Cor Sacrum Jesu

Today is the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, and it's been one blessed thing after another. Absolutely, sincerely, and truly. However, it's been a productive day. I managed to get done a set of annulment papers that has been hanging fire on my desk for a good long time, as well as saying Mass, processing the daily mail (ordinary internal audit coming in July or August), and having a special holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament, all by one o'clock. At one o'clock, I came off the altar to find Father Crotty of the Fathers of Mercy waiting for me. I had promised him lunch, and had forgotten that I had. So I got lunch twice - which I wouldn't mind so much about if I wasn't really trying to lose weight. Father had a number of needs, including the need to check his e-mail for which he used my computer. No problem, he is a traveling missionary, who has a healing ministry that is very effective and successful.

I took him out for Mexican food and ordered myself a vegetarian quesadilla since, even though it's a solemnity, I like to try to keep Fridays meatless. We talked a lot of shop, which I am not going to go through here; suffice it to say, we exchanged information on the spiritual state of our various ministries, and I got to hear a little bit about how "interesting" -- in the sense of the old Chinese curse -- life in other places in the Holy Catholic Church in America can be. There's always a certain amount of spiritual warfare going on, of course, and working as he does in a milieu of charismatic gifts and open blessings, he runs into that kind of thing probably more than most priests.

I'm trying get the Angelic Warfare Confraternity moving, although it seems to have a power to do this by itself. I need to think about promoting it more specifically in my own parish.

Anyway, before I knew it, it was time for Vespers. I finished my correspondence, but not in time to get out to the post office before it closed, as I have to send some letters out by Priority Mail. First thing tomorrow, I guess.

But I'm avoiding talking about Jesus. Growing up, I always associated the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart with the Jesuit order, and a certain style of devotion rather too sentimental for my personal taste. I am happy to say that I have rediscovered the scriptural roots of the devotion, with much spiritual profit. Particularly as a priest and Pastor, the Sacred Heart is a model to me for understanding my own priesthood. I think I've always doubted my own capacity to love, as I tend to be rather unsentimental, and led by my head rather than my heart. On the other hand, sentiment and passion are really not at the heart of what love is, according to the Scripture. The Latin word for heart, "cor" is the basis of our word "core"; the notion of the heart, biblically, has much more to do with raw, steely spiritual commitment of one's whole person to another than it does warm sentiment. Think of marriage as it is a day-to-day reality, after the wedding dress is put away, the photos are dusty in the album and the garbage needs taking out. Think of Jesus' love. Indeed on the day Christ loved us most powerfully, the day of his Passion, I doubt he was feeling warm fuzzy thoughts. We sinners were busy putting nails into his hands and feet, after all. But he refused not to love; he refused to be refused. And that's the model for me as a pastor, I think - based on the Pastor Bonus himself.

And Jesus himself taught me that.

In the year I was ordained priest, I had an opportunity to go on pilgrimage as spiritual director to group visiting a certain place in the Balkans, where Our Blessed Lady was supposed to be appearing. I don't have to mention the name in print, and won't, because it was, and still is not, officially approved by Holy Church. And that doesn't matter for the purposes of my story. I had promised her blessed Lady that if she kept me safe for ordination, I would go on pilgrimage in her honor at a place of her choosing. It had to be a place of her choosing, because I hadn't any money to go on my own. At any rate, when the notice for this pilgrimage went up on the priory board, I ran to the Prior, and then said, "Father Prior, I'd like to go on this pilgrimage; they are looking for a priest, and although I'm not a priest yet, next week I will be." I didn't make that one (somebody else had beaten me to it); but there was another one that needed to be filled and I went on that.

It was a very irritating pilgrimage. I warned my pilgrims about the spiritual dangers of going to a place to see "signs and wonders" without a heart that was really aimed at contrition and conversion; then was chagrined to find signs and wonders happening all around us. To make a very long story short, and to come to the point in an uncharacteristically abbreviated fashion, the pilgrimage culminated with me leading our group up the side of the local mountain, where there was a war memorial in the shape of huge carved stone cross. We made the Stations of the Cross as we went.

Did I mention that that was the seventh anniversary of the beginning of the apparitions? We had 25,000 pilgrims in a tiny Slavic village. There were literally traffic jams at the crossroads of the town with pilgrims moving in national bodies from one place to another. The mountain was no different. There was a party of Polish pilgrims ahead of us led by a Franciscan friar, who insisted on preaching (with warm devotion, and at great length - I am assuming the former and am certain of the latter) at each one of the Stations. The Stations of the Cross are not something you can really "play through" as in miniature golf, so we American pilgrims waited patiently at each station for Father to finish before we could make our own meditation there ourselves.

At the top of the mountain, there was time for peace and private prayer. I committed a few civil felonies while I was waiting (as in hearing confessions away from the parish church - this was still the time of Communist Yugoslavia) and then settled down to say my Rosary. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon, and we would have sunlight until approximately 9 o'clock at night at that season and latitude. There were broken clouds here and there, but the sun was bright, shining gold in the clear blue sky. Then a cloud passed over the sun, and things changed.

After the cloud passed, the sun was different. It was no longer gold, but kind of dark rosy pink color; it was surrounded by a halo of white-blue light, and shot out purple and rose rays into the sky around it. There was an irregular band of something across its breadth, it was no longer round, and it was pulsing. I saw it and realized it was familiar to me in some way, something that I was used to seeing but not just there. And I wasn't the only one seeing it. A Filipino lady in another group cried out with joy and wonder, "El Sacrado Corazón!" And all of a sudden I realized exactly what I was looking at. The badge of the Sacred Heart - the pulsing human heart crowned with thorns that Jesus showed St. Margaret Mary in the Convent of the Visitation in Paris, the pierced , crowned, flaming Heart that every Catholic has seen a million times on statues of Jesus displaying his Heart,- that was what was pulsing in the sky overlooking the mountain and the town below it. It seemed strange in another sense; I had never imagined the Sacred Heart beating before.

I'd like to say that I was overcome with warm sentiment and emotion, but I wasn't. The feeling was actually more like terror. What was happening was beyond human power, but I didn't want to be deceived. I remember kneeling and praying in a confused fashion something like: " Jesus, if this is from you, I praise and bless you for your glory; and if it's from the Evil One, forgive me for kneeling and I reject it utterly." After a few minutes I realized I was looking into the sun directly without any protection for my eyes, without pain, and apparently without effect to my retinas. I looked over to the carved cross. No bright points on my retina, no sunspots! I had heard people saying that like things had happened to them, but it had never happened to me before. After about 15 minutes of this of this watching the Heart of Christ pulsing in the heavens, shining in glory, another cloud passed over the sun, and when it passed, the sun was back in its golden normalcy, in a clear blue sky.

I am celebrating my 20th year of priesthood this year, and I have seldom talked about this, deeming it a private blessing and revelation, which it is. My personal experience of God is certainly less reliable and probative than the witness of Holy Church. But perhaps I have been remiss in not proclaiming sufficiently the great deeds of God in my own life. In retrospect, the experience for me (I have no idea what the place of the vision in anyone else's life would be) was an answer to the specific prayer that I had been making on becoming ordained as a priest: that Jesus should teach me how to have a pastor's heart. And the point he made that afternoon, apart from many other graces I could name, is that a pastor's heart must be like the Sacred Heart itself- that it must shine like the sun unfailingly upon the hearts of the people Jesus has sent his priest to serve. That has been a very useful teaching for me again and again in my ministry. To seek to be untiringly bright, cheerful, warm, to illuminate souls with that power of Christ's heart, to refuse to be refused - this is to be a pastor after the shape of Jesus' own Heart. There's more I could say, but this is already too long.

Jesus has a peculiar sense of humor, which, the longer I know him, the more I recognize it when it pops up; I find myself invariably and simultaneously instructed and humbled. This feast is become very important for me; what began as a "mere Jesuit devotion" in part of my life has become my own private Sinai, my personal Signadou - the mysterious sign from God St. Dominic saw in the sky at Fanjeaux that confirmed him in his mission to found the Dominican order. Christ is risen, he is truly risen, and the deathless Lord has shown his love-pierced Heart to Peter, to the apostles, and, -last of all -to me, his most unworthy servant. So today is blessed for me, every year.

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Truth Is Irrepressible

I subscribe to Origins, which is the official document service of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. It's a good way to keep track of what's going on in the Church here and abroad. Today I was reading a piece by Archbishop Castro on peacemaking, and in the course of describing the four "legs" of the "table of peacekeeping" he mentioned "truth," and reminded me of the meaning of this particular form of the word in Greek, the language of the Scriptures. "Truth" in Greek is "Alētheia": and that word has a specific connotation. Alētheia is the truth that cannot be hidden, that keeps coming to the surface like a body that won't stay conveniently buried, a truth that keeps breaking into history again and again, because God's power is behind it. The Easter greeting, "Christ is risen! He is truly risen! (Greek: Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!" preserves this notion of the resurrection as a truth that cannot be hidden, cannot be ignored, because it keeps breaking into our lives by the mercy of the risen Jesus.

"Your Word is truth;" ο λογος ο σος αληθεια εστιν. ( John 17:17)

The Greek really has an emphasis not caught by the English translation: The Word which is Yours is Truth (of the kind that keeps breaking in, and that cannot be hidden.)

The Word, is of course the other name for the Son... who is Truth: "I am the way and the truth and the life" (Ego sum via et veritas et vita.) He keeps rising, leaping into people's lives, changing hearts, healing wounds, refusing to stay conveniently out of the world's way. Thank God!

In contrast, of course, the world keeps trying to keep Christ buried. A small case: I was reading the newspaper a few weeks ago, which referred to the town of Bethlehem as "a place believed by some Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ." Now, I ask you, what is this phrase trying to do? Is the author suggesting that some people think that he was born in Chicago? Is there any other town on the face of the earth than Bethlehem that claims to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ? So the point of this fuzzy reference is to refuse to give credence or place to Christ as a historical actor in the history of the world. The necessity of making religion a purely private affair, which is fundamental to the modern project since the 18th century, require writers of a modern sensibility to try to destroy or dismiss the objective reality of what Christ has accomplished by his life, his death, his resurrection, his glorification, and in his establishment of the Catholic Church. The Church is part of that inconvenient truth that keeps surfacing again and again. In spite of the world's attempts to bury him, he keeps showing up in the lives of those who live in communion with him by the Holy Spirit he has sent upon them.

In today's Gospel, the apostles John and James tried to finagle the top seats in glory, much to the chagrin of the other apostles. The Lord points out that what they desire is a noble thing: to share his life and suffering and death and glorification, but that the heights of glory and are for those for whom they have been reserved by the Father. In the meantime, Jesus' people are to seek greatness by imitating the Master by serving each other as he did, he who is willing to take the position of the lowliest slave in the household, for whom no task is too dirty, thankless, or low to do for those whom he loved, whether washing the filth of the street from their feet at the Last Supper, or passionately pouring out his life's blood on Calvary for hearts too cold or preoccupied to make the slightest effort to love him back.

Jesus is the Truth that will not stay buried. May he keep turning up in our life, serving us even in those times that we have forgotten him for a bit. Christ is risen! He is Truly risen!

Baptizing Babies

I got a question about infant baptism today. Living in Kentucky, our Catholics get hit by Southern Baptists especially, who are working out of the Reformed tradition of John Calvin whether they know it or not - and of course most of the Protestants say they're " simply working from the Bible." Unfortunately most of them know a few Bible passages upon which their pastors construct a theology in accordance with the Calvinist pattern.

Protestants pick and choose among Bible passages; Catholics view Scripture as a totality - you cannot ignore passages you do not like - and furthermore, Catholics interpret Scripture as a community, not individuals.

At any rate, this particular difficulty is the "believers baptism" controversy. Protestants disagree with each other on whether infants can be baptized; Lutherans, for instance, have no difficulty with the practice. Certain other radical groups, such as Mennonites, and I believe some of the Reformed tradition, hold that because an infant cannot make an act of the will, it is unable to receive baptism validly. To put it another way, to receive baptism validly, certain Protestant sects demand that the recipient be of age to be able to make an affirmative act of belief in Jesus.
Notice, in passing, that it is impossible to baptize, according to this theory of the sacrament, not only an infant, but a person in a coma, or person suffering serious mental retardation.

At any rate, the traditional scripture passage that Catholics look to deals with the question of infant baptism is Saturday's Gospel of which was from Mark 10: 13-16.

The disciples are discouraging little children from coming to Jesus. Jesus, when he finds out, reprimands the disciples and tells him to let the little children come to him and "do not hinder them." The verb "hinder" is part of the ancient baptismal rite. Peter is asked the same question about baptizing the pagan Cornelius, and Philip is asked the same question by the Ethiopian eunuch who is seeking baptism in the Book of Acts. The question at issue is whether baptism is something we do with reference to Jesus, or whether Jesus is doing something in us through the sacrament. The answer is that Jesus is acting in us. The four effects of baptism can only come by the divine power which he possesses: forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, enabling a life of personal relationship to Father, Son and Holy Spirit by the implantation of the virtues of faith, hope, and charity; the incorporation of the candidate into the Body of the Church and consequent spiritual adoption by the Father; and finally the gift of eternal life.

Jesus finishes with the children by "placing his hands on them" in blessing; this is also the action of Bishop in confirmation which in the ancient Church is always celebrated immediately after baptism.

A small child, therefore, presents no obstacle to receiving The Kingdom of God, and therefore should not be hindered from baptism - this is the same language that we find about baptism in John 3. Little children are indeed passive; precisely because they cannot mount a real act of disobedience they are good candidates for baptism. But they can truly receive things, even before they can make an morally meaningful act of the will; they have no difficulty receiving food, clothing, shelter, the love of their parents, and the love of God.

Baptism is primarily the act of Christ, not our act. In every sacrament we are the recipient of grace. Every sacrament is an act of divine prophecy, making clear the mind of God to the world. In Baptism, Jesus stretches his hand out from his heavenly throne and truly and really plants seeds of the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity in the soul of the child, which he has chosen for himself, and revealed to the world and to the rebellious spiritual powers of the universe, as his own personal possession and beloved. But faith, hope, and charity are habits - powers in a certain state of development as yet unused-which nonetheless have to be used in act before they redound to our moral credit or debit. Nevertheless, Baptism changes us by the power of Christ, and precisely not by our own power.

Extra arguments in favor of the Catholic position:

In addition to the gospel I already quoted, a passage that opens up the possibility of infant baptism in the Scriptures is the story of the jailer in the book of the Acts the Apostles who is baptized by St. Paul "with his whole household". The jailer is a poor man, with his jail in the basement of his house. He is so poor that he has no guards except himself, and when he finds that the jail is wide-open, he is ready to fall on his sword. St. Paul stops him and converts him and baptizes him "and his whole household.) Since he has no slaves (who would guard his prisoners for him), "his whole household" must mean his wife and children. We don't know how old his children were, but it certainly opens up the possibility of an infant baptism (as well as a baptism done by pouring water rather than immersing somebody in the local river. Poor people went to the public baths to bathe).

John 1:9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. 10He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. 11He came unto his own, and his own received him not. 12But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (KJV)

- And therefore little children, however small, can recieve good things from God, including baptism, according to their capacity. For our birth in baptism that makes us sons of God in the Son is NOT "of the will of man, " "but of God."

In addition, circumcision, which brings people into the Jewish people, happens eight days after birth, by the will of the parents of the child and the command of God - not by the will of the child. Traditionally, the eighth day is also the traditional date for baptism for Christian children, who are in a similar way brought into the new Israel and people of God which is the Church by the faith of their parents and the command of God. There is a perfect consonance here..

Believers' baptism is a Protestant innovation from the early modern period. Nobody for three quarters of 2000 years ever believed such a thing. Besides (Romans 6) "do you not know that those who are baptized into Jesus Christ are baptized into his death?" Death comes at God's command, not the act of our will; doesn't it fit that the power of baptism works by God's command, that it comes not by our will but by God's?

None of the passages of Scripture above imply that an act of faith is presently required at the moment of baptism; rather, if you think about this correctly, you will see that it is the virtue of faith makes the act of belief possible. The virtue has to come first before it can be expressed in act. So whenever we see an act of faith, the gift of the virtue must have preceded it.

In an adult, we can usually see the presence of the virtue which makes possible the act of belief even before the moment of baptism. In fact, in an adult, the gift of the virtue of faith usually precedes the moment of the celebration of the sacrament. The sacrament is the visible sign that supernatural grace has been given. But the gifts themselves can be given before the prophetic sign of that grace is made visible in the sacrament.

In a child, that grace may also be given before the sacramental moment, but by the time the sacramental moment has arrived we know it has been certainly given. The act of belief that flows from the virtue of faith comes later, when the child is able to come to the age of reason on moral matters. (Customarily that's about seven years old - and at that time most children make their first confession as well as their first Communion.)

So children can be quite reasonably and validly baptized even when they're very tiny. Nevertheless, the job of parents and educators remains precisely to show those children, bit by bit as they grow up, how to use the powerful and supernatural gifts they were given by Jesus when he baptized them through the Church's ministry.

Laying the Cornerstone

How obscure can I make my blog's title?

As you can see, pretty obscure.

A "xenodochium" is a house for pilgrims. It is the term used by Pope Innocent II (he actually used the more Latin spelling "senodochium") for the Hospital of St. John near the abbey of St. Mary of the Latins in Jerusalem. Yes, "The Hospital " as in the original institution from which the Order of Knights Hospitallers was founded - now the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It's a word with a Greek root and a Latin form. I've been to Jerusalem several times as a pilgrim, and have always been moved by the holy places I have seen, by the history that still lives in those places, though so many move about ignorant of the glory that God as Man has walked the stones of that place, shed his Blood in that place, and beginning with that place has built a spiritual edifice that stretches between earth and heaven, which is the Catholic Church - who has preached the Holy Gospel "from Jerusalem" to the ends of the earth. And the Church is herself a "Xenodochium"- a house and hospital for pilgrims following the voice of Christ up to the new and Heavenly City of Peace. What the Church is in large, my parish should be. So the word 'xenodochium " has great personal appeal to me on many levels.

I suppose you could translate my blog title as, "Jottings from the Asylum," but that really wouldn't be accurate or what I'm about.

I'm writing this in my religious house behind the parish church that sits on this hill in Kentucky, -today's splendid and my seven o'clock appointment has canceled. So it's time, perhaps, to institute a new little project -- to improve my ability to write, and to overcome my foolish, prideful insistence not writing at all until I can write the absolutely last word on a topic- which of course means nothing permanent gets written.

I'm a Catholic religious and priest, but not, obviously, a Hospitaller. I care for small rural parish of farming people, and so my church really is a Hospital - in both senses of the term. The church is not an assembly of saints, but an infirmary to treat sick souls; and it is a hospital in the sense of the Hospital of Jerusalem in that it is a place where pilgrims lodge on their way to their heavenly destination, which is after all, the new Jerusalem of God. There's a number of things I want to do on this blog for myself and for others: I need to get healthier (I'm far too overweight); I need to put my thoughts more frequently on paper, in preparation for other uses; and I need to make a bit of personal contact with my dear friends and family who are so far away from me.

So we'll see how it goes. My friend Alfedis has been keeping a blog for a couple of years, and has inspired me to start my own. I salute you, milady, from afar!

If I can write a page each day I will be writing a lot more than I have been to this point. And, of course, the more I write, the easier writing becomes. So we'll see what develops.