Fruits

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

 

How can the world recognize a Christian? By the words they quote? The symbols they wear? The laws they uphold? No. Not even by their virtues, per se, but by their fruits, 

You will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:16)

In a time when the Church calls us to the New Evangelization, it seems like we ought to start with the fruits our lives bear. If we aren't producing good fruit, no amount of speechifying, apologetics or (saints preserve us) argumentation will attract people to Christ.

And the scriptures give us a clue by listing the fruits of some one in union with the Holy Spirit. What what we to make of that? How shall each of us judge ourselves? Perhaps a good examination of conscience might start with examining my life for signs of:

• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Kindness
• Goodness
• Faithfulness
• Gentleness
• Self-control

I stumble right out the gate on that second one if not the first. In the next few posts, I think I'll examine those one by one.

Hope

 Hope is faith in things unseen, the promise of things to come. Without we hide under the bed of our soul and never let God make us what we can be.

As 2020 turned over into 2021 and the New Year begins with yet more ugliness—deaths from Covid are up, Virtual Mass proves a poor substitute for the relating, hunger is rising and homocide rates with it, and a coup attempt that is probably just an opening sally has occurred—hope has never been a more vital component of our spiritual lives.

Samantha Powers told U.S. Catholic recently that, while the size of if the  world's ills is massive, there are always things that can be done right in front of our noses. No one of us is called to save the world. (The work of Redemption has been done, I believe), but we are all called to remember that the kingdom is at hand--right in front of us. We're called to live in the kingdom, loving God with our whole hearts and our neighbor--whoever that is and a whoever comes our way each day--as ourselves. 

We can't let darkness win. We'll know we walk there if we see His fruit. More on that another time.

Emptiness

 Last week I found a little book I had forgotten, shoved back on my bookshelf behind heavier things. It was The Reed of God, one once dear to my heart. I've been reading it every night and so it is again.

She begins with emptiness, the necessity if we are to be filled with Christ, We must be empty; we must be filled; and then—only then—and can we be the hands, the feet, and the beating heart that carries Christ where He wishes to go.

She speaks of three kinds of emptiness. The reed is the delicate emptiness through which the music of God can flow. The chalice is the solid emptiness in which sacrifice, necessary, and needed, can occur. A next is a soft emptiness in which life can be nurtured. We are, she says, all called to our own specific emptiness in order to be what He wishes.

My first image of God was of as the hub of the wheel that is my life. In that vision, a world of people, things, issues, worries, activity flowed in a chaotic circle held in place and given meaning by that hub.  She suggests a different image, one in which we enter into the emptiness at the center, by freeing our minds and souls of the chatter and the noise. It is harder than it sounds. I'm reminded of a mantra He gave me long ago: Listen; don't talk.

Advent is a good time to let the quiet seep in.

Black Lives Matter

 Black Lives Matter. 

God created man in His own image,

Genesis 1:27

Black Lives Matter

If it is on the tip of your tongue to respond “but all lives matter,” stop right there. 

Don’t say it. You’re missing the point. Life is God’s precious gift to be valued always. But for hundreds of years black lives specifically—precious and beloved of God—have been held cheaply in our culture. For 250 years, black lives were used, abused, bought, sold, and snuffed out with impunity in the United States. For the next hundred they were over-policed, underserved, and, yes, still snuffed out with impunity too often. It didn’t end with MLK making a speech as his death makes clear. 

The cry of the streets, what we must understand, is that precious lives continue to die as a result of hunger, the worst of the income gap, poor access to health care, and the actions of bad apples of law enforcement the structure can’t seem to control. Those things are only able to go on because our culture as a whole DOESN’T value all lives as it claims. Our young people are demanding that we stop looking the other way.

Black Lives Matter.

Say it to yourself. Say it over and over until it seeps into your marrow and becomes part of you. Say it out loud until it seeps into our culture and begins to transform it at last.

Black Lives Matter

This I Believe

This I believe:

1. God is. Nothing else really matters.
2. God is love. He is the trinity of Lover, Love, Beloved in neverending exchange.
3. The logic of love is creation~the sharing of love.
4. The gap between humanity and God demanded redemption. The continued gap calls out for salvation.
5. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him, not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it...  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

 I accept the formulation of the Nicene creed, and I choose to be a submissive daughter of the Roman Catholic church, never blind to its greed, sins, and administrative blunders, but joyful in its life in the Spirit, the beauty of its traditions, and the communion of its saints.

Baptism

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.  

Nicene-Constantinople Creed

What's with acknowledge?  The rest of the creed has been believe, believe, believe. Now we have acknowledge.  The new Roman missal actually translates it as confess.   Google translate uses confess.

The Oxford English Dictionary presents some definitions for both.   It translates confess as 
-To acknowledge, own, or admit.
-To acknowledge, concede, grant or admit for oneself an assertion [as true]

To confess is to acknowledge.   The definitions for acknowledge shed a little more light.  To acknowledge is:

-To recognize something to be what it is specified to be.

-To accept the authority, validity, or legitimacy of [something].

-To accept the truth of something.

It also can be defined as a legal term with which someone signs on to accept the truth of a proposition.

All those apply.   It seems that acknowledge (or confess) implies use of the mind. Belief does not require that we understand things.  Acknowledge implies active acceptance that there is one and only one baptism.  In our time it may be practiced by many denominations, but we acknowledge it as the same baptism.  Baptism is one of the sacraments that does not require the action of an ordained priest and could therefore be handed forward from the apostles in an unbroken line from Christian to Christian.  This is in sharp contrast to priestly ordination which we believe could only be handed on from ordained bishop to priest in an unbroken line to the ordination of the apostles.

Baptism forgives sins. Of course it does.  In the early church baptism, an adult-only   sacrament, was frequently postponed, at least in part, for that reason. Constantine is only one prominent example of someone who put it off until his deathbed.  While the forgiveness of sin (and the fact that Jesus vested the right to forgive with the Church) existed from earliest times, the primitive church did not practice the Sacrament of Reconciliation as we know it. Forgiveness of sins in manner distinct from Baptism boiled up as an issue in years after persecutions in response to the question, "Can those previously baptized persons who denied the faith to save their skins be forgiven?" Those who answered no were found ultimately to be heretics.   Eventually the problem of sins after Baptism had to be resolved, but there was never any doubt that in Baptism itself there is a clean slate, the forgiveness of sin in all its forms.

Church

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.

Nicene-Constantinople Creed.

This one is a mouthful. We believe in the Church, but what do we believe about it?  

 It is the People of God first and foremost--the people! 

It is also the Body of Christ.  That is enough to keep us up late pondering.  We, the Church are the Body of Christ, hands and feet, ears and voice, heart and mind.

It is the Temple of the Holy Spirit.   The place we find the Holy Spirit. The place we encounter God. Except, the Church isn't a place.  Up until 70AD even Christians went up to the Second Temple in Jerusalem, where the God's people had been taught they would encounter Him.  Christians were gradually understanding the People of God somewhat differently and after Titus razed the whole thing, the concept of an invisible temple, with the Holy Spirit as its life and the force behind all its saving actions began to flower.

But what about one holy catholic and apostolic?  We believe the Church has all four attributes.

The Church is one because of her source / her founder. (Catechism of the Catholic Church 813).  Jesus prayed to his father: "...that they [meaning the Church] may be one just as We are."     John 17:11   Luckily unity doesn't preclude some diversity because we have plenty of that.

The Church is holy because because of (and to the extent of) her unity with Christ.  That doesn't in any way overlook the chronic sinfulness of individuals and the earthy institutions they create in His name.   The Church as Christ created it, the mystical Body of Christ is holy.  Some of its members, not so much.  We'd be fools to try to pretend otherwise.

The Church is catholic because it is universal. That's what the word means, universal. Where there is Christ, there is the Church (Catechism 830).  His love is universal.  The Church isn't European. It certainly isn't American. He was Jewish, but the Church isn't Jewish.  It is universal and we do well to stay aware that we don't confuse cultural biases with the fundamentals of the Church.

The Church is apostolic because it was founded on the apostles--not by them, on them. The eyewitness generation was the foundation. With the direction of the Holy Spirit she holds fast the the faith handed down by the foundation. (Catechism 857).

The Church we believe in, in short, transcends the Church we see, the one we read about in the news, the one whose history we both love and question.  It is more than the pastor's sermons, the church lady's whispers after mass, the demands of charity, parish gossip, diocesan financial problems, bishops' letters, papal encyclicals, architecture both bad (1970's churchs--shudder) and stunning, magnificent art or tacky images, great schools and small ones, mission appeals, Knights of Columbus, and retreat houses.  It is certainly more than the ugly headlines we've endured in recent years. It is none of those things and yet it is all of them, bound up in Christ's redemptive work.

Postscript
Paul, as usual, nails it. Ephesians 2:19-22:

[we are] members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.202122

Winter

And perhaps I shall stay or even spend the winter with you, so that you may send me on my way wherever I may go. 1 Corinthians 16:6

Sometimes you have to begin again. Late winter, just before Lent is one of those times.

My journey never stopped but this blog dropped by the wayside along the way. This seems like a good time to pick it up again. This time I hope to reflect on two topics: 1) what I believe and 2) marriage. What do I believe? I'm a Nicene Christian--and  Roman Catholic. 

I still struggle with discerning God's will for my future, but less than before. It isn't really necessary to see the entire road map, only to continue the journey, "wherever I may go" and to trust that he is leading one step at a time. His word is a lamp to my path.