The End of the Mass
You might think that this is a grumpy-the-grump post on bad liturgy with a title like "the End of the Mass," but it is not. The "end" simply means the goal of something. The Greek word telos was appropriated into the English to mean "the end term of a goal-directed process." For philosophy students out there, it's the final cause. What is the telos or goal or end of a pencil? Writing. What is the goal or telos of the Mass? We will get to that, but—okay—permit me one grumpy-the-grump story in contrast. Last year, I was traveling across Florida. In Tampa, I stopped into a Church one afternoon. I kindly told the secretary of the parish that I was a traveling priest and that I'd like to offer Mass. She was confused, and asked if I had a group of [...]
Sons of Thunder
By a strange turn of events, I have to spend a day in Istanbul while trying to get home from Spain—even though it's the opposite direction. The reason this is especially strange is because these two countries were evangelized by the brothers James and John, sons of a Galilean fisherman named Zebedee. These two men became first century Apostles of Jesus Christ. Jesus nicknamed them "Sons of Thunder" because of their attitude towards life. After His resurrection, Our Lord sent St. James to Spain and St. John to Turkey (with His own Blessed Mother.) I flew from James' land to John's land today, and I'm tryıng to navigate a keyboard set up for the Turkish language at 9pm here in the city center of Istanbul. Now, it's a Muslim country. But did you know that for the first 500 years of Christianity, Turkey had a Christianity as booming and as heroic as the newly-converted Roman Empire? The two centers [...]
Pilgrimage 5 of 5
When I lived in a hermitage in Arizona called Merciful Heart Hermitage I was befuddled about why my hermit buddy named it Merciful Heart and then spoke so much of the Heart of the Father. "We only know of the Sacred Heart, not of the heart of the Father," I silently thought. But one day, in this very hermitage, I was reading the Gospel of St. John, and I noticed that the chest of Jesus (upon which the Apostle John listened to the heartbeat of love at the last supper) was the same Greek word (κόλπον ) as found much, much earlier in John 1:18: No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. That word "bosom" comes from κόλπον or kolpon from the noun kolpos. [...]
Pilgrimage 4 of 5
When I think of angels in adoration of the Blessed Trinity, I think of how the angels´ adoration is: cosmic, undulating, unified to an inter-galatic degree of gyrating glory, power, light and effusion. Then I wonder: How could I praise God like that? Hands up? Sing louder? Better music? Everything except the Mass actually comes up short in reality, and even then the full glories of the Mass are not known except to a few saints, this side of the veil. Why exactly are we left in dust and ashes on earth while the angels know quite easily how to orbit God in weightless joy, combined with all the weight of glory? The answer is pilgrimage. This is all training to praise God like that. St. Therese wrote, "The world's thy ship, and not thy home." If you remember from [...]
Pilgrimage 3 of 5
The Church Fathers compared the Jews´ time in the desert to a Christian's pilgrimage on earth. This is to ultimately lead them to the Promised Land. For us, earth is training ground to be able to enter the eternal Promised Land, but the Old Testament shows that the giants to be defeated are too great for natural powers to conquer. It takes supernatural power to enter the land of milk and honey...not because milk and honey are hard to obtain, but because of the enemies that block us. This is why sanctifying grace is so important to enter into heaven. Grace is not the "Price of admission," wrote Frank Sheed, but rather we (without supernatural grace) are in such a state that "our souls lack the powers that living in heaven calls for."—Theology for Beginners, 67. This is why our [...]