God – Vehicle Vespers

Kerygma

Advent and Christmas always provide a full and eventful kick-off to the liturgical year. This year we celebrate a Jubilee. Specifically, we celebrate the 2,025th anniversary of the Incarnation of our Lord. It seems like the perfect time for a fresh start. What better time, then, to once again reactivate this humble blog?

If you are new to Theological terms, then the title of this post might seem strange to you. “Kerygma” is a Greek word meaning proclamation. Specifically, it is the Greek word used in the New Testament to describe the apostolic proclamation of the good news of Christ and our salvation. Jesus directed the Apostles to go into the world and preach the good news to every creature (Mark 16:15, Luke 14:23). As the Apostles are called, so we are called. But what exactly is this good news, and what does it mean for us in our modern daily lives? There are many online resources that dive deeply into the Kerygma, the Kerygmatic Message, and the kerygmatic approach to teaching religion at all levels. I invite you to search the term in your favorite search tool to fully explore this topic. Acts chapter 2 is also a good place to gain a firm scriptural understanding of the subject.

I’d like to focus on the four core points of the Kerygma, because I find that they provide a solid anchor for my personal prayer life and they weave through and link together most of the concepts I cover in my catechetical efforts with both youth and adults. They are

–God Loves you and has a plan for your life.
–Sin interferes with this plan.
–God sent Christ to conquer sin.
–Reconnecting your life with Christ opens the path to Salvation.

Each of these points raises interesting and difficult questions. Who or what is God? How can I see or feel that he loves me? What about emotional distress or financial hardship; is that God’s plan for me? If sin blocks the plan, does that mean that God doesn’t love me when I’ve sinned? If Christ conquered sin, why is it so prevalent in my life? Why do I continue to fall into sin? Why does the sin of others hurt me and those that I love? That doesn’t seem like good news at all! Finally, if the remedy is a reconnection with and through Christ, what can I do to find and maintain this reconnection? I can’t answer all those questions in a single blog post. In fact, right now I’m at the beginning of a 10 week class that I’m offering at my home parish. 10 weeks isn’t enough to fully answer these questions either. My goal is to put people on a path to their own spiritual journeys to uncover a way forward; a way to embrace to the fullest extent possible the good news of the proclamation and be prepared for the glory of the ultimate realization of these truths when we are one day face-to-face with God our creator. St. Augustine teaches us that God gives us faith in this temporal world as a solace to life’s strife, hardship, and misery. In the next life and in the world to come, we won’t need faith, because we will be with God. We will see truth and ultimate peace. We will exist in truth and ultimate peace (City of God, book xix).

We sin, because God gave us free will. He gave us free will, because without it we would worship him out of meaningless robotic obedience, not love. God wants our love. Why? Because he loves us. The plan He has for each us is designed to lead us back to Him. Sin, though, throws up a wall between us and God. Sin separates us from Him in all three persons of the Trinity. The road back to God leads to the foot of the cross. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” (John 3:16). This only son, God Himself in human form, God’s very word made flesh to dwell amongst us, loves us, teaches us, died for us. Christ’s love for us “surpasses knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19). How then do we reconnect? God did not leave us alone in the wilderness with regard to that struggle either. During his ministry on earth, Christ instituted for us the Sacraments through which we can abide in hope, faith, and love. When he returned to God, Christ sent us the Holy Spirit to continue to guide us (John 16:7). The Holy Spirit bolsters us and gives us peace in this world. We must, though, manage our free will such that we stay connected to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is always there, and He too, always loves us. We can walk away from God, but God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit–never walks away from us. This pure love from God we call Grace. We can reject it, but we did not, and cannot earn it. Neither can we achieve it. We are not capable of loving God the same way he loves us. The closest we can come is to answer the call contained in God’s plan for us. We can turn our will and our lives over to God, love him to the fullest extent of our being, love our fellow creatures as we love ourselves, and……

Proclaim the Good News!

That, dear bothers and sisters, is the Kerygma.

Be 10!

Before I get to my topic for this post, let me take care of a few housekeeping items. First, I’d like to acknowledge and apologize for the long gap between posts. The fact is that I’ve been working on some personal goals and self-examination. Writing about issues of faith and spirituality can be daunting at such times. I realize, intellectually at least, that if I offer these humble articles as gifts of love, and if I have faith, then I shouldn’t be afraid to share my thoughts with you, and I shouldn’t entertain thoughts of inadequacy of rhetoric, style, or tone. I was just looking at some stats and it appears that I drifted away at exactly the wrong time. I was blessed to receive 183 views of this site in the first week of February. That is probably a small number in the vast universe that is social media presence, but it’s a big deal to me. I hope a large percentage of that 183 will return when they see that there is finally some new content. More than that, I ask always for your prayers; if you are reading this, please consider keeping this blog and its author in your daily prayers. I shall, in return, pray earnestly for all of you. Second, I just want to let you know that, for now anyway, I’m not going to write about the current scandals facing the Church. I don’t pretend to be a religious journalist, and pretty much everyone from Rome to Madison Avenue to Jakarta has opined on what happened, what should happen, and what they think is going to happen. I don’t feel that I have anything cogent to offer on the subject. I will pray—hard—for the victims and I encourage you do to so as well.

Alright, then! I’m back and I hope you are as well. May the Grace and Peace of our Lord, Jesus Christ, which passes all understanding, be with you all. Now: today’s topic.

When one really steps back and takes a breath and a broad view of the relationship one has with Our Lord, it becomes clear that we humans are complicated, but Christ’s love for us is really very simple and direct. We were all created in God’s image, but we were not created to be co-divine. That might sound obvious, but it is an important point. We are imperfect beings that are nonetheless objects of perfect love. That is probably why we often refer to ourselves as “children of God,” and not “brothers and sisters to God.” We don’t always act that way, though. We kick around concepts of religion and theology like they are vast, complex, and very “grown-up” issues. The truth is that religion might get you a book deal, and theology might get you a teaching gig, but salvation is an outpouring of God’s Grace in the form of Christ’s love for all of us and his passion on the cross. We can wrestle with didactic arguments if it makes us feel important, but I think that we would be better served by making ourselves “10-years-old for Christ.”

One of the many blessings in my life are the group of my adopted nieces and nephews. Mostly, these are the children of very close friends who are now more like family. One of them is my adorable goddaughter who is still a toddler, another is a wife and mother of her own toddler now, and still another will be confirmed this year and has honored me by asking me to be her sponsor (a decision she might now regret, because if I’m your sponsor, I’m picking you up every Sunday morning to go with me to Mass). This morning I got to spend some time with yet another neat person who calls me “Uncle Paul.” Her mother had an early appointment, so I was tapped to be on hand to ensure that she got on the school bus safely. She was already up and moving when I arrived. She had her breakfast, washed her face and combed her hair, picked out her outfit and got dressed, checked over her homework, made sure she had all important books and papers in her backpack, took the dog out to do its business, secured said dog in its day-crate, retrieved her lunch, closed and locked up the house, and headed to the driveway to wait for the school bus. I must admit that I was wondering what the heck I was doing there. She certainly didn’t need my help for anything. I was, of course, security. I was an adult presence there in case of any unforeseen issue and so I could make sure that she got on the bus safely. She didn’t need me in any tangible way, but she could be comfortable in the fact that I was there; that I was watching over her. I reminded her that I work from home, so I am always nearby and asked her if she had my cell phone number in case of an emergency and she confirmed that she did. In the midst of the small talk while we were waiting for the bus, she paused and looked up at me and said in a discernibly serious tone, “Tomorrow, I’m going to be 10 years old.” I was struck with a real sense that she was in tune with the fact that she isn’t a baby anymore. She is a person with a strong sense of identity and self-awareness, but she also understands that she’s still a kid, and she needs the security and stability that the adults in her life provide.

It is a relatively non-eventful anecdote, but I share it with you because I think it provides a metaphor for the way God can act in our daily lives. If through prayer and other means, we tune ourselves into the security and stability of Grace, then we can go about our daily responsibilities efficiently and earnestly, because we have that sense that Christ is with us and God is always there. I want to be 10 again for Christ. I think Christ opens us to the freedom of being loved at that level. Sin is the unforeseen incident, and God is the adult in the room that, through Christ, removes the obstacles so we can get back to living normally and healthfully. I want to be 10 again for Christ. Take a second and think about your best friend in 5^th grade. I’ll bet you are smiling. At 10, one’s personality is developed enough that deep and sincere relationships can bond and form, but one is still young enough that much of the flotsam and jetsam that creeps into our lives in our teen years hasn’t hit yet. I want to learn to love all the people in my life the way that my niece loves her dog, her best friend, her family, and unicorns. I want to feel the sense of safety and security she feels when her dad gets home, or when her Uncle Paul is there to make sure she gets on the bus okay. I want to be 10 again for Christ. I want to understand deeply that I am always welcome in the house of the Lord, and that I can be me, and that I don’t have to prove anything to Christ. This is the true power that Christ gifts to us through the cross. Not the power to conquer nations or build huge ministries or massive churches. We can do those things, and He can be our guide and our strength in all endeavors. But I want to be 10 again for Christ. I want to shake off the bothersome and nagging adult issues that try so hard to pull us away from our relationship with the Lord. I want to be 10 again for Christ, and I want to hear with a 10-year-old’s ears, and believe with a 10-year-old’s faith, and love with a 10-year-old’s heart when I hear Christ Jesus say, “Remember that I will be with you always; even unto the end of the age.” I pray that all of you will reconnect with your own inner 10-year-old as well. It’s good to be back on the blog. Thanks for reading my humble musings. Believe that you are special and worthy of love because God made you who you are, and Christ loves you very much, and may God bless us, protect us from all evil, and bring us to everlasting life.

Crossing the Alleluia Threshold

I wonder if any of you feel the same thing I do today.

Holy Thursday is unique in that it literally straddles two seasons of the Liturgical year. Morning prayer this morning was a Lenten observance; the final Lenten observance. The Easter Triduum began with Holy Thursday Mass, or Evening prayer depending on the form one selects for observing this special day in the calendar. I found the tangible threshold of passing over (pun only slightly intended) from Lent to Easter in the pages of the Divine Office very pronounced. We find ourselves at the end of a long 40 days of penance, alms giving, self-denial, and self-examination. Tomorrow is, of course, a day of great personal and introspective prayer. If today is a day of threshold, tomorrow is a day of peering over the precipice. Tonight, Christ asks us to serve one another and remember him in a special way. Tomorrow, we ponder the concept of life without Christ. It is always startling to dip one’s finger into the Baptismal font as a matter of habit only to find it empty and dry. Perhaps, after such a long time away from this blog, I’ll write more tomorrow about Good Friday. Right now, though, I want to stay focused on today and this evening and return to this concept of the Holy Thursday threshold. We should, I think, be relieved to return to normal; to enjoy with abandon those things we gave up for Lent, to have meat back on Fridays, to sing and say “Alleluia!” at Mass once again. I wonder, however, if any of you feel, as I do, a bit of sadness at the departure of Lent. It is such a spiritual time. Is there not something calming in the stoic, measured, and deep nature of our Church lives during these six weeks? I think that in the same way Christmas brings out the child in all of us, Lent brings out the grown-up. We have all heard the common admonition that we should carry a bit of the Christmas spirit with us all through the year. I think we should carry a bit of Lent with us all year as well. Or, maybe I’m just weak and I need the structure of the discipline a designated block of time provides. There is no maybe. I am weak. I do need the structure. It’s why you haven’t seen a post from me for a while. I’ve been soul-searching during Lent, and it gave me pause; made me hesitant to write about things that I’m still so actively exploring myself.

I guess what I want to say is that this has been a meaningful Lent for me, and I hope that it has been for you as well. As we cross this Alleluia threshold into Easter and head toward Pentecost, I find that I still can’t discern if Lent is a journey, or if it is a rest stop on the roadside of a bigger journey. Either way, part of me will miss the day-to-day wins and losses of trying to carve out a better receptacle for God’s love, Christ’s sacrifice, and a bounty of a Grace that passes all understanding.

A blessed Triduum to you all!