Christ – Mysteries and Manners

The Chosen and Eyewitness Testimony

December 14, 2021

I watched The Chosen Christmas special episode this past Sunday. Although I could have done without the long musical intro, and setting aside evangelical vs. Catholic understandings of Mary’s experiences of the virgin birth (for a Catholic perspective, see here), I wanted to note something I really love that this series does in this episode, as well as in the first episode of season 2: the writers try to imagine not only the experiences of the first followers of Jesus when they met him and followed him during his ministry; they also try to imagine what it might have looked like for these disciples after the death, resurrection, and ascension, as they began translating their experiences of Jesus into written accounts that later would be gathered into the New Testament Scriptures. It’s something that we do not consider enough.

For me, the best part of the Christmas episode was the way in which the writers imagined how details of the Christmas story came down to us. There is a beautiful focus on the Magnificat (Lk: 1:46-55) and Mary and Joseph’s encounters with the “messengers” (Lk: 1:26-48; Mt: 1:18-24) and the fact that Jesus, like a spotless lamb set aside by shepherds for sacrifice in the Temple, was “wrapped in swaddling clothes” by his mother (Lk: 2:7). These are details which, if we believe them to be accurate in any meaningful sense, must have been reported to the evangelist Luke ultimately by Mary herself.

The Chosen writers have Mary Magdalene come to visit the mother of the Lord shortly before she dies to be given the privilege of carefully writing down the words of the Magnificat and delivering them to Luke on Our Lady’s behalf.

Obviously, we have no way of knowing if this is how the information was transmitted to Luke, and perhaps this scenario is not very likely, but there is nevertheless something very beautiful about the show emphasizing Mary Magdalene’s role as “apostle to the apostles” even years after the resurrection and her initial announcement to them of the good news (cf. Mark 16:9-11, Matthew 28:1-10, Luke 24:10-11, John 20:1-18).

It is clear to me, regardless, that there must have been a special relationship between Mary the mother of Jesus and Mary Magdalene — as they were profoundly united together by witnessing the suffering of Jesus and standing beneath his cross as he died (John 19:25). In the episode, Mary Magdalene movingly calls Mary “Mother,” and the mother of Jesus says that Mary Magdalene has always been “like a daughter” to her. Mary Magdalene’s role as one of the very first witnesses of the resurrection would also, no doubt, have united her in a special way to Mother Mary, who accompanied the apostles “and some women” in prayer in the Upper Room as they awaited the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (Acts 1:13-14).

The traditional site of the Upper Room on Mt Zion in Jerusalem

Unfortunately, much of the scholarship on these questions since the 19th century (and a disheartening view into a lot of Catholic seminary formation) is well summarized by Father Casey Cole, OFM on his Youtube video here. He critiques the show because it imagines the apostles John and Matthew taking notes on their experiences with Jesus: “[the creators] treat the Gospels as if they were eye-witness accounts, written down as they were happening,” he says, disapprovingly. Such an approach, he contends, causes scripture “to be treated as nothing more than a literal, entirely straightforward account of events.” Clearly, he is thinking about sola scriptura and un-nuanced views of the inerrancy of scripture here. But he also proffers the common view that the Gospel writers were primarily “theologians”, not historians, interested in portraying Jesus according to the needs of their “faith communities”—and not very interested with factual accuracy at all.

I’m always puzzled by this thesis, as if people 2,000 years ago were so unlike people today that they were mysteriously un-curious about facts. What the Chosen series does well is to help us imagine these people as if they were real human beings, and consider how they might respond to the amazing events they experienced.

The evangelist Luke himself, at the beginning of his Gospel, actually claims to be transmitting the accounts of eyewitnesses and seems rather intent on accuracy:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received. (Luke 1:1-4)

Anglican priest and theologian Richard Bauckham, in his brilliant and well-researched work, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, offers a corrective view on the origin of the Gospels. Here’s a taste, but if you’re interested in this topic I highly recommend diving into the whole work:

The full reality of Jesus as he historically was is not, of course, accessible to us. The world itself could not contain the books that would be needed to record even all that was empirically observable about Jesus, as the closing verse of the Gospel of John puts it. Like any other part of history, the Jesus who lived in first-century Palestine is knowable only through the evidence that has survived. We could therefore use the phrase “the historical Jesus” to mean, not all that Jesus was, but Jesus insofar as his historical reality is accessible to us. But here we reach the crucial methodological problem. For Christian faith this Jesus, the earthly Jesus as we can know him, is the Jesus of the canonical Gospels, Jesus as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John recount and portray him. There are difficulties, of course, in the fact that these four accounts of Jesus differ, but there is no doubt that the Jesus of the church’s faith through the centuries has been a Jesus found in these Gospels. That means that Christian faith has trusted these texts. Christian faith has trusted that in these texts we encounter the real Jesus, and it is hard to see how Christian faith and theology can work with a radically distrusting attitude to the Gospels.
Yet everything changes when historians suspect that these texts may be hiding the real Jesus from us, at best because they give us the historical Jesus filtered through the spectacles of early Christian faith, at worst because much of what they tell us is a Jesus constructed by the needs and interests of various groups in the early church. Then that phrase “the historical Jesus” comes to mean, not the Jesus of the Gospels, but the allegedly real Jesus behind the Gospels, the Jesus the historian must reconstruct by subjecting the Gospels to ruthlessly objective (so it is claimed) scrutiny. It is essential to realize that this is not just treating the Gospels as historical evidence. It is the application of a methodological skepticism that must test every aspect of the evidence so that what the historian establishes is not believable because the Gospels tell us it is, but because the historian has independently verified it. The result of such work is inevitably not one historical Jesus, but many.
[…]
All history — meaning all that historians write, all historiography — is an inextricable combination of fact and interpretation, the empirically observable and the intuited or constructed meaning. […]
I suggest that we need to recover the sense in which the Gospels are testimony. This does not mean that they are testimony rather than history. It means that the kind of historiography they are is testimony. An irreducible feature of testimony as a form of human utterance is that it asks to be trusted. This need not mean that it asks to be trusted uncritically, but it does mean that testimony should not be treated as credible only to the extent that it can be independently verified. There can be good reasons for trusting or distrusting a witness, but these are precisely reasons for trusting or distrusting. Trusting testimony is not an irrational act of faith that leaves critical rationality aside; it is, on the contrary, the rationally appropriate way of responding to authentic testimony. Gospels understood as testimony are the entirely appropriate means of access to the historical reality of Jesus. It is true that a powerful trend in the modern development of critical historical philosophy and method finds trusting testimony a stumbling-block in the way of the historian’s autonomous access to truth that she or he can verify independently. But it is also a rather neglected fact that all history, like all knowledge, relies on testimony. In the case of some kinds of historical event this is especially true, indeed obvious. In the last chapter we shall consider a remarkable modern instance, the Holocaust, where testimony is indispensable for adequate historical access to the events. We need to recognize that, historically speaking, testimony is a unique and uniquely valuable means of access to historical reality.
from Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Chapter 1

For a more direct rebuttal of Father Cole’s take, see Catholic apologist Trent Horn’s response here.

Why does our view of the Gospels as transmission of eyewitness testimony matter? It matters for much the same reason that going to specific places in the Holy Land does. The reason the ancient Church preserved these places and wrote these Gospels is because it was convinced that something utterly unthinkable actually happened. Christianity is not a literary story, or vague theological reflection cobbled together by the needs of various “faith communities.” It is a testimony about real events, or it is nothing. To appropriate Flannery O’Connor’s famous quip on the Eucharist, “if it’s just a symbol, then to hell with it.”

I appreciate that The Chosen show takes the historicity of the Gospels seriously, and as a work of art helps us enter imaginatively into the lives of these people. It seems to really embody St. Ignatius’ teaching on imaginative prayer. We are human, so abstract ideas are not enough to nourish faith. God himself, having made us, knew this and took on flesh and bones to meet us in our poverty. We need to set aside abstracting the Gospel stories into oblivion in order to meet him in his.

Here and There

December 9, 2021

In the Holy Land, the Roman Catholic churches have a wonderful obsession with the word hic or “here” in Latin. (In truly Western fashion, I suppose, we like to be exact.) In several, you will find a specific spot underneath an altar with such an inscription. “The Word was made flesh here.” “He was obedient to them here.” “John, the precursor of the Lord, was born here.”

The same motif appears in the liturgies. At the various churches on the holy sites, you don’t celebrate the Mass of the day; rather, you celebrate the Mass of the place. In the church over St. Peter’s house in Capernaum, next to the synagogue where Jesus first taught about the Eucharist, we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi. In the chapel in the cave of the shepherds, we celebrated Christmas. In the chapel on Calvary in the Holy Sepulchre, we celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. And of course, in the tomb of Christ, we celebrated Easter.

Even in the Gospel readings for these liturgies, the Church reiterates the idea of “here” by inserting little points of emphasis: “in this place,” “on this mountain,” “outside this tomb.”

Some of these locations may be more exact than others, of course. One of my favorite places, and one that is about as accurate as you can find, was this rubble staircase:

These are first-century stone steps that Jesus climbed up from the Kidron valley on his way to Caiaphas’ residence, where he was tried, mocked, and imprisoned. You can see the mount of Olives on the left, in the distance. I imagine these stones cannot have forgotten the touch of his feet.

This pilgrimage reminded me how concrete and tangible the Christian faith is. It isn’t a vague, “spiritual” abstraction, or moral philosophy, a set of timeless principles that can apply anywhere, anytime. Christianity is rather stubbornly factual, historical, concrete. It is news, not literature or ethics. It insists on particular people in particular places at particular moments. It happened: here, here, and here. We don’t begin the story with a poetic “once upon a time” — rather, with mundane, journalistic precision: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas…” (Luke 3:1-2). As Bishop Barron observed in a recent homily, it would be like saying, “In the first year of the presidency of Joseph Biden, during the second year of the coronavirus pandemic, when Kathleen Hochul had been governor of New York for fourth months and Francis the Pope for eight years…”

It’s bracing, because visiting these places, where things happened, where Mary said yes and Joseph sought shelter and the man stretched out his withered hand and the people ate their fill of the loaves and Peter walked on water, challenges me to consider how I have responded concretely in my own life. Faith, to be real, needs to take on flesh somehow. Where? Here.

I was talking to a friend who went on the pilgrimage, who said that originally she felt no strong desire to go because of her faith in the Eucharist. “Jesus is present in every tabernacle, in every Church around the world,” she told me — and she is right. She felt no need to go to specific places in the Holy Land. She said she had even been willing to sponsor someone else going in her stead. And yet somehow, the priest leading our pilgrimage convinced her to go.

Her perspective changed the moment she laid eyes on the sea of Galilee. It meant so much for her to be there.

True, God is present everywhere, and, for the ancient Churches East and West we know he is present in a particular, dare I say, localized way in the Eucharist. And I think that gift flows directly from God’s fondness for what some people call “the scandal of particularity.” C. S. Lewis explains it best:

To be quite frank, we do not at all like the idea of a “chosen people.” Democrats by birth and education, we should prefer to think that all nations and individuals start level in the search for God, or even that all religions are equally true. It must be admitted at once that Christianity makes no concessions to this point of view. It does not tell of a human search for God at all, but of something done by God for, to, and about Man. And the way in which it is done is selective, undemocratic, to the highest degree. After the knowledge of God had been universally lost or obscured, one man from the whole earth (Abraham) is picked out. He is separated (miserably enough, we may suppose) from his natural surroundings, sent into a strange country, and made the ancestor of a nation who are to carry the knowledge of the true God. Within this nation there is further selection: some die in the desert, some remain behind in Babylon. There is further selection still. The process grows narrower and narrower, sharpens at last into one small bright point like the head of a spear. It is a Jewish girl at her prayers. All humanity (so far as concerns its redemption) has narrowed to that.
(From Miracles, Chapter 14)

Most people will not be given the opportunity to travel to the particular places in the Holy Land, and God in his mercy comes to us wherever we are. But whether one can go or not, it matters that he was conceived there, born there, grew up there, lived there, taught there, healed there, died there, and rose there. In some strange way, the omnipresent, omnipotent Lord makes himself close to us by embracing the limits of space and time. The one “whom heaven and earth could not contain” is hidden for nine months under the heart of a young girl from Nazareth, and then held in her arms.

Here.

Jesus, on his own turf

December 7, 2021

I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land from November 26 to December 5. Going in the midst of a pandemic was a strange experience—Israel shut its borders the day after we arrived—and the sites that usually are swarmed by long lines of pilgrims were almost empty. It was a huge gift to be in those sacred places with space and time to sit and to be.

A few people have asked me, “What was it like to be there?” I’m still trying to answer that question. But something that comes to mind is an experience I think many of us have had in our every day lives. Remember what it was like to make a new friend, who became a good friend? Perhaps it was your roommate in college. You spend lots of time with that person, you have wonderful conversations, you go to class together and stay up late writing papers and studying for exams, and after a while you get the sense that “yes, I know her really well!” But then, your friend invites you to her house for a holiday. You meet her parents, talk with her siblings. You see where she grew up. You walk around her neighborhood. You see old photos on the walls, or childhood drawings. You see whole other sides to her personality emerge while she is around her family. She is still the friend you know, but you suddenly realize how much more there is to her that you did not know.

That is what it was like to be in the Holy Land. I felt this in Galilee especially, but also in Jerusalem. Of course, in some ways, I was already familiar with Jesus. I grew up Catholic. I studied theology in college. I have even spent a lot of time reading and rereading the Gospels. One of my favorite hobbies is to look up research on archeological excavations about biblical places. I pray. But to wake up in Magdala itself, right next to a first century synagogue where Jesus very likely preached, to watch the sun rise over the sea of Galilee where he calmed storms and upon which he walked (and where Peter walked, too, for a few brave moments!), to hear the soft waves on the shore and hear the birds calling overhead, to walk through Capernaum and glimpse the ruins of Peter’s house where four intrepid locals once let down their paralyzed friend on a mat through the roof, and stand on the site of the synagogue where Jesus shocked everyone with talk of gnawing on flesh and drinking blood (John 6), to see the rubble of Chorazin on the lonely hill (“woe to you…” Mt 11:21), to look down from Mount Tabor where Jesus climbed up with Peter, James, and John, to gain a real sense of the distances between places, how long it took him to walk from town to town, to take in the landscape and the hills, to hear the voices of the people speaking Arabic and Hebrew, to see the ancient olive trees in Gethsemane, a sycamore in Jericho like the one Zacchaeus climbed… all of this seemed to make Jesus seem both more real and more mysterious to me. It’s hard to explain, but I do think it is rather like the experience we sometimes have with our good friends. We think we know them well, even if on a vague, abstract level we accept the fact that there are whole parts of them and their history we don’t have the slightest inkling about. But then if we see them suddenly in some new context, strange to us but integral to them, in which a wry humor or fiery temper or local accent suddenly appears that we had never known in them before, we at once experience a deeper understanding of and a greater unfamiliarity with them, a new closeness as well as a greater distance.

It’s humbling.

sunrise over the sea of Galilee, from Magdala

looking from the mount of Olives and the Dominus Flevit church toward Jerusalem

Listening

July 5, 2020

I haven’t written here in a while, although I’ve thought about it a lot. I think the people who read this include mostly friends, friends of friends, former students, parents of former students–folks interested in education. A lot of them Catholic or Christian. Whenever I write, I write with those folks in mind.

The horrifying events in our country in the last few weeks have provoked a lot of thought and reflection in me, and I am still working through how to respond.

One thing I do know is that I have a lot to learn about the injustice and suffering people of color have experienced. So I have been doing a lot of listening. And reading. And praying.

But I’ve realized that saying nothing at all is problematic. I don’t want silent activities to excuse me from speaking the truth.

And yet I want to be aware, to the degree I can, of what I do not know, and to avoid pontificating on experiences I have so much to learn about. I want to learn.

So a good amount of my “social media” posting these days (I mostly just use Facebook) has been sharing helpful voices who have been teaching me a lot.

Here’s what I will say here.

I had a conversation a few years ago with a dear friend about the art of listening. About how good listening does not actually mean just remaining silent while someone else speaks, but that good listening involves responsiveness. In conversations, that good listening can look like making gentle and intentional eye-contact, nodding, and most importantly setting aside the ideas swirling around in your own head, and resisting the urge to use the time the other person is speaking to formulate an answer rather than to receive their communication with open-ness and love. After the other person has finished speaking, good listening can involve gently putting what the other person has said into your own words and submitting your interpretation to her, to see if you have really understood.

In that spirit, I’d like to share with you some voices I have been listening to, who are teaching me a lot. For now I’m not going to do any interpreting or rephrasing, but I will include excerpts. Please do take the time to go read and listen.

“Some Thoughts for those who want to listen” from a black Catholic:

There are many correct responses to our current situation, so you’ll have to pray about that. I know some of you are freaking out about whether or not to post, make art, be silent, reach out, etc. I can’t really answer that for you, but I can offer a small suggestion. One thing you can do is to make an effort not to say any of the above things in a discussion about race, and pray for the Holy Spirit to open your heart and mind. If a BIPOC sister in Christ is opening up to you, she may very well feel terrified while doing so. She may be bracing herself for dismissive comments. Strive to honor her vulnerability.
2. We know you know that racism is evil. What we’re unsure about is whether you believe it really exists, exists to the degree that people say it does, can spot it in yourself and others, and are willing to actively work against it.
3. As a fairly traditional Catholic, I don’t want to have to cite rogue Jesuits or questionably Catholic sources. I cringe at them, too. But many of my admired Trad priests are silent right now. Honestly, that is heartbreaking. It makes me feel emotionally and spiritually orphaned by those I’ve made an effort to revere as Father. I’ve experienced the deep love of Christ in the Eucharist, and God my Father, and at the end of the day, their love is more than enough. At the same time, it helps to know that those who stand in Persona Christi are able to recognize the realities I face and take action. That those who are often willing to “afflict the comfortable” over other matters of morality are willing to take a stand in this one, too.

From David French: “American Racism: We’ve Got So Very Far to Go”

We each like to think we’re not unduly influenced by our immediate environment and culture. That’s a phenomenon that affects other people, we believe. I’m the kind of person who has carefully considered both sides and has arrived at my positions through the force of reason and logic. Sure, I’ve got biases, but that only matters at the edges. The core of my beliefs are rooted in reason, conviction, and faith.
Maybe that describes you, but I now realize it didn’t describe me. I freely confess that to some extent where I stood on American racial issues was dictated by where I sat my entire life. I always deplored racism—those values were instilled in me from birth—but I was also someone who recoiled at words like “systemic racism.” I looked at the strides we’d made since slavery and Jim Crow and said, “Look how far we’ve come.” I was less apt to say, “and look how much farther we have to go.”

“Reflections From a Token Black Friend” by Ramesh A. Nagarayah:

The length of my journey makes me inclined to be more patient with others in this process, as it’s taken me this much time to wake up. We should all be reasonably patient with one another, but I would encourage individuals to not be patient with themselves and to treat these issues with the urgency they deserve. The anger on display over the past week should exhibit the need for change.

To start learning about Gloria Purvis and what she has experienced as a Catholic speaking out against racism on her show:

I honestly think racism is demonic. I think it’s something we’ve never bothered to contend with seriously in this country. We haven’t done it on a spiritual level. We haven’t done it in terms of our policies to really try to effect change. We’ve done things like the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which are good, but I think we still have far to go.
There is this attitude of, “Why aren’t you satisfied, Black people? It’s better than what it was.” That is an unfair question. Why should we be satisfied with anything less than being considered sons and daughters of the King and treated with that same dignity and respect that we deserve? To be satisfied with anything less than that is to be satisfied with anything less than the Gospel, and that’s not what we want.

There is a lot going around about critical race theory. Here’s a good place for Christians to start understanding and engaging: “Reflections from a Christian scholar on Social Justice, Critical Race Theory, Marxism, and Biblical Ethics“:

I’ve tried to apply the biblical principle of being “slow to speak” (James 1:19), but I’ve been convicted recently about joining a particular thread of the (inter)national conversation taking place among those who share my faith in Jesus Christ and want to support truth and justice without compromising on principles peculiar and integral to our faith—principles that they are afraid might be stealthily replaced by rhetoric from other, incompatible frameworks of thinking.
[…]
If you believe in original sin (Genesis 3, Romans 5), you have to admit that any sin originates in the human heart. Sin might be aggravated by circumstances, but circumstances don’t cause sin. However, the conclusion that the solution to racism is for people’s hearts to change is true but incomplete. If people are born in sin and people build a society, that society will be structured in ways that reinforce whatever sins dominate the hearts of those who build it. Therefore, even if many people’s hearts change a few generations later, those structures might still perpetuate the problems associated with that society’s “original sins.”

Last (for now), I have been loving Fr. Josh Johnson’s podcast. He is pastor for Our Lady of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Louisiana. Here is an episode on “Police Reform, Removing Statues, and Catholic Speakers.”

Here is his episode on “Healing the Racial Divide”.

Keep listening and learning, friends.

Repetition and remembering with Mary of Bethany

April 4, 2020

James Tissot (French, 1836-1902). The Ointment of the Magdalene (Le parfum de Madeleine), 1886-1894. Opaque watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper. (Source) *Some Christians over the centuries have identified the unnamed woman in the Gospels’ account as Mary Magdalene, and some have identified Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany.

Sometimes during the days leading up to and including Holy Week, I like to imagine what was happening on each day two-thousand years ago in the life of Jesus.

So what happened today, Saturday?

According to John’s Gospel, “six days before Passover” (12:1) and the day before Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem on the donkey (cf. 12:12-15), Jesus came to Bethany and had a dinner with his disciples, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (whom he had very recently raised from the dead, as told in John 11). At this dinner, Mary “took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment” (12:3).

It’s such a beautiful moment. Mark and Matthew also mention this episode, but seem to place it on Tuesday of Holy Week (more on the chronology here). They identify the dinner as taking place “at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper” (Mk 14:3, Mt 26:6) — perhaps the leper he cleansed earlier as recounted in all three Synoptic Gospels? — and neither Mark nor Matthew identify the woman’s name. Although, ironically, in both their Gospels, Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.”

Which it has.

A similar episode of anointing by an unnamed woman occurs in Luke 7:36-50, but not in the context of Holy Week. Rather, this anointing takes place much earlier in Jesus’ ministry, and it is quite different from the anointing in Mark, Matthew, and John. An unnamed “sinful” woman approaches Jesus in the house of a Pharisee and anoints his feet with her tears. When the Pharisee (also, interestingly, named Simon) objects, Jesus tells a parable about two men who owed money to a moneylender, who forgives them both. The one who was forgiven the greater debt loves the moneylender “more,” as Simon begrudgingly admits. Jesus says to him,

“Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. ⁴⁵You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. ⁴⁶You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. ⁴⁷Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
⁴⁸Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”
⁴⁹The other guests began to say among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”
⁵⁰Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”
Luke 7:36-50

There’s a lot of controversy in biblical circles about how–or whether–these different accounts can be reconciled. Eleonore Stump, in her marvelous work on suffering Wandering in Darkness, suggests that perhaps the woman in both accounts is Mary of Bethany. Her first encounter with Jesus occurs in Luke’s story, where she hears about Jesus and, uninvited, boldly approaches him with tears of love and repentance. Her life is changed forever. She becomes a disciple, along with her sister Martha and brother Lazarus.

Lazarus later dies, and both sisters are devastated. Jesus arrives on the scene late. “If you had been here, my brother would not have died,” they both tell him. Mary, in particular, seems withdrawn in this story–she does not go out to meet Jesus, but only comes when Martha tells her quietly that the Master is asking for her (Jn 11:20, 28-29). Jesus weeps. And then he raises Lazarus after the man has been dead four days, prompting the amazement and adulation of the people and their willingness to sing “Hosannah” the next day on his entry to Jerusalem—and prompting also the Pharisees and religious leaders’ final determination to kill him.

It is in this context that the Saturday before Holy Week dawns, the day before his entry into Jerusalem (just two miles away). And Mary of Bethany at this dinner with Jesus and her brother, newly restored to her, anoints Jesus (once again). Eleonore Stump comments on this passage in a beautiful meditation you should slow down to read:

The wildness in Mary’s actions on the first occasion of her anointing him, in Simon’s house, is still there in this second anointing, after the raising of Lazarus; but it has a new form now. On this second occasion, Mary’s actions are not scandalous. Rather, they express her understanding of Jesus’ plan, her recognition of his love for her, and her love of him in return; and they are set in the context of her ongoing history of relationship with Jesus. Those who know her story, and that must be virtually all those present on this second occasion of anointing, will understand her action as a re-enactment of her first anointing. Her repeating of her original anointing is, therefore, a recommitment to Jesus, and in a deeper way. Mary picks this way of expressing her reaction to his raising of Lazarus because the as-it-were liturgy of the repetition gives weight to her act. The unrestrained abandon she showed in her original anointing had its loveliness, but it had an out-of-control character about it as well. In the second anointing, because she is choosing in quiet to recreate her earlier action, there is not only control but also power behind the unrestrained character of what she does. (366)

I love the solemnity and power that Professor Stump perceives in this second anointing, and her insight that Mary’s act is liturgical. And isn’t that what we do too, during Holy Week? Solemnly and lovingly re-enact those events so dear to the Church’s memory?

Some biblical scholars have also pointed out that this moment is the anointing of Jesus as Messiah (which, as you know, means “Anointed One”), a title he has often resisted to adopt openly up until the moment when the crowds hail him as son of David and king of Israel. His anointing as Messiah is the same as his anointing “for burial”, as Jesus says to Judas and the others to who object to Mary’s prophetic act.

Stump continues,

It is hard to imagine [Mary] being double-minded or uncertain about [Jesus’] love of her after this. […] The surrender of love of her action has an authority about it, as we can recognize by considering how very different the reactions of the onlookers must be this time. The first time Mary anointed Jesus, the other guests must have been a bit afraid of her, wondering what else this crazy woman was likely to do. This time the onlookers will be a little in awe of her. The courage behind her action this time is not desperate; it has strength and discipline in it now. This time the story does not say that she wept when she anointed him. (Ibid)

How beautiful, and how fascinating and human. Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus a second time, just days before his death, in act of gratitude and love and dignity. How moved he must have been. She takes him, and everyone in the room, back to an occasion of profound vulnerability for her, in order to re-enact the most precious moment of her life, in celebration of the miraculous resurrection of her brother and in mysterious anticipation of Jesus’ own death and resurrection.

In this anointing, then, Mary manifests the glory Jesus planned for her, in both senses of glory. Her standing in her community is here the mirror image of what it was when she anointed his feet the first time. And there is now something luminous and great about her. She is very different now from the frightened but fierce, shamed and shameless person she was when she anointed Jesus the first time. Now she is both powerful and lovely. (Ibid)

I would like to think that in modestly attempting to re-enact or at least remember the specific events of these last days in the earthly life of Jesus, we can join Mary of Bethany in honoring him with trust and gratitude and awe.

Divine Art: “Something we can hold in our hands and love”

December 9, 2019

The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe features prominently in the beginning of Willa Cather’s sparse and beautiful novel Death Comes for the Archbishop, a story based on the lives and friendship of two French Catholic missionary priests in the southwest. Today is the feast day of Saint Juan Diego, so it seems like a good time to return to a fascinating scene and discussion in the novel that explores the miracle he experienced.

Father Latour, later the “archbishop” of the novel’s title, is a fictionalized version of Bishop Jean-Baptiste Lamy and, like his historical counterpart, is contemplative and intellectual. He and his more emotive friend Father Joseph Vaillant (who is based on Joseph Machebeuf, eventually the first bishop of Denver) have an interesting conversation in the opening part of the book. Both of them have just listened to a young priest retelling the story of the miracle of Juan Diego’s tilma and the roses. Both friends are deeply moved when they hear of how Our Lady converted millions to Christianity in the matter of a few years, as they, too, are in mission territory in the vast expanses of the new archdiocese of Santa Fe.

Latour later observes to his friend, reflecting on Juan Diego’s experience of the apparition and the image on his cloak,

Where there is great love, there are always miracles…. [They] seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always. (50)

It is a beautiful and thought-provoking interpretation. Indeed, Cather ends first part of the novel with his words, as if to emphasize that everything else that comes afterward in the novel should be considered in these terms. Latour’s description suggests something of the miraculousness of the every day– if we could only see and hear “what is there about us always”. It makes me think of a favorite epigram of Emily Dickinson: “Not revelation–tis–that waits / But our unfurnished eyes.”

And yet… there is something distinctly modern in Latour’s interpretation of miracles too, as if they are more a matter of adjusting one’s internal, subjective perspective than bumping into something unexplainable in external, objective reality. His words are particularly strange when you consider the story itself; what is the miracle of Our Lady’s appearance to Juan Diego if not an instance of “faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off”?

Taken too far, Latour’s characterization of miracles might move us toward Thomas Jefferson’s famous rather ribboned version of the bible.

But setting aside for the moment its possible problematic theological implications, I think his description is an important interpretive key to the novel. There’s another way Cather might be inviting us to conceive of Latour’s words here, especially when you consider them alongside his friend Father Vaillant’s very different description of the event.

Vaillant, moved almost to tears by the story, says fervently, “The miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love” (50).

In my senior thesis in college, in which I focused a lot on this scene, I summarized the differences in the two friends’ descriptions of miracles this way:

The bishop locates miracles as occurring within interior human perception, whereas Father Joseph locates them as occurring in nature, in the external world. Father Latour seems to define miracles as a process—of refinement, clarification or sharpening; but Father Joseph seems to define miracles almost as objects: indeed, they seem rather unsettlingly personal and tangible—they can be touched, even held “in our hands.” Miracles, for Father Joseph, are interventions into nature. But Father Latour distances his definition from the idea of divine intrusion, of “faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off,” and places it instead within the context of corrected human perception. And of course, one cannot hold that in one’s hands!

Or can one?

Now, I think there is a way in which these views might be harmonized–or at least brought much closer together. What if we considered them as different descriptions not just of miracles, but of art?

I mean, one could argue that miracles themselves are a kind of special divine art. All of nature is divine art, of course, but when God intervenes in nature He’s making a rather unique statement. So maybe there is a kind of analogous connection there.

But I think there is also textual justification for looking at these two definitions as descriptions of art. The conversation between Latour and Vaillant occurs in the context of the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and that story’s miracle explicitly involves a work of art: the image on Juan Diego’s tilma, which we are told looks “exactly as She had appeared to him on the hillside” (49). The mantle, especially in its strange properties and marvelous preservation over hundreds of years, becomes a kind of “miraculous portrait” that we can “hold in our hands and love.”

Maybe in this scene, Cather is suggesting that art (literature in particular?) can achieve two things: it “refines” the reader’s interior perceptions, our ability to see the world as it truly is, and it offers us a kind of tangible object of wonder and beauty to hold and to treasure. The first description concerns what art does for us, the second more what art is in itself.

Why does any of this matter?

I think these two “roles” of art are often in tension with one another. They are like two poles that pull the artist in different directions. On the one hand, art should be about “refining perceptions”—that is, correcting our vision, or even challenging our assumptions about what art is and can be. I think (in my very inexperienced opinion) that a lot of modern art (and literature) likes to push boundaries for this very reason. Contemporary art is very much about changing the way we see things, perhaps especially art itself.

On the other hand, art should also be about creating “something we can hold in our hands and love”— that is, something grasp-able, accessible, that moves us with its beauty. This kind of art is more content with being something beautiful than with engaging in mind- and category-bending acrobatics.

I think my favorite examples of art, both literary and visual, do both of these things, but I think I am drawn much more to the Father Vaillant side. Theologically, I’m also more drawn to his view of miracles. They are real, they are out there, they aren’t just in my head, they happen.

But as Father Latour points out, we do need the “eyes and the ears” to perceive them, and this takes the healing of our perceptions. “Whoever has ears to hear ought to hear” (Mk 4:9).

“Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I say to you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, but did not see it, and to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.” (Luke 10:23-24)

*San Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin* by Raul Beroza

Silences, Empty Houses and Poetry

August 30, 2019

One of my favorite writers, Heather King, while reflecting on her pilgrimage seeking silence and prayer, recently observed, “I see that a lot of the ‘noise’ for which I blame the world is really noise inside of me!”

Oh, yes.

When people ask me what brought me to my new job, or what caused me to leave my old one, I have been saying things like, “I wanted more time to think” or “write” or even “be human.” Those are just other ways of saying I wanted more silence, more space. I thought, if I didn’t have to grade papers all the time, or fret about tomorrow’s lesson plans, I’d have more time to pray! To write that novel! To be involved in my community! To really flourish!

And I have had more time, it’s true. And I have been writing more. And it’s been wonderful.

But I also find myself filling a lot of that time with Columbo episodes, and NPR, and podcasts, and plenty of social media scrolling.

The “noise inside of me,” you see. Or perhaps concerted efforts not to listen to it.

Jesus, that expert on human nature, said once that when an evil spirit is driven out of a person, it wanders “through arid regions searching for rest but finds none” and, upon returning “home,” finds it “empty, swept clean, and put in order.” And then the spirit brings back lots of its demon friends and “the last condition of that person is worse than the first” (Matthew 12:43-45).

My gloss on that rather terrifying parable is that this pattern applies to other kinds of evil spirits, too—less alarming but perhaps therefore more insidious: spirits of exhaustion or discouragement or burnout or busyness. We get rid of them, we think, by changing jobs or going on retreat or embarking on a pilgrimage. We set aside real time for prayer. We get ourselves situated, “swept clean and put in order”, if you will. But notice that Jesus begins his description of the recently freed soul as “empty.”

Free from that troublesome spirit, yes, but free for what?

Without something to fill the space inside us, we may just fill it with noise, or invite the old spirits in through the back door so we don’t have to hear the echoes in the empty house.

In Leisure: The Basis of Culture, Josef Pieper explains,

Leisure is a form of that stillness that is necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. Such stillness is not mere soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul’s power, as real, of responding to the real — a co-respondence, eternally established in nature — has not yet descended into words. Leisure is the disposition of perceptive understanding, of contemplative beholding, and immersion — in the real.

Since I’m leading a seminar on poetry this fall, in which I propose that poetry develops in us habits of attention that help us read ourselves and the world better, I think one way I might fill my new empty spaces of time is by memorizing some poems. Poems aid us, I think, in filling silence well without resorting to distraction, because they help us re-attend to the world. Lyric poems in particular often have that companionable voice that can visit us in our clean-swept houses. Emily Dickinson knew all about that:

(1251)
Silence is all we dread.
There’s Ransom in a Voice —
But Silence is Infinity.
Himself have not a face.

I might add, though, that poems like hers often offer us that “Ransom” without thereby rescuing us from the silences we all need to confront.

Persistent Concerns

November 26, 2018

I was teaching a senior elective a couple of years ago called “Christian Authors,” and I remember trying to teach my kids about this idea of the “persistent concerns” of a writer– the issues that an author keeps coming back to, over and over again, in story after story, book after book. It’s a hard thing to teach in a one semester course because you can only really see it if you have read lots of things that one person has written.

A wonderful professor of mine in college, Dr. Roper, mentioned something like this in our literature class in Rome. He compared the act of real, honest writing to the rather unattractive image of scratching an itch that just won’t go away. And great writers, I suppose, are those people who keep scratching perpetual itches.

So, think about your favorite author– someone whose wide body of works you have read. Think of this person’s novels, short stories, essays, letters–whatever you have gotten your hands on over the years. Aren’t there certain threads that keep pulling on each other again and again? Isn’t there this sense that, somehow, every story he ever wrote is somehow the same story? Or perhaps there is an image or moment that keeps coming up over and over– not in a way that is forced, or even intentional–but nonetheless unmistakably patterned on another scene you’ve seen her try to articulate before?

You may have discovered this phenomenon long ago, but when I finally did, I felt like I had stumbled upon a small revelation: most writers, even the really great ones, keep writing about the same darn things.

And for most of them, it’s just one thing. Maybe two. Three at most.

It may look like lots of different things. C. S. Lewis wrote about everything from lions in wardrobes and men traveling to Mars to older demons teaching young devils the ways of temptation–but, in the end, wasn’t he always really writing about that mysterious, unbidden joy and longing? Lucy follows it, Ransom is baptized in it, Screwtape tries to kill it, Orual stifles it, Reepicheep plunges into its depths– but it’s always there. The most beautiful passages in all of Lewis’ stories and apologetic works describe that longing he called “joy”.

For Austen, one obvious persistent concern is marriage. For Flannery, it’s that violent intervention of grace. For Dostoevsky, it seems to be something like human suffering and the beauty of God.

What are the persistent concerns of your favorite writer? What questions or ideas do they keep going back to?

My kids actually notice this phenomenon all the time with the very few authors the curriculum demands they pay attention to more than just once, but they express their recognition with something less than awe: “Ms. Shea, why does Shakespeare always write about relationships with trust issues?”

I don’t mean to ignore the complexity and nuance of what great writers and poets do–but I believe that considering a large body of someone’s work in this way can help us find a more meaningful path towards knowing him better. When I was assigned the onerous Junior Poet project in college, and had to absorb all the writings of a particular chosen poet, I found that sitting back and asking myself rather simply about Richard Wilbur’s persistent concerns helped me to see connections in his work I had been too overwhelmed to appreciate before.

I bring this idea up because something occurred to me today as I was thinking about the Feast of Christ the King– a feast, I admit, that never has captured my imagination or spiritual feelings in any powerful way before. Gaudete Sunday always does, the Easter Vigil does, the Visitation… and lots of other minor memorials. Most of them probably have some kind of connecting thread to one of my own persistent concerns. But not the Feast of Christ the King. It’s the feast that lets me know that I can finally get excited for Advent, and that has been about it.

Yet for some reason today, as I was listening to a podcast about this last Sunday in Ordinary time and thinking how the whole kingship thing doesn’t really resonate with me, I remembered a priest asking once, in a homily perhaps, “Do you know what Christ talks about most in the Gospels?”

I remember my mind flitting through a list of possibilities. Love? No, too obvious. The poor? Mm, Jesus acts always with them in mind and heart, but how often does he actually use the word “the poor” besides in the Beatitudes and “the poor you will always have with you”? Maybe forgiveness– or something nobody would say, like bread? Fish? No. Ah, of course. Abba. Father. That must be…

“The Kingdom.”

What?

“The Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of Heaven as it is called in Matthew. The Kingdom is what he loves to talk about most.”

I remember being rather astonished and almost… disappointed? Not love? Not hope? Really, Jesus? What you talk about most is “the Kingdom”? What even is that?

Even now, as I write this, I decided to do a quick Command+F (mac!) search. In the King James translation of the Gospel of Matthew, the word “kingdom” appears 57 times. In Mark, 21. In Luke, 46. In John, only 5 (!).

As a comparison, the English word “love” occurs 57 times in John, 18 times in Luke, 10 in Mark, and 16 in Matthew.

That’s 129 to 101 in favor of “kingdom” over “love”, folks. And we know there are (at least four?) different Greek words for love, and John employs different ones throughout his Gospel, and so that 101 number would go down quite a bit if we distinguished the different actual Greek words being translated with the one English “love”. (For a brief but interesting summary of key Greek words in John, see this website.)

But the consistent word for Kingdom, βασιλεία or Basileia in Greek, appears 162 times in the New Testament according to Wikipedia–and most of those instances are from the lips of Christ himself.

Okay, so even if this priest was exaggerating, and even if you did more searches and found out that another word appeared more frequently, it’s clear that “the kingdom” is certainly a persistent concern of Jesus.

So why, I wondered, isn’t it a persistent concern of mine?

Partially, perhaps, because I don’t fully understand what the kingdom is. It always seemed synonymous with the Church or with heaven, or perhaps with the new creation–and those identifications are all true. Yet still it is only in the context of the term “kingdom” that I ever identify those already mysterious concepts with one another.

I remembered vaguely that in Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict reflects on the meaning of “the kingdom” quite a lot, so I searched for his explanations:

“‘Kingdom of God’ is…an inadequate translation [of the Hebrew malkut and the Greek basilea]. It would be better to speak of God’s being-Lord, of his lordship” (emphasis added, 56).

“He, who is in our midst, is the ‘Kingdom of God,’ only we do not know him (cf Jn 1:30)….He himself is the treasure; communion with him is the pearl of great price” (60-61).

“The Kingdom is not a thing, it is not a geographical dominion like worldly kingdoms. It is a person; it is he. On this interpretation, the term ‘Kingdom of God’ is itself a veiled Christology. By the way in which he speaks of the Kingdom of God, Jesus leads men to realize the overwhelming fact that in him God himself is present among them, that he is God’s presence.”

Mysterious still.

But at least I’m beginning to think about the Feast of Christ the King in a different way–that is, I’m actually thinking about it.

It’s a feast that celebrates the consummation of that kingdom, the already-but-not-yet reign of the one true king.

And then I remembered–how did I not see it before–how so many of Jesus’ stories are about the kingdom, how one must be “like a little child” to enter it– how the teacher of the law who answered him wisely was “not far from” it — how the poor in spirit would “inherit” it — how it is like a treasure in a field or a pearl of great price.

He even seemed, sometimes, to struggle to put it into words for us–as sometimes we all do when we are talking about what we love best: “What is the kingdom of God like? To what shall I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that a man planted in a garden… To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour…” (Luke 13:18-20).

There is much more, of course, to think about here. Like the kingly gifts he received from the magi as a poor infant, or the mockery of his kingship that he suffered at the hands of the Romans. The crown of thorns and the purple robe and the “King of the Jews” notice by Pilate take on a new poignancy when you reflect on how much Jesus loved to preach about the kingdom. And that pointed question we actually heard in the Gospel this Sunday from Pilate touches, rather deeply, on the whole mystery of what Jesus meant by the term:

Pilate said to Jesus,
“Are you the King of the Jews?”
Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own
or have others told you about me?”
Pilate answered, “I am not a Jew, am I?
Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me.
What have you done?”
Jesus answered, “My kingdom does not belong to this world.
If my kingdom did belong to this world,
my attendants would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.
But as it is, my kingdom is not here.”
So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?”
Jesus answered, “You say I am a king.
For this I was born and for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

John 18:33-37

Perhaps as we get ready for Advent– a season full of persistent concerns I can more easily relate to like waiting and hope– I can first pause and reflect, in this last week of ordinary time, on one of Jesus’ favorite things to tell stories about: his Father’s Kingdom.

Zašto-je-narod-vikao-»Krv-njegova-na-nas-i-na-djecu-našu«

Teaching, Decision-Fatigue, and Getting Out of the Way

August 19, 2018

“May I go to the bathroom?”

“Do we have to ask to go to the bathroom or can we just go and sign out?”

“Can I go get more tissues from the office?”

“Can I have a pencil?”

“Can I write in pencil instead?”

“Can I make up my quiz tomorrow during H block?”

“Are you going to do the scrapbook thing Ms. Otten used to do this year?”

When I first started teaching, I had no idea how many little decisions I would need to make throughout the day, every day. I had anticipated the instructional decisions, and I had spent many hours worrying about classroom management decisions–but I never could have predicted the tiny, moment-by-moment micro-choices that are unexpectedly overwhelming.

And as a brand new teacher, I was plagued by self-doubt. I often did not know the “right” answer. I would go home and agonize about a call I made in a brief moment–a decision to intervene with a kid, a consequence I had given, a “no”, a “yes”, a decision not to say something. Did the other kids notice? (Yes.) Did I think the repercussions through well enough? (Nope, didn’t have time.) Had I agreed to something I was going to regret later? (Possibly. Okay, probably.)

Lots of people have talked about the phenomenon of “decision-fatigue” in connection to teaching — the idea that making decisions takes a lot of energy, and that throughout the day our will power, like a muscle, can get overworked and exhausted and progressively worse at discerning the right choice. According to a fascinating New York Times article, one response to decision-fatigue might be to start making hasty decisions; another might be to avoid making decisions altogether–although this avoidance, too, is a kind of decision:

The more choices you make throughout the day, the harder each one becomes for your brain, and eventually it looks for shortcuts, usually in either of two very different ways. One shortcut is to become reckless: to act impulsively instead of expending the energy to first think through the consequences. (Sure, tweet that photo! What could go wrong?) The other shortcut is the ultimate energy saver: do nothing. Instead of agonizing over decisions, avoid any choice. Ducking a decision often creates bigger problems in the long run, but for the moment, it eases the mental strain. (Tierny, “Do You Suffer from Decision Fatigue?” New York Times)

This first week at my new school has reminded me not only of how many decisions teachers have to make (a widely-circulated estimate is 1,500 per day!) but that the thinking we do about these decisions at the beginning of the year is far more intense and, therefore, far more exhausting than at any other time. We know that the first few days of school are crucial in relationship-building and expectation-setting. Like it or not, first impressions with kids do matter, and it is much easier to establish healthy and welcoming environments with them at the beginning of the year than to try to recover lost ground with them later on. And in order to do that, you have to make a LOT of decisions: where to put your desks. Who sits where. How will they enter the classroom? What will you do when they don’t do you what you want? How much of the syllabus to cover the first day. How much to tell them about yourself. What activities to welcome them into your classroom and to establish it as a place for learning.

(For some great ideas on these first few days of school and these kinds of decisions, see the great work Tyler Hester does on his website here: agapemanagement.org )

I’ve found that being at a brand new school this year increases this kind of decision-making anxiety for me– simply because I am still learning the culture of the school. What are the kids used to? Do they usually get seating charts from teachers? Have they ever had to follow an attention procedure? How do other teachers in the building handle going to the bathroom?

There are the written policies in the handbook and, much more importantly, the unwritten, day-to-day lived policies of the school that you really only learn by experience.

Here’s an instance of a tiny incident that involved a lot of mental decision-making for me this week:

During a senior class right before lunch, I noticed that one girl in the back of the room took out a sandwich and began eating it during the Do Now. Everyone else was silently working on the assignment on the board. A thousand things rushed through my mind as I calmly circulated the room, making positive comments on student work, standing in strategic places so all students could see and feel my active presence: Did I make my expectations clear about no food in the classroom when I was going over the syllabus the other day? Does this girl have an accommodation or medical condition I don’t know about that means she can take out food whenever she wants to? Do other teachers just let kids eat in the classroom, and so this is just what she’s used to? Do I have time to address this now, or should I wait until I get everybody talking during the Pair Share activity to create a greater sense of privacy? Is it really that big of a deal? What will happen if I just let this one go?

Then, the girl behind her took out a tupper-ware with some kind of green vegetable in it, and she began eating, too.

The thing is, later in the year this kind of thing really isn’t a big deal. And I often allow kids to eat in my room if they won’t have time during lunch, or didn’t have time during lunch, or are especially hungry, or whatever. But at the beginning of the year every move you make is setting a precedent and communicating something to the kids about what kind of person you are and what kind of expectations you have for them.

So I went over to the first girl’s desk and whispered, “Hey, are you doing okay? Will you not have a chance to eat during lunch today?”

“Oh– uh, no, I’ll be able to eat then.”

“Okay. The expectation is not to eat food in class unless you ask me about it first. Just make sure you let me know if you need to.”

“Oh! Oh, okay. Sorry!”

She put her sandwich away, and the girl behind her tucked her Tupperware into her bag.

It wasn’t a big deal. And they’re seniors, and they’re probably just used to being able to eat in other classes. And I tried to convey with my tone that they weren’t in trouble–but also that I do notice everything in my room. Dun dun dunnn.

I tell you this example of my over-analyzing of a micro-decision in order to give you an idea of the decision-fatigue many teachers, and people of countless professions, can fall into. And I think it’s important that as teachers we be very aware of the decisions we make, and plan them carefully every year so that we make the best environment possible for our kids, where they can truly flourish.

But I also give this example to illustrate the sort of false, self-absorbed analysis that I have found myself prone to this week–and the kind that I think perhaps other teachers struggle with as well.

I mean the sort of anxiety we feel that we say is about beginning of the year procedures and classroom management, when really it’s rooted in a powerful desire to be liked and admired and respected–to be the positive center of attention.

The Gospel from yesterday was one of the most famous and beautiful in the Bible, but it struck me in a new way this time:

Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people, but Jesus said, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 19:13-14)

Given the horrible revelations about the ways in which our Church has failed to protect children and has actually kept them from experiencing the closeness of Christ, these words were especially painful to read. But I don’t feel ready to write about that part right now.

What I do feel ready to write about is much smaller: the fact that the disciples were just getting in the way.

The children were coming to Jesus–the whole point of discipleship, you know–and the disciples themselves were “hindering” them! Parents, relatives, other adults were bringing the kids to hear Jesus, to be prayed over by Him, to be healed by Him– just like the parents at my school are. And the disciples “rebuked” them!

I can imagine Peter, thinking he is being helpful, managing the crowd, trying to protect Jesus. “Oh, no, He’s in the middle of a sermon right now. This really isn’t the best time.” Or the ever practical Thomas, “You know, He’s talking about marriage and divorce and sexual morality right now–maybe another time would be better for the children to listen. Could you just have them stand over there until He’s finished?” Or even John, “The Master is tired. We were just about to get into the boat again. Can you bring the kids tomorrow when He’s had time to rest?”

They were getting in the way, trying to manage everything–making all of these little decisions, coming up with all of these solutions, thinking they knew best.

I thought, too, a little of John the Baptist, and his humility in saying, “He must increase, and I must decrease.” I must become smaller, I must be willing to recede from view, so that people can see Jesus and not get distracted by me and my management skills and the way I want things to be run.

I realized how much of my own teaching, especially in the first few days of school, can get so caught up in me. What will they think of me? Will they like me? Will they take my expectations seriously? Will they think I’m strict enough? Will they want to engage in my lesson?

And of course, this is kind of ridiculous. The class isn’t about me at all. At some level, it’s about the invitation to a kind of beauty and adventure that only literature can afford. At a deeper level, it’s about them–about the kids themselves, and what they need, and where they are, and how they can grow. And at the deepest level of all, it’s about Christ.

I just need to get out of the way.

“Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them.”

I began to think about my own decision-fatigue in a new way. Yes, the little choices are still there, popping up at every moment throughout the day. Some of them are voiced by student questions, some of them are my own silent internal questions, some of them are below the level of conscious deliberation. But I might feel a lot less exhausted if I stopped thinking about these decisions in terms of how they were going to impact me and my year and how I want my class to be run, and started thinking more about how each decision is going to impact these kids ability to feel loved by God. (Do I really need absolute silence right now because that is what is best for them? Or do I need it just to calm my own nerves? Or to make myself look strict?)

And the kids do want to come to Jesus, whether they realize it or not. They want to learn, to be joyful, to make strong friendships, to be challenged, to be cared for. They are approaching Him all the time. And like the disciples, maybe all I need to do is get out of the way.

Pray that I am able to do that this year.

“Any but the greatest”

May 12, 2016

It’s been too long since I’ve written about Flannery, but as usual her voice is on my mind and ever-ready to set me straight.

There have been a lot of difficult changes going on around me recently #beingateacher #catholicschool, and today this quote by Flannery came to mind:

Naw, I don’t think life is a tragedy. Tragedy is something that can be explained by the professors. Life is the will of God and this cannot be explained by the professors; for which all thanksgiving. I think it is impossible to live and not to grieve but I am always suspicious of my own grief lest it be self-pity in sheeps [sic] clothing. And the worst thing is to grieve for the wrong reason, for the wrong loss. Altogether it is better to pray than to grieve; and it is better to be joyful than to grieve. But it takes more grace to be joyful than any but the greatest have. (Collected Works, via Flannery O’Connor in the Age of Terrorism: Essays on Violence and Grace)

That quote is worth rereading a few times.

I remember seven and a half (!) years ago while I was studying abroad in Rome, our Literature professor Dr. Roper framed our Lit Trad III course around the question “Is life ultimately a tragedy or a comedy?” We read Aeschylus and Sophocles and Aristophanes and Shakespeare and others that semester. Dr. Roper gave us that question again on the final exam.

These words by Flannery helped me, during that challenging semester and during the years afterward, to confront that question.

Dante (whom I always read with my kids this time of year) named his work the Commedia and gave us the traditional Christian response: life is ultimately comic (in the literary sense of the word) because Christ’s love redeems humanity.

But unless you yourself get a vision of hell, purgatory and heaven, it is much harder to see Dante’s vision of things except by faith. The ancient Greeks seemed convinced that life was ultimately tragic, and had a lot of good reasons for thinking so. Indeed their greatest works reflect the view that human beings are subject to fate or the whims of the gods and can only learn wisdom by accepting their humble (and tragic) state #Oedipus.

As an English teacher with a melancholic disposition, I tend to see my life, my work and my students very dramatically. This tendency can be good because it means I take everything seriously but it can also be bad because I take everything seriously.

I like that Flannery O’Connor, in the quote above, acknowledges but then pushes aside the question of whether or not life is ultimately tragic (note her friendly “Naw”, but not a firm “no”). If you read her stories, you might get the impression that she thinks life very tragic indeed. However, she pushes past the tragedy question and gets right to the heart of the matter, as she always does: “life is the will of God and this cannot be explained by the professors; for which all thanksgiving.”

Her tone is lighthearted here and characteristically critical of intellectuals, but it is not disingenuous nor dismissive. She is suspicious of her own grief lest it be “self-pity in sheeps [sic] clothing”, but as is usual in her letters you can hear her own experience of loss in the background as she wrestles with what faith demands: “The worst thing is to grieve for the wrong reason; for the wrong loss. Altogether it is better to pray than to grieve.”

Ultimately, she concludes, it is “better” also to be joyful than to dwell in grief, as perhaps Dante teaches us. Pope Francis, too, is always urging Christians to be joyful, going so far as to say that “without joy [a] person is not a true believer” (via Breitbart.com).

But I like that Flannery O’Connor openly acknowledges the challenge of joy: “It takes more grace to be joyful than any but the greatest have.” She suggests that joy itself is a divine gift–requiring “grace”– and that it is an experience we cannot muster on our own.

Only “the greatest”–that is, the saints– have this joy, not because they are not well-acquainted with grief, but because they are actually more well-acquainted with it than the rest of us. Their grief is joined to the grief of Christ on the cross, and so too is their joy. If you read her letters I think you’d agree that Flannery herself is included in their number.