Sometimes I wish I had married a less intelligent wife. As Michael Novak puts it: 'Seeing myself through the unblinking eyes of an intelligent, honest spouse is humiliating.' Years ago she told me that I should go into ministry and apply to become a deacon and off and on I have vacillated between agreeing and being unsure. The thing is, I guess I am under no illusions about the implications of my taking such a step. My goal of becoming an academic specialising in Ethics means that I dedicate myself to the search of truth, but it does not necessarily mean that I have to change. You can believe in the right things and still be in bondage, you can believe all the right things and still be miserable, you can believe all the right things and still be unchanged” (Marcus Borg in The Heart of Christianity). Diaconate, on the other hand means that because one enters public ministry, I would have to make very real changes to the way I live my life. And so if I am to be whole, both are necessary. I suppose this is true - regardless of whether one enters public ministry or not. I just feel so often that the old saying by TS Elliot seems to have been written specifically for me:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
If I had simply listened to my wife, I could have shortcircuited all my meaningless meanderings only to get back to the same place. My writing this novel has revealed it to me even more starkly. I really thought that this was what I was called to do, but it seems everytime I think I have the answer, it moves along. I am going to finish the novel as it is something I have really wanted to write and I enjoy, but I think it will probably be my last one. I have hit the same wall as I did in business, in my dreams when I wanted to become a tennis pro and then journalist. They are ultimately meaningless and leave nothing behind. Sure a writer, if he /she is good, leaves a deposit to be enjoyed even after his life, but a deposit of what? Entertainment? How is that more meaningful than merely living a hedonistic life? I want more. The fire that Jeremiah speaks of burns so strongly within me needs to purify me first and then I need to stop messing around, second guessing God and get on with doing His will. Leaving a legacy that for better or worse, contributes to the deposit of truth.
"I say to myself, I will not mention him, I will speak in his name no more. But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it" (Jeremiah 20:9).
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Compline
I will quit writing on and on about the Breviary, but permit me one last post.
There is no question that my favourite prayer of the day is Compline (aka Night Prayer). I think people may say it is because I am lazy and it is the shortest of the hours! But there has always been something about it: that feeling at the end of a frantic day of activity just before you go to sleep of been able to just surrender into God as opposed to the day when I tend to keep wrestling with Him for control. The short responsory we pray from Scripture every night even says it: Into your hands Lord, I commend my spirit. And then the Antiphon before the canticle: Save us Lord while we are awake; protect us while we sleep; that we may keep watch with Christ and rest with him in peace. I often feel that it is enough to make me want to die in my sleep just to have those as the last words on my lips. The words of the Canticle of Simeon in Luke are the cherry on the top, but I would like to throw out a somewhat dodgy theological opinion on this. Simeon was an old devout man who was promised by God that he would see the Christ before he died and after seeing Jesus, he prayed this prayer (Lk2:29-32) which we pray at Night Prayer:
At last all-powerful Master,
you give leave to your servant
to go in peace, according to your promise.
For my eyes have seen your salvation
which you have prepared for all nations,
the light to enlighten the Gentiles
and give glory to Israel, your people.
There is an element of surrender to this prayer, especially for Simeon. But for us as Christians, is this not also a commission? That we are able to not only die in peace but go out in peace according to God's promise specifically because our eyes have seen our salvation. That this is not a nebulous 'peace' like a tepid pool of water but a simmering pool of lava burning at our core with God's love for the world and consuming all that is impure within us and the world . A peace that is not a passive state of the soul, but an active way of being - of Loving. (with a Christian 'L')
And then finally: The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
Amen.
There is no question that my favourite prayer of the day is Compline (aka Night Prayer). I think people may say it is because I am lazy and it is the shortest of the hours! But there has always been something about it: that feeling at the end of a frantic day of activity just before you go to sleep of been able to just surrender into God as opposed to the day when I tend to keep wrestling with Him for control. The short responsory we pray from Scripture every night even says it: Into your hands Lord, I commend my spirit. And then the Antiphon before the canticle: Save us Lord while we are awake; protect us while we sleep; that we may keep watch with Christ and rest with him in peace. I often feel that it is enough to make me want to die in my sleep just to have those as the last words on my lips. The words of the Canticle of Simeon in Luke are the cherry on the top, but I would like to throw out a somewhat dodgy theological opinion on this. Simeon was an old devout man who was promised by God that he would see the Christ before he died and after seeing Jesus, he prayed this prayer (Lk2:29-32) which we pray at Night Prayer:
At last all-powerful Master,
you give leave to your servant
to go in peace, according to your promise.
For my eyes have seen your salvation
which you have prepared for all nations,
the light to enlighten the Gentiles
and give glory to Israel, your people.
There is an element of surrender to this prayer, especially for Simeon. But for us as Christians, is this not also a commission? That we are able to not only die in peace but go out in peace according to God's promise specifically because our eyes have seen our salvation. That this is not a nebulous 'peace' like a tepid pool of water but a simmering pool of lava burning at our core with God's love for the world and consuming all that is impure within us and the world . A peace that is not a passive state of the soul, but an active way of being - of Loving. (with a Christian 'L')
And then finally: The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.
Amen.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The Benedictus
One of the most poignant passages in the Bible is in the middle of the Canticle of Zechariah where he interrupts his prayer to God to speak tenderly to his newborn baby, John the Baptist. I find that passage a very personal commission and challenge and appropriate that it is included in Lauds (Morning Prayer) to send us out into the day:
As for you little child
you shall be called a prophet of God, the Most High.
You shall go ahead of the Lord
to prepare his ways before him,
To make known to his people their salvation
through forgiveness of all their sins,
the loving-kindess of the heart of our God
who visits us like the dawn from on high.
He will give light to those in darkness,
those who dwell in the shadow of death,
and guide us into the way of peace.
It encapsulates the essential and awesome responsibility that we have as Christians to not only proclaim the Gospel, but the manner in which we are to do so. I find this 'sensitivity' or 'character' of how we are to be and communicate the Gospel, inadvertently but accurately described by a non-Christian, Thoreaux, in Walden: The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
As for you little child
you shall be called a prophet of God, the Most High.
You shall go ahead of the Lord
to prepare his ways before him,
To make known to his people their salvation
through forgiveness of all their sins,
the loving-kindess of the heart of our God
who visits us like the dawn from on high.
He will give light to those in darkness,
those who dwell in the shadow of death,
and guide us into the way of peace.
It encapsulates the essential and awesome responsibility that we have as Christians to not only proclaim the Gospel, but the manner in which we are to do so. I find this 'sensitivity' or 'character' of how we are to be and communicate the Gospel, inadvertently but accurately described by a non-Christian, Thoreaux, in Walden: The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Welcome
'Roma locuta est. Causa finita est.' This saying, attributed to St Augustine, translated means: Rome has spoken. The matter is settled.
This blog is in honour of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and is really an outlet for me to express my view of the world as a Roman Catholic and one struggling to live a life worthy of my calling as a Catholic. I will explore and hope to be engaged, corrected and encouraged by any others that are also on this journey. I do not believe in blind obedience, but I am not a dissenter. I submit myself to the authority of the Magisterium of the Church, Sacred Scripture and Tradition. I am not only spiritual. I am religious. In order to live a mature faith, one must seek to define, however imperfectly, the nature and content of one's belief. Dogma and doctrine are therefore useful, and I would argue, a necessary and even constitutive component of a mature believer's journey.
This blog is in honour of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI and is really an outlet for me to express my view of the world as a Roman Catholic and one struggling to live a life worthy of my calling as a Catholic. I will explore and hope to be engaged, corrected and encouraged by any others that are also on this journey. I do not believe in blind obedience, but I am not a dissenter. I submit myself to the authority of the Magisterium of the Church, Sacred Scripture and Tradition. I am not only spiritual. I am religious. In order to live a mature faith, one must seek to define, however imperfectly, the nature and content of one's belief. Dogma and doctrine are therefore useful, and I would argue, a necessary and even constitutive component of a mature believer's journey.
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