29 December 2009

Day Twenty

Once again, we’ve been in study mode—two classes and another session with our instructor on Islam. Illness has begun to creep in among us, laying one of us out for a couple of days, and giving others unusually deep or wheezy voices that persist far beyond the morning; thankfully, most of us have to this point stayed reasonably healthy and functional. We are gearing up for the Christmas celebration here, and it has every promise of being an exceptional year (though for many of the American-born seminarians at least, it is the first year away from home and family for Christmas).

Our sessions on Islam have been somewhat frustrating, as Islam is a notoriously difficult belief system to lie out in systematic form. Part of our learning has been to absorb the vast and varied reality of the Islamic worldview and practice, very little of which makes immediate sense to adherents of western Catholicism. Islam is by no means monolithic—much less so than Catholicism, or even Christianity; when we ask what it is that Muslims believe about this or that issue, there is very little that an introductory session can offer to plumb the many interpretations that exist. As an analogy, imagine explaining what Christians believe about salvation to a friend unfamiliar with Christian doctrine, who could no more than guess at the meaning of the words “Protestant,” “Orthodox,” and “Catholic,” and who approaches religion as a vague mixture of magic and pop psychology. In many respects, we are worlds apart.

For these and many other reasons, the discipline of being here in the Middle East is difficult to sustain. It requires a perpetual restraint against gut reactions and generalizations; to step into this world is, for many of us, a more radical transition into unknown territory than ever before, and when in unfamiliar territory, there is a temptation to resort to accustomed modes of thinking. The culture, language, history, and temperament of the land and its people are truly unique, and while there are many points of similarity, the differences can often be startlingly broad. Simply adjusting to the fact that the Qu’ran is broadcast for general consumption at tremendous volume five times a day requires special flexibility and patience for those of us accustomed to the general secular tone of the West and suburban noise ordinances.


The countdown to our departure from Bethlehem is winding down, and many of us are hitting the shops to make our purchases before taking off. The shop owners have become familiar faces in our movement about the city, and the more savvy among us have become quite adept at discovering the finest goods at the lowest prices. Many of us have saved for months, if not years, for this trip, and there are ample opportunities to acquire fitting items to commemorate our pilgrimage and enjoy for years to come. A number of us intend to acquire chalices and other liturgical goods, and all of us are accumulating many gifts for friends and family. There is a sense that it’s very possible we will only be here once, and there’s no reason to let a good opportunity pass us by.


24 December 2009

The Mystery Beneath her Heart

A merry Christmas to all.  Let's approach the mystery of the Incarnation together, with a hushed attentiveness to the reality that is only beginning to unfold in the world, even now, thousands of years later.   Let us consider what manner of child this is, and what sort of woman is his mother:

The Virgin, harboring a mystery under her heart, remains in profound solitude.  In a silence that almost causes the perplexed Joseph to despair. Incarnation of God means condescension, abesement, and, because we are sinners, humiliation.   And he already draws his Mother into these humiliations.   Where did she get this child?  People must have talked at the time, and they probably never stopped. It must have been a sorry state of affairs if Joseph could find no better way out that to divorce his bride quietly. God’s humanism at once begins drastically. Those whose lives God enters, those who enter into his, are not protected.   They have to go along into a suspicion and ambiguity they cannot talk their way out of.  And the ambiguity will only get worse, until, at the Cross, the Mother will get to see what her Yes has caused and will have to hear the vitriolic ridicule to which the Son is forced to listen.
Hans Urs von Balthasar

On behalf of your friends and family members here in Bethlehem, you are remembered here in prayer this holy night.

19 December 2009

Humiliation Incarnate



Our first “official” day here in Bethlehem began with Mass in the Grotto of the Nativity.  The Grotto is nestled underneath the Greek Orthodox portion of the Basilica, which is also the most ancient portion of the complex.  The entire church has been built over the stone where, it is said, Jesus was brought to light.  The grotto is clearly ancient, and as one descends down the steps rounded over with the awed shuffling of countless pilgrims, the air becomes warm and thick from the vapors of the lamps burning within the small, enclosed chamber.  Here and there, the sooty black stones show through the gaps in the drapery and brocades that shimmer in the light of the dim flames.  The eyes adjust and begin to discern dim shapes and faces on the walls dark with age.  A marble altar draped with a curtain woven of gold and silver thread sits astride the stone, and so in order to reverence the holy place as the shepherds and Magi did so long ago, the faithful literally have to prostrate themselves as they approach.  Our Mass was offered just a few feet away, on an altar built beside the stone on which the manger sat.  

Clearly, one of the more obvious tensions here in the Holy Land is to be found at the holy sites themselves.  Aside from the conflicts over jurisdiction between the Orthodox and the Catholics of the Latin, Armenian, and Ethiopian rites, the sheer number of people who come to visit presents problems of its own.  A case in point was our own Mass, offered in a space barely large enough to fit a dozen of us and a priest—yet brazen visitors, either oblivious to or apathetic towards the Mass, elbowed their way over to the manger and snapped trios of flash photographs just a foot or two from Father Lodge as he proclaimed the Gospel!  The hum of chatter and the shrill commentary of tour guides can often shatter any semblance of respect or humility before the mystery, and it is difficult for many of us to feel no small exasperation over what appears to be total disregard for the sacred nature of the place.  Yet in some sense, their conduct is understandable; many of them have saved up for years to accomplish their life’s dream to visit the Holy Land, and they may only have a few minutes of their whirlwind tour to dedicate to each place.  They will not be stopped!  It is for us, who have the tremendous privilege to contemplate these places again and again, to yield to the less fortunate. 

Yet is it not just the pilgrims who behave in discouraging ways; our own Elliot was confronted by a young Orthodox priest not much older than he.  Elliot had been standing by the door to block access to the grotto for the few minutes we’d be celebrating Mass; this, we had observed, was common practice on the part of other groups who had celebrated their own liturgies in the grotto in days prior.  Within minutes, this young priest came swaggering in, sarcastically demanded to know who was in charge.  When Elliot gestured toward the priest celebrating Mass, this young man stabbed his finger into his chest, declared that HE was in charge, and told our fellow pilgrim to get out!  Rightfully feeling that argument would only exacerbate an already ridiculous situation, he (and a few others along with him) complied.  Observing this petty tyrant from just a few yards away, I was all rage and shame, bewildered that such a display of playground bullying should take place not six feet from the very site to which we’d come to offer worship.  Those of us here for the first time couldn’t understand it; the more experienced shrugged it off as the way things are.

Yet, in some sense, this is the very mystery we have come here to contemplate.  Is it not a fitting icon of the reality of the Incarnation itself?  Are we surprised that the God who descended from His throne on high submits meekly to the mistreatment we are all too ready to offer him?  Does not this shoddy icon melt into a glassy mirror, disclosing to us our own irreverence, our own disobedience, our own sin? 





12 December 2009

For Your Enjoyment

New images are up at my personal photoblog (A Secret of a Secret), and a new series of photojournal entries and reflections will be posted on the official seminary site (A Seminarian's Tale).  Both are linked above, and will be posting continuously for the next week! 

08 December 2009

Happy Feast Day, America

On the Immaculate Conception:

The two dogmatic propositions entailed by the quality of Mary’s Yes, namely her virginity and her freedom from the original sin common to all men, are wholly a function of Christology. The latter affirmation, namely, that she “was conceived immaculate”, says nothing but what is indispensable for the boundlessness of her Yes. For anyone affected in some way by original sin would be incapable of such a guileless openness to every disposition of God. Her virginity, on the other hand, guarantees a christological fact: Jesus acknowledges only one Father, the one in heaven, as his own. This becomes evident in the response he gives as a twelve-year-old child in the Temple. No man can have two fathers, as Tertullian pithily and accurately says; therefore, the mother has to be a virgin. The point of this christologically motivated virginity lies, not in an antisexual, merely bodily integrity, as if it were an end in itself, but in Mary’s motherhood; in order to be the messianic Son of God, who can have no other Father than God, she must be overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and she must say to that overshadowing a Yes that includes her whole person, both body and soul.

Hans Urs von Balthasar
Mary: The Church at the Source


(Image copyright Matthew Alderman, 2008)


06 December 2009

On the Ground

Well, we're here, safe and sound ... a bit jetlagged, but that's nothing a couple of rest days haven't been able to fix.  The connection here is slow and tenuous so photos are going to be a luxury, I think.  That's not for lack of subjects, however!  The city of Bethlehem is a visual feast, and the weather has been outstanding thus far, enabling us to get out and enjoy the city (and its shrines) as we please.  The following is a short journal entry for our trip over.  More to come!

Ж


Wednesday, 3 December 2009

The first leg of our travels has brought us safely to Zurich.  I can safely say that the eight hour flight was one of the more pleasant ones I’ve ever taken.  We were offered most every amenity, including real silverware for dinner—though to my chagrin, I slept through the offering of the hot facecloth right before breakfast.  A lamentable disappointment.  Those unable to sleep whiled away the hours with the ample in-flight entertainment; Elliot managed a pretty convincing impression of a thirteen-year-old by playing Space Invaders games for hours on end, fueling his binge with one cup of apple juice after another.  A Jewish man moved to the back of the plane to offer his prayers, wrapped in a white shawl and rocking back and forth on his heels while turned to face Jerusalem.

It’s a sobering thought to recall how difficult our 8-hour journey would have been even a hundred years ago.  The rapidity of global travel has erased any real concept of distance we once had.  Whether dining on hot chicken and rice over Newfoundland, sipping a glass of red wine with Iceland on the horizon, or enjoying a hot roll and chilled yogurt while the English Channel sails by under the wing, there is no question that our experience is a far cry from the ever-tossing, frigid, cramped accommodations enjoyed by the passengers of yesterday.  I could almost picture them, green and shivering in the hold of a ship pitched over hard to leeward in a gale, terrified that the timbers would give way with each thudding wave that smashed into the bow.  Friends, I very nearly pitied them as I spread strawberry jam onto the warm croissant in my lap and took a leisurely sip of hot, black coffee.  The collective and sustained efforts of aviators, engineers, navigators, and entrepreneurs has whittled down the grueling, even life-threatening character of a transatlantic voyage to one night of mild discomfort offset by the consolation of any number of amenities at hand to keep the mind off the dreadful inconvenience of it all.  There are days when I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off without the phenomenally advanced technology of our day, with all its tendencies to numb our souls and distract our consciences.  Today was not one of those days.

Zurich is tidy and quaint, but as one of my fellow pilgrims put it, I’ve only got so much pilgrim juice in me, and there’s no sense in handing it out indiscriminately.  It’s naptime at our hotel, a nice hot shower before dinner, then back on the plane this evening to Tel Aviv!  Bethlehem, here we come.