god | A Catholic Philosophy and Theology Resource Page by Deacon Douglas McManaman

A Reflection on Beauty in Time

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Ever since I retired, I’ve had more time to reflect upon my years as a teacher, and my years of friendship with some of my colleagues, and my good friends. Sometimes I have to drive to a nearby town for an eye appointment, and I’ll have to drive right past the school at which I taught for the past 20 years, and when I do so, I experience a certain euphoria, all as a result of an influx of various memories.

So much has been forgotten, so many students that have passed through my classroom, the details of so many days, etc., and although I do remember many things, I do think I’ve forgotten more than I remember. But there is a joy there that I experience when I am brought back to that place, among other places.

My good friend is a retired priest, but I often think of my last 30 years with him, visiting him when he was stationed at this or that parish, and then after I was ordained in 2008 I could give him a break from preaching. A teaching colleague started to join me on these weekend visits; he’d cook, I’d preach, and our friend would smoke cigarettes and relax. Those were great memories. And they’re gone.

I am acutely aware that there was something beautiful in those moments, something I miss, and something I long to recover, to experience again. And I believe this is the root of tradition, which is an attempt to make the past present once again. We believe that doing something the same way, repeating an action, making it ritual, like singing happy birthday and blowing out candles, or opening presents on Christmas morning and having turkey in the evening, allows us to experience once again what we experienced in the past, which now, in the present, we long for. We long to connect to that past, to the people who perhaps are no longer with us.

But it begins with seeing something in the past that we didn’t quite see back then, or were not explicitly aware of at the time. It seems that time strips away some of the dross of our experiences and leaves us with a memory that is purified, and something now radiates.

I became more and more aware of this the older I got. I began to realize that this beauty that I saw when looking back, was there at the time, when it was not past, but present, but something prevented me from seeing it at the time, or appreciating it. It was buried underneath a host of baggage–perhaps stress, anxiety, preoccupation with what needs to be done at the moment, marking tests or creating exams, etc. What this means is that today, in the present moment, that element, that nugget of beauty that I will appreciate and see clearly 10 or so years from now (looking back and recalling this present moment), is here now, at this moment.

So, the question is: Is there a way for me to become aware of it now, so that I can delight in it now, rather than 20 years from now? And so a few years ago I began to really look for it in the present, to look for this element, this beauty, that I know I will see in retrospect.

So I know that one day I’m going to look back and remember teaching Confirmation to these kids, in the church basement either at St Lawrence the Martyr, or Blessed Trinity, or Sacred Heart in Uxbridge, taking their questions, questioning them, and I’m going to miss those moments, so, now, when I am teaching these classes, I am becoming more aware of that hidden element in the here and now. Same with preaching. One day I won’t be preaching anymore, but I’ll recall those times when I was preaching at this Church or that Church, and I’ll see something, something very memorable. I visit the hospitals often, at least once a week. Someday I might be a patient at Southlake hospital, and I’ll recall the years when I’d walk the halls and visit the patients, and I know I will long for those moments again, and I am aware of that now when I am in the hospital visiting patients, walking the halls and stairwells, making my way to their rooms. It’s hard to be attuned to this when we are young, because the young mind is just not focused on the present moment, but on the future.

And yet, the moments keep on drifting into the past. I am aware that when I discern that element in the present moment, I will often try to grasp on to it and keep it, but I can’t do it. It still drifts into the past. And it is always sad to see it drift away like that.

And yet, for God, nothing is past. God is the eternal present. So, does that mean when we die and enter into his rest, that all those moments will be recovered in some way? That we will experience the accumulated joy of each one of those moments, in the eternal present?

I think so. I am quite convinced that this is part of the joy of heaven. We are not to experience the fullness of that joy here, it will always escape our attempts to capture it, but it will be returned to us one hundredfold later on, in eternity.

Existence in time is a constant dying, drifting into the non-existent past. But Christ conquered death; he rose from the dead, so existence in time is a constant dying, each moment of which will rise again, in glory. Tradition seeks to recover the past, to make it present again, like the Mass, which actually does make present the sacrifice of Calvary. But in heaven, what tradition aims to achieve will be achieved. The joy of heaven will include the joys of each present moment of our existence, and so the deaths of each moment are not permanent; we can look at each moment and instead of saying “good-bye”, we can say: “see you again soon”.

Now, the gospel reading for the 2nd Sunday of Lent, was the Transfiguration. You know it well, so I’m not going to read it, but I have always been struck by what Peter says there:

Rabbi, it is good that we are here!
Let us make three tents:
one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

And every time I read that, I think of Father Frank Kelly, a homily that he gave way back in the early 90s, and I think it was when we came home from a retreat in New Jersey, we took a bunch of students, and we had Mass on our return. And the translation at that time was: “It is wonderful for us to be here”. That’s a better translation than what we have now.

The Greek word here is not “good” as in “It is good to be here”. The Greek word is kalon. It is kalon for us to be here.

Aristotle used that word kalon in his Nicomachean Ethics. The word kalon is derived from kaleo, which means attractive, and it is a word used in the context of aesthetics, the study of art and the beautiful. The kalon in Aristotle is best translated as the morally beautiful.

The gospel really should read: “It is beautiful for us to be here”, or “morally beautiful to be here”. The beauty is the moral atmosphere. This is an experience of beauty, the divine beauty. And it is an aesthetic experience that Peter, James, and John want to perpetuate. They want to keep it from drifting into the past.

Moses and Elijah, they are from the past, but they are present, in the present moment of the Transfiguration, contributing to its beauty; they represent salvation history before Christ. What is past is made present, in the here and now, through Christ.

God the Son joined a human nature to himself. The eternal, who is Beauty Itself, has entered into time and joined himself to the matter of the universe. Now, Pope John Paul II said often, in joining a human nature, God the Son joined himself as it were to every human being. He is present to every human person. Those who have the theological virtue of faith, those who have allowed Christ the king to reign in their lives, are given the light of grace, the light of faith. They have become aware of that deep and hidden presence, the presence of God the Son within the interior of the soul. That’s the kalon that exists at every moment, within every moment, in the lives of the faithful. That element of beauty that we see when looking back at things that have past is the kalon of the divine presence, stripped of the dross that acted as a distraction at the time. Our life is transfigured in Christ, right now, but there is so much that eclipses the radiance that the present moment contains. Later on, our memories of these events unveil the kalon so that we have a minor transfiguration experience.

To find that experience in the present, underneath the current dross that clouds it, we need to learn to be present. To be present is to be in the present. And to be present is a skill. It is interesting how the two words are akin: present and presence. To be present to another is to be in the presence of another, to be aware of their presence–not just their position in space. To be in the here and now, focused on the person before us. It is easy to be focused on a great person, but being present to the lowest of the low, that’s a skill. It requires an ability to see something in that person that is well disguised. Mother Teresa always spoke of the poor as Jesus’ disguise.

Now, the Greeks distinguish two kinds of time: chronos time and kairos time. Kairos is used over 80 times in the New Testament, and it refers to a season, such as harvest time. Chronos time is measured time, quantified into an hour, or a minute. Chronos time moves outside of us. The clock is ticking. The present moment, the now, is here instantaneously and then quickly drifts into the past, always escaping us.

However, we can be “within time”, that is, in time. We can move in it. If we move in it, then it is always now. As an analogy: think of a spacecraft. If we are outside the spacecraft, it zooms by us. If we are inside the spacecraft, we move along with it. Kairos time is time that we are in, and so it is always present.

But, chronos time is real, and it makes demands on us. We have an appointment and so we have to move on. Peter, James, and John got a taste of the kairos time that is in heaven, but chronos time made demands on them. The experience of the transfiguration came to an end and they had to come down from the mountain.

Chronos time and kairos time are simultaneous. Chronos time says I have an appointment at 10 o’clock, so I have to take leave of my friends and make my way there. But when I get to the doctor’s office, I have to be present to the doctor, pay attention to him, be a presence to him and allow him to be a presence to me. But, even the trip to the doctors, the drive, or the bus ride, is not meant to be pure chronos. I must be present to the beauty of the present moment. The view outside the window, or to the people on the subway, the walk to the doctor’s office, or whatever.

God is outside of time, not subject to the passing of time, but time exists, and God is intimately present within all that exists, as the First Cause of all that exists. God, who is Beauty Itself, is present in each moment of time.

And my students feel it. The first assignment that I give to my Niagara University students in January is to have them write out a short essay on how it is they got to where they are now, that is, how they got to teachers college. Reading their personal stories of how they got to this point is really an exhilarating experience. Their stories are so unique and so rich in content, and there is often some hero in their lives, either their parents, who came to Canada under adverse circumstances but struggled and overcame these obstacles through faith, trust in God, and hard work, or a great and unknown teacher in their lives who had a profound influence on the student as a result of the way that teacher related to her students, with great patience and perseverance, or some priest in their lives. etc. Many of them have very positive memories of their school years. Each story from each student is so different, but each one is usually so uplifting and exhilarating. And it is so easy to see the hand of divine providence in their lives, leading them to where they are now.

Now, it is amazing how many of these prospective teachers drifted from the faith, but returned, and it was the result of memories that were gradually uncovered, a feeling like something was lost, a world, and they rediscovered it.

The transfiguration was really a gift given to Peter, James, and John, to strengthen them for the impending trauma of Christ’s passion, and the memories we create for our students, for young people in the parish, are ordered to the same end, to strengthen them for the impending sufferings and difficulties and traumas that await them.

It is a ministry ordered to the creation of memories. I was going over these ideas with a patient of mine at the hospital, a young lady who suffers from clinical depression. I’ve been visiting her for many years now. Certain months of the year are very difficult for her. But I was telling her about the themes of this retreat.

I did ask her if she has any memories that bring her a sense of peace, and she said she had very few if any. And of course, she suffers from depression. When I spoke of this, she was reminded of Erik Erickson, the final stage of psychosocial development, the stage of integrity vs despair. Now, it is not quite the same in her case, because the stage of despair results from the fact that one sees the choices that one has made, and the despair is the result of those bad choices. Clinical depression is not something that results from bad moral choices. It is a brain disease. But I did give her something to think about. This is what I said:

We believe that God the Son joined a human nature and entered into human suffering. In joining himself to every man, he is especially present in the depths of our suffering and darkness. We don’t suffer alone, although it may often feel that we do. But we don’t. And this lady has a special cross to bear, as do all those who suffer from clinical depression.

And they must feel like they’ve been ripped off terribly. Others have their health, both mental and physical, they are privileged, brought up in a family that is well off, they travel and they’ve gone to university, they’re working. Life is tremendous. And here she is, this girl, in and out of mental health wards all her life. Life seems very unfair. But of course, our God is a God of justice. He balances the scales, and the divine justice has been revealed as the divine mercy. I told her that when you stand before God at the end of your life, and you see and grasp the meaning of your entire life from God’s point of view, that is, when you see your life in the light of Christ and the paschal mystery, and you reflect on the prospect of doing it all again, you will not want to change anything. She reacted to that and said she just cannot imagine that and doubts very much that she would not want anything changed. Nevertheless, that is the case, because she will see that Christ was present all along in the depths of that suffering, that her depression was a special sharing in the mental anguish of Christ that he endured throughout his life, especially on Holy Thursday night. She will see how her suffering has imprinted on her the image of the suffering Christ, and friendships are based on common qualities, and she’ll see how much her life has in common with Christ’s life, unlike the life of prosperity and privilege. She can’t see that now, but she will in eternity. But, she can begin to look now, to reflect upon her life in that light and perhaps begin to see it, begin to discover the suffering Christ in the midst of that darkness.

But the suffering involved in clinical depression is deep, but the Lord is there nonetheless. The specific cross given to such a person may involve being unable to detect the peace of his presence at any level, but he is there nevertheless, and one day this person will see it and delight in it, and see what it has done for her, how that suffering has configured her to the beautiful image of Christ crucified. And so the scales will be balanced in her favor.

A Season of Irony

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Years ago I was struck by something Gregory of Nyssa wrote in a Sermon on the Beatitudes:

What more humble for the King of creation than to share in our poor nature? The Ruler of rulers, the Lord of lords puts on voluntarily the garb of servitude. The Judge of all things becomes a subject of governors; the Lord of creation dwells in a cave; He who holds the universe in His hands finds no place in the inn, but is cast aside into the manger of irrational beasts. The perfectly Pure accepts the filth of human nature, and after going through all our poverty passes on to the experience of death. …Life tastes death; the Judge is brought to judgement; the Lord of the life of all creatures is sentenced by the judge; the King of all heavenly powers does not push aside the hands of the executioners (Sermon 1, The Beatitudes).

Notice the irony in this. Christmas, the birth of Christ, is a season of irony. For this reason, it is a season of humour; for it is irony that makes us laugh. That’s what makes good comedians, namely, an ability to see and make explicit the irony in everyday situations. Consider the nick names kids give one another; they are often very funny because they are ironic: the tall kid is called ‘shorty’, the short one is called stretch, the weak and skinny kid is ‘hercules’, and they called me “slim”.

If we stand back and think about the irony in the mystery of the Incarnation, it is rather funny. God, who is all powerful, immaterial, and indestructible, becomes flesh; God, who is eternal, is born in time; God, who is all powerful and independent, becomes a weak and vulnerable baby dependent upon a mother and father; God who is the judge of all is judged by a mere human being; God who is Life Itself dies on a cross. This is irony, and there is joyful humour in this. It is as if God is playing a joke on us, one serious to be sure, but a joke nonetheless–and it is serious because love is serious.

The word ‘humor’ comes from the Latin humous, which means soil or dirt. The word ‘human’ is also derived from the same root, because we came from dust and to dust we shall return. And the word ‘humility’ has the same origin, for the humble know they are dust and ashes and they have their feet planted firmly on the ground–they do not walk high and mighty; they realize they are just flesh and blood and are everywhere prone to error. These three words (human, humility, humour) are clearly related. The more humble you are, the more human you are, and the more you are able to laugh, especially at yourself.

This is a problem with our notion of holiness. In movies, saints are almost always depicted as overly serious, heavy, not disposed to laughter, as if laughter is offensive to God. But a truly holy person sees the irony in life in light of the divine irony, which is why truly holy people laugh a lot. Above all, they can laugh at themselves, because they take themselves lightly. I always emphasize to couples taking Marriage Prep that being able to laugh at yourself and taking yourself lightly is the key to conflict resolution–those who cannot laugh at themselves, who take themselves too seriously, will indeed have marital difficulties.

God is joy itself, and you and I are called to enter into that joy, to enter into the divine humour. Grace gives us the eyes to see life’s irony so that we can begin to laugh with God. We cannot laugh, however, if we are afraid, and there is a great deal of fear in people’s lives. Inordinate fear can cause us to do things that only make a mess out of our lives and bring chaos to the lives of others. Human beings are limited by matter, by flesh and blood. Our abilities and our knowledge in particular are terribly limited. When we experience those limits, we typically begin to fear, because we realize there is very little that is in our control, and then we are tempted to make choices that are contrary to the limits that the moral law imposes upon us. In other words, we are tempted to sin, to take matters into our own hands. But this is where we have to trust; for the spiritual life is about learning to trust and to fear less and less. Christians have a unique advantage here, because we have the example of divine irony: God is so powerful that he can defeat the one enemy that man could not hope to defeat, namely sin and death, and he does so not through power, but weakness: the weakness of a child, the weakness of poverty, the weakness of a bad reputation (as a result of sharing table fellowship with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes), and the weakness of death on a cross. He rose from the dead. And he gives us his very self under the appearance of ordinary bread–more irony; God, who is extraordinary, allows himself to be consumed under the appearance of ordinary bread, in order to strengthen us, in order to dwell within us. God, who cannot be contained, allows us to contain him. So why are we afraid? “If God is for us, who can be against us (Rm 8, 31).

Finally, the angel says to Joseph in a dream: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit”. Why in a dream? The reason is that when we are sleeping, we are no longer in control. And if we are not in control, we cannot screw things up. We are most disposed to listen when we are not in control. And that’s why God often does speak to us in dreams. But the message in this is that we must learn to relinquish control, more and more, when we are not sleeping, but awake. The more we relinquish control and allow God to be God, the more we will see miracles. We see so few miracles because we insist on managing things ourselves, managing other people, and driving them away in the process. But the more we learn to trust him and listen in silence, the more we will hear him speak to us, and like Joseph, we will know what to do, where to go, and how to get there.

Thoughts on God as Pure Act of Being and Atheism

Deacon D. McManaman

God is pure act of existence. But what does this mean? I can look at you and form a concept, an idea of what you are. In other words, I grasp something of your nature, i.e., you are a human kind of being, you have size and affective qualities, you have certain abilities and potentialities very similar and different from other kinds of beings. But I also apprehend that you exist, which is a different apprehension than the first (the apprehension of the kind of being you are). Your existence is intelligible, but I cannot form a concept of it–as I can form a concept of your nature, the kind of person you are. You are a certain kind of being that “has an act of existence”, but existence does not belong to your nature. Existence is an “act” that you have, while “human”, for example, is “what” you are (not what you have). The key point here is that your existence is not a concept; it is, nonetheless, intelligible.

God is not a composite of essence and existence (as are you), rather, his essence is to exist. He does not “have” existence; rather, he is his own act of existing. And so God is intelligible, but we cannot form a concept or idea of God. And because God is pure act of existence, he is pure goodness and beauty, because goodness and beauty are properties of being.

And so we need to be careful with confusing the worship of God with the worship of a conceptual framework. As pure act of being, God is intimately present to whatever has existence; God is more intimately present to you than you are to you. Being is the most interior aspect of a thing, and so God, who is the first existential and preservative cause of your being, is, of all that is within you, the most interior. How you relate to God, who is goodness itself and beauty itself, is not always clear to you, certainly not immediately clear. It becomes increasingly manifest in your dealings with other goods, such as human goods or human persons.

The atheist typically rejects a conceptual framework, as opposed to God himself. Even the use of “himself” is dangerous because it brings God into a conceptual circle. This is not to say that it is false, but it can be misleading. God is in many ways “himself” and “herself” and infinitely more, while at the same time God is absolutely simple, for there is nothing simpler than “being itself”.

And so when someone says he or she is an “atheist”, we have to ask what that means precisely. It very often does not mean that God is rejected–especially if the atheist has a degree of wisdom. It is usually a conceptual framework that is rejected, for a variety of reasons. The good news is that God is not a concept. God is intelligible, infinitely knowable, and incomprehensible. We believe he revealed himself in history, and this is where the construction of an elaborate conceptual framework begins, but this religious conceptual frame of mind, although not necessarily false, is always subject to reform and constant editing. God, however, is always infinitely larger than this religious conceptual framework. That is why openness to and dialogue with other religions and denominations is of the utmost importance.

Fear and Primitive Reasoning

Deacon Douglas McManaman

Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God (Is 35, 4)

So much of what goes wrong in the world has its roots in fear. And there is so much about this world today that gives rise to fear; but this life is really about learning to depend upon God, that is, learning to fear less (fearless), and the way to do that is first to become increasingly aware that independence is relative and ultimately an illusion, and that we depend on God ultimately, and second to actually begin to rely on God. We certainly depend on one another, but ultimately everyone depends on God. And the more we surrender our lives to God, the more we learn through our own experience that God really is intimately involved in everything that happens to us and that nothing happens outside of his providential control. However, although human beings really do make a mess out of their lives when they take matters into their own hands instead of relying on God, they are still wrapped up and surrounded by God’s providence.

My spiritual director would always say to me: “Fear is useless, what is needed is trust”. And fear is useless, at least fear without trust, because we all experience our radical limitations, but without trust we are tempted to cross those limits, that is, moral limits, and then we do things that we know to be wrong, like lying under oath, or stealing, or undermining the reputation of another, plotting to bring others down, etc. We make every effort to create an environment that is safe for ourselves, and this soon becomes a machination process in which we are willing to sideline those who get in our way. That injustice generates resentment in others, and such wounds can stay with a person all throughout his or her life. And soon everybody is carrying around a soul riddled with bullet holes, and the result is that we only think of ourselves, sort of like having a toothache–you can’t think of anything other than your own pain.

But God does allow suffering into our lives. He does not impose it on us, but He does allow it; for suffering is the opportunity God gives us to depend on Him, to trust Him more fully, to place ourselves in His hands. When we do, we can be assured that he will act, but God does tend to “take his time”, not our time. And so, we have to be patient. That’s the problem with living in a fast-paced society–we are disposed to want things done quickly, and that just does not happen with God. The reason is that love is patient, and God is love, and he calls us to be patient: “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains” (Jm 5, 7). Suffering and moments of darkness are symbolized here by the image of early and late rains–there is no “precious fruit of the earth” without that suffering.

In my experience, most people, even religious people, believe that suffering, hardship, and struggles are anomalies. Religious people in particular often assume that if we have a relationship with God, all will be smooth and relatively easy, so that if suffering enters our life, that must mean that our relationship with God has somehow been broken by something we did, some sin that we committed. This is how Israel interpreted her own suffering and hardship on a national level; on an individual level, it was assumed that those who were poor, lame, deaf or blind, etc., were forsaken by God by virtue of some ancestral or personal sin. This is a primitive way of trying to make sense out of suffering. Jesus, however, challenged this in the gospel of John: “As he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him’” (Jn 9, 1-3).

Unfortunately, many people still tend to think this way, because they want to make sense out of suffering, and if I can convince myself that a person is suffering because of something sinful he has done, well then I don’t feel so bad–on some level I convince myself that he deserves it. If we carefully read the book of Job, we see that Job’s friends were reasoning precisely along these lines, which is why in the end God rebuked them for this (See Jb 42, 7-9).

We have to be very careful with this kind of reasoning, which is still rather prevalent. Some people take many sections of the Old Testament literally and believe that God does in fact destroy otherwise innocent people (i.e., Amalekite children, David’s infant son, etc.) as a punishment for the sins committed by others. We have to keep in mind that Israel, in her infancy, thought as a child does, namely, egocentrically: if something bad is happening to a child, for example, if the child is being abused by a parent, or the child’s parents are going through a separation and divorce, that child believes this is all happening because “I am bad”. It takes years for a person to escape from this mythology–and he or she may need help (a trained therapist) to overcome such harmful and subconscious beliefs, otherwise they may carry that conviction into their adult lives, feeling and believing on some level that they are deeply flawed, and without knowing why. Such people typically carry around a great deal of anger. We see precisely this kind of thinking on a national level in the Hebrew Scriptures, but Israel is a nation in history, a nation that through time grew in her understanding of God as a result of that historical relationship. The way Israel thinks about herself and God later in her history is very different from the way she thought earlier.

However, God reveals his true face in the Incarnation of the Son, that is, in the Person of Christ. God’s response to human sin was pure grace. He does not impose suffering but enters into human suffering, for he joined a human nature to himself and entered into our darkness, so that when we suffer, we may find him in the midst of that suffering. He came to sanctify our suffering and death, to inject it with his life. That is why the Old Testament must always be read in the light of the New, that is, in the light of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

Finally, John the Baptist, the greatest of those born of women, is suffering in the darkness of a prison cell, awaiting his execution. He does not suffer by virtue of some sin; rather, he is suffering because of his heroic virtue, that is, his decision to speak out against Herod, who after visiting his brother in Rome, seduced his wife and married her after dismissing his own wife. John rebuked Herod for this, and Herod responded by throwing him into the dungeons of the fortress of Machaerus, near the Dead Sea. In that darkness, John was tempted to doubt. Initially, he pointed out rather definitively that Jesus was the lamb of God, but in this dark and final period in prison, he sent his disciples to ask Jesus: “Are you the One who is to come, or, must we go on expecting another?” Jesus sent John’s disciples back with the evidence: the blind are given their sight, the lame are walking, lepers are being cleansed, the deaf are hearing, and the dead are being raised and the poor are receiving the good news. What Isaiah prophesied in the first reading is being fulfilled in the Person of Christ himself. And if the lame, the poor, the sick, the deaf, etc., were thought to be forsaken, abandoned, and rejected by God, then what is happening here can only be interpreted as a vindication of the poor, that the kingdom of God has come upon them in the Person of Christ. He overthrows the kingdom of darkness, and the true face of God is being revealed not a God who punishes retributively,[1] but a God who forgives and loves, who loves us so much that he will take on our sufferings, join us in our deepest darkness so that we may not suffer alone. He enters into the worst possible darkness that a person can experience: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. He tastes the furthest extremity of God forsakenness, the depths of hell, in order to fill it with his light and love. That is the good news of our salvation.

1. When the New Testament speaks of divine punishment, the Greek word employed is kolasis, which is best translated as “chastisement”. Timoria is the Greek word for retribution or retributive punishment, but we do not find this word in the New Testament associated with divine punishment. Kolasis, on the contrary, is a horticultural term that refers to pruning, as in pruning a plant. One prunes a plant for the good of the plant. In other words, divine punishment is ordered to the good of the “chastised” and is consistent with the divine love.

Perfect Victory

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent
https://www.lifeissues.net/writers/mcm/mcm_437perfectvictory.html
Deacon Douglas McManaman

Anyone who uses social media and follows American politics is acutely aware of how divided we have become as a nation. This division is also evident in a number of Catholic journals, especially those that allow comments. YouTube videos often bear the legend “so and so gets humiliated”, or “____________ gets schooled by __________”, or crushed, demolished, destroyed, and so on. Such videos are not about listening to the finer points of an issue in order to inch our way closer to the truth; rather, the attitude is so often “demolish the enemy”, and the enemy, needless to say, are those who disagree with us. In the end, victory leaves us with one apparent winner and one loser; the winner gloats, and the loser is humiliated and goes off with his proverbial tail between his legs. Moreover, there is a tremendous lack of civility today on social media, especially when it comes to politics.

However, the first reading for the 2nd Sunday of Advent provides a very different vision of what a genuine victory is. I’m referring specifically to the last section of the first reading from Isaiah (11, 6-8):

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the baby goat,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the den of the venomous snake.

In short, no harm shall come from those who were at one time the enemy to be feared. This reading from Isaiah is a vision of the eschatological harmony that we can look forward to. And it is an entirely different vision of victory than what we typically understand by that word. There will not be one winner standing over the defeated enemy; rather, the enemies have been changed, that is, completely transformed. In short, there will be no more enemies; for they will have ceased to be such. That’s precisely what Christ’s victory is, which is the greatest possible victory.

I debated a lot when I was younger, and at times those debates got very heated. Back then, I was quite convinced that I won those debates, but my opponents were equally certain they did. In formal debates, it is the audience that decides the winner. If you came to the debate favoring a particular side, but the other side changed your mind, you indicate that at the end and the one who turned more people around to their side is the winner–and there is only one winner and one loser.

But is it possible to have two winners? Most people would say no, but it is possible. I know that in my case, on a number of occasions in my late 50s and especially in recent years, after reflecting upon certain issues for decades, I have said to myself more than once: “Gosh, so and so was right 35 years ago when I argued with him on this issue”, and “I think that person was right 20 years ago when we debated that issue”. This has happened many times in recent years, only because I still study. And it’s a marvelous experience to be sure, not unpleasant in any way, but there’s no way of getting in contact with these people to tell them: “Hey, remember the debate we had 35 years ago. You were right all along. It just took me 35 years to see it.”

In this case, we have two winners. And why did it take so long? Because human knowing is very limited; human intelligence is sluggish, and we depend so much on experience (empirical data), which takes time. Certain epistemic conditions were not in place at a specific point in our personal history, but after three decades, if and when those conditions are established, we see what we could not see earlier. That’s a true victory, when two opposing parties finally see eye to eye. And again, that’s why synodal listening is so important. Pope Francis understood something of the fundamentals of a sound theory of knowledge, and Pope Leo XIV continues to emphasize this essential aspect of the Church as “listening Church”. If Christ is victorious, it can only be a perfect victory, one that in the end leaves no enemies, a victory in which the enemy is entirely transformed: “Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2, 9-11).

The book of Revelation also envisions the same thing. The kings of the earth are depicted as opponents of God, for they side with the beast and wage war against Christ at Armageddon (Rev 16, 16), but in chapter 21, verse 24, we read: “The city had no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gave it light, and its lamp was the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and to it the kings of the earth will bring their treasure.” Christ’s victory involves the transformation of the kings of the earth, from enemies to worshippers who adore the Lamb–a perfect victory.

And we have a role to play in this eschatological state of affairs. Christ does not usher in the kingdom of God without us. We have to do our part and work for peace. We can move this world forward or we can hold things back. It all depends on the attitude we adopt. And it begins in the ordinary ways we relate to people who do not think like we do, whether they are on the right or the left, inside the Church or on the outside. How we talk and how we listen is important. People throw around the word “truth” rather loosely, but knowledge is very hard to achieve, and “truth” is for the most part truth as we currently see it, which implies that “truth” is, for the most part, tentative. The ones who seem to appreciate this fact are scientists who must always test their hypotheses. Outside of that circle, people tend to speak with a rhetoric of certainty.

In my last 20 years of teaching, close to 40% of my students were Muslim. Around 2013, I started to show the film Dancing in Jaffa–it was a Muslim girl who urged me to purchase the film and show it. The film is about a world champion ballroom dancer, Pierre Dulaine, who returns to Jaffa, Israel, where he grew up 30 years earlier, and his goal was to teach ballroom dancing to Jewish and Palestinian kids, and then to have them dance together, boy with girl, but one must be Jewish and the other Palestinian. He thought this was going to be a cakewalk, but it proved to be much more challenging than he realized–he was ready to quit on a number of occasions; many kids simply refused to dance with a Jew, or dance with a Palestinian. They just would not have it; the prejudice was deep and ingrained. But some were willing to try it, and the film has a beautiful ending, with the 11 year old Jewish and Palestinian dance couples in a competition between schools. It’s a very moving and hopeful film.

But it does give us a glimpse of how difficult it is to overcome deep-seated prejudice, in particular prejudice that has been picked up from parents and religious communities. And that prejudice is not only there in the Middle East, it is here too in North America. The way some Catholics still talk about Protestants and the way some Protestants still talk about Catholics, or Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs, and of course the way Liberals talk about Conservatives and Conservatives talk about Liberals strongly suggests that we really have a long way to go and that we are probably many centuries away from true and lasting peace. But that is our task, and we especially are responsible for taking the lead since we claim to worship the Prince of Peace, who was victorious over sin and death not through any kind of aggression, military or otherwise, but through the divine weakness, Christ’s birth in poverty and his death on the cross.

Miscellaneous Thoughts on Receiving Communion

Deacon Douglas McManaman

In the last little while, visiting a number of parishes, I have noticed that some parishioners–not many to be sure–will deliberately cross over onto another communion line in order to receive communion from the priest, as opposed to the extraordinary minister, a layman or laywoman. I inquired about this from one such person, and the reasoning, I found, had almost no coherence whatsoever. It seems to me that the very idea that one ought to receive communion from a priest and not a lay person is nothing more than liturgical snobbery. The entire Church received “holy communion” from a lay woman, namely Mary, Jesus’ own mother. That should settle the matter. But of course it doesn’t.

Consider the optics if we were to employ Kant’s principle of universalizability to this issue. A parish priest requests help to distribute holy communion from some of the faithful, who then become extraordinary ministers of communion. The rest of the congregation, however, adopts the attitude that communion should only be received from a priest, not a laywoman or layman. The extraordinary ministers would be standing there the whole time, waiting and watching everyone line up and receive from the priest. It is safe to say that this would certainly frustrate the pastor who would like to finish the Mass at a reasonable time.

But more to the point, is communion somehow different when it is received from the hands of a laywoman or layman? Is it less than Christ? Or, does a person receive something more, for example, a greater dignity perhaps, when he or she receives communion from a priest? If so, how does that work precisely?

Perhaps it is about reverence, as the person I questioned insisted it is. And so, is it the case that if I wish to show greater reverence to Christ, I should receive communion from the hand of a priest as opposed to the hand of a laywoman or layman? Again, if so, how does that work? To show reverence to Christ pleases him; to show greater reverence to Christ pleases him more. And so I approach the communion minister, I bow or make some reverential gesture, receive the host and then move on, but if I were to receive from the hand of an ordained priest, somehow Christ is more pleased with me, because I’ve shown him greater reverence? I have not yet been able to figure this out, even with the help of one who insists on receiving communion only from a priest.

Moreover, “communion” means just that: “union”, not only with Christ, but with the entire worshipping community. Of course, there is diversity within that community and that should not be suppressed (diverse talents, experiences, angles on life, spiritualities, etc.), but liturgically some people insist on doing their own thing, and the result is that some are kneeling, most are standing, some receive on the tongue, and some–thankfully most–receive on the hand, some only from the priest, and some–thankfully most–from either a priest or layman/woman, whoever is available at the moment. Is it the case that some people have a need to separate themselves from the “commoners”? Whatever way we slice it, I can’t help but suspect that this is another instance of Phariseeism (from Aramaic perishayya, “separated ones”).

Christ ate with sinners and tax collectors, shared meals with them, thereby entering into a profound communion with them–given the Jewish understanding of what it means to share a meal–, thereby becoming ritually unclean in the eyes of the religious leaders, which is why they despised him. Jesus was not concerned about ritual purity, as we see from the parable of the Good Samaritan, and he despised the elitist and condescending arrogance of the Pharisees, referring to them as whitewashed tombs full of the bones of the dead and every kind of filth. His attitude appears to me to be the complete opposite of the semi-elitist attitude that insists on receiving communion from an ordained priest only, as though it were “below me” to receive from an ordinary layperson, as it was below the religious leaders to share a meal with those ignorant of the Torah.

But I’ve been assured that this is not the sentiment. But then I am asked: Are not the priests’ hands anointed at his Ordination? They are, but so are the hands of those who receive the anointing of the sick, and so too the heads of babies who are baptized. Confirmandi are anointed on the forehead at Confirmation. Anointing represents Christ (Gk: Christos, anointed one), and oil symbolizes strength, wealth and royalty. All of us have been anointed (in Baptism and Confirmation), and all of us share in the Royal Priesthood of the Faithful. The congregation is a congregation of priests, because Israel and the New Israel (the Church) is a “priestly people” (Exodus 19, 6). The laos (people) have been “set apart”. As our first Pope said: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people set apart for God’s own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (2 Peter 2, 9). That a baby’s head has been anointed with sacred chrism, endowing that child with a new identity, namely that of priest, prophet and king, does not in any way necessitate different behaviour on the part of others towards the baby. Some will zero in on that aspect of the ordination ceremony in which a priest’s hands are anointed and deduce that this somehow suggests that we should behave differently towards him–i.e., choose his communion line–and that doing so is “more reverent towards our Lord”. Somehow his hands add something to the significance of my receiving communion, but what exactly that is, I have no idea at this point.

I cannot help but think that this is another symptom of the disease of clericalism that Francis so often spoke out against. He explicitly warned the laity not to put priests on pedestals, and yet how this decision to receive only from the hand of a priest is not an instance of just such a practice is beyond me.

Perhaps this practice of receiving communion only from an ordained priest is a subtle but real repudiation of the layperson’s sharing in the royal priesthood of the faithful. After all, the procession begins when the faithful leave their homes to go to the Church to celebrate Mass. The formal procession at the start of the Mass is merely a continuation of the procession that the people began when leaving their houses. The offertory is precisely the offering of this priestly people, an offering of their sufferings, their labor, their treasure, etc., and it takes the form of bread and wine (the parish purchases the bread and wine out of the treasury that comes from the people). The ministerial priest offers the bread and wine on behalf of this priestly people, the congregation. Christ receives that offering and changes it into himself, returning it to us, saying: “take and eat”. The priest is merely an instrument, an unworthy instrument as Pope Benedict XVI would often remind us. It is Christ who consecrates, it is Christ who is the single priest and victim. The ministerial priest is acting in persona Christi, which means that it is really Christ who is the agent who changes the offering (bread and wine) into himself–just as it is Christ, not the priest or deacon, who gives life in baptism and infuses the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity into the soul of the baptized, among other things.

The function of a ministerial priest is different from the function of those who belong to the common priesthood of the faithful, but it is a function that is entirely at the service of the priestly people that is the congregation. One can certainly say that the priest is “set apart” for a specific work, and that is true, but he is set apart to serve the entire people who have been set apart from the world, who have become a holy nation, a kingdom of priests. The significance of his vocation cannot be understood apart from this community. In other words, his priestly function cannot be understood except within the larger context of the priestly nature of the community. I’m reminded of Pius X, when people were kissing his papal ring, his mother said to him: “Keep in mind that you wouldn’t be wearing that ring if it were not for this ring here” (pointing to her wedding ring). The ministerial priest is “set apart” to act on behalf of the priestly congregation, which is “a people set apart”.

Peter himself gives us a clue to the resolution of this issue: “As Peter was about to enter, Cornelius met him and fell at his feet to worship him. But Peter helped him up. “Stand up,” he said, “I am only a man myself” (Acts 10, 26).

Some people look upon the clergy not as lowly common servants (feet washers), but as members of the British Royal Family, as it were, and within such a mindset, one will only hear the gospel within the framework of an old monarchical ecclesiology, which keeps a person from understanding the gospel’s radical nature.

I’ve tried to understand this issue from various angles, but the reasoning continues to make as much sense to me as a person who believes, deep within his heart, that eating potato chips is an offence to koala bears, so instead he chooses to eat corn chips.

The Evolution of the Temple

Homily for the Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome
Deacon Douglas McManaman

In the first reading, Ezekiel has a vision of the temple of Jerusalem, where water was flowing from below the threshold toward the east, from the right side. The water gives life to whatever it touches. But we know from the gospel reading that the temple of Jerusalem foreshadows the true temple, which is the temple of Jesus’ body, from whose right side water flowed as a result of the open wound caused by the centurion’s lance. And that water from his side symbolizes baptism, which brings to life all who are immersed therein.

And so we’ve gone from the temple made of stone to the living temple of Christ’s body. But the second reading from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians takes this even further. He says: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (3, 16). You and I are temples of the Holy Spirit because we have put on Christ, as Paul says in Galatians: “For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ” (3, 27).

And so we’ve gone from the temple of Jerusalem, made of stone, which will eventually be destroyed, to the temple of Christ’s body, which was destroyed but restored in his resurrection, to the faithful, each one of whom is the temple of the Holy Spirit. But, it does not stop there. Jesus not only houses himself in the baptized, he houses himself in all those who suffer, as we read in the Parable of the Last Judgment: I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, thirsty and you gave me something to drink, lonely and in prison and you visited me. When did we see you this way? As long as you did this to the least of my brethren, you did it to me (Mt 25, 31-46).

As Mother Teresa never tired of saying, Jesus disguises himself in the poor and suffering. They house Christ without their knowing it necessarily, and they are all around us. And not everyone who belongs to Christ is explicitly aware of the fact, and not everyone who explicitly belongs to the visible Church actually does so, for Christ said it himself: “Did we not prophecy in your name, cast out demons in your name? …go away from me, I never knew you; I do not know where you come from” (See Mt 7, 21-23; Lk 13, 27).

Desecration of the temple incensed Jesus because desecration was rooted in a failure to discern the sacred, and that spiritual blindness was caused by the greed of the money changers. And what angers Jesus today is the same failure to see and discern the sacred (himself) in the suffering, the struggling, ordinary human persons who have lost their social standing. We don’t have to take “poor”, “thirsty”, and “in prison” literally. These terms include the sick who are poor in health, and all those oppressed at work by an emotionally abusive boss or a toxic workplace environment, or those oppressed by a mental illness, or a lonely elderly person virtually abandoned by his or her family, or a teenager who feels alienated and estranged from parents going through a divorce, or alienated by an alcoholic father or mother, and so on. Christ is housed by the suffering of this world because he identifies with them, and that’s what love does. And if this is true, it follows that a hospital room, for example, is holy ground. I know of one priest who was so convinced of this that he would take off his shoes when visiting the sick in hospital. A classroom of young students is holy ground as well; a prison cell is holy ground, and so too a street shelter. Wherever we encounter suffering human beings, we have found Christ. A Carmelite biblical scholar recently mentioned to me that when he was in the city, he gave some money to a person living on the street, who responded by calling out to him: “God bless you”. This priest is emphatic that this man’s blessing has greater significance than if it were a blessing from the Pope himself.

Speaking of which, Pope Leo XIV, in a recent homily, said that “we must dream of and build a more humble Church; a Church that does not stand upright like the Pharisee, triumphant and inflated with pride, but bends down to wash the feet of humanity; a Church that does not judge as the Pharisee does the tax collector, but becomes a welcoming place for all; a Church that does not close in on itself, but remains attentive to God so that it can similarly listen to everyone. Let us commit ourselves to building a Church that is entirely synodal, ministerial and attracted to Christ and therefore committed to serving the world” (30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 26 October, 2025). Amen.

The Widow’s Joy

Deacon Douglas McManaman

In this gospel (Lk 7, 11-17), Jesus does what he does best and what he enjoys doing most, which is to raise the dead to life. Some people like playing golf; some people like going fishing, some like camping, but Jesus, he likes raising the dead to life. He raised a 12 year old girl (the daughter of Jairus), he raised Lazarus from the dead, and in this gospel today he raised the only son of the widow of Nain. And he raises us from the dead as well: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of the great love he had for us, even when we were dead in our sins, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with him,…” (Eph 2, 4-5).

Consider too that if a person is dead, he or she cannot do anything to earn that resurrection or help in the process; for he’s dead. So, if we are raised (justified), we who were dead in our sins, it was not as a result of anything we might have done. It was all his doing. That’s the God we worship, and that’s the good news. Everything is sheer gift. We don’t have to earn anything. We can’t earn anything. We just have to receive it, which can be difficult. It is difficult to open ourselves up to God’s generosity; we don’t feel we deserve it, and of course we don’t, but that’s besides the point. It’s not about us, but about his love for us. In the letter to the Colossians, we read: “And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims,…he removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross” (2, 13-15).

This is important because we have a tendency to slip back into the legalism that forgiveness is conditional upon what we do. But we are not saved by our works; we are saved by Christ’s generosity, his initiative, his incarnation and death on the cross. All our transgressions have been obliterated. The prison doors have been unlocked–we are free to go. No charges are hovering over and against us. If we could only believe that good news, our lives would change radically; we’d be living in the joy of Easter. Confession is not the sacrament in which we suddenly receive the forgiveness that was previously not there; rather, we are given the grace to open ourselves up to the forgiveness that has always been there. It is not God who has a hard time forgiving us; we have a very hard time believing that we’ve been forgiven, and the reason is our awareness that if we were in God’s place, we’d likely forgive very few people, until they earned it in some way. Our limited love keeps us from receiving God’s forgiveness of ourselves. Incidentally, that is why some people would like me or whoever is preaching to preach hard, for they would like the preacher to be a conduit of their anger at the world. That is the kind of Pope some Catholics today would like to see as well.

But this is a clue to the difference between the saint and the non-saint. It’s not that the one is so holy and the other is not. No, the saints have a profound awareness of their own sinfulness, like the tax collector we heard about last week (Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner), and they admit it–the saint would not think for a second that he or she is a cut above anyone. The difference is that the saint believes the good news and receives it, allows himself or herself to be touched by it.

There won’t be any sense that we deserve heaven nor any sense that we will be given our rightful due. That wouldn’t be heaven; it is much better than that. Heaven is unimaginable gratitude and joy, and a pale image of that joy might be the joy that the widow received in getting back her only son from the dead. Just consider the pain of losing your only child, and then your child is restored to you. That’s a small taste of the joy of heaven. Think of the sadness we felt after losing someone we were close to: a sibling, a parent, grandparent, a son, daughter, or close friend. We are all going to experience such a loss if we haven’t already, but the good news is that all that we lost will be restored to us. Their happiness, the happiness of those who have died but whom we will see again, will be our own happiness. And our love for God will be made perfect, and so God’s happiness will be our own as well, and if our love for God is perfected, our love for all who belong to him (everyone) will be perfected, and then their happiness will also become our own. It is just not possible to get our heads around the joy that awaits us. This life is precisely about preparing for the joy of heaven, but we prepare for this joy by expanding our capacity to be loved and our capacity to love.

The first reading from Wisdom (3, 1-9) mentions the furnace and the dross. That’s kind of what suffering does to us in our lives, similar to the furnace burning off the dross so that in the end, we are left with pure gold. Human beings seem to be at their worst in times of prosperity, but we are at our best in times of suffering, which is why God allows suffering to enter our lives, that is, in order to shape us, like a blacksmith shapes the iron, by heating and pounding it into a beautiful sword, or whatever is he is making. So when we find ourselves engulfed in darkness and despair, like the widow of Nain would have experienced at the death of her only son, we need to keep in mind that sunrise always follows the darkness and a joy we cannot conceive will soon be ours.