Agnus Dei

I recently began reading The Lamb's Supper by Scott Hahn, an excellent and revealing exploration of the true and mystical significance of the Catholic Mass. He argues that the Book of Revelation in the Bible is an explanation and retelling of a Mass as well as a vision of the end of the world. In fact, he believes that these two events are deeply interconnected--even, to some degree, the same thing. Should you be curious as to why the Apocalypse and the Mass are mystically the same event, I recommend the book. Mr Hahn is much smarter than I, and much more articulate about his point than I could be in this blog. But I'll reference some salient points to indicate one area in which modern American celebrations of the Mass fail to properly reverence all that the Sacred Liturgy means.

The author begins by briefly recounting his own conversion to Catholicism, which occurred during the observation of a Mass. When he heard the congregation recite the Agnus Dei and then heard the priest respond during the Elevation, "This is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world...," he realized that the format and the language of the mass itself is drawn directly from scripture, particularly the Book of Revelation. A protestant Biblical scholar at the time, he knew that the Gospel of John and John's subsequent apocalyptic vision--recorded in Revelation--particularly refer to Jesus by the title of "Lamb of God," and though Mr Hahn had previously condemned the Mass as a blasphemy, a "ritual that purported to 'resacrifice Jesus Christ,'" this scriptural fidelity caused him to reconsider.

But why the lamb of God? Tradition teaches that most Jews of Jesus' time, taking their cue from prophets who wrote that the coming Messiah would restore the "Kingdom of God," believed that the Christ would be a new David, a new Saul. The "New Israel" would be again a land of milk and honey, strong in its boundaries and renowned for its glory, as it was in Saul's day when the Queen of Sheba made her pilgrimage there (1 Kings 10). Such Jews were understandably upset when the so-called Christ, who claimed to be the Messiah and the Son of God, died ignomiously on a cross, leaving nothing but some cryptic sayings about rising from the dead and a gaggle of frightened followers. Yet Christian theology teaches rightly that the "New Jerusalem" isn't a stronger earthly kingdom were God's chosen people can be free from oppression, but rather an analogous spiritual kingdom where there is freedom from sin and corruption.

Think for a minute what a powerful point this is. The Bible begins the tale of humanity with a story that tells of man's fall from grace into sin. And that same sin is the root and origin of all misery. The sin of Cain caused him to be driven from his home; the sins of the Israelites in the desert of the Exodus caused the vast majority of them to be slaughtered; the sins of David caused him the great personal anguish recorded in the Psalms; the further sins of the Israelites caused the Babylonian captivity and a long passion of foreign oppression. Don't forget that the act of oppression is a sin in and of itself; it is the sin of the oppressor. The whole sordid history of the world, which saw the glory and decay of the Roman Empire, the Islamic Empire, the bloody democratic and nationalistic revolutions, Fascism, and today terrorism, is attributable to somebody's sin. Jesus' life, death, and resurrection frees us from the shackles of--though not the effects of--sin.

Therefore the true mark of Jesus' messianic effect is his role as sacrifice. Mr Hahn identifies this and cites it as the culmination and fulfillment of a long Jewish tradition of sacrifices. Throughout the Old Testament, Jews sacrificed to God as a core element of their worship. Able sacrificed a lamb to God, Abraham nearly sacrificed his son, Melchizedek offered bread and wine. Mr Hahn points out that the Hebrews are not alone in this, either: many other religions have ascribed a similar importance to sacrifice. "Man's primal need to worship God has always expressed itself in sacrifice: worship that is simultaneously an act of praise, atonement, self-giving, covenant and thanksgiving (in Greek, eucharistia)... So when Jesus spoke of his life as a sacrifice, He tapped into a current running deep...in every human soul" (26). To a Christian, it should be painfully obvious that the urge to sacrifice to God results from a deep human need to "make things right" with Him on a radical level: to praise God for creating and sustaining us; to lovingly give of ourselves back to Him in gratitude; to atone both for our great transgression in first turning away from him and for our daily specific transgressions.

Yet all our personal sacrifices cannot truly "make things right" with God. The opening story of the Bible makes it clear that by rejecting God's love and providence in the Garden of Eden, we have permanently stained ourselves with that sin. Practically, that original sin is visible in our specific sins, often committed despite our great efforts to be good and holy people. And so we recognize the need for a better sacrifice. This is not a new concept. Mr Hahn points out that during the original passover, the instructions specified a valuable lamb--one of certain age, one without physical defects. After all, the meaning of the sacrifice would be little if we sacrificed something worthless. For our sins and failings, though, only the sacrifice of Jesus good enough: the God-man, unstained by sin; completely undeserving of sin's reward, death. To properly praise God, to properly thank Him, and--perhaps most importantly--to properly atone for our transgressions, and thus be freed from the weight of our sin, we must (like the Jews during passover) offer a more perfect lamb. Only the Lamb of God Himself will do.

Jesus is, more than anything else, the Lamb of God. His role as the perfect sacrifice is the one thing that enables our communion with God and allows us to hope for eternal life. This sacrifice is what we Catholics re-enact at every Mass, reverently offering up again the perfect sacrifice for the praise of God and the forgiveness of our sins. Since while we bear the flesh of Adam and Eve on our bones we are tainted by their sin, our sacrifice must be constant--hence the need to reconstitute Jesus' sacrifice constantly. Our constant participation in the Mass (the Church recommends we attend every day, if we can) is extremely important. For God stands outside of time, and therefore to Him every moment in the world happens simultaneously, not in a single instant but over all eternity. That is why as humans we are never stagnant regarding God: we are either becoming closer to Him or further away with each action and thought we commit. The past does not factor into our current relationship with God except insofar as we can draw encouragement or discouragement from it; the future is the province of wishful thinking. The present, as C.S. Lewis observed, "is all lit up with Eternal rays." Thus the sacrifice on the altar at Mass is mystically, literally the same sacrifice that occurred on the hill of Calvary, and our worship is concurrent (and in community with) with the worship of the holy ones in the heavenly Jerusalem of John's vision in Revelations. At the Mass, our world literally touches heaven.

Christ, of course, was more than a sacrifice. Before his death, he was a leader, a healer, and a teacher. Now that he has risen, He is Lord and King of all creation. He is our brother and He is our friend. He is our sustenance, our "food for the journey." He has many titles appropriate to those roles: King of Kings, Prince of Peace, Bread of Life. Yet His most important role is always and forever that of the Lamb, is the sacrifice that finally reconciled us, God's chosen and beloved people, with God. The Mass celebrates above all this sacrifice and reconciliation. That is why, at the moment of the sacrifice, as we stand in the presence of God Himself and the whole of the Church triumphant, we chant or sing the Agnus Dei, repeating the words "Lamb of God" three times. To replace that title with a lesser one, like "Bread of Life," is to fail in reverence. Likewise, to make the tone of the Mass express more happiness at how much God loves us, or how great God is, than solemn and heartfelt awe at the magnitude of our offered sacrifice, is to fail in reverence. After all, Mass isn't something we Catholics do ourselves, nor is it something to which we can apply "artistic license." God does it for us; God invites us into his heavenly kingdom for that period of time. And our only guideline for how to act comes from John's vision in Revelation, which is resolved into the traditional rubrics of the Sacred Liturgy.

I'll conclude by saying that "reverence" does not exclude laughter or happiness. I think a deep joy mingles both with awe and with a deep sorrow regarding our sinful state when we are truly reverent. The external effect when we stand before God in church is, appropriately, one of solemnity; it then appropriately transitions to laughter, affection, compassion, spontaneous praise, and personalized, heartfelt prayer when we return to this physical world. The grace that attends our serious and awe-inspiring experience of God's presence leaves us prepared and able to be the joyous free lovers and servants of God--which is, after all, exactly what we were created to be.

Nip / Tuck

Though I rarely get to watch TV these days, there are shows I enjoy. Scrubs, for example, I find amusing, witty, and poignant. I should say rather I found it that way (past tense), because it seems like lately the show has been recycling old jokes and trying too hard to make them funny, mostly by reducing the characters from sympathetic, endearingly flawed people to mere caricatures. You might say this represents the inevitable and standard bow to the lowest common denominator. I also watch The Office, largely because it makes lowbrow humor the subject of highbrow, satiric humor, and presents in its characters archetypes rather than caricatures. Another show I enjoy is Ugly Betty. Artistically, this show has big fish to fry: it combines a satiric portrayal of high-fashion society with situationally comedic family humor; it also delves wisely and uncomfortably into the pain wrought by selfishness within friendships and families. Such shows both provide a comedic escape from drudgery while also--to varying degrees--presenting worthwhile themes and stories.

What, then, can I possibly find attractive about Nip / Tuck? This show is probably best known for occasional nudity, shocking references to sex, and a cruel veneration of sexual beauty. It offers very little that's light-hearted or funny. Yet between the lines of its biting and sometimes malicious script I detect a bitter satire.

No doubt there are viewers who find Nip / Tuck titillating. I certainly don't, because the tone of the story is grimly self-aware. The characters endlessly hurt each other in their desperate quest to be alluring and to conquer others. Moreover, the characters endlessly struggle, realistically, with the pain their lifestyle wreaks on them. A wasteland of broken relationships and cookie-cutter ideal beauty, Nip / Tuck pulls no punches revealing the true ugliness of our collective and selfish vanity.

You see, the writers of Nip / Tuck have identified the deadliest poison of our society: a radical, fundamental hedonism, founded in the (mistaken) belief that technology can make pleasure so readily available that there is no need to feel anything else. Their characters, superficially, meet our social ideal of manhood: they are sort of modern American Everymen, hypocritically seducing woman after woman between fits of trying to make more lasting relationships work, and concerned about money only insofar as it can elevate them above their peers. Nip / Tuck also shows its protagonists stumbling upon redemption, as when one of the doctors is asked to perform surgery on a nun. Challenged by her piousness and total contempt for his charm and his lifestyle, he hesitantly approaches her after the surgery is complete in order both to thank her for a small gift she gave him, and to ask her to help him pray a little. Of course, nothing comes of it in the end--the episode of the nun ends with that particular episode. Next week he is the same cocky, cruel, hedonistic man that he was before. But in those small incidences of clarity, when the characters vaguely realize that there is something truer and more satisfying beyond endless pleasure-seeking, I find an accurate portrayal of how socially we've nearly cauterized anything really good, anything approaching moral rectitude or an assertion of the actual dignity of man as an individual instead of a mere instrument or receptacle of sensation.

I am sure many people watch Nip / Tuck in order to worship, as it were, at the altar of modern hedonism. I am sure that the depraved and disgusting sexual episodes in the show are not only inspired by actual practices, but inspire imitation for people bored with more "conventional" relationships. And I am sure much of the show's critical acclaim and staying power has to do with "shock value." It does, however, also expose the great lie about our commercial culture--that the result of worshipping pleasure is to numb our senses to it. The show harshly illustrates the terrible emptiness of our "ideal" American life, often in ways that hit close to home, and (at least in my case) ends any temptation I have to participate it its characters' values in the slightest. The latter effect is more than enough reason to watch.

To Autumn (courtesy of John Keats)

Autumn is without question my favorite season. The suddenly chilly air, the clear night skies and warm sunlit days, the changing leaves and the bare trees that follow, the impending holidays and the sense of school starting again...all of these things contribute to a mingled sense of excitement and melancholy. For most of you, this post will seem late, since Autumn has largely passed by late November, but it comes late and weak to Southern California. Fortunately, a poet has captured it in words. I offer it to you today.

TO AUTUMN

by John Keats.

1.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

On the restoration of the Tridentine Mass

Recently the Holy Father Benedict XVI issued a motu proprio authorizing parishes and churches to celebrate the Tridentine Mass from the 1962 Roman Missal. In a way, it was a controversial decision, since the most visible change wrought by the Second Vatican Council in the Catholic Church was the change to a vernacular, popular Mass, celebrated. In fact, this change was rejected by a group of French clergy led by Bishop Marcel Lefevre--called the "Society of Pius X"--who in defiance of the Council teaching continued to celebrate the Tridentine rite and openly criticized the sweeping changes made to Catholic faith by Pope Paul VI. Eventually the Society's members were excommunicated for their refusal to obey the dictates of the Holy See.

In an age and society where we prize independence above nearly everything else, shackling the Mass to dead language and strict routine may seem medieval and stodgy. For us, a Mass without participation from the congregation in the music and conduct of the liturgy seems to exclude our very presence in the Sacrament. But Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, the auxiliary Bishop of the diocese of San Diego, wrote the following letter on how restoring the Tridentine Mass can have a positive effect on our faith:

"I think this is the most important point of the entire motu proprio (authorizing the Tridentine mass ritual). I think in some places the quality of liturgy has so degenerated that some people do not understand what Catholic worship is supposed to look like any more. Too often it is so horizontal and community-focused that the sense of the transcendent disappears; an expectation has been created that the liturgy, and the celebrant especially, should be entertaining. I believe that a greater presence and use of the extraordinary form (the Tridentine ritual) will help us recover our authentic tradition within the ordinary form. This would obviously mean a greater use of Latin and Gregorian chant, but it would include other aspects as well--for example, not deviating from the letter and spirit of the rubrics, a restoration of sacred music in general and sacred art and architecture, a greater emphasis on the transcendent, an awareness that the liturgy does not belong to the local community to do with as they will, but is too sacred and far beyond them to 'personalize' it. I would even go so far as to hope that it will help recover reverent behavior and dress on the part of parishioners!... Most importantly, we need to recover a love and appreciation of our Catholic heritage, and the implementation of the motu proprio will, I believe, be one important means for achieving this. However, at the same time, this does not exclude a legitimate diversity, and even inculturation, with the use of the ordinary form...

"There are elements of the development in the ordinary form that can enrich the celebration of the extraordinary form. I am thinking especially of the call of the Second Vatican Council for the lay faithful to learn the Gregorian chants in Latin, and sing them at Mass. I think it would be a big mistake to simply 'go back' to exactly the way things were done before. If we are going to recover and reappreciate our authentic tradition, it means that those who prefer the extraordinary form should be learn (and therefore be taught) the responses in Latin (so they are not said just by the acolyte--this is the old 'dialogue Mass'), and they should learn to sing the parts of the mass in Gregorian chant (while still allowing for some more technically demanding pieces to be done by the choir alone)."

Retreat

The weekend of November 3rd was a busy one. My new squadron celebrated the Marine Corps' birthday on Friday night, which turned out to be a lot of fun. The celebration almost always takes the form of a Ball, except when Marines are out in the field. Then it is usually celebrated over an MRE (or whatever chow is available). But however we observe it, it is a big deal - tradition dictates that we follow a specific procedure: first we read the original birthday message from General Lejeune (the 13th Commandant) first, then we read the most recent message, then we cut a cake--the first piece of which is given to the oldest Marine present, who takes a bite and passes it to the youngest Marine present to symbolize the continuance of tradition. That little ceremony is the basis for all Marine Corps' birthday celebrations. The Green Knights made it quite formal, with a sword honor guard for the cake and the guest of honor, followed by a pretty good dinner and dancing. The latter was mostly for those Marines who brought dates, so I mostly hung out with my former classmates and new comrades. Everyone got pretty convivial, but I stayed as sober as possible, for I had to drive out of town the next morning.

During the same weekend as the Ball, St. Brigid's young adult community held it's annual retreat at Whispering Winds Catholic Retreat center in Julian. If you followed the wildfire saga here in San Diego, you know that Julian was hit pretty hard. It sits up in the mountains east of the city (elevation some 5,000 feet), and that is where all the fires start when the Santa Ana winds blow. Fortunately, though, the campus was unscathed, and the utilities were restored mere days before we were to arrive.

The retreat itself started on Friday night, so everyone except me drove up that afternoon, participated in some icebreaker-type events, made "affirmation bags" where other people could leave them written messages of encouragement or faith, and turned in. Saturday morning they heard the first of several talks aimed at young adults--the one I missed concerned the ideas contained in Theology of the Body--and had some reflection time followed by lunch. That's when I arrived.

I got there in an enthusiastic mood. The road up to Julian winds through narrow canyons and over knife-edge ridged in a glory of tight turns and sudden views. My car got quite the workout; I must have taken 10,000 miles off my tires. There is something wild and relaxing about the mountain scenery, the clear sunlight, the laboring machine, and the solitude. A kind of reflection occurs at such times, unconscious and unintended, the chief effect of which is to focus one more on the immediate present and less on external and extraneous worries. It was providential: I arrived in Julian freed from the burdens of everyday life and ready for the retreat.

By now I know a fair number of the young adults at St. Brigid's, and it felt in a sense like 'going home' to meet with them, since they make up my core friends here in San Diego. But there were also many new people to meet. Fortunately the retreat schedule offered "free time" in the early afternoon where people could go to confession if they wanted, and also participate in any number of social or religious activities. One guy organized a football game; another a hike. I chose to make my confession and then participate in the Rosary walk. This may seem like a silly thing to do, since it involves praying a notoriously "rote" prayer in a group, but for me it brought back sweet memories of my pilgrimages to Medjugorje, where the Rosary and it's focus on the life of Jesus was second only to the Mass, and nearly always prayed/celebrated as a community. I find there is an additional measure of accountability and support to prayers prayed as a community--often they are therefore more valuable than the same prayers prayed alone, where any number of worries or whims can distract one from the prayer itself. Furthermore, the rosary itself only occupied a short amount of the "free time," so I also got to play in a touch football game. Like the drive up, there was something clarifying about spending that time outside in the sunlight, amid the smell of pines and the thin mountain air. The advantage of the football game over the drive, though, was that I got to share it with others.

Later that afternoon we heard a talk on vocation, and how vocation isn't necessarily a job, a call to religious life, or a call to marriage; rather it is a responsibility to do God's will in all the small acts of our lives. As I write this I am shocked to see how obvious it appears, baldly contained in one small sentence. But like many people I am victim to the temptation of focusing only on the big things in my life: my career as a Marine and an Aviator, my important relationships, my spiritual life. I find it easy to overlook what God's will might be for me when I do a specific thing, like go to a church function, or drive to work, or undertake a job around the squadron. But the speaker, Fr. Steve Callahan, explained that making our entire lives a prayer depends on the holiness we exhibit in all our actions, not just the big decisions. This lecture was the first of several events at the retreat which thus far have subtly began to change my life.

After dinner we headed down to the chapel for adoration and confession. Though the team had priests offering the sacrament during the free time, this evening event was much larger in scale. The intent, I think, was to gently remind us that there is an immense acceptance of grace found in the act of adoration and the receipt of the sacrament. Both were once cherished elements of Catholic faith that, sadly, have fallen off recently (especially among young people). Though I am a rather conservative Catholic myself--and therefore quite open to such practices--it was good to hear again the dogmas and teachings that provide Catholics an intelligent and challenging framework of worship. Before the confessionals opened up, a priest explained the value of what we were doing, and led us in an examination of conscience. Because I had gone to confession earlier that afternoon, I prayed silently for a while and left the chapel to pray another rosary with a close friend of mine under the chilly stars.

What a night it was! In an earlier post I talked about suddenly discovering stars, and the impact of that experience was no less in Julian. Ringed by mountains, unsullied by street-lights, headlights, and window lights, the stars above us that night shone forth in pre-industrial splendor. The Milky Way and the familiar constellations stood out clearly among thousands of stars I had all but forgotten. The crisp still air seemed to sharpen my senses and evoke a sense of exhilaration. I spent little time examining the panorama above, but its presence seemed to infuse the conversations that evening with a zest and wit and laughter I seldom experience, even among my closest friends.

During one such conversation a fellow retreatant told me that because he hadn't found an "affirmation bag" for me--since I didn't arrive until Saturday, I wasn't around during the time given for their creation--he made one for me. It may seem a small thing, but for me that represented the ultimate act of kindness. Having something kind to say, and guessing that others might as well, this friend out of charity decorated a paper bag so that I could receive notes and small gifts. I was humbled. I took about an hour and a half that evening to sit and write notes to all the people at St. Brigid's who meant something to me, and it was a cathartic experience. I have found kindness, hospitality, challenges to be a better person, support, and companionship among this community, and it felt right and satisfying to thank each and every person for what they gave me. When I first heard of the concept of an "affirmation bag," I cringed inwardly. Here, I thought, was an excuse to write yearbook-style, banal notes that (like yearbook notes) would sound the same for everybody: "so nice to meet you, hope we see more of each other, you're so cool." But as I wrote to my friends I found I had something unique to say to each of them. I realized then that, perhaps for the first time in my life, I was part of a cohesive group of friends, where I could appreciate them individually and collectively, not just as my personal friend but as friends of each other too. I have much to be grateful for.

The next morning started with Sunday Mass, breakfast, and the pack up. An easy camaraderie had formed among us that made the worship and the meal a simple and penetrating joy. In its closing the effect of the retreat is hard to put into words. Long had I known the right spiritual steps to take in my life, regarding both my personal prayer life and my interactions with others. But long had I put off taking those steps, due perhaps to fear that I would find spiritual dryness, or to my own selfish clinging to a comfortable routine, or even simply to a kind of spiritual apathy. But since I've returned I've discovered a subtle inspiration born of gratitude and humility. Perhaps that is the manifestation of accepted grace, brought on by the constant prayer at Whispering Winds. I write this more deeply grateful for all that St. Brigid's community has given me; I am humbled by the good and virtuous company of my friends. I have received a great gift.