‘When self-induglgence is at work the fruits are obvious’, but I do feel a lot better now after my hissy fit in the previous post. Maybe it’s good to have a little unholy tantrum now and then, ha.
There was a lovely poem in the cathedral parish newsletter today, by somebody called Martyn Payne:
When the spirit comes
by Martyn Payne
Before the Spirit came, you were just words on a page,
Black on white and yellowed with age.
Simply a story of long ago,
Of a man who had so much love to show;
Who healed the sick and cured the lame;
Took our guilt and bore our shame.
It sounded so good, but it just couldn’t last.
It was not for today but locked in the past.
Until the Spirit came.
Now the Spirit has come, you are here at my side,
Larger than life and ready to guide;
Making real to me all that you said
And doing through me the things that I read.
I am the glove that your hand has filled;
I am the cup into which you have spilled
All the love and the power you promised would come,
Right now in the present and for everyone.
Since the Spirit came.
Pop Quiz
When is it ok to live with a partner without being married?
a) it is never ok
b) it is ok if your partner is catholic and you might get married at some unspecified date in the future. (If one priest disagrees, don’t worry – you’ll find another one who doesn’t. Probaby in the same presbytery.)
c) it is ok if you are already a catholic and you are going to get married soon (i.e. living together without marriage is wrong, but living together before marriage is fine.)
When do you have to believe in dogmas of the church?
a) always
b) it depends. You don’t have to believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary, or the assumption.
c) what’s a dogma?
When should you acknowledge the authority of the pope, peter’s successor?
a) always
b) infalliblity applies when the pope pronounces ex-cathedra with the support of the magisterium
c) it doesn’t count if he’s talking about condoms
Happy Birthday Church.
Filed under: songs for the journey, the scenic route | Tags: music, pentecost
One more for May. I don’t know why it’s dubbed. The singing is still in English. And nuns still creep me out a teensy bit, even if they’re only actors. (Except Blessed Mother Teresa, obviously. And Julie Andrews.)
Filed under: the scenic route
Godzdogz has an interesting post on the gifts of the spirit and interpretation.
That really is the crux of the matter. I don’t need a sign from God – I think I’ve had plenty – what I need is an interpreter!
And that is the crux of the crux… recognising authority, the question of who has the right to tell me about God.
(and then of course remembering what they say. V. embarrassed I don’t remember the snake handlers of the ascension…)
The gospel reading for the Ascension is one that I think I’ve now heard about 3 or 4 times in Mass, Mark 16: 15-20, in some sense a spotters guide to Christians. Preaching, baptism and this:
“These are the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick, who will recover.”
It tends to get glossed over (i.e. it doesn’t exist) in the homily. On Sunday the bidding prayers made reference to it as metaphor (along the lines of, guard us against the serpent of doubt, let us be unharmed by the poison of sin, or something like that).
But if you turn those weird bits into metaphor, how can you then ascribe literal truth to other things mentioned in the same sentence? Acts gives accounts of apostles casting out devils and healing. Pentecost is coming up, that great miracle of diverse languages; at healing masses I have heard a catholic priest speaking in tongues (or at least, he thinks he was, and since he’s been a priest for over 50 years I am not eager to disagree).
I’m not entirely sure what I’m asking here. Maybe I just want someone else to say, yes, this passage in the gospel *is* bloody weird.
As well as Ascension, this Sunday was apparently also world communications day, which sort of passed me by. This is my belated communications day post.
In the 4-month gap between the old blog and this one, I started twittering. It’s blogging in miniature, or maybe facebook status updates gone mad. Anyway. You are restricted to using 140 characters. I’ve kept it on and have been updating it as well as this blog, so have now put in a twitter feed on the sidebar.
Some catholic bishop or cardinal or somebody important recently suggested using twitter as a medium for prayer. Which I think is what many people are already doing, and it’s a good idea. I also think it’s a good place to rant, mostly because you are restricted to 140 characters so can’t really go off on one.
So: twitter – prayer, rant and status updates. It’s a bit random.
p.s. more blog housekeeping, I have added a disclaimer in my ‘about’ page.
St Bede the Venerable
Tomorrow is the feast day of one of my favourite saints, Bede. He led a highly constrained life, but in his imagination he went everywhere and covered a vast array of subjects: history, poetry, biblical commentary, the calendar, the nature of the universe. We know so little about him personally despite his vast output: everything was for God.
The Venerable Bede at New Advent Encyclopedia
… isn’t always literal in the Bible is it? Or maybe it is. Lots of people (or the ones with the loudest mouths in cyberspace) are upset that Ascension Thursday is actually Ascension Sunday in the UK and US.
Ascension is 40 days from Easter; but surely Easter is often celebrated at the wrong time each year anyway (yes I know the church had this debate centuries ago), because it must be obvious to a 5 year old that Jesus’s crucifixion death and resurrection cannot coincide with a Friday and a Sunday every year.
I can see that removing the holy day to Sunday destroys the novena between Ascension and Pentecost.
I think this is about tradition rather than accuracy – and the erosion of devotion – which would be a fair enough complaint; except I suspect that some people think it’s about accuracy, hence various comments ‘Jesus didn’t ascend to heaven after 43 days’.
So the earlier question, is 40 days literal? Or 40 years for that matter? 40 days of flood, 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, 40 days in the desert. Does it not just mean ‘a period of time’?
Filed under: the scenic route
“For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height or depth, nor any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:38,39
Paul was talking about persecution here, but these verses have often come to my mind during the many little deaths of faith that happen on a regular basis.
And then of course there are the big killers. Internationally, the huge scandal of institutionalised abuse in Ireland, but also on a local level the imprisonment of a priest who abused several young men in his care in the 1980s. This comes a year – almost to the day – after a retired priest of the diocese was jailed last year for the same thing.
It’s not ‘only’ the abuse itself and it’s not ‘only’ the betrayal of trust; these are people who stood in for Christ. It’s the ultimate blasphemy.
The PP at the cathedral said, in a homily some time ago, “I cannot answer the question ‘what kind of God allows evil and suffering to happen?’, but I do know that our God is the kind of God who became one of us and suffered with us.” And I think this is the only answer.
There is no suffering that is beyond God’s capacity to heal; there is no sin (except, perhaps, an unrepented sin from someone who is fully capable of making that choice) that is beyond God’s capacity to forgive. Whether this healing or forgiveness comes in this life or the next, I don’t know.
