, of thinking and living in and with the Church.

You know, I didn't start life as a Roman Catholic out this way almost a decade ago. I was more the "cafeteria-style" Catholic back then. Like Julie Andrews, I had a "few of my favorite things" which I clung to. Eucharist. Social Justice. Reconciliation.

I held these treasures close to me when I felt inscure in the storm. Everything I disagreed with or just didn't understand in the Catholic faith, I had little time for.

But as I got more comfortable with the Faith I began to do some exploring. Then, I found to be true what G.K. Chesterton reported in his little treatise The Catholic Church and Conversion:

"At the last moment of all, the convert feels as if he were looking through a little crack or a crooked hole that seems to grow smaller as he stares at it; but it is an opening that looks toward the Altar.

Only, when he has entered the Church, he finds that the Church is much larger inside than it is outside. He has left behind him the lop-side-edness of lepers' windows and even in a sense the narrowness f Gothic doors; and he is under vast domes as open as the Renaissance and as universal as the Republic of the world."
Ironically, I have found greater freedom and expansiveness in submitting myself (I hate even to use that phrase but is the only one that fits) to the Church's living magisterium. This new freedom is greater by far than anything I ever knew in all my years of academic research, theological exploring or pastoral free-lancing. I only wish that I had come to this place earlier in my life.

We all have the opportunity to do that, to renew that commitment to Catholic truth, in a significant way with the arrival of our new Shepherd and Teacher.

Mindfulness and Minding the Store

A little meditation, prompted in part by today's reading from the Rule of St Benedict on the kinds of Monks (RB Chapter 1).

I've been dealing a lot recently with the interior state of openness and mindfulness. Sometimes, I think, however, we get so preoccupied with the inward Light that we fail to fully utilize all of the tools at our disposal which our Lord has left us in order to bring us to Himself.

One such tool is, of course, that inward stillness or mindfulness which allows us to receive that Light and hear that voice. Discernment of one's own thoughts is one hallmark of that inward state of grace.

However, in true Christian spirituality nothing divine is ever solely an inward mandate. Christianity is a religion of the interior, that much is true. But it is also a religion of the exterior, of the physical, and of objective truth. When we cease moving between these two loci of inward contemplation and external guidance, then I think we find ourselves in danger of moving off of the Path. To be authentic to the Benedictine tradition and to Christian faith we need both to practice mindfulness and also to mind the store.

Benedict certainly recognized this danger which seems to be inherent in the monastic state. Reading today's excerpt from the Rule, I was struck by the fact that two of the types of monks he disparages seem to have taken themselves and their own "spiritual journey" with the utmost seriousness.

However, Benedict chastises both the Sarabaites and the Gyrovagues for displaying similar tendencies. Both groups seemed self- absorbed, with no external referent, either in the form of guidance from an external authority, or through the discipline of belonging in a commited way to a definite community.

The third kind of monks, a detestable kind, are the Sarabaites. These, not having been tested, as gold in the furnace (Wis. 3:6), by any rule or by the lessons of experience, are as soft as lead. In their works they still keep faith with the world, so that their tonsure marks them as liars before God. They live in twos or threes, or even singly, without a shepherd, in their own sheepfolds and not in the Lord's. Their law is the desire for self-gratification: whatever enters their mind or appeals to them, that they call holy; what they dislike, they regard as unlawful.

The fourth kind of monks are those called Gyrovagues. These spend their whole lives tramping from province to province, staying as guests in different monasteries for three or four days at a time. Always on the move, with no stability, they indulge their own wills and succumb to the allurements of gluttony, and are in every way worse than the Sarabaites. Of the miserable conduct of all such it is better to be silent than to speak.

Passing these over, therefore, let us proceed, with God's help, to lay down a rule for the strongest kind of monks, the Cenobites.

In my own experience I have found a corrective to these tendencies in two different directions. First, one way to mind the store is by belonging to and being responsibile to a definite community... a monastic house of formation, a parish, or some other group where one can regularly check-in.

In God's heaven there are no "lone rangers." There is no chorus of just "me and Jesus." A part of that community membership is finding and keeping faith with a spiritual director. One cannot easily relate to an entire group of people, be it a dozen or 13,000 other Christians. And there is something very salutary in meeting with someone else one-on-one on a regular basis, and treating that relationship as a divine appointment.

Sometimes it's as simple as pouring out one's heart and asking "am I crazy for feeling this way or what?" I know that in 12 step communites there is a similar group practice known as "check-in." People go around the circle and share "what's up" with them. It's kind of messy, and probably not where I am at this point in my life. But the point in both spiritual direction and this modern day group-hug equivvalent is the same: a call to individual accountability and growth.

Because we are Christians, and Catholic Christians at that. we are also called to another form of accountability. It is less face-to-face than spiritual direction, but just as powerful and even more necessary for our growth in spirit.

We are called to respond in a positive way to the Magesterium of the Church, that body of teachings from the group of Bishops in union with our Holy Father the Pope. They help us understand what it is that God wants us to do.

It's a tough discipline to pursue in this do-it-myself, I-did-it-my-way world. But it's also a sure way to avoid running aground spiritually. I spent a lot of years trying out different spiritualities, finding truth in the Bible, prayer, spiritual techniques, theological study and a dozen other religious pursuits. However, it was not until I made a commitment to study and be changed by the truths taught in the Roman Catholic Church that I began to see and find my life moved concretely in a God-ward direction.

Not that I have arrived, or am even close to getting "There." But I am definitely closer to God's heart now than I've ever been before in my 50+ years. And for that I am very thankful.

Mark, His Words.

Today is the Feast of St Mark, that follower of St Peter who codified the apostle's memories of our Lord into the gospel which bears his name.

Appropos of yesterday's episcopal appointment of Bishop Nienstedt, here are some words from the Office of Readings which highlight the ancient self-understanding of the Church as a world wide teaching, praying, organized body composed of leaders and laity:

(warning: Irenaeus is the master of the run-on sentence)

Saint Irenaeus of Lyons (about 130-about 208), bishop, theologian and martyr

Against Heresies, I, 10, 1-2

The Church, though dispersed throughout the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples faith in one God, the Father Almighty, "Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them" (Ex 20:11; Ac 4:24); in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the coming, birth from a virgin, passion, and resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord; and his manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father "to gather all things in one," (Ep 1:19) and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord and God, Saviour and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, "every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess" (Ph 2:10-11) him, and that he should execute just judgment towards all…

The Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although scattered throughout the whole world, carefully preserves it as if occupying but one house. She also believes these things as if she had only "one soul and one and heart" (Ac 4:32); she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down with perfect harmony, as if she possessed only one mouth. Although the languages of the world are varied, the strength of the tradition is one and the same.

For the Churches which have been planted in Germany do not believe or hand down anything different, nor do those in Spain, nor those in Gaul, nor those in the East, nor those in Egypt, nor those in Libya, nor those which have been established in the central regions of the world. As the sun, that creature of God, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and enlightens all men that are willing to come to knowledge of the truth.

I like being part of this Church.