For our Western Friends Who Get into This Kind of Thing

meanwhile, back at the ranch....

Okay, it's not "our" ranch, but you get the idea...

Okay, I just find this one funny....

Think of it as release during this "end of the season" political time in America.

Kurt Luchs -- Things Politico and Frodo

First Things' On the Square today features humorist Kurt Luchs offering humorous but quite lucid and serious considerations on power, politics and the lessons that can be drawn from The Lord of the Rings. His analysis is entitled Frodo in a World of Boromirs. Read one excerpt here; then go read it all here.

It is no longer shameful to lust after power so long as one lusts for the good
of the people. In the words of Boromir, speaking of the One Ring, “For you seem
to think of its power only in the hands of the enemy: of its evil uses not of
its good.” The only rejoinder, in Frodo’s words to Boromir, is that “we cannot
use it, and what is done with it turns to evil.” Yes, it’s that simple. And as
you ascend the levels of authority, from city to state to nation, it only
becomes more true.

Ecumenical Patriarch addresses Roman Synod

Thanks to Sandro Magister for the text of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomeos I of Constantinople to the Roman Synod on the Holy Scriptures. His All Holiness' intervention came on Saturday, 18 October 2008 in the context of a Vespers Service. The main celebrant was His Holiness Benedict XVI, Pope of Rome.

Josephus Flavius over at Byzantine, Texas in an article recounting an interview with Archimandrite Ignatios Sotiriadis, includes the quote:

"It was a historical event, in which a Pope celebrates vespers before the representatives of the entire Catholic episcopate and on this occasion, doesn't exercise his ministry as teacher, but concedes it to the second bishop of the Church when it was not yet divided."

Sandro provides the whole address. Read it all.

To whet your whistle, herein are a few snippets...

[I]n having today the privilege to address Your Synod our hopes are raised that the day will come when our two Churches will fully converge on the role of primacy and synodality in the Church’s life, to which our common Theological Commission is devoting its study at the present time.
...
At each celebration of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the presiding celebrant at the Eucharist entreats “that we may be made worthy to hear the Holy Gospel.” For “hearing, beholding and handling the Word of life” (1 Jn 1.1) are not first and foremost our entitlement or birthright as human beings; they are our privilege and gift as children of the living God.
...
The challenge before us is the discernment of God’s Word in the face of evil, the transfiguration of every last detail and speck of this world in the light of Resurrection. The victory is already present in the depths of the Church, whenever we experience the grace of reconciliation and communion.

As part of Pope Benedict's response to the Ecumenical Patriarch's intervention, he is quoted as saying:

Your Fathers, that you have quoted so many times, are also our Fathers, and ours are also yours: if we have common Fathers, how could we not be brothers?

Indeed.

Neuhaus on Hauerwas and the Church

First Things' On the Square has Fr Neuhaus at his best discussing the nature of the Church. Consider these excerpts:

It follows that to speak of Christ and culture is to speak also of the Church and culture. Within this society, or any society, the Church is a distinct society. The word Church is from the Greek ekklesia, which means a gathering of the people who are called out. In theology, the subject of the Church is called ecclesiology. Some Christian traditions—the Orthodox and Catholic, for instance—have a full-orbed ecclesiology, an understanding of the Church through time that encompasses continuity with the apostles, councils, martyrs, saints, and authoritative teachers, all inseparably bound by a sacramental communio that is nothing less than communion with Christ through time.

...
American Babylon is our culture. It is not the culture of our choice, although, given the other cultures on offer, it may be the culture we would choose if we had a choice. It is certainly the culture in which we have been chosen and for which we have a measure of responsibility. The irrepressible human aspiration toward the transcendent, toward that which at the core of our being we know to be our destined home, takes many different forms. That aspiration is our religion, whether or not we call it by the name of a religion. The aspiration may be stifled or misplaced, but it cannot be denied; at least it cannot be denied for long. When, as Augustine teaches, our loves and loyalties are rightly ordered, we recognize that the only satisfactory alternative to Babylon is the City of God. At least this is how Christians see the matter.

...

By the bye, the article is related to Fr Neuhaus's current project, a book to be entitled American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile. I have a feeling it will be a must read book!

The whole article is available here.

PS Deep in the mysty recesses of time, I had an ethics class with Professor Hauerwas. On that basis, I encourage you that if you ever have the opportunity to attend a lecture by the Professor, do so. He has that kind of quirky passion usually only found in Old Testament professors (think Father Paul Tarazi) and is quite entertaining as well as thought provoking.

Deacon Preaching

Below, our beloved Deacon's notes for his sermon on the Healing of the Widow's Son. The notes give only a glimmer of what was a fine sermon!

In Catholic theology, Christ comes not simply to save something called the "soul," but rather a much more mysterious reality called the person.
Let us consider why it is that the human person, created as we are in the image and likeness of God, is mysterious and what it means for us to walk with God in a life in Christ.
Each of us is unique and unrepeatable.
We share, paradoxically, the quality of being unique.
We are able to experience empathy for others in which we see our unique selves in the other human person.
Empathy for others in their moments of hardship makes it possible for us to transcend our own uniqueness and enter into a sense of sameness between our neighbor and self.
It is often in moments of great need that we come to see our neighbor as really and truly neighbor.
Jesus established the second of the great commandments: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Collectively, we rose in many ways to help our neighbors when we were attacked by Moslem terrorists on Sept. 11th.
We came to our neighbors’ aid when hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast a couple of years ago.
Daily, when we hear that clear small voice that directs our hearts to action, we love our neighbor as our self.
Ideally, all this happens in a way that both preserves, and even sharpens, our uniqueness while making manifest, sometimes unbearably so, our sameness.
Like St Cyril of Alexandria said of the distraught widow: “I want, like Christ, to have "mercy upon the woman, . . . that her tears might be stopped, . . . [and see] the cause of her weeping . . . undone".
But because my communion with God is impaired through my sin, my communion with my neighbor is also wounded.
Because of my sin in the face of human suffering, and the renewed and deepened communion that contact within that suffering offers, I fail.
So often the face of human suffering, with its invitation to experience our common humanity, overwhelms us.
My concerned for my neighbor is well intentioned, but in the final analysis I am only able to lower my friend into his tomb.
Respect for each human person and empathy for our shared humanity are pleasing things.
As in Gal 5 these basic truths of respect and empathy must be transformed by the grace of Christ into "the fruit of the Spirit . . . love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control".
We are warned by St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians that it is only through cultivating a life in Christ through the Holy Spirit can we put to death in us:
"the works of the flesh [that] are evident, which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like" (vv. 19-21).
These works of the flesh need to be healed since it is these that are the cause of lost resolve in the face of human suffering.
These preoccupations of self blind me to the mystery of the human person since each degrades the person and changes my stance toward him from an end into a means.
Changing him from a human person into an object.
Standing unrepentant in my sins before God in Whose image and likeness I have been created, I do prefer to think that God saves souls and not that He saves persons.
There is a cleanness, a simplicity to the idea of a soul.
This simplicity does not require from me an acceptance of a life of communion with other human persons in their embodied uniqueness.
The salvation of the person, the person in all his uniqueness, however, is an invitation to live a life of respectful communion.
Christ comes to save people, not souls.
Christ gives people life in its full abundance, not amorphous souls.
Again, St Cyril:
Christ raised him who descending to his grave.
The manner of his rising is plain to see.
"He touched," it says, "the bier and said 'Young man, I say unto thee, arise.'"
How was not a word enough to raise him who was lying there?
What is more powerful that the Word of God?
Why then did he not work the miracle by only a word but also touched the bier?
So that we "might learn that the Holy Body of Christ is productive for the salvation of man."
In Christ, human flesh becomes "the body of life" and is "clothed with [divine] might."
To be saved, to have salvation, to be in Christ, means that we are not only liberated from sin, but are united once again to one another.
St Cyril says: Christ has entered into our sinfulness and has delivered us "from evil works, even from fleshly lusts" so that He "may unite us to the assembly of the saints."
Christ unites each unique human person to all others through love!
Jesus commands us: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Life in Christ returns to us the transcendent possibilities of our own full humanity.
We can love one another and need not fear the weight of our shared humanity.
As Christ said to the widow’s dead son, "…I say to you, arise.”
In Christ, life everlasting is given to us in and through his Church.
Let us lift up our hearts.
Let Jesus raise us, as He raised widow’s dead son, to true life and joy in Him guided by and nurtured in His Church. Amen.

[Inspired by Fr. Gregory Jensen]

O Virgin Pure

Another version of "O Virgin Pure" by St Nectarios.