Varden Varia

Bishop Varden has made quite a splash across Catholic media, especially since he was selected to deliver the Lenten retreat to Pope Leo, and his homilies were posted for all to absorb. The Pillar has gushed about him, and other media sources are finding his words like the Living Water we hear about in this weekend's scrutiny. This interview has some gems:

"The decision to ask to be received into the Church came entirely naturally. It never felt like a rupture; it was a matter of coming into my own, in every sense of that phrase, while I was conscious, at the same time, of encountering an utter otherness beckoning hospitably to me."

"That is why I like to insist on the pontifical, that is, bridge-building mission of Catholics. The biblical narrative, and later the history of the Church, is the account of the coming into being of a people out of scattered individuals oriented by conscience and grace towards a shared goal, infinitely attractive. Pursuit of that goal presupposes self-transcendence; at the same time, it enables entry into communion."

"When I grew up in the 80s, most people thought they knew what Christianity was. That is so no longer; and there is no embarrassment associated with ignorance.This is a cultural loss. At the same time it is an advantage for evangelization. For it is possible, now, to present the Gospel in its newness and for it to be perceived as new, fresh. We have a great task on our hands, an exacting and joyful task."

"A Christocentric approach to sexuality is conscious of Christ as the Alpha and Omega of the human condition. It will remember that we are made in God’s image in order to become like God; that our immediate, embodied, sensual, and affective desires are sparks of a more essential flame drawing us towards communion with uncreated Light, to 'the full Godhead’s burning,' as Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it in an ardent poem. No other categories are sufficient to account for the intensity of longing that inhabits men and women aspiring to be fully alive. Our secular establishment has no access to these categories. Therefore, we, as Christians, have a responsibility to represent them responsibly and well."

Here is his website, so much more than a blog, it is an immersion: Life Illumined
https://coramfratribus.com/life-illumined/on-consideration/

where you can find, among so much else, the homilies he delivered to Pope Leo, including this reflection on Christ's wounds:

Two contradictory tendencies mark contemporary efforts to deal with wounds. On the one hand, people readily display acquired, inherited, or imagined wounds as markers of identity. They may have good reasons, causes based on calls for justice. But as we have heard Bernard explain, motivational prospect is lost to us if we root our sense of self in attachment to a wound. We risk being mired in anger, a passion that displaces aspirations to healing with affirmations of self-righteousness. Anger and its reflection, bitterness, can lock us in perversely self-satisfied despair.

On the other hand there are efforts to airbrush wounds. We hear it insinuated that wounds should not exist and that, if they do, sick limbs should be removed. In societies become transactional, unproductive or unlovely elements have no place. They are seen as freak occurrences, met with harshness. This attitude is evident in ongoing controversies about abortion and euthanasia, as in recurrent talk about eugenics. It is seen in dystopic dreams of relieving societies of undesirables, whom certain politicians would confine in reservations or drop off the edge of a cliff. 

One can interpret this development in different ways. It seems hard to deny that the eclipse in public consciousness of the figure of the Crucified, the Wounded-yet-Unovercome, has something to do with it. A civilisation that, at some level, seeks its measure in an image that affirms the stature of patience and redemptive suffering is changed. It may learn empathy, which is not spontaneous to fallen humankind.

Christ’s Passion lets us lament without rage. It opens us to compassion, which is an epistemological category apt to prepare a graced insight like Job’s: ‘I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, now my eye sees you.’ We may call out to the Crucified-and-Risen-One: ‘My Lord and my God!’ The Gospel states that Christ’s wounds, after his rising, were not done away with, but rendered glorious. The world’s wounds can be, too, when Christ’s oil and wine are poured upon them.

It would seem my favorite blogger Amy Welborn also found this segment on woundedness as entrancing as I did.

March Daffodil

 Thy soul is not enchanted by the moon;

     No influential comet draws thy mind

     To steeps intolerable where all behind

Is dark, and many ruin'd stars and strewn.

But thou, contented, canst enthrall the tune

     That haunts each wood and every singing wind;

     Thou, fortunate philosopher, canst find

The dreams of Earth in every drowsy noon.

Match not thy soul against the seraphim:

     They are no more than moths blown to and fro

          And the tempest of the eternal Will.

Rest undismayed in field and forest dim

     And, childlike, on some morning thou shalt know

          The certain faith of a March daffodil.

-Compton Mackenzie (1883-1972)

From Poems; B. H. Blackwell, 1907. In the Public Domain.

Mortification of the will

"Mortifications are those actions which subdue our bodily desires for comfort by denying ourselves.  The word mortification comes from the Latin mortificationem, which means “a killing, or a putting to death.” The goal is to be detached enough even from our own bodies to give of ourselves in a complete way in imitation of Christ crucified.  

"But there is a primary way we are to give of ourselves, and that is within our vocation.  A mother who gives her body over for the growing child within, a father who works long, backbreaking hours to provide for the little souls at home, the priest who rises at night to anoint a dying person—this comes before anything else.  It is a way to sanctity we don’t need to guess at.  We just need to embrace it.  A practical kind of penance.  And sometimes, the obedience to our state in life requires the mortification of our will more than anything else."

-from an excellent post about the fasting God wants

Evangelization through Friendship

Enkhjin had previously visited a Protestant church and noticed its emphasis on Scripture. Yet what drew her toward Catholicism, she says, was the altar.

“What draws me to the Catholic Church is the altar, where the Body and Blood of Jesus are sacrificed and given to the people,” she said. “This nourishes the soul. I want to experience it personally.”

“I long for the day when I will receive the Body and Blood of Jesus for the first time,” she said.

She was officially accepted as a catechumen last year, and at this Easter vigil, she will be baptized in the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.

The Mongolian Church, established only in 1992 after the fall of communism, is still young, largely composed of converts and sustained by close-knit communities and personal accompaniment.

Enkhjin’s journey is emblematic of that reality: evangelization through friendship...

In Mongolia, where traditional Buddhist practice and secular influences shape much of society, conversion often begins not with doctrinal instruction but with lived experience. 

When asked how she hopes to serve the Church, Enkhjin said she wants to become a lector — to proclaim the Word of God to others.

Her imagination is shaped by the Gospel of John. She sees herself in Andrew, who brings his brother, Simon Peter, to Jesus, saying, “We have found the Messiah.”

“Just like Andrew, my friend Arvanai brought me to Jesus,” she said. “This is a very important moment in my life as a young Mongolian.”

“In the future, I also want to become an ‘Andrew’ for many ‘Peters,’ bringing them to Jesus. I understand that this is the role of every missionary in this young Church in Mongolia.”

Ascent in Ashes

I found this excerpt at Amy Welborn's blog, and it rings true, after my climb up the Croagh Patrick during my pilgrimage to Ireland as a widower:

"In a very real way, as anybody who climbs at all, will realise, the ascent of a hill closely resembles the route that must be followed in the life of prayer. If we are to reach God, we need to do all the things in the spiritual life that a mountaineer must do to reach an ordinary peak. Climbing a hill means leaving behind all the comforts of the valley, leaving the fireside and the sheltered places, for the bare ridges and the sting of hail and snow; it means too cutting down on equipment to that necessary, and no more, for the ascent. On the spiritual level, the ascent to God means cutting out all the things that are good in themselves but not necessary to us; to reach the heights of prayer is necessary to do much more than merely avoid sin. It is penitential, just as a hard climb is penitential."

Negative capability

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). -from Spiritual Direction blog

Kairos, not Chronos

Happy Catholic shares a quote that should be emblazoned as my epitaph:

"I'm sure God would have created the world very differently if he wanted us to be all business. Instead he generously sprinkles opportunities to laugh and play and adore and savor."

--Shemiah Gonzalez's friend Starlene, Undaunted Joy

Candles

This has become such an important liturgical calendar moment for me in my house. My son Ambrose in the Advent season with the candles beams when his patron saint is the one who blesses the bees who make the wax that makes the candles. My eldest daughter beams when she explains the St. Lucy tradition of an eldest daughter carrying the Christlight to her family. My daughter born in the third week of Advent beams when she lights the rose candle of Joy, which renders her middle name. Then comes the pivotal moment of Candlemas, when we close Christmastide and look towards the Paschal Candle, exulted for the work the bees did to make it, and we bless the candles that remind us that the Light of the World has Advented, and He will shine on us at the Easter Vigil. Then we take those blessed candles and place them on the throat of my beaming boy Blaise. 

I am truly blessed in this wreath of children encircling me with Light!

"The One True Holy Catholic & Apostolic Church taking time out to bless my throat!" -Flannery O'Connor, from the homage of Amy Welborn

Crepes for Candlemas: https://ashley315.substack.com/p/candlemas-the-presentation-of-christ

Myrrh is mine

 

Humility

 I cannot chant the angels’ hymn

As did the hosts of seraphim.

I cannot even cross the wild

As shepherds did, to find the Child.

I cannot shine, a living star,

To guide grave magi from afar.

I have no incense, myrrh, or gold

For gift as had the kings of old.

In all the world there is nowhere

A place so poor, a spot so bare

Save the crude cave at Bethlehem town

Where Christ, my Savior, laid Him down.

Because I am like that mean stall

I may possess Him most of all.

-Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, CSC (1887-1964)

From The Happy Christmas Wind and Other Poems by Sister M. Madeleva; 1936, St. Anthony Guild Press © Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Notre Dame, IN.  

In this crucifix in the reconciliation chapel at the Shrine in Knock, Ireland, I noticed the depiction of St.John the Beloved, reaching out his arm to comfort Mary, his new mother. It was a blessing to me at the time to consider my late wife, Amy, whose name means Beloved, reaching out to console me in my sorrow. 

Tannen-balm

There's something evocative about this Christmas tree, as imagined by Salvador Dali.

This would be a greeting card I could mail to a griever. O Tannen--  balm...

Joseph, Our Certain Hope

 Joseph, our certain hope below,

     Glory of earth and heaven,

Thou pillar of the world, to thee

     Be praise immortal given.

Thou as salvation’s minister

     God the Creator chose,

As foster-father of the Word,

     As Mary’s spotless spouse.

Joyful thou sawest Him new-born

     Of Whom the prophets sang,

Him in a manger didst adore

     From Whom creation sprang.

Lord over lords and King of kings,

     Ruler of sky and sea,

He Whom the heavens and earth obey,

     Was subject unto thee.

Praise to the Three in One Who thee

     Such signal honors lend,

And may thy merits be our aid

     To joys that never end.

-Father Juan Escollar; translated by Father Edward Caswell (1814-1878)

From St. Basil’s Hymn Book compiled by the Basilian Fathers; 1925, Rogers Church Goods Co. In the Public Domain.