The Real Jesus

The song is by "downhere" and the video from Kelly Wicoff, who packs a powerful lesson in the images she chooses...

Tonight's Radio Show - Theology of the Body for Teens

Tonight's guest on the Heart of Things radio show is Brian Butler, co-author of the new Theology of the Body for Teens program.

From the TOB for Teens website:

A New Language for a New Generation
"Theology of the Body for Teens presents the two hottest topics on the planet - God and sex - and "marries" them through Pope John Paul II's compelling vision for love and life. Using a great mix of stories, real-life examples, activities, prayers, and references to the culture that teens understand, Theology of the Body for Teens answers the questions teens have about their own bodies, issues on sexual morality, and how they were uniquely created for greatness."

Theology of the Body for Teens answers questions such as:

• Why did God give us our sexual desires?
• What is the difference between love and lust?
• Can Christ bring healing to me if I’ve already “messed up”?
• How far is “too far”?
• How can teens remain pure in our oversexed culture?
• Is there any hope for overcoming lust and pornography?

Click here to learn more about Theology of the Body for Teens.
For more on Brian's ministry, visit the Dumb Ox Productions website here!
The podcast of my interview with Brian should be up by this Thursday!

He Is Risen!

Seven Stanzas at Easter by John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.
- John Updike

God Sleeps in the Womb of the Earth

Yesterday Christ died. He said "It is finished," and He gave up His spirit. The great Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Morning Star was Himself extinguished by the Darkness.

So now we wait, and weep, and wonder. Has Death won? Is faith just a futile attempt to hold off the inevitable night, like a match lit for a brief moment, surrounded by impenetrable shadow, for a few seconds of illumination, until all is night? We wonder if there's more. We wait, we watch, like Mary by the tomb.

I see her sitting there, still stunned by the events of that Dark Friday, a whole cut into her heart, scraped clean. Open hands, cupped, lying on her lap, still breathing out the sweet smell of myrhh and oils from the Jewish burial custom. She stares blankly over the distance between the shade of an olive tree and the Roman guards moving about their watch, mumbling in a language she doesn't know. She is there keeping vigil, but she is not there. She is nowhere, she is no one. Her thoughts can only find rest on a few random phrases of His, like a bird alighting on swaying reeds.

"Destroy this temple.... And I will raise it up."
"Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man...."
"I am the Resurrection and the Life..."

But then the winds of memory and sorrow and unspeakable torture blow through her mind again, and the bird of her heart must fly away, for this wind is too strong. After all, she saw His broken body, washed those wounds with His Mother. She saw the marks, the gaping hole in His chest. "It is finished," she whispers to the wind. And her tears drop into the dusty earth.

But Holy Saturday is a day pregnant with possibility....

"Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man...."

Yesterday, Words that can remake the world were spoken, dropped from the mouth of Jesus like seeds full of paradoxical promise. They were spoken the night before as well, at a supper His heart longed to celebrate. These Words convey to the human heart the very secret of human life, the way to the truth of who we are and what we can become. These Words and only these Words, like a magic spell, can rebuild the shattered Dream of Eden, and create a Civilization of Life and Love. These Words have unspeakable power in them.

"This is My Body, given up for you.... Take and eat, take and drink."

To the barren fields of fallen man, the God-Man has given His body as grain. To the earth that has shared in our sorrow, drink. Where thorns and thistles grew now the seed in the blood of Jesus flows. In the dark womb of the earth, He lies broken, sleeps, and germinates, sending out the small, green shoots of promise...And with Mary, we watch and wait for Morning.

Passion Reflection #3 - Veronica's Veil

(Kindnesses small as seeds can stand as long as mountains, and be remembered until the end of an age... Such is the motion of a woman's veil, cupped in trembling hands upon the Face of the Man of Sorrows).

She stood out in a crowd.
It was the eyes above all
A stream of compassion
That flowed through the wall
Of hatred and anger
Jealousy and fear
Veronica saw Suffering
and dared to draw near.

Here the drama unfolded that has since been remembered, through time and through tales her act has engendered the same look, the same leap
Out of self, out to others,
To the small and the sorrowful, to the least of our brothers.

To ease the world's wounds is the saint's vocation.
To make a veil of the heart and the mind is our mission.
To catch tears and calm fears turns our pride to submission.
And in every small act of mercy or compassion,
His Face shines again from the servant-heart's passion.

Passion Reflection #2 - Peter and the Battle of Prayer

What a scene the Passion of the Christ begins with; tension, fear, foreboding from the first few seconds of the film.

On the night Jesus was handed over, he made his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, taking with him his three closest friends; Peter, James, and John.

How beautiful that Our Lord has these levels of intimacy; the family friends of Bethany, the Twelve, and these three men who have walked with him now from the beginning. (What are the levels of intimacy in your life? Do you have a trinity of souls to share your sorrows with? Two friends? Even one is a tremendous blessing).

But in the mystical, moist night air of the Garden of Olives, Christ is alone. His friends sleep while he burns in the fires of sorrow. Pressed down by the weight of the world's sin, he is living out in his body what the name of this place embodies; Gethsemane is a Hebrew word meaning "olive press." Jesus is fully man, and fully God, and he knows what is coming. Yet blood flows from his anxiety. His capillaries break under the anguish and strain of what lies ahead. But not only blood; the sweet oil of mercy flows out. Oil rich enough to light the lamps of countless souls for a billion centuries.

Torches appear in the murky shadows. Peter awakens and comes to Our Lord. But he has not prayed, he has not been pressed. He is not ready for this encounter. His reaction to Jesus' arrest will be reprimanded by the Prince of Peace; "Put away your sword, Peter. For those who live by the sword, die by the sword."

Bishop Fulton Sheen once spoke of this moment of Peter's. Without that solitary encounter with God, that quiet communion with Him in prayer, we do not receive His oil to light our lamps. We are operating on our own devices. We move out of our own initiative, rather than by the spark of the Holy Spirit's.

Peter has been sleeping while Christ has been praying. If he had been in communion with the Lord, "watched one hour with him," what might have happened?

So for us.... What fuel are we running on? What impels us to do the things we do? Is it coming out of that stillness we have spent in the Garden of Prayer, or from somewhere else? Perhaps from our own busyness, our own agenda, our foot in the door and last word opinion?

Step into His stillness then. Sit and pray in this Garden of Shadows and watch one hour with Him. Let Him tell you when the time is right for action.

Passion Reflection #1 - From Palms to Poison

(The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie from 2004 focusing on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, will be the source for this week's meditations. If you haven't seen the film yet.... shame on you. It's a priceless work of art).

SNAPSHOT:
There's a scene in the movie where Jesus first takes up his Cross, and in those first few steps, surrounded by a swirling, spitting, angry mob, we see his eyes, swollen and bloodied, looking out to see palm branches being laid at his feet. For just a few seconds, we see what he saw just five days before. Palms laid out before a King. Cheers and cloaks and green palms falling before the grey, stiff ears of the colt He's riding. Then, in a flash, we're back to the painful, poisonous glare of the crowds.

Five days. Just five short days was all the difference there was between praise and utter rejection. How fickle we can be. "How torturous is the human heart, who can understand it," one of the prophets once wrote.
The crowds quickly turn, like leaves in the wind, blowing from one side of the street to the other. No rhyme, no reason. The powers that be, the molders and shapers of the thought of the masses have declared that Jesus is no longer "in." Jesus is "out." And so he is.

I wonder if they ever talked to Jesus? Did they ever look for Him for themselves? Actually seek Him out? Or was the connection merely based on hearsay...

"They" say he's the Messiah.
"They" say he's John the Baptist.
He gave us bread and fish and miracles.

It's easy to go with the flow, to talk "about" Jesus and the Church at the watercoolers and in the cafeterias of the world. It's harder to talk "to" Jesus. To get beyond the shallow surface. To look him in the eye and ask him "Who are you?" And to wait for the answer.

We are too often like animals; we find safety in numbers. We give in to the herd instinct. Afraid of the great dark, cold, alone of standing up for someone, we huddle up in the warmth of compromise and comfortability. We'd rather "read the Times than read the eternities," and trust the most untrustworthy source for giving us the truth about anything (or anyone): the media monster.

But there were some in that crowd on that via dolorosa, that Walk that Remade the World, that stood out, and stood up for him. Unlike the faceless, nameless crowd, we remember them... Veronica, Simon, Mary, John.

The question for us today is the same as it was then, when the palms that praise are turned to poisonous accusation and bitterness: Where will we stand?