Why did Jesus 'Take the Form of a Slave'?

     Did you know that we are all slaves - and have you noticed how often the topic of slavery comes up in Scripture and in Salvation History?  We can see it in some recent posts here:  last Wednesday we discussed how St. Patrick was kidnapped and sold into slavery, and then returned after his escape to convert his former slave masters.  Two days later we celebrated the Solemnity of St. Joseph, whose forerunner Joseph son of Jacob had also been sold into slavery.  An impressive number saints have been slaves at some point, as recently as St. Josephine Bakhita, who died in 1947.

 Why is slavery so prevalent?  We Catholics know that in the Bible and in the history of God's interaction with humanity there are different levels of meaning.  In another recent post, for instance, we talked about leprosy in scripture as a metaphor for sin; in much the same way slavery represents our attachment to sin . . .

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"Let It Be Done To Me According To Thy Word" - The Annunciation and Us (From Spes in Domino)

       I often used to admire a stained glass window that looks down on the altar in the cathedral where I used to attend Mass with my family.

     The scene in the window is the Annunciation. It depicts the young Mary, kneeling on the floor and surrounded by angels, while God the father looks down on her from above, sending forth a beam on which rests the Holy Spirit in the form of a Dove.  God the Son is there, too, although we don’t see him, a human embryo in Mary’s womb, the Omnipotent Divine wrapped in mortal human flesh.  That’s how we encounter Jesus in the Gospels: the Eternal Word in human disguise. That’s how we receive him in the Holy Eucharist: the Second Person of the Trinity in the form of simple bread.  It’s a marvelous image to contemplate as we approach the Altar of the Lord to receive Holy Communion.

   Mary’s willingness to give up herself to be a part in God’s Great Drama of Salvation, perhaps the greatest (solely) human actor, is the big picture; as is often the way, there’s a little picture, too, a way in which the Annunciation is reflected in our own lives.  God has a plan for all of us . . .

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The Crisis of Fatherhood and the Litany of St. Joseph

     How odd St. Joseph, the human father of Jesus, must look to so many of us today.  We live in an age that distrusts the traditional features of fatherhood, and even denigrates them as "toxic masculinity."  Small wonder that fatherhood itself is in steep decline.  According to the National Fatherhood Initiative, "19.7 million children in America—more than one in four—live without their biological dad in the home." ("The Father Absence Crisis in America")  That unprecedented figure is growing all the time, in spite of the fact that the decline of fatherhood has such devastating and clearly documented consequences: a four times greater likelihood of living in poverty; a greater likelihood of emotional and behavioral problems, infant mortality, crime and imprisonment, teen pregnancy, drug abuse, obesity, dropping out of school, and all the other problems that flow from those circumstances (see the article linked above for citations).

"The Flight into Egypt" by Jacopo Bassano (1544)

      As horrific as those consequences are, Christians know that there's something even worse. The Church has always taught us that human fatherhood is merely a reflection: as Jesus himself puts it, "call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven." (Matthew 23:9) Human fathers are merely stewards, and our authority is not our own, nor do we exercise if for our own sake . . .

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St. Patrick, Julius Caesar, and Slavery to Sin

 “You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today” (Deuteronomy 15:14-15)

 

"St. Patrick Baptizes the King of Munster". *

     St. Patrick is, of course, the Patron Saint of Ireland, but he wasn’t originally Irish.   He was Romano-British, probably born in what is now southern Scotland, or possibly Wales.  His first introduction to the Emerald Isle was as a slave, after he had been kidnapped as a youth by Irish raiders.  In his difficulties he came increasingly to rely on God, and he believed that God was calling him out of captivity.  He escaped and found his way home.  His faith life deepened, and after a time he concluded that he was being called back to save those who had enslaved him.  After ordination as a priest he returned to Ireland, where he successfully evangelized his former captors, and eventually became known as the Apostle of Ireland.

   There is something profoundly Christian about St. Patrick’s story.  Consider just how different is the story about Julius Caesar, as told by the Roman historian Suetonius.  When he was a young man, Caesar was kidnapped by pirates . . . 

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*Stained glass window from St. Patrick's Church, Columbus, OH; photo Wikipedia Commons

Do You Consider Yourself a Leper? (from Spes in Domino)

       A few years ago, during a previous Lent, I attended a mass in which the Gospel reading came from Matthew 8, which included the following passage:

 . . . and behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, if you will, you can make me clean."  And he stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, "I will; be clean." And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (Matthew 8:2-3)

     Father began his homily with the question, "Do you consider yourself a leper?"  Well, I had never thought of myself as a leper . . . 

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Confession, Jonah, and the Prodigal's Sons (from Spes in Domino)

 There are many things for which I should be more grateful, and one of the greatest is the forgiveness of sins in the Sacrament of Confession. One of the graces of the season of Lent is that there are many things to remind my stubborn, sluggish brain of that fact.  For instance, this past Sunday father dedicated a large part of his homily to explaining how a detailed examination of conscience can help us make a good confession, and illustrated with a model based on the Ten Commandments .  He also very helpfully directed our attention to the stained glass window closest to the confessional, which happened to be a depiction of the Prodigal Son. That reminded me of a Lenten penance I received at confession a few years ago, an assignment which got me thinking . . . and led to the meditation on the Prodigal Son, the Book of Jonah, and the Power of Forgiveness that I have reposted below.

     I was given an interesting penance when I went to confession recently. I was to meditate on the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).  My confessor emphasized that the father in Jesus' story, who extravagantly welcomes back his wastrel son . . .

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"The Return of the Prodigal Son" (1782) by Jean Germain Drouais (angry son at right)

From Spes in Domino: What to do about Vatican II

  Do you want to start an instant fight in a group of Catholics, any group, no matter how large or small?  Here's a method guaranteed to work 100% of the time: just mention Vatican II. That's all it takes, just toss it in there like a hand grenade and watch the fireworks begin!

 

    You can find the latest evidence for the volatility of any discussion of the Second Vatican Council by looking at the comments section of an article called "How should we think about Vatican II?" published earlier this week by Douglas Bushman on the Catholic World Report website. It's clear that, over half a century after the close of the Council, the dust from Vatican II still hasn't settled. Maybe it's about time that it did . . . 

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From Spes in Domino: Don't Be So Judgmental!

 

My, how times have changed.  We used to have the Seven Deadly Sins and the Sins That Cry Out to Heaven For Vengeance. Most of these don't seem of much concern to most people any more, even in many institutions that claim to be Catholic; some are even treated almost as virtues. In their place is a larger and ever enlarging Index of Forbiddden -isms: transphobism, climate denialism, islamophobism, etc., with the Granddaddy of All, the Wickedest Capital Sin, being Judgmentalism  (unless you're judging someone you're accusing of judgmentalism . . . or one of the other isms . . . in which case it is positively a virtue) . . .

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From Spes in Domino: St. Agnes of Bohemia - Bride of the King

 We mortal men and women need stories.  I don't mean "stories" in the sense of things that are untrue or simply made up. I mean that we learn and understand some things best, even perfectly true things, when we encounter them in story form.  We need the arc of narrative to capture and hold our imagination.  In order to really absorb concepts we need to see them embodied, literally, in people like ourselves and in the things that people do.

     That is part of the purpose of the cult of the saints.  Through intercessory prayer they advocate for us before the throne of God, but they are also examples for us: through the stories of their lives, they show us in a way we can't fail to understand what it is to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

     One of those things that they show us is how important each one of us is to God: "the wisdom of this world is folly with God." (1 Corinthians 3:19) One of today's saints, St. Agnes of Bohemia (also known as St. Agnes of Prague) provides a good example of just how foolish the "wisdom" of the world can be . . . 

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From Spes in Domino: Pergolesi's Miserere - Music for Lent

  This is a very different musical interpretation of Psalm 51 than we saw last week in Allegri's Miserere.  In Allegri's composition the intensity of the soaring, unaccompanied voices leads us to contemplation of the Divine Mercy of God in Heaven. Here the urgent, dramatic orchestration pulls us down into King David's turbulent emotions as he comes to acknowledge his sinfulness and his need for God's mercy.  This clip is only the first part of a much longer composition, and contains only the first line of the Psalm: Miserere mei, Domine, secundam misericordiam tuam, "Have mercy on me, Lord, according to your compassion". As the focus of the Psalm moves from David's sinfulness to the abundance of God's mercy, the music in the later parts of the piece changes with it . . .

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"The Prophet Nathan Rebukes King David" by Eugène Siberdt

"The Way" to Where, Exactly?

  Beware of anyone whose key concept is power.

 

   Some years ago I worked in a Catholic school which decided to assign summer reading to the entire school community, including both staff and students. The idea was to have a school wide discussion of the book in September focusing on some key component of our Catholic Identity.  The book chosen for the first year was a dystopian science fiction novel set in a future where water is a scarce commodity, and our "Catholic" theme seems to have been Climate Change (unfortunately, this was about the time of Laudato Si'). When I first saw the prepared questions we were given to guide the discussion with our students I was immediately struck with the fact that every single question was about "power": who had the power in this situation, what did so-and-so do with his power here, what sort of power could such-and-such a person apply there, etc.  

It all seemed very foreign to the Christian, Biblical worldview.  That's not the way St. Paul talks. In his Second Letter to the Corinthians he says, "but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness . . .

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