Wisdom's Cry

Pentecost has always been an hard Holy Day for me.  I grew up baptist in a family of ministers.  Like them, I felt the call to ministry early.

When I was 6, the Sunday school teacher gave the call to salvation, and I knew more clearly than I ever knew anything before or since that I had to accept Christ into my life.  The call to ministry was so strong.  I would grow up and be a Baptist minister like my grandfather and great-grandfather.

Divine Intervention

My plan never included my conversion to Catholicism.  When it happened, I assumed that I would take up Holy Orders and join the priesthood.

The longer I spent in the the Roman Church, the more alienated I felt from the hierarchy and the deeper the traditions, liturgy, and theology appealed to me.  I am not going to go into all of the details regarding why I left the Roman Church, but I will simply say that I have not been able to even contemplate entering a Roman church since the death of John Paul II, of blessed memory.

Now I am in a strange place:

The Wilderness

It is difficult to be a non-Roman but still Catholic on any given Sunday.  The Holidays are harder, and Pentecost is the most difficult.

• My protestant upbringing tells me that I do not need a Priest or the Magisterium to celebrate Mass or the Sacraments.
• My catholic side sees the importance of the ordained and consecrated priesthood.

Pentecost exacerbates the problem.

The Anointing of the Holy Spirit

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.  And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

And they were all amazed and marveled, saying one to another, “Behold, are not all these which speak Galilaeans?  And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born?  Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God.”

And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying one to another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:1-12)?

My protestant education taught me that this was the Baptism of the Holy Spirit for all believers.  My Roman Catholic instruction says that this is the chrism imparted on the Apostles passed through the priesthood.

Peter’s sermon seems to validate the Protestant reading:

But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel;

And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:  And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy:  And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke: The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and notable day of the Lord come: And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved (Acts 2:16-21).

It is clear that this passage is about all believers.  Pentecost is for all of us.  The office of the Apostles was to shepherd the flock as guides on the journey.  The old priesthood died when the temple veil ripped at the Crucifixion.  But this leads me into a strange and interesting path:

What does lay lead Catholicism look like?

That is the the heart of the question.  In the last reformation, the protestants left behind most of the Catholicism, and replaced it with new traditions, practices and confessions.

Matthew Fox has called for a new reformation, and I hear that call loudly.  The challenge is for people like me, who hear the call for reformation this time, to keep what is best about the tradition, and build on that historical foundation a new home for those called to this path.

I am not sure what that will look like, but I am committed to seeking it out.  Hopefully, some of you will come along on the journey.

Prayer

Come, Holy Spirit!  As we remember the day you broke into the world to fill the Church with your new life, guide us in the path of righteousness as we follow the path toward reformation.  Illuminate our minds and take up residence in our hearts as we seek to find our way through wilderness like the Israelites of old.  Lead us to the mountain where we might leave behind our golden calves and learn the ways of God.

Amen.

We have been talking a lot about the nature of God and the most fundamental beliefs of the the faith of the prophets and mystics. Of the hundreds if not thousands of ways we could take the discussion of the nature of the Deity, I have decided to continue my posts inspired by Brian McLaren’s a Generous Orthodoxy.

In the book, McLaren describes the God he sees in creation in a simple yet profound way.

God is a:

a unified, eternal, mysterious, relational community/family/society/entity of saving Love (a Generous Orthodoxy, 85).

This is a phrase for meditation and quiet contemplation in the night. We have already talked about Rabbi David A Cooper’s image of God as a Verb (see this post). This notion of God is very close to the glimpses of Providence we get in our everyday life, but McLaren has found a way to describe our encounter with the Divine.

Unified

The testimony of the Prophets reveals to us a God that is One. On the night before he was crucified, our Lord prayed:

That they all may be one; as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:21).

It is our mission to reconcile all to God and to spread the word that we are one in Christ, and one in God. We are one human family, in fact, we are one terrestrial family. This is where our impulse for peacemaking and conservation arise.

Many people confuse the unity of God is one of the most misunderstood ideas in the history in monotheism. There is but one God, called by many names. There are no other Gods. Once we realize this, our tribalism melts away and we realize the commonality of all faiths.

Eternal

As Joseph Campbell said:

Eternity isn’t some later time. Eternity isn’t a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There’s a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. ‘All life is sorrowful’ is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn’t be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.

Moyers: That’s a pessimistic note.

Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it’s great this way. It’s the way God intended it (Power of Myth).

Eternity is a present reality that we tend to ignore. Through prayer and meditation we learn to reside in this eternal now, and through mindfulness we learn to live with in it. In so doing, we are learning to practice the presence of God.

Relational Community/Family/Society/Entity

God is most clearly seen in the relations of things to one another. We see God in the heart of all living. We find God as Father/Protector, Mother/Nurturer, Sibling/Believer, and Child/Actions.

The God we see through providence is the Unknowable Father, the one whose name has never been soiled by human language.

In nature and times of trouble, we rest in the nurturing Spirit as our Divine Mother.

In every believer, we see Christ in them as our Brother and Sister in the Lord.

Through our actions and the actions of the faithful, we see God as Child, the one who is conceived in us upon conversion, and who through our lives we bring into the world.

Corporately, we as the church are the body of Christ. We see God in the hearts of all people.

This is the Living God who is with his people and frees them from fear and torment through his marvelous grace.

Saving Love

The power of God is intimate love and peace we find as we rest in the arms of the Godhead in liturgy and meditation. This Saving Love is the power of Christ to deliver us from Satan’s power.

In all things, we worship the Living God.

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain`also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men every where to repent:

Because he has appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he has ordained; whereof he has given assurance unto all men, in that he has raised him from the dead (Acts 17:28-31)