Up, Up and Away - Part 2

Remember the debates we had as kids (I suppose this was more a boy thing. Ladies?) "Who could beat who in a contest... Batman or Spiderman, Torch or Iceman, Aqua Man or Green Lantern?" Who the heck is Green Lantern anyway? Invariably, some kid would bring up Superman and the debate was over. Come on, no fair! He's SUPERMAN! Well, fine. He is super, but here's where the Gospel has these guys beat. It's the true fairy tale. God really steps into Our Story, and beyond our wildest dreams, he becomes one of us. Jesus is not a Man of Steel, but a Man of Flesh! A Man of Sorrows... and this is exactly how he saves us, not by deflecting bullets off of his chest, but by taking them right into his heart. He is the Pierced One, and as St. Bernard says "The piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself… Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love…" - St. Bernard Throughout history, many have fallen into the trap of seeing Jesus as a kind of superman, impervious to suffering. Sure, he died for us to save us, but he was GOD. How could he feel pain? For the answer to that one, let's read Isaiah 53: He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, One of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all. Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.

UP, Up and Away! Come on, America, you know you love Superman. You know you want to fly, be impervious to pain, have the strength of will to always seek the Good. I love the fact that the Man in Blue is back, and however the film turns out (we'll see it in 46 hours and 19 minutes, or... Saturday), I'm sure the iconic qualities about the son of Jor-El will be clear as crystal. He's Christological! No denying it! How 'bout this line from the new film's teaser trailer: The voice of Marlon Brando, Superman's father from the 1978 film: "Even though you've been raised as a human being you are not one of them. They can be a great people Kal-El. They wish to be, they only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." Wow. Now, this rather explicit typology is stirring up the anger of a few people in the secular press. They are upset that this comic icon is being morphed with "religion." To which I respond, how could it not? We are a fallen race, a wounded band of travellers in a world that is dying, and we long for redemption. We seek Truth though all we see here is mingled with lies. We want the Good, though all we see here is compromised with evil. We pant after a Beauty that is infinite, though all we taste here is destined to decay. So we create myths and stories and fairy tales with superhuman characters that can lift us up out of our own weakness. But the Gospel is the true fairy tale. Here God steps into Our Story, and beyond our wildest dreams, he becomes one of us. And this is the best part! Jesus is not a Man of Steel, but a Man of Flesh.... a Man of Sorrows.... part 2 tomorrow!

It's All About the Body

Caro cardo salutis - these three words contain the whole of the gospel, the whole of salvation history and the entire plan of God! They are from Tertullian, written in the year 208, and they translate as saying the flesh is the hinge of salvation. Hold up... wass'at? The flesh? The body? This weak, fragile, and faltering thing that needs so much care and attention. THIS is the hinge of salvation? We're accustomed to hearing that the soul is what's saved, and that the very act of saving is a spiritual thing. What's the body got to do with it? "A body you have prepared for me," says Psalm 40, and echoed in the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. In the fullness of time the Infinite, All Knowing, All Powerful Word descended into time and space and took on our flesh. And so the body became a theology - a Word of God. The Word of God! But why? Why should the flesh be the hinge of salvation? Why couldn't God just say all's well. "I forgive you, come on home." Because we are our bodies! And we need saving. Our bodies are not like bags holding us, or decorations dressing the soul, like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Our bodies are not like pieces of luggage that allow us to carry our souls around, and once we reach Heaven we can empty out the suitcase. We are our bodies! We are embodied spirits, or ensouled flesh... a harmony, a unity of the material and the spiritual, unique in all creation! And when our First Father and Mother sinned in the Garden of Eden, the shockwaves of that act of disobedience rippled throughout the material world as well as the spiritual. We needed the Word to become Flesh, the Obedient One to come into our time and space - to walk and breathe and sweat and suffer for us who are so often disobedient. In His Body, He takes the bullet for us, dies, sleeps, wakes and rises again! We are saved in and through His Body. A real Body! So the flesh is truly the hinge of salvation, on which the door to Life swings open wide that was once shut tight. Ave verum corpus natum de Maria Virgine! Hail, true Body, truly born of the Virgin Mary mild. Truly offered, wracked and torn, on the Cross for all defiled, from Whose love-pierced, sacred side flowed Thy true Blood's saving tide: be a foretaste sweet to me in my death's great agony.

HERE WE GO... Captain's Log, Stardate - June 27, 2006 - 11:13am: Beginning the work of writing my first book today. My hope is to have a solid draft by the end of the year. I've had a few things in mind in the last year or so, and I've decided to go where the fire of inspiration is burning brightest.... the EUCHARIST and JPII!! So, into the deep we go! St. Peter Julian Eymard, pray for us!

St. Joan of Arc - A Masterpiece

MASTERPIECE MONDAY #1 Been away from 'da BLOG for over a week now... thought I'd kickstart it with a new weekly spot. Behold.... Masterpiece Monday! It's a little tour of a great work of art, posted every Monday (I hope). This first official MM is one of my favorites: Joan of Arc by Jules Bastien-Lepage. Drifting in prayerful contemplation, a hand outstretched and caressing a branch of leaves, Joan is hearing the voices of saints and angels. If you look closely at the house behind her, floating above her loom, you can see the saints with whom she speaks. I love the liquid gaze of her eyes (you'll have to see it in person to really dive in!) and the fact that Joan was doing her daily work when the voices came to her. The canvas is crammed with life; vegetative, human and angelic. The entire Heirarchy of Being is here present, from the pale flowers at her feet to the very Voice of God streaming through the Holy Ones above her. And the young Joan stands dramatically in the gap, and in this mission moment she makes her choice: to follow the inspiration and alter the course of history for France, or to turn away and remain at the loom, spinning.

ON IRISH MUSIC Listening to the music of the Clancy Brothers just now as we begin the first day of a short vacation "down the shore." The Irish! What a gift they've given us through music. Irish music can lift us to the heights of beauty in an air or lament on the pipe or the piercing moans of the tinwhistle, or send us into a mad dance on the pub floor with a dizzying jig or reel to the fiddle and bodhran. What lies behind each song, I think, is courage. The courage of the Irish to go there. To go into the sadness of love lost or to the oppression and starvation of their people. To enter into the reality of life and to dance in it. Some say the Irish can tend toward escapism in their drink and their song. Perhaps at times it's true. But I think the greater gift of the Irish is their ability to face life's hardships with this courage! Indeed, the Irish are the lords of the dance and when we hear their delirious jigs and reels formed in the midst of all of life's crosses, we dance with them.

Now available in stores somewhere! The song I've been looking for oh round about 6 years! Dave Wilcox has a knack for nailing me right where I need to be nailed. It's the moment of committment that he loves to contemplate, those dynamic few moments wherein a path is set, a new note sounds the beginning of the soundtrack of your life and you are the one who must decide to sing it. Dave got me long ago with Hold it up to the Light, and finally Get On has been published in the new CD Vista. Here's a wee taste of the refrain.... GET ON And my heart says, "C'mon let's go" And my mind's saying, "I don't know" And the train is at the station But I'm lost in contemplation And this ticket's only good for just so long I can think about it 'til that train is gone or just get on...