It was April, but still very cold and the chapel where we had just celebrated the Eucharist and the cafeteria to which we had retired for coffee lacked somewhat both for heat and light. There were about a hundred of us present, monks and seminarians mostly, along with a few lay people. All of us were somberly drinking coffee and making small talk, except for one child, a little girl of four. She, dressed in a smart, bright little coat, was skipping smack down the middle of the cafeteria, singing to herself, letting off steam after having been forcibly silenced during the long liturgy that had just preceded.
Everything about that little girl spoke of life, while everything about the rest of us spoke of soberness, lack of color, lack of life, age, and dram duty. At that moment, for all the world, it looked like there was more real life in one little girl, who had just been released from church, than in all the rest of us, God-fearing, duty-driven, church-going, wisdom-filled persons, none of whom could skip publicly if our lives depended on it.
How often does it appear as though what is happening in our churches is dead, duty-driven and sterile? Alanis Morissette, is a bitter, ex Catholic who complains of the “loveless priests” who run the faith and who stifle love and energy.There is a lot that needs to be reflected upon here, although in the end it is a considerably more complex than what is spontaneously suggested when we see a little girl happily skipping among sombre monks.
We often see a wisdom that is disconnected from life that precisely lacks any real connection to energy, eroticism, color, wit, intelligence, beauty, and raw health. That is why sometimes someone can deal with the issues of meaning, pain, death, and forgiveness and yet be unable to radiate any real energy or health. You go to church for wisdom, not for fun.
It can be very helpful to know this. One should never confuse Alanis Morissette with Mother Theresa, nor Jerry Seinfeld with John of the Cross. In one, we see more the raw beauty and pulse of God’s life; in the other we see the maturity of God’s wisdom. Part of our task is to bring them together. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Life versus Wisdom” November 1998]
It’s interesting how the believers at that first Easter experienced the resurrected Christ in their lives. The Gospels tell us that they were huddled in fear and paranoia behind locked doors, wanting only to protect themselves, when Christ came through their locked doors, the doors of their fear and self-protection, and breathed peace into them. Their huddling in fear wasn’t because of ill-will or bad faith. In their hearts they sincerely wished that they weren’t afraid, but that good will still didn’t unlock their doors. Christ entered and breathed peace into them in spite of their resistance, their fear, and their locked doors.
Things haven’t changed much in two thousand years. As a Christian community and as individuals we are still mostly huddling in fear, anxious about ourselves, distrustful, not at peace, our doors locked, even as our hearts desire peace and trust.
At the end of the day, the image of the “locked doors of our fear” contain perhaps the most consoling truth in all religion because they reveal this about God’s grace: When we cannot help ourselves we can still be helped and when we are powerless to reach out, grace can still come through the walls of our resistance and breathe peace into us. We need to cling to this whenever we experience irretrievable brokenness in our lives. The resurrected Christ can come through locked doors and roll back any stone that entombs us, no matter how hopeless the task is for us.
There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God who is Father of us all (Ephesians 4:5-6). That’s a lot in a few words! This creedal statement, while Christian, takes in all denominations, all faiths, and all sincere persons everywhere. Everyone on the planet can pray this creed because ultimately there is only one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God who created and loves us all.As Christians, we believe that Christ is the unique mediator between God and ourselves. As Jesus puts it, no one goes to the Father, except through me.
If that is true, and as Christians we hold that as dogma, then where does that leave Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims, New Agers, Neo-Pagans, and sincere non-believers? How do they share the kingdom with us Christians since they do not believe in Christ?
As Christians, we have always had answers to that question. The Catholic catechisms of my youth spoke of a “baptism of desire” as a way of entry into the mystery of Christ. Karl Rahner spoke of sincere persons being “anonymous Christians”. Frank de Graeve spoke of a reality he called “Christ-ianity”, as a mystery wider than historical “Christianity”; and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin spoke of Christ as being the final anthropological and cosmological structure within the evolutionary process itself.
What all of these are saying is that the mystery of Christ cannot be identified simplistically with the historical Christian churches. The mystery of Christ works through the historical Christian churches but also works, and works widely, outside of our churches and outside the circles of explicit faith. Christ is God and therefore is found wherever anyone is in the presence of oneness, truth, goodness, and beauty. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “A Universal Creed” October 2024]
Among all the religious symbols in the world none is more universal than the cross. Rene Girard, an anthropologist, once commented that “the cross of Jesus is the single most revolutionary moral event in all of history.” What is so morally revolutionary in the cross? Precisely because it such a deep mystery, the cross is not easy to grasp intellectually. The deeper things in life, love, fidelity, morality, and faith are not mathematics, but mysteries whose unfathomable depths always leave room for more still to be understood.
The cross is seen as revelation, and as being redemptive. Both concepts, even to the limited extent that we can intellectually understand them, are thoroughly morally revolutionary. Christianity is 2000 years old, but it took us nearly 1900 years to fully grasp the fact that slavery is wrong, that it goes against heart of Jesus’ teaching. The same can be said about the equality of women. Much of what Jesus revealed to us is like a time-released medicine capsule. Throughout the centuries, slowly, gradually, incrementally, Jesus’ message is dissolving more deeply into our consciousness.
There have been popes for 2000 years, beginning with Peter, but it was only Saint Pope John Paul II, who stood up and said with clarity that capital punishment is wrong. Mark, the Evangelist, speaking as a disciple of Jesus, puts it another way: For him, the cross of Jesus is the deep secret to everything. To the extent that we don’t grasp the meaning of the cross, we miss the key that opens up life’s deepest secrets. When we don’t grasp the cross, life deep mysteries become a riddle.
There’s a real difference between our achievements and our fruitfulness, between our successes and the actual good that we bring into the world. What we achieve brings us success, gives us a sense of pride, makes our families and friends proud of us, and gives us a feeling of being worthwhile, singular, and important.
Henri Nouwen frequently reminds us, achievement is not the same thing as fruitfulness. Our achievements are things we have accomplished. Our fruitfulness is the positive, long-term effect these achievements have on others. Achievement doesn’t automatically mean fruitfulness. Achievement helps us stand out, fruitfulness brings blessing into other people’s lives.
Hence we need to ask this question: How have they helped make the world a better, more-loving place? This is different than asking: How have my achievements made me feel? And so the truth is that we can achieve great things without being really fruitful, just as we can be very fruitful even while achieving little in terms of worldly success and recognition. Our fruitfulness is often the result not so much of the great things we accomplish, but of the graciousness, generosity, and kindness we bring into the world.
It will be the quality of our hearts, more so than our achievements, that will determine how nurturing or asphyxiating is the spirit we leave behind us when we’re gone. Jesus teaches us repeatedly that it’s better for us that he goes away because it’s only when he’s gone that we will be able to truly receive his spirit, his full fruitfulness. The same is true for us. Our full fruitfulness will only show after we have died. The fruit that feeds love and community tends to come from our shared vulnerability and not from those achievements that set us apart. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Achievements versus Fruitfulness” September 2017]
The biblical greeting of “grace, mercy, and peace” should be understood as an unconditional and universally accessible gift from God, rather than a limited commodity to be earned or selectively distributed. Fr. Rolheiser argues that we must risk proclaiming the “prodigal character” of this divine generosity, mirroring Christ’s example of offering love and acceptance to all, regardless of merit. religious people often try to protect God and limit who receives divine mercy, a tendency he sees as misguided. Drawing a parallel to the apostles who tried to shoo away children and sinners from Jesus, he argues that God does not want or need our protection. He asserts that we must risk letting the infinite, unbounded, and undeserved mercy of God flow freely to everyone, including those we might deem unworthy. We often witness the tension between extending unconditional grace and the fear of making it “cheap” by removing all conditions. He counters that grace is, by its very nature, unmerited and cannot be “cheap.” He points out that the fear of giving out grace too liberally often stems from a desire for fairness, a legalistic mindset, or a sense of self-righteousness, like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son.
Fr. Rolheiser contends that divine grace, mercy, and peace are not contingent on morality, orthodoxy, or a person’s preparation. He writes that God desires everyone—”regardless of morality, orthodoxy, lack of preparation, age, or culture”—to come to the “unlimited waters of divine mercy”. The journey from “paranoia to metanoia,” from a mindset of clenched fists to one of open hands is framed by moving from being judgmental to forgiving and living out of God’s grace rather than our own wounds. The writer George Eliot observed that “When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity”. This reflects his own conviction that as he has aged, he has grown more inclined to risk God’s mercy rather than err on the side of severity.
We are blind to the fact that the greed, the wars, and the violence that we see being played out on a world stage (and which we blame politicians and world leaders for) are, to a large extent, merely a magnification of what is happening inside of our own hearts and among us in our private relationships. There can be no peace on the big stage when there is greed, jealousy, unwillingness to forgive, and unwillingness to compromise within our private hearts.
There are many aspects to waging peace. The social justice literature of the past decades has given us a crucial insight which should never again be lost, namely, that private virtue and private charity, alone, are not enough. There is sociology as well as psychology, systemic evil as well as private sin. In the face of unjust systems and corrupt governments, Christians cannot get away with simply practising private virtue and saying to their less fortunate neighbours: “I wish you well. (Stay warm and well-fed!) I’m a good and honest person, I did nothing to cause your suffering!” There are real social and political issues underlying war, poverty, oppression, and violence. Peace-making must address these.
There is a story told about a Lutheran pastor, a Norwegian, who was arrested by the Gestapo during the Second World War. When he was brought into the interrogation room, the Gestapo officer he placed his revolver on the table between them and said: “Father, this is just to let you know that we are serious!” The pastor, instinctually, pulled out his bible and laid it beside the revolver. The officer demanded: “Why did you do that?” The pastor replied: “You laid out your weapon – and so did I!” In waging peace we must keep in mind what our true weapons are and who the real enemy is. [Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s “Waging Peace” April 1994]
Laughter is such a huge part of our lives that we actively seek it out. We want to watch things that make us laugh, read things that make us laugh, and spend time with people who make us laugh.
Dr. Tod Worner, Managing Editor of Evangelization & Culture, the Journal of the Word on Fire Institute, writes, “Humor and the laughter it begets are further manifestations of God’s divine spark. “Joy and Laughter,” says G.K. Chesterton, “is the gigantic secret of the Christian. There was something that God hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He constantly covered by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”
Imagine the enormity of God’s mirth. Imagine the magnitude of his wit. God left us with just a taste of the wondrous joy to come: glorious, delicious, irrepressible laughter. Fr. James Martin is a prolific author, magazine editor, and media commentator whose witty and often humourous elucidations on Church activities and teaching are sought by many. Below is a popular video of his talk at Boston College on Joy, Humor, and the Saints. Take some time and relax with the wit and humor of Fr. James Martin – it’s time to laugh with the saints!
Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? That question can spark endless debate because it is largely irresolvable. Catholic teaching is that God is revealed through sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture, hence the statement that Catholicism is a “both/and” faith practice.
Our protestant brethren hold that scripture alone is the only authoritative resource for the faith and practice of the Christian. This doctrine is referred to as Sola scriptura (Scripture alone). The often-quoted verse to support this doctrine comes from the Second Letter of Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16).
To view this from a Catholic perspective, some definitions are in order at the outset. Sacred Scripture, or the Bible, is a collection of works written under divine inspiration. Sacred Tradition is the unwritten or oral record of God’s Word to His prophets and apostles, received under divine inspiration and faithfully transmitted to the Church under the same guidance. Tradition differs from Scripture in that Tradition is a living reality passed on and preserved in the Church’s doctrine, life, and worship, while Scripture is a tangible reality found in written form.
Since the Protestant Reformation, a sticking point in the dialogue between Protestants and Catholics has been the perceived rivalry between Scripture and Tradition. The Catholic Church teaches that “sacred Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a single sacred deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the Church.” The focus of the debate shifted from one of “Scripture versus Tradition” to a discussion of the Lord’s desire to reveal Himself to His people, a process carried forward by both Scripture and Tradition.
From the temporal point of view, Tradition precedes Scripture, and the Church precedes both in that the writing of the New Testament did not begin until some fifteen to twenty years after the Pentecostal formation of the Church and was not completed until perhaps as late as a.d. 120. The Gospel message, then, was imparted through oral tradition first, and only later was it committed to written form. The means (whether oral or written), however, is in many ways secondary to the goal (revelation) and to the receiver of the revelation (God’s people, the Church).
An example from the American government might be instructive. The law of the land is found in the Constitution of the United States; it is normative for American life. However, it is not a self-interpreting document. On the contrary, it calls for detailed, professional interpretation from an entire branch of government dedicated to that purpose. Furthermore, when conflicting views do emerge, standard procedures of jurisprudence call for a return to the sources in an effort to discover the minds of the people who produced the document.
The canon of the Bible (the officially accepted list of inspired books) is the most evident proof of the validity of this approach. We know with the utmost certitude that no authoritative list of scriptural books existed until the fourth century. And who then produced this canon? None other than the Church meeting in the ecumenical council. Therefore, the value and even, one could say, the validity of the written Word is established only after its inspiration and inerrancy are assured and attested to by the Church. The process of divine revelation thus began with the Church, through Tradition, and subsequently passed into Scripture, and not the other way around.
Can it happen, though, that Scripture and Tradition will at times contradict each other? Impossible—because they are just two sides of the same coin, whose purpose is the same and whose origins are the same. Since God wishes to reveal Himself to us, He has guaranteed the process in both its oral and written expressions (and not one more than the other). Furthermore, God cannot contradict Himself. Saint Paul apparently had this very concept in mind when he urged his readers at Thessalonika to “hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours” (2 Th 2:15). This very passage, however, raises a secondary but related problem.
Some Christians tend to confuse “Tradition” with “traditions.” Having already defined Tradition, we need to consider the meaning and place of traditions (customs or practices). Sacred Tradition is divine in origin and, so, unchangeable; traditions are human in origin and therefore changeable. Some examples that come to mind are various devotions to the saints, processions, acts of penance, and the use of incense or holy water. No Church authority has ever held that these practices are divinely mandated; at the same time, no one can demonstrate that they are divinely forbidden. Traditions exist to put people in touch with Almighty God. To the extent that they do, they are good; to the extent that they do not, they are bad and should be modified or abolished.
On the other hand, certain defined dogmas cannot be found explicitly in Scripture (for example, Mary’s Assumption or Immaculate Conception). Yet, the Church binds its members to an acceptance of these teachings. How so? First of all, nothing in Scripture contradicts these dogmas. Second, they have been a part of the Tradition (or oral revelation) from the beginning. Third, because they can be implicitly located in Scripture, waiting, in a sense, to be uncovered by the Church’s prayerful reflection over the centuries.
Scripture comes alive only in the life of the community that gave it birth and has since preached and proclaimed it. To remove Scripture from its moorings in the Church is to deny it genuine vitality. Scripture provides Tradition with a written record against which to judge its fidelity and thus serves as a safeguard. In the “balance of powers” (to resort once more to the governmental analogy), Tradition is a defense against an unhealthy individualism that distorts the Bible through a private interpretation at odds with the constant Tradition of the Church.
Mark Wahlberg’s new film Father Stu is one of the most theologically interesting films to come out in a long time. It considers some of the thorniest and most puzzling themes in the sacred science, including the nature of vocation, the purpose of suffering in the divine plan, the role of supernatural agency, the dynamics of redemption, and perhaps most thoroughly, the mystery of God’s providence. In the course of this article, I would like to say just a few simple things about the first and last of those motifs.
Let’s take providence first. I have argued for years that most people in the modern world are functionally deist in their understanding of God. This means that they consider God a distant cause, important perhaps in bringing the universe into being, but now essentially uninvolved with his creation. This might have been the philosophical perspective of the leading minds of the eighteenth century, but it is most assuredly not the perspective of the authors of the Bible. For the writers of the Torah, for Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Peter, John, and Paul, God is personally and passionately implicated in his creation, especially in the affairs of human beings. The God of Israel pushes, pulls, cajoles, corrects, punishes, leads, and lures his human friends into fullness of life. Psalm 139 gives classic expression to this Biblical intuition: “O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me” (Ps. 139:1–5).
Wahlberg’s movie tells the unlikely story of Stuart Long, a burnt-out boxer from Montana who tried to make his way in Hollywood and ended up, to everyone’s enormous surprise, including his own, a Catholic priest. The journey commenced in the LA grocery store where Stu was working as a clerk. He spied a beautiful woman and was smitten. Inquiring after her, he discovered that she was a faithful attendee at the local Catholic parish, and so one Sunday, Stu went to Mass. Not a Catholic, not even a believer, he had no idea what to do or say at the liturgy, but he was intent upon getting to know the girl. After some awkward courting, she frankly informed the boxer that she would never consider dating someone who was not baptized. And so, with decidedly imperfect motivation, Stu entered the RCIA program and received baptism. In accord with Catholic theology, the sacrament had a truly efficacious effect on Stu, awakening and deepening his faith, and it ultimately prepared him to face a terrible trial. A motorcycle accident, depicted in the film with horrific realism, left him bedridden for months, but his Catholic faith and the support of his girlfriend sustained him. In time, he came to the realization that God wanted him to be a priest.
I won’t rehearse any more of the details of the story, but suffice it to say that, even as Stu was planning a life of movie stardom and marriage, God was about something else entirely. In point of fact, the Lord of the universe was so interested in the former boxer from Helena that, by careful steps, he led him, first to the Church, then to the faith, and finally to the priesthood. I wonder, honestly, how many devout Christians truly believe that God is so interested in them that he supervises their lives, drawing their freedom at every turn. Thomas Aquinas said, simply enough, that God’s providence “extends to particulars,” which implies that he knows and guides everyone individually. St. Paul told the Ephesians that the “power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph. 3:20). How our lives would change if we learned to trust that power and watch for the signs of his providence. A theme deeply related to providence is that of vocation or calling. Our culture highly privileges the rights, freedom, and prerogative of the individual. We celebrate, accordingly, those people who stand against the expectations of their families, friends, or traditions and make their own decisions, following their own chosen path. But this is repugnant to the Bible. The scriptural authors are interested, not in self-determination, but in the process by which a person awakens to God’s call. They celebrate those who enact, not the ego-drama, but the theo-drama, who abide, not by their own voice, but by God’s. They furthermore know that God’s call, once discerned, is practically irresistible. Once someone knows what God wants for him, he will do anything, overcome any obstacle, face down any opposition, in order to follow that divine directive. For biblical examples of this principle, think of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Jeremiah, or Paul. Stuart Long belongs, in his own way, in that great tradition, for having discerned that God wanted him to be a priest, he faced down the opposition of his mother, his father, his girlfriend, many of the people in his parish, the seminary rector, and even some of his seminary classmates. Moreover, he remained faithful to his calling when he was afflicted with the degenerative muscle disease that would eventually kill him. “Here I am; send me” (Isa. 6:8), said the prophet Isaiah, and Fr. Stu said the same thing.
I wonder, again, how many devout Christians understand that the discernment of their vocation is the most important psychological and spiritual move that they will ever make, that every other decision they make in their lives is secondary. And I wonder how many have experienced the real joy and excitement of surrendering to God’s call? What I sensed, especially in the second half of Father Stu, is how this man, despite everything, retained the joy of knowing he was cooperating with a divine purpose. That is the joy that, as the Bible says, no one can take from you (John 16:22).
If you want to see a concrete and contemporary enactment of these two great biblical principles, you could do a lot worse than to watch Father Stu.
