Pakleds and Klingons and Riker Rapidly Losing His Mind, Oh My!

So once again, after many years (months? minutes? I dunno, folks, I'm bad at math), the much-heralded, much-longed-for return of the Nathan Israel Smolin/Captain Peabody Star Trek Oral(?) History Blog Post Series Extravaganza! 

Continuing where we left off, here are a few mini-reviews of episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation. As with my TOS reviews, the idea is to skip over the most famous ("Best Of") the series, and instead highlight a few episodes that are not on any big lists, but which showcase aspects of the series as a whole, its strengths and weaknesses and special qualities. So without further ado, let's begin with one of those Weaknesses I just mentioned.

The Orthodox Schism: a Few Comments

Alright, here's a brief explanation and a few comments on the Orthodox Schism, which I'll give in two sections: (1) the immediate crisis, and (2) a little bit of the deeper historical and ecclesiastical background as I see it.

The Scenario

The immediate crisis can be most easily understood by looking at things from a very basic standpoint of ecclesiastical entities and numbers. Since math is hard and exact numbers impossible to come by, these will be by design very approximate and drawn from readily-available-through-googling sources.

The Russian Orthodox Church is numerically the largest Orthodox church in the world; by usual estimates, about half of the three hundred million Eastern Orthodox in the world are under the direct jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow. It is this, rather than any ecclesiastical claim to primacy, that makes Moscow one of the most important centers of world Orthodoxy, with a great deal of sway even other Patriarchates.

The modern ROC encompasses not only the modern nation of Russia, but also the Orthodox believers in (most) former Soviet nations. One of these, by far the most important, is Ukraine.

Ukraine, like Russia, is an extraordinarily large and populous country, with about thirty million nominal Orthodox believers and a very large number of parishes, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical holdings. It is also, by most estimates, a rather more religious society than Russia, where the vast majority of the populace are nominal members of the ROC, but where actual Church attendance is the lowest of any European country (consistently under 10%, and closer to 1-2% in major cities). It is this basic issue of numbers and parishes, more than anything else, that makes the question of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church so important for Moscow. As matters stand now, roughly half of the parishes of the ROC are in Ukraine rather than Russia; and this does not including the many parishes that have left Moscow and joined other Orthodox groups in the last thirty years.

The question of Ukrainian autocephaly, then, is not at all a distant or theoretical one for the Moscow Patriarchate. Giving up Ukraine means giving up a very large proportion of believers and institutions, and all that goes with them--including a great deal of Moscow's status in the Orthodox world generally. A fully united, autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church would be, immediately, the second largest Orthodox jurisdiction in the world, and a strong counterweight to Moscow. This is something that Moscow has shown itself entirely unwilling to accept.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople, on the other hand, directly presides over, in Turkey itself where it is located, one of the tiniest flocks in the world (perhaps 5,000), though it also has jurisdiction over many ethnic Greeks worldwide and most Orthodox in America and the West. Still, even with this, its numbers are a tiny fraction of Orthodox in the world (perhaps 6 million): its status in the world of Orthodoxy comes far more from the fact that it is universally regarded as the First See of all the Orthodox patriarchates and the "center" of Orthodoxy as a whole. What this means is not always very clear, but since the Eastern Orthodox churches are all descendants of the Church of the Byzantine Empire, and since Constantinople was, of course, the absolute center of that Empire and of the Church attached to it, that fact alone carries with it a great deal of prestige and influence.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople wishes to grant autocephaly to Ukraine, as it has to many other Churches formerly subject to it (including Moscow itself). Autocephaly, "having one's own head," means that the Church in question is self-governing, typically led by a Patriarch who has jurisdiction over the Church and all its dioceses and ordains its bishops.

Part of the issue is that there is no clear procedure or structural principle underlying "autocephaly" or its granting. The Byzantine Empire was an extraordinarily centralized society where Church and State were deeply entwined, with both centered around Constantinople and the office of the Emperor, who possessed religious as well as political authority. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, however, and later with the rise of modern nationalism, Byzantine Christians became politically and ecclesiastically "balkanized," gradually divided among multiple competing political and religious structures. The practice of "autocephaly" that has become the norm in modern Orthodoxy is little more than the regularized practice of Orthodox groups, largely for political reasons, breaking off from the Constantinopolitan center and managing their own affairs instead, generally with at least nominal (even if effectively coerced) consent from Constantinople itself.

The immediate impetus for Constantinople's move in Ukraine, though, is not so much ecclesiastical order (there are nation-states whose Churches are not autocephalous, and nation-states that are) as the desire to resolve a long-standing crisis and schism in Ukrainian Orthodoxy itself.

When the Soviet Union fell and Ukraine became for the first time in modern history an independent nation, a request was made to Moscow that the Orthodox in Ukraine be immediately granted autocephaly. The request was predictably denied, but in an equally predictable response, a large group of Orthodox clergy and believers in Ukraine broke off anyway and elected their own Patriarch, Filaret Denysenko. It is very difficult (at least for me) to tell precisely how many members this Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, as it is known, has, but some polls have shown its number of self-declared members to be actually larger than the ROC in Ukraine (though the ROC has many more parishes in Ukraine, and the numbers are muddied due to the large number of Orthodox in Ukraine who had no explicitly declared allegiance at all and who probably attend, if at all, ROC parishes), and has grown in recent years due to the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. For the last thirty years, it has, however, not been recognized by, and not in communion with, any other Orthodox Church outside of Ukraine. There is also, confusingly, a third Orthodox jurisdiction also in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, which has its roots in independent resistance among the Orthodox to Russian rule, but in the more immediate past is largely the result of distrust and hostility towards Patriarch Filaret, who had been a prominent Russian Orthodox bishop under the Soviet Union and thus is a man with strong past ties to the KGB and the Russian government. The UAOC is not in communion with any other group, including the Kyiv Patriarchate. Taken together, then, these two jurisdictions represent, both within Ukraine and for world Orthodoxy as a whole, a sizeable proportion of believers, parishes, and clergy separated from and not in communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

Constantinople's solution to this problem is, in the abstract, relatively obvious: to officially grant Ukraine autocephaly, thus reuniting all three Orthodox groups in Ukraine into a single Church with a single Patriarch, in communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

In reality, of course, this solution is far from simple, predominantly because Moscow (for the reasons discussed above) will never accept it, but also because of internal divisions within Ukrainian society that make reconciliation between pro-Russian and pro-nationalist factions (for obvious reasons associated strongly with the ROC and the two independent jurisdictions, respectively) very difficult. This is the basic situation leading up the events of the past few weeks and months.

The events themselves have proceeded fairly straightforwardly, though how they will proceed in the future is very open to question. Constantinople has proceeded quickly towards the process of granting the UOC autocephaly, declaring their intentions, sending exarchs to Ukraine to negotiate with the independent jurisdictions (the ROC naturally ignored them), and finally, in recent days, unilaterally declaring all the members and clergy of the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC to be in communion with Constantinople and canonically regular. In the near future, one would expect, they will officially grant Ukraine autocephaly, and the Ukrainians who accept this will elect a single Patriarch (who may or may not be Filaret, as discussed above).

Moscow, on the other hand, has responded to this first with belligerent rhetoric, then with increasingly extreme canonical and ecclesiastical moves. Members of the ROC, including most prominently Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the ROC's official head of external relations, have referred to the conflict as a "war," have threatened not only to break communion with Constantinople, but also to permanently dethrone Constantinople from its position as the First See of Orthodoxy, and have compared the forthcoming schism to that between the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy as "the largest schism in a thousand years."

Following the sending of exarchs, the ROC officially "suspended relations" with Constantinople, a step that has been taken only once in recent history, when Constantinople granted autocephaly to the tiny, formerly Soviet nation of Estonia (with little over a million inhabitants in total) in the early '90s. At that time, however, the ROC and Constantinople fairly quickly came to terms and agreed to a solution that would allow two independent jurisdictions in the nation, one under the ROC, and one independent.

Following Constantinople's rehabilitation of Filaret and the UAOC, however, Moscow has in recent days taken the more drastic step of totally breaking communion and all clerical relations with Constantinople. This means not only that the Patriarch of Constantinople will no longer be prayed for in the Liturgy along with the other Orthodox Patriarchs, but also that all faithful of the ROC are forbidden to receive communion in Churches under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, and vice versa. In the past few days, officials of the Moscow Patriarchate have forbidden their faithful from receiving communion at any Churches ecclesiastically subject to Constantinople, even on Mount Athos, the world center of Orthodox monasticism--they have also publicly declared that the position of Primate in Orthodoxy, formerly held by Constantinople, simply no longer exists.

The question at this point is what happens next, on multiple levels. Constantinople has shown no signs of slowing their process, and in the near future they will likely finally and officially grant autocephaly to Ukraine; this will in turn likely trigger a response from Moscow, which may go so far as a formal act of excommunication or anathematization directed at the Constantinople Patriarchate.

On the ground, in Ukraine, the question is to what degree the granting of autocephaly actually unites the various Church groups involved. At minimum, the UAOC and the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate will be united with one another and with Constantinople. The ROC in Ukraine will also certainly continue to be out of communion with them, and will now no longer be in communion with Constantinople as well. The ROC in Ukraine, however, may, and almost certainly will, lose parishes and faithful to the new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This process, though, has the strong potential to lead to judicial conflicts and even open violence, as faithful and clergy of different factions vie for individual parishes and all that goes with them. In the long run, this process may, or may not, lead to a decisive victory for one side or another; but in all likelihood both groups will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.

Outside of Ukraine, though, the situation is even more incalculable. The fact of the ROC being out of communion and actively hostile to Constantinople is in itself, by sheer force of numbers, significant; it means that the most sizeable group of Orthodox in the world no longer consider Constantinople to be the Primatial See of Orthodoxy and no longer participate in any of the common structures or projects spearheaded by Constantinople--which are, essentially, all of the common structures and projects that exist within Orthodoxy. Whatever Constantinople does apart from the ROC will be, by that fact alone, dramatically less significant, less prestigious, and less effective.

The real question, however, is how the other autocephalous Churches of world Orthodoxy choose to respond to this state of affairs, which presents them with an immediate and highly fraught puzzle. Within Ukraine itself, these Churches will be forced to decide which of the two jurisdictions to be in communion with; and outside of Ukraine, they will have to decide what, if any, steps to take in response to Moscow and Constantinople's breach in communion.

The most likely step for all these Churches, at least in the short term, is, paradoxically, simply to do nothing. It is far from unprecedented within Orthodoxy for a Church to be simultaneously in communion with multiple Churches that are not in communion with each other. There is, in fact, such a situation going on right now; the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, the two most important Middle Eastern Orthodox Churches, have not been in communion with each other over a jurisdictional dispute for a number of years. No other autocephalous Church, so far as I know, has made any move in response to this; they have simply continued to simultaneously relate to and be in communion with both.

Of course, with Constantinople and Moscow, the issue is not nearly so simple. Jerusalem and Antioch are poor, marginal, and persecuted; both Constantinople and Moscow have strong ties of direct and indirect influence extending all across the world of modern-day Orthodoxy. It is practically impossible for any autocephalous Church to simply ignore either one, let alone both.

Leading up to this break, Moscow, at least, has been actively seeking support from other Patriarchates; by my count, the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Serbia, and Bulgaria have all been brought to make strong statements of support for the ROC in Ukraine and against Constantinople's actions in recent weeks. The Orthodox Church in America, which has close ties to the ROC but is nominally autocephalous (an autocephaly granted by Moscow, and thus not recognized by Constantinople), has simply stated that they would not break communion with Constantinople. The Patriarch of Antioch has pointedly refused to endorse either side, but has bitterly complained about the divisions in the Church and the lack of attention shown to his own conflict with Jerusalem.

We are, really, in uncharted waters here. There are any number of theoretical ways this situation could resolve itself, but much depends on the precise actions and reactions of the parties involved. What is very close to certain is that neither side will, at this point, back down in their immediate conflict with one another: Constantinople will officially grant autocephaly to Ukraine, and Moscow will continue to try to cut itself loose from Constantinople.

Other autocephalous jurisdictions will try to mediate this conflict, but there is not really anyone in the Orthodox world with any significant amount of sway with either Patriarchate. A Council could be called, but it is extremely unlikely Moscow would ever attend such a meeting. Only a few years ago, Constantinople tried to summon a Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete, but was stymied by Moscow's unilateral refusal to attend (ostensibly for doctrinal and organizational issues)--a fact that ipso facto rendered the Council a dead letter. It does not seem likely Moscow would ever attend a Council where it actually had something to lose; and there is no longer an Orthodox Emperor to force them or anyone else to do so.

An Estonia-like solution is, of course, still very much possible; an agreement whereby both jurisdictions are allowed to exist in Ukraine simultaneously in communion with one another and with the rest of Orthodoxy. With every day that goes by, this becomes less and less likely, but it is still an obvious solution and can never be discounted. This resolution would presumably lead to at least a healing of the immediate Schism, though it would not bring an end to the deeper issues bringing Moscow and Constantinople into conflict. The status quo would be maintained, in other words, but not reconciled.

If the Schism continues and escalates to the point of open excommunication, whatever the other autocephalous Churches do, this would de facto lead to a situation where world Orthodoxy, over time, becomes more and more separated out into two clearly divided, hostile, competing institutions. Other autocephalous Churches could, in all probability would, be drawn into it and break communion with one side or the other. Or, if all of them maintain an ostensible neutrality, the labyrinthine, schizophrenic dimensions of modern Orthodoxy would be greatly increased. Either way, the ability for Orthodoxy to operate in any univocal or united way, or to ever join in on any common projects or statements, would be effectively neutralized.

In the long run, of course, regardless of what happens in the near future, one side or the other could "win out" in such a way as to render the other side impotent and of far less significance in Orthodox affairs. This does not seem particularly likely to me, but both sides have partisans who strongly believe in these scenarios, so they should not be entirely discounted.

The scenario by which Constantinople "wins" is fairly straightforward, and generally involves less "total war": due to on-the-ground conditions, the united Ukrainian Orthodox Church rapidly absorbs the ROC in Ukraine, and becomes too large and successful for any other Orthodox Church, including Moscow, to not to be in communion with. After the other autocephalous Churches gradually accept it as an equal and partner, Moscow is forced to accede, and the UOC thus takes its place in the pantheon of autocephalous Churches as a strong counterweight to Moscow's supremacy; and in the long run, a smaller, chastened, and more humble Moscow becomes a more reliable and less independent part of Orthodoxy under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The scenario whereby Moscow wins is also fairly straightforward, but rather more brutal: Constantinople has very few Orthodox believers under its direct jurisdiction, relying for its position and authority on soft power and prestige. If Moscow can successfully use its clout, which includes at least potentially the entire political and diplomatic power of the Russian state, abundant monetary funds, and numerous believers scattered throughout the world, to persuade other autocephalous Churches to join it in breaking from or even excommunicating Constantinople, at a certain point, Constantinople would simply become a tiny, poor, and insignificant Church, and a threat to no one. At this point, it would matter very little what they did or decided on any question; Moscow would be free to operate however they wished, whether, in the long run, they returned to communion with Constantinople or not. Moscow could even, depending on the situation, take the most drastic step of all: claim for themselves the Primacy ostensibly vacated by Constantinople.

As I said, I do not think either of these scenarios particularly likely, though they each have something to commend them.

Historical/Ecclesiastical Background

The difficulty with Orthodoxy as a modern phenomenon is always that it has never had a fixed Church order or ecclesiology. The Church of the Byzantine Empire had two institutional sources of unity at the highest, universal level, both of which modern Orthodoxy has no access to: the office of the Emperor, and the office of the Pope.

While it initially contained multiple Patriarchates with some degree of independence, following the Muslim conquests, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch were all lost to the Empire, while Rome and the Latin Church became gradually estranged from Byzantium first politically and later religiously; this led, in the long run, to an almost total ecclesiastical hegemony of Constantinople in the Empire.

Constantinople's status even as a Patriarchate, however, had been heavily disputed, to say the least. Prior to Constantine, there had been three Apostolic Sees generally recognized: Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, all of which had personal ties to the Apostle Peter. Rome was, of course, the acknowledge Primate, as the See where Peter and Paul had shed their blood. Byzantium, on the other hand, was a minor city politically and ecclesiastically, with no even legendary ties to Peter or any other Apostles.

After Constantine re-founded Byzantium as his new capital, Constantinople or New Rome, the vastly increased political importance quickly translated into greater ecclesiastical importance as well. During the late 4th and 5th centuries, clerics of Alexandria and Antioch competed over and against Constantinople and to maintain their own primacy in the East, a conflict that led eventually to the estrangement of significant numbers of their followers from the Empire and the Imperial Church. Finally, at the Council of Calchedon, the assembled clergy, absent the Roman legates, passed a canon declaring that Constantinople, because it was the Imperial City, ought to be the second See in the Church after Rome. Pope Leo the Great, however, reacted angrily to this appeal to politics in Church order, and publicly annulled the canon, since Constantinople was neither an Apostolic See, nor could it possibly take precedence over the older Apostolic Churches of Alexandria and Antioch.

Still, in the long run, the close ties between Church and State in the Byzantine Empire, where the Emperor held ultimate sway in both spheres, made Constantinople's religious hegemony simply a fact of life, one that received little official legitimation for centuries, but which became more and more official over time and especially as Rome's role in the Byzantine Empire, for many centuries (particularly those of the so-called Byzantine Papacy) powerful and decisive, gradually waned.

When the Byzantine Empire fell, however, the believers and Church structures that had once been a part of it were brought into a state of disarray. Nations and ethnic groups were forced to fend for themselves, which they did in different ways. Some (the large proportion of Antiochenes who now form the Melchite Church, the majority of the Kyivan Rus who now make up the Ruthenian and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches, etc) re-entered Communion with Rome and became a part of the modern, post-Reformation Catholic world of multiple sui iuris Churches under the ultimate governance of the Pope; others remained in communion with Constantinople while learning to manage their own affairs, leading to the existence of "autocephalous" Orthodox Churches in the modern sense.

The Church of Moscow, however, adopted a rather more aggressive strategy, forging extremely close ties to the expansionist Muscovite Empire. Its "autocephaly" was gained essentially by force, including an incident where the Patriarch of Constantinople--who had traveled to Moscow to raise funds, since the Ottoman Empire maintained the Patriarchate only on the basis of compulsory extortion and simony--was held captive in Russia until he agreed to grant the Bishop of Moscow the title of "Patriarch." Along with this aggression in Church matters came the ideology of "Third Rome," which held that, just as Constantinople had been the First See in the Church not due to any Apostolic pedigree, but solely due to its role as the capital of the Orthodox Empire, so too, Moscow, the capitol of the Orthodox Russian Empire, had now inherited that same primacy. As Moscow and the Russian Empire expanded politically, so too did the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, leading to many churches that had been formerly been subject directly to Constantinople now becoming subject instead to Moscow.

When the Russian Empire modernized under Peter the Great, so, too, was the Russian Orthodox Church modernized; in 1721, the Patriarchate of Moscow was actually abolished, replaced by a Synod subject to the Czar, and not reinstituted until 1917, in the throes of the Russian Revolution. The ROC, however, was soon, under the Soviets, officially abolished--and it was not until 1943, when Stalin made the decision, to benefit nationalistic sentiment against the Nazis, to revive and sanction Russian Orthodoxy, that the Patriarchate was officially restored once again. Under Stalin and his successors, however, the ROC was thoroughly penetrated and largely controlled by the KGB, even as it was marginalized and downplayed by the officially atheistic state. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladmir Putin, however, the ROC has re-forged its close ties to the Russian State, receiving a great deal of support and approbation from Putin, and in return endorsing his policies and political affairs.

Constantinople, on the other hand, suffered after the fall of the Empire through centuries of repressive Ottoman rule--until the rise of the modern Turkish state following World War One, which paradoxically butchered its followers and drove them out of the country, reducing it to a tiny fraction of its former numbers, while at the same time by its official secularism giving it, for the first time in centuries, almost total freedom to operate independently on the global stage. This, for the most part, seems to be Patriarch Bartholomew's vision: of a restored Orthodox Church separate from, liberated from, the State and now operating in a unified way under the strong, independent leadership of Constantinople.

If this break is happening now, then, it is in large part because these two institutions are both in positions of relative strength--and also because their basic visions for the structure and order of Orthodoxy as a global institution are radically in conflict. Moscow, in a sense, is the less ambitious one; it wishes to ratify a Church order tied to political structures, and in particular to the ethnic-national Orthodox Empire embodied in the contemporary Imperialism of the Russian State, which sees all of its former holdings, whether nominally independent or not, as part of its sphere of influence and consequently under its spiritual and jurisdictional sway. Patriarch Bartholomew, on the other hand, ambitiously wishes to forge a modern Orthodox Church that exists as a universal institution independent of national, ethnic, and political divisions, ruled by a strong independent Primate whose status comes, not from current Imperial sway, but from past tradition, and divided in an orderly fashion into autocephalous Churches whose boundaries are dictated by those of nation-states.

The two groups also have more intellectual debates and alignments, the largest of which is how Orthodoxy ought to relate to other Christian groups--in particular the Catholic Church. Patriarch Bartholomew is famously ecumenical, and is personally close friends with Pope Francis, with whom he as cooperated on a vast number of projects. The Patriarch of Moscow, however, is generally opposed to rapproachment with other Christian groups; though he was finally brought to meet with the Pope for the first time in history in recent years, the ROC has always been the main foot-dragger and obstacle to cooperation between the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy.

Over Ukraine, the issue is also one of jurisdiction. Kyiv was formerly under the direct jurisdiction of Constantinople, which was eventually forced, by the political realities, to allow Moscow to ordain its bishops. Moscow thus claims Constantinople has no right to grant Ukraine autocephaly, since it is its own canonical territory. Constantinople, for its part, claims the exclusive right, as Primate, to grant autocephaly; it has, in the past, refused to recognize Moscow's attempts to grant its subject Churches this status. It also claims that Ukraine, regardless of the changes brought about by conquest or the grant in question, is properly its own canonical territory--and thus Moscow has absolutely no right to jurisdiction over it.

This is not an easy dispute to resolve, on any level. Constantinople's claim to a strong primacy independent of any Orthodox Empire is at least historically an innovation; Moscow's claim to absolute jurisdiction over the Church of another nation-state due to past Imperial rule is at base ruthlessly political: but the far deeper issue underlying both these stances and the conflict as a whole is that there is, in fact, no clear way to resolve any of these disputes, neither in terms of Church structure nor in terms of canonical jurisdiction, within the institutions and traditions of Orthodoxy as it has existed since the Fall of the Byzantine Empire.

The resolution of this dispute, then, depends in reality not on any intra-Orthodox ecclesiastical principle, but simply and solely on the will of the parties involved, as well as the chaotic conditions and fortunes of politics and history.

As a Catholic, all I can say is that we ought to pray, whatever Christian group we may belong to, for all those believers who are caught up in the middle of this fiasco: and trust, ultimately, in Christ, who loves his Church, and will unite all those who belong to him, finally and forever, in the Kingdom of his Father. 

Vagueness and Compassion

It's a mistake to see vagueness and compassion as equivalent. They're not. As our society shows quite well, vagueness breeds bigotry as surely as a carcass flies.

The problem with relativism in practice is that when people stop absolutizing absolute things, they instead just absolutize themselves. In the absence of universal standards & authorities personal likes and dislikes become absolute. And by the standards of the absolutized individual personality, no one is deserving of mercy and compassion. You did *that*? I can't imagine doing that. You don't know *that*? I can't image not knowing that. The people my feelings tell me to love I will love, and the people my feelings tell me to hate I will hate: Amen, so be it. Those I like are justified, those I dislike are cast into the outer darkness, where is wailing and gnashing of teeth--how could it be otherwise?

No one has ever had to be taught to not understand another person, no one has ever had to be taught to be indifferent to another person, no one has ever had to be taught to dislike another person--it's loving and compassion that has to be laboriously drilled into people by authority and reason and dramatic leaps of faith. Take away that authority and that reason and that faith, and you infallibly get hatred.

I'm not sure there has ever been a group of people as collectively pitiless and devoid of compassion as modern Americans--and it is for this, first and foremost, that we will be judged. And we, most of us, most of the time, are pitiless and merciless not because we have any reason to be, but because we don't have any reason not to be. We have only ourselves--a God not of mercy, but wrath.

Technology & Madness

Most of the problems in our day and age are based on the utterly nonsensical idea that the "progress" of technology is some kind of natural force or trajectory implying a moral imperative to accept and make use of every form of technology possible. Can we make cellphones? Then we all must get cellphones, and use them. Can we make an atom bomb? Then we must make one, and use it. Can we make biological weapons? Torture devices and techniques? Elaborate data-collection algorithms? Sex robots?

Technology is nothing but the extension and partial reification of the human will, the will, ultimately, of some person or persons. The idea of a "morally neutral" technology is thus not just wrong, but self-contradictory. All technology is, by its very nature, ethical, since it is, again, a reification & extension of the choices of the human will, and since ethics is nothing other than the science of understanding and judging the choices of the human will. There is no other conceivable way to judge or even understand technology *except* ethically. And if you judge technology ethically, it must be possible to judge it negatively; to decide that this particular technology is, as an extension and reification of human choices, bad and ethically inadmissable.

If we cannot do this, then we are in a very fundamental and inescapable way simply insane, as insane as we would be if we simply refused to judge or even understand any human action, including our own. If our society cannot do this, then it is simply a very large and technologically advanced insane asylum.

I Went to Wal-Mart

I went to Wal-Mart today, with the goal of buying a pair of earbuds and a bottle of lemon-juice.

Wal-Mart is, in its essence, a deeply unpleasant thing for a human being to come into contact with; huge space unbounded by any human scale, order, or decoration, white ceilings and omnipresent flourescent lights, like an asylum or prison, looking down upon every type of evanescent merchandise capable of being manufactured by slaves in Malaysia and China, piled haphazardly on shelves or lying forgotten on the floor, everywhere surmounted by careless images and placards declaring low prices, and everywhere ignored by the underpaid, bored employees wandering vaguely about like inmates in purgatory, never busy, but never available for help or conversation either.

At the height of its power, when it advanced by leaps and bounds from coast to coast and across the sea, singlehandedly gobbling up and annihilating the economies of entire towns and regions, Wal-Mart was, no doubt, a terrifying thing; now, though, the institution has fallen on harder times, and evokes pity more than terror. Faced with competition from Amazon and other online retailers, the company is closing stores at a terrible rate; and even the open stores are often understocked. As I walked gaily through the electronics section, searching for my desideratum, at least half the shelves I passed were simply empty, with no sign of what was supposed to go on them. There were not too many customers, either, for such a day, and those that were there were poorer, older, minorities. The wealthier customers, I knew, were no doubt shopping at the newer, cleaner Target down the road--Target, that so well exemplifies the preferred consumerism of the middle class American of today, no less oppressive, no less ugly, no less fundamentally alienated an institution and an experience than Wal-Mart, but nonetheless painted red and ostentatiously supportive of LGBTQ rights.

I, however, was not shopping at Target and basking in the barest suggestion of an aesthetic and a social consciousness; I was walking through a Wal-Mart visibly in decline, and musing on time and decay and the beauty that is found it. That day, I found Wal-Mart, for the first time, lovely.

This really should not seem so strange; for things much more fundamentally ugly and evil than Wal-Mart have been rendered beautiful and nostalgic by the passage of time. Some have been rendered so fundamentally harmless and frivolous that they have become, not even poetry, but Internet and convention aesthetics. Thousands of "steampunk" enthusiasts every year elaborately dress up in and criticize clothing based on the deliberately ugly and practical garb of British industrialists and colonial administrators of the 19th century, rulers of the world's first capitalist Empire. The very appearances of the machines to which men were chained, and by which they were chewed up and worn out by the tens of thousands, the machines for whose sake boys of 10 were given stiff drinks of whiskey at the beginning of each workday, to dull the pain, have become, for most people, little more than a quaint aesthetic of a bygone age.

This kind of nostalgism, this kind of romanticization of the past, however objectionable some of its results may be, represents, in itself, a fundamentally sound instinct of humanity. It is hard to really appreciate a tiger while it is alive and threatening to eat you; for real aesthetic appreciation, for real poetic inspiration, it is better to wait until the beast has been turned into a rug, and then weep over it. The Antebellum South was, in most ways that matter, a fundamentally wicked society, that deserved to be smashed into powder; it was only once it was gone with the wind that it could be a romantic temple of vanished beauty. No one would really want to see the Colosseum when it was actually the Colosseum, a vulgar monument to spectacle in service to an overpowering state; now, though, centuries of rain have washed it clean of its bloodstains, and left nothing but the quiet majesty of stone.

These were the things I thought of in Wal-Mart today, and this is what I felt; Wal-Mart, the white walls and the vast, cavernous space and the empty shelves and the bored employees, fading away into the night, a sign and emblem of the whole society in which it thrived, the American Empire of cheap merchandise stacked haphazardly on shelves and then thrown away and endless armies of men bound to machines producing garbage. It all seemed, suddenly and overwhelmingly, as ephemeral and as sad and as beautiful as anything I had ever seen: seemed, indeed, already vanished from the earth, and in that vanishing to be lovely, like the monuments of Rome and Athens and the British Empire before it.

I drove out of the vast parking lot, ugly asphalt and careless yellow lines, and onto the freeway that already seemed to be falling to pieces around me. I wondered: what would we do with these vast, overwhelming buildings, these vast empty spaces, once all this had passed away? The Catholics of Rome had, with unerring common sense, turned the Pantheon into a Church, and put a statue of St. Peter atop the Column of Trajan. Perhaps, I thought, one day this huge, bare white cavern would be re-consecrated as a Cathedral, like the Parthenon; and I remembered, not without amusement, that in California the Crystal Cathedral, that great monument to the excesses of capitalist religiousity, had already been bought from its bankrupt owners and turned into a real Cathedral of the Catholic Church. I laughed at this, and in my heart I entirely approved it. Yes; just like Rome, the glories of this faded civilization should belong to God and his Church. Perhaps one day we would put statues of St. Peter or the Virgin on top of the shells left by abandoned McDonalds.

These thoughts were not entirely undirected; for I was driving to a little Adoration chapel at a Catholic Church, not far away, where I found a little room, smaller than that in which I am now sitting, in which there were a few middle-aged people and statues of Joseph and Mary and a few candles and God Almighty under the appearance of a piece of bread. And sitting in this room, reflecting on what I had just seen and done, I realized rather abruptly what it is that divides me, and has always divided me, from so many other people, from so many Catholics of past generations and my own: that for me, it was simply obvious that Wal-Mart, and the great Empire and society it represented, was fading away and falling into ruin before my eyes, and the Church was permanent and would outlast it--and for them it was not.

This, I reflected, was not at all due simply to lack of faith on the part of such people; for they lived at times when America and the American Empire of economic power and cultural production and military might seemed natural and large and permanent as the world itself, while the Church seemed ever smaller and older and destined to vanish like the mists at dawn, while I lived at a time when everyone, even the most piously American and secular, despaired of the future of the American Empire, and recognized the signs of its dissolution.

I realized that while for me, the overwhelming vision was of the world fading and falling into ruins and the Church remaining strong and upright, for so many Catholics, for so many Catholics far better and more faithful and holier than I, the vision, the overwhelming vision which they could not help but see, with and against which they fought all their lives, was of the Church falling into ruins and vanishing beyond recovery, and above her the world looming ever more permanent and powerful and unquestionable. I realized how much of the work and efforts and ideologies of both progressive and conservative Catholics over the past one hundred years and more had really been, at its base, responses to this vision: some good, some evil, and some merely foolish. I realized, too, that there was another vision which I lacked as well, one that possesses and frightens and drives many people not so much older than me, or even younger, to do and say and fight many things: a vision of growing up in a Church already little more than ruins, beautiful but obsolete and forgotten. I realized that I lacked this vision, too, that I have never for even one instant felt the Church to be in ruins, never felt the Church to be weak and failing or already failed, never in any real sense feared for the Church, its present, or its future. I realized that this is really what divides me from many Catholics far better and holier than I, and that this is no glory to me.

Sitting in that Chapel, though, I tried, for a little while, to see my surroundings in the light of these visions, thinking in a new light of the oldness of the few assigned adorers, the smallness and shabbiness of the room, the apostasy of so many young people from the Faith, the overwhelming force of the world in so many forms over and against human souls and the Church. As I came out from the Chapel, I got in my car, and drove through a tunnel, and when I came out there was a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market where there had not been one before, and I saw, for a moment, how all this could still seem powerful, inevitable, could still seem to have a future, while the Church did not.

As soon as I saw that, though, even as I saw it, I saw also very clearly that, in the end, these fortunes of history made no difference at all; that both while waxing and waning, Wal-Mart was nothing but an empty shell, ugly and meaningless and powerless and without a future, while in that little Chapel there was God himself, in the form of a weak and vanishing bit of bread, and souls whose virtue and fidelity were glorious and unconquerable even through the age and fading strength of their bodies.

When I saw this, I saw simply the world, in which God was made Incarnate; a world both of passing things, and of eternal things, of time and decay and resurrection.

Even when the Colosseum was full of gladiators and revelers, it was still empty; even when the Plantation House was full of ladies in gowns and the fields of groaning slaves, it was still an ugly and meaningless sham; and even when the Church has been at its weakest and most corrupt, in every place and time where it has seemed to fade away beneath the triumphant forces of this world, it has been strong with the strength of the Cross, and glorious with the glory of God, and possessed of an eternal future.

I came away from this experience, then, both saddened and comforted. I do not know whether America will endure for a year or a decade; but it will not endure. I do not know whether the Church in this place or time will conquer, or be conquered; but it will live forever. That is, really, all I need to know.

Anyway, I did get the earbuds and the lemon juice, and that was nice too.

Vignettes of Conversion

Today marks the 7th anniversary of my Confirmation and acceptance into the full communion of the Catholic Church. I've been planning to write something about it for a while, but found myself hitting the same wall that is always hit in such matters: the difficulty of writing about oneself.

People don't like to write about themselves as they actually are, for the same reason they don't like to hear their own voices on tape: which is one reason why most of the time, writing about oneself consists mostly of fairly elaborate methods of evading the topic, or else even more elaborate constructions of "brands" and fictionalized versions of the self. To avoid this, I finally decided to describe the process of life and of conversion more as it actually happened: that is, in small moments, in little broken-up narratives, and, as much as possible, using words I wrote during the times in question, intended not for public consumption, but for my own purposes, and mostly addressed to God. We'll see. What follows, then, may or may not add up to a consistent narrative, or a good story, or anything of the sort. I have tried to make it as true as possible, though no doubt I have failed at that, too.

Wake Up

My first memory, so far as I can reasonably tell, is of singing songs in church: the church I grew up in, that is, which for a long while bore the name of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church and which for most of the time I was in it consisted of less than a hundred persons. It is thanks to my membership in this church that I was baptized as an infant, and so began the life of grace.

I have many memories of God as a small child, though most are not very explicit; but they are all memories of presence and love, a presence and love I was never to entirely forget.

Pope St. Martin I, Epistola XV

The feast day of Pope St. Martin I, the last Pope to be honored as a martyr by the Catholic Church, was a few days ago. He was deposed and martyred by the Byzantine Emperor Constans II for his opposition to the Monothelite heresy. In honor of that day, here is a quick translation of a letter (XV in Migne) from the early days of his imprisonment, before he reached Constantinople, describing the events of his arrest. 

Martin to Theodore: Your dear love wished to know in what way I was snatched from the See of Saint Peter the Apostle, like a single solitary sparrow from a building. And I wonder that you wished to inquire about this, since Our Lord spoke beforehand about wretched times to his disciples: ‘For in those days there will be tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world even til now; and unless those days were shortened, all flesh would not be able to endure. But the one who perseveres until the end will be saved.’ (Matt 24:22). For also Saint Paul according to the grace of the Spirit given to him announced beforehand those days to Timothy his disciple: ‘In the last days men will fall from the Faith, and will turn their hearing away from the truth, loving themselves, avaricious, etc,” (1 Tim 4:1, 3:4). And believe me, my very longed-for son, since our Lord predicted the coming of Antichrist, we must see no other time except clearly this one, in which are the beginnings of sorrows.

And it seemed necessary to me to speak briefly, before judgment prevails in the whole world and I come to the end of the race, since I have judged that this is expedient for me, and in this, although others are preparing evils for me, I will exalt rather than weep. And so, that you may know how I was taken and led away from the Roman city, you will hear nothing false about what has happened. I knew everything which they were planning beforehand through that whole time, and at my own expense with my whole body of clergy I was staying privately in the Church of Our Savior Jesus Christ, which is named ‘Constantinian,’ which was constructed and founded first in the whole world by the Emperor Constantine of blessed memory, and is near the episcopal residence. There we all were resting separately on the Sabbath day, when Calliopas, with the army of Ravenna and Theodore the chamberlain, entered the city. Therefore I sent to meet him certain men from among the clergy: when these were received in the palace, he thought that I also was with them. But when he had asked them, and had not found me, he said to the leading men of the clergy: ‘We wanted to do homage to him; but tomorrow, which is the Lord’s Day, we will meet him, and will salute him, because we did not succeed today.’ Furthermore, when on the Lord’s Day he sent gifts to us in that holy Church of God, that man, because he suspected that a great crowd had come together there because of the day, announced: ‘We are very fatigued by the journey, and are not able to meet with you today, but tomorrow we will certainly meet with you, and will pay homage to your Holiness.’ But I myself had been severely ill from the month of October all the way to that time, that is, all the way to the sixteenth from the Kalends of July. Therefore on Monday in the morning he sent his Chartularius, and some men from his retinue, saying: ‘You have prepared arms, and are keeping armed men inside, and have collected many stones for fighting; and this is not necessary, nor should you allow something like this to happen.’ And when I had listened to these things in their presence, I judged it good not to make them certain myself but to send them to wander at will through the whole episcopal residence, so that if they had seen any weapons or a stone, they themselves might bear witness. But when they had gone, and found nothing, I told them that never at any time had it been otherwise, but they were always attacking us with lies and false accusations, since even they confessed that at the arrival of the infamous Olympius, a certain vain man, he had been able to drive me away with arms. I then was keeping my little bed, in which I was lying, before the altar of the Church; and when noon was not yet past, behold an army came with them into the Church, all armored and holding their lances and swords, and their bows made ready with their shields: and there were done there things which should not be spoken. For just as in the wintertime leaves struck by a strong wind fall from the trees, so the candles of the Holy Church were being struck with arms, and cut down were falling to the pavement. And a sound was heard in that Church, like some horrible thunder, from the striking of their arms, from the multitude of candles broken by them. And while they were entering in crowds, a message was given by Calliopa to the Priests and Deacons, in which was contained my humility's deposition, because, they said, I had taken the episcopacy irregularly and against the law, and was not worthy to be installed in the Apostolic See, but it would be transmitted to the Royal City when a bishop had been substituted in my place. This has not yet happened, and I hope that it will never happen, because in my absence the Archdeacon and Archpriest and Primicerius keep the place of the Pontiff. Even while, then, these things are happening, since they have been done about the Faith, I have made them clear to you. But indeed we were not prepared to fight, since I have judged it better to die a thousand times than to allow the blood of even one person, anyone, be shed onto the earth. War, indeed, is waged, even without danger, with not a few evil things done which do not please God. Thus at the same hour I gave myself over to obeying the Emperor and not resisting. Furthermore (that I may speak the truth), although certain men from the clergy were shouting to me not to do this, I gave my ear to none of them, so that men would not be killed. But I said to them: ‘Let some from the clergy come with me, who are necessary for me, bishops, priests, and deacons, and whoever seems good to me.’ Callopias responded: ‘However many want to come, let them come. We lay a necessity on no one.’ I responded: ‘The clergy is in my power.’ But certain men from the priests, shouting, were saying: ‘We live with him, and we die with him.’ After these things Calliopas began to say, and those who were with him: ‘Come with us to the Palace.’ Nor did I refuse to do this, but I went with them to the palace on the same Monday. And on Tuesday the whole clergy came to me, and there were many who had prepared to sail with me, who then had put their property on those things which are called levamenta [small boats]; and also some others, clergy and laity, were preparing and were hurrying to come to us. Then on the same night, which dawned on Wednesday, the thirteenth from the Kalends of July, about the sixth, as it were, hour of the night, they took me from the palace, thrusting aside all those who were with me in the palace, and also the various things which were necessary for me on the road and here, and they led us from the city with nothing but six servants and one drinking-vessel; and when they had put us into one of those boats which are called levamenta, about the fourth hour of the day, more or less, we came to the port. In that hour in which we went out from the city of Rome, the gates were immediately bolted, and they also guarded them, and remained there, lest anyone should go out of the city and come to us in the port, until we had sailed from there. For this reason it was necessary that we send away from the port the property of all those who had put their property into the levamenta, and then depart on the same day. And we came to Mesena on the Kalends of July, where there was a ship, which is my prison. But not only in Mesena, but also in Calabria; and not only in Calabria, which is subject to the great city of the Romans, but also on very many islands, on which our sins have impeded us for three months, I have obtained no compassion, except only on the island of Naxos, because I spent a year there, I merited to bathe two or three times, and in the city I stayed in a certain inn. And behold it is now the forty-seventh day since I have merited to wet myself with hot or cold water, and I have wasted away and have been cold all over, because the flowing of my stomach both on the ship and on land has given me no rest even to the present hour; and even in the very hour of my necessity, when I am about to eat, I am shaken in my whole body, I do not have those things which are necessary to enjoy for the comforting of nature, because what I have disgusts me to receive, since it causes me nausea within. But I believe in the power of God who sees all things, that when I will be led out from the present life, these things will be required of those who persecute me, so that at least in this way they may be led to repentance, and converted from their iniquity. [Signature] May God keep you unharmed, most sweet son.

Lenten Meditation #7: The Joy of Christ Jesus Upon the Cross

"And now you yourself glorify me, Father, with yourself, in the glory which I had, with you, before the world existed." (John 17:5)

"And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' Which, translated, means: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Mark 15:34)

The mystery of the Christian Faith is the Paschal mystery, the mystery of the death and resurrection of God. This mystery itself contains many mysteries, mysteries concerned with the nature of God and of man, of Incarnation and redemption and sin and death and justice and suffering. Indeed, there is, in a true sense, nothing either of earth or of heaven that is not contained in this one mystery. When we eat the Body of the Lord, and drink his Blood, we make ourselves a participant in the union of all of God with all of creation: and this is the purpose of our existence, of all our lives, and all our desires, thoughts, words, and deeds.

Here, though, is one small part of this mystery that has for many years been perhaps the central object of my meditation: the joy of Christ Jesus upon the Cross.

On the Cross, Jesus knew and tasted all the sin and suffering and evil of all mankind, from the beginning of time to the end of it. On the Cross, Jesus knew and tasted betrayal by those closest to him, including all of us, the mockery of his enemies, who we are and have been, and the loss of his only beloved. On the Cross, Jesus knew and tasted abandonment by God, the subjection of his body and soul to suffering and helplessness and torment without any consolation.

Still, on the Cross, Jesus remained God, remained united to God in an unbreakable bond, the bond of the hypostatic union and of the Most Holy Trinity.

Many saints and doctors of the Church have taught that, because of the hypostatic union, Jesus knew and saw God not only in his divinity, but in his humanity as well; that is, that he experienced in his earthly life, from the moment of conception to the moment of death, the Beatific Vision of the essence of God that all of us, by the grace of God, will experience only in heaven. While all men know God only by Faith, that is, the man Jesus knew him by sight, as completely and as intimately as it is possible for the created to know the uncreated. He was Son, and knew his Father not only in his eternal divinity, but in his chosen humanity as well.

It is in this divine sight that Christ Jesus on this earth preached and healed, prayed and lived and suffered, rejoiced and wept, for the love of his Father and of us all. It is in this divine sight, likewise, that he suffered and died.

This, though, is a question that has vexed many doctors and many saints: how is it that Christ Jesus could, while seeing the essence of God, suffer all that he suffered in the Cross? How could Christ Jesus, while seeing the essence of God, experience abandonment by God? Perhaps, we must say, the suffering must have been lessened, or else the vision must have been lost.

Nevertheless, the greatest doctors and mystics of the Church have affirmed both, without contradiction: that Christ Jesus on the Cross saw God, experienced what we feebly call Heaven, the ineffable and eternal union with God--and that Christ Jesus on the Cross saw only death and torment, betrayal and abandonment, by man and by God. Saint Therese of Liseux, in her last days of torment, spoke of this mystery; so, too, did St. Edith Stein, in the last days before her martyrdom. Both affirmed the double mystery of Christ Jesus' union and abandonment upon the Cross; and so too have many others.

The key to this mystery, I am convinced, lies in the teachings of the mystics and theologians, concerning the transcendence and ineffability of the essence of God. As St. John of the Cross teaches, the essence of God which we know in heaven, and in the merest shadows even on earth, in itself cannot be seen or heard, tasted or touched; in itself, it infinitely transcends every capacity of the body, mind, and soul, made, as they are, for the knowledge of creatures; in itself, it bears no proportion to, and no resemblance to, any created thing or any created experience. It is for this reason that knowledge of God and union with him so often comes to us not as light but as darkness, a darkness into which we are plunged, blinding us and removing us far from all pleasure and pain, all sight and hearing and all understanding. To know God as he is is to transcend all things, to be taken entirely away from all things.

Still, in heaven, we will see not only the essence of God, but also his glory, and show that glory in ourselves; that is, we will see not only God himself, but the effects he has on creatures, the participation of creatures in him. This may be expressed, however feebly, by images of joy and light, of power and honor and wisdom. In the last day, we will be raised from the dead, and all creation will be remade in him, transformed into a most perfect participation in his supernatural grace and love. All the saints will be united in a single bond of charity, of mutual love and honor. None of this is God, but it is his glory.

Likewise, even on this earth, the knowledge of God often brings us peace, light, joy, healing, reconciliation, and many other good things--even, perhaps, experiences of God that transcend our nature. On earth, too, we know and see the glory of God.

Still, none of this is, in itself, the essence of God; none of it is what we seek. The sight of the essence of God is not itself joy, or peace, or healing, or light, or any of these things; it is something far greater, and far more good, than any of them. In Christ Jesus, this knowledge of God frequently overflowed in him, to bring joy, to bring peace, to bring healing, to show forth the glory of God made flesh; but all this glory could be taken away, and he would still remain God.

So it was, then, on the Cross; Christ Jesus did experience abandonment by God, not because he ceased to see God, but because that sight ceased to bring anything at all except itself. As St. Edith Stein expressed it, all sensible joy of the indestructible union was taken away, so that he saw and felt and experienced nothing but the absence of God. In himself, he knew truly all our suffering, all our sin, all our fear and pain and torment and betrayal and abandonment; and the sight of God's essence did not lessen this, but rather increased it. The one who knew God, the Son of God, God in human flesh, was abandoned by him totally to suffering and torment and death. He drank our cup to the dregs.

Still, there is one other thing that must be remembered, through all of this; that in the Cross of Christ, God was glorified far more perfectly than at any other time in the life of the Christ. In St. John's Gospel, in fact, the hour of the crucifixion is frequently expressed not as the hour of abandonment, but as the hour in which the Father glorifies the Son. How is this possible?

Deus caritas est: God is love, and we are all saved, not through pleasure or pain, not through joy or anguish, not through consolation or abandonment, but solely and only through love. The love of God that dwells within us is the Holy Spirit, God himself; and this love is glorified in all that we do and say and experience that is from that love and for it. As St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross both teach, as every mystic and doctor of the Church has taught, it is not any mystical experience that makes us holy, not even a mystical experience of the darkness of God: it is simply and solely the love of God that dwells in us, and works itself out through us.

If we understand this, we understand why the Cross of Christ was not only abandonment by God, but far more his glorification: for in it, and through it, the love of God has been revealed in all its fullness, has flowed out in all its fullness into the whole world, and into our hearts. Christ Jesus was abandoned by God, and suffered all things; yet this is, in truth, for those with eyes to see, the greatest glory of God and of Man: that God should, as Man, suffer abandonment by himself, that God should, as Man, die in torments and in agony, for the sake of his love.

Christ Jesus came into the world to reveal to us God as love; and this he did upon the Cross. On the Cross, the Son was, truly, glorified by the Father with the very same love which he has known in eternity, the divine love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God.

In all our life on this earth, then, in both joy and suffering, consolation and abandonment, let us never fail to remember that Christ Jesus upon the Cross saw the Face of God, and revealed it to us; that he knew the essence of God, and was abandoned by God, and so glorified him.

There is no greater joy than the joy of Christ Jesus on the Cross.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, grant us, we pray, a true participation in that divine and eternal love which you glorified upon the Cross, so that in all our deeds, words, thoughts, joys, and sufferings, we may likewise, in you, glorify God. Grant that in all our experiences of abandonment by God, we may likewise possess him and glorify him, as you did; and grant that as we have suffered with you on the Cross, we may experience with you forever the joy of the Resurrection.

Amen.

Lenten Meditation #6: The Consolation of the Cross

"There was a vessel there full of vinegar, and putting a sponge soaked with vinegar onto a hyssop rod, they brought it to his mouth. When Jesus had accepted the vinegar, he said: 'It is consummated.'" (John 19: 28-9)

"Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, because your embraces are sweeter than wine." (Song of Songs 1.1)

We should never allow ourselves to forget that the Cross is, fundamentally, an act of love, and that we are the intended recipient of that love.

Christ Jesus loves us; that is, he wills our happiness. The Cross is thus the means to our happiness, first and foremost and before all else.

Of course, this, like all love, requires something of us. The happiness which Christ desires to give us is himself, his own Divine Nature, which is the source and summit of all perfections and delights, infinitely transcending every created good. It is a good, too, that transcends also our own natures, and every capacity of our bodies and souls; and so to receive it, we must be transformed into something infinitely more than ourselves, must become God, so that we may know and possess God by means of himself.

The means to this happiness is the Cross of Love. The Cross of Christ Jesus is the perfect act of self-giving, of self-sacrifice, of that fiery and consuming charity that is God. It is not possible to come to God without the Cross, on which God himself died. Only be accepting it entirely can we be entirely transformed into Love, and so receive the gift of perfect and eternal happiness.

Still, it is good for us to remember that the Cross is God's love for us, not a love that comes from us. It is, in the end, neither our task nor our burden; it is the Lord's.

The only task, the only yoke, which God lays upon us is the acceptance of his love, which is the Cross. This is a light burden, and an easy yoke to bear.

We all desire love, to console and to heal and refresh and to delight in; and in comparison to the love of God, every earthly love is dust and ashes. It is a very sweet and delightful thing to be loved by God, infinitely sweeter than every sweetness of this earth.

The love of the Lord is strong wine, rich food, the embrace of lovers, the stillness of the starlight sky, the depths of the ocean. The Cross of the Lord is the Tree of Life, full of fruit good to look upon and to eat. It is fulfillment, peace, security, consolation, rest, not of a moment or a place or a part, but wholly and in eternity.

Here is but one sweetness of the Cross, one of the many consolations and pledges of love which the Lord, as our lover, offers to us; that for the sake of love, he has shared in all our sufferings and sins, drank the cup of our nothingness and misery to the very dregs.

We do not merely suffer because God calls us to something beyond us; we suffer because we are created things, nothingness sharing in existence; because we live in a material creation that is good but full of death, of many creatures indifferent to our good; because we are incomplete in ourselves, and full of desire for what we hope will complete us; and because we are ignorant, and imperfect, and so sin, choosing what harms others and ourselves, and suffering in ourselves the consequences of others' sin.

In all this we are very pitiable, but this is the consolation which the Lord, in the fullness of his love, offers to us through the Cross; that he, who suffers in himself nothing, should take pity on us, and make himself one of us, to share in our suffering; that he, who knew not sin, should make himself sin for us, should take on himself each and every one of our sins and our sufferings, desiring to know and share in intimately each and every one of our pains and disappointments, our errors and our failures and our wounds; that he should make our sufferings his, and his ours, and use them redeem the whole world.

All in us that is weakest and worst and most wounded, the Lord has made his own. There is nothing we need fear, there is nothing we need be ashamed of, since there is nothing in us that does not share in this consolation, this healing, this peace. Whatever it is we suffer, fear, are wounded by, it is the Lord's, and by it he has loved us.

Whatever burdens we bear, which are our own, are no longer ours, but the Lord's. It is he who shall bear them, in us, it is he who has borne them already on the Cross. Whatever evils come to us, they are not ours to suffer, but the Lord's. It is he who shall suffer them, with us, in love.

This is a great mystery, and very hard for us, weak as we are, to accept. Very often, indeed, we find it far easier to accept our own sufferings, which we know and possess intimately, than to accept the Lord's love, which comes from outside and leads to a happiness unknown to us, beyond all our control and knowledge. Alone, we gladly bear our own wounds, and it is difficult for us to allow the Lord to take them from us, and make them his own. It is difficult for us to be loved by the Lord.

To accept the Lord's love, to accept his gifts and consolations and blessings, to accept his Cross, is a difficult thing, possible only by his grace; and we ought to ask for it, always.

In all this, though, let us never allow ourselves to grow anxious, never fearful, never distrustful, in anything. The Lord has loved us, made himself small for us, died for us. He offers us himself, and with himself a thousand thousand consolations, ten thousand thousand graces. Allow him to reassure your heart, and he will do so. Allow him to give you himself, who is above and beyond every created thing, beyond all sight and hearing and knowledge, all pain and all pleasure, and every created thing: and he will do so.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, sweet lover of my soul, give to me the grace to accept from you all that you wish to give me; consolations, assurances, signs and means of your love, and in and through and beyond all these things the Cross of your love, and by it your own self.

Amen.

Poem: Super Hanc Petram

"Καὶ ἐκπορευομένου αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ, 

λέγει αὐτῷ εἷς τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ: 

διδάσκαλε, ἴδε ποταποὶ λίθοι καὶ ποταπαὶ οἰκοδομαί."

They took the City, they took her. They took Thessalonika, they took even Hagia Sophia. Do you see these stones? When the Romaios passed through those lands, Clad in bright mail, gleaming with gold and precious stones, The little people, οἷ πολλοί, asked him, βάρβαροι, their speech broken: “Where are you going?” But he only said: “Eις τήν πόλιν.“ Not one stone will be left on another They did not understand. Our citadel is broken; It has become The citadel of our enemies. Nam Divus Titus vicit. “God has spoken!” The man said, his voice pompous, but his cheeks hollow. They raised him up from the pit Where he had lain So many days. “You are the Christ.” He said. “To you God has given Power without end.” And though he was afraid, deep in his heart, the Divine Titus rejoiced. “It is the Temple of the Lord!” They shouted in the street, all together, as one. “The temple! The temple of the Lord!” It is the God-protected city, bastion of the Virgin. It shall not fall εἰς αἰῶνα.
There is the Pious Emperor, Father of the Faithful, King and Priest He is seated on a throne set high above the world. Forever he will rule, For he is nothing but an image of stone. Amen, amen, I say unto you: The City shall fall. Sed dico tibi: I am in Jerusalem in the desert, high on the walls of Constantine: In the distance, the dust of the Saracens rises, And I know it is the end. Tu es Petrus All the stones have fallen, fallen Every stone that once stood Proud against the sky And said that it would stand forever. “God has given you into our hands.” the chamberlain said. Then he cut off his pallium, and the laces on his sandals. Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam The statue speaks, his lips stiff and swollen: “I am both Emperor and Priest. I the Restrainer, I the Image. I will not fail εἰς αἰῶνα.” Down at his feet, there is a little stone. He grinds it beneath his feet Perpetually: “You have betrayed the Emperor.” The statue is anointed with oil, sacred Chrism from the hands of God. He is greater than the small stone, Greater than the heavens and the earth, For he is made of many stones, and great foundations Set one upon another. The City will stand forever, For God protects it. Forever it will stand, For God protects it. “You have abandoned God, and he has abandoned you.” And I saw a beast coming up from the sea It had many heads And many crowns. Look, teacher! See the stones. The kingdoms of this earth Have become the kingdoms of God And his anointed one. For the beast has been anointed With the sacred oil. Divus Titus vicit, nam Christus est. “What hope have you?” Et portae inferni non praevalebunt adversus eam. “The City has fallen, and I am still alive.” And so I must die. And I looked, and behold, the great image, That all the earth served, Crumbled into dust before my eyes And the walls were encircled, And the abomination of desolation was set up in the holy place Until the consummation, and the end. And the city of the Virgin became The city of her enemies And the small stone endured Compacted, without seam and division And it became a great mountain And filled the whole world. Nam is est Petrus. I give thanks for all things To the only immortal King.

Lenten Meditation #5: The Trial of God

"Pilate said to him: 'You do not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you, and authority to crucify you?'" (John 19:10)

"Pilate, seeing that this was not advantageous, but rather a riot was happening, took water and, facing the crowd, washed his hands." (Matthew 27:24)

Pontius Pilate may be my favorite character in the Gospels. Most of the people we encounter in the Gospels are fairly similar to the Evangelists themselves: ordinary people, of no great status or significance or responsibility, transformed over time and with great difficulty by the grace of God into disciples of the truth. In this conflict of grace and nature, nature offers its share of difficulties, but little determined opposition. Peter may stammer and swear and shout and betray, but he loves Jesus nonetheless; blind men and lepers may disobey or lack faith or be confused, but in the end they want to be healed; the poor and the great of Israel may not understand what the Kingdom of God consists of, or like the one who preaches it very much, but they do want God's Kingdom to come.

Pilate, though, never shows any such desire for the Kingdom of God, or any particular respect for it; he is, after all, the representative of another kingdom. He represents nature not in its weakness and receptivity to grace, but in the fullness of its strength and pride.

Like very many of us, though, his part in human society, in the fallen order in opposition to grace, is in truth a very small and difficult one. Americans prize individual freedom and power over just about anything--yet in reality, almost no human being who has ever lived has ever actually been free and independent and strong in any remotely meaningful sense. Power and freedom resides in kingdoms, not in men; and most of us, most of the time, get whatever power and whatever freedom we have (or pretend we have) merely by consenting to be one small cog in a much larger machine. America is the leader of the free world; and I am a citizen of America. Rome is the head of the world; and I am the representative of Rome. 

Pilate's career, as we get it not only from the Gospels but also from the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus, was not a wildly successful or fortunate one; given charge of a backwater full of religious fanatics, he was undercut and opposed at every turn, his brutal and unsubtle tactics usually ending in failure and embarrassment for both Rome and himself. A long, miserable career, with plenty of dead bodies but very little glory, pursued more for the imagined proximity of success and power than any tangible presence thereof: if we do not, all of us, see much of ourselves in such a man, then we are hardly being very honest with ourselves. 

Still, in the end, Pilate receives his reward for all those years of fruitless toil: he gets to be the judge of God.

Let us take a moment to appreciate just what an extraordinary privilege, what an extraordinary gift, this really was, to Pilate and to ourselves. Is this not, truly, what he had always wanted, what all of us have always wanted, and fruitlessly sought, in so many labors?

For this is, in truth, the one thing pride, in its heart of hearts, most desperately desires: to be the one whose thought and word and will stands alone and unquestioned, entirely apart from and above all others. What bitterness, what resentment, we suffer, whenever any other human person, whenever any other reality, whenever even God himself, takes away from this blissful power, this all-encompassing freedom. At some time in our lives, another human person, whether by word or deed or merely by their existence, has stood as an obstacle to our will or our knowledge or our desire; at some time in our lives, another human person has even dared to set out their own thought and will and existence as equal to, or perhaps even more important than, our own; at some time in our lives, another human person has even dared to sit in judgment over our thoughts, over our wills, to tell us that this is good and that bad--or even had the audacity to command us, to demand that we submit our desires to their desires, our thoughts to their thoughts, our will to their will. At some point in our lives, faced with this intolerable reality, with this crushing and hateful presence, everything in us has risen up in rebellion, and and we have longed to see this other crushed, humiliated, annihilated, ceasing to exist or else subjected totally and beyond hope of recovery to our thoughts and desires, our will.

If this is true with another human person, is it not true a hundred, a thousand-fold with God himself? Is he not, after all, the one whose thought and will really does stand unquestioned and above all others, is he not the one who dared to create us with his will, to sustain us with that will, and even to redeem us by his love? Is he not the one who beyond all others claims the right to command us, who demands that we to submit our own thoughts and desires and wills, totally and beyond all hope of recovery, to his? Is he not the one, finally, who has dared to judge us, to declare this deed of ours good, and that evil? Is it not God that we have hated in every person whose existence and thoughts and will and judgment and commands we have hated, God we have longed to see crushed and humiliated and subjected to us totally? 

This, then, is the gift Pilate received, in recompense for a whole lifetime spent fruitlessly bending and submitting, flattering and scheming, murdering and torturing and toiling: to look into the face of God himself, and tell him that you are his judge.

To be the one--the one--to see God standing before you, in chains, to be the one to examine God, question him, parse his conduct, decide without question whether he is guilty or innocent, whether he has acted wrongly or rightly, whether he will live or die: this is, in truth, the perfect fulfillment of all our human pride.

Still, as the Gospel account shows, sitting in judgment over God is no easy task; and in doing it, Pilate's pride, like our own, hardly achieves a perfect victory. Pilate is in turn frightened, overawed, annoyed, overcome, even humiliated, by the Jewish priests, their crowds of supporters, and Christ himself. For Christ Jesus is not impressed at all by Pilate's power, his status, his accomplishments, or the vast human systems that underly all these things; nor is he any more impressed with ours. Christ claims to be Truth itself, utterly beyond and utterly indifferent to all power and all knowledge; and he demands that Pilate, and we, acknowledge him, submit ourselves to him, be judged by him, and be, cruellest of all, loved by him.

Against this divine calling, it is very difficult for any human being to remain strong in his own pride; yet Pilate succeeds nonetheless, and it is this that is his real triumph, his only success, as it is so often ours. "What is truth?" he asks, not a question at all, but a final declaration of indifference, of rejection, of Truth standing before him and offering himself to him. "God is innocent," he declares, as he nevertheless asks the priests and the crowd what their preference might happen to be on this matter; a gesture of the most superb indifference to justice, to truth, to each and every single person present. Finally, though, the most glorious moment of his triumph, and ours, comes at last: when he as presiding judge declares God guilty and hands him over to be scourged and mocked and tortured and humiliated and be utterly broken and die in agony; and in so doing washes his hands publicly in front of all his enemies, in front of the entire human race, and declares himself innocent.

Contemplate, if you will, the greatness of this human pride, his and ours! To wash our hands entirely of God and the priests and the people, guilt and innocent, truth and falsehood, life and death: is this not the greatest and most potent declaration of our independence, our freedom, the absoluteness of our own thoughts and our wills?

Perhaps God, who is innocent, is indeed being tortured to death and dying in agony under my orders, before my face; but what is truth? I am innocent of this man's blood.

In the face of God, the only real power of man is in indifference, in simple and final rejection of other persons, truth, and God. This choice of Pilate we have made, each one of us, and this same choice we make daily. We see good and evil, truth and falsehood, we see other human persons and ourselves, we see God: and we are indifferent to and reject them all.

Justice is violated before our eyes, the poor are oppressed and tormented and forgotten, the weak and the innocent are bought and sold, corrupted and led astray, God himself is insulted in his Church and his representatives, and we do nothing, perhaps indeed we even take delight in it, because it is so powerful, so free to be and to do such things.

Does not each and every single one of us daily take delight in such indifference, in such freedom? How many of the deeds we do are done, truly, for its sake? How many even of the deeds we claim to do for God are done, in truth, for the sake of pride, for the humiliation and subjection of other persons, and God himself, to our thoughts, our wills?

Pilate is not at all the most evil character in the Gospels, as Christ himself, not without pity, declared; he had less knowledge of God than others, and so less power to wound him in his heart. We, though, to the degree that we claim to, and truly do, know God and love him, are like Pilate and yet far, far worse than him in every way, whenever we imitate him in his indifference and pride.

Daily God is brought before us to be judged, in the guise of our neighbor, in the guise of the Church and her Pope and priests and bishops and teachings, in the guise of the poor and the weak and the sinful and the oppressed and each and every single one of our brothers and sisters. Let us, if we claim to be Christians, not act the part of Pilate; let us not crucify God in pride and indifference, but in humility and love let us acknowledge God in whatever guise he comes to us, submit our desires to his desires, our thoughts to his thoughts, our will to his will. Let us acknowledge him, and him alone, as the judge of every person, of every deed of others and ourselves, and submit ourselves and all things to his justice.

When we have laid aside all the glory of our earthly knowledge and strength, our status in every earthly system and every power that comes from it, every power to judge and to decide and to will: only then can we receive from Christ the Eternal Kingdom he would offer to us in his Cross. If we can accept this Cross, we will be blessed indeed, and will no more be forced to spend our lives standing in judgment over God, declaring him innocent or guilty, trying desperately and in vain to wash his blood from our hands. We will, rather, live in peace, sustained by his love, submitting to and seeking the justice he has declared, in and through his Church, to the whole world.

This, then, is the judgment: that only when every last shred of our pride has been utterly destroyed, only when we have become, like God, entirely truth and entirely love, can we enter into the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world, and delight in the fullness of joy forever.

Let us see to it, then.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, I acknowledge before you the greatness of my pride, and the great and willful indifference with which I have stood in judgment over you and my neighbor, and delighted in being free of you and your love. Grant, I beseech you, that I may truly repent of this pride, and truly and in all things submit my desires to your desires, my thoughts to your thoughts, my will to your will: first in your Church, her Pope and bishops and priests, then in all those set in authority over me by God, and lastly in each and every single one of my brothers and sisters, especially those who are most treated, like you, with indifference.

Amen.

Lenten Meditation #4: The Weakness of God

"And carrying the Cross for himself Jesus went out to the place called 'of the Skull,' which is called in Hebrew Golgotha." (John 19:17)

Third Station of the Cross: Jesus falls the first time.

Seventh Station of the Cross: Jesus falls the second time.

Ninth Station of the Cross: Jesus falls the third time.

"And they conscripted some passerby, Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus, as he was coming from the countryside, to take up Jesus' Cross." (Mark 15:21)

We are human beings, and so we are weak.

This is not in the least an evil; for weakness and strength are both relative things, valueless except in relation to God or human beings or time or space or some other created thing. God is strong in relation to us, because in relation to him we are nothing at all, and exist at each moment only because he wills it; but in himself, in relation to himself, God is properly neither strong nor weak. The Father does not need strength to beget the Son or to exist in relation to him; nor does the Son need weakness to be loved by the Father and love him in return, and with him spirate the Holy Spirit.

In relation to God and others and ourselves, there are times when it is good for us to be strong; and times when it is good for us to be weak. Sometimes we must help; sometimes we must be helped. Sometimes we must direct; and sometimes we must be directed. Sometimes, and in some things, we must act as though we existed, to accept the gifts of being and goodness which God offers to us, and use them as he wishes, offering to God his own offerings; but in many other things, and in the most fundamental heart of our being, we must be very weak indeed, existing in relation to God very simply as what we truly are: that is, nothing at all. In this humility is the only possible hope of our union with God.

Likewise, the real relations we have to our neighbors, and the genuine love that arises in them, are made possible in this life as much by our weakness as our strength. To love is to submit our own desires and fears and wishes to the good of another; and to be loved is to accept this submission and this will in another, for our good. This is a task that requires, often, all of our strength to fulfill; yet without weakness, we would rarely if ever even attempt it. In our fallen state, strength all too often does little more than make us proud, secure in a false illusion of self-sufficiency, while weakness reveals to us our own dependency and relatedness, and opens us to love.

Still, we are creatures to whom God has given intellects, to know the good, and wills, to seek it; and it is terribly vexing for us to be weak, to be unable to do what we will. We have bodies, which require food and desire pleasure, and hearts that seek always to love and be loved; and it is painful for us to not have what we desire, or to possess what we fear. To be weak, for us, is very often to suffer: to suffer the lack of some things we would have, and the presence of others we would escape.

Certainly it pleases us to be strong; to be able to do what we will, to have what we desire, to avoid what we fear. Yet here is another burden, another gift of God: that through our very strength we soon grow weak and weary, our bodies wearing away, our minds slipping from us, until we must seek nonbeing again in rest and in sleep.

Then, too, however strong we may be in body or mind, the utter failure of all our strength awaits us all in death. In the end, whether we will it or no, our bodies will fail and not be renewed, our minds will break and be torn from us and not return, and we will fall back into the feeble dust from which we came.

The Athenians, in the brief moment of their power, declared that the strong do what they will, while the weak suffer what they must. In the end, all of us, strong or weak, do what we do not will, and suffer what we must.

In becoming man, then, God became for the first time weak--and also for the first time strong, as we know strength. Christ Jesus in the body was a strong man, who overturned the moneychangers' tables and wandered the earth with no place to call his home. Day and night, he toiled and preached and argued and fought for the sake of sinners. Day and night, he did as strong men do, and carried out his will, which was to do the will of the one who sent him, in all things and at every moment, for the salvation of the world.

Even in his Passion, Christ Jesus was, as a man, strong; strong in the will and the desire that drove him to take up the burden of the sins of the world, to fight and to suffer and to die for the sake of his beloved. Christ Jesus, as man, knew each one of us, and as man he willed to seek us out and to save us, even through the pain and torment of the Cross.

Still, if Christ was strong, he was also weak; weak as we are weak, in the created nothingness of his humanity and ours. As he became strong out of love for us, to save us, so too he became weak for our sakes, to love us and be loved by us. He was weak when he came into the world as an embryo in the body of his Mother and at her will, when he was born to her and carried by her and nursed at her breast, when he cried aloud in the night for her to come to him and receive him and love him. He was weak when he wept over Jerusalem, because he willed to heal it, and his beloved willed not; he was weak when he sweated blood in the garden, because he willed that cup of sin and death pass from him, and it did not pass, since his own divine will must be done. As he became strong for the sake of love, so too did he make himself terribly, dreadfully weak, as weak as us and far weaker, so that we might recognize his love for us, and love him in return.

In the fullness of his human strength, for the sake of his great love for us, Christ Jesus our Lord took on himself the burden of the Cross, the burden of all of our sin and shame and misery; and in the fullness of his human weakness, for the sake of his great love for us, he was not able to bear it.

Christ Jesus willed to bear the Cross, to carry it until the end, and yet his body failed, his mind slipped, and he fell three times into utter darkness. In the end, he required the help of a human person to carry it with and for him.

Let us recognize the mystery and the glory of what we are saying: God required the help of a human person to bear the Cross. He required our help.

For the sake of his love, God did not will that he alone should save us; he willed rather that we should love him and one another, and with him and through him carry the Cross of salvation to the end. We are saved not merely through and by Christ, but in him also through and by one another; even through and by ourselves. Christ Jesus, as God, could have made his human body and soul strong enough to bear the Cross until the end; he did not. For our sakes he made himself very weak, so that we might help him, as he helped and helps us in all things. So great was his love for us that he desired that he should need our help to bring his love to completion.

In and through the grace of God, in the power of his Spirit, we too are called to offer ourselves for the salvation of the world; and without our cooperation neither the world nor ourselves will be saved. This is the responsibility, the burden, the Cross, which Christ Jesus lays upon us all. He has given into our hearts his own Divine Love, laid upon our backs his own Cross, and asked us to bear it until the end. So great is his love for us that he wills that we possess his love as our own, and fulfill it in ourselves.

There is no intimacy with the Lord closer than this, no divinization more blessed than this, than that we should possess as our own the Love of God, and in our own works and prayers and sufferings and lives fulfill it.

Still, if we would bear the Cross of Christ, we cannot bear it in our own human strength; far from it. We can only bear it by acknowledging, and living in, our own absolute nothingness, our own absolute dependence on God and his grace. Only by our own human weakness can we be strong with the strength of God. Only the Divine Love of Christ can allow us to will the Cross, and bear it faithfully until the end; every other love is only a counterfeit, a deception, and will fail the moment it is put to the test.

If we would bear the Cross of Christ, we must bear it not in our own strength, but through the strength of Christ; and if we would love, finally, as Christ loves, we must do so not through our own weakness, but through the weakness of Christ.

This is the deepest and most blessed mystery of all: to bear in ourselves, in our own bodies and souls and minds and hearts, the weakness of God. When Christ Jesus fell to earth beneath the Cross, he was weak with a weakness that saves and has saved us all; when he cried out in agony nailed to that same Cross, he was weak with a weakness that has torn the veil and revealed to us the very inner life of God himself, the Eternal and unbreakable love of the Trinity.

The lives we live, and the Crosses we bear, are full of suffering, and of weakness, and of failure. We will, and do not do what we will. We desire, and do not have what we desire. We fear, and have what we fear. By all this, we are made weary, and waste away, and fall into darkness. Christ Jesus, too, for our sake, was weak in just this way, and fell to the earth beneath the weight of the Cross; and by this he redeemed us all from everlasting death.

Let us, then, run to offer to him upon the Cross all our weaknesses, all our failures, all our nothingness and helplessness and lack. He will receive it all as his own, for he has indeed claimed it for his own. By it, far more than by our own vain strength, he will unite us ever more deeply with his own helplessness, his own failure, his own nothingness and weakness on the Cross. By it, he will lead us into the fullness of his Love, the Love by which he himself exists as Father, Son, and Spirit, far beyond all our weakness and all our strength, forever.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, weak and fallen Savior, take pity on us, and give us always the strength to accept your love, so that in us and our weakness the mystery of your own divine weakness may be completed, for the salvation of all the world.

Amen.