Big Questions

My mother had several mantras for her children. We knew them well and we not only heard them growing up but even after we left home. One of them was, "Remember who you are." She would bring that one out when we were whining or otherwise taking the low road in reaction to some perceived grievance. The mantra was a coded directive to claim the honour but also to live up to the challenge of what she considered was our family legacy. We knew exactly what she meant, in any case.

Looking back on those interactions, I see now that her directive was genius in its own way. She was not telling us exactly what to do, she was rather challenging us to buy into our identity. Who would turn that down? And yet if you accepted the premise of the mantra, you were in fact committing yourself to a course of action, certainly to a noble outlook on what to that point was a grievance or a worry.

Something similar would have happened if she had come at it from a different direction, with a question. What if she had said in the middle of our anger and argumentative interaction with her, "Well who am I then?" There is only one answer to that question, "You are my mother." Once again, however, in giving the answer, we children would have been making a commitment to what that stands for in the moment as well as what she stands for as a member of the extended family. It would be very difficult to give the answer and then to walk away saying, "Well I really don't care."

These kinds of thoughts ran through my head last week listening to the gospel and the ever so familiar question Jesus asked his disciples: "But who do you say that I am?" After all these years of hearing the answers given, doesn't it become clear that Jesus is not asking about himself, he is asking about the disciples. Once you have given the answer, you have made a commitment.

I recall when I was in my late teens and attending a seminary in the US, being saddened at seeing guys leave, and becoming aware that some of them were leaving the seminary, the church, and their faith, all on the same day. I do not know what process they were going through, but it would make sense if some of the problem was that the commitment to their answer to Jesus' question had become too onerous.

In our present day and age, there is arguably a significant fear of Jesus' question. There probably always has been. We sense just before the words come out of our mouth that we are about to make a big commitment to follow what Jesus stands for, and to follow Jesus himself. Too much, I can't do that.

And so we might hedge, as is very popular in our culture, by espousing a nonreligious spirituality, complete with a commitment to social justice.

Other hedges, popular in Christianity, certainly in Catholicism, are liturgical piety and ecclesial clericalism. The former is bound up with ritual, the latter is bound up with power. Both claim vociferously that they are following Jesus. Both are more likely to be ways of avoiding Jesus. They need to stand beside Peter and dwell on Peter's answer to Jesus’ question.

The era of the coronavirus pandemic, I think, is challenging all of us to stand beside Peter. We are post-resurrection people: we would have no trouble agreeing with his answer. (“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”) We would quite possibly, however, have a lot of trouble letting the answer expand, letting the dough rise, as it were, into its full significance for us.

Remember who you are.

Out there in the everyday world are thousands and thousands of people who are hungry for a meaningful, active spirituality. They are not coming to church to satisfy that hunger, because it feels like the church is the purveyor of empty, repetitive ritual. Inside the church are people, including and especially in leadership, who are wringing their hands over the declining numbers in the worshiping congregations. Isn't it obvious, the question that is being begged here? Two groups are missing each other, two groups that have the potential to provide a synergy that would light up the world! Oh. Isn't that what the gospel is about? Isn't that where Peter's answer to Jesus question will lead you? If you spend time with it.
     
Sadly, there is division in the church on how to approach this. Some want to double down on preserving the liturgy in its purity even going so far as longing to bring back Latin. Others say that if we do not become a mission church we will have no one in the pews anyway, and we will have lost our relevance. The divide was addressed in an article I read recently, by Fr. Victor Codina, S.J., The article appeared in the Jesuit publication America, in September, 2019. The title of the article is: Why do some Catholics oppose Pope Francis? I won't try to summarize the article here, but Fr. Codina speaks to the pastoral flavour of the theology of Pope Francis. The article resonated with me, because it seems to me that Pope Francis was standing beside Peter when Jesus asked the question, Who do you say that I am? Pope Francis immediately thought of the poor, the sick, the lost, the wayward, that Jesus had been loving and supporting.

Here is a short excerpt from the article. If we are going to revitalize the church, if we are going to attract people to Jesus, then this commentary is on the mark.  

“It bothers people when he (Pope Francis) says that we should not build walls against refugees but bridges of dialogue and hospitality. He is annoying when, following in the footsteps of Pope John XXIII, he says that the church has to be poor and exist for the poor, that the shepherds have to smell like sheep, that it has to be an outgoing church that reaches out to the peripheries and that the poor are a theological locus, topic or source.”

For those of us who feel like we are clinging to our pews, the answer to building our communities is here. But we really will need to dig deep and remember who we are. Mom had that part right. It starts with ourselves, the leaders will follow us.

Leaving Anatevka - What to take?

    There is a great scene in Fiddler on the Roof in which the young tailor Motel Kamzoil - who marries Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel - celebrates the ‘new arrival’ of a sewing machine. The people of the village gather around and congratulate the couple as though they had just given birth. Times are changing and this machine will be very important to them. Coincidentally, there is a new current of independent thinking among the youth, and Tevye the father fears that this will destroy their traditions, their way of life. To add a further huge complication, the Jews of the area are under attack from the Russians who are doing their best to take away their livelihood and force the Jews to find new ways to survive. For many, this involves leaving the area. The sewing machine will become important in the transition. It itself is not the transition, but it surely marks it. The couple will never forget the times in which they received that sewing machine.

    Peggy and I were excited like Motel and Tzeitel when our new baby arrived: a new gym style treadmill. The sewing machine image readily came to my mind. And as I thought about it over the next few days, it occurred to me that the image fits more closely than I had imagined at first.

    The Coronavirus has attacked our way of life. It has changed our ability to freely go places, it has robbed many of their income. Like Tevye and his family, we lost even our freedom to worship in the way to which we had been accustomed.

    For the two of us, the ability to move around in the community had included daily visits to the gym, high priority given our health histories. Those visits ceased, and we were left with walking in the community. Perfectly ok, but the weather has a lot to say about how and when you are going to do that! In particular, snow and bitter cold will be here in no time. Anticipating that, we made a big decision to transition to a new routine that would protect us in two ways: against exposure to the enemy virus in a gym, and against the weather elements that stop us from participating at all. The new routine is the treadmill in the basement.

    By itself, this is not at all noteworthy. But it is a bit like Motel’s sewing machine. It occurs as part of a transition to a new era. It does not make the transition, but it does mark it. As with many events in our lives this year, we will never forget when this took place.

    What was life like for those Jewish communities that had to leave everything behind? If you have seen the movie or play, you know that no matter how bad things were ever going to get, what they possessed to give them balance now and forever, was tradition. No-one could take that from them. The challenge, however, was how to incorporate it into the new reality of starting from scratch, and at the same time dealing with the perennial roiling that comes with kids growing up and thinking for themselves.

    Goodness, some of this sounds very familiar. My dad was greatly distressed by the changes brought by Vatican II in the mid 1960's. He kept asking me ‘What were we doing that was so wrong?’ I was so gung ho with Vatican II that I am not sure I gave him a full hearing. But he was upset.

    We are not in a Vatican Council circumstance right now, but we surely have experienced change in liturgies, starting with our ability to attend them. In the course of dealing with the disruption, parishes around the world have learned to stream their liturgies, and to get good at it. The upside of this is participation even if a step removed. The downside is no physical community gathering and no Eucharist. The convenience factor does not at all make up for those two losses. I think there is consensus on that.

    The next evolution - we are in the middle of it - has been the slow reopening of churches for liturgies, with limited seating capacity, strict social distancing rules, and significant limitations on the spoken and sung word by all those present. There is Eucharist, and there is community. And there is greatly slimmed down liturgical celebrations. Where is all that leading us?

    Not too long ago the National Catholic Reporter ran a series in which it asked the question, What next? The Church after Coronavirus.

    To my surprise, the authors and the people interviewed focused almost not at all on the details of the liturgies, as I might have expected they would. They focused instead on the nature of the communities, and what our gatherings are even supposed to be for. Massimo Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University worried that with our ability to choose the community we want to tune into online, we may be inclined to seek out groups with whom we resonate, rather than contributing to the local community of which we are a part. 

    Jesuit Fr. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator who is president of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar, cautions against too much insularity wherein we look inward and end up trapped in bureaucratic and clericalist structures as before. This is an opportunity he argues, for us to look outward to those we have not included. After all, that is central to the teachings of Jesus. In saying this, he is anchoring all our changes in the biggest tradition there is - the Good News of the Gospel.

    Julie Hanlon Rubio is professor at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. She marvels at the ability to form or join whatever community one wishes, through Zoom. She adds: “Yet I also strongly believe in the idea of a local parish, where you show up to worship with people who aren't like you, but to whom you are connected as members of the Body of Christ. I'm grateful for Sunday mornings that feel like opportunity instead of struggle. But I'm worried about what will be lost when we choose the church we prefer over the one down the street.”   Again, she is pointing at the heart of the Gospel.

    I think that what is coming through here is that there are a lot of changes that may amount to transitions. Those transitions may well include changes within the liturgy. But that is not the emphasis these writers are discerning. Rather, there is a shared excitement that maybe, just maybe, the Church will return to its roots in the social/ redemptive mission of Jesus Christ, which is to bring all people together in love - no-one left out. In the words of Fr.Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator: “I am minded to dream of a post-coronavirus church with doors open to a new Pentecost that blows social distances away and frees consciences of bureaucratic, clericalist and hierarchical structures and certainties in which we were schooled to place our trust. I dream of a church receptive to new ways of practising solidarity and compassion in response to Jesus' commission to be women and men for others.”

    Isn’t this interesting. Doesn’t it hit you that if we emerge from all this with our eyes open and our minds attentive to who we are and to whom we belong, the liturgies will line up just fine? Changed or not.

    We are leaving Anatevka. Dangers of various kinds have forced that upon us. It turns out that difficult as this may be, and as unsettling as the experience has been, this is also a great opportunity. I am not sure what our sewing machine would be as we make our transition. But if we listen to voices such as I just referred to, we would have found our balance in the middle of change. Tevye said it well. Change all around us, anchored by a precious possession. Tradition.