Breathe

No one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ unless he is under the influence of the Holy Spirit.

There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them. The particular way in which the Spirit is given to each person is for a good purpose.

1 Corinthians 12:3 - 7

I'm still old (young) enough to remember tipping my school cap as we passed any Catholic church, bowing my head at the name of Jesus, beating my breast to the Confiteor, overnight fasting before early morning Mass.

I also remember the stern warnings about entering (let alone praying in) Protestant churches, mixed marriages, limbo, purgatory, hell. It struck me then as it strikes me now that there wasn't much love in our religion back then. It was about fear: from fear of God, fear of sin, fear of whatever-there-was-after-death. Every few years the Redemptorists would storm our parish to ensure our fear was in tact. We curiously collected flybuys by way of indulgences to limit our purgatorial confinement, and more curiously, we could perform suffrages on behalf of the dead (Council of Trent Sess. XXV).

For Catholics, acknowledging Jesus as Lord is uncomfortable. What is there to confess if we are cradle to grave Catholics? What happens, no doubt, is that we remain cultural Catholics, seldom/never able or willing to articulate our relationship with Jesus nor able to confess Jesus as Lord. Why on earth are we so afraid?

Our strict liturgies, prayer rituals and devotions have left little opportunity for extemporary prayer, and it's possible we don't possess the language to talk about either our faith or our relationship with our God. It really is something we have to tackle. Enter any primary classroom and listen to the genuine and heart-felt intercessions of the children. How can we maintain that child-like awe for the duration of our lives?

You see, the fact that we have fellow Christians out there who do acknowledge Jesus as Lord is in fact proof of Paul's thesis. There is only one Holy Spirit - and s/he is not Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, Uniting or Pentecostal. And for the myriads ways in which the Spirit is given, it will always be for a good purpose.

 John's Pentecost (John 20:19 - 23) is a beautiful depiction of Jesus breathing on the disciples, and saying, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'. This is followed by that extraordinary pericope about the forgiving/forgiveness of sins. It behoves us to take these verses deadly seriously. If we are to accept the gift of the Spirit breathed into us, then we need to forgive our own failings and limitations, we need to challenge a religious world view that separates us from the generosity of God's love, to heal the past and the sadness wrought of fear-mongering. We must be free to speak from our hearts - free to acknowledge the person of Jesus in our lives.

May the Spirit of Pentecost be with you always.

Peter Douglas

Asking the clergy: Why is Pentecost important to Christians?

May 24, 2017 7
By Jim Merritt  Special to Newsday

Pentecost Sunday, which, this year, is celebrated on June 4 in Christian churches, commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Jesus Christ. This week’s clergy, from three different Christian perspectives, discuss the significance of Pentecost.

The Rev. Michael Sniffen

Dean, Cathedral of the Incarnation, Garden City

Pentecost, which comes after the 49 days of the Easter season, highlights the coming of the Holy Spirit as described in the book of Acts. A Greek word simply meaning “50th day,” Pentecost also describes the biblical feast of Shavuot, the feast of weeks, celebrated 50 days after Passover. Pentecost celebrates the fulfillment of the promise made by Jesus that he would send the Spirit of God to lead his followers in the right way. In John’s Gospel, Jesus says it this way; “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth . . . ” (John 16:12-13)

Important to the feast of Pentecost is the notion that God is not finished speaking to humanity. God’s revelation continues through the work of the Holy Spirit. The Christian tradition is not closed, but rather open-ended. The truth, according to Jesus, is too much for us to bear all at once. So, the Spirit of God leads us over time more deeply into the truth. God continues to challenge and guide us in the ways of justice, freedom and peace all our days. Pentecost celebrates, among other things, that people of faith are never alone in their search for meaning. God’s spirit is among us to lead us and guide us along the way of life. We continue to learn and grow, by God’s grace. God has more to say to us, as he did to the first disciples. On Pentecost, we remember to listen closely for God’s voice speaking a language of love that sets everyone free.

The Rev. John Fendt

New Apostolic Church, Woodbury

In countries such as the United States, Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter are well known even by non-Christians. However, many Christians do not seem to regard Pentecost as highly as Christmas and Easter, even though the fundamentals of faith of most Christians are tied to this day. Fifty days after Jesus resurrected from the dead, “in the place where Jesus’ followers were gathered, there was the sound of a mighty wind and tongues as of fire appeared, resting on each of them” (Acts 2:1-3).

Thus, Jesus’ promise to send the Holy Spirit was fulfilled. Until Pentecost, Jesus’ followers kept to themselves. Christians believe that it was the Holy Spirit who inspired Jesus’ followers to speak openly about his life and teaching. For this reason alone, the day of Pentecost is critical for Christians. Without this crucial event, one can only wonder if Jesus’ teaching would have faded into obscurity or if Christianity might have morphed into a Jewish sect.

In addition, one can also recognize in these events a characteristic that has become fundamental for Christian churches and their members — that is to be witnesses of Christ to the world, i.e., to speak about him and his teaching. This witnessing has served to spread the teaching of Jesus Christ. Another effect of witnessing is that if one is to speak about his or her faith, one must grow in his or her understanding thereof. Pentecost was, in effect, the “coming out” for Christianity and, thereby, is of critical importance to Christians.

The Rev. Andrew D. Cadieux

St. John The Baptist Greek Orthodox Church, Blue Point

Pentecost is fundamental within the life of the Church. Without it, the faith of the apostles would have withered away. This holy day rejoices that the church that Christ founded is able to transcend earthly barriers to proclaim the Gospel throughout the world.

Pentecost is a Judaic feast celebrating the first fruits of harvest, and it is celebrated 50 days after Pascha (Easter). It commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, transforming the disciples into apostles.

In the Orthodox Church, when we are baptized we also receive the sacrament of Chrismation which is a sign of the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Preaching the Gospel enlivens and actualizes this seal. The apostles actualized their gift of the Holy Spirit by preaching the Gospel throughout the world; of specific note, St. Peter preached in Asia Minor and Italy, St. Thomas in India and Persia, and so forth. Pentecost is a religious remembrance that all Christians are called upon to preach the Word of God.

 

Taken up

As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their sight. They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there.’

Acts 1: 9 - 11

There are few areas of our lives today where uncritical acceptance can be excused, whether you are buying a new vehicle or enrolling your child in a school, employing a new staff member or joining a choir. What we use in our decision-making is evidence: technical, observation, experience, history (such as previous success, founder, reputation, quality), and oftentimes - what our friends/family have to say.

The scriptures and tradition present us with a number of challenging propositions. Some of these are condensed and expressed in the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Very clever people spend a great deal of their lives writing about and/or explaining what these propositions are. There are 'traditional', fundamentalist, conservative, liberal, and post-modern thinkers, and all of these contribute to the weighty shelves of libraries and the exhausted terabytes of our computers' memories.

And yet, many of those challenging propositions are accepted as unexamined articles of faith. One of these is the Ascension of Jesus. The usual questions can be asked: Was it is an historical event? What is the purpose of this story? How does it fit with other scriptural and extra-biblical ascensions? Why are there different versions in Luke and Acts? Is my assent necessary in order for me to remain orthodox? Many of these questions can be answered by the clever people mentioned earlier. But the question I want to ask is: What does the Ascension mean for me and for my life?

The Ascension is one of three events recorded in the Gospels that draws us into a deeper experience of the full life that God offers us. While the Transfiguration anticipates the Resurrection, Jesus must undergo his passion and death before revealing the full potential of God's power over death. The Ascension completes the work of the earth-bound Lord as he takes his place with the Father.

What we learn from Jesus' ascension is that we too are time-bound, we have our '4 score and ten' and then we prepare to meet our Creator. This is the time for us to fully realise (both become aware of, and become) who we are before God, and ultimately we seek and arrive at enlightenment - sharing in and sharing God's generous and unbounded love. We too ascend from our daily humanity and become more and more the image of our God. In doing so you and I are slowly reformed and transformed in this process, not by our own endeavours, but by God's own hands.

For me Jesus' ascension is a pointer for my own life, to where I must aim myself, to be for others, to flourish inwardly and outwardly. It is not something that happens to me, it is something I choose, something in which I am a conscious participant. I am elevated, raised to new levels of consciousness of my proximity to the Divine and impelled in my everyday relationships and to work at making a difference by sharing God's love.

Words, emotion, images (art) and sound (music) are extraordinarily powerful means of accessing a deeper understanding and appreciation, but in the Ascension God reaches into our very lives and souls and draws us to himself. He is indeed with us always. To the end of time itself.

Peter Douglas

U.S. church wrestles with changing attitudes, pastoral practice toward L.G.B.T. Catholics

By Michael J O'Loughlin

Michael J O'Loughlin

Last month, the bishop of Lexington, Ky., addressed hundreds of L.G.B.T. Catholics and their supporters who were meeting in Chicago at a New Ways Ministry national symposium, telling them, “Your presence and your persistence in the church is an inspiration for me and for many.”

Bishop John Stowe, OFMConv told America that he accepted the group’s invitation because of a desire to engage in dialogue with Catholics who do not always feel welcome in the church. “Pope Francis talks about a culture of encounter, and that requires a lot of listening,” he said. “What I’ve seen among gay Catholics in my own diocese is a real desire to live their faith and the challenge to do so within a church that is not always accepting or labels them as disordered.”

Bishop Stowe is certainly not the first bishop to address a gathering of gay and lesbian Catholics, but his insights are emblematic of recent shifts in the relationship between the church and the L.G.B.T. community. Support for pro-L.G.B.T. causes, including same-sex marriage, has risen sharply among lay Catholics in recent years.

Support for same-sex marriage among U.S. Catholics closely tracks support among the country at large. Part of that support, several L.G.B.T. advocates said, stems from the increased visibility of gay and lesbian Americans. More people know a family member or friend who identifies as gay or lesbian and are thus more sympathetic to causes they support.

“Who am I to judge?” is one of the defining phrases of the Francis papacy, a statement praised by some Catholics. The pope has followed up that message of inclusivity with concrete actions as well, meeting with a transgender individual at the Vatican and with a gay couple during his U.S. visit in 2015.

But Brian Brown, head of the National Organization for Marriage, told America that those who see in the pope’s words and actions a softening of church teaching on marriage or sexuality “fundamentally misinterpret” his beliefs, pointing as evidence to the pope’s strong words against gender theory, the idea that male and female identity are not biologically fixed.

He notes polls that show Catholics who attend Mass weekly support same-sex marriage at lower rates than Catholics who attend Mass less frequently, yet he acknowledges that the church must do a better job overall in educating Catholics about church teaching. The past few decades have seen a sharp increase in the number of Americans who personally know L.G.B.T. people.

“People need to know not only what the church teaches but why it teaches it,” he said. “There is a deep, deep well of anthropological, philosophical and theological beauty and truth in church teaching, and I don’t think we’ve done a good enough job in conveying that to the next generation.”

American bishops have emphasized different aspects of the church’s teaching in their outreach to L.G.B.T. Catholics and their families. Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark told an L.G.B.T. Catholic group that they would be “very welcome” to organize a pilgrimage to the cathedral in his city. And Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, a delegate to the pope’s global meeting of bishops discussing family issues, said in 2015 that he meets with gay Catholics to understand their perspective and that gay Catholics in relationships could rely on their consciences when it comes to the question of receiving Communion. Meanwhile Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, also a delegate to the Synod of Bishops, has said that gays and lesbians not following church teaching on chastity are not welcome to Communion.

Arthur Fitzmaurice, an Atlanta-based Catholic who through lectures and workshops advocates greater acceptance of L.G.B.T. Catholics in the church, said there have been “a lot of ups and downs” over the past decade. “Catholics in the pews generally accept people in same-sex unions and want the church to be a safe space for them, but there are still pockets in the church in areas where [L.G.B.T.] people feel isolated,” he said.

Despite shifting views among average Catholics, advocates for L.G.B.T. people say the church can still feel unwelcoming. Church teaching that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” has not changed, and the Vatican reaffirmed its ban on priests with “deeply-seated homosexual tendencies” as recently as last December. Some also point to policies that prohibit gays and lesbians from holding leadership positions in parishes and to the termination of openly gay and lesbian employees from Catholic schools and other institutions.

Margie Winters was fired from her position as the head of religious education at a Philadelphia-area Catholic school in 2015 after a parent complained about her marriage to a woman. She told America that dismissals like hers lead some to drift away from the church, taking with them their creativity, energy and faith “We should be about the Gospel,” she said. “We should be about including people, which is what Jesus did.”

Just three months after she was fired, Ms. Winters and her wife were part of the crowd welcoming Pope Francis to the United States during a ceremony on the White House lawn, an event she described as “an incredible privilege.” She continues to be active in her parish and said she has hope that other L.G.B.T. Catholics will also feel welcome in the church.

“With any institution that is as large and has as long a history as the church, any kind of overtures are welcome,” she said. “But I also don’t expect that the church is going to change overnight. I think Pope Francis and others of his mindset are trying to change the tone and the pastoral approach to L.G.B.T. persons, but it’s a long road.”

This article appeared first in America on 18 May 2017

Plain speaking

On that day

you will understand that I am in my Father

and you in me and I in you.

Anybody who receives my commandments and keeps them

will be one who loves me;

and anybody who loves me will be loved by my Father,

and I shall love him and show myself to him.’

John 14:15 - 21

My father had always kissed me goodbye. I was 12. Dad had driven us into town. As we both parted ways, I leant up to him to kiss his cheek. The streets were relatively busy. He looked embarrassed and said, 'I think you're too old for that.' It was one moment among thousands of moments when a new understanding had dawned on me. This one in particular has stayed with me. The revelation that came with my father's gentle, if embarrassing, rebuff was that I was indeed growing up.

John 14 is part of Jesus' farewell discourse. The disciples had already been struggling with Jesus' use of figurative language, and now every question is answered by Jesus with seemingly obscure rather than enlightening responses.

The excerpt follows Jesus' washing of his disciples' feet. In this particular moment Jesus is pulling and dragging his disciples into a new understanding of who he is and who he will be - but this ultimate of all unveilings will not take place until he has fulfilled what his Father has called him to do. The mystery of his death will reveal a Jesus fully alive, who will perfectly image his Father. And Jesus leaves an invitation to his beloved disciples, 'Keep my commandments.' And for those that do, they will in turn will be loved lavishly by both Father and Son, and in an even more extraordinary gesture, Jesus will show himself.

One phrase that parents pull out of the bag when the question is too hard, is, 'One day (when you grow up) you'll understand'. Not so that the question will be forgotten, but to give time for Mum or Dad to think how best to respond. John's Jesus deliberately holds off giving direct answers to save his disciples undue anxiety, but in the end (16:19ff) he speaks plainly:

“Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech. Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.”

John 16: 29

John is patently clear that the practice of faith is loving others, and in doing so, loving God. What this highlights is the responsibility we have as educators not to overwhelm our students with esorteric and impenetrable theology or theory but to build on a foundation of faith and experience meeting God face to face in others.

My father's response was very clear, and while it felt like a slight, I soon understood why he felt that way. And that's okay. I am not at all embarrassed by kissing and being kissed my sons, daughter and grandchildren, and should they find it embarrassing, well, I'll do it anyway.

Peter Douglas

Under the Gaze of Dorothy Day: Living with my grandmother’s faith

Kate Hennessy

 

Dorothy Day

My grandmother, Dorothy Day, believed that to lose one’s faith was the greatest sadness. My mother, Tamar, Dorothy’s only child, believed to her dying day that she had lost her own faith. What can I make of these two interwoven strands of the most influential women in my life? How do I understand my own sense of faith? Do I have faith?

I have often felt that I needed a new vocabulary that speaks to my condition, as the Quakers would say. In fact, I often do not understand what people mean when they talk about “my faith”; they seem to speak a secret language that can feel more punishing than uplifting, more like a proclamation than a way of being. Is there some mysterious transformation that happens inside us when we make a proclamation of faith that I am not seeing?

Growing up with Dorothy and the Catholic Worker as part of my family, I picked up quite a tangle of odd phrases while lingering around the grownups: voluntary and involuntary poverty, Christian anarchism, pacifism, the works of mercy, houses of hospitality, the primacy of conscience. I made what I could of them, growing into them with each passing stage from childhood to young adulthood and now middle age, having interior arguments along the way.

Voluntary poverty was for many years a bone I chewed on as I felt the burden of being raised in involuntary poverty, though this was not so easy to define. At one level, my mother chose a life of voluntary poverty, and it came naturally to her. She did not need much in the way of material goods other than her gardens and tools, her looms and spinning wheels, her kitchen and her books. But as a single mother of nine, she spent years worrying about whether she could put enough food on the table or celebrate Christmas or fix the car or keep the house warm and the water pipes from freezing in the brutal Vermont winters.

But nothing from my upbringing engendered the same weighty feeling and confusion that the basic question of faith did.

Two faces of faith

When I was a teenager, I began visiting my grandmother at the Catholic Worker at Maryhouse on East Third Street in New York City. I would travel down by bus from Vermont during school breaks, leaving the hills and trees, the rhythm of the distinct seasons and a life on the farm that I never expected to leave, to enter the grit of New York City in the 1970s, when it was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. I would be greeted at the double doors of glass and wrought iron by women who were sometimes delighted to see me, sometimes not, then walk up the stairs to that room on the second floor, my grandmother’s room, where she spent the last three years of her life.

Her failing health and loss of mobility became my gain as I was able to spend more time with her, a time of listening to her ruminate on her past, often laughing as she did so, or as she read letters from people around the world—a priest in Uruguay, a friend from Mississippi or a member of an ashram in India. Even as a 16-year-old I felt the pull of the magnet that was my grandmother. But I also began to feel a struggle within myself. I was drawn by the power and luminosity of her faith, but I was deeply loyal and more naturally bent toward my mother’s way of being: unadorned, unspoken and rooted in the natural world.

It was not until I read my grandmother’s diaries that I more clearly understood the pain Dorothy endured as she watched her daughter—the daughter whose birth led to Dorothy’s conversion—leave that very church. In 1965, Dorothy wrote: “I consider the loss of faith the greatest of disasters—the greatest unhappiness. How can one help grieving over friends and relatives. How necessary to pray without ceasing for them.”

I know she was speaking of us. She was so very careful to never impose this pain on me. She never once, that I can recall, suggested that I go to Mass, though when I did, it was so important to her that she would write of it in her diary. What delicacy, what respect she had for a teenager, I can now see.

But at 16 all I could feel was her penetrating and unnervingly direct gaze, a gaze well known by those who often found themselves pinned by it. (Tamar referred to it as “the Look,” which she had, too, though she was unaware of it.) Under that gaze, I felt I had no chance of experiencing anything of the nature and power of my grandmother. Under that gaze, I felt unworthy, particularly when she asked me after I graduated from high school, “Now, what are you going to do, Katy?” It is unfortunate that at that moment all I could see was what she had accomplished, not all those steps, whether deliberate or wildly inspired, she had taken to get there. But truthfully, for years, I wanted nothing to do with a church that could leave my mother feeling she had no place in it, that left her with a burden that seemed insupportable.

I believed for decades, as I think my mother also believed, that in the face of Dorothy’s faith anything less could only be felt as a lack of faith. The force of her faith was so strong and sure. How could Tamar have felt there was any other way for her to express her own? This tension was passed down to me, and I am learning how to untangle the strands on my own terms. Unlike Tamar, I was not raised in the church; and unlike Dorothy, I am slow and cautious in my approach to faith.

Ultimately, I believe that Tamar did not lose her faith and that I simply grew up with two outwardly different expressions of what that faith can mean. Dorothy provided the ritualistic expression of a deeply held faith she came to as an adult, and she lived a life that acted this out in an open and full-bodied way. Though a cradle Catholic, Tamar came to live a quiet faith, unadorned by ritual, and yet one that also imbued her daily life. Dorothy’s gestures were seen by many; Tamar’s were seen only by those who knew her intimately. My mother had an abiding belief in the goodness of life and of people, a keen sense, awareness and perceptivity of those—human, creatures or flora—we live with day to day. “Pay attention!” she would scold me. Pay attention to what is going on, both the joy and the suffering. Be with each other, be there, show up. Tamar’s was a faith that held at its heart the belief that with loving kindness, and perhaps good soil, we will all flourish.

Between mother and daughter

At a fundamental level, Dorothy believed she could see the face of God in those who are destroyed, rejected and forgotten by society, and Tamar believed we all are children of God. What clearer expressions of faith do I need? Entire treatises could be written on either statement. And so I came to understand that what lingered within me, this history of grandmother and mother, contained no divide, no conflict, no exile.

I have spent the past seven years writing about this relationship between mother and daughter, and many people have asked me what surprised me most during the process. Did I learn anything that I had not known? Dorothy and Tamar were both unusually direct and honest storytellers, so there were no great revelations. But there has been a surprise, and it lies within myself: a deepening sense of falling in love with the two of them not only for their profound love for each other but also for the pain that existed between them. And with this comes my own burgeoning sense of faith—even if I have yet to be able to define this.

Of course, this should have been no surprise at all. I had begun the journey believing, knowing that no one can truly examine Dorothy Day’s life without being led to examine one’s own. But the depth and meaning of this surprise are a mystery to me, and this mystery is still unfolding, which is as it should be.

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Kate Hennessy is the author of The World Will Be Saved by Beauty: An Intimate Portrait of My Grandmother. She is the youngest of Dorothy Day’s nine grandchildren. This article first appeared in America, 9 May 2017.