RELIGION, NATION, MARRIAGE: THE LOYALTIES OF MEN
PRAY, WORK, STUDY, PROTECT: THE DUTIES OF MEN


Thursday, March 28, 2024

HOLY THURSDAY: He who cleansed the temple, now cleansed the priesthood so He might dwell among us

[first published April 17, 2014]




An explanation of feet-washing at the birth of the Christian priesthood by Dr. Pence:

On the night before He died, Christ formed the foundation of the Church by a new command of ordered love. This commandment was not the general order that each of us is to love our neighbor as ourselves.  He issued a more particular command to His chosen apostles: to love one another “as I have loved you.”  Christ 'transmitted to the apostles the Kingdom received from His Father' (Pope John Paul II on the Birth of the Church, August 1989).

This newly ordered love of an elected group of men with the power to forgive sins, cast out demons, and heal the sick shapes the sacred fraternity of the priesthood and the Church. This sealed-character relationship with Christ that is fully realized in bishops, and shared by priests and deacons, is the sacred bond from which Christ’s earthly presence in the Eucharist is made real. The Kingdom of God is now present as the new Adam and His sons are incorporated as priests into the communal love of the Trinity.

Just as the Levitical priesthood was born in a bloody battle, so the new priesthood was ordained in a struggle. It was essential that the priestly bond be shaped by the deep love of Father and Son, the filial fraternity of Sons and brothers -- not polluted by incestuous counterfeit or betrayed by avarice for gold or fractured by arrogant pride.  This priestly bond was prepared to receive the 'generation of the Church by Christ's redemptive death' [JP II], as well as the two comings of the Holy Spirit: sealing their power to forgive sins on Easter night, and sweeping them into the public manifestation of their mission on Pentecost Sunday.

Before the priestly prayer was said and the newly ordered love covenant was established, Judas was expelled from the room – discreetly but definitively.  And before that, the necessity to wash the priestly bond clean of the Evil One was demonstrated by Christ in the washing of the feet.   Peter (like so many of his clerical successors today) saw the Lord on his knees as an act of humility and service. He was having none of it. But Jesus corrected him: “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand."

The washing itself was not an act of self-negation, but an authoritative act by Christ establishing a new priesthood which would sanctify and rule his Church.  Christ’s action was foreshadowed by the priestly consecration when “Moses brought Aaron and his sons and washed them with water” (Leviticus 8:6 and Exodus 30:17-21). After Christ entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, one of his first acts was the cleansing of the Temple. On Holy Thursday, He would wash the new priests of the new Temple. This same order of consecration is described in Numbers when Moses first consecrates the altar, and then "takes the Levites from the Israelites and purifies them" with "the water of remission."

Christ’s washing was a casting out of the Evil One who was polluting the collegial body of the new priesthood (“for He knew who should betray Him.”)  Priestly acts of exorcism, healing and forgiveness of sins are spiritual acts of authority -- as was the Lord’s washing of his apostles. Thomas Aquinas saw the command to “do as I have done” in the washing of the feet as a command to laymen to forgive one another's trespasses.  For prelates, Aquinas saw this as an order to sacramentally forgive sins.  Every act of forgiving sins is an expulsion of one Spirit of authority for the sweeter yoke of another.  It takes authority to set the captives free.  Every baptism is an exorcism. The water that lifted the Ark left many others drowned; and the Red Sea which split for the Jews closed on Pharaoh’s army. If Christ had to rid himself of one of his own – numbered among the Twelve – why should his followers be spared the same troubling duty?  “If I your Master washed your feet, you should wash one another’s feet.”  This was a priestly purification command, which preceded the Love command. It was a bestowal of authority and the assignment of a duty. The Eastern Liturgy prayer of that night puts it this way: “When Thy glorious disciples were enlightened at the washing of their feet before the supper, then the impious Judas was darkened …”

Christians who have no apostolic priesthood can be excused for misinterpreting the foot-washing command as a general ordinance (see Foot-washing Baptists).  English monarchs can be admired as they pass out money to the poor, inspired by the King of kings on His knees (see Maundy money). Many early Christian communities integrated foot-washing as a favored part of Eucharistic liturgy – a sort of kiss of peace with an added touch of humility – (see Saint Ambrose, d. 397). All these practices are understandable.  For Christ was indeed a servant leader. He preached it often; thus, to match His persistent general teaching with that particular iconic moment seems irresistible.

But Jesus personally handed his apostles the Body and Blood, and no one dwells on His being a waiter! Likewise, when he separated his apostles from the power of the Evil One, we shouldn’t over-interpret His bended knee.

The love which will save us from the Evil One is the powerful sacramentally-ordered love of Christ and his purified apostles. Christian love is an ordered love, and the washing of the apostles’ feet manifests the authoritative love of a High Priest instituting a new ordinance.   We must insist that priestly ordination, the power to cast out sin, and the necessity of apostolic fraternal correction which constituted the substance of Christ’s act not be lost in the Zeitgeist.  We are not recounting this story to soothe priestless Protestants or feckless feminists.

The spotless purity of the Marian Church can only be safeguarded by a protective authority ready to cleanse and do battle.  Wherever Christ appears too publicly, He will be attacked.  Saint Joseph had little time to coo with the baby Jesus before He was leading His sacred charges into the dangers of a nighttime flight.  So, before Christ entrusted His presence with the new priesthood, he burnished some of them and expelled others.  The shirking of duty by Peter, the uncertain voice of Thomas, the cowardice of all the others must be confessed, repented, and reformed. The perfidy of Judas had to be washed away and expelled.




"The Lord will wash away the filth of the daughters of Zion; he will cleanse the bloodstains from Jerusalem by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of fire." (Isaiah 4:4). It was Irenaeus who recalled these words when he beheld the new Moses washing the feet of Aaron and his sons. When Irenaeus reflected on the washing of feet at the Last Supper, he did not see a Christ adding service hours to His resume.  He saw “the Word Himself ‘…washing away the filth of the daughters of Zion,’ when He washed the disciples' feet with His own hands. For He who washed the feet of the disciples sanctified the entire body, and rendered it clean.”
(Irenaeus, Book IV Chapter 22, Against Heresies)

The reintegration of the washing of the feet in the Holy Thursday liturgy is a very recent event (1955). It is not surprising that we are still learning the deep significance of this ancient ritual. It may be that it would be better placed in the morning Chrism Mass centered on the bishop and his priests.  For many, the male-only character of the foot-washing seems an affront – but so is a Church built on a male priesthood, the Real Presence of Christ, and a sacramental form of confession.  The flattened de-sacralized spirit of modernity and the congregationalist mentality of Protestants can make no peace with the authoritative masculine fraternity that Christ instituted on Holy Thursday to maintain His Living Presence among us.  Rather than inviting the ladies and grade-school girls to join in the foot-washing festivities, let us more deeply reflect on what we have received and render a more profound account of this pivotal event in the life of Christ and the Church.



UPDATE: In 2016, Pope Francis allowed the washing of women's feet in this ritual. Because he understands this as a sign of service, he sees no reason to exclude women and in his own practice has included non-Christians as well. This is entirely consistent with the symbol of service interpretation. Our comments when he made the announcement are here.  

Monday, March 25, 2024

Mapping Holy Week


By A. Joseph Lynch

The above map (click to enlarge) depicts the city of Jerusalem as it was at the time of Jesus. Although most of us are familiar with the events of Holy Week (from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday), most have not been introduced to the spatial and geographic dimensions of Holy Week. This is in some ways true even for those who have made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For example, the walls of the "Old City" today are not the walls that stood 2,000 years ago. The walls from the time of Jesus were destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70 and those that stand today were built by the Kurdish Sunni Muslim, Saladin, during the time of the Crusades. Because of this, the location of the Upper Room (site of the Last Supper and Pentecost) is now located outside the Old City walls despite the fact that it was within the walls at the time of Jesus. (To put the Jerusalem  story in the national context, see our Mapping Israel: from Joshua to Jesus.)

On Palm Sunday, Jesus made his way to Jerusalem along the road from Bethany and Jericho, over the Mount of Olives (see the east, or right, side of the map). According to Matthew 21, Jesus rode both an ass and a colt as he made his way over the terrain and into the city via the Golden Gate (see Matthew 21:1-11). Taylor Marshall suspects that Christ rode the ass, more capable of crossing rugged terrain, over the Mount of Olives and the colt as he rode into the city. He sees in the former an image of Israel under the yoke of the Law of Moses and young colt as a sign of the Gentiles to which Christ will send the Church. It is highly likely that Jesus would have passed by the Garden of Gethsemane on his way down the mountain. Luke records that as Jerusalem came into full view, he foresaw its eventual destruction by the Romans and wept over its failure to accept the coming of the Messiah (see Luke 19:41-44). Below is an image the author took of Jerusalem from the church now standing to mark the place of Jesus' weeping.

From the site of which Christ wept over Jerusalem. The gold-topped Dome of the Rock today sits on the place the Temple once stood. Immediately below this picture is the Kidron Valley dividing Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. Nearby towards the base of the valley is Gethsemane.
As Jesus crossed the base of the Kidron Valley and approached the Golden Gate at the foot of the Temple Mount, he was met by many proclaiming "Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" (Matthew 21:9). From here Jesus entered into the Temple where the Synoptic Gospels tell us he overturned the money tables and cleansed the Temple of the those making it a "den of robbers." Some allegorically note that as we prepare to receive the Eucharistic Christ into our bodies - the temples of the Holy Spirit - we proclaim the same words as those at the city gates and await the arrival of the King to cleanse our souls of venial sin through the reception of Holy Communion.

From Palm Sunday we advance to Holy Thursday. The Last Supper took place in the Upper Room, which is named for the guest room that stood above the site of King David's tomb. The site today is revered by both Jews and Christians as the former, segregated by gender, flock to visit the tomb of David while the latter climb the stairs up to the place where the Last Supper and Pentecost took place. The significance of this place to both religions is also why Christians have not turned the site into a church. Nevertheless, this area became the Church's first chancery of sorts as it is where the Apostles originally governed and, just across the street, the place where Mary is said to have entered her Dormition and Assumption. That site is marked today by the Church of the Dormition, visible in the Jerusalem cityscape image above and blown up in the image to the right. Note in the picture that the medieval walls of Jerusalem place the area outside the Old City, but in the time of Christ the walls would have extended much further south.

As Jesus, Peter, James, and John departed from the Upper Room for Gethsemane, they may very well have passed the house of Caiaphas. This house included areas to hold prisoners and it would be here that Jesus would have been taken after his betrayal by Judas. Remains of stairs (see left) from the first century have been found and preserved descending on the north side of Caiaphas' house on a path towards the Kidron Valley and Gethsemane below. A few feet from these stairs is the courtyard where Peter denied Jesus three times. Pilgrims today can visit both sites, and go inside the house of Caiaphas and enter into what scholars believe was the pit-like prison into which Jesus was interred the night of Holy Thursday after his pseudo-trail before the Sanhedrin.

While there is little debate over where Good Friday ended, there is some debate today over exactly where some of the earlier events of Good Friday took place. Crusaders believed that Jesus was taken to the Antonia Fortress located at the northwestern corner of the Temple. The fortress, however, was built to stand over the Temple to keep guard against an potential religiously-induced anti-Herodian or anti-Roman riots among the Jews on Temple grounds. By locating this place as where Jesus went  before Pilate, the crusaders left their mark on the location for pilgrims following the Stations of the Cross within the city. It seems that early Christians - and modern scholars - look to a different location for the trial. On the west side Jerusalem (see map at top) is found both the Praetorium (where Pilate lived) and Herod's Palace. As the Gospels note multiple trials taking place during the day between Herod and Pilate, it seems to make more sense that Jesus was not taken back and forth from one side of town to the other but rather shuttled back and forth from two parts of the same general location. If this is the historical case, it would mean that the path set down by the Crusaders for the Stations of the Cross were inaccurate while the western path used by early Christians was the correct one.

The site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher today marks the place where the Crucifixion and burial of Christ took place. At the time of Christ it would have been located just outside the city walls on the northwest part of Jerusalem. Calvary - or Golgotha, the place of the Skull (of Goliath)  - was the location for public executions. In some traditions this site was the burial place of Adam as well.  The execution sites were near the city gates so travelers and inhabitants would see the punishment for capital crimes. As the site of frequent deaths, it is unsurprising that burial grounds where located nearby. In fact, so close were they to Calvary that the tomb of Jesus is preserved within the same Church that houses Calvary. Within the walls of that Church, the pivotal moments of salvation history took place in which the eternal Son of God won man redemption through His suffering, death, and resurrection. Forty days later - Ascension Thursday - Christ would end his time on earth where this article's story began: the Mount of Olives overlooking the city of Jerusalem. Here Jesus commissioned the Apostles to baptize the nations. From there they went back to the Upper Room with Mary, praying for the next ten days until the Holy Spirit descended upon them on Pentecost Sunday bringing about the corporate body of Christ, the Church.

Sunday, March 24, 2024

HOLY WEEK

[first published April 16, 2014]
                                



"Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss, the sign of friendship and love. The betrayal and crucifixion of Christ carried the ancestral sin to its extreme limits. In these two acts the rebellion against God reached its maximum capacity. The seduction of man in paradise culminated in the death of God in the flesh. To be victorious, evil must quench the light and discredit the good. In the end, however, it shows itself to be a lie, an absurdity and sheer madness. The death and resurrection of Christ rendered evil powerless."                                                                                                       (from an Eastern Orthodox website)


Holy Week is when everything slows down, and truth presses its claims: will I keep settling for a superficial embrace of our Lord, or am I ready to submit to the schooling of the Holy Spirit -- the only One who can teach us how to become "partakers of the divine nature"?

Easter can be either a false kiss or true Communion.

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

The Solemnity of Saint Joseph: Husband, Protector, and Patriarch of Israel

[originally published March 19, 2015]
                     

On March 19, 2013, the pontificate of Francis (the first non-European to sit in the Chair of Peter in 13 centuries) was inaugurated.  In his homily he accepted as his mission that of St. Joseph--to be custos: the protector. 

It is inspiring to read of his trust in Joseph, who taught our Lord what manliness and fatherhood looked like:
"... I would like to tell you something very personal. I like St Joseph very much. He is a strong man of silence. On my desk I have a statue of St Joseph sleeping. While sleeping he looks after the Church. Yes, he can do it! We know that. When I have a problem or a difficulty, I write on a piece of paper and I put it under his statue so he can dream about it. This means: please pray to St Joseph for this problem."
Pope Francis went on to say: “In the Gospels, St. Joseph appears as a strong and courageous man, a working man, yet in his heart we see great tenderness... [Exercising the role of protector as St. Joseph did] means doing so discreetly, humbly and silently, but with an unfailing presence and utter fidelity, even when he finds it hard to understand... [The bishop of Rome] must be inspired by the lowly, concrete and faithful service which marked St. Joseph and, like him, he must open his arms to protect all of God’s people."

Joseph was the last patriarch of the Old Testament. He was the head of the household of the Lord. He is strong, virile, chaste and silent. He was the living link to King David and Bethlehem. He taught his son to love his country and he incorporated him in the Covenant rituals  of his countrymen.  He repeated the journey of the Israelites in and out of Egypt. He handed his son over on the eight day for the circumcision and naming. He took him to the temple on the 40th day and ransomed him from the death of the first born.  He saved the Virgin Mother and the Baby Savior from the murderer. He taught Our Lord the manual skills of the carpenter craftsman. He brought him to Jerusalem for the public feasts(and we are not sure he was as upset as Mary that Jesus stayed back to do some temple teaching at our Lord's own unique bar mitzvah).  Joseph is the patron of afternoon naps and a good night's sleep because that is when the angels gave him his orders. He is the patron of a good death because he was in the presence of Mary and Jesus when he died. God did not tempt him by keeping him alive for the Crucifixion of his son. We don't know what he might have done. He was not perfect. He would not have run away.       


UPDATE: Two other holy men who had a deep devotion to Joseph the Worker: Pope John XXIII (see his prayer); and Josemaría Escrivá (d. 1975), the Spaniard who founded Opus Dei. In 1955, Pope Pius XII responded to the Communist celebration of Mayday as International Workers Day by Christianizing labor with a May 1 Feast Day celebrating the carpenter craftsman - St Joseph the Worker. The Communist-Socialist holiday was in remembrance of the Chicago Haymarket Massacre in May, 1886.  

Father Escrivá wrote: "I don't agree with the traditional picture of St Joseph as an old man... I see him as a strong young man, perhaps a few years older than our Lady, but in the prime of his life and work."

                           
                                  

Thursday, February 22, 2024

February 22: The Feast of the Chair of Peter. Pope Francis and the leadership lessons of Lincoln


Chair of St Peter. A wooden chair given to a Pope by an Emperor in 875 AD. Gilded in bronze in 1647. 

On the birthday of America's founding patriarch (see Feb 22 below), the Church dedicates a Feast Day to celebrate a Chair given as a gift from an Emperor to a Pope.  We are meant to contemplate this symbol of authority and the Petrine office. Community demands Authority. Pope John Paul II asked all Christians to  suggest how this office should be lived to bring Christian Unity. Pope Francis has called together all the heads of Bishop Conferences and heads of religious orders to a summit in Rome "to listen to the cries of the little ones." A major theme of the Pope for episcopal and priestly reform is the necessity of synodal governance of the Church.(His address on 50th anniversary of Bishop Synods)  He called the February 2019 gathering to show the Church in a synodal form addressing abuse of minors. He is at all times keeping in mind the bishops of the Orthodox tradition and the need for unity with them so the Church can "breathe with two lungs". He has strongly resisted the American desire to insert lay people into Church governance. He has called the Apostles together to confront the pain of the victims and assert their every bishop and bishop's conference must go back to their home territories and show mercy by ruling justly. His gathering of the leaders is to insure that the sins of some do not diminish the authority of the Apostolic whole. His war against clericalism is not a war against the sacral Apostolic character of priestly identity. Unlike his predecessors, Pope Francis has shown any individual can be stripped of his rank to purify the priestly bond. The dramatic reduction of Theodore McCarrick the big spending, high flying American to the lay state is a vivid reminder that the old days of gentle whispers are over. The communal whole is greater than the wealthy maverick.

In this conference he is pointedly not addressing  homosexuality in the priesthood as a root cause of the crisis. This does not mean other bishops and free flowing press conferences cannot forcefully make the connections. Rather the Pope is mustering the authorities in the ecclesial form of the corporate brotherhood in prayer and parrhesia(fearless speech).  This is the antidote to the lobbyists, the magnified little men behind the curtains of media, the secret intriguers who fill the chanceries and Curia, the "homosexual parish" that shapes Catholic clericalism. He draws bishops together as he expects them to assemble their priests---in public, face-to-face, man-to-man encounters of fraternity under the Father. He has always emphasized that in synodal gatherings the bishops meet with (cum) the Pope and under (sub) the Pope. The problem with the Church is not an all male clergy. It is an emasculated clergy that has lost its sacral identity as a fraternity of fathers.

 Pope Francis knows the clerical rot is deep and he will need many new men and groups of men rising within the  diocesan and national gatherings of the ordained. He sees the synod in the Church the way he sees fraternity among the world religions and the nations. Fatherhood and brotherhood are the antidotes to spiritual incest. These are built in the many communal forms of the priesthood and episcopacy.  The Holy Father always starts with the whole before the part. He has written about this for decades (see The Mind of Pope Francis) 

President Abraham Lincoln faced the division of the American nation as he assumed the Presidency in 1860. Slavery was the fundamental sin which could not be reconciled with the Declaration of Independence though it was allowed in the Constitution. Many abolitionists demanded he build his campaign and Presidency on condemning the evil of slavery. But Lincoln understood he must hold together the Union or he would never have the authority to end slavery. He built his Presidency and  his Second Inaugural on expanding the civic brotherhood upon which the nation was founded.   The Pope is acting like Lincoln and many of us critics (self included) are playing the abolitionist. We should pause to see the whole and respect the Chair. ( There may be a lesson from the world of motorcycling explained in Matthew Crawford's book on The World Outside Your Head. He says when you are walking, you keep your eyes on a hazard ahead to avoid it. But if you are on a high speed motorcycle you must deliberately keep your focus on the clear road ahead not the hazard. )From the beginning of his papacy the Pope has said he will not focus on "contraception, gay marriage and abortion". He is not an individual writing a blog entry.  He is on a very fast and dangerous motorcycle, directing a global Church. His vision and words must inspire millions of poor fathers trying to find work in the megacities before placating hundreds of western elites debating their abominable perversions.


Another Man who understood the Authority of His Chair

All those who have taken this crisis as an opportunity to strike at the liturgy of the Novus Ordo, the validity of the Second Vatican Council, and the papacy of Pope Francis should consider the whole. They are in very dangerous waters playing the Accuser in trying to discredit the true agents of the Holy Spirit. They do the Accuser's work more efficiently than enemies who display no veneer of "faithful Catholics' to fool the faithful. They recoil with righteous indignation when they and their fraudulent clerical heroes (Vigano and Burke) are exposed for helping the Serpent who wants a headless Church. Those two same Chief Pharisees were quick to accuse the women in adultery after the Papal Amoris document but were not so authoritarian as they let two notorious homosexual bishops (Nienstedt and Apuron) slip through their perfumed hands of mercy. So stringent with the lady in the back pew with her kids; so gentle and accompanying with the predator clerics. Those polluted priests have done much more to desacralize the Eucharist from the priest side of the altar than any lady reaching through the crowd to touch Christ's garment. As Pope Francis says, there is something of the Black Mass with the predator priests. "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord." It is not the Novus Ordo that desacralizes the Mass. That is another smokescreen from diabolos. It is the Nienstedts and Apurons and McCarricks and Spellmans. It is not the sins of the laity which threaten our liturgical life--it is the priestly pollution.
 
The "traddies" and "resistance" should be mindful. Their momentary  media bubble is a glass house built on sand. As the traffic generated by their hysteria recedes, they will have time to remember the first rule of regicide. Be sure you kill the  king, if you are going to shoot at him.
For those of us who want to help the Father clean the filth we must reassert the whole with Pope Francis.  Vatican II is "rereading of the Gospels in a concrete historical situation." The event of Vatican II and especially the liturgical reform is the biblical answer to modernity not the fruit of modernism.  The renewed Church of Vatican II will be composed of synodal brotherhoods not the hidden clerical cliques of chancery, Curia, and "the lavender parish".

 One principal storyline of the Francis papacy is restoring the Papacy  as Shepherd-Ruler after the papacies of the philosopher-prophet and the theologian-priest. The journey Pope Francis is walking with us cannot be interrupted for you tube monologues contrasting two American queens like Raymond Burke and James Martin. We must think much bigger to think with Francis who is not the provincial that American neoconservatives label him.

It is not only the Church but the nations which constitute Christendom and humanity. Pope Francis understands the Church must go 'to the periphery" to baptize the nations or the Church forfeits her mission. Pope Francis is calling together the Apostolic Church as a Synodal fraternity to reform herself and function as a template for humanity. He is leading the biblical People of God amidst the nations. He is showing us the public fruits of Vatican Two are still maturing while the twisted fruits of hidden clericalism are rotting.  Following the true Spirit of the Second Vatican Council, he has initiated his unique diplomacy of fraternity to Confucian China and Islam. He answered the beheading of the Coptic martyrs on the shores of the Mediterranean with public Mass on the sands of Arabia. Synodal brotherhood in the Church and fraternity amidst the religions and nations of mankind may just be the wholistic approach that will best isolate the lavender Judas in the Vatican and the  salafist Cain in Mecca. Let us pray for Our Holy Father on this feast day and honor that Holy Chair.  He has a large plan and we can all agree he has not yet  found his General Grant.