Tag: mercy

What I saw at a Byzantine Divine Liturgy

This Sunday, I was visiting some friends near Dallas, and we went to Divine Liturgy at St. Basil, a Ruthenian/Byzantine church in Irving, TX.

I’ve been to Masses in many languages, including Novus Ordo in Latin, and I’ve been to several Tradentine Masses, but this is the first time I’ve ever been to a Byzantine liturgy. I got some general advice from my friend Elisa about what to expect, and then I just resolved to keep my ears open, soak it in, and be cool. (Ruthenians are in communion with Rome, and it’s fine for a Roman Catholic to just hop in and go to Mass there. They have a metropolitan, but they acknowledge Francis as the Pope.) 

We arrived in the middle of a churching, when a mother and her newborn baby are welcomed back forty days after the birth. I didn’t catch much of it, because I was dazzled by the church itself, not to mention by all the other babies who were loudly making themselves welcome.

Here is what I saw:

On the outside, it was a typical, barn-shaped Dallas building, long and rather low, with a long gable roof and a sort of portico attached to the front, with a slavic-looking steeple and cross perched rather oddly on top.

But here is the inside: The ceiling brilliant blue, the walls heavily stencilled and adorned, and the floor wood parquet, with a long carpet runner down the center, leading up to the iconostasis. 

As I understand it [AND HERE I NEED TO STATE VERY STRONGLY THAT I KNOW VERY CLOSE TO ZERO ABOUT BYZANTINE LITURGY. I WELCOME THOSE WHO ARE MORE EDUCATED TO CORRECT ANY MISTAKES I MAKE IN WHAT FOLLOWS!], the iconostasis is a decorated screen or fence, with (as the name suggests) icons on it, separating the sanctuary and altar from the nave, where the congregation collects.

The iconostasis signifies the separation between Heaven and earth, and the Eucharist is consecrated on the Heaven side. But it’s not really a fence, because it has doors in it — two on the sides, which the deacon and the altar boys passed through several times, and a large central one, which the pastor went through. So during the liturgy, there is some passage or meeting or interchange between Heaven and earth. 

This iconostasis has, among other things, the annunciation, the four evangelists, and two peacocks, which symbolize paradise, on the central gate.

On the wall behind the iconostasis is a huge icon of Mary Wider than the Cosmos. The blue ring with the stars and rays on it signifies the whole universe.

Much of Byzantine liturgy (and therefore iconography) is intended to correct the heresy that Jesus is divine but not really human, and so part of what’s being emphasized here is Mary’s real pregnancy with him. He was really God, but he was really a baby that was born from the body of this specific woman, so look at who she must be! [AGAIN, THIS IS ME FREEWHEELING WITH THEOLOGY A BIT! Take it all with a grain of salt.] She contains within her womb the uncontainable hugeness of God, and if you find that hard comprehend, that means you’re on the right track. Anyway, I gather that some of the friction between Byzantine and Roman churches comes from the fact that they were responding to and correcting different regional heresies, so they didn’t always agree on what needed to be emphasized. 

On the ceiling is a huge icon of, if I remember correctly, Christ Pantocrator (“ruler of all,” all-powerful) or Christ the Teacher. 

You can see the four evangelists, four angels, and clouds. The red means divinity and the blue means humanity. You can see that He has taken on the blue cloak of humanity and wrapped it around Himself. The book He is holding is the Gospel, and His hand is in a gesture of blessing that spell the name of Christ and also, with three fingers, signify the Trinity, and also, with the fingers touching each other, recall the joining of the human and divine in the Incarnation! I think maybe the clouds are just clouds, though. 

There were numerous other icons on the walls, and the walls were painted. There was also an ornate chandelier with icons all around the outside and also the inside

There were no pews. There were chairs lined up along the walls on both sides, for old people and mothers with babies. The room was very full of people of all ages, some in jeans and t-shirts, some in long skirts. Some women wore head coverings, some did not. There were a few ultra-modest trad types and a few folks with blue and purple hair in asymmetrical cuts and funky glasses, but the majority were utterly average-looking suburbanites.

The first thing I noticed was that the entire congregation was in motion. At first I thought this was because there were so many babies, and so many parents were rocking and jiggling their little ones; but then I saw that people without babies were also swaying and weaving and shifting a lot, possibly because it was just a long time to be on your feet, but also because there was just a general sense of liveliness. That is the best I can explain it.

The liturgy invited much more participation from the people than the western liturgy I am used to. Just about everything, including the scripture readings and the intercessory prayers, is chanted or sung (I’m not really clear if there’s a difference), and the people chant right back at the priest or deacon all throughout the hour and a half.

Some people were loud and bold; some murmured; some kept their peace; some went in and out; a few sang in harmony; and there was an incredible noise of babies and children throughout the entire thing. It was a sort of two-layer Byzantine cake, the foundation being a vigorous population of happy, confident children and toddler who expected people to walk around them, which they did. You really couldn’t call it disruptive, since it was just part of the liturgy. Everything was loud, the chanting was loud, the babies were loud, even the censor had little bells on it, and they used a ton of incense. It was a lot! It wasn’t cacophony, and all the sounds were good sounds. But it was a lot.

The only time I really felt overwhelmed and wanted everyone to just stop for a second was right after receiving communion. I am very accustomed to being able to return to my seat, kneel down, and pray in quiet for at least a few minutes, and it was jarring and a little upsetting not to have that, but just to witness the continuous weltering stream of chanting and wandering around continue. That would take some getting used to. 

You also cross yourself constantly. Just dozens of times. I never quite figured out which words triggered a sign of the cross, but there seemed to be several! I gave up trying to keep up and just did my best. 

There were at least a few occasions when the priest and altar boys came out from the altar area and processed around the church. The altar boys carried some kind of long poles topped with icons framed in golden sunburst designs, and at various times during the liturgy, they moved these in particular ceremonial ways. This was fascinating and I need to learn more about what it all means. I also noticed people reaching out to touch the vestments of the priest as he went by. I believe this must be an echo of the woman reaching out to touch Jesus’ garment for healing (not that people expect healing, but the vestments are so close to the Eucharist), but I am not exactly sure. 

When it was time to read the Gospel, all the kids streamed up to the front of the church. It wasn’t a big deal, and they didn’t do a special kiddie participation Q-and-A session or anything. Everyone just made room for the kids, and it was excellent. At other times, the kids went where they wanted to, including crawling around on the floor with icon coloring pages and little boxes of crayons. None of the kids were out of control or obnoxious, but they weren’t expected to be deathly silent, so they weren’t. 

When people got tired of standing up, they simply sat down on the floor. When they felt like getting up, they got up. When they needed a break, or wanted to be in a different spot, they simply wandered over somewhere else. This did not create an atmosphere of irreverence, if that’s what you’re imagining. I love the Tridentine Mass, but every TLM I’ve ever been at has been an extremely different vibe from this Byzantine liturgy. Latin chant at its best tends to produce an ecstatic, elevated sensation that sort of puts you on your best spiritual behavior. Not in a bad way, but that’s what it does for me.

I don’t want to read too much into one, uneducated experience and say “this is what Byzantine liturgy is like” after a single visit, but I got the impression they kind of started with the idea that God loves them, and went from there. It’s just kind of inescapable. Everything about the liturgy is saturated with the assurance of the closeness and tenderness of God. It wasn’t necessarily an emotional experience, either. It’s just that everything they said and did proceeded from an assumption that God is close. At least that is how it seemed to me. 

And this is weird, because one thing you’ll notice is that the congregation is constantly begging for mercy. Dozens of times: “Lord have mercy . .  . Lord have mercy!” all throughout the liturgy. It was explained to me that this mercy is less “I’m a disgusting sinner, so please don’t punish me like you probably want to” but more “give us some more of that sweet kindness that you love to give to us.” There was mention of being harshly punished by God, but I think I recall it was in the context of a kind of slavic shrug, as if we all agreed that life is just like this. I guess you can tell that culturally, what I saw and heard made instinctual sense to me, even if I didn’t catch every theological detail. 

The one part I can remember that was spoken, and not chanted, was the prayer before communion, and it really got me. I looked it up: 

O Lord, I believe and profess that you are truly Christ,
The Son of the living God, who came into the world
To save sinners of whom I am the first.

 Accept me today as a partaker of your mystical supper, O Son of God,
For I will not reveal your mystery to your enemies,
Nor will I give you a kiss as did Judas,
But like the thief I profess to you:

Remember me, O Lord, when you come in your kingdom.
Remember me, O Master, when you come in your kingdom.
Remember me, O Holy One, when you come in your kingdom.

May the partaking of your Holy mysteries, O Lord,
Be not for my judgment or condemnation,
But for the healing of my soul and body.

O Lord, I also believe and profess, that this,
Which I am about to receive,
Is truly your most precious Body, and your life-giving Blood,
Which, I pray, make me worthy to receive
For the remission of all my sins and for life everlasting.  Amen

O God, be merciful to me, a sinner.
O God, cleanse me of my sins and have mercy on me.
O Lord, forgive me for I have sinned without number.

As I understand it, this is the equivalent of the “Great Amen” that we say in the Latin Rite. I may print this out and bring it with me to Mass, because it really resonated. 

The bread they consecrate for the Eucharist is leavened bread. Little cubes of the bread are added to the chalice, and when you approach the priest with your arms folded across your chest, he places a tiny portion into your mouth with a spoon (post-covid, everyone gets their own spoon!). Children and even babies also receive.

And then everybody wanders back to their spot singing, with quite a lot of gusto, as they should:

We have seen the true light
We have received the heavenly Spirit
We have found the true faith
and we worship the undivided Trinity
for the Trinity has saved us.

My friend pointed out that a lot of the liturgy speaks from the point of view of the already-risen Lord, from whose point of view our salvation has already been accomplished. Here we are, stuck in linear time, still trying to work out the details of how we make it through our life; but in truth, the end of the story has already been worked out, and it’s kind of only a matter of whether we want to be there or not. The doors are wide open. 

The dismissal prayer got me, too. The priest says:

“May Christ our true God have mercy on us and save us, for Christ is good and loves us all.”

Can we . . . is there a way we can make that be part of the liturgy in every rite, and maybe part of every sacrament? I know there are people who just straight up don’t know this, and need to hear it. 

So that’s what it was like! Also, someone rode a horse to liturgy, because it’s Texas and why not. 

If you have the chance to go to a Byzantine liturgy, I heartily recommend it! It was fairly easy look around me and get the general idea of what I was supposed to be doing, and I never once felt like people were looking at me and wondering what I was doing there. I think this is typical of a Byzantine parish. They also had a very nice coffee hour afterwards, with babies galore, and lots of people brought extra snacks and homemade coffee cake and all kinds of things. 

If you are Byzantine, I’d love to hear more about some of the things that went over my head! And please never forget how lucky you are! I do love my church, and I’m grateful for our excellent pastor, but I would give an arm to have a Byzantine church in driving distance. 

 

You’re STILL not over the sex abuse scandal?

Bishop Weakland is dead.

Weakland, if you’ve allowed yourself to forget, was Archbishop of Milwaukee, and when he received reports of the sexual abuse of children in his care, he shredded them. He allowed abusive priests to continue serving, and he didn’t tell their parishioners or the police what they had done. He referred to abuse victims as “squealers.” And he embezzled nearly half a million dollars of diocesan money to hush up the 20-year-old student who accused him of sexual abuse. 

This is what’s known, in some Catholic circles, as “a complicated legacy.” 

Can I please make something clear. I wish for the dead bishop mercy. I pray that Jesus came to him and presented him with the clear chance to repent, and that the man grabbed at this lifeline with both hands. I wish for salvation for his soul and for all souls, and the Lord of mercies can work out the details of who deserves what in the afterlife. 

But Twitter is not the afterlife.  Twitter is full of the walking wounded, people who have personally been abused by priests and then further abused by the Church’s response to that abuse.

Yet on Twitter, I learned of Weakland’s death through a series of tweets that, to my horror, skipped straight over the nightmare he created with his own two hands, and dove directly into an anodyne, self-congratulatory valediction for the man, as if he’d just been any old cleric who had kept himself busy, done his best, and then toddled on to his likely reward. When Catholics responded with anger and disbelief at the omission, the general response was: Well, obviously the sex abuse scandal was terrible, but maybe try harder to be like Jesus, who forgives this stuff.

As if it were all over. As if the sex abuse scandal were in the past, and something that normal, healthy, grounded people had already long since gotten over.

And this is why it’s still not over. 

There are people who did not leave the Church when they were abused, and who did not leave the Church when their abuse was covered up. But when the cover-up began to get treated like some kind of overblown, hysterical nonsense for people who simply don’t know how to get on with their lives . . . then they knew they could not stay.

And that’s where we are now. This is where we continue to be: Mired in this all-too-familiar clericalism that tirelessly chides victims for being too sensitive, too unforgiving, too unlike Jesus. It’s still blaming victims and their advocates for the sins of priests — still, still trying to hush and rush past the mention of real, putrid, violent sin, and shield the sinner from consequences. It’s still happening, as we speak, on Twitter and in parish offices and everywhere, in real life. And this is why the scandal is still not over. 

Here’s a comparison that Weakland’s defenders will bristle at: The “yes yes, of course he was a sinner, but we must forgive” approach felt very familiar to me, and I suddenly realized what it was. It is precisely the same condescending attitude I hear from some people as they deal with COVID in August of 2022. They aren’t COVID deniers. But they’re COVID-weary, as who wouldn’t be; and so they’ve decided that not only are they done, but everyone else ought to be done, too. And so if they see someone in the supermarket or at church with a mask, they will roll their eyes and say, “You need to get over this, honey.”

But for all they know, the person in the mask may have cancer, or one lung. Or they may have long-haul COVID. They may have contracted a case that disabled them permanently, scarred them from the inside out. Maybe that’s who you’re rolling your eyes at for overreacting. 

Listen, as I write, I’m thinking to myself what a miserably dated reference COVID is. I never wanted to have to tag an essay “COVID” ever again. And that’s kind of the point. We’re all so wretchedly weary of having to consider it, pick it up one more time and take it into account, to figure out how it fits in, think about how serious a threat it is. Most of us are not living our lives in a state of panic and crisis. We have learned how to incorporate risk assessment and behavioral changes into our everyday lives, because you do have to live. True for COVID, true for the sex abuse scandal. 

But it’s a luxury to be able to feel that way. Some people’s lives have been changed forever. They are permanently disabled, scarred from the inside out, in part because so many people simply did not want to acknowledge what was happening. What are we going to do, deliberately harden our hearts because their problem is old news and now we’re bored? 

True for COVID, true for the sex abuse scandal. We may be past the first early era where it was shocking and new, but just because it’s less new now doesn’t mean it’s over; and part of the reason it’s not over is because people who should know better persist in behaving as if it is over. It’s not over. It’s old and exhausting and miserable and tiresome beyond words. But it’s not over. People are still suffering. 

I believe we’re only just starting to realize the long-term damage the infection of abuse has had on the body of Christ. What a dreadful thing to look at these walking wounded and say — whether outright, or by omission — Oh honey, aren’t you over that yet? 

We still have years and years of garment-rending ahead of us. We’re not done. Not nearly done. If you’re exhausted with other people’s suffering, you need to deal with that in private until you can get your head and heart back in a better place. This scandal is a long haul disease. We’re still not nearly done. 

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Photo by form PxHere

It’s easier to recover from being spoiled than from being abused

One of the toughest, potentially most painful, potentially most rewarding parts of being a parent is sorting through what you experienced yourself as a child. As soon as you start raising a child of your own, you have to figure out which parts of your childhood you want to live out with your own kids, and which parts you want to leave behind forever. Everybody goes through this, whether consciously or not.

The huge, unwieldy question of “How will I discipline my kids?” is especially tough. It strikes at the heart of so many profound issues, and the stakes are so high.

Like most of the really tough things in life, there are perils on both sides. If you’re either too harsh or too lenient in how you discipline your child, it could truly harm them, and that harm can ripple out to affect their relationships with other people and even with God.

So yes, it’s important to get it right. But there’s some comfort in knowing it’s not actually possible to get it completely right. You are going to make mistakes. You are going to be inconsistent, and give mixed messages to your kids. This is just how humans act, and I’ve never seen even really wonderful parents get it exactly right.

But I’m here to tell you this: If you are going to err, it’s far better to err on the side of laxity than on the side of harshness. This is not because being spoiled isn’t bad for kids. It is.

But if your child is going to have to recover from one extreme or the other as an adult, is far easier to recover from spoiling than it is from abuse. And there are all too many parenting philosophies calling themselves “discipline” that are really abuse.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

Image: FeeLoona via Pixabay

Red Hot Divine Marshmallow Mercy Squirters!

When we demand that every last little thing be calibrated to our aesthetic liking, we run the risk of worshipping aesthetics, rather than the Lord they’re meant to honor. So, yes, make adjustments when necessary. If a better translation is available, by all means use it! But don’t be such a precious butterfly that you simply can’t abide to alight on something that tickles you this way instead of that way. Keep on fluttering, and you’ll never get to the nectar.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

On fly ashes and flexibility

The Church doesn’t say, “Oh, well, no one should have to swallow a bug, so let’s just say that, if there’s a fly in there, it’s not really Jesus’ body, blood, soul, and divinity. Do what you like.” No. But neither does she say, “If you really, truly believe in the sacrament, then you have no other choice. Down the hatch, or you’re out.” She makes allowances for our humanity without denying Christ’s divinity. She is, in short, incarnational all the way down.

Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly.

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Image:  By Aravind Sivaraj (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Elder brothers and elbows

Christ freely chose to pour out his lifeblood for the salvation of that frivolous young punk, mankind. Far from resenting us for receiving such a lavish, unearned outpouring of the Father’s mercy, Christ’s perfect love made Him rejoice to personify that mercy, even as he bled.

And yet. Christ is our brother. I don’t know what to make of that elbow nudge, that insistent reminder that he is right next to me.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Is Vatican II to blame for the sex abuse scandal?

The Catholic Herald UK reports

Mgr Peter Smith, former chancellor of Glasgow archdiocese, said the Church accepted conventional wisdom of the 1970s that it was “better to repair the [abuser], to fix them or to redeem them”, than punish them. In that era priests accused of abuse could be sent for therapy rather than face criminal charges.

The paper is reporting Mgr Smith’s words with the strong insinuation that Vatican II is to blame for the scandal. I’m not sure if that’s what he really meant, or if his comments might be taken out of context. But I have most certainly heard other Catholics say outright that we can pin the sex abuse scandal on the laxness, the sloppiness, and the psychological sentimentality of the 70’s and Vatican II’s implementation. Vatican II, at least the way it played out in many places, was all about letting go of mean old rules and regulations, and doing what felt good, they argue. Of course we had abusers.

But they are forgetting one thing: Almost 70% of the abusive priests were ordained before 1970. They weren’t formed in feel-good Vatican II seminaries. These were old school guys. They are the ones who were molesting kids, and their world was the world that allowed it to happen.

The sex abuse scandal has three components:

1. Priests abusing kids;
2. The Church knowing about it, and letting it continue; and
3. Various people either not believing kids or parents who reported abuse, or being too in awe of priests to do anything about it, or blaming the kids for the abuse.

This third one has absolutely zero to do with any touchy-feely spirit of Vatican II, and everything to do with what Vatican II set out to change in the Church, because it needed changing.

Priests did not suddenly begin to abuse kids in the early 70’s (although the reports of alleged abuse peaked then; which is not to say that there was necessarily more abuse, but only that more people reported it). Many of the victims who came forward to report childhood abuse, after the Boston Globe‘s work started to gather steam, were children in the 1950’s. At that time, it was unthinkable to criticize a priest, unthinkable to believe that Father could do wrong, unthinkable to go over a priest’s head. There simply wasn’t any precedent for doing such a thing, other than, like, Martin Luther.

Sex abuse by clergy wasn’t a problem of loosey-goosey, post-sexual-revolutionary perverts infiltrating an institution that had heretofore been utterly chaste and holy. This was a problem of a horrible marriage between two deadly trends in the Church and in the country as a whole: the nascent sexual perversions that pervaded 1950’s American culture, and the institutional perverted understanding of authority and respect.

Where do you suppose the sexual revolution came from? Out of nowhere? It never could have happened if things weren’t already rotten underground; and it was just as true in the Church as it was everywhere else in the country. It’s a lie that things were wholesome and pure in the 50’s. But that grotesque artifice of happy, shiny exteriors worked exceedingly well together with the “Father knows best,” mentality. If Doris Day had to smile and have perfect hair no matter what, good Catholic families had to be respectful and obedient to their pastor no matter what. There was no room for going off script, even when lives were at stake.

Children who were molested were too afraid to speak up, because it was Father.
Parents who knew their kids were being molested were too afraid to speak up, because it was Father.
Parents who reported abuse were not believed, because it was Father.
Kids were rightly afraid that no one would believe them. Parents were afraid that their reputations would be ruined. Parishes were afraid that their reputations would be ruined. Bishops were afraid that their reputations would be ruined. And so this horrible carapace of silence was formed to cover up and cover up and cover up, shift the blame, shift the responsibility, and never look at the person at the heart of the problem.

And yes, the errors of the 70’s perpetuated the problem. It is very true that in the 70’s, the 80’s, and beyond, the Church and the rest of the country believed that one could simply see a therapist, attend a few classes, and not be a real danger to kids anymore. That was horrible. But it was no worse than the attitude it replaced, which was that Such Things Never Happened, and if they did, we Simply Don’t Talk About Them.

Of course, dreadful to say, the abuse scandal almost certainly goes back further than the 1950’s — centuries further — but those victims aren’t alive to give their testimony. But at very least, we can put to rest the idea that this hideous stain on our history came about by means of the Vatican II-style “Church of Nice.”

It’s always tempting, when we see gross behavior, to blame it on those who speak of mercy, of forgiveness, of healing. It’s tempting to think, “If we just clamped down and got tough, like we did back in the old days when everyone wore hats, then we’d have none of this nonsense!”

But the real lesson here isn’t that mercy is an error. The real lesson is that mercy and forgiveness can be abused just like innocence can be abused, and that evil is endlessly adaptable. It will grab hold of whatever weakness, foolishness, and wickedness is popular in any age, and it will put it in the service of sin.

Hell is overjoyed when we learn all the wrong lessons from suffering. Violation of innocents was horrible enough. Let’s not compound the outrage by trying to root true mercy, true forgiveness, and true compassion out of the heart of our Church.

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Photo by Milliped (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

We have one job

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. She wanted—no, needed—everything to be perfect. She planned and prepped for days, chopping vegetables, rolling dough, scrubbing baseboards, and counting silverware. On the day of the feast, she was up with the sun, full of determination and manic good cheer.

As the day wore on, the good cheer waned and the manic levels rose. Pots boiled over and were turned down; ovens smoked and windows were opened. The clock ticked, and little by little, the meal started to come together. The guests would be there in a matter of hours. Could she pull off the perfect day? She really thought she could.

Then, suddenly: calamity. She ran out of butter! Real butter, creamy and fat, the fuel that makes the Thanksgiving engine run. She had to have some. She shrieked for her husband and sent him out to the store, with instructions to come back as quickly as he could with at least two pounds of butter.

Off he went. And he didn’t come back, and he didn’t come back. She grew more and more frantic and considered her options. She could cook without butter. No, impossible. She could just explain things to the guests. Unthinkable. She could burn the house down and move to Guadalajara. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Just as she began to search for her passport, her husband’s car screeched into the driveway. He was home, home with the butter! Hallelujah, the day was saved!

With trembling fingers, she snatched open the bag . . . and then fell back, the words of thanks dying in her throat. She croaked. She gabbled. She gaped.

There on the table was a three-pound tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!

“Boy, the stores were crowded!” her husband said. ”I guess everyone was shopping for Thanksgiving. But I knew you would like this, because you just wanted two pounds of butter, and this is three!”

What the young woman replied, I cannot record here. But she did point out to her husband, possibly dozens of times, that, “It says right on the package that IT’S NOT BUTTER.”

Well, Thanksgiving happened anyway. The food was hot and bountiful, the guests were jovial, and if anyone noticed that the butter was not butter, no one mentioned it. It was a good Thanksgiving.

You may think I’m going to wrap this story up with a moral about how we ought to be thankful for the best efforts of our loved ones, and that what really matters in the end is family, peace, joy, harmony, and good intentions.

But, no. What I’m thinking is, “Seriously, it said, ‘IT’S NOT BUTTER’ right on the package. Right on there! And he brought it home anyway!”

Know who that reminds me of? Me. Not on Thanksgiving, but every week, every day. Every time I go to Mass, the last thing I hear is, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” God is telling us, “Look, you have one job. One job. Go and serve me.”

And I say, “Amen, Boss!” and off I go.

And then what do I do? I come back with a giant tub of “I Can’t Believe I’m Not Serving God!” And I jog back into his temple, all hopeful and proud with my ridiculous little package clutched under my arm, and I say, “See? Look what I found for you! Good, huh? Just what you asked for, right?”

It’s not what he asked for. It’s a substitute. It says right on the package that it’s not what he wants. And God opens the package, and he says…

“Close enough. Come on in, thou good enough, faithful enough servant. Come on in to the feast I have prepared for you. Sit down with your family in the home of your Father, and let us have a meal together.”

And that, my friends, is why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Not because we have it all together, not because things turned out perfectly, not because we never disappoint each other, or because we always please God. We celebrate Thanksgiving because God loves us even when we fail—especially when we fail.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love is everlasting.

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This essay was originally published in Catholic Digest in 2013.

Not everything is fixable (God have mercy on us all)

black-and-white-forest-trees-branches

A caller once asked radio host Dr. Laura for advice about an impossible situation. I forget the details — something about lots of children and lots of fathers, various addictions, various betrayals, and a family tree that was twisted and ingrown and diseased. Dr. Laura could not offer much hope to the caller, other than to point out that her story shows why it’s so important not to have kids out of wedlock.

“But–” the caller protested.  “What if I can get my boyfriend to go to therapy?” Dr. Laura laughed – cruelly, I thought.
“Therapy?” she said incredulously. “Therapy isn’t magic. It can’t fix everything. Honey, not everything can be fixed.”

I’ve since stopped listening to Dr. Laura. She has some good ideas, but she has a lot of bad ones, too, and she has very little concept of mercy. But boy, she was right about this thing: not everything can be fixed.

Oh, in the long run it can, of course. Despite the anguished mental contortions of Ivan Karamazov, the second coming of Christ will bring about a thorough reconciliation of all things, unimaginable to our limited consciences. But in this world, there are some situations which have become so twisted and ingrown and diseased that they cannot be fixed.

These situations are what we’re seeing as we work through various solutions to “irregular marital situations.” Darwin Catholic points out that some people are speaking as if there are only two ways of describing marriage: either adulterous, and therefore bad, or loving, and therefore good.  He says:

The fact is, there are a lot of people in our current society who are living in relationships which are not what the Church would view as valid marriages (they were married before and their prior marriage has not been ruled invalid, they are living together without having gone through a marriage ceremony, they are Catholics who got married in a non-Catholic ceremony without a dispensation, etc.) and yet who seem to all appearances to care about each other, to be raising children together, to be happy because of the relationship which the Church labels as sinful.

He uses the example of Johnny Cash and June Carter, who began their relationship in adultery — and yet they stayed together for decades, clearly loving and supporting and cherishing each other. Darwin says:

Was that an adulterous relationship or a loving relationship? Who’s to say it wasn’t both?

…

When we live in sin, with sin, around sin, it becomes entangled with a lot of the good in our lives. That’s one of the reasons we should try so hard not to get into these situations in the first place, because after going far down that path there will be good as well as evil that will be disrupted if we try to end our sin.

Very true. We want to see the world as black and white, good guy vs. bad guy, love vs. H8, so that it’s easy to choose sides — and once you make our stand, we can relax.

Well, we can’t relax. Every day is a struggle to discern the right thing to do in individual situations, which may have changed drastically since yesterday. But also,  every day is a struggle to discern how to treat people who are in a bad situation that they can’t get out of — that they can’t therapize away. How to be loving toward people who are in situations that can’t be fixed?

The other day, I suggested that the best we can do, in some unfixable marital situations, is to treat these couples as part of a larger family — to be welcoming of people living in sin if only for the sake of their children and all the other people their lives affect. This welcome doesn’t really help the couple involved, of course, unless their rightfully-married spouse dies, or unless they receive the grace to muster the heroic resolve to make their adulterous (albeit loving) relationship into a chaste one. One can make a spiritual act of communion and worship God no matter what, but remaining in a state of mortal sin is not a long term plan anyone should be comfortable with.

It would also be a wonderful thing to offer beefed-up  marriage preparation and support after marriage, so that fewer couples find themselves in invalid or impossibly difficult marriages.

I wish, though, that we could move past just repeating, “Not everything can be fixed.”  Okay, not everything can be fixed . . . but this is not a free pass to treat unfixable people like rotten meat, good for nothing, unsalvageable, useful only as a horrible example for the next generation.

I’m so tired, like Darwin, of hearing from people who should know better that the world is black and white. It’s not.

Some Catholics would like to say, “Lower the boom! The Eucharist isn’t for people in mortal sin, and adultery is a mortal sin. Jesus doesn’t care about your stupid feeeeeelings, so hit the road, adulterers, and take your bastard kids with you, if you even bothered to have any, ptui.” And others would like to say, “We’re all sinners, and God is love, so why are we even bothering to talk about  – ptui – sin? Let’s be on the side of love. Here’s a Host for you, and a Host for you, and a Host for you . . . . ”

But that’s not how things really work. Not all couples living in marital sin are honest, virtuous, loving sorts who simply got dealt a bad spousal hand, and now the mean old Church just won’t let them have Jesus because of spite; but neither are all couples living in sin just squalid hedonists who followed their genitals into mortal sin and disastrous home lives. Not all couples in valid marriages are upright, devout cornerstones of society who are holding the Church together with the sheer awesomeness of their sacramental devotion; but neither are all couples in valid marriages are just lucky ducks who happened to stumble across a ready-made, shiny, happy, stable homelife.

Some of us worked hard and still lost; some of us got lucky and skated into something great. Most of us are some combination of lucky and unlucky, hard-working and stupid. What do we all have in common? We all need mercy — from God, and from each other.

Unfixable. Some situations are unfixable. We can work on prevention and we can work on damage control, but not everything can be fixed. But that doesn’t mean that we have a free pass to treat unfixable people like rotten meat, good for nothing, unsalvageable, useful only as a horrible example for the next generation. We can’t say, “Not everything is fixable, so get away from me.” We should say, “Not everything is fixable. I’m so sorry. God have mercy on us all.”

***

Go forth and get Me butter, says the Lord.

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who was hosting Thanksgiving dinner for the first time. She wanted—no, needed—everything to be perfect. She planned and prepped for days, chopping vegetables, rolling dough, scrubbing baseboards, and counting silverware. On the day of the feast, she was up with the sun, full of determination and manic good cheer.

As the day wore on, the good cheer waned and the manic levels rose. Pots boiled over and were turned down; ovens smoked and windows were opened. The clock ticked, and little by little, the meal started to come together. The guests would be there in a matter of hours. Could she pull off the perfect day? She really thought she could.

Then, suddenly: calamity. She ran out of butter! Real butter, creamy and fat, the fuel that makes the Thanksgiving engine run. She had to have some. She shrieked for her husband and sent him out to the store, with instructions to come back as quickly as he could with at least two pounds of butter.

Off he went. And he didn’t come back, and he didn’t come back. She grew more and more frantic and considered her options. She could cook without butter. No, impossible. She could just explain things to the guests. Unthinkable. She could burn the house down and move to Guadalajara. Now we’re getting somewhere.

Just as she began to search for her passport, her husband’s car screeched into the driveway. He was home, home with the butter! Hallelujah, the day was saved!

With trembling fingers, she snatched open the bag . . . and then fell back, the words of thanks dying in her throat. She croaked. She gabbled. She gaped.

There on the table was a three-pound tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!

“Boy, the stores were crowded!” her husband said. ”I guess everyone was shopping for Thanksgiving. But I knew you would like this, because you just wanted two pounds of butter, and this is three!”

What the young woman replied, I cannot record here. But she did point out to her husband, possibly dozens of times, that, “It says right on the package that IT’S NOT BUTTER.”

Well, Thanksgiving happened anyway. The food was hot and bountiful, the guests were jovial, and if anyone noticed that the butter was not butter, no one mentioned it. It was a good Thanksgiving.

You may think I’m going to wrap this story up with a moral about how we ought to be thankful for the best efforts of our loved ones, and that what really matters in the end is family, peace, joy, harmony, and good intentions.

But, no. What I’m thinking is, “Seriously, it said, ‘IT’S NOT BUTTER’ right on the package. Right on there! And he brought it home anyway!”

Know who that reminds me of? Me. Not on Thanksgiving, but every week, every day. Every time I go to Mass, the last thing I hear is, “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.” God is telling us, “Look, you have one job. One job. Go and serve me.”

And I say, “Amen, Boss!” and off I go.

And then what do I do? I come back with a giant tub of “I Can’t Believe I’m Not Serving God!” And I jog back into his temple, all hopeful and proud with my ridiculous little package clutched under my arm, and I say, “See? Look what I found for you! Good, huh? Just what you asked for, right?”

It’s not what he asked for. It’s a substitute. It says right on the package that it’s not what he wants. And God opens the package, and he says…

“Close enough. Come on in, thou good enough, faithful enough servant. Come on in to the feast I have prepared for you. Sit down with your family in the home of your Father, and let us have a meal together.”

And that, my friends, is why we celebrate Thanksgiving. Not because we have it all together, not because things turned out perfectly, not because we never disappoint each other, or because we always please God. We celebrate Thanksgiving because God loves us even when we fail—especially when we fail.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His love is everlasting.

***

[This article originally ran in Catholic Digest in 2013.]