November 30th

The Institution of the Eucharist

I think these entries are going to be harder. The idea to use the decades was inspired by the new insight I had into The Transfiguration last night, but these are far more well-trodden stories for me, and right away I don't even know where to start writing.

This Sunday I ended up driving to church in Waynesboro alone. My friends Amanda and Dan usually drive the twenty minutes with me, and it's been wonderful to have that (small) spiritual community to sit with for forty minutes every week. I'm Dan's sponsor in RCIA and week before last he officially joined the Catholic Church (he was baptized in, we think, Lutheranism). But Amanda couldn't make it this Sunday and Dan stayed home with her, so I went alone. And I certainly missed them.

I was in the car and a block away before I thought to ask to bring communion for Amanda (Dan not having received that sacrament yet). I have only met Father Rolo (Castillo) through Dan, so I was nervous and I could tell he was a little surprised by the abrupt request from someone he doesn't recognize. However, after swearing that I have been trained as a Eucharist Minister elsewhere (two different parishes, actually), I was allowed to take a consecrated host to Amanda. Additional blessing - I was invited to become a Eucharistic Minister at St. John's, which I will have to arrange to train for after the holiday.

But I remember how it felt to hold that tiny container, and how I worried about where in my dirty car I could possibly respectfully set the host and eventually just settled on placing it in my pocket. I could feel it there the entire ride, and it was a wonderful experience.

Then when I reached Dan and Amanda's house, armed with a book I was instructed to lead a full Communion Service out of by Father Rolo, I found that they had already covered the readings for today, in addition to having coffee ready for me. So I nervously tried to hit the other prayers, before presenting a host for the first time in about two years.

There wasn't some big feeling I had, but I felt the significance, the sanctity of that. All of my favorite Mass memories are intimate ones (not entirely sure that's true, but the ones I'm thinking of now). The three of us friends, our own little spiritual community so closely knitted through our drives, sitting around a coffee table praying (poorly) and Jesus physically present there.

Then we had coffee and watched the rest of a television show that had been on when I arrived and went for brunch - as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Because it was.

But it wasn't. It was something sacred that we were allowed to touch - that we were allowed to share and make at least to some degree about us. The real presence of God, here on Earth. I swear, this is where I get all of that Kingdom of God is now stuff. From this experience.

When I was praying the decade I kept thinking about the gift He gave us with this sacrifice, the way He set up the ritual, and what it means that it could only happen once Judas left - and how the dipping of hands in the bowl was a different kind of intimacy entirely. Perhaps that's a good metaphor for other faiths, they can still touch God but the loss of the true sacraments...

Maybe the sacraments such as the one this Sunday should feel sacred in spite of the altered ritual, but to me, the Mass said on our countertop at home and the bringing of communion to those outside of Mass have something special to them. Bringing that ceremony, that reality of God's presence that we can start to take for granted, as Catholics who can go every day for the most sacred of human experiences, into our lives and forever blessing an ordinary spot in our house.

An atheist friend of mine once said to me, "The atheists will never win, because we don't have a Sunday meeting." His point being that we, as human beings, need ritual and ceremony and the community that that brings. Perhaps we do, but we don't need those things for the sacrament to be meaningful. In fact, those things can sometimes get in the way.

What I think I loved so much was seeing living proof (to no one but myself) that the ritual is not empty. I saw the center of the ceremony without the ritual surrounding it this Sunday, and it felt as powerful as ever, resting in my hands and no less precious for the lack of pomp.

And I hope, on final analysis, that we were respectful enough. I know we were in our hearts, if I fumbled through the prayers, said the response rather than the prompt and was too embarrassed to go back and do it over, but that precious sacrament is anything but empty.

For I have seen it stripped of ceremony, as it must have been then for the Apostles - a dinner. A deviation from the Passover meal, in fact. A holy night, but this a new thing for them. It's not the ceremony that makes it real.

Thank you, Lord Jesus, for that unmeasurable gift.

[November 28th]

The Coming of the Kingdom

Honestly, I don't entirely know what this means. A quick google search yields many suggested verses along the lines of "The Kingdom of God is here!" or 'for the children' or something like that. Usually when I meditate on it, I am thinking about the implications of the Kingdom of God already being here.

Not as a thing "To Come" in some nebulous End Times but a thing that we are actively building in the now. Jesus came down and broke all the rules - finally smashing even that great rule death and, in His Ascension, trouncing the universal law of gravity. He rewrote the world, and we are in His new Kingdom.

I could be totally off base with this, but I am coming from the "Kingdom of God is at hand" with my theory on this. And, of course, on that google source, the very next verse is, "My kingdom is not of this world" so there's a nice rebuttal.

And my father always said, "The purpose of life on Earth is to prepare ourselves for eternal life in heaven." The purpose of life here is to be worthy of life in the Kingdom of God. Perhaps that makes more sense and is more respectful.

But I am still really intrigued by the challenge of this, now, being the Kingdom of God. Because I think one of the traps religion can fall into is getting focused on the past or the future at the expense of the present. All caught up in tradition and old-fashioned norms to a fault or so eager for the End Times that they don't care if the world is burning - they're just waiting for the Rapture. You've got to admire the Nordic people that way - they believe that they're going to lose the Final Battle. Heaven lasts until then, and then the entire world, underworld and paradise all burn. So what they have is now and how they are remembered until then. Now there's a religion focused on the now.

Would we be better or worse people if we believed that? If all we had was this world and what we make of it? That's a question that gets asked a lot in regard to atheism and the current debate, but I want to pose it in a religious context (I suppose because I'm perverse about this debate). What if this is the world Jesus was talking about where the poor are blessed? What if the only reward they have for their suffering is here on Earth, in how they are given closer relationships to God by depending on Him more than those who are well-off? What if there is no reward for 'being good' except the satisfaction you get here of 'being good' and the improvement it does for your own soul? What if the next world is nothing at all like this one or what Jesus was describing? It's something else and we won't care at the time because we'll be with God - and we blew our chance to live in the Kingdom of God because we thought that was something that happened later?

And if this is the Kingdom of God, and He loves everyone, then what excuse do any of us have?

If I can have one more digression - I was having a bit of trouble a while back with the idea of these saints and mystics who lock themselves away. I was wondering in my head if that isn't turning away from God's gift of a human life before heaven - turning away from the body and the experiences of life not seeming like a true path to God as much as a rejection of His gift. Which is when I was seriously on my The Kingdom Is Now kick. But then I realized that they are reaching a religious state, like Communion, which is probably not available in the same way in Heaven. This is our only chance to be contemplative as a human, a weak human whose constant attention means more and is informed in different ways. This is our only chance to all of it.

What do we choose to do? To make ourselves ready for eternal life in heaven, how will we spend our time in the Kingdom of God?

November 29th

The Transfiguration

I will very carefully preface this (since my mother is exactly one half of my readership) that I love my name. It rhymes, which is awesome and the most discussed feature, there are all kinds of wonderful role models for me to look up to (saints and monarchs and just awesome women - I've even been reconciled to my intended name saint Catherine of Siena this past summer when she featured in a class I took and I learned she was awesome) and it's common these days but I make it my own. It fits me and I love it.

But I've never liked that the name "Katherine" means "pure." Because that's not a lot of pressure or anything.

It always angered me - you mess up one time and then BOOM! you're not pure anymore. Oh well. And you can try to change "purity of spirit" to mean more of an innocence, but purity and innocence are both things that can be lost - that's why they're so precious and remarkable. I know two young women I could describe this way who DO know about the darker side of life, but there's still an "unspoiled" feel to them.

And I don't like that as an aspiration, because it's not something you're working toward achieving so much as it is something you are actively (or passively I suppose) not trying to lose. And that's like that stupid phenomenon (which is inexplicably still going on apparently) of The Game - in which the only rule is, if you think of The Game you lose and have to announce, "I just lost The Game." In short, you can't win The Game any more than you can win with purity. You can only lose.

And why play that game? (I myself quit playing The Game long ago).

What does this have to do with The Transfiguration, you ask? Well, I was trying to pray and meditate on the decade and I was thinking about how surely I've kind of covered everything about this particular story in the Life of Jesus (heh). I remembered a homily that stuck with me (I'm not sure why) about this story which is completely unlike the usual Coming Down the Mountain or Taking Time to Spend on the Mountain that I usually focus on to one degree or another with this story. Father Manger described a conversation in heaven about how Elijah wouldn't want to come down alone, so they go get Moses so that they can both go down to meet Jesus on the mountaintop (it might have been the other way around). And I thought, "What was with that story? (I don't remember it's point) Isn't it more likely that they are symbols of the entire Jewish line of prophets leading here?"

And then I realized, they're not just any prophets and they're not even (just) the two biggest (and biggest name) Jewish heroes. They are the two (I know there are others but they're not as prominent) who have been taken up. They're the ones who haven't died. Elijah and the Fiery Chariot, Moses on the Mountain on the border to Canaan. They're the ones the Promise of No Death applied to retroactively (and literally since as it turns out we still die all the time - subject for another time what a moment it must have been for all the other apostles when James died in Jerusalem if they hadn't figured out the No Death thing was to some degree metaphorical).

So the three beings on that mountain were not only all "of the Earth but not of the Earth" but untouched by death. They were pure of that stain. Us, we'll have our bodies restored to us in a process that I can't really imagine or understand, but we'll have died. And Jesus now, in a paraphrase of the description in Life of Pi, is God with the smell of death on Him. Death has touched even God, though it was defeated, it still touched him.

The three beings, the two greatest prophets and the Messiah who was fulfilling their promises, were all pure, free of death, untouched by it. And the loss of purity was more beautiful, but only BECAUSE the purity was a big deal, because it was a beautiful thing in itself. And for us to understand that, we had to see that purity in its full form. If you tell this story before the Crucifixion, as Jesus made the three mere men promise they wouldn't, then it's about glory and the dual nature of Christ. But it's about seeing the fullness of Jesus's purity, without the stains of sin and death, before he sacrifices both. To see the beauty of that purity about to be actively traded for our salvation.

I think that's why those three men saw it. So that they, and through them we, would know and understand the fullness of what God sacrificed when He died for us - when He let Death touch Him and remain forever a part of Who He was. That purity was actively sacrificed, given as a gift. And it wouldn't have been important if the purity weren't beautiful.

The moment of having the purity and the moment of losing it were both important. Purity and its loss can both be beautiful. It's only a loss if the purity was precious, and it's only a gift if it's a loss.

Perhaps there's a reason I've always connected with this story beyond its usefulness in Going Forth Talks and my perpetual bemusement with Peter's response. It's about the destruction of purity that is about a loss and an improvement.

Advent Renewal

Having decided on the second day of Advent what my devotional this year will be, I'll have to try to make up Sunday's post tomorrow.

As I did a Bible verse last Lent, I think this Advent I will do a rosary decade (you know, to keep things interesting). Also, I found I had something to say about today's decade.

I'll be starting in the middle because that's where I am (I say a decade every night before bed - I kind of love my spanning rosaries).