Sin, Repentance and Lent

I guess it's easy to fall out of the habit of blogging. But I will try to keep it up. My thoughts are on sin at the moment. I frequently tell people in the confessional that what we call our sins are but the symptoms of a deeper illness - the effects of our fall. At heart each of us is deluded by the illusion that one is the centre of the universe and that everyone else (God included) ought to orbit about oneself and do as one wants, when one wants, as one wants etc. Since we all suffer from this, sin, conflict and suffering inevitably follow. Out of our disordered hearts the passions flow and our 'sins' are the obvious ends of deeper issues. Lent then is a chance to pay attention to ourselves not in the sense of pampering but to notice our truer, deeper motivations. It is these that also need to be brought to the confessional for healing and it is this healing that leads to Lent being called a joyful season. The Lord is zealous for our cleansing, to turn us into not just 'houses of God' but living tabernacless, His Body in the world. In the joyful sorrow of repentance we step towards the Kingdom that is established at Easter.

William Byrd to lift your spirit in Lent

Found this at the New Liturgical Movement's website. Enjoy.

First Sunday of Lent

The icon is from Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Ohio.
Unlike some I have not given up blogging for Lent but I was more than a little distracted. So Lent is here. I find it interesting that one of the Lenten prefaces calls this season joyful. What's joyful about giving things up? What's joyful about hunger? At the moment I'm reading Bernard Cornwell's Sword Song (set in the England of King Alfred) and I'm surprised by the level of anti-Christian sentiment it holds. The Christian (read Catholic) faith is presented as joyless, dour, legalistic and oppressive in contrast to the humane paganism that surrounds it. That I think says at lot more about Cornwell's vision than the mindset of an ancient pagan. He's not alone. Perhaps too often we have sold our faith as what we do not do rather than what we do. It strikes me that the three remedies proposed for sin: prayer, fasting and abstinence, and alms-giving cover both the 'negative' and 'positive' dimensions of the Lenten season. On the negative there is what we give up or deny ourselves, cut back on or reduce. This negation makes space in our lives for the Lord and for our neighbour. Into this space we can put our energies - the 'positive'- by not just giving cash but also giving time, effort, care, love. One without the other will not work. What point is our fasting if our love reaches out to no one? How can one reach out if one does not create the space, the time? Where will the will for all this come from without prayer for without God's help we can do nothing. It's our inability to do what is right that brings us to that other dimension of Lent: confession. The struggle to do better, to pray more, to give more, to give things up, often brings up our darker side: the illusion that each of us is the centre of the universe. Our passions surface in the struggle and they do so as sin. In the space created by fasting we can pay attention to that brokenness and bring it to the Lord to be healed in the sacrament. After all our Lord Himself fell three times so we should not expect an easy time of it. We can think of sin as the symptom of an illness - the fall - that Christ our doctor and our remedy has come not only to heal but to eliminate entirely - in Irish 'saviour' is rendered as 'health-giver'.

Support Fr. Tim

Fr. Tim Finnigan over at the Hermeneutic of Continuity has a copy of Elena Curti's (the Tablet a.k.a. 'the Bitter Pill') article about his parish and his interpolated response. His is a humble, moderate and balanced response as befits a Catholic pastor. It's a shame that a Catholic periodical couldn't be bothered to take a more balanced and sympathetic view of what priests like Fr. Tim are trying to do - restore solemnity and beauty to the Liturgy, to the worship of God. Hasn't it occurred to them that 40 years of liberalism has not just gotten us nowhere, it has lead us well away from the true path; a radical pro-abortionist in the White House elected by substantial numbers of Catholic voters should be screaming that out to us! All Fr. Tim is trying to do is co-operate with the Holy Father and help restore the Church's Liturgy to what it should be and in this way give people the most truly beautiful way to heaven ever. Go visit his site and drop him a few words of support and then back that up by keeping him in your prayers. If we don't look after our own who will we look after?

Guess what I found?

Over at the Vatican's website, in the Secret Archives, you can see the Letter of Byzantine Emperor John Comnenus II to Pope Callistus II written, it seems, in gold on vellum. There are also the seals of the John Paleologus one of the last of the Byzantine Emperors. Go and have a look.

Chinese Catholics under Pressure;

In an article at Sandro Magister's website we get the sad news of the continuing struggles and sufferings of the Catholic Church in China. It reminds me of the story of the conflicts in the early Church when the state actively intervened, sometimes on the side of orthodoxy but often against it, and many bishops vacillated in their loyalty and orthodoxy. At that time great theologian-bishops like Gregory Nazianzen and Basil of Caesarea stood up for the truth. In our own day many heresies threaten the Church; liturgical heresies, that the worship of God ought to be community-centred or ecclesial heresies that the Church is an entirely or largely a human construct and not of Divine origin or that she should shape herself to the ideologies of modern society. At root all these heresies are a rejection of the God who makes covenants with His people, who enters history in His Son and redeems man raising Him up an uniting him with the Divine Nature in the fullness of the Trinity. Let us pray with the Pope for the ship of Peter and for Peter's successor that he will not fail but will strengthen his brother bishops and all the faithful to resist the lies and assaults of the enemy.

For those who accuse the Holy Father and the Church of Anti-Semitism

From Sandro Magister:

The Catholic Church, the Jews, and the Holocaust

"I too am preparing to visit Israel..." The complete text of the pope's speech to members of the "Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations", received at the Vatican on February 12, 2009

by Benedeict XVI



Dear friends, I am pleased to welcome all of you today, and I thank Rabbi Arthur Schneier and Mr Alan Solow for the greetings they have addressed to me on your behalf. I well recall the various occasions, during my visit to the United States last year, when I was able to meet some of you in Washington D.C. and New York. Rabbi Schneier, you graciously received me at Park East Synagogue just hours before your celebration of Pesah. Now, I am glad to have this opportunity to offer you hospitality here in my own home. Such meetings as this enable us to demonstrate our respect for one another. I want you to know that you are all most welcome here today in the house of Peter, the home of the Pope.

I look back with gratitude to the various opportunities I have had over many years to spend time in the company of my Jewish friends. My visits to your communities in Washington and New York, though brief, were experiences of fraternal esteem and sincere friendship.

So too was my visit to the Synagogue in Cologne, the first such visit in my Pontificate. It was very moving for me to spend those moments with the Jewish community in the city I know so well, the city which was home to the earliest Jewish settlement in Germany, its roots reaching back to the time of the Roman Empire.

A year later, in May 2006, I visited the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. What words can adequately convey that profoundly moving experience? As I walked through the entrance to that place of horror, the scene of such untold suffering, I meditated on the countless number of prisoners, so many of them Jews, who had trodden that same path into captivity at Auschwitz and in all the other prison camps. Those children of Abraham, grief-stricken and degraded, had little to sustain them beyond their faith in the God of their fathers, a faith that we Christians share with you, our brothers and sisters. How can we begin to grasp the enormity of what took place in those infamous prisons? The entire human race feels deep shame at the savage brutality shown to your people at that time. Allow me to recall what I said on that sombre occasion: "The rulers of the Third Reich wanted to crush the entire Jewish people, to cancel it from the register of the peoples of the earth. Thus the words of the Psalm, ‘We are being killed, accounted as sheep for the slaughter’, were fulfilled in a terrifying way."

Our meeting today occurs in the context of your visit to Italy in conjunction with your annual Leadership Mission to Israel. I too am preparing to visit Israel, a land which is holy for Christians as well as Jews, since the roots of our faith are to be found there. Indeed, the Church draws its sustenance from the root of that good olive tree, the people of Israel, onto which have been grafted the wild olive branches of the Gentiles (cf. Rom 11: 17-24). From the earliest days of Christianity, our identity and every aspect of our life and worship have been intimately bound up with the ancient religion of our fathers in faith.

The two-thousand-year history of the relationship between Judaism and the Church has passed through many different phases, some of them painful to recall. Now that we are able to meet in a spirit of reconciliation, we must not allow past difficulties to hold us back from extending to one another the hand of friendship. Indeed, what family is there that has not been troubled by tensions of one kind or another? The Second Vatican Council’s Declaration "Nostra Aetate" marked a milestone in the journey towards reconciliation, and clearly outlined the principles that have governed the Church’s approach to Christian-Jewish relations ever since.

The Church is profoundly and irrevocably committed to reject all anti-Semitism and to continue to build good and lasting relations between our two communities. If there is one particular image which encapsulates this commitment, it is the moment when my beloved predecessor Pope John Paul II stood at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, pleading for God’s forgiveness after all the injustice that the Jewish people have had to suffer. I now make his prayer my own: "God of our fathers, you chose Abraham and his descendants to bring your Name to the Nations: we are deeply saddened by the behaviour of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant" (26 March 2000).

The hatred and contempt for men, women and children that was manifested in the Shoah was a crime against God and against humanity. This should be clear to everyone, especially to those standing in the tradition of the Holy Scriptures, according to which every human being is created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26-27). It is beyond question that any denial or minimization of this terrible crime is intolerable and altogether unacceptable. Recently, in a public audience, I reaffirmed that the Shoah must be "a warning for all against forgetfulness, denial or reductionism, because violence committed against one single human being is violence against all" (January 28, 2009).

This terrible chapter in our history must never be forgotten. Remembrance – it is rightly said – is "memoria futuri", a warning to us for the future, and a summons to strive for reconciliation. To remember is to do everything in our power to prevent any recurrence of such a catastrophe within the human family by building bridges of lasting friendship. It is my fervent prayer that the memory of this appalling crime will strengthen our determination to heal the wounds that for too long have sullied relations between Christians and Jews. It is my heartfelt desire that the friendship we now enjoy will grow ever stronger, so that the Church’s irrevocable commitment to respectful and harmonious relations with the people of the Covenant will bear fruit in abundance.

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The earlier documents and statements regarding the Jews mentioned by Benedict XVI in this speech:

> The decree "Nostra Aetate" from Vatican Council II

> John Paul II in Jerusalem, March 26, 2000

> Benedict XVI in Cologne, August 19, 2005

> Benedict XVI in Auschwitz-Birkenau, May 28, 2006

> Benedict XVI in Washington, April 17, 2008

> Benedict XVI in New York, April 18, 2008

> Benedict XVI in Rome, January 28, 2009

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As Rabbi Yehuda Levin recently said it is the left-wing, liberal side of the Church that is leading the assault on the Pope. Now that the Jewish community is getting the full picture they must continue alone but in the process exposing themselves for what they are - followers of ideologies incompatible with the Gospel.